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16 - The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday September 30, 2006 www.oakvillebeaver.com Paul Hellyer says UFOs are really out there By Wilma Blokhuis OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF Yes Virginia, E.T. is for real. The 1982 movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, about a small homesick alien creature who is stranded three million light years away from home and befriends 10-year-old Elliot, may not be far from the truth ­ if you believe what Paul Hellyer has to say about unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and ETs. Hellyer, an 83-year-old retired career politician and author of 12 books, shook up the academic world and took the United States military to task by saying UFOs exist in a speech delivered on Sept. 25, 2005 at the Exopolitics Toronto Symposium on UFO Disclosure and Planetary Direction at the University of Toronto. Hellyer, who was a Member of Parliament from 1949-1957 and again from 1958-1974, was the first person of cabinet rank in the G8 group of nations to publicly state that UFOs are real. Hellyer served as Minister of National Defense from 1963-1967 in the Pearson government and oversaw the unification of the Canadian Navy, Canadian Army and Canadian Air Force into one unit, the Canadian Forces. At the time, he brushed aside all reports of UFO sightings that crossed his desk. Hellyer made the headline grabbing speech shortly after reading Col. Philip Corso's book, The Day After Roswell, about the discovery and secret removal of an alien disc that crashed to earth in 1947. News of the landing was immediately denied, said Hellyer. He read the book in August 2005 while spending a week at Arundel Lodge overlooking Lake Muskoka. "I read it with total fascination; I found it very compelling." It brought back memories. "The closest I have come to an alleged encounter with a UFO occurred at Arundel Lodge, a small resort that my late wife and I ran for 45 years. One night a few of our guests met around a campfire on a big flat rock known as Fernrock. Naturally we brought a little firewater...the poison of choice was Jack Daniels' bourbon. "A couple of hours later a bright light appeared in the southern sky directly across the bay. It could have been an airplane that zigzagged across the horizon in a very erratic fashion. "The following morning some positions changed with the consensus being that it must have been the Jack Daniels that had been responsible for the zigging and zagging, but there were three holdouts who had nothing to drink. Their conviction that it had, in fact, been a UFO remained unshakable. It was their testimony that persuaded me to include the incident in a little book I wrote entitled Arundel Lodge." That incident was put aside while Hellyer towed the party line and denied UFOs and ETs BARRIE ERSKINE / OAKVILLE BEAVER PROBUS SPEAKER: Former Minister of Defence (1963-67) Paul Hellyer spoke at the recent Probus Club of Oakville. exist during his years in politics. Today he's convinced this denial is part of a "conspiracy of a long-term cover-up of extraterrestrial intelligence and advanced technology" led by the United States government, said Hellyer in a speech Thursday to the Probus Club of Oakville at Maple Grove United Church. He said this cover-up stems from the fact "real governance has passed from elected, accountable representatives of the people to an unelected, unaccountable, elite group of senior government officials and industrial leaders ­ an industrial military complex ­ whose agenda may be incompatible with the needs and desires of the population at large." Hellyer added, "This is my unshakable conviction. "The military industrial complex that General Dwight Eisenhower warned us about when he was president is creating and producing weapons systems designed to confront the visitors from space and, in the process, producing a sure-fire recipe for possible conflict." Hellyer said it's time to state the truth. Upon reading The Day After Roswell, he first thought it to be a "work of skillfully contrived fiction...but I ruled that out as a possibility because there were too many real people, real dates and real events for the story to be fiction. Corso was a career army officer involved in the intelligence field and an advisor to Eisenhower," said Hellyer. "He was a well-respected army officer; he had the credentials to write this book." Hellyer said Corso wrote the book (published in 1997) "because he felt it was time to full disclosure. He actually saw a cadaver at the crash at Roswell and 10 years later he was put in charge of alien artifacts." It was his job to keep this information top secret. Hellyer's nephew, in questioning the validity of the book, "called a retired United States Air Force general of his acquaintance, mentioned the book, and was told `every word of it is true and more.'" Since that speech, Hellyer was inundated with press interviews, speaking engagements and reading materials ­ everything from books to leaked and classified documents. "Some of it is pure junk, some is intriguing fiction but much of the material is pure gold," such as a book by Jim Marrs titled Alien Agenda. "It covers a lot of territory ­ the titillating thesis that the moon may have been placed in orbit by intelligent being, UFO crashes, abductions, face to face encounters, cattle mutilations and crop circles." Hellyer said Marrs' book is balanced, "giving the proponents and debunkers equal time." Equally compelling is a book, Majic Eyes Only by Ryan Wood documenting 74 UFO crashes from 1897 to the present. "While the evidence is stronger in some of the cases than in others, there is more than enough to convince an unbiased reader that UFOs have crashed on earth, governments have recovered and exploited these alien technology gifts and most disturbing to a democratic free society, the `alien secret' is more important than individual rights." Hellyer said these `gifts' include the microchip, fibreoptics, a "flexible metal resembling aluminum that springs back into shape after you bend it and let go," and "the original Star Wars show." Wood notes an April 1954 manual on extraterrestrial recovery and disposal contained "strict instructions concerning the `need for absolute secrecy in all phases of the operation' including a `news blackout,'" said Hellyer. "`Great care must be taken to preserve the security of any location where extraterrestrial technology might be retrievable for scientific study. Extreme measures must be taken to protect and preserve any material or craft from discovery, examination or removal by civilian agencies or individuals of the general public. It should be remembered when selecting a cover story that official policy regarding UFOs is that they do not exist...the most desirable response would be that nothing unusual has occurred. "`Witnesses will be discouraged from talking about what they have seen and intimation may be necessary to ensure their cooperation. If witnesses have already contacted the press, it will be necessary to discredit their stories.'" Coupled with a "tame and compliant press," continued Hellyer, "it is a policy that has made liars of some of America's most respected citizens and kept the majority in near total ignorance. It is doubtful that a single member of Congress is `in the loop' concerning the `alien secret.' If that is not correct let him or her stand up and state the truth." ­ Wilma Blokhuis can be reached at blokhuis@haltonsearch.com. Escaped prisoner arrested in Brockville hotel A 30-year-old man who escaped police custody while being treated at Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital has been arrested in Brockville. Benjamin Wood, 30, was arrested Thursday along with two women who helped him escape. Members of the provincial Repeat Offenders Parole Enforcement squad and Brockville Police officers used information from Halton Regional Police to find and arrest Wood and the two women at a Days Inn Hotel in Brockville. Wood, who escaped during a medical examination on Sept. 21, was initially taken into police custody for property related offences. He and the two women have now been returned to Oakville and were scheduled to appear for a bail hearing yesterday in Milton Provincial Court. Wood is charged with 12 counts of theft under $5,000, 12 counts of breach of probation, six counts of use of a stolen credit card, two counts of assaulting a peace officer and one count of escaping lawful custody. Leslie Ann Mcintosh, 18, and Denise Bukala, 23, are charged with aid and abet escaping lawful custody. Mcintosh is also charged with breach of recognizance and failure to comply with probation order. Halton Regional Police are asking anyone with information on this matter to call police at 905-825-4777 or call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).