Saturday, June 25, 2011

A Response to Robert Hastings

For those unaware, I've been participating in a "polite" discourse with Robert Hastings on Billy Cox's DeVoid Blog site.  Trying to get Hastings to engage in any civil discourse is equivalent to eating Jello with a fork...damn near impossible.  Below is an excerpt from one particular exchange:

"What, Mr. Hebert, no response to my comments regarding what Col. Figel *actually* said about the nature and location of the reports he got from those on-site?! Nice side-step.
As I recall, you refused to accept former Minuteman missile launch officer David Schuur’s email address directly from me and found it elsewhere on your own. Please correct me if I am wrong about that. And, after posting Schuur’s response to you at your website, you tried to explain his experience away in prosaic terms.
Moreover, you never accepted my offer to provide you with Hank Barlow’s email address. Barlow helped restart the Echo Flight missiles and reports a UFO involvement in their shutdown.
It was/is your game-playing and this kind of disingenuousness that makes me thoroughly disinterested in your alleged background and supposed insights." (bold type by Hebert)

and my response:

"...As far as Schurr’s email address, I used what you had provided me. Prove that I used another source! Let’s not forget that I requested James Carlson’s email address which you refused to give me because you stated that you had contacted Eric Carlson and he did not want the address given to me. (I have that very email). BTW, you never contacted Eric Carlson, did you? James was your smoking gun, no use in giving that wealth of information to a former ICBM crew dog that was “snooping” around. So you fabricated Eric Carlson’s “request”. You even went so far as to state to those on the missileforums site that I was a government agent, after I turned the tables on “your” silly assed snipe hunt. That precious bit of comedy can easily be had from the administrators of the missileforums site.
1. Prove to me that I received Schurrs email address from another source.
2. Prove to me that you actually contacted Eric Carlson concernin my request for James Carlson’s email address..."


and more of Robert Hastings:

"... Mr. Hebert, regarding the Schuur issue, you say you have my emails. It’s up to you, not me, to prove that you got his email address directly from me. If I did send it, which I doubt, then I will stand corrected..."

So Hastings makes a claim which I ask that he provides proof to back it up and yet he refuses to do so.  Well Robert, your wrong!  Let's take a trip down memory lane:

From: hastings444@worldnet.att.net
To: timh_37@msn.com
Subject: Re: Special request
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:29:31 -0600


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Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 10:44 PM
Subject: RE: Special request

Thanks Robert, I'll contact Schuur, when he confirms to you of said contact, then perhaps we can discuss Carlson's address?  No need to reply, I know that you are a man of your word.

Tim
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From: hastings444@worldnet.att.net
To: timh_37@msn.com
Subject: Re: Special request
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:55:35 -0600


Did you email Dave Schuur yet? You won't get anymore assistance from me until you do. I have told him to expect your email because I know you are a seeker of facts.
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And:

Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 11:32 PM
Subject: RE: Special request

Robert, sent message to Schuur, will await his response.  No need for the other emails, except for the elder Carlson.  The rest of the statements that matter can be gleamed from your numerous postings throughout the web.  I trust the quotes are accurate?  None the less, you wrote them so you are accountable to their authenticity.  I'd like to get your book, but $25 and shipping is extortion.  James Carlson, in reality, was a fishing expedition, his reaction to you is self explanatory.  It's your reaction to him that fascinates me.  You devote 50% of your postings bashing the poor bastard before you can get to the main point of the your article.  I had scroll down to infinity to get to where any substance could be comprehended.  BTW, has Schuur been to the forum site? I invited him to take a peek at the thread, unless you have guided him to it already.

Tim
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So Robert, above is my proof.  Do you still deny it?  I would expect a written retraction via post on Cox's blog, that is if you have any sense of integrity and honor.


As far as my Minot article featuring Schuur, I treated Schuur with the utmost respect.  My actual email contact and Schuur's reply in listed in the article. Your seemingly problem with the article is that I didn't endorse your point of view, plain and simple.  If Mr. Schuur has a problem with the article then he is most welcome to comment...that is, if you'll let him.


The same goes with Henry Barlow, his comments are certainly welcomed here, again, if you'll let him.  BTW, my Barlow article was taken from your interview with him.  Was your article inaccurate?


I also would like a clarification concerning your claims that you had direct contact with Eric Carlson regarding your releasing James Carlson's email per my request.  I have direct information that you never contacted the elder Carlson and used a fabrication as an excuse in not giving me the email address.


Most of my readers will probably find the above disagreement childish, which I have to agree in part.  Even after my exchanges with Hastings, I had to shake my head and smile.  Two grown men arguing over an email address.  Yet after all of this, what did it really matter if I had received Schuur's email address from a source other than Hastings?  Rather juvenile behavior coming from such an esteem UFO researcher, at least, that's the impression.   And the same can easily be said about me.  Perhaps Hastings merely forgot about giving me the address, after all it was nearly two years ago.  But this brings up a salient point, if Hastings can forget about this one little two year old email exchange, how can he expect that Figel, Meiwald, Jamison, Barlow and others can remember the finer details of something that happened 40-plus years ago.

8 comments:

  1. Now you see why I believe Robert Hastings has lied so much that he no longer knows what story to sell! I have numerous emails from him as well in which his consistent reliance on dishonesty is a well-proven characteristic of his daily bread.

    I can't help but laugh at his consistent efforts to "prove" that Col. Figel's comments as published by Robert Hastings are an accurate measures of his opinion, especially since all he's been doing is publishing and republishing the same old trash from 2008, after Col. Figel pretty defintively crapped all over that little party starting in March, 2010. That, after all, is the only reason Hastings told everyone for a nearly a full year that I never even spoke to Col. Figel - a desperate ploy that only a true idiot would have even tried, when proving the opposite is so damn easy!

    And now he's trying to tell the world that his recordings are actually from March 2010, which is an even bigger joke! After all, if he had recorded anything at all from March 2010 that could answer the very definite and devastating blistering that Col. Figel's complete and utter rejection of Hastings' entire case truly represents, why didn't he release it just before his silly little press party on September 27, 2010? After all, everybody who had previously considered him a credible source had reached the end of patience after 6 months of NOTHING in response to Figel's accusations! And then the day before the big show he releases another stupid little tape recording allegedly recorded by Salas in 1996? God, what a laugh that was!

    So now he produces more crap from 2008, but he's saying it's from March 2010? Ha!! Prove it, you pathetic clown!

    Why is it the Robert Hastings only uses audio recordings for this one case? With every other case, he's so proud and cocky, bragging about the written and notarized documents he's got - crowing like a peacock on Christmas Day about how this establishes for all time the truth of his claims! So why does he rely on these audio recordings that have no provenance and can't be confirmed by anybody as anything at all worth listening to in regard to Echo Flight alone? Since when is crap like this believable testimony? How does evidence created in the closet substantiate any claims at all?

    Col. Walt Figel has already gone on the record already regarding all of this - repeatedly! Everything Hastings keeps bringing up, all of this old nonsense that Figel publically eviscerated when he insisted upon releasing his own written statements instead of allowing Robert Hastings to torture all of the truth out his memories, proves nothing except Robert Hastings' own desperation.

    You know, Tim, when Hastings first released this new load of rubbish, he told me that "The reason I posted the full tapes of my conversations with Figel is so that your lie about my taking his words out of context will be exposed." He wrote that on June 10, and posted it at http://cnufos.ning.com/profiles/blogs/robert-hastings-exposes-james?xg_source=activity . It's still there; go take a look!

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  2. Well, I've also been stating for months now that Hastings never recorded anything with Col. Figel after 2008, and I've pointed out repeatedly (and have produced the emails with full headers, etc., that he wrote as proof of this) that he lied to the owners of "Reality Underground" when he told them immediately after my own interview with Figel in March 2010 (like 2 days later) that he and Robert Salas had also called Figel and had recorded Figel's supposed assessment that my claims were wrong, and that Figel had refuted what my father has always stated: that there was no UFO at Echo Flight. I've been publishing since June 2010 that this email illustrates what I've always believed: that the first place Robert Hastings always goes when faced by those who question his credibility is straight to the Very Big Lie. Now this is all proven; there is no doubt that he made these claims, and he continued to make them for almost a year, insisting not only that Figel has supported his interpretation of these alleged "memories" and "interviews", as Hastings insists upon calling them, but that "Carlson has never even talked to Figel."

    Now you tell me how in the world he's supposed to prove to the world that I lied when I said "Figel's claims were taken out of context by Robert Hastings", by producing audio recordings that not only can't be proven as a complete record of anything by Col. Figel, but were supposedly recorded on a completely different date from the context I've repeatedly discussed? How does that establish anything to do with "context"? After all, what possible context could there be in something that has never been recorded?

    Anyway, when he started producing this mess of a supposed "spoken record" that he only now insists was recorded in March 2010, I knew right off it had to be a lie, because Bobby's not that bright. You see, I call attention to March 2010, and that's what he responds to - just as he's doing now. He's like a little animal - all reaction, and very little thought. The fact that Col. Figel's last and strongest rebuke of Hastings' many fictions was drafted by him on September 24, 2010 has slipped Hastings' unfortunate mind. He's only reacting to public claims of his dishonesty, not the actual record of events established by Col. Walt Figel, the deputy commander of Echo Flight on March 16, 1967. In his pathetic attempts to erase my claims, he's forgotten entirely that I'm just a guy in the audience. Of course, he can't really attack Walt Figel and still claim that Walt Figel's claims as interpreted by Robert Hastings are the last and only gospel, can he? So he attacks James Carlson, and ignores the tattered waste of his insignificant little story about a flying saucer and a bunch of nuclear missiles, failing to see what really lies within the ruins of his own credibility: nothing - no UFO, no flying saucer, no outside origin of the spark that took ten missiles offline. Nothing.

    Robert Hastings first told everyone that he's responding to my insistence that he took Figel's claims of 2008 out of context. So he presents these tapes to disprove that assertion, a ridiculous assumption depending on the very tools that we rightly hold in contempt.

    Then he decides to respond to my insistence that he's been lying for over a year regarding Figel's disclosure of my supposedly irredeemable conclusions. So, to change pace, he changes his mind, and now reports that these recordings are from March 2010.

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  3. This, of course, being another reckless joke at his own expense, leads to even more questions that he can't answer. For instance, if these recordings he now claims to have made in March 2010 ever existed, then why the Hell didn't he produce them during the six months prior to his press conference when the entire world was waiting for him to produce what he repeatedly claimed he was going to produce? So he releases them over a year after the fact, now that nobody on the planet except a few Halloween flakes are willing to trust anything he has to say? Very amusing, Robert!

    Unfortunately, throughout all of it, Hastings has neglected to deal with the embarrassing fact that Figel's assertions are not single statements to refute, like he considers my own, but instead represent a process of rebuke, a series of insistent commentaries that disavow everything he and Robert Salas have attempted to establish. His failure to notice this is equivalent to his discussion of single details in a sad attempt to discount the mass of evidence that numerous analysts beside myself, such as you, Tim, have produced. How many times have I listed for him the many reasons, the dozens of already confirmed facts, only to have him ignore all but the least detailed and most difficult to establish points of contention? A dozen? Three dozen? And he responds only to the weakest? How unfocused is that type of defensive strategy, I wonder ...

    The fact that Hastings even attempts to do so is kind of sad; it's like he's unable to see that his attempts to substantiate a record of events are worth nothing if he can't prove the value or even the existence of the records he's trying to use.

    Whatever his claims may eventually morph into, one fact, however, remains very clear: Col. Walt Figel has said repeatedly that both Hastings' and Robert Salas' tales about a UFO are false, that Salas created them from nothing and that Hastings has publicized them for his own gain. Since the evidence, by an extremely wide and convincing margin, supports what both Figel and my father have convincingly asserted, such a strategy seems pointless. Frankly, Robert Hastings' attempts to vilify what he can't convincingly dispute or disprove are just more heaps of molten slag on Robert Salas' silly little flying saucer and the wallet that both men have been trying to turn it into.

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  4. The issue of the "new" Figel interview, v.2010, echos that of the affidavits that all of the participants at the D.C. press conference produced as proof positive that every finite detail of their stories were gospel. This is what I had coined the attempt to "reset" all of the disconnected stories. In other words, forget what Hastings wrote about all of them 10 to 15 years ago. This is their "true" version of events and you know its true because they all signed affidavits. Basically I find this logic hard to swallow. It appears that this is exactly the same approach with Figel's interviews.

    On another note, unless I'm mistaken, Meiwald was not at the press conference. If Salas insists that Meiwald backs his version of events at Oscar, why not have him there with a signed affidavit legally attesting such?

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  6. Good question Tim, and by the same token Figel. What I find interesting is his concern that you didn't get Shurr's email from him... hmm.

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  7. I can confirm absolutely that my father never told Robert Hastings not to give you my email address. But it's not the first time that Robert has lied about my family, as you well know. He just doesn't like it when people decide to take a closer look at his ridiculous little folk tales. I suspect that's because he's very much aware of how little of it can be confirmed, as well as how much of it is made up of outright lies - such as his interpretation of Col. Walt Figel's alleged accountings, as well as my father's.

    And Robert Salas continues to say nothing ...

    Considering the blistering that Hastings has been going through for so long now as a result of his own improprieties, that in itself is something of an idictment.

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  8. James, thanks for bringing that tid bit up...you were my source ("....I have direct information...") You and I discuss this some time ago and confirmed that Robert never contacted your father about my request. Yes, Salas "wisely" remains silent unless at a press conference.

    AD: Right...what difference did it make how I got Schuur's information. You notice that he contacted Schuur ahead of time to give notice of my potential contact...would to have loved to have been privy to that conversation, or should I say witness prep.

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