JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

http://ndapak.com/about-us/professional-associations/ John writes Lynn Catoe, again bemused at finding himself in the middle of a spat between her and Ivan Sanderson. He also offers an interesting assessment of Gray Barker, observations on strange voices on shortwave, and his usual exasperation at his fellow ufologists.

Some notes: Irving Stone wrote several biographical novels, including books about Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Freud, and Darwin; Richard Gehman wrote many biographies and magazine pieces about entertainers. Aimé Michel was a ufologist who had predicted “trouble in the U. S. S. R.” Edward Condon and Robert Low headed the University of Colorado UFO Project, which published its findings later that year.

Ivan Sanderson replies to John’s last letter in his usual inimitable ebullient style. He’s still annoyed about the article that almost made it into the National Enquirer, but John has apparently convinced him that he shouldn’t be annoyed with Lynn Catoe. His hint about releasing “material that I have not discussed even with you” is provocative, and we can all certainly sympathize with his exasperation with ufology. Richard Hall, by the way, was on the board of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena; Peter Kamitchis was on the board of the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained.

Lynn Catoe writes John on January 3, 1968; the wrong date is a common typo in early January. She discusses the continuing kerfuffle with Ivan Sanderson, defending herself and objecting to John’s characterization of her. She reports on a rumor from French ufologist Aimé Michel about Soviet UFO propaganda. She also asks John’s advice about a proposed visit to Gray Barker; Monka was a supposed channeled alien, and Phillip Rodgers an early experimenter with electronic voice phenomena. Eileen Buckle, Gordon Creighton, and Charles Bowen were all British ufologists, contributors to Flying Saucer Review.

John and Lynn Catoe exchanged a few more letters, in which he advises her to avoid ufology, she says she’s glad she knows him, and they discuss their long phone calls.  I’ll skip them, since they’re getting more flirtatious, which is none of our business. John then wrote Ivan Sanderson again, trying to assure him that Ms. Catoe was not part of some nefarious government scheme, and speculating that Dr. Frank Stranges was responsible for the stories in the aborted National Enquirer article.

June Larson was an industrious ufologist, who supplied John and other researchers with clippings. I don’t know who “that Von Covisky character” was. G-12 was Ms. Catoe’s rank in the civil service: quite respectable but not ”important” enough to alarm Sanderson. John apparently sent Sanderson a clipping about Philadelphia, which he didn’t keep with the carbon.