Reasons to Disclose

August 17, 2000
Stephen Bassett

Washington, DC – In a June 14 Alien Zoo column the question was asked, “What does the ‘politics of UFOs’ mean?” The answer:  making the case to the general public why their personal vital interests and their nation’s vital interests are served by a comprehensive and truthful disclosure of the facts known to their government relating to the extraterrestrial presence. Events intervened delaying a follow-up column making that case, until now.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the reasons why formal disclosure of the extraterrestrial presence needs to occur at this time. You will probably not read here anything that has not been written somewhere else, but there is a power to gathering them in one place. So, the reasons to disclose:

It’s True

Sometimes historical events are built on lies. That doesn’t mean the events were not powerful or dramatic. In such an instance activists might still pursue issues with vigor and well meaning ardor.   It does mean the outcomes were tainted, possibly destructive, and certainly confusing. Activism for the sake of activism is no virtue. The well-being of people, nations and the planet is best served by events built on truth.

It is of no small consequence the presence of extraterrestrials in our world is fact. An educated guess, a maybe, would be quite another thing. The evidence has been amassed by largely competent researchers for five decades. That members of certain established institutions – high end media, top universities, military and intelligence public relations offices – refuse to properly examine this evidence is not relevant to its dispositive value. Placing a paper bag over ones head is not acceptable conduct in the jury box.

One argument against the disclosure effort is simply there is nothing to disclose – no extraterrestrials, no contact, no retrieved craft, and no cover-up. In the shadow of this argument is the accusation the UFO/ET disclosure movement is a front for attacks on the military/intelligence infrastructure – a deceptive attempt to draw people into the secrecy reform movement who otherwise would have no interest. The truth of the phenomena negates that attack.

It is a powerful operating tenant of free societies of law that it is just as dangerous to suppress the truth in matters of great importance as it is to proffer lies. The very truth of the ET presence demands it be engaged. It is no small truth, and the possible outcomes and impact are beyond the ability of mere humans to predict.   In such instances the best course is open involvement by every aspect of the culture – bring to bear every talent, viewpoint, and skill.

The Cover-up Corrupts

The American people have granted certain intelligence entities the right to pry and keep secrets. But they did not grant the right to lie. The appropriate answer to a UFO/ET question by the government is “no comment.”   When any agenda at times forces members of the Army, Air Force, NASA, the Congress, the Executive, the CIA, NSA and other agencies to lie straight faced to the public, it corrupts the people lying and the entity that employs them. Worse, it lowers the barriers to more lies about other issues, making it a standard operating procedure. Over time this corruption becomes pandemic, spreading to other agencies not even related to the forcing agenda.

The corrupting effects of the UFO/ET cover-up are now in their 53rd year – a lot of time, a lot of damage.

The Cover-up Warps

As stated previously in other columns, the UFO/ET cover-up acts like a huge gravitational field warping and unbalancing the other components of government in their constitutional orbits.         Presidents are kept out of the loop, congressional oversight is breached, hidden wars are conducted, intelligence agencies violate their mission statements, the judiciary passes on illegal suppression of evidence and upholds unconstitutional executive orders, military services are recruited to maintain the deception, and civilian agencies such as NASA are twisted away from their legislated mandates.

Disclosure will turn that magnetic field off so our government can be brought back into equilibrium.

Sequestered Technology

The late Col. Philip Corso revealed in his memoir, The Day After Roswell, that some alien based technology was migrated into the commercial marketplace to give the United States a competitive edge.   Most of that technology has come to benefit all nations. Well and good. But the evidence mounts that the two most impacting technologies have been sequestered for national security reasons – how alien craft are propelled and how they derive the energy to effect that propulsion.

While the exact nature of these two technologies cannot be stated, they have come to be known by somewhat metaphorical terms – electrogravitic drive and zero point (free) energy.       In a world where thousands of children die every day from starvation and medical neglect, where hundreds of millions suffer from various deprivations, it is not acceptable to hold back technologies of this potency on the basis of national security or any basis.

And last, but certainly not least:

International Trust

The most valuable currency in the new century will not be gold or silver, U.S. or Euro dollars – it will be “trust.”   The list of threatening issues that have gone global and from which no single nation can withdraw, grows larger. It includes:

  • 1) non-coercive population control which does not violate human rights.
  • 2) mitigating international terrorism without the imposition of marshal law and violation of national sovereignties.
  • 3) ending the “war” on drugs without having to imprison absurd percentages of the population, wage real war, or violate national sovereignties.
  • 4) nuclear and biological arms proliferation.
  • 5) non-coercive disease management.
  • 6) environmental issues on a level impacting all nations – rain forest elimination, Russian nuclear ships rusting in heaps, fishing out the seas, genetic engineering foods to address famine.
  • 7) the turning of near-earth space into a landfill and a weapons platform.
  • 8) voluntary withdrawal from ancient ethnic hatreds and the concomitant spirals of violence.

Without unprecedented global cooperation, these problems will not be solved, and that cooperation will have to be purchased with trust, not money. The UFO/ET cover-up is nicely positioned to empty the American vault of that commodity.

Aside from the distrust bred of abuse of power, the breaking Echelon scandal being but the latest in a lengthening list of such abuses, the UFO/ET cover-up holds some spectacular possibilities to create international and cultural riffs that might last for centuries.

What are citizens of other nations and adherents of other cultures to think? The United States has lied about the most important event in human history to everyone for decades. It has captured extraordinary technology and kept it hidden. It has attempted to develop new weapons from this technology to add to its already unmatched arsenal. It has denied earth changing, life sparing, environmental saving technology from the human race for “national security” reasons. It has interacted with and perhaps entered into agreements with non-human entities for unstated, hidden purposes. It has denied financial and medical assistance to its own employees for “national security” reasons. It has forced other nations to adhere to its UFO/ET cover-up and timetable. It has either condoned, permitted, and/or conducted bizarre and sometimes coercive interactions with citizens of its own country and other countries, while denying any knowledge of such events.

The United States and Great Britain mutually agreed to keep all atomic bomb secrets from the Soviet Union for fear it would be the new enemy. The resulting Cold War and arms race cost between $10 and $20 trillion dollars. What will be the price tag on this latest game of hide and seek?

The New Paradigm

If the citizens who inhabit this planet of nations are not going to repeat the mistakes of the 20th Century on an even grander scale, they must think and act in a new way. The UFO/ET cover-up is old paradigm, formal disclosure and the end of the cover-up is new paradigm. Governments must open up, personal privacy must be reassured, nations must cooperate, people must give up their bigotry, the environment must be preserved – these are the elements of the new paradigm.

None of these goals can be achieved in an atmosphere of secrecy and mistrust. The formal disclosure of the extraterrestrial presence – the end of the UFO/ET cover-up – is a necessary and critical step toward a world of governments that realizes – and not simply promises – freedom, justice and the basic needs of life for all.

What does “The Politics of Disclosure” mean?

August 16, 2000
Stephen Bassett

Washington, DC – It is a strange phrase – other worldly, ambiguous.    It’s also a standing joke which goes like this: the lobbyist/activist is lurking at some soirée or another in Georgetown or Bethesda or the Capitol. Amiable chatting is taking place, harmless banter, until that magic moment occurs when the unsuspecting attendee asks innocently, “Now what is it that you do?”

Heh, heh, heh, of course this is exactly why the lobbyists/activist is there in the first place – for just this question, this polite act of networking so essential to everything that happens in this town.

The answer always catches them off guard. {“He seemed so normal – well dressed, articulate, sane.”} They were expecting something to do with the oil depletion allowance, passenger-side air bags, some newspaper in the mid-west. But “the politics of disclosure?”

These are not dumb people. They recover quickly. Something light is called for, something to diffuse the awkwardness, “You mean you lobby on behalf of aliens. Do they pay well?”

The questioner doesn’t realize this is a perfectly appropriate question. Extraterrestrial beings are here. They seem to have an agenda, which Jim Marrs, David Jacobs or a number of other fine researchers are quite happy to elaborate upon.  They want something, probably have all sort of neat things to swap, and would likely prefer our military stop shooting at them. Sure, they could use a lobbyist.

Unfortunately, there is not an iota of evidence they have anything remotely resembling money. No coin, no plastic – nada, zilch, nichevo. The lobbyist/activist can understand this. Just about everyone associated with this subject (with a few notable exceptions) hasn’t got any money either. Why should the aliens?

One could wonder whether any of the symbols on the Roswell wreckage happened to be alien for “pro bono,” but why bother? If the extraterrestrials want representation in Washington, this lobbyist is more than willing to take on a new, non-paying client and present their interests on the Hill. Of course, he would prefer the initial consultation were probeless. This goes without saying.

So, to all those with a more direct connection to our elusive visitors – channelers, hybrids, walk-ins, experiencers, the guy at Wright Patterson sitting outside the cell door – feel free to pass on the offer.   Perhaps some day it will be possible to answer the question above with, “They don’t provide a retainer, but you would not believe my vacation venues.”

The Reality Segue

Back to the soirée. It’s time to move off the humor and get to the point. “Nope, don’t represent ETs, but research and activist organizations addressing the phenomena.” This elaboration usually elicits the logical, yet dreaded, comeback, “Why?”

Why indeed. This legitimate yet troubling question lies at the heart of the politics of disclosure.

When politics is at its best it is a constant, external dialogue with those near the center speaking outwardly to the general public, telling us truthfully what is going on in the world and the details of their activities. At its worst, politics becomes an internal dialogue with those near the center speaking truthfully only to those within their own group – a kind of informational incest. Outside of these inward directed entities, no one really knows what is going on. At some point people even cease to care. Now you have real trouble. As world history clearly shows, this happens often. At this time the political and activist mandate must be as follows: making the case to the general public why their personal vital interests and their nation’s vital interests are served by a comprehensive and truthful disclosure of the facts known to their government relating to the extraterrestrial presence. (Comprehensive as opposed to full, since full disclosure will not happen. National security will always require some information be withheld – the key question being, “how much?”)

Unless the reasons for disclosure are widely presented and valid, the general public cannot be faulted for giving their government the benefit of the doubt in this matter indefinitely. And general public means everyone, not just the interested minority. This includes people who presently know absolutely nothing of UFOs, ETs, and cover-ups.

Our society is revered for its willingness to permit controversial information to be disseminated as far and wide as necessary. But it is not automatic. A deliberate and competent effort has to occur. The politics of Disclosure is all about such an effort.

Women

August 8, 2000
Stephen Bassett

Washington, DC – There is something you carry around with you twenty-four and seven that is absolutely essential to your well being, even operating while you sleep, infiltrating your dreams.

It is your world view. No aspect of ones personal reality is more taken for granted. You move through your life with a shadow composed of millions of small and large components acquired via the conscious and unconscious mind. This shadow is the vector sum of every experience you have had from floating in amniotic fluid to cutting your foot on a bottle cap to having someone explain why the stars stay up in the sky. World view is also affected by genetics, luck and timing.

With each passing year this shadow welds ever firmer to your self and becomes a prophylactic glove protecting you from the dangers about. Don’t leave home without it.

If you did, you wouldn’t even survive long enough to be voted off the planet. Your world view tells you that objects have mass and moving objects have momentum. Step in front of one and you feel the big hurt. World view tells you gravity is constant and certain. You could leap off a 20-story building, feeling like a little flying and calculating that gravity might be on holiday. You don’t.

You live in a highly developed social structure with great commonality of experience, so you are not surprised that world view tends to group. You like it when the person next to you has a similar, if not identical world view. It’s convenient and comforting and so very ancient.

When a single adult has a major change of world view, it is called a mid-life crisis, an epiphany, rehab, an awakening, getting one’s act together. When the population of an empire or continent or race have a major change of world view, it is called a paradigm shift.

That which is about to happen in the world needs a name, and paradigm shift is it. Yes, you are sick to death of this phrase. The word “paradigm” is all over the place and getting tiresome. Nevertheless, when a phrase or word matches up with events or phenomena of sufficient power, it becomes ubiquitous by virtue of that power.

The person most responsible for this is Thomas S. Kuhn who wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962. He introduced the concept of paradigm shift to describe what happens when a particularly profound, new scientific data set dramatically changes a base premise by which reality is interpreted.

As it happens, this type of shift will occur in science without the average person buying a slurpy at 7/11 knowing or caring. However, on occasion a scientific tremor is followed by a massive aftershock whereby such a shift explodes into the world at large and affects the world view of every living person. The Copernican Revolution had such an impact, altering politics, religion, literature, philosophy, planetarium building – the works.

What do you call that? The supershift, the megashift, a paradigm shift with lettuce, tomato, pickle and special sauce?  It’s a wonderful phrase and Kuhn just set his sights too low. A scientific revolution is a fine howdy do, but a tectonic change in world view by billions of people forcing reassessment of most of human history? – now that’s a spicy meatball.

Please permit a modest suggestion for the sake of clarity. If the extraterrestrial presence were merely a matter of scientific inquiry, its disclosure would create a Kuhnlike paradigm shift. But it is much more than that, representing the biggest change in world view ever on Earth. So we shall call it a Paradigm Shift with a capital “P” and “S.”

Let’s review. Light is both a particle and a wave – paradigm shift. Telepathic aliens are floating your brother into a saucer – Paradigm Shift. Disease is caused by microscopic organisms – paradigm shift. So many spacecraft are landing in Mexico they need valet parking – Paradigm Shift.

Since you now understand this, we, naturally, are led to the subject of “women.”

Human beings are, in general, a self-possessed species. When considering the importance of any event or circumstance, humans take a “what good has it done for me, Al Franken” approach. Let’s depart from that perspective and examine the 20th Century as to how it will impact the entire planet and every living thing on it for the next thousand years – the big picture.

On that basis, what is the single most important facet of the last century – more important than WWII, the atomic bomb, the moon landing, Velcro, the United Nations, the civil rights movement, environmentalism, the Bolshevik Revolution and painless dentistry? The answer – the political empowerment of women, the suffrage/women’s rights movement.

And, surprise, surprise, there is a very powerful tie-in to the politics of UFOs. “Ok, son, you’re out of your everlovin’ mind, but I’m willing to give you a couple paragraphs to explain this before I hyperlink the hell out of here.” Thank you.

The UFO cover-up is a male enterprise, run and managed by men based upon a world view constructed by male experience going back 3 million years. Virtually the same can be said about the waging of war, invention of weaponry, and the structure of politics, diplomacy and religion.

In other words, the 20th Century was shaped by a world view which was predominantly male. As it happens, that world view ceased to be adequate around the middle of that century, say 1945.

By that time, the long term future of Earth was based upon three extremely entrenched premises which are false. They are:

1)  the continuing increase in human population will auto-correct itself without serious human intervention, massive suffering and unnecessary deaths.

2)  one of the auto-corrective mechanisms mitigating the population issue will be the movement of second and third world countries to first world status accompanied by the appropriate level of technology and consumption.

3)  peace and the pursuit of happiness can be indefinitely preserved by secrecy, control, and the threat of using ever more effective weapons.

As a result of these premises the Earth enters the 21st Century on the brink of global calamity. Note the important word, “global.” The suffering in Belair, Marin County, and Westchester may not be too awful, but the suffering outside the U.S. borders will be terrible beyond description.

A major reason for this most unfortunate circumstance is this: the world view of women is not the same as that of men and that world view has not been sufficiently operative in shaping the modern world. It is the classic matter of yin and yang.

In the most powerful nation on Earth, women’s suffrage only comes about 35 years before the atomic bomb. Women still only represent a small portion of the U. S. Congress at a time when we are moving to place weapons of mass destruction in space. The Earth has been host to a seminal race between the empowerment of women and the consequences of a male dominated approach to politics, diplomacy and religion – it is losing the race by about 50 years. Had the timetable for parity between male and female world view in the conduct of world affairs been advanced a mere half-century, much of the worst of the 20th century might have been avoided.

The male dominated world view is so entrenched in our politics, the timely alteration of the premises above will require circumstantial change of the highest degree. There are only two candidates with sufficient leverage to effect such change: 1) full political leadership parity by women in most of the developed nations, and 2) formal disclosure of the extraterrestrial presence.

Even the most sanguine view of world politics will not project a yin/yang of male/female world leadership parity in time to avoid a 21st century nightmare.

This author believes the extraterrestrial entities presently engaging us know this, and that is one of several good reasons why they have seemingly been forcing the pace of formal self-disclosure for 20 years.

Even if true, the question remains: will the missing female parity in political leadership damage the process of self-disclosure and mitigate its impact on the lopsided rationales leading us toward a world of hurt?

Dark Matter

July 26, 2000
Stephen Bassett

Washington, DC – The average person in the street has but the faintest clue as to how far cosmologists and astrophysicists have gone in attempting to understand the universe. Oh, they note the occasional science article in their daily paper, the one about this black hole, that quasar, a superstring here, a quark there. But few are able to piece together the complete picture human science is painting about the world outside the planet earth. It is astounding – not simply for what is being hypothesized – but that it is being done at all.

The human brain, barely out of the nursery, has actually forged a logic train back to the “big bang” and, even beyond. Yes, there are scientists making serious efforts to understand the pre-big bang reality. Happily, we live in the golden age of science journalism and all of these findings and projections are being chronicled in a manner, also remarkable, even a reasonably educated non-scientist can follow.

However, for two decades the efforts of cosmologists working on the universal jigsaw puzzle have been thwarted by a missing piece.   A host of calculations including galactic rotation, clustering and expansion could not be properly interpreted without factoring in what has come to be called “dark matter” – missing, unseen matter we are just beginning to understand.

The extraterrestrial hypothesis is the dark matter of political science and science policy in the second half of the twentieth century. It may very well be the missing piece for archeology, anthropology, and the history of religion, but that is for another columnist to address.

Whether you are a reporter nosing around for a story, a legislative aide trying to figure out what all the fuss is, or just a bewildered Mr. or Mrs. Jones wanting to know what’s happening, hear this: the actions and policy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the conduct and treatment of presidents, the actions of the intelligence agencies, and the investigative and response policies of the military services do not calculate (make sense) unless you factor in the presence of extraterrestrials in the world, the ET hypothesis.

At its core, the disclosure process is the reinterpretation of history in light of the ET hypothesis. One of the reasons this process is intensifying is the quality of people stepping into the arena – it increase year to year.

A key continuing tactic of the insider, anti-disclosure cabal has been to refuse to acknowledge any new contribution by people of rank and stature – the higher the stature, the stricter the adherence to this tactic. Harvard education? Ph.D.? Pulitzer Prize? Career military officer? A dozen decorations? Member of the Congress? President of the United States? Accomplished, published scientist? If you are talking ET hypothesis, you don’t exist and will be ignored or stonewalled, if complete disregard is not an option (president, congressperson).

And like just about anyone who ever worked for Richard Nixon, you are left to twist slowly in the wind, whereupon members of the UFO/ET research community (to be fair, some government operatives) will gladly pick you apart until your contribution is likely rendered useless or marginalized.

Times are a changin’.  As more people of rank and station keep turning up, the tactic of pretending they don’t exist increasingly insults the collective national intelligence. Consequently, the fine people running things inside the Beltway look more and more like idiots. This author lives inside the Beltway and can state without hesitation, these people hate being thought of as idiots.

Guess what? Two new players just entered stage left. Let’s take a look.

Daniel Sheehan is one of the leading social activists of our time. He has three Harvard degrees; founded the Christic Institute, an interfaith center for law and national policy; was legal counsel on the Karen Silkwood, Iran/Contra, Pentagon Papers, and Watergate Burglary Cases, and numerous other landmark issues; represented Dr. John Mack during the Harvard Medical School inquiry; has raised millions of dollars for legal activism; is known throughout the world; and currently heads the Strategic Initiative to Identify the New Paradigm, one of six major projects spun out from the Gorbachev Foundation.

In 1977, while General Counsel to the United States Jesuit Office of Social Ministry in Washington, DC. he served as a Special Consultant to the United States Library of Congress Congressional Research Office Project on Extraterrestrial Intelligence ordered by President Jimmy Carter. Dr. Sheehan was given access not only to the classified portions of the United States Air Force’s “Project Blue Book” files but to the confidential report prepared for the Science & Technology Committee of the United States Congress by the Library of Congress Congressional Research Office. During this assignment he saw extraordinary evidence for the ET hypothesis.

On the July 6, 2000 radio broadcast (still archived) of Coast to Coast AM with Mike Siegel, Dan Sheehan committed himself and the prestige of the Christic Institute to ending the government UFO/ET cover-up.   The interested public should expect more news of this extremely important development over the coming months.

Now, don’t you just know the boys down at MJ-12 central, or whatever they call themselves these days, are just thrilled to hear about this?

Alfred Webre is a Fulbright Scholar, graduate of Yale University, Yale Law School with a JD degree, and the University of Texas.   He has been an environmental lawyer, a futurist at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), professor (Yale University and the University of Texas), author, and social activist.  Webre has been a non- governmental delegate to the United Nations and a delegate to the Texas Democratic Convention.

In 1977, while at the Stanford Research Institute, Alfred Webre also worked on the Carter study of extraterrestrial intelligence. The study was to have been undertaken jointly by the National Science Foundation and the Center for the Study of Social Policy at SRI where the author was a futurist and principal investigator.   In his new book, Exopolitics, he claims that the 1977-78 Carter White House study was secretly suppressed at the behest of Pentagon officials, led by the SRI liaison with the Pentagon.

Dr. Webre will be participating in the new initiative previously mentioned.

The entrance of these exceptional men into the disclosure movement will have several points of impact, one of which being the reopening of the facts surrounding the Carter study. The parallels to the Clinton presidency as relates to the UFO/ET question are eerie.

Carter arrived in Washington as an outsider and governor of a southern state. Very early in his administration he showed unilateral interest in the UFO/ET issue. He made inquiries, started a research study and requested information from several agencies. He was generally stonewalled.

In fact, when he approached the NASA administrator, Fletcher, to involve NASA in the study, his request was rejected. When he approached the CIA Director, he was told to look elsewhere. That director, George H. W. Bush.

The study was closed down early and an inconsequential report authored by Marcia Smith was published.

Carter then came under attack from several directions.   These attacks were often of a personal nature.   He was called a liar. Attempts were made to connect him to a financial scandal.   His family members, particularly his brother, were ridiculed in the press.  His Ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, was driven out of office.

Jimmy Carter essentially never spoke of the UFO/ET issue again and was voted out of office. A legend has grown up around the last days of the 1980 election. It is called the “October Surprise.”   Authors have claimed a deal was struck with the Ayatollah Khomeni to withhold the American hostages until the republican candidate was elected. The man allegedly leading the negotiation of that deal, George H. W. Bush, the former CIA Director and Vice President elect.

After William Clinton, a flawed man to be sure, showed formal, unilateral interest in the UFO/ET question, he came under attack as no other president in history. While the effort to limit him to one term failed, he has been humiliated and marginalized as he completes his tenure. The republican seeking to replace him in the White House, George W. Bush, son of George H. W. Bush.

Allow to be put forward a theory for your consideration. Some presidents are allowed to know the particulars of the UFO/ET reality and some are not.  Jimmy Carter and William Clinton were not invited to the party.   In fact, it was supposed to be George H. W. Bush’s party. He lost, but his son is slated to take his place as the disclosure president. The selection of former Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney is in line with that agenda.

The idea that some elected presidents are not briefed on issues of massive importance because certain insiders, perhaps composed of members of the other party, don’t wish them to be briefed, is not acceptable. It is illegal, it is dangerous, and it is part of that “dark matter” you need to embrace, if you want to make sense of the last 50 years of history.

Jimmy Carter is viewed by both political parties as one of the greatest ex-presidents in this or any time. He has risen above politics in his post-presidential life and garners great respect worldwide.

The presence of extraterrestrials in our world is bipartisan and affects everyone, everywhere. Maybe the last great act of Jimmy Carter’s life is to step into the disclosure arena himself and bring the process to all the people. At this point he is just about the only person left anyone would trust. Jimmy, come on dowwwwnnnnn.

The Paradigm Clock

July 17, 2000
Stephen Bassett

Washington, DC – You, the person reading this right now, yeah, you, guess what? You’re not supposed to be here. That’s right, you shouldn’t be alive. You should be dead or at least not born. Want to know why?

A group of men you most certainly never met, and in some cases never heard of, got together at the beginning of the century and started doing some science. Initially most of the science was out in the open. As each decade passed much of it became secret.

It was the physics of the manipulation of atomic structure, and the men included Fermi, Bohr, Einstein, Szilard, Teller, Seaborg, Lawrence, Oppenheimer, von Neumann, Heisenberg, Frisch, Gamow, Bethe, Hahn, Feynman, Morrison, Kistiakowsky, Neddermeyer, and dozens of others. Their work directly or indirectly led to the creation of the atomic bomb. Later, some of these men with others created the hydrogen bomb.

These men knew what they were doing and some were terrified. Had there not been a driving justification for this science, a world war needing an end; had they just been, as is sometimes the case, doing it because it could be done, many would have refused to proceed, or proceeding, had a nervous breakdown or committed suicide.

At one point they became concerned that igniting an atomic bomb might set the atmosphere on fire and kill all life on the planet. After a few head sessions, they decided the probability of that was “low” and they set off the test codenamed Trinity, a term used to describe the Godhead of the Christian faith.

Starting to get the picture? It was as close as men had come to being gods. They were about to create the means to destroy a world. In time the bombs were built, placed atop missiles, enhanced, MIRVed, and targeted on an enemy who had done the same. Two vast nations, each despising the other, with completely different ideologies, poised to strike in seconds – and not a single soldier had to leave a trench. It was electronic, sterile and easy.

By any historical criteria you might apply to this grotesque circumstance, those missiles should have been launched and you should not be here. But they weren’t, and you are. And the reason you are here has little to do with science; it has everything to do with politics.

The politics of science came of age at Los Alamos as these men attempted to grapple with the implications of their inventions. They lobbied, petitioned, argued and agonized over how to control the physics of nuclear destruction. They reached out to presidents, the public and the press. That effort continues to this day.

Two very powerful developments connect the politics of atomic physics with the politics of disclosure:

1)   In 1947 the editors of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published to the world the “Doomsday Clock” – a public relations device intended to influence public opinion and awareness of the proximity to nuclear war.  In an effort to attract the media to the political implications of the bomb, a metaphorical clock was set at seven minutes to midnight. If the missiles created by demigods were ever launched, the Doomsday Clock would strike midnight. Over time it would be closer or further from midnight depending upon world events.

2)   There is mounting evidence that from the WW II until the present, intelligent beings from other worlds have attempted to influence our decision making as regards the use of nuclear weapons and the conduct of mass war in general. A fertile and vociferous debate goes on within the UFO/ET research/activist community as to the ultimate intentions of these beings towards our species and our planet. The high end of the mainstream press has yet to catch up with this debate.

Therefore, on April 30, 1998, the Paradigm Research Group published to the World Wide Web the “Paradigm Clock.”  It includes a chronicle of events that have moved the clock. When the governments of the world, most likely but not necessarily led by the United States, formally disclose to their citizens the presence of extraterrestrial beings, the Paradigm Clock will strike midnight.       The time set for April 30, 1998 was 11:57:00 pm, three minutes to midnight, reflecting a view the disclosure process had advanced substantially since the “end” of the Cold War in 1989.

However, there is a wonderful concordance between the politics of disclosure and the politic of atomic physics. The Doomsday Clock was published in the same year the modern UFO era began, 1947 – the year of Roswell and Kenneth Arnold. For that reason the Paradigm Clock was retroactively created going back to 1947 and was initially set at the same time – 11:53:00 pm.

Since it was published in 1998, the Paradigm Clock, has been reset three times:

  • July 27, 1998: Time reset back to 11:56:30 pm
  • July 28, 1999: Time reset forward to 11:57:15 pm
  • July 12, 2000: Time reset forward to 11:58:10 pm

The developments which affected the last time setting are shown below.  Other events going back to 1947 can be found in the Time Change Chronicle at the Paradigm Research Group website.

  • 7/6/00 – On Coast to Coast AM, noted legal/social activist, Daniel Sheehan, confirms the existence of remarkable evidence presented to him during his work on a 1977 research report on extraterrestrial intelligence initiated by President Jimmy Carter.  Former Stanford Research Institute futurist and author of the new eBook Exopolitics, Alfred Webre, who also worked on the Carter report, confirms the project was shut down prematurely.   Daniel Sheehan commits the resources of the Christic Institute to the formal disclosure process.   Both publicly state strong convictions regarding the ET hypothesis.
  • 6/25/00 MSNBC airs a substantive one-hour news documentary on the UFO/ET issue.
  • 6/22/99 – NASA holds a press conference to announce photographic evidence pointing toward active subterranean water on Mars.
  • 6/23/00 – Internet entrepreneur, Joseph Firmage, who has publicly stated his belief in an extraterrestrial presence, launches an integrated media network, Project Voyager, with Ann Druyan, widow of the late Carl Sagan. Firmage declares his venture capital firm, Intend Change, has amassed $225 million.
  • 6/00 – Lt. Col. Philip  Corso comes under intense attack by researchers when FBI files on him are released to and then partially published by Larry Bryant.  These files contain much negative material written up by FBI agents over a span of several decades.
  • 5/23/00 – The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) releases 27,000 new Mars photos onto the Internet, which immediately come under close scrutiny by a host of Mars researchers.  The archive covers one Mars year, 687 Earth days, beginning in September 1997 and extending through August 1999.
  • 5/21/00 – Leslie Kean, an accomplished freelance journalist, publishes in the Boston Globe an extended piece on the UFO/ET issue, focusing on the COMETA report published in France in July of 1999.  The Globe is one of the top ten dailies in America.  The Minneapolis Star-Tribune (May 29), Memphis Commercial Appeal, Irish Independent (June 27, and VSD Magazine (July) follow up with versions of the story.
  • 4/26/00 – Mike Siegel seamlessly replaces Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM.     Premiere Radio Networks makes it clear the program will remain devoted to the show’s previous subject matter, including the UFO/ET/Disclosure issues.   Siegel, who has a Ph.D. and a law degree, demonstrates keen interest in the politics of disclosure.
  • 4/5/00 – The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) release new photographs of the Cydonia region of Mars that had been held back in violation of an agreement to publish such photos quickly.
  • 3/11/00 – A Canadian cable television technician reveals he has taped direct NASA Shuttle videos.  Martyn Stubbs comes forward with anomalous imagery and thousands of hours of tape to examine.
  • 3/10/00 – Touchstone Pictures releases Brian DePalma’s provocative movie, Mission to Mars, and introduces the Cydonia/Face controversy to millions of Americans.
  • 11/99 – Dr. John Mack of Harvard University publishes Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters, his long awaited follow-up to Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens.

The new time setting of 11:58:00 pm is intended to inform the public and the press that disclosure is near.

Should we fear the science of atomic physics and the science of the extraterrestrial propulsion and energy systems, or should we fear the politics of that science?  Can good policy emerge from a morass of lies, covert programs, illegal actions, subversion and public ignorance?

These are the questions the Paradigm Clock invites you to consider, and more importantly, invites your political leaders to consider – openly.  So far more people on this earth have perished prematurely from bad politics than from the laws of nature.

It comes down to what kind of world you want to construct. If you desire a political reality that is done “by you” rather than “to you,” there are two things you have to do – pay attention and get involved.  And now is a very good a time.

NASA – a jewel or thorn in the crown?

June 27, 2000
Stephen Bassett

Washington, DC – Look hard at the long, strange trip the human race has taken up from the caves at Olduvai Gorge. Savagery and animalism, conquest and war, subjugation and slavery, exploitation and injustice, brutality and pain – all there in plain view. Twisting and coursing amidst this history, however, is a process that many have struggled mightily to define and project forward in time. Where is this species going and why does it want to get there?

As you sift through events and achievements that seem to impact this process, you notice that some stand out – a few so extraordinary they amount to jewels in the crown of human experience. Here are some examples: the blunting of old world imperialism by the emergence of the Christian faith; the consolidation of Arab and middle eastern factions under Islam; the U. S. Constitution; the Magna Carta; the Marshall Plan and the peace waged after World War II; emergence of science in democratic, ancient Greece; the simultaneous discoveries of relativity and quantum mechanics; and the structures at Giza.

The last jewel to be added to this crown was created in 1958 – it is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA – the entity charged with taking the free world into space and learning what is there. The accomplishments of NASA are well known and need not be recounted here. One, however, may not be properly appreciated.

By 1969, at the age of 23, this author was intellectually convinced nuclear war was inevitable. This was not an uncommon sentiment. No generation in history had ever grown up under a Damoclese Sword of global totality. The psychological and social effect of such a sense of impending doom was and is immeasurable.The men (to the 99+ percentile) who ran the world had never in all of history failed to use the weapons they had built – never.

The stage was set for a deepening nihilism build on hopelessness, which, thanks to the media’s power to spread it around, would envelope the world like Carl Sagan’s nuclear winter. Humans, having been repeatedly disappointed by the failure of endtime predictions to pan out, had seized the initiative, building their own apocalypse, bomb by bomb.

After the annus horribilis that was 1968 and for the next 20 years, the wondrous discoveries from our space program provided good reason to turn away from the madness of MAD and give the future some respect. NASA’s accomplishments got many a young man and woman through the nightmare of the Cold War. I was one.

During the summers between college years I worked at the Kennedy Space Center as an intern. It was nothing special, but it allowed for trips around the facility – the famous Pad (39)A where most Apollo shots were launched and the Vertical Assembly Building (VAB) where the Saturn V space craft was pieced together. The launch tower was moved from the largest building in the world, VAB, to Pad A on the largest ground vehicle in the world, a massive crawler.

One job put me inside the portable tower. The bottom structure was designed like a ship with watertight doors and compartments – built this way because of the cooling torrents of water raining down at launch. I would take the elevator to the top of the tower and look out over the Cape. In the distance were other pads. Across two oceans further east a war was raging. I remembered climbing under my desk in elementary school during nuclear attack drills in the 50’s.  It was 1966. I was young, fearful and confused. I didn’t know much, but I knew there were rockets which carried 100 megaton hydrogen bombs and there were rockets which would carry us to the moon. Somehow the existence of the latter made the former easier to bear.

The exploration of space was a damn good reason to be alive. It still is, but something has happened to our space agency, something bad. Like many others who have learned this, I take no pleasure in pointing it out.

The 1958 Space Act

If you wish to understand the terrible dilemma faced by NASA, you must closely read certain paragraphs shown below and pay particular attention to the words in red.

While there were predecessor entities, the modern space agency we know and love was formed by the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. The foundation is described in the second section, Declaration of Policy and Purpose. Paragraph (b) is critical.

Sec. 102(b) The Congress declares that the general welfare and security of the United States require that adequate provision be made for aeronautical and space activities. The Congress further declares that such activities shall be the responsibility of, and shall be directed by, a civilian agency exercising control over aeronautical and space activities sponsored by the United States, except that activities peculiar to or primarily associated with the development of weapons systems, military operations, or the defense of the United States (including the research and development necessary to make effective provision for the defense of the United States) shall be the responsibility of, and shall be directed by, the Department of Defense; and that determination as to which such agency has responsibility for and direction of any such activity shall be made by the President in conformity with section 201 (e).

Section 201 is entitled National Aeronautics and Space Council. The important portions are below:

Sec. 201. (a) There is hereby established the National Aeronautics and Space Council (hereinafter called the “Council”) which shall be composed of–

(1)    the President (who shall preside over meetings of the Council);

(2)    the Secretary of State;

(3)    the Secretary of Defense

(4)    the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration;

(5)    the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission;

(6)    not more than one additional member appointed by the President from the departments and agencies of the Federal Government; and

(7)    not more than three other members appointed by the President, solely on the basis of established records of distinguished achievement from among individuals in private life who are eminent in science, engineering, technology, education, administration, or public affairs.

(d)  It shall be the function of the Council to advise the President with respect to the performance of the duties prescribed in subsection (e) of this section.

(e) In conformity with the provisions of section 102 of this Act, it shall be the duty of the President to–

(1)  survey all significant aeronautical and space activities, including the policies, plans, programs, and accomplishments of all agencies of the United States engaged in such activities;

(2)  develop a comprehensive program of aeronautical and space activities to be conducted by agencies of the United States;

(3)  designate and fix responsibility for the direction of major aeronautical and space activities;

(4)  provide for effective cooperation between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Defense in all such activities, and specify which of such activities may be carried on concurrently by both such agencies notwithstanding the assignment of primary responsibility therefore to one or the other of such agencies; and

(5)  resolve differences arising among departments and agencies of the United States with respect to aeronautical and space activities under this Act, including differences as to whether a particular project is an aeronautical and space activity.

What does this mean?

When NASA was created, there was a specific provision that required any aspects of the exploration of space that impacted national defense and security would be deferred to the aegis of the Department of Defense. It was this provision that led to the popular misconception that NASA was a sub-agency of the DOD. It is not. It is a civilian agency with a whopper of a national security provision.

The President of the United States had considerable influence over the activities of NASA. This oversight was to be exercised via the National Aeronautics and Space Council composed of the President, members of the cabinet and presidential appointees. One of the most critical roles of the president was to arbitrate disputes between NASA and the DOD over national security and defense issues that might emerge from the exploration of space.

The UFO/ET research effort has clearly determined that any evidence or events pointing toward an extraterrestrial explanation were and are considered matters of national security and defense by our government. Therefore, what, if anything, NASA might or might not do with respect to such evidence or events would be determined by the DOD. The DOD would decide whether such information was disclosed to the public. If NASA wanted it otherwise, only the President of the United States could alter the decision.

From 1958 to 1973 the presidents presiding over the National Aeronautics and Space Council were Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. There is a consensus Eisenhower was briefed appropriately on the extraterrestrial presence and the other three partially briefed. Whatever turned up during those 15 years, the elected executive of the nation  may have known about it. Decisions to not disclose were jointly arrived at between the DoD and NASA.

On April 18, 1973, four months after the last Apollo flight and 16 months before the resignation of Richard Nixon, the National Aeronautics and Space Council was abolished and presidential influence was undercut. Since that time the serving presidents have been Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Of these, Ford, Carter and Clinton were likely not briefed on the extraterrestrial presence and Reagan was incompletely briefed.

Consequently, for 14 of 27 intervening years the President of the United States was out of the loop regarding the UFO/ET reality and unable to address the NASA dilemma.     For eight of those years a sitting president was a partially informed pawn to inside entities with their own agendas. The person who cast the largest shadow over this entire period, as CIA Director, Vice President and President, was George H. W. Bush, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was the victim.

April of 1973 was a pivotal moment in the unfolding saga of the disclosure process. From that point forward under greater and greater stress, NASA was torn between its mandate as a civilian scientific institution and its obligations under the 1958 Space Act to the Department of Defense.

What has come to pass?

Evidence of trouble is everywhere.

1)   NASA has steadfastly refused to speak to any anomalous evidence that in any way points to an extraterrestrial explanation. It will not research, it will not publish about, and it will not substantively comment on any photo, video or personal testimony from any source, no matter the stature, that points to extraterrestrial “intelligent” life – period.

2)   A host of video evidence was dismissed by an unofficial, surrogate NASA spokesman as ice crystal Done. No further need for discussion.

3)    Former employees and reputable outside scientists, photo analysts and engineers were betrayed, ignored, lied to, circumvented, stonewalled, subverted and, in one bizarre instance, nearly punched out.

4)   Members of the intelligence and corporate “black ops” communities were placed in positions of high authority.

5)   Control of major aspects of planetary missions were given over to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and removed even further from elected oversight.

6)    Public pressure for attention to the public interest was first dismissed, then condescended to, then flimflammed.

7)    Space craft were lost all over the solar system.

8)   A public relations ploy blew up in the sky. Challenger.

9)   Agency executives have been hauled before congressional committees and humiliated on national television.

10)  Via the internet and talk radio came intense attacks of a most perverted and vile nature directed at UFO/ET researcher/activists by individuals “defending” NASA’s good name – some with established NASA ties.

11)  The agency began a series of announcements aimed at introducing the concept of “life on mars.” Both the “Mars Rock”     and “Mars Water” press conferences were an insult to the intelligence of a significant number of interested parties, including the entire Generation X. Even the lapdog press were unmoved by the ludicrous anachronisms intended to pass for revelation.

12)  Astronauts who dare to address the extraterrestrial issue are “out.” The rest of the astronaut corps remain silent. Beyond “I never saw anything unusual in space,” they have absolutely nothing to say about a mountain of gathering evidence confirming an extraterrestrial reality.

13)  Participation in “black” projects connected to DOD were denied, then confirmed. When asked about possible future “black” projects on national television, the agency director, Dan Goldin, dodged the question.

This sordid mess can be summed up in one paragraph.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is a brilliant creation of human kind with spectacular achievements and noble purpose. It is filled with quality people who want to explore space and report back to us what they find. They and their agency are caught up in a 50-year embargo on the extraterrestrial presence.     They are in a terrible bind and are working their way out by a series of disclosures focused on Mars that adhere to a timetable set by other governmental entities. The agency is behind the curve and wide open to criticism from a growing and increasingly sophisticated disclosure movement. Damage is being done. When the managed truth embargo finally ends, the civilian agency that took us to the Moon and soon to the stars, becomes the first beneficiary.

Harbinger of Change Passes Over the Ship of State – France launched it!

June 7, 2000
Stephen Bassett

Washington, DC – The Aztecs believed their great god, Quetzalcoatl, would one day return from the east across the sea as a white-skinned man. In the year 1517 a comet appeared in the skies over Mexico. The Aztec emperor, Montezuma, was angry his astrologers had not predicted this comet and had them executed. He became filled with a foreboding of eminent destruction.

In 1521, led by Hernán Cortés, Spaniards, who many Aztecs thought to be Gods from the heavens, destroyed the entire Aztec civilization.

Comet – at the beginning of recorded history this celestial phenomena was seen as a harbinger of great change, a cosmic omen. Thousands of years later near the turn of the second Christian millennium, educated people are still capable of using it as a motivation to commit suicide. All humans fear change, including the conquerors of the Aztecs.

The Spanish word for comet – cometa.

In July of 1999 the French (comete) have launched a COMETA into cyber space. It is a three-year study by the Committee for Advanced Studies (COMité d’Etudes Approfondies – COMETA) entitled ”UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For?” Before this study was published in VSD Magazine, it was distributed directly to various French services and departments and to President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

It concludes that UFO/ET phenomena need immediate, further investigation and there is a “strong presumption” the extraterrestrial hypothesis best explains these phenomena.

If you are specifically interested in the UFO/ET reality and access the Internet, you know about this study – it is all over the web. If you are merely a citizen wishing to be informed about matters of national and global importance, you have probably never heard of it. Why? Because the high end news media in the U.S. haven’t covered it and the United States government hasn’t acknowledged it.

This follows a well established pattern. The more substantive the person, organization, event or evidence pertaining to UFO/ET matters, the less likely there will be engagement by top-tier news media or the government. Do not go where you do not have the ability to respond to the inevitable questions and reactions that such engagement would bring.  Pick your spots – a questionable report, a known kook, a clear error in documentation – then move in and expose or ridicule with safe reportage.

When the Society for Scientific Exploration, with its connections to Stanford, published the Sturrock Panel Report, there was modest coverage, little at the top end, and no follow-up. From the government, nothing. When brilliant author, Apollo astronaut and MIT Ph.D., Dr. Edgar Mitchell began stating flat out in public, both here and abroad, there was a second government covering up an extraterrestrial presence, there was NO top-tier coverage and NO government response. When Colonel Philip J. Corso published his flawed but still remarkable memoir, The Day After Roswell, there was NO top-tier coverage and NO government reaction.

If they respond in any way, they have to support that response. They cannot. So they say nothing, answer no questions and leave it to the obstructionists and debunkers within the UFO/ET field itself to rip apart such contributions.

This may not work with the COMETA report because the publishing of this study was literally a shot across the bow of the U.S. ship of state, a warning between the lines: “we (the government of France) are tired of waiting while you continue to stretch out the cover-up of the extraterrestrial presence. We are weary of deferring to the U.S. on the process and timetable of disclosure as the damage and embarrassment to all governments, including the NATO partners, grows with each passing year.”

It is a “shot across our bow” because the report does not emerge directly from the French government – that would truly be a problem for the U.S. Rather it comes from a private committee comprised of former high ranking French military and agency employees.

IHEDN    Civilian, then? Just barely. Many committee members have backgrounds with The Institute for Higher Defense Studies (Institut des Hautes Etudes de Défense Nationale), a government financed strategic planning agency. And the principals, take a look at a few:

  • General Bernard Norlain, former commander of the French Tactical Air Force, military counselor to the prime minister and former director of the IHEDN
  • André Lebeau (former president of the National Center for Space Studies (CNES), the French NASA
  • General Denis Letty, French Air Force
  • Admiral Marc Merlo
  • Alain Orszag (the chief civil officer responsible for armaments)
  • Christian Marchal (a chief executive from Ecoles des Mines)
  • Jean-Claude Ribes (astrophysicist, former director of the Lyon Observatory de Lyon)

And what else does this “non-governmental committee” strongly suggest? As pointed out in Leslie Kean’s, May 21 Boston Globe article, they:

  • urge international action
  • recommend France establish ”sectorial cooperation agreements with interested European and foreign countries” on the matter of UFOs
  • encourage the European Union to undertake diplomatic action with the United States ”exerting useful pressure to clarify this crucial issue which must fall within the scope of political and strategic alliances.”
  • chastise the United States for what it calls an ”impressive repressive arsenal” on the subject, including a policy of disinformation and military regulations prohibiting public disclosure of UFO sightings.

The COMETA study was originally published only in French. This made it much easier for the U.S. media to take a pass and the government to pretend it never happened. But alas, limited English translations are turning up and COMETA will soon publish in English. And, of course, the Boston Globe decided to go fishing for Pulitzers and put Kean’s piece into print.

Yeah, it’s a shot across the bow – a powerful statement first issued in July of 1999 sufficiently indirect to permit the U.S. to maneuver and react The Boston Globe finally noticed. Now let’s see whether Dan Rather, Ted Koppel, Peter Jennings, Tom Brocaw, Katharine Graham, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and John Puerner saw it go by.

The Role of the Presidency in the Politics of Disclosure Part III: The Case for & against Gore

May 29, 2000
Stephen Bassett

Washington, DC –  In 1945 as WWII ended and the Cold War began – world human population was 2.3 billion. It had taken several million years to achieve that level. The Cold War symbolically ended in 1989 – world population was 5.2 billion. Today it is 6.1 billion.

This grand conflict was certainly unlike any before it. It was not the longest war in history, but it was the most expensive.   Its cost estimation is a complex work in progress. However, factoring in all related expenditures by the United States and its allies plus the Soviet Union, and including the costs of environmental cleanup and disarmament, you get a figure somewhere between $15 and $20 trillion in 2000 dollars. This is an amount greater than the cost of all the wars waged in all of history.

Thus, in a period in which the population of the planet added 3.8 billion, the first world nations committed $15+ trillion in treasure to an ideological difference of opinion. None of this money was available to feed, clothe, heal or educate the additional arrivals.

During the nuclear age, tens of thousands have died as a result of an atomic explosion. Tens of millions of have died as a result of the gap between human need and the resources required to serve it.  By starvation, environmental degradation, disease, territorial wars over resources, genocide, and countless other derivative causes, the Cold War generated a profound level of suffering and death – it just didn’t get the credit.

While we were focusing our fear and apprehension on the next nuclear bomb which never detonated, the population bomb exploded and laid waste to millions of the weakest and poorest of the human family. That this aspect of the Cold War took place outside the U. S. borders only dampened the awareness of the American public to its reality and ensured it would not be a factor in the policies created to pursue the conflict.

Like the general interest in UFOs, population concern tends to move in and out of fashion. Talk show legend Johnny Carson single handedly created a significant upswing in the 70’s due to his personal interest and repeated guest appearances on the Tonight Show by Paul Erhlich, one of the leading environmental and population theorists. More importantly, there are few areas of controversy which are as verboten for politicians to engage as the UFO/ET issue – one of them is population control/reduction.

The U.S. Census Bureau predicts a world population of 9.1 billion by 2050 using very conservative growth projections. Beyond then, one would best not project, since the earth has hinted at methods by which further growth will not be permitted regardless of the degree of our need to breed. And these methods are of a type that only a Wes Craven could properly appreciate.

We grouse about the intrusive images of starving children that interrupt our channel surfing. If the trend toward 9.1 billion humans in 2050 proceeds, one should be prepared for all Sally Struthers, all the time.  Unless there is a profound change in world view by the leaders and citizens of the advanced nations, the first half of the 21st Century will produce a level of suffering, death, and deprivation surpassing even the best our last century could generate.

Because the population problem and possible solutions are verboten as political discourse, those with legitimate concern usually proffer “environmental” front issues to indirectly address the question. As in the case of the extraterrestrial presence, there is always a price when the truths surrounding any controversy are kept out of the political arena.

The 50-year death march to 9.1 billion human beings packed into a world of diminishing resources begins next year.

Which brings us to Vice President Albert Arnold Gore, Jr.   It is already well known that Patrick Buchanan has the finest 19th Century mind in America. He will not become the president. The question before us is, “which candidate has a 21st Century mind?” Who either has or can acquire a worldview commensurate with the new set of problems the human race is about to encounter?   And make no mistake, one of those problems will be adjusting to the knowledge we are being engaged by extraterrestrial beings more advanced and with a complex agenda.

Actually, there is an easy answer – Heather Harder. But she will not become the president either. This leaves Gore and Ralph Nader.   As it happens, Green Party aside, Nader is very much a 20th Century guy. However, he is progressive and resonates with the disenchanted left. So much so, he might well play the same role as Perot in 1992, only this time on the Democrat side, and elect George W. Bush president. In politics, like nowhere else, what goes around, comes around.

To assess Gore as a potential president, the following books are suggested: The World According to Al Gore – Joseph Kaufman, Inventing Al Gore – Bill Turque, and Gore: A Political Life – Bob Zelnick, in ascending order of critical intensity.

But do not even think of voting for this man unless you have read, Earth in the Balance, his environmental/ theological/ political manifesto.

Written just after the near fatal accident of his young son, it is a highly unusual book for a political careerist, which Gore most certainly is. Outside of a few years as a journalist, he has been a professional politician following a path set out by his senator father. Gore does not want to write this book if he is following the rules of modern political strategy. Here he goes where others fear to tread. Does he have the worldview to take on an issue as difficult as the UFO/ET reality?

This book and Gore’s intellectual interests would seem to make that case. But there are serious problems elsewhere.

It is difficult to read about Gore’s career without thinking of The Candidate, a movie starring Robert Redford which gets hauled out of the vault every election year along with The Seduction of Joe Tynan with Alan Alda. The American public has come to believe the political process is fundamentally corrupting. No matter what degree of intellectual sincerity and vision you enter with, it will be stripped away by the time you leave. Al Gore may be the poster child for this cynical view.

The public is fairly fed up with ludicrously expensive, winning-is-everything politics. Gore has embraced both adjectives with a passion. As a result, his willingness to touch the UFO/ET problem on moral/ethical grounds, knowing it will damage him politically and hurt his party, is most certainly in doubt.

He is well aware of President Clinton’s interest in the UFO subject, including the briefings of Clinton staffers and the charge given to Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell by Clinton to look into the matter at the DOJ. He was witness to these activities going over like lead trial balloons, and this includes the efforts of Rep. Steven Schiff of New Mexico. Further, Gore has never shown much interest in challenging the military/intelligence community.

If he has, in fact, lost his ability to say what he means and mean what he says regardless of the political consequences, there is not much prospect of his taking up the disclosure mantle as president.

However, Gore has shown courage at times. He volunteered for Vietnam against his own personal views because it would have hurt his father’s senate campaign had he stayed out, which he most certainly could have done. He was one of ten Democrats who voted with the Republicans in support of President Bush’s Gulf War resolution. It was a risky vote of conscience. It came at a time when he had withdrawn from the coming 1992 presidential campaign and was completing work on Earth in the Balance. It was the zenith of Al Gore’s career as a man apart from the corrupting influence of paying for and winning elections.

Because of his service in Vietnam, the Gulf War vote, and unchallenged devotion to family values, he is viewed far more favorably than Clinton by the military and intelligence careerists who are conservative and republican in the majority. Should he win the election, they may consider dealing with Gore on disclosure rather than riding out another four years of government witness leakage and pressure by the UFO/ET activists and the media.

William Clinton had the opportunity to make the UFO/ET disclosure his presidential legacy. It would now appear he has chosen to make Al Gore his legacy. Perhaps he feels that disclosure under Gore will reflect back on him – a two-for-one.

Bush or Gore, take your pick. Regardless of who you choose, you will have to let him know in unambiguous terms you want the UFO cover-up to end, now. You might consider starting with the campaign. It is long past time for candidates for the highest office in the country to be repeatedly ask about the UFO/ET reality until they respond in depth without insulting anyone’s intelligence. Long past.

UFO vs. MAS

May 23, 2000
Stephen Bassett

Washington, DC – The human race is a walking, breathing irony. It’s biosphere home is a low-entropy island amidst a sea of chaos (high entropy) – a tiny pocket of order that owes its existence to the energy it draws out from the vast, less ordered cosmos over incomprehensible periods of time.

Gaia jumps out at you like a sudden spike on a cosmic lie detector test. At the top of this spike rests the most complex entity the human brain is capable of discerning – the human brain.

So naturally the owners of these brains are religiously devoted to rending the world asunder. Not merely content to just peek inside each other’s medicine cabinets, their curiosity drives them to deconstruction. Humans like to break things up – marriages, monopolies, double plays – they’ll even break a pair to draw to a flush.

But that’s child’s play to the turbo brained, SAT torching, white-frocked atomists who want nothing less then to shatter reality itself to smithereens. If you have ever seen Letterman drop a television off the roof, you understand. Smash stuff together at higher and higher energies and more stuff, smaller stuff appears. Whatever does turn up is not enough – protons, photons, gluons, leptons – that don’t impress you much.

Humans want more and even tried to build a supersmasher in the Texas desert until the red ants started eating it (broke it down) and the money ran out. Now they eye quarks with deepening frustration, knees bouncing as they wait for the first opportunity to pop those suckers good and find out what’s inside.

Another matter all together is the moral/ethical universe, about which this author, in Robert Pirsigian fashion, has contemplated a possible law of indivisibility almost to the point of brain breaking obsession. Almost, because nervous breakdowns, very chic in the 60’s and 70’s, are out of fashion since selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors were first discovered inside a Martian meteorite (a likely violation of the Prime Directive). It can be stated thusly:

  1. All knowledge (information) comes with an equal measure of moral responsibility which is inseparable.
  2. There are no exceptions and this pairing is universal to all sentient beings everywhere.

Can you find an exception? If so, please pass it along. Seriously, it could come in handy.

Some quick examples: you’re talking on your 900 MHz cordless when another conversation bleeds in just on your end. Two guys are yakking about the bomb they put on such and such flight, the airline, the time. They fade out, you hang up. Some new information. You can ignore it, head for the beach. No one is ever going to come around making nasty accusations. No finger will point your way. If the next day’s newspaper has an article about the crash, so what?

Break it down further to less and less significant pieces of information. You take an evening walk and notice your neighbor’s car has a flat tire – more new information. You can do nothing.       Your neighbor will leave for work, one-hour delay, kids late for school, so what?

The what, of course, is a fundamental responsibility that every human being would immediately recognize except one – the sociopath.  However, the sociopath is not an exception to the law, just an exception to its perception.

No amount of energy in the physical universe can separate responsibility from information. Don’t like it? Tough. If you were a potted plant, you could claim an exemption. You’re sentient, deal with it.

Which, of course, brings us to UFOlogy. One way to look at this field, movement, community, whatever, is a group of people, now numbering in the tens of millions, who have come into some new information. Whether they eagerly sought this knowledge or it was thrust upon them, the result is the same.   They get the equal measure of responsibility. And what a measure it is!

They know about an extraterrestrial presence, government propaganda and subversion, sequestered technology, wasted money and opportunity, uninvited encounters, violations of law, disenfranchised employees, distortion of the constitutional checks and balances, weakening of the American presidency, abuses of power, etc.

When the information is this heavy, the attached responsibility, if accepted, can usually only be carried out through political action. If UFOlogy has stumbled, it has been in its slowness to convert the information it acquired into the political expression of the responsibility that came with it.

The reasons for this would fill ten columns. Here is the one this author believes to be the most important.

There have always been two competing protocols affecting this transition.   The metaphor for the first would be the “wheat from the chaff.”  If it were only possible to separate out from the field those who are not sufficiently credible, credentialed, educated, honest, and worthy of our esteem. We don’t like their style, their claims, their face.  = If they would just retire, move to Greenland, or die, ah, then the remaining crème de la crème, now composed solely of PhD’s, Pulitzer/Nobel winners, and right thinking researchers with books that weren’t published by a vanity press, would be granted the keys to the kingdom.

The career intelligence officers at the NSA, the mainstream editors at the Times, the NASA guys, would rush forward to greet this pristine amalgam of UFO/ET purists, pat them on the back, hand out security badges, and all would walk together to the labs and conference rooms to discuss the global strategies for dealing with the new paradigm.

Of course, some person or organization would have to apply a fair measure of subjective criteria in order to get the chaff shipped out.   Few would go quietly. Enraged e-mails would be launched, old hatreds reinvigorated, death threats in abundance. Well, you have to break a few egg.

There is another protocol in play. The individuals who now find themselves in possession of knowledge of the UFO/ET reality and all its sub-themes must become a mutual admiration society (MAS).

Much of the division in the field is between the old guard researchers, many military, with decades of involvement, and the political activists, many new to the fray.

Nevertheless, everyone has contributed in their own way. There were no guidebooks, no instructions. People did the best they could with what they had, and what they did was extraordinary. The common interests have always transcended the disagreements, hatreds, and grievances. Hate the person’s guts if you must, but admire what they contributed.

Recently, this author was reminded of the power of this protocol.   A colleague attended a conference and happened to speak with a well-known presenter who sincerely proffered great admiration for my activist efforts.  As it happened, I thought the opposite to be true and remained on a cloud for a week.  Suddenly the frustrations of the work and the irritations that arise from the lack of funds lifted.      New energy and commitment sprung up, new focus.

If everyone in the UFO/ET research/activist field sent 5 e-mails tomorrow acknowledging the contributions of 5 others, and made sure two of those e-mails went to people that irritated them to no end, the impact would be immediate and potent.

Whether we wanted it or not, we have a responsibility to the human race and our planet to ensure a truthful, peaceful and constructive transition to a new paradigm. If we form a mutual admiration society, we will be able to carry out that responsibility by whatever means we find appropriate.

If we do not, history will neither remember nor care. But we will know, because we had the information, the opportunity to act, and the means to do so. We can make history together as regards an event that will never come again – the galactic coming out party of our planet – the moral/ethical/political birth of a sentient world.

The Role of the President in the Politics of Disclosure – Part II: The case for and against George W. Bush

May 17, 2000
Stephen Bassett

(Second in a three-part series.)

Let’s get one thing straight right up front. The politics of UFOs, how the presence of extraterrestrial beings in our world, now, is going to affect you, your government, and every other person on the planet, is not only bipartisan, it’s transcendent.

Transcendence is about moving from one paradigm to another, one worldview to another. It is a process so powerful, the very mechanisms involved are altered. In fact, they are not really up to the task, but being all we have, we make do.

That which is about to happen to the world will affect every political party, nation, race, religion, and point of view. There will be no paradigm deferments. Everyone participates whether they want to or not. At this level, staking out territory, getting the upper hand, building political capital, war chests, arms races and other Machiavellian machinations are made silly. We will find common ground and work together as we find our way through this or we will make utter asses of ourselves before an audience that may extend to the other side of the galaxy.

And one response to this might well be, “so what.”

The two main political parties don’t happen to have a plank in their platforms on this particular matter. Worse, for some time they have immersed themselves in the “Politics of Nothing” where the truly difficult issues are ignored completely or locked into permanent stasis. What is left are the personal and the dregs. One is reminded of the old aphorism about college life, namely that, “the reason university politics are so vicious is precisely because the stakes are so small.”

The process of electing an American president has now become sufficiently grotesque and expensive, voters no longer expect any deep controversy on a matter of true substance to force itself upon them during this quadrennial circus.

The media focuses 75% of its coverage on who’s up, who’s down, the polling numbers, endorsements, pratfalls, scandals and peccadilloes.  Only 25% is left to cover what a candidate actually believes, assuming they would tell, or how they would govern, assuming they knew.

All of which might suggest, why not make the partisan case. Pick a party and convince it the UFO/ET intriguees out there number in the tens of millions (they do). Show ‘em the websites, the mail lists, the demographics (high education, high income), the emotional intensity, and then close with, “Four words, ‘Go Alien, Kick Butt.’” You got your pro-life vs. pro-choice, your pro-gun vs. anti-gun, and now, your Rare Earth vs. Aliens Coming out the Wazoo.  Finally the politics of UFOs would take flight with everyone taking sides and spending hundreds of millions of dollars making TV commercials intent on showing the other side is comprised of idiots.

We could do that, but it would be wrong.

So let’s examine the coming election and how a victory by George W. Bush might affect the process of disclosure of the extraterrestrial presence. But in doing so, let’s not misinterpret a tough and candid analysis as a campaign ad for electing Al Gore (and vice versa, next week).

Election 2000 offers up a host of delicious ironies.

Much has been made of the millennial turnover. Certainly the politicians have taken advantage of this arithmetic inevitability. So many bridges to the 21st Century have been built, no one is at risk of getting their feet wet.  A cynic would say the year 2000 is about as important as that moment, while stuck in another freeway jam up, you happen to note your odometer turnover 100,000 miles. You smile for a moment, and ten seconds later it’s history.

Call it accident, fate, or a cosmic joke – the next couple of years will live up to the pre-turnover hype. This election campaign, conducted in the last year of the second millennium and placing a new president in office in the first year of the next, is indeed our political connection between two worlds. What is at stake is whether the 21st Century will surpass the horrors of the 20th or bring the human race freedom at last from the brutality, some say evil, of its pre-sentience animal nature, its lizard brain.

The moment screams for a president with profound new vision, someone poised by special background and circumstance, to lead the most powerful nation on the planet into truly new territory.

So, naturally, what we have is perhaps the most dramatic instance of “same old, same old” in memory. After eight painful years of dealing with the consequences of a president who lost, or perhaps never had, his moral compass, the Democrats put forth a candidate who is as close to a seamless extension of that president as has occurred in any election this century. More on that next week.

And the Republicans? In 1990 President George H. W. Bush began a campaign with an 80% approval rating. He was, and is, the quintessential 20th Century political man: WWII, cold warrior, diplomat, CIA, VP, secret societies, backroom connections, patriotism, control, plausible denial – the total package. Perhaps he somehow sensed that cosmic change was in the air because in mid-campaign the sitting president lost his vision, stomach for the process, perhaps even his desire to be president and came unglued

At the end he could barely deliver a speech without falling into near incomprehensibility. What followed was an upset, which in the opinion of this author surpassed that of Truman over Dewey in ’48. William Clinton, the anti-Bush, is elected. He takes office as stunned Republicans stare in disbelief.

Despised by the military and intelligence careerists to such a degree it becomes a serious matter of protocol noted by the press, Clinton immediately comes under political and personal attack almost unprecedented in the modern era. Finally, in a fashion worthy of Shakespeare’s best tragedies, he defies his enemies with a consummate act of self-destruction and hubris, handing them all they need to destroy him completely and take the Democratic Party with him.

He barely escapes by virtue of the incompetence of the Republican leadership in the House and their own personal failures coupled with Clinton’s almost preternatural survivability. Nevertheless, the country is put through a nightmare.

There is every indication the public wants to put this behind them – the extreme partisanship, special prosecutors, tawdriness, and political gridlock. They want a new start and a rejuvenation of the presidency which has been further weakened and humiliated. So who do the Republican insiders and deep pockets line up behind early on and in extraordinary financial fashion?

The son of George Bush, George Bush, a man in some respects more like Clinton than Gore.

There is a straightforward way to understand the worldview of the person you are about to elect to the presidency. Read three books. The first would be the candidate’s political autobiography; the second would be a neutral, quality biography by a responsible journalist; and the third would be the most critical biography available by a competent journalist/author, however biased. Combined in the same mind, it’s a potent amalgam.

For the average citizen who does not belong to a think tank or have much discretionary time to do political research, this is as good as it gets. If the last five presidential elections have proved anything, it is that television ads, talk shows, cream puff interviews, convention show speeches, and scripted debates are meager fare if one seeks to know what a presidential candidate actually believes about anything.                  

As regards George Bush, the choices are not too difficult. The following are suggested in the same order: his political autobiography, A Charge to Keep, George W. Bush with Karen Hughes; a neutral biography, First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty, Bill Minutaglio; and a highly critical commentary, Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush, Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose. (Note: Fortunate Son, J. H. Hatfield, is not recommended as there are serious issues with the author and authenticity of key elements of its content.)

Here’s a summary of what you would learn.

George W. Bush and William Clinton were born 45 days apart in 1946.   They had very different childhoods, but grew up to be tall, attractive, personable, men of boyish demeanor and playful personalities, with predominant ties to a southern lifestyle. Both attended Yale University and went on to become chief executive of southern states known to have “weak governor” systems, with Texas being the weaker of the two.

Bush and Clinton are practicing Protestants, Clinton Baptist, Bush Methodist and born again. Both men sowed a silos worth of wild oats, committing various “youthful” indiscretions which played a role in their campaigns. Those by Bush apparently did not extend into his marriage and ended around the age of 40, while Clinton’s persisted with well documented results.

Both men avoided serving in Vietnam, Clinton via student deferments and Bush via alternative service in the Texas Air National Guard. Both utilized whatever connections they could to effectuate this result.  Bush was accepted immediately into the Guard and pilot program with 100,000 Texans on the waiting list for the Guard and other pilot applicants (150) waiting up to 18 months to get flying clearance.

But enough about similarities. It’s the differences that get interesting.  William Clinton grew up poor and dysfunctional in a family less connected to power than dirt. It was this background which gave him the ability to relate to the average person and feel the pain of disadvantaged classes. It was his greatest strength and his greatest liability, as this same background laid the foundation for the ruination of his place in history and full appreciation of his contributions.

George W. Bush, on the other hand is possibly the luckiest businessman/politician in the galaxy. He is the Republican Jack Kennedy. John Kennedy came from a family ruled by a powerful man who viewed his sons’ right to the presidency as a given. Joseph Kennedy used his money, the money of his friends, pulled every lever, stuffed ballot boxes, moved heaven and earth to give his sons a leg up with the presidency in the cross hairs.

A generation later, George Bush received the same treatment in spades. Through every step of his business and political career money poured in from political and financial connections to the family. Every time he got in over his head, he was covered.

This enormous reservoir of connected money was particularly potent in Texas politics where there is no limit on personal contributions – $1,000, $1,000,000 – no difference. Bush spent over $40 million in his two gubernatorial campaigns. That money combined with the money raised and being raised for the 2000 presidential bid, will make George W. Bush the most financially backed politician in the history of the nation.  George W. Bush’s father, the President, is a man heavy with gravitas whose résumé is thicker than the D.C. phone book. His son is Bush lite, not remotely in the same league. It is as if the Republican party is determined to rectify that terrible upset outcome of eight years ago, to put the world right.

What does it mean for disclosure?

In one regard it is favorable. From the standpoint of those managing the UFO/ET issue within the government, one of the most critical disclosure issues is control. They want absolute control of as many variables as possible.

If you are going to announce to the world the presence of extraterrestrial beings who can pretty much come and go as they please, whatever spin you intend to put on this revelation, you want to have the complete cooperation of the executive and legislative branches, military services, intelligence agencies, enforcement agencies, etc. You want to make disclosure on your terms, according to your schedule and be able to deal with any and all reactions to that disclosure as you see fit.

The status and power acquired by the military/intelligence complex during the Reagan years and the end of the Cold War symbolized by the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 set the stage.   The senior Bush was the perfect president to have in office. It is this author’s belief the process of disclosure was thus set in motion to occur early in Bush’s second term (1993). The same circumstances set Col. Philip Corso in motion toward his eventual 1997 memoir, The Day After Roswell.

Clinton’s election suspended the process. George W. Bush, if elected, would be a surrogate senior Bush. The military and intel agencies will embrace the son. The network would be reestablished, the players reassembled, the father’s consultation a given, and control would be sufficient to proceed. So far so good.

But there is a downside. Ultimately the politics of UFOs is secondarily concerned with disclosure and primarily concerned with the quality of that disclosure. The end of the UFO/ET cover-up (or management if you wish) is inevitable. What is problematic is the veracity and comprehensiveness of the process. Will it be misrepresented and spun to serve government agendas not known to the public? Will it be destructive or constructive in its formulation? Will it build trust in government or further erode trust in the minds of the American public and citizens of other countries?

And the key question, will George W. Bush have the substance, courage and intellect to stand up to the military/intelligence infrastructure should they attempt to pervert the process and he knew it?

The election this November may be the most important in our history. Whether the voters know a flying saucer from a Boston cream pie, the presidential piece to the disclosure puzzle will be in their hands.