A Discussion With Nuclear Physicist Stanton T. Friedman

Editors note: This is part of a special series of Raiders News Network interviews focusing on the 61st Anniversary of the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico UFO Incident. Tom Horn is joined by Stanton T. Friedman, who received his BSc and MSc degrees in physics from the University of Chicago in 1955 and 1956. He was employed for 14 years as a nuclear physicist for such companies as GE, GM, Westinghouse, TRW Systems, Aerojet General Nucleonics, and McDonnell Douglas on such advanced, classified, eventually cancelled, projects as nuclear aircraft, fission and fusion rockets, and nuclear powerplants for space.
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HORN: Stan, once again, thank you for allowing me to interview you on the upcoming Roswell, New Mexico, Annual Crash Festival July 3-7, 2008. You have 4 lectures scheduled during this year's festival, including on Friday, July 4, 9:30-11AM Video Room "The UFO Why Questions". There is an entire chapter in your new book "Flying Saucers and Science" entitled the "UFO Why Questions". As a physicist normally concerned with facts and data, where is the science connection to Questions about Why?

FRIEDMAN: Over the 50 years that I have been interested in UFOs, I have found that people's willingness to examine data is highly dependent on their understanding of why things might be. This is especially true for debunking scientists and journalists. They seem not to have much imagination about why governments, witnesses, aliens might behave the way they do. They tend to dismiss what they can't imagine.

HORN: What areas will you discuss?

FRIEDMAN: I will discuss why aliens might visit our planet, why governments might want to cover up what they know, why aliens can't be expected to land on the White House Lawn, why witnesses might not want to talk about their experiences

HORN: Why do you think governments want to cover up UFO data?

FRIEDMAN: They want to determine the mode of propulsion because a duplicated saucer would make a fine offensive and defensive military system. We spend loads of money to develop new technology

2.They worry about opposing countries developing such technology before they do.

3.They worry that if an announcement were made there would be some discombobulation such as the stock market going down, mental hospital admissions going up, and a strong push for an Earthling orientation other than the nationalistic ones governments want to see. No government wants its citizens to owe their allegiance to the planet instead of the government. Power is the name of the game even if it is obvious that to ET, we are all Earthlings

4. Certain fundamentalist Christians who had been very close to the Republicans have loudly proclaimed there is no intelligent life out side of the earth and that UFOs are the work of the devil.. Think Pat Robertson, the late Jerry Falwell. They would be up the religious creek without a paddle if an announcement were made.

5. Many say since aliens are coming here and we are not going there, they must be more advanced which implies that soon there would be new methods of energy production, of ground and air transport, computers and communication technology. Economic chaos would ensue.

6. I have heard 7 stories of more planes chasing after UFOs then came back. No government wants to admit that. Military pilots were actually ordered to shoot down UFOs if they didn't land when instructed to do so in 1952. No government wants to admit that pilots are at risk from an unannounced enemy.

HORN: Why would aliens visit earth? Is there anything special about the planet?

FRIEDMAN: Earth is the densest planet in the solar system which means more heavy and valuable metals such as gold, uranium, tungsten, platinum, rhenium, osmium etc. It is the only planet in the solar system teeming with life, covered with water, blasting out numerous signs that soon we will be able to go to other solar systems despite our being such a primitive society who major activity was tribal warfare. At the end of WW 2 during which we killed 50 million of our own kind, destroyed 1700 cities and demonstrated new knowledge of atomic energy, rocketry, and electronics.. together, we would be able to bother them within less than 100 years. I think they would want to quarantine us. I list numerous reasons for visiting such as grad students doing thesis work on the development of a primitive society whose inhabitants speak many different languages, who have loads of genetic defects, etc.

HORN: Why don't aliens just land on the White House lawn and say take me to your leader?

FRIEDMAN: There is no leader to be taken to, it is a no fly zone, they know we are aggressive, they saw what happened in 1952 when many jets were scrambled to attack UFOs. They may have had conversations with leaders in secret

HORN: On Friday, July 4, 11AM-12:30PM in the Library you will discuss "Flying Saucers and Science" illustrated. Why do you use the term "Flying Saucers" instead of the more neutral term UFO?

FRIEDMAN: I am not interested in UFOs, but am very interested in flying saucers or ET spacecraft. All flying saucers are UFOs.. very few UFOs are ET. All great grandfathers are men. Not all men are great-grandfathers. I believe in telling it like it is instead of being an apologist ufologist. In the nuclear world only a few isotopes are fissionable. I don't care much about the rest, if I want to build a nuclear reactor

HORN: Is there really any scientific data available about flying saucers?

FRIEDMAN: In the book I talk about 6 large scale scientific studies that the debunkers avoid like the plague. Project Blue Book Special Report 14 covers 3201 sightings of which 21.5% were unexplainable completely separate from the 9.5% which had insufficient data. None of the debunking books mention it. The Secretary of the Air Force lied about it big time

HORN: You devote an entire chapter in your new book to comments about flying saucers by famous science fiction writers such as Isaac Asimov and Arthur Clark. I presume they were sympathetic to the notion of alien visitors?

FRIEDMAN: It generally comes as a surprise to most people that they were very unsympathetic and clearly were unaware of the factual data. Unfortunately they had an enormous impact on society with articles in popular magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and TV Guide. They deserve to be exposed for their bias, ignorance and lack of imagination

HORN: How do you demonstrate that there is what you call a Cosmic Watergate about this subject?

FRIEDMAN: I review false claims by government agencies. I show blacked out and whited out documents. Replace myths with facts.

HORN: Is it really possible to cover up a major government effort for more than half a century?

FRIEDMAN: It has obviously been done. I give examples of huge expensive programs that were covered up for many decades though involving thousands of people and billions of dollars. Certainly the key requirements for access are an appropriate clearance and a need to know. I worked under security for 14 years and have visited 20 document archives. There are loads of armchair theorists who haven't had clearances and haven't visited archives and do their research by proclamation. I prefer investigation.

HORN: You have an update chapter about the Majestic documents. Don't you agree that they are all fraudulent?

FRIEDMAN: I would agree that the arguments against the Eisenhower Briefing Document, the Truman Forrestal Memo and the Cutler Twining memo are indeed fraudulent. I have shown there are a few documents that are genuine and a mess that are fraudulent. So what? It is the genuine ones that matter. I even show Phil Klass's check to me for $1000. for proving him wrong about the typeface of the Cutler Twining memo based on his foolish proclamations though he had never been to the Eisenhower Library.

HORN: On Saturday, July 5, 1:30-3PM you will give your third presentation: "Why SETI Stands for Silly Effort to Investigate" Why do you claim that the SETI effort is not scientific?

FRIEDMAN:Where is the science? It is based on a host of silly assumptions such as that nobody is coming here, that we can predict what techniques they will use to communicate to us for reasons unknown ( I don't send signals to the squirrels in my yard) though they could be thousands or millions of years ahead of us.

They assume there has been no colonization or migration anywhere in the universe. They make totally false claims that there is no UFO evidence, ignore the large scale scientific studies, and provide no evidence of their own. That is cult thinking especially since they tout how important their work is.

HORN: What are the underlying assumptions that the SETI people put forth?

FRIEDMAN: see above and my Challenge to SETI Specialists on my website at www.stantonfriedman.com

HORN: You use the term SETI cultists, as opposed to SETI Scientists. Why?

Friedman: A cult has charismatic leadership, a strong dogma not based on reality or science, a strong resistance to outside critiques, and an enormous ego about how important it is despite any evidence to support these notions. I rest my case. Science is based on the collection, review, and evaluation of evidence. The SETI cultists provide none. At least I can provide 4000+ physical trace cases, many multiple witness radar visual cases, worldwide testimony. They have wishful thinking.

HORN: While we are on the subject of belief systems, in the several interviews I have done with Jesse Marcel Jr. on radio and as a news reporter, I asked him a question that often comes up about UFOs and religion. Jesse is a devout Catholic and like some of the high profile church astronomers that have been in the news recently talking about the possibility of intelligent alien life, he agrees that contact with extraterrestrials or some other proof of their existence would not be in conflict with his church's teachings. I realize you are a scientist, but have you given any thought to this question concerning the spiritual or psychological ramifications of what Roswell may represent with regard to people's religious ideas?

FRIEDMAN: Of course. That is why my last chapter deals with what it all means. I see our local neighborhood as teeming with life of which we are certainly not the most advanced. How silly to limit the notion of an omnipotent GOD to one planet in one solar system that is more than 4 billion years old. We only have been around for thousands of years. Surely God can do better than life on this planet.

HORN: A related question along this line. Following Vatican chief astronomer Father Jose Gabriel Funes recent interview saying it's okay for Catholics to believe in Aliens, I wrote an article called Is the Vatican easing humanity toward alien disclosure? I pointed out how Funes was just the latest in a string of Vatican authorities including Guy Consolmagno, Monsignor Corrado Balducci, the now deceased Father Malachi Martin and others who in recent history provided what could be interpreted as carefully crafted language designed to help church faithful face the possibility of ET contact. Consolmagno went so far as to the say the chances of finding ET are now better than not. Do you think the Vatican may have UFO or ETI evidence of some kind?

FRIEDMAN: I have heard Father Balducci. I think the Vatican is very sensibly hedging its bets so that Catholics won't say they have been lied to by a church saying there are no aliens. Surely some Catholic officials have passed on useful info during confessions.

HORN: On Sunday, July 6, 9:30-11AM in the Library you will present your fourth lecture: "You Can get Here from There!" Wouldn't it take far too much energy to get to another galaxy?

FRIEDMAN: I only worry about the local neighborhood say within 55 light years. The galaxy is 100,000 light years across and the universe about 13 billion LY across. As I show in the book the amount of energy it takes to travel is entirely dependent on the techniques used. These are engineering problems. If one makes wrong assumptions, as is always the case for the debunkers, one can prove it is impossible to put anything into orbit, to go to the moon etc. The ancient academics and fossilized physicists who make such false proclamations seem not to be aware of the huge amount of work that has been done in industry and the National labs and outside academia.

HORN: As a physicist do you have some reason to believe that Einstein was wrong about the speed of light being an absolute limit?

FRIEDMAN: Einstein also said that as one approaches the speed of light, time slows down, so that at 99.99% of c it only takes 6 months pilot time to go 37 light years. We are not limited to half an Einstein.

HORN: Why do you use the terms "Mother Ships" and "Earth excursion modules"?

FRIEDMAN: It seems very reasonable to me since there are many good observations of huge “space Carriers” 0.5 to 1 mile long which carry many much smaller earth excursion modules. We have 1200’ long aircraft carriers which only require refueling every 18 years which carry many dozens of much smaller planes that can only run for a few hours without refueling. Two very different environments (surface of the ocean and in the atmosphere). There is the space between the stars and that near a planet.

HORN: Isn't it true that our fastest rocket, the Voyager spacecraft, would take 70,000 years to get to the nearest star?

FRIEDMAN: Such a proclamation has been made by the head of the Hayden planetarium. The craft has no propulsion system on it. It is coasting. Throwing a bottle in the ocean or flying a kite tells us nothing about how long it takes to fly or sail across the ocean or around the planet

HORN: Can one really build a nuclear fusion rocket? If so, what would its advantages be.

FRIEDMAN: If one wants to spend enough money. After all, fusion is the primary source of energy of all the stars. We made controlled fusion weapons only 14 years after figuring out how the sun works. If one uses the right isotopes of hydrogen and helium (the 2 lightest and most abundant elements), one can eject particles having ten million times as much energy per particle as in a dumb old chemical rocket. The first H bomb in 1952 had the explosive power of 10 million tons of TNT and created a fireball 3 miles wide.

HORN: Thanks for doing this interview, Stan. Please tell people where they can learn more about your research.

FRIEDMAN: They can read my four books which are all available through my website at www.stantonfriedman.com which also has a number of articles, my lecture schedule, etc.

Thomas Horn is the CEO of RaidersNewsNetwork.com and SurvivorMall.com.

Over the last decade, he has authored three books, wrote dozens of published editorials, and had several feature magazine articles. His works have been referred to by writers of the LA Times Syndicate, MSNBC, Christianity Today, Coast to Coast, World Net Daily, White House Correspondents and dozens of newsmagazines and press agencies around the globe. Tom's latest book is "The Ahriman Gate," which fictionalizes the use of biotechnology to resurrect Biblical Nephilim.

Thomas is also a well known radio personality who has guest-hosted and appeared on dozens of radio and television shows over the last 30 years, including "The 700 Club" and "Coast to Coast AM."

Web Site: RaidersNewsNetwork.com
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