Can anyone find the source of this quote from Ben Rich Re: hidden advanced technology

'
Ben Rich, stated during a 1993, Alumni Speech at UCLA,

"We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an Act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity...Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do."
'

A traceable context for the quote, if he actually did gave it?

Unfortunately, you are going to have a hard time.

What is funny is the wikipedia site for Ben rich has taken that quote down numerous times since there are no verifiable sources to be found.

hmmm but he has said these things at other venues right I saw something on an article by Tom Keller, again haven't found the actual article

There are many, many people out there that would love to have this quote confirmed.

This was his retirement speech from what I understand and I can't believe it wasn't recorded. There must be a tape/video out there somewhere.

MUFON's New Executive Director Jan Harzan claims to have heard it and more.
Check this video at about 3:50

Originally posted by CardDown
MUFON's New Executive Director Jan Harzan claims to have heard it and more.
Check this video at about 3:50

What does he mean by ESP?

The earliest reference I can find to the story is 2007. Check the link below for the passage in Google Books:
Need to Know by Timothy Good 2007

Ben Rich, Former Head of Lockheed Skunk Works - …
www.unexplained-mysteries.com › … › Unexplained Mysteries

Ben Rich, Former Head of Lockheed Skunk Works - posted in Extraterrestrial Life & The UFO Phenomenon: “We already have the means to travel among the stars, but ...etc"

wow cool hadn't seen that before, the wording is different but essentially the same thing

reply to post by CardDown

It sounds like Jan Harzan is the source of these quotes.

This was posted on a forum in 2006 -

Josh,

I will answer for him as I have that data. Jan Harzan is the Director of MUFON O.C. and it is he who heard the statements.

Well, it just so happens that Jan was the source of the rumor that Ben Rich made statements in a presentation he gave to the group of engineers which happened to be members of a UCLA Alumni association who were invited to hear this presentation by Ben Rich on March 23, 1993.

The late Ben R. Rich, a UCLA School of Engineering alumnus (MS '50) who is known as the "Father of Stealth," is recognized as one of the best aircraft engineers in the world and led development of the heralded F-117 stealth fighter.

Knowing Jan, I called him to clarify what Ben said at this presentation to UCLA engineering alumni. I work at UCLA and am only steps away from the engineering building.

Here is what Jan, a Senior Project Executive with Boeing told me about Ben's presentation:

- Ben showed slides and went through the history of the Skunk Works. Showed pics of U2 and SR-71 and drones that no one had seen before.

- The kicker was the last slide. It showed a black disk headed for space. Ben showed this and made the statement, "We now have the technology to take ET home". He made this statement in 1993, but did not say how long we have had this tech.

There was a Q&A after the lecture. In this Q&A, he told the engineers that it was now possible to travel to the stars. There was an error in the equations which was corrected. The time of travel is fast, but he didn't say how fast.

Ben said he believed that security was too oppressive and that the time had come to develop this technology in the commercial world now that the cold war has ended. Months later he died of
cancer.

Jan is going to consult with his friend Tom who was also present and do an article on this in a future MUFON Journal.


- Bill Hamilton


www.dojopsi.info...

Originally posted by ATSZOMBIE
'
Ben Rich, stated during a 1993, Alumni Speech at UCLA,

"We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an Act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity...Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do."
'

A traceable context for the quote, if he actually did gave it?

S&F for asking the question.

I heard this quote in a DVD set by David Sereda entitled "From Here to Andromeda" (2007) -- it's two DVDs for your four (4) hours of viewing "pleasure."

I just don't have time right now to sit thru this again to find the quote.

Sereda goes all over the map -- it's a bit "self-indulgent" to say the least (his girlfriend sang in it about dying butterflies -- you get the idea).

On the other hand, there are eyewitness UFO accounts that are worth listening to.

Of course, we would love this quote to be true.

Even if we can't find a rock-solid source, some of us suspect that it IS true anyway.

Originally posted by mysterioustranger
Ben Rich, Former Head of Lockheed Skunk Works - …
www.unexplained-mysteries.com › … › Unexplained Mysteries

Ben Rich, Former Head of Lockheed Skunk Works - posted in Extraterrestrial Life & The UFO Phenomenon: “We already have the means to travel among the stars, but ...etc"

Ben Rich, That's the one.
Good job Mysterious Stranger.
Of course what could the head of Skunk Works
possibly know about secret technology ?

reply to post by CardDown


Thanks for the link, CardDown. Personally, I think Jan Harzan is speaking the truth.

To mention ESP as a means for deep space travel, makes me think the tech required goes beyond quantum physics (think "Holographic Universe") and may have not yet been created, but in the theoretical realm they have figured out that it's possible.

They have corrected the equations and know they can travel faster than light. It's possible.

So all these naysayers are wrong -- who say ETs cannot be here because of the immense time involved in interstellar travel.

Ben Rich is constantly misquoted as saying "We now have the technology to take E.T home." That is not what he said.

At the end of his presentation he showed his final slide, a picture of a disk-shaped craft – the classic “flying saucer” – flying into a partly cloudy sky with a burst of sunlight in the background and he gave his standard tagline. It was a joke he had used in numerous presentations since 1983 when Steven Spielberg’s "E.T. the Extraterrestrial," a film about a young boy befriending a lost visitor from space and helping the alien get home, had become the highest-grossing film of all-time. Rich apparently decided to capitalize on this popularity. By the summer of 1983, he had added the flying saucer picture to the end of a set of between 12 and 25 slides that he showed with his lecture on the history of Lockheed's famed Skunk Works division.

Rich had long used a standard script for his talks, tailoring the content as necessary to accommodate his audience. Since most Skunk Works current projects were classified, it didn’t matter whether he was addressing schoolchildren or professional aeronautical engineers; he always ended the same way. At a Defense Week symposium on future space systems in Washington, D.C., on September 20, 1983, he said, “Unfortunately, I cannot tell you what we have been doing for the last 10 years. It seems we score a breakthrough at the Skunk Works every decade, so if you invite me back in 10 years I’ll be able to tell you what we are doing [now]. I can tell you about a contract we recently received. The Skunk Works has been assigned the task of getting E.T. back home.” The audience laughed, as it was meant to do.

If something is successful, it is worth repeating. Rich gave an identical speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, on September 6, 1984, and continued using his script during successive appearances. Sometimes he refined the details a bit. “I wish I could tell you what else we are doing in the Skunk Works,” he said, wrapping up a presentation for the Beverly Hills chapter of the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution on May 23, 1990. “You’ll have to ask me back in a few years. I will conclude by telling you that last week we received a contract to take E.T. back home.”

Three years later he was still using the same line and the same slide. “We did the F-104, C-130, U-2, SR-71, F-117 and many other programs that I can’t talk about,” he proclaimed during a 1993 speech at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, home of Air Force Materiel Command, the organization responsible for all flight-testing within the Air Force. “We are still working very hard, I just can’t tell you what we are doing.” As usual, he added his by now infamous punchline, “The Air Force has just given us a contract to take E.T. back home.”

Within the UFO community, Rich’s words, and additional statements attributed to him without corroborative proof, have become gospel. He is named as having admitted that extraterrestrial UFO visitors are real and that the U.S. military has interstellar capabilities, and although nearly two full years passed between Rich’s UCLA speech and his death in 1995, some believers have touted his comments as a “deathbed confession.” It was nothing of the kind.

Rich, a brilliant scientist, apparently believed in the existence of other intelligent life in the universe, though only as something distant and mysterious. In July 1986, after Testor Corporation model-kit designer John Andrews wrote asking what he thought about the possible existence of either manmade or extraterrestrial UFOs, Rich responded, “I’m a believer in both categories. I feel everything is possible.” He cautioned, however, that, “In both categories, there are a lot of kooks and charlatans – be cautious.”

The article was written by Tom Keller, an aerospace engineer who has worked as a computer systems analyst for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Additionally, Mr. Rich is quoted,

“We now have the technology to take ET home. No, it won’t take someone’s lifetime to do it. There is an error in the equations. We know what it is. We now have the capability to travel to the stars. First, you have to understand that we will not get to the stars using chemical propulsion. Second, we have to devise a new propulsion technology. What we have to do is find out where Einstein went wrong.”

When Rich was asked how UFO propulsion worked, he said, “Let me ask you. How does ESP work?” The questioner responded with, “All points in time and space are connected?” Rich then said, “That’s how it works!”

There are 2 types of UFOs -- the ones we build and ones 'they' build. We learned from both crash retrievals and actual "hand-me-downs." The Government knew and until 1969 took an active hand in the administration of that information. After a 1969 Nixon "purge", administration was handled by an international board of directors in the private sector…

It was Ben Rich's opinion that the public should not be told [about UFOs and extraterrestrials] . He believed they could not handle the truth -- ever. Only in the last months of his decline did he begin to feel that the "international corporate board of directors" dealing with the "Subject" could represent a bigger problem to citizens' personal freedoms under the United States Constitution than the presence of off-world visitors themselves.”

A few years ago Steven Greer was on a radio show claiming that Ben Rich had said the following quotes in a meeting, and that they had been confirmed by Hal Puthoff.

#1 "There are no private conversations anywhere on Earth."

#2 "Anything you can imagine we've already done at the Lockheed Skunk Works."

#3 "We already have the technology to travel faster than the speed of light amongst the stars. In fact, we can take E.T. home."

I emailed Hal Puthoff and he said that "Greer’s points #1,2,3 are somewhat exaggerated (#1 I never heard of)" and that "The opening 4 points in your link below are accurate."

www.ufo-blogger.com...

1 : “Inside the Skunk Works (Lockheed’s secret research and development entity), we were a small, intensely cohesive group consisting of about fifty veteran engineers and designers and a hundred or so expert machinists and shop workers. Our forte was building technologically advanced airplanes of small number and of high class for highly secret missions.”

2 : “We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects, and it would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity. Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do.”

3 : “We now have the technology to take ET home. No, it won’t take someone’s lifetime to do it. There is an error in the equations. We know what it is. We now have the capability to travel to the stars. First, you have to understand that we will not get to the stars using chemical propulsion. Second, we have to devise a new propulsion technology. What we have to do is find out where Einstein went wrong.”

4 : When Rich was asked how UFO propulsion worked, he said, “Let me ask you. How does ESP work?” The questioner responded with, “All points in time and space are connected?” Rich then said, “That’s how it works!”

reply to post by ATSZOMBIE


Little bit of Googling and I found this, not sure if it'd be any help, but here's the link none the less:

www.thetruthbehindthescenes.org...

Originally posted by FunktheNWO
reply to post by ATSZOMBIE

 

Little bit of Googling and I found this, not sure if it'd be any help, but here's the link none the less:

www.thetruthbehindthescenes.org...

Thanks for providing the link to the purported death bed confession.

As I pointed out in an earlier post, there was no "deathbed" confession. His comments, many of which have ben misquoted, were taken from presentations he gave long before his death. Ben Rich gave his speeches using a standard script. The content varied a bit over the years; he added new material whenever something was declassified, but from 1983 on he always ended with his joke, "We just got a contract to take E.T. back home."

No matter how many years had passed since the last time he said it, it was always "we just got a contract" of "a few weeks ago we received a contract." That was part of the gag, making it sound like a current Skunk Works project. Rich kept copies of his scripts, which he reused according to the needs of his audience, along with photocopies of all of his slides (including the "flying saucer"), so these details are easy to verify.

Jan Harzan, now executive director of Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), attended the March 1993 lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles, with fellow UCLA engineering alumnus and UFO enthusiast Tom Keller. Keller, an aerospace engineer who has worked as a computer systems analyst for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, wrote about it in the May 2010 issue of "MUFON UFO Journal" and Harzan recently shared his story in a January 2012 interview with Web Talk Radio Network, and another with Alejando Rojas of Open Minds UFO News and Investigations in July 2013.

Harzan says that after the lecture ended a few people remained behind to ask questions. Some wanted to know more about the technology to “take E.T. home.” Harzan says Rich initially brushed off these queries but allegedly told one engineer, “We now know how to travel to the stars. We found an error in the equations and it won’t take a lifetime to do it.” I have also heard Rich's statement quoted as, “First, you have to understand that we will not get to the stars using chemical propulsion. Second, we have to devise a new propulsion technology. What we have to do is find out where Einstein went wrong.” Unfortunately, neither quote is verifiable but the second one sounds more like the words of an engineer, especially one with Rich's stated views as outlined in his letter to John Andrews.

As things began to wind down after the UCLA speech, Rich said, “I’ve got to go now,” and started to walk out of the room. Harzan pursued him, and continued to ask him about the workings of interstellar propulsion systems. it was an unanswerable question in light of our current scientific knowledge.

Rich finally stopped and turned, then asked Harzan an unanswerable question of his own, “Well, let me ask you; how does ESP work?” Stunned, Harzan stammered, “I don’t know. All points in space and time are connected?” Rich responded, “That’s how it works,” then abruptly turned and walked away.

From the tone of the exchange it sounds more like Rich, having been kept well past his planned departure time and tired of being pestered, was simply anxious to leave and not that he was sharing some great technological secret.

Harzan and others have interpreted Rich’s final comments as a tacit admission that interstellar propulsion technology exists, that it is in the hands of U.S. scientists, and that it involves a specific set of known equations. But, taken in context, it sounds more like Rich carried his joke too far and talked himself into a corner. It is likely that he would have said, “That’s how it works,” no matter what Harzan’s answer to the E.S.P. question. Even if Rich had said, “Look, I was just kidding,” it would have done no good. The damage was done.

In 1994, a year after the UCLA lecture, rich told Popular Science magazine, “We have some new things [at the Skunk Works]. We are not stagnating. What we are doing is updating ourselves, without advertising. There are some new programs, and there are certain things, some of them 20 or 30 years old, that are still breakthroughs and appropriate to keep quiet about [because] other people don’t have them yet.” He didn't disclose, or even hint at, any advanced interstellar propulsion technologies because there was nothing to disclose.