Post by auntym on Mar 4, 2016 15:21:45 GMT -6
www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/03/stephen-bassett-ufo-lobbyist-congress-aliens
This Is What It's Like to Be the Only Man in Washington Lobbying for UFOs
He is searching for intelligent life on Capitol Hill.
—By AJ Vicens / www.motherjones.com/authors/aj-vicens
January/February 2016 issue
The morning after I contacted the Defense Department, I got a voice mail message. "Man, we were looking at your query from yesterday on the UFO stuff," the public affairs officer said. He sounded as if he was trying not to laugh. "You're killing us."
He read aloud some of the questions I'd sent: "Which presidents have asked about UFOs? Does the president have the security clearance to know about UFOs? What happens if extraterrestrials show up?" He alternated between chuckles and exasperated sighs. "Which office handles UFOs? Dude, really? I don't know how to—we don't have that." He trailed off laughing. "I don't know how to answer these questions, man."
Most people in Washington don't know how to answer those questions—or at least say they don't. But Stephen Bassett, America's only registered lobbyist on UFO and extraterrestrial issues, is convinced that the government has this information and it's only a matter of time before the president "announces to the American people that we're not alone." This much-anticipated mind-blowing moment, known among some UFO enthusiasts as the "disclosure," will officially confirm that "there are extraterrestrials, not only elsewhere, but engaging us now."
Illustration by Phil Foster
"It's solid," Bassett says about the proof that aliens have visited Earth. We are having lunch at the National Press Club, and his piercing blue eyes are fixed on me. "Not going to apologize for that. Facts are facts." Bassett is dressed in a crisp black shirt and black pants; he is almost always dressed in all black. He has spent the last 20 of his 69 years working the Hill, barraging politicians and journalists with letters, faxes, emails, and, more recently, tweets urging them to force the government to reveal its interplanetary secrets.
"The nature of what I do almost demands that the person that gets into it has pretty much nothing going for them," Bassett explains. "You can't have a wife. You can't have kids that have got to go to college."
Bassett's turning point came in 1995, when he read Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens, by the late Harvard psychiatry professor John Mack, who counseled people who claimed to have had contact with aliens. After a short stint volunteering for Mack's Program for Extraordinary Experience Research, Bassett concluded that there was already enough scientific evidence "to confirm the ET presence many times over. The problem was political."
So in 1996 he registered as Washington's first ET issue lobbyist. In 1999 he followed up by forming the Extraterrestrial Phenomena Political Action Committee. In 2002 he ran for Congress in Maryland as an independent* on a pro-disclosure platform. (He didn't make it past the primary.) He's hosted several conferences on "exopolitics," the study of relations between humans and extraterrestrials. In 2013, with a grant from a wealthy Canadian, he staged a mock congressional hearing on human-ET contact with six former members of Congress, including Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel. (They were each paid $20,000.) Bassett claims he has been in touch with unnamed staffers from 190 lawmakers' offices to push for alien hearings.
CONTINUE READING: www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/03/stephen-bassett-ufo-lobbyist-congress-aliens
This Is What It's Like to Be the Only Man in Washington Lobbying for UFOs
He is searching for intelligent life on Capitol Hill.
—By AJ Vicens / www.motherjones.com/authors/aj-vicens
January/February 2016 issue
The morning after I contacted the Defense Department, I got a voice mail message. "Man, we were looking at your query from yesterday on the UFO stuff," the public affairs officer said. He sounded as if he was trying not to laugh. "You're killing us."
He read aloud some of the questions I'd sent: "Which presidents have asked about UFOs? Does the president have the security clearance to know about UFOs? What happens if extraterrestrials show up?" He alternated between chuckles and exasperated sighs. "Which office handles UFOs? Dude, really? I don't know how to—we don't have that." He trailed off laughing. "I don't know how to answer these questions, man."
Most people in Washington don't know how to answer those questions—or at least say they don't. But Stephen Bassett, America's only registered lobbyist on UFO and extraterrestrial issues, is convinced that the government has this information and it's only a matter of time before the president "announces to the American people that we're not alone." This much-anticipated mind-blowing moment, known among some UFO enthusiasts as the "disclosure," will officially confirm that "there are extraterrestrials, not only elsewhere, but engaging us now."
Illustration by Phil Foster
"It's solid," Bassett says about the proof that aliens have visited Earth. We are having lunch at the National Press Club, and his piercing blue eyes are fixed on me. "Not going to apologize for that. Facts are facts." Bassett is dressed in a crisp black shirt and black pants; he is almost always dressed in all black. He has spent the last 20 of his 69 years working the Hill, barraging politicians and journalists with letters, faxes, emails, and, more recently, tweets urging them to force the government to reveal its interplanetary secrets.
"The nature of what I do almost demands that the person that gets into it has pretty much nothing going for them," Bassett explains. "You can't have a wife. You can't have kids that have got to go to college."
Bassett's turning point came in 1995, when he read Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens, by the late Harvard psychiatry professor John Mack, who counseled people who claimed to have had contact with aliens. After a short stint volunteering for Mack's Program for Extraordinary Experience Research, Bassett concluded that there was already enough scientific evidence "to confirm the ET presence many times over. The problem was political."
So in 1996 he registered as Washington's first ET issue lobbyist. In 1999 he followed up by forming the Extraterrestrial Phenomena Political Action Committee. In 2002 he ran for Congress in Maryland as an independent* on a pro-disclosure platform. (He didn't make it past the primary.) He's hosted several conferences on "exopolitics," the study of relations between humans and extraterrestrials. In 2013, with a grant from a wealthy Canadian, he staged a mock congressional hearing on human-ET contact with six former members of Congress, including Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel. (They were each paid $20,000.) Bassett claims he has been in touch with unnamed staffers from 190 lawmakers' offices to push for alien hearings.
CONTINUE READING: www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/03/stephen-bassett-ufo-lobbyist-congress-aliens