The Case Against Michael Salla

There has been a great deal of debate on UFO Updates lately about Exo-politics (the supposed study of how humanity interacts with alien races), and one of its biggest proponents, Dr. Michael Salla.

I’ve been one of the most vocal critics of his approach (or, as he would put it, methodology) when dealing with the testimony of alleged whistleblowers, who, for those who might not be aware, are, for the most part, people who claim to have worked in some capacity for the government and were made privy to the truth about the UFO cover-up. Lately Dr. Salla has been touting Bob Lazar as a reliable “witness”.

In an effort to be fair, I figured the least I could do was take a look at Dr. Salla’s website…

http://www.exopolitics.org/

… and read through his various papers on the subject of exo-polictics. Who knows, I thought? Perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye.

I should have known better.

As it turns out, Dr. Salla is even less discriminating in his vetting of “whistleblowers” than I had thought possible, given his support for Bob Lazar.

In a paper with the grandiose title The Emergence of ‘Track Two’ Galactic Diplomacy with Extraterrestrial Races – The Role of Private Citizens & Groups in Establishing Communications & Agreements with Extraterrestrial Races, Dr. Salla writes:

“There are dozens of extraterrestrial races with a variety of motivations that are interacting with global humanity. These extraterrestrial motivations span the spectrum from ‘benevolent’ activities aimed at uplifting humanity towards a fuller expression of its collective potential, to manipulative activities designed to undermine human sovereignty. There is extensive evidence of government agencies in the United States and elsewhere having held meetings and having reached agreements with some extraterrestrial races. Those official diplomatic meetings have been highly classified and suggest that ‘galactic diplomacy’ at an official level has been secretly underway for at least 50 years without the knowledge of most citizens and elected representatives. A detailed examination of the fourteen most significant extraterrestrial races interacting with humanity reveals the role played by national security agencies in the US secretly reaching agreements with some extraterrestrial races while suppressing information about these agreements, and of the existence and activities of extraterrestrial races in general.” [This paper can be accessed at www.galacticdiplomacy.com/GD-Art-1.htm]

Wow.

Now, when someone makes a claim like that, the first thing I do is look to see what his source is for the conclusions he has drawn.

Dr. Salla’s primary source?

William Cooper.

Wow, indeed.

Now, if you took an opinion poll of everyone who knows something about the UFO phenomenon, in which you asked “who is the biggest wacko in the history of ufology,” I strongly suspect that the late Mr. Cooper – killed in a shoot-out with sheriff’s deputies (after Cooper fired first, severely wounding a deputy) trying to serve an arrest warrant for aggravated assault charges in 2001 – would be at the top of the list. He certainly would get my vote. Bob Lazar and Philip Corso seem positively respectable when compared to Cooper.

Want to find out what William Cooper was all about? Check out:

http://www.hourofthetime.com/

Of course, Dr. Salla has an explanation for all the criticisms of Cooper, which can be found in his paper Eisenhower’s 1954 Meeting with Extraterrestrials: The Fiftieth Anniversary of Contact. There he concludes that Cooper’s “testimony” is “most likely” credible, and all of the bad stuff about Cooper (see below) can be explained away because “The controversial Cooper has been subjected to undoubtedly the longest and most intense military-intelligence efforts to discredit or intimidate any whistleblower revealing classified information.” You can access this paper at:

www.exopolitics.org/Study-Paper-8.htm

So, what did the “controversial Cooper” himself have to say - because surely not even Dr. Salla believes that the government could put words into Cooper’s mouth?

All sorts of things, as it turns out. A good place to start looking is his speech to the 1989 MUFON Symposium, the full text of which can be found at:

www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/6583/maji007.html?20051

I encourage everyone to read Cooper’s rantings carefully, although you may want to use the Internet and therefore avoid spending any money on his book Behold a Pale Horse. In the meantime, here are some of my (UFO-related) favourites.

“Between January 1947 and December 1952 at least 16 crashed or downed alien craft, 65 alien bodies, and 1 live alien were recovered. An additional alien craft had exploded and nothing was recovered from that incident. Of these incidents, 13 occurred within the borders of the United States not including craft which disintegrated in the air. Of these 13, 1 was in Arizona, 11 were in New Mexico, and 1 was in Nevada. Three occurred in foreign countries. Of those 1 was in Norway, and the last 2 were in Mexico.”

For creatures that can travel the stars, it seems that the aliens were pretty lousy pilots. I can accept the possibility of a mishap or two (even aliens presumably are subject to Murphy’s Law), but “at least 16?”

For those who think there an alien spacecraft crashed near Aztec, New Mexico in 1948, Cooper goes one better:

“An alien craft was found on February 13, 1948 on a mesa near Aztec, New Mexico. Another craft was located on March 25, 1948, in Hart Canyon near Aztec, New Mexico.”

Two crashes? Someone should alert Bill Steinman – it appears he missed one.

Not only were alien bodies (17 of them) supposedly recovered from these two sites, but, according to Cooper:

“of greater significance was the discovery of a large number of human body parts stored within both of these vehicles.”

Not even Silas Newton was brazen enough to try and include this little gem in his con.

Cooper continued. He described an effort by the US government and the Vatican to decipher a critical prophecy, which they did, and which supposedly revealed:

“World War III would begin in the Middle Eats in 1995 with an invasion of Israel by a United Arab nation using conventional weapons which would culminate in a nuclear holocaust in the year 1999. Between 1999 and 2003 most of the life on this planet would suffer horribly and die as a result. The return of Christ would occur in the year 2011. When the aliens were confronted with this finding they confirmed that it was true…. They further explained that they were capable of time travel and the events would indeed come to pass.”

Hmm… it seems that I missed the holocaust, although I suppose I can still look forward to the imminent return of Christ. Or perhaps the aliens were just kidding.

And so it goes.

Now, some who desperately want confirmation for their own belief in crashed flying saucers and alien visitation (as opposed to evidence, which is what the rest of us are looking for), might latch on to this and defend Cooper, and through Cooper, Dr. Salla, who vouches for Cooper’s credibility.

They would no doubt cheer when Cooper concludes that the hated Phil Klass is an agent of the CIA.

But what are these well-meaning, albeit naïve, people to make of Cooper’s assertion that Majestic-12 (which most of them, including Salla, at least with respect to the SOM1-01 document, also accept as real) is a government disinformation program? Or that Stan Friedman, the Father of Roswell, one of the most respected elder statesmen of ufology, is probably a government agent responsible for spreading disinformation in the form of the MJ-12 documents? As Cooper put it:

“Stanton Friedman has told me and many others that years ago “he helped develop a nuclear reactor, to power and aircraft, that was the size of a basketball, was clean, turned out hydrogen, and worked like a dream.” His words, not mine. The only fuel which could go into such an engine and produce hydrogen as a by-product is water and that is precisely what at least one type of alien craft runs on, nuclear energy and water. The only place in the universe at that time to get such technology was from the aliens. Is he really unwitting? I do not know. He was a member of the Moore, Shandera, and Friedman research team and it was they who implemented the MAJESTIC TWELVE contingency plan… The actions of Stanton Friedman and William Moore are highly suspect.”

So now Friedman is highly suspect, and probably an agent of the government (Bruce Maccabee was also singled out by Cooper, although he was less certain of Maccabee’s involvement).

Cooper went further five years later, in a paper called Majesty Twelve, which can be found at:

www.hourofthetime.com/majestyt.htm

Here he wrote:

“Socialist change agents known to you as William Moore, Jaime Shandera, and Stanton T. Friedman presented the hoax known as Operation Majestic-12. These fake documents were printed in the socialist New York Times. It was an attempt to lead people away from the truth by presenting an artificial alien threat as a ‘government cover-up’ of extraterrestrial visitation. Most of the well-known uFOOLogists and so-called researchers are Illuminati, Marxist, CIA or KGB change agents operating in furtherance of propagandizing the American people. You wouldn’t but a used car from any of these people… why are you’ buying flying saucers’? Stanton Friedman ends every lecture with an appeal for world government which he justifies by asking, ‘who speaks for planet Earth… Argentina?’”

A picture of Stan Friedman follows, under which is the caption:

“would you buy a flying saucer from this man?”

Whether you accept that the MJ-12 documents are authentic or not, this is hogwash, hooey and bunk, all rolled into one. But what would one expect from someone who published the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in Behold a Pale Horse, without critical comment (see http://www.answers.com/topic/the-protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion)?

But there’s more. Cooper also wrote in Majesty Twelve:

"All so-called leaks are intentional misinformation projects designed to promote the alien threat scenario while allowing for complete deniability on the part of the government. The antics of... William Moore, Jaime Shandera, Stanton T. Friedman, Bruce Maccabee (CIA / ONI)... Whitley Streiber, Bud [sic] Hopkins (CIA), John Lear (CIA), Linda Moulton-Howe... Colonel Philip Corso (CIA, a monumental liar now deceased)... and many other people are projects of this type. Some (very few) of these people are unwitting accomplices in the charade and truly believe in the extraterrestrial threat. Most of those named, and others not named, are active, and with full knowledge, agents of illuminism / socialism. The most well known are active Fellow Travelers, communist agents of the KGB, the Central Intelligence Agency, or one of the many psychological warfare agencies founded by the Rhodes Round Table Group (the Group), the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and the Council on Foreign Relations."

The really hilarious part (at some point you either have to laugh, or cry – I choose the former) is that Dr. Salla cites both John Lear and Philip Corso as credible sources in the same paper in which he cites William Cooper as a credible source, the same William Cooper who maintained that Corso was a “monumental liar” and that Lear was “CIA”. If there is a bigger jumble of contradictory statements and wilful blindness in ufology, I haven’t seen it yet. And yet Dr. Salla weaves it all into his story, never minding, as John Lydon might have said, the “bollocks.”

By endorsing Cooper as a credible witness, Salla is endorsing statements such as these. He is encouraging people to accept Cooper as a sincere witness who was the victim of a devious and extensive campaign by the government to discredit him.

In truth, Cooper was a deeply troubled man whose own writings, and paranoia, discredited him and ultimately destroyed him.

There is no merit in Cooper’s claims (don’t take my word for it – read them yourselves). As Salla’s conclusions are based, in significant part, on those claims, there can be no merit in them either.

Here’s a final question for those in ufology who would still give Dr. Salla's views and theories any consideration. He wrote “the creation of controversy, uncertainty and confusion is the modus-operandi of military-intelligence agencies in maintaining secrecy of the extraterrestrial presence.” (www.exopolitics.org/Study-Paper-8.htm).

The question is :

Isn’t that exactly what Dr. Salla is doing by continuing to promote frauds like Bob Lazar, Philip Corso, and especially William Cooper?

Ufology needs to ask itself – why is Dr. Salla still given the benefit of the doubt? The serious study of the UFO phenomenon needs his kind of “methodology” –and the conclusions to which the blind acceptance of the word of men like William Cooper leads - like it needs a hole in the head.

To those who might say I’m being rude, or confrontational, or hubristic, I would ask - is our desire to be polite, and in the process to treat every point of view, no matter how ridiculous, with an equal degree of importance and weight, so great that we will not – or cannot – stand up when we see something so obviously wrong?

As the old saying goes, with “friends” like these, who needs enemies.

Paul Kimball