This is part 3 of the rough draft of Major Downing's book

It's a well-established fact that the Soviets have been spying on our military technologies since WWI. They even had some of their people watching our first atomic tests during WWII (when they were presumed to be our allies). Interestingly, they also had some of their spies in the US to suppress knowledge of soviet technologies which might leak into the American press. In the wake of reprts of UFO witnesses being visited by strange men clad in black, the soviets quickly picked up this trick. There were soviet surveillance and stealth aircraft fling over US soil, and these Russian Men in Black sought to silence witnesses of these flyovers by the same means as us. Could it be that they had a spy infiltrate our ranks and share secrets about our technique? That I don't know. Believe it or not, we American MIB did not have any awareness of the activities of the Soviet MIB until the 70's, when a retired KGB approached one of our people and told about it. **************************************

The first head of the Black Ops Bureau (ca. 1947) envisioned a non-lethal approach to suppressing or cloaking reported sightings of ultra-secret stealth or experimental technologies. This was an innovative approach, and thus the Black Ops Bureau (later, Brethren) was to be a laboratory for developing what became PSYOPS. Psychoanalysis, surrealism, witchcraft, and Madison Avenue advertising savvy all came together in this team to create a formidable organization, a hybrid of propagandists and ninjas. The intent of the mind-game techniques was to induce a hypnotic state by means of confusion and defamiliarization (shades of Erickson here). By making the witness doubt his or her recall (was it a dream? am I crazy?), and by actually warping the sequence or details of a witnessed event (it was a saucer, not an airplane0, the witness was a) less likey to report a sighting, and b) the witness would be dismissed as a delusional crackpot by others. ***************************************************

In the 1950's, when the idea of Men in Black had entered the collective imagination of popular culture, some other groups came along wanting a piece of that action. This is where things get complicated, and explains why it is difficult to easily answer the question Who are the Men in Black? Some religious and political groups started to use these tactics to silence dissenting views within their own organizations. Scientologists, satanists, some mob-controlled unions, and then , as I mentioned before, the Soviets. To ad to this bunch there were those various ufologists who would play this tactic on their competitors, and of course the pranksters who dress up in black suits to attend conventions for abductees of ufo fans. The CIA, the FBI, and the Mafia are also occasionally guilty of playing MIB, as are intelligence agents from foreign nations. And some masonic-type fraternities have been known to occasionally try their hands at this. There is one more group which I'm almost reluctant to speak about, only because I find it so hard to accept that nature has a place for such individuals. But history, and my senses, tells me otherwise. They are indeed of this earth, this plane, this time. They have always worked behind the scenes, and they do walk among us. Most active from the Near East, through central Europe, and up into the British isles, they are nevertheless found as far east as the Himalayas, and as far west as the Pacific coast of the Americas. Essentially (I'm pretty certain) they are Homo Sapiens, but they have an unusual alliance with the geomagnetic powers of this planet. In appearance they range from willowy fair folk to squat asiatic types. I don't know if they stand apart on the evolutionary scale, but it's evident they are different. The thing which most unsettles me about them is their relationship with what are called the "Black Dogs". These enigmatic critters, variously seen flying about or loping along, are described as smoky whirlwinds, bales of dark wool, or giant shaggy dogs, always with glowing red lights, or eyes, peering from somewhere. They never cease to invoke in me a horror akin to that inspired by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. But these things are real! They have been recorded, world-wide, since ancient times (think of dragons), and have even been caught on film. How could humans tame such a force? These other "Men in Black", whom I've encountered, and with whom the Black Ops Brethren (and predecessors) have a lon-standing truce, are like some kind of classical demigods, or elves. I recently noticed that some ufologists have identified MIBs with "elementals". That about hits it on the head. That's the best way to think of them. High-tech fairies, perhaps. I'm embarrassed to say this, but their display of paranormal power leaves me with no other conclusion. These people are not "competition" with the Black Ops Brethren, as the other groups might be deemed. As stewards of the black dogs, they are simply interfering with human efforts to capture and/or understand the phenomena they are commited to protecting. I was told once by one of the old guys in the Black Ops Brethren that these black dogs were trained to make fabulous designs in wheatfields, just to keep them out of trouble. It is, I must confess, my visceral reaction to recoil from these fey MIBs, because the very presence of them gives me the disturbing feeling that I'm in the presence of something very, very, ancient that I'mnot supposed to know about. Most of these fey MIB that are seen around Europe and in the Us are of the tall and fair sort. I have heard them speak their own peculiar tongue, and they manage somehow to live apart from the general population, even while living in our midst. They are mortal. They do NOT live in caves, tunnels, or in some other remote place. They live in cities and in the country, and are skillful at passing as locals. It is from them that the Black Ops Brethren got their cloaking and mind-control technology back in the 50's. It was still such a primitive thing back then. When switched on it would cause intense staticky and skin-crawling sensations in anyone standing within its field of influence. Aside from that it was very effective at cloaking very large things. They needed to wear these goofy silver bodysuits to protect themselves from the radiation coming out of the things though. Without the suits, one would become very disoriented and unmotivated. When we got hold of this technology we promptly went to work on miniaturising the device and correcting the direction of output. I personally do not know the physics of these things, so I cannot verify what energy they project, but my understanding was that it was telluric and microwave. Depending on the setting, it could simply be used to pacify someone and make them suggestible, then at a higher setting it distorts one's perceptions, causing one to see people in a really distorted way (think "big heads, waxy grey skin") , and at a very high setting, it simply cloaks objects with its area of influence. Early on it was difficult to really tighten the direction of output, and so some MIBs fell under its influence and had to practically drag themselves away from the locale of their visit ("must..go...energy..running..low..."). The fey MIB were very active in the 40s, because of the impact of human terchnologies on the geomagnetic grid. The constant launching of rockets and testing of atomic bombs had them worried about the black dogs. Curiously, the black dogs were not weakened after all, but rather became larger and more intelligent. Now the fey MIBs have a Dr. Frankenstein situation on their hands. A great deal of time and energy is being devoted to keeping the Black Dogs away from urban areas, where they could wreak havoc and cause alarm. Mind you, these Black Dogs are not springing up all the time. But on those occasions when they do (most often in Europe and England), they have to be kept out of view. *************************************************

While there are sporadic reports of Men in Black dating through history prior to the 1940's, there is little consistency in them. The organization which bore the name Black Ops Brethren originated the classic MIB appearance and modus operandi in '47 when the new mission was being laid out. No sooner had we done that, then other groups (including the fey MIBs) mimicked our style. We however were the merry pranksters who were actively experimanting with new ways to disorient and defamiliarize witnesses by such comical means as acting lke aliens or robots, talking backwards, speaking goofy secret agent jargon, etc...We were the first to take our black boxes into the field, where we sometimes failed due to technical ineptitude. Too often a session would have to be cut short because of an agent being overcome by his box. We never wore those silver body suits like the fey had, and when we finally finetuned the boxes, they began operating just like us. *******************************************

The scientologists, who have come to dominate the BOpFFOr, began to imitate the Black Ops Brethren as far back as the 50's. Hubbard, who had ONI connections, was a popular science fiction writer. At some point he got it into his head to start a mind-control cult, and became kind of an American Kurtz figure. He attracted lots of people to himself, always had wise things to say, and went so far as to play his followers off against each other. There is no doubt that he saw popular accounts of Men in Black, through such books as "The Flying Saucers and the Three Men" or "They knew too much". He took to sending Men in Black-disguised thugs out to harrass his enemies. In time, quite a number of his followers were to be found in the ranks of the intelligence community. By gradual means, they seized virtual control of the Black Ops Brethren, and thereupon remade it into the Black Ops Fed Fraternal Order. ....And that's where I got off. It just ain't what it used to be. They'll kill you now, because harrassment takes too much time. Look at what happened to Danny Casolaro.