The Secret Lives of Killer American Drones

The Secret Lives of Killer American Drones

What our busted and confiscated robot airplanes tell us about the US's new method of warfare.

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
The drone had been in the air for close to five hours before its mission crew realized that something was wrong. The oil temperature in the plane's turbocharger, they noticed, had risen into the "cautionary" range. An hour later, it was worse, and it just kept rising as the minutes wore on. While the crew desperately ran through its "engine overheat" checklist trying to figure out the problem, the engine oil temperature, too, began skyrocketing.
By now, they had a full-blown in-flight emergency on their hands. "We still have control of the engine, but engine failure is imminent," the pilot announced over the radio.
Almost two hours after the first signs of distress, the engine indeed failed. Traveling at 712 feet per minute, the drone clipped a fence before crashing.
Land of the Lost Drones
The skies seem full of falling drones these days. The most publicized of them made headlines when Iran announced that its military had taken possession of an advanced American remotely piloted spy aircraft, thought to be an RQ-170 Sentinel.
Questions about how the Iranians came to possess one of the US military's most sophisticated pieces of equipment abound. Iran first claimed that its forces shot the drone down after it "briefly violated" the country's eastern airspace near the Afghan border. Later, the Islamic Republic insisted that the unmanned aerial vehicle had penetrated 150 miles before being felled by a sophisticated cyber-attack. And just days ago, an Iranian engineer offered a more detailed, but as yet unsubstantiated, explanation of how a hack-attack hijacked the aircraft.
For its part, the United States initially claimed that its military had lost the drone while it was on a mission in western Afghanistan. Later, unnamed officials admitted that the CIA had, in fact, been conducting a covert spy operation over Iran.
The drone crash that led this piece did occur in Afghanistan—Kandahar, to be precise—in May of this year. It went unreported at the time and involved not a sleek, bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel, but the older, clunkier, if more famous, MQ-1 Predator, a workhorse hunter/killer machine of the Afghan war and the CIA's drone assassination campaign in the Pakistani tribal borderlands.
A document detailing a US Air Force investigation of that Predator crash, examined by TomDispatch, sheds light on the lifecycle and flaws of drones—just what can go wrong in unmanned air operations—as well as the shadowy system of bases and units scattered across the globe that keep those drones constantly in the skies as the US becomes ever more reliant on remote-controlled warfare.
That report and striking new statistics obtained from the military offer insights into underexamined flaws in drone technology. They are also a reminder of the failure of journalists to move beyond awe when it comes to high-tech warfare and America's latest wonder weapons—their curious inability to examine the stark limitations of man and machine that can send even the most advanced military technology hurtling to Earth.

Numbers Game
According to statistics provided to TomDispatch by the Air Force, Predators have flown the lion's share of hours in America's drone wars. As of October 1st, MQ-1's had spent more than 1 million hours in the air, 965,000 of those in "combat," since being introduced into military service. The newer, more heavily armed MQ-9 Reaper, by comparison, has flown 215,000 hours, 180,000 of them in combat. (The Air Force refuses to release information about the workload of the RQ-170 Sentinel.) And these numbers continue to rise. This year alone, Predators have logged 228,000 flight hours compared to 190,000 in 2010.
An analysis of official Air Force data conducted by TomDispatch indicates that its drones crashed in spectacular fashion no less than 13 times in 2011, including that May 5th crash in Kandahar.
About half of those mishaps, all resulting in the loss of an aircraft or property damage of $2 million or more, occurred in Afghanistan or in the tiny African nation of Djibouti, which serves as a base for drones involved in the US secret wars in Somalia and Yemen. All but two of the incidents involved the MQ-1 model, and four of them took place in May.
In 2010, there were seven major drone mishaps, all but one involving Predators; in 2009, there were 11. In other words, there have been 31 drone losses in three years, none apparently shot down, all diving into the planet of their own mechanical accord or thanks to human error.
Other publicized drone crashes, like a remotely-operated Navy helicopter that went down in Libya in June and an unmanned aerial vehicle whose camera was reportedly taken by Afghan insurgents after a crash in August, as well as the December 4th loss of the RQ-180 in Iran and an even more recent crash of a MQ-9 in the Seychelles, are not included in the Air Force's major accident statistics for the year.

Group Effort
The United States currently runs its drone war from 60 or more bases scattered across the globe. They range from sites in the American southwest with lines of trailers where drone pilots "fly" such aircraft via computer to those far closer to the battlefield where other pilots—seated before a similar set up, including multiple computer monitors, keyboards, a joystick, a throttle, a rollerball, a mouse, and various switches—launch and land the drones. On other bases, aspiring drone pilots are trained on simulators and the planes themselves are tested before being sent to distant battlefields.
The May 5th Predator crash about a half-mile short of a runway at Kandahar Air Field drives home just how diffuse drone operations have become, with multiple units and multiple bases playing a role in a single mission.
That Predator drone, for example, was an asset of the 3rd Special Operations Squadron, which operates out of Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico, and ultimately is part of Air Force Special Operations Command, based at Hulbert Field in Florida. When it crashed, it was being flown by an in-country pilot from the 62nd Expeditionary Squadron at Kandahar Air Field, whose parent unit, the 18th Reconnaissance Squadron, makes its home at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, ground zero for the military's drone operations. The crewman operating the sensors on the drone, on the other hand, was a member of the Texas Air National Guard based at Ellington Field in Texas.
The final leg of the doomed mission—in support of elite special operations forces—was being carried out by a pilot who had been operating Predators for about 10 months and had flown drones for approximately 51 hours over the previous 90 days. With less than 400 total hours under his belt, he was considered "inexperienced" by Air Force standards and, during his drone launch and recovery training, had failed two simulator sessions and one flying exercise. He had, however, excelled academically, passed his evaluations, and was considered a qualified MQ-1 pilot, cleared to fly without supervision.
His sensor operator had been qualified by the Air Force for the better part of two years, with average or above average ratings in performance evaluations. Having "flown" a total of 677 hours—close to 50 of them in the 90 days before the crash—he was considered "experienced."
The fact that the duo were controlling a special operations drone highlights the increasingly strong and symbiotic relationship between America's two recently ascendant forms of warfare: raids by small teams of elite forces and attacks by remote-controlled robots.
The Life and Death of American Drones
During the post-crash investigation, it was determined that the ground crew in Afghanistan had been regularly using an unauthorized method of draining engine coolant, though it was unclear whether this contributed to the crash. Investigation documents further indicate that the drone's engine had 851 hours of flight time and so was nearing the end of the line. (The operational lifespan of a Predator drone engine is reportedly around 1,080 hours.)
Following the crash, the engine was shipped to a California test facility, where technicians from General Atomics, the maker of the Predator, carried out a forensic investigation. Significant overheating had, it was discovered, warped and deformed the machinery.
Eventually, the Air Force ruled that a cooling system malfunction had led to engine failure. An accident investigator also concluded that the pilot had not executed proper procedures after the engine failure, causing the craft to crash just short of the runway, slightly damaging the perimeter fence at Kandahar Air Field and destroying the drone.
The clear conclusion reached by accident investigators in this crash stands in stark contrast to the murkiness of what happened to the advanced drone now in Iranian hands. Whether the latter crashed thanks to a malfunction, was shot down, felled by a cyber-attack, or ended up on the ground for some other reason entirely, its loss and that of the special ops drone are reminders of just how reliant the US military has become on high-tech robot planes whose major accidents now exceed those of much more expensive fixed-wing aircraft. (There were 10 major airborne mishaps involving such Air Force aircraft in 2011.)

Robot War: 2012 and Beyond
The failure to achieve victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with a perceived success in the Libyan war—significantly fought with airpower including drones—has convinced many in the military not to abandon foreign wars, but to change their approach. Long-term occupations involving tens of thousands of troops and the use of counterinsurgency tactics are to be traded in for drone and special forces operations.
Remotely piloted aircraft have regularly been touted, in the press and the military, as wonder weapons, the way, not so long ago, counterinsurgency tactics were being promoted as an elixir for military failure. Like the airplane, the tank, and nuclear weapons before it, the drone has been touted as a game-changer, destined to alter the very essence of warfare.
Instead, like the others, it has increasingly proven to be a non-game-changer of a weapon with ordinary vulnerabilities. Its technology is fallible and its efforts have often been counterproductive in these last years. For example, the inability of pilots watching computer monitors on the other side of the planet to discriminate between armed combatants and innocent civilians has proven a continuing problem for the military's drone operations, while the CIA's judge-jury-executioner assassination program is widely considered to have run afoul of international law—and, in the case of Pakistan, to be alienating an entire population. The drone increasingly looks less like a winning weapon than a machine for generating opposition and enemies.
In addition, as flight hours rise year after year, the vulnerabilities of remotely piloted missions are ever more regularly coming to light. These have included Iraqi insurgents hacking drone video feeds, a virulent computer virus infecting the Air Force's unmanned fleet, large percentages of drone pilots suffering from "high operational stress," increasing numbers of crashes, and the possibility of Iranian drone-hijacking.
While human and mechanical errors are inherent in the operation of any type of machinery, few commentators have focused significant attention on the full spectrum of drone flaws and limitations. For more than a decade, remotely piloted aircraft have been a mainstay of US military operations and the tempo of drone operations continues to rise yearly, but relatively little has been written about drone defects or the limits and hazards of drone operations.
Perhaps the Air Force is beginning to worry about when this will change. After years of regularly ushering reporters through drone operations at Creech Air Force Base and getting a flood of glowing, even awestruck, publicity about the glories of drones and drone pilots, this year, without explanation, it shut down press access to the program, moving robotic warfare deeper into the shadows.
The recent losses of the Pentagon's robot Sentinel in Iran, the Reaper in the Seychelles, and the Predator in Kandahar, however, offer a window into a future in which the global skies will be filled with drones that may prove far less wondrous than Americans have been led to believe. The United States could turn out to be relying on a fleet of robots with wings of clay.

Kim Jong Il dead: 17 bizarre details about the Leader's life

Kim Jong Il dead: 17 bizarre details about the Dear Leader's life

Kim Jong-il

Kim Jong Il has died of heart failure at the age of 69 - after 17 eccentric years as North Korea's 'Dear Leader'.

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The dictator issued strange decrees and fed the personality cult around him. Here are 17 of his weirdest moments...
1. His official biography claimed his birth was foretold by a swallow and led to the appearance of a double rainbow along with the emergence of a new star in space. He went on to spread the myth among his subjects that his mood could control the weather.
2. You may not be aware of this, but Kim Jong-Il was the world's greatest golfer... According to an official government handout marking his 62nd birthday, Kim celebrated by demolishing a par 72 course in just 34 strokes, managing a world record five holes-in-one on the way. To top it all, the superhuman round was apparently the first time he had actually played the sport.
3. In 2006, German giant rabbit breeder Karl Szmolinsky was contacted by Pyongyang, asking if they could buy 12 of the bumper bunnies. Having seen the massive rabbits in a newspaper, Kim planned to set up a breeding programme to boost meat production in the famine-hit country. Despite Szmolinsky warning the rabbits would make the situation worse - they only yield about 15 pounds of meat and have a huge appetite for carrots and potatoes - Kim insisted the animals should still be sent. Szmolinsky claims once the animals arrived Kim ate them himself as part of his birthday celebrations.
4. In 2004, a former chef for Kim revealed the North Korean leader employed staff to make sure the grains of rice served to him were absolutely uniform in size and colour.
5. In 2010 Kim Jong-Il banned the World Cup from being broadcast in North Korea unless the national team won. The communist country's state-run TV stations were ordered not to broadcast live matches or games involving other nations, with only heavily edited highlights of North Korean victories permitted to be screened.
6. Hacked off by the lack of film-makers in his native land, in 1978 Kim arranged for two South Korean directors to be kidnapped from Hong Kong and brought to him. They tried to escape but eventually relented, making a string of movies for him including the cult Godzilla rip-off  Pulgasari.

7. After being told by doctor's to give up smoking in 2007, Kim quit then decided he needed to go one step further to protect his health and so outlawed fags for the rest of his compatriots with a nationwide ban.
8. According to Russian emissary Konstantin Pulikovsky, who travelled with Mr Kim by train across Eastern Europe, Kim had live lobsters air-lifted to the train every day which he ate with silver chopsticks. Where did all his food go? An official biography on the North Korean state website declared Kim Jong Il did not defecate. The biography has since been removed.
9. After suffering a back injury following a horse riding accident, Kim was prescribed painkillers. Fearful of becoming addicted, he ordered a half-dozen of his closest staff to receive the same injection under the logic that if he became dependent, he wouldn't be the only one.
10. As well as being something of a foodie, Kim knew his booze. According to Hennessy, Kim was one of their single biggest customers, importing £350,000 worth of the cognac every year.
And here are seven new nuggets in video form...

11. In 2004 he claimed to have invented the hamburger.
12. One of his unofficial titles was The Central Brain.
13. He once wrote six operas in two years.
14. He has collected more than 20,000 foreign films - with his favourites including Rambo and Friday 13th.
15. He was a keen roller-blader.
16. During a 2001 visit to Moscow by rail he had roast donkey flown to his train every day.
17. In the 1950s he built an entire city called Kijong-Dong that was designed only for propaganda. To this day it has no residents.

The Australian Air Force & the flying saucer mystery

Soon after Kenneth Arnold’s famous 1947 Mt Ranier sighting of nine shiny flying objects moving like “saucers skipping on water,” it appeared Australian skies too were being invaded by flying saucers. From 1950 to 1954, reports of fantastic sightings and encounters appeared regularly in the nation’s newspapers. The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) soon took the problem of unknown objects invading our airspace seriously, with one high-ranking RAAF official even commenting that he believed objects seen in the sky over Melbourne “have an interplanetary source.”
In March 1949, a group of 23 “experts” met at the federal government’s newly-established Aeronautical Research Laboratory (ARL) to discuss the growing number of flying saucer sightings from across the country. The attendees included, among others, members of the British Interplanetary Society, Royal Aeronautical Society, Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation, and the RAAF.
With more and more members of the public seeing strange things flying in the skies, it wasn’t long before past and present RAAF personnel were claiming their own encounters with these flying saucers. The Canberra Times reported on 14 June 1950 that a former RAAF flying instructor, Mr Fred Betts, witnessed a flying saucer after the object was brought to his attention by his 4-year-old son.
“The object was moving in a south-easterly direction at speed of more than 1,000 mph. It was travelling at a terrific height and left behind a vapour- like trail of about 100 yards.”
Betts reported that the unidentified object revolved at a terrific speed and was bronze on top and silver underneath.”I had enough experience during the war and as a civilian pilot to know that it certainly was not a plane.”
Then, on 15 December, another report appeared in the same paper of a “flying ball” witnessed by ex-RAAF navigator John Mundy over the beachside suburb of Coogee in Sydney.  Mundy reported that at 6.55pm the previous evening he saw a “white-hot flying ball with a tail” appear about 75 degrees above the horizon. The obect flew straight and level from south to north for about 12 miles, accelerated and then disappeared. Despite the fact that Mundy, an experienced navigator, stated the object accelerated before dissapearing, an offical from the Observatory said that what Mundy saw was probably a meteor.
When you see a flying saucer
In February 1953, a committee was established to investigate the continuing spate of sightings.
“If you should see a ‘flying saucer, or even something like one, you should immediately notify the Australian Flying Saucer Investigation Committee,” Melbourne’s The Argus announced in its article When you see a flying saucer … which appeared on 25 February. The committee, while having “no political, military, or official affiliation,” had as its chairman Mr D.K Thomson, a former RAAF pilot.
“We’re attempting to approach flying saucer reports with intelligent curiosity. We have no preconceptions whatsoever. Each report will receive careful and impartial consideration. ‘Significant sightings’ would be referred to experts in physics, aeronautics, meteorology, and other sciences.
“So far I haven’t seen a flying saucer, or anything like one,” the former RAAF pilot turned flying saucer investigator admitted to The Argus.
We’ve investigated hundreds of reports since 1947: RAAF
The Australian Flying Saucer Investigation Committee wasn’t the only body investigating flying saucers, however.
In January 1954, the RAAF finally broke its silence on flying saucers, making its first official statement. It revealed that the Air Force had investigated hundreds of reports since 1947.
One of those earliest sightings was apparently reported by one of its own. In 1947, RAAF Flight Sergeant Leslie Bastin and his daughter, Jean, witnessed a “pewter type metal structure, with a domed top and slightly less domed on the bottom, with a flange around the centre of it,” hovering over the gully behind their home at Lawson in the Blue Mountains. They watched the strange craft for around half an hour before it silently and quickly departed.  Australian UFO investigator, Bill Chalker, interviewed Jean years later. Recollecting the sighting, she said she was sure her father had reported it to his RAAF superiors.
A high-ranking RAAF spokesman, while commenting on the RAAF’s offical statement admitting to its interest in flying saucers, made some refreshigly frank admissions, especially for a millitary official.
“We are anxious to get to the bottom of the reports. We have an open mind, but who are we to say the public is just seeing things,” he said. “We do not know if we are the only planet with life on it or if there are better brains in the universe than ours. We should be flying into space ourselves within 100 years.
“Our investigations show that 10 per cent of the people reporting to us have definitely seen something. Many of the reports correspond and many of the people making the reports should know what they are talking about — especially pilots.”
“Each report is investigated by an RAAF intelligence officer and 24 questions put to the person making the report are tabulated in a two-page report …”
The RAAF spokesman went on to say that the Air Force treated all reports confidentially and that cases would not be published in order to avoid copycat reports.
Two more sightings: An interplanetary source?
The Cairns Post, while reporting the RAAF’s official statement on flying saucers on 9 January 1954, also included the two latest sightings:
“Meanwhile Melbourne’s spate of flying saucer reports continued today when two more were reported. The first was from Mr W. Allen, manager of a Malvern shoe store. He said that he saw a shining circular object passing over Malvern.
“’Giving out a red vapor, the object headed toward the bay at about 2,000 feet. It seemed to be between 20 and 30 feet in diameter.’
“A Department of Civil Aviation officer said that only one aircraft was in the area at the time. It was a DC3 which would have passed over St Kilda on its way to Tasmania. The radar at Essendon picked up nothing.
“The second report — not received until late today was from a North Kew woman. The woman who asked that her name should not be published, said she arrived home about 3am today and went outside to cool off before going to bed.
“’I saw what I thought at first was a large yellow star,’ she said. ‘I also thought I heard a whirring noise, but I could have imagined that.’
“’The saucer was low in the sky and stayed in the same position for some time. It was like a star with lights radiating out from underneath it.’
“The woman woke her 17-year-old daughter, who produced a telescope which she focussed on the object. The girl described the saucer as being like a balloon or a big electric light globe. Something like a lighted platform appeared to be let down from it as she watched. Then the saucer faded away over Heidelberg.”
Commenting on these latest Melbourne sightings, the RAAF spokesman said he personally believed “objects seen in the sky over Melbourne have an interplanetary source.”
RAAF pilot sees flying saucers, picked up on radar 
In December 1954, flying saucers would cause further headaches for RAAF officers. According to The Sydney Morning Herald on 16 December, the Nowra Naval Air Station went on alert to watch for unidentified flying objects after a RAAF pilot had reported two flying saucers three months earlier.
“Officers at the station said this today during an inspection of the station by the Minister for the Navy, Mr J. Francis.
“Apart from admitting that the objects had been seen, naval officers told journalists accompanying Mr Francis that investigations into the incident were ‘secret’.
“The station still has not established the nature of the objects seen three months ago. The pilot who reported the objects was flying a Sea Fury at night in the Goulburn area.
“He said the objects were lighted. They travelled faster than his aircraft [220 knots] and passed him, flying close to his aircraft at about 15,000 feet. While inflight the pilot reported the objects to the Nowra station by radio.
“Radar operators then tracked the Sea Fury and did locate two other objects in flight.
“Inquiries later established that there were no aircraft flying in the area at the time. The pilot has since made a full report on the incident to senior officers at Nowra.”
This incident was investigated by Bill Chalker and the Sea Fury pilot, Lt. J.A O’Farrell was interviewed by famed US UFO investogator Dr Hyneck on his visit to Australia in 1973. For more on this case, check out Bill Chalker’s report.
RAAF finally loses interest in UFOs
Between 1950 and 1959, the RAAF investigated more than 400 sightings and a further 1,300 sightings between 1960 and 1980.  Over the years, many of these reports were made available to UFO investigators on request.
But the RAAF’s interest in the phenomenon appeared to wane, at least publicly, over the years. Finally, in January 1994 RAAF Wing Commander Brett Biddington, on behalf of the Chief of Air Staff, informed civilian UFO groups around Australia that: “The number of reports made to the RAAF in the past decade had declined significantly, which may indicate that organisations such as yours are better known and are meeting the community’s requirements. Therefore, the RAAF was not going to investigate or collect any more public reports from that date on.”
With the closure of the RAAF’s UFO investigations, did the Australian Government also lose interest in the UFO phenomenon? Not necessarily. Apparently, there is evidence that other government departments continue to investigate Unusual Aerial Phenomena (UAP) or Unusual Aerial Sightings (UAS), and that Department of Defence (DOD) policy documents addressing UAP and UAS are still in use today

LIE DETECTOR CONFIRMS KEY ROSWELL CRASH WITNESS TOLD THE TRUTH

LIE DETECTOR CONFIRMS KEY ROSWELL CRASH WITNESS TOLD THE TRUTH

To catch a liar is not easy. Our ability to detect a lie is 50/50. This “no better than chance” ability was improved upon with the advent of the polygraph in the early 1920s. This raised those odds to about 65%, though the polygraph remains “fluky” and the results it produces, controversial. But a new technology has recently emerged that applies software to analyze psycholinguistic cues to indicate truthfulness. This new “lie catcher” software was recently applied to the testimony of a key witness to the Roswell UFO crash in early July of 1947. This witness was Major Jesse Marcel. The new technology confirms that Jesse Marcel had indeed told the truth as a Witness to Roswell.

THE TECHNOLOGY

Two renowned professors at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ have recently stunned the criminal psychology and law enforcement communities with the introduction of a computer program offering an astounding 86%-99% rate of success in lie detection. The creators of this “veracity software” are Dr. Raj Chandramouli and Dr. Koduvayur Subbalakshmi. The two (who have established Instream Media, LLC) are now developing partnerships with insurance companies (to detect against false claims) and other businesses where deception often comes in to play. The software developed by the professors is an extraordinary text analytics program.

Dr. Chandrmouli (who graciously provided the software and instructions for use to this author) explains that their approach to deceptive content utilizes a unique combination of statistical analysis, linguistics and psychology. The software combs for 88 psycholinguistic cues that indicate whether an individual is “covering up” or speaking the truth as he or she understands and believes it to be. Traditional polygraphs examine such things as pulse, sweat and respiratory rates to determine veracity. Similarly, “voice stress analysis” has been implemented. But the Stevens Institute scientists (who worked with an interdisciplinary team of linguists, psychologists and information technology engineers) believe that the standard polygraph and voice stress approaches have far too many variables and ‘outside influences’ that can adversely affect the accuracy of those machines and those that operate them.

The professors’ approach is far less open to such variables and influences. They and their team developed an algorithm based upon the Freudian notion that the truth always leaks out no matter how hard we attempt to cover it up- a phenomenon of course known as the “Freudian Slip.”

The technology does not require that an individual be “hooked up” in any way to any kind of machine. In fact, the individual does not even need to be alive to use the deception technology. By carefully and accurately transcribing into text the known and confirmed words of what a person has said on tape or in a video, the Stevens Institute technology is able to scrutinize and interpret their words in text form to determine if they are truthful.

THE WITNESS


Rare Photo of Major Jesse Marcel in 1947

In 1947, Major Jesse Marcel was stationed at Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) as a Base Intelligence Officer. He was called by Chaves County Sheriff George Wilcox to respond to ranch foreman Mack Brazel’s visit to him about the discovery of strange debris discovered in a field on the JB Foster Ranch in early July of that year.

Major Marcel, when located in 1978, described seeing, handling and transporting very strange crash debris materials. Marcel said that some of the debris was very thin and light “metal with plastic properties.” He also described other odd material that was impervious to the heat of an applied torch and that would not dent or scratch even from the blows of a sledgehammer. Marcel also mentioned very strange “parchment” material and longer curved metal-like pieces. He said that this sky-fallen debris covered a very large area and that there appeared to have been an explosion in the air. He insisted it was not the debris from any kind of weather balloon or plane, that is was some sort of aircraft not of earth.

Here is a video of Major Marcel confessing to his ET debris discovery in one of his only televised appearances:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcONLgqe-RQ

THE TRUTH

Dr Chandramouli provided this author use of the software to test for falsehood the testimony of Major Marcel. The conversion of key testimony by Marcel was transcribed and the results are in!

To the statement by Marcel:

“One thing that impressed us about the debris was the fact that a lot of it looked like parchment. It had little numbers with symbols that we had to call hieroglyphics because I could not understand them. They could not be read, they were just like symbols, something that meant something, and they were not all the same, but the same general pattern I would say.”

Dr. Chandramouli’s deceptive analysis results indicate: NORMAL, NO DECEPTION

To the statement by Marcel:

“This particular piece of metal was, I would say, about two feet long and perhaps a foot wide. See, that stuff weighs nothing, it’s so thin, it isn’t any thicker that the tinfoil in a pack of cigarettes. So I tried to bend the stuff, it wouldn’t bend. We even tried to make a dent in it with a 16 pound sledge hammer, and there was no dent in it.”

Dr. Chadramouli’s deceptive analysis results indicate: NORMAL, NO DECEPTION

To the statement by Marcel:

“There were small beams about three-eighths of a half inch square with some sort of hieroglyphics on them that nobody could decipher. These looked something like balsa-wood, and were about the same weight, except that they were not wood at all. They were very hard, although flexible, and would not burn.”

Dr. Chadramouli’s deceptive analysis results indicate: NORMAL, NO DECEPTION

CONCLUSIONS

The Stevens Institute technology analysis indicates with certainty that Major Marcel did indeed accurately relate in transcribed interviews the truth as he believed it to be:

Marcel said that there was a crash in the summer of 1947. The debris from that crash included varying types: 1) Parchment-like material with strange, indecipherable symbols 2) beams made of material that was like wood, but “not wood at all” that also had hieroglyphics and that, remarkably, would not burn and 3) unusually thin and unusually light metal-like material that would not even dent to the force of a pounding sledgehammer.

This author is continuing to work through the testimony of Major Marcel, as found in various interview transcripts and films to apply the psycholinguistic lie-catching technology. Comparison to other testimony (such as that of Officer Bill Rickett and Officer Sheridan Cavitt, who were also at the crash scene with Marcel) will be conducted as well and reported on at a later date.

I do not ascribe 100% certainty to anything. It is for this reason that I do not offer a “firm endorsement” of the findings of the Stevens Institute analysis. That qualified, I do believe that it is the best-available technology to ascertain honesty.

Half of writing history is hiding the truth. Hopefully technology will one day free us, at last, to uncover the truth, the whole truth, and to correct history.

Predator C Avenger

The U.S. Air force has awarded General Atomics a contract to build a third prototype of the stealthy Predator C Avenger unmanned aircraft. General Atomics has already built two such aircraft and is planning to build two more, at least one is now being funded by the U.S. Government. According to David A. Fulghum of Aviation Week, these new ‘Avenger’ versions will be more powerful and will carry more payloads than the first two prototype competed in 2009. A second Avenger flew for the first time in April 2010. The Air Force has allocated $15 million for the first aircraft but the program is expected to grow in size.

General Atomics informed the Air Force it is ready to quickly ramp up production if the Air Force or other government agencies will order more planes. The procurement is overseen by the U.S. Air Force’s secretive Big Safari, a special, rapid-acquisition organization.
The Air Force plans to send this aircraft to Afghanistan, where it will be used for evaluation of ‘next-generation UAS sensors, weapons and tactics, techniques and procedures’, enabling the service to accelerate fielding of these advanced capabilities to the area of operations. The tests will also help determining the requirement for plane’s radar signature (stealth) reduction.
Avenger is designed to perform high-speed, long-endurance, covert, multi-mission Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) and precision-strike missions over land or sea. It can carry a variety of internal weapons loads, including the 2,000 lb Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), an Electro-optical/Infrared (EO/IR) sensor, and an all-weather GA-ASI Lynx Synthetic Aperture Radar/Ground Moving Target Indicator (SAR/GMTI). According to General Atomics, a recce system based on Lockheed Martin’s F-35 FLIR is currently being evaluated, as well as an in-house full-motion video sensor. To maintain the clean, stealthy underside, the Avenger would probably rely on specialized integral, conformal or retractable payloads, while maximizing long loiter ISR and weapons carriage capabilities.
The Predator has been one of the most successful weapon in the Drone war the CIA has launched against international terrorist targets in Asia, the Middle east and Africa. A new and more capable Predator “C-plus”, with larger payload capacity for multiple, heavier sensors and precision guided weapons, could further enhance these capabilities, opening wider operational capabilities for operations in contested airspace. Fulghum comments that an Air Forces procurement of off the shelf drone could relieve the Pentagon of having to commit to a procurement of a new program of record for ‘MX’, “in a budget environment that is guaranteed to quash new programs.” The Predator C/Avenger has also been considered for a future U.S Navy carrier based ISR platform known as UCLAAS.
The decision was made public days after the loss of another stealthy drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel over Iran. However, according to Fulghum, the new announcement is irrelevant to the current incident. The Air Force planned to award the contract in November 2011, but budget complications have kept in pending. Officials said the project was underway before the loss of a reduced signature UAV near Kashmar in northeastern Iran Dec. 4.

Argentina: Humanoids at San Antonio de Areco (1975)

Monday, December 12, 2011

Argentina: Humanoids at San Antonio de Areco (1975)

Argentina: Humanoids at San Antonio de Areco (1975)
A Report by PROYECTO CATENT (catent2002@arnet.com.ar)

Location: San Antonio de Areco, Province of Buenos Aires
Date: Winter 1975
Witnesses: Daniel Pignalberi and Eduardo Ramos
Ages: 20 and 16, respectively

The Investigation

These were the tough days of our friend Hector Antonio Picco’s illness in the winter of 2002, from which he is fully recovered today, pursuing what he enjoys the most, his work and trying to earn enough to earn his sustenance. This great researcher organized a series of conferences in his own home. In attendance at one such event was a gentleman, accompanied by his son and some friends. Daniel had learned of this event through Mr. Horacio Fadel, and he told us that the had witnessed a not-so-unusual event (as we have come to see) that involved the presence of strange humanoid entities. We exchanged e-mail addresses and agreed to meet.

During the first conference, he spoke of the existence of another witness to the same event – his cousin Eduardo Ramos, who we met days later. The result of these meetings is the report transcribed herein.

Transcript of the Interview with Daniel Pignalberi

Interview by researchers Mariela Verónica de Tomaso and Miguel Angel Gómez Pombo, members of Proyecto CATENT, on Wednesday, 24 July 2002.

The conversation started with a discussion about how most people treat these subjects with little seriousness, and Daniel tells us he’s afraid he won’t be believed. He had a series of UFO experiences in Mar del Plata at age 15 along with his family. He tells us he’s currently 48.

“The real impact it had in my life, and truly intrigued me and caused me to read up on the subject happened when I was 22 – of this I’m sure, because I got married at 23. At the time, when one was that age, we went backpacking a lot. We were a half of a group, because we would board a bus with our backpacks and get down on a given highway, heading to the same place. We’d go other places, but in general to the same one: Kilometer 110 on Route 9, where a tributary of the Parana River flows, known as the Areco river. It’s a stream that can be crossed at a stone’s throw.

“We’d get off on the road and walk diagonally until we’d reach a certain point. It was a long walk, but we were young and could do it.”

How long did you walk?

About an hour and change, to reach the interior (it is somewhat longer than that – Interviewer). Not sure if an hour and twenty or thirty minutes. Consider that we were carrying weight, and the encumbrance slows you down. We had to cross barbed wire fences. The problem is that 15 meters on each side of the river is municipal land, and the landowners cannot challenge you. We’d camp there, within the 15-meter stretch. We went dozens of times and continued to go there after these events. One night, we’d gone with my cousin Eduardo Antonio Ramos, who is 4 years my junior. He must’ve been 18 at the time. Let me tell you that this is a flat plain. If you see it, these are flat fields, no hills, no mounds, and few trees except for our campsite, which had five or six trees. We would throw a tarp between them for shade. That night we put up the tarp. I’m a big fan, so we set up the kindling for the campfire and stepped away to go fishing or something. The time was 22:00 hours. Can’t tell you the date.

Was it Summer?

No, of that I’m sure. Because there were a lot of bugs in the summer – horseflies and mosquitoes! We’d always go in the fall or in the spring. Well, at any rate, we went fishing. It was a dark night. No lights whatsoever. We had two flashlights, one each, of the tracking type with five or six batteries. We used them only as necessary. We stepped away, we had a little camp lantern with us, but not sure if we took it along. The thing is that we’d gone fishing and felt hungry at around 22:00 hours. We started walking, left the campfire going by the tarp. Some campfire! Because we’d always leave a hole through which we’d insert the kindling and it gave of a tremendous amount of light. In an open field, with that amount of light, we were able to walk back without turning on our flashlights. We were going by the firelight, and as we approached the tarp – some 80, 70 or 60 meters away or so – I saw two persons. Two guys, two men. One was standing beside the fire and the other was to the left, crouching. I thought he was stirring the fire. I could see the fire moving. The first thing that came to my mind was...we stopped cold and I told him: “We’re being robbed”. We nearly said at the same time. Two guys in the middle of the night, and in the dark.

At that point we started sauntering with our flashlights off, leaving our tackle on the ground, and we sauntered over to get there faster. At a distance of a few meters, my cousin lit his flashlight all of a sudden. And when he lit them up, I slapped my own flashlight – don’t ask me why, I guess I wanted to shock them. But when I lowered my flashlight, the [figures] vanished. I’m telling you it was like something that was there, and then was gone. Like something disappearing. Of course, at that moment, when those people vanished, well...we can say vanished, but at the time you don’t interpret it as a disappearance. You’re not prepared for such a thing. At the moment you’re grasping for an explanation to what’s going on, and it’s not that we discussed the disappearance, either: “Where the hell did they go?! How could we have lost them?!” So we turned on the flashlights and scanned the treetops, scanned the river to see if they’d gone into a boat, if they were hiding behind the tarp...we lit up the empty fields with those flashlights. The guys had vanished before our very eyes!!

Of course, at this point we faced the fact that these guys had disappeared. “Did you see what I saw?” I asked my cousin. I’d seen it. Nowadays I tease him, because whenever we meet a few times a year, I bring up the subject and I’ll say, “I know what I saw, but what about you?”

I was left with the doubt of whether I’d hallucinated it all and my cousin was fooling me, because you can speak for yourself, but not for the other person. The fact of the matter is that we were so scared, out in the middle of nowhere, that we climbed a tree and spent the night up there. It’s not because there were two people out there. The fact is that there was something that I haven’t told you about. These two guys – and I realized this as we got closer – were strange. Strange guys, because they were all dressed in white. Completely white, with white coveralls, like white jumpsuits, completely white. They wore broad belts, black or dark, visible in the night. I could tell that they had very straight hair, swept back, as if combed with brilliantine. Both were identical. At that time I was able to see them make a motion like this (a gesture to turn around, a half turn, as if noticing the presence of the witnesses). But I couldn’t see their faces due to the fact that my cousin had switched on his flashlight. Maybe if he hadn’t, I’d have been able to see them. I don’t know what would’ve happened after that. There are people, scholars of the subject, who have told me, no, that “...things happened after that, it’s just that you can’t remember them.” What do I know? I can only tell you what I recall. We were so shocked that we stayed up in the tree, and even peed from the treetops, since we weren’t willing to come down.

In the morning, we left at first light, leaving behind our very expensive camping gear, by the standards of the times. We left a lot of things behind, since we were so desperate to get away. The problem is that one isn’t ready for this – maybe you are, since you’ve heard so many things (referring to the interviewers) and they’ve told you some many things, so your head’s ready for it. But imagine that you’d never been interested in the subject, or imagine the 1970s, when the movie ET hadn’t been released yet and Hollywood’s special effects weren’t as good as the ones nowadays, and you’re suddenly faced with this situation. It’s tough. It’s really hard to face a situation like the one we faced in the middle of nowhere.

Didn’t you feel motivated to take everything apart at night before leaving the site?

In the dark? No way! Then again, those guys dressed in white...they were like torches in the night! You cast light on people like that and see them – it’s terrible. You know how you’re driving along at night and your headlights illuminate the roadside posts? Imagine two guys in white. They couldn’t have gotten away from us in fractions of a second. They vanished on us. So what was it?

Did you notice anything odd the rest of the evening?

No. But what we saw – and much I never discussed, and I’ll tell you why. I think that maybe you heard Eduardo at some point (turning to his wife, making reference to his cousin) say that we went back, to the same place on a night not too long after, but we saw three lights moving in the sky. But three lights moving very far away...and I could see them moving, but I couldn’t tell if it was an optical effect caused by looking at a distant little light. It looked like three lights moving, but you’re always wondering. Look, I told you those two things and I’m telling you: if you hook me up to a polygraph, I’d always question whether they were real or not. You know how it is. I can tell you what I saw, but I can’t speak for others.

Why do you mistrust what you saw?

No, in this case it was just two of us. It the first case there were many of us [translator’s note – interviewee is referring to an earlier case]. I have no doubt that it was a flying saucer but years later, I wondered, since detractors of the UFO phenomenon say that one could mistaken by gaseous effects in the sky.

And the second one?

No, not the second one. Let me make it clear that on that night we were not drunk, and this one (referring to his wife) can tell you that I’m into water. I was never much of a drinker or smoker, nor was I...you get me. We were two kids who were laughing at life, fishing, we weren’t talking about witches or scary stories, not that day, no. What’s more, that day we’d laughed a lot because we were out fishing.

Well, that’s what happened to me. It was very clear.

The first time you saw them, as you came up the river...how far away were they?

I’d say about less than a block away.

Who realized this?

No, it was both of us at the same time, because we swatted each other like this, at the same time. He was on my left. I remember this clearly, and we slapped each other as if warning ourselves. We’re being robbed, dude – two guys are robbing us.

So what did you see at first sight?

We dropped our fishing rods and began sauntering.

To get closer?

Our course. Not running – sauntering with our flashlights off. Since we know the ground, we were walking right beside the barbed wire fence. It’s a low municipal fence that can be crossed without climbing. We sauntered for less than a block. I’m not sure how much faster we got there by sauntering. I figure some 60 meters more or less. I could see them well.

How could you see them? The only light was that of the campfire.

Fire, dark night. Try it sometime. It’s like lighting a huge floodlight.

And what color could you see them? Were they the color of the fire?
No, what I recall is seeing them the color a person might have. Consider two things: the shock I felt at the moment, surely there are a thousand details I’ve forgotten, a thousand details that my brain didn’t capture or a thousand details I may have changed over time. I tried, but they can get mixed up.

They wore belts?

Yes. Broad black belt, dark footwear.

You could see their shoes?

Yes. Since they were crouching, I could see them. That I remember.

They were both crouching?

No. One was standing like this (makes the gesture of standing up) sideways looking at the fire. The other one was like this (crouches). I could see him moving and that the fire moved, like when you’re roasting something.

Hair color?

Hair was dark. It struck me. Imagine two people in the middle of the countryside. You expect to come across “Don Zoilo” (a typical gaucho name) with his gaucho pants. Not far from there is a ranch of people I knew, since they were my dad’s neighbors. What struck me was to see two people in the wilderness dressed like that.

Strange noises?

None. There was no wind, no weird buzzing, nothing that told us what was about to happen.

Were you startled by anything else?

Nothing. Everything was normal. I didn’t see any lights in the sky. Didn’t taste anything odd. That’s how it was. It was striking to see something like what we’re looking at right now (lifts a flower vase from the table) and suddenly it’s gone. At that moment, when it vanishes, you don’t say: “oh, it’s vanished!” You take a while. There was a flower vase there...maybe it slid off the table...no, it vanished. Especially if it makes no noise. Now you see it, now you don’t. And it isn’t that there was a flash of lightning when it vanished, or it became transparent like with the transporter devices in Star Trek. No. It was there, now it’s gone. You don’t react at time. And what’s more, if it had happened to me today, and I’d give anything to have it happen again, I now think that my head’s better prepared for it. And nothing ever happened again, you get me?

And when they disappeared, what happened with the two of you? Did you talk?

No, no...at the time it was more like: “what do you mean they’re not here, where did they go, didn’t we see two guys, where are they. Look behind the tent, shine your light upward.” In the silence of the night, if a guy gets into a boat in the stream, he makes noise with the wood, and every so often we’d see people boating there, but it’s very shallow. In the middle of the river, the water comes up to your heels, or the water can cover you in some spots. I must have photos of the place (asks his son to find photos to show us).

So when you turned on the lights, what did you see?

When we turned on the lights is when I remember them doing this (gesture of turning their heads to where they were) and that’s when I slapped my flashlight. I don’t know why I did it. My intention was to surprise them, but in fact they weren’t doing anything, if they were people from the area. But I don’t know...

You thought they were thieves?

You know why? We had some very expensive gear with us. Fishing rods that were worth a fortune.

What were you fishing for?

Trash fish. Catfish...we were just having fun. The joy of spending the night out, having cookouts, feeling at one with nature for a few days.

How many days would you spend?

Normally the weekend. We’d leave on a Friday and return on Sunday night. On long weekends we’d spend four days.

Could we speak to your cousin?

Sure. I called him and asked him I could give him your phone number.

(Conversation is interrupted as photos of the site are shown)

So what do you think it was? Did you associate it with anything?
What did you ask me? What? (distracted, looking at the photos). See, I have a notion that the two things that happened to me weren’t of this world, and I’ll tell you why. The first thing I go by, and many people have said so and I’ve thought this, is that there are terrestrial UFOs. I’ve no doubt that there are terrestrial UFOs. But in particular, I say that this thing came out of the sea at the time when it happened, and the way that it flew...I think it wasn’t [a terrestrial UFO]. I thought maybe there are terrestrial UFOs, but they don’t have the technology to move like that in flight (continues discussing the UFO he saw in Mar del Plata. He returns to the second experience, the one that concerns us here). I also think it could be something that isn’t from here...(goes back to looking at the photos)...I was 22 years old in 1975...

After the fright you had, did you return to the site?

Yes, yes...to the very same site. But were we restless.

But you went anyway.

We’re more brothers than cousins. If you talk to him, and he starts discussing me, anything I do, to him I was the smartest guy in the world, the best looking, the best dressed, the one with the best girlfriends...when I play guitar, I’m Paco de Lucía. He plays very well, but he’s Cafrune. And he always says to me: “You know how much I love you Daniel, you know what you mean to me”. He adores me. I’m the cousin, the big brother. Furthermore, I always thought that despite me being older, I gave a lot of space in my life.

And you saw their clothing as white in the firelight?

Yes.

Is that normal, or did it have to do with...?

Can’t tell you if it’s normal. I can tell you that I remember it as white. Light is light.

When you turned off the flashlight – what happened? Were they gone. When he turned on the flashlight, at what point did they vanish?

Less than a second. Nothing. Now they’re here, now they’re gone. Like that.

Footprints or marks?

I didn’t look. We didn’t look. We were trying to answer the question: where the hell did they go? Three was the tent, and the first thing I recall, I’m not sure which one of us did it, was to run around the tent. Where the hell else would they go? We looked in the trees, in the river. These guys vanished to our faces. That’s the answer. You’re ready to see a number of things. An airplane, for example, but imagine that you suddenly see me become transparent. At the time you’re not going to say: “I saw you become transparent.” You’ll try to find an explanation for it. Furthermore, today we see many movies with a lot of information, but I don’t think they were around at the time. What was the name of the series about the guy looking for aliens?

The Invaders.

Not sure if it was around....

Yes, yes it was. You were saying, “how this changed you”. What changed?

It changes your entire head. Imagine that what changed me the most from that moment onward was...despite the fact that I have, or had religious training, I changed in that regard. I went to a religious school and they stuck a bunch of things in my head that the Church puts there. The Catechism. So from that moment on I changed. I started to see things a bit more from here, rather than from there. It’s like seeing the world standing here, not above, not the other side. You see it through different lenses.

How?

You realize that you’re not alone, we’re not alone, there could be a ton of things, don’t know if we’re spiritual or will be...I started to think that maybe we’re persons or beings that are being manipulated or watched. Or when I believed that we – Adam and Eve, God came and separated the waters from the earth, dispelled the darkness – that was my notion. Years later I didn’t believe the Adam and Eve thing. I think it was a poem to say something lovely to ignorant peoples who couldn’t be told something like Darwin’s theories, get them to follow the religion of your choosing. Of course, there’s marketing in selling religion. So it changed me. That changed me. I also felt anguish at times.

Why?

Anguish at the fact that I cannot find answers to these things. You see? You can’t solve them, except for the other day when Picco was speaking (referring to the day that he witnessed one of the presentations given by researcher Hector Antonio Picco) and he said: “I was speaking to a being that vanished before my eyes.” I love that. I was also watching Infinito (TV channel specializing in mysterious subjects) and people spoke of similar things. So it calms me, but doesn’t define anything for me. It offers no solutions. Many told me that this will be explained, it’ll happen in the year 2000, E.T.’s will land and tell us: “Here we are, this is what we are.” So 2000, 2001 and 2002 went by, and here we are. Still nothing. Not even the world ended, as so many claimed.

So what were those beings doing there? Do you have any theories? Were they there because you were there? What was your impression?

I thought they were going to rob us. That was my first impression.

So when you saw them vanish, what did you think?

What I think if you ask me to play out my imagination, well...what I like to think is that those guys must’ve come down from somewhere, or sent from somewhere, and were looking into something about the site we were camped at, and were startled and removed from the scene very quickly. That’s my notion. I’d rather think they were E.T.’s instead of ghosts. It scares me less.

It’s interesting.

Yes, yes. I think that dealing with the concept of spirituality is harder than that of E.T.’s. Maybe because I saw that massive object (at age 15 in the city of Mar del Plata).

Did you become interested in these subjects from that moment on?

No. I read about it as just another thing. It was discussed when I was a boy, but I didn’t have an opinion about them. I don’t recall. The first time, when I was 15, from that moment on, I really got into what people were saying on TV about it. I listened to them and thought: those guys are telling the truth, regardless of whether it’s real or not, they experienced it and they’re being mocked...

Would you like to relive the experience out of curiosity?

To collect information and certify that the experience was real. What I thought and what I actually experienced. It would confirm my life. I discussed it with Eduardo (cousin and fellow witness) and I tell him: “Do you remember?” to which he recalls, “Of course it happened”. It’s important to me. It changed me greatly. We are not alone. I believe in God, but I’m not sure if there is a God, or just extraterrestrials.

Conspiracy Calls: Paranoid Telephonic Bugs and MIB Surveillance

In his classic book The Mothman Prophecies, author John Keel made it clear that he was no stranger to general weirdness. In addition to being followed around by MIBs, demented Keel-clones, and dark critters that go “flap” in the night, it’s also probably worth nothing that even his phone line was hardly exempt from receiving spillover of the supernatural kind.
In fact, we might as well get things off to a good start by adding a heaping dose of synchronicity: just as I was sitting down to write this piece, my phone inexplicably lit up, then shut itself off completely, and restarted. I usually ignore this kind of thing… but for some, it’s enough to keep one’s paranoid fantasies close to the edge for days at a time. With regard to my own situation, this isn’t the only time my phone has appeared to come to life on its own, and activate or deactivate itself arbitrarily. For several months now, I’ve been experiencing a remarkable amount of Keelian weirdness regarding my cellular phone… and in truth, I might as well admit it: I’ve kind of got a history with this sort of thing.
To set the stage for what kind of telephonic hijinks I’m referring to exactly, I’ll first recap some of the things John Keel had been describing back in the late 1960s. In addition to his ongoing pursuit of awkward acting, strange dressed “weirdos” and the more stereotypical Men in Black, John Keel also described having a number of issues with his telephone line. Beeps and static were rife throughout many of his calls, and he also claimed to have heard portions of previous conversations being replayed at times, which he surmised as being a form of “intimidation tactic.” Even more curiously, Keel would go on to find that many witnesses of weirdness he would go to visit would describe similar phenomenon; occasionally such calls would only occur while Keel was visiting, and strangest of all, some would claim to have received calls from Keel himself, when he was certain no such call had been made!

My own early experiences with telephonic weirdness actually began years ago, when I was working regularly with Joshua P. Warren’s LEMUR group. Josh would call me pretty often in those days, sometimes rapping back and forth into the wee hours of the morning about various things. Often, our discussions would gravitate in the direction of what I, again, prefer to call “Keelian” phenomena (rather than “Fortean,” at least so far as when the subject matter has direct relevance to John Keel or the subjects he focused on a lot). Things would often get funny, however, as soon as we would begin to discuss anything having to do with Mothman. When we broached this strangest-of-subjects, we quite often would find that our conversation would be interrupted by strange audio, or even disconnected altogether.
On one occasion many years ago, around the month of April Joshua had begun to get a distinct impression that there might be some particularly unusual occurrences going on. This had merely been a hunch on his part, as I remember, but subsequently we had been discussing various matters of strangeness, when we came back around to the subject of Mothman. As if on cue, we were suddenly disconnected; but here’s one of the curious things about this instance: neither of us were on cell phones! Indeed, we couldn’t chalk our severed line up to being poor reception or a “drop zone” one of us had passed through while driving. So naturally, I had gone about trying to reconnect with Josh, and I pressed and held the redial button for a moment. Upon doing so, I could again hear movement on the other end of the line, followed by Joshua punching the keypad as he tried to reconnect. It was the moment that he put the phone to his ear and found that we were already connected that we both noticed a faint sound in the background: a busy signal, the likes of which one is used to hearing if they become disconnected from a phone line!
“Wait, listen… do you hear that?” Josh said excitedly. Of course I heard it, and we both went scrambling through our respective homes to make sure there hadn’t been a phone off the hook elsewhere. Indeed, it sounded as though a third line had connected to our conversation from some place, though they had obviously failed to disconnect from the call at the time Josh and I lost signal.
This sort of unusual phone activity would continue for a number of years, and in my case, right up to the present. Do I think I’m being monitored by government officials, MIBs, or space aliens, you might ask? In truth, I don’t really think this is the case, knowing the variety of glitches and bugs that cell phones in particular can fall victim to. I’ll admit, however, that it is a bit strange at times; on one occasion this past summer, I had been having a late-night esoteric discussion with a friend of mine at her apartment, when I glanced over and saw that the “message alert” LED light on my phone was on. This isn’t outside the ordinary in itself, since this light often begins flashing if a text message or email is received. But in this instance, the light was just staying on, and there were no messages! I even recall joking at the time that “it looks like we’re being monitored!”
We laughed about it, and I subsequently shut my phone off for good measure. While I haven’t been given good reason to think I’m under surveillance by the MIBs yet, I’ll start to worry if my friends start getting calls from people claiming to be me, or if similar calls forwarded to my own cellphone start replaying clips of earlier conversations. Then again, such things may be nothing sinister at all… for all we know, playing messages back to people and acting like an all-round creep may just be ET’s way of “phoning home”!

Recent Analyses of Meier's Hasenböl Photos Shows their Genuineness

Fig. 1. Meier's photo #164. The sun is believed to lie behind the right-hand side of the craft. From Stevens’s “Best of Meier UFO photos,” vol. 4 (CD).

A key set of Eduard “Billy” Meier’s beamship photos for which its main investigators of 1978-1982 could claim genuineness and absence of any hoax was that of his Hasenböl-Langenberg series taken on March 29, 1976. One of a trio of photos shot after the craft had approached closest to the camera is shown on the left. In UFO...Contact from the Pleiades: A Preliminary Investigation Report (1982, p. 352) Wendelle Stevens pointed out that in his acquired photo of this scene, a branch of the deciduous tree on the far left of the UFO could be seen to lie in front of it. But this was not perfectly clear because the sun was directly behind the UFO, or barely peaking past one edge, in this trio of photos; hence there was a lack of contrast and detail due to glare. Also, the branches in question were thin, and there is lack of contrast between their shaded sides facing the camera and the shaded underside of the UFO, or beamship.
Although Stevens’s copy of photo #164 was only one generation removed from Meier’s original, other prints more available to the public were further generations removed. So this “smoking gun” of the Meier case, one of many, has lain smoldering. However, from an enlarged view of the craft and tree, a rather strong case can be made that Stevens and others on his investigating team were correct.

Fig. 2a. Blow-up of a section of Fig. 1.		Fig. 2b. Enlargement from photo #164 from Moosbrugger's ...und sie fliegen doch! (1991) as examined by Jeroen Jansen.		Fig. 2c. Fig. 73 from Korff's Spaceships of the Pleiades (Prometheus Books, 1995).

Fig. 2a shows the point Stevens was making. Due to a branch on the far left, the left edge of the beamship is not quite symmetric in shape with that on the far right. On his print, Stevens and team could discern that the cause was due to the branch being in front of the craft. In Fig. 2b, a lower portion of the tree limb indicated by the arrow does seem to be faintly visible as it crosses upwards in front of the craft's shaded underside, thanks to the ability of the human eye to pick out linear structures. Although it helps, in discerning it, to see the limb below as it begins to cross up in front of the craft, this does not seem to be essential.
Because of a presentation of the same scene by Kal Korff, however, shown in Fig. 2c above, an outcome of hoax has seemed certain to some. In his analysis, automatic edge-enhancement processing was performed, in which the upper sides of significant edges are automatically marked white, the undersides black, and the rest is portrayed in grey. Due to lack of contrast, the limbs in front of the craft’s dark underside do not show up, but the unwitting viewer is led to think they should show up strongly there if it weren’t a model UFO in front of the tree. (Other faint limbs, even with sky background, are not visible in Fig. 2c due to the program’s threshold for edge detection being insufficiently sensitive.) Thus the claim of a Meier-case hoax due to this presentation by Korff is still heard in some quarters.
Actually, any apparent absence of limbs in front of the craft is not nearly as significant as the presence of a limb in front, in determining hoax or no-hoax for this trio of photos. That is because the scene in the immediate vicinity of the craft and bright sky surrounding it was rather washed out due to camera glare. Meier's photo #159 shows the same tree about the same distance away but off to the side, when his camera was directed 28° more to the left (south), and out of the sun's glare, compared with Fig. 1. The tree's image in #159 exhibits two or three times more total limb substance than is seen in #164. Absence of evidence in these sun-glare photos is thus not necessarily evidence of absence. In the trio of photos with the sun behind the craft some slim outer limbs were washed out in their entirety, others appear in broken segments.
Fresh insight on these photos comes from close examination of the other two photos of the trio taken at about the same time. When Meier took photo #175, a section of which is shown in Fig. 3 below, the craft's forward facing edge was tilted downwards about 8° relative to Fig. 1 or 2a. (See also the overall scene or a cropped version of higher resolution.) This greatly extends the amount of the sloping saucer-rim surface exposed to view, and gives more contrasting background for certain faint tree limbs on the left.

Fig. 3. Cropped from Meier's #175, in UFO...Contact from the Pleiades, vol. 1 (1979), p. 44. Dashed lines added.

We can understand that, except in front of the craft’s superstructure, the saucer's sloping rim surface reflects the color of the cleaner sky farther above than that of the more polluted background sky. Hence a slight color contrast occurs that helps delineate the extent of the sloping saucer-rim surface. My estimate of the approximate location of the upper edge of the saucer-like surface on the left and right has been dashed in. On the left, two or more of the faint tree limbs do appear to cross in front of the sky-reflecting saucer rim. This is shown more graphically in Fig. 4 below.

Fig. 4. Analysis by Sean Gibbons, H.Dip. Digital Media. Meier's #175 bump mapped on image manipulation program 'Gimp'.

Although this bump-mapping analysis loses most of the contrast between the exposed saucer rim and background sky, by comparison with Fig. 3 one sees that two or three of the limbs on the left in Fig. 4 do have saucer-rim background. This strongly supports the 1979 observation by Tom Welch, from photo #175, that branches of the tree lie in front of the space craft (Lee & Brit Elders, UFO...Contact from the Pleiades, vol. 1, p.37).

Fig. 5. . Cropped from Meier’s photo #174 available from Michael Horn's web site. Black circle on left is centered around the partially eclipsed far-left protuberence. Pointed out by Jeroen Jansen.

A blow-up from the third photo of the trio, #174, shown in Fig. 5, additionally exhibits eclipsing evidence from the thicker tree branch on the far left. It eclipses the left edge of the leftmost protuberance, which is not totally visible judging from the corresponding apparent width of the protuberence on the far right. And the lighter brown of the left edge of the tree limb contrasts slightly with the brownish-black of the protuberance. The fifth of these nine visible protuberances is very slightly to the right of center, so that the angular width of the first protuberance on the left, if it were not partially eclipsed, should be slightly greater, not less, than that of the ninth one on the right.
There should now (as of March, 2009) be little doubt of the genuineness of this trio of Meier’s photos. One does not need the originals in showing this, although the lower the generation of the print, the better. The craft was on the far side of the tree, whose existence and location when in leaf has been documented. The tree was about 150 ft away from the camera.
Meier’s other 31 surviving photos of this series, which show the very same beamship at greater distances from the camera and exhibit the expected haze effect, must then also be genuine.
Once this is realized, an even more amazing realization is that the UFO pilot, Semjase in this instance, was so skillful and creative in supplying Meier with photo opportunities that would not force negative skeptics and ufologists alike to accept the intolerable. This strategy, of plausible deniability, is seen throughout the Meier case and the UFO phenomenon as a whole; it allows the aliens involved to make their existence, presence and messages for us known to those who can accept it while not prematurely disrupting the UFO coverup.

FINAL PROOF MEIER'S UFO PHOTOS GENUINE!

FINAL PROOF MEIER'S UFO PHOTOS GENUINE!

You are about to be presented with, and perhaps even confronted by, clear and incontrovertible proof that the UFO photo and film evidence in the Meier case is authentic, unfalsified and irreproducible with the technology known to have been available to Billy Meier at the time that he presented his 35mm photographic, 8mm film and other physical evidence. It is also still irreproducible today, even with the best digital effects.

Whether you are a sophisticated photographic and visual/special effects expert, or simply a layman, the use of common sense alone will be sufficient for you to understand the authenticity, and importance, of the evidence that you will see. And, as already suggested, an honest application of technological expertise will reveal, and result in, the same findings.

The Skeptical Argument

The skeptical argument against Billy Meier's stunningly clear, "too good to be true", UFO photographs, films and video has been that Meier used model UFOs and also model, or miniature, trees to create his evidence. This was the original claim made by CFI-West/IIG, in 2001 when they accepted my challenge to duplicate just one of Meier's UFO photos and one of his films. Naturally, that is a challenge they have never been able to meet.

Their claims that Meier used such models to create what they referred to as "an esily duplicated hoax" were presented by their current lead investigator, Derek Bartholomaus, in his carefully scripted presentation in the Special Features section of our film, The Silent Revolution of Truth (now being released as The Billy Meier Story: UFOs and Prophecies from Outer Space). Subsequent to the release of the film, Mr. Bartholomaus was forced to retract his foundational claims regarding models, since he was completely unable (despite years of preparation) to produce any evidence for them, without so much as one photograph of a comparable model tree to support his assertions.

Further, his attempt to get Academy Award-winning Uncharted Territory to retract their statement regarding the virtual impossiblity that Meier used model UFOs was not only rebuffed, they clearly restated their same evaluation. So frustrated was Mr. Bartholomaus, when other examples of his incompetence and false claimes were revealed, that he then took to falsifying emails from me to try to distract from the implosion of his own demolished credibility.

A Final Attempt

The last individual to try to debunk Meier's photographic evidence, British skeptic Tony Wharton, tried to duplicate the photos and film/video with small models, predictably unimpressive as they are. But at least he tried.

Wharton chose one particular photo, known as the "Sunight UFO", in his final attempt at debunking and duplicating Meier's evidence. You'll notice that the last photo on that page shows a man standing next to a tree, which we say is the same tree in Meier's photo. In Meier's photo the tree is barren-branched, since the photographs were taken as winter was ending, in 1976. I should also point out that the photo is one of 34 in the Hasenböl series, which also includes stunningly clear photos of the UFO in earlier daylight hours, several of which can be seen here. Clicking on the photos, like this one, reveal the intricate detail of this craft.

See for Yourself

So as to present the final proof referred to in the title above, we first present this photo of the Sunlight UFO next to one of the barren-branched trees:

(You may also wish to see James Deardorff's precise, detailed examination and analysis of this photo that establish the proximity of the UFO to the tree.)

Now here is a video clip from the film "Beamship - The Movie Footage" (courtesy of Intercep/Genesis III, copyright 1985) that shows Meier and Jun-Ichi Yaoi, a director and investigator for NTV (Nippon TV) discussing the famous Hasenböl photos. Yaoi and Meier are shown, next to the trees,while visiting the actual, easily identifiable location where Meier took his photo series, years before. Please note that not only are the trees, which are now in full leafy bloom, exactly the same full-sized trees, but the mountains in the background are also seen to be exactly the same ones that appear in the photo:

Once again, please remember that everyone who has attacked the evidence in the case, from Kal Korff to CFI-West, from Derek Barholomaus and his associates at IIG, to James Randi and Michael Shermer, have all steadfastly claimed that Meier used both model UFOs and model trees. It should now be abundantly, irrefutably clear - to even the most hardcore skeptic - that those claims are now shown to be completely false and unsubstantiated. And, by establishing the trees as full-sized, it's clear that the UFO is not only not a model, it must be around 21' in diameter, as Meier has long maintained.

UPDATE!

Now that it is clear and obvious that the trees in the Hasenböl photo sequence were indeed full-sized, and that Meier didn't use a model UFO, we'll ice that cake (for those who still need it) with the following excerpt from a film of the Hasenböl UFO that Meier took on the same day that he took the photo series. Once again, this has been hidden in plain sight for a long time. In this clip you will see that the UFO emits two separate beams of coherent light - in broad daylight - something that would have been impossible to hoax. When I showed this film segment to the owners of Uncharted Territory, I told them that Vaughn Rees (the original case investigator for CFI-West/IIG, in 2001) had said that the light was "an effect created by scratching the negative with a pin".

This was soundly rejected by Volker Engel and Marc Weigert as clearly not being the case at all. They stated that they were, of course, quite familiar with that rather primitive technique but that it didn't apply here and they stated that the UFO itself was also not a small model. (Let's remember that both Engel and Weigert are also UFO skeptics!) One would be very hard pressed to find a compelling example of a similarly convincing special effect in a film segment from any space or science fiction movie up to that time - or even up to today. Note that most so-called spaceships/UFOs shown in films appear either at night or in simulated space scenes. Meier's film was taken during the daytime and includes a close-up of the UFO, showing its highly detailed construction.

Wendelle Stevens reported the following, on page 284 of the Preliminary Investigation Report:

“The analysts examining the movie footage from this last event were amazed to find that what at first looked like a flash of reflected sunlight from a part of the rim of the ship and an area of the dome, was in fact a projected beam of bright coherent white light from something. The beam is clearly seen and it is sharply distinct and does not spread out as it leaves the ship.”

Here then is a short clip from Meier's Hasenbol film so that you can clearly see the two white lights alternating flashing from the UFO.

While the overall quality of the clip isn't great, some of the lack of clarity of the UFO is due to it being a large object a good distance from the camera. Efforts by skeptics to duplicate this and other Meier films results in them having very sharp, clear images because they are using small models close to the camera.

As was stated here (where you'll find additional evidence for the authenticity of the Meier case): "Motivation seems missing for an unknown hoaxer in 1976 to have gone to the effort and expense to have remote-control technology be built into a never-discovered model UFO of complicated design, complete with lamps, battery and circuitry, just to flash its lights briefly."

Where Is the "UFO Community"?

The main question that remains is: why the terrible silence about the Meier case from the so-called "UFO community"? Even more to the point, why the deliberate suppression of the Meier case's authenticity and unparalleled importance by these groups, such as the Disclosure Project, PRG, "Exopolitics" and even MUFON? In truth, defeating the skeptics was a simple matter, as the evidence speaks loudly for itself. It only needed to be organized and presented and opportunities creatrops ed for the skeptics demonstrate their prejudice, incompetence and outright failure. But as it turns out the real enemies of revealing the truth are the ones who have created the most vocal - and self-serving - presence, the ones who carry on endlessly about "the extraterrestrail presence", "forcing the government to reveal the truth about UFOs", "alien abductions", etc., etc. - all without an iota of actual evidence, a shred of proof, to back up their nonsensical, delusional claims.

But one must remember that this has become an industry, an easy place for hucksters and opportunists (if not deliberate disinformation specialists) to ply their trade and prey on very willing, gullible people. With no real standards, with no real evidence except for the Meier case, which they avoid because they perceive that it would threaten their livelihoods and fame-seeking to acknowledge it, the noise makers run around exhorting people to "send a million faxes to Washington!" and to listen to delusional, mentally ill individuals who pretend to be contactees for extraterrestrials.

The Truth

The tragedy here is that the most important part of the Meier case, the spiritual teaching, the scientific, environmental and world event related information is delayed in reaching the inhabitants of earth for whom it is intended, to a large degree because of these selfish, petty and very envious individuals who do everything in their power to prevent its dissemination, including passively ignoring it though they know full well that it is there.

But for those who seek, love and value the truth, for those who are unselfish and who care about our world and all of its inhabitants, the truth is here. It is plain to see, it can be confirmed through common sense, as well as scientific examination. The only remaining question is, as always, now that you know the truth, what will you do with it and about it?