An older Colin Andrews
(Continued from part 1/3)
Krshanna Duran has just republished an interview between crop circle researcher Colin Andrews and Jon King, former senior editor of UFO Reality Magazine and author of Cosmic Top Secret: The Unseen Agenda.
The interview describes the career of one of the most influential figures in UFOlogy and so I publish it in whole, in three parts.
Apparently, the interview was originally done in 1995 but gives significant background on the manner in which the intelligence community tried to defeat crop-circle research.
INTERVIEW WITH COLIN ANDREWS (continued)
JK: So why do you think the government would have wanted to infiltrate a research program which most of the world sees as cranky anyway?
CA: What we have to understand, Jon, is this. The reason the crop circle phenomenon is considered cranky, is because of the government’s carefully executed hoax and disinformation program. They have deliberately made it seem that way. My personal view is that, even if they knew the cause of the phenomenon, they did not want this information to be shared with or leaked out to the public. I think that somebody – whoever the people are who really run governments, and it certainly isn’t who we elect as our representatives – these people feel that we have to be controlled, like children. And I think they are afraid that this, ultimately, by sensing the nature of the mechanism, would lead us to question even such institutions as religion, things that stabilize society so that they can continue to control society. And once you start sniffing in that area, it’s highly dangerous to them, to their control.
JK: So you think the Doug and Dave situation was a continuation of that policy?
CA: Yeah, I do. But I’ll tell you what, Jon, I think the Doug and Dave thing can be looked at in two parts. One: I think that they could well be two innocent, elderly men who were friends with one another, who’d had a dabble and did make some crop circles – purely for fun or whatever – and then decided to approach the daily press, off their own backs, make a few bucks. Indeed, they earned around ten thousand pounds for their story. This I find quite possible.
JK: That’s a lot of money for a crop circle hoax story.
CA: Yes, it is. But according to my media sources, the Today newspaper paid them two large installments – five thousand and five thousand. Indeed, Doug and Dave threatened to sue for their second payment. They’d had five thousand up front, but the second five thousand, for some reason, didn’t come. So they threatened to sue. But they got the full amount in the end.
The second option is that they were used by the British intelligence agencies (although I should point out that Doug and Dave themselves are not, I’m sure, employed by British Intelligence – they’re simply not the caliber of the people we’re looking at). But they could nevertheless have been used by them. Indeed, the way in which the whole thing was worked supports this probability. For one thing, the intelligence communities in all major countries – certainly in Britain and America – have very good relations with the major editors. Some of these people are paid. The PR people in the intelligence agencies cooperate with them so that they can get the leads on political developments. This information comes through collaboration, cooperation. And once you buy into the major editors, the national newspapers, you’ve got your stage. I think myself that once Doug and Dave came forward -and I think this is what probably happened – having perhaps been responsible for one or two simple
hoaxes in their area, they were then unwittingly used by the intelligence machine to front the government’s hoax campaign. Indeed, Doug and Dave themselves may never know that they were used in this way. But what perfect stooges they made! Two old men, sixty-five or thereabouts-if they could make crop circles then anybody could. It was the perfect plan, very clever.
JK: You said that you thought there were three main phases in the way the disinformation program unfolded. Operation Blackbird, Doug and Dave…
CA: Right. The third phase came along in the guise of someone we both know, Jon (and I’m prepared to go into print on this; they can threaten whatever they like). This person’s name was [name deleted by publisher for legal reasons].
[Name deleted], working for the agency who had already put several nails firmly in the coffin of the crop circle phenomenon, arrived on the scene in order to hammer those nails home. They needed to keep the momentum going, and that momentum came in the form of [name deleted], working for the CIA – and that is absolutely fact; I have gleaned information on this man from within the CIA and from people who knew him because he worked on the desk next to them. He’d arrived in Great Britain posing as an American freelance journalist, that was the cover story. Crap! [Name deleted] had come to do a job, and he did it very effectively. He came between people, interviewed people, put wedges between fellow researchers [identifying detail deleted by publisher for legal reasons] and all the rest of the stuff. And here’s the evidence if you ever needed it.
The five phone calls I made in my car, privately, the ones nobody knew about- [name and identifying detail deleted by publisher for legal reasons) the contents of those five phone calls, and the names of the people I had phoned! How did he know? How could he possibly have known? It was obviously inside information. My phone had been tapped.
And if you want to go even further on this one – and this was clearly overlooked by British Intelligence- I happened to be the guy who signed the invoices, sanctioning payment of the communication system for Test Valley Borough Council. A ten-thousand-to-one chance, but it was nevertheless true. These invoices, of course, included my own radio telephone.
Now, I noticed that throughout the period that covered Operation Blackbird the invoice for my radio telephone simply wasn’t there. It seemed, for this period of time, that Test Valley Borough Council were getting my radio telephone calls for free! Very strange. But then, some weeks later, when the invoice finally did arrive in the system, the calls I’d made from my vehicle had been deducted from the bill and stamped by the British government! That phone was bugged! It was taken into a special monitoring system during Operation Blackbird because, for the duration of the operation, in order for them to make that hoax without my knowledge, my movements, my every movement, had to be precisely known by them.
And the information they eavesdropped was given to [name deleted] of the CIA.
These, then, are the three major attempts that I know of, made by the intelligence agencies of both Britain and America to debunk and discredit the crop circle phenomenon. There is no doubt in my mind about this.
The CIA and the Crop Circles:
JK: So, Colin. Can you think of any other instances where government agents have become involved in the crop circles research program?
CA: Yes, yes, I can. One instance in particular comes to mind.
A man who announced himself as working for the CIA back in, I think, June or July of 1989, approached me and said he had been assigned to `bring me into a plan’, or more precisely, `buy me into a plan’. He said this was the sole reason he’d come to England – that his assignment was to implement and execute this plan in which I was to be involved.
JK: And did he tell you what this plan was?
CA: He did, yes. He told me that certain individuals, all of whom you know, Jon – Richard Andrews, Terence Meaden, Pat Delgado, to name a few – he told me that the CIA were about to promote each major researcher in turn and then publicly debunk them. He said this was a ploy that was frequently used. He said they would give them a stage, encourage them to declare their hand and, one by one, take them out. He said that I would then be left with a `role’ that he later revealed to me.
JK: How did this man make his approach? How did he contact you?
CA: Well, when he first arrived, Pat and I were asked to go up to Pebble Mill television studios in Birmingham to take part in a program called Daytime Live. It was a kind of live TV debate situation. They were going to air the sequence that contained the mysterious sound detected in a crop formation and recorded by the BBC – the sound that destroyed a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of TV camera one sunny afternoon at a crop circle site in Wiltshire! As we came on air, they were running this particular sequence.
Anyway, on the morning of the program we were in our hotel, and we received a phone call from David Morgenstern of the BBC who said that they had received some communication from a man who claimed he had actually seen a crop circle being formed, and what questions should they ask that would allow them to know if he was telling the truth? So we gave them some questions that we thought would be helpful. When we arrived at the studios we were told that this man had been flown directly in to Birmingham and that we would not be able to meet him because they wanted it to be an absolutely first-time contact on air. As we came on air they panned to the studio audience, and this man described what he’d seen, live on TV.
JK: What exactly did he say?
CA: That he’d been out studying foxes in Scotland, and that one of the foxes on this particular night had refused to follow its regular path which, he explained, was not consistent with the usual behaviour of foxes. I don’t know if this is right or not, but it sounded plausible. The fox apparently refused to go any further and instead went back the way it had come. The man then apparently heard some rustling, and then he described the way this circle formed. What he was saying is that the fox had presumably sensed something strange and that after it had scampered off he witnessed the formation of this circle. But the point is that his live TV appearance seemed to legitimize him.
JK: You think this was his way of becoming accepted on the crop circle scene?
CA: Right. From that moment on his being seen in the presence of the crop circle researchers – myself and Pat in particular – became acceptable. It was his `way in’, so to speak.
(Concluded in Part 3/3)