First, a little from Wikipedia about the 1947 Maury Island UFO encounter incident:

The incident took place shortly after June 21, 1947. On that date, seaman Harold Dahl, out scavenging for drifting logs, claimed to have seen six UFOs near Maury Island (which is now a peninsula of Vashon Island, in Puget Sound, near Tacoma, Washington, United States). Dahl, his son, and their dog were on the boat. Dahl claimed to have taken a number of photographs of the UFOs, and reported that one UFO shed some type of hot slag on to his boat. The slag, he said, struck and killed his dog and injured his son.

The next morning, Dahl reported, a man arrived at his home and invited him to breakfast at a nearby diner. Dahl accepted the invitation. He described the man as imposing at over six feet tall and muscular, and wearing a black suit. The man drove a new 1947 Buick, and Dahl assumed he was a military or government representative.

While the two men ate, Dahl claimed the man told him details of the UFO sighting, though Dahl had not related his account publicly. The man also gave Dahl a nonspecific warning which Dahl took as a threat that his family might be harmed if he related details of the sighting.

[…]

In spite of the threat Dahl had reported the incident to his immediate superior, Fred Crisman, who had long claimed to have experience with unusual phenomena (and who was later linked to the John F. Kennedy assassination). Crisman gathered more of the slag, then called in the press, who in turn called in Kenneth Arnold to investigate the incident.

Albert Bender seized on Dahl’s story, and printed it in his newsletter. In 1953, Bender claimed three men in black visited him, and warned him to stop his UFO research.

Arnold, realizing the story was beyond his capacity to investigate, called in the United States Army Air Corps, which dispatched two investigators. The investigators were largely unimpressed with Crisman and with his evidence, but agreed to take some of the slag with them for further inquiry. The plane carrying the two investigators and the UFO evidence crashed shortly after leaving Tacoma, killing both men. In April 2007 it was reported that the crash site had been found and some material recovered.

Oooooh!  MEN IN BLACK!!!!

Now that I got that over with….

Last night, The History Channel aired a new offering called UFO Hunters.  (Well, it actually aired a mini-marathon of UFO-related programs, to include three timeworn episodes of UFO Files and this new thing about four guys searching for evidence of UFOs.)

So these four guys head out to Puget Sound and somehow manage to locate the exact spot in the water where the hot slag from the UFO landed.  (The producers didn’t feel it was necessary to waste the viewer’s time explaining how they had achieved such a remarkable feat.)  One of the guys dons a wet suit and plunges into the freezing water to dive down some 60 feet to search the bottom for evidence.  After freezing his nut sack off for a while, the guy resurfaces with a couple pieces of evidence.  One of the items retrieved appears as if it might be some sort of melted metallic object.  Was it a piece of the hot slag?

Next, the troupe heads out to the site of the plane crash that killed the two investigators.  They hope to find some evidence of the slag there, too.  At the site of the crash, however, they recover a few pieces of debris, but no slag.  They seem fairly excited by a piece of sheet aluminum that appears to be burned or melted at the edges. Bill Birnes, one of the investigators for the TV show, is quite excited by this piece of aluminum because it may be evidence that the hot slag cargo in the back of the aircraft may have combusted, causing the plane to crash.

So the team takes their evidence to some MIT professor guy for analysis.  In the end, they determine that the piece of singed aluminum is exactly that—singed aluminum.  The MIT dude then announces that the melted object from the bottom of Puget Sound is igneous rock—otherwise known as cooled magma.  It’s lava, Dude!

But Old Bill Birnes seems quite excited about the piece of burned aluminum, nevertheless, and seems quite convinced that the slag had caused a fire onboard the plane—a fire that caused the plane to crash.  He apparently doesn’t want to consider the possibility that the aluminum might have become singed as the result of the crash itself.  (A B-25 laden with fuel which crashes shortly after takeoff might tend to burn a little bit.)

At any rate, I want to know why The History Channel broadcasts UFO programs in the first place.  History is the story of things that have actually happened, not the story of things that some people wish had happened.

And of course, that’s what this UFO thing is all about, isn’t it?  It’s about a bunch of delusional people who are fed up with their dreary little lives and who long for something to be excited about–something exotic, and otherworldly. Something that might transport them away from the stark ugliness of reality….

Perhaps above all they want conspiracies.  They want to believe that the CIA and the evil U.S. Air Force are insulting our collective “intelligence” by concealing evidence that extraterrestrials have been visiting our puny little world for decades (perhaps eons) and have been abducting innocent Earthlings with impunity.

These are the kind of people who can stare straight at a German Shepherd and describe it as being pink and having feathered wings.  These are the kind of people who believe that the Kennedy assassination was a plot by the U.S. government.  These are truthers (troofers) of the most delusional kind.  Some of them may even be supporters of Ron Paul.

But I digress….

But who are some of these people?  What are their names?

Well, why don’t we start with the primary protagonists (ringleaders?) of the UFO Files series: Bill Birnes and Stanton Friedman.

That’s right.  That’s them.  (The only thing missing in those photos are the tin foil hats.)  These two nitwits have managed to carve a strange and nerdy niche for themselves on The History Channel as experts in the field of UFO phenomena.  They have even bestowed upon themselves the officious title of “ufologist.” (Ufology being the study of unidentified flying object reports, sightings, alleged physical evidence, and other related phenomena.)

These two charlatans, Birnes and Friedman, apparently eke out comfortable livings pandering to the fears and hopes of millions of believers in UFOs.

From what I can tell, Birnes is the publisher of a rag called UFO Magazine. (His wife is the editor-in-chief.) He co-wrote “The Day After Roswell: A Former Pentagon Official Reveals the U.S. Government’s Shocking UFO Cover-up” with Philip J. Corso. The Wikipedia entry on “The Day After Roswell” reads in part:

[The book] claims that an unidentified flying object of extraterrestrial origin crashed in the New Mexico desert in July 1947. The book claims that there has been a conspiracy involving the United States government to conceal “what really happened” from the world. The book also contends that technology was recovered from crashed flying saucers and this led to much of our modern technology.

[…]

However, it is now generally recognized that the Roswell Incident was merely the result of a scientific experiment, which was using high-altitude balloons to measure atmospheric radiation levels. Part of the light, metallic material used in the balloons was found by a local resident.

Of course, Wild Bill isn’t going to tell his avid readers that last part, lest he lose thousands—if not millions—of book customers and magazine subscribers.

Birnes also co-authored a wonderful tome called the “Star Trek Cookbook” with Ethan Phillips.  (Phillips stars as the Talaxian Neelix, a member of an alien race indigenous to the Delta Quadrant in UPN’s Star Trek: Voyager.) This literary effort, I am sure, has lent him a great deal of credibility among hungry UFO troofers everywhere.

As you can see, Mr. Birnes has excellent credentials in the field of milking money out of legions of gullible UFO troofers the world over.

Now.  On to Mr. Stanton Friedman.  From Wikipedia:

Stanton Terry Friedman (July 29, 1934) is an American physicist and self-proclaimed professional ufologist, currently residing in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. In 2007, the City of Fredericton honored Friedman by declaring August 27 Stanton Friedman Day.

Friedman has written books on the UFO phenomenon and was the first civilian investigator of the Roswell UFO incident. Since 1967, he has spoken about UFOs at more than 600 colleges and universities and more than 100 professional groups in the USA, Canada, and 16 other countries. Friedman used to bill himself as “The Flying Saucer Physicist” due to his nuclear physics degree. He’s one of the few scientists with legitimate scientific degrees to publicly speak out about UFO phenomena at length and one of the fewer qualified to espouse a professional conviction of their reality and validity.

[…]

He was perhaps the first investigator and publicizer [sic] of the 1947 Roswell UFO incident as a genuine crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. A significant portion of Friedman’s lectures and ideas are derived from the Majestic 12 papers, five large scale scientific studies and the results of his research in archives of various U.S. Government institutions and Presidential Libraries. He has published more than 80 UFO-related scientific papers, although few if any of them have been published in peer reviewed journals.

Friedman is combative with critics of the Extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) notion in general, and critics of the ETH/government cover-up theory of the Roswell UFO incident especially. He regards more conventional extraterrestrial-related scientific efforts such as the SETI Project with a particular contempt. Friedman is a tireless and most significant promoter of the UFO-ETH idea. Since 1967 he has lectured on the subject at more than 600 colleges and over 100 professional groups in all 50 US states, 9 Canadian provinces, and 14 other countries and appeared on hundreds of radio and TV programs.  [Emphasis added.]

As you can see, Mr. Friedman has made a profession out of espousing the “they are among us” hysteria.  As further evidence of this, let’s take a look at his literary/media credits:

Books

• Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience: The True Story of the World’s First Documented Alien Abduction (paperback, 2007), ISBN 978-156414-971-8
• Top Secret/Majic: Operation Majestic-12 and the United States Government’s UFO Cover-up (paperback, 2005), ISBN 978-1-56-924342-8
• Crash at Corona: The U.S. Military Retrieval and Cover-Up of a UFO (paperback, 2004), ISBN 978-1-93-104489-9
• Top Secret/majic (paperback, 1997), ISBN 978-1-56-924741-9

Videos

• Safespace - Fastwalkers - Winter 2006
• UFOs: Stanton Friedman’s revelation - an interview with Stanton Friedman

Audio (CDs)

• UFOs: The Real Story (1996)
• New CD of the Ramey Memo Scans and Enhancements

Now, surely Mr. Friedman didn’t write all those books, record all those videos and audio tapes, give all those lectures, and appear on all those television and radio programs for free?  Surely Bill Birnes doesn’t write his books and publish his magazine for the good of mankind?  Surely their participation in History Channel programs doesn’t arise out of a highly-developed sense of public-spiritedness?

Why, no!  Mr. Friedman does this as a profession!  He makes his living doing these things. The same must be said for Mr. Birnes. There would be no such living for either of these manipulators if millions of gullible halfwits didn’t believe in their bullshit UFO theories.

Would there?  Maybe all you UFO troofers out there ought to take a look in the mirror and feel a little silly for once.  Then you might bring yourselves to stop supporting shit-mongers like Bill Birnes and Stanton Friedman and get on with your lives.

And there’s no need to feel bad for old Bill and old Stanton, after all.  I’m sure they’ll just go on to invent something along the lines of “elfology”….

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