"Messengers of Deception" by Jacques Vallee 1979

[...] Scientific analysis will undoubtedly provide part of the truth about UFOs; however, I no longer believe it will lead to the whole truth. I owe this realization to a man I shall call “Major Murphy,” although his actual rank is much higher than that of Major. He taught me a lesson I am not likely to forget.

Major Murphy, who retired from a U.S. Intelligence service quite a few years ago, had seen action in World War II in Italy, and also described vividly his investigations in the Caribbean, where he organized efforts to intercept submarines and German spies on their way to the United States.

I met him at a gathering of UFO contactees and suggested a drink when it was over. I expressed my surprise at his interest in the event, which I had regarded as a complete waste of time. He asked me to clarify this judgment, and I said that in my opinion none of the people in attendance knew anything about science.

 

Then he posed a question that, obvious as it seems, had not really occurred to me:

“What makes you think that UFOs are a scientific problem?”

I replied with something to the effect that a problem was only scientific in the way it was approached, but he would have none of that, and he began lecturing me. First, he said, science had certain rules. For example, it has to assume that the phenomenon it is observing is natural in origin rather than artificial and possibly biased.

 

Now, the UFO phenomenon could be controlled by alien beings.

“If it is,” added the Major, “then the study of it doesn’t belong in science. It belongs in Intelligence.”

MEANING COUNTERESPIONAGE. And that, he pointed out, was his domain.

“Now, in the field of counterespionage, the rules are completely different.” He drew a simple diagram in my notebook. “You are a scientist. In science there is no concept of the ‘price’ of information. Suppose I gave you 95 per cent of the data concerning a phenomenon. You’re happy because you know 95 per cent of the phenomenon. Not so in Intelligence.

 

If I get 95 per cent of the data, I know this is the ‘cheap’ part of the information. I still need the other 5 per cent, but I will have to pay a much higher price to get it. You see, Hitler had 95 per cent of the information about the landing in Normandy.

 

But he had the WRONG 95 PER CENT!”
 

“Are you saying that the UFO data we use to compile statistics and to find patterns with computers are useless?” I asked. “Might we be spinning our magnetic tapes endlessly discovering spurious laws?”
 

“It all depends on how the team on the OTHER SIDE thinks. If they know what they’re doing, there will be so many cutouts between you and them that you won’t have the slightest chance of tracing your way to the truth. Not by following up sightings and throwing them into a computer.

 

They will keep feeding you the information they want you to process. What is the only source of data about the UFO phenomenon? It is the UFOs themselves!”

Some things were beginning to make a lot of sense.

“If you’re right, what can I do? It seems that research on the phenomenon is hopeless, then. I might as well dump my computer into a river.”

“Not necessarily, but you should try a different approach. First you should work entirely outside of the organized UFO groups; they are infiltrated by the same official agencies they are trying to influence, and they propagate any rumor anyone wants to have circulated. In Intelligence circles, people like that are historical necessities.

 

We call them ‘useful idiots.’ When you’ve worked long enough for Uncle Sam, you know he is involved in a lot of strange things. The data these groups get are biased at the source, but they play a useful role.

“Second, you should look for the irrational, the bizarre, the elements that do not fit: that’s what I have come to observe at this meeting tonight. Have you ever felt that you were getting close to something that didn’t seem to fit any rational pattern, yet gave you a strong impression that it was significant?”

[... Deleted: Vallee’s discussion of the immortality-claming group “Human Individual Metamorphosis,” the strange life of Jacques Bordas, and the mysterious Order of Melchizedek...]

The absurdity of many UFO stories and of many religious visions is not a superficial logical mistake. It may be the key to their function. According to Major Murphy, the confusion in the UFO mystery may have been put there deliberately to achieve certain results.

 

One of these results has been to keep scientists away. The other is to create the conditions for a new form of social control, a change in Man’s perception of his place in the universe. Are his theories fantastic? Before we decide, let us review a few other facts. We need to examine more closely the political connections.

Paris Flammonde, in his well-documented “Age of Flying Saucers,” remarked that “a great many of the contactees purvey philosophies which are tinged, if not tainted, with totalitarian overtones.”

A catalogue of contactee themes, compiled from interviews I have conducted, includes the following.

 

INTELLECTUAL ABDICATION

The widespread belief that human beings are incapable of solving their own problems, and that extraterrestrial intervention is imperative to save us “in spite of ourselves.”

 

The danger in such a philosophy is that it makes its believers dependent on outside forces and discourages personal responsibility: why should we worry about the problems around us, if the Gods from Outer Space are about to solve them?

 

RACIST PHILOSOPHY

The pernicious suggestion that some of us on the Earth are of extraterrestrial descent and therefore constitute a “higher race.”

 

The dangers inherent in this belief should be obvious to anybody who hasn’t forgotten the genocides of World War II, executed on the premise that some races were somehow “purer” or better than others.

 

(Let us note in passing that Adamski’s Venusian, the Stranger of the Canigou seen by Bordas, and many other alleged extraterrestrials were all tall Aryan types with long blond hair.)

 

TECHNICAL IMPOTENCE

The statement that the birth of civilization on this planet resulted not from the genius and ability of mankind, but from repeated assistance by higher beings.

 

Archaeologists and anthropologists are constantly aware of the marvelous skill with which the “Ancient Engineers” (to use L. Sprague de Camp’s phrase) developed the tools of civilization on all continents.

No appear to superior powers is necessary to explain the achievements of early culture. The belief expressed by the contactees reveals a tragic lack of trust on their part in human ability.

 

SOCIAL UTOPIA

Fantastic economic theories, including the belief that a “world economy” can be created overnight, and that democracy should be abolished in favor of utopian systems, usually dictatorial in their outlook.

Such ideas are present, in one form or another, in the statements of organized UFO cults and sects that are described here, and they deserve to be examined in some detail.