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The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects Author:Edward J. Ruppelt Ruppelt was in a strange position, authorized by the Air Force to investigate UFOs, while, possibly, required not to tell all he knew or found out. — For example, he took the twenty best sightings--extensive ground and air visual reports matching radar records--to Wright Patterson AFB's tactical intel center. The analysts took the best ten and ex... more »amined them. Absolutely controlled by intelligent direction, was the conclusion. And that was it. That's it!? If there was more to it than that, presumably he'd have said nothing about it at all. But still, incontrovertibly controlled by intelligent direction? And then he changes the subject. Perhaps he was as frustrated as the reader is. If that's all the information he had, that was all he could say.
He was unable to explain ("debunk") many of the sightings, but is careful to say that not being able to explain something doesn't mean it's an invading armada of Bug-Eyed Monsters.
Not too many years ago, the Air Force said--"claimed" for the folks who don't believe the Air Force--that they'd cleared 96% of unknowns not otherwise explained by relating them to known flights of U2 and SR71 flights, more than top secret at the time. The U2 may have figured in Ruppelt's later work, but he was out of the business before the SR71 came along. Nevertheless, this tells us a couple of things. One is that aircraft a generation ahead of anything we know can generate UFO sightings. Another is that when somebody says he saw something, maybe he did. Since these reports reported real aircraft. And we've always had something a generation ahead, under wraps, until it becomes known and then obsolete, but by then, there's another.
In another part of the book, he tells of convening a panel of mental health professionals. Must have had quite a budget for a major. The shrinks opined that the reason could be war nerves due to apprehension over imminent nuclear war. Mass hysteria, mass hallucinations. Correcting for the propensity of people to see things in terms of their own profession, this tells us something that those too young to recall might find interesting. The shrinks saw nothing wrong with positing that so many people were so actively scared of waking up dead one fine morning that they saw UFOs. It's not the UFOs that is the interesting part. It's that the shrinks believed, in their professional competence, that a significant part of the population was scared to death and that it wasn't an irrational fear. Ruppelt, writing in and of that time, didn't think to remark on it since he could expect his readers to understand, because they were living it.
Ruppelt talks about the famous Lubbock lights and the summer of UFOs around DC's airports.
The book will probably disappoint those seeking to validate the existence of extraterrestial visitors. Ruppelt either explains in mundane terms the sightings, dismisses them for lack of sufficient evidence, or simply admits there is no answer. But that doesn't mean XTs are the answer. It merely means he has no explanation.
Or no explanatioin he can put in the book, which is the killer for a reader.
What did he really know?
This is a page-turner, although written decades ago. It will explain some of the ways investigations are done, some of the difficulties encountered, and ground those who are too likely to see BEMs on every shooting star« less