Peter Robbins has finally released his statement about Larry
Warren. It takes the form of an open letter that he has given me permission to
reproduce. I have done so verbatim:
"An open letter to my friends and readers, colleagues in ufology, the many UFO
witnesses, experiencers and abductees I count as friends and who I’ve never
met, and most of all to the men and women whose lives were changed forever by
the events of December 1980 in Suffolk England.
For more than a year now a scandal - for there is no other word
that aptly describes it - has been steadily growing in the field of UFO
studies. It is as ugly, contentious, and vicious as we’ve seen, if not
more so, in the seventy years since the so-called Modern Age of UFOs came into
being. And it is spreading. While confined to that specific corner of
ufology alternately known as the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident or the
Bentwaters incident, it continues to draw in good people who have come to
increasingly demonize each other and allow hatred, frustration and fear to rule
their lives.
At the center of this storm of controversy is a man named Larry
Warren. He was my coauthor on a book some of you may have read or heard
about. Its title is Left At East Gate: A First-Hand Account of the Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident, Its Cover-Up
and Investigation.
The investigation itself was begun in 1987 and concluded in 1996.
It was conducted by me and my coauthor, and looking back on what I now know to
be true about the circumstance I had walked into back then, my efforts in many
respects came up woefully short. It is with more than a fair amount of anger,
regret and frustration that I’ve written what you’re about to read, but the
circumstances in question have given me no choice. My purpose in doing so is
nothing less than to stop it in its tracks. If not, this blight will continue
to fester and consume more individuals and that is something I will not and
cannot allow.
The assorted evidence included here is anything but a full
accounting of the outrages in question, but I my efforts will be enough to
assist all of us in bringing this sad ugly affair to an end. I very much regret
that the conclusions I have been forced to arrive at fly in the face of certain
specifics published in Left At East At East Gate and that many of the
falsehoods referred to are ones I stood by as 100% factual and repeatedly
defended over the years, then the decades, some of them not only in Left At
East Gate, but in part in two follow-up books I authored as well. My
unswerving belief in almost all of them had remained the case until said
‘facts’ began to fully unravel for me beginning in the spring of last year.
Since that time I have quietly been struggling to see beyond all
of the malice and misunderstanding that this controversy has generated. I have
done so, if largely in private, in as even-handed a manner as I am capable of,
this with special attention being paid to the part I have played - even if
inadvertently - in misleading what likely amounts to thousands of readers, and
between talks, lectures, and live and broadcast audiences, millions of others.
The focus of this writing though is Larry Warren and his
relationship with the truth regarding Rendlesham, his role in the events of
December 1980, and in some of his unrelated dealings as well. Why bother to
reference any such ‘unrelated matters?’ Because character and honesty go hand
in hand across the board in human behavior, and to my way of thinking we should
be held to the same standards in both our public and private lives as they are
mirror reflections of each other.
Coming to grips with the myriad pieces of information involved has
proven to be one of the greatest, not to mention depressing series of
realizations I have ever had to face as a writer and individual. On a personal
level the experience has closely paralleled the five stages of grief as defined
by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist who was a pioneer
in near death studies. The stages as defined by Dr. Kübler-Ross are denial,
anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Those of you who know me will not
be surprised to learn that this past year has been the most introspective,
self-critical, and increasingly disheartening in my forty-year long involvement
in UFO studies and where I go from her I’m not quite sure. But at this point
that means less to me than you might imagine.
I more than appreciate that in the minds of some I may seem too
close to all this to fully apply the rigorous objectivity necessary to come to
the clearest and most accurate conclusions. That’s alright. I am more than
willing to leave any such judgements to you the reader.
My only practical regret in ending this piece where I do is it
leaves out so much of the factual, conclusive evidence others have labored so
long and hard to find, confirm and publish. The best reasons I can give for
this is that every minute I have spent working on this is one I have resented
giving up to yet one more visit to this sordid mess, this after investing
thousands (and likely additional thousands) of hours on defending, supporting,
praising and assisting my former coauthor in his efforts. Writing when you feel
angry and resentful is not necessarily something that makes me write fast, and
that’s the other issue. I set a self-imposed deadline to complete this tonight,
though it’s now well into tomorrow. My reasons for doing so were not arbitrary.
I set off tomorrow for three weeks of work and travel and have no desire or
intention of dragging this millstone with me when I do.
But the ‘dialogue,’ for lack of a better word, between Larry
Warren and his supporters, and those who have completely lost faith in the
published and spoken accounts of his stated role in the events in question, is
now long past the point where any vestige of civility exists between them. The
discourse on both sides long ago turned toxic as nuclear waste, serving no one
and no aim other than to amp up the rancor, hatred and partisanship, and in the
process continue pitting decent people on both sides against each other. There
have been times over this past year when my irregular forays into this swamp of
commentary, claims and counter claims, threats, lies and insults has left me
feeling as though I was going to be physically ill, and with good cause.
Before proceeding on, I think there is something you should know
about me, that is to say about my make-up and character, because it bears upon
the way I have approached writing this and some of the inclusions it contains.
One day when I was a boy of about eight, I returned home from
elementary school looking noticeably disheveled. Not surprisingly my
mother asked me what had happened. I told her I had been in a fight with
another boy, to which she responded, what had been the cause of the fight. As
best as I recall I told her that whatever the reason had been, the other boy
had real problems, ones that I did not have, and that he always seemed angry or
unhappy in class. I wasn’t really sure why we had started to fight, but did not
blame him for it because he was obviously so unhappy. That was my mother’s cue
to tell me about something I later understood to be ‘empathy.’ She explained in
part as the ability to appreciate both sides of an argument, even when you
found yourself squarely on one side or the other. Everyone should have a mother
like I had. I’ve known and understood this about myself since, and there have
been times in my life when this has been a genuine asset. At other times
however this trait has resulted in bouts of inner conflict that have literally
pulled me in two directions at the same time. This has increasingly been the
case for me as I have exhausted every possibility I can think of to understand
how I missed so much along the way, and how I’ve come to see things for what
they really are – not what I thought, hoped and believed they are.
There are those in ufology who have already come on me for not
making a public statement about all this since the brief post I made in early
December, at that time letting anyone interested I had disassociated myself
from Larry both professionally and personally. The most recent criticism - and
it’s a beaut, has come from my friend and colleague Gary Heseltine , a retired
police detective in West Yorkshire who, since retiring, has dedicated himself to UFO research and to
producing the monthly “UFO Truth Magazine,” and an ongoing series of
conferences under the same name. I was and remain proud to have been the
publication’s American correspondent and regular columnist during the first
year of its publication.
On June 3, 2017 Gary posted the following
statement. Allow me to use it as a springboard into the lake of muck we face:
“A Chance Observation:
By chance I was looking at some of the previous issues of UFO
Truth Magazine tonight when I happened to come across an article by Peter
Robbins in issue 2. I was particularly drawn to one paragraph about his initial
relationship with Larry Warren in the 1980s when their collaboration period
began. The following paragraph is a direct quote from his article in issue 2
(July/August 2013).
“When Larry Warren, my co-author on the book Left At East Gate,
and I began our investigation into the Rendlesham Forest incident in the late
1980's I interviewed and re-interviewed him repeatedly regarding his memories
and involvement in the events of December 1980, sometimes to the point of
distraction. But he was almost always a good sport about it and put up with my
repeated enquiries.”
Thus it now begs the question, how when you've questioned LW 'to
the point of distraction' that you could have been 'deceived' which you now
claim? At the time of writing this article your collaboration period was at the
24 year point. Yet, just four years on and having written three books, all
about LW and his involvement the RFI I might add, you now find you have been
'deceived' by LW for 28 years! It seems to me that you are either the world's
worst judge of character or when some ill-judged questions, most of which hold
little or no evidential credence in relation to LW's RFI involvement you chose
to cut him loose to the gang of wolves with a malicious agenda (i.e. condemn
him as a liar, a fraud, a conman first, then claim in the next breath that
'their aim was only to seek the truth!) or when the going got tough you cast
him aside in a desperate attempt to save your professional reputation.”
While some may see Gary’s remarks as particularly
harsh, I continue to consider him my friend and someone whose commitment to
ufology is beyond question. I more than understand his frustration with my
silence and likely would feel the same toward him if our positions were reversed.
Some years back Gary singled out and championed a particular piece of evidence which I
had been attempting to bring to the attention of a wider audience. It is a
handwritten letter Larry Warren wrote to his mother in January 1981, about a
week after the UFO incidents had transpired. While this has yet to be
forensically analyzed, neither Gary nor I are in doubt as to its authenticity.
What my friend and colleague seems to have failed to recognize is that simply
because the letter is authentic does not mean that everything else Warren has said or written follows
in kind. Far from it.
If Gary takes the time to reread it he will observe that at no time does
the writer say or even imply that he was personally involved or actually
present. Not that he wasn’t, but all it actually establishes is that Larry was
aware of fact and some of the particulars involved. We know for a fact that he
called his mother from a base phone as his mother’s friend Sue Hickerson was
visiting at the time and has confirmed that his mother received that call,
though it was cut off almost immediately. Larry also had a witness with him
when he made the call, that being Greg Battram, a fellow SP (USAF Security
Police member).
But you Gary might have been better served to quote me from a
passage that appears on page 212 of Left At East Gate rather than the
one you selected. It describes my first impression of my future coauthor who I
briefly met in 1984 at a town meeting in Westchester, New York, during the so-called Westchester overflights of large black,
unidentified triangular-shaped craft. Larry had just come out under his own
name rather than as the witness ‘Art Wallace’ named in the News of the
World’s initial coverage of the Rendlesham incident the previous October:
“For a controversial witness, Larry Warren appeared
straightforward enough. He seemed to be answering the questions as best he
could and didn't put on airs. If what he was saying was true, he had a lot of
guts to come forward. If he was relating a delusion, or just plain lying, he
certainly was good at it.”
And Gary, he wasn’t just good at it, he was the best. Perhaps an
experienced police detective like you might have seen through some part of his
self-assured initial account that I missed. But when someone is fully committed
to intentionally deceiving you from the start, this is especially problematic,
especially for a well-meaning, self-trained investigator inclined to trust
someone who was so intensely and self-assuredly committed to their account of
things.
You write that I am
“either the world's worst judge of character or when some
ill-judged questions, most of which hold little or no evidential credence in
relation to LW's RFI involvement you chose to cut him loose to the gang of
wolves with a malicious agenda (i.e. condemn him as a liar, a fraud, a conman
first, then claim in the next breath that 'their aim was only to seek the
truth!) or when the going got tough you cast him aside in a desperate attempt
to save your professional reputation.”
First, the questions you refer to are not “ill judged.” They are
not and if you take the time to look into them yourself you would find yourself
coming to the same damned realizations I’ve been forced to acknowledge. Nor am
I “the world’s worst judge of character.” Far from it. However when it came to
ultimately falling into line with the now hopelessly intertwined nature of the
true/untrue account I continued to encounter in our ongoing interviews, his
stare-me-in-the-eyes insistence that he was telling the truth and nothing but
the truth finally won me over. And I can tell you for an absolute fact that
each member of that “the gang of wolves with a malicious agenda” you refer to
started out as a supporter of Larry Warren, proud to know him and in the
overwhelming majority of cases proud to call him a friend as well, if only on
Facebook. If you dig deeper you will see where their malice really stems from.
Your next assertion, that there is “little or no evidential
credence in relation to LW's RFI involvement” is simply wrong my friend.
Take the time to review the particulars like I finally did and you will find
that there is evidence in every sense included, even if supplied in part by
people whose flat-out hatred of Larry may leave you feeling disgusted. I’ve
been where you are now, and for months upon months leading up to writing this.
When I finally forced myself to the confirmed facts they had established
I had no choice but to change my mind. When you were a detective did you ever
decide to ignore potentially important evidence in an investigation simply
because the source was in some manner morally objectionable or personally
repugnant to you? No need to answer that rhetorical question. I know you well
enough to know the answer is no.
As to your writing that I “cast him aside in a desperate attempt
to save your professional reputation?” Please. Regarding Left At East
Gate, what remains of what I’ll laughingly call my ‘professional
reputation’ does not really matter all that much to me anymore. I know that I
may well go down as one of, if not the biggest prat in UFO investigative
history, but that’s water under the bridge now and I can only take
responsibility for the long list of investigative oversights I am guilty making
a quarter century ago and the successful bamboozling I was subjected to year
after year. The question is no longer 'what is true about Larry's story', or
‘story,’ as the case may be, and there are many truths that still stand for me.
The only question now is what he has lied about and the confirmable evidence
that supports the many allegations of deception perpetrated on all of us by
him, in our book and otherwise. With respect, I think you have allowed yourself
to fall victim to one of Stanton T. Friedman’s central tenants of debunkers, of
all things: “Don’t bother me with the facts. My mind's already made up.”
I know you, as well as I’m able, that you see yourself standing up
for a wronged if imperfect and troubled witness and friend seemingly under
attack from all directions by the “gang of wolves” you’ve referred to, and I
can only respect you for that. But be warned. You are being ‘played,’ to use
one of Larry’s favorite expressions. I’m sorry to have to tell you that the
over past few years some of the comments he’s made about you in his Facebook
messages and phone calls to me have been far from flattering. His phone remarks
you will have to take my word for, but his written ones would be easy enough to
establish with a series of screen grabs, that is if he had not blocked me from
his page sometime last month.
When I finally ended our Facebook friendship and in effect our
actual friendship on or about January 3rd, I made a point of not blocking him
from my page. I have no problem even now with him visiting it whenever he
likes. The only thing that has ever mattered to me in case investigation in
general and the RFI in specific is the truth, wherever it may take us and
whomever it may show in a good or bad light. I’m sure you and I are united in
this belief. I think these next few paragraphs serve to illustrate how I came
to find myself in the place I’m writing from:
“Larry arrived Friday afternoon, July
3, 1987.
Though glad to see him, it was quite clear that I really didn't know whom I had
invited to my apartment. Only two things seemed {emphasis mine} certain
about Larry Warren -- he had been through something in December of 1980, and he
was still very angry about it. What had he been through in England? What effect had it had on
his life? What effect did it have on his present state of mind? More, how
curious was I to find out? At once both open and guarded, things lay behind
things with him.
Whoever he was, he had brought along a pile of reading for me, all
of it on Bentwaters. We talked our way through a number of subjects over a great
Japanese dinner. The conversation continued late into the night and, next
morning over breakfast, picked up where we'd left off. His account of the
incident was riveting, never more so than the few times he veered away from
giving me a direct answer. My impression {emphasis mine} of him was
consistent: I was not being lied to, but he had more to tell. What though, was
I to make of the information he was giving me?
Not counting breaks, our first "interview" ran the full
weekend. That Sunday afternoon, I finally asked him why he was telling me all
this? Larry answered that he was looking for someone to write a book with and
thought I might be that person. After hearing me speak in Washington, he'd decided to ask if I was
interested.
I did understand that all his cards were not on the table. If I
accepted the offer, what exactly would I be agreeing to? After all, the
guy was talking about being a principal in his own book, and that could get
touchy. And was an independent co-author with latitude what he really had in
mind? What if the trail led somewhere he didn't want it to go? What if I found
out he had been wrong about things, or that he'd been lied to, or that he'd
lied? The man might even be some kind of Bentwaters "wannabe" -- on
base that night but not involved, then telling the stories he'd heard as though
they'd happened to him. Any of these possibilities were valid, but I didn't
think any of them were likely {emphasis mine}.
I asked the questions I had to and got more encouraging answers
than I'd expected. What Larry proposed was simply that he tell his own story,
in his own terms. I would be free to chronicle, support, or refute whatever I
could about the incidents and his part in them. Though we should stay open to
the other's suggestions, each of us would have our own last word on anything we
wanted to include. When the book sold, we would split whatever it made.
Larry's offer was worth considering, but there was risk attached.
Such a collaboration would be like starting a small business with a stranger;
but that was the least of it.
For those of us who make it our business to look into such things,
a storm of controversy had already swirled around the Bentwaters incidents for
several years. Having one of the witnesses, or alleged witnesses, as co-author
was just asking for trouble. Larry couldn't have agreed more. Such a book could
take some time to complete, maybe even a year or two. Given the circumstances,
could we both stick with it that long?
Another sticking point: I didn't see myself well-suited to the
job. Larry should have been looking for a different sort of writer; perhaps one
who had actually written a book. If it had been me, I would have tried to
enlist a good investigative reporter. What he did not need was a coauthor who
also had a UFO incident in his past. I just didn’t think the
"coincidence" would wash with a lot of people. But all these
objections were subordinate to a larger question: if I agreed, how far was I
willing to go for this story? If only a tenth of what he claimed were true...” (LAEG,
pages 214-215)
If only I had paid more attention to the doubts that had nagged at
me back then.
Jumping to the present, some of you may have already read the
article that appeared in the UK tabloid the Mirror, I believe
on May 29th You can read it at http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/
uk-news/ufo-expert-accuses-co- author-10527844. Reporter John Jeffay
obviously made the decision to ignore the specifics and complexities I
discussed in the radio interview which sparked the writing of this piece, and
which he mined for selective information, this with no interest in actually
speaking with me. Then again, why would he have bothered? It was only a ‘UFO
story’ and the Mirror is not known for its high journalistic standards. In
publishing his well-off-the-mark and highly generalized version of things he
insulted both me and Larry. In my case by putting words in my mouth that made
it appear that I had “..sparked a war of words after revealing he now believes
that former US airman Larry Warren's account
of the incident near RAF Bentwaters, Suffolk, in 1980, was "not
true."
The story of course hurt Larry more for obvious reasons. Small
consolation, but in the interests of accuracy I stated that I am convinced that
parts of Larry’s account are not accurate or faithful to the truth. And the
Mirror being the Mirror, you should also know that no journalist or reporter by
the name of John Jeffay is employed by the Mirror. There is little question
that this story was brought to the attention of the Mirror’s editors by someone
outside the newspaper’s staff. I can make an educated guess as to who it may
have been, but cannot say for sure.
Larry Warren and I first met one-to-one as previously noted on July 3 1987, this at my apartment on West 46th St. in Manhattan. He was living with his first
wife in Connecticut at the time. Also as
previously noted, he showed up with an assortment of reading material for me at
that visit. It included a small assortment of articles that had been published
on the UFO incident and his copy of Sky Crash by Suffolk paranormal researcher Brenda
Butler, her friend and colleague Dot Street, and Jenny Randles, the
best-known of the three and already a prolific writer on the subject of the UFO
phenomenon.
At the time, there had not been very much published on the RFI, at
least that I was aware of. What my memory is a little hazy on is whether or not
it was at that meeting or during his next foray into New York City that he
loaned me copies of some of his assorted military paperwork, all of which he
told me he had made copies of during his out-processing from the Air Force, but
I am sure that he brought them on one of those two initial visits.
A thought that never occurred to me at the time – or in fact at any
time since then, until earlier this year when I finally bothered to
actually read some of the findings that had been posted online. Call me naïve,
but I just don’t think that way. The paperwork he loaned me was almost entirely
Xerox copies, but there were a few originals, which were returned to him
several years later. If he (or anyone else) had altered any part of any
of them it would amount to a betrayal of the highest order, certainly for
me as his co-writer, but more importantly, to any reader who had ever served or
was currently serving in the military, American or otherwise. Such an offense
is simply not forgivable. I’m sorrier than I can say that I now know this to be
the case regarding at least several of these documents, but before damning
Larry with such an awful accusation, there is one other alternate theory you
need to consider, and consider seriously. Last month Larry was a guest on UK radio host Ben Emlyn-Jones'
radio program, on May 29 if I’m correct. His remarks included an assortment of
attacks and sleazy suggestions regarding my character and honesty. If you
haven’t listened to them you should. I’d intended to respond to all of them
here but time has closed in on me have precluded that. I’ll be glad to do so in
some future radio interview though. It’s an understatement to say that I did
not know him nearly as well as I thought I did. But it seems he did not know me
as well as he thought he did either. I think he actually thought that, as his
stories began to unravel, I would stick with him because I’d be too embarrassed
not to, seeing my professional reputation go down with his ship. He couldn’t
have been more wrong:
Excerpt from Larry's Odd Couple Video Statement to me.
“You know you sent me those letters back in October {actually back
in October and December} and I was waiting to get a letter through the mail box
believe it or not. {reference to an innocent party that has nothing to do with
the actual content of this communication. If Larry feels otherwise I invite him
to add it to the public record} … So when you tell me 'mail' and you know I am
not a computer guy.
So I am waiting for the postman to come, they still have them in
England and the post never came, but what you did so because you had a little
hissy fit because I didn’t respond to you quick enough, ah life goes on, I have
a teenage son and you know they involve a lot of effort when they are at that
age. I have a mother in the hospital with dementia, we are always hearing about
your family and I love them too, I've got problems in my family like everyone's
got problems in their family, mother with dementia which you are well aware of,
this that and the other... I don’t make this a public thing, you tend to do a
lot of that. It's just not my style! But I'm kinda surprised you sent all this
private correspondence but you sent them to everybody before I ever got them,
it's almost a blackmail kinda thing. We had that issue back in 88 over the phone
bill thing, but we won’t go into that here. My mother sure would, if she had a
memory.”
All that talk about letters but not a word in reference to the
contents of either. Larry is a master of ‘look over here, not over there,’ and
would be more than happy to keep you in the dark as to what those letters
actually said, but that is a concession he is no longer entitled to. Larry
would have you believe that I “sent them to everybody before I ever got them,”
This is nonsense on two counts. When, after three weeks of not hearing back
from him after sending him my letter of October 3rd, I wrote asking him what
his thoughts were about what I had said, he told me he never received it as he
goes on about above. I immediately responded with an extremely easy to see
screen grab of it as a screengrab attached to the brief Facebook message it was
attached to. But as he refused to acknowledge this, I sent the letter on to two
people who he is extremely close to, one at his request as he would be visiting
with that person over the coming weekend.
Let me say that I agonized over the contents of that letter and
took several weeks to write it. This had followed about five months of
escalating tensions between us and in composing my thoughts I consulted with
two mutual friends of ours, both of whom appreciated the sensitivity of what I
wanted to say to him. Both advised me to do so with a maximum of kindness and
understanding, and to the greatest degree possible, to be brief in doing so. I
took the first two parts of their advice to heart, but ‘brief’ was a challenge
I was unable to live up to. What follows is that letter. The only edits I have
made in references to completely innocent parties, an edit of something I had
been incorrect about regarding one of Larry’s ‘enemies,’ then corrected and
acknowledged in the second letter I sent. He is welcome to go public with any
of what I have not included if he feels that I have in any way done so to hide
or otherwise deceive you about the contents of this communication. Otherwise this
is what I had to say:
Dear Larry,
As you know, last night was the Jewish new year’s eve, Rosh
Hashonah. I had no plan or intention of adding any drama in sending it on the
first day of the new-year. That’s just how long it took to write, just the way
it worked out. But you know what? It is the first day of the new-year,
more than appropriate for me to begin this with some special Rosh Hashonah
thoughts for you. This holiday calls on us to examine our lives, our role in
society, and our relations with our neighbors. A time that we reflect on what
is most important to us. {Note to readers: While Larry is not Jewish, I am, and
during our long friendship, and through other Jewish friends has developed a
genuine knowledge about this ancient religion and its beliefs.}
Rosh Hashonah is a time for remembrance. Remembering better,
warmer days. Remembering our successes and failures. We remember the challenges
we faced in being a friend, family member, co-worker, parent, neighbor and/or
public figure. We remember people we once loved but who live no more. Rosh
Hashonah is at once a day to take stock of the past and a chance to dream of a
new beginning. We remember our achievements, our victories and our generous
actions to others, large and small. We reflect on our moments of weakness, the
times we could have, should have done better. The times we should have tried
harder and didn’t. The times we could have acted with more compassion but
didn’t. The things we regret having done. … And it’s done so in a way that doesn’t
shame, berate or condemn. Instead, we acknowledge our humanness. We appreciate
that we all have to grapple with our own personal struggles.
At Rosh Hashonah we are called upon to perform acts of compassion,
kindness, and justice every day. We come face-to-face with our innermost
nature. We ask ourselves if we have acted honorably and honestly in our
dealings with others. We look back on episodes we have come to regret. We
understand that we cannot change the world and we cannot change others until we
understand and forgive ourselves, for all those things we need forgiving on.
But this day is not about the past. What is done is done. Rosh Hashonah is a
time to forgive ourselves and others, amend our wrongdoings where possible,
then move on. I’m going to try and keep all of this in mind as I give this
letter a final read-through.
Congratulations again on your award from Gary. It’s just a shame it took so
long for a group or conference to so acknowledge you.
Yes, I again ignored your most recent Skype request. The reason, I
still didn’t want to talk to you. The reason I don’t want to talk to you,
because you lied to me, to my face in Glasgow, and in FB messages
beforehand. You may consider them minor lies, but they were major to me, in
fact they were life-changing. Early in June, and for a number of reasons having
to do with you, I began thinking more and more about the future of our
friendship and professional relationship, both of which are in real trouble as
far as I’m concerned. As such, we need to get a few things understood between
us. Having to write this up has been even less enjoyable than being compelled
to write Deliberate Deception or Halt In Woodbridge. I have repeatedly put off
doing so because frankly I hate the time I must spend on it because I
hate the way it feels. I know that 29 years of ingrained habit and behavior
have something to do with it, as does a complex history of friendship and
antagonisms, and a long instilled sense of loyalty. As the ‘X-Files’ poster
says, I want to believe, and as your coauthor, co-speaker and limited business
partner, I wanted to believe that you were 100% honest with me in matters
relating to us. Increasingly these past few months I have been struggling to
resolve, if resolution were even possible, my growing number of differences
with you, but it’s almost like you have gone out of your way to make this all
as difficult as possible for me, if not impossible.
Our friendship was built on decades of working together through
thick and thin, during which time I thought we more than earned each other’s
respect. But as far as I’m concerned your respect for me went out the window
this summer, a most troubling part being that you don’t even seem to realize
it. I am really worried about you. You will always have my respect for the
courage, commitment, and single-minded dedication you’ve shown in bringing the
RFI to public attention. And while I love you my friend, I do not even like the
person at least part of you seems to have become, that being the part who lies
to his friends, fakes things, threatens violence and extreme violence, and
blames others for events and circumstances they brought on themselves or were
otherwise you responsible for. {Note: The final part of the last
sentence was meant to have read, “…and blames others for events and
circumstances that you brought on yourself or were otherwise
responsible for.” My tiredness was showing here.}
As you know, I took your threatening, ultra-paranoid ultimatum of
July 14 as seriously as a heart attack. Yes, I know that you wish you had never
sent it, but you did and it still has me fuming. If I’d have sent it to you, I
think you’d feel the way I do, “to be honest it aintv very good mate ! im not
happy nor is my family with youre folks tell john mooore to piss off
DONT EVEN CONTACT ME AGAIN.........................
.................PETER I MEAN IT PISS OFF !
ATRE YOU RVEN ALIVE ?
pete ......you let me die.................for yer own
ends.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
who knows what that was ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,but pete the only contact
you n me will have is with lawyers..........dont send me shit and stop showim
MY shit ! we are OVER
After all I’ve done for you and all we have been through together,
that you would go off on me like this, that you would dare accuse me of such
things still amazes me. I never did anything to deserve this kind of treatment
from you and I’m certainly not going to put myself in the position where you
can ever pull anything like that on me again. The level your normally violent
temper has risen to, your often completely irrational paranoia toward me and
others, these things never really made sense to me except as an indication of
some deeper problems. Whatever their causes may be, I am tired of dealing with
them and do not want to have to ever again.
The thing that seems to have set you off on your July 14 rant was
imagining, and I stress the word “imagining” here, that John and I were somehow
out to get you or to fuck you over in the making of the documentary he had
intended to produce, for what purpose or what aim I have no idea. This while
I’d specifically included the following along with the link I sent to you:
“Just to give you an idea of what he's thinking in terms of, check out the link
that follows. Its NOT footage or stills he'll necessarily be using, but just
a working idea of the format, 'feeling,' content, etc he's interested in
using to focus on the LAEG story” (italics mine). Larry, the one thing
John wanted more than anything was simply to hear from you. To hear something,
anything from you. A self-motivated action indicating if you
still had a genuine, actual interest in committing to a project he considered
the most important of his professional career. John and I were sure committed
to it. But as has happened with us in past, I was again obligated to act as
go-between because you do not use email. You’ve then complained to me about
feeling left out, cut out, not being consulted on and/or not being kept
up-to-date about.
FYI John has had nothing but respect and admiration for you from
the first time he read Left At East Gate some years back up until last
month when you couldn’t be bothered to send him a note, see him, or even speak
to him while visiting his hometown. There is no question in my mind that this
extremely talented and dedicated man would have raised the substantial amount
of money necessary with the Canadian government likely underwriting part of the
production. Early this year I spent hours and hours going through every single
box of LAEG-related material I’d collected in 29 years, including copies
of every single audiotape, still photo, VHS tape, DVD of film, TV, conference,
documentary or self-shot footage I had that we appeared in, all for John to
take home, review, digitally transfer where necessary, then - with our approval
- include clips from in his film. The attention he paid to each piece of
material he went thru or filmed during the time he spent here in February was
impressive to say the least and he departed for Toronto with both of us excited
and optimistic about this once-in-a-lifetime project.
In the event you’ve forgotten, early last year before we decided
to drop John’s offer to pursue Peter B’s feature film option (and don’t we wish
we hadn’t), John sent us a draft for a contract. Bob Freedman reviewed it in
detail, communicated with John about it, and felt it was definitely in our
interests to move forward on. You were sent copies of all communications
between them, them and me, and of course a copy of the contract draft itself. I
also sent you a copy of the detailed working outline for the documentary that
John and I had put together, this subject to any changes, adjustments,
additions, ideas or whatever else that you wanted to make. The draft
made clear that we would have each been paid for our participation in the
project. When you asked me for John’s contact information just before you and
Dennis departed for Toronto (or once you were there? I forget) I thought,
maybe there was still a chance you were going to connect with him and pull this
out of the fire. All you had to do was ask Sid to email him for his phone
number, but you chose to let it slide, and with it, what could have been a
feature documentary every bit as good as ‘Travis’ if not better. You and your
paranoia were responsible for torpedoing this great project and not John or me.
All I can add is that it’s a damn shame.
In past when I’ve asked what you thought my ‘agenda’ was, you’ve
always gone quiet. You said in a July message that I never really ‘got you,’
and I guess that’s proved to be something of an understatement. I did ‘get’
some of you, but looking back I don’t seem to have been nearly as good an
investigator as I thought I was a quarter century ago. But I have always had
‘an agenda.’ Corny as it may sound, it has always been to follow the evidence
wherever it leads you, then to tell the truth about it as best I’m able.
This even when evidence takes you to places you would rather not go. It’s
the reason I choose to correct my errors in public, be they mistakes I
discovered after the fact or ones brought to my attention by others. Maybe most
important, there has never been a clause excluding truths that might prove
embarrassing to me, or for that matter, to you, and that’s what this has all
come down to.
I want to keep what I have to say as focused as I can. I have come
to a point in my life where I no longer have any interest in researching,
investigating or otherwise actively studying that thing alternatively known as
the Woodbridge Lights, the RAF Bentwaters incident, or the Rendlesham Forest
UFO incident. I will not doubt be compelled to talk about aspects of RFI now
and again, return to Deliberate Deception and Halt In Woodbridge again,
especially now that Charles Halt’s book is out or about to be published, but
otherwise have no desire whatsoever to wade back out into RFI research and
investigation. And while my career in UFO studies may take a hit as a result, I
could care less. There are other areas of UFO studies I’m involved in or that
interest me. More important, I want to get on with a life beyond Bentwaters. To
some degree at least I have forced myself to follow the general dialogue,
various attacks and counter-attacks, assorted posts as well as parts of ‘Left
Out of east Gate’ etc. It’s just that ‘dialogue,’ your part as well as the
voices of assorted others, has succeeded in all but killing the interest I had
had in the subject for so long. But first I gear up for one more round of RFI
investigative work, once again dedicated to substantiating my coauthor’s claims
if at all possible.
As you know I specifically zeroed in one of the photos I found on
Sacha’s website, the one purporting to be of you and John Lennon.
The reason I chose it was because to my untrained eye it appeared
to be the crudest, most cut-and-paste-looking picture in the bunch. I even
imagined, and wrote the same to you, that somehow Sacha and/or Dave had managed
to create a fake FB screengrab of it. Remember? When you responded “pete the
pict is real,” I was all but bowled over. It led me to revisit your earlier FB
postings and find the photo where you’d posted it earlier in June. You deleted
it not that long afterward. In response to your claims of the picture’s
authenticity, I pulled up every single photo I had of you taken when you were 19
and 20, comparing them all to each other, then comparing them to ones taken
years after, then compared each of the 19-20 year old Larry photos to the one
allegedly taken Nov 28 1980 in New York City. Larry, there is no question that
your face in that picture is broader and wider than any of the photos of you
taken in 1980 and 1981. That broadening of the face is something that comes
with age, and there is also no question that your hairline is receding in the
Nov 28 picture, something that is definitely not happening in actual photos of
you taken in 1980 and 1981.
Even so, I still did not want to believe you were responsible for
creating the photo. In an attempt to exclude this possibility, I used Google’s
‘Reverse Image Search’ to see if I could rule out a similar, separate photo of
John. Image Search works a lot like modern fingerprint search technology. You
enter any photo ever taken, then search for it or the closest ones to it. If
the picture appears anywhere on the internet, Image Search will find it. As it
turned out a pair of pictures comes right up. They were taken seconds before or
after the one you’re paired with John in, only they have a completely different
background, and John’s mouth is as clear as the rest as the photograph and not
with the mouth strangely smudged as in the one of you and John. Yours is a
bogus photograph Larry yet you insist it’s not. Not good.
As I wrote to you in June, there is no way I will ever believe
that you neglected or forgot to mention to me that 2 days before you flew from
the States to England to begin your Air Force assignment there you met and were
photographed with John Lennon in New York City.
Then that you expected me to believe you had withheld this fact
from both me and from Left At East Gate because you were saving it for
your next book? Yes, I know that you have met many famous and interesting
people in your life, people who you do not mention in our book, but please, in
the words of the great judge Judy, ‘Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s
raining.’ In my entire life I never met anyone – anyone - more
interested or obsessed in John Lennon’s life, work, history, instruments, etc.,
then you, and that goes back to from when we first met. I do not believe, not
for a moment, that given how heartfelt you were in writing up how John’s murder
affected you, and how you and other guys attended the huge memorial that
weekend in Liverpool, and that you never bothered to mention to me that
you just happened to meet (and be photographed with) John Lennon in New
York City the week before he was murdered? I get angrier just thinking about
it. What I hated most about being lied to like this was just how insulting it
was to my intelligence. But it wasn’t just to me of course. It was a lie to
everyone who sees your posts. In doing so you ‘opened the door’ as they say, to
the unwelcome reality of a permanent cloud of reasonable doubt hanging over
other things you have said, maintained, or are otherwise on record with, and
more’s the pity. In this case, if you had faked a photograph once, might you
have done it another time? And if you would fake a photo, might you also fake
something else? The answer sadly is yes on both counts and you and only you are
responsible for creating the reasonable doubt that it springs from.
Then there’s the deeper question of what would drive a person to
make such an outrageous claim? What is it that compels you to make others
believe this had really happened to you? That if you had been there a
week later… you would have taken a Mark Chapman bullet for him? Do you really
need for people like Kate McKenna Lawler to write, “RIP John and so incredible
you met him!” I’m at a loss here Larry and not being a mental health
professional I don’t know how to deal with it. Nor do I want to deal with it. So
what’s the big deal about a single, basically harmless untruth like this? Does
it have anything whatsoever to do with Rendlesham/ Bentwaters? No, of course
not. Does it have anything to do with my and others take on your basic honesty,
ethics and trustworthiness? Yes, very much so.
In May 2016 you were increasingly on my case to drop Ronnie
Dugdale as a friend. You made it abundantly clear that you were convinced he
was our ‘enemy’ and never really been our friend and how he had turned on us,
especially on you. As a result I wrote to him to get his side of things, and
you know what? I thought he made a great case but dumped him anyway, something
that I sure caused him real pain, which I know would have been fine with you.
My main point is that I did it because I felt that loyal to you, because you
wanted me to. On reflection, every falling out I’m aware of that you’ve had
with someone you’d previously considered a friend seems to have been that
person’s fault, never yours. So it was with (name of individuals). I used to
just accept this but don’t any longer. Isn’t it just possible that you
contributed something to the misunderstanding responsible for that
friendship ending? According to you, you were innocent in each case and I find
that harder and harder to believe in light of what these people have shared
with me or otherwise made public. In the case of Ronnie, one of the things he
did that I think infuriated you was something I should have done 25 years ago,
that being (to) really check out and independently confirm the written account
of your interview with Keith Beabey as it appears in Left At East Gate. In
fact you altered the facts Larry. Not a lot. I think it was a matter of not
feeling comfortable with some of the things you told him back then, but you
changed (a) fact in our book to suit yourself. Does this, should this change
people’s opinions about the great book we wrote together? Should readers, and
should I, now wonder if maybe you changed some other little fact here or there?
Unfortunately, definitely. Again, you opened the door to this line of
questioning and my doubts have only grown stronger (than) ever since
(realizing) you did.
In your msg from earlier this week, you tell me I should drop
Alyson Dunlop and James Welch as FB friends. Again, in past I’ve done this in
every instance you’ve asked me to, not necessarily to my credit, but almost
always without even looking into what the person has allegedly done to warrant
being dumped by you/us. But let’s talk about Alyson. And while we’re at it,
what exactly is behind your battle with ‘Scottish ufology,’ the University of Glasgow, James Welch, etc., beginning
at the beginning.
I met Alyson on FB about 2 years ago and was first a guest on her
show in January 2015. She was a huge fan of ours and Left At East Gate and
asked me if I would come on to talk about the incident and about our book. She
asked great questions and the show went great with lots of listeners commenting
on it. But with you being the one actually involved, she was even more interested
in you being a guest on the show and asked me if I thought you’d be willing to
appear on the show as well. I said yes, I certainly thought so. She then sent
you a friend request and you two became friends on Facebook. Your interview
with her also resulted in a kick-ass programme which she more than appreciated.
It was during this time that she learned we had not spoken together on the same
stage for more than 10 years, the result, that she made it her business to
change that by convincing Malcolm, Ron, and other colleagues involved in the
Society for Paranormal Investigation Scotland (SPI) that you and I should
headline their 2016 conference. After all parties agreed she began the process
of raising the hundreds of pounds necessary to bring us to Glasgow for the conference. It was
going to be structured so that everything would build toward our presentation
with us scheduled for the feature spot as the final presenters of the day.
Alyson was regularly attacked by Sacha and her buddies once she
began her efforts in our behalf and began promoting the conference. How did she
respond? By getting in Sacha & company’s collective faces every time
they came at her, in fact spending months and months defending you at
every turn, on her FB page and on the SPI’s Facebook page. If you go back and
read her posts and responses it’s obvious she must have spent hours on some
days doing little else but coming to your defence, praising your courage and
contributions to the RFI and refuting Sacha every chance she got.
We then come to this past June. Up until just after the conference
itself there had never been any negative statements, negative behavior, or
negative comments about you from anyone in ‘Scottish ufology,’ not that I’m
aware of or remember anyway, and I’m going back to 1987 here. But please
correct me if I’m wrong. It was in June that Kellymarie McColl Beggs made the
comment she did in direct response to Sacha’s being banned (by Alyson!) from
the conference. The result of this was your telling Kellymarie that if she
attended, that you would come down into the audience and rip her windpipe out
through her spine. {Correction: Larry’s actual statement was that he would
“..put your windpipe through your spine.” My error.} Maybe you consider
comments like this MC/outlaw humor, but to the rest of us they constitute a
genuine threat of physical violence, and that is not okay with me.
I don’t know Larry. Perhaps you’ve just gotten so used to
routinely threatening people’s health, safety and lives that you no longer
consider the impact your words really have on others. I know that I have
completely had it with your physical threats against people. No one else I
have ever known (ever) resorts to them as often and as routinely as you do.
When Kellymarie made the University of Glasgow aware of your threat to her,
they responded by banning you from speaking on campus, and this is where you
began spinning things. As far as I’m concerned the school did the absolutely
correct thing. They weren’t being wusses in taking your threat seriously. They
certainly don’t know you or that you never make good on your threats, at least
that I’m aware of. All they did was what any responsible school should do in
the face of a stated threat of violence on university grounds, end of story.
With respect my friend, when you shot that brief video with Tino,
it should have featured an apology to Alyson, Malcolm, Ron, and the other folks
who volunteered their time to make this event a reality, not to mention the
audience members who paid their money, at least in part, for the historic
chance of hearing us speak together again. Instead, you set out to make
it seem that others were at fault for your not speaking, not you, and that’s a
lousy way to treat people who had nothing but goodwill and respect toward you.
Your recent post, “this bitch needs to be run out.........just
sayin,” only makes me feel more disgusted with your attitude toward a woman who
never meant you any harm. Just the opposite, not until you gave her cause to
anyway. Yes, you genuinely do have a problem with Alyson, James, and other
members of ‘Scottish ufology’ now, but a problem that you singlehandedly
created on your own and are 100% responsible for.
And a little about James Francis Welch who you have also asked me
to unfriend. Prior to your infuriating him by unfriending him as one of many in
your purge of FB friends who happened to have any FB friend who is on your
enemies list, he was one of your {the word “your” should have read “our” here}
hugest fans in all of Scotland. It is sad to me that you
have become so rage-filled and defensive that you are unable to tolerate anyone
(maybe with the exception of me, thus far anyway) having anyone you don’t
approve of among their FB friends. Often such friendships are meaningless or
dormant, but they have to be non-existent in your book. True, your dumping
James turned him into an attack dog overnight, and over the top in some
respects, but you are 100% responsible for turning him from a major supporter
into a major critic, no one else. Your rage and paranoia can be contagious in
such a situation.
And speaking about paranoia, were you even remotely serious in
your August post: “16 hr delay....due to a bomb threat against the flight.just
found out ? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. makes one wonder..trolls n all.” I am sure
as I can be that you did not tell people or note on Facebook what your flight
to Toronto was or what airline you were flying, did you? So how could anyone
have made such a threat? And do you honestly think, even for a moment, that if
one of your haters did have your flight information, they would actually be
willing to risk a major felony or even terrorism charge just to delay your
flight? If so please think again. The Larry Warren I used to know would never
have even considered it. But ‘Old Laz’? He’s something else again.
I could go on Larry, but do I really need to? I would never have
believed it, not even as recently as early this summer, but you have blown your
credibility with me. Correction. You have blown enough of your credibility with
me that I do not know what to trust and what not to trust anymore when it comes
to your statements, opinions, beliefs or stances. This is so not where I saw
our relationship being after 29 years and I need to separate myself from you
and get on with my life.
I know I’ve given you a lot to think about. I hope you know I wish
you well, but also stand by all I’ve said here. With respect, this has got to
stop.
Peter
This is Larry Warren’s copy of USAF In-processing Sheet for
personnel entering the 81st Security Police Squadron at RAF Bentwaters. It
appears on page 446 of Left At East Gate and is self-explanatory. Note
that Sgt. Swain has signed off on it, twice, and with two different pens. I
have never confirmed this with Sgt. Swain, but while other men named Lee spell
their name that way, he spells it ‘Lea,’ twice, even though ‘Lee’ appears
clearly typed below the first signature. Cutting Larry Warren every latitude
possible, I guess there is a chance that this Lee is the one-in, what? A
thousand? Fifty thousand? Who spells ‘Lea, but if not, Lee misspelled his own
name, twice, and with two different pens. I think this is damning. Why didn’t I
follow up on it twenty five years ago? Because I believed Larry and
rationalized that Sargent Swain did spell his name with an ‘a,’ and that
the typed word ‘Lee’ was simply an understandable bureaucratic typo. I was
obviously not the investigative writer I wanted to be back then. Highly
suspicious? Yes. Smoking gun? Not quite.
The document below however is damning, and the only piece of Warren’s original paperwork
loaned to me that I can confirm with certainty. USAF form 490 is a light blue
five by seven card whose purpose is to confirm a medical or dental appointment.
In this case confirming, or seemingly confirming that Larry had an appointment
to have his eyes checked at the clinic located at (fairly) nearby RAF
Lakenheath. You can find it on page 451 of our book. A memorable part of his
account of his involvement on the third night of UFO activity was that his eyes
began to bother him immediately after the incident he claims to, and may in
fact have been involved in. If only because of some of the outright lies I
caught him in last year I will never again be able to take him at his word
again on anything that is not 100% fully documented.
The problem that exists here is both massive and undeniable. There
is no question that there was only one Dr. Echols serving at that clinic at
that time. It was he who signed off on Larry’s form 490 and would have written
the explosive comment, “OPTI/RET BURN/EXP - optical retinal burn exposure,
caused by the brilliant flash of light that Larry has always maintained
immediately preceded the appearance of the craft in the farmer’s field known as
Capel Green. I think I have brought this impressive ‘fact’ to the attention of
others in interviews, talks, radio broadcasts, and conversations on several
hundred occasions. Unfortunately, if Larry was there, this piece of paper
should be given no weight whatsoever in backing up his assertion.
Dr. Paul Echols was (and remains) a doctor of orthopedic surgery,
not an ophthalmologist or eye doctor. Note: Orthopedics is the medical
specialty concerned with correction of deformities or functional impairments of
the skeletal system, especially the extremities and the spine, and associated
structures such as muscles and ligaments. The only reason Dr. Echols might have
been assigned to examine this patient would have been if his eyes had been
attached to his spine or other bony structure rather than set in his face.
Either the writing on this card is a complete forgery, or that selective parts
of it have been altered. It makes no difference. Only one conclusion can be
drawn here and it involves both outright forgery and intentional deception. It
also establishes for me beyond any doubt that Larry Warren intended to deceive
me from the very start, even if it had only had been with this one damning
document, and that’s being kind.
Here is some background information on Dr. Echols:
This ‘healthgrades’ website data confirms Dr. Echols’ current
professional status:
There are other documents also being held in serious contention
regarding their natural state and with good cause, but I need to move on.
Some of you may feel that the sanctity of the contents of a
‘private FB message’ is as inviable as the confessional. But when it comes down
to allowing this madness to continue on and on, I am not one of them. For months
I tried in every way I could think of to resolve this situation privately
with Larry via FB messaging, only to have him stand firm in reiterating proven
falsehoods, double down on them, or go silent on me when pushed too hard. I
also attempted to do the same via back channels of sorts with no more success
than I’d had in dealing directly with him. There is only one result I am
interested in producing now and, it is that this madness must stop, and
stop now. I resent the fact that I am likely the only person with a chance of
doing so. I have far better things to do with my time that spend these valuable
hours slugging it out in an ongoing battle of words. However I also realize I
have a responsibility to do so, even if the only solution I can think of may
seem draconian to some.
There are many straws that have contributed to breaking this
camel’s back, but the final one, that point of absolutely no return, was
Warren’s daring to even suggest that I might have been responsible for
alterations to some of his military paperwork, or that I have been under the
influence of the ‘Larry haters’ all along, but in doing so he made a terrible
miscalculation. The one and only person responsible for this response to his
outrageous behavior is Larry Warren, despite what he insists on, imagines, or
may even have come to believe.
And something new for you to consider. This by me from the updated
2005 edition of Left At East Gate, page xxii-xxiii:
Publication of the book sparked a surprising amount of mail, and
as anticipated, included letters from some of the men we’d named. I was both
glad and relieved that none had written to correct or criticize our
characterizations of them. On the contrary, each of the letters confirmed key
points of my co-author’s account, some even offering details and particulars
that were new to us. Excerpts from half a dozen follow, the originals
being in Larry’s possession. They begin with an excerpt from a letter that Mark
Thompson sent to Larry. Mark, a former 81st Security Police Specialist
(SPS), had been assigned to D Flight along with then-Airman Warren. Mark is mentioned on page
141:
“Its real, it happened to us, and we will never forget it. Your
book brought it all back for me. … (How) Halt can put it all into a little box
is beyond me. He should take at least some responsibility for helping to keep
the lid on the thing! Oh sure, he talks about what he saw but what about the
hell we went through afterward. Thanks for fighting for us Larry, I’m grateful.
Now maybe we can all get a good night sleep.”
From Steve LaPlume, another former Security Police Specialist
assigned to D Flight and referred to on nine of these pages:
Larry, I asked your publishers to forward this to you. 17 years
blew by quick – I tried to forget the UFO, but Left At East Gate brought
it all back! How can Halt play it down – you were there and so was I. We got
debriefed after and some guys like you got f**ked over later for asking too
many questions – I remember that Navy guy saying that “Bullets are cheap.” The
difference between us I guess is that I believed him. … People died after this
for God sake. Maybe they were right when they told us that civilians were not
ready for this yet. I will try to get in touch with other witnesses and let
them know about East Gate.”
I never saw any of the actual letters, though that did not bother
me at the time; I was just relieved that none of the men who’d allegedly
written did so to criticize, condemn or deny how they had been characterized in
the book. When I first agreed to write this book with Larry it was understood
that I would be organizing all of the material that would go into it, but he
did agree to my request that all of drafts of his chapters would be given to me
on floppy discs and double spaced to make editing easier. He had no problem
agreeing to this request and made a point of telling me that he was a fast
typist. But when I received the first draft from him of his first chapter, it
was handwritten on lined yellow legal paper and single spaced.
When I reminded him of our agreement he told me he couldn’t afford
a typewriter and did not have a computer, and despite the extra work it put on
me, every chapter that followed was written out in longhand on those pads. So
it did not surprise me when the contents of the relevant letters he had
received were given to me, not in the form of the emails or original letters,
but written out in his handwriting on lined yellow paper as usual. This took
place within a few months at most after our book had charted as a bestseller in
the UK and once again I saw no
reason that I should insist on seeing the originals. What was I thinking? That
he might find such a request insulting. Again, the thought that he might have
overtly and intentionally lied to me about this or anything else in writing the
book was simply something I never considered.
Jump ahead to about four years ago. I was speaking at a conference
in Leominster Massachusetts, the hometown of Steve
LaPlume who we quote above. Steve and I had become friends years earlier via
emails during a period of years when he was living in China. For whatever reason, Larry
has stated that he and I are not friends, but nothing could be further from the
truth. When he and his wife came to visit New York City with their two daughters some
years after that I spent part of the time with them which deepened our friendship.
As you might imagine, I was happy to learn that he had agreed to speak at the
conference that was going to be held in his hometown. He had only given one
previous talk about his USAF UFO experience and that had been in 1984. His talk
was extremely personal and particularly moving at times, especially as there
were people in the audience who had known him growing up there, including his
sister, a retired police officer as I recall. It was at that time I gave Steve
a copy of Left At East Gate as a gift.
While pleased, I think, Steve, who functions under an extremely
high code of personal honor, told me that in the interest of fairness, he would
read it, but only after RAF Bentwaters former Deputy Base Commander Charles I.
Halt’s book was published so that he could read them at about the same time. I
appreciated his decision and that was the end of it.
A few weeks later I received an extremely curt and angry email
from Steve LaPlume that shocked me. In it he told me that he’d decided to read
just the updates part as it appeared in the front of the book, and, well, what
the heck. But as he explained, when he got to the inclusion about him, he was
furious. So much so that he did not want to speak with me again and as far as
he was concerned our friendship was done. Why? Because he had never sent
Larry any letter following our book publication and had never written the quote
attribute to him.
I was shocked, embarrassed and confused all at once. Larry had
certainly approved the quotation in draft form prior to the updates edition
going into print so I couldn’t understand what had happened. Things between us
were icy for a brief period of time, but then he was big enough to forgive me,
though still wary of how this could have occurred. Then I had a brainstorm and
called him. There had been two Steve L’s in the Security Police with
Larry on Bentwaters, Steve LaPlume and Steve Longero. Despite the fact that
Larry’s handwritten version of Steve’s letter said LaPlume and not Longero,
both Larry and I are dyslexic and one way or another this was obviously the
cause of the confusion, somehow. That is, until I phoned Steve Longero, a
Facebook friend of mine over a year ago to confirm that it had been he who had
written Larry the letter. There was no question in my mind that he would
confirm the fact (I mean, how could he not?).
When he immediately answered that he had also never written to
Larry I knew I had a big problem but have not said anything about it until now.
Steve LaPlume and Steve Longero are very real people and can confirm the above,
though Steve LaPlume has made it more than clear to me that he never wants to
have anything to do with the Rendlesham Forest incident or Larry Warren
again.
I realize now as the daylight floods into my window that I am not
going to be able to address other important and significant points here, but
will do so beginning next month when I’m back home, though on the air rather
than writing. This will include as full a response as possible to the things he
has said about me on Emlyn-Jones radio show last month. His even daring to
suggest that if anyone altered any of his military documents it might be me as
I had them for years. This is the closest thing I have ever had to an “I know
it was you Fredo” moment in my life and made me realize the depth of his
willingness to do anything or say anything to get himself such a sharp hook. In
any event, I expect this long statement will catapult me to the top of Larry’s
enemies list and he will continue to rail away at me and anyone else who brings
some of the discrepancies in his account to light.
In Larry’s world, nothing, as in nothing bad that has ever
happened to him is ever his fault, a fantasy assertion that I did not wake up
to until it was too late. In his world, everyone is out to get him, to
discredit him, and make him look bad. He is responsible for none of it.
But taken all together, it is still not that simple to dismiss
Larry from the events in question. As he notes in his May 29 Interview with Ben
Emlyn-Jones, the soil analysis I had conducted on the samples drawn from the specific
site he identified when we first visited there have revealed truly
anomalous results. But as I stated earlier when addressing myself to Gary
Heseltine, the important question is not what he says that is in fact true, its
what he says and has written that is not true – regarding Rendlesham,
and regarding his dealings in the rock & roll memorabilia business.
An example, and one of a disturbing number. Not long after we
began working together, I introduced him to my friend the singer, the late,
great Phoebe Snow, who in turn introduced him to May Pang. May had been John
Lennon's girlfriend during a split with Yoko Ono in 1974. I most clearly
remember his returning to my East 46th Street apartment after saying he had
just visited with May and that she had given him a pair of John’s eyeglasses as
well as an Army issue shirt that had also belonged to the legendary rock star.
I handled them both and was happy for Larry whose admiration for and obsession
with Lennon was deeper than anyone I had ever known.
Years later when Larry put up a pair of eyeglasses for auction
that he claimed had belonged to John, along with a questionable letter of
provenance which he said had been written by Ms. Pang, she responded thusly:
““I basically knew him {Larry Warren} for a couple of months. I
would never give or sell him anything of John’s. He never met John as far as I
know. I met him in 1988. I had to authenticate my handwriting to Sotherby’s
when a friend discovered a pair of glasses sold with a “provenance letter” from
me. My friend to the guy immediately in charge and said it isn’t May’s
handwriting. They called me immediately and they had to take the glasses off
the market. It was being sold for $20,000 at the time”
May Pang, August 16, 2016
Regarding Larry’s thinking that the book we wrote together is his,
it is not. It is ours. Nick Pope's suggestion that it be taken out of print
because it is filled with lies enraged him and didn’t make me any too happy
either. While it is of course built around his story, or, again, his ‘story,’ I
was the one who did the majority of actual day-to-day, year-to-year work that
turned it into a reality. But any decision to end Left At East Gate’s twenty
year-long production run has nothing to do with what Larry, or Nick, or I want.
In 2005 Larry Warren and I signed a contract with Cosimo Press, a small
print-on-demand publishing company in New York City. As usual in this industry,
the publishers get the lion’s share of the revenues, but at least I know these
people are honest with their authors unlike our original publishers. The actual
person who heads Cosimo truly believed in our book and was happy to add the
title to his company’s roster. Our royalties don’t amount to that much each
year, but for me it has remained a point of pride to know that it remains in
print. I’m sure that Larry would never dream of informing our publisher of any
of the matters touched upon here, but he more than most people not only has a
right to know what has been going on – it would be completely immoral not to
do so, the unhappy job of which of course falls to me. If he, after
reading this, which he most certainly will, then decides to drop the title,
Larry will only have himself to blame for it, but like all else, he will blame
it on someone else, like me for example.
As far as I am concerned my former coauthor has taken me for the
ride of my life and it is nearing the time for me to get off the bus. Yes, I
cannot discount and will not discount that he has also told the truth about
certain things, but he seems incapable and unwilling to admit that he has ever
done anything wrong or untruthful and I expect will continue to do so for the
rest of his life. If you want to continue fighting this battle for him you are
welcome to it. To those of you who have allowed your lives to be consumed by
rage and hatred toward him for the more than understandable reasons he has
given you, you need to get on with your lives. Remaining fixated on this
obsession is like digesting poison every morning and has the potential of
making you into what you hate about him. No one wins when that happens.
As far as I am concerned some of you owe each other apologies and
need to understand that you are the only ones who can end this. . I know I owe
apologies to more people than I can even count. I do however appreciate more,
and more than I can say, the incredible number of people who have written,
texted or called me in the past weeks and months to let me know that they stand
with me. More than anything else right now I need to turn my attention to more
life-positive things, finish packing, and do my best at the two upcoming
conferences I next speak at. I also need to take a break from the social
network for the next few weeks and try and begin to get my life back. I know
most of you understand.
Peter Robbins
June 12, 2017"
In the last installment of this article series I made a
promise to Peter Robbins that I would respond to him respectfully and
professionally, no matter what he said. I will keep that promise. The bulk of
Peter's statement concerns his own thoughts and feelings. I will not reply to
those because, basically, he alone is qualified to comment on them. He also
describes many of the tumultuous episodes in his long relationship with Larry
Warren. I've found this is not uncommon with co-authors; it's one of the
reasons I never collaborate on my own books. Again, it's not my role to assess
Peter and Larry's personal interactions. Who is good and bad? Who is right and
wrong? Only those two men know that. What I'm interested in here is facts. If
Peter is going to dispose of a thirty year writing and research partnership
because of a breakdown on a personal level, fair enough; but then he must be
honest and say that it is for this reason and no other. Emotions can make us
misjudge evidence and Peter needs to maintain introspection and be on his guard
against that. I think I will have to use the dissection method here, mostly
because Peter's testimony is so lengthy and I'm only concerned with replying to
a small portion of it:
"For more than a
year now a scandal - for there is no other word that aptly describes it - has
been steadily growing in the field of UFO studies. It is as ugly, contentious, and vicious as
we’ve seen, if not more so, in the seventy years since the so-called Modern Age
of UFOs came into being... The discourse on both sides long ago turned toxic as
nuclear waste, serving no one and no aim other than to amp up the rancor,
hatred and partisanship, and in the process continue pitting decent people on
both sides against each other..."
Peter, almost everybody I know in our community echoes your
sentiments here. I loathe every moment I've spent discussing this matter, which
is now close to its first anniversary. Even people on the other side have
expressed these feelings, sincerely or otherwise. However, I must say for my
own position, I have endeavoured to keep my involvement on a rational level and
reduce the hate, primarily for the sake of my own psychological wellbeing, as I
have explained in my article series and detail below. I have had to challenge
my detractors over defamatory and threatening actions towards me, but I've
tried to do so with the dignity that hospital portering taught me. What you say
about "both sides" is something I've been striving to amend. Nobody,
with the exception of the instigators, is enjoying this, any more than you are.
"The most recent
criticism - and it’s a beaut, has come from my friend and colleague Gary
Heseltine , a retired police detective in West Yorkshire..."
"Some years back
Gary singled out and championed a particular
piece of evidence which I had been attempting to bring to the attention of a
wider audience. It is a handwritten letter Larry Warren wrote to his mother in
January 1981, about a week after the UFO incidents had transpired... What my
friend and colleague seems to have failed to recognize is that simply because
the letter is authentic does not mean that everything else Warren has said or written follows in kind. Far
from it... at no time does the writer say or even imply that he was personally
involved or actually present. Not that he wasn’t, but all it actually
establishes is that Larry was aware of fact and some of the particulars
involved..."
"Not that he wasn't" is the crux here, Peter. I
think Gary is aware that this
letter is just one part of a far larger dossier of evidence that includes a
breadth of data, much of it provided by your good self, that supports Larry's
direct involvement with the actual encounter. To reject all your work on the
RFI is a very serious matter... but I'm getting ahead of myself. The letter home
is still a vital clue that supports Larry's story. You know that security
regulations for the base SP's would forbid them from doing anything as candid
as giving all the details Larry later revealed in a letter home to his mum.
Larry may well have said as much as he thought he could get away with at that
time.
"...some of you
may have already read the article that appeared in the UK tabloid the Mirror, I believe on May 29th
You can read it at http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/
uk-news/ufo-expert-accuses-co- author-10527844. Reporter John Jeffay
obviously made the decision to ignore the specifics and complexities I
discussed in the radio interview which sparked the writing of this piece... And
the Mirror being the Mirror, you should also know that no journalist or
reporter by the name of John Jeffay is employed by the Mirror. There is little
question that this story was brought to the attention of the Mirror’s editors
by someone outside the newspaper’s staff. I can make an educated guess as to
who it may have been, but cannot say for sure."
My thoughts exactly.
"Last month
Larry was a guest on UK radio host Ben Emlyn-Jones' radio program, on May 29 if I’m correct.
His remarks included an assortment of attacks and sleazy suggestions regarding
my character and honesty."
"To some degree
at least I have forced myself to follow the general dialogue, various attacks and
counter-attacks, assorted posts as well as parts of ‘Left Out of east Gate’
etc."
Peter, these "counter-attacks" include a
completely factual analysis, as well as a comprehensive and categorical refutation
of everything Sacha Christie and her accomplices have said about Larry. I've
written about them; Larry and I have discussed them in two radio interviews now.
He has also spoken of them in multiple video interviews with Tino. Have you looked at these
as well?
"As you know I
specifically zeroed in one of the photos I found on Sacha’s website, the one
purporting to be of you and John Lennon... it appeared to be the crudest, most
cut-and-paste-looking picture in the bunch."
Larry addresses this accusation in the first interview I did
with him. Peter, you know as well as I do, Larry's IT skills lag somewhat
behind Queen Victoria's. He can
barely log into his emails without somebody talking him through the process. If
he faked the photo then somebody else must have done it for him? Who? Why
haven't they come forward?
"...something I
should have done 25 years ago, that being (to) really check out and
independently confirm the written account of your interview with Keith Beabey
as it appears in Left At East Gate.
In fact you altered the facts Larry."
Larry denies this and explains why in HPANWO Show Prog 236
linked above.
"We then come to
this past June... The result of this was your telling Kellymarie that if she
attended, that you would come down into the audience and rip her windpipe out
through her spine. {Correction: Larry’s actual statement was that he would
“..put your windpipe through your spine.” My error.} Maybe you consider
comments like this MC/outlaw humor, but to the rest of us they constitute a
genuine threat of physical violence, and that is not okay with me."
This is starting to get really tedious, Peter. Larry did not
threaten anybody. His statement is one of intention to employ the lawful use of
force. Sure, it was a highly melodramatic and over-the-top one that was very
counter-productive, but Larry has had a lecture about that. If Larry had issued
real threats he would not have been banned from the Scottish conference; he
would have been dragged off to jail. Why has he not? Why has he not even been
arrested, or even questioned, by the police?
"And a little
about James Francis Welch..."
"This is Larry
Warren’s copy of USAF In-processing Sheet for personnel entering the 81st
Security Police Squadron at RAF Bentwaters. It appears on page 446 of Left At East Gate and is
self-explanatory. Note that Sgt. Swain has signed off on it, twice, and with
two different pens. I have never confirmed this with Sgt. Swain, but while
other men named Lee spell their name that way, he spells it ‘Lea,’ twice, even
though ‘Lee’ appears clearly typed below the first signature. Cutting Larry
Warren every latitude possible, I guess there is a chance that this Lee is the
one-in, what? A thousand? Fifty thousand? Who spells ‘Lea, but if not, Lee
misspelled his own name, twice, and with two different pens. I think this is
damning. Why didn’t I follow up on it twenty five years ago? Because I believed
Larry and rationalized that Sargent Swain did spell his name with an ‘a,’ and
that the typed word ‘Lee’ was simply an understandable bureaucratic typo. I was
obviously not the investigative writer I wanted to be back then. Highly
suspicious? Yes. Smoking gun? Not quite."
"The document
below however is damning, and the only piece of Warren’s original paperwork loaned to me that I
can confirm with certainty. USAF form 490 is a light blue five by seven card
whose purpose is to confirm a medical or dental appointment... A memorable part
of his account of his involvement on the third night of UFO activity was that
his eyes began to bother him immediately after the incident he claims to, and
may in fact have been involved in... The problem that exists here is both
massive and undeniable. There is no question that there was only one Dr. Echols
serving at that clinic at that time... Dr. Paul Echols was (and remains) a
doctor of orthopedic surgery, not an ophthalmologist or eye doctor."
Is it possible Dr Echols was standing in as a locum?
Remember his medical training would probably have involved combat medicine,
seeing as he was a military medic, which involves having to be a
jack-of-all-trades. I have known many such healthcare professionals myself. I
don't consider it as "damning" as you do. More research needs to be
done before fraud is suggested as the most possible likelihood.
"Publication of
the book sparked a surprising amount of mail... each of the letters confirmed
key points of my co-author’s account... Excerpts from half a dozen follow, the
originals being in Larry’s possession. They begin with an excerpt from a letter
that Mark Thompson sent to Larry. Mark,
a former 81st Security Police Specialist... From Steve LaPlume, another former
Security Police Specialist assigned to D Flight... I never saw any of the
actual letters, though that did not bother me at the time... (Larry) did agree
to my request that all of drafts of his chapters would be given to me on floppy
discs and double spaced to make editing easier. He had no problem agreeing to
this request and made a point of telling me that he was a fast typist. But when
I received the first draft from him of his first chapter, it was handwritten on
lined yellow legal paper and single spaced... Jump ahead to about four years
ago. I was speaking at a conference in Leominster Massachusetts, the hometown of Steve LaPlume who we quote above... A few weeks later
I received an extremely curt and angry email from Steve LaPlume that shocked
me. In it he told me that he’d decided to read just the updates part as it
appeared in the front of the book, and, well, what the heck. But as he
explained, when he got to the inclusion about him, he was furious... Then I had
a brainstorm and called him (Larry). There had been two Steve L’s in the
Security Police with Larry on Bentwaters, Steve LaPlume and Steve Longero.
Despite the fact that Larry’s handwritten version of Steve’s letter said
LaPlume and not Longero, both Larry and I are dyslexic and one way or another
this was obviously the cause of the confusion, somehow. That is, until I phoned
Steve Longero, a Facebook friend of mine over a year ago to confirm that it had
been he who had written Larry the letter. There was no question in my mind that
he would confirm the fact (I mean, how could he not?). When he immediately
answered that he had also never written to Larry I knew I had a big problem but
have not said anything about it until now. Steve LaPlume and Steve Longero are
very real people and can confirm the above,"
This is a genuine anomaly, and it would not have happened if
Larry had presented the original letters to you. Does Larry still have those
letters? I presume you've asked him. If he doesn't then that's unfortunate, but
it doesn't automatically mean that the two Steves' side of the story should
therefore win by default. Maybe Steve and Steve are mistaken here and not
Larry. It's their word against his.
"...the
important question is not what he says that is in fact true, its what he says
and has written that is not true... regarding his dealings in the rock
& roll memorabilia business... An
example, and one of a disturbing number. Not long after we began working
together, I introduced him to my friend the singer, the late, great Phoebe
Snow, who in turn introduced him to May Pang. May had been John Lennon's
girlfriend during a split with Yoko Ono in 1974. I most clearly remember his
returning to my East 46th Street apartment after saying he had just visited with May and that she had
given him a pair of John’s eyeglasses as well as an Army issue shirt that had
also belonged to the legendary rock star. Years later when Larry put up a pair
of eyeglasses for auction that he claimed had belonged to John, along with a
questionable letter of provenance which he said had been written by Ms. Pang,
she responded thusly: 'I basically knew him {Larry Warren} for a couple of
months. I would never give or sell him anything of John’s. He never met John as
far as I know. I met him in 1988."
Peter, do you know how many times people have brought this
up along with stated intentions to "call the police!" or to
"sue" Larry? Dozens. Do you know how many times Larry has been
arrested or actually served a court summons? Zero. Even Nick Pope has now
jumped on this bandwagon. Larry would be in prison right now if he really had
done what people say he has done. Let's face it, Larry Warren has not committed
any criminal act at all. His detractors know this otherwise they would have
stopped talking in hushed tones about
legal action and calling the police, and would instead have simply done it.
"...a response
as possible to the things he has said about me on Emlyn-Jones radio show last
month. His even daring to suggest that if anyone altered any of his military
documents it might be me as I had them for years."
I do not recall Larry saying this on the radio show in
question, but readers can listen themselves and find out. I shall do so as well
and edit this post afterwards.
My analysis of this statement by Peter Robbins is that Peter
feels very personally hurt. He feels that Larry has betrayed him, and I know
that the feeling is mutual. I suspect this has blunted his rational judgement
of the situation. This can happen to us all when our emotions flood our minds.
I have examined the factual case Peter makes against his former friend and
co-author and do not, repeat not,
believe he has presented enough evidence to support his conclusion that Larry
Warren is a charlatan. I can see that not all his points are merely repeats of
those tabled by Sacha Christie, which is what I feared Peter would do. However
I do question whether he has been unduly influenced by the aggression and
bluster in the tone of her material. As I've said before, there are two
separate issues here. The first is whether or not Larry Warren is a fraud; I
think he is not. The second is the conduct of those who oppose him. Even if he
were proven to be a complete shyster in every way his enemies have said, it
would not excuse their behaviour towards him, nor to others who have supported
him. I have described them as a "hate cult" and I don't think that is
an exaggeration. Sacha Christie only started publishing material denouncing
Larry immediately after the two of them had had a very acrimonious personal
falling out. That fact alone should make us deeply suspicious; in fact I see
the same pattern in the bust-up between the Kent Freedom Movement and Danielle
la Verite, see the background links below. There is an attempt afoot to destroy
Larry Warren as a human being in every way apart from physically. Larry is a
good friend and I do not permit people to do that to my friends. Part of this
campaign is defamation. Peter is right about one thing, a massive hoax has been
perpetrated on the UFOlogical community, perhaps the greatest ever; but the
culprit is not Larry Warren, it is Sacha Christie. All I can do is keep stating
the truth on a factual level. For the sake of my own sanity I have to apply the
"hate reduction" techniques I talked about above to myself as well. I
also include Peter Robbins within this scheme. Peter, all that I ask is that
you take some time out to cool off. After that, take a step back and look at
what you have said. Read it through to yourself again. Read both sides of the
story before deciding who is to blame. I want to awaken from this nightmare as
much as you do, but injustice and falsehood are not shortcuts out of it.
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/truth-mobbed-again.html
