Follow up interview with Apollo 14 astronaut Dr Edgar Mitchell over his UFO disclosure.

Irene Klotz: Why do you think the government hasn't acknowledged that there is life outside of Earth? I thought that was sort of the point of NASA.

Edgar Mitchell: Well most people in government don't know. The government is highly compartmentalized. You could work next door to somebody for 30 years not knowing what they're doing in certain areas. The whole point of all of this ... goes back to World War II. This Roswell incident took place right at the aftermath of World War II when the U.S. Army Air Corps was split off and became the Air Force and the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), which was the intelligence service of World War II, was disbanded and eventually became the CIA. At that point the Cold War was just starting to move under way and we were at odds with the Soviets.

The Air Force was brand new and supposedly in control of the skies and didn't know what they were doing, and the CIA didn't know what they were doing, so Pres. Truman was in a big problem here: Here people were telling him there were aliens around and nobody knew if they were hostile or what they were and what was he going to do about it?

So he formed a committee, a very high-level military and academic and intelligent people -- politically powerful people -- and said 'You guys work on this.' And that was called ... the MAJIC 12. And they did pass a National Security Act, or so I'm told, under highly classified auspices, that gave this committee virtually unlimited power to deal with this issue, which they have done for the last 60 years, slowly excluding everybody -- including presidents.

You may remember that Pres. Clinton tried to send (Webster) Hubbell to find out about this at Wright Patterson. He got rejected. And Barry Goldwater, back in the '60s when he was getting ready to run for the presidency and who was a brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve tried to get information about it. He got rejected. And I'm told that Gerry Ford tried to do some finding out and he got rejected.

Jimmy Carter announced his observation of UFOs, but that never went anywhere so obviously he made no progress. Only in recent years has the public interest become acute enough and enough stories leaked out so that people are starting to believe that it's all real. And the fact of the matter is, it is.

They're still around and there's a lot of stuff going on.

Are you aware of the so-called Phoenix Lights Incident? That wasn't our stuff.

Irene Klotz: I'm sorry. Can you say that again?

Edgar Mitchell: Lights. Just a few years ago. Three humongous craft flew over Phoenix, very slowly in the middle of the night that clearly were not -- I happened to be on the phone with people out there when that happened and have had pictures of it -- clearly those were not, to those of us who know aviation and spacecraft, clearly those were not local stuff, home-grown stuff.

Irene Klotz: So you're saying the incidences are becoming more prevalent among the general public? People are having their own sightings?

Edgar Mitchell: Just several weeks ago, this so-called incident at Stephenville, in Stephenville, Texas. Another one. And naturally a lot of discounting and unfortunately the press, the giggle factor got up and the press tended to ignore it, but the fact of the matter is this is the real stuff we're dealing with. We're not alone in the universe. And it has nothing to do with NASA. As far as I know it has to do with what's going on and has been going on for a long time.

Irene Klotz is a Florida-based freelance writer and columnist specializing in aerospace.