ABC special on UFOs - 'Seeing is believing'

By PETE HARTINGER   The Circleville Herald    Wednesday, April 27th, 2005

On the night of February 24th ABC television had a special 2-hour presentation about the ufo phenomenon. This was in a prime time slot from 8 to 10 p.m. Peter Jennings was the host.
     The first hour had positive information about the existence of UFOs.  The Phoenix Lights of March 1997 were discussed. A large triangular shaped craft went over the state of Arizona.  A few hours' later flares were seen near the mountain range by Phoenix.  The skeptics tried to explain them as the earlier UFO sighting. Thus the descriptions were totally different.
     There was an excellent animation of the January 2000 Illinois sightings by 6 different witnesses of whom 5 were police officers. This unknown object was seen in the early morning hours over a large area of southwestern Illinois.
     Several airline pilot testimonies were shown of UFOs being seen by both military and civilian pilots. One outstanding case was the Minot, North Dakota sighting on 24 October 1968. It was at the Minot Air Force Base where nuclear weapons were stored. Ground personnel saw the strange looking object along with a B52 crew that was in the sky at the time. There was a total of 16 witnesses altogether. The official explanation was stars. Again, this does not fit the eyewitnesses' descriptions.
     The second hour of the special involved the usual debunking.  The skeptics again said that UFOs are just a belief.  As I have stated before, "knowledge is not a matter of belief or desire, but a matter of evidence.  Evidence was not mentioned such as; freedom of information documents, car engine failures, landing trace cases, radar returns, etc.

     Dr. Frank Drake of the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) program had misty dyes when he said it would be a Special moment when you hear a distant intelligent radio signal. What does he think when eyewitnesses have a dramatic ufo sighting? You might call that a special moment to the eyewitness who never forgets. I know.
     The Roswell Incident was shown but the government explanation wasn't given about the bodies being parachute dummies. This was ridiculous because Roswell occurred in 1947 and the parachute dummy program was in the early 1950's.
     It was reported that Professor J. Allen Hynek, formerly of The Ohio State University, was one of the few scientists who later stated that UFOs were real. That is because he was one of the few scientists heavily involved in the research.  He was the chief civilian consultant for the U.S. Air Force for many years.

     Scientists talked about the speed of light being the fastest means to travel in space.  They don't like to admit that this is our present day knowledge.  A former U.S. astronaut admitted this to me in a personal interview in March 2002.

     Peter Davenport was shown at the end of the program. He operates the UFO reporting center in Seattle, Washington.  By the way he was presented on the TV special, it made you feel that he was the only one to report UFO sightings to.  Recently, he has received an increase of sighting reports because of the publicity of the ABC program.
     The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) was not even mentioned on the 2-hour program. It is just one of the largest UFO reporting organizations in the world.  Many qualified UFO investigators are in every state in the U.S.  I represent Pickaway and Fayette counties in Ohio.  I talked to John Schuessler, retired NASA engineer, on the phone and he stated that the ABC crew took a lot of material from MUFON headquarters in Morrison, Colorado.  A lot of this material involved some very good UFO cases.  John is mystified, as anyone, why MUFON was not even mentioned on the program.
     Dr. Steven Greer is head of the Disclosure Project.  He claims to know some 400 "insiders" that know UFOs do exist.  He has taken many video statements of ex-military and government witnesses. This includes 2 former astronauts.  They are all favorable to the UFO existence.  Like John Schuessler, Steven Greer is also mystified why the Disclosure Project Was not even mentioned on the special.  The ABC crew has also went over much of the material that he amassed
     You can read all the monthly MUFON journals dating back to 1994 at the local Circleville Library.
     Also there is the 4-hour video Disclosure Project video that you can borrow and take home, if you are a member of the library.
     On our web site, www.roundtownufosociety.com you can read Stanton Friedman's response to the ABC Special. It is one of our listed links.  You can go directly to Stanton's website, www.stantonfriedman.com.  Stanton is one of the world's leading ufologists.  I have met him on a few occasions.  He is a retired nuclear physicist.

     In conclusion about the program, it makes you feel as if ABC News only wanted you to hear about part of the evidence of the UFO phenomenon, for whatever reason.
     Astrophysicist Bernard Haisch contends, "We are in the curious situation today that our best modern physics and astrophysics theories predict that we should be experiencing extraterrestrial visitation, yet any possible evidence of such lurking in the UFO phenomenon is scoffed at within our scientific community."