by Robert Judson
Contributing Writer

The Cold War, the 9/11 attacks, feminism, missile defense, government induced cancer, the Rockefellers, Clinton and both Bushes: Stephen Bassett related all of these and more in his discussion entitled “The Politics of UFOs” on Wednesday night.

“We’ve got extraterrestrials (ETs) here…guaranteed lock,100 % certain,” Bassett said right from the start.

Bassett, dressed completely in black, addressed a crowd consisting of students, civilians, an ex-Marine who had witnessed a UFO, as well as a few residents from Middletown. There were no professors in the crowd of about 45 people.

Bassett’s speech explained the history of extraterrestrial/human interaction and what he claimed to be an international cover-up, which has kept it relatively unknown for decades. He stated that most of the Unacknowledged Special Access Projects [USAPS] that deal with this issue have even been withheld from certain Presidents and most of the congress after the formation of the “National Security State” in 1947.

Bassett also made clear his position as the congressional lobbyist of X-PPAC, the only PAC in history dealing with the UFO issue. Bassett is registered on behalf of UFO/ET research and activist organizations. He also worked with Dr. John Mack of Harvard University, a Pulitzer Prize winning author who has done extensive research in human / extraterrestrial interaction.

“I am a cage-rattler. I am ready to do battle,” said Bassett, “to get congress to tell the truth. It’s a radical concept but we’re hoping it will catch on again…The way you think things work is not the way it is.”

Bassett expressed his concern for the implications the lack of knowledge will have on humans in the new millennium. He maintained that all of humanity is in trouble unless something fundamentally changes in the way human beings think.

“We screwed up the 20th century big time…The 21st century is going to be a living envy of the dead not too far down the road… We need to meditate. We need to chill. It is very hard being human in the modern age,” Bassett said.

Bassett went on the explain that only two realizations would change human thinking in the way needed: the acceptance of the existence of ET life or the relinquishing of world power from men to women.

“The male collective worldview has taken the world as far as it can go. Women have a different worldview…and the human race has operated without that worldview. They have no role in the Catholic Church. No role in Islamic faith…It’s the powers that be that are not ready for a lot of reasons. Most of them are male,” Bassett said.

He concluded by explaining that a large part of this necessary realization is the discovery of the ultimate function of human beings as a species.

“The human race is a single species. Its fundamental role is to take care of this planet,” said Bassett, reasoning that the Earth, like other planets, is a pocket of life in the void of space, a rarity which must be protected.

Bassett’s speech combined science and religion. The main body took the audience back through the 30,000 years of extraterrestrial evidence.

“I’m not going to take him for his word, but I’m going to research it,” said Laura Neuman ’03.

Bassett compared the knowledge of UFOs to other truths that were unaccepted for ages which we now know to be true. He stated that the government has officially known of the existence of ETs since the famous Roswell crash of 1947 and has since been treating it as a threat to national security.

According to Bassett, there have been four major efforts to get the government to release all the information it possesses on UFOs and ETs. The latest effort was through President George W. Bush, and was accelerating rapidly up until the Sept. 11 attacks, when it was stopped it in its tracks.

Bassett made special note that the military managers who have information they wish to disclose will only do it through a Republican president.

“In America, Democratic presidents are treated differently than Republican presidents by the military intelligence community,” Bassett said.

He also explained how both foreign governments and the press are intimidated by the United States government into not releasing information on UFOs and ETs, despite the thousands of reported sightings every year around the world.

“The United States has created a secret empire bigger, larger, more complex…than any in history,” said Bassett. He then projected this beyond the UFO cover-ups and suggested that the government could be hiding other elements as well.

“If a nation has created a vast secret empire…how do you know what its foreign policy initiatives are?” Bassett asked.

“This lecture was very inspiring. Mr. Bassett...framed the struggle to reveal the cover-up as an opportunity for the empowerment of the human race,” said Conor Gately ’02. “I share his opinion that a successful movement to force government disclosure of extra-terrestrial contact will provide some desperately needed perspective for the people of this world in what will be a very different century.”

“It was interesting for me to watch how one discovery led to another, and how far you can take it if you wanted to,” Neuman said.

Bassett also stated that humans are dealing with multiple species, and that they regard humans in different ways, ranging only from benevolent to indifferent. It was his belief that any organism that was innately hostile would destroy itself before developing the necessary technology for interstellar spaceflight. For this reason, he stated his belief that humans were more dangerous than most ETs. He also stated that one of the worst shocks humans will encounter upon accepting the existence of UFOs is the undermining of many religions.

“They go back as far as we do…It created a global mythology of gods from the sky…We’re going to discover that most of our gods are aliens. Ultimately we’re all going to have to deal with this,” Bassett said.

According to an anonymous poll taken before the lecture, only about 1/3 of the students were completely convinced that UFOs were real, yet only one student believed that they had been told the complete truth on the issue by the government.

Bassett has a degree in physics and 15 years of experience in business development. He began extraterrestrial phenomena research in 1995 and has since worked with other committed researchers like Dr. Steven Greer of the Disclosure Project, who is working to release all evidence and documents concerning UFOs and ETs, to stop the development of space-based weapons, to explore alternate, more environmentally safe energy sources and to enact legislation to explore space peacefully. The Disclosure Project held a major press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on May 9, in which the first 20 individuals in government, military, intelligence, and the corporate world came out with information and documents concerning the UFO-related events they had experienced, or projects in which they had worked. The current list of witnesses stands at about 450.

Stephen Bassett’s lecture was brought to the University by Wesleyan Students for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (WESETI). According to Bassett, it was only the beginning of an extensive college tour. More information can be found at www.paradigmclock.com or www.disclosureproject.org.