Who else?
"And, anyway, if the CIA can only account for around half of all UFO sightings, then what the hell else was up there peering down on citizens of Planet Earth?"
The Russian planes spying on the US.
UFOs in the '50s skies? CIA admits: 'IT WAS US'
The US government's Central Intelligence Agency has 'fessed up about reports of UFO sightings in the 1950s by playfully tweeting "it was us". It linked to a document entitled The CIA and the U-2 Program 1954-1974 (PDF), which was first published in 1998. The CIA decided to flag it up via its Twitter account because it had …
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Friday 2nd January 2015 01:34 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Who else?
"yet still classified test aircraft."
Indeed.
Once a few photos of the F117 made it into the mainstream reports of triangular UFOs stopped overnight.
Once the existence of stealthed-up choppers got into mainstream, a lot of the slow moving stuff got explained too (I'd heard of stealth blackhawks about a decade before one bellyflopped into /bin/laden's compound, but cursory checking revealed people who mentioned them were generally classed as tinfoilers)
The CIA and several other organisations spent a long time planting people in various tinfoil hat brigades to keep them paranoid and believing in UFOs/alien visitors, as this was an easy way to keep the classified aircraft programs under wraps. In all liklihood they still do.
(FWIW, the standard alien "experiences" tend to follow movies of similar themes - showing that most people involved are fairly suggestible. They may _believe_ they were abducted by aliens, but it's more likely to have been a particularly vivid dream, possibly years after seeing Close Encounters, etc)
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Friday 2nd January 2015 03:19 GMT Ben Tasker
Re: Who else?
FWIW, the standard alien "experiences" tend to follow movies of similar themes - showing that most people involved are fairly suggestible. They may _believe_ they were abducted by aliens, but it's more likely to have been a particularly vivid dream, possibly years after seeing Close Encounters, etc
To pile conspiracy on top of conspiracy, as you said
The CIA and several other organisations spent a long time planting people in various tinfoil hat brigades to keep them paranoid
Let's accept that's true - the ultimate way for the CIA to keep the paranoia (and outward appearance of such) would be to do a few 'alien' abductions themselves. Slip the targets a few drugs and then wear rubberised suits whilst brandishing a certain medical instrument related to the bottom, lots of light's etc.
Mind you, if it came out, I guess an anal-probe could be seen as state sanctioned anal rape....
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Friday 2nd January 2015 18:15 GMT BrownishMonstr
Re: Who else?
They may _believe_ they were abducted by aliens, but it's more likely to have been a particularly vivid dream
Agree about the vividly dream. Had I not woken up from my extremely vivid dream I seriously would have thought the government has some mind control programme. The dream sure felt real.
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Thursday 1st January 2015 12:37 GMT chivo243
Re: Who else?
Let's see what TV history has to offer:
Jim Kirk's Enterprise
Planet Express Delivery Ship
Getting back to reality, wasn't there some guy Von Braun working on rockets and such then too? As much as the US tried to keep things top secret, I would believe that the CIA didn't know everything, and that would account for the other half.
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Friday 2nd January 2015 16:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Misdirection.
The UFOs are trying to understand why the peanut farmers and hillbillies are allowed to breed, because on their planet they have been automated out of existence. As have politicians...Harold Wilson once suggested that decision making would be improved by a set of traffic lights connected to a random number generator, the idea being that the decision would be quick and so if it was obviously wrong it could be reversed. Given the record of recent governments, replacing the Front Bench with a set of traffic lights and letting Change.org vote on what the decisions to be made should be, would lead to a faster, cheaper and more democratic system.
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Monday 5th January 2015 11:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Misdirection.
"Do you ever hear of a scientist or academic being abducted?"
Someone hasn't heard of Stanton Friedman then. Harvard Physicist and Alien Abduction expert.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanton_T._Friedman
If you're interested, look up something called "The Disclosure Project", in which a whole series of credible witnesses retell incredible stories. Believe them or not, its no parade of " in-bred mid western peanut farmers and hillbillies"
Admiral Lord Hill-Norton: Five-Star Admiral, Former Head of the British Ministry of Defense, July 2000
Sgt. Clifford Stone: US Army
Sgt. Karl Wolfe: US Air Force
Merle Shane McDow: US Navy Atlantic Command
Nick Pope: British Ministry of Defense Official
Astronaut Edgar Mitchell
John Callahan: FAA Head of Accidents and Investigations
Professor Robert Jacobs: Lt. US Air Force
Major-General Vasily Alexeyev: Russian Air Force
Dr. Alfred Webre: Senior Policy Analyst Stanford Research Institute
....there is quite an extensive list of "believers".
[Caveat: I neither believe nor disbelieve personally, but find it an interesting and misunderstood phenomena]
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Thursday 1st January 2015 15:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
nothing changes
All these sightings over the US were the CIA... perhaps they forget what country they were supposed to be spying on, or more likely it was all a very innocent mistake. I believe that's the standard response when you get caught cock in hand with your pants down surveilling your entire population in violation of the constitution.
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Thursday 1st January 2015 17:28 GMT phil dude
thought experiment...
Consider that any technology sufficiently advanced would appear like magic....perhaps from a less cynical age that we live in.
A logical stance might be that any technology that was sufficiently advanced might not be *perceptible*.
Consider the caveman finding a digital watch... (HHGTTG!!).
How about some modern technology that has no identifying marks but you need to "know" it sells something.... (thinking of the 2000 a Space Odyssey). Maybe the Obelisk was a particularly sleek Coke machine.... ;-)
In otherwords, aliens visiting the Earth will require such advanced technology, we might not recognise them...
The beer helps...Happy 2015 - we made it.
P.
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Friday 2nd January 2015 03:42 GMT Florida1920
Re: of course it was U2s
Probably a lot less of the reports were for the never shot down SR-71
Now that I'm well past the age of caring.... a radar operator at a USAF radar station outside Charleston, SC, detected something flying high and fast in 1967. The Pentagon sent down a major to investigate the "UFO" (the "Purpose of Visit" entry in the orderly room sign-in book said "UFO investigation"). The major advised the operator he hadn't seen anything. I wonder if even that major was cleared to know about the SR-71, which probably is what was detected. The radar operator was a well-grounded, believably serious young man, so until I heard about the Blackbird I often wondered what it was he'd seen.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
