Lance and all, I knew Phil Klass very well. The following is from my blog website Dark Matters Radio - Just another WordPress weblog posting on January 06, 2009. Hope you all forgive me for including the entire post but I think it is important in light of the hoax that is being discussed. Phil was not honest about several things in my experience, and one of them was when he blew up on my national radio show UFOs Tonite! on Jan. 25, 1995 ... screaming Bullshit-bullshit-bullshit when I "corrected his facts about the 1952 Washington DC overflights. But that is fodder for another day. Here is my post.
GEE MOM, ARE UFOS REAL?
Let’s get one thing straight from the onset … UFOs are real. If you look up and see something in the sky that you can not identify, that is a UFO. UFO does NOT mean aliens or spaceship, got that?
The real question should be, are ANY UFOs … someone else’s technology? Someone that ain’t from around here! (here means Earth.) Got that?
For better than 20 years, this is what I did. Back in the day, back when I was the Director of Research for UFO Magazine, I investigated and researched the question of UFOs and cases looking for proof that at least some of these things were ( or might be ) somebody else’s technology. Confused yet? God knows, I think I still am … confused that is. Over those years I came across SOME cases that caused my hair to stand on end, and some cases that caused me to break down in uncontrollable laughter. Yes, the field was that huge … wonder on one side and hilarity on the other. You see, we tried to be ( we at UFO Magazine .. a publication begun by my wife and still publishing today without us) the clearinghouse for the real and the unreal. Being a former policeman, I had little time for the bullshit artists ( lots of them ) or the woo-woo factor. ( You know, the aliens are coming here to save us from … us. They want to teach us a better way, the aliens hate war so we should get rid of the army, not militarize space, wear flowers in our hair, save the whales, love a dolphin, pray to the fairies … oh yeah, and send $50 bucks when you get done reading this!)
The bullshit artists and the woo-woo bunch didn’t like me so much, and in the spirit of being absolutely UPFRONT, I thought they were Full Of It … to the eyebrows and higher. It made an interesting 20 years. And, lest I forget, the other bunch, the Skeptics, were full of shit too. Not all of them to be sure, just most of them. Why, you ask, would I say that? Simply because it’s the dishonesty of their positions.
I do not have the space here in this post to lay it all out, but in time I will using additional posts. Lets simply take one example. (And God knows, I have MANY – MANY of them!)
I will assume that if you are reading this blog, you have at least a partial understanding and knowledge of the UFO field. Philip J. Klass, for years the spokesman of the Skeptical side of things, was the bug-a-boo Skeptic confronting so many UFO cases in the press and on the TV.
I knew Klass fairly well, and as matter of fact, I saved Klass from a drunk UFO Bubba in Pensacola, Florida at the 1990 MUFON Symposium. (The guy was drunk, big and mean and Klass was old, small and helpless. Hell, I never liked big guys picking on little guys anyway.)
Klass and I had a number of confrontations over the years. One such confrontation took place in Denver, Colorado about 1992. It was hosted by Mike Corbin of ParaNet and Klass and I debated the reality of the UFO field. Okay, so far so good, but then Klass tried to smear a dead guy, Frederick Valentich, a civilian Australian pilot, that disappeared during a UFO encounter over the Bass Strait.
When this topic was raised during the debate, Klass tried to smear Valentich as a “drug smuggler” evading the authorities. His “proof”? Valentich ( according to Klass ) had four ( 4 ) life preservers on board his aircraft! I lit into Klass like “white on rice.” Phil was also sneaky as I found out. Years before I came on the UFO scene Phil had contributed to the downfall of a brilliant scientist, Dr. James McDonald. The following is from Wikipedia.
“McDonald engaged in an often savagely adversarial relationship with aviation journalist and skeptic Philip J. Klass, who argued in his first book that nearly all UFOs can be explained by ball lightning[5]. At first, the duo exchanged cordial letters on the subject. Klass was rather guarded in his application of the plasma theory at the time, and McDonald agreed that it might explain a small portion of UFO reports. However, Klass quickly expanded his hypothesis arguing that most if not all UFOs, and even cases of alleged alien abduction, could be explained as plasmas. McDonald thought this was absurd, and offered a detailed rebuttal against Klass’s thesis[6]. Many observers—even those skeptical of UFOs—concluded Klass lacked even a basic understanding of the theories he proposed[7]
In late 1967, McDonald secured a modest grant from the Office of Naval Research in order to study cloud formations in Australia. While in Australia, McDonald conducted some UFO research on his own time. Klass mounted an extended, concerted campaign against McDonald, arguing that he had squandered government funds. The ONR responded by announcing that they knew of McDonald’s UFO interests and had no objections to his personal hobbies. The University of Arizona came to McDonald’s defense, announcing that McDonald’s UFO research was done on his own time, and had no adverse impact on his regular teaching and research duties at the university.
Klass then demonstrated that McDonald was spending at least small sums of government research funds on UFO research, and the ONR, apparently fearing controversy, decided to no longer fund McDonald’s cloud research.”
Later, because of this and also because of testimony McDonald gave to the US Congress, his marriage began to falter. McDonald’s life spun out of control and he began to plot his own suicide. After one failed attempt he was successful on the next attempt. Klass continued on for years on his merry crusade against “subversive and dangerous” thinking. Now, please allow me to relate one final example of the dishonesty of Phil Klass. While broadcasting my show UFOs Tonite! in January of 1995, I had Klass on as a guest and the discussion became somewhat heated. First it concerned the Roswell Crash, and Klass claiming that Army Air Corp Intelligence Officer, Major Jesse Marcel, was trying to “win” a $3,000. “reward” that some unknown newspaper was offering for “proof” of a flying saucer! When I called Klass on that, he threatened to hang up the phone in the middle of the show. ( touchy, eh? ) Later we were discussing the infamous Washington DC 1952 overflights, Phil claimed that the Air Force was so dis-interested, that it took them about an hour to get aircraft there to check out the UFOs. When I corrected him and told him it was because the Air Force was re-surfacing the runways Klass began screaming “BULLSHIT” on the air. 3 times he screamed it! When I called him on it he became embarrassed and hung up in mid-show. That was the last time I ever spoke to Klass.
Klass died August 9, 2005. The “skunk” left the garden party. ( Phil often described himself as a Skunk at the UFO garden party.) I will say this, he left an impression on all who knew him.
I left UFO research in January of 2007, perhaps more on that later. I suppose my point to you is that the UFO “thing” is vastly complex, not easily understood and one must have the patience of Job. (You know, the guy in the bible.) There is more to it than meets the eye, but I will leave that for another day. So, remember to
Keep looking up and I will catch you the next time around!
, I noticed a spike in searches for "ufo hoax" in Google.
