(from the August 2004 issue of FATE Magazine ( http://www.fatemag.com ) -- reprinted here with permission of the copyright holder, Galde Press, Inc.)

By Larry W. Bryant

Imagine yourself entering a U. S. federal courtroom to do pro se litigative battle for the principle of greater official UFOIA (UFO freedom of information and accountability). Further imagine yourself with no legal credentials whatsoever, no hope of winning even half of your case, and no hope of garnering much support from the UFO-research community.

But little ol' hopeless you decide to press on anyway, armed with the conviction that if YOU won't mount the challenge, then who will?

The actual challenge in question -- which reached its 20th anniversary on July 7, 2003 -- came as a surprise to all concerned: the respondent (the secretary of the Air Force), the assigned judge (the late Oliver Gasch of the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia), and the "jury" (the world of UFOlogy and beyond).

And the challenger/petitioner happens to be one Larry W. Bryant, director of the Washington, D. C., office of the public-interest group Citizens Against UFO Secrecy.

Show Us the Bodies!

My vehicle for this act of "imagination" (to use Gasch's descriptor) consisted of a "Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus Extraterrestrial."

As I plodded through the law library near my home, I asked myself a key question: by what means might I extend my litigative foot-in-the-door of officialdom's UFO sanctum? The question almost answered itself. I started with a proven tactic in problem-solving: First, define the problem. Easy enough. The anniversary of the Roswell incident was just a few weeks away, and all I had to do was to focus on its core elements. I chose the one that had received too little serious attention (up to then) from the mainstream news media: the current whereabouts of the USAF-retrieved alien bodies. If the anecdotal crashed-saucer reports then being collected by UFOlogist Leonard H. Stringfield had any merit whatsoever, then perhaps a best-case selection of them would help show the court just how close he was getting to the "smoking gun" of the bodies' whereabouts.

As I awaited receipt of Len's synopsis of his six key cases, I continued by research in preparation for the petition. I learned that the centuries-old Latin term "habeas corpus" means "you may have the body" -- a legal motion meant to bring the accused and/or detained person before a judge to determine the reason and lawfulness for his detention. I chose the suffix "extraterrestrial" for at least two reasons (a) to help modernize this ancient artifact of common law by bringing it into the realm of "metalaw (a.k.a. "space law"); and (b) to add a catchy, quotable tag to a household legal term.

"And just what about those 'alien bodies'?" you ask. "Don't they have to be ALIVE in order to qualify for this special discovery procedure?" That same question occurred to me, of course; but my brief, superficial research into habeas corpus case law could find no requirement that the "body" at issue be currently alive. Besides, who really knew, at this point, how many of the retrieved UFOnauts had failed to survive their violent arrival on terra firma? So I proceeded on the assumption that the U. S. government had no legal right to withhold the bodies (alive or dead) from the custody and care of their bereaved family members.

To bolster my legal standing for initiating this lawsuit, I introduced a novel rationale: by this petition, I sought to perform, on behalf of the detained space aliens, a "citizen's DISarrest" -- by which the court would reverse the government's illegal action. The logic worked for me: if a witness to a felony can perform a citizen's arrest of the felon, then why can't a witness to (or reporter of) an illegal governmental arrest take action to nullify that arrest? But would this logic work for the court?

Preparing the Petition

My research and theory-development now complete -- and my notes now organized and reviewed -- I was ready for the petition's drafting stage. Instead of settling down before my desk at home, or upon a table at the local library, I chose as my drafting venue the spare, captive interior of a Greyhound bus -- on my way to visit relatives in Newport News, Va., about 200 miles from Alexandria.

Within an hour or so, I'd devised a format that seemed to have enough official style to elicit more than a casual glance from its intended recipients.

Upon my arrival in Newport News, I realized that this handwritten draft soon was to take on a life of its own. Curiously, that life may have had more of an impact upon conventional jurisprudence than upon organized UFOlogy.

Back home in Alexandria, I set about typing the draft into its final form, using my trusty Royal- standard manual typewriter. Then I assembled its three exhibits, as follows:

A. The now-famous March 22, 1950, memorandum to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover from the Washington, D. C., Field Office's special-agent-in-charge (Guy Hottel) -- included in the petition as documentary evidence that the U. S. government possesses at least three crash-landed "flying saucers" and their deceased, apparently alien crew of three occupants per saucer. (My 1988 freedom-of-information lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation succeeded in revealing that this originally suppressed account originated via a "local law-enforcement" officer's relaying details to an Air Force investigator; alas, the bureau insists that to reveal either person's identity would violate their privacy.)

B. The September 25, 1980, letter to researcher Richard H. Hall from the Army's counterintelligence director at the Pentagon, admitting that back in the 1950s his office had operated a UFO-related project (albeit ostensibly informal and loosely recorded) called the "Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit."

C. The first page of a heavily censored TOP SECRET "in camera" affidavit submitted by NSA officials in response to the 1980 FOIA suit of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy vs. National Security Agency, which I included to demonstrate to the court the government's continuing secrecy policies on UFO information.

Next came the process of serving the petition upon the Air Force and of filing the original copy with the court's clerk via U. S. mail. I thus managed to accomplish both chores without venturing beyond my own neighborhood.

As I said earlier, the petition project had surprises for all concerned, including me. My chief surprise centered on the court's decision to accept the case as if it had originated from a major law firm or from a seasoned practitioner of constitutional law. And the surprise would continue all the way into the formal, David-vs.-Goliath hearing convened by Judge Gasch on that fateful day of July 28, 1983.

Before the hearing, I'd notified various news media about its scheduling. Reporters, print and broadcast, arrived on time to fill the several dozen seats available in Gasch's small courtroom. My late brother, in the company of another Baltimore artist (Beverly Linley, a certified courtroom sketch artist), claimed a front-row seat for the proceedings.

At the courtroom's entrance, I fielded a couple of reporters' questions just as the government's platoon of litigators began arriving. Chief among them was one Royce C. Lamberth, the assistant U. S. attorney assigned to my case. Upon realizing my identity, he self-confidently handed me an eight-page, double-spaced document, which turned out to the government's motion to have the petition summarily dismissed.

If It Please the Court

As H-hour (hearing hour) approached, I gingerly accepted Lamberth's document and strolled past the crowd of spectators toward my seat at the petitioner's table a few yards in front of the judge's bench. There, I added the document to my own folder of papers and proceeded to do a little observing of my own. My adrenaline level rose as I noticed a couple of uniformed USAF field-grade officers taking up their post just 20 feet or so opposite mine. "Sent here from the Pentagon's lawyer pool," I concluded.

"Oyez, oyez!" The honorable court called itself to order. Whereupon we all rose as Senior Judge Gasch entered, took his seat, and gazed blandly upon the fully packed pews.

He addressed me: "Mr Bryant?" And I responded by fully identifying myself and explaining that I'd just been handed the government's response to my petition -- and that I'd had no chance to peruse it. He graciously asked if I'd like to take a few minutes to read through the document. I replied, "Yes, sir, I certainly would."

Ad so it had come to this: there I sat surrounded by seasoned professionals in civil litigation, by news reporters hardened by realities of inside-the-Beltway politicking, and by curious onlookers seeking a circus atmosphere perhaps at my expense. To minimize the chances of my falling prey to that latter group, I resolved to keep my eyes glued to Lamberth's document, daring not to disturb, in any way, the hush that descended upon the assemblage as I went through the motions of digesting the government's motion. "Just focus on the task at hand," I counseled myself, "and let the process play itself out."

After several minutes reading and flipping through the pages, I stood and faced the judge -- much as if I were a high-school student trying to justify to the principal my habitual tardiness or some other misdemeanor. "Your honor, it looks as though the government's objecting to the petition on the grounds that I lack 'legal standing' to bring this case before you," I gallantly protested. But even though I was unable at the moment to prove that the court had jurisdiction over the government's alleged sequestering/mishandling of the confiscated alien bodies, and though I was also unable to prove I had the bodies' commission to represent them in this proceeding, I nevertheless explained that the whole purpose of the petition was to arrive at that determination (i. e., to perform a citizen's disarrest under the presumption, based on Stringfield's expose monograph, that the sought-for-bodies existed SOMEWHERE within official U. S. confines, and to gain access to those bodies and/or their survivors for the purpose of preserving their habeas-corpus rights).

Upon hearing my term "citizen's disarrest," Gasch asked me to explain. And I tried to do so by describing this corollary to the legal authority allowing any citizen to arrest the perpetrator of a felony: if the citizen does indeed have that power, then the reverse should apply -- the citizen's power to compel the government to cease its unlawful detention of a given entity. But Gasch shook his head over such a novel premise. With that, I decided that the inevitable outcome lay only a few steps away -- toward Mr. Lamberth's table.

Even so, I continued to stand my ground by trying to let Stringfield's document speak for itself as the "smoking gun" evidence that should persuade any judge to grant my petition on behalf of the detained "space aliens." Here, Gasch chided me -- first by pointing out that Len's document had an incorrect format/authentication for his acceptance as formal evidence, and then by asking me, "Do you have anything besides smoke?" My response might have been useful in a grand-jury proceeding (which has the authority to receive and evaluate hearsay evidence), but here it was destined to fall on deaf ears. I pointed out that certain current and former military persons privy to crashed-UFO lore and to retrieved UFOnauts chose not to come forward because they had yet to be released from their oaths of secrecy.

Irrelevant, declared Lamberth in his oral rejoinder. Sidestepping the whole issue of disclosability and possible discovery, he adhered to the game plan articulated in his document: attack my lack of standing and then move on to more nearly terrestrial concerns within the court's docket.

Just a few minutes later, Gasch granted the government's motion to have the petition denied, thus closing another early chapter in America's UFO-oriented citizenry's struggle for greater UFO freedom of information and accountability.

Media Interest

But in the Court of Public Opinion, the jury is still deliberating, fueled by a firestorm of news media interest in the case. During the weeks leading up to, and shortly after, the hearing before Judge Gasch, reports from far and wide weighed in on the novelty and audacity of the lawsuit. Here's a sampling:

* Reuter's News Wire Service: "Writ Filed Seeking UFO Alien Remains"; July 14, 1983, Washington. Written by reporter Chris Hansen, this short dispatch became the initial print-media treatment of the petition, resulting in a pickup via Mutual Radio News and, on July 14, via TV broadcast of NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.

* Associated Press (AP) News Wire Service: "Suit Says Air Force Holding ETs"; July 15, Washington.

* USA Today: "UFO Buffs Are up in the Air about . . . a Petition for a Writ . . ."; July 15, Washington. A front-page, breaking-news item based on the research of reporter Carol Atwater.

* Scripps-Howard News Service (Washington office): Reporter Lance Gay's write-up gets carried in the Cincinnati Post for July 15 under the title "Air Force Keeping E.T. on Ice, Citizen Charges." That front-page banner headline offers this lead-in: "The Pentagon has been given 60 days to come up with the body of E.T." The piece erroneously refers to the petition as the "writ" itself; the term writ applies to a documentary order issued by the judge upon his approval of the petition. Note: in the paper's late edition for July 15, Post staffer Anne Cohen localized the story with this front-page headline: "E.T.'s on Ice, and Cincinnati [Ohio] Man Knows Why" (referring to Cincinnatian Len Stringfield, who was sought out for commentary about his own research).

* United Press International (UPI) News Wire Service, as published on July 15 by the Trentonian (Trenton, N. J.): "Group Sues for Release of ETs Captured by Feds." The story misidentifies the petitioner as "JOHN Bryant," who is quoted from a telephone interview as saying, "What our petition aims to do, simply, is to perform a 'citizen's disarrest' -- to make the government account, formally and fully, for their capture of one or more UFO crewmen that have had the misfortune of falling into U. S. military hands."

* Washington Post: "Human Loses Suit for Space Hostages," written by Paul M. Barrett on July 29, reviewing the petition's status hearing before Judge Gasch.

* Journal of the American Bar Association (Chicago): For her October 1983 issue, ABA Journal editor Lynn Reaves produced "E.T., Please Call (Writer Loses UFO Secrecy Suit)"; a review of the issues, personalities, and plans associated with the petition's development and aftermath.

* Omni magazine (New York): In his "UFO Updates" section for June 1984, science writer Patrick Huyghe quotes Judge Gasch, from a telephone interview, as saying the case "was imaginative, and it did create quite a bit of interest."

Aftermath

Besides responding to various domestic media contacts, I had to juggle several queries ranging from Europe to Japan. Numerous radio talk-show producers sought me out as a guest. But, as with any media feeding frenzy, their interest quickly waned with the passage of time and mundane events. Unlike the Washington Post's coverage of the Watergate scandal, no editor, producer, or "think tank" organization (not to mention the ostriches in Congress) chose to undertake an in-depth investigation of the issue. No key UFOgate whistleblowers emerged to fan the dying embers of that courtroom drama hosted by Judge Gasch. No (living) E.T. hostage managed to escape from federal captivity in order to seek justice and freedom. All we have left is this partial history of the case that could've become the gateway to compelled government disclosure.

Partial, because we have little input from the government's side. You might be wondering: just how seriously did the Air Force take the petition? Besides arranging for two of his legal eagles to attend Gasch's hearing, Air Force secretary Verne Orr also had his public affairs office geared up for developments on the news-media side.

Curious about that behind-the-scenes activity, I fired off an FOIA request for a copy of all USAF records generated in response to the petition.

As I'd expected, the USAF attorney-client-privileged records were denied me on grounds of their being exempt from release. The Air Force did furnish, however, a copy of several excerpts from its Pentagon public affairs log sheets on "significant [media] queries" about the case. In the process, they denied me access to an intra-agency memo whose release, they asserted, would reveal the "deliberative process of the Air Force." Upon my appeal of that denial, they capitulated -- thus confirming that their censorial attitude would result in a public-relations backfire.

Here's how the July 26 memo, written by AF spokesman Capt. Johnny Whitaker to his superiors, starts out:

"Per Lt. Col. Houston, AF/JA, the case isn't going away as easily as we'd hoped. It doesn't appear the court is going to routinely dismiss it as a 'crank' or 'nut' case."

For those legal scholars, sociopolitical historians, and UFOlogists desiring more details about the petition itself, you can find a photocopy of the entire document (Civil Action No. 83-1932) published as an appendix to the book "UFO Crash at Aztec," by William S. Steinman (1987).

At this point, you might ask: "So, Larry, what have you gained from this doomed-from-the-start exercise?" My answer: besides the obvious litigative, activist, and reportorial experience, I've gained a renewed appreciation for, and commitment to, the principle that government authority (particularly as regards policies and practices shrouded in excess secrecy) must remain accountable to inquiry and oversight from the general public. If that means more UFO-related lawsuits and more archival mining of official UFO data and more ferreting-out of potential UFO-coverup whistleblowers in the Cosmic Watergate -- then bring 'em on!

For the time being, let's count the habeas-corpus-E.T. petition as just another lost opportunity to hold the government accountable for what it knows (and when it knew it) about UFO reality. One of researcher William L. Moore's contacts within the UFO sanctum supposedly made the following remark about the outcome of the petition case: "What if he'd won!" -- implying that maybe the keepers of the Ultimate Secret had no damage-control plan for coping with that astronomical long shot.

"What if . . ." indeed, Bill. And what a great way to begin (and end) an essay like this one!
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After pursuing a series of UFO-related lawsuits under the U. S. Freedom of Information Act and the U. S. Constitution's First Amendment during the years since the petition's fate, UFO researcher Larry W. Bryant moved on to retirement in Alexandria, Va., where he writes from the e-mail address of overtci@cavtel.net . His 2001 book "UFO Politics at the White House: Citizens Rally 'round Jimmy Carter's Promise" now has been expanded into the 2005 edition published by Galde Press, Inc. ( http://www.galdepress.com ). His debut into UFOlogical independent writing occurred with FATE's publication in February 1964 of his article "A Hard Look at UFO News Management."

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LWB Update Note: Where Are They Now?

Today (July 10, 2008), Judge Lamberth, from a small but cushy courtroom in the annex to the U. S. district court building at Constitution Avenue and 4th Street, N. W., serves as chief judge of the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court, hearing cases involving the more mundane form of alien creature -- i. e., the occasional suspected/potential terrorist.

The case's star witness-in-absentia -- Len Stringfield -- died several years later, leaving behind his legacy of UFO-crash-retrieval reports for those willing to pick up where he left off.

And Maureen O'Boyle, then anchor of the now-defunct syndicated tabloid-TV show "A Current Affair," probably has grandchildren by now and has forgotten about her narration of the program's coverage of the case.

The late James H. Heller, the attorney who handled my mid-1980 First Amendment case against my former employer (via Bryant v. Weinberger, et al.) once remarked to me that my habeas-corpus-E.T. case still engenders discussion amongst Washington litigators who happen to stumble across it.