Shargel criticism from Lindemann, Boylan & Allen

Critical reports by Micheal Lindemann, Richard Boylan and Don Allen on
Lee Shargel.


Lindemann on Shargel

Subject: Too much info
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1997 13:35:13 -0500

IS "DR." LEE SHARGEL REAL -- OR A REAL PROBLEM?
Alleged NASA Scientist Arouses Suspicion, Outrage at Nevada UFO Congress

by Michael Lindemann

The name of "Dr." Lee Shargel first came to the attention of CNI News in
mid-1996. A few people in the Florida area where he lives began speaking of
him in respectful tones. He was said to have NASA credentials, to be a
physicist of some sort, to have inside connections regarding UFO and alien
phenomena, and to be ready and willing to divulge important secrets.

Then we received a few copies of his four-page (hard-copy) monthly
newsletter, the Galactic Observer. We noted that nowhere in this
publication did Lee Shargel identify himself by name, nor as a rule did he
cite known experts, authorities or agencies in support of his sometimes
bizarre claims. It seemed hard to believe that such material could come
from a NASA scientist -- unless perhaps it was a joke. But it didn't sound
like a joke, either. The Galactic Observer seemed to present a blend of
pseudo-scientific fantasy and New-Age philosophy from a disembodied voice
of higher knowledge -- apparently the voice of Lee Shargel. After a few
issues, we concluded he was more or less harmless, but very likely not a
"Dr." of anything.

But some people clearly disagreed, especially those who heard him speak.
Apparently, Lee Shargel has fluent command of the English language and can
be quite a showman behind a podium. And he offers answers that people want
to hear -- a who's who of good and bad aliens, details of life on other
worlds, inside dope on NASA secret projects. He claims to know. He slings
scientific-sounding jargon with ease. He sheds light on mysteries, and
offers reassurance that the weird times ahead will, in the end, come out
OK.

Researcher Bill Hamilton told CNI News, "Dr. Lee Shargel was a big hit in
Philadelphia when I met him on November 17, 1996. In a lecture on NASA's
contacts with ETs from the planet Cholus, 4th planet of the star Vega, and
some of the photos he showed, it seemed like this man could make a real
contribution."

Of course, there would be nothing at all wrong with such a message, if it
were based on credible information. But therein, perhaps, lies the rub.

Shargel certainly isn't shy about his presumed credentials. An announcement
for his upcoming lecture in Oakland, California states: "Dr. Lee Shargel is
a former NASA scientist who worked for the space program as well as the
Department of Defense (Navy). He holds a Doctorate in Material Science. He
was the program manager for the Navy's SRBOC missile defense system and a
project manager on the Hubble Telescope. His theories on Gravitational Wave
Physics are part of the basis for the current LIGO (Laser Interferometer
Gravitational Observatory) project."

Why does such a man suddenly start talking about UFOs? The promo blurb
continues: "For years, Lee felt the whole UFO subject was nothing more than
science fiction gone awry. But an event that occurred in 1993 changed his
perspective forever..."

What event? Well, that's in the lecture. And his book. (We didn't see it in
Galactic Observer.)

On the strength of a last minute recommendation from several impressed
listeners, Dr. Lee Shargel was invited to speak at the Sixth Annual
International UFO Congress, which ran January 18 through 24 in Laughlin,
Nevada. According to people in attendance, this year's Congress has been a
major success, with crowds in excess of 500 for the entire weeklong
schedule. The speakers' lineup included a fairly dazzling array of U.S. and
international UFO authorities, including Whitley Strieber, James Hurtak,
Colin Andrews, Michael Hesemann, Stan Deyo, Robert O. Dean, Jaime Mausson,
A.J. Gevaerd, Wendelle Stevens, Bill Hamilton and Jorge Martin. Into this
lineup came Dr. Lee Shargel.

According to conference organizer Bob Brown, Shargel professed to have
almost no experience as a speaker. He said he was nervous, hoped he would
do all right. But on Wednesday afternoon (January 22) when he took the
stage, he proved to be anything but a novice. In fact, Brown says, he was
"slick."

That was the first surprise. The second surprise was less pleasant.
According to Brown, Shargel made claims so outrageous, backed by photos and
illustrations so patently absurd, that Brown and most of the other
conference speakers then in the audience were amazed.

Bill Hamilton described some of the problems he saw in Shargel's Nevada
presentation: "...[gun-camera] photos of an airborne craft over Roswell,
other UFO photos from New Jersey, the dark side of the moon, in space
[that] looked like cheap matte image doctoring... dolphinoid beings from
Cholus (an all-water world) which had developed appendages and manufactured
technology." Though at first impressed, Hamilton now asks: "Was this man
sent in as a disinformation agent now that things are heating up?"

CNI News interviewed Bob Brown by phone on Friday, January 24. The
conversation centered on the potential problems posed by Lee Shargel.
Following are excerpts from that interview.

Bob Brown: "Because this [conference] is an open forum, it allows a free
exchange of information, but it does open us up to people who are sometimes
not straight. I'm not saying that Lee Shargel is not straight, but there
are some questions.

"In the last couple of days we have verified that he seems to have
legitimate NASA credentials. I couldn't say that they're not counterfeited,
but they look to be the right badges.

"We have found out that there is a Northeastern University, that is, the
university he says he graduated from does exist. However, he says he got
his doctorate in -- get this -- Egyptian Quantum Mechanics. That's a quote.
He told Dr. [James] Harder this, and Dr. Harder said, 'Excuse me? Did you
say Egyptian Quantum Mechanics?' And he said yes. So Harder asked, 'Who was
your thesis adviser?' And Shargel said he couldn't remember.

"But then we get down to the evidence that he has presented to everybody,
and to me, most of it looks like the most obvious faked photos that you
could imagine. They are really bad, not evidence or proof of anything. We
are going to present him at some point with a written request to produce
some originals of these so that they can be correctly analyzed.

Michael Lindemann: "How would you characterize his presentation, apart from
the questionable photos?"

Brown: "Slick! He claimed to be as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof
before going out there, but I tell you, it wasn't five minutes before he
settled down, and he was up there like a true, slick pitchman. It's quite
obvious that this guy has been up in front of groups before. Maybe not
talking about the UFO subject, but he is no stranger to getting up and
motivating an audience.

"This is our concern. It's not our job to put an absolute stamp of approval
on everyone that we bring to an open forum. However, when somebody is so
blatantly questionable as Shargel is at this point, we feel the need to
urge people to be cautious and use some discernment."

Lindemann: "I understand that he had a big crowd in the room for his
speech."

Brown: "He had a big crowd. I would say there were 500 people in the room."

Lindemann: "And would you say the crowd was enthused by his speech?"

Brown: "Part of the crowd was enthused. It ran the gamut between some
people who, at times, he brought to tears, literally -- to some people who
stomped out of the room hollering 'charlatan!'"

Lindemann: "I understand there were a number of other speakers in the room,
people that you and I would both characterize as reputable researchers, who
were concerned by Shargel's material. What would you say?"

Brown: "Very concerned, certainly, and I suppose 'amazed' is a good word
too, because they were kind of incredulous at the evidence that this guy
put up on the screen. You'd have to see these pictures that he had. They
were ludicrous."

Lindemann: "Roger Leir phoned me and described one of Shargel's photos as a
purported UFO that appeared to be literally just pasted onto the
background."

Brown: "Yes, indeed. And he shows a photo, supposedly, of Hale-Bopp coming
in, and then off to one side of it is this little craft or probe that's
supposed to be checking it out, or checking out the companion behind it. He
characterized it as one of the 'bad guys.' And we have lots of scientists
here, lots of Ph.D.s in different disciplines, and they just see problems
from lots of directions here."

Lindemann: "I understand that you and your board and several other
conference speakers got together last night (Thursday evening, Jan 23) to
discuss the Lee Shargel situation. How would you characterize that
meeting?"

Brown: "Six of our board members were there, including Donald Ware, Michael
Hesemann, A.J. Gevaerd, Wendelle Stevens, Virginia Bennett and myself; and
another eight or ten concerned people, many of them Ph.D. scientists,
including Dr. Richard Sauder and Dr. James Harder. They were all very
concerned about what they were calling the 'hoax' that was being
perpetrated by Lee Shargel. The big question was, why would he do such a
thing? The answers go from the obvious one of just selling books, clear
down to the more sinister one that he might be like a producer for '20/20'
[television] to expose how totally gullible the UFO fraternity is, and that
we'll believe and swallow absolutely anything. It would affect the entire
UFO community if indeed he was a 20/20 producer and ended up on TV, saying,
'You know, Hugh and Barbara, the most amazing thing was, after we made this
insane, idiotic presentation with these dummied-up photos that we did in
two hours, and we gave them all these clues and all these ridiculous
statements, in spite of all that, we even sold them books.' It could be
that sinister -- it could set ufology back five years."

Lindemann: "Was there any significant dissent in your board meeting
concerning your general view of Shargel?"

Brown: "No. None, except from Donald Ware, who felt it should not be the
Congress' position to attack anyone, that we are only a forum. Other people
were trying to convince him of the potential damage Shargel could do.
Michael Hesemann put it brilliantly. He said, 'We have done nothing wrong
in giving our open forum to Dr. Shargel. But now, knowing what we know and
suspecting what we suspect, if we do nothing about it, then we may well be
doing the wrong thing.'"

Lindemann: "Do you anticipate taking any public step to expose him or
challenge his information?"

Brown: "At this point, we plan to get together a list of things that we
want to see -- for example, at least one of the pieces of filmstrip that
his slides of the supposed 'Roswell craft' came from. There's an obvious
thing there. If you've got a single frame of movie footage, with two moving
objects -- the plane shooting gun-camera footage, and a craft [UFO] moving
-- and you look at one frame, that frame isn't going to be clear. There's
going to be motion in that frame. These things [his photos] are crystal
clear. They're at a dead stop. That isn't possible. This is supposedly 1947
gun-camera footage. And it just wouldn't be like that." [Note: Bob Brown
makes much of his living producing aviation films. - ed]

Lindemann: "Perhaps a more thorough check of his credentials is in order."

Brown: "It is certainly required. He seems to have all the proper stuff,
but again, people make a living counterfeiting."

Lindemann: "One thing we should realize is that Dr. Shargel, whoever he is,
has been around awhile now and has been publishing a newsletter on a
regular basis. Therefore, if this is a '20/20' situation, he's carried it
to exceptional extremes. This leads me to suppose that he's up to something
else."

Brown: "Indeed he may be. This might be nothing more sinister than him
trying to sell books. Maybe he observed the Celestine Prophecy phenomenon
and said, 'How can I tap into this?' I don't know. I hope that's all it is.
Of course, I'm making an assumption that the guy is not being truthful, but
I don't have definitive proof."

Lindemann: "If he is legitimate NASA, or has any legitimate government
affiliation, and is clearly putting out incorrect information, then we
would have to say that he is performing disinformation, by definition."

Brown: "I would agree."

Lindemann: "If he's not a legitimate NASA person of some sort, then he's
just an out-and-out fraud. It seems to me that those are two strong
possibilities. The third possibility, which seems somewhat more remote, is
that his credentials are legitimate and so is his information. Broadly
speaking, those are our three options. If he's legitimate, of course, we'd
all be very interested. But if he's not, then I would say he should be
exposed."

Brown: "Exactly. When I think of the two hours we gave him, and all the
other presentations we turned down to give him a spot, it kind of makes me
ill."

Lindemann: "Do you intend to issue any formal statement about this?"

Brown: "It depends on the reply we get from him. We have asked him to
produce certain things. I have him scheduled to come to Oakland
[California] on February 8 for a presentation. This was scheduled before I
saw him here, taking him on good faith. I could cancel it, but at this
point I intend to leave the invitation on the table. Hopefully he will
produce some of this stuff and we'll have some definitive answers by then.
My personal suspicion is that he won't produce the things we ask of him,
but I don't know."

CNI News comments: It gives us no great pleasure to cast such doubts on the
character or work of anyone in the UFO field. However, we do believe that
there is good cause to question both the motives and the information of
"Dr." Shargel. We will continue to pursue the details of his background.
Meanwhile, it is clearly Dr. Shargel's responsibility to substantiate both
his presumed credentials and his seemingly incredible claims, and we hope
he will do so without delay.

Boylan on Shargel

Date: Sun, 26 Jan 97 18:35:10 -0800
Subject: RE: IUFO: "DR." LEE SHARGEL

->  SearchNet's   IUFO   Mailing List

 > > IS "DR." LEE SHARGEL REAL -- OR A REAL PROBLEM?
 > > Alleged NASA Scientist Arouses Suspicion, Outrage at Nevada UFO
 > Congress
 > >
 > > by Michael Lindemann
 >
 > Too bad... But I pretty much expected this. Rich, do you feel at all
 > the way Lindemann
 > does about this guy?

Chris,

        Michael Lindemann wasn't there. Lots of debunkers were. For how I feel
about Dr. Shargel's presentation, see my attached Open Letter to Lee Shargel.
January 26, 1997

Lee Shargel, Ph.D.
P.O. Box 26893
Tamarac, FL 33320

Dear Dr. Shargel:

        I listened with interest, but not with total agreement, to your
statements made at the just- concluded International UFO Congress at Laughlin,
Nevada. My overall impression is that you appear to be sincere, but that some
of your information is erroneous. The simplest way to reconcile these two
impressions is to hypothesize that either you or one of your group of insider
space scientist colleagues may have been deliberately fed disinformation in
order to discredit the various factual reports and leaks which your group has
been making through you. You indicated to me that you are a novice at public
speaking, and are ignorant of the wiles of the intelligence community. However,
given that the intelligence community also fields captious and vicious
disinformational debunkers, your ignorance of their wiles can be no defense
against being positioned by them as a seeming teller of falsehoods. Indeed, the
multiple figures conducting eavesdropping during your private conversation
suggests that the UFO Cover-Up organization takes your factual disclosures with
ill grace.
        Also, as I commented to you at Laughlin, in such sensitive matters you
cannot afford to make any interpretations beyond the actual data, without
clearly identifying your interpretations as interpretations, and not as raw
data. Thus for example, it seems to me that in your Laughlin talk, you went far
beyond basically reporting radio pictographic symbols code transmissions
downlinked from space to the dishes at Pine Gap> You went beyond to make
interpretations about what the pictographs meant. Your interpretations went far
beyond the mere description of the pictographs which you provided in your
January, 1997 Galactic Observer newsletter. The pictographs were interesting in
their own right. In your talk, you never presented a basis for your
interpretation that the pictographs indicated that "an audible sound would be
heard all over Earth on January 23rd." In my opinion it would have been far
better to say on the stage at Laughlin what you said in your newsletter: "We do
not know what all of it means. We can speculate about a thousand different
conclusions and every one of them may be wrong." In fact, no one I know heard
an audible sound January 23rd. More importantly, the pictographs you displayed
in your earlier newsletter do not necessarily indicate that the transmissions
aimed at human-like beings will be audible, or even what kind of energy would
be transmitted. Furthermore, one pictograph showed that many people would not
be aware of any transmission. Thus, for you to assert that a sound audible to
everyone would be heard not only goes beyond your data, but appears to
contradict the data.
        Permit me to list a few examples, taken from your talk, and comment on
how their presentation could have been strengthened. As one example, you
declared that gravity waves move faster than the speed of light. In our
subsequent individual conversation, you clarified that it is "a theory" that
gravity waves move faster than light. I submit that that difference is not a
small point, and that ignoring the difference feeds your debunkers needless
ammunition. It might have also helped to state in your talk what you said
privately, that you have engaged in gravitational wave research for NASA.
Indicating your areas of expertise when you make an assertion helps reduce the
likelihood that the debunkers will claim that you are making statements outside
your area of scientific expertise. You also in your talk spoke about gravity
waves "moving at the speed of thought", but did not specify how fast that could
be. Are you referring to gravity waves instantaneously arriving at the
destination being thought of? Or at five times the speed of light? Or  what? In
one photo slide you appeared to be showing light around Hale-Bopp being
distorted by gravity waves, but left unanswered the question that if the
Hale-Bopp "companion" your slide revealed were transmitting using gravity waves
to reach Earth, why said gravity wave-carried transmissions would not arrive at
Earth (the thought-about destination) instantaneously, rather than still be
within relatively nearby distance to the source (H-B companion) and distorting
visible light there (in the photograph). If you are using "speed of thought" as
a poetic term for pretty awesomely fast, it would be better to provide a best
approximation of gravity waves' observed speed. The debunkers don't tolerate
poetry in science presentations.
        The debunkers tore into your slides of reported gun camera photos of
the 1947 bow- shaped UFO filmed flying a search mission over New Mexico July
13th, looking for its sister crashed "Roswell" UFO. It would have strengthened
your presentation to point out that eyewitness reports of the actual UFO impact
site near Corona (rather than at the Roswell "tinfoil" debris field) described
the Corona craft in terms similar to the craft your reported gun camera photos
show; and that a drawing of a similar Roswell/Corona bow-shaped craft appeared
in a past issue of either UFO Magazine or MUFON Journal (I don't remember
which).
        When you presented the reported piece of a valve containment unit from
the "Roswell" crash site, you could reasonably expect controversy. While it was
helpful that you reported that Travis Walton, a respected experiencer, had seen
a similar part aboard the craft he was taken on, it would have been even better
to display a note from Mr. Walton testifying to that similarity. (Tedious? Yes.
The debunkers like to tie up UFO investigators in time-consuming detail.) And
while it was interesting to hear you report that the Roswell piece was composed
of 32,000 individual layers of homogenous aluminum, it stretched credibility
for you to add that dielectric properties were created through the use of rice.
While it is possible that a rice-like plant material could evolve on another
planet and be so used, it was an unfortunate choice of words to claim that the
ETs used "rice" (implying Earth materials).
        I noticed that the orchestrated debunker squad that immediately fanned
out through the audience after your talk did not challenge your revelation that
the military has positioned Star Wars laser [weapons] systems in orbit [in
violation of the No-Weapons-In-Space Treaty}. Nor did the debunkers challenge
your leak that the military has deployed a Diamond Mace hyperfast aerospace
vehicle which is powered by microwave transmissions from orbiting platforms.
        Your slides, reported from the DoD Clementine space photographic
satellite orbiting the Moon, showing UFOs on or near the Moon's far (not Dark)
side (no poetry allowed), were challenged by the debunkers because the UFOs
were too bright in comparison to the natural albedo (ground reflectiveness) of
the Moon. Your later explanation in private that the craft may have had
superreflective [or light-emitting] surface characteristics would have been
helpful to have included in your public presentation.
        Your assertion that there are friendly extraterrestrials inhabiting a
watery planet in orbit around the star Vega was interesting, but it would have
strengthened your presentation to provide the evidence supporting such an
assertion. Likewise, you provided no evidence base for your assertion that
there is a race of extraterrestrials who are "emotion-less and
conscience-less", and further added to the confusion by variously identifying
them as reptilian and then Zeta Reticulan ("Greys"). When I later in private
challenged your assertion about a "conscience-less race", you seemed to
backtrack, and gave me the impression that you made that assertion based upon
all- too-prevalent and shoddy pop ufology lore/disinformation, rather than
special evidence.
        It was charming to hear of your and your companion scientists'
extraterrestrial encounters at a desert field station at China Lake Naval
Weapons Research Station in California's Mojave Desert. Since you had with you
photos of the dolphinoid four-limbed ETs who contacted your group, and
displayed them to me privately, why did you not show them during your lecture?
If you assume that the audience would just have to take your word, that is not
a safe assumption. Do you not realize that photos of ETs during an encounter
are almost never heard of? Your presentation needs all the evidence available,
and the people deserve no less.
        One last example: labeling the intense light source observed by Hubble
at the very horizon of the universe as "the Eye of God" is another example of
impermissible poetry in a presentation meant to be taken as objectively and
scientifically valid.
        By your own admission, you are inexperienced at presenting in public
the secrets you and your group have learned about while working in classified
government projects. Fair enough. I hope that these comments aid you in
strengthening and winnowing your presentation down to soberly and
scientifically-presented data. UFOlogy is in an unwanted war, declared by the
UFO Cover-Up organization. They offer no quarter. Provide them no openings.
                                                - Richard Boylan, Ph.D.


-> Send "subscribe   iufo " to majordomo@world.std.com
->  Posted by: rich.boylan@24stex.com

Don Allen on Shargel

To: iufo@world.std.com
From: Don Allen <dona@totcon.com>
Subject: IUFO: Altavista - More on "lee shargel"

->  SearchNet's   IUFO   Mailing List

Whoa, this is getting _real_ interesting. I think we definately have
a match here, folks.

" Dr." Lee Shargel is a _science fiction_ writer.

URL - http://www.bocklabs.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/wri-print?Shargel_Lee

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shargel, Lee (aka n/a)
Email: JMMQ06A
Agent: Deborah Smith
Address:
4711 N.W. 82nd Ave.
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33351
Phone: 305-572-9948

Published works:

•100 Years of Moving Pictures, Faircount, 11/95, Science Fiction,
Film/Cinema/Stage•Voice In The Mirror, TOR, 4/96, Science Fiction•
Welcome to Hardrock-Penal Colony Gamma 5, Paramount, 4/94, Science
Fiction•Telecommuting in Cyberspace, Predictions/England, 7/93, Science
Fiction•Chulos, TOR, 2/93, Science Fiction•Auto-Erotica, Penthouse,
6/95, Erotic Fiction•Shakespeare & Socrates, Veerhoven, 1991, 1992, 1993

1994, 1995, 1996 (series), Juvenile Fiction

Interests: Sci-Fi, Screenplays, Mystery, General Interest Articles
Biographical statement:

Mr. Shargel is a former NASA scientist. began writting in 1990 fulltime.

Winner of national playwrights award for We Can make A Difference.
Active lecturer on UFO's, ET's and astronomical phenomena. Lives in FL
with his two ocelots, Shakespeare & Socrates.

--- end included article ---

Don

"A democracy cannot be both ignorant and free" - Thomas Jefferson

-> Send "subscribe   iufo " to majordomo@world.std.com
->  Posted by: Don Allen <dona@totcon.com>