Thou Does Protest Too Much

I opened my email this morning to find an interesting message from Victor Martinez:

BREAKING UFOLOGY FLAME WAR: MUFON's International Director JAMES CARRION Accuses "The OPEN MINDS FORUM" Moderators of Running a Rogue Co-Intel Operation Filled With "USG-DIRECTED AGENTS of INTRIGUE, SABOTAGE and SUBTERFUGE OPERATING FROM A DEN OF DARKNESS, SIN, LIES and DISINFORMATION!"
ATTACK MODE: "I will expose the SERPENTS of SLIME [OM Moderators} for being what they really are: running a rogue, Cold War era-like Co-Intel Operation!"

After I laughed for a good five minutes at the creative spin someone put on this, I thanked the muses for sending some fresh blog material my way.

So let’s talk about what’s really going on here. The two indisputable facts here are:

The owners at OM are less than transparent about their identities. Sure, some of them have names, facebook pages, co-board members that vouch for them, but when the tactic employed is to deflect calls for transparency and something as simple as posting their professional bios, it only fuels speculation.

Disinformation tactics were used heavily in the thread at http://lucianarchy.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=cali1&action=display&thread=6287&page=1 . Now I am not saying that everyone that chimed in is a disinfo specialist, but you have to wonder again why such tactics were used. Do you have to work for the US Government to use disinformation tactics? No, you don’t as they are employed in all walks of life by individuals to corporations.

So how the email Victor sent out was constructed out of these two facts is beyond me.
Now is it paranoid to wonder why this is happening on a board that proclaims to be legitimate? Paranoid is a strong word and I think suspicious would be the better choice.

So to set the record straight, I never called anyone on OM a government agent or OM a counter-intelligence operation and I am sure the vast majority of folks who communicate on OM are just good honest people with an interest in the phenomenon. What I have stated in a previous blog entry is that the two times I have been on the OM message boards, it has felt eerily similar to the time I spent on the Great Lakes Dive Company message boards in 2006 related to the Kinross hoax. What will follow in my next blog article is a detailed comparison of the two experiences and the similarity of tactics employed.

Now, do I suspect that the intelligence agencies have a hand in manipulating truth on Internet message boards? Absolutely! But they can do that on MUFON’s message board as well as OM. Again, what troubles me is that the owners of OM are not only reluctant to espouse identity transparency but also are the same ones using disinformation tactics. That doesn’t necessarily make them government agents but it doesn’t portray them in a positive light either. Why hide behind obscurity in a field that doesn’t need more shadowy behavior, but openness and truth?