UFO Magazine (Feb 2006)

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Article 1: UFO Magazine (Feb 2006) -( the story of Project Serpo)

by UFO Magazine Editor, William Birnes

 

Among the more exciting threads가닥 that have surfaced on UFO email lists over the past couple of months is the story of Project Serpo, which in previous incarnations, is not a new story. Many in the UFO community have heard versions of this tale before.

Among the key elements of this particular story are the following:

1. The Roswell crash didn't take place in Roswell, actually, but in Corona and near Datil, New Mexico.

2. The surviving ET or EBE, according to the MJ-12 briefing documents, was from the Zeta-Reticuli system, the same system that was home to the alien abductors of Betty and Barney Hill.

3. This EBE made contact with its home planet and in the ensuing negotiations between the U.S. government and the EBEs the parties agreed to set up an exchange program under which U.S. military personnel with different professional specialties would be taken to the EBE's home planet, Serpo, for an extended reconnaissance mission.

4. The basis of this story made its way to Steven Spielberg and was part of the background for his 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

5. Some members of this mission to Serpo returned to earth. They have since died but have passed their story along to others.

6. Those others, still fearful of releasing classified information, do want to tell the story and are looking for ways to release the information without any criminal sanctions, or worse.

7. There is a Red Book that contains the debriefing information and history of the mission.

8. The journals of some of the mission members are still extant.

9. Photographs of the mission may or may not be released.

10. This story has been above top secret for decades even though some folks in the intelligence inner circle know all about it.

There are many more aspects to this story, each of which is as exciting as the next. However, only those who either read the files and know the files are true and not disinformation or those who actually went on the mission know if this story is true. However, it does make for exciting speculation, regardless of whether it is true or false.

If we give those who are telling the story the benefit of the doubt-and why not- we can claim that we are keeping thoroughly open minds. (Unlike the Burisch story, which is aggressive in its exclusivity and virulently antagonistic to all who dare dispute a story of an alleged PhD holder who can't produce his PhD diploma, the narrators of this story openly seem to encourage questions, criticisms, challenges, and the like.)

So, for the time being, we should keep our minds open even though this story is utterly fantastic and raises more questions than it answers. Besides, doing so is just plain fun in a sometimes funless world.

One attorney who has been following this story posted his opinion that, because the Serpo report was ostensibly completed in 1980, it might be conceivable that there are aspects of declassification of previously classified material that could corroborate parts of this story.

What if, because there is a group of former high-ranking intelligence officers that have decided to release selective facts of one of the most secret United States military intelligence operations in history, that the National Security Council has decided to go along with the release?

After all, who can really be hurt after 40 years? And what if, rather than having the EBEs themselves show up on the White House lawn, the powers-that-be have all agreed that the story should be allowed to come out on its own?

If so, a disclosure on a quiet UFO email list is probably the best way to let it get out. After all, would you want to be the POTUS who stands up before a news conference to talk about UFOs, ETs, secret missions to a distant planet, and why we kept that secret for so long? on the other hand, what a better way to ensure your legacy than to be the disclosure president? We'll leave those question for others to answer.

Ufologists will have their own criticisms and comments about the Serpo story. Those who comment will also have their own thoughts and criticisms about other commentators. That, too, is part of the fun of the Serpo story.

My own questions concern the way the story relates to the different presidents under whose tenure the UFO incidents first began. For example, we now have the private ruminations of presidents who never intended their ruminations to become public.

Notwithstanding the infamous Richard Nixon tapes, there exist the Lyndon B. Johnson tapes released to the public by Lady Bird Johnson, the John F. Kennedy tapes, and the Harry S. Truman diary.

The Truman diary entries for the latter half of 1947-and these were very private diaries-make absolutely no mention of anything having to do with UFOs, even though President Truman reveals that he thinks he sees or feels Abraham Lincoln's ghost making its presence known in the White House.

It seems that Eisenhower has left no private record of anything having to do with a decision to send U.S. military personnel to a distant planet. No one has said that JFK revealed anything about the Serpo mission in his Oval Office tapes.

And, a careful review of the excellent Michael Beschloss book, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964 (Simon & Schuster, 1997), containing the transcripts of LBJ's Oval Office tapes indicates no commentary about Serpo.

Maybe the Serpo references were redacted by Lady Bird herself. Maybe. But why would the former First Lady take out references to a space mission when she did not take out a piece of incredible evidence inculpating her husband and former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in a conspiracy to conceal information of a murder conspiracy, specifically the JFK assassination, from the very commission LBJ assembled to investigate the crime?

In one of the released transcripts, Hoover reveals to LBJ that the FBI has discovered that there was another Lee Harvey Oswald. This Lee Harvey Oswald was an CIA plant, not the real Oswald. Thus, there is a CIA conspiracy afoot. LBJ and Hoover agree to keep the secret to themselves and not to tell former CIA Director Dulles that they know. Now it's a double conspiracy. Yet, astoundingly, this conversation appears in the LBJ tapes. But nothing about Serpo.

We have it on very good authority directly from Jackie Gleason himself that Richard Nixon took him to Holmstead Air Force Base in Florida where The Great one saw ET bodies with his very own eyes. Yet, no mention from Nixon that the U.S. had an ongoing military exploration mission to Serpo. Wouldn't Nixon, who clearly wanted to satisfy Jackie Gleason's curiosity, have revealed the truth about this? Maybe he did, and Jackie simply did not tell the person who told it to me.

President Jimmy Carter, despite his subsequent denials over the ensuing years, did seem to know something about our government's involvement with extraterrestrials. He even asked DCI George H. W. Bush for the inside information, but was promptly turned down.

Reagan seemed to know something because he certainly referred to extraterrestrials enough times during his administration and even admitted to following a UFO across the California desert.

And, finally, Anonymous reveals that President Clinton tried to get the Serpo mission re-started but was dissuaded from that by members of his administration. An astounding story, indeed, especially in light of another piece of information from the same person who told me that Jackie Gleason had revealed his Holmstead Air Force Base experience to him personally.

I am told that this person asked Bill Clinton shortly before his inauguration whether he planned to find out what the government knew about UFOs. Reportedly, Clinton told him that "they" would not let him get near it. After his inauguration, did the president finally learn the truth, and was he so astounded that he wanted the mission to continue? Is this something that President Clinton is inclined to talk about?

As do the rest of the members of this UFO mailing list, I await more information about Serpo and even whatever photographs those keepers of the secret can release. Meanwhile, the Serpo story and journals follow along with comments from Richard Doty, Bill Ryan, and the mailing list administrator, Victor Martinez.

 

 

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Article 2: UFO Magazine (Feb 2006)

by Victor Martinez

 

There are two issues I'll address here.

First, I've been asked to comment on whether I believe the postings from a high-ranking U.S. government source from the Defense Intelligence Agency who has taken the name Anonymous are authentic or are part of some incredibly complex hoax;

and second, what is the best method for releasing this information? Should it be through a small but highly specialized email group's moderator or through a more credible, traditional source like CNN or Fox News?

With respect to the authenticity of the emailed postings to me from Anonymous,

I believe they are true and correct in terms of the basic or core story:

In 1965 twelve very carefully screened and selected individuals were sent to an alien home world called Serpo approximately 38.42 light years away in the Zeta Reticuli binary star system. They resided there until 1978, when eight of them returned. Two died on the foreign planet, and two decided to remain there.

Their story, their journal entries표제, their photographs, and the samples they brought back were all memorialized in a final 3,000-plus page report entitled Project Serpo, which was finalized in 1980 with two supplementary reports to which the late Dr. Carl Sagan contributed and grudgingly but finally signed off on regarding the astronomical and math anomalies that did not add up.

Many have found themselves bogged down in the minutiae of whether it was ten men and two women or twelve men, or how could Anonymous make a mistake over the amount of equipment taken? Was it 9,100 pounds or 91,000 pounds? So what! Let's concentrate on the core story-the overall big picture-that twelve of our citizens from the United States of America embarked on a 13-year mission to live on another world. That's where the focus should be-not on all of these petty, nit-picky details! That's what everyone should be in awe of.

What BS! Little wonder ufology finds itself progressing ever so slowly over the years. It constantly shoots itself with all its inhouse pettiness and fighting; it finds itself hardly any further along after a major disclosure is made in the UFO field.

The evidence we have that such a human-alien exchange program did take place is backed up by several high-ranking former government officials: retired USAF colonel Ed Doty, ex-AFOSI special agent Richard Doty, Paul McGovern, Gene Loscowski, and USAF Colonel Jack Casey. In addition, author Whitley Strieber claims to have met a surviving team member of Project Serpo in Florida. Anonymous later confirmed Whitley's story to me-that, in fact, Whitley ran into this team member on three separate occasions.

A retired USAF colonel actually oversaw the project and commented privately to an acquaintance of Bill Ryan, amazed that details were now being released; this incident is recounted in the comments section of the website www.serpo.org/comments.html#1 . I know his name from Anonymous, as confirmed by Bill, but I will withhold it since he has chosen not to go public at this time.

Next, there is the former high-ranking government official who is actually coordinating this programmed release between the former DIA officials who worked on and oversaw the project and the three DIA officials who allow them access to the secure reading room where they can transcribe this material to be released to the general public through me. His name would be known to 99.99 percent of the readers of this magazine and my UFO email list because the readers and subscribers to these two forums follow such intelligence and black-world matters more closely than the general public.

For obvious reasons I'm not going to disclose his name because many UFO investigators, kooks, and freaks would soon be beating down his door asking him if it were true, and he would say, "No, it isn't true!" and then make it so. He'd order it stopped. And last but not least, former high-ranking government official Paul McGovern had lunch at an Arlington, Virginia restaurant on December 8, 2005 with another former high-ranking intelligence official now retired and working as a consultant. Paul gave me a brief summation of his conversation with this official under several administrations and the official said he was never briefed on the specific details but was aware of the project's existence and its overall big picture. I was going to provide his name for this article, but after careful reflective thought, I've decided not to for the same reasons I cited above: I don't want him harassed by anyone reading this article and the zillions of self-styled investigators in this field called ufology.

This former official believes in disclosure, but he feels that some of the information should be kept from public view, and I totally agree now that I've been made privy to much of it via the postings from Anonymous. Much of it which will never see the light of day. Besides, for the UFO field enough never seems to be enough. I could have provided twelve names who have gone on record that such a program did in fact take place while stating that I had another twelve names that I was keeping to myself, and people would still want those other twelve names; the twelve they got just wouldn't be good enough. It never is with the kooky, mental whack-job ufologists.

And now on to the second issue-the method of disclosure-which I'll briefly address to my highly regarded and respected colleague in all of this, Richard C. Doty. In Sergeant Doty's piece, he suggests that while there was really nothing wrong with Anonymous making his stunning revelations through me, it would have carried more credibility had it been done through a more open source like CNN or Fox News.

Again: BS! More credible than li'l ol' me? Absolutely! I agree with Rick, but the real question is: Would those more credible, mainstream open sources have ever run with it and published the material from Anonymous? Absolutely not.

CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, 60 Minutes, Dateline, 20/20, and others would have demanded that the story be verified by the White House itself, meaning either Bush, Cheney, or one of their subordinates, with their implicit knowledge and permission, would have signed off on such a disclosure before being made public. Now does Doty or anyone reading this article really believe that the single most secretive presidential administration of the past 50 years or so would sign off on verifying such a highly classified project? Does anyone in their right mind imagine the White House spokeshole as saying to one of these major news media outlets: "Oh, yeah, wow, so you found out; someone leaked it to you guys. OK, the cat's out of the bag, so yes, it's all true. Go ahead and run with it; President Bush is fine with it!"

Yeah, right. And my mother's the Queen of England! In fact, look at what's happened in fewer than 60 days with postings 1-11, November 2-December 21, 2005 coming through me: It's sparked a worldwide phenomenon and has caused people to really, seriously consider that a mind-boggling human-ET exchange program actually occurred during that time period.

At this point, I won't elaborate on how postings to my small but highly influential UFO email list, ironically loaded with former and current government insiders, really got the word out much more effectively than a mainstream news media outlet would ever have, except to refer the readers of this article and magazine to the absolutely brilliant summation written by my learned, scholarly, and erudite colleague Bill Ryan. He wrote an executive summary of sorts specifically for Anonymous on the tremendous reach, impact, scope, breadth, and sociological inroads Project Serpo has had thus far. Amazing! People are actually beginning to think outside of the box. Bottom line: Could approaching CNN or Fox have resulted in greater publicity for Project Serpo than the method chosen by Anonymous and his small group at the DIA? That's right: We're not alone in the universe and our government, for its own paranoid, sick reasons has been keeping this-what ufology's cop-on-the-beat Stan Friedman calls the Cosmic Watergate-from us for umpteen years! And mind you, your tax dollars pay these government clowns to keep us in the dark. Does any of this really make sense?

Think about it: We pay these government kooks, spooks, and ne'er-do-wells high GS-grade salaries to keep us from learning what they've discovered over the years. That's the real outrage that the UFO community should be up in arms over, not about the gender makeup of our team members on Project Serpo nor the weight of the equipment taken on their 13-year journey. Gimme a break, mental patients! I respectfully disagree with Sergeant Doty, whose wise counsel and sage advice I have often sought with respect to intelligence matters, but I totally disagree with his assessment here. In all fairness to him, he is really out of his league.

Why the secrecy? And when will it end with at least some major announcement regarding the UFO subject being made public? The most troubling aspect of all this is that most people need an authority figure to come out and say this-and-that is so for reasons of credibility because most people can't think for themselves. In other words, they can't weigh and evaluate the evidence on its own merits and come to a definitive conclusion on their own; they need someone to do it for them.

Short of that, people are never going to buy this story-nor any other UFO-related story-short of a former director of Central Intelligence, secretary of Defense, or chairman of the Joint Chiefs coming out and saying: "Yes, Project Serpo occurred and I was apprised of its overall program, structure, makeup, and mission when I was the DCI during the XX administration." Keep dreamin'.

In closing, I'd like to cite a few choice passages from well-respected UFO author Timothy Good's 1996 ground-breaking book, Beyond Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Cover-Up (William Morrow, 1988). Much has been made of the widely published comments that President Reagan made after a private White House screening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but what has been nearly forgotten were the following comments which appear in Good's book and which deserve equal consideration:

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND-A REALITY

During a talk given to the Tulsa, Oklahoma Astronomy Club in 1982, former Air Force intelligence officer Steve Lewis revealed that the 12 years he spent investigating UFOs for the military both in the U.S. and abroad convinced him that intelligent extraterrestrial beings are visiting Earth. Apologizing for being unable to be more specific owing to strict orders from the Air Force not to divulge specific details about his UFO research from 1965-1977, Lewis stated that only a fraction of information accumulated by the military has been released.

"That movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind is more realistic than you'd believe," he told the audience. "You can believe that or not." Pressed to reveal what had convinced him that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft rather than top-secret military devices, Lewis commented: "The records, the information I saw while in my job. I no longer rule out what the possibilities might be."

Next, we have this information, which includes a cryptic comment by former DCI and President George Bush:

Nobody likes to look silly. Fear of ridicule is a very compelling reason for politicians to debunk the subject. British Air Minister George Ward explained [1954] that, if he admitted the existence of UFOs without evidence that the general public could actually touch, the public would consider that the Government had gone barmy. Few politicians-in Britain, the United States and worldwide- have any inside knowledge of the subject of UFOs, which is why their repeated pronouncements debunking all the reports are so convincing. And those few who have troubled to study the matter, or who have been privy to top-secret information, may be so bewildered and even alarmed by the awesome complexity of the phenomenon that they would rather say nothing at all.

"You don't know the half of it," was all former CIA Director George Bush could say when asked by a campaign committee member about UFO secrecy during his first presidential election campaign.

Politicians, furthermore, are unlikely to speak out on such a controversial topic without a mandate from the electorate. Relatively few people write to their elected representatives about UFOs, although I am pleased to report than an increasing number are doing so."

And continuing with these choice comments:

In these respects, I am fully in sympathy with the current official policy. "From an intelligence point of view," remarks Dr James Harder, "the UFO phenomenon must be truly awesome - the worst of science fiction come to life. However, over the years, the intelligence agencies must have come to the realization that the strangers from space are nothing exactly new - that evidence indicates that we are experiencing only an intensification of what may have been going on centuries. And continuing with this same line of thought, we have:

It has been suggested that those in the know are concerned about the reaction of the public and religious authorities to revelations regarding the link between the UFO phenomenon and religion (one hypothesis being that homo sapiens is genetically linked with extraterrestrials). And with one final notation on this same train of thought from Good's other book, Alien Base: The Evidence for Extraterrestrial Colonization of Earth (Harper Perennial, 1999):

In addition to the visitors being responsible for genetically upgrading the human race on two occasions in our distant past, it was alleged that a few of our great spiritual leaders-including Jesus-were genetically "engineered" by a type of artificial insemination, in an attempt to instill Earth people with spiritual concepts. The reluctance of this particular group of extraterrestrials to communicate with humanity at large was due mainly to the fact that we simply are not psychologically nor spiritually ready for contact with a higher civilization, and it is necessary for us to evolve independently. Essentially, we are spiritual beings surviving beyond death. And finally, these are author Timothy Good's personal, closing observations:

It is my conviction that we are being visited by several groups of extraterrestrials, and that, while some may not be well-disposed towards us, others are benevolent. From my own investigations throughout the world, however, I am convinced that selective contacts have been made with possibly thousands of individuals. The visitors have no need to establish open contact, nor do they want the majority of us to know what they are doing here. It is probably, in my view, that the cover-up is sustained to a certain extent by the aliens themselves.

And in closing, we have this choice snippet from former DCI Roscoe Hillenkoetter:

One authority in a position to know facts-as known at the time-was former CIA Director Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, who was unequivocal in his condemnation of official policy.

"The public has a right to know," he declared in 1960. "It is time for the truth to be brought out in open Congressional hearings . through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense."

Forty-six years later, we're still those mushrooms living under a canopy of darkness and ignorance somewhat like the infamous, ignorant inhabitants of Plato's Allegory of the Cave in Book VII of The Republic. So, while the UFO community continues to wallow like swine in their petty jealousies and bicker, argue, and fight amongst themselves, this rather profound and awe-inspiring information will continue to be withheld from us. We berate the government insiders who withhold this information which rightfully belongs to us as losers. Believe me, they're not the only losers. Go look in the mirror and see who's staring back at you.

 

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Article 3: UFO Magazine (Feb 2006)

by Richard Doty

 

My name is Richard Doty, retired special agent, Air Force Office of Special Investigation (AFOSI), and now a private citizen living in New Mexico. I've been an avid reader of UFO Magazine for the past several years.

Recently Bill Birnes, the magazine's publisher, asked me to make some comments regarding the recent Serpo revelations. I told Bill I'd be very happy to write this article relating my personal analysis of the Serpo information, which describes an exchange program in 1965 between United States military personnel and extraterrestrials from the Planet Serpo in the Zeta Reticuli star system.

Before I go into the details of Project Serpo, let me explain that I've been a recipient of Victor Martinez's email listing for the past year. For those readers who don't know Victor, let me give a brief biographical review of him. Understanding the Project Serpo disclosure starts with understanding Victor's role.

Victor is a former U.S. government employee. He worked for a number of different Federal law enforcement agencies and now works in Los Angeles as a teacher. Victor has a longstanding personal interest in the subject of UFOs and maintains an email distribution list of well over a hundred recipients on the topic. In early November 2005 I learned from Victor that he'd been contacted by a person identifying himself as Anonymous who was telling an extraordinary story; moreover, it's one which I'd heard before.

Mr. Anonymous, as I like to call him, first introduced himself as a retired employee of the U.S. government and then went on to detail the "real" Roswell incident. He stated that the Roswell incident involved two crash sites: one southwest of Corona and the second site at Pelona Peak, south of Datil, New Mexico. The crash involved two extraterrestrial aircraft.

The Corona crash was found a day later by an archaeology team who reported the crash site to the Lincoln County Sheriff's department. A deputy arrived the next day and summoned a state police officer. one live alien being, an extraterrestrial biological entity (EBE), was found hiding behind a rock. The alien was given water but declined food, and was later transferred to Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

The information eventually went to Roswell Army Air Field. The site was examined and all hard evidence was also removed to Roswell. However, the bodies were taken to Los Alamos since they had a freezing system that allowed the bodies to remain frozen for research. The craft itself was taken to Roswell and then on to Wright Field, Ohio, later to be renamed Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

The second site was not discovered until August 1949 by two ranchers. They reported the findings several days later to the sheriff of Catron County, New Mexico. Because of the remote location, it took the sheriff several days to make his way to the crash site on horseback. once at the site, the sheriff took photographs and then returned to Datil. Sandia Army Base, later to become Kirtland Air Force Base, was notified. A recovery team took custody of all evidence, including six bodies. The bodies were initially taken to Sandia but were later transferred to Los Alamos.

The live entity established communication with the U.S. military and provided information about his planet and his race of extraterrestrials. Eventually, the U.S. Government made contact with the Ebens, as they were termed, and set up a meeting location, which turned out to be the well-known Holloman landing in 1964. Mr. Anonymous explained that the landing was near Holloman Air Force Base, not actually at Holloman itself.

During that meeting, an exchange program was set up between our two races. Our government selected twelve military personnel: ten men and two women. They were trained, vetted, and carefully removed from the military system, and in 1965 the twelve left on an Eben spacecraft to the planet Serpo.

That was the core story as presented by Mr. Anonymous in a sequence of eleven major releases of information to date, all so far via Victor Martinez. Readers can go to www.serpo.org and read the archive of the entire release, accompanied by further analysis from many different people. In this rest of this article, I'll offer my personal analysis of the initial contact made by Mr. Anonymous, and of the information released by him.

In early 1979, after arriving at Kirtland Air Force Base as a young special agent with AFOSI, I was assigned to the counterintelligence division of AFOSI District 17. I was briefed into a special compartmented program. This program dealt with United States government involvement with extraterrestrial biological entities. During my initial briefing I was given the complete background of our government's involvement with EBEs.

This background included information on the Roswell incident, which did indeed state that two crash sites were found. The first crash site was located southeast of Corona and the second site was found south of Datil. Basically, this was exactly the same information that Mr. Anonymous released.

Other details about the location of the bodies and the site where the live entity was discovered were also mentioned. I learned these details in 1979 and can con- firm that Mr. Anonymous did indeed state information that was previously unknown to the public. The fact that the bodies were taken to Los Alamos and that Sandia Base handled the second site were not known publicly in the past. This information is quite correct.

During a briefing in 1984 I read a document which mentioned an exchange program between an alien race and twelve U.S. military personnel. The briefing did not mention any specific details of the exchange program, but it did refer to the program lasting from 1965 to 1978.

I tried to obtain more information during a Pentagon briefing in 1985, but I was told I didn't have the proper clearance for that information. I retired in 1988 and with one exception, I never learned anything further about the subject until very recently.

In 1991 during a retirement party for a AFOSI friend, I had a conversation with Colonel Jack Casey, retired Air Force Intelligence. I specifically asked Colonel Casey about the exchange program I'd heard about. With a look of surprise, Colonel Casey looked around as if to make sure no one was listening and then led me outside to a patio. Colonel Casey then went on to give me a short briefing about the exchange program. He told me the following:

In 1965, twelve U.S. military men were placed on an extraterrestrial spacecraft and flew to an alien planet some 40 light years away. The exchange program lasted until 1978 when the team returned. Some of the twelve died on the alien planet and by 1991, when I was given this information, some had died since. The final briefing of the returnees is still classified. Note: all the team members are now dead, the last surviving until 2002. Again, this was exactly what Mr. Anonymous has described. That was all the information Colonel Casey would or could provide. I did try over the years to obtain more information, but no one, not even the retired intelligence officers I knew, had any further data they possessed or were willing to share. Then in late 2005, 14 years later, Mr. Anonymous made the stunning release being discussed here.

Although much of the information correlates closely with what I've heard elsewhere, I do have a few concerns both regarding the method used by Mr. Anonymous in his initial release, and also regarding some of the information itself. First, I'd personally have preferred Mr. Anonymous to have chosen a different medium for his release; he could perhaps have used a more open source.

Although I have nothing but praise for Victor Martinez and his email forum, I think Mr. Anonymous could have chosen a widely recognized news medium, such as CNN, Fox, or the like, which would have given him more credibility and instant access to a much wider public.

If Mr. Anonymous wishes the information to be released broadly, then in my opinion what would work best would be for him to go to such an open source and make all the information available at one time. I don't actually know the exact reasons why he chose instead to release his information via Victor Martinez. Secondly, there are some apparent anomalies in the information that has been released to date. Many former intelligence officers have come forward after Mr. Anonymous made his initial release, and pointed out what they claimed were errors in some of the data. For instance, Mr. Anonymous stated that ten men and two women comprised the exchange team. However, both Paul McGovern, former security chief for the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Gene Loscowski (real name Gene Lakes), former director of security, Nevada Test Site, have come forward questioning this particular gender mix of the team. Three other former Air Force Intelligence officers have also questioned this information.

According to Mr. McGovern, twelve men were selected; no women. My other independent sources also confirmed that no women were sent on that mission. I'm not in any way wanting to upset female readers, but to understand how the military would have regarded this project, one must really look back to the U.S. military, not now-but way back in 1965.

During that time period women in the military were segregated. The USAF had women in the Air Force (WAFS), there were women in the Navy (WAVES), and the Army had women in the Army corps (WACS). Most military females were in medical, administrative, supply, or the personnel career field. Few women would have been qualified for such a long-duration mission. Female astronauts were not selected until the late 1970s. These are valid reasons to doubt Mr. Anonymous's particular statement that women were included on this particular mission.

Mr. Anonymous then detailed the training given to the twelve people selected for the mission. Two former Defense Intelligence Agency employees have come forward to state that the training actually fell in line with astronaut training and that the training lasted for one year and consisted of astronaut training rather then the intelligence and combat training detailed by Mr. Anonymous. If one stops and thinks about it, astronaut training would probably make a little more sense than the training described by Mr. Anonymous.

Mr. Anonymous also mentioned some items which were taken on the mission. According to his early reports, the team took 9,000 pounds of equipment with them. However, Mr. Anonymous subsequently corrected this by saying 90,500 pounds of equipment was taken.

He then mentioned that liquid nitrogen canisters were taken as a fall-back weapon against the Ebens, who were sensitive to cold. But liquid nitrogen would not stay stable for an extended period of time and would last only a few weeks in a canister. Maybe Mr. Anonymous meant compressed air, which would last longer, or better yet, Freon, which would remain stable in a canister for a long period of time.

Finally, Mr. Anonymous mentioned handguns and rifles being taken as defense. I have mixed feelings regarding this. Since it was a military team, I could understand that some weapons would be taken as a routine measure. However, if you trusted the Ebens to the degree of allowing twelve United States military personnel to fly 40 light years for 12 or 13 years, why would anyone take weapons? What good would weapons be on a planet 40 light years away?

On the positive side of Mr. Anonymous's information, a number of insiders and researchers have reported hearing of such an exchange program before. These include such respected individuals as Linda Howe and Whitley Strieber, together with Colonel Casey and all the other former DIA officials mentioned above. Whitley Strieber's tantalizing and brief experience over 10 years ago was with a man he met at a convention who claimed to have been on the Serpo team before he left Strieber to consider what he had been told. This overall degree of corroboration seems highly significant, as I think readers will agree.

Some of the data provided by Mr. Anonymous seems off- the- orbital data and other scientific information- although he did state, intriguingly, that the laws of physics were not exactly the same on Serpo as they are here in our own solar system.

Nevertheless, there's a growing debate regarding the scientific information provided by Mr. Anonymous about the planet Serpo and that solar system. According to him, Serpo was a planet of a binary star system. A binary star is a double star, each orbiting their common center of mass.

I'm not a math or science expert and will not state all the different figures or formulas, but it seems to me that there are legitimate arguments on both sides of this issue. But I have to say that I do feel that a simple hoaxer would have been sure to get the numbers right. The purpose of a hoaxer, or even someone spreading disinformation, is-after all-to convince, not to lay himself open to criticism straight away.

To conclude, and aside from the broadly confirming testimony of my various colleagues, Mr. Anonymous is simply in my opinion not operating like a hoaxer would. A hoaxer would have actually done a better job, so to speak, of researching information for his hoax. Importantly, the apparent anomalies and absence of the promised photographs to date can all be accounted for if we suppose that the context under which Mr. Anonymous is operating is not exactly as it may first appear.

We must remember that Mr. Anonymous will hardly have the 3,000-page report in his living room just sitting there like a Sears catalog. The report will be guarded under the tightest conceivable security and the conditions of access are unknown by us. We can hypothesize that Mr. Anonymous may not even have access to the documents at all and may be relying on memory, someone else's memory, or someone else supplying him with the information maybe by phone or by tape under conditions over which he himself has no control.

As for the photographs, they may again be in a different location. Paradoxically, there is the factor of Mr. Anonymous having gone quiet since his last post on December 21 up to the time of my writing this on January 13 may be precisely because he has indeed met with difficulty caused by insider agents.

We know that there are different factions within the intelligence community regarding disclosure. Some may wish to obstruct a disclosure such as this while some others may be looking the other way, quietly supporting the disclosure by allowing it to happen. We just don't know at this point. These factors are not reasons in themselves to accept the story; however, they are persuasive reasons not to dismiss it without very careful thought indeed.

In conclusion, it seems to me that while there are some discrepancies in detail, there's a persuasively broad measure of agreement that such a project actually existed, and there are good reasons for us to suspend our disbelief. I earnestly hope that by the time this edition of the magazine is published we may have heard more from Mr. Anonymous, and that his important revelations will continue well into 2006.