David Rudiak's Analysis Against Mogul

 

As anyone who visits here regularly knows, I am not a fan for the Project Mogul explanation for the Roswell UFO crash. I have laid out the evidence on several occasions and there is a long appendix in Roswell in the 21^st Century that covers all this in depth.

The reasons begin with the documentation that suggests the culprit in all this, Mogul Flight No. 4, was cancelled. Yes, I know that it should be designated as the New York University Balloon Project Flight No 4, but that’s rather unwieldy. To counter this, Charles Moore said that the flight was launched a couple hours before dawn, yet the documentation proves it was cancelled at dawn. How do you cancel a flight that has already been launched? … But I digress.

Just recently on this blog, I noted that Charles Moore had said that Flight No. 4 had been configured like Flight No. 5. I hadn’t thought of it then, but in the Air Force report on Roswell, they provided schematics of all the flights that had been flown, including No. 5. There were no rawin radar targets on Flight No. 5, and if Flight No. 4 was configured the same way, you have to wonder where the rawin target that was photographed in General Ramey’s office originated.

I mention all this because David Rudiak provided a rather lengthy comment about it to that blog posting. I thought the analysis was interesting enough to be worthy of its own position on the blog. Following, without my commentary, is David’s analysis in four parts:

Besides Cavitt, another of these old Cold Warrior guys who couldn’t tell a consistent story was B.D. “Duke” Gildenberg, who from 1951-1981 headed balloon operations at Alamogordo base (where the NM Moguls were launched), but also worked on Project Mogul back at NYU in 1947. A large history of the early balloon projects at Alamogordo was written by the base historian, Dr. David Bushnell, and published in Dec. 1958. It is mentioned that Gildenberg was interviewed twice in 1957. In fact, one of the chapters was written by him:

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA323170.pdf

THE BEGINNINGS OF RESEARCH IN SPACE BIOLOGY and Biodynamics AT THE AIR FORCE MISSILE DEVELOPMENT CENTER Holloman AFB, NM.

The first chapter covers the period 1946-1952. On page 5, it says the following: “Holloman's first polyethylene research balloon was launched 3 July 1947 by a New York University research team …..” (Footnote 18)

This was Mogul Flight #7. Now check out the Footnote:

(Footnote 18, p. 9). “The FIRST research balloon flight of ANY SORT at Holloman had been slightly earlier, 5 June 1947; this involved a cluster of rubber-type balloons (interview, Mr. Gildenberg by Dr. Bushnell, 18 September 1957).”

This was the real Mogul Flight #5. Notice that this is based on information provided by Gildenberg apparently saying this was the FIRST such balloon, i.e. is the first Mogul launched from Alamogordo. Further notice there is no mention of “another” “first” such balloon flight from 4 June 1947, i.e. the modern-day Mogul Flight #4, invented out of thin air by Mogul engineer Charles Moore and Air Force counterintelligence (AFOSI) in 1994 to debunk Roswell.

But back in 1957, in an official history, the guy who headed the balloon projects there said the first flight was June 5 (Flight #5), which aligns exactly with the official Mogul records (taken from Moore’s files by AFOSI). There is ZERO documentation for another research flight on June 4 like the real, documented Flight #5. In fact, the table of Mogul flights has a big blank for Mogul Flights #2, #3, and #4, which we know from other Mogul documentation were all canceled because of adverse weather conditions.

Now fast forward 50+ years, and what was Gildenberg saying now? He appears in the 1997 AFOSI Roswell crash dummies report saying that Roswell could be completely explained by conventional projects in the area, including 1950s crash dummies, and complaining that he and Charles Moore were being disrespected by Roswell UFO promoters for saying so. Then he began writing Roswell debunking articles for the Skeptical Inquirer and Skeptic magazine. The SI articles are behind a paywall, but you can download the Skeptic magazine article:

https://www.skeptic.com/magazine/archives/10.1/pdf/A-Roswell-Requiem-SKEPTIC-10-1-2003.pdf

In one table that is supposed to “explain” both Roswell and all the flying saucer reports, he writes:

“June-July—UFO reports generated by Mogul balloons from Alamogordo AAF, NM, and balloon clusters out of Colorado.

June 4—Prof. Charles Moore launches Mogul Flight #4.

June 14—Rancher Mack Brazel finds paper, rubber, and foil debris.

June 24—Kenneth Arnold sights unknown objects over Oregon and Washington state described as saucers skipping across water.

—Press coins term “flying saucer” (or “flying disk”).

—Incident touches off the world’s first and most intense flying saucer craze”

Thus, the new “facts” according to Gildenberg is that there WAS a Mogul Flight #4, which would have made it the first such research balloon of “any sort”, not the documented Flight #5. He also suggests most flying saucer reports were caused by Mogul balloon clusters and from another alleged NYU Navy balloon project in Colorado. This would apparently include Kenneth Arnold’s sighting June 24 a 1000 miles from Colorado. (Good luck making that work.)

So why isn’t Flight #4 listed in Mogul records as the “first” Mogul? Well, sayeth revisionist Gildenberg (who seems to have totally forgotten his original 1957 story that it was Flight #5):

“Several of the early Alamogordo flights were preliminary tests, did not carry classified hardware, and were never recovered by Mogul personnel. One such flight, launched in early June, came down on a Roswell area sheep ranch, and created one of the most enduring mysteries of the century. Review of project records has identified that flight, with a very high degree of certainty, as Mogul Flight #4, launched on June 4th. (Ref 3)”

And what was Ref. 3 that identified Mogul Flight #4 “with a very high degree of certainty”? Why, no surprise, that was the AFOSI 1994-95 Roswell Report utilizing Moore as primary witness. This “very high degree of certainty” was based on Moore’s unquestionable 50-year- old memories and a total of one sentence from the diary of Mogul scientist Albert Crary who first wrote they canceled the planned Mogul launch on June 4 because of cloud cover. (Required by CAA regulations governing their work.) Then Crary wrote they sent up a Naval sonobuoy in a balloon cluster to test reception in the air and on the ground. But sonobuoys were utilized on all the early Moguls and were the only possible piece of classified equipment since they might hint at the actual classified purpose of Mogul, which was listening for distant Soviet nuclear tests. (The sonobuoys were identified only as the “payload” on all the engineering schematics suggesting their use might be considered sensitive.)

This was what Moore called a test flight or “service flight”,
which they used to test certain pieces of equipment. They were small
flights, lacked constant altitude control, and would have been
rigged to NOT fly off the White Sands Range into civilian air space,
which would have required them to issue NOTAMs (also required
by the (CAA) of a possible air hazard. Thus there was also no need for tracking gear, such as radar targets to see if the balloons flew
off-range.

The REAL reason these weren’t listed is because they weren’t
constant-altitude flights (the major defining characteristic of a
Mogul flight), not whether they carried classified equipment
or not.

This also means the balloon flights were small, requiring only
enough weather balloons to loft the test payload, not a 600 ft
string of balloons. Lacking constant-altitude control, it would be like a normal weather balloon, rapidly rising to high altitudes
where the balloons would start to pop and everything would rapidly
descend, keeping the balloons on the White Sands Range. They
couldn’t get to the Foster Ranch debris field site, which would
require a real, constant-altitude flight (i.e., a recorded Mogul
flight) to stay up in the air long enough, and couldn’t create a
large debris field, which would again at least require one of
those really long, fully configured Mogul balloon trains, not a small test flight.

And it would require the right winds. Moore did a 1997 mathematical model (published in the Smithsonian Roswell debunking book, “UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth”) to try to “prove” that a Mogul flight on June 4 could make it all the way to the Foster Ranch, but when Brad Sparks and I went over the model 20+ years ago we discovered that he employed numerous cheats with his numbers. In other words, it was a hoax.

I suspect Gildenberg probably knew all this. Among his many
specialties, he was a meteorologist. His bios describe him as
being an expect in predicting where their balloons would fly and where they would come down. He also said in this article: “Analyzing
newly available weather data, and following the lead of Professor
Moore have also linked a later Mogul flight (launched on July 7th) to the legend.”

This was Mogul Flight #11, which crashed about 3 pm on July 7
about 16 miles west of Roswell base, followed 100% of the time by plane and 97% by radiosonde. It was a plastic balloon flight with no
indication (like most of these early Moguls) of radar tracking
(including the published schematic showing no attached radar
reflectors), so it can’t possibly explain the singular radar
reflector or the rubber weather balloon displayed in Ramey’s
office or what Mack Brazel described when taken under military escort for a press interview later that night. At the time #11 crashed, Brazel had already reported the debris field and Marcel and Cavitt had followed him back and were examining it. Although Flight #11
crashed relatively close to Roswell, it was at least 50 miles from the
Foster Ranch crash site, and no indication whether it was
recovered or not, either by Mogul or Roswell base. Certainly not by
Marcel or Cavitt. Likely, since Mogul knew exactly where it came down, if it was recovered it would have been by the Mogul people.

So how exactly did Gildenberg “link” it to the Roswell “legend”? Just more hot air from him.

Gildenberg also briefly discusses the FBI Roswell telegram from the Dallas office sent to FBI director Hoover the evening of July 8, which says one of Ramey’s people (Kirton, an intelligence or CI officer) said it resembled a “hexagonal” radar target suspended from a weather balloon (all described in singular). Gildenberg then says, “The gear KNOWN to have been on this particular flight was described almost exactly in a famous telegram to J. Edgar Hoover, which is quoted without comment in most pro-alien Roswell literature. (Ref 4) Reference 4 is Kevin and Don Schmitt’s book “The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell.” Well, since Flight #11 was made up of PLASTIC balloons, not rubber, and zero evidence of radar tracking or radar targets, how does Gildenberg deduce that it “almost exactly” matches what Ramey displayed and what the FBI telegram describes? And since all that was reported/shown by Ramey and his intel spokesperson Kirton was a SINGULAR weather balloon and radar target, what happened to the rest of that 600-foot Flight #4 that Gildenberg claims explains the Roswell “legend”?

Just more non-factual BS from Gildenberg. The key point, however, is that Gildenberg drastically changed his story from his original one in the 1950s in an official AF history (the first Mogul flight was #5 on June 5, 1947) once AFOSI and Moore invented the nonexistent Flight #4 in 1994. His attempt to explain why “Flight #4” isn’t listed as the first (allegedly because it lacked classified equipment) is also directly at odds with the facts. There was no Flight #4. The actual documentation shows it was canceled and instead a small test flight of a sonobuoy was sent up instead. It couldn’t have reached the Foster Ranch (Moore had to flagrantly cheat to get it there, in part by creating an actual Mogul constant-altitude flight, which would certainly have been recorded had it existed) and couldn’t explain the large field of debris described or types of debris, which both Moore and AFOSI claimed required a fully configured Mogul balloon (which, again, would have been recorded in Project records).

This dovetails nicely with what I just published. Moore told me about the configuration of Flight No. 4 by telling me that it was configured like Flight No. 5, which contained no rawin targets. David notes that Gildenberg said, in 1957, that Flight No. 5 was the first Mogul flight. Refer to the bold-face, italic noted at the beginning of David’s information.

The schematic of Flight No. 5 published by the Air Force
in their report on the Roswell UFO crash.

This makes me wonder why, if there are true skeptics, they never question that material that is at odds with their favorite theories. Shouldn’t they look at the documentation and the earlier statements of the witnesses and realize there is a real problem with the Mogul flight solution.

I have said, repeatedly, that there was nothing classified with the balloon project in New Mexico. The equipment was off the shelf, information about those flights was published on July 10 that included pictures of the balloons, and contrary to what was being said, those in New Mexico did know the Mogul name. Dr. Crary’s diary contains several references to Mogul. What this means is that Mogul is not the solution and this is the solution offered by the Air Force in the mid-1990s.

Skeptics believe they have the answer to the Roswell UFO crash. I suggest they apply that same skepticism to the Mogul explanation rather than create alibies for its failure. A look at the evidence, a dispassionate look at the evidence, removes it from contention. We are left with no terrestrial explanation for the Roswell debris…

However, that doesn’t take us directly to the extraterrestrial. The circumstantial evidence suggests an off-world source, but it doesn’t prove the case. I just wish the skeptics, the news media and those science writers would be as honest in their assessment about Roswell. They have no solution.

Roswell, Sheridan Cavitt and Project Mogul

 

As I mentioned on Coast-to-Coast AM recently, I found another of those one-off UFO magazines that attempts to capitalize on the interest in alien visitation. I looked at the Roswell entry and noticed they mentioned the Project Mogul nonsense. I have covered this at length on this blog and in my recent books about the Roswell crash/retrieval. I’ll make one quick point here. Well, maybe two…

First, Flight No. 4, listed as the culprit here, that is, this flight was the one that allegedly scattered the debris for Mack Brazel to find was not launched. The documentation tells us that the flight was canceled. I do not understand how this documentation can be overlooked. If the flight didn’t fly, it did not scatter the debris.

There is a second point. According to what Charles Moore, one of the engineers who worked on the project back in 1947, told me, Flight No. 4, was configured just like Flight No. 5. While there is no schematic for Flight No. 4 (reinforcing the idea that it didn’t fly), we have the schematic for Flight No. 5, courtesy of the Air Force investigation of the Roswell case. There were no rawin radar targets on that flight, which raises the question, “Where did the rawin target photographed in General Ramey’s office originate?” It certainly didn’t come from Roswell.

Charles Moore reviewing winds aloft data at the school
library in Socorro. Photo by Kevin randle

Second, the testimony of Sheridan Cavitt, the CIC officer in Roswell at the time, carries great weight. However, what Cavitt told Don Schmitt and me when we met him, he wasn’t even in Roswell at the time. Later, he would tell Don and me, that he was too busy with security investigations to be chasing weather balloons.

I did ask him, given that the description of the officer who accompanied Jesse Marcel, Sr. out to the debris, meaning he was a West Texas boy who could ride horses, about his denial. He said that it sounded like him, but he insisted that he had not gone to the debris field.

Now, this could be boiled down to me spreading tales, but there is documentation about this. In the Air Force report, The Roswell Report: Fact vs Fiction in the New Mexico Desert, Cavitt’s interview conducted by Colonel Richard Weaver is published. Weaver asked about the incident that happened during the early part of July. Cavitt responded:

We went out to this site. There were no, as I understand, check points or anything like that (going through guards and that sort of garbage) we went out there and we found it. It was a small amount of, as I recall, bamboo sticks, reflective sort of material that would, well at first glance, you would probably think it was aluminum foil… I do not remember if Marcel was there or not on the site. He could have been. We took it back to the intelligence room… in the CIC office.

RW: What did you think it was when you recovered it?

SC: I thought it was a weather balloon.

I always wonder why, if Cavitt had identified the material while still on the ranch, he hadn’t communicated this rather important piece of intelligence to Colonel Blanchard and saved him the embarrassment of telling the world they had recovered a flying saucer… but I digress.

I have a letter, written by Cavitt to Doyle Rees, one time officer in charge of the CIC office in Albuquerque, on December 6, 1989. He was answering a letter from Rees, which I think was generated by the original Unsolved Mysteries show on Roswell that had aired several weeks earlier. I think this because that show is mentioned in the letter.

In the letter, Cavitt wrote, “…Marcel was a smart man; a good friend, a Louisiana Cajun, who was prone to be excitable, and, in this case wrong in that Cavitt had been along on that caper.”

Sheridan Cavitt interview in Arizona with Kevin Randle and
Don Schmitt. Photo by Kevin Randle

I don’t know why Cavitt would lie to Rees, unless had not been the senior officer of the CIC in the area at the time, and therefore, hadn’t been read into the crash when he, Rees, arrived in Albuquerque. The point is that Cavitt told fellow CIC officer, Rees, he hadn’t been there, but then told Weaver that not only was he there, he recognized the debris as that from a weather balloon…

Of course, that still doesn’t explain the picture of the rawin target taken in Ramey’s office, that was published on July 9, 1947, for all the world to see. Where did that debris originate?

Roger Ramey and Thomas DuBose with the remains of a rawin target. Since there
were no rawin targets on the early flights of Mogul balloons, the question
 is where did the rawin originate?

But, of course, that’s fine because we all know that it was really part of Project Mogul…

(Blogger’s Note: For those interested in a comprehensive analysis of the Project Mogul explanation, I recommend Roswell in the 21^st Century. This provides more evidence that Project Mogul was not a part of this story until injected into it in the late 1980s.)

Jake Barber: UFO Retrieval Whistleblower

Last Saturday night, (January 18) NewsNation aired a segment that featured Jake Barber who claimed that he had seen a “nonhuman” egg-shaped aircraft and had been recruited for a top-secret government UFO crash/retrieval program. Unlike David Grusch who talked of hearing of such things from credible but unnamed sources, Barber said that he had participated in retrievals.

I probably should point out here that neither of these “whistleblowers” was the first to make claims of an involvement in some sort of government UFO crash retrieval program. Among the first was Clifford Stone, a mid-level Army NCO, who claimed to have been involved in several such operations and had even seen the “alien autopsy file,” not long after he had joined the Army. I mention this because Stones’ revelations were little more than invention that was not backed up by any sort of independent evidence.

The late Cliff Stone, who claimed to be on the inside
of a secret program involved with crash retrievals.

According to NewsNation, which had checked Barber’s records, he was a talented airplane mechanic who was deployed on several presidential support missions. He had been recruited into the Air Force’s Elite Combat Control unit suggesting he was a helicopter pilot (though it is unclear if he had been a military pilot), freefall parachutist, expert marksman and the recipient of a NATO top-secret security clearance, known as Cosmic Top Secret and service in Bosnia, for which he earned an unidentified valor award. They don’t reveal what award that might be. Stones’ records provided no corroboration for his tales.

To indicate the off-world nature of the retrievals, Barber said, “Just visually looking at the object on the ground, you could tell that it was extraordinary and anomalous. It was not human.” The craft was metallic, pearly white, and about the size of an SUV.

Normally, I am skeptical of these sorts of claims and I believe we all should be as well. However, my own experiences in both Air Force and Army intelligence suggests there might be some truth to it.

Because of my status in the military, that is as an intelligence officer, and because some knew of my interest in UFOs, I occasionally received nuggets of information about UFO cases that haven’t been reported or that have had little military interest. Bob Cornett and I might have been among the first to gain access to the Project Blue Book records while they were still housed as Maxwell Air Force Base and had not been redacted, taking out the names of the witnesses.

Bob Cornett reviewing UFO records while on assignment from
a magazine in the 1970s.

One of the first cases we wanted to see was from November 1953 that involved the disappearance of an Air Force fighter. The Blue Book file was just two pages and it was noted that it was an aircraft accident rather than a UFO report. According to an Air Force colonel who was stationed at Kinross Air Force Base said that in November 1953, a jet fighter was scrambled to intercept an unknown target, meaning a UFO, over the Soo Locks on Lake Superior. The intercept was watched on radar, the two blips, that is the UFO and the jet, merged but never separated. That single blip flew off the scope and disappeared in the distance. From the point of the merge, there had been no further communication with the fighter. The jet was never found. The colonel told me that there had been two schools of thought. One was that the UFO abducted the jet and the second was that it had crashed into the lake.

That is the sort of thing that I believe David Grusch heard when he talked about UFO crashes. People who were at the right place at the right time to know something more than the public provided that information. The colonel believed that the jet had been abducted, or in his words, the UFO took it. I wasn’t there, but the source had been. I knew him and he was credible but then where do you go with such a tale. If it is highly classified, how do I, as a civilian now, break through that barrier. Besides, attempts to learn more about it, other than the mundane and unclassified, have failed. I’m pointed back to the information and documentation that I already had.

In a somewhat similar vein, Don Schmitt and I interviewed a general at the Pentagon. Well, interviewed might be an over statement. He agreed to meet us in a snack bar on one of the lowest levels. The tables were about waist high or higher, so that people had a place to set a plate, but there were no stools. It was a get in, get your food, eat it and get out place.

We wanted to talk about the Roswell case. Don had apparently chatted with him at some point, explaining what we were after which is information about Roswell. By this time, we had talked to many witnesses to the crash and knew more about it. We had rejected the balloon answer and had even interviewed three of those who had been in General Ramey’s office on July 8, 1947.

We were inside the Pentagon for about fifteen or twenty minutes. The general didn’t look nervous. He just told us that there was an area in the Pentagon to which he had no access. He said that our Roswell information was there. He didn’t elaborate. Just hinted that highly classified information about Roswell was in that area, and those entering had to have a specific request and their time in that area was limited. I would later talk to another man who had said he had seen the classified version Project Blue Book and described for me. He said he saw some of the pictures of crashed UFOs and the recovery operations that had been conducted. I don’t know if these classified Blue Book files were part of that section of the Pentagon to which the general had referred.

I have also talked with another general who said he knew the photographer who photographed Roswell bodies, but didn’t provide very much information about that. I need to point out that by the time the information got to me, it was third-hand. The general hadn’t seen the pictures, he had just talked to one of those men who took them.

I suppose I should mention the retired MSGT who said that he’d provided the rawin target for the Roswell explanation. What he had said to Cornett and me, was that he had taken a balloon into an area to show the witnesses what they had seen. This was before I had talked with Irving Newton, the weather officer who identified the wreckage in Fort Worth. He said they didn’t have rawin targets on the FWAAF, but did know where to get one if it was needed.

The MSGT was careful about what he told us, but the implication was that he had taken the balloon around the Roswell area. I have assumed that it was part it was part of the 1947 cover up, but when Bob and I talked to him, neither of us knew much about the Roswell case. I had read Frank Edward’s laughable description of the Roswell case in his Flying Saucers – Serious Business, but that didn’t contain much information other than it happened near Roswell and the Air Force had explained it, in Edward’s words, as a pie tin hooked to a kite.

All these are incidents, in which I was involved to some extent. Like those being talked about today, they suggest that these retrievals do happen. Sometimes the information is limited and we must deduce where it is going. Sometimes it is more explicit. What it does confirm is there was a cover up then and it remains in place now. 

The Zamora Symbol Controvery

Like David Rudiak, I really didn’t want to go down this particular rabbit hole because it was one of those no-win situations. More importantly, even if we could resolve the question of the “true symbol,” what did it gain us. And now there may be a third version to add to the mix.

I have advocated for years my belief that the “umbrella symbol” is the correct one. I based that on the documentation available in the Project Blue Book files and the testimony of some of the participants made at the time, that is in April 1964. I can see no reason that the officers involved in the investigation in the hours and days after Lonnie Zamora’s sighting would document that umbrella symbol as the true symbol if it was not. The every first is a scrap of paper on which Zamora said he scribbled that symbol as the craft was taking off. That seems to be very persuasive testimony.

On the other side of the argument are those who suggest the inverted “V” with three bars through it is the correct symbol. Ironically, it seems that Zamora is also the advocate of that symbol. It was released to some of the media, in those days meaning the press, within a day or two of the sighting.

J. Allen Hynek, in a letter dated September 7, 1964, produced a weird version of the inverted “V” symbol. It showed two parallel bars inside the “V” and a third bar over the top.

Rather than recap all this, the simplest solution for those who wish to read more about it, and to see the various pieces of evidence being discussed, is to follow this link:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-socorro-symbol-resolved.html

Now, in the last few hours, I have received additional information. As you’ll read, one of these correspondents is less than patient. I will note that I made no changes in his comment, other than to divide the paragraphs for greater clarity. He wrote:

Hi. This is Patrick Richard, former MUFON investigator, ufo artist, portrait artist, MUFON New Mexico member and a very close alliance of Lonnie Zamora up until his passing. I lived in San Antonito, 8 miles south of Socorro, from July 2004 until August 2011. Let me point out something about this blog's ruminations. There is controversy about the paper sack...whether it was a stray scrap of paper at the landing site in the arroyo, or that Lonnie had a paper sack in his cruiser that day...I never asked him. I don't know. But I do know what he divulged about the insignia when we were having coffee at the NWestern-most window table at the El Camino Restaurant in Socorro some 7 months before his well-attended funeral at the mission.

The correct insignia is, as he stated to the dispatcher, "un 'v' invertido con tres lineas debajo". Debajo is slightly different but noteworthy. He didn't say 'abajo' (below and not necessarily related to a reference point in Spanish). He meant that the horizontal lines were not apart from the inverted V, per this nuance of Spanish grammar --- according to my wife who is latin american Spanish. Lonnie's use of 'debajo' is like saying 'is attached to the subject in the bottom area' --- otherwise he would have used 'abajo'. Spanish, like German, is very fussy about exactness in location. Regressando a la vaca fria...let's get back to the cold cow : the El Camino restaurant in Socorro (which is still open). I asked if he 'd have coffee with me because I wanted to ask him in person to come to my little house in San Antonito to finish an oil portrait I was painting for the purpose of donating it to the Socorro Historical Museum. Lonnie agreed to both, to my surprise. To the El Camino I brought the Albuquerque Journal's 25 year anniversay edition of the experience. Lonnie said he never saw this. So he leafed through it while I was doodling the variations of the red insignia. I had intended to bring it up, but I was sensitive to his needs for privacy, still, after 45 years. He looked at the black & white pages of the Journal as we began talking about it. I mused which insignia it was -- not asking him directly as he looked at the Journal's photo of the paper sack or "scrap"...Then, he pointed to my doodles and said "That one." The inverted V with three horizontal lines at the bottom, running through the bottom of the inverted V.

His two sons, or his daughter, may kniw something different, HOWEVER, Lonnie was truly and irreversibly dedicated to the safety of his family until the end of his life. To me, that is in itself, the smoking gun of his reality in the arroyo.

And that is persuasive argument and I would counter with the comments I made before. There is no motivation for the officers who provided written reports for Project Blue Book to have concealed the real nature of the insignia given the circumstances. While they might not have wanted it out in the general public arena as a way of eliminating follow on hoaxes, in their internal communications, that purpose is moot.

An hour after this first comment (made about seven hours ago) he furnished the following:

I would never argue in support of just a theory. As ufoguy remarked: get away from the computer and go outside to interview. That's solid.

An hour after that, he wrote:

Not the umbrella. Lonnie and I talked briefly about the ongoing fear for his family. The AF really did a stereotypical intimidation on him and did it well...and then crystalized the veiled threat with a sickly idea of patriotism thrown at a latino man who loves family and country, in that order. "Un 'v' invertido con tres lineas debajo" means the inverted v with 3 horizontal lines at the bottom of that v in a slightly cramed cluster. He told me.

And finally, he provided the following an hour later, “Where is my comment?”

The answer was simple. I hadn’t looked at the blog. I no longer allow unapproved comments to be posted directly. I was getting too many comments like, “Loved your post Good story. See http;//blab, blab, blab.com which was just an ad for a product that had nothing to do with UFOs.

But I digress.

I had also received another comment from TheUFOGuy, who posted his comment before those of Patrick Richard. He wrote:

Once again. I have a first hand witness who discussed this with Lonnie at the local coffee shop. Here is the conversation: At El Camino, while Lonnie was talking softly about the Albuquerque Journal edition, i was sketching (doodling) a couple of versions of the red insignia.

He looked from the newspaper and pointed to "that one" . I didn't expect him to answer my rhetorical question ( more to myself than to him) "well which one was it?"

The one in the upperleft of the photo I just sent.

He pointed to the drawing of the inverted V with 3 lines, but this site will not let me paste that drawing. I could send it to you, but your mind seems to be made up. Your also forgetting that Lonnie described the inverted V with 3 lines in spanish when he called the dispatch from the site. So, I have the drawing from the first hand witness with Lonnie, but I guess you will not post it?

Once again, I’m not sure why the snarky comment. Why wouldn’t I post it? It is relevant to our discussion. But there was no attachment and I looked at my email but didn’t see anything from him… until I realized who he was: Here is the drawing he sent.

 

If you look at the following post, you can read some additional information about this controversy. David Rudiak makes a few very interesting comments about this issue. Like him, as I say, I didn’t want to get dragged down this rabbit hole, and since the information that set it all off has been discredited (that presentation about Tesla), we really didn’t need to do this. The source for the original story is from a not so credible source and I knew that if I posted that information, we’d quickly learn more about it. That turned out to be true, and that part of this episode should be reduced to a footnote.

There really isn’t way to resolve this dilemma. I have posted illustrations made by Lonnie Zamora within hours of the sighting, signed by him, as the real symbol. Ray Stanford, who was in New Mexico within a couple days, and within two weeks, wrote to Dick Hall that the inverted “V” was not the real symbol. The real symbol is the “umbrella symbol.”

When the mayor of Socorro asked that Lonnie Zamora provide an illustration, Rick Baca was the one who drew it. A version of that drawing was published in the newspaper without any symbol on it but under Zamora’s guidance, the “umbrella symbol” was added later. This information is in the following post’s comments.

And there are the comments by Harden, who lives in Socorro and I’m sure both Richard and TheUFOGuy have spoken with him. He provided some interesting commentary, found in the following post about the “true” symbol.

TheUFOGuy (sorry, I didn’t realize who you were until later in the conversation) and now Patrick Richard, provide some compelling testimony. He provided a copy of the material that Richard provided that, as noted, came about with his discussions with Zamora and approved by Zamora.

A solid case can be made for either symbol (or the new third one that developed on that illustration above). I believe, based on the interviews I conducted and the documentation from the Blue Book files, that the “umbrella symbol” is the correct one.

However, the other side makes a compelling case for the inverted “V,” so you look at the evidence and decide which you think is the right one. I’m just not certain that it makes any difference in the world today. And remember, at the chief of Project Blue Book said at the time. He was going to make the UFO people happy because he, Hector Quintanilla labeled the case as “Unidentified.”

A Good Match for the Zamora Symbol has been Found

Almost from the moment that strange craft was reported by Police Officer Lonnie Zamora in 1964, Air Force officers, UFO researchers, journalists and those with an interest in UFOs have been searching for an Earth based symbol to match that which Zamora saw. The search was complicated by military a military officer and an FBI agent who interviewed Zamora within a couple of hours. They suggested that he keep the symbol to himself, not to hide the evidence, but to have something to use if others reported the craft and symbol. That was further complicated when they, or someone at Project Blue Book, invented a symbol to satisfy the news media.

For those interested in reviewing this aspect of the case, you can find my postings about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/11/socorro-symbol-redux.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-final-analysis-of-socorro-symbol.html

Over the years, there have been suggestions about that symbol, but they weren’t very close matches. Now, however, there is one that is frightening close to what Zamora reported. It is upside down. It is attached to a document dated 1928 which is part of a larger document. You can find that document here:

https://www.hal5.org/PDF/HAL5-Dec2018-Talk-AntiGravity.pdf

If the link doesn’t work, and I’ve had trouble with this sort of thing in the past, this is a look at several patents held by Nikola Tesla. The relevant one is Patent No. 1655144. Use that number in your search engine. This is a pdf. You need to scroll down to the patents from 1928 and you’ll see it in the upper left corner of the illustration.

While it is not an exact match, but, as I say, it is frightening close to the symbol that Zamora drew. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, why not just show it. The links above show the symbols released in 1964 and provide the documentation for it. I believe these provide a good history of that symbol.

That doesn’t answer the question however. Just in case links are broken or the patent number doesn’t work, here is that symbol:

Is the symbol here, the inspiration for the Zamora/Socorro symbol?

I should point out that Charles Blithfield discovered this and passed it along to me. Credit for the discovery goes to him.

And no, I don’t know if this taints the Zamora case, though it seems to be an incredible coincidence if an alien spacecraft held a symbol that is so close to the one Telsa used. Over the years, there has been quite a bit of controversy about this. I have to wonder, if the object Zamora reported was some sort of experimental craft, if there is any link to the various machines flying around White Sands had any link to Tesla.

Anyway, Blithfield has certainly complicated the case. I am reminded that Hector Quintanilla, the chief of Blue Book in 1964 had labeled the Zamora case as “unidentified,” he thought that the solution was somewhere in Zamora’s mind. He thought there might have been something that Zamora saw but hadn’t quite figured out what it was. Maybe this is the hint that Zamora needed for access that memory.

I do want to note that I don’t believe Zamora made up the sighting and I believe he was truly confused by it. He saw something he couldn’t identify and reported what he had seen.

As I say, thanks to Charles Blithfield for the information. 

Drones: The Guesses Just Keep on Coming

I had hoped, with Congress in recess and we’re in the middle of the holidays, that I would be free from more drone discussion. However, there was one interesting item I caught over the weekend. Representative Nancy Mace, who is the Chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology and Government Innovation, said that she had been in a classified briefing on the drones.

Like President-elect Trump, she was careful about what she said. She indicated that the government did know more about these drone incursions that the claimed and said that she was interested in the fact that there were two distinct shapes involved in some of those sightings. She then said she didn’t want to get into the classified information she had received. If we follow the two-source rule used by journalists, we have two sources, that have been identified and who, given who their inside status, are in a position to know something more about the drones than we civilians.

In the last few days, there has been more analysis, some of it by other officials and some of it by various pundits, that suggests the government, or elements of the government, know what is going on. And there are those who are saying, with some justification, that this latest interest is the result of hysteria. Too many people outside looking for drones and spotting them. Or, in other words, not all the sightings are of these unidentified drones.

I also need point out that there are very few of us who believe that the drones are of off-world manufacture. This whole thing is Earth based.

Finally, there is no evidence, at the moment, that has been given to us by the government or that we have learned ourselves, that there is a threat here. I suppose we could say, and some have said, the drones could be a threat to aerial navigation, and one airport was shut down by a close encounter with a drone, but the truth is, this is one of those reflective phenomena. That means, simply, that the more attention we pay to it, the more our interest increases.

Anyway, the holidays have gotten in the way of drone reporting. We still see interesting video, and some of the news media continues to pursue the story, but the rest of us are no longer that interested in it.

Now, for those interested in such things, I’m doing Night Dreams Radio. For those interested, you can watch and listen here:

https://youtube.com/@nightdreamstalkradio?si=3dTWZX-SpgO0_zT4

And going completely off script, my wishes that everyone has a better new year than the last. 

Drones, Donald Trump and the CIA

 

So, I’m driving my car, pushing the buttons to find something interesting on the radio and I blunder into President-elect Trump’s press conference. I’m about to hit the button but I caught the question being asked. “Can you comment on the drones…”

Trump seems to hesitate and then said, “The Government knows what is happening… Look, our military knows where they took off from. If it’s a garage they can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went. For some reason, they don’t want to comment. And I think they’d be better off saying what it is. Our military knows and our President knows and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense. I can’t imagine it is the enemy because if it was the enemy they’d blast it out. Even it was late they’d blast it. Something strange is going on. For some reason they don’t want to tell the people and they should because the people… I mean they happen to be over Bedminster. I don’t think I’ll spend the weekend in Bedminster. I have decided to cancel my trip.”

The President-elect, as if I had to mention that.

He’s interrupted by additional questions and makes a very telling comment. A reporter asked, “Have you received an intelligence briefing on the drones?”

He says, “I don’t want to comment on that.”

They then descent into questions about vaccines, which is not relevant to our discussion.

I did see, or hear, that an ex-member of the CIA was suggesting that the drones were some sort of classified exercise. The CIA has spent decades taking credit for all sorts of UFO sightings, suggesting during the 1950s and 60s that high flying spy planes were the UFOs. Now the CIA, or rather someone who was a member of the CIA, is making the same claim about the drones.

And the CEO of a company that makes drones suggested that they are “sniffing” for gas leaks or areas of radiation. That is why they’re flying at night, which implies that these searches are classified. But I wonder if that was true, then why are they all lit up. If it’s a secret search, turn off the damn lights. And that really doesn’t explain the daylight sightings.

I’m inclined to believe what Trump said during the press conference. He said the military knows, which explains why none have been shot down. He then didn’t answer the question about having been briefed, which is, of course, a type of answer. Given what he has done since the election during this transition period, it is very likely that he has been briefed. That briefing suggested there is nothing dangerous involved.

I also wonder if some of the drone sightings haven’t been inspired by the hysteria that is being exhibited. During a wave of UFO sightings in the 1973, there were several cases in which witnesses were making up their encounters, increasing the hysteria. There was a case where three men, dressed in aluminum foil and standing near a road were waving at the cars. They were eventually arrested.

The point is, that it is now difficult to separate the real sightings from the faked sightings or the incidents in which some drone owners are taking advantage of the public concern. There is a solid body of evidence that drones are flying into areas that are restricted, violating FAA regulations, and adding to the hysteria that has gripped the nation.

To this point, and I stress that, to this point, there has been no incident in which one of these drones caused an accident. That isn’t to say that might never happen, only, to this point, it is the hysteria and the fear of the unknown that is driving these events.

If the Government has the answer, and it doesn’t involve our adversaries as we have been told repeatedly, and it’s not the Martians, or aliens from another solar system, then there is no real reason for the secrecy. If they can end the hysteria now, then it is time to do so.