Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Still More on Rhodes























Sourcerer said...


If my lead on the identity of the other photographer is accurate, and there was a classified project, it was might have been the Navy's.


cda said...

Was there a movie about Al Chop's "experiences"? It is new to me. Maybe you are referring to the 1956 movie, privately produced but with some AF personnel in it. Was Chop in that one? Was Ruppelt? Keyhoe? My memory is a bit shaky on this.

I do not take kindly to those who possess phoney degrees, as Rhodes' certainly appears to have. If it was a PhD "issued by the government" it ought to be called something else, maybe a DIG (doctorate issued by government).

KRandle said...


The movie was UFO which was sort of Al Chop's experiences with the UFO question. I think Tom Tower played Chop. When I talked to him, he said he hadn't seen the movie in a long time. I had a copy sent it off to him.

I don't think that Rhodes was being particularly disingenuous with his claim. I believe, when he worked for the government, he was told that he had the equivalent of a Ph.D. and he just ran with that, probably with more enthusiasm than was warranted.

I know that when someone claims military service and rank that he or she didn't have, it annoys me, which is why I went after Willingham. He was not a colonel, Air Force officer or fighter pilot. So I understand your notion here.

I have some leads to the other photographs and the Air Force agency which might figure into this. I'm chasing those now...

And I wonder if the folks as ASU might have been annoyed with Rhodes, not so much with his personality, but because of this claim of a "government-issue" Ph.D.

At the moment, I see no reason to reject the photographs as fake. They might not show an alien craft, but I don't believe Rhodes created them.

Lance said...

Hi Kevin,

I just wanted to say that I have certainly enjoyed your posts on this topic. I was unaware of the photo (shockingly) and appreciate your bringing it up.

It does seem that you go a bit headfirst into defending Rhodes--is everything he did perfectly innocent and everything the investigators did nefarious?


KRandle said...

Lance -

I'm not sure that I'm defending Rhodes. It just seemed to me that when reading the case file (I have the microfilms) that the government went overboard in their attacks on him. He was just a musician who really lived off his wife's income. They didn't like his Panorama Research Laboratory. The neighbors all said the same thing about him that used nearly the same words which suggests they were being fed some of the statements. They didn't like his degree, and as CDA noted, that was something that created trouble. James McDonald tried to get to the bottom of it... and the one source I found has dodged my question twice which suggests the statements about the degree by Rhodes are over the top.

The Air Force rejects the photographs as faked, but I can't find a good reason for that. Rhodes photographed something and I don't think he faked them. I have a couple of leads there and am waiting for the results (or answers to my questions).

The case file seems to indicae a careful character assassination, which is something that I find in other cases. I'll see where all this goes.

I would love to find the solution to this... one way or another. As I mentioned, I was sort of dragged into this, but it has caught my imagination. I'll let everyone know exactly what I find... including if I identify what the object really was.

steve sawyer said...


Any comment on that, Kevin?