Government Cover Ups Of Actual Ufo Crashes example essay topic

My first source, the article titled "The U.S. Government Is Covering Up Evidence of UFOs" was taken from the series of books titled Opposing Viewpoints. This article was written by written by Dennis Stacy. This source contained clear-cut facts and turned out to be a reliable source. The most popular cause of supposed UFO cover up is the crash at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. As rural farmers, Mac Brazel and Timothy Proctor were awoken by a loud crashing noise in the middle of the night. When they went outside in the morning to investigate, "Brazel and young Proctor stumbled across something unearthly- a field of tattered debris two to three hundred yards wide stretching some three-fourths of a mile in length".

(101) Brazel, not knowing what he had stumbled upon, brought some of the crash into town and then to the Air Force base near by. Investigator then went to the ranch to survey the debris. "The material that they found consisted mostly of highly flexible metallic-like fragments and pieces of a light but stiff material that appeared to be covered with strange writing or figures". (Cohen 94) That day there was a press release put out by the military that stated UFOs had become a reality. (101) There was widespread hype about the event and the crash around the country. But the next day, the military put out another press release.

It downplayed the crash being of a UFO and the wreck was said to be a weather balloon with an attached radar reflector. (101) With this, any report of an immediate follow-up was hopeless. This shows that the government could have actually been covering up a UFO and trying to make sure the public didn't know about it or even believe it happened. The story was dropped and to this day the government still stands by their statement that the crashed object was a weather balloon. The press conference to repute the statement that the crash was a UFO is refered to as "Cosmic Watergate", which is the ongoing cover-up of the government's knowledge about extra terrestrial UFOs and their terrestrial activities. (102) Weather or not there really was a UFO crash, the event and cover up signified the difficulties and frustrations that UFO researchers have to go through to obtain documents and information about government knowledge of UFOs.

Even though the Roswell New Mexico crash was downplayed, it was not buried. People became skeptical and a new group of UFO hunters and UFOlogists were created. At the time from the late 1940's to the 1970's, there was a lot of talk in the American people about UFOs. The Air Force and government also became concerned. Out of this was born Project Blue Book.

"Project Blue Book was the Air Force's public UFO investigative agency from the late 1940's till December 11969". (103) Many believed that Blue Book was just another way the government was tying to silence the masses of believers and use it as a cover up for their extensive knowledge of extra terrestrials. What the government actually knows was not in Blue Book and "proof of UFO reality can be found in the classified files of government vaults". (103) But how to get to these documents was a problem for UFOlogists.

In 1970 congress passed the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA). It was later amended in 1974 to include the Privacy Act. (103) This act was a big victory for UFOlogists. With this act, UFOlogists set out with requests and lawsuits for information about government knowledge to be released. Groups like Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) "eventually unleashed a flood tide of previously classified UFO documents".

(104) A clear case of government cover-up was the CIA which had assured the public that their involvement in UFO activities ended in 1953 while after a lengthy lawsuit, they ended up releasing over one thousand pages of documents. Since then CAUS has collected over ten thousand documents from various government agencies such as the CIA, FBI, Air Force, and all of them concerning UFOs. These documents revealed very sensitive information about the government's involvement with UFOs. One document form the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) stated "several sensitive military bases scattered from Maine to Montana were temporarily put on alert after a series of [UFO] sightings in October and November of 1975. (104) Another smoking gun that was released from the FOIA was the Bolen dar memo.

The memo was named after its author, Brig. Gen. C.H. Blender, who was the then Air Force Deputy Director. This memo acknowledges, "Reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security... are not part of the Blue Book system". (104) What were government agencies trying to do to protect the secrecy of these documents? "Missing files are one problem. Files known to exist but kept under wraps, are another". (105) Many intelligence agencies who are and were suspected to having information about UFO said that the documents had been lost.

Some even went as far as to say that the documents do not exist when there is sufficient evidence that they do. A prime example of this is a case involving the ultra secret government agency the National Security Agency (NSA). In a court case involving CAUS and the NSA, CAUS was trying to get hundreds of documents released by the Freedom Of Information Act. When the CAUS attorney filed for the release of all NSA documents dealing with UFOs, they NSA denied that any such documents existed. Finally the NSA did admit that the documents existed but refused to release them on the grounds of national security.

(106) Even the judge in the court case upheld NSA's request for the documents not to be released after reading one of the agency's 21 page classified petitions. After about 2 years, CAUS was given a copy of the petition, but seventy-five percent of the lines were blacked out. This shows that even though there is the Freedom Of Information Act, anything can still be kept secret. This idea was best illustrated by a prominent UFOlogist when he said, "The American public operates under the illusion that the FOIA is some sort of magical key that will unlock all of the government's secret vaults and all you have to do is ask".

(106) I liked this source because it gave a brief and not to extensive history of UFO cover-ups. It was also split up into sections, which gave a good description of each title of the section and made it easier to understand. The information was easy to follow and helped me throughout my report. "The U.S. government has suppressed information about UFOs" My second source was titled "The U.S. government has suppressed information about UFOs. It was taken from the At Issue book titled UFOs. The article is actually an interview of Robert Dean who is a retired U.S. Army sergeant and a long time UFO researcher.

The interviewer was Bruce R. Anderson who writes for the newsletter UFO Update AZ. This source provided good information about specific government cover-ups and how it is done. This source is reliable because the man giving the information had accesses the information and had a reliable position in the military. For governments to cover up UFO reports and documents, there has to be a strict level of classification for documents. As Dean explains, in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the highest level of classification that a person or document can have is COSMIC TOP SECRET, and the ranking just under it being TOP SECRET.

Over the years security has become more intense, as Dean comments " In military operations in every service, this security thing has become a nightmare over the years. We created it ourselves. We did it during World War Two and the Cold War". (41) There are also problems with the classifications that are used. You can have the highest classification but still not be able to gain access to a document that you desire. You also might not even be allowed to know it exists.

"There are four star generals who don't know a thing about the UFO phenomenon". (41) This top-secret classification of UFO documents is almost like something from a movie. Top bureaucrats in intelligence agencies have been trashing on the U.S. constitution. (42) They are going against the laws and doing whatever it takes to keep things secret. The Department of Defense, who deals with classifying and what not has no one that watches over them. They have no supervision from any other part of the government.

The Department of Defense has over $50 million in black budget programs and is still growing. "The numbers were ludicrous enough during the Cold War, but now that the Cold War is over, they " re even more ludicrous". (Stacy 104) If government agencies deny they have any involvement in UFO activates, then why would they need more money? Even with this $50 million a year of tax-payers' money, they do not have to go to congress and account for any of it or say what it is actually being used for.

(42) Secret government spending that is unaccounted for is a large problem and needs to be exposed. Has evidence of UFOs almost started a full out world war? The answer to that is yes. Appearances and sighting of what were believed to be UFOs and other strange looking objects in the sky almost set off a full-scale war. As Dean reports", [America] and the Soviets and the Warsaw pact people had almost gone to war with each other a few times over the UFO matter". (403) Just to think that what was keeping America and the USSR on alert during the cold war was UFOs.

This was the side of the Cold War that the public did not know about. Large metallic objects would show up in the sky over Europe and the Russia. They would then demonstrate their flying capabilities, sometimes even showing up in formations. They would fly at high speeds and demonstrated capabilities not possessed by human aircraft.

Most of the time when they appeared over Europe they would stay there for about 30 minutes and then turn north over the English Channel and disappear off of radar, "it was almost a standard pattern". (43) They were obviously intelligently controlled and when the governments saw these events, they got very wound up. (43) The Soviets would see the objects in the air and think it was the Americans and the Americans thought it was the Russians. So then the Russians would go on alert and then we would go on alert. Then they would both close the Berlin gates. All without telling anyone or anyone from the public why.

Because of these events and a possible war over them, an investigation and report needed to be made. The report was called for by Air Marshall Sir Thomas Pike who was the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. The U.S. government would not help out with the report, so it was funded by the Secretary General of NATO. The investigation lasted from 1961 to 1964. When it was finally completed it was classified COSMIC TOP SECRET and only 15 copies were made.

With Dean having the classification of COSMIC TOP SECRET, he was allowed to view the report, a report that changed his life. Dean had found what he did not expect. In the study there were alien autopsy reports. (44) The report accounted that there had been an alien crash in northern Germany in the British occupied zone in the early 1960's.

At the crash were found 12 small bodies that were no more than four feet tall. Dean commented, "The bodies were the same. There was no reproductive capability that we could determine. There was no alimentary tract, no rectum, no teeth. It's almost like these guys were made in a lab somewhere.

They were all identical!" (45) This report has never been leaked and the only 15 copies of the report were given to those countries that were part of the investigation. The Assessment, as the report is called is still considered to be the most sensitive document that NATO has. (47) The report has such a high classification and his held with such immense secrecy that to this day even a five-star admiral of Great Britain, who knows about the document, is refused access to the report time and time again. UFOs are the most sensitive issue in the history of the human race and the most highly classified material in U.S. military security. "It's a multi-national cover-up". (47) Reports like this don't only prove that there is extraterrestrial life that is visiting our planet, but it also proves that there is an elaborate multi-nation cover up of UFOs around the world.

I really enjoyed reading and examining this source. It provided very interesting material that has led even me that there are UFOs. The information in the source was organized and descriptive. One of the other things that I really enjoyed about this source was that it game opinions; this helped me throughout my whole report.

"Great Conspiracies and Elaborate Cover-ups" My Third source was a book title Great Conspiracies and Elaborate Cover-ups, written by Daniel Cohen. It has chapters on various cover-ups throughout history. My main focus in this book was the chapter titled "The Extraterrestrial Conspiracy". This source contained good and relevant information for my topic. The source also proved to be reliable because some of the same information was found throughout my researching and because Daniel Cohen is a distinguished author with more than 150 books to his name. As shown in the sources above, there was believed to be a large UFO cover-up at Roswell, New Mexico.

In this source there is more information about the cover-up and how it was done. When interest in the Roswell crash started to gain momentum in the 1980's, many UFOlogists began to closely research the case and examine it with great detail. "Some stories indicated that the whole weather balloon story was fraudulent and the government knew it". (96) This lead to increased investigation and pressure on the air force and government to express their knowledge on the matter.

Even a few people came forward whom claimed to be a witness to the Roswell crash site. They said that the government had told them to keep quite about what they saw. There was even a much wilder story about Roswell. "There were rumors of a much larger crash near Roswell and of bodies of several space aliens found on the scene and hidden away by the U.S. government".

(96) These bodies of aliens are said to be hidden at an Air Force base right outside of Dayton, Ohio. While this story gained much of peoples' attention, it has no evidence to support it. With things like fake alien autopsy movies, and TV-movies, which caught the attention of the public, the pressure on the government was increasing to say something about the Roswell crash. Finally, "in September 1994, the Air Force admitted that, yes, there had been a cover-up at Roswell-sort of a cover-up". (97) The Air Force said that what fell onto the ranch of Mac Brazel was not an ordinary weather balloon.

It was aimed at putting censors high into the atmosphere in order to detect possible Soviet nuclear tests. (97) The balloon was part of a government project called Project Mogul. At the time of the crash the balloon and the project were top secret. That is why the Air Force didn't release the information regarding the balloon till after the Cold War had ended. I believe this explanation for the cover-up at Roswell as it sounds very true and believable. In general, the Roswell crash "was a simple case of mistaken identity".

(Stacy 102) Although this could seem to be the end of the investigation into the crash at Roswell, many UFO researchers and believers think that this is still another cover-up and the government is still hiding the evidence that there was a UFO crash. There is also another government cover-up that is said to involve a weather balloon. On January 8, 1948, an Air Force pilot name Thomas Mantell, was leading a group of four F-51 planes to investigate a UFO sighting over God man Air Force Base near Fort Knox, Kentucky. While chasing the supposed UFO, Captain Mantell radioed in saying, "I'm closing in on it now to take a good look.

It's directly ahead of me and still moving about half my speed... the thing looks metallic and of tremendous size". (98) Then, a short time later his plane crashed without any warning. The initial theory for the explanation for the crash was that Mantell had blacked out due to a lack of oxygen. There are still no facts to back up how he died but there is still the question of what was Mantell chasing? The Air Force said that Captain Mantell was actually chasing the planet Venus. At certain times and under certain atmospheric conditions Venus can appear to be enormous, even fooling experienced pilots.

(99) This is a very logical explanation what happened to Captain Mantell and can easily dismiss the possibility of the Captain chasing a UFO. However, at the time of the crash, Venus was not in a part of the sky where it could have possibly fooled captain Mantell. At the time, the Air Force was laughed at and began to look very idiotic. Eventually in 1951, the Air Force admitted that they knew what Captain Mantell was chasing; and they had known the whole time.

They said he was chasing a giant skyhook balloon from the top-secret government project Skyhook. (99) This explanation was even more believable that the Venus explanation for the crash. The Air Force believed that these details would quite any further stories of Air Force and government cover-up of UFO, but the damage had already been done. Many believed that this explanation was just another cover-up because many didn't believe the Venus theory. I think that the explanation for the initial cover-up is true.

If project Skyhook did exist and there were large balloons in the project, there is no reason why this should not be concrete evidence for the death of Captain Mantell and the end of a UFO cover-up conspiracy associated with the event. In today's times, the focus of UFOs and government cover-ups has been a secret military facility in Nevada. This facility is known to the public as Area 51. Area 51 is well guarded and the government refuses to say what goes on there. For a long time, the government even denied [Area 51] existed at all. (106) For a long time, Area 51 had no connection with UFOs and it was believed to be a site for the disposal of extremely hazardous wastes.

(106) This could be a good explanation for why the government might want to keep this facility a secret. Recently there have been a large number of UFO sightings in the area, and "the connection between them and a secret government facility has proven irresistible". (106) Many believe that the government is hiding UFO crash parts and bodies there and they are even flying the UFO spacecrafts. Although there is no evidence to support the theory that aliens and their spacecrafts are being hidden and tested at Area 51, the area and town surrounding the facility continue to attract believes that there is something going on. I do believe that some sort of aircraft testing is going on there but am not sure if it has anything to do with UFOs.

With the lack of evidence of UFOs being associated with Area 51, UFOs probably have nothing to do with the facility but something more like a top-secret military project. I liked this source because it gave a brief but descriptive history of major events in government cover-ups concerning UFO. This made it easy to follow and organize to write this paper. It also gave an opinion about events, which helped me form my own opinion about my topic. The information in this source was great and the author made it very clear and easy to understand.

4. What I Learned At first it was hard to find information about my topic. When I looked on the Internet I found almost nothing and when I did find something it contained only a bit of information on my topic and was highly unreliable. Finally I decided to look up some books in the library and I found a vast area of information. After looking through many different books that were on government conspiracies or were centered on government cover-up of UFO I was able to find three great sources. With these sources I had well over enough information to write about but not so much information that it would overwhelm me.

Through this researching I learned many things. I have learned that the Internet is not always the best place to find information and that your best sources may come from where you least expect them to. I also learned that you sould not give up looking for sources and you might have to broaden your topic. Since writing this report, my opinion on government cover-ups of UFOs has changed. I had a limited knowledge of what was really happening and I believed that every cover-up that had a connection with UFOs was a UFO cover-up. I didn't not know that there were other reasons for the government to cover-up things like these.

The information showed me that many of the government cover-ups were actually of secret military and air force project regarding the cold war. I now believe that the cover-up about Roswell and Captain Mantell were about secret projects and as I read on, the ideas that they were about UFOs became more and more far fetched. Also, regarding the refusal of classified documents to be released I believe that these documents have nothing to do with UFOs but with the Cold War and the governments developing projects to use against each other during the Cold War that might have some mention of UFOs in them. But I am still somewhat skeptical after reading the interview about the alien autopsy, since it comes from such a reliable and respected source. I am not truly convinced that that there are no government cover-ups of actual UFO crashes or bodies but I do believe that government cover-ups of UFOs are fake. I really enjoyed learning about my topic because I was so interested in it.

It gave me new insight and information that I had never known. I finally came to somewhat of a conclusion that government cover-ups are not actually about UFO but are more about secret government projects. Through this I learned that you can be easily persuaded to believe something you want to believe but with the right information you can form a good and somewhat correct opinion of the matter. Anderson, Bruce R. "The U.S. Government Has Suppressed Information About UFOs". At Issue: UFOs. USA: Green haven Press, 1999: 41-50 Cohen, Daniel.

"The Extraterrestrial Conspiracy". Great Conspiracies and Elaborate Coverups. Connecticut: Millbrook Press, 1997: 89-108 Stacy, Dennis. "The U.S. Government Is Covering Up Evidence of UFOs". Opposing Viewpoints. Omni Publications, 1994: 100-116.