SKEPTIC - The Physics of UFOs

[frogmarch]

38. (8-06-2011) Col. Conrad agrees it may have been a hoax

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/8685868/Rendlesham-Incident-US-commander-speaks-for-the-first-time-about-the-Suffolk-UFO.html

snips:

Just after Christmas mysterious lights were seen in the sky above nearby Rendelsham Forest, and after a second night of reports from his men, Col Conrad investigated himself.

During the day, he went into the forest himself to a clearing where the lights had been seen and where markings on trees and on the ground had been found, indicating a possible landing by a spacecraft.

Col Conrad said he found them "unremarkable". Nevertheless, he returned to the base and hand picked a team of his best security officers and sent them in the forest that evening to investigate.

Lt Col Halt filed a report of the incident to the Ministry of Defence some days later and has since go on to say the lights he saw were “extraterrestrial in origin” and accuse the US and UK security services of a cover-up. Col Conrad, who had gone home convinced he had seen nothing unusual, has remained silent.

Now he has provided a series of statements about the sightings to Dr David Clarke, a Sheffield Hallam University academic and the UFO adviser to the National Archives - which this week will release some Ministry of Defence files relating to the incident.

"We saw nothing that resembled Lt Col Halt's descriptions either in the sky or on the ground," Col Conrad said.

In a damning indictment of his former deputy, Col Conrad added: "We had people in position to validate Halt's narrative, but none of them could."

He said there was no "hard evidence" of anything suspicious.

The Geiger counter was initially said to have given slightly elevated readings in the clearance, but that these were later found to indicate "normal" levels of background radiation.

Col Conrad is scathing about his former deputy.

"He should be ashamed and embarrassed by his allegation that his country and England both conspired to deceive their citizens over this issue. He knows better," he said.

The former base commander also disputes the subsequent testimony of another serviceman, Sgt Jim Penniston, who had gone into the woods on the first night of the sightings and has since claimed he touched an alien spacecraft.

Col Conrad said he interviewed the officer at the time and that, while he described seeing strange lights which had moved off into the distance, he had not mentioned touching a spacecraft.

Although he cannot explain the subsequent accounts of his subordinates, Col Conrad said he thinks the incident may have been a hoax.

Maybe it began with airmen mistaking the lighthouse beam, stars, the fireball, woodsmen's flashlight beams, or any of a number of natural objects - or a combination of them - for an alien spacecraft, but how can anyone honestly believe that Penniston, and maybe others too, didn't make up stuff to add to it - stuff to turn it into a juicy ETs Have Landed! story?

Crop circles are made by people. No aliens have ever participated. Or have even wanted to.