Saucer People Trading Cards: Men in Black, #23

This is Men in Black, card #23, from the Saucer People boxed trading card set from Kitchen Sink Press, 1992. The set has thirty six cards, with comic book style illustration on front, and information about the UFO event or researcher on the back.

"Some believe them to be government agents, others think they are Saucer People."

I love the objectified female in distress; fearful of the Men in Black who are, apparently, being quite rude to her boyfriend. Tight red dress, frightened… who will rescue her? Or will the Men in Black get her?

The info on the back of the card has nothing to do with the image on the front; the story on the back tells us of George Cook, head of the Pennsylvania NICAP group, who had several run-ins with MIB in 1967. 

Jack Brewer on The UFO Trail, Leah Haley, Abductions,MILABS, Contactees, Satanic Rituals . . .

Jack Brewer at The UFO Trail does it again: The UFO Trail: The Leah Haley Case: The Pink Elephant and a Sample of Comments

At the very least, we should give serious consideration to the extent the intelligence community manipulated public perception while authoring UFO and abduction lore. Intelligence interests have been well documented and demonstrated in circumstances such as the Maury Island fiasco and the supposed contactees of the 1950's.

However, as long as we largely refuse to regularly address the Big Brother pink elephant in the room of ufology, truth and objectivity will continue to suffer. This reaches far beyond Leah Haley or any other given case.

Brewer shares some of the comments (including some of my own) left at his blog on his posts about Leah Haley and the possible involvement of government mind control programs. Some readers, like myself, find Brewer's writings on this subject a good thing, while others are downright hostile.

As I've said before, I don't know if Leah Haley is right. But I think there's a lot -- a lot -- there, in terms of government involvement of abduction events.

Gloira Lee (aka Lee-Bryd)

I've said this in the past about the contactees. I'm not the only one of course; but even now, the idea that the contactees were heavily manipulated by humans, and not aliens (so much) isn't considered enough, in my view. Nor is the historical context followed. What I mean is, if it started with the contactees, the manipulations continued and morphed into the "alien abduction" scenario. I hinted at this a bit in my introduction to Tim Beckley's recent reprint of contactee Gloria Lee's book Why We Are Here. (I believe Lee did tap into something supernatural but was tragically manipulated by human forces as well.)

At the same time, all this covert government activity surrounding aliens and human contact doesn't negate the reality of literal aliens. Or, what we call aliens.

Jacque Vallee wrote of hidden human manipulators in his books, Messengers of Deception the classic, but today, it seems this idea is ignored, or even, as Jack Brewer points out, met with downright hostility. Nick Redfern has addressed similar ideas of human elements deep within the government as cause for, or in partnership with non-human entities in his book Final Events. And interpretations of secret experiments as UFO related, such as Roswell, in his Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story It's a thin line to walk, to consider the reality of government intentionally creating (or co-creating) alien, UFO events in secret, to believing there are underground bases containing vats full of human body parts stirred by aliens as uniformed soldiers stand by.

I keep going back to the news decades ago of Satanic abuses. The media was full of stories of individuals who insisted they had, upon regressions, recovered memories of horrific abuses, all within a Satanic setting. Animal sacrifice, human sacrifice, sexual and physical abuse of children and adults, devotion to Satan, these memories were buried until they erupted under regression. Then those tales faded away, and we began hearing more and more of alien abductions. Time lines overlap; the 1961 Barney and Betty Hill case is considered the "first" alien abduction and predates the Satanic abuse events, as do the earlier contactee encounters.  But I've often wondered if the controllers were experimenting with different themes to deliver their experiments. Satanic rituals here, alien abductions there. Maybe that's ridiculous, maybe not. Maybe there's some truth there, maybe not. As I've said, it's possible a cover was needed so different settings were auditioned. It's possible they decided the alien thing worked for a long list of reasons, including the hide in plain sight idea. In other words, if there really are aliens, (and I think there are) why not further employ disinfo by using the very thing so many -- including the government responsible for these distractions -- deny exist?

I have to add, that for those who've experienced these things, they are very real. They are real. (I'll refer to my own missing time experiences: whatever, whoever, caused those missing time episodes in my life, the fact remains: my memory was fucked with, and it wasn't by me. That's real. That's wrong, whether aliens did it or humans.) Because there might be the possibility these events were manipulated by humans, or even completely created by humans (which I doubt), that is no doing of the experiencer. We have to remain absolutely sensitive to, and respectful of, the witnesses. We have to really listen to their stories, and not just wait for places where we can insert our own ideas of how things are.

Nick Redfern: Contactees or Secret Agents?

Nick Redfern at Mysterious Universe: Contactees or Secret Agents? | Mysterious Universe

One of the most outrageous, but certainly intriguing, theories surrounding the early years of the Contactee movement suggests the Contactees were in the clandestine employ of the United States’ Intelligence community.

Their secret role: to spread outlandish – and utterly fictitious – tales of trips to the Moon and Venus with long-haired aliens. Their purpose: to make the entire UFO subject seem ridiculous, and to bury the truly unexplained and mystifying reports amongst a mass of largely unbelievable tales of cosmic contact. As controversial as it may seem, however, when we look for connections between the Contactees and elements of U.S. officialdom, we do find them.

Redfern is correct that there's a "U.S. officialdom" connection with the contactees. It is outlandish, but I think there's something to the idea that many researchers have ignored, or at least, not considered seriously.

Nick has some interesting information in his article that supports the theory the government had some involvement in the contactee experience.

However, -- though I'm not expert at all and this is just my speculation -- I think there was some kind of truth to what the contactees were saying; some non-human energy was present, manipulating experience, and the government knew about it, in turn doing their own manipulation of contactee communications. Not to say I think contactees literally went to Venus or, that the entities that said they came from Venus, Mars, or Jupiter really did come from those planets. But I do think non-human intelligences were present and responsible for much of what the contactees said they encountered. With help from government, human agencies.

Esoteric Claims to Fame, Or: My Cousin Was a MIB

Originally posted at Trickster's Realm for Binnall of America.

An item on Lon Sticker’s Phantoms and Monsters about Elvis and his life long interest in UFOs inspired me to write about the time I met Elvis in Los Angles when I was working at the Free Clinic.  (see my post on UFO Mystic.) That was one of my brushes with fame, and esoteric in a round about way, since Elvis had a strong curiosity about UFOs and believed in extraterrestrial life.

Another esoteric brush with fame is, I think, waaaaaaaay cool. It concerns Boris Badenov. Yes, that Boris Badenov! Legend has it that the character actor Akim Tarmioff was the inspiration for the spy character Boris Badenov of the  Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.  Here is what a Wikipedia entry has to say about Akim’s inspiration:

Badenov's name is a play on that of the 16th-century Russian Tsar Boris Godunov ("bad enough" vs. "good enough"). His accent and explosive temper are an homage to Hollywood actor Akim Tamiroff, especially Tamiroff's role in The Great McGinty, a 1940 movie directed by Preston Sturges.

Akim (Mikhailovich) Tamiroff, the Russian born character actor who appeared in dozens of films and television shows was often typecast as a Mexican or Greek, among other ethnic characters. He played spies, cops, thieves; all manner of roles.  Among the films Akim appeared in:For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1943, Lord Jim, 1965, Oceans 11, 1960, Topaki, 1964, and dozens more.

Akim was married to my grandfather’s niece, actress Tamara Shayne. My mother lived with them when she was in her late teens (that would be in late 1940s, early 1950s) when she first arrived in Los Angeles from Oregon.  I met them once when I was little; I remember Tamara as being stand offish , but Akim was pretty nice, very funny and playful.

Truly, how cool is it that one of the iconic cartoon characters, Boris Badenov, was based on a family member? (Another fun esoteric synchronistic fact: my mother’s name is a variation of Natasha.) 


Is it fair to say Boris was a MIB? No, it just sounded good for the title. Boris was short, fat, and hardly MIB like in behavior or appearance. He was an Eastern European/Russian spy, bumbling, the bad guy, created during the Cold War, when the spy business was everywhere. It still is; and actually, we’ve come back around to Russian spies recently, with movies like SALT and the plethora of Russian spies on television shows.

I have other claims to esoteric fame, which I'll write about in future columns.

From Blue Alien: CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs

The Blue Alien the hive blog has a piece by Gerald K. Haines: CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90: A Die-Hard Issue.

Nick Redfern: Saucer-Spooks

Nick Redfern, with Saucer-Spooks, on UFO Mystic.