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In this romp through stories mainly about alleged strange goings-on at secret bases, Nick Redfern lets the reader decide whether they are true, partly true, or just misinformation, lies and fantasies.
He starts with one of the best-known cases, the claims of Bob Lazar that he was employed at a secret base in Nevada, the notorious Area 51, on the task of investigating the workings of a fleet of alien spacecraft which the US government had somehow acquired. Lazar certainly had some technical knowledge and experience, but he also claimed to have received an MS in electronics from the California Institute of Technology and an MS in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but no evidence could be found to support these claims. Some of the things Lazar claimed were true and some were false, the resulting confusion giving plenty for believers and sceptics to argue about.
Those who believe that the US government possibly holds the secret of the saucers are also fascinated by Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Among these people was Senator Barry Goldwater, who wrote to a UFO researcher in 1975 stating that he had tried to find out what was in a certain building there.
Redfern informs us: "The building to which Goldwater was referring is allegedly a super-secret location that many UFO researchers believe houses the remains of one or more crashed UFOs, along with the cryogenically preserved remains of their deceased alien crewmembers. Its memorable moniker is Hangar 18."
One theory about the persistence of such stories is that they are encouraged by officialdom to hide research into new aircraft designs and weaponry. This is supposed to discourage serious journalists interested in defence matters from investigating because they don't want to be associated with a subject as disreputable as ufology.
Almost everybody who reads this review will have heard of the British hacker Gary McKinnon, who is awaiting possible extradition to the USA concerning alleged damage to NASA computers. Redfern mentions him in passing, as he has written about him at length elsewhere, but he gives more space to another British hacker, Matthew Bevan, who hacked into Wright-Patterson in 1994 and 1995 using a Commodore Amiga 1200, a computer that was primitive compared to those readily available today. However, Bevan got away with it, as the judge dismissed the case after the US authorities refused to supply the evidence to support their charges.
What puzzles me about such cases is why it was apparently so easy for such people to hack into US government computers containing lots of classified information. Why do the US authorities employ such incompetents to manage their computer systems?
The main theme of secret bases includes a chapter about bases on the moon, thought by some to have been built secretly by the USA (who else?). However, Ingo Swann used his amazing remote-viewing talents to determine that lunar bases were the work of extraterrestrials. If that doesn't seem incredible enough, it is true that Swann actually worked for the US government's remote viewing program, which investigated the possibility of using such talents (if they really existed) for intelligence gathering.
There are chapters on other topics, including one on stories of strange creatures, phantoms, and even cannibals haunting the London Underground railway system. This book is great fun to read, especially if you are unfamiliar with the topics discussed." -- John Harney."
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