UFOS


Blum, Howard. Out There. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. 300 pages.

     It wasn't that long ago that anyone who claimed to have seen a "flying
saucer" was dismissed as loony or at least unreliable. But with increasing
reports of UFO sightings and related phenomena, this is rapidly changing.
This book shows that government officials -- particularly the U.S. military
and science advisors with security clearances above Top Secret -- have
formed various study groups over the years while denying their ongoing
interest in the phenomenon. However, cracks in the official edifice have
appeared. Since even mass-market U.S. television documentaries are now
taking UFOs seriously, we can expect to hear much more on this in coming
years.

     Howard Blum is a former New York Times investigative journalist with a
book on Nazi-hunting and another on U.S. spy John Walker to his credit. He
starts out this book as a skeptic, using his contacts in U.S. intelligence
and plenty of shoe leather to try and get a handle on this UFO thing. One
section deals with the debate over the authenticity of the MJ-12 documents
-- a classified report of the 1948 recovery of a crashed UFO and four bodies.
UFO enthusiasts Bill Moore and Stanton Friedman defend the documents, Phil
Klass tries to debunk them, and even the FBI's counterintelligence team gets
stonewalled by the official secrecy. Blum comes away from this book feeling
that the government has something to hide.


Good, Timothy. Above Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Cover-Up. With a foreword
by the former Chief of Defense Staff, Lord Hill-Norton, G.C.B. New York:
Morrow (Quill), 1988. First published in Great Britain in 1987 by Sidgwick
and Jackson. 592 pages.

     Timothy Good is a professional violinist and amateur UFO enthusiast.
Half of his book is a review of UFO sightings in various countries and the
reactions of their governments. For the sake of credibility, he deals only
with sightings and not with closer encounters such as alleged abductions.
The other half deals specifically with the U.S. government: CIA, NSA, NASA,
and DIA. A 106-page appendix prints a variety of documents and reports,
both classified and declassified, from various governments.


Good, Timothy. Alien Contact: Top-Secret UFO Files Revealed. New York:
Morrow (Quill), 1993. First published in Great Britain in 1991 by Random
Century Group as Alien Liaison: The Ultimate Secret. 288 pages.

     In an earlier work, Above Top Secret (1988), Timothy Good concentrated
on establishing the existence of UFOs by examining the evidence available
from official sources in various countries. This book goes further. It looks
into the evidence that alien craft and bodies have been recovered, and that
secret contacts between aliens and some government officials in the U.S.
have already occurred.

     This book must depend on eyewitnesses who seem credible, but who can
only be weakly corroborated. One example is Robert Lazar, who was employed
briefly by Naval Intelligence to work on a secret base in the Nevada desert.
Lazar claims that he did research into the propulsion systems of recovered
alien craft. Another chapter deals with the phenomenon of cattle mutilations
-- which are, admittedly, difficult to explain unless alien technology is
assumed. Timothy Good himself feels that "the evidence available to me
suggests that we are being visited by a number of extraterrestrial groups,"
and that "those few within governments who are aware of the situation are
acting in our best interests by gradually presenting the information in
such a way that it will lessen the political, economic, religious, and
psychological shock."

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