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Your Paracast Newsletter — November 27, 2022


Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
The Paracast Newsletter
November 27, 2022
www.theparacast.com

Explore the Legends of Jack the Ripper and Reports of Mothman in the 1920s with Researcher Brian Young on The Paracast!

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This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz present Brian Young, a researcher, writer, historian, lecturer and podcast host. He specializes in boxing history, Victorian crime, with a focus on The Whitechapel Murders (Jack the Ripper) and has had a life long interest in the weird, the wild and the paranormal. He is co-author of the critically acclaimed "The Wrestlers Wrestlers' : Masters of the Craft of Professional Wrestling" (2021 ECW Press) and is co-host of Transatlantic History Ramblings, an international podcast hosted out of The United States and Wales UK. A open minded skeptic, Brian is also researching, as a historian, a "Mothman" like sighting way back in 1920 around his home town in Western New York.

After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers on November 27: Author, researcher, historian, lecture Brian Young returns to reveal to Gene and cohostTim Swartz about his personal ghost encounter, and whether there was any possible reality to it. And what about his UFO sighting? There’s also a pop culture discussion about the world of rock and roll, and the famous people Brian and Gene have met and interviewed over the years. Brian is what he calls an “open minded skeptic,” and is co-author of the critically acclaimed “The Wrestlers Wrestlers’ : Masters of the Craft of Professional Wrestling” (2021 ECW Press) and is co-host of Transatlantic History Ramblings, an international podcast hosted out of The United States and Wales UK.

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A History of Minimal Expectations
By Gene Steinberg

When the Air Force shuttered Project Blue Book in 1969, some might have felt that it was the end of the UFO era. We’d no longer wonder about the appearance of strange objects in our skies, even though the sightings clearly continued.

But the Air Force’s excuse was expected. Here’s a selection from its press release on the matter:

“From 1947 to 1969, the Air Force investigated Unidentified Flying Objects under Project Blue Book. The project, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was terminated Dec. 17, 1969. Of a total of 12,618 sightings reported to Project Blue Book, 701 remained ‘unidentified.’

“The decision to discontinue UFO investigations was based on an evaluation of a report prepared by the University of Colorado entitled, ‘Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects;’ a review of the University of Colorado's report by the National Academy of Sciences; previous UFO studies and Air Force experience investigating UFO reports during 1940 to 1969.

“As a result of these investigations, studies and experience gained from investigating UFO reports since 1948, the conclusions of Project Blue Book were:

“No UFO reported, investigated and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;

“There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as ‘unidentified’ represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; and

“There was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as ‘unidentified’ were extraterrestrial vehicles.”

The “no evidence” excuse is, of course, never defined. If something is “unidentified,” what might it be?

But that was very much the equivalent of taking an “out of sight, out of mind” approach. With no viable explanation, or even an excuse for one, it was easy for the Air Force to dispose of the rest. Of course, there are those who feel that there was and is another UFO project behind the scenes with decidedly different evidence and decidedly different conclusions about the phenomena. Proving such a thing is, to repeat that phrase, a decidedly different matter.

Now as you know, the UFO mystery didn’t end with the Air Force’s exit from its public study of the phenomenon. It still released a few statements about UFOs over years, such as claimed explanations for the 1947 Roswell incident. This was no doubt a publicity ploy, but it meant that the topic hadn’t been set aside all those years.

Although it once took the subject of its study seriously, Project Blue Book had devolved into a low-level public relations operation in its final years. There was little indication that real investigations had much priority after the Robertson Panel recommended, in 1953, that the government play down UFO sighting reports.

Not long after that decision, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, head of Project Blue Book, departed. Project Blue Book’s staff was shaved to three from over 10. But during his brief presence there, Ruppelt evidently tried to actually investigate UFOs, not debunk them.

His book, “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects,” first published in 1956, had the credibility of being written by an Air Force insider. It painted a compelling picture of the reality of the phenomenon, and was regarded as essential reading by anyone who wanted to know the facts behind UFOs.

It all became muddled in 1959, when a revised edition of the book appeared with three new chapters that essentially reversed the views expressed in the original book, especially in the final chapter, “Do They or Don't They?”

UFO author Major Donald Keyhoe, said to be a friend of Ruppelt, claimed that the new chapters were written due to heavy pressure from the Air Force to tone it down. So Ruppelt said that he was convinced that flying saucers did not exist, that there were conventional explanations for all of it. Of course, the rest of the book painted a very different picture.

Over the decades, it appeared that UFOs would remain pretty much on the back burner so far as government interest was considered, at least in public, until the 2017 release of a report in The New York Times about a secret Pentagon UAP project. Some $22 million in funding was handed off to a private company, billionaire hotel magnate Robert Bigelow’s National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS).

The funding was granted at the urging of former senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, working with Republican Senator Ted Stevens and fellow Democrat Daniel Inouye. The project was known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

Notice there was nothing said about a possible search for evidence of the presence of extraterrestrials.

However, Senator Reid’s opinions, expressed in the final days of his life, indicated that he did lean towards an off-world explanation.

It’s noteworthy that some of that Pentagon money went to a flying saucer club, MUFON, to cover investigations and reporting. There were some disputes and office politics in that affair that are best set aside since they’re not relevant to the topic at hand.

Since then, the Pentagon has played musical chairs with its UAP studies. Given a line item entry in the 2022 Pentagon budget, the latest project was supposed to result in the release of a progress report to Congress by Halloween.

As you readers may have noticed, no such report has been released, and there are just excuses from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) as to when it’ll arrive. As I write this over the Thanksgiving 2022 weekend, it’s still missing in action.

But if and when it arrives, I find it difficult to believe it’ll contain anything of significance. Sure, there may be more sightings and more conclusions, but the focus will remain limited on recent military sightings.

There have been published reports, in fact, that it’ll be a whitewash, blaming all or most sightings on foreign test aircraft, drones and natural phenomena. But certainly not possible spaceships from out there somewhere.

In other words, there is no threat to national security, which appears to be the main focus on the investigation.

If true, it’ll be pretty much in line with what veteran UFO researcher and author Kevin D. Randle has said on a number of occasions. It’ll be “Condon 2.0,” a deliberate effort to dismiss the phenomenon as something that’s strictly conventional and not a compelling mystery that needs to be solved.

Or it may just be a preliminary report replete with non-specific platitudes that will not change the status of the study and its ongoing work in any way.

Maybe NASA’s simultaneous UAP project will do better. Certainly having a space agency looking for flying saucers seems more promising.

But I have a feeling that, by Thanksgiving 2023, there will still be nothing of significance to report, as much as I wish it were otherwise. And you can quote me.

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