Page Content (OCR)
trusted sources, such as local newspapers. Could all of these people be lying or confused? Or could it be that there was something larger, more deeply rooted, that kept government officials from truly listening to these accounts, accepting them as true, and investigating accordingly? Hynek postulated that, in its inability to accept something as revolutionary as the existence of these inconceivable crafts, our psyche simply shuts the whole thing out. The impossible reality "overheats the human mental circuits and blows the fuses in a protective mechanism for the mind.... When a collective breaking point is reached, the mind must openly disregard the patent evidence of the senses. It can no longer encompass such evidence within its normal borders." He concluded that, due to the totally bizarre, shocking, and even traumatic nature of such an event, there is no energy for action, as if everyone was operating on a dead battery. This dynamic can affect groups of people as a whole, and those in charge were not exempt from its numbing effects. "With apathy goes the ability to accept even the most inane explanations—anything whatever—to stave off the necessity to think about the unthinkable," Hynek wrote. This may not provide a complete answer, but it touches on the profound nature of the UFO taboo, which manages to keep us in the dark even about events in our own backyard. This primarily psychological phenomenon, set in motion by the Robertson Panel in the 1950s, operates here with much greater strength and tenacity than it does in other countries. It infused the improper management of our Air Force agency, Project Blue Book, until its eventual demise. Then the taboo became integrated and accepted, affecting all levels of government. It's still hard to believe that the Hudson Valley events slipped by, unnoticed by most of us—but in fact, that's what happened. Of course, if our government had responded the same way the Belgian government did when that country was hit by a similar wave, everything would be different. And even more important, if we had set up an agency similar to the one in France, devoted to research for its own sake, even greater knowledge could have been acquired. The UK, our closest ally, had an office in place to receive UFO reports during the time of the Hudson Valley wave, and would have investigated. The U.S. government, albeit responsible for an enormous territory of land and sky in comparison to France, Belgium, or the UK, appears to be operating at one extreme in its ability to turn a blind eye to UFOs. CHAPTER 17 by Nick Pope The British Ministry of Defence set up its office for UFO investigations in the 1950s, at around the same time that the United States established Project Blue Book. However, the British kept their UFO its Blue Book. the British kept their established Project Blue Book. However, the British kept their investigation going much, much longer. Nick Pope was the man assigned However, THE REAL X-FILES