Q: Gen. Clark, when you were running for President, you said you thought mankind would one day fly faster than light and visit the stars. My question is, when you were in the military were you ever briefed on the subject of U.F.O.s?
At this point Clark looked down for a moment and shook his head, perhaps somewhat chagrined at being put on the spot or thinking how he should respond, but then looked at me and answered:
A: I heard a bit. In fact, I'm going to be in Roswell, New Mexico tonight.
Q: So you were briefed?
A: There are things going on. But we will have to work out our own mathematics.
In interpreting Clark's remarks, we have to realize that he was speaking in Washingtonian code on a touchy subject. He never directly admitted to receiving an official briefing, thus leaving himself a possible out. He could claim, e.g., that what he meant was he had heard the usual stories and rumors, just like everybody else.
But on the other hand, he never gave a simple, flat denial to the questions about being briefed, such as "No I wasn't." That would have put an end to it right there. Instead he dropped broad hints indicating that he was indeed briefed and that UFOs were real craft. Hence his comments about hearing a few things when he was in the military and "there are things going on."
Further, why talk about developing our own mathematics for something that was nonexistent? If you look back at Clark's FTL comments above, he likewise spoke of the need to explore higher and applied mathematics in order to eventually achieve FTL travel. In this respect, Clark's brief remarks to me were very similar to his FTL remarks a year before. My interpretation is that his FTL statements were indeed tied to the subject of UFOs.
Another broad hint was how he spontaneously brought up the subject of Roswell, N.M. immediately after saying he had heard some things.. Perhaps that was his oblique way of saying that the alleged Roswell flying saucer crash was one of those things that he had "heard a bit" about when he was in the military.
(According to fellow researcher Grant Cameron, Clark may have more than just heard about Roswell. When he recently posed the question of Clark's UFO knowledge to NIDS, a Las Vegas-based UFO investigation group composed of a number of people having contact with government insiders, one of them told him that "Clark has been given access to crashed saucer material." Another source said that Clark "knows something about the crash retrieval." For more, see Cameron's web site and Linda Moulton Howe's Earthfiles, also discussing the Wesley Clark story. I had contacted Cameron immediately after returning from Reno and he then shared the information with Howe.)
To understand the somewhat cryptic manner in which Clark responded, it is important to realize that he would only be briefed if the topic were treated with dead seriousness by the military. It would necessarily be classified at a very high level. Clark can't speak directly about what he might know without violating his security oath. Hence the care with which he tip-toed around the questions without actually denying anything.
A similar situation happened when Grant Cameron managed to ask Vice President Dick Cheney the UFO briefing question on the Diane Rehm PBS radio program, April 11, 2001. (http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc887.htm) Cheney had been a Senator and also Sec. of Defense under Pres. George Bush Sr. before becoming Vice President.
Cameron asked Cheney whether he had ever been briefed about UFOs when he was in the government. To this Cheney replied, "Well, if I had been briefed on it, I'm sure it was probably classified and I couldn't talk about it."
Like Clark, Cheney talked around the question without giving an unqualified denial. Again the key to this, as Cameron points out, is Cheney mentioning how the subject matter would be classified, so that he couldn't talk about it if he had received such briefings.
Gen. Clark was in exactly the same position as Cheney, and I appreciate that he bothered to respond to my questions at all. Hopefully at some time in the future, Gen. Clark will tell us a little more about what he might know.
Gen. Wesley K. Clark is a retired four-star Army general. At the peak of his career from 1997-2000 he was NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and Commander-in-Chief, United States European Command.
He graduated first in his class from West Point in 1966 and was a Rhode's Scholar at Oxford University from 1966 to 1968. This only briefly touches on his educational and military background, but indicates he was one of the nation's top generals and one very sharp guy.
Most people, however, know Gen. Clark as a Democratic candidate for President in 2003-2004. During a campaign event Sept. 27, 2003, in New Castle, New Hampshire, before about 50 people, Clark stated his belief that humans will someday be able to travel faster than the speed of light (FTL travel), putting no limit on how far we will be able to explore in space.
Clark's remarks were prompted by a question from Dr. Jay Buckey, who was an astronaut on the space shuttle. He asked what Clark envisioned for America's space program after the Columbia shuttle tragedy. Clark said he was a great believer in the space program and wanted a vision well beyond that of a new shuttle or space plane. He hoped mankind would eventually leave this planet and explore space beyond the solar system. Clark thought such a vision could probably require a lifetime of research and development in various fields of science and technology. Then at the end of his remarks, Clark dropped a bombshell when he said the following:
"We need to look at the realms of applied and higher mathematics. I still believe in
E = mc squared. But I can't believe that in all of human history, we'll never ever be
able to go beyond the speed of light to reach where we want to go. I happen to
believe that mankind can do it. I've argued with physicists about it. I've argued with
best friends about it. I just have to believe it. It's my only faith-based initiative."
The mass media then mocked Clark for his remarks, claiming that Clark said he believed in "time travel." But Clark never said any such thing, only that he believed we would one day travel faster than light. [Check the audio (NEW) and transcript.]
What was the basis of Clark's unusual belief, which flies in the face of conventional scientific wisdom? Some of us speculated that maybe Clark, as a top general, had been briefed on the subject of UFOs, knew them to be real extraterrestrial craft, and therefore already knew that FTL travel was very likely possible.
As luck would have it, I happened to be in Reno, Nevada on Oct. 30, 2004, at the same time that Clark was doing a campaign rally on behalf of John Kerry. That gave me the opportunity to briefly question Clark. After his speech, a small crowd gathered around Clark. Clark shook hands, posed for pictures, signed autographs, and spoke informally with various people.
Finally I got my chance to ask him about his FTL remarks and what prompted them. Unfortunately, I wasn't prepared for this and didn't have a recording device with me, but the following is very close to my questions and Clark's answers, which I wrote down from memory immediately afterwards:
