This Weeks Rumors

This week’s Rumors:

My wife had a strange situation last week.  She works for a small property management company and one of the tenants of a small strip mall came in to pay their rent for the month.   For some unknown reason the guy started talking about how he did film or video work for the Navy and Marines.  He said he was once at a US Navy base in Singapore recently and was filming some drones on the ground.   When he got close to the drone he noticed manufacture date from the 1970s.  My wife asked him, “you mean they were flying drones during the Vietnam war?”  He said “Oh yeah!  They’ve been using these things along time but nobody knew about it.”  

Then the man digressed into talking about how his company was once building some sort experimental aircraft but got involved in a contract war over the bid with ALCOA aluminum and the legal problems put his small company out of business.  He also said his father was a CIA agent down in South America years ago.  

My wife asked him “If they had all these spy drones so long ago, then shouldn’t they  have known about 9/11 before it happened?”  He said “They did know, the Senate has a special plane like the President, and the Senate [leadership?] was taken out a few hours before the 9/11 incident and put on that plane. They were flown to a secure location.”  My wife said “That means they knew it was coming!”  He said “Yes of course – they knew it was coming”.  My wife's mouth fell open. If true, this means all those Senate hearings on 9/11 were, excuse me for saying the obvious, Kabuki theater (Bizarre drama).

He seemed awfully chatty for someone with a security clearance.  I don’t know if the guy was just making this stuff up or not.  My wife sees him every month and this has never happened before so I don’t know why he became so chatty this week.  But then the whole week has been full of strange news, as if the fact that we were flying drones back in the 1970s, and the Senate leadership knew about 9/11 in advance wasn’t enough.  If he had asked her for it to remain confidential I wouldn’t speak of it now. But hey, I am a defacto reporter these days.  Who would have thought even 4 months ago? Not me!

Six degrees of separation - The Kevin Bacon Syndrome

This story starts from the present and goes back in time. My daughter has a friend whose father, which I'll call me Mr A, was once with the Air Force and worked contract at SAIC until a recent layoff.  If you want job security, never work at SAIC.  Most brutal internal competition of any company on earth - plus its a highly compartmentalized company so you never know how anything fits into the whole. I never could get out of him what he did. Nice guy Mr A., solid American, he once helped me when my truck transmission went out and I had no way to get home.  But I learned not to ask what he did for work early on, he simply wasn’t talking.  He’d just smile. 

Its a small world.  The weird thing about Mr A. is he knows a Naval Commander, Mr B.who is brother of woman I lost my virginity to fresh out of theology college. Ms C. was a part-time LA Sheriff and full time computer geek. I had worked in my college computer department in assembly language, she had written some of the first computers games in assembly language. It was geek connection. We both loved logic. But she was also a dancer and a singer and not your typical female geek. No she didn't use her sheriff  handcuffs on me, so don't ask.  I was remanded into her wonderful custody for interrogation. Its all ancient history and it didn't last long.  My wife knew all this long before we were married.  Not like I was every much of a playboy anyway, always was sort of a one woman at a time guy. We guys aren't supposed to remember things like that, but the older you get, you have to smile at some memories. And the impulsiveness of youth. Not like either of us, as strong willed as we are could have ever gotten along for very long as a couple. It was doomed from the start. For my first real encounter with a woman I got someone who was really really good at it and willing to teach. After it ended I craved her for months. I was heartbroken. Then I thought it was God's wrath for me having sex before marriage. Took me while to forgive myself for being human and being a healthy male.  A non-Christian can probably never understand this mindset, but when you grew up with a certain way of thinking and that dire divine penalties were waiting for biological infractions, you can be pretty harsh on yourself.  It was a long time before I really learned God was nothing like I was told in my religion. There are times I wish I never grew up is such a strict religious upbringing, but I think it occurred for a reason. To help others like me. And I know the tricks they use to convince the unsuspecting to convert them, usually through fear.

Mr B. once flew a Navy fighter over Nevada and had engine trouble which caused him to need to land at Area 51.  He radioed for permission to land, was granted that but was told not to leave the plane until a bus arrived to pick him.  Now this guy was Naval Intelligence and thought he had the highest security rating he could have.  A bus with no windows arrived, he was blindfolded, and driven to waiting room with no windows.  Base crews then went about the task of fixing his fighter.  When the work was completed he was driven back out to plane blindfolded and got in his plane and left.  He asked his sister the question, "If I have the highest security rating I can get in the Navy, what is in that place that I have to be blindfolded so I can't see it?" He never found out. 

Actually it was his sister, Ms C., that convinced me UFOs were indeed real in 1989.  Ms C. and Mr B were the children of another career Navy man who worked at TRW. Their father worked on Ronald Reagan's Star Wars project, and reported to Generals and Admirals.Very trusted man. At one point something he was working on, nearly killed him, she never knew what it was that harmed him, but he was very sick for months. Never did fully recover. When he retired from TRW, I went with her to South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.  First time I ever saw a woman pay $1200 for a dress, she looked like a million bucks. It was for her father's retirement dinner.  She adored the man.  She adored her brother too. I think it was her love of men in uniform that caused her to volunteer as an LA County Sheriff, where she worked with as regular Sheriff deputy in a regular squad car for $1 dollar a year in pay. Had the Navy been more open to women at that time I am sure she would have been in the Navy, but at that time it was still a man's Navy. Its quite quite an amazing family, she told me once her great grandfather was an Admiral in Czar Nicholas' Imperial Russian Navy. Their family has generations long tradition of Navy service. The family was solidly American in its loyalties, no commies in their family. They hated the Soviet Union and communism.

Fox TV, when it first started its own network, ran a very good program on the Roswell UFO incident.  She was working at JPL and had just completed tracking down German hacker who created the first ever digital worm launched through ARPANET (now called the Internet).  She's a very clever woman.  She's probably the most intelligent woman I have ever known. In my eyes at the time (and still) a very credible source. She was bothered by the Fox TV show, as she worked at JPL and nobody told her anything about UFOs. She knew there were magnetic tapes of Mars in the tape vault that she didn't have access to, even as the system administrator of JPL.  She asked her dad about it the Fox show, he told her "UFOs are real".  And for me, then a Christian fundamentalist, I had some questions I needed answered about my theology.  It was the beginning of my awakening. What did a savior mean in a Universe teaming with life?  Heck most Christians now think non-Christians on earth are going to hell, how the heck are they going to deal with life on other planets?  Can you understand why some might be hostile to the idea of ET life? Can you see why they can only come up with one explanation for ETs, demons! Their range of possibilities is very narrow.  Everyone will need patience as they adjust to a new world.  Don't hate them, almost all of them are very good people, although some of their leaders are less than honorable. They don't want to change their beliefs. They hold those abstract concepts like precious little children, but they are not children, they are just abstract concepts. I know, I have been in those shoes.  They will cope and adapt.