 |
| Friedman, Feschino, Hastings, and Dolan... On UFOs? The total aspect, an in-depth aspect, the aspect's aspect, and the historical aspect. All one needs to start! |
Robert Hastings: The Corinthian Scribe of
An aside... his ufological initiative dovetails neatly, and is subtly ensconced and well reflected in the labors of the three other gentlemen this writer also discovered and learned to ufologically admire over the decades. This writer's ufological referential Quadriga... his Rushmore... about whom he's written extensively. The late Stanton Friedmen, Richard Dolan, and Frank Feschino, Jr….
“UFOs and Nukes” ...and Full Disclosure
by Alfred Lehmberg
In the vaulted halls of modern myth, where the marble pillars of secrecy rise like Doric columns into an unknown and duplicitous sky, one particular name is meaningfully etched by this writer's deliberate and appreciative hand. That name? Robert Hastings.
by Alfred Lehmberg
In the vaulted halls of modern myth, where the marble pillars of secrecy rise like Doric columns into an unknown and duplicitous sky, one particular name is meaningfully etched by this writer's deliberate and appreciative hand. That name? Robert Hastings.
A staid chronicler of our unsettling shadows and a sober herald of officially silenced testimonies, Hastings has been standing time's test as both archivist... and lately provocateur... in that strange concord between UFOs and an observing humankind’s nuclear fire. He's been truly masterful!
His work, UFOs & Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites, is less a book than a reliquary—an especially august housing for the whispered confessions of vetted Air Force veterans who saw the impossible descend upon them in the fallaciously hubristic sanctums of humanity's atomic power! It's a monumental work, reader. It is organized, objective, constructive, comprehensive, flexible, acceptable, specific, and thoughtful! It is able to stand entirely on its own... and has, for any specific pushback, for years!
His work, UFOs & Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites, is less a book than a reliquary—an especially august housing for the whispered confessions of vetted Air Force veterans who saw the impossible descend upon them in the fallaciously hubristic sanctums of humanity's atomic power! It's a monumental work, reader. It is organized, objective, constructive, comprehensive, flexible, acceptable, specific, and thoughtful! It is able to stand entirely on its own... and has, for any specific pushback, for years!
An aside... his ufological initiative dovetails neatly, and is subtly ensconced and well reflected in the labors of the three other gentlemen this writer also discovered and learned to ufologically admire over the decades. This writer's ufological referential Quadriga... his Rushmore... about whom he's written extensively. The late Stanton Friedmen, Richard Dolan, and Frank Feschino, Jr….
Robert Hastings, not as extensively. That is corrected here, to a degree.
Hastings’ journey began not in the cloisters of academia but in the humming corridors of 1967’s Malmstrom Air Force Base, where, as a youth on clean-up detail for an after-school job, he glimpsed radar operators tracking uninvited guests in his Montana skies. "Hey, Robert! ...Come look at this!" He was gob-smacked, and, as his father was rather highly ranked at the base, learned to discover later at dinner that night that there was some real “there” there!
The story was predictably CRUSHED as they all are... but from that fecund seed grew a singular vocation surpassing what had been realized via his degree in Fine Arts! He would endeavor to gather together the scattered fragments of waning testimonies by first-person experiencers, and then bind them together into a mosaic of stark ufological revelation! One is reminded of Frank Feschino’s unrelenting approach to his research subject, Dolan’s singular assessment of his near-completed and heavily cited history of UFOs, or Friedman’s meticulous scientific evaluation of 6 decades plus!
Back to Hastings, over 150 military witnesses, men sworn to silence by the sometimes insensible iron codes of national security, lent their brave voices to Hastings’ archive. Their accounts converge upon a singular motif in the reality of the highly strange and threateningly bizarre, but real, thing! UFOs were disabling nuclear missiles, fuhcrisakes!
The story was predictably CRUSHED as they all are... but from that fecund seed grew a singular vocation surpassing what had been realized via his degree in Fine Arts! He would endeavor to gather together the scattered fragments of waning testimonies by first-person experiencers, and then bind them together into a mosaic of stark ufological revelation! One is reminded of Frank Feschino’s unrelenting approach to his research subject, Dolan’s singular assessment of his near-completed and heavily cited history of UFOs, or Friedman’s meticulous scientific evaluation of 6 decades plus!
Back to Hastings, over 150 military witnesses, men sworn to silence by the sometimes insensible iron codes of national security, lent their brave voices to Hastings’ archive. Their accounts converge upon a singular motif in the reality of the highly strange and threateningly bizarre, but real, thing! UFOs were disabling nuclear missiles, fuhcrisakes!
It was perhaps as if unseen cosmic arbiters sought to remind an arrogantly hubristic humanity of its fragile stewardship over its own threatening if self-inflicted annihilation? Somebody knows.
Unfortunately, Credibility, like Hastings’ Corinthian "capital" and "base," is carved with both flourish and fracture. The fractures are not his. Within the UFO research community and by this writer, Hastings is lauded as a master builder, his columns of testimony rising in honest symmetry and an earnest logic’s strength...
Unfortunately, Credibility, like Hastings’ Corinthian "capital" and "base," is carved with both flourish and fracture. The fractures are not his. Within the UFO research community and by this writer, Hastings is lauded as a master builder, his columns of testimony rising in honest symmetry and an earnest logic’s strength...
Yet, "skeptics" (klasskurtxians!), clad in their fallacious armor of insincere “conventional wisdom” and pompous “feigned empiricism,” dismiss his work as "anecdotal" stonework—ornate but unproven, a cathedral without foundation! That's a risible assessment!
Benjamin Radford and others even accuse Hasting's of re‑polishing old tales, of gilding “discredited” reports with a disingenuous rhetorical sheen. Thus, Hastings stands between worlds: respected by sensible persons in an invisible college of credible people... those credible persons accepting an open-ended UFO explanation... but then doubted (conveniently?!) by that officious academy of persons comfortable at their purloining funding troughs!
Remains! Hastings is a liminal figure, frankly, in the agora of self-revelation’s truth. He knows what he’s seen. Then? He knows what he's experienced...
...See, Hastings did not remain merely the archivist. In 2019, with retired Maine University professor Dr. Bob Jacobs (a man of similar reluctances and reputational concerns to Hastings), he unveiled Confession: Our Hidden Alien Encounters Revealed. Here, the staid chroniclers became the reluctant witnesses, fully aware of the possible consequences of their honest admissions... though, unwilling to pass on with it remaining on their consciences. Their's was a truth needing to be told for the record!
...See, Hastings did not remain merely the archivist. In 2019, with retired Maine University professor Dr. Bob Jacobs (a man of similar reluctances and reputational concerns to Hastings), he unveiled Confession: Our Hidden Alien Encounters Revealed. Here, the staid chroniclers became the reluctant witnesses, fully aware of the possible consequences of their honest admissions... though, unwilling to pass on with it remaining on their consciences. Their's was a truth needing to be told for the record!
This writer understands and has made similar confessions, mea culpas, and admissions. Admitting error is a step up, still! Truly, better out than in. The reader will come to know of that themselves as they winter their own winters and endure their own regrets. We digress...
Cut to the chase... Hastings would astonishingly admit to his own personal alien contact experiences! These were long concealed beneath the drapery of his public work. Why?
This writer knows Mr. Hastings for his intractable character, his superb due diligence, stunning intelligence, and his unblinking self-honesty. The man is virtually egoless, and his lack of unearned hubris is refreshing! One doesn't feel compelled to wonder what his "angle" is, eh?
This writer knows Mr. Hastings for his intractable character, his superb due diligence, stunning intelligence, and his unblinking self-honesty. The man is virtually egoless, and his lack of unearned hubris is refreshing! One doesn't feel compelled to wonder what his "angle" is, eh?
We’ve conversed and corresponded over the years. He admitted to this writer around 2009 his claim of contact experiences. One doesn't know why he'd do that… maybe he wanted it leaked (?)… maybe he just wanted feedback. This writer didn’t leak it. Hastings had asked that his confidence be kept. This writer will keep noncriminal confidences. ...Got some that could shake a person's worldview and stackin' swivel!
This writer's feedback was that he keep that revelation to himself… seriously, so his openness didn’t unfortunately muddy the water on his “UFO and Nukes” initiative. Researcher/Reporter is usually ill-served as a controversial participant.
Verily, his revelation transformed him from historian to participant and from scribe to initiate. ...But let the reader be cautioned!
Verily, his revelation transformed him from historian to participant and from scribe to initiate. ...But let the reader be cautioned!
Hasting's Corinthian style demands that we see this not as "contradiction" but as "apotheosis": the humbly honest archivist stepping into, drawn into, his own archive, the marble column of his substantive archive revealing its own living veins... like SO many others! He wanted to express his whole truth. We old men will feel compelled to do that in the winters of our winters...
What then is the measure of Hastings’ credibility? Consider if Jimmy Carter had been the one to admit to contact experiences? The subject GAINS credibility! It doesn't lose it! Consider Hastings, and by extension, Bob Jacobs—similarly! Observe!
What then is the measure of Hastings’ credibility? Consider if Jimmy Carter had been the one to admit to contact experiences? The subject GAINS credibility! It doesn't lose it! Consider Hastings, and by extension, Bob Jacobs—similarly! Observe!
In the strict calculus of science (or scientism!), Hastings claims remain unverified, the staid testimonies uncorroborated by physical evidence… forget the credibility of the witnesses... and 150 credible people, readers, many backed up by radar, are not to be sneered at! Yet in the mythic register, credibility is not a "ledger of physical proof" but a resonance of the sincere narrative of truths bravely told. Truth, told to be understood, will be believed. In the beginning, we're reminded, was the word... and that's ALL there is!
Sincerely, Hastings’ "word" resonates because it entwines the most potent symbols of our age: UFOs, emissaries of the unknown unknown... and nuclear weapons... those emblems of our potential (?) self-destruction! Together, these form a dialectic of awe and dread, a Corinthian ufological frieze carved upon the edifice of the unsettled and self-denying modernity that humanity contrives for itself out of its own regretable intellectual cowardice. Sad but true.
Thus, Robert Hastings endures as both chronicler and confessor! His legacy is not merely the catalog of testimonies, but to have the courageous audacity to speak of silenced things about himself! Whether skeptic or believer, one must admit: he has raised a ready column in the temple of discourse, a Corinthian pillar adorned with the leaves of secrecy and the scrolls of confession... and he's left an efficacious mark!
Thus, Robert Hastings endures as both chronicler and confessor! His legacy is not merely the catalog of testimonies, but to have the courageous audacity to speak of silenced things about himself! Whether skeptic or believer, one must admit: he has raised a ready column in the temple of discourse, a Corinthian pillar adorned with the leaves of secrecy and the scrolls of confession... and he's left an efficacious mark!
...And in that "temple," the original question lingers like an incense: are the watchers of the skies also the guardians of our nuclear fate? We’ll recall that we'll know nothing with regard to ANY of these matters. Robert Hastings might.
No… he didn’t cross the line. Remains, he may have pierced the veil. Read on.
No… he didn’t cross the line. Remains, he may have pierced the veil. Read on.
