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UFO Conspiracy Theories
Immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing in the spring of
1995, mainstream Americans suddenly became aware of a radical political
subculture in their midst. With the arrest of Timothy McVeigh and Terry
Nichols and the media coverage of their lives, attitudes, and
associations, the public was abruptly introduced to the previously insular
world of militias, antigovernment shortwave-radio broadcasts, and racist
literature. A racist novel (written by Andrew Macdonald, also known as
William Pierce), The Turner Diaries—unobtainable through
conventional bookstores—became an object of intense interest once it
became known that McVeigh had read and recommended it, and it was revealed
that the novel contained an episode strikingly similar to the federal
building bombing. An avalanche of television, magazine, and newspaper
stories uncovered the existence of conspiracy believers obsessed with
black helicopters and armed against what they believed to be an imminent
invasion by forces of the New World Order.1
More
than any other single event, the Oklahoma City bombing brought New World
Order ideas to the public's attention. But New World Order ideas had begun
to seep into broader segments of the American consciousness even earlier.
Pat Robertson had published his book The New World Order in 1991.
Robertson's version of the conspiracy (what might be termed "New World
Order lite") is mild compared to that of such militia figures as Mark
Koernke; nevertheless, his book is filled with ominous warnings: "The New
Age religions, the beliefs of the Illuminati, and Illuminated Freemasonry
all seem to move along parallel tracks with world communism and world
finance. Their appeals vary somewhat, but essentially they are striving
for the same very frightening vision." Robertson claims that an elite
network of the superrich, operating through secret societies, is on the
verge of taking undisputed control of the world. At the same time,
references to the New World Order were also beginning to appear in the
speeches of another conspicuous public figure, Pat Buchanan, who linked
such concerns with threats to America's economic independence.2
Thus
in the early 1990s New World Order conspiracy theories ceased to be
beliefs that circulated only in an obscure political underground and began
to penetrate some channels of mainstream discourse. In fact, however, the
most dramatic New World Order penetration came not from Robertson,
Buchanan, or coverage of the Oklahoma City bombers. Rather, it occurred
earlier, in a segment of American culture that straddles the divide
between "mainstream" and "deviant" and encompasses millions of people—the
UFO community. Those who are interested in UFOs, believe in them, or claim
to have been contacted or abducted by them form a subculture knitted
together by lecture circuits, Web sites, magazines, and conventions.
Depending on how it is defined, it is also a subculture of immense size.
UFOs
and Public Opinion
The
number of Americans who actually participate in the UFO subculture—by
buying books, magazines, and videotapes; attending conferences; visiting
Web sites; and engaging in similar activities—cannot be precisely
estimated. But survey data make clear that those who do participate
represent merely a fraction of a vast number of people interested in the
subject. Whether they are open-minded or simply credulous, it remains the
case that millions of Americans view UFOs with considerably less
skepticism than do the government and the academy.
Within
a few months of the first modern claim of a flying saucer sighting in June
1947, polls showed that 90 percent of the population had heard of them. By
1966, that figure had risen to 96 percent, and, more important, 46 percent
of all Americans believed UFOs actually existed. More than a decade
later—in 1978—30 percent of college graduates believed they existed. At
that time, the number of Americans who believed UFOs were real reached its
highest level, 57 percent. The number fell to 47 percent in 1990 but was
still at 48 percent in a 1996 Gallup poll, nearly half a century after the
first sighting.3
The
Yankelovich polling organization interviewed 1,546 adults in mid-January
2000 for Life magazine. Forty-three percent of respondents believed UFOs
were real as opposed to "the product of people's imaginations," and 30
percent thought intelligent beings from other planets had visited the
earth. Six percent had seen a UFO, and 13 percent knew someone who had.
Seven percent claimed to have "had an encounter with beings from another
planet" or knew someone who had. 4
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June 15, 1997, CNN Poll:
'U.S. hiding knowledge
of aliens'
(CNN) -- Nearly 50 years since an alleged UFO was
sighted at Roswell, New Mexico, a new CNN/Time poll released
Sunday shows that 80 percent of Americans think the government
is hiding knowledge of the existence of extraterrestrial life
forms.
While nearly
three-quarters of the 1,024 adults questioned for the poll
said they had never seen or known anyone who saw a UFO, 54
percent believe intelligent life exists outside
Earth.
Sixty-four percent of
the respondents said that aliens have contacted humans, half
said they've abducted humans, and 37 percent said they have
contacted the U.S. government. The poll has a margin of error
of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
But only 9 percent
said they believed there were any aliens near the Hale-Bopp
comet, which recently passed close enough to Earth to be seen
with the naked eye.
Some "ufologists"
believed a spacecraft was hidden near the comet, and members
of the Heaven's Gate cult committed suicide, believing that
they would be taken aboard the craft and returned "home."
What happened
in Roswell?
As for the Roswell
incident, nearly two-thirds of the respondents to the poll
said they believed that a UFO crash-landed in a field outside
the New Mexico town 50 years ago next month.
In one of the most
famous UFO "sightings" in U.S. history, Roswell residents in
1947 saw lights in the night sky, followed by a loud
explosion. A rancher found the "crash site" and removed a
large piece of debris, storing it in his shed.
A few days later, Air
Force officials from nearby Roswell Air Force Base inspected
the site and the debris, and issued a press release announcing
the recovery of a "flying disc." The Air Force quickly
retracted that statement, and claimed the debris was from a
weather balloon.
But countless
statements -- some from military personnel -- appeared to
contradict the Air Force's revised position. And several
"witnesses" claimed to have seen bodies of dead aliens whisked
away by the military.
Roswell today
capitalizes on its fame as a UFO crash site -- whether or not
it actually happened -- and is hosting a 50th anniversary
celebration the first week of July.
Friend or
foe?
Most people -- 91
percent -- told the pollsters that they had never had contact
with aliens or known anyone who had. A similar number -- 93
percent -- said they had never been abducted or known anyone
whisked away by beings from another
planet.
But if they do meet
someone from a galaxy far, far away, 44 percent said they
expect to be treated as friends, while 26 percent think
they'll be treated as enemies.
Thirty-nine
percent don't expect aliens to appear very humanoid, although
35 percent said they probably look "somewhat"
human.
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A
1997 Time-CNN poll (presumably commissioned in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of
the Roswell, New Mexico, UFO "crash" indicated that 17 percent of
Americans believed in alien abduction. An even stranger result had
appeared in a 1992 Roper survey, which suggested that 2 percent of
Americans (roughly 3.7 million) believed they themselves had been
abducted. While the Roper result is almost certainly inflated, a number
even half as large would be extraordinary. 5
Two
aspects of these figures are particularly striking. First, they have
remained astonishingly stable over a fifty-year period. What might have
been an early Cold War fad clearly came to occupy a semi-permanent niche
in the American psyche. Second, the level of belief was not only
relatively stable; it was extraordinarily high, regardless of when the
survey was taken or by which polling organization. Even if one compensates
for problems of sampling or the wording of questions, tens of millions of
Americans accept the reality of UFOs. In a survey of 765 members of the
UFO community, Brenda Denzler found her respondents to be anything but
"fringe." They were predominantly white, male, middle-class college
graduates, with incomes just slightly below the national median.6
At
the same time, attitudes about UFOs contain the seeds of conspiracist
thinking, for public attitudes are clearly at variance with the official
position that there is no credible evidence that UFOs exist. Indeed, in
the 1996 Gallup survey when subjects were asked, "In your opinion, does
the U.S. government know more about UFOs than they are telling us?" 71
percent answered yes. In the Yankelovich poll in 2000, 49 percent believed
that the government was withholding information about UFOs.7
Thus
an extremely large number of people hold beliefs that contradict official
government positions and believe that government concealment explains the
discrepancy. Belief in a government cover-up runs deep in the ufology
community, especially among those who are professional or full-time UFO
writers or investigators. Because government investigations have failed to
satisfy believers, the existence of a cover-up appears logical to them.
Even so, early ufologists did not generally advance a broader political
agenda. While steadfastly maintaining that military and intelligence
organizations were concealing the truth from the public, they did not
extend that suspicion to embrace any larger ideology of conspiracy. In
short, ufology's early political program did not extend beyond a general
desire to see revealed what was believed to be concealed.
But
by the late 1980s, elements of the UFO community began to link their
interest in explaining flying saucers with a larger political vision.
Receptivity to New World Order ideas in some UFO circles was facilitated
by two legends peculiar to the ufology milieu: the "men in black" story
and the tale of underground bases.
The
legend of the Men in
Black originated in the early and mid 1950s and quickly became a
staple of UFO folklore. According to this legend, people whose experiences
or research brought them too close to the truth were apt to be stalked,
harassed, or even killed by small groups of men—usually two or three—in
dark suits who did not identify themselves. Their ambiguous appearance has
led to a number of explanations: to some, they are secret government
operatives; to others, representatives of a conspiracy that controls the
government; to still others, they are aliens whose appearance is close
enough to that of humans to allow them to pass. In any case, their
appearance and demeanor make them a potent symbol of mysterious but
pervasive evil. 8
The
underground-bases legend is part of a larger complex of beliefs about
secret installations where (depending on the version) captured or crashed
alien craft or aliens themselves may be kept. In the most dramatic
versions, the aliens actually control parts of the installation, either by
themselves or in concert with secret government agencies. The most famous
base is Area
51, also known as Groom Lake and Dreamland, north of Las Vegas,
Nevada; but the most elaborate tales involve labyrinthine subterranean
caverns, tunnels, and chambers such as those allegedly near the town of
Dulce, New Mexico. These stories have led to belief in a hidden world
variously inhabited by alien beings or evil human forces, in which
conspirators can both conceal their enterprises and seek safety when
disasters overtake the earth's surface.9
UFOs and the New
World Order
Gradually,
parts of the UFO community began to adopt elements of the conspiracy
theories described in the previous two chapters, and by the end of the
1980s virtually all of the radical right's ideas about the New World Order
had found their way into UFO literature. Ufology's adoption of the New
World Order was by no means universal, but those who have found it
attractive have been able to create a version of New World Order theory
with some distinct political advantages.
The
most immediate advantage for New World Order ideas of being placed in a
UFO context has been a reduction in stigma. Although UFO ideas have often
been the target of ridicule, the enormous size of the UFO-accepting public
has made it impossible to stigmatize UFO beliefs so completely that they
are banned from public discussion. Far from it—UFO ideas have ready access
to such avenues of distribution as cable television, mainstream
bookstores, and magazine publishers. They fall into the realm of
stigmatized knowledge, in that they are rejected by science, universities,
and government, but the level of stigmatization has not been so great as
to exclude them from popular culture.
By
contrast, the views of the radical right have been so excluded, through an
unstated yet powerful pattern of self-censorship on the part of the
mainstream. This voluntary silence has denied access to beliefs deemed
racist, bigoted, completely unfounded, or likely to justify or promote
violence. Tales of secret Illuminati conspiracies, imminent UN invasions,
and Jewish, Masonic, or Jesuit plots, for example, have been informally
banned from media, classrooms, and other mechanisms of knowledge
distribution. Unlike beliefs about flying saucers, considered eccentric
but socially harmless, many conspiracy ideas deemed both false and
dangerous have been banished from the mainstream discourse.
The
linkage of New World Order ideas with UFOs gave the former a bridge to the
territory of semirespectable beliefs. Ufology became, as it were, the
vehicle for the New World Order to reach audiences otherwise unavailable
to it. To be sure, New World Order ideas occasionally reached mass
audiences, as the cases of Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan have shown. In
both cases, however, the conspiracies were presented in highly diluted
versions; and in Robertson's case, even his weak version produced
significant political problems.
The
story of the New World Order—UFO connection is a story of ideas moving in
two directions, not one. In the initial movement, New World Order beliefs
became entwined with UFO beliefs. A second migration followed in the
1990s, in which New World Order ideas with their new UFO add-ons returned
to the right-wing milieu in which they had first developed. In that
milieu, the combination led to the development of two diametrically
opposed syntheses. In one, exemplified by British writer and lecturer
David Icke (discussed at length in chapter 6), the human conspirators
feared by the radical right are actually doing the bidding of malevolent
extraterrestrial forces whose ultimate aim is control of the earth. In the
other, epitomized by the views of Milton William Cooper at the end of his
life, there are in fact no aliens at all. The appearance of an alien
assault on the earth is being manufactured by human conspirators to
provide a pretext for the assumption of global dictatorial powers.
The
first movement, when New World Order ideas left the hermetic world of the
extreme right and began to seep into ufology, is the more significant of
the two. As the preceding discussion suggests, there were factors in
ufology that made this penetration seem logical, but it was not
inevitable. It does not seem to have been consciously undertaken by
conspiracists or done for opportunistic reasons, even though in the end it
provided a large new audience. Rather, it began in a disorganized,
piecemeal fashion, and it provides a case study in the migration of
deviant ideas.
UFO Conspiracism: The
First Phase
The
development of New World Order conspiracy theories within ufology can best
be understood as the product of two separate phases. The first—from
roughly 1975 to 1980—introduced increasingly conspiratorial motifs into
UFO speculation, but without any discernible links to the conspiracy ideas
that were prevalent on the extreme right. There seem to have been two
separate conspiracist tracks that developed independently of each other.
This lack of connection between the two is all the more striking because
the late 1970s were a period of substantial right-wing activity, with the
growth of such movements as Christian Identity and the Posse Comitatus.
The Posse was an antigovernment movement made up of local paramilitary
groups active in the West and Midwest during the 1970s and 1980s. They
believed the only legitimate governmental authority to be the county
sheriff's posse, in the form of the armed adult males of a community.
There is no evidence that ufologists were aware of, interested in, or
sympathetic to those tendencies.
During
this initial phase, some important themes emerged in the UFO literature
that were eventually integrated into more elaborate conspiratorial
structures. One of these concerned small devices allegedly implanted in
the bodies of UFO abductees. Although such stories were not numerous, they
implied the existence of a powerful technology for monitoring and
controlling victims' behavior. Thomas Bullard's detailed analysis of 270
abduction stories (most of them dating between the 1940s and 1980) reveals
only thirteen cases of reported implants—barely 5 percent. These were
almost uniformly distributed among the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Despite
their small numbers, however, the implant stories contained two points of
potential connection with the independently developed New World Order
conspiracy theories described earlier. First, they offered apparent
confirmation of the mark of the beast associated with the Antichrist.
Second, they also appeared to validate the mind-control fears of more
secular conspiracists.10
About
the same time, in 1976, a Toronto-based neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier,
Ernst Zündel, published the first of several reports linking flying
saucers with the Nazis. In the strangest version of this tale, Nazis, not
aliens, had invented flying saucers and, with the regime's defeat, had
fled to subterranean bases in Antarctica with their invention. The
suggestion that flying saucers had been under development by the Third
Reich and were spirited out of Germany appears to have emerged first among
German nationalists in the 1950s. It was quickly assimilated into legends
of Hitler's supposed escape to South America or the Antarctic. By 1960,
comparable tales were circulating in English, though their full
elaboration had to await the efforts of Zündel and other neo-Nazis a
decade and a half later. While this scenario begged the question of how so
technologically advanced a government could manage to lose the war, it was
a story that turned out to have a long life for two reasons. First, it
introduced the idea that a secret group of human beings might in some
conspiratorial fashion develop such devices. Second, it established a link
between UFOs and the much older occultic tradition of an "inner world"
beneath the earth.11
The
year 1976 was also the year that some ufologists began to link UFOs with
cattle mutilations. Stories of mutilated cattle, mostly in western states,
began to appear in the late 1960s and became numerous and the subject of
national media coverage by the mid 1970s. Although they were occasionally
connected to reports of UFO sightings, a number of alternative
explanations were offered, including satanic rituals, "hippies," and
natural enemies. The carcasses were often missing portions of soft tissue,
and some reports claimed that cuts were made with a precision inconsistent
with animal predators.12
In
1979, Linda Moulton Howe, a Denver filmmaker, began work on a documentary
that alleged a mutilation-UFO connection. The film, A Strange
Harvest, was broadcast in 1980. She later stated that "I am convinced
that one or more alien intelligences are affecting this planet. I would
like to know who they are, what they want and why the government is
silent." Howe and others, influenced by her film and subsequent
publications, began to speculate that aliens mutilated cattle in order to
secure body parts or biological substances they needed for their own
survival, and that the U.S. government was complicit in these efforts. The
idea that aliens were engaged in some obscure effort to "harvest" or
otherwise retrieve biological substances from the earth has turned out to
be a fertile subject for speculation, which eventually came to include
such suggestions as the breeding of alien-human hybrids. The ease with
which stories of cattle mutilation were assimilated into the UFO
literature was a paradigmatic case of fusing disparate forms of
stigmatized knowledge. If cattle mutilations and alien spaceships could be
connected, why not other stigmatized knowledge claims as well?13
Speculations
about an alien harvest soon coalesced with aspects of the abduction
stories. Nearly half of the abduction tales examined by Bullard featured
invasive, often painful physical examinations. A number of accounts
included examinations of reproductive organs, and about half a dozen
individuals reported sexual intercourse with alien beings. Out of this
body of narratives came suggestions that aliens were seeking either to
harvest substances from human bodies or to create a race of alien-human
hybrids. Because the "other" here was alien in every sense, it was easy to
blur the distinction between procedures performed on cattle and those
performed on human beings; in the more sinister interpretation, it
suggested that human beings were being treated like breeding stock,
presumably to compensate for some biological defect in the aliens.14
In
1977, UFO speculation took a different turn with the broadcast by Anglia
TV in Great Britain of the strange purported documentary Alternative
3. Alternative 3 claimed to expose a secret plan, approved at
the highest levels of the U.S. and Soviet governments, to launch a program
of space colonization that would allow a select few to flee the earth
before environmental calamities made the planet uninhabitable. The show
strongly implied that a secret joint base already existed on the far side
of the moon, that another existed or would shortly be established on Mars,
and that the Martian surface, contrary to general belief, was hospitable
to human life.15
Alternative
3
was clearly a hoax—and not only because it was broadcast on April Fool's
Day. The interviews with supposed scientists, astronauts, and others were
far too dramatically polished to have been spontaneous, and in any case
the program's closing credits named the actors who took the roles of
interviewees and correspondents. Though artfully produced, the show's
counterfeit documentary style could scarcely have been expected to fool
many. As an Anglia TV spokesman put it, "we felt viewers would be fairly
sophisticated about it." They apparently were not; television and
newspaper switchboards were swamped after the broadcast. Anglia found it
prudent to sell off the book rights. The 1978 book version, by Leslie
Watkins, continued the pretense of factuality. It also reached countries,
including the United States, where the broadcast had not been aired.
Whenever the book was unavailable, believers attributed its absence to the
conspirators' attempts at suppression. This type of quasi-paranoid fear is
a particularly strong tendency in the United States. And the story lent
itself to conspiracist interpretations—who were the elite the secret space
program was intended to save? Even those willing to acknowledge that
Alternative 3 was trumped up insisted that its core argument might very
well be true—another instance of the demolition of the fact-fiction
boundary .16
Alternative
3
does not mention UFOs or aliens. Its role in the growth of conspiracy
theory lay in a later permutation, according to which UFOs and the threat
of an alien invasion of the earth are believed to have been invented by
the shadowy elite in order to gather sufficient power and resources to
complete the space-colonization enterprise. When the scenario of
Alternative 3 came to be enfolded within ufological conspiracism,
it suggested that UFO conspiracy theories could go in two different
directions. The first insisted on the reality of a threat from outer
space, with human conspirators involved as the aliens' lackeys or
collaborators. The other direction, following the Alternative 3
suggestion, claimed that UFOs from outer space were a deception concocted
by the conspirators for their own malevolent purposes, in order to deflect
attention from the real evil.
UFO Conspiracism: The
Second Phase
The
first phase in the growth of UFO conspiracy theories extended through the
late 1970s. It was characterized by a fragmentation of themes, whether of
abductees' implants, cattle mutilations, or Nazi bases. The only product
of the period that purported to offer an integral conspiracy theory was
the fictional Alternative 3 broadcast, which had not mentioned UFOs at
all. By contrast, the second phase, which began in the mid 1980s, was
marked both by the broader scope of conspiracy allegations and by the
convergence of UFO plots with the better-developed conspiracism of the
extreme right.
The
first full published statement of such a theory appeared in 1986, in
George C. Andrews's book Extra-Terrestrials among Us. Although
Andrews's conspiracy theory appears in bits and pieces strewn throughout
the volume, it can be reconstructed roughly as follows. A race of evil
extraterrestrials is using a "privileged elite caste" of humans to
manipulate and control the masses. As far as the United States is
concerned, the principal mechanism for political control is the CIA, a
"government within the government," implementing a form of "corporate
fascism." Andrews accuses the CIA of having assassinated John F. Kennedy,
and he cites William Pabst's pamphlet claiming that a network of
concentration camps is being readied for dissenters. He fears that martial
law is about to be declared, bringing an end to American democracy. The
explicit use of Pabst's work, warnings about the Rex 84, and repeated
claims that the Constitution is in imminent danger make Andrews's
political views almost indistinguishable from those associated with
militias. Only his placement of extraterrestrials at the pinnacle of the
conspiracies identifies him as a ufologist.17
The
publication of Extra-Terrestrials among Us marked the beginning of
a feverish period of UFO conspiracism, from 1986 to 1989. Much of the
literature of this period was based on the concept of a secret governing
apparatus, unknown and unaccountable, not unlike Andrews's notion of the
CIA as a "government within the government." The idea of a hidden
government received its most significant boost in 1987 with the
publication of the so-called MJ-12 papers.
MJ-12—sometimes referred to as Magestic-12 or Majic-12—purports
to be a document prepared for President Dwight Eisenhower, to which was
attached a memo from President Harry Truman to his defence secretary,
James Forrestal. Though made public in 1987, MJ-12 had a history that went
back to 1984.
According
to those involved, on December 11, 1984, Jaime Shandera, a film producer,
received a package anonymously sent from Albuquerque, New Mexico,
containing an undeveloped roll of film. He and UFO writer William Moore
developed the film, which they said contained images of the MJ-12
documents. Although the documents were not made public until June 1987,
when they were revealed at a UFO conference in Washington, D.C., UFO
publications referred to them as early as 1985. Facsimile copies were
reproduced in the British edition (and later the American edition) of
Timothy Good's Above Top Secret, and have appeared elsewhere many
times since.18
The
MJ-12 documents take the form of a briefing paper for the newly elected
president, informing him of the existence of a supersecret group of the
same name, allegedly established during the Truman administration, that
consists of a dozen high military and scientific figures. The documents
describe crashes of UFOs and the recovery of their occupants' bodies,
which established them as of indisputably extraterrestrial origin.
MJ-12
immediately polarized the UFO community into believers and skeptics. Among
the skeptics was Jacques Vallee, who compared the incident to the
activities of "Deep Throat" during the Watergate scandal. He suggested
that the documents' sender was more likely interested in disinformation
than in whistle-blowing, and implied that the documents were forged. Even
more dismissive was Philip J. Klass, a longtime debunker of UFO hoaxes,
who argued that the format and language of the documents pointed to
forgery.19
In
the years since the MJ-12 papers became widely known, they have taken on a
life of their own. Additional, related documents periodically appear, some
as recently as 1998. Just as with the Kennedy assassination, MJ-12 has
generated a cottage industry of commentators, authenticators, and critics.
More broadly, MJ-12 laid the foundation for elaborate conspiracy theories
by suggesting that UFOs were of extraterrestrial origin, that the federal
government was aware of them as early as the late 1940s, and that a secret
bureaucracy had been created to study and control the situation. These
claims allowed some ufologists to shift from observation of flying saucers
to attempts to unravel alleged government machinations. The proliferation
of MJ-12 documents and theories not only identified the enemy as a segment
of the government, but—inasmuch as this "secret government" was supposed
to have hidden all relevant information—allowed great latitude in what
might be "revealed." It mattered little whether publicly available
evidence confirmed a claim; its author could always respond, "The
government knows it, but won't tell you."20
The
first such revelation occurred on December 29, 1987, a few months after
the release of the MJ-12 papers. It took the form of a statement by John
Lear, estranged son of inventor William Lear. Building upon the original
MJ-12 documents, Lear constructs a far more elaborate edifice of intrigue
and dissimulation. The Lear statement narrates the purported history of
the relationship between the MJ-12 group and the extraterrestrials from
1947 to 1987. Although Lear cites few sources and offers no documentation,
his statement, like many conspiracy narratives, is striking in its
specificity.
The
"horrible truth" to which MJ-12 was allegedly privy was so frightening
that it drove at least one member—Secretary of Defence Forrestal—to
suicide, his death disguised as the result of mental illness. According to
Lear, the U.S. government began to hold meetings with the aliens on April
30, 1964, and by 1971 had negotiated a "deal." Its terms called for
transfer of the aliens' technology to the government, in exchange for
which the government would acquiesce in cattle mutilations and in the
temporary abduction of American citizens. The abductees would be implanted
with tracking and control devices, given posthypnotic suggestions,
sometimes used as guinea pigs in genetic engineering and cross-breeding
programs, and occasionally killed.21
Lear's
text alleged that the "EBEs" (extraterrestrial biological entities) have a
"genetic disorder" that has caused their digestive system to atrophy. They
can survive only by ingesting biological substances obtained from cows or
humans, or by creating an alien-human cross-bred race. This need led to
the construction, under government auspices, of gigantic laboratories, not
only to receive the aliens' technology but also to allow them to conduct
biological experiments. These laboratories included Groom Lake, Nevada
(better known in the ufology literature as Area 51 or Dreamland), and
several in New Mexico, notably near the small town of Dulce. There, Lear
claims, a joint CIA-alien laboratory provides facilities for unspeakable
experiments on abducted subjects. Indeed, the aliens' behavior was so
repugnant that in 1979 a subterranean battle supposedly took place between
them and U.S. military personnel, in which sixty-six U.S. troops were
killed.22
The
battle at Dulce was the beginning of a crisis for MJ-12, which gradually
became aware of the "Grand Deception"—namely, the failure of the aliens to
live up to their agreement. Their technology turned out to be only
partially usable, they were abducting far more Americans than they had
agreed to, and they were mistreating them. Faced with this situation,
MJ-12 supposedly decided it was foolhardy to attempt immediate resistance
and instead opted to develop weapons that might permit effective
resistance at some later time. This weapons development program was the
Strategic Defense Initiative, disguised as a Cold War project.23
The
Lear statement is brief—only seven printed pages—but dizzying in its
claims. It elevates MJ-12 to a conspiratorial position nowhere hinted at
in the original papers themselves. It implies a web of subsidiary
conspiracies—to silence the news media and the academic community, and to
mislead the UFO community as well. According to Lear, ufologist William
Moore, the figure most identified with the MJ-12 papers, was probably
himself a disinformation agent in the hire of MJ-12. The statement ends
with a litany of rhetorical questions—a common device in conspiracy
literature—all implying that the aliens' ultimate aim is the conquest of
the earth, and that the conspirators in government, centered in MJ-12, are
powerless to prevent it.24
Although
Lear did not employ the term New World Order, he managed to bring together
a number of elements compatible with New World Order theory, including
mind-control implants, a government within the government, and the
kidnapping of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Lear's claim of having
been a CIA pilot only added to the sense that this was an insider's view,
notwithstanding the paucity of evidence.25
If
Lear had been alone in his bizarre allegations, they would have
disappeared from view. But they were quickly taken up and amplified by a
figure who was to prove central to the convergence of UFO and militia
positions: Milton William Cooper, the most famous of UFO conspiracists.
Cooper also had a military background, having served in the air force and
later the navy, from which he was discharged in 1975. Between his
discharge and his ufology debut, he apparently received some training and
experience in photography as well as working at administrative jobs in
vocational colleges. Best known in ufology circles for his bitter
conflicts with rivals and critics, his conspiracist reputation rests
primarily on a 1991 book, Behold a Pale Horse. While it may not be, as
Cooper's Web site biography claims, "the best selling underground book of
all time," it is widely available and, apparently, widely read in ufology,
conspiracy, and antigovernment circles.26
The Cooper Narrative
Cooper
presented his own MJ-12 account in a series of related documents released
between December 1988 and the end of 1989. Coming as they did immediately
after both the MJ-12 release and the Lear statement, Cooper's claims
caused a sensation in ufology circles. In a series of Internet postings
and in an appearance at the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) symposium in Las
Vegas in July 1989, Cooper claimed to have seen an astonishing array of
secret UFO documents during his naval career. His earliest accounts, from
December 1988 and January 1989, closely parallel the MJ-12 papers and the
Lear statement, yet they mention neither Moore nor Lear. Instead, Cooper
claimed independent knowledge, asserting that in 1972, while in the navy,
he was shown sets of documents and photographs dealing with UFOs, their
extraterrestrial passengers, and relations between the extraterrestrials
and the federal government.27
The
earliest statement of Cooper's views—"Top Secret/Majic"—was, according to
Linda Moulton Howe, posted on the CompuServe and Paranet
networks on December 18, 1988. It purports to summarize the material
Cooper says he saw sixteen years previously. While the substance is
closely related to the MJ-12 and Lear materials, the structure of Cooper's
statement is quite different. It is neither a set of primary documents nor
a narrative. Most of it consists of brief sections, often no more than a
paragraph, each of which describes or defines a name or term Cooper said
he encountered in the original navy material. Many are names of projects
or operations allegedly initiated by the government to deal with
extraterrestrials, giving the entire statement a decidedly bureaucratic
tinge.28
Several
details of Cooper's account are noteworthy, either in the manner in which
they distance themselves from Moore and Lear or by suggesting new
political implications. The latter are particularly important, because in
the 1990s Cooper emerged as the most conspicuous link between UFO
conspiracists and militia circles.
The
Cooper variations, while small, increased the congruence between UFO
conspiracies and the tales of plots circulating on the extreme right,
though there is no explicit evidence that Cooper was familiar with
right-wing literature at the time. In his version, the MJ-12 group is a
relatively small part of a much larger government enterprise directed at
understanding the aliens, dealing with them, and keeping knowledge from
reaching the general public. Not surprisingly, the CIA is described as
central to the enterprise, a claim also made in Andrews's 1986 description
of the conspiracy. Black helicopters make an appearance as well, allegedly
accompanying test flights of recovered alien craft over the Nevada desert.
Although Andrews had not mentioned black helicopters specifically, he did
report transformations in which saucers turned into helicopters and vice
versa.29
Cooper
did not mention the Trilateral Commission, but he introduced motifs that
were to make its future inclusion appear natural. He referred to teams
called Delta that, he claimed, provide security for all projects related
to the aliens and whose members in fact are the legendary men in black.
Later on, others more explicitly identified this group with the well-known
Delta Force counter-terrorism organization. Cooper's references to Delta
are closely related to his lengthy discussion of what he called "a
trilateral insignia" allegedly found on alien spacecraft. He claimed that
the Delta security guards wear red badges with a black triangle, similar
to the "alien flag" of a triangle divided by parallel lines. His linking
of the terms delta, trilateral, and men in black offered the possibility
of conspiracy in which U.S. military forces, aliens, and the Trilateral
Commission collude.30
Like
Lear, Cooper alleged that the aliens came to Earth not out of mere
curiosity but because some biological flaw made them dependent on
substances, including blood, that could be obtained from human and animal
bodies. According to Cooper, they might have evolved from plants, because
they use chlorophyll to convert food into energy and excrete waste
products through the skin. How this mechanism related to the need for
human and animal blood was not explained.31
In
early 1989, Cooper issued a revised version of this document. It has since
been frequently posted on the Internet. Not all versions, however, are
identical. As is often the case with Internet documents, there is no way
to determine definitively if changes have been made since the date the
document bears.32
Notwithstanding
these difficulties, the later Cooper document is interesting in its own
right. In the first place, Cooper attributed the differences between this
and the earlier version to his having undergone "hypnotic regression in
order to make the information as accurate as possible." He did not
indicate who performed the hypnosis, when, or under what conditions. The
second version also contains a much-elaborated description of the MJ-12
group itself. It allegedly consists of the twelve senior members of a
thirty-two-member secret society called the Jason Society, which was
"commissioned" by President Eisenhower to "find the truth of the alien
question."33
Identifying
a complete and accurate text of the second Cooper document is difficult.
Howe's published version contains elisions. An Internet version is
considerably longer and places material in a somewhat different order. It
is also more overtly political, with references to the Kennedy
assassination, the Rockefeller family, black helicopters, and the
trilateral insignia; and it charges that the activities described violate
the Constitution, as well as "the human rights of every citizen of the
world." This longer text may well have been written as early as the
printed one (i.e., January 10, 1989), but the technology of the Internet
makes the date impossible to verify.34
Cooper's
claims in the second document regarding abductee implants and
concentration camps were equally sweeping. One in every forty Americans
has allegedly been implanted, which would amount to several million
individuals. The concentration camps are part of a plan in which, under
the pretext of a terrorist nuclear threat, martial law would be declared
and the media nationalized.35
Cooper's
next text, dated May 23, 1989, was an Internet document made public at a
UFO symposium in Las Vegas on July 2 of that year. It subsequently formed
part of a chapter in Behold a Pale Horse. Here, too, the political
element was conspicuously present: the CIA was created to deal with the
alien threat, Secretary of Defense Forrestal was an abductee, and the
presidents were kept in ignorance.36
Up
to this point, Cooper had suggested little in the way of political action
beyond recommending that Congress be informed. Sometime in 1989, however,
he associated himself with an anonymous document labeled "Petition to
Indict." In his undated accompanying letter, Cooper spoke of "Many other
signatures . . . on the original copy," presumably in addition to his own.
He begged Congress to act on the petition, but "not to trust any other
government agency with these matters because this conspiracy runs deep
within the government."37
The
"Petition to Indict," which runs somewhat more than four typed pages,
appears in some places to be addressed simply to "the government," at
others more specifically to Congress. It charges that "the government"
entered into "a secret treaty with an Alien Nation" in violation of the
Constitution. In addition to repeating many of the points already made by
Lear and Cooper, it charges that the resources to fund secret,
alien-related projects came from CIA involvement in the international drug
trade.38
The
petition is also significant for its lengthy references to the involvement
of then-president George H.W. Bush. Calling Bush "the most powerful and
dangerous criminal in the history of the world," the petition charges that
Bush's involvement in the international drug trade went back to his days
in the oil business and continued throughout his tenure as CIA director.
Bush's associations with Skull and Bones and the Trilateral Commission
have made him a favorite target of conspiracy theorists.39
Because
the petition asks full disclosure of government plots by May 30, 1989, it
can reasonably be dated to early that year, that is to say, roughly
contemporaneous with the revised version of the Cooper document. The
petition is vague about what might happen if no government action is taken
on its charges. But it warns that failure to act will make every member of
the House and Senate "accessories to the conspiracy and the crimes
outlined in this document," and the signatories "swear on the
Constitution" to bring "all guilty parties . . . to justice." How they
might do this is not specified.40
The
"Petition to Indict" bears some similarities to the "Constructive Notices"
sent in 1986 to a judge and to Internal Revenue Service personnel in
Nevada. The "Constructive Notices" were purported indictments issued by
the Committee of the States, an entity created by Christian Identity
preacher and tax protestor William Potter Gale. The "Constructive Notices"
threatened the lives of the recipients, and in October 1987, Gale and his
associates were tried and convicted of interfering in the administration
of the tax laws. In retrospect, it can be seen that the Committee of the
States affair anticipated such developments as so-called common-law courts
among antigovernment groups in the 1990s. There is no direct evidence that
Cooper or the anonymous drafter or drafters of the "Petition to Indict"
were familiar with Gale's activities. Nonetheless, like the Committee of
the States and many subsequent examples of right-wing shadow legal
institutions, the petition implies the authority to bring malefactors to
justice if formal legal institutions do not.41
By
the late 1990s, Cooper had moved away from the ufology community, where he
had first appeared a decade earlier, to the subculture of militias and
other antigovernment groups. His Web site circulated conspiracist versions
of the Oklahoma City bombing, and he spoke in the name of a shadowy
organization called the Second Continental Army of the Republic (Militia),
about which little is known. As Gale had, Cooper also took on the Internal
Revenue Service.42
Cooper
became convinced that he had been targeted by "The Illuminati Socialist
President of the United States of America, William Jefferson Clinton" as
well as "by the bogus and unconstitutional Internal Revenue Service." His
conflict with the latter resulted in an arrest warrant issued in July
1998. As of fall 2000, it still had not been executed, which resulted in
Cooper's being named a "major fugitive" by the U.S. Marshals Service. The
government's reluctance to arrest Cooper was apparently a reflection of
his conflict-laden rhetoric: "We are formed as the Constitutional and
Lawful unorganized Militia of the State of Arizona and the united [sic]
States of America. . . . By invading the Sovereign jurisdiction of the
State of Arizona to attack the Citizens of the State of Arizona the United
States has declared war upon the Citizens of the Several States of the
Union. . . . We have drawn our line in the sand." The warrant was never
served, because Cooper was shot and killed by sheriff's deputies in
November 2001 as a result of an incident unrelated to his tax problems.
This bizarre conclusion to a strange life is described more fully in
chapter 10.43
Cooper
was not the only figure in the UFO subculture who was elaborating
politically charged conspiracy theories by the end of the 1980s. The year
1989 marked the beginning of the activities of John Grace, also known as
Val Germann and Val (or Valdamar) Valerian. Grace was an air force
enlisted man stationed at Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas, where he
apparently came into contact with Lear. About 1988, Grace-Valerian founded
the Nevada Aerial Research Group in Las Vegas, but soon relocated it to
Yelm, Washington, under the name Leading Edge Research Group. He has been
an extraordinarily prolific writer and publisher, claiming to have issued
tens of thousands of pages. His central works are the massive, ongoing
series of Matrix volumes, of which at least six have appeared, and the
serial publication The Leading Edge.44
It
is impossible to summarize Valerian's system. Indeed, it may well be one
of the most complex superconspiracy theories ever constructed. Scarcely
any major organization or institution escapes inclusion. One diagrammatic
representation requires six pages to lay out the connections among
elements of the plot, including the Gestapo, the Mafia, and the Wobblies
(IWW). Valerian ranges not only across the usual UFO and conspiracist
terrain but across politics, religion, science, and history. He clearly
regards his system not merely as an explanation of flying saucers or
contemporary politics but as a synoptic vision of all knowledge.45
Cooper
edged gradually toward more ambitious conspiratorial schemes, but even at
his most sweeping he never sought to cover areas such as the sciences
(about which, in fact, he claimed ignorance). Valerian, by contrast, takes
conspiracism to its logical conclusion by suggesting that all true
knowledge has been deliberately hidden, and that attempts to reveal it in
one area will inevitably reveal the entire structure, if only one digs
widely and deeply enough. Anything that is available and obvious is false,
while what is hidden has to be true; its hiddenness can have occurred only
because those who truly know do not wish it to be revealed. As Valerian
puts it, "As a result of the suppression and compartmentalization of
information, cultures have been fragmented into several distinct groups
and mind sets which both co-exist and oppose each other." He clearly
believes that he has discovered the suppressed synthesis.46
Leading
Edge's location, Yelm, Washington, is also the home of J.Z. Knight, a
channeler who claims to be the medium transmitting the words of a
35,000-year-old warrior named Ramtha. The Ramtha School of Enlightenment
in Yelm was founded in 1988 or 1989, about the time Valerian arrived.
There appear to be no direct links between Valerian's organization and
Knight's, but they do share common themes. Ramtha asserts that the UFOs
carry aliens who are "your higher brothers." Valerian, like Knight,
employs the entity terminology standard in channeling circles, and he
includes favorable material about Ramtha in the Matrix volumes. There are
some differences: for instance, like many conspiracy-minded ufologists,
Valerian believes that there are many alien races, some of which are
malevolent. For their part, Knight and Ramtha identify evil with a
conspiracy of international bankers who include the Rothschilds and the
Federal Reserve. The Ramtha School's book service sells works by Cooper,
David Icke, and Jim Keith, and the Ramtha newsletter has published lengthy
interviews with Mark Phillips and Cathy O'Brien, with their tales of CIA
mind-controlled sex slaves. Notwithstanding the lack of formal
connections, Valerian and Knight clearly seem to tap into the same cultic
milieu.47
By
the early 1990s, therefore, at least some of the ufology literature had
gone through several transformations. It had become intensely politicized.
It insisted that powerful elements in the U.S. government were in
continuing collaboration with an evil, alien race. And it claimed that in
order to protect this information, the secret government was prepared to
destroy American liberties. From 1986 to about 1990, the activities of
Andrews, Lear, Cooper, and Valerian created a conspiracist form of UFO
speculation, which Jerome Clark refers to as ufology's "dark side."48
Much
of this material was either strikingly similar to or compatible with the
conspiracy ideas simultaneously circulating in the militia and militant
antigovernment subculture. The mythology of concentration camps, secret
government security forces, wholesale violation of the Constitution, and
control of the state by a hidden elite are themes prominent in both
domains. Yet any link between them in the 1980s appears circumstantial.
The UFO conspiracists were especially active in the West, where the
extreme right was particularly evident; even so, no evidence exists at
this time of direct contact between them.
UFO Conspiracy
Theories
1.
Andrew Macdonald (pseudonym of William L. Pierce), The Turner Diaries, 2d
ed. (Washington, D.C.: National Alliance, 1980). Typical of the news
coverage is Mark Potok and Katy Kelly, "Militia Movement's Draw: A Shared
Anger, Fear," USA Today, May 16, 1995
2.
Pat Robertson, The New World Order (Dallas: Word, 1991). "Buchanan
Promises 'Millennial Struggle' against World Government," CNN, January 6,
2000; http://www.cnn.com/ (January 7,
2000).
3.
Phil Patton, "Indeed They Have Landed. Look Around," The New York Times,
June 15, 1997, section H, 38. Jodi Dean, Aliens in America: Conspiracy
Cultures from Outerspace to Cyberspace (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1998), p. 36. Amy Harmon, "For U.F.O. Buffs, 50 Years of Hazy
History," The New York Times, June 14, 1997, section A, 1. "Gallup UFO
Poll: Some Want to Believe, Some Don't," http://www.parascope.com/articles/0597/gallup.htm(July
2, 1997).
4.
Cynthia Fox, "The Search for Extraterrestrial Life," Life (March 2000)
5.
Dean, Aliens in America
6.
Brenda Denzler, The Lure of the Edge: Scientific Passions, Religious
Beliefs, and the Pursuit of UFOs (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2001)
7.
"Gallup UFO Poll." Fox, "The Search for Extraterrestrial Life".
8.
"Men in Black," in The UFO Encyclopedia, ed. John Spencer (New York: Avon,
1993). Jerome Clark, The UFO Files (Lincolnwood, Ill.: Publications
International, 1996). Peter Rojcewicz, "The 'Men in Black' Experience and
Tradition: Analogues with the Traditional Devil Hypothesis," Journal of
American Folklore 100 (April—June 1987). The first book on the subject,
which initially appeared in 1956, was by Gray Barker: They Knew Too Much
about Flying Saucers, repr. (Lilburn, Ga.: IllumiNet, 1997).
9.
The literature on each is very large; but the nature of the material can
be gleaned from the following. On Area 51: David Darlington, Area 51: The
Dreamland Chronicles (New York: Henry Holt, 1997); and Phil Patton,
Travels in Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51 (London: Millennium,
1997). On Dulce: Branton, The Dulce Wars: Underground Alien Bases &
the Battle for Planet Earth (New Brunswick, N.J.: Inner Light/Global
Communications, 1999); and Commander X, Underground Alien Bases (n.p.:
Abelard Productions, 1990).
10.
"Abduction Phenomenon," in The UFO Encyclopedia, ed. Jerome Clark, vol. 1
(Detroit: Apogee, 1990). Thomas E. Bullard, UFO Abductions: The Measure of
a Mystery (n.p.: Fund for UFO Research, 1987), vol. 1.
11.
"Hollow Earth and UFOs," in The UFO Encyclopedia, ed. Jerome Clark, vol. 2
(Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1992). Commander X, "Legions of Doom," UFO
Universe, Conspiracies & Cover-ups, Special Issue 1 (1998). The
Nazi-UFO stories have been most fully reconstructed by Nicholas
Goodrick-Clarke in Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the
Politics of Identity (New York: New York University Press, 2002), chap. 8.
12.
"Animal Mutilations and UFOs," in The UFO Encyclopedia, ed. Jerome Clark,
vol. 3 (Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1996). George E. Onet, "Animal Mutilations:
What We Know," National Institute for Discovery Science,
http://www.nidsci.org/articles/animal1.html (September 13, 2000). Idem,
"Animal Mutilations: What We Don't Know," National Institute for Discovery
Science, http://www.nidsci.org/articles/animal2.html(September
13, 2000).
13.
"Animal Mutilations and UFOs"
14.
"Linda Moulton Howe: The 'Alien Harvest' and Beyond," transcript of a
conversation in UFOs and the Alien Presence: Six Viewpoints, ed. Michael
Lindemann (Newberg, Ore.: Wild Flower, 1991). Linda Moulton Howe, An Alien
Harvest: Further Evidence Linking Animal Mutilations and Human Abductions
to Alien Life Forms (Huntingdon Valley, Penn.: Linda Moulton Howe
Productions, 1989). On Howe, see Idaho Statesman (Boise), June 5, 1998,
1d. Bullard, UFO Abductions.
15.
Alternative 3 (videotape; Beverly Hills, Calif.: Underground Video, 1996);
originally broadcast on Science Report, Anglia Television (U.K.), April 1,
1977.
16.
Alternative 3. Leslie Watkins, Alternative 3 (London: Sphere, 1978). Jim
Keith, Casebook on Alternative 3: UFOs, Secret Societies and World Control
(Lilburn, Ga.: IllumiNet, 1994). Idem, Mind Control and UFOs: Casebook on
Alternative 3 (Lilburn, Ga.: IllumiNet, 1999). Bob Rickard, "Hoax:
Alternative," Fortean Times 64 (August—September 1992)
17.
George C. Andrews, Extra-Terrestrials among Us, repr. (St. Paul, Minn.:
Llewellyn, 1993 [orig. 1986]). William R. Pabst, "Concentration Camp Plans
for U.S. Citizens," see, e.g., http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/2012/camps.txt(January
25, 1999).
18.
Patton, Travels in Dreamland. Stanton T. Friedman, Top Secret/Majic (New
York: Marlowe, 1997). Howe, An Alien Harvest. The texts appear in Timothy
Good, Above Top Secret: The Worldwide U.F.O. Cover-up (New York: William
Morrow, 1988). The MJ-12 documents also appear in Friedman, Top
Secret/Majic, and Howe, An Alien Harvest. Robert Alan Goldberg provides
another description of the affair in Enemies Within: The Culture of
Conspiracy in Modern America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
2001).
19.
Jacques Vallee, Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception (New York:
Ballantine, 1991). "Skeptics Attack," http://www.parascope.com/ds/0996/maj2.htm(July
1, 1997).
20.
For example, "Declassified Documents Confirm Recovery of Alien Craft and
Bodies!" Nexus 6 (February—March 1999)
21.
"Statement Released By: John Lear, December 29, 1987," William F. Hamilton
III, Alien Magic (Glendale, Calif.: Uforces, 1989).
22.
Ibid.
23.
Ibid.
24.
Ibid.
25.
A brief biographical statement precedes the text of Lear's statement.
26.
Donna Kossy, Kooks (Portland, Ore.: Feral House, 1994), pp. 191—192.
"William Cooper: A Short Biography," http://williamcooper.com/william.htm(August
29, 2000). Milton William Cooper, Behold a Pale Horse (Sedona, Ariz.:
Light Technology, 1991).
27.
Don Ecker, "Dead Man Talking," Fortean Times 155 (March 2002): 38.
28.
The December 18 statement is reproduced in Howe, An Alien Harvest
29.
Howe, An Alien Harvest. Andrews, Extra-Terrestrials among Us
30.
Howe, An Alien Harvest, pp. 185, 190—191. Milton William Cooper, "The
Cooper Document: The Absolute True Information Regarding the Alien
Presence on Earth" (1989), posted October 29, 1997, http://server.wizards.net/mac/handy/incoming/cooperdoc.html(November
6, 1997)
31.
Howe, An Alien Harvest
32.
There are some discrepancies in dates for Cooper material between
Hamilton, Alien Magic, and Howe, An Alien Harvest
33.
Howe, An Alien Harvest
34.
Cooper, "The Cooper Document."
35.
Howe, An Alien Harvest
36.
Cooper, Behold a Pale Horse
37.
Letter from Milton William Cooper, published in Hamilton, Alien Magic,
unpaginated section.
38.
"Petition to Indict," published in Hamilton, Alien Magic, unpaginated
section.
39.
Ibid.
40.
Ibid.
41.
For a detailed, though partisan, treatment of Gale, see Cheri Seymour,
Committee of the States: Inside the Radical Right (Mariposa, Calif.:
Camden Place Communications, 1991). Michael Barkun, Religion and the
Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement, rev. ed.
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997)
42.
Milton William Cooper, "The Plot Thickens," http://harvest-trust.org/plot.htm(June
30, 1998). Idem, "In Search of . . . Mail Digest, May 11, 1997," http://in-search-of.com/frames/WWWBoard/messages/1050.html(November
11, 1997).
43.
For Cooper's quotation, see "Cooper Family Targeted by Feds,"
http://www.williamcooper.com/targeted.htm (August 29, 2000). "USMS Major
Fugitive Cases," http://www.usdoj.gov/marshals/wanted/major-cases/cases.html#A
(August 30, 2000).
44.
"Unofficial Link Page for John Grace," http://www.ufomind.com/people/g/grace/
(September 16, 1998). "Animal Mutilations and UFOs," p. 34. Valdamar
Valerian, Matrix II: The Abduction and Manipulation of Humans Using
Advanced Technology, 3d ed. (Yelm, Wash.: Leading Edge Research Group,
1990—1991). Idem, Matrix III: The Psycho-Social, Chemical, Biological and
Electromagnetic Manipulation of Human Consciousness (Yelm, Wash.: Leading
Edge Research Group, 1992).
45.
Valerian, Matrix III, vol. 1
46.
Valerian, Matrix II, p. v.
47.
J. Gordon Melton, Finding Enlightenment: Ramtha, School of Ancient
Wisdom (Hillsboro, Ore.: Beyond Words, 1998), pp. 70—71. Idem, "Ramtha's
School of Enlightenment," in The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New
Religions, ed. James R. Lewis, 2d ed. (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2002),
pp. 596—600.
"Ramtha's School of Enlightenment," http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~jkh8x/soc257/nrms/Ramtha.html(January
21, 1999).
Steven Lee Weinberg, Carol Wright, and John Clancy, eds.,
Ramtha Intensive: Change, the Days to Come (Eastsound, Wash.:
Sovereignty, 1987). Valerian, Matrix II, p. i.
Idem, Matrix III, vol.
1, pp. 475—446. Melton, Finding Enlightenment, p. 131.
"Conspiracies,"
http://www.ramtha.com/cgi-bin/private/c.%20.%20.&nav_mode%20=%20search&frames%20=%20&refer%20=%20homepage
(September 21, 2000). "Cathy O'Brien," The Golden Thread Newspaper
(November 1999), http://ramtha.com/golden/11—1999.html
(September 21, 2000).
48.
"Animal Mutilations and
UFOs" |
