Larry W. Bryant’s UFOview

Item 4.8: "Scopes" Redux, Anyone? (in Two Parts)

By Larry W. Bryant

AUTHOR'S NOTE: LWB update for 11/16/08: this piece's initial posting on the internet occurred in the fall of 1999 via the no-longer-UFO-related web site of http://www.ufocity.com .

One of my lawyer friends recently raised the issue of whether my forthcoming "Petition for Writ of Mandamus" against Virginia Gov. James Gilmore could survive the government's challenge as to the personhood/humanness/non-humanness of the alien abductors.

My friend noted that, in order for these perpetrators to be brought to justice under terrestrial law, a showing must be made not only that the victim has a right to be let alone but also that the perpetrator has the duty to abide by the laws establishing and protecting that right. A buffalo, for example, being a non-person/non-human, has no duty to stay in the pasture and to refrain from charging neighborhood children who might stray into his territory.

My response to that concern lies in the field of metalaw (a.k.a. space law) -- the emerging jurisprudence that seeks to expand terrestrial application of law and order to the entire universe.

But before we formally look at that dialectal picture (via Part One of the following article I had published in the July-August 1964 issue of "Fact" magazine), let me give you the argument that came off the top of my head when my lawyer friend first raised the issue:

(1) "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck . . ." (meaning that if ample alien-persona characteristics predominate into a humanoid whole, then we would have enough evidence to conclude that some of the aliens are as "human" as we);

(2) Determining personhood/humanness might well have to include other factors besides outward physicality and inward biology (e.g., DNA structure) -- for example: the innate problem-solving and reasoning power of humans; their propensity to make jokes (and to laugh at them); their drive to socialize, organize, and politicize their environment; their abiding commitment to burying their dead (a trait that the late science-fiction writer Murray Leinster cited as the central factor in the humanness test); the urge to create literature, art, and music; and the desire to experiment and to communicate on both a scientific level and a religious level;

(3) If some of the abductors (or their abettors) happen to be alien-human hybrids (as postulated by abductionologist David Jacobs), then why shouldn't that partial element of humanness be enough to bring them into the jurisdictional envelope of terrestrial law?

Conceivably, such a question could give rise to a neo-Scopes contest during the proceedings expected to ensue from my filing the "Petition for Writ of Mandamus" in the Circuit Court of Alexandria, Va. This of course refers to the famous Scopes "monkey trial," held in July 1925 to
review teacher John T. Scopes' insistence on promoting, in a Tennessee public school, the theory of evolution.

Is there a lawyer out there today with enough commitment to help me pursue this public-interest petition -- and to help me meet this (unlikely) challenge that harks all the way back to a pivotal era in
American jurisprudence? [LWB update: my eventual pro se petition failed to win the court's support, on the grounds that the governor's discretionary power may not be so challenged; thus, in his public-safety role, he couldn't be compelled to help repel the so-called UFO invasion, lately exemplified by the reported "flying triangles."]

Meantime, here's Part One of the article in question, titled "Supposing a Man from Mars Visited the Earth and Got Murdered -- Would It Be Homicide?"

On Oct. 19, 1959, according to the Newport News "Daily Press," two boys from Poquoson, Va., were out hunting for wild game on an isolated marsh. All of a sudden they spotted a large, round, metallic object hovering 80 feet above their heads. One of the boys, a tenth-grader named Mark Muza Jr., was so startled that he fired his 12-gauge shotgun at the thing. As he told me later, Mark distinctly heard his three shots ricochet; then the flying device began to spin and rise, vanishing
from sight in seconds.

That short news story intrigued me enormously. Suppose, I wondered, that the boy's three shots had actually penetrated the saucer (assuming there was one) and killed its extraterrestrial passenger. Would the youth have been arrested? If so, would the crime have been manslaughter? What difference, if any, would it have made if the deceased closely resembled a human being? Or if it could have been proved that it had come in peace? In brief, have any provisions been made by our government and by our legislators to protect peaceful extraterrestrial visitors from being harmed?

These questions, I have discovered after a few years of diligent research, are not so idle as they may sound, and indeed many forward-thinking people are very much concerned about what WOULD ensue if a peaceful non-Earthling came here and were attacked. An interplanetary war may be a bit far-fetched, but the destruction of any extraterrestrial visitor would certainly be a great and sad loss for both science and for humanity.

In my quest to find out what human rights non-humans may have, I began with SCIENCE, to ascertain how possible it is that someday a non-Earthling will drop in unexpectedly. I spoke with Dr. Laban Lacy Rice, former president of Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tenn., an astronomer, and a specialist in Einstein's theory of relativity; Dr. Lodewyk Woltjer, chairman of the Astronomy Department at Columbia University; and James Pickering, assistant astronomer at the Hayden
Planetarium in New York. By and large, they agreed that other planets in other solar systems may very well be inhabited by life more intelligent and more advanced than ours, but the chances that we'll find a seven-headed Einstein sitting on our lawn tomorrow morning are remote.

So much for SCIENCE. My next stop: GOVERNMENT.

Not long after dispatching a letter to the U.S. secretary of state inquiring about official protocol in dealing with visiting Martians, I received this brisk reply from a Public Services official, Arthur J.
Waterman Jr.

"Any individual coming to the United States is entitled to equal treatment under American law, and a crime of homicide against such an individual would, of course, be punishable by law. Any protection necessary for the individual [of extraterrestrial origin] could be provided under existing law, just as it is for visiting chiefs of state and other notables. On his arrival in the United States, such a foreigner would, like all other foreigners arriving in our territory, be subjected to the provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, as amended."

Mr. Waterman's answer was, on the face of it, most reassuring. But then I spoke with representatives of the LAW and discovered that Mr. Waterman had, alas, goofed. He had assumed that any slaying of an outer-space visitor would automatically be classified as homicide, and such is
simply not the case. Thus Andrew G. Haley -- a Washington, D.C., lawyer and the author of "Space Law and Government" -- wrote to me:

"Encounters with sentient creatures from outside the earth pose problems for which terrestrial laws were never designed.

"The laws against homicide were designed merely to apply to the slaying of a member of the species homo sapiens, as indeed the name of the crime implies. Those laws are only of superficial relevance in dealing with attacks on sentient beings from outside the earth.

"It is, therefore, rather unrealistic to consider the slaying of an extraterrestrial sentient being in terms of those laws that have already been enacted."

Further sleuthing corroborated Mr. Haley: No one seems to know whether killing a non-Earthling constitutes a violation of the law -- not the U.S. Congress, not the U.S. attorney general, not professors at our law schools.

A few months ago, I wrote the following to Rep. Thomas N. Downing (D., Virginia), a member of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics and himself a lawyer:

"An extraterrestrial spacecraft lands peaceably on U.S. private or public property, only to have one or more of its occupants slain by a local citizen. The citizen bases his violent action on uncontrollable panic at the appearance of the craft. The citizen reports the incident to appropriate law-enforcement
authorities, who charge him with violating a city, state, or federal law in this unjust slaying.

"Will you please tell me what crime the citizen can rightfully be accused of committing?"

Congressman Downing's reply:

"Space law is now a specialty in its own right, and a number of attorneys have been making very comprehensive studies on all aspects of space law ....

"... In a general way and on an 'off the record' basis, I would say that present law prohibits the murder of 'human beings.' A human being can be described as something having human form or attributes. Now, if the occupant of the spacecraft is a human being, then his unpremeditated slaying would constitute murder, so the question would appear to revolve around whether the occupant was in fact a human being.

"It would be a dilly of a trial!"

Virginia's Sen. Harry F. Byrd, through the staff of the Senate Space Committee and the Library of Congress, sent me a similar reply:

"The answer would depend on the law applicable to the place where the landing occurred. This might be the law of the federal government, or of any one of the fifty states.

"The most obvious possibility to be considered is that the killing of such a visitor might constitute murder. The definition of this crime varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but ordinarily the primary element of the offense is the killing of a human being. The only human beings thus far known to the law are those who inhabit the planet Earth. Whether the courts would construe the term to apply to a living creature of high intelligence but perhaps very different physical or ethical characteristics who comes from outer space is entirely conjectural.

"If the visitor were held to be a human being within the meaning of the criminal law of the jurisdiction, other subsidiary questions would arise. Should the killer have known that the visitor was a human being? If not, could it be said that he had the requisite intent to make the killing the offense of murder? If the appearance of the visitor was very different from that of the inhabitants of the earth, might he reasonably be mistaken for some strange animal, perhaps a creature sent into orbit by a hostile nation on the earth and brought down on our territory by accident or evil design? Despite the peaceful landing, did the appearance and demeanor of the visitor and all the attendant circumstances place the killer in reasonable fear of death or bodily harm at the hands of the
stranger, so as to justify a plea of self-defense? Whether 'uncontrollable panic' would be deemed to be insanity would depend on the law of the particular jurisdiction.

"If the visitor were not found to be a human being, it is possible that the killing might in some jurisdictions and in certain circumstances constitute some other offense such as a breach of the peace, or a violation of a law or regulation against cruelty to, or the killing of, an animal, bird, or fish.

"In short, this question opens up numerous lines of interesting speculative inquiry for which no answers are to be found in judicial precedents or other legal materials."

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Norbert A. Schlei also wrote me that present criminal laws against homicide would hardly be applicable. "If further laws were to prove necessary," he added, "they could be enacted, but until it is clearer what problems of safety, health, or commerce such creatures might bring, there is little basis for describing the kinds of laws which might prove appropriate."

A Virginia college law professor, who prefers not to be named, pointed out to me that existing homicide laws might cover the situation, provided that the non-Earthlings were proved to be Homo sapiens by experts in the fields of genetics, biology, and anthropology. The intelligence of the creatures, he said, "might or might not be a factor. It is just as much homicide to kill an idiot as it is to kill a genius."

To date, I have been unsuccessful in obtaining information from ANY Virginia state official on what Virginia law would be violated if Mark Muza Jr. had killed an outer-space visitor. (Virginia's attorney
general wrote me that "the General Assembly has not enacted any legislation pertaining to the matter.") And as for other countries, they too have accomplished nothing. When I discussed the subject with John Keesing, a well-known lawyer who regularly attends international legal conferences, he told me, "It HAS come up, but only in informal conversation over cigars and coffee. There are no specific rulings on this that I know of. All I know is, if they are classified as human
beings, they would have the same rights." And if they WEREN'T so classified? "Well, there are a different set of laws protecting animals. They WOULD have to be something -- animal, vegetable, or
what-have-you. I know what you're thinking of, something that has two heads and walks on eight legs or something like that. Well, then we would have to figure out just exactly WHAT they were. I'll be happy to bring this up at the next convention, in Tokyo, if you like."

All in all, then, I have found that while representatives of the LAW are somewhat concerned about the safety of visiting spacemen, they are woefully laggard about doing anything about it. The best the LAW has to offer is this piece of advice I received from the U.S. Attorney General's Office:

"Citizens might be well advised to realize that attacks on so-called 'unidentified flying objects' might injure occupants of experimental aircraft or persons on the ground, and that the wisest policy may be to notify the nearest authorities."

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== Part Two ==

AUTHOR'S NOTE: When he read Part One of my essay "'Scopes' Redux, Anyone?'", a physicist friend of mine felt moved enough to offer a few (telegraphic) comments of his own:

"* Who is not to be killed is a matter for either divine revelation ('DON'T KILL ALIENS') or a matter for consensus (take a poll: should humans be allowed to kill aliens?).

"* To try to base this on existing law is ridiculous. Perhaps one could generalize to DON'T KILL INTELLIGENT SPECIES (unless they threaten you with death), and then try to define 'intelligent.'

"* What happens in the future when you get mad at your computer and grab a hammer to 'solve' the problem? The computer says: 'Don't smash me off; I'm more intelligent than you. If you smash me, you will have killed an intelligent entity!'

"* Yes, we might create intelligent entities in the future (and I don't mean children as ordinarily understood). Could we kill them?"

Maybe some of the physicist's questions have answers buried between the lines of the following Part Two of "Supposing a Man from Mars Visited the Earth and Got Murdered -- Would It Be Homicide?"

* * * * *

But if SCIENCE has proved skeptical, GOVERNMENT uninformed, and LAW sluggish, I am happy to report that THEOLOGY, at least, is right smack on the ball. On Oct. 29, 1959, for example, 10 days after Mark Muza fired the shot unheard round the world, the Universalist Church (fittingly enough), at its headquarters in Boston, Mass., officially resolved that our nation should treat other-worldly beings decently, wherever and whenever encountered.

Intellectuals of the Roman Catholic persuasion share the same sentiments. The Very Rev. Francis J. Connell of Holy Redeemer College, in Washington, D.C., wrote me:

"I would say without hesitation that if any rational creatures from another planet landed on our earth, anyone who would kill them without any provocation would be guilty of murder just as if he killed an earthly human being. Such a crime would be forbidden by the natural moral law, which binds throughout the entire universe, since it comes from God, and God is the Lord of the other planets as well as of earth. I believe that Catholics are aware of this since they have been taught that the natural law of God binds everywhere."

Next, in a real burst of inspiration I sent off a letter to someone who represented not only THEOLOGY but the MILITARY as well, namely Maj. Gen. Charles E. Brown, Jr., the U.S. Army's chief of chaplains and a Methodist. If one of our soldiers, I asked, assassinated a non-Earthling, would that soldier have committed a sin? Gen. Brown's answer:

"[You have] raised what may one day be a burning theological issue. For the present, from what I have observed, it is not. Only a few individuals with far-reaching and creative imaginations seem to be concerned. This may be a good sign or a bad sign, depending on your point of view.

"The question you raise cannot be answered since you cannot talk of sin while disregarding motive. Of course, in lieu of extenuating circumstances, any 'assassin' is guilty of violating the Commandment 'Thou shalt not kill.'

"I do not recommend that U.S. Army personnel be specifically instructed in the religious implications of unprovoked attack against extraterrestrials. I believe that the U.S. soldier has been trained for 189 years to protect the innocent and peaceful spectators and non-combatants and to kill only the
enemy who demonstrates that he is an enemy.

"I have the utmost confidence that the American soldier will respond out of this training to any future encounter with any unarmed creature and will exercise his traditional restraint and natural helpfulness toward peaceful strangers."

Despite the benign assurances of THEOLOGY, however, our conclusion must be that the power elite has accomplished very little by way of insuring the comfort and safety of visiting spacemen. They have neither created laws, established protocol, nor attempted to educate the general public
on the importance of being good hosts. Not surprisingly, just this past April, near Moriarty, N.M., a 20-year-old man told newspapermen he had seen a strange object flying 100 feet overhead, and added, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that he had taken a few potshots at
it.

But the situation is not so bleak as it seems. Time was when all our comic books, films, and stories portrayed extraterrestrial visitors as purple people-eaters and burbling globs, freaks, and Frankensteins. In the George Pal film "War of the Worlds," a clergyman resolutely walks toward a foreign spaceship, cross held on high, and for his pains is ingeniously roasted alive. In Howard Hawks' "The Thing," a courageous scientist approaches the title character and delivers a magnificent
speech extolling the value of interplanetary communication, and for HIS pains gets a whack on the head. Now we have TV programs like "My Favorite Martian," films like "Children of the Damned," and books like Philip Wylie's "The Answer" and Walter Tevis's "The Man Who Fell to Earth," all of which come close to portraying interplanetary visitors as angels.

My point is that, while the power elite has sat on its hands, others in our society have providently acknowledged the need to protect outer-space visitors from xenophobic Earthlings. Take Richard Hall, head of the country's foremost private organization devoted to the study of unidentified flying objects, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena in Washington, D.C. Mr. Hall has written to me:

"It can readily be seen that our attitude toward racial differences would play an important role [in determining whether the slaying of a non-Earthling would be considered homicide]. If the spaceman were, by our standards, grotesque in appearance, or had green skin, his killing might not be considered murder.

"At the very minimum, we would risk losing an opportunity to profit by an association with peaceful intelligent beings from another planet. They might withdraw and avoid future contact, thereby depriving us of the chance to gain extremely important knowledge of space propulsion, exobiology, and their probable stable social structure which enabled them to devote their energies to peaceful space travel.

"Only if we knew such visitors were hostile could it [the assassination] possibly be justified. For if a spaceman of unknown intentions were killed, we would risk retaliation by a race of beings who implicitly would be far in advance of us technologically and against whose weapons we would have no defense.

"If we knew he was peaceful but irrationally killed him because his appearance frightened us, or for other emotional reasons, we would be cutting our own throats and shutting ourselves off from potentially great benefits for humanity."

Someone else who has seriously pondered this problem is Ray Bradbury, dean of American science-fiction writers. Responding to my query "What would be the repercussions if an Earthling killed an extraterrestrial visitor?" he wrote:

"To answer your question, depending on the degree of cultural sophistication of the 'invading' people, they might look on our murder of their men calmly, realizing that we were the barbarians
that must be treated as dogs, perhaps made to go to the kennel, perhaps shot. I don't think we can speculate on this, for the chances of its happening are small. I am more worried what we
will do when WE land on Mars, right now. I hope we will prepare our men well to keep their pistols holstered and not shoot the first intelligent spider they come upon, thinking it IS hostile because it LOOKS hostile."

In a follow-up telephone call, Mr. Bradbury informed me: "It is very likely that we will attempt to destroy an extraterrestrial visitor. When we panic, we become violent. But it also depends on where they land. In India, for instance, I feel the people will be more accepting, since the Indians' attitude toward animals and other forms of life is much more open and accepting. Americans are far more hostile to things strange to them.

"I do think that any outer-space visitors will be fairly friendly, and open to seeing strange sights. But I don't really foresee a need for laws to protect outer-space visitors. It would be law without
education, and therefore useless. Rather than new laws, I would prefer that we find the means, through our arts and sciences, to satisfy our normal destructive urges -- without actually destroying."

A strikingly similar point of view was expressed to me by TV-writer Rod Serling, of "Twilight Zone" fame. Not only does he believe that intelligent life "most definitely" exists on other planets, but he
thinks it is altogether reasonable that a few emissaries will eventually drop in on us. "Maybe not in our generation, but it is very likely that some day they will." How will they be greeted? "I think people are prone to fear what they don't know. I think this is a basic human quality. My guess is that fear will dictate our reaction, and that reaction will be violent. We can't even tolerate members of our OWN species. Look, I'm a strong believer in this new civil-rights bill. But it took 83 days to try and pass laws to protect Negro American citizens. How are we going to pass laws to protect things we don't even know?"

Certainly, it seems to me, I had come a long way in my quest to resolve the issues raised by young Mark Muza's having fired his shotgun at a flying saucer way back in 1959. All of my questions, I believe, have been answered. There are, right now, no laws that adequately cover the slaying of a peaceful extraterrestrial visitor, and while those men in our society who have the power to do something about this don't seem much concerned, certain forward-thinking individuals and groups of
individuals do seem to be. And perhaps the foremost of these groups -- to conclude on an encouraging note -- is the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization devoted to upholding the civil rights of EVERYONE, regardless of race, creed, color, or place of origin. For just a few weeks ago -- in answer to my query "What is the ACLU prepared to do if an outer-space visitor is set upon, unprovoked, by some sadistic Earthling?" -- I received this heartening communique from the
ACLU's legal director, Melvin L. Wulf:

"In the event it comes to your attention that an extraterrestrial being has been wantonly attacked by an inhabitant of this planet, by all means have it get in touch with this office."

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Item 2.13: An Open Letter to Pres-elect Obama, from Larry W. Bryant

Comments [3]

Item 2.12: FOIA Request to CIA re Investigative Journalist W. Todd Zechel

TO: MS. Delores M. Nelson
Information and Privacy Coordinator
U. S. Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, DC 20505

FROM: Larry W. Bryant
3518 Martha Custis Drive
Alexandria, VA 22302

DATE: November 8, 2008

Shortly before his death on November 14, 2006 (see the enclosed copy of his obituary), independent investigative journalist W. Todd Zechel circulated an essay within the UFO-research community that implicates your agency in the official U. S. government cover-up of the reality that some of the reported UFO encounters represent alien spacecraft.

The essay -- titled "The CIA's Most Secret Counterintelligence Project: The Condon Committee" -- now is posted upon my web log under Item 2.11 at http://ufoview.posterous.com .

Zechel's research for this reportage included contact with now-deceased CIA official Art Lundahl, who revealed to him that, back in February 1969, certain CIA personnel had entered into a formal agreement with some of their counterparts from the Soviet intelligence community. Their agreement specified that neither union's military leaders would henceforth falsely ascribe any of the reported UFO intrusions within the other's key military bases to activity of the opposite union's secret military aircraft. The agreement's rationale lay in the fear expressed by both parties that a misconstruance (whether intentional or not) of a given UFO intrusion as being traceable to either party could risk escalation of hostility between them (with perhaps disastrous military results).

With that background, I hereby submit this letter as my formal FOIA request that you send me a copy of all CIA-generated and CIA-received records pertaining to --

-- The associations, motivations, and activity of the late W. Todd Zechel;

-- The creation, coordination, ratification, and operation of the above-defined U. S.-Soviet agreement.

In your processing of this noncommercial request, I expect you to formally acknowledge (in writing) my requester status as that of "representative of the news media" (RNM) (as defined by the amended U. S. Freedom of Information Act and as exemplified by the content and publication credits posted upon my blog ( http://ufoview.posterous.com )).

As you well know, this codified category of FOIA requestership entitles me to full waiver of all records-search/review fees incident to your fulfilling not just this request but also any future noncommercial FOIA requests from me to your agency. I of course state my willingness to pay any customary and reasonable duplication fee for your providing me the requested records.

Should you choose, for whatever reason, to deny my current and future RNM-requester status (or to convert it to some other category without my concurrence), I shall construe that action as an adverse and unlawful determination of my FOIA records-access rights -- and shall seek all appropriate judicial remedy.

By snail-mail, I'm sending to you a signed printout of this e-formatted letter.


LARRY W. BRYANT
Columnist for the monthly newsstand periodical UFO Magazine

Copies furnished to:

Editor, UFO Magazine

Jonathan L. Katz, Esq.

Chairman, U. S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

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Item 2.11: Zechel's UFOlogical Naked Emperor at the CIA

By Larry W. Bryant

As obituaries go, it's about as nondescript as you can imagine, its 120 words painting a silhouette of a man who, unbeknownst to the uninitiated reader, managed to accumulate more enemies than friends during his 63 years on planet Earth.

Well, I'm talking not about UFOlogical iconoclast James W. Moseley (publisher-editor of the gossipzine "Saucer Smear") but about one of Moseley's unfavored acquaintances -- W. Todd Zechel, who according to "Smear's" Oct. 10, 2008, issue, died in relative obscurity on Nov. 14, 2006. (Moseley, of course, remains with us, headed toward octohood.) Both men had been cigarette-smokers; in Zechel's case, his obesity and smoking probably caused him to sustain a stroke several years before his demise.

In his later years, Zechel (who might've enjoyed being called the "Colombo of UFOlogy") had a tacit but nevertheless self-destructive approach to interpersonal relations: if you can't successfully attack your enemies, then just go ahead and attack your friends. Somehow, "Todd the God" (as he liked to be called) viewed me as a friend -- one who, alas, could be regularly exploited whenever Zechel felt so inclined.

If Zechel could lay claim to any lasting self-descriptor, it might go like this: "The Ultimate practitioner of the strategy called 'the end justifies the means.'" Even so, he possessed a folksy, ribald sense of humor, a slightly commendable irreverence toward official authority, an abundant talent for stalking/milking his research prey, and an enviable knack for writing.

It was in the latter category that I received my final word from him -- cranked out via an e-mail message addressed to me and to several other persons on May 8, 2006. (Having no computer of his own, he relied on the communal computer service at his local public library.) His message consisted of an essay titled "The CIA's Most Secret Counterintelligence Project: The Condon Committee." One of his e-correspondents at the time -- Frank Riccardi, director of the UFO-research web site of http://www.eyepod.org -- has posted the essay's contents as part of the Eyepod's online newsletter called "The Alien Chronicles" -- Issue 2-23.

In light of recent rumors about the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency's (alleged) interference with the (alleged) plans by certain U. S. Navy insiders to jump-start some official U. S. disclosure of the extraterrestrial presence (allegedly via a series of high-level talks at secret UN-sponsored venues), I'm presenting, below, the text of Zechel's j'accuse smoking gun -- as a sort of elongated epitaph. Meantime, readers desiring to learn more about Zechel's investigatory projects will find his biographic sketch and other reprinted material at the eyepod.org site.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

TEXT OF ZECHEL's ESSAY:

THE CIA'S MOST SECRET UFO COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROJECT: The Condon Committee

By W. Todd Zechel
Investigative Journalist; former NSA/ASA communications specialist


When the U. S. Air Force, under Congressional pressure, appointed Dr. Edward U. Condon of the University of Colorado to head a purported "independent scientific study of UFOs" in 1966, it was the end result of the CIA secretly taking charge of UFO intelligence in late 1957, having gained control of "'scientific intelligence" within the intelligence community. Between 1958 and 1966, the Air Force had been stuck in the publicly humiliating position of having to pretend it was the U.S. government agency responsible for studying UFO sightings and related events for whatever intelligence could be obtained. But in reality it was the CIA that had wrestled control away from the USAF by proving to the National Security Council (NSC) that the Air Force had completely bungled the job and was incapable of handling it without covering itself in proverbial eggs.

Dr. Condon had worked on the ultra-secret Manhattan Project during WW II, helping develop the Atomic Bomb. Later he became the head of the National Bureau of Standards, which assisted in American scientific, technical development. But in early 1951 he suddenly left the Bureau to become the director of research and development at Corning Cookware in upstate New York. But unlike the previous director, Condon did not specialize in developing pots and pans at Corning; but instead he spent his time developing missile and rocket nose cones and heat shields/ablation shields for America's space program -- Condon had been and was a key member of the National Aeronautics Advisory Committee (NACA), the forerunner of NASA. In fact, Condon is reputed (within supersecret circles) to have based his heat shield developments on the analysis of recovered extraterrestrial material*, after he left the National Bureau of Standards at the behest of President Truman.

In reality, Condon was chosen to head the UFO study in order to get the Air Force off the hook, the USAF being in the position whereby it had to pretend it was studying UFOs, while behind the scenes and in secret the CIA was conducting the real study. In point of fact, the CIA would utilize the Condon Committee to collect UFO intell, while at the same time promising the USAF it would ultimately debunk and dismiss UFOs, which was done in what became known as "The Condon Report."

In February 1967, Condon and four other scientists associated with his study secretly met with CIA officials at the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in downtown Washington, D.C., where U-2, SR-71, and satellite spy photos were analyzed utilizing state-of-the-art computer enhancement techniques. After being briefed and given a dog-and-pony show by NPIC's founder and director, Art Lundahl, who implored Condon's group to obtain some good UFO photos/films for NPIC to study, Condon issued a nationwide appeal through the media for citizens to send the Condon Committee UFO photos/films to assist the purported "impartial" study of UFOs, post-haste. In reality, the photographic evidence was being sought for the CIA to further its secret study of UFOs, on-going since the early 1950s but without a mandate until late 1957.

In April 1967, a Condon Committee researcher, Dr. Gerald Rothberg of Stevens Institute, Hoboken, N.J., was dispatched to Harrisburg, Penn., to investigate an on-going local UFO flap. Accompanying Rothberg, disguised as research assistants, were two covert CIA officers, one of whom was Fred Durant, a highly experienced and knowledgeable CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence officer who typically operated under a cover of being a civilian scientist, lastly with Avco-Everett Research Lab, where he was reputed to be conducting R&D with recovered E.T. material*. Durant and his partner brought with them a van load of high-tech detection equipment such as frequency scanners, plus advanced photographic gear. The CIA men mounted a special "all-sky" tracking camera atop Harrisburg's largest hospital, interviewed local civilian UFO witnesses, and met with the Harrisburg chapter of NICAP, then the nation's largest and most influential civilian UFO group, headed by an anti-UFO secrecy activist, Maj. (Ret) USMC, Donald Keyhoe.

Condon's most valuable service to the CIA, however, began in 1968 when another Condon Committee press release invited Soviet Union scientists to participate in his purported "independent scientific study" of UFOs. Condon was just dangling bait for the CIA, trying to get Soviet officials into a "non-aggression" treaty on UFOs. Subsequently, Condon "researchers" -- some of whom were covert CIA officers -- met with Soviet Bloc scientists in Eastern Europe, where the treaty parlay was set in motion.

According to information provided in confidence to the author by the late Art Lundahl, founder and original director of the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), the highly proficient CIA center where U-2, SR-71, and satellite recon photos were analyzed, in February 1969 a high-ranking Soviet KGB official flew to Washington, D. C., in order to meet with the CIA hierarchy and work out a sort of non-aggression pact on UFOs whereby each side would pledge not to falsely claim the UFOs hovering over the other's sensitive military installations were secret devices which belonged to them. This pact was put in place in order to try to prevent an accidental nuclear exchange or war triggered by UFO intrusions and overflights.

Interestingly, Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the CIA's first director in 1947, was very vociferous about the dangers of accidental nuclear war triggered by UFO intrusions and overflights, either in the Soviet Union or America -- to the point he allowed NICAP Director Don Keyhoe to publicly quote him warning as such while he served on Keyhoe's NICAP Board of Governors. It's not known if the Admiral ever learned of the ultra-secret "non-aggression" pact between the Russians and Americans, signed in 1969, but he must have breathed a sigh of relief if he did.

In the end, the Condon Report, released in late 1969, was a classic example of CIA disinformation, for it not only dismissed UFOs but also called for the USAF to cease investigating them, no matter how concerned about UFO intrusions witnesses might be.

Thereafter, UFO intelligence became a matter for the CIA to secretly collect and analyze, even though in the fall of 1975 UFOs were buzzing USAF SAC B-52 bases and missile sites, hovering over and, in the Air Force's own words, "demonstrating a clear intent toward nuclear weapons."

But Fred Durant, author of the CIA's Robertson Panel Report in 1953, perceived the greatest danger of UFO activity was the public and news media attention given to them. Durant had outlined a program of debunking and downplaying UFOs in order to prevent what he called "a morbid national psychology," which might foster "a harmful distrust of duly constituted authority."

The Condon Report sealed the lid on the coffin in which the truth about UFOs was buried. However, the UFO or flying saucer misinformation war between the U. S. and the USSR had been on--going since about 1950. The Soviets had suspected from the early days of saucer sightings in America that it was all a misinformation game designed to scare them into believing the U. S. had developed some sort of fantastic secret aerial weapon (which the USAF tried to reinforce by loudly proclaiming it was developing the AVRO disc** in the early 1950s). Conversely, in America some top scientific advisors to the Air Force [demurred] -- such as Dr. Anthony Mirarchi at the Air Force Geophysics Lab in Cambridge, Mass., which was receiving films of UFOs shot at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., shot by telescopic tracking cameras; Mararchi knew the UFOs surveilling White Sands were real but was convinced they were an amazing technological advancement by the Soviets.

The Soviets had gone so far as to stage an "accidental" exposure of a supposedly "Top Secret" schematic of a (bogus) Soviet-built flying saucer to an American spy in Moscow in 1950. Then in 1953 the Russians tried to reinforce this misinformation by planting a story in a Vienna, Austria, newspaper which claimed a flying saucer had crashed on Norway's Spitzbergen Island, and it had Russian markings on internal parts and matched almost exactly the bogus schematic exposed to an American spy in Moscow in 1950.

After Condon had buried the truth about UFOs with the study he headed and the report it generated, all designed to get the Air force off the hook and take UFO research underground where the CIA would answer to no-one, the public was only partly persuaded; but academia and politicians swallowed it like the proverbial hook, line, and sinker. Now, however, all manner of nonsense became part of the public forum on UFOs; but still, in spite of Fred Durant's gloomy predictions, America did not fall apart, the Soviet Union did.

The CIA's motto, borrowed from the Bible, says: "Know ye the truth, and the truth shall set ye free." Sadly, America has yet to be set free by learning the truth about UFOs being withheld by the CIA and other U. S. government agencies.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ++

* Note: The E.T. material studied and mentioned in this report has nothing whatsoever to do with the Roswell, N. M., incident of 1947, which was in truth the debris from the crash of a cluster of six balloons launched June 14, 1947, from White Sands as part of a Top Secret experiment to develop a recoverable sniffer of atomic tests in the Soviet Union. [LWB note: this being Zechel's bias favoring the contentious Mogul balloon theory for the Roswellian crash-retrieval/cover-up case.]

** The AVRO disc was just part of a U.S. Air Force attempt to misinform/mislead the Soviets, which started about 1953, when the USAF let a contract to Canada's A. V. Roe aviation company purportedly to build a flying saucer for only a few hundred thousand dollars. It was all a hoax designed to fool the Russians and the American public! [LWB note: The U. S. Army also had a hand in that multi-$m R&D contract. Indeed, one of the two "AVROcar's" prototypes became, back in the mid-sixties, an exhibit on the grounds of the U. S. Army Transportation Museum in Fort Eustis, Va.]

Copyright (c) 2006
W. Todd Zechel
Director of Operations, Associated Investigators Group
125 Sycamore St.,
Sauk-Prairie, WI 53583

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Item 2.10: CIA Falls upon Its Sword of FOIA-access Denial

LWB note: Never noted for any magnanimous treatment of right-to-know activists seeking to peek at some more of its storehouse of UFO-related records dating back to the 1950s, the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency, in its quaint but testy bureaucratic paternalism, once again is asserting its presumed right to thwart the spirit and letter of the now-beefed-up U. S. Freedom of Information Act.

This self-destructive mind-set manifests itself within the content of the following letter of Oct. 28, 2008, to me from the agency's FOIA coordinator:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Dear Mr. Bryant:

Reference: F-2008-01781

We received your 3 October 2008 letter appealing our 30 September 2008 final response to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for "the following CIA-received and CIA-generated records:

"(1) As pertain to the convening, attendance roster, briefings, minutes, and all other related documentation of the 1987 special meeting at FAA headquarters in Washington, D. C.;

"(2) As pertain to all other similar cases of airborne UFO encounters reportedly occurring since Nov. 17, 1986, to date."

Specifically, you appealed our determination to deny you status as a representative of the news media, and to deny your request for a fee waiver.

Initially, please be advised that FOIA requesters have no appeal rights regarding an agency's fee category determination. Please also be advised that since records responsive to the subject of your request have been previously released, and no additional searches were conducted following receipt of your request, you would be responsible for copying costs associated with this request regardless of fee category determination. As we noted in our final response letter of 30 September 2008, copying costs are ten cents per page less the first 100 pages. These copying fees would apply even if we were to place you into the representative of the news media fee category.

With regard to your request for a fee waiver, Agency regulations are clear that fee waiver appeals will be accepted within forty-five (45) days of our initial decision subject to the following condition: If processing has been initiated, then the requester must agree to be responsible for costs in event of an adverse administrative or judicial decision. This regulation is codified in 32 C.F.R. Sec. 1900(d). Since you neither agreed to this condition in your initial FOIA request, nor in your appeal letter, we cannot accept your fee waiver denial appeal.

As noted in our final response letter [whose content appears in LWB's blog Item 2.9], if you wish to obtain copies of all 2,779 previously released responsive pages, please send me your check or money order for US$267.90, made payable to the Treasurer of the United States, and cite the reference number above to ensure proper credit to your account.

Sincerely,

Delores M. Nelson
Information and Privacy Coordinator
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

LWB comment: Here's an excerpt from my Oct. 31, 2008, e-note to my attorney for this matter, Jonathan L. Katz of Silver Spring, Md. ( http://www.katzjustice.com ):

"COUNSELOR . . . we may have been a tad too optimistic when we thought we had a 50-50 chance of prevailing in Bryant v. Rumsfeld. But, in this case of the CIA's abject/arbitrary denial of my records-search-fee-waiver request (as a 'representative of the news media'), I feel we have at least a 90-percent chance, especially since the Section 3 ('Protection of Fee Status for News Media') of the Open Government Act of 2007 (signed by Bush on 31 Dec 07) has been added to the FOIA's section 552(a)(4)(A)(ii) of title 5, U. S. Code (see the latest text of the FOIA at:
http://tinyurl.com/6bmylw ). What's more: we have ample FOIA case law in my favor -- e.g., the eons-long battle being won in grudging, protracted increments by the National Security Archive against the CIA's similar requester-status stonewalling (see: http://tinyurl.com/rqkcc ).

"Today, I put a Xerox copy of CIA FOIA coordinator Nelson's 28 Oct 08 'get lost' letter into the snail-mail to you, solidifying the exhaustion of my administrative recourse. The FOIA specifies that the court will review the matter de novo, based on the record before the agency. As any rational/reasonable person must conclude, that record speaks for itself as warranting the CIA's acknowledgment of my requester status and my concomitant ENTITLEMENT to the requested fee
waiver."

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Item 4.7: Space Toys for Kids?

By Larry W. Bryant

[AUTHOR's note: From my UFOlit archives comes the following essay, which I originally published in "The Realist" magazine for March 1965, under the title "Space Toys for Kids?" Perhaps the article has added relevance today, in light of a growing citizens movement for an international treaty to ban the "weaponization of space" (see the web site of http://www.peaceinspace.com ). And perhaps one of today's enterprising freelancers might wish to revisit this topic by examining and reporting upon the current subculture of space-toy manufacturing, marketing, and consumption. The essay's initial online publication occurred in late 2001, upon the now-defunct web site of http://www.ufocity.com (which was operated for several years by New York-based researcher Peter Robbins). By the way, "The Realist"'s original publisher-editor, Paul Krassner, remains alive (and writing); and he remains one of my literary heroes. For an archived example of his current work ("How the Realist Popped America's Cherry" -- a memoir of his days at "The Realist"), see: http://www.nypress.com/16/34/news&columns/feature.cfm -- published by the New York Press on Aug. 19, 2003.]

"Just turn ray chamber for Alpha, Beta or Gamma ray. Fission Speed Regulators. Tele-Radar Sight. Neutron Release. Electronic Converter. Sonic Ray."

Is this space-age jargon referring to the latest brand of communications satellites, nuclear reactors, or anti-missile missiles? Hardly.

But if your son or daughter is caught up in the latest toy passion, grab your space helmet and take cover! For those impressive terms apply to an equally impressive example of our toy industry's ingenuity (or lack of it, depending on your point of view). In this case, the invention is the "Outer Space Ray Gun," marketed by Tim-Mee Toys, Inc., Aurora, Ill.

"It's 'Super Sonic,' with built-in Buzzer Signal -- shoots Alpha-Beta-Gamma Rays," proclaims Tim-Mee on the pistol's box. Naturally, it's made of colorful plastic, and (not so naturally) "can be used as flashlight." This space gun, unlike most of its competitors, also can be used to transmit Morse Code, making it a fairly innocuous device compared to some I've seen.

Does the advent of armed interplanetary rockets, space guns, and ray guns into the toy-weapons market portend the day when we on the planet Earth ourselves will become the armed invaders of outer space? Do these toys form a breeding ground for violent attitudes in our youth?

These questions, I have found, have no easy solutions. It seems that we do not know yet the full extent of toy space weapons' psychological effects. Nevertheless, having spied upon the stocks of local toy counters and consulted with toy-gun manufacturers, psychiatrists, pacifist leaders, and other authorities interested in the problem, I have discovered some tentative answers.

The dime store labels the new breed of "war toys" (as the pacifists call them) with such names as "Atomic Space Gun" and "Astro Scout." The kid next door compares his just-bought model with his "old-fashioned" .45 cal. Army pistol and marvels at the colored lights and way-out buzz of this addition to his space gun arsenal. Weeks later, the store gets a fresh supply of even weirder portable space weaponry.

Little Johnny down the street, who recently latched onto the "Astro Scout" (a plastic shooter that fires, one at a time, three plastic flying saucers 60 feet, vertically or horizontally), trades it off to big Billy, who has grown tired of his "Giant Saucers" gun, with its "NEW Pull-a-Gear Hand Launcher." Johnny gloats over the "giant" model's ability to "soar up to 100 feet," and pores greedily over the "assembly instructions." But Billy really didn't want the Astro Scout for himself -- he's going to pawn it to his next-door neighbor, Sally Ann, who has a new red-plastic, "Squirt Ray" water pistol shaped like a Buck Rogers spaceship; she wants to trade it only for an Astro Scout.

Then there is the "U.F.O. [Unidentified Flying Object -- officialese for flying saucers] Patrol," complete with telescopic sight, which is described by its maker (Park Plastics Co., Linden, N. J.) as a "palm-size launcher gun with two patrol saucers.) A more elaborate version is Park's "Satellite Interceptor," a "dual-action launcher gun . . . press button and fire saucer, trigger fires dart aimed at flying
saucer."

For a mobile launching station, Park offers us their "Jeep Missile Interceptor: Scale model combat Jeep with missile release mounted in rear. Flying Saucers launched by simple spring device . . . wind and launch." Finally, from Park's, we have the "Astro-Fleet," whose only difference from the Astro-Scout (besides the higher price) is that it shoots a "piloted" saucer.

What will Madison Avenue feed our space-minded innocents with next: a red-white-and-blue Luger that spurts a pseudo-laser beam? As in our real-life missile business, these futuristic weapons of the toy industry can become obsolete almost before they hit the market. They seem to symbolize not only the ability to kill but also the reserve capacity to "overkill" -- to disintegrate that imaginary target which is not a cowboy, an Indian, or a Nazi, but the omnipotent foe from outer space, the "monster" from another world.

From another capitalizing firm -- Palmer Plastics, Inc., Brooklyn, N.Y. -- comes the ("Unbreakable") "U.S. Space Probe Bombs (Shoots harmless paper caps)," which are billed as replicas of the Jupiter and Atlas missiles. Note the euphemistic term "space probe." With the word "Bombs," what Palmer ultimately implies is "space conquest."

While casually exploring the toy-gun stand of a local 5-10-25-cent store recently, I discovered a "Made in Japan" version of the Luger I mentioned earlier. Here, our "Junior Spacemen" are offered a metallic "Space Super Jet Gun," which is "friction-powered with sparking." And its maker certifies: "Non-Toxic Colors -- Safe -- Harmless."

Aimed at one consumer level is the so-called space helmet, a probable outgrowth of the TV "Outer Limits" science-fiction series. Whereas the space gun exploits the hostilities of its clientele more than their fears, the space helmet exploits primarily their fears. What a combination!

Our curious children are offered a space helmet put out by Remco Industries, Inc., Harrison, N. J., which calls itself "Hamilton's Invaders" and which pictures a gruesome "space bug" on the container,
with the label "Monster; Science Fiction." It was Remco's president, Saul Robbins, who, at the 1964 American Toy Fair, contended that there has been no evidence that gun toys instigate crime among their owners.

Although the "Outer Limits" series has tended to portray its spacemen or monsters as the "good guys" (in contrast to most of Hollywood's earlier science-fiction movies), there is no indication on the space helmet's container that the "Hamilton's Invaders" represent peaceful entities.

In fact, Remco also offers in its space arsenal "The Battle of the Giants (Horrible Hamilton [a multicolored beetle sporting a stringy hump on its back], Torpedo Tank, and six Defenders [Earthlings])." Here, in Remco's own words, we may have the epitome of the psychology of toy
space weaponry; the monster-image conjured up by Remco's ad writer could actually foster the sociological phenomena of mass panic and mob violence:

"Out of the eerie, unknown world of Science Fiction stalks Horrible Hamilton, eyes a fiery red antennae a-quivver . . . spine-chilling, thrilling. At the tug of a lanyard, this giant insect leader of the Invaders advances menacingly upon the 'earth.' He lumbers and lurches blindly ahead. His jaws actually close on the poor Defenders -- bringing squeals of pretended terror from every youngster who watches, delightedly breathless and disbelieving. Quickly, the 6 Defenders are brought into play -- strategically spotted to halt the invasion. Then the foot-long electric torpedo tank goes into action. Beneath the transparent hatch, the driver sits. Two torpedos snake forward 20 feet. And so the game goes on, for hour on hour of out-of-this-world adventure! Horrible Hamilton spring-motorized -- no batteries needed."

Why does the kid next door, or your own boy or girl for that matter, choose from these futuristic toys instead of the conventional toy weapons [see Realist issue No. 48]?

First, there was the bow-and-arrow and the rifle; then the torpedo and the fighter plane; now the missile and the space gun. If this is a natural and inevitable progression of weaponry down through the ages, it is because of one psychological fact: Man seeks pleasure and avoids pain. Thus he is required, when confronted by a competitor, to develop new weaponry either for furthering or for protecting his pleasure quest.

If his competitor is an Earthly non-human, fine; for the dumb animal, of course, cannot match Man's manufacturing skills. But if the non-human happens to be a sapient creature from outer space, Man is seized by fear that his conventional weapons will be inadequate to maintain his security.

The Earthling now convinces himself that he should avoid being pained by the possible natural superiority of the spacemen. Hence, Man's development of the neutron ("death ray") bomb, the laser beam, and, possibly, the ultra-toxic gas spray gun. The toy representation of such weapons probably signifies subconscious transmission of the adult's space-war phobia into the child's otherwise carefree existence.

Expressing his opinion as to why these new toys appeal to our youth, Dr.
R. Leo Sprinkle, a Guidance Education professor at the University of
Wyoming, states, in a letter to me:

"I see the ray guns, etc., as an extension of the "cowboys and Indians" and "cops and robbers" of the era in which I grew up. If they are related to extraterrestrial creatures, I believe it is more of a
reaction to fear of the unknown -- rather than as a positive step to become warlike.

"I may be overly optimistic, but I believe that human violence is based more upon ignorance than upon perversity or cruelty. I hope that further knowledge of other planets will prepare for the day when mankind is introduced officially to other civilizations."

Recently, while grocery-shopping with my 8-year-old son, I realized that the toy space-gun makers have finally seized upon the most obvious means of advertising their wares directly to our youth. Upon arriving at the cereal counter, my son started scanning the colorful boxes strictly to ferret out the latest sales gimmick. His selection was "Frosty-O's," not because he had eaten some in the past, or had heard how delicious they were, but because of the "Giant Flying Saucer Offer"
emblazoned over the entire back side of the box. Yes, it was Park Plastics' product with the "Pull-a-Gear Hand Launcher."

Here is how the "Frosty-O's" ad prescribed two uses of "Giant Saucers":

"(1) Space Duel. First player launches saucer. Then other player tries to knock it down with one of his own.

"(2) On Target. Stand 10 steps from a target and see how many times you can hit it in 10 tries. (Suggested targets: trees, telephone poles, fences.)"

If it is true, as some observers have said, that 80 to 90 percent of all toy guns sold are bought for the small fry by their parents, then we may blame the adult for the DEMAND FOR as well as the supply of the weapons.

The toy-gun manufacturers claim they market only what appears to them to be in public demand, whether it be a Davy Crockett musket or a Titan ICBM. We the adult population create the demand via our addiction to violence, this addiction being portrayed profusely in the various communications media. Real space weapons themselves (such as the satellite-bomb interceptor, the death-ray bomb and the laser-beam rifle), therefore, may be simply the reflection of our violent attitude toward the unknown dangers supposedly lurking in outer space.

The tragic part of this is that the toy space weapons, if not also the real ones, along with the communications media, can seduce youth into the violent posture we the adults have assumed.

I wrote to the director of the U. S. National Institute of Mental Health, posing the question of whether the space-gun toys do in fact symbolize a space-war neurosis in our society. The director's
information officer, Ed Long, replied as follows:

"Although there is an increasing amount of psychological research into factors influencing man's aggressions and hostilities, there has been little investigation into the influence of toys of any kind.

"Very close to this, however, there has been a rising concern, along with a rising number of investigations supported by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, over the possible influence of comic books, motion pictures, and television on abnormal development and delinquency among children. Although investigations have shown that crime and violence depicted through these media can influence child behavior, there have been no conclusive demonstrations as to what extent
these influences may be detrimental to normal development."

When I canvassed several of the larger organizations representing the 100,000-odd pacifists in our country, however, I found the consensus to be that, as Rev. R. Franklin Terry, an official of the Methodist Peace Fellowship put it, "the distribution of toy weapons of any kind does tend to foster the notion of armed conflict in the minds of our children."

One of the strongest pacifist positions is the one taken by Victor H. Gavel, president of the Baptist Peace Fellowship, which is affiliated with the 13,000-member Fellowship of Reconciliation:

"As I feel the use of any type of gun, pistol, rifle, etc., as toys in the hands of children to be extremely detrimental to the growth toward the idea of world peace, or peace as Jesus taught it, so I feel that the use of space guns of whatever sort would in a like manner develop a feeling of hostility toward any possible life on other planets."

Mr. Gavel's opinion is in keeping, no doubt, with the fact that in rearing his two sons and three daughters "we never had a gun or any shooting equipment in our home." One of his sons, for that matter, was a conscientious objector.

But not so critical as Mr. Gavel is the secretary-treasurer of the Lutheran Peace Fellowship, Rev. Lloyd A. Berg:

"Personally, I should think that the matter of toy 'space guns' would most essentially be a branch of the whole question of making toys out of lethal weapons. I tend to react negatively to this whole idea, but I know there are sincere peace-oriented psychologists who rather believe such toys provide a healthy and relatively harmless outlet for anger and aggressiveness."

One such psychologist may be Dr. Stanley B. Williams, chairman of the psychology department of the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va. For Dr. Williams wrote me:

"It is clear that the effect of any one experience depends on the context of related experiences; hence, a toy gun may or may not instigate hostility, depending on parents' attitudes, etc."

In the educated opinion of another Virginia psychologist, Dr. Donald P. Ogden of Norfolk's Old Dominion College:

"It is possible that toy weapons of any sort may serve as relatively harmless objects through which general feelings of frustration and hostility may be drained off, but this may be at the expense of possibly creating negative attitudes toward extraterrestrial creatures.

"Although I can't see how space guns, etc., do children any particular good, I do not feel that the likelihood of developing long-lasting negative attitudes of this sort is very probable. For instance, despite my early years of 'cowboys and Indians,' I do not now harbor negative attitudes toward Indians. Do you?"

Perhaps one might estimate the probability of this negative-attitude development by reviewing still another example of our war-toy technology: the "Astro Ray . . . Space-Age Gun for the Space Ace" is
marketed as a "Flashlight Target Gun" by its maker, Ohio Art Co., Bryan, Ohio. It competes with Tim-Mee Toys' brand in that it is capable of shooting six rubber-tip darts at an accompanying metal target board. The board projects the planets of our solar system as the numbered targets.

Let's try to answer Dr. Ogdon's question by turning to a group that claims to be "innovator, catalyst, gadfly" among united pacifists -- the 50-year-old Fellowship of Reconciliation itself, spoken for by Acting Executive Secretary Glenn E. Smiley:

"I suppose our only hope in this matter is the fact that children seem to be able to survive the most ghastly influence on their lives. As a pacifist, I recall distinctly playing with toy weapons, lining sticks up in trenches and 'killing' them by throwing rocks at them. Of course, my childhood days were spent during the First World War or in the years immediately following it. I was also taught 'the manly art of self defense' by my father, and hunted as a child for small game on my father's plantation.

"It is encouraging to me to realize that all of this experience had very little effect upon me although I realized at the same time that in my childhood the whole society was not violent in kind as is ours. We did not have television, the toy weapons were not as attractive nor as curiosity-encouraging as are the slick toys of today."

Mr. Smiley's reminiscence reminds me of one of my own childhood pastimes: building stick-and-stone houses in order to blow them apart with "harmless" firecrackers that I imagined as blockbusters. Now my own boy is doing the same thing with the more sophisticated "Space Probe Bombs."

But in contrast, another pacifist leader has an almost apathetic view of the problem. David McReynolds, field secretary of the War Resisters League, writes:

"I suppose someone might seriously get concerned with the dangers of toy space weapons to interplanetary peace. If so, we really can't be of any help. I don't think any of our members are losing sleep on the matter."

Probably the most militant response to the emergence of space-age toy weapons is voiced in a recent issue of Peace Education Newsletter, published by the New York-based Women's Strike for Peace. This contribution from the feminine approach to pacifism seems to take issue with the indecision of the psychologists and the lethargy of the male-dominated War Resisters:

"As you mothers have probably observed, the time-honored games of cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians have given way to mock guerilla warfare with very sophisticated and very violent death-dealing weapons. The TV blasts away with commercials showing children throwing grenades,
pilots dropping bombs on cities, Polaris subs firing missiles -- even the boy-child's favorite toy train now comes equipped with missiles.

"Most parents have anxiety when they first see their tiny one point a toy gun and shout, 'Bang, you're dead' . . . or, 'I'll shoot you.' They question the authorities (the teacher, the nursery school educator, the doctor, the psychologist, etc.); and, of course, they have been quietly reassured that this action reflects the natural hostility in the child, that it is part of his natural developmental process. The seeming violence means different things to the child; they [the authorities] say it is his way of overcoming fears and dealing with his own hostility.

"This popular theory may still be useful, although there is increasing disagreement by professionals in the behavioral sciences about the meaning of these actions. However, even if one assumes that the theory is correct, is our way of dealing with this behavior pattern right? When the tot lifts his tiny finger to kill his inner or outer fears, should we put a grenade in it . . . an atomic bomb? Are not weapons of total extermination already too horrible for many adults to comprehend, too horrible for children as well? Do we not actually interfere with his natural efforts to deal with his anxiety at his own level? In fairy tales or cowboy battles he can easily distinguish between play and reality, but how can you help a child pretend that bombs and missiles aren't real when he hears news reports and adult discussion to the contrary?"

Psychology professor T. L. Engle of Indiana University Fort Wayne Regional Campus has considered "making a survey of toy stores and toy departments in order to measure the percentage of space devoted to toys suggesting killing and the percentage of toys suggesting peaceful occupations."

Since his textbook "Psychology: Its Principles and Applications" has become a standard in use by high-school psychology teachers across the nation, Dr. Engle may well be in a sound position to evaluate the significance of toy space weapons even though he is not a social psychologist. "It is my opinion," says he, "that war toys do have a very real and marked influence on the attitudes of children who will be the makers of war in a few years. I wish that there were more toys suggesting the brotherhood of man and the values of peace."

If the pacifists and peace-loving psychologists can and do remove the warlike toys from the market, what can be furnished as a replacement? Well, if the production of war tools is motivated largely by fear of the unknown, then we can dispel most of this emotion by making toys more peacefully communicative and thus more constructive. The toys I have in mind can represent togetherness arrived at through person-to-person communication and transportation. (We already have the toy telephone and truck, for instance.) We can still appeal to the adventurousness (and aggressiveness, since it needs an outlet) of our children through the following space-weapons substitutes:

(1) A model radio astronomy kit.

(2) A mental-telepathy competition game.

(3) A teaching machine for the long-sought universal language.

(4) A simulated perpetual-motion machine.

(5) A space-age gyroscope.

(6) A doll-size bathysphere.

(7) A space-medicine kit.

If the "flying saucer" is in fact a mode of transportation used by non-Earthlings, then by all means let's construct toy models of it -- even flyable ones -- as long as we abstain from depicting it primarily
as a weapon. Granted that our space rockets are a form of transportation; but it seems the toy makers emphasize the military or destructive potential of these vehicles.

On the positive side, however, we have one manufacturer that does not play up the military aspect of its replica of the Army's "Flying Platform" -- namely, Sydney A. Tarrson Co., Chicago, Ill.

Meantime, as the day approaches for face-to-face meetings with non-Earthlings, let not my little Johnny, your big Billy, our neighbor's Sally Ann, or any other potential "space cadet" be swayed by propaganda of the space-weapon peddlers. If we cannot eliminate them entirely, we can at least reduce any of their war-mongering effect by continually exposing such ostensibly harmless advertisements as the following:

"Out of the swirling mists of the future comes the Hamilton Ray Gun. At the touch of the trigger -- ZZZZ -- sound waves penetrate, light rays dazzle! Four wildly colored beams are flicked at the foe. Change from one sizzling ray to another at the turn of the turret. All the weird wonders of Science Fiction in one harmless weapon."

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Item 3.13: The Strange Brew of C-D-C

(From the August 2006 issue of "UFO Magazine")

By Larry W. Bryant

"Dr. [J. Allen] Hynek of [USAF Project] Blue Book fame was very knowledgeable about the existence of MJ-12 and extraterrestrial contact."

-- Richard C. Doty, former USAF counterintelligence/security operative privy to
inside knowledge of the government cover-up of the UFO experience (as
quoted in the newly expanded tell-all book "Exempt from Disclosure," by
retired USAF captain Robert M. Collins)

Ex-USAF-OSI agent Rick Doty's revelation fails to provide any proof of this claim that Hynek knew more about UFO reality than he'd professed in public pronouncements. But, hey, this kind of claim permeates every page of the book, casting its trio of contributors -- Collins, Doty, and Timothy S. Cooper (C-D-C) -- as either extreme disinformation specialists or as surrogate UFO-cover-up whistleblowers of heroic proportion.

As you wade into this most disjointed UFOtome of all time, however, I suggest that you suspend critical judgment just so as to take the ride of your life into Possibilityland -- the entertaining (if not enlightening) possibility that C-D-C has disclosed some officially indisclosable UFOtruth. During your ride, you'll see how this book further polarizes two camps of readers: those who love UFOlit steeped in the lore of gossip, behind-the-scenes intrigue, and conspiracy/rumor-mongering -- and those who loathe it. I prefer to navigate somewhere near the middle of the road.

Next to Philip J. Corso's 1997 memoir "The Day After Roswell," I've placed this second edition of the C-D-C expose on the same shelf of my vast collection of UFOlit. Maybe I should label that shelf "Classic secrecy-busting works revealing what our government agencies would learn about UFO reality were they to read their own UFO-related documents."

But let's not turn this month's essay into a formal book review. Doty's unsubstantiated claim about Hynek's supposed UFO-MJ-12-E.T. awareness, along with Doty's admitted role in the warrantless, NSA-directed search of the late UFO researcher Paul Bennewitz's home, has fueled Doty's lack of credibility among some veteran UFOlogists. Worse yet, we have this (unintended?) insight about his governing end-justifies-the-means mind-set, as expressed in his chapter 4 of the book:

"It is even quite legal to lie [to the public] if there is no way to avoid revealing the existence of certain types of classified 'black projects.'" Wrong, Herr Doty! As Nixon's Watergate scandal amply showed, no government official has a right to lie to the public in the performance of his/her official duty. As a New Mexico state trooper sworn to abide by the public trust, you should disabuse yourself of that notion right now. That notion has prompted me to seek out any whistleblower-derived evidence that may shed additional light on your UFO-related activities and associations.

Now, then: when, in the course of UFOlogical events, we come to a fork in the road, that omniscient sage of American culture Yogi Berra would urge us to . . . well, take it! Today, such a fork presents itself to us in C-D-C's handbook of UFO politics, so aptly titled "Exempt from Disclosure: The Disturbing Case about the UFO Coverup." Whichever way we turn, we end up right back at the starting point -- not quite burned out or permanently disillusioned, as we await further revelations from new insider sources allegedly feeding morsels of leads/data to the gaping mouths of the C-D-C investigative team. (Better watch yo' phone/e-mail lines, pals -- lest the NSA/CIA/DIA/OSI/FBI pounce on both your sources and yourselves; and get that avian code of yours upgraded!)

It was back in the late 1950s that I began "taking" every UFOfork I'd encounter as a member of the now-defunct public-interest group National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. My road less traveled there in the industrial-port city of Newport News, Virginia, led me to establish a NICAP-friendly group called the Air Research Group. In a move to recruit membership, I sent a classified advertisement about the group to the printer of the nearby Langley Air Force Base's weekly newspaper, the "Flyer." In short order, I received bad news from the printer: he'd been prohibited from running the ad, by the base public affairs officer. When I queried the PAO about this, one Capt. Gregory H. Oldenburgh explained that his decision had derived from the USAF-wide policy (enunciated in AF Reg. 200-2) that official UFO information must be kept within USAF channels. Basically, he feared that any LAFB personnel tempted to join (or otherwise cooperate with) my group might also be tempted to share their knowledge of UFO reality. So much for freedom of speech/inquiry in the military.

With the passage of four decades, things have come full circle, forks or no forks.

My series of whistleblower-solicitation ads aimed at readers of various U. S. military installations' weekly newspapers got its impetus from my July 1983 federal lawsuit against the secretary of the Air Force, titled Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus Extraterrestrial. Filed in U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the petition sought the whereabouts of any and all retrieved occupants from the wreckage of crash-landed "flying saucers." Though I lost the case on jurisdictional grounds, I nevertheless managed to elevate the "what if" factor to worldwide awareness. What if those bodies still exist (living or dead -- and, if you can accept the C-D-C revelations, one or more of them did exist at that time); shouldn't we try something else to get at them? (See my retrospective essay about the case in the August 2004 issue of FATE magazine [which now is republished in this blog as Item 4.1].)

My "something else" consisted of inaugurating a campaign for UFO-cover-up-whistleblower solicitation ads. When some of the targeted military public affairs offices started rejecting the ads, I once again had to turn to court for relief -- this time to the U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (Alexandria Division). The ensuing consent decree of 1987 in Bryant v. Weinberger, et al. was supposed to settle the matter, allowing me to submit the ads without any further PAO interference. But, alas, the government's naked emperor of free-speech denial has proved to be a stubborn foe.

When, several years ago, I broadened the subject matter for my ad campaign -- switching to such topics as NASA activities and the military's retaliation against whistleblowers -- the censorial arm of the Defense Department again swung into action. In particular, in June 2003, the Army PAO in charge of the "Pentagram" newspaper at Fort Myer, Virginia, felt highly offended by my Iraqnam-related ad "Blow the Whistle on Bush's 'Gulf of Persia' Resolution!" Among other points, the ad had called for Pres. Bush to undergo a polygraph exam as to his veracity about the controversy surrounding Iraq's alleged possession of "weapons of mass destruction." The result of the "Pentagram"'s rejecting my ad: Bryant v. Rumsfeld, et al., filed on June 30, 2004, in USDC-DC.

Even as that case proceeded through litigation, I persevered in submitting other ads to such papers as the U. S. Military Academy's "Pointer View" and the U. S. Air Force Academy's "Academy Spirit" -- all of which chose to reject the ads. And the result here? Bryant v. Rumsfeld - II, filed in January 2005. The two cases have been consolidated, and you can view some of the litigation papers posted upon my attorney's web site: http://www.markskatz.com/militarycases.htm [now under the URL of http://katzjustice.com/militarycases.htm ].

Enter Langley. When, in the fall of 2005, I submitted my "Exempt-from-Disclosure"-related ad to the LAFB PA office for prepublication review, I encountered a case of what I call deja PEW(ee)! By the way, this very same ad, shown below, happens to have been accepted for publication by the Arnold AFB, Tenn.'s "High Mach" newspaper:

"BLOW THE WHISTLE ON THE NEO-UFO WHISTLEBLOWERS!

"Two members of a reinvigorated crop of reputed UFO-coverup
whistleblowers -- former USAF intelligence officer Robert M.
Collins and former USAF-OSI agent Richard C. Doty -- have
teamed up to produce a brand-new book, titled 'Exempt from
Disclosure: The Disturbing Case About the UFO Coverup' (
http://www.ufoconspiracy.com ). Does the book constitute a
confirmable case of insider knowledge of what our government
knows (and when it knew it) about UFO reality? Or does its
foray into the bowels of the world's Deepest Secret merely
regurgitate a form of official disinformation --
'disUFOmation' -- made (in)famous back in the 1980's via the
Kirtland AFB's Bennewitz Affair? If you (or someone you
know) reliably can corroborate or discount the Collins-Doty
revelations, please contact me at: Larry W. Bryant, 3518
Martha Custis Drive, Alexandria, VA 22302; e-mail:
overtci@cavtel.net ."

But the ostrichlike PA folks at Langley happen to have a different notion as to what can pass as freedom of speech for their base personnel. In their rejection notice, they aver, as they pummel the free-speech tarbaby: "Based on results of Project Blue Book, it is clearly not within our scope to publish material contrary to the government interest."

So, Langley's renewed, futile/fatal exercise in viewpoint discrimination not only violates the consent order in Bryant v. Weinberger; it also invites me to summon Mr. Rumsfeld's third appearance in my second home -- that First Amendment briar patch called the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia. [LWB update for Oct. 5, 2008: both the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia and a 3-judge panel of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit now have ruled against me (the latter, on July 15, 2008, affirming the lower court's ruling that these military-owned newspapers, including their classified-ad pages, constitute nonpublic fora).]

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Item 2.9: Appeal Letter re LWB's FOIA Request to CIA

TO: Director, U. S. Central Intelligence Agency
ATTN: Chairman, Agency Records-Release Panel
Washington, DC 20505

FROM: Larry W. Bryant
3518 Martha Custis Drive
Alexandria, VA 22302

DATE: October 3, 2008

This letter appeals the Sept. 30, 2008, decision of CIA information and privacy coordinator Delores M. Nelson to deny my FOIA-requester status as a representative of the news media as regards my FOIA request of August 23, 2008 (CIA reference F-2008-01781 -- sent originally on August 13th to the Director of National Intelligence).

Ms. Nelson's below-quoted denial invokes warmed-over official UFOlogical history to deflect the crux of my request -- i.e., that any action taken by any CIA personnel to unlawfully suppress/dissuade public exposure of UFO reality (as was done in the case the Alaskan UFO encounter of 1986) has contemporary news value, thus warranting your waiver of all records-search fees.

Ample evidence defining my requester status remains posted upon my blog site of http://ufoview.posterous.com . Applicable federal case law (most notably the years-old lawsuit waged against your agency by the Washington, D.C.-based National Security Archive) confirms that no "representative of the news media" need justify his/her FOIA request as seeking records "likely [to] contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations and activities of the United States government." What's more, the package of previously released CIA-maintained UFO-related records would be a most unlikely repository for such agency-incriminating documentation as that pertaining to the 1986 Alaskan case.

By this appeal, I hereby characterize my records-search-fee-waiver "request" as a DEMAND, in light of the current edition of the U. S. Freedom of Information Act's dictum as expressed in subparagraph (a)(4)(A)(ii)(II), namely: "fees shall be limited to reasonable standard charges for document duplication when . . . the request is made by . . . a representative of the news media." Accordingly, I intend to file suit in U. S. District Court to challenge any denial of this appeal.

As you process and grant this appeal, I also ask that you forward a copy of all its related correspondence to the CIA inspector general for him to investigate the circumstances, principals, and activities related to former FAA official John J. Callahan's revelation that one or more CIA personnel have unlawfully applied official pressure upon Callahan's right not to engage in any CIA-directed/supported cover-up of the 1986 Alaskan case. Your complying with this IG-referral request not only would contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations and activities of the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency; it also would help secure accountability for any CIA policy/practice that interferes with the public's stakeholdership in pursuit of UFOtruth.

By snail-mail, I'm sending to you a signed printout of this e-formatted letter.


LARRY W. BRYANT

Copies furnished to:

Editor, UFO Magazine
Jonathan L. Katz, Esq.
Chairman, Select Committee on Intelligence, U. S. Senate
Director, U. S. Government Accountability Office

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

TEXT OF MS. NELSON'S LETTER TO LWB (30 Sep 08):

Reference: F-2008-01781

Dear Mr. Bryant:

This is a final response to your 23 August 2008 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, received in the office of the Information and Privacy Coordinator on 28 August 2008, for the following CIA-received and CIA-generated records:

(1) As pertain to the convening, attendance roster, briefings, minutes, and all other related documentation of the 1987 special meeting at FAA headquarters in Washington, D.C.;

(2) As pertain to all other similar cases of airborne UFO encounters reportedly occurring since Nov. 17, 1986, to date.

We have assigned your request the reference number above. Please use this number when corresponding so that we can identify it easily.

On the general subject of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), there is no organized CIA effort to do research in connection with UFO phenomena, nor has there been an organized effort to collect intelligence on UFOs since the 1950s. At that time, the Air Force, specifically the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, had the primary responsibility for the investigation of all reports of UFO sightings. The CIA's role was in connection with a Scientific Advisory Panel, established to investigate and evaluate reports of UFOs. The panel was concerned only with any aspect of UFO phenomena which might prove to present a potential threat to the United States national security. The panel later issued a report of its findings, the Report of the Scientific Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects dated 17 January 1953, also known as the Robertson Report. The report was released by the Air Force Office of Public Information on 9 April 1958. The Air Force investigation, called Project Bluebook [sic], was terminated in 1969. We understand that the Air Force turned its records on this subject over to the National Archives and Records Administration where they are currently available for inspection and purchase. There is currently no CIA program to actively collect information on UFOs, although since the time of the Robertson Report there have been sporadic instances of correspondence dealing with the subject, and we occasionally receive various kinds of reports of sightings of objects in the UFO category.

As of this date, however, the Agency has released to numerous previous requesters 1,022 pages of UFO-related documents under the FOIA. Most of this material was located as a result of a previous search for records conducted on behalf of an earlier requester for information regarding UFOs up through 1979, and as a result of a recent updated search for records conducted on behalf of an earlier requester for information regarding UFOs from 1979 through 15 March 1990. Any releasable material as a result of these earlier, thorough searches is included in this package. These documents are not indexed, and most of the material deals with matters related to the report by the Scientific Advisory Panel. We should advise you that most of the reports dealing with the UFO sightings considered by the Panel originated with other government agencies such as the Air Force, and that much of the later CIA-originated reports concern sightings as reported in the foreign news media. In accordance with our enclosed fee schedule, the material referred to above costs ten cents per page less the first 100 pages as a requester in the "all other" category.

Also, as a result of former Director Woolsey's 14 December 1993 radio interview, a recent further release of 1,757 pages has been made bringing the total amount of pages to 2,779. Therefore, should you wish to purchase this package, please send us your check or money order for US$267.90 to me, made payable to the Treasurer of the United States and cite the reference number above to ensure proper credit to your account.

You also have the option of reviewing the initial release of 991 pages on the CIA's electronic FOIA internet site. The access for this site via homepage URL is: http://www.foia.ucia.gov .

I must consider your request for a fee waiver under the standards the Agency FOIA regulations outline, which you will find at Part 1900 of Title 32 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). I have reviewed your request under those standards and determined that your petition does not meet them because disclosing the information you seek is already in the public domain and its re-release would not likely contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations and activities of the United States Government. I therefore deny your request for a fee waiver.

You may appeal this decision, in my care, within 45 days from the date of this letter. Should you choose to appeal the denial of your request for a fee waiver, you are encouraged to provide an explanation supporting your appeal. Agency regulations also specify that if the Agency has started to process a request, the Agency may only accept an appeal of a fee waiver denial if the requester agrees to be responsible for the costs in the event of an adverse administrative or judicial decision.

In an effort to assist you further, enclosed is a copy of an article from the CIA's internal magazine Studies in Intelligence, Summer 1997, entitled "CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90." This item is being provided at no cost since it is under 100 pages. We trust that the information enclosed and that provided above will be helpful.

Sincerely,

Delores M. Nelson
Information and Privacy Coordinator

Enclosure

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Item 3.12: UFOlogical Culture-Jamming, Anyone?

(From the March 2007 issue of "UFO Magazine")

By Larry W. Bryant

As a 20-year-old during the late fifties in these United States of Advertising, I was operating as a UFO activist in the wolf's clothing of what today we would call a "culture-jammer." Who knew?!

It wasn't until 30-some years later that I became aware of the term culture-jamming -- a still-thriving dogma (and practice) dear to young people's hearts, mostly. A Google-produced definition tells us that it means "billboard alteration and other forms of media sabotage." (For some historical perspective and philosophical discussion about it, see the web site of http://tinyurl.com/2doux3 .) A culture-jammer, the definition goes on to say, is a communication guerrilla, whose chief goal is "to counter the overpowering signs of corporate advertising."

Now that our nation's governmental institutions, policies, and practices have become so blatantly public-relations-driven, we have every reason to accept the extension of culture-jamming (C-J) to all affairs of self-governance (ever heard of the Internet-fueled "freeway blogger," for instance? Check it out at http://www.freewayblogger.com ).

That UFO-C-J project of mine in the late fifties happened to challenge the status quo of both the private sector and the public sector as regards the content of advertising. As a local UFO researcher in Newport News, Va., I'd begun trying to recruit new members for the Washington, D.C.-based National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. "How about soliciting local military personnel to join my newly formed pro-NICAP study group, the Air Research Group?" I asked myself. So, I fired off a small classified ad to the contract printer of the Langley Air Force Base's weekly newspaper, seeking airmen's participation in my group. In short order, the printer notified me that the base public information officer had rejected the proposed ad, on the grounds that running it might encourage Langley personnel to violate the USAF regulation on dissemination of UFO-sighting data. Of course, that rejection violated my First Amendment right of freedom-of-speech/press, but my meager experience with bureaucracy, along with nonexistent legal funds, conspired to delay justice in what I now call "Bryant's 'Bleak House'" -- the most protracted series of interrelated First Amendment lawsuits in U. S. history (see the related, ongoing litigation in Larry W. Bryant v. Donald H. Rumsfeld, et al. -- http://www.katzjustice.com/militarycases.htm ). [LWB 2008 note: Unfortunately, on July 15, 2008, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied my appeal of the U. S. district court's ruling against me (and, in effect, against anyone else desiring to place "political" advertising in a military-published newspaper), thus bringing to a close this chapter of "Bryant's 'Bleak House.'"]

UFOlogical culture-jamming requires few resources, no membership dues, no group bylaws, minimal organizational skills, little supervision, and not much follow-up to actions planned/taken. Your basic tools include the First Amendment, the U. S. Freedom of Information Act, a keen grasp of irony, a fertile imagination, a decent track record of creativity, and (perhaps) a heightened sense of social outrage. Today's Internet serves as a force multiplier for those tools. For example, whenever one of my UFO-coverup-whistleblower solicitation ads got rejected by a military base newspaper, you could bet that word of that censorship would show up somewhere on the Internet.

The latest episode of UFO-C-J came to my attention via the e-mail bloglist run by Victor G. Martinez in California. One of the list's correspondents -- Bill Ryan of the UK-based UFO research team of Bill Ryan and Kerry Cassidy ( http://www.projectcamelot.org ) -- dispatched a Feb. 8, 2007, e-message titled "Echelon -- proof at last :)." The message wryly announces:

"This dramatic little paragraph was sent out on its own, with no context or explanation. Echelon [a data-mining system managed by the U. S. intelligence community] promptly grabbed it. It was withheld for 3 hours and 40 minutes and has only just arrived. The other mails we were sending back and forth [to each other from England to the States] -- rather more innocuous -- were all delivered straight away.

"Presumably, all the alarms went off and some junior clerk reported it right up the line until someone with some experience identified it for what it was :)."

Ryan explained to his fellow "listers" that he and partner Cassidy were, at that particular time in cyberspace, working on proposed text for a UFO-related video program being edited by Cassidy. They found amusing the (presumed) Echelon-intercepted/delayed transmission of what some researchers will recognize as an excerpt from the so-called Special Operations Manual 1-01 (April 1954) -- part of the various documentation "leaked" during the past 20-some years about the alleged UFO-related findings and conclusions of the supersecret panel of government scientists/military leaders known as Majestic-12 (see: http://www.majesticdocuments.com ):

"Any encounter with entities known to be of extraterrestrial origin is to be considered a matter of national security and therefore classified TOP SECRET. Under no circumstances is the general public or the public press to learn of the existence of these entities. The official government policy is that such creatures do not exist, and that no agency of the government is now engaged in any study of extraterrestrials or their artifacts. Any deviation from this stated policy is absolutely forbidden."

Some observers of this episode in the perennial politics of UFOlogy point out that, at the very time of Ryan's e-transmission of the one-paragraph excerpt, several of the Internet's key servers were undergoing major attack from hackers. But the question remains: why didn't this attack interfere with the more mundane e-mail being exchanged between him and Cassidy?

On a broader scale, some of these same observers may view Project Camelot's exploration of the controversial revelations from "Project Serpo" ( http://serpo.org ) as being, in part, a massive exercise in UFOlogical culture-jamming -- perpetrated by either bona fide whistleblowers or by government disinformation specialists (or via a joint mission of both parties?).

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Larry W. Bryant's latest entry into governmental culture-jamming consists of his e-book "The Bu$ch-Cheezey Impeachment Chronicles," which is being serialized upon the web site of http://www.bushbusiness.com/Bryant_OP.htm .

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Item 3.11: The Importance of Being Focused

(From the May 2006 issue of UFO Magazine)

By Larry W. Bryant

"Once a writer is born into a family, that family is doomed." -- Lithuanian poet Czeslaw Milosz (as quoted in David Bouchier's introduction to his book "Writer at Work: Reflections on the Art and Business of Writing")

Of course, we can apply Milosz's hyperbole to the fate of UFO researchers' families -- for writers and UFOlogists do indeed have much in common: they all collect, analyze, digest, and disseminate data; in the process, some become more creative, proficient, and successful than others, but they all crave, and can benefit from, encouragement and cooperation (especially when bestowed by their family members).

Ahhh, encouragement: the backbone of a writer/researcher's will to stay afloat in a roiling sea populated with large and small monsters bent on thwarting our goals. You know the drill: it includes forms of DIScouragement, from tacit ridicule of our efforts to passive/active resistance to them. How can we not only survive but also thrive amidst such a challenge to one's sanity? I grapple with that question more often than I'd like to admit.

Though we may never achieve enough satisfactory answers, let me offer one here. It derives from one of the "servings" in the best-selling series of books called "Chicken Soup for the Soul." In this case, I refer to the one titled "Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul: Stories to Open the Heart and Rekindle the Spirit of Writers" (published in 2000 by Health Communications, Inc., of Deerfield, Fla.). Since the world has yet to acquire a comparable anthology of inspiration and encouragement aimed precisely at UFOlogists (would YOU like to help compile it?), we'd do well to begin with the one aimed at writers. For example, in reading and re-reading chapter 4 ("Finding Your Voice"), I've gained much comfort from its two-page "Counsel from a Veteran of the Writing Wars" (Irving Wallace) -- e.g., his concluding remark: "The world around you is different from the world Shakespeare wrote about -- your world today has trod on the moon, by God. For every new writer [and for every new UFO researcher -- LWB], every new year remains unexplored until he or she explores it."

If there be a cultural divide called the "UFO Wars" (a subset, perhaps, of today's "infowar" waged by the military-industrial complex?), then, by all means, treat my essay here as a call to arms. Arm yourself with one weapon at a time as you explore and write about current UFOlogical affairs. From here in the trenches, I suggest that your primary weapon consist of the Power of Focus. As with the writing profession, it takes lots of time and effort to develop and hone that power, but it does get stronger and more effective as you exercise it. I recommend that every new UFOlogist apply the Power of Focus in this manner: select a local UFO encounter that ignites and perpetuates your passion for investigation and research, one that would serve you were you asked, "What one case of your personal involvement convinces you that the UFO issue merits serious, sustained attention by scientists, forensic researchers, journalists, and academicians?"

My own answer to that question centers on a case study dating back to the twilight hours of Monday, Oct. 19, 1959. On that date, two teen-aged boys had ventured out into an old bombing range in Poquoson, Va., near Langley Air Force Base. There, armed with 12-gauge shotguns, they witnessed the arrival of a metallic disc about the size of a Volkswagon. The 15-year-old, Mark Muza, proceeded to fire upon the aerial visitor as it descended in a hovering mode. He heard the shot ricochet off the craft. Two more shots later, the visitor apparently decided it had had enough of this "welcome" and proceeded to zoom straight up and out of sight. Twenty-four years later, in an interview with a reporter from a Norfolk newspaper, Muza, then a detective with the Newport News police force, recounted his feelings about the event, adding that he remembers the frightening encounter "as if it happened yesterday."

For some in-depth discussion of the Muza case, I refer you to two sources:

(1) A 2000 monograph in researcher Loren E. Gross's seminal series of The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse -- UFOs: A History (Year 1959 -- October-December), wherein he devotes pages 11--18 to the case (including a discussion of the USAF Project Blue Book's unsupported conclusion that the two witnesses had fabricated the event);

(2) My own retrospective review as posted upon the Internet, circa Jan 6, 2001 (e.g., via http://www.niburu.nl/index.php?showarticle.php?articleID=1707 ), under the title "The UFO Attack of Oct. 19, 1959: Echoes of the Shot UNheard 'round the World."

In retrospect, I wish I'd kept a better focus on the passage of time-and-place as to the fate of the case's two principals -- Muza and his neighbor down-the-street Harold Moore, Jr. No-one seems to know the latter's current status [LWB 2008 note: since this publication, I've located Moore, who's granted me an interview]. As for Muza, I'd wanted to re-interview him for my update piece cited above, but I soon learned that, according to his nephew, he had died in the late 1990's. Unseasoned UFOlogists can learn from my lapse: strive to keep up to date on the comings and goings of the principals in your pet case. Wouldn't you just hate being a victim of such missed opportunities in this dynamic field of inquiry? It's akin to a writer's lament over a colleague's phenomenal success with a book recounting, say, her career as a dental-assistant-cum-concubine . . . "Wow, I could've written that one, darn it!"

Now that time and toil have taken their toll on most of my family members, and now that my No. 1 cheerleader happens still to be my daughter, I have little anxiety or frustration in my dual role as writer-UFOlogist. From now on, Mr. Milosz, my family shall remain undoomed by that role.

Meantime, some readers might wish to honor me by visualizing this essay as my Introduction to the yet-to-be-written book "Chicken Soup for the UFO Researcher's Soul."

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