UFO enthusiasts may sue NASA for fraud (Oh My Gov!, 03-19-2009)
From The Black Vault Encyclopedia Project
The Article
The U.S. space agency NASA may want to brace itself for a flood of lawsuits in small claims courts. The idea was floated at the recent International UFO Congress and supporters will again promote it at the X-Conference next month.
Small claims courts, similar to the ones popularized on television shows like the People’s Court, are usually the domain of neighbor disputes over minor property issues. Citizens can file suit against another person, business, government, or other entity for an amount not to exceed hundreds or thousands of dollars, depending on the state or county statute. Attorneys are not allowed for either the plaintiff or defendant.
So what beef do UFO hunters have with NASA? They claim that the space agency is committing fraud by altering or destroying photographic evidence it has of signs of life in other planetary systems. Part of NASA’s official mission is to “Look for signs of life in other planetary systems” and the agency receives over $17 billion a year in taxpayer funding to accomplish that mission. Supporters of the small claims idea say that this is “waste, fraud and abuse” because it keeps asking for the money every year while “pretending” that it hasn’t found anything.
Jeff Peckman, of the Denver UFO Examiner, explained the reasoning using his hometown as an example:
…the portion of NASA funding coming from Denver taxpayers amounts to over $30 million each year. That might seem small compared to the Federal budget and even the Denver city budget. But it’s almost daily news that city budgets like Denver are cutting $1 million here and there from programs to help the homeless, children, people with special needs, law enforcement and more.
NASA’s bloated and wasteful budget could be better spent locally to help individuals and communities. The alleged fraud NASA has engaged in by doctoring or destroying UFO photos is just a small piece of the bigger picture. But it’s a piece that citizens can use to get at least one government agency into the light of closer public scrutiny.
The claim that NASA is hiding the truth about aliens isn’t just an idea of sci-fi fans who emerge from their mother’s basement just once a year for gatherings of like-minded fanatics. A 77-year-old former NASA astronaut, Dr. Edgar Mitchell, who was a crewmember of the Apollo 14 mission, says he knows that NASA is well aware of visits to earth by “little people who look strange to us.”
NASA’s response was not surprisingly concise and authoritative: “NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe. Dr. Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinions on this issue.”
Credits
Special thanks to Oh My Gov!.
