Page Content (OCR)
This is a frightening view, one that in the future may take new forms and engulf more people. Such is the result of the three coverups. There is a pattern behind this structure, and that pattern is not aoa . oT I have alluded to the fact that the major groups of UFO believers have been closely monitored by government agents. There is a good reason for this attention: their influence can be manipulated for political goals or simply as a test of various forms of deception. One of the recommendations of a recently declassified CIA/U.S. Air Force panel on UFOs, which met in Washington in 1953, was precisely to monitor the activities of civilian groups: The Panel took cognizance of the existence of such groups as the "Civilian Flying Saucer Investigators" or Los Angeles and the "Aerial Phenomena Research Organization" (Wisconsin). It was believed that such organizations should be watched because of their great influence on mass thinking if widespread sightings should occur. The apparent irresponsibility and the possible use of such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind. It is difficult to be more explicit. This political control factor does explain certain bizarre aspects of the UFO problem, including the behavior of some celebrated contactees, who could have been set up in their roles in order to propagate alleged extraterrestrial messages in this and other countries. For example, George Adamski has confessed that four U.S. government scientists were responsible for launching his career as an ambassador for the Space Brothers. These scientists were from the Point Loma Naval Electronics Laboratory near San Diego and from a "similar setup" in Pasadena. They asked him if he would "cooperate in the collective attempt to get photographs of the strange craft moving through space." Adamski's major supporter abroad was a former intelligence officer with the British Army, with whom I have personally met, and a Cambridge engineering graduate who now lives in Mexico. A man who hosted Adamski during his tour of Australia has told me that "Good old George" was traveling with a passport bearing special privileges. The political factor also explains the deliberate infiltration of civilian UFO groups by persons linked to the intelligence world. In terms of social behavior control, civilian UFO groups would be as necessary to an effective mechanism as Project Blue Book or the Condon committee, because they would provide an escape valve for the steam of the enthusiasts and a useful channel for planted stories. Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, the former CIA chief who stated, "It is imperative that we learn what UFOs are and where they come from," and later joined the board of directors of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), could have lent credibility to the stratagem by deliberately promoting the extraterrestrial theory. Also among the leaders of NICAP, one of the most influential UFO groups in the fifties and sixties, were at least three well- known intelligence operatives: Bernard Corvalho, Nicholas de Rochefort, and Colonel Joseph Ryan, men who were trained practitioners of the modern techniques of psychological warfare. It may seem preposterous for government to spend time and money testing the public's reaction to the idea of contact with extraterrestrials. Yet I strongly suspect at least two major UFO cases were covert experiments in rumor generation and in the deliberate creation of contactee cults (one of these cases took place in Spain, one in France). To the skeptical reader I can only point out that there are people on the government payroll whose job it is to devise contingency plans for all sorts of extreme situations. Under the Nixon administration, a White House task force had even proposed a scheme for the invasion of Cuba that involved a submarine equipped with lasers. It would "paint" an image of Christ over the island to simulate the Second Coming. This "miracle," it was thought, would disturb the Catholic population in Havana, paralyze communications, and disorganize the Cuban armed forces long enough for commandos to seize strategic points and overthrow the Castro contact but control. Political Overtones