... And then things got even weirder.

Events are escalating.

Within hours of Richard C. Hoagland's November 2-3 appearance on the Art Bell program and the posting of our SOHO/SETI article on this web site, Paul Dore, the engineer who first reported the anomalous signals from the direction of EQ Pegasi, suddenly cancelled his press conference that had been scheduled for Wednesday, the 4th of November.

He sent an e-mail outlining a story of threats and intimidation. First, two astronomer's scheduled to appear at his press conference called and cancelled with no explanation. Then three intelligence agents (one from NSA) showed up at his house while he was at work, and by their presence had terrified Dore's wife. He was subsequently told that what he had picked up was a secret "deep space" intelligence satellite, and he was coerced into signing a document that threatened him with prosecution if he spoke about it.

Clearly, the astronomers were "gotten to" by the same intel-types who visited Dore. Additionally, this all took place as US Defense Secretary William Cohen, who had yesterday cut short his Asia visit to return to Washington D.C. for an emergency meeting of national security advisors to the president, suddenly about faced and headed to the Middle East. He arrived in London almost simultaneously as these events were taking place at Dore's residence.

From a distance, this appears to an attempt to buy time, a SETI version of the JPL "catbox" image of the Face on Mars. It won't fool anyone who has a radio telescope or has seen the data, but will probably satisfy the "nit-witness news" types at the networks and seems only intended for public consumption.

This posting also brings into question both the honesty and integrity of the conventional SETI research. Remember, Seth Shostak and spokesman for several other SETI teams had flatly argued from the beginning that there was no signal. Even in the face of the cancellation of Dore's press conference, his story confirms that there was in fact an artificial signal. It's hard to believe, but evidently a few widespread amateur's have the goods over a massively funded NASA sponsored program.

This "Set's Eye" program of supposedly honest and highly competent professionals clearly has no clothes. Even ignoring the credibility of the "secret satellite" story (we'll get to that in a minute), SETI dropped the ball. Since the signal is real, (which we already knew) that makes the SETI establishment either liars or idiots. There is no other logical conclusion or mitigating circumstance. I wonder what the private funders of this NASA "front" will think about their multimillion dollar investment being scooped by a bunch backyard stargazers?

Later, a new posting on the EQ Pegasi web site, ostensibly from an Australian hacker, showed images supposedly "lifted" from the SETI web site. It showed data from the September observations, described as "anomalous" by SETI researchers, and showed a clear signal at 1210 MHz. The posting pointed out that NASA's computers and SETI's line were directly linked, in spite of the "propaganda" to the contrary. It also revealed the site that the data had been culled from, listed as:

VGER.SETI-INST.EDU 204.31.95.7 HERTZ.SETI-INST.EDU 198.120.9.5 MX.NSI.NASA.GOV 128.102.18.31

Now, my efforts to get through to this site have gone for naught. But there still seems to be a hint of something curious in the domain name itself. The first word, "VGER" just happens to be the name of the alien probe from "Star Trek - The Motion Picture".

You may recall that VGER, an enormous probe that headed directly for Earth at amazing speed, only to stunningly decelerate into Earth orbit, began as a mythical "Voyager 6" and then mutated into an alien form. It seems a strange name for a web site devoted to storing data from a "non-hit", don't you think?

There are also numerous problems with the "secret satellite" explanation. For one thing the drift of the signal makes no sense. If it is a secret encrypted signal, then its daily movement is far to small (only about 1- 1.5 MHz) to be very hard to find. If it is supposed to be in a stable orbit with a steady signal, then that kind of movement is far too great to be make any sense.

But most telling is the Aussie image. It is far fainter than the recent Dore signals, and the Japanese hit is even stronger. Dore's original professional assesment was that it was a navigational beacon, and a navigational ping that gets stronger over time means only one thing -- it's getting closer! Now, there is no such thing as a conventional technology satellite that moves with the appearant closing speed of this thing. Whatever it is, we best get ready for it.

And then ABC news posted the results of tonight's election -- 24 hours early! They claimed that they were merely running a test of their vote counting system, but so far the results are shockingly accurate. In the face of an onrushing probe, are we now to ask whether or not our elections are even real?

As if that wasn't enough, we then received a fax from someone who had visited the SDAC web site home of "they_killed".jpg. He found another image which did not seem to belong.

The posting date, 12 November 1995, indicates it refers to the contentious government shutdown of that period. What this was doing on a NASA site is hard to determine, but it is also eerily reminiscent of yet another story we have been following.

Recently there has been some controversy over a series of executive orders issued by President Bill Clinton. If you are not familiar with EO's, they are directives from the President to administer the agencies that fall under the executive branch. These are not subject to approval by congress, and automatically become law. The controversy arose over the language of EO13083, signed quietly by Clinton when he was in Birmingham, England last May 14th for the G-8 summit. The order concerns federalism and states rights, and Clintons version revokes a previous order by President Reagan. What is so chilling about Clinton's version is that it removes or overrides Reagan's language that protects states from regulations imposed by federal agencies without the approval of congress. It also cedes all power not specifically listed in the constitution to the federal government, a direct contradiction of the constitution which places such unspecified powers in the hands of the states. Responding to the controversy, congress passed a resolution asking President Clinton to revoke the order. Instead, he suspended the order on August 5th, 1998 for 90 days. This means it becomes law (unless congress challenges it) on November 6th, this Friday.

But that is not nearly as bad as the Defense Resources EO. This EO places stunning powers in the hands of FEMA (remember their weird commercials?) in the event of a declaration of National Emergency. Among other things, it gives the President power to seize the nations food supply, water resources, stop all travel within the United States, and confiscate any private property it deems necessary. It also grants the power to hire "consultants" without compensation - essentially slave labor, for any reason.

Besides the obvious questions as to the necessity of such draconian and unconstitutional measures, it seems evident that they are designed to be used in just the kind of emergency outlined in the SOHO paper.

The EO's take their power from the Emergency War Powers Act of 1933, which was passed because the "New Deal" was flatly unconstitutional. Since then, every president has continued the state of emergncy for one reason or another. If you search the White House web site, you will find that we are currently under several contiguous states of emergency. My favorite was the ongoing threat posed by the nation of Montenegro. This means that these EO's can be implemented with a simple phone call from the president. He does not even need to notify congress. It was this power that allowed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to place Americans into concentration camps in World War 2.

Oh and November 6th? That's the day that "The Siege" opens, a new movie about life in the United States under martial law. The slogan for the film is: "On November 6th, our freedom is history."

See. I told you it was getting weird ...