Paranormal researcher and pundit George P. Hansen – the author of the seminal book The Trickster and the Paranormal – has posted a quite amazing entry on his blog, which touches on the crossovers between UFO/paranormal research and the shady world of government agencies. This is a really sensitive topic, with most people preferring to sweep it under the carpet – but it is one that really, at some stage, needs to come to a head. Most importantly because it has ramifications for the reputation (and research) in multiple fields, from parapsychology to ufology, and alien abductions.
Hansen’s blog entry is basically a frontal attack on the credibility of C. B. “Scott” Jones and Colonel John Alexander, as speakers at this year’s “X-Conference” (held next weekend):
In the early 1990s, Jones publicly proclaimed that he “honestly did not know of any activity of the U.S. government” in the field of UFOs.1 But in 1992 Robert J. Durant produced a detailed, widely circulated white paper demonstrating that Jones was in a position to throw considerable light on government-UFO activities…
Colonel John Alexander (U.S. Army, retired) was heavily involved with the U.S. government’s psychic spying program, but he was also active with UFOs. In fact, Alexander admitted that he was the model for the “Harold Phillips” character in Howard Blum’s book “Out There: The Government’s Secret Quest for Extraterrestrials”.
Hansen then goes on to detail some rather shocking connections, which include links to the JFK assassination investigation, and also to the strange case of Armen Victorian – if you care to research either of these two topics, you’ll head down some very deep rabbit-holes indeed! Far too deep to go into here…it should be enough to say they involve plenty of shady government agencies, various levels of harassment and threats, and all the other cloak and dagger you’d expect from such folk.
Hansen’s point is this:
Whatever one may think of Jones and Alexander, one cannot reasonably conclude that they have worked to inform the public about government-UFO activities. They have fostered ambiguity and suspicion, and perhaps worse. One might be skeptical of any statements they may make on the topic.
Now, George Hansen is not some kooky conspiracy guy. He is a respected thinker on paranormal topics who has been involved in the field for many years – though he is also disliked by many because he tends to ‘call it as he sees it’. 
And in this case he may be calling the biggest topic there is in the paranormal field. John Alexander is linked to various high-profile research efforts on the paranormal – from the ‘Stargate’ remote viewing project, through to Robert Bigelow’s National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS). Beyond Alexander though, numerous high-profile researchers on paranormal topics also have been connected to government agencies.
My point? Considering its already shaky reputation, the field of paranormal research is one that must be open, honest and transparent. Involvement of government agencies throws a huge – and unwelcome – shadow upon that goal. That’s not to say that those involved with such agencies have nefarious goals or are bad people – I know quite a few myself, and most I would have nothing but praise for. But it is a huge issue that needs to be discussed more openly.
