An Alienable Right to Know About UFOs

As a public service and because young people are usually too small to do me physical harm, I occasionally like to analyze their views.

A few days ago, I received the following letter from Andrew David Cole, age 12, who lives in Lutherville, Md.

“Dear Mr. Simon,” he begins. “The most terrifying aspect of the UFO phenomenon doesn’t come out of the skies. It’s not on a wheat field in England. It doesn’t abduct people for goodness-knows-what purpose. It’s our own government, as well as those of other countries.

“For many years, the U.S. government has withheld from its citizens, or so it seems, at least as much UFO information as it has released.”

An articulate young man, I think you will agree. And it made my heart swell with pride to discover that our grammar schools are teaching our young people to be as dizzy and paranoid as their parents.

Andrew continues: “People present when UFOs have landed and when beings emerged from them have been threatened by government agents that, if they don’t move away and/or if they tell anyone about the event, physical harm will come to them.”

Well, now, Andrew, this is where I would like to interrupt you for a moment. It is very important to distinguish between fiction and fact, especially in our mass media society where the distinction is sometimes blurred.

So remember: UFOs, witches, hobgoblins, Elvis sightings, Murphy Brown and Dan Quayle are all fiction. Death, taxes and more profiles of Ross Perot are all inevitable facts.

Got that? OK, let’s go on with your letter: “In the 1950s, a UFO crashed near an Army base in the Southwest and, nationwide, articles were written about it in the newspapers. . . . Once, in another desert in the Southwest, a different UFO crashed, and a family went to investigate. . . . “

Let me stop you once again, Andrew. You raise a point about UFOs that I have never understood. They are built by superior creatures from civilizations far more advanced than our own. They have traveled unimaginable distances in order to meet us. So tell me this: Why do they pick such goofy places to land?

Why is it always a “Southwest desert” or some remote stretch of tundra near the Arctic Circle or in a swamp in south Georgia? Why don’t they land in Central Park in New York City? Or on “Donahue”?

OK, back to Andrew’s letter: “ . . . a different UFO crashed and a family went to investigate. When they got there, they found four alien creatures. Two dead, one dying, and the fourth still standing, having suffered apparently little damage.

“The standing alien was taken back to the military headquarters, where it lived for a few years before dying of an unknown illness. I think out of all the countries in the world, Belgium is the only one that makes public all its UFO information.”

Exactly my point, Andrew. Belgium is the world geographic equivalent of a swamp in south Georgia. Whoever heard of anything important happening in Belgium except the occasional soccer riot or the recent disappearance of 250 hectares of downtown Brussels in a bright blue flash?

“We try to live in harmony with other organisms on this planet,” the letter continues, “so why not do the same with other planets? It’s basically the same thing. Humans could openly visit whoever’s out there, and they could openly visit us. Why is the government trying to prevent that?”

Well, Andrew, I can think of three reasons:

1. Our economy would be thrown into chaos trying to keep up with the exchange rate on Martian pesos.

2. The Andromeda Nebula might demand one of the two new NFL expansion teams.

3. The crab creatures of Altair Six smell funny.

There is another possibility, Andrew, perhaps one even a student as bright as you did not anticipate: Perhaps that one alien creature that survived the crash in the Southwest did not later die “of an unknown illness.”

Perhaps that was just a cover story. Perhaps that creature escaped, assumed human shape and has lived among us to study our ways.

Perhaps he has the ability to cloud minds and bend us to his will. And perhaps he sits in the White House today, confident of reelection!

I can think of no other explanation.