Larry Warren's story is replete with all the elements of zaniness: underground bases, Air Force officials in communication with aliens, men in black with dark sedans carrying New York plates (in England), lights in the sky, pagans in the woods, you name it. Besides all the bells-and-whistles, one government official admitted that the spacecraft witnessed by Larry Warren, and by scores of military officials, had somehow penetrated hardened nuclear missile bunkers and "adversely affected the ordinance." Don't you love militarese? "...Adversely affected the ordinance..."

Col. Corso's offering notwithstanding, Larry Warren and Peter Robbins' contribution, Left at Eastgate, remains the most important UFO book to appear in 1997. Unlike Corso's memoir of back-engineering the relics of Roswell, this book is fully documented.

The essence of this book is the process of investigation carried out by Warren's coauthor, Peter Robbins, as he tried to verify and analyze the evidence. I have respected Peter's work on UFOs for years, ever since I read his articles on "Wilhelm Reich and UFOs" when he gathered the published sightings, mostly multiple-witness or military incidents, those that the government affirmed as unexplained ever since the fifties. In those articles, Robbins showed that what Reich reported about UFOs was very similar to what everybody else was seeing, and reporting to the Air Force. Some of us feel that the Air Force had and has an interest in Reich's ideas about UFOs, energy and weather. It's not surprising, then, that Robbins found several people who attested to the use of Reich cloudbusters at Bentwaters AFB.

Left at Eastgate reveals the National Security Agency (NSA) as the main governmental entity behind the UFO cover-up, or, if you prefer, disinformation/collective fantasy/fairy tale. Peter Robbins soon found himself under the NSA's open scrutiny and covert harassment when he got deeper into the research. He also found himself a up-close and personal witness to strange doings at Bentwaters, and finally was forced to struggle with the fact that he was no longer an "objective observer." One of the most memorable passages of the book is the transcript of an audio tape of Larry and Peter, on a return visit to the site many years later, as they see and describe what appear to be UFOs buzzing around near Bentwaters. Peter just falls apart: the composed and objective UFO researcher gets his chance at direct observation and the experience leaves him speechless and gibbering.

Another big part of the book is the discussion of what happens to UFO witnesses who come forward and make public what they've seen, at great personal cost in terms of friends, job, and family. It's a stinging indictment of the ufological community and the "official" UFO interest groups, and you'll be wondering why anybody would bother to come forward at all.

Ten years in the making, Left at East Gate, an all-too-rare document in the lore of the alien visitation, has already gone through its first printing run.

Interview With Peter Robbins, coauthor of Left at East Gate
Conducted at Greensprings, August 10th, 1997

Q: Why do you consider the Bentwaters case more significant than the Roswell Case? What are the comparisons and what makes this a more clear case of alien contact?

A: Well, for starters, although I'm as convinced as most people are, that Roswell was a real event, there was indeed a crash of an unknown craft and that it was covered up, but as we sit here right now, Jim, it's fifty years since it happened. The principals involved are all deceased. All the witnesses are gone. The anecdotal material is compelling, but not definitive. The paper trail is not just cold, it's vaporized. The interference that's been run has been totally effective. And in a funny way, much like a bullfighter just moving the energy right past himself, the establishment has managed to so deeply acculturate "Roswell" as to negate its power and impact. It's part of American culture right now.

The Bentwaters/Woodbridge incident happened just over sixteen years ago. All the principals are still alive. There is a paper trail, a fair amount of which we were able to follow up and research for the book. There are multiple witnesses that have come forward with full or partial accounts. There are two new ones who have come forward since the book has come out, and four new civilians witnesses that I've spoken with in England since then as well. It is supported by physical evidence of several types that we've discussed. Ultimately the book is developed as the kind of case that you could bring to court. One of the greatest things that could come out of it is that it might serve as a springboard to re-convene a serious Congressional investigation; we haven't had one in decades. The book gives information about the case that could lead to subpoenas.

We're closer to the mark, there's less anecdotal and more real evidence that in the Roswell case. It's just waiting to happen.

Q: In the sense that this was much more of an international event than Roswell, how do you think the Bentwaters case affects US-British diplomatic relations?

A: In terms of the nuclear treaty violation, the children do not inherit the sins of the parents. This was a Carter-era incident, and it doesn't have anything to do with the current administration. Where there's a potential problem, it's with the National Security Agency. As we know, they are the most secret intelligence agency this nation has ever chartered. They actual charter is classified. Their mandate, their reason for being is classified. What their employees do is classified. The NSA's "black budget" is classified.

The way things stand now, with the break-up of the Cold War and the loss of the Soviet threat, a good deal of the NSA's perceived mandate has evaporated. That leaves them with a problem. They are still in England, sitting on several billion dollars worth of sophisticated listening posts, sharing certain facilities with British Telecom, and monitoring every bit of communication they'd like. There is no Congressional oversight, no British oversight. The President of the United States only knows what he is cleared to know about the NSA.

Q: Which wouldn't be much, right now...

A: Not much at all.... Sadly, this is emblematic of the fact that, our democracy - this amazing, flawed, wonderful 220-year-old experiment - is floundering. There is no question that secrecy has become the state religion of both countries. I am an optimist, but I don't know if it can be reversed. We the People are not in the equation.

Q: You document your experience of being surveilled and harassed by the NSA in your book. How did you move past that to continue the work. There's a lot of paranoia associated with this type of research; some people even get paranoid just buying a book about it. What resources did you draw upon, what changes did you go through, to push forward?

A: Boy, that's a good question. The changes gone through were manifest. I understood, as it started to hit me how deeply involved I had gotten myself, that I had free choice here. I could walk away from the project, and in fact, I did for quite a number of months in 1988. But a combination of things fused my resolve and made me to some degree just as headstrong as my coauthor, Larry Warren, who had a much more personal reason for being that way. One was, I mean, it's going to sound so corny, but I grew up to understand certain things about this country, and I love this country, and I hate certain aspects of what happens here and how it functions. Number one, I was irate when I realized that young American airmen had been, basically, mind-fucked, to keep them quiet. Number two, being a quarter-British by a quirk of fate, I do feel some real connection to that country, and there was a very real possibility of a nuclear tragedy over there, because of this incident. At the very least, we lied, we had a major amount of nuclear ordinance there in violation of our treaty with Her Majesty's Government, struck me as profoundly wrong. As readers will learn in the book, Larry had been approached several times by the NSA, and at the last time, we were already starting to work on the book, and he was informed that a fairly routine background check had been done on me, and they had no feeling one way or another, whether he should work with me. I was horrified, frightened and enraged that they had done this to me. It just all kind of melted down and I realized that my teeth were severely on this stick.

If there was an ultimate catalyst, it was seeing for myself with Larry, a multiple UFO incident, on location, on our first trip to England, about five miles from the original site at Bentwaters. I lost my objectivity at that point. My hope to write an objective non-fiction book just had the rug pulled out from under it. I was now going to have to deal with myself in the book as a character in the story. And it was about as comfortable to have to write about my own feelings and experiences as it was to pull my own teeth out with pliers. I was much more comfortable at the NY Public Library pulling out archival material.

I found a way to make it exciting again for myself, and realized that if I walked away from it, I don't know if I'd ever be able to take on another serious project without self-doubt. I don't advise this as a career track. It was reckless, it was imprudent economically, and it was isolating. I am a very social person and I'm lucky enough to have a lot of people in my life that I care about, and they really care about me. I isolated from a lot of them over the years. Some of them, irreconcilably, but most of them, thank God, not.

Q: There was a sense of anger against the forces that were working against the completion of this book...

A: It's a very compelling force to get the job done. It really is. You realize that the myth that a lot of us were taught, that society and culture and history is changed by mass movements - certainly that has truth to it, but individuals in their own ways do impact on great social change and perception shifts. What Larry and I accomplished in this book was beyond the wildest imaginings of either of us. The results are what we begin to see now as this book begins to move out American and English readers.

Q: One of the most interesting parts of the book was what happened to Larry Warren when he initially came forward with his story, and how he was treated by the UFO "experts" -not the debunkers, but the buffs. What happens to a person who comes forth with a story like that.

A: Folks don't get into UFO research because they earn a degree from a university in UFOs. There one of two reasons they become involved: either it intellectually captivates them, which is as good a reason as any, or because they have had a sighting or experience, or somebody close to them has. It's had a real impact on their lives. There are no rules or bylaws to investigate UFOs. Those of us in the field approach it in two different ways. Some join organizations, subscribe to newsletters, and work out of an organizational structure. Others of us do it independently. There's no such thing as total independence, of course. As the acknowledgments in our book attest, there is a long list of individuals who helped me as a researcher and helped us as we moved forward, and without whom this book would not be what it is. But it was not done in tandem with any organizational assistance.

I have a very solid code of ethics that governs my behavior as a person and my behavior as a researcher. I'm proud to say that in a decade's worth of investigation on this one case, I did not betray a single confidence or break a single agreement with one outstanding exception which is discussed at some length in the conclusion of the book. It has to do with character. If you approach this in a skeevy or squirrely way and you put the case first, above people, the fact is that you may get more information, you may produce a more compelling article or book, but somebody will suffer for it and it won't be you. Unfortunately there's a tendency among many researchers who think of people who come forward, and have the courage to say "this happened to me, I'm willing to talk to you about it, here's my story" - these people are a bit disposable.

There's sort of a double ethic here. Some researchers will run a facade of serious interest in witness, but on the other hand they categorize people, like, "here's another abductee, this one saw a deltoid over his house - how many have you got?" "Oh, yeah I got one of those too." They don't put the people first.

I put people first. The book could have been stronger, if I had been maybe a little bit less ethical. Boy, there were several episodes that came to me that I honestly I would have been willing to commit a felony if I could have gotten these people to allow me to publish what they said. One of them in particular absolutely took the top of my head off with an amazing aspect of this phenomenon at Bentwaters.

Now, when Larry got involved in this, we were in another time when MUFON, for example, and I can't say that it was a party-line, but the prevalent feeling, underscored by their administration, was that yes, UFOs are real, they come and they go, they're machines under intelligent control, but let us not really get into what is really going on inside of them. The beings who are piloting these machines, that's far out. Any organization can rigidify. I like Walt Andrews as a person, he seems like a nice man. As far as I know he's never said anything against me, and sent me a note or two of encouragement when I started. But I wonder why Larry Warren was cut off at the MUFON conference of 1987. You just can't censor someone because of their style, or their attitude, or that they're not a comfortable person to be around. That's what I sensed happening. MUFON has never addressed this case in the last ten years. They have not reviewed our book. I would rather have an honest, unflattering review than be ignored. It's not that way with the affiliate organizations. I was graciously received by many local groups and told to continue fighting the good fight. It hurt Larry and it made me angry to be treated this way. It makes no sense, because supposedly we're all in this for the same reason.

Organizations, if they're going to serve their members, need to be flexible and adjust as things move forward. As we know, organizations - and I'm not just aiming this at MUFON, for the record - are as capable of pathology and neurosis as individuals. If we lived in a perfect world, where an organization, be it a political party, a corporation, a study group or what have you, could self-perceive that it was going off its original principles and dreams, it should dissolve or reorganize. Unfortunately it hasn't worked like that. It's human nature.

Really, we have been ignored by UFO groups and publications in the United States, and it's a shame because it's an important book. Part of the reason is that we have had the audacity to co-write a book where the first time, a fully-authentic military witness who is articulate and intelligent, who knows how to write has written a very moving and solid account of what happened to him - and had the nerve to add extraneous material that's not strictly UFO stuff. It's the old Jack Webb line, "Just the facts, Ma'am." There are the facts, but it's also who this person was when the incident happened. We get to meet him growing up, have some idea of who he was as a kid, how he matured as a teenager, and we follow along after and see how this impacted on relationships. If anything, Jack Webb is me. I'm the neutral voice of information and I weave my way throughout his account. It's not until half-way through the book that you meet me as a character, so there are three voices in the book. It goes against all the rules of a so-called "UFO book." The fact is, we didn't write it for people who are UFO buffs. We hope everyone that's interested in UFO studies, researchers or folks who just want to learn more about it, gets our book and reads it. But we wrote it for your mother, my uncle, for the janitor, for the junior high school student, for the retired person. We wrote our book for people. Unfortunately, that has made it an "outsider" book in the field of UFO studies.

Q: Do you ever get the sense that people who are heavily invested in the UFO scene are somehow defending themselves against something, defending themselves against, I don't know what, maybe a touch with the cosmic? Or defending themselves against the reality of UFOs?

A: In specific areas of study, individuals use intellect as a defense either against feeling or against something that is undisclosed. First of all, if we get to the bottom of this mystery, and the is "an answer" it means Ufology is out of business. So there's a real problem with pursuing problems fully through to closure. Second, if you actually leave yourself open to what the hell this really represents, and your not a terribly armored person, you're in for a real emotional roller coaster. If what we're dealing with is real as I maintain it is, as millions of people do from either an intellectual point of view or an experiential one ..... number one, we're bugs. Tiny specks in the great cosmos of things. It makes you feel, especially if there's a little insecurity in you, it's enough to sweep you off the map. However, if you are in contact with the fact that we're all part of this extraordinary sweep of life, of creation, and I'm not mystifying here, just talking points of physics, it's terribly exciting and it's anxiety-provoking too. Dealing with your own anxiety without dumping it on someone else is crucial to this work, to do it properly.

Q: You work with Budd Hopkins, and it's my understanding that people like John Mack and Budd Hopkins are using some type of "orgone therapy" as far as I can tell, or something related to Reich's therapeutic technique. They elicit a kind of catharsis to work through repressed memories. Do you think there is a relationship the way Budd in particular handles abductees?

A: I can only speak about Budd Hopkins, since I only met John Mack a couple of times. No, I don't think there is any connection. Budd is not a therapist, and he's the first one to say so. His methodology is such that he's got a great intellect, he cares about people, he's tremendously curious and he's a remarkably ethical and straightforward regressive hypnotist who knows how to walk that line - and this is an area where I have heard him so irrationally and inappropriately criticized and I stake my reputation on what I'm about to say here as far as my perception of his work - what he does is explore in terms of interview a person who feels they may have had an abduction experience as we call it. If the person wants to pursue it on a deeper level - and many of these people come to him with complete memories of what happened and a majority have partial memories - I cannot imagine a method that is more above-board, un-mystical, with questions that do not lead the individual than Budd's. This is something I have seen violated over and over again among pseudo-therapists, irresponsible practitioners who have an agenda.

If there is something therapeutic in following through and exploring what may be a very frightening episode in your life, in an atmosphere where you feel safe and you are respected, there is a therapeutic by-product, but that is up to the individual taking more responsibility for their life, coming through the fear, realizing that no matter what has happened or what may happen again, it's not going to get in the way of them living their life, and moving forward. That for me is transformational, and inspiring. Again, the therapeutic result is a by-product. I would expect somebody at Dr. Mack's level of the game, a psychiatrist, to practice therapy as such, but Budd is a natural. He cares and he really does a lot of good for a lot of people. He doesn't take any money for it.

Q: I still have questions about this whole area of hypnotic regression and alien abductions, not so much skepticism but I'm curious about the idea of "repressed memory". When somebody has a traumatic experience there is a tendency to forget it. I believe that you had a similar experience when you were growing up.

A: I had a sighting when I was fourteen years old at a time when there was no peer acceptance of this at all. It was 1961, for goodness sakes. All I knew was if I talked about this I would be laughed out of my junior high school. All I wanted when I was fourteen was some cool clothes and to get my hands on a girl. My ticket was going to be cancelled if I said I saw flying saucers over the neighbor's house. Can it be that simple? Yes, sometimes it can.

I don't know how to say it, because tragically it is so rare in the culture that we've grown up in, I had a happy childhood. I have a wonderful family and we still spend time together. So for me, the most traumatic event in my childhood was this sighting. I know that's a cupcake compared to a lot of people's childhoods. It absolutely closed down that part of my thinking, which didn't re-emerge for almost fifteen years and made me feel like I was going a little crazy. Luckily I had somebody I could verify it with and that was my sister, who never forgot it. She didn't bring it up because she knew -and I had made it very clear at that time - that I didn't want to talk about it. It's funny, one day will lead to the next week, the next month and the next year and one stays in a habit and it never came up. Finally one day I brought it up without specifying it, and she gave me the details. It was exactly what I remembered and my life changed overnight. I started to research, which means quite simply "to look again."

Q: Was it just the conversation with your sister that caused you to remember or...

A: No, the conversation was a result of the memory. What I remembered, when I remembered it, I guess you could say that I was ready to remember it. If there was a catalyst, the only thing I've been able to come up with is at the time is that as a young painter, I had a loft in the City's Chinatown, where I lived for almost ten years and loved it, and the memory returned in February 1979. If you've ever been in any "Chinatown" or Chinese ghetto at New Year's, it is pretty wild. In New York it meant 48 hours of gunpowder, explosions, the smell of cordite in the air, and just as you were ready to go to sleep somebody would throw a giant 30-foot mat of firecrackers over the lamp post outside your window and light them and a thousand firecrackers would go off. I really hadn't slept very well in two days, to put it mildly. I don't know whether that opened me up or not, but that memory came back a day or two after Chinese New Years celebrations.

Q: Who were some of the influences, the writers you followed as you began your research into UFOs?

A: I was a guy in his late twenties beginning to make a career for himself as a painter, which was my dream. My degree was in painting and film history. At the time I was teaching painting at the School Of Visual Arts, my alma mater. I was very proud of that. My work was starting to sell; I was occasionally showing some work in Europe. When this reality caught up with me, and I realized that there was something more compelling than what I had dreamt of doing since I was a little kid, my career trolley jumped the track. It was not a good feeling. The very serious game of establishing myself as an artist in New York City lost a great deal of its meaning. I continued to work for the next few years but my work got very literal in that I was working with images of UFOs in many different materials and mediums. The heart had gone out of the fight.

As I continued the research, I realized that a tremendous amount of the literature was mystical nonsense, fairy tales, highly subjective material that had no means of verification. I longed for something nuts-and-bolts to hang my hat on.

I started to read some of the early, good authors, like Donald Keyhoe, who set a serious tone and did their homework. I was lucky enough to read the works of Jerome Eden, who I thought was very outspoken. I had been studying Wilhelm Reich before I became interested in UFOs. Eden was at the time persona non grata in serious UFO research and still is. Most people were very uncomfortable with his work because it attacked the character of researchers and why we basically run in circles and don't get to the point. But you really need a grasp of Wilhelm Reich's work to appreciate Eden's work in UFO research.

In Eden's work I noticed a mention of a NYC police officer, who was involved in UFO research and had an organization called the Scientific Bureau of Investigation. This intrigued me because I was a New Yorker and this guy is a detective. His name was Pete Mazzola and you'll notice that the book is dedicated to him as well as Larry's mother.

I met Mazzola and started to work with his group, which was an extraordinarily fast-growing organization. The thing that set it apart from a group like MUFON was that several hundred of its initial members were police officers all over the United States - trained investigators. Let's face it - after the Condon Report, the Air Force wouldn't touch the new reports. Local police were starting to get the reports that used to go the Air Force. And what did they do with the reports? Well, there was a hot-line to Pete's organization. He was a great friend, an important teacher, his investigations were superb, and he was one of two people that the NYPD had trained to use hypnotic regression in criminal investigations, which he then used with people who reported sightings and incidents.

Pete was a real mentor for me. Around that same time, I read an article in the Village Voice, reprinted from Cosmopolitan magazine as I recall, on an outstanding case in New Jersey. It was written by a new investigator, Budd Hopkins. In fact, it was Budd's first case. I said to myself, I know that name from the painting world. And I got in touch with him. He didn't live that far from me. We had a chat, and I found out from my school that if I could put together and assembly and presentation on UFOs, we could do it. I arranged for Budd and George Obarsky, who was the main witness in this case, a guy named Dick Ruhl, an old NICAP investigator, and the four of us did the presentation for the students of the School of Visual Arts, in 1976. It was Budd Hopkins first UFO presentation and it was mine as well. We've been friends ever since.

Very quietly, Hopkins' reputation skyrocketed and we kept in touch. I volunteered to help out with his work-load. I had training in crisis-intervention, which served me well in the work. Just helping out keeping up with the tremendous amounts of mail.

Q: One of the remarkable things about Larry's experience is that it's so cinematic - it's almost straight out of a sci-fi movie. What do you make of the interplay between films about UFOs, and the real research being done? As more and more evidence piles up, and I certainly include your book as a part of that, more and more movies come out that draw from the literature. Is there a deleterious effect on the research or is there an interplay where all ships are raised in a rising tide?

A: I think you pretty much nailed it there. I don't think there's a secret working group that says "Right, another good UFO book has come out - call Spielberg and have him make another movie." Or: "get Joe Dante to a gremlins thing, but with aliens." I don't think it works like that. I think we self-assign. You hear people back-biting along the paranoid fringes with the concern that producers work for the government. 98 out of 100 are what I would call useful idiots, they just self-assign. We live in a culture where if you want to get well-known, one of the best ways to do it is by attacking somebody really well-known. There's an open market on vicious skepticism and debunking. You're a rational skeptic, and I'm a rational skeptic. You can't do this work without being skeptical, unless you want to totally bollocks your own research. You need to be your own best critic.

My work has a strict methodology. When I was looking into an aspect of this case, for example, the soil around "ground zero" of the landing site was phenomenally affected. The sand was melted into glass, the soil had four times as much iron ore, seeds germinate in it at a slower rate - something happened there. It wasn't a holographic projection or a myth. I did not, upon seeing this, say "Oh my God! A trace case!" I thought of more natural explanations: a play of light on the field - no. A farmer spilled manure there, unevenly spread. That didn't explain it. Lightening strike, no. You can't let your enthusiasm overpower your rational approach to the subject. Otherwise, you're going to get caught in your own trap. In investigating, I always look at the mundane before looking at the phenomenal possibilities.

Q: Getting back to the popular culture and the movies, how does this affect your ability to make a serious case about all this?

A: I think it's a drive mechanism. When a serious case is put forward and begins to creep into the public psyche - Roswell is a good example. Ten years ago Roswell wasn't a word that everybody was hip to, it was still an insider thing. As a case like Roswell becomes better known, and people who are in businesses, entertainment businesses, where they realize that here's a topic that the general population seems to be more and more interested in. Let's knock off a film.

I did not really enjoy "Independence Day" last year; I thought it was sanctimonious, bloated, over-funded, a combination of every WWII Nazi resistance movie I had ever seen. I thought that the players - and there are many good actors in it - overacted and the script was overblown and idiotic. I actually fell asleep during the show. When anybody takes themselves that seriously on an obviously blown-out piece of hysterical fiction, I really don't find it of interest.

This year, I enjoyed "Men in Black" a lot more because although it has nothing to do with the original Men in Black tradition, from Gray Barker on down, it was made in a self-deprecating way. I'd watch Tommy Lee Jones in a dog food commercial. He's a great actor. Linda Fiorentino is a fabulous actor who happens to be extremely sexy - not a cutesy-pie, pumped up Barble doll type - I mean the woman is an almost intimidating sexual presence on the screen and she makes intelligent choices as an actress, so it was doubly fun to see her in a comedy.

For me, I was almost in tears laughing at the aliens smoking the Marlboros in the coffee room. When the shit hits the fan and it's time to bail out, you'd better believe they're taking the cartons of cigarettes with them. This is pure entertainment. If you're so serious about the topic, that you can't just relax and enjoy an obvious entertainment, forget it.

Now there have been some outstanding films that which really have brought up tremendous emotions. "E.T." was a film that really did its homework and brought forth a lot of interesting characters. The ending got super-mystical, and was a real problem for me.

But be that as it may, I think one thing drives another. Let's say that you're interested in UFOs, but you go to a fantasy movie, it may well get you into the serious literature. And that's great. Or, you're into the research, an aspiring researcher and you're really wound up, and you go to something like "Men in Black" and you just laugh and have a good time and get back to your work again. They can balance each other out.

I don't see that one is a problem for the other.

Q: Maybe it's a way that we can work out some of the implications - and by the way, what do you think are the implications? When you start considering it as an objective reality, then a whole number of other possibilities start creeping in on you, possibilities that are very uncomfortable to think about.

A: Like that we're somebody else's lab rats?

Q: Yeah, or farm animals, or experiment, or progeny... What are your feelings on all of this?

A: After 22 years in the field, I can ask much better questions. I wouldn't presume to tell you that I have an idea of where these intelligences come from, why they're here, what they want, how they're propulsive systems work, why they interact with human beings they choose to interact with. It's so ironic that at this time, the most conservative thing I can say about it is that it is an extraterrestrial phenomena. I think it's very likely that we're also dealing with other types of phenomena: beings from other dimensions, possibly. Beings from another time. Perhaps simply another reality that has been here since time immemorial but just out of our perception. I don't know.

I do know that when someone tells me that they know "We're dealing with seven different types of creatures here: the Reptilians from Alpha Centauri, the Blonds from the Pleiades, the Greys from over here, the Bigfoots from over there, that these ones love us and want to cure cancer and let us live forever, that those want to suck out our enzymes and eat our children, these ones just want to use us for circus animals, these ones are visiting us from our own future, they're us in a million years - and on and on and on - I have to ask them - with due respect, how do you know this, and they say, "because they told me." I don't even say to myself, "Right. Call Bellevue." Who am I to presume they're wrong. Maybe it's true, maybe they did tell them, but I have strong doubts. And even if what they allege were true, why should you trust them any more than you trust the US military? Question everything, certainly question authority. Don't assume that anyone is telling the truth in this without verifying it for yourself, to the degree you’re able at the least.

As to where they’re from, I don't know, Jim, I just don't know. In a funny way it's become a moot point for me, and we don't make a big deal of it in the book. If they're from another dimension, another reality - it is what it is.
I'm not married to any agenda here.

Q: For most people, the problem is: okay, I've never seen a UFO. If they do exist, and they are this superior force, then there's nothing we can do about it and it doesn't matter. Then, is there any relevance to the whole question?

A: The relevance doesn't have to do with the ether, outer space, another dimension or another time or any of a variety of New Age nonsense. The relevance is: there is a secret being kept and that we are being lied to. Make no mistake about it. I am as convinced as we are sitting here that there is an historic cover-up going on at the highest levels of certain working groups within our government, and the need-to-know structure upon which our post-war intelligence operations are built, permeate it. That means that any seated President, whoever they may happen to be, may not know any more than the cabal of secret keepers feels the President needs to know. I am convinced that the information which different Presidents have been supplied with has varied for a number of reasons.

What we're talking about here is nothing less than the erosion of this amazing, flawed, crazy, blessed social experiment in democracy called the United States of America. It's been clicking along for 220 years now, and is being compromised more and more each year by those who keep the secrets from those of us that work, pay our taxes, live and die as Americans. There is nothing ethereal here. A primary concern of mine is that, whatever the intensions of these other intelligences may be, screcy has become the state religion of our country and our democracies are threatened by this.

The secrets which surround the reality of UFOs are one of many types of secrets being kept by our government which has historically chosen to treat us like children with reference to the topic. You know what? Maybe fifty years ago there was something to the thought that, in 1947, an announcement of this kind might have destabilized the social fabric. But I think we're made of sterner stuff. The understaniing that we are not alone in the universe has been so deeply acculturated, like it or not, that there's hardly anyone who has not tried on the thought, as uncomfortable as it is, and perhaps slipped it right off after that. If we do not begin to face the schizophrenia at the highest levels of the intelligence community, which permeates our government, I think we're going to lose it. A lot of people say we've lost it already. We've got the Federal Reserve, among other forces, manipulating our currency and economy. Our military has been lying to all of the poor Gulf War veterans about the horrific effects of exposure to the depleted uranium rounds they fired. We've got Vietnam vets talking to themselves, we've got kids all over the country sitting under un-ballasted fluorescent lights and going crazy in school and glued to the TV at home. Microwaves and EMF fields permeate our cities and have a discernible effect on the health and behavior of the populace. And yet the great majority our fellow citizens continue to sleep their way through their lives. Things, in short, are not going well..

Q: The world that we live in has become alien to us. One of the more popular theories, or implications of alien visitation is that they are actually in control...

A: I've heard that, and it may well be true. As far as I'm concerned, the "invasion" is over. Whatever was ‘happening,’ has already, and continues to happen. I'm not going to allow it to invade my humanity though. I'm not going to wonder if the new head of the CIA takes his face off at night and eats mice for dinner. These are not speculations that exert control over my life and will.

You think about the world our parents inherited at the end of WWII; it had just been wrecked and at the same time something positive and important had happened. A very frightening fascist threat had been beaten into submission. America had come into its own. I'm no jingoist. If you get seriously involved in these studies, you begin to have an idea of what we're up against, and the most remarkable by-product is that you begin to see yourself as a human being first - before you see yourself as a Christian, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, etc. Your see yourself as a human being more that one located in a specific socioeconomic class. Human more that a human of a specific skin color. You're a person first, and I think one of the things that frightens governments more than anything is that we'll all start to think of ourselves as people before we think of ourselves as Americans, Brits, Russians, Indians, Canadians, whatever. That's pretty intolerable for the folks at the top of the food chain who draw the lines in the dirt.

Look at the two of us Jim. Here we are sitting in beautiful southern Oregon, in the home of a good friend. If not for this nutty subject and the chance to come here and speak before some great people, you and I would not be talking, would not have made friends, would not be looking forward to the next time we're going to get together. This time next week I'll be in central England with some old friends and new friends. I resent tremendously when people say to me or Larry, or other people involved in this who work so hard and put the work ahead of everything, that we're in it for the money. It's a joke. Larry and I will never make back the money we put into this project. That's a given. However, I don't know many people who are as rich in experience and friends as I am.

I don't know if the book will be a commercial success. It's not a ‘fun read’ and has no sex scenes in it. But I'm getting to travel and talk with people I would never meet otherwise about a subject that I know is important, and many of them agree that it is important. Whatever may or may not be going on with these other intelligences, we are human, and the impact of this other reality on us is the main subject of our book.

Q: Speaking to your comment that the alien phenomena means that we'll start thinking of each other as people instead of nations, a comment I've heard Stanton Friedman say as well: you probably have heard the conspiracy theory that that's just what they want you to think to give up your national sovereignty. This is a theme that was put forth in The Iron Mountain Report back in 1967, a hoax that suggested that the elites created the alien phenomena to provide an external threat amid world peace. What do you think of that?

A: I think that's a very important point. In some ways I'm a fairly traditional person in my thinking. I think things have evolved on Earth with a certain reasoning to them. I like being an American in many respects. As a New Yorker I like that I live in a world of diversity. I am not interested in seeing everything break down. When I say I think of myself as a person first, it doesn't mean that I don't think of myself as an American, or that overall, am not proud of that fact. But as a professor of mine once said to me, you don't have to be a paranoid to know that someone is following you. I've studied enough about the impact of history as it functions behind-the-scenes, and like you, have been consumed for years with studies of how all of these factors and players have come together, interacted, and the influence they’ve had on our understanding of history. You know, your new book (the then unpublished “Wilhelm Reich and the Cold War”) is going to be a fabulous example that, specifically of how certain individuals tried to shape forces in history and manipulate society at large to discredit Reich and to pull the wool over our eyes at times. In the face of what continues to remain truly unknown, I do not feel that one should give up being vigilant. If the aliens have taken over the brains of world leaders, for example, there really is not a lot that you or I can do about it.

The bottom line is nothing which may or may not be happening in this realm should override our living our lives or following our dreams as best we are able. In the great scheme of things we're all here for a relatively brief span of time. We come and we go, and according so some beliefs, we may come back, but I don't know that for sure. Reich said it best, "Love, Work and Knowledge are the wellsprings of life. They should also govern it." I can’t say that I ‘love’ the work I've chosen, but it is fascinating and, I feel, important. It is hardly a sensible or practical career track to have taken but I’m not complaining. So kids, don't become a UFO researcher without keeping your day jobs (laughter).

What I'm saying is that balance is important in all things. Without having your feet on the ground, a set of values to live by, people to love and even bills to pay, it can be even more problematic to do this type of work to best effect. Following the Golden Rule is commendable, but one also needs to maintain the capacity for rational rage. There's a lot to be angry about in this world. Evil exists and one has to be on guard against it, but not to the degree that you give up your basic humanity or ability to love, or loose your sense of humor or interest in the world around you. The moment you do is the moment you stop learning and begin to die. Far too many people resign themselves to this state well before their time.

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