textfiles/ufo/UFOBBS/2000/2433.ufo

SUBJECT: LET THE PROJECT BEGAIN                              FILE: UFO2433


BY PAMELA WEINTRAUB for OMNI Mag.


OMNI KICKS OFF PROJECT OPEN BOOK, A WORLDWIDE QUEST FOR CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF 
THE DOCUMENTED KIND.

It was a clear, cold night in Brooklyn, New York, when ham-radio operator Alex 
Cavallari picked up bizarre, jumping wave forms on his scope. An hour later 
and some ten miles west in Newark, New Jersey, the same disturbance puzzled 
former Navy man and ham-radio operator John Gonzalez. Gonzalez's neighbors 
were disrupted as well: TV reception was interrupted, homes shook as if in an 
earthquake, and several witnesses reported a flash of light. Gonzalez now 
claims he could make out a disc-shaped craft inside the light, and contends the 
craft brushed his ham-radio antenna and knocked down tree branches in his 
backyard. A strange, ashlike sphere the size of a golf ball was later found in 
his yard. Rich in evidence, this intriguing incident has already been 
investigated by police and fire departments and by researchers in a lab. The 
needed culmination for all this data: a synthesis, in which an explanation 
might emerge.

Multiple witnesses and physical effects also define dramatic sightings over 
southwestern Michigan, where hundreds of people have reported red and white 
lights moving in circles through the sky. Here, the documentation includes 
police reports confirming the strange phenomena as well as data from the 
National Weather Service at the Muskegon County Airport, where meteorologists 
have tracked the light on radar. While experts concede that radar alone can be 
misleading, it does add weight to reports and suggests that something might be 
afoot.

And in Alabama, an accounting teacher and mother of two says her abduction by 
aliens was harrowing. Her story, precise in its detail, echoes the claims of 
hundreds of other alleged abductees who have come out of the closet of late. 
But given all the recent research on false memory syndrome, can anyone accept 
her account, rendered through deep hypnosis, as literally true? Well, it might 
be easier to evaluate if some of the evidence described by abductee Leah Haley 
turns out to be real. From odd scratches and scoops on her skin to weird 
malfunctions in her security system to alleged harassment by military men in 
fatigues. Haley claims to have a plethora of evidence that sets her story 
apart from other, more anecdotal tales.

These incidents all have one thing in common: They offer evidence that can be 
analyzed, fertile ground for Omni's newest venture, Project Open Book. In our 
effort to examine the UFO phenomenon, our basic question is clear: In the 
midst of all the sightings, all the claims and counterclaims, all the 
abduction scenarios, conspiracy theories and hype, is there any 
incontrovertible evidence, solid as nuts and bolts and plain as day, of 
visitation from on high?

We feel we are in a good position to pose this question because we have no ax 
to grind. As an editorial staff, we are not yet convinced the invasion has 
begun. Yet we don't have the knee-jerk instinct to debunk material just 
because it's weird. Yes, we agree the universe is vast enough and evolution 
flexible enough to forge intelligent species throughout the cosmos, 
especially on earthlike planets around sunlike stars. Yet we feel the feat of 
interstellar travel would be tricky, even for geniuses of the cosmic kind. In 
the end, there's just one thing we sense for sure: The UFO data suggests a 
mystery - unabiding, unresolved and sometimes downright spooky-in which 
strange phenomena continue to go unexplained.

In our search for evidence, explaining is mostly what we aim to do. As 
investigators have found in the past, the large majority of UFO sightings are 
rooted in the mundane. Whether sightings have proved to be practical jokes and 
hoaxes, meteors, cloud formations, ball lightning, Soviet satellites, or 
"black" aircraft under development in the United States, some 90 percent of 
all UFO reports investigated are eventually explained. Just sift through our 
past columns on the subject, and you will see that finding real-world 
explanations for the UFO phenomenon has been our impetus throughout.

In seeking to explain, moreover, Open Book will continue to embrace Omni's 
longstanding policy of informed skepticism. Show-me-from Missouri types, we 
will abide by the skeptic's tenet: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary 
levels of proof. In our philosophical universe., if we do not work hard to 
find an explanation-an ordinary explanation-for each and every case we look 
into, then our work has not been done. When we send our researchers out to 
sift through evidence for signs of E.T., you can bet your bottom dollar the 
terrible burden of proof will stay with us. And Open Book's final query will 
always be the same: Is there any evidence that proves, to our satisfaction and 
beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the alien interpretation of UFOs is for 
real?

UFO researchers have attempted to address this issue from the start. One of 
the first to try to bring the scrutiny of science to bear on UFO sightings was 
the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who, during the 1940s and 1950s, worked as an 
astronomer at the Smithsonian, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, 
and Harvard, producing rigorous papers on electronic satellite tracking and 
supernovas. At first a hardheaded skeptic, Hynek also worked for the Air 
Force, looking into UFO reports for the notorious Project Blue Book. Although 
Blue Book has, in recent years, been discredited as a PR organ of an Air Force 
intent on debunking any and all UFO reports, Hynek himself went through a 
conversion at its helm. As he followed " the program," squelching one UFO flap 
after the next, he began to doubt his own words. "Somewhere along the line," 
he told Omni, "I realized that I wasn't being scientifically honest. The 
sightings needed further investigation, but we were disregarding them, 
throwing the data away."

That realization put Hynek on a path he would follow for the rest of his life. 
He began making copies of all the documents to come out of Blue Book and 
gathered data that would allow him to study UFOs as they had never been 
studied before. He classified the various types of reports and even traveled 
around the country investigating the more interesting ones. Hynek agreed that 
many of the sightings could be explained. But, he held, there was "nothing in 
the accepted scientific paradigm to explain them all."

His obsession resulted, in 1973, in the founding of the Center for UFO Studies 
in Evanston, Illinois. Out of this small operation, run mostly through the 
donations of friends, he produced respected papers and monographs in a field 
replete with misguided enthusiasts, psychopaths, and frauds.

In the end, the so-called science of J. Allen Hynek went soft. Critics, and 
even friends, began to say he'd become shockingly gullible. He spent some of 
his last days in the luxurious Arizona home of a wealthy, but "anonymous" 
benefactor who subscribed to a psychic interpretation of UFOs and promised 
Hynek he would create for him the most lavish UFO center in the world. When 
Hynek died of brain cancer in April 1986, it was easy for sympathizers to say 
he'd gone insane.

Today, Hynek's legacy - his original notion that UFOs could be studied with as 
much scientific rigor as a volcano or a lake - lives on in a handful of 
serious researchers and open-minded skeptics who continue to sift through 
evidence, seeking to make sense of the data, to explain. It is in this spirit, 
and in hopes of doing what Blue Book couldn't, that Project Open Book turns 
its first page.

Because proof, if it exists, might be out there anywhere, we have asked our 
readers to help. Already, our call for evidence has been heard. Thousands of 
readers have written, sending us their thoughts, perceptions and suspicions, 
their photographs, video- and audiotapes, their samples of earthly (or 
unearthly?) leaves, rocks, and offerings from backyards and mountaintops 
throughout the country and the world.

A reader from Canada describes a mysterious object he says smashed into the 
waters of Shag Harbor, Nova Scotia, three decades ago. "What the Shag Harbor 
UFO crash lacks in high drama, it gains in solid documentation," this eloquent 
letter states. "There were many witnesses, and virtually no one of sufficient 
age in Nova Scotia's Shelburne of Yarmouth counties has forgotten the event. I 
am still uncovering new evidence, and have even interviewed witnesses from the 
Royal Canadian Air Force, Coast Guard, and Police."

A reader from Staunton, Virginia, described "a bright red" disc in the night 
sky above his home. "In the middle were four round black circles," he reports. 
"When the object floated over the apartments, it seemed to stop and turn one 
of its sides up. The it did something really wonderful-it blinked a good-bye. 
Its speed seemed to go from 200 miles an hour to God-knows-what, and it was 
gone."

And from the owner of a bed and breakfast inn and dairy farm in northern 
Vermont, we heard this: "Sunday, January 6, 1994 I had two guests from 
Washington, DC. We had been watching a video and when it went off, everyone was 
heading up to bed. My husband was already upstairs, but my son and I and one 
of our guests (an astrophysicist, now lawyer) decided to check the outside 
temperature. We went over to my large front window to look out at the 
thermometer (it was -28 degrees Fahrenheit) and we saw two bright lights in 
the sky across the street. I thought 'helicopter.' But there wasn't any noise 
and the two lights were spaced very wide apart. It moved so slowly. We just 
looked at each other, saying 'What is it?' Regardless of the cold, we ran out 
onto my font porch. It was a very gray sky that night, with the threat of 
snow. The object - two large rectangle shapes connected by a central square of 
triangle - was slowly moving directly toward us, without a sound, and flew 
almost directly over out heads. Only then did I hear a faint rumble, like a 
deeper version of the sound you hear when you place a large seashell up to 
your ear." This witness reports that the local newspaper, the County Courier, 
eventually carried the story, turning up witnesses she hadn't known about at 
all, "In all, eight people reported the sighting," she recalls.

Finally, we received three separate missives on the saucerlike designs 
registered at the U.S. Patent Office. "There are patents in the patent office 
describing certain flying aircraft not of conventional design," one reader 
tells us. His claim: The patents link many people who have worked on special 
or secret projects. Another reader goes even further. "I have spent several 
years researching current hardware available to build these craft," he states. 
A third informant sent us, via overnight delivery, more than one hundred 
photocopied sheets of the patents themselves.

A few readers have mentioned the so-called triangle craft, recently witnessed 
over California and elsewhere in the United States. "During the winter of 
1992-1993, I was at Beale AFB, Marysvill, California, and was in my backyard 
with my telescopes," explained one of our readers. "I am an amateur astronomer 
with over thirty years' experience, and was also a trained photo intelligence 
specialist in all types of systems. The date was around the third of March at 
about 10:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. I had just walked out of my warm-up 
shed and was walking back to my telescopes about en feet away when I noticed 
something floating above me, going from southeast to northwest. The craft was 
a triangle shape with two rows of lights going around the middle on the two 
sides and was a light gray on the bottom, possible from the reflected lights 
of the housing area I lived in. There was no sound of any type and no sign of 
engines. The craft looked to be as thick as a C-5A transport, which I have 
seen and flown in many times. The corners and sides were curved and were only 
broken by the two rows of lights. As I stood there with my mouth open, the 
craft traveled out of sight toward the PAVE PAWS radar site, about two miles 
away. For a long time, I thought what I saw was the new Mach +6 reconnaissance 
plane that has flown near Beale for many years, but on reflection, the craft 
was too thick (30 to 50 feet) to travel at such speeds. Having worked with the 
SR71, I can say I have never seen a craft like this, and others here in the 
Sacramento Valley have also seen the same type of craft in January and 
February of this year.  .  .  .Any ideas?"

Since ideas are the currency Open Book trades in online, our postees have 
given us quite a few. For instance, our online participants have helped us 
fine-tune our notion of what is and what is not legitimate "proof." A few 
people pointed out, for instance, that radar, while an important tool, is not 
valid as the only evidence of a UFO. "Since radar is dependent upon 
electromagnetic waves," we were told, "it may be easily distorted by other 
electromagnetic waves that are man made or natural in origin.

The consensus can be summed up by this posting: Real evidence, it was 
suggested, would come when, following abduction, and alleged abductee could 
deliver "advance information of an astronomical or physical nature, not known 
to contemporary science but checkable or verifiable ex post facto."

To help us evaluate the evidence, we have chosen a small but balanced panel 
of experts. Because we need people experienced at UFO investigation, we have 
selected a number of researchers allied with the UFO camp; all UFO researchers 
on our panel have been noted not only for their field work, but also for the 
high quality of their skeptical work. To give some credence to the other side 
of the realm, moreover, we have solicited the help of some noted skeptics. 
Intent on policing the UFO field, these panel members will help us make sure 
we never let down our guard. To provide background and expertise, we have 
recruited experts in aerospace and military craft. To shed some light on the 
human mind, we have asked for help from a few psychologists. And, because 
Omni's roots are, ultimately, journalistic, we've selected a number of 
investigative reporters who will wield their craft to go through data, coming 
up with what we hope is a semblance of truth.

Already, their investigations have begun. A. J. S. Rayl, an investigative 
journalist most recently writing and producing a CD-ROM on the Search for 
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (or SETI), is speaking with Leah Haley, the 
accountant-abductee. Jerome Clark, editor of the International UFO Reporter, 
is researching the Holland, Michigan, sightings and their radar components. 
Investigative science reporter Patrick Huyghe is on the trail of abduction 
cases in which multiple witnesses (and/or multiple abductees) claim to have 
been involved. Other Open Book panelists have been assigned to investigate the 
saucerlike designs in the U.S. Patent Office, the Nova Scotia water crash, 
and the bed-and-breakfast sighting in Vermont.

Our panel has also been poking around in the past. Longtime Omni writer Paul 
McCarth, for instance, was intrigued by reports that an Army Air Corps nurse 
helped autopsy aliens recovered from a UFO that crashed near Roswell, New 
Mexico, in July 1947 - and then just disappeared. Top Roswell researchers, in 
fact, told McCarthy they had attempted to find her along with other Roswell 
nurses to no avail, suggesting, perhaps, that they'd been intentionally 
deleted from the record for good. McCarthy decided to track the nurses, and 
thus far, had had astonishing good luck. (Look for his Open Book report in an 
upcoming Omni.)

And James Oberg, our longtime resident skeptic, an aerospace engineer, and a 
world-class expert on the Soviet space program, has been looking back a decade 
to 1984. His current assignment: bringing new evidence to bear on a Soviet 
sighting already touted as having it all - visual, radar, and physical 
effects. Just added to the mix, Oberg tells us, is a series of sketches that 
now may shed light on the origin of the mysterious apparition as it changed 
shape, color, and size.

Today, these researchers will help Open Book move forward, joining other 
serious groups across the spectrum, from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) to the 
Committee for the Scientific investigation of Claims of the Paranormal 
(CSICOP), who have been investigating the phenomenon for years. Thanks to our 
readers, our efforts will be fueled by reports coming in at a steady pace from 
around the world. With our own perspective, our own techniques, and our own 
special panel, we throw our hat into the ring. We have no way of knowing what 
we will find - or if we will find anything at all. We only know this: Any 
story we agree to look into must provide plentiful evidence to analyze, 
dissect, and explore. From our camp, without such elements as multiple 
witnesses, physical traces, medical documentation, or electromagnetic effects, 
you have nothing at all.

In marking our place on the UFO map, we evoke the trajectory of our near-
namesake-the frustrated Project Blue Book -and its leader, J. Allen Hynek 
himself. In the end, Hynek could mot use science to unlock the mystery of the 
UFO, as he had planned. Near the end of his life, ensconced in a grand 
hacienda in the heart of Arizona's Quartz Mountain, he glimpsed a geographic 
wonder: a mammoth slab of rock sculpted by nature to resemble a monk kneeling 
in prayer. In this gorgeous spot called Paradise Canyon, Hynek discovered 
fervor in his calling. Moved more by religion than reason, more by mysticism 
than science, Hynek the investigator was finally swept away. For him the dream 
had come to this: "I've often said that someday, I would enjoy being snowbound 
on the rocky coast of Maine," he told Omni. "I imagine myself in front of the 
fireplace, keeping my friends entertained for many nights, with one 
interesting UFO tale after the next. I'd enjoy being given the chance, as long 
as the food held out."

But now, at the cusp of the twentyfirst century, the busboy has come and 
cleared the food away. In a sense, it's sad: Who can deny an attraction to the 
stories? After all, from a literary perspective, UFO yarns can now 
unequivocally take their place among the greatest ghost stories and science-
fiction stories of our time. No doubt about it, from the tragicomic plight of 
the closet abductee and her frail, halfhuman "hybrid" heirs to the ominous 
stalwart bureaucrat who keeps crashed saucers and alien bodies under lock and 
key, magnificent UFO stories, rich in social commentary and psychological 
truth, abound. The heroes of these tales, be they missing nurses or pale hybrid 
children lost forever to the world of love, have become mythological symbols 
for our time. We will continue to listen to their cries. But now it is also 
time to move on. Kicking and screaming, we must let loose our grip on these 
riveting, beloved allegories and embrace the evidence, leaving literary 
conceits behind.

On this cautious note, and in hopes of finding some answers, our 
investigation begins.


T E A M  O P E N  B O O K

MEMBERS OF OUR PANEL, LISTED BELOW, WILL HELP US TUN A PAGE IN UFO RESEARCH. 
IF YOU SEND US A REPORT FOR STUDY, IT WILL MOST LIKELY BE FORWARDED TO ONE OF 
THE FOLLOWING:

PATRICK HUYGHE has been a science writer for 15 years. His work has appeared 
in Omni, The Sciences, Health, and Audubon, among others. He has produced 
documentaries for WGBH- Boston and WNET-New York and consulted on science 
exhibits for the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey. He has reported on UFOs 
for Newsweek, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and Omni. Particularly 
notable was his investigative expose on the infamous "High Rise Abductee," 
considered by some UFO researchers to be the case of the century.

SHERRY BAKER is an Atlanta-based freelance journalist and television consultant 
specializing in medicine, science, and the arts. She has also applied her 
significant investigative skills to the arena of UFOs. She has written on the 
subject for Omni for almost 15 years.

JEROME CLARK is vice president of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies 
(CUFOS) and edits CUFOS' bimonthly magazine International UFO Reporter. Author 
of a multivolume history of UFOs, he is currently based in Canby, Minnesota.

JAMES OBERG is a senior space engineer in Huston, where he specializes in 
Mission Control operations for orbital rendezvous as an employee of the 
leading contractor for manned spaceflight operations. He is a widely published 
author on the past, present, and future of space operations around the world 
(and off it), and has written ten books, including Red Star in Orbit, 
universally considered the best inside portrait of the history of Soviet space 
activities, and Uncovering Soviet space activities, and Uncovering Soviet 
Disasters, a look at secrecy and technological shortcomings in the former 
USSR. He privately provides expert assessment of Russian space technology, 
James Oberg has been contributing UFO analyses to Omni magazine since its very 
first issue, when he was the regular "UFO Update" columnist.

DENNIS STACY, an investigative reporter who has covered the UFO beat for 20 
years, is editor of the MUFON Journal and co-editor and publisher of 
Anomalist. He recently wrote a six-part series on alleged government cover-ups 
for Omni.

MARK RODIGHIER is director of the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago. He 
specializes in statistics and research methodology as they relate to UFOs, and 
is author of "UFO Reports involving Vehicle interference." He has served on the 
committee that published the recent Abduction Ethics Code, a series of 
guidelines and standards for abduction investigation and therapy.

PAUL KURTZ, PH.D., is professor of philosophy at the State University of New 
York at Buffalo. He is editor of the magazine, Free Inquiry, former editor of 
the Humanist, and founding chairman of the Committee for the scientific 
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP.)

A. J. S. RAYL is a long-time investigative reporter based in Los Angeles and 
Minnesota. She is currently traveling the country to write and produce an 
encyclopedic CD-ROM on the Search for Extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) for 
Voyager.

PAUL McCARTHY, PH.D., is an expert in political science who originally wrote 
his thesis on Jim McDonald's efforts to legitimate the study of UFO phenomena 
in scientific circles. Now a freelance writer based in Hawaii, McCarthy has 
covered UFOs and other science topics for Omni for the past decade.

JENNY RANDLES, director of investigations for the British UFO Research 
Association (BUFORA) from 1981 to 1993, has developed a code of ethics for UFO 
investigators and pushed through a moratorium on the use of hypnotic 
regression to retrieve UFO reports, as well as an outright ban on use without 
medical supervision.

JOE NICKELL, PH.D., a former magician and private investigator for a world 
famous detective agency, now teaches technical writing at the University of 
Kentucky. He is the author of several books, including Mysterious Realms, a 
casebook of paranormal, forensic, and historical mysteries; Pen. Ink and 
Evidence, a manual on historic document study; and (with psychologist Robert 
Baker) Missing Pieces, a manual for investigating paranormal claims.

ROBER A. BAKER. PH.D., professor emeritus of psychology at the University of 
Kentucky, is an expert in hypnosis and false memory. He is also the author of 
several books, including Missing Pieces (with colleague Joe Nickell), They 
Call it Hypnosis, and Missing Memory.

STUART APPELLE, PH.D., associate dean of the School of Letters and Sciences 
and professor of psychology at State University of New York College at 
Brockport, specializes in sensory processing and perception. He has helped 
create the Abduction Ethics Code, a series of guidelines and standards for use 
in abduction investigation and therapy, and is editor of the Journal of UFO 
Studies. A trained hypnotist, Appelle is a member of the Society for Clinical 
and Experimental Hypnosis.

KEITH HARARY, PH.D., is research director of the institute for Advanced 
Psychology in San Francisco. The author of eight books and more than 100 
articles on memory, learning, dreams, and altered states of consciousness, 
Harary is an expert in coercive persuasion and other manipulative techniques. 
He is also the originator of the reflective method of personality assessment 
and co-developer of the first reflective personality instrument, the Berkeley 
Personality Profile, designed in conjunction with colleagues at the institute 
of Personality and Social Research at the University of California at 
Berkeley.


**********************************************
* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
**********************************************