SECRET ACCESS: UFOs on the record

August 26th, 2011 03:07pm
History Channel gets it right
by Billy Cox
Thursday night's "Secret Access" report by The History Channel — "UFOs On The Record" — is the sort of crisp advocacy journalism one might easily envision in PBS' "Frontline" rotation. Focused (if not a tad overproduced), expertly sourced, and devoid of the tripe that too often characterizes network programming on this issue, "UFOs On The Record" is a foundational model for jump-starting a national conversation so desperately overdue.


Special effects filmmaker Joseph Trumbull will hunt for UFOs using ultraviolet, infrared, spectrograph and night vision technology, which could provide American science with even more data to ignore/CREDIT: hellcatmedia.com

In fact, the logical next question might be: What, exactly, are viewers supposed to do with this material? Contemplating citizen action may seem premature, given the comparatively small niche audience of The History Channel, but at least this week we got a glimpse of what may lie ahead.

The 96-minute documentary, built upon Leslie Kean's UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record, was produced by filmmakers Ricki Stern and Annie Sudberg, who obviously know what they're doing. Having tackled atrocities in Darfur, a racially motivated murder conviction, and America's post-9/11 surveillance culture, among other things, Stern and Sudberg have little appetite for equivocation. Like Kean, they made no unsubstantiated claims and dispensed with the uninformed ruminations of so-called UFO skeptics that pass for "balance" in mainstream formulas. Instead, they mined official documents and eyewitnesses to build a compelling case for the serious disconnect between reality and American public policy.

For Kean's readers, the "Secret Access" treatment covered familiar turf: the Phoenix Lights, the Rendlesham Forest incident, the 1989-90 Belgian wave, etc. But watching many of the players in the book — like former Federal Aviation Administration accidents division chief John Callahan, and retired Belgian Gen. Wilfried De Brouwer — as they physically reconstructed complex interactions between UFOs and jet planes brought the enormity of the transactions to life. And, fan though I am of the written word, there is no substitute for listening to audiotapes of air traffic/ground crew chatter trying to come to grips with a UFO idling over Chicago's O'Hare International in 2006.

"On The Record" also introduced us to eyewitnesses who weren't in the book, and gave a sendup to the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, which is conducting the sort of scientific research that sends our own government into contortions to avoid. And it profiled an innovator who just might someday land the biggest catch of all.

Hollywood special effects guru Douglas Trumbull ("Blade Runner," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "2001: A Space Odyssey") can spot UFO fake footage with a craftsman's eye. But lately, he's applying his technological skills to a mobile camera unit called Ufotog, with which he will scan the skies using optics capable of gauging size, distance, altitude, velocity and trajectory of unidentifieds up there, visible and otherwise. This is exciting stuff.

What a rollercoaster month it's been for Leslie Kean. The paperback version of UFOs On the Record rolled on Aug. 2, with a fresh endorsement from heavyweight astronomer Derrick Pitts. On Sunday, she was by the side of artist and abduction research pioneer Budd Hopkins when he died at age 80. A couple of days ago, she joined a panel discussion promoting the "Secret Acess" documentary on CNN Headline News. A noteworthy venue, but it should've been even bigger.

Things change, inevitably, whether we allow them to or not. Thursday night, we got a glimpse of how a major shift might begin. Given the MSM's track record for peddling dumbed-down mediocrity, it's unlikely the "Secret Access" piece can provide that momentum swing, which will occur eventually. What it did was remind us of an even more fundamental truth — hard work pays off.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ufo
• sun
• earth
• alien
• et
• solar
• system
• flying
• saucer
• space
• world
• moon
• planet
• history
• channel
• ufos
• on
• the
• record
• cia
• aliens
• visitation
• ovni
• ovnis
• secret
• access
• documentary

[Sithdisturber]

Thank you for uploading this. Very well done- hard to ignore this kind of evidence.

[7071t6]

Trust me every time you get on the net, someone is listening or watchng, if they can do it re: frequency line tracing back in the 40's and 50's imagine what they can do now.Cheers, :)

[thatman64]

lol. first they show f16s when talking about 15s then the other way round

[ww0416finezt]

alkesh bomber..... is this where they got that ideaa ?. properly from the soldiers sketches

[xponen]

@batfly maybe I read too quickly..

[batfly]

@xponen

I admit I don't understand what your argument is or even how anything you just said applies to what I'm talking about.

[xponen]

@batfly pfft... you are the sociopath because you don't understand people do. Social studies shows that rich people are just as concern as WE do about our society, and they also want to solve the problem that beguile it. -It is just that they don't understand what really matter, they had too much f'king money to understand about hardship....

[xponen]

@Jsledge85 I think he made the right decision. Nothing change even if he acknowledge UFOs, and things'll be the same even if he joked about it. I don't see UFO as real concern except for real world problem like people dying and people to feed...

I'd say we don't complain soo much and just move on with our life...

[freshkryp69]

For ANDROID PHONE!

[freshkryp69]

I need a instant video recorder ON icon/button, so i dont miss my alien encounter!