An Interview with Al Bielek by Kenneth Burke (1997)

An Interview with Al Bielek by Kenneth Burke (1997)


LE = Leading Edge reporter Kenneth Burke
LE: Whatever you’d like to share, just share, and we’ll use this as the basis of a story.

BIELEK: Well, as you say, you have already published some information on the "Philadelphia Experiment," and there’s been a lot of publication done in the last five years. I’ve been all over the country. I’ve been in Europe, and I’m scheduled to go to Australia in October for a major lecture there for the Australian MUFON organization in Queensland. The word’s getting around.

It’s an interesting thing that the first time I went public with the story in the lectures was in Phoenix, Arizona, 1989. I had only become aware of my involvement in 1988. It was all blanked out in the meantime. There was a very thorough job of brainwashing, believe me, but it finally broke through. It broke through in January 1988, when I watched HBO late one Saturday night. I had never seen the movie, " The Philadelphia Experiment." Of course, it had gone through the regular movie circuits before that, and I’d seen the dockets in the local movie in the town I was in at that time, Sedona, Arizona. The docket was "The Philadelphia Experiment." I was only there a week and, for some reason, I didn’t go. I didn’t see it again. Then, it went into the video format, and EMI Thorne took it over and got the rights to put it on video from the producers, and they started showing it. So, that night on HBO at 4 a.m., they announced that the next feature of the evening would be "The Philadelphia Experiment." Well, I was about to go to bed, but I said, no, because I wanted to watch it. I’d heard so much about it.

The first 15 minutes were almost "dead on" what happened. There were six script writers, because I talked with the producer later. Where they came up with the information, I don’t know. He didn’t know either. He didn’t even know for sure whether the thing ever happened, but he thought it was a great idea and they produced the movie. They were so close to 100% accuracy that it was amazing. That’s what hit me. It re-stimulated memories, which were close to the surface anyway. The two major areas in the first 15 minutes were the number of people: for the ones on board the Eldridge, they showed 150, which is the normal complement of personnel for the ship but, for the test, they only had 25. It was a skeleton crew, because they weren’t going anywhere except downriver.


audiobook specs: 1.7 hours, Mac computer voice


books: text files included