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From: clark@canby.mn.frontiercomm.net
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 11:28:56 PDT
Fwd Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 18:30:34 -0400
Subject: Re: 'Out There' by Howard Blum


> Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 10:50:01 -0300
> From: Stanton Friedman <fsphys@brunnet.net>
> To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
> Subject: Re: UFO UpDate: 'Out There' by Howard Blum


> > Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 15:53:46 -0500
> > From: Ted Viens <drtedv@smart1.net>
> > To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
> > Subject: The Book "Out There" by Howard Blum

> > Howdy folks...

> > I just finished this book a week ago and found it to be an excellent
> > overview of this UFO phenomenon as of some seven years ago.  While
> > working on the central theme of a secret deep Pentagon group rehashing
> > the truth of UFO's for the government, Blum worked a few parallel
> > stories into the book that illuminated major aspects of our
> > relationship to UFO's.  Though not one of the more important sections,

> > I found his writings on Philip Klass particularly informative.  Blum
> > reveals Klass's interest in debunking UFO's to be a pronounced case of
> > Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  This permits me to be somewhat more
> > tolerant of Klass's efforts, if not his manipulative and pejorative
> > style.

> > Now the real reason for my posting this.  Last week while discussing
> > ways to more legitimize the study of UFO's, Rebecca mentioned while
> > discussing Howard Blum that he learned he had been lied to about some
> > of the subjects of "Out There" and had become disenchanted with the
> > issue of UFOs.

> > As you can imagine, this has left me intensely curious with what
> > Howard Blum may have learned and what parts of "Out There" are now
> > suspect.  Would Rebecca or anyone else be able to share the details
> > with us?

> > Thanks...  Ted..

> This book is loaded with false information, false reasoning, and
> lots of fiction. Blum was out to make a fast buck. He certainly
> didn't check out the already existing documents proving there was a
> government coverup.For example he has everything wrong about me, Berlitz
> and Bill Moore and the Roswell Incident. Pencil thin Phil Klass? The
> people at the National Archives laughed their heads off about his
> fictional description ... Sorry the book is bunk.

> Stan Friedman

Hi, everybody,

Let me second Stan's wise remarks re this fraudulent book.

When it appeared in 1990, many of those who figure in it -- not
just ufologists but also SETI people and journalists (e.g., Seymour
Hersch) -- protested that the accounts describing them, their activities,
and their interactions with Blum were largely, sometimes entirely,
fictional.  Separate investigations have pretty much established
that the incident recounted in Chapter 1 (the tracking via U.S.
Space Command radar of an object coming to earth from deep
space) never happened.

At the time the book was published, some critics remembered that
a few years earlier Blum had written another book, this one on
Nazi war criminals in America.  That book was also widely criticized for
glaring inaccuracies and apparent outright inventions.

Two or three years ago I happened to watch Charlie Rose's show
on PBS.  Blum, who had just published a book on the FBI's war
against organized crime, was on along with two or three newspaper
reporters who specialize in crime coverage.  The latter were fiercely
hostile to Blum, pointing to error after error in his book.  One (I believe
the organized-crime reporter from the New York Daily News) said
he had spoken personally with some of the people mentioned, and
they swore that no such things as Blum claimed had happened ever
took place; or, if they did, Blum had so many facts wrong that the
accounts might as well have been made up.  Blum's defense?  The
other writers were just "jealous."  Yeah, right, Howie.

Out of this I felt a certain grim vindication.  At least ufologists
aren't Blum's only victims.  Apparently he regards all readers of
books on any subject on which he writes as equally gullible.  To
paraphrase what somebody told Ed Ruppelt about the Florida
scoutmaster: If Blum told me the sun was shining, I'd look out the
window just to make sure.

Jerry Clark