Unky
Martian Baby
NASA still mum on Kecksburg
by Billy Cox
Going on week two now since journalist Leslie Kean published the results of her six-year campaign to acquire NASA documents related to its involvement with an alleged UFO accident over Kecksburg, Pa., on 12/9/1965. And still no response from the space agency.
NASA was never all that hot to trot on revisiting this literal blank spot in its own history. Long before Kean’s Coalition for the Freedom of Information lawyered up a request to review NASA’s “reports of space objects’ recovery” from 1962-67, the agency’s “fragology” files had been listed as missing. By 2007, federal judge Emmet Sullivan had had it up to his keister with NASA’s stonewalling and nearly blew a fuse in court.
“This is outrageous what’s going on here. And it’s not your fault,” he told NASA attorney Marina Braswell. “But it’s a sad commentary to say the least. This is NASA. I never heard of a FOIA trial. But what do you do? And this is not one of these cases where — well, I’m not sure. I’ll hear from plaintiff. It’s not one of these cases where the government is really accused of hiding the ball and hiding documents. But maybe it is. I’m not sure.”
Sullivan slammed NASA with a $50,000 bill in plaintiff’s legal fees and ordered the space agency to conduct a more rigorous search of its vaults. When the smoke settled, more than the frag files were gone. Also missing were the requested files on NASA’s liaisons with the Pentagon during the relevant time period. In fact, Kean was informed a stash on the agency’s relationship with the Defense Department from 1964-66 had been destroyed.
NASA did release copies of form letters it sent to people who wrote in about UFOs, but it included none of the citizen queries that triggered those robo-replies. The no-brainer is that some of those letters might’ve provided additional details about the Kecksburg UFO, which provoked an apparent military recovery operation. NASA provided files that referenced attached photos and attachments — only, without the attachments.
Maybe that’s all lost to history. But NASA spokesman David Steitz has not responded to repeated requests by De Void to reconcile a curious statement he made in 2005. On the 40th anniversary of the Kecksburg incident, two years after a NASA analyst had refuted the Soviet-satellite theory, Steitz told the Associated Press that the Russians had, indeed, lost a satellite near Kecksburg, but that the records had disappeared.
Once again — Mr. Steitz: How can you make that statement if the records are missing? How did you acquire that information? What summaries or analyses did you read? Where are those records now? Was NASA/Johnson Space Center orbital debris scientist Nicholas Johnson lying in 2003 when he said Russian hardware couldn’t have plowed into the woods that night? Should I form an office pool for Week Three?
by Billy Cox
Going on week two now since journalist Leslie Kean published the results of her six-year campaign to acquire NASA documents related to its involvement with an alleged UFO accident over Kecksburg, Pa., on 12/9/1965. And still no response from the space agency.
NASA was never all that hot to trot on revisiting this literal blank spot in its own history. Long before Kean’s Coalition for the Freedom of Information lawyered up a request to review NASA’s “reports of space objects’ recovery” from 1962-67, the agency’s “fragology” files had been listed as missing. By 2007, federal judge Emmet Sullivan had had it up to his keister with NASA’s stonewalling and nearly blew a fuse in court.
“This is outrageous what’s going on here. And it’s not your fault,” he told NASA attorney Marina Braswell. “But it’s a sad commentary to say the least. This is NASA. I never heard of a FOIA trial. But what do you do? And this is not one of these cases where — well, I’m not sure. I’ll hear from plaintiff. It’s not one of these cases where the government is really accused of hiding the ball and hiding documents. But maybe it is. I’m not sure.”
Sullivan slammed NASA with a $50,000 bill in plaintiff’s legal fees and ordered the space agency to conduct a more rigorous search of its vaults. When the smoke settled, more than the frag files were gone. Also missing were the requested files on NASA’s liaisons with the Pentagon during the relevant time period. In fact, Kean was informed a stash on the agency’s relationship with the Defense Department from 1964-66 had been destroyed.
NASA did release copies of form letters it sent to people who wrote in about UFOs, but it included none of the citizen queries that triggered those robo-replies. The no-brainer is that some of those letters might’ve provided additional details about the Kecksburg UFO, which provoked an apparent military recovery operation. NASA provided files that referenced attached photos and attachments — only, without the attachments.
Maybe that’s all lost to history. But NASA spokesman David Steitz has not responded to repeated requests by De Void to reconcile a curious statement he made in 2005. On the 40th anniversary of the Kecksburg incident, two years after a NASA analyst had refuted the Soviet-satellite theory, Steitz told the Associated Press that the Russians had, indeed, lost a satellite near Kecksburg, but that the records had disappeared.
Once again — Mr. Steitz: How can you make that statement if the records are missing? How did you acquire that information? What summaries or analyses did you read? Where are those records now? Was NASA/Johnson Space Center orbital debris scientist Nicholas Johnson lying in 2003 when he said Russian hardware couldn’t have plowed into the woods that night? Should I form an office pool for Week Three?