(Feb 1, 1998) -- New Mexico-based researcher and author Karl Pflock first came to the attention of many UFO enthusiasts in 1994 when he published a 195-page monograph titled "Roswell in Perspective," in which he argued that most, if not all, of the wreckage associated with the "Roswell Incident" of 1947 could be attributed to the downing of a large, top-secret "Project Mogul" balloon array -- not a UFO. Though Pflock left room in his argument for a possible alien factor, noting that claims about strange bodies were not as easy to dismiss, he became identified in many minds as a debunker, particularly after the U.S. Air Force announced in September, 1994 that they too believed the Roswell "UFO" was a Mogul Balloon.
It seemed a little too neat. Not only was Pflock apparently giving comfort to the Air Force, his own background aroused many additional suspicions. He had served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan administration, 1985 to 1989; and worse yet, he had been a CIA intelligence officer from 1966 to 1972. Was any man ever better equipped for UFO debunkery than this?
Well, not so fast. Pflock figured prominently in a recent two-hour "Sightings" TV special called "100 Years of UFO Cover-up," broadcast several times during mid-January. Interestingly, he was not heard debunking anything. Au contraire, he was talking about UFO evidence that he found intriguing, even compelling. He said on camera that he is "subjectively convinced" not only that UFOs are real, but that they are someone else's craft.
CNI News asked Karl Pflock to state again, clearly and for the record, his personal position on UFOs. While making no apology for his grave doubts about the Roswell case ("I'm quite sure no crashed flying saucer was involved," he says), Pflock made it clear that he's personally persuaded by other UFO cases.
"UFOs are real -- that is, as yet unexplained phenomena," Pflock told CNI News. "Many solid unknowns leave us with but two choices: hoax, or real essentially as reported. If real, [they] couldn't be anything other than products of nonhuman intelligence and, in some cases, the intelligences themselves. Based on the data, I'm subjectively CERTAIN we've been visited by nonhuman intelligences -- to my '50s-conditioned mind, most likely from an extra-solar planet in our galaxy.
"However, we do not yet have PROOF of (as opposed to very strong evidence pointing to) this, though the proof may well be in the data already in hand, as yet unrecognized as such," he said.
Pflock went on to say that he was pleased with the treatment he got in the recent "Sightings" program. "It gave folks a chance to hear my views on matters other than Roswell -- surprising to many of those who know me only from Roswell," he said.
"I've been actively interested in this field literally since childhood -- even had an unexplained, multiple-witness sighting of my own in the summer of 1951 or '52 when I was eight or nine," Pflock told CNI News.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Pflock served as a member and then chairman of the National Capital Area (investigative) Subcommittee of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), then the world's largest private UFO research organization. He has also carried out independent research on humanoid/UFO-occupant sightings and contacts, and reports of UFO-connected animal mutilations. He is an Associate of the Society for Scientific Exploration, a member of the Mutual UFO Network, and an Associate of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies.
A prolific writer, Pflock is author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction and has been a consulting senior editor for Arlington House Publishers, editor of Libertarian Review, a senior editor at the American Enterprise Institute and science columnist for Eternity Science Fiction. His articles on UFOs have appeared in such journals as Omni, the International UFO Reporter, The Anomalist, Fate, the MUFON UFO Journal and Cuadernos de Ufologìa (Spain).
"The Roswell UFO Mystery: Legend and Reality," an updated, completely revised and expanded edition of his 1994 publication "Roswell in Perspective," is forthcoming.
Original file name: CNI - Karl believes
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