Technorati.com, Tim Brosnan, July 30, 2010 at 8:15 am
With nearly 30,000 flight hours under his belt, Jim Courant’s qualifications as a major passenger airline captain are solid. So is his conviction that the UFO phenomenon is real.
"I got the proof that I was after,” Courant says. “That’s the part I won’t discuss.But obviously something has kept me in this, taking the chances I’ve taken.”
The nature of the proof that he found isn’t all that Courant won’t discuss. Concerned about professional repercussions, he declines to confirm the name of his airline. Nor will he reveal the identities of some high level officials who he says have confirmed the extraterrestrial presence in conversations with him.
There are a few names that he will drop, however.
Astronaut Gordon Cooper, whose own unambiguous UFO encounter is a matter of public record, was a friend of Courant’s. He’s also traded stories with astronaut Edgar Mitchell, whose 2009 statement at the National Press Building calling for the U.S. government to come clean on the topic of UFOs garnered such fleeting media attention.
The short shrift Mitchell received in the press gives Courant little cause for optimism that future media events will turn the tide.
Media obscura
“A national hero and the sixth man to walk on the moon says that your government and others have been in contact with ETs for 67 years. That’s an incredible statement. It was buried on page seven the next day in the NY Post. Then Rush Limbaugh got in on the act.”
Courant’s frustration with the trickle-down effect of what X-Conference organizer Steve Bassett calls the “truth embargo” is obvious when he’s asked to comment on the effectiveness of the disclosure movement.
“I’d like to say that Steve is getting somewhere with what he’s trying to do,”Courant says. “But the internet is the new sheriff in town. There’s so much B.S. that it’s made it tough for people to know what to believe.”
Saying that he’s ready to unload his 5,000-volume library of UFO books, Courant talks with the road-weary circumspection of someone who’s told his story countless times, and who’s taken a few hits for the telling.
“It’s ruined my social life,” says Courant, who is divorced and lives in the Carolinas.
“I just don’t want the grief,” he says, referring to the backlash that airline pilots sometimes face within their own ranks when they express an interest in UFOs.
“In 1991, two co-pilots did turn me in, saying that the stuff I was talking about was off the wall,” Courant says. “I ended up getting a four-day check ride.Even the FAA showed up. Nothing was ever said about what it was about, but atthe end of the four days, they said, ‘You fly a good airplane.’ There was never any question about my ability to fly.”
Speaking in the documentary film “Fastwalkers,” Courant said that two of his colleagues had been fired from their jobs as pilots for doing UFO-related interviews while in uniform.
But Courant, now 59, continues to fly, despite his active involvement in UFO research. He’s spoken on the topic as far a field as China and Brazil and,closer to home, in Gaithersburg, MD where he participated in the 2005 X-Conference “Seen from Above” pilots’ panel.
Courant was invited in 1992 by an NBC affiliate in Raleigh, North Carolina to host"New Perspective," a live daily television show focusing on topics similar to those popularized by NBC's “Unsolved Mysteries” series, for which he’d served as a consultant.
“We did 534 shows, covering many aspects of the UFO subject,” Courant says. He traveled extensively taping interviews for the show which he co-hosted with a woman he’ll identify only as “Dea,”explaining that she now prefers to maintain a low profile.
Quest for knowledge in the avalanche of lies
Asked about his own UFO sightings, Courant says that he’s had three, the most notable of which occurred in 1995 while he was flying from New Mexico to Los Angeles.
“My co-pilot wouldn’t talk about it afterward,” he says, describing a large,oval-shaped, blue-green object that approached from the left, then shot up at a45-degree angle in a bright flash of light.
But Courant acknowledges that expert testimony is no match for what he says Gordon Cooper referred to as the “huge avalanche of lies” obstructing disclosure.
Google “Jim Courant” and you’ll find, among other things, a $20 DVD titled “Jim Courant Presents UFO Perspective,” which Courant says he’s never seen and did not authorize. Search for him on YouTube and you’ll find excerpts from an interview he did with black ops scientist and alleged contactee Dr. MichaelWolfe, which Courant says was posted without permission.
"I've taken a lot of heat for that," he says, lamenting the ill effects of information age technology, even as it raises public awareness (and acceptance) of UFOs.
“It’s sad that between your astronauts and your trained pilots, there’s still the put-down factor. I’ve learned from 20 years that you’ve got the real deal people, and the people who are in it for the ego and to make some money and fame.”
“For me," Courant says, "it’s ended up being a quest for knowledge.”
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