CONSPIRACIES
ALIEN
EVIDENCE
Sky One –
Oh, dearie,
dearie me! A programme that started off with such promise ended up leaving such
a sour taste in my mouth that I felt like drinking a cup of battery acid to ease
the pain.
Sky One’s
Conspiracies series may not be the zenith of investigative journalism (it
is Sky after all), but last night’s
programme about the alleged alien cover up since 1947 somehow managed to reach a
staggering nadir in the
aforementioned field.
It all
started off so well, sort of, with a jokey segment in which presenter, Danny
Wallace, stops passers-by in
Nick Pope,
former MOD UFO officer and, as Wallace smirked, Britain’s Fox Mulder, explained
that if the public could see some of the UK’s
real X-Files, they would be astounded
by the evidence for extra-terrestrial intrusions into our island’s airspace.
It
was time for a history lesson. Wallace jetted across the
UFO
researcher, Dave Clarke, told us that at that time, the world was on the brink
of World War III as the superpowers of the
Then
The next
segment covered the infamous ‘Men-In-Black’ (MIBs). Nick Redfern explained that
many UFO witnesses had received visits from these sinister agents and had been
warned off, even given threats against their lives. It was noted, though, that
many witnesses were credible, military people.
1952 saw
Project Blue
Book was created to dispel the myths about UFOs, but in reality it was more of a
public relations exercise than a serious investigative unit. It closed in 1969
and the powers-that-be hoped that that would be the end of the UFO ‘problem’.
Jenny
Randles, famous UFO researcher, told us about the Rendlesham Forest Incident of
December 1980, when a group of US airmen from the twin bases of RAF Woodbridge/Bentwaters
ventured into the trees and saw inexplicable lights. We were treated to the
actual audio of the event recorded by the deputy base commander, Lt. Colonel
Charles Halt. He wrote a memo of the event and it was filed away by the USAF and
the MOD.
The Ministry
of Defence ignored Jenny Randle’s requests to see the memo for two years, until
she decided to retrieve a copy via the USAF, using the American Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA). The memo created a media sensation, but the MOD refused
to comment and still do to this day.
Wallace made
the cryptic remark that the intelligence agencies wanted to control the UFO
movement from within – and then we went to a break…
In
1978, nuclear physicist and researcher, Stanton Friedman, resurrected the
Friedman
explained that during his meeting with Major Marcel, he found out that the
wreckage from the ‘weather balloon’ was not of this earth. The resulting
‘best-selling’ book put
The
alien avalanche became big business for
In 1994, the
USAF released their ‘final report’ on Roswell in which they put it down to the
infamous Mogul balloon project, experiments with test dummies dropped from
planes and balloons, V2 rocket tests, hapless monkeys sacrificed in the name of
science, the list goes on. They even used the Viking space probe test footage
from the 1970s!
That’s that,
then. It was all nothing more than a combination of top secret projects that
happened to all be found at the same time and mistaken for flying saucers and
live and dead aliens! The UFO mystery was all a handy smokescreen for the
intelligence agencies to get up to their cloak and dagger escapades without fear
of being discovered.
Wallace then
made the remarkable statement that since the end of the Cold War, there has been
a sharp dip in reported UFO sightings. “I guess that we’re just not testing as
much stuff as we used to,” he mused. Of course, we know this is all nonsense and
that UFO sightings actually increased
during the nineties and continue to do so to this day!
It was up to
Richard Dolan to defend ufology by explaining that not all UFO sightings can be
of U2’s etc., given the flight characteristics described by incredibly reliable
witnesses.
The final
segment was the real icing on the cake.
Wallace made
the astonishing claim that ufologists keep the ‘conspiracy’ going to keep the
money rolling in. If it all came out in the open, he suggested, UFO researchers
would be the biggest losers, as their ‘careers’ would go up in smoke and all
that lovely lolly that they had been raking in would evaporate!
Perhaps
somebody should explain to Messrs Wallace and Clarke that the vast majority of
UFO researchers make no money out of
their work and many end up out of pocket,
especially on the lecture circuit.
Once again a
UFO documentary has scored a massive own goal by dismissing the subject in spite
of the vast amounts of evidence they broadcast (and ultimately ignore).
Constantly, we are given the opportunity to see and hear first hand accounts
from the people that were there, credible people like Charles Halt, but time and
again, these programmes dismiss their testimony in favour of ‘towing the line’
and declaring that there is nothing to the subject.
When will
they wake up and see that the UFO enigma is not going to go away? It is a real
phenomenon and millions of eyewitnesses around the world are testament to that
fact.
© Steven
Johnson – 2005
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are the property of Sky Television and Redback Productions and are reproduced
here solely for review purposes