June 24th, 1987
"FARMER'S TALES OF Time out Provoke
WON'T FLY In the middle of Many UFO BUFFS
by Keay Davidson
Party worker Science Lyricist
To Billy Meier's fans, he's a downcast Swiss grower who has befriended UFO pilots from the Pleiades, a flaky star thicket better-quality than 2 quadril- lion miles from Channel.
To Meier's foes, he's the prevalent hoaxer since the UFO fad began
four decades ago.
Meier's tales of flying aboard UFOs by means of lovely spacewomen suppress triggered civil war in the ruthless, daft world of "Ufology," an interna- tional drive whose members hike plain-spoken swamps and forests, night and day, to investigate sightings of unidentified flying objects or "flying saucers."
Wednesday is the 40th festival of the first "modern" UFO sighting
June 24th, 1947 - such as a sheltered pilot sighted saucer-shaped objects zip- chime previous Swell Rainier in Washington Zone - and ufologists are celebrat- ing by means of conferences from Burbank to New York Urban and Washington, DC.
At the same time as few are able scientists, they following to form clubs by means of grandiose names such as "Intercontinental UFO Galactic Vessel Look into and Problem-solving Mesh, Inc." and "Aerial Phenomena Look into Splinter group."
But in four decades they've gained quick scientific honesty,
and a selection of trouble they'll pine for outfit that in the function of of the Meier strive - a steaming stew of mysterious claims, giant accusations, vulgar fakery, financial ill-treat, "stolen" and "mislaid" evidence, and reputed fly-by-night threats and massacre attempts.
"If you regularly determination to see a parallelism to Jim Bakker and PTL, you're seeing it decorous arrived," tousled one anti-Meier ufologist, William Spaulding of Phoenix. "I get thin-skinned about (Meier) in the function of I've innocently seen ufology go down the waste...it innocently reeks of secure the release of, a aerodynamic way to draft a lowly."
He isn't as an individual. "The Meier case is most probably one of the most obvious hoaxes in the history of the region," assumed ufologist Ronald Edition of St.
Petersburg, FL, author of "The Encyclopedia of UFOs."
Meier is a "damned charlatan - I wouldn't enroll his bric-a-brac by means of the everyday 10-foot gleam," assumed Don Berliner, an police officer at the Maryland- based Provide for UFO Look into.
The Meier fad is crack of a "innocence rash" that is allocation to
devastate ufologists' dependability, assumed one of the men ufologists trouble most, Robert Sheaffer of San Jose, author of "The UFO Present." Sheaffer has ex- posed a selection of famous saucer sightings as hoaxes and misidentifications of nat- ural phenomena. Ufology "isn't buffed yet, but it's dying," he assumed.
Ufologist Jim Speiser cleansing disagrees and accuses Sheaffer of "wish- ful schooling." But he acknowledges that maddening to include scientific gaze as Meier is in the news is "following maddening to get a date such as your quick brother who picks his rummage is always composed particular."
Speiser, of All right Hills, AZ, runs an electronic "zoom secure"
that allows saucer buffs to rap via private computers.
So why on Channel has Atlantic Magazine Rub, one of the nation's most dear publishers, innocently released a book - "Weak Sparkle" by Gary Kinder - that suggests award may be whatever thing to Meier's claims after all? A book whose sources maintain an incarcerated young person molester and a San Jose chemist who tells ghoul stories to plants? A book that, a selection of say, whitewashes what has been called "the most evil hoax in ufology"?
Its a shadowy story that began in the mid-1970's in the verdant hills of Switzerland.
Eduard "Billy" Meier, a one-armed, bushy-bearded grower, taken aback lo- cal country by maxim he had backdrop perceptive contact by means of saucer pi- lots from the Pleiades.
He equally assumed he had photographed and filmed UFOs that resembled hub- caps; tape-recorded their noises, which resembled dependable possessions from old science-fiction films; conversed by means of female UFOnauts, who skilled him cos- mic truths; flew aboard a UFO fashionable space, where he photographed God's
"eye" and the Apollo-Soyuz docking of 1975; and traveled by saucer fashionable the providence, where he saw the what's left of San Francisco after an rout.
But Meier's "evidence" dissolved under following, ufologists say.
Ufologist Spaulding cast-off a airport to translate eclipse details in Meier's photos and, he assumed, detected things holding the "UFOs" aloft - evidence that they were short models overhanging near the camera. As well, critics assumed, the photos of quake-ravaged San Francisco turned out to be copies of an artist's edition from the September 1977 folder of Geo magazine. And in Meier's 8mm movies of UFOs, the objects be in command of drive and forth as bit they were set on fire models bobbing in the breeze.
Yet the Meier story has survived somewhat in the function of of the grueling advocacy of his American backers, the Arizona ufologists Lt. Col. Wendelle Stevens (US Air Force, retired), Tom Welch and Lee and Brit Elders. Sparkle ago, they obtained the suitable internship to see to Meier's photos and other mem- orabilia, threatened to sue one who cast-off the things lacking permis- sion and built a short publishing selling, Origin III. The publishing arm sells books and videocassettes (for as appreciably as $29 apiece) about Meier's adventures.
Now they've landed a appreciably bigger fish: royalties from Kinder's 206- mass book, published May 26th. They're split royalties in compensation for giving Kinder arrival to Meier's photos and other documents.
Significantly secure the release of may be ended by all: Kinder guts proceeds 50 percent of the royalties, moreover the rest guts be pronged among Meier, Stevens, the Elderses and Welch.
Sales suppress precedent "fount well," Kinder assumed. The hit list is in sight, assumed the book's follower, New York publishing whiz-kid Morgan Entrekin, who rewarded Kinder an develop of better-quality than $100,000. Bay Boundary book- store owners say its import to a certain extent.
The book has annoyed an assortment of ufologists who take into account it lends an unde- served shine of honesty to a aggressive hoax, even though Kinder doesn't reach a particular ending about Meier's claims. "Face it, you're in it for the secure the release of following the rest of the writers of come out paranormal lit- erature," Spaulding assumed in a definite phone call to Kinder.
"It's been a real hearing maddening to fend off the absolute UFO communi- ty," joked Kinder, 40. "Give to were times such as I would jingle at Meier and take into account, `He's burn but a pointed con man.' Give to were other times would I would jingle at Meier and take into account, `Here is a unwrap and pleasant strange who has erudite whatever thing far preceding his hint and researcher cap- abilities and is maddening to go down with by means of it.'"
The Elderses say they've traditional menacing post and friend
calls and that Meier has been the extract of numerous massacre at-
tempts. They're not restless by evidence that Meier faked photos of, for typical, the San Francisco earthquake; in fact, they haven't outfit dis- cussed it by means of Meier, Lee Elders assumed. His partner insists that innocently in the function of Meier faked "one or two clothes" doesn't mean all his photos are unsound.
To Lee Elders, the best evidence for Meier's contentions is an analy- sis of metal samples from an reputed UFO. The re-examination was conducted by Marcel Vogel, originally a chemist at an IBM research center in San Jose. In the New York Era Book Disapproval, a unbroken mass ad for "Weak Sparkle" quotes Vogel as maxim the rude handiwork was one "we may perhaps not bump into...
on this planet."
However, the book doesn't indication that Vogel is a very, very imagina- tive guy. In fact, he equally has claimed the achievement to current psych- ically by means of plants.
The 1937 best-selling "Secret Nature of Grass" includes an absolute period on Vogel. In one scrutinize, he attempts to discover whether plants firm by means of electrodes show a physiological effect to "spooky stories."
The book says that at "identifiable points in a story, such as...`Charles bent down and raised the lid of the coffin,' the plant seemed to pay faster at- tention."
Vogel, 70, assumed Meier's UFO movies trusty him the grower had been in contact by means of "a selection of form of extraterrestrial intelligence" However, Vogel doesn't regard the metal samples by themselves as proof of extra- terrestrials in the function of he didn't suppress a lay bare to gossip by means of other experts to come the samples strangely consumed. Vogel add-on that since his plant work of the 1970's, he had founded a perceptive research civilization in San Jose, employed his "emotional transport" to fold spoons and affected the use of crystals to indulgence failure.
"Weak Sparkle" equally quotes organization such as Robert Space, head of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, as saying: "From a camera work bracket, you couldn't see whatsoever that was exploit about the Meier pho- tos... I trial, God, if this is real, this is leaving to be indeed
whatever thing."
Or is it? In an ballot by means of The Party worker, Space recalled that sev- eral years ago, Wendelle Stevens visited him at JPL and requested an ex- mischievous prospect on the pictures. Space acknowledges he was prisoner by the images, but was powerless to perform a scientific re-examination for two reasons: Most basic, he isn't a photo decline but choose the worker of a photo proces- sing lab ("following you proceeds your film to K-Mart", he assumed); and time, the pictures weren't originals but choose copies of originals - possibly outfit copies of copies of copies. Such combination stealing tends to dense deli- cate details, universe it array to detect evidence of cheat - e.g., things at the bottom of hubcaps.
In achieve, such as Space examined a selection of images by means of a magnifying porthole, he realized "a lot of the pictures weren't indeed photographs at all - they were lithographs," or high-resolution ink prints ended from photos - and, consequently, were void for purposes of re-examination. More to the point, the photos were " a lot fuzzier than the bric-a-brac on the lithographs, and I trial that was a quick shadowy."
For that and other reasons, Space began "to take into account, `Nuts, perhaps this guy is innocently a con man.' That's not the awareness of guy I determination to suppress whatsoever to do by means of."
In 1983, Stevens was convicted of young person molestation in Pima Realm, AZ. He is now present time in the Arizona Zone Jail and declined to be interviewed. But he did post The Party worker a secreted phone call in which he assumed a "originate of high officials...suppress in demand a private pin in a selection of of the clothes we were statute, but they may perhaps neither confirm nor state them with permission."
Stevens' conviction triggered a pandemic of paranoia among Meier buffs.
Some phoned Vicki Cooper, editor of California UFO Appraisal in Los Ange- les, and assumed Stevens "was `set up,' that identifiable witnesses were being killed," assumed Cooper, who is not gravelly to Meier's claims. "I was disheartened and disgusted by means of the people I was dialogue to."
"Its a drain out award," she assumed. "VIP conflicts are
rabid in this combat zone...Give to are hoaxers, award are curved people who are claiming outrageous clothes all roundabouts the UFO combat zone.
