Hidden Truth/Hidden Truth.iso/data/genufo/genufo/alien/main_archive/j_upto_r/paranoia.txt

Internet Message Format | 1997-01-02 | 11KB

From: [e-mail] (Titanium Knight)
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
Subject: * Paranoia
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 2 Jun 93 09:11:43 GMT
Organization: System 6626 BBS, Winnipeg Manitoba Canada
Lines: 177

File: paranoia.txt

International UFO Reporter (IUR) - Jan/Feb/1989 - Editorial
-----------------------------------------------------------

Published by the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS)
2457 West Peterson Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 60659
---------------------------------------------------------------

Editorial: Paranoia
---------
                             by Jerome Clark


  The  late  Gray Barker,  who trafficked  in  publications  chronicling
contactee  adventures,   men in black and sinister cover-ups of  various
sorts,  was fond of saying that nothing sells like paranoia.  Every time
he had a new product to move, he pitched it in language that spoke to he
most  elemental fears of his customers,  many of them certain that their
knowledge  of the world's deepest secrets (the hollowness of the  earth,
for  example)   would bring enforcers from the Silence  Group  to  their
doorstep  any  day.  Barker himself wrote the all-time  paranoid  title,
"They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers."

   Its easy to laugh. Other people's paranoia is always funny.  But what
of our own?

   These days,  paranoia - or anyway, deep suspicion; perhaps there is a
difference - seems in style.  This time the inspiration is the  ongoing,
ever un-resolved MJ-12 dispute. The spectrum of paranoia ranges from the
mild  (and  probably  defensible)  to the pathological (as in  see  your
sychiatrist). Fortunately the latter has afflicted few on the sober side
of ufology, but it is running rampant on the wild side.  Since the early
1950s contactee believers have maintained that ETs are here to serve man
-   that  is,  to offer to help us.  Now a new school of unhinged  types
claims the ETs are here to serve man,  by which they mean offering us up
as helpings,  presumably in some cosmic McDonald's.  Anyone who believes
this  (and to note the obvious - that not a shred of  evidence  supports
this  strange and sick reading of the UFO data - is to dignify it  in  a
way it does not deserve) has, let's not mince words, cracks in his pot.

   In  the  sane world,  where it is not generally held  that  the  U.S.
government  is  covering up knowledge of  man-eating  aliens,   paranoia
manifests in speculation and rumour about the "true" nature of the MJ-12
briefing  paper.   The operating assumption is that it is  not  what  it
purports  to be,  a  summary prepared for President-elect Eisenhower  to
inform him that the earth is being visited by extra-terrestrials, two of
whose  craft have crashed on North American soil.  The  questions  being
raised are these:

   Who  wrote  the  document,  if Adm.   Hillenkoetter  (the  ostensible

author)  didn't? Was it a well-informed nastily-clever ufologist putting
one  over  on  his  gullible  colleagues?   Was  it  intelligence-agency
personnel disseminating disinformation,  either to hide real UFO secrets
or to confuse the Soviets?  Or - at the top of the paranoia hit parade -
was  it  a ufologist consciously working in collusion with  intelligence
agents? If this last is true, just whom can we trust?

   This  week,   as I write these words,  I  have heard  serious charges
leveled  against  two prominent figures in ufology.  These charges  were
made  by individuals who went to some length to list their  reasons  for
entertaining suspicions that they acknowledge sound crazy. I am sure the
ufologists  at the receiving end of these accusations (which allege that
they are collaborating with intelligence agencies involved in the cover-
up)  will be able to defend themselves and to explain the actions deemed
suspicious.   The  mere  fact that such accusations are  being  made  by
noncranks,  however,  illustrates how perilous UFO inquiry has become in
the MJ-12 era.

   By "perilous"  I  do not mean, of course,  that anybody need fear for
his life because he Knows Too Much About Flying Saucers (a conceit that,
though widespread, has always done more to massage ufologists' egos than
to  truly  frighten them).  I  refer instead to the problem of  thinking
through  rationally what we may be up against,  given the reality  of  a
cover-up.   (And  there  is a cover-up;  if there were  not,   the  U.S.
government would have told us by now what it recovered in New Mexico  in
July  1947.   We know that it was not a weather balloon and we know  the
recoverers knew that, too.)

   One  need  not  be a textbook-case paranoid or a  conspiracy  nut  to
recognize that yes,  governments, even democratic ones, have secrets and
ways of keeping them.  They have intelligence agencies and,  among their
other  tasks,  these agencies'  personnel track the spread of  sensitive
information, including rumours of same. They have established methods of
dealing  with  leaks.  In dictatorships leakers are easily  dealt  with:
they're killed or sent off to remote gulags.  In a democracy such as the
United  States,   if  outright treason is not involved,   its  trickier.
Generally  the  worst that happens is that the leaker,  if his  name  is
known,  loses his job.  Beyond that,  the official agency involved  will
vigorously  deny the accuracy of the information being leaked  and  hope
that  journalists covering the story will be gulled into  believing  the
denial.

   Few  ufologists are aware that in the United States it is illegal for
official   agencies  or  individuals  to  circulate  disinformation  for
domestic consumption.  We all know, of course, that officials, including
Presidents, break the law. They usually don't bet by with it, as witness
such episodes as Watergate and the Iran-contra fiasco.  The reason  they
don't  get  by with it is that Congress,  prosecutors and the press  are
watching them.  That's why there was an uproar, a year or two ago,  when
the  Wall  Street  Journal fell victim to  a  disinformation  scam  that
reported,   falsely,  that the U.S.  government was about to bomb  Libya
again. The story was circulated for psychological purposes; the idea was
to scare the Libyan government. A 'Journal' foreign correspondent picked
up the story and made the mistake of taking it seriously. When the truth
came  out,  the Reagan administration was severely criticized and forced
to give assurances that nothing like this would happen again.

   In the context of the UFO controversy, however, it is undeniably true
that  a different set of rules apply.  It is an article of  faith  among
this  country's opinion-making elite (New York Times,  CBS News,   Time,
Science,   et  al)  that people who believe in UFOs are all  screwballs,
since UFOs do not exist.  Nothing that happens among UFO believers could
conceivably  be  of any significance except to readers fo the  "National
Enquirer".   That  being the case,  UFO "evidence"  is  of  no  interest
whatever,   regardless  of  the amount of documentation  or  quality  of
witnesses.   Because there are no UFOs,  there cannot be a  cover-up  of
important  information about them.  Therefore any testimony that  claims
the contrary need not be heeded.

   In other words, the field is open to any government agency to lay any
game it feels it need to play. The watchdogs aren't just sleeping on the
job;   they're  not  even on the job.  "The New  York  Times"   and  the
"Washington Post"  have never heard of the Roswell incident,  much  less
dispatched  investigative reporters to look into it.  Supremely smug and
blind,  they will not know if laws are being broken by official  persons
keeping UFO secrets;  anybody who says they are need only be referred to
"Skeptical Inquirer", or a psychiatrist, to get his head straightened.


   It  is  not true as a general principle,  the cliche notwithstanding,
that secrets can't be kept. But it has to be especially easy to keep UFO
secrets, since nobody except ufologists,  who have no influence and only
limited   resources,   is  looking  for  them.   (In  the  1970s  famous
investigative  journalist Seymour Hersh made a point of telling "Rolling
Stone"  that he doesn't do "flying saucer stories .") Nor, consequently,
is  anybody looking to see if federal laws are being violated by keepers
of UFO secrets. Any ufologist who says his phone is being tapped or that
intelligence  personnel are circulating domestic UFO disinformation  is,
well,  just another paranoid,  a  harm-less version of the guy who tells
police that space aliens ordered him to shoot his mother.

   What is truth?  a famous man asked.  Two thousand years later we ask,
what is paranoia? Well, it's certainly no delusion, no purely subjective
phenomenon. A fear or suspicion that has no demonstrably objective basis
is  paranoia.  That makes the fear that the CIA assassinates  ufologists
paranoia,   but  it  does  not  do  the  same  for  the  suspicion  that
intelligence agencies are doing other things to ufologists. We know that
both  active-duty  and retired spook types have  told  ufologists  hair-
raising tales about EBEs in government custody.  There is no independent
reason  to believe these stories are true,  but what's important for the
moment  is  that they're being told by the individuals who  are  telling
them.  We also know that some ufologists have interacted,  sometimes  in
curious ways, with these individuals.

   What   is  going  on  far  away  from  the  scrutiny  of  the   usual
establishment watchdogs?  And what is the reason for it?  It must surely
mean  that ufologists are on to something,  otherwise why the attention?
But where do reasonable questions end and crazy fantasies begin?  Beyond
the richly-documented Roswell incident, we have no real evidence of what
the  government  may  or  may  not know,  what it  may  or  may  not  be
concealing. That leaves us open to any credentialed liar who comes along
- if we are foolish enough to take him at his word, that is.

   Under the circumstances,  given the bewildering and bizarre nature of
events in recent years,  a  certain degree of paranoia (provided that it
be  mild and containable)  is inevitable.  Any more that a mild  degree,
however, need an antidote. I suggest laughter. What's ahead of us, as we
work our way through Roswell and beyond,  is not going to be easy to get
to,   but lunatic fears,  we can be sure,  will take us only  to  never-
neverland.

---  .
Titan|um Knight
Mail: [e-mail]
Amiga 1200 - AGA chipset