ParaNet BBS/hynek

ParaNet BBS/hynek

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ParaNet File Number: 00148


OMNI INTERVIEW: J. ALLEN HYNEK
==============================
>> Omni magazine interviewed Allen Hynek for their February, 1985 issue.
Copyright @ 1985, 86, Omni Publications Ltd. Distribution by permission of
the copyright holder and is limited to the ParaNet Computer Network.
==============================
J. Allen Hynek, the nation's foremost authority on UFOs, was not
always sympathetic to the idea of flying saucers.  Through the 
Forties and Fifties, he was a research scientist at Ohio State
and Harvard Universities, producing rigorous papers on super-
novas and electronic satellite tracking, and from 1960 to 1974
he was chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern
University.  

But somewhere along the line, Hynek's outlook changed.  Though
he worked with the Air Force trying to squelch one UFO flap 
after the next, he came to feel that some sightings, especially
those made by pilots and meteorologists, defied explanation.
That realization put Hynek on the path he would follow for the
rest of his life.  

His obsession resulted in the founding of the Center for UFO 
Studies in 1972.  A small operation run on the donations of
friends, the center produced the most respectable papers in a
field replete with misguided enthusiasts and frauds.  In the
process, Hynek defined the UFO and profiled UFO witnesses.  
He also developed a series of scenarios to explain UFOs and
to challenge the laws of physics as we know them today.

Here follows an excerpt of the interview with the famed 
ufologist which originally appeared in the February 1985 OMNI.

OMNI:  Many people consider you the world's foremost ufologist,
yet you started out a staunch skeptic.  Can you describe those
early days?

HYNEK:  After getting my Ph.D. in astronomy from the University
of Chicago, I weathered the Depression at the university's 
observatory in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.  I lived like a king on
my fellowship of sixty-eight dollars and fifty cents a month, 
and I slept and cooked my meals under the dome of the 
observatory.  It was like living in a monastery.  I was so
utterly steeped in astronomy that the rest of the world didn't
exist.  I didn't even know that Hitler burned books.  It was
a great isolation.

Then the war came along, and I got married.  I was on my 
honeymoon and passing through Washington, DC, when I offered
my services to what was then the equivalent of the National
Science Foundation.  They had me help develop an explosive 
device which was used against Kamikaze planes and that ultimately
detonated the A-bomb over Hiroshima.  It's the only thing in my
life that I've come to regret.

After that I went to Ohio State, where I served as director of
the school's McMillin Observatory.  One memorable day in 1948,
three Air Force officers came by in full regalia.  We chatted
about the weather for a while, and finally one of them asked, 
"What do you think about flying saucers?"  "It's a helluva lot
of nonsense," I said, "a fad, postwar nerves, a craze."  I 
apparently said the right thing because the Air Force asked if
I'd like to be a consultant to Project Sign, an attempt to deal
with the great many reports pouring in.  I said sure, why not?
It was a chance to eat fresh lobster, flown in from Boston, at
the officers club, and it certainly didn't require that I 
compromise my work as an astronomer.  

So once or twice a month they'd give me a stack of UFO reports.
I'd go through them and say, "Well, this is obviously a meteor,"
or, "This is not a meteor, but I'll bet you it's a balloon."
I was a thorough skeptic, and I'm afraid I helped to engender the
idea that it must be nonsense, therefore it is nonsense.  I 
always did my best for the Air Force, pulling the chestnuts out
of the fire with my explanations.

The Air Force found the whole idea of flying saucers repugnant.
They tried to ignore the reports at first, but they were, after
all, responsible for protecting us from anything that flies, so
they had to respond in a public-relations sense.  They spent 
much of their time answering letters from kids and little old
ladies in tennis shoes.  

What bothered the Air Force most were the reports coming from 
their own military pilots, men they had trained to be good 
observers.  My own report in June 1949 concluded that 80 % 
of the sightings had astronomical or other obvious explanations,
and 20 % could not be explained.  But I said that if we 
investigated further, we could probably explain those too.

UFOs didn't seem to get too much publicity for a while.  Then, 
in July 1952, civilians on the ground and airline pilots flying
into Washington Airport reported lights cavorting over the White 
House.  This sighting created quite a stir, stealing a lot of
newspaper space from the Democratic convention.  And it put the
spotlight back on the Air Force, which, under pressure, started
Project Blue Book, and called their great debunker -- me -- out
of mothballs.  But I realized that Project Blue Book was little
more than a public-relations campaign.

Perhaps they honestly feared public panic.  Also, the Air Force
is responsible for everything in the air, and it would be very 
bad PR if they were to say, "Yes, UFOs are real, but we're 
helpless."  People think that Blue Book was a large office
with computers and filing cabinets and jets at the end of 
the runway ready to take off and investigate a case.  Hardly!

OMNI:  Why did a responsible scientist and hard-bitten skeptic
like yourself choose to stay on at this small-time circus?

HYNEK:  The Air Force was getting the data, and I wanted the  
data.  So whether it's good science or not, I played along.
I'd begun to sense that there might be something more important
than anyone would admit.

OMNI:  What led you to that conclusion?

HYNEK:  The caliber of the witnesses.  When you get reports from
professors at MIT, engineers on balloon projects, military and 
commercial pilots, and air-traffic controllers, you might one 
day sit down and say to yourself, "Just how long am I going to
keep calling all these people crazy?"  I realized that if one
took the reports seriously, definite patterns emerged.  

OMNI:  It was after the founding of your center that you really 
began to define UFOs as a phenomenon.  What was the understanding
that began to emerge from your work?

HYNEK:  I realized that we don't have UFOs, only UFO reports. 
I defined the UFO phenomenon, then, as the continual flow of
strange sightings and reports from all over the world.  The 
patterns and contents of these reports constitute the UFO 
phenomenon.  The phenomenon says nothing whatsoever about origin,
nothing about little green men.  The question about whether you
do or don't believe in UFOs is irrelevant.  If you define the UFO
as the UFO report and its consistent contents, then the 
phenomenon is there.  

On the simplest level, I've divided the phenomenon into six 
categories.  The most frequently reported sightings are those
of strangely behaving lights in the night sky, so I called 
these, simply, nocturnal lights.  Since the majority of daytime
UFO sightings have an oval shape and are often reported as 
metallic looking, these I called daylight discs.  A separate 
category is also needed for UFOs that are picked up by radar.
Then there are the close encounters.  In close encounters of 
the first kind, witnesses come within a few hundred feet of
the UFO, but neither the witnesses nor the environment are
physically affected.  In close encounters of the second kind,
the UFO interacts with the environment, witnesses, or both. 
And most incredible, in close encounters of the third kind, 
humanlike creatures -- the so-called aliens -- are said to
make their presence known.  

OMNI:  How has your work helped you understand UFOs?

HYNEK:  It has helped me to formulate a major question:  Does the
phenomenon represent new empirical evidence in the same sense 
that bacteria represented empirical evidence when Van Leeuwenhoek
first looked through his microscope?  The real question is 
whether or not the UFO phenomenon can be explained by the present
scientific paradigm.  I've come to believe the answer is no.  

Of course, the UFO phenomenon may teach us more about ourselves 
than it does about the outside universe.  We don't know the 
answers, but there are several intriguing possibilities.  

OMNI:  Then you are advocating a psychological point of view.

HYNEK:  Whichever level you perceive the UFO phenomenon, you
still have a problem.  Whether UFOs are real or not, their 
motions are not random.  They seem to be programmed and to  
exhibit what appears to be curiosity and purpose.  

There's another feature about the UFO phenomenon that escapes
most people.  I like to call it the Cheshire Cat effect.  In 
ALICE IN WONDERLAND, the Cheshire Cat manifested itself, 
communicated with Alice, and then disappeared.  The UFO does 
very much the same thing.  In essence, UFOs appear 
spontaneously within a limited area, remain visible for a short 
time, and then disappear without a trace.  This peculiar 
behavior reminds us of the duality of light, which acts either 
as a wave or a particle.  Perhaps UFOs also have two aspects.  
They might even be an interface between our reality and a 
parallel reality, the door to another dimension.  I'm just 
suggesting this, not saying it's so.  Any number of other 
theories are presently as valid.