NASA chief Bill Nelson latest official to suggest UFOs have otherworldly origins
In a freewheeling Oct. 19
discussion on space policy, NASA administrator
Bill Nelson spoke passionately about his agency’s mission to seek out life beyond Earth. In his comments, Nelson
pivoted almost immediately to a series of U.S. military
encounters with mysterious flying objects, many of which appeared to
maneuver in
extraordinary ways while in
restricted airspace.
After speaking with several of the
naval aviators who
observed the unknown craft, NASA’s chief is convinced that the pilots “saw something, and their radars locked onto it.” Asked to speculate about the nature of the phenomena, Nelson – an Army veteran, former senator and ex-astronaut – responded, “Who am I to say that planet Earth is the only location of a life form that is civilized and organized like ours?”
As surprising as his answer may be, Nelson is only the latest high-level official to hint that UFOs may have otherworldly explanations.
Asked in June about the military’s recent encounters with mysterious craft, former President
Bill Clinton – like Nelson – responded by
pondering the vastness of the universe and the high probability of life existing beyond Earth. Similarly, former
President Obama speculated about the extraordinary
implications if recent incidents involved otherworldly
objects. Of note, Clinton and Obama retain
access to top-level intelligence briefings.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Queried about the Navy’s
encounters with UFOs, former CIA director
John Brennan speculated that the objects might “constitute a different form of life.” Channeling Clinton, Obama and NASA’s Nelson, Brennan stated that “it’s a bit presumptuous and arrogant for us to believe that there’s no other form of life anywhere in the entire universe.”
In much the same vein, former CIA Director James Woolsey, a longtime UFO skeptic, recently signaled
openness to the possibility that such encounters have otherworldly explanations.
John Ratcliffe, former
President Trump’s
director of national intelligence, is particularly
vocal about UFOs.
In a series of
interviews, Ratcliffe ruled out
secret U.S. technology and cited “
high confidence” intelligence assessments to eliminate foreign adversaries as possible explanations for the most compelling UFO encounters. According to the former head of U.S. intelligence, some UFOs exhibit “technologies that we don’t have and, frankly, that we are not capable of defending against.”
Like Ratcliffe, Sen.
Mitt Romney (R-Utah)
ruled out foreign powers or highly classified American technology, leaving few explanations for the phenomena.
By now, readers should be sufficiently convinced that this topic transcends America’s deepest political fault lines.
Perhaps more importantly, Luis Elizondo, former director of a Pentagon unit that analyzed military encounters with UFOs, has
suggested that the most compelling incidents have extraterrestrial explanations.
Ditto for Christopher Mellon, the top civilian military intelligence official during the Clinton and second Bush administrations. At the same time, U.S. intelligence analysts are reportedly
considering the possibility that recent encounters involved “non-human technology.”
As surprising as these developments may seem, a holistic view of the phenomenon suggests that history is repeating itself.
Reports of unidentified craft maneuvering in extraordinary ways surged in the 1940s, shortly after the first
nuclear weapons were detonated. With stark parallels to recent developments,
declassified documents show that from 1947 to 1952, U.S. intelligence analysts
ruled out foreign adversaries – such as the Soviet Union – or highly classified American technology as plausible explanations for the most credible and compelling UFO
encounters. Unsurprisingly, top military officials began “seriously
considering the possibility of interplanetary ships.”
In early 1953, however, such objective, open-minded government analyses came to an
abrupt halt.
Over several days the previous summer,
pilots and radar operators in Washington, D.C.,
reported extraordinary (and still
unexplained)
encounters with
unidentified objects. But the sheer volume of UFO reports – and the deluge of public queries that followed – spooked America’s defense planners.
Officials grew
concerned that future mass UFO sightings would again
overwhelm intelligence and communications channels. The Soviet Union, these officials worried, could exploit public interest in UFOs to sow “
mass hysteria and panic,” handing Moscow a “surprise
advantage in any nuclear attack.”
In response to these Cold War fears, the CIA convened a
panel of scientists to assess the UFO phenomenon. Over the course of two days, the scientists, who – critically – were “not given
access to the truly puzzling [UFO] cases,” recommended a sweeping government effort to “debunk” UFO sightings.
Fearing another flood of UFO reports, the CIA-convened panel reasoned that a “debunking” campaign would
decrease “public interest in ‘flying saucers’” and reduce Americans’ “susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda.”
As investigative journalist Leslie Kean
notes, the CIA’s remarkably brief, superficial meetings “would forever change both the course of
media coverage and the official attitude toward the UFO subject.”
Indeed, the U.S. Air Force’s two decade-long
project to investigate UFO reports
morphed into a determined effort to
discredit UFO sightings and witnesses, no matter how credible. According to James McDonald, one of the world’s
leading atmospheric physicists, the Air Force began applying “meteorologically, chemically and optically absurd”
explanations to the most compelling UFO
sightings.
Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first director of the CIA,
summarized the situation: “Through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe [UFOs] are nonsense. … Behind the scenes,” however, “high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned…”
As the Air Force systematically discredited witnesses (many of whom had nothing to gain by coming forward), widespread
public and
congressional anger
followed.
Unsurprisingly, the Air Force’s campaign to “debunk” UFO sightings at all costs fueled widespread perceptions of a government coverup, creating fertile ground for an array of exotic (and enduring) conspiracy theories. Moreover, by wrongfully tarring credible witnesses as kooks, the Air Force further fueled the
powerful stigma that continues to stifle good-faith reporting of unidentified objects by reliable observers.
Perhaps worst of all, as astronomer and long-time consultant to the Air Force’s UFO project J. Allen Hynek bluntly
stated: The 1953 CIA panel “made the subject of UFOs scientifically unrespectable.”
Ultimately, the two scientists who immersed themselves in the study of UFOs more than any of their contemporaries became fierce advocates of
serious academic
inquiry of the phenomenon.
Initially skeptics, renowned atmospheric physicist
James McDonald and
J. Allen Hynek – whose career
inspired the film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” – proceeded to make convincing
arguments that the most
compelling UFO
incidents may have otherworldly
explanations.
Sixty year later, as high-level officials speculate openly about such extraordinary possibilities,
McDonald and
Hynek’s meticulous, undeniably
scientific work
deserves close examination.
Asked to speculate about the nature of recent UFO sightings , Bill Nelson responded, “Who am I to say that planet earth is the only location of a life form that is civilized and organized like ours…
thehill.com
@Irfan Baloch
