TMCnet News
UFO investigator to discuss phenomenon(Alamogordo Daily News)Alamogordo Daily News The federal government's apparent change in attitude over the last half century has been significant. When Harry Truman chose to clamp down a lid of secrecy after the 1947 Roswell UFO crash and appointed the Majestic 12 committee, Dee Gragg said it was clear the president of the United States was in control. Those under him according to Gragg, "were answerable only to the president." "They were afraid and perhaps rightly so, that this would have panicked the American people to know there were vehicles that could fly thousands of miles an hour," Gragg said. Presidents change. With them so do the times. Gragg said when Ronald Reagan was newly elected he asked his vice president, former CIA Director George H.W. Bush, about UFOs. "Bush told him he had no need to know," Gragg said. "Now we've gone from what was under the control of the president to it's under the control of somebody. We don't even know who it is." Gragg, an Alamogordo resident, earned his investigator's status in June for the nationwide Mutual UFO Network. The New Mexico chapter is in Roswell, according to the Web site mufon.com. Gragg passed a difficult 100-question exam, only one of two people in the nation to do so that month, he said. The pool of hopefuls at any time averages 850, he said, but only four to five a month succeed. The test covers such topics as photography, celestial heavenly bodies and radar. But not all answers are in the study manual. Gragg only found 59 of them there. He was told he'd have to find the rest elsewhere, some by watching the night sky. Gragg's interest in UFOs is recent. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1959 with a mechanical engineering degree. He spent nine years working on nuclear weapons at Sandia Laboratories, then came to Holloman Air Force Base to participate in human air bag tests at the Aero Medical Lab. "The tests we did really cleared the way to say you could have airbags in vehicles and not kill people with them," he said. He then worked at the test track on ejection seats and escape systems, as well as on the B-2 bomber when it was a "black," or highly secret project. Gragg's first interest in the unusual was the intricately designed crop circles that mysteriously appear in farmers' fields worldwide. While he published three technical papers on the phenomenon, he said he found information and incidents "sporadic." UFOs, he found, were "much more fascinating" and sightings occurred with greater frequency. A year-and-a-half ago, he began devoting his attention to them and sought his field investigator's certification. On Saturday, Gragg will discuss his expertise on Ronny Diaz's radio program on KUPR 91.7 FM. The interview starts at 7:30 a.m. Those who have a further interest in picking Gragg's brain may have the opportunity to learn from him firsthand. He has applied to teach a class at the community college affiliated with NMSU-A on the topic in 2006. In anticipation, he's written a course book, "A Simple Explanation of UFOs." It covers ancient to modern history, including Roswell, Project Blue Book, MJ-12, alien entities and abductions, and the crafts themselves. Besides being the stuff of movies that span Cold War-era sci-fi scares to Steven Spielberg and George Lucas' benevolent ETs, just what in the world (not to mention outside the world) has been occurring? Tales go back to the Middle Ages. Petroglyphs and medieval paintings depict strange craft, beings and technology for which man then had no reference. As an investigator, Gragg has begun by studying the literature and established evidence, especially from the Truman years. He visited the Truman Library, saw the president's 1947 diary, and read his memoirs and a book of his compiled letters. Gragg learned about World War II-era "foo fighters," balls of light that pilots spotted speeding alongside them. "Foo fighters flew with our fighters in both theaters," Gragg said. "Our pilots were very apprehensive of them. (American officials) thought they were secret weapons of the Japanese and Germany. After the war we found out they flew with the Germans and Japanese, (who) thought (they) were secret weapons of ours." While reports of post-1947 UFO craft sightings show them increasing, Gragg pointed out their responses to man's reactions have changed. At one time, military fighters sent to intercept strange craft were often destroyed. "(The military) sent pilots out to try to shoot them down. There were a lot of training accidents' until (Truman) rescinded that order," Gragg said. "(UFOs) don't shoot planes down anymore. Apparently they're not really dangerous if we don't try to shoot them down." He cited two documented incidents of UFOs showing up when Minuteman missiles were readied for launch. "The missiles suddenly started to drop off line," he said. "They've never had any explanation for it." But if interaction between Earth- and extra-terrestrial craft is more benign, the first-hand incidences of abductions of men and women are not. Gragg said the speculation is that aliens are "growing a hybrid race ... They take the egg from the female, sperm from males, mix with DNA, and insert back into the female." Conjecture is the race has inbred, or been cloned for so many generations that the alien counterpart to human DNA has disintegrated beyond its usefulness. Victims' accounts report aliens apparently "have no genitals or reproduction process," Gragg said. "So the speculation is they're reproducing," he said. "They are hundreds if not thousands of years advanced from us. They can fly 6,000 miles an hour. They can make a right turn. They can fly straight up, straight down. They can appear, disappear. They obviously have mastered anti-gravity." To wink in and out, Gragg said the visitors have learned to bend light. "Our visible light is only a small slice of our electromagnetic spectrum. To disappear, change the frequency (it's) vibrating at," Gragg said. "The people who claim it couldn't be extra-terrestrial (visitors) because the closest star is more than 4,000 light years away, the flaw in that thinking is that they're thinking the vehicles are like ours. They're obviously not." |