Cheney, Daft, Much to Be Quizzed on Little Green Men in Davos

Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) -- A galactic mystery hovers over the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland: How many of the 2,280 global leaders, including 31 heads of state, gathered in this Alpine resort conduct business with extraterrestrials?

This is no whimsy for Davosians.

It's on the agenda of the annual powwow of the influential and affluent who will ask WEF participants such as U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, Coca-Cola Co. Chairman Douglas Daft and De La Rue Plc Chief Executive Ian Much if the aliens have landed and are collaborating with them and others to concoct government policy, brew soda pop and mint Iraq's new bank notes.

``The extraterrestrials have yet to make contact with me,'' said Much in a telephone interview. Much will help moderate the Thursday night dinner seminar (closed except to forum participants) on ``The Conspiracy Behind Conspiracy Theories: Have Extraterrestrials Made Contact With Government Leaders?''

The British moneymaker is confident -- at least for now -- that De La Rue remains the largest non-government printer of bank notes in the Milky Way. ``If the aliens are here,'' Much reckons, ``I'd absolutely expect them to call me to have their currency printed.''

Despite the twilight zone topic arching many an eyebrow along the snow-covered strip of fashionable hotel bars, WEF officials maintain their five-day program on ``Partnering for Security and Prosperity'' requires an unambiguous examination of extraterrestrial presence on Earth.

``The panelists are the best in their domain, they all have expertise in specific fields,'' explains Philippe Bourguignon, the forum's co-chief executive officer and a former CEO of Club Mediterranee SA. ``The themes and sessions at Davos reflect the global agenda.''

Hiding the Facts

And the public's pulse. A 1996 Gallup Poll found that 71 percent of Americans believe the government knows more about UFOs than it has disclosed; a similar Roper poll found that some 80 percent of those questioned think Wall Street and Washington are hiding knowledge of extraterrestrial contact. The Internet search engine Google Inc. has as many Web pages dedicated to UFOs as it does for investment banking.

``It is possible that UFOs really do contain aliens, and the government is hushing it up,'' Cambridge University physicist Stephen Hawking told British television viewers in a 1998 interview.

U.S. President George W. Bush's recent call to put a man on Mars before 2030 has swelled investor interest in exotic technologies, last week boosting the Bloomberg Aerospace Index 1.9 percent, its biggest gain since October.

Take Me to Your Market Leader

Earth's leaders prospecting extraterrestrial commerce as part of the forum's global agenda has set off a doozy of anticipation perhaps not seen among UFO analysts since ``Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' was released on DVD.

Richard Boylan, a retired professor of behavioral science at the University of California, couldn't be more gleeful if Captain Kirk had beamed him aboard the Starship Enterprise.

``The Davos dinner may represent the great leap forward we need to unravel the fact that corporations and governments are doing business with star visitors,'' says Boylan, widely regarded by ufologists as a specialist in intergalactic mergers and acquisitions.

Boylan says he isn't surprised the forum neglected to invite him and his colleagues to Davos for the first significant, high-level discussion on emerging alien markets and other popular conspiracy theories that stretch from ``Was the U.S. government behind the attacks of 11 Sept.?'' to whether Humpty Dumpty fell or was pushed off the wall.

``I've learned to live with insults,'' the 64-year-old psychologist says from his home in California. ``Billions of dollars have been spent to intimidate witnesses and use the giggle factor to put on a funny farm anyone who suggests corporations have privatized extraterrestrial technology.''

Working With The Visitors

According to the calmly resolute Boylan, more than 100 extraterrestrial races are in cahoots with firms that include International Business Machines Corp., Ford Motor Co., Lucent Technologies Inc., Northrop Grumman Corp., Dow Corning Corp., Monsanto Co., Boeing Co. and European Aeronautic, Defense & Space Co.

``Most Earth corporations are working with visitors from the Altair star system,'' Boylan says.

Altair is the brightest star in the constellation Aquila, 15.7 light years from Wall Street. Forum participant Martin Reese, Britain's royal astronomer, says ``there is no logical or illogical reason why Earth corporations would be doing business with Altair.''

Although Altairian executives were unavailable for comment, Francois Auque, a managing director at EADS, says he's eager to hear from them. ``I'd love to establish links with extraterrestrials,'' says Auque, one of the businessmen behind the Aurora Project to discover if there's water on Mars. ``So far no messages on my cell phone.''

Reality at Play

Tall tales of little green men on Earth go back to Biblical times, but conspiracy dinner panelist Dr. James Gilligan, a professor of psychiatry and social policy at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests today's widespread belief in the fable is not necessarily a sign of reality slipping away.

``We live in a post-religious age with huge tensions between secularism and traditional religious faith,'' Gilligan explains. ``In the past, people who believed in such phenomenal events would be embraced as having a religious experience.''

No matter the conspiracy theory, Gilligan says adherents don't create their delusions from whole cloth. ``There's always some kernel of reality behind the belief,'' he says.

Rattling off lists of purported government documents, first-person testimonies and ufological exegetes guaranteed to bumfuzzle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regulators, Boylan says star visitors have instructed global leaders to publicly reveal the intergalactic mergers by 2007.

The Roswell Incident

Still, the American academic frets the politicians of Earth won't honor the deal and that the forum's conspiracy dinner may be part of the conspiracy.

``If all the extraterrestrial technology came out at once,'' Boylan reasons, ``it would hurt stockholders in obsolescent industries and the multinationals don't want to lose their power.''

As Boylan tells it, the extraterrestrials first came to Wall Street in 1947 by way of Roswell, New Mexico. It was that year when U.S. Army Col. Philip Corso said he found five aliens amid the buzzards and rattlesnakes at a UFO crash site in the desert. The new arrivals were 4.5 feet tall with grayish-brown skin, four-fingered hands and watermelon-sized heads without hair.

Using Alien Knowledge

In his book ``The Day After Roswell,'' Corso says he salvaged parts from the downed UFO and managed a government-sponsored reverse-engineering program that decanted the technology to IBM, Bell Labs and Dow Corning. The flotsam of Roswell and other UFO encounters, Boylan adds, was used to formulate laser beams, fiber optics and Microsoft Corp.

Other analysts argue the alien knowledge was used to create the management consultant industry.

``UFOs are not engaged in open contact with mankind,'' says Swedish ufologist Bjorn Olav-Kvidal. ``They act more like supervisors.''

U.S. officials for decades have resisted any suggestion that the Roswell crash was more than a downed weather balloon or the leftover from a high-altitude parachute test with mannequins. Corporate confidence in alien technology hardly runs so high.

The Presidential Race

``I talk to extraterrestrials every day,'' mocks Denis Ranque, chief executive of Thales SA, Europe's largest manufacturer of electronic components for defense systems. ``They call me up every morning and tell me what to do.''

After the forum delegates depart Davos on Sunday, ufologists say the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign will become the best venue to spot extraterrestrial market trends. During the 1996 race for the White House, for instance, Republican presidential candidate Senator Bob Dole planted one of Gilligan's reality acorns: ``That's like the Air Force saying UFOs are impossible,'' Dole told reporters in response to President Bill Clinton's statement that 2 percent economic growth was impossible without inflation.

Where Do Democrats Stand?

Three years later and armed with a degree in physics, Stephen Bassett founded the Extraterrestrial Phenomena Political Action Committee. This April, the 57-year-old activist and 2002 independent congressional candidate from Maryland will host the First Annual Exopolitics Expo. All the Democratic presidential hopefuls have been invited to assemble in a Washington hotel ballroom to spell out their positions on UFOs.

``Voters are increasingly willing to confront candidates on the UFO issue,'' Bassett says. ``There is an alien presence in our air space and the government has access to their technology.''

He should know. In 1996, Bassett registered with the U.S. Congress as a lobbyist for ``extraterrestrial affairs.'' Still, ET's man on Capitol Hill remains somewhat skeptical about little green men on Wall Street.

``I'm only 30 percent confident that aliens have contractual relationships with major corporations,'' Bassett says.