By Billy Cox
De Void
12-28-12
"What do I have to do to stir up the action?" wondered Gen. Charles Cabell, who had previously warned Pentagon colleagues that those who failed to take the challenge of UFOs seriously "can get out now." After reading yet another futile Air Defense Command report on UFOs, the director of the USAF's Office of Intelligence, was clearly beside himself. "I've been lied to, and lied to, and lied to. I want it to stop," he told subordinates. "I want the answer to the saucers and I want a good answer."
Cabell's pique erupted in 1951; we revisited this obscure moment of official clarity 61 years later, on account of a masterpiece published in September. Co-authored by Michael Swords and Robert Powell, UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry explored the roots of America's surreal relationship with The Great Taboo before debunking and feigned indifference became formal policy. That a historical narrative should be the most substantial development to emerge from the UFO/media horizon in 2012 shows us, yet again, as if we needed another example, just how shallow the bottom really is.
This was the year worldwide news outlets from ABC to The Daily Mail went bonkers over Google Earth lens-flare "UFOs." We saw Anderson Cooper, CNN's prime-time golden boy, hosting a woefully inept "Do You Believe in Space Aliens?" forum in a daytime format so flimsy and trivial that producers decided to pull the plug before the entire brand suffered irreparable damage. We saw the National Geographic Channel manufacture the abysmal "Chasing UFOs" action-figure series that lured heretofore respected documentary filmmaker James Fox into a kamikaze dive. "My credibility and reputation has, deservedly, taken a serious hit," he said.
2012 was the year The New York Times commended the resumption of the radio-signal search for aliens at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory with yet another thumbnail history of the five-decade old SETI program. But not so much as a sentence devoted to the Swords/Powell review of the U.S. military's UFO fiasco after World War II. The Times also noted how Wikileaker Julian Assange had taken refuge in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, but not a word about how its president, Rafael Correa, began tweaking Uncle Sam as far back as 2008, when he ordered the declassification of UFO data perhaps as a response to alleged CIA meddling in its military infrastructure. In fact, no mention of the cosmic idiosyncrasies sweeping South America, where six nations now sponsor government-funded UFO research groups, and where two of them - Uruguay and Chile - entered a formal data-sharing agreement this year.
No doubt, there was plenty to write about. Retired CIA PR agent Chase Brandon got hammered for announcing he'd located the Agency's secret Roswell files back in the mid-1990s. Critics momentarily pounced and accused Brandon of trying to drum up publicity for a new novel. But there was no real demand for a full accounting by the MSM; after all, if Brandon had indeed violated a security oath, it was only over UFOs. And there was no discussion about what Brandon's alleged revelation might've meant for the Clinton administration, which actively pursued cold-case leads on Roswell. The sole Clinton-era operative to respond to De Void's requests for reaction to Brandon's professed discovery of the mother lode was former associate attorney general Webb Hubbell, who acted all hinkie and weird and mysterious, like an incoherent Deep Throat.
Yeah, there was decent material, all right. But what we got instead were Fox News, the LA Times, U.S. News & World Report, ABC, USA Today, and the Christian Science Monitor, to name a few, spreading the results of a National Geographic poll claiming that 71 percent of Americans believe UFOs "are more likely to exist than are superheroes, vampires and zombies," (progress...) but that the Incredible Hulk - garnering 21 percent support in a plurality - was America's fantasy savior of choice in the event of a hostile alien invasion.
So here's to the end of another fine calendar for UFO coverage. Maybe 2013 will be the year De Void gets fed up enough to quit....
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See Also:
Herald Tribune Reporter, Billy Cox Queries CIA On Chase Brandons Roswell UFO Claims
VIDEO Anderson Cooper Looks into Claims of Alien Abduction on New Show
UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry: "The Most important Book on the Origins of Our Current Policy on The Great Taboo"
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