Hacking the real or the unreal - the ultimate secret?

Hacking the real or the unreal - the ultimate secret?

Cao Xueqin (c.1760) had other things in mind when he wrote:

"Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true;
Real becomes not-real when the unreal's real"

(Translation by David Hawkes, Penguin Classics, 1973)

Cao was writing about entering "The Land of Illusion" in his epic Chinese literary classic "The Dream of the Red Chamber". I used this arresting quote to open my new book "HAIR of the ALIEN".

But in the context of "UFO secrets" Churchill's wartime maxim on counterintelligence & deception is perhaps equally relevant:

"Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

Such thoughts and a bit of nostalga entered my thoughts learning of Jon Ronson's interview with Gary McKinnon in the Guardian (July 9, 2005). Ronson (of the gonzo romps "THEM - Adventures with Extremists" (2001) and "The Men who stare at Goats" (2004) talked with McKinnon about the latters addled hacking adventures, which it was suggested might get him 70 years in a US jail. McKinnon said he was inspired by the hopes of getting at the US government's UFO secrets. Seems apart from some material related to "non-terrestrial officers" viewed apparently while he was stoned at a computer, little solid UFO material was accessed by McKinnon.

THis reminded me of a phone call I received a few years ago. Somebody was telling me that they had hacked into some ultra secret government UFO documents they were willing to share. A bit of probing revealed a tale tissue thin - the so called ultra secret documents were nothing more than Bill Cooper's wild and demented offerings accessed by my underwhelming caller via an internet enquiry anyone could have made.

Such tales of hacking treasures in the secret UFO vaults need to be challenged. If they survive a critical gauntlet then maybe, only maybe, they might be worth examining. Today the internet and other outlets are full of dubious material and researchers need to expose the fallacies where they can. Hopefully tales about the ultimate secret might eventually yield something of merit.

Back in 1988 in the heyday of the MJ12 controversy I sat down with Tony Jones (then of ABC TV "Four Corners", now of "Lateline") and Greg Hunter (then senior editor of Australian Penthouse, and more recently biographer of Ian Thorpe) at my place. Both were interested in trying to nail down the saga of the great UFO secrets! Tony never got Four Corners to do a UFO show, and Greg stunned by the convoluted complexity of the story asked me instead to write the article. That was back in the days where you could almost justify the pretense of reading "Australian Penthouse" for the articles rather than the pictures ....

I took up the challenge interviewing Bill Moore, Linda Moulton Howe and Robert Emenegger along the way. The result was an article "UFOs - the Ultimate Secret" - in the December 1988 issue that attracted an editorial compliment - an "impressive investigation" - and even clandestine responses of its own - you know, the stuff of "cloak & dagger" rendezvous in various places to be told "secret" tales.

I concluded my article then with the following:

"Ultimately, there is no absolute proof of any of this. It is impossible to say with any certainty just what is going on. We could be dealing with:
* real extra-terrestrial contact - a cosmic watergate - in which Churchill's wartime maxim of counterintelligence may rule ...
* one of the biggest hoaxes in history;
* a Space Age technological expression of the urban legend syndrome ...
* some sort of extraordinary clandestine intelligence gambit - an excercise in disinformation and deception.
It is possible we could be seeing a combination of these possibilities. Or maybe the answer lies in some other direction. As they say in the news flashes, we await further developments."

I've thought about revisiting the saga, now even far more convoluted and complex, in a follow-up piece, but "Australian Penthouse" is now not the magazine it once was, where perhaps an in-depth article might find a place - perhaps some other forum ...

Even now, more than 15 years down the track, with offerings like the Woods Majestic documents investigation controversy, "Case MJ-12" from Kevin Randle, "Project Beta - the story of Paul Bennewitz, National Security, and the creation of a Modern UFO Myth" by Greg Bishop, Robert Collins & Richard Doty's offering "Exempt from Disclosure: The Disturbing case about the UFO Coverup", and even Nick Redfern's "Body Snatchers in the Desert - the horrible truth at the heart of the Roswell saga", the game is clearly still afoot (apologies to Sherlock Holmes).

Bill Chalker