Fact, Fiction, and Flying Saucers
by Stanton T. Friedman & Kathleen Marden
New Page Books, Career Press, 2016, trade
Appendix, notes, bibliography, bw pictures throughout
288pp, $U.S. 16.99, ISBN: 978-1-63265-065-8
A Review by Gene Stewart
The Truth Behind the Misinformation, Distortion, and Derision by Debunkers, Government Agencies, and Conspiracy Conmen, is the subtitle and the focus of this excellent book.
If you’ve ever wondered why anyone bothers denying the gathering of information, the keeping of files, or the investigation of UFOs; if you’ve ever wondered why those files that don’t exist crop up almost entirely redacted when pried loose by using the Freedom of Information Act properly; if you’ve ever wondered why some are so vociferous about halting even the discussion of UFOs, let alone allowing a fair hearing of evidence; if you’ve ever wondered why some people work so hard to keep anyone from dealing with a topic these same pseudo-debunkers label nonsense, this is the best book so far to focus on such questions.
We learn that Philip J. Klass, heir apparent to Richard Condon, was himself a pathological pseudo-debunker who never genuinely investigated anything but who set himself up as the go-to authority when the media needed a so-called skeptic to allegedly balance the presentation of UFO claims. He was glad to lie and did so freely. Worse, he lied about people in back-channel communications and managed to destroy a few careers and even some lives. He drove at least one person to suicide. His lies cost some security clearances.
Others like him came along, namely the likes of Paul Kurtz, founder of CSICOP and the mordantly ironic publication THE SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, which was anything but skeptical; Joe Nickell, English major who has set himself up as the new Phil Klass, who had none to pass on; and Michael Shermer, a wann-be Paul Kurtz Jr. who suffers from incipient half-truth and a weak chin when it comes to allowing criticism of his limp methods.
There are more but those are the ones that stick up and ooze pus most often these days.
Wearing a mask of scientific detachment, fair play, and honest assessment of evidence, usually called ‘claims’ in a sneer of contempt, these pseudo-skeptics follow an agenda of shutting down any interest in, inquiry into, or discussion of not only UFOs but of anything paranormal. In short, they toe the Kurtz’s Krazy Krusaders’s party line of atheistic materialism, which Kurtz got from his being enamored of Communism, of all the failed things to be fixated upon.
We learn that Klass, perhaps the model for all skeptibunkers, was pathological. A martinet narcissist, he simply insisted he knew better than anyone else and made it all up as he went along. Yes, he’d have made a perfect Trump stand-in.
We also learn that, through searches of documents, journals, and other papers, some long thought lost, it is demonstrated that Klass and many another debunker was in the employ of CIA, NSA, NRO, the Pentagon, and other federal agencies. Useful idiots, some, like Klass, were more than happy to do it for free most of the time, but most were paid either in money or other ways. Prestige and publication in many of the controlled outlets was a common kick-back for favors rendered.
Even prominent scientists toed the line by dismissing UFO sightings as unworthy of serious investigation. They did so knowing that to do otherwise risked loss of reputation, status, and career. Funding has been pulled, tenure threatened, (see John Mack’s experiences at Harvard when he took abduction experience seriously, being a dedicated, award-winning psychiatrist), and projects ended or handed to others at the mere mention of a scientist or academic taking UFO’s at all seriously.
Jack Casher at the University of Nebraska, Omaha campus, physics professor emeritus, is among the very few to have bothered looking into UFO reports seriously, and what he found has caused him to be relegated to fringe TV shows rather than inclusion in serious scientific papers or discussion forums.
Truisms dominate. “The distances are too far and it takes too long,” is a popular catch-phrase. Fact is, there are thousands of planets around stars inside 100 light years of Earth. Postulating advanced technology, that’s in our back yard. We can even reach them, should we choose to spend the money. We currently have the technology to do so, as a recent Stephen Hawking / Elon Musk project to send nano-bots in a scattershot outward from Earth makes clear.
Yes, there were investigations, Project Blue Book being the best-known. Thing is, it covered only open-source reports that could be easily dismissed. Genuinely puzzling reports were handled in a different, top secret channel we never knew about. To this day that channel of information flow is blocked to public scrutiny. You’d need both a Top Secret: Codeword clearance and a Need To Know. Try getting that, even if you’re the President.
So why the clamp-down? To what end? It costs millions, perhaps billions, to maintain the fiction that there is no interest in UFOs among our official agencies. Given the profit-über-alles stance our world takes, it would be remiss were we to avoid concluding they must find the expense worthwhile.
Are facts being covered up? Unquestionably so.
What does this mean?
Some push for Full Disclosure, including current candidate for the Presidency Hillary Clinton. She’s promised to let us all in on what ever UFO secrets are being kept. Yet, as I noted in a prior paragraph, even a President lacks proper clearance. The cult of secrecy sneers at mere Presidents or other VIPs.
Further, it seems likely disclosure will reveal only that there is no such thing as The Government. It’s a loosely-associated-by-necessity group of autonomous gangs all vying for as much money and power as possible. This means The Government doesn’t know what it knows, and likely that amounts to nought. There may be a small group, federal or corporate, or both, who knows some interesting, even jaw-dropping things, but We the People are unlikely to be taken into their confidence when they can use the power of their information to herd us.
This is the sad fact: Information is power, and power must be used or it’s lost or stolen. Bet on the fact that, if there are secrets, they work against us, either via positive actions or by crimes of omission.
We know many UFO fact- and evidence-gathering groups have been infiltrated, spied upon, intimidated, (yes, MIB are real), and destroyed by sabotage from within. Making a UFO group look crazy takes only a few planted stories supplied by covert operatives pretending to be impassioned whacked-out rubes. It’s a tried-and-true method for discrediting people, to make them look either crazy or associated with crazy.
Yes, I know, Trump has his Trumpers, who flock to crazy, but that’s another matter entirely. Except to say that linking any claim to Trumpers automatically tends to discredit it, doesn’t it? See how easy?
Then there are the ones who promulgate intricate conspiracy. Many are deploying disinformation to snare unwary investigators. The slightest hint can lead people into first a maze, then into a Wonderland of lies, deceit, half-truths, and insanity. Some are nuts, like Alex Jones or Matt Drudge. Some are senile and nuts, like Pat Robertson. Some are, however, both anonymous and perfectly sane, working for organized groups seeking to crush dissent when it comes in the form of asking inconvenient questions about potentially earth-shaking things. This is disinformation, a kind of propaganda, and as William Colby, erstwhile head of CIA 1973-1976, said, “The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media”, first cited in 2000, four years after his death, in a book by David McGowan. Debunkers claim McGowan made the quotation up, but then, the would.
An analysis of the statement breaks down into Colby indicating that CIA can get anyone at almost any level of media to play ball on this or that story, giving it what ever spin is deemed necessary for National Security. Ah, now there’s a phrase with which to conjure.
He’s not saying the CIA ‘runs the news’ but merely almost all players in media will go along for the good of National Security, if asked. If leaned on. If intimidated and threatened. And if they won’t, easy enough to give them the Flake treatment and make them seem off-the-beam if not fully crazy. Easy enough to lead the audience into shadowy doubt, into disbelieving certain things because, well, they’re CRAZY ideas, aren’t they? Everyone says so.
Friedman and Marden have written a clear, concise overview of the matters mentioned in the book’s subtitle. Recommended if you are curious about why there always seems to be such a fuss about people merely asking questions, merely talking about certain things, merely evincing interest.
If you wonder why your thinking is curtailed, managed, and controlled, this is a good book to start with in your reading program toward freeing yourself.
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