Area 51/Nellis Range/TTR/NTS/S-4?/Weird Stuff/Desert Lore
The Groom Lake Desert Rat --
An on-line newsletter.
Written, published, copyrighted and totally disavowed by
Psychospy.
Direct from Las Vegas, the Center of Human
Civilization.
Issue #32. December 9, 1995
| In this issue... |
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![[Lazar Street Sign]](lazar_sign.jpg)
It was Psychospy's turn to play the alien as we descended upon the planet Hungary on Nov. 4. Our spaceship from Venus (make that Vienna) dropped us off at the Keleti Railway Station in downtown Budapest. Through the dim mists of the platform, we noticed some familiar figures. First we saw the Marlboro Man of Montana, lighting up a cigarette in that strong, silent way of his. Then we spotted Colonel Sanders of Kentucky, who promised, "Rántoit Csirke Amerikai Recept Szerint." Okay, no problem. It must say something like, "Made from American Secret Receipt." As we headed toward the concourse, we thought we might get the hang of Hungarian. The Hungarians are just like us: They eat at Pizza Hut and worship the god Schwarzenegger. We were feeling almost overconfident in this
familiar-looking world until we ran head-on into the
ferfi-or-nöi problem.Which one are you? In the station concourse, there were two doors. One said "Ferfi" the other "Nöi". Between them were the letters "WC," which is universal Eurospeak for "water closet" or restroom. It is a classic problem: Door Number One or Door Number Two? If you are a ferfi, probably one of the most embarrassing things in a foreign country is to find yourself in the nöi room, or vice versa. Our solution--and this is really brilliant--was to stand equidistant between the two alternatives and wait for a local specimen to come in or out. Soon we learned that nöi are the ones with bumps on the chest, while ferfi have hair on the face. After a brief self-examination, we knew exactly where to go.
That business behind us, we headed for a public telephone but found ourselves incapable of using it. Even if we could figure out how it worked, who would we call and what would we say? We arrived in Budapest frankly clueless. We knew no Hungarians, and our confirmed vocabulary so far included only ferfi, nöi and Amerikai. The more we were exposed to Hungarian the more we realized what a truly secure coding system it would make for those Hungarian-American UFO engineers [DR#28]. Our French and embryonic German did not help us much, since most of the words had different roots. Our arrival was like a dream in which we open a familiar-looking book and try to read, but no matter how we squint the page makes no sense. In practical terms, we had become autistic. Our language circuits had burned out, and we would have to rely on other means of data collection.
The physical form of this culture we knew quite well. It was Late 20th Century Techno Schlock, appointed with Coke machines, billboards hawking Calvin Klein underwear (that is, hardly anything at all), the aforementioned Colonel and cowboy, and the anonymous telephone which stood before us. Beside the phone was a Budapest phone directory. We stared at it a moment before crying "Eureka!" and flipping madly through the pages.
We looked up "Lázár" and found several dense pages of them. Here the name is spelled with an accent above each "a" indicating a long vowel. It is pronounced, like most Hungarian words, with the stress on the first syllable: LAH-zar. Family names always precede given names in Hungarian, so our own "UFO mechanic" in Las Vegas would be LAH-zar RO-bert. Indeed, we did find a Lázár Róbert in the Budapest directory, but our favorite names--and also those of Hungarian mothers evidently--were Lázár Attila, eight of them, who sounded like they could plunder the world, and Lázár Zoltán, also a popular name with six examples. The latter is our candidate for the evil alien in a bad sci-fi movie or Saturday morning cartoon. ("You'll never get away with this, Zoltan Lazar." Lazar: "Just try to stop me, Power Ranger!") True to our disruptive alien nature we could not merely observe but had to abduct. We ripped the Lazar pages from the phone book and later smuggled them out of the country. (So report us to the Magyar Posta!)
To be semi-scientific we looked up some other random names. Compared to the 422 Lázárs (including businesses), the Budapest phone book contained zero Campbells, zero Mahoods and four Huffs (including Huff László). Teller, the name of a known Hungarian-American, produced only 23 hits, but another known Hungarian descendent, Bakos, had about as many entries as Lázár.
Is Lazar Hungarian or what?
Later, when wandering around the city, Lázár again appeared through the fog. We had just passed the city's Las Vegas Casino--offering gambling but no buffet--and were wandering down a side street near St. Stephen's Basilica when we happened to look up and see that it was his street, Lázár Utca. [Location: N47° 30.169', E19° 03.222'. Photos: Street sign on building | Looking southwest down Lazar Street | Multimedia Center]
At that point, we began to lose our sense of time and place. Our consciousness became discontinuous as we phase-shifted both backward and forward in time. We experienced the world as episodic images: One moment we were in Europe, Minnesota the next, then we flashed back to New Mexico and our unfinished business there. Orange County, California faded to Kingman, Arizona then Veszprém, Hungary. Prague... Bratislava... Vienna... Munich... We have covered so much ground in the past 45 days that it is hard to say what is real now. The only thread that knits it all together is a certain ubiquitous clown.
Not Lazar, but another clown. This one does not exist in any corporeal sense yet has provided great comfort to us in our times of need. We may treat him with disdain at home, but when we travel in unfamiliar lands, he is the rock to which we cling when nothing else can be relied upon. You see, our travels are not simply a search for UFOs; they are also a culinary tour. Wherever we go we like to sample the local cuisine, and we can do this without any fear of gastrointestinal distress because we know the clown will protect us. When he says "beef" we know he means "100% pure beef" of the same quality we expect back home.
![[McDonalds Einfahrt]](mac_einfahrt.jpg)
That clown is R. McDonald, and the language he speaks is universal. We know that we can say "Big Mac" in any tongue and get exactly what we expect: two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun. Amen! Hallelujah! In Europe, we sampled the Mac-cuisine in three countries: Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic. The Big Macs in Hungary are the best, mainly because they are cheap (at least in dollars) and the McDonalds are everywhere. In all our travels throughout the universe, we have never encountered a greater mac-density than in downtown Budapest. There is one on nearly every block, and what amazes us is that almost all have been built in the five years since Communism fell.
To evaluate the real cost-of-living in any country, we use the Big Mac Index. Take the price of a Big Mac in local currency and convert it into dollars at the current exchange rate. In the U.S., a Mac normally costs between $1.99 and $2.19 (excluding 99¢ promotions). In Austria, the same sandwich runs at least $3.50, mirroring the atrocious prices throughout Western Europe (atrocious even to Europeans). In Hungary, though, a Mac is only about $1.70. In fact, you can get a complete "Big Mac Menü"--sandwich, large fries and a Coke--for only 299 Hungarian forints, or about $2.50. Of course, that could be the equivalent of $10.00 to the average Hungarian as post-Communist wages retreat, but at least the country is on the right track. Wal-Marts will surely be next!
Of course, no European tour could be considered a success without some snapshots to show to the folks back home, so here are links to some of our best ones....
We could go on and on about our special clown, but that other clown is calling us, as we sense another break in the continuum....
However, Lazar's Hungarian origins are complicated by his claims that he was adopted, as reported in the pre-sentencing report following his pandering charge (another curious event). The report, authored by an officer of the court, states:
A certified copy of the defendant's birth certificate indicates he was born on January 26, 1959 to the union of Albert Lazar and Phyllis Berliner (natural mother); however the defendant reports he was born on January 26, 1959 in Coral Gables, Florida, to unknown parents and was subsequently adopted by Albert Lazar and the former Phyllis Berliner within the first few months of his life. [Source: Mahood's "Lazar Flaws" Series][Later: A reader offers clarification on birth certificates in cases of adoption.]
What does it mean if Lazar is Hungarian or was raised by Hungarians? Probably nothing. It is all a fraud, of course, perpetuated by Lazar and this Jarod 2 we have fallen for. J-2 must have known that Lazar and his alleged patron Edward Teller were of Hungarian extraction. He must have known, too, about the "Hungarians are aliens" anecdotes from Los Alamos [DR#29] and recognized that Hungarians are an isolated ethnic group with an externally indecipherable language who have long wondered about their origins. It seems only natural, then, that to advance the story he would have to blurt out something stupid like, "The aliens speak a higher form of Hungarian."
Come to think of it, J-2 might not even exist at all; he could easily be a product of Psychospy's imagination. For that matter, what proof does Psychospy have that he went to Hungary? Sure, we saw his pictures of local McDonalds, but those could easily have been faked. It makes perfect sense, now, that even Psychospy must not exist. Who has actually met this entity? The whole charade could be the product of a warped internet nerd in Des Moines who never even set foot in Nevada, let alone Central Europe.
But let us play along with the illusion. In 1953, the American military makes contact with aliens and, with their assistance, commences a program to reproduce their spacecraft. Naturally, black-world guru Teller is a leader in the technical side of the program, and many of the other top scientists, diverted from nuclear projects, happen to be Hungarian, too. In an environment where secrecy and security are seen as paramount, program leaders remember the success of the Navajo Code Talkers during the war [DR#28]. Why not set up a similar program for the alien technical info? Teller and his cronies continue to write and converse in their native tongue, with some modifications to confound translation and adapt to the technical subject matter. Voilá, we have a "higher form of Hungarian." Then, since Hungarian is as good as English to an alien, we could have the Boys learn to speak Hungarian first.
The secret saucer program motors along for a few decades, but the human labor pool eventually grows short as the initial employees head for retirement. Just then comes along this smart-ass white boy with a good Hungarian name. Teller meets him in Los Alamos and falls in love. Lazar's apparent Hungarianess and maverick style prompt Teller to pull strings on his behalf, so perhaps he is exposed to the alien hardware much earlier than he ought to have been. He only gets Flying Saucers 101, though. As a training exercise, he is introduced to our mothballed alien models, where he "helps" deduce technical principles that were learned by Teller and others decades ago.
This theory would be strengthened if Lazar had had some prior exposure to the Hungarian language, say from a parent or grandparent. This would greatly increase his value to Teller and might justify extraordinary leniency in the clearance process. If Lazar never knew a word of the mother tongue but was still seen as Hungarian, this could reduce the attraction of his ethnic roots but might not remove it entirely. The preference might arise from what is commonly known as racism. You see, the saucer program known to Jarod employs only solid white males with an apparent preference for Central Europeans. Jarod says the all-Caucasian all-male crew is the preference of the aliens themselves, who exert ultimate control over who interacts with them. This may be natural to the aliens, since, as Jarod understands it, the six known subspecies of Gray are completely segregated from each other on their home worlds. The analogy J-2 uses is that all the Italians are on one planet; all the Norwegians are on another, etc., and they do not intermix. To soften the analogy, we prefer to think of it as all Macintosh computers being on one small planet and all the PCs being on a bigger but more primitive one. Or all the ferfi in one restroom and all the nöi in another. The segregation of alien species might simply be a matter of technical compatibility and not racism per se.
This is something that Jarod has talked about from the start but that we have carefully danced around in previous Rats. Think about what will happen when news of the government's secret saucer program finally becomes known. The satellite government admits to the public: "Yes, we've lied to you for fifty years, have misappropriated funds, ignored Congressional oversight and kept a really big secret with no mandate to do so." It is Psychospy's position that we will take all in stride, then, and adapt to the new situation like Germany did to the fall of the Berlin Wall. We might even learn to forgive.
But then the government says: "Oh, and by the way, this is not an Equal Opportunity Saucer Program." That's when all hell breaks loose and the pickets start to form outside "Facility X."
We regard this inevitable clash of cultures as one of the most interesting problems of alien contact. When they come, whoever they may be, you can be sure they are not going to conform to our current dainty ideas of what is P.C. and a fundamental right. For example, the visitors might not appreciate our notions of privacy or private property. Certainly, Ambassador Merlin of Draconis has taught us that [DR#26]. They also might not put the same value on a single life or understand the sensitivities of our personal egos. It is a fair assumption that they are not as litigious as we are, so they have probably come up with a stable system of social cooperation that works for them, but it may seem repulsive to us.
The most frightening scenario: Imagine a world where you do not have your own quarters and where you have no personal space to keep your stuff. Imagine, in fact, that in this society there is no stuff at all--no Wal-Mart, K-Mart or Home Shopping Network--just the practical hardware of the common good. What if these are pinko Commie aliens who have no respect for our Laws of Acquisition? What if they tell us that all you really need is love? That's going to put the bees in a few bonnets, eh?
Freud's second floor apartment and office at Berggasse 19 are now a museum, filled with his works, awards, personal phallic objects and the statues of mythical figures he liked to collect. From the moment we entered the place we were possessed by almost uncontrollable hysteria. In front of every display we had to make a wisecrack, much to the glaring disapproval of the stern custodians. We are not sure if we saw The Couch, but we definitely saw a couch [photo], and this was enough to keep us in stitches for the next few days. The highlight of our visit was the Videoraum. This was a converted pantry in which several TV monitors had been set up in a very artistic configuration. They played a continuous loop of really bad home movies of Freud and his family sitting around at garden parties sometime before the middle of the century. We resolved, then, that someday there would be a Psychospy Museum, maybe in Upper Rachel, where our own Videoraum would show endless ancient tapes of Psychospy doing mundane things: This is Psychospy climbing Freedom Ridge. This is Psychospy annoying the Cammo Dudes. This is Psychospy looking through binoculars at The Base That Doesn't Exist.... TV crews have already filmed it from every conceivable angle; all we need now is for some dedicated archivist with an eye to history to splice it all together in one marathon stream.
[Museum location: N48° 13.194', E16° 21.672'. Photo: Front Door.]
Freud's contributions to human knowledge are not solely comedic, however. It was he who gave us the subconscious and the idea that people rarely do things for the reasons they think. Freud was the first to recognize and label the human defense mechanisms, which are the many diversions people create for themselves to protect their ego and avoid unpleasant thoughts. Time after time in the course of our research we have seen the defense mechanisms proven true, and it never fails to impress us how irrational and self-destructive people can be when their precious ego is at risk.
The Freudian defense mechanisms we most treasure include....
All of this is routine in the human world. What we want to know is, do the aliens suffer from the same kind of evasions? An intelligent creature without neuroses could have much to teach humanity, but we'd probably mow him down in self-defense before he stepped out of the spaceship.
Also on our Vienna tour, Haba escorted us to the colorful Wiener Kriminalmuseum, displaying the fine work of the local police and their opponents. The bluntly lurid displays included the severed heads of executed murderers and numerous shriveled limbs of real dismembered victims, as well as the actual instruments that made them that way. Following our stroll through the dimly lit galleries and the famous guillotine room, an attendant invited us to take coffee and strudel at the museum's cozy cafe. Who says Austrians have no sense of humor?
Fast paced, two player dedicated gun game dazzles with a combination of animated, digitized and polygon graphics. Players are part of rescue team assigned to penetrate a mysterious air base where experiments on alien visitors have gone out of control. Many weapons are available, from the standard pistol to shotguns and grenades; there are also special bonuses to be found. You'll need all the help you can get as you encounter heavily-armed mutants and hostile aliens along the way to Area 51's ultimate secret.[Review of game, by Intelligent Gamer, including graphics]
Area 51: The Bar. Without warning, a new Area 51 bar has opened in Vegas. A giant billboard on the I-15 freeway now says, "AREA 51 X-TREME PARTY." This seems unrelated to the "vaporware" Area 51 Nightclub and Dreamland Lounge reported in DR#26, although we suspect this was the source of the idea. As reported by George Knapp on his Oct. 26 "Street Talk" segment on KLAS-TV, the owner of the Palladium nightclub bought up Bob Stupak's space debris from the old Vegasworld casino. Vegasworld has recently been demolished to make way for a new mega-resort, but in its heyday it was the tackiest joint in this neon city, proudly catering to the downscale crowd with spacecraft hanging from the ceiling and piles of cash lying around in glass cases. We visited once to test the buffet, which was dismal indeed, but we were impressed with the giant Space Shuttle hanging overhead. It reminded us of eating in the basement of a science museum. From the scenes in Knapp's report, the Area 51 bar looks not much different: a huge cavernous warehouse with black walls, laser lighting and suspended space junk. We have stopped to take pictures outside [billboard and skyline | car wash sponsored by a radio station] but have not ventured within. Jarod 2, still an adventurer at 70, says he went inside but was appalled to see two men dancing with each other. "Now we must be tolerant of other people's differences," we later lectured him. "No me," said the white male engineer, who is proudly Republican and believes society is going to hell. The bar is housed in the Palladium nightclub, which Las Vegas residents say has had numerous face-lifts. Area 51 is apparently the current rage of the meat market but is bound to fade. To preserve its dignity, the Palladium still offers an all-male oiled-flesh review on Friday nights--a treat for the ladies or those dancing gentleman.
Area 51 the X-Treme Party can be found on Industrial Road behind the Mirage casino. We welcome further intelligence concerning this facility.
[Later correction: "Area 51" apparently refers to the entire facility, and the Paladium is no more. There are no more oil-body reviews, either; the above picture must have been taken at a moment of transition. (12/14/95)]
Area 51 in California. In DR#27, we reported the existence of Area 51 the clothing and record store in Miami Beach. That's only the beginning. A few days ago, we were motoring through the California desert from L.A. back to Vegas when we stumbled upon yet another such operation. We happened to pass it in Twentynine Palms, CA, on the road from the town to the Marine base: Area 51 the T-Shirt, Jewelry and Alternative Music store. [Image of Flyer] The proprietor was Calder, a woman in her 20s with multi-colored hair. She told us she had just opened the shop in partnership with her father, who apparently owns the video store next door. She said she was not aware of the Area 51 in either Miami or Las Vegas, and she did not know much about that military one south of Rachel (rapidly becoming a forgotten franchise due to poor marketing), but she did think there was another Area 51 clothing or record store in Canada, probably Vancouver. (Any confirmation from our readers?) The location in Twentynine Palms is 5825 Adobe Road, or N34° 08.844', W116° 03.206'. We have now supplied that establishment with all of our logo merchandise for resale.
Area 51 Coffee Mug. Some fairly weak Area 51 products are now offered for sale in the 800-Trekker catalog of Star Trek/X-Files paraphenalia and other dork merchandise (i.e. Vulcan ears and the Commish's "Beedeep" communicator [DR#27]). The Area 51 items include a coffee mug, metal sign and "Property of Area 51" T-Shirt. (Soon we expect, "My <relative here> Worked At Area 51 And All I Got Was The Lousy T-Shirt.") Call 1-800-TREKKER for a copy of catalog.
You Sir, know a man personally, who, in a fully conscious state, has worked in close proximity with a non-terrestrial being. This single statement represents one of the most important events in the history of modern mankind. If Jarod2's statements can be checked with a clinically accepted method of verification, the question of mankind's relative uniqueness can be moved much closer to being laid to rest. [Full message]This is an intelligent question that needs a response. We would not ask J-2 to take a polygraph test because we would not do it ourselves, being that we have a profound distrust for such symbols of authority. Jarod's angle seems to be similar to Lazar's: "Here's my story. You can take it any way you want." He seems to feel no obligation to prove his claims, and he isn't selling anything based upon them, so why would he consent to such a test?
When one talks about this being "one of the most important events in the history of modern mankind," it immediately triggers Psychospy's ennui. So what? Mankind will find the truth only when it is ready to accept the truth. You cannot impose it from the outside, as the writer suggests that Jarod should do. Remember the Prime Directive: When you are talking about the biggest revelation in history, the question arises whether any one person or group has the right to bring it about unilaterally. Unrecognized truths are all around us, unseen only because that is our collective choice. An event this big is not a problem of evidence; it is, instead, a complex transition that a society has to "grow into" and that will not be brought about by any single revelation.
Jarod's story is so outlandish that it is bound to be shot down regardless of the results of the polygraph. For Jarod to consent to a lie detector test would be accepting that he has something to prove, that he is willing to respond to demands for proof and that he is prepared to become a de facto leader in this movement. Lazar did agree to a polygraph (It was inconclusive.) and his example showed that once you open the door to this, the demands for further proof never end. The worst thing for J-2 would be passing the lie detector test: Then his life would cease to be his own. The results would invite the skeptics to debunk him and--more destructive--the believers to follow him. He would be harassed by every UFO nut alive. Remember that J-2's identity is not completely secret, but the majority of the loons who know him have more colorful stories to follow and cannot accept the simplicity of his tale.
This is fine. Psychospy, too, has nothing to prove. The story, if there is one, will come out when it wants to come out. All Jarod can reasonably offer is clues, and our role as we see it is simply to pass on those clues to our readers as accurately as possible. Mankind will either pick them up and do something with them, or ignore them and continue on its current path. If J-2's story is true, he is certainly not the only holder of it. You ought to be able to put the same story together from other sources, including, no doubt, many that are already public.
All that really matters to us is that we like the guy, and he tells a good story. As long as he treats us kindly and leads us on such a rich and entertaining journey, we are willing to set aside the issue of true or false. He reminds us of our dear mother who also told us stories that we accepted without proof. The above writer may ask, "Are you willing to judge the biggest story in the history of mankind based only on your personal relationship with a single witness?" To this we must reply, "Alas, yes." If we have been suckered, it would not be the first time, but although we have gotten wiser with each burning and learned to protect our assets, we do not really see any credible alternative. "Trust no one," the sources tell Agent Mulder, but it simply is not possible. You have to trust most people by default, based on intangible evidence, until they give you cause to treat them otherwise. To start from a position of distrust can only lead to isolation and an impoverished life of paranoia.
We do not want to intrude into people's privacy. We do not care who is sleeping with whom or whose clothes a ufologist dresses up in when not studying UFOs. Ones public lies and proven major crimes, however, should not be forgotten. Filmmaker R. Estes was our inspiration for this project. He claims that the felony conviction rate for UFO researchers is many times higher than that of the general population. (Why is that not surprising?) Our policy in the ufologist pages will be to list all felony convictions that can be proven. Proof would consist of a court record or a newspaper article, and we ask the help of our readers in locating this information. Of course we are also looking for other, less colorful facts, including a bibliography for each person and summaries of the specific claims they have made.
Previously we called for volunteers to "adopt" web pages and take responsibility for maintaining them. However, now that we have a full-time webmaster we no longer have that need, and it is probably best that a single person maintains the core of the database. What the Research Center needs instead is spies--volunteers with healthy skepticism who can listen to radio interviews, scan books and articles and attend UFO conventions to collect summary data. You don't need our prior permission to spy for us; just do it and send us your results. What we are looking for is the specific claims and predictions made by each ufologist. For example, if a researcher predicts, as is the annual tradition, that 1996 will be the year the government finally releases its alien info, the specific prediction should be recorded, preferably with a direct quote and where it was given. Then if the year comes and goes without a revelation, that fact should also be preserved in the same place. On Art Bell's radio show alone, there are usually dozens of fantastic claims, predictions and positions declared every week, and these are usually completely forgotten by the next show. The job of our spy network is to assure that the claims are not forgotten and that each ufologist accumulates a track record over time.
Reports to us can simply be a list of specific claims made by the ufologist, described in a sentence or two per claim and with a direct quote if possible. Then you must be willing to attach your name to the report as the collector of the information. Hypothetical example:
John Smith interviewed on Art Bell's Dreamland, Nov. 31, 1995:
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Any relevant data or intelligence reports for our ufologist pages should be sent to our webmaster at webmaster@ufomind.com. Each report must be a neutral record of what was actually said or done, with no hint of ridicule or sarcasm (which may require superhuman effort in some cases). We will then link each report to the person's web page as a permanent record of their position. Other volunteer spies can then try to check any worldly claims contained therein--like purported educational credentials--and these reports will also be attached to the record. For reputable ufologists, their page will naturally evolve into a useful list of their work and theories. For the charlatans, each lie will be carefully recorded in detail, and their file will naturally become a damning one. The database itself is intended to be neutral and must follow a rigorous code of ethics, which we will attempt to put in writing. Every ufologist's page--be they a skeptic, charlatan or true believer--will be built from the same template and without bias. (This is going to be as difficult a challenge for Psychospy as anyone else, given that we like to call a shill a shill right up front. Thus, some of our prior ufologist pages might not yet live up to these standards.) Whenever a non-neutral claim is recorded, we will provide a link to a rebuttal upon request, and we will certainly correct any factual errors as soon as they are brought to our attention. If any ufologist is exposed as a fraud or loon, it should be by his own words and actions in a fair intellectual arena.
Let the games begin!
In spite of all the people Sean has used and discarded, he still has at least one loyal supporter. That ally is R. Jeffries, author and editor of Get Laid newsletter. (Get Laid is a curious compendium how-to-bed-'em advice that we highly recommend to all of our readers, especially adolescent males between the ages of 10 and 15. Motto: "Get Laid Now, Ask Me How.") Jeffries has forwarded some of our Rats to Sean, who apparently is not on-line, and he has also sent us numerous entertaining communiqués in defense of his friend. In a recent message to G. Campbell, Jeffries kindly provided the text of Morton's letter-to-the-editor recently published in Steamshovel Press (#14), along with this introduction:
Dear Mr. Campbell,...and this from an authority on boobs!Here is a letter that appeared in this month's "STEAMSHOVEL PRESS" from Sean David Morton in response to an interview you did with the magazine. It shows pretty clearly once again, that Mr. Morton is a brave pioneer in the UFO field and an educated class act, while you, sir, are nothing more than an ignorant, babbling boob!
Sean's letter itself raises serious issues about Campbell's credibility and is linked here in its entirety (as provided by Jeffries). Indeed, after reading it we must admit defeat: Sean is a class act and brave pioneer who stands alone and leaves us speechless. The only minor criticism we might have concerns punctuation, specifically use of the quotation mark. There is a convention in modern journalism that when one encloses words in quotes, these are a direct verbatim record of what was actually said. Sean gets a little liberal here in enclosing in quotes words that were never said, but the important thing is, he captures the gist of what the speaker was probably thinking. Sean also has his own unique way of reporting facts--recounting events that never happened--but this is excusable artistic license, we believe, because they could have happened had history been different. In any case, we cannot argue with Sean's final conclusion, although we do have some trouble parsing it:
So Glenn Campbell can go on calling me a liar and fake or "evil" if it suits his peculiar neurosis to knock down everybody who took the risks and did the work long before this person came along to base his life on and live in the shadow of the deeds of others, whom he mocks and gives no credit or due. He can even go on claiming that he "Shoo-ed me away..." from going out to the test site, but I stopped going when there was nothing left to see... which is just about when Campbell showed up to trumpet, against all the available evidence, that there had never been anything there at all.For those who are interested, here is the offending Steamshovel interview with Campbell. In it, he indeed describes Morton as "evil, evil," but we hope this does not rule out a reconciliation. Campbell:
With Sean, he could have some good information here and there. The problem is that he's like the boy who cried wolf. He sees UFOs everywhere and he has his finger dabbling into every New Age fad. He's not only, in his words, "the world's foremost UFO researcher," he dabbles in psychic phenomena, he's a prophet, he supposedly accurately predicts earthquakes and detects ghosts. I personally consider him a charlatan. That doesn't mean a charlatan can't have the truth sometimes. But when you spout so much nonsense, it's hard to find that truth.
A consortium lead by the highly secretive, privately-held,
finger-in-every-conspiracy construction company Bechtel has won the competition to replace EG&G as the primary contractor for the Nevada Test Site, effective Jan. 1. [News article on change | Article on EG&G departure] This probably means that EG&G's operations at the adjoining Area 51 base will also be transferred to Bechtel or its partners, Lockheed and Johnson Controls. At least that is what various little birds have told us. It would seem reasonable that the two contracts go together because the giant Test Site operation would provide a convenient shield for a secret facility within its shadow. You cannot do business at '51 without a substantial support operation in Las Vegas and Mercury--for personnel, procurement, etc.--and now EG&G won't have one.One little bird told us with great confidence that Bechtel would get the contract about eight months before the decision was supposedly made. "Yeah, right," we said, "And the aliens speak Hungarian." The competition for the contract was supposed to be a fair, three-way horse race, but our bird believed the victor was preordained. Personally, we are thrilled to welcome Bechtel as our new partner-in-publicity, as no other company could bring so much drama and mystery to our neighborhood. You want underground bases? Bechtel is a very "boring" company that certainly has experience in this domain. Previous reports [DR#17] indicate Bechtel has been doing runway work at Groom, and the relationship has probably gone on for years. If the Papoose Range is riddled with tunnels as numerous conspiracies contend, it is a fair bet Bechtel helped put them there.
We welcome any data our readers can feed us regarding Bechtel.
A few months ago, after unsuccessful complaints to the Air Force [letter] and BLM [letter], we engaged a volunteer work crew to build stone walls along the border in the ambiguous areas. Even the most naive hiker ought to look at these piles of rocks and say, "Hmmmm, this must mean something"--although the border is still inadequately marked elsewhere. We were performing a public service, right? Recently, however, M. Smith and another visitor reported finding our walls deliberately covered by uprooted brush. Who else could be suspected but the Dudes, who are watching this crossing point 24 hours a day by video cameras and patrols parked on a hill? These must be dim and frustrated gentlemen. It does not take a PR wizard to figure out that when visitors are lured inside the border and arrested in sham proceedings, it creates bad publicity, which in turn draws more visitors and media types. It would be as much to the Air Force's advantage as the public's that no one crosses the border unintentionally, but this is one of those modern intellectual concepts the Flintstones-era management has no grasp of.
So the border wars continue, and we are pushed that much closer to publishing the license plate numbers, names and home addresses of every Dude we can identify. How much longer must we rattle our sabers? (A least a while, we hope, because fully indexing and cross referencing the 1500 cars in the Janet parking lot across from our Vegas annex would be a lot of work.)
Knapp's talk was pretty much the same one he gave in Las Vegas on Feb. 1 [DR#22] concerning his visit to Russia and UFO evidence found there. Campbell spoke on the human aspects of ufology illustrated with examples from Area 51. Reviewers said he suffered from the "talking head syndrome" and needed more visual aids. This was remedied in Campbell's talk at Orange County MUFON on Nov. 29, to which he brought slides of his house, his cat, his car and fuzzy photos of Bob Lazar. (All photos of Lazar come out fuzzy he explained.) Video tapes of that lecture are available from Orange County MUFON.
Knapp is tentatively expected to speak at a meeting of Las Vegas MUFON on Jan. 22. Knapp says he will not repeat his Russia lecture but will simply take questions for the duration. Starts at 6:30pm (but 7pm is more realistic) at the Spring Valley Library. Free admission and open to all.
Acknowledgment: We wish to thank reader A. Saarinen for his fine "rat" illustration on our masthead--his way of working off his guilt.
Not only are you and your organization frauds from the beginning, you're lying and unprofessional ones as well. Thank you for taking me off of your subscription list. It saved me from degrading myself one more time by sending another email to your "psycho" address.... Any multicelled organism could compile that [Desert Rat] drivel in 10 minutes. Good luck in defrauding the cretins who are willing to set a match to their money for your dreck. It's bad enough for free let alone PAYING for it.
-- E. Kaercher [full exchange]
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