JOSEPH BURKES MD 2022
Contact Activists faced a number of challenges in the 1990s. These included surveillance during fieldwork, the possibilities of “psychotronic attacks” and the limited resources of our small networks of volunteers. PART 1 OF 2 PARTS
The New Year 1995 did not bring in much cheer in terms of CE-5 operations. My 1995 New Year’s resolution obliged me to review the previous year’ s research results. With the exception of the July 7, 1994, filming of the Fox Broadcasting’s “Encounters” television program about CSETI, our local Working Group had not truly accomplished a great deal. The CSETI Director had led our local team that night. and we were blessed with the appearance of highly anomalous nocturnal lights which the Fox film crew was able to record.
The Los Angeles CE-5 team was not making much progress and I faced challenges at home.
My Working Group had gone out into the field as a team no more than five or six times during the previous year. The devastating February 1994 earthquake could be partially blamed for the decreased research activities. Although no one in our group had suffered major damage to home or limb, the social disruption to the entire region was considerable. Many individual members started to wonder if they should move out of Southern California. I for one had traveled to the North Carolina and New Mexico with the concern that Los Angeles was no longer a very safe place for my family and therefore it might be time to relocate. Trying to convince my wife Yael to pick up and leave however was another thing entirely.
Since arriving from Israel in 1966, the city of the angels was the only home Yael really ever knew. She was born in Palestine under the British mandate. When Yael was 3 years old her father participated in the Independence War. He assisted a Zionist terror organization known as the Irgun. Yael recalls the bombing of Tel Aviv and crying with her sister Judy while huddled in a bomb shelter. During the fighting Yael and Judy were evacuated for several months to a kibbutz. There they lived among German Jewish children who had survived the holocaust. At the age of three, Yael learned to speak German. Being so young and separated from her parents however was very traumatic for her. Given this psychological stress at such a tender age, it is not surprising that my wife has no memory of how she learned German, a language she can understand and speak to this day.
Given this tumultuous childhood, it is easy to understand why Yael would not want to leave Los Angeles. After living in Southern California for over 25 years, she had several close friends, and a few good contacts in the art world. Most importantly she loved our newly renovated home. All this and more made her adamantly oppose any plans to relocate. Her spit level, 600 square foot studio, with a lovely view of Santa Monica Mountains, was known among her fellow women artists as “a studio to kill for.” The thought of leaving LA for some backwaters town in North Carolina or New Mexico triggered the response of, “No way, no how!” Thus, I was prevented from making any concrete plans to escape from Los Angeles. In the month of January 1995, I felt trapped in LA. A more disturbing development in the CE-5 Initiative darkened my gloomy mood.
Missing Time Events in the Human Initiated Contact Network
On December 26th, 1993, at 6AM I sat dazed in Misha’s Nissan Maxima waiting for something to happen. I am left with only fragments of what transpired over the subsequent hour. It was during this time that Misha believes he was taken on board an ET spacecraft. Our experience was part of a series of missing time events that occurred that month across the entire Western US CE-5 network. Contact activist Ron Russell reported an hour missing time in Denver. Wayne Peterson of the Phoenix CE-5 Working Groups described two episodes of missing time for his team of seven while doing fieldwork in the desert.
Years later as I think over the events of that cold winter morning of December 26th, 1993, I am struck by the absolute strangeness of it all. Like so many other UFO experiencers, I find no solace in scientific conventional wisdom that the human mind, in defense against psychologically traumatic events, can readily forget an hour, a day perhaps even months or years. The physiological mechanism by which this is accomplished is unknown to contemporary medical science. For those of us in Contact Underground, we readily speculate that an advanced civilization’s medical knowledge may have already deciphered the mysteries of human memory. With such knowledge, a psychotronic extraterrestrial technology may have been operational here on Earth and targeting human consciousness for centuries. At least this is the way it might work in theory. Theoretical considerations aside, the reality of leading CE-5 Initiative team during the beginning of 1995 was challenging. This was especially so in the face of all these uncertainties concerning missing time and conflicts with Yael about leaving Los Angeles.
Astounding Human Initiated Contact Events in Mexico
There was another development that was both exciting and disturbing at the same time. A telephone report from Shari just a few weeks earlier in the middle of December 1994 had rocked me. She described an incredible CSETI encounter during the Rapid Mobilization Investigative Team’s, (RMIT) fieldwork in Monterey Mexico. It was inspiring to say the least. At the local level, however, things were less than sensational. I could not help but make the comparison.
The RMIT under Steven Greer and Shari Adamiak’s leadership had spectacular success in Mexico in 1993. I was with them and two others when an over one-hundred-foot triangular shaped craft was attracted to our research site. While signaling back at our team, it amazingly hovered silently less than a quarter of a mile away. The Monterrey RMIT in 1994, again headed up by Dr Greer and Shari, had even greater success. According to her report a large “ET” spacecraft had hovered just a few hundred feet above the team. For close to two hours Dr. Greer and Shari had reportedly conducted a meeting on the ground with a representative of “Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” While their Mexican drivers at a safe distance reportedly witnessed the encounter in amazement, a holographic like projection of an “extraterrestrial” being conducted telepathic communication with the CSETI leaders. (Link to this astounding report is provided at the end of this narrative.) Shari told me of this encounter via phone just a few days after her return to Denver where she resided. It was the week before Christmas 1994.
I distinctly remember thinking that this was an escalation of the contact process and would possibly have important implications for the local CE-5 Working Groups. I was afraid that those forces opposed to contact with non-human intelligence of a presumed ET origin, might start going after the grass roots research teams. My concerns were based on the following considerations.
Harassment in the form of Possible “Psychotronic Attacks”
Throughout 1994 Dr. Greer, Shari Adamiak and others had reported increasing surveillance. These activities appeared to be conducted by professional intelligence agents. Frank harassment in the form of what the CSETI director had characterized as “psychoelectronic attacks” had also reportedly taken place. In October of 1994 while carrying out field work near Roswell New Mexico, a CSETI team consisting of Greer, Adamiak and others picked up what they considered were definite signs of surveillance. Using advanced consciousness techniques employed by the Center, Shari Adamiak entered a kind of out-of-body state to attempt mental contact with non-human intelligence. As described by the RMIT report, Shari was horrified to discover that she could not return to her body. She panicked and somehow Greer while in the “astral” phase was able to rally to her assistance and mentally guide her back to her regular “in body” conscious state. The official narrative on the New Mexico research asserted that this extremely unpleasant experience was deemed to be the result of “psychoelectronic” weapons’ technology. I was quite surprised at the time of publication by the report’s candor. Up until this October 1994 CSETI RMIT New Mexico report, there was no public speculation about the possible targeting of CSETI leaders. For almost a year however Greer had been alerting our network of difficulties in this area.
For example, in the winter of 1994, just a few weeks following the Northridge Earthquake Greer visited Los Angeles. He addressed a meeting of CSETI members only held at my house. I’ll never forget that night because Steven Greer described to his close supporters a particularly horrendous episode of alleged psi mediated attack. What follows is based on Dr. Greer’s account.
In the Fall of 1993, Steven Greer MD reportedly conducted a series of high-level briefings on the worldwide UFO situation. In New York City while resting in his hotel room at night, he reported to the CE-5 Working Group Coordinators that he suddenly became paralyzed by some unknown mechanism. He reportedly was able to breath, but not do much else. The attack occurred just a day before he was supposed to meet with someone who Greer described as “a European head of state.” According to the CSETI Director, while being incapacitated by the presumed psychoelectronic attack, a corner of the hotel room was filled with what he could only describe as “the presence of terrible evil.” Greer reportedly was terrified but was unable to flee.
Frozen in place before the menace, he described mounting a psychic defense by reportedly surrounding himself with white light. For what must have seemed like an eternity, Dr. Greer and the “presence” reportedly did something akin to “mental combat.” He stated that he finally “passed out” near sunrise. On awakening later that day, the sense of pure evil that had reportedly invaded the hotel room, was gone.
After hearing this account from the CSETI Director’s lips, my thoughts shifted to what might be the implications for local field group operations. As the CSETI Working Group Coordinator for Los Angeles, my primary concern as always was to preserve the safety of my team including myself.
Could the local CE-5 Working Groups Expect Similar Attacks?
Following the February 1994 meeting at my house, on the day of Dr Greer’s departure I accompanied him to LAX. We were alone together, waiting for his plane. I voiced my concerns in no uncertain terms. I did not relish the possibility that members of my Working Group would get cold feet after hearing such a frightful tale as he had described at my house. I asked the CSETI Director what guarantees could he offer my people that they would not be targeted. He looked me in the eyes and calmly replied the following: It was his assessment that only those activists at the level of the Rapid Mobilization Investigative Team, or Project Starlight (the precursor to the Disclosure Project) were likely to have problems such as had transpired in New York City and New Mexico.
What he said made sense to me at the time. I assumed that the highest level of contact with what I presumed were “extraterrestrials” would likely be only achieved by the RMIT under Dr Greer’s and Shari’s experienced leadership. Local Working Group teams were having limited success at best, far less than what might be expected from our organization’s (to use a baseball term) “heavy hitters.” For that reason, the local groups would most likely not be harassed.
Safety In Numbers Could not be Achieved back in the 1990s
I pondered what conditions might confer additional protection to my team. If a dozen or so Working Groups were going out into the field on a regular basis, disrupting their activities might present an adversary with a host of tactical problems. It seemed reasonable that there would be safety in numbers. The way to protect Working Group operations was to have as many teams as possible running around all at once and hopefully interacting with the intelligence responsible for the UFO phenomenon.
It was at that time so long ago, what might be viewed as a grandiose fantasy. Despite our best intentions, limited resources as often is the case, got the better of us. Simultaneous CE-5 fieldwork by many different teams at remote locations did take place during the 1990s. We were never able to get more than three groups out into the field at the same time. In my opinion the CE-5 Initiative network during 1994 -1995 was just too weak, and too poorly organized to handle the logistical details of such a larger coordinated effort. This is in contrast to the current situation in which dozens of CE-5 inspired contact teams are staging out Human Initiated Contact Events (HICE) in North America, the UK and elsewhere.
Thus, in the closing days of 1994 when Shari told me about her transformative encounter in the Mexican mountains near Monterey, I felt mixed emotions. I was happy to know that the RMIT was really going places. I felt worried that such success might precipitate more surveillance and possibly harassment of local CSETI Working Group activists. In light of subsequent events my worries appeared to be not entirely off base.
Surveillance at the Park was in Evidence.
It was the first week of 1995. I felt the need to do field work. Winter conditions with frequent storm gave a better guarantee that we would not have much company in Joshua Tree National Monument. Although it never snowed at the base of Queen Mountain, our usual site, temperatures could drop down into the thirties. With rain and high winds, a distinct probability, being exposed to the elements could get tricky. Getting a team of volunteers together just after the holiday season was no easy task. The few researchers from the initial group were still disposed to do field investigations. But most were too busy with work, household chores and other family responsibilities. “Misha” as always was ready to go. We needed, however, at least three researchers to make it an “official” CSETI outing. We lacked the necessary quorum. So once again just Misha and I drove out at night into the high desert. It was the dead of winter.
We chose a Saturday night, in early January. The worst storm of the season was blowing in from the Pacific. With my trustee four-wheel drive Isuzu, I imagined that I was ready for any kind of bad weather. At least so I thought. We turned off Interstate 10 and climbed up into mountains on highway 62. It was raining hard. We passed the small hill that was the site of our missing time experience some 13 months before. It stood like a sentry guarding the approach to the narrow gorge that led to higher elevations. Passing the 3000-foot level the rain turned to sleet. Driving became more difficult as the visibility decreased. If flooding of the road occurred, I counted on our 4WD to get us out of trouble.
Driving through the Yucca Valley the weather lightened up a bit. The downpour turned to a light rain. I breathed a sigh of relief. There had been reports of hail earlier in the day. It was well passed 9 PM when I made the turn on the access road leading towards Joshua Tree National Park. Misha and I drove in silence. The headlights illuminated countless Joshua Trees that stood like giants guarding the road. There was no traffic. Who in their right mind would be going camping during a predicted hailstorm?
The engine whined as we continue to climb towards the 4000-foot level. The windshield wipers pounded out a steady beat. The sounds of the rain, the engine and the thump, thump, thump of the wipers were hypnotic. Suddenly I saw a light on the road. It was a car driving into the park. Who could it be I wondered? The town’s folk were likely cozy at home under the covers waiting out the storm. I imagined fireplaces still adorned with holiday decoration. That would sure beat being out on a night like this.
I reckoned that the middle of winter during the worst storm of the season was not exactly prime time for sight-seeing in the park. Who were those guys in car in front of us? I accelerated to catch a peek of our traveling companion. The vehicle was a non-descript white sedan. It looked like a late model Chevy. As I attempted to close further, it accelerated away. I slowed down a bit, and the sedan appeared to do likewise keeping a safe 200 yards ahead. Naturally I became a little suspicious. It was nice however to have an escort lighting up the dark and slippery highway ahead. “Probably just some out-of-town tourists who can’t wait to see some Joshua Trees”, I mused. In my teenage son’s vernacular, I said. “Party on dudes!”
Once inside the park out excitement increased. We were anticipating contact. We quickly passed a white sedan parked in a rest area designated “Nature viewing Area.” We glanced at the car as we speed past. It looked like it might have been our “escort” from a few moments before. The vehicle’s lights were out, there was no one in sight. In the stormy darkness, there was no opportunity for viewing much of anything in the sky, or on the ground for that matter.
The mountain road curved back and forth through a multitude of gentle switch backs. Large rock formations composed of enormous boulders lay on either side of the highway. Suddenly near the top of one mighty rock pile, a yellowish-red light flared. It had the color and shape of a bonfire. But it was located where no camper could ever logically be, 100 feet up a steep cliff in the middle of a storm. There was no vegetation on those rock piles. The light burned for about three seconds and then was gone. Misha and I were both amazed. We drove on, encouraged by the anomalous light. Perhaps it was a sign of the “ETs’” presence.
At just over 4000 feet in elevation, we reached the Queen Valley, a broad plateau that was the base for our research activities. The rain had stopped. I made a prayer of gratitude and accelerated toward what we called “Desert Site One.” A mile before the Jumbo Rocks Campground, I turned north on to a dirt road.
White Pickup Trucks Galore
The previous storms had cut deep furrows in the sandy path. Even at five miles per hour, the car bounced and shook forcefully. The trail had been cut through the desert by Park Service bulldozers. Barely wide enough for one vehicle, the sides of my truck brushed against the branches of shrubs and small trees as I maneuvered to avoid deep cuts in the road. Our destination was a Park Service designated wilderness parking lot called a “backboard.” There campers were required to leave their vehicles’ license plate numbers on a note describing when they planned to return from “back country” camping. If the vehicles were still parked at the backboard passed that date, the routine was for the Park Service to send out search parties.
As we approached the fenced off backboard our headlights illuminated a white Ford pickup truck. It was sitting right at the entrance of wilderness parking lot that served as our jumping off place for hiking into the back country. The truck, like the sedan we had passed earlier appeared empty. I quickly jammed on the brakes and killed the lights.
There was something definitely wrong here. At this time of year, we had never encountered other vehicles parked in the backboard. There should have been no one but us out here in off season, doubly so because of the harsh weather conditions. The muscles in my stomach tightened. My suspicions about the white “escort” vehicle were growing. Ill at ease, I said to Misha, “What to do now?”
Walls of packed earth about two feet high lined each side of the dirt road. Embedded in the walls were rocks and shrubs. If confronted with certain danger, there was no way I could exit the road and trail blaze an escape. The 4WD would not help me now. Joshua Trees and other cacti were too densely spaced. Off the road, rough terrain was interspersed with jagged rocks. If forced to retreat, we would have to simply back up the way we had come. I advanced slowly toward the backboard. The pickup truck was less than 200 feet ahead. I found a spot where I could pull the road. If necessary, I could turn the Isuzu around if the truck came towards us.
The thought of the white Chevy possibly trailing us on this dirt road was not particularly comforting. I asked Misha to keep a sharp lookout for lights coming up from main road behind us. “What are we going to do?” I again asked Misha. He was as perplexed as I was. This was different from any previous potential security problem we had ever faced.
HAD AN COUNTERINTELLIGENCE OPERATION MONITORED US BEFORE?
The previous winter during fieldwork in Joshua Tree we encountered a sole male hiker. It was after 9PM when our vehicles arrived. The man appeared to be in his mid to late twenties and was in tremendous physical condition. His vehicle was parked at a backboard located three miles south on Old Geology Road. It was a site we had designated as “Desert Site Two.” Just as we drove up to the parking area this young man emerged from his civilian jeep. Wearing a simple tee shirt and shorts despite the cool night air, he effortless put on a heavy backpack. He had the physique of a weightlifter and he carried himself with a military bearing. I recall wondering whether he might have been a Navy Seal. Perhaps he was stationed at the 29 Palms Marine Base. As usual during the cold winter season, Joshua Tree was nearly devoid of visitors. Perhaps for security purposes, or more likely for romantic reasons, when campers were present, they always brought companions with them. This young man however traveled alone.
It also seemed a little strange that he exited his jeep just at the moment we had arrived. I wondered at the time if he might have been waiting for us. As if to dispel these suspicions the young man warmly greeted us. He smiled and said that he couldn’t imagine anyone else was crazy enough to hike out into the middle of the desert on a night like that. We of course had different plans.
We exchanged a few platitudes and wished him luck. The hiker proceeded to march off into the desert alone. Ever vigilant when issues of site security were in question, I postulated that if he were part of some surveillance detail, it would have been easy for him to observe our fieldwork. Joshua Trees and rock piles spread out across the Queen Valley as far as the eye could see. Any one of a multitude of sites could serve as an excellent vantage point to keep tabs on us.
On that evening the previous year, 1993, there were a half-dozen CE-5 researchers in the park with me. One lone observer possibly checking us out did not seem particularly bothersome. This night however in January 1995, the tables had turned. Misha and I were a lonesome twosome. I did not relish what seemed to be the increasing likelihood that we were being followed by multiple vehicles in what I imagined was a coordinated surveillance effort.
Misha and I sat quietly waiting. I kept my eyes on the Ford pickup a few hundred feet away. I tried to pick up the silhouette of the driver or anyone else who might be approaching us on foot. The vehicle and the surrounding terrain looked deserted.
I felt despondent. My chest ached with a combination of fear and loss. If this was the beginning of overt surveillance of my local Los Angeles based contact team, then Joshua Tree might have to be abandoned as a research location. All those difficult months of searching for the “ideal” fieldwork site had ended when we settled into this beautiful desert wonderland. But what if we faced more than simple surveillance. Paranoid notions of physical harassment crossed my mind. I tried to reassure myself with, “You’ve watched too many episodes of the X-files.”
We sat side by side in the darkness for several minutes. I kept the engine idling while we quietly debated our next move. I had positioned the Isuzu as far off the sandy trail as possible. Perhaps if another vehicle were tailing us, it might simply drive by. Then we could return to the main road and go to an alternate site. I was afraid of being boxed in by the truck in front of us and the sedan that had apparently led us into the park.
After a few minutes of waiting and watching, Misha suggested we head back to the main road and then proceed to Dessert Site Two. I had no better idea. Driving with dim parking lights only, we left the white ford pick-truck behind at the backboard. Moving very carefully on the one lane, finally we arrived at the paved main park road. Directly on the other side of the highway is Old Geology Road. Misha kept an eye out to see if we were being followed. No lights were tailing us.
I drove across the two-lane asphalt road and headed due south towards our backup site. This unpaved road was considerably wider and could easily handle traffic in both directions. As we approached the backboard at Desert Site Two my heart sank a notch lower. On the side of the road was another white Ford pickup truck. There was no way that the first one could have passed and had gotten ahead of us. Again, there were no driver, hikers or would be campers evident. This truck like the first was apparently unattended. It carried no markings. The truck was clearly not a Park Service vehicle. The rangers usually drove green Ford Explorers.
Cold anger mixed with my disappointment. Sure, they, whoever “they” were, had as much legal right as we did to be on public land. Nevertheless, my concern was that these vehicles represented some kind corporate or government surveillance outfit whose goal and methods were likely to be secret. The prospect that a well-financed security organization had taken an interest in us was not an appealing notion. Their presence would surely eliminate any high-level CE-5.
I’m aware of how these considerations might be deemed as self-serving by some people. “I’m so important that they must be monitoring me,” and my sounding like a delusional X-Files enthusiast. Nevertheless, under storm conditions where ordinarily there should be no vehicles at the wilderness parking lots reserved for backpackers only, we were encountering vehicles. that all seemed to be part of some kind of government or corporate motor pool.
I felt angry. Our group was made up of volunteers, primarily middle-class people with professional and family responsibilities. For many of my CE-5 co-workers, participating in UFO field investigations was risky enough already. Spending entire nights out in remote locations put a considerable strain on family relations. Others risked a loss of professional credibility. Let’s be honest, attempting to “vector in spacecraft” as Greer had described out efforts back in the 1990s, and even till today, is viewed by most of mainstream society as incurably kooky. As a CE-5 Working Group Coordinator, how was I supposed add to their burdens by telling them, don’t be surprised if you become the target of some well-organized surveillance effort.
We Were Confronted by a Third White Pickup.
I quickly turned my Isuzu back towards the main road. We needed to sort things out. I headed for the Jumbo Rocks Campground. Just a mile from the Old Geology Road cutoff, it was the largest camping area in the park. It had over 200 sites nestled into a fairyland of enormous boulders. When we first started using Joshua Tree as a research station, we often set up campsites at Jumbo Rocks.
Misha and I drove into the site and passed an old camper trailer that probably belonged to the campground caretaker. Despite being the most popular camping area in the park it was nearly totally deserted. The bad weather kept the number of visitors to a minimum.
No more than fifty yards into the site I slowed the car and stopped. There in front of me was another white Ford pickup truck. This was clearly an older model than the first two. Around the truck bed were wooden racks to be used to carry equipment. We looked at each other in dismay.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “It looks like someone might be trying to send us a message.” Misha nodded his head in agreement. I drove out of Jumbo Rocks and turned east. A couple of hundred yards down the road, I pulled off on to the shoulder and waited. I told Misha my plan. In a wild flight of fancy, I had considered the possibility that our team would come under surveillance. In preparation for what I had previously considered a remote possibility, I had scoped out some rough “4 Wheel Drive Only” roads. One ran across the park some 15 miles before exiting into an area we had explored for the CSETI /National Geographic film shoot done in April of 1994.
“Let’s give them a run for their money,” I told Misha. To dispel any doubts about whether we were being monitored, I proposed a hasty ride across rough country. If they follow us, then we’ll know that we’ve been targeted. In retrospect, I must admit the plan was fraught with danger. If we were pursued by trained intelligence agents, the back country during a storm probably was not the best place in the world to end up. Accidents do happen during hazardous conditions, conceivably one might even be staged for our benefit.
Did I Witness Guidance from a Telepathic Communication with Non-Human Intelligence?
Misha contemplated my proposal for a minute or two. From the expression on his face, I got the impression that he might be waiting for mental “instructions” from the non-human intelligences that were associated with our contact efforts. Given his close connections with the alleged “ETs”, I suspected that it might be even at that moment telepathically linked to them. His facial expression soon changed, and he appeared to be listening. I waited in silence. Finally, he seemed to have received an answer and decidedly stated. “No! No racing across the desert! “Let’s go to Key’s Point,” he said. I pointed out to him the obvious drawbacks of that proposal.
“Misha”, I said, “Key’s Point is a dead end of an isolated road with no exits. It has a great view, but not during a storm. And besides I’ve heard it’s at the edge of a 2000-foot drop-off. If we go down that road and they’re after us, we’ll have no place to go, no place to run.”
Images of Custer’s Last Stand, contactee style filled my mind. At least if we followed my plan, we had a chance to outrun whoever might be trailing us. At Key’s Point we’d be sitting ducks parked in a cul du sac.
Misha simply shook his head indicating no to my protests. “We’re going to Keys Point Joe,” he said, “that’s it.”
Who was I to argue with such certainty. I headed west to the cut off for the Point, took a left and headed south. A light drizzle had started. We drove no more than 100 yards from the main road when we hit a locked gate. The Park Service, bless them, had sealed off the dead-end road to Keys Point. I sighed a sigh of relief and I pulled into a picnic area on side of the road. The site was nestled against 40-foot-high boulders.
We were there only seconds when a white Chevy sedan traveling at high speed turned off the main highway on to road to the Point. It had been traveling east, in the opposite direction that we had taken to get to the cut off. It looked very much like the car that had led us into the Park an hour before. Driving fast, as if in pursuit mode, the Chevy took only a few seconds to reach the same locked gate that had blocked our path.
We observed the ensuing drama from the sidelines. The white car jammed on its brakes at the gate, and then sheepishly backed up. It turned around and slowly drove past us. I wondered if that vehicle had been waiting for us at the western edge of the Valley. When we turned south towards the Point, instead of continuing on the main road and exiting the park, perhaps the white sedan had been ordered to go into “pursuit mode.” In any case I now had less doubt that we were the object of some kind of surveillance effort. Remember, the monument was nearly deserted. We had not seen another moving vehicle on park roads for almost 2 hours. For this white car to suddenly veer off the main road at high-speed just moments after we made our turn, seemed more than just a coincidence.
The hour was late, after midnight. I was tired and disappointed. Misha prior to our journey had “subjectively acquired” (aka telepathically”) the information that we were to have a contact event around 1 AM. We waited in the car to stay dry. Periodically I shoved my umbrella out the window with one hand and used the binoculars to sky watch with the other. It was a rather awkward maneuver. And besides with it raining, all I could see in the sky were dark storm clouds.
A few minutes before 1 AM, the heavens began to clear. A small patch of sky with bright stars opened up near the zenith. “More ET tricks?” I wondered to myself. Misha was excited. We both were hoping for a sighting, something, anything other than more white American manufactured vehicles. I shoved my signal lantern out the window (no sense in going outside and getting wet.)
I fired off a few bursts of light into the patch of clear sky. I waited for a reply. Nothing! I repositioned the lantern against the side of the truck and squeezed the trigger hard. A steady beam of 500,000 candlepower reached out “to touch someone.” Stubbornly taking turns, we kept on signaling. This went on for another 30 minutes or so. But nothing doing. No “ET spacecraft”, no UFOs, not even an anomalous nocturnal light.
Our Field Investigation in Joshua Tree Encountered “Company”
It was 1:30 in the morning and I felt exhausted. Disgusted by the night’s disappointing events I announced to Misha that it was naptime. He was 20 years my junior, I decided it would be OK to leave any further contact efforts to the “next generation” of field investigators. I crawled into the back seat, curled up into the least uncomfortable position that I could find, and finally fell into a light sleep.
Sometime after 2 AM Misha announced, “They’re not coming Joe.” I was mostly awake, having twisted and turned fretfully in the back seat for a good forty-five minutes. “Yes Misha, I agree the ETs are not coming.” I added sarcastically, “What else is new?”
Misha however was in one of his rare sharing moments. I usually try not to ask him too many questions about what appeared to be his telepathic links to what we presumed was “extraterrestrial intelligence.” I preferred to avoid the error of making a big deal about something that is so subjective and almost totally unverifiable.
Starting in the summer of 1993, I had mysteriously experienced about 12 months of enhanced psi ability. It had left me in fall of 1994 as inexplicably as it had appeared. From that experience, limited as it was, I understood that alleged psi interactions with non-human intelligences were probably far more significant than mere wishful thinking or fantasy.
Misha told me about his subjectively acquired material. It took the form of a direct conversation in English. According to Misha the dialogue went something like this.
“ET”: We’re not coming tonight.
Misha: Why?
“ET”: Because you have company.
Misha: Where is the “company?”
“ET”: Behind you.
At this point Misha indicated that he interpreted this as meaning directly behind him, like in the back seat. I thought it somewhat amusing that I might be the obstacle to contact.
Misha: “You mean Joe, in the back seat?”
“ET”: No not him. BEHIND YOU!
At this point Misha said the communication ended and he decided to wake me up. I looked over my shoulder at the boulders behind us. There was a campground on the other side of the rocks.
“I guess we should go find out who is keeping us company,” Misha suggested.
I was angry, tired and generally fed up. I was upset about the distinct probability of losing of Joshua Tree as a research site, I didn’t care much what we did at that point. The rain had stopped, and I would have just as soon headed home. I let Misha drive while I pondered what he had just been told. I marveled at his literal interpretation of the term “company.” Direct, forward, straight to the point, that was my friend Misha.
I asked him if “they” (meaning the ETs) had specifically used the word “company.” His answer was affirmative. I mused over the CIA literature written by insiders. Those spies who came in from the cold had also used the term “the company” for their agency. I wondered whether Misha and I had become “company” business.
It had stopped raining. The dirt road to the campground on the other side of the boulders was passable. The oversize wheels on my Isuzu had no problem digging into the sandy trail that led to campgrounds on the other side of the boulders. This facility unlike Jumbo Rocks did not look empty. There were four or five vehicles clumped together near the entrance. We rolled by slowly with the windows down. I sighed in relief, finally no white Ford pickup trucks, no white Chevy sedans.
A Large White Motor Home with Communication Equipment.
The vehicles were ordinary enough, save one, a large white motor home with its curtains drawn. It sat in the center of the cluster of cars. The inside cabin lights were on but there were no sounds coming out. There were a few things unusual about the van. It was after 2 AM and the cabin lights were still on. I noticed several CB type radio antennas over the cab. Misha later told me that he also saw a satellite dish positioned a top the vehicle. It did seem a bit strange for campers to have all that electronic gear. It was like NASA had sent a mobile communication center to Joshua Tree. There were no organizational insignias however on the motor home. Unfortunately, I did not think to get the license plate numbers of this vehicle, nor any of the others clustered around it. It would have been a logical thing to do as we had postulated that they were possibly in some kind of organizational surveillance mode.
I was good and disgusted with the entire situation. The worst part was not really knowing what the hell was going on! From the moment we approached the park, strange human mediated events had transpired. Was it just coincidence that our primary and secondary sites had identical trucks waiting for us when we arrived. With almost no traffic in the park, why did the Chevy suddenly appear and speed after us when we turned off the main road heading for Keys Point. Even Jumbo Rocks had a large motor home that looked like it might be part of some kind of military or corporate motor pool.
I had experienced misgivings since I had heard about CSETI’s great leap forward in Monterrey Mexico the month before. My initial concerns were related to what might be the reaction of presumed clandestine organization identified in CSETI circles as “the control group.” This was thought to be a collective of clandestine corporate/governmental organizations that were running the flying saucer coverup. If Dr Greer’s hypothesis concerning such forces were correct, that they were dedicated to keeping a lid on the UFO/ETI situation, then I feared the local Working Groups might be in for problems following Dr, Greer’s and Adamiak’s success in Monterey.
Surveillance I could deal with, harassment with violent intimidation or psychotronic attacks were another matter. Even if that were a remote possibility, I didn’t relish looking for another fieldwork site. Most disturbing was the damned ambiguity of the situation. I did not particularly care for the cat and mouse game that we had just played in the high desert.
If Misha and I had truly been monitored by some professional intelligence operation, what was the goal? I couldn’t really believe that it was intimidation. There seemed to be a multitude of other ways to discourage us. Placing motor-pool type vehicles in our jumping off points, presumably with field agents attached was indeed disconcerting. Nevertheless, a few threatening phone calls combined with petty vandalism might accomplish intimidation more readily with much less effort. Another possible explanation was that our “friends in white cars only” just wanted to monitor any close encounter that might take place in the military-intelligence communities’ back yard. The Southwest has many bases, including the infamous Area 51. If the popular UFO mythology concerning secret bases and back engineering efforts were true, a program of successful human initiated close encounters might excite curiosity.
Joshua Tree National Park after all is located only a few hundred miles from Edwards AFB, and only 30 miles from the 29 Palms Marine base. From the logistical point of view, it would be cheap and easy to send a surveillance team to follow us around. If monitoring rather than intimidation was the goal, could they have chosen to be a bit less conspicuous? Of course, even if they could hide from us by placing camouflaged sentries out in the bush, would such means be able to elude the non-human intelligence of a presumed ET origin? If the “ET’s” alleged psi capabilities were truly as potent as my growing experience confirmed, advanced ET technology would likely detect surveillance or our activities even if human initiated contact researchers could not, hence no need to be inconspicuous. The possibilities of such head spinning speculation is endless, and I suppose ultimately is pointless. The UFO subculture is rife with endless conspiracy theories with practically no way to prove them decisively. Unlike many armchair investigators, at least Misha and I had gotten out into the field and our “boots on the ground” approach provided concrete experiences that could be analyzed. At the very least, we could inform other contact teams and prepare them for the possibility of active surveillance.
If the contact networks like the CE-5ers and Peruvian based group now called Rahma were correct, then a large-scale contact drama is unfolding across the planet. I thought that at best, my team played only a small role on the tiny portion of the contact stage that we could observe. I had to admit that it was getting increasingly difficult to mount research operations.
These preoccupations troubled me in the weeks and months which followed our January research outing. At times I asked myself, “Do you really have the energy to deal with difficult work?” I called Steven Greer soon after that wild night of wind, rain and white Ford pickup trucks. I describe the problems that I perceived. When I asked him what he thought was the source of the possible surveillance he offered a one-word reply. “Wackenhut.” It was the name of the private security firm that provides contract services to secret federal facilities.
Postscript
With the benefit of three decades of hindsight, I must admit an entirely different explanation is likely. The 1990s was a time of active research and testing of advanced drone technology and the 29 Palms Marine Corps base was actively preparing US forces for desert warfare. If drones were being tested around the base, it would seem only prudent for counterintelligence officers to patrol areas adjacent to their test sites. Misha was at the time a former Soviet national who reportedly had studied nursing in a military junior college. Our frequent trips to Joshua Tree National Monument in his vehicle may have identified him as a possible security threat if a wayward drone crashed in the park during secret testing. Thus, the surveillance might have had nothing to do with flying saucers, but instead was part of keeping American’s secrets away from our nation’s adversaries.
Link to Shari Adamiak’s report on Monterrey Mexico Rapid Mobilization Investigative Team (RMIT) December 1994
https://dianaperla0.tripod.com/dianaperlachapa/Spanish/FenOvni/CSETI_1.htm
Contact Underground 