A Room 101 Interview with Mack Maloney, author of UFOs in Wartime

From the foo fighters of WWII to the ghost rockets of the early Cold War, UFO sightings have always seemed to be more frequent during times of conflict. In his book UFOs in Wartime, author Mack Maloney takes a look at sightings not just from 20th-century conflicts but as far back as the time of Alexander the Great too.

Richard Thomas: How did you first become interested in the UFO subject as a writer?

Mack Maloney: I've always been interested in UFOs. Even as a kid, I read anything I could get my hands on having to do with UFOs. I think everyone likes to believe there's more to life than just life, and for me the thought that these things were flying around, appearing to people, things from some other place, I just found it fascinating and still do. So when I had the opportunity to write a book about them, I jumped at the chance.

Richard Thomas: Why did you decide to focus on UFO reports during times of conflict in your new book UFOs in Wartime?

Mack Maloney: I was having lunch with my editor and I mentioned to him that from what I'd read in the past, it seemed that lots of people see UFOs during times of war or just before a war starts. I had just read something about the foo fighters, and I'd known about the UFO incursions over U.S. ICBM bases in the 60s and 70s, and I just had the thought that whatever UFOs are, they might be particularly interested in us when we are either at war or preparing for war. My editor thought that it might be a good idea for a non-fiction book, even though I'm primarily a fiction writer. We went through the process and the book is the result.

Richard Thomas: The subheading of your book is What They Didn't Want You To Know. What do you think the authorities don't want us to know?

Mack Maloney: They don't want us to know what they know about UFOs. It's as simple as that. But the question is, what do they know? Do they know what UFOs are, and are keeping this news from us? Or do they not know what they are and they're keeping that news from us? It's a 50-50 question it could go either way. But they know a lot more than they are letting on. I'm absolutely convinced of that.

Richard Thomas: One of the earliest UFO reports you discuss in the book is Christopher Columbus' sighting. What do you think Columbus saw that night and would you agree that too much attention has been given to the Kenneth Arnold sighting and Roswell Incident from 1947 as the start of the modern UFO era?

Mack Maloney: What did Columbus see? It seems like he saw what would be normally described as a UFO a bright light, acting strangely in the sky, something that is not a star or the moon, or a meteor falling to earth. Whatever those things are, that's what Columbus saw. As for Kenneth Arnold's sighting being given too much attention, I agree that it has, at least in the context that these unidentified flying objects have been around for centuries. They didn't suddenly appear that day Kenneth Arnold saw them. What happened that day was the American press finally woke up to the story and branded them in this case, as flying saucers.

Once that happened then everyone became aware that unknown things were flying through our skies. But up to that point, no one in the media and apparently not in the military either, had ever thought that the foo fighters of World War Two and the Ghost Rockets of 1946, and the Ghost Fliers of 1933 and all these things that were seen by Alexander the Great and by people in the Bible and in medieval times were all connected that they were UFOs too. We just hadn't given them a name yet. So, yes, the popular involvement started with Kenneth Arnold's sighting, but UFOs had been around a long time before that. And as for Roswell -- I don't think anything extraordinary happened there. No crashed saucer, no recovered bodies. Nothing.

Richard Thomas: The Los Angeles Air Raid is perhaps the best-known UFO case from WWII in the United States. What do you think of the speculation that the US Army was able to shoot down and recover whatever was in the air on that day?

Mack Maloney: I did not come across anything to indicate the Army or the Navy shot down anything that night. The only thing that came out of the sky were spent anti-aircraft shells falling back to earth after being shot at whatever was flying overhead and missing their target. What is apparent is that both the Army and Navy were completely baffled and confused about what happened and they were at each other's throats the next day.

Richard Thomas: The most famous UFOs from the Second World War are the "foo fighters" spotted by both Allied and Axis pilots during that war. What are your thoughts on Nick Cook's book The Hunt for Zero Point in which he speculates that the Nazis could have been working on anti-gravity saucer-shaped aircraft?

Mack Maloney: I haven't read Nick Cook's book, so I can't comment on it directly. However, I will say that as far as the speculation that the foo fighters were actually Nazi superweapons, we reject that notion in the book. Simply put, the Nazis didn't have the resources from 1943 onward to even maintain their armies in the field, never mind create some futuristic flying machines that were seen doing fantastic things. By 1944, the Nazis were building the cockpits of their Me-262 jet fighters out of wood because they didn't have enough metal and steel to do the job. Second, if the foo fighters were Nazi weapons, why isn't there a single instance of a foo fighter firing on any Allied warplanes? If they were Nazi superweapons, why were they seen the Pacific theatre as well? Why was no vast super weapons manufacturing facility ever found in Germany after hostilities had ceased? And finally, if the Germans had these fantastic weapons, why did they lose the war?

Richard Thomas: The Rendlesham Forest Incident is often called the "British Roswell" but Jacques Vallee has suggested that it was a psy-op. How likely or unlikely do you think that explanations is?

Mack Maloney: I respect Jacques Vallee for all the tremendous work he has done in this field. And I've read only very little about his theory that the whole Rendlesham Affair was a psy-ops. But my first reaction would be to question whether the U.S. military or some U.S. intelligence service would actually run a psy-ops over the Christmas holidays. Why then? Government spooks have lives too. They go on vacation. They need time off. It seems like an unlikely time to conduct a psy-ops. Plus how was it done? Did the spooks construct a fake device that was able to float above the forest floor and then take off at a high rate of speed? Where they able to construct the half dozen large glowing lights that people saw in the sky one of those nights? Were they able to somehow stage the "crash" of some object into the woods and have it shine brightly with three vivid colours? Were they able to manipulate the radiation detection devices on aircraft flying over the forest to make it seem like the area was saturated with radiation? That's a lot of trouble to go through to psychologically test a bunch of Air Force types who, for whatever reason, couldn't get a holiday leave to go home for Christmas.

Richard Thomas: What do you think are some of the other best UFO cases from the Cold War era, not just the 1980s but the Korean and Vietnam Wars too?

Mack Maloney: The Korean War was pivotal in the U.S. government's investigation of UFOs. They'd closed up Project Grudge about six months before war broke out, basically saying UFOs didn't exist and that they were either misidentified aerial phenomena, the work of crackpots or people with delusions. But then, once the war broke out, a lot of U.S. pilots started seeing UFOs over Korea and the U.S. military realized they couldn't say all their pilots were crazy or hoaxers or delusional. So, they were stuck. Some UFO researchers believe that was one big reason the Air Force started Project Blue Book. So many of their pilots were seeing UFOs over Korea, they just couldn't ignore it. And there were some spectacular sightings. About two months into the war, three Navy fighter bombers were about to bomb a North Korean convoy when they encountered two enormous flying discs. And I mean these things were gigantic.

Then there were a couple cases of UFOs orbiting high above U.S. ships out at sea and playing hide and seek with carrier aircraft sent up to intercept them. There's an incredible story told by Dr Richard Haines in his book, Advanced Aerial Devices Reported During the Korean War, about a UFO appearing in the midst of a battle between U.S. infantry and North Korean soldiers. The object took fire from both sides, but then it bathed the American soldiers with some kind of ray, and two days later, nearly all of them were very sick. Really frightening stuff. I highly recommend the Haines book to anyone who wants to learn what happened in Korea when it came to UFOs. We just scratch the surface in our book.

For Vietnam, we came across a number of episodes. All of the sightings from Vietnam are strange because, I believe, the war itself was very strange. The most well-known is probably the Hobart Case, where US fighter planes fired at UFOs off the coast of the DMZ and wound up hitting this Australian warship, the HMAS Hobart, and killing four Australian sailors and wounding dozens of others. A very tragic story that got very little play here in the States at the time.

Richard Thomas: Are there any cases from the recent civil war in Libya or other recent conflicts you would like to include if you ever did a second edition?

Mack Maloney: If we did a second edition, we'd have to start just before 9/11, and cover all the conflicts in the Middle East. That might take up the entire book: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria maybe. That whole part of the world is turning upside down and when things like that happen, especially militarily, UFOs are usually on hand. Who knows what stories are out there, just waiting to be documented?

Richard Thomas: Where can readers buy UFOs in Wartime and have you got any plans for another UFO book?

Mack Maloney: UFOs in Wartime is published by Penguin-Berkley Books, so it's on sale at every bookstore in the United States and Canada. It can also be bought online at Amazon.

Whether there will be another UFO book in the near future, time will tell. I would like to do another one, but in a strange way our friends in the UFOs will have to cooperate and provide us some good stories. And so far, they're not returning my calls.

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A Room 101 Interview with Richard Thomas

Henry Baum of henrybaum.com turns the tables on me and asks me some questions about my new book PARA-NEWS - UFOs, Conspiracy Theories, Cryptozoology and much much more published by Bretwalda Books.

Henry Baum: Hey Richard,

As I mentioned on Facebook, one of the major things that struck me about your book was the references to Alex Jones, and these are questions that have been gnawing at me, so I hope you don't mind the focus. I get pretty long-winded here, hope that's not a problem...

On with the questions …

In your book, you frequently raise the spectre of Alex Jones and his ideas on eugenics, the New World Order, and so on. Personally, I take some issue with Alex Jones for a few reasons, and I wonder if you could address them. The main thing that leaps out about Alex Jones is that he never raises the UFO issue - you actually interview someone at Infowars who seems pretty disinterested in the whole subject. This seems like a fairly impossible assertion to make - it's pretty clear that there is something going on with the UFO issue, if only because the government's explanation for many sightings is so suspiciously stupid. If that's the case, and there is also a conspiracy to bring about a New World Order, then the two cannot be separated. When you look through at the NWO through the lens of the UFO issue then the NWO makes more sense - not just a way to aimlessly enslave us, but perhaps to make the population more controllable in the event of first contact. Do you think that's a possibility?

Richard Thomas: I've been following Alex Jones off and on since about 2000 when I saw him in an episode of Jon Ronson's Secret Rulers of the World series for Channel Four. He's had a big impact on the way I see the world and interpret world events. However, I do agree that he is missing a huge piece of the puzzle by not looking at the UFO topic in more depth. That said, trying to get the average person to accept that the Bilderberg Group really does exist is hard enough … so I can understand why Alex Jones doesn't cover the topic as much as UFO researchers would like him to.

More recently, however, I have noticed that Alex is talking about UFOs a lot more on his radio show. Here you can listen to him and David Icke talk about Project Blue Beam.

I myself believe that the globalists will use any crisis be it real or manufactured to further their goal of a one world government, be it global warming, terrorism, Colonel Gaddafi, or yes, UFOs.

A lot of UFO researchers tend to romanticise what they call “Disclosure”, the day when the world is finally told the truth (whatever that is) about what the US government and others really know about UFOs. I'm more cautious. I think if Disclosure ever really does occur (and that's a big if) we have to be careful that the existence of extraterrestrials or whatever isn't used as a justification to turn the world into a giant police state. Rahm Emanuel said "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" and his words sum up the mentality of the globalists perfectly.

Henry Baum: I guess another way of saying this is that what he sees as nefarious might actually have a purpose. Granted, the way they're going about globalization is a total nightmare. I just can't shed the feeling that they have a grander plan than just profit or enslavement. I mean if you have a billion dollars, what's 2 billion? Maybe they're just addicts, I don't know. But I also think all that profit might be going to black projects - sort of like the arks in the otherwise-terrible "2012" movie. That's not a way of excusing them, but just saying that there's more purpose to this than enslavement for the hell of it. Of course. Hitler had a "purpose" too, so there's a lot to be wary of. In sum: do you think it's possible that a one-world government could - in the very long term - potentially be positive?

Richard Thomas: No I don't. Let's say just for the sake of argument that the globalists have a higher purpose of some kind for what they're doing. Maybe they know about a fleet of marauding alien spaceships heading for Earth like in the film Independence Day or something like that, and the reason they want a world government and world army is so that the Earth will be able to defend itself against the alien invaders. That doesn't change the fact that we'll still be living inside a giant dictatorship created in stealth … maybe we would be better off under the aliens, lol.

But seriously even if the globalists were honest and open about what they were doing, and openly said they wanted to create a world government but it's okay because it's going to be a democratic one, I would still be very against the idea. I don't believe something the size of a world government could function as a democracy and it wouldn't be long before it became a dictatorship. Which is why I believe a world government and even the European Union are bad ideas to begin with.

Henry Baum: I'm playing devil's advocate here a bit because the globalists have really tipped their hand about the kind of world they want and it's a bad one. But for the sake of argument - say there was disclosure of an alien that was totally benign. Given the state of the world, releasing this info could be apocalyptic. If people get this upset about sharia law and illegal immigrants, what will the American public - let alone Middle Eastern terrorists - do with a literal alien? Seen through the lens of disclosure, the Patriot Act makes more sense. Not just to stop terrorism in 2011, but to keep an eye on the total global freakout that could be coming. I'm not longing for a police state or anything, but supposing 1% of what we know about the UFO is true - that amounts to a massive amount of world-changing information. Everything that's happened - 9-11, the war in Iraq, and so on - takes on a new meaning. So I wonder if those romantics about disclosure would trade some of their liberty for the big reveal if it meant finally getting some answers to the UFO enigma.

What's always troubled me is that people like Bush Sr. or Dick Cheney are the ones who are more likely to know the story behind UFO secrecy. There's a strange alignment between UFO secrecy and right wing ideology. Do you think it's possible to have disclosure without the world turning into a police state - given the impact it would have on religious ideology and technology?

Richard Thomas: Well it depends what we're told. Not everyone is convinced we're dealing with aliens from outer space. But if we are I suppose if they were “totally benign” and no threat it is possible to have Disclosure without the world turning into a police state. But if they're not. No I don't think it looks good. After 9/11 many people were willing to give up their civil liberties to fight a couple Islamic terrorists, imagine what they would be willing to do to combat a threat from outer space. But this is all just speculation.

Henry Baum: I also wonder about his ideas on Christianity. In his Bohemian Grove video, he points out that the men are sinister because they worship "the occult." He's even targeted Peter Joseph of "Zeitgeist" for being part of the New Age conspiracy, as if Christianity is the one true faith. If you watch "Zeitgeist" or "The God Who Wasn't There" it's pretty clear that the story of Christianity is fabricated. So Alex Jones believes in many conspiracies except one of the biggest: the fabrication of the Jesus story. Personally, I'd rather there be a universal religion than saying this one book (which advocates stoning heretics, among other things) is the be all end all of religious principles. What's your view of spirituality as it pertains to the NWO, or even to UFOs?

Richard Thomas: There's no question that early Christianity was hijacked by the Roman Empire. Christmas is as about as Christian as Halloween, December 25 was an important day to pagans. But I still celebrate it and I believe everyone has the right to believe, think, say, or do as they please as long as they don't knowingly lie or physically try to hurt anybody else.

Henry Baum: Finally, I wonder about things like population control. Studying population growth is not the same thing as advocating genocide, nor is advocating birth control. Planned Parenthood isn't evil - as he says in "Endgame" (which you reference). The Bilderberg conference might be totally sinister, but on the surface a bunch of powerful people all getting together to discuss the state of the world makes sense - why wouldn't they do that? I'm not even going to get into Global Warming science, as that's so loaded. I guess I never see in him any possible solutions - just a lot of paranoia about people who are looking for solutions. Certainly, some of these people are evil, but not all. Plainly our world is disordered, so people looking for a (lowercase) new world order might not all be dangerous.

I'm beginning to sound like a fat-cat apologist. It absolutely pisses me off that Obama and Bush are so identical and the wealthy elite are profiting off the backs of everyone else and raping the planet. They really seem to be sowing the seeds of disorder, rather than sustainability. If you're not paranoid, you're not paying attention. Jones' answer is to support Ron and Rand Paul - which I don't see as feasible. Giving corporations even more power via deregulation isn't the solution - i.e. Big Business isn't any better than Big Government. So I'm wondering what your ideal system would be, politically or economically.

Richard Thomas: Well my main problem with the Bilderburg Group is that most people have never even heard about them. I don't think that many powerful people should be allowed to meet in secret once a year and nothing be said about it in the media. Thankfully because of the hard work of dedicated researchers and activists around the world that is starting to change.

I get what you're saying about birth control etc, but there's no question that population reduction seems to be a big part of the globalist agenda. You just have to look at the comments of people like Prince Philip or Ted Turner and others.

"In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation."

- Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, in the foreword to If I Were an Animal 

"A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal."

- Ted Turner, founder of CNN 

"And I actually think the world will be much better when there's only 10 or 20 percent of us left."

- Dr Eric Pianka, University of Texas biologist

What kind of system would I like?

First I think it's important to stress I don't believe in Utopia. There's no such thing, you'll never have a perfect world and every attempt at creating one has always led to mass slaughter and tyranny. I think we need to recognise that first.

I think the founders of the United States had some good ideas. Things like a written constitution that protected the freedom of speech and other rights of the people, and an educated, informed public who could understand what that constitution said. Now, of course, even the early United States had its problems, slavery being a big one. But I think that's a good place to start. But if readers want to disagree with me … great … it's called freedom. Hopefully, we can all agree on that.

Richard's new ebook PARA-NEWS - UFOs, Conspiracy Theories, Cryptozoology and much much more is available on Amazon US and Amazon UK.

Also, please 'like' the Para-News Facebook page.

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A Room 101 Interview with Jim Marrs

One of my favourite films is Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK. Although Stone took a lot of creative licence in the film, for instance merging different historical characters into a single character like the "MR X" character, the film was largely based on two non-fiction assassination books. The first was On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, written by former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, the only prosecutor to bring a trial for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and who is played by Kevin Costner in the Oliver Stone film.

The second book which informed the film was Crossfire by Jim Marrs. I remember listening to Jim interviewed about the assassination on The Alex Jones Show and that interview really captivated me and I began reading more and more books about the assassinations of the 1960s. What follows is my own interview with Jim Marrs about the JFK assassination and some of the parallels with 9/11.

Richard Thomas: I've always had an interest in the paranormal and unexplained, but Oliver Stone's film JFK and your book Crossfire played a large part in my becoming interested in the JFK assassination and other conspiracy topics. How did you first begin researching the JFK assassination and what exactly do you think happened in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963?

Jim Marrs: On Nov. 22, 1963, I was a journalism major at the University of North Texas and I began looking into the JFK assassination on the day it happened. I still have the Dallas and Fort Worth newspapers from that day to include the UNT campus special edition. I knew something was funny right from the start because witnesses were on TV stating that two shots came one on top of the other --- Bang! Bang! At the time I was a deer hunter and had bolt-action rifles of my own and I knew that the bolt on a bolt-action rifle had to be cycled before firing again. Therefore, one could not get two shots close together. But at that time, although I was puzzled, I had no alternative but to believe the official version.

As to what happened in Dallas, President Kennedy was killed in a military-style ambush involving organized crime with the active assistance of elements within the federal government of the United States to include the CIA, FBI and military. Pressure from the top thwarted any truthful investigation. The Kennedy assassination was a true coup d'etat—a sudden and violent shift of power to the right in this country. And that power remains with us today.

Richard Thomas: The final documentary in Nigel Turner's 9-part series The Men Who Killed Kennedy, "The Guilty Men," which speculated about Lyndon Johnson's involvement in the assassination was banned after its initial broadcast on the History Channel back in 2003. How significant do you think LBJ's involvement was in the assassination, and are there any parallels to be made with 9/11 and George Bush's War on Terror continuing under President Obama?

Jim Marrs: Common sense would dictate that one does not kill the president of the United States without being assured that his successor would not track and prosecute the culprits. I do not personally believe that LBJ had any foreknowledge of the details of the plan as he would have wanted "plausible deniability." However, I think he generally knew what was up and was in agreement as it was his lifelong dream to become president and he would stop at nothing to achieve his goals.

The parallels between the JFK assassination and 9/11 are numerous. In many ways, the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks fit the same template as the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963:

• Within hours, despite a lack of real evidence, one man was blamed for the event along with hints that he was connected to foreign enemies.

• Official pronouncements were widely publicized only to be quietly admitted as errors later on.

• Although within the jurisdiction of the local authorities, the entire case was usurped by the FBI and CIA, both agencies under the control of a president who benefited from the tragedy. In 2001, FEMA, also controlled by the president, was added to this list.

• A group of specialists (medical in the JFK's case and engineers in that of the WTC) was convened but limited in what they could view and study, blocked from conducting an objective probe by federal officials.

• Evidence in the case was hastily removed and destroyed, forever lost to an impartial and meaningful investigation.

• More evidence was locked away in government files under the excuse of "national security."

• Federal malfeasance was excused by claiming lack of manpower and resources and no one was disciplined or fired. Federal agency budgets were increased.

• Any alternative to the official version of events was decried as "conspiracy theory" and "unpatriotic."

• The federal government used the event to increase its own centralized power.

• A foreign war (Vietnam in JFK's case and Iraq and Afghanistan today), which otherwise would have been opposed, was supported by a grieving population.

• A top government leader (then LBJ and now Bush), formerly under suspicion for election fraud and corrupt business dealings, was suddenly propelled to new heights of popularity.

• Many citizens knew or suspected that the official version of events was incorrect but were afraid to speak out.

• A compliant and sycophantic mass media was content to parrot merely the official version of events and studiously avoided asking the hard questions that might have revealed the truth.

• In yet another strange parallel to the Kennedy assassination, in the months and years following 9/11, an increasing number of potentially crucial witnesses began suffering untimely deaths.

Richard Thomas: Your second most recent book is called The Rise of the Fourth Reich. The Third Reich was born out of Hitler's Enabling Act and the end of the democratic Weimar Republic, would you agree that in the wake of the JFK assassination and 9/11 America has undergone a similar metamorphosis to 1930s Germany or the Roman Republic in the wake of Julius Caesars' assassination in 44 BC?

Jim Marrs: The American Republic has been lost to a National Security State Empire with many parallels to Rome and Hitler's Third Reich – 9/11 = Reichstag fire; the PATRIOT Act = the Enabling Act; Homeland Security = Secret State Police; secret detention centres = concentration camps; Nazi National ID cards = National ID Act of 2005, etc.

Richard Thomas: In Alex Jones' 2000 film Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove, the popular alternative radio show host exposed the bizarre annual "cremation of care" event, in which, as strange as it sounds, many of America's biggest names apparently meet up to conduct a mock child sacrifice to a forty foot stone owl deity, allegedly called Moloch. Have you seen any evidence of similar occult overtones in the JFK assassination or 9/11, or, even anywhere else?

Jim Marrs: There are many odd and puzzling aspects to both the JFK assassination and 9/11, for example, the strange similarities in names and places between the death of Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln, of which many people are aware. Dealey Plaza sits on the 33-degree parallel which has significant Masonic meaning. There are many other such oddities but we must not let this fascinating aspect distract us from the hard factual evidence of conspiracy in both cases.

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A Room 101 Interview with Keith Chester: Author of Strange Company - Military Encounters with UFOs in WWII

Almost every book I've ever read dealing with UFOs seems to start with either Kenneth Arnold's June 24, 1947 sighting, or the early July 1947 Roswell Incident. Sometimes there's a brief mention of the foo fighters from WWII too, and better-researched histories might mention the ghost aircraft of WWI or even the phantom airships that made headlines across the United States in the late 19th century. But Keith Chester's Strange Company- Military Encounters with UFOs in WWII is the first book I've come across that exclusively deals with pre-1947 sightings. What follows is an interview with Keith Chester about his unique book and research.

Richard Thomas: Just wanted to start by saying thanks for doing the interview, I remember your appearance on BoA: Audio back in 2007 and you've been on my list of people I'd like to interview for a while now. I know your book Strange Company mainly focuses on "military encounters with UFOs in WWII" and it's slightly off topic, but with the recent passing of Zecharia Sitchin what's your take on the ancient astronaut hypotheses, that is that aliens have been visiting the earth for thousands perhaps even millions of years and might have even played some kind of major role in mankind's genetic and/or technological evolution?

Keith Chester: Richard, glad we're communicating with one another. I have entertained the ancient astronaut hypothesis since the late 1960s, when I was first introduced to the topic by Erich von Däniken's work, especially after seeing the 1973 documentary, In Search of Ancient Astronauts. That film really got me thinking and I remember being fascinated by the possibility that Earth had been visited by extraterrestrials. I didn't start reading any of Sitchin's works until the late 1980s. It was his scholarly approach that attracted my attention. It seemed he had taken the subject matter to the next level. Whether Sitchin interpreted his research findings accurately, I don't know. But, for me, that really does not matter. The ancient astronaut hypothesis was one of the first subjects I discovered as a kid that excited me about the unknown. It was one of the first times I remember learning of such an idea. It inspired me to think outside the box. More importantly, it was responsible for my interest in the UFO phenomenon, of which I'm still passionately interested in studying. I have a very open mind regarding such concepts. That said, I must point out, however, it is important to keep myself grounded by a dose of healthy scepticism, and not fall prey to unfounded faith and belief systems. So, the ancient astronaut hypothesis can't be ignored.

Richard Thomas: Probably the most famous UFOs reported during WWII were the "foo fighters," what do you think these odd balls of light represented?

Keith Chester: When the foo fighters were reported, it was thought by most all they were some kind of secret German technology. Many reports seem to indicate the objects could be explained by a multitude of conventional explanations, such as rockets, flares, balloons and jets. Though the intelligence memoranda indicated the foo fighters were conventional objects, as the war progressed, and the sighting reports kept coming in, allied intelligence could not confirm what these objects were. Aircraft, some absolutely huge in size, that could hover, travel at phenomenal speeds, and conduct seemingly impossible manoeuvres, are mystifying. In fact, after the war ended in Europe and the sighting continued in the Pacific theater of operations, there were still no answers.

The objects seemed to have come right from the pages of science fiction.

The problem is that these incredible sightings are not available in the official documentation. That means we have to take the word of the veterans. And I am in no position to tell them that they are fools, were drunk, poor observers, or were suffering from war nerves. Some of the veterans I spoke with felt the objects were unconventional, meaning they defied known conventional technology of the day.

At this time, I don't see conventional explanations for some of the more remarkable sightings and am willing to entertain an extraterrestrial hypothesis.

Richard Thomas: Perhaps the most famous UFO sighting during WWII has to be the 1941 Los Angeles Air Raid, what do the official files say about the incident also known as the Battle of Los Angeles?

Keith Chester: The official documentation indicates something real was observed. Whatever these objects were, and aside from the civilian accounts, the military witness accounts varied dramatically; some observers witnessed one object, while others witnessed multiple objects. Descriptions of size, shape, speed, and color also varied. We know the anti-aircraft batteries opened fire. We have a dramatic photograph that appears to reveal an object caught in the crosshairs of several searchlights.

And we know a report was made and passed to President Roosevelt concerning the event. In 1942, due to Pearl Harbor, the United States, especially the east and west coasts, were on edge. Official thoughts about what occurred in those early hours on February 25, 1942, ranged from war nerves to a psychological warfare exercise. But, to my knowledge, there has been no official documents released that reveal what happened.

Richard Thomas: In Timothy Good's latest book, Need To Know, the best-selling UFO author writes about an alleged 1933 UFO crash recovery in Milan, Italy, and the subsequent creation of a top-secret UFO group - Gabinetto RS/33 - to study "unknown aircraft." In my 2008 interview with Good he also mentioned that "Other governments – that of Sweden in particular – also became concerned about intrusions of strange flying machines that year," have you come across any other stories of pre-Roswell crashes and how significant do you think the RS/33 documents are for UFO studies?

Keith Chester: Starting in 1933, Sweden, Finland, and Norway were being over-flown by unknown objects. This was the first time known official military investigations were initiated relating to aerial phenomena. It was a time in UFO history known as the "Scandinavian Sightings." Known in the press as "ghost aviators" and "phantom fliers," the reports ranged from lights in the sky to craft with propellers. Though the objects seemed conventional, there were several issues that puzzled Military authorities. They were unable to establish how such flights could occur over rough mountainous regions in harsh weather, including blinding snow storms, especially since most all aircraft flying in the early 1930s were bi-planes. The authorities were further puzzled over the skill needed to operate in such conditions, since it exceeded that of Europe's best-known pilots. Unless Russia or Germany, or both countries, were operating very secret and advanced aircraft, then some of the sightings defied conventional wisdom. And that is the primary reason these objects remained a mystery.

Regarding the Italian documents, if real, they are definitely significant. I have not seen any documentation during my research that indicates any crash and retrieval operations took place during the war. I am, however, open-minded about such a possibility.

Richard Thomas: The newspaper headlines from the late 1940s speak of "flying disks" and "ghost rockets" but the idea that UFOs might be from outer space didn't really gain popularity until Major Donald Keyhoe's 1949 article in Fate magazine, "The Flying Saucers Are Real," which in 1950 Keyhoe expanded into his best selling book. (Although, I know Mussolini made some odd comments (probably just in jest) about the "warlike inhabitants of the planet Mars" in a speech once.) Do any of the pre-1947 UFO files you've looked at indicate the Allies thought UFOs might represent something other than Axis weapons or experimental aircraft or vice versa even?

Keith Chester: During WWII, the first, and foremost, thoughts by allied air intelligence were the sightings represented enemy technology, after satisfactorily ruling out conventional ordnance and other possibilities. If the sightings were not misidentifications of conventional weaponry, meteorological and celestial phenomena, war nerves, or secret axis weaponry, then there is reason to suggest an extraterrestrial explanation was explored.

I feel the most important document uncovered that strengthens the case that unconventional aircraft were observed comes from a document discovered by British researchers, Dr David Clarke and Andy Roberts, in the National Archives in London. Over Turin, Italy on November 28/29, an "object , 200-300 feet long, travelling up to 500 mph, with "four red lights spaced at equal distance along its body, " was reported by Lancaster bomber crew. What gives this report real strength that something very unusual was observed appears in a follow-up report to Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command by No. 5 Group: "Herewith a copy of a report received from a crew of a Lancaster after raid on Turin. The crew refuses to be shaken in their story in the face of the usual banter." No. 5 Group's statement to Bomber Command is very telling in that it reveals the aircrew reports were not well received by the air intelligence men debriefing them. The reports were too unbelievable. And this is very important.

The intelligence memoranda I uncovered reveals confusion existed at the highest military levels. When reading some of these reports, of which many excerpts are included in my book, one can clearly see the struggle to find conventional answers for the sightings. It's as if the sightings were lifted from the pages of pulp science fiction; truly "Buck Rogers" and "Flash Gordon" material. When these intelligence reports are combined with the witness testimony, not included in the official reports, and are viewed as a collective whole, then the overall picture changes, thus strengthening the extraterrestrial hypothesis. This gives what I've assembled in my book its power. This is what I'm hoping the reader of my book will appreciate.

Richard Thomas: In his book The Hunt for Zero Point, Jane's Defence Weekly journalist Nick Cook speculates that "anti-gravity" aircraft technology captured from the Nazis by the United States during WWII might be responsible for UFO sightings in the post-war era. What are your thoughts on what Cook calls "the legend" in his book, and how strong in your opinion is the evidence for Nazi flying saucers? Also have you looked into the Nazi "bell" device in Joseph P. Farrell's The SS Brotherhood of the Bell at all?

Keith Chester: If I understand "the legend," correctly, it is basically the accumulation of documents and testimony that collectively address a subject, such as the Nazi UFO story, but when each piece of information is scrutinized, one finds out that particular piece of information is either false or can't be verified, thus becoming what is considered, in the industry, "the legend."

When I read Nick Cook's book, The Hunt for Zero Point, I was fascinated. I knew little about the anti-gravity subject. "The Hunt" grabbed my attention and I wanted to learn more about the story. I found Cook's investigation fascinating and I definitely began to question if such a breakthrough in anti-gravity had occurred. Aeronautics and aeronautic applications, such as anti-gravity, is a subject matter related to Cook's field of expertise, so for him to become interested in following the alleged "Bell" story, I felt compelled to follow his journey. Farrell's research adds a new layer of information to the "Bell" investigation. I must say, though, both Cook and Farrell, and others, have helped open awareness to a possibility that is pretty interesting.

Richard Thomas: What do you think were the most impressive UFO sightings documented in your book, and are there any cases you learned of after publishing you wish you could go back and include now? The WWII RAF sighting that supposedly resulted in PM Winston Churchill calling for a cover-up perhaps?

Keith Chester: For me, the most impressive sightings are those provided by the witnesses. Again, this is information that has not been verified. The most spectacular sightings, for me, were: A June 25, 1942 when a large circular object with high manoeuvrability was fired upon by an RAF bomber crew; A May 28/29 1943 sighting of a cylindrical object with portholes, hanging motionless and then speeding away at thousands of miles per hour; August 12, 1944 similar type sighting; November 1944 sighting of a circular object that some of the crew felt its heat and followed their bomber for 50 minutes; 1945 sighting of small several circular objects low above the ground, moving silently at low altitude; and, of course, Leonard Stringfield's daytime sighting of three tear-drop shaped objects flying in formation, possible causing malfunction to his aircraft.

The latest release of documents pertaining to one of Prime Minister Winston Churchill's RAF bodyguards, who claimed he heard a discussion between Churchill and General Eisenhower discuss remarkable UFO encounters is very interesting. Unfortunately, the new documents are only those generated by the RAF bodyguard's grandson, wanting information from the British government.

Since publication of my book, I have not located more documentation, but I'm still actively searching.

Richard Thomas: Thanks for doing the interview Keith, where can readers buy the book, and have you got a website or anything else you would like to plug?

Keith Chester: Richard, thanks for giving me the opportunity to have this interview. I enjoyed it. For those interested in my book, you can get it online from Anomalist Books. It can also be ordered from Amazon.com and at your local books stores, including Barnes and Noble and Borders, along with their on-line sites. You can find my web blog at keith-chester.blogspot.com.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

A Room 101 Interview with Mark Pilkington

Is it possible that instead of perpetrating a UFO cover-up the US intelligence agencies have really been promoting ideas like alien abductions, UFO crashes and recoveries, and secret bases all along? That’s what Mark Pilkington alleges in his controversial new book, Mirage Men: A Journey in Disinformation, Paranoia and UFOs. Sceptical but putting nothing past the US military-industrial complex I decided to actually read the book a lot of UFOlogists will try and ignore. Impressed, if not convinced, I decided to get in touch with Mark Pilkington to ask the author a few questions.

Richard Thomas: First things first. Thank you for giving us the time to answer these questions, I really appreciate it and I’m sure our readers will too.

Reading the book you're obviously a lot more sceptical about UFOs or to be more precise the ETH than you were when you first got interested in the subject. How did you first become interested in UFOs and how has your view of the phenomenon evolved since that time, and why?

Mark Pilkington: I've been interested in Fortean phenomena all my life – HG Wells' War of the Worlds was my favourite book aged about 7 or 8 and I grew up reading 2000AD (the British SF comic) and as much SF, fantasy and horror as I could get my mitts on. I found my first copy of Fortean Times in the mid-1980s aged about 13 and read Timothy Good's Above Top Secret when I was 14 in 1987. UFOs always appealed to me because they seemed to be the most accessible form of anomalous phenomena – you could look up at the night sky wherever you were and imagine seeing one.

I'm not sceptical about UFOs themselves – people see them every day – nor am I sceptical of the existence of ET life, I believe it's out there, and I can accept that it will come here and perhaps even has done at some point in our past. What I *am* very sceptical of is the popular notion of ET visitation as presented in the UFO lore that has emerged since the late 1940s. This has developed out of a multi-directional feedback loop between UFO experiencers, UFO book authors, mainstream popular culture and those in the military and intelligence worlds who would exploit and shape these beliefs and ideas.

Each era gets the UFOs and ETs that it desires, they are a culturally constructed phenomenon. In the book I demonstrate, for example, that there's nothing alien about flying saucers, which were synonymous with ET visitation from the 1950s through to the 1970s. Whether or not the Germans, British or Americans ever successfully flew disc craft at great speed, they certainly tried, as far back as the 1930s. Perhaps they did fly but were less useful than more conventional types of aircraft.

Richard Thomas: You write early in the book about some UFO sightings of your own you had (or thought you had) when you were younger. What did you see and is there any doubt at all in your mind that these weren’t anonymous like you originally thought?

Mark Pilkington: I open the book with a sighting of three silver spheres seen by myself and two friends in Yosemite national park in 1995. I still have no idea what these were, though I'm still confident that they weren't balloons. I actually tried to track down my companions, who I've since lost touch with, to ask them to send me their memories of what we saw, as I thought it would be a fascinating demonstration of the fallibility of memory if they described something entirely mundane or different. If I hear from them I will certainly publish their stories on the Mirage Men blog. As I point out in the book, silver spheres were seen at least as far back as WWII, and are still reported to this day. I have no idea what the things we saw were.

Richard Thomas: I haven’t looked into it much but after I read the back of your book I automatically thought of Project Blue Beam, a conspiracy theory on the web that the US Government are planning on staging a fake alien invasion to bring about a global police state. Do you think there might just be a seed of truth to such paranoid thinking?

Mark Pilkington: The earliest version of this story I know of is a speech made by British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to the UN in March 1947, in which he posits that an invasion by Martians would be the only thing that might unite the world's nations. Of course the Roswell incident took place four months later, something that was picked up on by former intelligence agent Bernard Newman in his 1948 novel The Flying Saucer. In which scientists stage a fake invasion to bring about world peace.

Reagan famously alluded to the idea again in 1987, also talking to the UN. It's a common motif in science fiction - I was recently pointed to an Outer Limits episode, “The Architects of Fear,” which follows the same premise. There are rumours that Wernher von Braun believed that a false ET invasion was on the cards, and it's something that UFO researcher and Manhattan Project scientist Leon Davidson also talked about in the 1960s referring to the contactees, who he thought were being deceived in elaborate setups by the intelligence agencies. It's a very appealing idea whether true or not.

I think it's a reflection on our times that the Blue Beam story uses the same premise to warn of an impending global police state, rather than world peace!

Richard Thomas: Briefly as possible who exactly are the “Mirage Men” and how did you first become aware of them?

Mark Pilkington: Ultimately everyone who talks or writes about UFOs become Mirage Men as their stories influence the field. In the book I'm specifically referring to those people from military and intelligence organisations who have used the UFO lore as a cover for their operations and, in extreme cases, have seeded new material within the UFO culture to further muddy the waters.

Richard Thomas: Perhaps the best evidence for UFOs are radar reports, but in the book you explain quite convincingly how such evidence might not be as convincing as researchers originally thought. Could you explain why this is to the readers, and what this might mean?

Mark Pilkington: Yes I talk about the Palladium system for spoofing radar returns, which I stumbled upon by accident while reading James Bamford's NSA biography Body of Secrets. By the mid 1960s this had got very sophisticated and was being used by the NSA and CIA. It was used with drones for example, to create the impression of much larger aircraft. I later found out that Leon Davidson had talked about the technology in the late 1950s, with reference to the famous 1952 Washington DC UFO overflights.

The radar ghosting phenomenon was actually first observed in 1945. By the mid-late 1950s the technology to create them was being used to train radar operators in the civilian domain. So the circumstantial evidence that the 1952 UFO wave was a demonstration of *somebody's* radar spoofing abilities is quite compelling.

Richard Thomas: In Nick Redfern’s book, Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story. he speculates that horrific Cold War experiments carried out on Japanese prisoners of war might be the truth behind the saucer crash story. Do you think the US Government are using the UFO lore to cover-up this and similar crimes, or, do the “Mirage Men” have other motives?

Mark Pilkington: I don't know what happened at Roswell, and the story has grown far too convoluted now ever to be satisfactorily resolved. Nick Redfern and I certainly think along similar lines at times and aspects of his Body Snatchers theory are quite convincing. We have to remember that the years following World War II were difficult and often desperate. The threat of Soviet infiltration and/or atomic annihilation was extremely serious, and the US government, like those of every nation, was prepared to do awful things to maintain the status quo.

The point about Roswell is that *whatever* came down, whether it was a Mogul balloon or something more exotic, the saucer deception worked – nobody took the blindest bit of interest in the Roswell story for at least 30 years, though someone in the military and or intelligence world appears to have been promoting saucer crash stories as early as 1950.

So in that respect Walter Haut and the others who put out first the flying saucer, then the weather balloon press releases are amongst the first Mirage Men that we can identify. As an aside, William Davidson and Frank Brown, the two Air Force Intelligence agents who died while investigating Kenneth Arnold in Tacoma, Washington, should also be added to that roll of honour.

Richard Thomas: The idea that the US intelligence agencies might have encouraged or perhaps even invented much of the UFO canon, i.e., crashed saucers, recovered ET hardware and bodies, etc, I’m sure will be rejected out of hand by most UFO researchers. Why do you think this is?

Mark Pilkington: Some prominent researchers have invested a huge amount of time, energy and credibility in believing and promoting the ETH and tales of an attendant cover-up. It will probably be harder for some of them to consider the ideas I present in Mirage Men without prejudice, though the positions certainly aren't mutually exclusive.

But, as Leon Festinger showed in his book When Prophecy Fails, there's a strange effect that when someone's deeply-held beliefs are challenged or shown to be delusional, especially when issues of credibility are at stake, rather than accept a new set of beliefs, they will cling more strongly to the old ones, reinforcing them with increasingly warped logic. Festinger studied a 1950s UFO group and his findings are just as relevant today as they ever were.

I'm just putting forward my take on a very complex story. I wrote Mirage Men to be an outward-looking book that would interest people outside of the UFO community, I also wanted to present a reasonable and responsible critique of the mainstream ETH to those who are already well-versed with the UFO lore. Most people who have contacted me seem to agree that I've done a decent job of this, though there's also been some hate mail. Generally I think I've only succeeded if I find myself take flak from both sides of the sceptical divide!

Personally speaking, I have no problem with people believing anything they like, as long as others aren't being exploited, harmed or prejudiced against as a result those beliefs. Taken literally, I think beliefs in ET visitation are actually more logical than those of any of the major religions for example.

Most UFO beliefs are quite harmless, even positive, though I think it's a shame that some people use them as a means to undermine human ability and potential, for example suggesting that advanced technologies or the feats of ancient cultures can only be attributed to aliens rather than human ingenuity.

Richard Thomas: What would your answer be to people who say that too many honest and credible witnesses have reported seeing phenomena that Earthly explanations just can’t explain?

Mark Pilkington: I accept that there are always going to be cases that refuse to give up their mysteries under even the most focused scrutiny, and in those instances it's ultimately going to come down to what people prefer to believe.

I'm fascinated by the 1980 Cash-Landrum incident for example. If even half of that incident was accurately reported by the witnesses then there are either some remarkably advanced toys in the human arsenal, or we really have been borrowing, or stealing them from someone else.

Some of my friends have had some really spectacular and bizarre UFO sightings, but personally I just don't see the need to invoke the extraterrestrial hypothesis. As military analysts have pointed out since the late 1940s, the patterns of behaviour ascribed to UFOs make no sense as part of a surveillance or invasion plan. Meanwhile if some secret cabal has been negotiating with the aliens, then what have they got to show for it? Where are the technological leaps or anomalies?

I've been reading Paul Hill's Unconventional Flying Objects. Although himself an ET believer, Hill, who worked on successful flying platform designs in the 1950s, points out that there's very little about UFO reports that is truly inexplicable – they obey, rather than defy the laws of physics. My own belief, and it's only a belief, is that some highly advanced experimental craft have been flown over the years, perhaps much further back than we realise.

Richard Thomas: Probably the big UFO story of 2006 was Project Serpo. In the book you meet Bill Ryan who runs the website where the most controversial documents since the MJ-12 papers were first posted. How do you think the story first began and if the “Mirage Men” were behind it what might have their intentions have been?

Mark Pilkington: Yes John Lundberg and I got involved with Bill Ryan within a few weeks of Serpo breaking and followed him to Laughlin for his ufological debut. That's a key section of the book. I don't know whether Serpo was a 'Mirage Men' operation, though in the book I do suggest a few purposes it might have had if it was. What we can say for sure is that the Serpo story, ridiculous as it seems, single-handedly reinvigorated, even resurrected, the UFO field at a time when it was almost entirely moribund.

In 2004 when John and I first began mooting the idea of Mirage Men you couldn't get anybody to take the least bit of interest in the UFO subject other than to say that it was a cultural dead zone. Now UFOs and ETs are once again big business with a flood of books, films and TV series headed our way. While interest in UFOs, like anything else, is always cyclical, I really think that Serpo was the seed for this particular wave of interest.

Richard Thomas: Have you found any evidence that Britain or other countries might have their own “Mirage Men,” I don’t believe them myself but there are a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding Nick Pope, for instance?

Mark Pilkington: I don't know about Nick Pope, though he *did* come to my book launch. hmmmmmmmm.

Seriously, my understanding - confirmed by a source who wishes to remain anonymous for now (yes, him again!) - is that the USAF's OSI (Office of Special Investigations) and the RAF's Provost and Security Services often work together, or at least keep each other informed of operations on UK soil. AFOSI have certainly run a few Mirage Men type operations over the last forty years, and I'm aware of at least one UFO-themed disinformation operation conducted on UK soil in the 1990s. I hope to be able to write more about this in the near future.

Richard Thomas: Thanks Mark, where can readers find the book and have you got any other projects or a website you’d like to plug?

Mark Pilkington: Thanks Richard. Mirage Men is currently available in the US and the UK via Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and the rest. I've set up a website for the book, which I'm using to explore some of the book's ideas and themes further.

I also run Strange Attractor Press, publishing books including Welcome to Mars by Ken Hollings, which is about America in the heyday of the flying saucer era, and The Field Guide, by Rob Irving and John Lundberg, which is an insider's history of the crop circle phenomenon, including detailed instructions on how to make your own.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

A Room 101 Interview with Steve Watson

Steve Watson is the webmaster for independent journalist, political activist and documentary filmmaker Alex Jones at Infowars.net. He is also a regular contributor to and editor of Jones' Prisonplanet.com. Holding a BA Degree in Literature and a Master's Degree in International Relations, Steve and his brother Paul Watson first became aware of Alex Jones after watching Jon Ronson's Channel Four documentary series: The Secret Rulers of the World. In 2005 both brothers appeared in Alex Jones' documentary film Terrorstorm.

Richard Thomas: Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions mate, I'm sure you're constantly busy so it's really appreciated.

Have you always been interested in what the mainstream media like to dismiss as “conspiracy theories” or was there a particular book, documentary etc that first caught your attention and things developed from there?

Steve Watson: I was always interested in alternative theories and questioning the accepted version of the truth regarding major historical and political events. I remember when I was in school, about 13 years old, my history teacher (who was also my brother's history teacher) would show video of the JFK assassination and would raise questions over the government's explanation of what happened. That stuff wasn't even part of our curriculum - we were supposed to be learning about the Second World War - but before the lessons began, as we filtered into the classroom, he would be playing these videos and telling us about the facts and discrepancies of the lone gunman explanation - I'm certain that prompted me into exploring things more and looking for alternative explanations and I thank him for that.

Richard Thomas: How was it that you and your brother, two “red coats,” started writing for Alex Jones' website infowars.com?

Steve Watson: We both saw Alex on a British documentary called Secret Rulers of The World made by Jon Ronson, who went on to write The Men Who Stare At Goats. It was 2000, when Alex infiltrated The Bohemian Grove. We began listening to his radio show on the internet, Paul started up his website and his own radio show, as Alex always encourages his listeners to do. I began helping him with the website and eventually it got popular enough for Alex to notice it. He liked what he saw and asked Paul to write for him and create the websites that became Prisonplanet.com and Prisonplanet.tv. I was studying at university during this time, but I kept contributing and helping out and in 2005 when I finished studying, Alex brought me in full-time.

Richard Thomas: What do you think the biggest misconception is towards people interested in the kind of topics you cover at infowars.com?

Steve Watson: That we are pushing a one-sided political viewpoint like the mainstream media does. Left and right is part of the same control system, anyone who looks at what we do for long enough will see that.

Richard Thomas: I noticed your brother goes by “Number 6” and I've heard the classic 1960s Doctor Who theme more than a few time on the Alex Jones Show. Are you, your brother and Alex Jones big science-fiction fans, and if so what are some of your favourite shows/films/novels etc?

Steve Watson: I am not particularly a science fiction fan (sorry!). In terms of entertainment culture I am a fan of anything stimulating and thought-provoking, no matter what genre of entertainment it belongs to. In relation to science fiction, Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner fits into that category for me, as does the writing of Philip K. Dick and some of John Carpenter's films. I can't say I like Dr Who at all, especially in its modern incarnation. I think Alex just uses the theme tune because it sounds good!

Richard Thomas: About 90% of what Alex Jones talks about seems to be based directly on what governments have already openly admitted to. In light of this what do you think the most disturbing document you've ever come across is?

Steve Watson: The ones that relate to biowarfare and eugenics. There are countless examples of the US government having illegally tested and used bio-weapons on its own citizens. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, The Program F fluoride study, Project SHAD which used live toxins and chemical poisons on American servicemen on American soil, spraying clouds of bacteria over San Francisco, releasing toxic gases into the New York subway, holding open-air biological and chemical weapons tests in at least four states in the 1960s, the list goes on. These are only a few examples of what has become public knowledge. Then there are documents like the 1974 declassified document of the National Security Council, entitled "The Implications of World-wide Population Growth on the Security and External Interests of the United States" in which Henry Kissinger calls for programs of sterilization and depopulation in the third world in return for increased aid. John P. Holdren's Eco-Science is another eugenicist's masterpiece. The most disturbing material is covered in Alex Jones' film Endgame.

Richard Thomas: Did you vote in the recent General Election? And what, if anything, do you think the result showed?

Steve Watson: Yes I did, though I didn't expect anything to change because all three candidates are establishment career politicians with broadly the same agendas. The result showed that people are utterly sick of the political system in the UK. The relatively high turnout also showed that people are desperate for some meaningful political change. Some people say everyone should stop voting in protest - I don't think that would achieve a great deal other than devaluing our right to vote. You have to effect change from the bottom up, that means ensuring the right candidates win locally. Though there is a great deal of optimism in our movement, there is also a great deal of defeatism - I mean people declaring that it doesn't matter whether they vote or not because everything is controlled and manipulated by the powers that be. Power is as much a state of mind as it is an actuality.

Richard Thomas: What role, if any, do you think the British Royal family plays in the New World Order?

Steve Watson: They represent an elite bloodline that has for centuries declared itself as God's appointed rulers over half of the planet, killing, torturing and maiming anyone who crosses it in order to hold on to that mantle. Are we supposed to believe they've had a sudden change of heart? Today many people in Britain suggest that these facts are no long relevant because the royal family has very little power. This is a huge myth. The Queen is the head of state and as such she can simply replace the British government at any time she chooses, should she wish to do so. The royal family still owns vast swathes of land throughout Britain and the rest of the world, and the Queen still presides as head of state in Canada and Australia. They also exert influence on the global stage through groups, bodies and corporations they charter and provide patronage to.

Richard Thomas: Why do you think Russia Today is the only mainstream media channel to take subjects like the recent Bilderberg meeting in Spain seriously?

Steve Watson: I understand why you ask this question, but I don't believe it is. This year there was much more mainstream media coverage of the meeting this year, though it takes someone like Charlie Skelton to approach it from out of leftfield for it to get into mainstream sources such as the London Guardian. Russia Today has become a prominent news provider because it has embraced the internet, while much of the mainstream resides in dinosaur land.

Richard Thomas: How long, if ever, do you think it'll be before the BBC are forced to let serious 9/11 researchers and climate sceptics on shows like Question Time?

Steve Watson: Never. The BBC is a state-controlled propaganda machine. If you buy a TV or any form of television receiving equipment in the UK you have to pay for the BBC by law. If you gave the British people a choice of whether to pay for the BBC or not, as part of a subscription deal for example - which should happen because it has violated it's charter over and over again - the majority would opt out and the BBC would cease to exist - simple as that.

Richard Thomas: I know Alex Jones doesn't discuss them much on his show, but what's your take on UFOs?

Steve Watson: It's a very broad subject, and I'm no expert. Some of the research into the topic is interesting, some of it is useless and ridiculous from what I've seen. I've never personally seen a UFO, but my gut feeling is that some are advanced military technology and the others are natural phenomena. That doesn't mean I don't believe there isn't life on other planets though - of course there is.

Richard Thomas: Thanks again mate, where can people contact you and read your articles? (Please feel free to plug anything you like here mate)

Steve Watson: prisonplanet.com, my MySpace page, and the news website of syndicated radio host Alex Jones - because there's a war on for your mind!

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

A Room 101 Interview with Dean Haglund: Star of The X-Files and The Lone Gunmen

Did the US Government have foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and filter it out to the writers of The X-Files spin-off series The Lone Gunmen? It might sound unlikely to some but that's exactly what Dean Haglund - who played the recurring character Langly in both series - seemed to be hinting at when The X-Files star appeared on a memorable December 15 edition of The Alex Jones Show back in 2005.

To summarise: The Lone Gunmen pilot (broadcast before 9/11) involved a government conspiracy to 'hijack' a commercial airliner via remote control and fly the aircraft into the World Trade Centre. Why? You ask. According to dialogue in the script, the plan was to blame the terrorist atrocity on rogue third-world nations and launch a new global conflict against terrorism to replace the much missed Cold War that had given America so much direction and purpose in the world … not to mention keep the arms trade afloat following the collapse of communism in the early 1990s.

"The Cold War is over, John. But with no clear enemy to stockpile against, the arms market's flat. But, bring down a fully-loaded 727 into the middle of New York City and you'll find a dozen tin-pot dictators all over the world just clambering to take responsibility and begging to be smart-bombed."

Intrigued by his more recent appearance on the AJ Show earlier this year and the news that Mr Haglund is in the midst of making a new feature documentary about believers in conspiracies and their search for "the truth," I thought the Lone Gunman might make an interesting interview.

Richard Thomas: First I just want to say thank you for agreeing to answer my questions, I've been a huge fan of The X-Files since it first aired on the BBC back in 1993, so you doing this interview is much appreciated.

Your first line in The X-Files was, "Check it out, Mulder: I had breakfast with the guy who shot John F. Kennedy." That still makes me chuckle, but I'm a lot more open to that kind of thing now. What did you think of that line when you first read it in the script and have your own perceptions of the character you played changed at all since then?

Dean Haglund: I didn't know what the writers were really talking about then. My brother was more up on that stuff than I was, so I started talking to him. The other part of that line was... "old dude now, but said he was dressed as a cop on the grassy knoll". And that was funny, because a year later I was down in Dallas and went to the book depository which is now a museum and went to that grassy knoll. From then on, it was fun tracking down these theories and ideas and experiencing first-hand so many of the things that The X-Files talked about. That naturally changed my perceptions and they continue to change to this day.

Richard Thomas: Did you do much research for the character, i.e. did you read any conspiracy-related books or magazines, or start listening to paranormal talk radio shows or anything like that?

Dean Haglund: Yes. I got to be on the paranormal talk radio programs as a guest. Then I was introduced to many of the researchers in the various fields and really got to know them well. Everything branched off from there. Many of them appear in my documentary that we are doing called The Truth is Out There.

Richard Thomas: There are other characters in the first series of The X-Files that we never saw again, why do you think The Lone Gunmen kept returning and were ultimately even given their own spin-off series?

Dean Haglund: One word: Internet. The early newsgroup alt.tv.x-files was one of the first online gathering spots for the fans of a TV show. There they would talk about the episodes, and the writers would lurk in there and get honest feedback of the show. Thus, the Gunmen sort of reflected this culture and even some of our lines came from this news group. And they would bring us back to boost chatter on the newsgroup, and use that traffic as a proof of our popularity. It was a fun symbiotic relationship.

Richard Thomas: Do you have a favourite episode or moment from either The X-Files or The Lone Gunmen? And is there a particular type of episode you prefer to watch yourself as a fan?

Dean Haglund: In our origin episode, called Unusual Suspects, my playing Dungeons and Dragon for money, was a really fun moment. And got me invited to a lot of games. I liked the monster of the week shows that they did, but the story was compelling when you had the time to invest in it all.

Richard Thomas: The subtitle of the new X-Files film was "I Want To Believe," do you think people really simply 'want to believe' or do you think something more meaningful might explain the growth of the 'alternative media' in recent years? Guess I'm really asking do you think people believe in conspiracy theories because they're true or because they need to believe in something and religion etc doesn't make the cut?

Dean Haglund: Belief and Truth! Two great ideas that are often jammed into one. For the last year, as a camera followed me around the world and we interviewed many people, like Alex Jones, Jordan Maxwell, etc, I asked them the question what is the truth and why do they believe they know it and not the other guy with a completely alternative viewpoint. Some said because they felt it or that history beard them out. But the thing that all of them had in common was the need to follow this path regardless or the personal toll it took. That the truth, however subjective it may seem, was ultimately an objective quantity that they were getting to.

Richard Thomas: What was your reaction after 9/11 and what's your current opinion on The Lone Gunmen pilot? In your interview with Alex Jones you said the writers would sometimes be approached by people from the CIA, FBI and NASA, was this the case with the pilot?

Dean Haglund: I asked Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad) this very question when he was on my podcast and he said that this was a case of an artist tapping into some bizarre collective un-conscience item, and he said that he read about the idea in a Tom Clancy novel, so there was no direct involvement in this case. My current opinion is that the pilot now stands as a chilling time capsule when we were just a little less scarred by real-life events.

Richard Thomas: If the pilot was indeed based on insider knowledge of some kind, why do you think they would feed it to the writers of The X-Files of all people? Do you think the purpose might have been to discredit the 'government did it' theories in advance?

Dean Haglund: Separate from the pilot, I have heard that the popular culture is used as a tool by whatever elite (business, govt, Illuminati, etc.) to both gauge and control the populace. That is, the conspiracy is the conspiracy theory itself, making its way into the mainstream culture, thereby usurping the power of the populace to alter it, because one can diminish some researcher or whistleblower as someone who "just watches too much X-files."

Richard Thomas: What's your take on the theory that sci-fi shows like The X-Files and Star Trek are intended to be a form of 'predictive programming' aimed at slowly acclimatising the public to ideas they would otherwise be hostile towards, i.e. world government?

Dean Haglund: This seems to give more power to an elite ruling body and removes the power of the artist to create shows that are tapping into the zeitgeist of the moment. It involves the idea that we all already know the future and we just connect to shows or artwork that reflect what we are thinking in a pre-cognitive level. To say that a small group dictate those idea memes into our minds and then have Hollywood or the BBC then make entertainment that matches what they preloaded I don't think can work. I think that they would like that to happen, but ultimately, creating art is not a simple cut-and-dry business exercise, it has to include some 'other' things to make it a "hit"

Richard Thomas: The final X-Files episode The Truth left us with a very ominous prediction about 2012, is it possible that this might have been based on some kind of insider information? Perhaps even preparation for something very nasty coming down in 2012?

Dean Haglund: Here is an excellent example of a collective fear manifesting itself into popular culture. Since this airing, 2012 has become the hot topic at all the conventions, however, as Paul Dean said in our documentary, when he was talking to a Mayan priest about all of this, he said that "western society has it all wrong" and that since we cannot hold a duality in our minds, a quantum "Schrodinger's Cat" scenario if you will, then we can only picture the end of something as a finite disaster and not both that and the re-awakening into the light.

Richard Thomas: It took the best part of thirty years before Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK broke the taboo and featured a pro-conspiracy plot about the assassination. How long do you think it'll take before Hollywood or even TV do the same thing with 9/11? Also do you think if The X-Files had not ended in 2002 Chris Carter might have tackled the issue?

Dean Haglund: I think that The X-Files would have been painted into a corner because it would have had to address it in some way, and yet to come out on the conspiracy side would have sat very harshly for some. Because the implication on the 9/11 truth movement is very sinister and somewhat hopeless even, in that, if it was all an inside job and all the people that had to be involved to make that happen, means that the cynicism that runs through whatever entity was behind that and whatever motive that was the compelling force to achieve that, is a lot of negative energy. Whether greed of Halliburton, or terrorist zeal of Al-Queda, either case makes for some heavy karmic weight some are carrying regarding that day. And to put that on TV even now would require either fancy footwork or a counterbalance. I think that the only work thus far that was able to embrace that would be Art Speigleman's comic book about the day called "In the Shadow of No Towers". His fun drawing style works to balance out that story nicely.

Richard Thomas: I noticed on your website, that you've done a comic book called Why The Lone Gunmen Was Cancelled, so why do you think The Lone Gunmen and ultimately even The X-Files were cancelled? Jack Bauer was quite a departure from the kind of American hero the Gunmen and Spooky Mulder represented, do you think there was an agenda to replace pro-conspiracy type programming with pro-government shows like 24?

Dean Haglund: To answer the first part, you have to get my comic book because it is a long story. Here again, popular culture reflects the times we live in. The X-Files would never get off the ground today because we don't have room in our brains to contemplate an "evil syndicate that is working with Aliens to create a human hybrid." When you think back to the time the show started in '93, there was so much optimism - the wall had just come down, there was the Oslo accord, the atomic clock was set BACK, etc. - so that we could be entertained by a "Trust No One" anti-hero, who rarely even used a gun. Now Jack Bauer is more comforting in our times because as all elements seem to spin out of control, this guy can work non-stop (within 24 hours) to stop and solve global crisis. That is cathartic at the same time as it is soothing.

Richard Thomas: I understand since the end of The X-Files you've been working on a documentary film about people who believe in conspiracy theories, what exactly is the film about and why did you decide to do it after doing The X-Files for so long?

Dean Haglund: As I alluded to earlier, The Truth is Out There, is a documentary about why conspiracies exist in the first place and what function do they serve, and ultimately, about what is "truth" and how do you know in our present 'information blizzard' when you have found it. I decided to do it after my co-host on my podcast, Phil Leirness, came to a couple conventions and saw that my life was interesting in that I dealt with these concepts daily, and because of the people that I knew from researching my role as one of The Lone Gunmen I had unique access to many people in the field that probably would not talk on camera to anyone else. So what I thought would be a few interviews has become a year-long travelling document about what is really TRUE and how that affects all those who seek and live it.

Richard Thomas: I know Alex Jones is one person you've interviewed but who are some of the other personalities you've encountered, and does anyone stick out in particular?

Dean Haglund: Jordan Maxwell, Dr. Roger Leir, David Sereda, Dr. Miller who started the Institute of Noetic Sciences with Edgar Mitchell, and many more. Alex Jones was illuminating because for the number of times I had been on his show I didn't really know that much about him. So for me to ask him questions and to see his passion behind why he slaved away on the radio and fighting against the machine was really cool. This documentary should be ready in November and then we head off to the film festivals for some screenings.

Richard Thomas: Other than 9/11, what other conspiracy theories have you investigated or looked into? For instance what's your opinion on the 1960s assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK; the New World Order conspiracy theories surrounding the Bilderberg Group and other secret societies; and, of course, Roswell and UFOs?

Dean Haglund: Let's see, we look into the GMO food alteration of our diet. Our food has been the same for 50,000 years except for the last 30 where we have completely changed how and what we eat. This may or may not be a specific plan to reduce the human population back down to workable levels using nothing other than our own gluttony. We saw labs where experiments are going on in a level of science that is beyond the orthodox three-dimensional sciences that would require this answer to be about 25 pages long. My theories on all of these are now, after hearing all of these people in a state of flux, since all of it, even though it contradicts each other, seems to be true is some way. Hopefully, we'll find an answer in the editing.

Richard Thomas: What other projects are you working on and where can people contact you and find out about the documentary?

Dean Haglund: I am reconfiguring everything as we speak. So go to Deanhaglund.com for links to everything, and you can contact me there for more info.

Richard Thomas: Thanks again Dean, hope we can do this again sometime.

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Paranormal Dichotomy - Richard's Room 101

The sheer mountain of eyewitness testimony, photographs, and audio recordings, not to mention film and video evidence should be ample enough to show that the pantheon of phenomena popularly described as "ghosts" or "apparitions" exist. That's NOT to say any of this accumulating evidence approaches anything near scientific proof or verification of the paranormal. The fact that, by definition, paranormal activity falls outside the normal realm of scientific understanding and can't be repeated within a laboratory setting has left many researchers believing we'll probably never have irrefutable proof.

However, few investigators would argue that the phenomena continues, nonetheless, and is all too real for a wide spectrum of witnesses that come from all walks of life. Which raises two important questions: if paranormal activity really does exist, what does it represent and how might the answer, or answers, affect our collective understanding of the universe and ourselves?

Other than hallucinations caused by ultrasound, sleep paralysis and similarly mundane explanations, parapsychologists and other paranormal investigators basically subscribe to three main schools of thought on the matter. The first, and most obvious, of course, being that "ghosts" are exactly what psychic mediums and other sensitives have always claimed they are: the spirits of the deceased or whatever it is that survives of the human consciousness after bodily death.

It is the second and third alternatives that seem to be the preferences of most contemporary parapsychologists. That is that paranormal phenomena such as "ghosts" are either some kind of 3D psychic recording / temporal replay or alternatively, the manifestation of the latent telekinetic powers of the human mind. When I interviewed Richard Holland editor of Paranormal Magazine the author/investigator, himself a witness to poltergeist activity, he speculated about a possible fourth alternative.

"When I was at university I read about bacteriophages, viruses so primitive that they can barely be called life at all. They attach themselves to bacteria and pump in their RNA. The rest of it, a protein shell, drifts away. The RNA recodes the bacterial DNA and – lo! – two viruses where once there was one bacterium. It made me wonder about a primitive consciousness, scarcely a mind at all, just a mass of electrical discharges that floats about and like the phage can only exist in any real form by latching onto a human mind … Perhaps similar twilight entities answer our subconscious needs according to our current superstitious beliefs – become fairies when we believe in fairies, then aliens when we believe in aliens. Perhaps they created some crop circles, too. More recently, I've been getting interested in the Islamic concept of the Jinn, incorporeal spirits created out of 'smokeless fire' at the same time as Man, and living alongside us. That comes quite close to what I've been groping at."

The danger, of course, when discussing "ghosts," just as with UFOs and pretty much any Fortean-type mystery, is that people want a single definitive answer. The classic example being that UFOs are either "nuts and bolts" spacecraft from Zeta Reticuli or they're extra-dimensional vehicles. And, as alluded to, a similar dichotomy seems to be entrenched in the paranormal field. It might be a bit of an overgeneralization, but generally speaking "ghosts" are either seen as evidence of survival after death or else, they're interpreted as being some form of alternative psychic phenomena we currently don't understand as the parapsychologists would suggest. The problem being, why does it have to be one or the other: why can't it be both or as conspiracy author Jim Marrs likes to say: "all of the above" or even something else entirely?

Traditional style hauntings, poltergeist activity, stories of possession and timeslips: there is certainly no shortage of paranormal phenomena to choose from, however, perhaps none defy this paranormal dichotomy better than the "crisis ghost phenomenon."

Crisis ghosts are different from other apparitions in that they appear to be person rather than location-based. They typically involve close friends or family members of witnesses appearing at a time of crisis, usually just before or after the person appearing dies. So common is the phenomenon that there is actually a case within my own family we can discuss.

I won't bore readers with all of the details but basically, years ago, while on holiday in Tenerife, my father had a strange dream involving several deceased relatives "all dressed in white" and a close childhood friend he hadn't seen in about "two and a half years." According to my father, the white figures in the dream told him that "they were all alright and not to worry." After waking up, my dad assumed it was just a strange dream and got on with enjoying his holiday. On returning to the UK, though, he discovered, to his shock, that the friend in the dream had, unbeknownst to him, been ill for some time and had died while he was away.

Had the spirits of the departed somehow invaded my father's subconscious that night in Tenerife, or alternately, had my father somehow psychically picked up on his friend's passing or imminent passing and this is how his subconscious mind dealt with it? Either explanation can be made to fit.

Stranger still, though, are the crisis ghost cases that take place while the witness (or witnesses) are wide and awake. For instance, there are many cases from the two world wars of soldiers returning home only to suddenly vanish or walk through a wall. News of their death arriving not long afterwards.

A classic example of this was featured in a memorable episode of Ghosthunters (the UK 1990s documentary series) focusing on the alleged ghostly happenings at Ireland's Castle Leslie. In the documentary, we're told that "Uncle Norman" Leslie was seen by the old gamekeeper and others "walking the gardens" when last they heard he was in France fighting in the 1914 war. Thinking the army captain must have gotten unexpected leave, the servants rushed to get a meal prepared for the returning war hero. Strangely, though, he never turned up. Not long later, however, (within a week) the family learned the truth. "Uncle Norman" had died attacking a German machine gun post.

When you consider the wide spectrum of crisis experiences (some awake, some asleep, some alone, some with others etc) is it really likely that every case has the same explanation, or, is it more reasonable to think that some might be traditional "spirits" and some might be evidence for something else? Ultimately, though, as is the case with all Fortean or esoteric-type topics, it comes down to a matter of personal belief.

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The Devil Rides Out - Richard's Room 101

By the late 1960s, the once cutting-edge Hammer Films was falling quickly behind the times. Back in the 1950s, the small British studio had been the leader in horror. It was the innovator that bravely trod where others were afraid to go. Meanwhile, American studios were making mostly bad science fiction films about alien invaders from the Red Planet and giant radioactive monsters (obvious stand-ins for Communists and the bomb). Hammer, on the other hand, was busy remaking the classic Universal gothic horrors that first launched the talkie era back in the 1930s (Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy) in glorious techno colour. This time around, though, adding the "dangerous cocktail" of blood and nudity to the horror mix. This might sound rather tame by today's standards but was genuinely shocking to 1950s audiences. 

Sadly, however, the studio that dripped blood was unable to stay ahead of the horror game indefinitely. Between the 1957 release of their first gothic horror The Curse of Frankenstein and their last film to date To the Devil a Daughter in 1976, the basic Hammer product, for the most part, failed to evolve at all. There are only so many Dracula and Frankenstein sequels a studio can make before audiences get bored. By the time Hammer made The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires in 1974 (kind of a mad mix between a Dracula and a Bruce Lee film), the writing was already well and clearly on the wall. Night of the Living Dead, Rosemary's Baby, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist ... these are the films that Hammer should have been making a year before their transatlantic competitors did, not an eighth Dracula sequel without the franchise's biggest star Christopher Lee as Seven Golden Vampires was!

There was one film, though, that could have changed the fortunes of the troubled studio and bought them the extra time they needed to regain lost ground. However, the film-makers failed to adequately capitalise on the picture's success early enough. That film was The Devil Rides Out: an adaptation of Dennis Wheatley's bestselling but disturbing 1934 novel about the Occult and widespread practice of Satanism at the highest levels of modern society. It's worth noting that Whitley's black magic books sold in their millions, even outselling James Bond creator Ian Fleming. Though, they were never popular in America due to Whitley's VERY British style of writing and imperialistic heroes.

Upon its 1968 release, the film adaptation of The Devil Rides Out was immediately hailed as a return to form by impressed critics. Today, the film is widely considered by fans as perhaps the best of the Hammer Horrors. In 1976, Hammer adapted another of Dennis Wheatley's bestselling black magic adventures: To the Devil a Daughter. But despite doing the best business Hammer had seen in years, it was already too late for the collapsing company ... if they had only released it sooner.

Old British horror films starring Christopher Lee might be interesting to film buffs and might even make entertaining late-night viewing, but what does any of this history lesson have to do with the unexplained, paranormal or even parapolitics? That's the question most regular readers will probably be asking themselves right about now.

Well, consider this, what if it wasn't all fiction? Both Dennis Wheatley and Christopher Lee (who was instrumental in getting the film rights for Hammer) had at least been somewhat associated with Britain's elite ruling class. Wheatley spent much of WWII in Churchill’s basement fortress as part of the Joint Planning Staff with the rank of Wing Commander. And Christopher Lee even claimed (via his mother Contessa Estelle Marie) to be a descendent of Charlemagne, the famous European monarch who through his conquests effectively recreated the Roman Empire in the middle ages. The question must be asked then did this pair know things the general public didn't?

At this point, it's important to point out that by "Satanism" we're definitely not talking about the very limited Christian fundamentalist definition of anything they don't understand but, more seriously, any attempt to use the Occult sciences for selfish, destructive or evil ends. The secretive Sith religion practised by the evil Emperor of the Galaxy and Darth Vader in the popular Star Wars films (which oddly enough also star Christopher Lee) would definitely qualify, but the Wicca faith, which emphasises a "rule of three," most certainly would not.

That said, the answer to all of the above, as weird as it might sound, is an alarming but definite "yes." Dennis Wheatley was famous for saying, when asked about the supernatural and occult, "don‘t meddle!" More substantially, though, in a recent documentary titled "To the Devil ... The Death of Hammer" made to accompany the DVD release of To the Devil a Daughter, Christopher Lee goes into some detail about how he and Wheatley originally intended the Hammer adaptations of The Devil Rides Out and To the Devil a Daughter to be a kind of "propaganda" warning about the serious dangers of Satanic worship and belief.

Also in the same documentary, filmmaker David Wickes goes into detail about how Wheatley was an "authority" on Satanism and the Occult. Wheatley didn't just make stuff up, he actually knew the meaning of all the different symbols and based his black magic books strongly on real Occult lore and fact. This might explain why the Satanic worship scenes and certain plot elements from The Devil Rides Out seem to mirror, bizarrely, events and oddities in the real world.

The most obvious example, of course, is the "Cremation of Care" ceremony which marks the beginning of the annual (and very weird) three-week-long ‘encampment' each summer at Bohemian Grove. A secluded 2,700-acre redwood grove located in northern California. Readers who aren't familiar with either Bohemian Grove or "Cremation of Care" should read my earlier Blade Runner: Electronic Owls and Illuminati Symbolism article or watch Alex Jones' excellent documentary Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove. However, it's pretty well documented that the ceremony involves the mock human sacrifice of an infant to a giant 45 foot stone owl god, and what more, many of America's and even the world's most elite names in politics, business and the media attend the annual gathering dressed in outlandish but expensive Ku Klux Klan style robes. Which, rather suspiciously, are just like the robes worn at the black magic ceremony to call the "Goat of Mendes" in The Devil Rides Out. It's worth pointing out, too, that the "Great Owl of Bohemia" (which may or may not be meant to represent the Canaanite idol Moloch) has horns.

Then there's the less well-known Skull and Bones Society at Yale University, of which President George H. W. Bush, his son President George W. Bush, and the latter's 2004 presidential opponent, Senator John Kerry, are all admitted members. The secret societies headquarters, ominously known as "The Tomb," have become famous on the university campus for their own bizarre rituals (which involve members dressing up as the Devil, getting in and out of coffins, oh and more mock human sacrifice) as well as the malevolent screams and chants of "Devil equals death!" and "death equals death!" emanating from the building. The windowless "Tomb" is also allegedly decorated with pentagrams and other Occult-type imagery. And this is where America's political class have spent their college years since 1832 ... maybe those wars suddenly make a lot more sense.

Perhaps the creepiest and definitely the strangest parallel, though, is that just as in The Devil Rides Out (and again the Star Wars films, strangely enough), after being initiated into The Order of Skull and Bones members are given new Satanic-sounding names. George Bush senior's Skull and Bones name allegedly being "Gog" or "Magog."

How seriously anyone in Skull and Bones or the Bohemian Club takes these strange rituals is anyone's guess. However, the elite have certainly put a lot of time, money and research into something they claim is just a bit of harmless recreational fun. Whether Dennis Wheatley knew about either of these secret societies and their rituals isn't known but one thing is for sure: what they appear to be is exactly the sort of obscene practices he was writing about in his books and, with Christopher Lee, wanted to warn the world about in the Hammer adaptations.

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