Peter Robbins' thoughts on the History Channel's documentary

[Admin]

Thank you to Peter Robbins for allowing me to post his article here.

-------------------------------------------------

I am an investigative writer who was a consultant to and appeared in the recent History Channel documentary, “Britain’s Roswell,” the latest installment in their “UFO Files” series. Its subject is England’s 1980 Rendlesham Forest UFO incident, the best-known and best documented UFO event in the history of Great Britain. The program was made for The History Channel by Chicago based Towers Productions and first broadcast in the States on December 17; it was shown in the UK a few weeks later.

Repeated involvement in such projects has taught me to expect almost anything in terms of a finished product, from a serious, studied treatment to a highly inaccurate one. Such shows usually end up hovering somewhere between the two. Given the wildly varying quality of information put forward as evidence and the subjective nature of many UFO reports, I appreciate that such programs rarely if ever leave all parties satisfied. Producers of such shows should have the latitude they need to examine and investigate and be allowed to come to their own conclusions in an open and honest manner.

With this understood, I must register my deep disappointment with this program’s significant inaccuracies and in the manner they chose to portray the account of one of the eyewitnesses, former USAF Security Police Specialist Larry Warren. Warren and I co-wrote a book entitled Left At East Gate: A First-Hand Account of the Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident, Its Cover-up and Investigation. I have thought long and hard about whether to even bother registering a complaint about “Britain’s Roswell.” Complaints after the fact often reflect more poorly on the complainant than the accused, and doing so will doubtless have no affect on The History Channel’s keeping the show in their programming rotation, so why bother ? Because when a reputable network airs a documentary that you know for a fact contains significant inaccuracies, they should not be allowed to stand unchallenged.

In its favor, I must say the documentary maintains first rate production values throughout, just as you’d expect in a History Channel feature. But “Britain’s Roswell” does not play fair. These are some of my key objections to the show:

• Larry Warren is never identified as one of the authors of Left At East Gate. On camera he is only identified as “Former Airman, Witness.” This is especially puzzling as Left At East Gate remains the only book on the subject ever written or co-authored by an actual Rendlesham witness. Left At East Gate is never identified or referred to in any part of “Britain’s Roswell,” despite assurances Producer David DiGangi had given me to the contrary. Why exclude all references to this extremely relevant book?

• Four out of the five times that author Georgina Bruni appears on camera, the words “Georgina Bruni, Author, You Can’t Tell the People” appear, appropriately, below her name. On the two occasions I’m on camera, the words “UFO researcher” appears below my name. Why haven’t I been extended the same professional courtesy as Georgina? I am also an author of a respected book on the exact same incident. Why else would the producer have asked this particular “UFO researcher” to take part in this program if not for my expertise, longstanding involvement with this case, and the fact that I co-wrote a book on it?

• The segment prior to that focusing on Warren’s involvement and veracity ends with the narrator saying, “For three years the public is kept in the dark about what happened at the air bases. Then in 1983, a new witness surfaced with a startling claim about the UFO encounter.” Such irresponsible and misleading language can only lead the viewer to understand that the witnesses we’ve already met, former Law Enforcement personnel Jim Penniston and John Burroughs, and former Deputy Base Commander Charles Halt, had already gone public when “new witness” Larry Warren “surfaced” in 1983. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Warren was the first and only eyewitness with the courage and conviction to make their account fully public – years before any of the other witnesses did.

• The narrator lets us know that “Warren, like Charles Halt and Jim Penniston, recalls seeing a glowing craft in the clearing of the Rendlesham woods shortly after Christmas 1980, but Larry Warren is the only airman who claims he saw alien life forms.” This is not true. Quoting Georgina Bruni from You Can’t Tell the People, a book the producer received months prior to the documentary’s deadline, “In January 2001 I talked to a witness who until then had been reluctant to discuss the entities he had seen at the landing site. Only if I promised not to mention his name in connection with this, would he oblige. … These beings had moved out from the landed object and appeared to be surrounded by a surge of electrical energy. Although he could not describe them accurately because they were almost translucent in form, he was able to conclude that they were human looking, like us he said. According to the witness, nobody was prepared to talk about this aspect of the incident. Another person who mentioned entities was Sergeant Bobby Ball. Although his face was blacked out and he was referred to only as Sergeant B, I have been able to identify Ball as the man who told Chuck DeCaro on the CNN Special Assignment programme, that ‘we saw flying objects containing maybe other people or another life form.’”

Ms. Bruni goes on to say, “One must recall that (Sgt.) Ball was with Halt’s patrol during the encounter. … I can only conclude that Halt was involved in this close encounter and is either suppressing the information for fear of ridicule or because he was instructed not to discuss it or is unaware through himself having been ‘messed’ with. This is a term Halt has used when describing what he believes were drug-induced interrogations performed on some of the witnesses.”

• We learn “Warren then watches as a senior officer begins communicating with the beings.” Where did this statement come from? Larry never made it during his Suffolk, UK interview with David DiGangi, nor has he ever made such a claim.

• The voiceover says “Warren recalls being taken against his will by men in dark suits, then being led to an underground facility on the base.” Very misleading and extremely cavalier. Warren was chemically subdued by an individual who sprayed an aerosol container in his face. This caused him to loose major motor functions, collapse, and be loaded into the back of a vehicle like a bag of potatoes, very much against his will. He was then driven to a building with an elevator into which he was dragged, the elevator then descended. It is both inappropriate and inaccurate to characterize such horrendous treatment as being “led.”

• “Another problem with Warren’s version of events,” we’re told, “is that no one can recall seeing him in the woods on the night in question.” This is underscored by Charles Halt: “No one ever recalls seeing him being out there that night. I’ve talked to all the players, and just about everybody that was on even the fringes, and nobody remembers seeing Larry anywhere, except around the base in training.” The unpublished epilogue I turned over to the producer on August 5 contained statements he was free to use or investigate, statements from uncontested military witnesses confirming Larry Warren’s presence in the forest the third night. The most explicit of these was from Greg Battram, a former 81st Security Police Specialist who’d been assigned to D Flight along with Warren that night. Quoting Greg: “I know you were out in that forest ‘cause I saw you out there.”

• It seemed curious to me that Sergeant Adrian Bustinza is shown, mentioned and referred to several times during the documentary, but never in any relationship to Larry Warren. Adrian certainly remembers Larry being present that night. They’d driven out to the area in the same truck and were standing next to each other when the craft appeared in the field. Viewers could have read about it in Larry’s and Adrian’s own words, if “Britain’s Roswell” had included a reference to Left At East Gate.

• “After the story breaks,” relates the narrator, “Warren’s accusations infuriate other witnesses.” Witness John Burroughs tells us that “Something really did happen to us, but there’s no way, the way he was describing what happened to us, and it wasn’t fair to the people who were involved to have that kind of extreme stuff come out.” The event Burroughs had been involved in occurred on the first night. Larry Warren was involved the third night. Burroughs was in the general area on the third night, but not in the farmer’s field when and where “the extreme stuff” transpired. As Charles Halt told Larry and me when we met with him on February 16, 1993, “There were only five people past that point, except when Burroughs, I think, came forward. You had to have been well behind us, at least a hundred, two hundred yards, when you saw the object.”

Larry Warren blew the whistle on the Rendlesham Forest incident in 1982, years before the others had come forward with their accounts. The incident-related information which Larry gave to then-Coventry, Connecticut Police Lieutenant (and UFO investigator) Larry Fawcett, included the names Charles I. Halt, John Burroughs and Jim Penniston. Are “Warren’s accusations” the reason these other witnesses are “infuriated?” Or are their opinions of him colored by his having ufologically outed them more than twenty years prior? The fact remains that none of these witnesses were at the same location as Larry on the third night. As such, they have no more right to pass judgment on what he says he saw or experienced than he has a right to correct or judge their observations or experiences.

It is not every day that a respected television network offers us the possibility of an evenhanded documentary on UFOs. What a shame to see another such opportunity wasted, especially when it’s about a vitally important UFO incident that just marked its twenty fifth anniversary. The producer of “Britain’s Roswell” should have treated each of the witnesses equally, but for whatever reason or reasons he chose not to. Charles Halt and John Burroughs were invited to comment on Larry Warren’s account and involvement in the incident, and did so. Larry on the contrary was never once asked to comment on the other witnesses. Such a strategy only makes for second rate television and biased, so-called documentary filmmaking. In short, The History Channel’s money could have been much better spent. For the reasons enumerated in this paper I think that Producer David Gigangi owes Larry Warren an apology, and by extension, so do The History Channel and Towers Productions, Inc.

Peter Robbins
February, 2006
New York City
probbinsny@yahoo.com

Left At East Gate by Larry Warren and Peter Robbins is published by Cosimo Books and is available from any online book source or bookstore.

[John Burroughs]

Peter
I hope you will respond to this. In your statement you stated Larry never said a senior officer made contact. In the CNN piece he stated LT Col Williams made contact with what ever it was out there and with out looking at it again because its been years I beleive he stated there was some kind of repair going on. That is the part I was refering to as not being fair because that did not happen. As far as the blue lights go all of us have made statements about them and I beleive Halt even stated he felt they may have been under some kind of control. Your right people have stated Warren was out there, but from meeting and talking to Larry he may well have been but as far as his encounter that he stated about Williams I think not and now your saying that never happened. The part of Ailen contact is extreme not what people saw and that is what I feel is unfair Was Larry in the party of 5? or was he just with Bustinza when he had his encounter? Please have someone come forword and state they saw what Larry saw unless your saying his encounter was just with Bustinza. if not just with Bustinza when and what time it happened and who else was out there at the time. If it was only Bustinza then that may explain why he told me Larry was telling his story! Larry was the leader in getting out the story and I am not infuriated with him I would just like to find out what happened to us. As far as the way these shows have been run Halt controls what goes on and allot of times who is in them so there is your answer to that question...