UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record [Hardcover]

 

 

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I've been interested in UFOs for about 5 years now ever since my Grandfather told me about the 'foo fighters' (not the band!) that accompanied him and other allied pilots during WW2. I've read about all of the cases included in this book but it was still fascinating to see which of the hundreds of UFO cases "out there" made the cut. Leslie Kean included only those cases which had the most compelling and verifiable evidence, as you'd except from a sharp investigative journalist. It was also fascinating to read the cases from those who had experienced them directly, or from the authorities charged with investigating them. It was very different from what I was used to, which was researching these cases online where you always question the source and the motives of the author. In the book, Kean's sources are impeccable and her motives and those of her co-authors are clearly and reasonably spelled out.

This book represents the best review of the UFO phenomenon to date. It is written from a sceptical perspective and includes only the best cases on record from 1970 to 2010 including the Chicago O'Hare UFO (2006) and the Alaskan 747 UFO (1986). Even though I've read about these cases before I still get excited when I read about them and the details included for each case really make it easy to imagine you are there, experiencing these thrilling events for yourself. Fortunately, I was on holiday when I read it because I don't think I could have focused if I had to take a break to go to work! I almost wish I had not known about UFOs before I read this book because before it was published, finding the quality cases within required many challenging hours of research. I can only imagine what it would have been like to have read one fascinating case after another, in dazzling, unnerving, clarity, while not having to worry if it was fabricated or exaggerated.

The final third of the book talks about the history, psychology, sociology and politics of the UFO phenomenon and ends with a plan of how to move forward on this issue, both from within the scientific community and as interested observers. It's an incredibly powerful piece of writing, researched over 10 years and written in the last 2 years, it actually manages to wipe the UFO slate free of the lunatic fringe and misinformation on both sides (debunkers and believers). It's an attempt to drag all those who will listen into the middle ground of agnostic scepticism. Let's hope it succeeds and a new open, rational era in UFO research is starting.

Leslie Kean is an independent investigative journalist known for pioneering human rights work in Burma. As Director of the Coalition for Freedom of Information, between 2005 and 2009 she fought and won a FOIA federal lawsuit against NASA to release "lost" records on the 1965 Kecksburg PA incident. She is patient, persistent, tenacious and skeptical. Her new book, ten years in the making and two years in the writing, has received open endorsement from so many leading politicians and scientists that it just might be a game-changer.

The intended audience is not the committed reader steeped in the lore of UFOs or discussions of the ETH and competing origin-hypotheses. Plenty of books explore these subjects and their readership is, against the mainstream, pitifully small and marginalised. Such works, however well-researched, are often self-published or condemned to share shelf-space with political CTs, channelling and new-age mush; often undeservedly consigned to the ghetto of the kooky, ridiculed fringe.

Readers familiar with the works of Allen Hynek, Jacques Vallee, Tim Good, Jerry Clark, Stan Friedman, Richard Dolan and writers of similar calibre will find little new here, though they will find a few interesting nuggets. They are already persuaded of the evidence, and not the target audience for this book. These writers, collectively, have never effected political attitude-change: the contributors to this book are such serious, credible, high-profile people they just might.

Kean's target audience is professional academia, those involved in politics and the media, the skeptically-minded scientist with little familiarity with the subject matter due to its long contamination with fringe elements, and the concerned, civic-minded man or woman in the street who has never read a book on the issue and knows little of the powerful evidence for the existence of persistent strange aerial phenomena. The book is carefully crafted to bring the subject out of the UFO conference fringe and place it firmly centre-stage into the political and academic mainstream where it belongs; to make it a respectable and important subject for discussion. The argument is: These are responsible officials going on the record, and here is serious evidence of something real. You are irresponsible if you ignore this subject, or allow it to continue to be marginalised.

To this end, the book's tone is deliberately sceptical. The tag-line "Generals, Pilots and Government Officials go on the Record" describes exactly the content: only incontestable cases with multiple official witnesses plus supporting evidence have been chosen for inclusion. The author worked for years to contact and gain the confidence of these military pilots and high-profile government officials and to bring them together at the National Press Club in DC in November 2007. High priority is given to cases involving air force encounters; documented, confirmed, official. The contributors are truly international, confirming the global reach of the phenomenon.

This cautious tone, the international perspective and the author's avoidance of contamination by book jacket-cover endorsement from anyone associated with the "UFO community" sets this book apart from other work on the subject. This will be extremely difficult for a debunker to deal with, and that is the intention. Journalistic standards are high, so there are no "anonymous whistleblowers", no ID kept secret, nothing flaky or un-checkable. These establishment people have gone ON THE RECORD, and write in total around half the content of the 302 pages of the book. Introducing the section written by Nick Pope, Kean writes: "He is yet another example of the many officials and military officers who, as they became acquainted with UFO investigations by accident, flexed their skeptical muscles only to find themselves absorbed by the unexpected power of the evidence they had initially expected to disprove." The accumulated evidence presented is virtually un-debunkable.

Kean contrasts the relatively open way the UFO subject has been managed in recent decades by nations such as France, Belgium, the UK, Brazil, Peru and others, with the history of stonewalling and ridicule from all government and military bodies in the USA. Since the closing of Blue Book, the phenomenon no longer officially exists in the USA even though pilots, operators of military facilities and ordinary folk encounter it all the time. It's an Orwellian environment. What is to be done?

In the third and final section of the book, the author explores the nature of UFO secrecy in the US. She sticks to the facts as known and documented, and acknowledges the unsupported speculations frequently put out by various people in the UFO field about the cover-up inhibit understanding of the issue and serve to marginalise the subject. Her reasoning is logical, thorough and grounded.

In Chapter 26, "Engaging the US Government," Kean lays out the reasoned objective sought by the CFI:

"The coalition is asking for responsible action on the part of the United States concerning UFOs. We make this request not as an accusation of wrongdoing in the past, but as an invitation to join an international, cooperative venture under way now...we are seeking the creation of a small government agency to investigate UFO incidents, and to act as a focal point for action at home and for research worldwide."

Her objective is to bring about legitimization of the subject, so that scientific interest might be encouraged and government grants enable scientists in the academic, research and aviation fields to pursue serious study free of ridicule. She is not impotently shouting for "Disclosure" whilst remaining forever shut outside. She, and the impressive contributors to this book, ask for official recognition of the UFO issue as real, and for the establishment of a small agency to co-ordinate international study as a first step. No assumptions about the origin of the phenomenon are made: just that it exists, and needs to be acknowledged as real. It's a reasoned, achievable objective, unarguable in the face of the unassailable evidence presented here. That's why this book might be the catalyst for permanent recognition of legitimacy: in other words, a game-changer.

The production quality of the book is first class and the writing from all contributors literate, straightforward and completely free of typos. It has a logical structure, is an easy and absorbing read containing nothing extraneous, concerned with the facts and testimonies. It builds a compelling argument. If you haven't read it yet, maybe you should.

Kean commendably attempts to address the UFO subject from a rational standpoint in an effort to lift the topic out of the realm of the nutters and into serious journalism.

She has presented statements from a variety of military, scientific, government and aviation personnel, many of them high-ranking and retired, who give their recollections or analyses of unexplained aerial phenomena.

The cases referred to will be familiar to those already interested in the subject, though some may be surprised that she gives little or no coverage to many well-known personalities and stories, including Roswell.

The underlying focus of the book is on why the US persists in avoiding any engagement with either its own citizens or official bodies in other nations on the subject of UFOs. She explains that several countries have an open policy on the matter and some, most notably France, take UFOs seriously, not least because they pose a potential threat to air safety and she cites some instances where American nuclear missiles appear to have been rendered inoperative by UAPs. The US, she observes, does not respond to requests from other nations for its participation in UFO research. She and some of her contributors consider why this is the case.

Kean spent ten years researching for the book, so she presumably heard many stories of reverse-engineering from persons claiming to have worked on such projects and counter-claims that UFOs are a man-made cover for Black Projects. These topics would benefit from her approach but she gives them little attention.

Overall, there is a sense that she has chosen her cases with great care to avoid being linked with sensationalists, which is understandable, but for some the book may seem only half complete. It would be interesting if Kean followed up with a second volume which addresses, in the same serious journalistic and investigative manner, the subjects which she seems to carefully side-step in this one.

The paucity of photographs suggests extreme selectiveness of material. Following publication, Kean was dismayed to learn that the famous delta-shaped Belgian UFO, pictures of which she presents as a good example of an unknown craft, was admitted to be a hoax.

Nonetheless, this is a worthy, if cautious, start on bringing a much derided and taboo topic into the public domain in a format which puts scientific investigation first and disassociates the subject from its more outlandish adherents. It remains to be seen if this will be a one-off or if other investigators will follow her lead.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Best book I have read for a while
I got the kindle installed when the update came for my iPad 2.
This is the first book I bought as I am very interested in the subject and also saw the woman author on an... Read more

Published 18 days ago by Mr. David R. Kennedy

5.0 out of 5 stars oh for disclosure, this yerar maybe ??
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Published 29 days ago by steve m shaw

5.0 out of 5 stars UFO book to end all UFO books!
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Published 1 month ago by M. J. Everest

4.0 out of 5 stars UFOs Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On The Record
An interesting book on a controversial subject, which focuses on only the most credible witnesses, from astronauts to military and civilian airline pilots, police officers and... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Jason Graham

5.0 out of 5 stars The world needs to read this book .....
As a long-time researcher into UFOlogy (since I saw a large flying object in broad daylight in 1978 which disappeared as I looked at it) I have to say Leslie Kean's book is... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Mrs. Margaret Hannah

4.0 out of 5 stars A vital addition to the UFO debate
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Published 4 months ago by Steven Willis

4.0 out of 5 stars Mature reading on the subject of UFO
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Published 8 months ago by Anthony M

5.0 out of 5 stars very well written balanced and not sensationalist
Very well written not sensationalist, and full of balanced information UFO's are unidentified flying object not necessarily little green me from mars! Read more

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