Historian, researcher and published writer for the past 40 years, Thomas McKelvey Cleaver is a specialist in aviation history and the Korean War. In the first half, he revealed how the history of our military conflicts with Korea explains a lot about our diplomatic relations with North Korea and South Korea to this day. The "official history" of the Korean War (begun in 1950) is little more than unexamined wartime propaganda that has "fossilized" over the past 66 years into "fact," he contends. And the failure to see the war as it really happened has had a negative effect on strategy and policy decisions ever since. During the Cold War, Korea was divided up into two states along the 38th parallel, the communist North, and capitalist South. When war broke out between the two, North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union, and South Korea was backed by the United Nations and America.
Post-WWII, America thought since they had the atomic bomb, they could police the world, and cut back on troops, he noted. Some 39,000 American soldiers died in the conflict, which ended in a standoff in 1953, and around 10% of the North Korean population was also wiped out. When US troops first arrived, they had no idea they were facing an army of 200,000 soldiers with combat experience, many of them from China, Cleaver explained. "When I was doing my research on Korea, names kept popping up, and the guys in 1950 who told us... 'it was going to be a cakewalk to go into North Korea, they'll be happy to see us come,' and it was a disaster. [These were] the same guys who ten years later were the high-ranking officials saying 'hey, it won't be any problem going into Viet Nam.'"
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Cryptozoologist Ken Gerhard has traveled around the world searching for evidence of mysterious animals, including Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Chupacabra, flying creatures, and even werewolves. In the latter half, he discussed his latest work on Bigfoot as well as updates on such creatures as the Minnesota Iceman, and the "Little People." In North America, most of the Bigfoot reports are in more temperate climates such as the Pacific Northwest. The preponderance of evidence includes thousands of sightings, the Patterson-Gimlin film, footprints cast in plaster, recordings of vocalizations, and consistent Native American legends. Taken together, he said, the evidence builds a strong case for Bigfoot's existence. While witnesses sometimes error in their estimates of the hairy creature's size, Gerhard has concluded that the females are over 7 feet in height, and the males range from 8 to 9ft. The weight of these giants is somewhere between 500 and 1,000 lbs, he added.
A lot of people overlook the possibility that in addition to Bigfoot, there might be smaller or dwarf size versions known as the "Little People" or Little Foot, Gerhard pointed out. In Central America, the Duende (goblin) are described as hairy creatures about 3 ft. tall, who walk on their hind legs and have human-like faces. These, he noted, are similar to descriptions of creatures in Alaska, that strike more fear in the indigenous population than Bigfoot. "I've also interviewed some Native American people in the Dakotas that swear that their reservation is actually...overrun with these...Little Foot-type creatures." He talked about his examination of the curious Minnesota Ice Man, a hairy Bigfoot-like being encased in ice that was displayed in the 1960s, and was initially said to have a putrefying smell about it. Later, the exhibit's owner, Frank Hansen, replaced it with a latex model, and Gerhard said it was unclear whether the original might have been authentic or hoaxed.
News segment guests: John M. Curtis, Steve Kates