Sagan's calculations

Captured from CLEVELAND FREENET, October 10, 1987
      OVERVIEW AND REWRITE OF PREVIOUS UFO RELATED UPLOADS
                    [Rick Dell'aquilla]
      Astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan, the acknowledged guru of
professional UFO "skeptics", has been quoted as saying,
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."  Another
of the better known of these professional UFO skeptics, Phil
Klass, has admitted the possibility of intelligent life
elsewhere than planet Earth, although he finds no convincing
evidence that UFO phenomena indicate visitation to Earth by
alien intelligence.
     In his book, COSMOS, Dr. Sagan postulates a formula that
suggests that many, perhaps most, stars have planets, and that
the number of potentialy technologically advanced civilizations
in the Milky Way galaxy can be estimated by the formula:

     N* X fp X ne X f1 X fi X fe X fL = N,



Where:

N* is the number of stars in our galaxy (about 400 billion)
fp is the fraction of stars with planetary systems (about 1/3)
ne is the number of planets per system suitable for life (2)
f1 is the fraction of the suitable planets on which
   life actually arises (about 1/3)
fi is the fraction of inhabited planets on which intelligence
   evolved and
fe the fraction of inhabited planets on which a technical
   civilization developed (fi X fe = 1/100)  and
fL is the fraction of a planetary lifetime over which the
   technical civilization survived. (< .0000001%)

     Dr. Sagan's computation indicates that N ( the number
of extant technical civilizations in our Milky Way galaxy is
about Ten Million (10,000,000).  This means that even though
only .0025% of the stars in the Milky Way have technologically
adavanced civilizations, there are about Ten Million
(10,000,000) such civilizations in our galaxy.



        Dr. Sagan's estimate of 10,000,000 inhabited and
technologically advanced planets in our one galaxy, of, course,
does not in and of itself prove that UFO phenomena represent a
manifestation of any one of them.  However, it does indicate
that in dealing with matters of such magnitude, even assuming
a "low probability", (in this case, .0025%) there remains an
astoundingly large number of potentially inhabited and highly
developed civilizations in our part of the universe.

      Highly unusual, startling, and completely credible
documentation concerning UFOs has been disclosed  under the
Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), is a statute by
which citizens may compel the government to release certain
documents.  This documentation (7000 pages approx.) has been
obtained by litigation with such agencies as the FBI, CIA, NSA,
USAF, etc.).  Much information is still being withheld from the
public and remains to be disclosed, since the bulk of these
documents have not been released by the government, under the
"National Security" exemption in the statute.  In view of the
extraordinary revelations contained in these documents, there
may be very much more, and even more disturbing, information
yet to be revealed.
        The authenticity of the documents is not arguable,
since they have been released directly from the federal agency
involded to the U.S. District Courts.

      Among the UFO cases established by the official
documentary evidence is the Bentwaters sighting of a few years
ago.  RAF Woodbridge/Bentwaters are two adjacent USAF bases
(Strategic Air Command) on land in Eastern England leased
by the U.S. Air Force from Great Britain.  As such, these are
high security installation and storage sites for nuclear
weapons.
      Over the Christmas season of 1980, several British
newspapers carried banner headlines of a unique UFO report,
unique in the sense that the information was obtained through
an OFFICIAL USAF DOCUMENT RELEASED UNDER THE FOIA.  The report
was prepared by the second in command of the base, Lt. Col
Charles I. Halt, a trained observer with a military career he
presumably would not wish to place in jeapordy with outlandish
or otherwise unsubstantiated UFO claims.  Yet, can one explain
the fact that he has never retracted a word of the following
report, was never reprimanded for making a false report, and
indeed, was later promoted to Brig. General?

      The report states:

        "1.  Early in the morning of 27 Dec 80 (approximately
0300L), two USAF security policemen saw unusual lights outside
the back gate at RAF Woodbridge.  Thinking an aircraft might
have crashed or been forced down, they called for permission to
go outside the gate to investigate.  The on-duty chief respond-
ed and allowed three patrolmen to proceed on foot.  The indi-
viduals reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest.
The object was described as being metallic in appearance and
triangular in shape, approximately two to three meters across
the base and approximately two meters high.  It illuminated
the entire forest with a white light.  The object itself had
a pulsing red light on top and a bank(s) of blue lights under-
neath.  The object was hovering or on legs.  As the patrolmen
approached the object, it maneuvered through the trees and
disappeared.  At this time the animals on a nearby farm went
into a frenzy.  The object was briefly sighted approximately
an hour later near the back gate.

        2.  The next day, three depressions 1 1/2" deep and 7"
in diameter were found where the object had been sighted on the
ground.  The following night (29 Dec 80) the area was checked
for radiation.  Beta/gamma readings of 0.1 milliroentgens were
recorded with peak readings in the three depressions and near
the center of the triangle foRAGRAPHS 2 AND 3.
(Emphasis added.)

(Signed)
Charles I. Halt, Lt. Col, USAF
Deputy Base Commander "

      Moreover, in a 1984 CNN documentary on the Bentwaters
case, current and former USAF security personnel independently
confirmed the contents of the Halt report.  A former military
policeman, "Airman Gregg," stated, " I saw some kind of
spaceship from someplace not of this Earth."  A former Master
Sgt., who was part of the team that investigated the landing
site, said the team found three depressions in the soil, 12
feet apart, in an equilateral triangle.  One officer who is
still on active duty with the USAF corroborated these
statements and added that motion pictures and still photographs
of the site were also taken. (denied by the USAF.)
      Lt. Col. Halt ordered a hightened state of alert for the
following night, on which night a four-man perimiter patrol
reported seeing strange lights in the sky outside the back gate
that, "were unlike the pattern of any known aircraft."  They
requested and were given permission to investigate.
      They found that an INTENSE light was eminating from a
clearing in the forest at the end of the runway.  One security
officer said that as they approached, all the hair on their
bodies (even under their hats) stood on end, "like therre was a
big static charge in the air."  They loaded their M-16s.  "We
didn't know what we were encountering; and we knew it was
something beyond our realm of experience.  We had never
experienced anything like that before.  About that time, we
decided to get the...out of there."  The armed security police
ran off and encountered about 30 more security police (led by
Lt. Col. Halt) in about a half-dozen vehicles on a nearby road.
      Halt and a three man team, including Sgr. "B" ( a USAF
security officer still on active duty) approached the
clearing.  The Sgt. later said, "right now, I do believe that
UFOs exist.  Up to this point, I had been skeptical.  Now I
believe there may have been someone else there."
      Larry Warren, a former security officer, has come forward
without anonymity and has withstood a blistering attack by the
professional skeptics on his personal integrity, who claimed he
was a drug user or flat out, a liar.  These unsubstantiated
charges were later retracted by the skeptics.  Warren maintains
that more happened on the second night that is not included in
the report or on the tape.  Warren states, "I was very
close...At one point we saw people, or whatever you want to
call them, coming out.  There were three of them..they stood
there...actually floated...our base commander was there (Lt.
Col. Gordon Williams)."

      Although the USAF originally maintained that "no audio-
visual documentation of the incident exists," a FOIA action
unearthed a 20 minute audio tape made by Lt. Col. Halt which
describes segments of events over a seven hour period of this
second night.  Among routine recordings of the levels of
radioactivity and the other evidence referred to in the Halt
report, the tape describes Lt. Col. Halt's EYEWITNESS UFO
SIGHTING made at the time of the recording.  Skeptics have
maintained that Lt. Col. Halt and his men mistakenly sighted
the Orford lighthouse about ten miles away. 
      Although a lighthouse beacon can be a source of a single
light point, there the similarity to the Halt report and tape
ends.  Lighthouse beacons do not leave radioactive "Landing
Marks" in the soil.  A single beacon is not simultaneously
visible in two different directions (180 degrees apart-north
and south)  In fact, at one point, Lt. Col. Halt describes four
separate lights at the same time, that moved about
independently of each other then disappeared.
        It is not likely that the beacon would have
been shut off in the middle of the night, just as it is
improbable that the Deputy Base Commander of a highly
sensitive nuclear base (and at least a dozen of his men) could
have confused a lighthouse beacon, in a location he was no
doubt familiar with, with the highly unusual lights he
describes--let alone that the confusion would have lasted in
excess of one hour.
        The lighthouse explanation simply does not stand up
under close scrutiny.  When this position collapsed, the
skeptics then turned to challenging the personal integrity of
the men who spoke out--and the discussion got ugly.  These men
were alleged to be drug users and the skeptics maintained that
these security personnel were, in the words of one noted
skeptic, "hallucinating Keystone Cops."
      At one point, the tape records Lt. Col. Halt (excited and
breathing rapidly) saying, "It's (the UFO) moving out...It's
moving fast!"  Another security officer remarks, "There's one
on the right heading this way too!"
      Halt continues, "They're both heading north.  Hey! Here!
Here...Here he's coming from the south!  He's coming toward us
now! WEIRD!...Now we are observing what appears to be a beam
coming down to the ground.  THIS IS UNREAL!"  To repeat, this
is an authenticated audio tape, obtained under the FOIA, which
has never been retracted by Lt. Col. (now Brig. General) Halt
or any other USAF official.

      Any OBJECTIVE review of this evidence indicates that the
government is (or should be) VERY interested in the matter of
UFOs, despite its official position that it discontinued all
investigations in 1969.  Indeed, many scientists are convinced
that more study of UFOs is needed.

e conducted the investigation entirely on his own.

        On July 9, 1985, Senator Exon wrote a letter stating,
"...while additional information on the subject of Bentwaters
AND OTHER UNEXPLAINED UFO INCIDENTS (emphasis added) may exist,
I can find no evidence of a coverup..."
        This letter was written significantly after the light-
house explanation was first proposed and apparently the
Senator also found the lighthouse description unacceptable,
chosing rather to call the incident an "unexplained UFO
incident."
        Although Senator Exon has refused further comment on
Bentwaters, in a letter dated August 14, 1985, he stated,
"I have put in more time on this matter than any other case
since I have been a U.S. Senator."  I leave it to the reader
to judge the importance at least one busy U.S. Senator felt
this matter demanded, to have taken so much time with this
sighting.  SOMETHING grabbed his interest.

     How do we know whether UFOs exist?  We don't. What we do
know is that an unusually large number of UFO reports exist,
and that some, such as the Halt report, are indeed
EXTRAORDINARY, in the sense mandated by Dr. Sagan. There are
many common points shared by these reports (e.g. the types of
phenomena reported, that the better the report the harder it is
to explain away and that many reports are made by perfectly
normal and sometimes highly trained personnel whose testimony
on any other subject would be accepted in any court of law). 
We also know that our government and others continue to study
UFOs, despite their official position that they do not.  Many
lawsuits have been filed under the Freedom of Information Act
against the FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, Air Force, Army, Navy, etc.,
which have revealed many previously classified documents
confirming that the government takes the matter VERY seriously
and that there are far more such documents remaining which the
government refuses to disclose.

     Perhaps the most open government involved in the study of
UFOs is France, although even they recently tightened the
security of these matters.  In 1974, M. Robert Galley, the
French Minister of Defense, gave an interview on French
National Radio in which he stated that UFOs are real and that
if the public were told the amount and quality of the evidence
(such as radar sightings and fighter gun camera movies) they
would be very disturbed.  He also revealed in the interview
that the government was passing UFO information on for
evaluation by CNES (the French NASA).  Dr. Claude Poher was in
charge of the study there.  By May 1, 1977, the work of Dr.
Poher was so impressive that the French government put it on a
much more official basis, gave the project a substantial grant
of funds and created a new division of CNES under Poher's
direction.  This division was named GEPAN (which stands for
Group into Unidentified Atmospheric Phenomena).
     About one year after the project started, Dr. Pierre
Guerin, an astronomer working for the project wrote, "an
intelligence controls the UFOs, and it is not ours."  Later in
the the article, Guerin said the the governments of the earth
knew the truth about UFOs (that they came from an intelligence
which coexisted with us on the planet and may actually control
us!) but that they had no idea how to disclose this information
and still maintain world order.
     GEPAN marked a new phase of open communication in official
policy, and the project was very cooperative with ufologists,
unlike governmental agencies in the United States.  In a
document dated February, 1979, GEPAN outlines how the study

operates.  There are field workers, including an early warning
team who can be rapidly sent to the scene of an incident. A
team of scientists of various disciplines studies the
information collected in well equipped laboratories.
Psychologists evaluate witnesses.  The National Police
(Gendarmes) are to prepare reports of incidents to be passed on
to GEPAN.
     Of 354 reports received in 1978, 53% involved close
encounters, of which 25% were classified "unexplained" and 34%
"potentially unknown but lacking probative data."  GEPAN states
that these alarming results "pose a real question after
analysis by our experts."  It was at this time that GEPAN
decided that "great vigilance is necessary regarding the
distribution and publication of these studies.  We estimate
that the witnesses we have met have really seen the things
which they report to us...the study of the cause of these
phenomena is capable of bringing forth new knowledge."  In
private, Poher and Guerin were going even farther, and the
French government became worried.  A new director, astronomer
Dr. Alain Esterle, was appointed.  Less GEPAN information was
released, although Dr. Esterle stated in 1981 that the work of
GEPAN was proving that UFOs were indeed alien.
     With the growth of its work and information collected by
1982, GEPAN had tightened its security measures and a
"reorganization" of GEPAN was instituted. Esterle was replaced
by an engineer and Dr. Guerin released this statement in 1983:
     "It is not the scientists, naturally skeptical as they
are, who induced the military and political leaders to refuse
to take 'UFO stories' seriously.  It is these authorities them-
selves who are concealing from us what they know...and they
have put it into the minds of the scientists to deny the
existence of es believes that most sightings are misidenti-
fications of prosaic objects, he estimates that 1,000 to 10,000
reports from all over the world remain for which no
conventional explanation is possible.  He speculates that
similar events have been occurring for centuries.  But despite
the literal "mountain" of evidence that has accumulated over
the past 40 years of government interest in UFOs, including the
GEPAN program in France, not one other government is willing to
openly admit that there is anything curious in the UFO
phenomena worthy of study, let alone a potential security
problem.
     He cites a remarkable public apathy, a climate of
ridicule by the media and an air of apparent indifference
by the world governments.  But, he says, this is only an
  apparent   indifference, as the phenomena is undoubtedly
being studied somewhere in   some   back rooms.
     For example, documents obtained under the FOIA from the
 CIA, NSA and other governmental agencies provide undeniable
evidence of continuing official interest in UFOs.  Noyes
congratulates his former colleagues at the MOD on their
ability to pretend to take no notice of the stranger incidents
reported to them.
     Noyes believes that the Bentwaters case in 1980 is one of
the most important UFO cases in history.  It was this case that
encouraged Noyes to finally write the UFO book he had long
considered.  He chose the fictional format because it permitted
him to enter into various speculations which would not
otherwise be possible.

     U. S. Senator Barry Goldwater (Arizona) is a retired USAF
General, with TOP SECRET CLEARANCE, who attempted to gain
access to a storage facility alleged to contain dead aliens at
Wright-Patterson AFB.  He was refused entry since he did not
have, believe it or not, a high enough security clearance.

     On December 3, 1974, Goldwater wrote the following letter:

     "...I made an effort to get in the room at Wright-Patter-
son Field where the information was stored and I was denied
this request, understandably."

     On March 28, 1975, Senator Goldwater wrote again:

     "...The subject of UFOs has interested me for some time.
I made an effort to find out what was in THE BUILDING AT
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE WHERE THE INFORMATION IS STORED
THAT HAS BEEN COLLECTED BY THE AIR FORCE, and I was denied this
request.  IT IS STILL CLASSIFIED ABOVE TOP SECRET..." (Emphasis
Added).

     Other prominent Amercans have also gone on record that
the UFO phenomena is worthy of serious study, for example:

     1.  President Carter asked NASA to explore the
possibility of investigating UFOs.

     2.  When he was in Congress, President Ford called for
Congressional investigations of UFOs.

     3. Astronaut Gordon Cooper said, "I believe that these
extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this
planet from other planets."

     4.  General Nathan Twining, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff and reputed member of MJ-12, wrote a secret memo on
September 23, 1947, in which he stated to the Commanding
General of the Army Air Forces on the subject of "Flying
Discs":
"    a.  The phenomenon reported is something REAL and not
         visionary or fictitious.
     b.  There are objects probably approximating the shape
         of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to
         be as large as a man-made aircraft.
     c.  There is a possibility that some of the incidents
         may be caused by natural phenomena, such as
         meteors.
     d.  The reported operating characteristics such as
         extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly
         in roll), and action which must be considered EVASIVE
         when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and
         radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the
         objects are controlled either manually, automatically
         or remotely." (Emphasis in Original).

        It is now clear that the U.S. Air Force Project Blue
Book was merely a public relations effort to show something
being "done" about UFOs.  It is equally clear that the real
effort was, and continues to be conducted elsewhere.
     In 1969, the U.S. Air Force closed it's public UFO data
gathering effort known as "Project Blue Book."  Since that
time, all inquiries to the Air force requesting information on
UFOs were met with standard form letters indicating that,
since 1969, the Air Force no longer is involved in UFO
investigation and that the reports gathered by Project Blue
Book have been archived and are available elsewhere.

     Lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act have
obtained significant official documentation verifying an on-
going uninterrupted concern with UFO investigations by the Air
Force, belying its publicly stated position on the matter.
     A Joint Army Navy Air Force Publication (JANAP 146)
requires reports of any sighting which could be a threat to
national security.  UFOs continue to be sighted by military
personnel and are reported under this regulation.
     Indeed, important UFO sightings and reports, even before
1969, were not processed under Project Blue Book, but were and
are collected and investigated elsewhere by the military.  An
Air Force document dated October 20, 1969, which proposed
termination of Project Blue Book, states, "Reports of
Unidentified Flying Objects which could affect national
security are made in accordance with JANAP 146 or Air Force
Manual 55-11, AND ARE NOT PART OF THE BLUE BOOK SYSTEM
(Emphasis Added)...reports of UFOs which could affect national
security should continue to be handled through standarddeemed to constitute a threat to national
security under JANAP 146, are considered by the regulation as
something different than missles and aircraft.

     Moreover, the term "UFO," as used in these regulations,
is given very clear definition. Illustrations in Air Force
Intelligence manuals at least as far back as 1953 represent
UFOs as large, disc-shaped craft with transparent domes and
portholes around the edges.  A U.S. Navy publication (OPNAV 94-
P-3B), titled "MERINT Radiotelegraph Procedure," shows UFOs as
a separate class from missles and aircraft.  In fact, an
illustration under the UFO heading shows a Saturn-shaped disc.

     Obviously, this does not even approach "final proof" of
the existence of UFOs.  But it does constitute EXTRAORDINARY
EVIDENCE as suggested by Dr. Sagan in that it establishes that
those responsible in our government take a serious attitude
toward UFOs, despite the public pronouncements to the
contrary.  The official documents released under the FOIA
establish an intense governmental interest in UFOs over at
least the past 40 years.  These monumental efforts are
completely irreconcilable with the notion that UFOs are nothing
more than the imaginations and misidentifications of a
misguided  and gullible populace.

      In reviewing the many uploads to this board, I felt there
should be a more streamlined way to present the above ideas for
consideration and discussion.  Your responses are invited.
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