Lis­ten: Side 1 | Side 2

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.)