TAKE ME TO YOUR READER!

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP91-00901R000500180001-6
Release Decision: 
RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
3
Document Creation Date: 
December 15, 2016
Document Release Date: 
November 24, 2003
Sequence Number: 
1
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
March 9, 1987
Content Type: 
NSPR
File: 
AttachmentSize
PDF icon CIA-RDP91-00901R000500180001-6.pdf154.47 KB
Body: 
Approved For Release 2003/12/03 :CIA-RDP91-00901R00050~'1$0~1 6~ WASHI'~iG'^ON POS'?' 9 2?arch 1987 Take Me to fur Reader. Ac~c~unts of UF'05 Invade the best-Selhr List:: By Curt Strplee W.tshntkGm Punt titalf Wntcr Heads up, America. They're here. Again. After a 10-year lull in public interest about UFOs, 1987 looks to be the Year of the Saucer-if not a whole ca- binetful of cosmological crockery. According to Leading Susceptibility indicators, we're in for a deluge of UFOria that'll make the Galveston flood look like a bathtub ring: ^ Three reputable publishers-Random Eiouse, Morrow and tltlantic Monthly Press-are releasing major nonfic- tion accounts of humans contacted, abducted or tortured by extraterrestrials. ^ Popular infatuation with the UFO sighted by a Japan Air Lines pilot in November has grown sky-high-forcing the Federal Aviation Administration into the mail-order busi- ness. To meet the ravening demand, the agency is now selling information packages at .6194.30 each containkng tapes of the crew, statements by air controllers, the pilot's drawings and color photographs of radar images. ^ "Our membership has gone up 10 percent in the past two ntonths," says Walt Andrus, international director of the 1,500-member (Mutual UFO Network, "and our mail has douhled. People are realizing that there is something to this after all." "It's been building for quite a while," says Bruce Mac- atbee, aNavy research physicist and chairman of the Washington-based Fund for UFO Research. And the new books, he believes, will provoke "an outcry for more infor- matron" from a galvanized public. "The negativists haven't realized what's going on yet." (They won't have to wait past June 'l6, when NIUFON '87-the International Sym- posium of the Mutual UFO Network-convenes at Ameri- can University here for three clays.) ^ iVlass curiosity about paranormal freakery has hit its apo- gee. ?Channelers'"-a new species of medium purporting to lease their larynxes to astral spirits-are being taken seri- ously outside the tabloids. Citizens now know more about Shirley MacLaine's multiple past lives than Franklin Roose- velt's one. Oral Roberts reports horn-to-horn combat with Satan himself. Bookstores and newsstands are doing a fierce business in supernatural subjects from auras to crystals. ^ The sour malaise and doomsday anxiety seeping across the nation are the sort that, in the pask, have proved propitious for cosmic omens in general and airborne dinnerware in particular. (Two weeks ago, a puny 20-second flare over New York and Connecticut resulted in hundreds of phone calls) Add the darkling shambles of the Reagan regime (maybe they'll skip that "Take-Me-to-Your-Leader" stuff this time), and who knows what demons will rise from the baleful~v~f~i~v~rc~cFar. Release 2003/12/03 :CIA-RDP91-009018000500180001-6 One thing's for sure: 'Chey will be nothurg like the winsome critters we claimed to see in the '50s, back when saucers had Fins like Cd- selsand space folks acted like intergalactic Jay- cees. In those days, an abductee named Buck Nelson sold little packets of tur at :65 each, which he said came from a Venusian Saint Ber- nard weighing 385 pounds. Another soi{lfsarat contactee, Howard Menger, explained en the "Tonight" show how easy it was to breathe on the moon and subsequently cut a record enti- tled "The Song From Saturn"-which ditty, he averred, was "actual music that carne from an- other planet." But that was 30 years ago. The new books provide a more lugubrious forecast. An Age of Suspicion Every year 1,000 or more reports reach the appropriate organization. From 1947 to 1969, it was the Air Force, which in 1959 issued a di- rective to all commands stating that "investiga- tions and analysis of UFOs are directly related to the Air Force's responsibility for the de- fense of the United States:' But 10 years later, following astill-controversial study, the Air Force dumped the project completely, citing insufficient evidence. Much of the Air Force material has been re- leased to the public, but many (1FOlogists be- lieve that the goverrunent is still concealing in- formation and/or physical evidence. Their doubts date from the same auspicious year as the Arnold sighting. In mid-'47, something crashed in the New iVlexico desert and was ob- tained by the Air Force, which at first an- nounced that it was "a flying disc," but subse- quently put out word that the tivreckage was merely a weather balloon and radar reflector. Ninny UFOlogists were dubious, and dark ru- mors circulated that the recovered material contained miraculous lightweight metals and the remains of insectlike pilots. Intermittently thereafter the mat er of the purloined cadavers has risen anew, along_with other complaints of suppressed evidence. (For- mer ~'IA director Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter_ char>zed in 1960 that the Air Force was at- tem~ting to "hide the facts" about UFOs and to ?silence it~.2ersonnel.") The fracas escalated in the early 'SOs as the Washington-based Citi- Approved For Release 2003/12/03 :CIA-RDP91-009018000500180001-6 zens Against ,UFO Secrecy initiated numerous lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act de- inands. In 1983, Cr1US__head. Larry Bryant filed -suit in U.S. District Court here demand- ing-that the tlir Force_release the New Mexico material "This is a cosmic Watergate," Bryant declared. The suit was disnussecl. The argu- ment continues. It will doubtless be rekindled this year, though it is ghastly to imagine how an already dispirited nation would take the revelation that some GAO warehouse was Bill of space-stiffs and slucer parts. "I can ~mderstand the rationale of a govern- ment cover-up," says Budd Hopkins. "The whole economy-stocks, bonds, mortgages, capital investment-is based on the idea that 20 years from now, things are gonna be pretty much the same." But if the feds announced tomorrow that aliens had arrived, "I'd rather be in the liquor business t}tan the real-estate business:' Approved For Release 2003/12/03 :CIA-RDP91-009018000500180001-6 STATINTL Approved For Release 2003/12/03: CIA-RDP91-0090180005 document File wl~o~s ow FIRST? oday's document file is a T needed corrective to what the Central Intelligence Agency rightry- identified as an error in the Quiz that appeared on this page Feb. 24. The Washington Post made the same error in its obituary of Admiral Sidney W.Souers on Jan. ia, 1973. WASHINGTON POST 3 March 1986 .i y~C wr. !~ '~'~ b ~ 1~, ~1 CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY ~~,. ~;; w~sHiNaroH, o, c.:onoe Mr. Leanartl Downie, Jr, Managing Editor THE NASHINGTON POST 1150 15th Street, N w, Mashington, D,C. 20071 Dear Len; four "Federal R qulL Ruesti e0ort" Pa e " g on, of 24 Fn A7enc who wdS the f~rst dlr hrudry 9i~ei the wr but ry' It was not Rear Anmiral Sf ector of th o^? answer ether Rear Adm1r eSCrr~ 31 IntelligenCeto Its dl Aosco dneY W, Souer Admiral Souers wa a H, 4111enkoetter, '-he 9uiz answer states, tdkine rw.___ _ 5 in~e,.,. _. fhe Ydme Rdge,rthe CrCm Idnudryatomentdl or9anlLdC10n1."-'atrdi Intelligence, Can r en[ral Intc)li une 1946, But as led the Central 9 esS enacted the National 9ence Agency was n ""u note el the third Director f Securi ~' establlshedeuntll on it was formed o Ce^trdl lntelify~nce of 194), 44mire} Hi11 after on Septembe n r )8, 1)41 ~ was the f1r a koe tte r, 7 would a st dlreCror of C!A when PPreclata TH E POST runnrn9 d tgrrectlon. SincerclY. Approved For Release 2003/12/03: CIA-RDP91-009018000500180001-6