The Man Who Wasn’t There: Newhouse

I’m writing for you, the future UFO researcher and investigator, and you can take this as a prophetic hint or a powerful history lesson: Don’t let the debunkers make your credible UFO witness a non-entity.

This increasingly common debunker’s tactic of removing the witness from center stage has been very successful. This tactic allows debunkers to isolate the evidence from the people and then manipulate that evidence by shifting the focus to explainable data while excluding witness testimony and any other real-time data. This removal of the witness from center stage in UFO casework highlights the need to advocate for the witness in a public way.

That is exactly what didn’t happen in the Lt. Newhouse case, centered on an impeccable military witness who supported and trusted his country and acted on that trust by submitting an 8mm film of his sighting as “evidence” of “flying disks”. This was a big deal. Newhouse was not saying he saw miscellaneous lights in the sky, he was claiming he saw flying craft that were in fact disks.

This post could have been “The Family That Wasn’t There”. Lt. Newhouse’s testimony was further enhanced with statements by his wife and children, witness testimony that was treated as inconsequential, hardly spoken about and noted, even though the family members themselves had the closest sightings.

James McDonald, See Post ;“The Last Scientist” http://ufomedia.blogspot.com/2008/07/last-scientist-part-1.html), sought the Newhouse family out over a decade later. This is from McDonalds about his phone interview with the family:

“As you will recall, one of the key points that I wanted to check with Newhouse concerned the description given by Ruppelt (and repeated in Baker's analysis as reproduced in the 1968 Congressional hearings), namely, that they appeared to be silvery-gray, "gunmetal", and like two pie pans face-to-face. Both Newhouse and his wife fully confirmed that, Newhouse comparing the shape to a discus in his comments to me. Mrs. Newhouse pointed out that they occasionally tipped, so that their round projected area, as seen in the initial portions of the sighting when they were nearly overhead, was replaced occasionally by a side-view exhibiting their discoid shape. There was not the slightest equivocation or any element of uncertainty as either of them discussed that very important point…

I should add that Newhouse returned to the above point several times in the course of our 50-minute telephone conversation, since, as he remarked, the matter of the visual observation was extremely important in his estimate. He commented on the point that almost no one who has since discussed his sighting and movies takes note of that point. In particular, he volunteered some extremely negative comments about the analysis in the Condon Report, and, to my queries, replied that no one from the Colorado team ever personally contacted him. When I asked him, in that connection, if he rejected their "gull hypothesis," he replied in the affirmative and said that, if he had a chance, he'd tell Condon the same thing he told Ruppelt: "You'd better go take a better look at some sea gulls!"

“Newhouse said that the Air Force didn't send the originals back to him at any time. He wrote ATIC when a long time had elapsed, and what they did finally send back to him was a color print which he stressed was distinctly inferior to the original. Not only that, but he was positive that they had cut out the first 10 or 20 feet, which were shot when the objects were very much closer and appeared much sharper on the film. (Oh! it just hit me that this may account for the seeming discrepancy between the maximum image size on the Baker-analyzed film and Newhouse's rough recollection that he began the shooting when the objects were at a zenith angle of 45-degrees. The missing footage, which he seemed positive was from the earliest and best parts of his original, would have shown the objects at an angular diameter larger than the later portions that have been involved in subsequent analyses. You follow me, I presume.)

What happened to that clip which clearly showed these object the Newhouse family saw were disk-shaped? The objects on the film were hard to evaluate for any definitive answers. But the tape that was given back to Newhouse was a copy and not the original he had submitted.

This is an extreme closeup…but they were pretty far away by then.

Lt. Newhouse had ample aviation and photography credentials, making him a superior witness and documentor:
“He had about 2,000 air-hours as an aviation photographer by 1952”


“Newhouse's rough recollection that he began the shooting when the objects were at a zenith angle of 45-degrees” would have made them much closer. UFOMM posted an article on missing evidence which was submitted and Newhouse’s was not the only claim of this type. http://ufologie.net/htm/tremontonmcdonald.htm#doc

DVD: Newhouse Film Close Up some footage from Mexico of similar objects:



At conferences, I see UFO researchers who become disenchanted with the whole field simply because of the vehement and irresponsible, knee-jerk attacks other researchers make on witnesses who report UFOs. Today we need to be more vocal as researchers on the side of credible witnesses. It is not enough to throw our hands up and avoid involvement, or push the witness aside, while we pick up our metaphoric slide rules and focus on myriad small things. The testimony of regular Americans is an crucial part of the process of convincing people these are real. After all the great mass of documentary evidence and eye witness testimony is now in the hands of the everyday people --not in the hands of the scientist, debunker or professional UFO researchers.
Gustavo Fernandez describes fanatics in his article: “When Ufologists Become Skeptics”: “A fanatic is someone who, distressed by the dissemination of another’s ideas, claims journalistic censure against these ideas”…
http://inexplicata.blogspot.com/2008/11/when-ufologists-become-skeptics.html
Today, via the Internet, we have instant social media posts of breaking events, and Google searches and via YouTube, rapid distribution of cell phone video and point-and-shoot consumer cameras, we have millions of blogs, and free public access to old-media style wire service distribution that used to be available only to professional journalists and broadcast networks. We must use these great communications media, not as hammers against different new and carefully thought-out ideas, but as a convergeance of public spaces where we must examine the injustices of the debunkers first hand. And we need to rethink our roles as rapid-responders, and publish these injustices as they happen, especially when debunkers and disinfo campaigns are used to make witnesses invisible by minimizing them to death.
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DON’T LET THEM MINIMIZE WITNESS TESTIMONY … LET YOUR TESTIMONY BE HEARD VIA YOUR BLOG, YOUR YOUTUBE, YOUR WEBISTE.

When you have a UFO witness --whether professional or lay orientation—come forward to take the risk and appear on Larry King, take time to call in and confront the debunkers one on one. That kind of pro-witness activism is a great thing to behold… and to participate in.

We have to remember that with massive popular distrust of government officials, major media, and even the now widely documented suppression and falsification of data by science institutions during the Bush presidency, the best way to “sell” the reality of the UFO phenom is to let the everyday people hear and see the everyday UFO witnesses tell their stories.

I do not myself entertain theories that end up making the UFO witnesses constantly idiots. For me, a good theory has to include the human factor, especially in the case of UFOs that seem to demonstrate possible intelligence on the other side.

But regardless of our personal theories about the phenom, we need better ways to investigate. We need fresh input from a new generation in the field -- intelligent people who view the entire anatomy of a UFO event in terms of both human and non-human possibility.

One of the ideas I disagreed with mentioned in the Brad Sparks clip on “MOGUL:The Balloon To Nowhere” was his minimizing certain types of witnesses. The ground truth that allows Mr. Sparks --who I think is a fine investigator-- to theorize is that there would be no counter-story, if it weren’t for the everyday witness: the farmer, rancher and housewife. Brad Sparks and everyone else would not be presenters if not for these witnesses. Despite how they are treated and used and tossed aside they still come forward the Newhouses, Mack Brazels, Betty & Barney Hills…June Crain and many more, brave UFO experiencer who believe with their whole hearts, that there is something deep and good in the nature of humankind, something in each of us that will recognize these most credible witnesses from all walks of life are telling the truth.

This is the real heart of what is happening on our planet …people of all kinds are experiencing the “impossible” and are brave enough to talk about it.

Joe Capp
UFO MEDIA MATTERS
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