Karl Nell, Paul Hellyer and the problem of dubious sources

Karl Nell, a high ranking military figure, cites Paul Hellyer as the source of many of his beliefs. Hellyer was an extremely old man when he started espousing these beliefs- he died at 98, and was in his late 70s when he first began speaking of them. Note that science has long told us that humans become more gullible with age, due to age related drops in mental ability, and as the parts of our brains that control belief/doubt becomes less reliable (it’s probably no coincidence that Nell’s other source, Haim Eshed, who is dismissed by all his colleagues, is 91 years old).

Regardless, Hellyer cites as the source of his beliefs various conspiracy books he read in the mid 1990 and early 2000s. Hellyer has no first hand knowledge, testimony or experiences. He simply read conspiracy books (he positively mentions Steven Greer on numerous occasions). One of them, for example, is Philip Corso’s infamous Roswell book, regarded as a literary hoax (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/nov/15/news) and rejected by none other than Stanton Friedman as being filled with inaccuracies and outright lies.

Elsewhere Hellyer endlessly regurgitates popular UFO lore. For example he thinks:

Four alien species currently live at the North Pole.

Jesus had alien roots.

The Star of Bethlehem was a flying saucer.

There are 80 species of aliens, including Nordic Blondes and Tall Whites. These Tall Whites can pass as humans and work inside the USAF. For this belief, Hellyer cites Charles Hall’s book “Millennial Hospitality”, which Hall claims he was allowed to write by the Anunnaki Race so long as he didn’t provide “solid proof of their existence”.

These aliens come from the Pleiades and Zeta Riticuli.

They also come from one of the moons of Saturn, and from bases in Venus and Mars.

There is an alien Federation and they have a non interference rule (ie the Prime Directive from Star Trek).

Two brothers from Peru teleported to a Saturnian moon where they were given warnings by the aliens.

The aliens want us to take better care of the planet and not nuke ourselves.

They abduct people and take them on spaceships, but only do this to people who are “receptive”.

Human technology like LED lights, kevlar vests, microchips and velcro are from aliens (we reverse engineered them).

There may soon be an interstellar war between alien races (like a bad scifi movie, the Whites are the goodies, the Reptilian-looking races are the baddies).

Hellyer’s sole sources for this are trashy conspiracy books, and letters sent to him by fellow conspiracists. He’s essentially a senile old man who believes everything he comes across.

Hellyer also wrote the foreword for the book “Messages from the Masters: A Cosmic Book of Galactic Wisdom”. It purports to be the received wisdom beamed across time and space to its psychic author from the greatest human minds (Albert Einstein, Nostradamus, Oppenheimer, da Vinci, JFK, Dr. Masaru Emoto, Gandhi, Tesla, Dwight D. Eisenhower), and also representatives from the Galactic Alliance and Zorra from Hollow Earth.

This is who Karl Nell is citing. Karl Nell’s source for there being an alien conspiracy is a guy who has no evidence, who himself has ridiculous sources, and who believes that a magical guy called Zora lives in a Hollow Earth.

Like Hellyer spun nonsense out of fragments of nonsense, Nell has spun nonsense out of fragments of nonsense. And like the delusions that propagate religions, this absurd game of telephone continues onward.