Turning the Page on UFO History
By: Mark Hammons
Tags: Belief, History, Oceans, News, UFO

As Above, So Below

By the 1970s, for example, on the basis of a few non-technical but widely distributed books that ignored readily available geological evidence to the contrary in existing peer-reviewed scientific literature and also deliberately misquoted referenced source material to bolster a presumed truth, John and Jane Public were trained to know perfectly well that there was never such a place as Atlantis. Case closed. Nothing to see here, move along.

The oceans were declared empty of everything except protein on the fin, exotic ecosystems at great depth around smoking fumaroles, and nuclear armed submarines playing cat and mouse. Sound familiar in terms of looking up into the heavens?

In this putatively conclusive paradigm, the vastness of water covering three quarters of the planetary surface could not possibly conceal anything else of interest except nodules of rare and precious metals to be gouged out of the seabed. People in general now take their ease in knowing for certain, because they have been so told, that there is nothing to be seen down there but a few strange looking marine creatures and a lot of mud.

Yet, persistently recurring accounts from the U.S. Navy, which spends a great deal of time submerged in the seas with highly sensitive tracking equipment powered up, point to the existence of unidentified craft that are doing in the water what UAP do in the skies. Whatever they are, these things dramatically outswim human technology.

With ufology titularly determined as being about flying objects, things that go bump in the seas have been unconsciously relegated to lesser consideration. And yes, not least because actual evidence is even harder to obtain than for things remaining inaccessible at high speeds in the sky. Things in the atmosphere can fall to earth and deliver us of physical debris, whereas things sunken into the sea tend keep heading further out of reach.

Naturally, the curious questioning arises, what are these reported undersea contacts doing? Are they just loafing about, possibly looking for really fresh sushi, or maybe hiding out from humans? Well, that last can’t be true, because we know they are there, so perchance these things are submerged in the oceans because they might be beyond our reach to interfere with whatever purposes they do have. Or do they come from there in the first place? Do USOs exist first, and only when they emerge from the water become UAP? Just saying beware the linguistic prejudice; they don’t have to originate in the sky for all you are encouraged by words to look for them there.

The account of the Atlantic ocean floor now lodged firmly in the minds of most people allows only for abyssal plains littered here and there with human-originated shipwrecks. No civilization lost to our awareness is permitted because someone already said so, making a now fossilized case with cherry picked information and a cheerful exclusion of anything not fitting the picture frame. Because, you know, they wanted to feel good about themselves for solving an age-old mystery to their own satisfaction. The existence of Atlantis was concluded with non-existence, because that outcome fit their conceptual bias and they enjoyed the warm fuzzy of second and third edition royalty checks.

The Predicament Was a Set-Up

The intelligence masters conducting the UFO coverup tried the non-existence approach, too. Many messengers were killed, one way or another. The non-existent still kept being a bothersome presence. When non-existence and threats written into non-disclosure agreements failed, there were balloon dummies to fall back on, the eternal presence of Venus in the sky, St. Elmo’s fire and ball lightening in a pinch, or when all else failed, some fresh iteration of swamp gas.

Also, it could be convenient to provide titillating disinformation with bogus manufactured documentation so that people had something new and deliciously distracting to chew on (ah, disclosure at last!). These could later be exposed as another example of what did not exist except in gullible minds. Tar babies are a core presence in ufology.

All this churn was dutifully sorted out, examined, and recorded to the extent possible by hundreds of sincere, dedicated researchers, even when their work was deliberately misused by a host of people profiteering on the flaky edge. These ufologists, too, wrote many books, gave multitudes of lectures, and risked a great deal of harm to their reputations and sometimes their physical wellbeing (James E. McDonald, RIP). They undertook these endeavors, well described by the fine words of President John F. Kennedy in a separate but related context, “…not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Credit where credit is due.

However, ufology researchers were caught in a bias of their own. The predicament was a setup, too. As long as the coverup existed, there was only available to them the defensive posture of proving something was there worth examining. As the old saying goes, denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. In this case, refusal to acknowledge the worth of the subject was the means of controlling the conversation, something that peaked in sequential successes with the nefariously preconceived Condon report and shallow public relations exercise of Project Blue Book. The coffin was nailed shut in public, but it has since been confessed by FOIA-retrieved documents that the body was never in that particular casket anyway.

Long hardened-in-place control cracked with the confirmation by the U.S. Navy in 2020 that they do not know what these clearly present things are, that they persist in coming and going at will with no respect for our idea of national security, sometimes appear to be playfully toying with fighter pilots, and their capabilities exceed known human technology by an exponential factor.

Light shines thinly from that crack, to be sure, but if there is one single moment where historians hence can point to as being the beginning of disclosure, that instance is available to be chosen as the pivot away from the old history people were taught over the length of a human lifetime. The libraries, archives, and secret stashes accumulated by ufologists constitute the chronicle of the contending experience of getting here. Lovely to know these resources exist in fruitful abundance, and they may come in useful here and there as we go along, but we are arriving at the end of arguing about the reality they were compiled to prove.

Already out in the world, there are people dedicating themselves to debunking the advanced flying objects shown in three Navy videos as artifacts of our own recording equipment. In doing so, they expose their own purpose all too clearly. Resistance is still entrenched against changing the story of non-existence. The amount of technical data acquired by the Navy in their encounters with UAP is not limited to a few grainy videos, and their newly installed scanning equipment on hand at the time was bleeding edge. We don’t have access to that data, and neither do those wanting to continue to exercise the perks of denial. However, the Navy does, and they have made their announcement.

There will always be some people interested in the valiant struggle undertaken by ufologists.

As a human tale, the subject notwithstanding, few histories, maybe none others, are as replete with obfuscation, lies and deceit over such a long period of time.

Now, however, the work of ufologists is being rendered moot in one important respect. As disclosure unfolds, as more reliable bits and pieces come into view, there will be a central fact on which rests all further account. These things are not unidentified anymore. No matter what we do or do not know about them, or come to call them, they are acknowledged to exist.

A memo about what we are supposed to call them may come soon. We will need a new name for the field of study, as well. Maybe those governing the coverup have already chosen it for us. They know already where we are going to wind up, and what we are likely to think. After all, that’s been their job for a very long time.