by Timothy Good
Venus
As for Venus, in 1921 Albert Coe’s alien friend explained that although the planet was younger in evolutionary processes than Earth, “its higher regions are not too drastically different than the environment here.” Only ten percent of the Venusian terrain is highland, and the highest point on the planet is the mountain known as Maxwell Montes, towering 35,400 feet above the planet’s “sea level” and 27,000 feet above a huge highland region the size of Australia known as Ishtar Terra. In any event it seems likely that, with their highly advanced technology, aliens are capable of converting the hostile environment—which in any case may be less extreme in the highland regions than we have been led to believe.
Carl Sagan, a world authority on planetary sciences, postulated that “terraforming”—involving in this case the injection of appropriately grown algae into the Venusian atmosphere—“would in time convert the present extremely hostile environment of Venus into one much more pleasant for human beings.”22
In his book Why Are They Here? Fred Steckling describes some of his meetings with aliens in downtown Washington, D.C., one of which took place on March 19, 1966. A main topic of conversation was the Russian Venera space probes, Venus 2 and 3, which had just reached the planet: an object about twice the size of a football had been ejected from the one-ton Venus 3 into the planet’s atmosphere and achieved a soft landing by parachute system on March 1—man’s first spacecraft to reach another planet. Reportedly, no transmissions were received. The alien explained, however, that the small device had been sending radio signals for some time, signals that had shaken up our scientists’ previous beliefs about the planet (thus presumably had been censored). He went on to explain that a “magnetic shield” enveloping Venus served as protection from cosmic rays and “holds a very high temperature, as well as the natural electrical layers of the upper ionosphere. The protective magnetic shield is made artificially by the inhabitants of Venus.” Fred’s unspoken thought that this shield probably cut down radiation levels to a minimum was confirmed verbally by the alien. (Venusian gravity, incidentally, is 91% that of ours, thus hypothetical Venusians would weigh a little more on Earth.)
Shortly before this meeting, Fred had written letters to some newspapers, including The Washington Post, challenging several of the published findings regarding Venus. In late 1962, the U.S. space probe Mariner 2, during its fly-by of the planet, reported surface temperatures of 428°C (802.4°F)—above the melting point of lead. Following the later soft landing by the Soviet Venus 3 probe, the Post commented: “Our scientists were sharply critical of this landing, for they were not sure the craft was sterilized [and] feared the unsterilized spacecraft may have carried germs from Earth to Venus, which might have jeopardized the chances of finding life on the planet.”
“I openly ask the scientists,” Fred challenged, “What life do they expect to find with an 800° surface temperature? If the boiling point of water, for instance, stands at 212°F, why does the space craft, then, have to be sterilized, if at only 212° all germs are killed automatically?” The letter was not published.23
I should add here that Fred Steckling’s son Glenn, currently a pilot with a major U.S. airline, also attests to a number of meetings with aliens living among us.
Another person claiming regular contact with Venusians during this époque was an American brigadier general. In a letter to Major Hans C. Peterson, Senior Air Traffic Control Officer in the Royal Danish Air Force (1949–1976)—Adamski’s representative in Denmark—the general stated, in part:
“In regard to the space ships and their crews, so-called ‘flying saucers,’ what I am about to impart to you I am asking you as a fellow Veteran not to divulge the source…. Let me first state that through no effort or expectation on my part, I was contacted one night eleven years ago while working late in my shop to finish a printing job. They came to my shop door, insisted on my opening it, came in, looked around a bit, spoke no word, and motioned me to come outside. As I did so I became aware of a large object, a few feet overhead.
“I was taken aboard, and had my first experience of positive telepathy, a very informative few minutes. They left, saying they would return soon. They kept their word and they returned—I think I can honestly say a few hundred times since, in the past eleven years.
“They have requested that I act as their contact man with quite a number of our national and religious leaders, and my identity must remain a strict secret, except with their permission as in your case. You can understand that, if my identity and work were known, I would never have a single moment’s rest, and would soon become worthless to both them and the problems I attempt to handle.
“Now to their ability to speak perfect English. If you, for instance, had been within close vicinity of Venus for 2,000 years, as the Venusians have the Earth, and had been able to hear any conversation in any language that was spoken on Venus, do you not think you would be able to speak their language quite fluently? Among their own people they use thought only, but we of Earth, because of our habit, they have learned our language so perfectly that if one of them was to step up and speak to you in your place of business or your home or on the street, you would not recognize him from one of your own people, and in appearance, probably the greatest difference would be his handsome features and perfect proportions physically….”
It has been twenty-five years since the Russians and Americans—or any other nation, apparently—have sent a lander to Venus. In late 2009, however, NASA awarded the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder) $3.3 million for a detailed, one-year concept study for a lander mission to Venus “to study the history of its surface, climate and atmosphere and to predict its ultimate fate in the solar system.” The mission had been proposed by CU-Boulder Professor Larry Esposito, science team leader on the proposal. As part of CU-Boulder’s Surface and Atmosphere Geochemical Explorer (SAGE) mission, the lander would descend onto the flank of an active volcano known as Mielikki Mons, which is about 200 miles across and 4,800 feet in altitude. Once the lander was in place, instruments would dig about four inches into the surface, then “zap the soils with two lasers and a vacuum tube shooting large pulses of neutrons, which would bounce back data to the lander with information on surface composition and texture,” it was reported in 2011. The lander would be constructed to survive the harsh conditions on Venus for three hours or more. “Venus has gone terribly bad since it first formed,” says Esposito. “The surface pressure is a hundred times that of Earth and its temperature is similar to that of a self-cleaning oven….”24
According to Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) planetary scientist Suzanne Smrekar, at eight miles above the surface of Venus, the carbon dioxide in its atmosphere becomes so dense that it turns “supercritical.” “Supercritical carbon dioxide is a gas-liquid mix that can eat through metal, and SAGE is designed to keep this nasty stuff from entering the sealed vessel,” explains Sam Kean. “For protection from the crushing atmospheric pressure—1,300 pounds per square inch—the lander will be roughly spherical…. The one redeeming quality of the heavy atmosphere is that it cushions the lander’s descent. Terminal velocity on Venus is a leisurely 25 mph—so slow that the parachute is no longer needed after the spacecraft is 42 miles above the surface.”
“Temperature is the thing that will kill you the quickest,” claims Smrekar, who adds that to protect circuits and batteries, she and others have been testing advanced insulation materials such as lithium nitrate. But insulation, per se, would be insufficient, and planetary scientist Mark Bullock points out that such landers will require “active” cooling—that is, multi-stage refrigeration.25
Is Venus the veritable hellhole it’s cracked up to be? Who are we to believe—the contactees, the “Venusians,” or the down-to-Earth scientists? Could it be that official statements about Venus are deliberately distorted? In addition to Fred Steckling, others have come forward to dispute the official findings. John Lear, whom
I first met in 1990, is a former pilot who has flown over 160 different types of aircraft in many different countries. The son of William P. Lear, designer of the Learjet, he is the only pilot ever to hold every airline certificate issued by the Federal Aviation Administration, and has also flown numerous missions for the CIA. He became interested in UFOs and the space program in the early 1980s. Behind the scenes, he has learned much about NASA and, in the following instance, about Venus in particular:
“In the late 1950s NASA was formed to compartmentalize, containerize, and sanitize information from all space platforms and vehicles,” claimed Lear in an interview with Art Bell in 2003. “We sold NASA to the public, claiming that all information would belong to them, but they got very little, and even that was highly sanitized.
“Our first efforts were to keep the public from learning about Venus—a very similar planet to Earth, and its population very similar to ours, just [more] technologically advanced…. Starting with the Russian Venera 1 and U.S. Mariner 2, we made Venus look like a lead-melting, volcanic surface, spewing sulfuric acid into a pressurized atmosphere 90 times that of Earth. And as often is the case, we overdid it, and we wondered why nobody asked how a parachute survived a descent into 800-degree air.”26
During my fourteen years with the London Symphony Orchestra, a fellow member learned from a scientist friend in the 1970s that the director of a top-secret U.S./German space research center in West Germany was of Venusian origin. This revelation, my colleague informed me, was restricted to a quorum of scientists at the center. The information supplied by the director proved invaluable in their research effort, which I assume was related to the liaison program. In the 1980s my friend had the opportunity of meeting the director over dinner in London, together with his scientist friend, and was satisfied as to the director’s “credentials.” Like some of the aliens in the Amicizia group (Chapter 13), the director enjoyed good food and wine. And why not?
Early Infiltration
In 1921, Albert Coe, then seventeen years old, was told by his 340-year-old (!) alien friend that, as early as 1904, the aliens replaced a hundred terrestrial babies and infiltrated their own. “In the base of each baby’s brain was this little thing that recorded everything that that baby saw or did, from the time they put it there,” Coe told Dr. Berthold Schwarz, a noted researcher and psychologist. “No one ever knew it was a switch.” Subsequently, as adults, the aliens became active in every major nation on Earth. Their main concern: that we were on the verge of discovering secrets of the atom, which could have disastrous consequences for our planet.
“You’ve just finished what you call a world war,” the man explained, “and each of your wars gets a little more brutal and devastating than the preceding one. We’re here to watch and see what you’re going to do when you learn the secret of the atom. This is one reason we’re here.” Coe learned years later that in 1955 the aliens, alarmed about the escalation of nuclear-weapons tests, had set up a neutralizing screen, “in case one of these nuclear experiments of ours got out of hand—that it wouldn’t start a chain reaction.” One nuclear weapon, for example, had been exploded above the atmosphere in 1964, they said. Were it not for the neutralizing screen, the results could well have been catastrophic.27
Personal Encounters
Many years ago I co-authored a book, together with Lou Zinsstag, on George Adamski, examining the pros and cons of his claims.28 Lou—a cousin of Carl G. Jung—had been Adamski’s Swiss representative and, like most of the representatives, subsequently experienced encounters with aliens living among us. The first of Adamski’s contacts occurred near Desert Center, California, on November 20, 1952, witnessed from a distance by six companions. The alien with whom Adamski communicated on that occasion—given the name “Orthon”—asserted that he came from Venus. The witnesses, two of whom (Alice Wells and Lucy McGinnis) I knew and found totally credible, subsequently signed an affidavit testifying to this significant event29—perhaps more significant than we realize, as I shall discuss later in this chapter.
Although described in Alien Base and in the book on Adamski I co-authored, since both are out of print I should mention here my two encounters with presumed aliens in the United States. The first occurred on November 13, 1963, while touring with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. During the five-hundred-mile or so journey from Tucson to Los Angeles in our convoy of three buses, we stopped at a restaurant near the Arizona/California border. Seated at a table with three colleagues, I happened to survey the customers waiting in line. My attention was drawn to an extraordinarily graceful, petite girl with blond bobbed hair and delicate pale features. The thought struck me that she might be one of those aliens living among us, so I telepathically transmitted the somewhat trite question: “Are you from another planet?”
There was no response. But as she left the line, she made a point of walking past our table, pausing to give me a lovely smile and gracious bow of acknowledgment before proceeding to another part of the restaurant, a “dead-pan” expression on her face. My colleagues shared my bemusement. Later, I was to be reminded of Adamski’s description of one of the female crew members he encountered on board a large mothership in February 1953, with her “almost transparent skin.”30
I do not know the precise location of the restaurant, but I do recall that as we departed in the buses, one of the highway signs nearby coincidentally indicated Desert Center. I had hoped to meet Adamski in Vista during our few days in Los Angeles, but unfortunately, owing to my schedule, it didn’t work out.
In February 1967 I was playing with the London Symphony Orchestra in New York for a series of concerts at Carnegie Hall with Mstislav Rostropovich, the great Russian cellist. I had just returned from my first meeting with Madeleine Rodeffer, a close associate of Adamski, with whom (and others) she had observed the classic Adamski-type scout-craft at very close range in her front yard in Silver Spring, Maryland. On February 26, 1965, Adamski had taken 8-mm film of the craft as it described a series of maneuvers. Madeleine told me that she had had a number of encounters with aliens living in the Washington, D.C. area, and suggested that on my return to New York I should try to initiate a contact telepathically. So, on that late afternoon, between a rehearsal and concert, I sat down in the lobby of the Park-Sheraton Hotel at 56th Street on Seventh Avenue and transmitted a telepathic request: “If any of you people from elsewhere are in the New York vicinity, please come and sit down right next to me and prove it.”
After about half an hour a man entered the lobby whose demeanor put me on the alert. Dressed in a charcoal-gray suit with a white shirt and dark tie, he could have passed for a businessman from Madison Avenue. He wore rimmed glasses and appeared to be about thirty-five years old and five feet ten inches in height, with slightly curly fair hair, a mild olive complexion, and perfectly proportioned features. He sat down beside me, took out a copy of The New York Times from his attaché case, and turned the pages over in a rather deliberate and superficial manner. After he had refolded the paper, I asked him telepathically if he really was from another planet, and if so, to please confirm this by placing his right index finger on the right side of his nose and—I vaguely recall—asking him to keep it there for a short while. No sooner had I transmitted the thought than he did precisely that.
I attempted more telepathy, but no further confirmation was forthcoming. Eventually he stood up, walked over to some display windows, and then gave me a direct and serious look before walking out of the hotel into Seventh Avenue. I never saw him again. I am often asked why I didn’t try and engage him in a conversation, to which I can only respond that it seemed inappropriate. I assumed that, if conversation was to be on the agenda, he would be the one to initiate it.
“Earth’s Future in Space”
Since that occasion, I have had two encounters reaffirming my conviction that aliens live among us, one of which occurred in Wrocław, Poland. I had been invited by the researcher Janusz Zagórski
to give a presentation at the “X UFO Forum” (“X” meaning “10th” in this instance), which ran from May 6 to 7, 2006. I was also honored by an invitation to head a discussion on the UFO topic the evening before the conference, as guest speaker, at Salonu Profesora Dudka—Professor Dudek’s Salon—organized by Jósef Dudek, a Wrocław University professor well known as an outstanding mathematician and humanist. The aims of this prestigious Salon are to “integrate scientific, political, and cultural elites of Wrocław by means of organizing discussion meetings devoted to topics that are of vital interest to representatives of various disciplines and circles.” The attendees, numbering about seventy (at a guess), included medical doctors, military personnel, politicians, psychologists, and scientists, some retired.
At 19:00, after being introduced to the assembled gathering by the chairman, I delivered my illustrated slide presentation, scheduled to last thirty-five minutes. An interval of forty-five minutes followed, allowing informal talks and refreshments.
From the beginning of the evening, I had been aware of an immaculately dressed, very composed man in the audience, sitting about ten feet from me. Slight of build, he was about five feet ten inches in height and wore a dark gray suit, waistcoat, white shirt, and dark tie. His complexion and hair were similar to the man in New York. I tried a bit of telepathy—to no apparent avail.
As the audience returned to their seats after the interval, I began taking a few photographs, hoping to capture an image of this man. I succeeded in taking a few shots of the audience seated to my right, but as I panned to the left—where the man was seated—a voice from the back of the room said, “The speaker is not allowed to take photographs.” I apologized—to whomever.
