An interview that appeared in the Nov/Dec. issue of New Times. Copies of this issue are available by sending $3 to New Times of the Southeast, 9104 Timberlake Road, Lynchburg, VA 24502. Email: newtimes@juno.com

Publisher Note: This exclusive New Times interview with Art Bell occurred on September 30, 1998. On October 12, Art Bell mysteriously shocked his audience and syndicator of his show, Premiere Radio Networks by abruptly resigning from his talk show. As we go to press, Art has announced he will resume to broadcast his show on Wednesday, October 28. He stated he will reveal the threat when the time is safe. Efforts to reach him for an update to this interview have been unsuccessful.

Interview

UFO and Conspiracy Theory Radio Talk-Show Host

An Interview with Art Bell by Russell McBride

NT: Your show is heard on 415 stations with the audience of ten million people. Why is a show that covers the paranormal, government conspiracies, and the unexplained being so successful?

AB: Well I think for one thing that people are sick to death of politics. I know I am. Particularly the current brand of it in Washington. I think that there's more to life than politics and talk radio is the number one format right now. If it (talk radio) doesn't realize it, and grow up soon and realize that there's more to life than politics, then it will not remain the number one format. In other words, if you were to ask yourself when you go home and talk to your family, your wife or your children, dad or mom, how many hours per day do I actually spend talking about politics I think you'd be surprised at the answer. It's not that many hours, yet a lot of talk show host go on the air and for many hours that's all they do. It gets old. So, there are other important things in our world.

NT: When you were interviewed on the NBC Today Show, they showed one of your listeners placing his hand to his throat and said, "I am fed up to here with Monica and politics." Do you think listeners reflect this?

AB: I think that the polls obviously indicate that's true. If you look at the conservative right wing in America, they appear to be completely perplexed by the continuing good poll numbers that President Clinton has, and the message there is not necessarily that the American people like what he's done, but they like what he's doing as President. They like the condition of the country right now. So I think that's the message and a lot of people aren't hearing it and they continue to force feed the American people what they don't want to hear.

NT: Your audience goes beyond the boundaries of the U.S. Does your international audience have the same concerns as U.S. listeners?

AB: Well, we do have a very, very large international audience. I think the reason for that is the kind of material that I present and deal with is universal. It plays well in Britain, or Australia, Canada, or New Zealand or anyplace where they can understand English. American internal politics doesn't export very well.

NT: Your show covers government conspiracies, the paranormal, secret governments, anomalies and a host a other unexplained phenomenon. How did you evolve from a former rock and roll DJ to a host of this type talk format?

AB: Well, that was my youth. I'm 55 years old now. I got my first job in radio when I was 16, so I spent the early days learning broadcasting technically from a programming standpoint. Early on in my 14 years of talk radio, I noticed we did shows on the paranormal, only on a sporadic basis, because I wanted to. I have a high interest in the subject and the audience response was tremendous, so I just sort of listened to my audience and began doing more shows of that sort until finally one day we turned the comer completely and here we are today.

NT: You broadcast, and live in Nevada, near Area 51. Is this by chance or do you have an agenda?

AB: I live in Pahrump, Nevada, which is indeed just across the mountain from Area 51, more by chance than with any agenda. I'm very glad that I'm here. I was living in Las Vegas and doing my radio show there and commuting for many years. That's 120 miles of driving a day. Pahrump turned out to be a nice quiet spot in the desert and a good foil for all the business that goes on in Las Vegas. In other words, I live in the country and I love it and I love the quiet and I have 5 hours on the night, every night, rather, on the air and when I get off I can just walk outside and it's quiet, peaceful and serene. And it's good balance. It gives me balance.

NT: You have had Gordon Michael Scallion on your show numerous times who is a very well respected authority on earth changes. He told you are in an area that may experience significant earth changes, possibly devastating. Why are you remaining and do you believe these predictions?

AB: Well, life goes on one day at a time. I don't want to end up at the bottom of a new ocean bed, it's true, but I'm here, I love where I live and if it turns out that this is where I'm going to die then that would be OK.

NT: So you're at peace with...

AB: So I have no intent to move is the answer.

NT: With all the programs that you've aired, is there any one show that stands out as the one of the most shocking that had an impact on you?

AB: I do many programs that are shocking. That's the business that I'm in. And I think that's what my audience has come to understand about my program, that a lot of the information is just flat out shocking. Some of it's true; some of it's not true. The way I interview my guests and my callers is to help them tell their story. I don't pin them up against the wall 60-Minutes style and sweat 'em. I let them tell their own story the way they want to tell it. I sit back and assume the audience is a group of adults who can judge the difference between truth and BS. You know I treat my audience as adults. Rush Limbaugh will frequently say you don't need to read the newspaper or TV. and he will tell you what to think. I don't tell you what to think. I present information to you and I let you think about it and come to your own conclusions.

NT: It seems you provide a forum for people to state their particular interest, or cause, or belief, and that it's the callers that quiz your guests, question their credibility, challenge or agreeing with them, rather than yourself.

AB: That's right. That's exactly correct. And that's exactly the way I intend for it to be. I don't want to do anybody's thinking for them. I don't want to tell them what to think, or what to believe. There's enough of that around the rest of the dial. On my program, you simply get information and you can sort it yourself and decide what you think. I don't feel some great responsibility to be the judge of what somebody says. I'll let my audience do that.

NT: Is a 10 million audience your verification?

AB: Well, yeah I think that speaks for itself.

NT: Did you think your show would be this successful?

AB: No, of course not. I had no idea it would be this successful. It just happened. It's one of those mysteries of life and, no... I don't know why. You asked me that earlier and I gave you my stock answer, which is that I'm doing something different. I do think that there are now a lot of people trying to imitate me, which is kind of sad. When Rush came along and got very successful, all of a sudden we had a lot of little Rush Limbaugh wannabe's and they kind of fell by the wayside one at a time, and I think that will occur with people that try to imitate me. What I would like to see is more people doing innovative things themselves instead of trying to find a format that they think is successful and duplicating it.

NT: Such as what you did.

AB: Yes. Go do something new. Do something that nobody else has done before. And I think that is the key to success. You might fall on your face, but you also might be an original. And there aren't too many originals out there anymore.

NT: The converse is when someone copies you that is the highest form of flattery.

AB: Well, it is, it's a high form of flattery all right but it's also sad that there's not more innovation in the industry. And this high form of flattery usually ends up falling flat on its face.

NT: I don't know who the producers were that were willing to take a chance but obviously you were fulfilling...

AB: Oh I give management a lot of nervous times, believe me. I still do, they have no idea what I'm going to do when I come on the air. No idea whatsoever, half the time I don't.

NT: You often mention the government monitors our phone conversations with super computers near DC and this is voice activated by some key words that someone would say. With the cellular technology it would be easy to pick up this...

AB: The national security agency does that on a regular basis both with domestic and foreign calls.

NT: Why do they do it?

AB: Extensively for national security. In other words if I'm in a conversation with you right now and I say the word bomb, or I say kilo, or I say terrorist, or I say nuclear, these are words that the big mainframe computer is going to trip, kind of like a tax audit trip, and its going to cause someone to monitor that conversation. They don't monitor everything, of course, they couldn't. But they use big Cray computers to sit and listen for key words, to trip listens. So of course it's done.

NT: You mention the Cray computer. It is believed by many those computers were used in the Philadelphia Experiment. Al Bielek, a survivor of the Philadelphia Experiment, has been a guest on your show and claims he has time traveled. With his extensive technical information about the project, do you believe his claims?

AB: Well, I'm a technical person. I was on the technical side of radio before I was on the microphone side of radio. So I'm conversant in these areas so naturally when I get somebody who is able to give me some sort of detail I pursue that angle. Which is very interesting because there is very little of that with people who describe these kinds of events. You get very few technical details generally, and I'm able to pursue that because I've got that background.

NT: Do you find Al Bielek experiences in the Philadelphia Experiment to be scientifically possible?

AB: I think that the technical aspects that Al Bielek described are absolutely reasonable and feasible. I begin to have a difficult time with Al's story when it gets into the latter stages where he's beginning to describe himself at an earlier age and that sort of thing. I don't rule it out as a possibility, I simply can't process the information as I can the technical information that he presents as easily.

NT: Over the years you've had many shows on the near death experience with Raymond Moody, Dannion Brinkley, Beverly Eadie and others. You had a recent show that said there's been a drug in existence since the early 1970's that can induce a near death experience. Does this diminish the near death experience work or survivors and researchers?

AB: No, not at all. It probably underscores it. I think that inducing a near death experience is a rather dangerous prospect. And I know several Ph.D. types who are in the middle of doing that right now, just like the old Flatliners movie. I interviewed them. So, I'm awaiting the results of this. But you've got to be quite an adventurous spirit to take a drug that will take you to the edge of death. So I don't think that it in any way takes away from the work of the Dannion Brinkleys and Raymond Moodys. It probably will add to it.

NT: You often have shows on the new millennium and the upcoming earth changes. When guests like Gordon Michael Scallion and futurists like Sean David Morton speak about...

AB: Sean David Morton, he's been a guest probably two or three times in the last couple weeks, so I know he's a very valid person.

NT: What is your personal belief about earth changes and the coming of the new millennium?

AB: It's not a belief; it's an observation. Obviously it's going on. I mean, anybody who could now deny we are in the middle of a permanent profound weather change has just got their eyes shut. So that's already underway. With regard to other aspects of earthquakes, we just had one in Pennsylvania and in Ohio on the state line there. We had a five pointer on the big island of Hawaii Monday. We had Papaugh New Guinea that just about got wiped away by a tidal wave. These things are going on. Magma is moving, a lot of volcanoes are becoming active that were not active previously, or have not been active in a long time. There's inevitably going to be an explosion of Mt. Popoa, I call it, in Mexico. And I'm a little nervous about Mt. Shasta and some of the mountains in the northwest. So, my belief about these things is if you look at the ice in the Antarctic that's beginning to melt and break off, these things are as real as a heart attack, and that's what the earth is having, a heart attack. It's just that it occurs on a scale where a lot of people are like the frog that is slowly boiling in the water and they don't know it's going on until it's already too hot.

NT: Why do people like G. Gordon Liddy and Rush Limbaugh take such radical stances saying the exact opposite, that there are not earth and climate changes?

AB: Because that's not a scientific, but a political stand. In other words, a lot of people realize that if you admit, for example, to global warming, or the big ozone problem - and it's interesting you should mention that because on NBC they did quite an interesting piece on the size of the ozone hole and on the melting Antarctic ice. With these rabid anti-environmentalists, you're dealing with a political economic agenda, you're not dealing with science.

NT: A recent guest on your show was a high ranking Soviet defector that talked about the present day Russian nuclear arsenal controlled by a starving, unstable military. Is this a real threat, and if so, why is this information being kept from the American public?

AB: Yes to both. It's absolutely a real threat. Russia is now more dangerous than when we called it the Soviet Union, by a long shot. It's very unstable.

NT: There have been many books, documentaries, and claims about the secret government. Is there a secret government? And if it is, who is it?

AB: I can't sit here and tell you for certain that I know there's a secret government, because I don't. Are there things that our Presidents are not told? I suspect yes there are. But can I sit here and give you evidence? No, I cannot anymore than Oliver Stone's movie about the assassination of JFK. Did that prove that somebody other that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy. NO. I think that if someone were to say today, here it is ladies and gentlemen, the absolute unvarnished truth about the assassination of President Kennedy, it would be one more theory on top of 10 thousand already existing theories, and so our chance of ever really knowing the truth is zero.

NT: Tell us about your UFO experience.

AB: My wife and I were coming back from Las Vegas. I was driving. We were about, I don't know about 1/2 mile from home. You've got to understand that it's very quiet out here. It was about 11:45, no actually about 11:20 at night, and my wife said, "What the hell is that?" and something caught her attention, and she looked behind the car and here comes this giant thing coming toward us. So I pulled the car over and we both got out, and looked up and here comes this giant triangular craft. It couldn't have been more than 150 feet above us. I felt like I could throw a rock and hit the damn thing. It was totally utterly silent, I mean it was quiet enough out there that you could hear crickets a good quarter a mile, and it was making zero noise. And it was not flying. I was in the Air Force and I know what aerodynamic flight is. It was floating, or put another way, it was defying gravity. It was moving forward at about 30 miles an hour. I'd say it was a minimum of 150 feet from one point of the triangle to the next. When it passed over us, the stars went away, the moon which was almost full, went away, but there was enough reflective light to actually see the metallic or whatever it was; it seemed like a black metallic bottom to the craft. We stood and we watched it float out across the valley. It just floated out toward Area 51. Now this is an interesting story, and a true story. It's interesting in one of two ways, either it's an extraterrestrial of some sort, or the U.S. government has antigravity technology that we don't know anything about. Either way, it's a pretty interesting story. That's my take on it, and as a matter of fact, on my web site you will find a painting that is very accurate. I worked with an aeronautical illustrator who got every detail down. And we put that up on the web site. So if you want to see what I saw, there it is.

NT: Of all the shows that you've done, which ones made you nervous?

AB: The series of shows that I'm doing with Sean David Morton probably has me a little more on edge than anything I've done in quite a while because he's eerily accurate. In other words, Sean David Morton has not only made predictions that come true, but he's nailed them down right to the very day. In so many instances now, that I'm beginning to wonder where his information comes from. It's even making a lot of religious people rather nervous. I think that a lot of religious people, when it comes to prophets manage to turn them off very easily in their mind, because their predictions frequently don't come true. When you have hit after hit after hit after hit, as Sean David Morton has, then you begin to get a severe reaction from the religious community, who begin to yell 'false prophet, false prophet, Antichrist', you know, whatever. I guess it's a little like an author - it's always your last book that's the best. So it's your last show, the best. But I think Sean David Morton has me pretty freaked out right now.

NT: Is that because it's valid information that is scientific and can be validated.

AB: He makes short term predictions that come true on the date specified. How much better does it get?

NT: How come CNN, NBC, ABC, MSNBC and the media are not giving the attention if he's able verify this information?

AB: You could ask that question and a lot of other questions about why the mainstream press in America doesn't cover a lot of things that are going on, I mean we are sitting here talking about Monica Lewinski and President Clinton, and there are 1.5 million people who are having their food rationed in Australia, in the big cities in Australia because they've lost all their natural gas because it exploded. The gas plant exploded, and that news isn't even hitting our wires. There's plenty of good questions to ask about why our mainstream press does what it does. It's pack journalism. They're lazy. They all cover the same thing. They rip and read the same wire, so what's fed to them from the networks is what gets reported, and nothing else does.

NT: It seems that it's more important who got the story first, verses the content of the story.

AB: What the American press does, is they decide how a story is going to be told and then anything that interferes with that, they disregard. In other words, the facts be damned. If they want a certain angle on a story, they tell it that way and any fact that would get in the way of telling it that way gets disregarded. Now that's lazy journalism.

NT: Being someone who has put themselves personally out in a very vulnerable position subject to attacks, have you been visited by men in black suits coming to your house and have you ever been threatened? What has been their reason for coming to...

AB: Yes. I can't talk about it.

NT: You can't talk about it?

AB: Nope. I can answer your question, but I can't give you details.

NT: Would it be safe to say that it falls under the basic umbrella of national security?

AB: I've told you as much on that as I can.

NT: The X Files television show covers a lot of the topics or has the same viewership that your show does. Is there a parallel? Is this another indicator that people don't trust the government and want true information?

AB: Well, I was already on when the X Files came on. I think that it's one more indication that the American people are interested in things that the mainstream press doesn't report on, but nevertheless are every bit as, I say this on Dreamland, every bit as real as the air that you breath. You know, they're real things. It's just that they can't quantify them in the way they usually want to quantify them on the network news so they can't touch them. Or won't.

NT: What's your view on crop circles? There have been a host of specials on Discovery and...

AB: Some are fake, but most are real. And anybody who looks at the series of crop circles this year in Great Britain, for example, and doesn't understand that they were not made by human beings is a complete blithering idiot. These in some cases cover as much as ten acres, they are precise. When the crops are tested they show molecular changes that could not be made by people with boards and chains. They are intricate and show every sign of exhibiting fractal geometry. So my take on them, is they are not made by human beings. What they are, I don't know. They could be one of many things. They could even be some sort of geo magnetic anomaly - they could be a lot of things, but they are not made by guys with boards and chains.

NT: It's not Doug and Dave.

AB: Yeah.

NT: Have you ever heard of Drunvalo Melchizedek?

AB: Yes.

NT: Have you ever had him on your show?

AB: No. He's out too far on a limb for me. It's a little too far out for even me, so I don't have anything negative to say about him, except that I wouldn't choose to have him on the program.

NT: On your Today segment there was a professor in Upstate New York who is blaming you for the Heaven's Gate mass death by placing a fake photo on the Internet.

AB: No actually, that photo came from Professor Courtney Brown at Emery University, and indeed I put that photo on the internet and I proved that it was a fraud, two months before these people committed suicide, so that professor was a tip of the hat on the part of NBC to try and put something challenging in there, but obviously, it has been long known by all the American media that Heaven's Gate people did not commit suicide because of what Art Bell had on the air. As a matter of fact in their own suicide note it said that they knew Comet Hale Bop did not have a companion and that the reason for their suicide was the comet itself. It was the marker, telling them it was time to go. But it goes back to what I told you earlier, about when the American press decides how they are going to tell a story. They don't let anything get in the way of that. And when those people committed suicide the American press decided they were going to blame it on Art Bell. Unfortunately, the facts did not fit. So they would come out here and they would interview me and I would show them the facts as documented with dates and all the rest of it, and they would kind of go, "Oh." And they would go away and you wouldn't hear anything more about it. You see, so again if their story is not told the way they want to tell it; they simply ignore the facts.

NT: Our readers are mostly in Virginia and North Carolina and in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We don't have the liberal openness attitude of Southern California, but there seems to be a movement in this area of the Southeast US that has a common bond. With your vast audience, what is your feeling about the country now? AB: I don't think there's a whole lot of difference now. There was a day when California was a land of fruits and nuts, and I think that now in America there's not a lot of difference between California and West Virginia. There are a lot more open minds out there than there were. And I don't think that it's drugs that have opened the minds, it just people beginning to realize that there is more going on than they're being told by the mainstream press.