X-Zone Broadcast Network - Ryan Wood and MJ-12

This week I spoke with Ryan Wood. He had sent out an email complaining about the anti-UFO bias on Wikipedia. I thought that would be an interesting topic, and since he is a proponent of MJ-12, I thought we could spend some time on that as well. But, as usual, the conversation took on a life of its own. You can listen to it here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/20493888

We veered off into the Cape Girardeau UFO crash of 1941, which, as everyone will tell you, is six years older than the Roswell case. The problem here is that there are no first-hand witnesses and while the granddaughter of minister who was called to scene heard about it from family, the problem is that she heard about it from family. There really is no documentation in the form of newspaper articles and diary entries, or anything of that nature. And while I didn’t make the comment

Ryan Wood. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle.

during the show because, well, we went off in other discussions, I always worry about these pre-Roswell cases. If this had happened, it would seem to me that the military might have been better prepared for the events in Roswell.

Ryan said that his book, Majic Eyes Only, listed 74 crash retrievals. I thought that there just weren’t that many because it would be impossible to keep all that secret for so long. At some point one of those crashes would have produced evidence no matter how hard the various government agencies attempted to suppress it all. I did point out that in my book, Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky, I listed something like 110. One of those was an alternative look at the Cape Girardeau crash. An analysis of that case follows this posting.

Given there were so many alleged crashes, I asked what Ryan thought were the best. He suggested Roswell, Kecksburg and Shag Harbour. I mentioned that I thought of Shag Harbour as more of an emergency landing than an actual crash. But the real point was that each of these had documentation and newspaper articles while most of the other crashes were single witness with no documentation at all. Some were clearly mundane objects seen under unusual circumstances. Some were clearly meteors, others debris from missile tests, and a few outright hoaxes.

We finally did make it to MJ-12 and the so-called Operations Manual. I mentioned that there were some anachronisms in it. Ryan pointed out that skeptics said the War Department seal on the front was one, but that he had found that symbol on other manuals printed after the War Department ceased to exist in 1947, meaning that, in this one case, it might not be an anachronism.

I wondered about the lack of a provenance for the manual and asked if there were any MJ-12 documents from a legitimate government source that lead to support MJ-12. Ryan said that there was a letter from Lieutenant Colonel Robert Blount to Dr. Robley Evans that did lead to MJ-12. You can see that letter here:

http://www.majesticdocuments.com/pdf/blount_evans.pdf

I believe the top-secret report to which Blount referred is the Air Intelligence Report (AIR) 100-203-79 with a date of April 29, 1949. There is nothing in it about UFO crashes or anything like that. Blount seemed to think it was more of a psychological analysis, which the AIR report is not.

But there is a real problem with the Blount letter that I’m sure if obvious to everyone. To sort of prove that point, I think the Hottel Memo makes the case. Here is an FBI document that mentions a UFO crash. You can read it here:

https://vault.fbi.gov/hottel_guy/Guy%20Hottel%20Part%201%20of%201/view

The point is, the Hottel Memo refers to the Aztec crash hoax and is based on information from Frank Scully’s book, Behind the Flying Saucers. Time magazine, in January, 1950, printed an article about little men from Venus. That predates the Blount letter and might well be the source of the rumor.

Next week, John Burroughs is the guest. He’ll be offering some new information about the Rendlesham Forest events of December 1980. If you have questions for him, put them in a comment here, and I’ll try to get them answered during the program.

Cape Girardeau UFO Crash, 1941

Charlette Mann wrote to Ray Fowler, a long time and well-trusted UFO researcher, who sent the letter on to Len Stringfield because Fowler thought Stringfield would be interested. Mann wrote that her grandfather, a minister, received a telephone call asking him to go to the scene of an aircraft accident. Stringfield, quite naturally, called her to ask for more detail and convinced her to rewrite her letter into a more structured report which he published in his UFO Crash/Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum and which is dated July 1991. He shared his report with many of his fellow UFO researchers, especially those interested in crash retrievals.

According to Mann’s letter, her grandfather, Reverend William Huffman was “born in August, 1888 and he grew up in Missouri. He attended college in Bolivar and after graduation, he went to a seminary. He was an ordained Baptist minister... he was a quiet man who was well respected.”

Alleged crash site. Photo copyright by
Michael Huntington.

Which, of course, means that his credentials are just fine. He was a well-educated man for the times and he was a minister which suggests he was also an honest man... again for the times. But he died before telling Mann about the case. This information came from her grandmother, known as Floy and I don’t believe I need to point out that it is, therefore, second hand and as related by Mann, third hand.

In her May 6, 1991 letter to Stringfield, she provided all the details that she had heard from her grandmother. She wrote:

It happened in the Spring of 1941. About 9 to 9:30 one evening, granddad got a telephone call from the police department, saying they had received reports that a plane had crashed outside of town and would he go in case someone needed him. Of course he said yes. A car was sent to get him, but my grandmother said it wasn’t a police car.

After grandfather returned that night, he explained what he had seen to grandmother, my father, Guy, and Uncle Wayne, but that they were never to speak of it again...

He said they drove out of town 13 - 15 miles or so, then parked the cars on the side of the road and had to walk 1/4 of a mile or so into a field where he could see fire burning.

Grandfather said it wasn’t an airplane or like any craft he’d ever seen. It was broken and scattered all around, but one large piece was still together and it appeared to have a rounded shape with no edges or seams. It had a very shiny metallic finish. You could see inside one section and see what looked like a metal chair with a panel with many dials and gauges – – none familiar looking to him. He said that when he got there, men were already sifting through things. There were some police officers, plain clothes people and military men. There were three bodies not human, that had been taken from the wreckage and laid on the ground. Grandfather said prayers over them so he got a close look but didn’t touch them. He didn’t know what had killed them because they didn’t appear to have any injuries and they weren’t burnt. It was hard for him to tell if they had on suits or if it was their skin but they were covered head to foot in what looked like wrinkled aluminum foil. He could see no hair on the bodies and they had no ears. They were small framed like a child about 4 feet tall, but had larger heads and longer arms. They had very large oval shaped eyes, no noses just holes and no lips just small slits for mouths. There were several people with cameras taking pictures of everything. Two of the plain clothes men picked up one of the little men, held it under its arms. A picture was taken. That was the picture I later saw. Then, one of the military officers talked to granddad and told him he was not to talk about or repeat anything that had taken place for security reasons and so as not to alarm people. Granddad returned home, told his family. That was all. About two weeks after it happened, he came home with a picture of the two men holding the little man.

After my grandfather died, my Dad kept the picture and was very interested in UFO info. Then when I was 10 or 11, a close friend of my Dad’s asked if he could borrow it to show to his folks so Dad let him have it and never got it back.

Stringfield was concerned about that picture. First, as has happened in all similar stories, the picture has disappeared, so we don’t have that bit of physical evidence. Of course, you have to wonder if there was actual security on the field, why were there people taking pictures… unless in an official capacity. Then you have to ask why Huffman was given one.

But Stringfield was also worried because he had seen, as I have seen, a picture that sounds similar and has been published around the UFO field for many years. In it are two military men holding the long arms of what is supposed to be an alien creature but what is clearly a monkey. It is an obvious but not a particularly well-known hoax.

Mann, in her May 6, 1991, provided a lengthy description of that photograph. She wrote:

My recollection from what I saw in the picture was a small man about 4 feet tall with a large head and long arms. He was thin and no bone structure was apparent; kind of soft looking. He had no hair on his head or body with large, oval, slightly slanted eyes but not like oriental from left to right, more up and down. He had no ears at all and nose like ours. His mouth was as if you had just cut a small straight line where it should have been. His skin or suit looked like crinkled-up tin foil and it covered all of him... I believe he had three fingers, all quite long, but I can’t be sure on this.

Stringfield got a copy of the picture he remembered from Michael Hesemann and sent it on to Mann. She replied, “It is nothing like what I saw. Your picture showed men in overcoats while in my picture, the man had no coats (sic)... Your picture shows two women; mine none. The alien in yours looks like a tiny doll, much smaller and shorter than mine.”

Mann has now granted interviews to many others and some of the details of her story have expanded. For example, in a 2008 interview she said that when her grandfather arrived, two of the alien creatures were dead but the third was still alive. She said that it, or he, or possibly even she, died while her grandfather was praying over it. He then moved on to the other two to offer prayers for them.

She also said that the symbols he had seen inside the craft “looked similar to hieroglyphics.”

Neither of these details were in the original story and I’m not sure that makes much difference. Oh, the skeptics will grab on to this and suggest it is proof that she is inventing the tale. I think a more likely situation is that she either remembered more as she thought about it or it could be a simple case of confabulation, which is not exactly lying, but just filling in missing details. That does nothing to negate the core of the story.

And, according to other reports, there is some corroboration. In what might be considered a not very persuasive bit of evidence, Clarance R. Schade, who is the brother of the sheriff in the Cape Girardeau area in the 1940s said that he remembered hearing of a crash and he seems to remember talk of little people

Ryan Wood. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle.

associated with it. Certainly not startling information, but not a quick denial either.

Ryan Wood, in his Majic Eyes Only, reported that Mann’s sister provided a sworn affidavit, confirmed the story. In other words, other members of the family are aware of the family history and report they too have seen the photograph.

In February 2008, Tyler, Texas, television reporter Gillian Sheridan interviewed Charlette Mann. According to that report, Mann said, “We got validation by going to the archives in Washington D.C. and to see a top secret declassified document that stated that there was in fact a crash retrieval in 1941 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, for me, I have not forgotten holding that paper in my hand and realizing that my families story was real, was solid, and for me was just an answer to a long time question.”

Samples of that document appeared on Frank Warren’s blog (found at www.theufochronicles.com) but they seem to be almost too good to be true. One of the samples said, “Based on all available evidence collected from recovered exhibits currently under study by AMC, AFSWP, NEPA, AEC, ONR, NACA, JRDB, RAND, USAAF, SAG and MIT, are deemed extraterrestrial in nature. This conclusion was reached as a result of comparison of artifacts (small part redacted) discovered in 1941. The technology is outside the scope of US science, even that of German rocket and aircraft development.”

The problem with this statement is that it proves that there have been extraterrestrial recoveries, and even uses that term. This is apparently part of a leaked MJ-12 document and is dated 24 Sep 47. The MJ-12 documents themselves are wrapped in controversy.

Which returns us to the original story. At the moment, the major witness is Charlette Mann. Her sister has corroborated hearing the family talk of the night their grandfather, Rev. William Huffman, was called out to pray over the bodies recovered from the wrecked craft, and the brother of the sheriff also seems to remember something about this.

The problem for me is simply this. If there had been this crash in 1941, then the military would have been aware of the possibility of interplanetary (as opposed to interstellar because people in the era thought in terms of interplanetary) travel, they would have been on the lookout for other examples. That means they wouldn’t have been caught by surprise with the flying saucers were first reported in June

Ed Ruppelt

1947 and would have been better prepared for the Roswell crash when it happened in July 1947.

In fact, Ed Ruppelt, the one time chief of Project Blue Book, reported that in the summer of 1947, those in the Pentagon were in a near panic because of the stories of the flying saucers. Ruppelt wrote:

The memos and correspondence that Project Blue Book inherited from the old UFO projects told the story of the early flying saucer era. These memos and pieces of correspondence showed that the UFO situation was considered serious; in fact, very serious. The paper work of that period also indicated the confusion that surrounded the investigation; confusion almost to the point of panic. The brass wanted an answer quickly and people were taking off in all directions.

That argues against the extraterrestrial nature of this case. If there had been a crash near Cape Girardeau in 1941, then the answer was already held at the highest levels. There would be no panic because they would know what was happening. They wouldn’t create a project to find answers in a hurry, because they had the answer already. Such an investigation ran the risk of compromising the classified project. A quiet word would have been issued and the whole investigation never have been started.

But there seems to be more than enough here. Additional investigation for the case is deserved. There is an old prospecting saying, “You don’t always expect to find the gold, but you have to look.” This is a case where you have to look. There are interesting leads that need to be followed and there are certainly witnesses that could be located, though time is growing short.

Glenn Dennis and the Interview on YouTube

On Monday, someone had posted to Facebook, a YouTube link to an interview with Glenn Dennis conducted on November 19, 1990. Dennis is seen in casual clothes, relaxed, and told the story of his missing nurse, his involvement in the Roswell UFO crash case, and what all he knew about it. He told an intriguing story that has many people convinced that what he said was true. That was underscored by the source of the tape which was listed as the Department of Defense, Department of the Air Force, Office of the Secretary. Office of the Administrative Assistant. Office of the Deputy for Security and Special Investigative Programs. Research Declassification Team.

All that is untrue.

Glenn Dennis in 1990.

Oh, the tape was made on November 19, 1990, and it was Glenn Dennis sitting in the chair in Roswell, but the government, the Air Force, and all those others mentioned had nothing to do with the creation of the tape, and that is the real problem here.

The first interviewer’s voice you hear on the tape is Don Schmitt. The second is Mark Wolf and the third is me. This was an informal interview and was conducted mainly by Mark Wolf with both Don and me offering questions and advice.

Two days later we did a more formal interview that I conducted. These were done as part of the documentary, UFO Secret – The Roswell Crash. I have the original tape (on Beta, if you can believe that) of the first interview. Mark Wolf took the second interview with him when we all left Roswell. Wolf was afraid that something might happen to the tape as he passed through airport security and since I was driving back home, I took the first interview with me. His thought was that we wouldn’t lose both interviews.

Wolf said later that there had been some trouble at one of the airport check points and he thought someone might have searched his luggage and had fiddled with the tape. When he got home, he found that there was nothing wrong with any of the tapes, other than evidence of a close examination of them.

Given the state of the investigation in 1990, we had no reason to suspect that Dennis might not have been as candid as he could be. After all, it was Walter Haut who supplied Dennis’ name. Subsequent research demonstrated the unreliability of Dennis’ testimony. You can read about that journey here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/01/glenn-dennis-revisited.html

(As an aside, you can see a picture of Glenn Dennis from that interview posted to that YouTube entry.)

The real problem here is that the posting of the Dennis interview to YouTube does not cite any of this. Instead, it looks as if some government agency conducted the interviews and that provides a note of authenticity to the tape. Comments are not allowed which prohibits me from providing the necessary context for the interview and the resulting investigation.

This worries me because those not familiar with the story will now believe that Glenn Dennis was involved in the case and that his nurse friend was killed not long after her involvement in Roswell. What might not be clear is that there is no truth to what Dennis said on the tape other than his name, he lived in Roswell and that he had worked at Ballard’s Funeral Home.

There is enough of these fake stories circulating through Ufology in general and the Roswell case in particular to alter the truth. It is a problem because all too often those doing research will find the confirming information and look no further. This tape should be labeled for what it is… the fantasy of a man who had no real involvement other than he lived in Roswell in 1947.

I should note here that I have notified the National Archives of the error in claiming the tapes were created by those government agencies cited. No military or government agencies were involved in this interview and we supplied copies of the tapes to the Air Force during their investigation and to both CUFOS and FUFOR in the earlier 1990s. Since comments are not permitted on YouTube to correct the error, I have suggested that the posting is in violation of copyright. Had the source been revealed, this drastic action would not have been needed.

Metamaterial, Art Bell and the To The Stars Academy

For those of you keeping score at home, I am coming to this table a tad bit late. I just couldn’t get fired up about the TTSA’s acquisition of alien metallic debris they call metamaterials. I have heard so many stories about bits of debris circulating throughout the UFO community and beyond that I just don’t buy into it anymore. For nearly thirty years I have chased metallic debris, claims of photographs, diaries and letters. In all that time, not one of them has panned out* so I have become somewhat cynical.

In the last few weeks I have learned that the TTSA has acquired some debris and that the US Army is interested in it because it might help develop materials to

The late Art Bell.

protect our soldiers on the battlefield. Well, having been a soldier on a battlefield or two, I’m all for protecting the soldiers but I doubt that anything the TTSA has acquired will help in that mission.

So, let’s talk about the material that the TTSA acquired that I’m told they paid something like 35 grand for. Just what is that material and where did it come from (so many sentences ending in prepositions)?

It has been reliably reported that what we have here is something that was originally known as Art’s Parts because they were originally sent to late night talk show host Art Bell. He received them in a letter on April 10, 1996. That tells us that these parts have been around for a while. According to the letter that arrived anonymously with them:

Dear Mr. Bell,

I’ve followed your broadcasts over the last year or so, and have been considering whether or not to share with you and your listeners, some of the information related to the Roswell UFO crash.

My grandfather was a member of the Retrieval Team, sent to the crash site, just after the incident was reported. He died in 1974, but not before he had sat down with some of us, and talked about the incident.

I am currently serving in the military, and hold a Security Clearance, and do NOT wish to “go public”, and risk losing my career and commission.

Nonetheless, I would like to briefly tell you what my own grandfather told me about Roswell. In fact, I enclose for your safekeeping “samples” that were in the possession of my grandfather until he died, and which I have had since his own estate was settled. As I understand it, they came from the UFO debris, and were among a large batch subsequently sent to Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio from New Mexico.

My grandfather was able to “appropriate” them, and stated that the metallic samples are “pure extract aluminum”. You will note that they appear old & tempered, and they have been placed in tissue-paper, and in baggies for posterity.

I have had them since 1974, and after considerable thought and reflection, give them to you. Feel free to share them with any of your friends in the UFO Research Community.

I have listened to many people over the years discuss Roswell and the crash events, as reported by many who were either there or who heard about it from eyewitnesses.

The recent Roswell movie, was similar to my grandfather’s own account, but a critical element was left out, and it is that element which I would like to share.

As my granddad stated, the Team arrived at the crash site just after the AAF/USAF reported the ground zero location. They found two dead occupants, hurled free of the Disc.

A lone surviving occupant, was found within the Disc, and it was apparant [sic] it’s left leg was broken. There was a minimal radiation contamination, and it was quickly dispersed with a water/solvent wash, and soon the occupant was dispatched for medical assistance and isolation. The bodies were sent to the Wright-Patterson AFB, for dispersal. The debris was loaded onto three trucks which finished the on-load just before the sunset.

Granddad was part of the Team that went with the surviving occupant. The occupant communicated via telepathic means. It spoke perfect english [sic], and communicated the following:

The Disc was a “probeship” dispatched from a “launchship” that was stationed at the dimensional gateway to the Terran Solar System, 32 light years from Terra. They had been conducting operations on Terra for over 100 years.

Another group were exploring Mars, and Io [which I assume is a moon of Jupiter… funny how the aliens knew the names we gave to various astronomical bodies but keep referring to Earth as Terra… but I digress].

Each “probeship” carried a crew of three. A “launchship” had a crew of (100) one-hundred.

The Disc that crashed, had collided with a meteor in orbit of Terra, and was attempting to compensate it’s flight vector, but because of the collision, the inter-atmospheric propulsion system malfunctioned, and the occupants sent out a distress signal to their companions on Mars. The “launchship” commander made the decision to authorize an attempted soft-landing on the New Mexican desert. At the same time, the inter-atmospheric propulsion system had a massive electrical burn-out, and the Disc was soon virtually helpless.

There was another option available to the occupants, but it involved activating the Dimensional powerplant for deep space travel. However, it opens an energy vortex around the Disc for 1,500 miles in all directions. Activating the Dimensional powerplant, would have resulted in the annihilation of the states of New Mexico, Arizona, California and portions of Mexico. Possibly even further states would have been affected.

Thus, the occupants, chose to ride the ship down, and hope of the best. They literally sacrificed their lives, rather then destroy the populations within their proximity.

The Dimensional powerplant was self-destructed, and the inter-atmospheric propulsion system was also deactivated, to prevent the technology from falling into the hands of the Terrans. This was done in accordance with their standing orders in regards to any compromise with contact experiences.

Granddad spent a total of 26 weeks in the Team that examined and debriefed the lone survivor of the Roswell crash. Granddad’s affiliation with the “project” ended, when the occupant was to be transported to a long-term facility. He was placed on-broad a USAF Transport aircraft, that was to be sent to Washington, D.C.

The aircraft and all aboard disappeared under mysterious and disturbing circumstances, enroute to Washington, D.C.

It may interest you that three Fighter aircraft, dispatched to investigate a distress call from the Transport experienced many electrical malfunctioning systems failures, as the entered the airspace of the transports [sic] last reported location. No crash or debris of the Transport was ever found. The Team was disbanded.

Well, I realize I have likely shocked you with this bizzare [sic] and incredible account, and seeking to remain “unknown” likely doesn’t do anything for my credibility… eh? And the metal “sample” only will likely add to the controversy.

But, I know you will take this with a “grain of salt”, and I don’t blame you, Mr. Bell.

I just hope that you can understand, my reasons and my own desire to maintain my career and commission.

I am passing through South Carolina with an Operational Readiness Mobility Exercise, and will mail this just prior to this Exercise, possibly from the Charleston area.

I will listen to your broadcast, to receive any acknowledging or confirmation, that you have received this package.

This letter and the contents of the package are given to you, with the hope that it helps contribute to the discussion of the subject of UFO Phenomena.

I agree with Neil Armstrong, a good friend of mine, who dared to say, at the WHITE HOUSE no less, that there are things “out there”, which boggle the mind and are far beyond our ability to comprehend.

Sign me,

A Friend

Well, there is a lot more nonsense to follow up with this, including some preliminary reports on the composition of the material. Almost all of the analyses suggested that the material is of Terran manufacture (being an old science fiction fan, I couldn’t resist using the science fiction name for Earth… Terra. BTW, I find the use of the name, Terra troubling and indicative of hoax since it is a science fiction term that wouldn’t have been known by many outside of science fiction fans in 1947… though, at one point I told Stan Friedman that I preferred the term Terran to Earthling, but I digress) You can read more of it here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010815220312/http://www.artbell.com/rosreprt.html

If you wish for more confirmation that the TTSA material is the “Art’s Parts,” you can read about it here:

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/whitley-streiber-confirms-to-the-stars-alien-metal-is-just-1990s-era-arts-parts

For those who might need a little help with this, what we have is here is nonsense. It is an anonymous letter containing a few scraps of metal. There is no provenance for the metal other than a cockamamie story of some unknown guy who somehow managed to escape with some bits of metal that he said came from Roswell but offered no proof of that. We can’t check the name to see if the guy was ever really in Roswell because we have no name. We have various analyses of the metal which mostly suggest it is from Earth. It’s been around for a couple of decades until Linda Moulton Howe sold it to TTSA (way to go Linda) and now it is about to go another round of analysis that will prove nothing because THERE IS NO PROVENANCE for it. We trace it to Art Bell and no farther… and Bell is dead so that really is the end of the line.

But somehow, the TTSA academy convinced the Army to study the material because it might lead to a way to make military equipment that is more resistant to the strains of combat. Why the Army would agree to that is almost as big a mystery as who this anonymous letter writer with the anonymous grandfather is.

The original letter should be the giveaway. A base on Mars. Aliens sacrificing themselves to save New Mexico and a bunch of other places. A convenient plane crash (or disappearance) so that the people who knew the most about this are gone along with the surviving alien crew member (maybe that launchship snatched the airplane to save the lone survivor).

Anyway, the anonymous nature of the letter, the lack of real provenance for the metamaterial, the stupid story told in the letter, are all reasons I failed to tackle this before now. I just couldn’t get around to it… but here are some of the facts. You have to decide if the Army is really dumb enough to think that little bits of metamaterial sent to a late late talk show host are enough to waste the limited resources of that one Army unit’s research budget. I simply can’t believe that they fell for it. The anonymous letter writer has to be laughing his ass off.

*We did discover a diary kept by Ruth Barnett for 1947, but there is nothing in it to suggest that Barney Barnett had seen a crashed saucer on the Plains of San Agustin. For the true believers, this was worse than finding no diary at all.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Dr. Michael Shermer

Dr. Michael Shermer, he of Skeptic magazine, was the guest on this week’s edition of A Different Perspective. We began by talking about the nature of evidence and what it takes to convince some about the possibility of alien visitation. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/20321523

We did discuss one of the problems of UFO research as I see it, which is that with some of the people and agencies involved with so many different agendas, that the truth somethings get lost in the arguments. I mentioned that during the Levelland

Dr. Michael Shermer

UFO sightings in 1957, the Air Force and Don Keyhoe of NICAP got involved in an argument over the number of witness to the UFO and its interaction with the environment. Had either side been interested in research rather than scoring debating points, then the tone of the conversation might have shifted to something that would have been useful.

We did get into a discussion of the Mogul solution for what had fallen at Roswell. Although he suggested the conventional skeptic points, he was unaware of Dr. Albert Crary’s field notes that seemed to eliminate Flight No. 4 as the culprit. I wanted to use that as a point that some skeptics tend to ignore the written record, relying instead on the memories of Charles Moore, one of those who worked on the project. I used the documentation that had been published in the thick Air Force report on the Roswell case. To his credit, Shermer was interested in these other data.

For me, this discussion, on Mogul, was of the most interest, but his opinions on other aspects of the UFO situation were also interesting. We did touch on the Wikileaks information that seemed to have uncovered no documents relating to UFOs, suggesting that there was nothing there to find. I countered with the idea that we know there have been classified UFO investigations going on such as Moon Dust and, of course, the most recent revelations. That would suggest that the Wikileaks information didn’t cover every aspect of the secrets the government wishes to keep.

Although I didn’t get to all the questions submitted for the show, I did get to a couple and I think others were covered as the discussions developed. Sometimes the show just takes a different track than I had planned. Sometimes the discussions that develop are just too interesting to divert.

Next week, I’ll be talking with Ryan Wood of MJ-12 research and the Crash Conferences fame. He has put out an appeal for us to look at Wikipedia because all the UFO related articles seem to have a skeptical slate. Sometimes that slant is more than a little biased and is based on faulty information. As always, submit questions in the comment section and I’ll try to get to them.

Oak Island - The Solution?

What ever happened to the search for the Money Pit? Wasn’t that the whole point of the show? To find the treasure that was supposed to be hidden at the bottom of the pit? Now we have them mucking about in the swamp (pun intended) trying to prove that it was manmade and that there is some sort of ship buried in the mud there.

Yes, we know that Smith’s Cove probably was created artificially and that the structures uncovered had nothing to do with the alleged flood system built to

The Money Pit, decades ago.

protect the treasure. Clearly this was a repair facility constructed in a location that was convenient in the New World. In the eighteenth century there just wasn’t the infrastructure that was needed. By the time the boys got to Oak Island in 1795 and invented the tale of a Money Pit, the east coast of the United States and Canada had built the port facilities that made Oak Island obsolete and unimportant. It was abandoned for the better facilities in a less hostile environment that sailors who’d spent months at sea would appreciate.

Remember back in the first season when they were looking for the original Money Pit? Remember Borehole 10X which supposedly revealed a long dead body, a tool or two, and a box that might hold some of the treasure? We saw, repeatedly, a video that seemed to show these things, but then a diver managed to get to the bottom of the Borehole and found… nothing. Some debris that had fallen into it from the surface, but nothing to indicate any sort of treasure. We aren’t treated to those videos any more because the dive had given us the answers about what was at the bottom of the borehole.

They continued their search to find the original Money Pit, even with the distractions of a Roman sword found in the ocean near the island that turned out to be a modern replica, the idea that the Knights Templar had somehow gotten to the New World before those in Europe knew about it so they could hide a treasure, and all the things found on the surface that suggested that people had used the island for decades before the boys began digging. But the point is that they found nothing to indicate a treasure buried deep on the island.

We keep hearing about the box drains that somehow supplied the booby traps with water that thwarted those boys when they dug too deep. But the real problem is that divers, who got down deep enough reported a current tugging at them. That indicates that the problem wasn’t a drain system, but an opening to the ocean that allowed the water in. Remember, it was reported that the depth of water in the Money Pit rose and fell with the tide. That wouldn’t have happened with a drain system created to booby trap the Money Pit.

So now we get to this season and the effort seems to be to find some sort of evidence in the swamp area. They are trying to find evidence that it is man-made. I think they have that right. The swamp is man-made. I think it worked something like a dry dock for wooden ship repair. I think the site was abandoned as better facilities farther south were built.

I have been interested in the mystery of Oak Island for fifty years. I have been interested in it since I first learned about it. I was fascinated with the story. And who isn’t captivated by a tale of pirate treasure? But we have the answer. The Laginas have done everything humanly possible to get to the bottom of the myth and I believe they have succeeded. They have proved the British were there decades before the Money Pit was “discovered.” The have found evidence of maritime activity associated with the island. They have opened up some very interesting historical avenues and, ironically, they have shown there is no treasure there.

I have followed stories of lost gold, of lost mines, of lost treasures for decades. Very few of them are true but most of them have a great historic tradition with lots of people trying to find them. But, most of them are just that. Stories. Oak Island was just one such story. We have a solid solution to it, thanks in no small part to the Laginas, but it is time to move on.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Colonel Charles Halt

Charles Halt, of Bentwaters fame, was the guest this week. The discussion was about the events of December 1980, what he personally saw, and the reaction of the senior officers of the Air Force to those events. He mentioned interrogations of the enlisted personnel that including hypnosis and chemical regression. His

Colonel Charles Halt

suspicion was that outsiders were responsible for these interrogations and that it was the CIA who conducted them. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/20149199

During the discussion, we touched on exactly what he had seen and who had been with him on that night. We learned that John Burroughs was involved on both the first night and on the third night, clearing up a problem I had seen in the testimony by Jim Penniston, who was interview on this program a couple of weeks earlier. You can listen to that interview here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Jim+Penniston

One of the things that caught my attention was Halt saying that there were more sightings than just the three nights that everyone talks about. He provided some

Jim Penniston. Photo
copyright by Kevin Randle

examples, including those in which the security force at the weapons facility had engaged intruders, suggesting that the intruders weren’t human.

There was a lot of information packed into the hour. Because his answers were short, we were able to get into several other events around the sightings. Halt confirmed that there were radar tracks of the UFO at the time of the sighting, but that someone, or rather a group of someones, had removed the tapes of the radar screens. Someone also took the various log books and police blotters that covered those nights in December. In other words, Halt was saying there was a cover up that extended up the chain of command and beyond, going all the way to Washington, D.C.

Next week, for a change of pace, I’ll be talking with Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine. The discussion should be interesting. If you have questions for him, send a note to the comments section and I’ll ask him during the show.