Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

There are some extremely intelligent people to be found in the field of UFO and paranormal research. There are many very sincere and honest folks searching for aliens, bigfoot critters, and assorted other things that go bump in the night.

Then there are people like Sean David Morton. OK, I don't normally like to kick a guy while he is down, but the fraud charges brought against him by the Security Exchange Commission comes as no surprise to anyone who has been aware of his very curious career. For the past several decades, Morton has repeatedly made claims that were, at best, wild exaggerations and, in some cases, out right falsehoods. In the past, he has always operated within the context of UFOs and the paranormal and managed to stay within a weird zone in which facts were hard to find and cross referencing is often unheard of and rarely pursued.

For example, he used to claim that he had discovered a mountain peak near Area 51 from which you could see the world's most famous top secret base. OK, actually it was well known already to the locals and he simply heard about it from someone. Likewise, he insisted that the people living near the mountain had named it after him. Nobody had named anything after him and this story was just part of the come on for his guided tour of "Morton Peak." All you had to pay him was $99.99. The only mystery to this racket was the $99.99. Why not just charge a $100. Better still, just pack a lunch and go on your own.

As stupid and expensive as it was, Morton did get the occasional customer. It was about this time that he started calling himself the world's foremost UFO authority. That was how I first heard about him.

As previously related, I had been approached by the original PR person for a company that was looking to release a videotape of an alien under interrogation at Area 51 . Though the provider of the tape was a man who stayed nameless (for fear of presumed government killers - or maybe just the IRS), there was a strange ensemble of characters involved behind the scene in peddling this tape. Aside from Art Bell (who in those days popped up behind every stunt since the Piltdown Man), one of the characters was (to me) an unknown chap with a set of claims about his personal reputation that seemed odd. I had never heard of this "foremost authority" and I figured I better check him out.

That took longer than I had expected. His name was largely unknown in virtually every rational list I could find on UFOs. As I moved deeper into the New Age zone, he was still a pretty unknown figure. Finally, I arrived at the Nevada researchers backstabbing, infighting zone. There, I found his name. A lot of the folks who were involved in "work" near Area 51 (OK, a lot of it consisted of standing around in the dark waiting for lights to buzz overhead) had pretty bad things to say about Morton. In turn, he had bad things to say about them. There was no love being lost in the dry desert air.

But all this told me was that he had a strong ego, a high opinion about himself, and pretty poor skills at public relations. Then I heard back from the PR person. The "boys" (Bell, Morton etc.) were busy trying to sell release rights to the video to several companies at once without telling any of the bidding companies that another company was already involved. Likewise, they were undercutting the PR by selling the rights to a rival British magazine without telling anyone. By the way, they were selling all of these rights without establishing any sign of ownership. The whole thing quickly took a nose dive into business oblivion while the boys were mostly interested in getting lots of people to pay cash up front.

The video, by the way, was undoubtedly bogus. Which is OK. If it were real, then the high handed (and largely dubious) antics from the boys would be appalling. As it was, it merely rounded off the freak show feel to the whole scam.

At the time, I was largely interested in the strange questions concerning Art Bell and his possible connection with the Defense Intelligence Agency (well, his phone system and computer server were obviously hooked up to the DoD system). Morton just appeared to have been a minor grifter with an ego problem. He hadn't yet discovered his psychic skills in investment opportunities. But I am not really surprised by the charges now leveled against him by the S.E.C. These guys have a habit of over reaching.

But at least he made Inside Edition. Finally, he is world famous for something.