Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh

by Wendy S. Painting

The Mirage Men would approach the targeted individual, either directly or through an intermediary, and offer to provide the Truth about what the government was hiding, sometimes in exchange for information about the latest rumors, trends and goings on in the UFO community. Having secured the target’s willing or unknowing compliance, the operatives would provide them with faked government documents about human/alien treaties, super-secret underground military bases that doubled as alien strongholds and faked footage of alien autopsies. Some Mirage Men, having gained clout and influence within the subculture (sometimes as spokespeople of citizen groups), would then proceed to make the most outrageous claims that, while persuading some already True Believers who then propagated and added to these stories, only tended to make UFO discourse appear ludicrous to the larger populace.