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In late February, news was released that earth-shattering evidence had surfaced that was going to prove, once and for all, that UFOs are actual unidentified craft operating under intelligent control. Did this evidence appear in a scientific journal? Was it announced by qualified scientists? Were all the world leaders informed? The answer to all three of these questions seems to have been “no”. Instead, a retired general, who heads an organization called the Comité de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos (The Committee for the study of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena - CEFAA) revealed this news at a..sigh...UFO conference.
CEFAA
CEFAA is a sub group of Chile’s version of the Federal Aviation Administration. Believe it or not, the Chilean government (using their tax payer’s money) actual funds the research being done by CEFAA. CEFAA, like the privately funded American counterpart, NARCAP, uses the argument that they are trying to protect aircraft from collisions with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). Despite there being little evidence that UFOs/UAPs have actually caused any aircraft accidents, UFOlogists at CEFAA/NARCAP have managed to present this argument in order to get funding (either privately or from the government).
CEFAA was first created in the late 1990s but seemed to disappear from view around 2003. By 2009, they found some support and the organization was “reactivated”. Collecting a paycheck from the tax payers of Chile’, retired General Ricardo Bermudez heads this group of UFO enthusiasts.
The videos
The news was announced in several forums that General Bermudez spoke at the conference and presented very important evidence. On February 28th, Billy Cox mentioned Bermudez appearance but did not mention the videos. Cox, would then write on the 2nd of March that Bermudez presented evidence of other incidents at the conference but still did not mention the videos.
The first appearance of the video was in article written on March 5th in the Open Minds blog by Antonio Huneeus. According to the article, General Bermudez stated that multiple videos were shot from multiple locations of UFOs during an air show at El Bosque on 4 November 2010. It was stated that astronomers and other skeptical scientists had analyzed the videos and used technology to measure the infrared signature of the UFO. Additionally, the Chilean Air Force analyzed the videos along with Dr. Bruce Maccabee and Dr. Richard Haines. We were told that all agreed that the object(s) were unidentified aerial phenomenon and that it was flying at high speeds through the camera’s field of view. Most importantly, it was noted that the UFOs were not visually seen by anyone during the air show. It was only after the show was complete that people, who shot the videos noticed these objects passing in front of or near the aircraft.
Wild Fire
I heard of the videos through the grape vine around March 12th about the same time the Huffington Post ran an article by Alejandro Rojas. A quick search of the internet revealed a clip that recorded during the UFO congress, which was very brief, and some frame grabs of the UFOs that appeared in Rojas’ article. I was not impressed and they looked like balloons, bugs, or birds to me.
The next day, Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, published a more extensive article for the Huffington Post. Kean, who seems to believe just about anything UFO proponents tell her, took the ball and began to promote the case as the case UFO skeptics have been dreading.1
It was revealed that there were seven videos taken from seven different locations and that the eight scientists examining the video determined that the object was flying at around 4000 mph. These scientists also determined that it was not a bird, plane, meteor, or any other known natural phenomena. Therefore, it was concluded the object was something really exotic. A better quality video was presented showing jets with the UFOs highlighted for the viewer.
Billy Cox would describe these UFOs as toying with the aircraft. He also stated that this “flying saucer” was “mocking” us. If they really wanted to “mock” us, they probably would have stood still for everyone to see and not flit about in an effort not to be seen. Cox seems to have drawn his conclusions but what were the skeptics saying?
Skeptic’s initial comments
Alan Boyle wrote the first skeptical article on the subject on March 15th in his Cosmic Log. Dr. Phil Plait was not that convinced by the video because it only showed some small object that had to be pointed out to the viewer. Robert Sheaffer made a few joking comments about he was “shaking” but then added that the videos needed to be looked at closer. He predicted that an explanation would probably surface but it would not be accepted by those wanting it to remain unexplained. I was also quoted late in the article from my initial observations I had made after seeing the first video and articles that had been written.
I am very skeptical of this story the more I read it. There are no high-quality videos available, and the frame grabs/brief clips I have seen appear to be vague and indistinct. The idea they may be birds, insects or possibly a small Mylar balloon has crossed my mind but I can’t tell much from the data at hand.
There are some big red flags for me:
1) This happened over a year ago and people are still working on analyzing this? If the evidence was truly that good, it would take a few months at best to come up with a reasonable analysis to demonstrate it was something not of this earth.
2) It is being leaked out to various UFO blogs instead of publishing in a scientific journal. If it were good evidence, that is where it would appear, and not the Huffington Post.
3) The videos are unavailable to be analyzed from outside sources. Perhaps they learned from the Mexican Air Force video debacle. Once the videos were revealed in sufficient length, many people identified the source of the images as being from oil wells in the gulf. A lot of people had egg on their face from that one. NARCAP was initially involved with that one, but then later stated they could not properly analyze the video because of the provenance being questionable or some excuse similar to that.
4) The videos have no provenance. We don’t know what has been done to them since the day of the event.
Just my thoughts on this one. I can probably come up with a few more red flags, but I would rather wait for the report to appear or the raw videos to surface. Meanwhile, I will hit my snooze button while the UFOlogists proclaim it the latest ‘smoking gun.’ So far all of these ‘smoking guns’ have turned out to be empty water pistols that have never fired a squirt.1
I was criticized for comment number 2 suggesting that the report be published in a scientific journal because there is no such thing for UFOs. The reason I stated this was because peer review is something critical to this sort of thing. Qualified individuals who are independent of the analysis need to examine the work for errors and determine if the conclusions are justified. CEFAA is not independent and should not be the governing body that determines if the analysis was correct. There are journals associated with optics and photogrammetry that could apply in this situation.
Instead of a presentation in a scientific journal for this sort of analysis, the information was slowly dribbled out with bits and pieces here and there at a UFO conference and by pro-UFO writers meant to promote the results. At the time of my comment, no full report has been presented showing methodologies, results, and conclusions even though it has been suggested that such reports have been written. To date, the reports still have not seen the light of day and I seriously doubt that they ever will. Most scientists would laugh at such a method of presentation. However, this is UFOlogy, where cutting corners is allowed and it is all about the hype.
Additionally, we only saw edited videos, which is why I made the comments regarding points 3 and 4. This would become important later on, when some of the videos presented by Kean on her web site were of low quality and had slow frame rates, which would induce unwanted blur in the images.
Boyle’s article took some heat from UFO proponents because he picked up the initial suggestion by some forums that these UFOs were nothing more than insects flying through the field of view. UFO Updates, which supposedly contains some of the best and brightest minds in UFOlogy, declared the comments made in the article were “Fatuous”. One can only assume that they were referring to the potential solutions and commentary. It is interesting that most of the skeptics (including myself) wanted to see more of the videos and examine them further before drawing some conclusions. On the other hand, proponents appeared to be accepting what they were told by CEFAA without questioning it. This would be nothing new for the UFOlogical crowd. I saw similar comments during the Mexican Air Force FLIR video in 2004. UFOlogists have difficulty learning from their past mistakes.
The house of cards
Boyle’s article brought me to the Above Top Secret forum, which was light years ahead of me in analysis of these video clips. I had to read through dozens of pages of exchanges to see how others had interpreted the videos. I thought about signing into the forum but decided I had little to offer that had not already been discussed. I also had some other distractions that would not allow me to devote 100% of my time to the discussion. So, I decided to monitor the exchanges and document what transpired. It is important to note that no prominent skeptics were involved and this forum deserves a great deal of the credit for what they discovered.
March 14th
The original post in the thread was made by SHINO pointing towards the videos. Almost immediately member GREY580 suggested it was a bug. This brought forth the comments by several members that bugs can not explain the fact that it was recorded by seven different videos from seven different locations. They also pointed out that it had been analyzed by scientists, who could tell if it was a bug or not.
March 15th
Member GLONTRA pronounced this video as the “end game” and it was definitive proof of UFOs (aka alien spaceships). CHADWICKUS cautioned members and posted several examples of videos showing these types of UFOs, which were bugs. THEGUT also mirrored CHADWICKUS’ comments concerning caution about all these videos, which nobody had seen. GLONTRA once again pointed out when all these videos were presented, we would finally have “disclosure”. SAVEDONE noted the problem with nobody seeing the UFOs during the event, which indicated they may be bugs or birds. UFOGLOBE began to conclude that these were nothing more than bugs unless somebody could demonstrate otherwise. UFOGLOBE would then demolish the claim that an infrared analysis (which can’t be done with a standard video camera) showed the UFO emitting heat. THEGUT would note that the Astronomer Barrera, who was quoted, did not state they had eliminated bugs.

March 16th
At this point, the pro-argument was that analysis by experts ruled out mundane explanations and, even though nobody mentioned it, that should include bugs. On the other side of the coin, various individuals were stating they look like bugs. UFOGLOBE became the primary voice on this and would point out why the video does not show a bug because of motion blur, compression, and focus, which would make a bug appear disc shaped. As an example, UFOGLOBE posted a link of a video somebody shot of a toy quadrocopter, which was attacked by a swarm of bees. The bees looked a lot like the videos in the El Bosque event. Analysis by UFOglobe indicated the displacement of the object between frames would agree with the bug hypothesis. ELEVENAUGUST would point towards Dr. Dil’s blog entry concerning BLURFOs (Birds and bugs blurred into appearing as UFOs). He also posted numerous examples of his BLURFOs. There was a lot of arguing about how it would be impossible for all seven videos to record the same bug. However, UFOGLOBE (among others) would suggest that it is very possible that all 7 videos show bugs but not the exact same bug. This would give the impression they were the same object. Meanwhile, RSF77 noted that the video being presented was edited. He would note that there are several different videos linked together but the editing gave it the false impression it was one complete video of the same event. LACUNA would conclude that nothing could be resolved as long as the other six videos remained unavailable. JUSTWOKEUP would e-mail Kean asking about the videos. She asked for patience and promised great revelations soon. ORKOJOKER would post Kean’s March 16th Facebook comment where she proclaimed that real experts had analyzed the videos and would have figured out if they were bugs or not. She proclaimed those suggesting the bug hypothesis were “amateurs”, who should not question CEFAA’s experts (even though their reports have yet to be revealed). Kean also pointed out that some of the seven videos were shot with cell phones, which meant they were of low quality!
March 17th
People kept questioning if the six other videos even existed or that they really were not of good quality. UFOGLOBE began to question the Astronomer Luis Barrera’s qualifications for performing video analysis because of the “pseudo-scientific flim-flam” infrared image analysis. UFOGLOBE also suggested that this was all a scam by CEFAA to justify its existence.
March 18th
DRDIL was able to contact Dr. Barrera, who stated he was misquoted when they declared it an infrared analysis. One has to wonder where General Bermudez got this information? UFOGLOBE would respond that the analysis being described in all of the articles and at the UFO conference was amateurish and pointed out how they were just using various photoshop effects/tools to try and enhance the image. DRDIL stated that Barrera was looking for changes in asymmetry in the images to look for wings beating. UFOGLOBE would point out several reasons why this would not detect insect wings (such as translucence of the wings, high beat rate of the wings, size of the wings, and proximity of the bugs to the camera introducing blur).
March 19th
On this date, the forum recognized the video presented by a person by the name of HOAXKILLER. It was HOAXKILLER’s efforts that began to seal he deal on the bug hypothesis. In HOAXKILLER’s original debunking video, he showed that one frame of the video that had been posted in the Huffington Post article showed the UFO in front of the hills but was not highlighted. Frames prior to this had been edited out. However, the frame showing the UFO in front of the hill put a fixed distance on the UFO and an upper limit on its size and speed. Prior to this it had been assumed that the UFO came from behind the hill. About the same time, three videos were posted on Kean’s web site. These three videos were described as the “best” videos of the event. They also confirmed the observations by the ATS group that the original video presented by CEFAA was a combination of several videos.
Even then, these “original” videos that were “released”, only had a frame rate of 10 fps and 640X480 resolution. Most videos are shot at 24 fps, which means the videos are probably not the originals and there is data missing from them. One also must wonder why low quality videos were presented. Was there something that CEFAA was trying to hide?
CRIPMEISTER would then post a video from a 2010 air show in Chile of an F-22 raptor in flight. Buzzing by the raptor was one of the same type of UFOs recorded in the El Bosque video. If the UFOs were that numerous, it seems they would probably be bugs and not craft of any kind. CRIPMEISTER would add that CEFAA was coming off as incompetent and were trying to legitimize their existence.

March 20th
This was the day that the nails were beginning to be pounded into the coffin that was the UFO video. HOAXKILLER took the three videos from Kean’s web site and found the UFO in more frames. These frames had been edited out by CEFAA in their original presentation. HOAXKILLER discovered that the deleted frames showed the UFO transiting across the foreground of the airstrip. This was completely consistent with the bug hypothesis. Most of the proponents of the ET hypothesis kept falling back to the analysis by CEFAA and the multiple videos from multiple locations argument, which began to appear weak based on the evidence presented.
March 24th
The house of cards that was the ET Hypothesis finally collapsed when STIVER posted a new video debunking the case. He found a video taken of the El Bosque air show that apparently had not been analyzed by CEFAA. It showed some of the same events in the other videos. The UFO does not appear the way it does in the CEFAA videos. Instead many BLURFOs appear that look exactly like the CEFAA UFOs.
I only know what they tell me
Leslie Kean had taken a lot of heat from people concerning this video analysis. Had she not thrown out the gauntlet about this being a case skeptics were dreading, she might have saved face. However, she started making promises like:
Have patience folks. More info will be presented soon. You can’t draw conclusions from looking at only one tape. And please remember, these images have been analyzed by experts in Chile. Didn’t I emphasize that enough in my Huffington Post story? They too thought the footage was a bug at first, until they collected the other tapes. It is an insult for you carry on about this being a bug, when obviously if you can figure that out so easily, the Chilean experts would have done the same.2
She also continued to make excuses:
As I did in my book, for the Chilean story I reported on what the authorities at the Chilean organization told me. These are authorities I trust, including a General and well known scientists. I presented the best video, and quoted their experts.3
It must be pointed out that she IS a journalist and she MUST stand by her work. If it is flawed, she must then look again and see if it is. If there are problems with what she wrote, she can then state it was a mistake. Instead, she basically states that she never bothers to examine anything closely and only repeats what these sources tell her. She accepts what they tell her at face value, which is a recipe for disaster when it comes to UFOlogy.
Hoping people will forget
When Kean finally did produce a response, several issues about CEFAA were mentioned. The first was CEFAA was very busy awaiting for the analysis of the videos to be completed. They now had other photo analysts, who were unnamed, looking at the videos. CEFAA also announced that it was not going to release any more information until these analyses were complete. That may be what they said, but I think there may have been another motive. They dribbled out the information hoping people would blindly accept it instead of examining what they presented critically. Apparently, people like HOAXKILLER were more thorough than their experts, who may have been seeing only what they wanted to see. To avoid any more embarrassment, they chose not to reveal any reports or videos and hid behind a curtain of secrecy. Is this a case of “non-disclosure”? Isn’t CEFAA a government organization? If this were the USAF, the outcries of cover-up and FOIA requests would have been numerous and Kean would have been leading the charge. One has to wonder if Kean has a double standard for UFO organizations where they are allowed to keep secrets but the government is not.
As Dr. Dil put it in his blog, Kean and CEFAA seem to have problems describing their own research. What was considered a completed study in mid-March has now turned into an on-going study. What was considered the best video, is now considered inadequate for research by others. Instead of demanding that CEFAA come clean with their evidence, Kean resorts to blowing a lot of smoke, hoping that nobody will notice that her/CEFAA’s original claims do not stand up to scrutiny.
Kean also decided to talk to a bunch entomologists to get their opinion. While she quotes several people, we really don’t know how many entomologists were asked to comment. She easily could have asked dozens and only published the comments from those she selected. Kean states she presented them with the evidence from CEFAA. Missing in her presentation was the other side of the argument like the video of the quadcopter with the swarm of bees, the video not provided by CEFAA showing lots of UFOs in the area, and HOAXKILLER’s very damning video analysis. Her summary of what her selected entomologists stated was it was very probably not a bug. 4 However, that is not what they really said. They all thought it was unlikely that it could be bugs but never stated that it was not a bug (one did but then changed their statement after discussing it with another person). We are not even sure if they had an experience looking at insects in videos like this. While one can respect their opinions about insects, that opinion did not falsify the bug hypothesis as Kean implied.
Because Kean has nothing more than what CEFAA originally told her, she keeps referring to those who upstaged the story as “amateurs” even though she does not know their qualifications! It is clear that these “amateurs” did a far better job and were more open with their analyses than CEFAA and Kean. Now Kean is simply “tap-dancing” hoping that nobody will notice that CEFAA never really published anything. With the revelations that the videos probably show bugs, I suspect CEFAA’s reports will never be revealed.

UFO = alien spaceship?
UFOlogists are great at saying what UFOs can not be. However, they always try and walk the fine line in revealing what they believe. It is best to hint at what you want everyone to think it is and then have them draw the obvious conclusion. When a skeptic says it is unlikely the object is an alien spaceship, the proponent immediately denies ever stating this as if they are trying to keep an open mind. This was apparent when Billy Cox declared that Benjamin Radford was misrepresenting what Kean had written:
Wrote Radford in his Live Science blog: “Kean and others interpret it as a metallic interplanetary spacecraft.” That isn’t true. Neither Kean nor Blumenthal nor anyone in CEFAA stated that in the HuffPo article.5
Billy Cox is technically correct. They never said “metallic interplanetary spacecraft” but they did state that it was dome-shaped, no visible means of propulsion, appears metallic, emits some form of energy, extraordinary machine, not man-made, Humans could not survive these speeds, and clearly under intelligent control.6 Saying these things is essentially the same thing as stating metallic interplanetary spacecraft. Billy Cox, and all the others who make these kinds of comments, are just trying to trick people into thinking they are being objective when they really are not.
Failing to do it right
Missing from all of these analyses is the reason for having multiple vid33eos from multiple locations. When that is done, one can triangulate the position of the UFO and determine distance, size, speed, and altitude. In all of these wonderful revelations by Kean and Bermudez, there never was any mention of triangulation. That indicates to me that they could not perform this since the UFOs did not align properly. Either there was more than one UFO present or these UFOs were bugs. As a result, we get these analyses using photoshop filters to look for things that may or may not be resolvable.
As a crude exercise in triangulation of the data available, I used the frame that showed the UFO at a low enough angle with the F-16s and compared it to the video taken from the review stand area (which is at 30 FPS). As one can see in the image from google earth on page 34, the distance between the two videographers was about a half-mile and the F-16s were approaching the runway (the white star). This can be done assuming the aircraft were flying a path in line with the runway and by looking at the background hills for reference. As shown by the sight lines from the two locations, If the UFO were distant, as indicated by CEFAA, then the position of the UFO would have been to the right of the F-16s in the review stand video. When one views that part of the video, where the jets were in the same approximate position, we do not see any UFO cross behind or in front of the jets.
Since most of the data in this little exercise is guesswork using some assumptions, it is possible the reason the UFO is not visible is because of these assumptions. I only performed this exercise as a demonstration on how the use of multiple videos should have been used to prove the exotic nature of the UFOs. CEFAA apparently is unable to perform such an exercise from the videos, which means all of these videos are essentially worthless.
Rinse, lather, repeat?
Originally proclaimed as the video that would scare skeptics, this case rapidly unraveled into another embarrassment for UFOlogists once additional information became available. Like the Mexican AF FLIR video from 2004, the analyses that were reportedly performed seemed to be hidden from any critical review. General Bermudez is the only person who appears to have access to these reports. However, it seems that his interpretation of them is inaccurate based on Dr. Dil’s communication with Dr. Barrera. Either Bermudez misinterpreted Barrera’s report or Dr. Barrera is trying to back out of his analysis.
If Dr. Barrera was misquoted or misrepresented by Bermudez, CEFAA appears as a “Mickey Mouse” organization that is more interested in promoting UFOs than trying to scientifically analyze anything. When you can’t get the facts right concerning the analysis that was performed, then the leader of this organization is either incompetent or purposefully misleading people. In either case, it demonstrates that CEFAA is a waste of the Chilean government’s funds and is a failure as a scientific organization.
If you couple the incompetence/chicanery of CEFAA with the gullibility of Leslie Kean and other UFO proponents, you are going to have a prescription for a farce. Will UFOlogists ever learn from their mistakes? Sixty years of this kind of pseudo-scientific smoke and mirrors has shown that they never will.

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Quelle: SUNlite 3/2012