Paper Trails: ‘UFOlogists’ focus on documents at Sunset Station conference

Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2003 | 8:33 a.m.

Instead, Majestic Documents, a Colorado-based team of UFO researchers, plans to focus on "government coverups" and "paper trails" during its three-day conference at Sunset Station.

"We're focused on hard evidence," Ryan Wood, president of Majestic Documents, said. "We're the nuts and bolts of UFOlogy."

Before you insert a punchline here, you should know that Wood is used to criticism from skeptics.

The 48-year-old teamed with his father, Robert Wood, a former aeronautical engineer, several years ago to authenticate "leaked" documents on an alleged government program called Majestic 12.

According to Majestic Documents, Majestic 12 was formed in the 1940s under presidential order to investigate the threat of alien attacks and use alien technology for military purposes.

But skeptics abound.

"They have the normal questions," Wood said from his home in Colorado. "Like, 'Why in the world would they crash if from such an advanced civilization? How could the government keep it secret so long? Why is there no evidence?'

"The very skeptical people are asking reasonable questions. There are a lot of crashes. The question is, 'How do you analyze whether they're real?'"

Both Ryan and Robert Wood, who worked 43 years at McDonnell Douglas, will be speaking at the conference. Joining them are 13 speakers, including Nick Redford, author of three books on UFO crashes and government documents, who will present papers from the National Archives and presidential libraries.

Art Campbell, a researcher who has "uncovered ... something resembling a small artificial body part and some strange narrow shoe soles," will present information on findings from a crash sight in St. Augustin, N.M.

Stanton Friedman, longtime investigator of the Roswell, N.M., theories, will defend the MJ-12 documents and Roswell stories that are often under attack by skeptics.

Do you believe?

Skeptics deem the Majestic Documents bogus, as do some UFOlogists.

And when the discussion turns to flying saucers and little green men, the general public usually shows no interest in the topic.

"The standard wisdom of UFOs is that a UFO is completely imagined, that it's something of ours that a viewer doesn't understand," said Michael Lindemann, a self- described "has-been UFOlogist" who will speak at this weekend's conference.

"Or it's an unusual phenomenon like a bolide meteor or space junk, stuff that falls out of the sky -- satellites. When (some) people see these, they say, 'It's aliens.' "

There are hoaxes by pranksters cooking up a story. But what intrigues Lindemann and colleagues the most is what they call the unexplainable, evidence that something shot across the sky in a remote area, crashed, then was swooped away by men in uniform.

"Once you say we've got that, you have to open the door to phenomena," Lindemann said.

Lindemann's interest in UFOs began in 1989. He had studied patterns and profiles of government secrecy pertaining to weapons when friends asked him to look into government secrecy regarding UFOs.

Until then, he said, his interest in UFOs "was no more than a person who saw an occasional 'Star Wars' movie.

"I was very skeptical at first," Lindemann added. "But during that 12-year period I was very active. I did little else. It's not, 'Can we or can we not see that there are aliens around?,' but, 'Can we or can we not see a pattern of secrecy?'

"Do these secrets exist? Yes ma'am."

Rapid response

It seems that both believers and non-believers love the mystery.

The Internet links to scores of UFO websites. There are dozens of state and national organizations and hotline numbers to report sightings. Then there are skeptic organizations and hundreds of debunkers prepared to counter any claim.

The International Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) based in Colorado, receives reports of UFO sightings daily and has a team of 500 staffers who investigate.

The National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle claims to have received "tens of thousands" of calls since it began a 24-hour hotline service in 1974.

Locally, the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), a private research organization with a team of scientists that looks into aerial phenomena and animal mutilations, has received 5,000 reports by telephone or e-mail since it opened its UFO hotline in 1999, spokesman Colm Kelleher said.

"We believe there are phenomenon not readily explained by scientific methods that have been ignored by scientific methods that deserve further scrutiny," Kelleher said.

"We try to remove the moniker UFO and apply the moniker IFO -- Identifiable Flying Objects."

Though the NIDS website links to the Majestic Documents conference, Kelleher said the organization remains "agnostic" in regard to the legitimacy of the Majestic Documents.

"We don't have any direct forensic evidence of authenticity of these documents," Kelleher said. "We're open-minded, but we're skeptical."

Rather than delving into past reports, NIDS looks into recent sightings. Its team of scientists and retired police uses forensic testing to explore the claims, which more than 90 percent of the time, the group says, are explainable by earthly means.

"We spend more time on cases that are not readily explained -- Venus low on the horizon, bolide meteors, shuttle debris," Kelleher said. "We haven't had any smoking gun, definitely saying, 'This is indicative of an extraterrestrial.'

"We do acknowledge there is a mystery. The numbers of cases we have that aren't unidentified are in the hundreds. The ultimate question is it ours, is it theirs?"

By "ours" Kelleher means that it could be advanced U.S. military hardware and possibly classified information.

"Then we stop investigating," Kelleher said. "We don't try to get into national security."

This is where Lindemann comes into play.

"I have a visceral dislike of government secrecy," Lindemann said. "That secrecy begets special priesthoods of people who exercise unconstitutional control over other people's lives.

"People are told that if they talk about this they might lose their jobs or something else may occur. That to me is an abuse of government power that should not be allowed."

Doubting the documents

Phil Klass is quick to debunk the Majestic Documents and coverups regarding extraterrestrial crashes.

The longtime aerospace journalist and writer and editor for a publication by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal has researched UFO claims, UFOlogists' credentials and written books on the topic.

In a May/June 2000 article in Skeptical Inquirer magazine titled, "The New Bogus Majestic 12 Documents," Klass argues that the documents are littered with flaws.

Klass reported that an alleged memo from President Truman authorizing the MJ-12 program included a pasted-on photocopy of a signature from President Truman (rather than an original). He cites date and location problems and similar markings between the documents and personal writing styles or typewriter markings of those who uncovered them.

"I seriously question whether an MJ-12 ever existed or whether crashed ET crafts could be kept secret for more than 50 years," Klass said via an e-mail interview.

"During my 53 years as a senior editor and contributing editor (for Aviation Week), I never even heard rumors of the existence of MJ-12 from any highly placed 'sources.' "

Klass, 84, added that he suspects few UFOlogists have signed up for this weekend's conference.

Wood said that more than 100 have registered. And according to John Schuessler, international director for MUFON, several representatives from MUFON will attend.

"Dr. Robert Wood is a very good forensic researcher," Schuessler said. "Not all of the Majestic Documents are credible, but some of them are."

As does Robert Wood, Schuessler shares a similar career background. He says he worked for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, for 25 years and that his UFO interests developed on the job.

"Back in the Gemini Days there were (things) they couldn't explain," Schuessler said, referring to the space program. "I looked into it, and I got hooked."

Bob Brown, a founding director of the International UFO Conference, also supports the work the Woods have done and says most of today's sightings are military equipment built from alien hardware and technology the government has had for upwards of 60 years.

Wood would like to see the government come forward about its past. He says government secrecy was a result of the beginning of the Cold War and the United States not being eager to leak information about its "celestial gifts."

Now would be a more stable time to present the evidence, even though religious concerns are the biggest reason for the government withholding evidence, Wood said.

"A lot of religious people are going to say, 'This is the devil come to fruition in front of us,' " Wood said.

But Wood and other UFOlogists believe information taken from these alien life forms could create medical breakthroughs. Some go so far to say that the spacecraft could help solve pollution problems.

"We know they run on some advanced propulsion and energy source we don't understand," Wood said.

So, why do they crash?

"These could be disposable biological robots, why bring them back?" Wood said. "Dump them. As soon as they go across the galaxy on a tank of gas, dump 'em."

archive