by Elaine Douglass
The arrest June 12 of Long Island New York UFO activist John Ford
is deeply troubling. Founder in the mid-80s of the Long Island UFO
Network (LIUFON), Ford became known for his relentless investigations of
UFO events and for his startling allegations that alien craft had come
down on Long Island three times in recent years and been retrieved by
federal and local authorities.
The Suffolk County Long Island Police Department is one of the
agencies John accused. John said the police helped recover a fiery object
witnesses told John came down in Long Island's Southhaven Park in 1992.
John made this claim at public meetings up and down Long Island, and he
held a demonstration at Police Headquarters.
About a year ago scary things started happening to John Ford. He
repeatedly phoned friends and said someone was harassing him and maybe,
he thought, trying to kill him. Was there a campaign to destabilize John
Ford?
If so, it reached its climax June 12 when John was arrested in a
sting operation involving phone taps and a "wired" paid informant. Police
charged John with conspiracy to murder and possession of radium without a
license. Suffolk DA James Catterson told news reporters John Ford planned
to murder an individual by the name of John Powell, head of the Suffolk
County Republican Party, by putting radioactive radium in his toothpaste.
An improbable charge, to put it mildly. Nonetheless, the DA
seemed unable to restrain himself in the media following John's arrest.
He sponsored two press conferences, compared John to the unibomber, and
made additional charges against John for which no indictments were
subsequently returned. Amid a flood of sensational news, John's bail was
set at half a million dollars. Naturally, he hasn't been able to raise
it.
In the meantime, the UFO community, unused to investigators being
arrested and charged with crimes, has met this unsettling drama with a
stunned silence. Nor has John, on advice of his attorney, issued any
statement in his own defense other than his plea of not guilty.
Not mentioned in the newspapers was John's claim of harassment,
of himself and others in LIUFON: auto accidents (too many), vandalism of
cars, and a physical attack on LIUFON member Joe Mazzuchelli, who was
arrested with John June 12. Mazzuchelli says last winter 4 men dragged
him out of John's truck, beat him up, and warned him to "stay out of our
business."
Such are the allegations in this case. What is the truth? Is UFO
investigator John Ford a potential murderer? Or is John the victim of a
political arrest? Was he set up by people local to the Island or
higher--people who got a little tired of John Ford's incessant
allegations?
What were John's allegations? As anyone familiar with John knows,
they were radical. For example, John believed that in 1989 Americans
forced down an alien craft over Moriches Bay Long Island. He believed
that in 1992 an alien craft crashed in Southhaven Park on the Island. And
he considered the possibility that in 1995 another mysterious object came
to earth in the Pine Barrens area of the Island and that "diversionary
fires" were set to distract public attention.
John claimed the technology used to down the alien craft in 1989
came from Brookhaven National Laboratory on the Island. Based on his
sightings investigations, John concluded UFOs were making regular flights
over populated Hudson Valley and Long Island, much to the consternation
of the coverup, which decided to do something about it. John further
believed the Long Island police, fire, parks and other local agencies
were commandeered by the federals to assist in these emergency operations
and then, naturally, gagged.
John claimed he had "sources" in the Police and Fire Departments
who privately told him information on which he built his cases. And there
were non-confidential witnesses, members of the public, who told John,
for example, about a fireball coming to earth in Southhaven Park, about
fire truck and police cars that night, and that the Park was closed
afterward. Yet the Fire and Police Departments denied it and the Park
director said the Park was never closed. The details of John's cases are
too numerous to cover here, but one treatment of the Moriches Bay case
can be found in Len Stringfield's Status Report VI.
The thing about John was he wouldn't shut up. He went all over
Long Island talking about a coverup of UFO events in which local
authorities were deeply implicated. John founded LIUFON about 1985. From
then on, he maintained a hot line. He investigated sightings and
abductions. He held public meetings. He talked to the press. He sponsored
conferences. He held demonstrations, he published a newsletter, he
leafletted. John was tireless. I know John Ford, and he is the most
determined UFO investigator I ever met.
He also has flaws, plenty of them. He is stubborn, for example.
Yet John Ford's friends all attest he lived a moral life and never, as
far as anyone can remember, threatened another person with bodily harm.
According to John's attorney, John Rouse of Central Islip, "You can't
believe how many people have called me to say they can't envision John
Ford killing anyone, or even conceiving the intention."
Murder wasn't in John's character, people say, and breaking the
law wasn't John's style. John Ford was a law and order advocate who spent
most of his career as a Court Officer in the Suffolk County court system.
John knew the law and how to use it. John was litigious, not violent. If
John Ford had a gripe against you, he'd sue you in a minute.
Nor is John stupid. Even the Suffolk DA called John a
"mastermind." If John was going to kill someone, would he use radium? It
hardly kills people fast. Readers will recall the famous radium dial
painters of the 1920s who licked radium paint brushes for 40 years before
they got cancer.
Yet the DA would have us believe that John's "murder weapon" was
radium. Toothpaste goes fast in a household of 4 people, like that of
alleged murder target John Powell. Was Ford going to break in and put
radium in Powell's toothpaste every week for 40 years until Powell got
cancer?
And would an individual who thought people were watching him
leave illegal radium in the back of a pickup truck in front of his house.
I repeat, John knew the law.
The charges against John strain credibility, but that didn't seem
to embarrass the DA. As I mentioned, Catterson was so eager to
incriminate John that he made several serious charges at his press
conferences for which no indictments were returned. "This," says attorney
John Rouse, "is called poisoning the jury pool."
Catterson's overstep raises questions: Did the DA believe he had
more evidence against John than he ended up with? How good is the
remaining evidence? Is it possible the DA never thought he had evidence
to convict John of anything, and that instead the purpose of the arrest
is simply to ruin John Ford's reputation and wipe him out financially
with legal bills?
The purported case against John rests on the taped conversation
made in John's house the night of his arrest. According to police, the
wired informant engaged in conversation with John and Joe Mazzuchelli
about doing away with Powell and another local politician via the radium
in the toothpaste route. After this the police, who were waiting outside,
burst in and arrested John and Joe.
The tape has now been released on discovery. "It's
unintelligible," says Preston Nichols, John's friend in LIUFON. "All I
can clearly hear on that tape," Nichols says, "is the informant talking
and John laughing like whatever they're talking about is a big joke."
Attorney John Rouse doesn't disagree. He's waiting for an
"enhanced" version of the tape to see if the conversation becomes
clearer. Rouse warns, however, that John's situation is serious. If a
jury believes the DA's charges, John Ford could get 25-75 years at an
upstate NY prison.
As for the radium, it was allegedly found outside in John truck.
Outside is where the police were, waiting and listening to the informant
talking with John and Joe. Could the police have planted the radium?
And finally, unless John was to be encouraged and entrapped, why
use an informant at all? If the police believed John was plotting a
murder, why not bug his house for a couple of weeks and get the whole
scoop? The answer might be that the purpose of the informant was to lead
the conversation in an incriminating direction.
I have in my files a letter from the Suffolk County Police
Department, dated April 1993. I wrote to them, at John's request,
complaining about police violations of LIUFON member's civil rights. They
had been leafletting near Southhaven Park and going house to house
looking for witnesses--constitutionally protected activity. The police
stopped them and ordered them out of the area. This was the kind of thing
John did, and this was the kind of response he got from the Suffolk
Police, as far back as 1993.
There is plenty of reason to think the Suffolk Police were "out
to get" John Ford. And no member of the UFO community can be confident
they understand the arrest of John Ford if their only source of
information is the sensational media reports orchestrated by the Suffolk
DA. That is why John's colleagues, including myself in
Washington, DC, LIUFON vice president Steve Iavarone, and Tony West,
Richard Jones, Preston Nichols, and Joe Zuppardo in New York, Don
Jernigan of Ohio, and Kelly Freeman of Florida, have organized the John
Ford Defense Committee. Our purpose is (1) to give people true
information on the arrest of John Ford, and (2) collect fund and other
resources essential for John's defense.
My support for John Ford, and the support of the other members of
the Defense Committee, is based on our conviction that John did not,
would not, and could not conspire to murder anyone. On this point our
support is complete and total.
As for John's allegations, I speak only for myself and not for
other members of the Defense Committee. I always found John's allegations
hard to believe but impossible to dismiss--because John had evidence and
what he claimed was perfectly possible. Taken as a whole, what John
Ford's claims suggest is a low intensity military conflict between the
United States and the aliens. Is that possible? Yes it is.
Just because John's allegations "fit" doesn't make them true. But
the fact is, John had evidence. John claimed 3 events on Long Island.
Even if he was wrong on 2 of them, if he was right on only one, John had
a tiger by the tail. If so, it's no surprise somebody would try to
destroy John Ford.
And there's that curious coincidence about Moriches Bay, which
more than a few persons have pointed out. Moriches Bay is where John said
the United States brought down an alien craft in 1989, and Moriches Bay
is where TWA flight 800 mysteriously crashed in August. The cause of that
crash, readers are aware, has so far eluded federal investigators, and in
particular investigators are unable to explain the reports of more than
20 persons who say they saw an unaccountable light streaking toward
flight 800 before it went down.
John Ford is the first UFO investigator to be seriously
persecuted by the authorities. Shall we sit idly by while our colleague's
life is destroyed? If John Ford is silenced, who is next? Contact the
John Ford Defense Committee at web site www.iwaynet.net/~pic or email
elaine26@juno.com
The Committee needs funds for John's legal defense and donations
of several kinds: a psychiatrist expert witness; professional audiotape
analysis; and a Long Island-based legal investigator. Please also write
personal letters to:
John Ford (8-29-48)
Suffolk County Jail
100 Center
Dr
Riverhead NY 11901.
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