While such assertions may sound fantastic, the fact that they are made by someone of Hoagland’s stature is significant, and, as we shall see below, the more one digs beneath the surface of various versions of the Two Space Programs Hypothesis, and the more details one uncovers, Hoagland’s version seems to pale into mundane normalcy by comparison.
3. The “Alternative Three” Version
Among the many versions of the Two Space Programs Hypothesis, none is more bizarre nor more famous than the Alternative 3 version.
Alternative 3 was a “documentary” produced for the British science series Science Report, which aired on Anglia television in the 1970s. Originally scheduled to air on April 1, 1977, the broadcast was delayed and did not air until June, though in the production credits April 1 is listed as the date. The “documentary” was one hour long, and makes interesting viewing.23 Ostensibly the “documentary” begins by investigating the so-called “brain drain” that was affecting Great Britain during the 1970s, as many of her top scientists and engineers left the country for more prosperous and promising positions overseas, most notably in Canada and the United States, and to a lesser extent Australia and New Zealand. Moving quickly, the documentary “uncovers” the cases of three scientists who simply were never heard from again, despite attempts of their “families” to contact them. Finally, one scientist died in a mysterious automobile accident, allegedly after placing a telephone call from a remote country phone booth to a journalist friend of his, to whom he had sent a computer memory tape.
On the tape, when it was finally “decoded” by the indefatigable investigative journalists of Anglia Television, was a video recording of an alleged joint Russian-American Mars landing in 1962, complete with video recording of sub-surface life burrowing a furrow on the ground to the wild and thrilled cheers of the Russian and American ground control crews in the background!
With missing scientists and engineers, a mysteriously dead scientist, and a computer tape of an alleged Mars landing, the journalists learn of a hidden, secret joint space program being conducted by the Americans and Russians, a component of which was to persuade the best and brightest of the world’s scientists to participate in the gradual, and very secret, colonization of the Moon and Mars. The purpose of this colonization? The world’s elite had concluded that the planet was being destroyed by humanity, and that overpopulation had passed the point of no return, and that life on Earth was doomed. Three alternatives were discussed to save the situation. The first was to explode nuclear warheads in the atmosphere, in an attempt to create a “hole” which would bleed off the pollution. The second was to build vast underground installations in which humanity could survive when the surface became unviable. And the third, Alternative 3, was to seek new planetary homes on the Moon and Mars.
The secret space program was thus a modern-day Noah’s Ark, and the most heinous crimes were being perpetrated to ensure the success of Alternative 3. There, more or less, is where the “documentary” ended.
But the story did not end. In fact, the network was flooded with calls from thousands of people who professed their belief in the whole wild scenario, and who in some cases added their own stories of encounters with the “hidden masters” of the project.
The problem was, the whole program was a complete hoax, an elaborate April Fools’ Day joke, intended as such by the producers and authors of the teleplay, David Ambrose and Christopher Miles,24 a fact that would have been evident from careful examination of the closing credits, with its very clearly stated date, and long list of cast which included professional actors.25 The story would not die, however, and was soon followed by a badly-written book of the same title, about which more in a moment.
To one Canadian inquiring about the truth of the “documentary,” co-author and producer Christopher Miles stated:
“The idea for the film and subsequently the book, was something that David (Ambrose) and I dreamed up over a lunch together in London, as I was getting rather tired of the docu-drama on television and wanted to prove how easy it is to lead the general public up the proverbial garden path! I am sorry that you were one of them and if you look at the film or read the book, you will realize that there are hints of its unauthenticity all the way down the line.
Of course it has a sprinkling of fact in it, but the basic show is a complete hoax and if you think a bit more yourself, you would realize this was the case.”
In an interview, however, Miles commented in a somewhat more mysterious fashion, saying, “Let’s say that all the facts in the show were true and all the lies untrue.”26
The documentary’s inconsistent acting is mirrored in the book’s incongruous slurry of wildly unconnected “data” all served up as “corroboration” of the secret space program and its nefarious activities:
The death of fifteen wild ponies in Dartmoor, England, is mentioned, an episode reminiscent of the cattle mutilations prevalent in the U.S. beginning in the mid-60s. Factual CIA MKULTRA mind control atrocities are also mulled over, but not in particular detail, and with no credible link to Alternative 3. Along the way instances of Russian-American cooperation in space are described, and we are offered accounts of the plights of several amnesia victims, but none of this has much to do with the core of the Alternative 3 thesis.27
At the end of it all – a book and a “documentary” – what does one make of Alternative 3? Jim Keith summarizes the whole episode this way:
In summary, Alternative 3 is a teleplay and a book which utterly lack substantiation, and the book in particular is written in a style identical to the Weekly World News of “Two-Headed Space Alien Gives Birth to Elvis’ Lovechild” fame. What propels Alternative 3 along in the manner of a 1940s Amazing Stories extravaganza set in the vicinity of Fleet Street are the “secret documents,” the interviews with persons who do not exist and, more than that, the word of the authors who, while repeatedly maintaining “We are only interested in facts,” write a television show and book loaded with as many questionable conclusions as the latest Brad Steiger UFO masterpiece…..
All the references to flights to Mars, “batch consignments” and so forth are found in the poorly rendered and unbelievable “secret transcripts” or created from thin Martian air by the authors.28
But, as Keith himself notes, one comes away from viewing the “documentary” and/or reading the book with an uneasy feeling, notwithstanding their clear and evident nature as hoaxes, and that uneasy feeling is that Alternative 3 and its various themes are quite close to the truth, that something like the odd goings on in the “documentary” actually are occurring.
In fact, Leslie Watkins, who co-authored the book version with the “documentary’s” producers for Penguin Books, wrote a researcher who had contacted the Penguin editor, that the book was “based on fact, but uses that fact as a launchpad for a high dive into fiction.” And a little later in his letter, Watkins recounts the unusual events that befell him after the book version was published and in circulation: “For some time after Alternative 3 was originally published, I have reason to suppose that my home telephone was being tapped and my contacts who were experienced in such matters were convinced that certain intelligence agencies considered that I probably knew too much. So, summing up, the book is fiction based on fact. But I now feel that I inadvertently got very close to a secret truth.”29 But if Watkins, Miles, and Ambrose had come too close to “a secret truth” that would call forth electronic wiretapping in response, what exactly in the crazy quilt-work of the Alternative 3 universe was it?
The universe of Alternative 3 is clear enough: there is a secret space program involving both Russians and Americans in cooperation, being controlled by some entity that transcends their governments and uses them for its own ends, which is the secret colonization of the Moon and Mars. To this end, it persuades or kidnaps scientists, and “commoners” for manual labor. Those it cannot “persuade” or who threaten to expose the project, are murdered. So one has the following elements:
1. Several missing scientists, in great numbers;
2. Murdered scientists;
3. Several missing “common” people;
4. A secret space program existing inside of, or parallel to, the public programs in Russia and America;
5. Colonies on the Moon and/or Mars; and finally,
6. Some entity coordinating all the above.
Conspiracy researcher Jim Keith investigated these aspects of the case, and came to a rather provocative conclusion, a conclusion so provocative, in fact, that he seldom states it directly, though much of his book, Mind Control and UFOs: Casebook on Alternative 3, implies this conclusion simply by virtue of the amount of time he spends exploring it.
We begin with point number 2 above: the deaths of scientists. Keith, like many other authors, noted the very strange fact that many European scientists, physicists, and engineers who were involved with, or otherwise might have something to contribute to President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, seemed to have unusually high suicide or “death-by-mysterious-circumstances” rates. And oddly, most of these scientists were from Western Europe. Proportionally fewer Americans, Canadians or Australians were involved in the unusual deaths.
Among those that Keith lists were: Keith Bowden, supercomputer expert; Roger Hill, a designer for Marconi Defense Systems (who allegedly killed himself by shotgun blast); Jonathan Walsh, digital communications expert for Marconi’s parent firm, GEC; Karl-Heinz Beckurts, director of research for Germany’s Siemens Company and his driver; and, notes Keith, “an SDI contractor allegedly linked to activities of Otto Skorzeny’s Nazi International;” Vimal Dajibhai, an expert in computer guidance systems; Gerrold von Braunmuhl, a high advisor to West Germany’s Defense Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher; Ashad Shariff, another Marconi employee; a Swedish professor, Svante Oden; an Italian electronics executive, Lando Conti; Aytar Singh-Gida, an SDI technology expert; Richard Pugh, British Defense Ministry contracts worker; John Brittan, computer expert; Swedish arms inspector Cal Frederik Algernon…and on and on Keith’s list goes.30
Like the “mysterious deaths” of key witnesses and personnel that followed the assassination of President Kennedy, rather too many scientists and engineers were dying in too many suspicious ways for the whole episode to be entirely coincidental. Keith observes that:
In July of 1986, Kurt Rebmann, Germany’s Federal Prosecutor, told the New York Times that he believed the attacks were part of a “coordinated offensive” against the West and the SDI program.
So, who killed the Star Wars scientists? In at least two of the cases, those of Beckurts and von Braunmuhl, the Marxist Red Army Faction (RAF) claimed responsibility. In Italy a note was found at the location of Griogieri’s murder, stating that he “was struck down exclusively for his responsibility exercised following the Italian adhesion to the Star Wars project.” And attributing the murder to the Italian Red Brigades. Of course, notes can easily be faked, and the fact that responsibility was claimed in only three cases is odd if two groups performed all the murders.31
One explanation, the obvious one, is that “it was apparent to the Kremlin that SDI, far from bring the defensive program that it was touted as by Ronald Reagan, had an awesome offensive capability.”32 This much is true, as we shall see in part two.33 But in any case, Keith’s conclusion is rational: the most obvious perpetrators of the strange deaths were the Soviets, who hoped to dissuade the West from deploying SDI.
But according to Keith, there was likewise another possibility: “It has also occurred to me that if there is in fact a secret flying disk technology on this planet, withheld for its surprise strike capability from some unknown quarter, then SDI might have been seen as a technology capable of pinpointing and shooting down such craft.”34 That is, if there was an “independent group” perfecting such advanced craft, then that group, too, would view SDI as a threat and seek to derail it, or, conversely, seek to acquire and deploy its technologies while denying them to its enemies.
It is this possibility that informs the bulk of Keith’s book. Tracing the possibilities to a pre-war network of American and Nazi business contacts, he quickly comes to one locus of possibilities: the “surrender” of Germany’s Foreign Armies East (Fremde Heere Ost) section of military intelligence to the OSS, a deal that was negotiated between General Reinhard Gehlen and OSS station chief in Zürich, Allen Dulles, later chief of the CIA and a member of the Warren Commission. But the “surrender” was only apparent, as many have pointed out. Keith’s summary is apt:
For reasons that will hopefully become apparent, I begin the search for Alternative 3 at what might appear to be an arbitrary moment in history: with men, most of whom died a long time ago. As we trace the actions and connections of these men, the conspiratorial web will radiate outward, and perhaps begin to take on a definite and ominous pattern.
The study is taken up shortly after the collapse of the Third Reich, when General Reinhard Gehlen, Nazi spymaster and Knight of Malta-to-be began negotiations with Allen Dulles and the American OSS (Office of Strategic Services). Using Nazi intelligence networks as a hole card to provide for his own survival and the survival of his huge spy network, Gehlen made a separate peace with Dulles, resulting in the clean grafting of Nazi spy apparatus to the American clandestine services. This was the birth of the CIA and part of a nexus of betrayal that continues to this day.35
Indeed, as many others have pointed out, at the inception of the CIA, the agency’s “Soviet desk” for all intents and purposes consisted almost entirely and exclusively of this Nazi spy network.36 Gehlen’s own words recalling this bargain are clinically chilling:
I remember the terms of the agreement well…
1. A clandestine German intelligence organization was to be set up, using the existing potential to continue information gathering in the East just as we had been doing before. The basis for this was our common interest in a defense against communism.
2. This German organization was to work not “for” or “under” the Americans, but “jointly” with the Americans.
3. The organization would operate exclusively under German leadership, which would receive its directives and assignments from the Americans until a new government was established in Germany.
4. The organization was to be financed by the Americans with funds which were not to be part of the occupation costs, and in return the organization would supply all its intelligence reports to the Americans.
5. As soon as a sovereign German government was established, the government should decide whether the organization should continue to function or not, but that until such time the care and control (later referred to as “the trusteeship”) of the organization would remain in American hands.
6. Should the organization at any time find itself in a position where the American and German interests diverged, it was accepted that the organization would consider the interests of Germany first.37
In other words, one whole department of the American Federal government – indeed, one of its most sensitive departments – was being run by agents of the Third Reich in a classic Trojan Horse operation!38 With the thousands of agents in Gehlen’s “Organization,” and its extensive network of “émigré exile” groups and fronts, historian Carl Oglseby noted that the Gehlenorg “substantially pre-empted the CIA’s civilian character before it was ever born…Thus, whatever the CIA was from the standpoint of law, it remained from the standpoint of practical intelligence collection a front for a house of Nazi spies.”39
The importance of these observations cannot be pondered too long, for as many other researchers and commentators have noted, there appears to be a “rogue element” operating somewhere inside the U.S. Federal government and inside its intelligence community. Keith’s observations, and similar ones made by others who have researched the incredible bargain struck between Allen Dulles and General Gehlen, give a historical background and foundation to these fears: There not only is a rogue element within the American i
ntelligence community, but it has been there since the end of World War Two. And it was Nazi in its personnel, aims, and methods.
Moreover, as Keith also points out, the Dulles family itself had long business associations with Germany.40 And there was an ideological connection:
With man, as with every other form of life, there is this same tendency for the birth rate to far exceed the death rate, with the inevitable result of an overcrowded population in which some must be eliminated. Who those eliminated are depends upon who are weakest and who are strongest in the competition which necessarily ensues.41
If that sounds vaguely like an anti-Jewish rant of Hitler at a Nuremburg party rally, think again. The words are those of Allen Dulles’ brother, John Foster Dulles, who would later become the American Secretary of State under President Dwight Eisenhower.
In any case, Gehlen’s bargain with Dulles was but one aspect of the creation of a vast postwar “Nazi International,” an organization with massive amounts of money, and, as has been seen, its own intelligence network.
Maintaining close ties to each other and other escaped Nazis, this network evolved into what has been termed the Nazi International, run by Otto Skorzeny and headquartered in Madrid. The Nazi International would be key in the establishment of worldwide arms, terrorist, and drug trafficking networks, although these crimes pale in comparison with the subversion of American intelligence, in collaboration with Allen Dulles, the result of which may be said to have been the creation of the Cold War and the continuing destruction of democracy in America.42
SS Brotherhood of the Bell: The Nazis’ Incredible Secret Technology Page 9