The Illusion of Motion

Strange Arrivals, Episode seven, The Illusion of Movement. In March of nine, the area around Hillsdale County, Michigan, experienced a wave of UFO sightings that eventually garnered too much media coverage for the Pentagon to simply ignore. The Air Force sent Alan Heinek, the consulting scientists to Project blue Book

to see if he could find a satisfactory explanation. Here's George Pruitt from w j R Radio in Detroit interviewing Project blue Book head Major Hector Quentinilla the local news run. An Airporce investigating team is looking into the runch of UFO reports that have taken place in southeastern Michigan. The team is headed by Dr h Alan Heineck of Northwestern University, who was the Air Force Scientific Adviser on project of

Blue Book. That's the Air Force project to investigate UFO reports w j RS Bill Jolls, contact of the Momentary Cheaper Blood projects of White Potters and Air Force Base near Dayton, Major Hector's Lindonella and had some questions for the leaguer about the investigations. No, one of the things that general mentors the public and you know, like I mean so many you received word uh, any other organization perhaps or radar you know with one of the Air

Force bases or something is also spotting these. We are contact, try to defend devided nothing and needs you need now is investigation in tale we'll talk and do the deep collection trancition. What obsurred, trying to den turn motivity and caring to conceded in that fashion. Alan Heineck hit the ground in Michigan with two ex dictations of him find an explanation for these sightings and find it fast. It would not prove to be that easy. Host of the

Sascer Life podcast, Aaron Gallias. What he finds are that the witness statements are while there's a lot of them,

they aren't necessarily consistent. And Heinek at this time had been involved in Air Force investigations of UFOs since the ninet and in one capacity or another, and he was getting very frustrated, not only with the Air forces seeming reluctance to dedicate serious scientific sort of resources to this, but also with what he would call the quality of some of the witness statements that he was having to

deal with. It's hard to take a scientific approach sometimes when you don't have sort of the raw materials of evidence to work with. Heineck's interviews were not limited to eyewitnesses. Because the sightings took place You're ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan, he was able to meet with local experts in astronomy, botany, and other subjects, hoping they

might help uncover a prosaic explanation, author Mark O'Connell. And after interviewing all these people over the course of several days, Heinech he's he's been getting pressure the whole time he's in Michigan from his boss holder press conference. Tell everybody it was just nothing, Tell them it was just something natural.

Quentinila's pressure meant that Heinech had to come up with a quick solution, too quick Heineck believed for an investigation to truly get to the bottom of this series of sightings, I think is resisting because he says, well, I don't know what it is. I don't know what they saw, so I don't want to have a press conference until I can say something that I really believe is true. Well, his boss at Project Luba Hector Kingtonia, basically says, no,

you're doing a press conference Friday at five period. You're doing a press prenference and you're going to give the media a natural explanation for what's going on. He goes to this press conference and it becomes incredibly famous in Ufo lore, and it's it's well known in the region there in southeast Michigan. Even people who aren't Ufo people have kind of a sort of folk memory of this.

He basically says, in a roundabout way that what what was seen at various places by various witnesses matches many of the conditions required for ignited swamp gas. Now, the term swamp gas is unfortunate because why you still might not believe that it is the cause of the sightings. It's not as ridiculous as it sounds. It's a real phenomenon, but the pressure was such that Heinech had to go with it because it was the best he could do

in that time frame. Here's Heinek talking about this explanation on Voice of America DA. And let me remind you that all that was described, with the exception of two people, The great majority of the people described only lights a glow and rather small red, yellow, and green lights. Now, the fact that this occurred near a swamp or at a swamp in both cases a great number of observers were referring to that. Those two events led me to follow that as a clue. Now, an astronomer doesn't usually

worry about swamps. His eyes are looking elsewhere generally, but in a in his rapid and as thorough away as was possible in that time. I did UH notice, for instance, that in Professor Minaret's book and Minhart as an astronomer, he describes in his book light and Color in the Open Air. He describes lights of these colors green, red, and yellow and white h as dancing around swamp areas. The willow lewis sometimes called Egnis factors and UH known

by other names. Also. I believe fox fire is another name given to it. Heinich talked with professors of chemistry, zoology, and botany to get more information. He learned that the vegetation decomposing under the winter ice would produce gases, including one called phosphene. And the phosphene can, they tell me spontaneously ignite after the when the spring thaw comes and the gases can be can bubble up from and get released.

The guesses can ignite spontaneously, and they flicker all over other place, though flicker at one place, then go out and suddenly appear someplace else, which gives the delusion of motion. And this description fit quite well the description that both the many co eds at the Hillsdale College uh told me, and also the policeman who were actually in the swamp and saw off the lights themselves. Remember Bud van Horne's description of the lights that he saw near Hillsdale College

to be on the surface of the earth on the ground. However, I don't feel that it was, because it moved very freely from left to right and right to left at various times, which it would be impossible for a type of week ago on wheels or on the ground. Too that because of the market portion area. Heinik went on to specify that the swamp gas explanation applied only to this case and not as an explanation for UFO sightings

in general. But I would like to emphasize here that this does not, in no sense of the word, this particular explanation which refers to these two specific cases. Am I trying to give a blanket interpretation or a blanket solution to the entire uful phenomenon. Given the pressure he was under, this was the best Heineck could do. But while a case could be made that this was a plausible explanation, the nuances were lost on the press, who not surprisingly fixated on the term swamp gas. He doesn't

say that that is what it is. It just said this is one possibility of what people might have seen that is an explainable, sort of supportable thing. He doesn't come out and say it was swamp gas. But what's reported in the media is Air Force says UFO sightings are swamp gas. Basically, a flying saucer expert hired by the Air Force today dismissed reports of weird flying object

excited throughout southern Michigan this past week. Dr J. Alan Heinick told a news conference in Detroit this afternoon, and this leads to a huge backlash against the Air Force, which is accused of not taking witnesses seriously, not taking the subject seriously. The public dissatisfaction was taken up by future President Gerald Ford, who at the time was a Michigan Congressman and minority leader of the House of Representatives.

The Congress should investigate the rank of reported sightings of unidentified flying objects in Southern men and other parts of the country. A congressional inquiry would be most worthwhile because the American people are becoming most interested in in many instances, very alarmed by the UFO story. I firmly believe the American people would feel much better if there was a

full blown investigation of the life incidents. A second Congressman, Edward Rausch of Indiana, also express frustration with the official explanation. People want to know what a UFO is, and therefore any chance that we have to to learn, we should take advantage of us. When you tell them American, I can't explain it. He wants to know, why can't you explain it? Why doesn't someone explain it? I want someone

to explain it. And I think that kind of pressure is going to change the view of many government on officials and members of Congress in the future. The swamp gas explanation, whatever its merits, had only increased suspicion that

the government was not acting in good faith. As the face of the investigation, Heinich was the obvious target, and he just he's getting squeezed in this vice because on the one hand, all his UFO friends are furious with him because they all thought this was the big one, right, this is the case that nobody can explain away. This is the case that proves that we're being visited by

spaceships from another world, and Heineck didn't give them that. Meanwhile, the people in Michigan were also furious with him because he seemed to be saying that you people in Michigan are a bunch of dopes and you can't tell swamp gas from a UFO, and what is wrong with you. Heineck felt that his scientific objectivity was being called into question, that he was viewed as a mouthpiece for government obfuscation.

Some of the lawnforcement officers in Michigan that that Heinech dealt with Bud van Horne, for example, who has involved his a civil defense official and law enforcement officer connected to the Hillsdale sidings. He believed the hine came in with his mind already made up. Bud van Horn, you both in fact, he watched one last time. I wondered, do you going on to the theory and Mr Van Horne that it would be gas out there? Because this

definitely not Bob, very definitely not Bob. I would like to ask Mr Van Horne, when you didn't report this to the nearest Air Force and had them send some planes over to investigate what this thing actually was while he watched it from the eleven until two. Because on the previous reports to self rate the air Force base, I have received very far reception and he had been made to look like a very uh ignorant person. Really, I can't figure this solved. They had this US hole

investigating program. But if I had to give an eye opinion, I would say a lot of and say either they just playing our answer every report they receive remains means to favor words, or else they know what it is. It's evident in hindsight that whatever else you think of Heineck's investigations, he did seem to be genuinely trying to figure things out. While he was initially a skeptic, he didn't undertake investigations with the predetermined conclusion in mind, regardless

of how it looked to the public. After this, heine begins to realize more and more that the Air Force is not necessarily interested in determining what people might be seeing. They're really just interested in clearing the cases and ensuring that people don't think that it's anything out of the ordinary, and that he's sort of been playing a role in this. But the way Blue Book operated helped contribute to that perception.

So I think this, especially the way the Air Force sort of positioned him as almost the public face of their ridiculous explanation, put him more on guard with with respect to how the Air Force handled things and pushed him more towards trying to investigate things more with an open mind. And this was the point at which heine said, you know what, I'm not going to let the Air Force put me in this situation again. I'm not going to carry their water anymore. And at the same time,

Heineck's name had been all over the news. People outside of Michigan and who weren't part of the small population of UFO enthusiasts identified Heinich as the expert on UFOs. There was this vast middle ground of people who thought, Wow, this guy knows what he's talking about. This is the guy who knows all about UFOs. All of a sudden,

and I would see this researching his files. There's this transition between early nineteen sixty six and later in nineteen sixty six, when all of a sudden, his correspondence in his files just expands like you wouldn't believe. Heinek was getting fan letters from people all over the country, all over the world, people saying, I want to tell you about my experience. I want to tell you about this thing I saw, I want to tell you about my theory of of reality. He was just getting fan letters

from people everywhere. So even though the swamp Gass case at first glance looked like it could have basically ruined Heineck, it could have destroyed him in a very strange way, it made him more popular and more credible than ever. People around the country, but especially in Michigan, insisted that the swamp gas explanation could not stand. They wanted accountability.

They wanted Congress to step in. So Gerald Ford and another one of his colleagues in the Congress actually held hearings just a couple of weeks after all of these events took place. Heineck, of course, was the star witness. His boss, Hector Kingtonia had basically told him you stick with the company line or else. Well, Heinick didn't want to do that. This is how much Heineck had change. He was now willing to buck, really openly buck his

superiors at the Air Force. When it became Heineck's time to address the Senate Panel, the Senate Committee, instead of towing the company line, Heinech pulled out a like five page prepared statement that he had not cleared with his bosses at the Air Force at all. This was a

complete surprise to the Air Force people. Heineck pulls out this prepared statement and he reads it to the Congress people and he makes the case for we need to get together the country's brightest scientists, and we need to fund a study program by which these scientists can spend all the time and all the resources they need to

investigate these really important cases. What Heinick was doing was calling for an investigation by people outside of the military into the cases that had proved most difficult to explain. But even when the military wasn't involved, they were involved. Although the Air Force wouldn't run the program, they would

organize it. There were calls in Congress for a more scientific approach to this, and so the Air Force was basically commissioned by Congress and funded by Congress to bring together scientists from all over the country and give them a bunch of reports from the Air Forces Project Bluebook effort and have these scientists sort of independently review these reports.

In April one, one month after the sighting at Manner Farm, Gerald Ford, a man who would soon as sent to the Presidency, sent out a press release taking credit for pressuring the Air Force into quote arranging for a study by high caliber scientists of some of the UFO sightings which have never been explained. Retired Air Force pilot James mcgahey, they wanted m I. T to do it, and m my team told him where they could go. They were not interested at all. They got Dr Edwin Condon at

University of Colorado to accept it. He was a had been chairman of the National Bureau of Standards. He was a very famous quantum mechanics physicist, one of the great of the twentieth century. He was a very, very imminent scientist. He put together a team to do the investigation, which became known as the Condent Report, and that team for about two years investigating current sightings in the Best Cases

in Blue Book. On October seven, a press release from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs announced that the Universe the of Colorado had been given a contract of more than three hundred thousand dollars to quote analyze phenomena associated with UFO sightings and to make recommendations on the Air Forces methods of investigating and evaluating UFO reports. Congress had signaled that they were serious

about the UFO question. Heinick was no longer responding to the Air forces pressure to explain away compelling UFO sightings. The committee began their work in November after the break after the Michigan UFO wave of j Alan, Heinik found himself off in the strange position of having both experienced his greatest professional humiliation and at the same time risen

to prominence as the publicly recognized expert on UFOs. In the last episode, we looked at the archetypal story of the hero's journey, where the hero goes from normal life and there's a mysterious or mystical world where he fights a battle and emerges back into the normal world, transformed

and with a message. We tracked how Heinich left the normal world of an academic to immerse himself in the investigation of UFO sightings taking place across the country, and while the vast majority of cases were easily solved, that left a small number that defied explanation. Given the available resources these cases Socorro, New Mexico, Hillsdale County, Michigan, and others, and the Air Forces seemingly prioritizing public debunking over actual investigation,

lad Heineck to a crisis of conscience. What exactly was the nature of the project he was spearheading. The review, organized by the Air Force and known informally as the Condon Committee, began work at the University of Colorado. It was the final opportunity for the official assessment of the UFO situation to match up with Heeneck's evolving views. Things

seem set up well to accomplish this. Aaron Gullias, Now, this was the sort of thing that UFO advocates, like the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon or NIGHTCAP and its leader Donald Kehoe, had been pushing for a long time.

UFO advocates believed and declared that if the UFO topic could be taken out of the Air Force's hands and put in the hands of independent scientists, that those scientists would, you know, looking at things rationally and objectively, come to the conclusion that we were being visited by beings from outer space, that at least some of the sightings were extraterrestrial. The Air Force had succeeded in covering this up, but if we could take it away from the Air Force

give it to scientists, the truth would come out. So there was a lot of initial hope from the UFO people that the CONDOM Committee would would come up with the truth about or the truth as they wanted it found about about UFOs. Heineck himself express optimism that the committee shared his outlook. This is Heinik from his February

seven appearance on k ABC TVs press conference. The kind of committee, and Colorado has in charge now with the responsibility of taking a scientific look at UFOs and ed condons. Has was for years, as you know, in the director of the view of Standards, and they very solid person in his whole field. But as you probably suspected, he was disappointed when the report was finally released in nineteen

sixty nine, the Condom Committee issues their report. Their report, their conclusions are basically not too different from what the Air Force had said in their Project Bluebook investigations. Basically, the vast majority of sightings that people report are the

result of people misidentifying planets, stars, satellites conventional aircraft. These sightings could in overwhelming numbers be explained, and while there was a significant number of cases that could not be immediately explained in a conventional manner, that does not prove that these are alien craft. Visiting Heineck found this acknowledgement that there were unexplainable cases hardening, despite the fact that the report's conclusion and the summary released by Condon himself

were definitive in dismissing the UFO issue. Surprisingly, the count of Committee built their final report, they built a pretty strong case for the continued study of UFOs, and Heineck found that very encouraging. For instance, Heineck noted that one of the common features of many UFO sightings was that car engines and radios would fail, and he was pleased that the Connan Committee would look at this phenomenon. This

is Heinik again from his interview with k ABC. Cannot speak for them obviously, but I understand that they are undertaking investigations of physical things, for instance things many many reports come in saying that persons car was stopped, UFO came by and their car stopped, and when up left

the car started again. And in the conclusion of the section on indirect physical evidence, the report reads of all the physical effects claimed to be due to the presence of UFOs, the alleged malfunction of automobile motors is perhaps the most puzzling. The claim is frequently made, sometimes in reports which are impressive because they involved multiple independent witnesses.

Witnesses seem certain that the function of the cars was affected by the unidentified object, which sometimes reportedly was not seen until after the malfunction was noted. No satisfactory explanation for such effects, if indeed they occurred is apparent, so still puzzling. Unfortunately, the head of the committee, Condon, wrote a summary of the report in which he just completely demolished the idea of UFOs, said, they're ridiculous. It's a waste of time and a waste of money to be

studying these things. And a lot of people who read the report simply read Condon's summary and didn't read the whole thing, and those parts were unsparing in their assessment. The second paragraph of the first section of the Condon report says, quote, our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past twenty

one years that has added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration of the record as it is available to us leads us to conclude that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby. Later, in the same section, it concluded that there was no defense value in continuing this work. Quote This question is inseparable from the question of the national

defense interests of these reports. The history of the past twenty one years has repeatedly led Air Force officers to the conclusion that none of the things seen or thought to have been seen which passed by the name of UFO reports constituted any hazard or threat to national security, much as was the case with the Robertson panel, there were grumblings that the connon Committee had begun their work

with the conclusion predetermined. The most notable piece of evidence for this assertion is a memo written by an assistant dean at the University of Colorado named Robert Lowe to two men in the university hierarchy. At the time, the university had not yet committed to undertaking the committee work and are evaluating if they should do so. The memos summarizes various faculty members arguments for and against taking it on.

The controversial passage reads quote, the trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that to the public it would appear to be a totally objective study, but to the scientific community would present the image of a group of nonbelievers trying their best to be objective, but having

an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer. This passage can be read to mean that it would be difficult to produce a report that satisfied both the public and the scientific community, or it could mean that the fix was in from the beginning, that before they even looked at the evidence, the outcome was predetermined there were no flying saucers, so they missed the message, you know, as one of these forests for the trees things. They read

Condon's summation and thought, oh, well, there's nothing here. We can trust this guy. He says there's nothing here, So there's nothing here. But regardless of these objections and the admission that some of the sightings were not able to be explained the public who was given the headline and not the details, the story that is sort of broadcast by the media, sort of simplifying things like the media often does, is that scientists conclude UFOs are not alien spacecraft.

Is basically the headline that goes out and due to this, the the Air Force uses this to say, well, you know, we had our conclusions. Scientists independently arrived at their conclusions, and so we can shut down Project Blue Book. The issue has been settled. There's not a danger to national security here. This isn't something the Air Force needs to be in the business of now. This is not to

say that the committee's conclusions were wrong. I don't necessarily think they were, but looking at the narrative of hi Nick's UFO work, it's another time when given the opportunity to support his viewpoint on UFOs, the voice of authority

chose instead to discredit their importance or even existence. So the whole thing kind of backfired, and a lot of the people involved in the Content Committee who really felt that they could make a legitimate case that there was some reality to these events and that we needed to study them, those those people all just got sort of sideline, and the consequences were fatal for the government's investigation efforts. There was a final step, though, before the Air Force

could close Project Blue Book. They knew that their sponsorship of the Conton Committee would delegitimize the committee's conclusions in some people's eyes, so they had the report reviewed. They sent it to the National Academy of Sciences for them to review. The report a blue Book, and the National Academy of Sciences were even more positive about what they said and commended conduct on one of the greatest ideas

about how he had approached this problem. The National Academy of Science report concluded, quote, we are unanimous in the opinion that this has been a very creditable effort to apply objectively the relevant techniques of science to the solution

of the UFO problem. It's concluding sentence read quote. On the basis of present knowledge, the least likely explanation of UFOs is the hypothesis of extraterrestrial visitations by intelligent beings, and the Air Force basically immediately closed Project blue Book. It's interesting how it was actually closed. According to mcgahey,

Quentinillo wrote an unpublished biography that contains this story. Quintillia loaded the entire files of Project blue Book from Wright Patterson Air Force Base, got on a C one eighteen cargo airplane and flew to Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, which is where the archives were kept for the Air Force, and he handed the entire thing offloaded it off the plane, signed it over to them, and got back on the plane and flew back to RYE Patterson Air Force Base.

That was how Blue Book closed. I know this because I have his He wrote a unpublished about a two page biography of himself and mostly about Blue Book, and I have a copy of it. And he was not a big fan of Project blue Book, even though he

was the last commander. But regardless of whether or not the fix had been in from the beginning of the Condom Committee, the upshot is that by the early seventies, the Air Force had pretty much withdrawn, at least publicly withdrawn from the UFO investigation field, and civilian organizations like Nightcap and APPROO, and a new one, the mutual UFO network, that would be emerging during the nineteen seventies, would be

responsible for collecting sighting reports and investigating things on their own. So Project Blue Book ended with a fizzle, not a bang. For a moment, UFO proponents and people simply wanting to see the study of UFOs given some legitimacy, had reason for optimism in the formation of the Conon Committee. There was an expectation, given the public relations disaster around the swamp gas explanation of the sightings in Michigan that had more even handed in their minds, reckoning with the subject

would be forthcoming, but they were sorely disappointed. The conting Matty may well have given a thoroughly objective report, but for people such as Heineck, it seemed as though it was more of the same biased assessments. But this final disappointment freed Heinich from whatever constraints he had previously worked under, and he emerged from his time with the Air Force with a new message next time on Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heeart, three D Audio

and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. This episode was written and hosted by Toby Ball and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Josh Thame, with executive producers Alex Williams, Matt Frederick and Aaron Manky, and special thanks to Wendy Connors, creator of the Faded Discs archive of UFO related audio

on archive dot org. Learn more about Strange Arrivals over at Grimm and Miles dot com, and find more podcasts from my Heart Radio by visiting the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H