Jun 01 2009
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Book Reviews And Agendas
After the release of my book Project Beta in 2005, reviews started coming in. I do read reviews, especially if they’re about something I’ve written.
Everything we experience is colored by our expectations. Unfortunately, most people don’t realize this when reading reviews. Some of the negative reviews of Project Beta seemed to ignore some of the facts I presented, and like most products of the ego, seemed to be heavily colored by beliefs and preconceptions. Unfortunately, there is no way for an author to respond to user reviews posted on Amazon, such as the entry by Missing Times author Terry Hansen, which decried a lack of “moral outrage” on my part. My response: Why should I act as the reader’s moral compass?
More disturbing was a review written by UFO researcher Robert J. Durant, which appeared in the International UFO Reporter, the journal of the Center For UFO Studies (CUFOS.) Durant used the review to pick apart Project Beta and Nick’s Bodysnatchers In The Desert. In October of 2005, I wrote a response to the review and sent it off, but it never appeared in the IUR, at least as far as I know.
I recently located the letter, and present it on ufomystic so that Durant and others may have a chance to see it and respond. There has been a small furor on the net and some radio shows recently over Project Beta, MJ-12, and UFO disinformation in general, and it seems like an appropriate time and place to publicize my response to a much larger audience than the members of CUFOS. I have not been able to locate the original review. If someone else can do so, I will link it from this post.
The letter was written in October of 2005.
To the Editor, International UFO Reporter
Long-time Ufologist and former airline pilot Robert Durant has written an unfortunately error-ridden review of my book Project Beta for the, Vol. 30, Issue #1 of the International UFO Reporter. This venerated journal, one of the few longtime newsletters of record in American ufology, has published an emotionally-laden and apparently hastily researched diatribe against both my book, as well as Body Snatchers In The Desert by Nick Redfern. I will let Nick respond as he sees fit, but I would like to point out some of the inaccuracies and ad-hominem personal comments against me contained in Mr. Durant’s working-over of myself and my research. To answer everything point-by point would take nearly as many words as Durant himself, so I will confine myself to the most glaring examples.
Although it is nigh-impossible to be objective in any human endeavor, and much less so as a critic, Robert Durant presents himself (consciously or not) as a crusader for the “truth” about the UFO subject, but he falls into the trap that is so common in the field: he becomes a Defender Of The Faith. Setting off on this path is not advisable for someone who presents himself as a detached or even scientific observer, which is a philosophy for which the Center for UFO Studies justifiably prides itself. This makes it all the more distressing that the editorial staff of the IUR saw fit to publish Mr. Durant’s review. Project Beta was conceived as a story with a warning. It’s not like Ufology doesn’t need to be reminded not to take everything at face value, but for some reason, this reminder needs to be repeated at regular intervals. We need to know what is false, and how it became that way in order to consider more valuable data.
While I would prefer to say that Mr. Durant’s review is difficult to answer, and that he presents many valid and noteworthy points regarding the facts as presented in Project Beta, he unfortunately doesn’t. He begins the review by essentially comparing me to Peter Jennings in the universally disdained (at least amongst mainstream ufologists) ABC special UFOs: Seeing Is Believing, which aired on February 24th of this year. I only wish that I commanded Jennings’ salary for what I do. The ABC people called me up months before the show and asked my opinion of the UFO subject. Apparently, they were sufficiently unimpressed with my opinion to take things much further, and they passed after a few phone calls. Is this because I was too skeptical, or not skeptical enough? Most likely, it was due to some other mysterious factor, but it is highly disingenuous for Mr. Durant to condemn an author at the outset with guilt by association, however tenuous.
Strangely, Durant appears to treat elements of my story as common knowledge or facts that he has somehow laboriously dug up on his own or were unknown before Project Beta was published. The fact that Bennewitz dropped out of his doctorate program to run his increasingly successful business is but one example. This method of using my findings and at times hard-fought research to conveniently fit his own version of events occurs with disturbing regularity in his review. This is a classic disingenuous method of debate.
In many places in his review, it appears that Durant has not actually read the book he is purporting to criticize. He writes “a critical decision was made by OSI” (actually AFOSI) to disinform Bennewitz and not simply tell him to cease and desist. “Why this second option was not taken remains a profound mystery,” he states. If Durant had taken the time to actually read the whole book (or read it without emotionally-laden blinders on) he could have found the answer on page 114: “…why were they [the AFOSI and others] encouraging Bennewitz to keep looking and make more noise? …If Bennewitz shouted long and loud enough, the ones who the spooks were truly worried about would come calling, pretending to be innocently interested in UFOs while actually trying to gather as much information as possible on anything that was being developed at Kirtland as well as other bases around the country. Meanwhile, the UFO fanatics could be counted on to look for spacemen in flying saucers.” I reiterated this in other places, namely on page 177 where I stated that the Air Force chose to take charge of his perceptions rather than ignore him or tell him to stop.
Durant continues in this erroneous vein. He relates that secret coded transmissions that Bennewitz was receiving on his self-designed equipment were used to control Russian spy satellites. Nearly an entire chapter (#22 “Revelations” – Pgs. 173-181) was devoted to the story of the Air Force discovery that lasers were in fact the method used to hack Soviet satellites, not radio transmissions. Did Durant speed-read the Cliffs Notes on Project Beta?
Even though he ends up shooting himself in the foot, Durant includes a section on AFOSI Agent Richard Doty’s appearance with myself on Coast To Coast with Art Bell, which was aired on February 27th of this year. He cites numerous quotes of interest to Ufologists from the program, then states, “Doty presents us with a concrete example of the paradox, ‘Everything I say is a lie.’ He was paid to lie, trained in the art of lying, and rewarded for his success in lying.” From Durant’s point of view, it seems that Doty telling the truth only when he is saying something that resonates with Durant’s own agenda, such as Doty’s admission on the program that he saw films of the Roswell crash recovery.
Complaining that I never flesh out Paul Bennewitz as a person, Durant says I missed a “golden opportunity” to regale readers with details of his personal life. This is one of the few instances where he is correct. I interviewed six people who knew Bennewitz. (Bill Moore, Gabe Valdez, Richard Doty, Leo Sprinkle, an Air Force Weapons Lab scientist and Christa Tilton) and asked them all for recollections of Paul’s personality and private life. None of them could supply more than the most insignificant details. All said that their only interaction with him concerned the UFO subject, and that he was very private if not secretive about himself. His family categorically denied any involvement with my book, and the accounts of those I contacted supported the very real possibility that he was a closeted genius.
As for the book’s subtitle, “National Security” and “The Creation of a Modern UFO Myth” and Durant’s failure to understand why these subjects were not addressed in the book, I can only respond again that he doesn’t seem to have read or digested the mountains of information I discussed regarding the history of the national intelligence structure, and how the lies perpetrated during the Bennewitz episode spread through the UFO subculture.
Durant ends his review with a litany of instances where the U.S. Government offered “inside” information to UFO researchers, only to take it back at the last and sometimes crucial moment. Although he says that I ignored these opportunities to inform the reader, in his list of thirteen accounts, I actually included detailed synopses of seven. I even went further back than Durant in describing a 1957 offer of UFO footage to Walt Disney. The story of Whitley Strieber’s mysterious phone call that Durant mentions was not an offer of help from the government, and the 1996 account of Nick Redfern’s interaction with various sources which would result in Body Snatchers In The Desert was not even known until this year.
I am quite surprised that Mr. Durant did not collapse into paroxysms of umbrage at the passage in Project Beta that concerned Dr. J. Allen Hynek, founder of CUFOS. Moore stated that Hynek had told him privately that he (Hynek) had (unwittingly or not) assisted in the disinfo campaign against Paul Bennewitz by delivering to him a computer which contained encrypted messages designed by the Air Force to compliment Bennewitz’ growing suspicions about an underground base near Dulce, New Mexico. While researching the book, I repeatedly tried to contact CUFOS regarding any of Hynek’s personal records pertaining to Bennewitz. While director Mark Rodeghier told me that he would try to locate these files, unfortunately nothing ever came of it. Mr. Durant’s failure to question this account supports the idea that he did not examine the text very carefully before launching into his diatribe.
Had Durant’s review of Project Beta been merely mean-spirited, I would barely have noticed. Since he twisted what I wrote, perhaps willfully ignored many aspects of the narrative, and used my own research to make himself appear an authority on the case and its implications, it was imperative that I respond.
While I do not consider UFOs a major world concern right now, it has nevertheless been an interest of mine since childhood, and if Mr. Durant had taken even a few minutes to look up my numerous writings and opinions on the subject, he would not have written that I do “not take UFOs seriously” and that I know “little about Ufology.” What I tried to make clear in Project Beta was that many of the so-called ufologists who get the most airtime and coverage in the media are the ones who are interested in self-aggrandizement first, and accuracy second. This is what bothers me—the “serious people who take UFOs seriously” of whom Durant claims that I am willfully ignorant, are almost never heard from. The reason for this is that they generally present mountains of boring data and careful statements, which makes for boring journalism, at least as it has been practiced in this country for generations. The headline grabbers and those with sensationalistic claims affect public opinion, and that is ufology’s loss. Until whatever it is that is behind the UFO phenomenon decides to reveal itself to the world in an unequivocal way, UFO researchers will be chasing their tails, as far as the public is concerned.
I would welcome Mr. Durant’s response to this letter.
Sincerely,
Greg Bishop
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June 1st, 2009 at 11:32 am
So much for moving the story forward. You’d think that Durant would at least hail your motives. Why is ufology not only flanked by but filled with know nothings and know it alls?
This was recently posted to me:
http://godssecret.wordpress.com/2009/05/22/2409/
No mention of your book. It seems like a step backward in understanding Bennewitz–or just a lateral move.
kt
June 1st, 2009 at 11:34 am
Haha! That last comment came back with “your comment is waiting moderation”–as will this one, no doubt.
June 1st, 2009 at 2:43 pm
After reading Project Beta and I listened to the show while moving form Houston to Austin(Western Travis Co. actually), I was quite outraged by the abuse of obviously mentally ill man by the US Intelligence community for any purpose whatsoever. I’ve had a couple of years to digest this and given the other gov’t abuses that were happening at the time and the looming gargantuan failure of the US intelligence community to predict the fall of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain. the Bennewitz Affair seems even more outrageous while at the same time, small and insignificant against the larger backdrop of the Cold War. Those of us who follow the flow of UFO news and information should be far more suspect of any future alleged gov’t whistleblowers, leaked documents about anything of a paranormal or parapolitical nature. It seems to me Paul Bennewitz was being used as a conduit for disinformation to see where it would go as much as he was being led astray to protect the secret weapons research at Kirtland AFB. Since we are outside the inner workings of the US Intelligence apparatus, we don’t know what were the mission goals and the true results of the intelligence operations involving Paul Bennewitz. Likely as not, we never will.
June 1st, 2009 at 10:19 pm
So essentially Durant incorrectly assumed you were anti-Ufology and a debunker, and reacted emotionally by writing that review? Do you think he would have written it had he known that you actually do believe there is something to the UFO subject?
I do hope someone is able to track down the review (I had no luck myself).
I’m not even sure of the point Durant was trying to make in some of those examples you cited. (Why he offered a litany of instances where the US Govt. offered inside info. And why he might have a problem with the Hynek involvement).
I’m sure if I read the review things would make more sense.
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:58 am
Durant sounds like a nut who was outraged that you failed to ride his favorite hobby-horse to the exclusion of all else, candidly.
As for Amazon, you actually can comment on reader reviews. I’m not sure that it’s really good for an author to make a habit of responding to reviews and criticism, no matter how tempting it is. Should you wish to, there’s a “Comment” link at the bottom of each Customer Review.
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:53 am
Kenn,
There seem to be a lot of internet sites that ignore the new (as of four years ago) data on the Bennewitz saga. I don’t want to get involved in that tarbaby.
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:56 am
Carlos,
You may be right about the UFO disinfo. I concentrated on the idea that he and others were being away from something, but there is a possibility that they were being led towards something as well. Perceptive of you.
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:03 am
Gareth,
It seems a little disingenuous of me to post my reaction without having the original review to compare it against, but when I found the letter, my emotions took over! As I remember, he had a few valid points, but they seemed pyrrhic as compared to the rest of the review, which was driven by a single-minded desire to defend the “reality” of UFOs. In other words, he missed the point of the book entirely: that we should be aware of the history of disinfo and how it works if we are to make any headway in the Government angle.
Why are gov’t people interested in the subject? What do we need to listen to in order to get a handle on what they know and perhaps more importantly, what they don’t? What are they trying to learn from the civilian researchers? Lots of avenues for information are available, if you play the game.
These subtleties are lost on people who see the issue as black-and-white and as some sort of a monumental struggle between civilians and military/ intel personnel.
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:06 am
Victor,
I wouldn’t categorize Durant as a “nut,” but I think he was outraged at my lack of outrage.
Thanks for the advice on Amazon. I’ll probably just shut up, like you said.
June 5th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Greg,
You wrote:
“These subtleties are lost on people who see the issue as black-and-white and as some sort of a monumental struggle between civilians and military/ intel personnel.”
That does seem to be the problem. I only got seriously interested in this subject (UFOs, to the point of actively reading/seeking info) around 1 yr ago, and while I admit I initially framed the Governments role in the UFO issue just as you have noted above, I have learned in less than a year that there is much, much, MUCH more to the story.
The Govt UFO relationship is a multi-layered mess with much more complexity than the common assumption of “they know all” & “them Vs Us”.
How anyone could spend any amount of time in this field - especially as a researcher - and not allow their view of Govt involvement to evolve is just beyond me. Emotional attachment to an idea, ‘and all that’.