Goose and Gander

A fairly good rule of thumb to live by can be found in the old aphorism "what's good for the goose is good for the gander." In short, what you would ask others to do you should be willing to do yourself, and if not, then don't expect it of others. That would be hypocritical.

Which brings us, yet again, to Roswell "researcher" Kevin Randle.

In his most recent blog posting, titled Rumor Control, Randle offers this gem:

There is a rumor circulating that now I have been retired from the military for five years, I am released from my obligations to protect classified material to which I might have been exposed. There are stories suggesting I will now be able to talk about experiences at Wright-Patterson and seeing the alien bodies (and yes, I have sometimes joked about this). These rumors are not true. Material that is classified as Top Secret is considered classified until properly downgraded and anything that I learned would still be classified. As one general told me so long ago, 'I don’t know what is still classified and what is not and I’m not going to talk to you.'

So... I’m not about to make some great revelation about the things I learned in the military.

So let's get this straight (not always an easy task when it comes to Randle): what he's saying is that even if he had been told something about UFOs whilst in the military (and I suppose we just have to take his word for it that he doesn't know anything, even though, as he said, he has "joked" in the past that he did), or seen something, he would keep it secret. Heck - let's forget UFOs: maybe he knows stuff, given that he was an intelligence officer, that some of us might think the public has a right to know, a la Snowden. Maybe he knows something about war crimes in Iraq, where he served. We'll never know, because he'll never tell.

And that's fine... except for the fact that Randle has built his ufological career encouraging other former military and intelligence personnel to come forward and blab it all when it comes to UFOs and Roswell (er... so long as they say what he wants to hear), and he celebrates those who do as the good guys whilst he has vilified those who don't, and the US government in general, for doing exactly what he himself says he will do with his secrets.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking. But as my friend Gilles Fernandez is wont to say: "that's ufology!"

Paul Kimball