Police Use Hypnosis in Texas

     The Texas Department of Public Safety put an end in January to 40 years of using hypnosis to investigate crimes, The Dallas Morning News reported. The announcement Texas Rangers will cease the shocking practice came in the wake of a two-part series, "The Memory Room," outlining the hypnosis program and published by the newspaper last April. The News reported officers used the debunked technique to send dozens of men and women to prison and some to their deaths.   

The Rangers employed hypnosis in attempts to obtain evidence for investigation. It was not clear to what extent it was used as an interrogation technique. The program raises many concerns due to the vulnerability of a hypnosis subject to be coerced and influenced.

The circumstances are darkly reminiscent of the saga of Navy Petty Officer Daniel King, as described in the Hoffman Report. King was held by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service from 1999-2001 on suspicion of spying. His detainment involved brutal interrogation sessions and the use of hypnosis. The young man was ultimately released and the case became the subject of an ethics review. A liaison for the American Psychological Association called the actions of the hypnotist "ethically very marginal."

The infamous use of hypnosis as a memory enhancer is well known in the UFO genre. Despite the practice having been conclusively discredited by qualified memory experts, it continues to find ill advised support among alien abduction advocates.

UFO proponents using hypnosis as an investigative tool can be traced back to the 1960's case of Betty and Barney Hill. Although Dr. Benjamin Simon employed hypnosis as a treatment for trauma with the couple, and did not take the resulting mental imagery literally, the sessions were misrepresented by others as compelling evidence for alien interaction. 

As one mental health professional explained to us here at The UFO Trail, "After speaking directly with Dr. Simon, I felt duped by the UFO community and media. There was misrepresentation of Dr. Simon's conclusions in the Hill case. These false conclusions were widely continued on in movies, books, etc. I was very disappointed and discounted the case as a result of hearing the truth from the practitioner."  

UFO researcher Dr. Leo Sprinkle used hypnosis as a means to try and extract what he supposed were suppressed memories of aliens. As described by Adam Gorightly in his new book, Saucers, Spooks and Kooks, Paul Bennewitz would secure his car from alien influence by lining the windows with tin foil for the vehicle to be used as a safe space for Sprinkle to hypnotize Myrna Hansen. Some of the resulting mental imagery from the 1980 case was promoted so widely it continues today to be incorrectly taken for granted as factual about alien abduction and surrounding circumstances. Suffice it to say the Sprinkle-Hansen activities should not be considered mentally healthy, much less effective or helpful treatment for trauma.

Budd Hopkins

The cow was then out of the barn, and so-called researchers such as Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs, and John Carpenter relied virtually exclusively on hypnotic regression as an investigative technique. They gave little more than lip service to the welfare of the individuals being hypnotized. The haphazard sessions offered easy to manufacture, plentiful sources of otherwise mostly nonexistent evidence. Related ethical failures are thoroughly documented in my book, The Greys Have Been Framed. The work of Carol Rainey is salient on the topic, including her article, The Priests of High Strangeness, as well as posts she contributed to The UFO Trail.     

The Dallas Morning News reported Texas Rangers performed at least 1,700 hypnosis sessions since the 1980's. Public records obtained by the outlet indicate eight sessions were conducted by officers last year, including an October attempt to investigate a kidnapping. Three of the eight sessions were related to murder investigations. 

While the Rangers had the most prolific hypnosis program in Texas, its shelving does not necessarily signify the end of the troubling law enforcement practice. Over 800 officers have been approved statewide to implement hypnosis since the 1980's. Most states have banned or significantly restrict hypnosis use by police officers and prosecutors. Texas is likely the only state with an active certification program for officers to learn hypnosis and hosts probably the only police organization in the country with investigative hypnotists.

Adam Gorightly Discusses 'Saucers, Spooks and Kooks'

    Adam Gorightly just released a brand new book, Saucers, Spooks and Kooks: UFO Disinformation in the Age of Aquarius. He is a longtime writer and researcher of UFO-related shenanigans, and I recommend giving a read to his latest offering from Daily Grail Publishing. 

The book dives into the often dubious tales that make up the UFO genre, taking particular aim at the circumstances surrounding the alleged underground alien base of Dulce, New Mexico. Adam tracks the stories to their origins, and shares insights about his personal interactions with characters who inhabit and cultivate those tales.

I asked Adam if he would field a few questions for a blog post. My questions are followed by his responses below. He also provided the accompanying images. 

    What made you decide to write Saucers, Spooks and Kooks, and what was most important to you about it?

    It was a project that evolved over time, starting with an article I was writing over ten years ago titled “My Breakfast with Tal”, which detailed my account of breaking bread with the one and only Tal Levesque. An enigmatic and somewhat shadowy character, he was a key player in promoting the Dulce Base story/mythos starting back in the late 1980s.

As things progressed, I started delving deeper into the many claims associated with Dulce Base, many of which Tal, and a handful of others, had seemingly seeded, and in some cases, it appeared, created out of whole cloth. Over time, the project evolved into a longer article with the working title “Deconstructing Dulce”. I set out to pick apart the entire Dulce Base story, in essence deconstructing all the elements, in an attempt to separate fact from fiction, and untangle the many seemingly spurious stories associated with Dulce. Many in ufology unfortunately have taken those stories as gospel over the ensuing years. So the article kept growing to the point where it ultimately became book length in order to cover all the aspects of the story, and the many players, in ufology and the intelligence community, who had helped form the Dulce Base narrative.

One of the key allegations in the Dulce Base story concerned a secret treaty between reptilian aliens and the U.S. Government in which ET technology had been exchanged in return for test subjects to be used in an alien-human hybrid breeding program. Rumors have long circulated that cattle mutilations were also somehow involved in these experiments, the ultimate goal of which was to allegedly create human-alien hybrids to preserve and revive a dying ET race.

As the story goes, a heroic security officer named Thomas Castello led a revolt against the Dulce Base alien bad guys and the end result was a shoot ‘em up that ultimately left sixty-six Dulce Base workers dead. Castello had at his disposal a “flash gun” that allowed him to take out a few of these dastardly aliens and hightail it out of Dulce, thereafter becoming a whistleblower on the run. This legendary battle, straight out of a sci fi B movie script, became known as “The Dulce War”.

    In Saucers, Spooks and Kooks, you trace the origins of several urban myth-like beliefs to Paul Bennewitz and Myrna Hansen, and their fateful interactions of the 1980s. How much of what came to be popularly accepted about alleged aliens would you say is directly related to Hansen and her influence on Bennewitz?

    Myrna Hansen was one of the first so-called alien abductees, way before the term became fashionable. Her encounter, or whatever you want to call it, occurred in early May of 1980, when she and her son Shawn, while driving in Eagle Nest, New Mexico, allegedly witnessed a cow get sucked up on a beam into a spaceship. Shortly after, they were also sucked up into the craft where all sorts of insanity ensued, first with the ETs dissecting the helpless heifer in front of their horrified eyes, and then Hansen was placed into a trance and underwent some sort of medical procedure.

Following her encounter, a terrified Hansen contacted the state police office in the town of Cimarron to inform them of her crazy encounter with knife wielding cow cutting aliens, and in turn the Cimarron office referred her to New Mexico state trooper Gabe Valdez. He worked out of Dulce, and had by this time acquired the reputation as the go-to guy for cut-up cows and unexplained lights in the sky. It was Valdez who put Hansen in touch with Paul Bennewitz, a private government contractor specializing in avionics who among other things was an APRO member. Through Bennewitz’s APRO connections he was able to enlist the services of Leo Sprinkle, a University of Wyoming professor who had been investigating UFO cases using hypnotic regression for over ten years. Sprinkle would conduct a number of hypnotic regressions with Hansen at Bennewitz’s home, and more specifically inside of Bennewitz’s Lincoln Town Car, which he had covered the windows with aluminum foil as a means to disrupt an alien beam he believed was attempting to interfere with Sprinkle’s hypnotic regression of Hansen.

Curiously enough, Sprinkle conducted hypnotic regressions back in 1973 with another lady named Judy Doraty, who recounted a similar tale as Hansen’s regarding ETs and cattle mutes getting sucked up into a space craft, so how much of this was crosspollination or contamination (i.e. investigators/regression therapists leading alleged witnesses to a certain conclusion) is still an open question. It should be noted that Bennewitz, in addition to his fascination with UFOs, also had an abiding interesting in the cattle mutilation phenomenon, and so the two—UFOs and cattle mutes, it could be presumed—became intertwined in his mind and this worldview leaked out on to those with whom he interacted.

Hansen’s regressions included a smorgasbord of standard alien abduction tropes, such as a victim being sucked up into a ship on a Star Trek styled tractor beam, then placed in a trance and undergoing medical procedures related to reproduction and the test tube creation of alien-human hybrids. Hansen, it was alleged, had been implanted with a monitoring device, a so-called “alien implant” as they became known in the lore, and she experienced “missing time.”

As the Sprinkle/Hansen regressions probed ever deeper into the recesses of her beleaguered brain, it was revealed, or she remembered or confabulated (take your pick), being transported to a secret underground facility. During a medical examination, a metallic object was allegedly implanted in the base of her skull, apparently as a means for the aliens to later track her and beam her with malevolent messages, which is the reason why Bennewitz went to all the trouble of constructing a tin foil beanie which he placed over the windows of his car during the hypnotic regression sessions.

At one point during her underground base misadventure, Hansen recalled escaping the clutches of her captors and encountering multiple vats of liquid containing the remains of human and animal body parts. Bennewitz somehow deduced that this underground facility where Hansen saw all this stuff was located near Dulce. All of these elements of the story ultimately became incorporated into UFO lore as we now know it. The term alien “greys,” as far as I have been able to glean, was another trope that came straight out of the Bennewitz Affair.

    As you explained in the book, the Bennewitz Affair came to involve Richard Doty and William Moore. I particularly appreciated your documentation of the origins of the unreliable Majestic 12 documents and their relation to Moore and his associate, Jaime Shandera. What do you think is most important for people to understand about that chain of events?

    One critical factor that’s important to consider when attempting to unravel the origins of the MJ-12 Papers was that in 1981, three years before the MJ-12 papers surfaced, Bill Moore was working on a book project with Bob Pratt, a National Enquirer reporter who covered the flying saucer beat for the magazine. This book project, originally titled MAJIK-12, was a fictionalized account based on supposedly true UFO related information relayed to them by none other than AFOSI special agent Richard Doty, who was identified by Moore in a draft version of this book as “Ronald L. Davis”. MAJIK-12, or alternately MJ-12, was short for Majestic 12, who as most of your readers probably know, was supposedly a super-secret government group involved in investigating UFO sightings and the retrieval of crashed flying saucers and aliens, dead and alive.

Although the Moore/Pratt book project ultimately fell by the wayside, the proposed title MAJIK-12  suggested that Bill Moore was aware of something called MAJIK-12 or Majestic-12 at least three years before a mysterious envelope landed on his research partner Jaime Shandera’s doorstep, sent anonymously with no return address, postmarked Albuquerque, New Mexico. This postmark seemed a huge hint to some that Richard Doty was behind this caper, as during that period Doty was stationed at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque. The envelope contained a roll of 35mm film that when developed revealed photos of what became known as the MJ-12 papers.

Prior to the emergence of the MJ-12 papers, Moore and another research partner, Stan Friedman, speculated about the existence of just such a group as MJ-12, and had even compiled a list of its most probable candidates. Moore later shared these names with Doty in the hopes that he might be privy to information that would confirm their list of MJ-12 candidates. When the MJ-12 papers surfaced, they did indeed include on their roster some of these very same MJ-12 candidates that Moore and Friedman had previously speculated were members of the group, such as Roscoe Hillenkoetter, first director of the CIA (1947-1950), and James Forrestal, who was Secretary of Defense during that same period, thus seemingly providing confirmation to Moore and Friedman that they’d been on the right track. Others would suggest that Doty cooked up the whole caper, and through a feedback loop provided Moore, Shandera and Friedman with what exactly they were looking for regarding information that seemed to confirm the Roswell UFO crash, that just happened to be the subject of the book Bill Moore and Charles Berlitz published in 1979, The Roswell Incident. It has been conjectured that Moore had a hand in counterfeiting the documents, with or without the help of Doty. However, it’s never been conclusively proven who hoaxed the documents, although the FBI determined that they were not authentic, or in their words, “bogus.”

FBI conclusion of the MJ-12 docs: "bogus"

In the same manner that the MJ-12 docs mysteriously showed up on Shandera’s doorstep, a similar event occurred in 1994 when UFO researcher Don Berliner received an anonymously sent envelope that contained a roll of undeveloped 35mm film. Once developed, the photographs revealed a 29-page document called SOM 1-01, Majestic-12 Group Special Operations Manual, a purported military manual related to flying saucer crash retrievals.

SOM-01-1 also included a reference to “Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico” which some suspected was a wink and a nod that it may have been another Richard Doty snow-job. Nonetheless, SOM-01-1 has continued to be embraced by some of the more prominent voices in ufology, such as Linda Howe, who at the Citizens Hearing on Disclosure (a pretend Congressional hearing held at the National Press Club in 2013), claimed that SOM-01-1 had “stood the test of time” —which of course it had done nothing of the sort, and only added to the stack of other seemingly spurious MJ-12 related documents that have littered ufology over the years.

    You wrote about several instances in which members of the military supply UFO researchers with doubtful information, accompanied by promises of future revelations. Ultimately, the big reveal does not materialize and the rug is pulled out from under the researcher. Please tell us a little about one such event.

    In the early 1970s, film producer Robert Emenegger was on the business end of one such promised “big reveal” (that ultimately turned out to be a dud) when he and his co-producer/partner, Allan Sandler, were approached by U.S. Air Force officials with an offer to cooperate and share information for a proposed documentary on UFOs. According to their Air Force contacts, this would be an all hands on deck affair, with the support of each branch of the military who would provide  Emenegger and Sandler access to UFO files in addition to the promised crown jewel: 16mm footage of a UFO landing with ETs, allegedly filmed at Holloman Air Force Base in 1971.

After spending considerable time and resources developing the project, with repeated promises of the saucer landing footage for their documentary, Emenegger and Sandler ultimately had the rug pulled out from under their feet, and were left empty handed as the Air Force failed to deliver the promised goods, and this early version of so-called “UFO Disclosure” went kaput. Emenegger and Sandler’s UFO documentary was eventually released years later, under the title of UFOs: It Has Begun but its impact was obviously diminished greatly from a credibility standpoint after the Air Force pulled out of the project. That's assuming, of course, that the Air Force actually possessed the material they promised for the film.

A similar “UFO Disclosure” head fake happened with Linda Moulton Howe a decade later, when in 1983 she was tapped to produce an HBO special with the proposed title UFOs: The E.T. Factor. During this period, Howe had been investigating the claims of Paul Bennewitz for possible inclusion in her documentary, and along the way she came to the attention of Richard Doty, then assigned to Kirtland Air Force Base. Doty took Howe under his dubious wing, and  gave her a glimpse of some supposedly classified documents related to flying saucer crash retrievals and the astounding revelation that there was actually a little ET in captivity at a military base somewhere. Doty informed Howe if she played her cards right she might even have an opportunity to interview the little fella. In addition, Doty told Howe that government intelligence officers had in their possession film footage of a UFO landing at a military base, as well as other photos and classified materials she could use. After several months of stringing Howe along, Doty informed her that he’d been removed from the case, and passed her on to other intelligence contacts that likewise strung Howe along for a period of several months, but never produced the promised UFO footage. This delay eventually caused HBO to opt out of the project, leaving Howe dangling in the wind.

As for the main motivation behind these capers, one can speculate in a lot of different directions, one of which was that Doty was attempting to discredit and misguide Howe’s UFO research, and ultimately undermine her HBO documentary, as well as to find out what information she had on Bennewitz and the counterintelligence program aimed at him, of which Doty was an operative.

    You explained a lot about the Dulce mythos and the people who spread it. In your research and experience, what did you think was most interesting about all that?

    The evolution of the mythos, and how it came about in the first place, is what I find most intriguing. There are different elements to the story, including what has become known in UFO lore as “The Dulce War”, which I mentioned earlier, where supposedly this security guard at the base named Tom Castello helped form a resistance movement. Some of his fellow human co-workers then got themselves into a dust up with the aliens and came out on the losing end of the skirmish. When the dust had cleared, as the legend goes, sixty-six Dulce base workers perished, although Castello was able to escape on account of his trusty “flash gun.”

So where did this story come from? As far as I can tell, it originated in a December 2, 1981 letter that Paul Bennewitz sent to U.S. Senator for New Mexico Pete Domenici stating that “sometime late 79 or first of 80 an argument insued [sic] over weapons and the military abandoned [Dulce base]; the final circumstance of the men unknown…” In a September 11, 1984 interview, Bennewitz told UFO researcher Jim McCampbell that: “In 1979 something happened and the base was closed. There was an argument over weapons and our people were chased out, more than 100 people involved…” Although Bennewitz didn’t implicitly state that there was an actual battle between humans and aliens at Dulce, his comments about some type of conflict, or of the humans abandoning the base,  appeared to have been enough to plant the seed that later blossomed into “The Dulce War.”

1981 letter from Bennewitz to Sen. Domenici

Nearly a decade later, “The Dulce War” story was fleshed out with the more detailed account concerning Tom Castello and his fellow resistors that appeared in “The Dulce Papers”. Variations of this story have also cropped up concerning a similar battle/confrontation occurring at Area 51.

In the mid-1990s, the Dulce War story resurfaced or was repurposed by a mentally unstable fellow named Phil Schneider who for a time became a star on the patriot and UFO lecture circuit, basically repeating the Tom Castello story with himself inserted into the heroic role of Castello, including the whole shoot ‘em up with dastardly aliens routine.

    There seem to be a lot of common themes that run between each of these stories, such as Dulce, Area 51, SERPO, and events surrounding Paul Bennewitz. Please share some of your thoughts on that.

    I would also add Roswell and the MJ-12 Papers to that mix, and the same recurring cast of characters who promoted these stories that are featured in my book, among them John Lear, Tal Levesque, Richard Doty, Bill Moore and a handful of others that formed this nexus of “influencers.” Bill Moore would later disavow many of these claims, and ostensibly remove himself from this nexus of characters, who he said were pushing false stories that had ultimately driven Paul Bennewitz bonkers.

John Lear, who admittedly had ties to the intelligence community, was an avid MJ-12 Papers promoter, while at the same time, during the mid-1980s, he was leaking information to the media about a secret stealth aircraft testing program at Area 51. The specter of stealth technology was forever lurking on the edges of these tall tales related to Dulce Base, Kirtland and Area 51, part of what appeared to be an effort to shape the overall narrative and muddy the waters about what was actually going on at these military testing sites.

As for SERPO, Richard Doty had a large role disseminating that story, dating back to when he appeared as “Falcon” in the nationally televised special that aired in 1988 called UFO Cover-up Live!. According to Doty (a la “Falcon”), the U.S. government had participated in an exchange program, with the aliens basically giving our astronauts the keys to one of their saucers, and having them travel to their planet, while in exchange the aliens stayed on Earth for a number of years sharing their vast intergalactic wisdom with the Earthlings, which was fundamentally the same story as SERPO.

    What would you tell UFO researchers new to the fray who attempt to navigate these stormy seas?

    Well, I think the people who need to hear it the most would probably care the least about what I have to say, but if they did, I’d suggest looking back in the annals of ufology and examining its past. Do that before jumping aboard any particular UFO shark, because there seems to be nothing new under the sun when it comes to a lot of these recurring themes that continually crop up in UFO lore. 

Ufology has the tendency to retread and repurpose many of the same stories, or elements of the same stories, time and again. A perfect example of this is the so-called Silverman photo, which first surfaced in the German newspaper Neue Illustrierte on April 1, 1950, with the title "Der Mars-Mensch" which showed a strange looking three-foot tall fellow apparently from Mars. A few days later, Neue Illustrierte admitted that the Martian story was an April Fool’s hoax, but that didn’t stop the photo from spreading through the UFO subculture in the years to come.

The infamous Silverman photo

Saucer historian Isaac Koi has compiled a timeline of the Silverman photo and the publications in which it appeared. The first book to feature this photo was Major Donald Keyhoe’s Flying Saucers from Outer Space (1953), which made no mention of the Neue Illustrierte hoax, but claimed that the photo depicted U.S. government agents escorting an ET known as “Aluminum Man”, who was covered with an aluminum spacesuit that protected him from cosmic rays. In Space-Craft from Beyond Three Dimensions (1959), W. Gordon Allen referenced that the creature in the Silverman photo had crawled out of a crashed saucer near Mexico City.

Most recently, Harold Povenmire in UFO's and Alien Abduction Phenomena: A Scientific Analysis (2016) published a colorized version of the Silverman photo promoting it as the real deal, although what “scientific analysis” he conducted is unclear. Thanks to Povenmire, this new iteration of the Silverman photo soon began worming its way through social media, as a new generation of true believers clicked and shared to their heart’s content.

Book Review: 'Captured by Aliens?' by Nigel Watson

The latest publication from Nigel Watson is well-sourced and far-reaching as we have come to expect from his work. Captured by Aliens? A History and Analysis of American Abduction Claims explores well over a century of reports of strange flying objects and their most peculiar crews in the United States.

The famous Betty and Barney Hill abduction case serves as the backdrop for analysis. Readers with casual interest as well as those well-read on the case will find this a worthy work. Watson covers much in detail, including Air Force reports and physical evidence analyses.

The author sets the stage by considering UFO events leading up to the fateful New Hampshire night of 1961. The dive into events surrounding Maury Island and Kenneth Arnold are quite intriguing, particularly the threads followed on Fred Crisman and Clay Shaw.

Watson spends significant portions of the book exploring aspects of reported alien abductions. Select cases are described, as well as a general outline of common occurrences of alleged abductions.

Watson periodically reminds readers of the dubious nature of the abduction beast. Challenging Budd Hopkins's persistent claims of a wealth of photographic, medical and physical supporting evidence, Watson writes, "As we have seen, there is no video or physical evidence for alien abductions, and other forms of evidence are based on anecdotes or generalizations rather than hard facts or data."

This is not to suggest, however, that the author does not give the abduction devil its due. Whatever we are to ultimately make of the reported encounters, it is clear there are potentially relevant implications. As one psychology expert considered, the fairly common theme of abductions occurring while on long drives could be of interest to neuroscientists.

If there is something this reader would like to have seen the author cover more thoroughly, I would appreciate more critical review of the activities of investigators who were largely responsible for forming the public perception of alien abduction. A substantial amount of documentation has been published by many sources on the unethical actions of abduction gurus. The author chose not to address these circumstances for the most part, although concerns about hypnosis as a memory enhancer were repeatedly expressed, as were objections to non-professional hypnotists leading the fray. The lack of further addressing ethical concerns may be due in part to the book being a revised version of Watson's 2009 self-published work, The Alien Deception: An Exploration of the Alien Abduction Phenomenon, according to the opening pages. 

Watson does indeed reference critical review undertaken by writer and researcher George Hansen. Watson also notes, "Ironically, Budd Hopkins, the very person who helped establish the concept of abduction has published ever-more fantastic accounts that even his followers find hard to accept at face value, and he has thereby eroded the validity of his original concepts."

However, aspects of the claims of Hopkins and other investigators are referenced without offering counterpoints. For instance, Hopkins's claims are noted pertaining to similarities of symbols which abductees purported to see during encounters and subsequently sketch later. The claim by Hopkins of their consistent similarities was effectively challenged by Carol Rainey with video footage to demonstrate its extremely questionable authenticity, including Hopkins qualifying the handling of the symbols was his attempt to "stack the deck".

In Watson's defense, he does not suggest Hopkins and other investigators were necessarily correct, but simply cites their claims as a means to establish what abductees seem to often report. Interestingly, investigators themselves may be among the most challenging hurdles to competently analyzing the abduction phenomenon: we are often at the mercy of their interpretations and agendas, absent access to the witnesses and what scarce data may exist. We don't know what happened, we know what they said someone else said happened, accounts often obtained through hypnosis and, at absolute best, a biased lens. It could be added that in some relevant instances this assessment of investigators is extremely generous and forgiving.

Watson takes a deep and thorough dive into the role media played in public perception of flying objects and their purported occupants. Confirmed hoaxes carried out by newspapers, recurring over generations, are covered, as are relevant aspects of film, television, and radio. The implications are evident.

The author's interest in UFOs and related reports inspired him to obtain a degree in psychology. Watson therefore dedicates a chapter to its significance, and acknowledges how discussion of psychological issues is often met with heavy resistance from investigators and experiencers alike. He clearly endorses treating people respectfully, while clarifying the situation is much more complex than simply labeling someone sane or insane.

The risk of offending researchers or abductees is not a legitimate reason to neglect delving deeper into their accounts, Watson ultimately argues. He adds, "In the long term, a less emotionally charged view of their experiences is likely to be of more help to them than soothing platitudes."

Watson dedicates the final chapters to analyzing the Hill case and alleged alien abduction, considering the contradictions in logic, and discussing social implications. The Hill case continues to be fascinating to both believers and skeptics.

Captured by Aliens? represents hundreds of hours of research and decades of knowledge acquired by Nigel Watson. The citations are clear and abundant. It is a useful research tool as well as a significant work on mapping social aspects of the alien abduction phenomenon, particularly the Hill case.

Captured by Aliens? A History and Analysis of American Abduction Claims is 215 pages. It is published by McFarland & Company, Inc.

Normalizing the Fantastic and Resisting the Rational

"Why have we normalized speculating about alien bases on the moon yet vilify a person trying to explain strange occurrences with grounded explanations?" Twitter user Inquiring Josh recently tweeted. 

Why, indeed. The UFO genre has a long and troubled history of treating extreme claims as the norm. Casual talk of alien bases is often bandied about without so much as a raised eyebrow. It's common. As Inquiring Josh suggests, the situation is confounded by the typical knee jerk dismissal of those who propose potential and much less extraordinary explanations for the many often heard fantastic stories.

Deep Prasad is a young UFO enthusiast who has been rising in popularity. He promotes a confident belief aliens are here - plentifully here - and he claims to have experienced an abduction-like event. These are fairly common beliefs in the grand scheme of things UFO, as those familiar with conferences, meet ups, popular online sites and such are well aware.

In his recent article, We Live in an Alien Playground, Prasad expressed beliefs as implied by the title. He also asserted there is tangible evidence of alien bases. He further asserted that multiple massive alien structures exist on the dark side of the moon, adding that key NASA and DoD personnel are well aware of them, as are high level officials in Russia and China.

Prasad stated in the article that he briefed the deputy commander of NORAD on how to detect and track hypersonic UFOs. The article was soon edited, however, to instead state he briefed a "prominent North American Aerospace Defence Organization". It is unclear why "Aerospace Defence Organization" was capitalized, as it is not a proper noun or agency name.

Prasad was emailed and asked if he would care to comment on the edit and clarify who was actually briefed. He did not immediately respond. The edit is indicated in the images below, before and after.

The extent the UFO subculture willingly shrugs off glaring questions in lieu of credulous acceptance of entirely unsupported material is rather amazing. My direct and personal observations in this area significantly contributed to my interest and writing about the genre. I came across so many of the incidents that I am confident I have now forgotten many more than I recall.

Inquiring Josh's tweet reminds me of a UFO person of interest to me who never really made it into my written material, certainly not in the ways it initially seemed they might. Their saga turned out to just be too convoluted and problematic.

The person achieved some degree of UFO notoriety and was on the radar of some relatively high profile researchers. I corresponded with them by email and phone for quite a while, periodically meeting in person. I found their claimed experiences to be difficult to accept at face value for a lot of reasons.

During one meeting in a public place, the individual was particularly suspicious that people around us were trying to eavesdrop. I did not share the suspicion. The person told me of alleged alien encounters and extremely subjective experiences during that interaction, but one of the most prominent things about that specific meeting was their concern intelligence agencies were actively interested in our conversation. The suggestion, in order to be feasible, had to be predicated on an agency's urgent interception of our emails and phone calls to know where we agreed to meet and subsequently place or secure an asset among the employees of the location, as the supposition went. I had a lot of questions about that. It should again be noted that, in the grand scheme of UFO culture, the general premise is a fairly commonly held belief in one form or another.

Nonetheless, just because it's common shouldn't necessarily mean to take it in stride. I also had a lot of questions about the integrity of the researchers who were apparently encouraging the person. Surely the individual behaved the same way around them, if not even more questionably, yet none of the information being published reflected any concerns about misinterpretations or overly subjective perceptions. Quite the contrary, actually. The person I knew as erratic and confused was described as level headed and reliable. The primary reason I never wrote about the person and their case was I thought it stood to do more emotional damage to them than it would benefit the collective UFO genre, particularly considering anyone practicing a reasonable amount of critical thinking would recognize the investigators involved as doing subpar work anyway.

Perhaps investigators are frequently content to omit mention of that which negates their argument, while promoting that which supports it. A lot of investigators seem to leave out the troublesome stuff because they want the rest of the material to seem more credible. It should be obvious that the reliability of such work is in serious question. Some such goings on in ufology are blatantly unethical - at absolute best.

Hopkins and Jacobs at a 2004 Intruders Foundation presentation
Credit: Carol Rainey

I piggybacked off the work of Emma Woods, Carol Rainey, Jeremy Vaeni, Jeff Ritzmann, and several others about events surrounding who Rainey termed "the priests of high strangeness," Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs. The hypnosis-advocating duo facilitated a train wreck of ethical research failings but, in the context of this post, I'm reminded how normalized it was to talk of aliens in the circles of people like Hopkins and Jacobs. To incredible extents, actually. The presence and activities of the non-human beings were taken for granted as objectively real. The only question was how much the creatures passed through each of our individual lives.

One of the many jaw-dropping scenarios uncovered by the above mentioned group involved David Jacobs and his subjects, for lack of a better term, "Elizabeth" and "Brian". Woods knew these people, and assisted with filling in detail and context (as well as shedding a great deal of light on her own infamous interactions with Jacobs). 

I explored an interview Vaeni and Ritzmann conducted with Brian, who had been doing instant message hypnosis sessions with Elizabeth. This rather incredible activity resulted from Jacobs's practice of doing the same. Jacobs at one point publicly stated an ET-human hybrid messaged him from Elizabeth's home while the hybrids rendered her defenseless. He claimed to believe this was actually occurring and among the most frightening things that ever happened to him (I personally interviewed Jacobs and asked about the claim, and found his statements to be an insult to intelligence). Here is a small sample of UFO cult-like behavior and its normalization, as facilitated by Jacobs, from The Greys Have Been Framed, pp66-67:

Brian went on to explain that he did some 18 such sessions with Elizabeth in 2007. The sessions would last for hours, as did telephone conversations between the two.

His trust for Elizabeth began to seriously unravel, Brian explained, when the “hybrid chats” which had occurred with Jacobs began to arise with him as well, and the content became increasingly ridiculous. It seems Elizabeth would allegedly fall under the control of the hybrids, leaving them to IM with Brian, who would exchange questions and answers with the unwelcome visitors. Elizabeth was supposedly rendered passive and without conscious recall of the occurrences. Essentially, Brian was supposed to accept that hybrids were storming the castle while he happened to have been conducting IM hypnosis with the woman, if not because he was doing so, and the hybrids were threatened that their plots and existence were becoming more widely known, all while Elizabeth would later be like, “What happened?”. Brian told Vaeni and Ritzmann that he strongly urged Elizabeth to use a web cam, which she always refused to do for one reason or another.

During interactions that did not allegedly involve hybrids, Elizabeth would apparently encourage Brian to use a pseudonym when IM'ing with the hybrids for reasons, according to Brian, she suggested included Brian's personal safety. Commenting on such hidden identities and the many aliases recommended and employed, Emma explained that Brian pretended to the alleged hybrids to be a doctor who lived in Austria.

“This came about because Dr. Jacobs had done a similar thing,” Emma continued. “Dr. Jacobs pretended to be numerous other people to the hybrids, including a female expert in MPD called Aloha Norton. He also used aliases when communicating with Elizabeth and me, and asked us to use the aliases when communicating with him, for when the aliens and hybrids read our minds. These aliases included him being someone called Lucille Scott, David Jacobsen and so on. He also wrote emails to us in code, and asked us to do the same thing. So Brian pretending to be a different person was based on that precedent from Dr. Jacobs.”

Believe it or not, that's actually far from the worst of Jacobs's exploitative actions. However, let's shake off the glazed-over eyes and numbed brains produced by that material and keep moving.

A designer golf cart sporting a "Q",
spotted by your author in The Villages, FL

It is frighteningly easier than many of us might like to think to become entrenched in questionable beliefs and the related social circles, one compromise at a time. No one woke up one morning and set out to get indoctrinated by lunatics or con men. It happens with an overly accepting, somewhat gullible willingness to hear "both sides," combined with what is often a reasonably valid distrust of authority. The groups themselves are often conducive to cultivating dependency through providing support and empathy for issues commonly dismissed by family and other more mainstream social circles. It is also noteworthy that a reasonable distrust of authority should not mindlessly evolve into uncritically accepting every far flung plot. Just because MKULTRA actually existed doesn't necessarily mean the CIA is eavesdropping via a waitress offering beverage refills. 

I have indeed found myself deeply involved with people harboring extreme fringe beliefs. I understand how we get there, and I understand how there can seem to be kernels of truth in some of the narratives. There may well be glimpses of currently unknown phenomena and covert plots of intelligence agencies to be found lurking within the UFO genre and material. 

That stated, I would like to think I have learned to exercise a willingness to seek information from multiple quality sources, not relying too heavily on any single witness account. I then rank the sources and their credibility as appropriate. Doing so can help us develop and implement a healthy, functional understanding of the fact-finding process. It comes as a result of extending an open-mindedness to the work of those who question UFO bandwagons as much as we extend it to those who drive them. It is also important to acquaint ourselves with such topics as identifiable flying objects, symptoms of emotional trauma, and various similar types of non-UFO yet quite relevant material. This should be done in generous proportion to subjecting ourselves to questionable stories in constant circulation on cable and the internet. This brings us back to the gist of Inquiring Josh's tweet.

Unreasonable as it is, UFO World indeed tends to accept and even celebrate assertions of massive alien structures on the moon without a blink of the eye, while adamantly resisting efforts at sensible discourse. To vilify those willing to apply healthy skepticism to the stories is a mistake. It's not just an attack on those individuals, but the very critical thinking they represent. It's a serious hole in the fact-finding process, while the only path to recognizing possible genuinely unknown phenomena goes directly through the critical review of the evidence. There's no way around it; the evidence must be published, and it must be subjected to critical review. Those who fail to embrace that are doomed to dwell in an echo chamber of unsupported fantastic assertions. 

Leah Haley, MUFON and NIDS

Following is from Chapter 13 of my 2015 book, The Greys Have Been Framed: Exploitation in the UFO Community. I find reflecting on it now to be timely and interesting.

Pensacola Beach, a short distance from Eglin Air Force Base

Leah Haley and the 139

[T]his is not a 'witch hunt' or any kind of a personal anything against John Carpenter. This is about those 140 abductees that have been screwed and used by John and to insure that there is never a repeat performance. I hope that you can appreciate the importance of pursuing this as vigorously as is necessary.

This nasty business has now been confirmed by Bigelow himself, Walt Andrus, Dr. [John] Alexander of NIDS, and about seven of the abductees whose files were sold. This [is] no Mickey Mouse, “Ok now we all know about it so let's forget it because we're all human” kind of thing. This isn't about “cheating on the wife” or “pilfering office supplies from work,” John [Carpenter] has violated the trust, privacy, and right to anonymity of 140 abductees.

No good. That kind of bullsh*t has to stop, and stop now.

- John Velez to Budd Hopkins, UFO UpDates List

On a Saturday morning in March of 2011, I drove my Ford down the sunny streets of Pensacola, Florida. I located an address where I was expected in what turned out to be a neighborhood with an inviting appearance, and I came to a stop in front of a corner lot hosting a pleasant looking brick house. After double checking the address, I parked in the driveway, gathered some equipment and walked up a sidewalk shaded by oak trees to the front door. I considered how things are not always as they appear as I rang the bell at the seemingly typical home of a woman directly involved in a very not so typical chain of events that consistently created more questions than answers.

Leah Haley opened the door. We were soon in her den, seated across from one another discussing extremely questionable activities that had long plagued the UFO community.

Haley became a relatively high profile figure within ufology during the 1990's as an alleged alien abductee. I first contacted her in 2009 due to my growing interest in cases that seemingly overlapped with elements of the intelligence community. In addition to her possibly anomalous experiences, she reported numerous interactions with people who behaved in very questionable manners. She described how one such person directly claimed to have approached her on behalf of intelligence officials. Her story was filled with people appearing to have hidden agendas and conflicts of interest, whoever they worked for and whatever their motives may have been. She subsequently authored books on her experience in ufology, and by the time she and I began corresponding, Haley no longer believed extraterrestrials were involved in her story at all: Her research led her to conclude that human beings were conducting mind control-like experiments and operations, and that some of the people who were targeted, including her, had misinterpreted the circumstances as alien abduction.

I have come to confidently conclude Haley's saga included exploitation, manipulation and ulterior motives. That is the case regardless of what specific explanations may apply to the circumstances.

Sitting in her den that Saturday morning, we talked about her fragmented memories of a childhood UFO sighting in Alabama, and how years later the memories led her to seek assistance from the UFO community. We talked about how she became involved with ufology hypnotists, and how, after writing Budd Hopkins, he referred her to John Carpenter. It was subsequently during a 1991 trip to Missouri to meet with hypnotist Carpenter and his assistants that Haley explained how she was approached at the airport in Springfield by a stranger. The man suspiciously asked out of the blue if her travels had anything to do with her interest in extraterrestrials. That occurred long before she became outspoken on the subject of UFOs, and a minimal number of people should have known – or cared – she was in town to be hypnotized by Carpenter.

Pensacola

Haley and I talked about how she got involved from her former home in Mississippi with the UFO scene in Gulf Breeze, a community of substantial significance in ufology located near Pensacola. That, in turn, resulted in two now previous board members of the Mutual UFO Network accompanying her on a 13-mile hike across Eglin Air Force Base.

On September 24, 1992, Leah Haley, along with USAF Ret. Lt. Col. Donald Ware and USAF Ret. Col. Robert Reid, set out across the south end of Eglin, which borders the Gulf of Mexico. They hiked from Navarre east across the base to Fort Walton Beach in search of the site where an alien spacecraft had been allegedly downed by American military personnel – with her aboard. That fantastic notion, dubbed the beach incident, resulted from the hypnosis sessions conducted by Carpenter, yet another member of the MUFON Board of Directors at the time. Ware later acknowledged it was he who incredibly suggested they search the base shoreline for the crash site and undertake the puzzling expedition.

The sun sets on Pensacola

Haley and I talked about how, a few months prior to the hike with Ware and Reid, she interpreted herself to have received a telepathic message stating her alien abductors were from Sirius. She later discovered Sirius to be a star in the constellation Canis Major. In her 2003 book, Unlocking Alien Closets, pages 19-20, Haley documented experiencing what she interpreted as a second telepathic message the very next day, March 13, 1992, following the transmission referencing Sirius.

“My communicators told me to check out the beach incident; they indicated that it had occurred Thursday morning, August 4, 1988, on Navarre Beach,” Haley wrote.

She discovered Navarre Beach to be near Pensacola and border Eglin Air Force Base. The circumstances directly contributed to her further involvement with the Gulf Breeze UFO community, Donald Ware and the subsequent hike across Eglin.

[...]

At one point in our interactions I asked Leah if she was aware of Martti Koski. She responded she never heard of him. I inquired about Koski, a Finnish citizen who claimed to have been a victim of MKULTRA-type mind control experimentation while visiting Canada, because he reported hearing unexplained voices – that told him his abusers were from Sirius. His case was cited in Martin Cannon's 1990 work, The Controllers: A New Hypothesis of Alien Abduction.

“Koski, for example,” Cannon wrote, “was at one point told that the doctors afflicting him were actually 'aliens from Sirius.'"

Further food for thought includes a September, 1991, Flying Saucer Review submission, The Extraordinary Case of “Elizabeth Richmond”. Explored in the article were events surrounding the alleged UFO-related experiences of a woman assigned the pseudonym Elizabeth Richmond, who apparently resided in Pensacola. Her reported anomalies included telepathic contact involving a message about aliens from Sirius.

“During later meditation sessions there was apparently some telepathic contact,” the authors wrote. “Elizabeth was told that their home-planet belonged to the star Sirius...”

While I found such circumstances intriguing, my interest admittedly spiked when I noted this: The authors were Donald Ware and Robert Reid. I checked with Haley to make sure there was not some kind of mix up in which Ware and Reid were actually writing about her as “Elizabeth Richmond,” which, Leah confirmed, they indeed were not. She further indicated she was previously unaware of the article and its contents.

Were we to believe MUFON directors residing in Greater Pensacola knew at least two people during the early 1990's stating they interpreted themselves to have received telepathic messages claiming to have been transmitted by aliens from Sirius?

MUFON Contradictions

Whatever we are to make of the many curious circumstances that make up the Haley saga, they do not change the fact that a great deal of consideration could be given to the actions of people involved in the case, whatever those actions might indicate. At the least, issues of ethics and exploitation arise. That is the fact no matter how adamantly one may choose to argue the validity of Haley's conclusions about her experiences or one potential explanation or another.

As I blogged about the case, primarily between 2011 and 2013, I frequently observed people seeming to be either unable or unwilling to absorb and discuss the social significance of the chain of events and its implications to ufology as a whole. Interested parties often seemed unable to get past arguing about the legitimacy of alleged alien abduction or the feasibility of relatively recent mind control operations in order to meaningfully discuss what I interpreted to be issues that offered better opportunities for deeper, more focused study. At the least, Haley's case offered opportunities to identify details of specific incidents and the players involved. I'd go as far as to say, in hindsight, I confidently suspect a significant segment of the UFO community prefers to keep attention aimed at nebulous concepts, arguing about beliefs that can't be conclusively resolved, rather than drilling down through that which is actually available for closer examination.

Tom Deuley

A fourth MUFON board member, US Navy Ret. Lt. Commander Tom Deuley, questioned Haley's motives and judgment in statements published in the March 5, 1995, edition of The Tampa Tribune-Times. The engineer and former National Security Agency employee stated that MUFON did not embrace Haley's story of alien and military abductions when he was quoted for an article addressing her then-upcoming speaking engagement. “We feel very embarrassed” about “such ridiculous stories,” Deuley commented on behalf of MUFON, adding that “it doesn't help the serious scientific work being done.” Such statements might be considered an understandable public stance to express – if they had been accurate.

While throwing Haley under the bus, Deuley completely failed to disclose it was his own MUFON colleagues – fellow board members, no less – who played primary roles in shaping and encouraging her perceptions in the first place; perceptions cultivated via such means as hypnosis and a very peculiar field trip across an Air Force facility in search of the crash site of an alien spaceship. Deuley apparently failed to disclose extents of MUFON involvement with Haley while literally describing her statements as ridiculous. He represented the stance of the organization as rejecting such claims, when, in fact, a much more accurate description of the situation would have been that its board members were actively involved in manufacturing them.

Readers even vaguely familiar with the Mutual UFO Network should be well aware of its long established tendencies to embrace and promote such beliefs, contrary to what Deuley informed the newspaper reporter. As a matter of fact, in 1995, during the very time in which The Tampa Trib ran the story with Deuley's comments, the MUFON UFO Journal was regularly carrying a pro-alien abduction column authored by John Carpenter. Abduction Notes, as it was titled, clearly endorsed and promoted claims of abduction of both the alien and military variety. In a column published in the February, 1995, edition of the Journal, a matter of just days before the March 5 newspaper article went to press at The Tampa Trib, Carpenter specifically promoted “the reality of UFO abductions” while referencing such material as Whitley Strieber's Communion and Budd Hopkins' Intruders.

For Deuley to assert that MUFON attempted to discourage spreading such stories in favor of promoting “serious scientific work” was obviously, to put it kindly, incorrect. For the MUFON director to frame the events in such a manner while simultaneously omitting mention of board members' direct involvement and literal participation in Haley's story, which he described the organization as identifying as embarrassing and ridiculous, was, to put it politely, not an accurate representation of the circumstances. History would soon show us that Deuley's failure to provide The Tampa Trib with more accurate context of the circumstances was only a trailing indicator of what would prove to be much deeper and systemic MUFON problems directly related to transparency, protocols and ethics.

The Carpenter Affair

In 1995, hypnotist, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and MUFON Director of Abduction Research John Carpenter was publishing columns in the MUFON UFO Journal. He was advocating quality services and compassionate treatment for alleged alien abductees, including what he described as the emergence of “a promising network of abduction support groups” led by “trustworthy individuals.” He would later state he was at that same point in time conducting what he attempted to justify as “data sharing” with controversial ufology philanthropist Robert Bigelow: Carpenter was supplying Bigelow and his associates at the now dissolved National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) information from and copies of case files of alleged abductees without their knowledge or consent.

John Carpenter

The circumstances would become known as the Carpenter Affair, and, according to documents and statements obtained from multiple sources which included Carpenter himself, copies of the case files of 140 alleged alien abductees were released. The files were shared without the informed consent of the individuals who were hypnosis subjects of Carpenter, and some had paid him for the sessions, including Leah Haley. Additional materials released apparently included audiotapes of hypnosis sessions.

Carpenter received a reported $14,000 from Robert Bigelow in exchange for the “data sharing.” He framed the compensation as reimbursements for his time and expenses, while others interpreted him to have sold case files.

“'[M]y data sharing was spread over three years around 1995,” Carpenter stated during a January, 2012, email exchange I conducted for a blog post at The UFO Trail.

“Other researchers were approached with the same proposal, and some of them may have shared data, too,” he added, but declined twice to elaborate further on the alleged involvement of other researchers.

Carpenter consistently defended his actions. He repeatedly described his hypnosis and alien abduction investigation activities as serious scientific research conducted with the best of intentions.

“It was an honor to have great minds study this important information, quietly, discreetly, and respectfully,” he wrote of the hypnotically induced narrations and their release to Bigelow and associates.

“If you were so confident your motives and intentions were honorable,” I asked during the 2012 email exchange, “why did you not ever just ask Leah if it would be okay to share her file with an interested party? After all, she was obviously an ambitious truth seeker, considering her activities and levels of commitment. Why didn't you just ask her?”

“She was already publicly sharing, speaking, and publishing more details of her case than I ever thought of sharing,” Carpenter replied, “and I wasn't sharing anything publicly - only discreetly and privately with scientists - that's what researchers do.”

Even if we were to entertain that statement – evasive and condescending as it may be - as a sincere description of Carpenter's interpretation of his actions in the case of Leah Haley, it doesn't explain his justification for bypassing informed consent in releasing the files of the other 139. They weren't all speaking publicly about details of their experiences and hypnosis sessions, were they? Furthermore, it's quite arguably beside the point from a number of perspectives, and suffice it to say Haley saw the situation substantially differently than Carpenter tried to rationalize it.

MUFON Complicity

In a two-page statement (see below) included in a 2001 complaint filed to the Missouri Division of Professional Registration, Haley explained how Carpenter originally presented himself as acting in the capacity of a mental health professional and repeatedly assured her that all information discussed would be kept confidential.

“Had I known that John [Carpenter] would sell my case files or disclose information he did not have permission to disclose, I would never have gone to him,” Haley wrote in the prepared statement.

What we can reasonably discern about the Carpenter Affair is that during the 1990's Carpenter supplied data to Bigelow and payment was made. The exchange was indeed discreet, as Carpenter described the circumstances, if not covert. It was not until investigator Gary Hart, acting on information provided to him by alleged abductees who told him of what they termed a file sale, picked up the trail in 1999 and more widely published the details. According to Hart, his tipsters were concerned about both the breach of confidential information as well as the MUFON willingness to enable the circumstances while failing to take corrective measures.

Hart took the role of principal reporter of the Carpenter Affair and in 2000 submitted a formal complaint to the Mutual UFO Network. The organization still took no apparent action. MUFON allowed Carpenter to remain in a leadership capacity and continued to encourage self-described abductees to seek his services.

Hart then filed a complaint in 2001 to the Missouri Division of Professional Registration, where Carpenter was licensed as a social worker. The agency enacted a five-year probation period on Carpenter's license. The action reportedly resulted from Hart's complaint. Carpenter vacated his position as MUFON Director of Abduction Research that same year, 2001, and the probation period was completed in 2006.

MUFON staple John Schuessler

I picked up the Carpenter Affair story while blogging about the Haley case. Gary Hart subsequently left comments about the saga at The UFO Trail, and I then contacted him for more information. The result was the 2013 blog post, The Carpenter Affair: For the Record, which contained several documents submitted and specific points addressed in the complaints filed to the Mutual UFO Network and the Missouri Division of Professional Registration.

Among the points of Hart's complaint I identified as most relevant was the apparent MUFON complicity in the chain of events. MUFON founding member and participant on the board of directors John Schuessler was simultaneously sitting on a NIDS advisory committee during the time in question, the 1990's. It became increasingly apparent that factions of the MUFON hierarchy not only attempted to cover up the Carpenter Affair, but had in all reasonable likelihood been aware of its circumstances all along. Larry Bryant, MUFON Director of Governmental Affairs at the time, expressed such concerns in a 2000 formal statement on the matter:

Since a cloud of alleged impropriety now hangs over the Executive Committee (of MUFON) for its having taken so long to act upon its months-long knowledge of the 'Carpenter Affair', I hereby call upon all members of the Executive Committee to resign forthwith from their Committee positions, from their membership on the MUFON Board of Directors, and from their MUFON general membership - all in the interest of helping restore the public's confidence in the purpose, operation, management, and integrity of this organization...

In addition, you Executive Committee members owe all of us in the entire field of UFO research not only a full, written explanation as to who on the MUFON Board originally knew of the 'Carpenter Affair' (and when they knew it) but also a published apology for their having embargoed or otherwise downplayed that knowledge at the expense of the rest of the Board. If we have a lesson to be learned from this debacle, how about this one: Enforced silence never can be the ally of truth!

Hart made it abundantly clear that, after submitting his complaint to MUFON, representatives for the organization expressed neither concern about the matter nor interest in pursuing it.

“Immediately after filing my MUFON complaint I was told in no uncertain terms that MUFON had no intention of taking the complaint seriously and actually doing an investigation, so I investigated the case further and made a proper report/complaint to the state licensing board,” Hart informed me in 2013.

He added, “Perhaps the most important point in all of this is that MUFON's ethics code was all for show. They had and apparently still have no intention of holding anyone, even a board member, to their code of ethics.”

Other key points contained in Gary Hart's investigation included implications of sexual relations commonly taking place between investigator/hypnotists and alleged alien abductees. Carpenter, for instance, reportedly married two of his former clients, one of which was a hypnosis subject represented in the 140 files released to Bigelow and his NIDS associates.

Hart reported in his complaint that Carpenter's activities rendered his body of research worthless due to the “exceptionally dysfunctional behavior” documented as having occurred between Carpenter and some of his abductee contacts. Given the circumstances, Hart continued, professional researchers could no longer determine what was truth or fiction within Carpenter's abductee accounts and conclusions. Hart's work further suggested such questionable activities were common among investigators of alleged alien abduction.

Conditions of the probation enforced upon Carpenter's license were specified in State Committee for Social Workers v. John S. Carpenter, a 2001 public document available on the website of the Missouri Division of Professional Registration. Stipulations included he submit to a psychosocial evaluation as part of a treatment program for an impaired professional. He was then required to inform the State Committee of any counseling or care recommendations that might result, as well as furnish progress reports on a quarterly basis. Carpenter was also required to provide the Committee with performance evaluations completed by his employer twice per year, among additional stipulations.

The Players

Robert Bigelow

Several attempts were made at various times to obtain comments on the Carpenter Affair from relevant parties. Multiple requests for permission to submit questions were sent to Robert Bigelow and his representatives. No responses were received.

John Carpenter was emailed in preparation for blog posts in 2012 and again in 2013, and he was willing to provide statements in each of the two circumstances. He maintained his lack of negligence and defended his actions, in spite of acknowledging he indeed provided Bigelow and associates with copies of the files and that payment was made. He consistently denied they were sold, however. In 2013 I requested he specifically comment on how he could deny the allegations he sold case files in the context of statements he wrote in a 1996 letter to Bigelow. A copy of the letter was included in Hart's complaint, and I provided Carpenter a copy when I requested comment.

“Personally, I want to thank you, Bob, for your assistance regarding the 140 cases I mailed to you. That helped pay some bills,” Carpenter wrote to Bigelow in the letter (see below).

“The remainder has been what we have been living on since last December at the rate of $600-$800 per month... What has really hurt this year – after I began copying and sending files – was the elimination of my bonus/incentive pay program at work.”

In response to request for comment on his remarks contained in the 1996 letter, Carpenter stated in an email received October 15, 2013, “I am now and always have been in complete possession of all original case files, approximately 140 in number. Mr. Bigelow paid me for my time, expense, and labor in making some copies that his elite science panel could review in order to understand the abduction phenomenon more fully.”

John Carpenter may describe his activities as he chooses, yet the fact will remain it is not difficult to understand why some people would interpret the circumstances as selling the case files and betraying the trust of the parties involved. An argument could also be made the specific purpose of the compensation is irrelevant as compared to the significance of the file release itself.

Part of a 1994 regional MUFON newsletter,

establishing Carpenter framed his hypnosis

activities as paid professional services,

a point later denied by his attorney

[...]

MUFON International Director from 2000 to 2006 and founding member John Schuessler was part of that “elite science panel” Carpenter referenced. Schuessler sat on the NIDS Scientific Advisory Board.

I emailed him on multiple occasions and requested permission to pose a few questions about the Carpenter Affair, clarifying that his comments were requested for inclusion in blog posts. No responses were received.

Former member of the MUFON Board of Directors Donald Ware and the organization parted ways, and Ware went on to direct the International UFO Congress from 1993 to 2010. He and I exchanged emails in preparation for my February, 2012, blog post, The Leah Haley Case: The Eglin Expedition.

Donald Ware

Ware explained that he suggested undertaking the hike across Eglin in 1992 based on the description of the alleged crash site, alluding to details which arose during a July, 1991, hypnotic regression session conducted by Carpenter with Haley.

“I told her there is about 100 miles of the sugary white sand along our coast,” Ware wrote, “but the most likely place for the military people to be there so soon would be the 13 miles of restricted Eglin AFB beach between Navarre and Ft. Walton Beach.”

[...]

In a July, 2000, email to the once popular listserv and website UFO UpDates List, John Velez indicated that Col. John Alexander and Robert Bigelow himself, along with some of the suspected abductees in question, were among those who had confirmed that “files were sold.” Career intelligence officer, non-lethal weapons expert and CIA consultant Col. Alexander was a staff member of NIDS at the time.

It was for such reasons that I emailed the colonel in the weeks preceding the 2012 Ozark UFO Conference, where Alexander was scheduled to speak, and requested permission to interview him at the event for a blog post to be published at The UFO Trail. In an email dated March 2, 2012, Col. Alexander responded that he “would be happy” to meet with me, and recommended I get with him at the conference to schedule a time. However, when I approached Alexander in person at the conference the next month, April, he declined to be interviewed due to what he described as my interests in conspiracies.

Since our interactions in 2012, I have emailed Col. Alexander and requested comment for blog posts on various occasions. Sometimes he offers direct statements and other times he is more vague.

In August of 2013 I emailed Alexander and informed him I was hoping he would provide comment on some issues surrounding the Carpenter Affair. I particularly asked what interests he may have had in the 140 files. I also asked if he would please explain, in his opinion, why his former employer, Robert Bigelow, desired to obtain the 140 files and, in effect, finance Carpenter's ongoing activities. Comment was requested on any knowledge he might have of other researchers offered similar agreements, as asserted by Carpenter.

Lastly, I cited James Carrion's January, 2011, allegation that Bigelow, during dealings with MUFON, moved funds on behalf of an undisclosed financial “sponsor” that Bigelow only revealed to John Schuessler, but not the rest of the MUFON board. I asked Col. Alexander if he could offer comment on Carrion's allegation, and if there was anything he might be at liberty to discuss concerning relationships between Bigelow corporations and intelligence agencies.

“You should ask Bigelow if you are interested in old affairs,” Alexander less than transparently emailed in response.

It is possible Alexander's aversion to discussing the Carpenter Affair and related issues, while ironically promoting himself as an intelligence insider both willing and able to explain behind the scenes ufology, may be due at least in part to nondisclosure agreements long reported to be conditions of dancing with Team
Bigelow. Following is an excerpt from an Associated Press article, Millionaire searches for UFOs on ranch in Utah, which references such agreements while exploring Bigelow's interests in the Skinwalker Ranch, published in the October 24, 1996, edition of the Eugene Register-Guard:

Officially, the research is being conducted by the National Institute for Discovery Science, which Bigelow formed last October. Among the scientists involved is John Alexander, former director of non-lethal weapons testing at Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico.

“Our approach is to do good, high-quality research using a standard scientific approach and do what we can to get hard data,” Alexander said from the institute's Las Vegas offices. “One of the missions of the institute is to make information widely available.”

Bigelow himself declined an interview. Alexander would not provide details of how or why the research is being conducted.

[Former owner of the property Terry] Sherman, now employed by Bigelow to maintain the ranch, said he can no longer discuss the activity because of a nondisclosure agreement Bigelow had him sign.

Along with the use of nondisclosure agreements, reports have circulated of Bigelow's direct involvement with intelligence agencies, in addition to his practice of employing their consultants such as Col. Alexander. An individual identifying himself as “Chip” in an interview published in September, 2012, claimed to have been employed in security at the Skinwalker Ranch during approximately 2009. Chip indicated security clearances and nondisclosure agreements were prerequisites for employment at the facility, and alleged that he saw copies of a contract between Bigelow interests and the NSA during the time he worked at the ranch.

James Carrion, in his ongoing research, documented contradictions and inconsistencies put forth by NIDS. Carrion reported that individuals, including family members of the former Skinwalker Ranch owners, stated that accounts of supposed high strangeness related to the property were exaggerated or entirely misrepresented. Moreover, while serving as the MUFON International Director, Carrion and an accompanying scientist visited the ranch but were denied access. Carrion further reported that he was among the people interviewed for a background investigation on John Schuessler for a US government security clearance allegedly related to his consulting work for Robert Bigelow.

Elizabeth Chavez Carpenter is a former wife and hypnosis subject of John Carpenter, and her case file was among the 140 released. She contacted me in December, 2013, after reading my posts at The UFO Trail about the Carpenter Affair. Although I had not previously interacted with her directly, I was aware of Chavez Carpenter due to my research of the circumstances and correspondence with Gary Hart. She was among the sources who provided Hart with information contained in his formal complaints, and he described Chavez Carpenter as “truthful in my many talks with her.”

She and I subsequently corresponded, and I considered one of the more interesting aspects of her experience as one of the 140 to be that she actually had a copy of her case file eventually sent to her by standard mail. Chavez Carpenter explained that she contacted John Alexander after identifying him from the NIDS website as someone who could possibly be instrumental in returning her file and audiotapes. She and Alexander then exchanged emails, according to Chavez Carpenter, from May to October of 2000.

She described the colonel as polite in their interactions, adding that he at one point informed her that he would check on the tapes the next time he was at the NIDS offices. In one email from Alexander, she indicated, he asked her if she had yet received anything. In another, Alexander suggested that he had discovered the tapes were not at NIDS – whatever we might suspect that implied.

Chavez Carpenter received her case file in 2001, but knowing that NIDS kept a copy, she concluded. It came in an envelope with no return address, as she recalled.

“I sent three letters to Robert Bigelow requesting to have my case file back along with the audiotapes,” Chavez Carpenter explained. “I did receive the case file, minus the audiotapes.”

She was unsure of the specific chain of events that led to receiving the file in the mail. I asked, for instance, if she thought Alexander was instrumental, as she initially suspected he might be.

“As I look back and reflect on all this, I cannot really say.”

I asked Chavez Carpenter what she thought the reasons were that Robert Bigelow was willing to provide John Carpenter with cash and purchase copies of the case files and related materials.

“We may never know,” she replied.

[...]

[I]n early 2015 the British army announced the formation of the 77th Brigade, a unit of 1500 troops The Guardian dubbed “Facebook warriors.” The soldiers are charged with carrying out unconventional, “non-lethal warfare” and executing psychological operations through the use of social media. Israeli and US armies engage heavily in such operations, with the Israel Defense Forces reporting activity conducted in six languages on 30 platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

It would be difficult for me to believe the UFO community did not serve in some capacity in the research and development of such psyops, or, at the least, I would doubt the community was exempt from effects of the evolution of such projects. As a matter of fact, in his hard hitting 2015 piece on how the US intelligence community drove to dominate the world through information control, Why Google made the NSA, investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed referenced ufology's favorite CIA consultant, Col. John Alexander. Specifically, the targeting of civilian populations for information war.

Addressing a 1989 US Navy brief authored by well-connected Pentagon official Richard O'Neill, Ahmed wrote, “That secret brief, which according to former senior US intelligence official John Alexander was read by the Pentagon’s top leadership, argued that information war must be targeted at: adversaries to convince them of their vulnerability; potential partners around the world so they accept 'the cause as just'; and finally, civilian populations and the political leadership so they believe that 'the cost' in blood and treasure is worth it.”

In the end, the best most of us can do is inventory the facts, carefully differentiating between what we can demonstrate to be true versus what we are told is true. We can then make an honest effort to see what kind of picture emerges when the facts stand on their own, absent unsubstantiated proclamations and stripped of colorful yet distracting costumes.

Leah Haley initially waded into the UFO community in search of credible information. People claimed they were qualified to provide it. Some 14 or more hypnosis sessions and a life altering change of belief systems was facilitated by the board of directors of a purported scientific research organization. Haley put on the brakes and summoned the courage to question the validity of the indoctrinated alien narrative. In her renewed efforts to separate fact from fiction, she found nothing to support an alien presence, yet repeatedly identified circumstances of human-instigated exploitation. She and others who have sought guidance from ufology hypnotists and similar self-described experts will deal with the adverse effects the rest of their lives.

I cannot conclusively say Leah Haley is a victim of covert mind control research as she suspects, but I can confidently say that she and her circumstances were exploited...

Either way, it was her involvement with the people of the UFO community who qualified themselves as able to be of assistance that directly led to the entire traumatic series of events, of which this chapter represents but a small sample. In a manner of speaking, she's right, one way or the other, as her interpretations of reality and memories of past experiences were definitely altered and manipulated. Relevant questions become how intentional was it, who was interested in studying it and for what purposes.

As for me, I'm pretty sure a lot of the excessive window dressing is hung by people bound by nondisclosure agreements and government security clearances which restrict them from discussing classified information. They're promoting hypnotic regression as a memory enhancer, and they are generally - and in some cases extremely - exploiting the public. They're spending decades as key personnel of nonprofit corporations funded by undisclosed sources and operating under false pretenses of prioritizing scientific study, while, in actuality, virtually constantly promoting an entirely unsubstantiated alien presence. If they can ever undress the facts they're disguising beneath multiple layers of elaborate costumes, evasive statements and unresolved contradictions, I'd be more than willing to adjust my assessment accordingly.

In the meantime, I call bullshit.