Sci-Fi Channel Looks for LGM in NASA Files 622
SharkJumper writes "The Sci-Fi channel expects to file a lawsuit within the week against NASA. They are attempting to gain access under the Freedom of Information Act to classified documents concerning a 1965 UFO sighting in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. The Department of Defense, Army, and Air Force are next on their list. Here's Sci-Fi's account of the story."
Do they really expect to win? (Score:1, Insightful)
WTF (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably a U-2 crash (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Classified Documents (Score:1, Insightful)
SciFi channel should make up it's mind (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead of dumping money into lawyers pockets, why don't they instead go back to exploring Science Fiction history, or trends in current science fiction development on an international level?
Maybe they will try to hire off Geraldo Rivera from Fox News next. Or maybe Rush Limbaugh.
They should put that lawsuit money back into funding good shows, like Farscape (I'm a little biased. Sorry).
Deja-Vu (Score:3, Insightful)
The results of Sci-Fi's new investigation into the incident will air Friday in a documentary hosted by Bryant Gumbel called "The New Roswell: Kecksburg Exposed."
Gumbel seems to be following the well-worn path of fallen journalists blazed so spectacularly by Geraldo Rivera... kind of sad, really.
Sci-Fi Channel is a big diasspointment (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm hoping for a good science fiction channel that won't give in to spreading pseudoscientific bullcrap just because it might get them better ratings. I'm looking for a station with integrity to throw my support behind, and the Sci-Fi Channel is not that station.
Re:Probably a U-2 crash (Score:1, Insightful)
That's one reason for FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
And what is that reason, exactly? That's what the plaintiff is asking here. Can the government continue to offer a legitimate reason for keeping decades-old documents classified? If so, they'll stay classified.
Let's face it-- even if those documents contain information about state-of-the-art (at the time) US aircraft, it's somewhat unlikely that there's still a reason to keep them under wraps. If we didn't have mechanisms like FOIA to periodically re-evaluate the need for secrecy on ancient documents, everything would stay classified out of sheer inertia, even when there was clearly no longer a reason for secrecy.
Odds (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Do they really expect to win? (Score:4, Insightful)
If NASA wants to not spend money on a lawsuit, they can simply release the documents.
Why do they have to file a lawsuit? Why exactly is NASA keeping in secret?
How the hell is anything that is US/Russia aerospace research oriented still worth classifying 50 years after the fact?
If the administrators at NASA are willing to go the the wall protecting these secrets, then they damn well are secrets that I want to know about.
Re:Classified Documents (Score:2, Insightful)
A) It was classified for a reason in the past, but the reason is gone (i.e. US-Soviet stuff, most of which is now being declassified)
B) It might hurt the political future of a government employee
C) It's easier to cover up everything than to explain anything
Well, I guess those are all reasons, but they are all pretty poor ones.
The Freedom of Information Act exists because of item C) above, after lengthy court and political battles that let us keep our right to know what our government is doing. There are exceptions, of course, for classified materials, but government censors can be overly broad about what is classified.
Does anyone know what the oldest classified government documents are?
Is there anything from WWII that is still classified? I hope not.
Is there anything from the Korean War that is still classified? I expect there is, as there likely should be.
Is there anything from the Vietnam War that is still classified? Probably less than from the Korean War.
Because the government would rather burn all these papers than ever make them accessible, it does often take lawsuits to get them released.
As far as this particular event goes, it was probably an airplane with nuclear weapons that went up in a ball of flames, and the government still wants to hide the fact that it almost killed a few hundred thousand people or something. That is not, in my opinion, a reason to keep something classified.
All this UFO stuff is SO nonsensical. (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about the whole Area 51 and Roswell thing for example. Ok, something weird crashed out of the sky, there were some bodies, and the government covered everything up. But it happened shortly after WWII, during a period where we were employing ex-Nazi rocket scientists to build us more advanced airplanes, didn't it? And, a more reasonable explanation of the Roswell crash would be that an experimental, top secret craft had a malfunction and bit the dust.
Consider that that whole Southwest is used for the testing of advanced aircraft. Groom Lake (in Nevada), another mecca for the tinfoil hat crowd, is an aircraft test facility. The stealth fighter, for example, was developed during the early 1970's, and was tested extensively there. OF COURSE there were lots of UFO sightings. They were testing their planes! Naturally SOMEONE would see them. We can't make 'em invisible (yet).
Now, fast forward to the Pennsylvania crash. SOMETHING crashed, and the government seems to want to keep it quiet. Does this mean there were little green men? Nope. It means that something failed on another one of the government's experimental toys (the operative word being "experimental"), a few unlucky test pilots probably bit the dust crashing it into a forest, and it's unfortunate and sad but NOT a sci-fi mystery.
We'll probably see whatever aircraft it is in twenty years or so when it's declassified and they use it to blow someone up in a future war. We'll go "Holy cow, that's a cool airplane, I wonder when they built that thing!" and check out the TechTV show about it after getting our anime fix...
Old line about UFOs. (Score:4, Insightful)
One of my favorite lines from an old conspiracy show about aliens was a backlit, voice-modified guy saying "Look, it's not aliens; it's military research. The fastest non-rocket-powered vehicle in the air right now that the public knows about is Lockheed-Martin's Blackbird, the SR-71, and that was designed forty years ago. Forty years before that, the fastest thing in the air was a biplane, a Sopwith Camel. Forty years before that, the fastest thing in the air was a balloon."
"That hasn't stopped happening."
Re:That's one reason for FOIA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Classified Documents (Score:4, Insightful)
In my limited experience in this arena, oftentimes documents, media etc... are classified for a number of reasons including: 1) That media may contain information that was collected using technologies that may not be disclosed. 2) Alternatively, the "collector" of that media may have been in a place at a time that they should not have been or 3) Often the media may document relationships that are intended to be known as "unrelated" for intelligence, military or political purposes.
I like David Brin's response (Score:5, Insightful)
Stefan
Re:That's one reason for FOIA (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter. By law, if the NSA deems something to be classified, it stays that way. There is nothing the public can do to declassify the documentation.
Yes, documents do have mechanisms to become declassified over time, but they're fairly simple to override. All someone has to say is: keep this locked up, and it'll stay locked up.
The two most likely resasons for this not being released yet are:
- It fell through the cracks
- Something about this case is important enough for the government to still protect, for one reason or another. In this case, it will never happen.
Sci-Fi is suing the wrong group anyway. Even if the court rules in their favor, NASA can't declassify the documents. They'd have to sue the department of defense in order to have the documents declassified.Re:Do they really expect to win? (Score:5, Insightful)
So long as the government has the authority to keep some things secret, it's well within that authority to keep things secret for fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand years.
You may believe that fifty-year-old secrets are "ridiculous", but you can't justify that belief without knowing exactly what the secret is.
Re:Do they really expect to win? (Score:3, Insightful)
access under the Freedom of Information Act to classified documents concerning a 1965 UFO sighting in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania
uh... it was bad enough that people didn't read the article, now they can't even read the summary
Former COS Podesta's involvement is interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
Public vs. Govmnt (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahem.
Am I wrong in my assumption that the government of the USA exists to serve the public in the public interest? (You know, "Government for the people, of the people, and by the people?" Sure, it's bullshit, but it's bullshit worth striving for.)
In that case, the government has no right to hide information from the public, except in the interest of public safety. (For instance, the deployment of US nuclear submarines might not be good public knowledge.) There is no other good reason for the government to hide information from its people.
In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the government has a responsibility to keep the public informed of important events. I would go further: I would say it is the public's responsibility to audit the functioning of the government on a regular, intensive basis.
The FOIA allows this auditing, even if it is 25 years after the fact. The only information that might need to remain classified is some information which has not changed over 25 years.
The FOIA has revealed some very interesting facts, like the funding by President Kennedy of the longest-running terrorist campaign against any nation (Operation Mongoose, against Cuba, which ran for many years; it may continue to this day). To FOIA is there for us to learn about our government; the government does not have the right to select the information we learn about it.
That would be like Microsoft choosing which memos are admitted as evidence during its anti-trust trials.
As far as this UFO thing goes: there has been no plausible evidence or explanaition to support visitation from other planets. Occam's Razor indicates it's nothing more than a fireball, just a regular, crashing-to-earth rock that left a trail of vaporized carbon, ice, and rock.
But, who knows? Maybe there *was* some sort of alien landing.
Re:Do they really expect to win? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well, this is obvious. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's only taxpayer-funded if the government (NASA) refuses to cooperate. Since NASA exists on our dime to acquire knowledge for all our benefit the fact that they are not willing to voluntarily give up knowledge they acquired bothers me. Yes, it is a shame that anyone or any organization has to SUE to get information from the government. But if that's what it takes to get the government to be more open with those of us who fund it, I'm all for it.
The government has wasted money on things much less important than freedom of information.
shit people. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Classified Documents (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, this is obvious. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also possible that NASA concluded their "investigation" was such utter bullshit that the whole file consists of a crayon-written letter from a yokel, and a memo saying "don't waste any time on this crap. We have a space race to win!" and that was the end of it.
So SciFi makes an FIA request; NASA says "that's all there is," mostly because aside from this file that's all there fucking is; then SciFi sues, desperate not to scuttle a project they've already invested $n in, thereby wasting more time and money, but it's all okay because it's not their money, it's ours, and it's not being used on space exploration.