You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time… but you can't fool John Velez, Richard Hall and few others on the UFO UpDates List.

Last week, Stephen Basset talked about how President Bush unilaterally changed a 1978 Congressional decision about releasing Presidential documents 12 years after the President leaves office. With one stroke of the pen to an Executive Order, Bush curtailed the release of documents that may contain information about any number of events… or about nothing whatsoever of interest.

Now, Stephen Basset, official lobbyist for the UFO community in Washington, jumped on this fact and announced on air that, "it is strongly believed" that the main reason President Bush did this was to curtail information about UFOs. His reasoning is that the Journalists who have jumped on the bandwagon and have blown the whistle on this pretty ballsy move by President Bush would not bother to let out that this move might be to simply keep us in the dark about UFOs. In otherwords, Stephen is simply doing us a favour by pointing it out to us.

There is no proof behind Stephen's statements and he offered no proof or even any particular reasoning that he could offer this suggestion to us. But it did get aired and of course was heard by many people interested in UFOs.

The reality with this type of rumour mongering is that some people will hear this and immediately rush to support it. Suddenly, what started as a maybe Bush did that to cover-up UFO evidence becomes "Bush is working to actively cover-up UFO evidence and has even gone to the point of reversing Congressional orders, contrary to U.S. Law." …and like in the game of phonecall…the story grows and gets enhanced until it becomes..."Bush saw some stuff that the Reagan presidential papers that made him turn white with fear and he declared that those papers can not be shown to anyone." ...etc.

But, true to good ufological practice, we police ourselves and John Velez and Richard Hall rose to the occasion by posting to the UFO UpDates list about how Stephen might have been overselling the concept on air and that an alternative reason that President Bush might be holding back Presidential papers could be because there might be some reference to Iran-Contra which took place during President Reagan's term and also while President Bush's father was the vice-president at that time. Also… the former President Bush Sr.'s papers will be due for release right around the time when George W. will be coming up for re-election and could possibly contain information that might be embarrassing to him.

Therein begins the battle… John Velez questions Stephen, Stephen refutes what John says and Richard Hall gets into the act as well and it becomes a tennis match. Point and Counterpoint on both parts. We also even have Lara Johnstone providing a little support to Stephen on the thread as well.

What it does show us through all of this is that our self-policing does work and that it makes us think long and hard about claims that are put forth….but it also does not put to bed that Stephen Basset could still be correct… President Bush might simply be doing this to cover up information about UFOs…and until those Presidential papers are relased, we might never know… but that's just my take on it!