Colonel Corso said to me, 'Linda, how did you get all of that classified material in your book? How did you do it? At least I had a gun.'" This remark by Linda Moulton Howe was made at the conclusion of a extraordinary three-hour telephone interview with Philip J. Corso and William J. Birnes on July 7, 1997, with Howe coordinating the four-way conversation and Art Bell asking the questions. Howe acts as the science reporter for the program. The interview covered many of the startling revelations made by Corso and Birnes in their ground-breaking book, The Day After Roswell (Pocket Books 1997), but it was one thing to read it and quite another to hear about these events from the mouth of the only living person to have personal knowledge about them.

      This interview, certainly a "scoop" in every sense of the term, is just one of the more recent examples of how Linda Moulton Howe has managed to stay in the middle of the labyrinthine morass that is the UFO controversy, and how she is able to get interviews and obtain classified information from otherwise forbidding sources. She is precisely in the eye of the storm, and has been there ever since her bold, Emmy-winning documentary about the cattle mutilations in the western U.S., Strange Harvest, was first aired in 1980.

      The world of UFO investigation and reporting is a strange, shifting, surrealistic mix of delusion, belief, and fact, where the "hard evidence" at one moment becomes the "disinformation" of the next, and vice-versa. Some journalists are believed to be purveyors of disinformation, either as government accomplices or as unwitting dupes. Since very little is provable, it then becomes a game of reputation. But even UFO investigators and journalists with the most experience and highest reputations can suddenly fall into distrust. In this milieu, for Linda Howe to have remained above reproach for over eighteen years, and to be trusted by both sides, is remarkable. Publication of her new book, Glimpses of Other Realities Vol II: High Strangeness ( Paper Chase Press, 1998), precipitated a recent Atlantis Rising interview. We met with her at John White's UFO conference October 10-11, 1998 in North Haven, Connecticut.

      From beauty queen to UFO investigator/journalist, Howe has traveled an improbable path. A former Miss Idaho, she parlayed her pageant scholarship wins into a first-class education, obtaining a B.A. from the University of Colorado in English Literature, and a Masters in Communications from Stanford on a Stanley Beaubaire Fellowship. Hired by MGM's documentary division right out of Stanford, she went on to a series of TV producing jobs. In 1976, she joined KMGH-TV in Denver as a Director of Special Projects. In this capacity she produced, wrote, directed and edited TV documentaries, and also did on-air TV reporting. Initially she focused on projects about the environment, medicine and science and had no interest in UFO phenomena. But in 1979, when her audio man told her about his work with a 20/20 ABC crew doing an investigation of the cattle mutilations, she became intrigued and decided to investigate. The result was Strange Harvest, and a new twist in her career path.


A HALL OF MIRRORS

As we talked over lunch about various UFO/extraterrestrial topics, the impression from her books was confirmed. While several other prominent investigators/writers in the field, have staked out territories, Howe seeks to solve the entire mystery. What started out as a determined effort to simply understand the cattle mutiliations has now broadened to encompass comprehension of the totality of reported encounters, what the government knows, crop circles, ancient astronauts, paranormal phenomena, and the scientific breakthroughs that are promised by alien technology. Like Alice in Wonderland, she has, in her search, been led down a path that gets "curiouser and curiouser," to a place of "high strangeness," (the "strangeness" scale was invented by astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek).

      She refers to it as "a hall of mirrors with a quicksand floor." Never daunted by the fantastic information she has uncovered, she has the mental scope to entertain even the most bizarre possibilities and to report them without fear of ridicule, and with incisive and informed commentary. It is probably for this reason that so many military operatives have confided in her. Perhaps the most noteworthy example is the now well-known incident in April of 1983 when Air Force intelligence officer Richard Doty invited her to Kirkland Air Force Base in Albuquerque to a secured room and read, under observation, a classified government document entitled "Briefing Paper for the President of the United States of America." Howe later reported that the paper revealed the government had reliable information that extraterrestrials had been visiting earth for tens of thousands of years, and had helped to create the human race, as we now know it, by genetic manipulating DNA of the native primate population.

      Her new book chronicles her trip through Wonderland. It covers a bewildering diversity of reports of phenomena that stretch conventional "reality" to the breaking point, and threaten to push us "through the looking glass" into another paradigm-a completely different view of what life is all about. In perhaps the largest section of the book "Military Voices," Howe reports on "confessions," anonymous and otherwise, from prior and active military personnel, about previously secret UFO/extraterrestrial activity. Much of this material is about Roswell. Howe provides new reports about the incident, based on information given directly to her. But she acknowledges conflicting narratives, and concludes that disinformation is probably the culprit. She says, "Government insiders, under ordered policy, have inspired and fueled ridicule of witnesses with weather balloon, Venus, flares and swamp gas explanations to make sure that the public and media stayed away from the bodies, craft and technologies."


Two Spaceships in the Night

Included is a report about Roswell that has the ring of authenticity, and sheds new light on the incident. One of her contacts, a man named Peter A. Bostrom, reported to her about an interview he had conducted with a former soldier, who claimed to have viewed all the top secret 16mm films taken at the Roswell crash site(s). The canisters of film were stored with other classified films in a vault within a vault in a basement with bricked-over windows, at Fort Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska. In the inner vault was a box marked "Roswell" containing several canisters taken by the Signal Corps.

      The soldier viewed all of these while doing an inventory in 1960, and reported seeing two different crashed craft in two different films, one with aliens with six-fingered hands being put in body bags and loaded onto military trucks. He told Bostrom that he was positive that the films showed two different sites, although the terrain was similar in both. Howe points out that this is the first intimation that what we loosely refer to now as "Roswell" may have been two distinct crashes, and this may be the reason that two different sites, scenarios and types of aliens were reported by various witnesses. One site would have been the Mac Brazel sheep ranch near Corona, site of the "debris field," and the other, described by Colonel Corso and others, where a nearly intact delta-shaped craft was found embedded into an embankment near El Capitan Mountain, about forty miles south of Corona. This conclusion is now supported by the release of new Roswell/MJ12 documents on the Internet (Art Bell web site) that make reference to two different UFO crashes on that same night of July 4, 1947, during an intense electrical storm.

      Howe speculates that the two crashes were probably the result of a mid-air collision! To confuse the matter even more, the book supplies evidence of a third crash that even pre-dates Roswell. This one evidently occurred on May 31, 1947 somewhere southwest of Socorro in the Plains of San Augustin, possibly as far west as Elk Mountain. And this, according to information in the book, was probably the crash that caused the death of the alien depicted in the now famous Ray Santilli autopsy film. In July, 1995, Santilli released the transcript of his video interview in 1994 with the military cameraman who had filmed both the crash site and three subsequent autopsies. The entire transcript is included in the book.

      Referred to only as "JB," the photographer said that the crash had occurred on May 31 "just southwest of Socorro." Anyone who has seen the autopsy film (and who hasn't at this point?) will recall that this type of alien appears to be a miniature human, but has large, round eyes and six fingers and toes. JB was literally "freaked out" by what he saw. He refers to the aliens as "Circus freaks," and claims that three were alive and one was dead. They were crying and holding some sort of a box clasped tightly to their chests. The "boxes", shown on one of the films, were evidently the metal control panels with indentations for six-fingered hands. Howe tells us that Bob Shell, editor of Shutterbug Magazine, analyzed the Santilli film and found that it had been manufactured in the early 1940s, and that it had probably been used within two years of manufacture. In 1997, Kodak verified this information.

      JB claimed that he filmed two dissections in July, 1947. One of the dissected aliens was probably one of the three from Socorro that survived, but later died of his wounds, quite apparent in the autopsy film where we see a very large gash in the right leg. Did the second one come from the El Capitan crash, where four six-fingered aliens were filmed being put into body bags? Of the two aliens that survived the Socorro crash, one apparently died in 1949, when JB filmed a third dissection. That left one alien still alive. His fate may have been revealed by a mysterious message that Howe found on her answering machine one night. A slow, deliberate voice with a Texas accent said "The government made contact in 1949 when they returned the alien that survived." Apparently, the amount of secret information yet to be revealed is truly staggering!


DEAD ALIENS ON ICE

In August, 1995, Howe received in the mail a plain manila envelope containing what was apparently a copy of a government document with the formidable title, "SOM1-01 Majestic-12 Group Special Operations Manual-Extraterrestrial Entities and Technology, Recovery and Disposal, TOP SECRET/MAJIC EYES ONLY." It was dated April 7, 1954. It is essentially a handbook for "Majestic-12 units" dispatched to crash sites, giving them background information about the extraterrestrial crafts (referred to as UFOBs), and the alien entities (EBEs), and complete instructions for technology retrieval and transport, security, handling of aliens (Dead EBEs should be packed in ice...") and dealing with the press. Howe includes the entire document, exactly as received, in an appendix.

      The section entitled "Press Blackout" is especially revealing. There we officially learn what every UFO investigator has already concluded, that the three techniques to be used with the press are a) Official Denial b) Discredit Witnesses, and c) Deceptive Statements. And it is in this document that we discover what the government knew about extraterrestrials to that point in time.


HEAVEN IN A SPACESHIP

In the section Body Containers and Souls of Light Howe reports on several unusual abduction cases where the abductees were not simply passive subjects of medical procedures, but interacted with the aliens, were given information, and remembered the details of their experiences. In some of these cases, we are introduced to a tall, large-nosed alien race, which seems to control the small greys who are here identified as sophisticated androids. All of the cases selected have certain common elements. They all remembered seeing various types of bodies in tubes in apparent suspended animation, and they were all told about other dimensions, alien interaction with the human race from ancient times, and the crisis on this planet/dire events to come. Several accounts speak of a "Noah's Ark in the sky" where specimens of various races and animals are kept suspended for possible future activation. Here we are introduced to such head-spinning concepts as simultaneous worlds, soul transfers, bodies under construction, human clones, time travel, and heaven in a spaceship.

      It becomes very clear, after reading this part of the book, that one cannot possibly comprehend the UFO phenomenon without knowing something about paranormal and theosophical concepts, because it now appears that various extraterrestrial groups function comfortably in other realms of existence besides the physical. This really is to be expected from civilizations that are thousands, perhaps millions, of years older than ours. Their paranormal "bag of tricks" apparently includes telepathy, astral travel, mental influence, selective memory eradication and replacement, suspension of time, projected illusions, and much more-capabilities far beyond Star Trek!

      From cases like these, and also and especially the case of Betty Andreasson Luca, the UFO/extraterrestrial world begins to merge with the spiritual/theological, and Howe devotes a significant segment of the book to ruminations and speculations in these areas, and a heroic attempt to put it all together-to solve the entire mystery! Here, Howe comes to grips with the ultimate questions about human existence on this planet. And like so many others who have trod this path, she eventually lines up with Von Daniken and Sitchin and acknowledges that the ancient and biblical gods and angels were probably E.T.s., and we are the product of genetic manipulation of early primates, and have been "bred," so to speak. And then we come to that age-old, but always contemporary problem of "good and evil." The abductees claim that there are two groups of extraterrestrials influencing us, each trying to prove a point, but neither interfering with our free will. We envision a great crap table in the sky with angels of light, and dark angels placing bets! Howe draws parallels with Rudolf Steiner's theology, Milton's Paradise Lost, and especially the apocryphal Book of Enoch. And this brings us finally to "The Rapture." The abductees confirm that those who are to be saved from the coming cataclysms have already been identified and "marked." They will be swept up to huge city-sized spacecraft just before the end, and then returned to earth afterwards to start a totally new era of love and peace.

      Howe's latest project is a translation of the Sanskrit text of the Hindu Vedas. She is convinced that a more careful and precise analysis may reveal richer details about the ancient "vimanas," which will clearly identify them as extraterrestrial. When we do eventually get to the bottom of all this, it will be, in no small part, due to the efforts of this lone, persistent, courageous trailblazer.