America Unearthed strikes again! Prolific UFO author Dr. Kevin D. Randle, a retired U.S. Army veteran and Ph.D., watched his first ever episode of America Unearthed last week and became convinced as a result that the Smithsonian Institution is conspiring to suppress the real history of America. Although this conspiracy theory emerged only in 1993 as a result of David Childress’s misunderstandings and uncritical mystery-mongering, it is now a touchstone of fringe history conspiracy culture. The idea keeps reproducing as one uncritical conspiracy theorist after the next picks it up from earlier conspiracy works.
 

Randle bills himself as one of the world’s leading experts on the Roswell UFO crash of 1947. He claims to be one of the most skeptical UFO believers, dismissing most UFO sightings for lack of evidence, and most alien abductions as the influence of hypnotists. He has been studying UFOs for more than 40 years and was among the first to investigate so-called cattle mutilations.

Despite his self-described critical thinking and skepticism, Randle was already open to the idea of hyperdiffusionism before he watched the program. He already believed, for example, that the Chinese discovered Oregon before Columbus, that the Clo
America Unearthedvis people were European, and that Solutreans from southern France settled in Florida 20,000 years ago (though he mistakenly says 2,000). Since he already was in so much agreement with so much of what America Unearthed puts out, it isn’t hard to see how he could easily conclude that Scott Wolter must be right about the Smithsonian, too, when Wolter claimed that a woman who discovered (almost certainly fake) Viking rune stones should not send them to the Smithsonian because the museum would suppress them.


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