The conclusion is that something akin to the so-called Star Wars space defense plan already exists, only it's aliens who control the machinery. Hastings, an independent civilian researcher presented his "UFOs: The Hidden History" lecture to an overflow audience at Idaho State University recently. In it, he portrayed an ongoing cover-up by the Air Force, FBI and CIA which has come to light since over 600 previously classified documents were obtained by Bruce Maccabbee, an optical physicist working for the U.S. Navy, and W. Todd Zechel, a former National Security Agency employee.

The documents include internal memos, reports from air traffic controllers and pilots and North American Air Defense directors' logs which Hastings says "document a pattern of over flights and interference by UFOs at military nuclear installations since the late 1940s."

The most provocative document is a memo from Guy Hottel, now deceased, to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in 1950 discussing the recovery of three flying saucers, "Each one occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall," recovered in New Mexico.

Other papers from the CIA discuss the need to get information on UFOs to determine national security implications and over flights and landings by saucers at Air Force bases, attempted intercepts by Air Force fighters and eyewitness accounts from security personnel.

Hastings says incidents at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., in 1966-67 and 1975, Loring AFB in Maine, Los Alamos Research Facility in New Mexico and other over flights, "expressed clear interest (by UFOs) in nuclear bomb storage hangars."

The latest document, dated August 1980 describes, "a round disk-shaped craft sighted by security forces near Kirtland AFB, New Mexico."

The object apparently sat down next to a storage area with 400 nuclear warheads. Hastings says he has eyewitness accounts of triggering mechanisms malfunctioning and fires of unknown origin taking place after over flights at other installations.

They may be selectively sending signals that they have the power to shut down a nuclear launch," Hastings said. "Whoever is flying these things has an interest in our nuclear weapons capabilities. I've had maintenance personnel who corroborated that when the missiles have been inspected (following UFO over-flights) they were found to be non-operative."

Hastings added that Zechel contacted Air Force Col. Robert B. Willingham who swore out a deposition that he had first-hand knowledge of a crash recovery operation on the Texas-Mexico border in 1950, headed by Col. John Bowen. Bowen would neither confirm nor deny the incident, Hastings added.

"I have two other NSA sources, neither of them that know each other, who were told that alien bodies are stored at Brooks Aeromedical Laboratories in San Antonio, Tex," he continued.

"Why would these people swear out affidavits attesting to something so crazy? They haven't made any money off it and they appear to be publicity-shy."

Hastings also has a copy of a letter written by then Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater to Lee M. Graham stating, "I have given up acquiring access to the so-called blue room at Wright-Patterson (Air Force Base, Ohio) as I have had one long string of denials from chief after chief."

Hastings said reports indicate saucer remains are stored at the facility.

Other reports range from a saucer that buzzed an Atlas Intercontinental Ballistic Missile which later malfunctioned in 1964 to then CIA executive assistant Victor Marchetti (who later wrote a book on the subject) stating for the record that he came across information that indicated saucers had crashed, been secretly recovered and involved, "very sensitive operations."

Hastings says he's not out to "get the government." He says he simply is presenting the facts, which have been routinely denied by the Air Force, CIA and NORAD for years. He says he has no answers and that he is not making very much money lecturing 40 times per year at $750 plus travel expenses per talk.

Critics and Skeptics of the program are numerous, from intelligence and military personnel to scientists like Cornell University's Carl Sagan, who says that until he sees physical evidence of UFOs, he concludes that they do not exist.

"Sagan has missed the boat," said Hastings. "He has not been prepared to review the type of data that has come forth. The most vocal critics are the persons who have never studied the data."