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International UFO Reporter (IUR) - Jan/Feb/1989 - Editorial
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Published by the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS)
2457 West Peterson Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 60659
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Editorial: Paranoia
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by Jerome Clark
The late Gray Barker, who trafficked in publications
chronicling contactee adventures, men in black and sinister
cover-ups of various sorts, was fond of saying that nothing
sells like paranoia. Every time he had a new product to move,
he pitched it in language that spoke to the most elemental
fears of his customers, many of them certain that their
knowledge of the world's deepest secrets (the hollowness of
the earth, for example) would bring enforcers from the Silence
Group to their doorstep any day. Barker himself wrote the all-
time paranoid title, "They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers."
Its easy to laugh. Other people's paranoia is always funny.
But what of our own?
These days, paranoia - or anyway, deep suspicion; perhaps
there is a difference - seems in style. This time the inspiration
is the ongoing, ever un-resolved MJ-12 dispute. The spectrum of
paranoia ranges from the mild (and probably defensible) to the
pathological (as in see your psychiatrist). Fortunately the latter
has afflicted few on the sober side of ufology, but it is running
rampant on the wild side. Since the early 1950s contactee believers
have maintained that ETs are here to serve man - that is, to offer
to help us. Now a new school of unhinged types claims the ETs are
here to serve man, by which they mean offering us up as helpings,
presumably in some cosmic McDonald's. Anyone who believes this (and
to note the obvious - that not a shred of evidence supports this
strange and sick reading of the UFO data - is to dignify it in a
way it does not deserve) has, let's not mince words, cracks in his
pot.
In the sane world, where it is not generally held that the U.S.
government is covering up knowledge of man-eating aliens, paranoia
manifests in speculation and rumour about the "true" nature of the
MJ-12 briefing paper. The operating assumption is that it is not
what it purports to be, a summary prepared for President-elect
Eisenhower to inform him that the earth is being visited by extra-
terrestrials, two of whose craft have crashed on North American
soil. The questions being raised are these:
Who wrote the document, if Adm. Hillenkoetter (the ostensible
author) didn't? Was it a well-informed nastily-clever ufologist
putting one over on his gullible colleagues? Was it intelligence-
agency personnel disseminating disinformation, either to hide real
UFO secrets or to confuse the Soviets? Or - at the top of the
paranoia hit parade - was it a ufologist consciously working in
collusion with intelligence agents? If this last is true, just
whom can we trust?
This week, as I write these words, I have heard serious charges
leveled against two prominent figures in ufology. These charges were
made by individuals who went to some length to list their reasons for
entertaining suspicions that they acknowledge sound crazy. I am sure
the ufologists at the receiving end of these accusations (which
allege that they are collaborating with intelligence agencies
involved in the cover-up) will be able to defend themselves and to
explain the actions deemed suspicious. The mere fact that such
accusations are being made by noncranks, however, illustrates how
perilous UFO inquiry has become in the MJ-12 era.
By "perilous" I do not mean, of course, that anybody need fear
for his life because he Knows Too Much About Flying Saucers (a
conceit that, though widespread, has always done more to massage
ufologists' egos than to truly frighten them). I refer instead to
the problem of thinking through rationally what we may be up against,
given the reality of a cover-up. (And there is a cover-up; if there
were not, the U.S. government would have told us by now what it
recovered in New Mexico in July 1947. We know that it was not a
weather balloon and we know the recoverers knew that, too.)
One need not be a textbook-case paranoid or a conspiracy nut
to recognize that yes, governments, even democratic ones, have
secrets and ways of keeping them. They have intelligence agencies
and, among their other tasks, these agencies' personnel track the
spread of sensitive information, including rumours of same. They
have established methods of dealing with leaks. In dictatorships
leakers are easily dealt with: they're killed or sent off to remote
gulags. In a democracy such as the United States, if outright treason
is not involved, its trickier. Generally the worst that happens is
that the leaker, if his name is known, loses his job. Beyond that,
the official agency involved will vigorously deny the accuracy of
the information being leaked and hope that journalists covering
the story will be gulled into believing the denial.
Few ufologists are aware that in the United States it is
illegal for official agencies or individuals to circulate dis-
information for domestic consumption. We all know, of course,
that officials, including Presidents, break the law. They usually
don't bet by with it, as witness such episodes as Watergate and
the Iran-contra fiasco. The reason they don't get by with it is
that Congress, prosecutors and the press are watching them. That's
why there was an uproar, a year or two ago, when the Wall Street
Journal fell victim to a disinformation scam that reported, falsely,
that the U.S. government was about to bomb Libya again. The story
was circulated for psychological purposes; the idea was to scare
the Libyan government. A 'Journal' foreign correspondent picked up
the story and made the mistake of taking it seriously. When the
truth came out, the Reagan administration was severely criticized
and forced to give assurances that nothing like this would happen
again.
In the context of the UFO controversy, however, it is
undeniably true that a different set of rules apply. It is an
article of faith among this country's opinion-making elite (New
York Times, CBS News, Time, Science, et al) that people who
believe in UFOs are all screwballs, since UFOs do not exist.
Nothing that happens among UFO believers could conceivably be of
any significance except to readers fo the "National Enquirer".
That being the case, UFO "evidence" is of no interest whatever,
regardless of the amount of documentation or quality of witnesses.
Because there are no UFOs, there cannot be a cover-up of important
information about them. Therefore any testimony that claims the
contrary need not be heeded.
In other words, the field is open to any government agency to
play any game it feels it need to play. The watchdogs aren't just
sleeping on the job; they're not even on the job. "The New York
Times" and the "Washington Post" have never heard of the Roswell
incident, much less dispatched investigative reporters to look
into it. Supremely smug and blind, they will not know if laws are
being broken by official persons keeping UFO secrets; anybody who
says they are need only be referred to "Skeptical Inquirer", or a
psychiatrist, to get his head straightened.
It is not true as a general principle, the cliche notwith-
standing, that secrets can't be kept. But it has to be especially
easy to keep UFO secrets, since nobody except ufologists, who have
no influence and only limited resources, is looking for them. (In
the 1970s famous investigative journalist Seymour Hersh made a point
of telling "Rolling Stone" that he doesn't do "flying saucer stories
.") Nor, consequently, is anybody looking to see if federal laws are
being violated by keepers of UFO secrets. Any ufologist who says his
phone is being tapped or that intelligence personnel are circulating
domestic UFO disinformation is, well, just another paranoid, a harm-
less version of the guy who tells police that space aliens ordered
him to shoot his mother.
What is truth? a famous man asked. Two thousand years later we
ask, what is paranoia? Well, it's certainly no delusion, no purely
subjective phenomenon. A fear or suspicion that has no demonstrably
objective basis is paranoia. That makes the fear that the CIA
assassinates ufologists paranoia, but it does not do the same for
the suspicion that intelligence agencies are doing other things to
ufologists. We know that both active-duty and retired spook types
have told ufologists hair-raising tales about EBEs in government
custody. There is no independent reason to believe these stories
are true, but what's important for the moment is that they're being
told by the individuals who are telling them. We also know that
some ufologists have interacted, sometimes in curious ways, with
these individuals.
What is going on far away from the scrutiny of the usual
establishment watchdogs? And what is the reason for it? It must
surely mean that ufologists are on to something, otherwise why
the attention? But where do reasonable questions end and crazy
fantasies begin? Beyond the richly-documented Roswell incident,
we have no real evidence of what the government may or may not
know, what it may or may not be concealing. That leaves us open
to any credentialed liar who comes along - if we are foolish
enough to take him at his word, that is.
Under the circumstances, given the bewildering and bizarre
nature of events in recent years, a certain degree of paranoia
(provided that it be mild and containable) is inevitable. Any
more that a mild degree, however, need an antidote. I suggest
laughter. What's ahead of us, as we work our way through Roswell
and beyond, is not going to be easy to get to, but lunatic fears,
we can be sure, will take us only to never-neverland.