Congressional, White House, UFO-related Constituent Correspondence, 1998

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pn\·:•·, ( ..I
t11·;.:~1n1. 1i l
;i_! :~iu ,i
,;,.;
vahdit:1
of th·! ru,:iu. •. Sn r,1.,n'.)
or<!ir:JI'_' th:,:,:-; Jl,v11L lhc So·.ic~ sp:.;;,J
pro1rJ1n a:.: Sl' Crcl (and 1011g pri~on
terms
a,·. ;.it
:i11yo11c
who
even
:icc:idc 11l:ll!y cin,l;:es .-.uclr ,fatal thal it
i,; inc:·l•ciit:1,· lh:tt ; o .,cn, tdr:: :i,1d .;i~­
nit:ca•ll:, fa.:L as a (.;fl) , i,:htin;: rould
erer leak ou~. evcn if su.:h a thing had
really har,p~ned.
The rule,; of ~\·id,rncc hari? been
Hretched
and
brokt?n
by
I.JFO
partisans. It i.; not up to me to " prn,;e"
that these sightings ne\·er took place.
Nobody has a.; y~t s£:en any P.\'idcnce
apart from a simp:c slat .?ment of fact
that th.: .sightings did ta!,e place. I will
be happy lo consider evidence when it
becomes a\'ailahl<!.
Let's
examine
more
of
cnese
"cosmonaut UFO;;". Ir, UFOs From
Behina The Iron Curtain, the UFO
magazine 'Clypeus' is ouoted about an
object seen by both Vostok-5 and
Vostok-6, a fleet of disks seen by
Voskhod-1, and "strailge cylinders in
space which were perfectly formed
and had
no apertures"
seen by
Voskhod-1, Voskhod-2, and Gemini-4
(sic!). UFOs have even been blamed
for the malfunction of the Voskhod-2
autopilot.
As
I have said, these
"reports" are hardly evidence, and can
be far more easily manufactured than
refuted.
SurE:ly one of the most specious
and ghouli~h "space UFO" 3tories
deals with the Soyuz-11 flight, on
which th~ crewmen perished during
their retur., to Eal'th. UFO literature
has
recently
been
circulating
a
"transcript" between the cosmonauts
and grc,und control. The crewmen
describe several glowing re·d objects
and
discuss
them
with
flight
controlle:-s.
To anyone familiar with typical
space-to-ground communications, this
"transcript" is patently counterfeit.
Someone's
vivict
imagination,
embold,med by th·e knowledge that
the men were dead and could not
argue, must have creat£:d the entire
incide11c.
Without further evidenct), the entire
cla.53 of "cosmonaut UFOs" must be
rejected.
D~liberate
attc•mpts
to
" muddy
tht?
waters''
Jnd
to
manuf..ct'..lr!:.' iancasies are common in
this LiFO genre, :,.; in othen;.
In
in\'e~tigatiu~
pll1Ho~rat-1hic
:.-..:nt.v i
~p;, ..,•,·r.lfl
Ccnl,·r)
1i.-ar
li,,,i,t,,r,.
U 11cl,•f\\'111h 1
1s an cXfl'Jl'i•
er.-:,•u
pilotuintrrp,cter
v:hu
h;,s
c:,:iminl•d
,J\'cry
si11;:lc pholo1;r.1ph
bYuu;;ht b.:cl; from orbit :ind beyond,
a111.l
h1;;
incredible
memory
can
iJL·1, ,: 1y
a d:?rad,J old p:1otc.i:n1µh,
dl·~cribe tr.l! si .:.uation. and find th~
citJLio;1 in :i,<' old record books within
minutes. 'rile oflicc oi this photogra­
mc-lric engir;c,el' is full of slacked iilm
i.:ans, light t.ibles, world and le.cal maps,
and piles of letters from ex-astronauts
and ordinary citizens alite.
Has he ser:n any UFO,;? Underwood
answered lhat with a smile: "I've nt?n!r
found anything in these pictures that
puzzled me for long, and I'm kind of
disappointed. It would be terribly
exciting to find evidence for someone
else's spaceship!'' When UFO writers
hint broadly about a "NASA coverup"
or "space
censorship»,
they
are
essentially calling Dick Underwood
and his colleagues a pack of liars.
Distortion and withholding of the
truth is no t a stranger to Underwood's
oflicc,
ho wever.
Wht!n
a
liFO
researcher named Al;i11 Sandler was
w•irkin!l on a book and a mo\'ic
("lffOs: Past. l~csenl and F'ularc". lo
he ad·,ert1sed as ;i "documentarv•') he
\"isited Underwood's of[ir.c and looked
through do7.ens of rolls of lilm. wriling
down ordt!rs for prints of :inything
that looked interesting. This is a
standard service provided by NASA to
journalists.
SanrllP.r rhose a set of photographs
for his movie, pnotographs which
Underwood advised him probably only
showt?d dust particles in front of the
camera, debris outside the spacecrail,
or glare on the windows (this was easy
enough to prove by looking at pictures
ahead of and behind the shots in
question).
Two photographs
were
particularly upsetting.
They both showed a black back•
ground with a string of lights in the
middle o( the photograph. In the book
(with the same name as the mo\·ie. •
although written by another author,
Robert Emeneggar) the two shots are
.
.,
®
;>r,o ~~ ,:,r Ag,, t>.:• 12 f ro m Go-nlr,;. 12 . T h ;, ,, pan of a seQuenc:e o f photos w h ,ch ta~~• trio
evid,Jn,:<'
o f
t; FQ
~i;;htirt,;~
br
A-;en t1 fr~m l1tJnt 11.tu d .lrk . After o ..1rk , o n ly t h e runn ing lighu are v•i•b le. One r e,oarchet
Am~rican :i.;trnn.iuts, I 11'.>ri,~d clu:icly
h:,s w,aorv pubh•hcd th •S IJ 1tcr p hoto grap h as a " UFO". .,, a ,d by N AS A te> be Agena trac:k •
with Hich:ird Cndrrw,h)d at thL• NASA
ing 1;9hts" . NASA p t,oto S 6 6 -63101.
Johnson Sp:ice c~•11t~r (forrn,•rly rnc
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