Your Paracast Newsletter -- May 26, 2012

[Gene Steinberg]

THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
May 26, 2012

Ghost Hunting Techniques Explored on The Paracast

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Sunday, May 27, 2012: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.

Set Up: The Paracast is a paranormal radio show that takes you on a journey to a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions. The Paracast seeks to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.

Join long-time paranormal researcher Gene Steinberg, co-host Christopher O'Brien, and a panel of special guest experts and experiencers, as they explore the realms of the known and unknown. Listen each week to the great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.

This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris present ghost hunter Jeff Stewart, of P.I.N.E., short for Paranormal Investigators of New England, an organization that has been active in the investigation of weird events 2004. You'll hear about case histories and the techniques the organization uses to evaluate paranormal events.

Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet
P.I.N.E's Site: Paranormal Investigators of New England - Home

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Taking Disinformation to the Extreme
By Gene Steinberg

On our February 10, 2010 episode, we featured James Carrion, a former International Director of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). As you heard on the show, Carrion’s tenure as head of the long-time UFO group was cut short in a dispute over his performance and his handling of MUFON’s finances. In passing, I should mention that MUFON has had two more leaders since then, and I hope the musical chairs situation doesn’t end up as bad as that of HP, the venerable technology company where CEOs have come and gone in recent years.

Now one thing sure about Carrion, and that is his UFO views have tended more towards the skeptical side of the ledger. But he shouldn’t be dismissed outright, even if you believe in the reality of those strange disks in the skies. It’s never a bad idea to look at all sides of the question, and it’s fair to say the skeptics do make good points from time to time.

Take a recent blog from Carrion, available at Follow The Magic Thread: Wanted: Flying Saucer Journalist – Pay is Great – Benefits Even Better. I urge all of you to read this article with an open mind. He is making some very important points, particularly with regard to Kenneth Arnold and his involvement in the controversial Maury Island UFO affair that, along with Arnold’s own famous sighting, occurred in 1947.

Now I’m going to use Carrion’s piece strictly as a starting point, and most of the ideas presented here are my own. He may even disagree with me, although I expect he’ll be in sympathy with a fair amount of what I’m about to say.

One thing that is certain about Maury Island, and that is the very obvious involvement of the government in key aspects of the case. The case is spelled out in clear detail in Arnold’s portion of the book he wrote with Ray Palmer, “The Coming of the Saucers.” We’ve featured several discussions about Maury Island on The Paracast over the years, most recently when Curt Sutherly appeared on our March 18, 2012 episode.

Curt hit all the high spots during the interview, and you have to wonder why it appeared that Arnold was being watched so closely. When he arrived in Tacoma to investigate the Maury Island case, all hotels in the city were booked, except for one room that had been reserved in his name. It also appeared that his hotel room was already prepared before his arrival, with eavesdropping gear already installed. That explains why members of the media actually heard about what was going on.

You can imagine the James Bond movie, where 007 sneaks into a hotel room and installs some listening gear into a lamp, or an air conditioner vent. You get the picture.

But why would the government care one whit about some guy who said he saw a flying saucer, and traveled to investigate another case of that sort? Based on Carrion’s summary of some curious stories published in those days about new aircraft capable of amazing speeds, the argument is that the government may have leaked such stories with the press in order to spook the Russians. It was the early days of the Cold War, and Russian spies, and paranoia about the Russians, was rampant in American society.

In the 1950s, Jim Moseley, who at the time published Saucer News as a regular quarterly magazine, adopted what he called the “Earth theory,” in which he posited that all or most UFOs were really secret aircraft. He later abandoned that theory in favor of what he calls a “3½D” solution, where UFOs might have some sort of paranormal connection and originate in another reality.

In any case, it wouldn’t take great leaps of logic to suggest that at least some UFO sightings were deliberately fabricated to draw attention away from what was really going on, and that was the testing of secret aircraft. That may even explain what actually happened at Roswell, though I’ll avoid discussions about the evidence that supposedly indicates a different solution, possibly the crash of a real craft from outer space. Certainly the 1948 Aztec case may be all about the crash landing of a secret aircraft, though the reports of the burnt bodies of the tiny occupants of the craft seem to point in another direction.

That is, unless you accept the possibility that some of the witnesses were being mislead, and maybe burnt dummies were put there to convey the impression that ET had visited us and failed to survive the trip. The “real” pilots were hidden elsewhere on that aircraft.

If any of this is true, it wouldn’t take a great leap of faith to consider the possibility that many of the so-called “Men In Black” cases were simply government operatives who were during their duty for God and country when they told UFO witnesses to be quiet about their sightings. Sure, maybe some went off the reservation and engaged in rogue activities. But government disinformation can surely serve a variety of purposes, and hiding the truth, whatever it might be, about UFOs, is but one possible motive. Fooling a potential enemy also rates high on the list.

Now even if the government was pulling pranks in those days in the guise of legitimate intelligence activities, that doesn’t mean there aren’t real UFOs. There have been sightings around the world that do not present evidence of any sort of government involvement. That forms the core of the UFO mystery, as far as I’m concerned. But if a case has a more mundane explanation, so be it.

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[Jeff Crowell]

Ya know (and granted; this is coming from a UFO Novice), I started thinking after the March 18th show that maybe the whole Maury Island case was made up to call out Kenneth Arnold. Here's what I'm thinking, and keep in mind that I just started looking into the Maury Island case a few months ago so what I'm going to propose may be more of a stretch than is usually presented.

I think that when Arnold went public with his Mt. Rainier sighting and created the hoopla around these boomerang-shaped craft (later termed "flying saucers" based on their flight behavior), the government became deeply suspicious of, not just the claim, but of Kenneth Arnold himself. They were suspicious, perhaps, because either they thought Arnold was working with the Russians to create this diversionary tactic about strange aircraft over American soil (seeding a cover story in case any actual Russian spycraft were spotted over U.S. soil), or maybe that Arnold had actually met with some Russian intelligence officers during that encounter and had created the UFO sighting to cover it up. Either way the government decided to try to get Arnold to confess so they created a scenario in which to try to gain his confidence and get him to "spill" that the Mt. Rainier sighting had been fake. Here was their plan...

Step one; surround Arnold with people "in the know," undercover government intelligence officers. This would have been this Captain E. J. Smith who Arnold happened to befriend just a few weeks earlier from my understanding, and Fred Crisman. Of course Crisman has been under suspicion as some sort of government contact before, since it's rumored he had some connection with the JFK assassination and "conveniently" got shipped to Alaska (out of sight, out of mind) afterwards. The two USAAF officers, Brown and Davidson, may also have been in-the-know intelligence officers utilized during the sting.

Step two; fabricate a similar UFO story somewhere in Arnold's territory, one that will attract his attention. Harold Dahl, a local fisherman, was "coaxed" into being the local contact and key witness to the fabricated event, and Crisman was inserted into the equation as a control.

Step three; get Arnold involved and get him talking. Here Ray Palmer plays a part, either he was encouraged to send someone out there, and encouraged to make it Arnold, or (yes, I'm going there) Palmer was tapped by the government to get Arnold involved.

Mistakes; Once Arnold's on site and the sting is in full swing we start to see the plan start to slip up in some areas like the hotel room (reserved by the government ahead of time), and the bug-leak.

• We hear that Dahl and Crisman were acting suspicious around Arnold. Dahl seemed nervous and unsure, as if he were lying perhaps? And Crisman a bit stand-offish.
• When Arnold, suspecting he was in over his head, called in Smith, this may have been an ultimate convenience to the plan since Smith may have been in-the-know anyway. Evidence of this may come from the fact that Smith and Crisman seemed to hit it off, splitting off from Dahl and Arnold now and again during the days of the investigation.
• When Smith and Arnold got the phone call from the reporter across the street saying their room was bugged, the story goes that the two men tore the room apart and couldn't find the device. Perhaps this was because the room wasn't bugged, but perhaps Smith was bugged instead. Since Arnold never suspected Smith he never considered that Smith 'was' the bug during their search and Smith knew they could tear the room apart all day long and never find it there.

Round-up; in the end the government players (now just Smith and Crisman) figured Arnold wasn't going to confide any thing to them, either involvement with the Russians nor that the Mt. Rainier sighting was hoaxed. They threatened Dahl to keep his mouth shut and went to move on. This would explain Dahl's behavior (never wanting to see nor talk to Arnold again) at the end of the investigation. The abrupt end to the investigation may also have been due to the crash that took Brown and Davidson's lives. This tragedy may have shaken the remaining agents and the government made the choice to back off since they weren't getting anywhere close to Arnold's "confession" anyway. All of this would have left Arnold scratching his head as he flew back home, having thought he had really been investigating a UFO sighting off of Maury Island.

A few other points;

• The encounter with Major Sander and and the smelter slag incident may have been another attempt to intimidate Arnold to come clean about foreign connections. When he didn't, Sander's irritation and brashness may have been frustration at the failure of the attempt.
• When Arnold went out to the small house where he'd met Dahl's secretary and it was empty and abandoned, I'm wondering if he didn't get the wrong house. From descriptions I've heard on the Paracast and read about in UFO magazine it sounded like the house may have been part of a housing project, like dormitories. Perhaps Arnold got the wrong one when he drove out there at the end of the investigation, an easy thing to do if you're going out there at night and they all look the same.

Some problems; Of course this thing reads like, as Gene mentions, a James Bond screenplay. It implies a pretty elaborate hoax with several government players, the target (Kenneth Arnold), and two patseys - Harold Dahl and Ray Palmer. Some aspects of the Maury Island case fit this scenario, I believe, such as the fact that Arnold never actually went out to Maury Island and why some of the players acted the way they did. In the end, I guess we'll never know for sure, but to me this explanation of the event makes a bit of twisted sense.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

Some fascinating possibilities, Jeff. I don't want to throw cold water into any of it, but Ray Palmer always came across as someone the government would never influence, at least directly. When the Maury Island case was attacked as a hoax in Edward Ruppelt's book, "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects," Palmer demanded an apology. In later years, he took on such libertarian causes as attacking widespread use of fluoride in water, and, as I recall, also supported Sen. Goldwater for president in 1964.

Or that may have all been pose. The late Otto Binder told me once that Palmer would just make up arguments to keep his readers guessing and responding in the letters columns.

And if you're going to accept Maury Island as a government scam, what about Arnold's original sighting? ET or secret weapons?

 

[Jeff Crowell]

That's just it, I think that Arnold's original sighting was genuine but the government may not have been convinced. To test Arnold...well that's where Maury Island came into play. But I agree with you, Gene. Palmer's involvement, and his level of knowledge, is one monkey-wrench thrown into my little hypothesis. I mean what are the odds that Palmer would have coincidentally invited Arnold to investigate the Maury Island case, and the odds that the government would have "known" he would have done so? Pretty slim, admittedly.

Still, other than my little hypothesis, here, about the only thing else we can deduce was that Maury Island was a complete hoax, on every level, and that Arnold and any government official involved would have been the dupes, there. Like Roswell and Aztec, I guess we'll just never know for sure.