The Missing Times – News Media Complicity in the UFO Cover-up

“When UFOs Appear, National News Agencies Fall Silent…” Terry Hansen

Very few if any books written about the mass media and the UFO cover-up display the insight and hard hitting critical analysis as that provided by Terry Hansen in his book The Missing Times – NEWS MEDIA COMPLICITY IN THE UFO COVER-UP.

Although it was published nearly 14 years ago Hansen’s research has withstood the test of time by sustaining and keeping relevant the incestuous relationship that exists between the American intelligence agency infrastructure and the news media.

Hansen describes it best when he quotes Joseph DeTrani, former CIA Director of public affairs:

“In many cases, we (the CIA) have persuaded reporters to postpone, change, hold or even scrap stories that could have adversely affected national security interests…”

Hansen uses an enthralling assortment of examples to illustrate how the US military and its co-terminus intelligence agencies have constructed a well-orchestrated political strangle-hold on the news. He graphically depicts how exquisite governmental manipulation of public perception is used to under-mind democracy while at the same time deftly sustain the facade of a free press. This theme flows consistently through his work.

President Kennedy – A Media Master

Hansen uses President Kennedy’s interaction with the New York Times as a classic exemplar of government and media complicity.

Little known to the public, President John Kennedy cleverly attempted to utilize covert censorship when he contrived to restrain Times publisher Orvil Dryfoos from publishing details of a controversial CIA program to recruit and train Cuban exiles in Guatemala for what eventually became the disaster known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. Kennedy’s glowing and almost saint-like persona would have been severely tarnished had this kind of news been allowed to seep into the public domain. Moreover, the political price Kennedy would have had to pay had the Times not complied was reason enough to impose his will on Dryfoos.

In another startling revelation Hansen also reveals that during the development of the atomic bomb in the 1940’s, government and military and government officials contrived to have the media communicate to an unwitting public that the horrendously huge first test of the A-bomb was a ‘munitions dump explosion’ that caused little or no damage and; that claims by some journalists about radiation poisoning were nonsense – both as it turned out were blatant government lies.

Somehow they got away with it. Eventually this kind of historical deception in journalism has become an accepted way of doing business among those in the media and between the government interests they are persuaded to protect.

Katherine Graham – A Media Mistress

In altering public opinion by manipulating facts and perceptions over the decades, it has become almost impossible to distinguish the truth from treachery. Regrettably this kind of complicity between the news media and the American political system has continued unabated for decades. It leads any inquiring mind to question the kind of ‘democracy’ we really have – or, even more disturbingly – is there a democracy at all? Hansen provides more specific clarity on this point with a poignant illustration that many may feel borders on sedition.

The one-time matriarch of the American press industry Katherine Graham is quoted as saying, before select members of the CIA, “There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t.”

This kind of editorial philosophy by a leading American newspaper should be of real concern to the American public.

Hansen goes on to quote Graham in the same address – “I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.” This unambiguous statement by a media giant does more than imply complicity between government and media – it guarantees it!

Members of the press who may read Hansen’s work might need to pause to re-assess their role as journalists when they hear one of their own describe how those in the upper echelons of government and media contrive to control the news and succeed at institutionalizing it. The question occurs to this author – what was Katherine Graham doing talking to the CIA in the first place?

Methods of Media Mendacity

As Hansen discusses later in his book, it is of little surprise that US intelligence agency’s propensity to feign disinterest in the UFO phenomenon gives mainstream press carte-blanche to do exactly the same. Even though some foreign news agencies do a fine job of exposing UFO related stories – the powerful American mainstream media seems to be able to pulls its influential trump card to manage UFO news – thus keeping foreign press stories on UFOs from reaching international wire services.

Hansen suggests several methods have been and are used to manage news about UFOs: recruiting influential journalists, monitoring and intercepting UFO-related news, instilling fear through the film industry about ‘evil aliens’, surveillance of UFO organizations, propaganda, misleading information or disinformation or, recruitment of influential people as media spokespersons to name a few.

Hansen goes into great detail to illustrate how these strategies are regularly used to pummel UFO news or evidence of it into oblivion so that no reputable news agency will touch it.

The result is a woefully uniformed and indolent citizenry that ensures the success of an institutionalized form of control through mendacity and complicity.

Hansen also goes to great lengths in pointing out that some of the historical media-control strategies used to manipulate public opinion during the second world war, the war in Vietnam and the Gulf war were re-cycled to tackle the ‘new media-menace’ called UFOs and extraterrestrials. The fact that the UFO issue has never become the massive mainstream story of the century is a testament to the success and over-all effectiveness of these strategies.

Monster Media-Machine

Ultimately what we learn from Hansen’s research is that this mendacity has created a two headed monster media-machine; one funded by tax dollars and one funded by billions in commercial advertising revenues.

We also learn how large corporate-media interests are permitted, in an unrestrained manner, to flood or dilute the essence of the political and national security implications of the UFO matter with fantasy, delusion and, what many call – the ‘giggle-factor’. Fundamentally the UFO issue is the most openly talked-about government secret in history – yet few in the public domain take it seriously.

Under these nearly perfect set of circumstances Hansen depicts why there is little wonder the authentic nature of the UFO phenomenon has virtually no chance of ever being fully disclosed in American mass media.

[Ed. Note: This feature of UFO secrecy has changed significantly since Hansen first published his book. Today – global efforts by many activists and groups to bring UFO/ET Disclosure into the political arena for the public have met with good success but continue to fall short of full government disclosure.]

Hansen goes on to suggest news stories about UFOs circulate with vigour within American intelligence channels. Hansen’s assertion is clearly corroborated by many UFO analysts who have often written about how validated information about UFOs is routinely supplanted by stories on terrorist bombings, war in the Middle-East or the waist size of Jennifer Aniston.

Routinely, the general public satiates itself on a feast of celebrity trivia, the banality of local news and the tireless on-slot of an expensive war economy. With little or no resistance, this news media-monster has come to life. It tramples on the US constitution by employing obfuscation, diversion and censorship as key tools in the dumbing-down of public awareness.

This is the world of the American news consumer – and quite frankly – they seem to gleefully accept it all as a way of life.

The Hansen Alternative

In The Missing Times Terry Hansen reminds us that all information – regardless of how unpalatable or uncomfortable it may be, must be accessible by the public. This is especially true when the source and holder of this information is the elected body known as the ‘government of the people and by the people’. Any other standard for or use of information that restricts the public’s right-to-know is an abrogation of authority and an illegitimate use of power.

Most if not all of Hansen’s book is quite familiar territory to UFO researchers and analysts. However to those unfamiliar with the UFO issue or with the historical techniques used by military and intelligence agencies to control public perceptions about everything from weapons of mass destruction to Monsanto’s influence within the American pharmaceutical industry, what Terry Hansen has to say about government/media complicity may appear quite unbelievable even mind-boggling to the average consumer of news who accepts at face value what the media spews out on a daily basis.

Hansen offers a thoroughly different worldview.

For those who may wish to venture beyond the edge of the worldview of Nightly News, Dancing with the Stars, Kate and William’s baby and who might win the World Series, Terry Hansen has drawn a picture of an alternative, uncomfortable yet very authentic new worldview about our place in the universe – among off-world civilizations who are knocking at our door and, more importantly – why the US government and media refuse to answer the door. The adventure of reading this powerful and professionally researched work by an accredited journalist is as energizing as it is painless for those who wish to know more than what’s on TV or Facebook.

As one reads Hansen’s entire work, the complicity of the diversionary brand journalism he describes so articulately becomes readily apparent in the very first chapter. The careful reader will discover two essential ideas from Hansen’s analysis. First, the UFO cover-up is real and second – the truth is free – not open to negotiation, attack or control by elite factions that seek to define reality for their own purposes.

In its infancy, the press served to protect such attacks on the truth. As the watch-dog for the people the press at one time exposed and challenged attempts by government to control news.

According to Terry Hansen – it appears this is no longer the case.

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NOTES: For those who are interested in gaining a full appreciation of how the media has become an unofficial arm of government propaganda with respect to the UFO issue – The Missing Times by Terry Hansen is a must read.

Sample Topics in The Missing Times: