The Unexplained - Howard Hughes - Special - Dr David Clarke, Calvine Interview

Aug. 14, 2022 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes

05:30

Special - Dr David Clarke, Calvine Interview

This is the full interview with Dr David Clarke about the Calvine UFO case - and the photo hidden for decades he tracked down...

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	Dave, first of all, congratulations.
	Are you surprised, as I was gobsmacked, that only two newspapers in this country, The Sun and the Mail, and nobody else so far has picked up on what is, for you and the world, I think, a pretty damn big story?
	No, it doesn't surprise me at all, actually, because since leaving journalism, I just can't believe how long it takes some media organizations to pick up on this kind of story.
	I can't completely understand why.
	You know, it's just that there are so few journalists left.
	You know, the newspaper I used to work at had, I don't know, sort of over 100 members of staff when I was there in the mid-90s, and now it's down to less.
	You could count them on your hand.
	So I think it's simply that it's far easier.
	Yeah, it's far easier just to copy stuff that's coming through on Twitter and not actually do any proper journalism and ask any questions like I'm able to do because I do it in a sort of freelance capacity.
	And you can give it the time.
	Last time I did a conversation about this case, which was about four months ago, I remember ending it, ironically enough, with the words, somebody must be sitting on this picture somewhere.
	You can't tell me that somebody doesn't have a copy of this.
	You found the picture and the person.
	How?
	By old-fashioned shoe leather foot-indoor journalism, the sort of thing that I was taught as a trainee in the 1980s, that you're like a dog with a bone.
	If, like you've just said, Howard, you know, that someone must be sitting on that photograph, then what's the best way to find it?
	Is it to sort of go online and spend all day on Twitter?
	Or is it actually to drive to Scotland, knock on doors, speak to people, real human beings, and eventually you'll hit pay dirt and that's what I did.
	The former MOD employee who had this picture was told, don't worry about it, London will deal with this.
	That is after the negatives of the picture disappeared following them being handed over to the Daily Record newspaper and, you know, the trail goes cold after that.
	So he was told, London will deal with this.
	Now he's 83 and he's decided whatever the consequences, which I'm sure there won't be any, he wants to come forward and talk about it.
	Well, he was happy to talk to me about it.
	He doesn't want to talk to anyone else because he wants the whole thing to go away.
	But he is, after all these years, he is keen as I am for the truth to come out.
	Whatever that truth is, I mean, in his words are, you know, the photograph shows it's either an exceptionally good hoax or it's the real thing.
	And I'm not sure what he means by the real thing, but I agree with him.
	If it is a hoax, then those two chefs who took the photograph have fooled the RAS finest, you know, Jarek, the best in the business, apparently, the photo analyst.
	They've fooled them.
	They've fooled the MOD.
	And to me, as a journalist, that's as good a story as it being, you know, aliens or secret aircraft.
	You know, to me, it's the story that's important, not whether it's true or false, you know, genuine or not, et cetera, et cetera, and people's reactions to the story.
	The MOD wasn't going to release this picture, was it for another 50 years?
	Certainly for a period of decades.
	No, well, that's not exactly true because there's a lot of false information going around on the internet about this.
	Because, yeah, they obviously had the photographs and the negatives.
	What became of them?
	They say that they returned them to the Daily Record.
	What happened to them after that is a mystery because they were never returned, according to the information that I've got, to the person who took the photograph, on whose trail I now trying to find him as we speak.
	I can't really say more than that because we're at a very crucial stage.
	But I'm pretty sure that the negatives, if they were returned to the Daily Record, they didn't go any further than that, shall we say.
	Once they were returned to the photographer.
	There must be in a metal filing cabinet somewhere.
	There's a book in this for you, Dave, isn't there?
	Yeah, I've been thinking about that, actually, but I'm not sure I want to write it in a sort of, you know, the sort of straightforward investigative way.
	I think it'd make a quite a nice sort of, you know, sort of like imaginative non-fiction, almost like a novel, because that's what I feel like I've been living on the set of the exiles for the past 12 months.
	So just in our last seconds here, because this is a sound conversation and, you know, our time has to be limited because of this.
	Whatever this was, if it was from here or if it was a, you know, if it was the Aurora spy plane in development, you know, taking a flight, whatever, the process alone of what happened to the picture, what happened to the people, is worth that book alone.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah.
	I mean, if this was just a fake, and as a lot of the keyboard warriors are now saying on Twitter, you know, it was a stone thrown into a pond, or that's the best one.
	I love that one.
	Or it was something dangling from the tree, then those guys managed to bring down a whole tornado on their heads in that, you know, they had all the sort of the men in black descending on the hotel where they were working and warnings not to talk to the media and everything.
	So I mean, so if the whole thing was a joke and a prank that got out of hand, then I think they live to regret it.

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