FBI Relents, Confirms Previously-Denied UFO Investigation (muckrock.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader v3rgEz writes: A Freedom of Information Act request for FBI files on a figure at the center of dozens of 20th century conspiracy theories reveals a rare glimpse into the Bureau's real-life "X-Files" -- which the agency had long maintained don't exist. And while there's no evidence yet of Mulder or Scully, the files do include a story of flying saucers and secret assassins stranger than anything on the show.
Specifically the documents detail the FBI's 1947 investigation into "flying discs" reported by early conspiracy theorist Fred Lee Crisman, describing "the Maury Island Incident" (picked up by U.S newspapers) which helped popularize the legend of UFO witnesses being detained by "men in black". Ironically, Crisman was later linked to one of the CIA's anti-Castro groups, connecting him another popular topic for conspiracy theorists: the assassination of President Kennedy.

Comments

Possible explanation

[zifn4b]

Perhaps they didn't admit to the investigation because it's embarrassing how much time and energy was put into investigating a hoax?

Re:Possible explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if they were "Hoax(s)" that doesn't mean investigating them wasn't worth doing.

Look at the crop circles fad that happened in the 90s, etc. That ended up proving several new geometric proofs (in relationship between circles and triangles IIRC)

Investigating Hoax(s) are worth the time of the FBI, if nothing else than to produce a back-catalog of hoaxes and how they were preformed.... BUT... the key to this is transparency and oversight... something the FBI has NEVER wanted (Ignoring the events over the past 6mos that are a prime example)

Re:Possible explanation

[Calydor]

Hell, even if the FBI laughed their butts off at the idea of an extra-terrestrial craft crashing on Earth they would STILL go check that it wasn't a Soviet nuke!

Re:Possible explanation

[Zocalo]

I recalled something on this too, so I did a little Googling. Turns out that a former Chair of the Astronomy Dept. at Boston University called Gerald S. Hawkins did indeed propose some theories based on designs found in crop circles. There's more than a little kookiness in the search results because a lot of the nature of the topic, not helped by some echos of Gödel Escher Bach with some musical connections in his findings, but there does appear to be some genuine math behind it - although it's questionable whether the perpetrators of the crop circles were just using trial and error or actually doing the math first. Basically, it all comes down to relationships between nested regular polygons that touch at each vertex or mid-point of an edge, e.g. a circle that touches all four corners of a square and so on. Euclid documented many of these, but Hawkins supposedly found a bunch of new variations that he (or anyone else) failed to find any evidence of past proofs for; it's hardly up there with Pythagoras' theorem, but they are genuine geometric theorems.

Re: Possible explanation

[Zocalo]

No, that was my point - I thought I'd emphasised that in the last line. It might - quite literally - have come out of a field of study riddled with hoaxes and kooks, but it does appear that Hawkins discovered a set of previously unknown Euclidean-style geometric relationships in his meticulous study of the various designs the perpetrators used.

Re:Possible explanation

[lgw]

Heck, the FBI was involved in the one big conspiracy-coverup we know was true from the 20th century - and the UFO investigations were key to it.

When game-changing new airplane designs from stealth technology to the SR-71 were being invented, during the height of the cold war, it was all about secrecy - but what do you do about eye-witnesses to these odd-looking planes, including people like pilots that it's hard to write off as kooks? You investigate each reported sighting as a "UFO sighting", and then loudly deny that you're investigating UFO sightings.

The plan seems to have worked pretty well - eye witness reports and even some photographs of experimental aircraft were dismissed as fakes by the public - and as far as we know, by the Russians. The more interesting the reports - triangular aircraft with no tails, aircraft moving faster and higher than anything known - the more easily it was dismissed as "UFO nuts". Brilliant plan, really, and the only modern conspiracy I know of that actually kept a secret long enough to matter.

Re:Tin foil hats

[PopeRatzo]

Time to put on your tin foil hats boys and girls!

I wear a tinfoil condom, because that's where my wife said my brains are located.

Re:Carl Sagan

[HornWumpus]

UFOs are often convenient cover for secret flight tests.

That gives the government an incentive to encourage UFO nuts. There are a few documented cases of UFO nuts being worked for years.

The types of Aliens people encounter varies around the globe (S. America, Africa; Eaters, giant jaws, football heads, Europe, N. America; Anal prober greys, Asia; another pattern which escapes me). So either most are culturally acquired or the earth is subdivided by continent/alien species.

Re:Brilliant Timing

[Sperbels]

the evil scary Russians are haxxoring the election

I don't see why this wouldn't be considered a possibility. The CIA has engineered the leadership nations all over the world to make sure they maintain subservient to US interests. Why wouldn't Russia attempt to gain a favorable outcome from a system which is demonstrably vulnerable to tampering?

Re:Reality....

[SuricouRaven]

The best conspiracy theories have some truth in them.

Take Roswell, for example. A mysterious craft crash-lands in a small town. Locals find it, and many people witness the wreck. It's made of strange materials, so light they almost float on air, and elaborate machines like nothing ever seen with parts far beyond any technology they were familiar with. Before news spreads far, men from the government turn up with big guns - they load the wreck into a truck and take it away, never to be seen again. The witnesses are told never to speak of what they saw, threats of jail are made should they do so, and the local media are ordered to report it only as a crashed weather balloon.

All that is true. You can see where the conspiracy theory started: There really was a genuine conspiracy and cover-up. The only thing popular culture got wrong was the reason behind the conspiracy: It wasn't an alien craft, but a high-altitude military balloon used for long-distance detection of Soviet nuclear tests. Super-advanced (for the 40s) military technology, but not alien.

Area 51 is another good case. Secret base, top-secret-classified to the point the government barely even acknowledges it exists, lots of heavily armed men guarding it (mostly again UFO-hunters trying to sneak in), good fodder for a conspiracy theory because there is a genuine conspiracy. It even has stories of strange and alien-seeming craft seen in the area, including a few flying saucers - and stories of the military trying to silence the witnesses with threats of imprisonment. But again, the conspiracy isn't really aliens: Area 51 is an experimental aircraft testing and development site.

There's also a separate and rather too-plausible conspiracy theory that Area 51 has been seriously violating environmental law by burning all sorts of toxic substances in open-air fires rather then go through proper disposal methods, and in doing so caused damage to the health of contractors at the base, then hiding behind top-secret classification in order to block any attempts at investigation or legal action against the government. The lawsuit was abandoned due to lack of evidence, because all records of the alleged incident are classified and so could not be used in court.

"Second Covers"

[Ungrounded Lightning]

UFOs are often convenient cover for secret Re:Carl Saganflight tests.

That gives the government an incentive to encourage UFO nuts.

A lot of the cold-war-era "conspiracy theories" sound like "second cover" stories. That's a psychological technique for diverting investigation into some large-enough-to-be-worth-the-effort secret project. Works like this:

Plant TWO cover stories. The first is plausible but misdirection. The second is fruitcake-nuts (but ideally has aspects that look attractively like actual artifacts of the project being hidden). Somebody investigating what is going on first hits the first cover. If he accepts it, fine. If he notices it doesn't quite fit and digs deeper, he finds the obviously screwy second cover. Oops? Now what?

The tendency of the more rational is to reject it - but bounce back to the first cover and give up there. The less well-hinged may report the second cover (much to the glee of the security people). Few are going to keep digging past both to discover some approximation of what's really going on - and if they DO get there and talk about it in public, if they happen to have said anything related to the second cover story (or even if the HAVEN'T), they can be debunked by painting them as having accepted the self-evidently tinfoil-hat-grade second cover story and propagating a variant of it.

The "conspiracy theories are always wrong and insane" meme is very convenient for this as well (as it is for any actual conspirators B-) )

Re:Carl Sagan

[Lord Kano]

Having Top Secret Clearance is not the same as having a need to know for compartmentalized information.

Moreover, he could just have been lying.

LK