A Room 101 Interview with Andrew May – Author of ‘Conspiracy History’

In his new book Conspiracy History – A History of the World for Conspiracy Theorists, Andrew May shows how conspiracy theories have been used to explain important political events long before the JFK assassination, going back as far as the time of Ancient Egypt. 

  

ROOM 101: In the first chapter you start by defining the term conspiracy theory; why do you think so many people associate the term with the paranormal when conspiracies have been a regular occurrence throughout history? 

  

ANDREW MAY: That’s a good question! I hadn’t really thought about it before, but I guess part of the answer is there’s a big overlap in the readership of the two subjects. People who are interested in conspiracies are also often interested in the paranormal. They’re people who don’t automatically believe what they’re told – people who are always questioning authority. The media slaps the “crackpot” label on both interests, but there’s an important difference. Paranormal phenomena, whether or not they’re real, have a big problem in that they conflict with well-established laws of physics. But conspiracies are completely consistent with the laws of human nature. That’s why the same types of conspiracy recur over and over again throughout history.

   

ROOM 101: It is often said that the JFK assassination was the event that gave birth to the widespread belief in conspiracy theories in the United States, however, it could be argued there is a conspiracy theory in the US constitution. The Second Amendment guarantees Americans the right to “keep and bear arms” as a safeguard against the government turning tyrannical. Any thoughts on this? 

   

ANDREW MAY: I’m not sure I would put it quite like that. When the Second Amendment was formulated, the idea of democracy was very new, and people must have seen it as very fragile. Most of the world at that time was controlled by a small number of powerful monarchies and empires. There must have been a real fear that the US could revert to that situation. But your question reminds me of something I was just reading about – Gödel’s Loophole. Kurt Gödel was a 20th-century mathematician, who was famous as a logical thinker – some people say he was the greatest logician in history. At one point he claimed to have discovered a logical flaw in the Constitution that would allow the US to become a tyrannical dictatorship. But no one knows what his argument was – he never wrote it down! 

   

ROOM 101: Why do you think in recent years with films like V For Vendetta the image of Guy Fawkes has become a symbol for many people who believe in conspiracy theories? 

   

ANDREW MAY: I think it largely came about as an accident, although it’s a very neat one. I’m a big fan of Guy Fawkes – the real historical character – so I love the way he’s now seen as a hero instead of a villain. As I say in the book, he may have been the victim of a government conspiracy himself. People think of him as an anarchist, because he tried to blow up Parliament. “The last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions” – I think that’s a great phrase. But really Fawkes wasn’t an anarchist at all – he just wanted a better deal for Catholics at a time of extreme religious intolerance.

   

ROOM 101: In chapter two you write about false flag operations like “Operation Northwoods” the Pentagon’s insane plan to create a pretext for war with Castro by staging attacks on the United States and blaming Cuba. Is it too much of a leap of faith from this to question the official history of the events surrounding the JFK assassination or 9/11 as many conspiracy writers do? 

   

ANDREW MAY: The answer to this one is a definite “yes and no”! Yes, the Operation Northwoods document proves the US is prepared to mount a false flag operation in order to achieve its objectives. But I’m doubtful whether they’re competent enough to pull off a really large-scale operation successfully. As you say, Operation Northwoods itself was a pretty crazy idea. An earlier operation against Cuba, the Bay of Pigs invasion – which was effectively a false flag operation in its own right – was a complete disaster. A double disaster, in fact – the invasion failed, and the world knew right away that the US was behind it. So, I’m skeptical that they could have pulled off 9/11 all by themselves. On the other hand, I’m sure the Bush administration turned a blind eye to warnings of a big attack because they thought they could use it as an excuse to invade Iraq.

    

ROOM 101: Do you see any parallels between the Lincoln assassination and the JFK assassination a century later? 

   

ANDREW MAY: Well, there are a lot of parallels between the two assassinations, but I’ll focus on aspects that are of particular interest in the context of conspiracy theories. To start with, both assassinations happened in the wake of massive crises – the Civil War in the case of Lincoln, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in Kennedy’s case. Predictably, the official view places the blame on the obvious “enemy” of the day. We’re told that a small group of disenfranchised southern rebels was responsible for the plot against Lincoln, while a pro-Cuban communist sympathizer acted alone against Kennedy. But when you look at the evidence more closely, it makes more sense for the brains behind both attacks to be people who were supposedly on the same side as the victims. They had far more to gain from an assassination than the “enemy” did. 

   

ROOM 101: What do you think of the widespread belief within conspiracy research circles that the Illuminati pre-dates 1776 and continues to exist today? Is it a simple way to explain a complex and rapidly changing world, or is there an element of truth to the idea of a secret group steering, if not controlling exactly, world events behind the political and financial scenes? 

   

ANDREW MAY: The book discusses over 70 historical conspiracies, spread over a period of thousands of years, but they all have one important thing in common. The people behind the conspiracy wanted to see results right away, in their own lifetime. That’s even true of the Bavarian Illuminati, who may have been behind the French Revolution. I find it difficult to believe in long-term conspiracies that require many generations before they come to fruition – that’s simply not the way human nature works. On the other hand, history has a way of repeating itself, so Illuminati-like groups do crop up again and again. Some of them may even adopt the name Illuminati, but I don’t believe they’re doggedly following the same agenda century after century. 

  

ROOM 101: Are there any controversial conspiracy theories that you think could be true? 

   

ANDREW MAY: In a way, the very essence of a good conspiracy theory is that it “could be true” – that’s why they have such appeal. Conspiracy theories usually fit all the known facts just as well as the conventional narrative does. The key question is whether the conspiracy theory is MORE LIKELY than the conventional view. The most obvious case where this is true is the JFK assassination. The idea that it was simply the work of a lone gunman – an attack out of the blue, which took the authorities completely by surprise – is almost impossible to believe. There are at least a dozen conspiracy theories that are more likely than that! 

   

ROOM 101: Thanks for doing the interview. Where can readers buy Conspiracy History and your other books? 

  

ANDREW MAY: The book is published in Britain by Bretwalda Books. The paperback should be available from all good booksellers in the UK, and through online retailers such as Amazon in other countries. There’s also a Kindle version, which may be easier for people outside the UK to get hold of.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

Another Crashed UFO in New Mexico? - Richard's Room 101

So entrenched has the 1947 Roswell crash become in the minds of many UFO researchers, that it is often overlooked that the Roswell incident was not actually the first crashed saucer story to enter the public consciousness. That distinction belongs to another alleged UFO incident in the New Mexico desert. This time near Aztec, a small town in the upper western portion of the state, hundreds of miles away from the Roswell crash debris field found by Mac Brazel’s on the Foster Ranch in the summer of 1947. 

  

In his 1950 best-selling book Behind The Flying Saucers gossip columnist Frank Scully alleged that a flying disk had been found on a ranch 12 miles from Aztec, New Mexico, in 1948, the year after the alleged Roswell crash. In Paul Kimball’s 2003 documentary Aztec 1948 UFO Crash UFO researcher Nick Redfern summed up the alleged events at Aztec: “The jest of the Aztec tale is that in 1948 a flying saucer complete with anywhere between 14 to 18 bodies crashed in Aztec, New Mexico and was recovered in high secrecy by the US government.”

   

According to Scully, he was told about the Aztec crash by a man he called “Dr. Gee”, who was supposedly a specialist in magnetic anomalies working for the US government at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where famously the Manhattan Project to develop the Atomic bomb had been centred. Dr. Glee explained to Scully that the alien vehicle used some kind of magnetic propulsion system to levitate and that this was the reason he was brought in by the US government.

  

In his book and talks, Scully claimed that Dr. Gee had been flown out by helicopter to the New Mexico desert in April 1948 to look at the wreckage of a flying saucer that had crashed there. The Doctor also allegedly told Scully that the deceased bodies of the spaceship’s alien crew, who were described as small humanoid beings just over three feet tall, were also found at the crash site. The bodies of these creatures were said to be hairless, with soft downy skin, and two of the crew may have still been alive for a short time after the impact of the crash. Later accounts of the Roswell incident would also involve the recovery of similarly described deceased alien beings. In their 1994 book The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell authors, Kevin D. Randle and Donald Schmitt wrote: “Stringfield, from his sources, said that he was able to draw a number of conclusions. According to Stringfield, the beings are humanoid, three and a half to four and a half feet tall … There was no hair on the head … In fact, there isn’t much hair on the bodies.” 

  

As well as the biology of the aliens found at the two crash sites, there are also similarities between the Roswell debris found by Mac Brazel a year earlier and the lightweight but durable metal the Aztec saucer was said to be constructed from. In Behind the Flying Saucers Scully wrote: “It looked like aluminium, but wasn’t of a metal known to this earth.” 

  

Another similarity to Roswell are the pictorial symbols similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics alleged to be on the inside of the Aztec craft. The son of Major Jessie Marcel, who was one of the men sent by Colonel Blanchard to investigate the debris found by Brazel on the Foster Ranch, also reported seeing strange purple writing that resembled hieroglyphics on pieces of the Roswell debris. In his book The Roswell Legacy published in 2007 for the 60th anniversary of the Roswell crash, Jesse Marcel Jr. described what he remembered being shown by his father back in July 1947. 

  

“As I looked at the piece, with the light reflecting on the inner surface, I could see what looked like writing. At first I thought of Egyptian hieroglyphics, but there were no animal outlines or figures. They weren’t mathematical figures either; they were more like geometric symbols-squares, circles, triangles, pyramids, and the like. Approximately one-fourth of an inch tall, they were imprinted on the inner surface of the beam, and only on one side. They were not embossed into the I-beam but seemed more like part of its surface.” 

  

The parallels between the alleged alien creatures and materials described by Aztec and Roswell witnesses are intriguing. In The Roswell Incident, published in 1980, the authors Charles Berlitz and William Moore even speculated that the Aztec crash story was a garbled version of the Roswell crash. 

  

There are some big problems with the credibility of the Aztec crash story, however. Scully’s book was debunked in two articles in True magazine published in 1952 and 1956. Written by San Francisco Chronicle reporter J. P. Cahn, the two articles revealed that Dr. Gee, who he named as Leo GeBauer, and Scully’s other main source Silas Newton, were in fact two slick oil conmen who had hoaxed Scully. 

  

The Aztec incident has been revived somewhat in recent years by a book by Scott Ramsey, a UFO researcher and successful businessman from North Carolina. One anomaly highlighted by Ramsey that should give sceptics pause for thought is a mystery road off of Hart Canyon which leads to what he believes was the crash site, a deforested area surrounded by trees with broken branches as if something had flattened the area. The mysterious dirt road doesn’t appear on any road maps of the area until around 2003, and it is unknown where the road came from or who made it. Ramsey suggests that the road was made by military personnel attempting to extricate the Aztec saucer after it was forced to make an emergency landing at Hart Canyon. This might seem like wild speculation, however, there is some physical proof at the alleged crash site that something happened there in 1948. 

  

Adding to the mystery is a concrete slab sticking up out of the ground at the alleged crash site. Like the road, there are no records or reasons why it should be there in the middle of nowhere. Ramsey believes the slab was made by the military to support one of the legs of a crane used to carry out the crashed saucer. Laboratory tests have also shown that the concrete slab dates to around 1948, the year of the alleged saucer crash.

  

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

The Mummy Returns: Illuminati Cloning? - Richard's Room 101

Do the global elite, sometimes called the Illuminati, plan on using cloning and other emerging technologies to give themselves immortality?

   

It is commonly believed inside conspiracy circles that the Illuminati secret society network that is allegedly working towards establishing a world government (New World Order) is thousands of years old, with its origins in Ancient Egypt and Babylon. The big problem with this belief often pointed out by sceptics is that it doesn’t make much sense that anyone would spend their entire life working towards something they would never see completed to benefit from.

   

But what if they knew that they could be brought back to life someday?

 

In the second Star Trek spin-off series Deep Space Nine, a species called the Vorta are given eternal life, of a sort, by their masters the Changelings in return for administrating a vast interspecies galactic empire called The Dominion. Whenever a Vorta dies, he or she is instantly resurrected via cloning. In the dark sci-fi series, we watch one Vorta called Weyoun die several times, only to be brought back, sometimes in the same episode.

  

Paralleling Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek universe, since 1997, when a team of British scientists announced that they had successfully cloned Dolly the sheep, there have been many rumours that humans have also been cloned. Perhaps the most bizarre of these claims is that President Obama could be a clone and not just any clone, but the resurrected ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten, who the President does bear a striking resemblance to.

   

The father of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, Akhenaten had a far greater impact on world history than his more famous son. The “Heretic Pharaoh” abandoned the traditional Egyptian gods in favour of worshipping a single deity, Aten, who was associated with the sun. Because of this, some historians credit Akhenaten as being the creator of the world’s first monotheistic religion. This might explain why the Illuminati would choose Akhenaten above other more famous Egyptian royalty to be brought back to life. It has even been speculated that the sun god religion started by the Pharaoh could be the secret religion of the Illuminati practiced today. For more information about this read Freeman Fly’s “Obama clone of an Egyptian Pharaoh” page on Freemantv.com. 

  

Whether or not “Atenism” was really the first religion to worship one god, there is something we can be sure of. Like all Ancient Egyptians, Akhenaten would have had no doubt about living again after his death: something which is made theoretically possible by the mummification process which preserved this ancient Egyptian Pharaoh’s DNA for cloning. 

  

While there is a resemblance between Obama and the Ancient Egyptian King, Obama does not have the elongated features that Akhenaten is depicted as having. This could be because these features are environmental rather than genetic in nature, but there is no consensus on why the Pharaoh is shown with such unusual-looking features. 

  

With controversy still surrounding the US President’s birth certificate, perhaps it isn’t surprising that conspiracy theories about Obama’s ‘real’ origins should pop up, but this isn’t the only clone conspiracy theory linked to the 44th occupant of the White House. 

  

In 2009 Fox News reported that an Indonesian magazine photographer, Ilham Anas, was collecting pay cheques appearing in advertising because of his strong resemblance to the President. 

   

The idea of a world leader being cloned strongly echoes the 1978 film The Boys from Brazil, in which Adolf Hitler is brought back to life as a teenager living in the 1970s. In this story, it is Joseph Mengele, the infamous Nazi Doctor notorious for his experiments on twins during WWII, who clones the Nazi Fuhrer in the sick hope of reviving the Third Reich.

  

The obvious problem with using cloning as a means of bringing the dead back to life is also explored in the film. A copy no matter how perfect is still just a copy. The boys Mengele creates may have the same DNA as Hitler, but without the life experiences of the Nazi Fuhrer, they are still completely different individuals. 

   

One answer to this problem would be to download a person’s consciousness into a computer until a new body is ready. This concept is used in the science fiction series Lexx, where one of the chief antagonists is a mad scientist called Mantrid who has transferred his “life essence” into a computer in order to survive the death of his body. 

  

Other science fiction series have also used this idea as a plot device. In the reimagined series of Battlestar Galactica, a race of biological robots identical to humans called Cylons use “resurrection ships” to download into a new body aboard one of these space vessels upon death.

   

Like human cloning “consciousness downloading” is another concept that began in science fiction, but could soon be a reality. In July 2012 the mainstream media reported that a Russian entrepreneur had contacted a list of billionaires offering them eternal life in return for funding a hi-tech research project called “Avatar”. The goal of which was “transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality” by the year 2045.

  

With the announcement on 9 March (2013) that the first genetically engineered humans have already been born, it is clear science fact is rapidly catching up to science fiction. The idea that an American President could be a clone of an Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh may sound like a clever spin on The Mummy films, with technology replacing black magic. But it would appear that the Ancient Egyptians may have been right about mummification guaranteeing them eternal life after all.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

A Room 101 Interview with Gerrard Williams, co-author of Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolph Hitler

Last year, the web was ablaze with conspiracy theories when the news of Osama Bin Laden's death was announced to the world on the exact same day as Adolf Hitler's death was 66 years earlier, May 1st. Most of these conspiracies included the belief that Osama bin Laden hadn't been killed at all because the Al-Qaeda founder and leader had been dead for years. Similar uncertainty has surrounded the fate of Hitler after WWII, only instead of dying years before the war's end, many believe the Nazi Fuhrer escaped Germany to begin a new life in South America or elsewhere. Like Bin Laden, except for a few skull fragments which could belong to anyone, no body was ever shown to the war-weary public, so why shouldn't people question the official story?

In their new book, Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler, Gerrard Williams and his co-author Simon Dunstan investigate claims that Hitler not only escaped to Argentina after the end of the war but that the deposed dictator even fathered children and lived until 1962.

Richard Thomas: Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions Gerrard, I read your new book Grey Wolf over the Christmas holidays and have lots to ask you about, but how did you start your writing career and have you always had an interest in the Second World War?

Gerrard Williams: Thanks for asking me, Richard. I trained as a Journalist with the NCTJ in Cardiff, but had always written for school competitions (Eisteddfod in Wales). Most of my life has been spent in international TV News with Reuters, BBC and SKY as well as time in Australia and Kenya. For people of my generation (I'm 52) WW2 always figured heavily in our lives. My Dad was a "Desert Rat" (8th Army N.Africa/Italy) and my mum was in the Army when they met. That and films, comics and books about the War always kept it at the forefront of our minds.

Richard Thomas: Last year the internet was ablaze with conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Osama Bin Laden being announced on the same day as Hitler's death was made public, May 1. And oddly enough Prince William and Kate Middleton got married on the same day as Eva Braun and Hitler as well, 29 April.

Do you think theories like these are in part due to the failure of historians to sufficiently investigate the fate of Hitler after the war, or, are there other reasons why people are still fascinated by conspiracies linked with the Nazis?

Gerrard Williams: I'm not a great one for conspiracy theories. In 33 years as a journalist any I've come across – and there have been a few – always seemed to fall apart at the first serious investigation. We should remember that the Nazis were the embodiment of Industrialised Evil, and also the biggest criminal gang in History. They cast a long and fascinating shadow, why would a civilized nation like Germany behave so badly?

Richard Thomas: What first persuaded you that the rumour about Hitler's escape from Germany in 1945 was anything more than just another conspiracy theory? Was it the revelation that the fragment of a skull the Russians have couldn't have belonged to Nazi dictator?

Gerrard Williams: I was filming a series of documentaries in Argentina partly on the Malvinas/Falklands War anniversary when I came across the story. I was going to do a silly conspiracy theory film about it – it would have been my first – but so many people I met and talked to were so sure that he had escaped and lived in their country, I decided it needed more investigation. I teamed up with my old friend and respected Historian Simon Dunstan and what we discovered shocked us both. There is far more evidence to his escape than to his death.

Richard Thomas: If Hitler did escape from Germany why do you think this wasn't discovered or maybe even ignored by the allies and mainstream historians?

Gerrard Williams: The amazing thing is that there were dozens of quite serious stories from news agencies and other sources that detailed his escape. I think elements in the US helped him and thousands of his supporters get away. Some people in Britain were complicit in the cover-up. Why did the head of MI6 hire an unknown medieval Historian, Hugh Trevor-Roper to write the "definitive" detective story of the deaths? Why didn't we put in serious investigators, Scotland Yard?

Richard Thomas: What do you think happened in Hitler's bunker in 1945 and how do you explain the account of Hitler's bodyguard that the bodies of Hitler and Eva were burned and buried?

Gerrard Williams: The details are in the book, but simply Hitler and Eva were swapped for two look-alikes. AH fled, and Bormann and "Gestapo" Mueller executed the two stand-ins when they were sure Hitler was clear. These bodies were allegedly burnt – although the Soviets at the time did not find any evidence of the bodies. They did find Josef and Magda Goebbels charred, but recognisable corpses and happily put them on display.

Richard Thomas: How did you begin your research and what led you to Argentina?

Gerrard Williams: I was sitting in a car park in the Green Zone in Baghdad in 2005 wearing a flak jacket, and helmet in 35-degree heat smoking a cigarette and a realization came over me. At 46 I was too old for "hard" news. I had always loved making long-form films and decided to see if I could make a living doing documentaries. I had never been to South America and starting with the letter "A" seemed sensible, hence Argentina. Since then I have been back 13 times, each time discovering something new and backing this up with intense research online, wading through literally hundreds of books, at Kew, in Berlin and in the US.

Richard Thomas: Where are some of the eerie places you visited in Argentina and was there a witness or other evidence that particularly impressed you?

Gerrard Williams: Hitler's home at Inalco is a strange place, a lovely estate which when built was virtually inaccessible, and the deserted Nazi-Funded Hotel Viena at Mar Chiquita is worth a visit.

Richard Thomas: I've often heard it said Hitler was suffering with Parkinson's disease by the end of the war and wouldn't have lived long even if he hadn't committed suicide. What evidence is there that Hitler lived until 1962? And what do you think happened to the former German Fuhrer's remains after his death?

Gerrard Williams: There is no evidence Hitler had Parkinson's . It's pure supposition based on a couple of home movies which show his right hand "trembling" while he holds it behind his back. Hitler was 56 in May 1945, probably massively stressed and known to have been suffering gastric problems – today they'd probably call it IBS – but still a relatively young man. The evidence is pretty detailed in "Grey Wolf" the FBI taking sightings seriously, numerous eye witnesses to his life in Argentina. Since publication we have had new information which adds to this. As for the body, I don't know. My best guess it was cremated and scattered on Bormann's orders to maintain the fiction that he died in Berlin.

Richard Thomas: One of the strangest revelations in the book is that Hitler and his wife may have had children. If this is true what do you think happened to Eva Braun and where do you think Hitler's children are now?

Gerrard Williams: Eva Braun was 33 in 1945. There is a lot of information about the birth of their daughter "Uschi" in Germany pre-war and also a still-born child in the middle of the war which was attested to by Eva's Mother. She seems to have also been newly pregnant – according to close members of their circle – in May 1945. There were rumours – which we so far have been unable to prove or disprove – that she was still alive in 2000 when she would have been 88. The two daughters would now be in their late 60's and early 70's. We still have leads to follow up. Our last confirmed sighting was from a senior Buenos Aires Human Rights lawyer who says she met "Uschi" in the late 80s.

Richard Thomas: Why do you think it is still important to find out the truth about the events of the final days of WWII over 65 years later?

Gerrard Williams: I'm a Journalist – of the old school – I think the truth is something that needs to be told.

Richard Thomas: Thanks Gerrard, where can readers buy the book and have you got a website you would like to plug?

Gerrard Williams: Thanks very much Richard. The book's available online at Amazon across the world, Barnes and Noble stores in the US – and online from them, Waterstones and all good book shops in the U.K. People who are interested can check out greywolfmedia.com. We're currently working on our follow-up.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

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.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

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.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

UFOs in the 1980s

The following guest article is by Rupert Matthews, author of the book Roswell.

-----------------

UFOs in the 1980s

By Rupert Matthews

Back in the mid-1980s the world of UFOlogy was becoming dominated by two quite different facets of the phenomenon. Of the two the more mainstream were the abduction events that were beginning to be reported by an increasing number and range of people. The other phenomenon was popular with the media and general public, but less well favoured by serious UFO researchers: crop circles. Of the two, crop circles dominated the media - probably because of the impressive photos that could be printed in newspapers on slow news days to fill a half page at low cost.

Meanwhile, some researchers were beginning to suspect that some incidents that were reported by the witness as being an alien abduction were, in fact, psychological in origin. Researcher Margaret Fry in the UK produced a number of cases in which a witness reported being abducted and undergoing the usual types of experiences, while others reported that the person supposedly being abducted was, in fact, fast asleep or in once case being operated on under anaesthetic in a hospital.

At the time there was a huge amount of controversy over these cases. Some held that they disproved the entire alien abduction hypothesis and proved that those reporting abductions were simply hallucinating. Others sought to debunk the cases in order to prove the witnesses were lying or that the researchers had fabricated evidence.

Back in 1986 it does not seem to have occurred to anyone that those witnesses reporting abductions while quite clearly not being abducted were dreaming or hallucinating, but that this did not of itself disprove that alien abductions really did happen. It is well know that people often hallucinate that they are taking part in historic events, scenes from movies and the like. Perhaps the people in question had read about an abduction, and then hallucinated about it later on.

In hindsight the spat seems to have been a case of “sound and fury, signifying nothing”.

Equally pointless in hindsight were the press stories that sought to link the tragic crash of the Space Shuttle Challenger to a sighting of a UFO many miles away at the time of the crash. The two were obviously unrelated, and the link seems to have been invented by a journalist looking to boost sales of his newspaper. Sadly it served merely to undermine the credibility of UFO sightings in the minds of some members of the public.

The next year saw the damage to credibility repaired somewhat. The major US soap opera The Colbys featured a story line in which the character Fallon reported being the victim of an alien abduction. The story line had a few features that dramatised the events for a TV audience, but generally followed the sort of events that real witnesses had reported and did much to bring the idea of alien abductions to a wider audience in a sympathetic way.

That same year Whitley Strieber published his book Communion to rave reviews. The book retold what Strieber said were a prolonged series of encounters with a humanoid life form that physically resembled a “grey” alien. The book sold in vast numbers and was an international best seller.

The Colbys TV series and Whitley book launched the abduction phenomenon into the mass media. Suddenly the television, magazine and newspaper world could not get enough abduction stories. Many researchers took to hypnotic regression of witnesses in an effort to get more details and more coherent versions of events. Sadly some researchers had little or no training in hypnotic treatments and made some key errors of technique that would later discredit their findings. Nevertheless UFOlogy in the later 1980s became dominated by abduction stories obtained largely by hypnotic regression. It seemed that the answer to the entire UFO riddle might finally be within grasp of researchers.

The search for new, better and more dramatic abduction cases became increasingly frantic through 1988 and 1989. Publication followed publication as new reports cascaded out and researchers sought to find a pattern to the abductions and the apparently medical examinations and experiments conducted during them.

Thus far, the researchers had been concentrating on the UFOs and their occupants. But in 1989 a man named Bob Lazar came forward to claim that he had spent some time working at the highly secretive American military research base known as “Area 51”. He claimed that the US military were in touch with aliens - which matched the general description of “greys” - and were in the process of reverse engineering alien technology. The claims reignited ideas of a conspiracy between the aliens and certain human organisations (usually the US government in some form) which had lain dormant for more than a decade.

The new wave of conspiracy speculation would soon combine with studies of alien abductions to produce new ideas and theories that would dominate research in the 1990s.
 

 
Rupert Matthews is the author of the book Roswell which is available on Amazon and from all good bookshops. You can find Rupert’s website at www.rupertmatthews.com. He also maintains a blog about the unexplained at www.ghosthunteratlarge.blogspot.com.

The Chemtrail Conspiracy

The following guest article is by conspiracy researcher and bestselling author Jim Marrs, whose latest book is The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy: How the New World Order, Man-Made Diseases, and Zombie Banks Are Destroying America. You can find his website at www.jimmarrs.com.

-----------------

The Chemtrail Conspiracy

By Jim Marrs

The chemtrail issue is to me one of the most puzzling conspiracies going. To begin with, unlike most, it is not hidden. It is in plain sight. All one has to do is look up and take note of the long-lasting crisscrossing trails high in the atmosphere. Yet many people refuse to notice and when they do, they, shrug off the phenomenon as simply aircraft vapor trails or, more correctly, condensation trails.

Condensation trails, or contrails, have been a fixture in the skies since World War II when high altitude bombers would leave a trail of condensation behind their engines.

Any aircraft engine, jet or piston, produces warm, moist air which, when injected into the cold dry air of the upper atmosphere, results in a trail of water vapor or ice crystals that stream out behind the craft. Once these particles return to a cooler state, they evaporate back into the air. This vaporization can take place within 10 seconds or stretch to more than an hour depending on the temperature and humidity in the atmosphere. Since contrails primarily contain water, they present no real hazard to the population. Contrails do not normally occur under about 30,000 feet.

Chemtrails present another story. These trails do not evaporate but spread out and eventually form a cloudy haze over the entire sky. As World War II veteran David Oglesby noted after observing chemtrails in the sky above his California home: “The trails formed a grid patter. Some stretched from horizon to horizon. Some began abruptly, and other ended abruptly. They hung in the air for an extended period of time and gradually widened into wispy clouds resembling spider webs. I counted at least 11 different trails.”

The official debunking line that all observed trails in the sky are simply condensation trails falls apart when, as described by numerous observers, a short contrail and a lengthy chemtrail are seen simultaneously in the same portion of sky and at approximately the same altitude. As one Above Top Secret forum member put it: “Keep looking up and you’ll eventually see contrails and chemtrails side by side in the air and once you see two planes of similar size laying trails at the same altitude and they don’t match, then you know something is amiss.” Another asked, “How come one day there are numerous trails crisscrossing each other in the sky but on the next day, with no change in the climate, there are no trails in the sky. Did all aircraft suddenly stop flying?”

A Harvard School of Public Health study determined that respirable suspended particles can be inhaled and can transport carcinogens and other toxic substances deep into the lungs resulting in respiratory illnesses like bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma.

High levels of Barium, along with aluminum oxide, already had been identified among the contents of chemtrails by tests. During a three month period in 2002, three separate rainwater and snow samples from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, were collected and submitted for formal double-blind laboratory analysis. Therese Aigner, an accredited environmental engineer, found significant amounts of barium, aluminum, calcium, magnesium and titanium in the samples, all of which had a verified chain of custody. Ms Aigner concluded that that the consistency of the findings indicated “a very controlled delivery (dispersion) of chemtrails by aircraft in your area.” She added that whoever was responsible for the chemtrails was violating more than a half dozen federal laws and regulations.

A 1974 classified study made by the U.S. National Security Council under Henry Kissinger in 1974 entitled, “National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.” This study, also known as The Kissinger Report, stated that population growth in the so-called Lesser Developed Countries represented a serious threat to U.S. national security. The study was adopted as official policy in November, 1975 by unelected President Gerald Ford and implemented by Brent Scowcroft, who had replaced Kissinger as national security adviser. NSSM 200 outlined a covert plan to reduce population growth in Third World countries through birth control, war and famine. Then CIA Director George H. W. Bush was ordered to assist Scowcroft, as were the secretaries of state, treasury, defense, and agriculture.

In a 1981 interview concerning overpopulation, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ranking Council on Foreign Relations member Maxwell Taylor, after advocating population reduction through limited wars, disease and starvation, blithely concluded, “I have already written off more than a billion people. These people are in places in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We can’t save them. The population crisis and the food-supply question dictate that we should not even try. It’s a waste of time.”

Voicing the same philosophy as Taylor and other globalist members, England’s Prince Philip in People magazine stated, “Human population growth is probably the single most serious long-term threat to survival. We're in for a major disaster if it isn't curbed— not just for the natural world, but for the human world. The more people there are, the more resources they'll consume, the more pollution they'll create, the more fighting they will do. We have no option. If it isn't controlled voluntarily, it will be controlled involuntarily by an increase in disease, starvation and war.” Years later, Philip mused, “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”

Supporting this eugenics policy of involuntary depopulation was a young academic who helped anti-natalist guru Paul Ehrlich and his wife Anne write the book Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment. This work states, “If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can [could] be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility – just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns….” The book went on to express the desire for “a Planetary regime” for controlling all human economic activity and interactions with the environment. The authors suggested the “power to enforce the agreed limits” on population growth by whatever means necessary. This includes involuntary sterilization, abortion, or even mass involuntary sterilization through the infiltration of sterilizing agents into public water supplies and even into the air.

The young academic who helped author this call for involuntary population reduction was John Holdren, now the US “Science Czar,” advising President Obama on science matters.

So, it appears that the chemtrail issue has become less of a philosophical concern and more of an urgent self-defense issue.

 

The Truth Behind Roswell

The following guest article is by Rupert Matthews, author of the book Roswell.

-----------------

The Truth Behind Roswell

By Rupert Matthews

When I first started investigating the Roswell UFO Crash in detail there were two aspects that really surprised me. The first was the date on which the Flying Saucer was alleged to have crashed into the desert near Roswell: July 1947. The second was the date on which the investigation into the apparent crash had begun: 1978.

My previous reading on the Roswell Crash had, I must admit, been rather sketchy and had been restricted to secondary sources such as magazine articles or books written by people who had not been there. I had somehow come to form the impression that the crash had taken place in the 1950s and had been investigated at the time. Shows how wrong you can be.

As I started to work my way through the assorted eyewitness accounts given in interviews, written as letters or in books I was in for another surprise. Nobody had claimed to have seen a UFO crash near Roswell at all. One person had seen a UFO. Another had heard a loud bang and seen some scraps of debris. A third had seen the US military cordon off a large area of ground. A fourth had seen a crashed aircraft of some kind. A fifth had seen some dead bodies.

However, when all the various accounts were put together they did form a cohesive story that held together pretty well. Quite clearly something very odd and unusual had fallen from the skies on to the desert near Roswell in early July 1947. The United States Air Force had moved quickly to recover the object and had thrown a veil of secrecy around the whole incident. Those who had seen debris from the crash all agreed that it was composed of very odd materials that they did not recognise and that it had some odd properties.

But I kept getting pulled back to the two initial surprises. The early date bothered me. July 1947 was a long time ago, even further in terms of UFO research. The epochal sighting by Kenneth Arnold that propelled Flying Saucers into the international media had taken place on 24 June 1947 - just over a week before the alleged crash at Roswell. That timing had two important impacts on the Roswell story.

The first is that Flying Saucers (or Flying Disks as they were also termed in 1947) were a major news item across the media at the time. Everyone was talking about them, far more than is the case today. The second was that there was no generally agreed description of what a UFO was like (and even the term UFO had not been coined). These were very early days indeed. It was possible that almost any unusual object in the sky or falling to the ground would be described as being a Flying Saucer. So just because the people who saw the object that fell at Roswell called it a Flying Saucer does not mean that it was what we would today term a UFO.

Reading the very few descriptions of the object given by those who claim to have seen it, does not read like more recent witness statements of a UFO. The object was said to be roughly triangular or conical in shape with stubby little wings or fins. There does not seem to have been anything terribly odd about it all, it sounds very mundane.

The fact that investigations did not begin until more than 30 years after the event also bothered me. Several of the key witnesses had died over the years. Their accounts survived only second hand. A neighbour remembered what one man had told him 30 years earlier. A son recalled what his father had told him. Such accounts are intrinsically vague and lack detail. Crucially the person is not there for the investigator to ask for more detail or to seek out cross references. Other witnesses were still alive, but they were being asked to recall events more than 30 years old. The human memory is a notoriously frail and deceptive thing. Dates can be blurred and details merged. One of the witnesses who was able to give a very good and clear description of dead bodies could not be certain when he had seen them - he did not even know which year never mind the precise day. Even more alarming is the fact that we humans are rational creatures and we seek to rationalise events. We are all capable of misremembering events so that they fit into an accepted pattern better than what we actually saw. After 30 years all sorts of details could easily be forgotten or remembered incorrectly.

By the time I was half way through my research I had almost given up hope of ever finding out what had really happened at Roswell back in 1947. There were so many contradictions in the evidence, so many details that did not match, so many accounts that were vague.

But then I decided to take a step back from all the mass of fine detail and look at the bigger picture. There was one thing that all those people who had been in Roswell in 1947 did agree on. Something had happened and that something had been very odd indeed. True, some witnesses contradicted each other. True, some details that at first seemed linked to the crash turned out to be quite unrelated. True, some apparent facts turned out to be nothing of the sort.

But in the final analysis something fell out of the sky in early July 1947. The United States Air Force did move quickly to collect the wreckage, then quickly launched a determined effort to kill the story and keep the find secret.

Can I tell you what it was that fell from the sky? No. There are several possibilities that would fit the evidence - and an alien spacecraft is but one of those.


Rupert Matthews is the author of the book Roswell which is available on Amazon and from all good bookshops. You can find Rupert’s website at www.rupertmatthews.com. He also maintains a blog about the unexplained at www.ghosthunteratlarge.blogspot.com.

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

UFO Crashes in Britain

The following guest article is by Rupert Matthews, author of the book Roswell.

-----------------

UFO Crashes in Britain
By Rupert Matthews

The evidence for UFO sightings, and landings, in the UK is widespread, numerous and often compelling. But when it comes to UFO crashes, I find that most people simply shake their heads. “You mean Roswell,” they say. But I don’t mean Roswell. I mean UFO crashes in Britain.

Now, I would be the first to admit that the evidence pointing to the fact that any UFO had ever actually come down in Britain is nowhere near as impressive as that for UFO sightings or voluntarily landings, but that does not mean that it does not exist.

Take, for instance, the events at Conisholme, Lincolnshire, in January 2009. In the winter’s evening several locals reported seeing two orange-red spheres flying over this small village some miles northeast of Louth. The objects were trailing what appeared to be yellowish arms or threads behind them. Suddenly there came the most almighty bang, followed by a vicious whirling noise. Before long police were on the scene, cordoning off access to the nearby wind farm. Something had hit one of the enormous wind turbines, smashing one 65-foot long blade and mangling a second. Whatever had hit the turbine had not only done some impressive damage, it had also left behind a small quantity of lightweight material.

Opinions differ as to what had happened. The company that runs the windfarm, Ecotricity, refused to speculate. They merely confirmed that a turbine had been damaged and was being repaired. Some locals thought that a stealth aircraft from one of the nearby air bases had been to blame. Others said they knew what a stealth aircraft looked like at night - or rather what its jet engines looked like - and that the orange balls had not been that. They blamed a UFO.

Even if the wind turbine at Conisholme had been destroyed by a collision with a UFO, I am not sure that this truly counts as a UFO crash. Nobody reported the object having actually impacted the earth at all.

Other events reported in the press as being a “UFO Crash” turn out to be more or less routine sightings dressed up to make the headline more exciting. On 26 January 2009, for instance, a woman walking her dog along Baytree Road in Clevedon, Somerset, saw a cigar- or rocket- shaped UFO plummet to the ground accompanied by a shrieking or howling noise. The object came down in the playing fields of a school, rested there for a while, then the noise restarted and the object took off at high speed heading west. Dramatic stuff, but quite clearly the object did not crash - as the newspaper headlines next day had it - but had landed and then taken off again.

Rather better known is the Berwyn Mountain Incident of 1974. On the evening of 23 January several people in northern Wales and adjacent areas of England reported seeing green lights in the sky. The lights were reported to be spherical or saucer shaped and to be moving erratically in odd patterns and formations. Then, at 8.38pm, residents around the Berwyn Mountain in Wales heard a deafening rumbling explosion and the ground shook. People came out into the streets. One man said he had seen lights over the mountain just before the crash and speculated that an aircraft had crashed. Phone calls were put through to the emergency services. While waiting for more help to arrive, the local policeman rounded up a nurse and went up on to the mountain to see if they could help.

Not long afterwards a convoy of army trucks arrived, the men cordoned off the mountain and refused admittance to anyone. The policeman and nurse came back down under army escort. They said that they had seen lights and debris as if from a crash, but had been instructed to leave. The nurse would later say that she had got close to the crash and seen bodies that did not seem to be human.

The official explanation for the events at Berwyn are that an unusually large meteor hurtled across the sky at the same time that an earthquake struck Berwyn. Some geologists have speculated that the lights were the rare, and largely unexplained phenomenon, of earthquake lights which are sometimes reported in the air just before earthquakes strike. Others remain convinced that it was a UFO that crashed at Berwyn, though very little of the craft seems to have survived the impact.


Rupert Matthews is the author of the book Roswell which is available on Amazon and from all good bookshops. You can find Rupert’s website at www.rupertmatthews.com. He also maintains a blog about the unexplained at www.ghosthunteratlarge.blogspot.com.

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.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA