Forbidden Science

                      [OMNI, April 1993, pg 80.]

Is the US Government withholding information on UFOs?  Yes, according to
computer scientist and UFO expert, Jacques Vallee, whose new book
_Forbidden Science_ (North Atlantic Books, 1992) reveals the diary
he kept from 1957 to 1969.

   According to Vallee, he was organizing the private files of
astronomer and UFO pioneer J. Allen Hynek back in 1967 when he
discovered a memo marked "SECRET-- Security Information," signed by a
project manager Vallee has dubbed "Pentacle." The memo cited some
unusual UFO patterns and suggested a serious scientific investigation.

   For some reason, the Pentacle memo never reached the so-called
Robertson Panel, made up of top-level scientists investigating UFOs for
the Air Force and the CIA.  The panel ended up debunking UFOs.  But
Vallee believes that UFO research would have taken a different course
had the panel seen the data reviewed by the Pentacle.  "The scientific
approach to a complex new phenomenon is to look for patterns," he says,
"and that is exactly what Pentacle did."

   But aerospace writer and UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass believes that
Vallee places too much emphasis on the Pentacle memo.  "The more than
twelve thousand UFO reports that were submitted to Project Bluebook,
some of which this memo refers to, are now available in the National
Archives, in the public domain," Klass says. "I invite Vallee to pick
out what he believes are the best of the those reports and demonstrate
that they cannot be explained in prosaic terms."

   Vallee, however, says this approach would not be useful.  "It is
unlikely that any single case or group of cases will demonstrate
anything," he says, noting that researchers would have benefited most
from studying the pattern as a whole.

                                                   ---Keith Harary.