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The Age of Exopolitics
by Stephen Bassett
FATE :: August 2007

In Alexandria, Virginia, there is a place called Gravelly Point Park, known throughout the region because it sits a mere 1,000 feet from the north end of runway 1/19 at Reagan National Airport.

Tourists pull off the George Washington Parkway to watch the planes land and take off—a longstanding pastime uninterrupted (remarkably) by the events of September 11, 2001.

Landing planes fly over this grassy patch so low you can see the tread on the tires. Panes taking off will rattle the fillings in your teeth. During the day the park is never empty. It’s addictive.

I have been there many times and remember one perfectly clear day during the summer of 1992. As the planes passed overhead this thought came to mind: while the destination of the plane was known, its point of origin was not. Neither was it known how many people were on board, if any—it could have been remote-controlled—nor their names, reasons for coming, hometowns, hopes, and dreams. And depending upon the viewing angle, it might not be possible to even know the airline.

With so much missing information one might be tempted to say, “What we have here is an unidentified flying object, a UFO.” But that would be ridiculous, ­wouldn’t it?

During the five decades since 1942, millions of people around the world had been seeing unusual objects moving in the Earth’s atmosphere. Tens of thousands of reports had been filed. The objects had been photographed, filmed, recorded on radar and sighted by trained observers—sometimes all four at once. They had been seen in the air and stationary on the ground. They had been seen traveling and maneuvering in a seemingly impossible fashion for the historical period. They had been seen by pilots off the wings and cockpits of planes—fully formed, metallic-looking discs. They had been seen by Army, Air Force, Naval, and Coast Guard personnel; air traffic controllers, astronauts, police officers, amateur astronomers, doctors, lawyers, political leaders, and scientists.

Documents referring to these craft have been discovered in government files, not just in the United States, but in most first-world nations. Systematic investigations had been conducted by civilian and government organizations over the entire 50 years. Nearly 10,000 books, papers, articles, and documentary films had been published specifically addressing this phenomenon. Reports have poured into researchers (their numbers would eventually swell to the tens of thousands) of direct contact with beings, clearly not human, who could well be the occupants of some of these craft.

When one of these “objects” passed overhead or tracked a plane in flight, the destination could properly be assumed to be the planet Earth, but the point of origin was not known. It was also not known whether the object contained humans, nonhumans, or no beings at all (remote- controlled). If containing beings, their names, reasons for coming, etc. were also not known. With so much missing information it would be appropriate to call the “object” an unidentified flying object—a UFO—wouldn’t it? No, it wouldn’t. It would be appropriate to call it an alien or extraterrestrial spacecraft, most likely piloted by nonhuman beings, destination Earth, reasons for presence unknown.

Paradigm Research Group was founded in 1996, but it was not until 2000 that the implication of those thoughts in 1992 became manifest. The implication was that the era of the “UFO” was over and a new era had begun—the era of exopolitics.........

Read the rest of this article in the August 2007 issue of FATE

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