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FEBRUARY – MARCH 2002 www.nexusmagazine.com NEXUS • 61The following is the edited version of an exclusive interview which Surfing The Apocalypse conducted with Disclosure Project witness John Maynard,US Army Retired – Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). It was conductedvia email over a period of several weeks by Theresa de Veto for Surfing The Apocalypse (www.surfingtheapocalypse.com/maynard.html). Surfing The Apocalypse is denoted as SURFING. John Maynard is denoted as MAYNARD. The views expressed here are not necessarily the views of Surfing TheApocalypse, the interviewer or any of the affiliated websites. MAYNARD: One might ask, with a career that includes a background in counterintel- ligence for both military purposes and drug trafficking, "How did you become involved inUFOs?" My involvement was probably more happenstance than anything else. I becameinvolved while overseas in Germany, Turkey and Korea. These areas were not noted for alot of UFO activity. I was primarily afforded the opportunity to investigate peripherally afew incidents and implement disinformation or misinformation programs to divert atten-tion away from the military and toward the paranormal and/or UFO [followers] in thoseareas. However, a point I never revealed to the military was that my grandmother broughtme up believing that UFOs exist. Regardless of that point, I was still a staunch conservative (politically) and placed my military duties ahead of my beliefs. I had a "country, duty and honour" type attitude. Ibelieved that because of my dedication and what appeared to be naivety on my part, mymilitary superiors did not question my actions when it came to debunking UFO sightings. However, I became very intrigued as to why UFOs were not to become public knowl- edge and that they (the government) preferred that any UFO information for public con-sumption stay in the realm of the paranormal and/or the unreliable UFO resources. It tookme several years to figure out that this blatant disregard for public opinion was a plandesigned to keep and maintain the pressure of proof on certain elements of our society. The plan was basically to place the burden of proof on the UFO researchers and to steer the public away from the military organisations that were directly involved in UFOresearch. In this plan, I deduced that the military was using the media to keep these UFOresearchers from making too much of the issue by having the media brand them as kooks,weird, paranoid and unbelievable; better yet, by having people who go around chasingafter shadows in a belief that UFOs are real and the government is hiding something. To date, this plan has worked well above average, and the general public still has an opinion that follows whatever the media tell them. SURFING: Can you tell me about the pivotal point at which you decided to move out of the realm of disinformation in the UFO field and into the belief that disclosure wasneeded? How did you come to the decision that your beliefs should take precedence overyour military duties? MAYNARD: If you want to pin it down to when it started to happen, I guess it was in the early 1970s while I was in Germany. It was also the time of the famous LA Times publishing of "The Pentagon Papers" and Daniel Ellsberg. I was in charge of a US/NATOclassified repository, and The Pentagon Papers caused me to inventory everything in therepository, right down to the last page. Part of the Ellsberg papers was classified TopSecret Cosmic, which is a NATO classification. Since I was at an Air Defense site, thatparticular document was in my repository, so we had to account for everything. Thiscaused my office an untold amount of work, inventorying all the documents. It was aTTOWOWARDSARDS FFULLULLDDISCLOSUREISCLOSURE ONONUFO/ET CUFO/ET C ONTONT ACTACT Retired US Army/DIA analyst John Maynard confirms the existence of highly classified UFO files in military archives and urges the government to make a full disclosure on UFOs and alien contact. An interview with John Maynard by Theresa de Veto for Surfing The Apocalypse © 2001 Website: www.surfingtheapocalypse.com/ maynard.html