CLOSE ENCOUNTERS NEWS -- Page 9

TV'S WASTELAND, WITH ITS "NO-WHERE-MAN'S JOURNEY" INTO THE UFO WONDERLAND -- A CEN SPECIAL REPORT ON THE ABC-TV UFO PROGRAM

REVIEWS OF ABC-TV NEWS UFO SPECIAL

Presented here in this CEN SPECIAL REPORT are reviews of the ABC-TV News Prime Time Special, "Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs -- Seeing Is Believing," broadcast nationwide on Thursday evening, February 24, 2005. We start with an in-depth review, including a recap of the show's segments, by CEN's Editor, followed by links to reviews from other sources as they appear. These already include five reviews: by WILL BUECHE of the John E. Mack Institute along with other reviews on the Mack Institute website; by WHITLEY STRIEBER from his "Unknown Country" website Journal section; by BUDD HOPKINS from the Jeff Rense siite; by DAVID JACOBS; by RICHARD DOLAN, author of "UFOs And the National Security State," Rowell UFO expert STANTON FRIEDMAN; MUFON International Director JOHN SCHUESSLER; by BYRON LEBEAU in "The Universal Seduction" website; and by DR. STEVEN GREER, plus a letter to ABC-TV by Connecticut MUFON State Director ANASTASIA WIETRZYCHWZKA (on CEN Page Two). We also include an article titled "Witnessing" by Dr. John Mack, since his interview was excluded from the TV special, as well as including other supportive material.

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EXPERIENCING IS KNOWING: BEYOND THE ABC-TV UFO SPECIAL... THE WITNESSES KNOW BETTER!

By Harold Egeln

Sunday, February 27, 2005 -- This past Thursday evening millions of people had a glimpse, due to a national TV special program, of the astounding UFO and close encounter phenomenon as told in the words of its witnesses, and questioned by skeptics and debunkers. And viewers were also shown what the trouble and flaws are in reporting on such a vast and inscrutible topic, the most complex issue that humanity has ever faced, that no one TV special has yet to properly portray, no matter how valiant or sincere the effort may be. Or how disingenious, as the ABC-TV report turned out to be.

In the Prime Time Special "Peter Jennings Reporting: UFO - Seeing Is Believing," the ABC-TV News anchorman appeared to stick his neck out to "investigate" (he did not really do that) or, at least, re-tell, parts of this subject (not the whole cloth).

But the program was plagued by an overall production that was a mixed bag of straightforward reporting with impressive animated re-creations of incidents and displays of typical human arrogance, hubris and outright squelching of evidence. Overall, it was a small step above Basic Ufology 101 taught by an ill-informed and inadequately prepared "Professor" Jennings whose reporting formula was a distasteful mixture of Facts Plus Lies Equaling Disinformation. It's the Old Story with UFOs as told in Peter Jennings Clothes. Remember the Hans Christian Andersen fable of "The Emperor Who Had No Clothes?" You saw it Thursday night!

What good was achieved in the beginning of the 87 minute program, sans its commercial breaks, began to falter halfway through and slide downhill more near the end with a dismissive and degrading segment on abductees, then concluding briefly upward with a spark of life: Dr. Michio Kaku. But by then it lacked the further on-edge science that could help explain the possible UFO source and its brazen and bizarre potent behavior among humanity, causing fear and wonder. Nothing really new emerged as old soil stained what could have been a fine opportunity to present the Big Picture.

But what was new, is that the subject seemed to intrigue a respected and seasoned veteran newscaster, who said in separate interviews on other shows that he knows that the UFO phenomenon may be for real.

Ironically, it was the esteemed anchorman who came out as not so real.

That was given the way the production served as a conduit of the secret world and culture of lies that blocks the full disclosure or comprehensive study of the Encounter Enigma, which harms witnesses, invesitgators and the mental health of our society at large. Ufology is the "Rodney Dangerfield" of science: It can get no respect. It is not a funny matter, but quite serious, as we shall see in this analysis of the program.

Jennings and his crew then, as the program progressed, squandered reporting on the biggest story of our time and, perhaps, all time: the Interface of Contact and Communication being experienced on a massive, planetary scale by millions of humans in diverse and contrary forms. To do the subject its full justice, more quality time and quality reporting is needed. And the Voices of the Experiencers, a huge choir of contact, are a must, without putdowns in any form.

SCIENCE SINGS: "ME AND MY SHADOW"

"It is real to some, fiction to others." That's how Jennings began the program, stating the obvious after showing a NASA scientist, Dr. Chris McKay, shifting sand through his hands hoping that humans will do so on Mars someday and find evidence of life, even if it's a fossil. [There's now indirect evidence of current life, according to the European Space Agency and NASA Mars orbiters -- see CEN article on Page Two here.] After the NASA scientist speaks, a UFO encounter witness says, "I know for a fact it's real."

More than "seeing is believing" is "experiencing is knowing," making close encounters for its witnesses not a matter of belief nor an article of faith, --- but, very importantly, a giant step towards knowledge and how to deal with the enormous challenge that such immensely valuable knowledge faces in hostile societal and scientific circumstances.

Setting the stage for comments from a mixture of scienitists and close encounter witnesses, Dr. McKay refused to ridicule witnesses, stating: "The difference is how we approach that belief" of extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI). Of Ufology, he says, "I see it as a shadow of the work I do." That is a dismissive and superior mindset. Sometimes the "Shadow" knows more, and it's time to sew back the shadow on Peter Pan.

Then the special goes into the shadows of nighttime radio and interviews Art Bell of "Coast To Coast AM," the fourth most popular radio program in the nation. Not mentioned was trailblazing crewcut radio broadcaster Long John Nebel, who, beginning in the flying saucer era of the late 1950s, had listeners, like myself as a boy, glued to their radios nightly for five hours after midnight with an array of early UFO personalities of that era.

What followed next were generally well-done UFO witness segments, starting with the Phoenix Lights sightings of April 15, 1997. This included interviews with witnesses, such as security guard Bob Nelson, the Watson family and a deputy sheriff. To "balance" its report, astronomer James McGaha, a former Air Force pilot and an "outspoken skeptic," based at the Grasslands Observatory in Arizona said, "Clearly Ufology today is a mythology based on superstition. There's no connection between lights in the sky and spaceships.They were clearly flares." He said that despite the fact that witnesses saw a solid object attached to the lights, blocking out the night sky.

"IT'S ALWAYS THE PERSONAL"

Going next to the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Illinois, its science director, Dr. Mark Rodeghier, Ph.D., states, "It's always the personal that leads to belief that the subject is real," as he is shown going through an file of old newspaper clippings in CUFOS vast informational storehouse.

This acts as the lead into a fascinating segment on a January 2000 sighting near St. Louis of a large, silent triangular object seen by five police officers and one civilian in the communities of Lebonan, Shillo and Millet, with excellent incident re-creations through realistic animations. It may remind some viewers of a similiar segment of the two-hour Whitley Strieber "Conformation" TV special on NBC in February 1999 of Ohio UFO sightings seen by cops.

"It was a massive triangular object flying in total silence," said Jennings. He adds, "The U.S. government is not in the business of investigating UFOs. To understand why, you need to go back to the beginning."

Well, Mr. Jennings, not true. While once the government officially investigated UFOs, it is suspected that it does now covertly. But Jennings does not state this, without anything to back up this current TV report about no more official government investigations since 1969, the Conden Report year. And that's a major journalistic failure, whether by lack of curiosity or, perhaps, design, given the mass media's inglorious track record on UFOs.

WHEN UFOs WERE MAJOR NEWS

In the next segment, "The Story of the First Flying Saucers," viewers are given a fairly good feel of what gripped the nation and the world during the late 1940s and into the 1950s and 1960s when "flying saucer fever" dazzled millions and the media openly and frequently reported the countless sightings.

Backed by occasional commentary by Dr. Rodeghier; Jerome Clark, author of "The UFO Encyclopedia;" and Michael Swords, Ph.D., a Case Western Michigan University professor, the first wave of massive sightings of 1947, highlighted by sober businessman Kenneth Arnold's historic sighting of nine crescent-shaped objects "skipping like saucers across water" by Mt. Rainer on June 24. 1947, is flashed for the TV viewer.

Newspaper clips and headlines are flashed, such as "Impossible! Maybe, But Seein' Is Believin' Says Flyer," There's an old MovieTone newsreel with famous journalist Lowell Thomas titled: "Nation Stirred By Mystery of Discs in Sky" from 1947, showing Army A.F. airplanes going out on patrol, armed with film cameras underwing.

General Nathan Twining, US Joint Chief of Staff Chairman back then, is told, Swords says, that UFOs are "real, not visionary nor fantasy" in an early estimate of the situation, as the nation enters the Cold War and the Age of the National Security State with all its domestically-bred mini-Iron Curtains. {The Modern Flying Saucer Era beginning in 1947 was only nine years after many Americans panicked, believing that Martians in their spaceships were invading as they heard the "War of the Worlds" Mercury Theater radio broadcast in October 1938; this went unmentioned in the ABC Report.)

Then the pilots step in, with the well-publized July 24, 1948 sighting by commercial pilots Clarence Childs and John Whitted, followed by interviews today of six other pilots who had sightings, among the thousands reported by both commercial and military pilots over the decades.

THE PROOF IS IN THE UFO PUDDING, (AS TASTED BY WITNESSES) The testimony of the six pilots was excellent and compelling: "It reminded me of a submarine in the depths...It was cigar-shaped"... "I watched this big gigantic light...I have over 30,000 hours of flight time; this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience" ... and so forth, backed by that haunting realistic animation, shown with witnesses approval as accurate. which made for what was among the best in the Jennings' Report. The military, Jennings said, was "faced with thousands of sightings by commercial and military pilots." The US government, armoring itself into its National Security Shell from threats both real and unreal, had a growing "Problem," the program states, as the "Flying Saucer Craze" spread into the late 1940s and into early 1950s with growing UFO reports. As Ufologists know, General Hoyt Vandenberg, US Joint Chiefs of Staff commander, was told that "the Earth was being investigated by alien spaceships" and he replied that, "You don't have concrete proof." The program focused on "UFOs biggest year," the massive UFO sightings of 1952 and the famous "UFO invasion of Washington, DC," dismissed at a huge Pentagon press conference (all of which this reporter remembers vividly as a little boy). In step, Professor Robert Goldberg, Ph.D., of the University of Utah, tells of "hysterical, frightened Americans" and then Jennings saying, "It was public hysteria, not the flying saucers themselves" that led to a crackdown and a derisive campaign of ridicule of witnesses," with the creation of the H.P. Robertson Panel and its report in January 1953: "We must do something to remove the aura of mystery from the UFO phenomena" so that "people won't bother to report them." Yet, the public fascination continued, the program accurately showed, with magazine articles such as an article by retired Major Donald E. Keyhoe (founder of NICAP) and the Life Magazine report on "Farmer Trent's Flying Saucer." There were also movies, with scenes shown from "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951), "War of the Worlds" (1954), "This Island Earth" (1955), and "Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers" (1956), along with the classic movie documentary "Unidentified Flying Objects" with Captain Ruppelt. The last movie mentoned was far better than the ABC Report last night. Next is a segment on "The Air Force Tries to Explain," with a review of Project Blue Book and its small staff, along with a present day interview with retired Col. Robert Friend, the project's director from 1958-1963. Blue Book was all part of a campaign to "denounce, dismiss and debunk" UFOs, and the Jennings Report cited examples. One key scientist shown in the report, who turned from debunker and skeptic to UFO reports supporter, was astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek, shown in a clip from the 1960s when he was working for Blue Book as its scientific investigator, and shown later in 1981, after founding CUFOS. Of course, as reviewers of this program noted, other scientists were not even mentioned, such as the valiant James McDonald, thorough close encounter detective Jacques Vallee, zoologist Ivan T. Sandersen, and NASA scientist and engineer Paul Hill, among others. What a missed chance by a supposedly competent TV news journalist! Even a brief mention, with photos or film clips, of these scientists would have shown that a reporter's homework was truly done. To the program's credit, a fully professional reporting job was done on the Minot nuclear missile site UFO incident of October 24, 1968, with an excellent animation and interviews with B-52 crew witnesses Staff Sgt. Bill Smith, Airman 1st Class Mike O'Conner, Capt. Brad Runyon and mention of navgator Capt. Patrick McCaslin, along with actual film of the radar scope showing the B-52 and the huge UFO. "I was fairly sure I was looking at an alien spaceship, something that came here from a planet other than Earth," a witness said. Blue Book, showing its true colors (a black-and-blue book), said that the B-52 crew and the 16 ground witnesses were "all seeing stars." Not true, of course. Next came the segment mentioned earlier on Dr. Hynek, which introduced the portion of the program on SETI researchers and astronomers, and finally mental health professionals. "Mainstream scientists categorically reject eyewitness testimony," Jennings emphasized. This set the stage for a downward turn in basic, commonly accepted journalistic standards and set-up an eminent, respected and longtime UFO abduction reseacher, the ailing Budd Hopkins, to be unjustly portrayed. This segment was a slap to truth-seeking and a stain on professional journalistic guidelines. This did a great injustice and disservice not only to Hopkins, but to all those who experience and investigate the close encounter enigma, doing a far better job in their own studies than the production seen by millions of informed and uniformed TV viewers. Collectively, this enormously rich databank is the strange evidence which is being dismissed and derided by those who should know better, as scientists and journalists.

"THEY'RE HERE!" AND WE DIDN'T LISTEN TO OUTER SPACE RADIO TO FIND THEM! AND BESIDES, THEY FOUND US. After Jennings says that "mainstream scientists categorically reject eyewitness testimony," Neil deGrasse Tyson, Hayden Planetarium director at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City, says: "I don't care how many people say they've seen something... I need something better than your eyewitness testimony, Even if in the court of law eyewitness testimony is a sign of evidence, in the court of science it is the lowest form of evidence you can put forth." Tyson, who is also The Planetary Society vice president, is a true "star" celebrity among those who study the stars and space, and the author of fascinating astronomy books, and, last year, of "Origins," made into a four part PBS-TV series. In the third part, "Where Are the Aleins?" he wondered: "Are we alone? Are we rare? Are we common? We still don't know. But we will." Tyson served last year on the "Moon, Mars and Beyond" U.S. Commission on Space Policy, and is an excellent, brilliant and lively speaker. He has been a topnotch guest speaker at National Space Society chapter meetings here in New York. In an e-mail to the Star Struck mailing list for the planetarium and Rose Center, Tyson said about the Jennings UFO Report: "We are assured that this program will take a skeptical view of the subject, in spite of the low-slung title." "TARTER SAUCER" & THE SETI "MYTH-TIQUE" Next is Michael Shermer, Ph.D., "Skeptic Magazine" publisher and author of "Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown," saying that people are "very bad" at reporting what they see, no matter who they are. Astronomer Jill Tarter, Ph.D., director of the Center for SETI Research, tells of her sighting, from her private airplane with her husband, of the Moon behind clouds, first thinking it may be a UFO, giving backing to the words of Tyson and Shermer. Animation of the NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, with the historic Jan. 14th landing on Titan, is shown to illustrate the search for life on other worlds within our solar system, "our cosmic backyard," as Tyson says. If life is found out there, he said, "Then there's no telling how much the entire universe is filled with life." Enter two more esteemed and well-respected scientists: Dr. Frank Drake, who launched the first SETI effort with Project Ozma at Green Bank Observatory's radio telescope in West Virginia in April 1960 (around the time of the Brookings Institute study warning on the dangers to Earth's cultures of discovering ETI "out there") and Dr. Seth Shotstek, director of the SETI Institute, who further put forward science's need for absolute solid evidence of ETI. Shostek and Tarter are shown touring the impressive Vast Array of radio telescopes under construction at Hat Creek in northern California, a project funded by billionaire Paul Allen, co-founder of MicroSoft (NOTE: Allen is the financier for Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne suborbital rocketship that flew to the edge of space three times last year.) When complete, the vast array of 350 radio telescopes, said Shostek, may give us the answer posed by NY Times science writer Walter Sullivan in 1964 in his book, "We Are Not Alone." "This is where it will happen," Shostek said. "This is kind of a portal to the cosmos. This is the place where we're going to crack the cosmic crystal of isolation that has surrounded this planet for five billion years." "Some Ufologists belittle SETI's research," Jennings intones, "saying that UFOs are here" as proof of ETI elsewhere. "Not proven," says Dr. Drake. Oh, dear Dr. Drake, it all depends on whose eating the UFO pudding and the taste and nutrients of information it leaves with them. Dr. Tarter notes that if SETI claims contact, it will have the supportive data to back up its claims. From here the program, re-inforcing official denial and mass media blindness, drifts into "The Making of a Myth: The Story of Roswell." In this segment, Stanton Friedman, Ph.D., the respected longtime Roswell researcher for nearly 30 years, who has done stellar work, is wrongly relegated to appearing as one who is incompetent and foolish, with a background of Roswell 50th Anniversary celebrants paraded on screen, along with the sperious re-telling of the Roswell weather and top secret Project Mogul balloon array stories. Karl Pflock of "Saucer Smear" is shown prominently, "busting the myth" of the Roswell Flying Disc, as the segment makes the Roswell incident "an article of faith," says Jennings rather than fact for the crashed UFO story. "They [the Roswell UFO crash supporters] cling to a myth," spin doctor Jennings ends the segment, and he says that the whole Roswell scenario did not offer prove that "we are not alone." As a prime example of the lack of fully professional journalistic inquiry and as a disservice to the Roswell Incident's parade of witnesses and researchers, a false impresion is created that the matter is settled once and for all when It is not. Of all the Roswell books, which the Jennings Report said were written to make money with sensational material, the best was one not even mentioned: "Majestic" by Whitley Strieber. It was published in 1989 after the "Communion" and "Transformation" groundbreakers. But, unlike Strieber's first two close encounter books, "Majestic" is a novel. Although it is fiction, it is actually a story-telling wrapping paper that covers a package of truth, Strieber's clever device to get the truth and the meaning of the Roswell Incident across in novel code: what happened there and how the authorities bungled what "Majestic" calls "a gift." Once again, the ABC investigative news team failed its assignment, building a bogus case of Ufology being close to a quasi-religion based on "belief" and "faith," -- as it next set a trap for its next case study. STEPPING INTO A MEDIA TRAP Unfortunately, the Roswell segment set the stage for the report on Budd Hopkins, his research, interviews with seven abductees, followed by a segment on Harvard University mental health professionals who blithly brush off stealth close encounters as another "myth" engendered by the use of hypnosis to recover "false memories" and a misinterpretion of the old standby: Sleep paralysis. Yawn --- we've heard that one before, such as in a feature story in "The Science Times" section of The New York Times in the 1990s, and elsewhere ad nuseum. A case of media myopia! But it is an outrage that this "sleeping pill" trite is being put once again into the public mind to keep John and Jane Q. Public in their somnambulistic state of sleepwalking while the cosmic chatter of otherwordly reality is alive all around us. Budd Hopkins, no matter what one thinks of his research and findings, has helped hundreds of people personally and countles thousands through his four books. Like the many people who have courageously attempted to understand the close encounter phenomenon and unravel its mysteries and secrets, he has one big piece of a puzzle that is more than the sum of all its pieces. The Jennings Report shows Hopkins doing a hypnosis session and has upclose interviews with seven abductees, who tell their unpleasant and disturbing stories to the TV public, with an aura of fear present in the segment. Mixed in are scenes from the Sci-Fi Channel TV series "Taken" with an angry and terrified abductee screaming on an alien examination table, and a mention of the 1992 Roper Poll on Unusual Experiences. Hopkins says that his subjects have "a clear recollection of what has happened" through hypnotic recall. It is a comment, taken out of context and twisted by the Jennings Report producers [see Hopkins' reaction below in the review links section], which sets him up for dismissal by two Harvard University people, Psychology Research Fellow Susan Clancy, Ph.D., and Richard McNaly, Ph.D. a Harvard professor of psychiatry. Clancy was the subject of a feature cover story in The New York Times Magazine in an article by Bruce Grierson a few years ago, telling of her befriending a few alien abductees and concluding that there is a danger in recalling what seemed to her to be "false memories" based on hypnosis and episodes of sleep paralysis. In this segment Clancy glibly repeats those conclusions, and claims that abduction recall in nothing more than "a product of fantasy and imagination." Adding his two-bits (and that's all it's worth, if that), is Prof. McNaly, telling of of the medieval incubi and sucubi being reclothed as "aliens" in our Space Age culture. Proponents of this scenario, he grins smugly, believe that they have partaken of "exotic adventures." End of story, they say. Unfortunately, the kindly Hopkins allowed himself to fall into the same trap, (despite taking precautions this time), as he, and others, did for the godawful unjust 1996 PBS-TV Nova science special, "Kidnapped By UFOs?" But Hopkins has made very clear, repeatedly over the years, that abductions occur in all sorts of places, not just in bedrooms, as we well know, and involve, at times, multiple abductees in an encounter. Besides, there are many fully conscious accounts of abductions, or at least part of these episodes. And where was David Jacobs [again, see Hopkins article below about how the production short-circuited him], longtime investigator Raymond Fowler (an abductee himself), and Dr. John Mack, among others? Of the sorely missed Dr. Mack, a month before his tragic death on September 27, 2004 in London, he was interviewed by a crew from PJ Productions, as related by the John E. Mack Institute. Leaving that interview of a longtime eminent Harvard Unversity psychiatry professor out of the program was a highly significant and unjust omission from the program, along without any mention of his contributions and passing. That was a grossly bad journalistic decision. CEN includes in its Program Review Links below an article by Dr. Mack from 2001 titled "Witnessing," which Jennings should have read in preparation for his TV special. We will never forget Dr. Mack and his invaluable contributions, understanding and support, and we give him space in CEN to make his comments! Within the past few years an award-winning film documentary, "Touched" by Laurel Chiten's Blind Dog Films, excellently chronicled the hard work of Dr. Mack and the witnesses he worked with. In production in New York City is another documentary, "The Experiencers" by Tamago Films with producer Jeffrey Morehouse. Morehouse is an actor who performed in remarkably evocative "The Abduction Project" play in New York City in 2001, and the play was performed at the California Institute of Technology, home of JPL, in April 2004 with a dialogue with the audience. There are links to "Touched" and "The Experiencers" in the Review Links below. They are examples of how to fairly and accurately portray close encounter witnesses. Overall, the whole stealth encounter segment as presented by the ABC report was a deceitful travesity and a trashing of the evidence that was made available to the producers, making the "sleep paralysis" proponents a media lynch team of judge, jury and executioner, without due journalistic process. MIXING POISON AND ANTIDOTE TOGETHER Complicating matters is the program finale, after a bright spark of true scientific inquiry and eye-bright wondering curioisity as displayed in an enlightening and upbeat segment on world-famous theoritical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku (author of "Hyperspace" and the new book "Parallel Worlds")... But more on that soon. After a sky camera sweeps into Seattle over the Space Neddle, there are scenes of "fulltime" ufologist Peter Davenport at work in his living room, the home of the Natonal UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) in Seattle, fielding phone calls, letters and e-mails at his desk. He is made to appear as an eccentric lone wolf. Of Davenport, Jennings concludes: "More than 50 years after Kenneth Arnold's sighting... it is all left to Peter Davenport and a few others, to investigate this mystery." What an inaccurate slant, spin and brush-off of all the others dedicating their own time, energy, work and lives, in their own ways, on this issue! In the search for what is called "the golden nugget" proving that UFOs are real, Jennings says that both Ufologists and SETI researhcers have "one thing in common"... Getting the proof of ETI reality. "They dream of the day there will be contact with extra-terrestrials. Ultimately, only contact is going to resolve the mystery." What say, Mr. Jennings? The program's conclusion ignores the issue that there has been and is on-going "contact" on a massive worldwide scale, unfolding in manners both silently subtle and startling stark. It also passed over the long history of UFOs throughout humankind's history, ignored other researchers such as scientist Jacques Vallee and so many others too numerous to name here. While SETI researchers tune into their radio telescopes, like children a few generatons ago once did with their crystal radio playsets, hoping for that denifate otherworldly radio or TV signal, or a cosmic flashlight in the form of an ETI laser beacon, witnesses are experiencing contact without benefit of cosmic radio receivers, providing the living database in extraordinary circumstances of all kinds. This immense living databank makes for a large Library of Contact and Communication, a virtual "Encyclopedia Galactia" at our fingertips, handed to us by an immensely powerful hyper-intelligence of unknown origin far beyond the keen of today's science. And it shows the urgent and overdue need for a Science of Human Experience, and the daring to explore new ways of knowing. In both ignoring and acknowledging this information-rich storehouse contained within close encounter witnesses' experiences, there is both great danger and great opportunity. A SCIENCE ACADEMY OF SLEEPWALKERS By and large, "mainstream science" is itself experiencing a cultural form of "sleep paralysis" by not waking up to what is actually there before their very eyes. When it comes to the UFO Enigma, Mainstream Science is an Academy of Sleepwalkers, slumbering in its own self-created delusion of its sole and elitist ownership of credulity that gives them false impressions. And the media, complicit in its doomed bad and mad marriage to deluded mainstream science, getting and promoting untruths of great power and untold damage to the real truth-seekers who tell, hesitantly or bravely, their own confusing and astounding stories to an often unbelieving and hostile society. For far too long, with some fine exceptions, the mass mainstream media has contributed to that form of massive sleep paralysis that lulls society into a dangerous state of falsehoods. The Jennings Report is a prime example of a flawed and false myth that has emerged in response to the Call of Contact occuring Here and Now. The Jennings Report has added greatly to that, while slipping in a few glimpses of that "Golden Nugget," the term it uses for proven contact. It does so by mixing poison and the antidote together, along with the dropping of the sleep paralysis "sleeping pill," as a distasteful cocktail into one glass: the TV screen.Television, for a large part, is what has been called "A Vast Wasteland" (first by the FCC's Newton Minnow in the 1960s) of mostly mindless entertainment and preveyer of unrelenting gratuitous violence, a Control Medium of great power and influence. How would someone on a distant planet around a star maybe 25 light-years from Earth, if equipped with a pre-historic TV set, react and respond to all of this 25 years from now... and to the Madly Mixed Message of the Jennings Report?

INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH? Perhaps the otherworldly TV watcher, let us call the Watcher Lrac Nagas, might pay attention mostly to a charming chap named Dr. Michio Kaku, who appears just before the concluding segment, shown teaching a class at the City University of New York and in an on-camera interview. "My word, at last, here's a hopeful sign of truly intelligent life on Earth among its scientists," says Lrac Nagas, siping a cup of methane broth, as the alien couch potato burps out some swamp gas. Dr. Kaku is the famous author of many books, such as "Beyond Einstein," "Visions," "Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes And the Tenth Dimension," and, now, "Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, And the Future of the Cosmos." The segment is about, Jennings states: "Wondering what a one-million year-old civilization would look like?" Scenes of imaged hyper-drive and warp-drive spaceships from a "Star Wars" and a "Star Trek" movie, and the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" TV series are shown. This is accompanied by astronomer and outspoken UFO skeptic McGaha talking about "distances so vast" that star travel is "very, very unlikely." Other comments about star voyages with humans aboard and the insurmountable difficultities, energy and costs involved are made by Tyson and Shostek, also. OK, that's all been said countless times before. An obstacle is the speed-of-light barrier for large objects, [Experiments on faster-than-light mini-particles have been done recently with supra-light speed results, tests unmentioned in the TV special.] "I think the notion of transporting people to other planetary systems beyond our solar system is so beyond plausibilty, that it is a waste of time," says John Gibbons, Ph.D., former President Bill Clinton's Science Advisor. "Some people slam the door on other civilizations visiting the Earth" because of these immense challenges, says Dr. Kaku. "I say, not so fast. The fundamenal mistake that people make about extraterrestrial intelligence is to assume that they are just like us, except that they are a few hundred years more advanced." Dr. Kaku is a very refreshing voice in the ABC News program, with a "golden nugget" sparkle in his eyes revealing the curious, childlike wondering soul that other scientists on this program seemed hestitant to fully express or deliberately supressed within themselves through self-imposed limitations thwarting their own full potential of discovery. [Note: 20 years ago this writer was a guest on Dr. Kaku's "Explorations" public radio program, heard on WBAI-99.5 FM in New York City. The radio discussion was about the potential dangers then of placing nuclear-tipped cruise missiles aboard the USS Iowa warship and to station them at a proposed New York City Harbor homeport, an issue on which our coalition of activists worked on in peace-making roles.] Then Dr. Kaku asks other scientists: "I say, open your mind, open your consciousness, that they are a million years ahead of us." He then explains that a straight line is not necessarily the shortest distance between two points but that a wormhole (an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, the technical term) is, folding the space-time continuum. To help the program, a film clip could have been inserted here of Dr. Ellie Arroway, the fictional SETI scientist played by Jodie Foster in the 1997 movie "Contact," rushing around the cosmos through a tunnel system of wormholes to have contact with an advanced ETI deep in space in a holographic re-creation, drawn from her dreams while she slept, of Pensacola Beach, Florida. [The network could have dropped the late night-like mind-numbing infomercials that dotted the program breaks to give more room to the show and allow for such inclusions as the one just mentioned.] Perhaps, Dr. Kaku adds, if UFOs are real, they may use these wormholes for travel. Or, as other scientists such as Harvard University-Smithsonian Observatory astrophysicist Dr. Rudy Schild (not in the program but well-known for his dark matter research) suggests, a spaceship may use a holographic-type projection technique to send the craft's information to Earth in holographic form, where the craft, as it is manifested, appears as a UFO to Earth witnesses. That might have been too much for reporter Jennings and his crew, unwilling to push the envelope of inquiry while determining that they can comprehend the UFO enigma and present the subject as they did! "You simply cannot dismiss that UFOs sightings are sightings from some advanced civilization millions of years ahead of ours," notes Dr. Kaku. "Let the study begin!" Actually, certain studies have been made, with both pro and con conclusions, the cons usually being a whiitewash and the pros getting little media attention. Scientist and UFO investigator Jacques Vallee once said in one of his many thoughtful books: ""In the past twenty years, UFO reports have not only been studied in a sensatonaliztic light by people with journalistic motives and methods but also by serious persons who have tried to place them within the framework of space science, modern physics, psychology and the history of superstition." He made that comment back in 1970 in his classic book: "Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers." Here we are, 35 years later, and it seems just like yesterday to longtime researchers. By-the-way, in an article about a UFO conference three years ago, Dr. Kaku was quoted in a news story by Mark Baard on "Wired News" - "Aliens may be here now, in another dimension, a millimeter from our world."" (Nov. 15, 2002) At this point as the ABC tome ends, our lonely otherworldly TV set watcher Lrac Nagas, realizes that there may be a glimmer of hope for humanity, and that whatever form of hyper-intelligence is interfacing with the troubled species on Earth, it may eventually be comprehended by humanity, viewing that Contact as its own strange adventure into a confusing endless Cosmic Wonderland. It would have been helpful if mention were made in the Jennings UFO Report, as noted by others such as media liaison Will Bueche of the John E. Mack Institute, of other physicists, such as the work of Columbia University's Brian Greene on superstring theory as told in his book "The Elegant Universe" and his recent PBS-TV series of the same title. We may add a few others, such as Oxford University award-winning physicist David Deutsch, author of "The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and its Implications" and astrophysicist Marcus Chown, author ot "The Universe Next Door: The Making of Tomorrow's Science." And a mention of the late Michael Talbot's "The Holographic Universe" book may have been nice. Another major journalistic failure in this scientific context was that there was no mention of Budd Hopkins' lastest book, co-authored with investigator Carol Rainey, "Sight Unseen: Science, UFO Invisibility and Transgenic Beings." The book, published in 2003, is a well-researched attempt by the authors to look at the stealth encounter pehenomenon through the latest scientific discoveries. [See Review below in Links List.] There is large, highly articulate united reaction and response to the Jennings UFO Report by Ufology, which suffers from its own politics and internal disputes as any large field of study does. But the main concern, (which can also help unite Ufology even more), here is: What Next? THE WRONG PATH TO THE RIGHT DESTiNATION The Jennings Reporting - originally titled "Life in the Universe?" - took the straight-line and safe narrow road approach to UFOs and the close encounter experience. This Enigma that plagues and provokes humanity, is not going away but persists and taunts as it draws deeper into the heart of the human experience, with the threat of shattering humanity sending us back into the wilds or with the promise of propelling humanity deep into inner space and other space and far beyond, making humanity reach its true potentials. In using the straight-line approach, "Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs - Seeing Is Believing" exhibited many crooked paths that intersected its already beaten path traveled by other programs and media efforts gone before, in its search, yes, in the right direction, -- the destination being Contact happening right now or preceived later. The truth is alive and awakening within the countless witnesses who interface, willingly or not, with the fiercely alive Contact Phenomenon taking place here and now, and not in the fuzzy scientitic radio static sought by SETI, with its assumptive preconceptions and hautiness. It is through the crisscrossing wormhole-like labrinyth of Contact Witnesses that the path in the right direction may be found by the world-at-large. It is a Conversation, which the ABC UFO Report did not fully engage. Instead, muted and muddled talk about UFOs was the hallmark of the Jennings Report, without a true Dialogue. That Dialogue of Contact is a challenge offered by the UFO Phenomena to the media, science and society, living on a small planet in crisis. It is a challenge lost at places like Roswell in 1947, Washington DC in 1952, and at other times and other places. The Challenge is still there. The Question, an inherent characteristic of the Contact Mystery, is how we will finally respond, with our bodies, minds, hearts and souls, to that Challenge of Contact. Failure is risky. The Future, for that is what the Challenge offers, is our choice... and our Answer. ********************************************************* NOTE: Comments about the ABC-TV UFO Special can be sent to: abc.news.magazines@abc.comABC ... And did you notice in the review the name of Carl Sagan? Hint: put the last part of the review before a mirror.

RESPONDING TO THE PETER JENNINGS UFO REPORT... DEAR ABC: A Letter to ABC News-Magazine By Anastasia Wietrzychowska, State Director of the Connecticut Mutual UFO Network (CT-MUFON) Friday, February 25, 2005 -- I watched with interest "Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs -Seeing Is Believing" last evening. I felt it important to comment that I observed two areas in which well-known validation was available, yet omitted from the program. But, perhaps, that was by design. Nonetheless, the first such omission was during the Roswell segment. Footage of Stanton Friedman was poorly edited for content, and his brilliant detective work was left unavailable to the public -- even in synopsis form in favor of many minutes of Karl Pflock debunking summations. ABC directors felt that outlandish footage of people in alien garb was more important for the viewing public to see, than further "boring facts," I suppose. Also, strikingly absent were the facts about the Air Force's repeated obfuscations of the Roswell event, to wit. It is a matter of record that the Air Force first tried to tell the public that a WEATHER BALLOON was what their trained military observers had found and failed to identify; then they tried to put forth the Mogul Balloon excuse. THEN, on the 50th anniversary of the event, they subsequently tried to say that their crash-test dummies were responsible for the bodies found at the crash site. Which LIE was it that we were supposed to believe??? Obviously they didn't think anyone would find out that the dummies were first used TEN YEARS after the Roswell event. Am I being too caustic if I wonder: "If ABC had really been tryng to get at the truth of this important matter, these pertinent facts would have been shared?" Secondly, well known is the fact that Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John Mack was run down and killed only a few months ago in London. He studied the abduction phenomena for many years and even published TWO BOOKS on the subject. Oddly, neither his cogent insights, his suspicious recent death, nor even this hard won right to study this controversial subject from the power of Harvard was ever referred to. Instead, two Harvard psychiatrits who HAVE NOT MADE A DEEP STUDY OF THE SUBJECT were allowed to hold forth upon hypnotic fantasies and false memory syndrome and otherwise belittle an experience they have not had! Their observations were not relevant to the subject matter, and failed to even mention that people all over the world have awakened to find puncture wounds, scratches, triangles and various marks on their bodies, radiation burns, missing fetuses, odd powdery residues on their persons and in their homes, ultra-violet markings on their bodies, that they are in different clothes than those they wore to bed -- sometimes their clohes were not even their own! Some had even found themselves locked out of their homes, or in remote locations, having no memory as to how they got there... only remembering seeing a UFO then... thousands of children have their own corrobarating testimonies about UFOs and aliens as well.... this was not even mentioned. Hypnotic fantasies and false memories, indeed!!

Yet the unsuspecting public would probably not know of these insidious facts and issues,, and could thus be counted upon to more easily swallow the negative delicately placed innuendos of the program thrown in by snide inflections, raised eyebrows and languid names from the opening through the show, the ELITIST, DEBUNKING SUBTEXT was there for all to precieve. Offhand, it seems that ABC's offering was able to accomplish at least two obvious objectives: 1) A great ratings grab, and 2) the media controllers were able to disseminate another timely deffusion on a dangerous subject. Dangerous? Obviously! The UFO subject, with its many facets and implicatons is affecting so many mllions of people worldwide, that a critical mass of sorts is in danger of being reached -- if mainstream media doesn't stay in and debunk it from time to time, that is. Those of us who have labored for many years with open minds and critical thinking and thousands of hours of fieldwork are once again disappointed by the haphazard treatment of this most important of subjects. Whoever is responsible for editing, directing and researching "Seeing Is Believing" can be proud of the sublity and polish of the production -- "mission accomplished" in maintaining the status quo and keeping the "sheeple" (sheep people) unknowingy ignorant. I realize that "Seeing Is Believing" is a team effort, and in no way do I belittle the hard work of any of those fine professionals. I realize that these projects come from "the top down," and many considerations must be kept in mind. However, "I have a dream" that some time in the near future the fine folks peopling the system will one day gather their shreds of their self-respect, their pride and their courage and do what investigative journalists should be doing: reporting the unvarnished and complete truth on this most important of subjects in an unbiased and comprehensive sequel. *********************************************************