UFO Guide Interview with Stanton Friedman

UFO Guide Interview with Stanton Friedman

By Billy Booth

UFOs/Aliens Expert

It is an honor for me to be able to conduct this interview with the world's most well known, and foremost UFO researcher, Stanton T. Friedman. I want to thank him for taking the time to answer some questions for our readers. If you haven't already done so, be sure to check out his latest book, "Flying Saucers and Science."

Thank you Mr. Friedman for answering some questions for our readers. It is a privilege to be able to pick your mind on the study of UFOs.

Billy: Being a nuclear physicist, how did you first become interested in the study of UFOs?

Friedman: In 1958 while working as a young nuclear physicist for the General Electric Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Department in Cincinnati, Ohio, I was ordering books from a mail order place and needed one more book so I wouldn't have to pay shipping costs. There was "The Report on UFOs," by USAF Captain Edward Ruppelt, marked down from $2.95 to $1.00 which would have been shipping costs.

He had been head of Project Blue Book in the early 1950s, and the USAF was co sponsor of our ANP program. I thought he ought to know what he was talking about. Turns out it was a very good first book. It intrigued me, but didn't convince me. I read about 15 more books some of which were junk. Then at the University of California, Berkeley, Library I found Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14, a privately published volume which hadn't been mentioned in any of the books. Biggest study ever done. Chock full of data establishing some UFOs were alien spacecraft. I talk of it in detail in my "Flying Saucers and Science"

Billy: In your book, you list three categories relating to UFO reports, those that are eventually identified as "known" objects, those that do not have insufficient date to make a determination, and those that can be classified as legitimate unknown flying objects. Project Blue Book and other governmental UFO research groups determined the legitimacy of a report by the social class of the reporter, according to J. Allen Hynek. Do you also subscribe to this theory?

Friedman: No, I don't. I knew Allen and never heard him express this view either. They were bound and determined to show there was nothing to UFOs and lied a great deal about their evidence. On my web site www.stantonfriedman.com there is a paper "Government UFO Lies"

Billy: Do you believe that Blue Book, and other study groups originally set out to misinform the American public, or did they decide this after seeing that there was sufficient evidence to show that UFOs could have an extraterrestrial source?

Friedman: There has clearly been an official policy to minimize the evidence and even to lie about it. There has been a Cosmic Watergate involving many agencies such as the CIA, NSA, NRO, etc as discussed in my book.

Billy: It is obvious to me, and many others who study UFOs, that the American government is covering up UFO related information. Obviously, the fewer people who guard these secrets the better. Do you feel that there is a small group of scientists and researchers who are privy to this information, and they answer to no one, not even the President?

Friedman: I think that a highly classified group like Operation Majestic 12 indeed is privy to the secrets and not talking about them as described in my book "TOP SECRET/MAJIC." I update the MJ-12 story in "Flying Saucers and Science." Remember that intelligence agencies such as the NSA, NRO, CIA, etc go on forever. Presidents come and go.

Billy: In your book, you refer to SETI as a cult. Can you explain that to us?

Friedman: Cults have charismatic leadership, strong dogma, strong resistance to outside ideas, and a enlarged notion of their own importance. They make claims rather than review evidence. They are looking for signals produced by an advanced civilization and constantly say there is no evidence for UFOs. They never refer to the large scale scientific studies that I discuss in "Flying Saucers and Science."

Maybe they should learn sign language since they have absolutely no idea how advanced civilizations would communicate or why they would send signals to a primitive society whose major activity is tribal warfare. That's us.

Billy: We often hear rumors that SETI has already received a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization. Are these only rumors, or is this a possibility? Do you have any "insider" information for us?

Friedman: I have seen no evidence whatsoever that SETI groups have actually received a meaningful signal from another civilization. Frankly, I would be surprised if they do. I expect advanced civilizations have communication techniques way beyond what we know. I don't use a slide rule any more. We are assuming that aliens are stuck at our level of technology. Silly assumption.

Billy: There is a policy to be followed by SETI should they receive a signal from an extraterrestrial source. Do you believe that it would be followed should contact be made, or would this be kept from the peoples of the world?

Friedman: I think the radio astronomers would follow their procedures to avoid looking silly. Impact would be minimal. Especially if, as they expect, it would be from hundreds of light years away. The civilization may have already disappeared. Hard to have a meaningful conversation.

So far as I know, no civilization on Earth has authorized radio astronomers to speak for them. That is why we have foreign affairs specialists. As described in the book, I think announcements should be international, carefully done, and include conferences on the political, religious, economic implications.

Billy: Do you believe that events like Santilli's "alien autopsy," or the Jeff Peckman-Stan Romanek "alien video," although causing a lot of media coverage about UFOs, ultimately hurt the cause of Ufology?

Friedman: Hard to judge. The Santilli stuff did cause a great deal of discussion worldwide which is probably good... even if the story was phony. I reached that conclusion years ago after meeting with Santilli, twice. I don't know what to make of the Romanek-Peckman stuff. Didn't look great on Larry King.

Billy: It is common knowledge that you are one of the foremost experts on the Roswell crash. Even though it is still being investigated, and the subject of new books, do you think it will be ever be solved? Or, has it already been solved?

Friedman: Although I am the original civilian investigator of the Roswell Incident, as described in "Crash at Corona," I have no idea if the full story will ever be released. It is clear that alien wreckage and bodies were recovered. We may never know what the government learned from them.

Billy: In your book, and in your public presentations, you have often said that an alien race "can get here from there." Do you believe that ultimately, science will discover a way for mankind to traverse these great distances to other galaxies?

Friedman: I try to avoid talking about other galaxies at all. I am interested in the local neighborhood of the Milky Way. Within 55 light years of here, there are about 2000 stars of which about 46 are very similar to the sun. The Galaxy is about 100,000 light years across and has perhaps 200 Billion stars. The next big galaxy over, Andromeda, is over 2 Million light years away.

I can't imagine any reason to be concerned about what is happening there. I am concerned about intra-galactic communication and travel, but not about inter-galactic visitations. Yes, of course, I believe trips to nearby solar systems will be feasible if we want to spend the money. Nuclear fusion would be a good starting process. I worked on that almost 50 years ago.

Billy: Some Ufologists, believing that space travel is beyond our capability, subscribe to the "alternate dimension" theory. Do you believe this idea has any value?

Friedman: I have no idea what people mean about such matters. Maybe we can warp space and time. We don't need to know how they get here to establish that there are visitors. The sun was a fusion factory for 4.5 billion years before we determined that is the energy producing process.

It was fusioning for a long time before we figured it out. Technological progress comes from doing things differently in an unpredictable way. It is humbling to realize how short our tech history has been compared to the age of the neighborhood.

Billy: Can you tell us what you consider to be some of the best documented cases of aliens visiting our planet?

Friedman: There are 10 outstanding cases in Paul Kimball's "Best Evidence" video including the RB 47 case, and the Iranian jet case.

There is the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill in New Hampshire in 1961, as described in "Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience." There are the 41 outstanding cases described by Dr. James E. McDonald in his Congressional Testimony of 1968.

Billy: What are your thoughts on the O'Hare Airport sighting, and the recent sightings in Texas? Do you believe they were adequately investigated?

Friedman: The O'Hare case was an excellent case involving as it did testimony by a number of United Airlines employees. There is a detailed 150 page report by Dr. Richard Haines of NARCAP (National Aviation Reporting Center for Anomalous Phenomena) chock full of data. There has been some concern about the adequacy of the MUFON report on Stephenville. It seems too bad that the original reporter lost her job. There is always room for improvement.

Billy: One last question: What do you think it will take for us to solve the mystery of UFOs?

Friedman: A massive effort on the part of a media group putting as much into an investigation of the Cosmic Watergate as the Washington Post did into its investigation of the political Watergate. I won't hold my breath. It seems clear, as reported in my book, that aliens are visiting, that there has been a massive cover-up, and we are dealing with the biggest story of the millennium.

Billy: Thank you again for this opportunity. I know our readers will find your answers most enlightening.

Visit the Stanton T. Friedman web site.