--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Facing danger, UFO bureaucrats engage a cloaking device Byline: Lionel Van Deerlin. Copley News Service 10/18/93 THE LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL The possibility of extraterrestrials _ of intelligent life on nearby planets or in other galaxies _ remains one of mankind's most enduring tenets, though lacking supportable evidence. Hardly a month goes by without a UFO sighting somewhere. The true believers gather regularly in massive encampments to fortify their faith through shared experience. Their hopes often are nourished by shameless frauds spinning tales of "documented landings," of cryptogrammic messages, 27-inch men and things that go bump in the night. Given enough zealots, almost any such quest will find friends within government. Thus it was that our National Aeronautics and Space Administration, an agency charged with probing the unknown, launched a program some years ago that would sweep the skies for strange or unexplained signals from outer space. Congress happily provided money to underwrite the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, as NASA labeled it. SETI began modestly enough, but quickly blossomed to a projected 10-year, $100 million program utilizing the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. And last year, on the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' voyage, NASA really whooped things up. It unveiled a new 1,000-foot antenna dish in Puerto Rico and a "deep space tracking station" at Goldstone, in the Southern California desert. These facilities were said to be capable of detecting the faintest signals from distant civilizations, should any exist. But the press agentry accompanying all this was really pretty dumb _ and its timing terrible, we now see _ for an agency employing so many smart scientists. It happens that a suddenly cost-conscious Congress had eliminated the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence from NASA's fiscal 1993 budget. So how come the press releases and all that new tracking gear? Richard H. Bryan, a first-term U.S. senator from Nevada who serves on the space subcommittee of Commerce, Science and Transportation, determined to find out. He discovered that in its craving to continue the search for life in astral outposts, NASA had indulged in some decidedly earthy tactics. Inasmuch as Sen. Bryan had been in on the 1992 fight to end SETI, his surprise may be imagined upon discovering a $12.3 million item buried in this year's budget _ for an outlay covering precisely the same research. Except that NASA had given it a new name. And what a whopper it was, even among government agencies given to Gordian-like nomenclature. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence had become _ hang onto your hat _ the "Towards Other Planetary Systems/High Resolution Microwave Survey." Reared in Las Vegas, Bryan had doubtless witnessed some monumental bluffs at the gaming tables. But this high-chips ploy by NASA seemed to top them all. "The response of the bureaucracy has been not only instructive but intriguing," he said on the Senate floor, "intriguing in terms of the creativity and tenaciousness with which programs, once authorized, can last forever." What had happened illustrates all too well the way business often moves on Capitol Hill. The authorizing committees of House and Senate had decided last year that a search for life in outer space could no longer be justified in a strapped economy. Its termination was thereafter approved by both houses as a part of legislation signed by President Bush. But then came NASA's sleight-of-hand, aided by friends within the appropriations committees. Their pet project was renamed as noted, buried a little deeper in the budget and _ presto! _ the sweep for alien radio signals went forward as if E.T. himself were in charge. NASA's formidable lobbying team must have cringed during Senate debate on Sept. 22, as the Nevada senator quietly exposed their hitherto unidentified flying fakery. Recalling the record vote more than a year earlier by which many in Congress thought they had ended the hunt for other worlds, Bryan said: "One can quarrel with our judgment, but (it was) that this program should be eliminated. That was a pronouncement of the Congress of the United States, signed into law by the president. The process was circumvented, in effect, by recasting this as a `high resolution microwave survey.' The appropriations committee put money into the program, cast in a new name. "This contributes to the public skepticism and cynicism about the way we do our business." NASA had its defenders that day, but only 23 senators _ fewer than one in four _ voted against Bryan's amendment to delete the star sweep once and for all, no matter what anyone chooses to call it. A House-Senate conference committee agreed to the cut, and NASA has reluctantly sent pink slips to its Caribbean and California listening posts. "We have some people here who have worked 15 years on this," a glum project manager at the Jet Propulsion Lab told Associated Press. "Now all of a sudden it's gone, and I think that's tragic." Tragic? Well, strange to say the least _ that ears trained to intercept galactic messages couldn't decode the plainly stated word from Washington. ===========================================================================