OUT OF THIS WORLD DOCTOR'S SIDELINE IS EXTRATERRESTRIAL INVESTIGATIONS.

Byline: Cecilia Chan Staff Writer

THOUSAND OAKS - The waiting room of Roger Leir's podiatry office looks like that in any other medical clinic - except for the UFO magazines tucked in with copies of ``People,'' and the bug-eyed alien dolls on display.

The magazines and toys - many of them gifts from patients - reflect Leir's belief in extraterrestrial life and his prominence in the community that studies UFOs.

When he's not tending to patients' foot and ankle ailments, Leir investigates extraterrestrial sightings and heads a medical team that surgically removes what he believes are alien implants - nine so far.

``I'm not out to prove alien abductions,'' Leir said during a recent interview in his cramped office, housed in a nondescript medical building on Lombard Street in Thousand Oaks. ``I started doing this as a challenge that this is the biggest nonsense in the world.''

Instead, Leir became a believer and is now well-known in the UFO community.

The father of five gives lectures and co-hosts ``Millennium Mysteries,'' a weekly cable radio show about alien encounters.

He also leads a local chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, an international group that on March 24 is hosting a rare West Coast appearance by Budd Hopkins, considered a top researcher in alien abductions.

In addition, Leir has authored two books, including ``The Aliens and the Scalpel,'' in which he says he has scientific evidence of objects implanted in humans who have claimed alien encounters.

Leir said that laboratory analyses of the objects he's removed from patients - the last surgery was in February 2000 - show the objects contain materials not of this world.

``The nonmetallic objects are small, gray balls, the size of a BB, he said. ``The metallic objects have a small, central core which is a metallic rod and these are covered with a strange biological membrane that seems to prevent the body from reacting to the object.''

He said all sorts of theories exist as to what the small objects are, including that they're tracking or behavior modification devices. He personally believes they are genetic manipulation devices.

Leir has his critics, including Joe Nickell, a senior research fellow with the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, a New York-based group whose founding members include Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov.

Nickell, who has been scientifically debunking paranormal reports for 30 years, said the so-called alien implants are more likely a fragment of collagen or a bone; a small piece of metal or glass that somehow became lodged in the foot during childhood; or a hoax.

``This is the mythology for our time,'' said Nickell, who has written 17 books on the paranormal and also is a reporter for Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

``We have studied the evolution of the UFO phenomenon and alien mythology. We have not found a single trace of any extraterrestrial craft, person or implant.''

Leir stands up to critics, saying others in the medical and scientific arenas are as baffled as he is by his findings.

``I believe that the skeptics in this subject are psychics. They've got to be because they know about everything but have never looked at any of the evidence and so they have to be psychic.''

Leir was born in 1935 in San Francisco and first became interested in UFOs in 1947, when his father showed the family a newspaper headline announcing the U.S. Air Force had captured a flying saucer in the New Mexico desert.

Although a government investigation in 1994 said the now-famous ``Roswell incident'' was a top-secret balloon project that failed, UFO supporters continue to believe in the cover-up of an alien ship crash.

Later, Leir said, a cousin who penned a book on UFOs and near-death experiences encouraged him to explore the extraterrestrial. Leir said he remained skeptical about alien implants - until a surgery in 1995.

``I'm a physical evidence guy,'' Leir said. ``I don't study alien abstractions.''

Leir spends much of his time working as section director for the 200- member Ventura County-Santa Barbara chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, which meets in Newbury Park. The 32-year-old international group of 5,000 members also has a chapter in Los Angeles, which meets monthly in North Hollywood.

The organization investigates all reported aspects of UFO phenomenon, including sightings, said Leir, who believes an alien spacecraft landed at Rocketdyne in 1996.

``I'm not out to change anyone's mind,'' Leir said. ``But people better wake up. Our government is hiding things.''

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Photo:

(1 -- 2) Dr. Roger Leir, podiatrist and surgeon, is head of the Ventura County-Santa Barbara chapter of the Mutual UFO Network. The father of five gives lectures and co-hosts ``Millennium Mysteries,'' a weekly cable radio show about alien encounters. Below, Dr. Roger Leir examines an X-ray of the foot of a patient who claimed to be abducted by aliens.

Phil McCarten/Staff Photographer