UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry by Michael Swords and Robert Powell

• Main Author: David Jacobs
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SSE 2014-06-01
• Series: Journal of Scientific Exploration
• Online Access: http://journalofscientificexploration.org/index.php/jse/article/view/777

UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry is a result of a major under-taking by a group of veteran UFO researchers who called themselves The UFO History Group. They dedicated themselves to developing new information about the U.S. Government-analyzed UFO reports, and they present a UFO history with new documentation obtained from the Air Force Files along with interviews with many of the participants. Although the book concentrates on the United States, it also contains histories of UFO research in Australia, France, Belgium, Spain, and Sweden, along with short pieces on Belgium, the Soviet Union, and Brazil. Michael Swords, an emeritus professor of natural science at Western Michigan University, headed up the team. The UFO researchers were Robert Powell, who helped with the writing and edited the book, and Barry Greenwood, Richard Thieme, and Jan Aldrich who served as consultants and contributing writers. The international chapters were written by William Chalker, Vincente-Juan Ballester Olmos, Clas Svahn, and Powell. Robert Purcell supplied the book with copious photographs, charts, and images of documents. Most of the book is written in a conversational style, making it accessible to both beginners and serious UFO researchers.  The history team's main focus is on how the United States addressed and dealt with the UFO phenomenon from the 1940s until 2007. The book is meticulous in providing fact-based analyses of the military and governmental investigators and scientists in the United States who developed the academic and governmental perspective on the subject that would influence generations. The reader will not find grand conspiracy theories and darkly hidden secrets that have fascinated UFO researchers for decades. Rather, this is a heavily documented history revealing exactly what happened and, whenever possible, why.