Earth (2 page)

In November 2012, several international news outlets reported numerous sightings of UFOs by Indian Army troops in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir. And between August 1 and October 15 that year, an Indo-Tibetan border police force unit deployed in Thakung, near the Pangong Tso Lake, reported over a hundred sightings of “unidentified luminous objects” (ULOs). Apparently neither the Indian Army, the Indian Space Research Organization, the Defence Research Development Organization, nor the National Technical Research Organization were able to identify these objects. By day and night, the “yellow spheres” were seen to rise up on the horizon from the Chinese side of the border, gliding across the skies for three to four hours before disappearing. “Something is clearly wrong if our combined scientific resources can't explain the phenomena,” said a senior Army official in Delhi. “These objects may be a crude psychological operation put forth by the Chinese or sophisticated probes to gauge India's defense preparedness in Ladakh.” However, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and Chinese drones, at least, were ruled out.
18
To me, the most likely explanation could be the ubiquitous “Chinese lanterns,” though their candle-powered flight duration is normally a great deal shorter than is described in the above report.

According to
Pravda
(
Пр
a
b
д
a—“Truth”), half of the entire Chinese population believes in UFOs.
19
And hundreds, possibly thousands, of Chinese scientists are involved in research. Sun Shili, a former foreign minister official and chairman of the Beijing UFO Research Society, firmly believes extraterrestrials are living among us.
20
I share that view. In common with thousands of people around the world, I have had personal experiences, described herein.

In 2011, Nick Pope openly admitted to having been part of an official U.K. policy to ridicule UFO reports, in commenting on the release by the MoD in August of yet another huge batch of previously classified (mostly at a low grade) UFO-related reports, typically from members of the public, totaling about nine thousand pages covering the period from 1985 to 2007.
During that period (1991–94), Nick was in charge of the official MoD unit. “What's abundantly clear from these files is that while in public we were desperately pushing the line that this was of no defense interest,” he told the
Huffington Post
, “we couldn't say ‘There's something in our air space; pilots see them; they're tracked on radar; sometimes we scramble jets to chase these things, but we can't catch them.' This would be an admission that we'd lost control of our own air space, and such an admission would be untenable….

“To really achieve our policy of downplaying the UFO phenomenon, we would use a combination of ‘spin and dirty tricks.' We used terms like ‘UFO buffs' and ‘UFO spotters'—terms that mean these people are nutjobs. In other words, we were implying that this is just a very somewhat quaint hobby that people have, as opposed to a serious research interest…. Another trick would be deliberately using phrases like ‘little green men.' We were trying to do two things: either to kill any media story on the subject, or, if a media story ran, ensure that it ran in such a way that it would make the subject seem ridiculous and that it would make people who were interested in this seem ridiculous.”

Nick Pope further admits that he may have been the one who drafted actual MoD statements contributing to the ridicule policy. “If it was my words, then I apologize, I'm very sorry for that,” he confessed. “I believe in open government and freedom of information. I believe that the UFO phenomenon does raise important defence, national security, and air safety issues, and if I helped kill any initiative on that, I'm deeply sorry….”
21

As Stephen Bassett, director of Paradigm Research Group, quips: “It's not just about lights in the sky: it's about lies on the ground.”

In recent years, by way of demeaning the subject, the media frequently belittles those involved in UFO research as “conspiracy theorists.” But conspiracies there are, and researchers are justified in theorizing thereon.

In 2012, Nick Pope commented publicly on an extraordinary photo of a UFO received at the MoD. “The saga began on 4 August 1990 when two members of the public out walking in the vicinity of Calvine, near Pitlochry, in Scotland, sighted a massive, diamond-shaped, metallic UFO. The UFO was virtually stationary and hovered silently for what the witnesses believe was several minutes, before accelerating away vertically at massive
speed. During the sighting, a military aircraft, believed to be a Harrier, was seen, but it wasn't clear if it was escorting the craft, attempting to intercept it, or whether the pilot was ever aware of it at all.

“A number of color photographs were taken and passed to the
Scottish Daily Record
, who in turn contacted the MoD, probably because they were seeking a comment for the story. It's not clear what happened next, because I didn't join the MoD's UFO project until 1991 and this investigation was handled by my predecessor. It seems that, somehow, MoD managed to persuade the reporter to part with not just the photos, but the negatives.

“The photos were then sent to the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) who then sent them on to imagery analysis at JARIC (Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre). Yet at the time, MoD hadn't even publicly acknowledged that there was any intelligence interest in UFOs at all. The whole situation was positively Orwellian. On the one hand, our line to Parliament, the media, and the public was that UFOs were of ‘no defence significance.' We implied and sometimes stated that we didn't ‘investigate' UFOs, but merely ‘examined sightings to see if anything reported was of any defence interest'—as if the two were somehow different!

“So why the MoD interest and secrecy? Though we'd never say so publicly, the bottom line was that we wanted the technology…. I first came across this story in 1991, when I joined the UFO project. A poster-sized enlargement of the best photo was prominently displayed on the office wall [and] I asked my DIS opposite number about the image. I was told that the official assessment was that the photos were real and the craft had a diameter of around 25 meters (over 80 feet). At one particularly surreal briefing on the UFO phenomenon, my DIS opposite number indicated the photo and pointed his finger to the right: ‘It's not the Americans,' he said before pointing to the left and saying ‘and it's not the Russians.' There was a pause, before he concluded ‘and that only leaves….'—his voice trailed off and he didn't complete the sentence, but his finger was pointing directly upwards….

“What happened next? The suspicion was that someone had shredded the photo, but whatever the truth of the matter, it was never seen again…. Despite the various media interviews that I did on this story, and associated public appeals, the witnesses have never come forward. Neither has anyone at
the
Scottish Daily Record
(or any other Scottish newspaper) come forward to say that they worked on this story back in 1990…. In their desperation to acquire the photos/negatives (and maybe kill the story), maybe DIS staff somehow tricked the journalist into handing over all the material and never gave it back. If the journalist hadn't briefed the editor, he may have stayed silent out of embarrassment. Similarly, maybe the witnesses were told that it would be better if they didn't discuss what they'd seen and took this as a threat….

“I don't know if the photos or negatives will ever turn up, but I certainly hope they do. Because whatever people's views on UFOs, these are the photos that changed the minds of numerous skeptical civil servants, military personnel, and intelligence specialists. I should know. I was one of them.”
22

The Ministry of Defence claims that it no longer investigates UFO reports.

Interestingly, on November 5, 2012, a “diamond-shaped” UFO in Pitlochry was filmed several times on video and mobile phone by Adrian Musat, a Romanian chef. At 07:30, while looking out of the window of his flat, he spotted the object hovering above Clunie Wood. “I saw this light pulsing about a mile away,” he told a reporter. “It wasn't on the ground but floating above the trees and moving left to right, [then forty minutes later] just disappeared, as if it ‘switched off.'”

Later that day, at around 17:00, Musat saw the object again. “For about twenty-five minutes I saw a small red cloud above the object. All the other clouds were moving across the sky, but this one stayed above the object all the time. It stayed until after 6
p.m.
It didn't make any noise.” He described the craft as being around five meters wide and changing color.

“I'm a little skeptical on this one,” commented Nick Pope. “Many diamond-shaped UFOs turn out to be caused by a camera effect. When people zoom in on a bright light source, the iris opening creates a diamond-shaped image which is effectively superimposed on to the light.”
23
Correct—in some cases. But the fact remains that an unknown craft was seen on two occasions that day by several witnesses. And some of the images clearly reveal a structured craft.

“Belief in the alien phenomenon is now more widespread than ever, with many wondering how we and our governments would react to the news that aliens existed,” declared Nick in October 2012, during his promotion of a
new video game. He also maintains that figures show that twenty percent of the U.K. believe UFOs have landed.
24

It is unfortunate that the acronym “UFO” has become synonymous with “alien spacecraft.” Hence, the commonly asked question “Do you believe in UFOs?” is redundant in this context. A UFO is an “unidentified flying object” per se. It
may
be an alien craft, but in the vast majority of cases—90% or more—it turns out to be nothing of the sort. Conventional aircraft (and/or their landing lights), balloons, planets (such as Venus), stars and satellites, the International Space Station, and so on account for many observations. And in recent years, a proliferation of “Chinese lanterns” is responsible for the large percentage of sightings appearing in the local and national newspaper reports I regularly receive from my press-cutting agency and other sources. I should also mention here the presence of “USOs”—unidentified submergible objects—which continue to be reported in our seas.
25

This book examines in-depth claims that the United States in particular, and some other countries, including the U.K., have developed advanced spacecraft, thanks partly to the recovery of a number of crashed alien vehicles and, more comprehensively, an alien liaison program. I also feature numerous reports of encounters and contacts with aliens of varying types, many of them published here for the first time. As will become evident, some of these aliens have our best interests at heart. Others do not. We are not the only ones with a vested interest in Earth.

Earth: An Alien Enterprise
is dedicated to Professor Stefano Breccia, who sadly died prematurely in March 2012. One of the most remarkable men I have ever met, Stefano magnanimously provided me with an abundance of information relating to the “Amicizia” group of aliens and those humans collaborating with them, described herein. His extraordinary acumen has widened my horizons, as no other, to the complex panoramas of this multi-faceted subject….

Environmental Survey

I
t was a late afternoon in the summer of 1932. A mile and a half east of
Killdeer, North Dakota, two farm boys, twelve-year-old Leo Dworshak and his younger brother Mike, had finished their chores for the day and were exploring a grassy hilltop near the farm. It was little Mike who first spotted a strange object in the valley below.

“It was a huge, round thing,” Leo recounts in his remarkable book,
UFOs Are With Us—Take My Word
.
1
“We just stood there gaping at it and began excitedly discussing what it was doing down there and trying our best to understand just what we were seeing. It was silvery, and although it was probably more than half a mile away, we could tell it was certainly as big as our barn, maybe even bigger. It appeared to be perfectly round [and] I counted many different colors of light on it that came from a band around the edge.

“I thought it must be a machine because it was rotating in a complicated way. The flashing colored lights formed an outer shell, like a band or belt that went completely around it at the widest point and was turning one way. The inner shell seemed to be standing still or perhaps turning the other way…. It was totally silent and produced no cloud of exhaust fumes or smoke.

“We stood there on the hilltop for some time, just watching that incred
ible machine…. Then we decided to try to get closer for a better look. As we began to walk downhill toward the machine, we were still more amazed to find our way blocked by an invisible force that would not let us get any closer. It was as if we were bumping up against an invisible fence or wall. We encountered that invisible ‘something' again and again, sliding to one side and the other against its unyielding surface. Finally we gave up our efforts to approach it and just sat on the hillside next to the barrier, watching the machine and debating the situation….”

The boys renewed their efforts to penetrate the invisible barrier by approaching it from different directions. To no avail. “Finally we just sat back down and watched,” Leo continued.

“Before too long, we saw the curious rotation slow and eventually stop, and the colorful lights stopped blinking at the edge of the machine. We also noticed that the outer shell now had an opening [that] had somehow opened up in the side of the machine. Out of it came three people who walked down a sort of ramp that, just as miraculously, sprouted out of the side of the machine. They stood in the dry weeds beside their enormous, silvery machine….

“We watched the distant figures very closely and saw that they were all wearing the same type and color of suit or coverall. These people walked only a short distance from the machine and moved around near it…. They finally returned to the machine and closed the door, and the ramp just went away again.”

The boys were anxious to return to their farmhouse near Kildeer, a long walk away, in time for dinner. They refrained from telling the rest of the family what had happened. The next day, they hiked directly back to the hillside, but the huge machine was nowhere to be seen, nor did they see it again until two weeks later.

“It was mid-afternoon as we stood in the same valley, looking at the ground, and puzzling about how there was no sign that anyone had even walked here,” wrote Leo. “I cannot explain why, but our senses somehow told us to look up. There, high in the sky and almost straight above us, we saw the machine. It was flying! It was an airship! We quickly moved back up the hillside and out of the way behind some bushes. The airship we had spotted was now slowly nearing the valley floor. It was clearly coming in
for a landing.

“We could sense a strange stillness that grew about us. This stillness gave us the first hint I can remember of a feeling that these people could stop all movement around them at any given time…. I am certain we were the only witnesses to the ship's landing. The appearance of the ship was the same as we remembered from our first sighting—a mirror-like exterior with a central rotating band that emitted colored lights. When the ship came to rest, the rotating band slowed to a stop, and the lights went out as before.”

Once the craft had landed—on four legs with pads at the end of each—the boys were again prevented by the mysterious invisible force from approaching. “We noticed nothing was moving, not a blade of grass or the branches on the bushes,” Leo continued. “While we sat by the barrier and watched this huge machine, the strange door started to open again….

“A total of six men emerged from the door and walked down the ramp. They were dressed in a different kind of uniform than when we first saw them, but we were somehow certain they were the same men as we saw before. We were close enough to see that they now wore a shirt-slack type of clothing that looked quite comfortable. We wished we had such fine clothes, instead of our ragged overalls and patched cotton shirts.

“The men began doing something that looked peculiar. We couldn't figure out what they were up to. All six men would repeatedly reach down to the ground and apparently pick up something from the earth. Whether or not they took it with them, we could not tell. I don't know why, but I was convinced they could see us….”

The boys stayed for an hour or so but, as before, needed to return home for supper. “Mike and I were not happy about leaving, but the length of the shadows and the position of the sun told us our time that day was up….”

Leo and Mike decided to tell their parents. “Mom and Dad listened patiently to our excited story,” explained Leo. “They agreed with us that something like this machine, this airship, could exist, but advised us just to forget about everything we had told them. We were very, very disappointed at their response to what was for us the most exciting experience of our lives.”

The next day, Leo and Mike went into Killdeer, anxious to discuss the matter with their friend Mr. Brooks (described for me by Leo's friend Barry Potter as “an educated, well-traveled man—Killdeer's cosmopolitan intellectual”),
who operated the grain elevator and who they thought might be able to explain what they'd seen. “One of our theories about the machine,” said Leo, “was that it was a new government plan for killing the hordes of grasshoppers that were eating our crops. We thought these people might be part of a government project to spray the countryside with DDT, a new chemical that was supposed to kill troublesome insects like grasshoppers and mosquitoes.” (DDT, per se, was not introduced until 1939. However, as Barry explained to me, Leo had described spray units driving through Killdeer around this time, fogging the neighborhoods with what he referred to as DDT.)

“Boys, I don't think you are crazy,” said Mr. Brooks. “I saw one of those things flying through the air without a sound. It was definitely some kind of airship. What I saw fits right in with what you have seen.” He was mystified, however, that the machine made no sound, such as produced by Zeppelins, for example.

“In those days, people did not even mention things like what we had seen,” Leo explained. “The talk was about the drought and the depression and the government and local doings. Many families went broke in those times and gave up, auctioning the farm to pay the bills and then leaving town. That is part of the reason Mike and I were not afraid when we first saw the ship and the men. I felt that they would do us no harm and might, in some way, help us out. I don't know why I felt like that, but I was convinced we were safe with them….”

Although the boys visited the site repeatedly, it was weeks before they had another encounter. “One afternoon,” Leo recounted, “our persistence was rewarded and we again watched the ship come in for a landing. This time, we were about 800 feet from the spaceship when we encountered their invisible wall, the closest we had been to them yet. I still figured there must be some way we could get closer, and somehow get to talk to these men. We waved and hollered, but to no avail.”

Many return trips proved uneventful, though others brought insights about the strangers. The boys would check the actual landing area for signs of the landed machine, but found no markings of any kind. “The earth was completely undisturbed,” observed Leo. “I thought it was mighty strange that there was no sign of any heavy object having landed there [and that]
surely those four mighty prongs beneath the ship would have left some holes in the ground.”

One afternoon the boys watched a jackrabbit bounce off the invisible “force field.” “The rabbit [then] nuzzled up against the ‘wall' with what must have been a sore nose, moved along it one way and the other, and then just hopped off….

“We got a peaceful feeling from [the men]. Their movements near the ship were peaceful and purposeful. I got the feeling they probably were making a survey of some kind. We always thought of them as men, people, humans like us…. Neither of us could quite accept the fact that these people might be from a very distant planet, yet both of us were able to sit there and think about the possibility.”

Leo describes the departure of the spaceship. “There was no sound, but we could distinctly feel the earth vibrating,” he explained. “This vibration continued for long moments until we wondered what was going to happen. Then we heard a slight hum, and the vibration ended. It was the first time I ever heard anything like a mechanical sound associated with the ship. The outer shell of the ship started turning, rotating faster and faster with perfect smoothness. Then it suddenly started rising….

“Those four tremendous prongs, which were maybe four feet by eight feet, began receding into the body of this flying machine. Again the earth started vibrating and we heard this slight hum. It was not loud enough to draw attention for any distance at all. Then the ship started lifting higher, going straight up. A tremendous amount of colored light flashed out from the ship. It kept going straight up. The speed was so great that when it got about ten or fifteen feet off the ground, it completely vanished….”

“It is significant,” Barry pointed out to me, “that although the ship was literally as big as a barn, it did not exert enough force on the earth to leave ‘footprints.' The four-foot

eight-foot prongs would imply four contact points with earth, each the size of two coffins side by side. Perhaps the prongs served an electrical grounding function rather than providing mainly structural support. Vibration ended when the prongs left the earth.”
2

Leo wished they could have taken photographs, but the cost of a camera, films, and processing was beyond most adults in those difficult times. Leo also expressed doubt that the unusual men would want any photographs
taken. Attempts to obtain proof were further stalled when the boys failed to persuade some of their playmates to accompany them on their trips.

Another landing occurred toward the end of August 1932. On this occasion the brothers were a little closer than before. “As the ship approached the ground, we found ourselves immersed in the invisible field of force. It came over us like a flood of water that got thicker and thicker as the ship dropped lower and lower until we could not move. Always before, we couldn't get any closer. Now we couldn't get out. We were caught inside the shell of force and were unable to free ourselves, no matter how hard we tried….

“We were just sitting on the ground and watched the door open and the men appear again. The door was so different from any doors we had ever seen, and it opened in such a very unusual way, I have no words to describe it. Anything capable of traveling at such a great speed, I reasoned, would have to be very complex…. We thought if we could get close enough to them, we might be able to talk with them. I knew this wouldn't be easy and I was a little scared to try it … but they held us in their forces. We could not get any closer to them [so] we just sat there keeping an eye on that ship. They had come here for some other reason than just advertising.

“Here we were, trapped maybe two or three hundred feet from the ship, fighting our feelings of panic. I wish I could adequately convey the way we were rapidly alternating from feelings of fear to safety, from doubt to curiosity, from wonderment to speculation. The great intensity of the experience is very memorable to this day…. They gave us the feeling that they were very interested in what was happening with the plants and creatures in the countryside. These impressions were entering our minds just like our own thoughts.”

Three days later, on August 28, at around eight in the evening, the craft returned to the valley. “As we approached the ship, moving carefully down the brushy, uneven hillside, we could see them moving about, strangely illuminated in the growing shadows. We again found ourselves blocked by that invisible force, but we were now far closer than we'd ever been. By this time, we had concluded the barrier was like a magnetic force that affected people and animals instead of iron and steel….

“Six men were outside the craft, all about the same build and size,
between five and six feet tall, wearing a similar light coverall or jumpsuit. They appeared to be smooth-faced, with no sign of a beard or moustache. The men near the ship often bent down and touched the ground. From a distance of no more than forty feet, Mike began waving and yelling at them and shaking the bushes to attract their attention, which resulted in the invisible force-field preventing any further approach.”

Although convinced the craft was an airship of some kind, at no point did Leo and Mike think the operators were from another planet. “I had to agree with Mike that I didn't think they were Americans,” said Leo. “Maybe they were Canadians, though most of the Canadians we had seen looked like ordinary North Dakota Americans to us.” However, once the ship had taken off with the familiar spectacular display of brilliant colored lights, and the boys were walking home under the stars, having been released from the force-field, they began to wonder what place the travelers called home.