DULCE BASE CONFERENCE ENDS: A FULL REPORT
By Norio Hayakawa
3-30-09
DULCE, NEW MEXICO -- Close to 120 people showed up for the first "underground base" conference ever to be held in Dulce, New Mexico on Sunday, March 29.
The event made a rather tumultuous start at the Best Western Jicarilla Inn at 10 a.m. By that time the entire bar lounge area began to be filled beyond capacity.
And by the time the first speaker (former Dulce ranch owner, Edmund Gomez) began his presentation, many people had to stand and wait in the adjacent restaurant area. It was then that the Fire Department issued a warning saying that the conference must immediately be moved elsewhere.
Halfway through the speaker's fascinating presentation, the Fire Department issued a stern second warning saying that the number of people inside the conference room far exceeded its capacity.
Panic then began to be felt by the event's organizer, Norio Hayakawa of Rio Rancho. Hotel employees frantically made phone calls to find out if there were any other locations available for the conference to go on.
It was then that Hoyt Velarde, former Dulce police officer and head of Public Safety Department, suggested to Hayakawa that the conference be moved to a civic hall inside a small shopping center across the street from the hotel.
With Velarde's swift assistance in making the arrangement, and after a short intermission, the entire Dulce Base: Fact or Fiction? conference and public forum finally resumed and continued the rest of the day at the new location.
As an interesting side note, on Sunday morning when it was still dark outside, many guests at the Best Western Jicarilla Inn were awakened shortly before 6 a.m. by a thunderous roar of blades of helicopters above. Local residents nearby reported that there was a rare low flight of two military helicopters above Dulce.
In the afternoon session of the conference, two local residents also testified that they witnessed the military helicopters circling above Dulce and that they passed slowly above the hotel. They told Hayakawa that there are occasional appearances of military helicopters over the town but the flights were never as low as what they saw early Sunday morning.
As organizer and moderator of this conference, Hayakawa several times alluded to an allegation that the government, beginning in the early 1970s and lasting till the early 1980s, may have conducted clandestine operations in the area involving experiments with bovine diseases, anthrax and other substances as part of biological warfare research.
He also alluded to another allegation that there may also have been some illegal dumping or storage of toxic chemicals and other bio-hazardous materials in the nearby areas.
Hayakawa stated that he tends to support a theory that the government may have purposefully created some 'convenient' cover stories (underground alien base concept) to conceal those clandestine activities and may even have staged a series of fake 'UFO-type' incidents in the area, utilizing high tech equipment such as holographic projection devices.
However he also stated that he cannot deny any possibility that there may indeed be some unknown interdimensional phenomenon in the area which happens to be filled with fascinating cultural and spiritual beliefs of the Jicarilla Apache nation.
The speakers at the conference and their main points expressed were as follows:
Edmund Gomez, spokesman for the entire Gomez family who owned a large ranch in Dulce said that their ranch lost more than 17 cows during the height of cattle mutilations incidents and experienced substantial financial loss over the years. Gomez stated that gas masks were found near the mutilation sites and that specific cows were each tracked with phosphorescent markings a few days before the mutilations actually took place. He is convinced that this was done by the government and that no aliens were involved. He asserted that the government was conducting some type of germ warfare experiments. He concluded by stating that there is definitely a governmental underground facility there.
Hoyt Velarde, former Dulce police officer and head of Public Safety Department asserted that he has not located the base yet but it is an undeniable fact that there have been (and still are) many UFO sightings in the area. Velarde even suggested that he is willing to organize an escorted group expedition soon for the public to the top of the Archuleta Mesa if such a request is made in earnest. He surprised the attendees also by saying that another conference on this topic could even be held next time in the conference hall of the Police Department there. Hayakawa said that he may consider this offer.
Gabe Valdez, former New Mexico state patrol officer in charge of the Dulce area stated that he investigated numerous cattle mutilation cases in the Dulce area from the mid 1970s to the early 1980s. He declared that this has nothing to do with aliens but that there is something there that is too sensitive for discussion and refused to further divulge what that was.
Christopher O' Brien, researcher of paranormal activities in the San Luis Valley of Southern Colorado asserted that Dulce may be a diversion for what is more importantly taking place in the San Luis Valley just north of northern New Mexico.
Dr.. Michael E. Salla, initiator of "exopolitics" and author of a book entitled EXPOSING U.S. GOVERNMENT POLICIES ON EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE expressed his belief that there is a joint US/alien underground bio-lab beneath the Archuleta Mesa and that this must be addressed as a serious human rights abuse issue.
Greg Bishop, author of PROJECT BETA, a book in which he describes in detail his investigations of the claims of an Albuquerque scientist by the name of Paul Bennewitz, said that Bennewitz was the initial source behind the rumors of the underground base in Dulce. Bishop asserted that Bennewitz was side tracked by an unofficial disinformation campaign to get him to look away from evidence of sensitive military projects going on in 1979 inside Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque. However, Bishop surprised everyone when he said at the end that he is now beginning to doubt his initial doubt about Dulce and concluded that there could indeed be something there.
Gabe Julian, former Dulce police officer who worked under the late Raleigh Tafoya, former Dulce Police Chief described his encounters with three metallic, oval-shaped object hovering at a tree-top level at a ranch in Dulce. He described how he was dispatched to the ranch house of a woman who claimed that small people with strange boxes emitting light were harassing her. Initially skeptical of what his radio dispatcher told him, he drove over to the area and was shaken up when he witnessed those hovering objects there.
Dennis Balthaser, a well-known UFO researcher from Roswell, New Mexico expressed his conviction that there is a US/alien joint biological laboratory and base under the Archuleta Mesa.
Keith Ealy, a researcher with a fascinating interpretation of Dulce as being a space time portal for interdimensionals amazed the audience with his close-up satellite imagery of Dulce Elementary School building. He told the audience that the contours of the parking lot resemble an ancient stone scupture in Bolivia. He concluded that the Dulce area is filled with interdimentional phenomenon, a topic similarly shared by world famous researchers, Dr. Jacques Vallee and John Keel.
UFO Hunters Debate Underground Base
By Raam Wong
The ABQ Journal
3-30-09 DULCE — UFO hunters came to this northern New Mexico town Sunday armed with satellite images, secret documents and grainy photos that they claim the government doesn't want you to see.
Packed inside a hotel bar, they had converged on Dulce to dig deep into the three-decade-old rumor about an underground alien-U.S. military base inside nearby Archuleta Mesa.
The conference — "Dulce Base: Fact or Fiction" — was organized by Rio Rancho resident Norio Hayakawa, who is described in a news release as a "retired funeral director and UFO researcher."
Hayakawa said he wanted to get to the bottom of the rumors, which have long circulated among conspiracy theorists and even some locals in Dulce, a town of some 3,000 people on Jicarilla Apache land.
The event, which saw some spillover from the 2009 UFO Conference in Aztec, had to be relocated to a conference room in a nearby grocery store because of the larger than expected turnout of about 100 people.
Area residents told of strange sightings in town, like military helicopters that seemed to disappear into the mesa, while a State Police officer described a rash of mysterious cattle mutilations several years ago.
The story of the underground base goes that, in 1967, the government exploded an atomic bomb about 25 miles south of Dulce to stimulate gas reservoirs. That detonation may have created some caverns beneath Dulce, enough space for aliens and military brass to rub elbows.
The Internet is rife with drawings of the purported subterranean base, complete with escalators and tube stop for subway rides to other below-the-surface stops.
An underground passageway is said to connect the base to Los Alamos National Laboratory. LANL officials insist that isn't so.
One participant at Sunday's event described finding a deep hole in the mesa floor with air spewing out of it. He said he believes it was an air vent for those working underground.
Debora Aragoncillo, a Santa Fe massage therapist, said she began attending UFO conferences after a series of vivid, out-of-this-world dreams.
"I've had some experiences in my life," she said. Aragoncillo described one dream in which she was in her home when some force began levitating her several feet off the ground as if she were being abducted.
The dream was so realistic, down to the smell of cat urine in her home's carpet, that it could only have been the real thing. "It was as real as day," she said.
Another participant used the online program Google Earth to pore over satellite images. He found something very curious about the parking lot of Dulce Elementary School.
If you rotate the image, zoom in and squint, the contours of the parking lot resemble an ancient stone sculpture in Bolivia. Coincidence? He wasn't saying.
But as for the joint alien/military base said to be a mile underground, several of the researchers had their doubts. There just isn't enough physical or eyewitness evidence, they said.
"Roswell's pretty factual, because of the eyewitnesses we've had," said researcher Dennis Balthaser, describing the alleged UFO crash in southern New Mexico. "But here you only have talk of underground facilities."
UFO researcher Greg Bishop said he believed the military was secretly pushing the false story of Dulce to distract attention from secret operations at Kirtland Air Force Base.
It was at that base where one nearby resident would frequently spot bright lights racing through the night sky in the 1980s, Bishop said. After hearing of the strange cattle mutilations up north, Bishop said, the man came to believe Dulce was a home base for spacecraft. He even claimed to have flown over one UFO crash sight near Dulce.
The Air Force may have been pushing the story, Bishop said, to keep the resident from discovering what was happening under his own nose.
Still, once a skeptic, Bishop said he has begun to think there just might be something to the Dulce legend.
"I have a doubt about my doubt," he said. "I think maybe there is something here."