SCI FI Channel may sue US gov't for UFO documents

[Ivan Seeking]

Last year SCI FI joined forces with an investigative journalist, a Washington, DC law firm, and former President Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, to gain release of documents relating to an incident it calls "the new Roswell," a UFO sighting in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania in 1965.

"Now, one year later, despite serious effort to uncover the facts, NASA and the Department of Defense are still maintaining their wall of silence," said SCI FI Channel president Bonnie Hammer. "Whether or not this has anything to do with UFOs the public has the right to know."

http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/031021/media_scifi_1.html

 

[Zero]

Boy, isn't this silly? Then again, in a way, UFOs are a perfect cover for clandestine military experiments. I've always thought that the government intentionally plants rumors about UFOs to attract the 'crazies', in order to avoid serious scrutiny of aircraft tests.

Remember, though, this is the Sci-Fi channel, and they are in the business of entertainment, not critical thinking.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Ivan,

I mentioned Kecksberg to you once but I think you hadn't heard of it at that time. Unsolved Mysteries did an episode on it. Since it's relatively recent ('65) there were a lot of eyewitnesses to interview - people who remember the night the military invaded the town, plus many intriguing details.

I actually hope the Sci-Fi channel succeeds in getting all the documents because I'm banking on the discovery that what landed in Kecksberg was a US experimental craft or a non-US (Soviet most likely) craft up to no good.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by zoobyshoe
Ivan,

I mentioned Kecksberg to you once but I think you hadn't heard of it at that time. Unsolved Mysteries did an episode on it. Since it's relatively recent ('65) there were a lot of eyewitnesses to interview - people who remember the night the military invaded the town, plus many intriguing details.

I actually hope the Sci-Fi channel succeeds in getting all the documents because I'm banking on the discovery that what landed in Kecksberg was a US experimental craft or a non-US (Soviet most likely) craft up to no good.

The Sci Fi channel is running a special about Kecksberg this friday. I can't believe I had never heard of this one...

So do I recall correctly that you mentioned being a cryptographer?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Not me. I like to use the word "cryptic" a lot, though. I totally suck at codes. Zantra once used the acronym MILTF in a post. I responded by saying I couldn't decipher that code. Could be you noticed that post and wondered if I were implying I usually could decipher codes. I can't. Kecksberg isn't at all well known, for some reason. I think the Unsolved Mysteries episode was the first big mention of it.

 

[Jonathan]

I hadn't heard of it either, but am now (since seeing the ads) looking forward to Friday. On that same show they are supposed to tell what came of those brown paper bags with some sort of evidence that they showed on the Roswell show not long ago.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Zero
Boy, isn't this silly?

maybe... your core belief systems as a skeptic are showing.

So what do you think about John Podesta. Do you think he's given up Washington for UFOs?

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by Ivan Seeking
maybe... your core belief systems as a skeptic are showing.

So what do you think about John Podesta. Do you think he's given up Washington for UFOs?

This has nothing to do with core beliefs as anything but someone who can actually look at reality and see what is there. The the reality is that the Sci-Fi channel puts on any garbage that will get ratings, without any sort of critical filter. They can pretend to be doing an 'investigation', but it is a sham to boost ratings.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Originally posted by Zero
the reality is that the Sci-Fi channel puts on any garbage that will get ratings, without any sort of critical filter.

The Sci-Fi channel certainly isn't PBS and it has to be taken into account that their prime motivation is ratings. To the extent they present anything as a fact it provides something to check.

As far as critical filters go, I often find these to constitute more mud to slog through. Watching the History Channel,for instance, I find the interviews with academic critical interpreters, often interspersed into the straightforward presentations of history, are sometimes naive, and often peculiar. It is sometimes impossible to believe these people came to their interpretations based on the history just presented.

They can pretend to be doing an 'investigation', but it is a sham to boost ratings.

Although their motivation is certainly to boost ratings, this doesn't mean the investigation must necessarily be worthless. The better the quality of their investigation the better it will be for ratings. They have an incentive to do a good job. Whether or not they will, remains to be seen.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Zero
This has nothing to do with core beliefs as anything but someone who can actually look at reality and see what is there. The the reality is that the Sci-Fi channel puts on any garbage that will get ratings, without any sort of critical filter. They can pretend to be doing an 'investigation', but it is a sham to boost ratings.

I have seen everything from the most extreme of the fringe to the most diehard skeptics on the SciFI channel. Also, I know for a fact that much [not all] of their so called reporting is accurate.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

more...

"A lot of people have said that the object might have been this Russian probe called Cosmos 96, which is known to have come down over Canada early in the morning of the day that the Kecksburg incident took place," Kean said in an interview. "I was able to eliminate that possibility by talking to the chief scientist for orbital debris at the NASA Johnson Space Center. His name is Nicholas Johnson, and he's one of the leading experts in the world on orbital debris and on the Russian space system."

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2003-10/21/13.00.sfc

 

[Jonathan]

Sorry to get a little of topic, but in reponse to Zoobyshoe's comment on History Channel, I too have seen this obvious nonsense. I saw one show about the Bible and archaeology, and they had some pompous dope say that he believes that the Bible was written in the Hellenistic period. They then had a guy from U of Arizona or Arizona U or something point out that they've found little bits of scoll with biblical texts on them and these have been dated to like 600BC. They switched back to the British dope and he said that that is nonsense, that everyone knows that you date things by their most recent example (or something to that effect). Following that logic, the Bible must have been written three seconds ago since the most recent one published probably was printed just then.
My complaint is that the makers of the show didn't point out that the man was spouting nonsense. I sent them an email sometime ago about this and never got a reply.
Back (kinda) on topic, I find it comical, at the Russian's expense, that a person (Nicholas Johnson in this case) should be an expert in both Russian spacecraft and orbital debris. LOL!

 

[selfAdjoint]

Back (kinda) on topic, I find it comical, at the Russian's expense, that a person (Nicholas Johnson in this case) should be an expert in both Russian spacecraft and orbital debris. LOL!

Why on Earth is that comical? Say you are going to become an expert on space debris. Then you had better learn what's up there, and also what used to be up there to contribute its debris. And part of what's up there is Russian space craft, no? So you couldn't be an expert on the one, without being pretty well up on the other.

In any case the fall of that satellite in Canada was widely reported. Even I saw about it.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

NASA has agreed to turn over documents relating to the alleged crash of a UFO in Kecksburg, Pa., in 1965, the SCI FI Channel announced. The news comes a day after SCI FI said it would pursue legal action against the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to release its records on the incident.

NASA informed Lee Helfrich, attorney for the Channel-sponsored Coalition for Freedom of Information, that it is releasing 36 pages of documents, the Channel said.

The release comes after 10 months of pursuing the records through the Freedom of Information Act. The Department of Defense and the U.S. Army have yet to release any records under similar requests, the Channel said.

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2003-10/24/12.00.sfc

 

[zoobyshoe]

I'm putting my money on the Cosmos 96.

 

[Jonathan]

First, what I said is comical because it implies that Russian spacecraft are junk, goofball.
Second, I have now seen the show and they come to these conclusions:
-There were more than three army men out there
-The military came at unheard of speed
-Something did fall from the sky
-The government, for untold reasons, has more info that they are still unwilling to disclose
Because of the fact that the military came so quick, I'd say it probably was Cosmos 96, because they would have been able to track its descent for weeks, and therefore be able to start people on the trip to Kecksburg before the object had begun to fall. That way, they could arive almost as soon as it fell.
The one thing that bothers me though is that the gov has more info, and since the Cold War is over, it doesn't make sense that they'd still keep it secret.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Actually, the show said the cosmos 96 was launched earlier that day, not weeks earlier. The military would have been right on top of it.

The main reason they would still be keeping it a secret is most likely because if they admit it, they are admitting they keep secrets like that, which could have too much bearing on the important things they are keeping secret today.

I got your funny about space debris.

-Zooby

 

[Jonathan]

I don't understand your first comment, but I agree with the second. I think you may have misunderstood me, I meant that Cosmos 96 would have been slowly losing orbital radius for weeks, so they would have been aware of it and been able to predict where it would fall. That is why they could get there so fast. However, the eye witnesses say that the object came down slowly and curvy, which isn't consistent with orbital debris. Although it should be kept in mind that eye witnesses are unreliable.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Originally posted by Jonathan
I think you may have misunderstood me, I meant that Cosmos 96 would have been slowly losing orbital radius for weeks, so they would have been aware of it and been able to predict where it would fall.

Cosmos 96 could not have been losing orbital radius for weeks because it never made it into orbit: it was launched earlier that day - Dec. 9, 1965 - the same day the object landed in Kecksburg.

From the start, the soviets designed their manned space capsules to come back down on land. They didn't let them fall into the ocean from fear someone else would get to them before they could.

These hard landings were less than ideal. Cosmos 96 was supposed to be a Venus probe, but my guess is that it was an experiment in controlled reentry and landing to improve upon the parachute landings onto hard ground. The people who saw it maneuver were probably not seeing things.

So, my thinking at this point is that the "Venus" probe story was a cover, Cosmos 96 was supposed to land on Soviet Soil but something went wrong and it came down pretty much exactly where the Soviets didn't want it to.

The engineering designs the program got hold of showed that the "acorn shaped capsule" of Cosmos 96 was only supposed to be about 3 feet in diameter. The people who saw the thing under the tarp on the back of the flatbed said it was bigger: about the size of a VW bug. This was the height of the cold war. There may have been an "official" Cosmos 96, and then a "real" one, on paper, at least (pure speculation on my part).

The "hieroglyphics" could possibly have been embossed cyrillic script, except that I think the reporter, Murphy, would have known that, even if it fooled the country firemen and others who saw it. Maybe Murphy did know. Maybe he was killed to prevent any possibility of writing a story that would confirm to the Soviets we had recovered their capsule.

I'm curious of course, about who screamed in the woods, twice, that night. The obvious answer is that a curiosity seeker was discovered and got his arm twisted behind him, or whatever, by impatient military. (I say that because in the 1960s that was the thing everyone went for in a fight: to twist the other guys arm behind him and make him say "uncle", meaning "I give up". It hurts enough to make you scream, believe me.)
The other thing that comes to mind is that they somehow got the capsule open and, poor Cosmonaut X, finding himself surrounded by English-speaking military, loudly requested the presence of his mother, or whatever.

 

[Jonathan]

Oh, I misunderstood you!

 

[screwball]

Originally posted by Ivan Seeking
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2003-10/24/12.00.sfc

why haven't i seen anything about these documents yet?
i mean how long does it take to release documents after you said you would after 10 months of waiting for you to say you would?

i bet someones burning the midnight oil with a certain 36 pieces of paper and a large black marker.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I Saw the Kecksberg UFO!

Something pierced the night’s sky over my left shoulder. Our heads turned to the left and our eyes could not help but notice a bright ball of light! Both John and I were stunned. Our mouths dropped. The object was about the size of a full moon and it trailed sparks or little bits of light. The odd thing about it was the thing did not fall straight down. The UFO went laterally; sideways; almost up! Whatever this was...it could not have been a meteor. A shooting star (or space debris) falls down. A natural object does not move horizontally. Meteors do not go up.

http://www.paranormalnews.com/article.asp?ArticleID=757

 

[zoobyshoe]

In response to the quote you posted (I didn't go to the link)

I just want to say that conventional meteors in the atmosphere do, in fact, move in paths that are, for all intents and purposes horizontal.
When I was about 10, I, and a group of about 7 other kids, saw a meteor travel across the sky, very close, from south to north, in apparent straight line motion.
The main mass looked like a burning glob of something: it was close enough that we could see it was completely engulfed in flames that were being blown back behind it in a very long tail. The tail imperceptibly changed from flame to a smoke trail. The smoke trail was very black and sooty looking like the smoke that comes from smudge pots or burning tires.

It seemed to move very slowly. The time it took to go from the southern limit of our field of vision to the northern one was about the same time it would take for a small plane to do the same thing if the plane were close enough to distinguish wings from the fusilage etc. (I'm sorry that's so vague).

This was in the 1960's, during the summer, about 5:00 PM. That night on the news we found out the meteor had been spotted by many people from Massachusettes to Canada, (I was in NH at the time), and that there were reports it had finally come down somewhere in Canada: a long, horizontal trip. There was no mistaking this thing for a craft, however, unless you were to suggest it were something in the final stages of incineration by friction with the atmosphere.
Its course was clearly ballistic, it made no changes whatever. I have no way to gage how big it actually was or how fast it was moving.

-Zoob

 

[zoobyshoe]

Originally posted by screwball
why haven't i seen anything about these documents yet?
i mean how long does it take to release documents after you said you would after 10 months of waiting for you to say you would?

i bet someones burning the midnight oil with a certain 36 pieces of paper and a large black marker.

One of the people they interviewed on the show (whose name I didn't catch) was someone who used to work for Nasa. He said Nasa never goes out investigating any of this stuff.

The implication was that the people who showed up claiming to be from Nasa weren't. They were actually, according to this man, probably affiliated with the two covert operations : Moondust, and Bluefly, which were the "real" MIB,and whose purpose was to recover any Soviet Space Debris they could.

If any of that is true whatever documents Nasa has about Kecksberg are probably completely uninformative, without any redaction. This may be why they agreed to hand them over.

That is my "reasonable" speculation on the subject. The truth could turn out to be more surprising, I don't know.

 

[Zantra]

As usual, it's clear that the government is hiding something. What exactly they are hiding is open to speculation. That they are hiding something is obvious. You don't refuse to release information that is 30 years old, if names are all that is sensitive, because they can be blacked out. I don't see this release as any victory. They will never release they stuff they don't want anyone to see. They will forge documents or black out the stuff that is sensitive.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Here is an old video [interview] on Kecksburg from the Napster.

Please see the 14th video from the bottom, left column.
http://www.ufocasebook.com/videos.html