AN OPEN LETTER
August 6, 1996
President William Jefferson Clinton
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. President,
As an American citizen, I am thrilled at NASA's scientific publication
next week in the prestigious journal, SCIENCE, of the Johnson Space
Center discovery in an Antarctic meteorite of microscopic fossil life
forms from the planet Mars; As we enter the final years of the 20th
Century, and now begin the four-year selection process for the next
President of the United States -- who will lead this Nation (and the
world) into the 21st Century itself -- I cannot help but wonder,
however, if this "NASA announcement" is only the beginning of
additional, even more startling "official" revelations to come... from
the Space Agency which is under your direction.
For the past fourteen years, as head of an independent research
organization, "The Enterprise Mission," I have been privileged to lead
a unique team of scientists, engineers, and generalists in a
multi-disciplinary investigation of an even more extraordinary
possibility: that from the mid-1960's, with the initial unmanned
robotic surveys of the Moon, to the mid-1970's, with the unmanned
Viking exploration of the planet Mars, NASA successfully returned to
Earth evidence of intelligently designed structural artifacts on at
least two other major bodies in this solar system.
But additional documentary evidence, developed directly through our
on-going, independent investigation, now affirms an inexplicable
breakdown of the system: a demonstrable failure on the part of NASA --
whether intended or not -- for over thirty years, to notify either the
majority of its own scientists -- or the American people -- of these
staggering results.
These startling possibilities began to unfold in 1979, when two
imaging specialists (Vincent DiPietro and Gregory Molenaar), working
under contract at the Goddard Space Flight Center, developed the
initial scientific evidence: independent analysis of the original 1976
NASA-Viking photographs, which revealed several potential structural
artifacts located in the Cydonia region of the planet. DiPietro and
Molenaar presented this provocative evidence in accord with standard
scientific methodology at a major astronomical conference; NASA
responded by ignoring their imaging analysis, while simultaneously
taking the extraordinary step of deliberately deprecating the two
authors.
This major management and scientific failure, on an issue as
significant as a Space Agency discovery of evidence relating to
possible extraterrestrial intelligence, directly resulted in our own
entry into this highly controversial area -- now encompassing over
fourteen years of intensive, multi-disciplinary scientific effort.
Our independent research efforts, coordinating scores of
multi-disciplinary scientists, have now led to the strongly supported
hypothesis that some specific structures in the Cydonia region -- laid
out in a striking and repeating mathematical and geometric pattern on
the Martian surface -- are only explicable as the direct result of
intelligent design. High-resolution photographs, with the potential to
publicly verify or disconfirm this increasingly robust hypothesis,
could have been acquired by NASA's unmanned Mars Observer spacecraft,
scheduled to arrive at Mars in 1993, but inexplicably "lost in space"
at the last minute. The latest opportunity to acquire these crucial
new Cydonia photographs has fallen to NASA's up-coming Mars
replacement mission, Mars Global Surveyor, now scheduled
"coincidentally" (in light of this astonishing "Martian micro-fossil
announcement") for November of this year -- 1996.
However, even with Mars Global Surveyor imminent, NASA continues to
ignore this detailed, careful Cydonia research, and steadfastly
refuses to give any priority to obtaining new high-resolution
photographs of these potentially artificial Martian structures. NASA
has in fact adopted policies regarding Mars Global Surveyor data
release no different than it planned with Mars Observer -- plans that,
even if the desired new photographs are taken, add considerable doubt
as to whether they will ever be released to the American taxpayers...
who in the end underwrite all NASA missions.
All the details of this extensive, potentially explosive Mars inquiry,
as well as NASA's inexplicable suppression of the topic, have now been
objectively reviewed in a separate, almost year-long study conducted
in 1992-1993 by Professor Stanley V. McDaniel, formerly head of the
Philosophy Department of Sonoma State University. After an exhaustive
analysis of the methodology employed by all independent researchers
who have worked on the Viking Cydonia data, Professor McDaniel
concluded in 1993 that "on the whole the [independent, non-NASA]
researchers, acutely aware of the controversial nature of their
subject matter, have conducted their work with a remarkably high
degree of scientific integrity. In many respects, their work has been
a model of the way science, at its best, should work."
I refer you to the Executive Summary in Professor McDaniel's heavily
footnoted document for a more extensive description of his critical
conclusions on this topic.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Professor McDaniel's findings is
that NASA's 20-year deprecation of this critical planetary evidence
may have been politically deliberate.
Independent of McDaniel's findings are the recent dramatic results of
our own two-year extension of our geometric Mars research to other
NASA data. This has resulted in our additional discovery, and public
presentation -- first, at Ohio State University on June 2 of 1994; and
earlier this year, on March 21 at a major National Press Club press
conference -- of compelling evidence of ancient structural artifacts
present on the Moon.
Confirmed through cross comparisons of overwhelming imaging evidence,
from several separate NASA missions -- with different photographic
technologies, different lighting, and different viewing geometries --
these studies now leave little doubt that A: this solar system has
been host to some prior habitation by intelligence, and B: some within
NASA have apparently known about and deliberately suppressed this
robust evidence for more than thirty years.
Regarding possible motivations for this inexplicable (if not
unconstitutional) behavior, additional documentary evidence discovered
by McDaniel in his independent ethical inquiry now seems particularly
relevant.
According to McDaniel, an early NASA study was commissioned from the
Brookings Institution in 1959 and may have formed the basis of current
NASA policy. This study specifically anticipates the possible future
discovery of intelligently designed artifacts elsewhere in the solar
system by unmanned NASA probes, and considers "how might such
information, under what circumstances, be presented to or withheld
from the public, for what ends?"
The apparent reason given for considering the possibility of
withholding information from the public, should extraterrestrial
artifacts be discovered, was the apprehension voiced within this Study
that society itself might "disintegrate." Everything in NASA's
(otherwise inexplicable) behavior regarding the possibly artificial
structures on Mars, and those now discovered on the Moon, indicates
that NASA has been following, and intends to follow for the indefinite
future, the policy of withholding information outlined in the
Brookings Institution Report.
There seems to be no other rational explanation for NASA's almost
two-decade campaign against independent research on the possibility of
artificial structures on Mars as supported by the Viking data base, or
its even longer, now highly documentable deliberate suppression of
data indicating artificial structures on the Moon.
If this is so, the possible decision on NASA's part to withhold data
concerning any evidence of extraterrestrial artifacts took place less
than a year after the official birth of NASA itself, "before the ink
was dry" on NASA's own unique charter as the one government agency
specifically enjoined by Act of Congress (the National Aeronautics and
Space Act of 1958) to "provide for the widest practicable and
appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and
the results thereof."
The possibility that NASA is operating on the basis of a censorship
policy regarding certain types of scientific discovery goes counter
to a standard expectation in American society of completely open and
unfettered scientific discovery and publication by the Nation's Space
Agency. This must now raise grave Constitutional questions, if not
even broader ethical issues regarding government manipulation of the
basic scientific process.
In an era of rising political revolt against government hypocrisy in
so many other areas, Mr. President, this striking evidence of a
possible long-term institutional hypocrisy deep within many Americans'
ideal of "government gone right," NASA itself, cannot be seen as
anything other than a fundamental failure of decision-makers in
Washington to keep faith with the American people, to believe in
representative government, and to abide by the tenets of the
Constitution.
And as such, this failure of representative government is a
particularly egregious example of what you, President Clinton, ran and
won against four years ago -- of "government gone wrong"; for, as you
have pointed out more than once since your election, without continued
fundamental trust in the integrity of government, how can a democratic
society long survive?
Mr. President, what do you suppose Thomas Jefferson would have done
with the stunning opportunities that now confront you? What if that
earlier Jefferson had lived in an age when technology could have made
it possible for him, as it is now for you, to reach out across the
solar system, to the Moon and Mars, to test -- on live global
television via return missions -- not only the possible reality of
extraterrestrial artifacts . . . but the ultimate meaning, power, and
promise to Humanity of the Constitution of the United States itself?
We do not have to wonder.
Jefferson, by far the most brilliant and scientifically inclined Chief
Executive ever to hold office, was intimately involved with the
details and planning of the famed Lewis and Clarke expedition through
the Louisiana Purchase, long before he single-handedly acted to double
the size of the young United States by acquisition of the Purchase in
1803. Jefferson hand-wrote specific instructions to Captain
Merriwether Lewis on everything from botanical observations to how
Native American tribes along the way were to be approached "on behalf
of the United States." Gazing at these presidential instructions --
the equivalent then of mission rules for the pioneering exploration of
an entirely new planet -- a strange, prophetic thrill comes over
you...
What would this visionary president have accomplished for the benefit
of the United States and for all Humankind, given the resources of a
"NASA?"
What will you accomplish, Mr. President -- given the present day
reality of these resources?
Another youthful holder of the Oval Office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
on the occasion of a state dinner being attended by several Nobel
Laureates, quipped that "the White House hasn't seen this
concentration of sheer human genius since Thomas Jefferson dined
here... alone."
That same new president gave American's the New Frontier, a world of
global communications satellites -- "CNN" -- the Golden Age of
unmanned exploration of the solar system, and the Moon.
JFK's largely unsung legacy of space exploration and development
ushered in a unprecedented era of fundamental technological
advancement, technologies which have now demonstrably generated more
real wealth for more Americans than any single Federal project. What
would confirmation and follow-up on a set of extraterrestrial ruins in
the solar system generate in stunning new technologies, in
revolutionary knowledge, and in unimagined wealth?
It is this, Mr. President, that NASA's current policy regarding these
discoveries appears ready to destroy. The crucial aspect of John
Fitzgerald Kennedy's overlooked space legacy is about to be put to a
key test by your decision: will you seek to verify before a watching
world potential alien artifacts in our own solar system, or will you
-- for the sake of policy developed 40 years ago, under the
influence of a paranoid McCarthy era and the Cold War -- turn your
back on a possible evolutionary step forward for all Humanity?
Mr. President, the important question is just this: what will you now
do to ensure the final, crowning legacy of JFK? How will you keep
faith with the dream of Thomas Jefferson, President Kennedy, and
millions of Americans for whom confirmation that the human race is not
alone would undoubtedly be viewed as the greatest contribution to
humankind of any administration in the history of the Republic?
Mr. President, a future unimagined -- a future filled with almost
unimaginable promise -- is now awaiting your decision. As one who has
spent more than a decade of his life fighting to gain recognition for
promise embodied in the apparent artifacts now discovered on two
worlds -- the Moon and Mars -- I urge you to follow the important
precedent established by your order to Secretary O'Leary at the
Department of Energy several years ago, regarding declassification of
medical data surrounding U.S. atomic testing of the 1950's; I strongly
urge that you immediately go far beyond NASA's latest, in truth
"tentative announcement" of microbes found in meteorites from Mars...
I strongly urge you to immediately declassify all pertinent government
studies and related NASA data concerning potential artificial
structures on the Moon and Mars -- as well as take immediate steps to
implement recommendations made at the conclusion of Professor
McDaniel's document for follow-up lunar and Mars missions.
Just a day before NASA's remarkable "micro-fossil announcement" -- the
first official presentation to the world of extraterrestrial life
beyond this planet Earth -- the man who hopes to replace you in the
White House next January 20, former Senator Bob Dole, released the
fifty-page official Republican National Platform. Within that
document, is an aggressive "plank" specifically urging a manned
mission to Mars.
Mr. President, the future of your own Administration, if not your
reelection to the Presidency itself, could well stand now in the
balance -- judged in light of NASA's apparent decision to begin to
reveal some of what it knows... a NASA still under your direction.
Because, waiting in the wings behind this first official NASA
admission that "we are not alone" is our own fourteen-year
"Enterprise" Investigation -- evidence of much, much more... actual
intelligently-designed artifacts, waiting on the planet Mars and
elsewhere...
This fall election thus could well now hinge on your willingness to
ensure that NASA's responsibilities to the American people are
henceforth carried out with full accountability to both the spirit and
letter of true Science -- if not to the letter and spirit of the
Constitution itself.
The choice, and the potential for unparalleled leadership as we enter
the New Century, is yours.
Sincerely,
Richard C. Hoagland, Founder
The Enterprise Mission
122 Dodd St
Weehawken NJ 07087
FAX (201) 271-1703
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