Book Club Review: 'Alien Agenda' by Jim Marrs

It seems like every Christmas, being at a loss of what to get me as a gift, my family always resorts to a trip to the book store. And, as a result, I have a pretty hefty stack of books in storage around my apartment that are in the queue to read one day. The old cliche of not being able to read a book "...by it's cover" is probably pretty true with human beings, but with actual books I've found that it's actually quite off. You can very often read a book's content by a quick glance of the cover. And the random books I've been gifted like, say, "Killing Kennedy" by Bill O'Reilly doesn't really require my suffering through it's 400 pages to know that it's going to be a complete whitewash and a full condemnation of any conspiracy theory that isn't in line with the government's official story. But sometimes I misjudge a book just based on the quality of the cover design or the reputation of the author. And such was the case with a book with a hideous and seemingly sensationalistic cover that sat on my dusty shelf for nearly 3 years until I finally gave it a chance. The book's title was even misleading; "Alien Agenda", leading me to think that it was nothing more than a silly attempt to trivialize the UFO phenomenon and lead the reader to dismiss the whole history of UFO sightings as nonsense. But, one night after finishing the incredible book "Crossfire" by Jim Marrs I looked around my room and my eyes stopped on the silvery spine of "Alien Agenda". I was immediately excited and leapt to my feet when I realized that it was written by the same author. That was about 7 years ago and I recently noticed the book on my shelf and decided I wanted to read it again. And, considering I'd never done a book review on the title, I figured I could kill two birds with one read. So here it is. Book Club review of "Alien Agenda".

It is quite difficult to find a book about the UFO or alien phenomenon that isn't a sensationalistic piece of garbage. Likewise, pretty much anything you can find on TV about UFO's/aliens is bound to be edited for a Jerry Springer styled viewership and nothing of any substance is ever really reached by the closing credits. But Jim Marrs is definitely NOT this kind of author and his writing style and approach is much more like an investigative journalist of the 1960's, back when journalism was still a thing and not just a veiled advertisement by corporations. Marrs takes on the UFO/alien situation by breaking it down into the major components of the phenomenon; Sightings, ancient astronauts, crop circles, abductions, animal mutilations, military involvement, and a very intriguing metaphysical angle discussing extra-dimensional possibilities and the concept of remote viewing. Basically encapsulating the overall full history of human interaction with the phenomenon we've come to know as aliens and UFO's, with a main focus on the 20th century after WWII. The most interesting aspect of "Alien Agenda" is Marrs' journalistic approach through which we get a much more realistic view of what has been going on with the UFO/alien situation throughout the 20th century. Through Freedom of Information Act requests and direct interviews with key players, Marrs catalogues actual government investigations and programs, not just rumor or speculation. Interviewing people who actually took part in certain government investigations and/or programs and presenting the story from a very objective point of view.

Another aspect of the UFO phenomenon that I found extremely interesting was the open involvement of a branch of the Air Force called the Office of Special Investigations, or OSI, with special agents actively disseminating false information about UFO's into the UFO community. Spreading, what has become known as DISinformation, in an effort to confuse the reality of the UFO situation with the lies. Again, these aren't just rumors, Marrs actually follows the story of one special agent, a man named Richard Doty, who became heavily involved in the UFO research community in the 1980's and openly admits in an interview that he was experimenting on certain individuals by secretly creating situations to make those people think they were not only experiencing real UFO or extraterrestrial contact, but they were also faking situations by intimidating them with government agents in black vehicles. The Huffington Post did a piece on Doty that sums up the story succinctly that you can read here. Very strange shit that just makes the entire situation confusing, yet even more intriguing.

I would consider myself pretty knowledgeable in the topic of UFO's, but there are many realms that "Alien Agenda" takes you that even I have to admit I had never delved into. And one of them, which I think might be the most interesting topic in the entire book, is the subject of a process known as Remote Viewing.

Originally developed under a US military program called "Project Stargate" which attempted to research and promote psychic phenomenon for military purposes, the process of remote viewing sought to locate and map the positions of Soviet nuclear submarines during the height of the cold war. A program that sounds like something from a bad science fiction film when you first are introduced to it. I will let you read the book to get a more detailed description, but my summary would be that remote viewing essentially entails a group of trained individuals attempting to visualize a coordinate on the world map, given only a longitude and latitude. And then they group will come to a consensus between what they all saw in their visions and settle on a result. The program apparently was very effective and was an active secret program until the early 1990's although the military insisted that they shut it down in the late 70's. This story gets incredibly bizarre and intriguing after the program is shut down and the remote viewing soldiers move on to start their own private firm and they began viewing non-military targets and eventually expanding outside beyond earthly targets and even into parallel dimensions. A story that sounds utterly ridiculous and absurd, but when you read the full story and hear the words of actual participants as their interviewed and quoted in the book it paints an incredibly intriguing picture of the world and universe around us.

Without attempting to explain every amazing revelation discovered in this book, I'll just urge you to pick up a copy and share some of your own thoughts here in the comments section. Because the story of the UFO/Extraterrestrial phenomenon is far more bizarre and insane than you could ever imagine. And "Alien Agenda" does an incredible job at capturing all of it w/in it's nearly 600 pages. Enjoy. And keep an eye out for other Jim Marrs books because this is my third and he's never managed to disappoint.