As they took turns at the microphone, it quickly became apparent that this was a rather old-fashioned event -- a return to the fundamentals of ufology, the discussion of aerial anomalies. At one point a witness flashed two black-and-white photos of a saucer- shaped craft. The tales were set, for the most part, in the '40s, '50s and '60s; there was no talk of alien abductions, or an alien- human hybridization program, or the implantation of alien fetuses, or any of those extremely intimate Close Encounters that have dominated the UFO mythology in recent years.

Scientists who work on "exobiology" endure the stigma of being experts in a field with no known subject matter. They'd be thrilled beyond words to find a tiny fragment of alien life. They'd like to know if extraterrestrial life is carbon-based, if it uses oxygen in its metabolism, if it stores genetic information in the form of the DNA molecule. They'd like to know the evolutionary history of an alien biosphere, so they could compare it to the history of life on Earth. Now we hear that all the scientists need to do is start poking around in government freezers.

Intelligent creatures have piloted spaceships across trillions of miles to visit our planet. They have the ability to elude detection by scientific investigators and mainstream news organizations, but have also been seen by thousands of people. Secret forces within our government have masterfully covered up the alien presence for half a century, although sometimes the coverup is imperfect, which is why, at Safeway, you can buy Chef Boy-ar-dee Flying Saucers & Aliens canned pasta. People like [Steven Greer], the crusading emergency room physician, have seen through the lies and are going to help us enter the era of cosmic brotherhood.