I believe that SERPO was a disinfo ploy. How convenient that they used a dead man (Sagan) as one of the players. Some of the counterintel people in the Bennewitz saga came back to the table to have another go-’round. For what purpose I do not know, but I have a suspicion it had to do with intercepted messages, all having to do with some sort of defense technology. When I get more info, I’ll post it here.

By the way, I’m reading your Body Snatchers book now. Most interesting stuff!

Re the FBI file link on Sagan: if you go back to the original post, and on the 5th line down are the words “FBI’s file”. This is a direct link to the page of the FBI’s official website where you can find the file. As you’ll see on that page, there is a link after the description of the file. Click on the link and it will open the FBI file in PDF format.

There are a lot of interesting files on the FBI’s website in PDF format now - including their files on ESP, Spontaneous combustion, cattle mutes, Silas Newton (of Aztec UFO crash infamy), UFOs, Wilhelm Reich, Nicola Tesla, MJ12, and much more.

Nick, can you post a link or give directions to that FBI report you cited, please? I’d be interested in taking a look at whatever is available.

A week or two ago I asked you for your impressions on the whole SERPO story at which time you indicated you leaned heavily in favor of it being a disinformation ploy. One of the things the SERPO source(s) allege is that Sagan signed off on the alleged astronauts US astronauts’ final report. In particular, that struck me as odd because there is so much quasi-religious material contained in their reports about the…Serponians? They indicated having absolute knowledge in a divine creator as I recall.

On the other hand, some time back I read an account given by Sagan’s wife describing her last hours with him before he died. I wish I could recall the site I read it on. In any case, she said that there was no “death bed” conversion to the possibility of an after life, and that as they looked into each others’ eyes it was clear (at least to her) that he was utterly convinced it would be for the last time; that when he was gone he really would cease to exist in any form but memories of those still living.

I do agree with Kenn that he had a somewhat smug attitude about him, but if anyone has ever been to Cornell they would find that attitude to be the rule rather than the exception. In the eyes of many, perhaps most of the Cornell elite, God does not make a move in the universe without first running it by the Cornell Board of Directors for approval. Which is odd. I was always under the impression God got authorization from BYU. Guess things have changed since my college days!

I don’t know how it is in the UK, but over here it is often difficult to make direct contact by mail, phone or even e-mail with public figures. The best that could be hoped for without hiring professional help to obtain a viable address would be to send correspondence to him through the university or his publishers, and the vast majority of that would get screened out before reaching Sagan. Perhaps the letter you cited somehow got through the various layers of insulation and into his hands. All on its own that would probably be enough to send the man into paranoid shock.

I have always been quite skeptical of Carl Sagan. Like that other Parade Magazine intellectual, Marilyn Vos Savant, I even wonder if “Sagan” is his real name. The savoir faire of Vos Savant; Sagan the great sage. Just seems like a media-made image, and a smug one at that.

In the Steamshovel anthology Popular Alienation, I reprinted the report in Star and Stripes from November 26, 1962 that included Carl Sagan’s surmise that alien civilizations maintain an observation base on the back side of the moon.