Why Government Panels on Weird Shit Don't Necessarily Mean the Government Believes It
Remember, governments are people too
In the New York Post’s recent video by Steven Greenstreet debunking a ton of Skinwalker Ranch nonsense, ranch owner Brandon Fugal tells how in 2018 he was invited to Washington DC to update a committee on the happenings at Skinwalker Ranch. Greenstreet verified that this did indeed take place.
At this point, many of you probably have your jaws on the floor. The government is spending taxpayer money to investigate the claims made by a paranormal entertainment program (The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch) on HISTORY, the network most synonymous with fictional fluff?
Well, not so fast. As Fugal was telling the story, it became more and more familiar to me. I have spent the past 16 years of my career researching such stories, finding out how they came to be stories, who were the personalities behind them, and why so many people believe anything that’s on television. A personality notable for their involvement with a famous paranormal case being invited to an official government meeting is a tale that I’ve encountered time and time again. Seriously, it keeps popping up.
It even happened to me once.
Before I was full-time at Skeptoid Media I was still doing some consulting, and one of my gigs was at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. While there, I was granted only the minimal security clearance needed to do what I was doing, which wasn’t much. I even had to be escorted to lunch or to the bathroom. Any time I was in a room, a red siren on the wall outside the door was on, warning others that a muggle was inside that room.
One day a guy came in and spoke with my handler, who was also my supervisor. He wanted to borrow me. A discussion ensued because I wasn’t cleared to go where he wanted to take me. They soon resolved it (how I don’t know, but evidently this new guy had some clout), and then I was off to wherever he was taking me.
In 2011 I had done a show on the famous Voynich Manuscript, the coded book that nobody can decode (because there is almost certainly nothing intelligible in it to decode). My new friend explained that he was a real fan of that episode — which shocked me because I was in a completely different brain gear; my work at LLNL had nothing at all to do with my work at Skeptoid. We went into a conference room (and this time they did not bother to turn on the siren outside, which makes no sense to me, but whatever, none of my business). In the conference room were approximately eight or ten men and women. I have no idea who any of them were, we were introduced but who remembers names. I don’t have any sense of what any of their roles were there at the Lab. Maybe they were the highest muckety-mucks, maybe they were the lowliest of clerical workers. But they were all fans of the Voynich Manuscript, and having somehow heard that I was on campus, they’d arranged to have me brought to them. For half an hour or so we discussed everything about the manuscript. They gave me their theories, I told them what I knew about each. It was all quite fun and cordial. And then it was over, we shook hands, I went back to work, and never saw or heard from any of them again.
Does this mean that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has some official work in progress on the Voynich Manuscript? No. It means that the people who work there are human beings with normal human interest in various things, and they had the opportunity and the means to have a personal conversation with someone whose work they were interested in on a personal level.
I bring this up because time and time again, I’ve read accounts of other such meetings. While watching Brandon Fugal in the New York Post video, the meeting I was most closely reminded of was one involving officials from several government agencies following a famous UFO case up in Alaska, which I also wrote about: the 1986 Japan Air Lines Alaska UFO. The details of that case are unimportant, but as it was widely published that USAF radar tracks were taken (on paper in those days) it attracted some attention. This meeting took place at an FAA office in Alaska some months after the event. In attendance were at least one CIA agent, at least one government contractor, at least one prolific UFO author, and allegedly some other assorted government officials. The purpose of the meeting was for all of these guys to meet with John Callahan, whose role in the case is not clear to me but who later became a major figure in pop UFOlogy, and to see the radar tracks.
Did that meeting mean that the government (specifically the CIA) had an official interest in the JAL UFO? No. It turns out that this was merely a group of friends, all UFO enthusiasts, most of whom were in government, who had the opportunity and the means to meet with Callahan and to see the printed radar tracks, which had otherwise not been available.
People are people, even if they work in government. Working in government has never immunized anyone from having strange beliefs. You’ll find people who believe in ghosts, psychics, aliens, and homeopathy working in government and the military just as often as you’ll find them working in hair salons or mortgage brokers. Notice how it’s never hard for TV networks to find believers in alien visitation among the ranks of Navy pilots. Why would it be?
In the New York Post video Fugal shows some photos he took at the meeting to Greenstreet (though wouldn’t allow them to be shown on cameras). That he was allowed to take photos strongly suggests the meeting had no official component. Greenstreet recognized some of the attendees: Hal Puthoff, best known for his lifelong obsession with psychic powers and the afterlife; Naval intelligence officer Brennan McKernan, who two years later became the director of the Pentagon’s UFO task force; and Sean Kirkpatrick, who later became part of the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office. You don’t get to join those groups without a serious interest in UFOs. After many phone calls to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Greenstreet was finally told by a spokesperson that the meeting had essentially no relevant official function; Fugal was there merely to update them on “plans for his properties.”
And so I am unpersuaded that it’s necessary to conclude the Pentagon gives a flying wahoo about Skinwalker Ranch. I am persuaded it’s perfectly plausible that a bunch of random people in government take a strong personal interest in such things, and had the opportunity and the means to meet Brandon Fugal.
The problem is when peoples’ personal interest in paranormal phenomena turns into the real expenditure of taxpayer dollars…