THE PENTAGON'S UFO DATABASE ENDED UP IN THE FAA RULEBOOK
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Apparently, somebody brought a filing cabinet. Somewhere around 2008, while the American public was busy watching the economy implode, a Las Vegas outfit called Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) was constructing an enormous database of UFO reports under a Pentagon research contract. By March 2009, the operation reported 234,364 entries across six databases. An impressive number, although many entries came from historical catalogs containing duplicates. A quarter-million records don't necessarily mean a quarter-million separate mysteries. But the really peculiar business was happening over at the Federal Aviation Administration. In January 2009, BAASS began working to replace the National Institute for Discovery Sciences, another Bigelow organization, in FAA reporting guidance. The contractor's March progress report describes negotiations with federal officials to accomplish precisely that. And by Feb...