Debunker Phil Klass' relentless ad hominem attacks on UFO eyewitnesses begs the question: What was he so afraid of?/CREDIT: gpposner.com
Posted on 02/20/2012 3:10:24 PM PST by SunkenCiv
A blast from the past animated the blogosphere earlier this month when a buddy of famed "Fire in the Sky" UFO abductee Travis Walton accused a dead debunker of attempted bribery. Steve Pierce said he -- Pierce -- had been offered $10k to say Walton had hoaxed the whole thing back in 1975...
Klass was a prolific writer who dismissed the Walton controversy as confabulation in his 1983 book UFOs: The Public Deceived... Klass' take on what became known as the Cash-Landrum incident stopped me cold. Because I'd actually done my homework on that one. And that's when I got that first queasy feeling that the American press was routinely quoting a man who had a pathological disregard for truth...
For years, Klass had badgered the victims, and Schuessler, for access to their hospital records. Aware of his proclivities, they refused to comply. "I said, look Phil, why don't you come up with what you think happened, publish it, and after you do that, we'll be happy to supply you with the records," recalls Schuessler from his home in Colorado.
Klass condensed Cash-Landrum into a single page. Rather than posit an alternative scenario, he simply ascribed the whole thing to a hoax founded upon pre-existing medical conditions. Even the Army's own Inspector General investigation specifically cited a lack of evidence for a hoax.
"Klass was a low-life and a bully who used his Aviation Week credentials to hold himself up as an expert," says Schuessler, retired project manager for space shuttle flight operations at Johnson Space Center. "He just made up stories any way he saw fit."
(Excerpt) Read more at devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com ...
Debunker Phil Klass' relentless ad hominem attacks on UFO eyewitnesses begs the question: What was he so afraid of?/CREDIT: gpposner.com
Klass was a crude, crass, boor. I was at the MUFON Symposium in Albuquerque,NM in 1992 when he was thrown out for trying to record the proceedings. MUFON was taping the whole proceedings for sale. It was announced and posted there were to be no private recordings. Klass was using a mini-cassette recorder to tape the audio. Despite being warned he persisted in making unauthorized recordings. When he was finally thrown out applause rang out throughout the room. I’m no conspiracy theorist but if there are paid government debunkers then noKlass was certainly one.
Therein lies the problem. When you're a professional debunker, you can't admit to EVEN one event being true, else you lose your credentials.
I saw this happen to James Randi, who has exposed many hoaxes. He doesn't claim to be a skeptic, rather an investigator. The one event that soured me was one in Australia, I believe, where he said he'd expose dowsing as a fraud. Dowsers who claimed they could detect water and another group who said they could dowse precious metals were tested in a field that was planted with both - water on one side and metals on the other.
The test began, and the water dowsers had something like a 70% hit ratio while the metal guys bombed at around 10%. Instead of saying that 70% was pretty good and there MAY be something to water dowsing, Randi combined the two results and said that both failed the test, "averaging only 40% hits."
I knew Klass when I was stationed in DC in the 1960s. I would go to the monthly luncheons of the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics. There was always some big name speaker from the government or industry. Klass always sat at a table just under the head table, and unlimbered his tape recorder during the speech. He insisted on complete silence at the table, so as not to get extraneous noise on his recording. I recall being shushed by him once.
The link mentioned McDonald, who was a professor of meteorology at some university in Arizona. He had taken a sabbatical, and investigated UFOs. He had become convinced we were getting visitors from other planets. He gave a briefing on his conclusions at the Pentagon. I wangled myself an invitation. As a Major I was sitting in the back row. The 4-stars were all in front. After McDonald gave his briefing, one of the 4-stars asked him, if we're being visited by vehicles from outside, how come they never crash? How come there's never any wreckage? McDonald stood there with the blandest smile I've ever seen on a human face, and said, "Maybe their Zero Defects Program really works." That brought the briefing to an end.
As an aside, the AIAA luncheons would always be attended by at least one person from the Soviet Embassy. I had interesting conversations with several of them. I'm sure they thought I was spying on them, since I was in uniform. It would be interesting to see what reports they submitted on me.
Pinging the UAP list..
I don’t recall ever having any other notions
than that
Klass was at best a duplicitous lying oligarchy shill . . . if not out-right evil in intent, practices and methods.
If you want off my ping list get over it!
;’)
I don’t think he was working for the gubmint, he wasn’t too bright, just sneaky.
That’s the Randi method! C’mon! :’)
Thanks MtBaldy.
"Maybe their Zero Defects Program really works."LOL! Thanks JoeFromSidney.
LOL.
I didn’t think he was too bright either.
However, I hope you don’t think that folks who hire for the government are all bright.
Are any of them?
Ping to me to follow up
NOTE
later in the thread . . . along about p 3 . . . they seem to document it as a hoax.
We shall see.
I can certainly believe the Chinese would love to stick their fingers in NASA’s eye.
And, that other countries have been releasing far more info than NASA for years now. That appears to be escalating.
LOL.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2742926/posts
This last summer the town of Llano, TX was out of water due to the drought. As a last ditch effort, they hired a water dowser who found water. The town was saved.
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