Getting government to release film?

[AnotherMe]

Hello. This is my first post.
How would one go about getting the government to release the UFO landing that the astronaut Gordon Cooper talked about many times? This event took place in 1957. I am sure it would take some lawyers under The Freedom Of Information Act. I would love to make this my life's career goal.
Gordon Cooper on UFO Landing - YouTube

[DD2011]

Where have you been? Not sure where you are from, but our government is sadly in deep denial to the mass public, regardless of any truth that exists or what people do to share it with others....they'd obviously rather go down acting ignorant before admitting any knowledge to the masses. If you ask me, they are smart enough to know that any admittance would create a huge mess that they find easier to just keep people stupid (because they don't know the answers to clean up that mess). Unfortunately, I also believe the easy way out is sometimes not always the right answer. Maybe someday truth will come, who knows!!

[ChrisPerridas]

Originally Posted by AnotherMe

Hello. This is my first post.
How would one go about getting the government to release the UFO landing that the astronaut Gordon Cooper talked about many times? This event took place in 1957. I am sure it would take some lawyers under The Freedom Of Information Act. I would love to make this my life's career goal.
Gordon Cooper on UFO Landing - YouTube

That would be an ambitious process. From the interviews I've heard, FOIA is becoming more difficult to obtain, and expensive. Not only do you have to be very precise, but you could incur legal and government fees for the information you do get.

A Different Perspective: The Decline and Fall of FOIA

Probably the very first thing you'll need to do is obtain as many of the public statements Cooper has made and compile them and compare them sifting them for exact dates, places, and any other information. Then, you probably would have to contact a specialized attorney in these matters for assistance in filing the multiple FOIAs.

[dr wu23]

Originally Posted by ChrisPerridas

That would be an ambitious process. From the interviews I've heard, FOIA is becoming more difficult to obtain, and expensive. Not only do you have to be very precise, but you could incur legal and government fees for the information you do get.

A Different Perspective: The Decline and Fall of FOIA

Probably the very first thing you'll need to do is obtain as many of the public statements Cooper has made and compile them and compare them sifting them for exact dates, places, and any other information. Then, you probably would have to contact a specialized attorney in these matters for assistance in filing the multiple FOIAs.

Chris ,
I'm interested in your opinion of what Gordon Cooper said in that clip. He obviously believes a real saucer landed in front of him, saw the film, etc.
Since you have taken the ufo as myth approach...how do you explain his comments?

[Carol Nistri]

Chris,did Gordon Cooper say what he said in that clip Before he was taken ill? I should think thats important.

[OzyMandias]

Stanton Friedman and others were able to obtain quite a few pages of documents on (UFO/Roswell) related info through the FOIA. However, the really good stuff was mostly redacted. Check out this interview with Stanton Friedman video here: Classic Interview with Stanton Friedman | VIDCAST . Start watching from 3:00 minutes -> 7:00 minutes video play time.

Even if you were successful in obtaining some of the film, the piece you get might be blank and only1 inch in length. :-D

BTW Merry Christmas everyone!

[ChrisPerridas]

Gordon Cooper was a hero in all senses of the word. I respect what he did and what he stood for. It is not for me to say what he saw or didn't.

The clip said he received film from staff members, and it became classified and disappeared.
____

In another interview with Yolanda Gaskins, there is a slightly different version, and it does not explicitly say he saw the craft, but that he was supervising those who did:

GC As they were sitting there filming a little saucer came from, I say a little saucer, it was *a* saucer, came flying over their heads, put down three little landing gear and landed right out on the dry lake bed. Then they picked-up their cameras and started over toward' it filming as they went, and when they got in fairly close to it lifted up - put the gear back in the wheel-wells - tipped up and took off at a great rate of speed. And so they brought, came into my office and told me what had happened and I sent them over to develop the film, and then had to go through all the proper regulations of reporting this, and we wound up having to send the film forward to Washington in the base jet airplane, and uh, I don't know whether anyone's ever seen it since.

UFO Folklore Center

[ChrisPerridas]

Originally Posted by Carol Nistri

Chris,did Gordon Cooper say what he said in that clip Before he was taken ill? I should think thats important.

I am just not that familiar with that case. I am still working with mostly 1947 material. The 1950's and 1960's I just try to stay up with the forum discussions as best as I can, and investigate the ones that seem aprticularly possible as extraterrestrial. The stuff after 1965, I do good to remember when it happened. (I'm 56 years old, so I lived through a lot of that).

[dr wu23]

Originally Posted by ChrisPerridas

Gordon Cooper was a hero in all senses of the word. I respect what he did and what he stood for. It is not for me to say what he saw or didn't.

The clip said he received film from staff members, and it became classified and disappeared.
____

In another interview with Yolanda Gaskins, there is a slightly different version, and it does not explicitly say he saw the craft, but that he was supervising those who did:

GC As they were sitting there filming a little saucer came from, I say a little saucer, it was *a* saucer, came flying over their heads, put down three little landing gear and landed right out on the dry lake bed. Then they picked-up their cameras and started over toward' it filming as they went, and when they got in fairly close to it lifted up - put the gear back in the wheel-wells - tipped up and took off at a great rate of speed. And so they brought, came into my office and told me what had happened and I sent them over to develop the film, and then had to go through all the proper regulations of reporting this, and we wound up having to send the film forward to Washington in the base jet airplane, and uh, I don't know whether anyone's ever seen it since.

UFO Folklore Center

I have read that before that it's unclear if he saw it also....but then are we to assume the military camera crew lied to him? Why..?

[ChrisPerridas]

I think we have to be careful. His belief that the Earth has been visited by aliens has to stay separate from the 1951 episode event. (Sometimes referred to as 1958, by the way).

There is a possibility that what they saw was terrestrial. In the clip he said he looked at the developed film and saw that it was clear and correctly processed, but did not run the film and view it.

Did the camera crew see something? The film would prove "yes" if found. Did they accurately describe what they saw? Cooper would have no way to confirm that.

Cooper also confirms he saw lenticular or saucer shaped objects by the scores, as did his fellow pilots. He said that these objects exhibited technology beyond that of anything he knew.

Cooper personally saw a number of esoteric objects in his career.
Cooper believed there was evidence somewhere that aliens have visited us.

I don't think you can make a leap and say that what Cooper saw at any given time was alien, though there may be a possibility it was. I do not know if he ever declared that anything he ever saw was proof of aliens. I listened and read about 5 different interviews today, and if you listen carefully, I don't think I heard him once explicitly connect what he saw with proof of aliens. He seemed slightly less clear on this the older he got, though.

As to the crew, who if they served in the military we should respect. However, we only know what Cooper said he remembered about this, and do not have the film or descriptions of what they saw. They may have seen a new military aircraft - certainly there were many new classified prototypes at this time. If they did see an alien ship, even the film could not prove this, but only imply or infer. I see nothing where they "lied" about it.

Back to your original question, as humans living in the 1950's, the film crew certainly were exposed to science fiction films, SciFi magazines, and flying saucer lore, which could have colored their interpretations of what they filmed.

In the 1930s and through the late 1940's, there was still mythology that Mars could be inhabited, and there was absolutely no proof that planets existed outside of the "9" we knew about.

In the late 1950's, better astronomical equipment began to erode the idea that Mars might have life, and some astrophysics models suspected that the creation of stars allowed for planetary formation by disc accretion. This is why Forbidden Planet (1956) is so radically different from George Pal's War of the Worlds film.

The original screenplay (1952) was called Fatal Planet and set on Mercury. By early 1956, Cyril Hume realized the back story had to be completely altered. War of the Worlds (1953) had more restrictions since it was Wells classic, but in 1953, the Martian theory was still allowable.

I think one of the death knells was the blunder by the National Geographic Society in September 1955. As Mars came close, they stated, "The sudden appearance of a large dark spot on the surface of the planet Mars was announced yesterday by the National Geographic Society in Washington. It was also claimed that this discovery supported the conclusion 'that Mars is not a dead world, that the darkening is due to the growth of plant life.'" They were taken to task by the scientific community for this statement.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardia...t-life-on-mars