A (Public) Moment for UFOtruth: SciFi v. SciLie

Larry W. Bryant

Author of

"UFO Politics at the White House: Citizens Rally Around Jimmy Carter's Promise"

Q.: What do you get when you assemble a select panel of pro-UFO-research partisans at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to launch a long-overdue frontal assault upon the government coverup of the UFO experience?

A.: You get a meager turnout of news media representatives (about seven), due in part to the latest attack by the Beltway Sniper (on Oct. 22, 2002). And, alas, you get a sense of deja vu that harks back to the days of the now-defunct National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena.

Indeed, at the height of NICAP's influence in Washington circles during the 1960's, the privately funded organization failed to persuade Congress to mount an in-depth probe into the coverup. Its demise came on the heels of the USAF-commissioned Condon Committee report's declaration that UFO reports merit no serious, sustained scientific investigation.

Now comes a slightly more sophisticated campaign, backed (presumably) by some megabucks from corporate interests, to pick up where NICAP left off.

The panel in question consists of personnel from the cable-TV industry (viz., the Science Fiction Channel), independent journalism, national-security oversight, and activist UFOlogy. For example, SciFi Channel president Bonnie Hammer tells us that the SciFi audience of nearly 80 million homes appreciates receiving, and deserves to continue receiving, the channel's programming on various "investigated realities."

Among these projects, by the way, will be the airing, in late November, of a 2-hour "special" on the Roswell Incident -- dovetailing with fictionalized Roswellian intrigue woven into the Spielberg-produced miniseries "Taken," as scheduled for telecast in early December.

 Hammer's enthusiastic announcement focuses on three pursuits in the politics of UFO awareness:

* Lending official corporate support to -- and lobbying for -- renewed efforts to secure release of significant records that our government has chosen to conceal from public view.

* Establishing a newly formed Coalition for Freedom of Information [for which a better title would be: Coalition for UFO Freedom of Information and Accountability]. The CFI position statement characterizes this independent alliance as bringing together "people who have both studied and been exposed to the UFO phenomenon and who believe it to be worthy of further investigation" [a NICAPian redux, to be sure]. The group's major objective: to achieve credibility among the leadership of organized science, the mainstream news media, and the Congress. CFI director Ed Rothchild explains: "We have constructed a new website -- http://www.freedomofinfo.org -- to generate public support for greater disclosure of government records and for more scientific investigation."

* Sponsoring, by SciFi, of "a symposium exploring the potential for interstellar travel and the evidence of unidentified aerial phenomena" at the George Washington University in Washington, on Nov. 8, 2002. Panelists will include such eminent American scientists and aviation experts as Richard Henry, professor of astrophysics at Johns Hopkins University; Peter Sturrock, emeritus professor of applied physics at Stanford University; and John Callahan, former division chief for accidents and investigations at the Federal Aviation Administration. For his part in this milestone press conference of Oct. 22, former White House staff secretary for the Clinton administration John Podesta reaffirms his rejection of the notions that "the government always knows best," and that "the people can't be trusted with the truth." He adds, "I think it's time to open the books about the government's investigation of UFO's. The American people can handle the truth [shades of Jimmy Carter's promise]." In Podesta's book, "disclosure is the general rule, not the exception."

Note: during the Q & A session, Podesta's remarks about excessive secrecy draw most of the response from the press corps. He happens to operate a Washington-based public-relations firm (Podesta-Mattoon) now being retained by SciFi to, in his words, "keep the pressure on toward keeping the declassification mission moving forward."

 Constant pressure needs to be applied, he emphasizes. And this not-quite-dull knight on a shining horse (i.e., the new, galloping vanguard for UFO-E.T. disclosure) might just be the ticket for admission -- considering his high-level contacts, specialized knowledge-and-experience base, and civic-mindedness (including his role as an advisory board member of the openness-in-government James Madison Project: http://www.jamesmadisonproject.org ).

In the SciFi press release on the conference, Hammer reveals that the channel's challenge to government secrecy includes "backing a Freedom of Information Act initiative to obtain government records on cases involving retrieval of objects of unknown origin by the secret Air Force operations Project Moon Dust and Operation Blue Fly." Counsel for this pursuit has been retained from the Washington law firm of Lobel, Novins and Lamont.

A pivotal case fitting the above parameters and circumstances leads off the effort via an Oct. 22 FOIA request sent to USAF headquarters by investigative journalist Leslie Kean. The retrieval in question occurred on Dec. 5, 1965, near Kecksburg, Pa., and included numerous witnesses from the community.

Will this kind of pressure convince the Air Force to cough up the artifacts from the Kecksburg crash-landing? Perhaps not; but, thanks to the folks at SciFi.com, we once again have another opportunity to acknowledge, and to advance, the view expressed by the late Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe (USMC, Ret.), NICAP's founding director: "The American people have proved that they can take shocking situations . . . without collapsing in fear. If prepared carefully -- and honestly -- they can take the hidden UFO facts, startling as they may be."