Posts Tagged ‘Pierce’
May 18th, 2013 | 
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Cannes: Chinese Mogul Bruno Wu Partners With French Film Vet; Pierce …
TheWrap Content has sold the violent action film in several territories across the globe, including the U.K., France, Germany, Australia, Japan, China and Turkey. … They are already working together on “U.F.O” starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Recreation CEO … |
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There have been a number of questions that have appeared in the comments sections of previous postings and I thought this might be a good place to deal with some of those, rather than searching from posting to posting.
First, let’s deal with this Project Aquarius nonsense. It was pointed out that Aquarius was a real classified project from the NSA. At least that was the original premise. However, Barry Greenwood, first in Just Cause and reprinted in the December 1987 (issue 236) of the MUFON UFO Journal, said, “Finally, our last issue [Just Cause] dealt with the sort-lived confirmation of an Air Force ‘Project Aquarius’ by the NSA. The revelation fizzled however when the NSA retracted its confirmation based on a false assumption… No other independent confirmation of the Project Aquarius document has been possible.”
Sure, the true believers are going to say, “And you believe this?” And my answer is going to be, do you have any independent confirmation of Project Aquarius?
I thought not.
More to the point, two of the projects listed in the Aquarius document have been identified. Project Snowbird, which had to do with flying alien craft, according to Aquarius, was actually a joint Army/Air Force cold weather training exercise. Code words are not duplicated because that could lead to the compromise of highly classified information. There is a two volume Code Name Directory to prevent that from happening.
Project Sigma, also in the Aquarius document which claimed it was an attempt to communicate with alien intelligence, was a classified project between the Air Force and Rockwell International.
If the information about these two projects, contained in the Aquarius document is inaccurate, what does that say about the rest of the document? Since there is no provenance for it and since it is filled with misinformation, is it no wonder that proponents of MJ-12 seem to have forgotten about it. Neither Stan Friedman nor Robert Wood has provided answers to my questions about these Aquarius documents.
Another area that has bothered the readers is my interview with Steve Pierce. Frankly I was surprised by some of the responses. I wasn’t advocating for the Walton abduction. I was not suggesting that it was based on alien intervention and anyone who has read my writings on alien abduction knows my point of view. No, I was suggesting that Pierce related what he had seen and done the night Walton disappeared, and his impressions of his interaction with Philip Klass.
What I wanted to know when I interviewed Pierce, was his view of the Klass story. We had heard from others, but not from Pierce himself. It seemed to me that he was more amused by Klass than intimidated or annoyed by him. While it is clear to me that he believed that Klass had offered money for his “confession,” I am not convinced that an actual offer of payment had been made by Klass. In other words, I think that Pierce believed that Klass had made an offer, though that offer was indirect. I think that it was mainly a misunderstanding and with that I think we could say that both sides are telling the truth… which is not to say that both sides are telling a truth grounded in our shared reality.
This means, simply, that Pierce believes an offer was made. Klass had said no such offer was made. Both believe, or believed, what he said. Both are right… I think that Pierce misunderstood what he was told by third parties… In other words, I have no reason to doubt what he said.
I also pointed out that Pierce thought that Klass was a fairly charming fellow, which, when you moved away from some of the outrageous things he said about UFO witnesses and researchers, was true. He could be vindictive and nasty in a UFO fight, but on other topics he was quite funny. He told me once that Aviation Week photographers had taken some good pictures of the latest Soviet fighters at the Paris Air Show in the 1980s. The magazine gave the originals to the Air Force, but somehow failed to get a print of one of the pictures. When they asked for it they were told they couldn’t have it because the pictures were classified… which makes no sense (meaning that the Air Force would classify them since the aircraft had been introduced in a public setting where everyone and his brother could take pictures so the source wouldn’t have been compromised… but I digress…)
So, I published an interview with Pierce providing his perspective on these events with Klass, and I have annoyed some… How could I trust Pierce? Well, I sat down with him, talked with him, and he didn’t say anything particularly controversial, other than Klass could be charming.
Finally, there is this latest allegation that I’m a shill for the military, though I’m not completely sure what this means. This isn’t the first time that something like this has happened. I was accused of working on Project Blue Book with Hector Quintanilla, I was a CIA agent of some kind, that I had been spying on APRO for the Air Force, and I don’t know what all. This latest seems to have been raised by Douglas Dietrich, who I don’t believe I have ever met and who I do not know. No evidence for this has been presented, but some believe it… It is not true and if Dietrich said anything like this, he is on thin ice.
This is one of those situations where the two of us know the truth. If he said it, he knows he’s making it up… I know what I have done in the military and what I haven’t done, and nothing in this allegation is true. If I find a source for the allegation, and Dietrich’s name is attached, I may go after him. And I assure those out there that there is nothing embarrassing in my military file or embarrassing questions to be asked that would prevent this.
Of all these above points, I think those about Project Aquarius are the most important. This is an issue that should have been resolved when more was learned about it, one of the Aquarius documents was proved to be a forgery, and when the information contained in it was found to be inaccurate. In today’s world, there are those who still believe in MJ-12 but ignore those documents that came before the “Big Three” that show just how flawed they are. They continue to pontificate about MJ-12, saying the criticisms have been answered, but, of course, they have not. MJ-12 should be dead but it is not. I don’t know what more we can do it kill it, other than continue to raise these points.
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Several months ago the story that Philip Klass had attempted to bribe one of the witnesses to the Travis Walton abduction made its rounds. I took a somewhat middle of the road stance, suggesting that I could believe that Klass might attempt something like that, but that the evidence for it was rather thin. I now have additional information.
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| Steve Pierce |
There were, in essence, two people who know the truth about this. One, Philip Klass is dead and the other, Steve Pierce had not been readily available for comment. However, on July 1, 2012, at the Roswell UFO Festival, I had the chance to sit down with Steve and get his side of the story. What follows is what he told me then.
Although my real interest in this was Steve’s interaction with Phil Klass, he did tell me part of the story from his perspective as one of the wood cutters in the truck driven by Mike Rogers.
They had seen a bright light and thought it was something that hunters in the area had set up. It was a solid light and a very bright white. One of them, Alan Dalis, thought that it was a spaceship.
Travis, outside the truck, began to walk toward it with everyone yelling for him to come back. A beam of light hit him in the chest and he flew backward. Rogers, and some of the others thought that Walton had been killed, and they took off in the truck. Some of them, Steve Pierce included, wanted to return. Rogers was talking about how he had left his best friend behind.
And one of them, Dwayne Smith, thought that Walton had been incinerated by the beam.
But they did return only they couldn’t find Walton. They drove into town and called the sheriff. Steve said that the cops looked for beer bottles, thinking that they all had been drinking. Rogers, Kenneth Peterson, and Dalis, to face his fears, went back out. Steve went on home.
He told me that the next morning, the police arrived and he heard them talking with his mother. He slipped out the back door and went over to his girlfriend’s house. The police thought that Walton was dead and the others were covering up the crime.
Eventually, the police convinced them all to take lie detector tests to try to learn the truth. They drew straws to see who would go first and Steve apparently lost. The polygraph operator asked if they had done bodily harm to Walton, and Steve answered that they hadn’t. He, as well as the others, passed the test, which wasn’t about the UFO and abduction, but an attempt to learn if a crime had been committed.
Walton, of course, showed up five days later, and told his story of the abduction and what he had experienced. It was then that so many UFO researchers, including the Lorenzens of APRO, the National Enquirer, and others began their search for the truth.
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| Steve Pierce ready to answer questions. |
Steve didn’t have a large role in that. Eventually a local deputy named Jim Click, came to his house. Click said that Klass had called him and wanted him to relay a message to Steve. Klass was willing to pay ten thousand dollars if Steve would say that the whole thing was a hoax.
Once that offer had been made through Click, Steve said that he began to get regular phone calls from Klass reinforcing the offer. When he moved away from Arizona, he was surprised that Klass could track him down. He said that his name wasn’t Steve Pierce, but Jeffrey Steven Pierce. He had begun to use his middle name after his fellows in elementary school began to tease him about his first name.
It turned out that Klass had a copy of that first polygraph examination that listed his name as Jeff S. Pierce, so Klass had that information. That was how Klass could find him.
After Steve moved to Texas, and after hearing from Klass on a regular basis, Steve said that he told his wife that he just might take the money. He said that he had some bills and that much money had an appeal to him.
His wife asked if the story was a hoax and Steve said, “No.” She said that he couldn’t take the money. In fact, if he did, she would never spend any of it.
Steve told me that after three years, and the once a month telephone calls from Klass, he finally told Klass, “Yes, it’s hoax.” He then wanted to know how to get the money.
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| Philip Klass |
According to Steve, he met Klass once in Texas. Ironically, Steve said that he found Klass to be a nice man when he wasn’t on the trail of a UFO story. He seemed to have gotten along well with Klass when they weren’t talking about the abduction.
This is an observation that I do not find hard to believe. Over the years I had many discussions, meetings, communications and telephone calls with Klass. Though he didn’t remember it, while I was in Washington, D.C. at a DIA school, Klass took me sailing on the Potomac River one afternoon. It wasn’t a long trip, just a little run about the area.
At the dinner meeting, Steve wanted to know how to get the money. Klass said that he needed to find some evidence, find the generator used to create bright light. Find “stuff” to prove it was a hoax.
Steve asked, “When do I get the money?”
And Klass said, “After you find the stuff to prove it was a hoax.”
Steve told me, “Phil Klass is the only person I ever told it was a hoax. I wanted the money.”
Steve said that not long after the incident he had a falling out with Walton and Rogers over things that had nothing to do with the UFO sighting or the abduction. He also said that he was annoyed about the way he was portrayed in the movie Fire in the Sky. He said that he wasn’t one of those crying as they fled the scene.
After this, Steve became a long haul trucker and stayed away from the UFO arena for several decades. It was only recently that he got back in touch with Walton (or maybe it was the other way around). He said that he had been to three of the UFO conventions or symposiums in the weeks prior to the 2012 Roswell Festival.
Here’s the thing. I sat there listening to his story, taking my notes, watching his face and his body language, and I have no reason to suspect he is lying. He said that you could prove that Click had come out to his house, but I’m not sure you would be able to prove the substance of the conversation.
He did know Klass and described his personality correctly. I had noticed the same things. Klass was quite charming when he wasn’t in the middle of a UFO debate, but that he would color things by his wording and descriptions to give a misleading impression. As I have said in the past, Klass wasn’t above writing letters to witness employers and causing trouble for those who didn’t agree with his analysis.
The question becomes, “Did Klass offer him ten thousand dollars?” and if he did, was it a bribe to get him to say it was a hoax? Clearly Klass believed that to be the case, so, to Klass, it would have been a payment to someone for finally telling the truth.
My impressions were that Steve Pierce was telling the truth about his experiences. If the Walton abduction was some kind of an elaborate hoax, Steve was not a part of it. He did say to Klass that it was a hoax, but there is that cloud of ten thousand dollars hanging over that claim. Steve has since repudiated it on a number of occasions.
I had wanted to get his take on this one aspect of the story. He answered my questions without hesitation, he explained the circumstances of his admission that it was a hoax (which he said he only said to Klass), and he explained how the falling out between him and Walton took place.
I have no reason to doubt his story.
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 Open Minds UFO News |
Travis Walton UFO incident witness Steve Pierce
Open Minds UFO News Pierce has made the decision to continue to speak out about what he witnessed in 1975. |
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Steve Pierce (Credit: Open Minds)
Steve Pierce recently spoke with Open Minds and gave what he said would be his final interview. Since then, an outpouring of encouragement has come from his supporters and friends. Realizing how vital his story is, Steve has made the decision to continue to speak out about what he witnessed in 1975. The friendship between Travis Walton and Steve Pierce had been strained, but since the posting of the Open Minds interview with Pierce, the friendship is on the mend. In the interview, he expressed his fears of sleeping alone in the woods, but recently with the help of Travis, Steve has over come those fears and spent his first night alone in the woods since the incident. The two will also be teaming up this summer to speak at the 2012 Roswell UFO Festival.
In the years since the incident, the polygraph tests have been the crucial piece of evidence backing their story. The test and results are posted online, but not a lot of attention has been given to them. Pierce recently brought these documents into the light again, in hopes of suppressing the skeptics and presenting solid evidence for the events of that night. Travis Walton has also come forward to speak with Open Minds regarding the documents and the exams too. The documents clearly lay out the questions asked, along with the examiners conclusion that: “These polygraph examinations prove that these five men did see some object that they believe to be a UFO and that Travis Walton was not injured or murdered by any of these men, on that Wednesday (5 November 1975).” He also shared some words of encouragement for Pierce, and how speaking out will be a positive thing for him. The tenacity that these men display in sticking to the truth rivals most. Their trials have been daunting, yet they press on, adhering to their stories through the crowd of skeptics.
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Tags: incident, Pierce, steve, travis, update, walton, witness | 
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Steve Pierce participates in the Travis Walton panel discussion at the 2012 IUFOC. (Credit: Jason McClellan)
The Travis Walton abduction story is one of the most famous cases in ufology. For the past 30 years Travis has been the one telling the story. This past February at the 2012 International UFO Congress, two others from that night, John Goulette and Steve Pierce, joined Walton on stage for a panel discussion of the incident. Both men have been dealing with what they witnessed in their own way since that November evening, and both men have gone through their share of ridicule and harassment for sticking to their story.
Steve Pierce was just 17 when the event took place. His life changed instantly as he was thrown into a world of news reporters, skeptics, and subjected to false accusations and a polygraph test. Even after passing, those closest to him had trouble believing his story. The harassment continued, and noted UFO skeptic Philip Klass offered Pierce ,000 to change his story and say the incident was a hoax. Pierce denied the offer. Things did not get easier for Steve. The occurrence left a continuing wake through his life, and those closest to him still would not believe the story. This would prove to be a burden on many of his relationships. Philip Klass eventually tracked down Pierce in Texas and continued to harass him to change his story, even flying to Texas at one point to meet. Steve never accepted the offer.
Since speaking at the conference, a new challenge has arose. He is again being contacted to change his story and say it was a hoax. Klass passed away in 2005, and Steve will not say whom the new offer is from. Through all of these trials, Steve has gained one very important follower, his daughter Stevie. After watching the film Fire in the Sky with her father, she has taken an interest in the subject and supports him and his story. This has given Steve encouragement to come out and give what he claims will be his last interview. In this exclusive Open Minds interview, Pierce addresses certain aspects of his story that he wants to set straight, and tells of his trials and tribulations through the entire process.
Otro de los testigos presentes durante la abducción de Travis Walton fue Steve Pierce, el más joven del grupo. En la entrevista exclusiva que realizó Tercer Milenio, Pierce nos contó cómo Philip Klass, uno de los escépticos más famosos, le ofreció 10000 dólares para decir que toda la historia era una mentira. Pierce no cedió ante esta oferta, pero Klass no se dió por vencido tan fácilmente.
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.
Over at his blog, Bad UFOs: Skepticism, UFOs, and The Universe, found at:
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.
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Tags: Klass, part, philip, Pierce, steve, travis, walton |
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UFO Days is back for landing July 29-31
Pierce County Herald Elmwood will salute the UFOs seen over its skies with the 33rd Annual UFO Days celebration July 29-31. ELMWOOD—The space shuttle program may be ending, but it doesn't mean what else has come from beyond the sky can't be celebrated. … UFO spotted in footage in aftermath of bomb explosion in Oslo, Norway [video] |
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Tags: 2931, back, county, days, herald, july, landing, Pierce |
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