Aliens follow their leader - UFO claims

Steven Greer, M.D., is the leader of CSETI, a wild-and-woolly UFO group that claims to be able to lure spacecraft down for close encounters by shining lights at them. If that doesn't work, they try "coherent thought sequencing" (CTS), which apparently gets 'em every time - see www.cseti.org/member/kit_ad.htm for the whole story. (His Web site promises to reveal a "long history of communications from Mars." Unfortunately, that page is available only to paid members, so I will not be able to report on their exciting findings.) Greer claims to have had hundreds of close encounters. He claims to have seen a dozen spacecraft, clustered up in the stars in November 1998. As for seeing actual ETs themselves, that's much more rare: he's seen them only a couple dozen times. Greer recently moved from North Carolina to Charlottesville, Virginia, with alien activity, including crop circles, following closely in his wake. According to the Charlottesville Weekly (February 2), "Greer had just bought a house in Albemarle County when the circles appeared here." Greer noted that the crop circles were in the shape of the CSETI logo. "It was a welcome mat they - the extraterrestrials - put out for the director of CSETI," he modestly explained.

Greer is a big promoter of the gospel of reverse-engineered alien technology, first proclaimed in the book The Day After Roswell by the late Philip Corso. "We possess and have reverse-engineered functional extraterrestrial devices that operate with physics not being taught at UVA. I have seen them." But don't assume that Greer is naively credulous: he thinks that at least 90 percent of the claims of UFO abductions are "absolute rubbish or hoaxes." As for the rest, he thinks they are due to a military program using crafts that look like UFOs, in which people actually are abducted (which, incidentally, was the plot of a recent episode of The X-Files).

But a dynamic young Internet entrepreneur in California's Silicon Valley has eclipsed Greer in the race to get attention by making the most outrageous UFO claims. Joseph Firmage, 28, was founder and CEO of the highly successful U.S. Web Corporation (NASDAQ:USWB), founded just four years ago but now worth $2.8 billion. However, as Firmage told the San Jose Metro, his role has diminished from CEO to "founder and chief strategist" to "the guy at the end of the hall who believes in aliens." Like Saul of Tarsus, Firmage had his life altered forever by a vision; unlike Saul his vision didn't occur on the road to anywhere, but instead while lying in his bed. One morning upon awakening, "a remarkable being, clothed in brilliant white light, appeared hovering over my bed in my room. Out of him emerged an electric blue sphere, just smaller than a basketball, which was swirling with what looks like electrical arcs. It left his body, floated down, and entered me." After a brief conversation with the luminous entity, Firmage was convinced that aliens were real. Had he known more about psychology, he would never have embarrassed himself with this account: This is a classic "hypnopompic hallucination," well-known in psychology, and frequently cited in the serious literature dealing with supposed UFO abductions. (See, for example, Susan Blackmore, "Abduction by Aliens or Sleep Paralysis?" SI, May/June 1998). Halfway between the dream state and waking, the mind mixes the input it receives from both.

Firmage used $3 million of his own money to found the International Space Sciences Organization in Santa Clara. He now accepts, and promotes, the most outlandish UFO claims making the rounds. Like Greer, Firmage preaches that most of our newest high-technology wonders, such as fiber optics, were reverse-engineered from artifacts found in a crashed saucer in Roswell, New Mexico, which is surely among the most absurd and ironic statements ever made by a Silicon Valley insider. When informed of this, Dr. Narinder Kapany, who developed the first fiber optics in the 1950s, exclaimed "that makes me a spaceman!" He explained how his interest in bending light around corners began when he was a student in India during the 1940s.

One of Firmage's favorite "proofs" is the disputed MJ-12 papers claiming that a secret government cabal keeps the lid on extraterrestrial encounters, milking them for information while hiding them from the public. The supposed Majestic 12 papers first surfaced in 1986 and have been extensively studied (and refuted) since then. Many of the more cautious UFO believers agree that they are hoaxes, including Roswell-crash promoter Kevin Randle. As if these papers were not sufficiently suspect, Firmage relies heavily on a second set of M J-12 papers, whose credibility problems are even more apparent than those of the first and whose supporters are even fewer. Yet Firmage apparently expects people to accept the "new" MJ-12 papers as proof of a giant government conspiracy, even though the originals have been shown to a hoax. You can read all these "proofs" for yourself at Firmage's Web site, modestly titled The Truth at www.thewordistruth.org. (He requires you to give him your e-mail address before allowing you to tap into his fount of cosmic wisdom.)