 | By Robert Hastings
www.ufohastings.com
3-30-12 |
Exopolitics guru Stephen Bassett has just issued a press release trumpeting a petition he recently created in which he urges the Obama administration to investigate and make public information about UFO incursions at nuclear weapons sites, as revealed by seven U.S. Air Force veterans at my September 27, 2010 press conference in Washington D.C. which CNN streamed live:
Over the past four decades, I have interviewed more than 130 ex-U.S. military personnel who have reported ongoing UFO activity at ICBM sites, nuclear weapons depots, and nuclear detonation test ranges. The seven individuals who participated in the press conference—co-sponsored by former USAF Captain Robert Salas—have provided affidavits relating to their still-classified experiences. Those, as well as several declassified documents reporting UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites since the late 1940s, may be read here:
In his March 28, 2012 press release, Bassett provides his contact information for journalists who might wish to interview him about the petition. Unfortunately, Bassett simply is not a reliable source of information on the nuclear weapons-related UFO incidents. Indeed, many researchers question his basic credibility as a spokesman on the topic of UFOs in general. I am among that group, however, I will confine my remarks here to addressing the factual errors and imprecise language found in the release.
SB: Washington, DC -- A petition calling attention to extraordinary testimony from former ranking members of the United States Air Force has been posted on the White House website.
RH comments: “Ranking members, Mr. Bassett? This inaccurate statement demonstrates your reportorial incompetence and/or your tendency to hype the facts. While the USAF officers to whom you refer include a retired colonel and lieutenant colonel, as well as former captains and a former enlisted man, none of these individuals can accurately be called a “ranking member” of the U.S. Air Force.
These persons’ testimony is of course tremendously important but to misrepresent, intentionally or not, their previous standing in the U.S. Air Force hierarchy only complicates the issue by providing ammunition to UFO debunkers who will seize any and every opportunity to discredit their statements based only on secondary, inaccurate commentary about them by persons such as yourself. (At least you didn’t call them all “generals” as one incompetent reporter did.)
SB: “The petition reads as follows: WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO ask Defense Secretary Panetta to respond to mounting evidence for nuclear weapons tampering by extraterrestrial craft.”
RH comments: Okay, Mr. Bassett, that’s my own
opinion as well, although I would have said, “…tampering by
those presumably aboard extraterrestrial craft.” As I write in my 2008 book
UFOs and Nukes:
“After researching the UFO ‘phenomenon’ for 39 years, I must conclude that the technology involved is so advanced that a human origin for it can be automatically ruled out in almost every bona fide sighting case. The radar data alone substantiate the presence of unknown craft in our atmosphere whose capabilities are vastly beyond our own aircraft and which defy known aerodynamic principles.
Therefore, the available facts suggest to me that extraterrestrial visitation, by one or more races of beings, is occurring. I further contend that such visitation accounts for all of the nuclear weapons-related incidents presented in this book, as well as the secrecy surrounding those events. In my view, the essential message being conveyed by our visitors is this: As long as nuclear weapons exist, they remain a potential threat to the future of humankind and to the planet itself. Get rid of them!”
However, Mr. Bassett, I am careful to say in my book, “While overwhelming empirical evidence is not yet available, at least in the public domain, to confirm an extraterrestrial origin for UFOs, it can at least be said that some as-yet unexplained mystery has been thrown in the faces of those who planned, and still plan, to use these terrifying weapons.”
I understand that my nuanced summation of the available evidence will go over the heads of those who view the UFO phenomenon in black-and-white terms but given that I am, as you say, the principle researcher on the UFO-Nukes Connection, my criticism of your imprecise commentary on my findings is valid and noteworthy.
SB: Since 1992 government witnesses of high rank have been coming forward with evidence regarding incidents in which extraordinary craft of unknown origin have tampered with nuclear weapons facilities around the world.
RH comments: 1992? Oh really, Mr. Bassett? Actually, my first ex-USAF sources—including a couple of retired colonels—agreed to be interviewed in the early 1970s. In 1981, when I first embarked on the college lecture circuit, those persons’ testimony became a matter of public record.
SB: …One of the incidents addressed took place at a Malmstrom Air Force Base nuclear missile launch complex in March of 1967. Former ICBM launch officer Salas testified to missiles being shut down in silo after a craft of unknown origin hovered directly over the complex. Other testimony dealt with the 1986 RAF Bentwaters base incident in the United Kingdom.
RH comments: Actually, the events at RAF Bentwaters occurred in December 1980, not in 1986. But considering the other inaccuracies found in your press release, I suppose I am belaboring the point.
Robert Salas’ Input
My co-sponsor at the UFOs and Nukes press conference, former USAF Captain Bob Salas, has written an article about Bassett’s dubious contributions to the UFO debate titled
“The Idiocy of the Disclosure Movement” in which he said:
“Stephen Bassett’s (or Steven Greer’s depending on which one is talking) Disclosure Project has been ineffectually trying to penetrate [the] door of secrecy since 2001. They have presumably tried to achieve disclosure by enticing speakers (myself among them) to tell as many stories, theories, philosophies, reports, and conjectures as possible during these conferences. I say presumably because these pointless exercises have been so ineffective in gaining serious public attention that one might conclude they were intentionally designed to keep disclosure from happening.
They seem to have achieved one probable objective of those who would maintain the secrecy, i.e., ‘to keep the public confused and unsure about the subject.’ The hallmark of these Exopolitics Conferences is generally unsupported statements and conjecture—lots of conjecture.
The mainstream media has not gotten on the bandwagon because there is little substance to talk about...The Exopolitics groupies are simply hurling whatever they can get their hands on in every direction.”
Salas has many other relevant comments and his brief, well-argued article should not be passed-by, at least by anyone seriously interested in the important issues involved with the inevitable announcement of the UFO reality by world governments.
(I will note here that another incompetent commentator on the UFO-Nukes Connection, Expolitics big-wig Dr. Michael Salla, has already muddied the waters by endorsing a hoax perpetrated by notorious con-artist Bill Knell, relating to veteran newsman Walter Cronkite’s supposed witnessing of a nukes-related UFO incident. After I publicly
took him to task, Salla eventually recanted his endorsement of the hoax but then wrote a scathing article saying that I and other longtime ufologists were unfairly criticizing the Exopolitics movement—I guess because, unlike the Exos, we require credible, vetted sources and, as often as possible—given the high-level classification assigned to national security-related UFO events—verifiable documentation that supports our sources’ statements, before we publish our findings.)
In any case, Mr. Bassett, I agree
in principle that ongoing efforts should be made by U.S. citizens to push for our government’s disclosure of the UFO reality and, in particular, the incidents involving nuclear weapons. As I say in my book:
For me, one of the most important UFO-related issues has always been political and philosophical in nature. Our country’s government has been proclaimed to be ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ If this is indeed the case—and democratic principles do in fact guide our national policies—then a relative handful of people at the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and the other intelligence agencies, must not be permitted to retain full and unchallenged discretionary power in a matter so momentous as the reality of UFOs. While the official disclosure about our visitors’ existence and presence here must be handled with great care and consideration, it is nevertheless advisable and ultimately unavoidable. The basic question is whether a secret as important as alien visitation should continue to be hidden from the American people, and the rest of humanity, decade after decade.
As I see it, the ongoing UFO intervention in U.S. strategic affairs is now a tale that needs to be told, in unflinching terms, to our legislative assemblies, if possible, but from the rooftops if necessary. All bold endeavors bear both planned-for and unintended consequences. The inevitable admission by U.S. government officials that our nuclear weapons have long been monitored, and at times compromised, by those of unknown origin and objectives, is not without its perils. But the facts will—and should—become known, sooner or later, by one means or another, in a society such as ours. And that’s a good thing. After all, isn’t that how a democracy is supposed to operate?”
Of course, implicit in my position is the fundamental premise that those who are publicly petitioning our government representatives and/or shouting from the rooftops, so to speak, by posting information about the cover-up on the Internet, be competent, informed spokespersons for the Disclosure cause.
Linking well-documented UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites with the nonsense routinely offered up the Exopolitics crowd—such as the supposedly-verified knowledge of who our Visitors are, what their game plan is, how they would interact with humans if only their reality were to be acknowledged by the government, etc.—only serves to degrade the integrity of the important nukes-related evidence found in declassified documents and ex-military witness testimony. This is the key reason I am writing such a highly-critical article, to warn people, especially journalists, to steer clear of Stephen Bassett when it comes to the topic of the UFO-Nukes Connection.
When I telephoned Bob Salas earlier today, prior to writing this, he told me that he was concerned that Bassett was trying to make himself the “point of contact” for any journalists who wished to learn more about the revelations divulged at our press conference or in our two books,
UFOs and Nukes and
Faded Giant.
We both agreed that this would be a very worrisome development, given Bassett’s non-involvement with the research, his apparent inability to accurately report the facts we have gathered, and the great likelihood that he would try to entwine our well-documented material with his mostly-bogus Exopolitical notions and claims.
Of course, no matter what I or anyone else says, there will always be some number of people who will gobble up the Exopolitics party-line without a giving a second thought to whether the occasionally valid but mostly unfounded “facts” offered by the group really have merit or actually provide any genuine insights into the coming paradigm-shift that will ensue once Disclosure occurs.
Regardless, Mr. Bassett, if any members of the media actually contact you in response to your latest press release, please remember to tell them 1) you had nothing to do with UFOs and Nukes press conference, 2) your release’s summation of the event and the research underlying it is factually-flawed, 3) your attempts to ingratiate yourself with me prior to the event were quickly rebuffed and 4) I think your approach to promoting UFO Disclosure is lacking in credibility and, therefore, counterproductive. As I once told you in an email, I consider you to be part of the problem, not part of the solution.
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