So what's in the classified stash?

By BILLY COX

Here’s an e-mail rejoinder for those advocating the U.S. government re-enter the UFO investigation biz. It comes from veteran British sleuth and author Timothy Good: “It needs to be pointed out that the USAF has never ceased its research effort — albeit clandestinely.”

Good’s reminder comes a few weeks after an international panel of high-level pilots and aviation experts presented dramatic evidence at a Washington press conference for the potentially dangerous aspects of UFOs. Event organizers at the Coalition for the Freedom of Information (http://www.freedomofinfo.org/national_press.htm) are trying to figure out which agency might best manage this sort of research project.

The feds abandoned their official UFO study with the Air Force’s termination of Project Blue Book in 1969. But Good, whose latest book “Need to Know: UFOs, the Military, and Intelligence” reached the States in October, stresses that classified data collection never ended.

Thirty-eight years ago, as Deputy Director of Development for the USAF, Brig. Gen. C.H. Bolender penned a smoking-gun memo that stated what Blue Book critics had suspected all along. Key phrase: “Reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security are made in accordance with JANAP 146 or Air Force Manual 55-11, and are not part of the Blue Book System.”

Good is equally suspicious of the ostensibly transparent UFO reporting system in the United Kingdom. Although its Ministry of Defence cites “no evidence which substantiates the existence of these alleged phenomena,” Good’s book presents evidence to the contrary.

Especially intriguing is a 1993 MoD memo from its Head of Air Staff to his Assistant Chief of Air staff concerning a triangular UFO buzzing into restricted RAF air space:
“Many of the reports refer to the object being very large, flying low and making a low humming sound. My staff have spoken to a number of the military and police witnesses, many of whom commented that the object was unlike anything they had ever seen before ... In summary, there would seem to be some evidence on this occasion that an unidentified object (or objects) of unknown origin was operating over the U.K.”

Good, who was arrested by military police in 1985 for getting a little too nosey around the RAF’s Provost and Security Services headquarters in Wiltshire, applauds the Coalition’s ability to provoke decent coverage for its initiative last month.

“But it remains to be seen,” he writes, “if there will be a lasting effect.”

Because, unfortunately, that's largely up to the American MSM.