Filipov’s last tape

Poor Lachezar Filipov.

On November 26, 2009, London’s Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail reported that Filipov, deputy director of the Space Research Institute (NASA equivalent) of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, had announced that, “aliens are currently all around us, and are watching us all the time.” He claimed that he and a team of BAS scientists had interviewed several aliens (by means not disclosed) and that the answers to their questions were encoded in crop circle formations. According to the Telegraph, BAS issued a report on these communications, but I’ve yet to find it online.

A Phoenix-based paranormal talk radio host named Kevin Smith says he contacted Filipov by phone shortly after the articles were published and Filipov agreed to be interviewed, saying it was his “duty” to make his team’s discoveries public.

Then, Smith says, the good doctor stopped answering his cell phone. Days of radio silence passed before a Croatian news team was allowed to interview Filipov in the lobby of the Academy of Sciences building in Sofia, but the 19-minute interview was not used because, according to the news team, Filipov was “intoxicated.”

Smith says he obtained a copy of the interview, which included many close-ups of Filipov’s face, and, in Smith’s opinion, Filipov was suffering from sleep deprivation. A former international policeman, Smith says that Filipov showed no signs of HGN (Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus), which always accompanies alcohol intoxication. He also points out that sleep deprivation is a favorite tool of the gone-but-still-active Darzhavna Sigurnost, or Bulgarian KGB.

So what happened? Did the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences establish a dialogue with extraterrestrials? Did its deputy director then go rogue, announcing to the media that this communication had occurred? And did the Bulgarian KGB, in an attempt to discredit him, then “prepare” the deputy director for his interview with a Croation news team?

Hallucination is another possibility, of course. As are substance abuse and outright deceit. As to the last possibility, the question arises, who’s deceiving whom? And why? The Telegraph refers to recent “heated debate” over “the role, feasibility, and reform of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences,” so maybe Filipov’s announcement was only a bizarre and deeply misguided publicity stunt.

Question: What would we be saying right now if the deputy director of NASA had made the same announcement?

Watch Kevin Smith’s 4-part discussion of the Filipov case.

Read Lachezar Filipov’s curriculum vitae.