X-Zone Broadcast Network - James Clarkson and His Resignation from MUFON

James Clarkson. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle.

For those who wanted to hear Peter Robbins, he had a family emergency, but fortunately I had already talked with James Clarkson about the show. He wasn’t actually a fill-in, but one who appeared a week before I had planned, meaning I moved him up in the schedule. So, I thank James for coming on the show to tell us about his reasons for resigning as the Washington State Director of MUFON. You can listen to the discussion here:

https://youtu.be/Hz0nmWbj4Q8

I did ask for a little bit of James’ history with MUFON and how he became interested in UFOs as a way of establishing his long-time interest in the subject. Once that was understood, and it was clear that James was not someone who had entered the field in the last couple of years, we explored the tasks of a state director, which is a somewhat thankless job. One of the things I learned was that every state director is required to attend the annual MUFON symposium. That meant the symposium this year had an income of $17,500.00 before anything else was accomplished. Apparently, this year’s symposium, claiming a secret space program, was well attended. Many of those didn’t seem to care that much of it was unfounded, unverified and unproven tales of those who said they had participated in that program. You can read more about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/07/are-some-tales-just-too-wild-to-believe.html

I was interested in what had caused James to resign as the state director. He provided a list of reasons, including some of the things that Jan Harzan had said when I had interviewed him about those in the MUFON Inner Circle. You can listen to that interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/12180631

Or, if you prefer to read about it, you can see my analysis of the situation here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/07/mufon-blowback.html

And here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/06/mufon-racism-and-dodging-questions.html

While it might seem that I’m waging a war on MUFON, such is not the case. I wanted to hear from James about his reasons for resigning. I wanted to know why several others had also quit MUFON. And I realize that the real work, of investigation UFO sightings and gathering data, is done by those at the lower levels who volunteer their time and money to learn what they can. I suppose you could say that most of us see the direction of MUFON changing for the worse.

Next week’s guest: Philip Mantle

Topic: His work in UFO investigation and his publishing activities.