James Oberg on TNT Soviet UFO documentary
From: Francisco Lopez <d005734c@dc.seflin.org>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 22:02:26 -0800
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Via: Blue Resonant Human <density4@cts.com>
Via: UFOR Mailing List
From Jim Oberg:
The TNT Special on "Secret KGB UFO Files" last night didn't make reference
to any of the classic space and missile "pseudo-UFOs" for which Western
ufologists still endorse the old Soviet government coverups and
camouflages about. So it wasn't very related to "space activity".
Except -- one sequence of scenes purporting to be "Declassified Soviet top
secret footage" of their rocket tests, which actually showed NASA Space
Shuttle SRB re-qualification test footage from 1987-8 (you can see the SRB
in its horizontal test position during the test fring). This
misrepresentation seemed typical of the rest of the show, which also kept
promoting the 1908 Tunguska explosion as "the Russian Roswell" and
presenting it as an unsolved mystery. Also, twice some Russians described
how some recovered crashed UFO debris had been sent "to the base in
Mytishchi", indirectly referring to the organization now known as the
"Energiya Rocket and Space Corporation" (the small north Moscow suburbs of
Mytishchi and Podlipki became 'Kaliningrad', now the city of "Korolev").
If the nearly-bankrupt Energiya management had UFO samples available,
their financial sitution would look a WHOLE lot different than it does
now!
Cautious skepticism are especially called for when you read the "fine
print" disclaimers. At the beginning of the show a big message flashed
up: "What you are about to see may or may not be true." And at the end,
two screens full of warning messages were even more to the point. One
paragraph read: "The Producers disclaim and do not guarantee the accuracy
or truthfulness [of] any of the documentation or materials that have been
provided by any source. . . . The materials and opinion presented on this
program including documents, film, photo, or video footage come from the
sources and are not the responsibility of the Producers. . . .This
production is produced solely for entertainment purposes only and no other
use is authorized."
They couldn't have been more explicit in their announcement that the whole
series of episodes about the recovery of a crashed flying saucer in 1969
near Sverdlovsk, and a subsequent autopsy (following which three of the
four medical workers die the same day from "cerebral hemorhages") was a
made-up story with posed footage (as with the infamous Roswell autopsy,
these scenes involved motion picture film but never showed any still
photographers getting high-quality imagery), "hidden camera" views of the
purchase of top-secret confirmatory documents ($10,000 cash changing
hands), and a string of sincere but typical self-deluded Russian UFO nuts
to vouch for the story.
The American sources, with shaded faces and computer-altered voices, were
also amusing, especially a guy who claimed to have gone to work for the
CIA in 1989 "straight out of college" and was immediately assigned to
infiltrate the Russian UFO study team. Sadder was the view of a sincere
ex-NASA scientist named Richard Haines who claimed he possessed "verified
documents from Stalin's time" that showed Soviet interest in the 1947
"Roswell crashed saucer" -- alleged documents which he has never published
and which were not shown on this program.
For entertainment purposes, including Roger Moore's narration, this is a
strong "B" production. For authenticity and newsworthiness, the warning
from the producers themselves should be trusted, and it rates an "F".
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RELEVANCE OF THIS MESSAGE: Gov't UFO info
Index: James Oberg (#10)
Index: Russia (#30)
Created: Sep 16, 1998
