Stanton T. Friedman - Flying Saucers and Science: A Scientist Investigates the Mysteries of UFOs: Interstellar Travel, Crashes, and Government Cover-Ups

Zhis book is dedicated to my loving wife, Marilyn, who has so patiently for decades tolerated my fixation on getting to the truth about flying saucers. She has put up with late night radio programs and phone calls, my long trips away from hone, visits from a wide variety of media people, and a huge accumulation of (hopefully) relevant papers, books, and videos I only hope it has been worth the effort.

I wish to gratefully acknowledge the Mutual UFO Network for sponsoring my numerous appearances at its annual symposia, forcing me to prepare papers for inclusion in the symposia proceedings.

Thanks also to The Fund for UFO Research, which provided some research grants to assist in my field investigations related to Roswell and my visits to a number of document archives.

To Robert Bigelow for a generous research grant for Roswell and MJ-12related research.

To the producers of a large number of radio and TV programs who have given me a platform.

To the hundreds of colleges who have allowed me to stimulate campus communities with lectures and class visits.

To my literary agent, John White, who has successfully pursued publishers. To all those brave witnesses who have been willing to speak out despite the antipathy from nasty, noisy negativists.

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Chapter ........... 29

Chapter 2: .................... 59

Chapter 3: ..................... 93

Chapter 4: ......................... 103

Chapter 5: ............................. 129

Chapter 6: ...................... 153

Chapter 7: ................ 175

Chapter 8: ....................... 199

Chapter 9: .............. 217

Chapter 10: ................... 243

Chapter ............ 257

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The fact of an extraterrestrial presence on and around Earth for at least half of the 20th century has been increasingly accepted in the United States and much of the Western world in recent times, albeit slowly. This has happened in spite of continuous efforts of political, military, and cultural authorities in the United States and other nations to obscure and even deny that fact through the release of distorted and false information pertaining to sightings and other reports.

Discovery that we are not alone in the universe must rank, for us humans, as one of the most portentous events in our entire history. Only in the time of generations now living has our own technology progressed to the point that we can venture off our planet, and also create the means necessary to view the vastness of the cosmos as no generations before us have done.

Debate about the propriety, morality, and even legality of such official denial and cover-up of these events in a free and open society will likely continue for some decades. Justifications involving national security, potential use of the knowledge by military opponents, public unrest, and even fear of public uprisings may be invoked by those seeking to defend these policies. The fact that the now-famous Roswell UFO crash occurred shortly after World War II, the most widespread and disastrous war in history, and following the first use of nuclear weaponry in war-weaponry that was initially tested at the nearby White Sands Proving Grounds-provided ample grounds for military concerns.

Whether these were valid concerns has yet to be determined. However, in the context of the cold war era, it is understandable that the military and intelligence communities might have been concerned that the aliens were hostile, yet were unable to do anything about their presence, and thus would not want the public to know. (The famous radio program War of the Worlds had been broadcast on the East Coast of the United States only a few years earlier, causing widespread panic.) Additionally, in light of the recovery of an alien craft at Roswell, the military and intelligence communities would not want America's Cold War enemies to know we had gained access to an advanced technology that might be used by the United States to deliver weapons. So there may have been sound reasons for enforcing a cloak of secrecy, denial, and misdirection about UFOs.