UFO
group that offered briefings to GG pleased by pro-forma response
OTTAWA
(CP) - A UFO researcher who offered to brief Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean on the presence
of extraterrestrials is putting an optimistic spin on the pro-forma response he
received from her office.
Victor
Viggiani of Exopolitics Toronto, admits that the perfunctory reply could be seen
as a polite brush off, but he's taking it as more than that.
The
letter from the Governor General's office says Viggiani's concerns "would
be best addressed by the Canadian Space Agency and the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service."
"You
may wish to contact these organizations."
Said
Viggiani: "You could interpret it in one way as a standard response. But
we're interpreting it, I guess, in a positive way that we now have the Governor
General's OK to pursue this thing in the Canadian security service . . . with
her support.
"She's
giving us sort of, quote unquote, her permission, consent, tacit permission to
go forward with this."
In
an e-mail to supporters, Viggiani said his group had "received direction
from Jean's office to pursue this issue with Canada's space agency and CSIS."
The
retired Toronto school principal has been a dedicated supporter of UFO research
and a firm believer in extraterrestrials for years.
In
a May 17 letter to the Governor General, Viggiani offered a private briefing by
"citizen experts" including one-time Liberal defence minister Paul Hellyer.
Hellyer,
a 1960s minister, has said he is convinced that UFOs are real and are evidence
of extraterrestrial visitations.
He
spoke at a UFO convention two years ago.
Viggiani's
letter also asked: "Is Canada willing to be left behind the other G-7 countries
as they begin to examine both the historical and future implications of contact
with off-world civilizations?"
He
believes that shadowy government agencies - and some governments - are aware of
the existence of alien visitors and may actually have met them. He feels that
governments are on the brink of announcing the extraterrestrial presence.
He
also thinks that secret labs are reverse-engineering technology from crashed spacecraft
that could solve energy and pollution problems forever.
He
said he hopes the Governor General's letter will help him gain a high-level meeting
with either the security service or the space agency.
"Any
little bit of leverage that we can use to get people's attention in terms of who
we notify about this ... we feel that this is very important."
At
that meeting, he plans to lay out his group's documentation.
"What
we want to do with them is ... brief them on what we know ... and just see what
their response is."
He
said he wants to know if there is a legitimate reason for keeping the reality
of visiting aliens a secret.
"There
may be an issue regarding this extraterrestrial presence that we may not want
to know about," he said. "It may be something that's so clandestine
and so dangerous for the human race to know that that's one of the reasons they're
not releasing it.
"I'm
not saying that that is the case. My opinion is just the opposite. They know about
this and they're hiding it for other reasons."
Viggiani's
approach to the Governor General comes 60 years to the month after the legendary
incident credited with giving birth to the UFO phenomenon.
On
June 25, 1947, a businessman named Kenneth Arnold was flying his private plane
on a business trip near Mount Rainier, Wash., when he saw nine strange objects
in the sky.
He
told reporters later that they seemed to be able to fly faster than the speed
of sound - in a day before any aircraft had broken the sound barrier - and their
movement was like a "saucer" skipped over water.
Thus,
the phrase "flying saucer" entered the language. Within weeks, hundreds
of similar sightings were reported and thousands more have been recorded in the
last six decades.
Arnold
died in 1984 at the age of 69.
