So, how do we answer the question?
We can always look at the assumptions made. First, that there are a multitude of civilizations out there. Maybe there are but a few scattered throughout the galaxy which would mean they are probably separated by tens of thousands of light years. Contact among them would be sparse until one or more conquered the problem of interstellar distances.
Maybe we have found no radio trace (or limited radio traces) because they have not reached that level of technology… or more likely, have reached it and moved beyond it. We search for alien radio signals based on some human assumptions given the nature of the radio sources in the sky, but other creatures on other planets might not use those same assumptions. We might be searching in vain because we think like humans and not aliens.
Carl Sagan has postulated that we could expect visitation by an extraterrestrial civilization about once every ten thousand years… though I don’t know how he came up with that number. But let’s say it’s accurate. That would mean that sometime in the last ten thousand years aliens arrived on Earth, and that would mean that they would have found our civilizations.
It really doesn’t matter when they arrived or the state of the civilizations they found. I would think that once you found something like that, you’d be inclined to keep watch on it, if for no other reason than it is another intelligent race. And if that is true, then the number of visits would increase as we advanced. Once we reached an industrial civilization, once we began developing machines to make our lives easier, rockets that could leave the planet, atomic power, and began radiating electromagnetic signals that would make us brighter than almost anything else in the Solar System in that spectrum, they would come by to take a look. They would visit with more frequently…
And isn’t that the situation we have today? Reports of UFOs growing from the beginnings of the industrial revolution until we have the thousands of good, solid cases.
Don’t we have some good physical trace cases including radar/visual sightings? Aren’t there some good photographs that can only be explained as either alien spaceships or hoaxes with no middle ground? Aren’t there some very puzzling sightings that involve multiple witnesses, instrumentality and other evidence?
So, the answer to the Fermi Paradox might not seem so flippant when we look at all the evidence. Maybe the answer is that we have been visited but we have failed to recognize the visitors. We’re so busy arguing about the reality of UFO sightings that we have ignored the bigger questions which is who are they and why are they here.
Project Blue Book and NARA
Back in the olden days, while I was still in college and a member of Air Force ROTC, I learned that the Project Blue Book files were available for study and review at the Air Force Archives at the what was then called Maxwell Air Force Base. The announcement was made in an internal Air Force document, meaning, simply, that it was circulated inside the Air Force but not necessarily in the civilian world. It said that anyone who traveled to Alabama could see the material.
During those days I wrote articles for SAGA and its companion magazine, UFO REPORT. I called my editor there, who normally didn’t speak to me but had his secretary tell me to call back later. I mentioned that I could get into the Project Blue Book files. I didn’t say that anyone could, only that I had the opportunity. One of the senior editors called me back immediately, giving me an assignment and telling me what he would like to know.
I drove to Maxwell AFB with fellow writer and researcher Robert Charles Cornett. We had no trouble getting onto the base because we were both members of the Air Force Reserve based on our status in AFROTC. In fact, we had a letter of introduction written by the detachment commander so they would know that we were members of the Air Force. We told the people there what we wanted but they hesitated, telling me that I had to request specific items from Blue Book, not just a vague desire to see the “files.” I knew something about UFOs so requested specific files from Kinross and Levelland, for example. They just weren’t sure that they should be handing us this information.
After they had talked to a “Mr. Smith” in Washington, cooperation increased and we learned that there was an index, which we requested to see immediately. I never knew if they initiated the contact, or if, somehow, Mr. Smith knew we were there and wanted us to have what we needed. All I knew was that after this mysterious man talked to the archivists, they were happy to assist us in anyway they could.
They eventually told us about a master index to the sightings. This master index gave the dates of the sightings, location, names of the witnesses and the Air Force conclusion. Cornett and I went through the whole thing and copied the information of all the unidentifieds, most of the photo cases, landing trace cases, and anything else that struck us as important. I didn’t know how valuable that information would become later.
In the mid-1970s, Jack Webb decided to do a show called Project UFOfor NBC (two of those involved seen here). To assist him, the Air Force moved the Blue Book files to the National Archives (NARA… ever notice how everything is being reduced to letters because, I guess, it’s too difficult to say National Archives), where it was microfilmed. We have Jack Webb to thank for that. Webb, as I understand it, paid the cost of the microfilming.
Over the years I have acquired a complete set of the Blue Book files on 94 rolls of microfilm. That collection is in no way unique. The J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies has a complete set and I suspect MUFON does too. What makes all this interesting is that the National Archives has now put all of Project Blue Book on line at: http://www.footnote.com/image/
Then go to page three and scroll down. At the moment, you can search the files for free. I don’t know how long that will last.
These are high quality scans, for the most part and provide a glimpse into the Air Force handling of the UFO project. The problem is that before these files were released into the public arena, Air Force officers spent weeks going through them taking out the names of the witnesses. Oh, they did a terrible job of it. In the Arnold file, they went so far as to take Arnold’s initials out of a transcript of an interview with him, but left, scrawled in large letters on one page, “Arnold Sighting.”
In other files, they took the names out of the Air Force generated reports, but left the names in newspaper articles that were filed with the reports. In other words, in some cases, you can put the names back in.
But remember, Cornett and I copied the names from so many of the case files that I, too, can put them back in. In fact, in Project Blue Book Exposed, Appendix B is a listing of those cases, including the date and time, location and the witnesses, along with a brief description of the sighting.
Saucer Smear, Jim Moseley and Me
Jim Moseley of Saucer Smear (the second oldest continuously published UFO “zine” if you count its various incarnations, banner seen here)) and I have been in a bit of a dust-up about Jesse Marcel, Sr. and the champion of the Mogul theory, Charles Moore.
The latest started when I suggested that Moore, based on the documentation available, had been told Mogul’s name long before Robert Todd arrived in 1992 to tell him. The point had been that Mogul was so secret that even those who worked on it had not known the name until more than forty years had passed. Documentation, from the Air Force showed Dr. Albert Crary, the project leader had known the name in 1946 and had mentioned it in his unclassified diary a couple of times… a clear security violation unless, of course, the name wasn’t classified as we had been told.