TAKE ME TO YOUR READER!

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000500180001-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 24, 2003
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: March 9, 1987
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2003/12/03 :CIA-RDP91-00901R00050~'1$0~1 6~
WASHI'~iG'^ON POS'?'
9 2?arch 1987
Take Me to fur Reader.
Ac~c~unts of UF'05 Invade the best-Selhr List::
By Curt Strplee
W.tshntkGm Punt titalf Wntcr
Heads up, America. They're here. Again.
After a 10-year lull in public interest about UFOs,
1987 looks to be the Year of the Saucer-if not a whole ca-
binetful of cosmological crockery. According to Leading
Susceptibility indicators, we're in for a deluge of UFOria
that'll make the Galveston flood look like a bathtub ring:
^ Three reputable publishers-Random Eiouse, Morrow
and tltlantic Monthly Press-are releasing major nonfic-
tion accounts of humans contacted, abducted or tortured by
extraterrestrials.
^ Popular infatuation with the UFO sighted by a Japan Air
Lines pilot in November has grown sky-high-forcing the
Federal Aviation Administration into the mail-order busi-
ness. To meet the ravening demand, the agency is now
selling information packages at .6194.30 each containkng
tapes of the crew, statements by air controllers, the pilot's
drawings and color photographs of radar images.
^ "Our membership has gone up 10 percent in the past two
ntonths," says Walt Andrus, international director of the
1,500-member (Mutual UFO Network, "and our mail has
douhled. People are realizing that there is something to
this after all."
"It's been building for quite a while," says Bruce Mac-
atbee, aNavy research physicist and chairman of the
Washington-based Fund for UFO Research. And the new
books, he believes, will provoke "an outcry for more infor-
matron" from a galvanized public. "The negativists haven't
realized what's going on yet." (They won't have to wait
past June 'l6, when NIUFON '87-the International Sym-
posium of the Mutual UFO Network-convenes at Ameri-
can University here for three clays.)
^ iVlass curiosity about paranormal freakery has hit its apo-
gee. ?Channelers'"-a new species of medium purporting to
lease their larynxes to astral spirits-are being taken seri-
ously outside the tabloids. Citizens now know more about
Shirley MacLaine's multiple past lives than Franklin Roose-
velt's one. Oral Roberts reports horn-to-horn combat with
Satan himself. Bookstores and newsstands are
doing a fierce business in supernatural subjects
from auras to crystals.
^ The sour malaise and doomsday anxiety
seeping across the nation are the sort that, in
the pask, have proved propitious for cosmic
omens in general and airborne dinnerware in
particular. (Two weeks ago, a puny 20-second
flare over New York and Connecticut resulted
in hundreds of phone calls) Add the darkling
shambles of the Reagan regime (maybe they'll
skip that "Take-Me-to-Your-Leader" stuff this
time), and who knows what demons will rise
from the baleful~v~f~i~v~rc~cFar. Release 2003/12/03 :CIA-RDP91-009018000500180001-6
One thing's for sure: 'Chey will be nothurg
like the winsome critters we claimed to see in
the '50s, back when saucers had Fins like Cd-
selsand space folks acted like intergalactic Jay-
cees. In those days, an abductee named Buck
Nelson sold little packets of tur at :65 each,
which he said came from a Venusian Saint Ber-
nard weighing 385 pounds. Another soi{lfsarat
contactee, Howard Menger, explained en the
"Tonight" show how easy it was to breathe on
the moon and subsequently cut a record enti-
tled "The Song From Saturn"-which ditty, he
averred, was "actual music that carne from an-
other planet."
But that was 30 years ago. The new books
provide a more lugubrious forecast.
An Age of Suspicion
Every year 1,000 or more reports reach the
appropriate organization. From 1947 to 1969,
it was the Air Force, which in 1959 issued a di-
rective to all commands stating that "investiga-
tions and analysis of UFOs are directly related
to the Air Force's responsibility for the de-
fense of the United States:' But 10 years later,
following astill-controversial study, the Air
Force dumped the project completely, citing
insufficient evidence.
Much of the Air Force material has been re-
leased to the public, but many (1FOlogists be-
lieve that the goverrunent is still concealing in-
formation and/or physical evidence. Their
doubts date from the same auspicious year as
the Arnold sighting. In mid-'47, something
crashed in the New iVlexico desert and was ob-
tained by the Air Force, which at first an-
nounced that it was "a flying disc," but subse-
quently put out word that the tivreckage was
merely a weather balloon and radar reflector.
Ninny UFOlogists were dubious, and dark ru-
mors circulated that the recovered material
contained miraculous lightweight metals and
the remains of insectlike pilots.
Intermittently thereafter the mat er of the
purloined cadavers has risen anew, along_with
other complaints of suppressed evidence. (For-
mer ~'IA director Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter_
char>zed in 1960 that the Air Force was at-
tem~ting to "hide the facts" about UFOs and to
?silence it~.2ersonnel.") The fracas escalated in
the early 'SOs as the Washington-based Citi-
 Approved For Release 2003/12/03 :CIA-RDP91-009018000500180001-6
zens Against ,UFO Secrecy initiated numerous
lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act de-
inands. In 1983, Cr1US__head. Larry Bryant
filed -suit in U.S. District Court here demand-
ing-that the tlir Force_release the New Mexico
material "This is a cosmic Watergate," Bryant
declared. The suit was disnussecl. The argu-
ment continues.
It will doubtless be rekindled this year,
though it is ghastly to imagine how an already
dispirited nation would take the revelation that
some GAO warehouse was Bill of space-stiffs
and slucer parts.
"I can ~mderstand the rationale of a govern-
ment cover-up," says Budd Hopkins. "The
whole economy-stocks, bonds, mortgages,
capital investment-is based on the idea that
20 years from now, things are gonna be pretty
much the same."
But if the feds announced tomorrow that
aliens had arrived, "I'd rather be in the liquor
business t}tan the real-estate business:'
Approved For Release 2003/12/03 :CIA-RDP91-009018000500180001-6
 STATINTL
Approved For Release 2003/12/03: CIA-RDP91-0090180005
document File
wl~o~s ow
FIRST?
oday's document file is a
T needed corrective to
what the Central Intelligence
Agency rightry- identified
as an error in the Quiz
that appeared on this
page Feb. 24.
The Washington Post
made the same error in
its obituary of Admiral
Sidney W.Souers on Jan.
ia, 1973.
WASHINGTON POST
3 March 1986
.i y~C wr.
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b
~
1~, ~1 CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
~~,. ~;;
w~sHiNaroH, o, c.:onoe
Mr. Leanartl Downie, Jr,
Managing Editor
THE NASHINGTON POST
1150 15th Street, N w,
Mashington, D,C. 20071
Dear Len;
four "Federal R
qulL Ruesti
e0ort" Pa
e
"
g
on,
of 24 Fn
A7enc
who wdS the f~rst dlr hrudry 9i~ei the wr
but ry' It was not Rear Anmiral Sf ector of th o^? answer
ether Rear Adm1r eSCrr~ 31 IntelligenCeto Its
dl Aosco dneY W, Souer
Admiral Souers wa a H, 4111enkoetter, '-he 9uiz answer states,
tdkine rw.___ _ 5 in~e,.,. _.
fhe Ydme Rdge,rthe CrCm Idnudryatomentdl or9anlLdC10n1."-'atrdi Intelligence,
Can r en[ral Intc)li une 1946, But as led the Central
9 esS enacted the National 9ence Agency was n ""u note el
the third Director f Securi ~' establlshedeuntll on
it was formed o Ce^trdl lntelify~nce of 194), 44mire} Hi11
after
on Septembe
n
r )8, 1)41 ~ was the f1r a koe tte r,
7 would a st dlreCror of C!A when
PPreclata TH
E POST runnrn9 d tgrrectlon.
SincerclY.
Approved For Release 2003/12/03: CIA-RDP91-009018000500180001-6