He followed the facts wherever they led

Karl Pflock was born and raised in San José, California, and read philosophy and political science at San José State University. While best known to forteans as an eclectic ufologist, he also managed to cram several conventional careers into his span on Earth. For two years after graduating cum laude in 1964, he worked for IBM in San José. From 1960 to 1966, he served in reserve units of the US Marine Corps and US Air Force, and then in 1966 joined the Central Intelligence Agency as an intelligence officer. He began freelance writing and editing in the early 1970s, and in 1972 joined the American Enterprise Institute as full-time senior editor. Political conviction and publishing wherewithal led to appointments as consulting senior editor for Arlington House Publishers, editor of Libertarian Review, and contributing editor to Reason.

At the same time, Pflock developed a secondary career as an author of science fiction; he joined the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and became science columnist for Eternity Science Fiction. He also became fast friends with Robert Heinlein, author of Stranger in a Strange Land.

In 1981, personal contacts he had made at the American Enterprise Institute helped to launch his next phase – a career as political and economic analyst and consultant in Washington, DC. He first worked for Republican Congressman Jack Kemp as a senior staff member of the House Republican Conference, specialising in defence matters. From 1983, he was Special Assistant for Defense, Space, and Science and Technology to Congressman Ken Kramer, a ranking member of the House Committee on Armed Services. In 1985 – the era of ‘Star Wars’ anti-missile systems development – Pflock was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Deputy Director) for Operational Test and Evaluation under the Reagan administration.

Three years from 1989 onwards were spent as senior strategic planner, initially with BDM International, leading a planning and technical support team in developing the Department of Energy’s strategic plans for environmental restoration of nuclear test sites, nuclear waste management, and waste minimisation. He also wrote strategic planning and market analyses for several international corporations.

By 1992, Pflock had become disillusioned with both the bureaucratic machine and the Republican Party – which he quit by popping a letter of resignation into a reply-paid envelope intended for donations to the party, and pasting it to a brick before posting. He went back to working as an independent writer, researcher and consultant, and in 1993 moved to New Mexico, where his wife was chief of staff to Congressman Steven Schiff.

By this time, Pflock had begun a 21-month research project into the alleged crash of a UFO near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. In summer 1992, he arranged a briefing on the incident for Schiff’s staff; Schiff became intrigued, and in due course persuaded the General Accounting Office to attempt to establish what, if anything, had occurred in 1947. Two months before the USAF’s contribution to the GAO report appeared, Pfl ock’s monograph, Roswell In Perspective, was published by the Fund for UFO Research. In it, like the USAF, he argued that the retrieved wreckage was almost certainly from a Mogul balloon array. However, something weird had crashed in the desert, and bodies, possibly alien, were retrieved from it. That conclusion fl owed from a credulous over-reliance on the dubious testimony of former Roswell undertaker Glenn Dennis, and his final words on the case, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe (Prometheus, USA; OP Editions, France; 2001) acknowledged that Dennis had lied, and plumped entirely for the Mogul explanation.

Pflock was not overly popular for bucking prevailing ufological wisdom, but it was not in his nature to fudge conclusions that he felt were firmly supported by the evidence. As his friend and one-time Capitol Hill colleague Fred Whiting said: “A meticulous researcher and a superb writer, Karl was the essence of intellectual honesty. He followed the facts wherever they led. And he admitted his mistakes and foibles with the same spirit in which he defended his ideas.” Although he helped to dispose of Roswell as an ‘alien’ event, and had a highly plausible debunking solution (sadly never published in full) to the notorious Travis Walton ‘abduction’, he also endorsed other well-known UFO cases as genuinely anomalous. His interest in UFOs was virtually lifelong, inspired in part by his own sighting as a boy in 1951 or 1952. Sights in the sky fascinated him: he was a member of the American Aviation Historical Society and an accomplished amateur astronomer.

He was convinced that some UFOs were craft from an extra-solar planet of our galaxy, although typically qualifying that with the belief that aliens had stopped visiting Earth in the early 1970s, if not earlier. As a journalist, he contributed to numerous publications (including Fortean Times), and appeared in and advised on several television documentaries. For a number of years he wrote a column for Jim Moseley’s monthly scandal sheet Saucer Smear, and ghost-wrote Moseley’s ufological memoirs, Shockingly Close to the Truth! (Prometheus 2002).

In late 1994, he began a detailed study of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction case, initially hoping to write a book with Betty Hill, who consequently became a good friend. He considered that sceptical explanations for various aspects of the incident were “for the most part simply wrong”, although some elements of the story were equally “shaky or false”.

Nonetheless, he believed that the Hills had been captured and taken aboard a craft from another world. As ever, Pflock took his own line on the case, reckoning it the only genuine alien abduction on record; he had a rich contempt for later abduction research. The Hill case was close to his heart: he was working on the final manuscript for a book on it the day before he died.

Pflock was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the same form of incurable motor-neurone disease that afflicts Stephen Hawking, in early 2005. He faced his death sentence (for that was what it was) with astonishing aplomb, unassuming courage, and wry humour – like the Marine he was so proud to be. In May 2006, his health worsened critically, as the disease attacked his respiratory system. Convinced he had another year to live, he was dead within a month. Over decades of research, he amassed a vast library of research material; once catalogued, his papers are to be archived with the Rare Manuscripts Collection at Ohio State University and the Gray Barker Collection at Harrison County Public Library, Clarksburg, West Virginia.

Karl Tomlinson Pflock, G-man, author, libertarian and UFO researcher, born 6 January 1943 in San José, California; died in Placitas, New Mexico, 5 June 2006, aged 63.