MUFON: A look at the Organization.

WHAT WE LOST
This is the sad part of the story because we lost a lot. The reference made to "We" in this section is directed to the research community at large and not just MUFON general membership.

First and foremost in my assessment we lost our good friends at BAASS. I thought that the people at BAASS including the infamous Mr."B" were pretty good guys in all of this. After all they put up the funding which paid all of the salaries and expenses for the SIP project.

As indicated part of my responsibility was to make decisions about deployments for the SIP Project investigators and review the case reports. Deployment was solely my responsibility and I had complete control of who went where, when and for how long. No one at BAASS ever interfered with us in this regard!

The terms of the contract agreement between MUFON and BAASS were pretty simple. MUFON provided data from sighting reports in exchange for BAASS paying funds directly to MUFON each month. BAASS was prohibited from exercising any management authority over MUFON. There was nothing sinister about any of this. We worked with these people on a day to day basis and form my prospective they kept their part of the deal.

BAASS investigated cases and used their case report information privately. They were paying us very generously for information and providing enough funding that we could freely investigate any cases we chose to and write reports about anything we desired without restriction. That was very powerful, and if it would have continued, the research community "we" would have benefited from it greatly.

The other great loss was that of the leadership and collaborative effort on the part of some very dedicated individuals from both MUFON and BAASS, that came to gather in that short time to create what became the SIP project. The countless hours of hard work, the diligence of the dispatchers who surveyed the data, the objective investigation, and the investigators who would deploy on a moment's notice all made the program what it was. I am proud to have been a part of that collaborative effort!

Finally, and worst of all "we" lost a lot of our own credibility . . . bottom line we had $672,000 that was put up to fund our research (with not very many strings attached). Less than one year later, after the dust settled from the all the infighting, avariciousness and paranoia, the program was shut down, with over half the money left unspent still on the table, leaving the UFO research community at large as the big looser!

END REPORT - RRL

References:

[1] Note: more information about the structure of the BAASS MUFON SIP Project program can be found in the blog article of March 6th "What caused the Failure of the BAASS - MUFON SIP Program?"

http://www.thedarksideofthelookingglass.com/

[2] Vallée, J. F. and Davis, E. W., “Incommensurability, Orthodoxy and the Physics of High Strangeness: A 6-Layer Model for Anomalous Phenomena,” in Proceedings of the 2nd International Forum on Science, Religion and Consciousness Oct. 2003, eds. J. Fernandes and N. L. Santos, Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Consciousness, University Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Portugal, 2005, pp. 225-239.

See full text (www.jacquesvallee.com) both in English and French. Follow the link to "personal research"

[3] MUFON UFO Journal - August 2008 Volume No. 484 page 15 see: photo and article

[4] MUFON UFO Journal - May 2008 Volume No. 485 page 22 see: Director's Message - MUFON STAR Team Coordinator

[5] MUFON UFO Journal - February 2008 Volume No. 490 page 11 see: STAR Team presents new logo

Posted by Richard Lang at 7:00 PM

http://www.thedarksideofthelookingglass.com/2011/03/mufon-baass-sip-project-what-we-learned.html