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| Nick Redfern. Photo by Kevin Randle. |
This
week I talked with Nick Redfern about his new book The Roswell UFO Conspiracy: Exposing a Shocking and Sinister Secret
because it would let people know about his new book, open up a discussion about
an alternative explanation for the Roswell crash and it would give me a chance
to promote my book, Roswell in the 21st
Century. Although I had suggested that his book was an update of his Body Snatchers in the Desert, it is
actually more than just that, and it provides more information about some
aspects of American history that are, for the lack of another term, rather
disgusting. You can listen to our discussion here:
(There have been some reports that the link is broken... if it doesn't work, try going to YouTube and type A Different Perspective Nick Redfern. That should take you to the program.)
Given the way things are in the world today, when people begin to talk about anonymous sources and don’t provide names, I begin to worry about the information. Nick pointed out that some of his sources weren’t actually anonymous but they were unnamed which, according to him is not quite the same thing. It means that while they’re not named, Nick knows who they are. I understand the necessity for these unnamed sources, some of it the responsibility of the publishers who now require that we all provide permission slips signed by the subject of interviews, often with the caveat that they had no objection to their names being used. The problem isn’t that Nick has refused to name them, the publisher wants to make sure that they agreed to being named because if they didn’t… lawsuit.
Given the way things are in the world today, when people begin to talk about anonymous sources and don’t provide names, I begin to worry about the information. Nick pointed out that some of his sources weren’t actually anonymous but they were unnamed which, according to him is not quite the same thing. It means that while they’re not named, Nick knows who they are. I understand the necessity for these unnamed sources, some of it the responsibility of the publishers who now require that we all provide permission slips signed by the subject of interviews, often with the caveat that they had no objection to their names being used. The problem isn’t that Nick has refused to name them, the publisher wants to make sure that they agreed to being named because if they didn’t… lawsuit.
I
know from my own experience that sometimes an overzealous researcher will want
to verify the information that I have reported. They call the witness to ask
their own questions, and I understand that. I want to be able to verify the
information published by others myself… to see if it is accurate, if the
witness has something else to say, or if the comments were taken out of context
and the witness actually meant something different. I have found problems with
some of those interviews conducted by others when I asked the questions, so I
do get it.
But
the flip side of that is something that I have run into and that is drunks, as
a single example. As I mentioned on the program, Bill Brazel told me that
drunks, making bets in bars, had called him on several occasions to ask if the
information published about him was true… and not just at a descent hour but at
two or three in the morning… I hesitate to subject people to that sort of
harassment… or to those who don’t like the information and who want to argue
the point with the witness.
One
way around that is documentation and I pressed Nick on that when he began to
speak about Unit 731, which had, according to him, conducted experiments on
humans that can be called little more than torture. And this is where we slide
off into another dark side of American history. Starting not long after the
Japanese invasion of mainland China, they built a concentration camp where they
performed experiments, many on Chinese men, women and children, but also on Russians
and prisoners of war. These experiments included cold weather exposure to see
how the body reacted to extreme temperatures, injecting live bacteria into
humans to map the progress of deadly disease, amputating limps and attempting
to reattach them, sometimes on the other side of the body, and the vivisection
of living, conscious subjects because they didn’t want the normal decay of the
diseased organs after death to color the results. They wanted to see exactly
what was happening on the living organs.
Okay,
that’s really enough of that. As the war wound down and it was clear that Unit
731 was about to be overrun by the Russians, the Japanese ordered everything
destroyed, the buildings burned and ordered those who had participated to never
say a word about it. I think the Japanese understood the concept of war crimes
and they were hiding the evidence… which means that there was little in the way
of documentation. Nick had mentioned a project like Paperclip that had brought
the captured Nazis to the US to help build our space program. There was a
similar project for the Japanese… or so he said.
Very
little research on my part was able to confirm this, though I don’t know if any
of the Japanese actually made it to the US. But Japanese who had participated
in these “experiments” were questioned about it by American authorities and
were told that anything they said would not be used in war crimes trials.
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was the senior officer to approve this
because the information about the progress of some diseases, and effects of
extreme cold, and other experiments did provide valuable information. The
thinking I suppose, was that the data had been gathered and there was no reason
to destroy it. The damage had been done, the subjects were dead and the
information might be used for the benefit of others.
The
point here is that Nick had been correct in what he had said about Unit 731 and
its horrendous past. Many of the Japanese involved were identified and were not
tried as war criminals so that the data would not be lost. That doesn’t take us
to the crash of that alleged experimental craft in New Mexico in 1947, but it
does get us a little closer.
Personally,
I’m a little disgusted with these secret agreements that were made at the end
of the war. I’m disgusted that the US government, and the US military seemed to
think there was a higher purpose there and the horror could be overlooked for
the value of the data collected…
Anyway,
I’m finished with this rant. I bring it up merely because Nick had talked of
Unit 731, had few names and it seemed even fewer documents to support all of
this and how it ended up in New Mexico two years after the Japanese surrender.
I bring it up so that we see that there is something to be said for Nick’s
theory here and there is independent support for some of the information he
used in his book and what we discussed on the program. It doesn’t mean that the
object that crashed was of terrestrial manufacture and that this theory is the
correct one, only that there is some information to support the theory and that
more research is required.
