Kicking Sleeping Dogs

Since we are now playing this game, once again, I thought I would publish some of the nonsense that comes from Kal Korff. This is written as an open letter to Korff, but I don’t believe I’ll get a logical and coherent response to it.

The following is based on Korff’s various writings including the four emails that he sent to me over a three day period in March 2007 (Not the two he later claimed). I will note here that in referring to these emails, I did not say he bombarded me with them and his continued insistence on that term is not only inaccurate, but in his demented world would be termed a LIE. I would like him to locate the place where I said bombarded. And I wondered if he planned to correct this erroneous statement now that it has been brought to his attention?

So, let the games begin.

Kal, let me remind you what you have said about making mistakes, "For the record, if I am indeed ‘wrong’ about anything, I have no’ problems, either admitting this or retracting anything which is incorrect. This offer of mine is timeless and universal, and it is available especially to my so-called self-described ‘kritics’ — which includes Major Kevin Randle."

To remind you of the facts, you sent a long email on March 8, 2007 which ran to five pages. Contrary to your claims, it did contain threats including death and lawsuits. Yes, you did say these were not threats, but calling an orange an apple doesn’t make it one and saying a threat isn’t one doesn’t change it.

(For those interested, on page 4 of the March 8 rant, Korff wrote, "Please don’t do anything stupid to get yourself in my show. EVERYONE ‘featured’ in it, either ends up dead or nailed in court, Kevin." He then adds, "This is NOT a ‘threat’ Kevin, just a fact.")

Contrary to your claims, I read each of the emails and I made copies of them. Yes, I did then delete them. But I know the contents and have hard copy of each of them because I always save emails that make charges and contain threats. Do you plan to correct your statements that I did not read them, which, in your world would be labeled a LIE.

Now, let me ask you a few questions for clarification.

1. You mentioned in your March 8, 2007 email that you had been in Iraq prior to the beginning of the war there. Would you care to elaborate and add any detail that would allow us to verify this claim? (I would think that a picture of you in front of an Iraqi landmark would do it. I can show you a couple of pictures of me standing under the crossed swords in downtown Baghdad for example.)

2. You say that you really were a captain (insert foot stomp here) in the Israeli based S3 (which you now call YS3) and that you would retire from these activities in five years. You said that you would not take a promotion even if offered one. Would you care to explain what happened to this statement and why you took the promotion?

3. You called me a coward for refusing to debate the merits of the Roswell case. Overlooking the fact that the last several years has seen me on active duty for various lengths of time and in various parts of the world, you wrote in your March 8, 2007 letter, "Remember Seattle?" This suggests that you remembered we had debated Roswell in the past so your claim that I was a coward for not debating was not only inaccurate, but could be considered a LIE and a SLANDER against a serving military officer. Do you plan to retract that statement? You did say that if you learned you had made an error you would quickly correct it. I’m waiting. (And this doesn’t even cover the two recent challenges to debate Roswell I accepted but you dodged.)

4. Your alter ego, Ms. Tycova (aka LT Tycova) said on "her" UFO Watchcat...

"On page 284 of Dr. Kevin D. Randle and Donald Schmitt's book, UFO Crash at Roswell, the following FALSE CLAIM is made:

"Sergeant Melvin E. Brown was at the second site, guarding the truck containing alien bodies. He also guarded the hangar at Roswell Army Air Field while crates from the site were held there."

She then notes, "FACT: THERE IS NO HARD EVIDENCE that Sgt. Melvin Brown was EVER a "witness" to the events at Roswell. Unfortunately, Sgt. Brown died YEARS BEFORE any UFO "researchers" such as Kevin Randle could ever interview him."

It is her opinion that this is a FALSE CLAIM, based, I’m sure on your opinion that there was no crash at Roswell and therefore anyone claiming to have seen anything unusual was telling a LIE. However, since this was based on an interview with Melvin Brown’s family, as noted in the book through footnotes, and since we were describing the relevance of each person in this little play at that point you, I mean she, quoted, the criticism is invalid. At no place do we suggest that we ever interviewed him and the astute reader knows that.

In the same vein, in your poorly researched book, you accuse us of "journalistic license" and suggest that a more honest way to convey Brown’s testimony would have been to have written, "According to Beverly Bean, Brown’s daughter, he said..." but this is another invalid criticism because the footnotes make it clear how the information was obtained. You are criticizing me for using a footnote, which is a proper thing to have done. And, on page 96, we explain exactly how the information was obtained. The astute reader knows that the information came from Brown through Bean... and they know who was present at the interview and that it was videotaped...

In fact, on page 82 of The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, we again mention Brown and write, "Melvin E. Brown, a sergeant with the 509th , told family members that..." See that? Family members.

But we can say in your book you mislead the public by writing, "Finally as the pro-UFO Roswell researchers will admit when pressed, Beverly Bean is the only person in the Brown family who has made these claims about her father. Bean’s sister and her own mother have never confirmed the account."

This is, of course, not true and since you reference the 1991 interview conducted with the Brown family, you should have known that both her sister and her mother confirmed the account on video tape. So, you must have known the truth but rather than writing, "In 1991, both Bean’s sister and mother who had failed to corroborate the story earlier, are now on the record..." you chose to conceal this evidence from your readers.

So, I can write about your FALSE CLAIM, and provide information that suggests you should have KNOWN the truth at that time, and you therefore must be LYING.

5. Let’s talk about Edwin Easley since you now choose to bring him up. On page 91, of your misleading book, you wrote, "After initially refusing to confirm to Randle that he was even there at Roswell, Randle claims that Easley, on his deathbed, eventually confessed that not only had he "been there," but that he had also seen bodies."

Kal, this is a mishmash of testimony and statements. In my initial conversation with Easley, he not only confirmed he had been there, but that he was the provost marshal (please note the proper spelling). In the taped interview conducted on January 11, 1990, I said, "I’m doing some research into the 509th Bomb Group and I understand you were the Provost Marshal there at one time."

Easley said, "That’s right."

I said, "At the 509th?"

He said, "Yes."

And I said, "During July of 1947?"

And he said, "Yes."

So, that sort of blows your statement out of the water and proves it to be inaccurate and untrue. In your world, this would be a LIE and a SLANDER, and, of course, you’d want to repair this as you said you would if you learned that you had made a mistake. And, I suspect the comments about having been there and having seen it were comments made by Curry Holden and not Edwin Easley. And the initial refusal to acknowledge he was in Roswell was Sheridan Cavitt (who, BTW was not a COLONEL as you suggest but was, in fact, a lieutenant colonel so here is another mistake), the darling of the anti-Roswell crowd, who was knowingly LYING at that point, something you all fail to mention. I believe you got the three testimonies mixed up.

But wait, it gets worse for you. On page 92, you write, "According to Easley’s family, he was quite advanced in age when he spoke to Randle. His memory was failing him and Easley had a tendency to place himself in events at which he was not present." You attribute this to Dr. Harold Granich who you claim was Easley’s physician. Dr. Mark Rodeghier talked to Granich and got a story that is completely opposite of what you report. How is that?

To quote you, this might be considered "journalistic license" and that a more honest way to convey Easley’s testimony would have been to have written, "According to Dr. Harold Granich, Easley’s eye doctor..." (Please note that Dr. Granich was not an oncologist as you seem to believe, but an eye doctor...)

But wait... weren’t these statements really made by the family of Curry Holden who was 96 when I had the opportunity to talk to him... and isn’t the information that you attribute to Easley’s family and his doctor really the information we gathered from Holden’s family... I mean the wording is remarkably similar and it is not the first time you used the wrong quotes in the wrong place and attributed them to the wrong person.

Now you didn’t talk to Easley’s family at all, did you? You have no idea what they had to say, nor do you know of the correspondence I have had with the family, nor that I have had dinner with one of his daughters, nor that she appeared in a documentary about Roswell adding to what Easley told the family. Not to mention fellow officers at Roswell who corroborate Easley’s role in the recovery... something that you don’t bother to acknowledge or to mention.

In fact, I have a hand written statement by Edwin Easley that says, "This is information about the 1947 incident north of Roswell, New Mexico AFB... This case was presented on T.V. Unsolved Mysteries in September 1989."

Kal, I just don’t know how you can recover from so many errors in so short a space, but you did say if you had made a mistake you had no trouble admitting it. Should I put in that quote again?

So, now the question becomes, do you wish to continue this game, one that you are sure to lose, or will you stop now.

6. As just one final look into this there is your claim that we cannot prove that you ever said that you had an amazing IQ based on OMNI’s IQ test. Well, posted to Rob McConnell’s website, and I’m sure he’ll confirm it was there, he wrote, "01:00 am – 02:00 am EDT / 10:00 – 11:00 mp PDTKAL KORFF - Korff's Korner & SecretWar - Armed with an IQ of 219, according to the Omni Magazine’s World’s Hardest IQ Test; known worldwide for solving numerous mysteries, whether they are criminal, historical, scientific, or even "paranormal,"... So, let’s not pretend the proof isn’t out there.

BTW, Kal, a V-2, contrary to what you wrote in your book, was not a "buzz bomb." That was the nickname of the V-1. So, would this be another LIE, or would you catagorize it as just a simple mistake... and if you do, how come you can make simple mistakes and all the rest of us are guilty of LYING and SLANDERING?

And I resent your lectures on my belittling the military because some of the witnesses I have interviewed claimed that soldiers had threatened them. I have served in various components of the military for thirty years including in two war zones. I have earned the right to criticize them if I desire. You, on the other hand, have not worn the uniform of an American soldier in any war zone, let alone in the peacetime military, so keep your opinion to yourself. And, BTW, I am not drawing a pension so this becomes another LIE and SLANDER and you should retract it immediately, as you said you would.

Oh, and can you tell me why the Israeli-based YS3's web site is hosted in Prague? And do you really think that a one page web site that allows us to learn nothing about the organization proves anything at all? I mean, if you were making all this up (which of course you would never do), this isn’t a very clever way to say, "See, they do have a web presence." After all, how hard is it to design a one page site? For something similar please see the movie, Shattered Glass and you’ll understand what I’m saying here.

That’s it for now but please understand, I can do this all day, if I want... Look at the way we dismantled your Lydia Sleppy analysis, if you require yet another example.

And now back to our regularly scheduled blog...

Ben Games and Roswell

About a year ago, Billy Cox, writing in the Herald Tribune in Florida, told of an aging pilot, Ben Games, who said that he had served with Lieutenant General Laurence C. Craigie. Games, who was giving a talk to a UFO group, said that in the summer of 1947 he had flown Craigie, to Roswell, New Mexico to investigate what had been reported as the crash of a flying saucer.

In that talk, Games only suggested they had remained overnight in Roswell and that Craigie had then returned to Bolling Army Air Field (near Washington, D.C.) to meet with President Harry Truman.

Cox also noted that Games had a copies of various DD-214s, which is the standard military discharge papers, showing a strange 44 year military career. He also had his personal flight records back to 1942, but raising a red flag is the missing documents that would cover the critical July 1947 period. He has no explanation for that.

Tony Bragalia talked to Games recently, and I verified much of what transpired in that telephone interview. Games said, again, that they made an unscheduled flight into Roswell from Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, and that Craigie remained there for several hours. They then flew on to Washington, D.C. so that Craigie could meet with the president.

Games seemed to believe that Craigie was a close friend of General Curtis LeMay, who, in 1947 was in charge of Research and Development for the Army Air Force. Craigie worked for LeMay, and that would mean, of course, that Le May knew about Roswell because he would have sent Craigie to New Mexico, and, more importantly, would tend to corroborate the tale told by the late senator and Air Force Reserve major general, Barry Goldwater.

Remember, Goldwater once asked LeMay to show him the special room where it was alleged that debris and possibly bodies from the crash were housed. Goldwater told many that LeMay’s answer was "Not only no, but hell no, and if you ask me again I’ll see that you’re court martialed." Confirmation of this attitude came from Goldwater himself and I have a copy of a letter sent to former Roswell researcher Kent Jeffrey that tells us as much (seen here).

Games, who is 84, according to what he has said, is a retired major who holds a PhD, flew in World War II, Korea and Vietnam and has some 737 recorded combat hours. Craigie, for those interested was the first American military pilot to fly a jet. Craigie (seen here) would later establish Project Sign.

What this does is provide us with some information about who was involved in the crash retrieval, gives some corroboration that President Truman was kept informed (which, had there been a crash, is not that difficult to believe), and hints, once again at the importance of what fell. Games made it clear that had it been a weather balloon, or even a balloon array, those in Roswell, as well as those coming in to investigate including Craigie, would have recognized it as a balloon. While those in Roswell wouldn’t have been able to follow it all the way to Mogul, if that was the answer, Craigie certainly could have. Games made it clear that neither he nor Craigie saw a balloon.

Games said that he had been living out of the country, working for, or heading up, several airlines and hadn’t realized how big Roswell had become. He said that he had not been sworn to secrecy. When he learned about the discussions of Roswell, he realized how he fit into the overall picture.

If there is a flaw in this story, it’s those missing flight records. Some military pilots keep them religiously and others rely on the documentation supplied by Operations. He has other records to cover many other periods, but the critical ones, that would show a trip into Roswell are missing. How many times have we heard that? "I have everything but what I need to prove a point."

I’m not saying anything other than those missing records bother me. It would have been nice for Games to be able to corroborate that flight into Roswell. That certainly would have silenced the critics but because the records are missing, they will have a field day. Games’ information could be important, but we just don’t know. Just once I wish we could get our hands on the documentation because no matter how good a cover-up might be, it just can’t be this good.

More on Lydia Sleppy

Christopher Allen, among others, has raised questions about the Lydia Sleppy story and I believe it’s about time that those questions are addressed. It seems that there is a lot of misinformation out there about this aspect of the Roswell case and it is, as are all other parts of the story, now wrapped in controversy. Given our perspective today, meaning we’re about ten years removed from all the investigative activity and can peer at the case with 20/20 hindsight, let’s see if we can wade through all of this.

As mentioned last time, the first known publication of the Sleppy story came in 1974 in the old SAGA UFO Report. That article said, in its entirety, "...[I]n New Mexico, a woman with a responsible position at a radio station received a call from the station manager. He had been out checking reports of a UFO which had crashed in a field and was trying to track down the rumor that pieces of the object were supposedly stored in a local barn. In his excited call to the newsroom, the station manager verified the UFO crash report, and also claimed he had seen metallic pieces of the UFO being carried into a waiting Air Force plane which was destined for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

"As the woman began typing out the fantastic news item over the teletype to their other two radio stations, a line appeared in the middle of her text, tapped in from somewhere, with the official order: "Do not continue this transmission!"

The next appearance of Sleppy, as far as I know, was in The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William Moore. They write, "Understandably bemused, Lydia placed the phone in the uncomfortable position between ear and shoulder and started to type McBoyle’s startling statements into the teletype. But after she had typed only several sentences the machine suddenly stopped itself. As this was a common occurrence with teletypes for a variety of reasons, Lydia was not concerned, though she had never been cut off the air before in the middle of a transmission..."

[A moment for editorial comment... Berlitz and Moore said this was common and then said that it had never happened before... so which is it, common or not? Yes, I know there is a qualification in this because she was typing and the machine had stopped the other times when she was receiving... but still, a clarification would have been nice.]

"...Moving the telephone from her neck to her hand, she informed McBoyle that the teletype had stopped at her end.

"This time, according to her recollections, he seemed not only excited but under pressure and apparently speaking to someone else at the same time. His voice seem strained. ‘Wait a minute, I’ll get back to you... Wait... I’ll get right back.’ But he did not. Instead the teletype went on again by itself and started addressing Albuquerque, or Lydia directly. The sender was not identified and the tone was formal and curt: ATTENTION ALBUQUERQUE: DO NOT TRANSMIT. REPEAT DO NOT TRANSMIT THIS MESSAGE. STOP COMMUNICATION IMMEDIATELY."

Note here that the FBI has not entered the case and while there are people quoted, it is not indicated if those people said those things, if it was one person quoting someone else, or if it was exactly what Sleppy had told to Moore and Berlitz.

In Crash at Corona by Stan Friedman and Don Berliner, we learn something interesting. They write, "While he [meaning Johnny McBoyle here] refuse to discuss the matter even after almost half a century, another principal has been found. Lydia Sleppy, the teletype operator whose message was interrupted so mysteriously. Long thought to have died, she was located by Stanton Friedman in October 1990 and interviewed. Apparently Friedman had forgotten that he and Bobbi Slate had used the Sleppy story long ago (or even he failed to make the connection after he began his Roswell research).

The critical paragraph in that interview is, "I went back and asked Mr. [Karl] Lambertz (he came up from the big Dallas station) if he would come up and watch. John was dictating and [Karl] was standing right at my shoulder. I got into it enough to know that it was a pretty big story, when the bell came on [signaling an interruption]. Typing came across: ‘This is the FBI, you will cease transmitting.’"

Well, now we have the FBI involved, but there is nothing to suggest where that came from. Sometime between the publication of The Roswell Incident and the investigations that began in the 1990s, Sleppy became convinced that it was the FBI who had interrupted her.

Please note one other, now important, fact. She said that the bell came on signaling an interruption. We’ll see what that means later.

When I interviewed Sleppy, she told me, "I called Mr. Lambertz, Karl Lambertz, who was acting in Mr. Tucker’s place [that would be Merle Tucker, the station owner who was away on business]... He was the program director. I called Mr. Lambertz up, there was something coming through and I had just started - I don’t know how much I typed but I was typing what John [Johnny McBoyle] dictated when the signal came on that this was the FBI and we [should] cease transmitting."

I asked if she knew what FBI office but she didn’t. She said, "It was the FBI that stopped us."

When I was writing my book, UFO Crash at Roswell, we suggested that it was the FBI office in Dallas and I frankly don’t know where that notion came from. I believe that Don Schmitt suggested that because the FBI office in Dallas had been involved in the balloon end of the story, meaning that we have a document from the FBI about the balloon as told to them by Major Kirton from the Fort Worth Army Air Field, that Don might have assumed that the FBI office in Dallas was involved... of course that might have been my assumption as well.

Karl Pflock in his Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, wrote, "Subsequently, I did some further investigating. Merle Tucker told me the Teletype in KOAT’s office [that is the Albuquerque office of his fledgling radio empire] had both a send and receive capability, but did not know if it was possible for an incoming message to be automatically printed on it without some enabling action being taken first. I was told by several journalistic old-timers that in the 1940s send-and-receive Teletypes definitely had to be manually set in one mode or the other. If a machine was sent to sent, it could not receive an incoming message. A bell would ring to alert someone to switch over to receive."

Kal Korff in his book wrote, "In researching the technical aspects of what would be required to place such a "tap" on the kind of machine that Sleppy had to have used at KOAT, it was discovered that the particular model she used had both send and receive capabilities. This discovery seemed to initially support the feasibility of Sleppy’s story. However, the credibility of Lydia Sleppy’s account began to unravel when the Dallas FBI field office noticed that in order to have received a message, the bell on top of her teletype would have gone off to indicate an incoming transmission. At that point, in order for Sleppy to receive the incoming message and have it print out for her to view, she would have to have then thrown a manual switch to put the machine into the receive mode."

The implication here is clear. The Sleppy tale can be discounted because there had to have been a warning bell and she would then have to flip a switch.

So, here’s where we are. I don’t know when the FBI entered this tale. Sometime between Sleppy first appearing in the old UFO Report and later in The Roswell Incident and the 1990s. I don’t know if this something she remembered, if it was something someone suggested to her and she incorporated into her story, or if it is a bit of confabulation. In the end, it might not be an important fact, other than to suggest that memories are fallible and we must be careful when interviewing witnesses after decades have passed.

Assigning it to the Dallas office is something that Don Schmitt or I did based on our research at the time. That doesn’t mean that there was no message into KOAT, nor does it mean that the FBI didn’t send one. Only that we found no paper trail for it and others who have followed have found no paper trail. That would be nice, but we don’t have it.

I might point out that those who discount the tale because the FBI said they had no paperwork forget that if the case is classified, they might not have the sufficient clearances to see that paperwork. Yes, I can point to other FBI operations that were so highly classified that only a handful of agents knew of them, and one project, Operation Solo, was so highly classified that even presidents were unaware of it and agents working in the same New York office didn’t know it was happening.

The important facts, though, are these. Lydia Sleppy told this story to researchers prior to the publication of The Roswell Incident, she was quoted in that book, and in the magazine article. She told us all that her transmission was interrupted and she was told to cease that transmission. Karl Pflock and Kal Korff told us there was a mechanism for interrupting transmissions, but it required that the operator then make a manual change... Sleppy told Friedman, prior to Pflock’s and Korff’s criticism that, "...when the bell came on [signaling an interruption] [Emphasis added]."

In fact, in the affidavit, published in Pflock’s book (and gathered by the Fund for UFO Research) Sleppy said, "As I typed McBoyle’s story, a bell rang on the teletype, indicating an interruption. The machine then printed a message something to this effect, "THIS IS THE FBI. YOU WILL IMMEDIATELY CEASE ALL COMMUNICATION."

In other words, Pflock and Korff were right about a signaling bell, and Sleppy mentioned that in her interview with Friedman and later in her affidavit. She would have then made the manual switch and the result would have been the message typed out in the middle of the story that she was putting on the teletype. The fact that she mentioned that bell in two separate interviews is important to this. And that both Pflock and Korff who wrote their books after this information was available, and Pflock actually has the signed affidavit in his book is interesting. It suggests they were interested in dismissing testimony rather than finding facts.

There is nothing that has been offered that disqualifies the Sleppy testimony. She told the tale prior to the overwhelming interest in Roswell and that is documented. She told us that her transmission was interrupted and said that there was a bell to alert her to incoming transmissions. No, she didn’t say that she flipped the switch, but clearly she did. Sometime after her first telling the story, the FBI connection entered the picture, but I have found nothing to suggest how that happened.

What we have here is another of the witness testimonies that is not fatally flawed as the debunkers have suggested. All we need to do is look at it carefully... and if there is a flaw, it’s that we don’t have the teletype copies to prove the point. Once again, the documented evidence as eluded us (and yes, I’m getting tired of that).

Ancillary Issues:

Korff wrote, in his book, "...McBoyle also mentions to Sleppy that there’s talk of ‘little men being on board’ and asks her to begin immediately typing up his story..." He references The Roswell Incident. His discussion at this point is accurate, meaning that The Roswell Incident does mention this.

The quote that appears in The Roswell Incident is, "Lydia, get ready for a scoop! We want to get this on the ABC wire right away. Listen to this! A flying saucer has crashed... No, I’m not joking. It crashed near Roswell. I’ve been there and seen it. It’s like a big crumpled dishpan. Some rancher has hauled it under a cattle shelter with his tractor. The Army is there and they are going to pick it up. The whole area is now closed off. And get this - they’re saying something about little men being on board... Start getting this on the teletype right away while I’m on the phone."

In the text, there is no way of telling who was relating this. Was it dialogue created based on what Sleppy had said to investigators? Was it the story told by McBoyle? Just who is speaking here, and what is the attribution for it? We have no answers to any of these questions.

Here’s what I know. When I interviewed Lydia Sleppy, after we had talked about the teletype interruption, I asked, "He [meaning McBoyle] didn’t mention seeing bodies or anything like that to you?"

"No... I mean I’ve read everything that I can get my hands on..."

This means that we can’t reject Lydia Sleppy because Berlitz and Moore cobbled together some dramatic dialogue that suggests McBoyle told her about bodies. According to her, this simply isn’t true.

The Bitter End

All of this means that the reasons for rejecting the Sleppy tale have fallen by the wayside. She told her story prior to the Roswell explosion, she has remained fairly consistent (though I would like to know when this FBI idea entered the story), there was a mechanism for interrupting the transmission which was published before either Pflock or Korff raised the issue, and the talk of bodies comes back to Berlitz and Moore with no way of knowing where they got it or why they halfway attributed it to Sleppy.

On the other hand, we do not have any written records from the time. There is no copy of the teletype message, no handwritten notes, and nothing to corroborate her tale, other than she did work for KOAT, she did use the teletype, and Merle Tucker did say that when he returned from his business trip, he was annoyed at both Sleppy and McBoyle because he was afraid they might have cost him his FCC permits.

The bottom line is this. We have nothing to suggest we reject the Sleppy tale and the only corroboration for it is other testimony. Yes, documents would be nice.

Lydia Sleppy: 1973 Interview

Tony Brangalia sent me a note about the Lydia Sleppy story as it relates to the Roswell case and since we can document that she told this prior to interviews with Stan Friedman, Bill Moore and me, I thought I should pass it along.

Tony wrote, "Peter Gutilla, a correspondent with Saga, first learned of Lydia's story (essentially ‘by accident’) in a 1973 conversation he had with Lydia's son, who was employed as a Park Ranger and who was referred to simply as ‘G. Sleppy.’

"Lydia's son was actually relating to Gutilla his own sighting of a UFO that he had seen in the woods sometime prior. He then mentioned to Peter that his mother (Lydia) had a far more interesting UFO story to tell.

"Gutilla happened to relate to Stan Freidman his unusual conversation with G. Sleppy... Today Gutilla seems somewhat circumspect that his unacknowledged lead had helped provide to the world what would one day become the Roswell saga.... Gutilla is still around as a low-key 'hobbyist fortean,' with a few articles he authors appearing on the net from time to time, often on cryptozoological subjects like Bigfoot.

"Lydia's story first appeared in an article (related only in part, and without using her name) in the Winter 1974 issue of Saga (actually it was Saga’s UFO Report on page 60). The article was authored by Stan Friedman and by his co-author Bobbi Allen Slate (deceased.)"

So what did that short note say? "...[I]n New Mexico, a woman with a responsible position at a radio station received a call from the station manager. He had been out checking reports of a UFO which had crashed in a field and was trying to track down the rumor that pieces of the object were supposedly stored in a local barn. In his excited call to the newsroom, the station manager verified the UFO crash report, and also claimed he had seen metallic pieces of the UFO being carried into a waiting Air Force plane which was destined for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

"As the woman began typing out the fantastic news item over the teletype to their other two radio stations, a line appeared in the middle of her text, tapped in from somewhere, with the official order: "Do not continue this transmission!"

Clearly this is the Lydia Sleppy story, published four years before Marcel said a word to any UFO researcher. We know that the "station manager" was a reporter, Johnny McBoyle, who told researchers that he’d seen a craft that looked like a battered dishpan. We know the station owner was Merle Tucker who owned KSWS in Roswell and had been out looking to buy another radio station or two.

I have talked to all these people. Lydia Sleppy confirmed for me that she had been there and had been attempting to put the flying saucer crash out on the wire when she was stopped... ordered to stop. Tucker told me that he was afraid that his employees, Sleppy and McBoyle might have gotten him into trouble with federal regulators. McBoyle told me that he wasn’t sure what he had seen, but knew that it wasn’t any kind of a weather balloon, or array of balloons.

I’m not sure what my friend Christopher Allen (CDA) will make of this. He’s always wanting us to find stories that pre-date the big Roswell explosion of 1980. Clearly this fits the bill. The publication date of the article is Winter 1974, which means the issue was probably on the news stands a couple of months earlier, or in the Fall 1974 and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the article was written in 1973, given the lead time of these things. Six or eight months between submission and publication isn’t unrealistic.

But, we do know when it was first published and this, I believe, makes it more credible.

Alien Abduction in Pop Culture

(Blogger’s Note: Since there has been some discussion of the elements contained in this partial chapter from The Abduction Enigma, I thought I would reprint it here. It addresses the issue of the cultural elements that have found their way into abduction reports and it mentions some of the early work done by some others. Christopher Allen wanted to address Martin Kottmeyer’s essays on pop cultural influences, suggesting, I guess, that the theory was somehow original to Kottmeyer and none of the rest of us had realized it until he thought of it. As you’ll see, these arguments pre-date some of Kottmeyer’s work ((the witness whose abduction matched Killers from Space so closely was regressed in 1976, for example and I realized the moment I heard it where it originated)), and you’ll see that reference is made to Kottmeyer’s articles. The bibliography for The Abduction Enigma contains five articles and papers published by Kottmeyer.)

David Jacobs has argued that the UFO phenomenon sprang into existence in 1947. Thomas Bullard suggested that the Barney and Betty Hill abduction of 1961 had no cultural sources from which to draw. And Budd Hopkins has claimed that the beings reported by abductees are like no "traditional sci-fi gods and devils." In other words, each is arguing that UFOs and abductions must be real because there are no cultural sources from which the witnesses could draw the material. Without those sources of material, the witnesses must be relating real events rather than some sort of folklore history even though the airship scare of the late nineteenth century demonstrates that the fundamental assumptions by each are inaccurate.

It seems ridiculous to suggest that a phenomenon that has no substantial evidence of its existence other than witness testimony must be real because there is nothing in the past that relates to it. Because there are no past traditions, how did each of these witnesses, who have never communicated, relate similar events if not reporting, accurately, something they have witnessed? This is the question posed by many UFO investigators and abduction researchers.

The answer is, of course, that the cultural precedents demanded by Hopkins, Jacobs and Bullard do exist. Pop culture from the beginning of the twentieth century is filled with examples of alien beings and alien spacecraft that match, to an astonishing degree, the beings and craft being reported today by the abductees.

To completely understand the cultural influences we must examine the pop cultural world. At the turn of the last century information moved at a slower pace, but it still had the impact it does today. For example, there were no radio stations that played the latest music. Instead, sheet music was sold. To sell it, without radio to play the songs, music stores hired piano players and singers. The music circulated through the culture much more slowly, but no less completely. A hit, on sheet music, might take weeks or months to move from one coast to the other, but the point is, it could and frequently did.

Think about that. Music would move from coast to coast. Musicians would hear it in one city and play it in the next. Vaudeville performers used the same popular music in their acts. Player pianos played it to audiences in all sorts of environments. Before long everyone in the country was singing the song, or playing it at home, all without records, radio, national broadcasts or MTV and before Ipods and YouTube.

This demonstrates just how information can be passed from person to person without the modern technology. It also suggest that arguments claiming that one person could not have heard a specific story because it had no national forum is wrong. The information, whether it is music at the turn of the century or information about abductions, can enter into a "collective consciousness." Simply, it moves from person to person until all have been exposed to it.

The introduction of movies, radio, and other mass media, however, have made it even easier to spread data, and provides more opportunities for all of us to be exposed to it. An abductee might claim no interest in science fiction, but that doesn't mean that he or she has not been exposed to the elements of science fiction.

One of the first movies made was the 1902 version of Jules Verne's First Men in the Moon. Walt Disney used parts of it on his old Sunday night show and while science fiction might not have been the theme that night, millions saw it. Since that time, Verne's work has been translated into dozens of films in dozens of versions. They have been broadcast on television for more than fifty years.

H.G. Wells was responsible for more than just adding science fiction to pop culture. His War of the Worlds, first published before the turn of the last century was responsible for one of the great "hoaxes" in American history. In 1938, Orson Welles, in a radio program broadcast nationally, reported on an alien invasion launched by beings from the planet Mars. The panic that developed during that broadcast has been studied for years afterwards.

Even those who hadn't heard the original radio broadcast learned about the after effects. Sociological studies have been done on the mob psychology that produced the panic. But more importantly, it brought the concept of alien invasion into the homes of average American before the 1940s. They might not be reading science fiction, but they were seeing the results of science fiction spread across the front pages of their newspapers.

Science fiction has been an important part of pop culture since Hugo Grensback introduced it to American society in the 1920s. Grensback's idea was to sugarcoat science so that the young would be interested in it. He envisioned it as a way of teaching science to those who weren't interested in learning science. He wanted it to bubble through society, through our collective conscious.

In the 1930s and 1940s there were many science fiction magazines. The covers of them featured full color art designed to catch the eye. Scientists, looking like all-American heroes, monsters of all kinds, and women in scanty clothes and in peril, were the themes on many. At the time, these were the pulp magazines, filled with action stories and exciting tales. Each month the newsstands had new covers, all crying out for attention to convince us to buy the magazine.

One particular cover, from Astounding Stories (seen here), published in June 1935, is particularly important. It shows two alien beings with no hair, no nose, a slit-like mouth and large eyes. Through a door, one of the strange creatures is looking at a woman on an examination table. Her eyes are closed and she is covered by a sheet (a convention of the time), but it is clear that she is naked under the cloth. In the foreground another creature is restraining a man trying to break through to the woman.

This cover predicts many elements of the abduction phenomenon of forty years later. Although, the alien beings have pupils in large whites of the eyes, the similarities to the modern abductions is striking. To suggest that abductees of today could not have seen the cover of a science fiction magazine published decades years earlier is to miss the point. It demonstrates that the idea of alien abduction is not something that developed in a vacuum recently, as aliens began abducting humans, but in fact, had been announced in public long before anyone had heard of flying saucers and alien abduction.

The idea that the aliens are from a dying planet have been played out in everything from Not of this Earth first released in 1956 to many of the most recent science fiction movies, including a 1994 remake of Not of This Earth. Interestingly, the alien is collecting blood in an aluminum briefcase and he always wears dark glasses to hide his eyes. Although not collecting genetic material in the way sometimes suggested by abductees, he is required to send humans to his home world as they attempt to end the plague destroying them. The obvious purpose is to gather human genetic material.

But that very problem is discussed in The Night Caller made in 1965. In that movie the alien is sent to Earth to provide women for "genetic experiments" on his home world. The women are, of course, abducted by that alien.

Films, such as This Island Earth contain alien scientists eventually abducting Earth scientists to help them defeat their enemies on their home world. The 27th Day, features potential alien invaders who provide several people with the power to destroy all human life on Earth so that the aliens can inherit it.

And each of these films suggest human abduction somewhere in the storyline. The 27th Day, begins with five people abducted onto an alien ship where time slows almost to a standstill. The abductees are returned quickly, after being given their mission, and the weapons to wipe out the human race.

Peter Graves, a scientist working on atomic energy, is abducted from his jet as it crashes in Killers from Space. He returns to the base, confused, with a period of missing time and a huge scar on his chest. The one thing that stands out in the film is the huge eyes of the aliens. Although not the jet black orbs of the modern abduction tales, these eyes haunt Graves as he tries to remember exactly what has happened to him. And Graves remembers nothing of the encounter until he undergoes a chemical regression aided by sodium amytal.

To take the Killers from Space (aliens from that movie seen here) theme even a step further, in 1975 I attended a UFO conference in Fort Smith, Arkansas. A man there claimed to have been abducted while waiting in his car at a railroad crossing. Under hypnosis, arranged by the conference organizer Bill Pitts, he told a story of being subjected to a medical examination of some kind. He said that while lying on the table, surrounded by aliens, he could see a huge screen near him. It was a display of his internal organs including his beating heart. And it is a scene right out of Killers from Space. I recognized the scene as soon as I heard it.

The implants claimed by some as proof that abductions are real have also been featured in science fiction movies. Tiny probes, pushed into the back of the neck to monitor the victims, are found in 1953's Invader's from Mars. In fact, there are several scenes in the movie that mirror the stories told by modern abductees.

And for those who find these examples interesting, but not persuasive there is Mars Needs Women. Overlooking the obvious which is, of course, the abduction of women for reproductive purposes, there are the costumes worn by the Martians. These include a tight fitting helmet, not unlike those worn by skindivers. Over the ear was a small, round radio with a short antenna sticking up. This exact costume was reproduced by Herbert Schirmer after his abduction was reported to the Condon Committee in 1968. The contamination by the movie is unmistakable.

What we find, by searching the science fiction movies of the 1950s and 1960s, are dozens of examples of aliens invading from a dying planet, abducting people for reproductive purposes, and implanting small devices into them for a variety of reasons. To suggest, as Budd Hopkins has, that there is no similarity to the "traditional sci-fi gods and devils," is ridiculous. The similarity to many of the alien beings and abduction situations in science fiction is overwhelming.

What we have demonstrated here is that all the elements of the abduction phenomenon have been used in dozens of science fiction stories. These films might have been poorly attended when first released to the theaters, but have been replayed time and again on late night television. Even those who claim no interest in science fiction movies have had the opportunity to see them on the late shows. It cannot be suggested that these films have had no influence on the abduction phenomenon for even if a specific witness could prove he or she had never seen any of these movies, there are dozens of others who have. There is no denying that this aspect of pop culture has had an influence of our view of the aliens and their motivations, and therefore on the reporting of stories of alien abduction.

And even if the witness could somehow prove that he or she had not watched the films on late night television, there would be other arenas for exposure. Again, we slip into a look at pop culture in the 1950s and 1960s. While a specific abductee might have avoided films with flying saucers and aliens in them, he or she would have attended movies. We all did, whether it was the Friday night date, or the kid's matinee on Saturday afternoon. One of the many features of the theater presentation was the trailers, or the previews of coming attractions. So even if the abductee didn't go to the science fiction movies of the era, he or she would have seen the previews for them. The abductee might have avoided seeing the whole film, but would have seen pieces of it while at another movie.

Or, to take it a step further. How many families made it an outing to attend the drive-in theater on a Friday or Saturday night? It didn't matter so much which films were showing, but that the family was going out together. Many of the drive-in movies were the "B" films, those made to support the main attraction. These were black and white science fiction films made cheaply. Many of them were of alien invasions, monsters from outer space, and as we have noted, included many of the elements of the abduction phenomenon of today.

And often, at those Friday night movies, or Saturday matinees, a chapter of a serial was shown. These films featured everything from Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers to Superman and tales of the Lost Continent of Atlantis. Robots, spaceships and evil aliens were the norm. Trips through the Solar System and to planets far away were taken. Many times the main film program was what people attended to see, but the "boring" shorts were shown first, including a serial.

In today's environment, the influence is even more obvious. NBC broadcast the story of Barney and Betty Hill to a national audience in October, 1975. If nothing else, it focused the alien abduction in the minds of so many of the viewers. After that, millions knew that the aliens were smaller than humans and they had big eyes.

Bullard opens his massive study of the abduction phenomenon by reporting on the Hill case. Prior to the release in 1966 of The Interrupted Journey, John Fuller's book about the Hills, there had been no discussion, in this country, of alien abduction. The Antonio Villas-Boas case, known to few even inside the UFO community, would not be known to Betty Hill. Yet, without that prompting, Betty Hill tells a tale of alien abduction that is similar to that related by Villas-Boas. The question that plagues the researchers, including Bullard, is, where did she get the idea?

Bullard believes that the Hills didn't possess the knowledge to construct the nightmare of alien abduction. And, he might be right. We have, however, just been provided with a clue about how the idea originated. The question is, are there other facts that add to this? Barney Hill's hysterical reaction certainly isn't enough to add the details of small alien creatures. The answer to this can be found in Keyhoe's The Flying Saucer Conspiracy.

At the time of the Hill abduction, there were few public reports of alien creatures. It was not a topic discussed much in UFO circles. Keyhoe cites a dozen of so of these cases, ignoring the majority of them. He does, however, treat the case of pilot in Hawaii who claimed, "I actually saw him," meaning the creature from the craft, with respect. Keyhoe seems to be suggesting that the story, while wildly extreme, at that time, has an undercurrent of authenticity.

More importantly, however, Keyhoe writes of UFO reports from Venezuela that seem to have contributed to Betty Hill's nightmare. In his book, Keyhoe reports on two men who sight a bright light on a nearby road. Hovering over the ground is a round craft with a brilliant glow on the underside. According to Keyhoe, four little men came from it and tried to drag Jesus Gomez to it. An apparent abduction that failed.

Betty wrote to Keyhoe, "At this time we are searching for any clue that might be helpful to my husband, in recalling whatever it was he saw that caused him to panic. His mind has completely blacked out at this point. Every attempt to recall, leaves him very frightened."

All of this, from Keyhoe's writings about nasty, hairy dwarfs who are attempting to kidnap humans, to the idea that the aliens are conducting some kind of experimentation, were introduced prior to 1961. The elements for the abduction scenario as outlined by the Hills were abundant throughout the media. If Bullard wonders where Betty Hill got the idea, a study of the case will provide an answer for it. There is no denying that pop culture could have supplied the various elements. Betty Hill may have pulled them together into a single, neat package. Please note here that I said, "May have..."

Martin S. Kottmeyer, writing in Magonia, presents a good argument for the introduction of elements from pop culture. For example, Barney Hill talked of "wraparound eyes" when he described the aliens to his psychiatrist, an element of extreme rarity in science fiction films. But Kottmeyer found the exception. He wrote, "They appeared on the alien episode of an old TV series, 'The Outer Limits' entitled the 'The Bellero Shield.' A person familiar with Barney's sketch in The Interrupted Journey and the sketch done in collaboration with the artist David Bakerwill find a 'frisson' of 'dejavu' creeping up his spine when seeing this episode. The resemblance is much abetted by an absence of ears, hair, and nose on both aliens. Could it be by chance? Consider this: Barney first described and drew the wraparound eyes during the hypnosis session dated 22 February 1964. 'The Bellero Shield' was first broadcast 10 February 1964. Only twelve days separated the two instances. If the identification is admitted, the commonness of wrap around eyes in the abduction literature falls to cultural forces."

Betty Hill was eventually asked about this by UFO researchers. She claimed that neither she nor Barney ever watched the Outer Limits. It seems ridiculous to believe that she would be able to recall if her husband watched a television show some thirty years earlier. It could simply have been the only time that he ever watched it. The coincidence between the airing of The Bellero Shield and Barney's description some twelve days later is interesting. (See also my discussion of the Twilight Zone episode about an alien abduction called "Hocus Pocus and Frisby" that follows this. Alien from that broadcast shown here.)

The situation of April 1961 is slightly different than we have been lead to believe. The Hill abduction didn't spring into existence in a cultural vacuum, but in a society where information was shared nationally on television and by the movies, not to mention magazines and books. Betty's interest in UFOs predated her experience because of her sister's UFO sighting, and Barney's fear of capture while driving on a lonely stretch of highway in New Hampshire, created the scenario. As the days passed, Betty Hill dreamed of the incident, writing about them in her diary. When interviewed by interested UFO researchers, she always told about her dreams, with Barney sitting in the room with her. The rest of it came together almost naturally.

It is important to note that the Hills' psychiatrist, Dr. Benjamin Simon, never believed the story told under hypnosis. He didn't accept the abduction as real. He believed it to be a confabulation, a fact often forgotten by UFO researchers.

What we have then, is a well ingrained theory, that is, that aliens are abducting humans, fueled by speculation from science fiction movies and the popular press. All the ideas have been discussed, in the movies, on the radio, on television and in books. All elements of the abduction phenomenon have been well publicized long before the first of the abductions was reported. Contrary to what the UFO researchers might want to believe, we can find all the elements of abduction in pop culture. We may have to search several sources, but there is no denying that the elements were all present before Betty Hill made her astonishing report.

If alien abductions are real, and even if we find precedents in pop culture and in folklore traditions, the abduction experience itself should be unique. We should find nothing similar to it in our society. It turns out that such is not the case. Alien abduction is not unique. There is another phenomenon that has grown out of pop culture, whose traditions and traits mimic UFO abduction almost step for step. It is a phenomenon reported, essentially by the same kinds of people, investigated by the same kinds of people, and it provides us with clues about the reality of claims of alien abduction.

Betty Hill and The Twilight Zone

Recently, on UFO UpDates, there has been some discussion about the Barney and Betty Hill abduction and a few of the claims made by researchers about what Betty Hill might have seen at the movies or on television. The problem arose when one of the list members wrote about that Science Fiction classic, Killers from Space.

This is a really awful 1954 movie in which Peter Graves plays a scientist working around nuclear weapons. He experiences an episode of missing time, has an unexplained scar on his chest, is haunted by aliens with large eyes who come from a dying planet and who are hiding in an underground base. Nearly all the elements of the modern abduction phenomenon are covered in this film and there are those who believe that it was a government plot to ridicule the abduction phenomenon to keep it hidden from the public. This about a decade before anyone heard of an abduction.

I suppose it’s time to stir the controversy pot again and point out that in The Abduction Engima, published about ten years ago, we, meaning Russ Estes, Bill Cone, and I, discuss all the pop cultural references to alien abduction starting with a 1908 silent movie, the pulp era of science fiction meaning the 1930s and 40s, and the movies that mirror the abduction phenomenon long before anyone in the UFO field was talking about it. Does this mean that all the abductees were exposed to this material? Well, the opportunity was certainly there.

Now there is the suggestion that the Pentagon might have engineered this, meaning producing the movies so that the general population wouldn’t take abduction reports seriously. But, much of this came long before there was a Pentagon (though there certainly was an Army)... and we really don’t need to postulate about disinformers in the military or in the government because we have enough home grown ones that no program needs to exist to make the topic ridiculous.

Yes, we can say today that neither Barney nor Betty enjoyed science fiction and that they were uninterested in it. But we must also remember that in the 1960s there were three television networks, Public Television and few independent stations. You were stuck with what they broadcast and in the era before the remote control, you even tended to watch the commercials. So, who can say that late one sleepless night that Betty didn’t see one of these movies (Killers from Space, This Island Earth, Invaders from Mars, etc.)... or an trailer for it...?

And let’s not forget that on page 144 of Fuller’s hardback, The Interrupted Journey, the book about the Hill aabduction published in 1966, Betty said, "And I laughed at him[Barney when he suggested they might be captured] and asked him if he had watched the Twilight Zone recently on TV..."

Now, to be fair, Dr. Simon asks if there had been anything like this on the Twilight Zone and Betty said, "I don’t know. I never see the Twilight Zone. But I had heard people talk about this program, and I always was under the impression that it was a way-out type thing."

But, to answer Simon’s question, "Yes, there had been." Broadcast on April 4, 1962, was an episode called "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" in which Andy Devine is abducted by aliens, taken onto their ship where they are finally revealed as gray-faced creatures with no nose and small, tear-drop shaped eyes without pupils.

(For those interested, Devine is a well-known liar, claiming all sorts of extraordinary things, which is why the aliens have searched him out. They believe he is a brilliant scientist and want to tap into his brain... which means, I suppose, interrogate him. When he pulls out his harmonic, the vibrations of the music cause the alien human appearance to shatter and we see the aliens for what they are. Devine escapes, tells his friends what happened, but, of course, they don’t believe him.)

Take a look at the picture (seen below) and see if it doesn’t bear a striking resemblance to the pictures we see of the "grays." Yes, the eyes are smaller and there are those folds in the face, but this is a interesting match. Of course there are those who will say that the designer working on the show had been abducted at some point and used his or her own subconscious memories to create the alien face. Just as there are those who claim that the writers and producers of Killers from Space had some sort of abduction experience... or that those in the Pentagon influenced the production to make claims of abduction seem ridiculous and causing the rest of us to reject such stories.

There is no amount of twisting and turning that the true believers will reject to keep their beliefs intact... which explains why even with the admission of the participants that the Alien Autopsy film is a fake and here’s who we created it, there are those who reject the proof... Or those who believe in the Allende Letters even with the confession by Allende (aka Carl Allen) that he faked the whole thing... Or those who think Maury Island was anything but a hoax... but I digress once again.

So, did Barney or Betty see this Twilight Zone episode? Did they see a preview for it? Or did they never see it and had no knowledge that it even existed? If I had to guess, I’d pick door number three, but I can’t know and neither can anyone else. To reject this possible contamination out of hand is typical of those true believers. Don’t bother me with evidence because I know the truth... I am enlightened and you are not.

What we can see here, and which I’m sure will now result in a loud chorus of "Betty Hill never watched these sci-fi programs," and "Kevin Randle is an anti-abduction propagandist," is the fact that these sorts of stories were in the public arena long before any of them reached into the UFO field. What we don’t have is an answer about the possible cultural influence of them on Barney and Betty Hill. I’m not saying that Betty Hill was affected by any of this, only that we cannot eliminate the possibility that she was...

And for a simple personal anecdote, let me say this. I don’t watch King of the Hill, but on Who Wants to be a Millionaire they asked what Hank Hill did for a living. I knew it had to do with propane. Had they not given four choices, I might not have been able to come up with the answer, but the point is, I did and I don’t watch the show. I picked it up because it was out there in the pop cultural world and we are foolish if we dismiss the possibility that someone uninterested in science fiction might not have stumbled across one of these references as she made her way around.

UN Meeting on UFOs?

Over the last couple of weeks, there has been a controversy raging inside the UFO community about a meeting held at the United Nations in which UFOs figured prominently. According to the exopolitics web site and Dr. Michael Salla, a confidential source had come forward to talk of this meeting and to tell us of the importance of it as we, allegedly, move toward full disclosure in 2013 or maybe 2017, depending on the mood of the reliable, but confidential source. Clearly, this meeting proved that UFOs were important and that the United Nations was aware of that importance.

According to Salla, who has been one of the leaders of exopolitics for years, "There are dozens of extraterrestrials races with a variety of motivations that are interacting with global humanity..."

He knows this because other people he believes, such as former U.S. Army sergeant Cliff Stone told him so. Stone has said that he knows, based on his service with super secret military organizations that there are 57 known alien races... just as there were 57 card carrying members of the communist party in the State Department and there are 57 varieties of Heinz products. For more on Stone and some of the other leading stars in the exopolitics heaven see the November 2005 blog. But I digress.

Anyway, this unidentified but highly qualified and reliable source said that the secret meetings were attended by the U.S. Air Force, the National Guard (the National Guard... what in the hell for?), the Vatican, representatives from 27 countries (where in the hell was the rest of the world?) and three U.S. senators. This meeting came up with such astonishing findings as that the UN is an international organization... "Therefore the briefing has do with other nation-states in context to sightings,"... whatever in the hell this means.

I could go on, but there is just too much that seems to be ridiculous in this. This inside source said "Although incidents are occurring around the world, these are NOT ‘Independence Day’ types. In fact, our source stated that the ships are not as big as the ones protrayed [sic] in the film."

And the ever popular, "You’ll know things are heating up when suicides dramatically increase."

Well, all this circulated around the Internet until it was learned from the UN that no such meeting had taken place, inside sources aside. Bernard Thouanel wrote on March 12, "It is obvious these so-called UFO Meetings at the UN never happened... and are pure hoax."

Thouanel’s information came from the UN Public Affairs Unit (at inquiries2@un.org) which wrote to him on March 11, "Greetings from the UN Public Inquiries Team. As far as we are aware there was no meeting concerning UFO’s at the United Nations." They attached copies of the journals for those days that showed all the meetings that took place, and they ran to more than forty pages.

Of course the "true believers" know this is all part of the cover-up and of course the United Nations would not admit to such meetings even if photographs and the agenda were published by this inside source. To prove what they said, Salla and the exopolitics crowd eventually identified the important inside source as Gilles Lorant who was further identified as a member of the French Institute of Advanced Studies for National Defense (IHEDN).

Well, that seemed to put a lie to the UN denial, which in the world of UFOs and conspiracies, and even Washington Post journalism (sorry, but I wanted to identify the source of the creation of the term) was a non-denial denial.

And then, as happens in the world of UFOs, the IHEDN denied that Lorant had ever had a role in its program. In fact, according the Gildas Bourdais (a reliable French UFO researcher and a decent fellow) reported that IHEDN was going to sue Lorant for "usurpation of title", which was going to get pricey for Lorant. He retracted his claim and confirmed that he "is not and has never been an auditor at IHEDN."

Worse still, Bourdais reports, "Michel Ribardiere, of the French group FEA (Federation Europeenne Airplane) has authorized me to reveal publicly that Gilles Lorant told him that he had not met with the two UN diplomats in charge of the UFO question!"

This, of course, didn’t mean that the meeting hadn’t taken place and we shouldn’t reject the claim just because the inside source turned out to be unreliable and the UN denied that it happened. Where would Ufology be if it wasn’t for those who claimed inside knowledge and who were eventually shown to have been less than honest in some of their claims? We listen to men (well, one man) who was thrown in jail for child molestation, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t telling the truth about his inside knowledge. We listen to those who claim high military rank only to learn that they hadn’t served in the military, or in the grade claimed, only to be told their records have been changed to make them look bad. How much of this crap are we supposed to swallow?

In the end, we’re left with another black eye for Ufology. It’ll be said that this whole sorry episode was another of the brilliant disinformation campaigns that the government has engineered to keep the truth buried when, in reality, it is just one more case of someone inventing a story to propel himself into the UFO spotlight. The landscape is littered with many examples from Cliff Stone and his 57 variety of aliens, to Gerald Anderson who injected himself into the Roswell UFO crash only to be caught in various lies, to George Adamski (or a couple of dozen other contactees) who claimed to have ridden on flying saucers with the benevolent space brothers to the nonsense of MJ-12.

The only thing to remember from this is that it was members of the UFO community who investigated the claims and revealed them for what they were. I know that the skeptics and debunkers will get the credit, but it really belongs to those who did the work, some of them cited here.

Oh, yeah... and we never learn. Tomorrow will have another story like this and in the end, it’s about the only thing people will remember... that some guy claimed to know a lot about UFOs but really didn’t.