There is an unusual dichotomy about UFO research. On the one hand, we are told there is nothing of value to it by the military and intelligence agencies. Yet, these very same agencies tend to be the one's who expend the greatest time, effort, and resources to keep control of the investigations and release of any results. The discrepancy lies between the interest shown by the intelligence community that infiltrates civilian UFO groups and the mainstream scientific community that has traditionally ignored the situation entirely.

A newcomer to the study will find their quest for knowledge waylaid at every turn. Even established scientists have continuously failed to get proper research and disclosure done through the "mainstream" routes of research. The theories behind UFO phenomena also gravitate toward a schism of thought. There are the more fantastical ideas of Shaeffer and Klass to set a counterpoint to the more conservative scientifically oriented outlook of Ruppelt, Kynek, or Keyhoe. Some areas of study focus on UFO's more in the paranormal realm than the practical science. With the squirreling away of any real knowledge by the military and intelligence agencies that are in the best position to have figured out the truth, a new researcher can have no clear path to follow.

The "great wave" of UFO sightings in the 20th Century started with the "foo fighters" of WWII and continued after the war with American observations of what were called "ghost rockets" over Europe in 1946. While they were studied by the Greek military and determined not to be either Russian or "rockets," the United States military did succeed in slapping a label of secrecy over the results. Then 1947 saw the massive outbreak of sightings all across the United States itself.

While the military agencies managed to keep the vast majority of these events secret from the public, they were often of very major and potentially catastrophic events. Many of these unknown craft were violating restricted air space over nuclear and top secret test facilities. As well as many military bases, the airspace over the Oak Ridge Nuclear Facility, Los Alamos, and Hanford were repeatedly trespassed upon. Even General Nathan Twining had noted in a classified memo that "some of the objects are controlled." He never hazarded a guess as to "what" controlled them.

By 1949 a confidential FBI internal memo was passed around stating "Army intelligence has recently said that the matter of "unidentified aircraft" or "unidentified aerial phenomena" ... is considered top secret by intelligence officers of both the Army and the Air Forces." A year later, Department of Defense Research and Development Board physicist Robert Sarbacher confided to the Canadian official Wilbert Smith that "UFO's are the most highly classified subject in the U.S. government."

Obviously the military and intelligence community feels they know enough about the UFO phenomena to make sure the public never learns the truth. It was a combined effort by the CIA and Air Force Intelligence that began the campaign in 1952 of ridiculing anyone who reported seeing a UFO. In the mid 1980's even such a trusted UFO researcher as William Moore finally confessed to having been part and parcel to a massive misinformation campaign to refute and confuse real civilian research on UFO's. Many people in the top echelons of the civilian UFO research organizations have had and still have past connections to the various covert intelligence agencies.

The clearest fact to be discovered concerning the UFO phenomena is that a great deal of effort is made at the highest levels to keep the average person from ever knowing the truth. A study of human nature will show that such activity is almost invariably done to maintain control over other people. What dirty secrets are constantly being hidden behind "national security" that would so require them to be kept for so long behind their "classified" covers?

The vast majority of UFO reports have been reasonably concluded as misidentification of naturally occurring phenomena. That still leaves thousands of sightings that have left only mystery and inconclusive results in their wake. Some have even presented enough evidence that former skeptics have come to reassess their beliefs. One such incident heavily affected J. Allen Hynek, scientific advisor for the United States Air Force's UFO investigations, and began his change of attitude about the potential reality of some non-terrestrial cause to the sightings that poured in to their investigators. Police Sergeant Lonnie Zamora near Socorro, New Mexico experienced the alien encounter on April 24, 1964.

Officer Zamora was chasing a speeding vehicle south of Socorro in the late afternoon of that day. He "heard a roar and saw a flame in the sky to southwest some distance away - possibly a 1/2 mile or a mile." Abandoning the speeder he went to investigate, as he knew a local dynamite shack was in that direction and was afraid it may have exploded. With the weather fine and only a few clouds scattered about the sky he recalled seeing a long, funnel shaped, bluish-orange flame that lasted about as long as the roaring sound he heard. He said it dropped from a high pitch to a lower one and then stopped as he approached the gravel road leading up to the shack.

Reaching the top of the rise, he saw what, at first, he mistook for an overturned white car about 150 to 200 yards away with two figures standing beside it. Turning his patrol car towards this sight, intending to offer assistance, he noted one of the figures give a start and they disappeared from his view. He said there was nothing extraordinary about them except that they were maybe the size of children or small adults.

Radioing in to his dispatcher he informed them he would be outside his vehicle checking on the "car" in the arroyo. As he exited his vehicle heard a a very loud roar begin, starting at low frequency and raising higher then a flame appeared under the object he could now see was NOT an automobile. He described the object as being white, not aluminum or chrome, and of an egg shaped oval, very smooth with no apparent windows or doors. He noted some sort of red lettering on the side and what seemed to be an "insignia" about 2x2-1/2 foot square. While the roar began while the object was on the ground, it began to slowly rise straight up into the air on the pillar of flame.

He began running, attempting to get away from the roar which he admits frightened him. When it ceased, he looked up and saw the object, now silent and flameless moving away from him, clearing the 8' shack by several feet. He regained his patrol car and radioed to the dispatcher to see if they could spot the object as it began to lift higher into the sky, soon passing over Six Mile Canyon Mountain, still silent and flameless.

He was soon joined by the dispatcher, Nep lopez, and Sergeant M.S. Chavez who helped him investigate the sight where the object had rested. There was brush burning in several places and they noted tracks left by what must have been "legs" on the object. The four indentations in the ground were deep, cutting into the subsoil to expose a deeper moisture level. The moist soil indicated that the marks were freshly made. There were also three other circular marks that only extended to about an eighth of an inch in depth. Some of the smoldering brush, while still smoking, was also cool to the touch.

As independent corroboration for Officer Zamora's story were several other sightings of the flying egg-shaped object reported round that time by others in various locations in the area, including two separate groups of tourists and an unidentified person who called the television station in Albuquerque. Other people reported hearing the roar of the object and one gas station attendant who reported in flying over his station at a very low altitude.

Several years later a former University of Arizona radiation biology doctoral student stated to UFO researcher James McDonald, who was also an atmospheric physicist, that she had been sent to collect and analyze soil and plant samples from the site. While the finished report she turned in has never resurfaced, she stated that the sand was fused, the plants were unusually dried out and that there were two undetermined "organic substances" included in the samples.

The official Air Force conclusion was blatantly riddled with errors and easily exposed misinformation. The claims that there were no other witnesses than Officer Zamora and that there was no indication of soil disturbance were easily debunked by the numerous reports as well as photographic evidence of the depressions left by the craft. This obvious falsification of the data at hand proved the insincerity and lack of integrity provided by the "official" military investigators, leading them to be increasingly held in suspicion and paving the way for their own scientific advisor to begin looking more closely and seriously at the sightings he was given to debunk.

Anyone who watches the UFO documentaries on cable television are familiar with the bearded, smiling face of Stanton Friedman, the go-to voice of positive UFO research and information. Love him or hate him, Mr. Friedman has some impressive credentials and many years of experience not only in physics but on the front line of UFO research.

Studying nuclear physics at the University of Chicago he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1955 and his Master of Science degree in 1956. Mr. Friedman went on to spend the following fourteen years working for such prestigious companies as Aerojet General Nucleonics, TRW Systems, and McDonnall Douglas, among others. At McDonnall Douglas he was employed on a number of classified projects dealing with fusion and fission engines for rocket and weapon systems along with space applications involving nuclear power plants. By the classified nature of much of his work, some debunkers claim he is a front man for government misinformation. Others feel that his work in such secret areas brought him into contact with things that could well have been what sparked his interest in the UFO phenomena to begin with.

While Mr. Friedman still serves as a consultant for various companies, including the Radon detection industry, he has, since the 1960's, devoted his time and resources to the investigation into the truth about the UFO phenomena. His investigations have taken him into seventeen different government, military, and private document archives seeking evidence for the truth or falseness of the phenomena. Mr. Friedman holds the distinction of being the first civilian investigator into the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico event, a tale in its own right of lies, misinformation, conflicting stories, and still no clear proof of what actually occurred.

Avoiding the more tabloid speculations, Mr. Friedman has delved into many highly reputable scientific studies of UFO's and the possible technology behind them. His conclusions are that these sources, less well know than the more sensationalized reports, hold a wealth of evidence, already at hand, that shows the UFO/Extra-terrestrial phenomena is real and is being consciously and sometimes ruthlessly being kept from widespread public awareness.

For over ten years now Mr. Friedman has had an unanswered standing challenge to Colonel Richard Weaver, author of the huge, but misleading book, 'The Roswell Report: Fact Vs Fiction in the New Mexico Desert' and USAF Captain James McAndrew, the writer of 1997's 'The Roswell Report: Case Closed', to a formal debate to try and justify their works. Mr. Friedman has referred to both volumes as propagandist material that makes a mockery of serious investigation. The authors have spent thirteen years avoiding his desire for them to join him on live television and try to justify their selective data selection, false claims, false reasoning, and juvenile name calling.

As a scientist, Mr. Friedman attempts to utilize the scientific data he uncovers to prove his belief that at least some of the UFO's reported are indeed piloted by an intelligent extra-terrestrial presence. He is dedicated to the cause of getting people to dig into the overwhelming scientific evidence and avoid the more sensationalized tabloid views. He feels the truth is already out there if people will only dig through the ignorance and hyperbole to find it.

It doesn't take much time or research into the UFO phenomena to realize that there are easily as many people trying to discredit the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors as there are those who try to prove its existence. Skeptics have always been with us and that is not entirely a bad thing. At their best, an educated and informed skeptic helps keep legitimate research from being overwhelmed by the more hysterical or emotional elements. It is necessary to look long and hard at what is being reported and shown to help determine the relative validity of any given report.

This is especially needed with what sometimes appears to be an army of hoaxers who attempt to misinform and ridicule those who have actual experiences with the unknown. The state of computer graphics has advanced to the point that a clever and talented craftsman can construct digital images that are virtually indistinguishable from an actual photograph. This makes it much harder to quickly accept a digital photograph as real without it having first been subjected to qualified scrutiny to search for any evidence of duplicity. It is almost ironic that in order to try and gain proof of a high technology, the low-tech Polaroid has less chance of being used in a successful hoax than any of a vast array of equipment that could give us greater detail and better imagery of these unknown things that fly through our skies.

Yet, for all the advantages a serious skeptic can bring to the UFO investigations, so many of them seem to become mere ridiculers of anything outside a narrow worldview. So many attack any seriously presented report or evidence presented regardless of the facts that can be gleaned from them. Even when serious scientists devote their time and skills to analyzing evidence presented as coming from a UFO, these non-scientists will so often shout down logic. It is as though the louder they ridicule, the more likely people will accept their unstudied opinion as facts, even when it is in direct conflict with discovered knowledge.

An example can be found in one of the major UFO research reports available. While the summarizing conclusion to the Condon Report was slanted to try and discredit the UFO phenomena, many of the facts revealed in the pages of the report itself were anything but discrediting. The skeptics, for the most part, seem to laud the "conclusion" while ignoring the many instances that were clearly not explainable by normally occurring causes and events.

It is necessary for the interested individual to become their own skeptic and research the UFO phenomena with as open a mind as they can. Check on both the sources of the reports and the sources of those "explaining" what the sighting was. No matter how much you wish to believe, it is necessary to develop the mindset that a sighting or report is plausibly explainable. It is also necessary for those who disbelieve to keep in mind that humans are not the possessors of all knowledge and that there could well be unknown, and even extraterrestrial, things in this universe. Only through an objective investigation can the truth of this phenomenon be uncovered and undeniable knowledge is found as to whether we are alone in the universe or not.