Just finished listening to the main show and I'm writing this while listening to ATP. First off, thanks for asking my question. It was perfectly timed to get Garetano to discuss in greater detail the controversial Stewart Swerdlow, his involvement in the project and his wild claims. Unfortunately, none of Stewart's wild claims were addressed by the guest (or raised by the hosts). Garetano seemed to whitewash Swerdlow and simply talked about Swerdlow having a nice family, speaking languages other than English (but 15? Come on!) and having a successful website that espouses a philosophy that "many people" apparently follow like a religion, as if that lent him some sort of credibility for all his Montauk claims. Garetano's opinion, and I'm paraphrasing, of "why would anyone lie about this stuff, especially when they aren't making any money" was jaw-droppingly naive. During that short segment I kept shouting "Billy Meier!" at my Sonos speaker like I suffered from Tourette's Syndrome.
Perhaps these issues weren't raised by the hosts due to a lack of specific knowledge about how wild many of Swerdlow's claims are: related to the first "president" of the Soviet Union, Yakov Sverdlov (possible), participated in mind control experiments (plausible), a wide-range of psychic abilities which led to him being recruited for the experiments (plausible), a special chair created by aliens to "boost innate psychic abilities" and allow time travel (unlikely), existence of a "time tunnel" (related to the "alien chair," I believe) allowing exploration of different time and space, Mars, etc. (unlikely), sacrificial rituals involving children attended by high level politicians, industrialists, celebrities - George H.W. Bush, etc.
(unlikely), multiple alien abductions (unlikely), evil reptilians (unlikely), being imprisoned by the US gov't (plausible but for what), learning an alien "interdimensional hyperspace language" allowing communication with all conscious beings in the universe (unlikely). I could go on.
Granted, a discussion regarding Swerdlow and his multitude of bizarre and outlandish claims could easily have taken up the full 2 hours. The show did seem to go by awfully fast this week (time travel or missing time?). I was just a little surprised that Garetano, who came off as a thoughtful, fairly level-headed guy, who was out to find "the truth" about the Montauk Experiments, was so accepting of Swerdlow and seemed to bestow a fair amount of credibility on him, without discussing a single item of any proof whatsoever to support Swerdlow's claims. He seems to have spent a great deal of time with Swerdlow, certainly more than the 10-12 hours of presentations by Swerdlow that I sat through approximately 20 years ago, not to mention the books of his and Nichols I've read on the subject, yet he seemed to get a "pass" from Garetano, as opposed to Bielek or Nichols. I also feel that not tracking down Duncan Cameron and getting him on camera, or on audio at the very least, despite his expressed reluctance is a big detraction for a documentary about this subject.
In retrospect, perhaps I should have done a better job at composing a series of detailed questions that covered all of the issues I listed above. I was a bit too broad in my language and by leaving out the specific areas of inquiry from my questions, I did not serve the hosts, Paracast listenership, or my own curiosity, as well as I could have. I'm on the fence about spending $25 for the Blu-ray version of the documentary. I'm curious but not confident, based on his Paracast appearance, that Garetano really provides any clarity or answers around this complex and wide-ranging conspiracy theory.