The McDonald Files
Unless there's a change in the schedule, this week's UFO Hunters episode on Wednesday night on History is about the James McDonald files, comprehensive records of his research into some of the most important UFO cases since Roswell. McDonald was in the senior physicist at the Institute for Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona in Tucson, which is where his files are now stored.
In this week's episode, Pat, Ted, and I visit the University of Arizona library and select three cases for follow-up investigation. The cases are: RB47, which Ted investigates along with our guest expert Bill Scott, who knows his radar and his aircraft; Lonnie Zamora, whose chilling sighting in Socorro, New Mexico is as compelling today as it was decades ago, and who tells Pat all about it; the Rex Hefflin photographs, which I investigate with the help of celebrated UFO researcher and author Ann Druffel, experts from the Polaroid camera company and photo analyst Terrence Masson.
This episode uncovered so much information that is was impossible to squeeze it into a one-hour program. Stan Friedman explained that McDonald was so meticulous in his research and so detailed in his attention to the facts, that the claims of UFO debunkers actually collapsed from the weight of his arguments. Betsy McDonald, his widow, also described James McDonald's inner demons, his ideations of suicide well before he actually did commit suicide, and the couple's involvement with radical politics in the late 1960s. And the release of the FBI files on McDonald revealed that he and his wife, because of their sympathies with left-wing and anti-Vietnam War groups in the late '60s caught J. Edgar Hoover's attention.
The story of James McDonald is fraught with all types of conspiracies. At one point, because McDonald had the temerity to present his findings about UFOs before Congress in probably the most comprehensive science-based case-study document in the history of UFOs in America, the FBI sought to discredit him among his colleagues. McDonald also became very frustrated by the lack of interest the United States government had in UFOs. Of course, McDonald didn't realize that the military was taking a very active interest in UFOs, fighting an air war with them in the 1950s. But on the surface, was "ho-hum, there are no UFOs." Even then Representative Gerald Ford could not get House Armed Service Committee Chairman Mendel Rivers to hold hearings on UFOs.
McDonald, because he did not get the reaction from Congress that he wanted, took it upon himself to contact scientists from other countries about their interest or experience with UFO research. He even went so far as to make contact withy Soviet scientists and contact the Soviet Consulate. This, as far as the FBI was concerned, combined with his activism about UFOs and his and his Betsy's contacts to radical groups of the day, was enough to target him. The FBI then went to McDonald's colleagues to gather information about him, solicit negative opinions about his UFO research, and to see if a case could be put together against him for subversion.
There is a conspiracy theory floating about -- one that's not that implausible -- that the FBI finally got to him through his wife. Because McDonald had manifested ideations of suicide, written a poem about suicide, the FBI thought that he might put himself to rest given the right set of circumstances. Therefore, and this is only conjecture not an accusation, the FBI or some clandestine arm of government, inserted into one of the socialist meetings that Betsy attended, a dupe, who would garnet Betsy's affections. Perhaps this person wooed her, initiated a sexual affair with her, and when Betsy sprung her decision upon her husband to ask for a divorce because she was in love with this new person, McDonald tried, not once, but twice to kill himself. His firs attempt blinded him. His second attempt was successful.
Thus, the field of ufology lost one of its greatest researchers and the government put to rest one of its greatest threats to the coverup of UFOs. True? False? Different scholars have different opinions.
You'll find Ted's investigation into RB47, the strange object that popped up on radar, was picked up on other radar, and literally flew circles around one of our most advanced electronic counter measures aircraft of the time, particularly fascinating. Pat's interview with Lonnie Zamora is a real eye-opener. And I think we put to rest the Air Force's debunking of the veracity of the Hefflin photos once and for all.
This is a real science-based episode, and I think a particularly strong one.
See you Wednesday
Bill Birnes
16 Comments
Reader Comments (16)
James McDonald -- I suspect that Phil Klass did everything but pull the trigger on him himself...
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mmmm...McDonalds.
Dr. William Heft, Director, APRO.
Hi Bill. I am pleased to see you and the crew are looking into the past of Dr. James McDonald, one of the leading researchers of APRO. I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to make a plug for APRO.
Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) stressed scientific field investigations, and had a large staff of consulting PH.D scientists. A notable example was Dr. James E. McDonald of the University of Arizona, a well-known atmospheric physicist, and perhaps the leading scientific UFO researcher of his time.
It is also notable that APRO was involved to a high degree with the investigation and research concerning Lonnie Zamora’s sighting. I have in our records the accounts written by Carol Lorenzen.
It is odd that just several days ago I was musing about the vast amount of evidence and research material that we have collected over the many years when we begin to once again look at these older cases. As it has been stated with the Zamora case, we investigators haven’t even scratched the surface, given the amount of evidence that we were left with. It is equality true with so many of the older cases. I am a strong believer in going back to many of these wonderful cases and attempt to re-investigate as Dr. Barines and crew are doing.
I know, the great temptation is to constantly move on to the newest case, leaving the old ones behind.
Several years ago I approached the publishers that put out so many of our books to see if they were interested in redoing some of the work that APRO had done, but unfortunately there was no interest. Perhaps now the stone has turned.
Bill Heft
I am sorry for mis-spelling Dr. Birnes last name. Bill Heft
Thanks to Bill Haft for correcting the misspelling of my name.
I sense _auspicious_ stones a'turnin'... as churnin' urns o' burnin' vermin lately rise up to preclude "progressive thinking" good folk use.
A tide has turned as we resolve that monstrous crimes go unresolved. Insult to our intellect provides unending disrespect as we get chumped for fools or worse enduring the embargo's curse.
Dr. McDonald’s story is tragic and complex in equal measure. It will be fascinating to see what the UFO Hunters discovered in his files, the collected investigatory efforts of an accomplished and top-flight research scientist.
Dr. McDonald was active and prominent during a turbulent time. It is never easy to speak your truth to power at any time, but it seems certain that while drawing the attention of many he undoubtedly earned the wrath of some.
Even tenured University scientists are vulnerable to pressures and those like James McDonald adopting non-mainstream ideas could find themselves subject to intense professional pressures. To gauge some of the forces bearing down on this single person, simply read the Conclusions and Recommendations section of the Condon Report. The report, endorsed by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, clearly delineates the official position - UFOs warrant no further study. While expressing the opinion that “scientists are no respecters of authority” it is interesting to consider that what is on offer here is nothing less than an authoritative dictum to the scientific community and the public. And the opinions and recommendations of such a distinguished panel of experts carry immense weight.
Big deal, you say? He should have ignored the naysayers and just kept working. It is not always that simple and what other scientists believe can sometimes matter a great deal. Scientists like Dr. McDonald need substantial funding to do their work. Exactly who gets what money is often decided by peer review in which research proposals are evaluated anonymously by colleagues. Imagine the problem getting the essential support of those colleagues when no less than the Academy of Sciences has declared an entire area to be pure bunk. Persons far out of the scientific mainstream sometimes must wait a long time for vindication. And if no resources are available, the wait for definitive answers will be even longer.
Dr. McDonald staked his professional reputation and prestige on UFO research. Perhaps the reactions of his colleagues inadvertently took a terrible toll.
I did this McDonald cameo based on the Anne Druffel’s book _Firestorm_. I add it here to show that McDonald was likely not a left-wing nutjob prone to self-destructive excitability. To the contrary, he was a first rate human being loved and respected by all who came in contact with him with an integrity and courage difficult to cow. He was driven to despair by cowardly despicables.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Magnificent Man
by Alfred Lehmberg
Dr. James E. McDonald, seminal ufologist and a man of undeniably objective science, was a man who might be observed at two seemingly disparate levels. On one level he possessed exactly what our suspect society stridently proclaims it prefers from its citizenship: intelligence, courage, self-improvement, civic involvement, and sterling productivity. He was ever a total asset to humankind’s elevation and advancement on every level.
On the other hand, he was a hapless fool—however magnificent! I think both observations are correct as strongly as I believe that he can be, oddly enough, congratulated and otherwise lauded on both of these levels. At once, Dr. McDonald’s story is a hard lesson even if it is a much needed and certainly gainful inspiration to us all. This is what is drawn from Anne Druffel’s powerful, informative, and very well-woven --excitingly readable-- biography of James McDonald; it is entitled Firestorm: Dr. James E. McDonald’s Fight for UFO Science (Wildflower Press, 2003).
Dr. McDonald, by way of introduction, was a good man, a kind man, a renaissance man, and a family man; he was a man instrumental, key actually, in elevating the status of aggregate ufology to the level of seriousness that it remotely enjoys, against all odds, today.
Yet, today, he is almost totally unknown even by those with more than a passing interest in the field.
This is a tragedy beyond debate. Ms. Druffel, in a near peerless effort, would put that error aright.
Druffel portrays the physicist James E. McDonald, accurately it would seem, as a highly respected world-class research scientist and much-beloved teacher, academic coach, and gifted educator. A renowned atmospheric physicist, he was a nascent prototypical ecologist, an incisive social scientist, and a master of diverse multiple subjects: a brilliant man in every regard. He changed the minds of hostile governments, steered academic boards, chaired lofty research sections, and headed significant causes.
Then he got interested in UFOs …
I’ve written before about an insidious social aspect of our hijacked society I tentatively call the Mothman Futility Mechanism. The sufferer of this mechanism, briefly, is an otherwise rational person innocently encountering an aspect of the highly strange.
In a justifiably passionate investigation of that very real strangeness, this person is destroyed in one way or another as a result of paying an awful and inevitable penalty for the pursuit of that "enigma’s teasing challenge," as it is imposed by that nonelected leadership mentioned before.
Such was the fate of Dr. McDonald. Druffel writes a compelling cameo, indeed, about the mechanism in action. It is portrayed exceptionally well in the heartbreaking and heartbroken subject of her startling biography. Back to McDonald...
This fine man, by step, by increment, and seemingly by design was progressively failed by society, its science, and by those closest to him. He would pay more than most MFM sufferers for his provoked transgression. He would be—perhaps deliberately—aggravated so that he suffered unmitigating depressions he found, at last, he could no longer endure.
Indeed, Druffel succinctly conveys how he would be inexorably driven over the cliffs of the blackest despair by others. He would be goaded, lead actually; drawn out on a precarious limb after years of government duplicity, institutional subterfuge, and agency chicanery. And then the limb was sawed off. With great deliberation and at the nadir of this abject hopelessness, he took his own life.
His was the kind of intelligent effort and efficacious artifice the aforementioned agencies, institutions, and governments would want to finesse for a "managed failure" and conveniently "thwarted success," one might suspect when reading between Druffel’s lines. Indeed, I recall that many of the major players on the ufological scene have been documented as being drawn down the same kinds of primrose path ending so tragically for McDonald. His story, again, is a pointed lesson for the observer of it:
Jacques Vallee wrote about Linda Moulton Howe and Stanton Friedman being played in a similar fashion. J. Allen Hynek and Edward J. Ruppelt wrote about the many hundreds of credible witnesses who initiate a report and then, abruptly, don’t follow up on their testimony. Richard Dolan and David Jacobs make rationally credible cases for an unelected government’s ufological interference and manipulation … and worse things.
Worse things, reader!
Given today’s realities, one could surmise many reasons why someone of McDonald’s caliber and propitious drive would have to be stopped—one way or another!
The mechanisms used against the good doctor are obvious and not so obvious, Druffel more than intimates. Not the least of these —jealous mechanisms of a hostile mainstream— were the scurvy tactics of otherwise inexplicable persons such as Philip Klass and Edward Condon. These were shallow men without imagination and courage, at best. At worst, they were drunk on their own baseless hubris and perhaps even cooperating drones for that conjectured unelected leadership.
Both were two-faced authoritarian murmurers with a predilection for whisper-campaigning, name-calling, hate mongering, and the yellowest of yellow presses. They were the hackish agents of stupefying misrepresentation and the instruments of crass deception and misinformation. They were the blindsiding back-shooters and the artless shadow-snipers. They are the reason the rest of us are reluctant to be bold!
These, and others like them —known and unknown— were the cowardly hurdles that Dr. McDonald was compelled to clear. They were the cheaters. They were the liars. They, themselves, were what they were pretending to warn us against!
McDonald, on the other hand, Druffel writes, was only a genuine scientist of the first water made aware, as a result of his researches, that a significant number of UFO reports could not have prosaic explanations. He was justifiably intrigued.
He was also demonstrably and justifiably aghast that his much revered science, in the person of the military and the scientists it employed, was not taking a remotely competent look at it. That UFOs should be exhaustively investigated was abundantly obvious to McDonald, along with few significant others. He understood all too clearly that they were not being properly investigated by any means. So he readily took up, as a man who is not a coward will, the campaign to bring mainstream science on line for that competent investigation. We are well served, ultimately, that he did.
For his trouble, Druffel notes, he was bait-and-switched, drawn out over empty air with high-level and well-connected promises of the financial support necessary for a quality investigation which, carrot-like, never materialized, and he, along with his family, was phone-tapped and threateningly followed in obvious ways!
Concurrently, even as McDonald is hobbled and persecuted in his righteous study of the problem, Edward Condon throws away a half million dollars in government grants for a negatively biased foregone conclusion regarding UFOs that he would later foist on the scientific community and a hapless public, very nearly ruining the whole ufological enterprise with his patent obfuscation of it, out of hand.
The bastard! Verily.
Condon and Klass were too little, too late for a complete destruction of nascent ufology, it seems, as Druffel points out with ready alacrity. Condon was clearly and suspiciously identified by McDonald, even before the formal report was released, as a duplicitous ax-grinder who apparently had not even read the report which he chaired and for which he was writing the conclusion. McDonald also made decisively short work of Philip Klass’ ludicrous expository, too. Klass was, summarily, inarguably, and effortlessly dismissed.
But for McDonald’s sterling science, faultless logic, expansive intelligence, and stalwart bravery, the bucket of cold water that was poured on UFOs by these two might have snuffed out the interest in them, altogether. McDonald was truly key in keeping them alive for subsequent generations. Druffel makes this clear, also. Oh, but what McDonald might have done with the half million dollars that Condon just pissed away on his fake study. I don’t think it unlikely that humanity might already be living expressive lives in the asteroid belt as a result. A living ring of humanity around our sun; a glittering halo of progressive humankind living between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter … but I digress.
Why was Dr. McDonald a fool, then? Everything expressed thus far would seem to indicate that he was a fool’s very antithesis. And he was, good reader; he was. But he was also a Boy Scout and a believer. Not a believer in the paranormal or a believer in UFOs, but a believer in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people as a working reality.
He had a Boy Scout’s confidence in the institution of science that went where the data went and not where it could, itself, be driven. He believed in demonstrable right and the courage of tested convictions, not easy convenience, untested faith, and profitable complacency. He believed in the rule of law, the rationality of due process, and the efficacious profits of professional behavior; he believed in the inevitable elevations and advancements discovered in frank open-mindedness, and he believed in the certain ultimate rewards found in a passionate investigation for the truth. Truth though heavens fall.
McDonald’s belief was that his society was an accurate reflection of the preceding. Even as it was not then. It is not now. McDonald, astonishingly, even as he can’t really be blamed, one discovers, believed he fought his scientific battles on a field that was remotely level.
The monumentally magnificent fool, forgetting for a moment that he is exactly the kind of fool that this writer and Ms. Druffel, I suspect, aspire to be and always admire; in fact, the only foolishness we’d insist upon. Fairness, rationality, forthcoming-ness, progressiveness, consistency, intelligence, and individual respect one should be able to take for granted given no demonstration otherwise.
Any other path is back-stepping, inane insanity. It is also apparent foolishnesses, given the state of the union today and half a century’s ufological denial, extra-normal dismissal, and thoughtlessly executed and canted denunciation by profit-taking pelicanists, scurvy skeptibunkies, and conflicted klasskirtxians.
These were the presumptions Dr. McDonald held, writing off the inconsistencies of science he witnessed as a monumental cock-up of crass incompetence and not what it more than likely was—a monumental cover-up of crafted duplicity.
And one not in our best interests I’d suspect; nor, I predict, would Ms. Druffel. Those who have would keep on having without regard to the sensibilities of those who have not.
Would that McDonald had been better able to take stock of his culture’s duplicity, he might have proceeded along more successful lines. Druffel points out a few occasions where information held out on him by knowledgeable authority provoked assumptions he was making regarding the veracity of professional persons he was otherwise forced to deal with. Thus, more encouragement outwards on that precipitous limb.
These were the officious anti-intellectuals and ethically bankrupt authoritarian toads such as Klass, Condon, Menzel, a host of intelligence operatives, wind-sensing (and passing) politicians, and timid academic functionaries. Betrayers of truth, all!
Verily, Ann Druffel is clear that Dr. McDonald was a fine, upstanding, and intelligent man of ethical consistency and rare courage who was betrayed by persons closest to him; betrayed when those persons knew he was on the right track, doing the right thing, and doing it in exactly the right way.
Where was the doctor’s wife when he had the future by the shirttails and enigma by the scruff? Where were his learned colleagues who knew he was right when he was blindsided by the convenient bias of pompous detractors who’d have to scale a ladder to buff his shoe tops? Where were his friends? What have they done in the aftermath to keep McDonald alive then, and for the future?
Dr. McDonald’s story is a hard lesson, because we are reminded of the prices that are sometimes demanded for the pursuit of human advancement. He is a wonderful inspiration when we recall that his name will be remembered long after the names of Klass and Condon and Menzel are less than ignoble dust.
In closing, this is a book of such power, intelligence, and accuracy that it has compelled this writer to reassess all of Ms. Druffel’s past work in a new, more interested and attentive light. It is that kind of book. Not to diminish the volume in any way, but it could be a dazzling film featuring Matthew McConaughey or Russell Crowe.
They might do Mac justice.
Firestorm! The very title of Ann Druffel’s book is an astonishing hint to just how close McDonald may have been to putting us in the asteroid belt to which I’d alluded earlier. Be that as it may, I am improved, fortified, and emboldened with the reading of it.
I’d suggest you would be, too.
Bummer! It is a rerun.
I'm getting that book ASAP.
The book ripped the lips right off my face. It's pretty clear that we would be light years ahead of where we are now but for anxious minions of a corrupt status quo vexing McDonald every direction he tried to turn... when he was only doing the work of a sentient humankind.
"mmmm...McDonalds.
December 16, 2008 | Jeremy vaeni "
...Don't know how I missed this. Consider yourself whacked with a sturdy board.
I can honestly say with no paronomasia intended, that after reading all this in the post. The "ALL" that I can say is that we are only just now beginning at the tip of the iceberg...
McDonald's tireless efforts in UFOlogy finally exacted a toll on him - he was gradually becoming professionally isolated, and his marriage was faltering. Besides Klass and Condon, McDonald butted heads with many other prominent figures, including Donald Menzel of Harvard University. McDonald's personality may have been a factor in these confrontations; even his friends described him as sometimes forceful and impatient, while others, less charitably, called him blunt and abrasive.
For a short period, McDonald was committed to the psychiatric ward of a Tucson, Arizona hospital. He made plans to return to his teaching position, but that never happened as he ultimately took his own life.
James McDonald was a man of great integrity and great courage. He was loved and admired by a great many people especially those who knew him, He made a lasting impact on many facets of atmospheric sciences and he will be missed much more than we would ever hope realize.
Rest in Peace, Mr. McDonald.
Greetings!
For anyone who has not read the James McDonald Congressional Testimony, please make time to do so. It summarizes the basis for the support of a scientific endeavor to study the UFO phenomenon.
Dr. McDonald was known as a fearless advocate for scientific exploration of UFOs and was a thorn in the side of Project Blue Book.
I purchased a copy from Stan Friedman's website (www.stantonfriedman.com).
I do not believe that UFO's are terrestrial based. There is too much evidence against this and the science does not support physical beings traveling billions of miles to earth. I believe the phenomenon is dimensionally based. Moreover, their behavior in how they have interacted with the human race over the centuries is closer to malevolence than to "scientific observation". While I enjoy the show, I believe Bill's position that these are terrestrial beings misleads the true nature of what these are and what their true intent is.