My Blog

- By Stanton T. Friedman -

After 50 years of study and investigation I have concluded that:

• Some UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft.
• The subject of flying saucers represents a “Cosmic Watergate” (government cover‐up of the best data obtained by intelligence agencies).
• Visits to planet Earth and this cover‐up represent the biggest story of the millennium.
• The next step in humanity’s thinking is to go beyond the “Earth bound” mentality. We are part of a bigger picture and members of a populated universe.

Unfortunately, as a scientist who has lectured on the topic “Flying Saucers ARE Real!” at over 600 colleges and over 100 professional groups in 50 states and 18 countries, and appeared on hundreds of radio and TV programs, I have found that anti‐UFO arguments so often made in the name of science are based on ignorance of the facts, arrogance about the critics’ “superior” knowledge, and a strong denial of the evidence. Instead of an admission of ignorance, we find an attitude of: “If that was true, it would be important. If it were important, I would know about it. I don’t, so it must not be true, and I won’t waste my valuable time.” It is time to correct the false impressions created by science fiction writers, SETI (Silly Effort To Investigate) specialists, and journalists. The major arguments are that there is no evidence of UFO reality, that one cannot get here from there, that secrets cannot be covered up, and that the great majority of sightings are by unrespectable people. All of these are demonstrably false.

My approach to these claims is based on working on classified research and development programs for 14 years, visits to 20 document archives, the collection and evaluation of a number of large scale scientific studies, and doing my homework on pollsters and reports of observations. I have found that fewer than 2% of the attendees at my programs have read any of the 5 major studies to which I refer in my new book, Flying Saucers and Science.

The history of the denial of UFOs is interesting. Everybody knew that the only way to fly would be with a balloon, that it would be impossible to place anything in orbit around the Earth, and that space travel, in the words of the British Astronomer Royal, was “utter bilge.”

Science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke have decried UFO reality, not only because of their ignorance of the facts, but amazingly because of their lack of imagination as to why aliens might visit and why governments would cover up. They cannot even imagine any national security aspects to visits and crashes of very advanced flight systems. One would think there would be no reason to try to duplicate the flight capabilities of flying saucers and that people in power would not be threatened by a worldwide movement towards an Earthling rather than nationalistic orientation and way of thinking (viewing ourselves as Earthlings rather than Americans, Canadians, etc.).

Some of the most compelling pieces of evidence for UFOs are the six large scale scientific studies discussed in Flying Saucers and Science. They provide a multitude of excellent UFO sighting reports including multiple witness radar visual sightings, sightings by pilots, sightings over big cities and from astronomers and meteorologists. There are direct cross comparisons establishing that the better the quality of the report the more likely to be unexplainable and the longer the duration. These studies are ignored by UFO deniers. Testimony from 12 scientists to congressional hearings is very impressive and illuminating and also ignored by the debunkers. The attacks on flying saucer reality from science fiction writers and SETI specialists are found to have no basis other than bias. It is easily established that government agencies are withholding UFO information, that there really was a saucer crash near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, and that some of the controversial Majestic 12 documents are genuine.

In addition, is a formerly classified comment by Air Force General Carroll Bolender: “Reports of UFOs which could affect national security were not part of the Blue Book system.” UFO critics do not deal with a number of multibillion dollar technology programs which were kept secret for more than 3 decades, the very highly censored UFO documents from the CIA and National Security Agency, or the engineering studies of high performance nuclear and other systems.

I have found that audiences are:

• Shocked to hear about public opinion polls showing that the greater the education the more likely to accept flying saucer reality.
• Amazed that the better the quality of sightings investigated by the US Air Force, the more likely to remain inexplicable.
• Incredulous at the lies about flying saucers that have been presented by government officials.
• Excited about new developments such as nuclear fusion propulsion systems able to exhaust charged particles having 10 million times as much energy per particle as in a conventional chemical rocket.
• Dismayed by the fact that while it was only in 1938 that we determined that nuclear fusion is the process that powers the sun and all other stars, it only took 14 years to use that fusion process in a hydrogen bomb with the destructive power of 10 million tons of TNT.
• Awed to find out that just 39.2 light years from us are two sun‐like stars that are not only 35 times closer to each other than the sun is to the next star over, but are a startling billion years older than the sun.
• Understanding that civilizations only a little older than ours would have technology that would be as much advanced over ours as a modern computer is over the slide rules of less than 50 years ago.

My previous books have dealt with individual areas of interest, such as the recovery of a crashed flying saucer near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 (Crash at Corona), or the controversial and very important original Majestic 12 documents (TOP SECRET/MAJIC) or the fascinating abduction of Betty and Barney Hill (Captured!: The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience). Now it is time to review the big picture.

In Flying Saucers and Science, I have tried to deal with all the important evidence for saucer reality and the official cover‐ups, and all the phony arguments made against those realities. It has been fairly easy, after answering more than 40,000 questions after lectures, in classrooms and during media appearances, to show that the supposedly anti‐UFO case against some flying saucers as alien spacecraft, as made by the anti‐UFO scientists, is bare of reason. The anti‐saucer emperors have no clothes. It is time for truth to prevail as opposed to ignorance and bias.