X Descending (17 page)

Perhaps some combination of fear and disbelief came into play when, in 2004, I submitted an article to Popular Mechanics, the very same magazine that in 1995 ran the article
Fly By Microwaves
detailing Myrabo and his concepts. I had decided to write a brief article under the title
Propulsion Concept Inspired By Mystery Aircraft
in which I would report simply that the Air Spike concept had been gleaned from a film of a “highly advanced and previously unseen aircraft”. Popular Mechanics had run numerous articles over the years touching on the subject of unidentified flying objects, including a February 2004 cover story titled
When UFO’s Arrive
. A quick search of that magazine's web site will reveal many past articles with “UFO” in the title. There was also an article from March of 2003 titled simply
Mystery Plane Revealed
. All of this made me fairly confident that my article fit perfectly with their subject matter and, since my article also related to their own 1995 article, I felt sure that it would interest them. Still, to be as journalistically accurate as possible (and to play it safe) I made certain that nowhere in my own article did I once use the term UFO or any of the words “unidentified”, “flying”, “object”, or “saucer”. When I was ready I placed a call to Jim Wilson, the Popular Mechanics Science Editor. After I read him a short synopsis his immediate response was, “Okay, I’m interested. Send it."

On the one hand I was surprised, and on the other hand not surprised at all, when I got a very short email reply saying it was not Popular Mechanics material. I was curious to know why, and so I wrote a polite email asking if he might give me a little input on what made it not their kind of material. Having read PM for many years I certainly thought it fit exactly with the kind of material they are well known for. I never received a reply, and chalked the experience up as par for the course when it comes to this phenomenon. Still, I cannot help wondering why, after expressing interest, Wilson never asked even one question about any of the facts behind the article.

More than anything else, this kind of situation is why I came to see human psychology as posing the greatest dilemma. Fostering the attitude that this phenomenon is a modern myth has created an environment where those who don’t know won’t ask, those who do know won’t tell, and meaningful discussion is fairly well suppressed. Even when the facts are based in hard science and technology, if both science and the media are too afraid to speak out, where does that leave the rest of us? A much more direct point was made in the NSA document quoted previously,
UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions
:

Up until this time, the leisurely scientific approach has too often taken precedence in dealing with UFO questions. If you are walking along a forest path and someone yells “rattler” your reaction would be immediate and defensive. You would not take time to speculate before you act. You would have to treat the alarm as if it were a real and immediate threat to your survival. Investigation would become an intensive emergency action to isolate the threat and to determine its precise nature - It would be geared to developing adequate defensive measures in a minimum amount of time.

It would seem a little more of this survival attitude is called for in dealing with the UFO problem.

It is debatable whether this phenomenon actually represents a threat to our survival. Perhaps labeling it a threat was simply a convenient way to place it in the military/intelligence domain. Even so, leaving the public unaware and unprepared may actually lead to the misperception that there is a threat. In the end, the debate may actually be whether the threat was, in fact, from this phenomenon and what it represents, or from a leadership that would deceive the public over something so profoundly important.

“In the long run it is far more dangerous to adhere to illusion than to face what the actual fact is.”

—David Bohm

It was not until I began to try to get this information out that human psychology became so fascinating. People react in strange ways when confronted with information that pushes them psychologically into areas with which they are uncomfortable. My interest has focused primarily on how people react to information that is outside this "comfort zone". They may not even be aware of the unconscious conflicts that drive their conscious reaction. Still, the ability to resolve these conflicts may be the deciding factor in how each of us deals with any difficult truth, including the truth within this phenomenon.

Fostering the belief that this phenomenon has no basis in reality and that no one with any real credibility would take it seriously may well have become a "Catch-22". Beyond simply maintaining a public and scientific community that is largely ignorant of the facts, inherent disbelief has already been shown to have potentially dangerous consequences, even inside our intelligence agencies. A National Security Agency affidavit, originally filed in 1980 to justify withholding some records relating to unidentified flying objects, was recently released to researcher Michael Ravnitzky. Although portions of this previously highly classified document were still redacted, the information available actually reveals a worrisome situation within both the NSA and the intelligence community at large. It seems that the author of the NSA paper
UFO Hypothesis And Survival Questions
, who was eventually identified by Howard Blum to be Lambros D. Callimahos, a very influential NSA employee, also produced a monograph titled
UFO’s and the Intelligence Community Blind Spot to Surprise or Deceptive Data
. The author discussed what he saw as a serious problem with the agency’s ability to handle and respond to surprising information or deliberately deceptive data.

He specifically cited the UFO phenomenon in making the point that there is a blind spot within the U.S. intelligence community to this type of information. It was his belief that the inability of the intelligence community to process this kind of information was having a negative impact on its effectiveness. The “channels” for gathering and reporting information—by implication the people involved—were unable to deal effectively with this kind of surprising information. It seems that within the intelligence community the attitude, “It can’t be, therefore it isn’t” is a serious handicap when it comes to recognizing significant data. The tendency to dismiss something purely because it seems inconceivable is clearly as much a problem now as it was years ago when intelligence gatherers failed to recognize signs of the Holocaust. How many times has the same blind spot kept us from seeing incredible possibilities?

Developments by our own scientific community in the past two decades show that we are only now beginning to experiment with concepts resembling some of what appears in Ray Stanford’s film. The evidence speaks for itself. There seems to be no way to escape the conclusion that the vehicles caught on Stanford's film could
not
have been designed and manufactured using any known science and technology applicable in the last fifty years. If this is true, the implications are staggering. If it is not true…if it is simply someone’s secret project…then there is a technology out there that should belong to all of us.

I have made a point not to theorize about aliens, time travelers, inter-dimensional travelers or other possible explanations for the origin of the vehicles in Ray Stanford's film. Questions of who built them and where they came from will have to be answered by studying the evidence, and by open discussion. But with evidence in hand to show that such vehicles do exist and that our own science has advanced because of them, I have no doubt pressure could be brought to bear to answer those questions and to compel an accounting of what our government has known, and when they knew it. Now that you know what I know, I leave it to each of you to make up your own mind. With this evidence, I think it is vitally important that we find out the truth now—and we all should be in on the discovery.

PART II

Introduction

This book began with the experiences of Paul Bennewitz, though in Part 1 the focus was only on the nighttime films he had made of vehicles over the Manzano Weapons Storage Area. The full story actually began several months earlier. Though things had reached a peak by the late 1980’s, the ramifications of what he did continue to this day.

Some of you have heard the more fanciful aspects of the Bennewitz story, and it is my hope that you will weigh what you have heard against what I have known. For those who know very little or have never heard anything about it, this case continues to raise troubling questions, not only about the technology behind the vehicles Paul filmed, but also questions of social and legal responsibility when authorities—whether government or military—treat a concerned citizen with callous disregard.

My purpose in the beginning of this book was to point out exactly what Paul had seen and filmed that caused the Air Force (and possibly others) to react so strongly. Sadly, most of the information available today on this case focuses on the fallout, often just bizarre claims and interpretations promoted by others, some with little, if any, basis in fact. The early and most significant events are practically never mentioned. In the past, a few articles I wrote on this case have been available on the Internet. After I lost contact with Paul, with no explanation for what had happened, I wrote what I knew at that time. Without access to the information I felt was so important, information that only Paul had (and that his family might still have), there was not much else that could be done. In subsequent years, as I began to find other connections to Air Force research, the facts of what, where, and how the events occurred took on a whole new significance. Even so, there did not seem to be any reason to write more about what I knew of Paul’s experiences because the case seemed to have gone cold long ago. In the last few years however, with the publication of two books that directly and indirectly relate to this case, it became clear that the repercussions of Paul’s experiences still draw substantial interest. Nevertheless, what I knew was most important was still not being told.

Because so much began with Paul Bennewitz, and because his fascinating and tragic story is, at its heart, so deeply human, I feel compelled to set the record straight about those aspects of the story that I know well. With emphasis so often placed on the objective reality of the UFO phenomenon, the subjective and sometimes deeply personal reality for those who have a profound UFO experience too often goes untold. It can have lasting effects.

Writing about this case has been frustrating not only because of the amount of the material covered, but also because much of it is woven together by threads of other information. To understand one point often requires an explanation of other details, and those details might make up another strange story entirely. However, staying focused on what, when, where, and why is the only way to understand the overall picture and is what has been missing from most accounts. The recent publications on this case focus almost exclusively on details, side issues, and events that took place well after the Air Force became involved. In my opinion, there is every reason to believe that most, if not all, of these other tangential issues were red herrings created for the specific purpose of shifting attention away from the real evidence Paul Bennewitz obtained early on. Like a tune played by a shadowy Pied Piper, the lure of mysterious documents, secret projects, and aliens in underground bases was there to lead away anyone who came too close.