7/25/99 St. Louis Post-Dispatch

MISSOURI AND D.C. CONNECTION WITH UFOs SAINT LOUIS POST DISPATCH July 25, 1999, by Jon Sawyer and, Stephanie Hanes wrote the following article: "We're just normal people and we want the truth," says Bruce Widaman (MUFON's State Director, explaining why he hopes to make Missouri the first state with a ballot initiative demanding that Washington disclose what it knows about UFOs and extraterrestrial encounters.

Missouri's show-me role in the UFO disclosure campaign was confirmed by Stephen Bassett of suburban Washington, who last week announced formation of the country's first political action committee that directly targets the government's alleged suppression of data about UFOs. Bassett said the new group (X-PPAC), for Extraterrestrial Phenomena Political Action Committee; is aimed at ending what it views as "the government embargo of facts confirming the presence of extraterrestrial life forms in our world."

"The whole thrust of my work is to make this issue mainstream, to see it treated with the seriousness it deserves," said Bassett, a former business consultant who decided three years ago to devote himself full time to the UFO issue. The challenge is overcoming what activists call the "laughter curtain" the linkage of UFO concerns with two-headed monsters and other tabloid fare.

In Missouri, Widaman, in his work life a hardware salesman, is putting the finishing touches on language for the ballot initiative. He said, he has about 200 conservative Ufologists prepared to start gathering signatures, in hopes of getting the issue on the ballot next year. "If there's nothing to the UFO question then why all the secrecy?" "People who don't think that this is real are just showing their terrestrial chauvinism." See www.X-PPAC.org)