Life in the Stars

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Corso also argues that there are two space programs: the one that we read about and the one that is already using off-planet technology recovered and reverse-engineered for advanced military and commercial purposes-including a Star Wars system he claims has already been deployed to fend off extraterrestrials.

Richard M. Dolan, author of UFOs and the National Security State: An Unclassified History, Volume One 1941-1973 (Keyhole Publishing, 2000), says it's difficult to follow up on claims such as Corso's because, while classified documents created by government agencies can occasionally be ferreted out, proprietary information held by businesses and global corporations is hard to come by. Since the military and the federal government rely on subcontractors to do some of their most sensitive work, using special-access projects (SAPs) and unacknowledged special-access projects (USAPs), secrets are easier to keep. Dolan's next work, scheduled for publication in early 2007, will explore the history of SAPs and USAPs since 1973.

Writing on his website, author and astrophysicist Bernard Haisch points out that a SAP 'is for programs considered to be too sensitive for normal classification measures. . . . They are protected by a security system of great complexity. Many of the SAPs are located within industry funded through special contracts.' Much of his analysis is based on 'In Search of the Pentagon's Billion-Dollar Hidden Budgets,' an article by Bill Sweetman in the highly regarded British publication Jane's International Defence Review.

'Even members of Congress on appropriations committees (the Senate and House committees that allocate budgets) and intelligence committees are not allowed
to know anything about these programs,' Haisch writes. 'Moreover, Freedom of Information Act requests cannot penetrate unacknowledged special access programs.'
In Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (HarperCollins, 2004), New Yorker contributor Seymour Hersh reports that one SAP, used to recruit operatives, has been linked to military torture in Iraq. The desired effect is the same: to avoid scrutiny and sidestep opposing elements that exist in the CIA and Pentagon.

'The granddaddy of all USAPs is the UFO/ET matter,' writes Steven Greer in his book Extraterrestrial Contact: The Evidence and Implications (Crossing Point, 1999). Greer-who says USAPs are a top-secret, compartmentalized project that not even the commander in chief has the power to access-founded the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI). Since the early '90s, working under the assumption that the USAP model exists, Greer and CSETI associates have met often with high-level officials of the U.S. and other governments, including former CIA director James Woolsey.

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