Part 3

The 1937 best-selling "Secret Life of Plants" includes
an entire chapter on Vogel. In one scene, he attempts to
determine whether plants wired with electrodes show a
physiological response to "spooky stories." The book says that
at "certain points in a story, such as...`Charles bent down and
raised the lid of the coffin,' the plant seemed to pay closer at-
tention."

Vogel, 70, said Meier's UFO movies convinced him the farmer
had been in contact with "some form of extraterrestrial
intelligence" However, Vogel doesn't regard the metal samples
by themselves as proof of extraterrestrials because he didn't
have a chance to consult with other experts before the samples
mysteriously disappeared. Vogel added that since his plant work
of the 1970's, he had founded a psychic research institute in
San Jose, employed his "mental energy" to bend spoons and
studied the use of crystals to cure illness.

"Light Years" also quotes authorities such as Robert Post,
head of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, as saying:
"From a photography standpoint, you couldn't see anything that
was fake about the Meier photos... I thought, God, if this
is real, this is going to be really something."

Or is it? In an interview with The Examiner, Post recalled
that several years ago, Wendelle Stevens visited him at JPL and
requested an expert opinion on the pictures. Post acknowledges
he was fascinated by the images, but was unable to perform a
scientific analysis for two reasons: First, he isn't a photo
analyst but rather the operator of a photo processing lab ("like
you take your film to K-Mart", he said); and second, the pictures
weren't originals but rather copies of originals - perhaps even
copies of copies of copies. Such multiple copying tends to
obscure delicate details, making it hard to detect evidence of
fraud - e.g., threads supporting hubcaps.

In addition, when Post examined some images with a
magnifying glass, he realized "a lot of the pictures weren't
really photographs at all - they were lithographs," or
high-resolution ink prints made from photos - and, hence, were
worthless for purposes of analysis. Furthermore, the photos
were " a lot fuzzier than the stuff on the lithographs, and
I thought that was a little strange."

For that and other reasons, Post began "to think, `Nuts,
maybe this guy is just a con man.' That's not the kind of guy I
want to have anything to do with."

In 1983, Stevens was convicted of child molestation in
Pima County, AZ. He is now serving time in the Arizona State
Prison and declined to be interviewed. But he did send The
Examiner a cryptic letter in which he said a "number of high
officials...have taken a personal interest in some of the things
we were doing, but they could neither support nor tolerate them
officially."

Stevens' conviction triggered a wave of paranoia among
Meier buffs. Some phoned Vicki Cooper, editor of California UFO
Magazine in Los Angeles, and said Stevens "was `set up,' that
certain witnesses were being killed," said Cooper, who is not
unsympathetic to Meier's claims. "I was discouraged and disgusted
with the people I was talking to."

"Its a cesspool out there," she said. "Personality
conflicts are rabid in this field...There are hoaxers, there
are fraudulent people who are claiming outrageous things all
throughout the UFO field.
End of report



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