By KEN KORCZAK
Government UFO deception began immediately after the Roswell Daily Record boldly reported the capture of a “flying saucer” in July 1947. But it was 1952 that government secrecy and misinformation became a formal & hardened policy of the U.S. Military and government.
Just last May, the UFO community lost a giant. Dr. BRUCE MACCABEE died at the age of 82.
After nailing down a Ph.D. in physics from Worcester Polytechnical Insitute, he embarked on an esteemed 37 1/2-year career working as an optical physicist for the United States Naval Surface Warfare Center.
He also worked on underwater lasers to generate subsurface sound and made significant contributions on aspects of SDI, Ronald Reagan’s so-called Star Wars space-based defense platform. Maccabee earned world renown for his skills as a scientist, but it was his intensive interest in the UFO issue that made him famous.
For those of us who have been addicted to UFO stuff for decades, Dr. Maccabee was an instantly recognizable face. Starting in the 1970s he began popping up in UFO documentaries on TV and film, usually as an analyst of anomalous photographs and video.
If Bruce Maccabee pronounced an image or video footage “authentic” or “unexplainable by natural means” — well, that meant something. With his bona fide scientific credentials, he could not be written off as just another flake. Dr. Maccabee was also a dogged researcher of an investigative sort.
He has engaged in strenuous efforts to obtain all manner of military and government documents relating to UFOs. A major milestone was getting his hands on the secret “flying disc files” of the FBI.
Yes, there was a real FBI X-Files!
In his 2018 book, THE LEGACY OF 1952: YEAR OF THE UFO, Maccabee offered an important perspective on where things stand in UFO research today, and “how we got here,” for better or worse. He argues that early on, but especially in the year 1952, certain protocols became set in stone in terms of how our military and government would treat the UFO issue.
This was the time the military established methods, systems and perhaps a “philosophy” for how and why they would share UFO information with the American public. Those protocols hardened into “tradition,” Maccabee writes, in 1952 and have remained essentially unchanged ever since. The result of this has been wide-ranging and enormous.
The effect has been that an entire American generation grew up with a government that either denied the “reality” of the UFO phenomenon — or simply suggest it could be explained in natural terms if and when more facts could be obtained. That latter part never seems to happen.
What was so special about 1952? Well, that year witnessed a remarkable explosion of UFO sightings. Thousands of reports poured into media outlets, local police and various government agencies. Practically no location in America was spared. The most significant is known as the “WASHINGTON FLAP” occurring from July 12 through July 29 in the summer of 1952.
It was an amazing time!
Suddenly, “swarms of UFOs” began appearing over the American capital city. And it wasn’t just sightings. The objects were routinely captured on radar. Jets scrambled to pursue the objects. Our best-trained fighter pilots observed UFOs with their own eyes. The “saucers” routinely outdistanced the F-94s and other assets that chased them.
When the jets ran low on fuel forcing them to cut off chase and return — the UFOs would sometimes turn around and come right back! It was impossible for anyone to be in denial of what was happening! The sightings were making headlines in major papers across the nation.
Also unable to ignore the events was President Harry Truman himself. Truman was alarmed enough to call top people in the Air Force to get some answers. Stop for a minute and think about that. The President of the United States picks up the phone, calls his Top Brass, and orders them to get some answers about UFOs.
What would it take today for the President of the United States to pick up the phone and call his top military commanders to focus urgent attention on the UFO issue? (On the other hand, modern Presidents may be far more clued in on what is happening with UFOs than we know. But that’s a complex issue I’ll leave aside for now).
And … and … well, I guess that leads me to my takeaway from Maccabee’s book. It informs me or, I guess, clarifies for me how we came to be in the place we are today in ufology. It helps explain the sort of crazy labyrinth that the “UFO question” has become. We find ourselves endlessly entangled in that maze here in 2022 — notwithstanding the recent incredible admissions by the Pentagon that UFOs indeed do exist.
This latter situation was brought about by the New York Times article December 2017 article: Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious UFO Program. This piece revealed the now famous 2004 Go Fast video taken by fighter pilots attached to the USS Nimitz. The footage appears to show a UFO-like object traveling over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.
Reading Maccabee’s book gave me the notion that a certain normalcy or rationality held sway for a few short years after that June day in 1947 when private pilot Kenneth Arnold sighted nine shiny objects flitting over Mount Rainier. Roswell and then Arnold’s encounter kicked off the modern UFO era. The press was reporting the UFO story in a straightforward way. It was “just that facts, ma’am.”
For example, if entire fleets of UFOs were observed over Washington D.C., ordinary, mainstream newspapers, such as the Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa, would sport the headline:
“SAUCERS SWARM OVER CAPITAL”
Sure, that’s a sensational headline, but it also happened to be simply factual and true. There was no need to hide it, censor it, spin it, mock it or sugar coat it for the reading public — the media just reported to the people what happened — so that citizens could have this information.
The same goes for the military and government. Early on, a fantastic UFO sighting WAS NOT immediately inserted into a meat grinder of denial, disinformation, propaganda or captured into a classified super-double-top-cosmic-secret-for-your-eyes-only-report. Rather, it was confronted directly as a problem for government experts to look at directly as they strove to produce straightforward answers.
But after 1952 — and because of critical policy decisions made by top government officials in that amazing time — we were all kicked down the proverbial rabbit hole we remain lost in today. On the other hand, this is all a much more complex issue. There’s a lot more at play here. For example, the UFO phenomenon has evolved in texture and scope to an astonishing degree since 1952.
Just nine years after 1952, guess what happened?
In 1961 a certain couple from Vermont reported they were abducted aboard a UFO by alien beings. They were subjected to medical tests — Barney Hill reported what is the first-ever report of an anal probe. His wife, Betty, had a long needle-like probe pushed into her belly. Barney was also forced to give a sperm sample.
As mind-boggling as the Betty and Barney Hill case was, things really got weirder thereafter. I have three words for you: “Praying Mantis Alien.” Or how about a few more words: Hybrid human-alien genetic breeding program.
See where I’m going here?
Oh for the days when it was just swarms of flying saucers blackening the skies over Washington!
What simple times!
So, on the one hand, Dr. Maccabee’s book provided me with an excellent sense of sociological clarity and perspective on how the UFO issue developed from the 1950s to the present time in terms of government, military, media and public dynamics. On the other hand, this perspective “stays in its lane,” so to speak. By that I mean it represents a narrow slice of the overall phenomenon as it roils and boils today.
That’s not a knock on Maccabee’s well-presented book. It provides a compelling narrative that adds to the realization that the UFO phenomenon is not only real but that the conventional explanations supplied by the skeptics are demonstrably flawed.
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