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Above Top Secret - "Uncover the Mysteries of the Digital Age" by Jim Marrs Paperback: 256 pages Publisher: The Disinformation Company (October 1, 2008) Language: English ISBN-10: 1934708097 ISBN-13: 978-1934708095 Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6.7 x 1 inches

Hey, didn't Tim Good do a book with this title? Of course he did, which I'm sure will create some confusion.  But Jim Marrs can be forgiven for making use of the same book title - in this case, it's named after the popular Internet forum, abovetopsecret.com.  The relevance of that choice runs through the whole book.  Essentially, this new book by Jim Marrs is a mini Encyclopaedia Conspiratoria, based upon a selection of 19 topics from the ATS on-line forums. 

The excellent foreword to the book, written by Bill Irvine, provides the background for the phenomenon that is abovetopsecret.com, and sets the scene for Jim's compact and succinct summaries of the various conspiracy theories on offer. I can imagine a novice to the genre, perhaps having read 'The Da Vinci Code', logging on to the forums for the same time, and struggling to get to grips with what on earth everyone's talking about on there.  The sheer complexity of many conspiracy theories means that many readers must struggle to get up to speed with the many hardened forum contributors.  So, this book by Jim Marrs is certainly an invaluable aid for those Da Vinci Code freshmen.

But, of course, it is a lot more than that.  Jim is a superb writer, and presents a tapestry of alternative knowledge in an engaging and relaxed manner.  In a way, you could argue that he's re-packaging the work of others; conversely, the forums repackage the work of authors like Jim, who are then bringing the subject matter home by writing another book.  There's a healthy symbiotic relationship going on here between the author and enthusiast, both of whom have much to learn from the other.

The quotes in the book from the abovetopsecret.com forums are kept anonymous in the book.  Many permeate the book as highlighted quotes, graphically set as if on a computer screen.  But even when the contributors are quoted in the main text, they are kept anonymous.  This was presumably an understanding between Jim and the owner of the website, to maintain confidentiality.  But it gets weird when contrasted with the direct quotes from named sources from other websites, and reports.  For instance, when the book covers the remarkable UFO that appeared over Gate C17 of Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, one ATS member was a witness, and his/her account, which was published on the forum, is quoted at length in the book.  Yet, the ATS member becomes anonymous as a source here, in keeping with the apparent policy through the rest of the book.  To my mind, this has the effect of detracting from his/her testimony.

I'm not sure how seriously to take a lot of these conspiracies, based upon how they are written up in 'Above Top Secret'.  Although I think Jim has very fairly examined the topics in a balanced way, the supporting evidence behind many of the claims he summarizes is not provided.  On reflection, I realised that this was the whole point: it is up to the reader to take the material provided in the book as a springboard for their own research.  Helpfully, at the start of each chapter is a link to the ATS website to look up additional evidence and commentary, and from there into the forums to discuss this data at length.  This allows the reader to embark on their own quest for Truth.  Essentially, the book's bibliography is ATS.

Do I believe everything written in this book?  No, and I doubt Jim does either. Reviewing ATS must be like putting on a blindfold and dipping your hand into a tin of assorted chocolates when you don't like the nutty ones.  Jim does a good job of presenting the various ideas in a non-judgemental way, carefully choosing his words to discern fact from likely fiction (or definite fiction, in my opinion, like the John Titor writings).

Did I learn anything?  Absolutely.  I loved the chapters on the Federal Reserve, the Nazi Base in Antarctica, and the various anomalies presented by our Moon.  All of the UFO stuff was top drawer.  The section on JFK was authoritative, as one might expect from Jim Marrs, and the Roswell chapter very helpfully included a list of the main witnesses and brief summaries of their testimony.  However, the areas in the book which dipped into New Age metaphysics were less satisfying to me, personally, but I can imagine that they are popular with many ATS members.

All in all, 'Above Top Secret' was a very enjoyable read.  It is a book I will reach for when wanting to read around a subject I hear about over the Internet. Finding information in the book is straightforward, and the material within clearly and concisely laid out.  It's also very cleverly packaged and presented (I love the way the corners are cut off).  The book is already a best-seller, and will likely remain so for some time to come.

© Book Review by Andy Lloyd 29/11/08

The Roswell Legacy by Jesse Marcel Jr. and Linda Marcel Paperback: 187 pages Publisher: New Page Books; 1 edition (September 15, 2008) Language: English ISBN-10: 1601630263 ISBN-13: 978-1601630261 Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.5 inches

I found this book fascinating for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is an account about the world's most famous UFO case, spoken directly from the horse's mouth.  The main author, Jesse Marcel Jr., is the son of Major Jesse Marcel, who was the intelligence officer for the 509th (nuclear) Bomb Group stationed at Roswell.  Both father and son handled and examined the wreckage taken from Mac Brazel's farmland in July 1947.  Their testimonies are central to this complex case, and this book sets the record straight on a number of issues arising from those testimonies.

Secondly, 'The Roswell Legacy' explores the impact that the case has had on three generations of the Marcel family.  This account is from the heart, honest and open.  If the testimonies have been in the public domain for some years, then this aspect of the book is the untold story of the aftermath of Roswell.  It becomes crystal clear that Major Jesse Marcel was an outstanding officer, before, throughout and after the incident.  However, his belief in, and commitment to, the armed forces that he served for so many years became tarnished as he became embroiled in a government and military cover-up that partially used him as a fall-guy.  His loyalty was recognised, through subsequent promotion, but the ensuing damage to his self-regard was a personal legacy that adversely affected him for the rest of his life. 

Thirdly, the book reflects the changes in our culture spanning the six decades post-Roswell.  Major Marcel's generation lived in a cultural climate after World War II that put a high onus on loyalty, secrecy and duty.  Jesse Marcel Jr's generation is more questioning, inquisitive and cynical, wanting to get to the bottom of things. The current generation view the Roswell Incident as a cultural phenomenon - the source of material for movies, festivals and talk shows - and consider Roswell cool, rather than a paradigm-shifting shock to our cosy belief systems.  It seems as though a large percentage of the population is acceptant of the likelihood of ET life, and visitations to our world, and we are simply waiting for the day when the news will finally break.  That's if the control-freaks who run this planet ever decide to let it go.

The book also takes a long, hard look at the government attempts to kill the Roswell story.  It thoroughly debunks the Mogul balloon theory.  It rightly picks holes in the 213-page report published in 1997, entitled "The Roswell Report: Case Closed."  Here's what the book says:

"The report contends that what crashed was not an extraterrestrial craft, despite the fact that my father's and my testimony does not support such a contention, and that evidence by a number of credible sources serves to refute such a conclusion.  Unfortunately, the government chose to edit out any evidence that did not support its desired conclusion, and acknowledges only evidence and statements that fit within the report's intended premise."  [p76]

If you put Roswell in the dock, and used the evidence contained in this book as part of the testimony supplied by the actual witnesses, then I am quite sure that any jury would throw the government's case out on its ear.  There is no way that the material described by Jesse Marcel Jr. was from a 1940s weather balloon, no matter how classified.  The military were seen to go to some considerable lengths to mop up all the evidence of this exotic material, and shut the story down. They managed this successfully for 30 years, until the inevitable began to happen:  the witnesses themselves retired, relaxed, and began to talk about it.  Now the story is fading into history. So much so, in fact, that my son recently covered Roswell in his high school history class.  The witnesses are mostly dead now, and the evidence is likely to be so well buried in the government's top secret archives that the people who know how to get to it are probably also all dead now.

Indeed, Jesse Marcel Jr. describes in depth an encounter he had with a government official in Washington who was quietly looking into the cover-up (which he admitted was a reality).  Despite the cloak-and-dagger approach, one can only assume the poor man got nowhere.  The trail is 60-years cold, after all.  But what remains is the testimony of the many, many witnesses and the fact that for a short while the world's only nuclear bomb group publicly disclosed its discovery of a crashed flying saucer.  It was no coincidence that this object was found near Roswell, although the cause of the crash remains a mystery (a lightning strike?).

There are also undoubtedly excellent reasons why the government saw fit to cover this all up in the 1940s.  But do those reasons really still apply today?  Personally, I think the cover-up is a self-perpetuating operation which has become lost in its own labyrinth of secrecy.  Jesse Marcel Jr. agrees, likening it to that famous last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the museum official wheels the crate containing the Ark of the Covenant into a massive warehouse full of thousands of other wooden crates.

'The Roswell Legacy' is well-written.  The authors come across well, albeit quite 'folksy' at times. It is said that the American people vote for the candidate they would like to most socialise with at a ballgame or barbeque.  In this category, the Marcel's come across well, winning you over with their honesty and integrity.  Jesse Marcel Jr. is a medical ENT doctor who served for decades with the Montana National Guard, and recently had a tour of Iraq, despite his advancing years.  He is, by any standard, a hero.  His late father perhaps even more so.  The account of what they experienced therefore demands our undivided attention.

© Book Review by Andy Lloyd, 30th October 2008

PSI SPIES - The True Story Of America's Psychic Warfare Program    By Jim Marrs   Paperback: 319 pages Publisher: Career Press (July 9, 2007) Language: English ISBN-10: 1564149609

This is the third book I’ve read about Remote Viewing, and is the best of the three.  The other two books were written by remote viewers themselves, and were absolutely fascinating in their own right. This is, after all, an extraordinary subject.  But they lacked the objectivity of the third person report.  Jim Marrs is an author/journalist heavily involved in fringe areas of study.  His reporting is clear and untarnished by some of the politics prevalent in the Remote Viewing ‘community’ these days.  His eloquent prose and open-minded representation of the subject provides for an excellent and informative read.

I should backtrack a little here, and explain what Remote Viewing actually is.  Basically, it’s clairvoyance; the psychic ability known as Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP).

This phenomenon is not particularly new, of course.  There have been many Seers over the generations.  The specialist term ‘Remote Viewing’ pertains particularly to a group of mostly military men who used their psychic abilities in the service of Uncle Sam.   Their experimental surveillance work was funded by various military and intelligence agencies, and spanned a couple of decades through the seventies and eighties.  Well-documented, and now largely in the public domain, Remote Viewing was undertaken with a degree of seriousness which belies orthodox establishment thinking.  Yet, despite a clamour of scepticism since its public outing, it did really take place.  The U.S. Military employed psychic spies.  This book documents their story.

The reason why serious money was thrown at psychic spying was two-fold: Firstly, the Soviets seemed to be using this methodology themselves during the Cold War.  Secondly, it had been shown to actually work. Time and time again, incredible results were attained.  No one could explain why, because on a strictly scientific level it really shouldn’t have worked.  But it did, and often under the most stringent experimental conditions possible, as Jim Marrs’ book outlines. 

Like the fictitious X-Files, the Psi Spies unit was effectively orphaned; a Cinderella organisation toiling away in a little military shack.  They repeatedly proved their worth, and effectiveness, but they were never wholly accepted.  Resistance to acceptability came from the need to square their work with the accepted scientific paradigm.  Also, psychic functioning does not generally sit well with religious orthodoxy (how would the Bush administration view this subject now, I wonder?)  So their very existence relied upon simple pragmatism.  After all, like it or not, Remote Viewing seems to work, and therefore has the potential to be a most remarkable tool for spying.

This book chronicles the emergence of this psychic spying unit, and details the methodologies they employed.  It acts as a biography of many of the key players, and their inter-meshed relationships and politics.  It provides anecdotal evidence for the operational usefulness of the unit, particularly in terms of operational intelligence gathering.  It also takes us far beyond the mundane, as the Psi Spies explored distant worlds and times, and various fringe areas of study (e.g. the Dinosaur Ghost of Scotland!).  Quite a menu, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Now a moment for my perennial rants! ‘Psi Spies’ was written during the time that Remote Viewing was first emerging into the public eye, back in the mid-nineties.  However, for a number of reasons, it was not published at that time, and this current issue is an updated and expanded version of the original manuscript.  Regrettably, the intervening years have not seen the demise of the abundant typos and grammatical errors in the published book, a matter which always annoys me as a book reviewer.  Where have all the editors gone these days?  ‘Psi Spies’ also suffers with that irritating modern American infection in literature; the explanatory sub-title (in this case ‘The True Story of America’s Psychic Warfare Program’). This is a totally unnecessary, and bulky affix to the book’s title.  Why???

Okay, I’ve got that out of my system…Now for a thought of my own from reading Jim’s book.  Remote Viewing seems to rely upon a displacement of the mind through time and space.  Or, perhaps, the receipt of information through the psychic ether, across dimensions, like plugging the mind into the Collective Unconscious. It seems as though all humans are capable of it. (If dogs could draw and write, they would probably be very good at it too LOL). 

So…could computers which use artificial intelligence do RV?  Could an A.I. computer versed in virtual reality cruise the psychic superhighway?  I wonder… You see, I can’t for the life of me understand why the program stopped.  The psychic spies are mostly civilians now, and pursue parallel careers in the alternative community, offering Remote Viewing training and other services.  Were they replaced by a more covert unit?  There’s some evidence that they were.  But there may also be the possibility that their work was superceded by the use of computers.  Computers do not carry the human mental baggage which so often seems to corrupt and distort the remote viewing process.  I’ll leave that thought hanging there, because I very much doubt that this ability is a human one alone, but simply a mental one borne of intelligence, whether natural or artificial.  Artificially generated RV would surely be more pure than the human equivalent, in terms of returned data.  And consistent accuracy is, of course, the key.

Jim Marrs has clearly done a lot of research and work to produce this book over more than a decade, and I thoroughly recommend it. 

© Book Review by Andy Lloyd 23rd October, 2007

Timothy Good is an authoritative researcher in the field of Ufology.  He has been collating reports, and authoring books on the subject, for as long as I can remember.  His  crowning glory was 'Above Top Secret', a book which made significant inroads into the mass consciousness regarding the UFO phenomenon and our collective governments' reaction to it.

This latest book represents a comprehensive overview of UFO sightings by trained observers.  The majority of these are military in origin, gleaned from first-hand accounts and official records.  The sightings are set out chronologically, giving the reader an insight into how the military's reaction to UFOs has changed over the course of some 75 years. 

An unsettling pattern quickly emerges.  Time and again UFOs are observed as solid craft exhibiting an unearthly ability to manoeuvre in our skies (and sometimes in our seas as well).  They are tracked on radar, and witnessed simultaneously by often large groups of military men.  Physical evidence is reported to have been collected. Then, a short time afterwards, a debriefing occurs, conducted by operatives from an intelligence agency, or a special branch of the armed services, and the evidence is removed, never to be seen again.  The witnesses are sworn to silence, often threatened in the process. Official military logs of significant UFO sightings are altered as if they never happened.  Only explainable sightings are paraded before the media, to give the sense to the public that there is nothing mysterious about the UFO subject.  A disinformation war is underway.

A second, perhaps more unsettling pattern emerges through the book.  UFOs are capable of destroying our aircraft, and often do so.  There appears to be a cold war going on between the Earth's various military bodies and these visitors from who knows where.  Sometimes that cold war hots up, mostly as a result of aggressive actions by our air forces, but sometimes initiated by the UFOs.  It becomes clear that over time our forces have been gradually overcoming the technology gap, and have become more effective at repelling UFO infiltration into our skies. Our military action (primarily executed by the all-powerful US) is driven by the need to regain control of the skies, attain exotic technology through shooting down UFOs, and simultaneously hoodwink the general public into believing that none of this is even happening. 

Which leads us to the third unsettling aspect of this book.  These tactics, in use for about 60 years, have worked.  If the US military has failed to regain control of our skies, it has more than compensated for that through its control of the public's perception of the UFO subject.

I think that 'Need to Know' is one of the finest books ever written about UFOs.  It is authoritative, eloquently written, engaging and ultimately compelling in its content.  Its concentration on the interaction between UFOs and our military installations and forces draws the reader to a matter of tremendous significance, perhaps going to the heart of the whole subject.  Countless servicemen have encountered UFOs, and have been ordered to intercept them, or even shoot them down.  Sometimes these action have been calamitous, with loss of life on a surprisingly large scale.  Yet, the military authorities continue to order their servicemen into action against a force whose capabilities are clearly well beyond our own.  There is no training, and thus no insight into the real level of threat to the frontline forces facing this unknown and unquantifiable threat.

Prospective armed forces pilots should read 'Need to Know'.  They should make themselves aware of the dangers they could potentially face when ordered to intercept UFOs.  Tim Good documents countless incidents where UFOs buzz aircraft, causing catastrophic instrumentation failures.  Some aircraft simply disappear, others lose power and crash, causing significant loss of life.  These incidents aren't just based on hearsay and rumour, but are compiled from first-hand reports and backed up by official documentation and records, where such material continues to exist.

I have often observed that the general public has a higher regard for the individual servicemen of our armed forces than their political masters.  At times of war public dissent is discouraged by the authorities by reminding us through the media that the morale of our troops on the ground is at stake.  This positive regard for our soldiers, sailors and pilots is absolutely correct.  Yet, when these same soldiers, sailors and pilots report encounters and incidents with UFOs that attitude reverses entirely.  The media discredits the reports, and the military comes down hard on the servicemen concerned (after carefully gleaning as much information from the reports as possible).  We, collectively, believe the authorities over the individual servicemen.  Why?  In all other cases we would side with the servicemen, and be cynical of our government's overtures. 

Tim Good's book offers a powerful argument for UFO reality, and presents its evidence in a clear and compelling manner.  Frankly, I don't see how any free-thinking person could read this book and not be shocked by it.

© Book Review by Andy Lloyd 23rd September, 2006

This review was written by Robert Shepherd Jr. - a customer who bought the book on Amazon.com

This is the first book about ghosts we've been asked to review.  It is a compilation of short reports on various reputedly haunted locations across the world.  Well, in fact there's a strong bias towards reports from the USA, where the majority of the contributing researchers, and indeed the book's editor, live.  In a way, the demographics of the book reflect those of the Internet as a whole, which is unsurprising given the book's link with the highly successful Ghostvillage.com.

The book makes for an interesting read, ironically made all the more intriguing for the European reader by this American bias.  All haunted places have a history to discover, often giving a sense of context to an encounter, and sometimes providing an explanation for a particular manifestation.  Because the post-Columbus history of the United States is uncommonly short, the available historical context surrounding any given location is much more limited than elsewhere in the Old World.  Yet, reading this book one could be forgiven for wondering whether ghosts are as common in the States as elsewhere: which is a sobering thought. 

Many of the haunted locations cited by the book's researchers are associated with the American Civil War, and the book actually provides a pretty good historical overview of that conflict, albeit in jigsaw form.  The various tales of woe attributable to that war are instructive and even poignant.  I've learned a lot about American history from the pages of this book, which is a tribute to the knowledge and learning of its various contributors.  They have done an excellent job of tying up diverse strands of research when investigating individual haunted places.  This work has then been thoughtfully assembled and presented by Jeff Belanger, in the end providing us with a good source book, and an entertaining read.

I should once again draw attention to the geographical imbalance of the book, however.  The book certainly does not claim to be exhaustive (how could it?), but the 'Rest of the World' is rather confined to the last quarter of the book.  I think it would have been better to concentrate entirely on the North American continent.  This would have made the book more useful to a traveller in the USA and Canada seeking out these various locations who, I suspect, would be unlikely to venture beyond North American shores (the majority of Americans don't possess, or desire, a passport).  Also, the book makes the mistake of including haunted locations in the Republic of Ireland (Malahide Castle and Saint Catherine's Abbey) within the chapter headed 'United Kingdom'.  Whoops.  I can sense the republican ghosts of Eire turning in their graves...But, most of all, if the book concentrated solely on North America it would not give the sense of the U.S. being the ghost capital of the world, which it most certainly isn't!

That said, there is a lot of merit in this book, and I would recommend it.  The research is well-written up; not going into laborious detail, and thoughtfully lightened up in such a way as to capture the imagination of the casual reader.  It highlights the diligence of many small research groups spread across the world, and shows us the breadth of expertise contained within the paranormal community as a whole.  It is to the credit of Jeff Belanger that he has selflessly provided the opportunity for so many ghost-hunters to get their reports in print, alongside more celebrated colleagues.  The book also travels off-road, visiting some pretty bizarre locations, like run-down diners and obscure cemeteries in the middle of nowhere.  In Britain, ghost stories are often associated with pubs, castles and old manor houses.  To read of haunted creeks is really pretty novel.  It seems that the relative short history of the USA does not prevent this great country having its fair share of ghosts.  If you buy this book you'll know just where to find them.

Zecharia Sitchin has written 6 books as part of his ‘Earth Chronicles’ series detailing his theories about humanity’s origins and the hidden planet ‘Nibiru’, plus several complimentary tomes.  His theories are based upon his scholarly study of ancient Sumerian and Akkadian tablets, and the remarkably frank accounts therein of the ancient gods, or Anunnaki.  According to Sitchin, the ancient accounts testify to an underlying reality that challenges our established notions of our origins to the core.  His scholarly contribution to the so-called ‘ancient astronaut’ mode of thought is unparalleled.

This latest book ‘The Lost Book of Enki’ compliments the ‘Earth Chronicles’, but it bears little resemblance to his other alternative science books.  Within its pages Sitchin gives us his complete vision of our past. ‘The Lost Book of Enki’ is a work of literature, written in the style of an Akkadian epic poem, and provides us with Sitchin’s version of the original ‘sourcebook’ for the Mesopotamian/Egyptian mythologies. 

He has set the book out in the form of 14 tablets, written out by the master Akkadian scribe Endubsar.  In the text, Endubsar claims that the tablets were dictated to him by the god Enki himself.  The impression is given that the reader has in front of him actual historical material, and it’s easy to see why many readers have taken this book at face value.  But this book is in reality an historical novel, incorporating Sitchin’s world-view.

The first thing one notices upon picking up this hardback book is that Sitchin has a different publisher.  Perhaps Avon will print 'The Lost Book of Enki' in paperback, perhaps not.  This book breaks an awful lot of unwritten rules in alternative science, by amalgamating scholarly research with fiction.  Potentially this is a dangerous book for Sitchin, because it opens him up to charges of making the whole thing up, simply because he has started to fill in the mythological gaps with his own account.  Worse still, it is by no means clear what parts of the book have been directly derived from the ancient texts, and which have been essentially dreamt up by Sitchin.

For his part, he openly offers this book as a possible blueprint for the original source-book upon which all Mesopotamian mythology was once based.  It stands as a literary work, rather than a theoretical study.  He has brought together many stories, from epics and fragments alike, and made a cohesive whole from them based upon his theory about extra-terrestrial gods.  The sheer scale of his vision is breathtaking.  Perhaps Sitchin felt that he needed to give this vision an appropriate form in one book, his Magnum Opus.  But I suspect he is taking a big risk, and I don’t think it’s going to pay off.  His regular readers will already be familiar with 90% of the material in the book, and newcomers won’t know what to make of it…it contains no word of explanation for the Sitchin novice.

The other problem is the writing style Sitchin uses.  It is written in the style of ancient Mesopotamian prose, giving one the feeling that this is the real thing; lost epics that explain everything.  Like I said, this is a dangerous game Sitchin is playing by moving from a science-based approach to a literary one.  I remember struggling with Latin at school, with its subject-object-verb format and lack of definite articles.  This ancient prose of Sitchin’s isn’t quite so daunting, but the format takes a bit of getting used to.  Occasionally, a modern word will creep in to the text (like ‘diaper’ for instance, which is American, and hardly ‘ancient’), reminding the reader that this is a semi-fictional work after all.

There has been much speculation that Zecharia Sitchin believes that Nibiru is set to return in the near future.  ‘The Lost Book of Enki’ quashes this rumour once and for all.  Nibiru appears at the beginning of the Nippur calendar in the book, which he has previously denoted as 3760BC, and is celebrated by the Anunnaki as the Nibiruan New Year.  According to Sitchin’s timeline, then, Nibiru would have again appeared in 160BC, and is due to appear next in 3440AD, or so. 

Unfortunately, the chronology of ‘The Lost Book of Enki’ ends with the destruction of the Akkadian society by the unleashing of Anunnaki weapons of mass destruction (an event recently linked to a meteor impact in Iraq around 2300BC [The Sunday Telegraph 4/11/01]).  It does not seek to explain Nibiru’s subsequent historical appearance.  Even so, Sitchin appears unequivocal…Nibiru will not be returning during any of our lifetimes.

Another new detail of interest is the appearance of Nibiru in the constellation of Leo during the perihelion transit that brought about the Flood (described in some detail in this new book).  If this is what he meant (and he could possibly have alluded to the Age of Leo), I’m gratified that The Lion is now included on the list of constellations that Nibiru can be visibly seen against during perihelion.  The adjacent constellation of Cancer appears to be the first point when Nibiru crosses the ecliptic (Taurus marks the second), and a parallax effect could easily place Nibiru in Leo as it first brightens from the void.  I have found fascinating evidence from around the time of Christ that Nibiru indeed appeared in Leo (see DarkStar16).

Other aspects of this book indicate to me that Sitchin does not really have a proper understanding of planetary science, which is worrying.  For instance, his portrayal of the 'seasons' of Nibiru, with respect to its relative proximity to the Sun, fall way short of the mark.  Nibiru's closest approach to the Sun is too short, and too distant to have any seasonal impact at all...if Nibiru is simply a terrestrial planet following a long-period comet path, that is.  For 99.9% of its orbit Nibiru would be absolutely frozen solid, down to the most volatile of its atmospheric gases.   Sitchin seems to reject my notion of a sub-brown dwarf and warmed moons, which is a pity.

Sitchin concentrates mostly on the mythology of the Anunnaki, and the complex relationships between them, and us.  His account of the artificial creation of humans is excellent in this book, giving a much more dramatic treatment of this subject than before.  His writing reflects the incredible complexity of the ancient Mesopotamian myths, and underlines how facile it is to seek to explain them simply in terms of weather gods and the like.  He also rethinks the nature of the 'Igigi', and creates a new scenario for the Face on Mars.

Would I recommend this book? Not as readily as some of his others that seek to apply more rigorous analysis to actual ancient texts.  ‘The Lost Book of Enki’ is written as though it was a classic, but it is unlikely to become one.  But if you enjoy reading Homer, or the Epic of Gilgamesh, this book may well appeal to you.

© Book Review by Andy Lloyd 28th April, 2005

‘Cosmic Conspiracies’ attended a lecture by Reg Presley a couple of years ago, at a conference organised by our good friends Tom and Kerry Blower.  At that point I’d heard of Reg Presley as the rock star who was into UFOs.  His lecture was certainly not what I expected.  It was, in short, brilliant.  It was witty, thought-provoking, eccentric and, above all, full of the kind of home truths that others lesser mortals fear to mutter.  I was mightily impressed, not least by the way the audience responded to Reg.  I think it helps that he is political and anti-establishment; his Rock ‘n’ Roll days are clearly in his blood.

I was concerned that Reg’s book would not live up to that ‘live’ performance; that he would inevitably sell out when delivering the written word of Truth. 

I should not have doubted him.  This book is every bit as good as his talk.  Like Billy Connelly after a few pints, it rambles around, pulling out anecdotes and shooting form the hip at will, then somehow returns to the theme of the book before the reader becomes too mesmerised.  Its erratic delivery kept on making me want to turn the next page to see what wild things Reg was going to come up with next.  I was impressed by the material about monatomic gold, a subject that, as an ex-research chemist, I had been pretty sceptical about before.  Above all I loved the way Reg delivered the numerous paranormal accounts in ‘Wild Things’; he is a born story-teller.  And I think I can predict that 2004 will be a big year for Reg (he’ll know what I mean).

I suspect that the uninitiated member of the public who decides to dip into a little Ufology by reading good old Reg Presley’s book is going to find a lot of this stuff a little hard to take.  They may just feel a little overwhelmed by the bomb-blast effect on their cosy paradigm. 

'Wild Things' is like the Niagara Falls of paranormal story-telling: sweeping through UFOs, Crop Circles, alchemy, politics and religion, often in a highly controversial manner.  This allows Reg to maintain a great pace, and I found myself not wanting to put the book down.

The informed reader is going to find plenty of new stories and insights, although they may recognise one or two faux pas along the way. 

But here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter!  Because the work is a charismatic and political one, challenging the orthodox mindset to question itself and repent of its sin of mental sloth.  After all, other authors have written technically accurate and scientific works that have sadly moved us no further on.

By contrast, in the War of Hearts and Minds, this book kicks butt.

Reg is best known as lead singer/song-writer with the band 'The Troggs'.  He has been a UFO and Crop Circle researcher for 13 years, and we were lucky enough to arrange for Reg to give Cosmic Conspiracy fans a lecture in our hometown of Gloucester in the Summer of 2003, talking about the book and other 'wild things'.  His passion for the subject shows through in the book, and his candid presentation at the City Museum in Gloucester left no one in any doubt about his commitment to finding the Truth.

The talk took place on one of the hottest days Britain has ever experienced, yet people travelled from far and wide to hear Reg give his lecture.  Remarkably, one chap from Botswana was there, although he didn't travel to the UK just for this event, of course!  The people who had braved the hot conditions were rewarded with 2 hours of fascinating anecdotes, stories, inside information and opinion.  Reg covered a great deal of ground, from alchemy and monatomic gold, to UFOs and religion.  His speaking style is not unlike Billy Connelly, heading off at tangents and then circling round to where he left off.


There was much food for thought, and some sublime insights...Free energy, brow ridges, the age-old tactics of the Church, the 3-day week, and the real Ray Santilli behind that Alien Autopsy footage.  Great stuff.  But perhaps the best part was Reg's endearing personality.  He is a most likeable chap, yet displays cutting and sometimes acidic wit.  He may come across as a cynic sometimes, but his passion for the truth, and his belief that what knowledge we have lost may one day be returned to us, shine through.

© Andy Lloyd 28th April, 2005

The Otherness : A Personal Interaction    By Tim Watts Paperback: 176 pages Publisher: AuthorHouse (November 18, 2004) Language: English ISBN-10: 1418488682 ISBN-13: 978-1418488680 Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches

Book review by Andy Lloyd, 10th April 2005

If you're thinking this sounds like a bit of a whacky book, you'd be right.  This is the debut novel by Simon Ralli Robinson.  Simon is quite political, and writes about various conspiracy theories allegedly lying at the heart of Government.  He has recently won the endorsement of David Shayler, the ex-intelligence operative, who publicly revealed the British plot to assassinate General Qadafi of Libya some years ago.

That said, "The Yogi Footballer" is not quite the book one might have expected from the pen of Simon Ralli Robinson. It is an enjoyable fictional romp about a fabulous young footballer, named Ben, whose brilliance on the pitch is enhanced by his almost supernatural yogic powers.  Robinson's style of writing here is easy-going and informal.  He tends to glorify the 'perfect game', and writes as though from the perspective of an ardent fan of the sport.  For the first two-thirds of the book this point of view dominates, allowing a similarly-minded reader to enjoy the basic story of Ben's rags-to-riches journey.

The main character is a Nepalese boy, who is adopted by a British couple travelling to the area around Varanasi, in India.  The boy is clearly gifted from a young age, having a wise head atop young shoulders.  His sporting talent seems to know no bounds, but he simultaneously follows an unusual parallel journey of self-knowledge.

The final third of the book takes a number of rather incredulous turns.  Ben becomes a messianic figure on the world stage, after 'wowing' football fans the world over with his remarkable agility and talent.  He is sort of a cross between Eric Cantona and Jesus Christ! He uses his fame to promote transcendental ideals, and eventually his powers are called upon in a battle against evil.  This is where Robinson's nose for conspiracy comes in, as he weaves a dark web of Establishment power and corruption.  In Dan Brown fashion, he mixes fiction with controversial factual material.  One is left with the sense that the book's informal style and glamorous storyline is a bait:  the football story becomes merely a vehicle to entice the unsuspecting reader to consider more challenging material.  

I think that this is quite a good approach for the author to take. However, where I think he falls down is his very informal writing style.  It detracts from the story, even though it allows the pace of the narrative to be well maintained throughout.  The style becomes more formal in the 'Author's Notes' section at the back, which I found eminently more readable.  It makes me think that Simon Ralli Robinson's ability to write has greater potential than the main text of 'The Yogi Footballer' suggests.  His ideas are imaginative enough for further novels, for sure, he just needs to tidy up his prose.

'The Yogi Footballer' also needs serious editing.  For instance, one would have to search a long time before ever finding a "tomb" in a library.  But, in general, the role of an editor in the production of a book is going the way of the dodo across the publishing industry.  More and more respected publishers are leaving it to the authors to polish up their own books, rather than bringing in the services of a professional proof-reader.  Typos will become more prevalent in literature over time, perhaps inevitably reflecting our more informal texting-friendly culture.  It is not just self-published books that have this problem these days.

Anyway, I would recommend this book to football fans who like travel and fantastic conspiracy theories.  In particular, fans of Southampton F.C. get to read about Glory-days for the Saints.  Like I said, it's pretty whacky stuff...

Book review by Andy Lloyd, 16th April 2005

Carrots, Elves and Aliens
by John Francis Callaghan

2004, Cabasa90, £16
www.carrotselvesandaliens.com

Unexpectedly, this is a book of poetry.  Well, a mixture of poetry and symbolic art.  Each page offers a poem accompanied by illustrations of a challenging, profane, and often highly erotic nature.  Much of the poetry is anti-Establishment, and centres upon the loss of personal faith and subsequent journey deep into the dark side of alternative science.  Gentle readers should be prepared to be very, very shocked by this book; the imagery employed explores several perversions and depravities, often with a iconic religious theme.

The front cover of John Francis Callaghan's book shows an ancient Mesopotamian artefact depicting the Sumerian trinity of Sun, Moon and Nibiru, various constellations, and partly encircled by the Cosmic Serpent.  This juxtaposition of religious and sexual imagery seems to be a running theme throughout the book, enhanced further by various plays on words in the poems themselves.

Personally, I found the bizarre layout of the poems and the wild, wild illustrations more interesting than the poems themselves. But that might be because poetry itself isn't really my bag.  Symbolism, however, is, and this book is loaded to the hilt with it.  The author explores the theme of inhibited sexual desires fully in his illustrations.  He also loads the pages with religious iconography; orthodoxy mixed with blatant sexual themes; heretical, alternative imagery jumbled together into a Gnostic collage.  He also attacks the mediocrity of modern society; the banal and superficial nature of consumerism.  This poet seems engaged in a deeper struggle, with emotions and desires, mythical archetypes and hidden knowledge.

For fans of the Dark Star Theory, there are numerous Winged Discs set on one page alongside a poem entitled 'Where's my Mummy' (!). Emerging from the classic Winged Discs (one or two of which must have come from this site) we discover an evolution towards Nazi, Austro-Hungarian and American Eagles as symbols of all-conquering power. There's a thought...

Then there's the Nibiru/Planet X page, entitled 'No Boundaries', and formatted in quasi-Cuneiform text, opposite a rather scary looking naked priestess!  I'll reproduce the first couple of verses of this poem to give you a flavour of the poetry, the format of which can be a little repetitive:

Languages from the past

Spring from thought this day last

Sophistication before time

Something lost inna rhyme.

Cuneiform tablets clay

My true thoughts gone astray

Translate this in the now

Only guess why and how.

(From 'No Boundaries' by John Francis Callaghan, 2004)

I find myself recommending 'Carrots, Elves and Aliens' to open-minded, inquisitive folk with a reckless interest in heresies...and religious porn.  (I'm reminded of the infamous Bishop of Bath and Wells in 'Black Adder'). The catch is that the book is quite pricey, at £16 (which is said to include worldwide delivery when bought through the book's website) and is probably not readily available in bookshops, with the possible exception of Ottakars and several small specialist book outlets.  Best to visit the web-site for more details.

Book review by Andy Lloyd, 28th April 2005

Although this is sub-titled as ‘The Definitive Alien Abduction’, it is actually quite difficult to define what category of book this lies within.  The Author provides us with an account of him meeting a man, who he calls the Stranger, who provides him with a large bundle of manuscripts in a pub.  The Stranger makes the Author promise to write this up as a book and publish it, which the latter agrees to in his drunken state.  Perhaps this is a trick would-be authors could themselves try with potential publishers?

This then brings us to the main text of the book, which is a rendition of the Stranger’s manuscripts, bolstered by a lot of reference material from various scientific and historical texts.  The Stranger writes his account as a confused abductee who is taught by human-like aliens in their spaceship.  The sessions have a dream-like quality about them and are certainly bizarre.  The aliens have a rather pedagogical approach to teaching.  The whole thing has the feel of one of those educational TV programmes aimed at secondary school kids; the material being taught is rather dry and complex, so needs a wild context to grab the attention of the audience.  In this case an alien teacher.

But this book is not aimed at children.  Its target audience is presumably adult.  So, whilst the pedagogical format of the main body of the text seems somehow inappropriate, the information being imparted should prove quite interesting to many grown-ups.  Certainly more interesting than you’d get in a typical school lesson, that’s for sure!  I found that the complexity of the various levels of interaction D. J. Haskell has provided in this book tend to get in the way of the message he’s trying to get across.  The alien abduction scenario seems to be a rather artificial vehicle to convey his popular science and alternative teachings.  “Countdown to Oblivion” is actually one of those “A Brief History of Everything…” books, with a heavily alternative slant.  I would have preferred the information presented in a more straightforward way, to reflect that. In all honesty, the abduction scenario painted comes across as rather unconvincing.  Others may differ in their assessment, of course.

That said, there’s plenty of entertaining source material in the book, and the author is reasonably well-read, judging from his bibliography.  “Countdown to Oblivion” also includes eight appendices, which are generally physics-orientated.  The philosophy of the cosmology discussed in the text is also quite up-to-date, reflecting the Multiverse and intelligent creation theories in particular. 

Sir Martin Rees presented similar material in his recent television programmes about the Cosmos.  The difference between Sir Martin Rees and our alien tutor on board his classroom spaceship is that the Astronomer Royal didn’t keep saying “Look, this stuff is too complicated for you, Earth-worm, so just accept what I’m trying to tell you and shut up, okay?”  Thinking about it, though, maybe that’s what Sir Martin’s undergraduate seminars at Cambridge Uni are like, too?? 

Anyway, D. J. Haskell fills out those annoying alien assumptions of Earthly ignorance with his system of well-researched appendices.  His book is filled with interesting titbits of knowledge, many of which I had never heard of.  He also presents some new ideas that are clearly his own pet theories.  For that, this book is worth delving into.

Andy Lloyd, 25th April 2005

Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form By Joan d’Arc Publisher:  The Book Tree, P.O. Box 724, Escondido, Ca 92033 Telephone:  1-800-700-TREE E-mail:  www.thebooktree.com Price:  $18.95 ISBN: 1585091278 Paperback - 206 pages (February 2000)

This book looks at anthropomorphic artefacts on Mars and the Moon which are evidence that we are not alone, even in our own solar system. In addition, Darwinian evolution is shown to be a highly touted philosophy, not an empirical science, of Western materialism, which cannot be used to argue that mankind is alone in the Universe. Humans did not accidently climb out of the pond scum of our local habitat. Indeed Earth may be a controlled DNA repository for the ongoing creation and dissemination of life forms, including the human form.

This book looks at ancient myths which describe the human form as common in the universe, rather than being a local, Earth-based, one of a kind anomaly. In essence, Darwianian evolution serves to keep us unaware of our true ancestry from the "sky" rather than from the "water." This book shows the reader how we have been hoodwinked by materialist philosophies, paraded as science, into believing we exist in an isolated consciousness in an isolated oasis, closed off from the larger family of man.

This is a fascinating excursion into the arguments surrounding our origins.  d’Arc has a background in anthropology, and is the co-founder and co-editor of the conspiracy magazine “Paranoia”.  That background tends to set the tempo, in that d’Arc deals with the conventional scientific paradigm in a critical and questioning manner, coming to some quite awe-inspiring conclusions.

The book initially sets out to falsify various arguments, forwarded by scholars, that the presence of extra-terrestrial intelligence in the rest of the Cosmos is impossible.  This isn’t a particularly difficult task in itself, because the possibilities are unknown, and the arguments of these scholars are really just speculative.  Having adequately dealt with these Earth-centric arguments, d’Arc discusses Von Neuman probes, particularly in light of solar system anomalies.  She offers an excellent overview of the evidence for ET visitation/inhabitation of our cosmic backyard, digging up quite obscure references.

The main tenet of d’Arc’s thesis is that Mankind’s appearance on the Earth is not by chance.  She provides a substantive argument against the blind acceptance of the theory of evolution, particularly by natural selection, and offers alternatives in a fair and open-handed way.  It is a delight to read her anthropological arguments, as well as her strong grasp of the philosophy of science.

She then turns to the modern conspiratorial alternatives.  To my mind, I can recognize the need to question Darwinism, but I have trouble with some of the alternative ‘New Age’ explanations for life in the galaxy, and the next section of the book is insufficiently grounded in my opinion.  If scientists are open to attack, then so are the like of Icke and Hoagland, whose extrapolations are sometimes exponential.  Various conspiratorial theories are dealt with by d’Arc, with almost journalistic objectivity.  In that sense, this section of the book is highly informative, and would certainly appeal to people who believe in conspiracies.

The next section deals with the theory of evolution head-on.  d’Arc runs through a plethora of books and articles, many of them bang up to date, regarding Darwinism, pro and con.  She plants the seeds of doubt about a theory that most people accept without thinking, and asks the question: If not Darwinism, then what?  This leads to the final chapter, where the book really shines.  d’Arc reviews research that paints a completely different picture, about our origins, to the one taught in textbooks and shown in museums.  Enough ‘anomalous’ evidence is presented to indicate that we have all been duped.

Mankind, in the modern sense, appears to be much older than taught by anthropologists, and other 'missing link' type hominids appear to have lived alongside Mankind for the vast majority of his time on Earth.  Man’s prehistory includes survival of catastrophes, after which the world appears to have been ‘re-seeded’, either in a physical, interventionist sense, or in a rather more subtle, spiritual way.  Perhaps most surprising for me is d’Arc’s discussion of the research of the orthodontist Jack Cuozzo into Neanderthal Man.  I won’t spoil this section for the potential reader, suffice it to say that his conclusions are remarkable indeed, and in a bizarre sense strike a chord.  Our own life-spans are seen in a different light.

d’Arc is clearly strongly influenced by the writers Velikovsky and Sitchin.  The alternatives about Man’s origins offered to the ever-more questioning reader lean on their work, but she recognizes the limitations of their theories, and doesn’t hesitate to highlight the problems.  In this way, she remains scientific in an objective sense, presenting the overall picture as it seems to appear, rather than as it should appear.  There is much anger in her book, particularly at the cultural scientific norm we take for granted, but there is also much honesty.

‘Space Travelers’ offers the reader a wealth of information, from anomalous evidence to complex theories to philosophy.  It is not light reading, by any stretch, but it wouldn’t be doing the various subjects she deals with justice if it were.  As an addition to the library of any alternative science reader, I would thoroughly recommend it.

In September 1977, during the Joint Attack Weapons Systems Test (JAWS) at Fort Benning Georgia, the entire base witnessed a UFO invasion. As many as 1300 troops were involved in the event. Most were left with severe psychological trauma and "missing time" gaps. John Vasquez was courageous enough to undergo counseling, regression therapy, and hypnosis. After 15 years of personal research, John and co-author, Bruce Stephen Holms present the story along with plenty of government documentation.

Readers are asked to enter this experience with an open mind. After reviewing the official documents and scrutinizing the appendix make up your own mind regarding the Incident At Fort Benning. It has often been asserted by UFO abductees that one of the problems with Ufology is that the experiencers often play second fiddle to the investigators.  This book breaks that mould. John Vasquez has come forward with a startling account of an incident that occurred during his training in the US Infantry in September 1977.  He has investigated the incident during the subsequent years, and then approached a media acquaintance, a host of Timeless Voyager Television, Bruce Stephen Holms, to help him to write up the account as a book.  The result is a ‘no-frills’ description, and documentary verification, of an intriguing UFO incident that took place over several days at Fort Benning in Georgia.

During a parade at the camp, the battalion that Vasquez had just joined was subject to a UFO encounter that sent the parade ground into a state of anarchy.  The men present were affected physiologically and psychologically, and Vasquez even reports telepathic contact by the intelligence behind the strange lights, that had wreaked such havoc.  An account of a mass-abduction follows, ending in a return to ‘normality’ at the camp.  Almost.

In the days that followed, Vasquez describes a military training exercise that enters the 'Twilight Zone'.  He and his fellow men were abandoned in the field by their superior officers, and were treated as a renegade unit.  As such, they were ‘hunted down’ by a regiment of Green Berets, and had to draw deeply upon their own strengths to prevail.  Capturing a consignment of live ammunition, the stakes of this strange war-game grew higher, with the ‘renegade’ unit appearing to mutiny in the field.  Throughout the ‘exercise’, the men, Vasquez included, seemed to be able to call upon superhuman and supernatural resources to aid their travails.  Often, they overcame odds stacked against them, without experienced leadership or military know-how.  It seemed that they had moved up to a different level of awareness and ability as a result of the UFO encounter at Fort Benning.

The bizarre exercise culminated in a battle with a UFO, and an encounter with an unknown entity.  Vasquez relates a number of very weird incidents throughout; including altered states of awareness, paranormal phenomena, encounters with unknown creatures, and deliberate ‘setting-up’ of challenging situations by the military forces.  This appears to have been a co-ordinated test of some kind by the military, although Vasquez does not rule out the possibility of a direct contact situation with an alien presence, itself superior as a force.

Parallels are bound to be drawn with the Rendlesham Forest incident in Suffolk, England, where a contingent of US Airforce personnel were subject to a UFO incident that continues to defy explanation.  It also reminds me of an account several years ago, of a British soldier who spoke of a UFO incident that had occurred during a training exercise on Salisbury Plain.  It seems that the best way to get close to the UFO phenomenon is to join the army!

Joking aside, ‘Incident at Fort Benning’ offers the UFO community a substantial opportunity.  Here we have an account of an incident that affected hundreds of men, who were later subject to methodical memory erasure by the military.  If this account could be substantiated by just one other witness, this would become a very important case.  As it stands, even with the documentation that Vasquez has accumulated and submitted for our perusal in the book, this remains the eye-witness account of an individual.  As such, it joins the thousands of other UFO accounts that offer us tremendous insight into the phenomenon, but fall short of absolute proof of anything.

That Vasquez has chosen to pursue the investigation of the incident himself, and not team up with a UFO researcher, is a double-edged sword.  There is earnest feel to the book that sidelines the normal accompanying analysis of an established investigator, and gives the reader the feeling that he/she is the first to hear the account.  It’s almost like the witness has sought the reader out to tell his story, and this allows one to empathise with Vasquez in a way that other UFO texts do not.  On the down-side, the book is short on debate.  The 15 years of efforts that Vasquez goes through, to investigate exactly what went on at Fort Benning in September 1977, are summarised in a few pages, with tantalising hints of corroboration and intelligence counter-measures.  More could have been made of the paper-chase besides the block of documents itself.

But that is not the focus of the book, and for producing a straight-forward account of a remarkable incident, Vasquez and Holms cannot be faulted.  As is noted on the back-cover, we must make up our own minds as to what really happened during the ‘Incident at Fort Benning’…

The Alaska Incident     by Willis T. Bird Paperback: 195 pages Publisher: AuthorHouse (August 16, 2000) Language: English ISBN-10: 0595011950 ISBN-13: 978-0595011957 Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches

‘The Alaska Incident’ is described as a sci-fi novel on its back cover, although the science part of the fiction is limited to the strange goings-on reported in Alaska, regarding the HAARP array experiments.  The author has worked these reports into a fictional worst-case scenario about how covert government interaction with an alien presence could go badly wrong. The main thrust of the book is a fast-moving ‘quest’-type adventure, focusing on the travails of the world-weary reporter who has the biggest story of the century drop into his lap.  His mission to seek the truth before telling the story to the world involves a personal transformation from an out-of-shape hack to an almost Hollywood-esque hero.

The reporter is hunted down remorselessly by government agents, and pulls sufficiently bizarre enough stunts to make his continued freedom believable.  In the course of the adventure, he must travel the length and breadth of the North American continent, meeting a menagerie of libertarian personalities, all skirting the law.  Given the author’s 30 years of service in the USAF Security Service, he seems to have remarkably anti-establishment sympathies, and the book reads like a treatise for the rights of the heroes forgotten by America.

The book appears to be self-published through the Internet publisher iUniverse.com, and this edition clearly has not been sufficiently proof-read or edited.  This is a pity, because the fast movement of the story is held back by textual errors and a strange habit the author has of jumping between tenses mid-sentence.  But the strength of the story is sound, and is told with wit and obvious experience.  If the reader is not too prone to the annoyances of incorrect syntax, then this is a compelling, hi-octane drama with an alien twist.

Finally, Willis Bird hints that aspects of his story, particularly pertaining to the alien presence on Earth, might have a basis in reality.  Is he an ex-government employee exposing classified knowledge in the form of a fictional novel, or is he hinting at this link for effect?  This is clearly a judgement for the individual reader to make.

Visit The Alaska Incident Website

DVD/Video Reviews
The investigators behind this website have been interested in the UFO subject for many years and over that time have amassed a fair amount of UFO films and documentaries. We have over 100 UFO tapes in our archives, some which have to be seen to be believed. The following review section highlights some of those videos/DVDs that we would recommend to any person interested in UFOs and conspiracy theories.

Secret Space The Illuminati's Conquest of Space
Produced by Chris Everard for The Enigma Channel                      

This DVD was specifically produced for The Enigma Channel, an online film resource for conspiracy theorists. Running at almost 2 hours, the film consists of 5 parts which are each devoted to some of the top names in the UFO investigation field. David Icke, Marcus Allen, Jaime Maussan, Valery Uvarov and producer Chris Everard all make an interesting contribution to this film.

Part I: The documentary starts by questioning the validity of the photos and film footage taken on the Moon and asks the question 'why did NASA fake the Moon landings?'. However, the first thing the film looks at is the Nazi links to the Saturn V rocket creator, Werner Von Braun. Von Braun was an SS officer and rocket scientist. His team based at Peenemunde during WWII designed the first cruise missile, the V1 doodlebug. The V2 rocket was the forerunner to the Saturn V rocket that would allegedly launch man to the Moon in 1969. Near the end of WWII the American government were desperate to get hold of the Nazi rockets and launched 'Project Paperclip' which secretly changed the war criminal files on Von Braun and his scientists. Files that described the SS officers as 'an ardent Nazi' were changed to read 'not and ardent Nazi'. It was not long before Von Braun was transported to the USA to start working on rockets for the allies.

It soon became apparent that the Germans had been working on a secret space project and had been making UFO-shaped vehicles called Haunebu craft (pictured right and named after Hauneberg, the region where they were developed.) The craft used alternative propulsion systems and may have been back engineered from crashed UFO saucers.

Much new evidence is unravelled in this film, including how Prescott Bush, the grandfather of George W. Bush, whilst working for the Bank of America, helped to arrange vast loans to the 3rd Reich. It details the vast underground German space project at Nordhausen that was housed inside a mountain, where thousands of Jewish slave labourers worked on Germany's rocket program in a factory of 100 million square feet. The film claims that Von Braun and his team were interested in UFOs and studied photos taken over Germany, Russia, Austria and Switzerland, and shows some very rare photos of UFOs over those Countries dating back to the early 1900s. 

After WWII the factory at Nordhausen was rebuilt in the Mojave desert, an area known today as Area 51.

David Icke goes on to explain the involvement between Prescott Bush and his funding of the Nazi movement. He reveals how both NASA and the CIA were started by Nazi founder members. Bush provided the Nazis with money to run the Nazi war machine. A number of companies that Bush was involved with during WWII were closed down for 'dealing with the enemy.'

Part II: The second part of this documentary looks at the start of the Space Race between Russia and the United States and the possibilities for the existence of UFOs. It questions how astronauts could travel through the Van Allen radiation zone and Marcus Allen comments that he contacted the makers of the spacesuits used by the NASA astronauts and asked 'What radiation protection was built into the spacesuits?', and was told 'There is no radiation protection built into the suits.' Allen also asked if the spacesuits could be used by technicians to go into Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, which also contained similar radiation and he was told 'No, not advisable.'

John Glenn, one of the first US astronauts in space reported seeing UFOs to mission control and described them as 'looking like fireflies', similar to the Foo Fighters that were reported following planes during WWII.

In 1972, Dr. Hermann Oberth, a NASA space scientist and one of the three founding fathers of rocketry and modern astronautics and Von Braun's mentor said 'Today, we cannot produce machines that fly the same as UFOs do. They are flying by means of artificial fields of Gravity. This would explain the sudden changes of directions. This hypothesis would also explain the pilling-up of these discs into a Cylindrical or cigar shaped Mothership upon leaving the Earth. Because it is in this fashion, that only one field of gravity would be required for all the flying saucers. We cannot take credit for our record advancement in certain scientific fields alone. We have been helped... and we have been helped by the people of other WORLDS.'

The Majestic 12 project and Roswell are also covered in this section of the documentary. The Mexican UFO investigator, Jaime Maussan, appears on the documentary at this point talking about the Mexican UFO phenomenon and the 'Secret Nasa Transmissions', released by the UK's UFO Magazine a few years ago (and now unfortunately out of print) that shows strange objects passing the MIR space station. This evidence and film footage is covered in our article here.

Part III: Marcus Allen once again talks about the Apollo project and the fact that NASA spent more money on projects on the ground than it did in Space during the 1960s. For example, there are huge life-size models of spaceships and lunar areas which were built by NASA and its contractors. We see a large section of faked moon terrain and Allen claims 'There were 400,000 employees involved in the Apollo project, but none of them had a need to know more than their job required. The people who were making the rockets didn't need to know what the people making the spacesuits were doing.'

He goes on to show drawings of a complete Moon model that would have been around 35 feet high, curved boards with moon terrain and believes that there is 'no doubt' that the film footage was shot in a studio. He says that there is a life-size, 2 mile long model of the 'Sea of Tranquility' in Flagstaff, Arizona, that could have been used in the faked moon landings. Mr. Allen believes that the footage could have been filmed from a helicopter over this region and the film shows footage of the Surveyor III spinning on descent to the surface of the Moon, which it claims is 'official NASA footage'. However, we have found evidence that contradicts this belief that you can read about here (I will write to the documentary makers and point out this error.) 

NASA astronauts and UFOs is the next subject covered. We hear radio transmissions from Apollo astronauts reporting UFOs and the statement by former NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper who in 1978 publicly stated in a letter to the United Nations general assembly 'I believe that these Extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this Planet from other Planets. In 1951 I had the opportunity to observe flights of UFOs of different sizes flying in fighter formations from east to west over Europe.' Also in a taped interview from 1973, Cooper claims 'For many years I have lived with a secret. In a secrecy imposed on all specialists in astronautics. I can now reveal that every day in the USA our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us.'

Russian space researcher and Ufologist, Valery Uvarov, states that Russian astronauts watched objects in space. Mostly over the Earth. Uvarov goes on to talk about alien abductions and contact in the Soviet Union.

Part IV: This part delves into NASA footage showing UFOs. Chris Everard, producer of this documentary, talks of the phenomenon known as 'space serpents'. Story Musgrave, a senior Space Shuttle commander who has served NASA for over 30 years, has seen this phenomenon twice and filmed it on one occasion. We also see the 'serpents' filmed from the ground, including the UK. All very strange! What is interesting is that there are around 8 ancient sites around the World that are dedicated to flying serpents.

Again, we see some nice examples from 'the secret NASA transmissions' tape showing several anomalous objects around MIR. At one point a NASA commentator from Mission Control tells the viewer that MIR is the large flashing object in the middle of the shot. However, another voice is heard to say 'We think you can see a flashing light just a little bit to the left of the screen, very faint.' To which a reply comes 'Yeah we do see something flashing visually, but were not sure that that might be uhh...'  There are so many moving and flashing objects on the screen that NASA could not even make out what was MIR and what were UFOs.

UFOs filmed during the Shuttle STS 75, STS 80 and STS 48 missions are also covered here. Everard claims that NASA's explanation that we are seeing merely space debris and ice crystals doesn't add up as it would make space missions very dangerous if their spacecraft have to fly through such conditions, and we agree. Why would ice crystals manoeuvre to form a triangle and hold its position in space?

I think that the original 'Secret NASA Transmissions' tapes as released by UFO Magazine a few years ago are now unavailable, so this DVD merits its asking price just for that footage alone. Everard continues by discussing the book 'The day after Roswell' by Lieutenant Philip J. Corso who during the 1960s was in charge of the Foreign Technology desk in the US Army's Research and Development division at the Pentagon. It was his job to evaluate weapon systems and 'investigate' foreign technology that had been retrieved from crashes. Corso claims that technology that we use today such as microwaves, microchips and laserbeams were the results of back-engineered alien technology, recovered during UFO retrievals.

Part V: And so onto the final part of this fascinating documentary, the relationship between NASA, Freemasons and the Occult. We hear that Armstrong's father was a 33rd degree Mason and that Aldrin, who is a 32nd Degree Mason, took a Masonic flag to the lunar surface. Many of the other Apollo astronauts were Masons too. It is claimed that Aldrin and Armstrong conducted a full Masonic ritual on the Moons surface 33 minutes after touchdown. They planted a Masonic flag which depicted a two headed eagle into the lunar surface, which relates to 'the eagle has landed'  statement. Apparently the ritual declared the Moon the property of the Masonic God, who according to Albert Pike, the Supreme Commander of the 33rd Degree, is Lucifer. The name 'Apollo' according to the Bible is another word for the Devil. The word Apollyon was used in the original texts of the New Testament to describe Satan. The names Apollo, Columbia and Atlantis are all words used in ritual, magic and the Occult. The documentary goes on to show more links which are far too in depth to go into here.

Summing up, I consider this documentary to be one of the very best that I have seen, and I have seen many in my time. This is an invaluable resource for anyone with even the slightest interest in the subject. There are a lot of items on this tape that I haven't seen before and I have been interested in UFOs for many years! If you are interested in further information please click the image of the DVD cover at the top of this review.

Reviewed by Dave Cosnette. 1st January, 2006.

Score 9/10