For more recent information about Area 51, see the new Area 51 Research Center maintained by Don Emory.
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From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas) Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 08:12:10 -0800 |
Below is an email interview between myself and Claudio Castellacci of the Rizzoli publishing group in Italy, who says he is working on an article on UFOs and Area 51 for a new monthly magazine. -- GC ------------------------------------------------------------------- >1) What is the Area 51 Research Center? The Research Center is a clearinghouse for information on Area 51 and all UFO and paranormal claims. Our principal activity is maintaining the web site at www.ufomind.com. I guess you could call us an "indexing agency": We don't evaluate claims; we only maintain a filing system for them. We support ourselves through a small bookstore in Rachel, Nevada, and on-line. The staff consists of myself, my wife and a couple of workers at the store. There is also a supporting cast of 100s on the internet. >2) When did you open it and why? I came to Nevada interested in UFOs, and this is my way of pursuing them. I intended to stay about a month, but that has stretched into almost five years. The "Research Center" started out as a bit of a joke. Here was I, alone in a trailer in the desert. I set up a sign out front and suddenly I was "Director of the Area 51 Research Center." A shingle is all you need to become an "expert" in UFOs. I took my role seriously, though, and I tried to make the Research Center live up to its name. >3) Why did you choose Rachel, Nevada? This is the closest town to Area 51. Actually, there is another town, Alamo, that is almost as close and a lot easier to get to, but Rachel was like a little planet. The isolation interested me, with nothing but empty desert in all directions. Coming from the dense area around Boston, I was always fascinated by deserts. Las Vegas, too, has always interested me, because gambling seems such absurd waste of resources, yet it is real, and it tells us something about the human psyche. I guess I was looking for any excuse to move out to Nevada, and Area 51 turned out to be it. >4) What is your professional background? Before coming to Rachel, I was a software developer in Boston, writing financial systems for banks. I now use my programming skills on the web site, which is very dependent on software systems. >5) Do you believe in extraterrestrial life? I neither believe nor disbelieve. I believe only that it is a question worth pursuing, regardless of where it may lead. I think the search for something "out there" is an essential element of our humanity. >6) Do you think that extraterrestrial beings have been in contact >with humans? I do not know. >7) When and how? Yesterday. 8:17 am. In the shower. >8) Do you think that, at present, there are contacts going on? I do not know. >9) Recently U.S. Government sources have declared that "UFOs exist": >those flying objects seen in the skys it was them, it was their >spy planes or test planes. What is your opinion about the explanation? This may explain some sightings, but only a small fraction. The military is in a tough position, even if they know nothing about UFOs. Whether or not UFOs are real, the social phenomenon is, and it has real effect on politics and on military operations. The presence of UFO watchers, for example, has certainly disrupted flight operations at Area 51. The military can't win: If they keep quiet, they are accused of covering up. If they say something, then they are accused of lying, and it may open the floodgates to more inquiries. This is a real public relations challenge, and I think they have done poorly. The military has been stumbling around cloddishly, trying to repair previous damage, when they should have dealt with the problem at a much earlier stage. This is the way a "culture of secrecy" comes back to haunt them. The military has lied to the public so often in the past -- through what are called "cover stories" for military operations -- that no one believes them even if they tell the truth. >10) What is your opinion of the Roswell case? Do you think that >after U.S. Goverment declarations about Ufos, the case is closed? I have no opinion of the Roswell case itself; I am simply an observer. If Roswell is beginning to fade from public consciousness, it is not any credit to the military. The modern Roswell fixation is a fad that will go away on its own. The military response to it seems clumsy at best. Parachute dummies, that's a laugh! It is more likely to keep the questions open longer than they might have been. >11) Do you believe in a cospiracy theory? Or perhaps it's only a >security problem: the Air Force doesn't want the public to know >about their secret tests? In general, I do not believe in big conspiracies, but little ones are possible. There are always people in government, or any organization, who are trying cover up their own weaknesses, and secrecy provides a good fig leaf to hide behind. There is always a tension in a free society between the military, which wants to keep things secret, and the rest of our democracy, which needs openness to preserve its resiliency. Because military secrecy is so pervasive at Area 51 and elsewhere, we cannot say for certain that there is no alien information hidden in there somewhere. I am not saying that there should be no secrecy, however. A credible defense depends on it. It is a balance that needs to be continuously renegotiated. >12) Which case would you take as an example in order to prove the >existance of Ufo's contacts on Earth? I don't think there are any that definitively prove it, except, maybe, to the people who claim these experiences. Since there is no unambiguous physical evidence, nearly all UFO claims depend on the credibility of human witnesses, and you can always say that the witness was somehow mistaken or delusional. On the other hand, if you discard all human testimony, you are going to live a very impoverished life. You have to trust people at some point. I have heard interesting UFO claims, but I have never had to bet my life on any of them, so I don't. The conduct of my own life depends only on what I know for certain here on earth. >13) Have you personally had any experience with Ufos? Or do you know >somebody that you trust that has had experience of any kind? None myself. I have run into many seemingly rational people who tell UFO stories that I regard as not easily dismissed. I look for stories with "depth," that have all the complexity and unexpected twists that I expect from real life. When I hear a good story, I try to record it faithfully, without trying to endorse or refute it. If a story is a lie, I assume that that teller will eventually be caught in his own inconsistancies. If the story is true, then I assume it will eventually dovetail with stories from other sources and a stable truth will emerge on its own. In any case, I am not too concerned about whether or when the UFO mystery is resolved. To me the "process" is more important than the outcome. The process is a fascinating human endeavor that teaches us more about people than about aliens. UFOs provide me with a way to approach many important philosophical questions, like "Who can I trust?| and "What is my place in the universe?" On the website, the search for something beyond our current existance is taken as the central core, and everything else is structured around it. It does not matter to me if the beliefs expressed on the site are false, because they still provide a structure. They provide a mechanism for organizing data which may later prove useful for other inquiries. Although I won't go out on a limb to say that any specific UFO or paranormal claims on my website is true, I would be willing to place a bet that at least one of them will be proven true in the long run, and this alone will be worth the investment. >14) What is your opinion about abductions? No opinion. I look at all UFO stories in term of my website. Instead of asking "Is it true?" I ask, "Where can I file it?" In that sense, abductions are more difficult to deal with than other UFO claims because the experiences reported are so varied and there is no clear way to classify them. They are unlike UFO sightings, which you can classify easily by date and the location of the observer. If someone is having an abduction experience every other week and encountering everything from Grays to Reptilians to military officers, I just don't know what to do with it. As a librarian, abductions are a nightmare to deal with, so I don't spend much time on them. >15) Don't you think that the newly born Extra Terrestrial Highway >with all the tourists and media attention that is bringing to Area >51, in the end, will "kill" the myth of the base? Myths are meant to be killed. In our plugged-in society, any interesting story is going to be returned to again and again until any hint of mystique is sucked out of it. This has happened with Area 51. It has been an energy source for the media, moviemakers and Nevada politicians. They go away when the novelty wears off and people start saying "Area 51: So what?"
Index: Glenn Campbell Index: Area 51 Research Center
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Created: Aug 29, 1997