-Caveat Lector-
http://www.forteantimes.com/artic/122/disin2.html
WHILE MJ12 - THE SEMI-SECRET BODY ALLEGEDLY OVERSEEING THE ALIEN 'PROBLEM' -
AND AREA 51- THE SUPPOSED ALIEN HQ ON EARTH - ARE NOW WELL KNOWN, FEW PEOPLE
ARE AWARE OF THEIR ORIGINS IN THE LATE 1980'S. VETERAN UFOLOGIST DON ECKER,
CONCLUDES HIS ACCOUNT.
While MJ-12 - the semi-secret body allegedly overseeing the alien �problem
- and Area 51 - the supposed alien HQ on Earth - are now well known, few
people are aware of their origins in the late 1980s. veteran Ufologist Don
Ecker, who had a ringside seat at the birth of this murky mythology,
concludes his account.
The close of 1988 saw American ufology in chaos over the claims and
counter-claims about MJ-12. The airing, in October 1988, of the two-hour TV
special UFO Coverup - Live only fanned the flames higher. In it, William
Moore and Jaime Shandera - who had both gained fame for their investigations
of the MJ-12 affair - introduced two men as American intelligence agents.
Disguised electronically and given the codenames of �Falcon� and �Condor�,
the men stated as fact that the American Government was playing host to
alien visitors. Memorably, �Falcon� claimed the "grey aliens" liked
strawberry ice cream.
Within days of this broadcast William Cooper sent me his critique of it for
publication on the ParaNet bulletin board system (BBS)2. He claimed that UFO
Coverup - Live, in tandem with the MJ-12 documents, was part of an elaborate
disinformation scheme designed to lead UFO researchers away from the �real�
situation.
WILLIAM COOPER
William Cooper declared that he could confirm "150 per cent" of the �Lear
Hypothesis�;
a paper by John Lear containing allegations of the US Government�s alliance
with ETs who, in exchange for advanced alien technology, were �allowed� to
abduct unwilling human subjects for experimentation and the harvesting of
biological material.
The confusing war of fantastic, paranoid and often contradictory claims
between Lear and Cooper proved too much for ParaNet�s founder Jim Speiser.
He ejected them from the ParaNet membership on 26 October 1988, explaining
his reasons in a four-page document.
Speiser also mentioned he had been contacted by a 24-year-old ParaNet user
named Jeff Felix whom he agreed to meet in a restaurant in Tempe, Arizona.
Felix claimed to work as a cryptology technician for the National Security
Agency (NSA) who, while "fooling around" on the NSA computer, had stumbled
across files on secret projects called �Majestic� and �Aquarius�. After
consulting contacts who had a genuine intelligence background, Speiser put
some testing questions to Felix at a second meeting several days later.
Felix failed this simple test but referred to something he called "Project
X-calibur".
When Speiser mentioned this to Cooper, he claimed to have heard of it but
knew nothing more. Later that day, Cooper called Speiser back and, to
Speiser�s surprise, proceeded to tell him that �Project Excalibur� was real
and concerned an MJ-12 project to obtain technology from the aliens. Speiser
later said he began to think that Cooper and Felix "were scamming me behind
my back". ParaNet, he said, was becoming "a home for unwed paranoids."
That same month (October 1988) Lear sent Cooper copies of all his research
into UFOs, including communications from �Val Valerian� (aka John Grace, an
airforce NCO on active duty who had a keen interest in UFOs) and the Dallas
Revisited videotape made by Lars Hansson exploring the theory that John F
Kennedy had been fatally shot by his driver. Hansson had sent it to Lear in
the hope that Lear might help finance his JFK research, asking Lear not to
pass it on to anyone. The fact that Lear passed it on to Cooper had
catastrophic consequences.
In April 1989, KLAS TV journalist George Knapp presented a highly successful
multi-part series on UFOs. In one segment, Knapp interviewed a man
(electronically disguised) identified as �Dennis� who claimed to have worked
at a super-secret site in Nevada known as �Area 51� and at an even more
secret site called �S-4�. His fantastic claim was he had worked on "real
flying saucers". At this time, no-one except Knapp and Area 51 security knew
who �Dennis� was.
BILLY GOODMAN
Lear and Cooper also appeared on a radio programme broadcast from Las Vegas
and heard all over the western United States, hosted by Billy Goodman on
KVEG radio. In May of 1989, Lear and Cooper were asked to appear on a
tabloid television programme, PM Magazine. Later Lear heard Cooper telling
the interviewer that while he was on the Naval briefing team in Hawaii, he
saw secret files containing documents designated �O H Krill�.
I knew these documents; John Lear sent me copies of the �Krill papers� in
early 1988. I knew that they were written by the USAF NCO John Grace using
the pseudonym �Val Valarian�.
The name �Krill� was an inside joke, referring to a case in the late 1950s
in which Navy investigators interviewed a woman who claimed to channel an
alien named �Cyrll�. Lear and Grace made up the initials �O H� out of thin
air.
Grace did not want his actual name on these papers because he was still in
the Air Force. So the �O H Krill papers� were just over a year old at the
time of this television programme, yet here was Cooper claiming to have seen
them in 1972 or 1973.
Lear said: "When I heard Bill tell the interviewer he saw the Krill papers
while he was in the Navy, I motioned him over and asked him, �What in the
hell are you doing?� He said, �What do you mean?� I said �Bill, John Grace
and I did the Krill papers. We named them after a 1950s case� [..] Well,
Cooper insisted he saw them in the Navy. That is when I really began to
wonder about Cooper."
By June of 1989 Lear�s paper on the "evil grey aliens," Bill Moore�s MJ-12
research and Cooper�s twist and spin on both subjects, were causing
shockwaves throughout American ufology, as exemplified by the controversial
1989 symposium in Las Vegas organised by MUFON (Mutual UFO Network). During
that year, John Lear became MUFON�s director for Nevada and had invited Bill
Cooper, Bill English and me to speak about our own research. At the very
last moment (Saturday, 1 July), Walt Andrus - the International Director of
MUFON - objected to the content of the papers by Lear, Cooper and English
and cancelled their presentation, scheduled for Sunday.
The MUFON membership reacted with open revolt. Lear threatened to take his
speakers down the street to another location and most of the conference
would have followed him had it not been for an even more outrageous event.
William Moore�s talk ran for over two hours in length and had the audience
calling for his blood. He admitted that he had worked hand-in-fist with
military intelligence during the 1980s in an attempt to "get on the inside"
of the military�s knowledge on UFOs. During his speech, he admitted
participating in the �disinforming� of Paul Bennewitz, a civilian UFO
investigator who had to be hospitalised for severe mental problems. When
Moore�s talk was complete, he refused questions and rushed from the room
leaving the proceedings in turmoil. Lear seemed severely stressed and
uncommunicative. Later he said: "Bill Cooper came to my house on Friday
before the talk and was drinking heavily. He demanded to know who I was
working for.
He said he was afraid that either I or someone else was setting him up. The
more he drank the louder he became and started slamming his hand down on my
desk. His girlfriend was there and I thought she might try to temper him but
did nothing. He then told me that anyone who tried to cross him would regret
it. I moved to the other side of my desk, not sure what he might do. Finally
his girlfriend led him out. "That Sunday (2 July 1989) the �alternative�
MUFON event began. Lear spoke first and then Cooper. By this time, Cooper
had refined his material and for the most part stunned his audience by
claiming the US government had recovered dozens of UFO crashes and alien
pilots. The aliens were abducting people and killing them, he said, and the
US had a �secret� space programme jointly with the Russians and the aliens
with bases on Mars and the Moon. Cooper even claimed there were areas on the
Moon where there was free-standing water and vegetation. "Man can walk on
the Moon with just an airpack," Cooper confidently told the audience.
Finally, he blurted out that President Kennedy was murdered by his secret
service driver as part of a huge conspiracy plot and that he read about it
in secret Navy documents.
Serious researchers - and some media channels - were now suspicious about
Cooper�s claims, especially concerning the Kennedy assassination tape. Even
Lear talked openly about how Cooper claimed to have �read� the �Krill paper�
years before Lear and Grace invented them.
A rival TV station hired private investigators to follow Knapp and Lazar
around. When news leaked out that Lazar was followed to an illegal brothel,
Knapp convinced Lazar to go public first. Lazar admitted that he knew the
madam, saying she had hired him to set up a computer and software for her.
Facing increasing criticism of his material as unreliable at best or
deliberately twisted at worst, Cooper distanced himself from the UFO field.
Lars Hansson had spent a great deal of time explaining why the �driver�
theory was invalid. Significantly, Cooper had been calling for the driver,
William Greer, to be brought before a court of law and charged with murder,
seemingly oblivious to the fact that Greer died in the 1970s. Cooper
slandered many prominent JFK assassination researchers while pushing this
theory and it was obvious he had very little investigative experience with
the case. In a typically sudden and arbitrary switch of loyalties, he began
to ally himself with the ultra right-wing militia movement, a position he
maintains to this day. Now he claims that all UFO cases are actually part of
a vast one-world conspiracy by a secret government that aims to enslave
everyone through its tyranny.
Ufology was nearly destroyed by the disinformation games I�ve detailed here.
Great harm was done; the real problems are still with us and there is no end
in sight.
The full version of this article can be found in FORTEAN TIMES 122.
Part one appeared in FORTEAN TIMES 121
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