by Michael Salla, Ph.D.
Honolulu Exopolitics Examiner
August 1, 2009

from Examiner Website

Extract from Banner for 2009 European Exopolitics Summit, Barcelona, Spain
 

A new breed of UFOlogist has emerged as critics of the burgeoning exopolitics movement.

It’s no surprise that in the lead up and success of the world’s first Exopolitics Summit in Barcelona, Spain, that UFOlogists would increasingly perceive exopolitics as an existential threat. The existential threat, according to UFOlogists acting as gatekeepers for “legitimate UFO research,” is that exopoliticians mix reliable with unreliable UFO sources in their analyses.

Indeed, this mixing of reliable and unreliable sources leads to a special form of hysteria among gatekeepers of legitimate UFO research.

Existential hysteria leads to UFOlogical gatekeepers claiming in all seriousness that exopolitics has become the main obstacle to genuine UFO disclosure. The reality is that after six decades of earnest activity, UFOlogy has failed to take humanity to the promised land of genuine government disclosure of UFOs, and a new set of pioneers have stepped in to light the way.

These exopolitical pioneers believe that a nuanced consideration of ALL evidentiary sources and related political processes will expose the truth behind the extraterrestrial hypothesis – that some UFOs are interplanetary in origin.

UFOlogy is broadly defined as a field dominated by those believing in the scientific study of the UFO phenomenon. Using methods and techniques borrowed from disciplines such as physics, meteorology, astronomy and biology, UFOlogists believe that they can amass sufficient evidence to convince hard core skeptics that UFOs are real, and have genuine national security implications.

In such an endeavor, any evidence deemed to be unreliable, tainted, not consistent with facts, is jettisoned in order not to corrupt the raw pool of reliable data needed to convince UFO skeptics. The end result of this rigid filtering process is a pool of data that UFOs are indeed real and have important national security implications.

For example, UFOs outperform modern aircraft, have crashed and been retrieved in mysterious circumstances, and are often sighted near nuclear installations.

It’s important to however point out that the decades long strategy of convincing UFO skeptics through hard evidence has been an abject failure. After six decades of amassing enough hard evidence to fill a small library, genuine UFO disclosure has still not happened. Governments continue to insist that UFOs are merely an unexplained phenomenon without any national security implications.

Indeed, former employees of government agencies go as far as claiming that UFOs are related to mistaken identification of covert military programs such as the U-2 and Oxcart spy planes.

The failure of scientific Ufology is simple to explain according to pioneers in the exopolitics movement. The UFO phenomenon is both a scientific and political problem. It is the political aspect that requires flexible social scientific techniques in order to wade through a vast array of evidence that have enormous political, sociological, economic and religious consequences.

Most importantly, exopoliticians point to a psychological warfare program that began in the early 1950s to debunk, discredit and misinform the public about the truth behind the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

Declassified documents reveal that psychological warfare was a key feature of a Majestic Project initiated during the height of the flying saucer phenomenon in the early 1950s.

Three 1952 Top Secret memos from the Joint Chiefs of Staff titled, "Joint Logistic Plan for MAJESTIC" (above images) were declassified in 1976 and state:

The following plans in support of MAJESTIC are now under preparation: A psychological warfare plan, an unconventional warfare plan, cover and deception plans, a civil affairs/military government plan, a command plan, a logistic plan, transportation guidance, to be included in the logistic plan, a map and chart plan and a communications plan.

The significance of this set of memos is that it shows that in 1952 a project called MAJESTIC was underway and this involved significant support across a wide spectrum of areas that would be expected for something involving UFOs and the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

The psychological warfare program led to many genuine witnesses of UFOs and their alleged occupants being discredited, harassed or intimidated into silence.

A key part of the discrediting of witnesses was to taint their reliability by removing supporting evidence, silencing independent observers, creating false documents, fabricating claims, character assassination and many other measures found in any psychological warfare manual.

These actions against UFO witnesses had many similarities to the FBI’s COINTELPRO.

The 1975 Church Committee described COINTELPRO as follows:

COINTELPRO is the FBI acronym for a series of covert action programs directed against domestic groups. In these programs, the Bureau went beyond the collection of intelligence to secret action defined to "disrupt" and "neutralize" target groups and individuals. The techniques were adopted wholesale from wartime counterintelligence.

Covert Actions Against American Citizens Living in America

In the case of witnesses of UFOs and/or their alleged interplanetary occupants, I have referred to this elsewhere as Galactic COINTELPRO.

Consequently, the existence of a psychological warfare program to discredit UFO witnesses and taint evidence requires moving beyond a simple dichotomy between reliable and unreliable sources.

Many sources deemed “unreliable” by modern UFO gatekeepers may in fact have been subjected to psychological warfare techniques intended to discredit their testimonies or supporting evidence such as photos, films, etc. Alternatively, some witnesses may be actively participating in a psychological warfare technique based on “hiding the truth in plain sight”. This involves genuine information being disseminated by discredited sources in an effort to get the general public to dismiss important information concerning UFOs and extraterrestrial life and technology.

Finally, some sources deemed to be “credible”, may in fact be part of a psychological warfare program to steer the public into unproductive lines of inquiry into the UFO phenomenon.

A psychological warfare program based on discrediting genuine witnesses and hiding the truth in plain sight can only succeed if enough skeptics/UFO gatekeepers join in a loud chorus insisting on strict scientific filtering mechanisms for witnesses and sources. Indeed, an existential hysteria on the part of the UFO gatekeepers performs a vital function for the success of the modern psychological warfare program to discredit and dismiss a great number of sources with genuine information on the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

Special mention should be made of modern UFO gatekeepers who are most vocal in perpetuating the existential hysteria over the exopolitics discipline.

Special note should go to Robert Hastings, author of UFOs and Nukes, who excels in hysterical overreaction when it comes to the use of sources he declares unreliable. David Biedny and Gene Steinberg, hosts of Paracast Radio have consistently shown an astounding lack of intellectual honesty in declaring which sources or witnesses they find reliable or not.

For example, they had image expert Jim Dilettoso appear as guest who promptly revealed that 40 of the earliest Billy Meier photos were real, and that models were then created for hoaxed photos for comparative purposes. Totally ignoring this very important information, Biedny and Steinberg go on to declare that the Billy Meier photos are fraudulent based on their analysis of later hoaxed photos.

Finally, small mention should also be made of retired Air Force Captain Robert Salas who in a moment of poor judgment deigned to join the existential hysteria created by Hastings, Biedny and Steinberg, and penned an article attacking exopolitics pioneers who had the temerity to support his work while also supporting those he deems unreliable.

In conclusion, getting to the truth of the UFO issue and the extraterrestrial hypothesis is filled with many difficulties and challenges which in no small part is due to a five decades long psychological warfare program.

Beware the artificial dichotomies created by the new breed of UFOlogical gatekeepers who deign to declare from on high which sources are reliable and unreliable based on framing the UFO issue as a strict scientific problem.

The truth of the extraterrestrial hypothesis will be found by a more nuanced approach that rightfully considers its political and national security aspects.

Michael Salla Exopolitics Summit