There was a thread on the UFO UpDates List this past week titled, "Apology to UFO UpDates List and John Velez" and it has to do with the return of Alfred Lehmberg as a posting subscriber to the list.

A while back, Alfred got caught up in a web of deceit that was being spun by Jim Mortellaro. It was very ugly and ended up with Mr. Mortellaro being banned from the UFO UpDates List. As a result of that ban, Alfred went with him, but it was because he bought into the story that Jim Mortellaro was telling.

I won't go into major detail here but Mr. Mortellaro claims to have suffered being abducted by aliens and through memory regression and some drug cocktail technique, has been able to give his reports of these experiences to some doctors. The problem is that when he gives out details of his experience, the reports bear an uncanny resemblance to details about abduction experiences that have happened to other people.

Now... I'm a storyteller. I write books and in those books I usually incorporate elements of reality - such as the cancellation of the CF-105 Avro Arrow back in 1959. Right along with that, I include a healthy dose of fiction to make a story that I believe will be interesting for other people to read. But I do not portray my books to be 100 percent truthful in every detail and if I ever did, I'd expect to be called a liar.

The problem with all of this is that when somebody called Mr. Mortellaro on what he was saying, he immediately claimed that he was being persecuted and went seeking allies to come to his aid. The person who initially challenged Jim Mortellaro about what he was saying was none other than our own John Velez. He did that with good reason. The reason was that the details of what Mr. Mortellaro was describing as his own abduction experience was in fact a report that mirrored one of John Velez's abductions and according to John, Mr. Mortellaro told it almost verbatim to what John had posted to the UFO UpDates List over a year before.

Abduction by aliens is not a subject that is to be handled lightly and already is riddled with people refusing to believe what is being reported. When somebody comes out and lays claim to somebody else's abduction experience, it makes the entire subject questionable.

When John Velez challenged Jim Mortellaro about what he was saying, he decided to attack John Velez in a very scurrilous fashion. He gathered as many people as he could about him, taking on the persona of the victim that was being discredited for telling the truth and then launched an attack on John Velez, trying to portray him as the bad guy.

Unfortunately, one of the people who bought into Mortellaro's brand of the truth was Alfred Lehmberg and it cost him some credibility and the loss of participation on the UFO UpDates List.

The good news from all of this is that eventually when someone is trying to tell tales, they have to continue the deception and eventually they get caught up in their own web of lies. I'm not aware of the details, but I do know that Mr. Lehmberg finally saw that he had made a mistake and has publicly apologized to the List and to John Velez personally.

When somebody tries to lie to me about something, everything they say after that becomes suspect. I can't say that Mr. Mortellaro ever was abducted by aliens and I also cannot say that it never happened to him. I also have to say the same thing for John Velez. However, I am much more likely to believe John Velez when he tells me about what he has experienced because I do not believe that John has ever lied to me or anyone else in his life.

Welcome back Alfred, we all make mistakes and the only one you made was listening to somebody who could weave a good tale. But that's just... my take on it.

But that's just my take on it.....