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Once again Philip Klass has stirred controversy and he didn’t even have to do anything himself. All of this started, for me, with a column by Billy Cox in which he mentioned the story that Klass had offered Steve Pierce, one of the witnesses of the Travis Walton abduction, ten thousand dollars to say the case was a hoax.

Some have been angry at me for accepting the story. As I mentioned then, my first reaction was to reject it, but then I remembered some of the other things that Klass (seen here with his fans) had done in his efforts to debunk everything UFOlogical (yes, it is hyperbole, but what the heck, it’s not the first time that one side or the other has engaged in hyperbole).

I took a stroll over to “Bad UFOs: Skepticism, UFOs, and the Universe” hosted by Robert Sheaffer so that I might read the other side’s take on this (though saying the other side here is something of a misnomer since I’m not a big fan of tales of alien abduction).

First, (well not first in his article but first in this piece) Sheaffer seemed so outraged that he wrote, “So, because of Travis Walton’s slanderous new charges against Philip J. Klass, I have performed a major Document Drop of papers in my files on Travis Walton…”

Slanderous new charges…?

More hyperbole. I just wanted to point out that both sides often engage in hyperbole and we, who are more or less outside of the particular debate, must be aware of this.

But then we do get to the meat of Sheaffer’s response. He points out that on a “website promoting the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina as a UFO ‘hotspot,’ Sky Ships Over Cashiers, there is a page titled Debunker’s ,000 bribe to stop UFO truth.”

Sheaffer continued, writing, “Someone shouts on the Outpost Forum on February 5 [2012], “BRIBE BOMBSHELL! STEVE PIERCE WHO WAS WITH TRAVIS WALTON WHEN HE WAS ABDUCTED CLAIMS THAT HE WAS OFFERED A ,000 BRIBE FORM (sic) THE LATE DEBUNKER PHIL KLASS TO STATE THE ENTIRE TRAVIS WALTON ALIEN ABUCTION CLAIM WAS A HOAX!”

Walton then replied, according to Sheaffer, “Yes, it is true. I even mentioned this in the 1996 edition of my book. But all I knew then was that Deputy Click had taken Steve the message when Steve still lived in the area. I didn’t know that Klass had also flown to Texas and spent hours taking Steve out to dinner and trying to get him to accept the bribe. And followed Steve to another state or two. Very curious… All this strongly supports the belief that Klass was a paid government disinformationist.”

Well, nearly everyone in the UFO field gets branded with that label regardless of what side you come down on. I have been accused of working with Hector Quintanilla and Project Blue Book, though I was in high school when Blue Book neared its end and was in the Army in Vietnam in the few weeks before it was finally closed. I have been accused of being a CIA agent and even a member of MJ-12. Stan Friedman suggested that I was a government agent attempting to divert attention from the crash on the Plains of San Agustin, so Walton’s allegation doesn’t really mean much in the greater scheme of things. You might say its just par for the course and an indication you have arrived in UFOlogy.

In fact, Klass often said he was a government agent. Oh, I know his tongue was firmly planted in his cheek and his claimed ten million dollar a year salary suggested that he was much richer than his lifestyle showed… and no, I don’t believe any of that, but the point is that Klass made the claim himself. I doubt he would worry about the allegation today, if he was alive to comment on it.

Sheaffer wrote, “In Bill Barry’s 1978 book about Travis Walton, Ultimate Encounter, it says, ‘According to Mike Rogers, ‘Steve told me and Travis that he had been offered ten thousand dollars just to sign a denial. He said he was thinking of taking it.’” (p. 160)

Sheaffer noted, as do I, that the accusation did not originate with Pierce, but was made by Mike Rogers, who Sheaffer described as “Travis’ best friend” (and I have no reason to doubt that… I have seen them traveling together) “and future brother-in-law.”

Sheaffer then wrote that Klass wrote, “…had Barry checked with me, I would have assured him that I never made such an offer to [Deputy] Click or to anyone seeking to ‘buy off’ a member of the Rogers’ crew.”

And while this piece is meant, mostly, to show the other side’s opinion on the Steve Pierce suggestion, I will note that Klass didn’t take his own advice. From his SUN Newsletter of November 1993, page 3, Klass wrote, “Kevin Randle has contracted to author a new book which will be a compendium of crashed-saucer tales dating back to the ‘Mysterious Airships’ of the 1890s and also include the 1908 Tunguska incident in Siberia. Publication in soft-cover is expected in the fall of 1984 [sic]. Randle recently told a friend that he received ‘a great deal of money’ from the publisher.”

Had Klass checked with me, he would have learned that I didn’t receive a great deal of money from the publisher… though I wish I had. I suppose Phil was suggesting a financial reason for writing the book, and a financial incentive for filling it with tales of crashed saucers with little interpretation or investigation. The point here is that Phil repeated the tale without checking with me, which is what he suggested Barry should have done with him.

Sheaffer then launches into the reasons he thinks the Walton abduction story is a hoax and I have no problem with his analysis or his conclusions. There are problems with the Walton abduction and like so much else in the world of UFOs, there really is no consensus. Hardcore UFO believers think the case is a hoax and Karl Pflock, something of a skeptic on much in UFOlogy, after a short analysis of the case, wrote, “I hasten to add that, while I think a hoax is possible, I have not yet made up my mind.”

As for the idea that Klass hounded Pierce, that too is a tough call, given Klass’ attacks on both James McDonald and Robert Jacobs (see Phil Klass and his Letter Writing Campaigns published here on September 11, 2011).

Klass apparently called Pierce on July 20, 1978, which can hardly be called hounding. According to the tape of that conversation, Pierce told Klass, “Uh, well, I thought it was something a deer hunter, you know, rigged up. You know, ‘cause it was deer season, you know, so you could see. You know? And, uh, but I couldn’t see the bottom or a top or sides, all’s I could see was a front of it, you know. You couldn’t tell if it had a bottom to ir or, you know, or a back to it or anything…”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the UFO, given by one of the witnesses to the abduction. This doesn’t read like the experiences of someone who was there making observations, but someone who is confused by what he saw and not sure what to make of everything that went on around him that night. It leaves the door wide open for various interpretations.

Sheaffer wrote, “Klass says that when he told Pierce that he believes Walton’s story to be a hoax, Pierce replied, ‘Me too. If I could ever prove it a hoax I’d damn sure do it.’”

So, the Pierce story of the attempted bribe is not as black and white as it has been made out to be by many of us. I will say here again, I don’t believe it beyond Klass to attempt something like this, given what he had done in the past… but, I will also say that the evidence that he did is extremely weak. Given all that, we’d have to conclude the tale is not true, unless and until we could find something stronger.

http://badufos.blogspot.com/2012/02/travis-walton-vs-philip-j-klass.html,

you can find a link that will take you to some of the documents that Sheaffer believes should be reviewed before anyone makes up his or her mind about all this.

As I say, this is, sort of, the other side of this debate. I will note that Klass’ personal attitude has influenced this debate. Some of his activities were highly questionable (such as writing letter to the employers of UFO witnesses as noted in that earlier blog posting), which means that many of us see the idea of his attempting to bribe Pierce as a reasonable extension of these other activities.

But, as I said, the evidence to prove it seems weak and the various tales told about it are contradictory. Yes, I believe Klass might have tried something like this but I don’t think we have any proof that he actually did it.

Let’s see how far I can get on this topic today. When you’re dealing with an old man sometimes the energy just quits — but high hopes. Yesterday we looked at some of the 1940s and 1950s cases which happened to be in my files [I say that to remind us that there are MANY other cases and many other drawings], where the witness blessed us with an actual first hand illustration of the object involved. Today we can gaze at another set of these things; this time from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s. And so we go….

Our first and unsurprising “conclusion” is that they continue to defy any detailed pattern, just as their earlier sister set of cases also did so deny [how's that for 19th century British sentence structure? --- sorry, my PhD is in 19th century History of Science and Technology]. If anything these characters may even be a little bit more diverse. Even the two “diamond hexagonal” objects differed mightily in size, although they were both on the small side when it comes to UFOs. It was nice that the one lady felt that she saw the same shaped craft ten years and several hundred miles apart, but even that might give one some cause for out-of-control speculation [feel free; it doesn't hurt that much if you're honest about it].

As to the specific sightings: There are some of UFOlogy’s strongest CE1s in this set. I’ve found over the years, even in very informal polls at UFO get-togethers, that folks differ greatly in their “favorite case lists”, but a couple of these above make them more than not [ Red Bluff and Exeter]. [I've read recently an attempt to debunk Exeter, but if you read the extensive interviews by John Fuller and others on this case, you see rather quickly that the persons pushing the debunk aren't interested in addressing the whole case's details]. And Red Bluff is a UFO Titan no matter how you want to cut it. In that case the Air Force and Donald Menzel actually used atmospheric diffraction of stars WHICH WERE NOT EVEN IN THE SKY YET to come up with what was a totally ridiculous concept anyway. THAT was one of the biggest, most over-the-top, explanatory stupidities or dishonesties [take your pick] in the history of the field.

A case that I particularly like [probably for irrational reasons] is the Millersport, OH incident of 1963. [my "synthesis" of the four witnesses' drawings is above]. In this case a family watched a UFO essentially “parked in the air” for some time until it took off. The drawings were done separately and “are the same, and different at the same time”. They have plenty of similarity to convince one of the unity of the experience, and enough difference to convince one that the witnesses were not even subconsciously pushed to say one exact story. So, for me, even though this was one family, the reports have an element of credible independence. This case may also be a good old-fashioned CE3 as well, as the mother felt that she quite clearly saw a humanoid -shaped figure silhouetted in one of the windows. So, what can I tell you? I like it, and probably would put the case in my top 200 or so encounters to use to defend the phenomenon. And just to complete that thought: it is my experience with just my own files that there are probably at least 400 or 500 cases good enough to roll out there in front of reasonable people to defend the basic anomalous nature of the phenomenon.

There are other cases in the list of similar confidence… but I’ve placed alongside to the left a drawing of one just too late to have made that panel: Mackay, Queensland 1965 [actually it may well have made it if I was being obsessive about month-&-day order but life's too short for such nonsense in filing.]

Mackay has multiple independent witnesses, a very good viewing allowing much detail, and a possible related trace [which would convert it into a CE2t]. For the ET-technology debate, the witnesses stated that this was “a well-defined machine, solid and metallic”. The witnesses had no background with which to judge size, and said it could have been anywhere from 30′ to less than 10′. The internal diameter of a ring trace found the next day a little ways away was c.20′, so the guessed range may have been good. Three brilliant floodlights surveyed the ground, and the thing was in sight for 30 minutes. It then rapidly accelerated away. Well, I say that’s a rocking good UFO! And it’s one of the many that Jim McDonald researched while he visited Australia in 1967. I’m happy to share anything with Jim McDonald, but particularly a mutual interest in the Mackay case.

Other things are sequestered on this list. Sheffield, OH 1958 was probably the incident which caused the Air Force more difficulty in Congress than any other. It was a pretty good unknown, but the difficulties were caused by the USAF making a complete hash out of its non-investigation and making statements which offended a no-nonsense woman. With Mrs. Fitzgerald’s cooperation, a Ohio UFO group [not NICAP but of NICAP attitude and competency] pursued congressional aid in redressing USAF incompetency and nearly got an investigation by congress when Don Keyhoe couldn’t. The ultimate case report small monograph [ called the "Fitzgerald Report"] was delivered to many congressmen, and is a UFO historical classic.

Elsewise here, are things like the great Lt.Colonel Gasslein case from Springfield,PA with all its witnesses and its long-observation, and apparent clear high technology nature. Another thing which is irrelevant to everybody but my brother and myself is the St. Albans, WV case of 1958, which is our own personal CE1. I used to view this as “just as nice domed disk”, but as I thought about our observation the thing had to be closer than I thought.

I should have drawn a little “map” but this should be simple enough to follow without that. Tom and I watched the disk going by E-to-W almost exactly, looking out of a north-facing window in our home. When it looked like I was going to lose the sighting shortly, I “sacrificed” a little of the window view and turned and bolted for the west-facing door in another room. Trees unfortunately blocked the whole scene so I had to continue running until I cleared them [ah, those were the days .... actual running]. Once cleared the thing still wasn’t in sight so I shifted on a precise right angle turn to the north [not by plan; that was how you had to go given all the obstacles] and jumped down a steep embankment [could I ever do that? Yes you could old man; you were once a basketball player remember? Basketball? What's that?]. Once down that embankment it was just a few more strides to get a look to the west and there the thing was, almost due west at the time. So you can see that I took a “Z” shaped run with right angles, and the object was at least close to dead west on that final angle. I’m not saying that the disk was only 30 yards away when it passed by the window; that seems way too close, but who knows? But even given some slop in the actual angle-guessing of my last position, that object was very probably far closer than a football field. So, I’m giving myself credit for a CE1. If you don’t… that’s OK too. It’s also a good case because someone up-river was reporting it to a local radio station at the time. I have no idea how many other folks may have seen it, or whether Tom and I got the best look.

The picture above is the artwork from the old J.Allen Hynek slideshow, illustrating the concept of a close encounter of the first kind using the Exeter case. It is a pretty faithful rendition from witness testimony vs some of the other representations that you see [example, see the picture at the very top of this post; also supposed to represent Exeter]. It points out another danger in these drawings: never put anything out there without the approval of the witness. It as an old prof friend of mine would say “subtracts from the sum total of knowledge in the Universe”.

My lightbulb is growing dimmer than usual at the moment, so I’m going to stop here, and complete this topic next time with the Total BS part: what might it mean? Till then, if you have the stamina.