UFO Organizations
Eyes Only: Key USA UFO Groups
Large UFO organizations with national reach, and smaller groups with significant resources, are noted here.
Narrowly focused UFO research is carried out by state, regional, and local UFO organizations. Miami Valley UFO Society, for instance, investigates sightings in Ohio’s Miami Valley area from headquarters in South Vienna, Ohio.
Some organizations, such as the UNO UFO Study Group, maintain Web-or brokered-radio broadcasts, and podcasts.
Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI)/The Disclosure Project
These linked, semi-autonomous organizations founded in 1990 by Steven M. Greer focus on extraterrestrial activity, peaceful interaction with ETs, and issues of national and world security. As the “Disclosure Project” name suggests, the center presses governments, government agencies, and politicians for honest UFO information.
CSETI has had semi-official interactions with Congress, though the group’s calls for UFO hearings have not been acted on. The organizations’ links to the CIA, or to past and present CIA agents, remain a point of discussion in the UFO community.
A minor kerfuffle erupted in 2011, when Greer and CSETI were charged with “operating a commercial venture on a national wildlife refuge.” The venture was a nighttime CSETI skywatch and training session held at Cape Hatteras National Seashore on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. CSETI responded by saying that it had done nothing to compromise its longtime status as a 501c3 nonprofit.
Florida UFO Network
Florida “Big Bend”-region investigations group established in 1991, and based in the Tallahassee metro area, at Havana, Florida. The group emphasizes proper scientific investigation, and “condemns New Age concepts and UFO cults.” It solicits accounts of UFO sightings while taking a dim view of the friendly-alien trope.
Florida UFO Network has origins in the Long Island UFO Network, and devotes a portion of its Web home page to the Long Island group’s former leader, John J. Ford. Ford has been held in a psychiatric facility since late 1997, after being declared unfit to stand trial for conspiracy to murder three Suffolk County, New York, officials that, Ford felt, covered up ET activity.
Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR)
Since its establishment in 1979–80 by people formerly associated with NICAP, the nonprofit FUFOR has pursued scholarly research of “a phenomenon for which there is no conventional explanation.” The group accepts an extraterrestrial explanation of the Roswell crash, and maintains that the U.S. government has an ongoing pattern of deception about that event and other UFO accounts.
FUFOR regards abduction accounts as having physical, rather than psychological, underpinnings.
International Community for Alien Research (I.C.A.R.)
Co-founded by engineering/avionics expert Joe Montaldo to fill gaps in existing UFO statistics and general information. I.C.A.R. maintains an active presence at UFO conferences in the USA and abroad; besides the United States, ten other nations are home to active I.C.A.R. members. (Some sources describe Montaldo as the group’s founder rather than co-founder.) Since the group’s establishment, I.C.A.R. representatives have interviewed more than five thousand UFO contactees and victims of abduction.
Information gleaned from those interviews is carefully collated and catalogued. I.C.A.R. also conducts research and publishes tables detailing contactee blood types, eye color, and other physical traits. It reports on the relationship of UFOs and civil defense, and is a proponent of the Drake Equation, formulated in 1961 by astronomer Dr. Frank Drake to estimate the existence of ten thousand “communicative civilizations” in the Milky Way.
Twenty-eight pages of the controversial Majestic-12 Group Special Operations Manual (see chapter eight) are available on the I.C.A.R. Web site.
The site maintains a link to the Freedom of Information Act site. Montaldo’s UFO Undercover Radio is regularly heard on Internet radio’s LIVE 365 and SoundCloud.
Note: Another, more narrowly focused organization, The International Center for Abduction Research, also uses the ICAR acronym, but without the periods separating the letters.
International UFO Congress (IUFOC)
This Arizona-based organization dates to 1991, and is known for its elaborate annual conference-convention. Laughlin, Nevada, hosted the event until 2011, when Phoenix—a larger and more easily accessible city—became the venue.
The event is known for its aggressive marketing and size—the Guinness Book of World Records recognizes the IUFOC get-together as the largest UFO conference in the world. The 2016 event stretched across five days in February at We-Ko-Pa Resort & Conference Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, with more than thirty speakers, panels, skywatching, vendors, film screenings, cocktail parties, dinners, and a banquet.
The owner-organizer, Open Minds Production LLC, emphasizes that the conference is attended by NASA scientists and other similarly credentialed people, and is not a sideshow event. Nevertheless, a writer with the snarky BuzzFeed news and gossip Web site prefaced his picture coverage of the February 2015 event with “I was on a mission to find me some aliens.”
J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS)
Chicago-area group dedicated to serious academic study of UFOs, founded in 1973 by the late Northwestern University astronomy professor Hynek. He disliked the fringe element involved in UFOlogy, and made clear time and again that the center’s mission was “to end a quarter century of misrepresentation and buffoonery.” From the day he founded the center, Hynek took pains to avoid mentioning CUFOS and Northwestern in the same breath; the university did not care to be linked to a “flying saucer” group, and never officially recognized the center’s work. The center’s office space is not on university property.
Directed now by astrophysicist Mark Rodeghier, CUFOS depends on volunteers to keep the office open to researchers; some five hundred volunteer associates across the country work from their homes, gathering files and news stories, and doing physical investigation of promising sightings. The enormous CUFOS information archive goes back to the 1940s; scholars can access it on a computer database called UFOCAT.
A recent CUFOS mandate, the Abduction Monitoring Project, sends researchers to abduction sites, to measure magnetic fields and other, possible physical traces of UFOs. But that work, and the rest of the center’s agenda, is compromised by modest funding, a continual problem. The center publishes a quarterly magazine, The International UFO Reporter, and an academic annual, The Journal of UFO Studies.
Mutual UFO Network (MUFON)
This very active California-based nonprofit, founded in 1969 by chemistry professor Allen Utke, Motorola operations manager Walt Andrus, and aerospace engineer John Schuessler, collects UFO data and conducts on-site investigations around the world.
MUFON has a membership of about three thousand. Each of the fifty states has an active chapter, and chapters are also maintained in American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Chapters exist in thirty-six other nations. Many members are well established in astronomy, physics, metallurgy, and other hard sciences. The present executive director is Jan Harzan, a nuclear engineer who worked more than thirty years in IBM’s information technology business.
The organization has three stated goals: to investigate UFO reports, promote UFO research, and educate the public. Every month, MUFON receives five hundred to a thousand reports from around the world. The organization gives investigative training to aspiring field investigators, who become qualified to travel to sites, collect data, and help with later evaluation. The key investigative aim is to discern “what is truly an unknown.” MUFON estimates that 75 to 80 percent of cases are resolved as IFOs—identified flying objects.
Information on thousands of cases is available via easy online access to the group’s vast database.
In relatively recent years, the parent organization, as well as state and local chapters, have expanded reportage and research of Men in Black, crop circles, ancient astronauts, time travel, Bigfoot, Chupacabra, animal mutilations, and alternate dimensions.
MUFON sponsors an elaborate and informative national annual conference, as well as local and regional gatherings. Organization members receive a monthly print-and-Web magazine, MUFON UFO Journal.
National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC)
Although modestly funded, this organization, founded in 1974 by firefighter Robert Gribble, is one of the premier repositories of up-to-date UFO sightings. In addition, NUFORC maintains a UFO clip file dating to the late 19th century. NUFORC data have provided invaluable insights into patterns of UFO sightings, such as location, density, time of day, topography, weather conditions, physical states of the witnesses, and more. Government knowledge of UFOs is also investigated.
Reports of new sightings are welcome, though NUFORC warns that “funny” or obvious hoax reports will be discarded. Since its inception, the group has maintained a twenty-four-hour hotline to take initial information about sightings. In recent years, the hotline has fielded some twenty thousand calls annually.
Gribble handed directorship of NUFORC to Peter Davenport in 1994.
Originally based at Gribble’s home in Seattle, NUFORC headquarters moved to a refurbished missile silo outside of Spokane in 2006.
Project 1947
Although carrying a name suggestive of Roswell, this Connecticut-based, volunteer-driven UFO investigatory organization concerns itself with primary documents reflecting the full range of international UFO incidents from what the group calls “the 1947 wave”; and, secondarily, documents pertaining to UFO accounts from 1900 to 1946; and, thirdly, 1948 to 1965. Documents most desired by Project 1947 are official UFO memos and reports, newspaper accounts, and credible personal accounts. The group takes full advantage of the Freedom of Information Act.
At this writing, Project 1947 is excited about fresh documentation of American pilots’ encounters with UFOs during the Korean War.
Many documents uncovered by Project 1949 are accessible on the organization’s Web site. These come from various years between 1909 and 1928, and 1943–55.
Starborn Support
Abductee-support group founded in Maine by twins Audrey and Debbie Hewins. A dozen chapters can be found along the East Coast, from New England to Florida. Chapters are also located in the United Kingdom and Latin America.
The group reaches out not just to abductees, but to persons who have seen UFOs, and those who have had extraterrestrial contact of any sort. A twenty-four-hour hotline is available for reporting and counseling.
Because “Experiencer” events can be isolating, Starborn Support sponsors an annual “Experiencers Speak” conference, and encourages discussion on its Facebook page.