BOOK REVIEW

Jack Brewer's, "Wayward Sons"

(Full disclosure - no pun intended. Jack was kind enough to provide me with an advanced copy for review and pleasure reading)

Why is it people think government is some special agency that can solve all the problems and has all the answers? People tend to plead with government to find solutions and then share them with the public. It’s not just for healthcare and economic stability and education and the like. But for UFOs as well.

Since the modern UFO era of 1947, a solution to the UFO phenomenon has been said to be deep in the vaults of the United States government; or, more specifically, the military. And it’s true the US military took special interest when people started reporting flying saucer sightings. It’s completely understandable. If a foreign adversary had such amazing technology buzzing the air space over America, it’s their duty to investigate. Memos from that era show a serious concern with the subject matter and official investigations from Project Sign to Grudge to Blue Book were implemented. In 1953, a special panel of experts convened to form what became known as the Robertson Panel with the purpose of getting to the bottom of the phenomenon. And their conclusions were two-fold: There was no threat to national security and whatever they were, they were not extra-terrestrial. But they noted UFO groups could potentially cause panic or hysteria and should be monitored for erratic behaviors.

Fast forward to the latest public UFO report released from the Pentagon. In June 2021, we got a nine-page report which said about the same thing the Robertson Panel said: There’s no identifiable national security threat. But they also, like the Robertson Panel, admitted some reports remained unexplained.

So we’ve over seventy-years of UFO reports and investigations and we’re in the same place as the beginning. This should pretty much suggest the original 1953 conclusions were correct. There’s nothing to it. Perhaps more to do with human psychology than actual fantastic aircraft.

And yet, none of this has stopped anyone from trying to pry UFO “reality” from government records and officials. The continued pursuit has everything to do with preconceived expectations and conclusions rather than actual evidence. And this leads us into Jack Brewer’s latest, WAYWARD SONS.

In 1956, nearly ten years after the modern UFO era began, several well-to-do, well-connected business and former military and government intelligence spooks founded the National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). The best known, being Donald Keyhoe. Right off the bat, about a year after founding, NICAP began holding press conferences and making publications claiming that flying saucers were extra-terrestrial. The details of the organization's founding and history are well laid out in WAYWARD and well worth reading. But the takeaway for me was how people who once held intelligence or military positions (many in high places) became members of NICAP with a mission (at least publicly) to expose the secret of the saucers. The question for me has always been why? Why would someone already in a position with the resources leave such a position then work from the outside to get information they would have had better access to if they just stayed put? It’d be like leaving employment with the Coca-Cola company then trying to obtain the secret formula working for a startup lobbying group. This makes no sense.

With this in mind, while I was reading WAYWARD, I kept wondering if there was some ulterior motive why some of these people were involved in NICAP. Some thoughts were on whether or not some of these people ever actually left employment with the intelligence/military services they claimed to have once belonged to. Maybe they were there to monitor (as suggested by the Robertson Panel). Or maybe to steer away from or into something.

Brewer thought such things possible too. In the opening pages, Jack considers just such possibilities but admits we will probably never know and perhaps, there’s a little bit of fence sitting going on with these individuals. Maybe they kept one leg in intelligence circles and the other in groups like NICAP to monitor. Let’s face it, at this time in history, the US military and intelligence services were building some amazing flying machines. The U2 and SR-71, among others, were in development and commission. Wouldn’t you want to keep an eye on what people were reporting when they saw them? And wouldn’t you want to provide a cover story, perhaps an outlandish narrative to divert attention as not to expose what you have? I think so.

Planting government spooks into such organizations (pretty much as the Robertson Panel asked for) seems a good idea. But as Brewer notes throughout WAYWARD, we’ll never know how many on the board of NICAP were true believers or plants or a little of both.

What I am certain of, however, is that the main face of NICAP, that of Donald Keyhoe, was a true believer. Either that or one of the greatest coverup artists in the history of intelligence services. But the evidence leans towards a true believer that flying saucers were coming from outer space.

WAYWARD explores how the history of NICAP is repeating itself with organizations like To The Stars Academy, a special interest group founded by Tom Delonge (musician best known for Blink 182) in 2017. TTSA once employed people very much like those that came and went from NICAP: Former government military/intelligence officials. The most prominent is that of Lue Elizondo, a former Pentagon officer who claimed to have run a UFO program out of the Pentagon but to have quit to join To The Stars Academy to get to the bottom of the UFO phenomenon and educate the public. Again, I have to ask, if you headed an official UFO program why would you ever quit to work for answers from the outside?

WAYWARD SONS is highly recommended as I see a lot of new faces entering the UFO field who are unaware of the history of the subject matter. A little knowledge could prevent so much of the misinformation and hopes of UFO Disclosure that’s as out of reach as Charlie Brown’s football kick from Lucy. However, even then, some won’t learn. I still see a lot of claims that today is not yesterday and today is different. I think more exploration and historical research into UFO history can be beneficial to alleviate some of this. Jack Brewer’s WAYWARD SONS is an excellent start.