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Showing posts from August, 2011

The Battle for MUFON, Part 4/5, The Firings and Resignations

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This information is taken largely from interviews recently conducted on Jerry Pippen’s www.ufoshows2go/mufon_under_seige.htm . “We looked around and the bodies were lying everywhere. We looked at each other and said, Well I’ll be damned.” And so, the troupe of newly and summarily fired started a group called The Committee to Reform Mufon. (From Elaine Douglass, founder of the group) In the early months of 2011 a surprising number of MUFON State Directors, Field Investigators, and Assistant State Directors were either dismissed, urged to resign, or resigned in protest. Two of the biggest names, Ken Cherry (former State Director of TX) and James Carrion (former International Director), had already left. Several members left with Cherry, but once they were gone, things stabilized. For a while. Then the investigations began, but they didn’t follow the kind of logic that would leave a sense of closure. Stunning Arrogance Chase Kloetzke, Star Team Manager under Clifford Clift (not th

The Battle for MUFON, Part 3/5, The Disappearing Cases

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This information is taken largely from interviews recently posted on Jerry Pippin’s www.ufoshows2go.com/mufon_under_seige.htm . What could possibly go wrong with Robert Bigelow funding If Clifton Clift, the International Director of MUFON after James Carrion resigned, thought that dismissing Ken Cherry (former State Director of TX) would settle the oncoming ruckus, he was wrong. Rattled by a pattern of unsettling and mystifying events, the insurrection continued. In Chase Kloetzke’s interview (member since ’96), she described her thrill at being named Star Team Manager for MUFON. She promised her friend Elaine that if she couldn’t be honest and straightforward she would resign. She assured the State Directors that she would not by-pass them, steal cases, or bully their Field Investigators. That made everyone happy. Even after Cherry left, “they had every part of me that was good.” She had an impressive resume of service to the military to prove that she had expertise. Essentially,

The Battle for MUFON, Part 2/5, The Contract

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The information below is from recent interviews by Jerry Pippen at www.ufoshows2go.com /mufon_under_siege.htm. The deal between MUFON and BAASS It changed MUFON. It generated mistrust, recriminations, secrecy, and bitter fights. The contract between MUFON and Bigelow Aeronautic and Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) was signed in February 2009. Here is how the Committee to Reform MUFON described it in a March 2011 email to the members of MUFON: “According to the contract, Bigelow is buying ‘the Seller's existing CMS database. . .and all other data,’ as well as ‘field investigative services and all information and material derived from those services, including but not limited to. . .physical evidence. . .photographs, film, data from detection devices. . .radar. . .satellite data, ground disturbance site information. . .electronic information, interview transcripts, any testimony, including recordings. . .as well as any other item that may be recovered from prior, present and fut

The Battle for MUFON, Part 1/5

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UFO history is once again being made. The UFO phenomenon really hit the airwaves in 1947 with three major cases. I will only name them here because in UFO lore they are already famous. I speak of the Roswell crash, the Maury Island case, and Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of the discs that became known as flying saucers. The Air Force got involved with Project Sign in 1947, which became Project Grudge In 1949, and Project Blue Book in 1951. In 1953 another committee produced a report called the Robertson Panel, which concluded that UFOs are not a significant threat to public safety or national security and do not require official attention. Scientists interested in UFO research, experiencers, and believers all found the methodology and conclusions of these projects to be extremely unsatisfying. In 1969 Project Blue Book (which should have been called Project Eyeroll) was closed. That year another committee report, the result of two years of study, came out to settle the question once and