V. Abductions
Press and public now regard abductees as tiny curiosities, yet science, for the most part, still banishes their tales to the domain of the damned, as Charles Fort defined damnation. So too with claimed victims of mind control. The Voice of Authority tells us that MKULTRA belongs to history; like Hasdrubal and Hitler, it threatened once, but no more. Anyone insisting otherwise must be silenced by glib rationalization and selective inattention.
Yet these two topics — UFO abductions and mind control — have more in common than their mutual ostracization. The data overlap. If we could chart these phenomena on a Venn diagram, we would see a surprisingly large intersection between the two circles of information. It is this overlap I seek to address.
Note, however, that I can not address all the other interesting and important issues raised by the UFO abduction experience. For example, I have written, admittedly rather vaguely, of nasal implants reported by abductees — the sort of detail which might place an account in the “high strangeness” category, and of course, a detail central to my thesis. But what percentage of the percipients speak of such implants? A truly scientific analysis would provide a figure. Unfortunately, I haven’t the resources to compile a sufficiently large abductee sample from which one could draw statistics. Nor can I make an over-arching qualitative analysis, measuring the value of “high strangeness” reports against other abductee claims. All I can do is note the available literature, and leave the reader to wonder, as I do, whether the compilers of that literature concentrated on exceptional cases or were biased in favor of the less fantastic abductee accounts. I have supplemented readings of the abduction literature with my own interviews with percipients — which, since abductees tend to know other abductees, can give a surprisingly wide view of the phenomenon. This view has been broadened still further by my talks and correspondence with other members of the UFO community.
Of course, we must recognize the difference between testimony and proof. No one can state definitively that abduction reports have a basis in objective reality (however misperceived). Ultimately, all we have are stories. Some of these stories may be of questionable veracity; others may be contaminated by investigator bias; many are insufficiently detailed. No one research paper can resolve all abduction controversies, and many necessary battles must be fought on other fields.
Still, the testimony won’t go away — and we certainly have enough to allow for comparisons. I maintain that an unprejudiced overview of abduction reports in the popular press and the less-familiar material on mind control will demonstrate a striking correlation. Once other abduction researchers have been educated in the ways of MKULTRA (and this paper is intended as an introductory text) they may note a similar pattern. If so, we can then begin to write a revisionist history of the phenomenon.
The abduction enigma contains within it sub-mysteries that slide into the mind control scenario with surprising ease, even elegance — mysteries which fit the E.T. hypothesis as uncomfortably as a size 10 foot fits into a size 8 shoe. As we have seen, the MKULTRA thesis explains the reports of abductee intracerebral implants (particularly reports involving nosebleeds), unusual scars, “telepathic” communication (i.e., externally induced intracerebral voices) concurrent with or following the abduction encounter, allegations that some abductees hear unusual sound effects (similar to those created by the hemi-synch and cognate devices), haywire electronic devices in abductee homes, personality shifts, “training films,” manipulation of religious imagery, and missing time. Needless to say, the thesis of clandestine government experimentation readily accounts for abductee claims of human beings “working” with the aliens, and for the government harassment that plays so prominent a role in certain abductee reports.
Let’s look at some more correlations.
The Hill Case and the “Advanced” Aliens
Earlier, I asked, “Do the aliens also watch black-and-white television?” in reference to their alleged use of old-fashioned, Terra-style brain implantation devices. Abduction accounts abound in other examples of alien “retro-technology.” The most striking example can be found in the Betty and Barney Hill incident, the details of which are too well-known to recount here.[156] As we have already glimpsed during our discussion of the Rex Niles affair, the Hills’ “interrupted journey” abounds in data which, taken together, permits the construction of an alternative explanation.
At one point during the alleged UFO abduction, the “examiners” inserted a needle in Betty Hill’s navel, telling her that this practice constituted a test for pregnancy.[157] Some ufologists[158] rashly assume that Betty Hill’s “pregnancy test” is evidence of advanced extraterrestrial technology, since her 1961 account pre-dates the official announcement of amniocentesis, which does indeed make use of a needle inserted into the navel. But we now have much less invasive means of testing for pregnancy than amniocentesis. True, amniocentesis is still sometimes used to gather information about the fetus, but the wielders of a highly evolved technology would certainly use other methods of determining the existence of pregnancy in the first place.
Betty Hill’s testimony reminds us of certain other abduction accounts, which contain descriptions of “healings” surprisingly similar to the procedures associated with still-experimental electromagnetic therapy techniques, such as those described in Robert O. Becker’s The Body Electric. For example, abductee Deanna Dube described for me an abduction-related “regeneration” of her long-damaged heart; had she been familiar with Becker’s work,[159] she might have been a bit less rapid to ascribe her healing to otherworldly influences.
Medical breakthroughs often undergo years of testing before their official “discovery.” For some of these tests, finding volunteers presents a major obstacle. If we accept the proposition that the Hill incident originated in an external and objective stimulus, we must then ask ourselves which scenario is more likely: Did Betty Hill encounter human beings using a technique ten years ahead of its time? Or did she encounter aliens (reputedly a “billion years ahead of us”) using science from eons before their time?
One must also ask why Betty Hill’s aliens seemed to have no grasp of basic human concepts (such as how we measure time) — yet they knew enough about us to speak English fluently and had even mastered our slang. Were these real aliens, or humans engaging in theatricals (and occasionally muffing their lines)? For that matter, why did Betty Hill originally recall her abductors as humanoid, only later describing them as aliens?
The Hill case provided a particularly controversial piece of evidence — the celebrated “star map” recalled by Betty Hill under hypnosis. In later years, an Ohio schoolteacher named Marjorie Fish made an ingenious and laudable attempt to discover a match for this map by constructing an elaborate three-dimensional model of nearby star systems; whether she succeeded remains a matter for keen debate.[160] For now, I prefer to avoid taking sides in this dispute and will confine myself to insisting that pro-ET ufologists answer (without resorting to glib ripostes) a point first raised by Jacques Vallee: The map makes no sense as a navigational aid. Vallee notes that, even if we grant the Fish interpretation, the stars are not drawn to scale — and at any rate, alien spaceships would surely be navigated the same way we guide our own spacecraft: via computers and telemetry.[161] The validity of the Fish interpretation is irrelevant; the point is that any such chart would have no value to an interstellar star-farer.
Fish’s work raises other controversies: Allegedly, the map points to Zeta Reticuli as the aliens’ home system and pictures Zeta Reticuli as a single star, a view consistent with scientific opinion of the 1960s. Yet in later years scientists discovered that Zeta Reticuli is binary.[162] Moreover, how did our abductee manage to remember so accurately a complex chart glimpsed in passing? Even allowing for the possibility of increased accuracy of recollection under hypnotic regression, the memory feat here seems remarkable. Consider the circumstances of the abduction: Kafka on hallucinogens couldn’t have conceived of the nightmare vision confronting Betty Hill that night — yet for some reason this particular arrangement of stars emerged as her most intensely-detailed recollection of the experience.
This memory (if not confabulated during regression, a possibility we should always weigh) is comprehensible only as an example of artificially-induced hypermnesia. In other words, Betty Hill was directed to store that chart within her subconscious. The celebrated star map ought to be recognized for what it was: a prop, a seemingly-confirmatory circumstantial detail meant to convince her — and perhaps us — of the reality of her abduction.
The question of motive arises. Why — if my thesis is correct — were these two fairly innocuous individuals chosen for this new variation on the old MKULTRA tricks?
The selection might, of course, have been arbitrary. Or perhaps circumstances now irretrievably lost to history rendered the couple a convenient target. Interestingly, Barney Hill had become acquainted (through church functions) with the head of Air Force intelligence at Pease Air Force Base; perhaps this relationship first brought the Hills to the attention of members of the intelligence community. Arguably, the Hills could have been fingered for a wide variety of reasons; as a general rule, the clandestine services prefer to satisfy a number of itches with one scratch.
In fact, the espionage establishment had one particularly compelling reason to focus on the Hills. Barney Hill (a black man) and his wife held important positions in several civil rights organizations, including the NAACP.[163] The abduction took place during the 1960s, when the NAACP and allied groups fell victim to an increasingly paranoid series of attacks from the FBI and other governmental agencies (under operations COINTELPRO, CHAOS, GARDEN PLOT, etc.).[164] At that time, infiltration of civil rights groups proved a difficult chore; while most left-leaning groups provided easy targets for FBI stooges, the average undercover operative would have had an exceptionally difficult time posing as a black activist. (In 1961, the only black people on the FBI’s payroll were the servants in J. Edgar Hoover’s home.)
In light of these facts, we should recall Victor Marchetti’s anecdote about the cat that the CIA had “wired for sound.” Perhaps an ambitious covert scientist proposed a similar experiment, in which a human being would play the role that had once been assigned to the unfortunate feline? As Estabrooks noted, the ultimate espionage agent would be the spy who doesn’t know he is a spy. Barney Hill, a well-regarded figure with a near-genius-level IQ, was a safe bet to obtain a leadership role in any group he joined; he would have been remarkably well-positioned, had any outsiders wished to use his ears to overhear prominent black organizers in confidential discussion.
Of course, many intelligence professionals would counter this suggestion by reminding us that eavesdroppers on the civil rights movement had plenty of less-flamboyant methods: Bugging, “black bag” jobs, paying for information, etc. The point is valid. But if the technology to create a “human bug” was developed circa 1961 — and there is documentation suggesting that such was indeed the case[165] — the intelligence agencies would surely have wanted to test the possibilities in the field. And considering the expense of such a test, why not conduct the experiment in such a way as to reap the maximum benefits? Why not choose a Barney Hill?