Richard
D. Hall (December 25, 1930 - July 17, 2009) was
a leading Ufologist and proponent of the extraterrestrial
hypothesis to explain UFO sightings; he also
wrote books and articles dealing with the role of women
in the American Civil War.
Biography
Hall
was born December 25, 1930, in Hartford, Connecticut.
He held a Bachelor's degree in
Philosophy from Tulane University
in New Orleans and lived most of his life in
the Washington, D.C. area.
When
the Korean War was imminent, Richard enlisted
in the fledgling U.S. Air Force in 1949 and
served into early 1951,
followed by six years
in the Air Force Reserve. After returning to
civilian life, he enrolled at Tulane University, New Orleans,
Louisiana, in 1954. Attracted by then emerging news about
sightings of "flying saucers" (UFOs) in the
1950s, he opted to make himself available to the National
Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena
(NICAP)
then being formed.
From
1958 to 1969, he worked for the National
Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena
(NICAP).
He began as executive secretary, and eventually became
NICAP's
assistant director. In this role Hall was both an eyewitness
and participant to much of the early history of the UFO
phenomenon in the United States. Working with NICAP
director Donald
Keyhoe, he helped lobby the United States
Congress to hold public hearings and investigations into
the UFO phenomenon.
In
1964, Hall researched, edited, and wrote much of The
UFO Evidence, a compendium of the best UFO
sightings and incidents of the 1940s, 1950's, and early
1960s. A copy of The UFO Evidence
was sent to every member of Congress in 1964, and the
book is still regarded by many UFO researchers and historians
as one of the best UFO books ever published.
Following
Keyhoe's ouster as NICAP
director in 1969, Hall left NICAP
to work as a technical writer and editor. He continued
to work in the UFO field. He served as the director of
the Fund
for UFO Research, which provides grant
money to researchers working in UFO studies. He was also
the editor of the MUFON
Journal, the official publication of
the Mutual
UFO Network (MUFON),
the largest civilian UFO group in America today. In 2001,
he wrote a sequel to The UFO
Evidence; it covered major UFO incidents from
the mid-1960s through the 1990s. He was also the chief
editor of the Journal
of UFO History, which is published six
times per year. Hall was a strong proponent of the theory
that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft from an advanced
alien civilization, and he was an active member of the
UFO Updates message board and
website.
In
1964, "high level White House discussions on what
to do if an alien intelligence was discovered in space"
took place. As a result, CIA
director John McCone initiated a review of the possibility
that UFOs might represent a threat to the United States.
CIA
agents interviewed Richard Hall, who provided them with
data about UFO sightings from NICAP's
records.
In
1997, the CIA
released a report called CIA's
role in the study of U.F.O.'s 1947-90 by Gerald
K. Haines, which admitted that the agency had routinely
lied about the causes of UFO reports for decades, blaming
the incidents on weather conditions such as "temperature
inversions" or "ice crystals".
Instead, these sightings were of secret aircraft, such
as the SR-71 or U-2 spy planes.
Pulitzer
Prize winning science writer William J. Broad wrote about
the release of the report in the New
York Times, quoting Hall:
"It's
very significant", said Richard Hall, chairman
of the Fund
for U.F.O. Research, a group in Washington.
"Certainly they've lied about not having any interest
in the subject. But I don't know of any other deception
like this."
John E. Pike, head of space policy at the Federation
of American Scientists, also based in Washington,
said the admission raised questions about other Federal
cover-ups involving U.F.O.'s. "The flying-saucer
community is definitely onto something", in charging
that the military is hiding something, Mr. Pike said.
According
to Broad, Pike and other aerospace experts accepted much
of the government's explanation of the earlier deceptions,
while Hall continued to believe that the government was
covering up evidence of the extraterrestrial origins of
UFOs.
To
supplement his income as a UFO researcher, Hall worked
for many years as an
abstractor-indexer for the Congressional Information Service
in Bethesda, Maryland. He did similar work
for the National
Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism,
Columbia
Telecommunications and the National
Council on Aging. A member of the Authors
Guild, Hall also wrote numerous books and
magazine articles dealing with the role of women in the
American Civil War, and he maintained a strong interest
in Civil War history through his life.
Books
and papers on the UFO Subject by Richard Hall:
The UFO Evidence, Volume II:
A Thirty Year Report. (2001)
"The Science of UFOs: Facts
vs. Skepticism", International
Space Sciences Organization, web site: www.isso.org
(December 1999)
"Signals, Noise, and UFO
Waves", International
UFO Reporter. (Winter 1998)
"Bridging 50 Years of UFO
History", chapter in UFOs: 1947-1997,
edited by Hilary Evans & Dennis Stacy (1998)
"Uninvited Guests: A Documented
History of UFO Sightings, Alien Encounters & Coverups".
Santa Fe, NMex. (1988).
The UFO Evidence.
NICAP
(1964)
Source:
http://www.nicap.org/bios/hall.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_H._Hall
