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 that he?d seen the interior of the

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.