What follows here is an interview with Whitley Strieber that features some material about his upcoming book "Confirmation: The Hard Evidence Of Aliens Among Us" (St. Martin's Press, 1998). While the new book will not be available to the general public until May 26, as a journalist I was given an advance galley and conducted an interview with Strieber over the phone in which we discussed the new book as well as what life is like for the man who wrote "Communion" after more than ten years in the harsh glare of an unbelieving media.

The following interview is also more of a verbatim and unedited transcript than is usually presented on this web site. While it functions for the most part like a standard Q. and A., it also has elements of the more conversational moments that happened while the interview was being conducted.

One more note: The evening after I had finished transcribing this interview, I came across the following sentence in Norman Mailer's 1997 bestseller "The Gospel According To The Son": "Who but Satan would wish to tell us that our way should be easy?" The fact that the path toward Salvation is a hard one is something Whitley Streiber knows only too well.

Q. "Confirmation" is a little different than the books that came before because you actually write very little about your own experiences but focus instead on other people and events. Why did you choose to write it that way? What purpose are you trying to achieve by this approach?

Strieber: The book is an attempt to present evidence that will lead to scientific interest in this field. And I can't do that by simply repeating my own story, because I don't have enough hard, physical evidence of my story.

Q. Your own status within the UFO community is rather unique because of your enormous book sales and visibility in the media. You also talk about the possibility that you were chosen as a propagandist by the Visitors. Would you care to comment further?

Strieber: A propagandist? I don't quite get that. I'm not understanding the question, Sean. In what sense did I say that?

Q. I think you used that exact word. A propagandist. Someone who's spreading-

Strieber: Oh, it's a speculation. I mean, obviously, with implants floating around, and we don't know what they are or how they work, we need to be really wary about all of this. And I include in that my own work. I think that until we understand what kind of technologies may or may not be impacting us, it's necessary to take a great deal of care. I must say that I don't feel in any sense that my mind is being influenced from the outside by anyone. But, at the same time, would a person under such influence feel that way? I can't answer that question.

I think that it behooves us clearly to take a serious look at that, though. I feel also that probably, because I'm so interested in taking a look at it, that I'm not under such influence. Because if I was under such influence, I probably would be saying that there was no reason to be concerned.

Q. Do you still feel as estranged from the UFO community as you once did?

Strieber: I'm very careful about anyone who is imprecise in their delivery of their ideas. I wouldn't say that I've ever been that estranged from the whole community, but there is an element in that community that does not function in a useful way. And yes, I would consider myself, if anything, even more estranged from them. I want nothing to do with them.

Q. Well, what element are you talking about?

Strieber: Well, I don't want to go into it, because it just causes me trouble. But I think it's obvious that if you look on the Internet, you'll see that it's full of web sites that are basically bunk. And I don't want anything to do with anybody who's dishing out bunk. And I think that you can find all kinds of false material on all of these web sites, on lots of web sites. All kinds of fake imagery and so forth. I've presently taken my web site down, and I'm redoing it. And one of the reasons I'm doing that is that every single piece of material that was sent to me over the Internet exclusively, with no photographic backup or anything like that, was fake. Without exception.

And at first, I was innocently putting this up on my web site because I thought that I could trust people. I'm sorry. I want to cut the cards. I don't trust anybody, and I'm very interested in watching my back. Because on the surface, there are a lot of people who are just amusing themselves with this and playing games. I'm not playing games. I'm not in here for fun. I'm very serious about this, and I want to see this moved into the mainstream scientific community. If UFO investigators can't handle it properly, then they shouldn't even be involved.

Q. Well, I know this is an unpleasant subject to discuss, but could you give us a historical overview of the persecutions suffered by you and your family since the publication of "Communion" in 1987?

Strieber: There will be something about that on my web site. But it would be fifty pages long. I can't. It would go on endlessly, and believe me, the UFO community is not solely responsible for that. Skeptics groups, religious groups, all kinds of different people have been identified as being part of that. Including just simply individuals who can allow themselves to think that I'm a liar and therefore I should be punished. And take out a little bit of their free-floating life resentment on me. You know? And it's really, really hard. Persecution is the norm in our lives. It's not exceptional. It's usual. And therefore I can't answer the question in just a paragraph.

Q. Well, if you want to answer at length, go ahead.

Strieber: No, I don't. It's too complicated.

Q. Well, I was particularly disturbed when I read about the incident where someone spat in your face at an airport.

Strieber: That's happened more than once. I only mentioned one of the incidents.

Q. What motivates that kind of-

Strieber: On that particular occasion, "Good Morning, America" put on a man who claimed I was a cult leader, like Jim Jones, and the spitting incident occurred the afternoon after that had been put on the air.

Q. Well, now that Heaven's Gate has happened, they know what a real cult's like. It would seem that they would have some sort of basis of comparison that would exonerate you and so forth. I remember when that-just to break off-I remember when that accusation first started. It was back in '89 when you were starting the Communion Groups around the country.

Strieber: Yeah. It was generated by a man who was later accused of computer hacking and ended up pleading no contest in federal court and was sentenced to a probationary sentence and a fine. And that was the end of it as far as I was concerned. He was completely discredited.

Q. Well, having suffered what you have, do you still feel the Visitor experience is worth what you have endured? Do you continue to feel you wouldn't trade it for anything?

Strieber: I do indeed. It is worth it. It's worth it for the reasons that I state toward the end of my book. That we have a chance to get out, to become a cosmic species. We have a chance to make a stab at "species immortality." Because once we have established ourselves, not only off-planet, but also outside of the solar system, then the species becomes effectively immortal, or lasts as long as the Universe potentially. I want us to have that chance, because there are many trillions of genetic combinations still available to mankind. We're just at the beginning of humanity, not at the end of it.

And I think that anyone who ends up, however peripherally, working towards that, is right on the aim of the whole species. And it's not a place that you should ever turn away from, no matter how difficult it is to be there.

Q. So, in other words, you're willing to endure the persecution for what you feel is the sake of a very positive future for the entire race?

Strieber: Yes, that's essentially correct. And I don't think, by the way, that there's ever going to be any mass landings. No one's going to give us this on a silver platter. If anyone offers us anything on a silver platter, they're evil and we've got to be very damn careful of what they have to offer. In this, all horses are Trojans, I think. What we can take, really take, from our own industry, effort and understanding is what's valuable to us. The rest of it, I don't care about.

Q. Well, this is another thing. This may be a little out of left-field to you, but do you think the Visitors themselves observe the persecutions you endure? And if so, what is their attitude about it? Do they ever mention it to you or comment on it?

Strieber: No, comments aren't something that happens in my experience. The number of words I've heard in my experience is very low. There's not a dialogue. Yeah, there has been some reaction at times. I think when we were driven out of the cabin in upstate New York, they reacted very negatively to that by putting on a rather amazing but very private display of response when it happened.

Q. They were unhappy for your sake, though, right?

Strieber: No, I think they were unhappy because they were losing a communications tool that had been very useful.

Q. But it had nothing to do with feeling sorry for your plight-

Strieber: I have no idea what their feelings were.

Q. In the new book, you call Dr. Roger Leir, Alice Leavy and Jesse Long heroes of a kind.

Strieber: They very definitely are.

Q. What does it take to be a hero in this field? Why are they heroes?

Strieber: Alice and Jesse are heroes because of the lives they've lived and their determination to present themselves to science on behalf of understanding. Roger is a hero because he put his career on the line in order to do something that is generally considered to be the farthest thing from professional responsibility. And he did that knowing what had already happened to John Mack in that regard. It took courage to do that-genuine human courage of the most basic kind.

Q. Well, can you briefly summarize what you're saying in the conclusion of the book about why the Visitors maintain secrecy about their presence for the sake of allowing us to develop independently of them?

Strieber: The premise that's based on comes from an article that's referenced. It was in "Science Magazine," the April 1977 issue. And essentially, it says that the great thing that we have to offer or would have potentially to offer to anyone with such extraordinary abilities as the Visitors display is "novelty." And if we end up as beggars on the Cosmic Street Corner, we will have nothing to offer them. We must not be given. We must take. We have to take. And I think that the Visitors will continue to make it as difficult for us as possible. They will do everything they can to defeat our efforts to get off-planet and to establish ourselves in a new way. And I think if they succeed, they will consider that a great tragedy.

Q. This is a very complex argument you're making here.

Strieber: Yes, it is.

Q. And I have a hard time-I want to discuss this, but I need to put it in some form where I can structure it as quotes from you.

Strieber: Well, the problem is that we're locked into this conceptual level of Good vs. Evil. Are they Good or Evil? Are they going to help us or not? And it is useless. We might as well be talking to a wall.

Q. You'll note I haven't asked any Good or Evil questions.

Strieber: Well, I know you haven't. But the thing that makes this so difficult to understand is how could they seem to be hostile to us when they're actually trying to help us? That's one of the things that hard to understand. But it becomes very obvious if you realize that what they're trying to do is make us strong. How do you make somebody strong? You make them exercise. You make them flex their muscles. You create, for example, questions that they can't bear and that they can't answer. That makes them strong. But just handing them star ship plans, like they do in the movie "Contact," that makes us weak. That hurts us. That's hostile.

So if you get Mr. Nice Guys coming and landing from outer space and giving us the key to the Universe, they're hostile. They're dangerous. Somebody who's tough and won't give us anything, but will be there exposing themselves so that we get the chance to take it, well, they're our friends. We have to do this on our own or not at all.

Q. You know, I was just now reminded-I don't want to cast it in moralistic terms-but the literal meaning of the name "Israel" is "he who strives with his Maker."

Strieber: That's absolutely correct. That's what we've got to do. We ARE Israel.

Q. Well, good. I think some kind of overtones about Moses and the Chosen People might also be why we're called Chosen Ones at times.

Strieber: Well, that could be.

Q. One concept that I've read about in your books and a lot of other books is people who have this sense of being "half-alien," whose sense of identity is sort of blurred?

Strieber: Yeah?

Q. With an indwelling alien personality? I have that experience a lot of times, you know. You start to realize they're thinking through you and you test it a little bit, you know? And logically, if you begin to test such a thing, you would totally switch off your own sense of identity. But that never quite happens. I mean, something is always there holding me as a conscious human entity in spite of all the spirits or whatever going through me at times.

Strieber: At the present time, we have no idea what all of that means. And one of the problems that is, I think, central to this is that we don't yet understand what the Visitors actually are. Even if they are aliens from another planet, there are things that happen to people that suggest that we still don't understand what they are. We don't understand what that may mean, and we don't know all of its significance. If they have something else to do with reality, then we're really at sea and we can expect all kinds of side-effects that are really difficult to understand or interpret. And feelings like those, I always say to people, keep it in question. Keep the question alive, because we really don't know what this means.

Q. Right. Well, another thing I experience, and this is the one that really frightens me-Katharina Wilson, the abductee, sent me some literature that talked about this same problem. You start to feel a "unique sense of non-existence." Like you're not real, the Universe is not real, you're staring at your face in the mirror and still you're not real.

Strieber: These high-level disassociative conditions are related to stress of different kinds. And in this particular case, you're dealing with stress of a sort that we really don't have much experience with at all. And side-effects of this kind of stress are going to be unusual. I think you're looking there at a side-effect that's unusual of a certain type of stress.

Q. It's almost as if, if you moved an inch further, you'd crack catatonic or something. You'd cease to be there at all.

Strieber: It's interesting that the close encounter experience in general does not harm people. I've had quite a number of cases of people who have claimed to have been injured in various ways.

Q. It's not necessarily an injury. It's just the strangeness-

Strieber: Yeah, well let me finish-including psychologically and this, that and the other thing. And what's been fascinating about this is when I've investigated these cases I've generally found that the people were fundamentalist Christians who were out in the community spreading terror for religious reasons. I think that if you scratch the surface of people who have real alien terror tales to tell, you find very often that those people are actually propagandists. That isn't to say that the experience is not difficult. I don't want to put a "happy talk" light on it, because it's very inappropriate to do that.

The experience is difficult, and it will get more difficult. The more public the Visitors become, the harder this is going to be. Until eventually it will get to the point, if it continues to move in that direction, that the people closest to it will all begin to have reactions like the ones you described. Which seem superficially harmless if strange. But actually, if they continue to intensify, you very quickly get into areas where there's a psychotic level of disassociation going on.

And what will happen under those circumstances is that the average man will be scared to death and the people close to the experience will be, as you say, catatonic. That could easily occur. We have to be prepared for that. And there is a way to meet it. The Visitors have always directed my attention to meditation. I find that many of the people who are most capable of handling the situation are people who meditate, who can take their attention out of their mind and simply place it on their body. And you then find relief because, as I mention in the book, the conflicting need of their consciousness and our consciousness to form the stuff of reality into shapes we understand leads the ego to feel as if it's being annihilated when you're close to that.

Q. Exactly.

Strieber: And you can end that by simply taking your attention outside of your mind and outside of your ego. And everything relaxes immediately and it all becomes very ordinary. What seemed to be monsters a moment before become a bunch of very tired, little creatures that seem to be struggling with something that they find difficult, at times boring, and very sad.

Q. I do want to say, just for the sake of the record, that I'm not a fundamentalist Christian. Streiber: Oh, I know you're not.

Q. I'm a liberal Christian. I believe the Visitors are basically good.

Strieber: Did you get a copy of Monsignor Valducci's interview that's going to be in the book?

Q. No.

Strieber: It didn't go out with the galleys. I guess it came in too late. Well, at the end of the book, there's going to be an interview with a prelate from the Vatican, Monsignor Corado Valducci which I think represents the beginnings of possible Church policy about the whole subject. Monsignor Valducci is a specialist in demonology, and in his interview he states very clearly that that is not what this is about.

Q. Ah, good to hear.

Strieber: Yeah, it's good to hear. Michael Hesseman got the interview and published it in his magazine in Germany. And then I read it and called Michael and Monsignor Valducci and he was kind enough to let me use it in my book.

Q. I want to ask you one more question, then can we talk a little bit off the record? Streiber: Yeah.

Q. This is the standard last question I've always used. Is there anything you wish to add? Is there some question I haven't asked or some kind of final statement you'd like to make?

Strieber: Well, what I want to add is that the scientific community can address this in a rational way. There are already instruments and techniques that would allow us to deal with this scientifically at every level and answer some of the questions that now surround it. Like the basic question, is it real or is it not? The scientific community can address that question and answer it now. If they do not do so, then it is a major failure of the human intellect. And it could be an extremely serious one. Because I guarantee you over the next fifty years there are going to be environmental disruptions of such a serious nature that our ability to address energy to an issue like this may become very limited.

Q. Well, another thing you say about the scientific community, and I also read this in Fowler's book as well, is the idea that we're at a point where established science is still rejecting all this information, but still you can sort of foresee a kind of transition where it does become gradually accepted.

Strieber: Yeah, well Peter Straub (?) is the perfect example, right at the beginning of the book. I mean, there's a whole group of very qualified scientists behind him who are trying to change things. And who do feel that there's something here that's worth looking into. So, yeah, I think that it is changing. But slowly.

Q. Well, that's also good to know. This is another thing off the record. But I'm going to be interviewing Rio D'Angelo pretty soon. He was the lone survivor of Heaven's Gate.

Strieber: Oh, yeah?

Q. He's the guy who left the group about a month before who they sent the video tape to and so forth?

Strieber: Yeah?

Q. He's starting to do a media "coming out" kind of thing. He's going to be on Larry King on Thursday. [D'Angelo's appearance was later canceled.] And a publicist working for him sent me a press release and everything.

Strieber: Yeah?

Q. So I was going to ask you, what questions would you ask Rio D'Angelo if you were going to talk to him? I guess I'm asking for help with my homework or something. My father was saying the idea's not to look back at what happened, but what kind of forward-looking-type questions could we ask?

Strieber: I have no idea what to think about that. I feel that there's a massive scientific failure, a failure of the scientific imagination, that led to a situation where people could easily turn this whole thing into a lot of superstition. And I think it's terribly unfortunate. It's sad. It is just pitiful and sad and I don't know what to think of this except that probably this man will only be used to harm the culture even more. Because I think that I can't imagine that there would be any purpose in bringing him out except to warn people away from dealing with the UFO issues in any way.

Q. I also talked to Elaine Pagels about this subject last year. You're familiar with her?

Strieber: Yeah, sure.

Q. And she was saying that what she felt had caused it was the suppression in the society as a whole, the repression in our society of religious impulses. The idea of looking outside yourself to a higher, loving intelligence-

Strieber: It's interesting that I think of it as being caused by the repression of scientific knowledge. I think that if science had addressed this thing meaningfully from the beginning, there wouldn't be a lot of superstition floating around. I would disagree with Elaine Pagels. Because she comes from the viewpoint that there's nothing real to it. That it is essentially a form of a misdirected religious impulse. But the problem is that these people can see the evidence that's hanging around out there, and there's a substantial enough amount of it to add credence to almost any claim that anyone wishes to make about it if they have a sufficiently charismatic or authoritative manner.

So the result is that you get these people-and it's not just the Heaven's Gate cult. There's lots of cults and people out there who are spreading just absolute bunkum stories. Like everyone assumes there are little gray visitors here from Zeta Reticuli. What? How did we come to that? We came to that through a lot of very vague, hypnotized recall and examining star maps that may or may not have had some sort of relevance to the real world. And it became engraved in stone. But it's nothing. It's fantasy. It's superstition. And because the scientific community never deals with this issue in a meaningful way, factual material turns into fantasy and superstition and you have things like Heaven's Gate.

We, the UFO community, will be blamed for Heaven's Gate. The scientific community is actually to blame.

Q. Well, I've also heard other people say that they doubt there were any even real abductees among them. None of them had ever sighted a ship or anything. Their faith was totally blind and uneducated.

Strieber: I feel this: That the way to deal with the abductee situation is that you start by working with abductees who have implants. We can find those people easily enough. They're readily available. I'm one of them. And you work with those people, and what you do is, you apply instruments to them that will enable us to tell whether or not the memories they're describing actually evolved out of physical experience and what general kinds of physical experiences those were. That's how you begin with this. But having somebody simply say that they're an abductee isn't enough. And once you've established some really valid guidelines, then the next step is to extend the same process into larger numbers of witnesses. Because, you know, as I demonstrate in the book, we can use the PET scanning machine potentially to determine whether or not the memories people are describing have got reference to physical reality or if they were just dreamed up. Like for example, a person, if they say they saw a huge light, and we see that the part of the memory, the part of the brain that processes optical events is also excited along with the hippocampus while they're describing this, then we know they did see such a light. The same is true if they say they saw a figure. We can make enormous strides in this. All we need to do is to get the scientists involved with using this equipment to address the issue. This is a great problem. I don't have the answer to it right now. I know some of these scientists. I know five or six of them. To a man, they are not willing to even allow an abductee into their laboratory, as things stand right now.

Q. I can quote you on all this stuff, right?

Strieber: Yeah, absolutely. Quote me on all of it.

Q. Okay, good. Have you read David Jacobs' book "The Threat" by any chance?

Strieber: Yes.

Q. And his conclusion is obviously exactly the opposite of yours.

Strieber: His aren't the opposite of mine. I don't know whether his conclusion is correct or incorrect, because there's no hard data. It's all hypnotized recall. That's what he bases his entire hypothesis on. As far as I'm concerned, until we have a foundation in hard, physical evidence, we're pouring from the empty into the void. We have no idea what any of this may mean.

Q. Well, the thing I was going to say was just the opposite was the fact that he sees a colonization by the aliens as what it's all leading to-

Strieber: What aliens? Are there any aliens here?

Q. Well, let me finish. He's sees a colonization by whoever is what's going to happen, and meanwhile you see that we go out into the solar system out there without their interference. Do you see what I'm saying?

Strieber: Yes. I wonder who's right?

Q. Me, too.

Strieber: Well, so far, we've made absolutely no efforts whatsoever to determine whether or not anything like that is true. And I'm very sorry to hear about this Heaven's Gate survivor going out in public, because it means to me that somebody has gotten to him who is putting him out there in order to harm this community. I can't imagine any other reason for it. And I'm sure that if you look back behind the scenes, you will find again the fundamentalist Christian community and the conservative right wing doing it.

Q. Well, that's interesting. And by the way, he's going to be on Larry King on Thursday if you're interested in seeing what he does have to say.

Strieber: Yeah, I am interested, and I'll look at it. And I can tell you this: that he will be on Larry King on Thursday, and the odds are I will not be on Larry King for this book. That we are going to be silenced. "The Today Show" has already passed on this book. I think that the King show will pass on it. I think everyone's going to pass on it. And that I will continue to be talking just to "the convinced." That our voice is going to be silenced in the media.

Q. Preaching to the choir or whatever.

Strieber: Yeah, exactly. That's what's going to happen. I will not gain access to the general community outside-it'll be a miracle if I get any national radio or television. National television, anyway. I'll get it on the radio from Art Bell. But I will not I think get any national television. And here we have a situation where you have highly qualified scientists saying that they were given physical objects from abductees that they could not explain scientifically, and the public will not be given that information. Instead the public will be given information that this is all very evil and you're to stay away from it, otherwise your children might commit suicide.

And I will tell you, if there is a Satan, he's working hard in this to make sure that we stay scared and confused and we stay away from it. Because this is the direction of our salvation. If we can get ourselves off of this planet, we're going to survive. If we cannot, we're going to go extinct. And the next century will tell the tale.

Q. It's weird. I totally agree with what you're saying that it's maybe the Devil himself who's trying to repress all this-

Strieber: It's so powerful. The engine of repression is so overwhelming powerful and getting stronger by the day. It's much stronger than it was ten years ago, make no mistake. People aren't as derisive now, but this engine of repression is really well organized in the media now. It's much better than it was before.

Q. The only threatening letter that I have ever received in all my years of covering UFOs came last year by e-mail. And the person's return e-mail address was some kind of Satanist-type address, like dot, dot, dot, 666 or whatever. Where he was obviously flaunting himself as a devil. And he said he had been to my web site and I had darn well better quit covering this subject or else. Sort of a veiled threat like that.

Strieber: That was just probably some jerk trying to-

Q. I'm sure it was some jerk, but it's a jerk who believes himself a devil, who has grandiose ideas about being a devil and so forth. So I called my Internet provider, and they put a block on my e-mail so he couldn't e-mail me again. But my point in telling you this is that I totally agree with you that it's the Devil who wants to repress-

Strieber: (Laughing) You think you got an e-mail from the Devil?

Q. No, not from the Devil himself, but from one of his people, one of his minions.

Strieber: Well, who knows? I don't know. I don't think it would be that obvious, Sean.

Q. I share your mistrust about the media.

Strieber: I am just sick about it. I'm SICK about it. I think it's not only the media, but science. I think that this book will be absolutely useless. That it will not change the scientific community one iota. That it will not change the media. That the media can't even read the book between the covers. They can't even see what's in it. And it's horrifying to be in a situation like this. It's literally like living in a country of the blind and being able to see. That makes you a dangerous, hated revolutionary. It's like going back to the Middle Ages and ending up in a trial by the Inquisition where nothing you say can save you. Where everything you say is taken to be a confession of guilt, and so is your silence. It's terrifying.

Q. I actually took a course in that, believe it or not, called the History of European Witchcraft and It's Persecution.

Strieber: Ah, it's terrifying, because it's the same process. You know, every time I walk down a street, I wait to see if this will be the time. Because you think you're exposed, Sean. Can you imagine how exposed I am? That there are people being told to throw stones, that we ought to be stoned to death? By a powerful national leader? And then I have to walk out into the street after that? And the public knows what I look like, but I have no idea of who they are and how to tell one from another? Because believe me, if they start stoning us to death, I'm the first person who's going to be hit with the stones. Because I'm the most visible.

Q. I realize that. And I also realize that my suffering in those terms is very minimal compared to yours and a lot of other people's.

Strieber: And I have in addition all of the jealousy and hatred from within the UFO community because of my high public profile that they all envy.

Q. Right.

Strieber: So I'm a man with almost no friends. I am outside, and there's nobody to support me. Or few people. I mean, there are some, but there are a large number of people who will be passive or simply sit on their hands if I get into any trouble. And believe me, if the worst came to the worst, and one of Pat Robertson's minions finally does kill me, a large number of people in the UFO community will be very happy to see that. They'll feel like an obstacle has been removed to their own success. Then they will also see the community whither away afterwards because there isn't anyone else out there who's really trying to take this and carry it to the scientific community in a very definite, clear way. It just isn't being done. It should have been done a long time ago, but instead what's happened is that MUFON, which sort of arises out of the old NICAP group, has got what looks like a scientific patina to it, but there's a lack of depth in terms of the credentials and reputations of many of the people who have scientific degrees who are in MUFON. But the main problem is that they don't reference their interest in UFOs into the technical and scientific journals at all. So the result is, when a scientist publishes on this subject, they publish in "The MUFON Journal" instead of in "Science" or "Nature." And that's very unfortunate.

Q. Well, I understand what you're saying there also.

Strieber: Listen, I've got to cut it short because we've got stuff to do.

Q. Well, thanks for talking to me. I certainly appreciate it. Good luck to both of us in our struggle, I guess.

Strieber: Okay, great.

Q. Okay, bye.

Strieber: Bye.