Raspberries for the conspiracy crowd
by Billy Cox
Review HERE:
If you’re even remotely serious about The Great Taboo, you’ll need to put John Alexander’s just-released UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies and Realities on your to-do list. And not just because it’s been endorsed by luminaries as disparate as Burt Rutan, Tom Clancy, Jacques Vallee and Whitley Strieber. Although it may not alter your perceptions, the challenge presented by the retired U.S. Army colonel can’t help but sharpen your critical-thinking skills.
A former Los Alamos National Lab project manager with ties to the CIA, Special Forces, NATO and the National Research Council, to name a few, Alexander has rightfully cast himself as an intel-world insider. Just how deep inside is another matter, but those familiar with his longstanding interest in UFOs are well aware of his curiosities, which have led him to this position:
There’s no government UFO coverup, but the phenomenon is real, sophisticated, and problematic. In UFOs, he lays it all out and, in some cases, names names.
A canny operator navigating federal bureaucracies bedeviled by endless public requests for UFO material, Alexander once convened an informal group of inquisitive scientists under the name “advanced theoretical physics,” the ATP acronym so neutral it would neither threaten those they wanted to approach nor clang word-search bells in UFO-related FOIA probes. Alexander discusses how his ATP was preparing the stage for congressional hearings in 1999, only to get blown off by Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner, who then chaired the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. He also reports a nibble of political interest in 2005, from Virginia Republican Tom Davis, who “allegedly had a sighting of his own.” (Davis ended his 14-year congressional career in 2008.) Alexander blames Steven Greer’s 2001 Disclosure Project press conference in Washington, in which shaky or fraudulent panelists contaminated the legitimacy of impeccable eyewitnesses, for making the issue radioactive again on Capitol Hill.
In establishing the reality of UFOs, Alexander covers a lot of the same ground explored last year in Leslie Kean’s UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record, and the material is largely redundant on that front. He portrays hardcore UFO conspiracy proponents and doctrinaire skeptics as opposite sides of the same coin. What some readers may have trouble accepting is the contention that any form of UFO censorship is the arbitrary product of insecure, hand-wringing mid-level lieutenants, not from the edicts of some deep-black cabal.
As proof, he reminds readers how not a single government employee, military or civilian, has ever been prosecuted for spilling the beans about their on-the-job UFO encounters. The reason is simple — an organizational coverup is a myth. Alexander recounts first-person conversations with a number of perplexed authorities who should’ve been in the know about these things, from former SDI director Gen. James Abramson to H-bomb pioneer Edward Teller. He even appeals to a few WTF sources, like well-connected military-thriller novelist Tom Clancy: “He said he knew we did not have a[n alien] craft ‘because somebody would have told me!’”
What Alexander proposes here is an authority-figure reality check, from whom the sort of secrecy necessary to fund and compartmentalize subterranean UFO research is not only illogical but impossible to maintain. Alexander’s world view is reassuring; for all of its faults, our system of checks and balances still works the way it was intended.
“The notion that secret subelements of the U.S. Government must deny the President access to such information when requested,” he insists, “is false and illegal.”
In many ways, Alexander’s book – and its logic — is a breath of fresh air. But inevitably, it puts him at odds with a source in a book of equal credibility and creates a gap which is difficult to reconcile.
by Billy Cox
Review HERE:
If you’re even remotely serious about The Great Taboo, you’ll need to put John Alexander’s just-released UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies and Realities on your to-do list. And not just because it’s been endorsed by luminaries as disparate as Burt Rutan, Tom Clancy, Jacques Vallee and Whitley Strieber. Although it may not alter your perceptions, the challenge presented by the retired U.S. Army colonel can’t help but sharpen your critical-thinking skills.
A former Los Alamos National Lab project manager with ties to the CIA, Special Forces, NATO and the National Research Council, to name a few, Alexander has rightfully cast himself as an intel-world insider. Just how deep inside is another matter, but those familiar with his longstanding interest in UFOs are well aware of his curiosities, which have led him to this position:
There’s no government UFO coverup, but the phenomenon is real, sophisticated, and problematic. In UFOs, he lays it all out and, in some cases, names names.
A canny operator navigating federal bureaucracies bedeviled by endless public requests for UFO material, Alexander once convened an informal group of inquisitive scientists under the name “advanced theoretical physics,” the ATP acronym so neutral it would neither threaten those they wanted to approach nor clang word-search bells in UFO-related FOIA probes. Alexander discusses how his ATP was preparing the stage for congressional hearings in 1999, only to get blown off by Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner, who then chaired the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. He also reports a nibble of political interest in 2005, from Virginia Republican Tom Davis, who “allegedly had a sighting of his own.” (Davis ended his 14-year congressional career in 2008.) Alexander blames Steven Greer’s 2001 Disclosure Project press conference in Washington, in which shaky or fraudulent panelists contaminated the legitimacy of impeccable eyewitnesses, for making the issue radioactive again on Capitol Hill.
In establishing the reality of UFOs, Alexander covers a lot of the same ground explored last year in Leslie Kean’s UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record, and the material is largely redundant on that front. He portrays hardcore UFO conspiracy proponents and doctrinaire skeptics as opposite sides of the same coin. What some readers may have trouble accepting is the contention that any form of UFO censorship is the arbitrary product of insecure, hand-wringing mid-level lieutenants, not from the edicts of some deep-black cabal.
As proof, he reminds readers how not a single government employee, military or civilian, has ever been prosecuted for spilling the beans about their on-the-job UFO encounters. The reason is simple — an organizational coverup is a myth. Alexander recounts first-person conversations with a number of perplexed authorities who should’ve been in the know about these things, from former SDI director Gen. James Abramson to H-bomb pioneer Edward Teller. He even appeals to a few WTF sources, like well-connected military-thriller novelist Tom Clancy: “He said he knew we did not have a[n alien] craft ‘because somebody would have told me!’”
What Alexander proposes here is an authority-figure reality check, from whom the sort of secrecy necessary to fund and compartmentalize subterranean UFO research is not only illogical but impossible to maintain. Alexander’s world view is reassuring; for all of its faults, our system of checks and balances still works the way it was intended.
“The notion that secret subelements of the U.S. Government must deny the President access to such information when requested,” he insists, “is false and illegal.”
In many ways, Alexander’s book – and its logic — is a breath of fresh air. But inevitably, it puts him at odds with a source in a book of equal credibility and creates a gap which is difficult to reconcile.
