Best Evidence - The Rendlesham UFO case

Here is the segment from my film, Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings, which profiles the 1980 Rendlesham UFO case.



What happened at Rendlesham almost three decades ago? Some people are convinced that it was an encounter with aliens from outer space. Others maintain that it was a psychological warfare exercise. And a few, against all evidence to the contrary, still argue that nothing much happened at all, except for some over-excited American military personnel letting their imaginations run wild.

I don't know what the answer is - I just know that, for me at least, the explanation has nothing to do with misidentified lighthouses and excessive partying, or a practical joke. People took it seriously back then, and the case should continue to be taken seriously now, as one of the best, and still unexplained, UFO encounters in human history. That doesn't mean that Colonel Halt and his men met aliens from Zeta Reticuli, or anywhere else, but I think it's pretty clear that something out of the oridinary happened to them, and that there has been no definitive answer offered for what it was that fits all of the facts of the case.

That kind of stance angers alien believers and disbelievers alike - which is usually a pretty good sign that it's the proper way to look at things.

Paul Kimball

Dick Hall passes away...

This is a sad day for me. Earlier, I received news that my good friend, Dick Hall, had passed away from cancer. Dick was a man whom I greatly respected, both as a person and as a serious UFO researcher. Indeed, when I was interviewed by Stuart Miller for UFO Review #17 a couple of years ago, Stuart, tongue firmly planted in cheek, chose as the title for the story: "I Like Dick".

Dick was an icon of serious UFO research, from his days with NICAP to his seminal works, The UFO Evidence, Vols. I and II. He was a rare voice of reason in a field full of charlatans, huxters, and died-in-the-wool true believers.

Dick had grown increasingly disenchanted with the UFO research community in recent years, and I don't blame him. In his heyday, he knew men like J. Allen Hynek, and James McDonald - now UFO research is the domain primarily of people like Steven Greer, and Steven Bassett. The likes of Dick Hall are few and far between these days, and UFO research is worse off because of it.

Dick hated UFO documentaries, and usually refused requests to be interviewed, so I was honoured when he agreed to be interviewed for my last UFO film, Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings. One or two of his clips made it into the film, but the rest remains in my tape archives - one of these days I'll make the time to edit it together and put it up on YouTube, so people can see and hear a real UFO researcher. Here is an outtake from Best Evidence that includes a clip of Dick talking about the Malmstrom missile base case:



The last few years were not kind to Dick, who was a victim of the financial disasters wrought by the Bush administration. Driven into poverty, he was forced to sell many of his prized UFO-related possessions. I was shocked when I went to interview him in Washington, D.C., to see the conditions in which he lived. I never pay interviewees, but I made sure Dick was an exception (we called it a "consulting fee").

Dick Hall was a giant in the world of serious UFO reseach, but more important than that, he was an honourable and decent person in a world with far too few such people. He will be sorely missed, even as his work lives on, and continues to inspire those of us who think there is something interesting about the UFO enigma, and that it's worth studying seriously.

Rest in peace, Dick.

Paul Kimball

The MJ-12 Brouhaha

At the moment controversy is raging within the "hallowed halls of ufology" about MJ-12.

"What," you ask. "MJ-12. I thought that was a dead fish".

Indeed. MJ-12 itself is a dead fish. It was a scam. Whether it was for disinformation purposes or financial gain is a secondary matter, as far as I'm concerned. Except for a few die-hard defenders (Stan Friedman foremost among them), everybody else has come to that conclusion some time ago, and for the most part moved on.

No, the controversy is not about MJ-12 itself, really, but rather about a paper written by Brad Sparks and Barry Greenwood, and presented at the recent MUFON Symposium. I had an advance peek at the paper weeks before the Symposium courtesy of Brad, and was going to provide some editorial input (mostly re: spelling, grammar, and overall construction, which it badly needed at that stage), but work and life got in the way, and I never got a chance to send back my suggestions, which Brad had asked for (putting the boots to any assertion that Brad can't take constructive criticism).

Anyway, the controversy, which is unedifying for all concerned, is between who wrote what, and when, and how much, and... well, you get the picture. Stuart Miller sums it all up nicely here.

Now, Brad is my friend, and was instrumental in making Best Evidence a well-received film, so I accept his account of how it all went down. Besides, I can't see what the point of all the argument is anyway. It is, in my opinion, a waste of time and energy.

With one exception.

As Stuart notes, Dick Hall has critiqued Brad for making reference to ongoing Roswell research, and big revelations on the horizon, without providing any specifics. Worse, Brad slams other researchers for their lousy methodology (fair game), but does so by comparing it with his own, which we can't check, because Brad hasn't published anything yet.

Dick is right, Brad - and I say this as a friend who has a great deal of respect for you and your work over the years. It is decidedly un-academic to use vague references to ongoing research that has not been made public to support your MJ-12 contentions, or anything else, including criticism of other researchers. If someone else tried this in a different context, I suspect that Brad would be one of the first people to go after them, and rightly so. This was the one part of Brad and Barry's MJ-12 paper that I immediately highlighted in yellow, with a couple of exclamation marks, and meant to send Brad a note saying I thought it was a bad, bad idea, but I never got around to it.

The unfortunate thing is that all of this petty to-and-froing has taken attention away from the real story, which was a paper that, by and large, was an excellent examination of the hows and whys of the MJ-12 fiasco, and should have been the final nail (if one was really needed) in the MJ-12 coffin.

Paul Kimball

Best Evidence - The 1980 Rendlesham Forest Case

Some clips from interviews I conducted for the 1980 Rendlesham Forest case for "Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Cases", which premieres on Space in Canada on May 10, 2007.

Included are UFO Review publisher Stuart Miller, UFO researcher / author / lecturer Stan Friedman, former UK Ministry of Defence UFO investigator Nick Pope, and UFO researcher / author Richard Hall.

And yes, Rendlesham is somewhere in the Top 10.

"Where?" you ask.

You'll have to watch the film to find out!

Paul Kimball