“I always thought I was a cynic,” author and journalist Gary Webb told me, “but my colleagues insisted I was an idealist.”
We were talking about the power of the national security state which has evolved since World War II and which had punished Webb for exposing the links between drug trafficking by the CIA, illegal funding for the Contras, and the introduction of crack cocaine into American cities. Webb was attacked by newspapers long connected to the intelligence establishment and his career derailed after his newspaper, The San Jose Mercury News, retracted the story. He has since expanded his articles into a book, Dark Alliance, with additional documentation.When the CIA acknowledged that it had used drug dealers and in fact had a dispensation to do so through the Department of Justice of the Reagan-Bush administration, the response in a more perfect world might have been an outcry. In a more perfect world, the newspapers that unfairly attacked him might have apologized. There might have been a little noise.
Instead, there was silence.
The silence of the lambs.
A cynic, Webb illustrates, is a disappointed idealist. Realists are never disappointed. Realists choose reality to be exactly as it is. When it turns out to be that way, well … what’s the question?
We’re disappointed only when there’s a gap between the way it is and the way we believe it can be. But there are assumptions hidden in there, that we can do something about the way it is, that consciousness is not merely a mirror but an engine of transformation, and that our energy, directed by will and intention in accordance with our highest values, really can alter the field on which humankind works and plays.
“I had no illusions,” Webb said. “I knew what they would do. These are people who lie for a living and think they’re above the law. They’re professionals at neutralizing enemies.”
Webb was attacked for things he never said, but when it turned out that he was right, nobody seemed to remember.
Intentional forgetting is not accidental. One of the illusions we still hold is that “history” is not designed, despite the sophisticated creation of pseudo-environments that wave our minds like flags aligned in a strong wind. Short-term memory is filled to the brim with irrelevancies and the time, inclination and discipline to do the work that uncovers the truth is in short supply.
Two recent books – “The Missing Times: News Media Complicity in the UFO Cover-up” by Terry Hansen and “UFOs and the National Security State” by Richard M. Dolan illuminate from the specialized perspective of UFO studies how effective, thorough, and well-executed the national security state has become in managing memory and forgetfulness, creating false memories called “history,” and teaching the sheep to heed their masters’ voice.
I once interviewed a woman I know well about a UFO sighting. Publicity or gain was far from her mind. Like most witnesses, she would speak only behind closed doors. She described an unconventional flying object hovering over a power plant on a back road in North Carolina in the 1970s. The physical details of her description were familiar – there were many sightings like it at the time – but I was fascinated by the way her mind negotiated with its own experience. “I couldn’t have seen it,” she said. “But I did. I know what I saw. I couldn’t have seen … but I saw … well I saw a flying saucer.”
That’s the way the human mind negotiates with its experience when it doesn’t want to believe it. When our experience has been the subject of ridicule, debunking, and threats of career-ending punishment for fifty years, it’s difficult to find our public voice. As a commercial airline pilot told me, “We talk about it among ourselves, but no one makes reports. We know what happens when you say something in public.”
The doctor who first defined battered child syndrome would speak to medical groups and afterward, there was always silence. No one asked questions in public. But later in the hallway, someone would approach him and say, “You know, I saw something like that in ER. Do you suppose …?”
Once we begin to ask the right questions, we are on the trail of the truth. Those who determine our models of understanding determine the questions that we ask. Then they don’t have to worry about the answers.
When I allude to UFO phenomena in a speech, a member of the audience often waits until others have left, then says, “I want to tell you what happened to me.” They often sound ashamed, having been taught that what they experienced happens only to crackpots and charlatans. They sound like people who were battered but still feel responsible for their abuse.
When secrecy is used to maintain the power of those holding the secrets, we inevitably develop a black market in truth. We may pay a higher price for reality but at least we know the goods are the real thing.
Stephen Northcutt, a computer security professional, told me the “open source” society of hackers gives them a leg up. Habituated to sharing knowledge with one another, the hacker community learns more and faster than the “professional” security community that hasn’t learned how to share information.
Hacking in its essence is the ability, will and intention to gather scraps of knowledge in the shadows and knit them into coherent scripts so a small trusted community can become a network of real power. That’s a model for building the truth in the shadow of the national security state. That’s really the only defense we little lambs have when our shepherds believe they can manage our lives better than we can and keep us behind electric fences on digital reservations.
The truth is hiding in plain sight. But the truth is not a tender little lamb, it’s a tiger crouching in the jungle, eyes glowing, waiting for its prey.
