This Pittsburgh newspaper article about Roswell comes from 1997. You might recognize the names - they haven't really changed in decades (with the exception of poor Karl Pflock, who passed away several years ago from ALS).
Kevin Randle answers the question of whether he thinks that there are any other good UFO cases besides Roswell in this excerpt from an interview I conducted with him in September, 2001. His ultimate conclusion might surprise some people - that the space aliens were here but seem to have left, a position that was also held by the late Karl Pflock.
Kevin Randle and I have been sniping at each other since we fell out in the fall of 2013. I do it directly, and he tends to do it by allowing people like Anthony Bragalia to publish columns at Randle's blog bashing me. Two sides of the same coin.
Well, it ends here, at least for my part. I did what I did, and I said what I said. Would I change it now if I could? Probably, but only because none of this paranormal stuff is really important to me to the point where I want to get enmeshed in feuds. I have a happy life that has nothing to do with all of these interpersonal squabbles about and within a subject that only the tiniest fraction of the population care about.
Besides, my original criticism of Randle was for mistakes he was making and half-truths that he was telling. I believe I was right, and Randle disputes that... but here's the thing - I've done the exact same things. I've made plenty of mistakes (including an entire feature film that was an unmitigated disaster), and I've also been less than completely honest at times. Who hasn't? So time to bury the hatchet, at least from my end, in my own way - I'll give Kevin the last word, traveling back in time to an interview I did with him in 2005 wherein I asked him about the media, which is at least in part what I do for a living. Here is his answer.
Randle isn't the anti-Christ, and neither am I. We're no more or less than two flawed human beings, making our way through this life as best we can... just like everyone else.
From my friend Jose Antonio Caravaca, who is part of the group of skeptical researchers looking into the Roswell slides. It sums things up nicely. From left to right, Bragalia, Randle, Carey and Schmitt.
Breaking news - I was just sent a super-duper advance look at the next trailer for the Dream Team's My 5th "Roswell Slides" release in Mexico City. What make this interesting is that all of the members are in it.
UFO researcher / author Kevin Randle (The Abduction Enigma, The Government UFO Files, Case MJ-12, The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell) discusses the cattle mutilation phenomenon, which he investigated in the 1970s for APRO.
Having looked into the cattle mutilation stories myself several years ago, I agree with pretty much everything Randle says here. The more interesting take-away for me from all of this is that most of what Randle says about cattle mutilation investigations, and investigators, is equally applicable to every other type of ufological investigation, whether it be "alien abductions" or crop circles... or Randle's own bread and butter, crashed flying saucers. His great failing is the blind spot that he has always had when it comes to that latter subject.
But as Karl Pflock always said, and it is a sentiment that Randle ironically echoes in this episode - belief can be a powerful thing.
Kevin Randle (co-author of The Abduction Enigma) outlines his views on the "alien abduction" phenomenon in this short clip from an interview I conducted with him in 2001.
In this excerpt from an interview I conducted with him in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in September 2001, UFO researcher Kevin Randle responds to the assertion by anthropologist Dr. Benson Saler that ufologists have inserted themselves into the Roswell story and therefore become as much a part of the story as the witnesses themselves.
In this 2001 interview I conducted with UFO researcher Kevin Randle, he outlines why he thinks that the explanation offered by the USAF for the 1947 Roswell Incident - Project Mogul - does not fit the facts.
As part of a more comprehensive film project, I'll be spending the next couple of weeks going through all the tapes of UFO-related interviews I've shot over the years (well over 50 hours worth). The end result will be a series of more complete releases elsewhere, but I'll post a few clips here along the way. Here's one from 2001, featuring Kevin Randle talking about the UFO Cover-up.
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
Kevin Randle offers his take on the recent "Dream Team" imbroglio in a blog post that proves to me at least that he is as slippery as an eel and has the ethical compass of a kumquat. This is the opinion I have formed based on my own interactions with him, and his public statements and actions in contrast to his private ones. Others may well come to a different conclusion (it's a free country, after all), but in my opinion I was mistaken to ever trust him, or to believe that he was genuinely interested in the truth about Roswell. Mea culpa.
And I will remind people reading this who go to read Randle's non-mea culpa, where he bemoans my bringing up Don Schmitt's proven record of lying about a wide range of things in the past, that in the already published e-mail to me Randle wrote:
My dilemma, then, is how to tell Tom that I'm now out. I hung in there with the unilateral decision to invite in Schmitt, even given his history of lying (which, BTW, continues in some arenas, and Schmitt's grab for the spotlight to the exclusion of all others).
And yet here we have Randle in his "Death of a Dream" post chastising me for focusing on poor Don Schmitt when in fact he was doing the same thing in his e-mails to me. Sadly, he is more worried about hurting the feelings of a man he says is still lying to him than he is about calling a spade a spade and advancing the truth. As Lance Moody wrote in a comment at the UFO Iconoclasts blog:
The latest revelations show that Kevin made the following decision about Don Schmitt:
1. I know you were a liar.
2. I still think you are a liar because you are lying still.
3. You'll do fine for our Roswell Dream Team as we search for the truth.
Precisely so. Of course, the real issue goes far beyond just Schmitt. It involves the credibility of the entire "Dream Team" investigation, and in particular the now notorious slides that are allegedly from 1947 and show alien bodies (if you believe Anothony Bragalia). Randle claims to have been out of the loop on it all, despite appearances to the contrary based on the e-mails he sent me. Indeed, at the start of his non-mea culpa, Randle writes:
I freely admit that it appears from those emails that I was involved but the reality is that I wasn’t even completely in the loop.
Well, judge for yourself just how much Randle knew, and whether or not he was "out of the loop" (and recall that in his previously published e-mail he stated that he had made his own inquiries, which to any reasonable person must mean he conducted an "investigation"). This is the text of the second e-mail he sent me, on September 6:
I got to looking at the documentation that had been given to me, and I asked how they had determined that the slides had been exposed in 1947. Was it chemical analysis? Was it some sort of measurement? How did they know?
I got back an email that explained some things that would happen to authenticate the slides which confused me so I asked additional questions. The testing HAS NOT been done. The document sent to me was a "proposed way to issue the statement." The date was based on the codes on the film, which I had said to anyone who would listen meant nothing because anyone familiar with the Alien Autopsy would know the codes. So, they hadn't determined with the slides had been exposed other than the film had been manufactured in 1947 or 1927 or 1967.
Now the kicker. The man who owns the slides today has approached Kodak to make the tests, but we all know how that went with the Alien Autopsy. The experts can supposedly tell when the slides were exposed (though I wouldn't put much faith in that) and based on the chemical analysis should be able to pin down the date of manufacture rather than have a forty year window and should be able to tell something about when the slides were processed, again based on the chemical analysis. I mention this not as an alibi but so you know (as I know) that it might be possible to determine some of these things.
The problems... well, as you note, as do I, there is NO chain of custody. I'm told that they believe they know who took the pictures originally, but he's dead, as is his wife and just about everyone who ever knew him... and that is a guess as to him having taken them. He could have been given them by something else. There is no way to know this.
Oh, yes, I almost forgot... there is no indication where the pictures were taken. It was a morgue of some kind but when and where doesn't seem to be in the cards. There are a couple of signs in the pictures, but they are angled and impossible to read... another clue you say? Of course. (Clue to a hoax, if I have to clarify).
I suspect the reason this has been bouncing around for more than two years is because it is a hoax of some kind. If the slides were authentic, I suspect we'd have a better chain of custody and I suspect the guy who had them would have approached someone with the ability to authenticate them and find him some big dough for them because, if authentic, how much would they be worth? Authentic slides of alien creatures... can you say "Millions."
So, yes, I'm thoroughly disgusted. I believe, at this point, the investigation is dead because it is not going anywhere and is badly tainted by the nun's diary story (thanks to Don Schmitt who has told me for two years that he knew where the diaries were but we haven't advanced on that front and I learned the original source who claimed to be a Special Forces officer was neither Special Forces not an officer). While the Ramey memo might provide some interesting results, I really hold no hope for that either.
I believe, at this point, it is time to strike the flag and move onto other things... sad to say.
This was what I knew when I read Randle's statement to the Examiner that he had never seen the slides (true) and had not participated in their investigation (untrue). Now he tries to go even further and claim that he was "out of the loop." I didn't sandbag Randle - I only released the information when I realized he was not going to be truthful about either his knowledge of the slides nor his role in their investigation, and he was not going to honour his commitment to me that he would withdraw from the "Dream Team" as I had implored him to do in order to salvage his reputation. No matter how much Randle tries to shift the issues in a classic public relations spin, the self-proclaimed "Dream Team" has imploded not because of malfeasance or betrayal by me or Rich Reynolds or Nick Redfern or anyone else who merely told the truth, but because of self-inflicted wounds motivated by a combination of greed, ego, and believerism. People will have to judge for themselves what to make of Kevin Randle based on this entire episode, but for me the answer is clear. We already knew that you couldn't trust Donald Schmitt; sadly, in my opinion the same now applies to Kevin Randle as well.
This clip from the Larry King Show in 1997 is worth watching for those who want to see how little has really changed when it comes to Roswell. Of course Kevin Randle still holds the view that an alien spacecraft crashed, despite watching just about every witness he was promoting in 1997 turn out to be compromised in some way or another (usually by not telling the truth), but that's like watching a prospector who has been digging for gold at the same site for years keep trudging out every day in the hope that his luck will turn around.
My favourite part of the tete-a-tete comes at the beginning, where Klass correctly points out Randle's very selective quotation from the famous Twining letter. As cherry-picked by Randle and his fellow saucerologists, the selective quote was used to buttress the claim that UFOs are alien spacecraft. But as Klass pointed out, they were taking the quote out of its full and proper context.
The real problem is that Randle tried to have his cake and eat it too, something which people should recognize as a familiar pattern, when he stated that the memo was only "Secret" so of course it couldn't have gotten into all the details. But then why quote it at all... or at the very least, why not quote it in full and let the reader / listener decide?
The answer is simple - for the same reason that some of the shadier religious figures throughout history have selectively quoted from the Bible. Their purpose is not to enlighten, inform or encourage people to seek the truth; it is to advance their own agenda, some of which relates to commercial interests, and some of which relates to their egos, and some of which relates to their will to believe - it varies with the saucerologists. The commonality, however, is that they have played fast and loos with the fact from the beginning, and will only tell people what they want them to hear.
The ethical dilemma that has been revealed about the Roswell "Dream Team" in recent days should come as no surprise given the participation of Donald Schmitt, a person who should have remained a pariah in UFO research given the proven lies he told in the 1990s, lies that related to far more than just his background, despite what many many people would have you believe today (such as the Paracast hosts who had him on their show last week and gave him a complete pass on his past, although to be fair they just happen to be the most recent example of a long list of people who have given Schmitt a pass).
It's amazing how quickly people involved in UFO "research" forget and forgive transgressions that would sink a career in any self-respecting field of research. Schmitt has been back on the lecture and radio circuit for years, and has published several books with his current research partner Tom Carey... and when the "Dream Team" was formed he re-united with his original partner, Kevin Randle.
I'm not going to revisit the long and sordid Schmitt story in its entirety here - that's what Google searches are for. But here's Kevin Randle's summary of Schmitt in an open letter published in 1995 that summarizes it succinctly:
He (Schmitt) will lie about anything. He will lie to anyone… He has revealed himself as a pathological liar… I will have nothing more to do with him.
The fact that any of the Dream Teamers, and particularly Kevin, were willing to partner with Schmitt years later should tell you all you need to know the direction in which their ethical compass is pointing.
Donald Schmitt
In an e-mail published in May, 2002, Kevin laid all of the problems associated with Schmitt and his ilk (which has since grown to include figures like Phil Imbrogno) when he wrote to Bill Hamilton and chastised him for attending a lecture given by Schmitt:
"I find myself a little puzzled here. I have waited for some sort of response to this suggestion that Don Schmitt has lied about his background, education, occupation, parts of his Roswell investigation and the like, yet no one seems willing to challenge Bruce [Hutchinson] on these points. It seems to me that we are in agreement about this. Bill, I don't mean to single you out, but when you attended the lecture, were you aware of the baggage that Schmitt brought to it? If not, then what is your reaction now, to the information he presented? Do you find it to be credible? I am interested in why anyone would listen to a thing he has to say, given what we know about him."
He continued:
Don Schmitt, while we were still working together, told a number of people not to talk to me because he suspected that I was a government agent planted on him. Here was my friend telling people I was a spy and not to be trusted. Since I'm not a government agent nor was I planted on him, would this then be character assassination?
And yet here we are in 2013, with Kevin and the others working with Schmitt, who is at the center of the "slides" story. The "Dream Team" was doomed to abject failure as soon as Schmitt was included on the team, just as Radio and TV shows and publishers diminished their credibility the minute they decided to do business with Schmitt. The "UFO research field" remains a joke a decade after Kevin wrote that e-mail in 2002 precisely because many within it have failed to heed Kevin's good advice - including, sadly, Kevin himself.
If only Kevin had remembered the advice he correctly dished out to others in 2002.
How can we expect the scientific and journalistic communities to listen to us when some of those on the lecture circuit not only aren't telling the truth, they have admitted they weren't telling the truth, and turn up time and again selling their new and improved stories... Until we clean our own house, no one is going to listen to us. We're going to remain the lunatic conspiracy fringe whose positive evidence gets buried under the rubble of those who lie to us... and we're all so dumb that we'll just sign up for more we lies... So, that's where we are. We do not intelligently debate, we embrace those who lie to us, and we will not tolerate dissent... So, people, just why are we listening to Don Schmitt? I'd like to know the reason for it.
"Just why are we listening to Don Schmitt?" This is the real question that Don Ecker should ask when he interviews Kevin on Dark Matters Radio on Tuesday, October 1st. I hope he starts by reading Kevin's own words from a decade ago back to him, after which the only things that Kevin can say which would make any difference, and help him reclaim his credibility, are "mea culpa" and "I'm sorry".
On August 28th, I received an unsolicited e-mail from my friend Kevin Randle, in response to a note I had sent him thanking him for appearing on my podcast and offering my condolences on the death of Jesse Marcel, Jr. I am publishing it here in full, with no additions or alterations of any kind. I do so with great regret, because I value confidence highly and I had agreed after receiving it to keep this communication between Kevin and I private, even though I had not asked to receive the information and was therefore under no obligation to do so. But now, when to keep that confidence requires me to stand by and say nothing about subsequent statements that I know to be untrue, then the ethical balance as I see it has shifted, and I have a duty to set the record straight, even on a matter as inconsequential to me in the grand scheme of things as the Roswell Incident.
There has been, for several months now, speculation at the UFO Iconoclasts blog about rumoured "new evidence" that could break the Roswell case wide open. Some of the statements have come from Rich Reynolds, the man who runs the blog - others have come from various commenters at the blog, including Anthony Bragalia, one of the members of the self-proclaimed "Dream Team" that came together ostensibly to examine the Roswell case with a fresh outlook. That "team" also includes Kevin, his former research partner Donald Schmitt, Schmitt's current partner Tom Carey, longtime Roswell-as-ET proponent David Rudiak, and Canadian UFO researcher Chris Rutkowski, whom I had recommended to Kevin for the spot as "team skeptic" when I turned down his invitation to join. For the full history of all this, I recommend readers go to the UFO Iconoclasts blog and look through the archives.
Things reached a head this week when Mr. Reynolds published an article titled "The Rumored 'New Roswell Evidence' by Anonymous", the central claim of which centered on the question of whether or not the "new evidence" which is the focus of the investigation by members of the "Dream Team" was photographic slides purportedly from 1947 showing alien bodies (there were other peripheral claims made, but those are beside the point). Previously, Mr. Reynolds had published claims that the slides existed but were subject to a non-disclosure agreement, among other things.
Mr. Bragalia responded at the UFO Iconoclasts blog as follows:
Folks... bogus information from Richard Reynolds... and from anonymous. He is threading a tale to create whole cloth... but there are too many holes in Mr. Reynolds tale.
I knew this to be false, at least with respect to the central point of the existence of the slides and the Dream Team's interest in them, because of what I had been told by Kevin in the e-mail of August 28th. I asked Mr. Bragalia a simple question - was the central claim by Anonymous about the slides true? As I wrote in a comment at the UFO Iconoclasts blog:
How about Mr. Bragalia answer one simple question then that goes to the heart of the matter - are there slides, or not, that the "Dream Team" have access to and which purport to be from the Roswell "crash" in 1947?
If the answer is "yes" then the story as reported by Rich is, in it's most fundamental aspect, correct. If not, then Mr. Bragalia should say so, clearly and unambiguously, and in a public venue.
This is one of those "come to Jesus" moments where people have to make a choice. Admittedly, it's penny ante stuff in the grand scheme of things, so it's more like a "come to Jebus" moment, but still... within the context of the world in which Mr. Bragalia and the Dream Teamers live, it's the moment of truth. Is the basic story true... or not? Is Anonymous a liar (and Rich one too by implication), or is his / her account accurate in its core claim?
Mr. Bragalia's response? "Paul Kimball you must be kidding. I owe you nothing. Come to Jesus? How about go to hell?"
"I have seen no photographs, slides, or pictures of alien creatures associated with the Roswell crash," Randle explained. "I have participated in no investigations of such slides."
That was the straw that shifted the balance for me, because the truth, as readers will see from the text of the e-mail below, is markedly different. There are slides. There is a non-disclosure agreement (which has clearly been breached, because the information made its way to me via a "Dream Team" member), and Kevin has investigated the claims of the slides.
In follow-up e-mails after August 28th I pleaded with Kevin to release this information himself, or at the very least disassociate himself from the "Dream Team" for reasons that should be clear from reading his e-mail (especially as they relate to Schmitt). He told me he was going to do so, and then several weeks later sent a note apologizing for "dilly-dallying". Last night he sent me a note saying that he could not do so now that Mr. Reynolds had published what is clearly substantially correct information, and because I had commented on it at the UFO Iconoclasts blog. "Now is no longer the proper moment to bail. If Reynolds had waited a week or two, I would have been long gone." I am afraid that given how the past month has unfolded, I simply do not believe that, but the point is moot.
My response? The proper time to bail was the end of August at the latest, given what the e-mail published below exposes - skulduggery, mistrust, half truths and complete untruths, profiteering, true believerism... all the things that undermine real research, a point Kevin made to me twelve years ago when I first met him.
Whether people believe it or not, it pains me greatly to publish this, because Kevin is one of the very few UFO researchers for whom I still had any respect. At his core, I still believe him to be a decent and honourable man. But it is clear to me now that he cannot be objective when it comes to Roswell, and that has led him to participate in the evasions, half-truths and untruths, and behind-the-scenes skulduggery that is the bread and butter of the Ufology circus, and Roswell in particular, but which has no place in a true, honest, open and objective search for the truth.
I didn't ask to be dragged into all of this, and I won't be a party to it further for any reason. It offends me on many levels.
The truth abhors a vacuum. It is time for someone to fill in the void with the real story, and let the chips fall where they may.
Paul Kimball
From Kevin Randle to Paul Kimball, August 28th, 11:11 pm.
Good Evening, Paul –
Okay, here’s the deal, again just between you and me, and because Carey’s book has really screwed the pooch on this one. He had told me that it was about Wright Field and Wright Patterson Air Force Base. It was about what was there and I had no idea that he was going to delve as deeply in the Roswell pool as he did.
Two years ago we had a meeting (and a few others since then) about doing the ultimate Roswell book. I told him, and Schmitt after Tom invited him aboard, that for this to work, we’d need to come up with something new and exciting. I said that we could review the data as presented, weed out the crap, and present the case as dispassionately as possible, but we needed something beyond the witness testimony and the few documents held. This had to be heavily and properly footnoted with all sources revealed for the “peer” review to follow. (I put peer in quotes simply because I figured that some of the peer review wouldn’t actually fit the definition, but that everyone had to be able to evaluate the sources.)
They agreed with that but said nothing to me at the time. Now, here’s where it gets good. They knew, at that time, of a source who approached them and who claimed he had photographic evidence. Two color slides of the alien bodies, taken by a reputable geologist. The Kodak coding on the slides was proper for 1947 and there were plans underway to have the photographs properly analyzed.
To get that information, both had to sign a “nondisclosure” agreement and both foolishly did. The investigation took off from there. I don’t know if you’ve seen The Newsroom on HBO but they talked of a Red Team to evaluate the data that the White Team was getting. Although I was excluded, and I think of my role as the Red Team, I don’t believe that was actually their thinking. They’d signed the damned agreement and they were stuck with it.
What they didn’t count on was that the source would be down in Midland, Texas, talking to the geologist buddies of the man who took the photographs, and the story got out from there. I’m not sure what the purpose of the Midland trip was, but all it did was put the information out for others to find, including Nick Redfern. I’ve talked to Nick about this.
Here’s where the train slips off the rails. I have learned that the man with the photographs is not the man who took them. The man with them got them from his sister who was cleaning out an attic in Sedona, Arizona but the sister was helping her boyfriend in the cleaning who worked for an estate service. (Convoluted enough for you?) The slides were found in a box in a separate envelop taped to an inner box lid, away from other slides. The box apparently belonged to the second wife of the photographer… the other slides in the box contained pictures from that “era” including one of Eisenhower (which is obviously five years too late).
Neither Schmitt nor Carey told me the photographer’s name or the name of the man who allegedly took the pictures (though given the chain of custody, I’m not sure who might have taken the pictures but I had a name of the man who died decades ago and I know the name of the man who allegedly took them), but I have been able to learn all that, and found a telephone number of the man who lives in Chicago.
I’m sure that I don’t have to tell you the problem with these slides… oh, and the man who has them now and who has approached a number of media outlets attempting to sell them, is a graphic artist. And the date code on the slides is correct for 1947. Well, Kodak recycled the codes so the date could have been 1927, 1947 or 1967. No real help there.
I have been reluctant to say anything about this because, in the very off chance that the photographs are authentic, if I revel what I know, the owner will blame Schmitt and Carey for telling me, even though I learned everything through other sources. I haven’t wanted to screw up their chances of getting the pictures, but I really don’t believe the photos to be real.
This is the alien autopsy without the motion, without the photographer, or without a chain of custody. Say what you will about Santilli, but at least he claimed to have talked to the photographer. Carey and Schmitt aren’t even sure who that might have been. Someone other than the geologist might have taken them and given them to the man who taped them in the box.
While this little conspiracy of silence has annoyed me, I understood the necessity for it. If the photos were real, premature release could jeopardize the investigation and if they were fakes, then Roswell had just taken an unnecessary hit. If the investigation revealed them to be fake we could make that announcement without having to retract anything about their authenticity.
So, you say, what changed? Carey and Schmitt’s book… which, when I saw the nature of it, revealed more about the Roswell case. They simply couldn’t talk about what went on at Wright Field; they had to get deeply into Roswell as well. It looks as if we’re putting out the information piecemeal, put I had nothing to do with that.
My dilemma, then, is how to tell Tom that I’m now out. I hung in there with the unilateral decision to invite in Schmitt, even given his history of lying (which, BTW, continues in some arenas, and Schmitt’s grab for the spotlight to the exclusion of all others). But this latest book seems to sink our effort before we even get to the end point.
No, I do not believe the story which is the main reason for not mentioning it. Why get everyone all excited about something that is going to blow up… and I suspect Rich Reynolds, knows it and is hoping to catch me in this web.
I think that brings you up to date, other than to say that, again, between you and me, I have enough income from pensions that I could never sell another word and live quite comfortably. I write what pleases me now rather than what might be more commercially successful.
I don’t know if this fully explains the situation, but if you have questions, feel free to ask. I tell all this privately, but will maintain publicly the attitude I have shown up to now. I see no reason to reveal this even though there are some who believe they have a right to everything we had found.
Of course any comments you care to make would be greatly appreciated. I just can’t wrap my head around the chain of custody.
Kevin
Note: An addendum, at 11:20 pm Thursday, September 25th.
Now that the betrayal is out in full, let me say that there was nothing in my statement that wasn't the truth. Whatever Paul might believe, or think he's proved, I have never seen the slides, and I have not participated in the investigation of them.
Because it was not my investigation, I believed it was up to those others to publish what they had when they were satisfied that it was authentic. I simply had no role in it. I am astonished that Paul would violate my trust by publishing an email that was clearly meant to be held between Paul and me... and then I'm accused of duplicity.
My reply:
Kevin wrote: "I have not participated in the investigation of them.
From Kevin's e-mail to me:
"I have learned that the man with the photographs is not the man who took them. The man with them got them from his sister who was cleaning out an attic in Sedona, Arizona but the sister was helping her boyfriend in the cleaning who worked for an estate service. (Convoluted enough for you?) The slides were found in a box in a separate envelop taped to an inner box lid, away from other slides. The box apparently belonged to the second wife of the photographer… the other slides in the box contained pictures from that “era” including one of Eisenhower (which is obviously five years too late).
Neither Schmitt nor Carey told me the photographer’s name or the name of the man who allegedly took the pictures (though given the chain of custody, I’m not sure who might have taken the pictures but I had a name of the man who died decades ago and I know the name of the man who allegedly took them), but I have been able to learn all that, and found a telephone number of the man who lives in Chicago."
Kevin may want to try and split ethical and moral hairs, but the claim that he has "not participated in the investigation of them" is clearly false, because he conducted his own investigation, and reached conclusions from it.
And yet Kevin thinks I'm the bad guy here. Given what can be seen in that e-mail (and others that I will not publish but which followed this one), it sadly comes as no surprise to me that Kevin is trying the one tactic left to him, the last refuge of the PR scoundrel - blame the messenger, and try to shift the story.
To which I will add a final note. Kevin's comments to Brewer shaded the truth to a degree where the grey and the black are indistinguishable, and the white is long gone. I was appalled. I was also terribly disappointed that despite obviously knowing what the right course was, he refused to take it (despite saying he would), and continued his association with a known liar who once accused him of being a government agent, and whom he acknowledged is still lying (Kevin's words, not mine). But that alone wouldn't have led me to publish - his comments to Brewer did, because they were public and they were not fully truthful.
I regret it's come to this, but I never asked him to send me that information, and I'm not the bad guy here. I realized when I published it that this would almost certainly cause an irreparable breach between Kevin and myself, not because he would never forgive me (anyone who forgave Schmitt clearly has a high degree of forbearance), but because I'll never be able to trust or respect him again. I honestly wish it were otherwise. As I said, I'm terribly disappointed in him.
And there it rests, for each to judge on their own.
Veteran researcher / author Kevin Randle joins me for a wide-ranging discussion about the Roswell UFO incident, and Randle’s work over the past two years with the ”Dream Team” (Tom Carey, Donald Schmitt, Anthony Bragalia, Chris Rutkowski, David Rudiak, and Kevin), who have been re-examining the evidence for and against the crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft near Roswell in July, 1947. I challenged Kevin to make the his best case for the crashed spacecraft scenario, and then we dug deeper to see how well the evidence has held up over the past thirty years. The answers may surprise people familiar with Kevin’s long-held view that the Roswell incident was indeed a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft - particularly his admission that despite his own personal belief that an extraterrestrial spacecraft crashed in New Mexico in 1947, when we examine the evidence as it exists today, "We really can't get to the extraterrestrial. We can eliminate practically everything else that you care to mention, but that still doesn't get us to the extraterrestrial."
Towards the end of the episode, we briefly discuss the other famous / infamous crashed spacecraft story from the late 1940s, the Aztec incident, and why both of us agree that it was a hoax / con.
This episode was recorded on 23 August, 2013.
Download this episode directly here, or listen to it at The Other Side of Truth podcast here.
My good friends Stan Friedman and Kevin Randle have signed on to appear in the film as the proponents of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Having worked with them both on other films in the past, but not since 2006 (when I interviewed Stan for Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings), it will be great to work with them again, and get their insights on why they think the ETH is a valid explanation for at least some UFO cases.
Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens
They are tiny. They are tall. They are gray. They are green. They survey our world with enormous glowing eyes. To conduct their shocking experiments, they creep in at night to carry humans off to their spaceships. Yet there is no evidence that they exist at all. So how could anyone believe he or she was abducted by aliens? Or want to believe it?
To answer these questions, psychologist Susan Clancy interviewed and evaluated 'abductees' – old and young, male and female, religious and agnostic. She listened closely to their stories – how they struggled to explain something strange in their remembered experience, how abduction seemed plausible, and how, having suspected abduction, they began to recollect it, aided by suggestion and hypnosis.
Clancy argues that abductees are sane and intelligent people who have unwittingly created vivid false memories from a toxic mix of nightmares, culturally available texts (abduction reports began only after stories of extraterrestrials appeared in films and on TV), and a powerful drive for meaning that science is unable to satisfy. For them, otherworldly terror can become a transforming, even inspiring experience. 'Being abducted,' writes Clancy, 'may be a baptism in the new religion of this millennium.' This book is not only a subtle exploration of the workings of memory, but a sensitive inquiry into the nature of belief.
An important work that most UFO researchers either passed on at the time, or simply accepted the "party line" that was put forward by the leaders of the "alien abduction cult" when the book was released. I also recommend my interview from September, 2010, with Kevin Randle, about his book, The Abduction Enigma.
To all of those UFO researchers who are still inclined to defend the practices and ridiculous "theories" of these cultists, answer this one question:
If aliens from other worlds have technology sufficiently advanced to allow them to travel the vast distances between the stars (and even in our own "neighbourhood", those distances boggle the mind), and abduct people here, there and everywhere when they get here, then what kind of person would believe that a plucky little bunch of "abduction researchers" (artists, associate history professors, and so on) could manage to beat these aliens at their own game, and defeat their technlogy and discover their plans?
It's laughable, and it has always been laughable.
In the meantime, people who probably needed real psychiatric help have wasted their time going to these "cultists" for help. Serious UFO research has suffered, and been tainted by this ridiculous circus. Finally, if there really is some sort of paranormal aspect to a few abductions (and I don't rule that out, anymore than I rule out the possibility that some people have direct experiences with a non-human intelligence in any context, "God" being the pre-dominant manifestation throughout human history), then any opportunity to discover such an intelligence has been squandered for decades.
UFO researchers wonder why they get no respect from the mainstream media?
Some even talk in dark tones of a conspiracy.
It's a conspiracy, all right - a conspiracy of self-marginalization by men and women who live in a fantasy world of mediocre 1950s science fiction.
All the while, the real mysteries remain - ephemeral, a bundle of possibilities which, if real, are far more exciting than anything UFO researchers (with a few notable exceptions) have been able to conjure up in the past sixty years. It's not just that they don't have the answers; they don't even have the imagination to ask the right questions.
Part II of my interview earlier this month with Kevin Randle, wherein we discuss animal mutilations, a few more points about the "abduction" phenomenon... and some miscellaneous subjects, including a certain Colonel of the Israeli-founded S3!
"Maggots, mutilations and myth: Patterns of postmortem scavenging of the bovine carcass", the Canadian Veterinary Journal article that I reference in this episode, can be read in its entirety here.
Paul Kimball
P.S. Here is a picture of yours truly in June, 2009, inside the secret S3 HQ in Prague!
On September 8, 2010, I recorded an interview with veteran UFO researcher Kevin D. Randle, most famous for his work on the Roswell case, wherein we discussed two particular topics that he has conducted extensive research in, but has rarely been interviewed about - animal mutilations, and the “alien abduction” phenomenon.
In this segment, Kevin and I discuss “alien abductions” - how it’s not caused by aliens from Zeta Reticuli (or anywhere else), what some of the non-paranormal explanations are, and why the truth has been overlooked by the vast majority of the UFO research community for the past 25 years, to the benefit of “researchers” like David Jacobs and Budd Hopkins, and to the detriment of the people they claim they have been trying to help.
For more information about Kevin’s research into the “alien abduction” phenomenon, you should get a copy of his excellent book The Abduction Enigma, co-authored by Dr. William Cone and Russ Estes.
