A personal note about the Heather Anderson affair:
The document that Kerry made available for public scrutiny is a poor one, written by someone with an educational level inconsistent with that required of an insider scientist of any description.
On the Project Avalon Forum, Heather refers to herself as "Dr Anderson", and another member (Marco) who claims he knew her, refers to her as an MD (i.e. a medical doctor). I very, very much doubt that this is true.
Identical repeated typos - e.g. SOLIDER for 'soldier' - occur in Ben Murphy's writing. Ben Murphy is the Project Avalon member, named in the published PDF, who claims that Heather was a real person whom he knew, and who, frightened and on the run, stayed with him and his wife for a while.
E-mails from both Ben and Heather have identical IP addresses. However, Ben explains this by saying that all Heather's messages were dictated by her to him. He also states that this is the reason the same dyslexic mistakes (SOLIDER, etc) occur in both his writing and hers.
When all the above became clear, I accused Ben of hoaxing the material, and banned him from the Project Avalon forum. I apologize to him here as there was not enough evidence - and more on the subject of evidence follows below - to justify a definite ban as a hoaxer.
I was angry that Camelot was being played. Indeed, Heather does seem to have been a real person. Camelot may indeed be being played, but not by Ben. A number of people are working quite hard on getting to the bottom of this little tangle on the grounds that it's just possible that what emerges might be important and valuable. For instance, we've recently heard that Heather is not dead after all, but has recently sent a message stating that she is in Strasbourg.
In the meantime, my strong personal opinion is that this is a waste of Camelot's time, and that we should focus on real whistleblowers (and real people) with provenance who are able to produce compelling evidence to support their claims. It's unfortunate that any of this reached the public. At best, it's a distraction. At worst, this is a sting operation against Project Camelot with the intention of discrediting our research.
In my view, those following our work expect us to apply intelligent due diligence to cross-check information that comes our way before publication. Also in my view, we have a duty of responsibility as gatekeepers, respected and followed by tens of thousands of people worldwide, to check the provenance of the information we record and report as carefully as possible while working in an arena which is awash with accidental and deliberate disinformation. It's my personal commitment to do good, solid research while remaining open to genuinely new and startling information - because the universe, as Sir Arthur Eddington famously stated, is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
It's easy to make mistakes, or to be fooled by those with compelling cover stories and resources to back them up. I commend Kerry for her unstinting support for whistleblowers of every kind - and there are many kinds. We don't always get it right, and have both made mistakes. The nature of our work over the last three and a half years would have required one to be superhuman not to have been on a learning curve.
Our learning continues. We're pledged to share our journey with our readers and viewers. Kerry and I are united in our passion for the truth, and are both committed to giving our best to help the world become a better place through the free flow of information that has been withheld from the public by those who wish to control us for reasons of their own.
--Bill
