Ufology... Unplugged - Pilot Episode

Feature films are my thing now, and I really enjoy it (my two latest films just screened at the Atlantic Film Festival last month to a great reaction and after a couple minor tweaks we'll have done by early November they'll be headed out to the broader festival circuit), but a small part of me remains fascinated by the subculture of Ufology. Fortunately, I've got hundreds of hours of interview footage that I accumulated over my years making documentaries, and I have some free time, so... behold - Ufology... Unplugged! A project I've been meaning to get to for some time. 

In the pilot episode I pull excerpts from two separate interviews with Stan Friedman. The first was in September, 2001 - Stan discusses his thoughts on Steven Greer and the Disclosure Project, which was the "big thing" in ufology at the time (and one could argue that it still is). In the second, which was conducted in 2003, Stan talks about his relationship with his former research partner William Moore.

Lots of interesting nuggets in here, but there are three that stand out for me. The first is Stan's line in the Greer interview that "I think that there should be plenty of secrets in the world," which might come as a surprise to some (particularly the forcefulness with which he delivers it here),. Second are his remarks about his disagreements with Moore about UFO Cover-Up Live and the failure of Moore to honour his commitments to people who ordered things from him via mail. Both point to Moore's intrinsic dishonesty (as does Stan's admission that Moore could be "tricky"), and yet he continues to maintain, in the face of everything we know about Moore and Doty, that the MJ-12 documents are bona fide because Moore could not have faked them. Finally, Stan offers a firm denial of the charge leveled against him over the years by Karl Pflock, Kevin Randle, and Brad Sparks, that Stan had discussed the prospect of faking documents with Moore and Shandera.

Paul Kimball

Stanton Friedman - William Moore and MJ-12

In this excerpt from an interview I conducted with him in 2003, Stanton Friedman talks about his relationship with fellow ufologist William Moore, who was his research partner on Roswell and MJ-12 for a decade from the late 1970s through the 1980s.

Much grist for the mill here, most of it centering on the cognitive dissonance of what Stan says about Moore's honesty - "Bill was a tricky guy," "He liked to float proposals, run them up the flag pole and see how people would react," he was committing mail fraud - and his blithe brushing off of the prospect that Moore created the MJ-12 documents by saying that Bill couldn't have know certain details so he couldn't have created the documents. What Stan ignores is the probability that Moore was working with someone else (or a small group of people) who could have found all the needed information, namely Moore's other "partner" in the 1980s - Rick Doty.

As for a motive, Stan details that as well, even as he ignores its implications - Moore's financial problems in the 1980s. Nothing like some fake documents to gin up interest in his cash-cow story (Roswell) which was starting to grow cold.

The MJ-12 story really is that simple. Stan has all the facts at his command, but he just can't see the forest for the trees - a triumph of belief over reason and common sense.

Paul Kimball

Karl Pflock - The creation of the MJ-12 documents

In this excerpt from an interview I conducted with him in 2003, my friend the late Karl Plock (author of Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe) discusses the MJ-12 documents, and who he is convinced was responsible for faking them.

Paul Kimball

Karl Pflock - The Cutler-Twining Memo

UFO researcher / author Karl Pflock discusses the infamous Cutler - Twining Memo (part of the bogus MJ-12 documents) in this 2003 interview I conducted with him at his home in Placitas, New Mexico. He puts to rest the notion that there was no way that the memo could have been faked and then planted at the National Archives, as he reveals that he once did exactly that himself as an experiment.

I miss Karl. He was a good friend, and a rare voice of reason and common sense amongst "ufologists."

Paul Kimball

Stanton Friedman - Charles Berlitz and "The Roswell Incident"

In this clip from the interview I conducted with Stan Friedman in 2001 for the documentary Stanton T. Friedman is Real, he discusses the writing of the 1980 book The Roswell Incident and his relationship with Charles Berlitz.

Paul Kimball