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52 REVELATIONS garded, or censored, while the central question of UFO research must remain the government cover-up of Majestic 12! Accusations and coun- teraccusations flew from all quarters, increasingly sharp and vicious. At this point the reader probably wonders why I didn't just get up and go back to my car, which was parked nearby under the trees of the Palace of Fine Arts. I did wonder: what am I doing here? I was tempted to leave this small cluster of ufologists in the midst of their mutual bitter accusations of being CIA, OSI, or NRO agents and minions of the worst government conspiracy to come along since the Kennedy assassi- nation. Hadn't someone even suggested that the President had been gunned down in Dallas by his own chauffeur in full view of the crowd precisely because he was about to reveal the truth about the Gray aliens to the American public? There were two reasons for me to remain seated at the table where this heady discussion was going on. The first one had to do, very simply, with my own inertia. It was, as I have said, a peaceful and sunny morning. I had nothing else to do, having postponed an out-of-town business trip to attend the conference. I confess I felt perfectly comfort- able drinking coffee and eating chocolate brownies while listening to some of the best horror stories I had heard since my childhood days when my mother read me Grimm's Fairy-Tales. The other reason was the same natural curiosity that I suspect has seduced many ufologists into a fascination with such stories. I wanted to force myself to keep an open mind and find out what it was that had led so many of my friends to believe such things. After all, they were not just New Age zealots who got their information from visions, channelings, or peculiar mushrooms. They were hard-working reporters who claimed to have solid, firsthand human sources. And some of their sources were said to be government agents and other officials who existed in the flesh. If these people were systematically manipulated to foster a belief in the imminent takeover of the earth by the Gray aliens, then that was a fascinating mythological fact in itself, almost as compel- ling as a genuine UFO invasion. And it was that last thought that kept me seated with them, listening intently to an introductory lecture about Area 51 and a man named John Lear.