Peter Jennings goes bats, too.

No, Peter Jennings has not proffered his own set of Killian Memoranda--though it would have been less damaging to his reputation if he had. Instead, he has wasted two hours of prime time talking to people who claim to have seen that class of spectacle that the United States Air Force has traditionally called "Unidentified Flying Objects," or UFO's.

He spent the first hour cataloging a sampling of UFO reports, and also discussing the very first such reports and, of course, Project Blue Book, which, Jennings maintains, was always intended to knock interest in UFO's in the head. According to Jennings, the Air Force might have succeeded, had it not been for the famous UFO movies: The Day the Earth Stood Still, The War of the Worlds, and my personal un-favorite, This Island Earth. The second hour appears to concern itself mainly with NASA's Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project. (Leave it to a bunch of goofy scientists to name a project after a Pharaoh of Egypt, and quite possibly the same one who lost the Egyptian Army in the Red Sea!) In all the loose talk about UFO's, I have not heard one single person talk about the full implications of such a phenomenon. Instead, I have heard a lot of confused reports, some of which could be hoaxes, some of which could be delusions, and others of which could be glints of reflected light, either from the ground or from flaws in an airplane window. Occasionally I hear a report describing a craft that reminds me very much of the B-2 Bomber--the world's first operational blended-wing-body aircraft. A "triangle" moving relatively slowly--that's exactly what an unfettered flying wing would look like. And such an aircraft, being the most efficient user of fuel known to aviation science, would have a range quite compatible with having been seen in Arizona after taking off from Edwards AFB in California, or Holliman AFB near White Sands, NM. Yes, we hear the story of the crash at Roswell, NM--a story that has inspired a television show all its own, episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Promised Land, and The X Files, investigative segments on Robert Stack's Unsolved Mysteries show and others like it, and a reference in a breathtaking science-fiction movie called Independence Day.

But, as I said--I have heard nothing about the implications about such a find--and the implications are very dire indeed. Let's cut to the chase here. UFO's are one of a limited number of things:

1. A hoax.
2. A misinterpretation of a natural event.
3. A secret Air Force or Navy prototype.
4. An actual extraterrestrial visit.
5. A demonic manifestation.

Now we all know that neither hoax nor misinterpreted observation need concern us at all. Demonic manifestations suggest to me that history as men know it is about to draw to a dramatic close, but until God reveals more of His plans, I won't speculate any further, other than to recommend a lot of prayer. But then I am always recommending prayer. (With one exception: some people claim abduction by ET's. That sounds exactly like something that demons would do. I would recommend that every one of those people tell their stories, not to any UFO bug or even to a psychiatrist, but to a discerning minister of the Gospel.)

That leaves secret Air Force prototypes and actual ET visits. Well, of course the Air Force would never stop experimenting with new aircraft! I wouldn't expect them to. Where, after all, do inventions come from? Could anyone have predicted that we could build something like the B-2 before we actually rolled it out? Could anyone have predicted the Manhattan Project before we put it together? Now go back to the B-2: remember that big triangle? Maybe what they saw was the forerunner of the B-2. And they are continuing to see a lot of other aircraft, most of which will never go into mass production. Now if someone sees a thing like that and starts talking about it, what do you expect the Air Force to say? "Excuse us, citizens; that's our next generation of fighter or interceptor or bomber." Sure--and they then have just put up a big neon sign saying, "Spies, look here!"

So is the Air Force covering that up? Of course they are--and for them to do any less would be irresponsible.

But let's face the ET possibility, and look hard at it. If ET's are visiting this planet--and especially if they are abducting our fellow citizens and subjecting them to the sort of medical experiment that we normally perform on rats and mice--then these are acts of war. These ET's, we are supposed to believe, are violating our airspace and doing as they please. What is wrong with this picture? Do you not suppose that if the Air Force thought any of this was real, they would be screaming to Congress for funding of a Space Command with the budget to seek out these intruders and bring them to some kind of understanding? And I haven't even mentioned that any such ET's would have command of a science that defies our understanding of the natural world. Albert Einstein would laugh at the thought--because after all, the nearest star of any brightness to our sun is far-enough away that its light takes four and a half years to reach us!

Now wouldn't you think that anyone investigating whether UFO's are more than hoaxes, and are not simply top-secret Air Force prototypes that we had best forget, would demand an interview with the Secretary of the Air Force, or even with the Secretary of State? Funny--I don't recall Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice ever getting a hypothetical about a magnetically levitated craft landing at Foggy Bottom, and its pilots walking up to the guards at the offices of the State Department and demanding, "Take us to your leader." What's even funnier is that people expect us to believe that a civilization that could mount an interstellar or even intergalactic expedition could not find the seat of government of the most militarily powerful nation on the planet! Frankly, I have more respect for the author of that famous short story, To Serve Man, which became one of the most chilling episodes on Rod Serling's TV show, The Twilight Zone. (The other real chiller was The Shelter, the story that pretty much killed the old Fallout Shelter program of the Sixties.) At least, in that story, the ET's, called "Kanamits," easily found Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in New York and landed a ship close enough to send a diplomat to walk straight into the UN Building and demand to see the Secretary-General. (Kenneth Johnson had the same idea in his famous mini-series concept, V.) Man alive--those ET's must be pretty stupid if their intelligence isn't good enough to accomplish that!

But at least they're willing to talk about the difficulties of interstellar travel, and to admit forcefully that TV and the movies have vastly underestimated the requirements in fuel, payload protection, and everything else. But they still find the goofiest "theoretical physicists" who postulate all manner of theories about "folding space"--just as people were supposed to figure out how to do in Frank Herbert's Dune cycle. (And are those pilots stoned on that peculiar hallucinogenic cocktail called "melange"? And wait a minute--did we ever develop a theory about folding the surface of the earth, as a means by which to project power throughout our world? Of course not!)

What we have here, in summary, is a God-substitute. Peter Jennings is looking for God in the cockpit of an otherworldly spacecraft capable of folding space itself and tunnelling from one fold to another. Now what are we supposed to do if such beings exist? Kneel down and accept whatever fetters they care to place upon our arms and legs, that's what--because any civilization powerful enough to accomplish such a feat would be far too powerful militarily for us to defend against. This, of course, begs the question of why they haven't yet attacked the earth, or even intervened in any of what must seem to them to be rather stupid wars. But I have given up expecting logic from the MSM--for "logic" means "reckoning," and some of these people act as though they wouldn't be able to balance a checkbook sometimes. But the larger point remains: we have a large number of fellow travelers of this earth who are looking for God in the wrong place. It's high time everyone look for God in the right place. If you want the answer to the UFO mystery, don't pick up the Air Force's Blue Book. Instead, pick up your Bible.

UPDATE: A Navy friend of mine sent me this link, and this, describing prototypes that all by themselves could explain many of the reported sightings, including some that Peter Jennings spotlighted. Now what was the matter with him, that he didn't research this? But then again, it wouldn't have been a good story to say, "Sorry, but these were Air Force or Luftwaffe prototypes, now long since declassified and released."