Tuesday, November 19, 2013

#797: Annie Jacobsen


Annie Jacobsen a writing for a variety of magazines and webzines, but is primarily known for two things; first, a bizarre but relatively high-profile 2004 event when she claimed to have identified as terrorists some people she saw on a plane and that these people were, in fact, afterwards identified by Homeland Security as being, indeed, terrorists. But of course they were nothing of the sort. The incidence, however, may help grasping what kind of mindset that permeates Jacobsen’s highly paranoid conspiracy rants, as illustrated by her 2011 book, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base concerning, well, you know, Roswell.

In the book Jacobsen claims that the Roswell incident was the result of a botched attempt at psychological warfare against the United States by the Soviet Union. Apparently Stalin tried to throw the US into a mass panic inspired by Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds by sending a remotely-controlled experimental aircraft with a payload of children surgically modified to look like aliens by no-one but Dr. Mengele himself! It didn't work out because the aircraft crashed, of course. Jacobsen’s story is based on a single unnamed source who may in fact have been trying to pull her leg. Or she might have misinterpreted the interviews, given that she already has a history of, shall we say, overdramatizing (read: go batshit hysterically delusional).

Of course, she has failed to convince the UFO crowd, but that kinda goes without saying (here is one James E. Clarkson being less than amused).

Diagnosis: Hysterical dimwit.

1 comment:

  1. Perhaps you should reconsider Jacobsen's entry. She was a finalist for Pulitzer, best history for her book "The Pentagon's Brain", the history of DARPA.She may be gullible in regards to a UFO story, that hardly discredits an entire career in which she seems a competent journalist and writer.

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