While
I know that many people are tired of the arguments about the authenticity of
MJ-12, and while I really don’t want to open up another assault on my integrity
based on my objections to MJ-12 documents, I have discovered something about
them that hasn’t been reported. It suggests, once again, who might have had a
hand in creating the documents, and it reinforces the idea that these documents
were created in the mid-1980s for personal gain and not in 1952 for the
President-elect.
I
was searching for another file, when I noticed one that was out of place. I
opened it out of curiosity and found some notes that related to MJ-12. What
this told me was that at the UFO Expo West in Los Angeles on May 11, 1991,
Jaime Shandera was lecturing about the Plains of San Agustin. He had this to
say:
The
people that supposedly found stuff in Socorro did not find stuff in Socorro. The
party of archaeological people and the Barney Barnett part of the story; they
were at the Corona site, not in Socorro [Plains of San Agustin]. I know [this
is] the way you understand it because it’s the way it’s always been written and
even the way it was written in The
Roswell Incident. That’s wrong. There is new evidence that it was all in
the Corona site. The way it happened was this – there were not two sites that
were more than one hundred miles or so apart … and the so-called Roswell site
was just outside of Corona. The archaeologists and Barney Barnett part of it, that
was over in Corona. There was no person that found anything in San Agustin.
Remember,
this was in May 1991, and had nothing to do with what Don Schmitt and I had
written in our book, UFO Crash at Roswell,
that would be published in July 1991, though we had come to the same
conclusion. Barnett was not over on the Plains. In May 1991, no one had seen
Ruth Barnett’s diary, which, of course, ended the discussion. Karl Pflock and I
would publish an article some ten years later that not only suggested that
Barnett had not seen the object on the Plains, but that his story had nothing at
all to do with Roswell crash.
On
that same day, that is May 11, 1991, Antonio Huneeus and Javier Sierra
interviewed Bill Moore about some of the things that Shandera had said earlier.
Moore was talking about the Gerald Anderson tale and why he did not accept it
as authentic. (Interestingly, one of the reasons he rejected it was because the
military was segregated in 1947, not realizing that white officers commanded
the black units, so one of his reasons for rejecting the tale is false, but
that doesn’t matter here.) He confirmed that he was on board with Shandera
about the Plains, saying, “There is no reason to believe anything occurred on
the Plains of San Agustin on that particular date.…”
Which
is, of course, what I and many others have been saying for years. Nothing
happened on the Plains. But then Moore said the thing that is quite revelatory.
He said, “The original hypothesis was that the object had come down in two
places, the first being the Brazel site, the second being the Plains of San
Agustin, and that in 1985 I abandoned [it] simply because the only witness who
put the thing in the Plains of San Agustin at all was Barnett’s boss, Danley,
[who] it turned out, was not sure of the place, and it turned out that Barnett
could have been up at the Brazel site…”
Here’s
what we know now. According to the documentation supplied by Moore in various
arenas, Shandera received the Eisenhower Briefing Document on December 11,
1984. This is based on their displaying of a mailing envelope with a December
1984 date on it (postmarked from Albuquerque, which I mention simply because if
I don’t someone will criticize the lack of my noting it) but we have no way of
knowing if that envelope actually contained the film. There is nothing to tie
it to the film and the EBD. We can document the first public mention of the EBD
by a London newspaper on May 3, 1987, though Just Cause did publish a list of members of MJ-12 in December 1985
but not the documents themselves. Prior to that, we have nothing that is
reliable about the EBD. We can accept the December 11, 1984, date as reliable,
or we can reject it. It actually means little because it is impossible to prove
that the date is accurate.
Now,
based on the 1991 interview, we have Moore’s statement that he had rejected the
idea of a Plains of San Agustin crash in 1985 which, as I noted, is
interesting. He tells us that he has rejected it because Danley couldn’t
actually provide a location or date for Barnett’s story. This is something that
I had noticed when I interviewed “Fleck” Danley in October 1990. It was clear
that he couldn’t remember much about what Barnett had said and had I been of a
mind, I could have convinced him of almost anything. I realized that his information
was severely compromised.
But
here’s the thing. Moore, in 1991, was saying that he rejected the Plains of San
Agustin in 1985, not because he had in his hand the EBD which mentioned nothing
of a crash there, but because he found the Danley information to be wanting. It
would seem to me that if I was in possession of a document which gave me
precise information about a UFO crash and that had been prepared for the man
who would be taking over as President in a few months, that would be the most
important source for a change in the basic story. If the Plains was left out of
the briefing that would tell me that the information about the Plains was
inaccurate and that would be a better source than that of a witness who was easily
confused. Or, in other words, I would have said I have a document that tells me
the Plains story is no good.
That
is, unless I know something about the EBD that others don’t know. If I know the
source of the EBD, and I know the document can’t be trusted, then I don’t use
it to suggest there was no crash on the Plains. I say something about the lack
of reliability of Danley’s testimony.
The
other side of this is that we can trace the EBD back to Bill Moore and Jaime
Shandera and no further. They are the sources for this document and it seems
that they, or at least Moore, are not confident enough in it to use is as
source material for his analysis of the situation in 1947. That tells us
something very important about the EBD. It tells us that Moore finds the EBD
unreliable, and if he has no confidence in it, why should the rest of us?
I
will say one other thing. The information contained in the EBD was the best
available in the mid-1980s. This is proved once again by Moore’s comment that
he abandoned the Plains idea in 1985. He is telling us quite a bit in that one
short statement. We should all listen to what he had to say about this because
it does answer a couple of burning questions.
94 comments:
Somewhere in my archives I have a longish Roswell paper by Bill Moore, dated 1985, where he rejects the San Agustin side of the story. He wrote this, needless to say, without Stan Friedman's assistance. Moore had obviously decided to reject the San Agustin tale for his own reasons, maybe to do with the MJ-12 'revelations' to follow.
I further recall Phil Klass saying (tongue in cheek?) that the likely reason the San Agustin crash was NOT in the EBD was that Ike had, at the time, security clearance to be told about one saucer crash but not two such crashes! Thus the San Agustin crash had to be omitted (Poor Ike!).
Anyway, enough of this Sherlock Holmes detective work. Moore obviously decided, like George Orwell, that 1984 was going to be his big year. It just happened to extend a bit beyond that.
Happy New Year for 2015.
Kevin:
Just some thoughts that continue to trouble me.
If what Marcel found on the Foster Ranch was in his words "a debris field" and later what Col. Blanchard released to the press was that the Air Force recovered a "flying disc" just doesn't seem to jive. It also doesn't work with Barnett's story. A debris field is just that, debris, not a disc.
I really don't give a hoot-in-hell about Moore and Shandera but I do care about Marcel and Marcel,Jr. and their stories. I also care about the fact that Col. Blanchard released a story that the Army had recovered a "disc."
This to me adds some credibility to the plains story or perhaps to the Carey/Schmitt theory that the actual craft causing the debris field ended up near Roswell where bodies were found and ties in with the Frankie Rowe story.
I think the plains is still a viable hypothesis. Keep in mind the Brazel site (Foster Ranch) was debris, not a craft as Barnett stated.
Larry, from what I've read, there were two sites near Roswell. The ranch site had debris the other a "disc" (or perhaps an egg shaped craft or "escape pod"?). We don't need the Plains for the "disc" and associated bodies. I don't think Dwyer had to go all the way to the Plains to see what he told Frankie about.
starman, you are speaking of the Carey/Schmitt theory that keys with the Rowe/Dwyer story. That is certainly possible except for the "escape pod" theory. To me that is currant time terrestrial thinking. I've talked with Frankie Rowe and if her story is accurate Dwyer didn't go more than 30 miles or so from Roswell to the crash site.
There is another school of thought that this was a two saucer incident that could bring the Plains of San Agustin into play. The main argument against Barnett and the Plains saucer is the diary of Ruth Barnett. The problem I have with that argument is that New Mexico in 1947 was (and still is today) a vast wilderness. The wife of a soil conservation engineer could write what she thought her husband was doing on any given day, but what she thought and what he was actually doing could be vastly different.
Larry -
I have no hope of this sinking in, but I'll make the points anyway. The link from Barnett to the Plains was Fleck Danley. As far as I know, only two people ever talked to him about this. One was Bill Moore who used the information to link Barnett and the Roswell crash. Moore said later, as I've outlined, that he had no faith in the Danley timeline and the two saucer scenario.
I talked to him as well and when I did, it was clear to me that Danley had no solid idea of when Barnett told him of the crashed saucer. He thought it might have been in the summer of 1947, but he didn't really know.
So, what we have is Barnett's tale floating out there without an anchor. It might have been 1947, or it might have been later. There is no way to tell. So much for Danley's testimony and the link to the Plains.
You cavalierly dismiss Ruth Barnett's diary but it is the only document from the time that we have and it takes Barnett out of the picture. It also eliminates Gerald Anderson because Barnett was in Socorro on July 5, Anderson's date for his family seeing the crash and seeing Barnett.
So, where are we? The only evidence, that is, Danley's testimony is repudiated by the one who reported that it linked the Roswell crash and the Plains (that is, Moore). In my interview with him, it was clear that he didn't have a firm fix on date or location. And the documentation available suggests that Barnett was not close to any UFO crash in July 1947.
And finally, there is the EBD which does not mention anything about a crash on the Plains... but if there was one, wouldn't that have been included? One or the other has to be false and I suggest it is both.
Kevin,
What does Ruth Barnett's diary say about hubby's activities for July 1-7, not specifically the 5th? E.g., if the crash was the night of July 2/3, then another possible date of discovery might be July 3 or 4. Or if the crash site wasn't discovered by civilians until July 7 (as per Walter Haut's affidavit), where does the diary place Barnett on the 7th?
Larry,
That is a good point. How would they know it was a “flying disc” from a preliminary inspection of a debris field? Doesn’t that tend to push one away from the UFO crash theory and toward something like it was an attempt to cover up a Mogul test? Then when the press went wild they know they had better get a new story quick, i.e. weather balloon. (I'm aware that there are good arguments that Mogul isn’t an explanation and I can’t think of any other normal thing that would still have been classified by 1995.) Even if it was a good guess wouldn’t you do more investigation before putting out a story like that?
David -
Overlooking the fact that there is no evidence to tie Barnett into a Plains crash in 1947, and overlooking the fact that Dr. Herbert Dick arrived there on July 1 and would have been in a position to see everything that was going on if anything did... On July 2, Barnett arrived home from Datil at six in the evening. On July 3, Barnett was in the office most of the day. On July 4, Barnett was ill and worked at home. On July 5, Barnett was working on the house they were building. On July 6, he was working on the house again. On the 7th, he went to Paloadera in the morning and to the Rotary in the afternoon. On July 8 he was in Pie Town. There is nothing in the diary to suggest that anything strange happened, that Barnett came home excited, quiet, strange. Just routine stuff without a hint of anything unusual.
John's Space -
Please remember that Mogul wasn't even classified in 1947. The name was known by the participants, the launches were coordinated with the missile range in many cases, and pictures of the balloon arrays were in the newspapers. Only the ultimate purpose, to spy on the Soviets was classified, but what was going on in New Mexico was not.
Kevin:
Honest debate is something that I don't see as a deficiency but rather as a virtue, and something that is sorely missing with those who hold different views in UFOlogy. With that said I made a simple and respectful post to bring up some issues that bother me, or to put it another way, to look at the issue from "A Different Perspective."
I am well aware of Danley's role in the Barnett story. I am also aware of the work Art Campbell has done on the suspected plains site. I don't know if Art is right or wrong but I know he has put in a lot of time, energy and money into his Plains of San Agustin work and I'm not just out of hand going to dismiss him as a crank.
As far as Ruth Barnett I didn't "cavalierly dismiss" her diary, I simply pointed out a problem, a potential problem with her entries.
Kevin,
So agreed the crash of a balloon array wouldn’t need to be protected. I had indicated that Mogul wasn’t a good reason. At the same time why would the Roswell base commander know that the debris field was from a flying disc so soon? Why go public with it rather than wait for a more detailed investigation even if that was suspected given the things why knew it wasn’t?
Another issue that is strange. You have pointed out in your book that for security reasons only a limited number of people new the truth. The pilots in general didn’t. Only staff officers, the MPs, the specific people detailed to work on the recovery knew. Marcel was a staff officer and the intelligence officer who was first to the crash site. But, he doesn’t know about the alien bodies in his telling of the story. Yet others whose stories came out years later report bodies.
Larry -
I have never thought of this as a debate, but as an investigation. It is an examination of facts and not a collection of speculations. It is an attempt to learn the truth and not a reason to shoehorn a belief into the known facts about the case.
You have no first-hand testimony from Barnett. He told friends the story but he didn't tell any of us. You have nothing to link July 1947, the Plains, and the UFO other than the story told by Fleck Danley. Bill Moore has repudiated this testimony as unreliable. When I talked with Danley it was clear that he didn't have a solid memory of what Barnett had said to him or when he had said it. With that you lose the connection to the Plains.
According to Ruth Barnett's diary, the only days for the object to fall was July 1 or July 7. On the other days Barnett was in Socorro and not roaming around on the Plains. There is nothing in Ruth Barnett's diary to suggest that Barnett had seen anything during that first week or July.
You have Herbert Dick working in the Bat Cave on the eastern side of the Plains that gave him a Panoramic view of the Plains. His work was in the entrance to the cave where human habitation took place and his camp site was on a flat piece of ground not far from the entrance that meant he would have seen anything that had fallen but said nothing had in my interviews with him.
Gerald Anderson lied about his involvement, changed dates and locations. He admitted to faking one document and his aunt's diary was written sometime after 1972 based on an analysis of the ink. Barnett was in Socorro on July 5, Anderson's date for the crash and Anderson's high school transcript showed he took an anthropology class from Dr. Buskirk, the man he identified as the leader of the archaeologists.
All the evidence, and I use the term loosely, peresented to this point is badly flawed and the only connection to July 1947 and a UFO crash is so faint to be nearly invisible.
So, contrary to your assertion, the main argument against the Plains is not just Ruth Barnett's diary, but all this other information. You have nothing to support a crash there. There is a great deal of information, much of it from witnesses I interviewed that suggest there was no crash there.
Finally, I do not understand how you can believe there is any value in the EBD and the Plains crash when it is not mentioned there. Wouldn't that suggest that the Plains crash didn't happen because it was not covered in that document? And if there was a Plains crash, doesn't that suggest the document to be faked?
Oh yes, let me note that spending time, money and effort to investigate a tale in no way translates into the validity of that tale. Besides, I believe Campbell has moved the crash site from the Plains itself into the high desert on the western edge of the Plains... all without providing any solid evidence.
Kevin:
I agree. Ruth Barnett's diary is PRIMARY evidence (as opposed to verbal testimony decades afterwards) that nothing happened that day, or days, on the Plains.
In fact it is about the only primary evidence of any sort that exists on Roswell (apart from the press reports and Haut's release). The trouble is that it is negative evidence, which tends to run against the grain of the Roswell diehards. Never mind, maybe Barney simply forgot to tell his wife what he saw that day, even it was alien bodies (a likely story!).
It is a great pity that certain other individuals, such as Marcel, Cavitt, Brazel, and any of the umpteen alleged witnesses did not provide any primary evidence, in the form of diary entries, to bolster their decades old testimony. Alas there is none. What's more, not a single one bothered to keep the press reports of such an earth-shattering event.
Of course there were the Mogul project records, but.....
Funny, but I have a feeling that we have strayed off topic - again.
I know we're going slightly off topic, but now that the debris field has been mentioned, what are the thoughts here on why the aliens didn't clear up their own mess? It seems they don't like to advertise their being here, so why not pull out all the stops to prevent us getting to their hardware.
Now the debris field, considering its reported length and width, possibly made it too awkward to clear within a short time frame, even with their advanced technology...but the disc site seems to have been a much more concentrated area and the place where the real important stuff was (ie, disc and bodies.) Talking of bodies, why no recovery attempt or more importantly, rescue attempt, for any possible survivors...or am I simply thinking too much like an Earth chap?
Yes, you are thinking too much like an earth chap.
But where, O where, are the photos of those ET bodies, dead or alive, that we may be sure (yes, very sure) were taken at the time, if they were indeed ETs?
Yes, I know there are those slides (!) which, we are led to believe, will soon be shown to the world. Does anyone believe that 2015 will be the greatest ever year for the confirmation of ET existence? I expect that a few individuals do sincerely believe this.
But we are straying off-topic even further.
Paul,
You make an excellent point. Given the apparent presence of UFOs in Earth airspace (a big flap was underway in summer 1947) wouldn’t the aliens make some attempt to at least recover the survivor that is claimed in some accounts? Also, one would think that they wouldn’t leave the bodies as well, even if our idea of funerals is not a big thing in their culture, would they just leave them for us to study. The same goes for any significant components like the propulsion system.
The other issue that bothers me about the whole UFO crash scenario is how often do these craft crash? Are they unreliable? The came from interstellar space but the flap has only been going for a brief time and they crash at a site the military can cover up with ease. It could have happened but that’s kind of lucky for our government if it did.
Kevin wrote:
Overlooking the fact that there is no evidence to tie Barnett into a Plains crash in 1947,
Except for Barnett himself, who told at least 6 witnesses over the next 20 years about being at such a crash.
Alice Knight: Barnett's niece, said she was told by her uncle Thanksgiving time 1947 and that the crash happened several month's earlier (placing it in the summer of 1947).
Vern and Jean Maltais: They said Barnett told them the story in Feb. 1950, Barnett saying it happened a few years earlier. (Incidentally, Feb. 1950 was the same time when various other flying saucer crash stories started coming out in the newspapers, which may have sparked Barnett's comments to the Maltaises).
James & Beth Danley: James ("Fleck") Danley was Barnett's boss. Told their story in 1979.
Howard Baca: Barnett's neighbor, said he was told around 1967, when Barnett was dieing of lung cancer he thought might have been related to being at the crash site. Baca also claimed Barnett's wife Ruth confirmed hearing the story from her husband about 20 years before.
Col. William Leed: Interested in UFO's, Leed got a tip from a superior officer about Barnett and sought him out, again as Barnett was dying in 1967. Barnett again confirmed being at such a crash site, furthermore having received followup visits from the military over the years.
So it was more than just the memory of Vern Maltais saying Barnett told the story. Alice Knight's testimony would place the event in the summer of 1947.
On July 2, Barnett arrived home from Datil at six in the evening.
And Datil is on the western edge of the Plains. So Barnett WAS in the area early July 1947.
...and overlooking the fact that Dr. Herbert Dick arrived there on July 1 and would have been in a position to see everything that was going on if anything did...
Dick's testimony of knowing nothing would have carried more weight if he hadn't lied about being there on an archeological dig. Documents, however, do place him there starting July 1. This was at Bat Cave, about 30 miles SW of Datil.
On July 3, Barnett was in the office most of the day. On July 4, Barnett was ill and worked at home. On July 5, Barnett was working on the house they were building. On July 6, he was working on the house again.
Nothing here placing him on the Plains or near Roswell or Corona, one of the questions in my mind concerning whether Barnett was possibly involved with Roswell, or we were dealing with a different crash.
On the 7th, he went to Paloadera in the morning and to the Rotary in the afternoon.
Can't find "Paloadera" anywhere. Is this Valles Caldera north of Albuquerque??
On July 8 he was in Pie Town.
Or AGAIN back in the Plains' area.
There is nothing in the diary to suggest that anything strange happened, that Barnett came home excited, quiet, strange. Just routine stuff without a hint of anything unusual.
Of course, IF Barnett had been warned not to talk about it by the military, he could easily have not told his wife initially when she was keeping her diary to protect her. (Or instructed her not to add such details)
(An analogous situation concerning Roswell would be Gen. Vandenberg failing to make any note of Roswell in his daily log, even though the newspapers clearly fingered him as being involved after the base press release came out, trying to kill the story. The fact that Vandenberg said nothing in his log was used by the AF in 1994/95 to claim Vandenberg had no involvement at all. Rather it was more if you want to keep a secret, don't commit anything to writing.)
Herbert Dick could likewise have been instructed not to discuss it and thus denied even being on the Plains at the time, which turned out to be a lie.
We certainly know of other witnesses saying they were warned or threatened not to talk about the Roswell case, so the same could easily apply to Plains' crash witnesses, such as Dick.
David -
Yes, he told people about a UFO crash. There is no denying it. But it is the timing and the location that has not been documented. He told Vern Maltais (whom I did interview) sometime around 1950 that it had happened a few years earlier... not exacctly precise information... in fact there is nothing here that demonstrates that Barnett pinpointed the date himself. When I talked to Baca he said he was unsure of exactly when Barnett had seen the craft.
So, we're back to Danley, and I repeat, I don't believe that anyone other than Moore or me talked to him. It was obvious to me that Danley had no clear idea of when or where.
I'm sorry David, but you have nothing other than speculation about this... As I say, there is no denying that all these people said that Barnett told them about the UFO crash but none of them can, could, or did actually provide definitive information as to location and date.
All -
Since we seem to be hung up on this idea (irrelevant to this post) that the aliens did not attempt to recover the craft of the bodies, I will say a couple of things. One, we just don't know how an alien intelligence would react. Maybe they had trouble locating the crash and when they did, people were already there. Maybe the craft was populated by intelligence cyborgs created by the aliens so they didn't care to recover them.
Or maybe, my favorite theory and one I dreamed up decades ago... they crashed it on purpose as a nonthreatening way to announce themselves to humans. They didn't count on the paranoia of the human race...
And for those who think these things are falling out of the sky, I submit that there are but two crashes... one of them, Shag Harbour, might not have been a crash but an attempt at evasion... All the others have some real problems with them (and I'll bet that Stan Gordon will be annoyed with me about this).
"Maybe they had trouble locating the crash and when they did, people were already there."
I thought the general agreement on the time line goes something along the lines that an explosion was heard during the night, and it was getting on for a good 24 hours later that Brazel came across the debris field...and sometime after that, the disc site was discovered! Considering the intelligence these aliens must have, you'd think that they'd have come up with some kind of disaster plan. At the bare minimum, some kind of distress beacon fitted to their discs. And considering their seeming ability to flit here and there, with impunity, at a vast rate of knots,they'd at least be able to locate and get to the disc site within the time frame.
I do believe the ETH best explains what happened at Roswell. I've always wondered, however, why they didn't move heaven and hell to get their disc (and their boys) back, before the USAAF could get their hands on it.
Hey...I know there's no real answer here...I'm just mumbling to myself aloud, I suppose.
For those interested, some video testimony of Barnett/Plains witnesses Maltais, Knight, and Baca can be seen here:
http://tinyurl.com/kvz4tgg
The main reason why I can't simply dismiss a Plains' crash and Barnett's story is that there seem to be a large number of people that Barnett eventually told the story to. Everybody who knew him felt that he was a straight-arrow sort of guy who would never make up such a story.
He is somewhat similar to Roswell witness Oliver Henderson, who likewise told a large number of people of seeing alien bodies and flying wreckage and/or bodies to Wright Field. Like the Barnett witnesses, all the Henderson witnesses were second-hand.
Karl Pflock tried to debunk Henderson as a "practical joker", but people who actually knew him well, such as his wife, daughter, and business partner, likewise thought Henderson wasn't the type to make up such a story.
The main difference between the Barnett and Henderson stories is that Roswell has a slew of corroborating witnesses and a base press release that something had indeed happened, plus being a population center and where much of the action took place. If something happened on the Plains, it never made the newspapers. The area was also extremely isolated and thinly populated. There were no bases nearby where a recovery operation would have been centered, such as at Roswell, thus townfolk in nearby small towns like Datil, Magdalena, and Socorro, would be unlikely to know anything about it.
We also seem to be getting hung up on exactly when and where this all took place and whether there was a direct connection to Roswell, which there may or may NOT have been. (E.g., if the military had a "shoot-down" order against the saucers, as they admitted to in 1952 during that big UFO wave, then maybe there were TWO distinct crashes brought on by military action.)
The Plains' evidence is still very thin, but not nonexistent. I have it in my gray basket.
@ John's Space. "The other issue that bothers me about the whole UFO crash scenario is how often do these craft crash? Are they unreliable?"
It could be something as simple as pilot error. If they are biological beings (as opposed to intelligence cyborgs :-) ) they may well be as susceptible to tiredness and concentration lapses as we are.
Or, maybe, "Murphy's Law" applies to everyone in the galaxy and they were hit by some freak occurrence they didn't know how to cope with.
Kevin:
I was going to comment on your response but David beat me to it. In short, Barnett confided in a number of people other than Danley including Maltais, but verbally and never in writing. Thus he would have admonished his wife not to mention it in her diary.
There is no question if this was a real event the military brow beat Barnett to keep his mouth shut. This probably is also true of his superiors including Danley. We all know that the military carried a very big stick in this time frame.
There is also the question concerning anthropologist Dr. Herbert Dick and if his party was at the plains site (Bat Cave) in early July. Common knowledge says he was not there until mid-July 1947. However, A letter from the archivist at the Peabody Museum at Harvard from Dick to an academic advisor, J.O. Brew, from December, 1947 stated he left Albuquerque July 1, 1947 for the plains where he and his team worked for two weeks. This of course would have put Dick and his students at or near the crash site in the proper time frame. You said you interviewed him but he told you nothing. If he was brow beat like Barnett and the others what did he have to gain? Nothing!
Kevin, you know as well as i do, or better than I do, that this is SOP with most who have knowledge of this issue, especially those in government or academia. They have nothing to gain and much to lose. Why talk?
You do bring up a point that I really have very little answer for, that is the lack of this event being included in the EBD. The only answer I can come up with is that this was a preliminary briefing document and Hillenkoetter didn't want to overload Ike with too many facts until he had a formal briefing as president. I know that's weak but still plausible.
To all as to why the craft (s) crashed and were not recovered. I offer this as pure but reasoned speculation. The craft and the beings were not important. They were simply probes sent from mother ships and the occupants were engineered beings, androids if you will, probably just a part of the craft. These probes didn't fly across the vastness of space they were/are eyes and ears to follow our nuclear and space developments from the afore mentioned motherships. Of course this is pure speculation and probably far more complicated than my simple speculation.
David:
I'm in agreement with your last post. However, I don't rule out the the very new and very secret high power radars being used at White Sands as as cause of the crashes. I'm not sure the "shoot them down" order was in place that early.
As a side issue when I was a senior in high school in 1961 I had a friend, 14 years my senior, who was a judo instructor at Biggs AFB in the early 1950's. He told me of pilots he instructed in judo who told him stories of saucers they encountered in the area (Texas-New Mexico) that scared the hell out of them. One bomber pilot from Roswell told him of flying saucer debris and bodies to Wright-Pat (Wright Field at the time). He said that Roswell was the center of saucer recoveries. This pilot could have been "Pappy" Henderson.
It's funny but I sort of forgot this story. When the Roswell story broke in the 1980's I couldn't finger why Roswell was a place that I associated with UFOs for years.
When writing my new book the fog started to lift and his accounts of what pilots told him from bases in the southwest came back to me.
Isn't it strange that whenever positive testimony (maybe 2nd or 3rd hand) appears, decades after the event, the pro-ETHers say it adds to the evidence of an ET crash, whereas whenever negative or zero primary evidence appears (as in Ruth Barnett's diary) the same pro-ETHers say it had to be omitted because of pressure or threats from the military to keep the matter secret!
Barnett was warned not to tell anyone, even his wife, about seeing those ET bodies. Hence the total absence from her diary. Ha!
The Roswell survivor was said to have been in a depressed state which suggests a biological (humanlike) entity as opposed to a cyborg. I doubt they crashed intentionally, sacrificing the lives of several intelligent beings, just to announce themselves. Besides crashes, or explosions, at least three of which, other than Roswell, appear real (Kecksburg, Las Vegas '62, shag harbor) there are a number of reports in which aliens tried to do something and failed, like taking someone captive. Ergo they don't seem invincible and can screw up or be stymied.
I did however encounter an obscure work with a quite different take, which addresses questions like why the ETs let wreckage and bodies fall into government hands. But it's an extremely controversial tome. THE ALIEN PLAN FOR EARTH is just a POD production no doubt because no trade publisher would touch it.
Larry, David -
You begin to sound like Stan Friedman. Nothing in the Barnett diary because Barney was threatened to keep quiet except that he seemed to have blabbed to everyone about it including his boss in July 1947.
Danley was threatened, which, even if he was, doesn't explain why he seemed to forget exactly when and where this took place.
We can reject Herbert Dick because he LIED about not being on the Plains in early July 1947 overlooking the possibly that he was simply wrong about when he arrived there. He must have lied... or he was threatened to keep quiet.
Barnett must have seen the crash wreckage in 1947 because he told Vern Maltais in 1950 that it had been a couple of years earlier... overlooking that this was about the time that the Aztec crash was in the news. No chance that Barnett was referring to that.
Howard Baca said that Barney told him that it was about twenty years earlier and Ruth confirmed that it was about twenty years earlier which, of course, is quite vague, and doesn't actually validate the date and location.
Alice Knight remembers Barney saying some at Thanksgiving in 1947 that this happened months earlier, which means he was talking about it not long after the threats and Ruth does not note this interesting tale in her diary.
It's not mentioned in the EBD because they didn't want to overwhelm the president-elect with too much information, except that he was Chief of Staff of the Army in July 1947 and the information would have passed through his office... besides this is a draft so the inaccuracies do not count.
But they do include the thoroughly discredited hoax at El Indio and there is no explanation how they knew about it because the tale wasn't invented until 1968.
Oh, and let's not forget that this area was too remote so the military officers in charge of the recovery didn't talk about it like those at Roswell did except that Alamogordo (Holloman in later years) and Kirkland in Albuquerque aren't all that far away and the roads to get there are better.
The links to a crash on the Plains in July 1947 are nearly nonexistent and are based on what Barnett might have said, but there are no facts to back it up. Nothing, unlike Roswell where there are documents and newspaper accounts to fix the date for us.
I have actual facts rather than unfounded speculations. If you have some facts that can be verified, I'd like to hear them... and please note, I am disputing the date of this because of those facts. If anything happened on the Plains, it wasn't in July 1947.
Is it conceivable that the huge radio telescope, known as the Very Large Array, was set up, in 1981, as a coincidence, on those very Plains that the great saucer crash of 1947 occurred?
There must be a connection surely.
@ Starman -
If they had been monitoring the events of WW2 a few years earlier, and seen how some PoW's (like in Siberia and Burma) had been treated, then the survivor would have every reason to feel a bit on the depressed side!
Just muttering aloud to myself again...maybe there was a rescue attempt very soon after the accident, but they encountered the same problem and came a cropper too. It's not that unusual an event for rescue teams to run into trouble.
This might tie in with the "two crashed discs" theory and explain why they left a survivor, bodies and hardware behind. (This has always been inexplicable
to me)
They used "plan B" but didn't have a "plan C"???
Paul & starman,
It seems reasonable that a UFO could have crashed. That wasn’t my point as much as just the odds of it happening that early in the big post-WW II flap. It also was thinking of the reported scene where the survivor is just hanging around as armed troops and the cleanup team occupy the crash site. Neither party interacting with the other.
I don’t get why a radar would bring down the craft. That idea has been brought up before. We have had radar for years by then and would that be anticipated when they started exploring a planet at that given level of technology.
It seems that the Mogul balloon theory has been discredited. Even the Air Force admits that was their only conventional explanation. So what are we left with?
John's Space -
Here is the error in your thinking and I don't blame you because it is a theory I proposed in my last book. The flap didn't begin in June 1947, but had been going on for a long time, first the Foo Fighters of WW II and then the Ghost Rockets in 1946. There were reports that preceded Arnold that were gathered by the Army and Howard McCoy that seem to have slipped through the cracks.
So, the Roswell case didn't actually happen near the beginning of the flap but well into it...
And, radar had nothing to do with it. Radar is not a weapon but a detection system that has been degraded by stealth.
Kevin:
I agree with you that modern saucer issue goes back years before the Arnold sighting. But two questions come to mind:
1) Do you discount the Charlette Mann/Huffman Cape Girardeau story?
2) Isn't it within the realm of possibility that the very powerful, and very secret new radars being used at White Sands, not as a weapon, but a new an unexpected technology could have interfered with the probes guidance systems. And an issue that "they" quickly resolved?
Kevin:
I forgot to add that your state that "radar had nothing to do with it. Radar is not a weapon but a detection system that has been degraded by stealth" is lacking provenance. I'll also admit that saying it did also lacks provenance. Let's walk on the same side of the street.
However, I submit the following:
"Radar Becomes A Weapon
Aviation Week & Space Technology September 5, 2005 Pg. 50
By David A. Fulghum and Douglas Barrie
Knowledge that radar can produce violent effects on electronic systems is not new. More than 20 years ago, bomber aircraft radars were capable of generating enough concentrated noise jamming to burn out the valve amps (tube amplifiers) in fighters attempting an interception. The emergence over the last few years of the active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, and its ability to provide high average power for appreciable times, makes such electronically destructive devices all the more attractive and effective."
To say radar had NOTHING to do with the crash is a pretty big statement with nothing to back up such a statement. On the other hand the above indicates a very high power unknown radar could have had a devastating effect on the "visitors" probe, an issue, if true, most probably was quickly resolved.
I could be quite scathing to the point if rudeness about some of the above discussion, but there is little point.
What is clear is that the amount of total drivel surrounding discussion of these events is phenomenal. I should say alleged events as there never was any actual evidence for the San Augustine claims and the vague unsubstantiated claims that were made should never have got the point of being published. These claims have now been effectively undermined by actual evidence and yet still it is being discussed as if this was something to seriously consider.
There evidently is a need for a serious, sober, and probably book length re-evaluation of this time period which strips out as muchi of the 'noise' that has accumulated around Roswell and cuts it back to the core data that can be evidenced.
And as for 1947 radars downing a UFO...just think about it for a minute for heaven's sake... how do we think these things probably work...what environment would it have passed through...just think about the physics of it for 30 seconds....!!!
My apologies for actually becoming somewhat blunt but lack of rigour gets my blood pressure up. Kevin's point is well made and based on documentary evidence about San Augustine...but we really do need to think about standards of evidence in this field
Larry -
My statement doesn't lack provenance. I made it. There you go.
This idea that radar had anything to do with these 1947 crashes is an outgrowth of the nonsense spouted about the Aztec crash. Three radars, that didn't exist at the time, though plans were in the works, allegedly converged to bring down the Aztec craft.
There were no such poweful radars in operation in New Mexico at the time... But let's think about this. We have a spacefaring race who has defeated the obstacles of interstellar flight. They have flown through space in a way that avoids the pitfalls of dark matter, they are unbothered by the solar winds of various star systems and they have learned from flying through the hostile environments of planetary atmospheres. They have seen a wide range of dangerous environments, but get to Earth and the relatively passive (please note the qualifier) radar beams scramble their electronics and they fall to the ground.
Where is your evidence for this? Wouldn't lightning be a far more dangerous event?
And why doesn't radar bring down airplanes... or rather why didn't it? During WW II the Japanese created a beamed weapon that could kill a bunny at 3 feet and stop an engine at 10, but that was its purpose and it didn't work at any sort of range. Inverse square law reared its ugly head.
Now we're to believe that some mythical radar system caused the object to fall, apparently on the Plains, where there is no real evidence of anything happening other than the vague references to that made by friends of Barney Barnett.
We have heaped speculation upon speculation and sprinkled with vague and unconvincing evidence, and provided a theory that radar had something to do with the Plains crash... not to mention Aztec. Now you pull out technology that was decades in the future (as looked at from 1947) and say that radar beams could damage the electronic components of fighters... which isn't quite the same thing as dropping alien craft out of the sky. And there is nothing in that to tell us about the range these things happened.
So now we discuss a radar system that didn't exist, used to bring down a craft that wasn't there, all based on... what?
And if there were powerful radars at White Sands, that would have been secret in 1947, where is the evidence of that today? No one has found it, and until they do, those radars didn't exist.
"But they do include the thoroughly discredited hoax at El Indio and there is no explanation how they knew about it because the tale wasn't invented until 1968."
And that, to me, is case closed on the EBD.
@Larry
AW&ST is paywalled. Do you have the original article?
.
Some aircraft may have used tube systems circa 1985 (around 20 years ago), but I doubt seriously if 1940s technology could 'burn out' a tube system*. They are extremely resistant to EM effects, much more so than todays SS technology.
.
Other than some heating of the metal, radar cannot penetrate metallic objects, and certainly can't destroy them.
.
I gotta go...
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*I believe the authors got it wrong regarding ca. 1985 tube receivers being 'burned out' by radar.
Albert:
Thanks for your thoughtful post. I simply bring up radar as a possible reason for the downing. There is no question that White Sands would have used the most advanced and probably secret radar systems to track their experiments such as V2 launches.
I think lightning is improbable because it has been around from the beginning and would have been well known and understood. In fact many reports have UFOs using lighting and electric generating facilities for their use, whatever that may be.
As far as the craft reported to have crashed here. It should be considered that these craft didn't fly here across the vastness of space. They were brought here as simple uncomplicated (in the eyes of the visitors) research machines. They were expendable, just as our weather balloons are expendable. That of course is pure conjecture.
Radar is particularly fascinating to me. The use of radar has mushroomed such as its use in radar "spoofing" something still highly classified.
I believe this story of the vulnerability of UFOs to radar is do to a story told by a claimed abductee who claim the aliens had related that to him.
They are exploration/landing craft but I don't think they are necessary considered expendable.
Larry -
Could you please provide the source for your statement about the White Sands radar? I did research the question a number of years ago and it doesn't seem that the radars they used were the most advanced but rather those that were portable and I have seen nothing to suggest any secret radar there in 1947.
Could you also explain how the alien craft get from their home systems to ours. You seem to have a grasp on it that has eluded other researchers...
Oh, and explain how radar which emits beams that are relatively weak could bring down such a craft when a lightning strike would be much more disruptive to electrical systems that aren't shielded in some fashion.
And finally, since I'm asking questions, please point us all to any documentation about a crash on the Plains, excluding of course, the unreliable EBD.
Kevin:
You are correct the SCR 584 (modified) radars in use at White Sands were in fact mobile. However, they were modified and experimental. I offer this from "The Sign Historical Group."
"Lt. Col. Harold R. Turner, the Commanding Officer at WSPG, sent this request to the Office of the Chief of Ordnance in Washington with the statement:
"3. The radar equipment currently in use at White Sands Proving Ground is under the control of the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer. This equipment is modified SCR-584 designed to operated the AN/APN-55 beacon used in obtaining ballistic information from the missiles fired at this station. This equipment being of an experimental nature obviously is undergoing modification and extensive testing procedures when not actually in use for a firing. It would, therefore, preclude any possible use by other agencies for procedures set out in subject request from headquarters Eighth Air Force."
It is clear that from other parts of this paper the WSMR radars were the most advanced in operation at the time.
As to your second question of how they got here. Knowing your background, I'm surprised at this question. I'm sure you've seen the drawing done by your former co-author, Don Schmitt, of the craft seen by the flight crew of JAL flight 1628. In my opinion, I repeat, in MY opinion, that is how they got, and continue to get here. It's not a theory that has has "eluded others researchers" as many have embraced this theory for years.
With your third question on "weak" radar beams, I don't know that they were weak. I know from the above that they were being modified and experimented with at WSPG. We don't know the phenomenon and if these were simple probes that may have been very elementary to the visitors, yet wondrous to us it may be as simple as something their systems on the probes were not prepared for. Many reports seem to indicate that real UFOs seem to thrive on electricity as well as lightening. Lightening has been around for a long time and would certainly think they know how to deal with it.
Your last question, there are are number, but most recently Art Campbell's, "Finding The UFO Crash At San Augustin." I can hear the screams coming from the Campbell debunkers, but the man has spent an enormous time at the site along with a tremendous amount of money. Something that can not be said of many.
Larry & Kevin
I have enjoyed reading your posts which are quite humorous in parts.
There are two keys points we seem to be discussing:
1. What/who bought the craft(s) down and
2. Where did they land?
If there were two craft that crashed including one on the plains of San Agustin then I think we might agree that the likely cause of the crasheS (emphasis added) was the two craft colliding in mid-air (NOT lightning OR radar)
This is the view of one Stan Friedman.
Larry, you haven't really made it clear - do you think one craft crashed or two? If you say two, then radar/lightning would have to be unlikely?
The other problem I see with a two craft crash is that you would likely have two separate debris fields - unless of course they collided mid-air over the Brazel ranch - then flew off in different directions and crashed separately.
The army, as Larry rightly pointed out, stated they recovered a disk (they never said they recovered two disks...)
I would be interested to hear what you think about the above point Larry.
As an aside Don Schmitt stated to me that, like Kevin, also believes there was no crash on the Plaines
The SCR-584 radar was originally designed to track aircraft targets out to about 20 miles for the purpose of pointing AA guns. Since the targets were not cooperative, they operated by "painting" the target with 10 cm wavelength RF pulses and detecting the return pulses from the metal skins of the aircraft.
White Sands wanted to use them to track missile tests, which could often go quite a bit further than 20 miles.
RADAR has the characteristic that the strength of the primary return falls off like distance, raised to the fourth power. This means that simply increasing the radiated power of a RADAR emitter in an effort to increase the tracking range is a losing proposition. For example, doubling the power of the SCR-584 would only increase the tracking range to about 24 miles, everything else being equal. Increasing the radiated power by a factor of 20 (likely not feasible) would just about double the range, and so on.
The easy way to get around this limitation is to put an active beacon on the target which emits RF pulses at the same frequency the RADAR set is designed to detect. This approach decouples the tracking problem from the radiated power of the RADAR unit. With a beacon on the target, the radiated power does not even enter into the equation.
The statement: "This equipment is modified SCR-584 designed to operated the AN/APN-55 beacon used in obtaining ballistic information from the missiles fired at this station." from the Sign Historical Group (SHG) implies that the engineers at White Sands were well aware of this problem and had opted to modify the RADAR sets to track a beacon INSTEAD OF increasing the radiated power.
This SHG statement actually argues AGAINST there being a high power RADAR at White Sands.
Larry:
39.7 miles to be exact. Now, did this radar, however powerful, play a role in the downing of the saucer (s), that may not have expected such primitive interference, I don't know. But I don't think it was lightning as these beings must have been well informed about lightning as it's been around a long time.
Larry -
I want to make one thing clear. I don't believe that lightning was responsible. I merely suggested that a lightning bolt would be a much stronger elecctrical discharge than a radar beam. I have no idea what brought the thing down. Maybe someone pushed the wrong button... and no we can have a long discussion about buttons as opposed to switches, knobs or dials.
Nitram Ang:
Yes, I believe in the two saucer theory. Also colliding in mid-air is something that I embrace, but could it not have been caused by advanced systems not accustomed to our primitive radar?
The debris field accounts for one and the plains accounts for the other. I don't rule out that the debris field came from a saucer that exploded above the Foster Ranch with the final saucer body ending up near Roswell. Thus the Dwyer/Rowe story comes into play.
But one should not forget that Col.Blanchard put out the story that the 509th had recovered a "disc," not debris. Blanchard has been assaulted by debunkers as an exaggerating fool, but he went on to wear four stars as Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force.
So what is the "saucer" Blanchard referred to, the remains of the Foster Ranch saucer that ended up near Roswell, or a second saucer on the plains, or both?
Kevin:
I agree, I don't think it was lighting or radar, but both remain in play. But who knows, as you said said someone my have pushed the wrong button perhaps many, many miles away. Who knows, we can only continue to put forward ideas and search for answers.
Larry H
your suggesting that lightning didnt bring down the craft.
Because its been around a while and the beings probably know about it, then what makes you think any type of radar we have would do it?
Since i would of thought that these beings would probably know of radar, RF waves and the like too, since lightning and radar are both probably beyond primitive to these visitors.
being speculative i wouldve thought along their evolutionary paths they would of known about RF waves and lightning also, mayby in different ways to us though.
However at a guess i think its lightning that night that did it.
You know, after spending the last few months reading this blog from the beginning. I'm fascinated by the knowledge of the UFO subject from both the ETH's (of which I tend to side with) and the sceptics who post here. I'm no researcher, simply an avid reader of the subject over the last few decades, but from what I can gather, the best explanation for why the disc/s crashed in the Roswell incident, is pilot error.
As mentioned by Starman, these beings certainly don't seem to be invincible. I mentioned earlier that if they are biological beings,which would seem to be the case, they probably can have an "off" day, same as us. Maybe they get tired, get hayfever...get "dear John" postcards from the missus.
KR jokingly mentioned above that "someone might have pressed the wrong button". That's not an outlandish theory to me. In one of the books in my vast collection...about 20 paperbacks :-( ... I remember reading an interesting point being made by the author (was it you Kevin?...might be Tim Good) that in some reported cases, the ufo's act like they are being piloted by juvenile delinquents secretly taking daddys car out for a drive. In the JAL case mentioned by Larry above, this UFO the size of two Nimitz class carriers was practically showing off!
Some reports suggest that UFO's could be accused of playing "chicken" with our pilots. Playfully buzzing them.
It's quite feasible to me that some,off colour, or cocky alien pilot could have made a "pigs ear" of it.
Based on a lot of reports of UFO aerial behavior it seems clear that a lot of their pilots are "hotdogs" in the cockpit.
So much speculation, so little fact...
@ Anthony...After looking at the pros and cons with an open mind for years, there comes a time when you have to come to your own decision. For me, looking at the way the powers that be fumbled and farted over the "Roswell, case closed" report, it left no doubt in my mind that this was a huge event they were determined to cover up come hell or high water.
Mogul balloon and dropped crash test dummies??? Chuckle. I suppose it's less condescending than "swamp gas"
Unless Nick Redfern is right, that it was something that was, and still is, hugely embarrassing/shameful for your govt, then for me the ETH is all that's left.
Hence I've more or less moved on from wrestling over whether or not it was a flying saucer from another planet...and now enjoy speculating why such advanced stuff crashed...and why it was left behind. Getting one of their flying discs was like the Soviets getting hold of your U2 in 1960 and the Royal Navy snatching an enigma machine off that German U-boat.
@ Paul Young
I do agree with you that it seems very likely that what crashed at Roswell was extraterrestrial. That conclusion is based on:
a) the fact debris was recovered
b) the military response involved sending the 509th's intelligence and counter-intelligence officers out to pick this stuff up, indicating Blanchard felt the matter required sensitive handling.
c) recognition that the weather balloon claim was a cover.
d) falsification of the NYU flight 4 claims.
e) the extent to which small elements of the Ramey memo can be quantitatively analysed, supporting the proposal by Rudiack that it contains the phrase "victims of the wreck" and later the word "disc".
f) A small number of high credibility witness testimonies including those of Marcel senior, Marcel Junior, DuBose and Haut etc.
g) the urgent response to the situation nationally including RDB involvement in the wider UFO question, Twining's activities etc.
What get's me annoyed is when we stray so far from established facts. We can all speculate but unless it generates a line of enquiry for research or testing then it lacks credibility. The San Augustine claims and the stuff about radar causing the crash are examples. The San Augustine claims never got beyond the point where the should only have been used to solicit responses from others that may have been relevant. There was never enough evidence to claim it was actually a real event, and now it is actually plausibly falsified, yet it still gets brought up.
There is no mechanism in ufology for stripping out bogus or weak claims from the record, but unless we find some way of enforcing academically rigorous standards we will continue to have to cross check every claim individually.
And that is a forlorn hope, I sadly suspect
Anthony:
Re your four points a, b, c, d:
How do each or any of these advance in any way the extraterrestrial nature of the 'crash' (if it was indeed a crash).
None of the contemporary reports refer to a 'crash' at all, only to the landing and recovery of a light instrument.
Re your point e:
Even supposing Rudiak is right (about which which Kevin and I and many others do not), how does the word 'disc' point towards an ET crash? And why should 'victims of the wreck' indicate an ET craft wreck (unless you want it to, of course)?
Re point f:
Why should these 'high credibility witnesses' mean anything regarding an ET crash? Would any of your named witnesses, or any others, recognise an ET craft or its occupants when they saw one? (Recall that no such things are known to science either then or now).
Point g means absolute zilch as to evidence for ETs visiting earth.
Where are all the tons of other paperwork and electronic media relating to this earth-shattering event and scientific discovery? STILL top secret I suppose.
Yes I do agree with you about those blessed Plains of San Augustin, or San Agustin or San Augustine or whatever.
Orgone ("OR") against nuclear radiation ( the alien crafts, when exposed to Nuclear radiation,
malfunction?)
www.rogermwilcox.com/reich/oranur.html
By 1950, Reich had become convinced that orgone energy could be accumulated and utilized in a wide variety of applications, from treating illnesses he classified as biopathic to healing X-ray burns to being harnessed in an orgone motor. Reich wondered if an orgone accumulator might not be useful in removing nuclear radiation from radioactive substances, or in treating radiation sickness. To test this possibility, in December 1950 through May 1951 he performed an experiment that pitted orgone ("OR") against nuclear radiation ("NR"). He dubbed this test the ORANUR experiment, which stood for ORgonomic Anti-NUclear Radiation.
Reich claimed that, in this experiment, he discovered that nuclear radiation "antagonized" orgone energy and turned it into Deadly ORgone, or DOR. The DOR produced by the interaction of concentrated orgone with even a tiny bit of nuclear material supposedly did all sorts of nasty things to living organisms, far out-of-proportion to the small amount of radiation sickness one would "normally" expect from a tiny bit of nuclear material. The Oranur effect, as Reich called it, was allegedly so destructive that to this very day no orgonomist dares to reproduce the experiment.
Ed
Hello Anthony and happy new year...
You state "So much speculation, so little fact..."
Yes, agreed - but we are simply guessing what downed the craft (if there was such a thing) - my guess too would be lightning, alien error is quite likely and if there were two such "vehicles" then mid-air collision would have to be the favorite and finally radar is in my opinion the least likely of all of the possibilities (sorry Larry - but just an opinion).
CDA I don't normally respond to your posts which generally luck logic and in some cases even common sense but since you choose to comment on the Ramey memo again I can't help but respond.
Assuming David has the wording correct ("victims of the wreck") then does this not indicate something more likely than the case of a simply downed weather balloon? You state that Kevin and yourself don't agree (or words to that effect) - however Kevin has certainly not ruled out the possibility of "victims" being the key word while you could hardily lay any claim to being a "Ramey memo authority"...
You may know of course that weather balloons (this is something that David & Kevin do agree on) is clearly visible in the document and you also know that Ramey is not a sci-fi novelist so accordingly try and give a sensible and constructive response:
If (Mr) Rudiak is correct about this line in the memo - what in your HONEST opinion is the document stating is referring too?
I guess that at the point I’ve moved to a 50/50 position on Roswell although I’m at a much more positive than that many UFOs are of extraterrestrial origin.
I'd like to make some counterpoints and raise some questions the specifics Antony Mungan raised.
a) the fact debris was recovered
There were debris of something but that doesn’t prove it’s an alien craft.
b) the military response involved sending the 509th's intelligence and counter-intelligence officers out to pick this stuff up, indicating Blanchard felt the matter required sensitive handling.
This was in response to local law enforcement’s request for assistance about a downed craft. They would do that in much less unique situations. If they had any idea that it was a flying saucer I think they would have sent more than two people.
c) recognition that the weather balloon claim was a cover.
It only requires that something needed covering up but not necessarily alien.
d) falsification of the NYU flight 4 claims.
It’s looking like NYU flight 4 is another canard just like the earlier weather balloon claim. The fact that the government is still covering up 50 years after the event is suggestive that something extraordinary happened.
e) the extent to which small elements of the Ramey memo can be quantitatively analyzed, supporting the proposal by Rudiack that it contains the phrase "victims of the wreck" and later the word "disc".
I think this is really a stretch and is controversial among experts.
f) A small number of high credibility witness testimonies including those of Marcel senior, Marcel Junior, DuBose and Haut etc.
This is some of the strongest evidence. However, one problem is that the Marcel senior omits the alien bodies in his testimony. Kevin’s argument that the knowledge of the event was restricted to the staff officers, the provost, and any individuals who were directly involved doesn’t explain why the intelligence officer didn’t know about the bodies.
g) the urgent response to the situation nationally including RDB involvement in the wider UFO question, Twining's activities etc.
What is unclear to me is Twining requesting Operation Sign and letting it go forward with an “interplanetary hypothesis” assuming that Roswell was a real extraterrestrial event. Since the policy was cover up, why have the T2 group develop and circulate an ET case when Twining knew the answer, and thereby expose a lot of people in the military establishment who didn’t have a need-to-know to such a theory? Of course Twinging left before Sign got underway to head the Alaskan Air Command. But, presumably his successor at the Air Material Command would have been cleared and taken charge. It seems that something like Grudge rather than Sign would have been the response with UFO crash debris being studied on base.
Also, has it been established that the RDB was involved in this from the beginning (in 1947)? We have evidence that by 1950 they were involved, i.e. Sarbacher and Walker.
John's Space -
Let's talk about Marcel, who was a member of Blanchard's staff. My thinking on this was that after the initial finding, Marcel's role would have been reduced... He wasn't responsible for security because that was the provost marshal. He wasn't responsible for the logistics because that would be operations or the adjutant. His role was superceded by other staff members.
And that he never talked of bodies doesn't mean he didn't know. In fact, a Marcel relative said that Jesse had told him about bodies but the information didn't surface until after Marcel had died.
I believe, however, that if Marcel ever mentioned bodies, it would have been to his son, and although his son shared some important information with me, he also said that his father never told him about bodies.
But, the fact he never mentioned them does not translate into that he didn't know about them. That is the flaw in some of this. He didn't mention them and because he didn't, the assumption was that he had been cut out of the loop at that point. I suggest, in the alternative, that while discussions of metal don't lead to the extraterrestrial, discussion of bodies can lead in that direction.
Sure, this is a fine hair to split, but we must acknowledge that a failure to mention the bodies is not necessarily evidence of no knowledge of them.
Kevin:
You are clutching at straws.
You suggest that Marcel told investigators, 30 years later, about the supposed ET crash, but did not reveal anything about the ET bodies, deciding to leave this to others.
A real modest guy indeed. He reveals half the story but carefully avoids the other, more interesting, half!
With Roswell, any fantasy is permitted, it seems.
CDA -
With your vast knowledge of the American military, including your years of service in the military and intelligence, your comment is quite perceptive...
I was merely suggesting a possible reason for Marcel's splitting of the information and nothing more. I also know how these things work in the military and while completing a staff assignment. It is not all that unreasonable for Marcel to be cut out of the loop after the initial find...
Now, let all those who haven't served a day in the military or been trained in intelligence begin to comment.
But please read this comment with its qualifiers intact. It is reasonable, given the circumstance, but not likely.
Just one initial point ( short on time) in response to the above comments. The reason I think it is significant that Marcel and Cavitt were sent is their roles as intelligence and counter intelligence. Blanchard affected the operational effectiveness of the 509th to recover this stuff. He didn't send a junior officer or NCO and s couple of GIs.
As for the Ramey memo, well, I would encourage the reader the study it for themselves. It is possible to measure the dimensions and layout of small elements and for this to drastically limit the possible reads for those elements, but the reader will have to do it for themselves. It is however the critical piece of the jigsaw and well worth the effort involved.
Kevin,
I agree that Marcel not knowing is possible if his participation was no longer required. It just seems unlikely to me. It doesn’t disprove anything but it is a strike against ETH for Roswell. I also find it hard to see how the pilots could have been kept in the dark. You’d think that activity would be noticed coupled with public claims of the flying disc being in possession of the base.
Wouldn’t there be a lot of rumors about why that was put out and then rescinded. “Hey, Marcel can’t you tell the difference between a flying saucer and a weather balloon!” might be said a lot. Then Captain X goes over to the hanger were the secret action is and then stopped by an armed MP saying, “You can go in there, sir.” He ask why not and receives a response of “Colonel’s orders, sir.” Then the Captain X says to Major Y an MP just blocked me form going into Hanger Z what’s going on, etc. I’d think that he other officers (the pilots mainly) would notice unusual activities and at some point would be told to keep out of it. That combined with the press release and the weather balloon cover might clue them in to what was happening even if they never were told.
On the other hand there are things in favor of the crash recovery like the lame efforts of the Air Force to explain what happened after nearly 50 years for one.
Kevin:
I feel desperately sorry for Marcel. Two scenarios arise:
On the one hand (so you tell us) he was kept out of the loop and not told about the bodies, after having spent many hours picking up the ET debris.
On the other hand, he did know about the bodies but could never tell anyone, even when interviewed 3 decades later.
Poor fellow. Just think of this discovery of ETs (perhaps the greatest scientific discovery of all time) Marcel could have contributed to our overall knowledge of the universe, but never did. It must have been VERY frustrating for him!
Yes you are quite right, I have never served even one day in the US military.
CDA
I'll put together a fuller response to your earlier comment, probaby tomorrow but just a thought around Marcel and the bodies questiion.
Back in 1947 the 509th put out a press release quoting Marcel about the debris. Haut's affadavit may give a possible ( probable?) rationale for that release, ie to distract press attention from the main crash site.
The cover story of the weather balloon was the supplied by Ramey.
Three decades later when approached about the subject Marcel stayed largely within the role he played in 1947. This guy was clearly a responsible officer and I think ( speculation...!) he was trying to stay within the limits of what was broadly speaking his 'role' in the story.
Just a possibility
Anthony:
You say "just a possibility". What is the probability?
I put to you 3 scenarios. Please tell me which, in your view, has the highest probability of being correct. Bear in mind that this is not 1947, but nearly 7 decades after the event.
1. Marcel saw the ET debris but not the bodies. He was then cut out of the loop of knowing about the bodies, despite recovering the debris (or a large portion of it).
2. Marcel saw both the ET craft and the bodies, but told 1980s investigators that he did indeed see the wrecked craft, but decided not to mention the bodies.
3. No ET craft or bodies ever existed.
Which, in your view, has the highest probability of being true? And I don't want any 'ifs and buts' either.
From reviewing the post and the discussion, I have one point and one question.
1) Ruth Barnett’s journal is described as “primary” evidence? I don’t think so. At best I think it is “primary” hearsay. If everything husbands told wives about their daily whereabouts was accurate, the divorce rate might be lower. If I’m wrong, please correct me. I do view it as evidence, but not very compelling.
2) If I understood the statement correctly, Herbert Dick was working at a location 30 or more miles from the (crash) site. It sounds like he had line of sight, but the statement seems to be that it is not possible (reasonable) that he could have missed either the sight, sound or both of a crash. I’m willing to believe that, but it certainly is not intuitively obvious. Did anyone test this or is there other evidence?
I can’t resist a little speculation, but think I qualify. I completely disagree with the point that if it were known that the Roswell incident involved a flying saucer the 509th would have sent more than two people. Kevin can provide “primary” evidence that when responding to an extremely sensitive situation, as a Commander I would send the fewest, most senior subject matter experts necessary to deal with the situation. There are a lot of things that don’t seem reasonable to someone who has not had the experience.
cda,
Your option 1 is basically what I was saying. It is possible that Marcel was cut out of the loop but it isn’t likely.
Option 3 has the problem of if no craft existed then why would Blanchard order the press release. And if it was something conventional why would an experienced intelligence officer of perhaps the most elite unit in the USAAF be fooled. The ET advocates have made a very strong case against the Mogul theory and the Air Force report pretty much rules out any other conventional explanations. One could argue that an exotic explanation is in order.
Option 2 while possible doesn’t seem very likely. It has occurred to me that alien bodies would have been expected given that Marcel revealed a crash. Why was this an issue at the time of the original interviews?
This whole thing is a real enigma.
CDA
Since were doing a "poll" at request I will say option 3 is most likely.
But if DR is correct with "victims of the wreck" then option 1.
Option 2 is the most unlikely of the 3 choices you have given us - by a wide margin.
Rusty -
Ruth Barnett's diary is the only record that we have from that period. Given the timing of events, given what she wrote, it would seem that Barney was not in a position to see anything on the days he would have had to be out there. There is simply nothing in the diary to indicate Barney was involved in anything unusual in July 1947.
The Bat Cave is on the what would have been the eastern shore of a lake that disappeared centuries ago. From his position, he had a clear view clear across the Plains of San Agustin all the way to Datil, NM on the farside. Had there been something going on, he would have been in a position to see it, and it is clear that he did not. He was quite clear when I talked to him about this.
When the 509th was alerted to the field of debris by Mack Brazel, they had no ideaa what it might have been or who was responsible. Blanchard told Marcel to check it out and to take that new guy assigned to them, the CIC agent Cavitt, with him. It wasn't until they arrived at the site which was just metallic debris that Marcel realized it was something that required additional work.
CDA -
I believe that it is possible that Marcel might have heard rumors about bodies but he was not involved in the recovery based on the command structure in the 509th. Once he had reported what he had seen, the mission would have been handed to others such as the provost marshal. While security is the responsibility of the Intelligence Officer in some units today, back in 1947 and the 509th, that belonged to the provost marshal.
While Marcel knew about the metallic debris because he had seen it, he might have not seen bodies and therefore didn't talk about that possibility. I do know that Cavitt got extremely nervous when I mentioned what some had told us about bodies... but Cavitt was CIC and his chain of command did not run through the 509th. Cavitt was a class II facility.
CDA
In some ways this is getting a little boring, however, to give a fuller response.
In assessing a controversial claim such as an alleged UFO crash I tend to follow the following sequence
Is it possible to determine in an event of any sort actually occurred? Most such claims fall at the first hurdle and we shouldn't waste anymore time on them. In terms of Roswell there is no doubt debris of some sort was recovered.
Secondly - is it possible to construct a prima facie case that the event does not have a mundane explanation? To do this (and note we are looking for a prima facie case at this stage only) requires considerable hard data to be able to eliminate conventional explanations in a conclusive manner. Few cases pass this second stage (I've only seen 40 or so UFO reports in total that pass this stage). Of the various alleged crashes only Roswell passes this second phase. This includes the elimination of the weather balloon and NYU flight 4 possibilities along with other less popular ideas such as Fugo balloons etc.
A hundred years ago, when logical positivism was the philosophical basis for science, this would have been considered sufficient, but as Karl Popper highlighted the elimination of all other possibilities that are known of does not prove the one remaining possibility. In a critical rationalist approach we therefore need to move on to constructing specific hypotheses and testing them.
In the case of Roswell the Ramey memo, although controversial, offers the potential for quantitative analysis in small parts. If the crash related to a UFO then we should be able to find specific related information in the memo. If you care to spend the time measuring the letter forms (e.g. central bifurcations such as V or Y etc, central stems such as a T or and I etc) and work through the possibilities it leads to some interesting results.
The reader must simply do the analysis for themselves but I am now content that the results of that test are conclusive to the extent that there were victims of the wreck and a disc is referred to. Large parts of the document are too unclear to apply my methodology to.
As a final stage it is necessary to consider the extent to which the conclusions reached fit within a coherent wider picture (credible witness testimony and a consistent wider policy response are examples relevant to Roswell). Within that the evidence pointing towards the RDB as a focal point for technical analysis, with BB (as it became)acting as a public face and an initial collection point for raw intelligence works well.
Hope that now makes sense, although I'm sure I will not have persuaded you of the conclusion!
In terms of Marcel, bodies and your scenarios - my best estimate is that I don't know if he was cut out of the loop or chose to stay close to the information that he was quoted as saying back in 1947. Whilst at the start of the process outlined above Bayesian logic would put a high prior probability on a very mundane event, in this case that can, I think, be shown to be ruled out in this case.
What Marcel did or didn't know about bodies is a bit of a cipher. If we believe Walter Haut's affidavit, he already knew of the closer craft/body site on the afternoon of July 7 while Marcel and Cavitt were still on the debris field. Marcel/Cavitt could not have known of this until they returned to the base.
The following morning, Haut's affidavit details the staff meeting, which allegedly included Gen. Ramey and Col. Dubose flying in to attend from Fort Worth. Both sites were discussed and debris was passed around. While Marcel probably would not have visited the craft/body site, he would have known about it from this meeting, if Haut’s affidavit is truthful.
On the other hand, if Schmitt/Carey are correct about additional, very decomposed and smelly bodies out near the debris field, including Mack Brazel finding same, the major impetus for him traveling to Roswell, then it is hard to believe that Brazel would not have taken Marcel/Cavitt to see them, thus Marcel would have had direct knowledge of bodies which he never mentioned in public interviews.
In his last interview with Linda Corley, Marcel did indicate he was holding back, saying there were some things he would NEVER talk about "for the sake of my country". Further, if he did discuss such things, he commented they might haul him off to the "rubber room". This leaves me and others speculating that maybe he was specifically referring to knowing about bodies, but he wasn't going to get into that--ever. Talking about strange materials was one thing, but talking about alien bodies is so unnerving and unbelievable to many. It takes the story to a whole new level.
In general, witnesses to bodies tend to be much more reticent about discussing them than other knowledge of the crash. Two more examples would be radio reporter Frank Joyce and Walter Haut, who would drop hints that they knew more, but waited two decades before discussing any knowledge they had about bodies.
Joyce was one witness who mentioned Brazel knowing about bodies when he first came to. This is a story Joyce refused to tell for nearly 20 years after he was first interviewed. He had hinted about it in his first interviews when he mentioned seeing Brazel again after he had changed his story and asked him, "what about the little green men" he first told him about? Brazel supposedly replied, "They weren't green" and walked out.
When Joyce finally told the entire story (first to Carey and Schmitt, later to me), he said Brazel was very agitated when he first spoke to him, at first complaining about the huge debris field, wondering how he was going to clean it up. But Joyce said he sensed something more and finally drew out of him that he had found small, smelly, nonhuman bodies. Joyce said initially he didn’t believe him.
Haut started discussing witnessing bodies, first to a French documentary film crew arouind 2000, then in an interview with Wendy Connors, then in his affidavit.
Finally, I am quite certain "VICTIMS" is in the Ramey memo, plus other references to bodies and the handling of bodies. E.g., I strongly suspect "CADAVERS" is at the beginning of the second paragraph, (part of the phrase “CADAVERS IN THE ‘DISC’”), though partly covered by Ramey's thumb. In fact, the first two-thirds of the Ramey memo seems to be about bodies and dealing with them, with the last third about how they were covering it up. What isn't specific is what type of bodies they were (though I think the word “DISC” provides the proper context). I might note that the military itself brought up the subject of bodies and “space ships”, but in the negative, dismissing them as possibilities. Gen. Ramey a week before Roswell was already publicly debunking the idea that the flying discs represented “men from Mars”, was declaring the “disc” at Roswell was too flimsy to have carried a crew, and the AAF just before Roswell declared they were absolutely certain the discs were NOT “space ships.”
David:
Your question, "If we believe Walter Haut's affidavit" is, at least to me, of major importance. The affidavit states or infers, that Ramey and Dubose flew into Roswell the morning after the discovery of the debris field for a meeting with 509th senior officers.
Why is this important? Because Col. Blanchard authorized the press release through Haut. If he did it on his own and created a public relations nightmare for the Air Corps he would have been reprimanded and his Air Force career would have been over. Yet, as we know he went on to wear four stars as Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force.
As is well documented, the armed services, especially the Army and Navy, were very competitive in those and later years. If a 'disc' had been recovered (something I'll touch on in a moment) Ramey could very well have told Blanchard to put the story out that the Army has recovered a 'disc.' The Army wanted the glory but it quickly backfired on them. Thus the call from McMullen to Ramey through Dubose.
One only needs to read Gen. Chuck Yeager's biography to understand the extreme rivalry between the Air Force and the Navy at Muroc (Edwards) with flight testing in those early years. In any case it's not beyond the pale to believe that Ramey told Blanchard to release the story.This then would have taken Blanchard off the hook so to speak.
If in the Air Corps/Air Force's zeal to out do the Navy, and it backfired on them, the event may have seemed justified to the Army/AF and it was brushed under the rug. Thus no harm was done to anyone's reputation or career. This of course is pure speculation.
What is not speculation but fact, is that Blanchard authorized Haut to put out a press release that the Army had recovered a 'flying disc.' It is also fact that Jesse Marcel said that he was taken by Brazel to a debris field, a very large debris field of material he had never seen before. It should be noted here that Marcel was a HAM radio operator before and and after the war, and held an FCC license. He was also schooled in radar and radar reflectors including rawan reflectors used in project Mogul.
The point here is that Marcel only saw debris that he couldn't recognize. He didn't see, according to him, a 'disc' as Blanchard told Haut to report. So where did the disc come from? Could Blanchard have made up a disc story from from the Foster Ranch debris? Unlikely. Some say the craft exploded above ground and that's why there was such a large debris field with no impact point on the desert floor. However, for those who have taken the time to read Jesse, Jr's. book, he states his dad told him the debris field was like a fan with a gouge in the ground at the apex of the fan. Do we have a craft that hit the ground leaving much debris and then skipping on to crash elsewhere?
Jesse, Jr. and I had adjacent rooms at the hotel during the 2013 Roswell Festival and adjoining tables on the museum floor. We talked a lot and one question was "did your dad ever mention bodies," he flatly stated "never." We lost Jesse two months later.
Do I have trouble with the Haut affidavit. Yes. But I have found in my research that there are bits of truth in many questionable documents. There is one overriding fact, the Air Force has had 35 years to put Roswell to rest and they hold all the cards. In the 1990's they produced at great expense well over a thousand pages to explain Roswell as a Project Mogul crash and later crash test dummies as the bodies found. Yet in all of these documents, paid for by the tax payers, they have not produced one official document, not one, that states the Foster Ranch debris cleanup was from a Mogul balloon.
That one document, now declassified, would put an end to the entire Roswell story. Think about it!
David:
Just a quick note of clarification: The first few paragraphs were directed to you. The balance of my comments were for general viewers of the blog and I failed to make that distinction.
Larry Holcombe:
Ramey and Dubose at Roswell base the morning of July 8: This is in both Haut's 2002 affidavit and a 2000 interview with Haut by Wendy Connors:
http://www.roswellproof.com/haut.html#anchor_8
http://www.roswellproof.com/Haut_2000_interview.html
So it wasn't just the affidavit where Haut is making this claim. Unfortunately, so far nobody has been able to document exactly where Ramey or Dubose were that morning, so it was just Haut's say-so.
My concern here is Haut's statement that Ramey declared they were going to cover it up, though Haut didn't know specifically how they were going to do it.
The Roswell base press release of recovering a flying disc was step one. Within an hour, Ramey was already changing the story to weather balloon, so not enough time for them to "claim credit" for recovering a disc and then suddenly change direction when the public uproar ensued.
Another indication of this were Ramey's early press statements that the object was "hexagonal" in shape. First, Ramey at the time was also claiming the object was in his office, but Marcel had yet to arrive from Roswell. The radar target they eventually displayed was also torn to pieces and flattened out. An INTACT and assembled radar target in profile might be described as "hexagonal", but how would Ramey know that unless he was an expert? And why all his other coy comments how it MIGHT be a weather device and he would have to bright in a weather officer to be sure?
The whole "hexagonal" description was prescripted for Ramey, perhaps to try to make the very undisc-like radar targets sound more disc-like. Or, in other words, another part of the cover story:
http://www.roswellproof.com/Rameys_hexagon_story.html
To me, it appears the whole disc/weather balloon bait-and-switch was preplanned, probably between the morning meeting and the afternoon press release, not some suddenly improvised change of story when the press release went viral.
Another key part of Haut's affidavit, is it indicates Marcel would indeed have known about the find of bodies, though not necessarily have viewed them directly. That being the case, Marcel deliberately avoided mentioning knowledge of same in interviews. (Just as Haut did until near the end of his life.)
David:
Very interesting indeed. It's late and I need to look over your links. I'll get back to you.
Why would the alien bodies be so sensitive compared with the crashed flying saucer? If in fact you claim as Marcel did that an alien craft crashed would it be reasonable to ask about the crew? RPVs were not so common back in 1947.
This does raise another question. In some of the stories there is one alien who was still alive when the troop from RAAF arrived. What happen to this alien? One is that part of the story false?
I have an issue with this final Haut claim. Wouldn’t the arrival of Gen. Ramney and his chief of staff be noticed by other base personnel even if they weren’t privy to the staff meeting?
John Space wrote:
Why would the alien bodies be so sensitive compared with the crashed flying saucer?
An alien body's non-earthly origins are immediately obvious, much more so than debris (at least at a distance), which might resemble more mundane earthly stuff.
Psychologically we are also wired to fear the "other", including humans, who we perceive to be clearly different from our own "tribe" (the basis of a great deal of racism and other -isms). Actual bodies are just psychologically unnerving to most people. (There is a tiny bit of testimony and evidence of suicides and people becoming unhinged when confronting the reality of alien bodies. If true, that would be a powerful incentive to cover it up, fearing the public-at-large flipping out.)
If in fact you claim as Marcel did that an alien craft crashed would it be reasonable to ask about the crew?
Indeed, an obvious question for Marcel. Publicly, Gen. Ramey dealt with that point once he took over the story (starting about an hour after the base press release went public on the newswires). He claimed the "disc" resembled a flimsy box kite covered with tinfoil, lacked a power plant, and therefore lacked any capacity for speed or ability to carry a man [crew]. See, e.g.:
www.roswellproof.com/Charleston_NewsCourier_July9.html
This was Ramey, I think, doing a preemptive strike to head off questions of any casualties. Earlier in the day, the Pentagon also issued a press release flatly denying the flying discs were "space ships", another preemptive strike, I believe, in preparation for the soon to be public Roswell press release.
www.roswellproof.com/Flying-Saucers-NOT-spaceships.html
Ramey's own debunkery of the possible alien aspect began about 10 days before Roswell, and only 4 days after Kenneth Arnold's sighting. Ramey and his intel chief were ridiculing Arnold and the notion that the flying discs were "Buck Rogers stuff" or spaceships from Mars. This begs the question "Why"?
http://www.roswellproof.com/ramey_and_kalberer.html
This does raise another question. In some of the stories there is one alien who was still alive when the troop from RAAF arrived. What happen to this alien? One is that part of the story false?
From the scanty witness testimony on this, the surviving alien was initially taken to the Roswell base hospital, kept at the base for a few days, then perhaps transported to Wright-Patterson or Los Alamos. (There may be a one word mention of a survivor -- "patient" -- in the Ramey memo. The Ramey memo, again, is mostly about dealing with the bodies.)
I have an issue with this final Haut claim. Wouldn’t the arrival of Gen. Ramney and his chief of staff be noticed by other base personnel even if they weren’t privy to the staff meeting?
Big base with big runways. His private plane could taxi to the middle of a runway far from any buildings or personnel, a staff car would pick him up and carry him to the staff meeting at HQ, perhaps unseen. However, I would expect a least a few guards for his plane and around HQ, but if they existed, nobody has located them for interview.
Unfortunately, we haven't yet been able to find any corroboration for Haut's story of Ramey being there at the base the morning of July 8. We certainly know Ramey was back in Fort Worth that afternoon. But Roswell is only about 400 miles from F.W. Ramey could fly there and back in 4 hours or less, so certainly very doable time-wise and logistically.
In the Berlitz-Moore book a photo of Gen. Ramey is captioned: "Records show that Ramey paid what is described as 'an official visit' to the Roswell Base on the night of July 16/17, 1947, barely a week after the flying disc recovery hit the headlines".
In the book (UK edition p.47) it is stated that "On July 10, according to records of the Fort Worth Army Air Base...Colonel Irvine visited Gen. Ramey on an undisclosed mission".
What I am saying is that if either DR or LH are so concerned at Ramey's whereabouts on July 8 (or any other date during this period) why don't they consult these Fort Worth records?
Or are they afraid the said records will show that both Ramey and du Bose were firmly in Ft Worth on the morning of July 8 and thus destroy Haut's worthless 2nd affidavit and the whole idea that any secret meeting was held at RAAF with these two generals?
Give it a go and see.
cda:
Being able to read and comprehend is a resource that many don't have. I said", Do I have trouble with the Haut affidavit. Yes." You seemed to either not understand that statement or overlook it.
You also said said:
"Or are they afraid the said records will show that both Ramey and du Bose were firmly in Ft Worth on the morning of July 8 and thus destroy Haut's worthless 2nd affidavit and the whole idea that any secret meeting was held at RAAF with these two generals?"
Let me make this clear, I'm afraid of nothing about this issue, I only want to find the truth. Are you quoting the Berlitz-Moore book as "official documents?" You also suggest we research Ft. Worth documents. Well, I've spent a great deal of time in presidential libraries archives at my own out of pocket expense, interviewed a number of people, and written many letters for interviews (have you). This is not really a high priority issue with me.
I don't really care where Ramey was when the crash was discovered. If he was in Corpus Christi fishing I don't care, telephones worked well back then and high ranking officers could always be reached. If he and Dubose did fly to Roswell on the morning of the 8th it of course, if true, would be an interesting piece of the puzzle.
However, my interest is who authorized Blanchard to release the press statement. I don't for a moment Believe Blanchard did it on his own. That is my area of interest and research.
One final thing you overlooked in my post. In the 1990's the Air Force produced two books totaling some 1400 pages about Roswell being a Mogul Project crash. The military did nothing to move troops without generating paperwork, even if it was top secret. In those 1400 pages there was not one official document stating that there was a Mogul or any other clean-up at the Foster Ranch. That's all it would take, that one simple document and Roswell would vanish as an issue. Can You explain that?
Larry:
This "one simple document", as you put it, does not exist because the AF never thought it important enough to write such a 'document'. I presume the mere clean-up of a balloon debris site was considered not worth 'documentating'. That is my take on it.
As to any conference at Roswell base with General Ramey and others (which was ostensibly about a suspected ET crash/recovery) the opposite applies, i.e this would indeed be important enough to take minutes of and possibly even photograph those present.
Where are those minutes and photos? Still Top Secret, or what?
Perhaps these minutes are part of the Ramey memo that DR makes such a big noise about ("victims of the wreck" etc). Perhaps indeed, if such minutes ever existed!
You do NOT bother to document trivia but you DO document things like a suspected visit of ETs to our planet! That's the difference, Larry.
I expect DR will maintain that any such meeting at RAAF would be top secret and thus the minutes are still top secret. It is what I call the 'Friedman syndrome' and we are stuck with it forever as far as Roswell is concerned.
Meanwhile you ought to be able to locate Ramey's whereabouts on the relevant days if the official records still exist. Why not do so? Moore & Friedman managed to, didn't they? I am positive that had Gen. Ramey visited RAAF on the morning of July 8 one of these esteemed researchers would have discovered this and announced it to the world.
Larry, CDA
Since you feel that the Airforce not bother to document the cleaning up of Debris.
Presumably because you feel that a weather balloon or a Mogul balloon wouldnt be worth it.
Well you cant have it both ways, explain then why the Airforce would send manpower out for a couple of days in the first place if it was such a mundane event not worth "bothering" with.
Why would they do that for flimsy pieces of material, why? especially when these balloons had a reward for return tag on them.
One the one hand your saying they wouldnt bother documenting it because its not important, but then your accepting it was important enough to send alot of manpower out scour the desert and clean up the debris.
cda:
You stated: "This "one simple document", as you put it, does not exist because the AF never thought it important enough to write such a 'document'. I presume the mere clean-up of a balloon debris site was considered not worth 'documentating'. That is my take on it."
I'm going to repeat again, the Army, and the military in general did nothing, repeat nothing, unless paperwork was generated. A private didn't go to the motorpool and get a can of gas without a hand receipt. Troops didn't move for whatever reason unless paperwork was generated.
As far as the affidavit, as stated previously I have issues with it. I originally thought that Ramey being in Roswell the morning of the 8th could have played a role in the press release. However, as DR pointed out the time line doesn't work. Of course it is almost certain that Blanchard called his boss, no matter where Ramey may have been, to discuss the wreckage when found and Ramey may have authorized the press release. That of course is speculation.
Al12
You must not have read my post.
CDA wrote:
In the Berlitz-Moore book a photo of Gen. Ramey is captioned: "Records show that Ramey paid what is described as 'an official visit' to the Roswell Base on the night of July 16/17, 1947, barely a week after the flying disc recovery hit the headlines".
In the book (UK edition p.47) it is stated that "On July 10, according to records of the Fort Worth Army Air Base...Colonel Irvine visited Gen. Ramey on an undisclosed mission".
What I am saying is that if either DR or LH are so concerned at Ramey's whereabouts on July 8 (or any other date during this period) why don't they consult these Fort Worth records?
Or are they afraid the said records will show that both Ramey and du Bose were firmly in Ft Worth on the morning of July 8 and thus destroy Haut's worthless 2nd affidavit and the whole idea that any secret meeting was held at RAAF with these two generals?
Apparently unknown to the usually histrionic CDA, the "records" consulted by Berlitz-Moore were NOT detailed daily logs of the activities of Ramey and Dubose, but the extremely UNDETAILED 8th AAF chronology, that you can view here:
www.project1947.com/roswell/8thaaf.htm
You'll notice only 10 items listed between July 3 and July 21, 1947. In fact, NOTHING is listed as going on July 4 to July 9. Was everybody on vacation?
I know for a fact where Ramey was on July 6, because I looked up the local newspapers, which you can see here:
http://www.roswellproof.com/Ramey_July6_1947.html
He flew in to Denton, TX, north of Fort Worth, leading a formation of B-29s from Wendover Field, Utah. Denton was Ramey's hometown and Ramey was one of the dignitaries at an airshow there marking the opening of the Denton municipal airport.
But nowhere in the 8th AAF chronology is there any mention of this, is there? No, there is NOTHING there about his or Dubose's whereabouts July 4 to July 9.
However, these newpaper items DO corroboate Dubose's later statements that Ramey was away from the base when the first calls came in from Roswell and a special top-secret shipment of debris was sent via Fort Worth to Washington, using deputy FW base commander Col. Alvin Clarke as a "colonel courier" ordered by Gen. McMullen. What's additionally interesting here, is the newspapers place the base commander Col. Hewlett Wheless in Denton with Ramey, which might explain why Clarke became the courier.
Apparently this early shipment of Mogul balloon debris to Washington was deemed to be of mighty importance if it required the acting base commander to act as McMullen's "colonel courier".
A similar thing happened with Marcel's flight to FW 2 days later. Acting base commander Lt. Col. Payne Jennings was the pilot on Marcel's B-29. Again, apparently the few pounds of recovered Mogul balloon debris was of such great importance, it required a B-29 and the acting base commander to pilot it, all the other many pilots at the base deemed not up to snuff to transport tinfoil and rubber balloon debris.
David:
I know that Ramey went to Denton on the 6th for an air show. But somewhere in my files I also remember he left there for Corpus to fish. I really don't know if that's important but I'm just trying to fit the pieces together.
The bottom line is that I don't believe that Blanchard authorized the press release on his own. Blanchard certainly could have gotten Ramey on the phone, and with the oneupmanship between the Army and Navy Ramey could have made a quick decision to go with the press release. Within a short time all hell breaks lose and McMullen's order to Dubose to kill the story. All of this I admit is pure speculation.
Larry,
I know that Ramey went to Denton on the 6th for an air show. But somewhere in my files I also remember he left there for Corpus to fish. I really don't know if that's important but I'm just trying to fit the pieces together.
Ramey was in Harlington, Texas, July 10 to dedicate the opening of another converted AAF base to a municipal airport. After that, the Harlington newspaper reported he went deep sea fishing.
You may be confusing Ramey with AAF chief of staff Spaatz, who flew into San Antonio on July 10, and then to Corpus Christi for deep sea fishing, starting July 11.
(Which interestingly places Ramey and Spaatz close together.)
The bottom line is that I don't believe that Blanchard authorized the press release on his own. Blanchard certainly could have gotten Ramey on the phone, and with the oneupmanship between the Army and Navy Ramey could have made a quick decision to go with the press release. Within a short time all hell breaks lose and McMullen's order to Dubose to kill the story. All of this I admit is pure speculation.
Well I don't think Blanchard authorized the press rlease on his own either. Haut thought everything was approved by the Pentagon, and I suspect that is correct. (E.g., the addressee in the Ramey memo I have long thought to be Gen. Vandenberg, acting AAF C/S in Spaatz's absence.)
After the press release, Ramey started changing the story to weather balloon within an hour, and had one in his office for photos within two hours. This was much too fast for this to have been a suddenly dreamt-up change of story. Then there was Ramey's peculiar super-familiarity with radar targets, describing the torn-up one he had for photos as "hexagonal". Only an intact target might be described that way, thus this had to have been scripted for him ahead of time (unless Ramey was a weather or radar expert).
To me this points to a bait and switch going on. First the somewhat ambiguous press release of recovering a flying disc, supposedly flown on to "higher headquarters," getting the story immediately out of Dodge and over to Ramey and his QUICK debunkery as a simple weather balloon. This looks like a plan cooked up by counter-intelligence, or the Army CIC.
David,
The IAB met on behalf of the NIA/NSC in Washington at 09:30, on July the 8th. I was curious as to how that time frame might/or might not correlate with the Ramey Press meeting -with the balloon?
However, my interest is who authorized Blanchard to release the press statement. I don't for a moment Believe Blanchard did it on his own.
This is a very good point and one of the big mysteries of Roswell regardless of which side of the debate you take. If it was some conventional thing (balloon, etc.) how was Blanchard, Marcel, etc. fooled. If it was an alien craft why would Blanchard put out a press release? On his own? Or, under orders? It wasn’t a career ender either.
Based on David’s reference it seems to me Ramey neither could have ordered the press release or have travel to Roswell for the staff meeting. Blanchard wouldn’t have known about the results about the results from Marcel until early on July 8 when he reported for duty. So there would be no reason for Ramey to have travel to Roswell that morning. Presumably when Blanchard had his briefing from Marcel he contacted 8th Air Force HQ to report the find and request instructions. It seems from that he must have got Dubose instead Ramey. This because Ramey wasn’t back by the time Dubose received instructions from McMullen on what to do with the debris and not to inform even Ramey until he had time to think about the next step.
Now we have the paradox that Ramey didn’t order the press release and while it could have come from SAC HQ it doesn’t seem likely as they don’t even want Ramey informed at that point. So there is a very should timeline between this and when Hauk goes to the press. By the afternoon Ramey is back and working to kill the story. So he is in the loop by then but certainly not for disclosing the Roswell discovery.
David:
You are correct I was getting Tooey Spaatz trip to Corpus and Ramey's Harlingen trip confused. As you mentioned Harlingen and Corpus are very close. Of course there is speculation that they got together on the 10th or 11th.
Not to bring up the radar issue again but I finally found the info I wanted on high power radar in NM from 1946. This is from UFO Digest but I've also located other sources including Scott Ramsey's work.
"A few of the known sites uncovered in New Mexico that are linked to not only having the new generation of powerful targeting radar at their facility, but also being linked to nearby crash sites under operation by 1947 were El Vado (AFS-P8) in Rio Arriba, County north of Los Alamos, Moriarty (AFS-P7), and Continental Divide (AFS-P51). These secret high intensity micro wave radar facilities formed a triangular configuration that was intended for defending Kirtland AFB, Sandia Laboratories, and Los Alamos Laboratories."
The Atomic Energy Commission ordered and ran the sites until 1951 I believe when they were turned over to the Air Force. Information and manuals found at the now abandoned sites warned of the power of these radars.
John Space wrote:
Based on David’s reference it seems to me Ramey neither could have ordered the press release or have travel to Roswell for the staff meeting. Blanchard wouldn’t have known about the results about the results from Marcel until early on July 8 when he reported for duty. So there would be no reason for Ramey to have travel to Roswell that morning.
This would be the logical conclusion if nothing else had happened between Marcel going to the ranch (probably late July 6) and returning to inform Blanchard of what he found early July 8.
However, according to Haut, he already knew of the finding of the craft/body site north of Roswell by the afternoon of July 7. If true, this event alone would tell Blanchard and up the chain of command that they were dealing with an extraordinary ET event and prompt a visit by Ramey to the staff meeting early the next morning to discuss what to do.
One indication that something out of the ordinary was happening the afternoon of July 7 can be found in the daily log and calender of acting AAF C/S Gen. Vandenberg. At around 2:00 p.m., he cancelled a dental appointment and instead went to the airport to personally pick up AAF Secretary Stuart Symington. This begs the question "why?" and strongly suggests to me an urgent piece of business had come up that couldn't wait. Simultaneously, NM Senator Carl Hatch's office called the White House to request a private meeting with Truman, granted 2 days later (no subject matter listed).
Another possible angle, less well established, is the theory of Carey/Schmitt that what brought Brazel to Roswell initially was not so much the debris field but the finding of small, decomposing, nonhuman bodies (e.g., testimony of reporter Frank Joyce). If true, then undoubtedly these would have been shown to Marcel/Cavitt when they visited. Carey/Schmitt believe this prompted the return of Cavitt to Roswell well before Marcel (while Marcel continued to explore the debris field) to report their findings to Blanchard, who would again relay up the chain of command, again possibly prompting a visit from Ramey the following morning.
David Rudiak wrote:
"the theory of Carey/Schmitt that what brought Brazel to Roswell initially was not so much the debris field but the finding of small, decomposing, nonhuman bodies (e.g., testimony of reporter Frank Joyce). If true, then undoubtedly these would have been shown to Marcel/Cavitt when they visited. Carey/Schmitt believe this prompted the return of Cavitt to Roswell well before Marcel (while Marcel continued to explore the debris field) to report their findings to Blanchard,..."
I find this theory of Don & Tom quite illogical (I do respective the efforts they have made in researching the "cold case" however).
If Marcel had seen bodies in all likelihood:
1. He would have told his son and 2. He never would have mentioned the incident to his friends in the late 70's. The reason he did so is because he had NO IDEA what the material was (he had a THEORY that it was nothing from this planet).
If he had seen the bodies he would have all the answers and no need to bring up the matter.
David,
So the indicated official behavior is dependent on the discovery of a second crash site and it being reported on July 7 (or late July 6)?
It seem unlikely that Marcel and Cavitt would have been sent to the Brazel ranch on the afternoon of July 6 if they had known of the second site which as closer to the base. Certainly Cavitt returning late on in the afternoon of July 7 couldn’t have affected the 2PM DC trip to the airport.
If there were two crashes it seem likely that it was probably due to the collision of the two craft. I admit that is an assumption but it seem reasonable. This issue is that the second site was visible from the highway according to the Anna Willmon testimony. This report must have come in late in the day on July 6 (after Marcel and Cavitt departed) or early in July 7. The issue is that the crash on the Brazel ranch occurred a few days earlier. If the two sites were due to the same event, why did it take so long for someone to report the second site which was visible from the highway?
If that much time had gone by it is also unclear why the claimed surviving alien(s) could have been rescued by then. Of course that speculation goes a bit far as we don’t know much about the alien’s motivations and capabilities.
John Space wrote:
So the indicated official behavior is dependent on the discovery of a second crash site and it being reported on July 7 (or late July 6)?
Yes, probably. (But see below for another possibility.)
It seem unlikely that Marcel and Cavitt would have been sent to the Brazel ranch on the afternoon of July 6 if they had known of the second site which as closer to the base.
Disagree in part. A secondary crash site would still have been investigated and cleaned up, but wouldn't need to be scouted first by the two top intelligence officer at the base.
Certainly Cavitt returning late on in the afternoon of July 7 couldn’t have affected the 2PM DC trip to the airport.
Agreed. There is another possibility of knowing for sure of an ET crash before Marcel/Cavitt returned from the field late July7/early July 8. There is Gen. Dubose's story of Roswell debris being forwarded to Washington by "colonel courier" while Gen. Ramey was away from FWAAF base (July 6).
However, my current take is that something much more sudden and urgent seems to have come up earlier July 7 to prompt Gen. Vandenberg's unplanned trip to the airport to pick up and probably confer with AAF Secretary Symington. At about the same time, Sen. Carl Hatch of NM requested a private meeting with Truman.
The following morning, simultaneous with the morning staff meeting in Roswell, an unplanned meeting of the War Dept.'s Joint Research and Development Board was called by Vandenberg, probably chaired by the JRDB head Dr. Vannevar Bush. Its successor RDB was fingered 3 years later by the Wilbert Smith Canadian documents as housing a super secret saucer study group headed by Bush, why I think this JRDB meeting on July 8 and Roswell are directly connected.
Again, this July 8 suddenly-called meeting would have had to be prompted by something else before Marcel briefed Blanchard early July 8 about what he found in the field.
Bob Koford wrote:
Bob Koford wrote:
The IAB met on behalf of the NIA/NSC in Washington at 09:30, on July the 8th. I was curious as to how that time frame might/or might not correlate with the Ramey Press meeting -with the balloon?
Don't know about this meeting. It is interesting it also happened simultaneously with the Roswell staff meeting and the Joint Research and Development Board meeting at the Pentagon called suddenly by Gen. Vandenberg. In terms of timing, it makes complete sense if any part of it had something to do with Roswell. Note that Ramey's press meeting with the infamous balloon happened about 6:30 p.m. Washington time, or about 9 hours after this IAB meeting.
IAB = Intelligence Advisory Board for the Central Intelligence Group, soon to be CIA), headed by Rear Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter.
Bob previously emailed me Hillenkoetter's declassified diary listing his activities during this time frame. None obviously relates to Roswell or the flying discs. There is considerable redacting of names and one item for the morning of July 9 that is completely redacted. Might be Roswell; might be something else. One can only guess why something 67 years later is so sensitive and important that it should remain classified.
There is one item from July 4 in the diary for Hillenkoetter's deputy, Gen. Edwin K. Wright, stating that "Gen. Wright departed for the West Coast." I know Bob on his interesting blog (http://bobkoford.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated), notes that at that IAM meeting, H. apologizes for the missing deputy Wright.
After additional sleuthing through CIA online files, Bob found that Wright had previously investigated the European "ghost rockets" one year before, and speculated maybe Knight was Hillenkoetter's go-to UFO guy, given H's known later interest in the topic (was an old friend of Keyhoe, on NICAP's board of directors and wrote a letter to Congress virtually admitting UFOs were ET in origin). Thus MAYBE Wright went west July 4 to investigate the heavy concentration of flying saucer reports out there that started with Kenneth Arnold 10 days before.
Unfortunately, as with a lot of this, there are few facts to hang our hats on, leaving much to speculation.
Thanks David.
One more item of interest I found id that General Wright was actually considered the DCI, as Hillenkoetter was more of a logistics guy.
This was a source of tension for some, in the Agency, including Allen Dulles.
When General Smith took over, this was a key element he sought to change. (see: General Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence by Ludwell Lee Montague cr 1992 Pennsylvania State University)
Thanks again, and keep up the good work, all.
When you guys have finally decided to end speculating and pontificating on Roswell (that infamous town in NM that so attracted the ETs long ago), please notice that Kevin has switched the discussion to another infamous place called Oak Island.
Boy, there seems to be a plethora of radar experts here. It's amazing, since most of the items they're pontificating about are wrong, and easily disproved with actual data on radar specialty sites.
I don't know what brought whatever it was down in Corona/Roswell- I wasn't alive yet, and probably most of the people here weren't either. At this point, it may not be knowable, given the huge amounts of mis-information generated on all sides of the issue.
However, there were radars developed that were seriously dangerous to both human life and aircraft- they existed in 1947. One of the big things that happened to radar in 1940's was the difference in base operating frequency. It went from the megahertz range to the gigahertz range with the introduction of the AN/CPS-6 combo radar and the AN/TPS-10 height finding radar, which was used along with the AN/CPS5 search radar, which I'm sure all you experts already knew. Perhaps the freq change, perhaps the power increase-but no one here knows for sure. However, since UAP's haven't been crashing into each other since biblical times and before (as far as we know), it's probably not the lightning causing whatever happened. Since a few physics people think that the one way to run a machine that ignores Newtonian physics would be light, used as both energy and data transfer, perhaps nuclear fission/fusion in the form of testing screwed them up.
If you want to know about radar (or act like an expert)try to at least educate yourselves before spouting off - one of y'all was spewing misinformation AND complaining about"the lack of rigor" in others investigations at the same time!!
Excellent source-https://www.radartutorial.eu
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