I don't know if this has ever been covered anywhere or if anybody has done any investigating into the X-PAC or not to see if it actually is real and by real I mean registered with the Federal government. But I decided to because I knew there should be a paper trail and I wanted to see what that trail looked like. All PACs have to be registered with the FEC(Federal Election Commission) and their records are public so that people can see who is donating to what organization and which politicians are receiving donations.
Here is a link to the FEC's report on X-PAC, I'm note sure what "Committee Designation: U (UNAUTHORIZED)" means:
http://images.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/fecimg/?C00346916I have to admit I was somewhat skeptical as to whether or not X-PAC was a real PAC(Political Action Committee) or not. Not because I thought that Bassett was being particularly insincere or lying, but because it just sounded like one of those things in UFOlogy that people say they are this or that and it turns out they are not.
Anyway, I submitted a FOIA request to the FEC because I couldn't find anything on their searchable database. Turns out I didn't need to submit a FOIA because it was on the database it was just really hard to find. I was searching for "X-PPAC" which is how Bassett has it listed on Paradigm Research Group. It was also in a dark corner of the database, that if you didn't know exactly how X-PAC was designated you would never find it. After I submitted the request somebody from the FEC's FIOA office contacted me and told me the docs concerning X-PAC were in the searchable database.
So it turns out X-PAC is a real political action committee, it's long name being the EXTRATERRESTRIAL PHENOMENA POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE DBA X-PAC and the records go back to when Bassett says he started it in 1999. The only real question I have now is, "What does X-PAC do?"
I saw an interview with Steven Bassett recently on Youtube and he states that he would rather not have to persuade people in Washington DC to study the UFO or extraterrestrial phenomenon. Then what is the point of having a PAC? That's kind of the whole point. PACs are nothing more than influence peddling. Has X-PAC met with any Congressional members or their staffers?
I haven't really gone through the expenditures reports for X-PAC on the FEC's site, but really what was he spending all that money on? On the X-Conference? If X-PAC is actually a PAC then what was the X-Conference? A political rally of some sort? I don't know, I've never been to an X-Conference.
It seems to me that X-PAC could have spent it's money a lot more expeditiously. Bassett is in DC he should be climbing the steps of Capitol Hill and petitioning Congress members in person. That is what most lobbyists do. There are embassies for just about every country in the world in D.C. X-PAC could be petitioning those countries as well, if "disclosure" is the goal.
4938 Hampden Lane PMB 161, Bethesda, MD 20814, the address for X-PAC is a "private mail box" at a UPS Store. So unfortunately X-PAC seems to only exists on paper and in the aether. I guess it exists one weekend out of the year in Gaithersburg, Md but that may not be for very long as it appears X-Conference is in financial straits. At least Bassett was actually smart enough to register X-PAC with the FEC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBBmQni4 ... r_embeddedhttp://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/1 ... nce/?tc=ar