November 20, 2005: Ufology Update - Stanton Friedman

Cosmic Watergatethe biggest story of the millennium: Friedman lays out his core thesis as Art asks how he opens a lecture to skeptics: some UFOs are alien spacecraft, the government is running a 'cosmic Watergate,' there are no good arguments against either conclusion, and this is the biggest story of the millennium.

Klass paid Friedman $1,000 to settle the MJ-12 typeface betFriedman recounts how arch-debunker Phil Klass bet him $100 per genuine government document matching the Cutler-Twining memo's typeface, capped at ten. Friedman sent fourteen - Klass paid the $1,000, then threatened to sue when Friedman published the cancelled check.

Racing the undertaker for Roswell witnessesAt 71, Friedman tells Art he's still hunting living Roswell witnesses and quotes Max Planck: new ideas win not because opponents are convinced but because they die. He's looking for a Woodward-Bernstein reporter to break the story before he's gone.

Harvard's Susan Clancybias baked into the abduction study: Friedman reads Clancy's own words from her new book - she chose abductees specifically because she 'could be fairly certain' the events never occurred - and argues her taxpayer-funded research was rigged from the premise that aliens don't exist.

They're here to quarantine usAsked what they want, Friedman cites the Hill star map pointing to Zeta Reticuli - 39 light-years away, a billion years older than our sun - and gives his bottom-line theory: aliens are quarantining a primitive, war-prone Earth before it can take its tribal warfare into the galaxy.