NASA confusion over 'Kecksburg UFO crash' of 1965

Here's the AP story:
http://www.vindy.com/content/local_r...1839491855.php
and longer:
http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbc.../51209007/1007

Seems garbled to me. There were never any reports I was aware of that NASA
had investigated
fragments from Kecksburg. Under Frosch and at Jimmy Carter's
insistence, NASA examined fragments from the Socorro 'landed UFO'
(from 1964). Tom Sciacca was in charge of that

The UFO guy involved in that encounter with NASA restates his views he
http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/.../m30-022.shtml and
http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/.../m17-002.shtml

Here's a press account about NASA's garbles:

State's UFO story is still incomplete
http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2...al/daily01.txt
By The Sentinel, Dec 10, 2005
Roswell, N.M. and the notorious "Area 51" in Nevada have gotten all of
the
ink when it comes to talk of Earth being visited by beings from
another
planet.
But Pennsylvania has its own UFO legend, centered around a mysterious
incident in the village of Kecksburg, Westmoreland County. Use Google
to
search "Kecksburg PA" and you'll get pages and pages of references to
the
story that celebrated its 40th anniversary yesterday. snip


A NASA spokesman told the Associated Press that the agency was asked
at
the time to examine metal fragments taken from the site. That
examination
led to the theory that the fallen object was a Russian satellite.
Unfortunately, NASA now claims that all documents relating to its
investigation have been misplaced.

Needless to say, that dog-ate-my-homework explanation only fuels the
imagination of skeptics who believe that something more significant
than a
rock from space or an errant satellite landed in Kecksburg.


Here's an email exchange with Jim Oberg explaining where his
own years of digging into this story have led him.... Feel free to
distribute anywhere.

Subject: Kecksburg UFO crash party
From: "Jim Oberg"
To: "Sam Kusic"
Tuesday, December 06, 2005 2:37 PM

Re your story: http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-.../s_401127.html

"a fireball was reported streaking over four states, across the Pittsburgh
area and toward Greensburg."

Well, now, that's the trouble. The fireball was widely photographed, and
astronomers
were able to determine beyond a shadow of a doubt that it did not streak
over Pittsburgh
nor towards Greensburg. Sure, some folks thought it did, but they were just
mistaken.
It was heading south-to-north over the western end of Lake Erie -- yeah, the
western end,
hundreds of miles from Pennsylvania.

Come on, at least tell your readers about the OTHER investigations on this
interesting story.
It's not that hard. grin Start at http://www.debunker.com/Kecksburg.html
and follow the links.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam Kusic"
To: "Jim Oberg"
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 3:02 PM

At the very least, the Zippy cartoon was pretty damn funny. Thanks for
sending me the link.

And thanks for pointing out the arguments against something coming down in
the woods. Though I should tell you the pro side says they have evidence --
based on growth rings in trees and the supposed landing site -- that
something did indeed crash there that night.

All that aside, I'm a lowly paid generalist, so I don't have the technical
expertise to write an exhaustive report on what may or may not have happened
on Dec. 9.

And that's why I tried to stay away from all that. I only wanted to rehash
the story as it's told and focus as much as I could on the fact a local fire
department looking to make some money off of the story. I simply wanted to
let people know that the event was going on. I'll let others draw the
conclusions.

----------------------------
From: "Jim Oberg"
Tuesday, December 06, 2005 3:29 PM

I wondered a long time (as a 'space expert') if it might have been
the Soviet Venera probe reentry vehicle, and the 'tracking data'
released by the USAF was misdirection to conceal the actual
US possession of the vehicle. But in recent years, with access
to Soviet tracking data, it now is clear the off-course probe
would have been over another part of the world during the
reported fireball. It DID enter the atmosphere earlier that same
day, a coincidence that we all over-interpreted (in hindsight).

But the USAF was definitely interested in retrieving falling
satellites (I was on active duty from 1970-1978, I saw many
of the alert messages of 'imminent decay'), while keeping any
recoveries of them secret (UN treaty required they be returned
to country of origin, while intelligence types didn't like that).
My own 'reconstruction' of the event was that the imminent decay
of the high-interest Soviet probe (it shared many key systems with
Soviet thermonuclear warheads) sparked DoD messages to all
locations to be aware of any 'meteorite falls' and if reported, go
take a look, discretely. The rest is, if not good history, then
good story.

The 'acorn' shape, for example, does look VERY much like the
actual probe. But it turns out, nobody seems to have reported the
shape until years afterwards, after some investigators had showed
recently-released photographs of the probe design in question. Now,
if there are published accounts of the acorn shape before, say, 1985 or so,
that would be interesting!

And you may quote me!


----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam Kusic"
To: "Jim Oberg"
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 4:00 PM
Subject: Kecksburg UFO crash party


So what would be the implications today if it came out that the country had
violated the treaty by keeping foreign satellites that had fallen to Earth?

And as far as the acorn-shape goes, I believe that's how witnesses who claim
to have seen it have been describing it all along.

-------------------------------------
From: "Jim Oberg"
Tuesday, December 06, 2005 5:16 PM

No implications -- the Soviets kept lots of our stuff. I know
we kept some of theirs -- I was on watch when it came in --
but it was from Southern Rhodesia (that dates the event!!),
not Kecksburg.

'Ice Station Zebra' was loosely based on a real incident.

Re the acorn, yeah, I've heard people say they remember seeing that
shape, but they are remembering NOW. I'd like to see some 'capture'
of that impression way back before their memories got influenced
(possibly) by somebody showing them something... Memories are
appallingly malleable, as Elizabeth Loftus (google her) and others
have shown.

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 18:32:38 GMT, "Jim Oberg" wrote:

Here's the AP story:
http://www.vindy.com/content/local_r...1839491855.php
and longer:
http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbc.../51209007/1007

Seems garbled to me. There were never any reports I was aware of that NASA
had investigated
fragments from Kecksburg. Under Frosch and at Jimmy Carter's
insistence, NASA examined fragments from the Socorro 'landed UFO'
(from 1964). Tom Sciacca was in charge of that

I vaguely recall the Carter pledged to personally look into the UFO business when
he became President. If so, has he ever talked or written about what he learned?

Dale

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 18:32:38 GMT, I wrote:

I vaguely recall the Carter ...

That should have been "that Carter"- not like "The Terminator" or something

here is the report -
http://theshadowlands.net/jcufo.jpg

& also - (sorry i forget things sometimes & have to ad to it later)
because the exibit # is blacked out - that sort of says to me :
"there's more..."
without saying how many more ...
so i wonder - if "JC" reported more than once or if there are more
pages to the one we see -?

here's what came up in search results when i typed in the #
301-949-1267 seen on the top left of the "JC" report :
http://www.darkcorridors.com/37493-a.html documents from NASA

On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 05:20:53 -0800, Dale wrote:

I vaguely recall the Carter pledged to personally look into the UFO business when
he became President. If so, has he ever talked or written about what he learned?

....Would you trust the word of possibly the worst President we ever
had?

OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[

Jim Oberg quoting AP stories wrote:

A NASA spokesman told the Associated Press that the agency was asked
at
the time to examine metal fragments taken from the site. That
examination
led to the theory that the fallen object was a Russian satellite.
Unfortunately, NASA now claims that all documents relating to its
investigation have been misplaced.

Needless to say, that dog-ate-my-homework explanation only fuels the
imagination of skeptics who believe that something more significant
than a
rock from space or an errant satellite landed in Kecksburg.



Here's the NASA FOIA documents about the Kecksberg incident:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/FO...ksberg-UFO.pdf

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/FOIA/

-Rusty

"Rusty" wrote in message
oups.com...

Jim Oberg quoting AP stories wrote:

A NASA spokesman told the Associated Press that the agency was
asked
at
the time to examine metal fragments taken from the site. That
examination
led to the theory that the fallen object was a Russian satellite.
Unfortunately, NASA now claims that all documents relating to its
investigation have been misplaced.

Needless to say, that dog-ate-my-homework explanation only fuels
the
imagination of skeptics who believe that something more
significant
than a
rock from space or an errant satellite landed in Kecksburg.


The Guvmnt seems to have a knack for losing interesting stuff. First they
try to hide it, then they give it a new name, such as balloon, satellite
etc., then they file it and finally it disappears, just like Hillary's
travelgate files.

On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 11:48:50 -0600, OM
wrote:

On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 05:20:53 -0800, Dale wrote:

I vaguely recall the Carter pledged to personally look into the UFO business when
he became President. If so, has he ever talked or written about what he learned?

...Would you trust the word of possibly the worst President we ever
had?

I wasn't asking about him. I was asking about Carter.

Dale