From: mcgrew@dropout.rutgers.edu (Charles Mcgrew)
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
Subject: Re: What Do You Think?
Date: 2 Oct 92 01:43:30 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


	crago_l@cubldr.colorado.edu (Lou Crago) writes:
	This is by Victor Marchetti, former Executive Assistant to the
	Deputy Director and Special Assistant to the Executive
	Director of the CIA.

... Marchetti resigned from the Agency in 1969.  He had worked in the
CIA for fourteen years prior, as an expert in Soviet military and
antiballistic missle systems, and in 1966 moved to the office of the
director.  He is most known for co-authoring "The CIA and the cult of
intelligence" (1975) with John D. Marks.  Authoring the book put him
decidedly on the 'outs' with the Agency.  Just so you know... (and
know that Marchetti's information was at least 10 years old in 1979.)

   The passage you quote appears in Timothy Good's "Above Top Secret"
(page 365), where it is described as "Machetti's theory"; that is,
that Marchetti believes this to be true knowing what he knows about
how the agency operates, and what documents that have been released by
FOIA suits.  (Clearly, Marchetti knows a lot about the agency, but he
doesn't have the evidence implied by the quote you gave.)  It would be
nice to be able to read the entire original article -- do you have it?

	What I'm wondering is, what do people think about this now?
	WOULD the mass of people go completely ape if it was
	established that UFOs and Visitors are real?

... probably.  (This topic has been discussed before on this group.)

   It depends on what a supposed alien race said when they contacted
us.  For instance, if they directly challenged major religious views
(e.g.  "Jesus was an Alien", "Mohammed did not ascend to heaven",
etc.) then the chaos could be considerable.  If they did not, then the
chaos could be similar to what we've seen when higher-tech cultures
interact with lower-tech ones without restrictions: major social
upheavals as the lower-tech culture tried to assimiliate new
technologies without a proper "ramp-up" (which almost certainly would
severely test economic systems, as the scarcities that drive economies
become plentiful, and technologies are taken on without a proper moral
background -- imagine street-gangs with particle-beam weapons....)


   I doubt that there would be a lot of "human-kind is not top dog"
kind of upheavals; various races have been told they are inferior in
human history (Indians, American Indians, Blacks, Irish, Jews, etc.,
etc.), and have survived.  Technological upheaval (that of a sudden
whisking-away of technological barriers by a 'great leap forward' in
what is known) would also probably occur, but would probably be
replaced with new technological barriers to be explored, after a
learning period (that is, after a period of uncertainty, we would all
find something *else* to do.  For instance, the 'need' for TV shows
would not disappear, regardless of what the TV looked like.)

   There's also political considerations (and I'm not talking about
elections).  Consider: why, typically, do explorers explore?  For some
form of gain.  Sometimes the "gain" is not particularly threatening to
those "found", sometimes it is.  Until widespread contact is actually
made, its something of a crapshoot as to who wants what.


Charles


PS - sources: "The CIA and American Democracy", Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones,
Yale University Press, 1989; "Above Top Secret", Timothy Good, Quill
William Murrow, 1988.
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors