X-Zone Broadcast Network - Jerry Clark

This week I discussed the UFO Encyclopedia, 3^rd Edition, with the author, Jerome (Jerry) Clark. Before we began our discussion, I mentioned that it was the 50^th anniversary of my destroying a UH-1H helicopter by triggering a land mine in South Vietnam. Knowing full well that there are many people who claim Vietnam service who were never there, and knowing some might be not believe the story, you can read it in the unit history of the 187^th Assault Helicopter Company here:

http://www.187thahc.net/Incidents/incident_69.htm

Just scroll down to May 16, and you’ll find it… and yes, this has nothing to do with UFOs and I mentioned it only because it was fifty years ago today that it happened.

But on to the UFO stuff and Jerry Clark.

Naturally, given the timing of the show, we had to mention the passing of Stan Friedman a few days earlier. I thought it important to acknowledge his passing and

Jerry Clark

we devoted the first segment of the show to that.

We did get around to talking about his UFO Encyclopedia, which is a massive resource, that is a must for anyone who is serious about UFO research. To me, one of the most important aspects of the Encyclopedia, is the list of sources at the end of each of the articles. That allows the reader to find additional information, some of it providing an opposing view or giving an alternative solution. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17940170

Although I wanted to cover the questions that readers had sent, we did run out of time. I tried to ask at least one question from each of those who supplied them. One of them concerned the airship wave of 1897. I had thought that Jerry believed there was a core of good reports that began in late 1896, but that many of the sightings in 1897 were, shall we say, imaginative. Jerry quickly corrected me.

I did go back and look at the entry from the 2^nd Edition of his Encyclopedia so that I could compare it with the latest version. The entry had evolved, and covered sightings that began in other parts of the world some fifty years earlier. It seems that the sightings involve some sort real experiences but when we reach April, 1897, it is clear that the majority of those reports are faked. I asked specifically about the Aurora, Texas, crash, which, given what we know today, is laughable, when you read the original report. I am astonished that there are those who still believe this was a real event. You can find more information about it, and the Alexander Hamilton calf-napping here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/04/aurora-texas-again.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/09/ufo-crashes-fifty-years-before-roswell.html

Jerry tells me, "The point I was trying to make about airship reports was that they were real experiences, not "real events" as you have it.  I try to make clear that radars/visuals and CE2s exemplify event anomaliess, i.e., strange things that occur within the boundaries of consensus reality, and high-strange phenomena exemplify experience anomalies, which take place in liminal space between the real and the imagined, with characteristics of each mixed together."

We also talked, briefly about contactees and abductions. Time prevented us from going into depth about these topics. I think you get a feel for where Jerry is on the topics and I do mention that George Adamski’s tales of Venus failed to account for the surface temperature that is hot enough to melt lead… not the tropic environment that so many envisioned in the 1950s.

Next up is Dr. Dan Farcas and his theory about Hyper-civilization. It is an interesting take on a number of questions about UFOs and other topics. For those who have questions, as always, append them here in the comments section and I’ll try to get them asked.

Stan Friedman has Died

Noted UFO researcher Stan Friedman died last night, May 13, 2019.

Stan will be remembered for this advocacy of the extraterrestrial hypothesis, believing that some of the alien visitors were from the Zeta I, Zeta II Reticuli star system some 37 lights years from Earth. He had met with Betty Hill, and had partnered with Hill’s niece, Kathleen Marden in recent years. Together they wrote Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience which was an inside look at

Stan Friedman and Kathleen Marden at the MUFON
Conference in Denver. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle.

the Hill abduction.

Stan started his adult life as a nuclear physicist working in the industry on various projects, including some that were classified. In 1970, he quit industry to devote full time to his UFO research. He had lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities and wrote several books about science and UFOs. He appeared on thousands of radio shows, on television and in documentaries.

While in Louisiana in 1978, a television station manager suggested that Stan might want to talk to a fellow named Jesse Marcel, a ham radio operator. Marcel was, of course, the air intelligence officer of the 509^th Bomb Group, the military unit said to have recovered the remains of an alien spacecraft and the bodies of the occupants. That began a decades long search for documents, witnesses, and insight into what became know as the Roswell Incident.

Stan Friedman with the speakers at the Denver MUFON Conference.
Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

It was during my research into the Roswell crash that I first met Stan more than 30 years ago. We did share information and resources, though we sometimes clashed over details. Stan believed that a few of the early MJ-12 documents were authentic while I believed them all to be created by UFO enthusiasts to provide documents proving that a spacecraft had been recovered. Stan was instrumental, however, in proving that dozens of the documents were faked, showing that he simply didn’t accept everything handed to him as authentic.

Stan had met Vern Maltais who claimed that his friend, Barney Barnett, had seen a crashed saucer on the Plains of San Agustin. Barnett had a niece, Alice Knight, and though both Stan and I had asked her about anything to document this, Knight said that she had nothing. She called me one night and said that she had found a diary that Ruth Barnett had kept for the year 1947. I was scheduled to meet Stan, along with Don Schmitt, in Albuquerque a few weeks later. I said I would swing by Knight’s house, which was more or less on the way. I smile every time I think about the first words Stan said to me when we met in Albuquerque. He asked, “Did you get it?”

I certainly had, but there was nothing in it to corroborate the Barnett tale. That was a great disappointment for all of us.

Stan was tenacious in his research, traveling around the country, visiting presidential libraries, meeting with families of witnesses, gathering important information, and providing encouragement to many interested in UFOs. He

Stan in full speaker mode. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle

debated those in the scientific community and those he thought of as debunkers. He was proud of taking a thousand dollars from Philip Klass, when Klass suggested that none of the typewriters in the White House used pica type. Klass said he would pay one hundred dollars for each example, up to ten. Stan happily complied earning him the grand.

Although we had been at odds, in later years, we both seemed to mellow out. In Roswell in 2012, he mentioned that he thought I was right about Robert Willingham, a man who had claimed to have seen a crashed saucer just south of the Mexico. The evidence stacked against Willingham was overwhelming, but that didn’t dissuade Stan from his belief that the Eisenhower Briefing Document was authentic. It was just one of those things with which we had to agree to disagree.

The last time I saw Stan, I believe, was at the Citizen Hearing in Washington, D.C. in May 2013. We sat together, listening to a couple of the sessions of the hearing, and were both part of the hearing that dealt with Roswell. At one point, as we sat together, a question was directed as us, which we both answered at the same time, the same way. It dealt with a minor point about Roswell.

That was the thing. Stan said, more than once, that he and I agreed on more than we disagreed. We had one of those adversarial relations that was more cordial than many thought. In Roswell, at a big dinner in 2012, I had taken a seat at one end of the long table and Stan was about to sit at the far end. Someone mentioned that, believing, I guess, that we were mortal enemies. Before Stan sat down, I moved and took the chair opposite of him. Those around us waited for fireworks, but there were none. We had a nice chat during that dinner.

Stan could be headstrong but he was also interested in the evidence. He could defend those he thought had solid information, rarely abandoning them when the evidence went against them. He was positive that we have been visited, and debated those who thought otherwise. He was a strong advocate for his position, often complained about the entrenched attitudes of the academic world, and arguing passionately for his beliefs.

He leaves behind a wife, and three children. Stan was 84.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Mark O'Connell

Mark O’Connell, author of The Close Encounters Man, a biography of J. Allen Hynek, was this week’s guest. Although we were going to talk about J. Allen Hynek and his investigations during the years of Project Blue Book, we started with my predictions about who would end up on the Iron Throne. Yes, we took a dive into

Mark O'Connell

the pool of Game of Thrones, and since I thought I had figured out the ending, I wanted a record of that. You can listen to the show (which was about much more than GoT here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17873376

We did talk about the way Hynek had ended up as the Air Force consultant on UFOs, and how that compared to the way it had been presented in the History series. (And I didn’t even mention that the lead actor, Aidan Gillen, had played Littlefinger in GoT.) Mark provided some interesting insight into how and why Hynek ended up doing what he did.

One of the cases that we discussed was the Chiles-Whitted sighting. I was surprised that Mark thought of as a good case. I believe that it is explained by a bolide, given what we have learned in the last fifty years. You can read my analysis here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/01/chiles-and-whitted-revisited.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/12/history-channel-project-blue-book-and.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/01/chileswhitted-and-skepticism.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/04/meteorite-men-and-ufos.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/03/chiles-whitted-turbulence-and-ed-ruppelt.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/03/chasing-footnotes-chiles-whitted-cigar.html

We did go off line later to talk about it some more. Mark had done additional research and still believes it to be a good case. In this, he agrees with Jerry Clark, who will be on next week’s show. Mark thought that the ground sighting, if linked to Chiles-Whitted argued against a bolide. I’m just not convinced that the sightings should be linked, but my arguments are laid out in the above links.

We also talked about some of Hynek’s favorite cases which included the Lonnie Zamora landing in 1964 and the Coyne helicopter case in 1973 (which was not part of the Blue Book investigation). I have covered both of these on the blog and in books I have written. We both agreed that these were good cases. For those who want more on Coyne, you can find it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/06/october-181973-coyne-helicopter-case.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-coyne-helicopter-ufo-case.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-i-chase-footnotes-coyne-edition.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/05/chasing-footnotes-coyne-edition.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-coyne-helicopter-encounter-explained.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-library-fairy-coyne-edition.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/05/chasing-footnotes-coyne-encounter-update.html

We closed the show talking about who makes the best witnesses. That evolved into a discussion Michigan swamp gas fiasco and who was the blame for it. The problem was the Air Force need to bury the incident quickly and Hynek caught the flak for the lousy answers. The Air Force officers were afraid that the national attention would create more problems for their investigation in Michigan in particular and UFOs in general. Turned out that the sightings resulted in Congressional interest and eventually lead to the demise of Blue Book.

Next up is Jerome (Jerry) Clark, who had just published the third edition of his massive UFO Encyclopedia. For the serious researcher, this is a must have addition to any library. The Encyclopedia is a comprehensive analysis of all aspects of the UFO phenomena. As always, if anyone had questions for Jerry, send them to the comments section here and I’ll try to get them asked during the show.

Curse of Oak Island - Season 6 Finale

Well, the finale was a big “nothing burger.” You could have watched last season’s finale and gotten the same results. In fact, you could have watched the first season finale and seen nothing different. Oh, they’ve dug up great portions of the island, they’ve found evidence that someone was there prior to 1795 when the boys found the “Money Pit,” but they’ve really done nothing to solve the mystery.

One of those mysteries had been the coconut fiber found on the beach in Smith’s Cove. It was dated to a hundred years or more prior to the beginning of the great

search for treasure. However, it seems that carbon dating something less than several centuries old is notoriously unreliable. All we can say is that the coconut fiber was brought to the island in the dim past for reasons that we can only guess at.

This year, they built that coffer dam and dug up the beach, finding evidence of some sort of port facility or emergency repair station. None of that leads us to a buried treasure but does provide an excuse for what has been found. If, as Joy Steele suggested, this was a place to repair the wooden ships, or a safe harbor for ships that needed it, then the treasure myth is gone and the mystery is solved. It wasn’t the Lagina boys who solved it.

If this was such a port facility, then there should be some record of it in the admiralty records hidden (and by hidden, I merely mean filed away) in Great Britain. As far as I know, no one has attempted to learn if some sort of naval facility had been established on Oak Island around 1700. It seems to me that someone with access to these now nearly ancient records, could find a map, a note, something to tell us about it. And that would solve the mystery once and for all.

The point here, however, is that nothing new was produced during last summer’s assault on Oak Island. Holes were drilled, geographic surveying was done, ground penetrating radar was used and metal detectors were deployed. In the end, we learned nothing and found nothing to suggest a treasure. Everything pulled up can be explained by more than two centuries of searching for a treasure that was never there.

If the ratings hold, if there is enough continued interest, I suppose we’ll be treated with another season of them digging up the island. The only treasure to be found is in the continued ratings… and I suspect many people are becoming bored with the ongoing failure to find treasure. They gave it a shot but there was no treasure for them to find. They should work at repairing the island now.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Larry Holcombe

This week I talked with Larry Holcombe about his book, The Presidents and UFOs: A Secret History from FDR to Obama. It was a wide-ranging interview that took in a lot of territory. You can list to it here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17809625

There are a couple of points that we need to clarify. We talked about Doug Locke, who had said that as a judo instructor at Biggs Air Force Base in El Paso, he had

Front gate at Biggs Air Force Base, El Paso, TX.

learned about the Roswell crash from several pilots sent there for training. I knew it as Biggs Army Air Field, which is not a big difference but a difference none-the-less. Checking the history of the base, I learned that in the 1950s it had been Biggs AFB, and that the name later had been changed back to Biggs AAF. So, both Larry and I had been right about it. That it had been an Air Force base in the early 1950s added a note of credibility to Locke’s tale.

I probably should note here that I did press Larry on the vetting of Locke’s military experience. The problem was when he mentioned that Locke’s military records had been lost in the fire at the St. Louis Records Center in the big 1973 fire. Oh, there is no doubt there had been a fire and that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of records had been lost. Claiming that “my records were burned in the fire,” is the standard dodge of those making up their tales of military service. In this case, I think the problem was more that Larry didn’t understand my question. Some of Locke’s records had apparently survived or had been reconstructed, so

Larry Holcombe

that his military service was confirmed by an independent, disinterested source. I think that became clear in the show.

The other point was Jimmy Carter’s UFO sighting. I said that he had made it while governor of Georgia and Larry said it was before he was governor. Turns out that the sighting was made in 1969 but wasn’t reported until 1973 after Carter became governor.

Either way, the sighting is not a very good one. According to the latest data it seems that on an evening in 1969, the exact date of which has not been confirmed, Carter, with a group of others saw an object about 30 degrees above the horizon. Carter said it was bright white and about as bright as the moon, rather than the size of the moon. The object seemed to approach and then recede.

Although Carter said about twenty people saw the object at the same time he did, none of those people have been found. Given that, and the controversy (yeah, controversy is a bit harsh) over the date, it is difficult to put a conclusion on the sighting. Originally, it was suggested that Venus was the culprit, but later, Air Force tests conducted around Eglin Air Force Base, seem to have provided a better solution, especially if the date of January 6, 1969, is accurate. Anyway, you can read more about that here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_UFO_incident

and here:

http://www.debunker.com/texts/carter_ufo.html

and here:

https://badufos.blogspot.com/2017/01/jimmy-carters-ufo-sighting-was-it-venus.html

Larry and I did discuss MJ-12, who might have had a hand in creating the documents and if there were elements of authenticity in them. I suggested a fatal flaw in what is known as the Eisenhower Briefing Document and you can read about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Eisenhower+Briefing+Document

and the tale of Robert Willingham here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/10/end-of-mj-12.html

And, if you wish to read the whole story of MJ-12 as it stands today, look for Case MJ-12, but be sure it is the 2018 updated version. There is new information added to the 2000 edition.

Next week, I’ll be talking with Mark O’Connell, who wrote the biography of J. Allen Hynek. The conversation will be framed with the treatment of Hynek in History’s Project Blue Book but we’ll also look at some of the controversy Hynek created with his swamp gas explanation for the Michigan UFO sightings in 1966 and his adventures working for the Air Force.

If you have any questions for Mark, add a comment here and I’ll try to get them answered for you during the program.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - John Greenewald

I had the chance to talk with my friend, John Greenewald, about his book, Inside the Black Vault: The Government’s UFO Secrets Revealed. We did discuss more than just that and you can listen to the program here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17736668

John suggested that there is a cover up of UFO information and offered the evidence of it as it appears in many government documents. I had outlined a

John Greenewald. Photo
copyright by Kevin Randle

similar attitude based on a review of the administrative files that had been released as part of Project Blue Book. John suggested, as I have, that those who were creating the files, writing the reports, and doing the research believed that none of this would see the light of day. They had not anticipated the Freedom of Information Act which allows us all to see much of what was going on behind the curtains. The true attitudes and the real methodology used by those involved in UFO research can be seen. John pointed to a document from a Florida case from July 1969 where the Air Force officer in charge of the investigation had little respect for the witnesses, calling them names, and overlooking the fact that the witnesses were on active duty with the Air Force. It suggests an attitude of disbelief and outright hostility by the officer would was supposed to be gathering information. He wasn’t supposed to inject his own bias into that investigation.

We also talked about MJ-12, and I mentioned a document with a known provenance from 1952 that was code named “Majestic.” The problem is that it had nothing to do with UFOs. You can read about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/11/majestic-found.html

At that time, I was unable to update documents and illustrations to my blog. I don’t know what the problem was, but it was eventually resolved. Following are the four pages from that document.

Next time on A Different Perspective, I will be interviewing Larry Holcombe about his book, The Presidents and UFOs" A Secret History from FDR to Obama. If you have questions for Larry, post it as a comment. These are moderated so the questions won’t appear in the comment section. I’ll get to them during the interview.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Terry Lovelace

I spoke with Terry Lovelace about his abduction experiences. As many of you know, I’m not a fan of the tales of abduction, but Lovelace is a man with impressive credentials. He is a retired attorney who practiced civil litigation and criminal defense. More impressive is that he retired as an Assistant Attorney General for Vermont. Here is a guy who doesn’t need to create a tale of abduction to gain any sort of recognition. There is simply no motivation to come forward with something like this. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17671590

He talked about his first UFO sighting when he was only eight. He then had a series of encounters with what he called monkeys that were not real monkeys.

Terry Lovelace

These might have been some sort of a result of the UFO sighting, or they might be unrelated. These might have been nightmares or might have been real. The point is that I asked if he was familiar with Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic hallucination. These hallucinations are associated with sleep paralysis, and there is usually a manifestation of some sort of entity during these brief periods of paralysis. Lovelace said he was familiar with the terms, and that the monkeys disappeared when the hall light came on, breaking the spell. I thought this was interesting and suggestive of sleep paralysis.

We then talked about his abduction experience when he had been in the Air Force. I had wanted to get a little deeper into that, but the time ran out on us. He also mentioned that he had been chemically interrogated by members of the Air Force OSI. We touched on that, but again, time interfered with the discussion.

There were a number of aspects that I hope to follow up on in the future. For those who wish to learn more about Lovelace’s experiences, you can read his book, Incident at Devil’s Den or check out his website at:

http://www.terrylovelace.com.

Next week, I’ll be talking with John Greenewald of The Black Vault fame. He has just published a book about his experiences with FOIA and what he has learned from the thousands of government documents that he has reviewed. His book is Inside the Black Vault.

If you have a question that you would like that I ask Greenewald, put it into the comment section… These are moderated so that the question will not appear. I’ll make a note of it and try to fit it into the discussion. Thought I would try something new.