There's a topic on the UFO UpDates List this week begun by Ray Stanford, titled, "Strange Sightings Over Washington Beltway" in which Ray shares with us information of a UFO sighting that he experienced on March 8, 2003.

But the sighting is not what got me interested in this thread, what got me interested is that Ray stated that he contacted Don Berliner of Fund for UFO Research about his sighting and was asked to not post details about his sighting on the UFO UpDates List.

Now this is the second time this year that Don Berliner has been accused or mentioned in a way that would indicate that he is actively suppressing information or investigation of UFOs and UFO case histories. So, with that said, I decided to call Don Berliner and go straight to the horse's mouth, so to speak and ask him to tell me what the hell was up with this?

Don was very receptive to my call and told me the full sentence that he said to Ray, which was, "Please do not post this on the UFO UpDates List until a thorough investigation can be conducted." Don is not trying to suppress information, nor is he actively trying to derail any UFO information, what he is seeking is to get anything involving UFOs to be properly investigated and documented so that we can begin to get things properly investigated by the general scientific community. This way perhaps they will simply not laugh us off or dismiss UFO sightings the way they have in the past.

So, case closed, that's my take, right? Nope!

During my conversation with Don, he mentioned that we didn't really have any official investigative procedures in place and this triggered me to mention that I had seen some documents that somebody had put together to conduct a proper witness investigation of a UFO sighting and perhaps we should pull those out and use them on a consistent basis with anybody who has seen or interacted with a UFO.

After I hung up the phone I went off in search of these mysterious documents that I had once come across. Lo and behold, I didn't have far to search before I came across a very elaborate document set for conducting an investigation into a UFO sighting. But, the most interesting thing about this document set was that it was developed back in the 60's and is labelled, AFR 80-17 [Air Force Regulation] and was issued by The United States Department of the Air Force, Washington, DC 19th of September, 1966. It is the official form that was used by Project Blue Book investigators.

Now, firstly, I must say that it is an excellent document that should be brought out whenever anyone is interviewing or questioning somebody about what they saw or witnessed regarding a UFO.

But there are a lot of things about this particular document, how it was generated and how it was employed and used by the U.S. Air Force that got me thinking and digging a little more.

The first thing that interested me about this, is that Project Blue Book was set up to investigate UFO reports and if anyone believes that it was just the U.S. Air Force doing this to share information with the public, you best give yourself a shake and come back to reality. The Official reason Project Blue Book was begun was to determine if there was a threat to the security of the United States and another reason, less-widely known, "to use the scientific or technical data gained from study of UFO reports" - a direct quote from the document.

Apparently, there is even a division of the US Air Force, very innocently named, the 'Foreign Technology Division' - FTD - that supported Project Blue Book with it's resources and its this particular division that got my interest up as I began to wade through this document. I don't believe that the Air Force in general is the 'bad boy' regarding UFOs anymore - it's FTD.

You see, FTD was responsible for doing the analysis work on what Project Blue Book investigators gathered and they are the ones that prepared the final case reports. But the most interesting thing about this little lode stone of information is this small quote from the pages of the document.

"If the final report is deemed significant, FTD will send the report of its findings to Air Force Systems Command, Andrews AFB, Wash, DC 20331, which will send a report to HQ USAF (AFRDC), Wash DC 20330."

In other words follow the chain of command, but... FTD has the first say on who sees what.

The official reason that Project Blue Book was shut down was that "UFOs present no threat to the security of the United States" but, FTD offered no information about what information THEY gathered and somebody needs to ask them why.

But that's just my take on it.....