Free The Reality Conspiracy by Joseph A. Citro Page A

three-dimensional objects."
    Karen started to feel a bit flustered. "Well, you're the expert, Jeff. Doesn't your 'think tank' have an opinion?"
    "Strange you should ask. Yes, as a matter of fact, we do. Our—I need a drum roll here—our official level-one opinion is that all UFO activity, all the way from sightings to abductions, is pure bunk, hoaxes and hallucinations. That goes for close encounters of the first, second, and third kind. All of it. Everything. The whole shootin' match. My open-minded colleagues and I are being paid to reinforce that attitude on the American public every chance we get. How's that for objectivity? We have our conclusion right from the start, all we have to do is assemble the data to prove it. We are traders in swamp gas, Dr. Bradley. We're vendors of hot-air balloons, weather satellites, and sunspots. I'm one of a proud army of professional debunkers, dauntless soldiers in the U.S. government's war on truth, reason, and honesty."
    "Oh, I'm beginning to see now." Karen leaned forward, as if she were conspiring with him. "You've researched it enough that you're starting to believe there's something to these UFO stories, right?" She narrowed her eyes. "You're starting to believe in them, aren't you?"
    "There you go, playing shrink again. Well, Doctor, you got me. You're absolutely right. I do believe."
    "The skeptic becomes a believer. And right before my eyes! Wow!"
    "It's the wine. It loosens my tongue."
    Now it was Karen's turn to lean back in her chair and raise her wineglass. "Then we'd better order another bottle, 'cause I'm curious as hell. I want you to tell me all about this."
    "You're getting me drunk and plying me for top-secret information."
    "Guilty as charged. Now, Dr. Jeffrey Chandler, let's come directly to the point. I've never talked to anybody professionally involved in the UFO business. Suppose you try to convince me. Suppose you tell me what you, personally, consider the strongest, most convincing case of a UFO."
    For a few moments Jeff thought in silence while Karen stared at him, smiling patiently. All his frivolity disappeared, his joking stopped. When he finally spoke, he was completely serious. "It is a comparatively recent sighting. And one that was heavily witnessed and thoroughly investigated. What would you say about a sighting witnessed by an estimated seventy thousand people?"
    "Seventy thousand !" Karen raised her eyebrows. "I'd say it was pretty convincing."
    "Sure, so would I. Among the seventy thousand witnesses there were scientists, newsmen, film people. There were politicians. Doctors. Religious leaders. In fact, a broad sampling of the population, from all over the world. And I'm talking about credible witnesses, mind you. People whose testimony would be readily believed in a court of law. People whose word, under oath, could send a criminal to jail, even to the electric chair."
    Karen held her eyes on his. He was talking directly to her, with no hint of humor in his voice. "If thousands of people really witnessed this UFO," she said, "then it would be big news. Is the government hushing it up or something? How come I've never heard anything about it?'
    "I bet you have. It took place at about noon on October thirteenth of 1917 in a little town in Portugal, a town called Fatima."
    Karen tensed. Her cheeks became hot. She felt as if she were being set up, tricked. "You're talking about the miracle of Fatima! The appearance of the Virgin Mary to those three little kids! That's not a UFO sighting—"
    "No? Think about it. Sure, now it's viewed as a miracle. And we're in the habit of thinking of it as a religious experience. But that's mostly because the visions were first seen and interpreted by three Portuguese children whose strong Catholic upbringing was their only frame of reference. Today, when we read about the strange goings on at Fatima, the events continue to be colored by a Catholic perspective. But consider what really took place there. The