TRANSCRIPT: The Earl Baldwin Show Wednesday, August 18th, 1988 KFYI Radio Guests: Richard Hall, Jim Speiser Transcript begins approx. 7:15PM EB: ...this hour, we have the author of a book with us, it says "Top Secret" on the cover, and I don't know, I've read a lot of the secrets in here. "Uninvited Guests", its a "documented history of UFO sightings, alien encounters, and cover-ups." And the author is Richard Hall. Richard is with us here on The Talk Station via the telephone. Hello, Richard Hall! RH: Hi. How're you doing? EB: Pretty good. And we have in studio, Jim [Speezer], or is it Speiser? Speiser...who is a ufologist, and director of ParaNet, which is a computer Bulletin Board of explorers of the paranormal...a network, I guess, of all those people who are comparing data [such] as you have in your book. Your book is a compendium of all of the reports correlated here in different categories, from "Close Encounters of the Vehicular Kind" to bodies in the morgue, humanoids, and big secrets and other...uh, what gave you the idea for doing this, Richard Hall? RH: The idea for doing it was that the public at large has had very little in the way of current, honest sources of information on this subject for many years now, and their primary source of information, very regrettably, has been the tabloid newspapers. The conventional news media do not give adequate coverage of the subject, so I felt it was time to do an update, pulling together the most impressive information, and (whether impressive or not) the currently reliable information on the subject. So that's what I tried to do. EB: Now isn't this a case of, "where there's smoke there's fire," the idea, with all this smoke there must be a flame somewhere? With all of the reports, and many of them seem to correlate, most people who sight spaceships seem to give the same general description. Most people who see lifeforms coming from spaceships, or assuming they come from some kind of extraterrestrial vehicle or transportation, put them in similar categories, and, are we saying, because these things have gone on for many, many years now, and seem to correlate from different sources, different countries, and come up with the same kinds of general observations, that there must be something to it? RH: Yes, indeed. I think that's exactly right. I think if we'd had all these reports over the years, and they were of 90,000 different sightings, and no two were alike, you know, you could write it off as some kind of psychological phenomenon or whatever, but we do indeed have all these converging patterns, very STRONG patterns, in fact, of exactly, similar descriptions from people worlds apart, continents apart, all walks of life, and it tells a very important picture here of some real phenomenon going on that has not been adequately investigated. EB: What disturbs me is the fact that it has NOT been adequately investigated, and that there seems to be a pattern of covering up; that, if there is something to this, the government - the military in particular - doesn't seem to want anybody else to have the information. RH: Yes. EB: And why is that? RH: Well, one can only speculate. But the case I build in my book is that, sometime back several decades ago, the government and/or the...at least the military services found very strong evidence of what we will call extraterrestrial visitation, for lack of a better term - some kind of intrusion into our airspace by mysterious, unexplainable objects and apparently humanoid beings. And they really didn't know how to cope with this. It was not really treated as a scientific problem, it was treated as a national security problem. Who are these beings, what are these craft, where are they coming from? Are they about to attack us or what? But there was no evidence of any kind of invasion per se. So the military forces were stuck with a problem that they really couldn't cope with. Now there's much more to it than that, which I'll be glad to get into, but that's as short an answer as I can give to such a complex question. EB: Let me ask our guest, Jim Speiser...how did you get an interest, or develop an interest in UFOs, extraterrestrials, and the like? JS: I got an interest in it from way back, about 1966. I was a young boy and I read all of the pulp magazines, etc. Kinda lost interest up until college, when I learned of the "skeptical side" of things. From there on I proceeded from a skeptical point of view, as I pursued many other facets of the so-called "paranormal": ghosts, ESP, etc. [But] it soon came to my attention that the skeptical information I was getting on UFOs - that they didn't exist, that they couldn't possibly be here, that they've been explained in other ways - I slowly came to the realization that those explanations were not quite as scientifically based as the skeptics would have us believe. And so I said, "Wait a second. If our best debunkers and skeptics can't explain these cases, or have to resort to way-out left-field explanations that make the `alien' theory look ridiculous, maybe there really IS some fire behind the smoke." EB: Was there any one, or two or three, basic incidents that convinced you there was something out there? or up there? JS: Well, I remember the particular turning point in my mind was the Helicopter-UFO Incident over Mansfield, Ohio in 1973, and...that's a case where the best debunker in the world, Philip Klass, as far as I can see, really dropped the ball. He tried to explain this thing as a "bolide", or meteor, that lasted some one minute and twenty seconds, which...I've called dozens of meteorologists, astronomers, experts...[and] no one can tell me that a meteor could possibly last a minute and twenty seconds. EB: OK, and, Richard Hall, the author of "Uninvited Guests", was there one turning point, one "ah-HA!" factor for you that said, "there must be something to this?" RH: I'm not sure I can pin it down to one precise case, but I think one category of reports that impressed me highly was reports by professional pilots, military and civilian professional pilots, airline pilots, Air Force pilots... and I have over the years talked to many, many of them, face to face. Reports sometimes that they don't put on public record, because they fear ridicule. But their reports are being investigated by Dr. Richard Haines at NASA-Ames Research Center, and I think they're a very impressive category of reports. EB: Mm-hmm. And, uh, some of the movies, like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "ET," and like that, they've done a lot of research, which seems to be parallelled by a lot of the stories, this documented history that you present in your book "Uninvited Guests." Do you think that Steven Spielberg, for example, was borrowing from the same basic materials that you've used in your book, to background his films? RH: Yes. Steven Spielberg had some contact with the Center for UFO Studies, which was headed by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, and did indeed borrow from the UFO literature, but I think he expanded beyond that and took a few "artistic liberties," shall we say...went a little beyond the legitimate database, but indeed he was borrowing from it. EB: OK, because I notice that, "Close Encounters," I notice a lot of the lights and the sightings and the shapes of the humanoids seem to correlate with a lot of the actual sightings that are documented in your book. RH: Right. [Commercial Break] [Transcript picks up when Speiser is talking to Baldwin about Senator Goldwater incident. Tape started late...] JS: ...confirmed to ParaNet that he was not allowed access to records where UFO information was kept. EB: Why? Isn't he... JS: That is a good question.... EB: ...a high muckety-muck, or was... RH: He didn't have a high enough security clearance. EB: ...a member of the Senate, head of the Armed Services Committee, whatever he was the head of, a top-secret clearance... JS: He was head of just about every possible Senate committee that would have oversight powers over anything that would have anything to do with foreign technology, alien technology, space...he was head of just about everything that would come under that venue. EB: Is there any member of [the] Senate, or of the President's Cabinet, who would be allowed...I mean, the head of the Armed Services on the President's Cabinet, the head of Defense, the Defense Secretary, rather, wouldn't that person be allowed...? JS: Well, any answer I give would only be speculation, we don't know who has the clearance... Dick might have a better aspect than I do on that... RH: Well, I'm in the same boat. We really don't know who has been told what, you know. All we know is that increasing documentation from the past suggests that there has been a tightly-held secret by a group called MJ-12... EB: MJ-12? RH: Yes, MJ-12, which was a group of very high, highly placed political leaders and scientists, back when they allegedly first got some kind of physical evidence. And this was just between the President (then Harry Truman) and this group of scientists. And it was very tightly-held. Other members of the Administration were not told, other military leaders were not told, other politicians were not told, so we just don't know. Assuming that's true in the first place, which we don't really know, although there's suggestive evidence of it...assuming that's true, then we don't know where it went from there...what has become of this evidence, who has been clued in and who hasn't. So its very much up in the air. But there's enough suggestive evidence and leads here that we only wish that we could get some high-powered investigative reporters involved, to really dig into this, because, you know, we could certainly provide some very substantial leads to them that they could have a ball with. EB: Well now, in your appendix, Appendix B here, you have a briefing document of Operation Majestic-12 that was "prepared for [then-] President Dwight David Eisenhower," back in November of 1952, and it says "Copy 001 of 001," which means this was the only copy ever made? "Top Secret" is crossed out and "Eyes-Only" crossed out on my copy, in the book. Can't you get in trouble for even copying this, or publishing this? RH: No, no. EB: Why? says "Top Secret"! RH: Civilians are not subject to this kind of thing. If I were a member of the military and published this, then I might get in trouble, but they have no hold over me... EB: Well, the Rosenbergs weren't members of the military and they took some Top Secret information out of the country... RH: Well, I'm not publishing any atomic secrets, see, I'm publishing something whose validity is denied... EB: Oh, I see, they deny that this is an actual document... RH: ..and also I'm not the original publisher of this. This was released by Bill Moore and Stanton Friedman and Jaime Shandera. EB: How did they get it? RH: They...Shandera received it in the mail anonymously on film. It was an undeveloped roll of film, and he had it developed, and this was what was on the film. They have spent several years since then (this was several years ago), they've spent several years doing a lot of clever documentary research, and biographical research to find out who are the principals named in here - they name the twelve, the Majestic Twelve, in here - they did a lot of research to find out who these people were, where they were at the time of the alleged incidents, you know, the whole thing. And everything they've been able to find out is at least CONSISTENT with this report. Doesn't prove it... EB: Well, now wait, according to this there were nine, whatever, nine spaceships or craft or whatever else flying over New Mexico, right? Or the Cascade...I'm sorry, uh, Cascade Mountains in the state of Washington, but then, later on, there was a [begins more-or-less quoting from document] crash in a remote region of New Mexico, about 75 miles northwest of Roswell Army Air Base (now Walker Field), and aerial reconnaisance discovered four small human-like beings that had apparently ejected from the craft, somewhat before it exploded, and fallen to the earth about two miles east of the wreckage site, and all four were dead and badly decomposed due to the action [of] predators and exposure to the elements due to the approximately one week time period which had elapsed before their discovery. Now they removed the bodies, and so forth, and put a cover story out about a weather balloon. But the question I have is, that there were nine of these craft visible just before, or a month before, in the Cascade Mountains, and a month later, one of these, obviously, from the same formation, or a similar one, crashes, why wouldn't the other eight have stuck around or why wouldn't they be able to get there if they have the advanced technology and pick these other creatures up, or find out where they had crashed, if they had this advanced technology? Why couldn't they find it before we did? RH: We don't know, but, the point is that these things allegedly crashed and allegedly were retrieved. And you can only speculate about what else went on. Actually, if the story...if you take it at face value, the beings were dead when they hit the ground and the craft exploded in the air. So they may have been "written off..." EB: Oh, and they thought there wasn't enough to even go after... [Commercial Break] [Tape again started late...] EB: ..if they know that much about us, why don't they speak our language? Because some of the sightings, uh, the people say they make "unintelligible sounds." Why wouldn't they have taken a Berlitz course or something, in English? RH: [chuckles] That's a good question. I don't know. I say in my book, in various places, that we may underestimate the difficulties in cultural differences between us and supposed alien beings, or beings [from] elsewhere, as I call them... EB: But if you can build a spaceship, you must have some computer technology. We have computers that will translate most foreign languages. They can translate Chinese to Russian to English in a matter of seconds. RH: Yes, but if they come from a totally different biosphere than anything we're familiar with, you know, and there could be tremendous roadblocks. They might not even be able to recognize, out of all the myriad forms of life on Earth, which is the supposedly intelligent life. They may be down there trying to talk to porpoises. Who knows? EB: Well, we have some intelligent life now on Line #1. From Phoenix, here's Charles, at 258-KFYI. You're on with the author of "Uninvited Guests," Richard Hall, and Jim Speiser, the ufologist and director of ParaNet. Charles, you're on KFYI, hello there. Caller: Hello. Uh, gentlemen, I frankly, I think this is all hogwash. RH: Good. EB: Hogwash! Caller: Right. And here, let me give you my proof. Now, I don't know about the rest of it, but this one part where these craft landed, and all that, and our government is either hiding it, hiding them, or destroying them, or something, to keep us from finding out. Now, just think of this for a moment: We are not the only nation on Earth. I mean, there are hundreds of nations where others could have landed, and it is assumed that...I don't believe that for whatever planet they come they'd pick just the United States and these little confines. Therefore, all the nations of Earth - Russia, China, India, Australia, Canada, England, Germany - all of them must have ALL gotten together in one great conspiracy to keep this information from all the peoples of the Earth. Is that humanly possible? EB: Or extraterrestrially possible... Caller: It is? EB: Is it EXTRATERRESTRIALLY possible, not HUMANLY possible. Caller: Well, no, WE are the humans who are hiding this, you see. Or our government. EB: Well, that's a good question, except that, in this book, I might point out, that there are sightings in places like Finland, France, Italy, and New Guinea, and Brazil. Caller: But how about absolute proof, that is, like you say, wreckage, bodies, even though decomposed...apparently, since these bodies were damaged by predators, they are apparently edible. RH: Well, that's very interesting, you show some signs of having read the literature, because we didn't mention the predator damage before... EB: I had mentioned that just a moment ago... RH: Oh, did you mention predator damage? OK, but let me just say that, you talk about the international scope of this thing, that's absolutely correct. We've learned that even mainland China, communist China, has had a long history of UFO sightings in modern times, which is only now beginning to come out since the country has opened up a little bit to the West. We have an official ongoing investigation in France, and so forth. I don't think it requires any international conspiracy to account for why governments haven't told us things. The governments are confronted with some very strange, baffling information and so are we. What we're getting tonight in this discussion is some of the most extreme, very dubious sort of information. In my book, I have a solid underpinning of why we take this subject seriously at all. This question of whether or not there are crashed UFOs and physical evidence is definitely up in the air. I don't insist that that's true. All I do is report the information that is available, and suggest that we really need to study this seriously. But I don't think it necessarily follows that there has to be some big international conspiracy, I don't follow that logic. Caller: Well, somehow it must have sneaked out from SOME country, that they have evidence which I assume that they would have also, not just we. EB: Oh, well there have been crashed UFO reports from other countries. There have been abduction reports from other countries. Caller: And they are also keeping this a deep, dark secret from their people? RH: No, its NOT being kept a deep, dark secret, because we're aware of it. But its just not believed, you see.... Caller: Well, if they would show me, I'd believe it. RH: ...like you, people say "hogwash." Caller: Yeah, but if they would show me, I would believe it! RH: Well, read my book. I'll show you. EB: We had a shooting down of an airplane by one of our Naval vessels with hundreds of casualties, and people called our station and said they don't believe it, that it was set up and that there were fake bodies and corpses that were set up from Iran... JS: That's the trouble, a lot of people...you've heard the expression, "I'll believe it when I see it." A lot of people will see it when they believe it. They preface it by that..."I have to believe it first, and no matter what you show me, I'm not going to believe it until I believe it." [Commercial Break] EB: Six minutes before 8:00, we had a fellow named Joe waiting on Line #2, but obviously a UFO has spirited him away. So if anybody else is allowed to call us, if they're not in the hands of either the Air Force or the extraterrestrials, then you are free to dial 258-KFYI or toll-free 1-800-242-TALK. And our guests for these last few minutes of this first hour: we have Richard Hall, the author of "Uninvited Guests," which is probably the best collection in logical sequence of all the sightings, all the reports, and lots and lots of theories on whether or not the government is covering up something, or whether or not we have aliens among us. And Jim Speiser in our studio, ufologist and director of ParaNet. Now that's a computer Bulletin Board, Jim? JS: Yeah, its a network, actually, of computer Bulletin Board Systems, designed to collect and disseminate information on what's happening right now in the paranormal, especially UFOs and other anomaly fields such as Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, Cattle Mutilation, things like that. There's a communications gap in these fields... EB: So sharing information, and trying to see if there's a pattern here... JS: Exactly. EB: ...might help. Richard Hall, I understand our government, or SOMEONE, investigated you, when they found out you were putting this book together, this gathering of all the intelligence data on possible life from other atmospheres, other planets, other solar systems. Is that true? RH: I was investigated back a few years ago, a number of years ago by the Central Intelligence Agency, and its kind of an elaborate story, but the bottom line is that I found out, through some other acquaintances and some Freedom of Information Act requests that they had conducted a security clearance on me, without my knowledge or consent and... EB: Why? Were you applying... RH: I don't know, but I've been told that they were apparently trying to set me up as a so-called "window," a source on the subject, but whatever happened to the effort, I don't know, because they never did that, at least I was not aware of it... EB: In other words, they were trying to see if they could trust you, and maybe put you on the Majestic Twelve list... RH: Well, perhaps, but apparently I flunked their security clearance... EB: Well, I would too, if you put out a book that has a Top Secret document in it. I'm not sure they want those kinds of people... RH: Yeah, well, that was much later that I did that... EB: Well, they could tell. They knew you were capable of doing this type of thing. JS: I think that's the bottom line, Earl. If there's nothing to the subject, why all this government interest? Why are there these documents - and I mean documents that we HAVE confirmed - Why did the government tell us that they had no further information on UFOs, when all of a sudden, under the Freedom of Information Act, more documents started pouring in that showed that they DID have interest when they were telling us they didn't? EB: Well, officially they closed out this "Blue Book" the Air Force used to keep? Right? JS: That's right, in 1969. EB: Does that mean that, for the last, well 19 years, they really haven't gathered any information about flying saucers, that they've ignored all their own pilots, uh, visual... JS: We have confirmed information to the contrary. Although if you write to the Air Force, they'll STILL tell you, "We closed out Project Blue Book in 1969, and that was it, that was the end of our interest." EB: So nobody in the Air Force is keeping track, right Julie? Julie's on our Phoenix line here, with a minute to go in our show. Caller: Hi. EB: Hi there. Caller: I just wanted to ask your guests if they had any dealings with Richard Hoagland, who wrote "The Monuments of Mars." I just finished reading that book, and it was supposed to be pictures of... EB: We had Richard on last month. Caller: Right! That's where I heard of the book. EB: Ah, OK. JS: I haven't dealt with Hoagland directly, but that's a very interesting thing that he's got there with the face, and more interesting is the actual "buildings" or whatever, "structures"... EB: That's computer-aided, though! That means that you can twist your computer and have your computer make any pictures it wants. JS: I invite any computer analyst to see if those things were twisted or if they were merely enhanced. If they were, I would be willing to listen to them. However, I haven't heard that charge made, because nobody's bothered to follow up on the analysis. EB: I'm not sure I could prove a computer either twists or enhances my mind... [End transcript] [End program]