Larry W. Bryant’s UFOview

When, on Feb. 7, 2003, I submitted my FOIA request to the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency for access to "the entire CIA case file on 'Wendy Lee's' submission of her draft memoirs for prepublication approval," the thought never crossed my mind that the FOIA coordinator would take as long as six years to process my request. (No wonder the Agency received the National Security Archive's 2006 Rosemary Award for FOIA laxity/non-responsiveness! -- see: http://tinyurl.com/bzyjul .)
 
In a letter to me of Jan. 28, 2009, current CIA FOIAmeister Delores M. Nelson invokes six of the Act's "(b)" exemptions to deny me access to most of the sought-for case file. What she did deign to provide was a copy of two legal documents filed within the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia under case No. 1:03-cv-00206-TPJ: (1) the Feb. 3, 2003, First Amendment complaint of Wendy Lee v. Central Intelligence Agency (from the hand of Mark S. Zaid, Esq.); and (2) the July 7, 2004, memorandum and order granting summary judgment to the Agency (under the hand of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson). Basically, the pseudonymous Wendy Lee lost her case because the Agency, in the court's view, has carte-blanche authority to "classify" anything it chooses. What's more: Lee, by having signed a preemployment secrecy agreement, had forfeited her First Amendment right to publish anything relating to her CIA (undercover) affiliation without prior Agency review/approval. Thus, her claim of official prior-restraint censorship failed to persuade Judge Jackson that the Agency had acted arbitrarily and capriciously in denying her permission to publish.
 
I summarize this case here to point out an apparent breakthrough in the Agency's almost impenetrable stone wall of recalcitrance as regards its obligation to process citizens' FOIA requests in a competent and good-faith manner. Can we attribute this turnaround to the fully activated, FOIA-strengthening U. S. OPEN Records Act of 2007? Let's hope so. And let's hope that there'll be fewer FOIA lawsuits, too -- so that some of the saved federal funds can be applied to beefing up the various agencies' FOIA staffs. -- Larry W. Bryant (independent writer specializing in national-security affairs -- http://ufoview.posterous.com )
 
== ". . . [CIA-deleted] in their telephone conversation, suggested that we had not heard the last from Mr. Bryant." -- from an Aug. 14, 1973, CIA memorandum pertaining to the Agency's clandestine courting of the UFOlogical favors of UFO researcher Richard H. Hall ( http://www.hallrichard.com/newufopage.htm ). See the May 17, 1990, FOIA lawsuit of Larry W. Bryant v. CIA (Civil Action No. 90-1163; USDC for the D. C.), which unsuccessfully sought access to the redacted portions of the 1973 memo. ==

(Originally published in the July 2007 issue of "UFO Magazine.")
 
By Larry W. Bryant
 
  Exactly 47 years and seven months after his role as a dual witness in one of the most compelling UFO encounters in recorded history, Lester Harold Moore, Jr., of the Hampton Roads bay-area city of Poquoson, Virginia, has stepped forward to help put his story on the public record -- from the citizen's standpoint, not from the federal bureaucrat's.
 
  Besides observing his 62nd birthday June 8, 2007, the native Poquosonite will be contemplating, once again, how he and a fellow neighborhood teenager, Mark Muza, had tempted fate during the twilight hours of Oct. 19, 1959, when they ventured out upon the restricted territory of an old USAF bombing range near Langley Air Force Base.
 
  They brought with them their shotguns and their zeal for bagging some water fowl.
 
  Separated by about 100 yards from his hunting companion, 15-year-old Muza (the older of the two by one year) came to a sudden halt in the marshland about a mile north of his Ridge Road home as he heard a whirring sound above his head. "Like a flock of wild birds," as he described the sound to a Newport News Daily Press reporter summoned to the area by Muza's mother. Almost frozen with fear, Mark chose to greet the small, unannounced, self-illumined saucer-shaped craft not with a wave of his hand but with a blast from his 12-gauge shotgun. As the craft kept descending from the estimated height of 80 feet, Muza fired another round; then, reloading with a solid-slug shell, he delivered the third and final blast before the interloper decided it had had enough of the Muza brand of hospitality, spinning away toward the southeast. During my interview with him a few days later, he told me that he'd distinctly heard his third shot ricochet as if it had hit a metallic object.
 
  After I had Muza fill out a simple sighting-report form for forwarding to the now-defunct, Washington, D.C.-based National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, I stopped by Harold Moore's home to seek HIS account. But his mother was skittish about my interviewing him, so I let the matter drop for then. (Note: mid-fifties-era residents of Poquoson tended to be xenophobic, so I was expecting at least a modicum of such hostility.)
 
  A year after the event, I produced a mimeographed monograph about this, my very first field investigation (at age 21). In it, I decried the lack of an official USAF Project Blue Book probe into the case. In the course of pushing for a formal investigation into this "shot UNheard 'round the world," I sought, with the help of a teen-aged UFOlogist in Norfolk, the intervention of U. S. Rep. Porter Hardy, Jr. But USAF authorities at both Langley and the Pentagon had chosen to stonewall both me and Hardy, averring that it would be contrary to AF policy to mount a UFO investigation on the basis of hearsay evidence. Had any of them been firemen alerted to a house fire by an anonymous passerby, would they have exhibited the same reluctance to become involved?
 
  Eleven years later, a newsletter called UFO Commentary (published by then-teenager Patrick Huyghe of Newport News) carried my retrospective essay about what was becoming a classic case in the annals of UFO research. Then, for his column of Dec. 28, 1983, a reporter at the Norfolk Ledger-Star interviewed Muza (who then was serving on the Newport News police force). The resulting story noted that Muza recalls the incident "as if it happened yesterday."
 
  Finally, upon discovering some official Poquoson-related records, I wrote another retrospective review,* posting it in one or two places on the Internet during January 2001. I'd wanted to contact Muza for an update interview but, alas, I ended up learning about his recent demise from cancer. In that essay, I also expressed perennial frustration over my inability to track down one Mr. Harold Moore, Jr. (assuming he still was alive). Not long afterwards, though (as if harnessing the theorized "six degrees of separation"), a Hampton resident contacted me with a key datum: Moore's first name was not Harold but Lester. What's more, this Lester fellow used to attend high school with a friend of the Hamptonian's. Bingo! I now had a full name, street address, and phone number, thus rounding out all the leads I'd need to resume my search. Unfortunately, with two unreturned phone calls later, I still had yet to make contact.
 
  I particularly had wanted to inform Moore of my recent acquisition of certain Blue Book files on his case, particularly as regards the two Langley AFB-dispatched investigators' interview conclusion (in May 1960) as to the (perceived) veracity of Muza and Moore. (By the way, those interviews had evolved from my persistence in pressing the case with Rep. Hardy and with the House Committee on Science and Astronautics.)
 
  Months passed by as the missing-link contact simmered on the back burner of intellectual neglect. Will I let still another missed opportunity rule the day -- or will I knuckle down and focus my energy one more time on this far-too-long diverted quest?
 
  The answer arrived on May 19, 2007. On a trip from my home in Alexandria to my daughter's home in Hampton (which lies within 10 miles of Poquoson), I vowed to mount an ambush of Mr. Moore. With daughter Gretchen at my side, we drove over to this home in Poquoson. We learned from his brother-in-law that Harold was out on a crabbing mission, due to return in a few hours to the seafood market where he and his wife labored for their owner-son. (Turns out that Gretchen happens to be an occasional customer of the place.) Thus, the denouement for this protracted drama was just a short while away. We decided to visit a nearby thrift store, eventually stopping by the market. Moore's wife told us that he was expected to return there shortly, so we left for a late lunch, returning at four o-clock.
 
  Upon entering the store this time, we noticed a balding, smiling man of about 265 pounds sitting next to Mrs. Moore. Yes, it was he -- the unwittingly elusive Harold, now seemingly eager to sort out the identity and purpose of this mysterious couple from afar.
 
  I began by telling him that I'd met him when he was fourteen; that I also had interviewed Mark Muza back on that otherwise routine day etched in Mark's memory. I beamed triumphantly as Harold rolled out the welcome carpet, offering me a seat in an interlocking easy chair next to his in the store's foyer. We talked for about 20 minutes -- a spell broken only a few times as he rose to attend to some arriving customers' needs.
 
  Like Muza, Harold said that he remembers the event as if it occurred yesterday: "I even recall that it took place on a week day." He added that he and Muza had remained friends throughout adulthood. Curiously, though, they never had bothered to discuss among themselves any details or after-effects of their "flying saucer" sighting. This silence may be due to their desire to avoid further ridicule from any of the townspeople of that era.
 
  I lost no time in posing the burning question: "The Air Force's report on this case, now preserved at the U. S. National Archives and Records Administration, concludes that the case probably was a hoax. Do you agree with that assessment?" Harold, taking only a couple of seconds to respond, gave me the answer I'd expected to hear: "It was no hoax." I proceeded to explain to him that the Blue Book report had turned upside down the rationale for rejecting the two boys' accounts: "The two investigators said they couldn't accept your veracity, Harold, because the details of your accounts coincided too much." Usually, as in police investigations, if a given witness's testimony DIFFERS substantially from another's, that's a valid reason to suspect some chicanery; but not if there's substantial AGREEMENT between the two testimonies. Go figure.
 
  At this point, Harold had a question for ME: "Do you know that, around the next day [October 20th], a sighting occurred near Hampton High School?" I answered "no," wondering if the Daily Press had been notified of that case as well.
 
  Shortly before concluding our discussion, Moore dropped a bombshell (almost disguised as a passing reference): he noted that, back in October 1959, NOT in May 1960, a Langley-based investigator had accompanied the two boys on a return visit to the area of the "crime." The investigator, noting the contoured wind/weight effect upon a patch of swamp grass, declared: "Yep. Somethin's set down here." Of course, the Blue Book report contains no such admission, so the question remains: who's doing the lying here: the Muza-Moore team or the USAF team of so-called objective investigators of UFO reports from the citizenry?
 
  Given our knowledge of how readily and easily various government agencies/officials can (and do) conspire to deceive the public, how can anyone be surprised to learn that officialdom, back in October 1959, conspired to deny the public its right to know the truth about such hard-core cases of UFO reality as exemplified by the Muza-Moore incident?
 
  From now on, we, the People, deserve better treatment -- and we demand it. Thank you, Harold Moore, for honoring that principle today.
 
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
 
Larry W. Bryant's accumulation of these "Bryant's UFO View" installments has approached book-length dimensions. When he began the column several months ago, he was hoping to amass enough depth and variety for publishing an anthology of the more popular entries. He now welcomes readers' views on whether the time has arrived for producing that book. How about it: should he proceed, and do you have any favorite entries deserving of priority? Please let him know at his e-mail address (overtci@cavtel.net) or phone number (703-931-3341).
 
*[For the contents of that review, see Item 3.14 of this blog -- http://ufoview.posterous.com ]

(Posted originally on the Internet in January 2001, upon the UFO Updates listserv of http://www.virtuallystrange.net ; later published in the November 2007 issue of "UFO Magazine.")

 By Larry W. Bryant

 Let not the title of this piece mislead you.

 The "attack" in question came not from a raygun-wielding tentacle of some grotesque alien-spacecraft crew member bent on destroying his/her first contact upon Planet Earth during that fateful twilight hour of Oct. 19, 1959, in a town called Poquoson, near Langley Air Force Base, Va.

 No, it came from the trembling hands of a 12-gauge-shotgun-toting 15-year-old named Mark George Muza, Jr. He and his 14-year-old hunting companion, Harold Moore, Jr., had ventured out that afternoon into an old USAF restricted bombing range near their homes off Ridge Road.

 Somewhere about a mile into the Big Marsh, Muza heard a whirring sound, "like a flock of wild birds," coming from above. Separated from Muza by about 100 yards, the other boy watched in amazement as a roughly 4-foot-diameter flying saucer slowly descended from about 100 feet to some 50 feet above Muza's head. At that point, the terrified youngster aimed his gun at the craft and, over the course of about 90 seconds, pumped three shots into it. All three blasts -- especially the third,
heavy-duty "slug" -- produced a ricochet that, to Muza, sounded as if metal were scraping metal.

 Apparently unaccustomed to such a hostile greeting, the saucer finally ceased its wobbly descent and proceeded to spin as a toy top, zooming straight up, out of sight.

 That would've been "end of story" had not Muza's mother called the local newspaper (the Newport News Daily Press).

 Complete with a photo of Muza holding his sketch of the craft, the article published on Oct. 21st gave me the opportunity to visit the site, to interview the two witnesses (and Muza's mother), and to publish my own report on the incident. That report -- titled "From Poquoson to Washington" -- lamented the fact that no-one at Langley had chosen to investigate the case. The mimeographed report summarized a series of correspondence between me, officials at Langley, certain Pentagon-based USAF officials, a fellow researcher from Norfolk, and his congressman
(Porter Hardy, Jr.). You might say that, besides providing me a favored best-evidence case for UFO reality, this confrontation with a recalcitrant officialdom helped propel me upon a 42-year-long career as an activist for greater freedom of UFO information.

 In retrospect, the Poquoson case has confirmed what I and most privately funded researchers had suspected for years: the Air Force's Project Blue Book of the 1952--1969 era operated as a thinly disguised public-relations effort to downplay UFO-sighting reports, and in the process to denigrate both UFO witnesses and UFO researchers whenever the opportunity arose.

 Exactly where have I found that confirmation?

 It surfaced in my recent visit to the U. S. National Archives annex in College Park, Md. There, amongst the several dozen rolls of microfilmed Blue Book records, lies the entire USAF case file on the Poquoson encounter (including a copy of my entire 9-page report of Nov. 1, 1960). Here you'll find some of the correspondence mentioned above -- as well as some revelatory official commentary whose originators had assumed would never see the light of archival exposure.

 Some excerpts:

 (1) From an OFFICIAL USE ONLY memo sent to HQ USAF spokesman Maj. L. J. Tacker: "1. ... c. On 12 November 1959 a confidential source provided this Directorate with a copy of an incomplete document entitled "From Within the Blackout: An Analysis of Secrecy on the Local UFO Scene," by
Larry W. Bryant, director of the Air Research Group. 2. Attached for your information is one copy of the above-cited document and one copy of letter from Bryant dated 1 November 1959. The attachments are for your retention. 3. No investigation is being conducted of subject by this
Directorate." [Signed by F. L. Welch, Assistant Chief, Counterintelligence Div., Directorate of Special Investigations, the Inspector General.]

 (2) From a HQ USAF letter of May 20, 1960, to a staff member of the House Committee on Science: "At your oral request, this office has further investigated the Poquoson ... incident and the correspondence relative thereto which has passed between this office and Congressman
Hardy... . you will note, as indicated in the newspaper article attached hereto, that Mr. Bryant is a self-appointed authority on unidentified flying objects and he, along with many others, considers himself entitled to be an unofficial advisor to the USAF Intelligence community... . Please note further that the UFO detection device featured in the newspaper picture of Mr. Bryant appears to be nothing more than a common doorbell connected to two dry cell batteries. Mr. Bryant is evidently of the opinion that such a device is capable of supplying scientific proof that UFOs are flying objects from outer space. Yet the Air Force has been unable to secure such evidence utilizing its entire worldwide
air defense radar network and the facilities of the rest of the scientific community dedicated to satellite tracking."

 (3) From a June 9, 1960, Memorandum for Record (Subject: UFO Sighting), written by Blue Book chief Maj. Robert Friend: "... 3. Mr. Larry W. Bryant, who reported the sighting to Langley AFB, was
investigated by OSI. Mr. Bryant was at one time employed in the Provost Marshal's Office at Ft Monroe, Va., but due to his attitude and evidence that he was a poor security risk, had been transferred to a less sensitive job at Ft Eustice [sic], Va." [LWB comment: Besides his misspelling of Fort Eustis, Friend has his facts wrong. My entry-level job at Monroe in May 1958 was with the Adjutant General's section of the U. S. Continental Army Command. It was through the good graces of the secretary to the commandant of the U. S. Army Transportation School that I'd learned of the promotional potential with a clerical vacancy there. I applied for the job, got selected, and progressed into various other positions requiring appropriate security-clearance updates. If by "evidence" Friend is referring to my monograph "From Within the Blackout," then you can see how such a bunker mentality helped spawn the intelligence-agency abuses of the sixties and early
seventies.]

 So much for the human drive to kill the messenger of (UFOlogical) bad news. Throughout my civil service career, I came to expect more of the same from those in authority who felt (and probably still feel) that I had no right to point a finger at the Naked Emperor of official UFO secrecy. (But to present all that history would take at least a book or two.)

 Killing the messenger ranks high enough on the scale of bureaucratic evil. But consider that the Blue Book gang also had no compunction about killing the NEWS as well. They pulled off this feat of
legerdemain simply by discrediting, as much as possible, a given witness; and the more extraordinary the story, the easier became the act of dismissing it.

 In Muza and Moore's case, because of the congressional pressure, the Langley-based "UFO investigation officer" (a Maj. Paul Roberts) arranged to have them interrogated at separate times in May 1960. According to the (unnamed) interrogator's summary sheets, the boys' accounts coincided too much. What's more, he concludes: "The publicity brought about by the newspaper article made it necessary for them to prepare a pat story and then stick to it to preserve face." (A tall order for two teens from the tall marsh grass of Indian country!) What would the investigator have concluded had the two accounts contained too many variations? From this lose-lose situation, we now have this official dismissal of the story, as entered upon the BB "Project 10073 Record Card": "Investigators believe sighting to be a hoax."

 With the passage of time, Muza and Moore have had more than one opportunity to recant. Back in 1983, for example, when reporter Larry Bonko of the Norfolk, Va., Ledger-Star contacted Muza (then a police detective for Newport News), Muza mused that he remembers the event as if it happened yesterday. "I have no idea what I saw," he told Bonko. Had he hoaxed the whole thing in a moment of youthful indiscretion, he just as easily could've admitted that failing and moved on to
non-history.

 And neither has he told any family member otherwise. Several months ago, I tried to locate Muza for a follow-up interview. The only Muza listed in the Peninsula phone book turned out to be his nephew, who confirmed that Mark had stood by his story all these decades.

 Unfortunately, as I learned from the nephew, Mark had died a few years ago -- a victim of cancer, then in his mid-fifties.

 If anyone knows the whereabouts of Harold Moore, Jr., please let me know -- so that the resurgent echo of their story can be heard 'round the world.

 [LWB update for Jan. 4, 2009: sometimes, persistence does pay off in this field of research. Since having finally located Mr. Moore (with the assistance of a UFO-oriented resident of Poquoson), I've published the result of my subsequent interview of him. It will appear in this blog as Item 3.15.]

TO: Ms. Dolores 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: January 2, 2009
 
1. Referring to your December 22, 2008, response to my Nov. 8, 2008, freedom-of-information request (your Ref. F-2009-00200), pertaining to the research/writing activity of the late W. Todd Zechel (see text of your letter below), I hereby submit this letter as a FOIA request for a photocopy of the entire CIA-created case file on the processing of my Nov. 8, 2008, request. I need these records in order to determine the scope and depth of any forthcoming appeal of your "no records" determination.
 
2. Since the records sought by my Nov. 8, 2008, request deal with matters of wide-ranging public interest applicable to today's official UFO awareness within U. S. and foreign intelligence services (e.g., the 1969 existence of a CIA-Soviet-Intelligence agreement on how best to treat each other's country's detection of UFO activity), I cannot imagine the records' having been lost or destroyed. These obviously permanent records detailing the formulation and operation of a key CIA policy/program/practice would constitute "essential evidence" preservable as part of the nation's official archives. If they now repose within a CIA-monitored records-holding area or in any facility managed by the National Archives and Records Administration, you have the obligation to identify for me that location so that I may pursue their public release.
 
3. As you process this latest FOIA request, I expect you to acknowledge my requester status as a "representative of the news media" and to, accordingly, grant me a full waiver of all records-search/review fees incident to your fulfilling this request.
 
4. By snail-mail, I'm sending to you a signed printout of this e-formatted letter.
 
5. NOTE: As in the recent past, I'm furnishing a copy of this request to my attorney, Jonathan L. Katz, Esq., of Silver Spring, Md.; and to the editor of the newsstand periodical "UFO Magazine." When Congress convenes this month, I also shall furnish the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence with a copy of this correspondence, in case they wish to investigate the issues raised by the CIA-Zechel connection.
 
 
LARRY W. BRYANT
Columnist for UFO Magazine
http://ufoview.posterous.com (particularly Item 2.12)
 
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
 
== TEXT OF MS. NELSON'S 22 DEC 08 LETTER TO L.W.B. ==
 
Reference: F-2009-00200
 
Dear Mr. Bryant:
 
On 19 November 2008, the office of the Information and Privacy Coordinator received your 8 November 2008 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records concerning W. Todd Zechel, deceased. We have assigned the above reference number to your request. The remaining portion of your letter will be treated under separate correspondence, under reference number F-2009-00179.
 
We accepted and processed your request in accordance with the FOIA, 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552, as amended, and the CIA Information Act, 50 U.S.C. Sec. 431, as amended. Our processing included a search for CIA-originated records existing through 19 November 2008, the date we received your letter. We did not locate any records responsive to your request.
 
Although our searches were thorough and diligent, and it is highly unlikely that repeating those searches would change the result, you nevertheless have the right to appeal the finding of no records responsive to your request. Should you choose to do so, you may address your appeal to the Agency Release Panel within 45 days from the date of this letter, in my care. Please include the basis of your appeal.
 
Thank you for your patience while we processed your request.
 
Sincerely,
 
Delores M. Nelson
Information and Privacy Coordinator

[LWB note: In our field of UFOrensics, we have behavior patterns, threads of commonality, and event tie-ins that may offer clues as to the origin and purpose of some reported UFO encounters. Consider the following analysis written in 2001 and sent to me by the late researcher W. Todd Zechel, then director of the Wisconsin-based Associated Investigators Group.]

 "Get back, you fool!" shouted Travis Walton's fellow woodcutters as he walked beneath a hovering flying saucer. Suddenly, a blue ray shot out from the yellowish-orange glowing object, striking Walton and sending him flying into the air, arms outstretched -- "like he'd touched a live wire," according to witness Ken Peterson.

 Walton and six co-workers had been heading home Nov. 5, 1975, after a hard day of tree-trimming work in the Arizona mountains, rumbling along in a truck on an isolated mountain road about 12 miles from Heber, Ariz. Near dusk, a UFO was sighted hovering about 25 feet in the air over a clearing beside the road. As the woodcutters slowed to gape at the glowing saucer, Walton bolted from the truck and walked toward it, ignoring the pleas of his friends.

 The shocked and frightened crew roared away from the scene even as Walton soared upward toward the UFO. But a few minutes later they returned, having calmed a bit -- only to discover that their buddy had disappeared. A lengthy search turned up nothing.

 Walton wouldn't be seen again for five days. In the interim, the six witnesses underwent lie detector (polygraph) tests by Navajo County sheriff Marlin Gillespie, who then concluded (after five of them had passed with flying colors and one nervous witness had been termed "inconclusive"): "I'm sure they saw a UFO."

 Walton, slumped over and in a confused state of mind, was retrieved from a phone booth near Heber by his brother, Duane, whom Travis had phoned upon regaining his bearings. Later, Travis would recall awakening aboard a spaceship, surrounded by "creatures," which he described as looking like "well-developed fetuses." The young man said the beings were "about 5 feet tall and wore tight-fitting tan-brown robes. Their skin was white like a mushroom, and they had no clear features. They made no sounds. Their faces had no texture or color, and there was no hair. Their foreheads were domed and their eyes were very large. They had long fingers -- but no finger nails."

 In retrospect, the Walton case acquires added dimension when you consider that it occurred near the tail end of the 1975 flap in which UFOs had hovered over Air Force B-52 bases and missile sites from Maine to Montana in late October and early November. Walton's disappearance correlated with the UFO activity's move westward around Nov. 5, and his return on Nov. 10 coincided with the flap's subsidence. Walton couldn't have known these facts at the time, since records of the incidents and
their details were not released until two or three years later. (See SIDEBAR.)

 [LWB postscript: Walton went on to write a soft-cover book (1979) about his experience -- now published in updated, hardback form by Marlowe & Company (1996). Its title: "Fire in the Sky -- the Walton Experience (the Best-documented Case of Alien Abduction Ever Recorded)."]

   * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

   SIDEBAR: The 1975 Fly-over Flap

 One of history's more remarkable, bizarre, and troubling series of UFO encounters began on the night of Oct. 27, 1975, when a low-altitude, flashing object invaded Loring Air Force Base, Maine -- a B-52 bomber facility located near Presque Isle, Maine.

 Loring experienced UFO intrusions three nights in a row, at least two of which included the UFO's hovering within 100--150 feet of the Weapons Storage Area, where nuclear bombs for the B-52s are stored. In fact, Air Force messages later released under the U. S. Freedom of Information Act state that the UFOs "demonstrated a clear intent" toward the nuclear weapons.

 Observed visually by scores of base personnel, the elusive craft also were tracked on several separate radars. They ended up being chased by special pursuit helicopters containing security forces. In one case, the pursuers had trouble closing on the intruder even though radar scopes indicated that at one point the helicopter had come within 1,000 feet of its target. An OPREP-PINNACLE report ("grave national security situation") described the UFO pilot as "a smart and most capable aviator."

 After investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, AF spokesman Col. Charles Senn stated that "no cause for the sightings had been determined. There were no military or civilian aircraft in the vicinity at the time."

 Alien Glowworms?

 On the night of Nov. 1, 1975, two glowing UFOs invaded Wurtsmith Air Force Base, Mich., another B-52 site for the Strategic Air Command. In buzzing the flight line, the UFOs provoked a chase by a KC-135 Orbital Command Post (modified tanker) out over Lake Huron, at which point the "unknowns" got low to the water and doused their glowing lights, thereby evading further radar or visual detection.

 In the next few days UFOs began showing up over B-52 bases and SAC missile sites in North Dakota and Montana. The North American Air Defense Command, headquartered in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex near Colorado Springs, Colo., scrambled a group of F-106 fighters to intercept a flight of seven UFOs over Montana missile sites, but the pursuers became helpless when the crafty craft took evasive action by hovering low near the mountains and extinguishing their glowing lights. That development was witnessed by ground-based Sabotage Alert Teams watching through field glasses.

 An Airborne Agenda

 During the first 11 days of November, dozens of UFO incursions took place over or near sensitive missile silos, many described by notations in the NORAD command director's log later FOIA-released. Near Harlowtown, Mont., at Site Lima-1, a UFO hovered within 10 feet of the missile silo, drawing the attention of a missile crew in a nearby support building. One of the officers present at the incident, Capt. Thomas Moulton, later told close relatives that the targeting instructions on the missile's multiple-warhead array had been altered by the UFO.

 Even more curious: during that same period, a number of cattle were found mysteriously mutilated in fields in North Dakota, Montana, Colorado, and New Mexico. Steers had turned up lying in muddy fields with organs and anuses removed through some sort of precise, bloodless surgery; but nary a track or other evidence of an intruder was uncovered. All that was seen had been glowing lights in the night skies. As with the fly-overs at the military sites, investigators were unable to determine a terrestrial cause for the mutilations. Of course, arm-chair UFO debunkers chose to blame the whole thing on "predators."

 Thanks to a Public-spirited Informant

 Little of this invasion ever would've become public knowledge had it not been for the courageous action of an analyst assigned to one of the government's super-secret intelligence agencies. His leakage, in 1977, of some of the reports to certain civilian researchers ultimately led to the FOIA release of scores of documents related to the flap. Yet, even now some of the details remain closely guarded secrets.

 [LWB Note: The 1975 fly-over documentation led to publication of the 1984 expose book "Clear Intent: The Government Cover-up of the UFO Experience," by researchers Barry J. Greenwood and Lawrence Fawcett. Since then, a comprehensive study of the events, principals, testimony, associations, and implications related to the reported incursions has been completed by researcher Robert L. Hastings ( http://www.ufohastings.com ). The resultant 600-page tome of 2008 bears the title "UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites." If you decide to buy only one more UFO book in your current lifetime on planet earth, make it this one.]

 http://ufoview.posterous.com

LWB note: Subscribers for the bimonthly "Journal of UFO History (A Publication of the Donald E. Keyhoe Archives)," published-edited by former NICAP assistant director Richard H. Hall ( http://www.hallrichard.com ), have a nostalgic treat on page 11 of the Journal's November-December 2008 issue. It consists of this excerpt from Hall's recent interview with former NICAP staffer Donald Berliner:

 "Q: I think I know the answer to this, but what is your opinion on the reality or non-reality of the alleged MJ-12 organization?

 "A: Either there was an MJ-12 as described in the Eisenhower Briefing Document, or there was a similar organization that went under another name/designation . . . or maybe a series of titles. To have ignored the greatest scientific discovery in history and not marshaled our best talent to learn everything possible would have been malfeasance of the worst kind."

 That conversation -- with its ageless perspective -- prompts me to publish here the contents of my 2000 public "Petition to Investigate the 'MJ-12' UFO Cover-up," which I'd circulated for three months via the now-defunct service called "petitionpetition.com." Alas, none of the agencies cited ever responded to my snail-mail delivery of the petition (which also had listed as a recipient one Va. U. S. Senator Charles Robb). Had they done so, they probably would've invoked their discretionary power to ignore it. But it certainly does stand as a nagging footnote in the history of the official, worldwide UFO cover-up, no? Here's the petition's text and list of signatories:

 TO: Secretary, U.S. Department of the Army (Washington, D.C.);
  Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy (Washington, D.C.);
  Director, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (Washington, D.C.);
  Director, U.S. Office of Special Counsel (Washington, D.C.);
  Attorney General of the United States (Washington, D.C.)

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

 DATE: July 22, 2000

 (1) With their 169 electronic signatures now entered upon subject
petition, citizens from all walks of life -- from homemakers and
students to government workers and professional specialists
-- are requesting that you take all appropriate action toward fulfilling
their plea as expressed in the text of the petition.

 (2) Circulated during the period April 21 to July 21, 2000, via the
Internet website of http://www.petitionpetition.com, the petition
presented the following background information:

   The inspectors general of three federal agencies -- the
  Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of the Army,
  and the Department of Energy -- are continuing to ignore
  a written request to investigate their agencies' role in the
  official cover-up of the "UFO/E.T. experience."

   This ADMINISTRATIVE petition (as carried by the website
  of http://www.petitionpetition.com) sets the stage for a
  forthcoming "Petition for Writ of Mandamus," to be filed
  in federal court in Washington, D.C.

   Accordingly, if the IG officials involved persist in
  stonewalling the formal request to investigate their
  agencies' role in the UFO cover-up as revealed by certain
  whistleblower-"leaked" documentation (now posted
  upon the website of http://www.majesticdocuments.com ),
  then they'll have to justify their decision not to just
  the Court of Public Opinion but also to the U.S. District
  Court for the District of Columbia.

   This next logical, legal step in the public's growing
  demand for the full story as to what these agencies know
  (and when they knew it) about UFO reality centers on the
  behind-the-scenes conduct of a supersecret
  panel of top-rated military leaders and scientists selected
  circa 1947 to analyze, exploit, and conceal certain recovered
  artifacts of alien-spacecraft origin. Known as
  Majestic-Twelve, the 12-member panel managed for decades
  to keep its affairs hidden from public view -- until
  one or more whistleblowers began to "leak" documentary
  evidence of those affairs.

   As work proceeds to fully evaluate (via technical, literary,
  political, and forensic means) the content and specific
  origin of the MJ-12 documents, you now have this opportunity,
  through your signatures on this petition, to say no to the UFO
  status quo -- and to remind these agencies that the public
  has the right to know, and they have a duty to tell.

 (3) Here's the text of the petition:

   We, the undersigned citizens -- concerned about the
  U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's, the Department of
  the Army's, and the Department of Energy's having been
  implicated (by whistleblower-"leaked" documentation) in
  the official cover-up of the "UFO/E.T. experience" -- do
  hereby petition our elected and appointed government
  officials to compel these agencies' inspectors general to
  cease their stonewalling and to fulfill their statutory
  duty to investigate (and to report upon) whatever role their
  agencies have had (and continue to have) in concealing from
  public view various hard evidence of UFO/E.T. reality.

   -- Whereas, each of these IG officials have received --
  and have chosen to ignore -- a formal, written request to
  commission the sought-for investigation;

   -- Whereas, this stonewalling contravenes both the
  spirit of government accountability and the letter-of-the-law
  as to the IG charter;

   -- Whereas, to countenance that stonewalling invites
  these agencies to perpetuate their decades-old abuse
  of authority, violation of the public trust, and
  deliberate evasion of congressional oversight (as revealed by
  documentation posted upon the website of http://
  www.majesticdocuments.com); and

   -- Whereas, a growing body of UFO-cover-up whistleblowers
  and other material witnesses are waiting in the wings to
  testify against that official agency wrongdoing (if given
  a chance in a court of law or in an open congressional hearing)
  --

   We sign this administrative petition in full expectation that
  its recipients will exercise, forthrightly and swiftly, their
  authority toward granting its demand; and should they deny its
  demand, we encourage the petition's originator to append the
  electronically signed version to his proposed "Petition for
  Writ of Mandamus," for filing in U.S. District Court for the
  District of Columbia.

 (4) On behalf of the petition's signatories, I ask that you keep me
regularly and fully informed as to your progress in helping achieve the
goal of this petition. Your failure to do so will add that much more
substance to the petitioners' quest for judicial review of your
agencies' role in the worldwide government cover-up of the UFO/E.T.
experience.

 (5) Please note that I'm snail-mailing to you a printout of this
e-mail-formatted communication so that you may readily process it among
the multiple levels of your agencies.

 (6) Here is the list of signatories:

   169.
  Full Name: Chester L. Hanna
  City: Kokomo
  State/Province: Indiana
  Country: USA
  Age: 86
  Occupation: Retired

   168.
  Full Name: Peter Statler
  City: Santa Monica
  State/Province: CA
  Country: USA
  Age: 64
  Occupation: Exec.

   167.
  Full Name: Lynwood R Freeland
  City: San Bruno
  State/Province: Ca
  Country: USA
  Age: 64
  Occupation: Electrician

   166.
  Full Name: Cameron McCreary
  City: Auburn
  State/Province: CA
  Country: USA
  Age: 43
  Occupation: Student at Sierra College

   165.
  Full Name: Thomas J. Birong
  City: Phoenix
  State/Province: Az.
  Country: USA
  Age: 64
  Occupation: Retired Engineer

   164.
  Full Name: DELETED
  163.
  Full Name: Daniel L. Beffa Jr.
  City: Sunrise
  State/Province: Florida
  Country: U.S.A.
  Age: 47
  Occupation:
  Marine Electrician

   162.
  Full Name:
  Richard Henry Walden Jr
  City: Charlottesville
  State/Province: VA
  Country: US
  Age: 54
  Occupation:
  Real Estate

   161.
  Full Name: tracy brannom
  City: crescent city
  State/Province: ca
  Country: usa
  Age: 35
  Occupation: self employed

   160.
  Full Name: adam schneiderman
  City: Roslyn Heights,
  State/Province: ny
  Country: usa
  Occupation:

   159.
  Full Name: Peggy Chamblee
  City: Pendleton
  State/Province: SC
  Country: USA
  Age: 36
  Occupation: Personal Banker

   158.
  Full Name: darrell long
  City: cape coral
  State/Province: florida
  Country: usa
  Age: 42
  Occupation:

   157.
  Full Name: Jerrold D. Pesz
  City: Pegram
  State/Province: TN 37143
  Country: USA
  Age: 57
  Occupation: Patrol Supervisor

   156.
  Full Name: cs
  City: li
  State/Province: ny
  Country: usa
  Age: 21
  Occupation:

   155.
  Full Name: Alan L. Baughman
  City: Evansville
  State/Province: Indiana
  Country: USA
  Age: 39
  Occupation: Manufacturing Supervisor

   154.
  Full Name: Seth Elson
  City: Santa Ana
  State/Province: CA
  Country: USA
  Age: 32
  Occupation: Engineer

   153.
  Full Name: Brian Edward Paddock
  City: Cincinnati
  State/Province: Ohio
  Country: USA
  Age: 29
  Occupation: Cook

   152.
  Full Name: Lynette Donna Day
  City: Greenwell Point
  State/Province: New South Wales
  Country: Australia
  Age: 33
  Occupation: Photographer

   151.
  Full Name: Jack Goosey
  City: S. Pasadena
  State/Province: CA
  Country: USA
  Age: 44
  Occupation:

   150.
  Full Name: Charles Mitchell
  City: Danvers
  State/Province: Ma
  Country: USA
  Age: Occupation: Network Administrator

   149.
  Full Name: anthony m. venute,jr.
  City: niagara falls
  State/Province: new york
  Country: USA
  Age: 43
  Occupation: industrial electrician

   148.
  Full Name: come on folks
  City: let's get to
  State/Province: the truth here. if it wasn't
  for "US" the
  Country: government wouldn't "be"
  Occupation: get guts, sign this

   147.
  Full Name: Michael Terry
  City: Tualatin
  State/Province: Oregon
  Country: America
  Age: 52
  Occupation: seeker

   146.
  Full Name: Robert Owen Palmer
  City: Christchurch
  State/Province: Canterbury
  Country: New Zealand
  Age:40
  Occupation: Musician

   145.
  Full Name: don herrick
  City: va. beach
  State/Province: VA.
  Country: USA
  Age: 57
  Occupation: looking for the truth-for the people

   144.
  Full Name: JENNIFER LEWIS
  City: MAYVILLE
  State/Province: WI
  Country: USA
  Age: 32
  Occupation: HOMEMAKER

   143.
  Full Name: Dave Glover
  City: Trail
  State/Province: B.C..
  Country: Canada
  Age: 72
  Occupation: Retired

   142.
  Full Name: Robin Joyce Blum
  City: Los Angeles
  State/Province: California
  Country: U.S.A.
  Age: 40
  Occupation: Fiber Artist

   141.
  Full Name: steve genge
  City: slough
  State/Province: berks
  Country: uk
  Age: 35
  Occupation: aviation industry

   140.
  Full Name: David Jinks
  City: Olympia
  State/Province: WA
  Country: USA
  Age: 31
  Occupation: Hospital Manager

   139.
  Full Name: Michael Munger
  City: Boulder
  State/Province: Colorado
  Country: USA
  Age: 21
  Occupation: Student

   138.
  Full Name: Joshua Ortenzo
  City: Pittsburgh
  State/Province: Pennsylvania
  Country: USA
  Age: 16
  Occupation: Student

   137.
  Full Name: Eric Stephen Hofer
  City: Kutztown
  State/Province: PA
  Country: United States
  Age: 28
  Occupation: Optical Technician

   136.
  Full Name: Amy Lynn DeLong
  City: Leesport
  State/Province: PA
  Country: USA
  Age: 20
  Occupation: Student

   135.
  Full Name: Randall Wilbanks
  City: Oklahoma City
  State/Province: OK
  Country: USA
  Occupation:

   134.
  Full Name: Michael Lee White
  City: Midwest City
  State/Province: Oklahoma
  Country: USA
  Occupation:

   133.
  Full Name: Zachary Adler
  City: Boulder
  State/Province: CO
  Country: USA
  Occupation:

   132.
  Full Name: Jon McKenzie
  City: Norman
  State/Province: Oklahoma
  Country: USA
  Age: 24
  Occupation: University Student

   131.
  Full Name: Russel Callaghan
  City: Leeds
  State/Province: West Yorkshire
  Country: England
  Age: 42
  Occupation: UFO Mag UK Webmaster/Producer

   130.
  Full Name: Sarah McDevitt
  City: Gresham
  State/Province: Oregon
  Country: USA
  Occupation:

   129.
  Full Name: Ron Eastwood
  City: Stockton
  State/Province: California
  Country: USA
  Age: 58
  Occupation: eastwood@inreach.com

   128.
  Full Name: Frederick Milton Olsen III
  City: West Allis
  State/Province: WI
  Country: USA
  Occupation:

   127.
  Full Name: June R. Steiner
  City: Los Gatos,
  State/Province: CA
  Country: USA
  Age: 66
  Occupation: Psychotherapist/Educator

   126.
  Full Name: John Wynniatt
  City: Whangarei
  State/Province: NZ
  Country: New Zealand
  Age: 52
  Occupation: Consultant

   125.
  Full Name: Dean Ladds
  City: Glasgow
  State/Province: East Kilbride
  Country: Scotland
  Age: 42
  Occupation: IT Engineer

   124.
  Full Name: John Stephen Davis
  City: Cary
  State/Province: NC
  Country: USA
  Age: 25
  Occupation: temporary reader adivsor/librarian

   123.
  Full Name: Bernie Brechtlein
  City: EL Cajon
  State/Province: CA
  Country: U.S.
  Age: 39
  Occupation: Data Processor

   122.
  Full Name: Thomas Murdic
  City: Franklin
  State/Province: Tennessee
  Country: U.S.A.
  Age: 46
  Occupation: Retired

   121.
  Full Name: Robert Alan Byer
  City: Indianapolis
  State/Province: Indiana
  Country: United States
  Age: 31
  Occupation: Computer Consultant

   120.
  Full Name: jeff owen
  City: kitchener
  State/Province: ont
  Country: canada
  Age: 39
  Occupation: construction

   119.
  Full Name: Sarah Ranfield
  City: Knutsford
  State/Province:Cheshire
  Country: England
  Age: 23
  Occupation: Development Executive

   118.
  Full Name: Christopher Lee Helton
  City: Winter Park
  State/Province: Florida
  Country: US
  Age: 44
  Occupation: Magazine Publisher

   117.
  Full Name: Neil Freer
  City: Santa Fe
  State/Province: New Mexico
  Country: u.s.a.
  Age: 70
  Occupation: author

   116.
  Full Name: Dale Mattice
  City: Worcester
  State/Province: MA
  Country: USA
  Age: 40
  Occupation: Materials Project Manager

   115.
  Full Name: sheila marie treit
  City: little hulton
  State/Province: manchester
  Country: u.k
  Age: 22
  Occupation: travel consultant

   114.
  Full Name: Chhat Sao
  City: San Diego
  State/Province: CA
  Country: United States
  Age: 19
  Occupation: student

   113.
  Full Name: Jossette Bailey
  City: New Baltimore
  State/Province: MI
  Country: America
  Age: 14
  Occupation: Middle School Student

   112.
  Full Name: Bruce Alan Widaman
  City: St.Charles
  State/Province: Missouri
  Country: U.S.
  Age: 48
  Occupation: Hardware/sales

   111.
  Full Name: Gerry Alexander Treit
  City: Glenrothes
  State/Province: Fife
  Country: Scotland
  Age: 36
  Occupation: Engineering Technician

   110.
  Full Name: JosephHaas53@Hotmail.com
  City: Ashland 03217-0218
  State/Province: New Hampshire
  Country: United States of America
  Age: 47
  Occupation: Missing Heir locator

   109.
  Full Name: Giuseppe Germano
  City: San Giorgio a Cremano
  State/Province: Napoli
  Country: Italia
  Age: 39
  Occupation: Ricercatore Universitario

   108.
  Full Name: Jason Warner
  City: Las Vegas
  State/Province: nv
  Country: usa
  Age: 32
  Occupation:self employed

   107.
  Full Name: Maria Elena Morgan
  City: Woodbridge
  State/Province: VA
  Country: USA
  Age: 45
  Occupation: Administrative Assistant

   106.
  Full Name: Josi Martine Galante
  City: Austin
  State/Province: Texas
  Country: USA
  Occupation: Artist-Illustrator

   105.
  Full Name: PAUL E. MATELIS
  City: MIAMI
  State/Province: FLORIDA
  Country: USA
  Age: 52
  Occupation: ACCOUNTANT

   104.
  Full Name: Ellen R. Stuart
  City: Naperville
  State/Province: IL
  Country: USA
  Occupation: Secretary

   103.
  Full Name: JASON KELLEY
  City: WAUKEGAN
  State/Province: ILLINOIS
  Country: U.S.A.
  Age: 28
  Occupation: MACHINIST

   102.
  Full Name: Virgil Clinton Staff
  City: Berkeley
  State/Province: California
  Country: USA
  Age: 72
  Occupation: Retired

   101.
  Full Name: jodi wright Haun
  City: Mt Juliet
  State/Province: TN
  Country: USA
  Age:44
  Occupation: Executive Chef

   100.
  Full Name: Karen Lyster
  City: Auckland
  State/Province: N/A
  Country: New Zealand
  Age: 40
  Occupation: UFO Researcher

   99.
  Full Name: Elsa Lambert
  City: Christchurch
  State/Province: Canterbury
  Country: New Zealand
  Age: 66
  Occupation: Retired

   98.
  Full Name: Dennis G. Balthaser
  City: Roswell
  State/Province: NM
  Country: USA
  Age:58
  Occupation: Researcher/Investigator

   97.
  Full Name: Jeremy Eaton
  City: Carbondale
  State/Province: Il
  Country: United States
  Age: 24
  Occupation: student

   96.
  Full Name: Michael L. Urbano
  City: Morton Grove
  State/Province:Illinois
  Country: U.S.A.
  Age: 53
  Occupation: Retired from Caterpillar,Inc.

   95.
  Full Name: Neil Thomas
  City: Tuttle
  State/Province: OK
  Country: USA
  Age: 36
  Occupation: Software Engineer

   94.
  Full Name: Russell Brewer
  City: Sulphur
  State/Province: OK
  Country: USA
  Age: 50
  Occupation: Retired

   93.
  Full Name: Stanley B. Hall
  City: Raytown
  State/Province: MO
  Country: USA
  Occupation:

   92.
  Full Name: Angel Christine
  City: Orange
  State/Province: CA.
  Country: U.S.A.
  Age: 36
  Occupation: Air Conditioning/Refrigeration

   91.
  Full Name: Mark Gordon
  City: Lake Elizabeth
  State/Province: CA.
  Country: U.S.A.
  Age: 38
  Occupation: Police Officer

   90.
  Full Name: Evelyn Solano
  City: Lake Elizabeth
  State/Province: CA.
  Country: U.S.A.
  Age: 38
  Occupation: Park Ranger-Police

   89.
  Full Name: Eddie Ontiveros
  City: La Puente
  State/Province: CA.
  Country: U.S.A.
  Age: 46
  Occupation: Police Officer

   88.
  Full Name: Noelia Rodriguez
  City: Ontario
  State/Province: CA.
  Country: U.S.A.
  Age: 67
  Occupation: Housewife

   87.
  Full Name: Miguel Rodriguez
  City: Ontario
  State/Province: CA.
  Country: U.S.A.
  Age: 57
  Occupation: Retired

   86.
  Full Name: Doris Rodriguez
  City: Orange
  State/Province: CA.
  Country: U.S.A.
  Age: 28
  occupation: Student

   85.
  Full Name: Eric Rodriguez
  City: Las Vegas
  State/Province: NV
  Country: U.S.A.
  Age: 32
  Occupation: Club owner

   84.
  Full Name: Henry
  City: Orange
  State/Province: CA.
  Country: U.S.A.
  Age: 33
  Occupation: Entrepreneur

   83.
  Full Name: timothy j. lease
  City: piqua
  State/Province: ohio
  Country: usa
  Age: 40
  Occupation: printer
&nbs

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."

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

== 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."

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

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