UK UFO NETWORK Part 2
Mon, 16 Dec 1996 20:38:13 +0000
Source: UK UFO Network
Continuing from Part 1...
[W4]******
From: Duncan@life.com
Source: Focus magazine
Date: September 1996
Aliens
With the movie Independence Day bringing ETs into the limelight once
again, Focus speculates on what sort of creatures might really be
lurking out there...
By Sean Blair
Britain's top astronomer was furious - and a little frightened.
Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Ryle believed what had happened would lead
to only one thing; alien invasion!
The year was 1974, and Ryle had just learnt that the American
National Astronomy and Ionosphere Centre had sent out a welcome
message from its radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, aimed at the
constellation Hercules.
Ryle's response was immediate. Didn't thc fools know what they were
doing? He drafted an angry letter to the International Astronomy
Union, demanding that no such message ever be transmitted again and
asking them to officially condenm such hazardous actions. In an
unknown and potentially hostile universe, Earth had drawn attention to
itself, letting malevolent aliens know just where to find us.
The IAU never did condemn such transmisions. It was left to Frank
Drake, director of the centre and pioneer of the Search for Extra
Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) initiative to explain that it was too
late for future Nobel prize-winner Ryle to worry anyway. Radio and TV
signals have already announced our presence to our galactic
neighbourhood - to this day. Dixon of Dock Green and I Love Lucy are
still speeding outwards at the speed of light.
Besides, Drake argued, any alien race that achieved interstellar
travel would be sufficiently developed to reject war and aggression.
Drake speculates elsewhere that aliens are quite likely to have
discovered the secret of imortality and other scientific gifts they
will gladly share with their newly discovered terrestrial neighbours.
Ryle never replied to Drake's letter.
This one sided exchange is interesting as it demonstrates the variety
of opinion on what "they" might be like, if "they" are out there at
all.
In medieval times, the skies were believed to be peopled by angels and
devils. Our knowledge has grown exponentially since, but our view of
alien entities still tends to centre on either benevolent superbeings
or prospective evil invaders.
Until we get what SETI enthusiasts refer to as "The Signal", we
cannot guess exactly what an alien would be like. The centuries of
speculation about extraterestrials tend to reveal more about ourselves
than ETs.
Serious scientific discussion about aliens really began in 1959, with
the publication in Nature of an article suggesting signalling to
aliens by microwave and, the following year, Frank Drake's first radio
telescope scans of nearby stars to detect extraterestrial signals.
Before finding anything, you must decide what you're looking for - so
SETI scientists have spent a lot of time over the past 30 years
working out what aliens around any of the estimated 40 billion
trillion stars in the universe might be like.
They are almost certain to use radio to communicate across
interstellar distances, and they would be carbon-based, like all
life as we know it.
Carbon is the only atom capable of forming sufficiently complex
molecules to create life. Water would also be necessary for the
biochemical reactions comprising living systems. It is assumed that
aliens will be composed of individual biological cells broadly similar
to our own.
In fact, NASA's Global Surveyor mission to Mars, to be launched in
1998, will look for calcium carbonate "skeletons" that could have been
left by cells of micro-organisms, checking a theory that life once
started on the Red Planet, too, but died before evolving as Mars began
to grow cold and inhospitable.
While the exact nature of aliens is unknown, they must have ways of
taking in nourishment, moving and reproducing and some sort of organ
that houses intelligence.
Thought has also been given to the character of alien civilisations.
Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev introduced a classification
system in the 1960s that has become SETI standard. Human civilisation
is a comparatively puny Type One civilisation, just about up to
exploiting the energy capability of planet Earth. But maturer
civiltsations could reach Type Two using the entire energy of their
home star - or even Type Three, involving colonisation and
exploitation of whole galaxies.
Around the same time, Frank Drake put together an equation to work out
the number of alien species broadcasting in our galaxy. Taking into
account all possible contributory factors, the Drake Equation has
yielded answers varying from 10 million alien civilisations to a more
modest few thousand.
Waiting for "Wow!"
So where are they? There have been numerous "answers" to the "Fermi
paradox" since it was posed by Italian physicist and Manhattan Project
member Enrico Fermi. Physicist Frank Tipler argues only enormous
chance allowed life on Earth to arise - expecting it to happen twice
is just too much to ask.
Or perhaps Earth is just out of step with our alien neighbours. We
might have to wait millions of years for them to evolve - or else they
are already extinct; perhaps all intelligent civilisations eventually
destroy themselves, by war or by accident.
The idea that we are in space quarantine, either for our own good or
theirs is a popular argument. As J G Ballard commented gloomily after
the lunar landing, "If I was a Martian, I'd start running now."
Another possibility is that alien races are observing radio silence to
avoid the attentions of predators - either hostile aliens or
autonomous self-replicating probe robots (perhaps even sentient
computer viruses existing as microwaves) hungry for raw materials and
real estate. The existence of just one such threat might be enough to
silence the galaxy - apart from naive young worlds like ours,
broadcasting happily away.
Anyway, it isn't quite true to say SETI efforts have heard nothing for
the past 35 years. There have been hundreds of suspect signals
received - most famously the regular signal, originating from at least
lunar distance and detected at Ohio State University Observatory in
1977.
This has gone down in SETI history as the 'Wow!" signal - from what
the supervising astronomer wrote in the margin of the computer
printout. These and other such unrepeated signals - SETI resechers
call them "bumps in the night" - fit well with the idea of alien
microwave communication - but unfortunately, they also fit more
mundane explanations: secret military satellite transmitting on
illegal fequences, reflections from space debris or equipment
malfunction
But if The Signal does come for sure, will there be anyone still
listening? Under pressure from a cost cutting Congress, NASA ended SETI
research in 1993. Private research is precariously funded and
Scientists have been reduced to appealing for money over the Internet.
The Ohio State Telescope being pulled down this year - to make way far
a golf course. At a time when interest in aliens is greater than ever
- and the discovery of complex organic molecules and new worlds in
deep space make their existence more likely - our chances of knowing
for certain if they exist are getting slighter.
How aliens have always been in our nightmares
Notions of non-human intelegences stretch back thousands of years. The
flrst imagined were animist nature sptrits of mountains, forests,
rivers and seas. And a few of these spirits developed into gods.
With its waxing and waning dominating the night sky, the moon was
naturally ensgrined in godhood by many cultures, and its movements
became the basis of all calendars.
The Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, in the fifth century BC, was the
first to suggest the moon might not be another being but a world like
the earth-and an inhabited one to boot. His opinion was later endorsed
by the historian Plutarch and the writer Lucian. His A Tru History
written in AD 165, has a hero carried to the moon by a whirlwind to
meet the distinctly human lunar king and queen, who are warring over
the colonisation of Jupiter.
The Renaissance marked a renewal of interest in the universe beyond
Earth. The Italian writer Ariosto described a trip to an inhabited
moon (this time via the fiery chariot of Elijah) in his 1532 poem
Orlando Furioso. But while it was acceptable to suggest in fiction
there were habitable worlds besides the Earth, saying so as fact was
unwise.
Six decades on from Ariosto, the Italian monk Giordano Bruno declared,
"Innumerable suns exist; innumerable earth's revolve about these
suns... Living humans inhabit these worlds." The Catholic Church
called on him to recant this cosmological heresy. When he refused,
they burnt him at the stake.
But, a few years later, the invention of the telescope revealed the
moon as an earthlike place, with mountains, craters and "seas", and
spurring on speculation about life on other worlds Cyrano de Bergerac
penned Voyages to the Moon and the Sun in 1647, and a pair of English
bishops, Francis Godwin and John Wilkins, wrote their own visions of
life on the moon -inhabited by inteligent human beings, as usual.
As astronomical knowledge progressed, the airless moon was abandoned
as a possible home of life - although as late as 1835 the New York Sun
newspaper claimed astronomers had seen flowers, trees and unicorns on
the lunar surface.
This still left the rest of our solar system, however. In 1796
astronomer Pierre Simon de LaPace formulated the theory that it
originated out of a gradually cooling cloud of gas, with the furthest
planets in the solar system condensing first.
This meant the further from the sun a planet was, the older it was.
It followed then that cloud-covered Venus was a young version of Earth
literally a virgin world - while Mars, with its thin atmosphere, was
seen as an elderly, dying planet.
Despite this, Mars was considered through out the 19th century as a
probable abode of alien life. It had icy poles, suggestive of water,
and seasonal movements of dark and light across its surface that were
interpreted as vegetation - possibly cultivated fields. And then
there were the canals...
In 1877 Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli was the first to see
what we now know to be the optical illusions of dark channels
stretching across the Martian landscape, but it was American Percival
Lowell who made them his own.
>From his private observatory in Arizona he mapped more than 500
hundred canals, crossing at dark spots dubbed "oasis".
Despite objections from other astronomers that they couldld see nothing,
Lowell depicted, in books such as 'Mars as the Abode of Life', an
advanced but dying Martian civilisation, combating the drying out of
their world with global irrigation.
There were already many suggestions on how we should contact our
potential neighbours.
Back in 1820 German mathematician Karl Gauss had suggested cutting a
huge and bizarre pattern of Pythagorean triangles into the forest of
Siberia, while 50 years later, French physicist Charles Cros mooted
the idea of a network of sunlight-reflecting mirrors stretched across
Europe.
In the 1890s psychics also got in on the act, claiming they had
already made mental contact with denizens of the Red Planet.
Mystery radio signals
The new medium or radio was also pressed into service, with both
Marconi and Tesla briefly believing they had picked up signals from
Mars or elsewhere. (In fact, what they had heard were "whistlers"
long-lasting electromagnetic waves produced by lightning flashes.)
Then, in the years following Lowell's death in 1916, studies of the
Martian atmosphere showed it was colder than Antarctica, and too thin
for any human-like form to breathe. Shifting colours on the surface
were revealed as simply dust storms, and "canals" as tricks of the
light.
The culture of the 19th century had constructed an imaginary
civilisation in its own image. In the age of the Panama and Suez
canals, canal- building was seen as the hallmark of an advanced
civilisation.
The Martians were gone, but not forgotten. They lived on in the books
of such authors as H G Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the
fledging genre of "scientifiction". And the "Greys" of today's ufology
are the great-grandchildren of 19th century Martians; with their
wizened, spindly limbs, enlarged heads and apparent obsession with
reproduction, they'd fit in perfectly on the low-gravity plains of
Lowell's dying Mars.
Martians made a brief reappearance in 1938, when Orson Welles' New
Jersey-set radio version of War of the Worlds caused mass hysteria
among its audience, already disturbed by rumours of war.
The next time aliens entered popular culture was the 195Os when flying
saucer sightings gave people something else to worry about besides the
Cold War. But whatever they are, belief in ET visitors has never gone
away. Forty years ago they were responsible for banal but well-meaning
speeches about the dangers of nuclear energy. Today, they're stronger
on random kidnapping and sexual assault than chit- chat-the perfect
reflection, perhaps, of the Nervous Nineties.
Watchers of the kies: the alien hunters
Slashing NASA's SETI budget reduced the US deficit by just 0.0006
per cent but dealt a crushing blow to the alien hunters (the only
country now sponsoring SETI efforts is Argentina). However, SETI has
bounced back with the setting up of several private sector groups,
including the New Jersey based SETI League and the SETI Foundation in
California.
The SETI League has announced a new all-sky SETI programme, Project
Argus, beginning in1997, which will use thousands of mini-satellite
dishes set up by volunteers across the world. The SETI Foundation is
also overseeing a search called Project Phoenix from Australia,
targeting 200 stars, while the University of California at Berkeley
is carrying on its long-running SERENDIP (Search for Extraterrestrial
Radio Emmisions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations)
project, with help from sponsors including scientist Carl Sagan.
Not that SETI enthusiasts have devoted all resources to the
airwaves: some believe that aliens will be found by sighting actual
artefacts, suh as Dyson Speheres - gigantic constructs surrounding
individual suns - which will give off distinctive and detectable
infrared patterns.
Another theory is that aliens will communicate by high powered
lasers. Astronomer Stuart Kingsland has built a telescope in Ohio
with a photon-counter to find laser pulses between the nearest 1,000
stars.
Making an alien: imagining life on the moon of 70 Virginis
A new planet, discovered last January around the star 70 Virginis,
excited interest because its position suggested that water - and
therefore life - could have developed there. But what would such
life be like?
Life as we envisage it couldn't develop on the planet itself, which
is similar to Jupitor but 6.4 times as big, though probably also has
solid moons.
Imagine an Earth-sized moon orbiting the planet every 2.6 days. With
an orbital radius of ope million km, it's distant enough to escape
being broken up by the planets massive gravity.
One side of the moon always faces towards the planet, and is
distorted by tidal forces.
Resultant crustal cracking may have spewed out hot gases to form an
atmosphere, as well as water (some of which also came from comet
impacts) creating an ocean, and volcanic minerals providing raw
materials for carbon-based life forms.
70 Virginis is three billion years older than our sun, so life here
has had twice as long to evolve. Micro-organisms feeding on undersea
volcanic vents could develop into larger organisms. Evolution could
be spurred on by a high mutation rate caused by radiation from the
planet.
The planet's temperature and pressure is extremely high - water
would have a boiling point of well over 100 degrees C here - so
"Virginians" might be small and spiky to vent excess heat, with eyes
and frond-like tentacles in all directions to locate nutrients.
Tidal forces could leave part of the moon high and dry every 1.3
days, causing Virginians to evolve a hard shell to prevent themselves
being dried out - as well as intelligence to cope with the
ever-changing enviroment.
The Virginians could maybe link brains via tentacles. The bigger the
problem, the more join together. Alone, they are perhaps as clever
as a cat; a dozen of them together, far more intelligent than a human
being.
The alien makers
A hideous, slimy tentacled space invader staggers out of the Area 51
Lab - one of the stars of the 60 million dollar SFX-fest,
Independence Day. But while you wouldn't want to meet monster maker
Patrick Tacopoulous's creation in a dark alley, like all movie
invaders, they're really not alien enough.
Even H R Giger's famous Alien design owes its shock factor to
humanoid aspects. Taking a leaf out of Freud's book, he made the
creature's vaious stages of life resemble human genitalia, from its
vulva-style egg to the phallic head of the adult alien. Gigers latest
work will be revealed this autumn, with the release of the latest
Star Trek film, First Contact. He has redesigned the Borg, the alien
from the Next Generation TV show, to make it look less human. The
Borgs use time travel to change history and destroy the Federation.
In reality, any humanoid aliens will be in extremely short supply.
The chances of another planet producing the same genetic sequence as
ourselves is an estimated 5 x 10 to the power of 16,557,000 - enough
digits to fill over a thousand pages of Focus.
Written science fiction has yielded some more credible aliens than
films, but there are still limitations. SF writer and physicist
Stephen Baxter has created some of the most original aliens of the
past few years, including creatures made from dark matter and
enormous beings made from the turbulent cells of a boiling ocean, but
he argues that it is among the hardest things for a writer to do.
"My feeling is that real alien races will be just that: alien," says
Baxter. "You only have to look at our 'cousins' on Earth, like the
fossil creatures of the Burgess Shale, to see that."
Imagining the way an alien might think and communicate is a real
barrier.
"I think communication will be much more difficult than we think -
second only to the problem of recognising something as alive in the
first place."
If you're looking for a credible alien, you should go to a
xenobiologist like Jack Cohen, who works out how aliens would
evolve. Xenobiologists ask themselves how evolution would solve
problems presented by certain enviroments - high gravity worlds might
give rise to flat, armoured creatures, while gas planets might serve
as home to balloon-like "floaters".
The results of Cohen's studies have appeared in novels by Larry
Niven and Brian Aldiss - but Cohen the script for any resulting movie
would be dull.
"I'm sure aliens would be so different as to make interaction with
humans unlikely," he says.
What happens when we finally hear The Signal...?
The '50s comics made it look so easy. The head alien steps out of
his saucer parked on the White House lawn and says, "Take me to your
leader!"
In real life, any communication is likely to come by radio, not
rocket ship, but what then?
To address that question, a document called Declaration of
Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of
Extraterrestrial Intelligence was approved in 1989 by the
International Academy of Astronautics and a host of other astronomy
organisations.
It says information on any alien signal should be promptly released
to other researchers and, once verified, to the entire world. When it
comes to replying, it specifies that no return signal be sent until
international consultations take place.
This is usually taken to mean that the decision on whether to reply
(and what to say) should be mad by the United Nations, although it
is arguable whether a unanimous decision on such a momentous issue
would be reached. The design of the alien greeting plaque sent on
Pioneers 10 and 11 led to controversy in 1972. Because the plaque
showed a naked couple, NASA was accused by some of sending smut into
space. The cultural and political divides that would open up debating
the contents of a reply to aliens would undoubtably be far greater.
Astronomer Patrick Moore, among others, has urged that all
politicians be left out of it - while Alabama sociologist Donald
Tartar suggests those who first detect a signal immediately reply
with a code word. The code will also identify all future messages
from the discoverers, so the aliens will know which ones are worth
listening to.
The other question pondered by SETI researchers about First Contact
is the risk of profound culture shock. The extreme differentness of
aliens might drive us to collective xenophobia or, if their
achievements are sufficiently ahead of ours, we might plunge into a
despairing apathy so severe it might mean extinction.
[W5]******
From: NASANews@hq.nasa.gov
Subject: Station's First Module Assembled\; Ready for Testing
Date: Monday 9th December 1996
STATION'S FIRST MODULE ASSEMBLED; READY FOR TESTING
The first major component of the International Space
Station (ISS) has been completed on schedule and on budget.
Russia's Khrunichev Industries, working under contract
to NASA's ISS prime contractor, The Boeing Company, has
completed assembly of the Functional Cargo Block, or FGB,
which will be launched in one year and will provide initial
power and propulsion for the ISS.
The FGB, a 20-ton pressurized spacecraft, will be
launched on a Russian Proton vehicle in November 1997.
"The first piece of Space Station is on track and will
be ready to launch in just twelve months," said Virginia
Barnes, FGB program manager. "The people of Khrunichev
worked hard to make this happen, and we are all excited to be
playing such a crucial role in this new chapter of space
exploration."
In May 1997, the FGB will be transported from Moscow to
the Baikonur launch complex, where it will undergo final
checkout and testing, and be mated to the Proton rocket.
"Most of the subsystem hardware has been installed
including the propulsion system, the onboard computers,
lighting power supply, solar array orientation system,
thermal controls, fire detection, and guidance, navigation
and control," said Barnes. "The subsystems will now undergo
functional testing until the FGB is transported to the launch
site."
A week after the FGB launch, an interconnecting node
module, built by Boeing in Huntsville, AL, will be launched
from the Kennedy Space Center, FL, aboard a Space Shuttle.
Astronauts will link the two modules in space, signaling the
beginning of the largest space-based construction project in
history. The FGB will provide orbital control,
communications and power to the node.
During this period, the FGB will control the motion and
define the altitude of the Station's orbit. Later in the
assembly sequence of the Station, as additional modules are
added, the FGB will serve as a storage and experimentation
facility. In addition, its external fuel tanks will continue
to be used throughout the lifetime of the Station.
"This is an exciting time for the FGB team," said
Barnes. "In the next 12 months we will be preparing to
launch and to unite our two countries in building the
International Space Station."
In August 1995, Boeing Defense & Space Group and
Russia's Khrunichev State Research and Production Space
Center, signed a $190 million contract for all phases of
development and production of the spacecraft.
[W6]******
Source: Mufon UFO Journal
Date: November 1996
THE ORDEAL OF JOHN FORD
by Elaine Douglass
The arrest June 12 of Long Island New York UFO activist John Ford is
deeply troubling. Founder in the mid-8Os of the Long Island UFO
Network (LIUFON), Ford became known for his relentless investiga-
tions of UFO events and for his startling al- legations that alien
craft had come down on Long Island tree times in recent years and been
retrieved by federal and local authori- ties.
The Suffolk County Long Island Police Department is one of the
agencies John ac- cused. John said the police helped recover a fiery
object witnesses told John came down in Long Island's Southaven Park
in 1992. John made this claim at public meetings up and down Long
Island, and he held a demonstration at Police Headquarters.
About a year ago scary things started happening to John Ford. He
repeatedly phoned friends and said someone was ha- rassing him and
maybe, he thought, trying to kill him. Was there a campaign to desta-
bilize John Ford?
If so, it reached its climax June 12, when John was arrested in a
sting operation in- volving phone taps and a "wired" paid in- formant.
Police charged John with conspir- acy to murder and possession of
radium without a license. Suffolk DA James Catterson told news
reporters John Ford planned to murder an individual by the name of
John Powell, head of the Suffolk County Republican Party, by putting
ra- dioactive radium in his toothpaste.
An improbable charge, to put it mildly. Nonetheless, the DA seemed
unable to re- strain himself in the media following John's arrest. He
sponsored two press conferences, compared John to the Unabomber, and
made additional charges against John for which no indictments were
subsequently re- turned. Amid a flood of sensational news, John's bail
was set at half a million dollars. Naturally, he hasn't been able to
raise it.
In the meantime, the UFO community, unused to investigators being
arrested and charged with crimes, has met this unsettling drama with a
stunned silence. Nor has John, on advice of his attorney, issued any
state- ment in his own defense other than his plea of not guilty.
Not mentioned in the newspapers was John's claim of harassment, of
himself and others in LIUFON: auto accidents (too many), vandalism of
cars, and a physical at- tack on LIUFON member Joe Mazzuchelli, who
was arrested with John June 12. Mazzuchelli says last winter four men
dragged him out of John's truck, beat him up, and warned him to "stay
out of our busi- ness.
Such are the allegations in this case. What is the truth? Is UFO
investigator John Ford a potential murderer? Or is John the victim of
a political arrest? Was he set up by people local to the Island or
higher-people who got a little tired of John Ford's inces- sant
allegations?
What were John's allegations? As any- one familiar with John knows,
they were radical. For example, John believed that in 1989 Americans
forced down an alien craft over Moriches Bay Long Island. He believed
that in 1992 an alien craft crashed in Southhaven Park on the Island.
And he considered the possibility that in 1995 another mysterious
object came to earth in the Pine Barrens area of the Island and that
"diversionary fires" were set to dis- tract public attention.
John claimed the technology used to down the alien craft in 1989 came
from Brookhaven National Laboratory on the Island. Based on his
sightings investiga- tions, John concluded UFOs were making regular
flights over populated Hudson Valley and Long Island, much to the
con- sternation of the coverup, which decided to do something about
it. John further believed the Long Island police, fire, parks and
other local agencies were commandeered by the federals to assist in
these emergency opera- tions and then, naturally, gagged.
John claimed he had "sources" in the Police and Fire Departments who
privately told him information on which he built his cases. And there
were non-confidential wit- nesses, members of the public, who told
John, for example, about a fireball coming to earth in Southhaven
Park, about fire truck and police cars that night, and that the Park
was closed afterward. Yet the Fire and Police Departments denied it
and the Park director said the Park was never closed. The details of
John's cases are too numerous to cover here, but one treatment of the
Moriches Bay case can be found in Len Stringfield's Status Report VI.
The thing about John was he wouldn't shut up. He went all over Long
Island talk- ing about a coverup of UFO events in which local
authorities were deeply implicated. John founded LIUFON about 1985.
>From then on, he maintained a hot line. He inves- tigated sightings
and abductions. He held public meetings. He talked to the press. He
sponsored conferences. He held demonstra- tions, he published a
newsletter, he leaflet- ted. John was tireless. I know John Ford, and
he is the most determined UFO investi- gator I ever met.
He also has flaws, plenty of them. He is stubborn, for example. Yet
John Ford's friends all attest he lived a moral life and never, as far
as anyone can remember, threatened another person with bodily harm.
According to John's attorney, John Rouse of Central Islip, "You can't
believe how many people have called me to say they can't en- vision
John Ford killing anyone, or even conceiving the intention."
Murder wasn't in John's character, peo- ple say, and breaking the law
wasn't John's style. John Ford was a law and order advo- cate who
spent most of his career as a Court Officer in the Suffolk County
court system. John knew the law and how to use it. John was litigious,
not violent. If John Ford had a gripe against you, he'd sue you in a
minute.
Nor is John stupid. Even the Suffolk DA called John a "mastermind."
If John was go- ing to kill someone, would he use radium? It hardly
kills people fast. Readers will re- call the famous radium dial
painters of the l920s who licked radium paint brushes for 40 years
before they got cancer.
Yet the DA would have us believe that John's "murder weapon" was
radium. Toothpaste goes fast in a household of four people, like that
of alleged murder target John Powell. Was Ford going to break in and
put radium in Powell's toothpaste every week for 40 years until
Powell got cancer?
And would an individual who thought people were watching him leave
illegal ra- dium in the back of a pickup truck in front of his house?
I repeat, John knew the law.
The charges against John strain credibil- ity, but that didn't seem
to embarrass the DA. As I mentioned, Catterson was so eager to
incriminate John that he made several se- rious charges at his press
conferences for which no indictments were returned. "This," says
attorney John Rouse, "is called poison- ing the jury pool."
Catterson's overstep raises questions: Did the DA believe he had more
evidence against John than he ended up with? How good is the remaining
evidence? Is it possi- ble the DA never thought he had evidence to
convict John of anything, and that in- stead, the purpose of the
arrest is simply to ruin John Ford's reputation and wipe him out
financially with legal bills?
The purported case against John rests on the taped conversation made
in John's house the night of his arrest. According to police, the
wired informant engaged in con- versation with John and Joe
Mazzuchelli about doing away with Powell and another local politician
via the radium in the tooth- paste route. After this the police, who
were waiting outside, burst in and arrested John and Joe.
The tape has now been released on dis- covery. "It's unintelligible,"
says Preston Nichols, John's friend in LIUFON. "All I can clearly hear
on that tape," Nichols says, "is the informant talking and John
laughing like whatever they're talking about is a big joke."
Attorney John Rouse doesn't disagree. He's waiting for an "enhanced"
version of the tape to see if the conversation becomes clearer. Rouse
warns, however, that John's situation is serious. If a jury believes
the DA's charges, John Ford could get 25-75 years at an upstate NY
prison.
As for the radium, it was allegedly found outside in John's truck.
Outside is where the police were, waiting and listening to the in-
formant talking with John and Joe. Could the police have planted the
radium?
And finally, unless John was to be en- couraged and entrapped, why
use an infor- mant at all? If the police believed John was plotting a
murder, why not bug his house for a couple of weeks and get the whole
scoop? The answer might be that the purpose of the informant was to
lead the conversation in an incriminating direction.
I have in my files a letter from the Suffolk County Police
Department, dated April 1993. I wrote to them, at John's re- quest,
complaining about police violations of LIUFON member's civil rights.
They had been leafletting near Southhaven Park and going house to
house looking for wit- nesses-constitutionally protected activity. The
police stopped them and ordered them out of the area. This was the
kind of thing John did, and this was the kind of response he got from
the Suffolk Police, as far hack as 1993.
There is plenty of reason to think the Suffolk Police were "out to
get" John Ford. And no member of the UFO community can be confident
they understand the arrest of John Ford if their only source of
informa- tion is the sensational media reports orches- trated by the
Suffolk DA.
That is why John's colleagues, including myself in Washington, DC,
LIUFON vice president Steve lavarone, and Tony West, Richard Jones,
Preston Nichols, and Joe Zuppardo in New York, Don Jernigan of Ohio,
and Kelly Freeman of Florida, have organized the John Ford Defense
Committee. Our purpose is (1) to give peo- ple true information on
the arrest of John Ford, and (2) collect funds and other re- sources
essential for John's defense.
My support for John Ford, and the sup- port of the other members of
the Defense Committee, is based on our convic- tion that John did not,
would not, and could not conspire to murder anyone. On this point our
support is complete and total.
As for John's allegations, I speak only for myself and not for other
members of the Defense Committee. I always found John's allegations
hard to believe but impossible to dismiss-because John had evidence
and what he claimed was perfectly possible. Taken as a whole, what
John Ford's claims suggest is a low intensity military conflict
between the United States and the aliens. Is that possible? Yes it
is.
Just because John's allegations "fit" doesn't make them true. But the
fact is, John had evidence. John claimed three events on Long Island.
Even if he was wrong on two of them, if he was right on only one,
John had a tiger by the tail. If so, it's no surprise somebody would
try to destroy John Ford.
And there's that curious coincidence about Moriches Bay, which more
than a few persons have pointed out. Moriches Bay is where John said
the United States brought down an alien craft in 1989, and Moriches
Bay is where TA Flight 800 mysteriously crashed in August. The cause
of that crash, readers are aware, has so far eluded federal
investigators, and in particular investigators are unable to explain
the reports of more than 20 persons who say they saw an unac-
countable light streaking toward Flight 800 before it went down.
John Ford is the first UFO investigator to be seriously persecuted by
the authorities. Shall we sit idly by while our colleague's life is
destroyed? If John Ford is silenced, who is next? Contact the John
Ford Defense Committee at web site www.iwaynet.net/~pic or email
elaine26@juno.com
The Committee needs funds for John's legal defense and donations of
several kinds: a psychiatrist expert witness; profes- sional audiotape
analysis; and a Long Island-based legal investigator. Please also
write personal letters to: John Ford (8-29- 48), Suffolk County Jail,
100 Center Dr., Riverhead, NY 11901.
Continuing in Part 3...
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