UFOs, DISINFORMATION AND DECEPTION

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UFOs, DISINFORMATION AND

DECEPTIONSimon Harvey-Wilson

Many ufologists claim that the US and UK governments are doing secretresearch into UFOs while telling their citizens that they do not exist. If thisis true, an understanding of deception and disinformation techniques maymake us less vulnerable to being fooled. For obvious reasons fewgovernments publish much information about such techniques. However,deception is frequently used during wars, so by studying some historicalexamples we might learn about what is happening today. Because officialdisinformation is not the only source of confusion about UFOs, this article

will also discuss other sources

Misleading information

Deception is to create a misleading impression in your target audience by your actions. It issomething that you do to mislead whoever may be observing you, either on a small or large scale. Deception might be directed at the intelligence services of a country that you are at war with, or atyour own citizens during peacetime. Most intelligence services see little difference between warand peace time, and unfortunately if you wish to fool the international community you generallyhave to mislead your own citizens as well. Deception techniques take advantage of the fact thatpeople tend to think that information they had to ferret out is more likely to be true than if it werehanded to them on a platter.

We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent

facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.

~John F. Kennedy

An example of deception was revealed in an article in the Sunday Times entitled “Germ warreports exposed as hoax” (1998). The report tells how released Russian intelligence files hadrevealed that in 1952 the North Koreans had deliberately infected a couple of their own citizenswith plague bacilli, and then used tissue samples from their bodies to convince the world that theAmericans were using germ warfare in the Korean conflict. The United States had unsuccessfullydenied the claims because, as the article says, “Historians had questioned whether the Koreans


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and Chinese could have mobilized thousands of people and faked evidence from scores ofdoctors, scientists and officials. But the new papers show they did exactly that.” This illustratesthat some governments will occasionally go to inordinate lengths to mislead.

Disinformation is the release or leaking of misleading information. I think it was Churchill whoclaimed that to keep something secret sometimes one needed “To surround the truth with a tissueof lies.” By releasing three parts disinformation to one part truth you can confuse and mislead yourtarget audience. This is especially important with the UFO phenomenon because, unlike technicalsecrets, which can be kept locked up, UFOs appear in public so a completely different technique isneeded to keep them secret.

UFOs were probably first noticed by Western governments soon after WW II. It is not within thescope of this article to discuss why the authorities decided to keep them secret, but once thatdecision had been made, the best way to do it was obvious. If they could not make UFOsdisappear physically, the solution was to make them disappear psychologically using perceptionmanagement or what the military calls psy-ops (psychological operations). Regardless of whatmany people were seeing, they simply decided to define UFOs out of existence, and ridicule theminority who did claim to see them. I believe that it will eventually be shown that the UFO cover-uphas been the most successful deception campaign in human history. Ironically, it continues to beso effective that those in authority may be concerned that the public will refuse to accept the trutheven if concrete evidence is presented to them. In other words, the continued UFO secrecy maypartly be a result of the effectiveness of the earlier secrecy.

For ease of recall, the categories used in deception and disinformation involve five verbs beginning with the letter D. These are: to deny, distract, demean, deceive, and divide, and it is nothard to think of examples from the history of ufology that illustrate each of them. These techniquesare also frequently used in politics, especially around election times.

Military History

Some might challenge the suggestion that a UFO deception campaign could succeed to the extentthat many ufologists claim. However there have been several historical precedents thatdemonstrate how to keep a secret under difficult circumstances. Michael Lindeman (1999) givesus the example of the US government concealing the fact that German U-boats were attackingmerchant ships off the eastern American coast during the early years of WW II. “Today fewAmericans have even the slightest notion that between December, 1941 and September, 1942,292 vessels were torpedoed and hundreds of merchant seaman lost, most within sight of Americanbeaches”. Wreckage and bodies that washed up on the shore were impounded by the military,newspapers were persuaded not to publish stories about it, and “those who were in thegovernment information loop on this policy were strongly informed that any breach of securitywould be considered treason, a crime punishable by execution”. Not surprisingly the informationwas not made public. There is every reason to suspect that a similar policy exists today aboutUFOs. The question we need to ask is, when is it going to end?

There are a few interesting books about deception that I would recommend. None of themmention UFOs, but they give numerous historical examples which reveal the imagination, cunning,ruthlessness and audacity that exponents of deception and disinformation employ. The first is TheDeception Planners: My Secret War (1980) by Dennis Wheatley who was a famous best-selling


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author at the outbreak of WW II. He describes how he became a deception planner in the officesof the British War Cabinet, and reveals how important such planners were to the war effort. Theyhad access to all War Cabinet documents and came up with some amazing ideas to mislead theGermans into sending troops to places where they would do the least harm. Wheatley clearly setsout the basic guidelines of deception and illustrates them with examples. It does not take muchimagination to see that those rules could easily be used today in misleading the public and othergovernments about what the USA really knows about UFOs. This is an important point. Forexample, Stanton Friedman claims that by spreading convincing cold war rumours that they hadmastered UFO technology, the USA might have deterred other governments from using that sametechnology to attack them (Lindeman, 1991, p.26).

A more recent book on deception is The Art of Military Deception (1997) by Mark Lloyd which givesan historical overview of the subject from ancient times to the present. Some of his examplesshould be of interest to ufologists. During WW II the British set up propaganda radio stations that,while actually based in England, pretended to be German stations transmitting from Europe. Oneof them was specifically aimed at German U-boat crews. It played the latest German dance music,had request programs and, “contained dedications for genuine birthdays and anniversariesgleaned from censored mail passing between German navy prisoners of war and their families”. Among the music, news stories and highly detailed reports of bomb damage in Germany was,“slipped subversive information, morale-sapping innuendo and highly accurate details of thesituation on the home front”. As Lloyd points out, “The effect on U-boat crews, cramped, inconstant danger and thousands of miles from home in the mid-Atlantic, can well be imagined”. Asthis example reveals, rather than simply disseminating false information, a deception source mayaim to become a trusted organ of influence with the purpose of gently guiding their targetaudience’s views in a desired direction. To do this they do have to publish some accurateinformation. Conspiracy theorists generally assume that the US government monitors UFOresearchers, and may at times wish to divert their attention away from areas of higher nationalsecurity significance towards less threatening topics. One way of doing this would be for them tohave secretly funded a public UFO research organisation or magazine whose covert intentionwould have been to centralize the attention of ufologists, keep them distracted and amused withlow level, narrowly focussed ‘scientific’ information, while actually discussing very little of genuinerelevance. In other words, ufologists perhaps need to pay attention not to what some of today’sUFO magazines are getting excited about, but rather what it is that they consistently do notdiscuss. We also need to realise that there is every chance that a few leading ufologists are not asdedicated to revealing the truth as they might appear. We need to distinguish however betweenwhat we could call double-agent ufologists and those who publish misleading information in orderto help sell their books or promote themselves, although pretending to be the latter would be idealcover for those who were actually the former.

Another book that reveals the high level of secrecy and planning that goes into covert deceptionactivities is Op JB: The Last Great Secret of the Second World War (1996) by ChristopherCreighton, which describes how British Intelligence secretly smuggled Martin Bormann, Hitler’sprivate secretary and executor, out of the ruins of Berlin at the end of the war and gave him a newidentity in England, despite the worldwide manhunt for him. This was done in exchange forBormann giving them access to the vast fortune that the Germans had looted from across Europe. The book also reveals the absolute ruthlessness used to keep vital information secret. Forexample, Creighton claims that, as an undercover British agent, he was required to blow up aDutch submarine and all its crew just to prevent them from revealing that British and USIntelligence had been forewarned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. This suggests that, asa last resort, people might be killed (‘terminated with extreme prejudice’) to protect importantenough UFO information, provided that it could be done in a deniable fashion.


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A final recommendation is the book By Way of Deception: The Making & Unmaking of a MossadOfficer (1990) by Victor Ostrovsky & Claire Hoy. Once again UFOs are not mentioned, but Ibelieve that anyone that is serious about ufology needs to read a few such books to learn, firstlyjust how little they previously knew about deception, and secondly how imaginative, ruthless,cynical, well-trained and well-funded the professionals who work in such fields really are. Unfortunately, and with no disrespect intended, this means that, in comparison to those managingthe UFO cover-up, the average ufologist is an absolute amateur, and we need to realise that if theauthorities really want to mislead us, there is probably very little we can do about it.

Examples

Let us look at a few examples of possible UFO deception.

In his book Above Top Secret (1989) Timothy Good describes a 1962 incident where some USnavy aviators, who were temporarily at Wright-Patterson Air Force base, entered a hanger lookingfor sports equipment to use during their daily fitness workout. Once inside they were stunned tofind a flying saucer-shaped object about four metres wide suspended by two engine test stands. Itwas roped off and surrounded by eight guards. They were promptly told to leave “by an air policesentry with a sub-machine gun”, and later the senior pilot was reprimanded by his general forbreaking security.

There are several points to be made about this incident. If the story is true, we could ask whysomething that is so secret that it warrants eight guards is kept in an unlocked room. Surely abetter means of security would have been to lock the door and put the guards outside, thusensuring that they too did not see what was inside? Secondly, if one didn’t want people to see theUFO, why rope it off? A screen would have been far more effective. The standard of security inthis example was so incompetent that whoever was supervising it should have been promptlycourt-martialled, unless it was deliberately designed that way.

I do not know if this scenario was actually an example of deception, but we could ask whatpurpose the incident might have served if it was? By ‘accidentally’ allowing the pilots to see thecraft surrounded with armed guards, and then accentuating the importance of the situation with asecurity reprimand from their general, the whole incident probably became indelibly etched in theirminds. Timothy Good writes that, once outside, the pilots “had reassured each other that the goodold US had developed, or had all along, flying saucers in service”, and the story then found its wayinto his best-selling UFO book for anyone to read. So much for secrecy! Perhaps the wholeepisode was carefully designed to reassure US servicemen, and later the public, that the Pentagonhad the UFO situation under control, even if it didn’t.

Even if various government are involved in UFO deception, their motives and methods may varyconsiderably. The apparent abduction of Franck Fontaine at Cergy-Pontoise on the outskirts ofParis in November 1979 is a good example. The story is quite complex and is described in severalUFO books.

Franck and a couple of his friends were loading their car with clothes to sell on their stall in amarket about sixty kilometres away. They had got up before dawn and, while the others broughtthe clothes down from their flat, Franck remained in the car to stop it stalling. They then saw abrilliantly shining UFO and several smaller lights near the car and, after some confusion, Franckwas found to be missing. The incident was reported to the police and received nation-widepublicity. One week later Franck reappeared near where he had disappeared and was amazed todiscover that he had been missing for so long.


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Most books that mention it leave the case open, however in Jacques Vallee’s book Revelations:Alien Contact and Human Deception (1991) we get quite a different story.

Vallee quotes an unnamed official from French Air Force headquarters who, in November 1980,admitted that the Cergy-Pontoise abduction had actually been carried out by the Frenchgovernment in order to observe the reactions and behaviour of the police, media, scientificinvestigators and the public. The abduction had been authorized by a member of the Frenchcabinet and no more than fifteen people knew what had happened. Franck Fontaine had beengrabbed, kept drugged in a secure place for a week and then returned to where he had beenabducted without knowing what had really happened to him.

Vallee advises that, to eliminate such official deception in future, abductees should be promptlychecked for syringe marks and given blood and urine tests to check for any knockout drugs. IfVallee’s report is true, we have the ironic situation of a leading Western government trying to foolthe public into thinking that UFO abductions do exist, rather that their usual denials. The questionthat ufologists may need to ask themselves now, is whether other countries carry out similar fakeabductions to assess public reactions, and if so, how often do they do it?

In 1997, Sydney engineer and inventor Ted Roach published a small book entitled The Physics ofA Flying Saucer. Roach believes that the propulsion of UFOs involves discoveries about a unifiedfield theory and the nature of time. He describes how he had submitted several patentapplications to the Australian Industrial Property Organisation (AIPO) for, “ten inventions formachines in gravitational, electric and magnetic fields” and claims that, “The pending patentcomprised the physics of flying saucers and other applications using the Unified Field Theory andsix dimensions of space time”.

In reply to his application Roach received a letter from the AIPO which said that, “due to the natureof the invention and the possible military interest, the applications have been forwarded to theDepartment of Defence and the Australian Safeguards Office for a determination as to whether ornot a publication prohibition order should be placed on the inventions” (p.116). In the meantimeRoach was told not to reveal details of his invention. A couple of months later his application wascleared by both those authorities, and a copy of the relevant letter appears in the back of his book.

Most people would probably have never heard of the Australian Safeguards Office, however it iswell known to many ufologists and ‘free energy’ researchers, that patent applications in mostWestern countries can result in a new invention being confiscated by the authorities and aninformation blackout being placed on the subject. This generally only happens if the SafeguardsOffice believes that the invention has genuine national security implications, otherwise there is nopoint in classifying it.

So what are we to conclude from Roach’s case? If Roach is telling the truth, can we assume thathe was allowed to proceed with his patent application because someone decided that his inventionwouldn’t work, or was of no relevance? As Roach points out, if UFOs don’t exist why shouldanyone be interested in his invention? Are we to conclude therefore that the AustralianDepartment of Defence and the Australian Safeguards Office do know that UFOs exist? Or shouldwe be cautious and suspect that someone behind the scenes saw Roach’s patent application asan ideal opportunity to muddy the waters a bit more by pretending to be interested in hisinventions, confiscating them for a few months, and then handing them back knowing that hewould probably write about the incident in a book? I do not know the answer to these questions,but it may be possible that, if UFOs do exist, the authorities do not want any information about theirpropulsion systems to be made public for reasons of national security, and so are obliged tointercept patent applications such as Roach’s, just in case they are on the right track.


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There are numerous examples where misleading UFO-related information appears not to havebeen generated by disinformation experts. Plenty of magazines and Internet sites publish suspectUFO information. An example of a misleading UFO-related photograph can be found in theFebruary 1996 edition of Encounters magazine. The cover photo, described as a ‘WorldExclusive’, showed two jet fighters accompanying a black triangular craft that is being refuelled inmidair. The photo seems to have been taken towards a bright yellow sunset so that all four craftare just black silhouettes. The article inside (p.68) claims that the photo was taken from theground by a man on holiday in Cornwall, and reveals that the military has been concealing theirconnection with such craft. However, an article in the March/April 1996 edition of UFOMagazineby Bill Rose claimed that the details in the Encounters story were completely fictitious,and that the arial refuelling photo is actually a, “simulation photograph of an Aurora Project aircraft”created by him to illustrate a sighting of such a craft being refuelled by a KC-135 tanker over the

North Sea in 1989.

Bill Rose’s UFO Magazine articles are very informative and well-referenced. He appears to be amine of information on modern military aircraft and it seems reasonable to believe his account ofthe photo’s origins. So here we have a simulated B&W photo, created with good intentions toillustrate a genuine sighting report, which ends up being superimposed onto a colour photo of asunset on the cover of a rival UFO magazine to illustrate a fictitious conspiracy theory article aboutthe air force. Ironically, Bill Rose’s article also suggests that the original triangular craft sightinghelps prove that the US or British air force have secretly developed such a craft. It would be hardto invent a more confusing scenario that does so little to enhance the credibility of UFO research.

The UFO literature increasingly contains revelations by people who claim to have had something todo with UFOs or aliens while working for their governments. Examples are Bob Lazar (1991); NickPope (1996, 1997); Col. Philip Corso’s book The Day After Roswell (1997); Dan Sherman’s AboveBlack: Project Preserve Destiny (1997); Michael Wolf’s The Catchers of Heaven (1996); and IngoSwann’s Penetration (1998). Dr Steven Greer who runs the Centre for the Study of ExtraterrestrialIntelligence (www.cseti.org/) claims to have numerous US government insiders prepared to testifybefore an official UFO inquiry, if given permission to break their security oaths. Some insider leaksmay be because these people are no longer worried about breaking their security oaths becausethey are old and sick, while others may have been persuaded to take part in one lastdisinformation project.

So, how much insider information should we believe? It is a standard security practice tocompartmentalise highly classified research, meaning that top secret information is only given tothose with a need to know. Christopher Creighton claims that, of the dozens of people involved insmuggling Martin Bormann out of Germany, only three or four actually knew who he was. The restwere only told he was someone important. This suggests that few insiders would be able to leakthe full picture about government UFO research, even if they wanted to.

An example of an insider not being given the full picture is Michael Wolf who claims to have beenthe head of a friendly US team profiling the various alien groups visiting earth, while anotherbranch of the military (which he says he wasn’t supposed to know about) was using futuristicenergy-beam weapons to attempt to shoot them down. This duplicitous state of affairs,simultaneously friendly and hostile, sounds so ridiculous that one is tempted to believe that it mightbe true. However, a good disinformation planner would obviously attempt to create plausiblescenarios.

Some leading ufologists warn us to be extremely suspicious of insiders offering convincing UFO


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information. Such a scenario might be a deception set-up in which the ufologist, if sufficientlynaïve, publishes the information using his or her credibility (‘Trust me, I’m a ufologist!’), only tohave it convincingly refuted some time later. Not only does this sabotage his or her credibility, andthat of ufology in general, but it also helps persuade others that might in future be leaked genuineinside information, not to believe it, or to abandon the field all together out of sheer frustration.

Disinformation or Education?

In this vein we need to ask ourselves whether the Majestic 12 documents (which supposedlydescribes a top secret UFO briefing given to President-elect Eisenhower in 1952) or the ‘AlienAutopsy’ film are genuine? (A copy of the MJ12 documents can be found in the appendix ofTimothy Good’s Above Top Secret.) Could a sophisticated disinformation game be being playedhere? Those in charge of the UFO cover-up, assuming that someone is in charge of it, probablyhave contingency plans ready in case, for example, a UFO landed in the middle the OlympicGames, or a football grand final. They would hopefully also know that one day they must reveal atleast part of the truth about UFOs, so they might be preparing us for such a revelation by feedingus genuine UFO information in a semi-fictitious but entertaining form. It has even been suggestedthat popular films such as Men In Black are part of that educational program.

When one considers the Pentagon’s increasingly unlikely Roswell explanations, parachutetest-dummies indeed!, we could be excused for suspecting that they are implying that the Roswellstory does have some validity, but that it is still too early for them to admit it out loud. Let us beaware therefore that any future US president’s ‘full and frank admission’ about UFOs has everyprobability of being only a self-serving part of the whole picture.

Following on from the ‘Are we being educated?’ question, what are we to make of the US spaceagency NASA and a majority of its astronauts acting as if UFOs do not exist? How could NASAnot know about UFOs? Is their behaviour just a public deception? Although a civilian agency,NASA is still subject to national security restrictions, regardless of how much its employees mightdislike it.

In his book Unconventional Flying Objects: A Scientific Analysis (1995), NASA rocket scientist PaulHill points out that, while he worked there, NASA’s policy was that, regardless of the evidence,UFOs do not exist. He was not happy with this situation, but could do nothing about it. Unlike themilitary, scientists tend to see scientific discoveries as transcending national boundaries. So wecould have some sympathy for those NASA scientists who might dearly wish to make what theyknow about UFOs public, but are perhaps reluctantly obliged either to keep silent or makemisleading statements about them. However, even if not actively engaged in spreadingdisinformation, such silence does contribute to misleading the public.

That brings us to the various Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) projects, which are nowfunded largely by private enterprise. How is it possible for millions of dollars and hours of valuableradio telescope time, which includes Australia’s Parkes radio telescope, to be spent listening foralien radio messages while some of those very aliens appear to be flying over our heads. Anarticle in Flying Saucer Review by Jorge Martin reports that numerous UFOs, including some verylarge ones, have been seen near the radio astronomy observatory at Arecibo in Puerto Rico, whichis involved in SETI.

There are not many researchers employed by SETI (computers do most of the listening) so is itpossible that they too have been misinformed about UFOs? In an end-of-the-millennium article inScientific American (Dec, 1999) entitled “Is There Life Elsewhere in the Universe?” SETI scientistsJill Tarter and Christopher Chyba write that, “Despite tabloid reports of aliens and artefacts


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everywhere, scientific exploration so far has revealed no good evidence for any such things”. It ishard to know whether such comments are the product of ignorance or deception. It is clearlyuntrue that UFO information comes only from tabloids, and Tarter and Chyba neglect to mentionwhich ‘scientific exploration’ it was that ‘revealed no good evidence’ for UFOs. Had they beenmore honest, they might have admitted that there was plenty of good scientific evidence for theexistence of UFOs, but that they were either unwilling or not permitted to mention it.

Could SETI have a covert purpose apart from listening for aliens? As Terence McKenna writes,“To search expectantly for a radio signal from an extraterrestrial source is probably asculture-bound a presumption as to search the galaxy for a good Italian restaurant.” Even if we didpick up an alien message from a planet that was, let’s say, twenty-five light-years away, what arewe then going to do? It would be a very tedious conversation if we answered it, and then had towait another fifty years (twenty-five years there and twenty-five back) for their reply.

While keeping a few computer engineers, software designers and astronomers in gainfulemployment, perhaps SETI actually serves the more important purpose of introducing the public tothe idea that there are almost certainly aliens out there somewhere. Rather than listening foraliens, SETI’s main function may be to send a non-threatening message about aliens to the publichere on Earth, as a prelude to informing them that those aliens are already here. Most SETIscientists might be unaware of this covert motive, which would make the whole project amasterpiece of deception.

Many ufologists had hoped that (FOI Freedom of Information) legislation would provide access tonumerous revealing UFO related documents. However this has not generally proved to be thecase. For a start, all FOI legislation has exemption clauses preventing the release of documentsthat might jeopardise national security, and the bureaucrats are not silly enough to give the gameaway by saying “Sorry we cannot release those documents on the grounds of national security”. Instead they adopt more frustrating tactics. They may take ages to answer your letter, or denyhaving the documents, or ask exorbitant fees for copying them (Fawcett & Greenwood, 1984). Some of the documents that have been released suggest that the US and British governments dotake UFOs seriously. Nevertheless FOI documents provide an ideal deception opportunity, and sowe should be cautious in interpreting them. An Internet site that contains a large number ofUFO-related US government documents is The Black Vault (www.blackvault.com/).

It has been claimed that when the US government started to research UFOs in the late forties theyset in place a security system the likes of which had never been seen before. That system has nodoubt been redesigned numerous times since then, but would still appear to be workingeffectively. Col. Corso (1997) claims that some UFO debris was handed over to trusted defencecontractors to reverse-engineer. Even if this is not true, it is still possible that a significantproportion of UFO research has been conducted by private enterprise where the paperwork isprotected by commercial secrecy and beyond the reach of FOI legislation. In Ingo Swann’s bookPenetration (1998) he claims to have worked briefly for a US organisation which was so secretivethat it left no paper-trail at all. It would obviously be impossible to obtain documents from anorganisation that does not have any.

Religion

Another category of deception is the sensitive subject of self-deception. There are some peoplewith strongly held religious views who are convinced that UFOs and abductions are the work of thedevil, designed to fool humanity into straying from the path of righteousness. Such people seldomconsider that it may be they who are misled, and their dogmatism does not compensate for theirlack of concrete evidence, or disregard for the basic principles of science. It is bad enough that


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our governments appear to be deceiving us about UFOs without various religious groups addingmore confusion to the subject.

As an example, consider the following information that was e-mailed from Alex Ruxton to aboutfifty UFO ufologists and research groups worldwide in January 2000. Ruxton claims that there are“200 million reptilian devils that are now in a state of hibernation underneath the pyramids of Egyptand Mexico! They are scheduled to resurface very soon. They already have their battle plansprepared. The majority of their troops will be sent to invade the leading industrialized nations. Wedo not have much time left…. If you think that I am kidding then please find the hole in my story.”

Ruxton’s evidence comes largely from the Book of Revelation, and his website describes histheory in detail. Unfortunately, there are so many holes in his story that most people wouldprobably not even bother replying. However, to be fair, we should acknowledge that much of theinformation supposedly provided by aliens to abductees over the last few decades is fairlygarbled. Are aliens also trying to mislead us, or are our technical and cultural differences so greatthat we would be incapable of understanding them whatever they told us?

Thankfully, some students of religion are more rational. Timothy Paul Prevett claims to havecompleted an honours thesis in 1998 at Regents Theological College on the ‘DemonicEschatological Hypothesis’ (DEH) which claims that “ETs are a demonic deception heralding theapproach of the return of Christ”. After reviewing the available literature, Prevett concludes thatUFOs, “should be seriously and calmly investigated by the full power of science” because, “theDEH is unsatisfying and theologically questionable. There are too many possibilities, and littleground for dogmatism”.

To justify the belief that we are being deceived about UFOs, it helps to believe that a well-funded,well-informed, top secret UFO research project does exist. However, the assumption that anubiquitous, all-powerful, unknowable, superior authority, has the disturbing matter of UFOs undercontrol could itself be seen as a type of reassuring religious belief. We therefore need to becareful that we are not deceiving ourselves into believing that ‘the authorities’ know more than wedo about UFOs, because deep down we are frightened that they really know very little. Could theybe using UFO disinformation to reassure us while they desperately try to work out what to do? After all, a military mentality is probably the least appropriate mind-set to research a phenomenonthat appears to be a combination of nuts-and-bolts, paranormal and spiritual ingredients. Or havewe also been mislead about that?

To illustrate that UFO disinformation does occasionally have its lighter side, a short article in theMUFON UFO Journal (‘509th’, 1999) describes how that magazine had been sent a shoulderpatch supposedly now used by the 509th Bomb Wing whose members were formerly stationed atRoswell (and recovered the July 1947 crash debris), but who now fly B-2 stealth planes fromWhiteman Air Force Base. The circular patch displays the Latin phrase ‘Gustatus Similis Pullus’,which means ‘tastes like chicken’? and shows an alien’s head above a delta-winged craft. So, dothe 509th really eat aliens for breakfast? The MUFON UFO Journal editor contacted WhitemanAFB and was told that, although ‘pretty funny’, the hoax patch did not belong to the 509th.

This article has onlybeen able to address asmall proportion of thequestionableinformation about UFOsavailable to the public,


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but it is neverthelessobvious that we have tobe careful about whatwe choose to believe,because there arethose out there whoseem determined tomislead us for onereason or another,while others mayactually be trying toeducate us. Unfortunately, thesituation is likely to geteven more confusing assome new air forceplanes appear to bemodelled on genuineUFOs, and rumoursexist that the USgovernment may oneday stage a fake alienattack in order perhapsto justify thesubsequentmilitarisation of space(Hayakawa). HelmutLammer even believes that US military involvement in some abductions may be related to mindcontrol research on their own citizens. It is claimed that the second most popular type of Internetsites are UFO related ones. Unfortunately, this means that an ever increasing number of peopleare available to be misinformed. Let us hope that one day soon someone in authority, human oralien, has the decency and courage to begin telling us what is really going on about UFOs.

References

CSETI. Available at: http://www.cseti.org/Corso, Philip J. (1997) The Day After Roswell. New York: Pocket Books.Evans, Hilary. (1984) Cergy-Pontoise. In Brookesmith, Peter (Ed.). The Alien World (pp. 87-95). London: Macdonald & Co.Creighton, C. (1996) Op. JB. The Last Great Secret of the Second World War. London: Simon &Schuster.509th Bomb Group Files. (1999, November) MUFON UFO Journal, No.379, p.11.Friedman, Stanton. (1991) The Case for UFOs as Alien Spacecraft & the Government Cover-up.In Lindeman, Michael (Ed.). UFOs & the Alien Presence. Santa Barbara, California: The 2020Group.Fawcett, Lawrence & Greenwood Barry J. (1984) Clear Intent: The Government Cover-up of theUFO Experience. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Germ war reports exposed as hoax. (1998, November 15) Sunday Times [WA], p.43.Good, Timothy. (1989) Above Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Cover-up. London: GraftonBooks.Gotcha! Exclusive Report Captured With Camera. (1996, February) Encounters, Issue 4, 68-69.


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Hayakawa, N: http://www.eaglehost.com/groomwatch/Lammer, Helmut. (1999, Nov-Dec) Milabs: Military abductions of alien abductees. UFOMagazine, 14-16.Lazar, Bob. (1991) Alien Technology in Government Hands. In Lindeman, Michael (Ed.), UFOs &the Alien Presence. Santa Barbara, California: The 2020 Group.Lindeman, Michael. (1999, Nov/Dec) Challenging UFO Secrecy. UFO Magazine, 66-69.Lloyd, Mark. (1997) The Art of Military Deception. London: Leo Cooper.Martin, Jorge. (1999, Winter) Are UFOs watching the radio-astronomical observatory at Arecibo? Flying Saucer Review, Vol.44/4, 23-25.McKenna, Terence. (1991) The Archaic Revival. San Francisco: Harper SanFranciscoOstrovsky, Victor & Hoy, Claire. (1990) By Way of Deception: The Making & Unmaking of aMossad Officer. New York: St. Martin’s Press.Pope, Nick. (1996) Open Skies, Closed Minds. London: Simon & SchusterPope, Nick. (1997) The Uninvited. London: Simon & Schuster.Prevett, Timothy P. (1998) An evaluation of belief in extraterrestrial life. BA (Hons) thesis,Regents Theological College.Roach, Ted. (1997) The Physics of A Flying Saucer. Sydney: Roach Industries.Rose, Bill. (1996, March/April) The Hidden Aurora. UFO Magazine, 4-7.Ruxton, Alex. Available at: http://msnhomepages.talkcity.com/AquariusAve/ruxtonal/Sherman, Dan. (1997) Above Black: Project Preserve Destiny – Insider Account of Alien Contact& Government Cover-up. Tualatin: One Team Publishing.Swann, Ingo. (1998) Penetration: The Question of Extraterrestrial & Human Telepathy. RapidCity, South Dakota: Ingo Swann Books.The Black Vault: http://www.blackvault.com/Vallee, Jacques. (1991) Revelation: Alien Contact and Human Deception. New York: BallantineBooks.Wheatley, Dennis. (1980) The Deception Planners: My Secret War. London: Hutchinson.Wolf, Michael. (1996) The Catchers of Heaven – A Trilogy. Pittsburgh: Dorrance Publications.


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UFO Secrecy

and the

Death of the American Republic

With the availability of the Internet, it is more difficult for thepowers behind the scene to keep the truth away from theAmerican people. More spin control is needed as panickingofficials see their secrets unfold to the public. This is whathappened on the week of February 20-26, 2005. American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) decided sometime in2004 to make a special program about UFOs. To give theprogram more "credibility," anchorman Peter Jennings waschosen to be the narrator of the two-hour documentary. That thisprogram was a deliberate propaganda product aimed atdebunking any notion that UFOs are real and that aliens havecontacted human beings cannot be discerned by the average TVviewer unless they are educated in how to detect spin control andalso have been informed on this subject. That this was not an

Cosmic conspiracy: six decades of government UFO cover-upsDennis Stacy

Lightning flashedover Corona, NewMexico, and thunderrattled the thinwindowpanes of thesmall shack whereranch foreman MacBrazel slept. Brazelwas used to summerthunderstorms, buthe was suddenlybrought wide awakeby a loud explosionthat set the dishes inthe kitchen sinkdancing.Sonofabitch, hethought to himselfbefore sinking backto sleep, the sheepwill be scatteredhalfway between helland high water comedawn. In the morning,Brazel rode out onhorseback,accompanied byseven-year-oldTimothy Proctor, tosurvey the damaged.Accoring topublished accounts,Brazel and youngProctor stumbledacross somethingunearthly--a field oftattered debris two tothree hundred yardswide stretching somethree-quarters of amile in length. Norocket scientist,Brazel still realized


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UFO Conspiracy Theories

Immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing in the spring of 1995, mainstream Americanssuddenly became aware of a radical political subculture in their midst. With the arrest ofTimothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols and the media coverage of their lives, attitudes, andassociations, the public was abruptly introduced to the previously insular world of militias,antigovernment shortwave-radio broadcasts, and racist literature. A racist novel (written byAndrew Macdonald, also known as William Pierce), The Turner Diaries—unobtainable throughconventional bookstores—became an object of intense interest once it became known thatMcVeigh had read and recommended it, and it was revealed that the novel contained anepisode strikingly similar to the federal building bombing. An avalanche of television,magazine, and newspaper stories uncovered the existence of conspiracy believers obsessedwith black helicopters and armed against what they believed to be an imminent invasion byforces of the New World Order.1 More than any other single event, the Oklahoma City bombing brought New World Order ideasto the public's attention. But New World Order ideas had begun to seep into broader segmentsof the American consciousness even earlier. Pat Robertson had published his book The NewWorld Order in 1991. Robertson's version of the conspiracy (what might be termed "New WorldOrder lite") is mild compared to that of such militia figures as Mark Koernke; nevertheless, hisbook is filled with ominous warnings: "The New Age religions, the beliefs of the Illuminati, andIlluminated Freemasonry all seem to move along parallel tracks with world communism andworld finance. Their appeals vary somewhat, but essentially they are striving for the same veryfrightening vision." Robertson claims that an elite network of the superrich, operating throughsecret societies, is on the verge of taking undisputed control of the world. At the same time,references to the New World Order were also beginning to appear in the speeches of anotherconspicuous public figure, Pat Buchanan, who linked such concerns with threats to America'seconomic independence.2 Thus in the early 1990s New World Order conspiracy theories ceased to be beliefs thatcirculated only in an obscure political underground and began to penetrate some channels ofmainstream discourse. In fact, however, the most dramatic New World Order penetration camenot from Robertson, Buchanan, or coverage of the Oklahoma City bombers. Rather, itoccurred earlier, in a segment of American culture that straddles the divide between"mainstream" and "deviant" and encompasses millions of people—the UFO community. Thosewho are interested in UFOs, believe in them, or claim to have been contacted or abducted bythem form a subculture knitted together by lecture circuits, Web sites, magazines, andconventions. Depending on how it is defined, it is also a subculture of immense size.

UFOs and Public Opinion

The number of Americans who actually participate in the UFO subculture—by buying books,magazines, and videotapes; attending conferences; visiting Web sites; and engaging in similaractivities—cannot be precisely estimated. But survey data make clear that those who doparticipate represent merely a fraction of a vast number of people interested in the subject.Whether they are open-minded or simply credulous, it remains the case that millions of


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June 15, 1997, CNN Poll:

'U.S. hiding knowledge of aliens'

(CNN) -- Nearly 50 years since analleged UFO was sighted at Roswell,New Mexico, a new CNN/Time pollreleased Sunday shows that 80 percentof Americans think the government ishiding knowledge of the existence ofextraterrestrial life forms. While nearly three-quarters of the 1,024adults questioned for the poll said theyhad never seen or known anyone whosaw a UFO, 54 percent believeintelligent life exists outside Earth. Sixty-four percent of the respondentssaid that aliens have contactedhumans, half said they've abductedhumans, and 37 percent said they havecontacted the U.S. government. Thepoll has a margin of error of plus orminus 3 percentage points.

Americans view UFOs with considerably less skepticism than do the government and theacademy. Within a few months of the first modern claim of a flying saucer sighting in June 1947, pollsshowed that 90 percent of the population had heard of them. By 1966, that figure had risen to96 percent, and, more important, 46 percent of all Americans believed UFOs actually existed.More than a decade later—in 1978—30 percent of college graduates believed they existed. Atthat time, the number of Americans who believed UFOs were real reached its highest level, 57percent. The number fell to 47 percent in 1990 but was still at 48 percent in a 1996 Gallup poll,nearly half a century after the first sighting.3 The Yankelovich polling organization interviewed 1,546 adults in mid-January 2000 for Lifemagazine. Forty-three percent of respondents believed UFOs were real as opposed to "theproduct of people's imaginations," and 30 percent thought intelligent beings from other planetshad visited the earth. Six percent had seen a UFO, and 13 percent knew someone who had.Seven percent claimed to have "had an encounter with beings from another planet" or knewsomeone who had. 4

A 1997 Time-CNN poll(presumably commissioned in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of the Roswell, New Mexico, UFO "crash"indicated that 17 percent of Americans believed in alien abduction. An even stranger result had appeared in a 1992 Roper survey, which suggested that 2 percent of Americans (roughly 3.7 million) believed they themselves had been abducted. While the Roper result is almost certainly inflated, a


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But only 9 percent said they believedthere were any aliens near theHale-Bopp comet, which recentlypassed close enough to Earth to beseen with the naked eye. Some "ufologists" believed a spacecraftwas hidden near the comet, andmembers of the Heaven's Gate cultcommitted suicide, believing that theywould be taken aboard the craft andreturned "home."

What happened in Roswell? As for the Roswell incident, nearlytwo-thirds of the respondents to the pollsaid they believed that a UFOcrash-landed in a field outside the NewMexico town 50 years ago next month. In one of the most famous UFO"sightings" in U.S. history, Roswellresidents in 1947 saw lights in the nightsky, followed by a loud explosion. Arancher found the "crash site" andremoved a large piece of debris, storingit in his shed. A few days later, Air Force officials fromnearby Roswell Air Force Base inspected the site and the debris, andissued a press release announcing the recovery of a "flying disc." TheAir Force quickly retracted that statement, and claimed the debris wasfrom a weather balloon. But countless statements -- some from military personnel -- appearedto contradict the Air Force's revised position. And several "witnesses"claimed to have seen bodies of dead aliens whisked away by themilitary. Roswell today capitalizes on its fame as a UFO crash site -- whether ornot it actually happened -- and is hosting a 50th anniversary celebrationthe first week of July.

Friend or foe? Most people -- 91 percent -- told the pollsters that they had never had

number even half as large would be extraordinary. 5 Two aspects ofthese figuresare particularlystriking. First,they haveremainedastonishinglystable over afifty-yearperiod. Whatmight havebeen an earlyCold War fadclearly came tooccupy a


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contact with aliens or known anyone who had. A similar number -- 93percent -- said they had never been abducted or known anyonewhisked away by beings from another planet. But if they do meet someone from a galaxy far, far away, 44 percentsaid they expect to be treated as friends, while 26 percent think they'llbe treated as enemies. Thirty-nine percent don't expect aliens to appear very humanoid, although 35 percent said they probably look "somewhat" human.

semi-permanent niche in the American psyche. Second, the level of belief was not onlyrelatively stable; it was extraordinarily high, regardless of when the survey was taken or bywhich polling organization. Even if one compensates for problems of sampling or the wordingof questions, tens of millions of Americans accept the reality of UFOs. In a survey of 765members of the UFO community, Brenda Denzler found her respondents to be anything but"fringe." They were predominantly white, male, middle-class college graduates, with incomesjust slightly below the national median.6 At the same time, attitudes about UFOs contain the seeds of conspiracist thinking, for publicattitudes are clearly at variance with the official position that there is no credible evidence thatUFOs exist. Indeed, in the 1996 Gallup survey when subjects were asked, "In your opinion,does the U.S. government know more about UFOs than they are telling us?" 71 percentanswered yes. In the Yankelovich poll in 2000, 49 percent believed that the government waswithholding information about UFOs.7 Thus an extremely large number of people hold beliefs that contradict official governmentpositions and believe that government concealment explains the discrepancy. Belief in agovernment cover-up runs deep in the ufology community, especially among those who areprofessional or full-time UFO writers or investigators. Because government investigations havefailed to satisfy believers, the existence of a cover-up appears logical to them. Even so, earlyufologists did not generally advance a broader political agenda. While steadfastly maintainingthat military and intelligence organizations were concealing the truth from the public, they didnot extend that suspicion to embrace any larger ideology of conspiracy. In short, ufology's earlypolitical program did not extend beyond a general desire to see revealed what was believed tobe concealed. But by the late 1980s, elements of the UFO community began to link their interest in explainingflying saucers with a larger political vision. Receptivity to New World Order ideas in some UFOcircles was facilitated by two legends peculiar to the ufology milieu: the "men in black" storyand the tale of underground bases. The legend of the Men in Black originated in the early and mid 1950s and quickly became astaple of UFO folklore. According to this legend, people whose experiences or researchbrought them too close to the truth were apt to be stalked, harassed, or even killed by smallgroups of men—usually two or three—in dark suits who did not identify themselves. Their


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ambiguous appearance has led to a number of explanations: to some, they are secretgovernment operatives; to others, representatives of a conspiracy that controls thegovernment; to still others, they are aliens whose appearance is close enough to that ofhumans to allow them to pass. In any case, their appearance and demeanor make them apotent symbol of mysterious but pervasive evil. 8 The underground-bases legend is part of a larger complex of beliefs about secret installationswhere (depending on the version) captured or crashed alien craft or aliens themselves may bekept. In the most dramatic versions, the aliens actually control parts of the installation, either bythemselves or in concert with secret government agencies. The most famous base is Area 51,also known as Groom Lake and Dreamland, north of Las Vegas, Nevada; but the mostelaborate tales involve labyrinthine subterranean caverns, tunnels, and chambers such asthose allegedly near the town of Dulce, New Mexico. These stories have led to belief in ahidden world variously inhabited by alien beings or evil human forces, in which conspiratorscan both conceal their enterprises and seek safety when disasters overtake the earth'ssurface.9 UFOs and the New World Order Gradually, parts of the UFO community began to adopt elements of the conspiracy theoriesdescribed in the previous two chapters, and by the end of the 1980s virtually all of the radicalright's ideas about the New World Order had found their way into UFO literature. Ufology'sadoption of the New World Order was by no means universal, but those who have found itattractive have been able to create a version of New World Order theory with some distinctpolitical advantages. The most immediate advantage for New World Order ideas of being placed in a UFO contexthas been a reduction in stigma. Although UFO ideas have often been the target of ridicule, theenormous size of the UFO-accepting public has made it impossible to stigmatize UFO beliefsso completely that they are banned from public discussion. Far from it—UFO ideas have readyaccess to such avenues of distribution as cable television, mainstream bookstores, andmagazine publishers. They fall into the realm of stigmatized knowledge, in that they arerejected by science, universities, and government, but the level of stigmatization has not beenso great as to exclude them from popular culture. By contrast, the views of the radical right have been so excluded, through an unstated yetpowerful pattern of self-censorship on the part of the mainstream. This voluntary silence hasdenied access to beliefs deemed racist, bigoted, completely unfounded, or likely to justify orpromote violence. Tales of secret Illuminati conspiracies, imminent UN invasions, and Jewish,Masonic, or Jesuit plots, for example, have been informally banned from media, classrooms,and other mechanisms of knowledge distribution. Unlike beliefs about flying saucers,considered eccentric but socially harmless, many conspiracy ideas deemed both false anddangerous have been banished from the mainstream discourse. The linkage of New World Order ideas with UFOs gave the former a bridge to the territory ofsemirespectable beliefs. Ufology became, as it were, the vehicle for the New World Order toreach audiences otherwise unavailable to it. To be sure, New World Order ideas occasionallyreached mass audiences, as the cases of Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan have shown. Inboth cases, however, the conspiracies were presented in highly diluted versions; and inRobertson's case, even his weak version produced significant political problems.


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The story of the New World Order—UFO connection is a story of ideas moving in twodirections, not one. In the initial movement, New World Order beliefs became entwined withUFO beliefs. A second migration followed in the 1990s, in which New World Order ideas withtheir new UFO add-ons returned to the right-wing milieu in which they had first developed. Inthat milieu, the combination led to the development of two diametrically opposed syntheses. Inone, exemplified by British writer and lecturer David Icke (discussed at length in chapter 6), thehuman conspirators feared by the radical right are actually doing the bidding of malevolentextraterrestrial forces whose ultimate aim is control of the earth. In the other, epitomized by theviews of Milton William Cooper at the end of his life, there are in fact no aliens at all. Theappearance of an alien assault on the earth is being manufactured by human conspirators toprovide a pretext for the assumption of global dictatorial powers. The first movement, when New World Order ideas left the hermetic world of the extreme rightand began to seep into ufology, is the more significant of the two. As the preceding discussionsuggests, there were factors in ufology that made this penetration seem logical, but it was notinevitable. It does not seem to have been consciously undertaken by conspiracists or done foropportunistic reasons, even though in the end it provided a large new audience. Rather, itbegan in a disorganized, piecemeal fashion, and it provides a case study in the migration ofdeviant ideas. UFO Conspiracism: The First Phase The development of New World Order conspiracy theories within ufology can best beunderstood as the product of two separate phases. The first—from roughly 1975 to1980—introduced increasingly conspiratorial motifs into UFO speculation, but without anydiscernible links to the conspiracy ideas that were prevalent on the extreme right. There seemto have been two separate conspiracist tracks that developed independently of each other.This lack of connection between the two is all the more striking because the late 1970s were aperiod of substantial right-wing activity, with the growth of such movements as ChristianIdentity and the Posse Comitatus. The Posse was an antigovernment movement made up oflocal paramilitary groups active in the West and Midwest during the 1970s and 1980s. Theybelieved the only legitimate governmental authority to be the county sheriff's posse, in the formof the armed adult males of a community. There is no evidence that ufologists were aware of,interested in, or sympathetic to those tendencies. During this initial phase, some important themes emerged in the UFO literature that wereeventually integrated into more elaborate conspiratorial structures. One of these concernedsmall devices allegedly implanted in the bodies of UFO abductees. Although such stories werenot numerous, they implied the existence of a powerful technology for monitoring andcontrolling victims' behavior. Thomas Bullard's detailed analysis of 270 abduction stories (mostof them dating between the 1940s and 1980) reveals only thirteen cases of reportedimplants—barely 5 percent. These were almost uniformly distributed among the 1950s, 1960s,and 1970s. Despite their small numbers, however, the implant stories contained two points ofpotential connection with the independently developed New World Order conspiracy theoriesdescribed earlier. First, they offered apparent confirmation of the mark of the beast associatedwith the Antichrist. Second, they also appeared to validate the mind-control fears of moresecular conspiracists.10 About the same time, in 1976, a Toronto-based neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier, Ernst Zündel,


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published the first of several reports linking flying saucers with the Nazis. In the strangestversion of this tale, Nazis, not aliens, had invented flying saucers and, with the regime's defeat,had fled to subterranean bases in Antarctica with their invention. The suggestion that flyingsaucers had been under development by the Third Reich and were spirited out of Germanyappears to have emerged first among German nationalists in the 1950s. It was quicklyassimilated into legends of Hitler's supposed escape to South America or the Antarctic. By1960, comparable tales were circulating in English, though their full elaboration had to awaitthe efforts of Zündel and other neo-Nazis a decade and a half later. While this scenariobegged the question of how so technologically advanced a government could manage to losethe war, it was a story that turned out to have a long life for two reasons. First, it introduced theidea that a secret group of human beings might in some conspiratorial fashion develop suchdevices. Second, it established a link between UFOs and the much older occultic tradition ofan "inner world" beneath the earth.11 The year 1976 was also the year that some ufologists began to link UFOs with cattlemutilations. Stories of mutilated cattle, mostly in western states, began to appear in the late1960s and became numerous and the subject of national media coverage by the mid 1970s.Although they were occasionally connected to reports of UFO sightings, a number ofalternative explanations were offered, including satanic rituals, "hippies," and natural enemies.The carcasses were often missing portions of soft tissue, and some reports claimed that cutswere made with a precision inconsistent with animal predators.12 In 1979, Linda Moulton Howe, a Denver filmmaker, began work on a documentary that allegeda mutilation-UFO connection. The film, A Strange Harvest, was broadcast in 1980. She laterstated that "I am convinced that one or more alien intelligences are affecting this planet. Iwould like to know who they are, what they want and why the government is silent." Howe andothers, influenced by her film and subsequent publications, began to speculate that aliensmutilated cattle in order to secure body parts or biological substances they needed for theirown survival, and that the U.S. government was complicit in these efforts. The idea that alienswere engaged in some obscure effort to "harvest" or otherwise retrieve biological substancesfrom the earth has turned out to be a fertile subject for speculation, which eventually came toinclude such suggestions as the breeding of alien-human hybrids. The ease with which storiesof cattle mutilation were assimilated into the UFO literature was a paradigmatic case of fusingdisparate forms of stigmatized knowledge. If cattle mutilations and alien spaceships could beconnected, why not other stigmatized knowledge claims as well?13 Speculations about an alien harvest soon coalesced with aspects of the abduction stories.Nearly half of the abduction tales examined by Bullard featured invasive, often painful physicalexaminations. A number of accounts included examinations of reproductive organs, and abouthalf a dozen individuals reported sexual intercourse with alien beings. Out of this body ofnarratives came suggestions that aliens were seeking either to harvest substances fromhuman bodies or to create a race of alien-human hybrids. Because the "other" here was alienin every sense, it was easy to blur the distinction between procedures performed on cattle andthose performed on human beings; in the more sinister interpretation, it suggested that humanbeings were being treated like breeding stock, presumably to compensate for some biologicaldefect in the aliens.14 In 1977, UFO speculation took a different turn with the broadcast by Anglia TV in Great Britainof the strange purported documentary Alternative 3. Alternative 3 claimed to expose a secretplan, approved at the highest levels of the U.S. and Soviet governments, to launch a program


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of space colonization that would allow a select few to flee the earth before environmentalcalamities made the planet uninhabitable. The show strongly implied that a secret joint basealready existed on the far side of the moon, that another existed or would shortly beestablished on Mars, and that the Martian surface, contrary to general belief, was hospitable tohuman life.15 Alternative 3 was clearly a hoax—and not only because it was broadcast on April Fool's Day.The interviews with supposed scientists, astronauts, and others were far too dramaticallypolished to have been spontaneous, and in any case the program's closing credits named theactors who took the roles of interviewees and correspondents. Though artfully produced, theshow's counterfeit documentary style could scarcely have been expected to fool many. As anAnglia TV spokesman put it, "we felt viewers would be fairly sophisticated about it." Theyapparently were not; television and newspaper switchboards were swamped after thebroadcast. Anglia found it prudent to sell off the book rights. The 1978 book version, by LeslieWatkins, continued the pretense of factuality. It also reached countries, including the UnitedStates, where the broadcast had not been aired. Whenever the book was unavailable,believers attributed its absence to the conspirators' attempts at suppression. This type ofquasi-paranoid fear is a particularly strong tendency in the United States. And the story lentitself to conspiracist interpretations—who were the elite the secret space program wasintended to save? Even those willing to acknowledge that Alternative 3 was trumped upinsisted that its core argument might very well be true—another instance of the demolition ofthe fact-fiction boundary .16 Alternative 3 does not mention UFOs or aliens. Its role in the growth of conspiracy theory lay ina later permutation, according to which UFOs and the threat of an alien invasion of the earthare believed to have been invented by the shadowy elite in order to gather sufficient power andresources to complete the space-colonization enterprise. When the scenario of Alternative 3came to be enfolded within ufological conspiracism, it suggested that UFO conspiracy theoriescould go in two different directions. The first insisted on the reality of a threat from outer space,with human conspirators involved as the aliens' lackeys or collaborators. The other direction,following the Alternative 3 suggestion, claimed that UFOs from outer space were a deceptionconcocted by the conspirators for their own malevolent purposes, in order to deflect attentionfrom the real evil.

UFO Conspiracism: The Second Phase The first phase in the growth of UFO conspiracy theories extended through the late 1970s. Itwas characterized by a fragmentation of themes, whether of abductees' implants, cattlemutilations, or Nazi bases. The only product of the period that purported to offer an integralconspiracy theory was the fictional Alternative 3 broadcast, which had not mentioned UFOs atall. By contrast, the second phase, which began in the mid 1980s, was marked both by thebroader scope of conspiracy allegations and by the convergence of UFO plots with thebetter-developed conspiracism of the extreme right. The first full published statement of such a theory appeared in 1986, in George C. Andrews'sbook Extra-Terrestrials among Us. Although Andrews's conspiracy theory appears in bits andpieces strewn throughout the volume, it can be reconstructed roughly as follows. A race of evilextraterrestrials is using a "privileged elite caste" of humans to manipulate and control themasses. As far as the United States is concerned, the principal mechanism for political controlis the CIA, a "government within the government," implementing a form of "corporate fascism."


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Andrews accuses the CIA of having assassinated John F. Kennedy, and he cites WilliamPabst's pamphlet claiming that a network of concentration camps is being readied fordissenters. He fears that martial law is about to be declared, bringing an end to Americandemocracy. The explicit use of Pabst's work, warnings about the Rex 84, and repeated claimsthat the Constitution is in imminent danger make Andrews's political views almostindistinguishable from those associated with militias. Only his placement of extraterrestrials atthe pinnacle of the conspiracies identifies him as a ufologist.17 The publication of Extra-Terrestrials among Us marked the beginning of a feverish period ofUFO conspiracism, from 1986 to 1989. Much of the literature of this period was based on theconcept of a secret governing apparatus, unknown and unaccountable, not unlike Andrews'snotion of the CIA as a "government within the government." The idea of a hidden governmentreceived its most significant boost in 1987 with the publication of the so-called MJ-12 papers. MJ-12—sometimes referred to as Magestic-12 or Majic-12—purports to be a documentprepared for President Dwight Eisenhower, to which was attached a memo from PresidentHarry Truman to his defence secretary, James Forrestal. Though made public in 1987, MJ-12had a history that went back to 1984. According to those involved, on December 11, 1984, Jaime Shandera, a film producer,received a package anonymously sent from Albuquerque, New Mexico, containing anundeveloped roll of film. He and UFO writer William Moore developed the film, which they saidcontained images of the MJ-12 documents. Although the documents were not made publicuntil June 1987, when they were revealed at a UFO conference in Washington, D.C., UFOpublications referred to them as early as 1985. Facsimile copies were reproduced in the Britishedition (and later the American edition) of Timothy Good's Above Top Secret, and haveappeared elsewhere many times since.18 The MJ-12 documents take the form of a briefing paper for the newly elected president,informing him of the existence of a supersecret group of the same name, allegedly establishedduring the Truman administration, that consists of a dozen high military and scientific figures.The documents describe crashes of UFOs and the recovery of their occupants' bodies, whichestablished them as of indisputably extraterrestrial origin. MJ-12 immediately polarized the UFO community into believers and skeptics. Among theskeptics was Jacques Vallee, who compared the incident to the activities of "Deep Throat"during the Watergate scandal. He suggested that the documents' sender was more likelyinterested in disinformation than in whistle-blowing, and implied that the documents wereforged. Even more dismissive was Philip J. Klass, a longtime debunker of UFO hoaxes, whoargued that the format and language of the documents pointed to forgery.19 In the years since the MJ-12 papers became widely known, they have taken on a life of theirown. Additional, related documents periodically appear, some as recently as 1998. Just as withthe Kennedy assassination, MJ-12 has generated a cottage industry of commentators,authenticators, and critics. More broadly, MJ-12 laid the foundation for elaborate conspiracytheories by suggesting that UFOs were of extraterrestrial origin, that the federal governmentwas aware of them as early as the late 1940s, and that a secret bureaucracy had been createdto study and control the situation. These claims allowed some ufologists to shift fromobservation of flying saucers to attempts to unravel alleged government machinations. Theproliferation of MJ-12 documents and theories not only identified the enemy as a segment of


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the government, but—inasmuch as this "secret government" was supposed to have hidden allrelevant information—allowed great latitude in what might be "revealed." It mattered littlewhether publicly available evidence confirmed a claim; its author could always respond, "Thegovernment knows it, but won't tell you."20 The first such revelation occurred on December 29, 1987, a few months after the release ofthe MJ-12 papers. It took the form of a statement by John Lear, estranged son of inventorWilliam Lear. Building upon the original MJ-12 documents, Lear constructs a far moreelaborate edifice of intrigue and dissimulation. The Lear statement narrates the purportedhistory of the relationship between the MJ-12 group and the extraterrestrials from 1947 to1987. Although Lear cites few sources and offers no documentation, his statement, like manyconspiracy narratives, is striking in its specificity. The "horrible truth" to which MJ-12 was allegedly privy was so frightening that it drove at leastone member—Secretary of Defence Forrestal—to suicide, his death disguised as the result ofmental illness. According to Lear, the U.S. government began to hold meetings with the alienson April 30, 1964, and by 1971 had negotiated a "deal." Its terms called for transfer of thealiens' technology to the government, in exchange for which the government would acquiescein cattle mutilations and in the temporary abduction of American citizens. The abductees wouldbe implanted with tracking and control devices, given posthypnotic suggestions, sometimesused as guinea pigs in genetic engineering and cross-breeding programs, and occasionallykilled.21 Lear's text alleged that the "EBEs" (extraterrestrial biological entities) have a "genetic disorder"that has caused their digestive system to atrophy. They can survive only by ingesting biologicalsubstances obtained from cows or humans, or by creating an alien-human cross-bred race.This need led to the construction, under government auspices, of gigantic laboratories, notonly to receive the aliens' technology but also to allow them to conduct biological experiments.These laboratories included Groom Lake, Nevada (better known in the ufology literature asArea 51 or Dreamland), and several in New Mexico, notably near the small town of Dulce.There, Lear claims, a joint CIA-alien laboratory provides facilities for unspeakable experimentson abducted subjects. Indeed, the aliens' behavior was so repugnant that in 1979 asubterranean battle supposedly took place between them and U.S. military personnel, in whichsixty-six U.S. troops were killed.22 The battle at Dulce was the beginning of a crisis for MJ-12, which gradually became aware ofthe "Grand Deception"—namely, the failure of the aliens to live up to their agreement. Theirtechnology turned out to be only partially usable, they were abducting far more Americans thanthey had agreed to, and they were mistreating them. Faced with this situation, MJ-12supposedly decided it was foolhardy to attempt immediate resistance and instead opted todevelop weapons that might permit effective resistance at some later time. This weaponsdevelopment program was the Strategic Defense Initiative, disguised as a Cold War project.23 The Lear statement is brief—only seven printed pages—but dizzying in its claims. It elevatesMJ-12 to a conspiratorial position nowhere hinted at in the original papers themselves. Itimplies a web of subsidiary conspiracies—to silence the news media and the academiccommunity, and to mislead the UFO community as well. According to Lear, ufologist WilliamMoore, the figure most identified with the MJ-12 papers, was probably himself a disinformationagent in the hire of MJ-12. The statement ends with a litany of rhetorical questions—a commondevice in conspiracy literature—all implying that the aliens' ultimate aim is the conquest of the


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earth, and that the conspirators in government, centered in MJ-12, are powerless to preventit.24 Although Lear did not employ the term New World Order, he managed to bring together anumber of elements compatible with New World Order theory, including mind-control implants,a government within the government, and the kidnapping of hundreds of thousands ofAmericans. Lear's claim of having been a CIA pilot only added to the sense that this was aninsider's view, notwithstanding the paucity of evidence.25 If Lear had been alone in his bizarre allegations, they would have disappeared from view. Butthey were quickly taken up and amplified by a figure who was to prove central to theconvergence of UFO and militia positions: Milton William Cooper, the most famous of UFOconspiracists. Cooper also had a military background, having served in the air force and laterthe navy, from which he was discharged in 1975. Between his discharge and his ufology debut,he apparently received some training and experience in photography as well as working atadministrative jobs in vocational colleges. Best known in ufology circles for his bitter conflictswith rivals and critics, his conspiracist reputation rests primarily on a 1991 book, Behold a PaleHorse. While it may not be, as Cooper's Web site biography claims, "the best sellingunderground book of all time," it is widely available and, apparently, widely read in ufology,conspiracy, and antigovernment circles.26 The Cooper Narrative Cooper presented his own MJ-12 account in a series of related documents released betweenDecember 1988 and the end of 1989. Coming as they did immediately after both the MJ-12release and the Lear statement, Cooper's claims caused a sensation in ufology circles. In aseries of Internet postings and in an appearance at the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON)symposium in Las Vegas in July 1989, Cooper claimed to have seen an astonishing array ofsecret UFO documents during his naval career. His earliest accounts, from December 1988and January 1989, closely parallel the MJ-12 papers and the Lear statement, yet they mentionneither Moore nor Lear. Instead, Cooper claimed independent knowledge, asserting that in1972, while in the navy, he was shown sets of documents and photographs dealing with UFOs,their extraterrestrial passengers, and relations between the extraterrestrials and the federalgovernment.27 The earliest statement of Cooper's views—"Top Secret/Majic"—was, according to LindaMoulton Howe, posted on the CompuServe and Paranet networks on December 18, 1988. Itpurports to summarize the material Cooper says he saw sixteen years previously. While thesubstance is closely related to the MJ-12 and Lear materials, the structure of Cooper'sstatement is quite different. It is neither a set of primary documents nor a narrative. Most of itconsists of brief sections, often no more than a paragraph, each of which describes or definesa name or term Cooper said he encountered in the original navy material. Many are names ofprojects or operations allegedly initiated by the government to deal with extraterrestrials, givingthe entire statement a decidedly bureaucratic tinge.28 Several details of Cooper's account are noteworthy, either in the manner in which theydistance themselves from Moore and Lear or by suggesting new political implications. Thelatter are particularly important, because in the 1990s Cooper emerged as the mostconspicuous link between UFO conspiracists and militia circles.


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The Cooper variations, while small, increased the congruence between UFO conspiracies andthe tales of plots circulating on the extreme right, though there is no explicit evidence thatCooper was familiar with right-wing literature at the time. In his version, the MJ-12 group is arelatively small part of a much larger government enterprise directed at understanding thealiens, dealing with them, and keeping knowledge from reaching the general public. Notsurprisingly, the CIA is described as central to the enterprise, a claim also made in Andrews's1986 description of the conspiracy. Black helicopters make an appearance as well, allegedlyaccompanying test flights of recovered alien craft over the Nevada desert. Although Andrewshad not mentioned black helicopters specifically, he did report transformations in whichsaucers turned into helicopters and vice versa.29 Cooper did not mention the Trilateral Commission, but he introduced motifs that were to makeits future inclusion appear natural. He referred to teams called Delta that, he claimed, providesecurity for all projects related to the aliens and whose members in fact are the legendary menin black. Later on, others more explicitly identified this group with the well-known Delta Forcecounter-terrorism organization. Cooper's references to Delta are closely related to his lengthydiscussion of what he called "a trilateral insignia" allegedly found on alien spacecraft. Heclaimed that the Delta security guards wear red badges with a black triangle, similar to the"alien flag" of a triangle divided by parallel lines. His linking of the terms delta, trilateral, andmen in black offered the possibility of conspiracy in which U.S. military forces, aliens, and theTrilateral Commission collude.30 Like Lear, Cooper alleged that the aliens came to Earth not out of mere curiosity but becausesome biological flaw made them dependent on substances, including blood, that could beobtained from human and animal bodies. According to Cooper, they might have evolved fromplants, because they use chlorophyll to convert food into energy and excrete waste productsthrough the skin. How this mechanism related to the need for human and animal blood was notexplained.31 In early 1989, Cooper issued a revised version of this document. It has since been frequentlyposted on the Internet. Not all versions, however, are identical. As is often the case withInternet documents, there is no way to determine definitively if changes have been made sincethe date the document bears.32 Notwithstanding these difficulties, the later Cooper document is interesting in its own right. Inthe first place, Cooper attributed the differences between this and the earlier version to hishaving undergone "hypnotic regression in order to make the information as accurate aspossible." He did not indicate who performed the hypnosis, when, or under what conditions.The second version also contains a much-elaborated description of the MJ-12 group itself. Itallegedly consists of the twelve senior members of a thirty-two-member secret society calledthe Jason Society, which was "commissioned" by President Eisenhower to "find the truth of thealien question."33 Identifying a complete and accurate text of the second Cooper document is difficult. Howe'spublished version contains elisions. An Internet version is considerably longer and placesmaterial in a somewhat different order. It is also more overtly political, with references to theKennedy assassination, the Rockefeller family, black helicopters, and the trilateral insignia; andit charges that the activities described violate the Constitution, as well as "the human rights ofevery citizen of the world." This longer text may well have been written as early as the printedone (i.e., January 10, 1989), but the technology of the Internet makes the date impossible to


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verify.34 Cooper's claims in the second document regarding abductee implants and concentrationcamps were equally sweeping. One in every forty Americans has allegedly been implanted,which would amount to several million individuals. The concentration camps are part of a planin which, under the pretext of a terrorist nuclear threat, martial law would be declared and themedia nationalized.35 Cooper's next text, dated May 23, 1989, was an Internet document made public at a UFOsymposium in Las Vegas on July 2 of that year. It subsequently formed part of a chapter inBehold a Pale Horse. Here, too, the political element was conspicuously present: the CIA wascreated to deal with the alien threat, Secretary of Defense Forrestal was an abductee, and thepresidents were kept in ignorance.36 Up to this point, Cooper had suggested little in the way of political action beyondrecommending that Congress be informed. Sometime in 1989, however, he associated himselfwith an anonymous document labeled "Petition to Indict." In his undated accompanying letter,Cooper spoke of "Many other signatures . . . on the original copy," presumably in addition tohis own. He begged Congress to act on the petition, but "not to trust any other governmentagency with these matters because this conspiracy runs deep within the government."37 The "Petition to Indict," which runs somewhat more than four typed pages, appears in someplaces to be addressed simply to "the government," at others more specifically to Congress. Itcharges that "the government" entered into "a secret treaty with an Alien Nation" in violation ofthe Constitution. In addition to repeating many of the points already made by Lear and Cooper,it charges that the resources to fund secret, alien-related projects came from CIA involvementin the international drug trade.38 The petition is also significant for its lengthy references to the involvement of then-presidentGeorge H.W. Bush. Calling Bush "the most powerful and dangerous criminal in the history ofthe world," the petition charges that Bush's involvement in the international drug trade wentback to his days in the oil business and continued throughout his tenure as CIA director.Bush's associations with Skull and Bones and the Trilateral Commission have made him afavorite target of conspiracy theorists.39 Because the petition asks full disclosure of government plots by May 30, 1989, it canreasonably be dated to early that year, that is to say, roughly contemporaneous with therevised version of the Cooper document. The petition is vague about what might happen if nogovernment action is taken on its charges. But it warns that failure to act will make everymember of the House and Senate "accessories to the conspiracy and the crimes outlined inthis document," and the signatories "swear on the Constitution" to bring "all guilty parties . . . tojustice." How they might do this is not specified.40 The "Petition to Indict" bears some similarities to the "Constructive Notices" sent in 1986 to ajudge and to Internal Revenue Service personnel in Nevada. The "Constructive Notices" werepurported indictments issued by the Committee of the States, an entity created by ChristianIdentity preacher and tax protestor William Potter Gale. The "Constructive Notices" threatenedthe lives of the recipients, and in October 1987, Gale and his associates were tried andconvicted of interfering in the administration of the tax laws. In retrospect, it can be seen thatthe Committee of the States affair anticipated such developments as so-called common-law


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courts among antigovernment groups in the 1990s. There is no direct evidence that Cooper orthe anonymous drafter or drafters of the "Petition to Indict" were familiar with Gale's activities.Nonetheless, like the Committee of the States and many subsequent examples of right-wingshadow legal institutions, the petition implies the authority to bring malefactors to justice ifformal legal institutions do not.41 By the late 1990s, Cooper had moved away from the ufology community, where he had firstappeared a decade earlier, to the subculture of militias and other antigovernment groups. HisWeb site circulated conspiracist versions of the Oklahoma City bombing, and he spoke in thename of a shadowy organization called the Second Continental Army of the Republic (Militia),about which little is known. As Gale had, Cooper also took on the Internal Revenue Service.42 Cooper became convinced that he had been targeted by "The Illuminati Socialist President ofthe United States of America, William Jefferson Clinton" as well as "by the bogus andunconstitutional Internal Revenue Service." His conflict with the latter resulted in an arrestwarrant issued in July 1998. As of fall 2000, it still had not been executed, which resulted inCooper's being named a "major fugitive" by the U.S. Marshals Service. The government'sreluctance to arrest Cooper was apparently a reflection of his conflict-laden rhetoric: "We areformed as the Constitutional and Lawful unorganized Militia of the State of Arizona and theunited [sic] States of America. . . . By invading the Sovereign jurisdiction of the State of Arizonato attack the Citizens of the State of Arizona the United States has declared war upon theCitizens of the Several States of the Union. . . . We have drawn our line in the sand." Thewarrant was never served, because Cooper was shot and killed by sheriff's deputies inNovember 2001 as a result of an incident unrelated to his tax problems. This bizarreconclusion to a strange life is described more fully in chapter 10.43 Cooper was not the only figure in the UFO subculture who was elaborating politically chargedconspiracy theories by the end of the 1980s. The year 1989 marked the beginning of theactivities of John Grace, also known as Val Germann and Val (or Valdamar) Valerian. Gracewas an air force enlisted man stationed at Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas, where heapparently came into contact with Lear. About 1988, Grace-Valerian founded the NevadaAerial Research Group in Las Vegas, but soon relocated it to Yelm, Washington, under thename Leading Edge Research Group. He has been an extraordinarily prolific writer andpublisher, claiming to have issued tens of thousands of pages. His central works are themassive, ongoing series of Matrix volumes, of which at least six have appeared, and the serialpublication The Leading Edge.44 It is impossible to summarize Valerian's system. Indeed, it may well be one of the mostcomplex superconspiracy theories ever constructed. Scarcely any major organization orinstitution escapes inclusion. One diagrammatic representation requires six pages to lay outthe connections among elements of the plot, including the Gestapo, the Mafia, and theWobblies (IWW). Valerian ranges not only across the usual UFO and conspiracist terrain butacross politics, religion, science, and history. He clearly regards his system not merely as anexplanation of flying saucers or contemporary politics but as a synoptic vision of allknowledge.45 Cooper edged gradually toward more ambitious conspiratorial schemes, but even at his mostsweeping he never sought to cover areas such as the sciences (about which, in fact, heclaimed ignorance). Valerian, by contrast, takes conspiracism to its logical conclusion bysuggesting that all true knowledge has been deliberately hidden, and that attempts to reveal it


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in one area will inevitably reveal the entire structure, if only one digs widely and deeply enough.Anything that is available and obvious is false, while what is hidden has to be true; itshiddenness can have occurred only because those who truly know do not wish it to berevealed. As Valerian puts it, "As a result of the suppression and compartmentalization ofinformation, cultures have been fragmented into several distinct groups and mind sets whichboth co-exist and oppose each other." He clearly believes that he has discovered thesuppressed synthesis.46 Leading Edge's location, Yelm, Washington, is also the home of J.Z. Knight, a channeler whoclaims to be the medium transmitting the words of a 35,000-year-old warrior named Ramtha.The Ramtha School of Enlightenment in Yelm was founded in 1988 or 1989, about the timeValerian arrived. There appear to be no direct links between Valerian's organization andKnight's, but they do share common themes. Ramtha asserts that the UFOs carry aliens whoare "your higher brothers." Valerian, like Knight, employs the entity terminology standard inchanneling circles, and he includes favorable material about Ramtha in the Matrix volumes.There are some differences: for instance, like many conspiracy-minded ufologists, Valerianbelieves that there are many alien races, some of which are malevolent. For their part, Knightand Ramtha identify evil with a conspiracy of international bankers who include the Rothschildsand the Federal Reserve. The Ramtha School's book service sells works by Cooper, DavidIcke, and Jim Keith, and the Ramtha newsletter has published lengthy interviews with MarkPhillips and Cathy O'Brien, with their tales of CIA mind-controlled sex slaves. Notwithstandingthe lack of formal connections, Valerian and Knight clearly seem to tap into the same culticmilieu.47 By the early 1990s, therefore, at least some of the ufology literature had gone through severaltransformations. It had become intensely politicized. It insisted that powerful elements in theU.S. government were in continuing collaboration with an evil, alien race. And it claimed that inorder to protect this information, the secret government was prepared to destroy Americanliberties. From 1986 to about 1990, the activities of Andrews, Lear, Cooper, and Valeriancreated a conspiracist form of UFO speculation, which Jerome Clark refers to as ufology's"dark side."48 Much of this material was either strikingly similar to or compatible with the conspiracy ideassimultaneously circulating in the militia and militant antigovernment subculture. The mythologyof concentration camps, secret government security forces, wholesale violation of theConstitution, and control of the state by a hidden elite are themes prominent in both domains.Yet any link between them in the 1980s appears circumstantial. The UFO conspiracists wereespecially active in the West, where the extreme right was particularly evident; even so, noevidence exists at this time of direct contact between them. UFO Conspiracy Theories

1. Andrew Macdonald (pseudonym of William L. Pierce), The Turner Diaries, 2d ed.(Washington, D.C.: National Alliance, 1980). Typical of the news coverage is Mark Potok andKaty Kelly, "Militia Movement's Draw: A Shared Anger, Fear," USA Today, May 16, 1995 2. Pat Robertson, The New World Order (Dallas: Word, 1991). "Buchanan Promises 'MillennialStruggle' against World Government," CNN, January 6, 2000; http://www.cnn.com (January 7,2000).


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3. Phil Patton, "Indeed They Have Landed. Look Around," The New York Times, June 15,1997, section H, 38. Jodi Dean, Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace toCyberspace (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 36. Amy Harmon, "For U.F.O.Buffs, 50 Years of Hazy History," The New York Times, June 14, 1997, section A, 1. "GallupUFO Poll: Some Want to Believe, Some Don't,"http://www.parascope.com/articles/0597/gallup.htm (July 2, 1997). 4. Cynthia Fox, "The Search for Extraterrestrial Life," Life (March 2000) 5. Dean, Aliens in America 6. Brenda Denzler, The Lure of the Edge: Scientific Passions, Religious Beliefs, and thePursuit of UFOs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001) 7. "Gallup UFO Poll." Fox, "The Search for Extraterrestrial Life". 8. "Men in Black," in The UFO Encyclopedia, ed. John Spencer (New York: Avon, 1993).Jerome Clark, The UFO Files (Lincolnwood, Ill.: Publications International, 1996). PeterRojcewicz, "The 'Men in Black' Experience and Tradition: Analogues with the Traditional DevilHypothesis," Journal of American Folklore 100 (April—June 1987). The first book on thesubject, which initially appeared in 1956, was by Gray Barker: They Knew Too Much aboutFlying Saucers, repr. (Lilburn, Ga.: IllumiNet, 1997). 9. The literature on each is very large; but the nature of the material can be gleaned from thefollowing. On Area 51: David Darlington, Area 51: The Dreamland Chronicles (New York:Henry Holt, 1997); and Phil Patton, Travels in Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51(London: Millennium, 1997). On Dulce: Branton, The Dulce Wars: Underground Alien Bases &the Battle for Planet Earth (New Brunswick, N.J.: Inner Light/Global Communications, 1999);and Commander X, Underground Alien Bases (n.p.: Abelard Productions, 1990). 10. "Abduction Phenomenon," in The UFO Encyclopedia, ed. Jerome Clark, vol. 1 (Detroit:Apogee, 1990). Thomas E. Bullard, UFO Abductions: The Measure of a Mystery (n.p.: Fund forUFO Research, 1987), vol. 1. 11. "Hollow Earth and UFOs," in The UFO Encyclopedia, ed. Jerome Clark, vol. 2 (Detroit:Omnigraphics, 1992). Commander X, "Legions of Doom," UFO Universe, Conspiracies &Cover-ups, Special Issue 1 (1998). The Nazi-UFO stories have been most fully reconstructedby Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke in Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics ofIdentity (New York: New York University Press, 2002), chap. 8. 12. "Animal Mutilations and UFOs," in The UFO Encyclopedia, ed. Jerome Clark, vol. 3(Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1996). George E. Onet, "Animal Mutilations: What We Know," NationalInstitute for Discovery Science, http://www.nidsci.org/articles/animal1.html (September 13,2000). Idem, "Animal Mutilations: What We Don't Know," National Institute for DiscoveryScience, http://www.nidsci.org/articles/animal2.html (September 13, 2000). 13. "Animal Mutilations and UFOs" 14. "Linda Moulton Howe: The 'Alien Harvest' and Beyond," transcript of a conversation inUFOs and the Alien Presence: Six Viewpoints, ed. Michael Lindemann (Newberg, Ore.: Wild


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Flower, 1991). Linda Moulton Howe, An Alien Harvest: Further Evidence Linking AnimalMutilations and Human Abductions to Alien Life Forms (Huntingdon Valley, Penn.: LindaMoulton Howe Productions, 1989). On Howe, see Idaho Statesman (Boise), June 5, 1998, 1d.Bullard, UFO Abductions. 15. Alternative 3 (videotape; Beverly Hills, Calif.: Underground Video, 1996); originallybroadcast on Science Report, Anglia Television (U.K.), April 1, 1977. 16. Alternative 3. Leslie Watkins, Alternative 3 (London: Sphere, 1978). Jim Keith, Casebookon Alternative 3: UFOs, Secret Societies and World Control (Lilburn, Ga.: IllumiNet, 1994).Idem, Mind Control and UFOs: Casebook on Alternative 3 (Lilburn, Ga.: IllumiNet, 1999). BobRickard, "Hoax: Alternative," Fortean Times 64 (August—September 1992) 17. George C. Andrews, Extra-Terrestrials among Us, repr. (St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn, 1993[orig. 1986]). William R. Pabst, "Concentration Camp Plans for U.S. Citizens," see, e.g.,http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/2012/camps.txt (January 25, 1999). 18. Patton, Travels in Dreamland. Stanton T. Friedman, Top Secret/Majic (New York: Marlowe,1997). Howe, An Alien Harvest. The texts appear in Timothy Good, Above Top Secret: TheWorldwide U.F.O. Cover-up (New York: William Morrow, 1988). The MJ-12 documents alsoappear in Friedman, Top Secret/Majic, and Howe, An Alien Harvest. Robert Alan Goldbergprovides another description of the affair in Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy inModern America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001). 19. Jacques Vallee, Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception (New York: Ballantine,1991). "Skeptics Attack," http://www.parascope.com/ds/0996/maj2.htm (July 1, 1997). 20. For example, "Declassified Documents Confirm Recovery of Alien Craft and Bodies!"Nexus 6 (February—March 1999) 21. "Statement Released By: John Lear, December 29, 1987," William F. Hamilton III, AlienMagic (Glendale, Calif.: Uforces, 1989). 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. A brief biographical statement precedes the text of Lear's statement. 26. Donna Kossy, Kooks (Portland, Ore.: Feral House, 1994), pp. 191—192. "William Cooper:A Short Biography," http://williamcooper.com/william.htm (August 29, 2000). Milton WilliamCooper, Behold a Pale Horse (Sedona, Ariz.: Light Technology, 1991). 27. Don Ecker, "Dead Man Talking," Fortean Times 155 (March 2002): 38. 28. The December 18 statement is reproduced in Howe, An Alien Harvest 29. Howe, An Alien Harvest. Andrews, Extra-Terrestrials among Us


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30. Howe, An Alien Harvest, pp. 185, 190—191. Milton William Cooper, "The CooperDocument: The Absolute True Information Regarding the Alien Presence on Earth" (1989),posted October 29, 1997, http://server.wizards.net/mac/handy/incoming/cooperdoc.html(November 6, 1997)

31. Howe, An Alien Harvest 32. There are some discrepancies in dates for Cooper material between Hamilton, AlienMagic, and Howe, An Alien Harvest 33. Howe, An Alien Harvest 34. Cooper, "The Cooper Document." 35. Howe, An Alien Harvest 36. Cooper, Behold a Pale Horse 37. Letter from Milton William Cooper, published in Hamilton, Alien Magic, unpaginatedsection. 38. "Petition to Indict," published in Hamilton, Alien Magic, unpaginated section. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. For a detailed, though partisan, treatment of Gale, see Cheri Seymour, Committee of theStates: Inside the Radical Right (Mariposa, Calif.: Camden Place Communications, 1991).Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement,rev. ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997) 42. Milton William Cooper, "The Plot Thickens," http://harvest-trust.org/plot.htm (June 30,1998). Idem, "In Search of . . . Mail Digest, May 11, 1997,"http://in-search-of.com/frames/WWWBoard/messages/1050.html (November 11, 1997). 43. For Cooper's quotation, see "Cooper Family Targeted by Feds,"http://www.williamcooper.com/targeted.htm (August 29, 2000). "USMS Major Fugitive Cases,"http://www.usdoj.gov/marshals/wanted/major-cases/cases.html#A (August 30, 2000). 44. "Unofficial Link Page for John Grace," http://www.ufomind.com/people/g/grace/(September 16, 1998). "Animal Mutilations and UFOs," p. 34. Valdamar Valerian, Matrix II: TheAbduction and Manipulation of Humans Using Advanced Technology, 3d ed. (Yelm, Wash.:Leading Edge Research Group, 1990—1991). Idem, Matrix III: The Psycho-Social, Chemical,Biological and Electromagnetic Manipulation of Human Consciousness (Yelm, Wash.: LeadingEdge Research Group, 1992). 45. Valerian, Matrix III, vol. 1


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46. Valerian, Matrix II, p. v. 47. J. Gordon Melton, Finding Enlightenment: Ramtha, School of Ancient Wisdom (Hillsboro,Ore.: Beyond Words, 1998), pp. 70—71. Idem, "Ramtha's School of Enlightenment," in TheEncyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions, ed. James R. Lewis, 2d ed. (Amherst, N.Y.:Prometheus, 2002), pp. 596—600. "Ramtha's School of Enlightenment," http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~jkh8x/soc257/nrms/Ramtha.html(January 21, 1999). Steven Lee Weinberg, Carol Wright, and John Clancy, eds., Ramtha Intensive: Change, the Days to Come (Eastsound, Wash.: Sovereignty, 1987).Valerian, Matrix II, p. i. Idem, Matrix III, vol. 1, pp. 475—446. Melton, Finding Enlightenment, p. 131. "Conspiracies," http://www.ramtha.com/cgi-bin/private/c. . .&nav_mode = search&frames =&refer = homepage (September 21, 2000). "Cathy O'Brien," The Golden Thread Newspaper(November 1999), http://ramtha.com/golden/11—1999.html (September 21, 2000). 48. "Animal Mutilations and UFOs"