The Trickster and the Paranormal

by George P. Hansen

  Paranoia and conspiracy theories subvert established structures, and they thrive when there is disorder and uncertainty about the established system’s viability. Paranoia is directly related to anti-structure and liminality, and a future chapter will be devoted to that nexus. Paranoia and conspiracy theorizing cannot be reduced to just psychological explanations; they fundamentally involve more than that.

  Summary

  Paranormal phenomena associated with unbounded conditions inherently lack clear limits, constraints, and boundaries, and hence they are particularly hospitable to the trickster. They display an extraordinary richness of surreal qualities. They blend fantasy and reality. They are almost universally ignored by those in the establishment. The task of studying unbounded paranormal phenomena falls to a small number of independent researchers—another symptom of the phenomena’s anti-structural nature.

  These phenomena intrude into the lives of investigators. The researchers participate in them and cannot remain on the side as observers. The subject-object distinction is subverted, and the consequences are often unpleasant.

  Status is an important concept here. The phenomena induce marginality in those that become enmeshed in them. Researchers who seriously study the phenomena are tainted and suffer a loss of prestige. Further, trying to describe the phenomena with the most obvious frameworks, i.e., religious beliefs and conspiracy theories, tend to make one appear odd.

  The phenomena are almost incomprehensible to the modern rationalistic mind, but people in earlier cultures understood them. The primitives grasped the ideas of “participation” and the contagion of taboo violation. These concepts illuminate unbounded paranormal phenomena far better than scientific theories accepted today.

  CHAPTER 18

  Government Disinformation

  If I put you over at Justice, I want you to find the answers to two questions for me. One, Who killed JFK? And two, Are there UFOs?

  President Bill Clinton to Webb Hubbell1

  The epigraph above exemplifies the UFO problem today. What does the government know? Who can be trusted to reveal it? Even the president seems puzzled. But is the epigraph from a real conversation? Hubbell was a friend of the president and later pleaded guilty to bilking clients and served time in prison. Can he be believed here? Or was he just telling a story to help sell his book? These are exactly the kinds of questions found throughout the UFO field. Ambiguity, disreputable claimants, paranoia, and distrust of authority permeate ufology. Even the association with the Kennedy assassination is not uncommon.

  One reason I prepared this chapter is that mainstream journalists and academics ignore the role that government disinformation has played in fostering belief in UFOs, aliens visiting earth, and official cover-ups. Those beliefs are held by rational, thinking people who have spent much time investigating them. I am not the only one to recognize the importance of disinformation for that. So has James Oberg, a founding member of CSICOP and a consulting editor for Skeptical Inquirer, and he is one of the trio of CSICOP’s primary UFO debunkers (the others being Philip J. Klass and Robert Sheaffer). Oberg is also a NASA scientist and a leading expert on Soviet space affairs, and as such he undoubtedly has wide contacts in the intelligence world. In an open letter regarding government disinformation activities, Oberg wrote: “from my own experience, they seem to have played a tremendous role in inciting and enflaming public interest in UFOs.”2 It is truly remarkable how widely this factor is ignored.

  On the other hand, the widespread belief cannot be accounted for only by deceptive practices of the government. The situation is much too complicated to be explained by that alone. Yet there is considerable government activity. Intelligence agents really are involved with the paranormal. Secrecy and paranoia surround them. Many of the same shadowy figures are connected with parapsychology, ufology, and even cattle mutilations, but the statuses of those individuals are often unclear. Are they who they claim? Do they really work for some intelligence agency? If so, are they acting in an official capacity? There are disturbing, even ominous, signs of illicit activities.

  I want to make it clear that I am not proposing the existence of a massive orchestrated government conspiracy. The government is not monolithic; many parts operate independently and even at cross-purposes. But groups and individuals associated with various agencies have been deceitful on the paranormal. It is often unclear whether they were acting in an official capacity.

  There is always a middle ground between official policy and individuals’ activity. No organization operates with only explicit policies, stated rules, and distinct chains of command. Established codes and regulations cannot cover all situations. Individuals may take advantage of that for their own purposes. Additionally, some official goals must be kept hidden. At times, direct orders may not be forthcoming, but hints are given as to what needs to be done.

  All this promotes ambiguity and uncertainty and is congenial to the trickster. The field of intelligence is particularly hospitable because it is one of institutionalized deception. When its operatives dabble in the paranormal, they ipso facto strengthen the trickster constellation.

  Of all paranormal areas, disinformation is most prevalent in ufology, and UFO phenomena have an incredible number of liminal and trickster properties. Several will be introduced in this chapter, and the next one will address more. Ufology is a marginal field. Deception, ambiguity, paranoia, and conspiracy theorizing are its salient features. Boundary blurring is pervasive. Fact and fiction are mixed. Liars are prominent. Statuses of operatives are often unclear.

  There is an added complexity: government UFO activities are mixed with remote viewing and cattle mutilations. Several paranormal phenomena are blended, and that makes the situation of special interest for this book. But the mix is repulsive for those in the establishment. The marginality and disreputability are amplified, making the situations unpleasant to investigate for mainstream scientists and journalists.

  Anti-structure assures that no stable, recognized institutions study all these topics and identify reliable information. Researchers must spend much time evaluating the reliability of sources because qualified authorities are difficult to identify. Investigators are often fooled by glib claimants and hucksters who only seem to be credible.

  Countless trickster manifestations are found in government disinformation activities. They provide concrete examples of some central issues of this book. However those wishing a clear, unambiguous view will be disappointed. Emphasis in this chapter is on obscurity, rather than lucidity; on messes, rather than order; on confusion, rather than clarity. Uncertainties are seen in motives, roles, purposes, statuses, identities, etc. UFO research requires a high tolerance for ambiguity if one is not to succumb to premature conclusions, or paranoia.

  The limits of science and knowledge quickly become apparent when one investigates intelligence agencies. Full answers are impossible to obtain, and when they are offered, the agencies have such a long history of lying that they cannot be trusted. The full story of many cases cannot be known, and any comprehensive picture must include this inherent ambiguity.

  Many examples of government UFO involvement are available, but I will focus on relatively recent ones that have substantial documentation. As I will show, government agencies have promoted mythological beliefs, but the consequences are rarely recognized. They are not always healthy for the larger society.

  Historical Comment

  Intelligence agencies’ interest in UFOs is not a recent development, and this is superbly documented in the book Clear Intent: The Government Coverup of the UFO Experience (1984) by Lawrence Fawcett and Barry J. Greenwood. The authors were leading members of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS), a group that waged a long legal battle for release of documents on UFOs using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Greenwood edited their newsletter Just Cause. Fawcett and Greenwood are among the most reliable researchers in ufology, but they have not attracted much media attention, and they are not even especially
well known to casual followers of UFO research.

  Clear Intent describes the CIA involvement with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), a civilian organization begun in the 1950s that went on to become the largest UFO group of its time. Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first director of the

  CIA, served on the Board of Governors of the organization, and he was by no means the only CIA employee in it. There were many others. Fawcett and Greenwood report that “CAUS uncovered a number of disturbing bits of evidence relating to NICAP that should cause other UFO groups considerable concern.”5 They then proceed through a litany of CIA personnel involved in NICAP from its inception until its demise. They explain how those people controlled the organization in the 1960s and 1970s, and when Donald Keyhoe started pressing the government for public disclosure, he was ousted as Director in a cabal led by Joseph Bryan, former Chief of the CIA’s Psychological Warfare Staff. After that NICAP became less active and more inept scientifically; it slowly disintegrated and finally went out of business. The evidence for deliberate malfeasance is only circumstantial, and it is possible that the culmination of the leadership’s ineptness just happened to follow Keyhoe’s political activism. Fawcett and Greenwood admit that the connection is speculative, but there is plenty reason for suspicion.

  Undoubtedly the CIA had a legitimate interest in NICAP, if only because of Hillenkoetter’s involvement. His membership must have attracted the KGB’s attention. That in turn would make NICAP, and the UFO subculture generally, of interest to U.S. intelligence agencies and to the FBI. In fact, Fawcett and Greenwood even report that “NICAP received several overtures from the Soviet KGB.”7

  In 1997 Gerald K. Haines, a historian at the National Reconnaissance Office, published an article entitled “A Die-Hard Issue: The CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90.” It appeared in Studies In Intelligence, a journal produced by the CIA for the U.S. intelligence community, and the article was posted on the Internet.

  Haines admitted that the CIA had an interest in UFOs for many years and also had a policy of denying that interest. In 1952 the CIA sponsored a panel headed by H. P. Robertson, a physicist from California Institute of Technology. The panel expressed concern that a surge of UFO reports could clog channels of communication and that it might also lead to hysterical behavior. It “recommended that the National Security Council debunk UFO reports and institute a policy of public education to reassure the public of the lack of evidence behind UFOs … the panel also recommended that such private UFO groups as the Civilian Flying Saucer Investigators in Los Angeles and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in Wisconsin be monitored for subversive activities.” This is revealing, for it shows that ufologists’ paranoia about the government had a basis in reality.

  Haines readily acknowledged that the CIA withheld information and misled people about that, but he had little to say about any active disinformation programs. He admitted that in the 1950s and 1960s the Air Force made “misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears and protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project [the U-2].” When he discussed more recent activities, Haines was not as forthcoming. He carefully avoided mentioning Fawcett, Greenwood, Clear Intent, or CAUS. On the other hand, he gave four citations to William L. Moore, who will be discussed shortly. Moore is a self-admitted liar who claimed to be an informant for the government. Haines gave no hint of Moore’s unreliability. Although in ufology it is common to cite Moore’s work without caveats, in any other field such practices would themselves be considered dishonest. One may surmise that Haines was not completely candid, and some may suspect him of deliberately spreading misinformation.

  Haines alluded to some intriguing projects. For instance, he stated that “The CIA reportedly is also a member of an Incident Response Team to investigate UFO landings.” Here Haines seems to admit that he didn’t have full access to the CIA activities regarding UFOs. Why else would he use the word “reportedly?” He went on to comment that “The lack of solid CIA documentation on Agency UFO-related activities in the 1980s leaves the entire issue somewhat murky for this period.”11 This is a direct acknowledgement that he did not have access to all relevant information.

  Haines made another startling admission. He wrote that “During the late 1970s and 1980s … some in the Agency and in the Intelligence Community shifted their interest to studying parapsychology

  12

  and psychic phenomena associated with UFO sightings.” He also reported that “There is a DIA Psychic Center and the NSA studies parapsychology.” These statements confirm the government interest in the link between UFOs and parapsychology, but Haines said nothing more about it.

  Rumors Of ET Aliens

  Rumors allege that ET aliens have landed on earth and are held captive by, or are in league with, the government. There are innumerable variants of the story, some exceedingly bizarre. For many years, the rumors were considered completely fringe, but in the 1990s they gained mainstream attention. The establishment media did not completely sneer at them, and for a while they were given some respectable coverage on major network TV shows. The motifs also appeared in popular culture, with captured aliens featured in science fiction movies and elsewhere (e.g., the 1996 movie Independence Day grossed over $300 million). A centerpiece of the stories was the now-infamous Roswell incident, and the popular fascination with UFOs in the 1990s cannot be understood without some familiarity with it.

  On July 8, 1947, the Army Air Forces base near Roswell, New Mexico released a statement saying that it had captured a crashed flying disk. The story appeared in a number of newspapers, but it was quickly retracted, and instead it was claimed that the object actually was a misidentified weather balloon. Today, proponents, skeptics, and even the Air Force agree that this second explanation was a fabrication and that something else crashed near Roswell. There is no consensus on what it was, but from the currently available evidence, the most likely candidate is a downed balloon from the then-classified Project Mogul. Robert G. Todd, probably the most capable researcher on the case, was the first to suggest this, and he uncovered a variety of information to support that idea. The Mogul hypothesis received additional support from a 1995 report issued by the Air Force.

  After the fabricated cover story was released, the incident seemed to be forgotten. But in 1950 Frank Scully, a writer for the entertainment industry’s Variety magazine, published Behind the Flying Saucers. He claimed that the government had discovered a crashed saucer with dead aliens in New Mexico. It was later revealed that two of Scully’s primary informants, Silas Newton and Leo GeBauer, were veteran confidence artists, and after that exposure, the stories of crashed saucers largely disappeared from public view, though they circulated among a fringe of UFO buffs. Then in 1980, Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore revived the story with their book The Roswell Incident. These two writers had previously collaborated on an ostensibly nonfiction, but non-credible, book about the U.S. Navy making a ship disappear and inadvertently sending sailors into some other dimension.

  In December 1984, Moore’s close collaborator, Jaime Shandera, received a roll of undeveloped film. Processing showed photos of the now-notorious “MJ-12” documents, which discussed a purported crashed saucer in possession of the government. The “12” of MJ-12 referred to 12 highly placed, now deceased individuals charged with managing the cover-up. There is overwhelming evidence that the MJ-12 documents were hoaxed, and in 1989 Moore publicly admitted to lying about some of his UFO activities. He is widely suspected of forging the documents, and his admission of deceit didn’t enhance his credibility. On the other hand, it didn’t diminish interest in Roswell; if anything, it stimulated it.

  The debate over MJ-12 consumed a massive amount of the time of UFO researchers. It was a major component of the conspiracy theories surrounding the Roswell case. If a crashed saucer had been retrieved, and the public was not informed, there must have been an intense scientific effort to s
tudy it and keep the findings secret. A highlevel group of scientists, engineers, and military personnel would have been formed to manage the project. MJ-12, or similar group by any other name, became a centerpiece of theorizing by ufologists. It established a governing paradigm for many researchers. They gathered snippets of evidence and tried fitting them into this framework, and indeed, a cover-up of a crashed saucer seemed to explain many events as well as the obvious disinformation spread by government agents.

  In the late 1980s the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) began supporting the work of Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt on Roswell. The two produced books and numerous articles, but in 1995 a reporter for a Milwaukee magazine discovered that Schmitt, the CUFOS Director of Special Investigations, had extensively lied about his background. Some months later, after checking, Randle publicly repudiated all Schmitt‘s work.

  The above mentioned individuals (GeBauer, Newton, Moore, Schmitt) are not minor players in the Roswell drama, but rather the most prominent promoters of the case. However, they are by no means the only ones with dubious credibility, and there are a number of entertaining stories of “witnesses” who came forward but were later shown to be liars. The affair exposed the extraordinary gullibility of many UFO investigators.

  The Roswell saga began with a lie by the government, and over a period of half a century it was boosted by con artists and dishonest researchers to become the most celebrated of all UFO cases. In the 1990s it generated countless articles, several books, Tv programs, and even full-length movies. Three museums opened in the Roswell area to capitalize on the publicity. A General Accounting Office inquiry was carried out at the request of New Mexico Congressman Steven Schiff. All this activity culminated in a massive celebration on the July 4th weekend of 1997, the fiftieth anniversary of the supposed crash. In short, the Roswell incident received more sustained media attention than any other UFO case in history.