Alien Base: The Evidence for Extraterrestrial Colonization of Earth – DISCUSSION
Was Dan Fry really taken for a ride — or was he taking us for a ride? I have dwelled at length on his story for two reasons: first, because I believe it to be fundamental to the understanding of certain extraterrestrial encounters; secondly, because I believe the story to be essentially true. That is not to say that I accept it unreservedly. There are a number of Fry’s claims that require critical commentary.
I first met Fry in the early 1970s during a tour of the United States as a violinist with the London Symphony Orchestra. Then, in August 1976, he invited my friend and co-researcher Louise (Lou) Zinsstag and me to stay with him and his wife Florence at their home in Tonopah, Arizona. I recall that the temperature at the time went up as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit, though, mercifully, the dry desert air made it feel less so. Dan and Florence were very kind hosts and gave us a lot of their time.
During the stay, which lasted nearly a week, I asked Dan many questions about his claims. In the first place, I wanted to know why he is listed, in most of his publications, as ‘Dr Daniel Fry’, holding a ‘Ph.D. from St Andrews College of London, England’. There is no such college in London; furthermore, the ludicrous ‘dignity degree’ of ‘Doctor of Philosophy (Cosmism)’ was conferred on him in April 1960 by the ‘St Andrews Ecumenical University Intercollegiate’, as was evident when I saw the framed ‘degree’ in his home. Enquiries by Philip Klass, a vocal sceptic, revealed that the college was ‘a sort of correspondence school’, where anyone could apply for a Ph.D. by submitting a thesis and paying a modest fee.
‘I don’t think that you could buy a degree there,’ Dan replied. ‘I certainly never paid anything for this one, neither was I ever asked to. It was given for the material in the first edition of my book, Steps to the Stars.’ But Dan,’ I argued, ‘a Ph.D. is normally associated with a recognized university. You can surely sympathize with scientists when they become suspicious of a man who is trying to make his Ph.D. look like an accredited doctorate?’ ‘I’ve never attempted to make it look like that, it’s been others who have done that,’ he answered, somewhat defensively. ‘It doesn’t make any difference to me.’
It may not have made any difference to Fry, but by allowing the phoney Ph.D. to appear on the jackets of his books and publications, as well as on his stationery, it certainly made a huge difference to the degree of acceptance of his claims by the scientific community. Interestingly, though, Steps to the Stars was taken seriously by at least one scientist. A letter to Fry from Parry Moon, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (a copy of which is in my possession) endorses the book thus: Your book, Steps to the Stars, was called to my attention by Alexander Mebane [who] had written a caustic criticism [and] I’m afraid I offended him by disagreeing completely with his analysis . . . Steps to the Stars seemed to me an admirable presentation for the layman. But, as in any popular exposition, some of the ideas were necessarily vague. A more rigorous treatment might be of great value to scientists . . .
Another of my questions dealt with the fact that, in all editions of his first book, The White Sands Incident (first published in 1954), the date of the incident is given as 4 July 1950. Yet 10 years after publication he admitted that the incident actually occurred on 4 July 1949. ‘I had to change it,’ he explained. ‘In the last edition, I told the publisher to change it, but he decided this might not be good for publicity, and he kept it to 1950 after I’d said to change it, because there was now no need to hide the fact that it was 1949.’ ‘So there was a reason?’ I asked. ‘There was a reason,’ Dan replied, ‘because it turned out to be a year later than he had originally planned — that Alan could be here.
He thought it could be done in four years; it actually took five years. Now, had the Pentagon, for example, taken this book seriously, at that time there was a pretty good chance they could have tracked him down. There had to be an escape mechanism. The fact is that on the evening of the Fourth of July 1950 I was not at White Sands — I didn’t arrive there until later in July. And everyone in White Sands Proving Grounds and in Aerojet knows that.’
Fry held several security clearances during his time at White Sands, and when The White Sands Incident was published, he immediately took the first copy to the security section at Aerojet. ‘I said, “Read this over, and if you find any violation of security, speak now.” They read it over, and said there was no violation. And that copy was put into the Aerojet Technical Library — under non-fiction. It happened that the President of Aerojet served a term as Secretary of the Navy, and during that time was flying to Japan when he was supposedly buzzed by a UFO that circled his plane a number of times, in broad daylight and at close range. So this individual knew perfectly well that these things were not just swamp gas.’ Others at White Sands were equally convinced that UFOs were a reality.
Commander Robert McLaughlin confirmed that on 21 April 1949 (the year of Fry’s initial encounter) his team of US Navy scientists tracking a Skyhook balloon at the base observed an unusual silvery object. With the aid of a theodolite and a stopwatch, the scientists were able to ascertain that the UFO was at an altitude of 56 miles, was 40 feet long, 100 feet wide, and that its speed when first seen was seven miles per second. ‘I am convinced,’ said McLaughlin, ‘that it was a flying saucer, and further, that these discs are spaceships from another planet, operated by animate, intelligent beings.’ On another occasion, he reported, two small discs, tracked from five observation posts at White Sands, were seen to pace an Army high-altitude rocket. After circling it briefly, the discs shot off at high speed.
McLaughlin is also quoted as saying: ‘Many times I have seen flying discs following and overtaking missiles in flight at the experimental base at White Sands, New Mexico, where, as is known, the first American atom bomb was tried out.’
Regarding the initial contact, Lou had always been incredulous about the exceptional courage shown by Fry. ‘How could you just step into a dark contraption on a dark night,’ she asked him, ‘with nobody showing, and just a voice?’ He laughed. ‘I did not have all that much courage; I mean, I tell you, my knees were knocking pretty well!’ ‘Well, they told him it was a sampling device,’ added Florence, ‘and he said after he got inside he wasn’t sure that he might not be the sample!’
I have always been dubious about the authenticity of Fry’s 16mm films of UFOs (copies of which are in my possession), particularly an object he said he saw in Oregon in May 1964, which to me looks like a couple of lampshades or similarly shaped devices fixed together and suspended with fine twine. He went into some detail as to the circumstances of the filming, and claimed that some frames show the limb of a cloud coming in front of the saucer.
I remain unconvinced; the movement of the craft gives every indication of being a suspended fake. Perhaps I am wrong. But does this prove that Fry was lying about all his previous experiences? I think not. Most probably, he thought that a few fabricated movie films of ‘saucers’ would bolster his unprovable claims. I have come across a number of contactees who have done just that; Eduard (Billy) Meier being one.
That aside, it seems to me that Fry did take at least one genuine photograph of a UFO (see plate section). The incident took place on the afternoon of 18 September 1954, as he was driving home from work on Garvey Boulevard, near Baldwin Park, California. He had no camera with him so, having just passed a drugstore, he made a U-turn and hastily purchased a Brownie box-camera and film. The UFO was photographed and within minutes the film given to the same store for processing.
What is perhaps most striking about Dan Fry’s account is that part which concerns the technology of flying saucer energy and propulsion. Regardless of his credentials, not only is Fry’s description sophisticated because of his own technical career, but it is inherently more scientifically advanced and theoretically pristine than was anywhere available or studied in 1949-50.
The kind of even now hypothetical physics and engineering that Fry says he was told about by Alan only began to be seriously examined in the late 1980s and in this decade by a few prescient academics and far-reaching experimental engineers (for example, Dr Hal Puthoff), writing in peer-reviewed and critically edited scientific journals that are widely read and highly respected repositories of leading scientific thought, literally on the edge of the twenty-first century.
Fry claimed to have had in-person meetings with Alan at about five-year intervals, but was reluctant to provide me with a description of the man.
Concerning the success of his masquerade, Alan told Fry at their initial meeting, ‘My first real test will come when I walk down the street of any of your larger cities, and if anyone — anyone — turns their head to look at me, then it would mean that I had failed somewhere.’ Dan also remarked that the life expectancy of Alan’s race was about two and a half times that of ours, and that two other individuals would be taking Alan’s place eventually, in an attempt to keep a lid on the possibility of a nuclear holocaust.
Finally, Fry discussed the confusing variety of alien species with which we are confronted. ‘Probably most of the confusion in the field,’ he commented, ‘has been caused by the need of many people to force all of the UFO phenomenon into one hole. Each individual case is an individual event that should be judged on its own merits.
To think that all beings visiting this planet come from the same place, with the same purpose, and in the same type of craft, is like standing on the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway, watching all the people go by and assuming they all come from the same place, with the same purpose, and the same habits. We live in a galaxy that teems with life and intelligence in every direction — once we get our egos under control enough to admit the fact. We’re just one of a series of evolutionary products — and by no means the leading one