USCC May/Aug 1978

SHADO---United States Central Control

MONTHLY STATUS REPORT, VOLUME 42; MAY-AUGUST 1978

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Well, here we are, late again. I had hoped to have had the big handbook
mailed out long before now, but it is turning out bigger than I had
expected, I had more legal hassles with the SHADO bank account than I had
counted on, and I am just beginning to realize how much I don't know about
many of the details of how Dale ran the club. And, I am only one mere human
being without any magical or superhuman powers who is able to squeeze only
the normal amount of hours, minutes, and seconds into a day.

Some 60-odd pages of the handbook have been typed up so far, which leaves
about another 40 to go before its ready to start printing. I had hoped to be
able to offset the entire handbook, but it seems I had forgotten how
horrendously expensive printing some 200 copies of a 100 page fanzine can
be. I fear the bank account simply cannot bear that burden, so it's back to
the mimeo machine and black fingernails for the next several months, I
guess. The biggest problem with the mimeo is the time factor involved. It
may be relatively cheap in strict monetary terms, but it is very expensive
when it comes to the amount of time it takes, and my time is at a premium
these days I'd like to be able to predict a date for the handbook, but my
time sense seems to be way off recently, so I'm afraid you'll have to be
satisfied with the promise that it will be out before the end of the year.

If you have any art-work, puzzles, cartoons, riddles, blueprints, etc. that
you've been thinking about submitting, by all means send them along. I hope
to include three complete stories in the handbook, but we're always in need
of illustrations and fillers.

Our first shipment of SHADO patches arrived in late April just around the
time the last Status Report was mailed out and are long gone. If you ordered
and paid for a patch before April, it should have arrived long since; if you
did purchase a patch before April and it hasn't arrived yet, then please let
me know -- the Post Office must have eaten it. I have not yet ( what with
everything else I have to do) placed a second order for the patches, but
will be doing so soon (since several members have paid for patches after tne
original shipment was exhausted). Once again, the patch company takes 6-8
weeks to deliver from receipt of purchase order, so it will be probably
November at the earliest before any more patches are mailed out.

Page 2

On July 25, I received a letter from Ed informing me that he had been
invitedl to attend a SPACE:1999 convention in Columbus, Ohio, July 29-30,
and that he had accepted the invitation, with the stipulattor that he would
have to cancel his attendance if some professional opportunity came up in
the meantime (altogether a most reasonable stipulation, considering that the
convention was merely paying expenses and that he would not be paid for
attending the convention itself). The letter was dated July 18 and as of its
writing, Ed was looking forward to attending the convention. Gripped with
indecision that nearly tore my checkbook in half, I decided to take the
chance, hurriedly packed several hunered blank membership cards and forms
waiting for the Commander's signature alcng with late Christmas presents and
birthday cards and what-not, and hopped a plane to Columbus, Ohio.

To make a long story a bit shorter, Ed was not able to make it after all. it
seems that he was offered a part in a TV series (so it was rumored) and had
to bow out at the last moment. When I returned to Los Angeles after the
convention, there was a letter from Ed at the post office waiting from me,
warning me that he would not be able to attend the convention after all. The
letter was dated July 22 and sent airmail, but trans-atlantic mail service
is not notably efficient.

Aside from the facts that 1) my only real reason for attendinq the
convention had disappeared within minutes of entering the hotel, 2) that it
was one of the more disorganized conventions I've attended, and 3) that it
was the most expensive convention I have ever been to, it was a relatively
nice con.

Lots of personalities were in attendance and they were not surrounded by
miles and miles of people intent on guaranteeing that the star and his fans
stayed far apart. There was ample opportunitg for photographs and plenty of
chances (if you were even the slightast bit alert) to find a moment to talk
to one of the guests on a one-on-one basis (especially if you were willing
to hanq around one of the restaurants for a while).

Surprisingly enough, ths convention wasn't totally fixated on SPACE:1999 to
the exclusion of all else. Aside from members of the SPACE:1999 cast (Martin
Landau, Nick Tate, and Clifton Jones), there were some names one might
remember from other shows besides SPACE 1999, like Gerry Anderson and Barry
Gray, and they weren't at all reluctant to discuss some oP their other
projects, like Thunderbirds, Fireball XL-5, and UFO. And, even though there
were only two SPACE:1999 episodes in the film program, there was a
Thunderbirds episode, and two Gerry Anderson movies, "The Day After
Tomorrow" (which Ed Bishop narrated), and "Journey to the Far Side of the
Sun", which featured Ed Bishop, George Sewell, and Vladec Sheybal, all of
whom we well remember from UFO.

SHADO was well represented at the convention, with members from one of the
Maryland bases receiving a lot of attention, with the ladies in full
Moonbase attire right down to the purple hair and the gentlemen tastefully
clad in flight suits. The group entered the costume contest and caused a bit
of a stir when one of the moon-girls singled out Gerry Anderson for a peck
on the cheek while the other set her sights on Martin Landau. I'm not sure
whether the second landed on target, but I do know that Martin seemed
somewhat reluctant to let go of her. The SHADO group did not win any of the
costume awards, but they were one of the six or seven groups selected by the
judges for a second run through, which is a most respectable showing. All
three prizes were awarded to costumes based on the SPACE:1999 series, as is
only fair.

Page 3

As the con broke up, there was talk of holding another one next year, this
time in New York (where you can at least get something to eat in the middle
of the night. We had a terrible time finding quick, cheap, decent food at
the convention.) If a second con comes off, it may very well be something
worth looking into and waiting for.


PROJECT UFO: A Review by Gene Schneider

I was really quite excited when I heard that a show called Project UFO was
slated to appear in the Fall TV lineup, because I've been a student of
UFOlogy for many years. I was a little taken aback to hear that Jack Webb
was the producer -- he's not at all my idea of a UFO buff. I had vague
imaginings of some militarized Sgt. Friday and his faithful Indian companion
pursuing aliens across the countryside.

The stamp of Jack Webb is obviously there. The way people talk, leading each
other on with unfinished sentences, coming up with ponderous quips in answer
to same, variations on "Just tell us what happened, ma'am," these elements
are found nowhere in the universe except in Jack Webb productions.

The other hallmark of Webb's work is also evident, though: his fanatic
dedication to realistic, human presentation of events. To this end, as
Starloa readers know, he hired the former head of Project Bluebook, the Air
Force farce that made enemies from coast to coast investigating UFO's in the
fifties and sixties, as technical advisor to the series. According to this
gentleman, Col. William Coleman, the series episodes are written directly
from the Project Bluebook files. He selects the cases to be used on the
show -- he plots them on a C/S graph, a plot with 'credibility' on one axis
and 'strangeness' on the other -- and then sends reports of high C/S
sightings to the show's writers.

It turns out that Coleman had a high C/S sighting of his own, high enough to
be used in the series (though it only was allotted about 1/4 of an hour).
This happened before Project Bluebook was ever heard of, and, surprisingly,
to me anyway, the military brass still wanted him to head the project after
he told them about it.

This brings me back to the one thing that bothers me about the series. On
the whole, I've been pleased with it. I find it entertaining, and,
extrapolating from the cases shown that I've read extensively about
elsewhere, quite faithful to the 'facts' as reported by the witnesses. But I
find it hard to believe that the Air Force investigators were really as
unbiased and friendly as the show would have us believe. I've read too many
books and articles over the years that portray Project Bluebook as an active
conspiracy to suppress evidence and browbeat witnesses, to accept
uncritically the gently persuasive tactics and apparent open-mindedness of
the show's two Air Force investigators.

An example of this, a little closer to home than books or TV shows, is a
saucer the people where I work called the China Lake Cruiser. It wasn't a
saucer actually; it was a huge black cigarshaped craft that lived in the
lava beds in the north ranges of the China Lake Naval base for many months.
All sorts of otherwise trustworthy people saw it, calmly rising from the
rocks and returning to land there. And I keep wondering: what ever happened
to reports, photos, etc. of what sounds like a fairly spectacular and
verifiable group of sightings? If the investigators truly tried to keep an
open mind, if they have really made their reports availpble to the public,
why has none of the several dozen UFO casebooks I've read ever mentioned the
China Lake Cruiser? (Could the fact that it happened on a military base have
anything to do with it?)

Speaking of UFO casebooks, something that has always been annoying to me
about the subject is that, whereas in any other field that comes to mind, to
have read extensively on the subject increases one's credibility as an
observer, it's quite the opposite in UFOlogy. If a serious student of the
field dares to report a sighting, everyone instantly knows it's a hoax or an
outright lie. What they don't realize is that, when the ordinary Joe sees a
pulsating triangular white light in the sky) or a mass of multicolored
lights flashing asynchronously in the distance, he"s likely to report a UFO;
if I saw the same thing, I'd mumble something about how bright Venus is when
it's in transit, or wonder who has a chopper out at this time of night, and
go inside for dinner and forget about it. Knowledge does make a difference,
you see, but not in the direction that's normally supposed.

I find myself continually fascinated with the question: what did the witness
report that resulted in the particular extraterrestrial Edsel I'm seeing
this week? The thought first arose when I saw the episode, my favorite,
about a little Mexican boy who wouldn't speak. Several adults in the town
claimed to have seen an object, and photographed it. The show gave a
dramatization of the sighting the way they told it. Then, when the boy came
forward and revealed he was really the one who had made the sighting and
told it his way, there was a dramatization of his report, and both the
events and the UFO itself had been dramatically transformed. Here is an
indication that a person's previous experiences can also be an important
factor in a UFO report.

I hope the show won't run out of high C/S cases to report when it returns
next season. If it has to fall back on things like the German case of the
disc that had "FUT" (Fliegende Untertassen) lettered on the underside, or
the Brazilian case where a man was raped by a beautiful red-haired alien,
then the field of UFOlogy will have lost one of the best public relations
campaigns to have come along in centuries.
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See my note in the "Troop Roster" message for details on this relic.