The Scum Rises: Peter Jennings on UFOs
Friday February 25th, 2005
By Whitley Strieber ( http://www.unknowncountry.com/journal/ )

The much heralded ABC special on UFOs has come and gone. Predictably, it was
more of the same, a large number of lies sprinkled with a few truths. At
least it wasn't as relentlessly negative as such programs have generally
been in the past. But people like Peter Jennings and his producers are
cursed with the belief that they can understand-or already do
understand-what they are looking at. The reality is that the UFO phenomenon
is the most complex event in history, and a cursory examination of its
surface by a few overworked and ill-informed television producers is not
going to succeed in any way whatsoever to come to any truth about it.
They are filled with belief in their own competence, however. The result is
that their efforts become an exercise in hubris. They end up making
judgements based on inadequate information because they believe that what
they have gathered is sufficient. But it is not sufficient, it only fulfills
their expectations and serves their assumptions. That's always where they
stop, and it's never enough.

Jennings was somewhat open to the notion that some UFOs might be actual
unknowns, and he actually told the truth, for once, about Project Bluebook:
it was indeed a publicity stunt.

But the characterization of the Roswell Incident as a hoax and the people
attempting to investigate it as cultists was a grotesque lie, and, I think,
an intentional one. It is classic disinformation-tell a little truth so that
your lie will be swallowed along with it. Of course, how could anything more
be expected from a man like Jennings? He's a prostitute to the
establishment, nothing more or less, and it is in the interest of the
establishment to conceal the reality of Roswell.

Something went wrong there. It went very wrong. And it is somebody's fault,
and, to this day, that somebody is terrified that the public will discover
that we had a truly magnificent chance at Roswell, and our side blew it.

In 1988, my uncle told me that he had personally been aware of and involved
with the management of the debris that had been brought from Roswell to
Wright Field in 1947. My uncle Edward Strieber was an honorable man, indeed,
a very honorable man. He spent his career in the Air Force, mostly working
in areas that were extremely classified. He was in a position to know what
he was talking about, and, as I say, he was an honorable man.

Not only that, he introduced me to his commanding officer and old friend,
General Arthur Exon, who could not have been more frank. He stated, and this
is a direct quote: "Everyone from the White House on down knew that what we
had found was not of this world within 24 hours of our finding it."

And he, also, was an honorable man who spent a sterling career in service to
his country.

So who am I to believe, two honorable soldiers, or a man like Peter
Jennings, in love with his own silly assumptions and willing to lie for
profit?

Give me the soldiers, please. What they told me about Roswell was true.
Therefore, the honest and honorable people involved in the Roswell case are
the researchers like Stanton Friedman. The ones who 'debunk' it are
professional liars or ignorant fools, pure and simple.

This gets me to the way the abductees were treated. I just cannot imagine
why Budd Hopkins keeps exposing himself to people like Jennings. What this
man has given up for the abductees is, essentially, everything. Jennings
sneered that he is an artist, not a scientist. What he should have said was
the truth: that this artist, out of the decency in his heart, gave up his
career and, essentially, his life for people who were hurting, because
science in its arrogance and stupidity would not help them.

The reality of Budd Hopkins is this: he is old, he is ill, he is broke. That
is his reward for a lifetime of extremely courageous service to humanity. If
he is a cultist, then where are the Rolls Royces, where are the doting
followers? And for that matter, if I am simply sitting back and making a
fortune off my books, then where is that fortune?

I am not as poor as Budd, it's true, but I give back at every level of my
life. I have supported this website for years, and this website does good,
it does a world of good. If nothing else, it serves as an antidote to the
lies and propaganda spread by the arrogant garbage that have taken the high
ground in this so-called free society of ours.

There is a horror behind all of this: it is that, because of the way that
people like Jennings characterize the abduction phenomenon as the product of
fringe cultism and delusional thinking, the visitors remain free to do with
us what they will.

And that, bottom line, I suspect, was the purpose of this program. True,
they paid lip service to UFO reality. But when it came to the important
stuff, they spread disinformation of a kind that is devastatingly harmful to
mankind.

We need to face some facts: the abduction phenomenon is real, it is
invasive, and there is nothing whatsoever that anybody can do about it.
That, incidentally, is the great secret: the reason the government lies and
uses things like laughter and skilled disinformation like the Jennings
special to dismiss the phenomenon is that the reality behind it is
terrifying and they are helpless.

I often ask the disclosure proponents if they actually expect the president
to go on TV and say that UFOs are real, and that we can do nothing to
control their access to our airspace. From there, it is just a short step to
the abduction evidence, which involves an abundance of physical traces like
implants which defy medical explanation, and a wealth of anecdotal reportage
that is at once exceedingly strange, exceedingly provocative, and, frankly,
suggests the presence of a great and hidden danger in our world that we
cannot control.

The Jennings special took it all to another level of propaganda. They
admitted a certain amount of truth in order that their poison pill of lies
would be swallowed with it. For a journalist, there can be no more
despicable act.

I believe in the soul. I believe in an afterlife. I also believe that it is
incumbent upon us all to live to the highest ethical standards in this life,
or face in the next the consequences of not having done so.

All I have to say more is this: I am certainly glad that I don't have Peter
Jennings' soul. When I die, I will go to God with these realities imprinted
on my being: I never lied; I always strove to lift myself and all whom I
encountered to the best moral state we could achieve; I took the road less
traveled, knowing that it would be hard. I did so because I was given the
chance to, and I saw a chance to help my fellow man, and so I took the
chance.

So, here is my response to Mr. Jennings and the dirty little men who lurk in
his shadow, whispering their lies to him: First, Roswell really happened,
and it is the key to everything, because the Air Force made a
world-historical mistake there that has led to our being in the state we are
in now: isolated on this earth, swimming in ignorance, and denied what is
the birthright of every intelligent species, which is access to the great
cosmos. Second, the most important aspect of the whole UFO phenomenon is
abduction. As ugly as it is, it is also our only point of contact with the
outside. And there is a message being sent from them to us. It has nothing
to do with radio telescopes and the adolescent tomfoolery of SETI, and
everything to do with the hearts, minds and bodies-and the souls-of the
abductees.

You want a communication from the 'aliens,' SETI? You want a dose of the
truth, Mr. Jennings? Just ask us. We are that communication, and we are that
truth.