UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record

Leslie Kean is an independent investigative journalist known for pioneering human rights work in Burma. As Director of the Coalition for Freedom of Information, between 2005 and 2009 she fought and won a FOIA federal lawsuit against NASA to release "lost" records on the 1965 Kecksburg PA incident. She is patient, persistent, tenacious and skeptical. Her new book, ten years in the making and two years in the writing, has received open endorsement from so many leading politicians and scientists that it just might be a game-changer.

The intended audience is not the committed reader steeped in the lore of UFOs or discussions of the ETH and competing origin-hypotheses. Plenty of books explore these subjects and their readership is, against the mainstream, pitifully small and marginalised. Such works, however well-researched, are often self-published or condemned to share shelf-space with political CTs, channelling and new-age mush, undeservedly consigned to the ghetto of the kooky, ridiculed fringe.

Readers familiar with the works of Allen Hynek, Jacques Vallee, Tim Good, Jerry Clark, Stan Friedman, Richard Dolan and writers of similar calibre will find little new here, though they will find a few interesting nuggets. They are already persuaded of the evidence, and not the target audience for this book. These writers, collectively, have never effected political attitude-change: the contributors to this book are such serious, credible, high-profile people they just might.

Kean's target audience is professional academia, those involved in politics and the media, the skeptically-minded scientist with little familiarity with the subject matter due to its long contamination with fringe elements, and the concerned, civic-minded man or woman in the street who has never read a book on the issue and knows little of the powerful evidence for the existence of persistent strange aerial phenomena. The book is carefully crafted to bring the subject out of the UFO conference fringe and place it firmly centre-stage into the political and academic mainstream where it belongs; to make it a respectable and important subject for discussion. The argument is: These are responsible officials going on the record, and here is serious evidence of something real. You are irresponsible if you ignore this subject, or allow it to continue to be marginalised.

To this end, the book's tone is deliberately sceptical. The tag-line "Generals, Pilots and Government Officials go on the Record" describes exactly the content: only incontestable cases with multiple official witnesses plus supporting evidence have been chosen for inclusion. The author worked for years to contact and gain the confidence of these military pilots and high-profile government officials and to bring them together at the National Press Club in DC in November 2007. High priority is given to cases involving air force encounters; documented, confirmed, official. The contributors are truly international, confirming the global reach of the phenomenon.

This cautious tone, the international perspective and the author's avoidance of contamination by book jacket-cover endorsement from anyone associated with the "UFO community" sets this book apart from other work on the subject. This will be extremely difficult for a debunker to deal with, and that is the intention. Journalistic standards are high, so there are no "anonymous whistleblowers", no ID kept secret, nothing flaky or un-checkable. These establishment people have gone ON THE RECORD, and write in total around half the content of the 302 pages of the book. Introducing the section written by Nick Pope, Kean writes: "He is yet another example of the many officials and military officers who, as they became acquainted with UFO investigations by accident, flexed their skeptical muscles only to find themselves absorbed by the unexpected power of the evidence they had initially expected to disprove." The accumulated evidence presented is virtually un-debunkable.

Kean contrasts the relatively open way the UFO subject has been managed in recent decades by nations such as France, Belgium, the UK, Brazil, Peru and others, with the history of stonewalling and ridicule from all government and military bodies in the USA. Since the closing of Blue Book, the phenomenon no longer officially exists in the USA even though pilots, operators of military facilities and ordinary folk encounter it all the time. It's an Orwellian environment. What is to be done?

In the third and final section of the book, the author explores the nature of UFO secrecy in the US. She sticks to the facts as known and documented, and acknowledges the unsupported speculations frequently put out by various people in the UFO field about the cover-up inhibit understanding of the issue and serve to marginalise the subject. Her reasoning is logical, thorough and grounded.

In Chapter 26, "Engaging the US Government," Kean lays out the reasoned objective sought by the CFI:

"The coalition is asking for responsible action on the part of the United States concerning UFOs. We make this request not as an accusation of wrongdoing in the past, but as an invitation to join an international, cooperative venture under way now...we are seeking the creation of a small government agency to investigate UFO incidents, and to act as a focal point for action at home and for research worldwide."

Her objective is to bring about legitimization of the subject, so that scientific interest might be encouraged and government grants enable scientists in the academic, research and aviation fields to pursue serious study free of ridicule. She is not impotently shouting for "Disclosure" whilst remaining forever shut outside. She, and the impressive contributors to this book, ask for official recognition of the UFO issue as real, and for the establishment of a small agency to co-ordinate international study as a first step. No assumptions about the origin of the phenomenon are made: just that it exists, and needs to be acknowledged as real. It's a reasoned, achievable objective, unarguable in the face of the unassailable evidence presented here. That's why this book might be the catalyst for permanent recognition of legitimacy: in other words, a game-changer.

The production quality of the book is first class and the writing from all contributors literate, straightforward and completely free of typos. It has a logical structure, is an easy and absorbing read containing nothing extraneous, concerned with the facts and testimonies. It builds a compelling argument. If you haven't read it yet, maybe you should.

There's no smoking gun here. There's not even a cap gun. A crashing disappointment, Leslie Kean's derivative and superficial book inexplicably treats well-trod ground as virgin territory, failing meaningfully to advance the state of UFO knowledge.

Ms. Kean, a progressive freelance journalist of modest renown, tackled UFOs only ten years ago and in her freshman-survey analysis ignores most of the intriguing research that's gone before. Her big prizes are on-the-record statements from various, mostly foreign officials who think something highly strange is going on. But nobody in a position to know confirms a thing.

With a limp touch-the-bases term paper on the history of US government deny-and-dissemble strategies, Ms. Kean does not deliver on a promise to explain how UFOs became so taboo. Recounting again the well-known episodes of the Twining memo, the Robertson panel and the Project Blue Book whitewash, she seems not to realize that they may not be news to everybody just because they're news to her.

This narrow, personal perspective is the book's flat-out worst sin. To the informed reader, Ms. Kean's ignorance or rejection of the sizable body of good UFO research makes her look isolated or silly. "What do we really know about them?" she writes. "Do pilots ever see them?... The answers... are nothing short of astonishing." Not if you've read a UFO book since 1953, they're not. She completely ignores Roswell, Kecksburg, MJ-12 and the abduction phenomenon.

Ms. Kean presents old US government telexes about UFOs in Peru and Iran like they're hot stuff, though the originals were published years ago. She and her co-writer "witnesses" trot out old chestnuts like the `80s Belgium triangle-craft flap and the Valentich vanishing over the Tasman Sea in '78, but have nothing new to say. Ms. Kean seems to believe, however, that as a "real" investigative journalist she's entitled to go at the most elementary UFO questions as if nobody had ever considered them before - though she's far from unique in this regard. Howard Blum's 1990 book "Out There" confirmed the Pentagon's classified UFO efforts in intriguing detail, while 20 years later Ms. Kean ruminates at fact-free length about whether any such thing could possibly go on.

She also asks why more "deathbed confessions" have not emerged from aging insiders - perhaps not knowing that in the case of Roswell, such confessions, extensively documented, have emerged by the score.

I can see how career UFOlogists who've done 30 or 40 years of serious, scary legwork might be nonplussed at Ms. Kean's look-at-me-I'm-first-on-the-moon approach. She acknowledges Greer, Friedman, Good and Imbrogno in her source notes, but in her text makes no mention of their research, whose scope, energy and value far outstrips her own. She speculates at exhaustive, uninformed length about official concealment, but appears unaware of Moulton Howe, Randle, Marrs, Dolan, and many other chroniclers of the black world's clear continuing interest in the UFO issue and involvement in elaborate disinformation campaigns. She even argues for Washington to reestablish a public UFO investigative agency - despite the excellent evidence from others that NSA, DIA, AFOSI, ONI, NORAD, and CIA plus innumerable private contractors are pretty clearly working the problem.

And, oh, is Ms. Kean wordy. "Military fliers are prepared to defend themselves if necessary; their jet aircraft are loaded not with passengers but with lethal weaponry that can be used either to attack or to defend." No kidding.

The most interesting thing about this book is the foreword from Washington heavyweight John Podesta, who allows warily that there might be something to all this. Otherwise it is basically one naïve newcomer's first-person journey through a UFO labyrinth that many readers will feel they know better than she does. For more numerous and interesting revelations from people in high places, read Steven Greer's "Disclosure." For a far better overview of official UFO coping strategies, read Richard Dolan's "UFOs and the National Security State, Vol 2: The Cover-Up Exposed, 1973-1991."

Anyone who's quickly scanning reviews looking for a book to read... and are like most potential reader's who value their time... some books are ruled out simply by their title or assumed subject matter. Please don't let the "UFO" in the title dissuade you from reading this book. This is not about little green men... or people with antennas coming out of their head... and the fact that I have to immediately point that out to you, is why one of the main preoccupations that the author rightfully focuses on... is the United States M.O. of making everyone afraid to publicly share their experiences regarding UFO's... and sometimes it's Ad Nauseam. (And now here I am starting off down the same road. So there must be a reason!)

Let me first get your attention and pulse pounding before I get back to the United States being an obstacle in the worldwide investigation and understanding of UFO's. This book includes chapters and comments written by eighteen reputable and impressive individuals in both character and the level they rose to in their professions. From Generals to Governors to pilots to leaders of academia to NASA to White House Chief of Staff... and other vaunted positions. And they all had one thing in common. They all were involved as either witnesses to UFO's or were investigators who became believers. These esteemed individuals are from the United Kingdom, Iran, France, Brazil, Peru... and yes... even the good old United States. But, believe it or not... the country that was dead last in the acknowledging of the obvious... (And believe me it will be obvious to you also after reading this expertly detailed book.) is the United States. Dating back to the famed *PROJECT-BLUE-BOOK* in the early 1950's run by the Air Force to supposedly substantiate or un-substantiate any UFO sightings until the time it was closed in the mid 1970's... when in actuality *PROJECT-BLUE-BOOK* was chartered to simply make up one inane story after another to brain wash the public that no real "sighting" took place. It was also their aim to discredit and damage the reputation of any individual sharing his experience with the public. Pilots who not only saw non-definable aircraft... but who had witnesses as crew members and passengers... and had radar reports that matched their stories... were basically told not to report it... or their career would have no future. This includes the FAA which refused to admit on the record about a hovering craft over O'Hare Airport in 2006 that was witnessed by many. Some of these sightings are discussed by police officers and witnesses who without knowing each other drew the same pictures of what they saw. There are first person recounts by high ranking military officials in other countries that include fighter jets being ordered to attack the UFO's and one actually shooting sixty-four 30 mm shells at the UFO... some hitting with absolutely no damage to the craft. These stories are amazing and documented, yet America leads the world in the shameful practice of acting like these things never happened, as well as humiliating any public individual who speaks out. The best example of this is former Arizona Governor Fife Symington III, who while Governor in 1997 was one of hundreds if not thousands of Arizona residents who viewed an immense low flying UFO that witnesses said... that the size was anywhere from three football fields to a mile long. The Governor, since he was in office at the time made a mockery of a press conference that followed rather than admit what he saw. Subsequently, and in this book, he admits what he saw.

As I mentioned in my opening... this is not about little green men. It's about spacecraft with technologies and capabilities that are hundreds if not thousands of times superior to anything know to the human race here on earth. And that's one of the problems... even our scientists can't explain the capabilities that have been seen. "THESE CAPABILITIES INCLUDE STATIONARY AND SILENT FLIGHTS, ACCELERATIONS AND SPEEDS DEFYING THE LAWS OF INERTIA, EFFECTS ON ELECTRONIC NAVIGATION OR TRANSMISSION SYSTEMS, AND THE APPARENT ABILITY TO INDUCE ELECTRICAL BLACKOUTS." In 1987 "JAPAN AIR LINES FLIGHT 1628, A CARGO JET WITH A PILOT, COPILOT AND FLIGHT ENGINEER, WAS NORTH OF ANCHORAGE, AND IT WAS JUST AFTER 5:00PM. THE CAPTAIN, KENJU TERAUCHI, DESCRIBED SEEING A GIGANTIC ROUND OBJECT WITH COLORED LIGHTS FLASHING AND RUNNING AROUND IT, WHICH WAS MUCH BIGGER THAN HIS 747, AS BIG AS AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER. HIS CREW, BOTH SAW IT TOO."

General Parviz Jafari of the Iranian Air Force actually went on attack to protect the air space in Iran and said after: "TO THIS DAY I DON'T KNOW WHAT I SAW. BUT FOR SURE IT WAS NOT AN AIRCRAFT; IT WAS NOT A FLYING OBJECT THAT HUMAN BEINGS ON EARTH CAN MAKE. IT MOVED WAY TOO FAST. IMAGINE: I WAS LOOKING AT IT ABOUT SEVENTY MILES OUT AND IT JUMPED ALL OF A SUDDEN 10 DEGREES TO MY RIGHT. THIS 10 DEGREES REPRESENTED ABOUT 6.7 MILES PER MOMENT, AND I DON'T SAY PER SECOND BECAUSE IT WAS MUCH LESS THAN A SECOND. NOW YOU CAN TRY TO CALCULATE THE SPEED IT WOULD TAKE FOR IT TO MOVE FROM A STATIONARY POSITION TO THIS SECOND POINT. THIS NEEDED VERY, VERY HIGH-LEVEL TECHNOLOGY. ALSO, IT WAS ABLE TO SHUT DOWN MY MISSILE AND INSTRUMENTS SOMEHOW. WHERE IT CAME FROM I DON'T KNOW."

Believe me I have not given away 1/50th of the unbelievable testimony in this book. To be frank... this book really needs two separate reviewer rankings. The first should be on the testimony by the esteemed individuals I mentioned... and on a rating of one-to-five... I would rate that part a *TEN!* The second part of the book that should be rated are the chapters in between the testimony that constantly and repetitively scrutinizes the United States holding back the entire world from a better community of UFO investigation... and that would be a *TWO*. That's the reason for a very strong four-star-rating. The interview portions are off the charts!

P.S. Another thought provoking subject. If a country... say the United States or Soviet Union... discovered and captured... or found... a craft with these capabilities... during the cold war... or now... do you think they would share it with the world? Or would they keep it a secret and try to reverse engineer the capabilities that are truly out of this world? Think of not only the military advantages it would provide... but also the economic and commercial??

I've read many books on the subject of UFOs, which has many tentacles, ranging from the questionable and dubious (abductee accounts, "Grays" peeking through windows, aliens helping us build the Egyptian pyramids, etc) to highly credible and unexplainable events (well documented sightings of objects that can not be understood after all logical explanations are examined, including mass sightings and reports from pilots, police, astronauts and military officers).

The subject of UFOs is very complicated for the following reasons:

1) A vast majority of sightings do have, or very likely have, mundane explanations that make logical sense (by way of Occam's razor).

2) The term "UFO" has been re-branded to mean "extraterrestrials" when in fact it was not originally intended that way -- its official use within the military was to emphasize UNIDENTIFIED. (If we knew a flying saucer belonged to an E.T., it would no longer be truly unidentified, would it?) A US stealth bomber flying over Africa could be a legitimate UFO if seen by a bushman, because the bushman cannot identify it -- the object is outside of his ability to do so. So, being a legitimate UFO is a subjective term, not an objective one. But because the term is now inseparable from the extraterrestrial visitation paradigm, officials are now using Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).

3) The UFO culture has been cheapened by silly merchandizing (goofy B-movies, alien dolls, silly slogans, etc) a level of fandom and fanaticism that's journeyed well into the world of the weird (costumers at UFO conferences that rival Star Trek conventions, reports of women having alien babies, etc), poorly researched and embarrassingly inaccurate books (like Chariots of the Gods), and hoaxes. Not that I don't understand the fun of all this, but it jeopardizes the credibility of the relatively small percent of UFO incidents which are completely without any logical or mundane explanation (which number well into the hundreds just in the 20th century alone), and these events are serious and profound.

4) Believers in the UFO paradigm tend toward a more singular cause for many strange events... They would have me believe that one or two (or in some cases several) extraterrestrial races are flying around our skies (saucers, cigars, "silent vulcans" or triangles, and other shapes), abducting people (abductee accounts, often complete with surgical implants and other strange things -- which for some reason are never witnessed by third parties and cannot be scientifically confirmed), surgically removing cow genitals in the middle of the night for no understandable reason, and historically interfering with human advancement by informing the Dogon of their homeworld, mating with Sumerians, helping Egyptians build pyramids, showing the Mayans how to build calendars that forecast the end of the world, and assisting (if unintentionally) the Nazis to build more advanced military technology in World War II. But all of these things may -- and dare I say very likely do -- have completely different sets of explanations. Here and there I might be convinced of a relationship, but attributing all of these notions to extraterrestrials is mostly pure speculation and imaginative pattern-finding that has no basis in fact. I would gamble that alien "abductions" and secret cattle "surgeries" and a few other phenomena have far more explainable incidents than unexplainable ones (see Occam's razor again). Hard core members of the UFO culture act threatened if you even suggest disconnecting one of these from the other, or offering an explanation that doesn't involve aliens from other worlds or time travelers (or anything that approaches ordinary). This is a problem because it smokescreens out what could be legitimate evidence (even if it isn't empirical) that needs our attention, and otherwise reduces the credibility of more serious encounters.

So why is this book good? Because it throws all of the above problems out the door and serves us only the serious side of the UFO issue.

If you are a well-read UFO buff, the book may be more like a review. You are not its intended audience. Some reviewers, who gave it fewer stars, are in that category.

This book is for people who are not as well versed on the subject because they see the UFO culture as something to snicker about. To them it's in the same category as Star Trek and other SciFi. Many reporters and scientists outwardly treat it that way. For scientists it's often a matter of communication protocol so that they can maintain their status within the scientific community, not as a reflection of what they really believe. (It seems an oxymoron that the same scientists who predict that there is not only a lot of extraterrestrial life in the universe but a fair amount of life with technology far in advance of ours also deny any of that technology poking around our planet. That's because they DO subscribe to the possibility that we are being visited. They just do not permit themselves to publicize that opinion.)

It is also a good point to remember: Kean is defining skeptics and debunkers as being different. Debunkers wear the clothes of skeptics but their motive is different. They are not approaching anything from an investigative or scientific point of view, they are jumping to the conclusions that 1) the topic on UFO sightings is supporting the notion that extraterrestrials are here, and 2) extraterrestrial visitations are not happening, and in fact are impossible. They don't often admit "impossible" but they imply it with every word they say. And then they set about either making jokes about the subject (a fear response if ever their was one) or attempting to discredit what ever they possibly can. A skeptic, on the other hand, isn't trying to prove against anything. A skeptic is in fact trying very hard NOT to jump to ANY conclusions, but eliminate all ordinary possible explanations. While those possible ordinary explanations exist (and I mean POSSIBLE, not tooling words like "swamp gas" to refer to lights that behave contrary to swamp gas), further investigation of a sighting is probably not warranted.

Leslie Kean's book details accounts written first-hand by authorities and credible witnesses around the world. It also summarizes the American intelligence and military communities' historic path toward cover-ups and "cartoonizing" of UFO phenomena.

Many extraterrestrial visitation believers (and I use that phrase rather than "UFO believers" since the latter term doesn't actually make any sense) attack and chastise our entire government, as if all the thousands of government officials from the President downward are harboring secrets -- when in fact that is simply not the case. There are only small factions within our government, specifically within the intelligence (CIA) and military (Air Force) sectors, who practice compartmentalized secrecy on the subject (meaning they aren't just secreting from the public, but secreting from other branches of the government), and at least in the past practiced a healthy amount of propaganda and media-manipulation. But this author offers at least a logical explanation for how and why these factions came to be this way, even if the she agrees (as I do) that it shouldn't continue. Other countries offer much more public visibility on their UFO investigations, now more than ever. At some point our intelligence community needs to get on the same wagon.

Some reviewers here also suggested that author Leslie Kean is not as "agnostic" on extraterrestrial visitation theory as she has professed to be... That the book is biased, not unbiased. Well, that may be correct -- but its the research she conducted and the accounts she relates in this book that may have convinced her that extraterrestrial technology is probably the best explanation we have for the most official and well documented incidents... However she is not drawing conclusions on anyone's behalf. The conclusion of the book is that WE DON'T KNOW. This sets it apart form many books on this topic that basically conclude ALIENS. Disentangling the term UFO from Extraterrestrials in our mind has become a futile exercise, despite that UFO is not and was not supposed to refer to anything except WE DON'T KNOW. (Again, the cases in her book represent a minor percentage of the reports that are made. The rest are excluded from discussion because they are at least explainable or have probable ordinary cause. But even that minor percentage represents a high number of incidents, too many to pass off arbitrarily as a huge conspiracy of hoaxes and liars. That is what makes her presentation so compelling.)

I highly recommend this book. It is the most convincing narrative on the UFO phenomenon that I have read, and while I have been on the fence for most of my life, I am now quite sure that there is extraterrestrial technology that has graced our skies -- more rarely than it appears, but common enough to warrant a fix on our "we are alone in the universe" egocentrism.

I read Kean's new book cover to cover in almost one sitting. Strange, because I'm familiar with most of the stories told here. But this book truly is the ultimate single damning document to the skeptics- nothing but the most hard-boiled objective truths, told by the pilots and generals, colonials, etc. themselves. In fact, I'll be surprised if any 'skeptics' write a review to this book.

I'd like to see you try! But if you do, please do read the book first.

Whenever a book about UFOs is good enuf, you'll get disinfo people going; take that as a clue here to read this good book by a top level investigative reporter. With 19 first-hand accounts by Generals and other highly trained people who want the world to know what they saw, this is undoubtedly the best summary type book of the subject that you could get at this point in time. Just published on Aug. 10, it is creating a firestorm among those who don't want their worldview rocked. The author is also very good at summarizing important aspects of the 60 some year story. Most don't realize the extent of the historical events here. This author was also the person who broke the story of the French COMETA report in the Boston Globe ten years ago. She's got the facts and is working against the information inquisitional taboo about this subject in this country. Then if this doesn't quite convince you something is awry here, read retired Canadian Defense Minister [[ASIN:1449076122 Light at the End of the Tunnel: A Survival Plan for the Human Species]], Paul Hellyer's just released book. Wow, now today (9-8-10) this book (Leslie Kean's UFO's: Generals, pilots,etc) is 29th on the New York Times Bestseller list!!!! GOOOOD Job. . .

This seems to be a book endorsed primarily by unrigorous believers. I only read two chapters before realizing it wasn't the "objective" book advertised, so I returned it.
To be fair, the writing is clear, the author is not of the most sensational variety, and it's an adequate start for the beginner.

A work of "objectivity" should present plausible counter evidence when available. This is hardly the case here. Example: I had only been researching the Belgian case for a few brief days. But my limited scholarly sense nevertheless took me first to the JREF (James Randi) forums, where I routinely visit when confronted with a fantastic tale. I typed in "Belgian ufo" and it brought me to a paper titled "The Belgian UFO Wave of 1989-1992" by Renaud Leclet. In it, a different picture emerges than presented in this book. Except for the alleged lack of sound, the witness reports of triangular shaped objects bear striking resemblance to military helicopters, a description of which was an eye-opener. In addition, these "completely silent" objects apparently did make quite a bit of noise (thud, chain noise, humming, for examples), depending on which witnesses one chooses to quote. A check by Leclet of original newspaper accounts also reveals how facts had been embellished in the retelling process: the Eupen gendarmes, for example, (Nov29 1989) description of a light humming noise morphs into "total silence." This is just the tip of the iceberg of the many pieces of counter evidence presented in this paper.

Next I turned to the famous Brentwoods case, where once again a few minutes of research is contrasted with "10 years in the making." This time I did what I would think any competent researcher might do by reflex: I went to Wikipedia, where I was directed to the pages of Ian Ridpath. This enjoyable UFO author has unusually detailed things to say on Brentwoods. For example, he mentions the 5-second cycle correlation of Britain's 2nd most powerful lighthouse (at the time) with the live tape recording: "The five-second interval between the words "there it is again" and "there it is" synchronizes exactly with the flashes of the lighthouse."; he mentions the bright meteor widely seen in the area at the same time that morning, nowhere mentioned in Kean's book, and the changing stories of the witnesses at the time, including the peculiar case of Sergeant Jim Penniston, who stated under regression hypnosis that our descendents had traveled back in time "to obtain genetic material to keep their ailing species alive." No mention of any of this in the book, despite Ridpath being perhaps the most famous researcher on Brentwoods. At this point, I decided the book wasn't worth my money, so I stopped reading any further.

I am not saying the above refutes alien life technology. Like the author, I remain agnostic and open to the possibility alien visits. Unlike the author, my common sense research skills would not allow me to publish in such an obvious one-sided manner. When one ignores easily available sources that plausibly fill in many of the questions left in the reader's mind, a scholarly book has not been produced. Again, maybe the other chapters are different, but a quick skim read of them did not suggest this to me.

(edited by me Nov 19 2011: trimmed out unnecessary detail)

I am a UFOlogist. I've been investigating/studying this field for years, 55 to be exact. I currently serve MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) as Ambassador-at-Large and Consultant in Social Psychology. I was former state director for MUFON in Hawaii. I have a Ph.D. in social psychology. I have seen this 'taboo' of ridicule that Leslie Kean so aptly describes in her book applied against this subject matter. Not only have I seen and experienced this 'taboo' reaction to this subject, I am personally aware of the kinds of people in science, academia, and across the political spectrum who should know much better that the aim of science and knowledge is to study and understand what it is that we do not know, rather than to dismiss the unknown strictly out of hand, a priori, without studying the evidence. In all my years of reading books on the UFO subject, of attending conferences, discussing the subject into the wee hours of the morning, meeting and getting to know the majority of 'players' in the current modern era of UFOlogy, I can state without any reserve whatsoever that Leslie Kean's book is the single best work on the subject of UFOs in this early 21st century. I dare any open-minded skeptic--or any intelligent debunker (if that is not an oxymoron)--who reads this book and honestly confronts the issues to tell me that he or she can still walk away from the subject with clear conscience. If you want a primer, or like me, you want a fresh view on the subject matter of UFOs, then this is the book to get!

The writer presents some interesting cases, but for much of the book focuses on the need for the U.S. government in cooperation with other governments to study the UFO/UAP phenomenon. I am more interested in reading about the actual phenomenon rather than reading what amounts to a large portion of the book continually bludgeoning the reader with the case for government research which could have been summed up in a single chapter.

As my title indicates, I felt this book was 40% great and 60% boring. The great part would be the UFO encouter reports. As for the rest, it seemed to mainly consist of the author trying to prove that the U.S. government was not doing as much as they should be doing.

So I give the book 5 stars for the UFO encounters and 2 stars for the US government obsession. I give her 2 stars rather than 1 star for this because she accomplished her mission very thoroughly. So if this was a thesis paper I would give it 5 stars. However, the amount of chapters devoting to the US government was overly obsessive. Who cares what the US government thinks? Is it any surprise to anybody these days that they lie about stuff or are incomptetent in general? Why does she feel the need to get Mommy and Daddy's approval to prove that UFOs exist?

It only took a chapter or two at the most for her to convince me the US government was lying. This is simply common sense as many UFO reports are way too reliable for the US government to show no interest whatsoever on the subject seeing as they are obsessed with defense.

I felt she had a limited amount of reputable sources to make her book. She had maybe 120 pages worth of UFO material which was top notch by the way. I would have much preferred 80% of the book to be UFO tales and 20% the politics behind why it is unfashionable to talk about UFOs. I don't need other people's approval to determine facts.

I understand her main point was to make UFOs respectable and mainstream and she accomplished her goal. However, in terms of interesting reading...the government stuff got way too repetitive.

However, it may be worth it to buy the paperback version when it comes out and read the science stuff and skip over the obvious govt chapters.