--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Facing danger, UFO bureaucrats engage a cloaking device
Byline: Lionel Van Deerlin. Copley News Service
10/18/93
THE LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

The possibility of extraterrestrials _ of intelligent life on
nearby planets or in other galaxies _ remains one of mankind's most
enduring tenets, though lacking supportable evidence.
Hardly a month goes by without a UFO sighting somewhere. The
true believers gather regularly in massive encampments to fortify
their faith through shared experience. Their hopes often are
nourished by shameless frauds spinning tales of "documented
landings," of cryptogrammic messages, 27-inch men and things that
go bump in the night.
Given enough zealots, almost any such quest will find friends
within government. Thus it was that our National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, an agency charged with probing the unknown,
launched a program some years ago that would sweep the skies for
strange or unexplained signals from outer space. Congress happily
provided money to underwrite the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence, as NASA labeled it.
SETI began modestly enough, but quickly blossomed to a
projected 10-year, $100 million program utilizing the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. And last year, on the
500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' voyage, NASA really
whooped things up. It unveiled a new 1,000-foot antenna dish in
Puerto Rico and a "deep space tracking station" at Goldstone, in
the Southern California desert.
These facilities were said to be capable of detecting the
faintest signals from distant civilizations, should any exist. But
the press agentry accompanying all this was really pretty dumb _
and its timing terrible, we now see _ for an agency employing so
many smart scientists. It happens that a suddenly cost-conscious
Congress had eliminated the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence from NASA's fiscal 1993 budget.
So how come the press releases and all that new tracking gear?
Richard H. Bryan, a first-term U.S. senator from Nevada who
serves on the space subcommittee of Commerce, Science and
Transportation, determined to find out. He discovered that in its
craving to continue the search for life in astral outposts, NASA
had indulged in some decidedly earthy tactics.
Inasmuch as Sen. Bryan had been in on the 1992 fight to end
SETI, his surprise may be imagined upon discovering a $12.3 million
item buried in this year's budget _ for an outlay covering
precisely the same research.
Except that NASA had given it a new name.
And what a whopper it was, even among government agencies given
to Gordian-like nomenclature. The Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence had become _ hang onto your hat _ the "Towards Other
Planetary Systems/High Resolution Microwave Survey."
Reared in Las Vegas, Bryan had doubtless witnessed some
monumental bluffs at the gaming tables. But this high-chips ploy by
NASA seemed to top them all.
"The response of the bureaucracy has been not only instructive
but intriguing," he said on the Senate floor, "intriguing in terms
of the creativity and tenaciousness with which programs, once
authorized, can last forever."
What had happened illustrates all too well the way business
often moves on Capitol Hill. The authorizing committees of House
and Senate had decided last year that a search for life in outer
space could no longer be justified in a strapped economy. Its
termination was thereafter approved by both houses as a part of
legislation signed by President Bush.
But then came NASA's sleight-of-hand, aided by friends within
the appropriations committees. Their pet project was renamed as
noted, buried a little deeper in the budget and _ presto! _ the
sweep for alien radio signals went forward as if E.T. himself were
in charge.
NASA's formidable lobbying team must have cringed during Senate
debate on Sept. 22, as the Nevada senator quietly exposed their
hitherto unidentified flying fakery. Recalling the record vote more
than a year earlier by which many in Congress thought they had
ended the hunt for other worlds, Bryan said:
"One can quarrel with our judgment, but (it was) that this
program should be eliminated. That was a pronouncement of the
Congress of the United States, signed into law by the president.
The process was circumvented, in effect, by recasting this as a
`high resolution microwave survey.' The appropriations committee
put money into the program, cast in a new name.
"This contributes to the public skepticism and cynicism about
the way we do our business."
NASA had its defenders that day, but only 23 senators _ fewer
than one in four _ voted against Bryan's amendment to delete the
star sweep once and for all, no matter what anyone chooses to call
it.
A House-Senate conference committee agreed to the cut, and NASA
has reluctantly sent pink slips to its Caribbean and California
listening posts.
"We have some people here who have worked 15 years on this," a
glum project manager at the Jet Propulsion Lab told Associated
Press.
"Now all of a sudden it's gone, and I think that's tragic."
Tragic? Well, strange to say the least _ that ears trained to
intercept galactic messages couldn't decode the plainly stated word
from Washington. ===========================================================================


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