The date is November 9, 2007. We have just passed the 60 year anniversary of when UFOs became a United States government public relations problem.
The scene on November 9th looked promising. Thanks to a UFO questions posed to presidential campaigners Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson the UFO issue was now being discussed by media all over the United States. Not only was it being discussed, it was being done in a tone that was not quite as condescending as in the past.
The future looked bright. On November 12, there was going to be news conference at the National Press Club in Washington where high ranking pilots and officials from around the world would be telling their stories of UFO encounters.
The Clinton Library had just released 18 Freedom of Information Act Requests related to files from the Bill Clinton White House files. The release was a big story because Hillary Clinton was still the front runner to be the next U.S. president and some of these FOIAs were her files from the Clinton White House. Then the word came out; 12 of the released FOIAs were related to the Clinton White House role in trying to get UFO disclosure in the 1990s. UFOs released before all the requests from various presidential historians seeking fodder for their upcoming Clinton scholarly tomes? Who would ever have predicted such a development?
It looked like the UFO community might be days away from some sort of permanent movement away from 60 years of the government’s cone of silence, and the media’s high brow contempt. It was at this historic point in history that TV host Larry King hosted a UFO show trying to cash in on the semi positive UFO buzz.
At first the show looked good. It would have old classic stories such as the Former FAA Division Chief John Callahan’s story of secreted hard radar evidence of a Boeing 747 being followed in 1996 by a gigantic UFO the size of two aircraft carriers, and the main witnesses from the December 1980 Rendelsham Forest UFO incident in England.
It looked even better when at the last minute outspoken actress Shirley MacLaine was added to the show. It was she who went public and outed presidential campaigner Dennis Kucinich about his UFO close encounter at her home some 25 years ago. It was also Shirley who outed President Jimmy Carter in April 1995 stating that he had told her, “many times that when I first wrote Out On A Limb that he would support me, that it was true, that there were crafts, that he believed there were occupants, why should we be the only people in the universe. He wanted to shine the sunshine laws on intelligence, to expose it, to see how the people would react, but he didn't and wouldn't and couldn't as he explained to me."
I sent an e-mail question to the show based on a statement Shirley MacLaine had on November 7th to Matt Lauer on the ‘Today” show. During that interview Shirley said that she had spoken to many presidents and they had told her “they’re real.” The question e-mailed to the show concerned which presidents MacLaine had talked to and what did they say they knew for sure.
The show started with the retelling of the dramatic Rendlesham Forest case where USAF officers actually touched a craft that had landed outside of their air base in England. Then on came Shirley MacLaine and the opportunity for Larry King to hit the home run.
Shirley provided Larry all the soft pitches to hit, but for some reason Larry did not swing the bat. She had brought along Jimmy Carter’s UFO sighting report that he had filled out while governor of Georgia in 1973. Larry did not revisit what Shirley had told him on what President Carter believed, or had discovered while President.
He did however seem to be heading there, as he asked Shirley about who she had talked UFOs with.
KING: You've talked to a lot of people over the years, right?
MACCLAINE: Oh, yes.
KING: Astronauts, presidents, etc.?
King was evidently aware of the Today Show interview two days earlier where MacLaine had stated,” So I've talked to a lot of astronauts, I've talked to a lot of presidents. I mean these people are saying they're real."
And so the important public play continued, and Larry King’s next line should have been “So which Presidents did you talk with and what did they say?”
Instead, King asked the irrelevant questions, “And your belief is firm, right?” followed by “Do you think we'll ever know, know?”
Well, one thing is certain with me. We will never know unless we start asking the President what he knows, or start asking people like Shirley MacLaine what presidents have told her in her meetings with them on the subject.
What Shirley MacLaine believes about UFOs or when she thinks disclosure will come is much less important than what the President told her he knows or when he thinks there will be disclosure. The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the world. He is the constitutional head of the U.S. military, the recipient of all the best U.S. intelligence, and the head of the executive branch of government.
Theoretically, if he asks for a briefing on UFOs, he should be given the “best evidence” the government has. If the President asks and is not told that is also important because it leads to the question of who is running the American democracy everyone is so proud of.
If someone like Shirley MacLaine has talked to many Presidents who told her UFOs are real, this is a significant fact that someone has to get on the official record.
An example.
Paul Davids is a Hollywood writer and director of such films as Starry Night, and Roswell . His father, Jules Davids, was one of Bill Clinton’s professors at Georgetown University. Paul Davids sent a package of material to President Bill Clinton concerning Roswell in 1996. As it turns out Paul Davids’ correspondence with the President was one of the 12 UFO theme FOIAs that were just released on November 1st by the Clinton Library.
Once I was informed of the release by the Clinton Library I e-mailed the Inventory of the FOIA to Davids. Paul e-mailed me back the same night and revealed an encounter with President Clinton that was even more revealing than his 1996 encounter as to just what Bill Clinton thought about UFOs.
Paul Davids wrote;
On August 5 of this year (this past summer) I met informally with Bill Clinton at a fundraiser in the Hamptons, NY (fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, spoke to a breakfast gathering I attended). At that time I presented President Clinton with a copy of WITNESS TO ROSWELL, a copy of Jesse Marcel Jr.'s new book THE ROSWELL LEGACY, and an extra-large xerox of the text of the Walter Haut affidavit (that appears at the end of WITNESS TO ROSWELL). I did not enclose a letter. I discussed the Roswell UFO case with Bill Clinton. I told of my dissatisfaction with the Air Force reports done during his administration and my feeling that the testimony in WITNESS TO ROSWELL completely and thoroughly rebuts the conclusions of those reports. I praised the decision of former Sec. of the Air Force Sheila Widnall to release Roswell 1947 servicemen from any oaths of secrecy they ever took related to the Roswell incident, and I pointed out that Schmitt and Carey, for their book, had gone to all the surviving servicemen of Roswell they could find of that era to tell them of the release from security oaths and collect their affidavits. I mentioned the statements of former Sec. of Defense of Canada Paul Hellyer and the recent disclosures about the Phoenix lights case by former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington. President Clinton gave me his undivided attention and when I was done speaking to him he held the WITNESS TO ROSWELL book tightly in his hands and said "You know, I've always been really interested in this stuff, and I'm going to read this."
Now isn’t that more interesting than Paul Davids telling me if his belief is firm or if he thinks disclosure will ever come? It is time to address the presidential role in the history of UFOs.
What made the Larry King show really collapse after the failure to ask Shirley what Reagan, Clinton, and Carter had told her about the reality of UFOs was bringing a skeptic, MAJ. JAMES MCGAHA, USAF (RET): on the show to burn up the last 20 minutes of the show exploring his deluded view of reality.
TV shows, in the interest of balance, have always fallen for allowing skeptics to muddy the water on important UFO evidence with their challenge to prove. They throw out the bait and reel in most hosts like some fish that hasn’t eaten for a week.
The answer to any skeptic challenge to prove the UFO case should always the same. “Prove to me the world is round and I will prove to you anything you want.” Proof is a game no one can win.
The world is round.
No, it’s flat.
Everyone knows the world is round.
Everyone used to think it’s flat. What everyone believes is not proof.
Astronauts have flown around it and said so.
Astronauts claim to have flown around it. They were simply misinterpreted what they saw.
There are pictures of the round world.
There are also pictures of UFOs. They can be hoaxed. Pictures are not proof.
The horizon shows the world is round.
It is an optical illusion; just like Venus setting in the west will get bigger and appear to change color.
People have flown around the world in planes.
They think they have. They were actually flying in a big circle over a flat earth, or they were lying. People lie. People misinterpret what they see.
Say what you will, it is impossible to prove anything to a skeptic. All of the evidence you present to him must filter through his subjective mind and he has the right to reject anything or everything if he chooses.
Anything you have viewed is subjective, and subject to evaluation. The skeptic’s subconscious has every right to interpret the incident in a different way. There really is no “objective evidence” that everyone is forced to accept.
That’s why there are still 19% of people who still believe Elvis might be alive, 22% of Americans believe George Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand, 16% who believe explosives brought down the Twin Trade Towers, and the 1997 Gallup poll which showed 44% of Americans backed the creation of man by God in the last 10,000 years (the 6-day creation) as opposed to only 10% who believe in the Darwinist evolution theory.
Despite these lessons of history, everyone on the Larry King Show worked hard to prove their case and convert poor Major McGaha to save his soul. McGaha, however, was having none of it. He played the “prove it to me game” like a pro.
And so, the UFO Disclosure movement continues down the road to bring enlightenment to the public. It has taken two steps forward in the last couple weeks, and now one step back with the November 9th Larry King Show.
The movement, however, is still forward. Sooner or later, like any new thought movement that does the necessary work, we will arrive at a point where what we now claim will no longer be fringe. It will be a commonly held belief. The new ideas will flourish and the old ideas will die away.
Tags:
clinton, larry king, shirley maclaine, ufo
Posted at: 11:29 PM | Add Comment