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- ST. IGNATIUS - Staring down the business end of a $60 million
lawsuit, UFO skeptic Robert A.M. Stephens lights another cigarette from
a crumpled pack of Checkers and tweaks the screen of his Macintosh computer
to pull up yet another document from the Internet.
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- This one names him as the defendant in
that lawsuit. It accuses him of everything from slander to lying about
his credentials to maliciously using the Internet to try and destroy the
career of syndicated radio talk show host Art Bell.
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- It is Bell who filed the suit against
Stephens and another man last week, focusing national media attention on
Stephens and his five-month-old feud with Bell over UFOlogy and Stephens'
own credentials.
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- "Stephens participated ... in a
national and international conspiracy designed to impugn Bell and sully
his reputation ... " the lawsuit charges.
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- The lawsuit was filed not only to collect
monetary damages and to clear Bell's good name, but also "to take
a public stance against the irresponsible and unlawful use of the Internet
for illegal or improper purposes," Bell's Los Angeles lawyer states
on Bell's Web site. Bell's lawyers, Gerard P. Fox and Davidson M. Pattiz
of Fox, Siegler and Spillane LLP, did not return a phone call this week
seeking comment.
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- Stephens, a 47-year-old artist, railroad
model maker and computer-imaging expert, is staying in a rambling farmhouse
two miles north of St. Ignatius. He shares the house with another family,
but Stephens says he provides the cash flow.
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- Outside, dogs are barking and a disabled
vehicle is parked under the carport. Weeds are growing thickly in the fields
around the barn.
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- In a darkened room inside, Stephens is
sitting by his computer, a smallish Power Mac with a 14-inch monitor. He
apologizes, explaining that his computer system's big monitor was "bombed"
in an Internet attack over the weekend by unknown parties. He suspects
the culprits are people who have taken extreme umbrage at his attempts
to debunk self-appointed UFO experts and their radio talk-show sympathizers
during the last five months, he says.
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- Meanwhile, his state-of-the-art computer,
a Mac 93 400, sits unused and unplugged at the end of a cluttered table.
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- Similar problems have plagued his Web
site, shady-pines.com, which for several months lampooned and parodied
UFOlogy and radio talk show host Bell. It is no longer up and running,
a victim, he says, of his feud with Bell.
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- The whole thing started on Oct. 16, 1998,
Stephens says, knocking another ash off his filter cigarette.
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- "It started with the Montana UFO,"
he says.
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- Some Mission Valley residents may recall
the spate of reports of a UFO seen by numerous witnesses that week in October
around the Mission Valley. Stephens said the reports he heard were of "a
triangle in the sky, with red, blue and green lights, hovering at about
20,000 feet five miles east of U.S. 93."
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- "It was here for three weeks. All
sorts of people saw it," he said. Stephens was not among them.
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- Although he never saw the suspected craft
from outer space, he took it upon himself to report the sightings to various
Internet sites interested in such reports. Within five days, his postings
had attracted the interest of late-night talk show hosts.
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- Somehow, he let slip that he is associated
with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This gave him instant
credibility on the radio shows, as if he were some kind of official spokesman.
But the shows apparently did not check with NASA about his supposed association.
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- Last week a NASA official said Stephens
was a volunteer artist in a program that supplied artwork for the agency
during the beginning of the shuttle program in the 1980s, and he donated
several art works to the program. He does not work for the agency, has
never worked for the agency, and is not an agency spokesman about UFOs
or anything else, the NASA official said. His access to NASA facilities
and tours is the same as that of other civilians, the spokesman said.
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- Stephens says now: "I don't work
for NASA and I will never work for NASA." But he hints that he does
have NASA support.
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- "I have a lot of influence in the
agency," he says.
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- Stephens said his main motive in entering
the UFO discussions was to defend NASA against outlandish charges - for
example that the agency was part of a government conspiracy to keep the
existence of space aliens secret from the American public.
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- Stephens said other outlandish claims
were that NASA was hiding entire planets from the American public and that
forces in Washington, D.C., were secretly planning to bomb Washington,
D.C., itself.
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- Stephens said he went on the talk shows
and used his Internet expertise to demand evidence from UFOlogists.
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- His notoriety spread with his accessibility,
and he was invited on Bell's radio program as a telephone guest Dec. 30,
supposedly to debate a UFO expert. Stephens said that in preparation he
assembled a list of some 200 questions to ask the UFO buff. But he said
Bell cut him off after a few minutes, much to Stephens' displeasure.
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- After that, the battle between Bell and
Stephens gravitated toward the Internet, with each aspersing the other's
credibility.
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- Stephens says that on April 1, "I
publicly and privately asked him (Bell) to stop. He refused and said 'a
lot better people than you have tried to take me down.' "
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- On April 3, Stephens was a guest on another
radio show, where the battle escalated. It is the comments on that show
that prompted Bell to sue.
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- Here's what the lawsuit alleges Stephens
said, according to a copy of the suit posted on Bell's Internet Web site:
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- "A. Approximately 20 years ago,
Bell had been 'arrested' and 'served time' for 'trafficking' in various
aspects of pornography. B. Bell made pornographic 'videotapes'; and C.
The entire story had been confirmed by 'a consortium - a syndication of
private' investigators, who had located an original article in the Monterey
Herald confirming the story."
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- None of these allegations are true, the
lawsuit says, and making those statements on a radio program, Stephens
slandered and defamed Bell, and caused him loss of earnings.
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- For his part, Stephens says he "categorically
denies any and all charges of any kind" alleged in the lawsuit. He
said he has yet to be served an official copy of the suit, so he can't
respond directly to the allegations. In fact, he said, he has not read
past the first page of the version posted on the Internet, and he has yet
to retain a lawyer.
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- Stephens said he views the lawsuit as
frivolous and as an attempt to intimidate the Internet service providers
that maintain his Web pages, and also as an attempt to muzzle Stephens.
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- "These lawsuits are a way to stifle
my dissent (from UFOlogy orthodoxy) and my defense of NASA," he says.
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- To some extent, it has worked, he acknowledged.
He said his Web page has been pulled from the Internet by its service provider,
apparently because of concern about the lawsuit.
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- He says he has recently received 374
e-mail death threats from UFO cultists, probably because of his feud with
Bell.
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- "I take that seriously," he
said. He said he has contacted the FBI.
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- As for UFOs, he says he does not believe
in them, at least the way they are presented by the UFO cult - alien abductions,
flying saucers, government conspiracies, and the like.
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- However something is out there, he says.
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- "There are anomalous objects in
our time-place that defy description and defy denial," he says mysteriously.
He notes that the millennium is coming.
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- "I do believe the way things are
headed, we are probably going to know more about (those anomalous objects).
But the course that UFOlogy embraces, that of a cult religion, that is
not the way."
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- Meanwhile Bell's Web site, www.artbell.com,
and other Web pages associated with Bell, continue to vilify Stephens.
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- But Stephens is not defenseless. Tacking
away at his little computer in his upstairs room, chain-smoking, Stephens
in the last few days has put up another Web page. It is considerably tamer
than shady-pines.com. It shows photos of him in the company of a NASA official
at a recent NASA launch site tour.
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- But at the bottom of the page is a parody
photo of Bell in garish costume and dark glasses. (Stephens' new site is
at http://people.Montana.com/~sti3818/)
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- "If you make fun of the UFO'ers,
they go ballistic," Stephens says, unrepentant. "It's a religion
that tolerates no sense of humor."
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