Ignorance (as in ignoring something) is bliss

Last week’s press conference given at the National Press Club in Washington by former USAF officers who had experienced UFO activities over nuclear bases was compelling. Three gentlemen, now in their eighties, all of whom had in the 1960s commanded units of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs),  talked about what they had witnessed.

The events took place in remote launching bases in Montana and North Dakota in 1964 followed similar lines. The officers – David Schindele, Robert Salas and Robert Jamieson, all holding the rank of captain – would be 60 feet underground in blast-proof bunkers; arrayed in a circle around them were 10 silos each holding an ICBM. The launch control centres which the officers commanded were linked to each of the missiles, which – should the order ever come – would be launched against targets in the Soviet bloc. Topside, there was a perimeter fence, a few buildings – and armed guards.

The three men told their stories plausibly, without undue drama. A phone call from topside from panicked guards, saying that an unidentified craft was hovering silently over the command centre. Then, one by one, the individual missiles would go offline (to use the parlance of the day, they 'lost their strategic alert status'). This was unprecedented – from time to time, one, maybe even two missiles might malfunction, but never ten all of them. 

The officers reported this immediately; they were then visited by senior, anonymous, Air Force staff, who’d tell them that nothing had happened and that they were not to speak of this to anyone, ever.

Over the decades, found that they were not alone in experiencing such incidents; they discovered each others' stories and collectively decided to come forward and speak publicly about their experiences. They mentioned visits from technical specialists who were at a loss to explain how it came about that all 10 ICBM launchers had been somehow switched off – at the same time as there were reports about unidentified flying objects over the base.

Watching the entire press conference, which lasted just over two hours, I was struck by the normalness of these elderly men; these were not attention-seekers, but – it seems to me – they had all experienced something that had profoundly shaken their lives and wanted to share their testimony. Not just the UFO incidents themselves, but the cover-up, the aftermath, the ongoing pretence that nothing had happened.

I have been writing about the UFO phenomenon here for some while; it is clear that the US government is becoming (being forced to become?) more open about what’s been going on, for at least 75 years. The press conference begins with testimony of a WW2 pilot who had been scrambled to intercept UFOs over the top-secret uranium enrichment plant at Hanford, Washington state, as early as February 1945.

How should we react to such stories? With a healthy dose of scepticism, looking to pull the stories apart, seeking character flaws in the witnesses, inconsistencies in their narratives – or, when taken together with newer UFO encounter stories such as the ones mentioned in the report of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to Congress on 25 June – does the weight of evidence start to become convincing?

As American scientist Eric Weinstein has said – whatever the truth is, this must be the biggest story ever.

Either the US military is recruiting fantasists and weirdos, sending them up from carriers with faulty radars in aircraft equipped with badly calibrated sensors. Who between them have recorded in recent years along, 144 such incidents that the Navy is unable to explain. 

Or that China or Russia, or some other power, has managed to build craft that can perform manoeuvres that current science cannot explain. Since 2004.

Or that the US has managed to do this, and has been trying out this technology, unannounced, in restricted airspace where it poses a threat to its own military aircraft and ships. 

Or that these craft are from other worlds - other star systems, other dimension, another time.

One way or another, this cannot be ignored. A pattern has been emerging clearly over the decades since mankind has harnessed the power of the atom for mass destruction. Our nuclear weapons attract phenomena which conventional science cannot explain.

I have written about disclosure before – many of us are just not ready to have our Newtonian worldview upset. Many of us would rather ignore the phenomenon, rather than accept that mankind is not the most (and only) advanced civilisation within our purview.

The Drake Equation, which suggests our galaxy is teeming with intelligent life, clashes with the Fermi Paradox, which states that despite the Drake Equation, we have yet to have any concrete proof of the existence of that intelligent life.

I posit that any technologically advanced civilisations that are here, be they from another star system, another dimension or another time, they are doing all they can not to upset our worldviews. Human science, on discovering a primitive tribe, would today no longer go in, unbidden, to make contact. Similarly, aliens are unlikely to turn up offering us magical technologies in return for our planet’s resources. So we should just take it easy; one day a future US government might come clean over Roswell - but I think it better that it didn't, at least just yet.

Here's the full conference (starts around 00:03:29).

Capt. David Schindele's testimory re: Minot AFB event, September 1964, from 00:46:53 to 01:06:02

Capt. Robert Salas's testimony re: Malmstrom AFB event, March 1964, from 01:08:30 to 01:20:35

Capt. Robert Jamieson's testimony re: Malmstrom AFB event, March 1964, from 01:21:32 to 01:27:42

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