Peter Robbins Explains His Take on Left at East Gate (Part One)

(Blogger's Note: This is Peter Robbins' discussion of what he learned in the decades that followed the publication of his book and attempts to clarify the issues.)

By Peter Robbins

An open letter to my friends and readers, colleagues in ufology, the many UFO witnesses, experiencers and abductees I count as friends and who I’ve never met, and most of all to the men and women whose lives were changed forever by the events of December 1980 in Suffolk England.

For more than a year now a scandal - for there is no other word that aptly describes it - has been steadily growing in the field of UFO studies.  It is as ugly, contentious, and vicious as we’ve seen, if not more so, in the seventy years since the so-called Modern Age of UFOs came into being.  And it is spreading. While confined to that specific corner of ufology alternately known as the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident or the Bentwaters incident, it continues to draw in good people who have come to increasingly demonize each other and allow hatred, frustration and fear to rule their lives.  

At the center of this storm of controversy is a man named Larry Warren. He was my coauthor on a book some of you may have read or heard about.  Its title is Left At East Gate: A First-Hand Account of the Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident, Its Cover-Up and Investigation.

The investigation itself was begun in 1987 and concluded in 1996. It was conducted by me and my coauthor, and looking back on what I now know to be true about the circumstance I had walked into back then, my efforts in many respects came up woefully short. It is with more than a fair amount of anger, regret and frustration that I’ve written what you’re about to read, but the circumstances in question have given me no choice. My purpose in doing so is nothing less than to stop it in its tracks. If not, this blight will continue to fester and consume more individuals and that is something I will not and cannot allow.

The assorted evidence included here is anything but a full accounting of the outrages in question, but I my efforts will be enough to assist all of us in bringing this sad ugly affair to an end. I very much regret that the conclusions I have been forced to arrive at fly in the face of certain specifics published in Left At East At East Gate and that many of the falsehoods referred to are ones I stood by as 100% factual and repeatedly defended over the years, then the decades, some of them not only in Left At East Gate, but in part in two follow-up books I authored as well. My unswerving belief in almost all of them had remained the case until said ‘facts’ began to fully unravel for me beginning in the spring of last year.

Since that time I have quietly been struggling to see beyond all of the malice and misunderstanding that this controversy has generated. I have done so, if largely in private, in as even-handed a manner as I am capable of, this with special attention being paid to the part I have played - even if inadvertently - in misleading what likely amounts to thousands of readers, and between talks, lectures, and live and broadcast audiences, millions of others.

The focus of this writing though is Larry Warren and his relationship with the truth regarding Rendlesham, his role in the events of December 1980, and in some of his unrelated dealings as well. Why bother to reference any such ‘unrelated matters?’ Because character and honesty go hand in hand across the board in human behavior, and to my way of thinking we should be held to the same standards in both our public and private lives as they are mirror reflections of each other.

Coming to grips with the myriad pieces of information involved has proven to be one of the greatest, not to mention depressing series of realizations I have ever had to face as a writer and individual. On a personal level the experience has closely paralleled the five stages of grief as defined by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist who was a pioneer in near death studies. The stages as defined by Dr. Kübler-Ross are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Those of you who know me will not be surprised to learn that this past year has been the most introspective, self-critical, and increasingly disheartening in my forty-year long involvement in UFO studies and where I go from her I’m not quite sure. But at this point that means less to me than you might imagine.  

I more than appreciate that in the minds of some I may seem too close to all this to fully apply the rigorous objectivity necessary to come to the clearest and most accurate conclusions. That’s alright. I am more than willing to leave any such judgements to you the reader.

My only practical regret in ending this piece where I do is it leaves out so much of the factual, conclusive evidence others have labored so long and hard to find, confirm and publish. The best reasons I can give for this is that every minute I have spent working on this is one I have resented giving up to yet one more visit to this sordid mess, this after investing thousands (and likely additional thousands) of hours on defending, supporting, praising and assisting my former coauthor in his efforts. Writing when you feel angry and resentful is not necessarily something that makes me write fast, and that’s the other issue. I set a self-imposed deadline to complete this tonight, though it’s now well into tomorrow. My reasons for doing so were not arbitrary. I set off tomorrow for three weeks of work and travel and have no desire or intention of dragging this millstone with me when I do.

But the ‘dialogue,’ for lack of a better word, between Larry Warren and his supporters, and those who have completely lost faith in the published and spoken accounts of his stated role in the events in question, is now long past the point where any vestige of civility exists between them. The discourse on both sides long ago turned toxic as nuclear waste, serving no one and no aim other than to amp up the rancor, hatred and partisanship, and in the process continue pitting decent people on both sides against each other. There have been times over this past year when my irregular forays into this swamp of commentary, claims and counter claims, threats, lies and insults has left me feeling as though I was going to be physically ill, and with good cause.

Before proceeding on, I think there is something you should know about me, that is to say about my make-up and character, because it bears upon the way I have approached writing this and some of the inclusions it contains.

One day when I was a boy of about eight, I returned home from elementary school looking  noticeably disheveled. Not surprisingly my mother asked me what had happened. I told her I had been in a fight with another boy, to which she responded, what had been the cause of the fight. As best as I recall I told her that whatever the reason had been, the other boy had real problems, ones that I did not have, and that he always seemed angry or unhappy in class. I wasn’t really sure why we had started to fight, but did not blame him for it because he was obviously so unhappy. That was my mother’s cue to tell me about something I later understood to be ‘empathy.’ She explained in part as the ability to appreciate both sides of an argument, even when you found yourself squarely on one side or the other. Everyone should have a mother like I had. I’ve known and understood this about myself since, and there have been times in my life when this has been a genuine asset. At other times however this trait has resulted in bouts of inner conflict that have literally pulled me in two directions at the same time. This has increasingly been the case for me as I have exhausted every possibility I can think of to understand how I missed so much along the way, and how I’ve come to see things for what they really are – not what I thought, hoped and believed they are.

There are those in ufology who have already come on me for not making a public statement about all this since the brief post I made in early December, at that time letting anyone interested I had disassociated myself from Larry both professionally and personally. The most recent criticism - and it’s a beaut, has come from my friend and colleague Gary Heseltine , a retired police detective in West Yorkshire who, since retiring, has dedicated himself to UFO research and to producing the monthly “UFO Truth Magazine,” and an ongoing series of conferences under the same name. I was and remain proud to have been the publication’s American correspondent and regular columnist during the first year of its publication.

On June 3, 2017 Gary posted the following statement. Allow me to use it as a springboard into the lake of muck we face:

“A Chance Observation:

By chance I was looking at some of the previous issues of UFO Truth Magazine tonight when I happened to come across an article by Peter Robbins in issue 2. I was particularly drawn to one paragraph about his initial relationship with Larry Warren in the 1980s when their collaboration period began. The following paragraph is a direct quote from his article in issue 2 (July/August 2013).

“When Larry Warren, my co-author on the book Left At East Gate, and I began our investigation into the Rendlesham Forest incident in the late 1980's I interviewed and re-interviewed him repeatedly regarding his memories and involvement in the events of December 1980, sometimes to the point of distraction. But he was almost always a good sport about it and put up with my repeated enquiries.”

Thus it now begs the question, how when you've questioned LW 'to the point of distraction' that you could have been 'deceived' which you now claim? At the time of writing this article your collaboration period was at the 24 year point. Yet, just four years on and having written three books, all about LW and his involvement the RFI I might add, you now find you have been 'deceived' by LW for 28 years! It seems to me that you are either the world's worst judge of character or when some ill-judged questions, most of which hold little or no evidential credence in relation to LW's RFI involvement you chose to cut him loose to the gang of wolves with a malicious agenda (i.e. condemn him as a liar, a fraud, a conman first, then claim in the next breath that 'their aim was only to seek the truth!) or when the going got tough you cast him aside in a desperate attempt to save your professional reputation.”

While some may see Gary’s remarks as particularly harsh, I continue to consider him my friend and someone whose commitment to ufology is beyond question. I more than understand his frustration with my silence and likely would feel the same toward him if our positions were reversed. Some years back Gary singled out and championed a particular piece of evidence which I had been attempting to bring to the attention of a wider audience. It is a handwritten letter Larry Warren wrote to his mother in January 1981, about a week after the UFO incidents had transpired. While this has yet to be forensically analyzed, neither Gary nor I are in doubt as to its authenticity. What my friend and colleague seems to have failed to recognize is that simply because the letter is authentic does not mean that everything else Warren has said or written follows in kind. Far from it.

If Gary takes the time to reread it he will observe that at no time does the writer say or even imply that he was personally involved or actually present. Not that he wasn’t, but all it actually establishes is that Larry was aware of fact and some of the particulars involved. We know for a fact that he called his mother from a base phone as his mother’s friend Sue Hickerson was visiting at the time and has confirmed that his mother received that call, though it was cut off almost immediately. Larry also had a witness with him when he made the call, that being Greg Battram, a fellow SP (USAF Security Police member).

But you Gary might have been better served to quote me from a passage that appears on page 212 of Left At East Gate rather than the one you selected. It describes my first impression of my future coauthor who I briefly met in 1984 at a town meeting in Westchester, New York, during the so-called Westchester overflights of large black, unidentified triangular-shaped craft. Larry had just come out under his own name rather than as the witness ‘Art Wallace’ named in the News of the World’s initial coverage of the Rendlesham incident the previous October:

“For a controversial witness, Larry Warren appeared straightforward enough. He seemed to be answering the questions as best he could and didn't put on airs. If what he was saying was true, he had a lot of guts to come forward. If he was relating a delusion, or just plain lying, he certainly was good at it.”

And Gary, he wasn’t just good at it, he was the best. Perhaps an experienced police detective like you might have seen through some part of his self-assured initial account that I missed. But when someone is fully committed to intentionally deceiving you from the start, this is especially problematic, especially for a well-meaning, self-trained investigator inclined to trust someone who was so intensely and self-assuredly committed to their account of things.

You write that I am

“either the world's worst judge of character or when some ill-judged questions, most of which hold little or no evidential credence in relation to LW's RFI involvement you chose to cut him loose to the gang of wolves with a malicious agenda (i.e. condemn him as a liar, a fraud, a conman first, then claim in the next breath that 'their aim was only to seek the truth!) or when the going got tough you cast him aside in a desperate attempt to save your professional reputation.”

First, the questions you refer to are not “ill judged.” They are not and if you take the time to look into them yourself you would find yourself coming to the same damned realizations I’ve been forced to acknowledge. Nor am I “the world’s worst judge of character.” Far from it. However when it came to ultimately falling into line with the now hopelessly intertwined nature of the true/untrue account I continued to encounter in our ongoing interviews, his stare-me-in-the-eyes insistence that he was telling the truth and nothing but the truth finally won me over. And I can tell you for an absolute fact that each member of that “the gang of wolves with a malicious agenda” you refer to started out as a supporter of Larry Warren, proud to know him and in the overwhelming majority of cases proud to call him a friend as well, if only on Facebook. If you dig deeper you will see where their malice really stems from.

Your next assertion, that there is “little or no evidential credence in relation to LW's RFI involvement” is simply wrong my friend.  Take the time to review the particulars like I finally did and you will find that there is evidence in every sense included, even if supplied in part by people whose flat-out hatred of Larry may leave you feeling disgusted. I’ve been where you are now, and for months upon months leading up to writing this. When I finally forced myself to the confirmed facts they had established I had no choice but to change my mind. When you were a detective did you ever decide to ignore potentially important evidence in an investigation simply because the source was in some manner morally objectionable or personally repugnant to you? No need to answer that rhetorical question. I know you well enough to know the answer is no.

As to your writing that I “cast him aside in a desperate attempt to save your professional reputation?” Please.  Regarding Left At East Gate, what remains of what I’ll laughingly call my ‘professional reputation’ does not really matter all that much to me anymore. I know that I may well go down as one of, if not the biggest prat in UFO investigative history, but that’s water under the bridge now and I can only take responsibility for the long list of investigative oversights I am guilty making a quarter century ago and the successful bamboozling I was subjected to year after year. The question is no longer 'what is true about Larry's story', or ‘story,’ as the case may be, and there are many truths that still stand for me. The only question now is what he has lied about and the confirmable evidence that supports the many allegations of deception perpetrated on all of us by him, in our book and otherwise. With respect, I think you have allowed yourself to fall victim to one of Stanton T. Friedman’s central tenants of debunkers, of all things: “Don’t bother me with the facts. My mind's already made up.”

I know you, as well as I’m able, that you see yourself standing up for a wronged if imperfect and troubled witness and friend seemingly under attack from all directions by the “gang of wolves” you’ve referred to, and I can only respect you for that. But be warned. You are being ‘played,’ to use one of Larry’s favorite expressions. I’m sorry to have to tell you that the over past few years some of the comments he’s made about you in his Facebook messages and phone calls to me have been far from flattering. His phone remarks you will have to take my word for, but his written ones would be easy enough to establish with a series of screen grabs, that is if he had not blocked me from his page sometime last month.

When I finally ended our Facebook friendship and in effect our actual friendship on or about January 3rd, I made a point of not blocking him from my page. I have no problem even now with him visiting it whenever he likes. The only thing that has ever mattered to me in case investigation in general and the RFI in specific is the truth, wherever it may take us and whomever it may show in a good or bad light. I’m sure you and I are united in this belief. I think these next few paragraphs serve to illustrate how I came to find myself in the place I’m writing from:

“Larry arrived Friday afternoon, July 3, 1987. Though glad to see him, it was quite clear that I really didn't know whom I had invited to my apartment. Only two things seemed {emphasis mine} certain about Larry Warren -- he had been through something in December of 1980, and he was still very angry about it. What had he been through in England? What effect had it had on his life? What effect did it have on his present state of mind? More, how curious was I to find out? At once both open and guarded, things lay behind things with him.

Whoever he was, he had brought along a pile of reading for me, all of it on Bentwaters. We talked our way through a number of subjects over a great Japanese dinner. The conversation continued late into the night and, next morning over breakfast, picked up where we'd left off. His account of the incident was riveting, never more so than the few times he veered away from giving me a direct answer. My impression {emphasis mine} of him was consistent: I was not being lied to, but he had more to tell. What though, was I to make of the information he was giving me?

Not counting breaks, our first "interview" ran the full weekend. That Sunday afternoon, I finally asked him why he was telling me all this? Larry answered that he was looking for someone to write a book with and thought I might be that person. After hearing me speak in Washington, he'd decided to ask if I was interested.

I did understand that all his cards were not on the table. If I accepted the offer, what exactly would I be agreeing to? After all,  the guy was talking about being a principal in his own book, and that could get touchy. And was an independent co-author with latitude what he really had in mind? What if the trail led somewhere he didn't want it to go? What if I found out he had been wrong about things, or that he'd been lied to, or that he'd lied? The man might even be some kind of Bentwaters "wannabe" -- on base that night but not involved, then telling the stories he'd heard as though they'd happened to him. Any of these possibilities were valid, but I didn't think any of them were likely {emphasis mine}.

I asked the questions I had to and got more encouraging answers than I'd expected. What Larry proposed was simply that he tell his own story, in his own terms. I would be free to chronicle, support, or refute whatever I could about the incidents and his part in them. Though we should stay open to the other's suggestions, each of us would have our own last word on anything we wanted to include. When the book sold, we would split whatever it made.

Larry's offer was worth considering, but there was risk attached. Such a collaboration would be like starting a small business with a stranger; but that was the least of it.

For those of us who make it our business to look into such things, a storm of controversy had already swirled around the Bentwaters incidents for several years. Having one of the witnesses, or alleged witnesses, as co-author was just asking for trouble. Larry couldn't have agreed more. Such a book could take some time to complete, maybe even a year or two. Given the circumstances, could we both stick with it that long?

Another sticking point: I didn't see myself well-suited to the job. Larry should have been looking for a different sort of writer; perhaps one who had actually written a book. If it had been me, I would have tried to enlist a good investigative reporter. What he did not need was a coauthor who also had a UFO incident in his past. I just didn’t think the "coincidence" would wash with a lot of people. But all these objections were subordinate to a larger question: if I agreed, how far was I willing to go for this story? If only a tenth of what he claimed were true...” (LAEG, pages 214-215)

If only I had paid more attention to the doubts that had nagged at me back then.

Jumping to the present, some of you may have already read the article that appeared in the UK tabloid the Mirror, I believe on May 29th You can read it at http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ufo-expert-accuses-co-author-10527844. Reporter John Jeffay obviously made the decision to ignore the specifics and complexities I discussed in the radio interview which sparked the writing of this piece, and which he mined for selective information, this with no interest in actually speaking with me. Then again, why would he have bothered? It was only a ‘UFO story’ and the Mirror is not known for its high journalistic standards. In publishing his well-off-the-mark and highly generalized version of things he insulted both me and Larry. In my case by putting words in my mouth that made it appear that I had “..sparked a war of words after revealing he now believes that former US airman Larry Warren's account of the incident near RAF Bentwaters, Suffolk, in 1980, was "not true."

The story of course hurt Larry more for obvious reasons. Small consolation, but in the interests of accuracy I stated that I am convinced that parts of Larry’s account are not accurate or faithful to the truth. And the Mirror being the Mirror, you should also know that no journalist or reporter by the name of John Jeffay is employed by the Mirror. There is little question that this story was brought to the attention of the Mirror’s editors by someone outside the newspaper’s staff. I can make an educated guess as to who it may have been, but cannot say for sure.

Larry Warren and I first met one-to-one as previously noted on July 3 1987, this at my apartment on West 46th St. in Manhattan. He was living with his first wife in Connecticut at the time. Also as previously noted, he showed up with an assortment of reading material for me at that visit. It included a small assortment of articles that had been published on the UFO incident and his copy of Sky Crash by Suffolk paranormal researcher Brenda Butler, her friend and colleague Dot Street, and Jenny Randles, the best-known of the three and already a prolific writer on the subject of the UFO phenomenon.  

At the time, there had not been very much published on the RFI, at least that I was aware of. What my memory is a little hazy on is whether or not it was at that meeting or during his next foray into New York City that he loaned me copies of some of his assorted military paperwork, all of which he told me he had made copies of during his out-processing from the Air Force, but I am sure that he brought them on one of those two initial visits.

A thought that never occurred to me at the time – or in fact at any time since then, until earlier this year when I finally bothered to actually read some of the findings that had been posted online. Call me naïve, but I just don’t think that way. The paperwork he loaned me was almost entirely Xerox copies, but there were a few originals, which were returned to him several years later. If he (or anyone else) had altered any part of any of them it would amount to a betrayal of the highest order, certainly for me as his co-writer, but more importantly, to any reader who had ever served or was currently serving in the military, American or otherwise. Such an offense is simply not forgivable. I’m sorrier than I can say that I now know this to be the case regarding at least several of these documents, but before damning Larry with such an awful accusation, there is one other alternate theory you need to consider, and consider seriously. Last month Larry was a guest on UK radio host Ben Emlyn-Jones' radio program, on May 29 if I’m correct. His remarks included an assortment of attacks and sleazy suggestions regarding my character and honesty. If you haven’t listened to them you should. I’d intended to respond to all of them here but time has closed in on me have precluded that. I’ll be glad to do so in some future radio interview though. It’s an understatement to say that I did not know him nearly as well as I thought I did. But it seems he did not know me as well as he thought he did either. I think he actually thought that, as his stories began to unravel, I would stick with him because I’d be too embarrassed not to, seeing my professional reputation go down with his ship. He couldn’t have been more wrong:

Excerpt from Larry's Odd Couple Video Statement to me.

“You know you sent me those letters back in October {actually back in October and December} and I was waiting to get a letter through the mail box believe it or not. {reference to an innocent party that has nothing to do with the actual content of this communication. If Larry feels otherwise I invite him to add it to the public record} … So when you tell me 'mail' and you know I am not a computer guy.

So I am waiting for the postman to come, they still have them in England and the post never came, but what you did so because you had a little hissy fit because I didn’t respond to you quick enough, ah life goes on, I have a teenage son and you know they involve a lot of effort when they are at that age. I have a mother in the hospital with dementia, we are always hearing about your family and I love them too, I've got problems in my family like everyone's got problems in their family, mother with dementia which you are well aware of, this that and the other... I don’t make this a public thing, you tend to do a lot of that. It's just not my style! But I'm kinda surprised you sent all this private correspondence but you sent them to everybody before I ever got them, it's almost a blackmail kinda thing. We had that issue back in 88 over the phone bill thing, but we won’t go into that here. My mother sure would, if she had a memory.”

All that talk about letters but not a word in reference to the contents of either. Larry is a master of ‘look over here, not over there,’ and would be more than happy to keep you in the dark as to what those letters actually said, but that is a concession he is no longer entitled to. Larry would have you believe that I “sent them to everybody before I ever got them,” This is nonsense on two counts. When, after three weeks of not hearing back from him after sending him my letter of October 3rd, I wrote asking him what his thoughts were about what I had said, he told me he never received it as he goes on about above. I immediately responded with an extremely easy to see screen grab of it as a screengrab attached to the brief Facebook message it was attached to. But as he refused to acknowledge this, I sent the letter on to two people who he is extremely close to, one at his request as he would be visiting with that person over the coming weekend.

Let me say that I agonized over the contents of that letter and took several weeks to write it. This had followed about five months of escalating tensions between us and in composing my thoughts I consulted with two mutual friends of ours, both of whom appreciated the sensitivity of what I wanted to say to him. Both advised me to do so with a maximum of kindness and understanding, and to the greatest degree possible, to be brief in doing so. I took the first two parts of their advice to heart, but ‘brief’ was a challenge I was unable to live up to. What follows is that letter. The only edits I have made in references to completely innocent parties, an edit of something I had been incorrect about regarding one of Larry’s ‘enemies,’ then corrected and acknowledged in the second letter I sent. He is welcome to go public with any of what I have not included if he feels that I have in any way done so to hide or otherwise deceive you about the contents of this communication. Otherwise this is what I had to say:

Dear Larry,

As you know, last night was the Jewish new year’s eve, Rosh Hashonah. I had no plan or intention of adding any drama in sending it on the first day of the new-year. That’s just how long it took to write, just the way it worked out. But you know what? It is the first day of the new-year, more than appropriate for me to begin this with some special Rosh Hashonah thoughts for you. This holiday calls on us to examine our lives, our role in society, and our relations with our neighbors. A time that we reflect on what is most important to us. {Note to readers: While Larry is not Jewish, I am, and during our long friendship, and through other Jewish friends has developed a genuine knowledge about this ancient religion and its beliefs.}

Rosh Hashonah is a time for remembrance. Remembering better, warmer days. Remembering our successes and failures. We remember the challenges we faced in being a friend, family member, co-worker, parent, neighbor and/or public figure. We remember people we once loved but who live no more. Rosh Hashonah is at once a day to take stock of the past and a chance to dream of a new beginning. We remember our achievements, our victories and our generous actions to others, large and small. We reflect on our moments of weakness, the times we could have, should have done better. The times we should have tried harder and didn’t. The times we could have acted with more compassion but didn’t. The things we regret having done. … And it’s done so in a way that doesn’t shame, berate or condemn. Instead, we acknowledge our humanness. We appreciate that we all have to grapple with our own personal struggles.

At Rosh Hashonah we are called upon to perform acts of compassion, kindness, and justice every day. We come face-to-face with our innermost nature. We ask ourselves if we have acted honorably and honestly in our dealings with others. We look back on episodes we have come to regret. We understand that we cannot change the world and we cannot change others until we understand and forgive ourselves, for all those things we need forgiving on. But this day is not about the past. What is done is done. Rosh Hashonah is a time to forgive ourselves and others, amend our wrongdoings where possible, then move on. I’m going to try and keep all of this in mind as I give this letter a final read-through.

Congratulations again on your award from Gary. It’s just a shame it took so long for a group or conference to so acknowledge you.

Yes, I again ignored your most recent Skype request. The reason, I still didn’t want to talk to you. The reason I don’t want to talk to you, because you lied to me, to my face in Glasgow, and in FB messages beforehand. You may consider them minor lies, but they were major to me, in fact they were life-changing. Early in June, and for a number of reasons having to do with you, I began thinking more and more about the future of our friendship and professional relationship, both of which are in real trouble as far as I’m concerned. As such, we need to get a few things understood between us. Having to write this up has been even less enjoyable than being compelled to write Deliberate Deception or Halt In Woodbridge. I have repeatedly put off doing so because frankly I hate the time I must spend on it because I hate the way it feels. I know that 29 years of ingrained habit and behavior have something to do with it, as does a complex history of friendship and antagonisms, and a long instilled sense of loyalty. As the ‘X-Files’ poster says, I want to believe, and as your coauthor, co-speaker and limited business partner, I wanted to believe that you were 100% honest with me in matters relating to us. Increasingly these past few months I have been struggling to resolve, if resolution were even possible, my growing number of differences with you, but it’s almost like you have gone out of your way to make this all as difficult as possible for me, if not impossible.

Our friendship was built on decades of working together through thick and thin, during which time I thought we more than earned each other’s respect. But as far as I’m concerned your respect for me went out the window this summer, a most troubling part being that you don’t even seem to realize it. I am really worried about you. You will always have my respect for the courage, commitment, and single-minded dedication you’ve shown in bringing the RFI to public attention. And while I love you my friend, I do not even like the person at least part of you seems to have become, that being the part who lies to his friends, fakes things, threatens violence and extreme violence, and blames others for events and circumstances they brought on themselves or were otherwise you responsible for. {Note: The final part of the last sentence was meant to have read, “…and blames others for events and circumstances that you brought on yourself or were otherwise responsible for.” My tiredness was showing here.}

As you know, I took your threatening, ultra-paranoid ultimatum of July 14 as seriously as a heart attack. Yes, I know that you wish you had never sent it, but you did and it still has me fuming. If I’d have sent it to you, I think you’d feel the way I do, “to be honest it aintv very good mate ! im not happy nor is my family with youre folks tell john mooore to piss off

DONT EVEN CONTACT ME AGAIN..........................................PETER I MEAN IT PISS OFF !

ATRE YOU RVEN ALIVE ?

pete ......you let me die.................for yer own ends.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

who knows what that was ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,but pete the only contact you n me will have is with lawyers..........dont send me shit and stop showim MY shit ! we are OVER

After all I’ve done for you and all we have been through together, that you would go off on me like this, that you would dare accuse me of such things still amazes me. I never did anything to deserve this kind of treatment from you and I’m certainly not going to put myself in the position where you can ever pull anything like that on me again. The level your normally violent temper has risen to, your often completely irrational paranoia toward me and others, these things never really made sense to me except as an indication of some deeper problems. Whatever their causes may be, I am tired of dealing with them and do not want to have to ever again.

The thing that seems to have set you off on your July 14 rant was imagining, and I stress the word “imagining” here, that John and I were somehow out to get you or to fuck you over in the making of the documentary he had intended to produce, for what purpose or what aim I have no idea. This while I’d specifically included the following along with the link I sent to you: “Just to give you an idea of what he's thinking in terms of, check out the link that follows. Its NOT footage or stills he'll necessarily be using, but just a working idea of the format, 'feeling,' content, etc he's interested in using to focus on the LAEG story” (italics mine). Larry, the one thing John wanted more than anything was simply to hear from you. To hear something, anything from you. A self-motivated action indicating if you still had a genuine, actual interest in committing to a project he considered the most important of his professional career. John and I were sure committed to it. But as has happened with us in past, I was again obligated to act as go-between because you do not use email. You’ve then complained to me about feeling left out, cut out, not being consulted on and/or not being kept up-to-date about.

FYI John has had nothing but respect and admiration for you from the first time he read Left At East Gate some years back up until last month when you couldn’t be bothered to send him a note, see him, or even speak to him while visiting his hometown. There is no question in my mind that this extremely talented and dedicated man would have raised the substantial amount of money necessary with the Canadian government likely underwriting part of the production. Early this year I spent hours and hours going through every single box of LAEG-related material I’d collected in 29 years, including copies of every single audiotape, still photo, VHS tape, DVD of film, TV, conference, documentary or self-shot footage I had that we appeared in, all for John to take home, review, digitally transfer where necessary, then - with our approval - include clips from in his film. The attention he paid to each piece of material he went thru or filmed during the time he spent here in February was impressive to say the least and he departed for Toronto with both of us excited and optimistic about this once-in-a-lifetime project.

In the event you’ve forgotten, early last year before we decided to drop John’s offer to pursue Peter B’s feature film option (and don’t we wish we hadn’t), John sent us a draft for a contract. Bob Freedman reviewed it in detail, communicated with John about it, and felt it was definitely in our interests to move forward on. You were sent copies of all communications between them, them and me, and of course a copy of the contract draft itself. I also sent you a copy of the detailed working outline for the documentary that John and I had put together, this subject to any changes, adjustments, additions, ideas or whatever else that you wanted to make. The draft made clear that we would have each been paid for our participation in the project. When you asked me for John’s contact information just before you and Dennis departed for Toronto (or once you were there? I forget) I thought, maybe there was still a chance you were going to connect with him and pull this out of the fire. All you had to do was ask Sid to email him for his phone number, but you chose to let it slide, and with it, what could have been a feature documentary every bit as good as ‘Travis’ if not better. You and your paranoia were responsible for torpedoing this great project and not John or me. All I can add is that it’s a damn shame.

In past when I’ve asked what you thought my ‘agenda’ was, you’ve always gone quiet. You said in a July message that I never really ‘got you,’ and I guess that’s proved to be something of an understatement. I did ‘get’ some of you, but looking back I don’t seem to have been nearly as good an investigator as I thought I was a quarter century ago. But I have always had ‘an agenda.’ Corny as it may sound, it has always been to follow the evidence wherever it leads you, then to tell the truth about it as best I’m able. This even when evidence takes you to places you would rather not go. It’s the reason I choose to correct my errors in public, be they mistakes I discovered after the fact or ones brought to my attention by others. Maybe most important, there has never been a clause excluding truths that might prove embarrassing to me, or for that matter, to you, and that’s what this has all come down to.

I want to keep what I have to say as focused as I can. I have come to a point in my life where I no longer have any interest in researching, investigating or otherwise actively studying that thing alternatively known as the Woodbridge Lights, the RAF Bentwaters incident, or the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident. I will not doubt be compelled to talk about aspects of RFI now and again, return to Deliberate Deception and Halt In Woodbridge again, especially now that Charles Halt’s book is out or about to be published, but otherwise have no desire whatsoever to wade back out into RFI research and investigation. And while my career in UFO studies may take a hit as a result, I could care less. There are other areas of UFO studies I’m involved in or that interest me. More important, I want to get on with a life beyond Bentwaters. To some degree at least I have forced myself to follow the general dialogue, various attacks and counter-attacks, assorted posts as well as parts of ‘Left Out of east Gate’ etc. It’s just that ‘dialogue,’ your part as well as the voices of assorted others, has succeeded in all but killing the interest I had had in the subject for so long. But first I gear up for one more round of RFI investigative work, once again dedicated to substantiating my coauthor’s claims if at all possible.

As you know I specifically zeroed in one of the photos I found on Sacha’s website, the one purporting to be of you and John Lennon.

(Continued in Part Two)