The U.S. government has a close working relationship with alien beings, three unnamed witnesses told a California radio station in a program aired in June.

The four-hour program, produced and broadcast by KPFA-FM in Berkeley, Calif., ranged widely over the UFO topic, but the most explosive segments were the testimony of a construction contractor who said he saw aliens at Edwards Air Force Base and at the China Lake Naval Weapons facility in California; the testimony of a man who described "saucers" being launched from a Northrop facility near Edwards; and a woman's second-hand account of a meeting between aliens and U.S. military officers.

Moreover, it now appears that KPFA's voice in the UFO area has been silenced. Although in June the program producer Ralph Steiner promised additional coverage of the UFO issue in future broadcasts, inquires from the Forum were met with this blunt message from Mr. Steiner: "Do not re-broadcast the tape. Persons whose testimony is on the tape have been threatened and their lives are in danger." Subsequent inquiries from The Forum to Mr. Steiner have gone unanswered.

The Forum has obtained a tape of the KPFA broadcast. What follows is a summary and excerpts from witness No. 1.

According to the KPFA broadcast, the interviews were conducted in April 1991 in communities surrounding Edwards Air Force Base in the Antelope Valley of Southern California. Witness No. 1 described himself as a Vietnam veteran, former Green Beret, military medal-holder, and a licensed general contractor who has worked on construction projects at Chuna Lake and at Nellis, Scott, Edwards, and Andrews Air Force Bases. The projects, the witness said, were "mostly underground."

* Underground Structures, Alien Beings

Each of these facilities has extensive underground installations, and they are "definitely not normal military structures," the witness said. He described 4-foot thick concrete walls and electronically-controlled oval-shaped doorways. "In one building I worked on at Edwards, called Haystack Buttes, it took us over 5 minutes to get from the top to the bottom by elevator," the witness said. "We estimated it was 30 stories deep." It was here that the witness first saw an alien. "We were walking down a hall," the witness said, "and these doors opened and there was a very particular person or things that caught my eye for an instant. This man was over seven feet tall. I'd say between 8 and 9 to 10 feet, wearing a lab jacket and talking to two [human] engineers.

"This man's arms were almost down to his knees! It threw me into shock," the witness said. "And then the doors closed. Security saw us and told us to get out of there. Next day I walked off the job," the witness said.

Asked if the being he saw was a human, the witness replied, "Definitely not. He had big slanted eyes. A big head. Fingers were extremely long. Greenish skin." The witness said he saw the being for "just a couple of seconds. Three-quarters of its face is what I saw and I said, this guy would make a hell of a basketball player!"

* One Witness Scared, the Other Dead

The witness said his co-worker " 'bout died" when he too saw the being. The witness compared the height of the being to the height of the humans standing next to it. He said he knew one of the humans, whose height he estimated at 6 feet 6 inches.

Witness No. 1 described a second encounter with aliens. He said he and co-workers saw "greys" at the China Lake naval facility.

"They [security] thought we had left--me and two other guys. But we decided to stay over and finish this job. We walked past a hangar and we could see through a window," the witness said.

"One of the guys I was with, Paul, he saw them first. He said, 'Come here! Hurry up! I want to show you something!' And we looked in the window and there's these four little grey guys about 3 feet tall.

"Right then, security saw us and they told us, 'We thought you guys left.' And they escorted us and said, 'You're not allowed around this hangar. This hangar is off- limits to everybody. You'll get yourself shot.'

"And it messed with Paul's mind so much that every chance he got he snuck over there. He finally got caught and was kicked off the base. About three months later they found him mysteriously dead in Orange County. This kind of put a scare into me. I know why not to mess with something," the witness said.

"After that I said, Ain't nobody pulling the blanket over my head any more. l know what's going on now. l know what I saw at Edwards is real. Somebody's playing games with us," the witness said.