The Paracast Newsletter
March 31, 2024
www.theparacast.com
Author Linda C. Powell Reveals the Life and Times of UFO Pioneer Major Donald E. Keyhoe on the Paracast!
The Paracast is heard Sundays from 3:00 AM until 6:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, the Boost Radio Network, the IRN Internet Radio Network, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR THE PARACAST+ YET? PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARACAST+ SO YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE ULTIMATE PARACAST EXPERIENCE AT A SPECIAL LOW PRICE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to an exclusive bonus podcast, After The Paracast, plus an enhanced version of The Paracast with the network ads removed, when you join The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes on your device. Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz remember one of the key figures of the early UFO field, as we interview Linda C. Powell, news editor for The Anomalist. She is the author of "Against the Odds: Major Donald E. Keyhoe and His Battle to End UFO Secrecy: A Biography." In UFO lore, one man is largely responsible for the twin pillars of current belief: that UFOs represent extraterrestrial technology and that the government is hiding this truth from us. His name is Donald E. Keyhoe. He was a 51-year-old retired Marine Major when his own investigation of a famous 1948 flying saucer case led him to believe that the US Air Force and the CIA knew the Earth was under surveillance by beings from other worlds and were keeping it secret from the public. For the next 21 years, he devoted himself, at great personal cost, to exposing the official cover-up of what he believed was an alien visitation. Thanks to his highly-placed contacts in the military and secret informants in the Pentagon, Keyhoe became the first major figure to truly challenge the official view that UFO reports belonged in the domain of “kooks and fuzzy thinkers.” He eventually led what became the world's most powerful civilian UFO organization for its time, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). You'll also learn all about Gene's early encounters with Keyhoe between 1965 and 1975, and some of the controversies that arose over Keyhoe's attempts to run NICAP as a lobbying arm for UFO disclosure.
After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers on March 31: Author Linda C. Powell, news editor for The Anomalist, returns to reveal to Gene and cohost Tim Swartz more of the inside details of the life and times of a founder of the modern UFO field, as detailed in her biography, "Against the Odds: Major Donald E. Keyhoe and His Battle to End UFO Secrecy: A Biography." How did Keyhoe get fired from NICAP, the UFO group of which he was Director? What happened to NICAP after he left, and what about Keyhoe's final years as an active UFO researcher? Thanks to his highly-placed contacts in the military and secret informants in the Pentagon, Keyhoe, as a result of his reluctant acceptance of an assignment to write an article on the subject from the editor of True magazine, became the first major figure to truly challenge the official view that UFO reports belonged in the domain of “kooks and fuzzy thinkers.” He was a 51-year-old retired Marine Major, best known for his articles on aviation and his fantasy fiction novels, when his own investigation of a famous 1948 flying saucer case led him to believe that the US Air Force and the CIA knew the Earth was under surveillance by beings from other worlds and were keeping it secret from the public. For the next 21 years, he devoted himself, at great personal cost, to exposing the official cover-up of what he believed was an alien visitation. As you'll learn in this fascinating interview, Keyhoe was far from the perfect messenger delivering evidence in support of UFO reality.
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums. Visit our new online shop for great branded merchandise at: https://www.theparacast.shop.
Government Agent Conspiracies in the Early Days
By Gene Steinberg
On a vintage episode of The Paracast, thus long ago, one of our guests jokingly suggested that my cohost at the time might be a clandestine military operative. Mortified for no reason that I can discern, the cohost hung up on the show. At least it was in the final moments.
But over the years, we’ve always wondered if anyone who signed up with The Paracast Community Forums was actually a government disinformation agent of some sort. Not that it should make much of a difference. It’s a public forum, and anyone over the age of 13 can join.
Indeed, it may be a mark of distinction to be important enough to attract government interest. Or maybe they have nothing better to do.
Now over the years, it has been a common meme among Ufologists that the U.S. government is hiding the truth about the flying saucers, that they know we are being visited by extraterrestrials. So it makes sense that the keepers of that secret have dispatched individuals to infiltrate the UFO field and make sure we don’t stumble upon some great life-altering evidence.
Perhaps interference comes in the form of spreading false information about the phenomenon, so that we look for answers in the wrong places. In the real world, though, it’s hardly needed. There are loads of approaches and conclusions about UFOs. There’s little to indicate that anyone has stumbled upon some unknown truth that we aren’t meant to know.
If they did, it would just be hiding in plain sight, thus requiring no special intervention on the part of “them.”
And what about those who somehow come to know too much? Well, they might be visited by individuals that would convince them, via whatever means possible, to say nothing about it. Maybe it’s all in the interests of national security. It’s a matter of protecting the public from a secret that higher-ups believe we can’t handle.
That, to some degree, may be what the so-called Men In Black (and Women In Black) legends attempt to describe.
On the other hand, it does appear that what is regarded as the “original” MIB case, involving UFO researcher Albert K. Bender, wasn’t quite what it was first suspected to be.
So Bender was active in the field until, in 1953, he claimed that the MIB visited him, confirmed what he knew about the saucers, and convinced him that it was in his best interests to shut up.
In passing, it did seem that such a visit, if publicized, would only draw attention to whatever it was the alleged MIB wanted to hide. Researchers tried to parse articles and statements from Bender to somehow discern his truth.
They needn’t have bothered. In his 1962 book, “Flying Saucers and the Three Men,” published by the infamous researcher and hoaxer Gray Barker, Bender revealed that he had, in fact, been visited by extraterrestrials from a planet known as Kazik.
So much for human Men In Black, or maybe Bender was coerced, with Barker’s help, to write that book to get people to stop bothering him. After a lecture or two, he moved to the west coast, where he got involved in setting up and running the Max Steiner Music Society, which was established in 1965.
He left the UFO field behind him, which was probably a good thing.
Now when suspicions arose about government UFO secrecy and secret government projects, a little paranoia can run deep. From time to time individuals in the UFO field have been struck with the broad brush of being military plants.
One early and notable example was the famous UFO researcher I wrote about in last week’s issue, Major Donald Keyhoe. For a number of years he was the Director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), a. major organization for its time. Since Keyhoe was military, and had many friends and information contacts within the military, a number of retired officers joined the organization’s Board of Governors.
A key member was Rear Admiral Roscoe Henry Hillenkoetter, a former head of the CIA. Now what was that all about?
The answer seemed innocent enough. Hillenkoetter and Keyhoe were longtime friends, and the former apparently had a genuine interest in getting to the bottom of the UFO mystery. To Keyhoe, having such a board was a sign of prestige, demonstrating that NICAP was an organization to be taken seriously.
But the skeptics felt that a board heavily laden with military figures must somehow demonstrate that NICAP was nothing more than a front designed to somehow wreck the UFO field. Or something.
To use a common phrase, logic would dictate that suspecting such a thing was all too obvious. So obvious it was silly.
If the military wanted to set up a UFO group as a front, wouldn’t they do so in a manner that wasn’t so painfully obvious? What about setting up a group and/or publication headed up by people with little or no discernible military intelligence connection? Wouldn’t that make a whole lot more sense?
Of course that reminds me of my late pal Jim Moseley. To all intents and purposes, he was the antithesis of military. A Princeton dropout, he traveled throughout the country in the early 1950s to gather information for a proposed UFO book. When the original book project was canceled, he established his own magazine, first known as Nexus, which later became Saucer News.
In person, there was no possible way the sometimes sloppy Moseley could be a military operative. He could be profane, he drank too much, he smoke too much. He perpetrated UFO hoaxes. It just wasn’t possible.
But some suggested he was, very much because he adopted the view that most unexplained flying saucer sightings were really caused by flights of secret military test aircraft.
Now as most of you know, I knew Jim for years, and it did seem that he, to some extent, took the “Earth Theory” seriously. But he later came to adopt a “4.5-D” theory about UFOs from other dimensions and such.
But there is one little detail I didn’t mention. Jim was the son of Army Major General George Van Horn Moseley, who became a notorious fascist after he retired from the military in 1938. Following his retirement in 1938, he became controversial for his fiercely anti-immigrant and antisemitic views.
Yet Jim was utterly the opposite of his father in every way I could determine. He didn’t have a spec of racism in his body. He was very accepting of people and had a variety of friends of different views, religions and orientations.
He was, in all respects, a wayward son, so I never believed he had some clandestine military connection, although it would be the perfect pose right?
Besides, I don’t see any reason for the military to infiltrate the UFO field. Very little of what Ufologists do is secret, so people who want to know merely have to watch the goings on. There are so many views that disinformation hardly makes sense. It would just get lost in the clutter.
Copyright 1999-2024 The Paracast Company. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
March 31, 2024
www.theparacast.com
Author Linda C. Powell Reveals the Life and Times of UFO Pioneer Major Donald E. Keyhoe on the Paracast!
The Paracast is heard Sundays from 3:00 AM until 6:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, the Boost Radio Network, the IRN Internet Radio Network, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR THE PARACAST+ YET? PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARACAST+ SO YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE ULTIMATE PARACAST EXPERIENCE AT A SPECIAL LOW PRICE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to an exclusive bonus podcast, After The Paracast, plus an enhanced version of The Paracast with the network ads removed, when you join The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes on your device. Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz remember one of the key figures of the early UFO field, as we interview Linda C. Powell, news editor for The Anomalist. She is the author of "Against the Odds: Major Donald E. Keyhoe and His Battle to End UFO Secrecy: A Biography." In UFO lore, one man is largely responsible for the twin pillars of current belief: that UFOs represent extraterrestrial technology and that the government is hiding this truth from us. His name is Donald E. Keyhoe. He was a 51-year-old retired Marine Major when his own investigation of a famous 1948 flying saucer case led him to believe that the US Air Force and the CIA knew the Earth was under surveillance by beings from other worlds and were keeping it secret from the public. For the next 21 years, he devoted himself, at great personal cost, to exposing the official cover-up of what he believed was an alien visitation. Thanks to his highly-placed contacts in the military and secret informants in the Pentagon, Keyhoe became the first major figure to truly challenge the official view that UFO reports belonged in the domain of “kooks and fuzzy thinkers.” He eventually led what became the world's most powerful civilian UFO organization for its time, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). You'll also learn all about Gene's early encounters with Keyhoe between 1965 and 1975, and some of the controversies that arose over Keyhoe's attempts to run NICAP as a lobbying arm for UFO disclosure.
After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers on March 31: Author Linda C. Powell, news editor for The Anomalist, returns to reveal to Gene and cohost Tim Swartz more of the inside details of the life and times of a founder of the modern UFO field, as detailed in her biography, "Against the Odds: Major Donald E. Keyhoe and His Battle to End UFO Secrecy: A Biography." How did Keyhoe get fired from NICAP, the UFO group of which he was Director? What happened to NICAP after he left, and what about Keyhoe's final years as an active UFO researcher? Thanks to his highly-placed contacts in the military and secret informants in the Pentagon, Keyhoe, as a result of his reluctant acceptance of an assignment to write an article on the subject from the editor of True magazine, became the first major figure to truly challenge the official view that UFO reports belonged in the domain of “kooks and fuzzy thinkers.” He was a 51-year-old retired Marine Major, best known for his articles on aviation and his fantasy fiction novels, when his own investigation of a famous 1948 flying saucer case led him to believe that the US Air Force and the CIA knew the Earth was under surveillance by beings from other worlds and were keeping it secret from the public. For the next 21 years, he devoted himself, at great personal cost, to exposing the official cover-up of what he believed was an alien visitation. As you'll learn in this fascinating interview, Keyhoe was far from the perfect messenger delivering evidence in support of UFO reality.
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums. Visit our new online shop for great branded merchandise at: https://www.theparacast.shop.
Government Agent Conspiracies in the Early Days
By Gene Steinberg
On a vintage episode of The Paracast, thus long ago, one of our guests jokingly suggested that my cohost at the time might be a clandestine military operative. Mortified for no reason that I can discern, the cohost hung up on the show. At least it was in the final moments.
But over the years, we’ve always wondered if anyone who signed up with The Paracast Community Forums was actually a government disinformation agent of some sort. Not that it should make much of a difference. It’s a public forum, and anyone over the age of 13 can join.
Indeed, it may be a mark of distinction to be important enough to attract government interest. Or maybe they have nothing better to do.
Now over the years, it has been a common meme among Ufologists that the U.S. government is hiding the truth about the flying saucers, that they know we are being visited by extraterrestrials. So it makes sense that the keepers of that secret have dispatched individuals to infiltrate the UFO field and make sure we don’t stumble upon some great life-altering evidence.
Perhaps interference comes in the form of spreading false information about the phenomenon, so that we look for answers in the wrong places. In the real world, though, it’s hardly needed. There are loads of approaches and conclusions about UFOs. There’s little to indicate that anyone has stumbled upon some unknown truth that we aren’t meant to know.
If they did, it would just be hiding in plain sight, thus requiring no special intervention on the part of “them.”
And what about those who somehow come to know too much? Well, they might be visited by individuals that would convince them, via whatever means possible, to say nothing about it. Maybe it’s all in the interests of national security. It’s a matter of protecting the public from a secret that higher-ups believe we can’t handle.
That, to some degree, may be what the so-called Men In Black (and Women In Black) legends attempt to describe.
On the other hand, it does appear that what is regarded as the “original” MIB case, involving UFO researcher Albert K. Bender, wasn’t quite what it was first suspected to be.
So Bender was active in the field until, in 1953, he claimed that the MIB visited him, confirmed what he knew about the saucers, and convinced him that it was in his best interests to shut up.
In passing, it did seem that such a visit, if publicized, would only draw attention to whatever it was the alleged MIB wanted to hide. Researchers tried to parse articles and statements from Bender to somehow discern his truth.
They needn’t have bothered. In his 1962 book, “Flying Saucers and the Three Men,” published by the infamous researcher and hoaxer Gray Barker, Bender revealed that he had, in fact, been visited by extraterrestrials from a planet known as Kazik.
So much for human Men In Black, or maybe Bender was coerced, with Barker’s help, to write that book to get people to stop bothering him. After a lecture or two, he moved to the west coast, where he got involved in setting up and running the Max Steiner Music Society, which was established in 1965.
He left the UFO field behind him, which was probably a good thing.
Now when suspicions arose about government UFO secrecy and secret government projects, a little paranoia can run deep. From time to time individuals in the UFO field have been struck with the broad brush of being military plants.
One early and notable example was the famous UFO researcher I wrote about in last week’s issue, Major Donald Keyhoe. For a number of years he was the Director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), a. major organization for its time. Since Keyhoe was military, and had many friends and information contacts within the military, a number of retired officers joined the organization’s Board of Governors.
A key member was Rear Admiral Roscoe Henry Hillenkoetter, a former head of the CIA. Now what was that all about?
The answer seemed innocent enough. Hillenkoetter and Keyhoe were longtime friends, and the former apparently had a genuine interest in getting to the bottom of the UFO mystery. To Keyhoe, having such a board was a sign of prestige, demonstrating that NICAP was an organization to be taken seriously.
But the skeptics felt that a board heavily laden with military figures must somehow demonstrate that NICAP was nothing more than a front designed to somehow wreck the UFO field. Or something.
To use a common phrase, logic would dictate that suspecting such a thing was all too obvious. So obvious it was silly.
If the military wanted to set up a UFO group as a front, wouldn’t they do so in a manner that wasn’t so painfully obvious? What about setting up a group and/or publication headed up by people with little or no discernible military intelligence connection? Wouldn’t that make a whole lot more sense?
Of course that reminds me of my late pal Jim Moseley. To all intents and purposes, he was the antithesis of military. A Princeton dropout, he traveled throughout the country in the early 1950s to gather information for a proposed UFO book. When the original book project was canceled, he established his own magazine, first known as Nexus, which later became Saucer News.
In person, there was no possible way the sometimes sloppy Moseley could be a military operative. He could be profane, he drank too much, he smoke too much. He perpetrated UFO hoaxes. It just wasn’t possible.
But some suggested he was, very much because he adopted the view that most unexplained flying saucer sightings were really caused by flights of secret military test aircraft.
Now as most of you know, I knew Jim for years, and it did seem that he, to some extent, took the “Earth Theory” seriously. But he later came to adopt a “4.5-D” theory about UFOs from other dimensions and such.
But there is one little detail I didn’t mention. Jim was the son of Army Major General George Van Horn Moseley, who became a notorious fascist after he retired from the military in 1938. Following his retirement in 1938, he became controversial for his fiercely anti-immigrant and antisemitic views.
Yet Jim was utterly the opposite of his father in every way I could determine. He didn’t have a spec of racism in his body. He was very accepting of people and had a variety of friends of different views, religions and orientations.
He was, in all respects, a wayward son, so I never believed he had some clandestine military connection, although it would be the perfect pose right?
Besides, I don’t see any reason for the military to infiltrate the UFO field. Very little of what Ufologists do is secret, so people who want to know merely have to watch the goings on. There are so many views that disinformation hardly makes sense. It would just get lost in the clutter.
Copyright 1999-2024 The Paracast Company. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!