Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Roswell Dream Team - A Brief Update

By examining a little of the material about the Roswell case, and here I mean a combination of documentation and testimony, we can draw a couple of conclusions in a limited way. I will note that I hold all the documentation for this, meaning I have copies of the relevant material, and I conducted the interviews with the witnesses, which include recordings of the conversations.

Here’s what we know and what we can prove.

According to the mythology of Roswell, the officers at Roswell were so confused by the Mogul arrays, they didn’t know that what they had were mere weather balloons and rawin radar reflectors. They flew the material to Fort Worth, their higher headquarters, where a low-ranking weather officer identified it all as nothing more than a balloon and foil-like rawin.

The problem here is that the timing doesn’t really work out if we believe that the men at Roswell didn’t know what they had until they got to Fort Worth. That would mean that the men in Fort Worth would be unable to identify it until the stuff arrived.

According to the time lines it was at 5:30 p.m. local time that the Dallas Morning News interviewed Major E. M. Kirton. According to the newspaper, the material found in Roswell was nothing more than a weather balloon.

But it was 6:00 p. m. local time that Warrant Officer Irving Newton (seen here with the rawin radar reflector) reported for duty, according to what he told me. The telephone in the office rang and he was ordered to report to Brigadier General Ramey’s office. He said that he was alone in the office and that he couldn’t leave. Ramey himself then called and told Newton, “to get your ass over here now. Use a car and if you don’t have one, take the first one with the keys in it,” according to what Newton said.

When he arrived, a colonel briefed him in the hallway (and if I was going to speculate here, I’d say that would be Colonel Thomas DuBose (later brigadier general), the Chief of Staff of the Eighth Air Force). Newton said that he didn’t remember who it was but that the message had been clear. “These officers from Roswell think they have found a flying saucer, but the general thinks it’s a weather balloon. He wants you to take a look.”

At that point, you might say, the air went out of the Roswell saucer. Nothing more than a weather balloon and a rawin radar target. Newton identified it as ordered and there is no question that the material, spread out on the floor, is the remains of a weather balloon and a radar target. From the photographs available, that is quite clear.

Okay, you say. So what?

How is it that Major Kirton could identify the material as a balloon before Newton arrived on duty, was called to Ramey’s office, and then identified it as a balloon? How did Kirton know this, at least, thirty minutes before anyone else supposedly knew?

Or is it that the cover story had already been decided upon and the actors in that little play were given their scripts. Kirton read from his, but he was more than thirty minutes too early. He should have said that the material was in Ramey’s office and it would be looked at by various experts...

In fact, why is it that only Newton was called forward to identify the material? Doesn’t this suggest that the fix was in?

And on a related point, while rereading the newspaper (specifically The Boston Herald of July 9, 1947) articles, I came across a statement by Brigader General Donald N. Yates, who in 1947 was the chief of the Army Air Forces weather service. He said, about the weather balloon and rawin radar targets, that only a very few of them are used daily, at some points where some specific project requires highly accurate wind information from extreme altitudes.

I mention this for two reasons. One is that in a letter to me, Newton used similar wording. He wrote, in 1995 I might add, that “The rawin target and balloon in question, was only used at limited locations...”

The suggestion here was that they were unusual and it wouldn’t be difficult for the men at Roswell to confuse this debris for something more exotic... except, the rawins and balloons were used at Operation Crosswords. These were the atomic tests in the Pacific in 1946, carried out with crews from the 509th, so the men at Roswell might well have been familiar with the look of the rawins.

And, second, there is the find from Circleville Ohio, as reported around the country in the days prior to the announcement from Roswell. Here a farmer found a weather balloon and rawin target in his field, but knew what it was. He took it to the sheriff, who knew what it was, and it was displayed in the window of the local newspaper, where, apparently everyone else knew what it was. Oh, they couldn’t have told you it was a rawin, but they would have told you that the object was a weather balloon and something attached to it.

Yet the guys in Roswell couldn’t identify it, even though they had the balloon envelop and the torn up target on display in Ramey’s office... and no one explained why the rawin was so torn up.

The real point here is that the timing was off, based on the documentation and testimony available. The timing of the announcements make it sound as if the answer was prepared before Newton arrived to give it. He was the window dressing. The expert who had worked with the rawins and the balloons and would know what it was. And the press, who ever they were (Newton mentioned several reporters) took that answer, as did Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter, J. Bond Johnson, and returned to their city rooms. In a couple of hours, it was reported that the Roswell debris was a “weather forecasting device.”

And that was the end of it... for more than thirty years.

13 comments:

Sharon Day said...

Well, you have me hooked now. I feel like a contented child being fed an exciting storyline bit by exciting bit. I will definitely be back to see how this is progressing for you and the dream team. Good luck to you all and keep your skepticism alive, both from the aspect of cover-up and non-cover-up. So long as you have nothing personally invested in your belief system by pursuing the answers, your answers will ring true.

cda said...

Kevin:

You are clutching at straws, straws that blow away just like the balloon did.

You have absolutely NO way of knowing the exact timing of events. The press report says 5.30 pm. This can easily be off by up to half an hour. Likewise Newton's memory recall 40 years later (!) that it was 6 pm when he was called to examine the debris. Do you really trust his memory to such accuracy?

There was no 'fix'. There was no deception. You have built your case on what you want to believe.

For all you know the Roswell guys identified the object with 80 to 90 percent certainty before they ever took it to Fort Worth. They only took the junk there because they were ordered to (after that press release).

So far you are merely repeating what you and Don Schmitt wrote over 20 years ago.

There were no "actors", nobody was "given their scripts", and your assumptions are just that - assumptions that fit your case.

Get real, Kevin. Your ET case is a complete fantasy. The real ETs, if they exist, must be laughing at you.

Despite the above I still wish your dream team well.

KRandle said...

CDA -

The documentation said 5:30, but you reject that because it doesn't fit with your pov (point of view).

You say that Newton couldn't remember what time he was called... but he would know what time he went to work. He had the evening shift, which began at 1800 hrs or 6 p.m. Clearly the telephone call came in after he arrived at work... for the purposes of this, I assumed the call came right after he arrived but clearly it could have been much later.

There are other newspaper articles that provide timing...

But you reject the documentation that doesn't fit with your view.

And I'm not saying this leads to the extraterrestrial, only that it suggests a cover up.

There is more to come, of course.

David Rudiak said...

To Kevin: Newton couldn't remember when he went on duty when I spoke to him. But his wife had a very specific memory that he got home at 11:00 p.m. (something to do with their new baby I think—wives are keen for relief). So I presume he went on duty around 2:00 or 3:00. Doesn't really matter, as it turns out.

To cda: Despite your usual absolutist pronouncements, a great deal is known about the time-line that afternoon. Sometimes we even have precise times from the teletype messages that survive or other sources. E.g., here are some key times (given in Fort Worth or Central Standard Time):

3:26 p.m.: AP version of Roswell base press release first goes out over wire.

3:40 p.m. UP version of PR (but preceded by earlier version that didn't survive)

4:53 pm: AP bulletin that Ramey was sending the “disc” to Wright Field. Last Roswell item on July 8 to make it into west coast newspapers, like the SF News and LA Herald-Express, which also had a sub-headline and INS bulletin saying that Ramey thought it was a weather gadget and another INS bulletin from a Colorado Senator that a radar target/balloon was the solution. (Where did he get that?)

In addition, Ramey was already making this statement to at least one reporter from the SF Examiner around 4:30 that it was a rawin target. The Examiner, which would have reported over the INS wire (Hearst news service), stated they were the first to get the real story out. Two other major newspapers (Chicago Tribune, NY Times) also reported that Ramey began to change the story within an hour of the press release. UP also reported early on Ramey's balloon/target “suspicions.” It was ALSO reported that Ramey would LATER bring in a weather officer to confirm his ID.

The 4:53 bulletin was also the first AP mention of Ramey, which likely spurred the FW Star-Telegram editor to send out Bond Johnson (probably just coming on the evening shift at ~5:00) to take photos and cover the story, meaning his photos were likely taken about ½ hour later, also indicating the time when Johnson was first told about Ramey's and also Dubose's weather balloon “suspicions” (as the Star-Telegram was to report).

~5:30 pm: Major Kirton (one of Ramey's intel officers) telling the Dallas M. News it was a “rawin” (precisely spelled, unlikely the case with the AP and UP). Much earlier, Kirton had been telling Reuters (as the FBI Dallas telegram also reported at 6:17) that Ramey was saying the object was “hexagonal” in shape, also saying he thought it “possibly” a weather balloon. (Very important, since it was IMPOSSIBLE to deduce any sort of shape, much less “hexagonal” from a torn-up radar target. Where could Ramey have possibly gotten “hexagonal” unless this was scripted for him and he knew for an absolute fact what it was?)

What this all points to was Ramey knew exactly what he was dealing with from the beginning and brought in Newton toward the end merely for show and to make the rawin/balloon ID official, exactly as Kevin said. Ramey was also making the balloon ID before Bond Johnson was ever dispatched to take photos. Again, this was all for show. The fix was already in.

Some critical links (Ramey's early radar target/balloon ID):

http://www.roswellproof.com/LA_HeraldExpress_July8.html

http://www.roswellproof.com/UP_SFNews_July8.html

http://www.roswellproof.com/SFExaminer_July9.html

Also: http://www.roswellproof.com/Rameys_hexagon_story.html

cda said...

DR:

All you have shown is that the Roswell guys more or less identified the stuff before it went to Ft Worth, and probably told Ramey (or Kirton or someone else) this over the phone before it arrived. Hence Ramey's deduction about its hexagonal shape, etc.

You have not shown that there was a 'fix', a deception or cover-up of any kind.

Naturally I cannot prove my interpretation of events, but neither can you prove yours.

Never mind, maybe the dream team will finally (!) resolve the matter. Maybe...

Terry the Censor said...

I have no opinion on this analysis but... isn't the very first dream team post a little early to be invoking a conspiracy? Wouldn't it be sufficient to state that the chronology here doesn't support the official version, then move on to the next bit of evidence? Otherwise, it looks like the team already had a conclusion in mind -- and so no one will want to make time to read the rest of the posts.

KRandle said...

Terry -

Very good point. Yes, I, and I take full responsibility here, am responsible. But this does present a bit of a conundrum in the timing of the various statements. As David Rudiak pointed out, it seems that the answer existed before the plane arrived in Fort Worth.

Yes, I say that I want to let the facts take us to the end... and it is certainly much too early to draw specific conclusions, but there is this discrepancy that I wanted to point out.

I will also point out that Chris Rutkowski is on the other side of the fence... our resident skeptic on Roswell, so we didn't load the Team with true believers.

This is the problem that Ruppelt faced in 1951. He didn't want all believers but he didn't want all debunkers, just a nice mix. I think that we can look at evidence and provide rational thought to it. If we find out that a witness has been less than candid, or is mistaken, then we are required to publish that as well...

Frank Kaufmann will serve as our example here. I certainly believed him, but once we learned the truth, we published as quickly as possible.

But I also wanted to show that we were looking beyond story and trying to find documentation. Besides, a little enthusiasm never hurt anyone... as long as we see the bigger picture.

cda said...

As you say, Kevin, "it seems that the answer existed before the plane arrived in Ft Worth."

But this answer is not the one you have been promoting for two decades.

However, let us see what the dream team turns up in the coming months. How long are you proposing for the team to do its work? Do you really expect to lay your hands on any hard evidence or hidden documentation?

I DO wish you well, despite my skepticism about the whole Roswell tale. Unfortunately, previous Roswell teams have split up, and not amicably either. So with five in the new 'dream team', you are at risk again (as you presumably realise).

David Rudiak said...

cda wrote:
All you have shown is that the Roswell guys more or less identified the stuff before it went to Ft Worth, and probably told Ramey (or Kirton or someone else) this over the phone before it arrived. Hence Ramey's deduction about its hexagonal shape, etc. You have not shown that there was a 'fix', a deception or cover-up of any kind.

OOOKAY, let's see if I have this right...

First the "Roswell guys" put out a press release to the local media that they had a gen-you-wine "flying disc" and order a B-29 flight to take the "disc" to Wright Field, but first stopping off to see Gen. Ramey.

But BEFORE the flight leaves and BEFORE the press release goes over the wire and "goes viral," the "Roswell guys" ID the debris as a humble weather balloon and radar target. This is an amazing insight, considering half the debris was obviously a dirt-common weather balloon that any 5-year-old could ID. Their great insight also included the fact that the badly torn up target is "hexagonal" in shape (something only the outline of an intact target might be described as and only somebody totally familiar with the targets might know).

Naturally, with this amazing head-slap ID, they would IMMEDIATELY cancel the now-unnecessary flight and issue a lightning-quick retraction to their now embarrassing "flying disc" press release. Right?

According to cda, wrong! No the flight continues, the PR goes out all over the nation and world, causing Roswell, Fort Worth, and the Pentagon to be thrown into pandemonium for the rest of the day.

But at least the "Roswell guys" had the courtesy to call up Ramey on the phone and say, "Sorry, but it's not one of those supersonic 'flying discs' but a 'weather gadget'. And be sure to make a point that it is 'hexagonal' in shape in case anybody asks. Again, sorry."

Naturally I cannot prove my interpretation of events, but neither can you prove yours.

The big difference is my interpretation is factual, based on careful reading of the newspaper reports and makes logical sense (also agrees with witness testimony such as Marcel and Dubose). The weather balloon was a preplanned cover story and details like "hexagonal" were part of a script furnished to Gen. Ramey, a detail he, nor anybody else except a total rawin-target expert, could possibly have gotten from actual examination of the debris.

In contrast, CDA's "interpretation" is blithering nonsense.

cda said...

Methinks DR is a bit unhappy that he has been omitted from the 'dream team'.

The likelihood is that there were phone calls between Roswell and Fort Worth both before the flight took off and while it was airborne. This would be quite natural. During these calls someone at Roswell told Ramey (or a lower officer) that they (i.e. the Roswell guys) had more or less ID'd the stuff, but could not be sure. Ft. Worth nevertheless still wanted the stuff forwarded to them, with an onward flight to Dayton if necessary. Ft Worth had every right to see the debris even if Roswell had decided it was probably a balloon plus radar device.

What I am saying is that it is wrong to assume nobody at Roswell realised what it was. As reported in the RDR, the guys at the ranch had already tried to make a kite out of the sticks but failed. It is a perfectly reasonable assumption that SOMEONE (Marcel ?) who examined the debris at the base thought it was probably a broken hexagon-shaped radar target, but because of some doubts and the pervasive early post-war 'war nerves', they had to sent it to "higher headquarters" for further examination.

What is so improbable about this? Why cannot you see that your ideas are pure fantasy and involve absurd conspiracy theory whereas mine are at least reasonable, even if I cannot prove them.

So, yes, Ramey was probably told about the likely shape and identity beforehand. Thus he did NOT need to see it himself to issue his statement to the press.

You see, the Roswell guys were not such fools after all. True, the press release was silly and premature and they got told off about it by Washington. Maybe it was only issued to give the base some brief publicity. But I expect Marcel was 80 - 90 per cent certain what the object was before Ramey ever saw it.

The only "blithering nonsense" about the case is the dotty idea that ETs visited NM in July 1947 and the USAF has hushed it up from the scientific world for 64 years.

But that will have to be left to the dream team to decide, if they can.

Steve M said...

Kevin

The RAWIN target was all torn up as it it had obviously been dragged along the ground as the main train of Mogul was been blown along the ground shedding debris.

Larry said...

Part1.

The short answer is that anecdotal testimony become scientific observation when the testimony is treated in a scientific manner.

In order for that to happen;
1) The testimony has to be treated as a veridical story.
2) There has to be a scientist considering the content of the story.
3) The scientist follows accepted processes of logic and evidence in considering the story content, for the purpose of producing new knowledge.

Some caveats: (1) The testimony has to be treated as a veridical story, at least hypothetically, for the scientific process to proceed. If one starts with the premise that the story is false, then it is logically inconsistent to try to extract truth from it. It may be the case that, for reasons entirely separate from the content of the story, one may conclude that the story is false. (2) The scientist does not necessarily have to have any particular set of credentials or academic degrees which, in any case, vary from time to time and place to place. He/she must have sufficient intelligence and domain knowledge to perform the functions of a scientist in the matter under consideration. (3) The usual process of considering story content is to analyze, or break down the story into constituent parts, apply knowledge and reason to those parts with the idea of fitting them into a lawful and orderly (ideally, mathematical) explanation of reality. The final step is to use that explanation to uncover hidden information in the story that may not have been apparent in the anecdote, and/or to make testable hypotheses about future observations. That’s where the new knowledge comes in. The explanation does not have to be “tested, proven and verified” for this process to be scientific. The model would have to be tested, proven and verified in order to convince a large number of other scientists that the explanation is true to the exclusion of other possible (and scientific) explanations. It is often the case in science that multiple explanations of reality are proposed and elaborated long before (sometimes centuries before) one can be chosen to the exclusion of the others.

Perhaps the most iconic (non-UFO) example of this is Issac Newton’s discovery of the law of universal gravitation. As the story goes, he was sitting under an apple tree when he happened to see an apple separate from the branch it was attached to and fall to the Earth. Up to this point, this is anecdotal testimony. (And, like all anecdotal testimony--UFO or not--there are those who claim it never happened!) Newton, acting as scientist, made the logical inference that there was a mutual attraction force between the apple and the Earth, whether or not the two were in physical contact. (He was not the only scientist entertaining this hypothesis but he and the other scientists of this persuasion were often criticized for introducing this “occult” idea of action at a distance.) The most important part of his observation, actually, was that the apple was attracted in the direction of the center of the Earth. Because he was a brilliant mathematician (having independently invented Calculus) he quickly realized that this meant that every particle of the apple was attracted to every particle of the Earth (this is where the requirement for “sufficient intelligence and domain knowledge” comes in). What he was observing was actually the result of the vector sum of all the individual gravitational attractions between all the particles of the apple and all the particles of the Earth. Others had postulated the idea of gravitational action at a distance, and an inverse-square diminution of gravity with distance; the new knowledge Newton added was “universal gravitation” between every particle of mass in the universe.

Larry said...

Part 2.
A good UFO example of this process can be provided by Paul Hill as described in his book, “Unconventional Flying Objects—A Scientific Analysis”. His anecdotal story is that he and a colleague were driving along one day in the summer of 1952 near NACA’s Langley Research Center when they saw two self-luminous spheres approaching them through the air at approximately constant speed and altitude below the clouds. According to his story, the spheres approached the observers on what appeared to be nearly a collision course until they arrived overhead, at which point they executed what appeared to be a coordinated maneuver that resulted in the spheres co-orbiting a common, fixed point in space at a speed of at least one revolution per second. Up to this point, this is anecdotal testimony.

Then the scientific analysis begins: “They came in side by side at about 500 mph, at what was later learned by triangulation to be 15,000 to 18,000 ft altitude. From all angles, they looked like amber traffic lights a couple of blocks away, which would make them spheres about 13 to 20 feet in diameter.” At least three bits of scientific analysis appear in this paragraph. First, he invokes the principle of triangulation, in which knowledge of trigonometry is utilized to calculate an approximate quantitative distance from the observers to the lights (with error bars). Second, he utilizes the fact that the light sources present a circular cross section when seen from all aspects to deduce that they must have been spheres (geometrical reasoning). Third, he utilizes the apparent angular size of the sources (“traffic lights a couple of blocks away”) combined with their distance from the observers to deduce that they were spheres about 13 to 20 feet in diameter (the new bit of knowledge, based on the laws of optics). Knowing the approximate absolute size of the sources, their relative separation, and their orbital frequency, he was able to deduce the centrifugal acceleration they must be experiencing, in order to stay on their circular path (approximately 100 g, = more new knowledge, based on Newton’s laws of motion).

In both examples given the source of the anecdotal testimony and the source of scientific analysis were one and the same person. This is the case that is most likely to produce new scientific knowledge from anecdotal testimony. For one thing, the observer generating the anecdotal testimony knows he/she is not lying, so he/she is highly motivated to try to get to the truth of the matter. Because he/she is also an exceptionally intelligent, and knowledgeable individual, he/she is capable of conducting scientific analysis without having to rely on someone else to provide intellectual resources. Unfortunately this case is quite rare because both UFO reports and exceptionally intelligent and knowledgeable individuals are each independently uncommon; hence the probability of both conditions occurring simultaneously is second order small.