The Untold Truth Of MUFON | Unveiled

The Untold Truth of MUFON

The Mutual UFO Network has thousands of volunteers across every US state and dozens of countries, and is one of the biggest and oldest civilian UFO organizations in the world. If you’re ever questioning the official line on UFOs, you can join MUFON to answer your burning questions about extraterrestrial life and to talk with likeminded people. But are there some things even MUFON doesn’t want you to know?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re uncovering the untold truth of MUFON.

MUFON was established on May 31st, 1969, as a new way to chart UFO sightings, but it certainly wasn’t the first organization of its kind. While MUFON itself had reasonably modest beginnings (starting off as just the Midwest UFO Network), many of its founding members had actually already gained alien hunting experience via different, smaller networks. Other groups that predated or briefly existed alongside MUFON, for example, were NICAP, or the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, the Civilian Saucer Intelligence, and APRO, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization. APRO was the longest-lived of these early agencies, which all began in the 1950s, but it still ended in 1988. For better or worse then, for the last fifty years, MUFON has been the foremost public UFO investigation group.

But what does MUFON actually do? Among its roughly 4,000 members, MUFON has enlisted more than 600 field investigators. To become a field investigator, you have to complete various exams (written by MUFON) and embark on a short course - or “Boot Camp” - in the Arizona desert, which cost $150 in 2020 (not including your travel or accommodation). It’s these “trained” investigators, though, who go through the UFO sightings the group is inundated with all year round. They’re primarily tasked with determining which ones can be easily debunked… and which can’t. Away from the day job, there’s also an annual MUFON “symposium” where the latest research is shared with other paying members. Then, there’s plenty of MUFON-branded merchandise to get your hands on, and there’s even a three-tier subscription service including “MUFON TV”, which grants access to the group’s vast video archive.

The benefits of an organization like MUFON are its dedication to transparency and getting the truth out there. Even locked behind a membership fee, MUFON’s ever-growing database is still more accessible than high-security jobs at the top of NASA or the US Air Force, where you’d expect more “official” data on aliens to exist. Often, we don’t even know when major governmental investigations into UFOs have been carried out until they get declassified after the fact; it was true for the famous Project Blue Book and for the more recent Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. This high-level secrecy means it’s difficult – maybe even impossible – for the general public to know not only who to call to report a close encounter, but whether or not these issues are even being investigated at all. Thanks to MUFON, though, there is at least one other avenue to go down. And, while MUFON is potentially open to everyone and encourages the pursuit of ufology with or without a science degree, it has counted numerous, highly qualified scientists within its ranks over the years… so not everyone who joins is an amateur.

That said, MUFON’s supposed following of the scientific method has been called into question more than once. The organization professes dedication to science on its website, but various scientists who aren’t on board with it have said that MUFON encourages pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, and that its data is not reliable. Arguably its most damning reality is that, despite operating for fifty years, it has yet to publish conclusive evidence of aliens, besides continually stating that it’s still the group’s belief that aliens are out there. It’s little wonder then, that plenty are unimpressed with MUFON’s methods, with one of the most popular criticisms being that it takes only two days of basic training to become an all-important MUFON field investigator. By comparison, in the US, it takes years of hard work for someone to become even the lowest rank of detective, so MUFON’s critics argue that similar levels of robust, deductive reasoning just aren’t possible to achieve after a weekend’s worth of boot camp... Add into the equation that many MUFON members reportedly join already believing that aliens exist, and the accusations of a severe confirmation bias throughout the group have been constantly levelled at them.

But, more disturbingly, MUFON has found itself and its leaders at the center of numerous other controversies and scandals in recent years; controversies completely unrelated to UFO method or the search for alien life. In 2018, John Ventre, the State Director for MUFON’s Pennsylvania chapter, went on a racist tirade on Facebook, in which he claimed that the Netflix show “Dear White People” was “anti-white”, and he also voiced opposition to interracial couples. Despite widespread calls for Ventre to be dealt with, MUFON’s other directors appeared hesitant to criticise him or anyone else with similar beliefs within the group. The lack of action led many of MUFON’s legitimate scientists - including Doctor Chris Cogswell - to resign in outrage. Cogswell had been made MUFON’s Director of Research, but said in a public statement on Twitter that, despite Ventre eventually being stripped of his title, he was still an “active member” of the group, and was even in charge of organizing that year’s symposium. Other directors have also stepped down due to Ventre and MUFON’s reported connections to various far-right donors.

One person who was slow to criticize Ventre at the time was Executive Director Jan Harzan, who blamed “social media” rather than bigotry for the backlash against Ventre. But in July 2020, Harzan found himself at the center of a scandal of his own making. He was arrested in California for attempting to solicit sexual activity with a detective he had believed was a minor. And it wasn’t his only offense, with the police reporting that he’d committed “multiple felonies”. MUFON’s Board of Directors swiftly fired Harzan and said “he will no longer serve any role in the organization”.

Cutting ties with Harzan and, at long last, Ventre, might mean that MUFON can get back to what it was originally there for: watching the skies to freely investigate UFO claims. And, it should be said that many of MUFON’s on-the-ground members, those who go to local meetings but aren’t involved in managing the group, have spoken out against the likes of Ventre and Harzan. The organization also takes a relatively decentralized approach, so MUFON’s many chapters mostly work independently of each other without taking orders from on high… meaning there could be opportunities to rebuild.

As a collective, however, MUFON now has many high-profile scandals to contend with, which have triggered mass resignations in recent years… so it’s easy to wonder if, at more than fifty years old, the Mutual UFO Network hasn’t now run its course. Perhaps more contemporary, more outwardly scientific groups should come to the fore of civilian UFO investigation? Clearly, in the internet age, publishing potential evidence for the existence of aliens is easier than ever… so the future of such a group looks to be very different to what it was in the past.

Until we have solid proof that aliens do or don’t exist, people are always going to be interested in investigating and theorizing on UFOs… but it’s unclear if large, publicly run groups like this one are still fit for purpose. And that’s the untold truth of MUFON.