At the time, I was used to hearing foreign accents. Brits and Frenchmen in rock and roll, Germans and Chinese . even Italians with a Southern drawl . at my company, Village Labs. But there was something very strange about the way Vladimir said "meel-yunayre un vay-kashun" that made me stop and ponder. He reminded me of the TV comedian Yakov Smirnoff.
Vladimir spoke with authority. He was very precise. He selected words carefully. Why was he addressing me, though? It was then when I realized that he didn.t really know me from UFO-TV, or my lab work. I thought he might have wanted simply to talk to my exotic blonde friend.
"So, did you hear my lecture?" he asked.
"Sorry, we missed it," I replied. "Please allow us to introduce ourselves. I am Jim Dilettoso and this is Susan Gordon. And you are . . . ?"
"I am so pleazeded too meat you," Vladimir replied with a conviction and warmth that belied the intellectual rigor that had been bred into the core of the Hungarian.s being. "I am scientist from Russian Academy of Sciences. Do you have UFO video we can trade?"
I let him know that I wasn.t there actually speaking this time, that my band, UFAUX, was performing at the banquet party. (I had long since discovered that you can stay out of the line of fire if you perform at these things, instead of speak!) Problem was, my UFO video collection was back in Arizona.
"Great. I.ll come to Arizona," Vladimir confirmed.
And after a full weekend of more deliberate intellectual intoxication than a man should be allowed, we headed back to Arizona. So did Vladimir, who drove a Volvo station wagon pumped full of videotapes and paperwork, with only a slight amount of room for the cooler. I never did hear him lecture, but once he was at my ranch, I got the full monty. We actually became great friends.
He told me that he was the Hungarian who was calling me in 1985. And that it was our many phone discussions that motivated him to defect to the U.S. Legend had it, though, that he was still a KGB double agent. That wasn.t possible, I thought: He.s too short to be a secret agent! Besides, he has the best UFO video collection I.ve ever seen.
My home, the Flying Heart Ranch in Paradise Valley Arizona, was a great place to bring foreign dignitaries. A sprawling horse ranch built in 1947, with multiple guest houses and great oriental landscaping, my home made the perfect setting for getting someone to "loosen up." And loosen up Vladimir did. I heard all about it. Not only did I get to see all the videos he had been collecting, but I got to hear about his day job . his spooky business.
Vladimir was a "scientific investigator," as he put it. His interest became his passion, and his passion became his assignment. He investigated the paranormal and scientific secrets of the Third Reich. He harbored no sympathies for the Nazis. He wasn.t even interested in the regime.s philosophy. But he was immersed in their secrets.
In the '70s and '80s, the KGB controlled East Germany and East Berlin. This provided the basis for the unraveling of the bizarre tale of Hitler's UFOs. Not only had the Third Reich built them, but the people who built them are still alive today . and building UFOs in South America. Vladimir had pictures to prove it all.
The big question in Vladimir's mind was not whether or not they had built UFOs, but whether or not aliens had helped. Having read Morning of the Magicians, I was well-versed in the concepts that the Third Reich had used . magic, astrology, sacred geometry, llamas, and priests from Tibet who barked at the moon to get more power. I didn.t know if any of it was true, but I appreciated Vladimir.s quick wit and tenacity.
To me, the issues were much more fundamental. If Werner Von Braun et. al., the key Nazi space scientists, had worked on flying disks and levitation machines . with or without aliens . why did they build rockets and tin cans for NASA? Had the aliens abandoned them? Were the Germans holding back this secret knowledge? Was the Third . or Fourth . Reich alive and well in Brazil, building UFOs, commanding the New World Order from the Bilderberg-Hapsburg empire and keeping the traitor Nazis under their thumb at NASA? If any of this was true, then world politics far superceded any provincial rocket building.
Vladimir had a wealth of impressive knowledge of physics, aerospace, and UFO propulsion theory. But was he bamboozled, or was he putting in the plumbing? The pictures and blueprints he had were seemingly genuine. Other UFO investigators were also on the bandwagon. Valery Uvarov, Victor Kostrikin, and even famed Russian Cosmonaut Marina Popovich were convinced of their authenticity.
As the years have gone by, Vladimir Terziski has become famous in these circles. His two-hour lectures, followed by three-hour question-and-answer sessions, can hold just about any standing-room only crowd. He.s frequently dismissed as a kook, but then again, most UFO investigators are known as that in some circles, just for different reasons. If aliens had helped the Third Reich, then God save us all.