Goverment Cover Ups Essay, Research Paper
Government Cover-ups
by
Megan Garza
College Bound English
Mrs. Riley
Jan 1,2000
There has always been a big controversy over weather there really are
extra-terrestrials, and flying saucers. UFO is another way to sum up both of these.
Remember that UFO means unidentified flying object. It does not stand for alien. There
has also been a lot of speculation about there really being aliens and the government
keeping the citizens in the dark for various reasons. Howard Blum had an interesting way
of looking at the situation. He said, ?They?re covering up not what they know, but what
they don?t know. They?re embarrassed, and even a little frightened, by their inability to
explain certain phenomena (Huyghe 92).?
Many people take the ?lite? view of things and thinks the government is just as
baffled by the UFO phenomenon as the rest of us (Huyghe 94). Some people even feel
that the Air Force was aware that flying saucers were from another planet but they were
covering up the fact to percent public panic (Huyghe 93).
Many people speculate about the United States Air Force and Army bases being
so secretive because they are hiding flying saucers and such. One such place is called
Area 51. A terrestrial black hole into which some think millions of tax dollars go each
day, regardless of the fact that they don?t tell us anything about the place (Dane 50). One
of the reasons people think that the government is hiding things is because Area 51 and
other such Military bases are guarded with such heavy security. Armed, unidentified men
stalk the sagebrush in camouflage, unmarked Black Hawk helicopters sweep the hills,
and electronic sensors are hidden along the approaching roads (Dane 50).
There are different kinds of sightings and encounters with UFOs. Distant
sightings are more than 500 feet away, close encounters are nearer than that (Dunn 6). If
a UFO is seen at a close range but leaves no evidence you can see or touch, that?s a Close
Encounter of the First Kind (Dunn 6). A Close Encounter of the Second Kind is said to
leave evidence, such as pressed down or scorched plants (Dunn 6). When someone
claims to have seen the occupants of a UFO, that?s known as a Close Encounter of the
Third Kind (Dunn 6). A report of contact with occupants of a UFO is called a Close
Encounter of the Fourth Kind (Dunn 6).
I am going to tell you about five UFO encounters that are quite mysterious as to
weather it really was what the government wanted us to believe it was.
The first UFO encounter is known as the Roswell Incident. There was a UFO
crash in Lincoln County, New Mexico. It was in early July in 1947. The Air Force base at
Roswell Field had a ?flying disc.? It was taken to the Eighth Air Force Headquarters in
Fort Worth. Commander Brigadier General Roger Ramey said it was from a weather
balloon. By 1990 the Center for UFO Studies interviewed 250 individuals who were
somehow related to the incident. Those who talked about the debris said it was not of
earthly origin. Witnesses said the craft had an undentable thin foil that after it was folded,
returned to its original shape with no sign of ever being folded. Some informants claimed
that bodies not of human beings had been recovered a mile or two away (Huyghe 92).
This encounter was one persons word against another, but it could be that the commander
was trying to hide something he or somebody with higher authority, didn?t want known.
The second UFO encounter is known as the Disc in the Desert. In the Seventies a
veteran UFO researcher known as Raymond Fowler was investigating Fritz Werner. In an
sworn statement Werner swore that on May 21, 1953 he and others were driven to nearby
Indian Springs Air Force base. They were put on a bus with blackened windows and
informed that they were to participate in the recovery of a ?supersecret Air Force
vehicle.? After four hours they were let out. They were shown an oval shaped object that
?looked like two deep saucers, one inverted upon the other,? about 30 feet in diameter.
His job was to determine how fast the craft had been traveling when it hit the sand. At
one point Werner claimed he happened to look into a tent at the site; there he saw the
?dead body of a four-foot humanlike creature in a silver, metallic-looking suit.? When he
was leaving he talked briefly with an airman who said tha
craft where there were ?two swivellike seats as well as instruments and displays.? All
participants were sworn to secrecy. Another investigator, Leonard Stringfield,
interviewed a former Air Force metallurgist who claimed that in the spring of 1953 he
had been flown blindfolded to a ?hot and sandy area? to participate in the recovery of a
vehicle much like the one Werner described (Huyghe 93). Here we just have these two
mens words, but I find it strange that both could describe the same event without
conversing with their stories first.
The third UFO encounter is known as the Navada Crash. In April 18, 1962 North
American Air Defense Command radar tracked a glowing red object moving west across
the United States. By the time it reached the Southwest it was close it was close enough
that witnesses on the ground could hear a roaring sound when it passed. Witnesses
reported the UFO landed near Eureka, Utah for a few minutes before resuming its flight.
It disappeared from radar screens 70 miles Northwest of Las Vegas just as witnesses saw
an aerial explosion. In the Eighties Kevin Randle interviewed witnesses, one had been
stationed at Nellis Air Force base. The man claimed that he and other soldiers had been
put on a bus with closed windows and taken to a site in the desert to pick up the
wreckage of what looked like a flying saucer. The soldiers were told only that the craft
was something secret (Huyghe 93). So now we find out the even the soldiers in the
different sections of the Military are kept in the dark about what they are doing, and what
things are.
The fourth encounter is known as the Kecksburg ?Acorn.? At 4:15 p.m. on
December 9, 1965 thousands of people in the Midwestern an Eastern states saw the
passage of a glowing object that left a smoke trail visible for 20 minutes after the object
was gone. Investigators concluded that the object had been moving slightly faster than
1,000 miles per hour in a southeasterly direction from Flint, Michigan. Meteors move at a
rate of at least 27,000 miles per hour. The object was moving towards Cleveland where
it made a 25 degree turn and headed east. People observed it descend in a smooth and
controlled fashion. People who went into the woods that night discovered a large gold,
acorn-shaped object that emitted a strange blue light. In a band along the side of the
object was hieroglyphiclike writing. People were ordered to leave when an Army flatbed
truck came. They saw they truck leaving with a giant upright acorn-shaped object
covered with a tarp (Huyghe 92). In this incident people saw the object, but the Army
apparently didn?t want more people to see it because they covered it with the tarp.
The fifth and last encounter is known as the Tex-Mex Episode. In 1977 a retired
Air Force Lieutenant Colonel said in a sworn document that he and another pilot had
been flying a f-94 in the experimental stage, out of a Texas Air Force base. Ground radar
told them a UFO was about to come into view. They watched a disc-shaped object make
a 90 degree turn. They asked to chase it and were told not to. Radar tracking indicated
that the UFO crashed near the Texas-Mexico border. The Colonel landed their jet,
boarded a light plane, and flew to the crash. They saw the object in the sand. The
Tex-Mex story first surfaced during an investigation by W. Todd Zechel. During the
exercise there was an alien being claimed to have been recovered (Huyghe 93).
There are many encounters and unexplained phenomena, most are recorded in
Project Blue Book. At the end of a 22-year operation more than 700 sightings listed in the
Project Blue Book logs remained unexplained (Cooper 81). There are many that have
been explained but also the 700 that have not.
It is really up to you to decide weather you believe in UFOs or not, but the way
the government tries to hide, and cover-up things certainly makes me wonder about the
truth. Like Howard Blum said, ?They?re embarrassed, and even a little frightened, by
their inability to explain certain phenomena (Huyghe 92).?
Cooper, Vicki. ?UFO Update.? Omni v 11. March 1989: 81.
Huyghe, Patrick. ?What the Government Isn?t Saying About UFO?s.? Omni v 13.
December 1990: 91+.
Dane, Abe. ?Flying Saucers: The Real Story.? Popular Mechanics. January 1995: 50+.
Dunn, Jerry. ?Unidentified Flying Objects.? National Geographic World. December
1993: 6.