Pictured here is a blue beam that Jim said was emitted outside the door of his house. Jim said he photographed the beam Feb. 7. The photo shows a person Jim declines to identify at right, running into the house. Verdict out on Gulf Breeze aliens Abductions by aliens/17A Official sees light/17A By Dave Richardson News Journal UFO photographs taken in Gulf Breeze may be a clever, complicated flimflam. Or they may be visits and contacts by aliens • - contacts that, if proven, would reshape the priorities of governments, assault religions and threaten the lofty human ego. Some researchers see flaws in the photos and denounce the photographer's story. Others say there are no flaws and no inconsistencies. So far, there is no hard evidence of a hoax. Moreover, a Pensacola polygraph examiner says the photographer who took the dozens of shots believes what he says and believes his photos are real. For sure, there are claims of seeing unidentified flying objects, there are photos of craft in the sky, photos of blue beams, claims of terrorized citizens, claims that creatures spoke to a Gulf Breeze man and that a creature looked in his window and that five of them walked toward him down a road. He says a humming in his head heralds the arrival of UFOs. EXPERTS AT ODDS: Gulf Breeze Mayor Ed Gray III among many who say, flatly, that this is a hoax. But no one has decisively proved the contacts, or the photos, or statements of the man who first saw them, to be fakes. In fact, Bruce Maccabee an optical physicist who works for the Navy in Washington, a respected scientist with a quarter of a century of degrees and research credits - says of the Gulf Breeze UFO photos: "I think there is a good chance it's the real thing." Is Maccabee, despite his credentials, a kook? Philip Klass is Maccabee's counterpart and his nemesis. Klass is the nation's, maybe the world's, chief debunker of UFOs. He leads the assault on claims of UFO sightings from his training as an electrical engineer, his experience over 35 years as editor of Aviation Week, and as a founder 22 years ago c of CSICOP, the Committee for the Study and Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. Klass says Maccabee is "one of the most intelligent, one of the most technically competent, one of the most rigorous" scientists he has ever crossed swords with. Klass puts him among the top five scientists in the nation who study UFOs, maybe among the See ALIENS, 17A
