From De Void-The mainstream's lonely UFO web log
De Void - Sarasota Herald-Tribune - Sarasota, FL
May 13th, 2011 09:44am
They might be giants (but they’re not)
by Billy Cox
( page of 2 ) View One Page
"You have a situation where the best bomber group in the world doesn't know a weather balloon from a flying saucer, and it seems to me somebody on high is going to be a little concerned about that, and let's see how they're explaining it to their higher-ups" -- Rep. Steven Schiff, 1995/CREDIT: darkmattersradio.com
“I’m going to admit to you that when I first decided to send the request for more information about the Roswell incident to the military … I took a deep breath,” said the congressman. “Because I knew what the repercussions could be. But I decided at that point … the issue is not my view or anyone else’s views of extraterrestrial visitation. The issue is, in a free country, do people have a right to information from their government?”
The year was 1995, and the watchdog — Rep. Steven Schiff (R-N.M.) — was sick and tired of having his intelligence insulted by the Pentagon. But today his conscientiousness about the Great Taboo, recorded in an interview re-posted on Dark Matters Radio by Don Ecker, sounds so quaint and archaic.
A member of the House Space Science and Technology Committee as the 50th anniversary of the 1947 crash of an alleged UFO in his home state approached, Schiff fielded countless queries about what happened from constituents. What really diced his ‘taters was the runaround he got from the Defense Department, which referred not only him, but his inquisitive congressional colleagues — twice — to the National Archives, when DoD knew the Archives had nothing on it.
Listening to Schiff recount how he put the General Accounting Office on the trail almost restores faith in the idea of public servants, except a) this was 16 years ago, and b) Schiff died of cancer in 1998 at 51. Oh, and c) all 1947 records in question from Roswell Army Air Field had been illegally purged. And there was nobody left in the command chain to grill about it. “The GAO believes the outgoing messages were probably destroyed more than 40 years ago,” Schiff told Ecker.
What Schiff did accomplish was to force the USAF to adjust its cover story for the third time, from the original “flying disc” press release, to a case of mistaken identity with a weather balloon, to its current disposition as a classified high-altitude atom-bomb ballon-train sniffer known now as Project Mogul. Schiff said the mystery caught the attention of his colleagues on the Hill.
Peer feedback was “uniformly positive,” he recalled, without mentioning names. Furthermore, “I was told by the General Accounting Office that 20 members of Congress had sent letters to the GAO asking for a copy of the report when it was concluded. The interest has been overwhelming.”
Yeah, sure, so long as Schiff provided cover. One wonders if one of those colleagues might’ve been then-freshman now-retired congressman Tom Davis (R-Va.), whose own GAO investigation into UFOs in 2004 wasn’t nearly so bold.
Anyhow, Schiff never voiced a formal opinion on what went down in Roswell, but Ecker decided it was worth reminding listeners what a single elected official is — or used to be — capable of.
“In the straight world, so to speak, expressing public interest in UFOs, as you know, is the kiss of death, especially in the cloistered environment of Washington, D.C.,” says the retired cop, former Army special operations agent, and erstwhile research director for UFO Magazine. “It’s hard to imagine something so extraordinary happening that would pique the interest of these clowns today.”
De Void - Sarasota Herald-Tribune - Sarasota, FL
May 13th, 2011 09:44am
They might be giants (but they’re not)
by Billy Cox
( page of 2 ) View One Page
"You have a situation where the best bomber group in the world doesn't know a weather balloon from a flying saucer, and it seems to me somebody on high is going to be a little concerned about that, and let's see how they're explaining it to their higher-ups" -- Rep. Steven Schiff, 1995/CREDIT: darkmattersradio.com“I’m going to admit to you that when I first decided to send the request for more information about the Roswell incident to the military … I took a deep breath,” said the congressman. “Because I knew what the repercussions could be. But I decided at that point … the issue is not my view or anyone else’s views of extraterrestrial visitation. The issue is, in a free country, do people have a right to information from their government?”
The year was 1995, and the watchdog — Rep. Steven Schiff (R-N.M.) — was sick and tired of having his intelligence insulted by the Pentagon. But today his conscientiousness about the Great Taboo, recorded in an interview re-posted on Dark Matters Radio by Don Ecker, sounds so quaint and archaic.
A member of the House Space Science and Technology Committee as the 50th anniversary of the 1947 crash of an alleged UFO in his home state approached, Schiff fielded countless queries about what happened from constituents. What really diced his ‘taters was the runaround he got from the Defense Department, which referred not only him, but his inquisitive congressional colleagues — twice — to the National Archives, when DoD knew the Archives had nothing on it.
Listening to Schiff recount how he put the General Accounting Office on the trail almost restores faith in the idea of public servants, except a) this was 16 years ago, and b) Schiff died of cancer in 1998 at 51. Oh, and c) all 1947 records in question from Roswell Army Air Field had been illegally purged. And there was nobody left in the command chain to grill about it. “The GAO believes the outgoing messages were probably destroyed more than 40 years ago,” Schiff told Ecker.
What Schiff did accomplish was to force the USAF to adjust its cover story for the third time, from the original “flying disc” press release, to a case of mistaken identity with a weather balloon, to its current disposition as a classified high-altitude atom-bomb ballon-train sniffer known now as Project Mogul. Schiff said the mystery caught the attention of his colleagues on the Hill.
Peer feedback was “uniformly positive,” he recalled, without mentioning names. Furthermore, “I was told by the General Accounting Office that 20 members of Congress had sent letters to the GAO asking for a copy of the report when it was concluded. The interest has been overwhelming.”
Yeah, sure, so long as Schiff provided cover. One wonders if one of those colleagues might’ve been then-freshman now-retired congressman Tom Davis (R-Va.), whose own GAO investigation into UFOs in 2004 wasn’t nearly so bold.
Anyhow, Schiff never voiced a formal opinion on what went down in Roswell, but Ecker decided it was worth reminding listeners what a single elected official is — or used to be — capable of.
“In the straight world, so to speak, expressing public interest in UFOs, as you know, is the kiss of death, especially in the cloistered environment of Washington, D.C.,” says the retired cop, former Army special operations agent, and erstwhile research director for UFO Magazine. “It’s hard to imagine something so extraordinary happening that would pique the interest of these clowns today.”