News of the Apollo 11 UFO encounter on the Moon was only covered in European media, much to the dismay of Dr. Frank E. Stranges and other American ufologists. Artwork source: All Posters.
God’s Celestial Ambassador- The Life and Times of Dr. Frank E. Stranges, Part XXXVII
By Dr. Raymond A. Keller, a.k.a. “Cosmic Ray,” international awards-winning author of the Venus Rising book series (Terra Alta, West Virginia, 2015-2022), available on amazon.com
Dr. Raymond A. Keller Books: https://thepromiserevealed.net/product-category/books/
Project Blue Book Closure
On 26 December 1969, the Secretary of the Air Force, Robert C. Semans, Jr., stated that his branch’s official UFO investigation, Project Blue Book, was being closed, immediately. Semans had sent a memorandum to Air Force General John D. Ryan declaring that due to the findings of the Air Force-funded University of Colorado at Boulder’s Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, headed up by that academic institution’s most prominent physicist, Dr. Edward U. Condon, a determination was made at the highest echelons of the Air Force that the continuance of Project Blue Book could no longer be considered justified either in the general interest of science or on the specific grounds of promoting national security. The published findings of the Colorado investigation, which lasted from 1966 through 1969, was commonly referred to as the Condon Report. It was made available to the public in a mass-market edition consisting of a whopping 965 pages through New York Times/Bantam Books, New York, New York, in January 1969.
Condon Report Ignored Contactee Testimonies
Overall, by the time it was over, the University of Colorado investigation cost the American taxpayers $539,000. According to evangelist Dr. Frank E. Stranges, however, in an editorial to his National Investigations Committee on UFOs (NICUFO) membership in the January 1969 UFO Confidential Newsletter (Van Nuys, California), titled “Air Force ‘Bows Out,’” the so-called Condon Report availed little or nothing. For despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars forked over to the university by the Air Force, Dr. Frank insisted that, “They (the scientific team at the University of Colorado at Boulder) did not investigate the more serious reports regarding UFO sightings by responsible individuals. To our knowledge (the board of directors at NICUFO), not one of the so-called ‘contactees’ were called in to give testimony. Furthermore, the UFO investigation team comprised by six of this nation’s top scientists was not all made public. The secret Congressional hearing did not include those persons who had claimed space contact.”
It is interesting to note that by the end of the 1960s, the stigma surrounding an advocation of the extraterrestrial hypothesis for the UFO phenomenon had no longer signaled a death knell for a scientist’s standing in the global academic community. This is why it is so perplexing that Condon and others of his ilk were in such deniability when it came to the existence of some UFOs as possible manned extraterrestrial vehicles. In my opinion, the ice was broken, insofar as this controversy goes, back on 29 July 1958, when the Associated Press ran a news release of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) out of Alamogordo, New Mexico, titled, “Dr. Jung Says Flying ‘Disks’ Suggest ‘Quasi-Human Pilots.’” It seems that the famous Swiss psychiatrist, Dr. Carl G. Jung of Zurich (1875-1961), had been working closely with the officers of APRO for some time in the investigation of UFO reports on many levels, i.e., those reports that were coming in to its headquarters and UFO Filter Center at Alamogordo.
Dr. Carl G. Jung Changes Paradigm on Flying Saucers
In the afore-cited Associated Press release, the Swiss psychiatric authority remarked that in his reevaluation of the flying saucer phenomenon, he had arrived at the conclusion that “Unidentified flying objects are real and show signs of intelligent guidance by quasi-human pilots. I can only say for certain these things are not a mere rumor. Something has been seen. A purely psychological explanation has been ruled out.”
Previous to this press release, Jung was of the opinion that flying saucers were a mass projection of cold-war angst, a manifestation of a changing consciousness in an age of threatening nuclear confrontations and the dawn of the exploration of outer space and the fears of what we might encounter “out there.” The highly-respected scientist explained that, “I have gathered a mass of observations of UFOs since 1944. The disks do not behave in accordance with physical laws, but as though without weight. If the extraterrestrial origin of these phenomena should be confirmed, this would prove the existence of an intelligent interplanetary relationship. What such a fact might mean for humanity cannot be predicted.
“But it would put us without doubt in the extremely precarious position of primitive communities in conflict with the superior culture of Western civilization. That the construction of these machines proves a scientific technique immensely superior to ours cannot be argued.”
Dr. Jung’s keen observations formed the basis of a paradigm shift in the world’s scientific community. Up to this time, scientists were satisfied to just take the word of the United States Air Force Project Blue Book personnel. After all, they had been investigating the so-called “flying saucers” for the previous ten years and have consistently maintained that they have produced no evidence that such things exist. As of November 1957, Project Blue Book investigators had checked out 5,700 UFO reports. The majority of these objects turned out to be weather balloons, aircraft seen under unusual weather conditions, astronomical phenomena, birds, fireworks or hoaxes, etc.
In all cases where individuals claimed contact with the occupants of a landed flying saucer, the Air Force investigators dismissed it outright as a hoax or the delusions of a psychologically unstable person. It was just too much of a strain on credibility. But Jung took a different approach and found that at least in a few of these contact cases, as mentioned earlier, “A purely psychological explanation is ruled out.” Lou Zinsstag (1905-1984), one of the more prominent female ufologists from Europe at the time and a cousin of Dr. Carl G. Jung, upon visiting him at his home in Zurich, asked him why he had changed his mind about UFOs in favor of the extraterrestrial contact hypothesis, to which the famous doctor replied, “In the future, when we are traveling to other worlds in space, I just cannot see ourselves dancing around for years in the atmosphere of another planet, aware of its being inhabited, without landing some day and shaking hands, any hands, even those of an old guy like myself!”[1] Saying this, he gave his young cousin a smile and a wink.
News of the Apollo 11 UFO encounter on the Moon was only covered in European media, much to the dismay of Dr. Frank E. Stranges and other American ufologists. Artwork source: All Posters.
Apollo 11 Moon Mission Censorship Critiqued
Dr. Frank E. Stranges was also concerned about an extraterrestrial presence on the Moon. Noted the California doctor and evangelist with regard to his work with NICUFO, “We are also interested in knowing why the UFO sightings took place during the Apollo 11 Moon flight were not reported to the American people, but had to be brought to light in foreign newspapers, radio and television media.”
It is a certainty that with Apollo 11, the Eagle landing module touched down on the Moon and that American astronauts Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr., set foot on our natural satellite’s surface on that fateful day of 20 July 1969, at 9:32 Eastern Daylight Time, as measured by Earth’s chronometers. Michael Collins was the Command Module Pilot overhead in lunar orbit for this historic mission. All-in-all, the Moon landing was a most spectacular achievement for the United States, especially considering our fledgling space technology to which we are only now trying to repeat with the Artemis Moon rocket program. Every magazine and newspaper ran photographs of Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s footprints left in the lunar regolith.
In his highly authoritative book, UFOs and the Complete Evidence from Space: The Truth About Venus, Mars and the Moon (Walnut Creek, California: Pintado Publishing, 1987), former Navy electrician nuclear submarine crew member and director of the Public Interest Space Sciences Center in Walnut Creek, California, Daniel K. Ross, wrote: “The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) knew there were other footprints on the Moon, though not at the chosen Tranquility Base, and not oversized astronaut boots. After Apollo 11 landed, two UFOs hovered near the site; and Edwin Aldrin took several photographs of them before he and Armstrong climbed out of their Lunar Module. That fact is a certainty according to Flight Communication Director Maurice Chatelain.[2] What is also a certainty is that NASA had fully prepared our astronauts on how to deal with the fact that they were traveling to an inhabited world, and to expect harmless surveillance by extraterrestrial spacecraft.”
Ross also informs us that, “They (the astronauts) were further instructed as to why humankind on Earth was not ready for this information. It seems the space program was designed to concentrate on advancing our scientific technology, and to expand humankind’s thinking, step-by-step in a controlled manner. It was the perception of the authorities in control that our civilization was not progressed enough to come face-to-face with evidence of extraterrestrial life. That evidence could be, and would be, completely censured from all lunar mission communications and operations. Apparently then an astronaut would be seen stumbling around the lunar surface, not stumbling into life on the Moon. According to those in control, that is all that the public would be able to accept.”
Who Is Hiding the Truth, and Why?
Dr. Frank, speaking for the NICUFO membership and the public-at-large, wanted to know the answer to the persisting questions: “Who is hiding the truth about UFOs and why are they doing it?” The NICUFO director believed that Dr. James Harder (1926-2006), a professor of civil and hydraulic engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, was “right on” when he declared, that in his opinion, at least, “Sufficient evidence had been presented at the Congressional UFO hearings that followed the Condon Report that proved beyond a doubt a positive case for UFOs.” Yet, Dr. Frank surmised that the Air Force brass, acting upon political pressure from the Nixon administration, beholding to corporate interests, as it were, decided to “play it cool” with regard to the matter of UFOs and just announce that their branch of the armed services would “bow out” insofar as anything to do with UFO investigations was concerned, and thereby shutting down its long-standing Project Blue Book.
Chief Skeptic Opines
Dr. Frank was particularly upset to hear that some in the scientific community, siding with the Condon Report recommendations, were taking a strong stand against even the continuance of civilian UFO investigations groups. Dr. Donald H. Menzel (1901-1976), the first theoretical astronomer in the United States and in 1971, the chief astronomer at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, declared that, “Amateur groups, especially, who believe that UFOs represent spacecraft from other planets, can do considerable harm to science.”
For the California evangelist, Dr. Frank, in addressing Dr. Menzel’s bloviation, assessed that, “The real harm comes when both scientists and the military can be scared off when the bulk of available scientific evidence proves beyond a doubt that we are dealing with a power that might upset their applecart by not conforming to the established laws of aerodynamics, as the evidence has clearly shown for the past 21 years.”
Dr. Menzel was adamant in his assertion that the United States government should get out of the UFO business entirely. Said the astronomer, “The government should withdraw all support for UFO studies, as such.”
To Dr. Frank, this was a very short-sighted attitude for the astronomer to take. The subject of UFOs, i.e., unidentified flying objects penetrating United States airspace, would certainly come with inherent national security concerns. And besides, the United States government spends billions of dollars every year on controversial and seemingly fruitless projects. As to Dr. Menzel’s comments in the previous paragraph, Dr. Frank stated, “This is all well and good; though I am certain, on the other hand, he would most likely fully endorse studies of the sex life of the Ethiopian cockroach. This type of attitude, I believe, is in reality an abomination in the scientific community.”
UFOs From an Historical Perspective
For Dr. Frank and other ufologists, there was no point in the government ignoring a phenomenon that literally has existed on the Earth for centuries. “UFO history dates back as far as 4,000 B.C.,” noted the evangelist, while further referring to the Holy Scriptures when he affirmed that, “Biblical history bears testimony of unknown objects being sighted and recorded. Can we take this together with facts, figures, names, dates and places, as reported for the past 21 years and carelessly sweep them under the rug of ignorance and fear? Or shall we again attempt to gain scientific information that will shed light on this unusual and perplexing problem and honestly evaluate the bulk of evidence?”
NICUFO Recommendations
There was a committee chaired by Dr. Frank at NICUFO to evaluate both the findings of the Condon Report and the scientists’ panel review of the Condon Report in the Congressional hearings that followed. After careful consideration of the above, the California evangelist, together with his committee members, unanimously recommended the following with respect to future UFO research in America:
- That an active sky watch program be set up.
- That the service of qualified and experienced experts be obtained. This would be expensive, to be sure, but equally as important, if not more so, than the numerous United States government’s giveaway (welfare) programs.
- That international cooperation with groups who are interested in an active UFO program be encouraged.
- That annual findings be presented before the entire world to be able to see and hear whatever progress has been made.
- That no military or political interference be permitted.
Summation
In light of the facts that the Project Blue Book Air Force team consisted only of three men in a small office on the premises of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base at the beginning of 1969, its closure was probably of no major significance to United States military readiness overall. Its closure was largely a symbolic act to lull and pacify the American public with regard to the true presence and nature of the UFOs in our skies overhead. As we later learned, all branches of the military and offices of the government at every level, to include local law enforcement, continued to investigate UFOs internally. For example, one only has to look at the recent revelations from the Department of the Navy with regard to the so-called “Tic-Tac” sightings by that branch’s military pilots flying out at sea.
Dr. Frank said it best: “The record speaks for itself. Responsible men and women the world over have seen UFOs. Experienced airline pilots, scientists, radar experts, military leaders, statesmen and stateswomen, etc., have all been a vital part of the entire picture. Let us not go down in history as being a nation too lazy or frightened to consider the suggestion that we are not alone in the universe.”
(Editor’s Note: Stay tuned to this website for Cosmic Ray’s Part XXXVIII on the enigmatic Dr. Frank E. Stranges, wherein the evangelist speculates on just what the United States Air Force really knew about UFOs in 1970. -Lon).
[1] Good, Timothy and Zinsstag, Lou, George Adamski- The Untold Story (Kent, United Kingdom: Ceti Publications, 1983), 50.
[2] Maurice Chatelain, Our Ancestors Came from Outer Space (New York, New York: Doubleday, 1977), p. 17.