If you've watched UFO shows on cable over the past few years, you've probably seen a show produced by Scott Catamas.
3/21/2000
Written by Wiggz...also known as the AlienZoo prohibitor of dullness.
If you've watched UFO shows on cable TV over the past three or four years, you've probably seen a show produced by Scott Catamas. Between 1995 and 1998, Catamas was involved in producing more than 150 segments for NBC's "The Other Side", UPN's "The Paranormal Borderline", and nationally syndicated programs "Strange Universe" and "Looking Beyond". In his travels, Catamas has interviewed scores of renowned ufologists, astronauts, and military figures.
Today, the three-time Emmy winner is founder and president of New Earth Communications, a production company devoted to developing .transformational. TV programming and news. Of late, the Los Angeles, Calif. company has been developing five TV programs, each of which addresses a distinct interest group. "Amazing Universe" deals with UFOs and the unexplained. "Which Doctor?", meanwhile, is a health and wellness show. "New Earth News" will be a "positive" news magazine revolving around, as Catamas puts it, .what you don.t see on NBC . what.s really going on in the world.. Celebrities for a "Better World" offers insights into what celebrities do with their spare time and spare money. Lastly, .dromedy. "Following Bliss" will be a New Age "Ally McBeal", as it will be set in an alternative community in northern California, rather than a Boston law firm.
Catamas looks at UFOs from the metaphysical orientation that he has had since early childhood. He describes his experience with a UFO . 10 years ago, with a group of friends on Maui . as a .powerful and wonderful experience.. As you.ll see below, he.s kept an open mind about how we see our world.
AlienZoo: What were some of your favorite moments of your work on UFO shows?
Scott Catamas: Definitely, my interviews with some of the key astronauts and military personnel. I had two wonderful interviews with Edgar Mitchell, the Apollo 14 astronaut. He.s truly an American hero . he walked on the Moon, and was on the third manned mission to the Moon. He founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He.s a very well-respected scientist, educator, and spiritual teacher. Along with Dr. Steven Greer, he.s one of the two leaders in the government disclosure movement.
I.ve enjoyed traveling all over the world, too, going to Mexico and Peru, on shoots, chasing UFOs. I was in Sedona with a film crew, and we actually caught a UFO on tape.
AlienZoo: Speaking of military, what are your insights into the military.s alleged cover-up?
Catamas: I have a lot of compassion for people who are in the military. Without a doubt, there was a crash at Roswell. That set in motion a whole series of events. I.ve had the good fortune of breaking the story of Frank Kauffman, the counterintelligence officer who was stationed in Roswell in July, 1947. Roswell was home of the 509th Atomic Bomb Squadron. Roswell was a highly sensitive site; there was a lot of espionage; we were just entering into the Cold War with Russia. And Frank.s job was to ferret out Soviet spies, of which there were many.
A craft did go down. And the government didn.t know what to do about it. In fact, there was no cover-up at all. The government issued a press release; Walter Haut, who I.ve spent a lot of time with, was the young man who wrote the press release. For the first 24 hours, there was no attempt to cover anything up. It wasn.t until the big guys from Washington, D.C. came out and changed the story, and made Major Marcel post records of it being a weather balloon. In hindsight, it is easy to say, .How dare you keep that information from us? We have a right to know!. But you.ve got to remember that this was two years after a devastating world war, one in which if Hitler had developed an atomic bomb first, we would have lost, and life as we know it would have been very different. We were living in a time in which atomic weaponry and technology was of a premium value, and if the enemy had obtained a hold of it, we could have been snuffed out.
Very accurately, the military determined that, by reverse engineering, and studying the craft.s technology, we could have obtained secrets . technology that could have given the U.S. a strategic advantage. For the time, keeping this a secret wasn.t an outrageously bad decision. I think a lot of our technology did come from reverse engineering. I.ve interviewed too many credible people who say that, indeed, that this is where we have achieved many technological breakthroughs. Unfortunately, a precedent was established that a lot of people are trying to get out of. Once you cover things up, a lie begets a lie. Many people, like Frank Kauffman, are trying to come forward and share what they know. There.s a tremendous amount of infighting going on in the military over whether to release certain information. Now, I.m not saying that the military are all good guys; I could go on and on in the other direction, but that just be repeated what we already know. I think that the military is allowing information to come out through reporters like myself, and television shows such as the ones I.ve done.
The testimony of military personnel who are coming forward and speaking, along with Dr. Steven Greer, and Edgar Mitchell, there is a very significant consensus. The consensus is that when most people see a classic disk-shaped object, it.s not piloted by an ET, it.s piloted by military personnel. What we have out there is more sophisticated than what the general population knows.
AlienZoo: Do any of the eight astronauts have in common any insights into UFOs?
Catamas: There.s a wide disparity there, because of the different levels of relationships with UFO phenomena. At one end of the spectrum, you have Edgar Mitchell calling for government disclosure, and they.re very active in their beliefs. At the other end of the scale, you have Buzz Aldrin, who is so adamant about there not being UFO stuff that I don.t believe him. It goes too far . and I.ve interviewed him several times. Then there are other guys, like Rusty Schweickart, who are in the middle, saying, .I would have loved to have seen a UFO, but I never did, and I don.t know anybody who did..
Astronauts. sightings of UFOs, according to www.anamalous-images.com
AlienZoo: You say that you.ve always had metaphysical interests. Do you think that there.s a place for spirituality in looking at UFOs? I can imagine that some of the more scientifically minded ufologists would say there isn.t.
Catamas: I think that, certainly, the nature of consciousness is to expand. The proliferation of the Internet . having more information available . gives people ample opportunity to explore different arenas of thought. Every field of study that is expansive in nature . certainly, ufology and extraterrestrial possibilities fall into this category . will continue to rise and grow in people.s consciousness.
What I.ve come to learn is that everything is real, and nothing is real. I don.t mean it in a cute, Zen-like way. This is a dream world. Everything exists to the degree with which it is imagined. Scientists are proving this: Quantum physics explains that everything exists to the degree with which it is imagined.
Archetypal events take place in such a way that you never really know what the truth is. I can give you three examples: Jesus Christ, the John F. Kennedy assassination, and the O.J. Simpson case. These events took place in totally different times and eras, but they.re all archetypal events; people who feel a relationship with them have a very strong opinion about them. If you think about it, none of us know for a fact what really happened. We really don.t know if Jesus resurrected; we really don.t know if he was the Christ; nobody knows for sure . at least nobody we.re going to have coffee with tomorrow. We really don.t know for sure what happened with the Kennedy assassination -- there.s incredibly contradictory evidence, that Oswald acted alone, that Oswald was a patsy who never touched a gun. What do you want to believe? What is it about your belief system that makes you choose to believe that Oswald did it? The same thing can be said about O.J. Simpson; except for one or two people, nobody really knows what happened . but almost everyone will be emphatic.
Bringing this to UFOs, when I would interview abductees, and they would look me in the eye, I knew that they were not lying. I knew that these people absolutely, positively believed that they had been abducted, that they had been experimented on, that they had outrageous, impossble-to-believe experiences. I don.t think those experiences took place in the same consensus reality that you and I are talking in right now. Most of the people who have those experiences have them in some kind of interdimensional world. But this doesn.t mean that it doesn.t have validity. It doesn.t mean that it doesn.t have truth. Where we fail is where we become absolute, where we say, .Christ was the Messiah,. that .O.J. did it.. It is there where we become so emphatic in our beliefs that we actually contract.
The nature of UFO contact is to expand our consciousness. The positive approach is, .The universe is greater than I can conceive. Things are bigger than my belief system..
New Earth News. UFO sightings gallery
AlienZoo: UFO culture is in many ways a culture of rebellion . those who believe they have proof of UFOs. existence often have to .fight the system. to be heard. Mainstream media in the U.S. somehow just can.t tolerate taking UFOs or aliens too seriously. Meanwhile, you.re bridging the gap with the shows that you.ve done. Why is it that cultures around the world are much more receptive to the idea of extraterrestrial life than U.S. culture?
Catamas: It ultimately comes down to belief systems. Why is it that in predominantly Spanish-speaking cultures, in Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Spanish-speaking parts of Texas, there are reports of chupacabras? Have you heard of chupacabras being sighted in Hawaii, Alaska, or Seattle? I haven.t. Conversely, in Spanish-speaking cultures, how often do you hear about alien abductions? The more people read Whitley Strieber.s books, the more people seem to be abducted.
I.ve done some research into this. There seem to be waves and cycles of group consciousness, if you will, revolving around supernatural encounters. Apparently, there was a wave of vampire-like experiences during the turn of the century. Dracula was just out; the books were very popular; all of a sudden hundreds of girls were getting pregnant, claiming that a vampire had visited their bed. When an archetypal event occurs, we work it into our consciousness. A Christian would be more likely to see Jesus in a near-death experience; Muslims would have ones involving Mohammed. Extraterrestrials tend to play a large role in our super-conscious experiences, whether it.s dreams, waking dreams, or heightened states of awareness. Rather than getting caught up in, .My experience is truth for everyone,. we should be saying, .I have these feelings. I have this response. What does this say about me, my belief system, my world, and my journey in this lifetime?.
It.s more important to bring it back to ourselves than project it onto the rest of the world. When we share experiences on a common ground, the result is very positive.