ARE UFOs out of this world? Yes, says researcher Timothy Good. But perhaps it's all true.

Good, best-selling author of Above Top Secret and acknowledged leading world authority on UFOs, is claiming in his new blockbuster, Alien Liaison: The Ultimate Secret, to have documented proof of all the above . . . and more.

He names names and offers top-secret letters that have yet to be refuted.

The ultimate secret, he says, is about to unfold.

Whether a believer or not, Good has amassed a fascinating array of evidence that makes absorbing reading.

He is somewhat inurred to the scepticism he's sure will greet the publication of his book.

He's met with it all since he first warmed to the UFO phenomenon in 1955 and began travelling the world in 1967 to gather evidence and lecture to universities, schools and many organisations including the Institute of Medical Laboratory Sciences, the House of Lords All-Party UFO Study Group and the Oxford and Cambridge Union Societies.

He explains: "While my last book, Above Top Secret, proves beyond any doubt that a massive cover-up has been in effect since the late 1940s, Alien Liaison takes us one stage further by partially exposing what has been hitherto withheld, that is that some UFOs are indeed extraterrestrial in origin, that alien bodies have been recovered and that contact has been established - even at an official, if restricted, level.

'SINCE these claims are certain to be misrepresented, let me emphasise that only a relatively few people in governments and the intelligence community are aware of this situation. The most sensitive information about UFOs is handled at a 'need-to-know' level, restricted to those with very high security clearances - in some cases . . . as high as 38 levels above Top Secret."

Good notes that, as he describes in the book, the US Government HAS made several attempts at "indocrinating" the public about "some of the realities involved in the UFO phenomenon" and that while what has been revealed is "undoubtedly diluted with disinformation intended to confuse and deceive, it is important to stress that official disinformation on the UFO subject would be pointless if there was nothing to cover up."

A MEDICAL EXAMINATION

Dr Leopoldo Diaz, a pediatrics and anesthesia specialist, was executive director of the Hospital del Ferrocarril del Pacifico in Guadalajara, Mexico, when the following incident is alleged to have happened.

On October 28, 1976, Dr Diaz noticed an unusual man waiting in his office. He was short - about 155cm - with extraordinarily white skin, "almost the color of milk".

He requested a full physical. Dr Diaz noted the man was normal in every way bar being hairless, with the exception of his head - where a small growth of black hair encircled the temples - and the eyes, which were violet with the iris wider than normal.

The man claimed to be 84, which astounded the doctor, who said the man appeared to be in his 40s or 50s. Suddenly the man explained the real purpose of his visit was to impart some important information.

"I am not of this planet, but don't be nervous," he began. "It is necessary that you people recognise that many of us are here intermingling with you and trying to help, because you are very close to having tremendous problems on your planet." Further on Dr Diaz asked why he was being told rather than government officials and scientists and was told: "We have approached your government people and your scientists, but many are very arrogant.They don't want to hear. We are trying to help, but only in the way you want to receive this help. We cannot force you to accept." After talking to close friends and then to the UFO Education Centre in California, Dr Diaz made a special trip to New York where he related the details to a UN delegation.

Says Good: "When I spoke to Dr Diaz by phone in 1980 he struck me as being completely truthful and gave me the names of some of the United Nations delegates with whom he had spoken in New York. The meeting had taken place in the office of Robert Muller, Under-Secretary of Economic and Social Development, and accordingly I telephoned him at the UN.

"Mr Muller confirmed the meeting with Dr Diaz but when I asked what the UN proposed to do about it, he replied: 'Nothing - nothing at all. I circulated it to some people who might be able to do something about it and I had not a single response'."

ANIMAL MUTILATIONS

On September 9, 1967, a three-year-old colt named Lady was found dead near Alamosa, in the San Luis Valley area of southern Colorado. The entire head of the animal was stripped clean of all flesh and muscle and the brain, organs and spine were missing.No signs of blood or tyre tracks near the animal could be found.

Fifteen circular "exhaust" marks were discovered in the vicinity and a metre-wide circle of six or eight holes in the ground, each about 10cm across and 7.5 to 10cm deep, was found near a damaged bush 13 metres away from the animal's body. A Forest Service ranger checked with a geiger counter and found evidence of radiation around the "exhaust" marks, but the radiation count decreased the closer he approached to the carcass.

Dr John Altshuler, assistant clinical professor of medicine (hematology) and pathology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Centre in Denver, investigated the case 10 days later and was profoundly shocked by what he found.

"When I got close to the horse I could see that it was also cut from the neck down to the base of the chest in a vertical, clean incision. At the edge of the cut, there was a darkened color as if the flesh had been cauterised with a surgical cauterising blade.The outer edges of the cut skin were firm, almost as if they had been cauterised with a modern-day laser.But there was no surgical laser technology like that in 1967.

"Most amazing was the lack of blood. I have done hundreds of autopsies. You can't cut into a body without getting some blood but there was no blood on the skin or on the ground. No blood anywhere.

"Then inside the horse's chest, I remember the lack of organs.Whoever did the cutting took the horse's heart, lungs and thyroid. The mediasternum was completely empty - and dry. How do you get the heart out without blood?"

The Alamosa case was the first to attract worldwide attention and thousands of similar cases have been reported since that time.

IN many cases, sex organs have been removed from the animals and this has fuelled speculation that satanic cults are responsible. While this may be so in some cases, it is doubtful if such cults would be able to excise the organs with such immaculate precision.

A more plausible theory is that the mutilations have been done as part of a secret US government research project, such as germ-warfare experimentation. Again, while there are definite indications of government involvement in some cases, evidence remains tenuous.

A particularly gruesome multiple mutilation happened on or around March 10, 1989, when five pregnant cows were found dead by L.C. Wyatt on his property near Hope, Arkansas. On arrival at the scene, reporter Juanita Stripling noted that the cows seemed to have dropped dead in their tracks.

"One cow was lying on her right side," she reported. "There was a large, round cut-out area with the calf lying just outside the cow and still in the embryo sac. There was no blood on the ground or on the body of the cow or calf." Howard Burgess, a retired scientist who conducted a great deal of research into mutilations in New Mexico and Colorado, pointed out in 1979 that up to that time an estimated 10,000 cases had taken place in the US.

"To the general public the term 'mutilation' has come to mean a crude sex operation done by some unknown cult," he commented. "This is not true for the animals we are examining. In these animals the same parts of the lymphatic and digestive tracts are removed from each animal in a very precise and bloodless operation. The operation is generally performed in the air and the dead animal dropped. Many times the animals appear to have received some form of radiation."