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September 2010_june_july_2009.qxd 29/09/2010 10:59 PM Page 7 Clandestine Human Experimentation 7 Clandestine human experimentation disclosed. More to come? Continued from Page 6 Activists for supposed "UFO Disclosure" generally ignore, downplay and deflect public and journalistic interest from any recollection or recounting of human experimentation possibly attendant to so-called "ET abductions" or other alleged "UFO" activity involving reported contacts with terrestrial human beings, in the US and now most notably in other countries and cultures. The Guatemalan disclosures likely signal a "climate change" in how such alleged reports are considered, as much so-called "UFO" activity and claimed conspiracies involving citizens of countries other than the US US government and some past and present He was "quite a hard-working instructor," have been the centerpiece of "retail UFOlogy." officials. [] especially when teaching his primary interests Previously, the American CIA of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, acknowledged that many claimed "UFO" Alvin Lawson dies at 80; short stories and children's literature, said sightings during the Cold War years had been of Charles Pomeroy, a retired English professor exotic reconnaissance aircraft the agency UFO researcher who shared a campus office with Lawson for sponsored and developed, including its A-12 about 20 years. supersonic spy plane, code named "Oxcart." questioned beliefs of Lawson's work at Long Beach also That aircraft later went public as the SR-71 alleged abductees included a UFO literature course that examined Blackbird, now "retired." The skin of an early how people "used language to describe the A-12 prototype recently was installed as a static LA Times phenomenon," Pomeroy said. display at the CIA's campus in Langley, VA, and Not everyone on the faculty understood a retired SR-71 was added to the collection at Alvin Lawson, an English professor at how Emily Dickinson and "E.T." could interest Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, Cal State Long Beach who spent decades the same professor. after a record-breaking final flight across the studying unidentified flying objects and "University life is very tolerant, but a lot continental United States. questioning the beliefs of people who said they of people had the sense it was a very unusual Less proudly remembered are previous had been abducted, has died. He was 80. interest for him to have," Pomeroy said. government and military intelligence research Lawson died Sept. 8 at Western Medical Lawson once told a Times reporter that programs into so-called "mind control" and Center in Anaheim from complications of his interest in UFOs began in the late 1940s other experiments aiming to influence human pneumonia, said his daughter, Leslie Dirgo. when he first read of reported sightings. In the and cultural behaviors, alleged victims of which Over the years, he developed "a personal 1970s, he started the UFO Report Center of continue to seek recognition and justice for kind of fascination" with UFOs, his daughter Orange County, which according to a 1992 claimed medical and psychological damage said. Times article received about 400 calls in its first they suffered. Lawson taught a class on the subject at year. A number of these were disclosed in the Cal State Long Beach, started a telephone With an Anaheim doctor, William C. mid-1970s, after congressional investigations hotline about UFOs and became convinced that McCall, Lawson used hypnosis on people who following Watergate and allegations the Nixon people who said they had been abducted said they had been abducted. Lawson started administration misused the FBI and CIA in its actually were using memories of their birth to becoming more skeptical of the accounts, and activities targeting anti-war protestors and describe encounters with extraterrestrials. he and McCall decided to hypnotize people who others deemed "enemies" of the Nixon White "Do I think there are unidentified flying made no claims about space aliens. They were House. objects, things that people can't explain what asked to imagine being abducted so the But President Gerald R. Ford and later they are or why they're there? Yes," he told the accounts could be compared to reported President Jimmy Carter shut down disclosures St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1996. "Do I think little abductions. Lawson was struck by the of many such programs, deemed "the Family green men are inside abducting people? No." similarities. Jewels" by intelligence insiders. Some of these Alvin Houston Lawson was born Oct. "We had expected the people imagining programs allegedly were transferred out of 11, 1929, in Fort Bragg, Calif. His father, the abductions would be giving us real government, to several private medical and Roscoe, was a school principal who became a predictable, stultified, cardboard encounters. philanthropical foundations and to academic district superintendent, and his mother, But they made up incredible stuff," he told The research institutions. Katherine, was a teacher. Times. "It was just as rich, variable and Alleged victims of similar experiments Lawson graduated with a bachelor's interesting as the supposedly real abductions." perennially assert that not all of the military and degree from UC Berkeley in 1952 and a Lawson believed people could intelligence research involving unwitting master's in 1958 and a doctorate in 1967, both in remember the trauma of their birth and the human subjects have as yet been disclosed, but English, from Stanford University. He served in subjects kept using similar imagery and details. mainstream journalism routinely disregards and the Army during the Korean War. "The research means that people who marginalizes such claimants, feeding on the In 1953, Lawson married Barbara Slade. have reported being captured by the UFOs have abundance of "silly science" and "whacko" They met as students and fellow musicians at had experiences as least as valid as dreams, information continuously fed by zealous San Francisco State, which Lawson attended as deathbed visions and psychosis," he told advocates of "ET's presence," and their latest an undergraduate before transferring to Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper in 1985. Internet manifestation, "Exopolitics." Berkeley. She played the clarinet and he played "That is, they aren't lying but their experiences But a number of journalists and the trumpet in the school band, Lawson's aren't real or anything like we've seen in the investigators suspect "UFO" related programs daughter said. movies." covered up illicit human experimentation Lawson joined the Cal State Long Beach Lawson's views made him "a rebel" equally embarrassing or moreso than the faculty in 1962 and stayed through the mid- among people interested in UFOs, his daughter Guatemalan disclosures of yesterday are to the 1990s, becoming an emeritus professor in 1990. said. []