Teacups empty, saucers fly

Published on November 18, 2007

"Irrefutable" evidence of contact between humans and extraterrestrials.

Need to Know: UFOs, the Military and Intelligence
By Timothy Good
Published by Pan Books, 2007
Available at Asia Books, Bt495
Reviewed by Paul Dorsey
The Nation

Timothy Good is, among ufologists, one of the most respected chroniclers of visits from space, but one does get the impression that he enjoys baiting the sceptics. Among the snippets of book reviews on his own website are these words from the Spectator in Britain: "I do not know how many trees were cut down to produce this 590-page diatribe, but I wish they had been left standing. 'Above Top Secret' is an evil book ... Mr Good's ideas are those of a maniac."

Of Good's "Alien Liaison", the Daily Telegraph complained of "shrill yappings" and decided "only mentally subnormal people could believe in it". The Ottawa Citizen liked a previous title, but tellingly called it "a story worthy of Franz Kafka".

Then there is the matter of the book at hand here, Tim Good's latest, "Need to Know", which is touted as a compilation of previously secret military documents that offer  "irrefutable" evidence of contact between humans and extraterrestrials.

There are three main problems, one to do with the word "compilation" - it really is just a sheaf of reports for readers to sift through. Good apparently thinks we'll have no trouble jumping to his conclusion. Another problem is that this is pretty much the same book by Tim Good that I read a couple of decades ago. The title is different and there is indeed plenty of new stuff in it, but it amounts to the same thing.

The British government declassified many reports and reviews about UFOs in recent years, but that's only mentioned in passing here in a pointlessly amiable foreword by a pal of Good's who's with the Royal Aeronautical Society.

The third problem, it's almost needless to point out, is that this is not "irrefutable" evidence at all. If it were, sirens would be going off. "A case that is impossible to dismiss," the cover blurb says. Nonsense. "A compelling expose." I must have missed that while I laboured through the 450 pages hoping in vain for something to get my teeth into.

Several morsels did pique my interest; none was very filling.

l His Royal Highness Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, the book says - and I'm not aware that this is common knowledge - may have been the "beneficiary" of a UFO encounter. Thai Airways made available for his use a 737-488 it had bought from Aer Lingus, Ireland's national carrier.

About a year earlier, in January 2004, the jet was approaching Dublin airport, followed by a British Midland Airbus, and the Airbus crew swore they saw a triangular UFO with strobe lights launch vertically from a field. It began circling the Aer Lingus 737, causing the passenger craft to glow purple and, according to the 737's own crew, lose power.

The UFO took a position directly in front of the 737, and the air-traffic control tower, which had the UFO on radar, gave the pilot a course to avoid collision, at which point the UFO disappeared at high speed, leaving the jet shuddering in turbulence.

When the 737 landed, considerable damage was found on the wings. This was repaired and Aer Lingus continued using the craft for some months before selling it to Thailand.

No authorities have acknowledged the incident. Good got the goods from a pair of Irish UFO researchers who heard the story from a pair of pilots.

l Thailand pops up again in the book, in a 1974 letter published in Flying Saucer Review, a British magazine. A signals sergeant of that nationality who was stationed with the Royal Thai Air Force in Mukdahan (for some unexplained reason) reported that he'd heard about the Americans simultaneously losing several F-111s and an F4 one day during the Vietnam conflict for no evident reason.

Yes. But anyway ...

l "Need to Know" is dedicated to Gordon Cooper, the last of America's Mercury 7 astronauts into space. Cooper went to his grave in 2004 convinced that he'd seen several extraterrestrial craft buzz a German airbase back in the '50s and that Washington was covering up the truth about UFOs.

But he laughed about another episode that Good plays up, when military authorities in California confiscated the cameras from his surveillance plane. Good is unswayed in his belief that "Gordo" had inadvertently photographed aliens. Cooper found out years after the incident that he'd been shooting footage of the top-secret Area 51 test range. Maybe he got a peek at the stealth jets. (Cooper fumed at length over other ufologists' insistence that he'd seen a "a greenish object with a red tail" fly past his Mercury capsule in 1963.)

l Then there was the surgeon in Brazil who was pulled to one side by the military in 1996 to fix the busted leg of an alien who'd crashed. As the operating theatre filled with a greenish mist, the doctor said, the creature "downloaded" a tremendous amount of information into his brain, mostly spiritual stuff about how humans are wasting their potential and missing the point of life.

What is the point of life? Well, I'm not going to tell you - that would be hearsay!

Buy the book for fun. Extra bonus for plane-spotters: There are dozens of photos in this UFO book, almost all of them of planes and jets "of the type" that someone or other was flying when they saw a UFO.