Italian UFO Reporter (10/10/96)

ITALIAN UFO REPORTER International Newsletter of the Italian Center for UFO Studies Centro Italiano Studi Ufologici (CISU) Vol. 2 No. 4 10 October 1996 [Image] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This issue of ITUFOR consists of the English language abstracts of Issue No. 18 (July-December 1996) of CISU journal UFO - Rivista di informazione ufologica, just released. As usual, we prefer to give you long format abstracts of original articles, while shorter summaries are given of non-Italian reports or articles. NEWS by Paolo Toselli Four items in the recent news for our readers' attention: INFECTION FROM OUTER SPACE The real alien invasion occurring in movies and TV, as exemplified by "Independence Day" (but also "The Arrival", "Mars Attack!", "Men in Black", Spielberg's "Alien Zoo", "Phenomenon"), as well as "Dark Skies" and of course "X-Files". X-FILES CONSPIRACIES: ALIENS, GOVERNMENT OR WHAT ELSE? Reporting on the cult TV serial "X-Files", whose public success has been enormous in Italy, too: after screening the second series last spring, the third one is arriving in September. 67,000 copies of "The Unopened File" home videocassette have been sold in our country, and the monthly magazine "X-Files" is regularly selling 30,000, also because the Italian edition is not limited to comics and gossip, but has been designed as a real journal about mysteries, with articles and features. ROSWELL IS BUSINESS Roswell two-fold degeneration: in business (museums, gadgets, festivals, pop culture) and in hoax-argument (plethoras of anonimous fragments pouring in). MR. SANTILLI DOES NOT CONFIRM Santilli's alleged alien so-called autopsy controversial footage saga continued: we can confidently spare you from repeating ad nauseam the latest developments of such soap-opera, which we only give some space in our publications in order to avoid that the only source about it in Italy be pro-Santilli's "Notiziario UFO", whose editor in chief Maurizio Baiata (recently appointed Director of Roberto Pinotti's Centro Ufologico Nazionale) was (is?) Santilli's representative in Italy. That's why CISU accepted to take part in Kent Jeffrey's International Roswell Initiative effort to expose Santilli's case contradictions and inconsistencies, by translating the well-known "SCAM" article in Italian and diffusing it free of charge (you won't be surprised that Maurizio Baiata tried to respond it by calling Jeffrey a "debunker"). UFO CRASH AT GUARDIAREGIA ? In search of a mystery craft fallen onto a mountain in Molise by Renzo Cabassi Two different news reports in early March, 1994 alerted those CISU members active in Project Aircat (collection and analysis of Italian UFO reports by pilots). Both reported events took place on March 6th in the province of Campobasso. At 16.30 two men were flying an ultra-light aircraft Zenair 70 at 200/250 feet above Termoli, at a speed of about 80 mph when they noticed a small sphere reflecting the setting sun light and moving on a north horizontal path at about the same altitude as theirs, seemingly 6 kms away. The mystery object suddenly disappeared after 5 or 6 seconds. On the following day the local newspapers Il Tempo reported that a mystery craft had crashed on Mount Mutria that same afternoon, around 4 p.m. and that research teams were still looking for it. But nothing was allegedly found, according to later news items. We launched an investigation, at first by phone calling and letter writing to local witnesses, journalists and authorities, since weather conditions prevented us from a direct on place expedition among the snow mountains at 1,800 meters above the sea. What we were told was more intriguing than what expected: helicopters over the area in the night (well before the official arrival of the one who found nothing on the following morning); the whole area cordoned off by a very heavy police and military activity. Locals rumoured a sort of plane had crashed, and authorities had it secretly retrieved at night. We waited impatiently till Renzo Cabassi and Roberto Raffaelli could organize a field investigation, on May 28, in order to directly interview the witnesses on the place. "A PLANE HAS CRASHED" The main one was 18 years old Angelo Giambattista: between 2 and 2.20 p.m. of that Sunday afternoon he was to get home in Guardiaregia (730 mt. above the sea, facing Mount Mutria) when he saw a dark object flying from east and seemingly landing onto the mountain, or better bouncing on the snow and stopping as a black spot. He called his father, 45 years old Franco Giambattista, a policeman and a former airman, telling him a plane had fallen. Franco runned out and could easily see two dark shadows on the snow in a ravine about 100 meters below the mountain top (1823 m.). Through his binocular he clearly distinguish an oval shape with swept snow all around and, 20 or 30 meters lower, a 3 to 4 meters long black "aeronautical fuselage" with a vertical flag and a row of small portholes around. He called the emergency number and at 4 p.m. an officer of Carabinieri (military police) arrived and could see the craft. The air accident alarm took another 90 minutes before the area was cordoned off by Police and Carabinieri, and a Civil Protection team arrived, formed by Alpine Rescue volunteers. The fire brigade placed a powerful light beam, while at 8 p.m. eight volunteers began climbing the wooded mountain in the dark. According to at least four witnesses we interviewed, at the same hour no less than three helicopters were hovering near the impact spot. Unverified rumours even told of two copters having retrieved a... missile! At their second attempt, the volunteers got to the mountain top by 1 a.m., and two of them began descending into the ravine, with precise instructions by Carabinieri not to get close to anything they might find, but only report by radio. People down at Guardiaregia could see their light beacons in the right place, but they could neither find or see anything unusual, not even broken branches of snow traces. They only reported briefly seeing like a fable flame. The volunteers remained up there until dawn, when a Fire Brigade helicopter rescued them and flew with them all over the area, finding nothing at all. People down at Guardiaregia, including Franco Giambattista, could no longer see any dark shape on the snow. ON THE FIELD On our second trip to Guardiaregia, on July 9, we could once again interview local residents (except young Angelo, who wants not to talk any more about it, after having been interrogated by Carabinieri) and suddenly realized at least 15 of them had been gazing for hours to the wrong area on the mountain, watching nothing but an odd, big stone curiously similar to a plane. On the following morning Renzo Cabassi and Roberto Raffaelli were taken on the mountain top by the same Civil Protection rescue team, in bad weather conditions (a few meters of visibility, strong wind, winter cold). Raffaelli and the same two rescue members of that night finally descended down into the ravine, getting nothing more than a lot of photos. HYPOTHESES AND QUESTIONS We can guess the crashed craft might have been a military unmanned reconnaissance drone (see box). Roberto Raffaelli analyzed this side of the affair in an article he had published in the specialized journal "Aerei" (october '95), but if true such possibility would request a whole series of science fiction-like activities in order to retrieve the crashed vehicle and cancel any trace of the event: an immediate arrival of helicopters which retrieve it, then three more ones for cleaning the area, then repeated fly-overs to check it had been done OK; plus a large-style alarm, but "piloted" so to take as long as possible to arrive (precious daylight hours being wasted, so that the civil rescue team could only leave in the dark; more nighttime helicopter activity, with at least 11 hours of darkness to complete the work). Such an operation, if real, would rather point to a military secret linked with war operations in the former Jugoslavia. If so, an ethical question may be raised: do we have a right to interfere in such matters? Moreover, shouldn't the government issue an brief - even undetailed - official release, not to let legends and folklore of a new Roswell case be born and diffused? Another hypothesis we considered is that a scientific research high altitude balloon might have momentarily collapsed, his load looking like the reported vertical flag. Such balloon might have later taken off because of a subsequent higher temperature and some wind. But this would not justify the large-style rescue operations. A third hyothesis is the mistake by witnesses, in evaluating and interpreting what they saw. Angelo might have seen any aircraft flying behind the mountain top, and think it might have crashed on it while he only saw its shadow on the snow. The others might have seen a broken trunk or wathever else (but what? Nothing was found, nothing was visibile any longer from Guardiaregia, on the following day). Any hypothesis wa may prefer, we have to keep the huge unfolding of men, means and energies, and we have to ask why. Why did rescue operations only begin three hours later? What controls were done in the meantime? Who took the responsibility to send a Civil Protection team in a dangerous nighttime operation? Since 2.30 p.m. (first alarm) until 5.30 p.m. (beginning the resue operations), since 5.30 p.m. until 1 a.m. (when the rescue team descended into the ravine), did nobody get certain that nothing had crashe u pthere? Why were two helicopters still surveying the mountain? Why all such operations did take to no official report, no explanation to Guardiaregia mayor, no press release at all? Such questions are only made more insistent by the last developments: on August 10, 1994 the district attorney asked (and obtained) that Franco Giambattista be penally sentenced a fine by the Campobasso Tribunal because, "by announcing with thoughtlessness an inexistent accident of an alleged vehicle, he caused unjustified alarm of authorities, agencies and people". So, what are the responsibilities of those reporting an alleged air accident? What then the responsibilities of those not reporting it? Where was the thoughtlessness by Franco Giambattista? Is is always possible for a UFO-crash witness to be charged for "causing unjustified alarm"? All those questions, as of now, remain unanswered. DRONE: UNDETERMINED COMPONENT by Nico Sgarlato Drones (remotely piloted vehicles, RPV; unmanned aerial vehicles, UAV) are often accused of causing UFO sightings. Until the late 1980's, that would have been a very rare possibility, in Italy, since they were rarely used outside military test areas, even in war theaters. During the Gulf War (1990/91) and more recently in the former Jugoslavia they began having an intense, though largely unpublished, use. Italian newspapers only reported the Pentagon (unaccepted) request to base DARO and CIA drones in an Italian airport on the Adriatic, but such vehicles had already been used by the French Army (Fox AT-1) in Bihac and the US Gnat 750 (also called Tier I) were later based in Albania and Croatia. Newer Tier II (Predator) were also based in Albania in 1995, but rumours have it that they had been unofficially operating from an Italian base, too). Two Predators were admittedly lost in August, 1995, but rumours are known of at least another one retrieved by Serbians. More recently US Marine Corps are to send twenty Pointers , US Army the Hunters and US Navy the Pioneers. SOME TIMES THEY FALL... IN ITALY, TOO A Catalogue of Italian Alleged UFO Crashes by Giuseppe Stilo On December 13, 1884 a shining body came down from the sky crashing onto a field in Sorisole, near Bergamo. That was the first known case of a series of possibly UFO accidents in Italy. Since spring, 1995, we decided to collect and analyze them all in a research project called CRASHCAT, including all Italian reports of a seeming fall of flying objects onto the ground (or a water surface), that is all potential UFO crashes. On the contrary, we are not including traditionally fortean phenomena of things fallen from the sky (ice, fishes or animals, vegetables, sand, blobs, etc.). Such reports does show some peculiarities: for example, 75% of them are so much alarming that government agencies (military or civil)are called in action, often with an aura of secrecy. As of present, 102 reports have been filed in four classes: a) retrieved objects (52 reports); b) fallen but unretrieved objects (15); c) fallen into a water surface (31); d) retrieved entities (with or without a vehicle (4). A larger part of them can be explained as fallen balloons, meteorites, planes (or parts of planes), satellites or hoaxes. But 31% of our reports still show unclear details, worthy to be give a deeper analysis. None of these is by now classified as a true unidentified, but only as "insufficient information" because a serious investigation is lacking or did take no concrete fact. Some reports refer to planes seen falling down in flames, but never either found or reported missing. As for the four entity retrievals, they are all just rumours and refer to: a little green man capture in Puglia in 1910/15; six aliens capture by the Italian Army north of Rome in 1959; an undated capture by the Fire Brigade in Veneto; and an alleged autopsy of alien bodies in a USAF base near Savona, following a UFO shot down in 1974. INVESTIGATIONS: THE MILO BALLOONS Sicilian Sightings of Summer 1995 by Antonio Blanco On August 20, 1995, between 10 a.m. an 10.30 p.m., a small UFO flap took place all over Sicilia, as reported by local newspapers and TV stations on the following days. Here follows a collection of reports investigated directly by the Sicilian branch of CISU. The first witness was a naturalist in Caltabellotta (Agrigento), who watched through his binocular a sun/reflecting spherical object with an irregular surface and two protruding legs below, for two hours between 10 a.m. and noon. Around noon, a policeman in San Giuseppe Jato (Palermo) recorded a strange white dot in the blue sky with his home/camera. A whole family of eight people in Vassallaggi watched and also video-recorded a bright white globe high and motionless in the sky at 12.30 p.m. in San Cataldo (Caltanissetta). At 1.30 p.m., two witnesses in San Leone (Agrigento) watched what they described as either an aluminium/covered sphere with ropes below or as a grey balloon, motionless and far away. Between 3.30 and 4 p.m., a few people from Nicolosi (Catania) a silvery dot or an oval with a darker line below, hovering high in the sky. They try to photograph it but the thing is much too small. At 4.30 p.m. the object is still visible from Catania, though slightly more to the east. The last report came to us from Siracusa, at 10.30 p.m., where dozens of people watched a strong light at first hovering above the sea, then speeding away. A second light arrived but also departed the same way. It was soon clear all daylight sightings looked like describing the same and one object. The chronology of sightings (gradually moving from western to eastern Sicily as the hours passed) also confirmed an hypothesis first proposed by a Palermo astronomer: a balloon launched by the Italian Space Agency base in Milo (Trapani). We could confirm that by asking the directors of the project, who kindly provided all data of their summer campaign: a first launch failed in June; a second one suceeded on July 29; the third one was on August 10 and the last exactly on August 20. They all concerned a single stratospheric balloon of very large dimensions. The second and third launches had astronomical and astrophysical survey aims, and went westwards (toward Spain), so that they caused no UFO sightings over Italy (though they did cause an uproar in the Baleares Isles, where one was sighted and video/recorded by many locals and also by Italian tourists, as we reported in ITUFOR 2:3). The launch we are concerned of had an opposite course, westward, as its aim was to try to recover it off eastern Sicily coast, in order to simulate a retrieval operation of a 3 tons space/capsule at sea. The balloon arrived up to 200/300 meters in diameter, had a 250 meters long chain holding its charge and was kept up and driven through telemetric and radiocontrol equipments. Through an apt use of hig altitude winds, it took off at 8 a.m. and moved at about 20 km/h up to 6 p.m., where it discharged the capsule into the sea as programmed. The only anomalous sighting would seem to be the last one, which probably referred to the helicopters taking part in the retrieval operations at sea. The flap also teach us that witnesses are usually accurate in their testimonies, so that we should alway listen to them respectfully; at the same time it tells us they need our help in order to correctly understand what they saw, since their interpretations may be quite off reality. ANOTHER FLYING HUMANOID? Flying Object over Sardinia Investigated by Antonio Cuccu Around 9 p.m. on July 27, 1993 a dozen of people sighted a strange object over the Calabona beach, near Alghero (Sassari), for three to four minutes. The first witness was a four years old boy, who called out his father and a hotel barman asking to take him "that balloon". A whole group of tourists could so watch aound, black object hovering at about 30 meters away. A short rope below made him look quite like a toy balloon, but its shape soon changed to an oblong, irregular one, also beginning to wave, then it got out of their view. The witnesses ran down the stairs and got out into the street, and saw the object enlarging and changing again its shape into what looked like an helicopter with a red pulsating light on top. Suddenly it took off and sped away in just a few seconds on a southwestern path. Shape and behaviour are strongly similar to the strange wave of flying humanoids over Central Italy in that same summer of 1993, as reported in several previous issues of ITUFOR. SOME TIMES THEY COME BACK... Another Flying Humanoid at Rocchetta Sant'Antonio Investigated by Arcangelo Cassano Nearly an year after the hovering humanoid seen on October 1994, a new case was reported in Rocchetta Sant'Antonio (Foggia) on September 11, 1995. At 7.45 a.m. a woman of 20 years old was taking her sheeps pasturing in a valley when she noticed something shining. She got closer and suddenly the thing turned toward her and showed itself to be a small smiling humanoid with a brown coverall within a sort of transparent space-suit. It was about 50 centimeters tall, had two eyes and a nose, two legs and seemingly neither arms nor mouth. A sort of silver half-sphere was on its shoulders and an antenna was above it. She remained gazing at it for about 5 minutes from a distance of 200-250 meters, then decided to get back home, but soon found the creature was now following her. Panicked she began to run to the road, and met a passing driver, telling him of the thing. The man tried to get closer to the being and later described it as a dwarf walking to and from in the valley, later began trotting along on its short legs and took off while the woman (but not the man) heard a noise like a motorcycle. The man also described a sort of white trail coming from the half-sphere on the humanoid back, while it was flying away. Two more people also saw the flying thing from the little town. FISHING SUBMERGED UFOs An Unidentified Submerged Object in Puglia Investigation by Arcangelo Cassano On the night of August 26, 1984, at 3 a.m., three fishers were sitting in a boat 2 miles off Campo Marino (Taranto), when they saw a whitish light moving under the sea in the opposite direction, at a distance of 500-1000 meters from them. At first they thought a submarine was to emerge, but suddenly a round, metallic-grey object came vertically out of the sea, then changed its path of 60-70 degrees and moved away very fast disappearing within a few seconds. No sound was heard, no wave or water sprout were noticed, no trail was seen: these details seem to point against the possibility of missile launche from a submarine. UNIDENTIFIED SUBMERGED OBJECTS: AN ITALIAN CATALOGUE by Marco Bianchini A catalogue of all reports of unidentified submerged objects (USO) in the Italian sea, rivers or lakes was began in the spring of 1995. Four classes have been designed: a) only-submerged objects; b) objects entering the water; c) objects coming out of water; d) objects on the water surface. Unusual marine occurrences of potential interest (broken fishing nets, rumours of underwater alien bases, etc.) are also collected. USOCAT presently comprises 117 cases, of which 80 with insufficient information for any analysis, 16 compatible with more than one possible identification and only 9 surely identified. Strictly unidentified USOs are only 2: the above-reported Campo Marino one and a huge object seen emerging from the sea, then re-immerging into it at Gorgona Island (Livorno) on June 22, 1979. The richest year was 1978 (30 reports) and the richest region is Marche (21). Among possible identifications we find cetaceans, meteor or satellite reentries, submarines, torpedoes, sonar, ROV (remotely operated vehicles), fallen balloons and planes. MEIER, PROPHET OF THE PLEIADES Or: How to Change, in Better, Your Life by Exploiting People's Credulity by Maurizio Verga A long article giving the first complete, and negative, analysis of the famed Swiss contactee Eduard Billy Meier ever published in Italy. Though largely based on the recent Kal Korff's book "Spaceships of the Pleiades", the article also makes a comprehensive review of the published articles in main UFO journals about the affair, and devotes a section to Meier's ufological "promoters", and another one to the Italian scene. Since our foreign readers are assumed to be familiar with it all, we limit ourselves to presenting the Italian side of the Meier case, plus the bibliography (possibly the most complete ever published, but we may have missed a better one). THE MEIER MYTH IN ITALY Ilse von Jacobi's Quick article (the one to launch Meier in to the German public eyes) was also published in the August 1976 issue of the monthly Il Giornale dei misteri (journal of mysteries): a few staggering saucer pictures and a detailed story of his first contact with Semjase. The case then remained known only to a few students for the next eleven years, but in 1987 Gary Kinder's "Light Years" was translated in Italy and has since been the "best" story of the Meier case available in our country. In 1990 a great publisher (Rizzoli) published both the first book of Genesis-III's "Contact from Pleiades" series and Meier's "Messages from Pleiades", in a curious contemporary with Roberto Pinotti's first book (Pinotti's Centro Ufologico Nazionale awarded Rizzoli for the "best book UFO information in 1990" during its Fourth National Congress in Milan, January 1991; such congress was funded by Rizzoli, who also payed for the proceedings, getting a full-page advertisement on the back cover and also publishing a full-page announcement of the prize in its own Corriere della sera, the second-largest circulation daily newspaper in Italy!). For the Italian launch of "Contatti dalle Pleiadi" Rizzoli had authors Brit and Lee Elders come to Italy, speaking at a press conference in the International Book Show, guests at a major TV talk-show on May 23, 1990, and lenghtily interviewed in the monthly Vanity Fair, obviously presenting an embellished and seemingly believable portrait of the Swiss contactee. Meier thus began to be widely, though lately, known in Italy, so that rarely can you speak about UFOs to the public without getting questions about him. A brief resume of the Meier case was also written by Roberto Pinotti both in Il Giornale dei Misteri and in his book "UFO: Cosmic Contact", in 1991, in a surprisingly "pro" attitude, leaving an open door to the "real case" and even reporting Bruce Maccabee's openly-"con" analysis of the pendulum-model as if partly confirming a typical UFO "falling-leaf motion". Pinotti also defended Meier-proponent Wendelle Stevens (who hosted him at his 1991 International Congress and had announced plans to publish a book by Pinotti) as of his penal fine: Stevens could have been eliminated by some cover-up intelligence agency. In 1995 Columbia Tristar Home Video published an Italian edition of the 1979 Genesis-III pro-Meier video, which was presented uncritically as a serious story (Roberto Pinotti was thanked as a consultant). More than the books, such video has given Italian buffs a distorted picture of the Meier case, making it look like a credible affair. THE BILLY MEIER CASE: A BIBLIOGRAPHY by Maurizio Verga and Edoardo Russo * AA.VV. (1979), UFO... Contact from the Pleiades - Vol I, GENESIS III Productions Ltd., Phoenix - AA.VV. (1980), "Update on the Pleiades Contact Case", in Second Look Vol. 2, No. 4, May-June 1980, pp. 10 and 12 - AA.VV. (1983), UFO... Contact from the Pleiades - Vol II, GENESIS III Productions Ltd., Phoenix - M. Arends (1976), Eduard Meier - Prophet der Neuzeit ?, Rimsting - California Study Group (1996), Documents on its WWW (Internet) Homepage - Manuel Carballal (1991), "Eduard Meier, el contactado de las Pleyades", in Mas Alla, September 1991, pp. 105-113 - James Deardorff (1985a) "Occultness and Ambiguity", in MUFON UFO Journal No. 208, August 1985, pp. 5-10 - James Deardorff (1985b), "The Meier case", in MUFON UFO Journal No. 211, November 1985, pp. 11 and 18 - James Deardorff (1990), Celestial Teachings, Wild Flower Press - James Deardorff (1996), A refutation of false claims and distortions by Korff, documento inedito - George Eberhart (1987), "Photographs and red faces", in International UFO Reporter, July-August 1987, pag. 19 - Manuel Fernandez (1992), "Eduard 'Billy' Meier: evidencia de un fraude fotografico", in Javier Sierra (ed.), Mas Alla de los OVNIs, Madrid - Didier Gomez (1992), "Billy Meier: le contact_ des Pleiades", in Lumieres dans la nuit No. 313, November 1992, pp. 36-37 - Josep Guijarro Triado (1991), "El fraude mas infame de la ufologia", in Karma 7 No. 225, August 1991, pp. 18-21 - Richard Hall (1980), "New View of Pleiades", in MUFON UFO Journal No. 150, August 1980, p. 8 - Gary Kinder (1987a), Light Years - An investigation into the Extraterrestrial Experiences of Eduard Meier, North Atlantic Monthly Press, New York - Gary Kinder (1987b), "Light Years: an open letter", in MUFON UFO Journal No. 228, April 1987, pp. 3-8 - Kal Korff (1980a), "The Meier Incident - The Most Infamous Hoax in Ufology", in MUFON UFO Journal No. 154, December 1980, pp. 3-6 - Kal Korff (1980b), "The Meier photographs - Hoax from the Pleiades", in UFO Report Vol. 8, No. 6, December 1980, pp. 14-21 and 44 - Kal Korff (1981a), "The Billy Meier Hoax", in Frontiers of Science Vol. 3, No. 3, March-April 1981, pp. 31-33 - Kal Korff (1981b), The Meier Incident - The Most Infamous Hoax in Ufology, Townescribe Press - Kal Korff (1995), Spaceships of the Pleiades - The Billy Meier Story, Prometheus Books - Kal Korff & William L. Moore (1982a), "Contact from the Pleiades" in Fact and Fiction: A Categorical Response to Wendelle Stevens and Genesis III, Moore - Kal Korff & William L. Moore (1982b), "'Contact from the Pleiades' in Fact and Fiction", in MUFON UFO Journal No. 173, July 1982, pp. 3-8 - Jim Lorenzen (1979a), "Open Letter to Genesis III", in APRO Bulletin Vol. 28, No. 2, August 1979, pp. 1-3 - Jim Lorenzen (1979b), "More Ado about Meier", in APRO Bulletin Vol. 28, No. 5-6, November-December 1979, pp. II-III - Jim Lorenzen (1984), "Ufology - According to Whom ?", in APRO Bulletin Vol. 32, No. 7, pp. 3-5 - Bruce Maccabee (1989a), "Pendulum from the Pleiades", in International UFO Reporter January-February 1989, pp. 11-12 + 22 - Bruce Maccabee (1989b), "Billy, no; Ed, yes", in International UFO Reporter, May-June 1989, pp. 16-19 + 24 - Eduard Meier (1959), "Funfer-V-Formation von UFO's", in Ufo Nachrichten No. 36, August 1959 - Eduard Meier (1988), Messages from the Pleiades: The Contact Notes of Eduard "Billy" Meier, Vol. I, GENESIS III Productions Ltd. and Wendelle Stevens, Phoenix - Eduard Meier (1990), Messages from the Pleiades: The Contact Notes of Eduard "Billy" Meier, Vol. II, GENESIS III Productions Ltd. and Wendelle Stevens, Phoenix - Eduard Meier (1991), Messages from the Pleiades: The Contact Notes of Eduard "Billy" Meier, Vol. III, GENESIS III Productions Ltd. and Wendelle Stevens, Phoenix - Guido Moosbrugger (1991), ... und sie fliegen doch!, Michael Hesemann Verlag, Munchen - Luis Ruiz Noguez (1994), "Billy Meier: el mas polemico fraude fotografico", in Perspectivas Ufologicas, pp. 55-63 - Dennis Stacy (1987), "Pro Meier", in MUFON UFO Journal No. 226, February 1987, pag. 21 - Dennis Stacy (1988), "Reassessing the Meier case", in MUFON UFO Journal, pp. 3-4 and 22 - Hal Starr (1987), "Who stands behind Billy Meier ?", in North American SETI Magazine No. 1, pp. 12-18 - Wendelle C. Stevens (1977), "A Most Remarkable Recurring UFO Case", in Argosy UFO Magazine, May 1977, pag. 38 - Wendelle C. Stevens (1981a), "Billy Meier is No Hoaxer!", in Second Look Vol. 3, No. 3, March-April 1981, pp. 9 and 44 - Wendelle C. Stevens (1981b), "Kal Korff and the Meier 'Hoax': a Response", in MUFON UFO Journal No. 164, October 1981, and No. 165, November 1981 - Wendelle C. Stevens (1983), UFO... Contact from the Pleiades: a preliminary investigation report, Wendelle Stevens, Tucson - Wendelle C. Stevens (1989), UFO... Contact from the Pleiades: a supplementary investigation report, Wendelle Stevens, Tucson - Ilse von Jacobi (1976), "Besuch aus dem Weltall: Die Frau, die von einem anderen Stern kam", in Quick, 8 July - Kolman VonKevickzky (1982), "Response to Stevens", in MUFON UFO Journal No. 169, March 1982, pp. 16-17 - Werner Walter (1991), "UFOs, Botschafter ferner Welten", in CENAP Report No. 180, February 1991, pp. 15-30 - Randolph Winters (1992), "A search for Thruth", in International UFO Library Magazine, pp. 6-9 and 40-41 - Randolph Winters (1994), The Pleiadian Mission: A Time of Awareness, The Pleiades Project Inc., Altwood - Randolph Winters (1996), Documents on his WWW (Internet) Homepage * BOOK REVIEWS Four books recently published in Italy are reviewed, the first one by most known UFO author Roberto Pinotti, the other three ones being translations of foreign books. Roberto Pinotti, "UFO TOP SECRET" (Bompiani, Milano 1995) reviewed by Marco Orlandi It's a 436 pages paperback: of which 240 are the body (9 chapters), and the rest is made of 9 appendixes, a bibliography, a list of quotations and a preface by Stanton Friedman; as rich as usual of data and reports but based on the initial assumption and built in order to document it, so that in the end it is done as demonstrated: the extraterrestrial origin of UFOs being a certainty for the author, he goes on to try and show all-world governments know the truth and conspire to hide it (cover-up) in order to avoid panic and major political crisis. Chapter titles read like: State Secret, Conspiracy of Silence, Cultural Schock, Occult Conditioning, Cosmic Watergate, Planetary Problem. A plausible scenario, maybe, but certainly not demonstrated by information and facts in the book, often based on anonimous or ambigous sources. The blind faith in a world conspiracy does explain it all, indeed. But the cover-up subject itself brings real and verifiable facts together with false information and also rumours of uncertain or doubious origin or reliability. Such heterogeneity in the documentation quality should have been explicitly mention, while it's not. There's no doubt that militaries all over the world have got a lot of suppressed UFO reports in their files, but should we forget that such secretness is often due not to dark planetary conspiracies but specific military needs for secrecy: you cannot expect the Italian Air Force to freely release a UFO picture taken by a pilot when the local AFB is plainly visible in the background! You can't call it debunking, can you? Pinotti is right in calling the socio-psychologica hypothesis extremistic, but - given the present knowledge - the cover-up thesis is as much extremistic. Supporters of both make the same methodological error: they approach data with a preconceived framework, forcing all data within it and ignoring what doesn't match. Let's data speak for themselves, instead! John Mack, "RAPITI!" (Mondadori, Milano 1995; "Abduction", USA 1994) reviewed by Giuseppe Verdi How much Mack's apparent ignorance of ufology made him willing to accept at face value some claims? The reviewer is surprised at how many sexual and familiar troubles stories feature in the selected abductees sample in the book: consequence or cause of their abduction experiences? What about evident, previous "new age" and UFO beliefs by them? What about oniric elements in their reported experiences? Such features don't get much discussion, and neither do some important social and psychic issues, as well as the folklore analogues of abductions are not deepened enough in the opening chapters. The book is clearly showing alien abductions have now become a phenomenon in itself, a real challenge to science, but nearly distinct and separated from the UFO phenomenon who generated 'em (the UFO itself is often marginal, or missing). Sometimes you get the impresson that the real "abducted" are the aliens, brutally dragged into our contemporary reality from such a wide, dark universe as our mind. [Two separate boxes report the opposite reactions Mack got in the USA from traditional UFO students (Richard Hall disputes the "positive experience" concept) and new agers (Michael Miley praising Mack in all)]. Johannes Fiebag, "GLI ALIENI" (Mediterranee, Roma 1994; "Die Anderen", Germany 1993) reviewed by Edoardo Russo The author is to be praised for his effort to move from a literalist approach to ETH at face value, though he is editor of Ancient Astronauts and a close collaborator to Erich Von Daniken. Fiebag shows a great erudition in updating the once-classical paraphysical approach of the early '70s (folklore analogues to present-day CE-III's and IV's; absurdities; "mirror effect" of a phenomenon that seems to mimic or adapt itself to contemporary technologies as well as to individual features of the witness) with last decade data and fashions (abductions, implants, animal mutilations, crop circles, crashed saucers). Given a non-human intelligence as the cause of an ever-lasting phenomenon, are witnesses unconsciously adapting an inexpressible experience with the Otherworld; or are "The Others" (the original German title, though badaly translated as "The Aliens" in Italian) purposefully camouflating? Fiebag does not try to answer and also avoids to fall into an anthropocentric attempt to interpret behaviours and motives we might not be able to understand at all, as shown by his final chapter paradoxical hypothesis: what if we were just a virtual reality, where our creators sometime call in? Much food for thought here, at least for the younger generation UFO buffs. Alan Watts, "DOSSIER UFO" (MEB, Padova 1996; "UFO Quest", UK 1994) reviewed by Edoardo Russo The author is blamed for causing the reviewer a time travel experience, since such book could well have been written 30 years ago, as of general meaning and most of reported data, by the former British ufologist of the early '60s the author admits to have been: a casual bibliography, approximative chatting about electromagnetism, antigravity, color variation with speed, propulsion reasoning based on faked Adamski's scoutship pictures, orthoteny and isoscely: you might think it's just ignorance of UFO literature. But what about calling "leviathans" the cigar-shaped motherships, negating his own sightings of flying triangles were the stratospheric balloons they are known to be, believing the Langford's "Victorian UFO" hoax, Swiss hoax-photo-maker Billy Meier, the "Wales Triangle" and Wilson's lunar cities! His sheer attitude of sheer belief in anything claimed or written sounds of a pre-scientific "good old ufology", making the author look like those Japanese survivors still hiding in the jungle and unknowing the WWII has been over for decades now. TRIANGLE-SHAPED UFOs Lifting Body, Aurora, Black Horse: Mysteries of Advanced Aeronautics by Roberto Raffaelli The recent years upsurge of triangle-shaped UFO sightings (Hudson Valley, Belgium, Western USA, etc.) is revisited with an eye on recent developments in aeronautical science. A brief history of triangle-shaped aircrafts since the early '50s in the USA is paralleled with similar but less known activities in the Soviet Union. Only after the Berlin Wall fall in 1989 more complete details are known of such crafts as reconnaissance planes capable of up to Mach 5 (repeatedly sighted over Western Europe) and pilotless drones (whose impossible accelerations and manoevers often left NATO radar operators speechless). Apart from a brief mention to a few specific radar-UFO cases, the article is not particularly concerned about the Italian scene. And since we guess our foreign readers will already be aware of it all, we limit ourselves to such a short summary. (c) 1996 by: CISU, P. O. Box 82, I-10100 Torino, Italia All ITUFOR abstracts, translations, mistakes, faults and typos are to be credited to Edoardo Russo, who is charged of CISU Foreign Relations. ITUFOR (as a whole or in part) may be freely copied, photocopied, reproduced, stored, distributed and retrieved, at the only condition that ITUFOR and the Centro Italiano Studi Ufologici are reported as the source. Beside the usual mail sending to sister-organizations worldwide, as a companion to UFO - Rivista di informazione ufologica, ITUFOR and its weekly supplement CISU*Flash are also posted in Usenet newsgroups alt.paranet.ufo and alt.alien.visitors, plus some Internet UFO mailing lists and FidoNet echomail area Fido.Ufo. They are also available as a mailing list of its own (just send a message to our e-mailbox with "SUBSCRIBE ITUFOR " in the body), and you will also find it on the WWW via our homepage. A weekly e-zine in Italian is also issued, and is called UFOTEL. If you can read Italian you may subscribe by simply sending a message to our e-mailbox with "SUBSCRIBE UFOTEL " in the body.

Back to the UFO Evidence...