The Congressional Recommendation

When I began writing this blog back in April, referencing events purely in chronological order wasn't possible, though things are a little more orderly for the moment. In fact, some of the more important entries were inserted in those first few weeks.

Nevertheless, I always knew that once a little chronological order kicked in, this very moment would arrive -- an occasion where I would bring before my readers something of curious significance. As usual, I'll let you be judge and jury.

In recent years I've mentioned the existence of "the letter," and various Web sites comment either correctly or incorrectly about the circumstances. But the truth is, I doubt that I ever showed the document itself to more than six people. Okay, maybe ten people, but, then again, probably the number six is too high. For three decades I've carried a photocopy in my wallet, just in case (of what?), and I even made sure it was a very poor photocopy, just so that if I did show it to somebody they would say with extreme doubt, "Oh yes, sure, look at this thing, it's an obvious fake!"

No, actually the letter is quite real. I'm proud of the whole thing, but. . .then what? So what? What to do? Where to go with this?

If you've read this blog from the start, you know that I've included several letters from former, now deceased, Syracuse Congressman James M. Hanley. Jim Hanley, as I've said previously, was one of the best congressional representatives Central NY ever knew, and he served several terms beginning in the early sixties. The James M. Hanley Federal Building in downtown Syracuse was constructed and named in his honor.

Prior to the 1976 elections, congressional redistricting or some such activity resulted in my area being represented by another congressman, and on at least one occasion when I tried to contact Rep. Hanley about some matter his office wrote back, replying that congressional courtesy required that the new representative handle my letter because Mr. Hanley no longer covered my area. I was (obviously) a chronic letter writer in those days on numerous matters, so dealing with a different office really presented no problem. Well, not until. . .

Until Jimmy Carter won the presidential election in 1976. As many people know, Carter believed he saw a UFO in 1973, and the kicker was that classic June 8, 1976 National Enquirer article in which Carter was quoted to say, "If I become President, I'll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public, and the scientists."

Upon reading that, my dilemma surfaced like a periscope smashing into an iceberg. What if? What if Jimmy Carter won? Would he? Would he really do it? Would there be a new UFO project?

And what if I communicated some thoughts on UFOs to my "new" (Republican) congressman's office, with which I'd conducted nowhere nearly the level of correspondence about UFOs that I had with the other (a Democrat) for over 10 years? I truly doubted that anybody there would care, particularly because this was the opposing political party. I didn't care which party was which, just that they represented two opposing sides, and there's nothing like politics to muck up the best of intentions.

So I took the chance and wrote my original congressman, hoping this letter wouldn't get passed on like the other. On November 12, 1976 I wrote Jim Hanley a long letter, reaffirming my interest in a comprehensive UFO investigation after Carter assumes office. This was the time when my articles appeared in national magazines and I was teaching the UFO course at a college, and I simply posed the question, how could I be considered for a position in any proposed UFO project the Carter Administration might initiate? I wasn't a scientist, so the strengths I could offer would include anything involved with an historical perspective, publicity or writing in such a project.

Based on past expectations, I fully expected the letter would go to Rep. William Walsh, my then-current member of Congress. However, much to my surprise, Hanley sent me a letter on December 1 (displayed here), informing me that he had forwarded my letter to the Carter-Mondale transition team for a response.

However, my sense of surprise ascended to cascading explosions of astonishment two weeks later, when a December 15 letter from Rep. Hanley arrived, accompanied by a December 6 letter from the Carter transition staff, signed by the prominent Frank Moore, one of Jimmy Carter's key people.

Yes, the letter's words are routine, but all of this came about because Rep. Hanley had taken a giant step by actually recommending me to Carter's staff as a potential UFO project participant. I never for a moment anticipated that he would put his name and immensely golden reputation on the line by doing for me this incredible kindness.

That's where the story ends. There was no follow-up by Carter's people, apparently no UFO project and certainly no clandestine midnight meetings between men in black nor hooded alien figures and I (I bring these folks into the mix only because some inventive bloggers hovering on the edge out there may be looking for precisely this improbable collaboration, and I don't wish to deny them their impressions).

I do suspect, however, that I may be the only UFO researcher, and probably the only anybody, ever awarded a congressional recommendation to work in a government UFO project. Me, just a regular guy, neither rocket scientist nor brain surgeon. More animal than human, some might say, but I do digress. . .

Okay, now you know the letter is real. As I said, I'm proud of it -- but I've never been quite sure about including it on my resume. Especially when a little explanation might be required. Wow, can you even imagine?

All too often, what might have been or, arguably, should have been, will never be. All during the time I served at an Air Force base in Carter's Georgia from 1971-72, I never once ran into Jimmy Carter or Billy Carter, nor had I even a chance encounter with Miss Lillian at a supermarket. What were the odds?

The Possible Navy Frogman

WNDR-AM Radio no longer exists in Syracuse, but on October 24, 1976 I appeared as a guest on a weekly Sunday evening talk show entitled "Open Forum." Host Mike Cahill rather surprised me because his invitation included no mention of the skeptical astronomer who joined us for a discussion about UFOs.

We consumed about two and a half hours of this program that ran from 7:00 to midnight. There was a tape of the show, but only of the part where we talked about UFOs. Later, after I had returned home, still listening to program callers who phoned in long after the fact, the UFO topic remained hot. Now, there were numerous prank calls that night, as one might expect, with regret. But. . .

There was one particular caller, a man with a young-sounding voice, who had an immediate answer for every question the host asked. The caller claimed to have been a U.S. Navy frogman who, as part of a team of seven, assisted in the successful recovery of a strange submerged object that he called a UFO, or a part of one, on December 7, 1969. He reported its location as the Atlantic Ocean, not far from Guantanamo.

I listened intently from home, wishing I were still at the studio to take the call. The caller exhibited a few seconds of hesitation at only one point, and that is when host Cahill requested the retrieval's location. Following disclosure, the man clearly stated that he was warned never to discuss the incident under threat of some undefined punishment. At that point, he also warned radio listeners intrigued by the UFO subject not to get too involved, whatever that meant. The caller did seem genuinely afraid to leave his name off the air and feared his call being traced. He had commented that he probably said too much already.

I phoned Mike Cahill Monday morning (I was unable to reach him the previous evening) to see if a studio tape recording existed of the show, but there was no tape. He, too, had wished for a recording of this most intriguing call. He promised to contact me with any further information, but nothing materialized.

Monday evening I phoned Coral Lorenzen about this, she was "intrigued" and thought perhaps some of their military members could look into this.

As an aside, this is also the call where Coral informed me that an interview about APRO had just appeared in Oui Magazine and that there was some misquoting involved. She vowed to do no more interviews via phone unless she could tape them and review the articles first. I had to conceal my laughter when she confessed no prior knowledge that Oui featured pictures of naked women and, indeed, she insisted that her son cut the article out and give to her so she wouldn't have to look at the other contents -- and then she threw the remainder in the trash.

By this point, her husband Jim had fully recovered from heart bypass surgery and felt great. Coral was expecting a call from a Japanese film company this very evening, intent upon coming to the U.S. to film a documentary about UFO abductions, and she was working on a new book regarding abductions based upon what she called seven good cases. Quite confident, Coral promised the book would be unlike any other UFO book. I'm not sure whether anything more developed from this ongoing project, and I also suspect that answers to a great many questions like this will only be answered when access to APRO's files occurs someday (these invaluable files are apparently in the hands of a couple who somehow inherited them after Coral's death and APRO's demise).

Dr. Hynek's Silent Movie

Two more 1976 letters from Dr. J. Allen Hynek today. In one, he answers my complaint about a late publication.

In the other, he actually acknowledges how much money he made from his brief non-speaking appearance in the then still-unreleased movie, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," the answer to a question I certainly did not ask. But it was interesting to know.

If you read my earliest blog entries, you already know that one of my Argosy UFO articles turned up as a prop in the movie for a few seconds. Even in my life, this is one incredibly useless bit of information and impresses nobody. Drat.

It appears that Dr. Hynek banged this letter out on a typewriter or printer by himself, and I suppose he was just busy or tired when referencing the movie's director as "Steve Spielsberg" and leaving the "s" off the second word of the title. Too much time frittered away in astrophysics and not enough on the keyboard, apparently.

Edited Out

Editors of large city newspapers often serve their readers for years, at least they did commonly during the days when newspapers were so much more popular than they seem in some areas today. The late J. Leonard Gorman, executive editor of The Post-Standard (Syracuse), experienced such longevity, and he had been around long enough to know about my UFO interest via many letters to the editor. When informed about my first article for the national magazine Official UFO, he sent a very nice letter and kindly assigned a reporter to write a story.

On the other hand, speaking of Official UFO, there were publications where editors barely had time to unpack before making a hasty exit. Countrywide Publications of NY, NY published Official UFO and several other titles in the seventies and eighties. Official's first editor, Bernard O'Connor, was a dream for any UFO researcher intent upon writing a serious article. His dedication to printing the best UFO literature available impressed all of the major UFO organizations and his early issues seemed promising with an eventual circulation of 250,000.

He included my article (expanded from the 1971 A.P.R.O. Bulletin piece) on UFOs and ultrasound in the May, 1976 issue and by the time of its publication I was already working with him on the large article I hoped to write about the 1956 United Artists documentary movie, "U.F.O."

But suddenly all plans were on hold. Contributing writers in May of 1976 received letters from O'Connor informing us of his resignation from Official UFO. He thanked all of us profusely, yet gave no reason for leaving -- though word was already on the street about friction in the office.

Before long, a new editor stepped in, Russ Rueger, and he, too, sent out letters, essentially saying hi to the writers and laying out his plans for the magazine, Unfortunately, barely three months later we writers received another letter (widely circulated) from him, this time telling us of his own resignation, and he didn't spare the details. Rueger stated that the publisher endorsed an attitude that readers are mostly "true believers" who "desperately need to believe that UFOs are extraterrestrial beings who will someday come to earth to bring salvation." Further, stated Rueger, the publisher demonstrated a preference for "trumped up, sensationalized" unsubstantiated sightings and one or few-witness accounts written with a "true confession" slant. "We're an entertainment magazine," Rueger claimed the publisher would say, "so ethics are irrelevant." Clearly aware that Official UFO would exploit, rather than assist, UFO research, Rueger, simultaneously involved in a separate situation with the publisher which led to everything else that transpired, left the magazine, replaced by respected UFO researcher Dennis Hauck, who was assured by the publisher that all would be well. Thus, just in 1976, Official UFO was directed by three editors. I don't know the circumstances, but it wasn't too long before the magazine and its likewise absurd companion, Ancient Astronauts, perished. Whatever Hauck was able to offer during his tenure there, I'm sure his standards reflected the best of everything.

During the turmoil, I was advised to contact a Saga Magazine editor who might be interested in my planned article on the 1956 United Artists movie, but he decided -- unwisely - that nobody reading Saga publications would care about my rehashing the details of an old movie about UFOs. Eventually, completed at last, the article went back to Official UFO under Hauck's guidance and was printed in the February, 1977 issue with some portions excluded because of length. The piece, " 'UFO' Revisited," proved very popular with readers, and in later years became available on the NICAP Web site with pictures (see the NICAP link and look up my name in the NICAP search engine for access) and is also currently featured on the Ufologie.net Web site in both English and French versions.

However, as the February cover displayed here clearly shows, Official UFO was indeed wrestling with its identity, spotlighting in one title a sober interview with Dr. Hynek, while way above headlining the frightening UFO abduction of a woman's daughter -- a false story, by the way, contrived purely to sell magazines to the gullible, compliments of the publisher.

For me, abandoning Official UFO as a writer was an eye-opener, causing me to trust the publishing world a little less, more aware that the bottom line was almost always the bottom line. Integrity didn't matter nearly as much as the money to some publishers, and the proof was usually right before our eyes on the newsstands in the seventies and eighties, the largest assortment of UFO-related garbage in print that one can imagine.

Placing a few articles with competitors, such as Argosy Magazine's Argosy UFO and True Magazine's True Flying Saucers and UFOs Quarterly, where editorial policies enjoyed more stability, worked out well, but my unpleasant encounters with Countrywide Publications weren't over yet. A few years later, on some city newsstand I spotted a hopelessly inferior-looking magazine about UFOs, and though I can't remember its title at the moment, I instantly noticed the cheap pulp on which it was printed and the print quality inside was just hideous. In addition, I did a double-take while thumbing through the pages of this Countrywide abomination when I stumbled upon a reprint of my own article on UFOs and ultrasound from 1976 -- the article I sold to Countrywide on a "first rights" basis, meaning all rights reverted back to me after initial publication. I don't even recall if my name remained with the title, though the graphics were the same. Other writers recognized their previously sold work also, but I don't believe any of us attempted legal action because the expense and uncertainty for, frankly, so little economically would have been enormous and just too much trouble. I guess I know too well now what a cautionary tale is.

The lesson? If you write and something goes awry, by all means check with the editorial staff -- but don't automatically exclude the publishers as the root of all things dreadful. After all, they run the show.

A Conversation with Coral Lorenzen

Maybe you wonder why some of my blog entries seem irrelevant to your interest. I know a lot of this seems to be all about me, and that's because (unfortunately) much of it is about me. It's a blog, my name's at the top and if you sometimes think, oh, good grief, this guy is so full of himself, I guess that's an unintended impression I leave. However, my primary concern here is to offer whatever I can for historical reasons. I suspect that many UFO researchers of the past didn't send or receive as many letters as I, and if they did chances are their collections were simply thrown in the trash by surviving relatives or friends after their demise, people with no understanding of the historical treasures they condemned to extinction.

Therefore, I beg your indulgence when I get personal about important UFO researchers or witnesses of the past. I just want some things on the record, particularly when I believe that few, if anybody, had the opportunity or desire to bring these little nuggets to the forefront.

Readers who follow this blog realize that I had occasional phone conversations with Jim and Coral Lorenzen, the late couple who originated the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) in 1952, one of the oldest UFO research groups in the world. In my old files I've found notes made during an afternoon call to Coral on Saturday, May 29, 1976, and today I'll just list a few points from that conversation:

My reason for calling was to ask how Jim was doing, as he continued recovery from recent cardiac bypass surgery. Coral recalled that night when Jim felt so poorly and frightened about his condition. He had phoned his physician emergently, and when the surgeon replied that he would be at the hospital in one hour Jim responded, no, I want you there now. The operation proved successful.

Jim's post-surgical depression and spirits had lifted significantly the previous week when he appeared, still accompanied by a weakened voice, with alleged UFO abductee Travis Walton on ABC-TV's "Good Morning America," hosted by David Hartman, who was joined by actor Paul Michael Glaser of the "Starsky and Hutch" TV series (as the art of coincidence goes, I guess I should mention that Glaser's acting TV partner in the series, David Soul, appeared in the UFO-related TV movie, "The Disappearance of Flight 412," mentioned a couple of blog entries ago). The weeks after surgery had been chaotic, with medical insurance not covering enough and Coral losing weight because of worry over Jim's ordeal. While in Hollywood, the Lorenzens had spoken with an unidentified motion picture producer who expressed considerable interest in making UFO documentaries.

We talked about her new book, Encounters with UFO Occupants, actually an updated version of Flying Saucer Occupants. She also labored busily on a future book about UFO abductions. I was interested to learn that she had also written a science fiction story about a time in the 1930s when people saw a landed UFO with occupants exiting and then re-entering the object, which quickly departs. All witnesses, from the town drunk to the highest official, decide not to tell anybody for individual reasons of their own. To her regret, Coral had been unable to sell this one. I wonder what happened to it?

There were troubles at the magazine, Official UFO. Coral knew very well by then that its editor and his boss had serious disagreements (I'll write more about this situation in another blog entry), but was surprised when I informed her that he had already resigned on May 1.

Nor was it ever a secret that there had been "bad blood" between APRO and another major UFO organization known to many. In this conversation, Coral excoriates its director, who has just assumed the position of editor for the group's membership publication following a resignation ("Can you imagine what a mess that will be?" she asks). She asserts that he was once an APRO member who broke away to form his own organization, calling APRO members around the country in the process in an attempt to get them to abandon APRO. One APRO member had even taped a call from him and played it for Jim and Coral, who stated he said some terrible things about they, the Lorenzens.

Before ending our talk, I did ask Coral about her UFO opinions, in light of the Travis Walton abduction case and others then coming to light. Without hesitation, and with perhaps the only laughter induced during a call enhanced by her coughing and obvious weariness, she merely shot back this response: "Beats me."