July 13, 1996
Source: Arizona Daily Star
By Ed Severson
The Arizona Daily Star
"I'm disappointed at the paranoid approach to the alien thing."
UFO Investigator Robert O. Dean, who had seen the explosion flick "Independence Day," allowed that the movie was OK - even with its evil ETs taking out the Big Apple.
Good entertainment, maybe, but wrong message, he said.
The 67 year old retired Army sergeant major, who has researched UFOs for half his life, said Hollywood constantly makes the little green men wear the black hats.
"I've concluded that they are not here to intentionally be malevolent or hostile," Dean said.
And make no mistake: Dean believes that THEY are here.
Researcher? Prophet? Flake?
How you label Dean depends on your take on UFOs.
"Asking me if I believe in UFOs is like asking me if I believe in Boeing 747s," said the grey-bearded, ponytailed Dean, whose southwestside living room is dominated by a large bust of Augustus Caesar.
In what must be a marriage made in Heaven - or at least in interstellar space - his wife, Cecilia, 49, shares his passionate belief in UFOs.
"The evidence is overwhelming," she asserted.
Eager to show proof, she rummages through stacks of books and papers in search of a survey, which concluded that 2 million Americans had been abducted by aliens.
The couple's home doubles as headquarters of Stargate International Inc., an approximately 300-member worldwide organization devoted to the study of UFOs and related matters.
Despite its cosmic focus, Stargate operates amid the alluring clutter of what could be an old curiosity shop.
Beneath Baroque and Renaissance paintings Dean has collected in his travels, his UFO research - three decades' worth - sits piled on tables, desks, chairs, and sofas.
Scattered throughout the place is an astonishing collection of antique broadswords that could arm a small crusade.
"I can't tell you when I've seen the top of my dining room table," said Cecilia, abandoning her pursuit of the elusive survey.
Settling into a chair, Dean recalled the day in 1963 that changed his life.
"I was a person who didn't believe something unless I could kick it or bite it," he said.
A command sergeant major, the highest enlisted ranking the U.S. army, he was assigned to Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Paris. SHAPE is the military arm of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
As an intelligence analyst, he was given a cosmic top-secret clearance, which Dean said is NATO's highest.
One night, while in the SHAPE war room, he read a three-year NATO study compiled by top-level military experts, "The Assessment: An Evaluation of a Possible Military Threat to Allied Forces in Europe."
"The simple truth is that we and the Soviets had almost gone to war a half a dozen times,"said Dean.
"It was because of the flyovers of large numbers of circular metallic objects flying at high altitude at a high rate of speed, obviously under intelligent control."
In addition to reputing sightings and alien encounters, including abduction, "The Assessment" also told of a UFO crash in the early 1960s not far from Timmensdorfer-strand, a little town near the Baltic Sea.
The report said a British Army battalion actually dismantled and retrieved the saucer, recovering 12 small bodies, Dean said.
"They took close-up photos of it and did autopsies."
Among the findings: The aircraft occupants had hearts and lungs but no alimentary tracts and no teeth.
The creatures, which Dean refers to as "little dudes," were 3 1/2 to 4 feet high.
Instead of blood, their bodies contained a yellowish-greenish substance.
According to Dean, one of the medical examiners cited in the report said, "It reminds me of chlorophyll."
For Dean, who continued to reread the report as long as he had access to I, that was close enough to kicking and biting a space alien.
Afterwards, he was to realize that he had actually seen a UFO but hadn't known what he'd been looking at.
While stationed at the Army Electronic Proving Ground at Fort Huachuca in 1961, he'd been part of a team testing radiodrones carrying cameras and TVs.
For the tests, they employed a special, high-speed cameras used for missiles and remote-controlled launches, which automatically lock onto planes with an automatic-focusing lenses[sic].
You can watch that gomer 'till it's literally out of sight," Dean said.
When the drone was launched that morning, an object came and hovered over the launch site.
"It was a metallic object, like polished aluminum or polished stainless steel, sitting up there about 200 feet above the ground a couple hundred yards away," he said.
"It sat there for another couple of minutes, kind of bobbing like a boat will on the water."
The 40 soldiers who were out on the range estimated it to be 35-40 feet in diameter.
"All of a sudden it started, and in a flash it was gone," Dean said.
"We thought it was part of an Air Force project."
After the incident, a colonel took the film out of the camera and shipped it to Washington.
"We never saw it again," Dean said.
When Dean retired from the Army after 27 years, he worked for the Pima County Sheriff's Department as an emergency services manager.
In his spare time, he continued his UFO research.
After 14 years, Dean's departure form the Sheriff's department in 1992 earned him a National Inquirer headline: "Turned down for a promotion - because he believes in UFOs."
When his boss's job became vacant, Dean was second in line.
When the No. 1 candidate turned it down and Dean still didn't get the job, he hired a lawyer.
Sheriff Clarence Dupnik testified under deposition that although Dean had done a good job, Dupnik didn't want someone in a manager's position who was involved with UFOs.
Outraged, Dean filed another suit charging that his First Amendment rights guaranteeing freedom speech [sic] had been violated.
The Equal Employment Opportunity office agreed that he had a case. in an out-of-court settlement, Dean got $116,000.
Dupnik could not be reached for comment on the case.
These days, Dean, who is retired, lives on Social Security and a military pension. he and his wife travel almost constantly, leading UFO-related tours and expeditions. In the last two years, he has spoken in 13 countries and 32 states.
He is angered by what he sees as a government cover-up of what he believes are the facts regarding UFOs.
The Deans have formed a group, Coalition for Honesty in Government, which will, among other things, push for hearings on UFOs.
"This is probably the most important issue in the history of the human race," Dean said.
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