The following is in response to a question I received from one of my radio show listeners, asking about my feelings toward MUFON as a UFO research organization. My thoughts went back to my first appearance on “Larry King Live” which was being hosted by political commentator and former staffer on the Nixon administration Patrick Buchanan, who was filling in for King that evening.
The topic that night was the reported landing of a UFO in the Soviet Union city of Voronezh. At the end of the broadcast, I referenced General Douglas MacArthur’s last public address at the Military Academy at West Point, where he warned the cadets that at some point they may face aggression from E.T.s. Buchanan almost went ballistic, claiming “I never saw that! I have his speech hanging on the wall at home!” I had a copy of the speech with me, but of course we were then out of time. In the next issue of the MUFON Journal, then-editor Dennis Stacey castigated me. Reacting to my MacArthur reference on King’s show, he said words to this effect: “I could see UFO research going down the drain!” He soon regretted his remarks as readers snowed him under with MacArthur’s quote. For your reference:
"We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy, of making winds and tides work for us, of creating unheard-of synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics, to purify sea water for our drink, of mining the ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food, of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundreds of years, of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine, of spaceships to the Moon, of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations, of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy, of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.”--General Douglas MacArthur at West Point, 1962 (emphasis added)
Stacey never offered a “mea culpa,” so that one instance that told me more about MUFON than 30 years of the MUFON Journal or all those yearly symposiums.
MUFON: A Commentary
“Don, what's your take on MUFON ?”
This question was sent to me by a user of my Dark Matters Radio Fan Page, along with an attachment, a resignation letter written by Virginia MUFON Field Investigator Ben Moss. In it, he expressed major discontent over the direction that MUFON has been taking for quite some time now.
Moss’ letter reminded me of my own “brush” with MUFON in the mid-1970s. Some background: I had returned home from my military service in 1972 and joined a Pennsylvania police dept. in January of 1974. Somewhere along the way that year, I came across a copy of the MUFON Journal (I do not recall the date of the issue) that described a police officer’s wife being run off a country road in Pennsylvania by a very low-flying UFO. I knew about UFOs, of course, as I had a spectacular sighting in 1966 (also in Pennsylvania), knew about the Condon Committee Colorado study, Major Donald Keyhoe, Frank Edwards and so on, but that was about it. What I do remember vividly is that the issue had included the area’s police department 800 phone number to call in the event of a UFO sighting or sightings. Where did that number go? I have no idea, because we never had any sightings reported while I was working there.
As the 1970s moved along, more and more UFO stories began to hit the public, including Steven Spielberg’s massive hit move, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” On the heels of that the biggest UFO story of all finally surfaced, the “mother” of all UFO stories, Roswell. The UFO “event” that happened in 1947 outside of Roswell, New Mexico was suddenly being reported in newspapers and books. It made a huge splash, particularly in the UFO community. Notable researcher Stanton Friedman was running with it, and Bill Moore and Charles Berlitz wrote “The Roswell Incident.” The “new” saucer chase was on. Also in the wings, so to speak, other UFO-related stories sprung up and added to the excitement. Sensational items included animal mutilations and claims of human abductions by aliens, all helped along by additional stories of UFO events at the USAF base in Bentwaters and the 1986 sighting by pilots of the Japanese JAL Flt. 1628 in the skies above Alaska. Even with all this going on, it was barely the tip of the UFO iceberg.
In the ‘80s there were really only two major UFO organizations in the U.S. One was APRO, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization that was begun in January, 1952 by Jim and Coral Lorenzen. APRO was one of the very first civilian UFO research organizations in the U.S., if not the first. It stressed scientific field investigations, hosting Ph.D. scientists to call upon. The second major UFO organization was MUFON, Mutual UFO Network, originally established as the Midwest UFO Network. Most of the founders were APRO members or associated with APRO, and included Walter H. Andrus, Jr. and John F. Schuessler, among others. Years later, Coral Lorenzen, a woman with a fiery temper, claimed Andrus stole membership lists and files from APRO in order to begin his new group.
I made my very first steps in ufology as a state section director in Idaho. Not long after I medically retired from law enforcement, I met then-State Director/MUFON Don Mason. He and I hit it off, finding we had a common interest in the question of UFOs. Mason was a real go-getter and as state Director he had a lot of ideas he wanted to try out. He paid for all of his work out of his own pocket. He came up with an idea to network the MUFON chapters in Washington State, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, and perhaps some other states, into some type of rapid response organization. At the time, MUFON did not have a master membership directory where the various offices were listed, so Mason called Walt Andrus and requested the lists so he could contact the various officers. Andrus flat out refused to give him anything. Hearing this became my first exposure to the MUFON mindset. (In hindsight, I suspect Andrus refused because he feared someone else might do to him what Lorenzen accused Andrus of doing to her.)
cont. ...
The topic that night was the reported landing of a UFO in the Soviet Union city of Voronezh. At the end of the broadcast, I referenced General Douglas MacArthur’s last public address at the Military Academy at West Point, where he warned the cadets that at some point they may face aggression from E.T.s. Buchanan almost went ballistic, claiming “I never saw that! I have his speech hanging on the wall at home!” I had a copy of the speech with me, but of course we were then out of time. In the next issue of the MUFON Journal, then-editor Dennis Stacey castigated me. Reacting to my MacArthur reference on King’s show, he said words to this effect: “I could see UFO research going down the drain!” He soon regretted his remarks as readers snowed him under with MacArthur’s quote. For your reference:
"We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy, of making winds and tides work for us, of creating unheard-of synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics, to purify sea water for our drink, of mining the ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food, of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundreds of years, of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine, of spaceships to the Moon, of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations, of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy, of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.”--General Douglas MacArthur at West Point, 1962 (emphasis added)
Stacey never offered a “mea culpa,” so that one instance that told me more about MUFON than 30 years of the MUFON Journal or all those yearly symposiums.
MUFON: A Commentary
“Don, what's your take on MUFON ?”
This question was sent to me by a user of my Dark Matters Radio Fan Page, along with an attachment, a resignation letter written by Virginia MUFON Field Investigator Ben Moss. In it, he expressed major discontent over the direction that MUFON has been taking for quite some time now.
Moss’ letter reminded me of my own “brush” with MUFON in the mid-1970s. Some background: I had returned home from my military service in 1972 and joined a Pennsylvania police dept. in January of 1974. Somewhere along the way that year, I came across a copy of the MUFON Journal (I do not recall the date of the issue) that described a police officer’s wife being run off a country road in Pennsylvania by a very low-flying UFO. I knew about UFOs, of course, as I had a spectacular sighting in 1966 (also in Pennsylvania), knew about the Condon Committee Colorado study, Major Donald Keyhoe, Frank Edwards and so on, but that was about it. What I do remember vividly is that the issue had included the area’s police department 800 phone number to call in the event of a UFO sighting or sightings. Where did that number go? I have no idea, because we never had any sightings reported while I was working there.
As the 1970s moved along, more and more UFO stories began to hit the public, including Steven Spielberg’s massive hit move, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” On the heels of that the biggest UFO story of all finally surfaced, the “mother” of all UFO stories, Roswell. The UFO “event” that happened in 1947 outside of Roswell, New Mexico was suddenly being reported in newspapers and books. It made a huge splash, particularly in the UFO community. Notable researcher Stanton Friedman was running with it, and Bill Moore and Charles Berlitz wrote “The Roswell Incident.” The “new” saucer chase was on. Also in the wings, so to speak, other UFO-related stories sprung up and added to the excitement. Sensational items included animal mutilations and claims of human abductions by aliens, all helped along by additional stories of UFO events at the USAF base in Bentwaters and the 1986 sighting by pilots of the Japanese JAL Flt. 1628 in the skies above Alaska. Even with all this going on, it was barely the tip of the UFO iceberg.
In the ‘80s there were really only two major UFO organizations in the U.S. One was APRO, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization that was begun in January, 1952 by Jim and Coral Lorenzen. APRO was one of the very first civilian UFO research organizations in the U.S., if not the first. It stressed scientific field investigations, hosting Ph.D. scientists to call upon. The second major UFO organization was MUFON, Mutual UFO Network, originally established as the Midwest UFO Network. Most of the founders were APRO members or associated with APRO, and included Walter H. Andrus, Jr. and John F. Schuessler, among others. Years later, Coral Lorenzen, a woman with a fiery temper, claimed Andrus stole membership lists and files from APRO in order to begin his new group.
I made my very first steps in ufology as a state section director in Idaho. Not long after I medically retired from law enforcement, I met then-State Director/MUFON Don Mason. He and I hit it off, finding we had a common interest in the question of UFOs. Mason was a real go-getter and as state Director he had a lot of ideas he wanted to try out. He paid for all of his work out of his own pocket. He came up with an idea to network the MUFON chapters in Washington State, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, and perhaps some other states, into some type of rapid response organization. At the time, MUFON did not have a master membership directory where the various offices were listed, so Mason called Walt Andrus and requested the lists so he could contact the various officers. Andrus flat out refused to give him anything. Hearing this became my first exposure to the MUFON mindset. (In hindsight, I suspect Andrus refused because he feared someone else might do to him what Lorenzen accused Andrus of doing to her.)
cont. ...
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