Here are the last two pages of Part 5 of “The Answer,” John’s private summation of his conclusions as of 1967. There’s more on the organization of the Androids, their reliance on contactees for supplies, the “Plus Machine,” and strangeness with his telephone. Although John says, “If all of this sounds unbelievable to you, just wait… we are only beginning,” he continued for only a few more pages.
Did Keel ever repudiate this paranoid thesis? I understand he came to discount it, but since this was a private document, did he ever even semi-publicly say, “Boy, was I off on this one?”
Comment by Paul Thompson — October 7, 2021 @ 6:46 am
I’ll enumerate a few of the contradictions in which Keel, an otherwise intelligent man, seems to incur in this document:
• The androids are made not of living cells but of artificial flesh and they don’t age or grow. Yet they need to eat, have internal organs and are vulnerable to our microbes.
• They have complete disregard for their own lives and will commit suicide if their overlords order them to do so. But they are terrified of anyone in uniform —even supermarket employees and firemen— and are afraid of weapons. They are also afraid of doctors and of being dissected despite the fact that Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy “they do not feel pain as we do” and don’t fear death.
• They all have the power to possess our minds at will. And yet their plan has involved centuries of acting furtively. They live “in hiding, fearing for their safety”.
• They can appear and disappear at will but their main means of transportation is cars.
• Their cars have foreign license plates yet they sometimes don’t have license plates and the police don’t seem to bother them at all. Then why have any
license plates? And if the police don’t bother them, why are they afraid of the police or of anyone in uniform?
• Keel says that “their favorite food is olives” yet elsewhere he says “their main food is ordinary table salt”. Salt has no nutrients and no calories. It’s curious that in one communication they call themselves The Very Good People like the fairies in Robert Kirk’s book The Secret Commonwealth, yet in that book it is stated that the Good People “never eat anything salt”.
• “Stealing and killing are perfectly natural to them for they have no consciences and no training in ethics”, says Keel. Yet elsewhere Keel says “UFO occupants do not kill”.https://www.johnkeel.com/?p=4745.
• The androids can control anyone, yet they themselves are “mindless robots” under the control of their leaders. And the leaders are also under some kind of central control. That’s a lot of controlling! Sounds like Keel had a thing about control and being controlled.
• The androids can read minds, but their bases have elaborate telephone systems that tap phones “with tape recorders”.
• They are artificial constructs yet they can breed with us and create millions of hybrids.
• The androids are confused, behave like schizoid personalities and are picked up by police and taken to mental asylums, yet the have infiltrated our government and industry and teach at our colleges!
• They weaken our will with maconacide, a substance found in angel hair dropped by flying saucers and in fluoride. Since they can already control our behavior one wonders why they need to weaken our wills. By the way, fluoride is an ion of fluorine, an element. Elements don’t “contain” any other substances. “Maconacide” seems to be a word used only by Keel.
• More girls are now being born than boys (absolutely not true).
Keel was a professional writer who wrote for television. Yet this stuff wouldn’t make it as science fiction. He must have been in a peculiar mental state to tolerate so many contradictions. Contradictions he would not have accepted in others. His later theories about the superspectrum contain just as many contradictions but at least they are much less melodramatic.
Comment by Mestiere — October 7, 2021 @ 8:14 am
Yes, he was certainly in a peculiar mental state. He was smart, ambitious, hard-working, and (as he put it) “a reading machine.” But he was also an autodidact who dropped out of high school, and had no training in methodology. I suspect there was some confirmation bias is his assessment of this material: he wanted to be the one who finality solved the UFO puzzle.
Comment by Doug — October 7, 2021 @ 9:34 am
I think he mentioned in an interview that he had kept a diary in which he had become far too credulous, which I assume referred to the “Special Cases” file. He also said at some point that locations he thought were UFO bases were actually military bases and missile silos. However, it’s likely that his public writings around 1967 were informed by these private conclusions.
Comment by Doug — October 7, 2021 @ 9:40 am
What fascinates me is how much of the apparently weirdest stuff is now confirmed as being CIA or AFOSI activity, including the phone call oddities, lack of tracing of calls, “imposter” officers “pretending” to be from the air force (they actually were from the air force and for some reason acting delberately weird).
Same with this stuff. The contradictions are because he is combining several types of different reports into a single combination to try and put it all under one label. Sorted back out into individual data points it makes more sense, whether one believes it or not. Likewise the beings who say they work directly for God – well that would make them angels (or devils) or at least fit them into an ethereal or spiritual or even religious context much better than a nuts and bolts alien planet context. Going through Keel’s material on that basis is amazing because the sheer amount of stuff he collected is a repository of modern American folklore. He’s at his weakest as an author when he synthesizes rather than simply reports.
Comment by WHITEFRANK — October 14, 2021 @ 8:58 pm
The late ’60s were also years of political turmoil, with a lot of talk about revolution. Some of the military and intelligence activity may have been more motivated by that. And I have to agree that much of John’s material was not conducive to synthesis, although I can understand why he wanted to make the attempt.
Comment by Doug — October 19, 2021 @ 11:41 am
This was written before the pod matured, in the guest room.
Comment by BRIAN john KRAJCI — October 21, 2021 @ 11:23 pm