Witnessed: The Ture Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions

It is 3 a.m. on November 30, 1989. On the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a motorcade carrying international diplomats, including a U.N. representative of the highest standing, stalls out and comes to a halt beneath the FDR Drive. An enormous reddish-orange UFO looms above an apartment building, where a pretty housewife is seen by the members of the motorcade to float out of a 12th-story window, accompanied by three ugly gray aliens, and into the spaceship. Because those involved, including the woman (""Linda Cortile""), the U.N. diplomat and his security men (probably ""CIA or NSA""), eventually read Hopkins's bestselling last book, Intruders, they all end up contacting him. One of the security men becomes completely unhinged and is either assassinated or consigned to the back wards of a government insane asylum. He gets off easy. The other G-man falls in love with ""Linda,"" only to discover that he has been trysting with her since the age of 10 under alien auspices. Hopkins contends that the ""Brooklyn Bridge incident"" is the most-witnessed UFO abduction of all time. Because he has changed the names of all the participants--allegedly to spare them ridicule--little in his text can be checked. In any case, according to Hopkins, ""outing"" abductees is done only by ""vicious debunkers"" who have ""rigid belief systems."" Even so, the author himself does everything but write the words ""Perez de Cuellar"" in describing the high-echelon U.N. diplomat with the tinted glasses and Spanish accent. Hopkins isn't the storyteller that Whitley Strieber is, but his last book rode high on the bestseller lists, and there's a creepy, nightmarish quality to his new one that may ensure it the same fate. Meanwhile, believers will believe and skeptics will remain skeptical. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour. (Sept.)