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PID: Synchronet 3.19b-Win32 master/a2a9dc027 Jan  2 2022 MSC 1928
TID: SBBSecho 3.14-Win32 master/a2a9dc027 Jan  2 2022 MSC 1928
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SUBJECT: MEIER A SECOND OPINION                              FILE: UFO1014


Part 3 
      
      The  1937  best-selling  "Secret  Life  of Plants" includes
an entire chapter  on  Vogel.  In  one scene, he attempts to
determine whether plants wired  with  electrodes  show a
physiological response to "spooky stories." The  book  says that
at "certain points in a story, such as...`Charles bent down  and
raised the lid of the coffin,' the plant seemed to pay closer at-
tention."

      Vogel,  70, said Meier's UFO movies convinced him the farmer
had been in  contact  with  "some  form  of  extraterrestrial
intelligence" However, Vogel  doesn't  regard  the  metal samples
by themselves as proof of extraterrestrials  because he didn't
have a chance to consult with other experts before  the  samples
mysteriously  disappeared. Vogel added that since his plant  work
of  the 1970's, he had founded a psychic research institute in
San  Jose,  employed his "mental energy" to bend spoons and
studied the use of crystals to cure illness.

      "Light  Years"  also  quotes authorities such as Robert Post,
head of the  Jet  Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, as saying:
"From a photography standpoint,  you  couldn't  see anything that
was fake about the Meier photos...  I  thought,  God,  if  this
is  real,  this  is going to be really something."

      Or  is it? In an interview with The Examiner, Post recalled
that several  years  ago,  Wendelle Stevens visited him at JPL and
requested an expert  opinion  on  the pictures. Post acknowledges
he was fascinated by the images,  but  was  unable to perform a
scientific analysis for two reasons: First,  he isn't a photo
analyst but rather the operator of a photo processing  lab  ("like
you take your film to K-Mart", he said); and second, the pictures
weren't  originals  but rather copies of originals - perhaps even
copies  of  copies  of copies. Such multiple copying tends to
obscure delicate  details,  making  it hard to detect evidence of
fraud - e.g., threads supporting hubcaps.

      In  addition, when Post examined some images with a
magnifying glass, he  realized  "a  lot  of  the pictures weren't
really photographs at all - they  were  lithographs,"  or
high-resolution ink prints made from photos - and,  hence,  were
worthless  for  purposes  of analysis. Furthermore, the photos
were  "  a  lot  fuzzier  than  the stuff on the lithographs, and
I thought that was a little strange."

      For  that  and other reasons, Post began "to think, `Nuts,
maybe this guy  is just a con man.' That's not the kind of guy I
want to have anything to do with."

      In  1983,  Stevens was convicted of child molestation in
Pima County, AZ.  He  is now serving time in the Arizona State
Prison and declined to be interviewed.  But  he  did  send  The
Examiner a cryptic letter in which he said  a  "number of high
officials...have taken a personal interest in some of  the  things
we were doing, but they could neither support nor tolerate them
officially."

      Stevens'  conviction  triggered a wave of paranoia among
Meier buffs. Some  phoned  Vicki  Cooper, editor of California UFO
Magazine in Los Angeles,  and  said  Stevens  "was  `set up,' that
certain witnesses were being killed,"  said  Cooper,  who is not
unsympathetic to Meier's claims. "I was discouraged and disgusted
with the people I was talking to."

      "Its  a  cesspool  out  there,"  she said. "Personality
conflicts are rabid  in  this  field...There are hoaxers, there
are fraudulent people who are claiming outrageous things all
throughout the UFO field.
End of report


          
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