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May 15, 1997 - Art Bell
02:39:51
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Richard C. Hoagland - NASA Coverup
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art bell
East of the Rockies, and you're listening to AM 1500 KSTP.
From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening or good morning as the case may be across all these many time zones, and many they are.
From the Hawaiian and Taishan Island chains in the west, all the way east to the Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin Islands, south into South America, north to the Pole, and worldwide on the internet.
This is Coast to Coast AM, also now in Murfreesboro, Illinois.
Welcome, W-I-N-I, to Coast to Coast AM, 1-6, Tuesday through Saturday, which is what we do here.
Great to have you along.
1420 on the dial in Murfreesboro, Illinois.
We've got a lot of Murfreesboro's with us.
So if I say I want to call from Murfreesboro, it's going to be interesting.
Anyway, good morning.
As promised, because of this big brouhaha generated by Mr. Rosenthal's AP story, Richard Hoagland is here this morning.
We're going to do something a little bit different.
We're going to hold our response, that is to say, my response, Richard Hoagland's response, and the response of somebody who actually talked to Mr. Rosenthal for about 30 minutes earlier in the day, because Richard Hoagland was certainly unable to connect with him.
I was unable to connect with him, but we found somebody who did connect with him and had quite a talk about how he wrote that article and has this gentleman, Lindsay Tackett, has quite a few things to say about his conversation with Miss Rosenthal.
So you might find it very interesting.
Now, if you have not yet seen the infamous Rosenthal article, it is on my website right now, right this very moment.
You may go and see it.
It is at www.artbell.com.
I suspect it's also on Richard's website as well.
My webmaster, the webmaster we share actually for the two websites, Richard's and mine, is very efficient, Keith Rowland.
And so up there it is, and I would receive, I would say, by now, to give you some idea of the amount of coverage, I've got about, oh, easily 100 copies of it from every corner of the nation, including Hawaii, which did it today.
So in a moment, Richard C. Hoagland, and what we are going to do is we're going to lay heavily into the phones, which we normally don't do at the beginning of the program.
So if you have a question or a comment, because so many of you by now would have read this, which is exactly what I was hoping, you'll be able to make your comment to Richard.
So we're going to start with phones.
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All right, now to Manhattan.
He's an Engstrom Science Award winner.
He's a one-time advisor to Walter Cronkitz, who was very much in the mainstream press himself one time.
And was one time a science advisor to NASA, which now I understand has his picture lined up and down the walls of NASA near Houston in memorial.
Richard C. Hogland.
richard c hoagland
Good morning, Ari.
art bell
Good morning, Richard.
Good morning, everyone.
Well, I talked a very great deal last night about this article, Richard, and I sort of wove it into a lot of other complaints I've got about why Americans are becoming so cynical.
And one of the reasons they're getting cynical is because of this sort of article by Harry F. Rosenthal that now has run, as far as I can determine, in nearly every paper in America.
So by now, most would have read it.
How were you notified that this story was breaking?
richard c hoagland
You know, it's interesting because most of the breaking news on our investigation that we get comes to us from the BBC.
When NASA held its, or was going to hold its amazing press conference on life on Mars, the microfossil in the rock last year, I was awakened at something like 8 in the morning by a nice producer for the BBC, first radio and then television, asking me my thoughts on this rumor that NASA had found life on Mars.
Well, needless to say, my little heart jumped and went pitty-past.
art bell
Yeah, I bet it did.
richard c hoagland
And we spent a lot of time checking this out.
We call science and whatever, but the heads up came from England, from the BBC.
The same thing happened a couple, three days ago.
The phone rang, and they faxed it to us from England.
It was moving on the wires, and that's how we got our notice that another shot across the bow had taken place.
art bell
I find it a little strange, indeed, more than a little strange, Richard, that you would be notified of these things by the BBC.
Now, what kind of pipeline do they have, either to NASA or to the American press, that CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC would not have?
richard c hoagland
Well, you know that old expression, a prophet is not without honor save in his own country?
We're taken far more seriously in Europe, in the Soviet Union, in Japan, in Africa, in Australia than we are here.
This investigation is being followed very closely around the world.
And the BBC is like the grand dame of news agencies.
And they're on the job.
And we have producers who are following our work, who give us heads up on various things.
I had one of them call me this afternoon, actually solicitously asking me how the program went last night.
Because while you were on the air here, we were doing the BBC all over the world in response to Mr. Rosenthal.
We've been called and asked to do a program called All Night, which runs literally all night and all day because the old British Empire is everywhere.
And the producer who arranged it called me back today to ask me how I thought the program went, which of course they don't do here.
And in the process of asking me this, this individual happened to say that there were two researchers out of Oxford, I believe, who have written a book that he thought was very relevant to Tom Van Flandern's model and my discussions reasonably using Hubble to photograph Hale Bob.
And he wanted to know if I knew about that.
I mean, can you imagine an American producer being academic enough to recognize a work of scholarship that might be relevant to the bigger problem and then calling a guest back to make sure they knew that this work was out there?
unidentified
It's kind of nice.
art bell
I think I'd like to read you something, Richard, and then we'll get to the phones.
Quotes concerning controlled news.
John Swinton, the former chief of staff of the New York Times, called by his peers the dean of his profession, was asked in 1953 to give a toast before the New York Press Club.
And here is what he said.
After reading it, think about what he said.
He said, quote, there is no such thing at this date of the world's history in America as an independent press.
You know it and I know it.
Now remember, folks, this is the guy talking to his peers.
There is no such thing as an independent press.
You know it and I know it.
There is not one of you, not one, that dares to write his honest opinions.
And if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.
I'm paid weekly for keeping my opinions out of the paper I'm connected with.
Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things.
And any of you who would be so foolish as to write an honest opinion would be out on the streets looking for another job.
If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before 24 hours my occupation would be gone.
The business of journalists is to destroy truth, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread.
You know it, and I know it.
And what folly is this toasting an independent press?
We're tools and vessels for rich men behind the scenes.
We're jumping jacks.
They pull the strings and we dance.
Our talents, our possibilities in lives are all the property of other men.
We are intellectual prostitutes.
Richard M. Cohen, senior producer of CBS Political News, said, quote, we are going to impose our agenda on the coverage by dealing with issues and subjects that we choose.
Richard Salante, former president of CBS News, quote, our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.
Now, those are All quotes.
And by the way, that piece, which is entitled Quotes Concerning the Controlled News, is right now on my website.
And I really thought it should be so that it kind of frames the discussion that we're about to have.
But is that not amazing?
John Clinton, the former chief of staff of the New York Times?
What do you think of that, Richard?
richard c hoagland
Well, it's sad, but unfortunately, it is incredibly true.
I worked, as you know, for Richard Salan.
He was the president of CBS News when I was advising Cronkite.
And I remember some very interesting and vigorous conversations for this, at that time, young kid of 22, 23, who came into CBS very naive.
I mean, I thought I was in the world's most prestigious news organization, Edward R. Murrow.
I was surrounded by these giants.
I used to drink with Eric Severide and, of course, worked with Walter.
And I mean, I was in awe, as one would be, until I started interacting with the producers behind these giants.
And what I discovered, much to my sadness, which is why I'm not in network news anymore, is that the correspondents basically no longer were able to function as correspondents during World War II that had built their giant reputations.
That they basically were handled, they were managed, and they were trotted out in many cases by producers who you never got to see, who you don't even know that they exist, and that these people literally, during those years of the 60s into the 70s, managed the news and felt that they had the power to manage the news every night on CBS, NBC, and ABC, which were the only networks that we had in those days.
This is before cable, before CNN, before MSNBC, before the internet, before this explosion of alternative media, which has come to us just in time, I think, to save civilization.
I got into some very severe fights because I ran into head-on producers who had an outright bias against the very reason that I had been hired by CBS, which was to advise, you know, the special events unit and to advise Cronkite on the science of going to the moon.
I remember at one point I tried to get a guest, an industrialist named Neil Rusik, who had written an elegant book, an incredibly elegant book called Where the Winds Are All Asleep.
It's a quote from a famous poem.
And the book was about the industrial usages of the moon.
The idea that to protect the Earth's environment, at some point, we might wish to move some industries to the lunar surface and utilize the vacuum and sunlight and the resources of the moon and basically create a technological revolution in space that would remove some of these things from the biosphere.
art bell
Oh, one thing is for sure.
You couldn't pollute the moon there.
richard c hoagland
That's right.
And of course, this was before we have discovered there were things on the moon built not by us, but by somebody that came before.
How naive we were in those days.
Anyway, so I went to this one producer who worked very closely with Cronkite, and I attempted to get her, and it was a her, I will make that point clear, to basically simply put this guy on as a guest.
And I remember I got into the most incredible fight, and it politically really did me damage early on because it was her opinion that the moon was irrelevant to the human condition, that Apollo was a complete waste of time and money,
John Kennedy's vision was nothing but a political pandering to the masses who were into the Cold War, that there was nothing useful to be gained from the space program, and that it would be against humanity to put this guy on claiming that we're going to someday use the moon and it had any possible relevance at all.
And I'm standing in this person's office, and I'm listening to this, and I'm saying, wait a minute, this is a point of view that should be represented.
This guy, he's got credentials, he's done his homework, he runs a journal which has engineers and scientists and scholars that are looking into these things.
We should put him on the air because he's not just somebody from Boughepsie in a garage and has a couple of ideas.
He has a credible following.
He's done his homework.
He's running a magazine devoted to the technological application of space to the human condition.
This producer would not hear of it because in her mind, in her prejudice, it was irrelevant.
And if she put him on the air, she'd be giving him a platform to spread his heresy.
art bell
So they decide what is heresy.
richard c hoagland
Yeah, and that, of course, made me her bitter enemy and vice versa for my entire tenure.
It was a very interesting, eye-opening experience because when Spiro Agnum, who of course I'm not going to carry water for, when he was in Chicago and gave that speech in 68 or 69, somewhere in that timeframe, about the neighboring nabobs of negativism,
I actually could resonate with some of what he was saying because I was on the inside seeing day by day how these people literally managed what Americans got to saw each night, their view of reality.
There was another example which was really an eye-opener for me.
We were sitting around in Bob Wesler's office.
He was the executive producer of special events.
And we were discussing.
We had correspondents who had come all the way back from Tokyo.
The Bureau Chief of Tokyo had flown in because we were assembling this cracked team to run 42 hours non-stop when the astronauts landed on the moon in Apollo 11.
We were going to be on the air around the clock all over the world, hundreds of cameras, thousands of technicians and correspondents, and I mean, literally this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity covered by CBS News, Edward R. Murrow's legacy.
And we were sitting around, it was on a Sunday afternoon, and Wessler had broken out some scotch, and we were sitting there, kind of some of us, you know, perched on chairs, some on the floor, and just kind of kicking around the outlines of what we were going to do.
And one of the first things we were trying to figure out is what we were going to call this 42 hours of epic coverage.
So at one point, somebody proposed that we call it the epic journey of Apollo 11.
Kind of straightforward, right?
The producer, who had come all the way back from Japan, was sitting on the floor, propped up against the couch.
He said, wait a minute, we can't do that.
How do we know it's an epic journey?
And this is what I cut my eye teeth on in network news.
You understand now why I say that I learned so much more than I imparted in those years, that I was, in essence, preparing for this kind of battle, which is a battle for intellectual honesty, not prejudice, not bias, not a perspective, a point of view, a managed version of reality, but trying to find out what reality really is?
art bell
Yes, I do.
Let's go to the phones very quickly, and let's take a bunch of fast calls.
And then at midnight, we will open up on the Rosenthal matter.
Our wildcard line, you're on the air with Richard C. Hoagland.
Hello.
unidentified
Mr. Bell.
This is Robert in the San Joaquin Valley.
art bell
Hello, Robert.
unidentified
Good evening, sir.
Mr. Hoagland.
richard c hoagland
Yes, sir.
unidentified
It's a pleasure to speak to you again, sir.
richard c hoagland
Thank you.
unidentified
I would like to say quickly first before my two questions that long after these mud slingers are long gone and forgotten, the tens of millions of people that respect you, sir, that admire you, you will go on.
And as Mr. Bell would agree, even on the show, many people are referring to you as the Galileo of this century.
richard c hoagland
Well, thanks.
You know what really struck me about last night, and I must admit that I did stay up and listen because I'm working on the follow-up Hail-Bot paper that I'm going to try to post on the web in the next week or so.
What struck me is the Democratic spirit is alive and well in America.
I'm really very heartened by this whole experience because I don't take Harry Rosenthal all that serious.
Harry Rosenthal doesn't speak for me, and he doesn't obviously speak for a lot of Americans who are wanting to find out.
They really want to know.
And the thing that struck me, because you don't screen calls, Art, and last night it was even more difficult.
Even if you'd wanted to, you had those television cameras looking over your shoulders.
unidentified
That's right.
richard c hoagland
What we got to hear last night was a cross-section of real people expressing their real opinions and their real curiosity.
And they're not going to let Harry Rosenthal and people like him simply cut off their access to the search.
art bell
Well, we are going to tend to that tonight.
Caller and Richard Holdtight, we're at the bottom of the hour.
We really are going to get into this in great depth this morning because the implications go far beyond a hit piece written about Richard Hoagland far beyond that.
It goes to the very essence of what the American press is all about yesterday and today.
What does that mean for America?
I'll leave that one up to you.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
We'll be right back.
I can't say goodbye.
I can't say goodbye.
Thank you.
Art Bell is taking calls on the wildcard line at 702-727-1295.
That's 702-727-1295.
First-time callers can reach Art Bell at 702-727-1222.
702-727-1222.
Now, here again, Art Bell.
art bell
Once again, here I am.
Good morning.
It's going to be a heavy telephone morning, and we don't do a lot of that with Richard, but this morning we are going to do so.
After the top of the hour, we're going to talk to a man named Lindsey Thackett, who's the only one we know who got through to Mr. Rosenthal all day long, had about a 30-minute conversation with him.
And again, you might be sitting there saying, well, yeah, you know, they blasted Richard.
So what?
What's the big deal?
Well, the big deal goes to journalistic integrity.
It goes to what's happening to journalism in America.
It goes to what you hear and what you see and what you read every day and whether people are telling you the truth or whether you're reading somebody's agenda.
Now, look, I do a talk show, and I make no pretense about it.
I've got lots of agendas lots of times, and I come at you with specific things and with opinions.
However, when you read something in a newspaper, when you see it on the evening news, you have a reasonable right to expect that what you're seeing is objective, investigative, informed journalism.
In other words, the straight story.
And that is not what you always receive here.
I mean, you get opinions here.
But when you read news, I think you have a right to expect that it reasonably resembles the facts.
And so why is it important?
That's why.
And so we'll be back to Richard Hoagland and caller in a moment.
9-4255.
Once again, Richard C. Hoagland and a caller.
You're both back on the air.
Caller, you said you had a couple of questions.
unidentified
Yes, sir.
Mr. Bell?
art bell
Yes.
unidentified
First of all, I wanted to say that I have heard recently when you mentioned some 15 million people listened to your show, there have been other estimates of 30 to 40 million, sir.
And a gentleman said the other night that they consider your program Radio Free America.
We have a tremendous appetite for truth, and We are not stupid and we hear the truth on your program.
And, Mr. Hoagland, I've got three quick things I'd like to say, sir.
Okay.
First of all, I'm curious, if I'm not being too personal, what's the C represent?
richard c hoagland
It represents Charles.
unidentified
Thank you.
art bell
Charles?
richard c hoagland
I never use it.
art bell
Thank you for asking that question, Carler.
I'll always remember Charles.
unidentified
And what is your birth date, sir?
richard c hoagland
In April.
Do you want the exact date?
unidentified
The day, please.
richard c hoagland
April 25th.
unidentified
We'd like to remember you on your birthday, sir.
My final question, if I may ask.
Because of the past, I've listened to all of the programs in which you spoke on.
Do you feel that the cover-up is because of embarrassments and people concerned about their futures?
Or do you think it's because of secrecy and what lies ahead?
richard c hoagland
Both.
There are layers.
This is like an onion.
Harry Rosenthal is not in on the cover-up.
Harry Rosenthal is a guy doing a job who is, you know, we rub shoulders with folks that he admires and, you know, likes to pall around with and is best buddies with.
And when they call him up and ask him to do something, he does it because they're authority figures.
They represent truth, justice, and the American way.
And they know how to pull hairy strings.
The folks that are really the villains in this piece is not Harry Rosenthal.
I am not mad at Harry Rosenthal.
Harry Rosenthal, as you'll hear later, has some problems.
He's not checked lately with what it is internally to be a journalist.
Why you start out with a pencil and a typewriter wanting to write about truth about what's really going on.
He is merely a minor player in a much bigger problem, which is people inside who are manipulating the Harry Rosenthals of the world, getting them to do their dirty work while they get away scot-free.
Those are the people we have to be concerned about.
art bell
All right.
Let's see.
First time color line, you're on the air with Richard Charles Hoagland.
Oh, God.
unidentified
Hello there.
Okay.
This is Ms. Silico from Seattle.
art bell
Yes.
unidentified
I listen to you on KOMO.
Yes.
Okay.
Hello, Mr. Hoagland.
richard c hoagland
Good morning.
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
It's the first time I've gotten to speak to you, and I'm really honored.
I wanted to ask you three things, and I'll do it real quick because I know there's a lot of people that want to talk to you, but Art, you know, last night when you, I wanted to let you know that I really admire you because last night you went in defense of Richard Hoagland, and I think that's wonderful.
art bell
Well, look, it's a defense of the truth.
As much as I like Richard, I didn't come to his defense specifically.
I simply know what the truth is because I'm involved in this story.
Kind of like the Heaven's Gate thing.
I've had two very strong lessons now about what the Associated Press specifically does with a story.
And so I'm concerned about more than just my hide or Richards.
I'm concerned about the state of journalism and truth as to whether or not we're getting it.
Anyway, go ahead.
unidentified
Yes, yes.
And Mr. Holroom, the only problem I see with you is it says you're not asleep.
But that was a compliment.
Three things, Cydonia and The Face on Mars.
I've been reading a book.
It's nothing in this book is true, but it's exactly how things are by Bob Frissel.
And he talks about secret government, rich people that actually have a colony on Mars.
And that's why they don't really care about the rest of the people because they already have something kind of like, what is the word?
Their ultimate goal is to, or they're able to travel to Mars.
They're trying to make a colony there.
Second thing, I'm going through this real fast and then you can respond to it.
Second thing is I'm reading, I read a book on the Montauk project that they were doing experiments on weather changes and affecting the weather.
And then last week on Strange Universe, they had a segment on mind control and art last night when you were talking about world evolving and about possible consequences of the cynicism, maybe anarchy.
Well, maybe a way of controlling the people is through mind control.
So I'm wondering, Mr. Hoaglin, if you have any sense of this or what your opinion is.
art bell
All right, of mind control.
Well, if 90% of the American people sit down and watch the evening news and they get an agenda instead of the truth, their minds are being controlled.
So to that degree, we have mind control.
Would that be right, Richard?
richard c hoagland
Well, let me give you an example of what I call inadvertent mind control on the Heavensgate thing, you know, since obviously I've been now linked to it.
What I did was on our show, raise the question, which I had not heard anyone else in any media coverage, in any interview situation, raise, which is, how do we really know these people committed suicide?
And I did that because I just wanted to inject a note of questioning into a set of assumptions.
Everyone covering the story assumed that these people would do what they did in the way that they did it.
And yet when I was looking at the interviews with members of this group, and I don't even want to call it a cult because I think that's a very pejorative.
These people had sincerely held beliefs.
Nichelle Nichols, who was a friend of mine, her brother died in this scenario.
And we need to respect those people for being people, first and foremost.
art bell
Richard, I have no idea where they are right now.
richard c hoagland
Anyway, my point was this.
If you don't ask questions, if you don't go against the standard wisdom, you never learn anything.
So I asked the question and opened myself up, obviously, to the accusation that somehow I am linked.
You know, this investigation is somehow linked to this particular group of individuals.
art bell
Yes, Richard, but I said clearly last night, Richard, that you had had nothing to say about Heaven's Gate prior to the event.
What you said came long after the event.
There is no way you could be connected to the event itself, period.
richard c hoagland
No, but in Time magazine, before we even talked about it, before I raised the question, I was linked directly.
art bell
I know.
richard c hoagland
And then AP is linking me directly.
Now, what I said about the whole Heavensgate incident was if one, in fact, was trying to create a scenario where this comet and the questions around it would be submerged under noise, under distraction, you could not have done a better job.
And that model is affirmed by what Mr. Rosenthal has done this week.
We're not talking about the substance of Van Clandern or the observations, or is NASA taking data, or why don't we have other data on the web?
We're talking about the political response to a set of accusations which are specious and creating nothing but noise.
art bell
Let's talk for a second about facts.
You did speak with Harry Rosenthal.
unidentified
Yes.
art bell
All right.
In the context of that conversation, you raised the opportunity for him to speak with the man himself, Tom Van Flanderen, who is the guy who's saying why it is important that we take photographs of a comet hailbox before it's gone.
And he responded, in what way?
richard c hoagland
He was totally uninterested in talking to Tom.
art bell
Didn't want to talk to him?
richard c hoagland
He said categorically, I don't want to talk to Tom.
I just want to talk to you.
I don't care about what Van Flandern thinks.
And his typewriter was going in the background, and he was taking down quotes as I was speaking about the larger context of the problem.
Namely, here's an interesting scientific puzzle.
This set of observations could define whether Tom's model is correct.
Why don't we have Hubble data?
And he took all that down, and it was reduced, as you saw in the recycled version of the story, to one paragraph, where I basically was talking about the infrared camera and how it could have given us good information.
But he did not want to talk to a key principal on the issue of the science.
Yet, he's talking with NASA about what should be a scientific problem.
art bell
Nor did he attempt to talk to any of the principals before the initial article, correct?
richard c hoagland
No, he did not call me.
He didn't call you.
He certainly didn't call Tom.
The actual mechanism whereby he got these facts and decided to do a story is very murky.
I'm hoping that Mr. Tackett can clear that up from his conversation.
art bell
Well, that'll be coming up after the top of the hour.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Richard Hoagland.
unidentified
Hi.
Oh, what a pleasure it is to be able to speak to you.
This is Jeff calling from Cleveland, Ohio.
art bell
Hi, Jeff.
unidentified
Jeff?
I just wanted to mention to you, Art, quickly, that your show has been more than entertainment for me.
In fact, a lot of it's been internalized, and I appreciate your ability to present this type of show.
Thank you.
Even so much as to say that I've seen people walking around with Mel's Holes t-shirts.
In Cleveland?
In Cleveland, Ohio.
I consider it quite a double honor to even speak to Mr. Hoagland.
Of all your guests that I've listened to, I would have to say Mr. Hoagland has been one that has been more than of obvious entertainment value, but of true science value, which being in the science field myself, I consider very valuable.
art bell
All right.
unidentified
My question I have quickly, which was almost, I guess, basically answered a couple callers ago, but I'd like to maybe reword it.
This journalistic disinformation that seems to be spreading throughout the country, Mr. Albone, do you feel that it's specifically pointed by, say, an American government, or is it a New World order that is trying to incite the paranoia in all of us?
Or is it any specific group that you can think of?
art bell
Or is it simple elitism, Richard?
In other words, what's behind it?
richard c hoagland
Well, as you know, we have cast a very wide net in this investigation.
We started out very narrowly focused on is there stuff on Mars?
And then we broadened it.
Is there stuff on the moon?
Then we broadened it to, well, has anybody known about this stuff?
Or is it just there in the data and no one noticed?
And then we broadened it to, okay, who has been hiding this stuff from us?
Then we broadened it to, oh my gosh, there is a very curious pattern in the landings in Apollo, which turns out to have ritual significance in certain secret society traditions.
What is that doing in a scientific organization?
And so we had to broaden it again.
I don't know where the broadening is going to stop.
I don't know who to blame yet, because I'm trying to do it by the numbers.
I'm trying to stay grounded in a real process of figuring it out.
Now, if you'd asked me five years ago, was there a group or groups involved?
I would have said, no, of course not.
If you'd asked me two years ago, were there groups involved?
I would have said, yeah, they're probably government, all right?
Now, I'm not so sure we're dealing with governments.
I think we're dealing with ad hoc secret society relationships and transnational memberships and agendas that are extraordinarily ancient and old.
And the veneer of modern society is, in fact, in terms of these questions, just that.
It's the veneer.
And there are people manipulating honest folks who are working for agencies that we recognize or government bureaus or even nations that we recognize who, in fact, don't even know that their agendas are being set and manipulated by people behind the scenes.
art bell
Well, two callers ago, Richard, a man, as his first question, you will recall, said, are we already on Mars?
Have we already been back to the moon?
Are we traveling to these places that we only dream about traveling to now in years future?
Are we already doing it now?
richard c hoagland
My honest answer is, I don't know.
My suspicion is, and this is going to be a little complicated, but follow the logic here.
If we had that capability, which is basically out of Bill Cooper, all right?
We were on Mars in 62 or something.
If a group of elite people using hyperdimensional physics and technology and spaceships and all that had been out there already, we would never have gotten to see any of the NASA data that we've seen.
They simply would have vacuumed it before it ever reached the archives.
So by that logic, no, we're not.
Because if we'd been, we never would have been allowed to view what's really there.
art bell
I tend to agree with that.
Now, do we have technology that is not publicly known?
I think the answer to that is probably clearly absolutely yes.
richard c hoagland
I think is a provisional yes.
I'm working hard on the analysis of this SDS-80.
My colleagues and I are really putting effort into it.
We're going to provide a video that everybody can get access to.
We're going to give you a preview copy art so that you can kind of describe your impressions of the analysis before anybody else.
I think that's fair.
art bell
And you're probably yet a couple of weeks away.
richard c hoagland
At least, at least, because we have to do it correct.
We have, as you now know, enemies out there who are looking for us to make any misstep, certainly in terms of technical fact.
art bell
Richard Hogland with enemies?
Welcome to the Rockies.
You're on the air with Richard C. Hobland.
unidentified
Hi.
Hi, Art.
Hi, Mr. Hogund.
This is Mike calling from Willits, California.
I must say it's truly a pleasure to speak with both of you.
I wanted to bring up a couple of things that were talked about last night regarding the cynicism as a result of the way the media has really been yanking us around.
And when you put it to the point that you compared it to finding out that Santa Claus doesn't exist and the way we feel when we hear this kind of betrayal.
And what I feel is that not only does Santa Claus exist, but he's really not such a nice guy and doesn't really care about the boys and girls.
And he's got like this little group of shadow elves that are ready to ruin your life if you try to see if he really doesn't exist.
But I certainly appreciate the work that both of you are doing and causing us to think and use our minds.
And it's just really a pleasure to hear you every night and run these ideas around in our heads.
It can get so tedious with working with the sleepers and the normals that we all work around every day and that we live around.
And it's just really a pleasure to have.
richard c hoagland
Well, remember what my mom says.
Remember what I've been saying on our show for some time.
If this physics that we've been looking at is real, you can project and predict that as the months and years unfold, people are going to wake up.
There's going to be more and more questioning.
The rows and falls of the world cannot just write whatever they want and have people just roll over and accept it.
And we're seeing that in all kinds of other so-called real-world examples, not the least of which is the events going on around the trial in Oklahoma and in Denver regarding Oklahoma City.
I was struck today by something so incongruous that it really is making me look at this in a different light.
It turns out that the FBI, the lab that of course is going to be vilified by the defense, reported today, if I'm remembering correctly, it's been a busy day on our front, that there are no fingerprints of McVeigh on any of the documents or the key or the truck.
art bell
That's correct.
unidentified
Now, this is astonishing news.
richard c hoagland
This is absolutely, you know, front page, stop the presses.
art bell
Well, it may be.
Now, you know, fingerprints can be wiped off.
So it is possible Mr. McVeigh wiped off the fingerprints.
You've got to imagine that to be possible.
But you are correct.
They reported today, and they had to admit that they had found no fingerprints whatsoever.
However, there is a lot of other evidence, Richard, pointing to Mr. McVeigh that has been unveiled very efficiently.
So anyway, listen, stand by.
The top of the hour is coming.
We are going...
Richard, get out the...
I think the way to do it is get out the article by Rosenthal, and we'll read it at the top of the hour and go from there.
All right.
We'll be right back.
This is CBC.
unidentified
St. Paul, Minneapolis.
The End Call our bell.
Toll-free.
West of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
1-800-618-8255.
East of the Rockies at 1-800-825-5033.
1-800-825-5033.
This is the CBC Radio Network.
art bell
That is who we are.
My guest is Richard C. Hopeland.
Coming up shortly is Lindsey Tackett.
Lindsey is in Cleveland, and he's one of the only people we know of who actually got to speak to Mr. Rosenthal today.
So it should be quite revealing.
In a moment, I'm going to let Richard actually read the Rosenthal article for you, because I know that a lot of you have not yet read it.
It's on my website and in just about every newspaper across America.
And so we'll get to all of that here in a moment, and I think you'll understand why I'm considering this to be important.
And again, not because a shot has been taken at me, really it wasn't even in that article, or because some shots were taken at Richard Copeland, but because we've got freedom of the press, and apparently we've got a lot more.
We've got a press with an agenda.
And if that is true, then that's big, important news.
Somebody mentioned mind control last hour, and usually that conjures up visions of helmets and machines sucking out information from your mind and putting information in.
Well, that's not the kind of mind control we're talking about.
If your information sources are not accurate, or if they have an agenda, then they are, in effect, controlling your mind, aren't they?
So it's a very, very serious topic that goes far beyond my hide, Richard's hide, anybody's hide.
It's accuracy.
It's whether or not we're getting real information.
And if we're not, that's very serious.
4627.
That's 1-800-557-4627.
You've got nothing to lose but the facts.
All right, now, Ingstrom Science Award winner, advisor to NASA, and, of course, Walter Cronkite at one time.
Here is the main subject of the article by Mr. Rosenthal that virtually appeared in every paper in the country.
Richard C. Hoagland.
Richard, would you do me a grand favor, Richard?
I read the AP article to the audience early on in the show yesterday, so a lot of people would not have heard it.
I presume you have it handy.
richard c hoagland
I have it in front of me, yes.
art bell
All right.
Would you please read what virtually has appeared all across the country, with, I might add, some modification along the way?
richard c hoagland
This is actually his revised version as of 6.57 Tuesday evening.
art bell
All right.
richard c hoagland
After he had talked to me, he added one additional paragraph.
art bell
I see.
richard c hoagland
The title is NASA Bop's Hail Bop Plot Theory by Harry F. Rosenthal, Associated Press Writer, Tuesday, May 13th, 1997.
Dateline, Washington.
The latest but not the last word on Comet Hailbop is that the space agency is being accused of a cosmic cover-up.
What are you afraid of telling us, demanded one irate citizen.
Accusations that NASA refused to photograph the comet with the Hubble Space Telescope started arriving not long after 39 Heavensgate cultists in California killed themselves in expectation they would catch a ride on a UFO they believe was trailing the comet.
Some of the messages had a nasty tone, and all of them demanded that the space agency use Hubble to get pictures of the departing Halebop and publish them.
NASA's answer?
It has done both.
The controversy began after lecturer Richard C. Hoagland was interviewed on a syndicated radio program.
In the past, Hoagland has claimed to have seen a face carved on a mile-wide rock on Mars and a glass dome and other huge structures in pictures taken on the moon.
Quote, it has come to my knowledge that those in charge of the Hubble telescope have either not taken detailed pictures of the Hale-Bob comet or taken the pictures and denied doing so, wrote one citizen.
Quote, what is happening?
What are you afraid of finding out?
What are you afraid of telling us?
Most of us who are interested in this stuff are adults and can take it.
NASA provided a sampling of the memos at the request of the Associated Press after deleting the identity of the senders.
Quote, these accusations are totally false, NASA said in a letter to Art Bell, host of the syndicated radio show who had interviewed Hoagland.
Quote, Hubble has been used to observe Halebop a number of times since 1995, and the images have been widely available on the internet and have been in the news.
Indeed, the two NASA Halebop computer sites had 4,500 images, not all from Hubble, in mid-April when sighting of the comet was at its peak.
It is now on its way back into deep space, not to return for 2,500 years or so.
Ed Weiler, chief Hubble scientist, wrote Bell that most of the major discoveries about the comet were made with ground-based observatories and other spacecraft.
He pointed out that Hubble's spectrograph was not yet operational and that the angle at which the comet could be photographed put the telescope in danger of being blinded and ruined by the sun.
Hoagland took issue with the response, quote, a simple set of superb high-resolution hail-bopp images from Hubble would have been a profound legacy for 20th century science.
Instead, we have excuses, he said.
Asked on Tuesday what he thinks might have motivated NASA, Hoagland suggested Hubble's infrared capabilities might have upset conventional thinking of the last 35 to 40 years about what comets and asteroids are.
Quote, this represented an extraordinary opportunity, he said.
It could have given us incredible science.
For some reason, NASA seems to have blown it.
The letters came to NASA mostly by facts.
Quote, what are you hiding?
Maybe a full-scale investigation is in order, said one handwritten fax to NASA Administrator Daniel Golden.
Quote, I request, no, I demand you utilize the Hubble telescope, said another, addressed to Dr. Goldman, director, NASA, a public-funded agency.
There was a demand that Hubble be, quote, publicly focused on the comet.
One letter referring to the Heaven's Gate cult and its leader said that Richard Hoagland expects that, quote, you'll be able to get pictures of Marshall Applewhite and Heaven's Gate arriving at the alien spaceship located by the comet.
So if you know what's good for you.
art bell
Now, I have pretty good recollection of most of our conversations, and there have been many, Richard.
Was there any point where you ever said that you expected to be able to get pictures of Marshall Applewhite and company arriving at the alien spaceship located behind the comet?
richard c hoagland
Of course not.
In fact, as you may note, back when that whole controversy about companions and all that, you and I had a conversation and I proposed that you invite Tom Van Flandern to actually discuss the real interesting mysteries of Hailbop, which had to do with natural companions, natural satellites.
art bell
Even after all of the blue haha, the suicides and all the rest of it, there was never one instance.
richard c hoagland
Oh, of course not.
I mean, this is absolutely trash journalism.
This is journalism with an agenda because I don't know where Rosenthal could have gotten this fact.
None of the listeners to your show, I would almost be willing to bet not one listener would have written a fact like that.
And I am extremely suspicious because early in the piece, he says, and I'll quote again, NASA provided a sampling of the memos at the request of the Associated Press after deleting the identity of the senders.
Now, in Journalism 101, when you get anonymous documents, the first thing you're supposed to ask is as to the authenticity of the documents.
Faxes are extremely nondescript.
Fax paper comes by the mile, all right?
Fax printers all tend to look the same.
Fax headings can be deleted.
For all we know, NASA could have handed Mr. Rosenthal a whole bunch of faxes that they made up.
art bell
Well, that's true.
richard c hoagland
They had no way, and he had no way, and what I find really interesting is he never asked, can I get to see these people?
Can I call them and ask them if, in fact, this is their view.
art bell
Well, that's a very good point.
Very good point.
All right.
You spoke with Mr. Rosenthal one time after the initial story broke.
richard c hoagland
Well, after the BBC called me, I, of course, picked up the phone and I called Rosenthal, and I was rather surprised that he answered the phone.
We had about a half-hour conversation.
Harry seems to talk in half-hour chunks of time.
He claimed he had to rush off to his wedding that night, so I obviously didn't want to press the point.
And he didn't want to talk to Tom.
He didn't want to talk about the science.
He said, I'm not competent to talk about the science.
So my question parenthetically is, then why is he writing this at all?
art bell
Indeed.
richard c hoagland
He said, I'm only interested in the faxes.
But he only, as you're going to hear from our friend in a few minutes, he's only interested in a certain variety of the faxes.
That is interesting new news.
art bell
All right, indeed, because somebody just sent me this.
It says, hi, Art.
I don't think anybody should be so upset about what Mr. Rosenthal wrote.
He was just quoting a letter somebody had sent to NASA.
That's from Brian.
Now, why is it important to be calling Mr. Rosenthal in the Associated Press on this article?
Why is it important?
According to Brian, all he did was quote a letter someone sent to NASA.
Why is it important, Richard?
richard c hoagland
Well, because A, we don't know that these are real letters, first of all, because they're totally anonymous.
And second, the first rule of journalists, the first rule is to check your sources.
My problem over the years has been when I have tried to get people to look at NASA and to raise the specter of a possible agenda, not by the whole agency, but by certain individuals within.
The first question I get is, but Richard, why would they do it?
What's their motive?
Followed by, but there's no reason for them to lie.
There's nothing to hide.
Every other government agency, when a reporter is called and given documents, the first thing the reporter does is to ask as to the authenticity of the documents.
In this case, apparently Mr. Rosenthal was satisfied because he was told that these were faxes coming in and they were, you know, connecting us in terms of...
Well, that's a good question.
art bell
It certainly is.
Now, let's turn, Richard, for a second to the one man who has talked to Harry Rosenthal now, yesterday, in most time zones, earlier in the day.
His name is Lindsay Thackett.
Lindsay?
unidentified
Hi, Art.
Hi, Richard.
art bell
Hello there.
unidentified
Hi.
It's Tackett, T-A-C-T.
art bell
Tackett.
unidentified
Right.
art bell
Lindsay Tackett, T-A-C-K-E-T-T, right?
unidentified
Right.
art bell
And you're in Cleveland.
unidentified
Cleveland, right.
Cleveland, Ohio.
art bell
All right.
So you called Mr. Rosenthal, what, late today or something?
unidentified
I called him at about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, probably exactly 5, 5, 12 in the afternoon today.
art bell
All right.
unidentified
This afternoon, or actually yesterday now, afternoon.
And I didn't call him per se because I didn't even know who wrote the article because I was hearing bits and pieces from your show, and then I forgot his name.
So I went to, on the American line, I went to your website, and then I went to Richard's website, and then I saw his name, Harry Frozenthal, and then I wrote his name down, then I called up the science writer at the Washington Post, and lo and behold, his booth, or however it's set up, was right next to Harry's.
richard c hoagland
Wait a minute.
Linda, let me stop you there.
unidentified
Yes, sir.
richard c hoagland
You called the Washington Post?
unidentified
Oh, the Washington AP office, whatever it was.
They're not at all.
richard c hoagland
Rosenthal works for the AP.
It does not work for the Post.
unidentified
Right.
At the Washington Bureau, it is?
richard c hoagland
Yeah, it would be the Washington Bureau there.
unidentified
That's okay, sorry.
But I called that, and the science writer for the AP at the Washington Bureau, I had his number from the AP here in Cleveland, Ohio, and I didn't expect to get anywhere.
I mean, I just expected to talk with him, and then he'd brush me off because who am I?
I'm just Lindsey Tackett, 20 years old.
Who am I?
But lo and behold, he's saying like a canary.
Oh, yes, sir.
The science writer leaned over or whatever and said, do you know Lindsey Tackett?
And he said, no.
And then they chatted for a few seconds.
And then he passed it over to Mr. Rosenthal.
And then the rest is history.
art bell
All right.
You said he sang like a canary.
What do you mean?
unidentified
He was telling me things, Richard, that my jaw was dropping.
I couldn't believe it.
I mean, he was telling me things, saying things that no journalism worth his thought should even say to anyone, much less a stranger for the love of God.
And I was just in shock.
art bell
Well, all right.
Relate those things.
unidentified
All right.
Well, it first started out.
I wanted to have some clarification with regard to what he had said, or one of the factors.
That's how it got started.
I asked, Harry, why did you have, to me, the worst facts that you could possibly have against, number one, against Richard Hoagland and against the Halebapp Comet and NASA, whatever the heck they're doing.
And then it came to that one at the very bottom.
You know, the last facts.
richard c hoagland
The one about me wanting to get images of Apple White arriving.
unidentified
That's right, that one.
And then he said, well, I got what I asked for.
Those were his exact words.
art bell
I got what I asked for.
unidentified
That's right.
art bell
Meaning he asked NASA for the very worst faxes that you could find.
unidentified
That's right.
He asked, his exact words were, I wanted the absolute rating, rampaging, however the way he worded it.
He wanted the worst of the bunch.
And his exact words were, NASA gave me about two dozen of the best ones that they could find.
art bell
Worst.
unidentified
Well, he said best, of the best ones that they could find.
art bell
His language translating to the most irate.
unidentified
Right.
And then I said, you mean to tell me that you got 24, but you only printed six or however many?
And he said, well, maybe it was about 20.
And those were his exact words.
And, I mean, as the 30 minutes or so progressed, the things that he was saying were just absolutely incredible.
I'll give you an example.
As the minutes progressed, I started to ask him about, well, why did you want to put such a slant on it?
Why didn't you want to have more of a less of a derogatory slant?
And why didn't you want to have more of one favorable to Richard's position?
And he said it's because the people don't want to hear that stuff.
They want to hear the screaming whackers and all that stuff.
He didn't word it in that way, but those were his, in essence, what he was saying.
richard c hoagland
What were his precise words, if you can remember?
unidentified
Because it's all bunk and it doesn't really matter, something like that.
From the get-go, he was calling Richard a charlatan.
And then he called Dr. Edgar Mitchell a nutcase.
art bell
Did he?
unidentified
Yes, he did.
richard c hoagland
So how did Mitchell's name enter the conversation really?
unidentified
Well, now, as time was progressing, I was starting to ask him about other things to try to get his opinion, whether or not he was a clean-cut journalist or whether he let his own opinions intercede and contaminate or, well, in some sense, contaminate his story.
And the fact of the matter is, it was getting to the point where I was almost, I was literally about to cry and become sick.
Here is a major journalist who was saying things like calling, like dismissing Richard Hoagland totally out of his mind.
And one of his exact words, when I asked him about the two NASA people, and there is so much to cover, but I'm trying to say as much as possible.
art bell
Sorry, take your time.
unidentified
I'm sorry, Art.
But his exact words were, with regards to the two NASA people debating Richard and Dr. Van Flandren, why should they?
There's no reason to debate because there's nothing to it.
Now, can you believe that?
art bell
Well, I believe he said it, or what?
Dr. Van Flandren is a well-respected man with a well-respected model and a well-respected scientific question.
What do you mean there's nothing to it?
unidentified
Well, he was saying, okay, again, I'll impose upon that point.
His words were something to the effect that when I was at the press club, remember Richard, are you there?
Yes, we were.
Remember when you were, March 7th, it was, 95 or 96?
richard c hoagland
No, it was March 21, 1996.
We held, at the National Press Club, we brought eight of our other scientists, architects, geologists, imaging experts, inside NASA people like Ken Johnston, and we sat them down at the National Press Club.
And we invited a whole bunch of the major national press, including Mr. Rosenthal, who came from the AP, to spend two hours looking at the moon data for the first time in downtown Washington.
His opinion of our press conference, I take it, was less than favorable.
unidentified
It was atrocious, more or less.
richard c hoagland
What did he say?
unidentified
Well, he said that he couldn't see anything.
You were just pointing out to him natural structures, and you were a charlatan.
You were pointing out things that had no consequence as being unnatural or alien structures, which I commented and said, look, Mr. Rosenthal, you can see a shadow on the shard.
And that's what's questioning me, because I wanted that explained.
If that's just an artifact of the shared art, then why in the heck does it have a shadow?
art bell
All right.
On that note, both of you hold on a moment.
We have reached the bottom of the error.
We have a man, Lindsey Tackett, who talked with Mr. Rosenthal earlier today in some conversation.
It was indeed.
I'm Art Bell, and this is CBC.
unidentified
CBC.
Music Arch Bell is taking calls on the wildcard line at 702-727-1295.
That's 702-727-1295.
First-time callers can reach Art Bell at 702-727-1222.
702-727-1222.
Now, here again, Art Bell.
art bell
Once again, here I am.
Good morning.
Lindsay Tackett is with us along with Richard The Hogwarts.
Lindsey Tackett talked with Mr. Rosenthal at the Associated Press in Washington earlier today.
Something neither Richard nor myself was able to accomplish.
I think you'll find what Lindsay is saying to be very revealing regarding how these stories are constructed?
And this really, as I'm trying to explain to everybody, goes far behind, far beyond, rather, Richard's hide or my hide or anything else.
It goes to whether or not we are getting the truth in what we read, or whether there's even an effort to construct the truth, or whether, most ominous of all, there is an agenda of simply a mind control, and that's a very strong term, mind control the American people because they are what they read as we are what we eat.
And so we'll get back to Lindsay in a moment.
Call 1-800-557-4627.
All right.
I think this is very revealing.
Now, Lindsay Tackett is just a listener, a concerned listener in Cleveland, Ohio.
But he's special because he managed to get hold of Harry Rosenthal at the Washington office of the Associated Press earlier today.
And with Richard Hoagland, here he is once again.
unidentified
Hi, Owen.
Hi, Richard.
art bell
Right.
Hi.
Hi, Lindsay.
Please continue, Lindsay, with anything else, any characterizations you can give us of what Mr. Rosenthal said.
richard c hoagland
Well, let me ask a question, Art.
art bell
All right, sure.
richard c hoagland
Apparently, the conversation, Lindsay, between you and Rosenthal turned to his attendance last year at our press conference on the lunar anomalies of the National Press Club.
unidentified
Yes, sir.
richard c hoagland
With our eight experts that we had, in addition to myself.
And if I'm hearing you correctly, his extremely negative impression of me, his name-calling, Oglenza-Charlaton, et cetera, stemmed from his not being able to see the data we laid out in that two-hour press conference with our eight other experts.
unidentified
Is that correct?
Not even wanting to see it.
I mean, the man, you know, maybe I'm just special or something, or maybe, I don't know what it is, but he was just so down upon all of your work and all sorts of things.
He doesn't believe that there's anything wrong with NASA.
There's no conspiracy.
There's no UFOs.
There's no this, there's no that.
And yet when I was throwing evidence to him or even...
richard c hoagland
This is what I'm very intrigued with, because I've never done anything to Harry Rosenthal.
In fact, I've never singled out any individual by name in NASA art.
Have I?
Have you ever heard me ever mention anyone by name?
art bell
Dan Golden.
richard c hoagland
Well, he's the, I mean, the buck stops with Dan Golden.
He's in charge of policy.
And I have not said that Dan Golden is responsible for hiding things.
What I have said specifically is there is a group, a rogue group within the agency, nameless, who have apparently hijacked policies.
And those people in charge should understand what apparently is happening and move to correct it.
That's the extent, and Mr. Golden is the man in charge, is he not?
art bell
Correct.
richard c hoagland
The only individual that has been mentioned inadvertently, and it was not by my choice, was the night that we had the interesting discussion with Graham Hancock and Robert Baval, and they were in Delaware, and I was here, and you were there, and they mentioned Farouk Elbaz as a former NASA employee involved with the site selection for the Apollo landings.
And I did not want to single out Dr. Elbaz, and they insisted on mentioning him by name.
But that's the only time that I have ever mentioned any individual.
So what I can't understand is why Harry Rosenthal has it in for me personally.
unidentified
Because, Richard, you're close to something big.
richard c hoagland
That's your opinion.
What did he say?
What did he say?
unidentified
Well, the bottom line with him, it seems, was what I want you to be is a dispassionate reporter.
Right, I'm trying to.
richard c hoagland
Which obviously Mr. Rosenthal is not.
unidentified
Well, I'm trying to think of exact quotes because there are so many of them.
My God, it was just incredible.
I'm trying to think of quotes for you.
With regard to you, he was just saying, all of your work seems to be for nothing.
Because all you're doing is running on, not tirades, that wasn't the word he used, but you're running against pipe dreams.
He didn't use pipe dreams, but that was in essence what he was saying.
All the work that you're doing and all these astronauts who are coming and working with you, they're all net cases.
art bell
And Edgar Mitchell, he said, wasn't it?
unidentified
His exact words were Dr. Mitchell.
And here's the thing, though, and I can't believe I almost forgot this.
All the people around him, he said out loud, Edgar Mitchell, did you just say Edgar Mitchell, Dr. Mitchell?
And all the people started to laugh.
All around him in the other booth started to laugh.
richard c hoagland
This is at the AP in Washington.
unidentified
This is at the AP in Washington.
art bell
This is the Edgar Mitchell who went to the moon.
unidentified
That's right.
And I said, I could not believe it.
I mean, all of these people, you could hear them in the background.
They were having coufours.
They were having conniptions.
art bell
What about Gordon Cooper?
unidentified
I mentioned Gordon Cooper.
I said, well, if you don't like Dr. Mitchell, then what do you have against Gordon Cooper?
Is it colonel or is he a colonel?
A major?
richard c hoagland
I don't remember his military rank.
I do know that he was an astronaut who was at one point on the fast track to becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
This is not generally known, but if Cooper had minded his P's and Q's, if he'd not sponsored some of the things he did at the UN in terms of Decision 478 and all that back in the 70s, he would have ultimately wound up probably as chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
art bell
That's not right.
I didn't know that.
So anyway, what did Ms. Rosenthal have to say about Gordon Cooper?
unidentified
Well, I mentioned his experiences, and I said, well, and this is where it started to get violent.
Not violent, violent, but he started to show his weakness with holding his composure, Richard.
He said, let me use exact words here.
I mentioned, well, if you don't like Dr. Mitchell, Mr. Rosenthal, then what about Gordon Cooper?
What do you have against Gordon Cooper?
And then there were little chuckles after he said, Gordon Cooper, but there wasn't like a fall as it was with Dr. Mitchell.
And he said, well, what does Edgar, I mean, Gordon Cooper have to do with anything?
And I said, well, you don't know about his, was it the UN?
Did he go to the UN and talk about the UN and about his sightings over at an Air Force base, a supposed UFO landing and all that business?
And he said, no.
And I said, well, obviously, I'm not going to say that you're not doing your homework because that would be rude of me.
And I'm not a rude person.
I'm just here acting on my own to get to the bottom of it.
And he said, well, you're right.
It would not only be rude, but it would be wrong of you to say that I wasn't doing my homework.
And then I just kind of didn't say anything, and I just let him dig his own grave.
But he said, his exact words were, I don't know anything about it.
And until I do, I think he was just making it all up.
Now, I may be a lot of things, but, well, if I was saying you could have my word of honor and it wouldn't matter because you don't know me.
Well, Richard knows me, but I'm not going to lie.
I'm not a liar.
Now, that's one thing that I am not.
And at that point, I was beginning to get angry because, and we still have 20 minutes to go.
I mean, he was just, the things he was just saying, he was singing like a canary.
art bell
Well, instead of continuing to say that, Lindsay, try and give us what he actually said.
If you can recall precise words.
We already know that he requested of NASA the very worst tirades that NASA could provide.
unidentified
But there's more to it.
All right, go.
Again, I iterate back to what I was saying with regard to the 2000 and then the 20 and all that.
I asked him, well, are you not aware that when those two NASA people were on, what were their names?
richard c hoagland
Savage and Ray Villard.
unidentified
Right, Savage and Villard.
I didn't use their names because I didn't know their names, unfortunately.
I said, well, what about all that?
Did you not know that I believe that they said that they received thousands of faxes sent to them or they were receiving all those faxes thanks to Richard's work and all that stuff?
And he said, well, and I was hearkening back to all these faxes with regard to Hubble.
And he said, well, I don't believe you.
NASA told me that they only received about 100.
And I couldn't believe it.
After what these people, after they came on and were saying all that stuff, and forget about that, but then it was, he said, it doesn't matter.
I got what I wanted, and that's the bottom line.
art bell
And what he wanted was the very worst tirades, the nut-sounding cases.
That's right.
People were talking about the people trailing hillbop and all the rest of the world.
unidentified
He wanted to take violent action and all that business.
And I just, I couldn't believe it.
This man is supposed to, not even report, but he's supposed to not even put a slant on it.
He's supposed to take both.
Remember the good old days when people would call, well, say Richard Hogan, for example.
A reporter would call you if he's going to use your name or whatever, and make sure that he had both sides of the story.
This man, he not only did not have both sides of the story, he didn't even have the full story of NASA.
Because he didn't know anything about...
And that was nearing the end of the conversation because I was getting him into a corner that he didn't want to be in.
Because all these, and I asked him, well, if you don't believe me, Mr. Rosenthal, I said then, then you can do your homework and you can go and check it out for yourself.
And there's a lot more that I've skipped, but that's pretty much how it ended.
And then I said, well, thank you for your time, and I hope that eventually you can come to understand that there's more than NASA's side to the story.
And that's what Fair Journalism is all about.
And that's how it pretty much ended.
art bell
So the long and short of it is he wanted a specific set of facts so that he could tell a story in a very specific way.
Not a story objectively written.
unidentified
That's right.
art bell
A story written to tell it to the American people in a certain way, frankly, mind control.
unidentified
Well, you know what the really, Arden, Richard, you know what the really depressing thing is?
Is that those people, those men, those fair journalists we all trust and believe in, those people were laughing about something that was important.
A man whose career was nearly impeccable.
And did you know that he would not, and I kept asking him for about 10, 15 minutes at different points, tell me one thing that Dr. Mitchell should be called a nutcase for Mr. Rosenthal.
And he refused to do it.
That man serves our nation, Art and Richard.
And for him to say, for him to degrade that man who risked his life innocence.
richard c hoagland
Well, I mean, it sounds like Harry is an equal opportunity destroyer and all those things.
unidentified
You're right.
You're absolutely right, Richard.
And I talked to you.
richard c hoagland
Why he apparently has a personal peak regarding me?
unidentified
I asked him about the monuments of Mars and the Sphinx of Mars and the DNM pyramid.
I asked him about all this, and I forgot exactly how I worded it, but he just came back and said it's all bunk.
There's nothing to it.
Richard doesn't have any, the scientists are all.
they're working for nothing or something along those lines, it just seems like they're...
richard c hoagland
What does that mean?
unidentified
It means the way that I interpreted it, it meant that you're inconsequential.
All the work that you're doing is a waste of time.
It's a waste of the world's time.
You're not worth the oxygen you're breathing.
That's how I interpreted it.
This man hates...
He hates the fact that you're alive.
And I can't hit you.
richard c hoagland
Let me stop you there.
Yes.
unidentified
All right.
richard c hoagland
Now, Art, since Harry Rosenthal and I have literally interacted only once in our entire lives directly, which was in Washington, he was there in the audience.
I didn't meet him.
And I only talked to him once two days ago for a few minutes.
What my question would be is, where is this invective and this deep abiding emotion coming from?
In other words, is Harry Rosenthal reflecting the attitudes of people with whom he associates at I.E. NASA?
art bell
Or is this an opinion he has formed on his own?
unidentified
But you can't really, I mean, if you've never met a person, how in the hell can you form an opinion detrimentally?
richard c hoagland
It sounds to me like there's a really loaded thing here.
It's more than merely an intellectual, you're not worth the oxygen you breathe.
There's real animus.
Now, again, where does this animus come from?
I would venture a speculation that Harry Rosenthal is reflecting the opinions and attitudes of people that he trusts and admires and, so we say, adheres to.
And those people are at NASA.
So this is a personal reflection of the conversations and discussions in NASA regarding what we're trying to accomplish.
And my question would be, if we're so inconsequential, why is there that animus at NASA?
art bell
Well, or for that matter, Richard, if the whole matter is so inconsequential and you are not worth the air you breathe, why are you worth a two-page Associated Press National News article?
unidentified
And he didn't even mention Dr. Van Flandren.
He did not say one word about the good doctor, about Dr. Van Flandren.
Not one word.
And I mentioned him.
I mentioned Dr. Van Flandren a couple of times, but for one reason or another, he just caroused right by him.
art bell
Well, he did that in the conversation with Richard as well.
unidentified
But are you beginning to see a website?
art bell
Well, what I'm beginning to see is that you can't have it both ways.
Richard, on the one hand, cannot be worth discussing or even the air he breathes, but on the other hand, be worth a national news article to try and tear him apart.
unidentified
That's right.
His article, and I read it about four or five times in order to prepare for the interview to make sure that I was going to be using some of the things that he was saying in context.
The man, he has vehemence against Richard and against his work.
And when I mentioned the astronauts, when we got onto this topic of especially Dr. Mitchell and Gordon Cooper, he did not even know about Gordon Cooper and astronaut O'Neill.
I forgot his first name, but...
art bell
But let's say.
unidentified
Yes, sir.
art bell
Let's say, for the sake of conversation, it was 100.
He claims that he had 20 faxes, and he had requested of NASA the very worst of what people sent.
Now, does journalistic integrity require that you print a representative sample of what was received?
unidentified
No, sir, yes.
art bell
Or is there any integrity at all in requesting the very worst so you can write an article that takes a specific agenda slant?
unidentified
That's called yellow press.
And I used those exact words on him, and that's when he just quivered because he didn't know what the heck to say.
I said, Mr. Rosenthal, is that not yellow press journalism?
Now, I was an anchor for NTV when I was in high school, and I had a great teacher.
Her name was Mrs. Breard.
This was where I was living in Monroe, Louisiana.
And she taught me very well in the ways and forays and mores of journalism.
You are not supposed to slant your article.
If you do slant your article, that's when you begin to get into all these tabloids and all that business and Jabberwocky.
And that's when you begin to get into yellow press journalism.
You are supposed to report the facts as they are represented.
And what he did with the NASA Facts Result and Richard was not report the facts.
He reported what he wanted to write.
richard c hoagland
Well, now this raises a very interesting question because if the management of the Associated Press is condoning editorials which are masquerading as news, as reporting.
art bell
You're damn right.
unidentified
And that's not what a reporter is supposed to do for the Associated Press or for the International API.
What is the International Press?
richard c hoagland
Well, there's Reuters.
art bell
UPI, there's a lot of people.
unidentified
UPI.
UPI.
art bell
Lindsay, we've got to leave you at this moment.
I think you have told us most of the essence of the conversation you had with Mr. Rosenthal, and I really appreciate your coming on.
richard c hoagland
Before we let Lindsay go, Lindsay, you were able to get Mr. Rosenthal's fax number.
unidentified
Yes, that's true.
I certainly was.
Really?
richard c hoagland
Really?
art bell
What is it?
unidentified
His fax number is 202-776-9570.
And I'll say it again.
His fax number is 202-776-9570.
art bell
Really?
Well, this should be interesting.
richard c hoagland
I think it would be a good idea for the audience to let Mr. Rosenthal know what their feelings are regarding the matter.
And what I'd like to do is to read you a letter, which came to me, which we're posting on our website tonight, from a Mr. Mark James in Belmore, New York.
art bell
All right.
We will do that when we come back.
Lindsay, thank you, my friend.
Lindsay Tackett, Cleveland.
You take care, and thanks for giving us all that info.
unidentified
Well, thank you, the American public, and get out there and do something about this.
art bell
All right.
There you are.
Richard, we'll be back to you shortly.
Once again, Mr. Rosenthal's fax number, area code 202-776-9570.
And we'll get that on the air.
I've also got something from the Los Angeles Times about Betty Grissom.
We'll talk about that when we come back.
unidentified
We'll talk about that when we come back.
Bell toll-free.
West of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
1-800-618-8255.
East of the Rockies at 1-800-825-5033.
1-800-825-5033.
This is the CBC Radio Network.
art bell
Is what we're discussing this morning important?
You bet your butt it is.
Is it important whether something written as news or proffered as news, meaning an objective reporting of facts, is in fact an editorial?
In other words, something prepared to disseminate a specific agenda-driven opinion?
Or is it news?
That's what we're talking about here.
It goes way beyond Richard's Hyde or my Hyde or anything else.
It has to do with agendas.
I also, this is the second example, personal example, that I can refer to.
The first was the coverage of the Heavensgate suicides themselves.
Also agenda-driven.
Not for the least bit concerned were they for the facts.
They were going to tell that story the way they wanted to tell it.
The facts be damned.
Don't let the facts get in the way.
And if the press in America generally, and I have only these two examples personally to go by, has come to that point, then we should all know it and know it for what it is.
And that's pretty sad.
We'll get back to Richard Hoagland, and I want to talk a little bit about Betty Grissom.
You might recall who Betty Grissom is.
We'll ask Richard about that.
Bajin is 406-0469.
Perhaps you would be willing to send Mr. Rosenthal a fax.
After hearing what you have just heard with regard to Mr. Rosenthal and the method used to collect the information for the story he wrote, you would be willing to ask Mr. Rosenthal on our behalf if he would like to come on the air.
I tried to do that myself, as did Richard, with no luck.
But perhaps you in the audience would be so kind as to jot a quick note off to Mr. Rosenthal by facts.
His number is area code 202769570.
That would be at the Washington Bureau of the Associated Press.
And perhaps you would like to invite Mr. Rosenthal to a reasoned discussion with regard to the preparation of that story here on the air in an open forum where there actually exists a two-way conversation.
Because I, angry as I am, I extend and continue to extend that invitation to Mr. Rosenthal.
So if you're going to send him a facts, please A, be reasonable, and B, please invite him to a two-way discussion on the matter of which he has written.
Area code 202-776-9570.
Does that sound reasonable, Richard?
richard c hoagland
Yeah, yeah.
I've just discovered an interesting mystery, and I think maybe Lindsay tripped over it earlier.
I have a letter here from Mr. James, who was a listener in, I believe, Belmore, New York.
He is sending a letter, you know, ordinary, what we used to call snail mail, to Mr. Rosenthal, care of the Washington Post at 1150 15th Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C. And he sent a copy to Mr. Robert G. Kaiser, who is the managing editor of The Washington Post.
Now, it may be that Harry also works for the Post.
He may be a feature writer for The Post, and he holds down two jobs.
art bell
That may be.
unidentified
All right.
richard c hoagland
Let me read you Mr. James' letter, because this is the kind of tone and the elements that I think that anyone who's interested in sending a fax to Harry Rosenthal should follow.
We don't want Venom.
We don't want vitriol.
art bell
That's right.
richard c hoagland
Emotion is not going to carry the day.
What will carry the day is if the colleagues around Harry Rosenthal see fax paper coming out by the mile of that fax machine with thoughtful Americans expressing their First Amendment right to get the story straight.
Because the reason this is important to me, Art, and I presume to you, is because we depend in a democracy on a free and responsible press.
If we don't have responsible reporting, meaning a reporter putting his feelings aside, his opinions aside, and simply reporting the facts, ma'am, nothing but the facts, then everything you see and everything you read is no better or worse than in the heyday of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, in Spain, in China, any totalitarian regime, the first casualty is always the press.
art bell
That's right.
richard c hoagland
You have propaganda institutions designed to get people to believe and to think what the government wants you to believe.
This is so scary and frightening because what Lindsay discovered in his 20-year-old way was that that attitude, we will control what you see, we will control what you hear, we will control what you think?
What's important?
That attitude, apparently, tonight, is alive and well in the largest press organization in the world.
art bell
It's so serious, Richard, because when the Associated Press dispatches a story over the wire, as we just learned, it is then virtually reprinted by probably 90% of all the newspapers across America.
That means that you've got one central source of information.
And I use the word information, not news, because in this case, it's quite obvious that what passed for a news story actually belonged on the op-ed page or as an editorial where it would have been just fine.
This is a very non-trivial delineation between news and editorial comment.
And as you point out, if we have now crossed that line, then we're in a very, very different America.
So I think that the appeal to Mr. Rosenthal should be made on journalistic integrity grounds rather than getting into an argument about you or, for that matter, me.
richard c hoagland
Absolutely.
It's not personal.
art bell
Yeah, it's not personal.
It's about what journalism is becoming in America.
It's a very important topic.
Otherwise, it's going to just sound like you and I are sitting here whining about a story that was negatively aimed toward us.
It's not just that.
richard c hoagland
No, what's bothersome to me is the process.
And what was very serendipitous is that Lindsey Tachin and I have had, I think, three conversations.
He called me, he started calling a couple of nights ago because he'd heard me on your show discussing the STS-80 video.
And he is a student.
He's there in Cleveland, and he apparently has access to some physicists at Cleveland State or one of the universities there that want to take a look at this footage.
So I'm going to make a copy of the STS-80 footage and send it to him to carry to the university for analysis.
As part of our discussion, he got very irate and upset at this Rosenthal piece on the AP.
art bell
Sure.
richard c hoagland
And he took it upon himself.
You know, I didn't tell him to.
I didn't know he was going to until he called this afternoon and said he had succeeded in getting through and had this rather remarkably interesting conversation for half an hour with Mr. Rosenthal.
art bell
Very revealing, yes.
richard c hoagland
Very revealing because if this is going on in other areas, if there are reporters who are so blatantly and vehemently injecting their attitudes behind the scenes into stories on other facets of Americana,
of other public policy positions, the attitude of agencies versus private individuals, whistleblowers, whatever, then we really are living in a culture where democracy, as we believe it should function, cannot function.
art bell
Well, I must tell you, I had CNN here for, I think, a total of four hours last night, and we talked about this.
And I said, can you imagine that a news organization the size of the Associated Press would not pick up the telephone, at the very least, pick up the telephone, and attempt to talk to the principles he was writing about to try and determine both sides, or at least get feedback from both sides to objectively try and write the story.
And the person from CNN said, well, maybe they don't have the budget.
What?
Yeah, I know.
And I said, come on.
Scripps Howard has the budget.
Individual television stations in Sacramento, I've got one coming Sunday, traveling here.
They've got the budget.
Newspapers in Las Vegas have the budget.
And the Associated Press does.
richard c hoagland
I've got the facts here from the Gators at the University of Florida.
The college station wants to talk to me, and they have the budget.
art bell
Right.
So I'd rule that one out, frankly.
Now, I want to shift subjects very quickly.
Before we do, though, I want to give out Mr. Rosenthal's fax number one more time, and I predict he'll get at least 20 faxes.
At least.
Area code 202-776-9570.
Richard, I want to ask you about something.
From the Los Angeles Times, May 9th, Florida.
richard c hoagland
Oh, before we do that, we have to read Mr. James' letter.
art bell
Oh, quite a bit.
richard c hoagland
Remember, go ahead.
Part of the problem we've had over the years in doing this show is when we come to a break, sometimes we don't pick up where we left off.
And I've gotten a few faxes.
So I'm trying to be assiduous about that, okay?
This is from Mark James, Dateline Today.
Dear Mr. Rosenthal, your article of 51397 titled NASA Bopp's Hail-Bop Plot Theory is a classic example of irresponsible journalism at its finest.
Did you bother to research all the facts, or is this simply a case of sloppy reporting?
Or could it have been that you did all the background work on this topic and chose to print your own slanted and biased coverage of the story?
Remember, this person doesn't know what we now know via Lindsay.
I get the impression from your article that you accept whatever NASA says without question and you regard Richard Hoagland, despite his impressive credentials, as a, quote, lecturer not worthy of credibility.
Did you even attempt to speak with Mr. Hoagland?
Also, why was there no mention of Dr. Tom Van Flandern, whose scientific model on the exploded planet theory is the major reason behind the demands for close-up Hubble images of Halebop?
Yes, NASA did use Hubble to image Halebop when it was quite some distance from Earth, but not so, at least to my knowledge, during its closest passage to us.
This lack of close-up imaging and potential scientific data we could obtain is what the public outcry is all about.
It has been suggested that during the present position of Halebop, there is a window of opportunity to take images at a specific time interval using the Earth's horizon to block the sun without damaging Hubble.
The point has not been satisfactorily addressed by NASA.
In your article, you state, Quote, accusations that NASA refused to photograph the comet with the Hubble Space Telescope started arriving not long after 39 Heavensgate cultists in California killed themselves.
Is this juxtaposing of events supposed to somehow imply that public demands for a scientific investigation by our national public-funded space agency are the result of the claims made by Heaven's Gate cult members?
What is your true agenda, Mr. Rosenthal?
Are you an objective reporter or a disinformation specialist?
Sincerely, Mark James.
Now the point of this is the points are there.
The tone is civil, but the message is ultra clear.
And the copying to the managing editor of the Washington Post, if you out there in America tonight happen to know other press people, local editors, local TV stations, whatever, that you think should be part of this discussion, it wouldn't hurt to send copies of your letter to those people because you see, this is a national dialogue in can we trust the information we're getting as we enter the most perilous times in our nation's history.
When we are missing outside enemies, when there's no longer an evil empire, the Soviet Union, what cultures tend to do when there's no big enemy is they turn inward and they eat themselves alive.
art bell
And that's what we're doing.
richard c hoagland
That's exactly what we're doing.
And the only salvation is a press which will give us unbiased facts on which we can base our opinion.
art bell
Well, particularly, Richard, at a national level.
I mean, you assume that ethical journalism perhaps takes a bit of a slip occasionally as you get to the lower levels.
But at the highest level, you would expect the highest level of journalistic integrity.
And if the opposite is true, if there's no longer any difference between the news areas and the op-ed or editorial areas, then a very, very profound, dangerous thing has occurred in America.
And that's the central theme, I think, of what we should be driving at here.
Not picking apart the article for all its slanted content, but instead complaining about where journalism is going.
And if we can prove it in this case, Richard, it's kind of like UFOs.
You know, if you've got one in your hand, if the government has one, then that's all you need.
richard c hoagland
Well, as my grandmother used to say, it only takes one white crow to prove all crows are black.
art bell
That's right.
That's exactly.
richard c hoagland
This case, because sometimes of the excruciating experience I put your audience through, there's an awful lot of people in America who know exactly and remember exactly what I say, what I believe, what I distrust, what I suspect, what I will not put confidence in.
In other words, I've tried to stick to the facts.
This article is such a blatant contradiction of the experience of your audience in terms of our discussions that it really does make a wonderful test case for the biases, even if we didn't have Lindsey Tackett's reporting, that in fact, Mr. Rosenthal is not only free with his opinions, he is proud of his opinions in his reporting.
This is very strange.
art bell
No, it's dangerous.
I want to read something very quickly.
You can react to it after the bottom of the hour.
It's from the Los Angeles Times, Dateline, Florida.
Astronauts' Widow Blasts NASA probe.
Now, listen to this.
Betty Grissom said her resignation from the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame governing board resulted from 30 years of frustration over the launch pad fire that killed her husband and two other Apollo 1 crewmen.
At the heart of the issue was the board's decision not to induct Roger Chasey, the junior member of that crew, because the January 1967 onboard fire killed him before he actually flew in space.
Quote, this might be the last straw, unquote, said Grissom, widow of space pioneer Virgil Gus Grissom.
Grissom said NASA's investigation of the Apollo 1 fire was, quote, a cover-up from the beginning, unquote, led, she said, by many of the same astronauts now honored in the hall.
Now, as we get down to content of cover-ups and lies and or half-truths or things unsaid that amount to lies, I think that here is the widow of an American who died in a fire on the ground, Apollo 1, who is now herself accusing NASA of a cover-up.
And when we get back, we'll discuss this a little bit with Richard.
I'm Art Bell.
This is CBC.
unidentified
CBC.
art bell
Attend to the letter I already read.
A letter, I guess, a news article by Mrs. Grissom.
And then I've got a letter for Richard, and we'll go back to the Rosenthal piece.
If you suffer arthritis pain and it is bad, listen.
richard c hoagland
Press, including Mr. Rosenthal, who came from the AP, to spend two hours looking at the moon data for the first time in downtown Washington.
His opinion of our press conference, I take it, was less than favorable.
unidentified
It was atrocious, more or less.
richard c hoagland
What did he say?
unidentified
Well, he said that he couldn't see anything.
You were just pointing out to him natural structures, and you were a charlatan.
You were pointing out things that had no consequence as being unnatural or alien structures, which I...
Thank you.
art bell
on AM 1500 KSV.
unidentified
AM 1500 KSV.
You're Listening to an encore performance of Coast to Coast A.M. with Art Bell.
art bell
I'm Art Bell, and it's great to be here.
My guest is Richard C. Hoagland.
You've heard him many times, but never say what he just said.
So we're going to explore this a little further.
Betty Grissom talked about a cover-up.
She accused NASA of a cover-up, in her words, from the very beginning.
Richard Hoagland has taken it far beyond that, and we're going to explore that in a moment.
He virtually suggested that what may have happened to those three astronauts was not an accident, but was murder.
That's strong stuff.
We'll explore it more in a moment.
627.
Now, you can't get it in stores, but you can get it here.
So call them.
1-800-557-4627.
Back to Richard C. Hogwind in Manhattan, where as usual, it's getting pretty late in the morning.
Richard, that's a very, very, very serious allegation that you've made.
richard c hoagland
Well, but remember, it's not me making it.
It's Betty Grissom.
art bell
Well, no, Betty Grissom did not say that, Richard.
She said that the investigation of the Apollo 1 fire was, quote, a cover-up from the very beginning, end quote.
Now, that doesn't say it was murder.
richard c hoagland
Well, wait a minute.
What are they covering up?
Well, because everything else came out.
The project manager, Stormy, I forget his Harrison Storms, who was the head of the Apollo project for Rockwell, was fired.
He was canned for the decision to go with a pure oxygen cabin environment for the Apollo spacecraft.
When, in fact, Rockwell had never wanted a pure gas oxygen, they had voted, they had proposed a design.
We're building a spacecraft with a two-gas system, nitrogen and oxygen, because there's much less danger of fire if you have a dilutant like nitrogen.
art bell
Okay, I'm comfortable with all of that, but that implies a technical screw-up.
richard c hoagland
The point is that the report of the Borman Committee and the NASA investigation and the Senate investigation and the House investigation literally name names as to individuals and institutions that were at blame for the deaths.
art bell
I blame, all right, that's her.
I blame, but murder is a strong word.
richard c hoagland
Let me finish, please.
There was a whole series of design flaws, management decisions, errors of judgment.
A whole list of people were at fault with the deaths of these men.
They were not blameless.
So if Betty Grissom is claiming a cover-up, what's left to cover up?
All right?
There was enough blame to go around.
Heads rolled.
Contracts were changed.
So what's the cover-up about if it isn't the ultimate cover-up, which it wasn't an accident, it was deliberate?
art bell
All right, aside from the motives.
Aside from that, that you've already given us to back what you're saying, what else do you have?
unidentified
Okay.
richard c hoagland
When I began to get curious about this, because I, like everybody else, had assumed it was a horrible, tragic accident.
unidentified
Of course.
richard c hoagland
What you have to understand is the power of the computer.
Without this incredible democratization of the computer and the ability to run millions of celestial profiles so that you can pick out the signal from the noise, think of planets and stars and rotation as clocks.
art bell
All right?
richard c hoagland
For thousands of years, we've been using the sky as our first clock.
We've marked the seasons with where things are in the sky.
We've marked the day and the night.
We have religious ceremonies around the world.
You know, religious Jews at sunset celebrate the Sabbath and go into hibernation.
And, you know, I mean, I have some of my best friends do that, so I can't literally talk to them across the weekend from Friday night sunset to Saturday night sunset because they're running their lives by the celestial clock overhead.
What we have found in this pattern is that NASA planning for some reason all the major events in the entire space program, not just landing on the moon.
art bell
Based on this clock, yes, we have to.
richard c hoagland
Based on this clock.
Well, but what that is, is an incredible indictment of a plan to this.
Accidents don't happen according to plan, Art.
A plan is a plan.
So when I found the Apollo fire occurred exactly according to this plan, for me, that's almost all they had to write.
It means that somebody, according to this ritual pattern, wanted those men to die.
Not because they had it in for those men, but because if those men died in a tragic way, the politics in the Congress were so fragile that the entire Apollo program would have died like years later it almost died again during the almost tragedy of Apollo 13.
art bell
All right, but that's anecdotal, Richard.
richard c hoagland
So let me start listing some of the interesting correlative evidence.
So with this as a heads up, you know, this needs to be looked at again, I started combing the literature, my sources, you know, libraries, whatever, for all the information on the Apollo flyer and the analysis.
What I found was that during the analysis by the Borman committee, when they took apart that spacecraft literally down to the washers and nuts and dissected the metal and x-rayed everything and did the incredible technical job NASA can do when it really wants to, they could not come up with an answer.
They do not know to this day on the record what caused the fire.
The closest they came was a series of analyses focusing on something called the IMU, the inertial measurement unit.
The spacecraft was literally alive that night in a full-up test prior to launch, meaning all the electronics were powered up.
They were on a pressurized oxygen system.
They were in Their suits, they were on the comm channels, they were down range, everything was as it would have been, except they never lit the rocket.
There was no fuel in the rocket underneath them, thank God, or the thing would have blown and we would have had anything to analyze.
art bell
All right.
richard c hoagland
One of the things that was powered up was this thing called the IMU, which is an inertial measuring unit, which basically is a set of gyros and a set of accelerometers that can sense to very high precision the motions of the spacecraft in space.
art bell
Gotcha.
richard c hoagland
It's kind of like a seismograph.
art bell
Understood, yes.
richard c hoagland
What they were looking for, what the analysis team was looking for, were any indications on those readouts that were being relayed to Houston via the communications links, the wires, the cables plugged into the spacecraft, of events happening right at the instant of the fire.
When Chafee yelled, we have a fire in the spacecraft, and there were some other choke cries.
They were looking in those telemetry plots that were not being radioed, but were coming out with hard wires into the computers on the ground to see if there was any indication from the one instrument in the spacecraft that could give them an indication of something unusual, that something unusual had occurred.
And what they found was, right at the moment, just before the astronaut on the Comlink said there's a fire in the spacecraft, there was a motion.
There was a jolt.
And it was localized down on the floor of the Apollo capsule next to Grissom's foot.
They had it that precise.
Now, on that place on the floor, there was supposed to be an instrument called a mass spectrometer, a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer, a gadget designed to measure the air in the cabin, to sense for impurities.
Apparently, according to the records that came out in the committee hearings, the night before the fire, that instrument had been removed from the spacecraft.
It was not supposed to be there.
Instead, there was a pair of bare wires running to where it would have been on the floor of the spacecraft where Grissom's feet would have been.
art bell
Oh, my God.
So the suggestion, obviously, is his foot jogged the wires.
richard c hoagland
The report blame him because, remember, Grissom was the one whose door, hatch on the capsule, the Mercury capsule, mysteriously blew off in 1961 during the second flight of the Mercury spacecraft.
art bell
I recall that, yes.
richard c hoagland
And his spacecraft sank.
It filled with water and sank.
The helicopter couldn't pull it up.
They always blamed Gus for being a kutz.
The innuendo going around in NASA was here's a guy who couldn't keep his capsule upright because he somehow pulled the lanyard that armed the pyrotechnics that blew the hat.
art bell
Right, but back to the fire.
richard c hoagland
So the inference in the report on a POP one was that Gus Grissom, again, had screwed the pooch.
art bell
Oh, well, that's screwed up.
That's absolutely insane.
richard c hoagland
That's what the innuendo is in the written report.
art bell
So they left two bare wires there.
richard c hoagland
Well, let me finish.
art bell
Let me finish.
richard c hoagland
The theory is that those wires were energized.
There was electrical power.
art bell
Voltage.
richard c hoagland
Yeah, voltage, right.
And caused sparks in a 16-pound per square inch full oxygen pressure vessel.
art bell
Right.
richard c hoagland
Which lighted the fire, and the rest is history.
art bell
But how in God's name could they put blame at his feet, no pun intended, when they left the bare wires there?
richard c hoagland
Well, it gets more interesting.
I have tracked down now an engineer who was in that capsule the previous night.
The last man, the last technician to check out the spacecraft before the astronauts went in for the test.
art bell
Yes.
richard c hoagland
He literally changed professions the day after the fire.
He quit the space program, quit being a technician, and became instead a minister.
Went into the religious persuasion, a man of the cloth.
unidentified
Really?
richard c hoagland
Yes.
Now, here's what's interesting, because he did not report the instrument, the mass spectrometer, the gastromatograph, as missing.
It was his job to check out the instrumentation in the spacecraft.
His recollection was that that instrument was still there.
The logs that NASA produced claim it had been removed.
Now, this is where I'm going to go to a speculation.
If you want to destroy a spacecraft on the pad, if you want to create a fire that will kill three men and damage the program and probably cripple it and probably wind up killing the whole Apollo mission, all you need to do is to put a small pyrotechnic device in that spacecraft.
unidentified
That's right.
richard c hoagland
Masquerading as an instrument that is supposed to be there.
art bell
Or to bear wires with voltage when shorted.
richard c hoagland
But you would then have to know that he would kick the instrument at the right time.
In other words, if it's time, that's where we go back to the celestial clock.
This took place according to a precise schedule.
Accidents can't happen on a schedule, Art.
Now, do you see why I'm so intrigued that Betty Grissom, who knows nothing of our forensic analysis, is independently claiming that these men died and NASA covered up the mechanism of their death?
art bell
Well, she definitely said cover-up.
There's no question about that.
In this story, she said NASA's investigation of the Apollo 1 fire was, quote, a cover-up from the beginning, unquote.
And I don't know what that means.
I don't know if it means what you're talking about, but cover-up is cover-up.
And this comes from the widow of somebody who spent 30 years, 30 years as the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame governing board or in it.
richard c hoagland
Now, let me raise another specter here.
It makes absolutely no sense to an outside observer, which is what you and I are, that there would even be a debate as to whether Roger Chaffee deserves to be in the Astronaut Hall of Fame.
art bell
I agree.
richard c hoagland
I mean, does it make any sense to you that someone could be so anal retentive and bureaucratic?
art bell
No, it doesn't.
Just simply because he did not fly, what kind of passinine logic is that?
richard c hoagland
Now, however, if we're dealing with ritual magic, if we're dealing with warped and sick individuals who have a hidden agenda so deeply buried that there's an in-crowd and an out-crowd, and those who were chosen and those who were not,
and those who were in, and those who deserved to die, and they are part of that group that is now running the politics around who gets to be nominated and in the hall.
In other words, this has such profound implications for Betty to resign and then say to reporters, this is the last straw, 30 years of frustration.
She indicts the people involved in that Hall of Fame as being part of the cover-up.
art bell
We already cover in the first part of this story the fact that Chafee, ridiculous as it may sound, is not being inducted because he never flew.
That does not appear to be what she refers to, certainly, when she talks about the whole thing being a cover-up from the beginning.
richard c hoagland
See, the astronaut hall on there is a brand new institution.
It was formed in a kind of a private liaison with NASA, and I'm trying to remember.
I think it was 88 or 89.
It's a relatively new institution.
It certainly doesn't go back 30 years, so it is not part of her indictment.
She's talking about something much deeper and bigger and much more significant, which gets to the heart of what has our space program really been looking at?
art bell
Yeah, you're right.
She simply is expressing 30 years of frustration, that's correct, over the launch pad fire.
richard c hoagland
And this, she said, was the last straw.
art bell
Last straw, yeah.
richard c hoagland
Last straw because there's much more beneath the surface that she wasn't able to tell.
Or are we getting a portion of what she told the reporter and his or her opinion as to its importance filters through the story and we don't really know what she said?
art bell
Well, I don't know.
I think we need to talk to Betty Grissom, and I hope she responds to my invitation to speak to us.
She may not.
I hate these statements of sort of, you know, a cover-up from the beginning.
Well, that certainly can't refer to Roger Chafee.
It's got to refer to something else.
And I hope, I pray, it's nothing as horrible as what you've talked about here.
All right, look, we're going to go to the phones.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
Sit tight, Richard.
Nobody ever said this would be a rose garden.
And whoever it was who told me that all those years ago when I began doing talk radio sure was correct.
And by the way, Mr. Rosenthal, Harry Rosenthal's fax number, if it's out of paper by now, try tomorrow, is area code 202-776-9570.
That's 202-776-9570.
unidentified
The End
The End Art Bell is taking calls on the wildcard line at 702-727-1295.
That's 702-727-1295.
First-time callers can reach Art Bell at 702-727-1222.
702-727-1222.
Now, here again, Art Bell.
art bell
Once again, I do appear to be here.
Good morning, everybody.
Well, I'll tell you, some nights this job is a rough one.
800-359-4255.
All right, we are going to go to the phones now.
Back to Richard C. Hoagland.
Richard, let's go to the phones and let's cover as much as we can between now and the end of the program.
On the first time, call our line.
You're on the air with Richard Hoagland.
unidentified
Hi.
Yeah, this is a calling from Spokane, Washington.
art bell
Yes, sir.
unidentified
There was another fire in the Apollo shortly afterwards.
The son of a very good friend of mine that I taught at a college with for years died in the fire.
He was working as a young engineer working to find out, to try to find out what the cause of this was.
And he told Dennis, his dad, over the phone earlier, that he thought that this was a combination of the pure oxygen and one of the chemicals that were coming out of the strap-type seats.
He was getting married on that Saturday afternoon, so he said he was going down in the morning to set some of this stuff up for this experiment.
When he did, well, he was in the capsule.
It burned, burned him completely, almost, then he said almost beyond recognition, a spontaneous fire.
So there was another fire in an Apollo capsule with one of the people that was trying to figure out what this was.
His name was Dennis Muslin Jr.
art bell
Are you familiar with this at all, Richard?
unidentified
No, I'm not.
I'll bet he isn't.
If he was familiar with this, he wouldn't make those brash statements that he was making.
Because, I mean...
richard c hoagland
Let me stop you there.
unidentified
Yeah.
richard c hoagland
You know, I'm not making the brash statements.
Betty Grissom.
unidentified
Well, no, you're mentioning to me as far as I'm listening.
richard c hoagland
Sir, Betty Grissom is talking to the Los Angeles Times about a NASA cover-up on the subject of the fire going back 30 years.
What I'm talking about.
unidentified
What is murder, not her?
What?
You were talking murder, not her.
richard c hoagland
What are they covering up?
Everything else was exhausted.
unidentified
I'm sure they may be covering up something, but I'm sure it was not.
They were covering up a lot of things, possibly.
richard c hoagland
Like what?
unidentified
They weren't covering up something.
richard c hoagland
What would they be covering up if it wasn't the ultimate problem?
unidentified
I don't know what they were covering up, but let me put it in the middle.
richard c hoagland
You're not looking at the magnitude of what Betty Grissom is saying.
She has resigned.
unidentified
You're saying that you felt that this was somebody caused the fire purposely, and it was murder.
You said that.
I listened to it over there listening to that.
richard c hoagland
I stand by that statement.
unidentified
Somebody also didn't murder this young man.
art bell
Hold it, folks, one at a time.
Caller.
And Richard, I, to some degree, agree with the caller.
I don't know what Betty was referring to, and you can say, well, what else could she be referring to?
But surely she didn't really say that.
So in some ways, Richard, I kind of agree.
It's a jump to murder, one I can't make.
However, what you told us about these wires and about this instrument that was removed with pure oxygen, but murder is a pretty big leap, Richard.
richard c hoagland
Well, by the process of elimination, since the reports were incredibly exhaustive as to all of the blame, and there was enough to go around to Rockwell, NASA, the design, the change to a pure gas from the, you know, the change of the HAPS design, everybody got tarred.
Nobody was left untouched.
art bell
I hear that.
richard c hoagland
What is there left to cover up?
art bell
Well, extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence.
richard c hoagland
But no, no, no, it's statical.
What is there left to cover up?
If you exhaustively had an investigation, if you've indicted everybody, the one thing that was never figured out in the official reports was the cause.
Now, the cause is very important.
In every accident, what the Transportation Safety Board is trying to find with Flight 800 is the cause, right?
art bell
Sure.
richard c hoagland
What we try to find in any event, any catastrophe, is the cause.
The fact is the cause remained a mystery, and to this day, NASA's official report says cause unknown.
unidentified
Well, I'd like to give another little brief look into this.
When this happened on that Saturday morning, he had talked to his father and said he was sure that this is what it was, that he thought there was some chemical in there that with this 100% oxygen, he was going to make sure that set up.
So he went in there to put in some of the strapping and whatever it was into this other capsule on that Saturday morning.
When Dennis got the call in the afternoon that his son had burned, had died in that capsule, Dennis went down there, and this is another odd thing.
When Dennis went down there, they would not let Denny in, his father, into NASA.
They met at the gate.
His son's body was put in, whether a...
I don't remember, body bag or what.
art bell
All right, caller, in a way, what you're saying...
What you're saying is as fantastic in some ways as what Richard is saying that you're having a problem with.
So I would ask you to supply me with some documentation proving what you're saying or a witness.
Can you do that?
unidentified
Oh, sure.
You could call Dennis Muslins.
art bell
No, no, no.
Don't give me any numbers on the air.
Supply it to me by facts or email or snail mail or any way you can.
unidentified
Sure.
All right.
Oh, I'd like to do that, but let me get a pencil here so I can get your facts number down.
art bell
All right, sure.
unidentified
Okay, hold, hold just a second.
art bell
All right.
I'd be glad to.
I have a little bit of a problem with where you've been on this, Richard, on the murder aspect of it.
I understand what you're saying when you say, what else could it be?
richard c hoagland
No, there are two data points.
We have figured out the accident was on a clock.
That immediately implies planning.
Immediately.
art bell
All right?
Okay, that's data point one.
And data point two, you've already.
richard c hoagland
Data point number two, Betty Grissom is claiming now there was an official NASA cover-up involving the agency and astronauts from the beginning.
art bell
Yep, I agree.
richard c hoagland
Number three, the actual cause of the fire is listed on the books as unknown.
art bell
All right.
Caller, my fax number is area code 702-727-8499.
You give me information, I'll follow up, all right?
Do you get that?
I can barely hear you.
unidentified
Okay, one quick thing.
When Dennis went down there, they wouldn't let him inside.
They had the hearse come to the gate with his son.
I forget if it was in the cask or in body bags.
They brought it that far, gave it to him, and that was it.
art bell
All right, all right.
We don't have time for any more.
I'll follow up.
You get me the information.
We'll go from there.
Here's a facts for you, Richard, from Mike in Indiana.
Art, please ask Richard if he thinks the Challenger accident was sabotage as well.
richard c hoagland
Well, I have not investigated Challenger.
And, you know, I mean, if I were to even voice an opinion, it would simply be an opinion.
There was an exhaustive study, again, Richard Feynman, the Nobel laureate for physics, had this extremely elegant demonstration with the crocking compound, the so-called O-rings, in the ice water, in the glass, showing that when they tried to launch at 32 degrees with O-rings that under cold temperatures don't expand and fill those joints, that they were just begging for trouble.
From everything I've seen at a cursory level, meaning I have not looked at this intensively, the Challenger appears to be an accident.
It appears to be an incredible, horrible accident of mismanagement of NASA attempting to satisfy a presidential need or desire to do the State of the Union that night with Christy McCauley.
art bell
I recall that.
get that launch done.
I recall that.
All right.
richard c hoagland
At worst, one could indict the agency for incredible bad judgment for overruling the Fiat Col engineers.
We know all that story.
art bell
Yeah, sure.
Politics over there.
richard c hoagland
It's not of the same magnitude.
art bell
Politics over safety.
richard c hoagland
That's right.
Now, let me tell you this.
The Challenger does not fit the pattern.
Apollo 1 does.
art bell
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Richard Hoagland.
unidentified
Another fascinating program, Richard.
The March 19th appearance you made on a program, Richard.
That was an absolutely fascinating program.
Anybody who hasn't heard it should listen to that again.
I'm really kind of intrigued by the March 20th Helsinki Summit meeting, the mystical planetary alignments and the Hailbob thing and the Egyptian mythology.
I don't quite understand, Richard, where you were going with that, but in my mind, I was thinking the Antichrist.
richard c hoagland
No, no, no, no.
See, I don't put labels on all this.
I am looking at a pattern.
Other people want to come to value judgments and want to identify players.
I just had a call during the news break from someone off the air who wants to indict the Masons.
And I said, wait a minute, don't you dare do that.
Because what we're looking at is a pattern.
I highly doubt that we can recognize any of the players from those people that are in front of us on the board.
What we're seeing here, if in fact it is being orchestrated for an objective, for a purpose, is being done at such a deep level that you wouldn't know who the players are.
They would not go by familiar names or nomenclature.
unidentified
Sure.
richard c hoagland
So let's not indict groups or take standard dogma off the shelf and dust it off and say, these are the bad guys.
I'm not saying that.
I'm looking at patterns.
Science begins in tracing a pattern.
unidentified
It's true.
art bell
It's true.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Richard Hoagland.
unidentified
Hello.
Yes, good morning.
art bell
Good morning.
Where are you?
unidentified
I'm in Virginia, and my name's Dan.
art bell
Yes, Dan.
unidentified
I would like to comment that I really appreciate listening to Richard.
He's a great teacher because we have forgotten, a lot of American people have forgotten how to think properly.
They don't know how to use their intellect.
Richard is teaching us in his way, even though it takes a little time, you know, to get to the bottom line, how to think again and how to evaluate and find our own answers.
And I'm glad that this thing has happened, you know, with the Associated Press because what that tells me, I have to go out there and do my own investigation to get to the truth.
art bell
Yes.
unidentified
And Richard is teaching us how to do that.
richard c hoagland
Well, you know, sir, it's very interesting because a lot of people from time to time, including Art last night, very artfully, pun intended, tend to kind of, you know, stick it to me every once in a while about how much time I take to get to the point.
I do that for a very specific reason.
I do not believe that truth is handed to any of us on a silver platter.
If you want the sound bite, this is not the place to hang around for five hours when I'm up all night trying to lay out how we arrive at our conclusions.
Because I don't want you to take my bottom line.
I want you to see how I got to where I have arrived.
And if you agree with the process, if you agree with the journey, then you'll go the next step, hopefully.
unidentified
Exactly.
richard c hoagland
But it isn't sound by journalism, and it's not sound by science.
This is the process.
And the reason that I was so intrigued with last night's reaction is that I heard an awful lot of Americans who have lived through this experience with us here at Enterprise, and they felt affronted by Mr. Rosenthal's slap in the face because they participated, sometimes excruciatingly, in the journey.
art bell
Yes, but it's thank you, Caller.
Richard, it's more important than that.
It's more important than slams at you or slams at me.
And actually, in this article, there was not a slam at me.
It simply identified my program.
Heavensgate, there they slamming.
What does bother me is agenda-driven editorial-type information presented as news when it is not.
And that is dangerous.
It's dangerous to the democracy that we claim to have.
richard c hoagland
Well, if you stand back and you try to look at this objectively, what do we have?
We have an agency, a government agency, that, according to the First Amendment, is getting a number of communications from citizens, from taxpayers, from Americans, saying, you're not doing certain things or we're unsatisfied with what you are doing.
Please tell us why you're not doing it.
And if you are doing it and not letting us know about it, please correct that.
In response, this government agency turns around and picks on a hand-picked reporter for a major wire service.
art bell
I agree with this here.
richard c hoagland
Feeds him managed information, deleting, sanitizing all the respondents, feeding him the worst of the worst.
And this reporter then writes an agenda-driven editorial.
art bell
As a matter of fact, the reporter admits that he requested the worst of the worst.
richard c hoagland
And he brags about it to an average American who simply calls up that he doesn't know from Adam.
art bell
Yes, I agree.
richard c hoagland
Now, the larger issues here are as follows.
If there's nothing to hide, if there's no sensitivity here, why bother?
art bell
Well, certainly if you're not worth the air you breathe.
I guess that was a statement that Lindsay said Mr. Rosenhall, in fact, made, then why certainly bother with an extensive article to be printed in every newspaper in America?
richard c hoagland
Why?
Because I am inferring here there were a significant number of Americans faxing asking questions, and someone has decided that that should be turned off at the spigot.
art bell
Well, they sure as hell wouldn't do this over 100 faxes, would they?
richard c hoagland
I don't think so.
art bell
I don't think so either.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Richard Hogland.
Hello.
unidentified
Hi, this is John, Sacramento.
art bell
Hi, John.
unidentified
Can you tell me any article that Mr. Rosenfeld's written before?
I can't remember any.
richard c hoagland
You know, I've been kind of scratching my head here tonight.
I have a feeling that he has been reporting on space events, but I can't put my finger on anything he has written before.
unidentified
Well, you've made him somebody now.
richard c hoagland
I am going to go through the library, and I'm going to look and see if he is, in fact, a veteran.
You know, I didn't ask him.
I didn't even think to ask him the other day.
unidentified
And don't you think NASA has also sacrificed him?
richard c hoagland
I don't quite understand the question.
unidentified
Because they put him in a place where he can't get out.
art bell
And now, he put himself in that place.
Look, by not calling him.
unidentified
He went right along with him.
art bell
Yeah, by not calling my network, me, Richard Hoagland, somebody at Enterprise, Dr. Van Flander.
By accepting faxes purported to be from listeners after requesting the worst of the worst with the names and the identities blacked out and then writing a story based on that, he has put his journalistic integrity as well as that of the Associated Press on the line.
unidentified
Yes, there he is.
But, you know, if I started out an article tonight, then, according to sources high up, that Mr. Rosenthal is an alien, and he's reported that his slander and cover-up of these facts because he is an alien, and, you know, just put that news out and didn't say anything else, and you put it out over the air, would he be upset?
Yeah, his wife would be.
richard c hoagland
They've been married 40, 20 years.
unidentified
Yeah, probably so.
But, I mean, turn right around without any justification, without any higher-up sources, turn right around and come off with all these facts.
Now, on this other subject you're coming up with, I am having a little difficulty following you on.
art bell
Well, all right.
I understand, Caller.
I have difficulty with that as well, but let's stick with the Rosenthal business for a second.
Why would Mr. Rosenthal be willing to accept faxes sent to NASA without names and addresses or phone numbers so that he could pick up the phone and say, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so or whoever, did you send this fax?
Is this an accurate rendition of what you said to be sure that NASA didn't plant faxes?
richard c hoagland
Well, I think when Mr. Tackett was reporting earlier in the evening, he said that the attitude was, this really doesn't matter.
Which gets into another area of journalism.
Those issues that are of importance to society and those areas where reporters basically can exercise a kind of free fire zone because it doesn't matter.
Now, the problem is that their opinion as to what doesn't matter, in fact, matters.
The reason that I have put 15 years into this investigation is because I think this matters enormously.
If we're going to change the direction, the downward slide, the downward spiral of civilization, we need confirmation of some big events big enough to capture everyone's attention and to refocus our direction and give us a dream once again.
And that's why the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence and us part of a larger framework, a larger stage on which maybe the human race has done incredible things in the past and can do them again is worthy, I think, of our attention and our asking the appropriate questions.
art bell
Hold it there.
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unidentified
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art bell
That's who we are.
Good morning, everybody.
Richard C. Hoagland is here.
And we'll get back to him and the phones in a moment.
unidentified
Art.
art bell
Back now to Richard C. Hoagland in Manhattan, where the sun shortly will be arising.
richard c hoagland
It's arising right now.
It is across the Terminators.
It is dawn in New York City.
All right.
Let me say one thing, Art.
I know this is a very controversial discussion we're having regarding the Apollo 1.
art bell
It is, yes.
richard c hoagland
But what we need to do is to back up and look at the big picture.
What is it that our 15 years has uncovered?
It's uncovered elements, bits and pieces, circumstantial data indicating an extraordinary reality out there.
The space program that the American taxpayers have bought and paid for, have taken to their heart, their bosom, have cherished as the most remarkable example of government gone right, somehow has gone radically wrong.
That to a first order, when we found the remarkable things that we thought that NASA was being formed to find, namely evidence that the human race is not alone, they hid it.
And they hit it according to the timid dictates of a document we've now uncovered, the Brookings Report, which basically prophesies that if you find it, you should probably not tell them.
They're not grown up enough to handle it.
Now, if you really take that seriously, if you really consider that as a model of reality with the evidence we put forth, the people that have come forward, the people on your show and all that, as a building layer of credible evidence that something is really rotten in Denmark here,
then you have to ask yourself, what would be the response of those inside this agency, or maybe in other parts of government, that knows that this is true and is desperately afraid that a critical mass of Americans will get the message and begin to ask hard questions?
At what point do you have to kill the messenger?
And how desperate will you be?
This is not just about a comet art.
You know, come on, let's be grown-ups here.
This kind of response, this hatchet propagandistic attitude exemplified in Rosenthal's article, for whatever his own personal biases, was egged on, was instigated by people who are really determined to stop this investigation dead in the water.
No one will pay attention to what we find out in future.
art bell
Yeah, I think that's clear.
richard c hoagland
So what is it they're afraid we're going to find out?
Maybe Betty Grissom has given us another window as to what someone might be hiding.
And notice I keep using the provisionals.
I am not sitting here categorically and saying, I know for a fact that these men were murdered.
I've not said that.
I said the circumstantial evidence got me to quietly begin to look at the bits and pieces, and I was stunned when Betty Grissom came out completely independent and said flatly, there has been a cover-up for 30 years.
That demands now a follow-up investigation.
Mr. Rosenthal, are you listening?
art bell
Wildcard line, you're on the air with Richard C. Hoagland.
Hi.
unidentified
Hi, this is Curtis from San Diego.
art bell
Yes, Curtis.
unidentified
It's amazing.
Everything that comes out of ears in his mouth is just the nail right on the head about everything.
And you've got to understand, though, it's not just about Apollo 1.
It's a lot deeper than that.
When our leaders, this country, start lying to us, like the Kennedy assassination, that's all a cover-up.
Apollo's probably a cover-up, and many things other than those two kind of things.
But I'm telling you, when leaders of a country that's supposed to be under God start lying to us, folks, and then it develops big secrecy.
And it's a sin, turns into a bigger sin, turns into a bigger sin, and it's gone on for 35, 40 years now.
And I think that you mark my word, I know, because the truth always prevails in the end.
And you mark my word today that it's all going to come out.
And us as American folks, we're getting smarter as we get older.
You know, as time goes on, we get smarter and we know it might be my children, but it might be my generation that's going to bring everything out.
And I'm not going to be 85 years old when those Kennedy things are unsealed.
I want to know now.
I deserve to know.
art bell
All right.
I appreciate the call.
Richard, going back to the Apollo 1 situation, based on what you've said, I would have used the accusatory word of negligence.
I would have said that sounds like negligence.
To make the leap to murder requires a leap to accept...
richard c hoagland
We have a clock.
We have a celestial clock, which is as predictive as you can.
art bell
No, I'm not forgetting that.
I'm not forgetting it, Richard.
It requires a leap to accept your timeline, your clock.
And I'm not sure that that would, for example, when you're talking about murder or the possibility of murder, if you were in a courtroom and you began to talk to them about dates and clocks, they'd laugh you out of the room.
richard c hoagland
No, no, no, not at all.
Not at all.
And before the next show, I will go and get the evidence that, in fact, some convictions have been obtained based on evidence of premeditation and a clock, a plan, a pattern.
unidentified
Okay.
richard c hoagland
That is a part of the discussion of guilt or innocence.
Did the person carry out a plan?
Why do you think they have means, motive, and opportunity?
The opportunity is a time factor.
art bell
Well, earlier in the show, you were, I recall you're mentioning the lack of fingerprints on a key and on a bill, I think it was.
richard c hoagland
No, I actually, while we've been in break, I've had a chance to look at the CNN story, the report.
It's interesting that in the government's case against McVay, where they claim that he stored the chemicals for the bomb in this set of lockers, they claim he rented the rider truck at a specific office there outside of Oklahoma.
unidentified
Correct.
richard c hoagland
They claim that he used a key, took it out of the ignition, had it with him as he ran down the alley to get into his getaway car, and then threw the key away.
That on none of these pieces of evidence, none, not just one out of three or one out of five, but on none of them have the independent FBI investigators, of which there were a legion, an army of independent guys looking at this evidence, have they come up with these fingerprints?
Now, this, again, boggles the statistics and raises, in my mind, a pretty important question.
And I'm going to hit it right on the head.
Is McVay the designated fall guy to hide a much deeper problem that people did not want us to explore?
It's always bothered me that a guy who has just committed the most heinous crime in American history has blown away men, women, children in a daycare center, drives 75 miles up a road in a car without a license plate, which, by the way, when they walk foot by foot back to Oklahoma City, they have never found that license Plate.
It literally doesn't exist.
And he's found in a car by a state trooper all by his lonesome on a freeway.
They don't call them freeways, they call them toll roads or something up there.
He has a gun, a loaded gun.
He's just committed a heinous crime of mass murder.
There's no one around.
If he shoots the trooper, he gets away.
He meekly goes to the police station over a license problem.
art bell
That's a point well made.
It's pointed out.
unidentified
Like with Heaven's Gate, I'm asking questions.
art bell
Well, like with Heaven's Gate, like with the assassination of President Kennedy, like so many other things, Richard, Flight 800.
And I could go on and on.
I don't think we're ever going to know.
richard c hoagland
Well, if people want to know.
art bell
And even if McVay is convicted, there are going to be people like yourself asking these questions for generations to come.
richard c hoagland
Well, I hope that we could short-circuit that time factor.
unidentified
I would hope so, too.
art bell
But look how long it's been going on with Kennedy.
richard c hoagland
The problem with Kennedy is that the murder of John Kennedy, and it was murder, right?
No one argues about that.
art bell
By somebody.
richard c hoagland
Took place in a totally different era.
When authority said, when the FBI said, when the Warren Commission said this is the way it is, most Americans simply accepted it.
There were a few, you know, the guys who wrote the books and the other.
I know a couple of the researchers and have had long discussions.
I remember, because he's dead now, I can tell the story, I stayed one weekend with Carl Sagan when he and Linda were together.
It was an extraordinarily interesting weekend.
I remember that our weekend parted on a severe note of dissension.
This is back in the early 70s.
Because I believe the Warren Commission, look how far we've come, and Carl Sagan did not.
Carl Sagan believed that Kennedy was assassinated as part of a conspiracy in the early 70s.
And I've never told the story to anybody, tonight.
art bell
What happened to the extraordinary evidence thing?
I mean, why would he leap to that conclusion?
richard c hoagland
Because Carl didn't leap.
He obviously had done his homework, and I had not.
And that's what made me very suspicious of his efforts to keep us from looking at Sidonia years later.
art bell
Well, Richard, he must have given you argument.
If the weekend ended on a note of dissension, he must have argued his points to you.
What did he say?
richard c hoagland
You know, now, this is going to sound funny, but I really don't remember because to me, to me, the Kennedy thing was emotionally very wrenching.
I remember where I was.
Everybody does.
art bell
For everybody.
richard c hoagland
But I felt it was one of those things where no matter how much we would argue, we'd never get to the bottom of it.
That there was no evidence that we could put our fingers on.
The records were sealed.
The mindset of the country at that time was radically different.
Now, everybody's asking questions about everything.
Thank God.
art bell
But let me assure you, even if McVeigh is convicted and then finally executed after X number of appeals, there will still be people saying, but where were the fingerprints on the key?
Where were the fingerprints on the retal sheet?
And all the rest of it.
They're going to be asking those questions until you and I are long gone.
richard c hoagland
People are assuming it's a foregone conclusion.
I think there are surprises.
I think Stephen Jones is a decent attorney, and I was dumbfounded.
art bell
Well, you missed the if part.
I said, even if he's convicted and executed, those questions will always remain.
richard c hoagland
But remember, we're dealing in a different social milieu.
This is not the 1960s.
This is the 1990s.
People are asking questions.
We do have the internet.
Remember, Pierre Salinger is out there with an aggressive stance in terms of Flight 800.
art bell
Yeah, and he's still swinging in the wind.
richard c hoagland
Well, because at the moment, the evidence has not been forthcoming.
art bell
Well, there's been an awful lot of time that's gone.
richard c hoagland
No, there hasn't.
It's been a few months.
art bell
A few months.
If Pierre had the goods, they should have been all over the mainstream press.
richard c hoagland
As a matter of fact, yesterday, he and the journalist who wrote this book that was on Tom Snyder the other night, whose name escapes me, Sanders, is it?
James Sanders.
They held a news conference yesterday.
And Fox, early in the morning, claimed they were going to carry it live.
They then came on and announced that they'd made a mistake.
They were not going to carry it live.
In fact, nobody carried it live.
They carried Tiger Woods.
All right?
At the same time that Salinger and Sanders are laying out what they claim is evidence for another heinous crime, Tiger Woods is holding a conversation with some sports journalists somewhere in the South, Louisiana, I guess.
CNN chose to cover, among others, that press conference and not the Salinger and Sanders press conference.
Now, will it stop there?
No, because the wheels are slowly turning.
My point is simply this.
When you're presented with a set of conclusions these days, given now the exquisite forensics and CAT scan on the Rosenthal affair, be skeptical.
Don't buy the story as it's given to you.
art bell
You know, I'll give you one that I'm wondering about, Richard.
The assassination of Martin Luther King.
There's this big deal running on CNN about how they're firing the gun and checking the ballistics.
unidentified
Yep.
art bell
I'm a little curious about this.
Haven't we had the ability to check ballistics since the day Martin Luther King and long before he was killed?
And if they fire this gun and they conclude with ballistic tests that it was not the gun that fired the bullet that killed Martin Luther King, isn't that going to be a little bit embarrassing for them?
richard c hoagland
Well, it's going to be embarrassing for a whole range of people.
art bell
Yeah, but I mean, you tell me.
Didn't they have the ability back then to ballistically check the...
richard c hoagland
I have not investigated the Martin Luther King assassination.
art bell
Nor have I. I'm simply astounded that they aren't just now getting around to testing.
richard c hoagland
Well, no, no, no.
What I recall is that the claim at the time was because the bullets were so shattered that they could not do meaningful ballistics on the bullets that came out of King's body.
They could not compare them against bullets fired from this gun.
And the claim now from Ray's attorney, again, this is secondhand, is that the science of ballistic forensics has come far enough that we're now able to, like with these images from NASA, pull information and data out of the noise that was unavailable to technology before.
art bell
Well, it is certainly true in other areas.
There are rapists convicted in jail that are now on a regular basis getting set free because of DNA analysis that we can now do.
First time caller line, you're on the air with Richard Hoglund.
unidentified
Hello.
Hi, my name is Rick from Long Beach.
art bell
Hi, Rick.
unidentified
How are you doing tonight?
Okay.
All right.
Yeah, I just wanted to comment on some stuff that Richard had said earlier pertaining to his idea that those people on the Apollo craft were murdered.
I thought, you know, Richard, you know, the way you present yourself on the radio and from a few of the things I've heard about you, you're very discreet about the information that you let out.
You know, especially on the air, I've noticed that you're very concise and you don't normally say things unless you can absolutely back it up.
And I can remember on a number of occasions when you actually stated that, that you didn't have the material yet for solid proof.
And that's why tonight, you know, I was kind of disappointed when I heard you actually say that these people were murdered.
And there's a couple of reasons for it.
You know, I was listening the night that you were talking about the 39 people that committed suicide, most recently.
And I remember you using the word hypothetically when you first started that conversation out.
And so, you know, this guy with the AP that had a field day with this, and then it happened once before with another group.
You see, I understand what you guys are talking about with that, okay, where that was misrepresentation.
It was just Phantasma Corey.
It's just, you know, media hype.
And tonight, I get the impression that you may have just set yourself up for that again.
The reason I say that is because you use the term circumstantial evidence and things like that.
And it's kind of disappointing because the way you present yourself normally, I can listen to what you say and I can buy a lot of that.
You know, I don't understand a lot of physics or anything, but I can entertain your ideas with an open mind and actually go over them.
And tonight, the way you presented yourself with this murder accusation or whatever, you didn't use any hypothetical sense or anything.
And I think maybe that might have hurt you.
I know that I found it to be a disappointment.
richard c hoagland
Well, I'm sorry you're disappointed, but when you're dealing with something as serious as this, you have to call the spade a spade.
If the deaths were not accidental, they were murder.
It's very binary.
Either they died inadvertently or they died because someone wanted them to die.
art bell
All right, Richard.
richard c hoagland
The question is, which is it?
art bell
Which is it, indeed?
All right, Richard, hold it right there, and we'll be right back.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
The clock says we must stop.
This is CBC.
unidentified
The talk station, AM 1500, KSTP.
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