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commanders on the spot who knew about the phenomenon and had no official
instructions on the matter, acted on their own initiative to investigate UFOs,
recording data, and so on. I know that in some places they even learned to
create a situation which would deliberately provoke the appearance of a UFO. A
UFO would appear where there was increased military activity connected, say,
with the transportation of "special" loads. It was enough artificially stimulate or
schedule such a move for a UFO to appear. In other words, some kind of
conditional relationship emerged. And they detected it. We're an intelligent nation,
nothing escapes us. I know that at certain testing ranges - I won't name them,
although it's no longer a secret - they even learnt to make contact of a kind.
What did that consists of? First the UFO appeared; in most instances it was a
sphere, but there were other kinds. Contact was achieved with the help of
physical indications of behaviour - pointing your arms in various directions, say,
and the sphere became flattened in the same direction. If you raised your arms
three times, the UFO flattened out in a vertical direction three times as well. In
the early 1980s, on the instructions of the then Soviet leadership, experiments
using technical devices (theodolites, radar stations, and others) were carried out
as a result of which the unidentified objects were firmly recorded as instrumental
data.
VU: Can you say on what level those researches took place? While studying the
material from those observations and the contents of certain documents I formed
the impression that the prime reason for circulars and orders on this matter in the
armed forces was that they most likely considered UFOs a new sort of weapon
belonging to some hostile country. Isn't that why orders were issued on the
rigorous investigation and examination of the appearance and behaviour of
UFOs by all available ways and means? What was the nature of the recording,
on instruments and in written documents, of the time of appearance, trajectory
and other characteristics?
VA: I think that on the whole there were two reasons. First, a great deal of
information of various kinds was coming in from all over. I know of a case when
workers from one of the research establishments outside Moscow flew to
Novosibirsk, I think it was, to investigate an air crash. When they came back they
wrote a report that they had had an encounter with a UFO that accompanied their
plane in the air. Being sensible people and inclined to scientific analysis, they
managed to share out their roles so that during the observation some watched
and dictated, others sketched, a third group kept track of time. In that way the
observation acquired a certain scientific grounding. It wasn't just a sighting, but a
scientific team at work, carrying out a sort of real-time experiment. Reports of
UFO sightings came in regularly. And evidently somewhere nearer the core of
our leadership in the sphere of the Defence Ministry, the Academy of Sciences
and so on, a lot of this kind of information began to build up. And not only from
ordinary laymen, but from scientists and professionals as well. Military men in
general are not inclined to fantasise. They only report what they see, what
actually occurs.
They are people you can believe. You should not forget that the arms race was
still going on at this time, a struggle for military and other priorities. New
discoveries in science and technology were being made all the time. The UFOs
were something new and not understood. And there really was an idea that they
might be some means of gathering intelligence. I don't think that it only happened
here. For example, one of the reports of a state commission that worked on one
of the testing-ranges in Volgograd region proposed several versions for the origin
of the phenomenon. They referred to possible natural processes that we have
failed to recognise, but did not exclude the possibility that it was a form of
reconnaissance.
At that very time, and slightly later, a whole group of disguised electronic
intelligence-gathering devices were in reality discovered on those testing-ranges.
But it is interesting that one of the official versions from the commission, included
among the final points, was the possibility that UFOs belonged to an
extraterrestrial civilisation! That was very interesting!
VU: At what level was investigation carried out? To what extent was there a
scientific approach, or was it simply recording data?
VA: It was more like recording data. By the nature of my work I received
information from various military units across Russia, the Soviet Union as it then
was. I know that that material was sent on without any explanations or
annotations to the relevant bodies higher up. I was aware that there were groups
engaged in investigating UFOs, and perhaps something more, but at that time
the level of secrecy over this question was such that all that took place was
receiving information and subsequently sending it on higher up: people came to
see me, but, as we were military men, there were no explanations of any kind.
They simply said they were interested in this or that. Then they came up with a
table with pictures of all the shapes of UFOs that had ever been recorded - about
fifty, ranging from ellipses and spheres through to something resembling
spaceships. Witnesses were asked what it looked liked, then they pinned down
the locality and so on. After which all the material was passed on. As a result it is
hard to say how the work was continued, to what extent it was scientific.
I knew that some kind of work was going on in the Defence Ministry, the
Academy of Sciences and the intelligence services. But things were such that
those who weren't directly connected with the investigations didn't know what
was going on. We only provided the information. I must admit that there was an
awful lot of information. And here, around Moscow, above many air-defence sites,
testing-ranges and other installations - those are the places where UFOs appear
most often.
VU: You just said that people came to you who were interested on information
about UFO sightings. Then that information was passed on up. Some intelligence
services were engaged in analysing the information. What do you think - as a
man of experience who has attained such a high position and rank - regarding
the interests of humanity as a whole, was the information you provided gathered
and used to positive or negative ends? In the West the idea is firmly established
that when gathering information about UFOs the intelligence services in America,
and in Russia too, were and are guided not by the interests of humanity as a
whole, but rather the opposite.
VA: I think that politics interfered with science here. Investigation of what was
unidentified and not understood was carried out above all in order to clear
matters up. Military specialists and military science in general has an immense
potential that can be compared with that of the Academy of Sciences, and in
some spheres that potential is even greater. Military technologies have always
been the most advanced. I don't imagine the intelligence services were inferior.
Behind the military and intelligence services' interest in UFOs lay the desire to
get to the bottom of the new phenomenon, where it was leading, what it was all
about. What if it did represent some kind of threat, from the object itself? That
was why they had to get to the bottom of it. But I don't think, in fact I practically
exclude the idea that the Russian military were scheming in some way. It is
simply out of the question. The very structure of the military organisations, the
intelligence services and the Academy of Sciences make it impossible to decide
matters of that kind without the intervention of the government and other state
institutions.
Anyone with common-sense, knowing the structure of the state, will have to
admit that such a thing is simply impossible. The more so as the work on
investigating UFOs was being duplicated by several bodies. Even if only one
department of state had studied the question, and some maladjusted individual
working there tried to conceal information and use it to his own ends, that too
would have been impossible. If, say, the Defence Ministry had had a monopoly
on the question, the intelligence services would in all likelihood have known
about it, reports would have been passed by various channels anyway. After all,
we don't have one organisation that does the checking, ours is a system with lots
of facets and lots of channels, which absolutely rules out the possibility of making
selfish use of the results for hidden goals.
VU: Thank you. That is a very important question that worries people not only in
Russia, but around the world.
VA: I agree. It is a global issue, a geopolitical one. I am sure that the Americans
and other countries have built up a large quantity of this kind of information. I am
certain today that there is a great deal of this information. And anyway, this issue,
like thermonuclear weapons, is a global one. It is a question of the survival of
humanity, considering how poor our conceptions about the environment and
energy resources are, the ecological problems that are emerging. We burn up
the oxygen and do a lot of other things, and in the last resort it is hard to say
where we will end up and to what extent these processes are irreversible. A way
out has to be found; there must be some kind of breakthrough. With those
problems in mind, the study of UFOs may reveal some new forms of energy to us,
or at least bring us closer to a solution. Therefore questions bound up with UFOs
and all the accompanying phenomena are, I believe on the whole, the concern of
all mankind.
And here our leaders at the relevant level should take matters seriously and find
an acceptable solution. Many prominent scientists of world rank have spoken of
the need for such an approach. Why it hasn't come about yet is hard to say. At
the present moment it is probably bound up with the formation of a new Russia.
At times our funding is irregular and not very well organised. Well, God willing,
we'll struggle through. Many countries today have reached a certain level in
science and in the study of this question. We have obtained certain results, and
at present the issue is the creation of some single body that would bring together
all our knowledge on this matter. I believe things would be easier then. The
Americans have got something interesting, so have we. Conclusions have been
made and data assembled, for years gone by as well, and now they have been
"shelved" somewhere. Perhaps it would be enough to put one thing together with
another for the whole question to appear in a completely different light.
VU: How are things today as regards investigation, recording and so on, in your
sphere, for example.
VA: Much worse today than they were before. But that is not due any decline in
interest. What is the chief concern in the armed forces now? - How to survive!
Who's going to bother about UFOs? The question has, I think, temporarily
become secondary purely for economic reasons. We will resume this work as
soon as we get a bit stronger.
VU: Are you personally interested in the question of UFOs?
VA: I have a strong personal interest. While still a schoolboy I dreamt about
extraterrestrial civilisations; I looked for life on Mars and even on Venus.
Sometimes I regret that I have never myself observed a UFO in an active
manifestation like some people - when it was not simply a glowing sphere but
something more intriguing. And there are a great deal of facts like that, right up to
contacts with aliens.
VU: During our last meeting you said a lot about encounters between military
personnel and UFOs.
VA: There was a case with us outside Moscow when two warrant officers felt an
inner urge to go outside. And one of them found himself directly at the landing
site of a flying device. He made mental contact - not at the level of speech, but
sort of correction, not allowing processes of disintegration to begin when they will
bring the history of civilisation to an end, is evidently included in the plans of the
Higher Intelligence.
VU: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. I really hope that this will not be
the last time we meet. We will probably think of more questions for you.
VA: I wish you every success. I hope you find help not only from God, from your
active engagement, but that you encounter people who will help you to realise
what you have conceived, because it is not only important for the whole of
humanity, it also demands serious investment. But it seems to me that you have
sufficient energy and enthusiasm. The main thing is that you have plenty of
people alongside you who provide moral support. That is very important. All the
best.
Interviewer: Valery Uvarov, Moscow, March 1997
Copyright 2000 Michael Hesemann. All rights reserved.