“People who want to experience feelings of power and euphoria around the globes do so,” Whitcomb argues. “It’s what we call a psychosomatic reaction. The mind is able to bring about the subconsciously desired physical sensations.”
But just as in the case of most alleged paranormal or miraculous events, from so-called alien contacts to religious visions, those who truly believe will never be swayed by the kind of explanations Whitcomb is offering.
At the same time, those who fear the globes, people like Aquileia’s four bombing conspirators, usually find few arguments that will allay their fears.
Chapter 5
Stunt. Fighting the Law. First Amendment.
Conspiracists on Twitter. Embedded. Lakenheath.
What Do You Know? Call for Transparency. Questions To Ask.
1.
“And now we owe you a big favor, Colonel,” Dan Knight said as he followed Garret Robinson into his study.
Robinson, who’d had a placidly neutral demeanor since Knight arrived at his house on Travis Air Force Base, now gave him a very brief, but decidedly sharp, look before glancing away again. Robinson was going for the liqueur cabinet, aiming to do good on a fifteen-year-old Glendronach single malt scotch he had promised.
“I’m not complaining, of course,” Knight said.
And he wasn’t. It was better to spend the evening a free man than still fighting his way out of the legal and bureaucratic morass with the San Francisco cops, the District Attorney, Jerry Peretti’s lawyer, and a passive-aggressive, suddenly bipolar Peretti himself.
“Don’t worry,” Robinson called over his shoulder as he started pouring their drinks. “This is not quite a done deal yet. The people from Washington are not happy with your group’s little stunt….”
2.
(CNN) …At what price blockbuster reality television? That’s the question being asked right now in San Francisco as cast members of a yet unsold reality television program stand to face charges of criminal negligence.
The stars of the in-the-works Confirmation: Investigations of the Unexplained, Professor Daniel Knight, ex-reporter Cornelia Oxenburg, and Richard Ballantine, the controversial host of the now-defunct CBS series Hollywood Justice, along with their technical crew members Melinda Rowland, Ian Durfy, Matthew Cooper, Lacy Anderson, and Anthony Griffin, have been arrested for their involvement in a high-speed chase in the Noe Valley.
“The freedom of the press does not give anyone the right to put innocent people’s lives at risk,” said Assistant District Attorney Charles Harper. “It does not give them the right to interfere with a police case or allow them to act as vigilantes and try and apprehend suspected criminals.”
The Confirmation crew now stands accused of contributing to a chase with Rawley Heiser, a convicted sex offender involved in a shootout with the police. Heiser, now accused of shooting and killing three people in an armed standoff, including his neighbors Manuel Sifuentes and James Mead, and police officer Roderick Clemmons, attempted to flee the scene when the television crew gave chase. The chase resulted in three car wrecks.
The only serious injury in the chase was Heiser’s, whose car rolled over several times after striking another vehicle in an intersection. He is now in a coma in the California Pacific Medical Center. The accident, said Dorothy Ferguson, a Medical Center spokesperson, left Heiser with severe head trauma, a broken back, two broken arms, and a crushed pelvis.
According to Assistant D.A. Harper, these accidents would not have happened had the Confirmation team not attempted to pursue Heiser.
“Make no mistake,” Harper said, “this could have been much worse. There could have been more people getting caught in the middle of this chase. There could have been more injuries. There could have been fatalities.”
Tanya Mancuso and Lloyd Peters, both of whom were driven to swerve out of Heiser’s way and wreck their cars in the process, are considering civil lawsuits. Benjamin Fisher, whose car was struck by Heiser, is also reportedly consulting with an attorney.
The Confirmation group has garnered considerable media attention recently due to their involvement in the globe phenomenon. They were the first ones to find a globe in the outskirts of Mount Shasta City, California. Daniel Knight, Professor of Anthropology at Bakersfield State University and author of several books on paranormal phenomena, has been a prominent voice in the ongoing speculation about the nature of the globes.
Sources have also suggested that the Confirmation cast was about to be given access to the military’s efforts to study the globes. How this proposed project will impact the car chase case remains to be seen….
From CNN’s Victoria Marshall
3.
“They haven’t committed fully yet,” Robinson said, and tasted his scotch. “General Barrett’s a stickler for by-the-book procedure. And right now, your people are out on bail.”
Knight, too, tasted the Glendronach and found it exceptional. “That arrest was bogus,” he said at length. “That psycho had a fully loaded assault rifle. There would have been a hell of a lot more shooting and more killing had he gotten away.”
“Be that as it may,” Robinson said coolly, “the law says it’s not for you to interfere.”
“We weren’t interfering. We were covering the event. We are the press. And we have a right to document a shooting in the street.”
Robinson grinned and took another pull on his scotch. “The press? By the loosest definition of the term.”
“The First Amendment definition is pretty loose.”
Robinson tipped his glass at Knight. There was a faint, amused hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth, but his eyes betrayed something else. Something crafty and challenging. “So I can assume the whole group is interested in working with us. You won’t be too paranoid, I hope, about your…journalistic integrity being undermined by the government.”
“Well, the government’s not going to undermine it, will it?” Knight asked, his mind already turning over the bizarre set of Twitter exchanges Cornelia brought to his attention just after they split up following their release from police custody.
4.
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
Latest out of S.F.: Govt & military/industrial/entertainment complex going to bed to bring U FAKE NEWS about #globes
867 Retweet 1023*
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
Cast of @ConfirmationTV to document #NWO Govt’s BOGUS investigation into #globes
705 Retweet 1053*
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
#NWO & @ConfirmationTV investigating #globes: Let the coverup begin!!!
1001 Retweet 1237*
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
#NWO + @ConfirmationTV + #globes = #brainwashing
1134 Retweet 1505*
Conspiracy Bob @BRadford
@NWOAgWatch I heard @ConfirmationTV is an #occult #Freemason controlled drivel. #Apocalypse #Antichrist #indoctrination
12 Retweet 9*
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
All cast members of @ConfirmationTV have ties to the #occult, govt, #Freemason #conspiracy
1286 Retweet 1388*
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
Dan Knight writes books about #occult #Magick
1250 Retweet 1410*
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
Dan Knight teaches impressionable youth at school founded by a #Freemason. FACT!! #indoctrination
1465 Retweet 1637*
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
Knight paving the way for #NWO #oneworldgovt. #indoctrination #antichrist
1403 Retweet 1655*
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
@CorneliaOxenburg: a disgraced ex-Barbie Doll reporter. Killed caree
r of whistleblower professor.
1522 Retweet 1566*
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
Rick Ballantine: Brutal #LAPD cop. FIRED!!!
1611 Retweet 1653*
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
@LacyAnderson: Military #insider. #Surveillance
1578 Retweet 1614*
NewWolrdOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
@IanDurfy: Hollywood special effects tech. Expert in fake news, fake media images. #FalseFlag #MoonHoax #911Hoax
1787 Retweet 1823*
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
@MelindaRowland: Ex bodybuilder. #Steroids DOD/DARPA #geneticgengineering
1643 Retweet 1704*
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
@MattCooper: Very little govt connection. #coverup What is he hiding?
1602 Retweet 1793*
Conspiracy Bob @Bradford
@ConfirmationTV rotten to the core. In the pocket of the military, #NWO. Complete #MediaBias #FalseFlag
1863 Retweet 1892*
Freedom Crusader @PatriotJoe
RT @Bradford @ConfirmationTV rotten to the core. In the pocket of the military, #NWO. Complete #MediaBias #FalseFlag
30 Retweet 41*
Freedom Crusader @PatriotJoe
@NWOAgWatch Specifics about #globes & #Antichrist #aliens connection?
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
@PatriotJoe #aliens are a misinterpretation of demonic interdimensional invaders. #globes are interdimensional
2004 Retweet 2163*
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
#alien truth is that they’re a govt #coverup
2105 Retweet 2348*
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
#alien truth is that they’re not from space. Interdimensional invaders. #demonic & hostile
2111 Retweet 2251*
NewWorldOrder Agenda Watch @NWOAgWatch
#occult connection of @ConfirmationTV & govt means a plot to lie to the public & hide truth. #conspiracy
2345 Retweet 2417*
5.
Knight took a seat in one of Robinson’s leather easy chairs and drank more of the scotch. “We’ll be…what? Embedded reporters on the air force’s globe hunt?” he asked, passing his eyes over the aviation-themed decorations of the colonel’s man-cave.
“Yes,” Robinson said matter-of-factly as he, too, sat down across the room from Knight. “Your group and probably a few others. From what General Barrett said, the Pentagon will get various media outlets involved. To keep it fair. Make it completely inclusive and transparent. You’re just lucky that you’re in a unique position, having asked to talk to us about the globes before anyone else in the media did…and that the brass originally said yes. And since your people were the first to find one of these things.” Now Robinson paused, staring into his glass of Glendronach. “And because I know Cornelia and I could put in a good word.”
“Much appreciated.”
“But you’re really not feeling any kind of a coercion by the military conspiracy, are you?”
From Robinson’s sour tone, Knight wondered how much perusing the colonel and at least his people here at Travis did of the online conspiracy crowd. “No,” Knight said, then, after a beat, couldn’t help but add, “not yet.”
There was a sort of self-satisfied, inscrutable little smile on Robinson’s face. It was the smug, vaguely taunting look that used to piss Knight off in another life. When people used to look at a teenage Knight like that was when fists wound up being thrown, perhaps weapons brandished, people forced to back down, respect demanded lest things turn lethal.
“But I am curious,” Knight said at length. Let’s see how open and cooperative these clowns really are, he thought.
“Aha?”
“What do you know about these globes?”
There was a long pause before Robinson replied. Knight noted how honestly baffled the colonel appeared to be.
“What does who know about them?” Robinson asked. “Me? The air force?”
“Yeah.”
6.
(FOX NEWS) …The appearance of the latest globe in Suffolk, England, close to the town of Lakenheath and the Lakenheath Royal Air Force Base, has led to tensions between locals and the American military.
Charges of conspiracy and cover-up by the U.S. Air Force, which operates its 48th Fighter Wing out of Lakenheath, stems from the area’s ties to the unexplained.
“I’m not surprised that thing would show up here,” said James Bannister, a local mailman. “All the UFO and alien sightings and all that went on in the area here so many years ago.”
The Suffolk area is still steeped in paranormal lore, with many UFO enthusiasts claiming that an alien spaceship made contact with American soldiers here in Rendlesham Forest in 1980. The alleged incident is still referred to as “England’s Roswell.”
Starting on the evening of December 26, 1980, airmen from the U.S. Air Force’s 79th Fighter Wing, stationed at the time at the Woodbridge Royal Air Force Base, reported seeing strange lights descending toward Rendlesham Forest. The sightings continued for at least two more nights, with soldiers claiming contact with extraterrestrial spacecraft. Although the witnesses claimed the unidentified craft flew away, they said it left impressions in the ground, and levels of radiation high above normal were measured around the alleged landing site.
The Rendlesham Forest incident has been the subject of scores of books, articles, and documentaries about the UFO phenomenon.
This legacy of the unexplained in the area and charges of conspiracies now fuel new allegations of a much greater military knowledge of the mystery globes than the U.S. and British governments admit.
“That globe appears and now you have all the military activity going on all over the place…aircraft flying over the area day and night, yet the authorities are getting dodgy as usual. They claim they don’t know anything after all,” said Liam Norris, a member of a group of local UFO enthusiasts calling themselves the Aerial Phenomenon Research Center. “We think the coincidences are just too great to believe.”
“They’ve lied to us before and they’re lying to us now,” said Bruce Alloway from the nearby town of Mildenhall. He, too, claims to have seen an unusual volume of low-level flights by American helicopters and fighter jets in the area, especially near the location of the globe. “Nothing but flashes of light from a local lighthouse or meteors or nonsense like that, they told us after the Rendlesham Incident. I believe there was something, you know, unexplained—an alien contact taking place in 1980—and they lied about it. Now I think the Americans are behind this entire globe situation again, and they are trying to keep us in the dark. Our government, as usual, is going along and covering everything up.”
The local consensus appears to agree with people like Norris and Alloway. Most people believe that the globe phenomenon is the product of some sort of secret American research project, and that at least the British government, if not most of the governments of the world, are conspiring to keep the truth hidden. The leading local theories range from time-travel experiments, experiments in creating interdimensional portals, to the globes acting as markers for an invasion force of alien spacecraft to land.
People who hold these views are also getting angrier by the day, and are starting to make their feelings known in ever more dramatic ways. An estimated six hundred people from the towns of Lakenheath, Mildenhall, and Thetford already held a protest rally outside the air force base. They are promising to not only keep the pressure on the base, but to take their movement to London and stage a similar rally outside the House of Parliament.
“We want answers, we want them now, and we will keep raising our voices to those in power, those who know full well what’s going on here, until the
y give the people truth,” said Georgina Easterbrook, an office manager from Lakenheath.
“There is something very big going on here, something that’s probably putting all of us in danger,” added Rufus Baines, a chef from Thetford, “and we’re not going to sit by as the wealthy, the powerful, the well-connected are the only ones who can prepare for it.”
This tension spilled over into an actual physical altercation on the evening of September 10 outside a Lakenheath tavern. American airmen Roy Malone and Eric Garcia were reportedly taunted by three local youths, Roger Craig, William Evans, and Bran Gedding, about the military’s role in the appearance of the globes. Soon thereafter a fight broke out, sending Craig and Gedding to the emergency room and landing Evans, along with Malone and Garcia, in jail.
Lakenheath police chief Stephen Bailey insists, however, that the fight is not a true indicator of anti-American hostilities brewing among the general population.
“I would blame a little too much youthful machismo and the need to show off to a couple of girls for that fight rather than any kind of true hatred for the Americans,” said Bailey.
He also added that the protests were the work of “fringe agitators.”
From FOX’s Raymond Miller.
7.
There was another thin smile on Robinson’s face, but it, just like his glance, appeared distracted and distant this time, Knight thought.
As Knight’s gaze flittered to a large framed picture of Robinson’s two kids, Sarah and Jeff, on his desk, the distance in that look made sense. Knight was surprised the man could function as well as he did.
But Knight’s thoughts were pulled in other directions as well. What else will complicate matters here, Colonel? he thought, noting Jeff Robinson’s air force uniform in the picture. So he’s the “saved” member of the family, according to Rick’s lovely and gracious ex-wife. And I wonder if she and her husband are still around, offering valuable spiritual advice to anyone who’s willing to listen.
“The Man? Is that who you mean, Professor?” Robinson asked. “What does the government know about the globes? The powers that be?”
Confirmation Page 15
