Thursday, March 05, 2015

The Roswell Slides and a Little Hypocrisy


The hypocrisy of this situation is beginning to get to me. On the one hand, we are told that there is a witness who was in Roswell in July 1947 who saw the alien bodies and he said that the slides show what he had seen or at the very least it looked like what he had seen. On the other we are condemned for naming him as if his credentials are unimportant beyond what we are told. He was there in 1947 and we should just accept this fact according to the narrative that is developing.

Well, his name wasn’t all that important when he was one of many voices talking about the events of 1947. When he is identified as tying the alleged bodies recovered in Roswell to that depicted on the slides, his voice becomes more important. And now we are told that he was a lieutenant, maybe in Roswell or maybe later all because of a possibly misunderstood question or answer. That is certainly not outside the realm of possibility and if you looked at my military record in the summer of 1967, you’d see that I was a PVT E-1, or the lowest of the enlisted grades and in that summer the lowest of the low, which is a basic trainee. I did get promoted along the way and if you looked at the summer of 1968, just a year later I was a Warrant Officer WO-1. So he could easily have been commissioned at some later date.

However, I don’t think anyone has checked on any of this. I believe that when his name appeared in the Yearbook along with his picture that was enough to prove his credentials. When it was shown that he was a member of the 390th ASS that sort of underscored those credentials because he served under Major Edwin Easley, the base provost marshal and Easley was responsible for security on the base. At least Benavides was in a unit that had that function as opposed to a guy who had been a cook and told his family about his experiences.

Here’s something else. Easley complained that his units had been decimated in 1947 (and yes I used that term on purpose because a very large number of his soldiers were transferred). According to the Unit History, the military police organizations including the 390th, had their soldiers transferred at a high rate. This began in May 1947 and continued until at least August. Easley was complaining, in a letter in the Unit History, about his trained soldiers being replaced by those who were not as well trained. The numbers show that the soldiers assigned remained steady, it was just that for those moved out, others were brought in. A man who had been in the unit in May might have been gone by the end of June but his picture could be in the Yearbook.

The Unit History also tells us that the Yearbook was created during that same period and that it was sent off to the printers in August to be returned in November. Walter Haut, who had the responsibility for the Yearbook told me that ten to twenty percent of the soldiers assigned were absent, which is irrelevant here because Benavides does appear in the Yearbook. It is possible, though, that he wasn’t physically present in July 1947, that he was transferred out before July or transferred in afterwards. It might be that he wasn’t there at the right time.

There is a secondary issue and that is the rank. Adam Dew tells us that he was told Benavides said he was a lieutenant. This can be checked as well. The National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis is where all military records are stored once the military person is no longer on any of the variations of military duty including the National Guard and the Reserve. Although what can be released is limited by the Privacy Act of 1974, it would give us the highest rank obtained and should provide us with information about his length of service and might even give the dates of his various military assignments. This would provide some of the answers and is something that should now be standard in investigating claims of military service. It might provide the date on which he was assigned to the base or the date he transferred out. It would provide us with a glimpse into his military career, which at this point is quite important.

There is another way to check this as well. When a soldier is assigned to a unit, he signs in. It is mentioned on the Morning Reports. When he leaves, he signs out and that is mentioned as well… but more importantly, if he goes on leave, if he is sick, if he is on temporary duty, it is mentioned in the Morning Report. These are designed so that the command knows how many soldiers are present for duty at a specific location.

The Morning Reports would tell us if he was gone at the critical time… but there is a catch. These are also located in St. Louis and they just don’t respond to requests for that data quickly, they will only provide them for a 90 day period and they now charge for the information. If we had someone in St. Louis, he or she could visit the archive and get the information faster I believe… if not, it will take months to get an answer from them and then it might be wrong.

And yes, I have written for the records, which will also take months with little hope of getting the information needed. Without a serial number, it will be more difficult, but sometimes with this I get lucky.

So, here’s where we are. Apparently only the chosen have the right to question a man whose story is becoming more important. For the rest of us, we are required to sit back and believe what we are being told. I understand that protecting the witness is their goal, but they are the ones who have pushed him to the forefront. And, let’s not forget he has appeared in two or three documentaries, one of which basically identified him. He was mentioned in one book that provided enough information to identify him. So, all this nonsense about violating the privacy of a 90-year-old man sort of sailed when he appeared in the documentaries. That is the hypocrisy of all this.

I will note one thing in passing. It is important to get the documents from an independent source. We had Frank Kaufmann’s discharge papers that seemed to verify what he was saying. It just never occurred to me that he would alter them. I believed that man who was a Special Forces officer would tell the truth, not thinking, in the early 1990s, someone would lie about that. I tumbled onto Willingham because I requested his records after I learned that in some thirty years everyone thought someone else had done it. I told MUFON that I would happily attempt to verify the military records of those who claimed military service, but they were not interested in that. So I say, let’s look at the records to see what they say before we all go off half- cocked.

56 comments:

Kurt Peters said...

Nicely stated, Kevin Randle.

My only intent in questioning Benavides actual rank has less to do with Schmitt's documented record of confabulation (a concern none the less), and more to do with "Adam Dew"'s disingenuous media smugness.

Nick Redfern said...

My latest Mysterious Universe article on the Roswell slides:

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/03/the-roswell-slides-adios/

Terry the Censor said...

> It might provide the date on which he was assigned to the base or the date he transferred out.

Another item on the slides team's checklist. They have to demonstrate conclusively that the EB was assigned to the base around the time of the alleged crash before we can even think of him as a witness.

Good work, Kevin.

CommanderCronus said...

I'd like to know how EB came up with the date of June 8, 1947. Was there something else he was doing concurrently that can be tied to that date? Exactly which years did he serve at RAAF? He claims to have seen some unusual bodies brought in. Did he see debris brought in with the bodies? Was it the kind described by Major Marcel?

Witness recollections can be sketchy, especially when it comes to specific dates. Is he absolutely sure of the July 1947 date, or is he simply assuming that his recollections of bodies are part of the Foster Ranch incident, and therefore must be July 1947? I'd like to see this nailed down because it is so very, very important.

I've often wondered if reports of unusual bodies may be part of a completely separate incident, unrelated to the aluminum foil-like debris found at the Foster Ranch. What if these reports of bodies occurred later in the year, or even 1948 or 1949? Let's assume, hypothetically for a moment, that EB did in fact see alien bodies and was a lieutenant at the time. If EB was a PFC in 1947 but a lieutenant in 1949, it could change our understanding of the entire legend.

Please don't allow your reason to be shackled by dogma. If you want answers, think outside the box.

CommanderCronus said...

Nick Redfern's article hits a home run, in my opinion. That said, I have one disagreement: while the film stock appears to be from the year 1947, the actual picture could have been taken in subsequent years. Some of the other slides in the Ray collection are clearly from 1948, not 1947.

I still agree with Nick Redferns ultimate conclusion. Sorry Mr. Bragalia, but that thing in the case looks an awful lot like a mummy.

albert said...

@CC
I generally agree with Nick (and others), but I'm still interested in seeing how the Cinco de Mayo show turns out. I want to hear the various theories.
.
If the Roswell Slides _did_ show an authentic alien body, then that body would almost certainly have been collected _without_ the knowledge of the military.
.
If the military DID have an alien body, you'd have a better chance of breaking into Fort Knox, than getting in to see it, let alone photograph it. Only early in the collection phase would that be possible, but photos? My credulity is strained enough, already.

...

John's Space said...

You said it Albert. I don't see the military letting this Ray guy getting close to an alien body with a camera.

Rusty L. said...

@Nick, a great example of why I appreciate your work. Others might take a lesson about the difference between a hypothesis and wild speculation.

In the previous thread someone mentioned that the "alien" was not iced down. That also supports (but does not prove) that the body is a mummy that is already desiccated and hence doesn't require refrigeration.

I really don't know why everyone is so wound up about EB. Leave the poor 90-year-old alone. Even if he was a lieutenant (many of us were, and privates) and even if he was are Roswell in the July 1947 timeframe, his statement that this slide resembles something he saw in 1947 is at best weak circumstantial evidence.

As Kevin suggested to Tony a few weeks ago, the very first thing the DT should do is stop referring to these are "Roswell" slides. It strains what little credibility the group started with to the breaking point.

With all that said, like albert I still want to hear what they have to say. I hope it is far more compelling than what we have heard so far.

Paul Young said...

@ Kevin... I do understand that this Benavides chap has "put himself out there" by appearing in various documentaries and that it wouldn't have taken too much digging for an investigator to find out his real name as opposed to his alias.

So yep. Everyone knows who he is now, and I agree with your opinion (and Lance's reply to me in the previous thread), that if you're going to come out with a remarkable story, then researchers are going to want to grill you on it.

My gripe is that people here seem to think it's perfectly ok to pinpoint exactly where this chap is so that any weirdo on the internet can go round and mither the poor bloke.
I don't think it's being hypocritcal, as you put it.

Like Benavides, everyone knows who you are Kevin, but that doesn't mean you'd think it ok if someone put up a photo of your house with Google Earth coordinance.

You'd have every man and his dog inviting themselves round for a cuppa tea, boring you about why they think Kaufmann is "legit", etc.

cda said...

Have I missed something?

I agree that we should leave this poor 90-year old guy alone, but wonder just when he was first shown the slides. When was this and who showed them to him?

If, say, within the last 3 or 4 years then if he did indeed see the 'body' in 1947 what was he doing with his earth-shattering knowledge during the intervening 65 or so years?

Was he covering up some great secret, keeping it to himself (bound by some so-called security oath, under the threat of death)?

Far more likely, he kept silent because he realised the slides showed nothing of value, and that what he had seen in '47 was trivial and not worth mentioning to anyone. He then suddenly 'remembered' seeing this creature some 65 years later when shown the slides by pro-ET members of the Roswell Dream Team.

But let us be thankful (and let him also be thankful) that he is still alive at the age of 90 and has managed to avoid the 'death penalty' for revealing his knowledge too soon.

I assume Tony Bragalia will agree on this last point.

Curt Collins said...

CDA, Adam Dew filmed EB in his driveway fairly recently, I think, maybe January 7 of this year. That's when Maussan said he met with EB (and likely signed the show contract).

Supposedly, in 1949, EB told his wife that he'd seen bodies in a hangar (about the same time the Aztec hoax was in bloom). For whatever reason, he wasn't telling anyone about seeing aliens until he visited the Roswell UFO museum.

There's no reason for anyone to bother EB at home, he's told his story in in a book and on film at least three times.

KRandle said...

Paul -

You misunderstand. My point is that those who are promoting the slides have used Benavides to connect the image on the slide to the bodies recovered at Roswell. They have told us the tale but apparently do not wish us to confirm it. I'm saying that they must expect those of us on the outside to make sure that the story being reported is the same thing as the witness said.

Case on point... Karl Pflock, in an attempt to refute Frankie Rowe interveiwed three fire fighters who had been with the fire department in July 1947. He named all three in his book. Tony Bragalia located one of them and interviewed him later. I interviewed his as well. Yes, he said exactly what Karl had reported but then I asked him one more question. Did he know Dan Dwyer (Frankie's father) and he said yes. He then gave me more to the story. That Dwyer did go out to the crash site and that a colonel from the base told them they didn't have to go out there. Karl's report ended at the point he wanted to make, not where the story actually ended.

So, as you can see, there is a reason to interview the man to make sure the whole story is told. Like Glenn Dennis, who as a reluctant witness who apparently never missed a chance to be on TV (with the exception of Unsolved Mysteries), this guy has been in several documentaties, and has been interviewed in a book. Independent investigation and verification is required to ensure that critical pieces of the testimony has not been overlooked (which is not to say that it has, but those who have talked to him up to this point do have an agenda).

I will make one other point. In the past I have been burned by accepting stories as told to me by those I thought reliable. Now I check the information myself, which is why Robert Willingham's tale has been exposed.

Unknown said...

So...here my opinion to the Roswell Slides! Its a fake,a hoax!

Who are the hoaxers? The hoaxers are the so called Roswell Dream Team. They bought an old camera and an old unused camerafilm and they took the photos.

Who are the members in the Roswell Dream Team? Thats are:

Tom Carrey
Donald Smitt
Kevin Randle
Anthony Bragalia


Are there real Roswell Slides out there? Yes...there are, there is it:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/space/aliens-ufos/history-roswell-incident2.htm

KRandle said...

Michael Mu -

I have not been a member of the team since 2013 and I have nothing to do with the slides. I was not involved in the investigation of them which is sort of one of the reasons that I'm no longer on the team.

KRandle said...

Michael Mu -

Really? You bring this up again. Have you read the caption on the photograph. It says, "This dubious photograph of unknown origin..." Please explain why you believe this picture to be authentic. Please explain the source of the picture. Please explain who took it... and don't blame me for it.

Paul Young said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Paul Young said...

Thanks Kevin. On reflection I do get your point.

Paul Young said...

@ Michael Mu,
I don't know if you've been keeping up with this blog too closely, but some of the guys here have come up with some excellent reasons (and in great detail) as to why kodachrome wouldn't be capable of taking decent snaps much more than a decade after manufacture.

CommanderCronus said...

No one has hoaxed anything in this case. They simply found an old photograph, and they believe it's an alien and want others to believe that too. There are lots of pictures out there of things people can't identify. It's similar to the way people see a water stain on the ceiling, and think it's the Virgin Mary. Others might see the face of Jesus in an omelette or on a burrito. Here you have what is probably an old picture of a mummy, but people see what they want to see. No deception involved, just plain old gullibility.

Also, I don't remember Kevin Randle having ever been an advocate for the Kodachrome slides. Am I wrong?

Unknown said...

@Kevin

I have explained why i think that the photo are real.

Look at the photo and you can see that this being was a living being...before he/she was dead.
It looks like post mortem photos. You dont know what post mortem photos are? Look here:

http://acidcow.com/pics/1453-the-migration-of-pictures-after-death-26-pics.html


I cant say who took the photo...the photo was sent anonymous to a leader of some UFO Research Group but i dont know the name of the leader and the UFO Group.

I think the photo is real because know one can prove until today that this photo is a hoax!

The photo was published in the early 1990s and when it is a hoax - anyone would prove that the photo is hoax...but no one can prove it until today - Ergo, its real!

KRandle said...

Michael Mu -

Do you have any evidence that any of us you named bought an old camera and old film to fake the slides? If you are going to sling allegations, you should have evidence.

Second, it is not up to me to prove your favorite picture a hoax, it it up to you to prove it authentic, which you can't do. You have no names to go with it and the link you provide says that it is dubious and of unknown origin. This screams hoax all by itself.

Finally, here's the deal. I will remove anymore posts that reference that photograph and I will eliminate all discussion of this obvious fake.

David Rudiak said...

I have "Eli Benjamin's" Roswell story of seeing the living alien and other bodies while assigned guard duty there, being tasked to escort them from the base hangar to the base hospital (from Carey and Schmitt's book "Witness to Roswell"),:

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

As you can see, it took three years before he would talk about what happened after his wife first told the story at the Roswell museum in 2002. His story also has corroboration from other information that we have from other witnesses. You will also see links to other claimed first and second-hand witnesses to bodies (such as base PIO Walter Haut), including in the base hangar and at the base hospital, likely on either July 7 or July 8, 1947. (I might add it isn’t just witness testimony, since the strong consensus on the Ramey memo is that it also mentions “VICTIMS”, with other possible references within the memo to the handling of bodies, though not necessarily ALIEN bodies.)

Like some others, I have known his real name (Eleazar Benevidez—the spelling in the base yearbook) for several years and suspected he was probably the elderly Roswell veteran in the recent short Dew teaser on the “R” slides.

Even knowing his name, I have respected his wishes to remain anonymous on my website. In his various Roswell books, Kevin himself has used pseudonyms to the identity of witnesses. Even Karl Pflock did it, so I don't see what the big deal is here. The fact that Benevidez has briefly shown his face in three documentaries I consider irrelevant. (probably a total of only 2 or 3 minutes) An elderly man would be very difficult to identify without further information. His wishes to otherwise remain anonymous should have been respected just out of common human courtesy, if not journalistic ethics.

He’s 90 years old; please don’t harrass the poor man whether you believe him or not. His opinion isn’t even that important regarding the slides. They will ultimately rise or fall on their own merits.

Tim Hebert said...

Since the slides issue has surfaced, has E.B. been harassed, threatened, or contacted by anyone other than Bragalia, Carey, Dew, and/or Schmitt?

I posed this question to Tony in Kevin's previous post and Tony's answer seemed to be that no one had done such.

Terry the Censor said...

@Rudiak
> the strong consensus on the Ramey memo is that it also mentions “VICTIMS”

Please don't.

Unknown said...

Kevin:

In reading your blog I noticed something you said that I wanted to ask you about. Please understand this is in no way meant to imply that I doubt you, because I don't. It's just a little unusual and I wondered how you accomplished it.

You said that you went from a recruit private E-1 to a WO-1 in one year. Now it has always been my belief that to become a warrant officer candidate you had to be an E-6 or above and obviously you didn't advance from an E-1 to an E-6 in a year. My guess is that you were granted a special waiver to enter WOCS because of your educational background. Is that a correct assumption?

Also, since you retired a Lt. Col. I believe, did you have to go through OCS to move into the officer ranks? I'm just curious as you climb in the military ranks is impressive.

Unknown said...

Should read "your climb"

albert said...

I might point out that even though EB is 90 years old, law enforcement can easily bring charges against anyone harassing him. A complaint from him, or his permission, is not required.
.
...

David Rudiak said...

I wrote: "the strong consensus on the Ramey memo is that it also mentions “VICTIMS”"

"Terry" pathetically wrote:
"Please don't."

FACT: The strong consensus on the Ramey memo is that it also mentions "VICTIMS".

FACT: I have also done an OCR reading, and "VICTIMS" again rises to the top of the most probable words. Computers don't care one way or the other about UFOs or Roswell.

Too bad you won't even consider this, since your mind is obviously made up.

Gilles Fernandez said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
David Rudiak said...

In he past I've done a compilation of various Roswell body stories, and the list of first and second-hand witnesses numbers about four dozen. Bendevidez was just one of them.

He may be the last living person claiming to have been an actual eyewitness to the bodies, including a living alien, but he wasn't the only one. At least five other members of his unit, the 390th Air Service Squadron, a security unit, also claimed to have guarded and/or seen alien bodies, mostly out in the field or accompanying them back to the base.

So it isn't only Benevidez and it isn't only "VICTIMS" in the Ramey memo. There is now a huge mass of witness testimony to body recoveries of some sort at Roswell.

Nitram said...

Please no, not the Ramey memo again...

Regards Nitram

Gilles Fernandez said...

a compilation of various Roswell body stories

Yes, stories, Dr Rudiak.

When you have in mind that VIP and an Astronaut, like Edgar Mitchell can remember, claim, things that didn't happen, or as never written in newspapers, well, it adresses (again) how testimonies are only, well testimonies and not reliable.

http://skepticversustheflyingsaucers.blogspot.fr/2015/03/dr-edgar-mitchell-et-ses-souvenirs-de.html

Wait, we will have photos revealed 5 may 2015!

Suspens, tic tac, tic tac...

Regards,

Gilles

KRandle said...

Larry -

In 1967 it wasn't unusual at all. The Army had a program for high school graduates called Warrant Officer Flight Training. You went to basic training as a PVT E-1 and were then assigned to flight school. At that point you were promoted to Spec 5 E-5 (a rank that no longer exists). Upon completion you were appointed a warrant officer WO-1. From the point that I graduated high school to deployment in Vietnam was 15 months. After my active duty and discharge, I attended college and AFROTC I was commissioned in the Air Force.

The rules have changed in todays world. If you require some documentation, look at the 187 AHC web site (just type 187th AHC into your search engine) and you'll find pictures of me from both Vietnam and Iraq. There is even a picture of my flight school class on the internet somewhere. I'll leave it to you to find it.

At any rate, I'm sure that someone somewhere has checked my records and if there were problems, you can be sure they would have been published somewhere...

Hope this helps you out...

Unknown said...

Kevin:

No problem at all. I don't need to check your records as I believe your account, respect it and admire your service. I do know that all branches of the military had programs that changed seemingly from year to year. Chuck Yeager only graduated from high school and became a Brig. General in the Air Force through a special program.

Thanks for your explanation. My hat is off to you for your military service, and I mean that sincerely. I'm sure we'll disagree on some UFO related issues but that in my mind is okay and probably is good for UFO research.

My best.

David Rudiak said...

ME: "...a compilation of various Roswell body stories" (I mentioned about four dozen--Gilles omitted that part)

GILLES the grump: "Yes, stories, Dr Rudiak."

Yes, stories of fellow human beings, where we get 99% of our information about the world outside our own direct experience, you know, like your mother or father or friends or teachers.

But with Gilles psycho-social babble theories, literally NOBODY saying anything he doesn’t want to hear can be trusted because they are ALL liars, senile, or suffering from 100% witness contamination and false memory. With this handy mental screen, everybody you don't want to believe can be dismissed as unreliable.

This is the perfect closed, circular, psychological denial mechanism, commonly found in rigid ideologues of all stripes. Gilles, as a PhD psychologist, does know about psychological denial? It typically afflicts at various times ALL human beings, even skeptical PhD psychologists and even me.

Except when it comes to people Gilles wants to believe, like Charles Moore and his totally fabricated Mogul "Flight #4". His singular testimony (not, in contrast, 4 dozen people to alien bodies) now becomes 100% reliable and trustworthy. No lies or false memories for him. (Even though he PROVABLY lied about some things.)

We've been round and round with this before, including when I wrote that about a dozen witnesses spoke of Brazel being seen in custody of the Army, being detained at the base against his will, being intimidated and complaining about his treatment, etc. This included credible people who were actually there and you think would know, like Brazel's son or base provost marshall Edwin Easely who admitted to Kevin holding Brazel at the base under armed guard. Gilles likewise dismissed every single one of these accounts as due to witness contamination and false memory.

Gilles cited the usual skeptobunker litany of studies by fellow psychologists like Elizabeth Loftus on false memory for events that never happened.

Except, if you actually read the Loftus paper Gilles loves to cite, she never claimed that you can induce false memory in 100% of subjects, nor can you induce a richly detailed false memory. Instead, it's more like 8% to start, which can eventually be bumped up to about 25%, and that takes considerable effort, constantly badgering them in what to believe, such as "Well your mother said that happened to you when you were young." (the classic example being lost in a shopping mall as a child)

In addition, Loftus said even when people think they do remember something, their "memory" lacks the richness of details of the memory of a real event. Well, what a surprise!

Another way to look at this, is even with heavy coaching, 75% of adults do NOT succumb to the pressure of remembering something that never happened.

But for Gilles, it is 100%. I'm sure this is very comforting to Gilles. No need to suffer from any cognitive dissonance when something comes along that is uncomfortable to his perception of reality. Destroy it with pure psychobabble pseudoscience--it can't be true, therefore everybody who says otherwise is lying, senile, contaminated, having a false memory, Loftus proved it, blah, blah blah.

Est-ce pas, Gilles?

Terry the Censor said...

@Rudiak

You and I had been playing nice about the slides, but your delusional Friedmanesque rhetoric about the openness of my mind shows you are still your intemperate self.

I had no opinion about the Ramey memo. After your comment about VICTIMS, I looked at your hi-res scan to see what the deal was about. It is mush. There are no discernable words in the entire image (though "the" is reasonable to infer here and there).

You have no warrant to assert anything about the text. Talk of a consensus is patently mad. If your best defence is to impute bias, give up your wounded posture, for you have effectively surrendered.

Don't bring the Ramey memo into the slides mess.

(And remember, I said "please" the first time.)

KRandle said...

All -

Discussion of the Ramey memo stops at this point because it is not relevant to the discussion at hand. We'll take up the topic at some other date.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tim Hebert said...

Michael Mu,

As a fellow skeptic...please stop as there is no need for comments such as your last.

Kevin has been kind to allow you, me and others to post comments on his site. Disagree with his ideas, but in a coherent manner.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Dr Rudiak,

As usual, you go off-topic when a particular point is adressed (well, sometimes I do the same^^) and the point was DR Edgar Mitchell remembers to have readed things in contemporan 1947 newspaper despite none of such things were claimed/writen in the historiographical materials the agnostic investigators have at his/their disposal (the same newspapers he remembers to have readed). Period. Cool, zen.

Because you wrote about it, there is none "richness" in what Dr Edgar Mitchell is legacing regarding Roswell, but only "I was here, I read the contemporan newspapers stating about the recovery of an alien spacecraft and bodies" (in short), despite there were none of this in contemporan Roswell newspapers.

But maybe David will propose why DR Edgar Mitchell is wrong without using or pointing the leads of falses memories, retrospective falsification and social contagion?

Regards,

Gilles

Tim Hebert said...

Yesterday, I posted a comment asking if there was evidence that E.B. had been subjected to harassment and unwanted communication attempts.

Since no one has offered any evidence, we can safely assume that the answer is no.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Hello,

Regarding "unwanted communication attempts."

Ask the DT to remember You that/how William Curry Holden (born in 1896!) was interviewed by the Dream Team in the 90's when he was around 96 years old, to serve the lead of the archeologists regarding Roswell Gospels and best-sellers/selling...

In other words, DT member(s) teaching to not harass old men but not applying it for themselves when for Roswell Gospels goal and best-seller books...

Regards,

Gilles

KRandle said...

Gilles -

The Dream Team had nothing to do with that and the situation isn't the same. I was invited into the house by the family and Curry Holden was happy to speak with me. I was respectful, realizing that his advanced age would be problematic. As far as I know, no one else spoke to him and that paragon of journalistic morality, Kal Korff, confused Holden's information to me with that of Easley and Cavitt. Korff's data was so screwed up it was difficult to sort it out since it is clear that Korff talked to none of these people and I talked to them all.

I might mention that Dubose was 90 when Jaime Shandera invited himself to their home and began to attempt to press his point of view on Dubose rather than attempting to learn what the man had to say.

Anyway, the point is that the Dream Team did not harass Holder but I was invited to visit them.

Gilles Fernandez said...

So, Kevin, you will share (or remember us) here what her daughter stated regarding this and how was her father when Carey came to him?

KRandle said...

Gilles -

I do not believe that Tom Carey ever spoke to him. His daughter told Mark Rodegheir that at his age he tended to get his memories mixed up and if I remember correctly, didn't think much of this idea he had seen anything in New Mexico. I do remember him saying that his daughter was the archaeologist and not him. He headed up the Department of History and Anthropology at Texas Tech, if I have this correct...

Of course, there was some independent corroboration for his story be Bertrand Schultz, whom I interviewed at his home in Lincoln, NE a long time ago... and yes, I was invited in as well and he was getting up in years too. Tom interviewed him as well.

David Rudiak said...

Part 1 of 1:
Gilles wrote:
Because you wrote about it, there is none "richness" in what Dr Edgar Mitchell is legacing regarding Roswell, but only "I was here, I read the contemporan newspapers stating about the recovery of an alien spacecraft and bodies" (in short), despite there were none of this in contemporan Roswell newspapers.

Did Mitchell LITERALLY mean that? Or was he instead saying the base DID admit to having an actual flying saucer (the press release), which the military quickly switched to "weather balloon", which he accepted for many years (other of his statements).

Furthermore, he has spoken that although he had no direct knowledge, it was the "lore" in the Roswell area while he was there (BEFORE the Roswell story got revised in the 1980s) that a flying saucer had crashed and alien bodies were recovered. E.g., here is what he said about such local “lore” on the Larry King show in 2008:

"I happened to have lived in the area and the - and I grew up the area and my family had farming and ranch holdings and farm machinery holdings. We knew many of the people, including the ranch where this was discovered and in spite of all of the security oaths, etc, the talk in the community was, of what it was, that it was an alien craft and that survived all of the other stories and all of the other oaths and so forth. It was there for a long time. I happened to have lived there."

Thus contrary to what Gilles has written on his website, Mitchell said the flying saucer crash and alien bodies continued to be discussed by locals while he lived there and well BEFORE the revival of the case in the 1980s.

However, it was only in the 1980s, after he had been to the moon and become famous, that several Roswell "old-timers" independently approached him saying they knew of alien bodies being recovered. That is when he became convinced it DID happen and the original story (recovered flying saucer) was indeed true and the second story by the military (weather balloon) was a coverup.

But maybe David will propose why DR Edgar Mitchell is wrong without using or pointing the leads of falses memories, retrospective falsification and social contagion?

Because he lived there, heard the stories of the saucer crash and alien bodies, and much later became convinced they were indeed true by speaking to people who had direct knowledge. From this he also came to the conclusion that the original newspaper story (recovered flying saucer, therefore alien bodies as well) was the true story and the next military story (weather balloon) was a coverup. That is also a perfectly logical interprepation of his various remarks.

You, however, are assuming, or using psychic powers, that Mitchell literally meant the Roswell Daily Record printed that alien bodies were recovered, without considering his full story of how his opinion changed. I bet if he was asked directly whether the newspaper specifically mentioned alien bodies, he would probably say "no", but that was what the original military press release was implicitly admitting to once you know the whole back story.

David Rudiak said...

Part 2 of 2:
As for Gilles webpage on Mitchell:

http://skepticversustheflyingsaucers.blogspot.fr/2015/03/dr-edgar-mitchell-et-ses-souvenirs-de.html

where Gilles also claims at the time there was hardly any consideration that the new flying saucers might be extraterrestrial, that is totally false. I did a whole webpage myself on the topic, combing through a lot more newspapers than Ted Bloecher did, and I found a whole lot more than two discussions to possible ET origins in the newspapers:

http://www.roswellproof.com/eth-in-1947.html

In fact, Kenneth Arnold alone brought up the topic at least four times, either as his own opinion or the opinion of others. This started only three days after he first had his sighting, when he mentioned running into a hysterical women screaming that he was the guy who saw the "men from Mars". In an AP article on July 7, he stated he had received a lot of “fan mail” from people telling him they thought the saucers were ET. And here is another article from July 7 that I found at the Chicago Public Library, where Arnold is very explicitly and seriously considering the ETH origins of what he saw:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Chicago_D_Times_1947-07-07-3s_Arnold_interplanetary_statement-Cpt_Smith.jpg

THE Gen. Ramey was already publicly mocking the idea that the saucers might be from Mars only five days after Arnold’s sighting, begging the question why bother?:

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

But most tellingly, just before Roswell base issued its recovered flying disc press release on July 8, the Army Air Force at the Pentagon issued their own press absolutely DENYING that the flying discs were “SPACE SHIPS”!

http://www.roswellproof.com/vandenberg.html#anchor_58
http://www.roswellproof.com/Flying-Saucers-NOT-spaceships.html

Why issue such a denial unless there had been considerable discussion of that exact possibility? Maybe Gilles can cook up some more BS “social contageon” and “retrospective falsification” theories to explain this to us.

Paul Young said...

I have to say Gilles... The most entertaining part of this whole blog for me, is seeing you trying to be a smart arse..."waxing lyrical" in your nonsensical way...and then getting completely slapped down by David Rudiak!

Wonderful theatre!

If you were a boxer, you'd have cauliflower arse. :-)

David Rudiak said...

Michael Mu wrote:

I cant say who took the photo...the photo was sent anonymous to a leader of some UFO Research Group but i dont know the name of the leader and the UFO Group.

I think the photo is real because know one can prove until today that this photo is a hoax!

The photo was published in the early 1990s and when it is a hoax - anyone would prove that the photo is hoax...but no one can prove it until today - Ergo, its real!


In reality, we CAN prove it is a fake.

The actual source was this WAX/LATEX alien dummy made for "Expo'67" in 1981 in Montreal, Canada:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIi3uDxRKac

http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/et/nonet03.htm

http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/ssw001.ht

Terry the Censor said...

@Rudiak

Nicely done.

(Of course, now that you have disproved MU's claim, let us all watch him move the goalposts.)

cda said...

The "4 dozen witnesses to alien bodies" idea, as stated by DR, is a myth and nothing else.

For one thing, not one of these "4 dozen" would know a real alien body if they saw one, since no such thing is, or was, known to science. All they could say was something to the effect of "it didn't look like a creature I have seen before", which is nowhere near being the same as an "alien body"

For another, ALL of these witnesses only told their stories 40 to 60 years after the event (a likely scenario if they ever really thought they had seen an ET body!),

A third problem is the usual 'witness contamination' problem. We have not seen interview transcripts (have we?) of any of them. And I mean unedited transcripts too. Nor do we know how much of the 'Roswell saga' was known to them prior to the interviews.

So this '4 dozen' figure is worthless as scientific evidence.

As for the slides, we can only wait and hope (!). But if what Tony Bragalia has told us so far is true, these slides will simply end up on the ever-increasing Roswell 'trash can', much to his (and a few others') dismay.

cda said...

I am curious about Edgar Mitchell's knowledge and when he acquired it.

Did he reside in the Roswell area and if so, where? When did he so reside there?

Are we to believe that people in that area were discussing the crash and bodies long before the ROSWELL INCIDENT book came out? If so, exactly when was this, and were there any newspaper reports on these stories?

And if Mitchell did indeed hear these tales during the 60s, he obviously realised they were just tittle-tattle (as he said nothing while an active astronaut) but suddenly decided to 'reveal all' when he was safely in retirement.

Again, perhaps he feared loss of his pension (yes, we have heard that yarn before too!).

So, I repeat: did Mitchell really know ANYTHING about Roswell, or...?

Curt Collins said...

My piece, "Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Memories of Roswell" http://www.blueblurrylines.com/2015/03/dr-edgar-mitchell-memories-of-roswell.html may be easier for English-speaking readers to follow, then, they may want to return to GIlles' version which expands on it and adds a psychological perspective.

David Rudiak's assertion that ET and spaceship notions were around in 1947 is true. Most people came by them via Buck Rogers and Orson Welles. The phrase "men from Mars" was as familiar then, as "little green men" is to us, and taken just as seriously. It'd take a retired Marine Corps Major a few years to get grown-ups to give it a second thought.

David Rudiak said...

cda wrote:
I am curious about Edgar Mitchell's knowledge and when he acquired it.

Did he reside in the Roswell area and if so, where? When did he so reside there?

Are we to believe that people in that area were discussing the crash and bodies long before the ROSWELL INCIDENT book came out? If so, exactly when was this, and were there any newspaper reports on these stories?

And if Mitchell did indeed hear these tales during the 60s, he obviously realised they were just tittle-tattle (as he said nothing while an active astronaut) but suddenly decided to 'reveal all' when he was safely in retirement.

So, I repeat: did Mitchell really know ANYTHING about Roswell, or...?


Jeez Louise, Christopher! Don't you even bother to read first before you fire off a practically incoherent rant?

To REPEAT, Mitchell said his family were ranchers in the Roswell area at the time, they knew the rancher upon whose land the "disc" was found (possibly meaning Brazel), he was a teenager, about to enter his senior year of high school at the time, he remembered reading the first Roswell Daily Record story about the Army recovering a "flying disc" and then the weather balloon retraction the next day. He accepted this until well after he had already left the astronaut corp and was approached in the 1980s (thus about 15 years later) by "old-timers" who told him of their personal knowledge of alien bodies being recovered.

He was a little more specific about who these people were. One was the granddaughter of the undertaker who provided the military with child-caskets. Don't assume this necessarily meant Blenn Dennis, whose story is that they didn't have the caskets at the time. In "Witness to Roswell", Carey/Schmitt said the caskets really came from the undertaker in Hagermann, N.M., about 25 miles south of Roswell, who did have caskets on hand.

Another "old-timer" was the son of one of the deputy sheriffs and helped keep people out of the area, and the third was a major in the intelligence office who shared space with Jesse Marcel. (These are the only people he mentioned talking with in Roswell, but also presumably took in the accounts of Jesse Marcel Sr. & Jr. plus others. In fact, he mentioned being good friends with Marcel Jr., so no doubt he again heard Dr. Marcel repeat his story of his father bringing flying saucer wreckage home in the middle of the night.

But while Mitchell still lived in Roswell, he heard the rumors about the recovery of the alien spacecraft and crew, but he accepted the weather balloon story, until he spoke to these people in the 1980s. That is when he became convinced that the weather balloon story was a lie, and the original story of the Army recovering a flying saucer was indeed true.

Got it? Probably not.

David Rudiak said...

Curt Collins wrote:
My piece, "Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Memories of Roswell" http://www.blueblurrylines.com/2015/03/dr-edgar-mitchell-memories-of-roswell.html may be easier for English-speaking readers to follow, then, they may want to return to GIlles' version which expands on it and adds a psychological perspective.

This is no different than Gilles' perspective and fails to take into account the FULL context of Mitchell's remarks on how his thinking about what happened at Roswell evolved over 3-4 decades.

David Rudiak's assertion that ET and spaceship notions were around in 1947 is true. Most people came by them via Buck Rogers and Orson Welles. The phrase "men from Mars" was as familiar then, as "little green men" is to us, and taken just as seriously. It'd take a retired Marine Corps Major a few years to get grown-ups to give it a second thought

I would basically agree, except for the last sentence. As I pointed out previously to Gilles, there were numerous SERIOUS references to the saucers POSSIBLY being ET spacecraft, including from Kenneth Arnold himself right from the beginning. (four such instances I know about in the following 3 weeks. I could quote in detail if necessary.)

http://www.roswellproof.com/eth-in-1947.html
http://www.roswellproof.com/ETH-in-1947-2.html

If nobody took the claims seriously that the saucers MIGHT be ET space ships, then why was the MILITARY itself issuing public denials to that effect in June/July 1947?

Again, Gen. Roger Ramey and his intelligence chief denying the saucers were from Mars on June 30, 1947, (over a week before the Roswell story broke):

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

And the Pentagon AAF public relations office putting out a falt denial that the saucers were "space ships" early on July 8, 1947, or just before Roswell base issued their press release that they actually had one:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Flying-Saucers-NOT-spaceships.html

It seems that you and Gilles want it both ways: There was no serious talk about the saucers being ET until Keyhoe came along in 1950, but the military felt it necessary to deny exactly that in June/July 1947.

In the real world, government agencies do not issue official denials unless there is something to actually deny and which they also consider important enough to deny.

As just one examples of the public edginess concerning the saucers and possible ET connection:

Daily Illini Roswell story, July 9, 1947:

AP Wires Burn With 'Captured Disk' Story
"…Fort Worth Roswell's celebrated 'flying disk' was rudely stripped of its glamour by a Fort Worth army airfield weather officer who late today identified the object as a weather balloon. …That was the word that many editors had been hoping for. The people who had been debunking the flying disk story weren't quite certain whether they wanted a solution to be found. Of course, a big story on flying disks would be fine, most of them thought, but it's a good story as it is. A solution might be more than embarrassing. It might be calamitous. What if there really were "men from Mars!"

There are other indications in newspaper stories (I don't even know about what was being talked about on the radio), that the public was worried about what the saucer's represented, including the possibilities of them being Russian or ET.

Now THAT is the basis for some public authority like the military issuing denials that they were either--trying to calm actual public panic in the air because a significant fraction DID believe that.

cda said...

DR:

"Got it? Probably not."

Oh yes I think I've got it.

Edgar Mitchell, who lived some 40 miles south of Roswell in 1947, and was at the local high school, may indeed have read of the great crash (but not the bodies) in the newspapers, but that is all. It meant little or nothing to him.

He then forgot all about it but post-1980 (surprise, surprise) suddenly found a new interest in the tale.

He then returned and spoke to some second- or third-hand sources who repeated the Roswell 'saga' to him, bodies and all. And lo and behold, Mitchell became yet another Roswell witness (of sorts).

Mitchell became all sorts of persons after he retired, didn't he, believing in spiritualism, spiritual healing and so on? Perhaps the Apollo 14 trip really affected him.

But it does not exactly add anything exciting or original to the Roswell tale, does it?