From: Gildas Bourdais <bourdais.gildas.nul>
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2009 17:35:08 +0100
Archived: Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:22:02 -0500
Subject: Re: Bernard Thouanel Interview


>From: Christophe Grelet <greletchristophe.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <post.nul>
>Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2009 20:05:51 +0000 (GMT)
>Subject: Bernard Thouanel Interview

>Hi,

>You will find an interview with journalist Bernard Thouanel here:

>http://tinyurl.com/ycq7jb8


List,

Here are my comments on that interview of Bernard Thouanel.

I find this interview very polemical. The aviation journalist
Bernard Thouanel, now established in the United States, once
more criticizes French ufology, public as well as private and
supports, on the contrary, the American policy. As for France,
everybody gets a turn: Cometa, Geipan, the "repas ufologiques" -
free monthy gatherings and talks in a growing number of cities -
and more particularly some ufologists like me, regarded as
hopeless and incompetents.

There is a central argument of Thouanel's, on which I want to
focus and comment. According to him, there are many more secrets
in France than in the United States. In the US he explains, you
can always find a back-file thanks to FOIA. Whereas in France
you find practically nothing. The Geipan files are sanitized,
and it's peanuts, he proclaims!

Thouanel remains silent about sixty years of American policy of
secrecy, which he had exposed himself in one of the first
special issues of the popular magazine VSD on UFOs in July 2001.
His report, entitled UFOs - USA The Reasons For Secrecy, cited
the military rules established as early as 1948, forbidding
pilots to talk. The following year, he published a very solid
article by David Rudiak in favour of the Roswell UFO crash. Now,
he gives the impression of having forgotten all that!

Yes, there are certainly secret files in France, but there is an
essential difference between the official attitudes of the two
countries.

In France, Geipan admits officially the reality of UFOs - for
example the book by Yves Sillard, president of the Steering
committee of Geipan - which the Pentagon still denies. Many
observers around the world have understood that difference. It
looks like Thouanel, who incidentally is proud of his good
relations with the USAF, now tries to hide that situation behind
a smoke screen.

This discourse leads Thouanel to deprecate authors who point to
the American policy of secrecy. He considers me, for one, as a
kind of crank.

But, how could he ask me to write articles for his magazine VSD?

In 2005 I wrote three articles, published in July. One on
abductions (12 pages), one on Varginha (6 pages), and one on
Brazilian military files (2 pages). A total of twenty pages: not
too bad for a crank!

He thanked me warmly in two messages, in August. But after six
months of silence beginning in March 2006  and without warning
he began to bombard me on the Internet. First with grotesque
caricatures, sent anonymously - but he was quickly identified,
having not changed his IP - and later with violent messages, in
which he seemed to discover my existence as a pitiful ufologist.

I wondered what had happened, but then I realized that it was
the same month that Nick Redfern strenuously refuted, in the
MUFON UFO Journal, my critique of his insane anti-Roswell book
Body Snachers In The Desert which the Journal had published in
November 2005.

What a curious coincidence!

My impression is that, in the United States some people did not
like my article.

I could tell more but I prefer to stop here.


Cordially,

Gildas Bourdais



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