Exactly ten years have passed since Whitley Strieber first recorded the disturbing experiences he recalled in his now famous non-fiction narrative Communion. Over the course of that decade, Strieber has been widely recognized as the most outspoken and controversial witness to the UFO phenomenon this country — and much of the world — has yet seen.

In 1995, however, he emerged from a long, self-imposed retirement from the UFO scene, touring the country to promote his new book, Breakthrough. In it, he recounts the story of his advocacy for greater openness on the UFO question by the U.S. armed forces and the intelligence community, as well as his involvement in financing research into the anomalous features photographed on the Cydonia plain of planet Mars.

Now, after months spent on the road at book signings and conferences, Strieber is making a special trip to Dallas to appear exclusively as the guest of The Eclectic Viewpoint.

Readers familiar with Strieber's nonfiction Communion and Transformation may also know him as the author of such well-received novels as The Wolfen and The Hunger (both made into successful feature films), as well as later works such as Warday and Nature's End. In the years following the publication of Communion, Strieber explored the Roswell crash mystery in his novel Majestic, and through his chilling story, The Forbidden Zone, hinted at the awful potential underlying advanced psychotronic and physics research.

In his speech for The Eclectic Viewpoint, however, Strieber plans to discuss new information not covered in any of his previous publications, as well as address the positions he took in Breakthrough.

"I'm going to touch on two main things," he said in a recent interview. "The first is that probably the most extensive series of UFO sightings in the past quarter century are unfolding around us right now, and I'm going to give an overview of what is happening in various countries."

"The second thing I am going to talk about is the motive behind the CIA's sudden disclosures regarding Project Sunstreak — a remote viewing program also known as Grill Flame — revealed November 28 on the ABC news show, Nightline."

Strieber has always been very cautious when speaking of the apparent activities of the beings whom he still refers to as "the visitors." As he puts it, "They are always too surprising." Nevertheless, he does believe that the recent UFO flap is leading to something significant.

"This is very similar to the flap in 1989 where they came very close to open contact, and then broke it off at the last minute," he said. "I don't think that it will break off this time though — of course it may — but I think that it will be extended to more and more different countries. And I think the reason is that people are being able to videotape these things — so many people that 'the visitors' tend to go to countries where people look up a lot. That's probably why they're in South America and South Africa, where there are very ancient human cultures side by side with modern human culture. I think they're trying to see if they can reach us that way. There's a little bit happening in the United States, but it's very minor, although I noticed that the media has isolated us almost completely from this phenomenon, so we don't get to know any of that."

While Strieber has long been known as a gadfly to U.S. media coverage of the UFO phenomenon, his disclosures of information regarding government sponsored psychic research are quite new.

"My knowledge of this comes from the fact that I met people who were working in the program and were having visitor experiences. They came to me, and wanted to know what was going on. What's interesting here is that there is such an enormous gulf between public reality and the secret reality of the thing. The disclosure that took place on Nightline was one of the few times that the public got a glimpse of what was happening on the inside, but that glimpse was essentially another form of lie, with the CIA saying in essence it didn't amount to much and the media quickly leaping on that bandwagon and beating that drum and the whole thing immediately thereafter being dismissed. What I'm going to do is talk about why the release was done."

Whitley Strieber's adventures with the UFO research groups and the intelligence community have made him a legend in his own time. Having chronicled those adventures in Breakthrough, he is busy finishing a book on his childhood visitor experiences, entitled The Secret School. Audience members will have ample opportunity to question Strieber, as well as have him sign his books, which will be available after the lecture.

— Ed Conroy