The death of Dr. James McDonald.

Dr James McDonald was the Senior physicist at the Institute for Atmospheric Physics and professor in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Arizona -he made some very interesting comments about the UFO/OVNI subject and actively petitioned the U.S. Congress to hold serious investigations into the subject.
He died in mysterious circumstances leading some people to beleive he was murdered -here are some of more intriguing quotes:

"My own present opinion, based on two years of careful study, is that UFOs are probably extraterrestrial devices engaged in something that might very tentatively be termed 'surveillance'".
Before the U.S. Congress in 1968


"UFOs are entirely real and we do not know what they are, because we have laughed them out of court. The possibility that these are extraterrestrial devices, that we are dealing with surveillance from some advanced technology, is a possibility I take very seriously".


"The scope of the present statement precludes anything approaching an exhaustive listing of categories of UFO phenomena: much of what might be made clear at great length will have to be compressed into my remark that the scientific world at large is in for a shock when it becomes aware of the astonishing nature of the UFO phenomenon and its bewildering complextiy. I make that terse comment well aware that it invites easy ridicule; but intellectual honesty demands that I make clear that my two years' study convinces me that in the UFO problem lie scientific and technological questions that will challenge the ability of the world's outstanding scientists to explain - as soon as they start examining the facts".


"I have become convinced that the scientific community has been casually ignoring as nonsense a matter of extraordinary scientific importance".


"My study of past official Air Force investigations (Project Blue Book) leads me to describe them as completely superficial. Officially released 'explanations' of important UFO sightings have been almost absurdly erroneous."
James McDonald, speech to American Meteorological Society 1966

www.abovetopsecret.com...


Firestorm Biography:

James McDonald did not accept the conclusions of the Condon Report because 30% of the cases studied in the report remained unexplained, which is staggering. The evidence provided in the final report could have substantiated the opposite conclusion (that UFOs warranted much more scientific study) rather than the official conclusion, which was to recommend no further study. Firestorm, a biography of McDonald by UFO researcher Ann Druffel, gives a detailed account of McDonald's tireless efforts promoting scientific UFO research.

en.wikipedia.org...



Death:

Dr. James McDonald tried to convince Congress to look into the UFO situation. He died after shooting himself a short while later

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/24159640514b.gif[/atsimg]

Dr. James McDonald, senior physicist, Institute of Atmospheric Physics and also professor in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Arizona, died in 1971 purportedly of a gunshot wound to the head. There is no one who had worked harder in the 60s than McDonald to convince Congress to hold serious, substantial subcommittee meetings to explore the UFO reality of which he was thoroughly convinced. He was definitely a thorn in the side of those who maintained the official coverup and, needless to say, his passing to them would be a blessing.

McDonald, allegedly depressed, shot himself in the head. But, alas, he didn't die. He was wheelchair-ridden but somehow, several months after his first attempt, he allegedly got in an automobile, drove to a pawnshop, purchased another pistol from his wheelchair, drove to the desert and did himself in. How convenient, one might say, for his adversaries. And McDonald, there can be no doubt, had made enemies. The question is: How much did these enemies aid and abet the demise of this most worthy and influential campaigner?

www.metatech.org...


Tribute:

Four of McDonald's peers from the University of Arizona wrote a reminiscence of their colleague, calling him "A man of great integrity and great courage. He was loved and admired by a great many people ... he made a lasting impact on many facets of atmospheric sciences ... and he will be missed much more than we now realize".

en.wikipedia.org...

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Starred and flagged, on principle.

Everyone on this board should know this man. He did more to give credence to the subject of UFOs than anyone else (the '68 UFO symposium wouldn't have happened if it weren't for McDonald). Thinking about it makes me want to start submitting FOIA requests to the Office of Naval Research to get more details about James Hughes and why it was exactly that McDonald's Naval contract was canceled.

that how humans are ... man, if you think deep enough .. you will see that we are in a #ing prison ... many things happen here that just doesnt make any sense ... the evil is so big that we just cannot fight it anymore ...

Yep, I have always leaned towards him being silenced. He went 100% against the status quo, and he was SUPER sharp in his methodologies and presentations. Even the disinfo crews and hired debunkers couldn't cast doubt on his findings. So the only solution was 'for him to commit suicide'.

McDonald was a bad ass.

he looks old he probably died from being old.

i mean hes not young hes probably around 40 or EVEN 50!
at those ages people drop dead having sex so i dont see what is so mysterious about an old fogey dropping dead i mean it happens everyday.

Originally posted by tigpoppa
he looks old he probably died from being old.

i mean hes not young hes probably around 40 or EVEN 50!
at those ages people drop dead having sex so i dont see what is so mysterious about an old fogey dropping dead i mean it happens everyday.

Did you actualy read the post?

McDonald, allegedly depressed, shot himself in the head. But, alas, he didn't die. He was wheelchair-ridden but somehow, several months after his first attempt, he allegedly got in an automobile, drove to a pawnshop, purchased another pistol from his wheelchair, drove to the desert and did himself in. How convenient, one might say, for his adversaries. And McDonald, there can be no doubt, had made enemies. The question is: How much did these enemies aid and abet the demise of this most worthy and influential campaigner?

reply to post by tigpoppa


Not from a gunshot wound to the head they don't.

And if you think 40 or 50 is old you must be very very young.

This is sick stuff. The guy died in 1971.

I'm not sure how many 14 year olds are reading this.

People's lives are complicated, we know very little about what goes on in their heads. There are things called sex, money, professions, social relations, etc that go wrong for people.

Tens of thousands commit suicide every year. Many have been interested in UFOs. It's a popular hobby. This guy was into it. It wasn't his whole life.

en.wikipedia.org...


In March, 1971, McDonald's wife Betsy told him she wanted a divorce. McDonald seems to have started planning his suicide not long afterwards. He finished a few articles he was writing (UFO-related and otherwise), and made plans for the storage of his notes, papers, and research.

In April 1971 he attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head. He survived, but was blinded. For a short period, McDonald was committed to the psychiatric ward of a Tucson, Arizona hospital. He recovered a degree of peripheral vision, and made plans to return to his teaching position. However, on June 13, 1971, a family, walking along a creek close to the bridge spanning the Canada Del Oro Wash near Tucson, found a body that was later identified as McDonald's. A .38 caliber revolver was found close to him, as well as a suicide note.

[edit on 17-5-2009 by mmiichael]

Originally posted by tigpoppa
he looks old he probably died from being old.

i mean hes not young hes probably around 40 or EVEN 50!
at those ages people drop dead having sex so i dont see what is so mysterious about an old fogey dropping dead i mean it happens everyday.

This is a very immature and ignorant comment IMO. Age had nothing to do with it. Also btw 40 or 50 are NOT considered old like you think. I know more people in their 20's dropping dead than people their 50's or 40's so really age doesnt matter IMO. You might want to read about him before you ask what is so mysterious about him dying. It was VERY mysterious. He isnt the only one out there in the UFO community who has died under mysterious situations.

Originally posted by Xtraeme
Thinking about it makes me want to start submitting FOIA requests to the Office of Naval Research to get more details about James Hughes and why it was exactly that McDonald's Naval contract was canceled.

Xtraeme,thanks for the reply-thats a mighty fine idea.
I don't know if you've visited the USO thread but ,if some reports are to be beleived, the Office of Naval Intelligence has far more involvement with the UFO/OVNI subject than many people realise.
www.abovetopsecret.com...
Its a shame all their offices,files and records were destroyed in the Pentagon attacks of 2001.

Originally posted by DimensionalDetective
Yep, I have always leaned towards him being silenced. He went 100% against the status quo, and he was SUPER sharp in his methodologies and presentations. Even the disinfo crews and hired debunkers couldn't cast doubt on his findings. So the only solution was 'for him to commit suicide'.
McDonald was a bad ass.

DD great post -he certainly was a very intelligent man.
I find it interesting what he (and other scientists) made of the
'government sanctioned studies' into the UFO/OVNI subject -it appears they thought them a bit of a sham.

"Project Blue Book was ballyhooed by the Air Force as a full-fledged top-priority operation. It was no such thing. The staff, in a sense, was a joke. In terms of scientific training and numbers, it was highly inadequate to the task. And the methods used were positively archaic. And that is the crack operation that the general public believes looked adequately into the UFO phenomenon".

And:

"Blue Book was now under direct orders to debunk...I remember the conversations around the conference table in which it was suggested that Walt Disney or some other educational cartoon producer be enlisted in the debunking process".

Dr J Allen Hynek, Chairman of the Department of Astronomy at Northwestern University and scientific consultant for Air Force investigations of UFOs from 1948 until 1969 (Projects Sign, Grudge and Blue Book).



"My study of past official Air Force investigations (Project Blue Book) leads me to describe them as completely superficial. Officially released 'explanations' of important UFO sightings have been almost absurdly erroneous."
James McDonald, speech to American Meteorological Society 1966



"Based upon unreliable and unscientific surmises as data, the Air Force develops elaborate statistical findings which seem impressive to the uninitiated public unschooled in the fallacies of the statistical method. One must conclude that the highly publicized Air Force pronouncements based upon unsound statistics serve merely to misrepresent the true character of the UFO phenomena."
Yale Scientific Magazine (Yale University) Volume XXXVII, Number 7, April 1963

Found this interesting article from the September 1, 1968 edition of the scientific review "Electronic Design":

SCIENTISTS ASK THAT UFOS ARE STUDIED SERIOUSLY:

Six famous scientists recommended that the Congress should seriously plan to give its support to an intensive international study of UFOS (unidentified flying objects). They asked in a pressing way that the subject is not condemned in advance, not turned in derision and not overlooked.

The six scientists brought their testimonial to a UFO symposium sponsored by House Committee on Science and Astronautics. These scientists were: Dr. Robert L. Baker Jr of the Computer Sciences Corporation; Dr. Robert L. Hall, professor of sociology at the university of Illinois; Dr. James A. Harder, professor of civil engineering of the University of California with Berkeley; Dr. J. Allen Hynek, adviser of the U.S. Air Force as regards UFOS and astrophysicist in Northwestern University; Dr. James McDonald, senior of physics at the university of Arizona and Dr. Carl Sagan, astronomer in Cornell University.

McDonald spoke about what he learned while studying more than 300 cases of UFOs observations. The number of UFO sightings being accompanied by some form by interference with the ground networks of electrical power distribution convinced him, he said, that UFOS are perfectly real, with a "strong possibility that we are under the monitoring of extraterrestrial intelligences... No service has never studied that, and however", told McDonald, "it could be the answer to all the question about UFOS."

Sagan supported this opinion: "If we are visited by extraterrestrial travelers, it would be crazy that we are not interested". He suggested that more stress is put on programs of interplanetary exploration, to obtain more information.

The scientists were unanimous to recommend that the existing program of investigation of the U.S. Air Force must be left aside in favor of a program whose direction would be entrusted to the National Science Foundation, or to the National Academy of Sciences. Hynek urged that an international study be undertaken on a worldwide scale under the authority of the U.N.

It is expected that the U.S. Air Force will submit during this September the report on its program of investigation on UFOS to the National Academy of Sciences. Last spring, the member of the Chamber of Representatives J. Edward Rousch (representative of Indiana) had recommended that the Congress takes the direction of all research on UFOS.

www.ufologie.net...

As for him dying in mysterious circumstances,I don't think it would be the first time -as it mentions in this article by Professor G. Cope Schellhorn,it appears that the life span of the average serious investigator falls far short of the national average.

Death by gunshot to the head. Death by probable poisoning. Death by probable strangulation. Deaths possibly by implantation of deadly viruses. No one lives former. Yet the recent suspicious deaths of UFO investigators Phil Schneider, Ron Johnson, Con Routine, Ann Livingston and Karln Turner, as well as the deaths of a host of researchers in the past, only seem to add emphasis to a reality with which many of the more aware UFOIogists are now quite familiar: not only is UFO research potentially dangerous, but the life span of the average serious investigator falls far short of the national average.

Mysterious and suspicious deaths among UFO investigators arc nothing new. In 1971, the well-known author and researcher Otto Binder wrote an article for Saga magazine's Special UFO Report titled "Liquidation of the UFO Investigators:' Binder had researched the deaths of "no less than 137 flying saucer researchers, writers, scientists, and witnesses' who had died in the previous 10 years, "many under the most mysterious circumstances."

www.metatech.org...
Cheers.

More from Dr James McDonald

Science in Default:
Twenty-Two Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations

American Association for the Advancement of Science, 134th Meeting
General Symposium, Unidentified Flying Objects
James E. McDonald, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
The University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
December 27, 1969

dewoody.net...

reply to post by karl 12


I liked the episode of UFO Hunters that went to the library that held his catalog of cases. It was quite impressive to see how much has been gathered in the field of ufology.

One of the early pioneers of UFO research who will not be forgotten.

Way back when I was researching the hell out of the Condon report I happened upon a copy of J. E. McDonald's scathing critique of the NAS panels decision to endorse the 'Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects' as the final word on the subject of UFOs.

What's amusing is J.E.M's paper was published at the same time as the NAS panelists wrote up their own thoughts about the Condon study and in the same journal, no less!

Digging online I found the NAS panels review publicly available on the DOD's FOIA website. Whereas McDonald's paper was nowhere to be found. This is rare and valuable bit of UFO history folks! I highly recommend people read both reviews and judge for themselves which is more objective.

Hint: it paints a pretty damning picture of the NAS committee.

Some vitals. The article was published in:

Icarus, Volume 11, Issue 3, November 1969, Pages 443-447

And was titled:

The Condon report, scientific study of Unidentified Flying Objects : E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1969. 967 pp. $12.95; also Bantam Books, New York, 1969, $1.95

Feel free to download it here.

Enjoy!

[edit on 9-6-2009 by Xtraeme]

I have to say I agree with Dr McDonalds premise that science is ignoring an important occurance.

What leaves me at times baffled by the scientific community (my ex is a Professor of Quantum Physics) is their willingness to explore so many premises in the name of research, yet for some reason there is a stigma associated with interdimentional or extraterestrial occurances.

Occurences that are mind boggling important to humanity.

On one hand they acknowledge the possibilty from a scientific point of view the exstence of life and or interdimensional possibilities, yet they limit what they do to investigate it.

Hmmm



[edit on 9-6-2009 by zazzafrazz]

Originally posted by mmiichael
Tens of thousands commit suicide every year. Many have been interested in UFOs. It's a popular hobby. This guy was into it. It wasn't his whole life.

So did the very first Secretary of Defense and alleged Majestic 12 member James Forrestal.

en.wikipedia.org...

The Men In Black stories began with him as he thought he was being bugged and followed constantly. His brother always felt he was murdered.

reply to post by fls13


Fls13,mighty fine point -James Forrestal´s death was very suspicious indeed.

Originally posted by karl 12
reply to post by fls13

 

Fls13,mighty fine point -James Forrestal´s death was very suspicious indeed.

Suspicious for sure. His family absolutely thought so, his brother in particular. What I've found on the matter is that Truman was the one really interested in UFOs, Forrestal not so much. It appears he was pretty well out of the loop by his own inattentiveness and that's the way Truman wanted it. No question, Forrestal was very alarmed by the Soviets.

reply to post by fls13


Fls13 - I'm currently re-reading Richard Dolan’s excellent book
'UFOs and the National Security State' and it makes some very interesting comments about the death of James Forrestal:

There are several odd elements concerning Forrestal’s final moments. First, the young corpsman guarding Forrestal – that is, Harrison – was a new man, someone Forrestal had never seen before. The regular guard during the midnight shift was absent without leave and, the story goes, had gotten drunk the night before. Harrison was the only person to have had direct contact with Forrestal in the moments before his death, and ultimately it was on his word only that the official account rested.

Also, Forrestal never finished writing the chorus from Sophocles, and in fact stopped in the middle of a word. Quite possibly, Forrestal had not even written the fragment that evening, especially if he had been asleep at 1:30 a.m. How reasonable is it to suppose that, sometime between 1:30 a.m. and 1:45 a.m., he woke up, got out some writing material, located a bleak poem within a huge anthology, copied out 17 lines, put on his robe, crossed the hall to the diet kitchen where he tightly wrapped and knotted his bathrobe cord around his neck and presumably tied the loose end to the radiator under the window; then climbed up on the window sill and jumped.

There is also an odd juxtaposition of a tightly knotted bathrobe cord around Forrestal’s neck and the assumption that he tied the other end so loosely to a radiator that it immediately came untied and allowed him to fall to his death. This radiator was a rather improbable gallows: it was about two feet long, the top was six inches below the sill, and it was attached to the wall with its base a good fifteen inches above the floor. But there was no evidence that the bathrobe cord had ever been tied to the small radiator in the first place. If the cord had snapped under Forrestal’s weight, one end would have been found still fastened to the radiator. The cord did not break, however, and there was not a mark on the radiator to indicate it had ever been tied there.

Moreover, if Forrestal wanted to hang himself, why choose a tiny window by anchoring himself to a radiator when he much more easily have done the job from a door or sturdy fixture, such as the shower curtain rod in his own bathroom? On the other hand, if Forrestal wanted to go out the window, why bother with a cord? Why not simply jump, a far easier proposition? In sum, we do not know that the cord was ever tied to the radiator, but we do know is it was tied tightly to Forrestal’s neck.

Later inspection found heavy scuff marks outside the window sill and cement work. Proponents of the suicide theory claim these were made by Forrestal’s feet while he was hanging by the neck from the radiator, and perhaps that he belatedly changed his mind and tried to climb back in. But the scuff marks confirm no such thing. They could just as easily have been made by his struggle with someone pushing him out the window.

There are many other suspicious elements to this story, such as the decision to place Forrestal on the 16th floor. This was exactly opposite what medical opinion desired (the bottom floor of a nearby annex had been the first choice of his caretakers), but was pressed by unnamed individuals in Washington.

keyholepublishing.com...
Cheers.

reply to post by karl 12


Thanks for that Karl! Dolan is one of the better UFO guys out there. Does he have much tying Forrestal directly to UFOs? I haven't seen anything significant. I think the main reason his name comes up a bit is because of the tragic/curious circumstances of his death.

For a good look at Forrestal from a guy who worked with him a fair amount, try this. Admiral Dennison was Truman's Naval Aide and reading his comments, you get the sense he was not a fan of Forrestal's