KEPTICS UFO NEWSLETTER By Philip J. Klass 404 -"N" SL SW Washington DC 20024 Copyright 2002 NIDS Concludes That McGuire AFB "Dead-ET" Tale Is A Hoax Which Challenges Earlier Claims By MUFON's George Filer The claim that an Extraterrestrial (ET) was shot to death on the night of Jan. 17-18, at the McGuire Air Force Base (or adjacent Army Fort Dix) is a HOAX, according to an investigation by the National Institute for D.iscovery Science (NIDS). The NIDS finding challenges the claims of George A. Filer, who reportedly was a USAF intelligence officer at McGuire AFB at the time [SUN #68/Summer 2001]. Filer, who is MUFON's Eastern Region Director and produces a weekly Internet web-site on UFO reports, was one of the star witnesses at Dr. Stephen Greer's first major press conferences for his Project Disclosure, May 9, 2000, at the National Press Club. Results of the NIDS investigation were posted on its web-site in mid-July, but have been ignored by Filer's own web-site (as of late August). The dead-ET tale was first made public by (the late) Leonard Stringfield in his paper presented at the 1985 MUFON conference. He was first informed of the incident via a letter received on Sept. 23, 1980, from a James Morse, who said he had been a military security at McGuire at the time, when he claimed that there had been numerous UFO sightings in the area. Roughly two months later, Morse wrote again to say he now had retired from the USAF and the two men then corresponded intermittently. Three years later, Morse called Stringfield on the telephone and in a subsequent phone conversation Morse claimed that he and others involved in the incident had been flown to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) two days after the incident, where they were interrogated about same. Morse even provided the names and ranks of the (alleged) interrogators. Shortly afterward, Morse said, he and the others involved were transferred from McGuire to distant overseas air bases., ,Soon after this disdosure; Mo':SP. sent Strif1gfield -~. Dhotocopy of ~n official Farm 1569. "Incident/Complaint Report," which-seemingly confirmed Morse's story about the dead-ET who (allegedly) had been shot by a military policeman whose name was listed. Stringfield's 1985 paper, which is available on the NIDS web-site, indicates he had ambivalent feelings about the veracity of Morse's story. But when Richard Hall, a long-time UFO researcher and former deputy director of NICAP had the opportunity to interview Morse in person on Jan. 13, 1985, and Hall reported finding him credible, this prompted Stringfield to make public the dead-ET story at the 1985 MUFON conference. In response to several~requests, NIDS deputy director Dr. Colm Kelleher, whose is "cattle mutilations," tasked special investigator Roger Pinson to investigate the case. During the following few weeks, Pinson talked to dozens of persons by phone and communicated with many others via e-mail, a~ su~marized on the NIDS web-site. Because the incident reportedly had occurred 22 years earlier, some records had been discarded, but Pinson was able to locate-and interview several former key McGuire AFB officials. Skeptics UFO Newsletter Results Of NIDS Investi2ation The NIDS investigation found NO corroboration for the realitY of the dead-ET incident. It discovered evidence that the Form 1569 Incident/Complaint Report that Morse provided was so flawed probably was counterfeit. NIDS' Pinson interviewed the former Lt. Colonel whom Morse claimed had interrogated him at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base about the incident. The officer, who had been based at McGuire AFB at the time, flatly denied that he had ever been to WPAFB. "One initial expected outcome of this report may be a number of voices claiming NIDS is naive and 'of course senior military people are going to deny all knowledge,'" NIDS admits. But it adds, "Four senior military officers who were stationed at McGuire AFB at the time of the incident were interviewed NIDS investigator Roger Pinson who had extensive training in interviewing and interrogation techniques as well as the detection of deception .... The four military officers responded without hesitation and further, insisted that they should have known about the incident if it had occurred." [SUN Comment: If an ET had beei1 shot to death st McCuin; A~B. H1is base and . Fort Dix would have been mobilized for a to-be-expe-ci"ed ET reprisal attack. But this did not occur.] Dr. Greer Makes Even Wilder, Wackier UFO Claim Dr. Stephen Greer's latest claim is that the Government is preparing to stage a hoax extraterrestrial attack to mislead the public into thinking that ETs are hostile so we can engage in a cosmic war. Greer's views were set forth in an e-mail message sent on June 12 to supporters, titled "COSMIC DECEPTION: LET THE CITIZEN BEWARE." According to Greer, a covert multi- national agency is producing "Alien Reproduction VehiCles" (ARVs) and performing "UFO abductions" to mislead the public. Greer claims "that after 60 years, trillions of dollars and the best scientific minds in the world pressed into action, a secretive, shadowy group-a government within the govern- and at once ful(~ outside the government as we know it-has mastered the technologies, the of deception and the capability to launch an attack on Earth, and make it look like ETs did it." A year ago, Greer issued a press release which claimed that if the Government had revealed its . UFO secrets, including anti-gravity propulsion, "that could have prevented the September 11 tragedy" [SUN#70/ Winter 2001-02]. SEEMINGLY, GREER NOW BELIEVES THE U.S. CAN .. EASILY WIN THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM-INCLUDING IRAQ's SADDAM HUSSEIN-AND PLANS TO LAUNCH A HOAX. WAR AGAINST ETs. GREER ASSUMES THIS WILL NOT RESULT IN REAL WARFARE. Greer cites the claim of one of his "witnesses" named Mark McCandlish-an artist who claims to have been employed by many aerospace companies-that "the United States not only has operational anti-gravitv propulsion devices, but we have had them for many, many years, and they have been developed through the study, in part, of extraterrestrial vehicles over the past 50 years." (Emphasis [SUN Comment: But we still outfit our newest aircraft, such as the F-22 and F-35 (Joint Strike Fighter) with "old fashioned" jet engines and buy aerial tankers needed to re-fuel jet-powered aircraft.] Greer claims that "space-,/~asJd weapons are already in place." FALSE. One possible defense against ballistic missiles is to use space-based high-energy lasers. But to date NO experiments have been conducted to demonstrate feasibility. USAF hopes to conduct feasibility-demonstration tests in several years-IF Congress will provide the funds. ,.. Skeptics UFO Newsletter -3- UFO-Abduction Reports Experience Sharp Decline John Velez reports a sharp reduction in the number of persons reporting they have been abducted by a UFO to the Abduction Information Center web-site that he has operated for the last seven . years. Although the number of web-site visitors ("hits") has continued to increase to an average of about per day, the number of persons reporting a UFO abduction has declined from "5-15 per day to one or two a week," according to Velez. He adds that Mark Rodeghier, Scientific Director of the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), also reports a significant decline in the number of UFO-abduc- tion reports it has received over the last few years. Velez says he has questioned other researchers who "also experienced a drop in the number of abduction reports over the last few years." Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John Mack, who became very interested in UFO abductions in 1990s and created Program for Extraor:diiJary Experience Research (PEER), has folded PEER into another organization called "The Ce'ni~r for Psychology & Social Change," according to Will Bueche, commuriit~tioris advis6'r to" tHe ne~"Cirit~r . . As qu't>t~d iifab; ief article in the June. issue of the "MUFON UFO Journal," Bueche reveals that, "PEER itself has been Largely inactive for the past year, though we have continued to assist the media, as efforts have shifted towards the new 'Institute/or Psychological & Spiritual Development.' The closing of the PEER web-site reflects this shift in focus and resources .... In case you are wondering a~out the future of Dr. Mack's interest in the subject of alien encounters," Bueche said, "Dr. Mack has remarked that 'Passport to the Cosmos,' his second book on alien encounters, is his final word on the subject, or at least the last book he will devote full to it." Other "Straws In The Wind" Tom P. Deuley, long-time official of MUFON who is playing a key role in its effo"t to obtain credible scientific data to assess the reality of UFO abductions, confirmed Velez's observation in a brief letter-to-the-editor in the May issue of the "MUFON UFO Journal." "In the process of our research and solicitations we are in general finding that there are fewer abductions in the past few years and especial(l few cases of repeat abductions," according to Deuley. "We have now solicited about as broadly as we can short of advertising directly to the public.' Unfortunately we have not had sufficient response to fill our needs for the project .... If ffewer UFO abductions] seems to be true in your area, we would appreciate a response to that effect ... [to} verify that abductions are inqeed decreasing., UFO-abduction guru Budd Hopkins did not mention any decline in the published version of his 2002 MUFON conference paper, titled "The Abduction Phenomenon-Where We Are Now." The abstract claimed: "There are several things we can say we know with assurance about the UFO phenomenon, and there are quite a Jew theories we can confidently pronounce as wrong. However, there are many aspects of the phenomenon, particularly abductions, which are still being studied and evaluated." Hopkins first discredited skeptical prosaic explanations. Then he attacked theories of three "pro-UFOiogists"--Dr. John Mack, Dr. Stephen Greer and (the late) Lt. Col. Philip Corso. " "The aliens' presence on earth is not to warn us to take better care of the planet," according to Hopkins--as suggested by Dr. Mack. " "The abduction phenomenon is not a quasi-military operation being carried out by soldiers ... or by of CIA agents in scary black cars," as claimed by Dr. Greer. " UFO abductions did not cease about two decades~ago when President Reagan's "Star Wars" system was covertly implemented, as_ claimed by Corso in his book "The Day After Roswell." Skeptics UFO Newsletter [SUN Comment: Some of us suspect that~ persons who claimed UFO abduction did so as an easy to achieve notoriety and be invited to appear on radio/TV shows and/or be featured in newspaper stories. A few years ago there were many talk-shows on UFO abductions, with many "abductee" guests (but few if any skeptics). Today there are few if any such opportunities for "instant-fame." Although abduction guru Budd Hopkins flatly denies any possible correlation, SUN suspects the decline in media interest may explain the decline in persons claiming UFO abduction.] New Disney Movie Promotes Media Interest In "Crop Circles" The new Disney studio movie called "Signs," which opened on August 2nd, has generated much media attention on "crop circles," which some claim are created by extraterrestrials and UFOs. Crop circles had their genesis nearly three decades ago in Britain but have recently spread to other countries Canada and the U.S. The movie stars Mel Gibson, who discovers crop circles in cornfields ~n his "Pennsylv:m!a fann~ (Crop c!r~lcs in, fle!ds,cffu!l~ gro'Yn cc;>rn are very _photogenic but.are much more difficult to create than in fields of wheat, oat; barley and other usual crops, which have much lower structural strength.) The movie, which opened in 3,264 theaters around the U.S., grossed a near- record $60.3 million during its first weekend. The movie's director, M. Night Shyamalan, was featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine, which carried a banner headline that read "The Next Spielberg." (Director Steven Spielberg first achieved fame via his movie "ET.") A somewhat skeptical feature article in The Boston Globe, written by Vanessa E. Jones, was "'Signs' Brings Bonanza Of Books, Documentaries And TV Shows In Its Wake." According to the article, a segment on crop circles recently ran on a Barbara Walters' portion of ABC's "20/20" TV show, and "cable channels from Discovery to History to Learning plan to air specials." The article noted that another movie, titled "Crop Circles: Quest For The Truth," was scheduled for an Aug. 23 release. And another movie, titled '~Place To Stay," was looking for a distributer. The article also listed several recent books that also promoted crop circles. When crop circles first appeared in England, some scientists sought a natural explanation, such as mini-tornadoes. However, as the crop circles became more complex in their designs, some UFOlogists " that they were created by ETs. But in 1991 two Englishmen-Doug Bower and Dave Chorley-publicly. confessed to .. _having covertly made many of the early crop circles as a prank. Currently, most crop circle researchers admit that most crop circles are created by human hoaxers but ., that a few defy such explanations. Colin Andrews, a leading Bri~ish-born rP.sear11her who now the U.S., concedes that roughly SO% of the crop circles are created by human h!>axers but he claims the remainder defy such prosaic explanations. Andrews hesitates to attribute them to ETs, but he notes that most crop circles occur in southern England within a 40-mile radius offamous Stonehenge. Stacy Poses Excellent Question About Crop Circles Another relatively balanced article sparked by the new Disney movie was published in the Aug. 1 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle and authored by Rick DelVecchio. It quotes a very sage question posed by Dennis Stacy, who served as editor of the MUFON UFO Journal for about a decade until his growing skeptici6m f about UFOs led to his departure. Initially, Stacy was quite impressed with crop circles, prompting him to make two trips to England for a "first-hand investigation, which led to his subsequent crop-circle skepticism. Stacy asks: If crop circles are created by ETs to convey messages to Earthlings, why are the crop circles in Britain so elaborate while those elsewhere-such as those in Canada and the U.S.-are so relatively primitive? [SUN Comment: One possbile explanaion is that ETs send their most experienced crop-circle makers to England. Another Skeptics UFO Newsletter possible explanation is that the extraterrestrials have learned that the British are very much smarter than Canadians or Americans in interpreting the intended messages of complex crop circles.] The Best Explanation: Britain Has Its Own Expert Crop-Circle Makers In the spring of 1998, New Zealand got its first gigantic crop circle whose complexity was comparable to the sophisticated circles found in Britain. The 100 circles with an outer diameter of 300 ft. were created by three British "professionals"-:-John Lundberg, Rod Dickinson and Will Russell-who are members of a volunteer group, called CIRCLEMAKERS, which had created many of the English crop circles during the last decade. They had been flown to New Zealand by NBC-TV, which was making a documentary titled "Unmasked: The Secrets of Deception" that was broadcast on NBC-TV in the U.S. during May of 1998. They created the giant crop circle in southern New Zealand in less than four hours at night as observed and recorded by NBC cameramen, having earlier obtained permission from the farmer whose crops were involved.' The Circlemakers are an outgrowth of a 1992 competition held in Britain to create the most sophisticatedly beautiful crop circles in darkness. The next-best prize was won by an American. student in Britain, named Jim Schnabel. He later described his experience in a book titled "Round In Circles: Poltergeists, Pranksters and the Secret History of the Cropwatchers." Schnabel recalls, on the Circlemakers web-site ["'ww.circlemakets.otg], '~s I began to make circles myself, I noted that my own mistakes or unconscious idiosyncracies, were transformed .magically by Cerealogists [crop- circle researchers] into special accomplishments that no human could possibly duplicate. ... A crop circle pictogram, fabricated with the aid of several pints of Guinness [ale] and a wood-and-rope stalk stamper, was later alleged, with the most sensitive instruments, to be buzzing with radioactivity." Understandably, there is "no love lost" between crop-circle hoaxers and those who claim that some of the circles have been created by paranormal forces or ETs. Maccabee Admits He Was Fooled By Hoax UFO Photos Dr. Bruce Maccabee, who is considered by some UFOlogists to be one of the most rigorous investigators and an expert on authentication of UFO photos, recently admitted he was the victim of photo hoaxers. The incident involved two.similar UFO photos, allegedly taken by two different men in vicinity of .Lawton, OK The firstL1jwton ph~roreportedlywas taken March 11,2002, afabout 1:30 a.m. using a digital camera by a man identified by Maccabee as JW. It was brought to Maccabee's attention by UFOlogist Jim Hickman, who has a UFO web-site. JW reportedly was watching the UFO during a drive home where he had access to a camera. Shortly after taking the photo, the UFO darted off and disappeared, which explained why he had taken only a single photo. The photo showed a very unusual rectangular-shaped red UFO, accompanied by two groups of several much-smaller green lights. JW responded to many Maccabee questions about the (alleged) incident and took several photos at Maccabee's request to enable him to determine the optical characteristics of JW's camera. On the night of May 20 another man, reportedly a military policeman at the large Army base in reported he had encounteredra very similar UFO and photographed it using a digital camera he carried in his car. This man, identified as TJ, was quoted by Maccabee as saying "they were the strangesi objects in the sky that I ever saw!" Maccabee was very impressed by the similarity of the Mar. 11 and May 20 UFO photos, seemingly taken in the same area on different dates by two different persons. Maccabee concluded: "Unless someone has a better idea, I would have to classify this as a True UFO (TRUFO), which might be some sort of Alien F(l'ing Craft (or two such craft)." Skeptics UFO Newsletter -6- On Aug. 4, Maccabee was alerted to a recent web-site posting by a "John Baker" which described how to create hoax UFO photos using a digital camera, a personal computer and Lasso Tool software. Then the web-site suggested that the hoax-UFO photo be submitted to a UFO web-site for expert analysis. A few months later, create another hoax-UFO photo similar to the first and submit it to the same UFO web-site,. b~t ~se "a dlffereni 'alias." THE WEB-SiTE INCLUDED A HOAX- PHOTO SIMILAR TO THE LAWTON UFO PHOTOS TAKEN BY JW AND T J . Maccabee's Reaction To Discoverin2 He Had Been Fooled Maccabee promptly conceded that the Lawton UFO photos were hoaxes. He offered a lengthy