Human Potential Foundation

The Human Potential Foundation was a nonprofit corporation that C. B. Scott Jones founded with Claiborne Pell in 1989 and ran as president until its dissolution in 1998.¹ The Center for Applied Anomalous Phenomena, which Jones founded in 1985, was absorbed into it; the Foundation managed three centers (interspecies communication, intercultural medical exchange, and thanatology and survival research) and a small press for limited runs of books; the interspecies communication center organized research on psychic communication with dolphins (project Neptune's Helper) and on human interaction with potential extraterrestrials, which produced the 1995 conference.¹

Offices and Board

A white paper of February 20, 1992 by Robert J. Durant gives the Foundation's address as 8000 Towers Crescent Drive, Suite 600, Vienna, Virginia 22182, in the offices of the law firm Sandground Barondess and West, and states that Mark Sandground and Pell served on its board and that it was "reportedly funded by Laurance Rockefeller."² Letters of 1993 and early 1994 carry the Foundation's address as 282 North Washington Street, Falls Church, Virginia 22046, and letters from mid-1994 on carry P.O. Box 6, Falls Church, Virginia 22040, with a logo of three linked emblems.³ Menelika McCarthy is named in the 1992 paper as Jones's assistant.²

Funding

The Colorado finding aid states that the primary donor in the first two and a half years was Laurance Rockefeller, "whose support was conditional with a program designed to get the United States government to acknowledge the existence of alien life."¹ A handwritten note signed by John Gibbons and dated 3/29/94 on the scan reads that the Foundation "is funded in part, I believe, by L.R."⁴ In a letter to Newt Gingrich of August 17, 1995 Jones wrote that "the Human Potential Foundation has been supported by Mr. Laurance S. Rockefeller and others."³ Richard Farley, whom Cameron describes as hired as director of project development and as having worked for the Foundation for about three years, is cited by Grant Cameron for the statement that Rockefeller put 700,000 dollars through it from 1991 to 1994; Cameron also writes that Common Cause Magazine reported more than 700,000 dollars for those years.⁵ Cameron states that Farley left the Rockefeller effort in April 1994 in protest at its approach, and that Farley says the "Matrix of UFO Beliefs" paper in the OSTP files is an altered version of the one he wrote.⁵

The newsletter of the Center for Psychology and Social Change for September 1993 states that John E. Mack's abduction research, "Funded by a grant from the Human Potential Foundation," was proceeding under the Center as the Program for Extraordinary Experience Research.⁶

Programs

Jones's letters to the White House describe the Foundation's work on UFO disclosure as an effort to move the government from "secrecy, silence and disinformation" toward openness, culminating in a conference. Its press was edited by Robert G. Teets of Terra Alta, West Virginia, whose own book on grassroots UFO activity Jones sent on December 2, 1994; Jones's letter of February 17, 1994 refers to the "UFO Matrix of Belief" he had provided Gibbons in 1993.³ On May 16, 1995 Jones wrote to members of the House that the Foundation's conference, "When Cosmic Cultures Meet," would be held at the Sheraton Washington hotel on May 27 to 29, 1995, and urged them to attend (a wire story by Dinah Eng printed on May 17, 1995 described the program as an examination of contact with extraterrestrials rather than a debate on their existence, and identified Jones as the Foundation's president)⁷; the Clinton Library holds the invitations sent to the President and First Lady (collection 2008-1575-F, not scanned).³⁸ The White House declined for Mrs. Clinton on December 15, 1994 and for the President on December 21, 1994.³ The registration packet contained a questionnaire; of 175 registered attendees, 102 returned it, and those who did were promised a copy of the Conference Proceedings. A composite of the answers was sent to every member of Congress in August 1995.⁹

In August 1995 the Foundation mailed every member of Congress a packet, described under the Rockefeller Initiative.³

Dissolution

The finding aid gives the dissolution as 1998; the Peace and Emergency Action Coalition for Earth, founded by Jones, received its Internal Revenue Service ruling in October 1998.¹¹⁰