Budd Hopkins' Intruders Foundation
Holds Its First UFO Abduction Conference
By Peter Robbins

On Saturday, April 10th The O'Henry Learning Center in Manhattan's lively Chelsea District played host to this city's first conference devoted entirely to the subject of UFO abductions -- The Intruders Foundation 1999 Abduction Conference: What We Know and How We Know It.

The event was organized as a fund raiser for the Intruders Foundation, or IF, which is a non-profit organization devoted to getting to the truth about UFO abductions, as well as assisting individuals who have experienced them. IF was founded in 1989 by the leading voice in the abduction field, Budd Hopkins and the event marked the foundation's first attempt at conference organizing. By all accounts, it was an unqualified success. This was greatly due to the dedicated team of volunteers whose efforts helped to draw more than two hundred people to the all-day affair, some coming from as far as California.

Stanton Friedman was the first speaker of the day and set the tone well with a 'They CAN Get From There to Here" talk. Friedman, a nuclear physicist and one of the most respected UFO researchers in the world, focused much of his talk on the engineering challenges inherent in getting from wherever to planet Earth and noted that astronomers who say that interstellar travel is unlikely, and that aliens won't want to visit here, are quite simply, wrong. "Astronomers don't know anything about the engineering solutions for problems of space flight. Neither do physicists."

Jerome Clark, arguably ufology's most distinguished historian, surveyed the literature surrounding pre-Betty & Barney Hill cases, looking for indications that abductions were happening before 1961. Clark concluded that in his opinion there was little evidence for abductions before this time and respectfully posed the point as a challenge to abduction researchers.

A relative newcomer, documentary film maker Carol Rainey did a fine job documenting real abuses by the media in misrepresenting abduction research, researchers, and abductees. Drawing from a wealth of television footage on the subject which ran from intelligent and respectful to mind-numbingly idiotic, Rainey methodically dissected television's long-running love/hate affair with UFO's in terms that were clear, specific and accurate. The indictment -- for that was what it really was -- against television's abdicating it's responsibilities in covering this complex and disturbing story with any sustained attempt at accuracy or fairness, was one of the high points of the day.

Conference organizer Budd Hopkins was decidedly the central figure of the day and the conference's main draw. For any one who has had the pleasure of hearing one of his presentations, this does not come as a surprise. Eloquent as ever, Hopkins chose to focus in on the patterns observed in abductions, and the particular dilemma posed by working with child abductees: strong stuff made all the more poignant by the color slides of abducted children's drawings.

David Jacobs' presentation was fascinating, and somewhat chilling. Where are all of the hybrids abductees have been reporting for years? What is the nature of the plan that these non-human intelligences have been operating under? What are their intentions with respect to the human race? Not good, concluded Dr. Jacobs. Beyond the subject of his book The Threat, Jacobs stressed that descriptions of aliens tend to overlap and that one abductee's reptilian may be another abductee's gray.

Journalist Greg Sandow did a fine job moderating the panel discussion and fielding questions from the audience. By the end of the day, there was no question in the mind's of the organizers that New York will be seeing more IF conferences and seminars in the future.