Jan
Harzan, the Executive Director of the Mutual UFO Network, was arrested by
Huntington Beach, California, police on July 3 on charges of soliciting sexual
activity with a thirteen-year-old girl.
According
to the Huntington Beach Police website, Harzan solicited the minor to meet with
him for the purpose of engaging in sexual activity. Instead of the young
girl,
Harzan was arrested by detectives who were there to take him into custody. He
has been charged with multiple felonies.
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| Jan Harzan |
Harzan
became the MUFON Executive Director in 2013, and since that time, MUFON has
undergone a number of changes and endured several scandals that rocked the
organization. In 2018, John Ventre, the MUFON Pennsylvania State Director and a
member of MUFON’s “Inner Circle,” posted several racist comments on his
personal Facebook page after learning about a Netflix series that he claimed promoted
white genocide. Ventre wrote, “The last things blacks want is for white males
to organize and that’s not too far away!”
In
Harzan’s tepid response, he worried about the social media world in which we
all now live rather than the racist nature of the comments. Harzan wrote, in
part, “there is no justice in hate.” After an internal rebellion by a number of
MUFON’s state directors, including the resignation of a few, Harzan’s statement
was withdrawn, replaced by another and Ventre was removed from his leadership
positions in MUFON.
Just
last month, Ken Pfeiffer, MUFON Rhode Island and Vermont State Director, posted
a number of allegedly racist comments to his Facebook page. MUFON took no
action because they found no evidence of bigotry in his posts.
The
Inner Circle caused additional trouble for Harzan and MUFON after Ventre’s rant.
Although described by Harzan as a “donor level perk” without any real clout in
the operation of MUFON, the website described it differently. According to that
website, “Inner Circle members provide advisory guidance to MUFON and are
included in annual conference calls, attend private functions…” which sounds
like something more significant than a donor level perk.
Importantly,
the website added, “You’ll meet other Inner Circle members at MUFON who are kindred
spirits [emphasis added] and you’ll participate in Inner Circle Only
events.”
Joining
Ventre and Harzan in this Inner Circle was J Z Knight, described as a New Age
leader who channels a 35,000-year-old Lemurian warrior named Ramtha. While that
sort of belief is not a disqualifying characteristic, her attitudes which were
“filtered” through Ramtha said “To screw [though she used far stronger
language] over God’s chosen people”, meaning the Jews. She said they’d earned
enough cash to have paid their way “out of the… gas chambers by now.”
Ramtha,
speaking through Knight, added that Mexicans “breed like rabbits,” all gay men
were once Catholic priests and that organic farmers have questionable hygiene.
To
make matters worse, another member of the Inner Circle was David MacDonald, who
owned a flight service that provided a platform for those who wished to join
the Mile-High Club. While certainly not as egregious as the racist and
homophobic comments made by other members of the Inner Circle, the sexual
nature of that activity has now come back to haunt MUFON.
Chris
Cogswell was the MUFON Director of Research who resigned because of what he
termed the “racist culture” at the organization. He said that the leadership at
MUFON had been problematic for years. The attitudes of some of the State
Directors and the members of the Inner Circle certainly reflect that.
Before
all this came to the attention of the UFO community, MUFON had been involved in
earlier scandals. John Carpenter, one time MUFON’s Director of Abduction
Research, sold confidential information and notes about the abductees he
interviewed and hypnotically regressed to a third party. According to some of
those abductees, they had been told that the information would remain confidential.
Carpenter admitted that he had received cash payments from Robert Bigelow
through the Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, on multiple occasions, but,
he said, his clients had not been hurt and that he had just supplied notes
rather than cases. However, in a letter dated June 29, 1996, Carpenter wrote to
Bigelow, stating, “Personally, I want to thank you, Bob, for your assistance
regarding the 140 cases I mailed to you.”
For
those interested in this rather tangential tale, the complete story, including
the documentation, can be found here:
ufotrail.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-carpenter-affair-for-the-record.html
Although
MUFON did not profit, directly, from Carpenter’s cooperation with Bigelow, MUFON
did enter into an agreement with Bigelow Aerospace, again sharing information
that the volunteers and unpaid field investigators had collected. MUFON was
paid for the information but that money did not trickle down to those
volunteers. This all began under the administration of Walt Andrus, the
original International Director. John Schuessler, who took over from Andrus as
this story began to break at the turn of the century may not have been aware of
these arrangements. The April 2001 issue of the MUFON UFO Journal announced that Carpenter had resigned his
position as the Director of Abduction Research, which tended to end that
scandal.
One
question arises from all this. What, exactly, is the mission of MUFON?
Originally it had to do with the scientific investigation of UFOs, but in the
last decade, it seemed to have shifted into creating financial streams of
compensation for the MUFON corporation. Scientific investigation has been lost
under the stewardship of Harzan.
One
of the best examples for this redirection is the list of speakers announced for
the 2017 MUFON Symposium. Here the criterion seemed to be who could fill the
seats without a thought given to the reality of the story. For those interested
in this episode see:
kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/07/are-some-tales-just-too-wild-to-believe.html
In
2018, X-Zone’s Rob McConnell created a petition calling for the removal of
Harzan as the Executive Director. Response was tepid with some of those in the
organization, defending Harzan and his leadership.
The
petition didn’t gain much traction when it was first announced. Ironically, two
years later, the MUFON Board did react to the arrest of Harzan faster than they
did when Harzan had almost justified Ventre’s rant. In a matter of hours, they
announced that Harzan was out and that there is no place for him in the
organization in the future no matter the outcome of his current trouble. Harzan
had not been convicted of a crime, only that he had been charged with multiple
felonies.
The
problem here is that the Board replaced Harzan with David MacDonald, a member
of the Inner Circle. According to the information available, MUFON had taken
the precaution of creating a way to rapidly transfer power from the west coast
if there was a catastrophic event to their California headquarters. I was told
that it took little more than the push of a button for the operation to shift.
MacDonald’s
selection did not meet with universal approval. As one member of the UFO
community put it, “…this seems to me to be an incredibly tone deaf appointment
by the MUFON board considering what just occurred with Jan Harzan. I mean the
guy ran a company for aerial sex. Is this going to smooth over the bad
publicity over the reprehensible sexual activities of the previous International
Director [Harzan]?”
The
speculation by some of the MUFON membership is that the organization might not
be able to survive the latest scandal. At worse, it could fragment with some of
the State Directors, or regional officers organizing on a smaller level. At
best, it could see MUFON return to its original mission of scientific
investigation and an elimination of some of the more controversial elements of
the paranormal that has crept into the MUFON hierarchy.
