Crop Circles, Sinister Developments? Part 1

File: UFO209

MUFONET-BBS GROUP - MUFONET-BBS NETWORK

COORDINATED INFORMATION EXCHANGE - HOUSTON UFO NETWORK

The following article originally appeared in the January '93 HUFON Report, the newsletter of the Houston UFO Network. Article provided by HUFON for posting by The MufoNet-BBS Network.

Crop Circle Update - FIELD OF SCHEMES I

By Bill Eatwell

In the November 1992 issue of the Mufon UFO Journal, there is an article by Jim Schnabel titled, "Confessions Of A Crop Circle Spy". Well, as always, there is more to this story than is being published. For one thing, there are alleged inaccuracies in Schnabel's telling of his side of an a recorded telephone interview that was to be published in the journal of the Center For Crop Circle Studies known as The Circular which is edited by George Wingfield. The interview was mysteriously pulled from the magazine before distribution.

In October, while attending George Wingfield's Dallas, Texas lecture (see HUFON Report, Nov., 1992 issue), George gave me, in strict confidence, a copy of the Schnabel interview that had been pulled. George told me that his publisher in England, Michael Green, had pulled the interview from publication while he was on his lecture tour here in America.

I was told to "sit" on my copy unless given the go ahead to publish the suppressed interview in the HUFON Report if George was unable to resolve the problem when he returned to England. On Saturday,(12/5) I received a call from a friend alerting me that a new publication in Dallas, the Texas Mufon Newsletter, had just published George's suppressed interview.

I immediately called George in England and asked permission to reprint the same article in HUFON Report. I not only got the OK, but received the next day, by fax a copy of George's soon to be published reply to the above Journal article by Schnabel. Since not all HUFON members subscribe to the Mufon UFO Journal, I will carefully summarize Schnabel's article below. Included in this Crop Circle Update are both the suppressed interview, and George's faxed reply to Schnabel's article which should appear in the December Mufon UFO Journal. According to George, the following (suppressed) interview was made and recorded by Dr. Armen Victorian (AKA: Henry Azadehdel, Dr. Alan Jones, and for this interview, Cassava Ntumba). George says that there was no time lapse between Victorian's prior call to a Robert Irving, and Jim Schnabel. Why is this important? Because, Schnabel claims that Irving called him to warn of Victorian's question line and the two of them conspired to lead Victorian, as Ntumba, down the old proverbial false disinformation trail.

George also told me that someone (he knows who) sent a copy of the "pulled" interview to Schnabel so he could fashion a quick cover story and, somehow, persuade the Mufon UFO Journal to print it. After you have read the following, I will have more at the end.....

THE SUPPRESSED CIRCULAR INTERVIEW Subject of The Circular interview in this issue is Jim Schnabel. He has written several newspaper articles on the circles beginning with an item in the Washington Post last year which espoused the cause of orthodox Meadenism. More recently he collaborated with Robert Irving to produce a piece for the Independent Magazine in which it was implied that many of the major pictograms in the mid-Wiltshire area were hoaxed by the UBI group. Although UBI has faked a few minor formations (of which CCCS has full details) suggestions of major hoaxing by them --at, say, Alton Barnes--are known to be untrue and this article can only be seen as part of Schnabel and Irving's campaign to make people think that the pictograms are all hoaxes and promote the highly dubious claims of Doug & Dave.

Unlike Doug & Dave, Schnabel is an accomplished circlefaker and in July he came second in The Cerealogist's Circlemaking Competition at West described then as the "Master of Grapeshot," he did not deny having had previous circlemaking experience.

Ostensibly Schnabel is a student doing a post-graduate course in sociology at Bath University. Despite this his telephone number is on the Oxford exchange and his address in Bath (where Robert Irving lives) is secret. He usually gives his address as c/o Lincoln College, Oxford, although at the beginning of l992 Lincoln College stated that Schnabel no longer had any connection with them.

In the following candid interview Schnabel reveals his role as a paid disinformation agent working for an unnamed western intelligence organization. From what he says, one is made aware of the extent and determination of the continuing campaign to rubbish the circles and discredit the researchers. This campaign is but a continuation of the Doug & Dave scam with different faces, different players.

End of part 1