were capable of making. And he devised an acronym to refer to the drivers of these
machines: CORE (Cosmic Orgone Engineering) men.
In April 1952, the time when the most frequent sightings of flying saucers were
made, Reich found a reason for the increase in DOR effects. If the saucers used orgone
energy, they would give off waste material or exhaust; such “slag” might be DOR. The DOR
could be coming into the earth’s atmosphere accidentally or as a deliberate action on the part
of the navigators. Alternately, the deliberate path of DOR might have malignant or benign
intentions behind it. If malignant, we were at war with invaders participating in the creation
of deserts. If benign, the navigators might be giving us a cosmic lesson concerning the
“immunization” benefits of DOR sickness^8.
One should bear in mind the growing belief among serious students of UFOs that
some sightings have never been satisfactorily explained and that the government has not
been frank about the matter^9. Still, Reich seriously erred in building so elaborate a super-
structure on the basis of such scant evidence, exactly the kind of relationship between the-
ory and fact he normally deplored. In my view, Reich speculated far beyond the verifiable
facts for the same reason that he idealized Eisenhower: he was desperately looking for sup-
port. CORE men who used orgone-fueled ships could be powerful allies who thought as
Reich did. (Indeed, in 1954 Reich changed the name of his periodical,Orgone Energy Bulletin,
to CORE, denoting his cloud-busting concern with cosmic orgone engineering.) However,
it might take more time than the crisis with the FDA permitted for friendly space travelers
to make contact with him. If, on the other hand, these visitors were deliberately poisoning
earth’s atmosphere, the world would soon need Reich’s concepts and techniques in order to
wage effective cosmic war. Reich’s imagery concerning the CORE men—their orgonomic
creativity and destructivity—represents a vivid externalization of the high-pitched ferment
within himself at this time.
Although Reich held some very irrational ideas during this period, most of the time
he was functioning on quite a different level.Writing Neill in 1954, he responded to Neill’s
query as to whether orgonomy would penetrate socially before mechanistic scientists blew
up the world. Reich said he did not know but he did believe that our mechanistic-mystical
civilization had already died.He remained outside this world and took pride in his separate-
ness from it^10.
He repeatedly and rightly criticized Neill for looking to various authorities to
“accept” orgonomy. As Reich pointed out, it was an honor not to be accepted by a destruc-
tive status quo. All the sadder, then, was his own seeking of acceptance from the American
government.
One can understand Reich’s desperate hope for some kind of support when one
realizes the ferocity and the range of the attacks against him. Hardly a month went by when
there was not some new incident.Thus, in the winter of 1953, Bernard Grad was detained
at the Canadian border on his journey from Montreal to visit Orgonon and was interrogat-
ed about his association with Reich. In February, several medical orgonomists were asked to
appear before professional boards to defend their adherence to orgonomy^11.
384 Myron SharafFury On Earth