Activism in legal, political arenas getting results; some believe disclosure is near
4/4/2000
Written by Wiggz...also known as the AlienZoo prohibitor of dullness.
One legal organization and a network of political lobbyists believe they are making inroads into ending UFO secrecy. Not only are their efforts gaining results in the arenas of law and government, but they seem to be taken seriously by the mainstream media -. without being treated with a typically skeptical tone.
On the legal front, Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) made major headway in its recent case against the Department of Defense. In the case titled CAUS v. Department of Defense, CAUS charged that the military agency didn.t perform a thorough keyword search on documents related to a flying triangle. The case was dismissed last week, however; U.S. District Court Judge Stephen M. McNamee ruled that the Department of Defense (DoD) did conduct a reasonable and thorough search, that CAUS did not "demonstrate substantial doubt regarding the reasonableness of the search." The case marked the first time in 17 years since CAUS appeared in court; in that sense, it was a victory.
Meantime, in the political arena, Bruce Widaman, state director of Missouri.s Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), has succeeded at getting the green light for circulating a petition to place a UFO disclosure question on Missouri's autumn election ballot. If he and his Missouri peers can gather 80,000 supportive signatures by Friday, May 5, voters will be asked to approve a measure encouraging the U.S. Congress to convene UFO-related hearings involving testimony from government personnel.
Are the times a-changin., to paraphrase Bob Dylan, as far as mainstream acceptance of UFOs in the U.S. is concerned?
CAUS.s Gersten: Still looking for answers
CAUS Executive Director and AlienZoo columnist Peter Gersten will not to be deterred by Judge McNamee.s decision on the DoD case. He says he will seek more information from the DoD Freedom of Information Act officers who, in the first place, oversaw the electronic search (solicited by e-mail) for "flying triangle" documents.
At least two DoD employees would be questioned here: Edmund F. McBride, chief of the Information Management Division of the Joint Secretariat, Joint Staff, and Richard L. Dunn, also of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It.s probable that Gersten will be asked to submit another FOIA request regarding this matter.
"I.m going to see if I can obtain the responses from the e-mails, and whatever responses they received from the computerized search," says Gersten, the self-styled "UFO lawyer." "Even though the response was not consistent with what I wanted . the triangle object . I would guess that whatever they retrieved by using the words .alien craft,. .space craft,. and .flying saucer. would be interesting to me."
Gersten continued: "I want to see the e-mails responding to what they said. Did they take the search seriously. Did they find anything? Did they recommend anything?"
CAUS.s contention all along was that it wasn.t searching for traditional UFO information. The DoD case was special for this reason; an unconventional FOIA search was requested with hopes of gathering out-of-the-ordinary information. In the end, though, nothing was said to be discovered.
For CAUS, appealing the DoD case isn.t an entirely viable option. Gersten would have to show that McNamee abused his discretion in dismissing the case. Since this is a District Court case, doing so would be very difficult, not to mention time-consuming and costly.
Expect Gersten to become involved with NASA matters quite soon. He has been retained by an unnamed individual to work on NASA-related FOIA requests.
"To one degree, Peter Gersten.s work has political impact," says Stephen Bassett, director of suburban Washington, D.C.-based X-PPAC (Extraterrestrial Phenomena Political Action Committee), a political action committee. "He.s on the legal front, but there.s political implications when he.s suing the State of Arizona or the DoD. It puts pressure on the government, because it forces them to respond, so that they don.t make a mistake."
Widaman: "More information is better than less"
To be able to circulate a petition that would allow for a vote on UFO legislation, MUFON.s Bruce Widaman and colleagues, namely UFO activist Larry Bryant (MUFON.s director of governmental affairs and a long-time CAUS representative), started from nothing. Widaman, for one, had no experience with formulating ballot language. So the group fought five months for their measure to be accepted by Missouri.s Secretary of State. At last, on March 24, Missouri MUFON met success; the groupl must now work diligently to obtain the required number of valid signatures.
If the signatures are received, and the ballot measure is allowed, voters in Missouri on Nov. 7 will encounter the following question: "Shall Missouri statutes be amended to state that the year 2000 be proclaimed and observed as the Year of UFO Awareness; to contain a statement urging the U.S. Congress to convene open, comprehensive hearings in which government personnel are permitted to present sworn testimony regarding their personal knowledge of any UFO-related evidence given under immunity by waiver of any applicable security oath or agreement of nondisclosure; and to proclaim various statements regarding UFO as fact? The estimated fiscal impact of this proposed measure to state and local governments is unknown."
MUFON needs to obtain 5% of the voting population.s signatures in six out of nine Missouri Congressional districts. Technically, 60,000 signatures are needed; yet, since some signatures may be unverifiable, and hence invalidated, Widaman thinks that as many as 80,000 signatures are needed.
"It looks as though everybody is trying to get on this and sign it," he says. "It.s going really well. It.s snowballing."
Surprisingly, Widaman discovered in his travails that the Secretary of State office in Missouri was remarkably easy to work with, in terms of submitting forms. However, MUFON.s proposal was rejected on seemingly simple grounds, like a semi-colon being out of place.
Having wished for full disclosure of UFO information for three decades, Widaman won.t lose sight of the power of government resting in citizens. hands.
"The government is supposed to be for the people, not against the people. We are the government," he says. "I.m just trying to get to the truth, and use the rules that they.ve set up. In my opinion, we.re doing the right thing."
Widaman believes the secrecy surrounding the Roswell Incident, for example, has remained overhead for far too long. As a precedent that should be followed, he points to an executive order signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1995, regarding declassifying documents dating back 25 years or more. The Classified National Security Information law states that classified documents must remain classified only if declassification might "seriously and demonstrably impair relations" between nations. Dialogues between Japanese Prime Minister Sato and President Nixon, from 1972, were declassified as a result.
"If we go back all the way to 1947, we find that they.ve been covering up UFO information from day one," Widaman notes. "With Roswell, New Mexico, all we find is the alleged double-crash of vehicles, the recovery of alien bodies, and shortly thereafter the invention of the National Security Act of 1947, which to date prevents anyone in the military from speaking about them. Right after the National Security Act of 1947 came into existence, the Central Intelligence Agency was born."
He continues: "Everyone I.ve been talking to in the military and government has told me that they.ve always thought it was much better to get the information out to the public."
A call for UFO unity
X-PPAC director Stephen Bassett views the Missouri push for Congressional hearings as "a historical first." A successful November 7 vote would pave the way for government employees to take the witness stand. And government employees, in Bassett.s view, represent "the best door that the disclosure process could go through to achieve success."
Regardless, Bassett opines that the Missouri government stalled the petition drive for months so that MUFON had as little time as possible to gather the required signatures. Basically, the group has to find just short of 2,000 signers per day.
Bassett started X-PPAC last year with a two-fold aim. First, to "end the government embargo of facts confirming the presence of extraterrestrial life forms in our world." Second, "to form a partnership between our government and the American public to create policy."
Not only does X-PPAC lobby political officials at the state and national levels, it lobbies the media.
"Many issues won.t even be pursued on the Hill unless the press gets on them first," Bassett says. "The key developments in our political stream of events almost always turn on a certain level of press coverage. That coverage might be of hearings going on. If the press covers an issue, the politics will be changed dramatically."
While he plans to help the Missouri effort as he can, Bassett plans to run an anti-UFO secrecy ad -. once funds become available .- in The Washington Post. The ad would call for Congressional hearings in which government, military, civilian contract, and agency employees give testimony regarding their personal knowledge of extraterrestrials.
Another politically active means of keeping UFOs in the public eye, Bassett says, is through a grassroots initiative called "Get out the Questions." Through this simple strategy, UFO believers would attend Congressional and Presidential campaign speeches this summer and approach the microphone whenever possible, asking about disclosure. Not only would candidates would be put on the spot, their answers would be put on the record.
Despite the positive strides made in politics, however, Bassett cautions against the divisions inherent in the so-called UFO "community." The field's strongest display of consistency has been its unwillingness to work together.
"It.s a fractionated field with a lot of territoriality, a lot of ego, and a lot of internal strife, where people lose focus of the larger picture," he admits. The UFO community.s inability to work together, he says, has been the "number-one reason, other than the government.s obstacles, why disclosure has not occurred."
For further reference
To contact Bruce Widaman, call his 24-hour hotline at 1-800-489-4UFO. His mailing address is: MUFON Missouri, P.O. Box 643, St. Charles, MO 63302.