On the other hand, there are a host of scenarios that presume a rich interaction between the government and various off-earth cultures. The facts are that the public does not know what, if anything, has been going on, and president Reagan's ravings or trial balloons didn't move the mark one millimeter. What probably did happen was that the director of the counterintelligence program was staggered at the effectiveness of his efforts.
Here are two simple scenarios to consider:
They seem to be both comfortable with it and knowledgeable about it. Only a few U.S. scientists appear to have much interest in it. For both U.S. and Russian scientists, the work of Tesla is a touchstone for the subject. A few U.S. researchers have told me that when they became involved in this type of research, serious problems developed and persisted until they dropped their efforts. That suggests that a classified program exists with military applications, and that these particular scientists were not among the few to be allowed to work in the area.
The Foundation has followed several of these trails. The easiest one was mind control technology, and this, as you may recall, is one of the Matrix entries for possible Government involvement and/or control of UFO phenomena. This is a little discussed and disturbing area of government activity. Stan Friedman talked a little bit about this yesterday when he told about the success that John Marks had under the Freedom of Information Act in obtaining documentation about the CIA MKULTRA program. Perhaps in the style of Paul Harvey's "Now, the rest of the story," later I will pick up where Stan left off on this particular case.
Over the years, a number of citizens have reported that following what they thought and reported was a UFO sighting or some sort of interaction with UFO phenomena, they were visited by "government personnel" and questioned about their experience. Some also claim that evidence in the form of photographs was either asked for or demanded by these alleged agents of government. More extreme claims have been made, including various forms and intensity of harassment. This data supports the existence of government policy to discourage activity and discussion by private organizations and individuals on the UFO subject. If this is true, then it predicts the existence of a government organization to implement this policy. While there may be no evidence concerning what level in government such a policy may have been articulated, there can be no doubt that such a policy and every enforcement action of it is illegal and a gross violation of the rights of U.S. citizens.
It seems fair for anyone who is making an effort to get the White House to change its inherited policy of secrecy to one of openness, to know the type of personnel who play the important counterintelligence game. In a Colloquium on Counterintelligence they were described by Major General Edmund R. Thompson, U.S. Army, former Assistant Chief of Staff, Department of the Army, this way:
"I too have long believed that successful deception or counter-deception efforts require that kind of outlook, skills and especially operational mind that intelligence and counter intelligence people have -- or as Eric Ambler has described us: 'the most suspicious, unbelieving, unreasonable, petty, inhuman, sadistic, double-crossing set of bastards in any language.'"If a counterintelligence program has been in effect against the American people, it is so abhorrent that it virtually assures, in my opinion, that its development and implementation is layers below the White House. There have been enough men of integrity in the office of the president to believe that they would not have allowed such a program to continue if they had known about it.
This is not to suggest that the President is not briefed on the subject of UFO phenomena when he comes into office. However, there is speculation whether or not such a briefing is automatic with every incumbent, and how complete each briefing may be.
If the above is correct or even partially so, how could the government get into such a mess? It very likely had an innocent beginning, but over the years has become a problem within and outside of government, the extent of which is known to very few. Here is one scenario. In the late 1940's or early 1950's, there was one or more UFO incidents that convinced people in authority that earth was in interaction with cultures of unknown origin. The response was predictable. The military insisted upon absolute secrecy while attempts to assess potential threat to national security were being made. Whatever tangible items for investigation were available, possibly material from a crashed vehicle and bodies of crew members, either failed to yield unambiguous evidence of a threat, or defied our best efforts to reverse engineer the material in order to reach some conclusion. A decision, not unreasonable, was made to keep the secret in anticipation that future additional evidence would add clarity to a confusing picture, or that our own future engineering and technological advances would allow us to begin to solve the mystery. Over forty years later we are essentially in the same position, hoping that the next piece of evidence will be critical to a denied understanding, and still blocked from penetrating technology that may be ten thousand or hundreds of thousands of years in advance of ours, or simply based upon another metaphysics that we cannot handle.
The above is a simple scenario and it needs no embellishment to explain the government's continued want for secrecy on the subject. What does need to be explained is what someone in government may have been willing to do in order to keep the secrecy lid in place.
Concurrent with this there may be at least two opportunistic coattailing programs, attempting to use the government's policy of UFO phenomena secrecy and the public's interest in UFO phenomena to cover other activity. One of these is essentially benign; research and development programs of the military services and possibly NASA, on advanced air and space systems. The attempt here is to shield R&D programs for as long as possible from foreign intelligence penetration. The motivation is not to keep U.S. taxpayers in the dark, but rather the realization that if the information is available to them, it is also available to other countries' intelligence services. This would be a legitimate counterintelligence program, and the people running it, probably the Air Force, need not know anything about real UFO phenomena. It is associated in name only.
The second program that may be cruising along with UFO phenomena cover is not benign. The subject is mind control and mind influence technology. It may be an unrevealed facet from one of the "family jewels" from the mid-1970's when the CIA was plunged into purgatory by the investigation of the Senate's Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect the Intelligence Operations (the Church Committee), and the Rockefeller Commission established by President Ford. These investigations uncovered Project MKULTRA, the CIA's program of research and testing the use of drugs in behavioral modification.