AN OPEN LETTER

(As always, click on images to get full-size view)

August 6, 1996

President William Jefferson Clinton
The White House
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. President,

As an American citizen, I am thrilled at NASA's scientific publication next week in the prestigious journal, SCIENCE, of the Johnson Space Center discovery in an Antarctic meteorite of microscopic fossil life forms from the planet Mars; as we enter the final years of the 20th Century, and now begin the four-year selection process for the next President of the United States -- who will lead this Nation (and the world) into the 21st Century itself -- I cannot help but wonder, however, if this "NASA announcement" is only the beginning of additional, even more startling "official" revelations to come... from the Space Agency which is under your direction.

I am, therefore, greatly heartened by your own official announcement on this issue:

That a White House "bi-partisian space summit" will be convened in Washington under the Vice-President's direction, before the end of this year, and that the intended objective of this summit will be "to discuss how America should pursue answers to the scientific questions raised by this [life on Mars] finding..."

Mr. President, because of the magnitude of both the present NASA claim, and its attendent implications, I sincerely urge you to include in these White House deliberations the widest possible range of independent scientific research into these same issues that exists outside of NASA. I speak as the head of one of those independent research organizations: "The Enterprise Mission."

For the past fourteen years, as head of an independent research organization, "The Enterprise Mission," I have been privileged to lead a unique team of scientists, engineers, and generalists in a multi-disciplinary investigation of an even more extraordinary possibility: that from the mid-1960's, with the initial unmanned robotic surveys of the Moon, to the mid-1970's, with the unmanned Viking exploration of the planet Mars, NASA successfully returned to Earth evidence of intelligently designed structural artifacts on at least two other major bodies in this solar system.

But additional documentary evidence, developed directly through our on-going, independent investigation, now affirms an inexplicable breakdown of the system: a demonstrable failure on the part of NASA -- whether intended or not -- for over thirty years, to notify either the majority of its own scientists -- or the American people -- of these staggering results.

These startling possibilities began to unfold in 1979, when two imaging specialists (Vincent DiPietro and Gregory Molenaar), working under contract at the Goddard Space Flight Center, developed the initial scientific evidence: independent analysis of the original 1976 NASA-Viking photographs, which revealed several potential structural artifacts located in the Cydonia region of the planet. DiPietro and Molenaar presented this provocative evidence in accord with standard scientific methodology at a major astronomical conference; NASA responded by ignoring their imaging analysis, while simultaneously taking the extraordinary step of deliberately deprecating the two authors.

This major management and scientific failure, on an issue as significant as a Space Agency discovery of evidence relating to possible extraterrestrial intelligence, directly resulted in our own entry into this highly controversial area -- now encompassing over fourteen years of intensive, multi-disciplinary scientific effort.

Our independent research efforts, coordinating scores of multi-disciplinary scientists, have now led to the strongly supported hypothesis that some specific structures in the Cydonia region -- laid out in a striking and repeating mathematical and geometric pattern on the Martian surface -- are only explicable as the direct result of intelligent design. High-resolution photographs, with the potential to publicly verify or disconfirm this increasingly robust hypothesis, could have been acquired by NASA's unmanned Mars Observer spacecraft, scheduled to arrive at Mars in 1993, but inexplicably "lost in space" at the last minute. The latest opportunity to acquire these crucial new Cydonia photographs has fallen to NASA's up-coming Mars replacement mission, Mars Global Surveyor, now scheduled "coincidentally" (in light of this astonishing "Martian micro-fossil announcement") for November of this year -- 1996.

However, even with Mars Global Surveyor imminent, NASA continues to ignore this detailed, careful Cydonia research, and steadfastly refuses to give any priority to obtaining new high-resolution photographs of these potentially artificial Martian structures. NASA has in fact adopted policies regarding Mars Global Surveyor data release no different than it planned with Mars Observer -- plans that, even if the desired new photographs are taken, add considerable doubt as to whether they will ever be released to the American taxpayers... who in the end underwrite all NASA missions.

All the details of this extensive, potentially explosive Mars inquiry, as well as NASA's inexplicable suppression of the topic, have now been objectively reviewed in a separate, almost year-long study conducted in 1992-1993 by Professor Stanley V. McDaniel, formerly head of the Philosophy Department of Sonoma State University. After an exhaustive analysis of the methodology employed by all independent researchers who have worked on the Viking Cydonia data, Professor McDaniel concluded in 1993 that "on the whole the [independent, non-NASA] researchers, acutely aware of the controversial nature of their subject matter, have conducted their work with a remarkably high degree of scientific integrity. In many respects, their work has been a model of the way science, at its best, should work." I refer you to the Executive Summary in Professor McDaniel's heavily footnoted document for a more extensive description of his critical conclusions on this topic. ¹

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Professor McDaniel's findings is that NASA's 20-year deprecation of this critical planetary evidence may have been politically deliberate.

Independent of McDaniel's findings are the recent dramatic results of our own two-year extension of our geometric Mars research to other NASA data. This has resulted in our additional discovery, and public presentation -- first, at Ohio State University on June 2 of 1994; and earlier this year, on March 21 at a major National Press Club press conference -- of compelling evidence of ancient structural artifacts present on the Moon.

Confirmed through cross comparisons of overwhelming imaging evidence, from several separate NASA missions -- with different photographic technologies, different lighting, and different viewing geometries -- these studies now leave little doubt that A: this solar system has been host to some prior habitation by intelligence, and B: some within NASA have apparently known about and deliberately suppressed this robust evidence for more than thirty years.

Regarding possible motivations for this inexplicable (if unconstitutional) behavior, additional documentary evidence discovered by McDaniel in his independent ethical inquiry now seems particularly relevant.

According to McDaniel, an early NASA study was commissioned from the Brookings Institution in 1959 and may have formed the basis of current NASA policy.² This study specifically anticipates the possible future discovery of intelligently designed artifacts elsewhere in the solar system by unmanned NASA probes, and considers "how might such information, under what circumstances, be presented to or withheld from the public, for what ends?"

The apparent reason given for considering the possibility of withholding information from the public, should extraterrestrial artifacts be discovered, was the apprehension voiced within this Study that society itself might "disintegrate." Everything in NASA's (otherwise inexplicable) behavior regarding the possibly artificial structures on Mars, and those now discovered on the Moon, indicates that NASA has been following, and intends to follow for the indefinite future, the policy of withholding information outlined in the Brookings Institution Report.

There seems to be no other rational explanation for NASA's almost two-decade campaign against independent research on the possibility of artificial structures on Mars as supported by the Viking data base, or its even longer, now highly documentable deliberate suppression of data indicating artificial structures on the Moon.

If this is so, the possible decision on NASA's part to withhold data concerning any evidence of extraterrestrial artifacts took place less than a year after the official birth of NASA itself, "before the ink was dry" on NASA's own unique charter as the one government agency specifically enjoined by Act of Congress (the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958) to "provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof." The possibility that NASA is operating on the basis of a censorship policy regarding certain types of scientific discovery goes counter to a standard expectation in American society of completely open and unfettered scientific discovery and publication by the Nation's Space Agency. This must now raise grave Constitutional questions, if not even broader ethical issues regarding government manipulation of the basic scientific process.

In an era of rising political revolt against government hypocrisy in so many other areas, Mr. President, this striking evidence of a possible long-term institutional hypocrisy deep within many Americans' ideal of "government gone right," NASA itself, cannot be seen as anything other than a fundamental failure of decision-makers in Washington to keep faith with the American people, to believe in representative government, and to abide by the tenets of the Constitution.

And as such, this failure of representative government is a particularly egregious example of what you, President Clinton, ran and won against four years ago -- of "government gone wrong"; for, as you have pointed out more than once since your election, without continued fundamental trust in the integrity of government, how can a democratic society long survive?

Mr. President, what do you suppose Thomas Jefferson would have done with the stunning opportunities that now confront you? What if that earlier Jefferson had lived in an age when technology could have made it possible for him, as it is now for you, to reach out across the solar system, to the Moon and Mars, to test -- on live global television via return missions -- not only the possible reality of extraterrestrial artifacts . . . but the ultimate meaning, power, and promise to Humanity of the Constitution of the United States itself?

We do not have to wonder.

Jefferson, by far the most brilliant and scientifically inclined Chief Executive ever to hold office, was intimately involved with the details and planning of the famed Lewis and Clarke expedition through the Louisiana Purchase, long before he single-handedly acted to double the size of the young United States by acquisition of the Purchase in 1803. Jefferson hand-wrote specific instructions to Captain Merriwether Lewis on everything from botanical observations to how Native American tribes along the way were to be approached "on behalf of the United States." Gazing at these presidential instructions -- the equivalent then of mission rules for the pioneering exploration of an entirely new planet -- a strange, prophetic thrill comes over you...

What would this visionary president have accomplished for the benefit of the United States and for all Humankind, given the resources of a "NASA?"

What will you accomplish, Mr. President -- given the present day reality of these resources?

Another youthful holder of the Oval Office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, on the occasion of a state dinner being attended by several Nobel Laureates, quipped that "the White House hasn't seen this concentration of sheer human genius since Thomas Jefferson dined here... alone."

That same new president gave American's the New Frontier, a world of global communications satellites -- "CNN" -- the Golden Age of unmanned exploration of the solar system, and the Moon.

JFK's largely unsung legacy of space exploration and development ushered in an unprecedented era of fundamental technological advancement, technologies which have now demonstrably generated more real wealth for more Americans than any single Federal project. What would confirmation and follow-up on a set of extraterrestrial ruins in the solar system generate in stunning new technologies, in revolutionary knowledge, and in unimagined wealth?

It is this, Mr. President, that NASA's current policy regarding these discoveries appears ready to destroy. The crucial aspect of John Fitzgerald Kennedy's overlooked space legacy is about to be put to a key test by your decision: will you seek to verify before a watching world potential alien artifacts in our own solar system, or will you -- for the sake of a policy developed 40 years ago, under the influence of a paranoid McCarthy era and the Cold War -- turn your back on a possible evolutionary step forward for all Humanity?

Mr. President, the important question is just this: what will you now do to ensure the final, crowning legacy of JFK? How will you keep faith with the dreams of Thomas Jefferson, President Kennedy, and millions of Americans for whom confirmation that the human race is not alone would undoubtedly be viewed as the greatest contribution to humankind of any administration in the history of the Republic?

Mr. President, a future unimagined -- a future filled with almost unimaginable promise -- is now awaiting your decision. As one who has spent more than a decade of his life fighting to gain recognition for the promise embodied in the apparent artifacts now discovered on two worlds -- the Moon and Mars -- I urge you to follow the important precedent established by your order to Secretary O'Leary at the Department of Energy several years ago, regarding declassification of medical data surrounding U.S. atomic testing of the 1950's; I strongly urge that you immediately go far beyond NASA's latest, in truth "tentative announcement" of microbes found in meteorites from Mars...

I strongly urge you to immediately declassify all pertinent government studies and related NASA data concerning potential artificial structures on the Moon and Mars -- as well as take immediate steps to implement recommendations made at the conclusion of Professor McDaniel's document for follow-up lunar and Mars missions.

Just a day before NASA's remarkable "micro-fossil announcement" -- the first official presentation to the world of extraterrestrial life beyond this planet Earth -- the man who hopes to replace you in the White House next January 20, former Senator Bob Dole, released the fifty-page official Republican National Platform. Within that document, is an aggressive "plank" -- specifically urging a manned mission to Mars.

Mr. President, the future of your own Administration, if not your reelection to the Presidency itself, could well stand now in the balance -- judged in light of NASA's apparent decision to begin to reveal some of what it knows... a NASA still under your direction. Because, waiting in the wings behind this first official NASA admission that "we are not alone" is our own fourteen-year "Enterprise" Investigation -- evidence of much, much more... actual intelligently-designed artifacts, waiting on the planet Mars and elsewhere...

This fall election thus could well now hinge on your perceived willingness to ensure that NASA's responsibilities to the American people are henceforth carried out with full accountability to both the spirit and letter of true Science -- if not to the letter and spirit of the law... the Constitution itself.

The choice, and the potential for unparalleled leadership as we enter the New Century, is yours.

Sincerely,

Richard C. Hoagland, Founder

The Enterprise Mission

1. Setting Mission Priorities for NASA's Mars Observer: A failure of Executive, Congressional and Scientific Responsibility? Stanley V. McDaniel (1993)

2. "Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs", Brookings Institute report delivered to the Committee on Long Range Studies, NASA, November 1960. Submitted by NASA to the 87th Congress, 1st Session, April 18, 1961. House Report #242, Serial Set Vol #2, #12338.