Whitehorse Star
October 27, 2000
The truth is out there, and appreciated
by Chuck Tobin
Star Reporter
A UFO specialist believes the top-level secrecy placed around the phenomena of UFOs is coming to an end, quickly.
Stan Friedman says it might
be as soon as five or 10 years when governments like the United States start sharing what
they know.
In the meantime, he suspects they secretly appreciate the efforts of UFO investigators
like himself and others who stand front and centre with their insistence that unidentified
flying objects do indeed exist.
Changing the traditional mindset with a barrage of information about UFOs, and making it
OK to believe in them, will only make it easier in the end for government to show its hand
and promote public acceptance, he says.
"I am an old man," jests the nuclear physicist by trade. "I want it to
happen pretty soon."
Friedman was among a list of prominent UFO investigators who headlined the Yukon's first
UFO conference held earlier this month. In addition to the headline speakers were two
eyewitnesses who told of their encounters with UFOs while living in the Yukon.
The theme of the conference, funded with a $17,000 grant from the Yukon government
millennium fund, was to highlight the wealth of international experience dealing with
UFOs, with an aim of reducing the ridicule faced by those who tell of their experience.
To the 304 who signed up for the conference, the internationally-renowned investigator
delivered anecdote after anecdote of what they laid before the audience as overwhelming
evidence of UFOs.
Disbelievers, from the layperson to the academic scholar, fall into one of a few
categories, Friedman says: They're ignorant of the facts; they want to steer clear of the
ridicule factor; they're unwilling to use the existing understanding of technology to
understand flying saucers, or their ego simply can't handle it.
Friedman recites a comment from a person he described as a prominent U.S. astronomer:
"If they were coming here, they would want to talk to me, and they have not asked for
an appointment, so they are not coming here."
The naysayers, Friedman says, commonly ask why there are never any sightings over large
cities; why only one person only ever sees a UFO; why are sightings only made by
crackpots; why there's never any radar confirmation of objects that can't be identified;
why there are never any pictures.
There's ample evidence on the books about sightings over large cities, confirmed by
several eyewitnesses, Friedman tells the audience. Multi-witness sightings, he insists,
are common-place. (Martin Jasek, conference organizer and local UFO investigator,
recounted the December 1996 incident, witnessed by 31 Yukoners, from motorists travelling
near Fox Lake to residents of Carmacks, Pelly Crossing and Mayo.)
Friedman said UFO reports are not just made by the town drunk staggering home after having
too many. They're made by pilots, air force pilots, commercial jumbo-jet pilots, and
professionals from all walks of life.
There are scads of radar records of unidentified objects, just as there have been
countless photos taken and produced, Friedman says.
In fact, says Friedman, public polls indicate the greater an individual's education, the
more likely he or she will believe in UFOs.
"So if you are a believer, you are the cream of the crop, not at the bottom of the
barrel," he tells the audience. "If you are a believer, you are one of the good
guys, you are on the right side of the tracks."
Friedman cites the famous case of a woman who drew a map depicting routes of space travel
after maintaining her and her husband were abducted in 1961, and that she had obtained the
information for the map from one of her abductees.
The chart never lined up through the mid -'60s with known three-dimensional charts of the
universe surrounding the earth. Only after 1968, when advancements in space measurements
allowed for a more accurate 3-D recreation, did the map line up, Friedman says.
The five or six stars connected in the map, including the sun, were all of the type - just
like the sun - where one could expect to see life begin and evolve, Friedman tells the
audience.
And some of those stars, he says, are as much as a billion years older than earth.
What if life in another part of the universe where to have a billion-year head start on
life on earth, Friedman asked the audience.
"Why is this relevant?" Friedman asks. "Because somebody with a billion
years' head start on us is going to know something we don't."
Friedman suggests by looking how far technology on Earth has come in just 50 years, one
can imagine where it will be in a million years, or even just 10,000 years.
The man who once worked on the development of nuclear rocket engines for the private
sector, under contract for the U.S. air force, recounted for the conference his experience
dealing with the Roswell, New Mexico affair.
It's believed by Friedman and others that two flying saucers crashed in the Roswell area
in the summer of 1947, and that the wreckages and alien bodies were recovered and put
under wraps by the U.S. government.
Friedman, who's co-authored and authored a book on Roswell and events surrounding the
incident, says he has every reason to believe the U.S. is covering up the event. He says
he's conducted interviews with dozens who were there, or who had family in the area at the
time. The evidence, he insists, is overwhelming.
And it was only in the early `70s while pursuing UFO investigations that he came across
the Roswell incident. Otherwise, it would still be lying dormant, he says.
News of a suspected UFO landing surfaced one morning in June 1947, and by the very next
day, the air force was hosting a media event to show that wreckage seen by eyewitnesses
had fallen from a radar-reflecting balloon. End of story.
But not for Friedman.
He suggests that if he can get his next book out within the year, along with a documentary
video, the shrouds of secrecy governments have placed over their UFO files will disappear
in as few as five years.
What would UFOs be doing in the middle of desert country, New Mexico in 1947?
Friedman says advanced societies don't typically take notice of the more rudimentary
civilizations until they have cause to, or perhaps feel threatened.
In 1947, he says, New Mexico was the only place on the planet where you could find
advanced atomic weaponry, the advanced U2 high-altitude spy plane and powerful radars; in
other words, the things that other life forms might take notice of.
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