TL;DR: A false dialectic was handed to us concerning the modern UFO phenomenon. On the one hand, Martians were coming for our women (or at least our b-holes). On the other J. Allen Hynek was the scientific authority telling us there was “nothing to see here” in the skies above us, and to “move along”. We’ll look at some associations that suggest he wasn’t just some dude that happened to end up doing that.

In the last post, we looked at one half of the false dialectic. On the other side was J. Allen Hynek (1910-1986), who simply oozed scientific credibility. He was much higher profile and there is much less to say about him, which I think you will see fits the profile. In short, it looks like he was identified early, plucked out, and put in that position.

Hynek became a living meme: the bespectacled scientist with a Van Dyke and a pipe telling us it was “swamp gas”. Yes, he was quite literally the “swamp gas” guy, if you didn’t know:

Hynek recalled in his 1972 book: "Swamp gas became a household word and a standard humorous synonym for UFOs. UFOs, swamp gas, and I were lampooned in the press and were the subjects of many a delightful cartoon (of which I have quite a collection)."

He played his part well, calling bullshit on everything in the sky and on the ground:

Once back at the office, Hynek requested privacy for a phone call; "He was on the phone for quite a while, which I found very enlightening. He came out and I said, 'Well, Dr. Hynek. What do you think?' He said, 'It's swamp gas.' He tells me one minute he has no idea what it is. And then he makes one phone call to Washington and comes out and gives a statement that it's swamp gas. Very strange."

Hmmm, right? Anyway, Hynek was the scientific adviser to all three big government “UFO investigation” programs: USAF Projects Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book. The last two were officially run by Edward J. Ruppelt as discussed in the last post. They were the two opposing polarities, but Hynek was wrangled by Ruppelt, and Ruppelt in turn worked for General Earle Cabell. All the setup you need. Now the question is, was Hynek’s name just pulled out of a hat? I don’t think so. “They” don’t work like that.

First up in Hynek’s strange associations—and the reason I think They had Their eyes on him early—was that his doctoral advisor at the University of Chicago was William Wilson Morgan. It’s not that Morgan himself has any red flags on him, but it’s that—as part of Conspiracy 101—you’ve probably heard of the fundamental slam on Freemasonry known as the “Morgan Affair”: some guy was writing a book to expose the Masons so they kidnapped and murdered him. Well, (1) that guy was named William Morgan, and (2) that affair was a huge psyop that gets real shady real quick, which I exposed here:

Did you know William Morgan and Joseph Smith were Eskimo brothers? Now I think the whole “Freemasons murdered a guy!” thing was just another psyop (conspiracies.win 11/17/2024)

Point (3) is that I feel certain that the Morgan of said Affair was of the same family as “JP”, so I get real twitchy when I come across anyone named Morgan.

You can read that Hynek was also associated with Harvard, the Smithsonian, and Johns Hopkins. It’s too much detail to get in to and there’s nothing specific about his work at any of these places, but I consider all those institutions to be bastions “They” founded and run to this day. Ever wonder why it was JHU that was telling us how everyone was dropping dead from The Coof? Now you know.

One quick association I can’t resist: Do you know where we got the term “little green men”? It was in fashion for all the early decades of UFOs, and came from the Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter of 1955. I would contend that Hopkinsville and Johns Hopkins are no coincidence at all. See why I’m suspicious Hynek spent time there?

Now, I doubt there are many “science conspiracy” fans out there, but if so we’ll talk a bit about Hynek and George Gamow. He and Hynek wrote a paper about the formation of the Solar System in 1945. If you research Electric Universe theory (which is itself a disinfo program but at the expense of many revolutionary revelations), you’ll find that the conventional ideas about the origin of the Solar System are dead wrong. If you get my drift on this, I have to wonder if Hynek was specifically chosen to help with a paper full of dead wrong ideas.

Speaking of promoting dead wrong ideas, Gamow was primary in promoting the Big Bang. That idea came originally from Georges Lemaitre. Conspiracists love to tell you that Lemaitre was a Jesuit. The ones who have gone in headfirst say that “le maitre” means “the master” in French, and that this is all one big “high Masonic” joke (h/t Alan Watt). Do a little research by clicking the link to find that although Georges attended schools run the Jesuits, he specifically declined to become one. I would contend it’s enough here to know that the Big Bang is wrong, that Gamow promoted it, and that Hynek worked a bit with him. Something more than nothing, but not much.

But do you know which association I simply cannot pass off as coincidence? After Blue Book was shut down, Hynek went to work at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, a joint project between Harvard and the Smithsonian (both of them so so sus, as mentioned). The director of SAO was astronomer Fred Lawrence Whipple. Profile pic looks like a friendly old guy, right?

Maybe he was, but the name “Whipple” is not common at all, and even more not common is that it appears on the list of people involved in the (fake) Salem witch trials. Okay, maybe the Joseph Whipple in that list was just some easily alarmed and superstitious dirt farmer and the names are mere coincidence, but let’s take a look at another random Joseph Whipple from a little after and not too far from Salem, Joseph Whipple III (1725-1761):

The son of Deputy Governor Joseph Whipple Jr. who was a very wealthy merchant…. He must have had very good political connections because he became Deputy Governor aged 25….

The Governor at the time was William Greene, Sr., and Green is another name you’ll find on that witch trial list. Imagine that.

Our final topic, worthy of some discussion, is the strange shift in controlled narrative that takes place at the end of 1952. It’s a big switcheroo, and we can highlight it with what Ruppelt and Hynek said and did. I can’t tell you I have an explanation, but I would not accept something along the lines of, “They orchestrated it to make it look like They orchestrated it.” Too much even for me! Let’s start with the fact that Ruppelt had to work to keep Hynek—a serious scientist, after all--on the hook that there was something worthy of investigation:

Hynek wrote "In my contacts with [Ruppelt] I found him to be honest and seriously puzzled about the whole phenomenon".

Hynek investigated and called shenanigans on all of it. Maybe we could say it’s an application of the principle, “There’s no one better to tell a lie than someone who believes it.” But by 1952 or so, Hynek and a few others involved apparently started to believe something real was going on. Hey, They can’t have people looking into real things, can They? On the recommendation of the CIA (of course), the Robertson Panel convened in January 1953 to formally say it’s all stuff and nonsense. It worked:

[Hynek] would write that the Robertson Panel had "made the subject of UFOs scientifically unrespectable, and for nearly 20 years not enough attention was paid to the subject to acquire the kind of data needed even to decide the nature of the UFO phenomenon."

Blue Book was reduced to a staff of three and Ruppelt soon left. He later joined in the calling of bullshit:

In new chapters that were notably conservative in tone, and frequently attributed by reviewers to author disillusionment or disenchantment, Ruppelt declared UFOs a "space age myth". Content of this nature was of a noticeably different tone to famous quotes from the original "Report" that had, for example, referred critically to a 1949 change of attitude in the Project whereby "everything was being evaluated on the premise UFO's couldn't exist. No matter what you see or hear, don't believe it".

Oh, he couldn’t figure that out when he had a staff and scientists and the US military? No? Ed died within months, a tool til the end. Now, this last thing I hate to say, but perhaps Hynek was a fool til the end. In 1973, he founded the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). Know what the problem was there? The board included Ufologist Jerome Clark. You get that? Another name from the witch trials.

Bonus: Remember that boring Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory that Hynek worked at with Whipple?

It is likely that SAO's early history as a solar observatory was part of the inspiration behind the Smithsonian's "sunburst" logo….

They mean this logo. Have you ever compared it to the IHS emblem of the Jesuits? Maybe those Jesuit-haters aren’t 100% wrong.

Thanks for reading! See you for the next installment where we start in on some of the all-time classic UFO encounters!