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

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scn~:itinnal rn•.•'ll(h for rir:tional •'far.t"
·,l"riln
Fr•111 ;.; Ed·: ar-1;: hi) had two
hundrf'rl
peopll•
ar.luatl)i
me
Lhc
ohjt·ct.).
The source of the story secll!S to
have
bren
an
NBC
newsm:t!l in
Australia. But the prob:crn ~ecms tll b.:
th:it Cooper has nc,.·er heard of it. He
has b-:cn out of tile spat'e program for
SP.Ven years. and talks freely about
urus lo reporters, to the Columbia
"UFO recording·•.. to Mike Douglas,
to friends and associates. Somehow he
k:iows nothing about. "his" space
UFO-and he has no reason to be
silent. His space UFO never existed.
Confronted
by
this
evidence,
Fawcett (letter of May 10, 1976)
insists that "I sincer<?ly believe some of
the ashonaut sightings are bonafide,
based on some of my sources of
information." John Keel, too, recalls
0etter of .March 26, 19i6) that "ex•
NASA engineers have told me all kinds
of fascinating UFO tales.. ." Always
these write~s fall back on "secret
reports" and "private information''
when their published reports and open
articles disintegrate in the face of the
truth.
On October 18, 1973, the famous
Mansfield,
Ohio
UFO
sighting
occurred, for which Captain Lawrence
Coyne and his helicopter crew later
were to receive the 'Best UFO Case of
the Year" award (and check) from a
weekly tabloid's 'blue-ribbon panel' of
UFO experts. A few months later,
Coyne said he was told by the panel
chairman,
J.
Allen
Hynek,
(the
respected head of the Center for UFO
Studies) that Skylab astronauts had
photographed the same UFO from
space. (Hynek ultimately denied this.)
A
reputable
ma~azine,
"Army
ReserYe" published the story with an
intriguing photograph it had received
from NASA and which it labeled
"NASA: Skylab", clt>arly indic;iting
that this was the astronau t photograph
which had buzzed Coyne.
It would ha\'e been a neat trick for
the Skylab astronauts to have photo·
graphed anything on October 18th.
since they weren·t even on board the
space station. The prc\'ious crew had
returned to E:irth a 111011th before and
their relief ere·.\· was not sr.lwduled to
blast off for anothl·r thrPe weeks. The
photograph prin!rd in the rn:il(a7.ine
was clearly labt•lt·rl rm its backsidl' as
r.j,•('fNI
frnm hi, spaf'(•cr;1rt in an
:lll!.'lllpl Lo gl't. \"isual lrackilll'. pr:tctic,:
(11:is photo is often referred to :is the
"cl:issical domed UFO" shnt). UfO
re$c:Jrchers anrl mai;azine edi tors had
dearly not made Hen a minia1u111 of
effort to verify
thes•?
transparent
errors and mistakes. but instr:ad p.!ssed
011
the false data to the public.
ThOU$ands more were dcceivr.d.
Lall' in 197:J, ;i strange ob!c••:t did
appNtr in Skylab sp,,Cl' photograph,.
Takrn on Conrad's Skylab fl ight i11
June, Lhe objcct was not 11oticE'rl bl·
UFO researchers but bv govE>rnmcn·t
photo analysts.
pl..t~ '33 •
Rather than ·•swP.ep thc t;FO under
the rug", the officials look the other
tack: it might be a mysterious So,·itit
SatP.llite and could be of great value to
, .
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• '• • /-"':"::. -.,"1-·/,-:;;.."..-':,....,(;-':.,.::,~,!~--~~i'-:i...-.., ... ~
~Joi~~~---..:.6'~,(;A»~~~-®
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6.::>
"UFO.. -seen fro,n Skyloh-2. Tho e1O,1901tcd ou,~ct i, actually an air1:lrip
takrn hy S.:,>tl C:irp,.•u(,•r Oil .\ll'rcury-
in the Bra:d,an 1un9,.,~. Enlargomont of NASA photo SL2-16-1 09,
7 morn than t1•n years before. II c-fl,t~ .
show,•d a limp ballnon C:irp<'nter had
")..\ c..a-..."" !
58