By Harv Howard �2010 We have been lead to believe that our efforts into space have advanced along purely typical lines of scientific investigation of natural phenomena such as Mankind has always done on Earth. That quest has naturally moved outward to other worlds in our solar system and beyond as technology has allowed. Such is true in the greater sense of what Science is about. But the driving force of off-planet investigations has at its core a hidden agenda beyond that of our innate curiosity. The directed goal has been a search for answers to a troubling predicament: Where do the UFO's come from, and are they local to our solar system? We are in the midst of a slow, scientific disclosure that started with our early space probes and is increasing in velocity at an ever-increasing rate. Under our watchful and frequently enthralled eyes we have been presented with a growing escalation of new discoveries every few weeks. The public knows these revelations as Martian meteorites with fossilized primitive life forms, water on Mars, and the Moon, Titian maybe harboring life in its oceans, Mars anomalies, and, recently, planets found around other stars. Without a doubt, the discovery of earth-like planets will be found any day now. Closer to home and in recent weeks, there has been a recent renewing of the argument over the results from the Viking “search for life” experiments in the late 1970s. Unbeknown to the public, that all-important question has never been fully or correctly answered. What has never been discussed to any firm conclusion or even headed in the right direction is an important key that could have answered the question of life on Mars early on in our investigations of the planet. That finding was not about primitive life forms, but evidence of intelligent actions. But that surprise discovery was successfully kept hidden in plain sight with a very low level of interest shown in the data. (If that sounds like an incredible assertion, consider how the reality of UFOs have been kept from the public for over half a century.) Being the giver of all data in the early years of space exploration, NASA has kept the lid on the secret, but times have changed. NASA (the US government) no longer has total control. It has partners and competitors with which to work and contend. The single-handed, iron-fisted control of data by NASA (and Malin) is gone. Politics and ideologies enter the picture of what we find out there and how to interpret and report it. Strangely enough or not, even our non-NASA, pro-ETs and pro-UFOs organizations, prominent writers in the field, and self-promoting showmen have not responded to the key data that resides in the public domain, dormant, virtually hidden from easy access. Perhaps it would be more correct to say there exists in some of these areas a “hands-off” policy coupled with overt attempts to focus attention elsewhere because this knowledge does explicitly explain straight away by implication the UFO phenomena. First, we need to understand the evolution of the situation from the beginning to where it is now, crowded with more participants. Briefly, as the 1960s’ development of ICBMs grew to monstrous proportions, they were soon topped with smaller rockets to give an extended reach to orbital flight and eventually to missions to the planets. The simple charts we see of the numerous planetary launches, both successes and failures, by the Soviets and the US belie the course of events and the jockeying of the super-powers. Critical decisions were made. The Soviets chose Venus to explore as being the home of the ETs, and NASA aimed for Mars. Both nations dabbled somewhat in the territory of the other, but to no great success. It didn’t take much probing from the Soviets to prove Venus inhospitable. Strangely or not, their attempts to study Mars were almost totally disastrous. The NASA/JPL scientists joked that a Martian monster reached out and thwarted in some fashion about every Soviet effort thrown toward that planet. The Soviets had over thirty failed shots to Mars, one after another. Whatever the real reason, the Soviets were shut out on Mars despite their successes to Venus. On the other hand, almost all of NASA’s missions to Mars were successes. (And we have reason to doubt some reported failures!) Mars, via the progressive discoveries of Mariners 6, 7 and finally, 9 in 1971, turned out to be the likely source for ETs in this solar system. True, it was indeed an alien environment as compared to Earth, but it was considered to be the last possible planet in the solar system that had even a minute chance of supporting (or having supported) some aspect of life. At Carl Sagan’s urging, who sincerely believed life existed on Mars, mysterious Phobos was added to the Mariner 9 flight program. About 70 images of Phobos were returned. The quality of the images was not sterling, but enough data was recovered to show unsettling anomalies that piqued interest. In addition, the moon w...