X-Conference 2009 Press Coverage
Photos from The Washington Post print edition and Web site, April 21, 2009
Photo of Dr. Edgar Mitchell, from The Washington Times print edition and Web site, April 21, 2009
Mainstream Media
- Fox News, Wednesday, April 22, 2009,
Apollo 14 Astronaut: Space Aliens Are Real
[VIEW ARTICLE TEXT]
An Apollo 14 astronaut told a group of UFOlogists Monday that aliens are not a myth and called on the government to disclose its findings, The Washington Times reported.
"It is now time to put away this embargo of truth about the alien presence," Edgar D. Mitchell, who made the longest moonwalk in history, told those attending a conference in Gaithersburg, Md., set up by the Paradigm Research Group.
"I call upon our government to open up ... and become a part of this planetary community that is now trying to take our proper role as a spacefaring civilization," the 79-year-old added. "We are being visited."
Paradigm Research Group founder Stephen Bassett backed Mitchell's theory and demanded that President Obama's administration release all information concerning extraterrestrial beings.
"If it does not disclose, by the end of May - this is not a threat or anything, you don't threaten the United States government, they're heavily armed ... the PRG has an enormous and substantial network, and quite a bit of documentary evidence connected to this, particularly politically ... and we are going to be extensively putting that out to the media, and we're just going to make it as difficult on them as possible," Bassett told the newspaper.
- The Washington Times, Tuesday, April 21, 2009,
Astronaut says we're not alone,
by Joseph Curl, Political Theater
[VIEW ARTICLE TEXT]
Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell, the sixth man ever to walk on the moon, has a message for all citizens of Earth: We are not alone.
"We are being visited," the 79-year-old grandfatherly "spacefarer" told 100 or so UFOlogists gathered at a National Press Club conference called by the Paradigm Research Group (motto: "It's not about lights in the sky; it's about lies on the ground").
"It is now time to put away this embargo of truth about the alien presence," said the astronaut who made the longest moonwalk in history. "I call upon our government to open up ... and become a part of this planetary community that is now trying to take our proper role as a spacefaring civilization."
With a new, perhaps more intellectually curious president in the White House, UFOlogists say, the time is ripe for the United States to follow the lead of other nations and release all classified files about government interaction with extraterrestrial beings. In fact, PRG founder Stephen Bassett demands that the Obama administration dump the documents, and quick.
"If it does not disclose, by the end of May - this is not a threat or anything, you don't threaten the United States government, they're heavily armed ... the PRG has an enormous and substantial network, and quite a bit of documentary evidence connected to this, particularly politically ... and we are going to be extensively putting that out to the media, and we're just going to make it as difficult on them as possible," Mr. Bassett said.
If Mr. Obama refuses, Mr. Bassett said there's a chance "above 50-50" that the United States could fall victim to another space gap, this time by being beaten by another nation more willing to finally admit "the extraterrestrial presence."
"We will wake up and pick up The Washington Post or The Washington Times and the headline will read: 'President [Nicolas] Sarkozy of France today will tell the French people about a confirmation of an extraterrestrial presence and provide evidence from defense military files.' We will follow, and they will lead."
Packed into the First Amendment Room on the 13th floor (UFOlogists are apparently not triskaidekaphobic), the conference featured a half-dozen experts - all but one titled "doctor." Former U.S. Air Force Lt. Milton Torres entranced the audience with a firsthand account of his encounter with a UFO.
Flying over England on May 20, 1957, "I got this blob - it was not a blip, it was a blob" on his radar screen, big as an aircraft carrier, he said. "Then he took off at Mach 10," something around 7,000 mph. The 77-year-old retired professor of civil engineering choked up as he retold how he was forbidden by a "spook" ever to speak of the incident, even to his father.
The incident came out in late 2008 when Britain declassified a batch of Ministry of Defense files on unidentified flying objects. "It was such a relief for them to let me know that I can talk about this," he said between sobs.
Roger Leir, author, lecturer and "alien-implant researcher," told the group that "multimillions" have been abducted worldwide, and some have been implanted with strange, tiny devices used to monitor or control.
Holding court afterward, the doctor said the devices are similar to how we humans "tag" animals. Tagging "about 15 percent of the species results in enough didactic knowledge to satisfy the curiosity of whoever put 'em in."
Cheryll Jones, a former CNN news anchor, said she was surprised when she first started attending UFO events. "I was expecting a lot of crazies, tinfoil hats and all," she said with a laugh. "But I think we can all benefit from being a bit more curious. Look at the cattle mutilations. Maybe it's the military, but I don't know."
Most, though, appeared to have come to see Mr. Mitchell. As perhaps the highest-profile claimant of alien visitation, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology doctor in aeronautics and astronautics told the gathering the time will come when we have to get off this rock we call Earth.
"The sun will burn out in due course, and we have to be off this planet if our species is to survive," he said. "At this point in human history on this planet, we're now starting, and should be, to reach out beyond our planet and then beyond our solar system to find out what is really going on out there."
After the press conference, Mr. Mitchell said he got involved because people with UFO encounters "figured I was reliable enough to carry their stories and not compromise them."
"All of a sudden, when I began to realize the UFO phenomenon and alien visitation was real, I thought, 'OK, we're not alone in the universe.' That's pretty big news for we humans."
Asked why there still is no definitive proof, he said: "We have that, it's just that it's been covered up and denied by the powers that be in our own government," adding that "there's a secret government" that may be run by the "military-industrial complex."
"We've got to get to the bottom of this. It's our place in the universe we're talking about. We are really universal beings." And as to whether his foray into UFOlogy is detracting from his reputation, he said, "Maybe I'm damaging it, but it doesn't matter, because I know we're right about this."
- The Washington Post, Tuesday, April 21, 2009,
The Exo Files
Cosmic Politics? To Believers, No Idea Is Alien,
by Dan Zak,
Washington Post Staff Writer
[VIEW ARTICLE TEXT]
Extraterrestrials exist and they visit Earth routinely, according to people who know this for a fact.
Moving on.
What does this mean for Washington, for America, for the planet? It means, according to the roughly 400 people attending the fifth X-Conference over the weekend, that politics isn't local anymore. It's galactic. It's universal. This is exopolitics.
In the ground-floor banquet hall of the Gaithersburg Hilton, there are no alien costumes. There are PhDs, ex-military men, activists and concerned citizens. They sit in on lectures with titles like "Obama and Disclosure." They browse tables stocked with books such as "Exopolitics: How Does One Speak to a Ball of Light?" They talk about black budgets and quantum cosmology. They watch the last 15 minutes of "The Abyss," during which Ed Harris swims hand in hand with a jellyfish-like alien.
People in the exopolitical movement want full disclosure of any U.S. government files on unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrials. Only then, they maintain, can mankind deal with the sociopolitical implications of the universe: the rule of law in outer space, the sharing of technology between civilizations and the physics of one-on-one interaction with ETs.
"No, we're not alone," said Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, speaking first at the X-Conference on Sunday and then at the National Press Club yesterday morning. "Our sun will burn out in due course, and we have to be off this planet. . . . Our consumption rate of non-renewable resources is not sustainable. . . . Our destiny is to become part of the planetary community. It's time to start thinking in those terms."
Forget "eco." The most urgent prefix today, the X-Conference suggests, is "exo." We need to evolve into an exoculture. We need to be exoconscious, to reframe our minds for interstellar relations and interdimensional experiences.
"If we live off-planet, we have to change our mind and bodies," says Rebecca Hardcastle, a hypnotherapist and exoconsciousness coach who lives in Phoenix. "Your emotions, life force and what you've been taught is a belief system that cords you to the Earth. We must change our frame of reference."
Hardcastle, wearing pearls and a black dress and sitting at a table, says she has been contacted by ET intelligence since she was 3. She, and others in the exopolitical community, say we need to learn remote viewing and teleportation, we need to propagate the practice of ESP, we need to let ETs change us, and we need to integrate technology and consciousness so we can participate in the universe.
What's the secret to moving in that direction?
Diet and exercise and balanced living, says Hardcastle. Yoga and peacefulness, say others. Small steps for man.
To be sure, conspiracy theories and creepy claims are a big part of the X-Conference. Even an audiovisual glitch is a cue for mild paranoia: "Something happened with our system," says a nervous AV guy after a microphone blows out during a lecture. "It happened suddenly, systemwide. Something hit it and took it down."
When California podiatric surgeon Roger Leir takes the microphone, the topic is extraterrestrial implants.
"How many of you have seen a UFO?" Leir asks the audience before showing video of alleged implant extraction surgery.
More than 100 people put up their hands.
"How many think you've been involved with the alien abduction program?"
Five hands go up.
"How many of you think you've been abducted and have never returned?"
There is laughter. There is also a sentiment of acceptance and adaptation. Once we get our act together, once we understand our own selves, the ETs will engage us, says Michael Salla, president and founder of the Hawaii-based nonprofit Exopolitics Institute, which offers an online semester in galactic diplomacy for a little more than $1,000.
"Humanity is still tribalistic, driven by elite interests rather than global ones," Salla says. "But with Barack Obama, for the first time in our planet's history, we have a global leader. It's a tremendous advance in our global society."
On the TV in the lobby of the hotel, Obama shakes hands with Hugo Chavez. Later, there's a CNN report on the disclosure of torture memos from Guantanamo Bay. These are good signs of open-minded diplomacy and government transparency, some conference attendees say. Plus, over the past year, the British government has released thousands of documents pertaining to UFOs, about 5 percent of which are truly inexplicable. The exopolitical movement was also encouraged by Obama's selection of John Podesta, noted champion of UFO disclosure, as his transition chairman. And Mitchell the astronaut is out in full force, saying the existence of ETs was confirmed to him 10 years ago by a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (who subsequently denied it, but that's how these things go).
The ridicule is ebbing, conference attendees say. The exopolitical movement has gone grass roots; the education and outreach phase is underway. One man at the conference is collecting 4,000 signatures to put forth a ballot initiative for a Denver Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission. Another is calling upon the United Nations to create an "extraterrestrial civilizations liaison."
For Nick Pope, who was in charge of UFO investigations for Britain's Ministry of Defense in the early '90s, the bogies in the sky are simply a matter of national security.
"If we ignore UFOs because of the baggage that term has in people's minds -- because we don't believe in flying saucers -- it opens up a gap in our capacity to deal with these things," Pope says. "It's dangerous. We're ignoring a potential air-safety issue."
Exopolitics: It's about air-traffic control. It's about honest government. It's about self-empowerment and healthy living and bold declarations of reaching for the stars. Ask too many questions, though, and you'll see exopolitics is also about a race of humanoids who live under the barren surface of Mars and may, at some point, desire to mooch off Earth's rich resources.
Exopolitics "provides a conceptual framework for dealing with our highly populated universe," says author, lawyer and activist Alfred L. Webre, who coined the term 10 years ago and has watched it creep into the mainstream.
He also says the Martians are keeping to themselves for now.
- CNN, Monday, April 20, 2009,
Former astronaut: Man not alone in universe
[VIEW ARTICLE TEXT]
(CNN) -- Earth Day may fall later this week, but as far as former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell and other UFO enthusiasts are concerned, the real story is happening elsewhere.
(Former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell, shown in 1998, says "there really is no doubt we are being visited.")
Mitchell, who was part of the 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission, asserted Monday that extraterrestrial life exists, and that the truth is being concealed by the U.S. and other governments.
He delivered his remarks during an appearance at the National Press Club following the conclusion of the fifth annual X-Conference, a meeting of UFO activists and researchers studying the possibility of alien life forms.
Mankind has long wondered if we're "alone in the universe. [But] only in our period do we really have evidence. No, we're not alone," Mitchell said.
"Our destiny, in my opinion, and we might as well get started with it, is [to] become a part of the planetary community. ... We should be ready to reach out beyond our planet and beyond our solar system to find out what is really going on out there."
Mitchell grew up in Roswell, New Mexico, which some UFO believers maintain was the site of a UFO crash in 1947. He said residents of his hometown "had been hushed and told not to talk about their experience by military authorities." They had been warned of "dire consequences" if they did so.
But, he claimed, they "didn't want to go to the grave with their story. They wanted to tell somebody reliable. And being a local boy and having been to the moon, they considered me reliable enough to whisper in my ear their particular story."
Roughly 10 years ago, Mitchell claimed, he was finally given an appointment at Pentagon to discuss what he had been told.
An unnamed admiral working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff promised to uncover the truth behind the Roswell story, Mitchell said. The stories of a UFO crash "were confirmed," but the admiral was then denied access when he "tried to get into the inner workings of that process."
The same admiral, Mitchell claimed, now denies the story.
"I urge those who are doubtful: Read the books, read the lore, start to understand what has really been going on. Because there really is no doubt we are being visited," he said.
"The universe that we live in is much more wondrous, exciting, complex and far-reaching than we were ever able to know up to this point in time."
A NASA spokesman denied any cover-up.
"NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover-up about alien life on this planet or anywhere else -- period," Michael Cabbage said Monday.
Debates have continued about what happened at Roswell. The U.S. Air Force said in 1994 that wreckage recovered there in 1947 was most likely from a balloon-launched classified government project.
Stephen Bassett, head of the Paradigm Research Group (PRG), which hosted the X-Conference, said that the truth about extraterrestrial life is being suppressed because it is politically explosive.
"There is a third rail [in American politics], and that is the UFO question. It is many magnitudes more radioactive than Social Security ever dreamed to be," Bassett said.
- The Washington Post, Monday, April 20, 2009,
What to Watch
[VIEW ARTICLE TEXT]
The Paradigm Research Group will hold a news conference at the National Press Club to discuss the just-concluded annual X-Conference. That meeting, held in Gaithersburg over the weekend, took a look at unidentified flying objects and the possible existence of extraterrestrial life.
Garance Franke-Ruta
federalcity@washpost.com - CNN.com, Monday, April 20, 2009, Streaming video coverage
Other Media
- Telegraph (UK), Wednesday, April 22, 2009,
Are UFOs real? Famous people who believed
[VIEW ARTICLE TEXT]
The former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell has claimed that aliens exist and their visits are being covered up by the United States government. Mitchell is in good company in his beliefs. Here we highlight 12 other public figures who believe that extraterrestrials may have been visiting our planet over the last 100 years.
Jimmy Carter, US President from 1976 to 1980, promised while on the campaign trail that he would make public all documents on UFOs if elected. He said: "I don't laugh at people any more when they say they've seen UFOs. I've seen one myself."
General Douglas MacArthur, the Korean and Second World War soldier, said in 1955 that "the next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of the earth must someday make a common front against attack by people from other planets. The politics of the future will be cosmic, or interplanetary".
J Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI from its inception in 1935 to 1972, said of a famous incident when flying saucers were allegedly fired at over Los Angeles in 1942: "We must insist upon full access to disks recovered. For instance, in the LA case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination."
Monsignor Corrado Balducci, a Vatican theologian, said: "Extraterrestrial contact is a real phenomenon. The Vatican is receiving much information about extraterrestrials and their contacts with humans from its embassies in various countries, such as Mexico, Chile and Venezuela."
Professor Stephen Hawking: "Of course it is possible that UFO's really do contain aliens as many people believe, and the Government is hushing it up."
Dr. Herman Oberth, a Nazi rocket engineer who was taken to the US after the war and became one of the fathers of modern spaceflight, said: "It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are spaceships from another solar system.There is no doubt in my mind that these objects are interplanetary craft of some sort. I and my colleagues are confident that they do not originate in our solar system."
Dr J Allen Hynek, director of the US Air Force's Project Blue Book investigation into UFOs, said: "When the long-awaited solution to the UFO problem comes, I believe that it will prove to be not merely the next small step in the march of science, but a mighty and totally unexpected quantum leap... we had a job to do, whether right or wrong, to keep the public from getting excited."
Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, commander of RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain: "I am convinced that these objects do exist and that they are not manufactured by any nations on earth."
Ronald Reagan, US President from 1980 to 1988, "I looked out the window and saw this white light.It was zigzagging around. I went up to the pilot and said, 'Have you ever seen anything like that?' He was shocked and he said, 'nope.' And I said to him: 'Let's follow it!' We followed it for several minutes. It was a bright white light.We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement it went straight up into the heavens. When I got off the plane I told Nancy all about it."
Mikhail Gorbachev, the USSR's last head of state: "The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously."
Richard Nixon, US President from 1969 to 1974: "I'm not at liberty to discuss the government's knowledge of extraterrestrial UFO's at this time. I am still personally being briefed on the subject."
Dr. Walther Riedel, research director at the Nazi rocket research establishement at Peenemunde: "I am completely convinced that UFOs have an out-of-world basis."
- Guardian (UK), Wednesday, April 22, 2009:
Former Apollo astronaut calls on the US government to 'open up' about aliens, by Paul Lester
[VIEW ARTICLE TEXT]
The truth is out there. And a former Apollo 14 astronaut wants you to know about it. Edgar Mitchell, who made the longest moonwalk in history in 1971, says alien life does exist and the US government is blocking the information from getting out.
On Monday Mitchell addressed the issue of extraterrestrial life at the National Press Club in Washington after the X-Conference, a convention of UFO researchers and activists.
"We are being visited," he said. "It is now time to put away this embargo of truth about the alien presence. I call upon our government to open up ... and become a part of this planetary community that is now trying to take our proper role as a spacefaring civilisation."
Mitchell, who has a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said it's only a matter of time before we need to evacuate Earth and seek a new home. "The sun will burn out in due course, and we have to be off this planet if our species is to survive. At this point in human history on this planet, we're now starting, and should be, to reach out beyond our planet and then beyond our solar system to find out what is really going on out there."
Growing up in Roswell, New Mexico - where some UFO experts believe a crash took place in 1947 - Mitchell said residents of the town "had been hushed and told not to talk about their experience by military authorities" and were told they would suffer "dire consequences" if they did.
Residents relayed eyewitness accounts of alien sightings to him because they "didn't want to go to the grave with their story. They wanted to tell somebody reliable. And being a local boy and having been to the moon, they considered me reliable enough to whisper in my ear their particular story."
Mitchell's belief in the existence of aliens is well documented. In an interview with the Times in 1998, he said he is "90% sure that many of the thousands of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, recorded since the 1940s, belong to visitors from other planets."
"A few insiders know the truth . . . and are studying the bodies that have been discovered," he told the St Petersburg Times of Florida in 2004.
- Associated Content, Tuesday, April 21, 2009:
Edgar Mitchell: "We Are Not Alone', by Mark Whittington
[VIEW ARTICLE TEXT]
Apollo Astronaut Claims UFO Cover Up
Former Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell, in a speech at the National Press Club on Monday, April 20th, claimed that extra terrestrial life exists and that various governments, including the United States, are covering it up.
Edgar Mitchell made a similar claim almost a year ago during a radio interview in Great Britain. Edgar Mitchell, in his National Press Club speech, expounded on stories of an alleged UFO crash near a military base in Roswell, New Edgar Mitchell: "We Are Not Alone'Mexico in 1947. The alleged crash, denied by the Air Force, has entered into UFO lore and even popular culture as proof that not only do UFOs, which is to say space craft from other worlds visiting Earth exist, but there is a secret cover up. Edgar Mitchell comes from Roswell, New Mexico.
The idea of a secret government cover up of UFO visitations has become so pervasive that the idea has become part of the UFO mythology. The reason that governments would want to cover up UFO visitations varies from "avoiding public panic" to concealing some kind of politically explosive embarrassment.
Popular culture is rife with the theme of UFOs and the secret government cover up. The theme was used to good effect on the long running television show, the X Files, which depicted an FBI agent dedicated to finding proof of alien life beyond the Earth and revealing the secret government cover up, which seemed to involve collaboration of some sort of a planned alien invasion.
The notion of a secret government cover up of UFO visitations seems to fall down when one looks at motives. There would seem to be more incentive to let the public in on the secret than in concealing it.
Imagine what would happen if, at any time in our recent history, the President of the United States had come on network TV and announced, "My fellow Americans, we are not alone in the universe."
One almost certain effect is that the sky would be the limit for the budgets of not only NASA but military space programs. Even if there were an official government cover up of UFO visitations, that would be incentive enough for someone to leak the information to the media.
Government conspiracies are very hard to keep secret in any case, considering the number of people who have to be in on it. Whether its secret government cover ups of UFOs or the Kennedy Assassination, there are just too many people who have to be in on it for the conspiracy to work. JustEdgar Mitchell: "We Are Not Alone' ask the people in the Nixon administration who committed Watergate.
So, with respect to Edgar Mitchell, and American hero who walked on the Moon, one would have to respond to his claims with a little bit of skepticism.
- Coyote Prime, Monday, April 20, 2009:
Astronaut Edgar Mitchell: "We Are Not Alone"
[VIEW ARTICLE TEXT]
"Earth Day may fall later this week, but as far as former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell and other UFO enthusiasts are concerned, the real story is happening elsewhere. Mitchell, who was part of the 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission, asserted Monday that extraterrestrial life exists, and that the truth is being concealed by the U.S. and other governments.
He delivered his remarks during an appearance at the National Press Club following the conclusion of the fifth annual X-Conference, a meeting of UFO activists and researchers studying the possibility of alien life forms.Mankind has long wondered if we're "alone in the universe. [But] only in our period do we really have evidence. No, we're not alone," Mitchell said. "Our destiny, in my opinion, and we might as well get started with it, is [to] become a part of the planetary community. ... We should be ready to reach out beyond our planet and beyond our solar system to find out what is really going on out there."
Mitchell grew up in Roswell, New Mexico, which some UFO believers maintain was the site of a UFO crash in 1947. He said residents of his hometown "had been hushed and told not to talk about their experience by military authorities." They had been warned of "dire consequences" if they did so. But, he claimed, they "didn't want to go to the grave with their story. They wanted to tell somebody reliable. And being a local boy and having been to the moon, they considered me reliable enough to whisper in my ear their particular story."
Roughly 10 years ago, Mitchell claimed, he was finally given an appointment at Pentagon to discuss what he had been told. An unnamed admiral working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff promised to uncover the truth behind the Roswell story, Mitchell said. The stories of a UFO crash "were confirmed," but the admiral was then denied access when he "tried to get into the inner workings of that process." The same admiral, Mitchell claimed, now denies the story. "I urge those who are doubtful: Read the books, read the lore, start to understand what has really been going on. Because there really is no doubt we are being visited," he said. "The universe that we live in is much more wondrous, exciting, complex and far-reaching than we were ever able to know up to this point in time."
A NASA spokesman denied any cover-up. "NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover-up about alien life on this planet or anywhere else - period," Michael Cabbage said Monday. Debates have continued about what happened at Roswell. The U.S. Air Force said in 1994 that wreckage recovered there in 1947 was most likely from a balloon-launched classified government project. Stephen Bassett, head of the Paradigm Research Group (PRG), which hosted the X-Conference, said that the truth about extraterrestrial life is being suppressed because it is politically explosive. "There is a third rail [in American politics], and that is the UFO question. It is many magnitudes more radioactive than Social Security ever dreamed to be," Bassett said."
- The Solar Satellite, Monday, April 20, 2009:
Edgar Mitchell demands "Saucer Secrets"
[VIEW ARTICLE TEXT]
WASHINGTON, DC -- April 20, 2009 -- Retired navy captain and Apollo XIV astronaut Edgar Mitchell today called for the U. S. government to disclose to its citizens and other Earthlings what he asserts are the realities of long-standing extraterrestrial visitations and interactions with our planet.
Speaking this morning at "X-Conference 2009" in Gaithersburg, MD, a suburb of the nation's capital, Mitchell told several hundred attendees and a phalanx of video cameras that, with our planet confronting population pressures and critical questions of environmental and energy sustainability, the need for disclosure about extraterrestrial involvement with Earth is critical.
- NowPublic, Monday, April 20, 2009: CNN's streaming video
- Cape Cod Today, Sunday, April 19, 2009:
Apollo astronaut demands release of "Saucer Secrets"
[VIEW ARTICLE TEXT]
Apollo Moonwalker Calls for Disclosure of "ET" Contact!
by Dick Farley, capecodtoday Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON, DC -- April 19, 2009 -- Retired navy captain and Apollo XIV astronaut Edgar Mitchell today called for the U. S. government to disclose to its citizens and other Earthlings what he asserts are the realities of long-standing extraterrestrial visitations and interactions with our planet.
Speaking this morning at "X-Conference 2009" in Gaithersburg, MD, a suburb of the nation's capital, Mitchell told several hundred attendees and a phalanx of video cameras that, with our planet confronting population pressures and critical questions of environmental and energy sustainability, the need for disclosure about extraterrestrial involvement with Earth is critical.
Mitchell contends that the dispersal of knowledge about what he believes to be the end of Earth's apparent quarantine from other civilizations, and advancement of planetary culture beyond its present fragmentation and incoherence, are desirable results of the widest public release of information about the extraterrestrial presence he believes is real.
The conference, organized by long-time "UFO Disclosure" activist and one-time Maryland congressional candidate Stephen Bassett, centers on an emergent field of cultural reconsideration its advocates term "Exopolitics." Basset's nonprofit Paradigm Research Group has mounted a decade-long broad spectrum campaign advocating disclosure of what he says are unwarranted secrets about "UFOs" and "ETs" held over as unnecessary "Cold War paranoia."
Questions of "What do we do and say after we say 'Hello!' to ET?" remain distant from wider public consideration, let alone consensus about their implications for national sovereignty, religious traditions and global policy formulation, discussions about which conference organizers and presenters are intent on provoking.
Mitchell, Bassett and other "ET disclosure" activists are banking on President Barack Obama's repeated assurances that government agencies withholding information from US citizens are "on notice," in the President's words, that an era of unnecessary secrecy is over.
Obama has said his administration's tendency will be to unlock what he and senior officials consider information rightfully belonging to the public, while recognizing constraints required for national security, a presidential promise replayed on video at the conference to sustained applause by hopeful disclosure advocates.
"We live in challenging, magnificent times," Mitchell said, emphasizing that, in his opinion, information that we are not alone in the universe -- and indeed, he said, that we here on Earth are having ongoing interactions with nonterrestrial beings -- may provide a key to consciousness changes he and his colleagues believe are necessary.
Mitchell said he believes such changes are essential for Earth to make progress through problems confronting humanity's competing needs, religious imperatives and cultural fragmentation. His efforts since leaving NASA and the space program have been focused on exploring frontiers "of the mind, body and spirit," he said.
Mitchell acknowledged that, before humanity can travel with practicality much beyond our own solar system, solutions to Einsteinian limitations to faster-than-light propulsion of our spacecraft must still be solved, a frontier the aging astronaut said he believes science eventually will do.
But he stressed that our own limitations have not limited the extraterrestials he asserts are present on Earth.
"The aliens have done it!" Mitchell said of an apparent ability to traverse what to us are insurmountable distances.
He contends that as a result of wider public awareness of the ET presence, revisitation of much phenomenology catalogued in human history should precipitate revision of how we understand planetary history in light of what he believes are long-standing extraterrestrial interactions on Earth.
The astronaut, who told Cape Cod Today he was raised in a strict Baptist household, said reevaluations of source phenomena that led to Earth's major faiths, and which he said foster divisions among humans, might be another of the beneficial results of wider awareness of what Mitchell believes is the historical and ongoing "ET" presence and their asserted involvements in human development.
Mitchell and his fellow explorers of what he has called the "Frontiers of Consciousness" have long contended that broader public awareness of the extraterrestrial presence and interactions the astronaut-scientist believes are reality could help promote a "global mind change."
Mitchell and colleagues assert this could point us toward "planetary transformation," helping Earth's culture to mature sufficiently to gain entry into a wider community of civilizations for which they believe abundant evidence exists, now and throughout history, when viewed through a filter in which the claimed extraterrestrial presence is considered.
Taking questions following his presentation, Mitchell told Cape Cod Today that his beliefs as expressed this morning about extraterrestrial involvements with humanity on Earth are drawn from information generally available to those who study the field of alleged "ET-UFO" events and experiences, citing no "secret information" to which he has been privy.
He also contradicted some other presenters at X-Conference 2009, who claimed that Mitchell and the other NASA astronauts were briefed before their space flights about potential encounters with UFOs of an extraterrestrial nature and how to handle or disguise them from the public. He said unequivocally that this did not occur.
In a previous private interview with Cape Cod Today, Mitchell also expressed skepticism about some of the more popular "UFO conspiracy lore," i.e., stories that NASA astronauts did not really visit the moon or that the space agency has been covering up satellite photographs of Mars purportedly showing evidence of past civilizations.
"We had no briefings on UFOs during our astronaut training," Mitchell told the conference, suggesting that "human nature" tends to embellish and distort things about which there is insufficient information or which embody concepts disruptive of our respective world views.
He also acknowledged that the UFO field has often been the target of disinformation and intentional misinformation seedings throughout the years, some perhaps for legitimate national security reasons having to do with terrestrial aerospace research and development.
But Mitchell's stance on NASA-centered conspiracy theories about "ET UFO" remained firm in the face of questions.
"It was not mentioned during my career," he said, adding that he and his fellow spacefarers saw no evidence of space visitors on the back side of the Moon, another long-standing tale among the more cult-like cohorts of UFO faithful.
Mitchell said decades of "UFO disclosure" revelations, drawn principally from elderly military and nonmilitary folks claiming bits and pieces of the larger puzzle about what they believe really happened at Roswell, NM in 1947, helped shape his belief that the event actually took place and was not, as the US Air Force claimed, a crash-test balloon.
He cited what he described as the credibility of the witnesses and the coherence of their stories as influencing his belief in the reality of the ET scenario attendant to the Roswell event, which stems from a 1947 cover-story released in July of that year after a crash of some unspecified aircraft not far from Roswell Army Airfield (AAF).
The next day the initial "recovered flying saucer" cover story issued by Roswell AAF public affairs staffers was countermanded by a senior Army Air Force commander, who said a "weather balloon" was what had crashed, pieces of which had been recovered.
The story died for three decades until being resurrected in the early 1980s, eventually prompting a 1994 U. S. Air Force revision of their "official story," contending that the Roswell crash was of a "Mogul" project balloon of the type used for atmospheric monitoring to detect possible Soviet nuclear weapons tests.
A subsequent version of the Air Force story was that the alleged "recovered alien bodies" endemic to some Roswell crashed saucer tales were, in reality, "crash test dummies" used for testing experimental high-altitude equipment for the U. S.'s growing strategic bomber forces.
As is well known to worldwide "UFO" enthusiasts, the Air Force's efforts to defuse the Roswell story were in vain, and a host of alternative scenarios have persisted.
These range from "ET crashed saucer recovery" to speculations that the event being camouflaged was human experimentation on unwitting subjects, in contravention of the then-recently adopted Nuremberg Protocols governing medical experimentation on humans following disclosure of Nazi concentration camp Holocaust horrors.
Mitchell is among many former military officials and large numbers of US and world citizens who scoff at the Air Force "clarifications," citing what he says are the credibility of the witnesses and the coherence and consistency of their recollections, in his opinion, that an extraterrestrial craft indeed crashed and the event covered up for six decades.
"What more do you need?" Mitchell declared, asserting that the Air Force's balloon stories are transparently false.
Ironically, the future astronaut grew up in Roswell, NM, where his family had a ranch not far from the alleged crashed saucer site, although Mitchell said that at the time it happened, he had no firsthand experience or knowledge about it.
But other space related research was going on at Roswell during Mitchell's youth, as rocket pioneer Robert Goddard had moved his research and testing program to Roswell in the 1930s and launched numerous experimental rockets. The youthful future astronaut was captivated by Goddard's efforts, which captured his imagination about possible travel away from Earth and to the stars.
Mitchell also related that in 1945 he and his family's neighbors witnessed the bright, white flash over the horizon which signaled the advent of the atomic age with testing of the first nuclear weapon at the Trinity site. Mitchell said the bomb influenced him significantly when he later learned what it was and, much later, better understood its implications.
Mitchell said he believes the nuclear explosion also may have attracted the extraterrestrial presence he believes resulted in the alleged ET aircraft collision which UFO researchers have claimed for three decades happened near Roswell, which is situated not far from where the nation's first nuclear weapon was detonated.
"I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason for Roswell (as the alleged ET aircraft crash is euphemistically termed) was that the UFO phenomenon was drawn to our nuclear sites," Mitchell told the gathering. He said he is concerned about the tendencies of terrestrial governments and their militaries to stake claims and perhaps fly weapons in space, a concern Mitchell believes may be shared by the intervening extraterrestrials.
Mitchell said that many years ago, after leaving NASA, he authored a manuscript advocating against militarization of space attendant to nationalistic colonization of the high frontier for military advantage or benefits other than for all of humankind.
"I submitted it to thirty-four publishers, and all refused to publish it," Mitchell said.
He told the X-Conference that his coming forward so unequivocally at this time reflects his concerns about the direction our planet is heading and his belief that wider public awareness that "we are not alone" will precipitate a healthier consideration of Earth's future.
Mitchell is slated to appear at the National Press Club tomorrow morning (Monday, April 20, 10 a.m.) to amplify his encouragement of the Obama administration to compel disclosure of what the U. S. government may know about the extraterrestrial interactions with humanity the astronaut said he believes have been happening and remain ongoing.
Cape Cod Today is planning to cover that press conference.
And as for the Cape Cod connection? The late Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John E. Mack, a former summer Cape dweller who studied and wrote about purported "ET alien abductions" in the early 1990s, and long-standing "ET abduction" researcher (and Provincetown resident) Budd Hopkins, a New York modern artist who has studied the phenomenon since his own "UFO" sighting in 1964, met each other at the Cape. They were introduced by a mutual friend, Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, the acclaimed psychiatrist and author, also at Harvard, who lives on the Cape.
Miscellaneous
- Photos from the April 20, 2009 Press Conference at the National Press Club, Washington, DC, taken by Paul Nahay.
- Paradigm Research Group's National Press Club Press Conference Video Links
- Streaming video of the press conference on the Exopolitics Denmark site.
- ABC News, November 22, 2008: Woman Claims Alien Abduction (video)
