C H A P T E R   27

Adolf Hitler isn't known for his mathematical genius. I don't know why. Hitler was able to do what no mathematician before him could: he made 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 1. And he did it by creating and using a psychological tactic that has become known as "the Big Lie."

The Big Lie is this: If you tell a lie that's big enough and you tell it often enough, people will believe you are telling the truth even when what you are saying is total crap.

Of course, just about everything Hitler ever said was a big lie. Yet some people believe that the use of the Big Lie died with Hitler in a bombproof bunker under the Berlin chancellery. (Actually, there is evidence that not even Adolf himself bit the big one in that bunker, but that's a conspiracy for another book.) The fact is the Big Lie is alive and well and used against us every day in every aspect of our lives. Best of all, it works--even if the "truths" that it's built on aren't particularly true! And if you don't believe me, check for it next time some politician decides to do something out of the ordinary, like bomb the shit out of some country the size of Rhode Island.

So, to recap: a whole bunch of little truths equals one big lie. Got that? Good. Because without that theorem and these little "truths," the government's story about the nonexistent UFOs just doesn't add up.

1. We can't believe any evidence of UFOs because such evidence is purely anecdotal. This premise hinges on the idea that we all agree that all people other than government officials and us are either nuts or full of shit. Of course, all you have to do is take a good look at the people around you in the 7-Eleven Slurpee line to realize there is a certain amount of truth to this observation. But if UFO sighting claimants and abductees are really the Forrest Gumps of the world, why do the powers that be go to such lengths to marginalize, neutralize, and silence them? Maybe life is just a box of chocolates . . . the real stuff is hidden in the middle of a bunch of overly sweetened fluff.

2. Normal people like us don't know any wackos who believe they have seen UFOs. My college geometry professor would call this a corollary to the previous entry. He'd still be calling it a corollary today if he hadn't been turned into quad-kill by the landing gear of a UFO.

Although this factoid might seem true, Jim Marrs believes we all know somebody who has seen, been in contact with, or has experienced some kind of extraterrestrial phenomenon. And to prove it, all you have to do is this: First, let it be known that you are interested in alien theory, then make it clear that you are open-minded enough to accept any anecdotal information you are offered without making any judgment.

Marrs predicts that if you just do those two things, people you have known all your life will suddenly come forward to tell their UFO story. Even if the people you know are conservative Republicans. (See Barry Goldwater's quote, page 156.)

3. Terrifying tales about men from another planet . . . curiously similar UFO-related experiences . . . complaints of peculiar physical maladies and symptoms . . . these aren't the objective observations of independent witnesses. They are symptoms indicative of some kind of mass hysteria! Oh, I see! UFOs are too weird to be real, but a complex, heretofore undiagnosed, contagious, worldwide mass hysteria that people have been reporting for four thousand years . . . hey, we can buy that!

Too bad it's not true. As Jim Marrs told me: "Hey--if all we had were the abduction stories with no other evidence to back them up, no other UFO sightings, no history of UFO sightings, no ancient writings, I'd be the first to say it must be a mass psychosis. But the internal consistency of the contemporary abduction stories and everybody else's abduction stories, placed in the context of the last fifty years of UFOs, then placed in the larger context of man's prehistoric reports of people coming to Earth in flying machines . . . well, the evidence is just there."

So it is. And couldn't fifty years of dogged denial be considered a symptom of mass hysteria? Just wondering.

4. If UFOs were real, they would make their existence known to our government. Oh, absolutely! Any being--green, gray, or otherwise--with a story to tell is just dying to tell it to some bureaucrat. Hey, look how peacefully all those JFK assassination witnesses are resting after having gotten their stories off their chests!

Factoid:It's Alien to Us! There's a rumor that the designs for the Aurora, the Skyhawk, and the Stealth fighters are all based on alien technology. Jim Marrs told me, "There is no question that in the deserts of Nevada, particularly Groom Lake--which is also known as Area 51--we are testing some very, very futuristic and unusual craft and power plants. The only question is Where did we get this technology? According to Steven Greer of the Center for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, researchers now know of 165 former government and military employees who, if they knew they would not be prosecuted, would be willing to come forward right now and tell us just how we have come to engineer these UFOs." But will scientists ever engineer a whistle-blower who can't be destroyed for telling the truth? Hey, babe . . . it's just a matter of time.

Every U.S. president since Truman has known perfectly well that we are being visited by booga-boogas from other worlds. In fact, Truman was so convinced of it, he instituted the National Security Council in part to protect us from any threats from the vast beyond.

But do aliens want to commune with our, ahem, leaders? Jim Marrs believes that they attempted to go that route and have since decided that Earth's bureaucrats aren't worth contacting.

As Marrs told me, "There's a good argument that can be made that, back in the forties and early fifties, extraterrestrials tried to make contact with certain leaders around the world. They were thinking, 'Okay--let's try and get the story out and get you humans up to speed with the rest of the intergalactic community.' But what they found was that these leaders, probably ours as well as those in the Eastern bloc and everywhere else, were afraid that acknowledging ETs would cause them to lose power. Plus, of course, each country wanted to keep the technology to themselves.

Your Lips Are Saying "No, No, No," But Your Subconscious Is Saying "Yes, Yes, Yes!" To be honest with you, I think the idea of a human happily undergoing medical procedures at the hands of a creature from another planet who is practicing proctology without a license is pretty weird. Then again, when I hear a seductive come-on like "Now I'm going to sample your genetic material," I can't help thinking, Oh, great . . . Nazis. As it turns out, that's probably just my personal quirk. Many people who have agreed to go along with alien experimentation have told Jim Marrs that they don't regard the poking and probing as violation. To them, the experience was like a trip to a doctor. A doctor with grasshopperlike legs, antennae, an exoskeleton, and no piece of paper from Johns Hopkins, perhaps, but a doctor nonetheless. How does Jim explain such cool? He says that many abductees have told him that they sense a metaphysical or spiritual "link" between them and their alien abductors. These people feel that, at some level, they have agreed to be abducted . . . and even diddled. Of course, a spiritual connection and a physical one are two different things. Sometimes when the abduction experience actually takes place in the three-dimensional world, it catches the human participants off guard and they are frightened or upset despite the consensual nature of the encounter. As Jim quipped to me, "Those little grays . . . they just don't have any bedside manner."

"So the ETs said, Well, this is a screwy situation, and over a period of time they decided to simply bypass the leadership and appeal to the common people, which is what led to the recent increase in sightings and abductions."

5. There is no earthly reason for the government to withhold credible evidence that ETs exist. If we aren't publicly acknowledging UFOs, it is because the evidence proving their existence isn't there. If the powers that be aren't acknowledging UFOs, it's because they fear for their jobs!

Check out this excerpt from an article that appeared in the New York Times on December 15, 1960:

MANKIND IS WARNED TO PREPARE FOR DISCOVERY OF LIFE IN SPACE
Brookings Institution Report Says Earth's Civilization Might Topple if Faced by a Race of Superior Beings

Washington, Dec. 14 (UPI)--Discovery of life on other worlds could cause the Earth's civilization to collapse, a federal report said today.

This warning was contained in a research report given to the National Aeronautical and Space Administration with the recommendation that the world prepare itself mentally for the eventuality.

The report, prepared by the Brookings Institution, said "while the discovery of intelligent life in other parts of the universe is not likely in the immediate future, it could nevertheless happen at any time." Discovery of intelligent beings on other planets could lead to an all-out effort by Earth to contact them, or it could lead to sweeping changes or even the downfall of civilization, the report said.

Even on Earth, it added, "societies sure of their own place have disintegrated when confronted by a superior society. . . ."

Can a society that debates whether ketchup constitutes a vegetable be called a "civilization"? I've got my doubts.

Beyond that, given the choice, with whom would you rather cast your lot? A career politician who, in twenty years, hasn't figured out how to provide health care for most of our citizens, or a being who knows the secrets of the universe, has mastered intergalactic travel, and may even be able to vaporize people who piss him off? There you go. Bear that in mind the next time you cast your vote for Trent Lott.

6. There is something vaguely blasphemous about belief in aliens. That's why God Him-/Herself is anti-alien. Hear me: Most people who believe in God or a higher power or whatever believe that his or her God is the God of everyone in the universe. So what's the problem if (S)He is also the God of little gray men who drive around in spaceships rather than Hondas? If one God can be the God of Attila the Hun and Mother Teresa, (S)He can be the God of everybody.

Of course, there are people who believe that single-parent families, dancing while vertical, and PVC piping could also undermine all they hold sacred. But since what they hold sacred is a repressive status quo, I can only hope they're right.

So there. And don't make me go through this basic stuff again.

7. Since UFOs could only have been created by a technologically superior civilization and no intelligent life exists in space, there can't be any UFOs at all.

The airbags in our cars can be fatal. And you can't nuke a veggie burger that isn't frozen in the middle and burnt on the edges, sort of like your testicles if you've been standing too close. Considering the technological botch-jobs we live with every day, it is easy to believe that UFOs are so complex they could only have been created by some superior species. But according to what researchers have learned, that is simply not true.

Flying disks of human making were developed by the Nazis during World War II (see page 167). In fact, Werner von Braun and John Kennedy reportedly met a few times to discuss how the "spaceships" American scientists were developing might be fueled. (Hmm . . . and the next thing you know, Tang powdered drink mix hits the market. Is there a connection?)

But what makes this issue confusing to a lot of people is the fact that the "experts" are always trying to make UFOs an either/or situation. Either flying disks are created by human technology or they're something from outer space. And the truth is they're both.

Factoid: What Goes Up Does Come Down Although there have been claims that people have been abducted by UFOs and returned mutilated or not returned at all, Jim Marrs knows of no documented reports of true intergalactic kidnapping. Therefore, putting Linda Tripp on the top of the Capitol Building with a sign that reads "Take Me, Little Gray Man" cannot be considered a solution.

What Jim Marrs told me is this: "There's no question that when we overran Germany at the end of World War II there were plans on the drawing board for flying disks: some powered by jet engines, but some powered by electromagnetism and other nonconventional power sources. The only question is, did the Nazis get to the point where they actually developed something that flew? That's where the controversy is."

In his book Alien Agenda Marrs tells a fascinating story about Werner von Braun and the SS officer Ernst Kammler. Ernst Kammler was a high-ranking official who reported directly to Heinrich Himmler. He was also prominent within the Waffen-SS, so prominent, in fact, that at the end of the war, when the SS was pretty much taking over everything, he was put in charge of spiriting the Nazis' top-secret rocket programs (with scientists and V-2s, and all) to a safe haven near Munich in Bavaria. He told the scientists at that time that his plan was to give himself up to the Americans and to offer them the rocket scientists and the rockets--in other words, Germany's technology--in exchange for his life.

Sure enough, Kammler disappeared shortly thereafter--and was never heard of since. Of course, as we now know and as history records, when the Allies piled into Bavaria they captured Werner von Braun and the V-2 rockets and all that technology. So that makes me wonder: What technology did Kammler know about that allowed him to bond with the Allies? What plans did he take off with? And where did he get those plans? Were they pulled from German ingenuity or from a wrecked alien craft?

Which brings us to Number 8. . . .

8. No American functionary has ever captured anything remotely resembling an alien spacecraft.

Have we found wreckage? Shit, we're flying it! Jim Marrs told me about a case in Texas in the mid-eighties in which two women and a boy encountered what appeared to be a big glowing UFO surrounded by helicopters. The disk, they said, was airborne, but it was wobbling and spinning and flashing as though it were in some distress. You know, kind of like a 1972 Gremlin did before you put it up on blocks in your front yard.

Anyway, a few days later these people started experiencing some strange physical symptoms. Their skin was burned, their hair was falling out, and horrific lesions were developing on their bodies. They went to the doctor and were immediately diagnosed with radiation sickness.

Naturally, they pleaded their case with the United States government, saying, Hey--this was some kind of test you were doing and it harmed us and now we want some kind of compensation. But the government denied having any such technology, so the court threw it out.

Be Afraid . . . Be Very Afraid. . . . While the politicians live in fear that ET will touch down on the D.C. mall and leave skid marks all over their nice clean power base, and the religious leaders quake in their neckwear, wondering whether the faithful won't confuse a short, telepathic, pallid stranger (sounds like Kreskin, doesn't it?) for the One and Only Deity, here's something the rest of us can worry about! Jim Marrs knows for sure that there are contingency plans in the government files right now for the day we have a major, undeniable, Phoenix-type UFO sighting. (You know what I'm talking about here . . . I'm talking about the day the mothership lands in the Safeway parking lot and blows Sam Donaldson's toupee off on the evening news.) According to Marrs's sources, the instant extraterrestrial visitors make themselves irrevocably known, that's when the government is going to step in and tell us all, "Okay--UFOs are real. Now you must give up every last shred of your civil and human rights so we can protect you." It's a double-whammy deal: we concede the truth, but--oh, too bad--life as you know it is over. Still, it's better than the deal they offered Dorothy Kilgallen, n'est-ce pas?

Through sources Jim Marrs has developed in the military, he has learned that, in that particular case, they were testing a UFO--that is, an off-Earth craft--the military had captured or somehow acquired. To try and get it to go, they put a little nuclear power plant into it, like from a nuclear submarine. They believed they were going to fly it with this fission-based power plant in it. There they were, spewing radiation all over the place. Not that they're averse to exposing innocent citizens to a little radiation now and then. Heck . . . who isn't looking forward to the day when strippers have three breasts?

9. UFO "abductees" aren't troubled because they've been exposed to aliens. They are simply troubled people. Period. Or are they? Jim Marrs suggests that the abductions we tend to hear about in the media are those that make for an exciting broadcast--i.e., precisely those that are traumatic, frightening, and/or painful. But that doesn't mean all abductees believe their encounters with aliens are akin to interstellar "date rape."

When we hear about alien abductions in books or on TV talk shows, we are generally hearing from those abductees who are seeking help or information or "communion" or guidance, and that's fine. There are plenty of people out there who can empathize with their experiences. But what we rarely hear about are the many, many people who have had alien encounters but did not regard them as painful or fearful. These people aren't looking for help or compassion or anything else. You don't hear about them because they don't need their experiences clarified by a talk-show host. Nor are they seeking the ridicule that goes hand in hand with going public.

As for the game of Name That Nut the "authorities" have been playing for the past half-century, isn't it possible that people who deny every possibility without ever looking at the evidence are the real nuts here? I mean, it's like blaming, say, the next schmo to walk past the Coke machine for a presidential assassination without any eyewitness testimony or proof! How sane is that?

10. Free and democratic America is the most open and honest country in the world. No rational person believes there has been anything but a totally up-front and candid exchange of ideas on this and every other controversial subject. Maybe public flogging isn't the preferred form of discipline in this country (but it can be if you're willing to pay for it!), but "free and democratic America" is no place to initiate an open and honest dialog about anything. Oliver Stone's film masterpiece JFK was lambasted by the critics before it was ever shown . . . and the intimidators have similarly trounced his latest work, an exposé of the controversial downing of Pan Am Flight 800. And that's only the beginning. The lifework of credible but politically incorrect researchers has gone unread. And people whose thoughts wander beyond the parameters of "acceptable" theory are routinely silenced, either professionally, politically, or, when necessary, physically. Open and honest? Tell that to Lee Harvey Oswald's corpse.

And the pervasive atmosphere of mistrust, intimidation, and fear has trickled down to the personal level. A friend of Jim Marrs's told him a story that illustrates this perfectly. It seems that when this friend was a college student, he and a buddy were driving along a highway at night when they saw a strange light. The light was not stationary, like a star . . . nor did it move in straight lines, like an airplane. It hovered, it dipped . . . it did things no conventional aircraft could possibly do. The men continued watching, in silence, until finally the craft just shot straight up in the sky and disappeared. At that, Marrs's friend turned to his companion in awe and remarked, "Wow! did you see that?" But instead of discussing what they had just witnessed, his friend just flew off the handle. He got very angry and snapped that he hadn't seen anything and just shut up about it.

For this man, if he didn't admit to seeing a UFO, he wouldn't have to deal with the truth of having seen a UFO. Unfortunately, this is the same attitude alternative historians and UFO researchers have been up against for fifty years, at the highest levels as well as at the most intimate. There are people in "open, honest America" who have seen and experienced these things firsthand but, in order to protect their reputations, careers, and relationships, will tell you that it didn't happen. Gather up a few hundred of those people and you've got an informational stonewall. Convince several thousand men and women they'd rather not be this year's Oliver Stone and you've effectively blacked out the truth.

Now, what were you saying about those strange lights you saw? Nothing? Yeah, that I what I thought.

Do you see a problem? I'll bet you don't. Do you see a big difference between getting your information from independent researchers, like Jim Marrs, and getting fed the same old lies by national media? I'll bet you do. For one thing, researchers are willing to address the issues. Any issues. They don't pretend evidence isn't there when it is, or that it is there when it isn't. They don't have to lie to protect the guilty, because they aren't getting paid by the guilty. And their information isn't filled with disclaimers, innuendo, or attempts to mislead or distort. Eliminating redundancies like those leaves a lot of room on a page for truth.

Of course, if you prefer your information watered down, twisted, or politically sanitized, you can still get your news from the fifth network, CIA. But to those of you who don't, I say, stay tuned. The truth is in here.