Documents / Official release
This release contains White House Exchange Mail records dated January 1998 to October 1999. Most of it is a transcript of a January 29, 1998 press briefing by Press Secretary Mike McCurry covering Iraq, Iran, the budget and the Lewinsky inquiry, plus a 1998 presidential speech. An October 19, 1999 email among Transnational Threats staff forwards a Florida Today article on how scientists expect alien contact would spark a media frenzy rather than a cover-up, describing the 1989 SETI detection protocol.
“Gray”6 pages
Page 2 of 338365469.FIN http://classified/email/data_source/exchange/record/cd018/octl999/38365469.html 1/5/2010 But do not return ET's call. Any response to an alien message, the protocol says, is a matter for "international consultations" in other words, a worldwide debate over who should say what for humankind. Tarter, who played a major role in putting together the protocol, is one of the many scientists who know full well the announcement won't go by the book. But at the same time, scientists say: Street rioting is unlikely. Without a doubt, a 1938 radio dramatization of The War of the Worlds triggered frenzy when thousands of listeners thought invading Martians were spreading death and destruction in New Jersey and New York. The Sunday night broadcast disrupted households, interrupted church services, spawned traffic jams and clogged telephone lines. Some actually left their homes as wide-eyed mobs took to the scurry to the mountaintop observatory here, and a new genre of "expert" TV analysts astronomers with a knack for snappy sound bites will form a lucrative cottage industry. A human wave made of the UFO crowd, strange cults, religious zealots and enterprising T-shirt vendors will crash onto Puerto Rican shores, swamping the media event to beat all media events. "That's one scenario that just might play out," Tarter said. "What is unsettling is the fact that the situation will get away from us, and it will be very difficult to do our work." A plan, however, already is in hand to try to manage the event. Called the "Declaration of Principals Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence," it's a three-page set of instructions adopted in 1989 by the International Academy of Astronautics. Made up of 1,000 researchers from 65-countries, the academy presumes the detection will come in the form of an intercepted radio signal rather than an alien spaceship visiting the White House. The protocol includes the following: Step One: Confirm, over and over again. The discoverer will not make any announcement until proving beyond a doubt that the radio beacon isn't a stray TV signal from The Sci-Fi Channel. Step Two: Verify, repeatedly and independently. Don't claim an alien contact before scientists at other radio telescopes can unequivocally determine that ET indeed is calling. Step Three: Tell Everybody. Alert the appropriate "national authorities." Advise astronomers through the Central Bureau of Astronomical Telegrams. Notify the secretary general of the United Nations. Ring up the media.
Not linked to a story yet.
Official release, from the nara collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 88 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.