X-Zone Broadcast Network - Mark O'Connell

Mark O’Connell, author of The Close Encounters Man, a biography of J. Allen Hynek, was this week’s guest. Although we were going to talk about J. Allen Hynek and his investigations during the years of Project Blue Book, we started with my predictions about who would end up on the Iron Throne. Yes, we took a dive into

Mark O'Connell

the pool of Game of Thrones, and since I thought I had figured out the ending, I wanted a record of that. You can listen to the show (which was about much more than GoT here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17873376

We did talk about the way Hynek had ended up as the Air Force consultant on UFOs, and how that compared to the way it had been presented in the History series. (And I didn’t even mention that the lead actor, Aidan Gillen, had played Littlefinger in GoT.) Mark provided some interesting insight into how and why Hynek ended up doing what he did.

One of the cases that we discussed was the Chiles-Whitted sighting. I was surprised that Mark thought of as a good case. I believe that it is explained by a bolide, given what we have learned in the last fifty years. You can read my analysis here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/01/chiles-and-whitted-revisited.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/12/history-channel-project-blue-book-and.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/01/chileswhitted-and-skepticism.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/04/meteorite-men-and-ufos.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/03/chiles-whitted-turbulence-and-ed-ruppelt.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/03/chasing-footnotes-chiles-whitted-cigar.html

We did go off line later to talk about it some more. Mark had done additional research and still believes it to be a good case. In this, he agrees with Jerry Clark, who will be on next week’s show. Mark thought that the ground sighting, if linked to Chiles-Whitted argued against a bolide. I’m just not convinced that the sightings should be linked, but my arguments are laid out in the above links.

We also talked about some of Hynek’s favorite cases which included the Lonnie Zamora landing in 1964 and the Coyne helicopter case in 1973 (which was not part of the Blue Book investigation). I have covered both of these on the blog and in books I have written. We both agreed that these were good cases. For those who want more on Coyne, you can find it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/06/october-181973-coyne-helicopter-case.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-coyne-helicopter-ufo-case.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-i-chase-footnotes-coyne-edition.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/05/chasing-footnotes-coyne-edition.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-coyne-helicopter-encounter-explained.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-library-fairy-coyne-edition.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/05/chasing-footnotes-coyne-encounter-update.html

We closed the show talking about who makes the best witnesses. That evolved into a discussion Michigan swamp gas fiasco and who was the blame for it. The problem was the Air Force need to bury the incident quickly and Hynek caught the flak for the lousy answers. The Air Force officers were afraid that the national attention would create more problems for their investigation in Michigan in particular and UFOs in general. Turned out that the sightings resulted in Congressional interest and eventually lead to the demise of Blue Book.

Next up is Jerome (Jerry) Clark, who had just published the third edition of his massive UFO Encyclopedia. For the serious researcher, this is a must have addition to any library. The Encyclopedia is a comprehensive analysis of all aspects of the UFO phenomena. As always, if anyone had questions for Jerry, send them to the comments section here and I’ll try to get them asked during the show.