[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] The COMETA Report

[rfmcdonald]

Emma Hartley's recent 50 Facts You Need To Know: Europe is an interesting read, seeking to expose underrecognized facts about Europe and to present old facts in new and interesting ways. The book largely succeeds. Perhaps the most interesting topic in the book was the suggestion that the French military believed in the existence of UFOs as an extraterrestrial phenomenon. The proof? The COMETA report, a report allegedly assembled by leading French government officials that strongly supported the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

General Norlain explains in a short preface how this committee was created. General Letty came to see him in March 1995, when he was Director of IHEDN, to discuss his idea of a committee on UFOs. Norlain assured him of his interest and referred him to the Association of Auditors of IHEDN, which in turn gave him its support. As a result, several members of the committee come from the Association of Auditors of IHEDN, joined by other experts.

It is interesting to recall here that, twenty years ago, it was a report of that same Association which led to the creation of GEPAN, the first unit for UFO study, at CNES.

Most of the committee hold, or have held, important functions in defense, industry, teaching, research, or various central administrations. General Norlain expresses hope that this report will help develop new efforts in France and lead to indispensable international cooperation.

General Letty, as president of COMETA, points to the main theme of the report, which is that the accumulation of well documented observations compels us now to consider all hypotheses as to the origin of UFOs, especially extraterrestrial hypotheses.

The COMETA report appears to have attracted no small measure of press coverage soon after its 1999 release, having produced a 2000 report in the Irish Independent and another in the Boston Globe. Indeed, if official France does in fact believe that UFOs are extraterrestrial probes, the COMETA report should have gotten a lot of press coverage indeed. The problem is that this does not seem to be the case. Also in 2000, ufological writer Claude Maugé produced a negative critique of the COMETA report in Inforespace, the official publication of the Société Belge d'Étude des Phénomènes Spatiaux (Belgian Society for Space Phenomenon Study). Maugé argues that the people presenting the report have misrepresented it as a report officially commissioned by the French government, and that instead it is best understood as a private report commissioned by a non-governmental organization.

On January 31, 2000, in order to get my own clear view of the situation, I asked the interested parties about the status of the ‘Cometa Report’ at the Presidency, the Prime Minister’s office, the General commanding the IHEDN and the president of Cometa. To date (3 May 2000) I have received three answers, as follows:

• By letter dated 23 February General Bastien, of the Special Staff of the President of theRepublic, wrote: “To answer your question, this ‘report’ compiled by members of an association organized under the law of 1901 (ruling most non-commercial private associations in France) did not respond to any official request and does not have any special status. You will have noted (page 7) that its authors, among other pretensions, intended to inform decision-makers on this topic. It is in that spirit that a copy got sent, for information, to the President of the Republic.”


• According to Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre Bayle, head of the Communication Service of IHEDN, “The Institute for Advanced Studies in National Defense wishes to make it clear that statements made by these individuals only engage them, and them alone, and are in no way a reflection of the thoughts of IHEDN, which has no special element of information on this topic.”

Naturally one could argue that such statements are misleading, because political and military authorities know well that real UFOs exist. Yet the position statements quoted above are the only objective reality about the true status afforded to the Cometa report.

Maugé goes on to note that the actual attention given to UFOs by the French government seems to be minimal, suggesting that the French government does not in fact accept the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Maugé is admittedly a proponent of the hypothèse sociopsychologique, falling in the ranks of what the Anglo-American world would known as scientific skeptics. For some, Maugé doubtless isn't a sufficiently credible critic.

This cannot be said of established ufologist Perry Petrakis who criticized the report on similar grounds, suggesting that the report has been misrepresented as an officially-commissioned report, claiming that many important UFO events (Petrakis cites the Belgian UFO wave of 1989-1991) have been neglected in favour of more conspiratorial UFO events such as Roswell, and speculating as the motives for identifying the United States as " the ‘Big Black Wolf’ [whose] debunking scheme, especially (but not only) over Roswell would seem logical if we are to believe they have aquired otherworldly objects." These critics' objections have been criticized in their turn, though not very well, Gildas Bourdais seeming to want to take the existence of the COMETA report as written by former French military and civil-service initials as indicative of broader tendencies within the French government.

In the end, what can be said about the COMETA report? I feel comfortable in saying that Hartley misrepresented the report's importance, that the French state as such does not believe in the extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs. More than that can't reasonably be said: The fact that, as Bourdais points out, so many French government officials are willing to accept the extraterrestrial hypothesis says much, but what of? Belief can't be made to substitute for reality, no matter how fervent it is.