Larry King props up the ETH
Posted July 29, 2008
On his July 20 broadcast of Larry King Live, the CNN personality featured Robert Hastings, author of “UFOs and Nukes“, along with three retired Air Force personnel claiming that Unidentified Flying Objects had a keen interest in our burgeoning nuclear capacity. Among their claims are that UFOs caused missile malfunctions at Malmstrom Air Force base in 1967, and were even caught on film by Bob Jacobs during the filming of missile tests at Vandenberg Air Force base, but the films were confiscated by the CIA. You can watch a full YouTube version of the video by clicking on our “Video of the Week” link, or see the shorter version on the official CNN site by clicking here.
This isn’t the first time Larry King has used his show as a forum for discussing the UFO phenomenon. In November of 2007, for example, his program focused on the topic with a show entitled “UFOs: Are They for Real?”
(Part 1 of this episode linked here via YouTube)
However, while a part of me wants to applaud King for the courage to discuss UFOs in a public forum, my problem with King’s program, and most other treatments of the UFO phenomenon available on US television and across the width and breadth of the internet, is an extremely narrow focus on the Extra Terrestrial Hypothesis (ETH). Proponents of the ETH generally support the idea that UFOs are physical vehicles piloted, or remotely controlled, by intelligent beings assumed to be from another planet. In some of the more remote corners of the ‘net you might also find folks willing to accept, or actively promoting, the idea that UFOnauts are actually from another dimension of space/time, from the future, or even from the interior of our own planet.
While these folks are considered fringe elements by those who consider themselves “serious” UFO researchers (and each of their interpretations of the phenomenon should be taken with a very large grain of salt), the time-traveler/interdimensional/ancient astronaut camp, and other ideological descendants of Erich von Däniken, do have at least one thing right. This phenomenon is much older than Kevin Arnold, Roswell, and the nuclear age. This does not mean that nuclear age anxiety, and technological anxiety in general, did not have a great impact on our modern interpretation of this phenomenon. It means simply that as we interpret the unknown, we must do so in terms of the known. This explains why a medieval French farmer thought he was being plagued by a sorcerer in a flying boat, and those who encountered an airship in 1897 thought they were seeing the product of eccentric industrialist inventors, while Betty Hill, who experienced her phenomenon while man was taking his first tentative steps outside our atmosphere, is convinced she was abducted by more technologically advanced beings from another planet.
Where Larry King and others go wrong is by focusing on the physical reality of the UFO phenomenon. While the Roswell myth attempts to provide us with purportedly physical evidence, in the form of tin foils and light metals with strange glyphs, and others have recorded depressions in the ground from the weight of landed craft and even burn marks on vegetation, these all fall far short of the type of hard proof necessary to prove, once-and-for-all, the physical reality of alien aircraft. The physical sciences will not be of any help until such time as we have made undeniable contact with an alien presence (or, if you believe in the time-traveler theory, until we have evolved ourselves), and then biologists and engineers can get to work on the dissection, reverse engineering, and study of beings and their hardware. If and when that happens I will gladly eat crow and begin to re-examine some of my favorite UFO cases in the light of the ETH.
In the meantime the only way to meaningfully study the UFO phenomenon lies within the realm of the social sciences; of history, psychology, and sociology. UFOs, like crop ravaging sorcerers or faeries, changelings, and incubi/succcubi, are a social phenomenon. They represent our anxieties about social change, our ability to adapt, and even our reproductive capability (more about reproductive anxiety in a future article on changelings, incubi, and the alien-human hybrid), interpreted through the cultural lens of our time. UFOs have less to do with advanced beings from another world than with our own struggle to define our place in a world that we continue to change at a rapid pace. But you aren’t going to hear that from Larry King.
My response to Jeremy:
JW: On his July 20 broadcast of Larry King Live, the CNN personality featured Robert Hastings, author of UFOs and Nukes, along with three retired Air Force personnel claiming that Unidentified Flying Objects had a keen interest in our burgeoning nuclear capacity.
RH: Indeed. Utilizing declassified USAF, FBI and CIA documents, as well as the testimony of nearly 100 Air Force veterans who worked with nukes, I have discovered a six-decade-long pattern of UFO activity at nuclear weapons laboratories, bomb test sites, weapons storage areas, and ICBM launch facilities.
According to my former or retired U.S. Air Force sources, on at least six occasions in the 1960s and ‘70s, several Minuteman missiles simultaneously malfunctioned just as UFOs were reported to be in their vicinity by USAF security guards. Missile maintenance personnel later determined that the stricken ICBMs exhibited various hardware and software failures, related to their guidance and control systems.
According to my sources, these missile shutdown incidents were immediately classified at a high level and many of the key personnel involved in them were sworn to secrecy. Only now, decades later, are these individuals willing to come forward to tell their amazing stories.
JW: …my problem with King’s program, and most other treatments of the UFO phenomenon available on US television and across the width and breadth of the internet, is an extremely narrow focus on the Extra Terrestrial Hypothesis (ETH). Proponents of the ETH generally support the idea that UFOs are physical vehicles piloted, or remotely controlled, by intelligent beings assumed to be from another planet.
RH: Point taken, however, 75% of the Air Force veterans I’ve interviewed over the years subscribe to the ETH. Why, one might ask? Perhaps the specifics of their experiences left them little choice. For a free peek at some of those encounters, visit my website, ufohastings.com, then click on the Articles page and read “UFO Sightings at ICBM Sites and Weapons Storage Areas.”
JW: In some of the more remote corners of the ‘net’ you might also find folks willing to accept, or actively promoting, the idea that UFOnauts are actually from another dimension of space/time, from the future, or even from the interior of our own planet…these folks are considered fringe elements by those who consider themselves “serious” UFO researchers.
RH: UFOnauts from Earth’s interior aside, the other proposals mentioned are not as crackpot as you imply. Respectfully, you seem to be out of touch with current cosmological thinking in theoretical physics circles. As I discuss at length in my book, leading theorists at major universities worldwide are increasingly lending support to the concept of higher-dimensional space, or hyperspace, within which our four-dimensional spacetime is embedded. If one wishes to learn about what is being proposed, the writings of Dr. Michio Kaku would be a good place to start. Long story short: If hyperspace does indeed exist, faster-than-light (FTL) and time travel are both possible. The implications for the UFO question are obvious.
In my book, I write: “And so, exciting new concepts—the manipulation of the fabric of spacetime to achieve superluminal velocities, as well as the integration of that fabric into a higher-dimensional reality—have prompted a growing number of scientists to question long-held assumptions which would have prohibited practicable interstellar travel. Although it will be undoubtedly some time before the great majority of physicists and astronomers seriously consider the UFO phenomenon as a potential manifestation of the new ideas now unfolding, the fact that ‘legitimate’ science is now openly advancing such previously taboo concepts as faster-than-light travel, time travel, and multidimensional reality, may ultimately hasten the process.”
“If one or more of these concepts are ultimately proven to have merit, then travel between solar systems may be far more probable, and eventually become a reality for humans. And, of course, such journeys may already be a routine activity for other, more-advanced civilizations elsewhere in the galaxy who long ago solved the problems inherent in interstellar travel…”
“If one is tempted to think that all of this talk about extra dimensions and extra-dimensional space travel is just too radical, consider the article, ‘Take a Leap into Hyperspace,’ published in the January 5, 2006 issue of New Scientist magazine. It notes that the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics had recently awarded a prize to a paper written by Walter Dröscher and Jochem Häuser, in which they propose the construction of a hyperdrive spacecraft, based on their modification of the theories of a somewhat obscure German physicist, Dr. Burkhard Heim, who first postulated a type of higher-dimensional reality over 50 years ago.”
JW: This phenomenon [UFOs] is much older than Kevin Arnold, Roswell, and the nuclear age. This does not mean that nuclear age anxiety, and technological anxiety in general, did not have a great impact on our modern interpretation of this phenomenon.
RH: Yes, it is undoubtedly much older. However, respectfully, the “nuclear age anxiety” hypothesis is almost always proposed by those unfamiliar with the facts relating to the UFO-Nukes Connection. May I again recommend that you and others read my online article.
Yes, there was anxiety, great anxiety, among those operating and guarding U.S. nuclear weapons during the Cold War era, but it had nothing to do with some nebulous, free-floating, collective societal anxiety about nuclear Armageddon. Rather, it was a response to the fact that disc-shaped objects—which were often tracked on radar—were repeatedly hovering over the USAF’s nuclear missiles and apparently knocking them offline on a semi-regular basis.
This is not my claim; it is the on-the-record contention of several dozen Air Force veterans who were present for one or more of these incidents. These are persons whom the U.S. government trusted with Weapons of Mass Destruction. They passed numerous psychological and other background checks before they were permitted to go near the nukes. Now, nearly 100 of them are independently reporting that UFOs have monitored and occasionally shut down their missiles. (See my book excerpt, “Like a Diamond in the Sky” which is now online.)
JW: In the meantime the only way to meaningfully study the UFO phenomenon lies within the realm of the social sciences; of history, psychology, and sociology.
RH: I wouldn’t try to sell that argument to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and USAF radar operators whom I’ve interviewed. One of them, Grover Austad, who tracked UFOs at Malmstrom AFB, where several missiles were reportedly shut down by UFOs in March 1967, told me, “One night this object came on the radar and it was moving at tremendous speed. We estimated that it was flying about 2,400 mph. Now, the controllers who worked at SAGE knew about the SR-71—even though it was still secret. [This was confirmed to me by a retired high-level FAA administrator.] But this thing, whatever it was, was even faster than that.” (The SR-71 “Blackbird” still holds the official record as the world’s fastest jet—at 2,193 mph—a speed achieved during a short-duration, straight-course flight on July 28, 1976.)
Austad continued, “So I called ADC—that’s Air Defense Command—to see if they had it too. The controller I talked to said, ‘Yeah, I see it, but UFOs don’t exist, do they?’ Then he laughed sarcastically. The object played around for a few minutes. It zigzagged back-and-forth, covering hundreds of miles. Then it disappeared off the scope.”
Austad is only one of many retired air traffic controllers I’ve interviewed. There is a whole chapter in my book devoted to their revelations. Radar data are empirical, not anecdotal in nature, and lend legitimacy to the physical reality of bona fide UFOs. Physics, not psychology or sociology is required to analyze those data.
As I write in my book, “Since the late 1940s, on literally hundreds of occasions, military and civilian radar controllers have tracked unidentified aerial objects traveling at hundreds or thousands of miles per hour, which then instantly stop and hover in mid-air. A moment later, with near instantaneous acceleration, the objects resume their high velocity flight and continue on their way. During other radar trackings, the UFO—again flying at high velocity—suddenly makes a hard-angle, 90-degree turn, or even a 180-degree complete reversal of course, without a turn—with no loss of velocity or damage to the craft. Several such cases of UFOs being tracked on radar will be presented later in this book.”
“To state the obvious, our own fixed-wing aircraft—whether American, Russian, or that of any other nationality—are simply incapable of achieving these aerodynamically-wrenching feats. In fact, our current knowledge of aerodynamic principles simply cannot even explain them. In ways that have yet to determined, the technology utilized by UFOs apparently neutralizes gravitational and inertial forces, thereby permitting them to travel at velocities and perform maneuvers hitherto undreamed of.”
“Because radar is based on physical principles involving the emission and reflection of radio waves, in order to detect the presence of a physical object, the data recorded by military and civilian radar operators may be considered to be empirical evidence. It can be quantified and analyzed. The search-radar track of a military jet, or passenger aircraft, is routinely accepted as empirical evidence of its position, speed, and direction of flight; a height-radar track is accepted as empirical evidence of that aircraft’s altitude. If this were not so, modern military and commercial aviation would not be possible, given the thousands of aircraft airborne at any one moment. Similarly, radar has unquestionably been the most empirical of means currently available for establishing the physical presence and extraordinary, often mind-boggling capabilities of UFOs.”
“Despite efforts by skeptics to dismiss these unambiguous UFO-related radar data as suspect—resulting from weather-related phenomena, equipment malfunctions, or errors in interpretation—the weight of the evidence, in hundreds of cases, confirms the existence of unknown aerial craft operating in our atmosphere which are vastly superior to any commercial or military aircraft. Many of the U.S. Air Force and FAA records relating to these trackings are now available for scientific scrutiny. In some cases, the original radar tapes are available, in addition to the written records.”
On a related topic, Jeremy, in response to your assertion that psychology, rather than physics, would best explain UFO reports, I write, “many well-meaning psychologists have dismissed UFO sighting witnesses as overly imaginative,
‘fantasy-prone’ persons who supposedly invent unusual explanations for mundane events, in order to make their otherwise tedious lives more exciting. But if this is so, what are we to make of the thousands of reports worldwide involving frenzied animal behavior in the presence of a landed or low-flying UFO? Fantasy-prone cows perhaps? Far more likely, both domestic and wild animals are simply reacting to a sudden, dramatic change in their physical environment—one with which they are completely unfamiliar and, for some reason, they find fearful in the extreme.”
In summary, dear Anomalists, the various philosophical musings about UFOs on this website—while valid in their own right—generally fall short, in terms of relevance, when compared with the stark, often reluctant testimony of those whom I’ve interviewed over the years. (See my book excerpt, “Launch in Progress!” which is now online. Talk about nuclear anxiety!)
I am attempting to organize a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. at which a dozen, or perhaps two dozen, former nuclear missile launch officers, targeting officers, missile maintenance personnel and missile security guards will have an opportunity to present their collective testimony. Should that event materialize, I guarantee that factual reporting, not philosophizing, about UFOs will be the order of the day.
–Robert Hastings
Thanks for your reply Robert. I’m afraid you may have misunderstood or read a little too much into my post though. I don’t deny the very real physical traces left by UFO phenomenon (whether these are burns on the ground, anomalous radar blips such as the one picked up the night of the Betty and Barney Hill incident, or the situation with the missiles mentioned in the Larry King report). I’m also really intrigued by the idea that the phenomenon may be more interdimensional than intergalactic, and don’t throw out that possibility. I just think the ETH is a bit presumptious, and I also believe that any work being built around the assumption of the ETH is “putting the cart before the horse”, so to speak. It is my opinion that, since this phenomenon has been with us since time immemorial, and has seemed to change to meet evolving social expectations and beliefs, the social scientific realms of psychology and, more importantly, sociology, should be our starting points for understanding the phenomenon before we start making random guesses about where the occupants of UFOs have come from (whether another planet, another dimension, our own government, etc.)
Thanks very much for taking the time to read and comment.