Chapter Twelve
PHOBOS: MALFUNCTION OR STAR WARS INCIDENT?

"....On July 12, 1988, the Soviet Union launched an unmanned spacecraft called Phobos 2 and may have provided Mankind with its first Star Wars incident - not the "Star Wars" nicknamed of America’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), but a war with people from another world.

"Phobos 2 was one of two unmanned satellites, the other being Phobos I, that were set off from Earth in July 1988, headed toward the planet Mars. Phobos I reportedly because of a radio command error, was lost two months later. Phobos 2 arrived safely at Mars in January 1989 and entered into orbit around Mars as the first step at its destination toward its ultimate goal - to transfer to an orbit that would make it fly almost in tandem with the Martian moonlet called Phobos (hence the spacecraft’s name) and explore the moonlet with highly sophisticated equipment that included two packages of instruments to be placed on the moonlet’s surface.

"All went well until Phobos 2 aligned itself with Phobos, the Martian moonlet. Then, on March 28, 1989, the Soviet mission control center acknowledged sudden communication "problems" with the spacecraft; and Tass, the official Soviet news agency, reported that "Phobos 2 failed to communicate with Earth as scheduled after completing an operation yesterday around the Martian moon Phobos. Scientists at mission control have been unable to establish stable radio contact."

"These admissions left the impression that the problem was not incurable....

"....Although launched by the Soviets, the mission in reality represented an international effort on an unprecedented scale, with more than thirteen European countries (including the European Space Agency and major French and German scientific institutions) participating officially and British and American scientists participating "personally" (with their governments’ knowledge and blessing).

"....But on the next day, while the public was still being reassured that a resumption of contact with the spacecraft was achievable, a high-ranking official at Glavkosmos, the Soviet space agency, hinted that there indeed was no such hope. "Phobos 2 is ninety-nine percent lost for good," Nikolai A. Simyonov said; on that day, his choice of words - not that contact with the spacecraft was lost but that the spacecraft itself was "lost for good" - was not paid any particular heed.

"On March 30.... from Moscow to The New York Times, Esther B. Fein mentioned that Vremya, the main evening news program on Soviet television "rapidly rattled off the bad news about Phobos" and focused its report instead on the successful research the spacecraft had already accomplished. Soviet scientists appearing on the program "displayed some of the space images, but said it was still not clear what clues they offered to understanding Mars, Phobos, the Sun and interplanetary space."

"What "images" and what "clues" were they talking about?

"....When reports published in the European press (but for some reason not in the U.S. media) spoke of an "unidentified object" that was seen "in the final pictures taken by the spaceship," which showed an "inexplicable" object or "elliptical shadow" on Mars.

[An interesting report from the Spanish daily La Epoca appears in the book and it is translated into English]

Mr. Sitchin continues:

"Needless to say, this is an amazing and literally "out of this world" that raises as many questions as it answers. The loss of contact with the spacecraft was associated, by implication if not in so many words, with the observation by the spacecraft of "an object on the Martian surface seconds before." The culprit "object" is described as "a thin ellipse" and is also called "a phenomenon" as well as "a shadow." It was observed at least twice - the report does not state whether in the same location on the surface of Mars - and is capable of changing its size.... And when the "Vremya" reporter wondered whether it was a "space rocket," the scientist responded, "This is to fantasize." So, what was it - or is - it?

".... a report.... in Science (April 7, 1989) spoke of " the apparent loss of Phobos 2" - loss of the spacecraft itself, not just of the communications link with it. It happened, the prestigious journal stated, "on 27 March as the spacecraft turned from its normal alignment with Earth to image the tiny moon Phobos that was the primary mission target. When it came time for the spacecraft to turn itself and its antenna automatically back toward Earth, nothing was heard.

"The journal then continued with a sentence that remains as inexplicable as the whole incident and the "thin ellipse" on the surface of Mars. It states:

""A few hours later, a weak transmission was received, but controllers could not lock onto the signal. Nothing was heard during the next week."

"....The reason given was that the spacecraft, having turn its antenna to scan Phobos, failed to turn its antenna back toward Earth due to some unknown reason. But if the antenna remained stuck in a position facing away from Earth, how could "a weak transmission" be received "a few hours later"?....

"....The question that arises is indeed a simple one: Was the spacecraft Phobos 2 hit by "something" that put it out of commission, except for a last gasp in the form of a weak signal hours later?

"....What caused the spacecraft to destabilize itself? Was it a malfunction, or was there an extraneous cause - perhaps an impact?

"One controller at the Kaliningrad control center said the limited signals received after conclusion of the imaging session gave him the impression he was "tracking a spinner."

"Phobos 2, in other words, acted as if it was in a spin.

"....Pressed by their international participants in the Phobos mission to provide more definitive data, the Soviet authorities released the taped television transmission Phobos 2 sent in its last moments - except for the last frames, taken just seconds before the spacecraft fell silent. The television clip was shown by some TV stations in Europe and Canada as part of weekly "diary" programs, as a curiosity and not as a hot news item.

"The television sequence thus released focused on two anomalies.... The "anomaly" [the first] appeared to be far from a natural phenomenon.

"The television clip was accompanied by a live comment by Dr. John Becklake of England’s Science Museum. He described the phenomenon as very puzzling.... the pattern of parallel lines and rectangles covering an area of almost two hundred fifty square miles was a source of heat radiation [photographed with infrared camera from Phobos 2]. Is is highly unlikely that a natural source of heat radiation (a geyser or a concentration of radioactive minerals under the surface, for example) would create such a perfect geometric pattern.... What it was, the scientist said "I certainly don’t know."

"....We now come to the second "anomaly" seen in the Phobos 2 transmission as a thin ellipse with very sharp rather than rounded points.... and the ages, rather than being fuzzy, stood out sharply against a kind of halo on the Martian surface. [Mr. Sitchin is comparing the anomaly with another image from Mariner 9 recorded eighteen years earlier].

Dr. Becklake described it as "something that is between the spacecraft and Mars, because we can see the Martian surface below it," and stressed that the object was seen both by the optical and the infrared (heat-seeking) camera.

"All these reasons explain why the Soviets have not suggested that the dark, "thin ellipse" might have been the shadow of the moonlet.

[Still with Phobos 2 reports]....

"....As the last picture was halfway through," Dr. Becklake said, "they [Soviets] saw something which should not be there."

"....In the October 19, 1989 issue of Nature, Soviet scientists published a series of technical reports on the experiments Phobos 2 did manage to conduct; of the thirty-seven pages, a mere three paragraphs deal with the spacecraft’s loss. The report confirms that the spacecraft was spinning, either because of a computer malfunction or because Phobos 2 was "impacted" by an unknown object (the theory that the collision was with "dust particles" is rejected in the report).

"So what was it that collided or crashed into Phobos 2, the "something that should not be there"? What do the last frame, or frames, still secret, show?.... The chairman of the Soviet equivalent of NASA referred to the last frame when he tried to explain the sudden loss of contact, saying,

"One image appears to include and odd-shape object between the spacecraft and Mars."

"....What the secret frames hide is evidence that the loss of Phobos 2 was not an accident but an incident.

"Perhaps the first incident in a Star Wars - the shooting down by Aliens from another planet of a spacecraft from Earth intruding on their Martian base.

"Has it occurred to the reader that the Soviet space chief’s answer, "We just don’t know" what the "odd-shaped object between the spacecraft and Mars" was, is tantamount to calling it a UFO - and Unidentified Flying Object?
 

"For decades now, ever since the phenomenon of what was first called Flying Saucers and later UFOs became a worldwide enigma, no self-respecting scientist would touch the subject even with a ten foot pole - except, that is, to ridicule the phenomenon and whoever was foolish enough to take it seriously.

"The "modern UFO era," according to Antonio Huneeus, a science writer and internationally known lecturer on UFOs, began on June 14, 1947 when Kenneth Arnold, an American pilot and businessman, sighted a formation of nine silvery disks flying over the Cascade Mountains in the state of Washington....

Mr Sitchin at this point gives a concise report of events which took place sooner after this sighting went to Press.

After his concise report Mr. Sitchin continues:

"The real problem many have with UFOs is the lack of a cohesive and plausible theory to explain their origin and purpose. Where do they come from? Why?

"I myself have not encountered a UFO, to say nothing of being abducted and experimented upon by humanlike beings with elliptical heads and bulging eyes - incidents witnessed and experienced, if such claims be true, by many others, but when asked for my opinion, whether I "believe in UFOs," I sometimes answer by telling a story. Let us imagine, I say to the people in the room or the auditorium in which I am speaking, that the entrance door is thrust open and a young man bursts in, breathless from running and obviously agitated....

And Mr. Sitchin relates the story of the man’s "sighting" which in reality happened, as he explains:

"....What do we think? Do we believe him?

"We should believe him if we believe the Bible, I say, because what I just related is the tale of Jacob’s vision as told in Genesis, chapter 7. Though it was a vision seen in a dreamlike trance, Jacob was certain that the sight was real, and he said,

Surely Yahweh is present in this place,
And I knew it not . . . .
This is none other but an abode of the gods,
and this is the gateway to heaven.

"....Obviously, the hovering craft that Jacob saw was readily identified by him as belonging to the Elohim, the plural gods. What he did not know, the Bible makes clear, was only that the place where he had slept was one of their lift-off pads.

"Ancient depictions and terminology show that a distinction was made even then between the different kinds of flying machines and their pilots. There were the rocketships that served as shuttle craft and the orbiters, and we have already seen what the Anunnaki and the orbiting Igigi looked like. And there the "whilbirds" or "sky chambers" that we now call VTOLs (Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircraft) and helicopters; how these looked in antiquity is depicted in a mural at a site on the east side of the Jordan, near the place from where Elijah was carried heavenward. The goddess Inanna/Ishtar liked to pilot her own "sky chamber," at which time she would be dressed like a World War I pilot.

"But other depictions were also found - clay figurines of human-looking beings with elliptical heads and large, slanting eyes - an unusual feature of whom was their bisexuality (or lack of it)....

"....Now as one looks at the drawings of the "humanoids" by those who claim to have seen the occupants of UFOs, it is obvious they do not look like us - which means they do not look like the Anunnaki. Rather, they look like the odd humanoids depicted by the ancient figurines, [these appear on Mr. Sitchin’s book].

"....If the tales be true, then what the "contactees" have seen are not the people, the intelligent beings, from another planet - but their anthropoid robots.

"And even if a tiny percentage of the reported sightings is true, then the relative large number of alien craft visiting Earth in recent times suggests that they could not possibly come, in such profusion and frequency, from a distant planet. If they come, they must come from somewhere relatively close by.

"And the only plausible candidate is Mars - and its Moonlet Phobos.

"The reasons for the use of Mars as a jumping-off base for spacemen’s visits to Earth should be clear by now.... The circumstances in which Phobos 2 was lost indicate that someone is back there on Mars - someone ready to destroy what to them is an "alien" spacecraft. How does Phobos, the moonlet, fit into all this?

"Simply put, it fits very well.

After explaining the proposed missions by the Soviet Phobos 1 and 2, and the involvement of other participating countries, the purpose became clear, as Mr. Sitchin explains:

"....The Phobos mission was nothing short of a concerted effort by modern science to lift the veil from Mars and enlist it in Mankind’s course on the road to Space.

"But was someone there, at Mars, who did not welcome this intrusion?

"It is noteworthy that Phobos, unlike the smaller and smooth-surfaced Deimos [the other of Mar’s moons], has peculiar features that have led some scientists in the past that it was artificially fashioned. There are peculiar "track marks" that run straight and almost parallel to each other. Their width is almost uniform, some 700 to 1,000 feet and their depth, too, is a uniform 75 to 90 feet (as far as could be measured from the Viking orbiters)...

Phobos

"....What are these tracks or trenches (water, causing them has been ruled out), how did they come about, why do they emanate from the circular crater (whose rim is so perfectly circular that it looks artificial), and does the crater lead into the moonlet’s interior?....

"....Have others, long ago, carried out ideas and plans that modern science envisions for the future - bringing Phobos and Deimos, two captured asteroids, into orbit around Mars to burrow into their interior?

"In the 1960s it was noticed that Phobos was speeding up its orbit around Mars; this led Soviet scientists to suggest that Phobos was lighter than its size warrants. The Soviet physicist I. S. Shklovsky then offered the astounding hypothesis that Phobos was hollow.

After several speculations from diverse entities which Mr. Sitchin presents in his book, he continues:

"Were a natural crater and interior faults artificially enlarged and carved out by "someone" to create inside Phobos a shelter, shielding its occupants from the cold and radiation of space? The Soviet report does not speculate on that; but what it says regarding the "tracks" is illuminating. It calls them "grooves," reports that their sides are of a brighter material than the moonlet’s surface, and, what is indeed a revelation, that in the area west of the large crater, "new grooves can be identified" - grooves or tracks that were not there when Mariner 9 and the Vikings took pictures of the moonlet.

"Since there is no volcanic activity on Phobos (the crater in its natural shape resulted from meteorite impacts, not volcanism), no wind storms, no rain, no flowing water - how did the new grooved tracks come about? Who was there on Phobos (and thus on Mars) since the 1970s? Who is on it now?

"For, if there is no one there now, how to explain the March 27, 1989, incident?

"The chilling possibility that modern science, catching up with ancient knowledge, has brought Mankind to the first incident in a War of the Worlds, rekindles a situation that has lain dormant almost 5,500 years.

 

The event that parallels today’s situation has come to be known as the Incident of the Tower of Babel. It is described in Genesis, Chapter 11, and in the Wars of Gods and Men I refer to Mesopotamian texts with earlier and more detailed accounts of the incident. I have placed it in 3450 B.C. and construed as the first attempt by Marduk to establish a space base in Babylon as an act of defiance to Enlil and his sons.

 

"In the biblical version, the people whom Marduk had gotten to do the job were building, in Babylon, a city with a "tower whose head shall reach the heaven" in which a Shem - a space rocket - was to be installed (quite possibly in the manner depicted on a coin from Byblos). But the other deities were not amused by this foray of Mankind into the space age; so

Yahweh came down to see the city
and the tower which the humans were building.

"And he said to unnamed colleagues:

This is just the beginning of their undertakings;
From now on, anything that they shall scheme to do
shall no longer be impossible for them.
Come, let us go down and confuse their language
so that they should not understand each other’s speech.

"Almost 5,500 years later, the humans got together and "spoke one language," in a coordinated international mission to Mars and Phobos.

"And, once again, someone was not amused.

Return



Chapter Thirteen
IN SECRET ANTICIPATION
 

"Are we unique? Are we alone?

"....Scientific advances since 1976, reviewed in previous chapters, have gone a long way in corroborating ancient knowledge. But what about the two pillars of that knowledge and that ancient answer to the central questions?.... one more planet in our Solar System.... other intelligent beings outside Earth....

"That a search has been going on, both for another planet and for other beings, is a matter of record. That it has intensified in recent years can be gleaned from publicly available documents. But now it is also evident that when the mists of leaks, rumors, and denials are pierced, if not the public, then the world’s leaders have been aware for some time first, that there is one more planet in our Solar System and second, that we are not alone.

"ONLY THIS KNOWLEDGE CAN EXPLAIN THE INCREDIBLE CHANGES IN WORLD AFFAIRS THAT HAVE BEEN TAKING PLACE WITH EVEN MORE INCREDIBLE SPEED.

"ONLY THIS KNOWLEDGE CAN EXPLAIN THE ACTUAL PREPARATIONS BEING MADE FOR THE DAY, WHICH IS SURELY COMING, WHEN THE TWO FACTS WILL HAVE TO BE DROPPED LIKE BOMBSHELLS ON THE PEOPLE OF THIS PLANET EARTH. [Capitals are Mr. Sitchin’s]

"Suddenly, all that had divided and preoccupied the world powers for decades seems not to matter anymore. Tanks, aircraft, armies are withdrawn and disbanded. One regional conflict after another is unexpectedly settled. The Berlin War.... is gone. The Iron Curtain.... is being disbanded. The head of the atheistic communist empire visits the Pope - with a medieval painting of a UFO as the centerpiece of the room’s decoration.... President George Bush.... (1989) has become an ardent partner of his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev, in clearing the desks of the old agendas; but clearing them for what?

"The Soviet president, agreed to unprecedented troop withdrawals and reductions a week after the same U.S. president, amidst reductions in the American military spending, asked the Congress to increase funds for SDI/ (Strategic Defense Initiative) Star Wars.... And before the month was out, the two superpowers and their two major wartime allies, Great Britain and France, have agreed to let German unification proceed. For forty-five years the vow never to see a unified, resurgent Germany again was a basic tenet of European stability; now, suddenly, that seemed to matter no more.

"....As one looks for answers, the clues point in one direction: Space. Surely, the turmoil in Eastern Europe has long been building up. Certainly, economic failures have necessitated long-overdue reforms.... Since about the middle of 1989 all that had been vigorously defended and brutally suppressed no longer seemed important....

"....Was it only a coincidence that the Phobos 2 incident in March 1989 was conceded in June to have been the result of spinning caused by an impact? Or that it was in that same June that Western audiences were shown the enigmatic television pictures from Phobos 2 (minus the last frame or frames) revealing the heat-emitting pattern on the surface of Mars and the "thin, elliptical shadow" for which there was no explanation? Was it a mere coincidence in timing that the hurried change of U.S. policy occurred after the Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune, in August 1989, which relayed back pictures of mysterious "double tracks" on Neptune’s moon Triton tracks as enigmatic as those photographed on Mars in previous years and on Phobos in March 1989?

Triton

 

"....Was it mere coincidence that within days of the Phobos 2 incident the White House took unexpected steps.... with Space programs.... In June 1989 the NSC (National Space Council) instructed NASA to accelerate the Space Station preparations.... In July 1989 the Vice President (Dan Quayle) briefed Congress and the space industry on the specific proposals for the manned missions to the Moon and to Mars. It was made clear that of five options, that of "developing a lunar base as a stepping-stone to Mars is receiving the greatest attention." A week later it was disclosed that instruments lofted by a military rocket successfully fired a "neutral-particle beam" - a "death ray" - in space as part of the SDI space-defense program.

"Even an outside observer could sense that the White House, the President himself, was now in charge of the direction of the space program, its links with SDI, and their accelerated timetable. And so it was that immediately after his hurried summit meeting with the Soviet leader in Malta, President Bush submitted to Congress his next annual budget, with its increase of billions of dollars for "Star Wars.".... Evidently the soviet leader knew what SDI is all about: President Bush, in their joint press conference, acknowledge that SDI was discussed, both "defensive" and "offensive"- "rockets as well as people . . . a wide discussion."

"....When the Challenger shuttle was accidentally destroyed in January 1986, all space work was put on hold. But in July 1989, just a few months after the Phobos 2 loss, the United States, rather than pull in its horns, reiterated a determination to go to Mars. There must have been a compelling reason. . . .

"....Concurrently with these developments, NASA has been expanding its network of space telescopes.... has equipped some of the shuttles with sky-scanning devices.... SETI was re-activated by Senator John Garn of Utah, a former shuttle astronaut who became convinced of the existence of extraterrestrial beings....

"....Commenting on these developments, a spokesman for the Federation of American Scientists in Washington said, "The future is starting to arrive." And The New York Times of February 6, 1990, headlined the report of the invigorated SETI programs "HUNT FOR ALIENS IN SPACE: THE NEXT GENERATION." A small but symbolic change, no longer a search for an extraterrestrial "intelligence", but for Aliens.

"A search in secret anticipation.

"....When President Reagan, in a televised address in March 1983, surprised the American people, the world’s nations (and, it later became known, most top officials of his own administration) with his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) - the concept of a protective shield in space against missiles and spaceships - it was natural to assume that its sole purpose was to attain military superiority over the Soviet Union. That was the Soviet reaction, and it was vehement. When Mikhail Gorbachev followed Konstantin Chernenko as Soviet leader in 1985, he adhered to the position that any improvement in East-West relations depended first and foremost on the abandonment of SDI. But, as it now seems clear, before the year was out, a new mood began to take hold as the true reasons for SDI were communicated to the Soviet leader. Antagonism was replaced by an attitude of "Let’s Talk"; and the talk was to be about cooperation in space and, more specifically, about going together to Mars.

"....The marked change was even more puzzling, since in 1983 and 1984 the Soviet Union appeared to be moving far ahead of the United States in space achievements.... Comparing the two national programs, a U.S. Congressional study reported, at the end of 1983, that they were like an American tortoise and a Soviet hare. Still, by the end of 1984, the first sign of renewed cooperation was given when a U.S. device was included in the Soviet Vega spacecraft that was launched to encounter Halley’s comet.

"There were other manifestations, semi-official and official of the new spirit of cooperation in space, despite SDI....

"....In July 1985 scientists, space officials, and astronauts for the United States and the Soviet Union met in Washington, ostensibly to commemorate the Apollo-Soyuz linkup of 1975. In reality, it was a seminar held to discuss a joint mission to Mars....

"....Was there perhaps also some other cause, some significant occurrence that suddenly made a major difference, that changed the agenda, that called for new priorities - but necessitated the revival of a World War II alliance? But if so, who was now the common enemy? Against whom were the United States and the USSR aligning their space programs? And why the priority, given by both nations, to going to Mars?

"....How could he explain this U-turn, Reagan was asked. His answer was that what made a common cause was space. More specifically, a danger from space to all nations on Earth.

"....What we know from the public record is that on February 16, 1987, in a major address to an international "Survival of Humanity" forum at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, Gorbachev recalled his discussion with President Reagan in words almost identical to those the American President had used.... After pointing to the risks of nuclear weapons and the common interests of "human civilization," he went on to say,

"At our meeting in Geneva, the U.S. President said that if the earth faced an invasion by extraterrestrials, the United States and the Soviet Union would join forces to repel such an invasion.

I shall not dispute the hypothesis, though I think it’s early yet to worry about such an intrusion."

"....Amid the gloom of the Challenger disaster, all the space programs were suspended except those pertaining to Mars. To remain on the road to the Moon and Mars, NASA appointed a study group under the chairmanship of astronaut Dr. Sally K. Ride to reevaluate the plans and their feasibility. The panel strongly recommended the development of celestial ferryboats and transfer ships to carry astronauts and cargos for "human settlement beyond Earth orbit, from the highlands of the Moon to the plains of Mars."

"....Not everyone in the United States was for it....

"....Overriding objections, the United States and the USSR signed, in 1987, a new agreement for cooperation in space....

"In the United States oppositions to sharing space secrets with the Soviet Union nevertheless continued, and some experts viewed the repeated Soviet invitations to the United States to join in their missions to Mars simply as attempts to gain access to Western technology. Prompted, no doubt, by such objections, President Reagan once again spoke up publicly of the extraterrestrial threat. The occasion was his address to the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 21, 1987. Speaking of the need to turn swords into plowshares, he said:

"In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world."

"As reported at the time in The New Republic by its senior editor Fred Barnes, President Reagan, during a White House luncheon on September 5, sought confirmation from the Soviet foreign minister that the Soviet Union would indeed join the United States against an alien threat from outer space, and Shevardnadze responded, "Yes, absolutely."

"....There were those who questioned Soviet motives and found it difficult to draw a clear distinction between sharing scientific technology and sharing military secrets. And there were those, like the chairman of the House of Representatives’ Science, Space and Technology Committee, Rep. Robert A. Roe, who believed that the common effort to explore Mars would shift the international focus from "Star Wars" to "Star Trek." He and others encouraged President Reagan to stay the course of going together to Mars at the forthcoming Summit meeting.

"....So, once again, President Reagan raised the issue of the secret threat. Meeting in Chicago in May 1988 with members of the National Strategy Forum, he told them of wondering,

"What would happen if all of us in the world discovered that we were threatened by an outer - a power from outer space - from another planet."

"It was no longer a vague threat from "outer space" but from "another planet."

"At the end of the month the two superpower leaders met for their third summit in Moscow....

"Two months later the Phobos spacecraft were launched. The die was cast: the two superpowers on Earth had launched challengers to probe "the outer - a power from space - from another planet."

"They sat back in secret anticipation. They ended up with the Phobos 2 incident.

"....It is noteworthy that in his February 1987 address, the Soviet leader, in raising the issue of such a threat and choosing not to dispute it, could reassure his audience with the thought that "It’s early yet to worry about such an intrusion."

"Until the Phobos 2 incident, and certainly before 1983 was over, the whole question of "Extraterrestrials" was viewed in two parallel yet separate ways. On the one hand.... Frank D. Drake of the University of California at Santa Cruz and president of the SETI.... Institute in Mountain View, California.... concludes in his formula that in the Milky Way.... there ought to be between 10,000 to 100,000 advanced civilizations. SETI projects have been using various radio telescopes to listen in on radio emissions from distant space....

"....The SETI search, besides being unproductive so far, raises two questions. The first, [besides Congress cutting funds] is whether there is any point in trying to discover any intelligent signal that may have taken light years to reach us.... Second, (and this is my question) [Mr. Sitchin’s]: why expect advanced civilizations to use radio for communication? Would we have expected them to use bonfires if we had conducted the search centuries ago, when one mountaintop village signaled another by such means? What about all the advances we on Earth have attained - from electricity to electromagnetism to fiber optics, to laser pulses and proton beams and crystal oscillators, as well as new methods yet to be discovered?

"Unexpectedly but perhaps inevitably, the SETI searches were forced to concentrate closer to Earth (and to focus not on extraterrestrial "intelligences" but on "beings") by scientists dealing with the origin of life on Earth.... "The hunt for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence" is the "crowning research effort in the minds of many" who look for the origins of life, Erik Eckholm reported in The New York Times. The chemists and biologists were now looking to the exploration of Mars and Titan, Saturn’s moon, for answers to the mystery of life on Earth.

"....As early as 1968 the U.S. National Security Agency, in a study dealing with the UFO phenomenon, analyzed the consequences of a "confrontation between a technologically advanced extraterrestrial society and an inferior one on Earth." Surely, someone had to have a theory regarding the home planet of such an extraterrestrial society.

"Was it Mars? That might have been the only plausible (even if incredible) answer until another line of search- for one more planet in our Solar System - merged with the issue of Extraterrestrials.

"In The 12^th Planet it was explained that Planet X (as designated by astronomers) and Nibiru would be one and the same, because the Sumerians considered the Solar System to have twelve members: the Sun, Moon, the original nine planets, and the planet that became the twelfth member, the Invader, Nibiru/Marduk.

"....Working in 1972 on the anticipated trajectory of Halley’s comet, Joseph L. Brady of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California discovered that Halley’s orbit was also perturbed. His computations led him to suggest the existence of Planet X at a distance of 64 AU with an orbital period of 1,800 Earth-years.... Could the fact that Nibiru is on its way back toward its perigee account for the fact that Brady’s 1,800-year orbit is exactly half the 3,600 Earth-years orbit the Sumerians recorded for Nibiru?

"There were other conclusions by Brady that were in significant accord with the Sumerian data: that the planet has a retrograde orbit, and that this orbit is not in the same plane (the ecliptic) as that of the other planets (except Pluto) but at an inclination to it.

"....In 1981, with the data from Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 and from the two Voyagers on Jupiter and Saturn in hand, Van Flandern and four colleagues at the U.S, Naval Observatory restudied these planets’ orbits as well as those of the outer planets.... Van Flandern presented new evidence, based on complex gravitational equations, that a body at least twice the size of Earth orbits the Sun at a distance of at least 1.5 billion miles beyond Pluto, with an orbital period of at least 1,000 years. The Detroit News of January 16, 1981, published the news on its front page together with the Sumerian depiction of the Solar System, borrowed from The 12th Planet, and a summary of the book’s main thesis.

"The search for Planet X was then joined by NASA.... In a statement issued from its Ames Research Center on June 17, 1982, and headlined "Pioneers May Find Tenth Planet," NASA disclosed that the two spacecraft had been enlisted in the search for Planet X....

"....In September of that year, 1982, the U.S. Naval Observatory confirmed that it was "seriously persuing" the search for Planet X. Dr. Harrington said his team has "narrowed themselves to a fairly small portion of the sky," and added that the conclusion by then was that the planet "was moving much more slowly than any of the planets that we now know."

"(Needless to say, all the above-mentioned astronomers leading the search for Planet X soon received long letters from me, accompanied by copies of The 12th Planet; their responses have been equally long and detailed as well as gracious).

"....It is known that on various secret missions of the U.S. space shuttles, new telescopic devices for scanning the distant skies were employed, and that Soviet cosmonauts aboard the Salyut space station were equally engaged in secret searches for the planet.

"....the enigma of the unknown planet might be resolved through the "infrared search of the solar neighborhood" by the "all-sky survey of the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS)." He (John Anderson) explained that IRAS "will be sensitive to the heat trapped in the interiors of substellar bodies" - heat that is slowly lost to space in the form of infrared radiation.

"....Did IRAS find the tenth planet?

"....the official response to the question is no - no tenth planet was found.

"But that, to put it mildly, is not a correct answer.

"Having scanned the same part of the heavens at least twice, IRAS did make it possible to "blink" images; and, contrary to the impression given, moving objects were discovered. These included five previously unknown comets, several comets that astronomers had "lost," four new asteroids - and an enigmatic cometlike object."

"Was it perhaps Planet X?

"In spite of the official denials, a disclosure did leak out at the end of the year. It came in the form of an exclusive interview of the key IRAS scientist by Thomas O’Toole of the science service of the Washington Post. The story, generally ignored - suppressed, perhaps - was carried by several dailies, which variously headlined it "Giant Object Mystifies Astronomers," "Mystery Body Found in Space," and "At Solar System’s Edge Giant Object is a Mystery"....

"But could it be a planet - another member of our Solar System? That possibility seemed to have occurred to NASA. According to the Washington Post:

""The Mystery body was seen twice by IRAS"
""This suggests it’s not a comet because a comet would not be as large as we’ve observed and a comet would have probably moved"
""Conceivably, it could be the 10^th planet that astronomers have searched for in vain."

"So, what did IRAS discover, I inquired of the Public Information Office of JPL in February 1984. This is the response:

""....In true scientific fashion he [the scientist reporting on the Washington Post], carefully noted that if the object were close it would have to be Neptune-size. But if distant, an entire galaxy.

"Gone, then, is the Jupiter sized comparison: now it was a Neptune-sized planet "if the object were close" - but a galaxy (!) if distant.

"....William Gutsch, chairman of the American Museum-Hayden Planetarium in New York.... in his syndicated column "Skywatch" - "A tenth planet may have already been spotted and even catalogued," although it is yet to be seen with optical telescopes.

"Was this also the conclusion reached at the White House, as witness the developments that have followed in superpower relations as of 1983 and the repeated "hypothetical" statements of the two leaders concerning aliens from space?

"When Pluto was discovered in 1930 it was a great astronomical and scientific discovery, but no earthshaking event. The same would have applied to the discovery of Planet X; but not anymore - not if Planet X and Nibiru are one and the same.... then the Sumerians were also right about the Anunnaki.

"If Planet X exists, we are not alone in this Solar System.

"....Indication that what IRAS had spotted was not "a distant galaxy" but a "Neptune-sized planet" is further corroborated by the intensified efforts to scan certain parts of the heaven with optical telescopes and by the sudden stress on conducting these searches in the southern skies.

"....This would be done with some of the world’s "most powerful telescopes" [Washington Post published], two on Mt. Palomar in California.... the extremely powerful telescope at Cerro Tololo in the Chilean Andes.... [and others], including the one atop Mount Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Cerro Tololo Observatory, Chile; and a caption of stars trails .
Above: Mt. Palomar   Right: Mauna Kea, Hawaii

"....Commenting on the NASA news conference, Newsweek (July 13,1987) reported: NASA held a press conference last week to make a rather strange announcement: an eccentric 10^th planet may - or may not - be orbiting the Sun." But unnoticed went the fact that the news conference was called under the auspices of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Ames research Center, and NASA headquarters in Washington. This meant that whatever had to become known bore the stamp of approval of the topmost space authorities. The message was hidden in a final comment by Dr. Anderson. Asked when Planet X would be found, he said,

"I wouldn’t be surprised if it is found in 100 years, or it may never be found... and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s found next week."

"That, no doubt, was why three NASA agencies had sponsored the news conference: That was the news.

It is noteworthy that since 1984, after the enigmatic IRAS disclosure, there has been a spate of rushed construction of new or enhancement of older powerful telescopes by the United States, the Soviet Union, and European entities. Telescopes in the southern hemisphere have received the most attention. In France, for example, The Paris Observatory has formed a special team to search for Planet X, and a New Technology Telescope (NTT) was activated by the European Southern Observatory in Cerro La Silla in Chile....

Cerro La Silla	Observatory, Chile
Paris Observatory

"....NASA had planned to loft the most powerful space telescope ever built, the Hubble, when the shuttle program went awry after the 1986 Challenge accident; there is reason to believe that the expectation of the discovery of Planet X in June 1987 was based on hope that Hubble be lofted at that time (it was finally put into orbit at the beginning of 1990 only to be found defective).

Hubble Telescope attached to Shuttle

Hubble being repaired

"....Dr. Harrington presented his latest findings in a paper published in The Astronomical Journal (October 1988) titled " The Location of Planet X...."

"Sending me [to Mr. Sitchin] a reprint of the paper, he marked alongside the northern portion of the sketch "Not consistent with Neptune," and along the southern portion of the skies he wrote "Best area now."

"On January 16, 1990, Dr. Harrington reported at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Arlington, Virginia, that the U.S. Naval Observatory has narrowed its search for the tenth planet to the southern skies and has announced the dispatch of a team of astronomers to the Black Birch Astronomic Observatory in New Zealand. The data from Voyager 2, he disclosed, now lead his team to believe that the tenth planet is about five times larger than Earth and about three times further from the Sun than Neptune or Pluto.

"These are exciting developments, not only because they bring modern science to the verge of announcing what the Sumerians already knew so long ago - that there is one more planet in our Solar System - but also because they go a long way toward confirming the details of the planet’s size and orbit.

"....By concluding that the inclination of Planet X might be as high as 30 degrees, modern astronomers corroborate Sumerian astronomical data.

"So does the most recent determination that the planet is orbiting toward us from the southeast, the direction of the constellation Centaurus. Nowadays we see there the zodiac constellation Libra; but in Babylonian/biblical times that was the place of Sagitarius....

"If Extraterrestrials exist, should Earthlings try to reach them? If they can journey in space and reach Earth, will they be benign, or - as H.G. Wells depicted in The War of the Worlds - will they come to destroy, conquer, annihilate?

"....The Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Ryle, counseled against any attempt by people on Earth to make their existence known. His concern was that another civilization might see Earth and Earthlings as a tempting source of minerals, food, and slaves. He was criticized not only for paying too little heed to the possibility of gain from such contacts but also for creating unnecessary fears:

"Given the immensity of space" (The New York Times editorialized), "the nearest intelligent beings are not likely to exist closer than hundreds of thousands of light years away."

"But, as the chronology of discoveries and superpower relations indicates, it was realized by the time the first U.S - Soviet summit was held that such intelligent beings are much closer to us than that; there indeed exists one more planet in our own Solar System; that it was known in antiquity as Nibiru; and that it was not lifeless but peopled, with beings much more advanced than us.

"....The "working committee" [convened by the United States after 1985, with representatives of Soviet Union and many other nations] to ponder the matter of Extraterrestrials....

"....What was the Committee required to consider? Not the theoretical question of whether there are Extraterrestrials light years away.... The task before the Committee was much more urgent and ominous:
What should be done as soon as their existence is discovered.

"In April 1989, immediately after the Phobos 2 incident at Mars, the international team hammered out a set of guidelines. It was a two-page document titled DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES CONCERNING ACTIVITIES FOLLOWING THE DETECTION OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE.... it is clear that its principal purpose was to maintain the control by certain authorities of the news following the "detection of extraterrestrial intelligence."

"....Clause 8 [of The Principles] prohibit unauthorized response:

"....No response to a signal or other evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence should be sent until appropriate international consultations have taken place. The procedures for such consultations will be the subject of a separate agreement, declaration or arrangement.

"....Why should there be pandemonium and worldwide panic if, say, the authorities were to announce the possibility of intelligent life in some star system several light years away? If they were thinking, for example, that such a signal might come from the first star system Voyager might come upon after it left the Solar System, the encounter would take place forty thousand years in the future! Surely, that is not what has worried the Committee.

"Clearly, then, the Principles were drawn up to its anticipation of a message or phenomenon closer to home, from within the Solar System....

"....Modern science has indeed caught up with ancient knowledge - of Nibiru and the Anunnaki. And Man knows, once again, that he is not alone.

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