Friday 20 July 2012

Spacing Out! Ep. 12 – X-Files actor Dean Haglund on UFOs and his recent documentary film


Published on 20 Jul 2012 by

Dean Haglund is an actor, a comedian, an artist, and an inventor who is probably best known for his recurring role on The X-Files. We talk with Dean about UFOs and his recent documentary The Truth is Out There. We also discuss real-life X-files recently released by the UK, an interesting UFO crash in Russia, and other space and UFO news on this episode of Spacing Out!

Ufo News Links For Friday 20th July 2012


Inexplicata-The Journal of Hispanic Ufology: Argentina: Thoughts on the Concordia Aerodrome MIB

UFOs Reported in Oklahoma - HispanicBusiness.com

Where Are The Extraterrestrials? The People Speak… – Science 2.0

Robert Barrow: Can Venusian Beauties Save the Earth?

The Challenges Facing Ben Stiller’s The Watch – Village Voice

Air Force Personnel and Project SERPO « Dad2059's Webzine of Science Fiction, Science Fact and Esoterica

Riding Along With the Mars Rover Drivers – Popular Science

Nick Redfern's World of Whatever...: The Breaking Cases app

Are we E.T.? – Sun-Sentinel

Paranormal Alaska: Investigator Takes Seriously UFO Reports, Bigfoot Sightings, Arctic Extra-Terrestrials | Alaska Dispatch

The Truth Is Still Out There – Wall Street Journal

Durham Police: There was a UFO Near Hamsterley Forest – Teesdale Mercury

Lava red alien planet found by NASA Spitzer Space Telescope – Herald Sun

The UFO Trail: Examining the Tainted Well of UFO Land

Declassified ‘UFO’ Documents Don’t Prove Alien Life – Space.com

RENO UFO Crash? July 2012 ~ Federation of Magic Pop and UFOs

UFO ‘Degree’ On Alien Life Forms Is Among Free Courses Offered By Edinburgh University – Huffington Post UK

Rod-like Object Caught on Video over Boston, Massachusetts

'Invisible' UFO Filmed from Plane (Video) | Gather

Investigating Alaska’s paranormal a serious business — with growth potential – Alaska Dispatch

UFO Disclosure Countdown Clock: Today's MUFON Report Yields Potential Blockbuster Triangle UFO Sighting Reported By Policeman

UFOs are the star at research agency’s annual event – Ct Post

Military Claims Michigan UFOs Part of Training... | Gather

Everything’s coming up roses – Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Mystery of the Men in Black: The UFO Silencers: Timothy Green Beckley: Amazon.com: Kindle Store

Aliens With Lasers: SETI Bets On Nano-second Flashes From E.T. – Forbes

Weird Ancient Spiral Galaxy Discovered : Discovery News 

UFO X-Files Released By U.K. Reveal Desire To Weaponize Alien Technology


Ukufo
Illustration of an eyewitness account from the U.K. UFO files released on July 12, 2012.

Newly released X-Files from the United Kingdom's National Archives reveal the role of that country's Ministry of Defense UFO Desk officers, what they actually thought about possible alien visits to Earth and their ideas on harnessing alien technology as a weapon.
There are 25 files, comprising more than 6,700 pages, that include UFO policy, parliamentary questions, media issues, public correspondence and, of course, UFO sighting reports. Overall, more than 10,000 UFO reports came through the special Ministry of Defense unit from 1950 to 2009.
"These are probably the most fascinating and bizarre government files ever made available to the public," said Nick Pope, who was the UFO Desk officer from 1991 to 1994.

Nick Pope explains some of the new U.K. X-Files.


"There's massive public interest in UFOs, and at one point, the MoD was getting more Freedom of Information Act requests about UFOs than any other subject," Pope told The Huffington Post in an email. "The files contain the usual mixture of policy documents, sighting reports, photos, sketches and papers discussing how best to handle the subject with Parliament, the media and the public."
File DEFE 24/2080/1 is a collection of MoD UFO information from 1972 to 1995 that includes intelligence papers that were declassified from "secret."
On page 157 of this file is a briefing prepared for the MoD before a 1979 House of Lords debate in which an intelligence officer asks why aliens would want to visit "an insignificant planet (the Earth) of an uninteresting star (the sun)." He wrote that this sort of visit "would probably not occur more than once in 1,000 years or so, even if one assumes that every intelligent community made 10 launches a year." The officer concluded that "claims of thousands of visits in the last decade or so are far too large to be credible."
Pages 38 to 43 of the file contain a 1995 briefing by a UFO Desk officer, calling for a full study of UFOs, since national security implications had never been assessed. The writer suggested that, "If the sightings are not of this Earth, then their purpose needs to be established as a matter of priority."
In that same briefing, an intelligence officer indicates the need to capture UFO technology for U.K. use. "If the reports are taken at face value, then devices exist that do not use conventional reaction propulsion systems; they have a very wide range of speeds and are stealthy. I suggest we could use this technology, if it exists."
File DEFE 24/2090/1 references a U.K. study of what were called Unexplained Aerial Phenomena, or UAP. Page 47 of this file reports that some UFOs/UAP might be rare atmospheric plasmas or ball lightning that could be harnessed or used by the military as "novel weapon technology."
A recent Huffington Post story included statements from former undercover CIA officer Chase Brandon, who said that in the 1990s, he found a box labeled "Roswell" at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Brandon said there was information in that box that was related to the alleged 1947 UFO crash outside of Roswell, N.M.
File DEFE 24/1985/1 brings up the subject of the Roswell incident in a Jan. 3, 1997, response to a question raised on whether or not the MoD had ever been briefed by the CIA about Roswell. The response by a Defense Intelligence official states, "We have no data on the alleged 'Roswell incident' or any 'crashed UFO incidents in the UK.' In short, DI 55 has no records of any UAP/UFO 'crashes' in either the UK or US and have never, as far as we can tell from existing files, received any briefs from any US agencies, including the CIA."
"The question of whether or not we're alone in the universe is one of the biggest and most profound questions we can ask," said Pope. "People are fascinated with the idea that we might have been visited, and these files chart MoD's attempts to grapple with the subject."
There is much more to be revealed about the U.K. files, including how Prime Minister Tony Blair was briefed on UFO sightings in 1998, and how the efforts of David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University were instrumental in getting the MoD to release the UFO files to the public.

National Archives consultant David Clarke introduces the new U.K. UFO files.


The UFO files are available to be viewed by the public for free for one month.

Hacked off: 'UFO' hacker declines extradition psychiatric test in row over Home Office expert

The Mirror

He turned it down as the Home Office expert doing it has no experience in looking for suicidal tendencies in people with autism.

Battle: Computer hacker Gary McKinnon
Battle: Computer hacker Gary McKinnon

Hacker Gary McKinnon has declined to take a psychiatric test to see if he is fit to be extradited to America, his mother revealed today.
Janis Sharp said Asperger’s sufferer Gary, 46, turned it down as the Home Office expert doing it, Professor Thomas Fahy, has no experience in looking for suicidal tendencies in people with autism.
She said: “It is not a refusal – he had no choice. It is an impossibility because the assessor would not be able to diagnose him.”
McKinnon, 46, admits hacking into 97 US military and NASA computers using the name Solo in 2001/02 – but insists he was looking for evidence of UFOs.
His mother criticised the Government for continuing with the case when experts had warned Gary could kill himself if sent to the US to stand trial.
She said: "Gary's ordeal has gone on for far too long.
"The Home Office should accept the very clear and incontrovertible evidence provided by the country's leading psychiatric experts in this field.
"It's time to make the right decision and end Gary's torment of extradition.
"When he's fit and ready, as we have said all along, the CPS could try him in this country for his foolish acts that happened over a decade ago."
She went on: "No one has ever been extradited from America to the UK for conduct that took place in America so why is Britain extraditing British citizens to the US for actions undertaken on British soil?
"It's cruel, unnecessary, and for years has blighted not just Gary's life but mine and our family's too.
"The victims of extradition include the friends and family of those facing extradition.
"Parliament passed a motion in December for treaty change to take place as pledged pre-election by the coalition. Hopefully this will be implemented soon."
Ms Sharp added: "Gary has endured 10 years of mental trauma and has lost 10 years of his youth. We so need a good end to this.
"I'm sure that Theresa May will do what's right, and make a just and compassionate decision now and allow Gary to begin to regain some of the life he has lost."
A Home Office spokesman said: "The Home Secretary will make a decision as soon as possible.
"This is a complex case, in a complex area of the law, and a large amount of material has been submitted, some of it relatively recently.
"She needs to consider all the material carefully before making a decision."
Mark Lever, chief executive of the National Autistic Society, said: "Asperger syndrome is a complex condition and it would be impossible for anyone without specialised training to fully understand its impact.
"If Gary is forced to undergo an assessment that doesn't take account of his needs and he is consequently extradited, it could have very serious and potentially tragic ramifications."
He went on: "This situation has dragged on for over 10 years - and the stress of this in itself will undoubtedly have had a negative impact on Gary's mental health.
"The Home Secretary must urgently take the necessary steps to recognise Gary's needs."
Mr McKinnon, of Wood Green, North London, faces up to 60 years in jail if convicted.
A hearing will take place at the High Court on Tuesday.

The Spitsbergen UFO: A “Plant”?



If there are two things we can say for sure about reports of alleged crashed UFOs, it’s that (A) there are a hell of a lot of them; and (B) many are highly controversial in nature. And one of those cases that falls firmly into category B is alleged to have occurred off the coast of Norway on the island of Spitsbergen in mid-1952. It’s a case that a few UFO researchers accept as being genuine, but that a great many believe to be nothing less than a complete and outrageous hoax. There’s another possibility too, however: that the story was a deliberate, government-created “plant” to confuse the truth about tales of UFOs crashing to earth, whatever that truth might really be…
Now-declassified CIA files of 1952 on the Spitsbergen affair begin: “Writing in the German magazine Der Fliger, Dr. Waldemar Beck says that a flying saucer which recently fell at Spitsbergen has been studied by eminent Norwegian and German rocket experts. He writes that Dr Norsal, a Norwegian expert in rocket construction, went to the place where the flying saucer had fallen a few hours after it had been discovered in the mountains of Spitsbergen by Norwegian jet planes.”
The CIA continued: “In the wreck of the apparatus the expert is said to have discovered a radio piloting transmitter with a nucleus of plutonium transmitting on all wavelengths with 934 hertz, a measure that has been unknown so far. The investigation has also shown that the flying saucer crashed because of a defect in its radio piloting system. The saucer which carried no crew has a diameter of 47 meters. The steel used in the construction is an unknown ally. It consists of an exterior disc provided at its peripheral with 46 automatic jets. This disc pivots around the central sphere which contains the measurement and remote control equipment. The measurement instructions have an inscription in Russian.”


Was there some substance to this report? And if so, was this crashed flying saucer Russian or extraterrestrial in origin? Having an interest in the case, I dug further, and came across several pages of U.S. Air Force material that showed shortly after the incident was reported by the media, the intelligence arm of the U.S. Air Force made inquiries with the Norwegian military who asserted that they had no knowledge of the crash. But still the story refused to die.
Three years later, I discovered, a seldom-seen account of the crash was printed in a Stuttgart newspaper, the Stuttgart Tageblatt. A translation of the account read:
“Oslo, Norway, Sept. 4, 1955 – Only now a board of inquiry of the Norwegian General Staff is preparing publication of a report on the examination of remains of a UFO crashed near Spitsbergen, presumably in early 1952. Colonel Gernod Darnbyl, during an instruction for Air Force officers, stated: ‘The crashing of the Spitsbergen disc was highly important. Although our present scientific knowledge does not permit us to solve all the riddles, I am confident that these remains from Spitsbergen will be of utmost importance in this respect.’”
I continued to review the article, and was intrigued to see that Colonel Darnbyl was now specifically denying that the disc was Russian in origin: “Some time ago, a misunderstanding was caused by saying that this disc was of Soviet origin. It has – this we wish to state emphatically – not been built on earth. The materials used in its construction are completely unknown to all experts who participated in the investigation.”
The Stuttgarter Tageblatt had still more data to impart: “According to Colonel Darnbyl, the Board of Inquiry is not going to publish an extensive report until some sensational facts have been discussed with U.S. and British experts. We should reveal what we found out, as misplaced secrecy might lead to panic.”
The newspaper continued: “Contrary to information from American and other sources, Second Lieutenants Brobs and Tyllenson, who have been assigned as special observers of the Arctic regions since the event at Spitsbergen, report the flying discs have landed in the polar regions several times.”
Said Lieutenant Tyllenson: ‘I think the Arctic is serving as a kind of air base for the unknowns, especially during snow storms when we are forced back to our bases. I have seen them land and take off on three separate occasions. I notice that, after having landed, they execute a speedy rotation around their discs. A brilliant glow of light, the intensity of which is variable with regard to speed at landing and at take off, prevents any view of the things happening behind this curtain of light and/or inside the disc itself.’”
These are certainly fantastic revelations, but how much can be authenticated? The British researcher Philip Mantle looked into the case in 1985 and had received an outright denial that anything remotely resembling the Spitsbergen crash had ever occurred on Norwegian soil. “The whole story seems utterly unfounded,” Mantle was told by Arild Isegg, the head of the Information Division, Norwegian Royal Ministry of Defense. Moreover, despite its 1952 interest in the matter, the CIA later came to accept the whole thing as a complete fabrication that the media ran with and which spiralled wildly out of control.


However, Spitsbergen refused to roll over and die. UFO investigator Bill Moore spoke with the French investigator Jean Sider, who had uncovered a clipping from a Nancy-based newspaper that referred to a Nazi-developed craft built in the closing stages of the Second World War, the description of which sounded remarkably like the craft recovered at Spitsbergen.
By far the most intriguing aspect of this saga, however, came from none other than the National Security Agency. From the NSA I obtained a translation of a 1960s Russian media article on the UFO subject. Contained within the article, I was interested to see, was a passing reference to the Spitsbergen incident, which stated:
“An abandoned silvery disc was found in the deep rock-coal seams in Norwegian coalmines on Spitsbergen. It was pierced and marked by micro-meteor impacts and bore all traces of having performed a long space voyage. It was sent for analysis to the Pentagon and disappeared there.”
This was certainly a new slant on the case; but what really caught my eye was the National Security Agency’s reaction to the mention of Spitsbergen. Instead of dismissing the matter as a hoax, a still-unidentified NSA agent circled the paragraph of the article referencing Spitsbergen, and wrote in the margin the intriguing word “PLANT” in bold capitals.
Had the NSA been exposed to data that could conclusively lay the legend of Spitsbergen to rest, once and for all? If that was the case, the NSA weren’t saying, and no further evidence pertaining to National Security Agency involvement in the Spitsbergen incident came to light.
And yet, that curious one-word note, scrawled many years previous by an anonymous NSA employee, continues to puzzle me. Rather than indicating an outright hoax, the “PLANT” reference suggested that the Spitsbergen story (even if bogus) had been disseminated officially, possibly to cloud and confuse the rumors surrounding crashed-UFO incidents in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Of course, this begs the questions: (A) How many more “UFO crash” stories may have had their origins in the world of government/intelligence-orchestrated programs of disinformation and psychological warfare; and (B) why the need for such actions?
Perhaps certain governments really do have crashed UFOs in their possession and wish to swamp the real data with so much faked material that the former will get buried, hidden and confused by the latter. Or, maybe there has never been a real crashed UFO event – ever – but certain governments, at the height of the Cold War, dearly wished to promote such scenarios as a means to frighten and intimidate the enemy.
After all, effectively telling your potential foe that “We have alien technology in our hands and you don’t” may have worried more than a few generals – whether in the Kremlin or the Pentagon, or both - when the Flying Saucer mystery kicked off all those years ago. And that the stories of crashed UFOs may not even have been true demonstrates how a well-placed lie can have a profound effect…