UFOs

In South America, Chile and Peru set up new government agencies tasked with studying UFO cases in 1997 and 2001, respectively. The Brazilian military has conducted UFO investigations since the late 1940s. Russian cosmonauts, scientists, and high-ranking military officials have spoken publicly about UFO events there. And for the first time, the Mexican Defense Department provided data on an unsolved sighting by an Air Force crew to a civilian researcher in 2004, an important step in government openness within that country.

The French government is generally recognized for maintaining the most productive, scientific, and systematic government investigation of UFOs in the world, continuing without interruption for over thirty years. The agency, now called GEIPAN[75] (Group for the Study and Information on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena), is part of the French national space agency known as CNES,[76] the French equivalent of our NASA, and serves as a model for other nations that have consulted with it over the years. Particularly remarkable is the network of scientists, police officials, and other specialists that are linked to GEIPAN, ready at a moment’s notice to assist with the investigation of any UFO case. Its purpose has always been purely as a research agency, not primarily concerned with defense issues as was the MoD in England or with aviation safety like Chile. It was set up seven years after the close of Project Blue Book, and states its mission as simply to investigate “unidentified aerospace phenomena” and make its findings available to the public.

Jean-Jacques Velasco of France, Nick Pope of the UK, and General Ricardo Bermudez of Chile have all headed small government agencies within their own countries that worked full-time on investigating UFO cases. They, among others writing in the pages that follow, describe their innovative work on behalf of their governments, and the impact such close-up work with the UFO phenomenon has had on their lives. In countries around the world, witnesses and investigators such as these are very aware of the need for greater participation by the United States, and are now coming together to address that problem.

Whether they have set up specific offices for UFO investigation or not, many governments have accumulated massive amounts of UFO case documentation over the decades and the public has placed great emphasis on gaining the release of these official files.

In recent years, as if part of a trend toward greater transparency, unprecedented numbers of these documents have been declassified and made public for the first time. Since 2004, the governments of Brazil, Chile, France, Mexico, Russia, Uruguay, Peru, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom have released once- secret files, and in 2009 even Denmark and Sweden joined the trend by releasing over 15,000 files each. However, none of these new records have changed our overall understanding of the phenomenon, beyond confirming that the same events occur around the world and that the behavior of the objects, and often of the governments responding to them, has been repeated over and over. Unfortunately, there has been little forward motion in terms of actually solving the mystery, and the acquisition of even more documents is not the answer.

In fact, government investigators have by and large been limited by the fact that all they’ve been able to do so far is learn as much as possible after a single event is over. Without greater resources, not much can be done except for the filing of reports, year after year. Letters from civilians about isolated, often questionable sightings are also added to the aggregate, making up a large proportion of the released pages. Although often fascinating, government documents no longer reveal anything new, and the thousands and thousands of pages have not led to a major breakthrough in understanding. The most sensitive files—the intelligence reports that are concerned with more serious national security implications and likely deeper investigations and analysis—will not be declassified and released. No long-awaited “smoking gun” document has surfaced.

I believe that a demand for the release of yet more files—even in the United States—is no longer a useful focus. It’s an interesting sidetrack, but it does not speak to the heart of the problem. Undue emphasis on seeking further release of documents could even prolong the international stalemate we now face, and give governments a way out through claims that they have done their part by declassifying files or will be doing so in the near future.

Yet the public continues to get very excited about seeing new batches of government documents about UFOs. Most recently, the release of large archives by France in 2007 and the UK in 2008, 2009, and 2010 generated a frenzy of international media coverage in America. So many people logged on to the French website its first day that it crashed. Most interesting was the announcement that about 28 percent of the French cases remain unexplained—approximately the same percentage found by Project Blue Book and the Condon report in 1968.[77]

A featured 2008 piece in the New York Times by a staff reporter stationed in the UK selectively focused on a few of the silliest new documents released by the British MoD (letters written to the agency by wacky everyday people), and provided readers with the standard ridicule and blatantly biased approach traditionally employed by that noted paper.[78] Ironically, this led to the media breakthrough I had been waiting for: The New York Times published the first serious op-ed piece about UFOs in the paper’s history. “Unidentified Flying Threats” by former UK Ministry of Defence official Nick Pope[79] offered a rational response to that initial, essentially dishonest story. But once again, none of this publicity changed the political landscape in America regarding UFOs, or did much of anything really, except to make the point that UFOs must be taken seriously.

Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing whether more revealing documents remain closeted away by some governments in secure locations. We know even less about what remains classified in the United States, the most important one of all, and it’s highly unlikely that these documents will be provided anytime soon. If a government agency does not wish to release certain sensitive material through the Freedom of Information Act, it won’t. So in seeking a new emphasis while attempting to inform and persuade American officials to reevaluate the UFO issue, we can begin by learning from the other countries with established government agencies of their own, and finding out what has been gained from these endeavors. How were these agencies set up, and why? How does their work contrast with that of Project Blue Book? What have they learned about UFOs? What actions have they taken as a result?

First and foremost, we turn to France. Exclusive pieces by General Denis Letty, chair of the COMETA group, and Jean-Jacques Velasco, head of the French government agency for over twenty years, explore these questions. Another noted expert from France, Yves Sillard, is one of the most prominent proponents of cooperative international UFO research in the world. Former director general of the French national space center, CNES, Sillard is currently chairman of the steering committee for GEIPAN. In 1977, while head of CNES, he founded the original French scientific committee charged with the investigation of UFO reports—GEPAN, then with a different name. Sillard has served in many important government and research positions between then and his recent return to GEIPAN. In 1998, NATO appointed him assistant secretary general for scientific and environmental affairs.

In the United States, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is considered in the popular mind to be the country’s premier scientific organization with the most knowledge about everything that happens in outer space—a global leader in Earth and space research. CNES has a mandate and an esteem in France that parallel those of NASA here. Responsible for shaping and implementing France’s space policy in Europe, CNES, although smaller than NASA, also works on developing space systems and new technologies in cooperation with the European Space Agency, headquartered in Paris. Obviously, the views of the successive directors of either organization—CNES or NASA—are of great significance, whether they deal with the complexities of space exploration or the perplexities of the UFO phenomenon.

Yves Sillard, unknown to most Americans, is a man of stature within the European space community. He founded what has become the world’s most effective agency investigating UFOs more than thirty years ago, and still plays a leading role in directing that agency today.

Most important, he has successfully bridged what is usually a gap between scientific space research and UFO investigations, thereby assuring their coexistence within the framework of the French government’s national space agency. In 2007, Sillard consolidated his ideas in the landmark book Phenomenes aerospatiaux non identifies:[80] Un defi a la science (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: A Challenge to Science), written under his direction in collaboration with other scientists. A year later, in 2008, I had the privilege of meeting with him at CNES headquarters in Paris.

Mr. Sillard has provided the following commentary, composed specifically for this volume, summing up the current situation. We must all recognize the power carried by these concise, pointed words, which are highly unusual given the stature of Mr. Sillard in the world community.