Message posted by Turbo 182 on May 17, 2011 at 21:33:07 PST:
I contacted a source of mine in Dallas who is a major media person. Asked my source to check into the author and book. I am not sharing the name or media source that employs this person but this is what was sent back to me regarding the book & Annie Jacobsen. “Seldom have I spent part of my news day digging into UFOs and aliens — although once as reporter in St. Louis, I did a story on a farmer's unusual crop circles that he swore were created by cow-hunting extraterrestrials. And, you know, an "udderly" remarkable sty like that comes along only once in a "blue m-o-o-o-o-n." Sorry. Still, the eerie coincidence of your email about flood of complaints over the Jacobsen book — and me getting the PR-advance copy a day after the NY Times review — was enough to make me take a quick break this afternoon from bin Laden, the war(s), the mayor's race and the Mavs to dig deeper. And, it take long to see that in the world of Roadrunners, she ain't gonna get invited to their holiday parties. On the one hand, she did a good job bashing much of the work on named people - ex-workers and officials and such - and on declassified records to try to explain what Area 51 has been — and continues to be. Part of what she wanted to do was pierce the veil of secrecy there. And she should get credit for detailing previously unknown examples of US government conducting nuke tests that irresponsibly put some workers and residents at risk, and even flouted international treaties. It will generate initial publicity — she was on NPR just this morning — but it could be her downfall as well. I'm not sure what the World Affairs Council was thinking when they booked her, and we may do something on that before her appearance.
But on the downside, at the very end, she relied on a single unnamed source and no documents for the Stalin-did-it version, which covers only a few pages in the penultimate chapter. She may see it as an attempt to dispel the never-ending rumors about alien spacecraft in the Roswell crash, but too late — the uproar has begun and her intentions have come under attack. I figure she couldn’t help herself. Like a Grisham novel, she needed a kicker ending. One reviewer called it sci-fi provocation.
For our part here, under normal circumstances, we never allow reporters to go w/only one unidentified source on anything - let alone something as outlandish as this. But such are the differences between trying to sell daily papers and making a buck off a big ol' book. And, of course, there are some beliefs and conspiracies out there that will always last, regardless of facts. Heck, we still get letters from folks saying they have "solved" the Kennedy assassination.”
In Reply to: Re: Area 51 Seminar and book by Annie Jacobsen posted by Peter A. Forkes on May 17, 2011 at 16:56:28 PST:
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