40 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Waste Your Money, April 20, 2007
This review is from: The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don't Want You to Know (Mass Market Paperback)
Too bad I can't give a "minus star" rating.
Kal Korff's book "Roswell: What they don't want you to know," is pretty much a bashing expose of alleged lies and confusions spread, supposedly, by the many witnesses to the legendary Roswell UFO crash who have come forward over the years. He takes Jesse Marcel apart, he takes the fireman's daughter's story apart; he rips the undertaker's story to pieces; he takes Phil Corso's story apart; you name it, he bashes it to bits. He even claims to have located the origin of the "little sticks" with hieroglyphics on them" seen by several of the so-called witnesses never mind that this "find" is contradicted by his "balloon theory" as well as the fact that the military changed its story yet again, even after Korff's book.
The problem is that, despite the fact that all the stories have been dissected by this guy apparently so effectively, there ARE still things he cannot account for, and explanations that he makes that simply don't fit his thesis. On the one hand, he claims that the Roswell base people instituted a cover up of a top secret balloon project, and on the other hand, he says that the Roswell base did not KNOW about the top secret balloon project because it was so secret! That is completely irreconcilable.
Dealing with the crafty twisting and distorting of the work of other people that contaminates nearly everything in this book would be a labor of Hercules. (Cleaning the Augean Stables comes to mind.) For but one example, the way Korff treats the testimony of the late Brigadier General Arthur Exon provids an interesting insight into not only Korff's book, but his deviant mind. Korff writes:
"There is no excuse for how Exon's 'testimony' is misrepresented in the Randle-Schmitt book. It is blatant fiction on the part of the authors...Randle and Schmitt were deceptive in their presentation of both Exon's recollections and his supposed 'involvement' in the Roswell affair."
The indictment rests, as it happens, on the accusation that Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt presented Exon's remarks as if he were relating first-hand testimony, when actually he was only reporting things he'd heard from others.
The question is, of course, what did Exon say?
As Kal himself tells us (see p. 93), Exon talks about Roswell debris being flown to Wright-Patterson. "The boys who tested it," Exon says, "said it was very unusual....It had them pretty puzzled."
Now, is that "first-hand", "second-hand" or what?
The fact is that Exon, an Air Force general, is telling what he's heard about Roswell. More than this, what Exon says about the Roswell debris are the same kinds of things that many of the first-hand witnesses say! If you put any weight on Exon's testimony (as a General), the Mogul theory [the glorified weather balloon explanation offered by the Air Force in 1994] is pretty much dead in the water.
Let's take a look at what the well-known music critic, Greg Sandow, wrote about this matter:
Even the passage Kal quotes doesn't support his view. Here's how Kal presents it: "To read the Randle-Schmitt book, it appears that Exon corroborates the Roswell UFO recovery by providing impressive-sounding testimony that appears to be firsthand. 'We heard the material was coming to Wright Field....It was brought into our material evaluation labs. I don't know how it arrived but the boys who tested it said it was very unusual.' Exon described the material: '[Some of it] could be easily ripped or changed....there were other parts of it that were very thin but awfully strong and couldn't be dented with very heavy hammers....It was flexible to a degree,' and, according to Exon, 'some of it was flimsy and was tougher than hell and almost like foil but strong. It had them pretty puzzled.'"
"To almost anyone reading this," Kal writes, "it would appear that...[Exon] was a firsthand source who was present and personally saw what he describes." But I don't see it that way at all. Consider these statements: "We heard the material was coming....I don't know how it arrived, but the boys who tested it said...It had them pretty puzzled." Isn't it clear that Exon isn't speaking of first hand knowledge? Who wouldn't understand that Exon didn't handle this debris himself?
A page later in the Randle-Schmitt book comes another Exon quote, which Kal doesn't reprint: "The metal and material was unknown to anyone I talked to. Whatever they found, I never heard what the results were. A couple of guys thought it might be Russian but the overall consensus was that the pieces were from space."
Again, it's perfectly clear that Exon didn't handle or analyze the material himself, and even that his knowledge was limited. But he appears to think he'd spoken to people who knew at least something about what the analysis had shown. How sure was he of this knowledge? Let me quote a few suggestive passages. First, an Exon quote from Randle's book: "I know [my emphasis] that...[General Ramey] along with the people out at Roswell decided to change the story while they got their act together and got the information into the Pentagon." (UFO Crash at Roswell, paperback, p. 111.) Another Exon quote from Randle: "I just know [again my emphasis] there was a top intelligence echelon represented and the President's office was represented and the Secretary of Defense's office was represented..." (He's talking about the secret UFO committee that he's sure existed; UFO Crash, p. 232.)
And here's something Exon said on the tape, which wasn't quoted in Randle's book. Kevin asks, referring to stories we've all heard about alien corpses at Wright-Patterson: "You've heard the rumors about the little bodies, haven't you?" "Yes, I have," answers Exon. "In fact, I know people that were involved in photographing some of the residue from the New Mexico affair near Roswell." Here's something else, about how Exon knows that there were alien bodies from Roswell at Wright-Patterson: "People I have known who were involved with that" told him so. [Sandow's emphasis.]
Look back at the quote Kal thinks is so damning: 'We heard the material was coming to Wright Field....It was brought into our material evaluation labs. I don't know how it arrived but the boys who tested it said it was very unusual.' Exon described the material: '[Some of it] could be easily ripped or changed....there were other parts of it that were very thin but awfully strong and couldn't be dented with very heavy hammers....It was flexible to a degree,' and, according to Exon, 'some of it was flimsy and was tougher than hell and almost like foil but strong. It had them pretty puzzled.'"
Given the full context of Exon's remarks...and bearing in mind everything I've quoted from Kevin's interview with him....isn't it clear (a) that Exon certainly thought he knew quite a bit (even if not first hand) about the subjects he was quoted on, that (b) he says quite clearly that he'd talked to people who were involved first-hand, and (c) that therefore the passage Kal quotes from Kevin's book is really quite reasonable in both its tone and content? I don't think it misrepresents Exon at all. (Here's another quote from Exon, from the tape: "Most of the people you're talking to are a little bit like me. Close enough to know that there was something happening. They had no direct responsibility for any of it." Anyone who reads the complete sections on Exon from Randle's books will, I think, form exactly that impression.)"
Kal Korff has made his career out of exposing the allegedly false, or exaggerated claims, of others. But what about ole Kal himself?
On his website, Korff claims, among many, many other things, to have been "a key, expert witness in the O.J. Simpson murder trial CIVIL lawsuit".
If you check the list of witnesses, from Court TV's website, you will not find Kal Korff's name. His misleading claim to have been an "expert witness" in the Simpson trial is apparently supposed to make him sound more credible.
As Kevin Randle (
Roswell Ufo Crash Update: Exposing the Military Cover-Up of the Century) reports, Kal Korff also claims to be a captain in an Israeli organization that he describes as a "`meta-organization' so there won't be some fancy building that can be targeted." He says that you can't "Google" it because the English version of the name isn't quite accurate and you need the Hebrew name. Randle asks, quite reasonably, "why not supply that as some have requested? The only things you can learn about this secret organization that Korff insists on naming only in the loose English translation takes you back to Korff driven documents. If another researcher attempted to pull off something like this, Korff would be all over him."
In short, this book consists mainly of Korff slinging allegations, but providing no evidence to make his case. If you want to waste your money to take a look, go for it, but I think that Korff is probably already well-paid to disseminate this twisted nonsense. I'm sorry I contributed to his support even if it was a good lesson in seeing how a deviant mind operates.
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40 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Correct, but highly annoying., April 21, 2000
This review is from: The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don't Want You to Know (Mass Market Paperback)
Kal K. Korff (a name that presents one of the more regrettable monograms in authordom) is the sort of person who very much enjoys being right, and in "The Roswell UFO Crash," he is certainly right. He is most likely correct in his evaluation of the "eyewitness" testimony presented by those who would have us believe that an alien spacecraft crashed in the New Mexico desert (unreliable at best, fraudulent at worst), in his presentation of the formerly top-secret balloons of Project Mogul as the prosaic explanation for what actually crashed on Mac Brazel's farm in 1947, in his strident debunking of Philip Corso's "Day After Roswell" fiction, in his exposing of the "Alien Autopsy" video as a clumsy hoax, and in his overall assessment of the scientific validity of the existing evidence for extraterrestrial visitation of our planet (nonexistent, that is).
All of this doesn't make Korff's presentation more palatable. He is by turns egotistical, pedantic and condescending. His prose is uninspired, usually tending toward a breathless, overheated style exemplified by the crass overuse of exclamation points and italics for emphasis. If you ever wondered what a skeptic would sound like if he wrote in the same infantile manner that commonly characterizes the true UFO believers, this book provides the answer.
Beyond issues of style, however, Korff's logic is prone to harboring rather wide gaps, so all too often when he states that an assertion of the UFO believers has been proven untrue, he's not entirely correct. Furthermore, the more substantive contributions to debunking the Roswell myth appear to be derived from the work of others, most notably Robert Todd. After reading the extensive quotes from Todd's work in this book, I rather wished that he had written "The Roswell UFO Crash" rather than Korff. As it is, Philip Klass' "The Real Roswell Crashed Saucer Cover-Up," while failing to cover as much ground as this book, is a much more satisfying read.
One final note: the packaging of the mass-market paperback version of this book is downright deceptive. One could read both covers and the introduction without realizing that this represented the work of a skeptic/debunker. I suppose this might be a useful way of roping in readers who would otherwise pass it over, but coupled with Korff's style of writing it contributes to the overall sordid feel of the whole affair.
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