Greg Bishop and Nick Redfern have a groovy new blog site at UFOMystic.com. It's a much more historically minded discussion of UFOs than anyone has come to expect. I chimed in on a couple of posts recently, like the one below: (from Greg's top ten UFO sightings list:) At 10:30 on the night of March 21, students in the women's dormitory of Hillsdale College in Dexter, Michigan called the Civil Defense office with a report of something with red green and white pulsating lights that had flown over their building. At about 11PM, they called back to report that the object had returned and had settled into a hollow in a wooded area about 1/2 mile east of the dormitory. The place was maintained as a park by the College. Police were called and dispatched to the area to check things out. Seeing a few lights which they could not get close enough to investigate, they returned to the dorm and observed orange and white lights flashing near where they had been looking. The reporting officer watched as the lights ascended to about 150 feet and back down to the ground several times. He was able to observe a convex surface on the object. At about 4:30 AM, the lights disappeared and nothing more was seen. Bluebook sent Dr. J. Allen Hynek out to investigate. After consulting with witnesses and the policemen who had seen the object, and under pressure from the Air Force to come up with any sort of explanation, he told reporters that the phenomenon could have been due to luminous methane gasses coming from a nearby swampy area. The press picked up on this as the Air Force's official explanation and roundly criticized and ridiculed Hynek for it. The incident began to turn the tide of public opinion against the official policy of debunking reports. 1. Kenn Thomas Says: December 30th, 2006 at 8:43 am One of Nick's links on Gerald Ford elsewhere on this blog pointed out that Ford's congressional district included "Swamp Gas" Dexter, and he called for hearings to get a better explanation than what Hynek had offered. One hearing was held by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which actually grilled Robert McNamara of all people about UFOs. So at least taxpayers got some small use out of Ford before he went on to the presidency for the sole purpose of pardoning Nixon. 2. Greg Bishop Says: December 30th, 2006 at 1:36 pm …and McNamara said that there was nothing unknown about the subject. I wonder if Ford is still lying in state out there in Palm Springs. My girlfriend and I are going to be there tomorrow. More associations–Palm Springs is supposedly where Eisenhower was vacationing when he was taken to see some frozen aliens. 3. Kenn Thomas Says: December 30th, 2006 at 4:44 pm …in February 1954, five months prior to the Cutler-Twining memo! (that's an MJ12 thing discussed in another thread on this blog) In 1955 Ike also had a meeting with Reich according to Reich biographer Jerome Greenfield, and shortly thereafter Reich traveled to Roswell. (Neither the 2/55 alien meeting nor the Ike-Reich meeting are contradicted by the official record.) and…and…AND Richard Nixon showed Jackie Gleason the alien bodies in Palm Springs in 1973! Poor Ford–had to compete with Saddam and James Brown for swan song TV time. 4. Kenn Thomas Says: December 30th, 2006 at 5:27 pm footnote on McNamara: He's the one who pushed for the General Dynamics bid for the TFX fighter over the Boeing bid that the Department of Defense wanted. That switch led to JFK's assassination according to Jim Garrison, who said Fred Crisman shot from the knoll under the employ of Boeing. (And the Clay Shaw business from Oliver Stone movie fame was just a toe-hold on the broader conspiracy.) General Dynamics' design appealed to the hyper-efficient McNamara because of the multiplicity of its uses. It eventually became the F-111 and was sold to Australia, opening a funding corridor that led to the development of Pine Gap. I realize that's probably more than you wanted to know, but I rarely get a chance to blog with someone with enough background to understand what I'm talking about! 5. Greg Bishop Says: December 31st, 2006 at 1:48 am I forgot about Nixon! Don't get Kenn started, or you see what happens. I actually enjoy it. When you say "not contradicted by the official record" you mean that the official record makes no mention of the Reich meeting, right? [as much as it does of the Eisenhower dentist visit Greg mentions next--kt] I know no one has found anything on Eisenhower's mysterious absence from a lunch party in Palm Springs, although he was supposed to have been at a dentist taking care of some sort of emergency, but that this does not account for all of his time off the record that day. 6. Greg Bishop Says: December 31st, 2006 at 1:54 am Incidentally, the 1988 stories about Area 51 coincided (or were actually preceded) with concurrent letters to Paul Bennewitz telling him what had been going on out there, and stories about two alien races fighting for control of the planet. The letters were written by an NSA (or CIA, or DIA) operative overseeing counterintelligence on the Stealth Fighter program at Lockheed. It seems that someone or some group was priming the pump for the Area 51 mania that was to follow. 7. Kenn Thomas Says: December 31st, 2006 at 8:39 am As contrasted with the attempt to make Lee Harvey Oswald out to be a lone nut in part to cover up his connection to the U2 plane, developed at Area 51. Yeah, Ike supposedly lost a tooth cap in some chicken and made a late-night visit to a Palm Springs dentist. Evidence for this does not appear in Ike's existing, extensive medical records. The only witness was the dentist's widow, whose recollections were suspiciously vague. I did an article entitled "Wilhelm Reich: Eisenhower's Secret Ally Against The Aliens" with all the particulars on this for Phenomena Magazine that appears in my new book, Parapolitics. Happy New Year, guys!