Leland Falkirk—Robert Alvarado power conflict

Leland Falkirk and General Bob Alvarado’s power conflict grows out of competing claims to command Thunder Hill and incompatible judgments about the people connected to the July 6 incident. Falkirk treats containment as an overriding military duty, even when it means confining his own colleagues; Alvarado insists that he remains the Depository’s commanding officer and moves to protect its personnel. Their struggle is not simply a contest between colonel and general: as evidence accumulates, both men begin to undermine the cover-up, while Alvarado concludes that Falkirk may turn his authority against the entire installation.

Command and the VIGILANT Dispute

The conflict becomes explicit when General Bob Alvarado storms into the security office after learning from Dr. Miles Bennell that Falkirk has taken control of VIGILANT and made the staff prisoners. Alvarado challenges him directly: "Is it true, Colonel Falkirk? By God, is it true? Have you actually taken control Of VIGILANT and made prisoners of us all?" Falkirk does not deny the action. He says he has authority to place the secret program in the security computer and activate it at his discretion, grounding his claim in an order from General Maxwell D. Riddenhour, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Chief of Staff of the Army.

Alvarado initially rejects that explanation, suspecting that Riddenhour could not be Falkirk’s true authority. Falkirk answers with a pointed piece of proof: he gives Alvarado Riddenhour’s unlisted home number, explaining that the general would expect to be contacted there if he were away from his office. The card changes the exchange. Alvarado leaves angry, then returns fifteen minutes later pale rather than flushed, having confirmed that Falkirk’s claimed authority is real. He concedes that Falkirk is in command of Thunder Hill for the time being—but Falkirk declines the broader title: "Not at all, sir," he says. "You're still the CO."

That apparent deference defines the limits, and the danger, of their arrangement. Falkirk recognizes Alvarado’s position as commanding officer, but qualifies it: Alvarado’s orders remain in force only when they do not conflict with Falkirk’s authority to prevent dangerous persons—or, as he pointedly adds, dangerous creatures—from escaping. The chain of command is therefore split. Alvarado retains the ordinary office; Falkirk reserves an exceptional security power whose scope depends on his judgment about who is still human and who poses a threat.

Opposed Judgments About the Witnesses

The disagreement is sharpened by what Falkirk believes the July 6 witnesses may have become. He wants them brought from the Tranquility Motel to Thunder Hill, where he expects to obtain proof that they are no longer human; his stated purpose is to destroy the witnesses and the Depository staff if that proof confirms his fears. Alvarado, meanwhile, has heard Bennell’s account and is increasingly unconvinced by Falkirk’s interpretation. When the two men meet again in Bennell’s dark office, Alvarado says that he once considered Falkirk a competent, if overly rigid and gung-ho, officer. Now he calls him a madman.

Falkirk’s new proposal briefly complicates that judgment. Through Alvarado, he tells Bennell to study the witnesses, especially Brendan Cronin and Dominick Corvaisis, and to decide whether their gifts indicate an inhuman presence. If Bennell finds them fully human, Falkirk says he will spare them; he may also abandon another memory-repression session and recommend revealing the story to the public. Bennell finds the apparent change in Falkirk’s position difficult to trust. The offer sounds like an opening for assessment and disclosure, but Alvarado’s suspicions remain: he believes Falkirk has not genuinely become reasonable and is not bringing the witnesses in to let the scientists study them.

Their competing interpretations reflect a broader institutional breakdown. Falkirk sees infection and unreliable judgment everywhere inside Thunder Hill; Bennell and most of the researchers reject the idea that the witnesses pose a threat. At the same time, efforts to suppress the story are faltering. The Salcoe family, who rented rooms at the Tranquility Motel, are undergoing another round of covert memory modification in Monterey, while the FBI and CIA’s joint operation has drawn criticism from within the government. The failure of the cover-up does not reconcile Falkirk and Alvarado, but it helps explain why both begin to consider actions outside the official process.

From Rivalry to Covert Alliance

Their alliance takes shape privately, in the darkness of Bennell’s office. Alvarado closes the door and asks whether Bennell sent the photographs to Corvaisis and the Blocks. The question reveals that Alvarado, too, has been working against the secrecy operation. He had handled postcards with gloves and intended to leave them for Jack Twist, then make anonymous calls to other witnesses and give them Twist’s unlisted number. Before he could carry out that plan, someone else had already sent notes and Polaroids, creating a new crisis.

Bennell admits that he sent the photographs. Alvarado and Bennell recognize that they independently tried to set the witnesses moving toward one another and toward the truth. Their shared efforts do not make them equal in authority: Alvarado is the general, and Bennell is a scientist and trusted ally. But they do establish a private counter-network, using anonymous messages and photographs to frustrate a cover-up that neither believes can safely continue. Alvarado has come to Bennell, he says, because he needs an ally against Falkirk and does not believe the colonel’s stated willingness to reconsider.

Alvarado then states the threat plainly: he thinks Falkirk intends to kill the witnesses and the people at Thunder Hill as well. When the public-address system orders all military and civilian personnel to report to the armory for handguns and then return to their quarters, Alvarado distinguishes Falkirk’s order from his own purpose. Falkirk has directed the staff to their quarters; Alvarado has decided to arm them. He plans to warn them that Falkirk and his DERO forces may be a danger and to ensure they can shoot back if Falkirk’s men arrive to round them up. The general who previously accepted Falkirk’s authority now organizes the installation’s resistance to its possible use.

A Dangerous Balance of Power

The plan Alvarado shares with Bennell makes their change in position unmistakable. He will conceal a pistol behind his open uniform coat and, if Falkirk appears ready to order the staff’s destruction, shoot him. He also wants Bennell armed beneath a lab coat and ready to kill Lieutenant Tom Horner if Horner threatens to shoot Alvarado. Alvarado insists that both men must be stopped: Horner could kill him if given the chance, and Alvarado believes the staff will need a surviving general to make Falkirk’s men obey after their colonel is dead. Bennell agrees that he can pull the trigger to stop Horner, citing not only their friendship but Alvarado’s having read all of T. S. Eliot.

The plan is conditional, not an account of an outcome: the available scene ends with Alvarado asking Bennell to come to the armory. Its significance lies in how far the command dispute has traveled. Falkirk’s authority has been acknowledged, but it no longer commands Alvarado’s trust; Alvarado’s formal rank remains, but he prepares to use concealed force against the colonel and his lieutenant. The two men’s relationship shifts from direct challenge to covert cooperation, not because they settle who controls Thunder Hill, but because Alvarado believes Falkirk’s power has become an immediate threat to the people it was supposed to protect.