UFOs to be topic of Oct. 14 presentation at LSUS
09/23/04

“UFOs: The Hidden History,” a 90-minute lecture and slide show concerning the U.S. government’s secret response to UFOs, will be presented at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 14, in the LSUS University Center Theater. Sponsored by the LSUS Student Activities Board, the presentation is free and open to the public.

The program by Robert Hastings, an independent UFO researcher and lecturer, is based on previously classified documents which have been secured via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by several researchers.

On the whole, Hastings said, the documents confirm, beyond a reasonable doubt, that “UFOs do indeed exist, and despite repeated public denials over the years by official spokesmen, these mysterious objects are of the greatest concern to the highest levels of the U.S. Air Force and the intelligence community.”

He said a number of the documents refer to UFOs repeatedly violating highly sensitive airspace over nuclear weapons sites, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where nuclear weapons are designed. Other documents concern UFOs hovering above nuclear missile silos or nuclear bomb storage bunkers. Still others refer to attempted aerial intercepts of UFOs by military jet fighters.

“So far as is known,” Hastings said, “all of these attempts have been unsuccessful.”

One FBI memorandum, dated March 22, 1950, and addressed to then-Director J. Edgar Hoover, reports that “flying saucers” had crashed in New Mexico and secretly recovered by the U.S. Air Force. The memo states that aboard the craft were found “bodies of human shape but only three feet tall.” This memo is one of several hundred FBI documents concerning UFOs obtained through the FOIA by Dr. Bruce Maccabee, a U.S. Navy physicist.

Hastings says his interest in UFOs began in 1967, when he was present at an air traffic control tower at Malmstrom Air Force Base, near Great Falls, Montana. “Five UFOs were tracked on radar for several minutes,” he recounts, “and jets were launched to intercept them. I later learned from Air Force sources that as the jets closed in, the UFOs performed a vertical ascent and left the area at enormous speed – far beyond the capability of any aircraft.”

Since that incident, Hastings has devoted countless hours researching UFOs and the government’s covert response to them. He has spoken at more than 500 colleges and universities since 1981 to bring to the public the intriguing information that he and other researchers have obtained.

“I am not condemning any government agency for its policy of secrecy regarding UFOs,” he said, “but I believe that the American public should be given the facts.”

Hastings lives in Surfside Beach, S.C. For information about the presentation, contact the LSUS Student Activities Office at 797-5393.

NOTE: Hastings may be reached for an interview at 843-650-1622.