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Authors: Timothy Good

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Prime Minister Medvedev

On December 7, 2012, Russian Prime Minister (former President) Dmitry Medvedev gave a television interview to five reporters, following which he continued responding to the reporters, making some off-air comments—
supposedly without being aware that his microphone was still on. At one point he was asked if “the president is handed secret files on aliens when he receives the briefcase needed to activate Russia's nuclear arsenal?”

Medvedev responded: “Along with the briefcase with nuclear codes, the president of the country is given a special ‘top secret' folder. This folder in its entirety contains information about aliens who visited our planet…. Along with this, you are given a report of the absolutely secret special service that exercises control over aliens on the territory of our country…. More detailed information on this topic, you can get from a well-known movie called
Men in Black.
… I will not tell you how many of them are among us because it may cause panic.”

None of the television stations that interviewed Mr. Medvedev broadcast the off-air comments, but they were delivered to Reuters as a pool signal and some were shown on YouTube. Was it all a joke? The London
Telegraph
claimed that, in response to the question, Medvedev had “answered playfully.”
41
In fact, his demeanour remained serious.

Russian television channels were passing the blame after the unofficial footage was leaked, according to the
Moscow Times
.
42
Readers can be forgiven for assuming that the prime minister was referring to the latest American
Men in Black
science-fiction film. A more accurate translation of what Medvedev actually said (to journalist Marianna Maksimovskaya, I learned from Nikolay Lebedev, a leading researcher) is: “You can receive more detailed information having watched the documentary film of the same name.” Among other aspects, this excellent Russian documentary,
The Secret about Men in Black,
examines testimony that extraterrestrial bases have been established on Earth, and that some are in restricted U.S. military areas with the full knowledge of the Pentagon.

The Rockefeller Initiative

It is not widely known that Laurance S. Rockefeller, the billionaire philanthropist (1910–2004), took a serious interest in aviation and, in later life, the UFO/alien subject, funding a number of projects relating thereto. As Antonio Huneeus, the preeminent researcher, explains: “This has come to be known as the Rockefeller Initiative, since in some cases they went beyond funding and included an actual lobbying effort to the Clinton
White House, undertaken by Rockefeller himself and his lawyer Henry Diamond, in the mid-1990s.”

Antonio and I were among those involved in one of these projects, resulting in
Unidentified Flying Objects Briefing Document: The Best Available Evidence
, a report authored by the distinguished American aviation journalist Don Berliner, a long-time student of the subject, and Antonio Huneeus.
43
The project was co-ordinated by Marie Galbraith, wife of investment banker Evan Galbraith, who served as U.S. Ambassador to France during the Reagan administration. I never met Rockefeller, but I liaised with Madame Galbraith in London on the project. One thousand copies of the original edition were printed and distributed to selected VIPs in the U.S. and abroad, including President Clinton.

“Unfortunately,” Antonio points out, “the success and impact of the UFO Briefing Document was limited in real political terms. Most people and the press seemed far more interested in the fact that Rockefeller had sponsored it and was interested in UFOs than with the contents of the report and its political, military, and scientific implications. One significant exception was France. Because of Marie Galbraith's extensive social and political connections from the time she had lived in Paris as the American ambassador's wife, many copies were distributed there, including President Jacques Chirac and CNES [National Center for Space Studies]. The Briefing Document eventually became the model for a similar report prepared by a number of former high-ranking French military and intelligence officers and scientists, who formed a study group called COMETA (Committee for In-Depth Studies) that led to the release of their own report,
UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For?

COMETA stressed its concern with the continuing high level of secrecy surrounding the subject. “For the editors of the book,” explained the authors, “this secrecy is essentially military in origin: the nation that is first to produce the exceptional characteristics of UFOs will dominate the world. The secrecy was justified during the Cold War, but it is no longer justified now, given the scientific and technical breakthroughs useful to humanity that one can expect [to obtain] from the study of UFOs.”
44
The knowledgeable French authors, however, sidestepped
mentioning their own government's highly classified investigations into the subject.

In February 1996, Laurance Rockefeller sent a copy of the Briefing Document to Dr. John H. Gibbons, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology. In his covering letter (see p. 408), released under the Freedom of Information Act—together with many other documents relating to the Rockefeller UFO Initiative—Rockefeller wrote:

“… The public interest in UFOs and extraterrestrial intelligence obviously remains very high as evidenced by the recent cover story in
Time
magazine [and] the many television programs including one this week…. I sponsored this report because it seemed useful to bring together the most credible evidence about UFO sightings…. While I do not necessarily agree with every finding and conclusion, I do believe that the evidence presented indicates that this subject merits serious scientific study. Toward that end, I hope that our government, other governments, and the United Nations will cooperate in making any information they may have available….”
45

Rockefeller's comment about the subject meriting serious scientific study seems to indicate his unawareness of the fact that numerous scientists worldwide have been studying and dealing with the subject since the 1940s. In the U.S., very high security clearances are required for those involved in the Special Access Programs (SAPs) relating to the matter. As science journalist Terry Hansen points out in his masterly book,
The Missing Times: News Media Complicity in the UFO Cover-up
, “the findings of private science are not available to those who don't have the necessary security clearances [and] the Pentagon has an incentive to ensure that the knowledge acquired by private science is not independently discovered by public science.”
46
In China, numerous scientists are likewise involved. However, academic freedom is claimed to prevail. In 1985, for instance, at a scientific conference on UFOs held in Darlian, some forty papers were presented.
47
And by 1992, the China UFO Research Association, affiliated with the China Association for Science and Technology, had 4,600 full members as well as 40,000 research associates, mostly scientists and engineers.
48

Religious Ramifications

In
A.D. After Disclosure
, Richard Dolan and Bryce Zabel explore the possible
ramifications arising from hypothesized official disclosure of the alien situation. They cover a lot of ground—including the religious aspects. In this respect, the Vatican seems more open-minded than most, some of its astronomers publicly expressing their opinion that life is widespread throughout the cosmos. Citing Paola Harris,
49
Dolan and Zabel report for example that the late Monsignor Corrado Balducci, a long-time friend of Pope John Paul II, stated his conviction in the reality of alien life on many occasions, and more than once attested to his belief that contact between humans and extraterrestrials was real.
50

Dolan and Zabel also cite a 1994 survey by Victoria Alexander of clergy from Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish congregations. One of the questions asked was if any hypothetical official confirmation of the discovery of an advanced, technologically superior extraterrestrial civilization would have severe negative effects on the country's moral, social, and religious foundations. “In sharp contrast to the ‘conventional wisdom' that religion would collapse,” Victoria writes in her book
Extraterrestrial Life and Religion
, “ministers surveyed do not feel their faith and the faith of their congregation would be threatened.” A 2002 Roper Poll asked a similar question, and received a similar response. “Not only was the answer overwhelmingly ‘no,' it actually rose with age,” Dolan and Zabel report.
51

But what if these respondents had been made aware of the negative aspects of the alien scenario such as abductions, as opposed to a naïve set of beliefs based perhaps on films such as
E.T.—The Extraterrestria
l
? Reaction to any official disclosure will surely be predicated on what we are told—which is unlikely to reflect the truth.

Earlier I cited the briefing of President Carter on the alien problem, attended by Harvey Jack McGeorge II, among others. “According to McGeorge,” a friend of his reveals, “the two main reasons the government is withholding the truth about UFOs are the religious question, and the fact that we do not have control of the situation. ‘They' are in charge. According to McGeorge, if the Bible said that God created the Heaven and Earth, then what the hell do the aliens believe in? The thing that the aliens fear the most is that Man would find out that we are not the creation of an
omnipotent supreme being, but possibly the creation of these aliens themselves—that we are a genetic experiment. And they also fear greatly that religion, as a controlling factor on behavior in the world—if the truth was known—that that controlling factor would immediately be destroyed and there might be anarchy. The second reason—that we are not in control—I think is pretty obvious.”
52

But times are changing. In 2008, for example, Pope Benedict XVI let it be known that there is no conflict between believing in God and in the possibility of “extraterrestrial brothers” perhaps more evolved than humans. Journalist Nick Pisa reported that the papal ruling came from Father José Funes, a Jesuit then in charge of the Vatican's Observatory and an expert on galaxies. In an interview with the Vatican's official newspaper, Funes stated (in part) as follows:

“Astronomers believe that the universe is formed of hundreds of millions of galaxies and in these are hundreds of millions of stars. Many of these or all of them could contain planets. So how can we exclude that developed life cannot be elsewhere? It's possible to believe in God and extra-terrestrials without bringing into question our own faith….”
53

Papal Connections

On May 31, 1963, George Adamski had a private audience at the Vatican with the ailing Pope John XXIII, to deliver an important package he said had been given him by one of his alien contacts (probably Orthon). Prior to entering the Vatican, he was accompanied by Lou Zinsstag and May Morlet, his Swiss and Belgian representatives respectively. “I expected him to be admitted through the well-known gate where the Swiss Guards were posted,” Lou reported. “Yet, without any hesitation, he walked to the left of the Dome where I now noticed a high wooden entrance gate behind the open doorway, with a small built-in door. The door was partly opened and a man was standing inside it, gesturing discreetly to George. On his chest I noticed some kind of material in white, green, and red…. May and I returned an hour later.

“There was George already, grinning like a monkey [with] his eyes shining like black topazes. ‘We have done it,' he said. ‘I was received by the Pope. He gave me his blessing and I gave him the message.' When later in
the day we lunched with George, he told us that the Pope was not lying in the room above St. Peter's Square, as the people had been told, but that his bedroom faced the most beautiful part of the Vatican garden. And he added confidentially, ‘If you ask me, the Pope is hardly a dying man…. They haven't yet tried to operate on him, but I'm sure that's what they will do soon.' George added that the Pope even had rosy cheeks, and had said that he did not feel so bad.

“George had been helped on with a kind of cassock over his suit before he entered the bedroom. The Pope gave him a nice smile and said: ‘I have been expecting you.' When George handed him the sealed package from Copenhagen, he said—also in English: ‘My son, this is what I have been waiting for.' He then spoke to his visitor in a very low and soft voice for a few minutes. Adamski had to bend his head down close to the Pope's, whose last words were: ‘My son, don't worry, we will make it.' After receiving the Papal blessing, Adamski was ushered out.”

Although only in the preliminary stages of cancer, the Pope died two days later.

There is ample evidence that this meeting did take place, such as the gold medallion given to Adamski during the audience, with the Pope's head in profile thereon, dated May 31, 1963. Following the meeting, Adamski showed the medallion to Lou and May, and it was ascertained from banks in Rome that the ecumenical coin had not been available officially until two weeks later. Also of relevance was the small plastic wallet in which the coin was wrapped. “It bore the most singular inscription I have ever seen, protected by a transparent cover,” said Lou. “The written characters were of a very unusual kind; certainly neither Roman nor Gothic, nor were they Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, or Hebrew.”
54

According to Major Petersen, Adamski had had another audience with Pope John XXIII. In confidential talks with Petersen during his trip to Europe in 1959, Adamski revealed that he had to attend an important meeting at the Vatican. “Are you to meet with the Pope?” asked Petersen.

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