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Your Paracast Newsletter — August 27, 2017


Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
August 27, 2017
www.theparacast.com


UFO Curmudgeon Don Ecker Takes No Prisoners 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.

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This Week's Episode: Gene, Chris and guest cohost/panelist J. Randall Murphy present a return appearance by the inimitable Don Ecker, long-time UFO researcher and curmudgeon. On this episode, Ecker talks about some of the unsavory characters he's encountered in the UFO field over the years, including Sean David Morton, Dr. Steven Greer, Kal Korff and Stan Romanek. Both Morton and Romanek have been convicted of crimes. Ecker will also talk about such subjects as undersea UFOs, possible ancient astronauts and advanced civilizations, UFO group follies, and whether it's at all possible to do serious UFO research anymore. And that's just the beginning!

Chris O’Brien’s Blog: Our Strange Planet

Dark Matters Facebook Page: Don Ecker's Dark Matters Radio

After The Paracast -- Available exclusively to Paracast+ subscribers on August 27: Consider this podcast as Part Two of the August 27, 2017 episode of The Paracast with Gene, Chris, guest cohost J. Randall Murphy, and Don Ecker of Dark Matters radio. So how do people in the UFO field get away with faking their credentials? The example of Philip J. Imbrogno is cited, along with the efforts of The Paracast, Ecker, and skeptic Lance Moody to reveal that Imbrogno’s educational and military expedience was fabricated. And what about discredited researchers, such as Butch Witkowski, who just pick up after they left off as if nothing had happened? Randall details his skepticism of the Travis Walton UFO abduction case, as Chris and Don explain why they continue to regard it as credible.

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. Check out our new YouTube channel at: The Official Paracast Channel

Unsavory UFO Characters Often Stick Around
By Gene Steinberg

As with any offbeat field, the UFO field attracts all sorts of people, and some aren’t the sort of people you should depend upon for honesty.

Now it’s not so big a deal when someone writes a book that contains a bogus or fanciful story about unworldly visitors from other planets. In the early days of UFO research, we had all those contactees who claimed to be in touch with the humanoid inhabitants of other planets.

It didn’t matter very much that the likes of George Adamski and Truman Bethurum, and others of their ilk, made fanciful flying saucer contact claims. Maybe the books they wrote could be looked upon as an entertainment form of some sort. So not much harm done, other than what you paid to buy the book, or to see one of their lectures.

It’s something else again when the public figure in question is engaged in some sort of scam in which people lose millions of dollars.

Take the unfortunate case of one Sean David Morton, who claimed to be an expert at just about everything in the world of the strange and unknown, including UFOs, psychic phenomena, and even the ability to predict the stock market.

His one-and-only appearance on The Paracast occurred on May 23, 2006. During that episode, Morton claimed to be friends with lots of famous people, including the late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. It didn’t take us long to discover that he was making it all up.

All right, we regarded him then as just another harmless crank. Yet despite our problems with Morton, he had frequent guests spots over the years on a number of paranormal shows, including the original Art Bell “Coast2Coast” program, and usually got a free pass.

But he wasn’t so harmless after all. In 2010, Morton was accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of bilking some 100 investors of more than $6 million. Sure, compared to a Bernie Madoff, it was a decidedly small-scale scam, but not to the people who believed that Morton would be the source of their prosperity.

The Morton odyssey went on for several years, and involved being convicted of his crimes and, when he was due to be sentenced, going on the lam. Well, until he was foolish enough to do a guest spot on a paranormal radio show, which resulted in his capture.

Now in the early days of The Paracast, we came across a number of pretty unsavory people. We gave them a platform in the interests of exploring what they had to say and, when appropriate, exposing them when we realized they were up to no good.

Perhaps we were naive in those days, because we hadn’t paid such close attention to the shenanigans of some of these people. But none them engaged in the same level of outrageous schemes as Morton.

On a lesser scale, I remember the two occasions when Michael Horn, the American representative for notorious contactee Billy Meier, appeared on The Paracast. As he recited his well-rehearsed spiel, I was busy researching his claims online. I brought up a few of his questionable claims, and how they were easily exposed. His responses were long-winded. He’d go on at great length as to how those exposes were relevant, or were somehow misleading.

They weren’t.

I suppose, in the scheme of things, Horn is yet another relatively harmless eccentric.

But in the weeks after Horn’s two appearances on The Paracast, our forums were filled with thousands of messages where he and his supporters debated the issues with the brilliant and skeptical individuals who make up the bulk of our membership.

I just had to sit back and observe them in action, deftly taking apart every one of Meier’s outrageous claims and demonstrating their falsity. Some of the hoaxes were so transparent you wondered how Horn and his colleagues could brazenly maintain they had any basis of fact.

Except for an occasional Horn thread in our forums, that was pretty much it for me. Well, until, on the suggestion of a friend, I invited UFO researcher Margie Kay to appear on The Paracast. You can hear her on our August 2, 2015 episode.

At the time, she was the Assistant State Director for MUFON in Missouri, but also heavily involved in all sorts of psychic pursuits. Her alleged accomplishments included remote viewing.

In order to test her claims of possessing psychic abilities, I asked her to provide some information about my late brother, Wallace H. Steinberg.

Now if she actually bothered to do a little research, she would have discovered a few online stories about him, since he was a well-known investment banker specializing in the healthcare industry, and a former Johnson & Johnson executive. The New York Times ran a story about Wally’s untimely death, at the age of 61, in 1995. It’s still available at the paper’s site, and it would have taken maybe 30 seconds for her to dig up a few basics about him.

But she evidently didn’t consider the ease with which that information could be acquired.

The interview really went off the rails when Kay later announced that she planned to host none other than Michael Horn at a local MUFON meeting. I questioned her about the decision, and she seemed totally unaware of the fact that Horn and Meier have been exposed on numerous occasions over a period of several decades. As with the basics of my brother’s life, that information was easily searched online. A minute or two would have brought a wealth of references.

I later learned that the invitation to Horn was withdrawn due that Paracast episode and its aftermath. He complained loudly about the decision, but that’s to be expected.

Fortunately, some discredited UFO figures eventually take the hint and leave.

So Philip J. Imbrogno long claimed exemplary military and educational credentials. He even co-authored a well-received book with Dr. J. Allen Hynek and Bob Pratt, entitled “Night Siege: The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings.”

In 2011, it was discovered that Imbrogno’s credentials, which included having a Ph.D., Army Green Berets experience and Special Forces training, were all bogus. The truth was hiding in plain sight, easily available to people who checked. But he must have assumed that he could get away with this scam forever.

Once exposed, however, Imbrogno lost his teaching job. After apparently protesting in an online forum message that was posted under an assumed name, he evidently had the decency to retire from UFO research. He does not appear to have made an effort to reinvent himself. So for once, assuming nothing changes, he did the right thing.

If only some other discredited UFO researchers would take the hint and just go away.

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The fact the individual fake being a United States Army Green Beret and did SF training is an insult to those United States Special Forces Veterans and especially those killed in action. Also their families.
Absolutely. Impersonating the average citizen isn't cool, but impersonating those who we are supposed to be able to trust to defend us IMO kicks it up another notch.
 
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