-Caveat Lector-
from http://www.conspire.com/ufofiles.html
"HERETIC AMONG HERETICS" -- JACQUES VALLEE Interviewed
Jacques Vallee hesitated before agreeing to be interviewed
about the subject for which he's most famous: UFOs. It's not that
he's reluctant to discuss the topic, or tussle with the skeptics.
After all, he's written close to a dozen books on UFOs, several
of them best-sellers, analyzing a notoriously ethereal subject as
a hard-headed physical scientist, folklorist, and sociologist. He
believes there is more than enough solid evidence to make a
compelling case for the existence of UFOs, and he doesn't shy
away from an honest debate.
It's the hard-core believers who give Vallee pause. Anyone
who has observed the semi-academic cockpit known as "UFOlogy"
knows that close encounters of the UFO expert kind shed little
light and much heat, dogma and territorial sniping. Vallee's
views about UFOs are far more exotic and far stranger than what
he calls the reigning "nuts and bolts" approach to the subject.
Consequently, he's been attacked by believers so often that he
jokingly refers to himself a "heretic among heretics." As Vallee
puts it, "I will be disappointed if UFOs turn out to be nothing
more than spaceships."
In his recent autobiographical book, "Forbidden Science,"
Vallee summed up his views about the provenance of UFOs, a
viewpoint that he's developed through decades of research: "The
UFO Phenomenon exists. It has been with us throughout history. It
is physical in nature and it remains unexplained in terms of
contemporary science. It represents a level of consciousness that
we have not yet recognized, and which is able to manipulate
dimensions beyond time and space as we understand them." So much
for anti-gravity-powered starships ferrying Big Brothers from
outer space. Vallee thinks UFOs are likely "windows" to other
dimensions manipulated by intelligent, often mischievous, always
enigmatic beings we have yet to understand.
No other UFO researcher has contributed more to an
admittedly controversial field. But Vallee commands a measure of
respect that must leave his colleagues feeling a bit envious.
Even Philip Klass, the avionics expert and the media's favorite
UFO-debunker, calls Vallee "one of the more distinguished members
of the pro-UFO community." Vallee, he adds, "is one of the
brighter physical scientists who believes in UFOs."
Vallee moved to America from his native France in the early
1960s, as young astronomer-turned-computer scientist. Vallee
pioneered the use of computers to analyze and categorize the UFO
phenomenon, and his 1965 book, "Anatomy of a Phenomenon," is
still considered one of the most scholarly books on UFOs ever
written. At Northwestern University, Vallee assisted Prof. J.
Allen Hynek, the academic consultant on the Air Force's infamous
Project Bluebook, now seen by most saucer students as either a
half-hearted government effort to address the UFO craze of the
1950s and 1960s or a full-blown coverup. While working with
Hynek, Vallee and his wife, Janine, compiled the first-ever
computer database of UFO sightings.
In 1969, Vallee published another groundbreaking book,
"Passport to Magonia," in which he collected a body of folkloric
"myths" that read remarkably like modern UFO encounters, from
Celtic tales of fairyland abductions to Biblical passages and
medieval chronicles of "visitors" from beyond. Building on Carl
Jung's thesis that UFOs are a sociological phenomenon, a product
of the collective unconscious, Vallee forever left behind the
space-bound E.T. theorists. But his folklorist's approach to the
problem would influence a number of later researchers and writers
who continue to echo his ideas about other-dimensional forms of
consciousness. Best-selling author Whitley Strieber, Harvard
"abductee psychologist" John Mack, and journalist Keith Thompson
(author of "Angels and Aliens") all owe a debt to Vallee. Stephen
Spielberg paid homage to Vallee in "Close Encounters of the Third
Kind," basing his French scientist character (played by Francois
Truffaut) on the real French UFO theorist.
We recently had lunch with Vallee in San Francisco at
restaurant around the corner from the offices of his
high-technology venture capital firm. Part 1 of that interview
covers Vallee's theories about UFOs and his belief that science
can penetrate mystery of flying disks and alien beings. In Part
2, which we'll publish later this month, Vallee discusses the
second sphere of his researches: The connection between the UFO
phenomenon and the religious impulse. Vallee believes that the
intelligence guiding UFOs is a kind of control mechanism, an
invisible hand shaping the development of human consciousness
over a period of eons. In the second installment he also talks
about the theory that from time to time governments have
manipulated public opinion through UFO mythology -- in some
instances constructing elaborate hoaxes for propagandistic
purposes.
60GCAT: Why are Americans obsessed with the idea that outer space
aliens are the pilots of UFOs?
Vallee: I think Americans, if they are interested in the subject,
are very literal. They want to kick the tires, which is a good
American thing to do. They want to do reverse engineering on the
propulsion system. And when I tell them, "Look, maybe those
things don't have a propulsion system," you get a strange
reaction. Just like, if you remember, in "Close Encounters," the
Truffaut character keeps going around saying this is a
sociological phenomenon, not just physical. And he has a lot of
trouble getting that idea across.
60GCAT: At one point you subscribed to the theory that UFOs might
be extraterrestrial in origin ...
Vallee: When I met Stephen Spielberg, I argued with him that the
subject was even more interesting if it WASN'T extraterrestrials.
If it was real, physical, but not ET. So he said, "You're
probably right, but that's not what the public is expecting --
this is Hollywood and I want to give people something that's
close to what they expect." Which is fair.
60GCAT: So what do we know for sure about the nature of UFOs?
Vallee: There is a phenomenon. We don't know where it comes from.
It's characterized by its physical [traces]. Eighty percent of
all the cases have trivial explanations. But I'm talking about
the core phenomena. It seems to involve a lot of energy in a
small space; it seems to involve pulsed microwaves, among other
things. There isn't much that is known about the effect of pulsed
microwaves on the brain, so it's quite possible that some of the
stories that you get from people are essentially induced
hallucinations in sincere witnesses -- the witnesses are NOT
lying. They really have been exposed to something genuine but
there is no way to go back to what that thing was, based on their
description, because their brain has been affected by proximity
to that energy.
Having said that, I have plenty of colleagues in science and
technology I respect who tell me this could be a natural
phenomenon -- this could be an undiscovered form of energy in the
atmosphere. We don't know much about the effect of
electromagnetic fields on the nervous system. We're going to be
discovering that as we go. So, it's quite possible that there
could be a phenomenon like that, a very spontaneous thing. Or it
could be artificial. If it's artificial it could come from
another form of consciousness, which may or may not be
extraterrestrial. It's a big universe out there. Who are we to
say where it comes from? We can only speculate on that point.
60GCAT: How can we use our own comparatively backward technology
to investigate this mystery?
Vallee: Where I think that technology can be of help is in
looking for patterns. And I did as much of that as anybody else.
I built, with my wife, the first computer database of UFO
sightings. But where I think computers could be used much better
is in applying artificial intelligence, reason, and inference to
eliminating the reports that have natural causes. I developed a
software prototype of that, which was called OVNIBASE, which I
turned over to the French CNES; presumably they are developing a
next version of it, and running it on their database.
60GCAT: What about other technologies that can help us analyze
evidence better than we could, say, 10 years ago?
Vallee: Digital enhancement of photographs is very useful. In my
book, "Confrontations," I mention the photograph that I brought
back from Costa Rica, which was unusual because the object was
over a lake [Lago de Cote], so there was a uniform black
background. Everything is known about the aircraft that took the
photo. At the time the picture was taken [in 1971], nobody on the
plane had seen the object. It was only after the film was
developed that the object was discovered. The camera used was
exceptional: It produced a very large negative--ten inches, very
detailed. You can see cows in the field. The time is known; the
latitude, longitude and attitude of the aircraft is known. So we
spent a lot of time analyzing that photograph, without being able
to find any obvious natural answer to the object. It seems to be
a very large, solid thing.
I obtained the negative from the government of Costa Rica --
if you don't have the negative, analysis is a waste of time. I
also obtained the negative of the picture taken before and the
picture after, all uncut. I took negatives to a friend of mine in
France who works for a firm that digitally analyzes satellite
photographs. They digitized the entire thing, and then analyzed
it to the extent that they could, and could not find an
explanation for the object.
60GCAT: It's hard for Americans to grasp the idea that UFOs might
be a manifestation the other-dimensional ...
Vallee: You have to keep an open mind. What I try to do is what
any cop would do: I try to listen to the witnesses instead of
printing my own theories. Theories are a dime a dozen. They don't
do any good. It's much more useful, I think, just to listen to
what people are telling you, and I've been trying to do that not
just in the U.S., but also in Europe and other places I've
visited, like Brazil and Argentina, and try to look for patterns.
60GCAT: You're a bit of a controversial figure among UFO
researchers, mainly because you entertain theories more exotic
than the UFOs-are-from-outer-space paradigm.
Vallee: I've antagonized a number of the believers in UFOs.
Number one, because I'm not ready to jump to any conclusion that
it's necessarily extraterrestrial -- we're not smart enough to
know what they are at this point. And the research has not been
done. I certainly remember enough of my training in astronomy to
tell you that the universe is big enough to have other forms of
life than us; at least we hope that it does. But so far we
cannot prove it. So we cannot see how they would come here --
they probably would be much advanced with respect to our physics,
and they would have found a way to do it. But that does not
explain UFOs.
I've also antagonized a lot of people because I think that
the way abductions are being handled is wrong. It's not only
wrong scientifically, it's wrong morally and ethically. I've been
telling people, don't let anyone hypnotize you if you've seen a
strange light in the sky. I think a lot of those people prominent
in the press and in the National Enquirer and in the talk shows
and so on are CREATING abductees under hypnosis. They are
hypnotizing everybody who's ever had a strange experience and
TELLING them they are abductees by suggestion. And they are doing
that in good faith. They don't realize what they are doing. But
to my way of thinking, that's unethical.
60GCAT: What do you think of John Mack, the Harvard psychologist
who believes that alien abductions are a real phenomenon? Of
course, he uses hypnosis on his patients to liberate "repressed
memories" of those abductions.
Vallee: I respect him for his courage in addressing the issue,
but I don't agree with his methods.
I've taken some witnesses who wanted to be hypnotized, taken
them to specialists in two cases out of maybe 70 cases of
abductions that I've studied. And usually the specialists tell me
that hypnosis is not necessarily the best way of helping these
people. Nor is it the best way to recover memories. It may help
in very specific cases. But I've never hypnotized anybody -- I'm
not qualified to do it.
60GCAT: How did you first become interested in UFOs and
paranormal phenomena?
Vallee: I started out wanting to do astronomy and I ruined
essentially a perfectly good career in science by becoming
interested in computers. This was in France in the early days of
computing and the earliest days of satellites and space
exploration. So I took some of the earliest computer courses at
French universities.
My first job was at Paris observatory, tracking satellites.
And we started tracking objects that were not satellites, were
fairly elusive, and so we decided that we would pay attention to
those objects even though they were not on the schedule of normal
satellites. And one night we got eleven data points on one of
these objects -- it was very bright. It was also retrograde. This
was at a time when there was no rocket powerful enough to launch
a retrograde satellite, a satellite that goes around opposite to
the rotation of the earth, where you obviously need to overcome
the earth's gravity going the other direction. You have to reach
escape velocity in the direction opposite the rotation of the
earth, which takes a lot more energy than the direct direction.
And the man in charge of the project confiscated the tape and
erased it the next morning.
So that's really what got me interested. Because up to then I
thought, Scientists don't seem to be interested in UFOs,
astronomers don't report anything unusual in the sky, so there
probably isn't anything to it. Effectively, I was in the same
position that most scientists are in today--you trust your
colleagues, and because you don't see any reports from credible,
technical witnesses, you assume that there is nothing. And there
I was with a technical report -- I don't know what it was. It
wasn't a flying saucer -- it didn't land close to the
observatory. But still, it was a mystery. And instead of looking
at the data and preserving the data, we were destroying it.
60GCAT: Why did he destroy it?
Vallee: Just fear of ridicule. He thought that the Americans
would laugh at us, if we sent it -- all of the data on satellites
was being concentrated in the U.S. And we were exchanging our
data with international bodies. And he just didn't want Paris
observatory to look silly by reporting some thing that he could
not identify in the sky. [This was in] 1961. Later I found out
that other observatories had made exactly the same observation,
and that in fact American tracking stations had photographed the
same thing and could not identify it either. It was a first
magnitude object: it was as bright as [the star] Sirius. You
couldn't miss it. It didn't reappear in successive weeks. It's
just a little anecdote, but to me that fact that we destroyed it
was more important than what we saw. And that reopened the whole
question for me: Are there things that scientists are observing
and not talking about? And then I started extending a small
network of scientists, which is still active, and found that
there was a lot of data that was never published. In fact, the
best data has never been published. I think a great deal of the
misunderstanding about UFOs among scientists is that the
scientists have never had access to the best data.
60GCAT: Why has the best data never been published?
Vallee: I talk to a lot of technical companies where the
executives are aware of my interests, and I've had a lot of
reports under seal of confidentiality from people in science and
in business who had seen things. About a year ago, a vice
president at IBM took me aside after a conference and said, "Are
you the same Jacques Vallee who is interested in UFOs?" And he
described a perfectly classic UFO close encounter story that he
and his family had in upstate New York. This is not something
that is going to be in the National Enquirer.
I met a man who is president of a technical company in
Silicon Valley; he wanted to tell me about his experiences. He
had been a very-high ranking naval officer in command of a large
ship, and he had three experiences with UFOs, two of them in the
service in very sensitive positions -- and at one time when he
was a test pilot. He has never reported any of the encounters,
even when he was a pilot. I said, "Weren't you under obligation
to report it?" And he said, "Maybe I was, but if they have the
slightest doubt about what you are seeing up there, you are
[considered to be] crazy -- they won't let you near the cockpit
of an experimental plane." And he said, "If you're a pilot, you
want to fly. You don't want to spend the next month filling out
forms for a bunch of psychiatrics." Which is what will happen. I
think any pilot will tell you the same thing, you know, over a
beer. So those are the cases that I'm interested in. The cases
that have not been reported in the press, haven't been distorted
in the retelling. When I have time, I follow up on those cases
with my own resources basically out of curiosity, with no
preconceived idea.
60GCAT: But skeptics always argue that even though there may be
anecdotal evidence, there's no hard scientific data ...
Vallee: There is plenty of data -- and it should be analyzed
further. But I do not think it's going to be a propeller from a
flying saucer. I think it is going to be things that would be
interesting if you could find a pattern to the material. I'm
skeptical about stories of crashed saucers; I have an open mind
about it, but I've heard those stories for so many years and they
never really amount to anything tangible. Also, I am skeptical
for another reason: We build technologies now that are extremely
reliable where there is the need. How often does your hard disk
crash? I mean, if you keep your computer for 15 years, eventually
the hard disk is going to crash. But you don't expect that to
happen. If you were going to build a technology that takes you
across interstellar space, it would have to be extremely
reliable.
60GCAT: In your books, you detail the hard data turned up in
European investigations.
Vallee: There is a small unit of the CNES, which is the French
equivalent of NASA, that has permission to investigate any cases
of UFOs. They were set up in the mid-'70s and they've been going
ever since. They found a number of cases that couldn't be
explained, and some cases were never published with all the data.
Cases where there were traces on the ground, where there was
evidence of heat, evidence of radiation, including pulsed
microwave radiation, and evidence of plants being affected.
Again, that doesn't prove anything. It just proves that there was
something there. It doesn't tell you what it was. But it
certainly is a valid technical issue.
This data doesn't tell you if the phenomenon is natural or
not, because it doesn't tell you enough about the conditions
where that happened. And that's where I think a lot more research
should be done. People have come to me saying, "Look, I was a
pilot or in a radar station in Alaska, and we were tracking
UFOs--we recorded the data, and I was a pilot and followed one of
those things and got gun camera footage of it. When I landed
there was a guy waiting for me, in blue jeans and a sweater, who
said, 'You didn't see anything up there.'" Meanwhile, a guy with
a screwdriver is unhooking the camera from the fuselage. Usually
witnesses have no idea where those guys come from. But somebody
has a lot of data; and I think that this hard data should be
turned over to science, certainly the stuff from 20 years ago--I
mean, how classified can it be? By now, we should have known if
it was an enemy, so we should turn over the data to the
scientific community. Let the skeptics analyze it from their
point of view and let anyone else analyze it from their point of
view. That's the way science should be done.
<cont'd>
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