... the cruelest part of Crain's phony drama

Two days later I received a long, tortuous letter from “Dr.” Crain, denying that he had ever been in the military, that he had never been part of a UFO cover-up, that he knew anything about government contact with aliens, followed by another invitation to join him at the Planetary Society event for “lively conversations.” The thing was, I never asked him about the military or aliens or anything else, for that matter. It seemed weird and a bit over the top, considering that our conversation took all of about 20 seconds.

That’s when the Dan Crain p.r. campaign began in earnest. I started getting anonymous letters almost every week. Some came from neighbors, some from ex-girlfriends, some from alleged co-workers at the ol’ ET lab in the desert. A few were genuinely intriguing, especially the ones that included supposedly purloined copies of letters written by Crain himself in which he boasted of his work with ETs and of his success in throwing me off his track. I wasn’t on his track. At the time, my weirdness plate was full because of the Lazar story. The Planetary Society event came and went, with no real fireworks, but that certainly wasn’t the end of it. The mysterious letters rained into my mailbox from all sorts of sources, who independently and spontaneously were motivated to write to me about Danny boy. It was clearly and unmistakably orchestrated. I believed then, as now, that Crain was doing it himself.

One of Crain’s missives contained some scientific mumbo-jumbo that I didn’t understand. I forwarded it to my friend Linda Howe, who sent it to a biologist friend of hers, who wrote back to say that he didn’t completely understand what work was being conducted; that it seemed “bizarre”, but that the terminology suggested the author knew what he was talking about. That letter prompted me to temporarily suspend my overt skepticism.

In a 1990 presentation to MUFON, I even mentioned Dan Crain as part of a list of people who had come forward with claimed knowledge of ET research in Nevada. I did not vouch for Crain’s authenticity, but merely included his name on a list.After that, the floodgates really opened up. I started getting snapshots of Danny during his visit to the Biosphere, vaguely implying that he had something to do with that project. I received ridiculously amateurish cut-and-paste creations made from form letters mailed out by veterans groups. I got fake credentials, aborted love letters, veiled threats, all sent from supposedly independent sources, all in the same time frame. Hmmm, again.

Okay, I decided, I’m going to ask some questions. One of the first people I contacted was Joe Girouard, who had acted as Crain’s assistant and press agent as far back as the Planetary Society event. Somehow, I was not surprised to learn that Girouard was also a ranking public information officer at Nellis Air Force base during all of the time when I was receiving these mysterious mailings. When Captain Girouard finally left the Air Force, he and I had some very detailed conversations, with the condition that I would not make public what was said. In all of the wacky and speculative articles that have been written about Dan Crain by assorted UFO researchers over the past few years, I have never seen a single mention of Joe Girouard. Suffice to say, it’s a blatant omission, but one that could go a long way toward explaining Dan Crain’s wacky web of mystery. Read between the lines, if you must.

I also was in contact with Dan Crain’s parents—on many occasions. A recent email sent by Crain supporter Bill Hamilton to this magazine alleges that I harassed Crain’s parents night and day; that I hounded them with phone calls, that my relentless inquisition drove Danny out of their home and forced them to assist in covering up his dark secret. I’ve been a reporter in Las Vegas for almost 25 years now, and while I am aggressive when need be, I have never—ever—harassed regular people if they didn’t want to talk to me. Bill Hamilton can believe what he wants, but that allegation is a lie.

To put it mildly, I could give a rat’s patootie about Dan Crain. The only time I made phone calls was in response to the relentless tsunami of weird letters, especially those that made disparaging remarks about me. I did talk to Crain’s parents after they made numerous calls to my office asking for help. In December 1993, they pleaded with me to meet them to talk about their son. I went, and took very detailed notes.

The Crains were very nice people who were deeply confused about what was happening to their son. When I arrived, they read me a letter from Danny. He had instructed them to contact me if anything ever happened to him. I asked if he had disappeared, and they said no, but that he wasn’t the same person, that he wasn’t their son anymore. They surmised that his brain had been erased or manipulated by his Navy employers. They surmised this because Danny had cut off all contact with them, pretended not to recognize them, and didn’t hug them anymore.

Contrary to reports now circulating, the Crains said they never saw any military people pick Danny up at the family’s apartment. He told them he would meet his escorts down the street. They took his word for it that he was flown away in unmarked planes to a secret location. They told me that young Danny had gone to high school in London (even though his diploma is a GED from the Clark County school district) and that he had gone away somewhere to get an advanced degree, an education that Danny told them was financed “under the table” by the Navy.

They subsequently contradicted themselves by saying that Danny lived with them throughout high school and college. They completely believed his whispered secrets about the military and aliens in the Nevada desert because their only son had told them it was all true.

This seems to me the cruelest part of Crain’s phony drama. He put his own parents through this pain, but I doubt it was the result of his alleged secret life. Dan Crain lived with his parents well into adulthood. He didn’t leave the nest because of harassing phone calls from a reporter, or because of threats from his shadowy bosses. He left because he got married. He married a woman named Deborah Burisch, moved out for the first time in his life, and cut off contact after his wife had a nasty argument with his parents, according to Dotty Crain, the mom. He even changed his name to Burisch to coincide with the name of Debbie’s child, a child fathered by someone else. Needless to say, his parents were crushed and confused. Did he do this because aliens and the government wiped out his brain, or could it be that he was following the wishes of a new wife?

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