Editor's Note: Kenn Thomas publishes Steamshovel Press, the conspiracy theory magazine. Four issue subscription: $23; single issue: $6, from POB 23715, St. Louis, MO 63121. An anthology of back issues, Popular Alienation (IllumiNet Press, 1995), is also available. He'll be speaking at the National UFO Conference in Austin on Sunday, 16 September 2001.

Disinformation: Can you explain a little about "The Parapolitics of UFOs" topic that you'll be speaking of at the conference? Does it have anything to do with the "bisociative connections" you wrote about in "You Are Being Lied To"?

Kenn Thomas: The term "parapolitics" is one I like to promote because its alternative, "conspiracy theory", has such a derogatory connotation in the larger media. Of course, the larger media (CNN/Fox/ABC/NBC/CBS) has no credibility in making any judgement about conspiracy writing or research. It is virtually owned by the military and serves only to disparage anything that isn't a government or corporate press release. In You Are Being Lied To I tried to draw attention to Arthur Koestler's old technique of looking at disparate things and trying to connect them in creative ways, as a means getting past the corporate dumb-down in the media and at some actual truth.

For instance, two stories that appeared simultaneously in the news recently included the forced return to Philadelphia of the self-exiled activist Ira Einhorn, to face a legal situation regarding the murder of his girlfriend. That very week, a large "meteor" appeared over Philadelphia, witnessed by hundreds. Unless you had some awareness that Einhorn has long maintained that he was framed by an intelligence/mind control group connected to UFOs, and could make that bisociative connection, the eerie quality of what's happening with Einhorn might be lost on you.

Disinformation: What leads you to believe that mainstream media is controlled by the military, as opposed to moguls like Rupert Murdoch and corporate advertising dollars?

Kenn Thomas: A difference that makes no difference! General Electric, for instance, which owns NBC, is a military contractor. At one point, all news feeds came through ABC, which has a notorious military intelligence connection--it was the network that first went over Danny Casolaro's files. CNN regularly hires military personnel and is the obvious propaganda organ when things like the Persian Gulf War happen. For decades Dan Rather has covered up and distorted the Kennedy assassination, which was a military operation. Murdoch, and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy (another media mogul), keep their corporate power in service of the military. Ted Turner played a major role in the recent crackdown on the independent press in Russia, for instance.

Disinformation: What connection, if any, do you think exists between UFO phenomenon and technology as we know it today? Do you think that quantum leaps in the military like the SR-71 "Blackbird" aircraft were in any way related to UFO sightings?

No question that some UFO sightings are these things, the Blackbird and the Aurora, etc. We have reason to believe that personal computing technology may have been back-engineered from the Roswell crash. Look at, for instance, the essay by Vannevar Bush (a Truman scientific adviser whose signature appears on the spurious MJ12 documents) "As We May Think", written shortly after Roswell, in 1947. It basically tries to imagine the PC in terms of the available technology of 1947.

And why does Dubya have a bug up his butt about strategic missile defense in space? The Pentagon is opposed to it. Does he really want a Deathstar to further control the earth, or does he know about enemies coming in from up there?

Star Wars. ECHELON. The FBI's Carnivore program. The PROMIS software. These developing science-fiction nightmares just as well may be as responsible for UFO apparitions as they are the products of "alien" technology.

Disinformation: Wouldn't the Pentagon know about if national/global security was threatened by something extraterrestrial in origin? If they didn't, who would?

Why do you presume they do not? There's every indication in the historic record that the Pentagon and its various intelligence agencies have been collecting information on a possible extraterrestrial presence on earth for the past fifty years. Everyone from Douglas MacArthur to Ronald Reagan has commented about it in public. The dynamic currently seems to be that Pentagon people simply want to emphasize US imperialism on earth, perhaps even giving it a public PR spin as an imperialism without an agenda, rather than pursue the "missile defense shield". Dubya and cronies--secret government people who go back to Iran/Contra and PROMIS software, the first Star Wars Initiative--want to go into space. The Lewinsky scandal was a military operation that successfully forced Clinton into re-funding Star Wars. He did it the same day the vote against impeachment was taken. A couple of dozen scientists working for the SDI contractor Marconi were all killed under mysterious circumstance the last time Star Wars research was in the ascendancy. They knew too much.

Disinformation: As you said earlier: "[W]hy does Dubya have a bug up his butt about strategic missile defense in space? The Pentagon is opposed to it." This led me to believe that the Pentagon wasn't aware of an ET threat and that there was internal strife between the Pentagon and the president over orbital missile defense. However, from your last remark, I got a different impression of conflict between G.W. and the Pentagon over this subject. Can you please clarify your thoughts on the subject?