Most Americans probably believe in UFOs but would deny it in public. Not unlike religion in the Soviet Union, professing an idea inimical to the reigning ideology is a risk only the fervent and the retired would assume. And yet popular fascination with UFOs is prevalent in our culture through fiction (“X Files” et al) and the tabloid media where the possibility can be indulged as a harmless pastime. But anyone standing up to say “I believe,” or worse, “I saw a UFO,” will be branded a wing nut and relegated to the fringe.
As James Fox discovered in his History Channel documentary, “I Know What I Saw” (out on DVD), many prominent figures believe in the unbelievable. Among the people he interviewed were two 1960s astronauts, Gordon Cooper and Edgar Mitchell, plus military officers and aviation officials from the U.S. and other countries. Britain’s defense ministry recently declassified its flying saucer files, which reveal a significant residue of unsolved and seemingly unsolvable cases. A French government commission issued a report favoring the “extra-terrestrial hypothesis” for that stubborn five percent of sightings than can’t be dismissed as swamp gas.
According to news clippings and archival press conferences unearthed by Fox, the U.S. military and news media was once inclined to take the UFO phenomenon seriously. During World War II, the luminous globes of light that dogged some bomber squadrons were suspected as Nazi secret weapons, and afterward, when saucer sightings became common in the early Cold War years, the air force maintained a keen interest. And then, sometime under Eisenhower, a change in attitude became prevalent. Most of the sightings proved to be balloons or falling space debris, and yet there was always that stubborn five percent. “I Know What I Saw” proposes no grand answers but keeps us wondering what’s up.
