Sunday, June 21, 2020

Richard Dolan - Three Strikes, and You're Out!! Strike One - the "UFO Leak of the Century" Collapses


For years now, Richard Dolan has promoted himself as a 'sensible,' or 'thoughtful', or 'conservative' UFO researcher and commentator. How he has gotten away with this branding is puzzling. As I wrote back in 2013 after hearing Dolan speak at the National UFO Congress:

Dolan managed to bring in just about every loopy idea that has come up in recent years: ancient pyramids, crash retrievals, reverse-engineeered alien technology, a "secret space program," alien hybrids, telepathic alien contact, and mind control. Mention this the next time somebody refers to Dolan as a "conservative UFOlogist." The reason for the UFO cover up, he suggested, is because the secret of the UFOs' alien propulsion system threatens petroleum interests, the same claim that Steven Greer makes in the wild conspiracy movie Thrive.
In recent years Dolan has managed to get himself quite tangled up in three major gaffes that completely refute the notion that he is careful or credible in any sense. These are not minor errors or oversights or misquotations, but extended gaffes of colossal magnitude. He has enthusiastically leapt with both feet into making sensational, foolish claims, where wise men fear to tread.


Strike One: Dolan's "UFO Leak of the Century" Collapses


In 2019 Dolan pretty much 'bet the farm' promoting what he called the "UFO Leak of the Century." It's a rather confusing narrative, based on  some leaked notes apparently written by Dr. Eric Davis, after a supposedly clandestine meeting with Admiral Thomas Ray Wilson, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 1999 until 2002. Prior to that Wilson served as Director of Intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Deputy Director of Intelligence for the Joint Chiefs from 1997 to 1999.

Dolan writes,
So what are we talking about?

These are notes by Dr. Eric Davis from October 16, 2002. [uploaded anonymously to imageur on April 19, 2019]

Who is Eric Davis? He is a scientist, but surely qualifies as a very interesting scientist. For many years, during the 1990s, he was a member of the National Institute for Discovery Sciences, which of course was owned by billionaire Robert Bigelow. NIDS was a very important organization back then and brought scientific rigor to many interesting areas of research connected to UFOs and beyond. The mystery of the black triangles, for instance. And most famously the Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, something Davis was very much involved in studying.
Davis is also a close associate of Dr. Hal Puthoff, who owns the scientific company Earthtech. Dr. Puthoff of course has an extensive career in science and the world of intelligence. Along with Russell Targ he developed the protocols for America’s classified remote viewing program in the 1970s and 80s. He is an expert on Zero Point Energy and what is called spacetime metric engineering. Think about that for a moment. And he has also has worked closely with Bigelow on a number of occasions. Plus of course he is an integral member of To the Stars Academy (TTSA).
These notes "were written by Davis in the aftermath of a meeting he had with Wilson in October 2002. They concern a series of events that took place during the spring of 1997, when Wilson was Deputy Director of Intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. What took place during this meeting was a discussion of very great importance. It concerned nothing less than a confirmation of the existence of deeply classified programs to study alien technology. That is, extraterrestrial aliens. Their craft and technology."

Dr. Eric Davis
Dolan writes that according to the leaked notes,
Wilson confirmed that he was able to confirm in June 1997 that “there is such an organization in existence” in relation to “MJ-12/UFO cabal – crashed UFO.” At that time, this is late June 1997, Wilson phoned [Lt. Commander Willard] Miller and apparently told him that yes, he was right. There is such a group, a cabal, that manages the crashed UFO program...

After reading this Wilson laughed and said that he “didn’t tell Miller EVERYTHING,” whatever that means. Then Wilson said “Miller can make good educated guesses on who (contractors) has alien hardware.” Then, “Miller can give good advice on which defense companies to look at – that’s all he knows.”

Clearly, Wilson knew a lot more.

Wilson was also angry that Miller, a fellow Navy officer, betrayed the trust of their conversation by relaying it to Greer and who knows who else. In reality, it doesn’t seem that Miller told many other people. Davis in his note added that Miller only told Edgar Mitchell, who was the one who told Davis about it in 1999. It’s possible that Miller told something to journalist Leslie Kean. At least this is what Wilson believed in his conversation with Davis in 2002.

Wilson was clearly nervous even in talking with Davis and said he was taking a risk just talking with him. And indeed, two decades later, the entire conversation is now out.
Most significant of all, Admiral Wilson allegedly tracked down the defense contractors who were supposedly working on the 'crashed UFO' program. He was reportedly told that he didn't have the necessary clearances to be told about it, even though Wilson was the Director of Intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff!

Edgar Mitchell
It may be of interest that "CE5" Steven Greer and the late astronaut Edgar Mitchell were also involved in this story. Dolan argues, in his own inimitable way, that "It’s will be impossible to debunk this leak as a hoax or fabrication. At most, skeptics might argue that somehow these men were given wrong information. But as you will see, this is also not a credible argument."

But this story/rumor has been kicking around for many years because of Steven Greer and Edgar Mitchell, although the pages uploaded to imageur in 2019 had not been seen before. Nonetheless, there were some obvious "red flags" associated with the story, which should have given pause to anyone who might take it seriously. First, Steven Greer is involved, whose history of promoting UFO absurdities should give pause to any rational person. Second, and more significantly, UFO researcher and blogger Billy Cox interviewed Admiral Wilson back in 2008, and wrote,
A former high-ranking military intelligence official rumored to have been snubbed in his attempts to obtain sheltered UFO data insists he never even bothered to look for it.

“Never,” retired Rear Adm. Thomas R. Wilson replied Tuesday when asked if he’d ever been barred from retrieving classified material, exotic or otherwise, during his career.

Wilson, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was head of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1997 when he agreed to meet at the Pentagon with advocates of UFO declassification. Among them, he confirms, was Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell.

The driving force behind that meeting was North Carolina UFO researcher and emergency-room doctor Steven Greer. Greer founded The Disclosure Project in an effort to grant amnesty to government whistle-blowers willing to violate their security oaths by sharing insider knowledge about UFOs.

At least seven years ago (http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc788.htm), Greer was telling audiences about extracting a pledge from Wilson during that meeting to investigate special access projects involving UFO technology. But shortly thereafter, Greer claimed Wilson reported that he didn’t have the proper security clearance to inspect those files.

As Greer informed a Portland, Ore., audience in 2001, Wilson said, ” ‘I am horrified that this is true. I have been in plenty of black projects, but when we tried to get into this one,’ he was told, and I quote, ‘Sir, you do not have a need to know.’ The head of intelligence Joint Staffs. You don’t have a need to know. Neither did the CIA director, and neither did the president.”

This story has been circulating on the Internet ever since, and made it into Greer’s book “Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge,” last year. But the thing didn’t sprout legs until Mitchell began discussing the meeting during what turned out to be a media blitz in July.

So, Admiral Wilson acknowledged that he had met with Greer and Mitchell back in 1997, but denied their claim that he had been refused access to classified UFO records. And this was known in back in 2008!
“What is true is that I met with them,” Wilson said in a phone interview. “What is not true is that I was denied access to this material, because I didn’t pursue it. I may have left it open with them, but it was not especially compelling, not compelling enough to waste my staff’s time to go looking for it.”
Remember that this refers only to a 1997 meeting, and has nothing to do with any alleged meeting in 2002, which claim had not yet been made.

But back to Billy Cox: After Dolan's big hoopla about the clandestine meeting supposedly taking place in a car in Las Vegas in 2002 between Admiral Wilson and Eric Davis, Cox contacted Wilson again. On June 15, 2020 Cox (who is certainly no "debunker") wrote,
The admiral at the center of controversial notes describing his inability to access a classified UFO research program says the documents are bogus. Furthermore, he says the alleged author of those notes, physicist Dr. Eric Davis, never interviewed him.

“It’s all fiction,” says former Defense Intelligence Agency Director Thomas Wilson, from his home in Virginia. “I wouldn’t know Eric Davis if he walked in right now”....
In his first public statement on Core Secrets, Wilson rejected the entire premise of the meeting and his role in it. The notes indicate that Wilson and Davis rendezvoused in Las Vegas, inside a car attended by three uniformed military personnel, in the parking lot of the Special Projects Building of defense contractor EG&G.

“I’m not saying that sometime, somewhere, I never met (Davis), but I certainly don’t know him, I don’t remember him, and I definitely did not sit with him in a car for an hour in Las Vegas,” Wilson told De Void.

“You may also see in those notes where I came with two other naval officers, a lieutenant and a lieutenant commander, and a petty officer who was driving the car. I was not even in the Navy then. And the Navy was certainly not ferrying me around in a car at that point.

“Those notes are really detailed – it’s like somebody wrote a fiction piece,” Wilson said.
Cox further notes that Davis "has never affirmed or denied his ostensible authorship of Core Secrets when pressed over the past year. He did, however, tell the New York Post in May that the documents were leaked by the estate of the late astronaut and Apollo 14 moonwalker Dr. Edgar Mitchell."

So what is going on here? Did Davis write up the 15 pages uploaded anonymously to imageur to promote a hoax? Did somebody else write them? That seems unlikely, since Davis was given the opportunity to disavow them, but did not.

Perhaps the most interesting suggestion for the origin of these pages comes from John Greenewald, Jr. of The Black Vault. In a Youtube video, Greenewald notes the similarity of the supposed Davis notes to a film script, pointing out that the enormously successful series The X-Files had ended just a few months earlier. From his experience in the film industry, Greenewald offers "my crazy theory" that the Davis papers were written as a scene for a TV or movie script. (Remember that Wilson himself had suggested "it’s like somebody wrote a fiction piece.")  In this view, Davis had sent Mitchell a copy of his notes for a proposed TV series. After Mitchell's death in 2016, somebody with access to his documents anonymously uploaded the proposed script to imageur, presumably  believing it to be factual. I don't think that's such a "crazy idea" at all.

Veteran UFOlogist Kevin Randle has just published his commentary on the Davis/Wilson matter. He notes how a number of prominenet UFOlogists have been attempting to contact Davis about this, but Davis is refusing to answer any questions. Even from the Executive Director of MUFON, Jan Harzan. Randle notes that since Davis was "a consultant to MUFON, you’d think that a response to the Executive Director would be forthcoming." Nope. This looks very, very bad for the credibility of Eric Davis. And of Richard Dolan.




10 comments:

  1. While we're cataloguing Dolan's utter failure to succeed as a competent researcher, that he poses as, these notes of mine regarding UFO report I've specialized in for decades:

    UFOs IN SPACE. What's Going on Up There? Richard Dolan Intelligent Disclosure.
    https://youtu.be/Nidz2VB28Ms
    Streamed live on Apr 2, 2019 50,000 views



    How do Dolan's claims about moon alien evidence get reconciled with this testimony:

    Edgar Mitchell to UFO convention, at time 10:35 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqFVOyXOmvk “I have had no first-hand experience even in the astronaut program, saw nothing on the moon -- no villages no structures etc, like have been claimed, and have had no UFO experiences myself …except for the fact of meeting all these fine research people, …"

    Gordon Cooper didn't hide any NASA space secrets, and on this Russian interview about 60 min in, he describes how he looked over every inch of the Apollo film and saw no sign of any alien activity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJMrU8WCeWY&t=1943s or https://youtu.be/DJMrU8WCeWY

    DOLAN FALLS FOR A FAKE ‘MOON UFO’ STORY
    Dolan transcript 16:02: “ so back in 2005 all right Buzz Aldrin made this crazy statement that the crew of the Apollo 11 mission had seen a UFO on their way to the moon. the next day or the day after that I don't even think it was Buzz I think he had like spokespeople saying oh no these words were taken out of context. Buzz Aldrin did not say such thing and what he actually said I just because if you do a search on Buzz Aldrin UFO Moon today alright you'll get like every single search result is the same the headline there like Washington Post and all the others know Buzz Aldrin didn't see a UFO on the way to the moon they're all like in unison and they often use the same language right so they're obviously yeah they take their up marching orders they get … “

    REALITY CHECK” The Apollo-11 mid-flight UFO story is a classic that requires a lot of technical context to properly assess, here's my stab at it == and critical comments are welcome: http://www.jamesoberg.com/apollo-11-ufo-3.pdf



    [more]


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It sounds like you may have identified Strikes Four, Five, and possibly more. Wow!

      Delete
  2. I had this comment dated 15 June from Hal Puthoff (via email):
    Hi Phillip,

    I have no reason to comment on the authenticity of a document that purports to describe classified USG programs to which I'm not privy.

    Best regards,
    Hal

    Eric Davis added on the same day:

    Hal speaks for me.

    Regards,

    Eric

    Make of these comments what you will. All i asked was if the Wilson 'core secrets' were authentic or not. I asked no questions about their contents.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ah, faith-based UFO research! Know it well from my years with Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs. And from growing up within a strict fundamentalist religion,I do have a degree of empathy for the forces inside true believers of any stripe that drive them to distort and cherry-pick what passes for "data." I get the desire to put a tangible shape and form to a great mystery. But taking the shortcuts (declarations far in excess of the facts, per Dolan, Hopkins, and so many others) blocks all roads to real knowledge. What a damn shame!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It isn't even about research though. The UFO/Conspiracy scene is a business first and foremost and operates AS a business. Truth has nothing to do with it.

      Delete
  4. Something has been "off" with Dolan for some considerable time. I noticed it a few years ago when he was pushing a digitally enhanced version of the alleged Turkish UFO which had already been proven beyond doubt to have been a cruise ship. Then inconvenient comments started vanishing from his channel on other videos with some people getting blocked, notably for including links to Mac Brazel's original statement and Betty and Barney Hill's original account made years after the alleged encounter. Dolen then started to make verbal attacks on people who disagree with him as being "ignorant" and "uninformed" then recently dropped his infamous "motivations don't matter" statement. In short it seems a little coincidental that Richards change and him starting to behave like an ass coincided with someone coming into his life who has great influence. I'm just observing on this point.

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  5. So dis Billy Cox really decline to be on the Dolan discussion yesterday or is that just more absolute rubbish?

    ReplyDelete
  6. IF Richard was not in consort with Putoff, Green, & TTSA, he could reveal the source of the Wilson "Docs". It was Paul Duggan, an Australian friend of Edgar's. Paul priced Edgar's NASA and Apollo memorabilia for auction for the Mitchell Estate.

    ReplyDelete
  7. My thoughts here are that two TV personalities, one "who wants to believe" and a skeptic respectively defend and criticize the use of source material. Source material that has subsequently proved impossible to authenticate. Sad to read that someone is so banned for such a mistake, that they are even taken down by YouTube. A mistake was made, but I really think this is a typical American overreaction ...

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  8. I would like to suggest everyone here to visit this link ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDZEb-GKAJ4&t=1635s ) which is Curt Jaimungal's recent podcast with Richard Dolan. Especially listen to the part where he summarises many of the series of events tied to the Wilson Memo. Just start the video from the 1:20:16 minute mark. The reason why I suggest you do this is because the blog article here suggests the collapse of Richard Dolan's claims regarding the Wilson Memo and to do that, it, the article, cites the comments of Wilson himself on the alleged meeting. This is notably an unpersuasive reference because of the nature of the secrecy of the information held by current or former DIA officers under oath. It should be almost self evident that even if such a meeting between Davis and Wilson took place, that Wilson would deny it in every opportunity. This is just an inference made by looking at the nature of confidentiality within such intelligence offices as the DIA. I also would like to point out that towards the end of the article above, the author claims that it is not a far fetched idea to propose that Eric Davis had just sent these papers to Mitchell as his notes for a TV series. For this I have to say a few things. First, I would like the author of this article to establish a context as to why Eric Davis would send "notes for a TV series" to Edgar Mitchell. Besides, I can't find a proper reason as to why Davis with other members of the NIDS would be so hesitant to make decisive comments if the memos are just notes for a TV series. I am not saying that the Wilson Memos are decisively authentic. I am merely pointing out that while referencing an interview with a former DIA officer or speculating about a minute detail about a subject of mystery, it is important to pay attention tho the statements and behaviours of those who are more or less affiliated with the world of "classified" informations. That way you can get a better idea of how to arrive to conclusions about the testimonies of different people by looking at their backgrounds, the positions they held and their goals respectively.

    ReplyDelete

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