Info-ParaNet Newsletters Volume I Number 413 Thursday, May 30th 1991 Today's Topics: Jacques Vallee Interview Vallee Interview, (2) Vallee Interview, (3) Vallee Interview, (4) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: ParaNet.Information.Service@p0.f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG (sm) Subject: Jacques Vallee Interview Date: 29 May 91 06:26:00 GMT (C) 1991 ParaNet(sm) Information Service. All Rights Reserved. **************************************************************** ParaNet File Number: 01154 **************************************************************** A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS Recently, Jacques Vallee has been making more public appearances following a hiatus which took him out of the american ufological scene for nearly ten years. His reasons for the absence were directly tied to the disgust he felt toward the methodology employed by UFO researchers and investigators. A very controversial figure, Vallee is highly regarded within the French and European community, where it appears progress is being made due to a diverse attitude among our European counterparts. One has to agree that things are a sad state of affairs right here at home. Virtually no progress is being made as we are actually further from an answer than we were ten years ago. This can be credited to the lack of a focused, scientific approach, coupled with a move away from critical thinking so necessary to begin to understand the complexities that this enigma presents. Vallee has published two books of late - Confrontations and Dimensions, which detail the fruits of his research, conducted quietly and away from the public scene. Vallee's message is clear - The UFO phenomenon represents a clear and present danger. His research indicates that we may be dealing with an extremely complex set of models that demand scientific discipline and a whole new approach to the problem. Vallee is highly concerned with the public's seeming "blind faith" acceptance of the "space brothers" scenario, considering that there are serious actions on the part of the phenomenon to do harm to individuals without any consideration for our comfort or feelings. The problem is agitated further by unqualified personnel performing hypnotic regression which seems to cement the contact to fit the hypnotists idea of what happened, instead of what really happened. This, as Vallee says, attempts to force the event into the victim's reality, when it really doesn't belong. Although Vallee has drawn a lot of fire from noted abduction researchers such as Budd Hopkins, his ideas are not far from accepted scientific methodology. Hypnosis is not for the unqualified to be performing. It belongs with credible, degreed medical personnel who know the intricacies involved with the procedure. More harm is being done to the alleged victim than good when unqualified people perform the regression. The victim is often left with the trauma of the contact, and cannot effectively deal with it. It must be treated as a medical problem. As Vallee states about unqualified hypnotists dealing with victims: "It is unprofessional and unethical." With this he sharply criticizes Dr. Edith Fiore, who took a course on hypnosis during a weekend and began to regress abductees the following Monday morning. The question comes down to: Are we interested in getting to the bottom of this problem, or are we more concerned with the sensational aspect of it? If the answer is the former, than we must begin to police our own backyard and change the direction of things. The data pool is so polluted and corrupt with information that has been arrived at with faulty investigative methods, that we are drawing false conclusions about what UFOs really represent. We must have an open mind. But, we also must employ a methodology that is akin to forensic investigative methods. In this respect, we will make substantial progress, and with the data that is collected in this fashion, be able to construct theoretical models which hold some hope for the answer. ParaNet has reprinted the entire interview with Jacques Vallee. We invite your discussion and comments. ================================================================= This article was reprinted from FATE Magazine, Vol. 44, No. 7, Issue 496, July 1991. (C) 1991 Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd. Subscriptions: $22.95/yr. to: P.O. Box 1940, 170 Future Way Marion OH 43305-1940 ================================================================= AN INTERVIEW WITH JACQUES VALLEE BY George W. Earley In 1980, Jacques Vallee "disappeared" from organized ufology. The author of several ground-breaking (and often controversial) UFO books, a one-time associate of (and co-author with) the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek, vanished almost as quickly and quietly as a UFO itself. Almost a decade would pass before Vallee reappeared; when he did, he aroused even more controversy than he had in the 1970s. <> -- ParaNet(sm) Information Service - via FidoNet node 1:104/422 UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name INTERNET: ParaNet(sm).Information.Service@p0.f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: ParaNet.Information.Service@p0.f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG (sm) Subject: Vallee Interview, (2) Date: 29 May 91 06:27:00 GMT Vallee's reappearance was signaled by publication of two books: Dimensions (Ballantine; 1989) sought to show that the phenomenon we call UFOs has been with humanity throughout-and likely even before recorded history. His second book, Confrontations (Ballantine; 1990), chastised ufologists as scientifically inept investigators, detailed the in-depth and hands on investigations (many of them done outside the U.S.) he undertook during the 1980s, and expressed his strong belief that UFOs and their allegedly attendant beings were likely not extraterrestrial, but interdimensional forms. I caught up with him in Portand, Oregon, several months ago, and between his early morning appearance on a local TV show and a press conference, the following tape recorded conversation ensued. Earley: I saw the program on TV this morning and you mentioned the Costa Rica photograph. I looked at the one in Confrontations and the analysis of it and it still seems inconclusive. What do you feel we need to have for a photo to be thoroughly acceptable not only to the scientific community but to the media and the public? Vallee: Well, in this case we are taking the analysis step by step. We are purposely very careful, not making any claims that we can't prove as we go along. The first thing that was done was to work from a 2nd generation negative that I brought back from Costa Rica. Dick Haines1 and I published an initial article in the Journal of Scientific Exploration.2 When that article was refereed and reviewed, a couple of referees raised questions about what the image could be and what artifacts could have caused it. Now we have the original negative which I have succeeded in getting out of Costa Rica. As you know, it is a photograph taken by a mapping aircraft of the government of Costa Rica and it belongs to the government. What I have now is the original uncut negative, the frame that shows the object, the frame before and the frame after, taken at 20 second intervals. We have looked at it, magnified it, printed it with different densities, and so on. That eliminates all the claims of possible artifacts. We know this is not a double exposure, we know this is not a fine particle trapped in the film...this is a real image. It is a large image. The next step is to digitize it-we do not have access to such a place here [in America] but I know people in France who can do it, with superb facilities for computer photo analysis. We are waiting for them to digitize the frames and to do enhancement and comparisons of one frame to the next. Earley: I'll be interested in hearing the results of their work. Now, during your TV appearance today, just before and after each commercial break, the station used some of those controversial saucer photos taken in Switzerland by Edward Meier. Has anyone analyzed them? I know there have been a couple of books about him but I don't believe his claims have ever been seriously examined. Vallee: In the case of Meier, the negatives have never been available, to my knowledge. Without the negatives, one can do nothing. So it goes back to a question of belief. I am very, very skeptical of the Meier case. I've been to his place in Switzerland. Nobody can tell me this is an average Swiss farmer...[chuckles]...the man has led an extremely interesting life. The photographs themselves are not convincing. No one will be able to tell for sure until we can work from the negatives and the negatives have never been available. And there's no good reason for withholding them. In a situation where someone has had a genuine experience, there should be full disclosure. There is no reason to hide anything. Earley: I agree. I would also note that the space beings he says he's meeting with are more like those described by George Adamski in the 1950s than the beings that are reported today. I don't know how you feel about this but it raises a warning flag for me. Vallee: Yes. And the place...I was there last summer [1989]. The place is run like a cult. Visitors are screened by members of his group. He is not at all living in poverty, getting up at sunup to work in the fields. He has a large house, with the flag of his organization in front of it, a guest book which has been signed by every TV station in Japan which has come through there. There is a satellite antenna to pick up foreign television broadcasts...this is an organized cult. It is not just the average farmer who has happened to see UFOs. GULF BREEZE Earley: Very interesting. Have you talked with Dr. Bruce Maccabee about the Gulf Breeze case? Vallee: Yes I have. And I respect Dr. Maccabee, he's a good scientist. I've looked at the photographs, spent two to three hours with him in Washington. I should qualify this -- I don't like to talk about cases I have not investigated myself. I have not gone to Gulf Breeze purposely, I am not trying to investigate it. As you know from my book, I put the highest priority on cases that have not been reported and cases that are not big media cases with fanfare...those are the cases where I can achieve something within my limitations, where I can get somewhere. I like the cases that have been very quiet or where interest has disappeared over the years. Then I can go to the site and meet the people and be seriously involved and this is certainly not the case in Gulf Breeze. Now on the technical questions I have about Gulf Breeze, I've never gotten an answer. One question is: Why don't we have a spectrum of the illumination? The object appeared again and again and again; it appeared often enough that the witness could be supplied with a camera that had four different lenses on it. Well, it would be a simple thing to sacrifice one of the lenses and put a [diffraction] grating in front of the objective [lens] and get a spectrum and then we would know once and for all if it's a good old 200-watt Sylvania light bulb in there or if it is something unknown to physics. At least we would know that. From the photographs you can't tell. Another thing that is very, very disturbing is that, as you know, the witness, Ed Walters, has a (criminal) record. Well, that is neither here nor there -- people with records see UFOs just like people with no records. But that does have an influence on the way one would analyze a sighting. And the fact that he has a record is not disclosed in the book. And I think that's wrong! I feel there should be full disclosure. Earley: There was a vague mention of an "indiscretion" or something like that. I would note that in a recent issue of Jim Moseley's Saucer Smear newsletter 3, Walters writes that because of "my reputation as a responsible business man and community leader" he has been granted "a Full Pardon" by Florida Governor Bob Martinez. Of course that doesn't take away the guilt of what he did...I know Phil Klass loves to get into things like that. He pointed out that Travis Walton had also been charged with forgery... <> -- ParaNet(sm) Information Service - via FidoNet node 1:104/422 UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name INTERNET: ParaNet(sm).Information.Service@p0.f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: ParaNet.Information.Service@p0.f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG (sm) Subject: Vallee Interview, (3) Date: 29 May 91 06:27:00 GMT <> Vallee: I think that's relevant and it should always be disclosed. There should be no question in disclosing it. The fact that in this case there is no full disclosure, that the book represented him as a pillar of the community, I find that wrong. Earley: I think the pardon came after the book was published. Perhaps it will be put in the 2nd edition... I'd like to talk about witness harassment and ridicule. You mentioned this topic in your book; I believe in one instance you wrote of "vandalism." Was this to a victim's home or car? Vallee: If you remember, there were several cases like this. There was a policeman in the Midwest, Herbert Schirmer, who suffered from harassment. Even in the case of Lonnie Zamora, he was harassed and had to leave the police department. The kids, when he tried to arrest them in Socorro [New Mexico], would say "Why are you after me? Look at that flying saucer over there. It's going faster than I am. Why don't you arrest it and leave me alone?" And in the famous case in Michigan, the "swamp gas" case, the witness's house was pelted with beer bottles and Coke bottles and cans...jsut the reaction of the friendly local community. Earley: And the police chief in Alabama I think it was, who took the picture of an alleged entity...Greehaw, was it? I think he resigned because of the hassles he had. Have any of your fellow scientists done any sociological studies as to why there should be this reaction to UFO reports? Vallee: Not any formal studies. It is a normal human reaction in a way; there is a reaction of laughter to relieve tension and the fear of the unknown. It's nice to be able to laugh at it and it makes you look smart. It is a normal reaction by people who don't want to be bothered by such things. I don't know what it will take for people to grow up and recognize this phenomenon as something very important. I hope that my book will be a contribution in that direction. Among my colleagues it has started to have that effect. After reading the book they understand that this is obviously not just a bunch of uneducated people in the countryside sitting by the river and watching flying saucers come by... Earley: So you're getting a positive reaction from your colleagues in the United States as well as in France? Vallee: Absolutely. COSMIC IMPLICATIONS Earley: That's encouraging. Because what it gets down to is how do we develop a proof that will allow people to take this seriously...why are people ignoring the, shall we say, "cosmic" implications of the UFO phenomenon? Vallee: Well, you know, the people who are interested in the UFO phenomenon...we've been guilty of pushing the extraterrestrial theory to the exclusion of everything else. The word from many people in the public and also in the scientific community is -- either UFOs don't exist and it is all illusions and mistakes and hoaxes and so forth, or we are being visited by beings from outer space. It seems to be either one or the other. Well, it doesn't have to be one or the other. What I find is that people start paying attention when you tell them "Hey, of course it could be aliens or a form of intelligence from outer space, but it could be other things too!" Then they start to want to know more, they start thinking...before they had to decide between not believing the witnesses or agreeing that we were being visited by aliens. People have reacted negatively to that narrow choice. Scientists have certainly reacted negatively to it. They say "Oh yeah? If they are space aliens, how and why do they come here?" I had that reaction yesterday at a radio station in Seattle. "Why do they do these absurd things people say they do? Why do they look like us?" We have to deal with the fact that while this phenomenon is very complex, it does not have to be extraterrestrial necessarily. That opens up many other hypotheses including interdimensionality, which is now mainstream physics. There are theories about the universe having more than four dimensions, and to me the UFO phenomenon is interesting to the extent that it is forcing us to ask those questions and to test some of those new and exciting theories. When you say that, scientists become interested once again because it means that the UFO problem is not a closed system anymore. What has surprised me is that when you start proposing such ideas, the people who react the most negatively, not to say venomously, are not the skeptics but the people in the UFO community themselves. I have been astonished by this violent reaction and you may have seen the comments of Budd Hopkins and of Jerry Clark4 calling me a flake for opening up these possibilities. I've argued before, as you know, with Donald Menzel and I've argued with Philip Klass, yet I've never experienced such polemics. Mind you, I don't mind the polemics. I'm not particularly looking for it, but if it happens, it happens. Yet I've never encountered the kind of vitriolic reaction I have with Jerry Clark, which was totally uncalled for. It just came out of nowhere as far as I'm concerned. That taught me an important lesson, though, that I'd not realized before: parochialism within the UFO community itself may be what is preventing us from being heard by the scientific world. Earley: I think that could be a possibility. The "house divided" effect... Vallee: Jerome Clark is reacting almost as if I had questioned something very sacred for him, something that must not be questioned by someone who calls himself a UFO researcher. I'm questioning the dogma that these beings are ETs...yet when I listen to the witnesses, which is what I try to do carefully, they tell me they see objects appearing out of nowhere, and disappearing on the spot. They don't necessarily see things that take off and go up in the sky and go through the atmosphere. In some cases they do, but in many cases they describe objects that seem to have the ability to operate on space-time, to manipulate space-time. Well, if there is a form of consciousness that does that, if there is a technology that does that, then it opens up all kinds of questions that we have never really considered seriously. And from a scientific point of view, number one, it makes a lot more sense. Number two, it is much richer in terms of what we can do with it in our own research. <> -- ParaNet(sm) Information Service - via FidoNet node 1:104/422 UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name INTERNET: ParaNet(sm).Information.Service@p0.f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG -------------------------------------------------------------------- From: ParaNet.Information.Service@p0.f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG (sm) Subject: Vallee Interview, (4) Date: 29 May 91 06:28:00 GMT <<>> Earley: It is, of course, a regrettable fact that the scientific community, by and large, has rejected the UFO phenomenon out of hand without making any real study of it. I've talked to Isaac Asimov. He speaks of "UFO maniacs" in a recent book5 on the NASA/SETI program, yet he knows nothing of UFOs. When you try to pin him down about his skepticism, he says: "Well, I've devoted enough of my time to this and I have many other things to do." Carl Sagan does the same thing. A very personable man but very glib and shallow in some respects, particularly with regard to the UFO phenomenon. Vallee: They've never taken time to study the cases themselves. All they know about it is what they read in the National Enquirer... Earley: Are you saying that to a large degree you wrote Confrontations for the scientific community and that while you are hoping it will have an impact on the public at large, basically you were trying to speak to your colleagues? Vallee: I'm trying to show that, number one, the data is robust enough that it can be studied scientifically. There is no lack of parameters that are quantifiable, there is no lack of data from technically trained observers. Number two, I am showing that the phenomenon also has important medical implications, physiological implications that should be studied. A lot of attention has recently been placed -- and rightly so -- on the abduction phenomenon. That is fine, but beyond the abduction phenomena there are other types of impacts that should be documented and studied: that includes the medical and physiological impact and I'm trying to call attention to that. ABDUCTIONS AND HYPNOSIS Earley: You mentioned Hopkins' disagreement with your theory as to the possible origin of the aliens -- do you still feel the abduction phenomenon is a real one? Vallee: I've never said otherwise. People have tried to imply that I was rejecting the abduction phenomena and I never have. As you know, both in this book (Confrontations) and in Dimensions, I even talk about abduction cases I've studied. In Confrontations you will find the case of the woman I call "Mrs. Victor" and several other cases. In Happy Camp (California), for example, there was an abduction case, among many other things. In some cases I have studied those incidents whit the help of hypnotists. But I surely would not do the hypnosis myself as some abductionists so. As I have said before, and I will say it at every occasion, this is unethical and unscientific. What they (the abduction hypnotists) are getting is not the truth. They are wrongly assuming that they are looking at the first level interpretations of what the witnesses have encountered. In many of those hypnosis sessions you will find that leading questions are being used. Besides, there is obvious screening or self-selection on the part of the people who come forward to be hypnotized. There is a framework that is put on the experience itself. The tragedy is that once that kind of framework has been put on the experience, you cannot go back. I've had a number of people who have been studied and hypnotized, people who have been mentioned in some of the more prominent books on abduction, who have come to me saying "my experience was much wider than what is described in the book. The author took things out of context to fit them in his book, but I need help to deal with other aspects of my experience that nobody wanted to look at." I'm not in a position to help these people because they've already been hypnotized a number of times, they are stuck in a certain framework -- I don't know of any way one can go back and rehypnotize these people to get back to the original experience. Which is why in many cases a...psychiatrist using hypnosis in his work will tell you that you have to be very careful and that in many cases hypnosis is not even the proper form of investigation. Earley: That's why I was frankly appalled at Dr. Edith Fiore's book6 because she "learned" hypnosis over one weekend and then began using it the following Monday. And now she thinks she is an abductee after having been hypnotized by Dr. James Harder. I understand Dr. Rima Laibow is saying she's an abductee. It seems to me there is a lot of self-contamination and pollution in this business. But let's take a scenario here. Suppose I came to you and said I've been having disturbing dreams and I've read things in newspapers and magazines about abductions; maybe I've been abducted; you're the first person I've come to about this. What would your step-by-step procedure be with a person who approached you in that manner? Vallee: I think witnesses should only go to trained people. Hypnosis is a complex and dangerous thing; people should only go to clinical psychologists or M.D.s for that kind of work. There is an objection to that, which I have heard from Jerome Clark and other people in the UFO field, saying that many witnesses don't have access to such experts, so Budd Hopkins and Dave Jacobs and others are performing a valuable service when they do it themselves because the medical professionals are not always available to do it. Well, it's obviously a flawed argument. It's like your coming to me and saying "I need a triple [heart] bypass. Would you please take your kitchen knife and do it because my doctor doesn't want to do it?" Well, I'm not qualified to do a triple bypass and I'm not qualified to hypnotize anybody and I'm not going to learn the technique so I can start hypnotizing people left and right. Again, I think this is unethical and unscientific and it doesn't get us to the kind of UFO data we need. In the cases when this situation has happened, what I've done is to go to professionals I know. I would not discuss the case with a witness. I would say, "Look, we are going to get to know each other. You are going to tell me about yourself, but let's not talk about UFOs. Please don't read any more on the subject for a few weeks until we can get you to see someone who is trained in hypnosis." In one case I went to a friend of mine who is a clinical psychologist and he said, "You won't need hypnosis with this person, there are other ways -- there are much more sophisticated techniques that can be used to help people remember what happened to them, under their own control." <> -- ParaNet(sm) Information Service - via FidoNet node 1:104/422 UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name INTERNET: ParaNet(sm).Information.Service@p0.f428.n104.z1.FIDONET.ORG ********To have your comments in the next issue, send electronic mail to******** 'infopara' at the following address: UUCP {ncar,isis,boulder}!scicom!infopara DOMAIN infopara@scicom.alphacdc.com For administrative requests (subscriptions, back issues) send to: UUCP {ncar,isis,boulder}!scicom!infopara-request DOMAIN infopara-request@scicom.alphacdc.com To obtain back issues by anonymous ftp, connect to: DOMAIN ftp.uiowa.edu (directory /archives/paranet) ******************The**End**of**Info-ParaNet**Newsletter************************