Steering Public Interest

In September of 2015 I did a blog post summarizing the case of Jeffrey Alan Lash. Readers will recall a Los Angeles attorney alerted LAPD in July that the corpse of Lash was located in a vehicle parked in Pacific Palisades. The resulting investigation included increasingly strange circumstances reported in the media, involving the discovery of excessive amounts of weapons and cash, as well as tales of Lash being an ET-human hybrid working undercover for the CIA. 

Follow up efforts to learn more from LAPD hit a dead end. Further inquiry revealed the Department would not be releasing files on the Lash investigation.

Dawn VadBunker, one of the central
characters of the Lash case

The initial post has consistently received traffic. Week in and week out, regardless of what is cycling in the news and what is discussed around ufology, the summary of the Lash case receives anywhere from a hundred to several hundred views per week, now making it the second most viewed post ever on The UFO Trail. For whatever reasons, and a year after the story first broke, people remain interested in the bizarre chain of events, at least in proportion to other genre-specific cases. 

Website traffic logs indicate the visitors originate from IP addresses at universities, libraries, hotels, offices of state and city government - pretty much anywhere one might get on the internet. The traffic is also international, as our peers in Australia, South America and Europe, among other locations, appear intrigued by events surrounding Lash. 

Visitors also include IP addresses assigned to United States federal agencies, including locations both domestic and abroad. Traffic logs suggest visits specifically to the post on Lash repeatedly occurred from multiple offices of the Department of Defense and the Navy Network Information Center, as well as IPs assigned to the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice.

I do not offer explanations as to why the Lash saga draws such interest. I'd imagine there are lots of different reasons. 

One dynamic I have pondered and will offer for consideration is, when a story gets legs, any number of demographics might desire to further understand and duplicate that interest. Such demographics might range from writers and Hollywood executives to intelligence analysts who specialize in propaganda and the accompanying social media operations. While the popular interest in the Lash story, and how such interest might be intentionally cultivated, could indeed seem a worthy object of attention, the reverse dynamic might also deserve its share of consideration: Minimizing publicity and the resulting impact of a story.

Involuntary Human Experimentation

There is a trial currently taking place, little discussion as it may generate in most circles, that involves involuntary human experimentation conducted by the American intelligence community. It's the Guantanamo war court.

Implications include the use of non-lethal weapons, or at the least such claims are being made. Incorrect claims might result from effects of trauma in some instances, among other reasons. Procedures used, widely known as "enhanced interrogation techniques," have caused permanent impairment, extreme trauma and death.

CIA planned to hold Abu Zubaydah
"incommunicado for the remainder of his life" 

Testimony includes statements that "noises and vibrations" are directed at prisoners as part of a psychological operation. Closed circuit television of the trial provided to journalists is intermittently turned off for security reasons. Moreover, extreme involuntary human experimentation was documented, among other sources, in the relatively recent Seton Hall University School of Law report, Guantanamo: America's Battle Lab - and the existence of Gitmo is hardly an isolated incident.      

Prison Legal News, a project and publication of the nonprofit Human Rights Defense Center, reported in 2015 that some 54 nations were complicit in the operation of secret CIA prisons. Sources included reports from the US Senate and the Open Society Justice Initiative. Numerous international legal cases developed, with rulings leveled against the CIA. I devoted a chapter to such circumstances in my book, The Greys Have Been Framed: Exploitation in the UFO Community. The chapter is titled 21st Century US Illegal Human Experimentation. 

Furthermore, a career intelligence officer, one frequently invited to speak as an expert at UFO-related events, asserted mind control was "coming back" - nine years ago. He added that technology would enable modification of the behavior of enemies, specifically citing those held at Guantanamo, via electronic means. 

"We're now getting to where we can do that," John Alexander stated during an interview published by The Washington Post in 2007. 

I'm not suggesting all the claims, by either prisoners or intel officials, are entirely accurate. Neither am I necessarily suggesting all of it directly applies to events within the UFO community. Those are other issues for another time.

What I'm inviting readers to consider is that fringe-themed websites, which devote substantial content to either supporting or criticizing such topics as CIA-employed hybrids, UFO cover-ups, and advanced alien technology, take such little interest in what's happening at Gitmo and other black sites. Many of the circumstances are readily accessible via declassified reports, as well as credible sources, such as those linked above, which analyze those reports. Nonetheless, members of the UFO community typically seem uninterested or poorly informed about the activities and scope of the intelligence community.

Meanwhile, for each of you who will read and consider the contents of this post, several hundred more will read about Lash.