Thursday, June 29, 2017

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Jan Harzan and MUFON's Inner Circle

Jan Harzan
This week, given the controversy that had erupted in May, I invited Jan Harzan back to talk about that, among other things. I covered the part of the program that dealt with the MUFON Inner Circle in a much longer post that can be seen here:


The last part of the program dealt with some of the speakers who had been invited to the MUFON Symposium. While it seemed that Harzan admitted that some of the tales being told were not as credible as others, he also suggested that MUFON had an obligation to provide its membership with diverse opinions and let them decide for themselves what they wanted to believe. You can listen to Jan Harzan here:


(And if you have trouble with the link, try YouTube and A Different Perspective, Kevin Randle, Jan Harzan. That should get you to the proper interview.)

I had hoped that MUFON might use discretion in selecting the speakers, especially given some of the wild tales being told, but it seems that most viewpoints are welcome, no matter how far out… except for those that are not welcome… While I am not a fan of Michael Horn and his drumbeating for the Billie Meier contact case, apparently MUFON agrees with that assessment. They have not provided Horn with a platform which makes me wonder how they decide what is credible enough for their Symposium.

Next week: Mark O’Connell

Topic: His biography of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, The Close Encounters Man.

Monday, June 26, 2017

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Dr. Irena Scott

Dr. Irena Scott
This week I spoke with Dr. Irena McCammon Scott who had published the book, UFO’s Today: 70 Years of Lies, Misinformation and Government Coverup. I had hoped that we would be able to talk about what was new in the book and when I asked, she pointed to a tale of Cordell Hull who had talked about alien bodies stored under the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. The problem is that the tale is not new and was reported in the International UFO Reporter in the winter 2001 – 2002 issue. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of corroboration for the story. You can listen to the interview here:


(And, as always, you can find it on YouTube by searching A Different Perspective with Kevin Randle. Just add Dr. Scott’s name.)

We did speak at length about the Kenneth Arnold sighting, and I wanted to know more about Maury Island where a damaged UFO had touched down, leaving some debris behind. Although we talked about the story being a hoax, Dr. Scott fell back on the position that it was a hoax, but there was a Men in Black component in it. She didn’t know that one of the witnesses, Fred Crisman, had been in contact with Ray Palmer, the science fiction editor year or two earlier and who had leaped onto the flying saucer bandwagon the first chance he got. The Men in Black were probably Crisman and his partner Harold Dahl, who seemed to be leaking everything to the newspaper and frightening poor old Ken Arnold. Arnold believed his hotel room had been bugged because of the articles in the newspaper. I don’t think we ever got through that, but I gave it a try.

We did speak briefly about the nonsensical story of Charles H. Forgus, the Texas deputy sheriff who claimed to have seen the crash site and the bodies of the alien creatures found near Roswell. I reported on this a while back and you can read the story here:


Next week’s guest: Jan Harzan

Topic: MUFON and the Inner Circle

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Latest MJ-12 Documents: A Final Look

For those of you who tuned into Midnight in the Desert to listen to me discuss the latest MJ-12 document release, well, I was bumped early in the evening because Heather Wade had “overbooked the show.” At least I wasn’t dragged off by security for refusing to give up my place at the microphone… which couldn’t have happened since I was at home and she controlled the telephone system anyway.

But I did listen to the beginning of the program because like so many others, I wondered what Stan Friedman would say about the authenticity. Like many of us, he was interested in the source of the documents. They had seemed to excite him in earlier statements, but he now was somewhat more neutral though a careful reading of them should have given away the false nature of them... The mere mention that the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit (IPU) was involved should have been a huge red flag. The IPU has been identified and it has nothing to do with aliens or UFOs or anything of the nature. For more about the IPU see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=IPU

I found one point hilarious and which nearly everyone has failed to mention. The first page says, “READ-AND-DESTROY. I have to wonder how the document survived with that instruction on the first page, which also argues against authenticity. I will note here that a top secret document’s destruction must be documented saying that it has been properly destroyed. Whoever “stole” this one would have had to violate that rule because he would have had to sign the destruction form.

Heather wouldn’t name names, and in one respect I understand that but that also tends to undermine the validity of the documents. She did say that the person who “stole” them originally had died so that he or she can’t be questioned about how he or she gained possession of them.

Heather hadn’t received the originals either. They had come to her in a .pdf file, which, as I have noted in the past, does not allow for much in the way of a forensic analysis of the paper, ink or anything else that might be gained by examination of the originals. We are left with a study of the format, the font, if the documents conformed to others created at the highest-levels of the government and if the documents fit into our current understanding of the situations being discussed in them.

Instead of analysis of these latest documents on the show, we were treated to another waltz down MJ-12 memory lane from the alleged moment the original documents first arrived at Jaime Shandera’s house in 1984 to the point we have reached now. There was nothing new here, other than listening to Stan talk about all his visits to archives, and he enjoys to do so (and hey, that is fun going through all this material, looking for that single and often elusive nugget) and things he had learned about the men who were named to the original MJ-12 committee, all of which was irrelevant to understanding these new documents.

For those who haven’t looked at them yet, though they can now be accessed through a variety of websites including that for Midnight in the Desert. You can still find them here if you are still interested:


I have outlined some of the many mistakes in these documents already and find it difficult to believe that something created at this level would be so riddled with errors. I am sorely tempted to enumerate the errors in the Roswell section but will refrain from doing that. Anyone interested can take a look at Roswell in the 21st Century (or almost any of the other Roswell books) and compare the information there with that in this document. The errors will be apparent and we have to think that anyone who was far enough inside of the loop to be writing this document would be cognizant of the facts of the case.

I’m going to move onto the Aztec case which was covered in depth here. Stan had made a big deal out of the research in Scott Ramsey’s book while he was on Midnight in the Desert and how careful and meticulous it has been. But this document is at a wide variance with what Ramsey published. This sets up a conundrum… if the document is accurate, then Ramsey is wrong but if Ramsey is right, then the document is fake and I haven’t even mentioned the possibility that both are wrong and Aztec is a hoax.

According to the document, on March 25, 1948, the craft was watched on three radars “belonging to the recovery network of the White Sands Test Range and located in classified areas of southwest New Mexico.” In 1948, it was the White Sands Proving Ground, and if the radars were in southwest New Mexico, that would have prevented tracking of the object to low altitudes in northern New Mexico because the mountainous terrain would have been in the way. In fact, once you get very far north of White Sands, their radars aren’t much good for an object below 10,000 feet. Radar is line of sight.

Again, according to the document, the crash site was secured by 10:45 p.m. that night, which meant that no civilians would have been gathered at the site on the morning of March 25 to watch the military arrive because the object had yet to crash according to these new documents. And, if the civilians were on hand to see the military to arrive, it would have had to be on the morning of March 26, but then the site was already secured and the civilians would have been prevented from getting near.

We are treated to a reference to the base at Flat Rock, Nevada, which, of course, was the scene of much of the action in The Andromeda Strain. We learn that the Blue Berets (whoever they are… no, they don’t exist) came in disguised as National Guard, but I’m not sure how you pull that off since the uniforms worn by the National Guard are the same wore by those on active duty with the Army. I suppose they removed their Blue Berets and wore regulation headgear.

Stephen Bassett
But there really doesn’t seem much reason to drag this out. The documents are faked. I spoke with Stephen Bassett yesterday afternoon, and almost the first thing he said to me was that he too thought the documents faked. We discussed some of the bloopers in text, the problems with the classification markings, and all the other errors. Bassett said that he didn’t think these were disinformation, but more likely just someone outside the government who had too much time on his hands. I’ll add someone who didn’t actually know much but who had gotten his hands of William Steinman’s book UFO Crash at Aztec.


What we need to do now is place these documents in the same file folder with the Roswell Slides, the alien autopsy and little grey men who like strawberry ice cream and Tibetan music. Footnotes in the great journal of UFO information, or maybe, even better, have them all deleted from anything to do with UFO research because they have only distracted us. They have added nothing to our knowledge.

Jim Marrs is Gravely Ill

There was sad news yesterday. In my conversation with Stephen Bassett, he mentioned that Jim Marrs was gravely ill. He is dealing with dialysis at home, which is not a pleasant experience and is suggestive of a very bad situation. We should all hope for the best outcome for him.

Thursday, June 15, 2017

MJ-12 - New Documents, Old Story

(Blogger's Note: Normally I would take more time to edit this, but there is pressure to get something posted. This is my opinion based on what I have seen, read, and researched since I was alerted to the documents at 4:18 p.m. CDT on June 14. Excuse the typos...)

The field where Mack Brazel is alleged to have found the
metallic debris. Photo copyright by Kevin
Randle.
Okay, I’ve had time to review the document carefully, or rather given it a solid first reading and I have some points to make. I will note here that in my talks with Stephen Bassett, he suggested that all of us, meaning Stan Friedman, Richard Dolan, him and me, create a list of what our first impressions are, and the things that we spotted right off the top. I thought that idea had some merit. We’re not looking to authenticate or debunk, only at the things that disturbed us in some fashion.

I did ask Heather Wade about the source, or sources, and she didn’t give me names, only that they were ex-military and had possessed the documents for a very long time. She didn’t know which government agency had originated them,
Richard Dolan. Copyright by
Kevin Randle
and there seemed no way to verify them through government sources. We also seem to suffer from the same problems that we’ve always had and that is that we’re working from copies and not originals. This makes the whole process problematic… and I think we can point to many cases in which copies of documents have turned out to be forgeries (think CBS and George W. Bush’s military records and any number of MJ-12 documents).

The classification markings on the documents do not seem to be consistent with authenticity, that is, the classification is not marked at both the top and the bottom of the document.

The dating format, 07 July, 1947, is not one that was in use in 1947, but I suppose you could argue that this format is consistent with the other MJ-12 documents even if it is more consistent with a dating format used by Bill Moore.

The use of “Ultra Top Secret” also raises questions. Ultra was the British code name for their operation to intercept and read high-level, highly-classified Nazi message traffic. This code name seems inappropriate for use by the US government or military. In keeping with that, there are several mentions that these documents are classified “Above Top Secret,” but that is really a misnomer… Top Secret is the highest classification, but the number of people allowed to review certain documents can be further restricted by adding a code word. Only those who are code word cleared would have access to the document and by adding a second code word you restrict the numbers even further. So, if there are two code words, you have a document that can be said to be two points above top secret, though that is not actually a fact. While we can argue the semantics of this, I don’t believe someone on the inside would talk of a document being classified two points above top secret, but rather suggesting it was double code word protected.

Jesse Marcel, Sr.
The description of the Roswell case, and the chronology is not accurate based on all the documented evidence available. As but a single example, the document tells us that Mack Brazel alerted the authorities at Roswell Army Air Forces base (which is not the correct name of the facility) at “05:18” (which should have been written as 0518 hrs) though it is clear that it was the sheriff who alerted the Army and Major Marcel himself said that he learned about it as he was eating lunch.

One of the major red flags is, “At his arrival in Roswell, General Twining relieved Colonel Blanchard of command…” There is no evidence of any such order. The relief of a commanding officer is a major event. Had Twining arrived in Roswell and assumed command by virtue of being the senior officer present, that is not the same thing.

I’m going to leave the Roswell segment here, though I see many other problems, and move onto the “Aztec UFO Crash,” which is featured more prominently (which means I’m not even going to discuss the fraudulent IPU). As I was reading this, I thought the same thing that one of the commenters made on the previous post, that is, I was reminded of William Steinman’s nonsensical book, UFO Crash at Aztec. If we compare this to Scott Ramey’s book, The Aztec Incident, the chronology here is all wrong. If we accept Ramey’s book as accurate, then the document fails (which is sort of a point in another arena).

In this document, they have changed the times which had been Mountain Standard Time, to what they call Local Time or LT. If this was strictly a military document, I would have expected the times to be converted to Greenwich Mean Time or Zulu Time. Not really a fatal flaw but one that seems to be out of place.

I’m now going to skip all the trouble with the Aztec aspect of this simply because there is so much that is simply wrong. And if this is a real briefing, where is the mention of Del Rio, Plains of San Agustin and Kingman? They mention other crashes but provide no detail, probably because these details would be difficult to find and easy to refute.

Anyway, we are now treated to the transcript between an EBE and an assortment of interviewers who are never named for a reason that I can’t fathom (unless, of course, they don’t exist). At first glance, I was drawn to the comment about why the aliens had coming to Earth for centuries and learned, “And we like trees?” I wondered if this was the same group of aliens that liked strawberry ice cream and Tibetan music.

I did mention this to Stephen Bassett who wondered if someone had gone to all the trouble to fake the documents, all the study that it had taken and the time to create it, if he or she would then sabotage the effort with some ridiculous, off the wall comment about liking trees.

My first reaction was to think that was an interesting point, but I had yet to carefully read the document. Having now done so, I see that there really is nothing new here. The information about Roswell is wrong, the name of the base is wrong, the chain of command is wrong, and even the higher headquarters at Fort Worth is wrong (it wasn’t the 5th Air Force, but the 8th).


Stan Friedman. Copyright by
Kevin Randle
The Aztec material is derivative of Steinman’s book, the MJ-12 information is taken from there (or maybe from any of Stan Friedman’s many writings on it), and there is nothing that is suggestive of advanced scholarship. The writing does not sound as if it came from a government source, and without names, without government agencies, without any way to check things out, this just doesn’t seem to be authentic. I withheld my opinion on this, just announcing that the documents have been released so others would have a chance to review them, but it is now clear that this does nothing to further our knowledge and just confuses an already confused issue.

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

MJ-12 - The Latest Documents

Stephen Bassett. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle
For those of you keeping score at home, there has been another bunch of MJ-12 documents dumped on us. I was alerted to this by Stephen Bassett, he of UFO lobbying and Disclosure fame. He told me of the documents that were at the Midnight in the Desert website ( I will talk about this Friday, June 16 beginning at 1:30 a.m CDT on that program), documents that Heather Wade had been given, and they can be viewed here:


Now, I have not had a chance to review them in great detail but I have scanned them. There are some problematic parts, or elements, in these documents, but then even documents that come with a complete pedigree, which is to say a proper provenance, sometimes have parts that argue against authenticity. In other words, I find some things wrong, but aren’t comfortable with rejecting without a in depth reading of them.

In my conversation with Bassett, he suggested three outcomes for the research: 1. They are authentic. 2. They are a hoax put together by someone in the UFO community for any of a number of reasons. 3. They are disinformation (though at the moment I’m at a loss as to why the disinformation agents would toss these out now). Bassett thought it might have something to do with the possibility of Disclosure moving closer to reality so this was something of a pre-emptive strike.


As it stands at the moment, I will be joined on my radio program, cleverly called A Different Perspective, by Stephen Bassett in a special, two-hour edition. By then, both of us will have had a chance to review the documents, talk to some experts, and be able to describe what we think.

Thursday, June 08, 2017

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Oak Island and Joy Steele

This week I reached out to Joy Steele who had offered an alternative explanation for the depression found on Oak Island that became known as the Money Pit. We started with a brief history of the area, but given the time constraints, had to work through that quickly so that some of the information was condensed. You can listen to the interview here:

I have visited this topic on several occasions and for those who are interested in reading those posts can begin here:


There is other information about Joy, her investigations into the mystery of Oak Island, research into South Carolina earth kilns of the eighteenth century and how all that relates to Oak Island. You can see some of that here:



The point she was making, and one that sometimes gets lost in the controversy, is that the construction and the look of these kilns seems to match that of the original money pit right down to the flagstones found two feet down and the vault that was found during one of the attempts to find the money. Debris found inside the pit itself, and some of the artifacts found on the island also support this conclusion. The swamp area, according to Steele, would have been necessary for their work in repairing ships if her theory is correct, and the Laginas boys had found debris in the swamp that suggested there had been a ship, or ships there in the distant past.

Other aspects of the Oak Island mystery are explained by the evidence found on the ground, including what appeared to be a British camp on the island in the eighteenth century. Given the real lack of results in the search for treasure, and that some of the artifacts pulled from the money pit might have been put there to induce investors to spend additional money, what she said made a lot of sense.

Next week’s guest (tentatively): Jan Harzan

Topic: MUFON’s current trouble

Monday, June 05, 2017

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Larry Lawson

This week I tried something a little different, or more accurately, Larry Lawson of Paranormal Stakeout and I did something a little different. Lawson was on my show and we talked about UFOs and the paranormal but then, later, I was on his show and talked about the paranormal with a smattering of UFOs involved. We wanted to have two shows connected by the paranormal but exploring that topic from our distinct perspectives. You can listen to them here:

and

(And as I always say, you can find the shows on YouTube by typing in A Different Perspective. Add the guest’s name and it will take you directly to the correct show. For the Paranormal Stakeout, do the same thing and you’ll be able to listen to both parts of the shows.)

On Paranormal Stakeout, I had an opportunity to talk about a book, Conversations, I had done a number of years ago that began as an abduction and became a past live regression. I always thought it was an interesting story with a young woman and her horrific dreams that seemed quite real to her. To my surprise, as we explored this using hypnotic regression we learned the details of her past lives and I was able to confirm much of what she was saying in those pre-Internet days. Though I mentioned it on Paranormal Stakeout, the book, of course, goes into more detail.

Those of you who wish more information about Larry Lawson and Paranormal Stakeout, take a look at xzbn.net and just follow the links. You can also visit his website at www.paranormalstakeout.com.

Next week’s guest: Joy Steele

Topic: The Oak Island treasure and what her research has uncovered.

Friday, June 02, 2017

X-Zone Broadcast Network - John Greenewald

For those of you who tuned in to hear James Clarkson, he bailed on the show, but John Greenewald, of the Black Vault, was kind enough to fill in. We began by talking about a recent announcement of a government document, published in this century, that suggested an interest in UFOs. John said that while there had been some very recent interest in the document, he’d had it on his website for a number of years. There really wasn’t nothing new in the document and the entry about UFOs was quite small. You can listen to John’s interview here:


(I know that some have trouble with the various links I put up here so I note that if you go to YouTube, you can type in “A Different Perspective,” and the name of the guest, and you can listen to the programs there… or go to XZBN.net, and follow the prompts to the specific program.)

The interesting thing about this document was that in 2005 there had been some discussion in the media about it and the reference to UFOs and in a matter of weeks, there was a new version, an updated version, that contained no reference to UFOs. While the document wasn’t all that interesting, the government’s response after the information was published is interesting. Why did they work so fast to replace that document?

(Yeah, yeah, I know. You want to see the document and wonder why I haven’t told you the name. John tells you how to find it during the show, but here’s the link:


So now you can see how relatively unimportant that document is though the response to it is.)

We also talk about trouble with FOIA and how that situation has changed over the years. For me, it just doesn’t seem to work as well as it once did and we are all at the mercy of the various agencies involved, but they are still required to respond. Although it might seem to be a little dull, it really is a fascinating hour.

Next week’s guest: Larry Lawson


Topic: This is sort of a special program. We begin the hour talking about UFOs and how they relate to the paranormal, and then on Larry’s show, I’m the guest and we talk explore the paranormal in greater depth. It is a two-part show, but each part does stand alone.