"The Fitzgerald Report"
Dear Bob:
Maybe I am overly sensitive, but….!
Having just read the reissue of "The Fitzgerald Report" by MidOhio Research Associates [Ohio UFO Notebook #18], and your Introduction therein, I feel obliged to strongly protest your depiction of NICAP (and, by implication, me). Please do not contribute to perpetuation of these myths, which apparently began with David Jacob's thesis and have been carried forth by certain other dubious reporters such as Jacques Vallee.
You state that you sent copies to every Member of Congress, and "We fully expected NICAP to make a major media and Capitol Hill push with the case. Zero. The failure of even ufologists to follow up was dismaying, but the answer lies in the fact that this was a close encounter case. NICAP wanted daylight discs sighted by airline pilots. Nothing more exotic, thank you."
Aside from the Akron UFO Research Committee's perhaps false expectations, for which we cannot be held responsible, this is a totally unfair and, in many respects, grossly inaccurate portrayal of the facts. I wish you had done some homework before bad mouthing NICAP. For example, if you had looked at issues of the U.F.O. Investigator for that time period, you would have seen that we had no staff and precious few resources, and we were barely hanging on. You would also have seen that we gave full-page coverage to, and strongly endorsed, "The Fitzgerald Report" in the December 1958 issue (copy enclosed).
By your own admission, Congressmen were unresponsive. I can't imagine anything we could have done to alter that situation. We were fighting that exact battle tooth and nail on a broader front as best we could. (See my history of NICAP in the MUFON 1993 Symposium Proceedings; also on the NICAP web site managed by Francis Ridge.)
As for NICAP's alleged bias against close encounter cases, this is totally false and unfounded. I was there and, in fact, practically running the show. We reported any solidly investigated and well-founded close encounter and physical evidence cases, including extensive coverage of the Socorro landing case.
For the time period in question (1958-59), I enclose a page of the U.F.O. Investigator of February-March 1959 containing a roundup of UFO sightings. Note the many close encounter cases. This is the only formal rebuttal I will offer; we also reported many dozens (probably hundreds) of other close encounter cases well before [Jacques] Vallee's arbitrary "late Sixties" date. For a total rebuttal, you need only look at The UFO Evidence (1964). The Fitzgerald case is again summarized there on page 113.
In all fairness, you cannot say either that we failed to make good use of that case or that we wanted nothing more exotic than daylight discs reported by pilots. The facts refute both of these claims.
As for Vallee's remarks, I have never seen him get much of anything accurate when it comes to basis facts about cases or UFO history. His relatively recent "Notebook" (or whatever it is called) contains numerous falsehoods about me, most based on gossip, which he never bothered to check for accuracy. He has a lot of gall!
This (Fitzgerald Report issuance) comes against a recent background of "revisionist history" and especially about old NICAP cases appearing on the Internet and about cases whose investigation I personally supervised. I set up and ran the NICAP investigation network, and I'm getting damn sick and tired of the garbage that is being circulated about these cases. Our work in those years is not beyond criticism at all, but this stuff is not reasonable criticism at all. In the majority of cases, the critics simply don't know what they are talking about, and are substituting wild surmise for "scientific inquiry." These cases are well documented; they should do their homework before trashing NICAP and me! It's as simple as that.
Keep up the (otherwise) good work.
Richard Hall
Bob Durant's Reply
This is in reply to your letter of September 24th [1998], in which you correctly take me to task for challenging NICAP and its dealings with the "Fitzgerald Report" in a way that does you and NICAP an injustice.
Perhaps some venue will arise in which I or both of us can set the record straight on this one.
R. J. Durant