2 2 Volume 36 Issue 3 | Skeptical Inquirer

You just can’t make this stuff up.For the past few years I have beenreporting from time to time on

the absurd claims of a group of UFOl-ogists who call their study exopolitics—“political implications of the extra-ter-restrial presence.” That there is an“extra-terrestrial presence” on Earth,they have no doubt. Alfred Lambre-mont Webre claims to have been thefounder of exopolitics, al though in re-ality Michael Salla can probably claimthat dubious honor; Webre’s website isexopolitics.com, and Salla has exopoli-tics.org.

Lately Webre’s claims have gotten sobizarre (e.g., a war between the An -dromeda Council and the Reptilians andAmericans being teleported to a secretbase on Mars to meet with aliens) thateven others in exopolitics have becomealarmed and begun distancing them-selves from him. As Salla recently wrote

on his website, “Webre is a marginal andcontroversial figure in the network of ex-opolitics researchers and activists that hasformed around the world. Webre’s writ-ing and behavior is seen as too bizarreand controversial for most credible ex-opolitics researchers to use” (http://ex-opolitics.org/Exo-Comment-98.htm).Nonetheless, Webre’s far-out articles onExaminer.com were being read by asmany as 400,000 people each month—until recently, that is, when Exam -iner.com finally gave him the boot.

Webre’s colleague Jon Kelly, “aworld-famous expert in the applicationof voice-based disclosure technologyfor revealing UFO secrets” (whateverthat means), writes (http://tinyurl.com/cgymy3p):

Kuala Lumpur War Crimes TribunalJudge and founder of Exopolitics Al-fred Lambremont Webre is callingfor consumers to occupy an immedi-

ate boycott of pay-per-impressionadvertising funded news website Ex-aminer.com. . . . Examiner.com’s cor-porate publication ban against theSeattle Exopolitics Examiner is anIlluminati agenda-inspired media hittargeting the columnist who revealedPresident Barack Obama’s participa-tion in the CIA’s secret Mars visita-tion program [http://tinyurl.com/7bc93mo].Pieces on Examiner.com are pre-

sented to make you think you’re readinga news story. Once a colleague and Iwere discussing one of Webre’s absurdcolumns on Examiner.com that claimedNASA was promoting (not de bunk -ing) fears of an “extinction level event”from Comet Elenin (http://tinyurl.com/3njgzfj). He asked me, “What kind ofnewspaper is publishing crazy stuff likethis?” I replied, “I don’t think it’s actuallya newspaper; it’s more like this guy’sblog.” In his feud with Examiner.com,Webre spelled out Examiner.com’s busi-ness model:

During 2009 many of the writerswere receiving $0.01 per page view.Examiner.com later offered a varietyof pay scale options to their writers.Examiner.com now bases compensa-tion on variables such as subscrip-tions, page view traffic and sessionlength. . . .Examiner.com derives thebulk of its revenue from consumer(reader) click-throughs. Every timeyou as a reader click through to readan article on Examiner.com, thecompany is paid a royalty by its ad-vertisers.Let’s see, one cent per page at 400,000

pages per month gets you $4,000 amonth, although Webre suggests  thatmight be only in a good month. So theformula for success as a UFO writer

Sheaffer's “Psychic Vibrations” column has appeared in the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER for more than thirty years; its high-lights have now been published as a book (Create Space 2011). Sheaffer blogs at www.BadUFOs.com, and hiswebsite is www.debunker.com.

[ PSYCHIC VIBRATIONS R O B E R T S C H E A F F E R

Join the Boycott to Protest the CIA Cover-Up of President Obama’s Trips to Mars

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Skeptical Inquirer | May/June 2 0 1 2 2 3

seems to be: make up the most outra-geous claims you can think of and putit on Examiner.com, then sit back andcollect the coins dropping into the hop-per. And here am I, stupidly wasting mytime and effort writing skeptical arti-cles! Webre does not say exactly whathappened to get him kicked off Exam-iner.com. It cannot be that they areconcerned about their journalistic cred-ibility, for they have none. Webre doessay, however, “Examiner.com has beencriticized for its lack of verification andfact-checking of stories published onthe site, including accusations of plagia-rism.”

Webre’s request is simple: “Please letyour friends and networks know youare boycotting Examiner.com becauseit is promoting the CIA’s Obama onMars cover-up, and its direct assault onthe Truth movement and Truth move-ment journalists like Alfred Lambre -mont Webre.” How about that for aFacebook status?

* * *A ‘Classic’ UFO Photo, Now in 3D! In Santa Ana, California, on August 3,1965, highway worker Rex Heflin tookthree photos of a supposed UFOthrough the window of his van using hisPolaroid instant camera. NICAP andmany prominent UFOlogists have longtouted this series of photos as “classic.”This object supposedly flew right overthe Marine Corps El Toro Air Stationand the Santa Ana Freeway (Interstate

5) in broad daylight, but no one else sawit. (See my book UFO Sightings, Prome -theus Books, 1998, pp. 91–93.) In thesephotos, distant objects are hazy becauseof the Los Angeles smog, but the UFOis sharp—probably because it is tiny andvery close to the camera. For many yearsthe original prints could not be investi-gated because Heflin claims that an in-vestigator came to his house, flashing anID supposedly from NORAD, and con-fiscated them. (At least Heflin did notclaim that the Men in Black came forhis prints or that the dog ate them.) Soall we had left were copies made fromthe originals. The Air Force’s ProjectBluebook listed the Heflin photos as a“hoax.” 

However, “In 1993, Heflin’s Pola roidoriginals surfaced unexpectedly undermysterious circumstances” (http://tinyurl.com/75bp7ba). Heflin had retiredfrom busy and smoggy southern Cali -fornia to a small town in northern Cal-ifornia. He says that he received twocalls from a mysterious woman tellinghim to check his mailbox. When he did,he said he found his original three UFOpolaroids in a plain brown envelope. OrHeflin just made the whole thing up—the “loss” of the originals as well as their“recovery.” Heflin died in 2005. 

Skeptics have argued that Heflin’sUFO appears to be a tiny model, just afew inches in size, hanging from some-thing like a fishing pole propped upover the cab of his van. William K.Hartmann, who investigated the casefor the Condon Report (Case 52,

http://tinyurl.com/7vup348), success-fully replicated Heflin’s photos in ex-actly this manner by using a suspendedlens cap.

However, only in 2006 did a still-anonymous person, using the alias“Enkidu,” make an extremely impor-tant finding. In a discussion thread onthe conspiracy-oriented website AboveTop Secret (www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread208479/pg1), Enkidu ar-gues that Heflin unintentionally cre-ated a 3D photo of his UFO. Assum -ing that the UFO was attached in someway to the truck, by moving the cameraa few inches between the exposures,Heflin has produced a near-perfectstereo pair, as can be seen in stereoviewers. The photos in Figure 1 werereversed by Enkidu to allow easierviewing of the 3D effect without astereo viewer by simply crossing one’seyes. When you do that, the UFO isseen to be tiny. It’s clearly farther awaythan the truck’s mirror but much closerthan the roadside vegetation or the dis-tant trees. Responding to criticism,Enkidu writes, “Yes, it’s possible thatthe UFO moved between the time thefirst photo was taken and the second.But it would have to move exactly hor-izontal to the way the camera moved,because there’s no apparent differencein the size of the top part of the ship. Itcould only tilt forward. It didn’t go upor down, and it didn’t get nearer orcloser. The odds of that happening arepretty slim.” Great work, Enkidu—theHeflin photos are busted! n

Figure 1. Internet commenter Enkidu argues that Rex Heflin inadvertently created a 3D image with two of his photos, supporting the argument that the UFO is actually atiny model.

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