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Fur­ther devel­op­ing a theme from ear­lier pro­grams (FTRs 66, 68 and 105), this broad­cast ana­lyzes some of the polit­i­cal over­tones of the UFO phe­nom­e­non and the ET myth. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of Orson Welles’ 1938 War of the Worlds broad­cast, the pro­gram high­lights the crit­i­cal role of the media in the incident.

A radio play based on the H.G. Welles sci­ence fic­tion novel of the same name, The War of the Worlds was mis­taken for a real Mar­t­ian inva­sion of earth, largely because of the real­ism of the pro­duc­tion. The broad­cast sounded so much like a real media event that many lis­ten­ers did not ques­tion its authen­tic­ity, despite peri­odic inter­rup­tions and announce­ments. The result was near panic in a dis­turbingly large part of the lis­ten­ing audi­ence, under­scor­ing the impor­tance of the media in deter­min­ing our behavior.

Because of this tremen­dous power, recent tele­vi­sion pro­grams endors­ing the “aliens are among us” myth are to be viewed seri­ously and with alarm. With a 1997 Gallup poll hav­ing found that 42 per­cent of col­lege grad­u­ates believe that earth has been vis­ited by space aliens, the NBC pro­gram Con­fir­ma­tion and local news pro­grams tout­ing the ET myth may well do much to strengthen the public’s belief in extrater­res­trial visitors.

The pro­gram sets forth the argu­ment that pro­grams of this type pave the way for manip­u­la­tion of the pub­lic con­scious­ness in a very cyn­i­cal, dan­ger­ous and fascis­tic man­ner, by lend­ing the aura of cred­i­bil­ity to a myth. With evi­dence that so-called “fly­ing saucers” are real and ter­res­trial in ori­gin, the pos­si­ble use of that tech­nol­ogy to deceive and con­trol a tar­get pop­u­la­tion should not be too read­ily dismissed.

The pos­si­bil­ity of “ET’s” was also recently floated in a syn­di­cated col­umn by James Pinker­ton, a major right-wing scribe.

The sec­ond half of the pro­gram presents some of the views of John Lear and Bill Cooper, two of the lead­ing pro­po­nents of the notion that our gov­ern­ment has been deceiv­ing the pub­lic about the real­ity of ET con­tact. Both advance the hypoth­e­sis that our gov­ern­ment has entered into a secret agree­ment with aliens, who are giv­ing us access to their tech­nol­ogy in exchange for our “coop­er­a­tion” in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent projects. Sig­nif­i­cantly, both have links to the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity (Lear to the CIA and Cooper to the Office of Naval Intel­li­gence.) Cooper also par­rots a view that some of the “aliens” are blonde, “Aryan types.”

Mr. Emory presents author Jacques Vallee’s cri­tique of the views of Cooper and Lear, not­ing the glar­ing defi­cien­cies and incon­sis­ten­cies in their argu­ments. In addi­tion, Mr. Emory advances the hypoth­e­sis that some of the activ­i­ties ascribed by Cooper, Lear et al to “aliens” might actu­ally serve as a cover for exper­i­ments and other activ­i­ties by humans. (Recorded in August of 1999.)