Prime Time Replay:
OMNI Editor Pamela Weintraub
on the reopening of Project Open Book
MsgId: *high_strangeness(1)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:09:16 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
Welcome to this evening's edition of High Strangeness. Since our regular moderators are, at this moment, investigating Loch Ness, we're taking this opportunity to host a chat on OMNI's Project Open Book.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(2)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:11:48 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
While we're waiting, I'll describe the inception of Open Book --a project aimed at openly investigating reports of UFOs.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(3)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:13:49 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
We have always taken an open, but skeptical stance on UFOs. At OMNI, investigating mysteries are the lifeblood. On the other hand, our feeling has always been that extraordinary claims --and we consider aliens and ET starships to be extraordinary-- require extraordinary levels of proof. Where's the evidence for a claim? That's what we want to see.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(4)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:17:54 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
So with each claim that comes our way --if it's an interesting claim-- we have taken the opportunity to investigate. We investigate not as a true believers, but as skeptics with open minds. If you say there are alien corpses at Roswell, we want to see the bodies. We want to find the biological evidence. We want proof. Nothing else will do.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(5)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:20:07 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
It was this philosophy that formed the basis for Open Book. In the past, we had always investigated UFOs as journalists. But Open Book was our effort to send investigators into the field.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(6)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:29:34 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 205.236.105.111
I don't know how the system works, but here it is... I started reading about Open Book from the beginning of the project and was agreably surprised by the quality of most of the articles. I especially enjoyed the one on UFO abduction where a victim was followed constantly during a certain time by your investigators. It must have been the first time this ever happened. Ongoing abducting experiences by the victim while your investigators noticed nothing unusual does cast a new light on the abduction principles.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(7)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:29:53 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
If anyone out there has any questions concerning Open Book, please feel free to ask.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(8)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:32:05 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
Yes, our investigators have taken a very careful and cautious approach. Perhaps that is why NONE of our investigators have ever found solid evidence for ET, even when others claim they have. We have always managed to find the flaw in the ointment, so to speak.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(9)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:35:13 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 205.236.105.111
Mrs. Weintraub: has your team come up with some definite conclusions about US and foreign governments trying to hide pertinent information on the subject of UFOs ?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(10)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:37:52 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
We have not found evidence for cover-ups of UFOs, where we have looked. But we have seen some evidence of cover-ups in which the government actually let the UFO interpretation go unchallenged to hide OTHER activity. This is true of the US and the then-Soviet governments.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(11)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:40:01 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
Secret Soviet space launches were often interpreted as UFOs, and the Soviets were quite thrilled that no one ever realized the truth. Likewise, military testing of prototypes in the US have been viewed as UFOs. There was no effort to correct the notion.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(12)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:41:43 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 205.236.105.111
This is a bit surprising. Some of the FOIA documents mention observations by NORAD personnel which had been denied at the time by the US military ..
MsgId: *high_strangeness(13)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:42:31 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
In the case of Roswell, which we investigated intensively for the better part of a year, we found no solid evidence for the alien theory and associated govt. cover-up...
MsgId: *high_strangeness(14)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:44:39 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
In fact, we investigated allegations that the government was covering up the disappearance of five nurses from Roswell. The chief Roswell investigators (not our people) had looked high and low and concluded these nurses had been erased from the Earth. They asked us to write a story about their findings, but instead, we decided to investigate the investigation. We found all five nurses in three days.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(15)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:47:09 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
We have found, in the UFO arena, a lot of slippery sands, and many rumors, and many investigators ill-equipped to carry out the work they do. This is not to say that there's no mystery, or that there's nothing worth looking into. Obviously, we don't believe that. We are compelled to investigate. However, in doing so, we find a level of sloppiness that would never be accepted by any legitimate science.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(16)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:49:52 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
The UFO world has also changed. Back in the early days of UFO pioneer J. Allen Hynek, who I knew and interviewed extensively, the investigators investigated reports of OBJECTS --daylight disks, cigar-shapes, and the occasional close encounter, where an object allegedly had touched down and left a mark. They could point to burns and impressions in the soil...
MsgId: *high_strangeness(17)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:51:41 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
I do not mean to suggest that these impressions, or whatever, were actually alien in origin --but only that the investigators were looking for tangible things. These days, the key is abduction, and in my opinion, the abduction researchers have ventured into Dream Country. Their tales are haunting, the stories they collect mystifying --but thus far, they have failed to come up with any physical evidence at all...
MsgId: *high_strangeness(18)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:52:09 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 198.6.71.10
Hmmm... wasn't the Roswell incident covered up because the high-altitude balloons were carrying radioactive materials to see how far they would be spread? Project Mogul, no?
MsgId: *high_strangeness(19)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:52:40 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
Where are those implants, man! The last one I heard about turned out to be a spot of natural calcification...
MsgId: *high_strangeness(20)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:54:54 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 205.236.105.111
Could the UFO phenomenon stand trial on circumstantial evidence? Like... For nearly 50 years now, keenly trained people have seen and carefully observed strange objects and/or beings... And we are still here discussing about "their" existence... This is, again, surprising. If I may, this looks like the "Scully Scientific Approach": I will doubt only scientists who deny.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(21)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:56:40 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
Well, the whole notion of Project Mogul has been disputed. Have you seen our story on this?...
MsgId: *high_strangeness(22)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:58:47 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 205.236.105.111
And, by the way, people dealing whith FOIA docs never encountered anything about Roswell. But they did find evidence of cover-ups in other cases. But it seems that, of course, we will still be addressing controversial cases, forgetting all the truly important stuff... [forgive the bitter tone]
MsgId: *high_strangeness(23)
Date: Tue Apr 15 22:58:55 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 198.6.71.10
No, I've not seen any articles from you about Mogul; my source is a physicist. What *his* source was, I don't recall.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(24)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:00:07 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 205.236.105.111
Another remark: UFOs are a scientific facts denied by scientists, not science.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(25)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:03:05 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 205.236.105.111
Some scientific fact: helium does not explode. Hydrogen will explode when mixed with oxygen. The problem with the balloon theory is that a balloon is filled with HELIUM not HYDROGEN. Thus: it DEFLATES, it does not EXPLODE.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(26)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:03:54 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
Sorry --my browser froze, oh well. Let me say this about Mogul: In an effort to answer the cover-up allegations, the Air Force had completed its own internal review. ..
MsgId: *high_strangeness(27)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:04:20 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 205.236.105.111
DEFLATING is a slow process. So, you cannot find tiny pieces... You find a WHOLE balloon :))
MsgId: *high_strangeness(28)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:04:35 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
Its "Report on Roswell," which was released in September 1994, identifies the so-called "weather balloon" as part of a once-top-secret experimental program, "Project Mogul," for monitoring Russian nuclear bomb tests. A page-one story in The New York Times of September 18, 1994, heralded this explanation as the long-awaited denouement of the Roswell Incident. Project Mogul, the Air Force and the Times agreed, dismissed the alien-spaceship tale as a modern myth. Proponents of the alleged saucer crash and subsequent cover-up, however, remain unconvinced by the Air Force...
MsgId: *high_strangeness(29)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:04:53 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
account. If the Air Force account is correct, of course, here is more evidence of the government letting UFO theories stand to hide top-secret or covert activity.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(30)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:08:37 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 198.6.71.10
And *my* source says that Mogul involved releasing radio- active dust at high altitudes from balloons, to see how far they'd be spread by the wind. Over populated areas, too, which is why the Air Force kept it covered up.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(31)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:08:58 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 205.236.105.111
Does anyone in this room think that, if the US Air Force ever recovers an extra-terrestrial aircraft, Bill Clinton will make a public statement ???
MsgId: *high_strangeness(32)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:09:51 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
I want to conclude with this, and I do hope you come back to chat further about this: Many UFO researchers feel that Roswell is the case that destroyed UFOlogy and any possibility that they will ever get a fair hearing. The reason is that evidence from Roswell --from the UFOlogists end-- is tainted, impure, and in general, sloppy beyond belief. If you look at the evidence, really look at the evidence, you will need to toss Roswell out as a case. Anyone who wants to make the case for an alien presence or visitation from ET will have to move beyond Roswell, because true students of the issue now say the evidence there is just useless...
MsgId: *high_strangeness(33)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:12:01 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 205.236.105.111
Mrs Weintraub, you think that, if the US Air Force ever recovers an extra-terrestrial aircraft, Bill Clinton will make a public statement ???
MsgId: *high_strangeness(34)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:12:17 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
You can believe what you want --there were a Cult of people who killed themselves because the believed it was the prerequisite for a rendevous with a UFO behind Hale Bopp. But if you want to prove UFOs are not just mysteries, but actual ETS, you will need to come up with the evidence. That's the only way to take it beyond what someone believes to the level of scientific fact. The proof has not been found.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(35)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:14:09 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 205.236.105.111
You are not answering the question Mrs Weintraub... You are the one who believes what she wants... not me ..
MsgId: *high_strangeness(36)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:14:46 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
Will Bill Clinton make a public statement? No, probably not. However, many people have looked into the Roswell incident for many years, and they have confounded the issue and delivered nothing but rumor and suspicion. Moreover, just because the government might hide aliens if they found them, it does not follow that aliens are here. There is still a need for evidence that meets the standards of science. Hope you will return for our next Open Book chat.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(37)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:15:17 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 205.236.105.111
Associating pro-UFO opinions to cult and mass suicide is demagogical and manipulative. Read your own magazine
MsgId: *high_strangeness(38)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:16:47 PDT 1997
From: Pam_Weintraub At: 168.100.204.58
BTW, one last thing, then I'm gone --I find it easier to believe that the government was hiding the release of radioactive dust than the presence of aliens, but either way, we need evidence if we are to embrace it as so. Again, thanks for the chat, and look forward to seeing you again.
MsgId: *high_strangeness(39)
Date: Tue Apr 15 23:37:16 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 207.158.98.183
Although I do believe we have been visited by aliens, I also believe that these so called believers like the Roswell bunch and others like them, Hopkins, Hynek, et all, do more damage to proving alien life than help. Specifically because they believe that almost anything is proof of UFO's, the abduction croud is the hoakiest of all. They're out there but I really doubt that our government is so all powerful that they could keep the kinds of things from us that are "supposedly happening", like the rampant abduction phenomena. A superiour or more advanced life form would not be part of our daytime talk mentality of life in the late 20th century. Think about it!
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