An Illustrated Review of The Close Encounters Man By Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos Symbols do matter. When you buy a book devoted to the UFO enigma (in my case, I kindly received it from the publisher for review) you expect the cover to have a meaning, a clue to its contents. Yes, I know that you should not judge a book by its cover, but the exterior should always somehow relate to the interior. Consequently, when I found the full front covered by a known-fake flying saucer photograph, along with a highlighted book endorsement by a journalist embracing the alien cause, bad sensations were aroused. Publishers doing? Maybe. However, when Carl Sagan, one of the most extraordinary scientists and thinkers of our epoch, is referred to as a UFO mocker (p. xi), the authors preconceptions emerge. But perhaps this also may be relatively unimportant. Let us read the book The Close Encounters Man by Mark OConnell, a biography of Josef Allen Hynek Ph.D. (1910-1986), scientific advisor to the U.S. Air Force for over 20 years. I should note at the outset that the author reveals himself not as a neutral historian researching and writing about the top figure of ufology. A screenwriter by trade, he is also a UFO blogger who, by age 13, had already read a lot of UFO books. By his own admission and emphasis, the 1973 Pascagoula UFO abduction is pretty much my favorite UFO case of all time. OConnell is hardly an impartial chronicler of the career of someone like Hynek, for whom the study of UFOs was a part-time profession and a full-time hobby. Let me digress a little from this review to establish my own perspective with regard to the man. Dr. Hyneks involvement with the UFO mystery spanned from 1947 to 1986. Mine started in 1967, therefore, we shared 20 years of common interest, so it is predictable that both interacted during this long interval. My personal association with Hynek started in 1974. I had an uneven letter exchange with Hynek since that year. I held it, mainly, with his staff: Mimi Hynek, John Timmerman, Mark Rodeghier, or Jerry Clark. In 1976, the Center for UFO Studies released a compilation of UFO landing reports in the Iberian Peninsula, with a prologue by Jacques Valle (since 1969, I had been closely working with Dr. Valle in the development of a computerized census of this type of occurrences in Spain and Portugal). In addition to letter-exchanging, two major spotlights in our relationship are worth alluding to. One was a couple of vis a vis meetings. On the occasion of BUFORAs first international UFO congress, held in London in August 1979, where we both were invited to deliver speeches, I had the opportunity to greet Hynek in the conference corridors and we agreed to meet far from the footlights. On the following day, we met close to the American Embassy. We held a fruitful conversation, one that would illuminate my research plans for the following decade, which would center on convincing the Spanish Air Force Staff to declassify and place in the public domain its UFO files. This goal was, as military pilots use to say, an accomplished mission. Hyneks advice and vision was superlative in planning the strategy. Hynek and Ballester Olmos, London, 1979. Dr. J. Allen Hynek. London, 1979. Photo by Perry Petrakis. Photo by V.J. Ballester Olmos. Another highlight of my association with Hynek was his contributing the foreword for my book Investigacin OVNI (UFO investigation), published 1984. I was specially moved because he wrote generously about me and my work. (See Hyneks original prologue text in the Appendix 2.) Back to the book. This is an attempt to find the heroism, humor, and humanity in the man Hynek, the author explains. More than likely, those qualities will emerge, yet I would prefer finding an unbiased scientist always doing science with UFO sightings and arriving at sober, down to earth conclusions. Well see. Well-written, as is to be expected from a professional writer who contributed episodes to the Star Trek saga, and well-documented, both features specially appreciated by any demanding reader. We already knew the esoteric interests of Hynek from Jacques Valles memories through a specific article by John Franch. Here we see how from the age of 18 Hynek developed a sympathy with Freemason and Rosicrucian readings and became enthralled with the concept of occult science propagated by philosopher and spiritual teacher Rudolf Steiner (p. 16). How much the belief of an invisible, arcane world would predispose the mind of a young astronomy student to the acceptance of other unearthly realities (not to be disclosed until 1947), we do not know, but certainly the seed was implanted. You never know how these beliefs may frame the ideas of a person, but if you are tackling an inscrutable phenomenon like UFOs, the risk of transforming something intricate into something impenetrable and unknowable is always there. CUFOSs Mark Rodeghier (right) and V.J. Ballester Olmos, Washington, D.C., 1987. The book is pleasant reading. Most of us are familiar with the Hynek-ufologist but less with the Hynek-astronomer or family man. Also, the author cleverly establishes a continuum from the late nineteenth centurys Martian life expectations to pre-1947 public awareness and fears of interplanetary conquest. He shows how the culture was ready to echo misinterpretations that led to the huge (but short-lived) rash of flying saucer sightings of July 1947 in the United States. From the Prologue to Chapter 2, the history of astronomical discoveriesand the stream of erroneous speculations they promptedfrom 1897 to 1938 represents an oven where the ideas being cooked would favor the subsequent apparition of flying saucers. Not to forget the influence of local science fiction literature, I hasten to add. Not unexpectedly, the initiatory Kenneth Arnold sighting is presented without criticism, while the Mantell accident episode and other precedent episodes are shown in a more balanced light. Interestingly, UFO reports were in the beginning vague and sketchy for Hynek (p. 46). It was years before the waves of UFO landings and occupants. In other words, the phenomenon reinforced and reinvented itself and gained in complexity. In my view, it was the media pressure which convinced the witnesses to come along with more elaborate tales, peaking from the sixties to the eighties and diminishing to near zero in the current century. Reflecting on that, recently I wrote an entry in my blogsite entitled Where have the UFO landings gone? reality, they did not go, they simply never came in the first place. In fact, Hynek himself found inconsistencies in size, speed, and performance estimates of the objects for the fundamental and founding Arnold sighting. On the other hand, one of the first photographic records reported (Phoenix, July 7, 1947) motivated Hynek to suggest it should be reopened for investigation, claiming that no competent investigation had been done and that no astronomical explanation seems possible (p. 48). Of course, because most probably it was a crude hoax. I am convinced of that, yet I still cannot prove it. But at that time the possibility someone would lie to the air force was not considered. All in all, some 20% of the cases were unsolved within the first 273 studied by Hynek for the air force between December 1948 and April 1949 (Project Sign). By February 1949, Signs final report even went so far as to discuss the likelihood of a visit from other worlds (p. 50). Some will say, coverup and debunking had not yet started. Blessed ignorance is what I believe. Most of Chapter 4 covers the fiery, magnificent, July 24, 1948 Chiles-Whitted sighting of a huge, portholed, red-exhausted flying torpedo. The report produced a great shock in the Air Force top brass and Hynek could not explain it astronomically either, if we accept [it] at face value (p. 55). Key words. Unprecedented up to then, it was with all certitude the first close view of a bolide (large magnitude meteoroid) by airborne pilots. Over time, UFO and scientific literature discovered how the observation of a major fireball can be transformed into the appearance of a structured solid object with windows. This is termed W.K. Hartmanns airship effect. finally attributed it to a slow-moving meteor and wondered if psychologists would link the brilliant trail of a meteor to the impression of a ship with lighted portholes. After the cancellation of Sign, Project Grudge was enacted, to cope with continuing incoming reports to the Air Force. The ET-conscious stand changed to debunking reports as quickly as it could (p. 59). Depending of your viewpoint, it was due to either a dark hand or a flow of realism. The thing is that after eight months of operations (and 244 cases reviewed), the conclusion reached was that UFO incidents posed no threat to national security. In concordance, the same finding was reached decades later by various countries DoDs, when collections of military-based UFO reports were declassified and released. Nevertheless, today, some stubborn believers do not accept this incontrovertible fact, including, apparently, the books author. The history continues by introducing the myth of the Martians salvaged after a flying saucer crash. OConnell righteously tells that the tale was a contrived story. Yet this concept would surface in later years very vigorously, to survive in the form of the Roswell scenario. This time believers would not let the prey go as easily. In 1951, the movie industry entered into the scene with the movie The Thing. O`Connell takes the last sentence of the film, expired by a wounded scientist: watch the skies! and interprets that the public more emphatically stared at the heavens and, consequently, observed more and more UFOs. However, with the passage of time, the interpretation of most scholars is that this is precisely one of the causes of the phenomenon of waves, a spate of uncalibrated, mistaken, delusional and mundane UFO observations, to be ascertained after a disciplined look at the sightings. The book vividly depicts how good Hynek was as a professor and fund-raiser to the Ohio State University. Popular and valued by university related media, he did not hate publicity, mainly because it was the medium to achieve his career objectives. They sayand the book asserts itthat Grudge responded to debunking instructions . But it just took a General of the Air Force Intelligence to realize that the flying saucer project was inadequately staffed to reactivate it. It was then when salient Captain Ed Ruppelt was entrusted to reinvigorate the program (p. 69). The subject of study was now termed Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) and the program renamed to Blue Book (until its closure in 1969). Ruppelt asked Hynek (again in his consulting role) to reevaluate the Mantell case, initially attributed to Venus. And he recanted. Why? The book says because the UFO phenomenon persisted (p. 70). The fact is that Ruppelt found evidence pointing to a secret Skyhook balloon as the possible culprit instead. After the never properly-probed, massive radar tracking on July 19, 1952 over the airport of Washington, D.C. (a case of anomalous propagation?) , the Battelle Memorial Institute was contracted to statistically analyze thousands of UFO reports (Project Stork). They wanted to discriminate between true and false UFOs. A naive attempt. They still did not know that there are no differences between knowns and unknowns. A particular case receives special attention (9 pages beyond p. 96), the August 5, 1953 series of sightings that started with a GOC observers sighting at Blackhawk, South Dakota and grew to span over three hours and 200 miles distance to North Dakota. It is virtually impossible to analyze an event from almost 50 years ago, but what can appear to be a homogeneous case, I see quite differently: something that occurred in far-flung locations, over the course of several hours, visually, by radar, from the ground, from the air, by untrained personnel or by pilots and air controllers, showing witness excitement, can perfectly well have diverse explanations and be the combination of different phenomena. I speak from memory, but I think Philip Klass already spoke about this artificial combining effect. The funny thing is that when the investigation concluded, Hyneks report made him allude to an Alice in Wonderland flavor (p. 111), i.e., a conundrum. It reminds me of the case of the Spanish pilot of a Supercaravelle on November 11, 1979. For several hours after a central aerial incident, UFOs were seen from the ground and later on by a fighter pilot scrambled to investigate the strange lights. The only way to study time-extended sightings like this is to fracture them into separate temporal and geographic segments; otherwise, we are adding unnecessary complexity to what happened and making it inexplicable due to an incorrect methodology. It was around this time that Hynek sparked the concept of the residue. Those ungovernable cases are the root of a new phenomenon. But that is a fallacy. If you take a million measurements in a laboratory, a small percentage of random errors or discrepancies will always appear. It is a statistical fact that does not indicate at all that these extraneous measurements represent a new phenomenon or structure. In any field of investigation (police, medical, etc.) there are always "unsolved cases", but this speaks rather of the limitations of the investigator. In ufology, it just mirrors the failure of the narrator or/and the analyst. With more experience and skills this percentage decreases. Matter of fact, the figure 20% of unexplained cases by Hynek or the Blue Book has been reduced today to 2.0%, according to the latest figures of GEIPAN. For social sciences academics who contend that media and cinema stimulated and maintained the high level of saucerism (both belief and reporting-wise) in America, the book quotes film historian Patrick Lucianos estimate of 500 movies of the SYFY genre (flying saucers included) produced in the US from 1948 to 1962. If you add to this book publishing, newspapers, magazines, and television promoting UFO stories during the space age and cold war term, the foundation for this appears more than proved. The narration establishes a parallelism between Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) and Hynek, a little bit far-fetched in my view. Primarily, based on unorthodox intellectual Arthur Koestlers (1905- 1983) biography of Kepler, who defied XVII century scholars rejection of Galileos discoveries through the telescope he invented. In the same manner, the author suggests, Hynek opposed XX century scientists to look at UFO photographs (p. 118). But if there is one aspect of UFO phenomenology that has been well covered by scientists since 1947 (in and out of the military) it is photography and film footage evidence. As I said, an excessive comparison that I can understand as a nice literary conceit for a book. In reviewing Hyneks labor life as an astronomer, this volume goes through interesting scientific achievements in the contemporary history of astronomy, e.g. the Baker-Nunn camera (p. 123). Also, the account of events surrounding the launch of the Soviet Sputnik in 1957, and the role played by Hynek, is quite illustrative and entertaining (p. 127). It can be ascertained that the investigators will to believe crucially limits ones capacity to analyze eyewitness depositions and UFO incidents. I can affirm that firsthand as I suffered this bug. It is like having a veil in your mind that inhibits detecting logical flaws, awkwardness, and absurdities within the reported event, or making a sensible and rational assessment of the whole situation, therefore accepting everything verbatim no matter how weird it is. Simply because you believe that such weird things happen in the first place. Let us revisit the Levelland, Texas story of multiple-landings on the night of November 2, 1957 (p. 133) from a different perspective. At 10:50 p.m., P. Saucedo and Joe Salaz, farm laborers driving a truck 4 miles west of town, have a brief encounter with a torpedo-shaped, high-speed colorful flame about 200 feet long. Notably strained, Saucedo reports the fright to the night desk police officer of the Levelland Police Department, adding that the vehicles engine and lights momentarily failed. Police officer A.J. Fowler dismisses the call. Drawing of UFO sighting by P. Saucedo to Blue Book investigator, S/Sgt. Norman P. Barth, 1006 Intelligence Service Squadron, Ent Air Force Base, Colorado. ( https://www.fold3.com/image/7229817) As described, the economy of hypotheses rule suggests the observation of an unexpected bolide fireball, powerful enough to scare the two Hispanic occupants who, in their excitement, couldn t manage the vehicle. Nothing to be surprised about for UFO experiencers. There have been great confusions with fireballs, their grandiosity has even given rise to close encounter reports. Incidentally, for astrophysicist Menzel, it was a case of ball lightning. This resolution was the one adopted by ATIC (Blue Book). One full hour elapses. A still night is in progress. Suddenly, a Jim Wheeler [of Witharral] calls. He is driving 4 miles east Levelland and has seen a brilliantly lit egg-shaped object, about 200 feet long, sitting in the middle of the road. As he approaches the neon glowing object, engine and headlights fail. He tries to leave the car when the landed object streaks upward and vanishes. Car power then recovers. A few minutes later, Jos Alvarez [also of Whitharral] calls the same Police Department, now from a roads telephone booth. He reports to have just observed a large glowing object sitting in the road 11 miles north Levelland. His car suffers from electrical failure as soon as the object soars away. At 12:15 a.m., [Whitharral] motorist Frank Williams phones to officer Fowler to claim having seen a glowing, pulsing object. With every lights pulse the car dies. The object departs with a thunder. [He is 9 miles north of Levelland]. Now, Fowler realizes that his communications are being overheard by dispatchers that are having a good time with him and requests that air remains free for emergencies. Only then the kidding ceased. [Hynek wrote that all observers were listening to a local radio that carried the news.] One more call is received from a pay phone at 1:15 a.m. from a terrified truck driver [James D. Long, according to New Yorks World Telegram and Sun, November 4] who tells Fowler he saw a [neon] glowing egglike object...200 hundred feet long that made his vehicles lights and engine fail until the object blasted off to the sky [at northeast Levelland]. Witnesses usually have a problem estimating times and sizes. But here we have 4 reports made to the same bureau in the space of 85 minutes mimicking the crude dimension and shape and brightness and EM effects claimed for a meteor-like phenomenon made one hour before by two simple Mexican farm workers, in the same area, now portrayed as an egg-shaped object landing repeatedly. Frankly, it looks like a coordinated joke. Or a copycat case, a miserable prank on the police. Havent the reader realized the kind of idiotic behavior/maneuvers of a potential spacecraft? Were the UFO operators drunk, jumping from a road to another, with