Klass act, no principles

By Billy Cox

A blast from the past animated the blogosphere earlier this month when a buddy of famed “Fire in the Sky” UFO abductee Travis Walton accused a dead debunker of attempted bribery. Steve Pierce said he — Pierce — had been offered $10k to say Walton had hoaxed the whole thing back in 1975. 

De Void has no insight into this moot and meaningless kerfuffle. But De Void knew Phil Klass, the target of the allegation. Or rather, De Void talked to Klass on a number of occasions, because Klass was always the go-to guy journos contacted whenever they drew the short straw and had to write about UFOs. He seemed the logical choice. As senior editor for Aviation Week & Space Technology, Klass was Mr. Insider, the establishment’s sensible “reality check” authority you could always count on for “balance.” Klass never met a UFO he couldn’t explain, and he made it his life’s calling to reassure the Fourth Estate they were wasting their time, that they’d be better served chasing rocs and griffins.
Klass was a prolific writer who dismissed the Walton controversy as confabulation in his 1983 book UFOs: The Public Deceived. De Void was just beginning this forlorn and dreary journey back then. No reason for a newbie to doubt him. Except for, well, maybe this one case in Klass’ book concerning three people who suffered acute UFO radiation burns in Texas in 1980. Klass’ take on what became known as the Cash-Landrum incident stopped me cold. Because I’d actually done my homework on that one. And that’s when I got that first queasy feeling that the American press was routinely quoting a man who had a pathological disregard for truth.
I’d gone to Texas and interviewed the victims — Betty Cash, Vicki and Colby Landrum — as well as other witnesses who’d seen the military helicopters that were either escorting or pursuing the UFO. Cash and the Landrums authorized MUFON investigator John Schuessler to share their medical records with me, which he did. The story was complex and gruesome.
For years, Klass had badgered the victims, and Schuessler, for access to their hospital records. Aware of his proclivities, they refused to comply. “I said, look Phil, why don’t you come up with what you think happened, publish it, and after you do that, we’ll be happy to supply you with the records,” recalls Schuessler from his home in Colorado.
Klass condensed Cash-Landrum into a single page. Rather than posit an alternative scenario, he simply ascribed the whole thing to a hoax founded upon pre-existing medical conditions. Even the Army’s own Inspector General investigation specifically cited a lack of evidence for a hoax.
“Klass was a low-life and a bully who used his Aviation Week credentials to hold himself up as an expert,” says Schuessler, retired project manager for space shuttle flight operations at Johnson Space Center. “He just made up stories any way he saw fit.”
De Void had one face-to-face encounter with Klass in 1987, during a MUFON symposium at American University. Whitley Strieber’s first-person abduction epic, Communion, had just rolled and was making bestseller lists in the nonfiction category. Klass, who attended Strieber’s keynote speech, had written that Strieber was probably suffering from brain damage.
The next day, I met Klass at a deli for lunch. He repeated his assertion that Strieber was plagued with frontal lobe epilepsy. Then he lowered his voice, drawing yet another reporter into his sage confidence, and said he wanted to go off the record. “Whitley Strieber is a troubled man,” he said. He produced a sad smile, like some wise old avuncular Yoda. “Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be surprised if he tries to take his own life.” Goosebumps.
We know the rest of the story. Klass died in 2005. Whitley Strieber is alive, well and continues to write. But one thing we’ll never know is the full extent of the damage Phil Klass did to American journalism’s tepid inquiry into The Great Taboo. The first word that comes to mind: Irreparable.