Washington Post: The Exo Files

The Exo Files
Cosmic Politics? To Believers, No Idea Is Alien

By Dan Zak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Extraterrestrials exist and they visit Earth routinely, according to people who know this for a fact.

Moving on.

What does this mean for Washington, for America, for the planet? It
means, according to the roughly 400 people attending the fifth
X-Conference over the weekend, that politics isn't local anymore. It's
galactic. It's universal. This is exopolitics.

In the ground-floor banquet hall of the Gaithersburg Hilton, there are
no alien costumes. There are PhDs, ex-military men, activists and
concerned citizens. They sit in on lectures with titles like "Obama and
Disclosure." They browse tables stocked with books such as
"Exopolitics: How Does One Speak to a Ball of Light?" They talk about
black budgets and quantum cosmology. They watch the last 15 minutes of
"The Abyss," during which Ed Harris swims hand in hand with a
jellyfish-like alien.

People in the exopolitical movement want full disclosure of any U.S.
government files on unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrials.
Only then, they maintain, can mankind deal with the sociopolitical
implications of the universe: the rule of law in outer space, the
sharing of technology between civilizations and the physics of
one-on-one interaction with ETs.

"No, we're not alone," said Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the
sixth man to walk on the moon, speaking first at the X-Conference on
Sunday and then at the National Press Club yesterday morning. "Our sun
will burn out in due course, and we have to be off this planet. . . .
Our consumption rate of non-renewable resources is not sustainable. . .
. Our destiny is to become part of the planetary community. It's time
to start thinking in those terms."

Forget "eco." The most urgent prefix today, the X-Conference
suggests, is "exo." We need to evolve into an exoculture. We need to be
exoconscious, to reframe our minds for interstellar relations and
interdimensional experiences.

"If we live off-planet, we have to change our mind and bodies," says
Rebecca Hardcastle, a hypnotherapist and exoconsciousness coach who
lives in Phoenix. "Your emotions, life force and what you've been
taught is a belief system that cords you to the Earth. We must change
our frame of reference."

Hardcastle, wearing pearls and a black dress and sitting at a table,
says she has been contacted by ET intelligence since she was 3. She,
and others in the exopolitical community, say we need to learn remote
viewing and teleportation, we need to propagate the practice of ESP, we
need to let ETs change us, and we need to integrate technology and
consciousness so we can participate in the universe.

What's the secret to moving in that direction?

Diet and exercise and balanced living, says Hardcastle. Yoga and peacefulness, say others. Small steps for man.

To be sure, conspiracy theories and creepy claims are a big part of
the X-Conference. Even an audiovisual glitch is a cue for mild
paranoia: "Something happened with our system," says a nervous AV guy
after a microphone blows out during a lecture. "It happened suddenly,
systemwide. Something hit it and took it down."

When California podiatric surgeon Roger Leir takes the microphone, the topic is extraterrestrial implants.

"How many of you have seen a UFO?" Leir asks the audience before showing video of alleged implant extraction surgery.

More than 100 people put up their hands.

"How many think you've been involved with the alien abduction program?"

Five hands go up.

"How many of you think you've been abducted and have never returned?"

There is laughter. There is also a sentiment of acceptance and adaptation. Once we get our act together, once we understand our own
selves, the ETs will engage us, says Michael Salla, president and
founder of the Hawaii-based nonprofit Exopolitics Institute, which
offers an online semester in galactic diplomacy for a little more than
$1,000.

"Humanity is still tribalistic, driven by elite interests rather
than global ones," Salla says. "But with Barack Obama, for the first
time in our planet's history, we have a global leader. It's a
tremendous advance in our global society."

On the TV in the lobby of the hotel, Obama shakes hands with Hugo
Chávez. Later, there's a CNN report on the disclosure of torture memos
from Guantanamo Bay. These are good signs of open-minded diplomacy and
government transparency, some conference attendees say. Plus, over the
past year, the British government has released thousands of documents
pertaining to UFOs, about 5 percent of which are truly inexplicable.
The exopolitical movement was also encouraged by Obama's selection of
John Podesta, noted champion of UFO disclosure, as his transition
chairman. And Mitchell the astronaut is out in full force, saying the
existence of ETs was confirmed to him 10 years ago by a member of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff (who subsequently denied it, but that's how these
things go).

The ridicule is ebbing, conference attendees say. The exopolitical
movement has gone grass roots; the education and outreach phase is
underway. One man at the conference is collecting 4,000 signatures to
put forth a ballot initiative for a Denver Extraterrestrial Affairs
Commission. Another is calling upon the United Nations to create an
"extraterrestrial civilizations liaison."

For Nick Pope, who was in charge of UFO investigations for Britain's
Ministry of Defense in the early '90s, the bogies in the sky are simply
a matter of national security.

"If we ignore UFOs because of the baggage that term has in people's
minds — because we don't believe in flying saucers — it opens up a
gap in our capacity to deal with these things," Pope says. "It's
dangerous. We're ignoring a potential air-safety issue."

Exopolitics: It's about air-traffic control. It's about honest
government. It's about self-empowerment and healthy living and bold
declarations of reaching for the stars. Ask too many questions, though,
and you'll see exopolitics is also about a race of humanoids who live
under the barren surface of Mars and may, at some point, desire to
mooch off Earth's rich resources.

Exopolitics "provides a conceptual framework for dealing with our
highly populated universe," says author, lawyer and activist Alfred L.
Webre, who coined the term 10 years ago and has watched it creep into
the mainstream.

He also says the Martians are keeping to themselves for now.