Recently The New Indian Express printed a story about an individual Ajay Kumar from Mumbai who used the RTI to enquire whether the Indian government was prepared to deal with an invasion by aliens, zombies and extra-terrestrials. Further he wanted to know whether we need edto acquire the services of Will Smith to help us in this regard, obviously he was referring to the character Will Smith played in Men in Black (1997).
The RTI applicant later clarified that he filed such a request as a form of protest against the intolerance prevailing in society. This individual may have used RTI sarcastically to make a point, but what most people don’t realise is in the US RTI’s counterpart FOIA has proved to be a powerful tool in exposing the UFO cover up. Let us look at its interesting history.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was first passed by the US Congress in 1966, reluctantly signed by President Lyndon Johnson. But it remained a toothless tiger. In 1974 after the Watergate scandal tarnished the presidency of the US, the Congress voted once again to pass amendments, strengthening the FOIA law, providing judicial review of executive secrecy claims.
This was used by dedicated UFO researchers like Stanton Friedman, Dr Bruce Maccabee and journalist Leslie Kean to unearth many UFO related documents that proved, since the 1940s the US Government had been taking this UFO phenomenon very seriously, at the same time withholding information from the American people.
The most sensitive and revealing among them were the top secret letters and memos exchanged between top officials and generals of the American military. Like the Twining Memo written on September 23, 1947 by Air Force General Nathan Twining to the commanding General of the Army Air Force stating that the UFO phenomenon reported was something real and not visionary or fictitious. Then we had the 1952 memorandum written by General Walter Bedell Smith, director Of CIA, to the National Security Council stating that since 1947, approximately 2000 official reports of sightings had been received and of these, about 20% were as yet unexplained and a broader, coordinated effort should be initiated to develop a firm scientific understanding of this phenomena.
Then we had the memo unearthed by Navy Physicist Dr Bruce Maccabee in 1975 using the FOIA act, written on March 22, 1950 by FBI Special Agent in charge in Washington Guy Hottel to the then FBI Director J Edgar Hoover in which he states that an Air Force investigator had informed him that three so called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of very fine texture.
Then we had the 1951 United States Air Force intelligence memo containing the description given by the pilot of an F-1 fighter plane based in Lawson Air Force Base in Georgia on his up-close and personal encounter with an UFO on July 9, 1951. The pilot was a World War 2 combat veteran. These are just a few samples of how the FOIA has helped in exposing the truth about UFOs.
The RTI act is not a plaything that should be used for mocking. In a democracy it is a powerful instrument to make the government accountable for its actions. In recent years, many RTI activists have been murdered for using the RTI to expose many scams and illegal activities. We don’t need Will Smith or his organisation from the movie Men in Black to protect India against an invasion of aliens and zombies. It is knowledge and awareness of the UFO phenomenon that will be India’s best line of defense.
(The writer is the Director of INSETS: Indian Society for Extraterrestrial Studies and also the author of ‘Accidental Apocalypse’)