SUBJECT: OMNI MAGAZINE: GOVT KEEPS UFO DOCS SECRET           FILE: UFO1888



OMNI ARTICLE


  Government agencies still have hundreds of UFO documents that they refuse
to release to UFO researchers.  The National Security Agency (NSA) admits to
withholding more than 100 UFO-related documents, the CIA refuses to release
about 50, and the DIA says it's withholding six.  This is black-and-white
proof of a cover-up, says Greenwood.  "In a literal sense, information is
being covered up in being withheld."

  The most tantalizing of all the withheld UFO documents are those belonging
to the NSA, the supersecret agency whose primary job is eavesdropping on
military communications.  No one really knows what UFO information its
documents contain, but Friedman has an idea what one may be about.  Someone
working for the agency told Friedman that in March 1967 a listening post
picked up communications between Cuban radar installations and two MiG-21
jets sent to intercept a mysterious, bright metallic sphere in Cuban
airspace.  When the MiG pilots failed to make contact with the object, they
were instructed to shoot it down.  "Suddenly there was this shrieking from
the pilot in the second plane," says Friedman.  "The first plane had
disintegrated."  Friedman's contact says that NSA headquarters was sent a
report on the incident.

  UFO researchers took the NSA to court for its UFO documents in 1980, but
federal district court judge Gerhard Gesell, the same judge who presided over
the Oliver North case, ruled in the NSA's favor.  The agency refuses to
release any of its UFO-related documents because to do so would reveal
sources and methods, and that would be a violation of national security.  But
Friedman believes that there is something about the phenomenon itself that
the agency regards as a threat to national security.  These objects are
violating our airspace, he points out, and they show the powerless response
of our military systems to such intrusions.  Friedman has a name for all
this.  He calls it the cosmic Watergate.

  Philip J. Klass, an aerospace journalist and the field's foremost skeptic,
says there is no such thing.  He points out that many of the communications
intercepted by the NSA come from potentially hostile nations and many of them
are coded.  So the agency's rationale for not making these documents public
is actually quite simple.  "They might reveal the location of certain
listening posts," he explains, "and even more important, they would reveal
that we have cracked and were able to decipher certain codes."

  So if the question is whether the withheld documents contain any answers to
the UFO mystery, the answer is, Probably not.  "Long ago a lot of us used to
think that the government was covering up a knowledge of extraterrestrials
and their craft," says Greenwood, who six years ago coauthored 'Clear Intent:
The Government Cover-up of the UFO Experience'.  "But we've had a change of
attitude.  We just don't see the government as having any answers.  If they
knew what UFOs were all about, I think history would have been a little
different than what we now see."

  This argument gains power, oddly enough, from the Roswell incident itself.
"If it was a UFO that crashed in Roswell," says Jacobs, "a whole series of
events would have been set in motion in the government.  There would be major
studies of it.  Hundreds of scientists would have been involved with it over
the past forty years.  The government would be acting very differently about
UFOs than they do now.  All of UFO history makes sense if there was not a
crash, and none of UFO history makes sense if there was a crash."  Jacobs
adds, "It's still possible that one could have crashed and there's an
entirely different scenario at work."

  If the craft at Roswell had been an E.T. craft, insists Klass, then the
United States would have wanted to know just how many of these craft were
passing overhead.  At the very least, he says, we would have established a
space-surveillance system similar to the one that was set up three years
after the launch of Sputnik.  Klass cannot imagine the government doing
nothing and simply hoping the aliens are friendly.

  Never in his 24 years of UFO investigation has Klass encountered a
government cover-up of significant information.  If you think there's a
cover-up, he says, call your local air base and report that a saucer has just
landed in your backyard and that strange-looking creatures are getting out of
it.  If the government really were trying to keep things under wraps, he
says, the voice on the other end would ask for your address and a SWAT team
would be there within minutes.  Instead, what will happen, says Klass, is
that the voice on the other end will simply thank you for calling and suggest
that you report your sighting to the local police department or to one of the
national UFO groups.

  That's too simplistic, says Bryant.  If they really have hard evidence
about aliens and flying saucers, what would they care about what's in your
backyard?  For the past several years Bryant, who happens to be a Pentagon
employee, has been placing ads in military newspapers encouraging anyone with
UFO information to come forth and blow the whistle on the government
cover-up.  So far no one has come forward to reveal what he calls the
"ultimate secret" that will motivate the general public, the press, and
Congress to resolve the issue.  He's not surprised. "So few people in the
government really know about UFOs," he says.  "And those who don't know are
covering up because it's just the way of doing things.  It's the bureaucratic
way.  When in doubt, don't let it out.  Don't even let out that you don't
know."
     
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