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New Book Reports Soviets Behind Roswell UFO Scare
jalefkowit writes "A new book by Los Angeles Times Magazine investigative reporter Annie Jacobsen, titled Area 51, reports that that the famous 1947 UFO sightings in Roswell, New Mexico, were actually an attempt by the Soviet Union to demonstrate that they could panic the American population if they wished. According to the book, the UFOs were actually aircraft derived from flying-wing technology, piloted by 'child-size aviators' surgically altered by captured Nazi doctors to appear more frightening. Skeptics note that this account is based on testimony provided to Jacobsen by a single unnamed source, who she describes as one of only five engineers given full access to the crash debris at the top-secret facility in Nevada known as Area 51."
Silly claims about surgically-altered child-sized navigators aside, there is a connection between the Soviets and Roswell. Project Mogul, a top secret program to spy on the Soviets, was being testing near Roswell in 1947. One of their spy balloons was what crashed in that famous incident (and why there was a subsequent cover-story and cover-up by the local military).
In fact, if you look at the mass of "UFO" incidents, you'll notice a pretty consistent pattern. They almost always took place near secret U.S. air bases during the height of the Cold War. Doesn't take a genius to figure out that the strange lights, mysterious craft, and "men in black" that people were seeing had a lot less to do with little green men than with Cold War secrecy, paranoia, and spycraft.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Russians? Nazis? Not according to any movie I've seen.
This is an unsubstantiated claim and not a report. Absolutely ridiculous.
I know we're all naturally curious creatures, and love a good narrative, but no experimental technology, political conflict, or conspiracy surrounding a single crash in the 40s is going to have much bearing against todays in-use technologies, political conflicts, or conspiracies(if there are any). Whatever happened is essentially irrelevant today, unless it was aliens(it wasn't aliens).
It was called the Cuban missile crisis.
An obscure journalist attempts to demonstrate that she can capture the attention of the media by publishing yet another a crackpot conspiracy theory.
No matter how many people speak out the "truth", there have been so many wildly different stories and claims that everything automatically gets tagged as bullshit in everyone's mind.
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I'm more willing to believe it was an actual UFO.
And I don't believe in Alien UFOs.
This is the most convoluted conspiracy theory I've heard since the "9/11 was perpetrated by the US" and "Obama's Birth Certificate" nutjobs
You see, without that little doohicky, the universe stops.
http://propheteer.org
It's a shame that the stuff at the end (Stalin smuggled Josef Mengele out of Nazi Germany in the closing days of WWII so that he could surgically/genetically alter 13 year old kids to look like aliens for the purpose of starting a panic in the US that would delay the response to a preemptive Soviet attack- really?) will discredit what otherwise seems to be a well sourced history of cold-war research.
An actual alien crash landing is almost more believable than this "explanation".
the crap that is told by that book, is less believable than extraterrestrial visitors.
ironic that this shit came out a short while after fbi ufo disclosure (right or wrong) news hit the major news outlets.
aliens may be there, or not, but, THIS is the most incompetent piece of disinformation that can ever be attempted. 'child size aviators' my ass.
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Holy crap...the most batshit-crazy theory yet to explain Roswell, and it doesn't even point to a consipracy by our own government, or a shadow organization? Who would have thought?
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they would have made it public for a worldwide haha on the US!
Despite the claims being crazy, if the author is to be believed, all she did was take the claims of people who were working at Area 51 at the time and wrote a book on what they said to her. Blame those guys.
She was on the daily show last week; she seemed pretty sane, even if her story doesn't... Judge for yourself.
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This narrative doesn't make sense for any of the players involved. The only way you see the plastic-surgeried child pilot is if you're deliberately crashing the thing - at which point it is clear to the people picking it up it's "normal" technology and the child is clearly a clumsily mutilated (even modern plastic surgery is not going to conceal this kind of thing) human. It would have also been immediately clear who did it, why it isn't scary aliens, and it would have been reasonably hard to do (requires launching a plane deep into the US). It also wouldn't make much sense to keep secret - the message is simple: the Russians are weird douchebags who sent a over a plane with a dead kid.
Contrast that with another, significantly-less-crazy-but-still-pretty-crazy plan that could have actually worked: Have a weird formation of small planes with blinking lights. Send them around at night to New York. If you want, maybe blow up the Statue of Liberty with an unconventional mix of explosives while shining a big light on it or something. Get a whole bunch of weird coincidence stuff going too, broadcast strange radio messages and have it happen in correspondence with some astrological phenomenon. Then get out real fast before they can find your planes, and see that they have conventional propulsion systems and human pilots.
Anyways, I'm sure you or I could do better than the above stupid plan with a little time to think it out (heck, a rope and a cornfield works pretty good). Imagining that the Russians, with plenty of time to think through a plan that required significant commitment, couldn't do better than mutilated kid crashing a plane in the desert... is just so very dumb. I think the only people dumb enough to accept it would be the morons who already have an "explanation" (ie. those who believe it was aliens).
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Another get money and run book, but it is plausible at least.
...Conspiracy Theory^2.
That really isn't the story here, and she pretty much says that in all the interviews I've heard with her. The story is the fact that the organization behind Area 51, the US Department of Energy, can classify information so tightly that no one in the US Government (Including the President) could be deemed to have a "need to know" to see it. They are unaccountable and outside any system of checks and balances. Of course, that alone doesn't sell books so I can see why she trotted out the freak show.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"by a single unnamed source, who she describes as one of only five engineers given full access to the crash debris at the top-secret facility in Nevada known as Area 51."
Except that the crash debris was taken to the so-called "Hangar 18" at Wright Patterson AFB in Ohio and Area 51 was a bombing range in 1947. It wasn't until 1955 until they started doing stuff there... oops...
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CLearly she stopped applying all thought when she talked about child altered surgically and/or genetically.
In fact, in order to use emotions to make her claims more believable, she changes from a proper journals 3rd person writting to a 1 person writing.
IT's crap. Complete hearsay. She also made the classic blunder of people who start to buy in to this kind of lunacy: Made up security clearances.
At one point she said:
My source remains anonymous because he is afraid of what will happen. He is the last remaining engineer on a 5 man tame.
As if that wouldn't give him away to the very people she claims he is afraid of.
"Gosh Bob, we would shut this person up, be he is anonymous. We do know he was on the uber top secret project with pal;id levels security, and we know he's the only surviving member. But Who can it be?"
When pressed she started making up crazier and wider reaching 'theories'. I mean she was told by some guy who claim to have been on some project, and then uses the Ad ignorantiam ad the 'argument from authority' logical fallacies.
IT';s kind of sad. Watching a good journalist get sucked in like that.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You know, I was going along with the theory until we got to "'child-size aviators' surgically altered by captured Nazi doctors".
I recently heard an interview with Annie Jacobsen and this book is a huge load of crap. It's all based on third-hand information ("I was told by someone, who was told by someone...."). She claims that the aircraft was being remotely piloted by the Soviets and contained people, who appeared to be 12-13 years old, who had been genetically engineered by Josef Mengele (who went to work for the Soviets after the end of WWI) to look like aliens.. Of course she had no explanation of how Mengele genetically engineered a few 12-13 year old people in the 2 years between the end of WWII and the crash at Roswell. Not to mention the fact that the knowledge and technology for genetic engineering didn't exist at that time. She never did answer questions about the people in the aircraft -- did the US recover them? Were they alive? Were they dead? She just changed the subject and started talking about something else.
The entire interview was nothing but weasel words and lots of backpedaling whenever she was asked about specific details.
Roswell was a part of my family lore because a relative was with Army Air Force Intelligence at Roswell. Heard all about it since I was a very wee fellow. No, this new book is phoney baloney. Oh .. based on all accounts I heard over the years cannot confirm personally it was UFO or of alien manufacture. Relative certainly did think so. Said so on his death bed. Very strange event.
Was Area 51 even a facility back then? Whatever they recovered from Roswell went to "Hangar 18" - an environmental test facility at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH.
Even most skeptics agree on that (regardless of what they thought was recovered).
Anybody claiming Area 51 involvement in the Roswell incident instantly loses all credibility.
Because that is largely what it is, fiction.
Sad to see a moderately successful writer of average competence complete such a sad, misleading work.
Even the "New Right" doesn't spout much as flawed as what Jacobsen has done with her book.
15 minutes of fame- successful
Lifelong damage to credibility-absolutely.
No, not by the claims, but by the linked article.
I'm just impressed there's a site out there that's slower and more processor intensive than /.
She specifically warns the reader that she changed to the first person to give an accurate account from that single source (mentioned in the summary). Since she only had once source for that information, and the information appears to be extreme if even partially true, she told his story in a different way.
The Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross:
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/17/136356848/area-51-uncensored-was-it-ufos-or-the-ussr
Listen or Download link is right at the top.
As fun as slandering people is, two notes should probably be kept in mind. First, the vast majority of the book is about research told to her by multiple sourced first-hand accounts of what was going on at Area 51. As in, non-conspirational yet still interesting stuff. Second, as a commenter above noted, this is not Annie Jacobsen's crazy theory on what was happening. She took special pains to point out that this was a story directly recounted to her from someone who was supposedly directly involved, unfiltered by her bias. In fact, if I recall correctly, she actually says at some point that she thinks the whole story is highly unlikely.
Unfortunately, the media loves a good sensationalist story, so out of the whole book, this is the one extremely minor thing picked out of it to publicize, and people are trying to cast Annie Jacobsen in the light of the crackpot theorist.
How about actually finding out more about her and the book next time before you go maligning people like this? Oh, right. Because the media isn't the only one who loves a good sensationalist story.
This book is plain rubbish. I can't believe she got published with such attention, let alone almost a full hour on NPR.
Roswell explained:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2334857802602777622&ei=DoRESannBJLAqAL5p7z4DA&q=physics
This is a lecture on physics a Berkeley. It will take an hour but it explains the Roswell UFO stuff and why it was classified.
More fascinating IMO than aliens....
the famous 1947 UFO sightings in Roswell
Sorry, what UFO sightings? Does a crashed something-or-other even count as a sighting?
I watched the Nightline report on this book last night. Ms. Jacobsen claims that Josef Mengele was working with Stalin and the Soviets, developing these alien-looking children.
Josef Mengele, after WW2, was captured by the United States while he was FLEEING the Soviets. He used a fake name and was in a POW camp for a while, was released, and then escaped to Buenos Aires care of the ODESSA network, where he remained until the 1980s.
So, historically speaking, her story makes no sense.
Flying wings, piloted by child-sized aviators ... makes me think of the The Turk, piloted by a child-sized chess master.
-kgj
I remember i once read an article in a magazine that someone had recovered a piece of metal from the Nevada desert and had it analyzed. The author claimed this particular alloy was unknown on earth and gave the composition, i remember it had a particularly high nickel content.
My father was a mechanical engineer and I consulted his data books (this was around 1980, no wikipedia or google). I found an alloy that was very close to what was printed in that article, it happened to be a stainless steel designed for use in high temperatures.
So, the guy found a piece of a broken jet turbine near an air force proving grounds, went to all the trouble to have it analyzed, only to conclude it came from aliens...
...don't mean it have the latest information.
...did anyone else immediately get that idea?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you've read the book, or heard her discuss the book at length you might be a bit more informed to make comments. She -does not- make these claims on her own, nor does she report it third hand. She reports it as an addendum to the, most likely true, accounts of what the UFO's at Area 51 actually were ... experimental aircraft. The 'conspiracy' theory was not a leap of logic, it was a journalistic account told from an immediate source who supposedly worked on the 'alien' crash at Roswell. Don't jump to conclusions about the book, or the contents therein just because -you- do or don't believe in what happened or what you think about a 5 minute interview on a comedy t.v. show.
If I remember the history of the Roswell incident is that it made the news long after everything was cleaned up. Decades later did the stories come out about coverup and what people really saw.
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I heard her on NPR last week. She's nuts :)
All theories about Roswell need to address questions but don't. Why did Marcel & DuBose say what they did? Did they tell the truth? Did they lie? If you look at it from a simple standpoint it gets real easy.
1) They told the truth and we have been and are being visited by advanced non-human races.
2) They lied. This one gets a bit murky but it also makes sense. Why lie? Maybe they were ordered to? There was a cold war going on and if the Soviets thought we had super advanced technology it might put a crimp in their plans. Lets face it both were high ranking military men who served at the place and time the events happened. So they are old and near the end of life and someone from the DoD talks to them and says "one last time we need you to help out". They say what they are told to.
Given the other people in the area who also corroborate parts of their story it is either the best done pysop in history or they were telling the truth. I lean towards #1 but I'm open to other explanations. This current one ranks up there with the Japanese balloon bomb BS and is even less credible than the government's explanations. We may never know. I leave this discussion with the words of Ben Rich circa 1993.
"Anything you can imagine we already know how to do. We can travel to the stars."
Cheers
I am always amazed at how easy the people absorb the disinformation that has been thrown in their lap. Blaming things on the Russians is not a new concept, remember the cold war and the "Duck and cover" training. The truth is far more fantastic, and the security measures utilized to keep such secrets, extremely serious. We are not alone on the 3rd rock, the "big trailer park" of this side of the galaxy. However, you might be better off NOT knowing, Keeping in mind that everything you think you know about such "Alien technology", is already obsolete by over 50 years before it is allowed to become declassified, and entered into the public sector. This might be a good thing when you consider who is in control of earthy affairs, the massive corruption, how the planet resources are being abused, and their track record to date. .....Perhaps, this is why YOU pay others to loose sleep over such things, and why YOU still can sleep at night.
Think about this for a few minutes: Who would believe you if you were one of those who were selected, and making contact? How would you share their important Alien message with the world, without looking like a guest on Jerry Springer show? Do you think that dealing with something so intelligent, so advanced, and so powerful would be a fun experience? Oh, come on now, even if you had a real dead Alien sitting in your freezer, "they" would just report it to the news it was a shaved monkey, and another hoax along with the big foot and crop circle people. This is important part: Would such abnormal events such as Alien contact add anything to YOUR piece of mind, or personal life, or just get you some government approved medications?
Here is why you don't know: http://www.fas.org/sgp/isoo/sf312.html, and for those interested enough to turn off the brainwashing TV box, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13526