SUBJECT: GRAY BARKER AND THE MEN-IN-BLACK                    FILE: UFO1409



Subj: RE: I'M CONFUSED
BJ> I remember the name 'Gray Barker' from MANY years ago,but from
 BJ> then, he and Alex Bender (I think) were visited by 'TheMen in B
 BJ> after THAT, refused to discuss UFO's,and many OTHER things AT A

 Howdy Bud,
           I'm not real sure what happened to Barker,he may well be
 dead,but as of 1979,Bill Moore had stated in The Phila.Experiment
 that reprint facsimiles of the original Varo edition of The Case
 For The UFO could be obtained through Gray Barker at Saucerian
 Press,P.O.Box 2228,Clarksburg,West Virgina 26302. I tried writting
 to Barker at the time,but all my letters came back "return to
 sender". By the way,wanna buy some slightly used maps of the
 Phila.Navy Yard circa 1943? How bout some microfilm reprints of
 every Philly Daily from the 1940's?...Ah,,never mind.
           Anyway,I do have some info on Bender.The following is from the
 file MIBS_HST.ZIP,I have included only the text pertaining to Bender,but
 there is much more on the history of MIB's and it's worth reading.

 The origin of the Men in Black legend can be pin-pointed fairly
 exactly. Back in 1953 a man by the name of Albert K. Bender was
 runnong an organization called the International Flying Suacer
 Bureau (IFSB) and editing a little publication called "Space
 Review" that was dedicated to news of flying saucers.

 The IFSB had a small membership despite its rather grandoise title,
 and "Space Review" reached at best, no more than a few hundred
 readers. But they were all deeply devoted to the idea that flying
 saucers were craft from outer soace. In common with other ture
 believers, these saucer buffs were convinced that they were in
 possession of a great truth, while most of the rest of the world
 remained in darkness and ignorance. They felt very important , and
 thus it was with a sense of surprise, even shock, that they opened
 up the October 1953 issue of "Space Review" and found two
 unexpected announcments:
    "LATE BULLETIN. A source which the IFSB considers very reliable
 has informed us that the investigation of the flying soucer mystery
 and the solution is approaching its final stages."
    "This same source to whom we had referred data, which had come
 into our possession, suggested that it was not the proper method
 and time to publish the data in 'Space Review'."

    The second and more shocking item read:

    "STATEMENT OF IMPORTANCE: THe mystery of the flying saucers is
 no longer a mystery. The source is already known, but any
 information about this is being withheld by order from a higher
 source. We would like to print the full story in "Space REview",
 but because of the nature of the information we are very sorry that
 we have been advised in the negative."
    The statement ended with the ominous sentence, "We advice those
 engaged in saucer work to please be very cautious." Bender then
 suspended the publication of "Space Review", and disolved the
 IFSB.
 The tone of the announcemnets would have been familiar to anyone
 who had much experience with occult organizations. Occultists often
 claim they are in the possession of some great secret which, for
 equally secret reasons, they cannot reveal. Even the appeal,
 "please be very cautious" was not unique. It made those engaged in
 "saucer work" feel more important . After all, who is going to
 bother to persecute you if you are just wasting your time?

 SHortly after Bender closed down his magazine and organization he
 gave an interview to a local paper which he asserted the he had
 been visited by "three men wearing dark suits" who had order him
 "emphatically" to stop publishing material about flying saucers.
 Bender said that he had been "scared to death" and that he
 "acutally couldn't eat for a couple of days." Some of Bender's
 former associates tried to press for a more satisfactory
 explanation, but to all questions he replied either cryptically or
 not at all.
 This state of affairs created soncsiderable confusions amoung the
 flying saucer buffs. What were they to think about sucah a strange
 story> Some were openly skeptical of Bender's tale. They said that
 his publication and organization were losing money and the tale of
 the three visitors who "ordered" him to stop publishing was just a
 face-saving gesture. Yet, as the years went by the "three Men in
 Black" began to sound more rspectable and they took on a life of
 their own. Some' were Bender's friends first thought that the Men
 in Black were from Air Force or the CIA, and indeed Bender's
 original statments do seem to sound like government agents. But
 after a while the Men in Black begun to assume a more
 extraterrestrial, even supernatural air.

 Finally in 1963, a full decade after he first told of his
 mysterious visitors, Alber Bender elaborated further in a book
 called "Flying Sauvers adn the Three Men in Black." It was a
 strange, confused and virutally unreadable book that revealed very
 little in the way of hard facts, but did significantly enhance the
 reutation of the Men in Black as extraterrestrials. The book also
 introduced into the lore "three beautful women, dressed in tight
 white unigorms." Like thei r mail couterparts in black, the women
 in white had "glowing eys."

 Also see: "Flying Saucers on The Attack" Harold T. Wilkins Ace
 Books (C) 195? A good account of the Albert K. Bender incident
 including views towards the MIBs durring the era it all started.

              
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