\n
It began reliably enough early last January, when Editor &
\nPublisher, the exhausted industry watchdog monitoring the extinction of
\nnewspapers and their advertising revenues, found time to chide The Wall
\nStreet Journal for wasting 1A real estate on UFOs. The WSJ actually
\nplayed that story straight by tracking down fellow eyewitnesses to
\nDennis Kucinich\u2019s 1982 UFO sighting. The E&P was just doing what
\nit's supposed to do. Zzzz.<\/p>\n
A few weeks later, the libertarian
\nCato Institute \u2014 those stalwart sentinels for government transparency \u2014
\ndecided to terminate the services of adjunct scholar Dom Armentano for
\nwriting an op-ed piece in the Vero Beach News-Press. The economics
\nprofessor\u2019s crime? Advocating the declassification of federal records
\non UFOs. Had Armentano gotten the hook for writing about racism or some
\nother more conventional corruption, this would\u2019ve been news. But it was
\nonly UFOs. So who cared?<\/p>\n
And as the months went by, UFOs
\ncontinued to provide the media intelligentsia with easy rhetorical
\ndevices in which to gauge the stupidity of the American people. Eric
\nAlterman flogged the horse in March: \u201cVastly more Americans believe in
\nflying saucers and 9\/11 conspiracy theories than believe in the notion
\nof balance \u2013 much less \u2018objective\u2019 \u2013 in the mainstream news media\u201d
\nNicolas Kristof took a whack in April: \u201cThere\u2019s this embarrassing fact
\nabout the United States in the 21st century. Americans are as likely to
\nbelieve in flying saucers as in evolution.\u201d<\/p>\n
So 2008 was shaping
\nup as a garden-variety yawner. Until the drama over Stephenville, Tex.,
\nshook down. And as a result of the MSM\u2019s evaporation in the aftermath
\nof this still-unresolved national security fiasco, De Void has
\nproclaimed 2008 as The Media\u2019s Worst UFO Year Ever.<\/p>\n
To be sure,
\nthere was an initial stampede to the Stephenville region shortly after
\nEmpire-Tribune reporter Angelia Joiner\u2019s accounting of the Jan. 8 UFO
\nincident made the wires. TV crews came from as far away as Japan to get
\nthe story, and why not? There were plenty of loquacious witnesses to
\nthe lit-up, bigger-than-an-aircraft-carrier flying machine that glided
\nsilently over the little cow town and reversed its course. Eyewitnesses
\nincluded cops and a pilot. Better yet, several reported military jet
\nfighters scrambling after it.<\/p>\n
An Air Force Base at nearby Fort
\nWorth denied it had planes in the air that night, which was good enough
\nfor Newsweek. The emaciated weekly magazine didn\u2019t waste any precious
\nprint on the story, but it did run a \u201cWeb Exclusive\u201d by a \u201clecturer in
\nEnglish at Yale University\u201d who attributed the suppertime sighting to
\nsleep deprivation.<\/p>\n
But then, not quite two weeks after the
\nincident, as the hoopla subsided, Carswell Field made the surprise
\nannouncement that yes, it did indeed have warplanes in the air on the
\n8th. Not one or two, but 10. Ten F-16s. \u201cRoutine training missions.\u201d
\nIts press release said nothing about the UFO. Which raised another
\nquestion \u2013 why bother with issuing a press release at all? Why not just
\nlet the event die a natural death? The official statement went against
\nthe USAF's own interests. It meant the eyewitnesses were credible.<\/p>\n
Carswell\u2019s reversal generated another brief wire-service cycle, but it had nothing to fear from the media.<\/p>\n
In
\nMay, Dateline NBC promoted a UFO ratings-month special called \u201cTen
\nClose Encounters Caught on Tape.\u201d Host Hoda Kotb was more into rhymes
\n(\u201cTonight, an extraterrestrial creature feature!\u201d) and lame cliches
\n(\u201cThe experts can argue until they\u2019re as green as the little men whose
\nexistence they debate\u201d) as she reviewed UFO cases from as far back as
\nhalf a century ago. This lady had network resources to work with. And
\nshe said nothing about Stephenville. Zilcho.<\/p>\n
The reason for
\nCarswell\u2019s embarrassing press release became clear in July when the
\nMutual UFO Network uncorked an online bombshell \u2013 a 77-page evaluation
\nof radar records from 4 to 8 p.m. on Sept. 8 near Stephenville.<\/p>\n
In
\nresponse to MUFON\u2019s Freedom of Information Act request, the FAA
\nproduced a 139-meg CD tracking 2.8 million radar hits during that time
\nspan along the UFO flight corridor on a southeast beeline toward
\nCrawford, site of President Bush\u2019s \u201cWestern White House.\u201d The timeline
\ntapered off at 8 o\u2019clock sharp, the end of MUFON\u2019s request window \u2013
\nwith the UFO just 10 miles from Bush\u2019s ranch, and six miles from its
\nrestricted air space.<\/p>\n
Although the F-16s ventured into
\nunauthorized civilian air space and pulled to within a mile of the
\nobject, which carried no transponder and flew at speeds between 49 mph
\nand 2,100 mph, they were nowhere near the craft when it reached
\nCrawford. Neither Carswell nor any other Defense Department entity
\nreleased radar data, but the former turned over its flight logs for
\nthat evening, all of which had been redacted.<\/p>\n
\u201cFour days after
\nour FOIAs hit the FAA, they (the military) knew we\u2019d show they had
\nplanes all over the place that night,\u201d MUFON investigator Glen Schulze
\ntold De Void. \u201cThey didn\u2019t have much choice. Fort Worth radar data
\nshows the F-16s from takeoff the landing at Carswell Air Force Base.\u201d<\/p>\n
This
\nwas an incredible story. Especially the non-responses from various
\nmilitary bureaucracies. There was a brief allusion to the MUFON report
\non Larry \u201cnon sequitur\u201d King. But no wire service coverage. Not even
\nThe Wall Street Journal. During the first public presentation of the
\ndata in San Jose, Calif., in July, the San Francisco Chronicle showed
\nup, but its reporter didn\u2019t have a clue.<\/p>\n
\u201cA chart full of purple
\ndots and black arrows that may or may not indicate aliens flew over
\nPresident Bush\u2019s Texas ranch in January,\u201d wrote Steve Rubenstein. \u201cThe
\ndots and arrows on the chart are as plain as day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schulze, a
\nresident of Littleton, Col., couldn\u2019t even draw ink from the hometown
\nmedia. But he pointed out that the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain
\nNews managed to cover Denver rez Jeff Peckman\u2019s press conference, which
\nadvocated spending municipal funds on an extraterrestrial liaison
\ncommitteee.<\/p>\n
During the September sweeps, ABC Prime Time aired a
\nrehash of Peter Jennings\u2019 \u201cSeeing Is Believing\u201d report from 2005. There
\nwas a brief mention of Stephenville, but reporter David Muir didn\u2019t
\nbother to question military authorities about the FAA records. Which
\nappear to have documented a serious breach of national security. Just
\nfor the record, when contacted by De Void, Carswell PIO Maj. Karl Lewis
\nsays his employer has no comment on what he describes as MUFON
\n\u201cspeculation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finally, in November, during the last ratings
\nperiod of 2008, CNN\u2019s Miles O\u2019Brien filed a week-long UFO series
\n(pre-empted by the terror attacks in Mumbai) without mentioning the
\nStephenville case once. Internet cassandras charge O\u2019Brien was
\nterminated immediately thereafter because he dared to venture into The
\nGreat Taboo. CNN said it canned O\u2019Brien and its entire science staff as
\na cost-cutting measure, and there\u2019s no reason to doubt that. No
\nsinister government agency could've possibly been threatened by
\nO\u2019Brien\u2019s UFO reporting.<\/p>\n
Stephenville was the only UFO story that
\nmattered in 2008, because it was one of those rare instances where
\nfederal records supported eyewitness accounts. It showcased a military
\nresponse to a threat against the home of the United States president.
\nAnd the Air Force got away with its lack of accountability (again)
\nbecause the press wasn\u2019t interested.<\/p>\n
Which raises another question: If the MSM\u2019s stunning financial collapse hits critical mass this year, will anyone notice?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
http:\/\/www.heraldtribune.com\/article\/20090101\/blog32\/901010279&tc=yahoo<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omniversity.us\/exopolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}