JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

Jalai Nur In February 1968, John and Lynn Catoe started seeing each other more seriously, and their letters were mostly concerned with their relationship. Threaded throughout, however, are updates on the state of ufology. Also in February, the Condon Committee (a group at the University of Colorado, funded by the USAF to study UFOs) had a bit of a scandal. One of its members, Robert Low, wrote a memo to two administrators at the University, saying that the Committee would find that UFOs had no basis in reality. Two other members, Norman Levine and David Saunders, sent copies of the memo to NICAP and James McDonald, among others. On February 9, Condon fired Levine and Saunders over the incident.

In a letter to John on February 6, Lynn Catoe mentioned the brewing scandal, and said her recent long talk with McDonald had focused on it. She was also exasperated with Ivan Sanderson’s part in it.

In a formal letter to Ms. Catoe in her role as bibliographer, John catches her up to date.

John’s next letter to Lynn Catoe is certainly newsy. He mentions Ivan Sanderson (and John’s impatience with his rambling meetings), the Condon Report, a curious interaction with a UFO witness, a new report of a Man In Black in West Virginia, an exploding arsenal in Iowa, and unspecified “startling new things” about Gray Barker. He also responds to Ms. Catoe’s meeting with James McDonald and complaints about her dog. Bob Lowe and Dr. Condon were mentioned in a footnote in her last letter; Ivan Sanderson had confused the two.

A few more letters have passed, of a purely personal nature. Lynn Catoe returns to professional, or at least ufological, matters, in this letter. She discusses some reactions to the Colorado Project, whose findings were soon to be published as the Condon Report. She also reports on her conversations with James McDonald. He was one of the casualties of the UFO culture of the ’60s: a physicist whose interest in UFOs led to academic stigmatization, public ridicule, marital difficulties, and eventually suicide in 1971.

Well, nature is running its course, and Lynn Catoe has invited John to dinner in her apartment. So, his letter is both a response to her letter about the Gordon Evans case and to her invitation. I’ll cut the more personal paragraphs, and just post the former. He describes some of William Donovan’s erratic behavior, and adds an interesting note on the need for better terminology in ufology. “Tamper,” by the way, is a term popularized by Richard Shaver, for interference by the deros and their ray machines.

Lynn Catoe, in her official capacity as bibliographer, replies to John’s letter about the Gordon Evans case. Evans certainly sounds like a troubled soul, but I haven’t been able to find anything on the Funt sighting or his investigation of it. Maybe it’s less of a mystery to some of the readers out there.

As the Catoe-Keel correspondence developed, it became more flirtatious, with each teasing, provoking, and shocking the other. All probably fun for both of them, but none of our business, so I’m omitting those letters. Here, though, John writes her in her official capacity to summarize “the Gordon Evans affair.” William Donovan was a member of NICAP; I can’t identify Robart.

I’m omitting some of John’s correspondence with Lynn Catoe, since it’s more personal than professional. However, this letter asks some interesting and pointed questions about John’s goals and methods in ufology. He gives the Gordon Evans story in detail in an upcoming letter; in brief, the ufologist Gordon Evans became frightened and abandoned his research. Operators and Things is a vivid memoir of schizophrenia by Barbara O’Brien (probably a pseudonym): the Operators are controlling voices, the Things their helpless victims. The book was much discussed at the time.

John Keel died eleven years ago, on July 3, 2009. I don’t know who took this photo, but I assume debauchery was involved.

The best way to remember John is to read his books. During the pandemic, people have been posting “shelfies,” so I’ll follow suit with a shot of my Keel shelf. Stay safe, Keel fans.

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.