Page 15 - 201007 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - July 2010

July 2010_june_july_2009.qxd 31/07/2010 10:52 AM Page 15 Are UFOs Just A CIA Con-Trick? 15 ARE UFOs JUST A CIA CON-TRICK? MIRAGE MEN BY MARK PILKINGTON By Harry Ritchie Ufology is a faith that includes many beliefs, from the oddly popular one about Nazi aliens who live under the ground to David Icke's contention that the Duke of Edinburgh is in fact a shape-changing, blood-sucking alien lizard. But here's the core of the faith - that some UFO sightings and encounters are real, the U.S. government knows all about these extraterrestrial visitations, and they've mounted a huge conspiracy to keep the aliens secret and us in the dark. This book threatens to demolish that faith. Because here Mark Pilkington sets out to prove that the U.S. government really has been conducting a top-secret UFO conspiracy - only one designed not to hide UFOs but publicise them, fuelling and even creating the major UFO myths. Flying saucers, alien abductions, crash- landed spacecraft, secret underground bases in New Mexico - they were all created by the U.S. government. As Mark Pilkington immediately acknowledges, that might sound only marginally less ridiculous and emptily melodramatic than claiming that the Royal Family are actually alien reptiles. But he begins was Timothy Good, whose international and confides the real 'truth' - yes, there is a huge to build a pretty convincing case that U.S. bestseller about supposed contact with aliens, government conspiracy to produce a agencies really have been conducting just such Above Top Secret, included completely bogus smokescreen of nonsense about UFOS, of a long-running disinformation campaign to papers planted in the American National course; however, it's designed to hide not promote UFOs. And it does make sense. Archives. supersonic test-flights but ... real UFOs. UFOs make the perfect cover story to Another is George Adamski, an early Because, you see, by offering up a series hide experimental aircraft from prying Russian fan of flying saucers whose bestselling books in of scary stories about UFO invasions and alien eyes as well as those of their own citizens. the Fifties described his meetings with a chap abductions, this will gradually desensitise the Ufologists are a particular pest to U.S. Air Force called Orthon from Venus and his own trips in public to the eventual truth that the U.S. security, for ever trying to root around their flying saucers. government really has been in contact with secret projects and hack into their systems - they I came across one of Adamski's mad aliens. need to be led up various extraterrestrial garden books in my local public library when I was a Argh! Clearly, obviously, surely, this is paths and far away from finding out about boy, and I remember being disturbed and more hokum, an attempt to exploit Pilkington actual highly-classified experiments in perplexed - this was a book, a proper printed with a slightly refined version of the same old weaponry or aircraft book, so all this stuff about going to Venus and stories - but he has previous as a Ufology Pilkington's theory would certainly meeting Venusians ... it had to be real, didn't it? believer and he can't quite shake off the thrill of explain why so many of the key UFO sightings Now, it seems Adamski was an innocent, eager thinking that maybe, just maybe, an alien and events happen near U.S. Air Force bases - dupe and that Orthon and the spaceships weren't spaceship did crash-land at Roswell. That's such as Roswell, home of the famous 'incident' figments of his silly or venal imagination but typical of a book that isn't quite the rigorous when an alien craft was supposed to have crash- real people and vehicles supplied by the CIA. hard-hitting investigation it could and should landed, with a couple of aliens aboard. ake spaceships, fake aliens, fake have been. Pilkington just about manages to And why so many extraterrestrial documents and even a fake underground alien hold on to his scepticism but ends with a spiel spaceships seem to behave like the pilotless base - it might all seem unduly elaborate and about nobody knowing for sure what the truth drones and stealth aircraft developed by the indeed expensive. can be and Ufology being a murky, grey area. U.S. Air Force. And why flying saucers should But the Americans certainly had the No, no, no. There's nothing grey about it. Either first turn up at the start of the Cold War, just money for it, budgeting billions of dollars for we have been visited by aliens and the when the U.S. Air Force was beginning to the CIA's black arts. American government is covering this up or we experiment with exotic new types of flight The Pentagon already had a good bash at haven't and it isn't. According to Pilkington, the campaign to that themselves, sponsoring a recruitment film Either that debris at Roswell was part of promote the idea of UFOs was masterminded in of the Seventies, which claimed that UFOs were a crashed flying saucer or it came from a test- the Fifties by the head of the CIA, Allen Welsh real and which included footage of a flying flight that went wrong or a knackered high- Dulles. More recently, many of the leaked fake saucer landing at a U.S. Air Force base and a altitude weather balloon. Either the Duke of documents and bogus stories seem to have come couple of aliens disembarking. Edinburgh is a blood-sucking alien reptile from the U.S. Air Force's Office of Special And that, you might think, is the seeded from a distant star system or he is a Investigations (AFOSI). Pentagon bang to rights. But at this point in the human from Greece. So. What do you reckon? One victim of fake UFO documents book, things begin to get even more Great credit to Pilkington, though, for revealing evidently supplied by the American government complicated. who Orthon really was/ those aliens really are. An AFOSI agent takes Pilkington aside