UFO Magazine – August/September 2004

George Knapp Investigation into Dan Burisch

It’s just my opinion, but the name-changing, secret-spilling, tall-tale-telling UFO “whistleblower” known as Dan Crain — or Dan Burisch, or the biologist-formerly-known-as-J-Rod’s lab partner — is a complete goofball. He is a manipulative, egocentric, phony-baloney goofball. You can quote me.

It’s hard to believe that he is still peddling the same bunch of ET crapola that he tried to foist upon me 14 years ago. It’s even more surprising that anyone could possibly take him seriously, but we all remember what P. T. Barnum said. I will give him credit for perseverance and for the creative, ever-adapting fantasy he has manufactured. The guy certainly has stamina. Did I mention that he is a goofball?

Crain first came to my attention in early 1990, just a few months after I had broken the story about Bob Lazar, S4, and flying saucers in the Nevada desert. Maybe I was chosen for his attention because I was perceived by some as a gullible sensationalist — a reporter who would swallow anything — the predictable fallout from my involvement with Lazar. Whatever the reason, I soon found myself in Dan Crain’s modest orbit.

I was invited to participate in a panel discussion about ET life. The local Planetary Society sponsored the public event, and since a few of the names on the program were credible people, I agreed to chime in. I had never heard of Dan Crain, but soon learned that he was the head of the local Planetary Society at that moment and was the driving force behind this particular event. (It may sound prestigious, but the Planetary Society at the time was a loosely organized social club based at the local community college — a small group of people who enjoyed talking about astronomy and related subjects.) Crain, an alleged biologist, became the head of it because he lobbied for the voluntary job.

A month before this event, I participated in an Earth Day forum at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Just a few days prior, I received an anonymous letter from a supposedly elderly lady who said she was a neighbor of Crain’s. She suggested I look into his background because she had seen military men come to his apartment in the middle of the night and whisk him away.

She took the bold leap of assuming this must have something to do with flying saucers and Area 51 and wanted me to look into it.

Hmmm, I thought, that sure is curious. Just before the Earth Day forum began, I was standing in the men’s room when a balding little guy sauntered up and introduced himself as Dan Crain, biologist to the stars. It occurred to me that I had heard the name before, and I casually mentioned that I had received a strange letter from some lady who suggested he might have something to do with Area 51. It was a genuinely offhand remark, but Crain reacted as if I had attached electrodes to his gonads. He sprinted out of the restroom in melodramatic fashion and I didn’t speak to him again.

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?

You tell me what’s more likely! Where did Crain meet his wife? He met her during his stint at Nevada’s Parole and Probation Department. He was a parole officer; she was a parolee. The significance of his employment at P&P cannot be overstated. Crain worked as a parole officer from February 1988 until April of 1990. Crain’s current defenders say he earned his PhD in 1989 from SUNY Stony Brook. Of course, there are no records at the college that he ever attended. Crain defenders will allege this is because the government erased his records. Since I’ve been down the erased-records scenario before (Lazar comes to mind), this type of claim is not unfamiliar to me.

The problem for Danny is that he lived in Las Vegas during the entire period when he supposedly was earning a doctorate in New York. Perhaps SUNY offers PhDs through the mail — but I tend to doubt it. There is no question that he worked for the state during this period. I not only have his official state employment records and employee evaluations — I have spoken to his co-workers who confirm that he really was there. In July 1989, after a year on the job, he managed to arrest a bank-robbery suspect — a brave deed that resulted in a commendation from his bosses and a mention in the local newspaper. He was here in Nevada during the entire time that he was supposedly working on his doctorate in New York. End of story.

After his stint with the state, he took a job as a security guard at the Sahara Hotel. Odd, don’t you think, for a guy with advanced degrees and a Q-clearance? Perhaps it was a sham job, a cover story to hide his “real” work? Not according to his employers and co-workers. I have his employment file from the hotel. I personally know the people who owned the hotel at the time. I spoke to security personnel. He was there from June 14, 1991 until July 27, 1993 — when he was terminated. Maybe he was flown out to see J-Rod after he finished guarding racks of quarters and nickels. And maybe not.

In case there is anyone who still believes this is a vast conspiracy as opposed to the egomaniacal fantasies of a troubled person, consider the following: Crain claims to be a biological whiz kid who turned down scholarships at the best universities in the world so that he could return to UNLV, a prestigious citadel of higher learning. He was a student at UNLV — but his major wasn’t biology. It was psychology. Crain defenders say he was driven out of his preferred subject by a single professor who was jealous of his work. I talked to the professor. And to Crain’s academic advisor. And to the chairman of the department. They all considered him to be an off-kilter showboater who craved attention.

He did get into a tiff with a professor. It happened when, as an undergraduate, he called a news conference at the university to announce that he had found a cure for cancer. The miracle cure? Clorox bleach. How would you react if you had been his professor?

And to any diehard supporters who still think Crain/Burisch was railroaded by the school — where is the miracle cure? If he knows the secret potion, why not release it, make millions of bucks, and save countless lives? Maybe it was wiped out of his memory by J-Rod.

If Crain really was part of the most secretive, most important program in human history, he certainly didn’t follow any known protocols. In 1990, while he supposedly was the only human that the alien J-Rod would allow into the secret chamber, he was participating in numerous public events that teased the ET scenario — all of which promoted Dan Crain. A publicity release issued by his friend Joe Girouard invited the public to hear from this champion of the environment who “has been recognized nationally and internationally for his scientific research.” Nationally and internationally recognized, just a year after earning his bogus doctorate? Maybe I missed it. I’m sure his oppressive masters at Area 51 were pleased by his pursuit of media attention.

In 1993, Crain was represented by another p.r. operative named Marcia McDowell — aka B.J. Wolf. She was a relentless steamroller in her promotion of the book she wrote with Crain, modestly titled Eagles Disobey. The book was a ridiculous rehash about structures on Mars. Crain focused on borrowed photos of Martian dirt clods and proclaimed them to be the remnants of extravagant alien skyscrapers.

He’s supposed to be a serious scientist, but the book is called Eagles Disobey? So let me guess — who’s the eagle? Ah, now I see. Crain is the eagle. And he dares to disobey. What courage. During his marital period, I received a handwritten (but obviously dictated) biography of the internationally known science juggernaut. It was signed by his loving wife Debbie. She sent me another letter on paper that prominently featured the very same amateurish snip-and-clip military insignia that graced several letters sent by supposedly anonymous sources.

Gee, do you think it really was Danny himself who sent all those random letters? Maybe he was trying to get the story out before something bad happened to him. Maybe all of the ridiculous lies and phony claims he made earlier were meant to throw me off the track, as his defenders now suggest. Or maybe they were just… lies. What seems believable to you?

The evil secret government has been trying to silence Danny the Eagle since the very beginning. They’ve beaten him, his parents were told, drugged him, wiped out his identity and memory, tried to discredit his credentials (except for the hotel security guard gig), and marked him for death. Oh, that’s right — he was dead for a while. What sad news that was. It was tough to choke back the tears. When I expressed my doubts about his unfortunate and mysterious demise, I was chided for my skepticism. And then… Lo and behold — he arose from the dead, Christ-like, and quickly found new converts to his ever-expanding knowledge of the universal truth. He now says he has witnessed the birth of humanity, knows the reason we are here, and is the one human who might save both us and the aliens. (J-Rod told him the aliens are facing genetic calamities. Boy, that’s a new one.)

My guess is that if the secret government really wanted to silence Dan Crain, or Dan Burisch, or Snoop Danny Dan — if that’s what he wants to call himself this week — they might have been able to do it. They could have bumped him off as he bravely patrolled the perilous corridor between the dollar slots and the Sahara buffet. They might have dispatched hired killers to pose as misdemeanor potheads while he toiled behind his desk at the parole office. Or maybe a femme fatale pretending to be a bleach saleswoman could have nailed him during his groundbreaking cancer-cure period at UNLV.

If he wanted to avoid the government assassins from Area 51, his recent, well-publicized appearance at the Little A‘Le’Inn — just down the road from the secret base — was a stroke of genius. They would never look for him there.

If any readers want to believe Dan Crain’s ridiculous fantasies, then go for it. I am not one to criticize someone else’s religious beliefs. Despite the tone and content of this article, I am reasonably certain that Danny will be delighted by the attention. He knows that a small portion of the UFO devout (especially those who miss the scriptures of Bill Cooper) will slavishly hang on his every word and disregard any contrary information. Books, movies, speaking engagements will follow. It took 14 years of total baloney — but at last, this biologist–psychologist–astronomer–security guard has finally arrived.