Peter Panned

By Larry W. Bryant
Director of CAUS
(Citizens Against UFO Secrecy)
3-04-05

Doubt not that, when they first heard about the Peter Jennings Productions' UFOdrama, most seasoned UFOlogists exhaled a sigh of "so what?". Some of them, like me, chose a hope-for-the-best approach; in my case, this included my dispatching a prebroadcast e-plea to ABC TV's "Nightline" that one or more segments of THAT program be devoted to expanding upon Peter's would-be ground-breaking assessment of today's UFOworld (see text of my letter, below).

Now that the video-Peter-gram has been delivered and digested, I have only to say that my plea has morphed into a pan. Place no bets, dear TV viewer, that anyone at
"Nightline" will get around to providing a customized reply to my plea. And why should they? In their ballooning, self-satisfied hold on the public's short attention span, the ABC moguls needn't look any farther than such cookie-cutter productions as Jennings's for earning their paychecks. So long as they're willing to continue pandering to the Shallow Halls of Scientism as regards UFO reality -- and so long as the public accepts that status quo -- we can do little to open the eyes of those scientists beset by their own form of (intellectual) "sleep
paralysis."

If Jennings's languid UFOmercial has proved anything, it has proved, once again, that -- in Amerika's corporate-driven, codified society -- we UFOlogists can expect little solace (or enlightenment) from mainstream media, vis-a-vis the UFO problem.

TEXT OF L.W.B.'s 2/7/05 LETTER TO" NIGHTLINE":

TO: Mr. Tom Bettag, Executive Producer of "Nightline" (at ABC News)

As most of us in the UFO-research community eagerly await the airing of Peter Jennings's new documentary on the state of public UFO awareness (Feb. 24 at 8:00 p.m. EST), some of us would like to see "Nightline's" cameras zoom in on the "politics of UFOlogy" (as exemplified by our decades-long efforts to seek a full, unequivocal accounting from pertinent government officials as to what they REALLY know (and when they knew it) about UFO reality . . . and why they've chosen to suppress that knowledge from public view).

We're aware that at least once in the past -- several years ago -- "Nightline" did air a program devoted to this hot-potato subject, but it failed to dig far enough for that elusive gold at the end of the UFO-coverup rainbow. Now, with Mr. Jennings's attempt to defuse this sociopolitical/cultural taboo, "Nightline" can capitalize on the public edification thus gained -- by helping us ferret out and cultivate certain whistleblower-derived data, further insider contacts, deathbed confessions, and "leaked" documentation. You could start the process by querying certain congressional committee chairs about their behind-the-scenes activity on the UFO-coverup issue; you could assign a team of investigative reporters for producing follow-up programs; and you thereby could export the wealth and worth of Jennings's trench work in helping tell this, the greatest story ever never told.

Unfortunately, the field of serious, sustained UFO research -- along with the concomitant pursuit of full UFO freedom-of-official-information/accountability -- remains replete with missed opportunities. "Nightline" can help close that public-access gap by marshalling its worldwide resources as a force multiplier for UFOtruth. Peter Jennings has placed an ABC-News foot into the UFO inner sanctum's back door; now let us have you folks at "Nightline" boldly barge into the FRONT door!

Meantime, I thank you all at ABC News for affording me this(unmissed) opportunity to urge you to let ALL the UFO evidence speak for itself.

LARRY W. BRYANT
Director, Washington, D.C., Office of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (and author of the 2005 Galde Press, Inc., edition of "UFO Politics at the White House: Citizens Rally 'round Jimmy Carter's Promise")