THE SCARIEST THING ABOUT UFOS (IT'S NOT THE ALIENS)
Mar 29, 2024 17:39:56 GMT -6
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Post by auntym on Mar 29, 2024 17:39:56 GMT -6
www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-scariest-thing-about-ufos-it-s-not-the-aliens/ar-AA1k1q3G?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=c6b052392a0b4512ab4608225f4760ce&ei=21
LA Times
The scariest thing about UFOs (it's not the aliens)
Opinion by Mark Athitakis
Garrett M. Graff is a veteran reporter on the U.S. military and security apparatus: His books include 2011’s “The Threat Matrix” (on the FBI and the war on terror) and 2017’s “Raven Rock” (on government doomsday scenarios). His new book, “UFO,” steps into murkier territory. Since the dawn of the Cold War, he finds, the government has gathered information on inexplicable airborne incidents and strategically withheld details from the public. One CIA document from the early ‘50s noted that the Air Force was keeping an eye on UFO enthusiasts such as California’s Flying Saucer Committee “because of its power to touch off mass hysteria and panic.”
Since 2017, as the government has been more public about the phenomenon, the conversation has sobered up somewhat. But any discussion about UFOs still involves engaging with matters of paranoia and wild imaginings. In this conversation, edited for space and clarity, Graff spoke to The Times from his home in Burlington, Vt., about the book’s inspirations, how UFO conspiracism intersects with Jan. 6 and why the “giggle factor” still stands in the way of knowing what truth is out there.
In the book you mention being interested in UFOs from the time you were in college. What inspired you to research a book about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence?
In 2020 I saw an interview with former CIA director John Brennan, who said something along the lines of, “There's some stuff flying around out there that we don't know what it is.” I've covered Brennan for years. He has spent his entire career in the upper ranks of the U.S. intelligence community. I think there can't be that many mysteries in John Brennan's life; if he wants to know the answer to something, he has a $16 billion-a-year intelligence apparatus that can deliver him the answer by the end of the day. If he thought there was something interesting and worthy of further study up there, I thought that was something worth trying to explore in a book.
How did you separate fact from fiction? I imagine you were overwhelmed with stories about abductions and sightings and cattle mutilations.
I tried in general to keep my thread as the U.S. government's debate and discussion around this subject. There's a lot of ufology and paranormal-adjacent stuff that is important to know for a full understanding of the history of the subject. But that fundamentally doesn't impact the government's view of the subject. What I tried to zero in on was 75 years of the U.S. government's involvement.
In that light, the book is also a kind of shadow history of Americans’ distrust in government through much of the 20th century.
Yes. The early stages of the flying saucer age really is the story of the start of the Cold War. Early on, the government doesn't really care whether UFOs are aliens. Once the Air Force figures out that UFOs are not secret Soviet craft being built by Nazi rocket scientists, they lose interest in the subject, even though there's probably still a pretty interesting answer out there about what these crafts are. By that point, the subject has taken hold in public popular culture, and then it becomes a story of ever-rising public interest and pop-culture attention, driven by ever darker conspiracy theories about what the government may or may not be hiding.
CONTINUE READING: www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-scariest-thing-about-ufos-it-s-not-the-aliens/ar-AA1k1q3G?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=c6b052392a0b4512ab4608225f4760ce&ei=21
LA Times
The scariest thing about UFOs (it's not the aliens)
Opinion by Mark Athitakis
Garrett M. Graff is a veteran reporter on the U.S. military and security apparatus: His books include 2011’s “The Threat Matrix” (on the FBI and the war on terror) and 2017’s “Raven Rock” (on government doomsday scenarios). His new book, “UFO,” steps into murkier territory. Since the dawn of the Cold War, he finds, the government has gathered information on inexplicable airborne incidents and strategically withheld details from the public. One CIA document from the early ‘50s noted that the Air Force was keeping an eye on UFO enthusiasts such as California’s Flying Saucer Committee “because of its power to touch off mass hysteria and panic.”
Since 2017, as the government has been more public about the phenomenon, the conversation has sobered up somewhat. But any discussion about UFOs still involves engaging with matters of paranoia and wild imaginings. In this conversation, edited for space and clarity, Graff spoke to The Times from his home in Burlington, Vt., about the book’s inspirations, how UFO conspiracism intersects with Jan. 6 and why the “giggle factor” still stands in the way of knowing what truth is out there.
In the book you mention being interested in UFOs from the time you were in college. What inspired you to research a book about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence?
In 2020 I saw an interview with former CIA director John Brennan, who said something along the lines of, “There's some stuff flying around out there that we don't know what it is.” I've covered Brennan for years. He has spent his entire career in the upper ranks of the U.S. intelligence community. I think there can't be that many mysteries in John Brennan's life; if he wants to know the answer to something, he has a $16 billion-a-year intelligence apparatus that can deliver him the answer by the end of the day. If he thought there was something interesting and worthy of further study up there, I thought that was something worth trying to explore in a book.
How did you separate fact from fiction? I imagine you were overwhelmed with stories about abductions and sightings and cattle mutilations.
I tried in general to keep my thread as the U.S. government's debate and discussion around this subject. There's a lot of ufology and paranormal-adjacent stuff that is important to know for a full understanding of the history of the subject. But that fundamentally doesn't impact the government's view of the subject. What I tried to zero in on was 75 years of the U.S. government's involvement.
In that light, the book is also a kind of shadow history of Americans’ distrust in government through much of the 20th century.
Yes. The early stages of the flying saucer age really is the story of the start of the Cold War. Early on, the government doesn't really care whether UFOs are aliens. Once the Air Force figures out that UFOs are not secret Soviet craft being built by Nazi rocket scientists, they lose interest in the subject, even though there's probably still a pretty interesting answer out there about what these crafts are. By that point, the subject has taken hold in public popular culture, and then it becomes a story of ever-rising public interest and pop-culture attention, driven by ever darker conspiracy theories about what the government may or may not be hiding.
CONTINUE READING: www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-scariest-thing-about-ufos-it-s-not-the-aliens/ar-AA1k1q3G?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=c6b052392a0b4512ab4608225f4760ce&ei=21