SM: Stuart Miller
MS: Michael Salla
SM: I’ve not looked at
Exopolitics before but it’s been gradually
chipping away at me. To be perfectly honest, there’s been so much
negativity about it, it’s been easier to turn away from it than to
take a serious look. But you’ve almost forced me to take it
seriously and to consider it. Do you see Exopolitics as the way
forward now?
MS: Definitely. I think a lot of people really are looking for
understanding what is going on in terms of the secret policy-making
that’s been going on. I think there’s a lot of evidence that people
have accepted that there is a presence that hasn’t been divulged to
the general public and people are interested and are asking, “What
does that mean politically?” and they are looking for anyone who can
give some kind of analysis of what is happening and I think that’s
why the Exopolitics concept is beginning to take off.
SM: You said a moment ago that people are looking to see
what’s
happening politically. Aren’t they just not looking for confirmation
that something really exists?
MS: Well, I think that’s part of it. I think that when people look
at all the evidence that exists, they come away feeling there’s a
lot of evidence there but there’s still the debate about whether
it’s conclusive or not. But I think intuitively people feel there’s
a lot happening and that points to some governmental cover up or
something that the government is not fully disclosing and that’s a
political process and so people become interested in what’s
happening in the political arena.
SM: So you would define it as looking towards government to get some
sort of confirmation or revelation that something’s going on as
opposed to finding hard evidence of something physical happening.
MS: I think people have more or less accepted that there is
sufficient hard evidence out there for something happening in terms
of a UFO presence and an extraterrestrial association with that. And
so they’re looking for not so much governmental acknowledgement of
that but more an idea of what it is that the government have set up
secretly to deal with this. I think people understand it’s unlikely
the government are going to come out soon with some acknowledgement
of this. But I think people are asking about what is the secret
process that’s been set up from the very beginning when this whole
arena was acknowledged to be something legitimate.
SM: Why do you think that
Exopolitics concerns or infuriates or
irritates the nuts and bolts Ufologists so much?
|
Stephen Bassett |
MS: I think they are really looking for hard evidence and wanting to
be able to use whatever information they’ve gained to then go to the
next step and give cautious statements about what’s needed to be
done next.
So when they look at this concept of Exopolitics which is based on
the idea that there is sufficient evidence substantiating an
undisclosed extraterrestrial presence, they think that it’s really
moving into the area of conjecture and speculation. We may say,
“Well, we really need to build on the hard evidence” and of course
those that are defending the Exopolitics concept are saying, “The
hard evidence is there. You just haven’t taken it to the next step
of looking at the political process that surrounds all things
pertaining to UFOs and an undisclosed extraterrestrial presence.
SM: Do you think it’s possible for somebody to have a foot in both
camps?
MS: I think that’s what people like Stephen Bassett and
Steven Greer
are doing. They do have a foot in both camps. Myself, I have much
more of a political background. I do have that international
politics training and so I’m looking really at the evidence I’ve
found that there is a secret infrastructure set up to deal with this
whole UFO arena. That’s really what I look at and so I’m not looking
at the nuts and bolts aspect as does the traditional UFO researcher
and I’m really in the exopolitics arena.
SM: What evidence have you found?
|
General Vandenberg |
MS: A lot of it comes from multiple sources. Some of the key
documents that emerged from the beginning of UFO research, such as
the way in which the original
Project Sign report was dealt with by
the US air force when the Chief of Staff General Vandenberg got a
report from the Project Sign team that was conclusive in terms of
the UFO phenomenon and an Extraterrestrial hypothesis and he turned
round in 1948 and sent that back down saying, “I don’t want a
conclusive result, I want an inconclusive result”. And I looked at
that particular process and realized that a political process was
already set up whereby there was no chance that the air force would
accept a conclusive result to any investigation by its own technical
experts into the UFO phenomenon. That to me suggested a political
system had been set up whereby this was going to be kept out of the
public arena.
And then you look at things like the
Project Blue Book process where
they got junior air force officers like Captain Ruppelt to deal with
a phenomenon which had enormous policy implications not only for the
US but for the whole planet, but dealt with by these junior officers
who had very few resources. Ruppelt himself described how he
couldn’t even get a staff car to investigate the 1952 UFO sightings.
So that to me suggests to me that there was already a cover up going
on.
Then you have people such as Major Donald Keyhoe describing the
official process that was covering up this information so I
recognize that there was a political process in place here and that
it was worth investigating that.
SM: What reasons have you discovered or that you assume for
the
cover up?
MS: I think that the main reasons pertain to the impact on the
general public in terms of the culture and religion. I think there’s
also the impact on the economic arena in terms of such industries as
the energy sector which could become redundant virtually overnight.
I think there’s also the national security implications in terms of
the extraterrestrial races having an increased ability to
communicate with the general public in ways that national security
agencies might find a threat to continued stability.
SM: Do you feel that those reasons are justified or do you feel that
the world in general, with all those components you’ve just gone
through, could actually deal or cope with the revelation?
MS: I think it’s a really complex question. Certainly the government
could do much more in terms of preparing the general public but I
think that there is a real question over the preparedness of the
general public to really handle the full scope of what is happening
in terms of extraterrestrial races who, by all accounts, have been
performing activities on the planet that are very worrying to the
government.
I think these activities range from very positive encounters that
many individuals have reported in terms of contactee reports, to
very disturbing accounts of abductions and genetic experiments that
abductees have been describing. So I think if this information was
to be released without any kind of filtering process, I think there
would be a lot of concern on the part of many who would be quite
frightened by exactly what is happening. I think the government
really has tried to deal with this in a very secret way but
unfortunately they have not allowed enough information to get out to
prepare the public for the truth and over time, this has taken on a
characteristic of inertia where very little information is released
by governments such as the US and the UK.
SM: Given what you’ve just said, how do you see your position? If
you think that the public aren’t prepared and you’re trying to force
this information out, let’s assume hypothetically that fairly soon
you’re successful, arguably you could be accused of bringing on the
downfall of humanity.
|
Steven Greer – fellow traveller on the Exopolitical road |
MS: Well, I think what happens when someone like me comes forward
and releases a lot of information that’s based on the testimony of a
lot of very credible people such as the whistleblowers who have
appeared in
Steven Greer’s Disclosure Project, those are the sort of
people I like to focus on because I think they’re the most credible
and they’re the ones that a lot of the general public are going to
listen to, that when the public do read the kind of reports and
papers that I put out, that they’re introduced to the concepts.
Now of course, because there is still a lot of controversy, a lot of
debate over Exopolitics, a lot of people have a degree of
speculation or denial that they can indulge in where they can look
at this and say, “It’s very interesting” and they can work with it
and sit on it for a while without it being thrust in their faces and
I think that’s part of the preparation process because
psychologically, I think there’s a vast difference between what
happens when a researcher such as myself starts talking about
governments having arrangements or agreements with extraterrestrials
where extraterrestrials abduct citizens to where the government
acknowledges that this has in fact happened.
SM: I was actually going to ask you, you mention about preparing the
public and the filtering process, how do you envisage that? How do
you interpret that? What would you like to see the government start
doing? A slow steady trickle of a release of information?
MS: Definitely. I think something that would help tremendously would
be to acknowledge the existence of, for example life on
Mars. I
think something along those lines would assist greatly in helping
people open up to the truth about extraterrestrial existence. A
graduated disclosure project like that whereby the public are slowly
introduced to the idea of advanced extraterrestrial and then
advanced civilizations on planets. And then eventually there would
be some acknowledgement that this has been happening on Earth as
well.
SM: But the moment you acknowledge that there’s even
macro
biological life on Mars, which is likely to be the very first step,
surely that already begins to affect everything on Earth. Because
it’s first and foremost an acknowledgement that Life exists off this
planet however tiny, however powerful a microscope you might need to
look at it, Life of some sort exists off planet earth. And it’s not
a massive leap in the human imagination to assume from there that
intelligent Life exists elsewhere. So already you’ve got that impact
on religion right from the start.
MS: Well that’s correct, yes. I think that once you do have that
acknowledgement of even macro biological life on a planet like
Mars,
that opens the speculation as to advanced Life all over the galaxy.
SM: There is this conflict really whereby we can acknowledge the
likely impact of the revelation of the announcement of intelligent
life, we can foresee the possible consequences here on this planet,
and yet we still want to know, we still want to find out, we still
want to be told. There is that sort of juxtaposition, that conflict
there. Whereas you and I and a great many other people can deal with
it and process it, at the same time there’s going to be a great many
people, probably the majority who will struggle with it.
MS: I agree. I think this is really the challenge - that people
mistakenly assume it’s all about the government not disclosing the
truth but I think it’s also largely due to the general public not
being ready for the truth. I think that there’s a lot of information
that’s been circulated freely for many, many years about UFOs and
extraterrestrial sightings and so forth and the public haven’t
picked this up and I don’t think it’s been entirely a result of
government manipulation. I think the public has really shown that
it’s too much for it to handle and I think there really does need to
be a graduated disclosure project to deal with that. I think it does
reveal some kind of collective psychology at play where advanced
life on other worlds really is going to be a tough sell for a lot of
people to incorporate into their lives.
SM: But could I put to you in response to what you just said the
fact that a frequent series of polls over the years, particularly in
America that show that the majority of people certainly seem to
believe and accept that there is intelligent Life elsewhere.
MS: That’s right. I know that the polls are very encouraging and
show more and more people opening up to that. And maybe that’s the
result of the general media and films like “Star Wars” and
television series like “Taken” and that this has really helped to
open up the public to this possibility.
SM: Do you think there’s a difference between somebody answering a
pollster by saying, “Yes, I believe there is intelligent Life
elsewhere” and the actual reality of it being presented to them. Do
you think there is a difference?
MS: I think there’s probably a difference in the level of
commitment. A person might say in response to a poll question that
yes, they believe there is Life out there and they believe that the
government is covering up information about that. But if you ask
them if they would like to read a book discussing this, they might
answer, well, they don’t have time or they have too many
commitments. So I think there’s a disjuncture there between what their
belief system is and what they’re actually prepared to commit
themselves to.
SM: You mentioned a few moments ago the witnesses from
Steven
Greer’s Disclosure Project and you said you regarded them as very
credible. Arguably, the biggest criticism from nuts and bolts Ufologists directed towards you is that the witnesses seem to be
lacking credibility.
MS: Well this is the big issue here. There’s a question of what is
an appropriate screening process for whistleblowers for example that
come forward and reveal their information. Steven Greer put together
a filtering process and that was very strongly criticized by the
traditional nuts and bolts ufologist for not being critical enough
because they were asking, “Where is the evidence substantiating the
statements of these whistleblowers?”
I think the point that Steven Greer was making was because
this is
part of an official cover up, a lot of these witnesses aren’t going
to have hard evidence supporting their testimonies because this was
classified information and hard evidence is not easy to access and
if you do have possession of hard evidence, you may be in fact
breaking the law and there still are very severe penalties in place
for those who do divulge classified information.
SM: So really what you’re asking of other people then is simply
belief. Please believe these people; we can’t prove what they’re
saying.
MS: Well I think you would look at it in terms of you have a number
of people here who are talking about a very similar phenomenon in
terms of them being involved in classified projects or having had
access to various documents or having witnessed radar sightings or
that kind of evidence. When you put them together collectively, what
you have is evidence of a pattern and so if you look at these
witnesses collectively, you can say, “This is very credible evidence
here” because here you have a number of very senior people who had
very responsible positions in charge of nuclear weapons or secret
aircraft. These people, who had very important responsibilities, all
disclosing these stories about UFOs, cover ups by government
agencies and sightings of extraterrestrial biological entities.
So you have a pattern and I think all of that together constitutes
some very important evidence that people can consider.
SM: I think I remember you talking at some point in relation to
these witnesses about official/unofficial tampering of their
credentials. In other words, as if the government had made some
attempt to cut away the legs from under these people by removing
their records. As far as you are concerned, you feel that goes on?
MS: Oh definitely. I think a number of
whistleblowers have spoken
about it. I’ve interviewed a few people who have spoken about
similar things themselves. I think a good example is someone like
Bob Lazaar who described how he himself divulged information
relating to his work on a flying saucer that had been recovered and
was being reverse engineered and that was not built on Earth and how
all his records had disappeared and he subsequently had a lot of
difficulty proving that in fact he did work at Los Alamos and at
S4
and that he did have credentials as a nuclear physicist because all
his records that substantiated his degrees had been withdrawn. There
were a few others who described a very similar phenomenon with
themselves.
SM: Have you had any encouragement, however slight, or barely
perceptible from any official authority in relation to the work that
you’ve done, that’s hardened or confirmed your opinion?
MS: I haven’t had anything that I can cite as evidence one way or
the other of government official support or effort to censor my
work. I did have a very negative reaction from the university I had
an academic affiliation with when I had an interview published by
The Washington Post that the university were very disturbed by. They
felt that somehow I was bringing them into some kind of disrepute
and so they started a process where bye my affiliation was
eventually not renewed and the programme that I had been setting up
was summarily terminated. Who was responsible for that? It may have
been entirely a university decision or there may have been an
external agency at work to make it more difficult for me to have any
kind of credibility with the general public.
SM: Indeed I do remember this
Dr. Salla. It was fairly recently, was
it not? Last year some point?
MS: Yes, that’s right.
SM: What reasons were given to you? You said before that the
university was disturbed but they must have elaborated on that.
MS: When I did
The Washington Post interview, I spoke to the
associate director for the Centre for Global Peace where I had my
affiliation and she said that the publication of the interview would
not be very good for my association with the university.
SM: Their ploy was that a respected member of staff, talking about
this sort of thing, would bring the university into disrepute?
MS: Not only that but I was doing a programme into which they felt I
was wanting to introduce some of this extraterrestrial or
Exopolitical methodology, which wasn’t the case and without
consulting me, they terminated the programme.
SM: How personal a blow was this?
MS: Well it was very significant because it meant I had to leave the
US because the university was my sponsor and come in under another
visa, another arrangement. And of course now it means in terms of
working with the university I have this black mark against my name
because my last university and I parted ways in a very unpleasant
manner.
SM: Do you feel bitter? Angry?
MS: I feel angry at the lack of support I got from within the
university. I felt there were people there who could have at least
allowed me to continue doing this research despite the public
interest that was there. This research was still legitimate because
I was doing it in a way that I felt was in conformity with the
academic training that I’d received. I felt that people weren’t
willing to support this in any way. It was like a red flag and they
just wanted to get away from it.
SM: You have, over the course of your career within ufology
sustained an incredible avalanche of criticism. It really is quite
amazing actually just how much has been directed towards you at
virtually every level. How do you cope with that because you seem to
maintain a decorum? You don’t appear to lose it if you know what I
mean.
MS: I understand that there are a lot of people with a long term
vested interest in ufology. People who have been working in the
field for 30 years or more and who believe that they’ve seen it all.
They’ve investigated many of the outstanding cases and that they
have this tremendous experience. And so when a relative newcomer
such as myself comes along, and doesn’t adopt the same methodology
that they do, they can be very critical and dismissive. I understand
that and it’s like the old guard holding on to their methodology and
not being prepared to consider alternatives. So I understand that I
need to be circumspect in how I deal with these people because they
are very well respected in the UFO community and have tremendous
experience and so I need to be considerate of that while at the same
time promoting the methodology that I feel is more appropriate.
SM: Have you had any contact with
channelling and if so, what are
your views on that method?
MS: It’s one of those sources of evidence that I describe in my very
first study paper on Exopolitics where I list seven sources of
evidence and channelling was the seventh, and I classified it as the
weakest source of evidence because there’s very little to
substantiate what different channellers have to say. I think it’s
very interesting, I think there’s reason why we shouldn’t dismiss it
out of hand but at the same time we need to be very wary of adopting
what channelled information has to say. But I think there’s
definitely something there that deserves investigating and it
shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.
SM: What ranks at the top of that list? Is it witness testimony?
MS: Yes. I basically put the witness testimony up there. Then I put
the sightings phenomenon together with contact and abductee
statements. Then I include other sources like remote viewing,
independent archaeology, documentary sources and then
channelling.
SM: What do you think is actually going on? Do you have a sense of
where these aliens may be from; do you have any idea of how many
different races might be out there? Do you feel they might actually
be here and walking around?
MS: Definitely, yes. I believe that
the government has been aware of
a number of different extraterrestrial races that have been
visiting, based on a number of whistle blower testimonies. For
example, Robert Dean described a NATO document that he saw in 1964
when he was working in the intelligence briefing team for the
Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers in Europe that he saw a
document detailing at least 4 extraterrestrial races that the
military were aware of, that were flying their ships, and he also
described their physical characteristics. This was a 1964 NATO
document and there have been other whistleblowers who have come
forward to describe as many as 57 different extraterrestrial races.
Others describe 60 or more so it seems that what we have here are
many different ET races that some whistleblowers have been privy to
in terms of documents that they have come across or information that
they have received while working within the intelligence community
or the military. I do believe there is a knowledge about the
different ET races that are visiting and that the government
agencies that are responsible for dealing with this whole area are
keeping this from the general public for reasons we talked about
earlier.
SM: Do you feel that the government has any control over this?
MS: I think that’s part of the problem. They probably believe they
have very little ability to control the ET races that are visiting,
that they are not sure exactly what the extraterrestrials that are
here are doing and what they are up to and their long term
motivation. So I think there’s a lot of uncertainty there with the
government and that helps account for why they have been so slow to
release a lot of information.
SM: What do you see as the way forward for exopolitics?
MS: I think the way forward is to have better ways of
analyzing the
whistleblower testimonies that are emerging. Steven Greer started
the ball rolling in assembling those large numbers of whistleblowers
that came forward and gave testimony and what really needs to be
done is to come up with more systematic criteria for analyzing the
whistleblower testimonies describing the UFOs and
extraterrestrials
when there isn’t sufficient hard evidence to substantiate that.
That’s where I think there really needs to be a lot of hard work
done in Exopolitics because that’s where we’re going to get a lot of
the information. The same thing needs to be done with contactees and
or abductees. Dr. John Mack had started to do something similar. So
we really need to develop pretty rigorous social science criteria to
investigate and analyze the testimony of these people. This is
critical since we can use this whistleblower/witness testimony to
develop a coherent picture of the secret government infrastructure
created to deal with UFOs/EBEs, and the extraterrestrials themselves
in terms of their motivations and activities here on Earth.
SM: That seems to be an acknowledgement on your side that witness
testimony could really be a bit stronger or needs to be able to
stand up to more rigorous scrutiny.
MS: I think we need to be more rigorous in terms of how we
substantiate it. It doesn’t need to be done purely on the basis of
hard evidence which is what the nuts and bolts people do. But I
think we could do a much better job in terms of cross referencing
what different whistleblowers have said and sort out what
inconsistencies might apparently be there.
We also need to look at the way national security agencies interfere
with the evidence, and seek to discredit whistleblowers and
witnesses in ways that lead to them being dismissed by nuts and
bolts researchers. This unfortunately introduces a conspiracy
element that nuts and bolts researchers want to steer clear off, but
it’s nevertheless necessary to do since that is what the evidence
points to as taking place.
In short, we won’t understand what’s really going on until we better
understand how the different government agencies interfere with the
evidence and the credibility of witnesses.
SM: Dr. Salla, thank you
