Monday, November 09, 2015

J. Bond Johnson's Statement on His Visit to General Ramey

Since it has been suggested that Ramey had invited reporters from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram to his office, and since some of the quoted material came from a web site that hosted an interview with J. Bond Johnson, the reporter, I thought I could clarify some of this by posting the following. This is from my second interview with Johnson, made about a month after he called me, left his telephone number on my answering machine asking me to return the call. I note here that Johnson claimed I had called him cold and he had no opportunity to review his notes or the
Johnson's picture of General Ramey
holding the memo. Photo copyright
by the University of Texas at Arlington.
newspaper articles that appeared in 1947… though in the first interview he actually reads the July 9, 1947 article that he claimed to have written. Or, in other words, he was not called cold. There are other indications in that interview that he had already reviewed his “UFO” file, that he had talked to Betsy Hudon at the University of Texas at Arlington, and he was aware that she had forwarded a copy of my letter to him which gave him my telephone number. She wouldn’t tell me who he was but she did say she would forward a letter to him to facilitate our communication.

In my March 24, 1989 interview, I said, “Could you just sort of tell me what you did… what transpired when your editor gave you the assignment to go out to the base.” In response, Johnson said:

My name is initial J Bond, it’s also James Bond Johnson. I’m the original [referring obviously to the master spy by the name of Bond, James Bond). I was a reporter and back up photographer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in July 1947 after having served in the Air Corps as a pilot-cadet in World War Two.
On the… Tuesday, July 8, 1947, late in the afternoon, I returned from an assignment to my office in the city room of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram which was both a morning and afternoon newspaper. My city editor of the morning paper ran over and said, “Bond, have you got your camera?” I said, “Yes,” I had it in my car. I had a four by five Speed Graphic that I had bought recently and I kept it in the car because I was working nights and police and so forth and had it at the ready. He said, “Go out to Ramey’s office and, he said, they’ve got something there [and] that to get a picture. I don’t recall what it he called it. He said they’ve flown something down… I don’t think he called it something… he gave it a name because I was kind of prepared for what I was going to see. He said something crashed out there or whatever and they’re… we just got an alert on the AP wire [emphasis added to prove a point] … though it might have been the UPI… that the Air Force or the Air Corps as it was called then [actually it was the Army Air Forces in July 1947] is flying it down from Roswell on orders from General Ramey. It would be located in his office. It was or would be by the time I got out there.
So I drove directly to Carswell [Fort Worth Army Air Field in July 1947] and my recollections now are I went in and I opened my carrying case with my Graphic and I had brought just one holder with me with two pieces of the 4 X 5 film. Black and white of course. I posed General Ramey with this debris piled in the middle of his rather large and plush office. It seemed incongruous to have this smelly garbage piled on the floor… spread out on the floor of this plush, big office that was probably, oh, 16 by 20 at least.
I posed General Ramey with this debris. At that time, I was briefed on the idea that it was not a flying disk as first reported but in fact was a weather balloon that had crashed. I returned to my office. I was met by a barrage of people that were unknown to me. These were people who had come over from Dallas… In those days, any time we had… we normally bussed any prints that we were sending to the AP, we bussed them to Dallas to be transmitted on the wire photo machines. We had a receiver but not a sender in Fort Worth in those days. And no faxes.
After a discussion of how they transmitted the pictures and we chatted about all the pictures including the ones of Major Jesse Marcel that Johnson would later claim he hadn’t taken, he said, “It is entirely possible that I was briefed by the PIO.”

We can take this even further. Dennis Balthaser published an interview with Johnson that can be found here:


During that interview, Balthaser said, “Finally, another researcher seems to remember a statement you made that the paper in General Ramey’s hand was a press release that you handed to General Ramey. Can you verify that as a true statement you would have made in a previous interview? If yes, please explain.”
Johnson said, “Yes, that was an early speculation of mine that I might have handed Ramey the copy of the AP ‘flash’ my editor had given me regarding the Roswell crash craft being flown to Fort Worth. Obviously I was in error in that speculation.”

What all this shows is that the information about the debris going to Fort Worth was in an AP news alert and had nothing to do with Ramey inviting people out to the base. We don’t have to speculate about this because we have the information from the reporter who was involved in it provided before he began think of himself as “the Roswell photographer.”

We can corroborate all of this from the news stories that appeared at the time and the chronology that was published in the Daily Illini. I also recovered a transmittal letter sent with the photographs that gave the date as July 8, 1947, the time as 11:59 p.m. and the photographer as J. Bond Johnson.  Later, we can see that Johnson dramatically altered his story attempting to put himself into the spotlight. He went so far as to deny that he had written the story that appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on July 9, a story that he had told me he had written. He said during my first interview with him, “Seven nine [July 9] is my story on the front page that was in earlier … [which, of course, negates the idea that I called him cold and he hadn’t reviewed his UFO file].”

The problem for Johnson’s claim that they didn’t know what it was when he was there is the last paragraph in that article. It said, “After his first look, Ramey declared all it was was a weather balloon. The weather officer verified his view.”

For those who wish to follow this to its end, I did a blog posting on October 9, 2009, about the whole Johnson tale. It can be found here:


This then should end the idea that Ramey invited anyone out to his office. The story was on the news wire and the astute editors and reporters would think of calling Ramey on their own. He received telephone calls from far away and even did a telephone interview with a reporter on the West Coast. The idea that it was a weather balloon quickly killed the story and just hours after it broke on the news wires the interest faded.


But the point is that Ramey did not call anyone and invite them to his office. The testimony and the evidence negates that idea. Johnson may have well taken the teletype alert with him but we don’t know. He might well have taken it into General Ramey’s office but we don’t know. The evidence for that is contradictory because Johnson spun many tales about what he did and didn’t do in General Ramey’s office. However, given what we can prove, it would seem that we no longer have to speculate about the reason Johnson went out to the base.

175 comments:

cda said...

"But the point is that Ramey did not call anyone and invite them to his office."

Agreed. The very LAST thing Ramey would do is call a newspaper and invite a reporter into his office if his true intention was to cover-up the whole ET crash idea. Therefore if you believe Ramey really set out to give a false impression of what was shipped to Fort Worth, why did he allow anyone from the press to take photographs?

It would be a serious risk to allow anyone from the press or public into his office if his intention was to deceive. Yet you and DR both insist that Ramey did a remarkable 'balloon switch' and hoped his deception would not be detected. Indeed someone (maybe yourself) claims that the REAL debris was hidden behind the phoney balloon debris in the same room. Believe this if you can!

My conclusion: the fact that these photographs were taken at all disproves your thesis that there ever was a 'balloon switch'. Ramey could easily have told Johnson (or anyone else) that it was a classified subject and that the press and public were not permitted.

But without this alleged switch there would be no Roswell 'legend', would there?

KRandle said...

CDA -

I'm afraid your logic escapes me. The story was already out. Haut and the 509th had given the story to newspapers and radio. The wreckage, whatever it was, had been ordered to Fort Worth. The media was interested and Johnson headed out to the base on orders from his editor. They had a balloon laid out on the floor (well, a balloon and a degraded rawin reflector). Seeing this mundane debris ended the interest. The crash had been explained.

You can argue that it was the stuff brought from Roswell or stuff that they found at Fort Worth, but there was a display in Ramey's office and if it was to conceal the real nature of the debris it certainly worked because the story was dead in about 24 hours.

However, all of this does not disprove the thesis... Colonel Dubose made it clear that the stuff in Ramey's office was not the real stuff. Marcel, looking at the pictures said it was not the stuff he had found. We can go round and round on that, but the fact that Ramey allowed pictures of that debris is not evidence there was no alien ship.

In fact, had Ramey said that the whole business was classified, that would have caused more speculation and more demand to know what was going on. By showing the balloon and allowing photographs of it, the story ended... not to mention that Brazel, Blanchard and Marcel were not available for interviews... Wilcox refused to answer questions because he was "working with the boys at the base," the radio station interview of Brazel never aired, and the story's control slipped from Ft. Worth to Washington, D.C.

cda said...

Kevin:

Marcel WAS available for interview, at least for answering a few questions. You can see that from the Ft Worth Star Telegram reports. Presumably it was Johnson who did the brief interview (but he may have forgotten by the time you saw him decades later).

Ramey could easily have said things were classified, and that would have been the end of it. Goodness, there were all manner of classified projects and topics in that early post-war period. Johnson would never question secret or classified matters, would he?

Sure there would be press speculation. There was anyway. So what? Better than taking a big risk with having a photographer in the room with top secret material around!

If the press descended on Ramey out of the blue, as seems to have happened, the following scenarios are possible (assuming a cover-up was planned):

1. Ramey, not suspecting anyone from the press, simply dispatches the debris to wherever he was requested to send it, and thus there is no need for a 'balloon switch' at all. What would be the point of such a 'switch'?

2. When Johnson arrives Ramey, not expecting him, has to tell Johnson to wait while he (Ramey) tries to do a very rapid 'switch', then invites Johnson in and hopes (yes hopes) he does NOT stumble across the real debris. Wire news travels fast and there was always the chance another reporter/photographer might arrive unexpectedly, thereby placing Ramey and his gang at even greater risk.

3. Ramey is tipped off (how?) that the press will arrive and thus must try a quick 'switch' and hope nobody arrives before he completes it. Again, highly risky.

Whatever happened, Ramey, by allowing Johnson and the photos, was running a very severe risk that his great cover-up and switch would be revealed.

So I repeat: by allowing the reporter to be present in his office and to take the photos, we have a strong case that there never was a 'balloon switch' at all.

But I know your mind is firmly fixed on this switch, without which the whole Roswell legend collapses.

And I am not the least impressed by what various Ft.Worth people told you decades afterwards. They all changed their stories at times (just like J.Bond Johnson!). All were interviewed, and re-interviewed, FAR too many times, that's why.

Here is a much simpler answer: The debris shown in the photos IS the real debris, and there is no secret to cover up. End of story.

John Steiger said...

cda: Your "simpler answer" is simply false. Accept the truth. End YOUR cover up.

Unknown said...

cda

I'm not the least bit impressed by a Brit with an agenda either. Do you really think a reporter could waltz into a General's office unannounced? Generals have Aides who act as gatekeepers. Speaking of gatekeepers, it's unlikely that Johnson could get through the Main Gate of the base without the guard checking for authorization. In other words Ramey would have known Johnson was coming, period.

Kevin already explained your faulty logic.

@ Kevin

It strikes me as odd that Johnson had only two sheets of film with him. Aren't there more than two pictures allegedly taken by him in Ramey's office? At least if he's telling the truth about when he bought the camera we could narrow down what lens was used in case anyone wanted to recreate the pictures. Unless he bought it used or military surplus.



Brian B said...

And just how in blazes does a news photographer simply wander into a secure military base, camera in hand and unannounced, asking to see the general who commands the famed 8th Air Force at precisely the time the general is planning a photo op for a coverup using Marcel as the patsy? And the photographer is supposedly the only press photographer there?

There's no logic in that at all. That's just ridiculous.

Johnson's editor must have been informed in advance, as Johnson recalls, that there was some sort of open invitation to go on base and see the junk in Ramey's office.

If they recall receiving a UPI or AP alert on the wire, why does anyone insist what Ramey has in his hand isn't something about that news wire, or even the one Johnson originally claimed he brought but later retracted?

You can't just walk into a military base that is supposedly at some sort of hightened alien crash alert and working on a massive worldwide coverup and expect to see the commander behind that coverup simply unannounced.

Or is this just another case of the frazzled Ramey screwing up again, but still maintaining his masterful plan of cosmic secrecy? He's brilliant and crafty yet dumb enough to let the press on base uninvited and then carry a top secret memo into the photo session? Right on Ramey.

Perhaps all this Roswell nonsense got the best of him and he had one too many the night before...

Don said...

CDA, the purpose of the "cover up", the "security lid", the "campaign" to silence saucer reports by the army and the navy, was to kill the story and the stories. That's it. The military didn't like the way the publicity was going against their interests (read the other news in the papers, not just the saucer stories), I think. There was real political danger for the military, especially, the AAF. It didn't matter what the object was, or if there was an object; the immediate concern was to kill the publicity.

Regards,

Don

Gilles Fernandez said...

Hello here,

Kevin wote : Marcel, looking at the pictures said it was not the stuff he had found.

Kevin, again this pseudo-argument?
Marcel, "Star witness" said several times that the picture(s) he is figuring in are with the debris he found. And this by two times in the first "Gospel", The Roswell Incident (1980). Another time in a TV documentary. PERIOD.

After he changed his story, testmony probably because interactions/pollution with ufologists pointing him it was prosaic stuffes. PERIOD.

Regards,

Gilles.

Brian B said...

Yes you cannot hold up Marcel as a star witness and claim people like Johson are not credible because of changing their stories.

Marcel clearly changed his story after the fact and decades later. Let's not hold up his testimony as gospel truth when he initially claimed, as did the papers, what he had recovered was tin foil and sticks.

David Rudiak said...

(1 of 2)
If I may reframe CDA's argument, he is asking why Ramey would have balloon debris in his office if he hadn't called up Johnson's newspaper and asked them to send a reporter out. Can we just believe that Johnson and the newspaper got lucky that there was something there to photograph?

That's a fair question so far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. It assumes that nobody else had an inkling that "higher headquarters" of the Roswell press release meant Gen. Ramey at Fort Worth. That is simply not true, because various press outlets already knew Ramey was fielding phone calls and talking about debris supposedly being in his office, even giving bogus descriptions of it (such as the "boxkite" being 25 feet in diameter if reconstructed or that it was "hexagonal"). This all started about an hour after the press release while Marcel was still flying to Fort Worth. Ramey was already suggesting that it was or probably was a weather balloon/radar target.

My point is that Ramey would have had every expectation that a regional reporter or reporters, probably from Fort Worth or Dallas, would eventually show up on his doorstep asking for some sort of exclusive and photos. A second point is that the new weather balloon story replacing the base press release "flying disc" story was already in the works by Ramey BEFORE Marcel ever arrived from Roswell. It wasn't just chance that a weather balloon would have been waiting for a reporter when they finally showed up.

First of all, note in reconstructing events, we know from the Daily Illini AP chronology that the FIRST AP bulletin mentioning Ramey's involvement wasn't until 4:53 CST, in a release from the Pentagon. It mentioned that Ramey announced he had shipped the "disk" to Wright Field. See chronology at:

www.roswellproof.com/AP_Chronology.html

That is the likely time Johnson's editor would have dispatched him, and it would have taken about another half hour to get from the newspaper building to the base and Ramey's office. (according to Johnson's own estimate of travel time) Thus the likely time of the photos was around 5:30 CST, just about 2 hours after the initial press release, and a full hour after Ramey began spinning the story in the direction of weather balloon.

One example of early weather balloon reporting was reporter Dick Pearce of the San Francisco Examiner who said he deduced within the first hour that "higher headquarters" of the press release meant Gen. Ramey (what Kevin in his post calls the west coast reporter). He therefore called up Ramey, was the first reporter to reach him, got the story that Ramey thought it was a weather balloon, describing something just like the balloon/radar targets sent up every day over at nearby Oakland, CA. Pearce added that they were the first news group to get the "real" story out.

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

Ramey knew Pearce since they had met in San Francisco during Operation Crossroads the previous year. See photo of Ramey with Pearce and backstory here:

www.roswellproof.com/Ramey_photos.html

This may explain why Ramey took the call from Pearce and why Pearce knew to call Ramey to begin with and skipped trying to call Roswell and Sheriff Wilcox (or talk to the head, not the ass).

KRandle said...

All -

Johnson explained at one time, to Moore and Shandera, that he was a member of the Civil Air Patrol, a civilian auxiliary of the Air Force and had a CAP sticker on his car. He also had press credentials, and was known at the base as a member of the press. He didn't just wander in, but was stopped at the gate, and admitted to the base because of the above. Let's not invent problems that do not exist.

David Rudiak said...

(part 2 of 2)
Another strong, early indication that the weather balloon story was prearranged can be found in the special edition of the Los Angeles Herald-Express the evening of July 8:

www.roswellproof.com/LA_HeraldExpress_July8.html

This covered the first 1-1/2 hours of the story, right up to the same AP announcement noted in the Daily Illini chronology at 4:53 p.m. of Ramey shipping the object to Wright Field. Note first that the subheadline states: "General Believes It Is Radar Weather Gadget", and, further down, "General Orders Flying Disc
To Wright Field for Tests".

This was followed by two INS bulletins (the news service of the Hearst newspapers, including their flagship paper SF Examiner). The first bulletin, probably originating from the Examiner and Pearce, has Ramey stating that the "flying disc" was "evidently nothing other than a weather or radar instrument of some sort."

This was followed by a totally unique bulletin where a U.S. Senator was also repeating the Ramey weather balloon story: "Senator Ed C. Johnson, of Colorado, told the Denver Post by long distance from Washington today that the object found in New Mexico may have been "either a radar target or a meteorological balloon.""

We see here again that probably a full half hour to an hour before Johnson ever got to Ramey's office and took the photos, the weather balloon story was being planted in the national press, even by a U.S. Senator. Where did he get the story? That is very much a big mystery to me.

KRandle said...

Neal -

As each of the pictures was found, Johnson revised his story. He had taken two holders with four pieces of film... then it was three holders with six... then he decided that he hadn't taken the pictures of Marcel so we're back to two and four. It is clear from this that Johnson didn't remember and based his testimony on the number of pictures that had been identified. I do not know why he decided that he hadn't taken the pictures of Marcel.

KRandle said...

Gilles -

You have no evidence that Marcel changed his story because of contamination by UFO researchers. He said that if he was in the pictures it was the real stuff and if it was anyone else then it was not. When actually shown the pictures taken in Ramey's office, Marcel said that was not the stuff he had brought from New Mexico.

KRandle said...

All -

This posting was not about Marcel but about the suggestion that Ramey had invited a reporter out to the base. There is no evidence for that as my interviews with him showed. I also noted that he radically altered his tale, changing many of the elements of it while the documentation showed otherwise.

And we still have those who have not investigated this particular aspect of it clinging to the idea that Ramey had invited, apparently, a single reporter to the base. The evidence and testimony refutes this.

Gilles Fernandez said...

Hello Kevin,
So Kevin, you mean that the F.W. pictures figuring in the 1980 book (well, cropped) were not "actually" shown to him when/why Marcel stated/is stating by two times in the same book, "it was the real stuff he found?" Hum... ;)
Well of-topic, and we already have its discussion in the past with you, CDA, Lance and all.
Gilles.

cda said...

Neal Foy:

Kevin can't have it both ways. Nor can you.

Either the debris in the pics is the real stuff or it is not. If it is the substituted stuff (i.e. part of the 'balloon switch') it was done to cover up the real debris, in which case it was part of a top secret plan to fool the press and public, in which case the base would have certainly been closed to the public until ALL the debris and bodies were permanently off site (which allegedly took two or more days according to reports). This means NOBODY without a 'need to know' would be allowed past the front gate on that day, July 8th. This includes J.Bond Johnson.

With a secret like that, Ramey would NOT have risked any John Q. Citizen even entering the base that day.

So I repeat: Johnson DID enter the base and DID enter Ramey's office. The debris shown in the photos IS the real thing, and there was no cover-up.

But without the 'balloon switch' the Roswell legend collapses, doesn't it?

But don't let a mere Brit with neither a physics degree nor years of service in the USAF presume to think he knows better than DR and KR.

Don said...

Ramey's weather balloon story was greeted with skepticism which was reported in the newspapers. Both civilian and military weather station personnel doubted balloons and rawins could account for the flying saucer stories, and the UPI noted, about Roswell, there were "diehards among the prinicpals" who were not satisfied with Ramey's solution.

If the press followed up on those leads, the story would not die, thus the "campaign", including photo ops of balloon launches. Afterwards, the press reported balloon/target sightings. I recall one, I think from August, in which a stray wearther balloon was tracked across the country for 700 miles.

Today's skeptics are convinced by all that. I wonder if the skeptical "diehards" in 47 were.

Regards,

Don

David Rudiak said...

Brian Bell wrote:
You can't just walk into a military base that is supposedly at some sort of hightened alien crash alert and working on a massive worldwide coverup and expect to see the commander behind that coverup simply unannounced.

Or is this just another case of the frazzled Ramey screwing up again, but still maintaining his masterful plan of cosmic secrecy? He's brilliant and crafty yet dumb enough to let the press on base uninvited and then carry a top secret memo into the photo session? Right on Ramey.


This ignores the obvious that the whole point of the weather balloon display was to counter the Roswell press release of recovering a real "flying disc". Then Ramey would have EVERY reason to admit a reporter onto the base and into his office, tell him a story, and allow him to take pictures.

A very good, thoroughly documented example of a far more extreme photo op arranged as part of a cover story was during the 1960 U2 incident. The very top-secret U2 spy plane was repainted with a phony NASA logo and false ID number, and the press was invited in to take photos at Edwards AFB as part of a cover story. Previously the press had been fed the cover story that it wasn't a U.S. spy plane shot down over Russia but a NASA weather plane flying out of Turkey that had drifted off-course and crashed on its own because the pilot had passed out from oxygen deprivation when his oxygen system allegedly failed. NASA even put out phony transcripts of the pilot's supposed last communications.

This was a far more elaborate and risky ruse, putting a previously top-secret plane on public display to try to counter a more damaging story. In contrast, all Ramey had to do was place a totally unclassified weather balloon and radar target on display to bolster the story he had already been putting out that what was supposedly recovered at Roswell looked like a weather balloon to him. A photo op here was no different than the U-2 photo op as part of a cover story. As the line goes, a photo is worth a thousand words, making a story that much more graphic and vivid in the public mind.

Brian B said...

"So I repeat: Johnson DID enter the base and DID enter Ramey's office. The debris shown in the photos IS the real thing, and there was no cover-up."

And obviously a Civil Air Patrol sticker and friends at the base wouldn't have got him in under these conditions either. No way.

After all, this was THE collection point for alien bodies and a 25 foot hexagonal shaped spacecraft and its parts. It was the temporary hub for a cosmic coverup beyond our wildest imaginations.

Heck, down in Roswell they had a full scale alert with MPs driving around confiscating every scrap of paper and threatening to kill children.

Gilles Fernandez said...

David wrote: Another strong, early indication that the weather balloon story was prearranged can be found in the special edition of the Los Angeles Herald-Express the evening of July 8:

Tsss... It seems, David, each time there is something by the Army regarding weather balloons (after the Roswell "release"), you MUST and have the biased reflex to link it to Roswell, at all costs, and not taking into accout the "full" context.

You well know there were PRIOR Roswell, several "weather ballons" cases (so to speack) : Circleville, Columbus (July 6), Atlanta journal concerning Circleville (July 7), Columbus Citizen (July 6), etc.

I mean that to link "weather balloons" were specially concocted due to Roswell, seems to exist only in your mind!?! Or without virulence a strange/ illusory correlation you are making?

Regards,

Gilles.

David Rudiak said...

Don wrote:
Ramey's weather balloon story was greeted with skepticism which was reported in the newspapers. Both civilian and military weather station personnel doubted balloons and rawins could account for the flying saucer stories, and the UPI noted, about Roswell, there were "diehards among the prinicpals" who were not satisfied with Ramey's solution.

If the press followed up on those leads, the story would not die, thus the "campaign", including photo ops of balloon launches. Afterwards, the press reported balloon/target sightings. I recall one, I think from August, in which a stray wearther balloon was tracked across the country for 700 miles.


The military debunking plan, starting with Roswell and then the followup balloon demos, was clearly to try to convince the public that the flying saucers were explained by weather balloons and radar targets. I've detailed this military campaign and the balloon demos here (all documented from the 1947 newspapers):

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

The plan didn't work very well. According to a Gallup poll the following month (the first ever such poll), only 3% of the public believed the saucers could be explained by weather balloons. A third either didn't answer or had no opinion as to what they represented, a slightly smaller percentage thought people were just seeing things. 10% thought hoax. Among respondents who thought people had seen something real, the most popular theory was secret military project (15%). Only 1% thought they were Russian.

http://www.project1947.com/fig/gallup.htm

Either Gallup didn't ask about "space ships" who those who thought they might be were hidden in the no answer/undecided category (33%) or "other explanations" (9%). Clearly some fraction of the public believed they might be ET, as even the Army Air Force at the Pentagon chose to deny the possibility that they were "space ships" (or Russian or our own secret military project) in a press release issued only shortly before the Roswell base press release that they had recovered one. See:

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

And, interestingly, even THE Gen. Ramey and his intelligence chief were debunking the idea of "men from Mars" over a week before the Roswell story broke:

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

cda said...

DR:

The comparison between the U-2 cover-up and an ET craft cover-up is not valid.

The U-2 cover-up was possible (for a very short period) because the CIA never knew the pilot Gary Powers was alive and in Russian hands when they made the phoney 'weather plane' announcement. The CIA assumed he had taken his pills and killed himself (as per his contract).

Whereas with the ET craft there was NO WAY the USAF could possibly know about ETs' intentions. For all they knew, ETs were planning a full scale invasion of the earth and the Roswell craft was merely making a reconnaissance. It was an unknown entity.

So because the US authorities could cover up the former (so they thought) there is no chance they would attempt to cover up the latter.

Even General Ramey was not that clever. Nor was Vandenberg.

Gilles Fernandez said...

The military debunking plan, + The plan didn't work very well
Stupid US militaries: they orchestrated a super plan, but it didn't work very well = FACT in favor of the Roswell crash.
But wait: If the poll have shown people replied "weather ballons", David had said the debunking plan worked very well!
David theory/scenario are always non-refutable!
David, imho and out virulence, if there is a victim of the wreck, Roswell myth is now a wreck, and you a victim of the myth? :p

Regards,

Gilles.

David Rudiak said...

Gilles commented:
Tsss... It seems, David, each time there is something by the Army regarding weather balloons (after the Roswell "release"), you MUST and have the biased reflex to link it to Roswell, at all costs, and not taking into accout the "full" context.

You well know there were PRIOR Roswell, several "weather ballons" cases (so to speack) : Circleville, Columbus (July 6), Atlanta journal concerning Circleville (July 7), Columbus Citizen (July 6), etc.


You repeatedly accuse me of somehow ignoring stories that I dug out of microfilm archives and posted on my website YEARS AGO. However, I am a native speaker of English, you are not, so please stop lecturing me on what these articles supposedly say or what must be deduced from them.

http://roswellproof.homestead.com/Circleville.html

The Circleville articles have the farmer, Sherman Campbell (also his wife) suggesting from July 6 that MAYBE this is what people were mistaking for flying saucers. He himself noted that part of a weather balloon was still attached to the 6-pointed shiny device, and photos showed the attached balloon fragment. Nobody was particularly convinced that this was anything other than some sort of weather device, though suggesting maybe in the air people were seeing it as a flying saucer.

A Circleville reporter who examined Campbell's object described it thusly to a Columbus paper: "It looked like a meteorologist's balloon, with a six-pointed kite-like contraption suspended from the balloon." He too suggested maybe people were mistaking these for flying saucers.

When local military weather services were queried, they had no trouble IDing exactly what it was from mere phone descriptions. The Columbus Citizen photo of July 6, showing Mrs. Campbell holding the device, had in the caption: "Weather experts said it was only a meteorologicist's instrument... note the deflated balloon hanging down from the kite."

Nobody on examination seemed to think it was anything other than a weather instrument and a kite of some kind, though suggesting maybe other's were mistaking it for something else, namely the saucers. Somehow, 2 days later, the drooling idiots at Roswell base didn't seem to be as savy as farmers and reporters, saying they had recovered a real flying disc instead of announcing, like with Circleville, that it was a weather instrument of some kind. (Do you think the intact weather balloon in Ramey's office might have given it away, like the partial one attached to the Circleville kite, that Campbell immediately recognized?)

I mean that to link "weather balloons" were specially concocted due to Roswell, seems to exist only in your mind!?! Or without virulence a strange/ illusory correlation you are making?

BEFORE Roswell, the press, NOT the military, was blowing up the story and saying maybe what Campbell recovered explained the saucers. As Kevin wrote long before me (another person making a Gilles "strange/illusory correlation"), the widely carried Circleville story and photos might well have been the inspiration for Ramey's weather balloon story simply because the press had already planted the seed that maybe this explained the saucers.

But the military didn't coopt it as the official saucer explanation until July 8 and afterward, starting with Roswell. Then they ran with it, as the follow-up planned weather balloon/radar target debunking demos prove. (Before that they were stating they had no idea what the saucers might be. Even Gen. Vandenberg and Gen. Twining were making such comments, saying instead they were being investigated.)

As Gen. Arthur Exon later commented, the weather balloon story was "ready made" as an explanation for Roswell.

David Rudiak said...

Gilles said: (1 of 2)
Stupid US militaries: they orchestrated a super plan, but it didn't work very well = FACT in favor of the Roswell crash.
But wait: If the poll have shown people replied "weather ballons", David had said the debunking plan worked very well!
David theory/scenario are always non-refutable!
David, imho and out virulence, if there is a victim of the wreck, Roswell myth is now a wreck, and you a victim of the myth? :p


Gilles' poor English comprehension is showing again.

What I said is that the military's attempts to convince the public that the saucers IN GEENERAL were explained by weather balloons obviously didn't work well because a Gallup poll a month later indicated that only 3% thought they were explained by weather devices. Far more (15%) thought they might be a secret military project (that the military was covering up). The vast majority expressed no opinion (33%) or thought there was nothing to the saucers (10% though hoax, 29% some sort of illlusion). 9% gave other mostly unspecified explanations. Only 1% thought Russian.

HOWEVER, with Roswell specifically, "weather balloon" was obviously good enough for the press, because they stopped pursing the story at that point and went on to other things. The story mostly disappeared after a day or two. As two news stories suggested, the press may have been just as relieved to drop the story because of the anxiety it was generating in the public at large. The Daily Illini story, e.g., wrote:

http://roswellproof.homestead.com/AP_Chronology.html

That was the word that many editors had been hoping for. [the new press release from Fort Worth announcing it was a mistaken weather balloon] 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!" After the bulletin, the rest of the "95," which was already on the tape, limped through. But the story already was killed. And AP reporters could relax for a while until someone else "found" a flying saucer.

So notice, that this story alone indicates some level of public anxiety that the saucers might represent an invading force from Mars. The idea was certainly out there, and only a few hours before the Army Air Force had issued a pre-Roswell press release specifically denying the saucers could be "space ships".

Another story along these lines was in the Chicago Tribune Roswell story:

http://roswellproof.homestead.com/Chicago_Tribune_July9.html

Fort Worth, Tex.--July 8 (Special)--A disk-jittery nation was treated to a two hour step-up in its platter panic today when an army press agent mistook remnants of a weather balloon for one of the mysterious sky saucers hundreds of persons recently have reported they thought they saw in the air. The press agent put out an unequivocal announcement that flying disk had been found on a New Mexico ranch and was in army possession. He touched off a wave of excitement which traveled by radio and newspaper bulletins thruout [sic] the country. Newspapers were flooded with telephone calls. High army officers in Washington leaped for telephones...

[Ramey expressed the opinion it might be a meteorological device and finally brought in his weather office, Irving Newton, who IDed it as a "ray wind" target, a common weather device.] Newton's words flashed over the wires to bring relief to a worried public.

David Rudiak said...

(part 2 of 2)
So what worried the public so much? Based on the denial AAF press release a few hours earlier, the AAF thought the public was apparently worried they might be: 1)a Russian weapon; 2) a new secret military project; 3) ET "space ships". Thus they denied the possibility that the saucers could be any of these three things.

Two rare stories I have come across have two of the U.S.'s foremmost science experts, Drs. Vannevar Bush and Merle Tuve, denying any knowledge of the saucers.

http://roswellproof.homestead.com/bush_article.html

One of these stories notes the public had never gotten over the fact that the terrifying A-bomb was developed in total secrecy right in our midst. There was fear that a similarly destructive and terrifying weapon might be developed again right under our noses.

"Long after Hiroshima and Nagasaki--long after the war was over, in fact," one psychologist said recently in a public meeting, "the effectiveness of the secrecy continues to prey on the mass mind." For that reason, he added, the average skeptical citizen today puts little if any credence in the official denial of Army, Navy and atomic experts. Such a frame of mind would make it a cinch of purely mythical secret weapon to excite and frighten millions of citizens who would feel that was almost no one to whom they could turn for the truth ...

Gilles Fernandez said...

OK David, so I must left your "myth" to Native English speackers despite PROOVING "weather balloons stories" appeared in newspapers before Roswell and You/Rudiak cause "an American" choose to link all Army speeches regarding "weather balloons" to Roswell. lol/mdr.

Interesting (poor) argument!

Ah, Circleville inspirated a "Weather balloons" cover-up and a super US Army "PsyOp". But no really having success! But if the poll showed "weather balloons" as big results, your scenario wins too!!!

Interesting... Dunno if US Army was inspirated by Circleville for a supra-mega-hyper malevolent operation or David developping his fictional, but childish "cultural roman" from Circleville case. Anyway, you are cute as a Roswell-UFO defender.

But well, David is fluent in English, not me. He devoted more 15 years on the case. Must shut up, He is so convincing! :p

Regards,

Gilles

Gilles Fernandez said...

I fogot:

Concerning the first Gallup poll concerning "flying Saucers/UFO", how Doctor David Rudiak explains that "from another world/Mars" (or an entry like it) was not proposed by the Institute as possible answer? They received "threats" or are part of the cover-up too? They were stupid?An error, crual mistake? What a romance David Rudiak will propose again?
Regards,
Gilles

Louis Nicholson said...

Hi. I'm new on this blog and do not profess to have anywhere near the level of knowledge of this topic as many who have regularly posted, so please excuse my ignorance. I do, however, have a keen interest in whether we are alone in the universe and have always been fascinated by the topic of ufology generally and Roswell particularly.

Concerning the subject of this thread, I have a few questions. According to some, what is in the photograph is really what landed in Roswell. Its my understanding that the latest official Air Force Roswell explanation is that it was an alleged classified Project Mogul balloon that came down. If those two assertions are correct then wouldn't that mean that the photograph depicts the remains of a classified Mogul balloon? Do we know whether the military, prior to Roswell, ever allowed anyone to photograph Project Mogul balloons or other classified objects? Has anyone attempted to do a detailed and thorough analysis of the photographed materials to determine whether those could (or are)the actual remains of a Mogul balloon? I believe I remember hearing Kevin say in an interview that while the Project Mogul program was classified, the materials used in its balloons were not. If that is so, I guess such an analysis may not help. Then again, perhaps one could calculate how much and what types of materials would be included in the typical Mogul balloon launch and compare that to what is in the photograph. Also, if the Mogul materials were themselves just mundane and ordinary weather balloon material, why would the Army insist that no one be allowed to pick up and keep pieces of it? Also, can any lettering or numbers be discerned on the materials themselves to ascertain any clues as its origin? Did Johnson ever say that he asked to touch the material?

KRandle said...

Gentlemen -

We are off topic here. This was about J. Bond Johnson and his trip to Ramey's office. This other stuff is not relevant to the discussion. Let's rein it in...

Louis Nicholson said...

After reading the Balthauser interview, I answered my last question. Johnson did handle the some of the material because he felt he needed to rearrange it for the photo shoot.

Gilles Fernandez said...

"Do we know whether the military, prior to Roswell, ever allowed anyone to photograph Project Mogul balloons or other classified objects?"

Hello Louis,

In my 2010 book (in French http://www.sceptiques.qc.ca/dictionnaire/userfiles/file/Rencontre-Du-Premier-Mythe-Mise-en-Page-GF-SQ.pdf ), I presented a memo concerning Mogull.
In fact, only the goal of the project, how to assemble a cluster, the scientific dataes obtained, etc. were "secret".
Not the composants of a cluster (which included RAWIN or radar targets and neoprene envelopp for balloon, as you seen in the F.W. photo).
So, imho, no problem to have such stuff to be photographied: they revealled nothing regarding Mogull and what was "protected".

Regards,

Gilles

cda said...

Kevin:

Sorry to have to go over old ground. Can you tell us please:

1. How did Johnson get dragged into the Roswell investigations? Was it he who got in touch with you or was it the reverse?
2. How did he hear of the revival of interest in the case?
3. Had he read any Roswell books or articles BEFORE being interviewed?
4. Who first interviewed him?
5. The inevitable question: did Stan Friedman ever interview him and if so, was it before you did, or after?
6. Did he possess his own written newspaper article(s) in the FT Worth Star Telegram, or did he have to retrieve them from a library?
7. About how many times was he interviewed altogether, by all people?

I ask these because you have stated somewhere that at the end you hardly trusted a single thing he said.

Steve Sawyer said...

@ CDA:

"Ramey could easily have said things were classified, and that would have been the end of it."

Really? Then why didn't he?

If anything, declaring "things were classified" would have had the opposite effect of quelling the controversy generated initially by the press coverage created by the Haut press release, don't you think?

Saying things were "classified" would have caused an immediate press/public uproar as to just what was classified and why, accelerating questions from the press for more forthcoming and reasonable answers. That just wouldn't do.

I suspect that's the last thing Ramey and higher headquarters would have wanted, which is why it didn't happen. Precisely why do you disagree?

The key was to urgently "deflate" [Heh!] the initial AAF story as quickly as possible with the "weather balloon" story when it was soon realized the Haut info going public raised some rather difficult and awkward questions that declaring things "classified" would have only radically exacerbated to a potentially unmanageable degree, IMHO.

It would have backfired to mysteriously claim "hey, it's classified!" and blown things up (more in/deflation metaphors - heh!) even more than Haut's actions already had, at least at first.

* * *

"Either the debris in the pics is the real stuff or it is not. If it is the substituted stuff (i.e. part of the 'balloon switch') it was done to cover up the real debris, in which case it was part of a top secret plan to fool the press and public, in which case the base would have certainly been closed to the public until ALL the debris and bodies were permanently off site (which allegedly took two or more days according to reports). This means NOBODY without a 'need to know' would be allowed past the front gate on that day, July 8th. This includes J.Bond Johnson.

"With a secret like that, Ramey would NOT have risked any John Q. Citizen even entering the base that day.

"So I repeat: Johnson DID enter the base and DID enter Ramey's office. The debris shown in the photos IS the real thing, and there was no cover-up."


Well, then, "case closed" -- I'm glad you've presumptively figured it all out, CDA. 8^}

Interesting, although contradictory and simplistic logic, Christopher, based on what actually happened in Roswell and nationally with the Haut press release prior to Ramey getting directly involved.

I'd also suggest military bases are usually rather large, often having more than one building, and plenty of security, so there would have been no difficulty hiding and securing something, if there was something like that, somewhere else on base other than Ramey's staff office.

By that I mean if early press reports, based on Col. Blanchard telling Haut to put out a press release stating the AAF had taken possession of a "disk" (and only a couple of weeks after the Arnold sighting had raised national headlines!) generated wide national press, which it did, and thus amped up growing public curiosity and attention, then that fact alone must have been quickly realized on the part of elements of the AAF, like Ramey and above, to have been a really dumb mistake, with national security implications, that rapidly needed to be quelled, whether there was an actual "ET crash" or not.

Thus, Ramey's very effective effort to dismiss any such obvious questions, inspired by the Haut press contacts, as just being based in mistaken identification of simple weather balloon and rawin debris.

And, that does not eliminate the possibility of a "switch," either.

Feel free to disagree, but you'll need more facts than your presumptive analysis or odd surmise provides to be either logical or evidence-based. Your suggested correlations cannot be assumed to be causation. At least that's my opinion about yours.

Steve Sawyer said...

"Do we know whether the military, prior to Roswell, ever allowed anyone to photograph Project Mogul balloons or other classified objects?"

I've always been curious as to whether there are any existing photographs of the technical heart of Mogul, the directional low-frequency microphone array suspended by the balloon array designed to detect the kind of distant audio at the proper elevation channel known back then to transmit the acoustic signature of an atomic bomb, the classified purpose of Project Mogul.

Does anyone know? And if not, why not? It's long been declassified, right?

The reason I ask is because I would guess any such "microphone array" would have to have been enclosed in some kind of container, with ULF microphones arrayed around it's circumference in a possibly circular or "points of the compass" configuration, in order to detect the directional source of any nuclear explosions Mogul was created to try and find.

Could the microphone and radio electronics package have been either "disk-shaped" or hexagonal in shape or appearance, in other words? Or what? And, what size was that critical component assembly?

I'd really like to know, and if any photos of the central classified part of Mogul are available or not, and if not, why not (to be, as usual, so loquaciously redundant)? 8^}

Jeanne Ruppert said...

CDA wrote:

"Either the debris in the pics is the real stuff or it is not."

Some of it might be the 'real stuff'. I just listened again to the Paracast interview with Ron Regehr taped last May, which I think I linked here around that time. His forthcoming book on Roswell coauthored with Neil Morris (sp?) provides new information (some of it discussed in the interview) and will reopen many issues discussed here at KR's page. I highly recommend listening to it. The first link below goes to the commercial-free version available with a subscription to the 'Paracast Plus' version ($5/year). The second goes to the basic version with (many annoying) commercials. The book should be out some time in the coming months, the sooner the better.

http://www.theparacast.com/resources/Paracast-05-17-15.mp3

http://www.theparacast.com/podcast/now-playing-may-17-2015-ronald-regehr/

The interview with Regehr begins at 19:00 into the tape.



KRandle said...

CDA -
Kevin:

Sorry to have to go over old ground. Can you tell us please:

1. How did Johnson get dragged into the Roswell investigations? Was it he who got in touch with you or was it the reverse?

I was chasing down the pictures taken in Ramey’s office and learned from the Bettmann Photo Archives that some of them were taken by a photographer from the Star-Telegram. I learned from them that all these photographs (many, many from the newspaper) were housed in the Special Collections at the University of Texas at Arlington. I called them and Betsy Hudon mentioned that I was the second person to call recently and that the other fellow said he had taken the pictures. I wanted to talk to him but she wouldn’t tell me who it was. I asked if she would forward a letter to him and she agreed. Ironically, she sent me a copy of the cover letter she wrote so I knew who it was. Johnson called me and left his telephone number so that I could call him. So, I sent out the feeler allowing him to respond to me, which he did. I called him to learn what he knew about the case.

2. How did he hear of the revival of interest in the case?
I don’t know what he heard but from talking to him, he was doing research into pictures he had taken and these were among them. He might have been looking for them specifically, but this was early 1989 before the big explosion of Roswell information. I would guess it was late 1988 that he contacted UTA looking for his pictures.

3. Had he read any Roswell books or articles BEFORE being interviewed?

I know that he had a copy of the article he had written for the newspaper. He read it to me during our first conversation. He was familiar with the In Search Of… episode that dealt with Roswell and he knew the names of some of the people involved. It was also clear that he hadn’t studied the case and was making a few guesses about things.

4. Who first interviewed him?

I did.

5. The inevitable question: did Stan Friedman ever interview him and if so, was it before you did, or after?

I don’t know if Friedman ever interviewed him but I know that I was the first. Moore and Shandera jumped in later to “interview” him and that was the point his story began to radically change.

6. Did he possess his own written newspaper article(s) in the FT Worth Star Telegram, or did he have to retrieve them from a library?

I don’t know where he got the copies, but in that first interview he was reading from that July 9 article and claimed he had written it.

7. About how many times was he interviewed altogether, by all people?

I don’t know. I interviewed him twice before Shandera and Moore got involved. Once they published their nonsense, I called him twice more, asking some very tough questions and quoting to him, what he had told me. I eventually sent him copies of the taped interviews (twice) and my transcripts (twice) to prove to him that I had not misquoted him. He never acknowledged any of that but continued to claim I had misquoted him. He said that I recorded the interviews without his permission, but you hear me ask, on tape, if he minded if I recorded it. He said I called him cold and he hadn’t had the chance to review his “UFO” file, but in that first interview he read to me from his article.

I ask these because you have stated somewhere that at the end you hardly trusted a single thing he said.

That was because I could demonstrate how often and radically he had altered his story. I have a very thick file of this. Had he stayed with the original tale, that was corroborated by other documentation, everything would have been fine, but he had to expand his role, say things and then take them back.

KRandle said...

Steve -

while this moves us slightly off topic (though not too far) here's what we know. The name, Mogul, was not classified and is mentioned in Albert Crary's diary and field notes a number of times. The equipment used was off-the-shelf items and were not classified. The purpose of the experiments in New Mexico by the New York University were not classified which was to develop a constant level balloon (the ultimate purpose, to spy on the Soviets was classified). Photographs of a Mogul launch (in reality an event staged for the newspapers) were taken on July 10 and appeared in newspapers around the country. We know this is the Mogul group because Charles Moore told me that the ladder that appears in one of the pictures was one that he had bought with their petty cash.

I think that answers the question.

Wind Swords said...

Dave Rudiak said:

'The idea was certainly out there, and only a few hours before the Army Air Force had issued a pre-Roswell press release specifically denying the saucers could be "space ships".'

If the air force was so intent on debunking Roswell as a weather balloon why would they issue such a press release just before the incident happened? They suddenly changed there minds when the Haut PR said they actually got a hold of one?

Paul Young said...

I had to read the opening post twice, because I'm baffled by so much about the photoshoot in Ramey's office. The whole thing contradicts both the ETH and sceptical sides of the fence.
First and foremost,of course, is why bother to transport something as mundane as a destroyed balloon all the way from Roswell anyway?

But, getting away from that...
Of all places to display this junk, why use Ramey's posh office. In KR's opening post he quotes JB Johnson as saying ... "I posed General Ramey with this debris piled in the middle of his rather large and plush office. It seemed incongruous to have this smelly garbage piled on the floor… spread out on the floor of this plush, big office that was probably, oh, 16 by 20 at least."
Wouldn't it have been easier to have this "smelly garbage" photographed by the press in one of their hangers rather than stink the Generals office out?

This, to me as an "ETHer", would suggest it was a highly stage-managed event...but if I put my sceptic hat on for a moment, then this contradicts the suggestion that JB Johnson's editor sent him to the base,off his own bat, unexpected and unannounced. (Am I missing something here?)
If I were Ramey, I'd be waiting ON THE RUNWAY for this plane to arrive...eager and anxious to see this stuff that excited Blanchard so much. On realising it was a bloody balloon, I'd have sent a wire to Blanchard ordering him to get his head tested...let the press photograph the junk, for the record...then probably put it on a bonfire where it belonged.

But no!
He has this smelly garbage taken to his office?! Even though he's NOT expecting the press! JB Johnson says he had come unannounced, yet all indications are that Ramey was expecting him and had set-up his office to facilitate a photoshoot..

It's very late here...and maybe I just need some sleep...but this JB Johnson photoshoot story doesn't make sense (to me) from either an ETH OR sceptic outlook...nighty night

Don Maor said...

CDA concluded:
"So I repeat: Johnson DID enter the base and DID enter Ramey's office. The debris shown in the photos IS the real thing, and there was no cover-up."

I see CDA, the debris shown in the photos IS the real thing, there was not cover up, but on the other hand we we have the official explanation from the USAF that they were indeed covering up of a SECRET Mogul Ballon. So now CDA is in a paradoxical situation in which he (CDA) somehow concludes that there was not cover-up, and on the other hand CDA know and probably accepts the USAF report in which it has been clarified that Ramey was indeed COVERING UP a Mogul Balloon.

It seems like CDA is living in a Schrodinger's Cat reality.

Don Maor said...

Gilles said:
So, imho, no problem to have such stuff to be photographied: they revealled nothing regarding Mogull and what was "protected".

So if it was safe to have parts of the SECRET Mogul balloon photographed, it would also would be safe to photograph parts of a switched, false debris, having already sent the material with strange properties to Fort Worth, etc.

This shows that there is nothing relevant in CDA's supposedly ‘logical’ deductions.

Don said...

Maor: "It seems like CDA is living in a Schrodinger's Cat reality."

Actually, a skeptic explained this (it may have been Printy): since a Mogul train had weather balloons and rawins attached to it, Ramey didn't actually "cover up" anything. I know. I know.

Regards,

Don

Wind Swords said...

Paul Young:

"First and foremost, of course, is why bother to transport something as mundane as a destroyed balloon all the way from Roswell anyway?"

I have heard others say that once the 509th press release went out, even though Ramey suspected it was a weather balloon, the brouhaha over the announcement led to the higher ups wanting to see the stuff first hand. If you're of the prosaic solution to what happened at Roswell it is reasonable for the technology division (Wright Field in Dayton OH) to want to see what was found - remember this all happened within a few hours. Despite the suspicion that it was balloon fragments they wanted to make sure of what it was. What if it really was a "flying disc", like the ones seen by Arnold and others? That doesn't mean the air force was thinking aliens, "flying disc" could have been any number of things in 1947 as Kevin has said, maybe something foreign. Of course ET proponents will say that's nonsense. You will have to decide for yourself if this would be a reasonable response from the air force or not.

If you're of the ET solution to what happened at Roswell then the debris in Ramey's office was used to further a coverup for what really was recovered. It was there for Ramey to show to the press that it was not a "flying saucer" but just a weather balloon. Except that Ramey didn't call a press conference to show off what he had. Johnson showed up on his own...

"The whole thing contradicts both the ETH and sceptical sides of the fence."

You said it! But I think that most of the Roswell story does, not just the Ramey photo op.

Louis Nicholson said...

Paul Young wrote

“This, to me as an "ETHer", would suggest it was a highly stage-managed event...but if I put my sceptic hat on for a moment, then this contradicts the suggestion that JB Johnson's editor sent him to the base,off his own bat, unexpected and unannounced. (Am I missing something here?) “


Winds Swords said:

“If you're of the ET solution to what happened at Roswell then the debris in Ramey's office was used to further a coverup for what really was recovered. It was there for Ramey to show to the press that it was not a "flying saucer" but just a weather balloon. Except that Ramey didn't call a press conference to show off what he had. Johnson showed up on his own... “


Good points.

Maybe what happened is that Ramey was in process of examing the real debris (whatever it was) and then suddenly got a call from the front gate or whatever saying that an unexpected reporter, Johnson, had just shown up. Rather than have an MP excort Johnson off the premises, Ramey quickly summoned someone to bring in some boxed weather balloons and take out the real stuff as quickly as possible. Once the boxes of balloons were quickly brought in, Ramey and/or an assistant quickly started unpacking them but did not finish before Johnson showed up.

That may explain why Johnson said in the Balthauser interview:

“When I entered General Ramey's office some packages already had been unwrapped and the debris was heaped in an unarranged pile on the brown meat wrapping paper spread out on the general's nice office carpet -- which both then and now seems rather odd.”. . . I do recall that I was concerned that the pile of debris was very unphotogenic and that I attempted to "pose" the pieces of debris in some kind of order that would make an acceptable photo. Nothing seemed to fit together and I believe that I opened one of the unopened packages and added the contents to the display.”

Paul Young said...

@ Windswords and Louis... I'm just glad it's not only me that can't understand why Ramey would dump smelly junk into his plush office when it would have been easier to walk to the hanger meet the the plane itself, and inspect it there!

He could only have wanted this crap in his office if he wanted to use it for a press photo opportunity.
But we're lead to believe that he didn't invite the press... That JB Johnson only turned up by chance?

There's nothing about "Roswell" that's straightforward!

Don said...

side note: Somewhere in the recent discussions there were issues raised about the phrase "victims of the wreck". I did a search on an online news archive on the exact phrase:

Number of hits per decade:

2010's (12)
2000's (97)
1990's (46)
1980's (52)
1970's (135)
1960's (264)
1950's (360)
1940's (400)
1930's (411)
1920's (634)
1910's (1,185)
1900's (2,281)

1940s:

1940 (32)
1941 (36)
1942 (32)
1943 (75)
1944 (37)
1945 (16)
1946 (26)
1947 (107) <---
1948 (29)
1949 (10)

Regards,

Don

cda said...

Don Maor:

It should be obvious that I was referring to a cover-up of an EXTRATERRESTRIAL VISIT, not the cover-up of a Mogul balloon.

I am thus NOT in a "paradoxical situation" as you put it. Please take your helmet and mask off and look at the real world!

Steve:

There seems no end to this debate on what Ramey would, or should have done in the circumstances. I still firmly say that if Ramey had realised the debris & bodies were 'not of this earth' and decided to make it all top secret (which is what the ETHers insist was done) then NOBODY out of the loop, including all civilian visitors, would have been allowed past the gate, let alone into Ramey's office.

The situation is not the same as, for example, if atomic bombs were stored there in a fixed secret storage area. This was a sudden emergency and Ramey could not have so quickly confined the debris & bodies coming from Roswell into a single room, substituted balloon debris and then invited a civilian reporter into his office! It is inconceivable, with all the panic and rush in a sudden 'emergency' as this allegedly was. Therefore the logic is that Ramey would NOT have allowed reporters to enter the base that day, or probably the next day either. Think of the risks involved! There was also the chance, however small, of some over-excited or loose lipped guy leaking the great news to Johnson.

The fact that he DID allow Johnson onto the base and into his office indicates to me that the debris was indeed simply balloon and radar reflector debris, and there was no secret to cover up. I am surprised you suggest otherwise.

Jeanne:

You are surely not suggesting that both the real (ET debris) AND substituted balloon and radar target debris appear in the photos?! As to the forthcoming Regehr/Morris book, you write: "The book should be out some time in the coming months, the sooner the better."

Maybe, but I expect there are a great many who have seen more than enough Roswell books over the years, and are not too keen on another. I am one of these.

Lance said...

Don,

Thanks for the above!

Did you happen to note how many of those 107 references had to do with aircraft incidents? The phrases "car wreck" and` "ship wreck", I am sure are common, but was the term used for air crashes, etc.?

Thanks,

Lance

Tim Hebert said...

Off topic, one veteran to another acknowledging Kevin's past service. I extend the same acknowledgement to others that have served who post comments on this site.

Don said...

You're welcome, Lance. I didn't look at the stories except in the squib for each hit in 1947. It seems to have been used for any wreck, railroad, ship, plane, car, truck, but I didn't look that closely. It was the sense the phrase sounded 'odd' to many that got my attention. You can see in the list that as time goes by it is less frequent; so that may explain some of its oddness to us. It seems common in 1947, and the frequency of it stands out in 1947 in that decade.

I also looked for a wreck, in the same week as Roswell, that might have been of concern to Ramey. The only candidate I found was the B-17 crash in Sibley, La, on the 1st or 2nd of July, out of Barksdale AAF (which was of the 8th AAF). It is rather mysterious and unexplained, at least in the news stories I found. There was at least one 'victim' of the wreck, but the phrase doesn't appear in the stories I found.

For all I know it is well known, but it's the first I've heard of it.

Regards,

Don

Unknown said...

Louise Nicholsen -

"Maybe what happened is that Ramey was in process of examing the real debris (whatever it was) and then suddenly got a call from the front gate or whatever saying that an unexpected reporter, Johnson, had just shown up. Rather than have an MP excort Johnson off the premises, Ramey quickly summoned someone to bring in some boxed weather balloons and take out the real stuff as quickly as possible. Once the boxes of balloons were quickly brought in, Ramey and/or an assistant quickly started unpacking them but did not finish before Johnson showed up."

But isn´t there testimony that Johnson wasn´t the only reporter there (Newton, Dubose?)
And I think Maj. Charles A. Cashon, who waa Rameys Public affairs officer was also present, so I doubt Johnsons visit came as a suprise for Ramey.

Lance said...

Many thanks!

Just to be clear, are you saying "Victim(s) of the Wreck" does appear in aircraft crash stories from 1947?

Lance

Unknown said...

cda

The news from Roswell that a disc had been recovered stirred up a lot of interest world wide. So you say the correct, logical thing for Ramey to do would be to close the base for security reasons. As it turned out he did the opposite, he opened the base to at least one reporter. This was his effort to get the press off his back. And damn, it worked for a very long time. Proving you dead wrong!.

Don said...

Lance, That's a good question.

I wrote "it seems...but I didn't look closely". I'd satisfied my curiosity about whether the phrase was in use then.

There was one story with "the victims of the flaming wreck", which was an airplane crash. There may be more. This matter not worth it to me to spend the day peering at faded jpegs of newspapers. If it ever seems worth it, then I'll do it.

The majority of stories are of trains and cars -- more common transportation back then than aircraft, but the expression is found in plane accidents whether in 47 or 46 or 48, I'd guess. I wasn't aware that was the issue.

Regards,

Don

Brian B said...

@ Neal

"As it turned out he did the opposite, he opened the base to at least one reporter. This was his effort to get the press off his back. And damn, it worked for a very long time. Proving you dead wrong!."

I'm supposing Ramey told you this himself since you seem to have it all figured out. Can you provide the documentation that this is what he decided to do?

David Rudiak said...

Don wrote:
side note: Somewhere in the recent discussions there were issues raised about the phrase "victims of the wreck". I did a search on an online news archive on the exact phrase:

Number of hits per decade:


Thanks Don for compiling this. I did a similar, not-so-exhaustive electronic search some years back when this point was previously raised and got similar results. The phrase "victims of the wreck" was VERY common at the turn of the 20th century, in reference mostly to large public-transit disasters like ship wrecks, train wrecks, and street-car wrecks. Then in the 20th century, it slowly became less common, but didn't exactly die out either, with the phrase in your survey still being used at about 20% the rate in the 1940s as in 1900, actually peaking in 1947, as you note, in your 1940's breakdown. (Maybe because there were a LOT of big air crashes in June 1947, which led Truman to create the Air Board to try to improve air travel safety, which it did.)

Why the phrase waned in use we can only speculate, but maybe because public transportation became safer with more government regulation and technical advances. The phrase was most often employed regarding big disasters, like ship wrecks and train wrecks. Maybe also because more and more people got cars and stopped using public transit. Multiple crash victims became less common, and the deaths more diffuse. (The U.S. loses as many people EVERY MONTH to car crashes as we lost on 9/11, yet there is almost no commentary on this in the press because it is so common and spread out, unlike 9/11, a highly dramatic event. Car deaths are so routine, often they aren't even reported any more.)

Lance raised the issue of whether "victims of the wreck" is used for air crashes. Yes it was, but not as often as for other crashes like ship wrecks, train wrecks, etc. Could be a statistical sampling problem, since air travel was not common in the early part of the 20th century, and air crashes are now few and far between. Far fewer people die in air crashes these days than car crashes, or ship wrecks, train wrecks, street car wrecks, etc. in the early 20th century.

Don said...

David, I'd only looked to see if the phrase was common or exceptional back then. It seems common. The service I used does not include the major newspapers "of record", like the Times and the Post. I'd recommend to Lance a service with more extensive press coverage for what he is asking.

And I was side tracked when I came across the Barksdale crash. Are you familiar with it?

Best Regards,

Don

cda said...

Neal:

You said "proving you are dead wrong", meaning I am dead wrong in my conclusion that the damn stuff shown in the photos was the balloon and radar reflector debris from the ranch.

Alas, it is you who are wrong as the very fact that Ramey allowed a reporter onto the base is proof that the debris was free for public viewing and there were no secrets to be kept.

I repeat: you DO NOT risk allowing the press or civilians onto an air base if there is a sudden emergency and there is top secret material being moved about (which there was if the ET believers are to be believed).

But it is clear, once again, that whatever we say the debate will not die down.

Unknown said...

Brian

Here we go again, you asking for documentation. Show some that proves otherwise.

cda

You do like to twist logic and misunderstand the English language. You claim out of thin air that Ramey should have closed the base. The FACT is he didn't and it DID get the press off his back forever for him. Another FACT, the story from Roswell died and wasn't revived for many years. You can make up stuff all you like it doesn't change what Ramey actually did.

Your conclusion on the debris is wrong for an entirely different reason, testimony from witnesses who said the debris was switched. They were there and you were not.

David Rudiak said...

Don wrote:
David, I'd only looked to see if the phrase was common or exceptional back then. It seems common. The service I used does not include the major newspapers "of record", like the Times and the Post. I'd recommend to Lance a service with more extensive press coverage for what he is asking.

And I was side tracked when I came across the Barksdale crash. Are you familiar with it?


No, but, also in the process of answering Gilles, I just came across "The Chatsworth Wreck" in searching Google books (first entry using "victims of the wreck" search phrase). This was a book written in 1949 about an 1887 train wreck, using "the victims of the wreck" twice on p. 58. The next entry on Google books is from 1919 with "and the victims of the wreck". (As you go down the list, the Ramey memo makes it appearance in some books, but this is irrelevant to the discussion.)

Brice said...

@Kevin : Thanks for clarifying this issue as it seemed some/many - myself included, thought it was the army that called the journalists to come to the base. Having listened some time ago to the paracast interview of Ron Regehr about his recent work on the photos, I remember that he said upon comparing the focus length of the cameras used, there were 3 separate sets of photos (one set by JB), so at least 2 or 3 different photographers (I don't recal exactly). I know it's very late now but it might be interesting to find out who the other photographers are (private, army's?), if still alive they might have some additionnal informations about the photographic session? What do you think?

Paul said :

"First and foremost,of course, is why bother to transport something as mundane as a destroyed balloon all the way from Roswell anyway?"

Sure, it is mind blogging that RAAF officers weren't able to identifiy the remnaints of a mere weather balloon and sent them to Fort Worth, as well as it was a General (Ramey) who had to handle this at Fort Worth, and thereafter when it had been identified as a weather balloon, still been sent to Wright Field. What a damn story for a simple weather balloon!

"But, getting away from that...
Of all places to display this junk, why use Ramey's posh office. In KR's opening post he quotes JB Johnson as saying ... "I posed General Ramey with this debris piled in the middle of his rather large and plush office. It seemed incongruous to have this smelly garbage piled on the floor… spread out on the floor of this plush, big office that was probably, oh, 16 by 20 at least."
Wouldn't it have been easier to have this "smelly garbage" photographed by the press in one of their hangers rather than stink the Generals office out?

This, to me as an "ETHer", would suggest it was a highly stage-managed event...but if I put my sceptic hat on for a moment, then this contradicts the suggestion that JB Johnson's editor sent him to the base,off his own bat, unexpected and unannounced. (Am I missing something here?)"

Given his rank and duties, it also seemed to me a bit awkward that Ramey would display all the wreckage in his own office when it may have been done elsewhere. In anycase if we were to trust the memories of JBJ, his editor told him that the stuff would be located in Ramey's office, which would mean at least someone of the journal (his editor?) has called the base so they knew that (otherwise how could they know the stuff would be in Ramey's office and not elsewhere?). So he wouldn't have been unexpected when he showed up at the base.

David Rudiak said...

In one or more Johnson interviews, he commented he couldn't understand why Ramey would have such stinky garbage in his office instead of in a salvage yard where it would normally be taken. I think the obvious reason he would have it there was for a photo op. Another point is that unlike others photographed that day--Marcel, Dubose, and Newton--Ramey was in full dress uniform--therefore planned or hoped for photo op!

Whether Ramey contacted the press or not and invited them out, he had been laying a trail of bread crumbs to his door for the past hour before Johnson showed up. Ramey was making various comments that the object was in his office (even if he wasn't, based on some of the nonsense he was quoted as saying as to what it allegedly looked like.) Eventually, it was very likely some newspaper or news agency would send out a photographer to the base hoping to get photos of the Roswell "flying disc" that Ramey said he had.

People seem to forget there was an absolutely enormous press feeding frenzy seeking more information the moment the Roswell base press release went out over the wires. Johnson also recalled, e.g., that after he returned to the newspaper to develop the photos, AP sent over a wirephoto machine from Dallas to get the photos out over the wire ASAP, something he couldn't remembering happening before or afterward. Johnson said the prints were put on the wirephoto machine still wet and he also had to rush the development, not completely drying the negatives.

If Johnson or some other photographer hadn't arrived as hoped or planned, all they had to do was pick up the phone and call someone local to send one out. Even if Johnson's newspaper wasn't contacted by the base to send a photographer, it's not some killer argument that Ramey had no intention of having a photo op and it just sort of happened, therefore this had to be the "real" stuff recovered. (Remember Ramey's dress uniform? That's very difficult to explain if Ramey wasn't planning a photo session. There is no evidence I know of that there was some sort of other ceremonial event that Ramey attended that day requring that he dress up.)

Louis Nicholson said...

Paul said :

"First and foremost,of course, is why bother to transport something as mundane as a destroyed balloon all the way from Roswell anyway?"

What about the possibility that it WAS a Mogul balloon but there was a great mystery as to WHY it came down the way it did and there was a need for further analysis. Maybe something intercepted the balloon and contributed to the debris field and the Army needed to study that? Is there any accounts of other Mogul balloons falling out of the sky? If so, what caused them to fall and what did their debris look like? Is there any evidence that any Mogul balloons have been sabotaged or shot down after being launched? I know I'm just grasping at straws here, but apparently so is everyone else. Like Paul said, nothing about Roswell is straightforeward.

Brice said...

@Kevin : It seems JBJ said in your first interview (http://kevinrandle.blogspot.fr/2009/10/ufos-ramey-memo-j-bond-johnson-and-me.html) something that somehow contradicts that it was the star-telegram journal that took the initiative to send a photographer (JBJ). I put the excerpt concerned below with an emphasis :

"KDR: Marcel is ordered off Roswell and they load the material into a B-29 and flew it to Fort Worth for Ramey to look at.

JBJ: That's when I got into it because the AP picked up that they were flying it down there. And I walked into the Star-Telegram. I was primarily a reporter but I had a camera, Speed-Graphic, that I carried in my car. I worked night police. I was a back-up photographer. The city editor came over and said, 'Bond, you got your camera?" And I said yes and he said, "Get out to General Ramey's office. They've got a flying saucer and they're bringing it from Roswell." And they were flying it down there.

KDR: I think what happened was that they realized what they had. They realized that it was something extremely unusual. That it really was an alien spacecraft. Then Ramey comes up with this weather-balloon nonsense.

JBJ: Right. That was a hoax, I think that's when they called and what I saw . I think I was duped... And it's interesting that if it was a ray-wind [sic]or a balloon that the commander of Roswell wouldn't have known that and that...

It seems to me here that JBJ was saying it was the base that had called?

Brice said...

Louis Nicholson said :

"What about the possibility that it WAS a Mogul balloon but there was a great mystery as to WHY it came down the way it did and there was a need for further analysis. Maybe something intercepted the balloon and contributed to the debris field and the Army needed to study that?"

IMHO this is a very audacious hypothesis, and regardless of its value, it doesn't adress the problem of why the RAAF officers couldn't identify the remnaints of a weather balloon as shown in Ramey's office. But IMO, as developped in KR's blog, there are too many issues that invalidate a Mogul balloon explanation.

Brian B said...

"KDR: I think what happened was that they realized what they had. They realized that it was something extremely unusual. That it really was an alien spacecraft. Then Ramey comes up with this weather-balloon nonsense."

Err... Doesn't that seem like leading the witness during a fact finding investigation?

cda said...

Neal Foy:

I never said Ramey closed the base. I merely said he would not have allowed unauthorised persons, i.e. civilians, onto it if the top secret activities, as claimed, were going on.

NOBODY actually saw any debris switched. It is the usual 2nd or 3rd hand testimony, or just plain assumption. The debris in the photos is such obvious terrestrial junk that ETH promoters just HAD to find a way out of their predicament. Hence the alleged 'switch'.

David Rudiak said...

Brice:

"KDR: Marcel is ordered off Roswell and they load the material into a B-29 and flew it to Fort Worth for Ramey to look at.

JBJ: That's when I got into it because the AP picked up that they were flying it down there. And I walked into the Star-Telegram. I was primarily a reporter but I had a camera, Speed-Graphic, that I carried in my car. I worked night police. I was a back-up photographer. The city editor came over and said, 'Bond, you got your camera?" And I said yes and he said, "Get out to General Ramey's office. They've got a flying saucer and they're bringing it from Roswell." And they were flying it down there."

...It seems to me here that JBJ was saying it was the base that had called?


Quite possible. Either that or the editor deduced from news wires (plus maybe phone calls) for the half hour BEFORE Johnson walked into the Star-Telegram, that Ramey and his spokespeople plus the Pentagon press room were all reporting that the object was in Ramey's office with Ramey giving descriptions of it (but some impossible, such as the that it resembled a "boxkite" 25 feet in diameter if reconstructed and "hexagonal" in shape--therefore nothing there in his office yet--Marcel was still in the air flying to Fort Worth).

So as I said, Ramey et. al. had laid a trail of bread crumbs to Ramey's door BEFORE Johnson was dispatched by his editor. The Star-Telegram was the biggest paper in the area and closest to the base, so it's not remotely surprising they would or could on their own send a photographer out to take pictures of the big news story of the day.

David Rudiak said...

Searching the electronic newspaper collection at ancestry.com (same as Newspaperarchive.com) just for 1947, here are some instances of “victims of the wreck” being used:

Norwich (N.Y.) Sun, Feb. 21, 1947: Photo caption of passenger train wreck killing 25 and injuring 124. “One of the victims of the wreck [name] is shown.”

Connellsville (PA) Daily Courier, Feb. 22, 1947: Same train wreck: “...three apprentice seamen reported missing and feared victims of the wreck had reported [for duty].”

Hagerstown (MD) Daily Mail, May 2, 1947: Train wreck, 5 dead, 6 critically injured: “A two-week old infant daughter of one of the victims of the wreck....”

New Castle (PA) News, May 2, 1947: Same train wreck: “[names]. local honeymooners, were victims of the wreck... [injured but not killed].

Frederick (MD) Post, July 22, 1947: Describing disastrous train collision Sept. 24, 1942, killing at least 18, and the local hospital’s handling of it: “...the accident room received 14 victims of the wreck..”

Lethbridge (ALBERTA) Herald, Sept. 8, 1947: Train collihion, at least 31 dead: “...mass rites tomorrow for the still unidentified victims of the wreck.”

Doesn’t prove anything one way or the other, other than the phrase obviously being used by newspapers in reference to disasters with multiple casualties. The only instances in this quick, limited survey were train wrecks.

cda said...

Brian:

If the quotes you gave really are from the first interview Kevin had with JBJ, then you have hit on a significant discovery. It appears that Kevin DID lead Johnson towards the spaceship answer. However, we would need to see the entire transcript first to see how the conversation drifted. "Something extremely unusual" certainly does not imply "alien spacecraft". The phrase "weather balloon nonsense" would constitute further bias.

However, as I said, we need to see the whole transcript. On the face of it, it looks a bit like Kevin was 'doing a Stanton Friedman' on Johnson.

David Rudiak said...

CDA said the usual:
If the quotes you gave really are from the first interview Kevin had with JBJ, then you have hit on a significant discovery. It appears that Kevin DID lead Johnson towards the spaceship answer. However, we would need to see the entire transcript first to see how the conversation drifted. "Something extremely unusual" certainly does not imply "alien spacecraft". The phrase "weather balloon nonsense" would constitute further bias.

However, as I said, we need to see the whole transcript. On the face of it, it looks a bit like Kevin was 'doing a Stanton Friedman' on Johnson.


In the psychosocial "explanation" world of CDA, Gilles, ZoamChomsky, etc. all human beings are weak-minded automatons who can be easily led into believing anything some interviewer says to them. Thus CDA's million-fold claim that witnesses like Marcel didn't believe anything ET happened at Roswell until the remarkably persuasive Stanton "Svengali" Friedman found them and told them what to think.

And now Johnson was convinced by just one remark from Kevin that Roswell was an ET event. In reality, Johnson's conversion didn't happen until years later when he decided to become the "Roswell photographer" of the real flying saucer debris, probably more old-age narcissism than anything else. (Just like Mogul engineer Charles Moore took it into his head in his old age that one of his imaginary balloon flights must explain Roswell.)

In the real world that the rest of us live in, most human beings with personal knowledge of things will tell you to drop dead if you try to lead them in a particular direction other than what they believe to be true already.

Johnson

Brian B said...

@ CDA

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.fr/2009/10/ufos-ramey-memo-j-bond-johnson-and-me.html

Well Brice posted it first but he did reference KR's own recording by KR himself from this very blog. The link above has it in KR's own words.

But perhaps KR can explain it more. As for me, it just sounds like leading someone down a path by sharing your own viewpoints and theories in the midst of a fact finding interview and that can't be too helpful.

Wind Swords said...

Brice:

"IMHO this is a very audacious hypothesis, and regardless of its value, it doesn't adress the problem of why the RAAF officers couldn't identify the remnaints of a weather balloon as shown in Ramey's office."

I believe what was in Ramey's office wasn't that was found on the Foster ranch. But that doesn't mean it was an alien spacecraft that crashed on the ranch.

Go back to the descriptions of what Brazel, Marcell and Cavitt found: foil, paper, sticks, rubber. None of it bigger than my 27" computer monitor IIRC. If I'm wrong then MOST of the pieces were smaller than that.

Then Haut's PR says it's a "flying disc" that "landed" on the ranch as was picked up to be flown to "headquarters". So it sounds to the press like it's whole or nearly whole contraption. After the PR goes out and the story goes "viral" to borrow a modern phrase, I believe that somebody got a hold of Ramey (Cavitt or Cavitt thru Blanchard) and told him it was a balloon (weather, Mogul, or something else does not matter). Remember, I said that there indications that Haut over did it with his PR.

So when Ramey sees the stuff that was actually on the ranch, the majority of the pieces no bigger than a piece of paper he realizes he has a problem. The PR from Roswell said it was a disc. If he shows this stuff the press is going to bombard him with questions: "Where's the rest of it? They said it was a disc. There's is nothing here that could even begin to account for a disc. What are you trying to pull?" How does Ramey get the press off his back without them thinking the Air Force are idiots or they are hiding something? So he substitutes a "pristine" weather balloon and rawin (it wasn't really it was just more or less intact instead of shredded into little bits like the ranch debris). He tells Marcell to keep quiet and not say anything.

You have to remember that the Air Force was about to go independent and join the Army and Navy as go-equal branches of the military in less than 3 months. The press is going to think that the Air Force personnel are idiots for thinking that sticks, foil, paper and rubber is a flying disc OR that the Air Force is hiding something because Haut said it was a whole disc and Ramey shows them shredded junk (by the way, the ETH'rs today would say the same thing as well). Either way it wouldn't be a good situation. So the more intact balloon/rawin was more believable as an honest mistake (as it was in Circleville OH). Embarrassing but quickly forgotten.

You say that's a crazy theory? Not as crazy as it was an ET craft that crashed in 3 different places, was seen by the whole damn town practically, including archeologists from out of town, and alien bodies were brought on base but Marcell didn't see any of that and Blanchard went on vacation and there is not one shred of documentation or a diary entry to support it. Or not as crazy as it was a Nazi bell experiment that somehow went from Argentina to New Mexico. Or not as crazy as a high altitude balloon experiment using children with Progeria. It's not sexy, but my theory does account for most the contradictions whether you're a believer or a skeptic.

Brian B said...

@ Rudiak

"Doesn’t prove anything one way or the other, other than the phrase obviously being used by newspapers in reference to disasters with multiple casualties. The only instances in this quick, limited survey were train wrecks."

Ah....let's keep in mind that it does demonstrate that the phrase was used in newspaper reports - but that's not really evidence that the phrase was used in military reports - or top secret pentagon memo's.

If anything it demonstrates the contents of the Ramey memo, if it does use that phrase, has more to do with a newspaper press release since this is what the evidence of its use apparently confirms.

If you want to determine its use in military documents, it's best to evaluate military documents not civilian newspapers.

And regarding leading witnesses, it does matter that prominent ufologists may have inadvertently played a hand in leading witnesses to conclusions or details not originally in their minds at the moment of interview.

Despite claims the entire case, if litigated, would convince a jury of a massive alien coverup, leading a witness, if proven or suspected, would render the witnesses' testimony invalid. I suspect many Roswell witnesses' testimony would be scrapped under such circumstances as it rightfully should be despite desperate attempts to ignore inconsistencies because UFO buffs just want everything said to confirm aliens crashed.

Brian B said...

@ Wind Swords, Brice, and Louis:

"What about the possibility that it WAS a Mogul balloon but there was a great mystery as to WHY it came down the way it did and there was a need for further analysis. Maybe something intercepted the balloon and contributed to the debris field and the Army needed to study that?"

There are many alternate theories, but even if you buy none of them as plausible you can't escape the fact that the CIC was very aware of Soviet spy rings all over NM at the time. You got Los Alamos, Alamogordo, Roswell, and Nazis at White Sands.

It's plausible that something else required secrecy as suggested.

Jeanne Ruppert said...

Brice wrote:

"... if we were to trust the memories of JBJ, his editor told him that **the stuff would be located in Ramey's office**, which would mean at least someone of the journal (his editor?) has called the base so they knew that (otherwise how could they know the stuff would be in Ramey's office and not elsewhere?)."

That's a very good point. It more than strongly suggests that either the editor of that newspaper called the base to find out if the material reported to be coming in from Roswell could be photographed [based on the AP newswire's heads-up] or someone on Ramey's staff called the editor to suggest that he send a photographer over.

I think it's obvious this was all stage managed. I sometimes think that the original PR from Roswell was authorized by Ramey (or Vandenberg) in the first place in order to be quashed -- within hours -- by Ramey's statement that the Roswell debris turned out to be a misidentified weather balloon. How better to seize control of the situation than first to have RAAFB issue the release that a 'disc' had crashed near Roswell, gaining immediate widespread media attention, and then announce that officials at Roswell had been mistaken, with photos of apparent balloon debris to 'prove' it in time for the evening newspapers.

Haut was at that meeting at RAAFB the morning of the 8th attended by Ramey and Dubose, getting instructions on the statement to release to the press. Everyone there understood Ramey's intentions and instructions (no doubt given to him by Vandenberg) on how to defuse a situation that otherwise would have led to intense ongoing pressure from the press and the public. It would have gotten out anyway since too many civilians in Roswell were already talking about the crash and too many servicemen had been involved in the cleanup. And it couldn't be allowed to get out since by then the second site and the anomalous bodies had already been discovered. The situation was a fire that had to be put out completely.

Blanchard and Marcel agreeably took a fall on behalf of the AAF (soon to become the US Air Force) and were promoted afterward.

Jeanne Ruppert said...

BB wrote:

"There are many alternate theories, but even if you buy none of them as plausible you can't escape the fact that the CIC was very aware of Soviet spy rings all over NM at the time. You got Los Alamos, Alamogordo, Roswell, and Nazis at White Sands."

Wasn't it a key figure in the CIC who put out the misinformation that the flight to Wright-Patterson had been cancelled? Clearly also an attempt to minimize the significance of the Roswell 'debris'.

Jeanne Ruppert said...

CDA wrote:

"Jeanne:

You are surely not suggesting that both the real (ET debris) AND substituted balloon and radar target debris appear in the photos?!"

If I'm not mistaken, others before Regehr have suggested the same thing. If you read Rudiak's research concerning Bond Johnson, you'll see that Johnson said he finished arranging the 'balloon debris' on the floor of Ramey's office preparatory to taking the photos. He also said that he opened up one or more of the packages lying on the floor of the office to add to the display. Who knows whether one or more of the packages included debris from the ranch that does not appear to fit the balloon story? I think there's also a photo of Johnson kneeling on Ramey's office floor arranging the debris included in Rudiak's discussion.


"As to the forthcoming Regehr/Morris book, you write: 'The book should be out some time in the coming months, the sooner the better.'

Maybe, but I expect there are a great many who have seen more than enough Roswell books over the years, and are not too keen on another. I am one of these."

Your choice. I think this is one book you should not miss, based on details Regehr discussed in the Paracast interview.

David Rudiak said...

I wrote: "Doesn’t prove anything one way or the other, other than the phrase ["victims of the wreck"] obviously being used by newspapers in reference to disasters with multiple casualties.”

BB responded:
Ah....let's keep in mind that it does demonstrate that the phrase was used in newspaper reports - but that's not really evidence that the phrase was used in military reports - or top secret pentagon memo's.

If the phrase was used COMMONLY in public media, as it was, how is that evidence that it wouldn't be used in military documents? Was there some sort of military code against such use? If anything, generals live in the culture just like everybody else and are exposed to it. Why wouldn't it be used if it was suitable to the situation and commonly used to describe casualties of disasters in the public arena?

As usual, the goalpost has been moved once again. Now that its been demonstrated that "victims of the wreck" was indeed common when the question was raised whether it was used at all, now the demand is made we have to demonstrate its use in military documents.

If anything it demonstrates the contents of the Ramey memo, if it does use that phrase, has more to do with a newspaper press release since this is what the evidence of its use apparently confirms.

So let's see, Ramey couldn't use the phrase INTERNALLY for some unknown reason, but if it's there, then he COULD use it PUBLICLY for a "press release", meaning this is somehow "evidence" that the Ramey memo is really a "newspaper press release", even though this would ALSO mean Ramey DID use it and would be admitting to "victims" anyway, which is sort of the point, isn't it?

If it was a "newspaper press release" admitting to "the victims of the wreck", then it would be in the public domain, only it isn't, therefore there is no such "newspaper press release." Which I suppose in BB's Alice-In-Wonderland logic, now becomes "evidence" that "victims of the wreck" is not there.

This sort of weird "logic" also reminds me of one of Tim Printy's arguments against the memo that "disc" can't be in it for security reasons in case the memo was intercepted. But this didn't stop Ramey (or Roswell base) from using the term publicly. In another paragraph, where I had argued the memo reads "in/on the 'disc'", which also you can't find in any newspaper article and also belies "the 'disc'" being essentially a 2-dimensional balsa kite with no insides nor anything of any importance "in" or "on", Printy tried to argue that maybe it read "as the 'disc'" instead, essentially admitting that "disc" IS in the memo.

So more Schroedinger's cat argumentation, trying to have it both ways. "Disc" can't be in the memo but simultaneously is. And "victims of the wreck" can't be in a military document but simultaneously can be in a publicly issued one, somehow pointing to this being a "newspaper press release" instead of a military document, only there is no such "press release".

These guys make my head ache with the logical absurdity of their arguments.

If you want to determine its use in military documents, it's best to evaluate military documents not civilian newspapers.

I'm sure BB is aware that such a search of literally billions of military documents is much more difficult than public domain newspapers, books, and magazines now converted to electronic files for easy searching. After expending an enormous amount of time and effort, and even if other examples of "victims of the wreck" were found in military documents, this would be ignored anyway, since it would then be argued this wouldn't by itself prove that it was in the Ramey memo.

Keep those goalposts moving .

Paul Young said...

cda said,..."The debris in the photos is such obvious terrestrial junk that ETH promoters just HAD to find a way out of their predicament."

Which of course brings us back to the question of WHY,(if that stuff in Ramey's office was the very same stuff picked up by Marcel at the Foster Ranch...and Marcel thought it was something from another world...)

...then why wasn't Marcel thrown into a lunatic asylum?


@ Louis...Concerning the question about what other mangled moguls might look like, I mused over the same question here a few months back. Basically why Foster Ranch debris field was comprised as some stuff like rubber strips (as expected from a burst balloon) and other stuff (metal with "memory" type qualities)that seemingly shouldn't have been amongst the wreckage. For me the only way to square the circle was for something exotic (flying saucer) to have crashed into the prosaic (balloon), bringing parts of each object down there. As in the block of ice that eventually doomed the space shuttle and the piece of rubber tyre that destroyed the Air France concord...trivial things can badly mess up hi-tech stuff.


David said, ..." Whether Ramey contacted the press or not and invited them out, he had been laying a trail of bread crumbs to his door for the past hour before Johnson showed up. Ramey was making various comments that the object was in his office (even if he wasn't, based on some of the nonsense he was quoted as saying as to what it allegedly looked like.) Eventually, it was very likely some newspaper or news agency would send out a photographer to the base hoping to get photos of the Roswell "flying disc" that Ramey said he had."

I think this is the answer to the contradiction. Ramey is all "suited and booted" and got his silly display of OBVIOUS weather balloon junk, just waiting for WHICHEVER journalist/photographer took the bait and arrived first!

It just happened to be JB Johnson...but it could just as easily have been any hack in the relatively nearby area! Have car... and camera...will travel!

Steve Sawyer said...

@ KR:

"I think that answers the question."

Well, actually it doesn't. You answered a question I didn't ask. I was already aware of the info in your reply to me, regarding Mogul.

What I wanted to know was the size and shape of the ULF microphone array "pod" or container, and if any photographs of "the heart of Mogul," whose purpose was classified, existed or not. I'd wanted to know what what the container for the mikes looked like, is all, either a photo or schematic drawing.

Several months ago I did an online search for Mogul-related photos, and found pics of the multi-balloon with tethers assembly, pics of the constant-level ballast system, but no photos of the microphone and associated radio-electronics package or box, whatever it was shaped or looked like. Which I found sort of intriguing.

The reason I wanted to see what the microphone package looked like was in part due to the question of, if it was disk-shaped or hexagonal, maybe someone mistakenly thought the shape looked something like a small "flying saucer," which if so, then might have generated related misidentification that a "disk" had been found, or why the term "disk" is in Haut's press release -- there was no indication if the "disk" in Haut's press release was either intact or of any particular size.

Far-fetched, I know, but why aren't there any photos of the crucial instruments package and container that held the Mogul ULF microphone array online (as far as I know, and I looked)? That was really my central question.

Paul Young said...

Brian Bell said, ..."Ah....let's keep in mind that it does demonstrate that the phrase was used in newspaper reports - but that's not really evidence that the phrase was used in military reports - or top secret pentagon memo's."

How different a turn of the English language do you presume military folk use as opposed to the civilian population?

It may be more slightly clipped, more concise...but if civilians use phrases such as "victims of the wreck"...then what is so unbelievable about the author of the Ramey Memo using that turn of phrase too?

David Rudiak said...

CDA said: (1 of 2)
I never said Ramey closed the base. I merely said he would not have allowed unauthorised persons, i.e. civilians, onto it if the top secret activities, as claimed, were going on.

Marcel and Robert Porter on Marcel's plane, said most of the debris they brought was left on the plane. Porter said the rest of the crew had to stay on the plane until a guard was posted. Then they were allowed to go have something to eat. When they got back to their B29, Porter said he was told the debris had been transferred to another plane bound for Wright Field.

All that Marcel took with him to Ramey's office were a few debris samples to show Ramey. Obviously, it wouldn't take much to hide these away from prying eyes of any civilians who might be invited in (like maybe stick them in a drawer or move them to an adjoining room, or cover them up--duhhhh). No need to keep civilians off the base. Just limit where they could go (as I have experienced visiting military bases--you can't roam anywhere you want) and limit what they can see.

It's really not THAT hard. Thus, keep unauthorized people off the flight line where the debris was still on the planes, and have Johnson only go Ramey's office and prevent him from roaming the building or rifling through Ramey's desk. Easy!

NOBODY actually saw any debris switched. It is the usual 2nd or 3rd hand testimony, or just plain assumption.

The one's making the claim, Marcel and Dubose, were FIRST-HAND witnesses. (Walter Haut said Marcel later told him about the swtich, but it is Marcel and Dubose who we are really talking about.) Notice how they are also in the photos along with Ramey? They were there; you weren't. Dubose was Ramey's chief of staff and you think he would know. He backed up Marcel 100% on this point.

Of course it is easy to "assume" or deduce what happened, as in Marcel's case, when he brought one thing, and something else replaced it for the photo shoot. Why would he need to actually see the debris being swapped? As Marcel always said when actually shown Johnson's photos, that was not the stuff he found and brought from Roswell. He said those photos were "staged".

Dubose stated he took the actual call from their superior Gen. McMullen, ordering them to cover it up, and the weather balloon in the photos being a cover story to get the press off their backs. He didn't know who came up with the balloon idea, maybe Ramey, or where they got it, but what was in the photos wasn't the real stuff, which he said he was never allowed to see. But there he is in the photos with the weather balloon and he wasn't wearing a hood over his head. If that was the "real stuff" from Roswell, then he would have seen it, yet he denied that he did.

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

David Rudiak said...

(2 of 2)
There are other indications from the photos themselves that this was a shill balloon and radar target. The white paper backing on the target's foil lacks any indications of weathering, such as water stains, or having been dragged through dirt. The white paper is pristine white and clean. When I analyzed the target in a 3D ray tracing reconstruction, there is exactly one target there, plus maybe 2 or 3 extra bare sticks. This is complicated, but two sticks were left out of each target so they could be folded down flat for compact packaging and shipment. The targets were packaged 24 to a shipping box, with at least 48 bare sticks thrown in on top. When a fresh target was taken out of the box, the two sticks were glued back into the empty sleeves for final assembly after the target had been unfolded. Thus is explained in much more detail at my website where you can see the reconstruction of the radar target debris and the extra sticks, plus description from a shipping manifest of a RAWIN target manufacturer of how the kites and extra sticks were packed for shipment:

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

The most economical explanation for the above details in the photos is that this WAS a new radar target taken out of a box, reassembled, broken by hand, with a few extra bare sticks thrown into the mix.

There are other details that also don't match up with rancher Mack Brazel's description a few hours later of what he allegedly found. E.g., nobody can find any indication of Brazel's "flower tape" on the radar target, nor are there any of Brazel's "rubber strips" that he rolled into a bundle, only a used but otherwise seemingly intact weather balloon.

So independent evidence of a shill balloon and radar target from the photos themselves.

Another interesting possibility (just mentioned in email to me) comes from Johnson's original testimony of walking into Ramey's office and immediately noticing the bad smell from the balloon. (Johnson is unique in mentioning any smell to any debris. E.g., neither Marcel mentioned it and I specifically asked Marcel Jr. about it.) The smell would be due to solvents added to the neoprene balloons when they were manufactured. But after cooking in the desert for at least 3 weeks (Brazel's testimony), would there be any solvent there to smell? More likely it would have all or nearly all evaporated off and there would have been little smell to the debris. But without an experiment, this is just speculation at this point. However, if true, this again points to the balloon being relatively new and not an old one just retrieved from the elements.

And another point, the balloon is largely intact. You can see stretch marks from it having been inflated (thinning it out and hastening deterioration of a real flown balloon) and also pleats, as if it still has a lot of flexibililty. Charles Moore's own AF affidavit has him stating these balloons after being flown at high altitude and then retrieved only a few days later were often found broken up into flakes. Again, this points to the balloon in Ramey's office being relatively fresh. See:

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

The debris in the photos is such obvious terrestrial junk that ETH promoters just HAD to find a way out of their predicament. Hence the alleged 'switch'.

The "alleged switch" was based on testimony of those who were there, corroborated by details in the photos themselves.

Brian B said...

@ Paul

"How different a turn of the English language do you presume military folk use as opposed to the civilian population?"

Maybe not much, but making a case for the Ramey memo having this phrase based on an assessment of press articles is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. They may both have seeds, but they're two different things entirely.

Steve Sawyer said...

@ CDA:

"I still firmly say that if Ramey had realised the debris & bodies were 'not of this earth' and decided to make it all top secret (which is what the ETHers insist was done) then NOBODY out of the loop, including all civilian visitors, would have been allowed past the gate, let alone into Ramey's office."

* * *

"Alas, it is you who are wrong as the very fact that Ramey allowed a reporter onto the base is proof that the debris was free for public viewing and there were no secrets to be kept.

"I repeat: you DO NOT risk allowing the press or civilians onto an air base if there is a sudden emergency and there is top secret material being moved about (which there was if the ET believers are to be believed)."

* * *

"I never said Ramey closed the base. I merely said he would not have allowed unauthorised persons, i.e. civilians, onto it if the top secret activities, as claimed, were going on.


And, again, these quotes simply amount to just more, repeated presumptions on your part. You don't really know, either way.

We don't know exactly how long it took for whatever kind of debris was removed from the aircraft dispatched from RAAF to Ft. Worth after it landed, how long it took for the debris to be transported from the landed plane across the base to Ramey's office, or maybe some of it elsewhere on the base other than Ramey's office per se, nor the timing of J.B. Johnson's arrival at the base gate, or how and when Ramey was notified Johnson was at the base, or how long it took for Johnson to arrive at Ramey's office, do we?

There very well could have been enough time to remove whatever from the plane that arrived from RAAF at Ft. Worth, and if any of it was "secret" (the implication being NOT fragemented weather balloons and rawins), there might have been time to put that stuff somewhere else on base, and for Ramey to have assembled some superficially torn up weather balloons and rawin reflectors in his often in addition. Or, even what Brazel and Marcel retrieved from the Foster ranch. Or, additional materials from some other site. Big aircraft can carry more than one thing or bundle on board, both secret and not, simultaneously.

So, both might have occurred; it's not a binary choice between one scenario and another -- there could have been something classified located elsewhere removed from the plane, and something else assembled in Ramey's office for the press contact and photos to have been taken by Johnson. I hope that's clear now.

It just bothers me when people, from either "side," claim "facts in evidence" are what they base their speculative interpretation on to bolster their pre-existing beliefs or assumptions, when in actual fact, we simply do not know precisely how much time there was for Ramey to stage something or not, in anticipation of his being notified at some point Johnson was on his way in.

How do we know Johnson wasn't delayed somewhat, or made to wait somewhere on base before being ushered subsequently into Ramey's office?

We don't know, and that's also my point: if you don't know for sure, don't claim a scenario that supports your other contentions, or suggest "this is the way I know it must have happened," in effect.

You don't know, and I don't know, that's all, so please do not presume: that is not either evidence-based, balanced, or truly objective, when you don't know the timing involved or actions possibly taken at Fort Worth, and out of Johnson's sight. This should all be very obvious -- we don't know what we don't know!

Your repeated statements, or conclusions, must be supported by relevant, confirmed evidence.

They are not.

KRandle said...

Brian – (Part Uno)

You guys just never stop… CDA, it might be significant if the quote wasn’t taken out of context and the context was in the portions of the transcript that I published. Johnson had already been exposed to the idea that this was an alien craft. There was a great deal of discussion that went on before we got to the quote that so offends…

To clarify one point for CDA, Johnson said to me, at the beginning of the interview, “I went to Texas around Christmas just before and went down to the newspaper and they turned me over to the library and I found and went back in the microfiche. I found the pictures. Interesting, they [Star-Telegram], had turned the negatives from those years over to UTA…”

Which means, of course, he was looking for those specific negatives. Then, with no prompting from he, he said, “ The Star-Telegram. The interesting things that you can get into, that you may know about . . . oh, those pictures have been used on a couple of TV shows. . . . One was Star Trek . .. no, Star . . .In Search of which Leonard Nimoy was the host of. [Johnson's photos were not used on In Search of] And I was sitting watching the TV and it popped up and showed this picture and oh, there's my picture [which explains why he was looking for them]. That kind of thing. Then another time it was on ABC. They had done a similar sort of thing and I was going to . . . Alan Lansbury puts together the In Search of and he invited me over to a party at his house and this major was going to be there, the one from Roswell... My interesting part of this, having taken the picture and now going back and looking at the picture because I didn't have a copy of it . . . is that I don't know whether the Air Force was pulling a hoax or not. It looks like a kite. There was another thing that the gal from UTA gave me . . . there is a negative they have of Ramey looking at this ray-wind [sic] kite or something and it was printed in the paper a couple of days earlier. [In fact, this is one of the photos Johnson took. There is no evidence that Ramey was photographed with a Rawin target device earlier in the day or at any other time until Johnson took his photographs.]

So, we see from this earlier quote, he has been exposed to the idea of an alien ship without me having to have suggested it to him. In the interest of fairness, shouldn’t this quote have been used as well?

A few minutes later, Johnson said, “Marcel, yes. He has the son. I saw the son interviewed on TV recently.”

Remember this is 1989 before the Unsolved Mysteries on Roswell aired, before any of my books were published that were devoted to Roswell, but, of course after the 1978 interviews with Jesse Marcel, Sr.

KRandle said...

Part Dos

Johnson then said, “The son said interesting things. That the father came home and told us about the bodies and so forth. And then said that we can’t talk about or don’t tell anybody and so forth.”

Here, it is Johnson who introduced the concept of bodies. I had said nothing about that. He had mentioned the major but didn’t know his name. I did supply that.

Johnson, just a few moments later said, “I’ve had some other interesting things. I’ve run into some people who were at Wright-Patterson that knew about it at the time and who have been there in recent years and everything is still locked up there.’

Then, after telling me about how he got out to the base, as we all known based on what I have published, Johnson said, “That's when I got into it because the AP picked up that they were flying it down there. And I walked into the Star-Telegram. I was primarily a reporter but I had a camera, Speed-Graphic, that I carried in my car. I worked night police. I was a back-up photographer. The city editor came over and said, 'Bond, you got your camera?" And I said yes and he said, ‘Get out to General Ramey's office. They've got a flying saucer and they're bringing it from Roswell.’ And they were flying it down there.”

At this point, in 1989, and having heard all the other things he said, I assumed that flying saucer translated into alien craft, but then Johnson had already introduced that into the conversation. At that point I said, “I think what happened was that they realized what they had. They realized that it was something extremely unusual. That it really was an alien spacecraft. Then Ramey comes up with this weather-balloon nonsense.”

In the context of the interview, I didn’t introduce Johnson to the idea that what had been brought from Roswell was an alien craft. That was already in his mind. He suggested that he had been duped by the balloon debris in Ramey’s office. I didn’t introduce that concept to him either.
Taking a single quote out of context certainly does look bad… put it into context and you begin to understand why I made that statement. Johnson was already well down the path to alien visitation. He had seen programs about the Roswell case, he had met some of those involved in television documentaries, and he had talked to people at Wright Field about it.

Sorry, the find isn’t significant at all. Just another attempt to spin things the way you want them as opposed to the way they were… meaning simply, that I put no notions into Johnson’s head. That was done by his friends and contacts before I arrived on the scene and certainly by Moore and Shandera long after I had talked to Johnson.

David Rudiak said...

Steve Sawyer wrote:

What I wanted to know was the size and shape of the ULF microphone array "pod" or container, and if any photographs of "the heart of Mogul," whose purpose was classified, existed or not. I'd wanted to know what what the container for the mikes looked like, is all, either a photo or schematic drawing.

Several months ago I did an online search for Mogul-related photos, and found pics of the multi-balloon with tethers assembly, pics of the constant-level ballast system, but no photos of the microphone and associated radio-electronics package or box, whatever it was shaped or looked like. Which I found sort of intriguing.

The reason I wanted to see what the microphone package looked like was in part due to the question of, if it was disk-shaped or hexagonal, maybe someone mistakenly thought the shape looked something like a small "flying saucer," which if so, then might have generated related misidentification that a "disk" had been found, or why the term "disk" is in Haut's press release -- there was no indication if the "disk" in Haut's press release was either intact or of any particular size.


In the early Moguls (which is what we would be talking about here), they used Naval sonobuoys for microphones, which were cylinders. The special acoustic microphones were still being designed and hadn't been deployed (not sure if they ever were).

It thus becomes academic what their shape was, since they didn't exist yet.

As for Ramey's intel officer Major Cashon speaking to Reuters and the FBI and saying the object resembled a hexagonal radar target suspended from a weather balloon, the description allegedly coming from Ramey, the "hexagonal" description was a direct reference to the radar target, not a piece of equipment.

The RAWINS when fully assembled and when viewed in profile from directly above or below could be said to have a "hexagonal" shape, but this is a really strange if not impossible description, especially since all Ramey displayed was a flattened, torn-up radar target on his floor, from which the hexagonal profile of an INTACT target could in no way be deduced. This is why I have argued the whole radar target hexagonal description had to be pre-scripted for Ramey, unless he was a rawin target expert himself. But if that was so, why make statements that he only suspicioned it was a weather radar device and had to bring in his weather officer to make an official ID. Either Ramey was an expert or he wasn't. If he already knew enough on his own to use "hexagonal", he didn't need the weather officer.

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

The whole impossible hexagonal description of a torn up target I think is more good evidence that what Ramey displayed was a shill balloon and target brought in specifically for a photo op to bolster the new Roswell weather balloon explanation that Ramey had started putting out by phone for an hour prior to the photos.

David Rudiak said...

Paul Young wrote:
I think this is the answer to the contradiction. Ramey is all "suited and booted" and got his silly display of OBVIOUS weather balloon junk, just waiting for WHICHEVER journalist/photographer took the bait and arrived first!

It just happened to be JB Johnson...but it could just as easily have been any hack in the relatively nearby area! Have car... and camera...will travel!

I think it EXTREMELY important that Ramey was photographed in dress uniform, not his work uniform or fatigues, like Marcel, Dubose, and Newton were all wearing in the photos.

Ramey was planning a photo shoot. It wasn't accidental. Whether he called the newspaper or they figured it out on their own is a minor point. Eventually someone would figure it out given the public statements already being made that the Roswell disc was in Ramey's office (direct from Ramey's lips over the telephone prior to Johnson being dispatched.

Frankly we don't know whether the newspaper was called or not. It would make logical sense to call the nearest big newspaper, namely the FW Star-Telegram, so that you would have more control over the situation that way in terms of timing and reporters seen.

The only other area newspaper I know of that did any independent investigation was the Dallas Morning News, and that was done over the telephone. They got one of Ramey's intel officer's again, a Major Edwin Kirton, the same guy who earlier spoke to the FBI and Reuters and claimed Ramey described the object/radar target as "hexagonal" in shape.

Daniel Transil last Sept. on the blog pointed out that Kirton in 1960, as an air attache in Russia, was kicked out by the Russians for being a spy. This suggests to me he was probably counterintelligence rather than intelligence. Why was Kirton handling phone calls rather than some public information officer who would normally do this work? Apparently whatever happened at Roswell called for a spook rather than a PIO to spin the story.

This was obviously the most mysterious and important weather balloon in human history.

Jeanne Ruppert said...

BB wrote:

"'How different a turn of the English language do you presume military folk use as opposed to the civilian population?'

Maybe not much, but making a case for the Ramey memo having this phrase based on an assessment of press articles is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. They may both have seeds, but they're two different things entirely."


This is your most trivial argument yet, BB. You are hanging on a thread. Give it up.

Brice said...

@Windswords (1/2) :

"Go back to the descriptions of what Brazel, Marcell and Cavitt found: foil, paper, sticks, rubber. None of it bigger than my 27" computer monitor IIRC. If I'm wrong then MOST of the pieces were smaller than that."

As I said in another post (no offense), based on what I know so far on the developpements of the case, I don't trust Cavitt's testimony and don't give much confidence in the version Brazel gave to the newspapers on the july 9th. I consider Marcel's testimony more trustworthy. But I seem to recall (don't know from where exactly) that most of pieces were indeed quite small.

"Then Haut's PR says it's a "flying disc" that "landed" on the ranch as was picked up to be flown to "headquarters". So it sounds to the press like it's whole or nearly whole contraption. After the PR goes out and the story goes "viral" to borrow a modern phrase, I believe that somebody got a hold of Ramey (Cavitt or Cavitt thru Blanchard) and told him it was a balloon (weather, Mogul, or something else does not matter). Remember, I said that there indications that Haut over did it with his PR."

Actually, I would disagree with this idea/scenario. I remember you thought Haut could have "overwritten" the PR on his own. As for myself I don't think he would have done this, not measuring the consequences of the significance of what was released and without being cleared by his superior (Haut told Kevin he would not have released something without Blanchard agreement) - and it also should be explained why if the material recovered was of a weather balloon neither Marcel nor Blanchard recognized it while Cavitt did but didn't transmit the information. Cavitt and Marcel brought back some material and if I'm correct they're supposed to have attended a meeting with Blanchard and Haut on the morning of july 8th, so they should have all been knowledgeable and in phase with what was the material and the information released (PR).

Brice said...

@Windswords (2/2) :

"So when Ramey sees the stuff that was actually on the ranch, the majority of the pieces no bigger than a piece of paper he realizes he has a problem. The PR from Roswell said it was a disc. If he shows this stuff the press is going to bombard him with questions: "Where's the rest of it? They said it was a disc. There's is nothing here that could even begin to account for a disc. What are you trying to pull?" How does Ramey get the press off his back without them thinking the Air Force are idiots or they are hiding something? So he substitutes a "pristine" weather balloon and rawin (it wasn't really it was just more or less intact instead of shredded into little bits like the ranch debris). He tells Marcell to keep quiet and not say anything.

You have to remember that the Air Force was about to go independent and join the Army and Navy as go-equal branches of the military in less than 3 months. The press is going to think that the Air Force personnel are idiots for thinking that sticks, foil, paper and rubber is a flying disc OR that the Air Force is hiding something because Haut said it was a whole disc and Ramey shows them shredded junk (by the way, the ETH'rs today would say the same thing as well). Either way it wouldn't be a good situation. So the more intact balloon/rawin was more believable as an honest mistake (as it was in Circleville OH). Embarrassing but quickly forgotten."

IMO it would be the contrary, if the material was blown up into small pieces it would have more chances not to be recognized than if it was not in a too bad shape (though I don't think RAAF officers wouldn't have been able to identify the remnaints of a WB). So it would make less excuse for the incompetence of the military to show a "pristine" WB and rawin target than the real debris (but they might not want to show it because it was not a WB)

"You say that's a crazy theory? Not as crazy as it was an ET craft that crashed in 3 different places, was seen by the whole damn town practically, including archeologists from out of town, and alien bodies were brought on base but Marcell didn't see any of that and Blanchard went on vacation and there is not one shred of documentation or a diary entry to support it. Or not as crazy as it was a Nazi bell experiment that somehow went from Argentina to New Mexico. Or not as crazy as a high altitude balloon experiment using children with Progeria. It's not sexy, but my theory does account for most the contradictions whether you're a believer or a skeptic."

We can certainly call for "craziness" for a lot of disputable/improbable theories, for good or less good reasons, but my point was that a WB/mogul explanation doesn't work IMO.

Brice said...

@Jeanne Ruppert :

"That's a very good point. It more than strongly suggests that either the editor of that newspaper called the base to find out if the material reported to be coming in from Roswell could be photographed [based on the AP newswire's heads-up] or someone on Ramey's staff called the editor to suggest that he send a photographer over.

I think it's obvious this was all stage managed."

That's also what I think, whether it was the base that called the journal or the journal that called the base. Ramey had been informed that JBJ was coming to shoot photos so it wasn't unprepared.


"I sometimes think that the original PR from Roswell was authorized by Ramey (or Vandenberg) in the first place in order to be quashed -- within hours -- by Ramey's statement that the Roswell debris turned out to be a misidentified weather balloon. How better to seize control of the situation than first to have RAAFB issue the release that a 'disc' had crashed near Roswell, gaining immediate widespread media attention, and then announce that officials at Roswell had been mistaken, with photos of apparent balloon debris to 'prove' it in time for the evening newspapers.

Haut was at that meeting at RAAFB the morning of the 8th attended by Ramey and Dubose, getting instructions on the statement to release to the press. Everyone there understood Ramey's intentions and instructions (no doubt given to him by Vandenberg) on how to defuse a situation that otherwise would have led to intense ongoing pressure from the press and the public. It would have gotten out anyway since too many civilians in Roswell were already talking about the crash and too many servicemen had been involved in the cleanup. And it couldn't be allowed to get out since by then the second site and the anomalous bodies had already been discovered. The situation was a fire that had to be put out completely. "

I would however disagree on the idea that the 1st PR was part of a plan because it really sent the whole affair and the AAF in a big turmoil, up high the commands. I think it was rather a "spontaneous" announcement ordered by the RAAF commands. I don't think also that Ramey and Dubose were at the meeting on the morning of the 8th, if so what the material would have been sent to Fort Worth for? Ramey and Dubose could have it seen at Roswell. It doesn't fit also in the developpements of the second communication of a weather balloon by Ramey only hours after the 1st press realease.

Brice said...

@Paul :

"I think this is the answer to the contradiction. Ramey is all "suited and booted" and got his silly display of OBVIOUS weather balloon junk, just waiting for WHICHEVER journalist/photographer took the bait and arrived first!

It just happened to be JB Johnson...but it could just as easily have been any hack in the relatively nearby area! Have car... and camera...will travel!"

IMHO, if Ramey had wanted to have a photographer to come he may just had contacted a journal to call for one (which might have been the case?) or even take some pictures and give them to the journalists.

Don said...

This seems a good spot to ask a question: Ramey was interviewed on a Ft Worth radio station. I think that's where he spoke about it, rather than in a "press conference" in his office. Does anyone know what time that was, before or after Johnson's photo op? Was Ramey at the radio station or did he call it in?

The radio interview had to be agreed upon between the station and Ramey's office. The story mentions Ramey's intention to make a national broadcast, as well.

Considering the above, Johnson's photo-op was part of the army's media campaign, arranged with the newspaper.

Regards,

Don

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

Brice said,...
"........ or even take some pictures and give them to the journalists."

Personally, I think that's unlikely.
Ramey's whole point of having this photo shoot was in order to put the whole thing to bed.
He would have wanted it to have been SEEN to have been reported by an independent party...without interference.
Having himself, or some other base staff, taking their own photographs to pass on to the press, might not have been seen to be neutral.

cda said...

Jeanne:

The idea that Ramey and duBose were at Roswell early on the morning of July 8 is based SOLELY on Haut's 2nd affidavit, which Don Schmitt wrote and Haut signed, years after his first affdavit (why did he need to write the second one anyway?). Haut by then had been questioned over and over again so many times, and was in any case getting close to dementia, that hardly anyone but the most rabid ET believer accepts this 2nd affidavit. One simple question: if this was true why didn't Haut put this in his FIRST affidavit?

So you can discount the idea that Ramey or duBose were at Roswell that morning.

DR:

As I wrote elsewhere, if it was a genuine ET craft, do you really suppose Ramey was so calm and collected that he would have had the idea of assembling a substitute balloon for the real debris on that day? You are supposing Ramey knew the real ET nature of the debris (or strongly suspected it) and of the alien bodies also found, yet managed to keep his calm so perfectly that he arranged for someone to pick up an old balloon and try and fool everyone that this is what landed at the ranch.

I predict that Ramey, and others, would be so taken aback at such a discovery that none of them would have a clue what to do. They would have been running around in circles. And they would certainly NOT have allowed civilians to enter the base either.

Another fear would be the possibility of a full scale ET landing or even an invasion. Yet miraculously Gen Ramey calmly goes about his daily business, procures a weather balloon and radar target and hopes this keeps the press & public at bay. Absolutely remarkable!

I repeat: NOBODY has ever said they saw this 'switch' done and nobody has ever admitted they performed the 'switch'. The most obvious person to do it was Newton. Did he ever say so? No he did not.

Also, Marcel originally said he was photographed with the actual debris, then again with the ersatz debris. A preposterous idea, but that was due to the cropped photo in THE ROSWELL INCIDENT. Once the full photo (and the other five) was obtained, it was obvious all the photos showed the same stuff. At that point ETHers were in a predicament - and the only way out was to somehow plant the idea that a switch was done at the very beginning, before any pics were taken.

Trying to bring in the fact that Kirton was, years later, a counter-intelligence officer in Russia, has zilch to do with it. It is the kind of evidence only a conspiracist would bring in. Just like Ramey keeping his mouth firmly shut 5 years later at that Washington press conference (and taking the ghastly secret to his grave).

Brian B said...

@ Jeanne

You really believe Ramey and DuBose flew to Roswell to have that morning brief with Blanchard's team? Oh boy...you really are lost in the world of make believe!

David Rudiak said...

CDA wrote:
The idea that Ramey and duBose were at Roswell early on the morning of July 8 is based SOLELY on Haut's 2nd affidavit,

Only partly true. 2nd affidavit 2002. But Haut had been PRIVATELY talking about this well before the affidavit. Wendy Connors and maybe Dennis Balthauser had heard him talking to a German documentary film crew (I think in 1999) about seeing a craft and bodies, and maybe Ramey and Dubose flying in, therefore they arranged a recorded interview with Haut in 2000 to try to get him to go on the record:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Haut_2000_interview.html

In the course of the interview, Haut very reluctantly affirms these events taking place. He wasn't eager to publicly admit to it. When I spoke to him the following year, he would tell me nothing of great importance, instead kept deflecting my questions if I tried to go there.

which Don Schmitt wrote and Haut signed, years after his first affdavitut

Yes, but based not on Don Schmitt making everything up (as you are insinuating), but on prior statements by Haut, mostly in private. Haut had ample opportunity to review the affidavit and make changes if he felt something was inaccurate or not properly stated, or not sign it at all:

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

In the 1995 USAF report, nearly all of the affidavits were both witnessed and written up by the counterintelligence officers who interviewed the witnesses. Under the circumstances, these are not really legal affidavits (would never be admitted to court with interviewers both writing and witnessing). I’ve never heard any complaints raised by skeptics about the validity of these statements, such as “Why didn’t Cavitt write it up earlier or by himself?”

(why did he need to write the second one anyway?). Haut by then had been questioned over and over again so many times, and was in any case getting close to dementia, that hardly anyone but the most rabid ET believer accepts this 2nd affidavit. One simple question: if this was true why didn't Haut put this in his FIRST affidavit?

Because he was nearing the end of his life, and wanted to put on record what he left out of the first one because of its inflammatory nature that would only have only invited personal attack while he was alive, such as "demented" or "liar".

On the question of "dementia", I spoke to Haut in person in Roswell for 2 hours in August 2001 (thus between the Connors' interview and the 2nd affidavit). While he didn't tell me anything sensational, I was actually there and this was NOT someone "getting close to dementia". He was engaged (if cautious), understood exactly what I was saying, was logical, clear-headed, and perfectly coherent in his responses, he did not ramble, he did not repeat himself endlessly (as someone with short-term memory loss will do), he did not stare blankly into space, he did not drool. There were NO indications of any sort of dementia at that time.

You were not there, never spoke to him, yet you feel no restraint in accusing him of being "close to dementia". Why? It is just the usual "because CDA says so." Who is really acting like the "rabid believer" here? (Note to Kevin: He said it first.)

Unknown said...

A friend of mine who met Haut personally, told me that Haut was suffering on age related diabetes. Hypoglycaemie can sometimes cause shorttime problems with the memory. This maybe the reason, why some people misinterpreted this as dementia.

I saw a tv interview with Haut from 2003 and he seemed to be mentally fit on it.

cda said...

DR and Kevin::

I shall put this to both of you in the form of questions, rather than state my views (which can be deduced from the questions).

Question: In his second affidavit Walter Haut names several individuals who attended the supposed meeting at Roswell on the morning of July 8. Were any of these individuals alive at the time of his first affidavit in 1993 (when these names were not mentioned)? If so, which ones? Were these people still alive at the time his second affidavit was written (2002)? Were any still alive when it was finally published (2007)?

Further: Why was Haut's second affidavit only to be released after his death?

And no, I was not present at either of these affidavit writings. (surprise!)

Jeanne Ruppert said...

cda wrote:

"As I wrote elsewhere, if it was a genuine ET craft, do you really suppose Ramey was so calm and collected that he would have had the idea of assembling a substitute balloon for the real debris on that day? You are supposing Ramey knew the real ET nature of the debris (or strongly suspected it) and of the alien bodies also found, yet managed to keep his calm so perfectly that he arranged for someone to pick up an old balloon and try and fool everyone that this is what landed at the ranch."

I predict that Ramey, and others, would be so taken aback at such a discovery that none of them would have a clue what to do. They would have been running around in circles."


But they wouldn't have reported all this up to their superiors in Washington (and elsewhere) in order to receive instructions on how to handle the situation? You write, cda, as if these discoveries and the crisis they presented occurred in an information vacuum and outside of an established and highly organized hierarchy of command and control, which had already been confronted with the dilemma of the ufo wave of spring-summer 1947, ufo appearances over the Hanford atomic facility (as early as 1941), over Oak Ridge, and over atomic research and testing facilities in New Mexico for years. All of these events constituted the informational context within which the crash near Roswell took place, and no one in the command structure of the AAF or the military in general would likely have been unaware of this context. The crash at Roswell was not a situation that would have, or could have, been managed locally.


"Also, Marcel originally said he was photographed with the actual debris, then again with the ersatz debris. A preposterous idea, but that was due to the cropped photo in THE ROSWELL INCIDENT. Once the full photo (and the other five) was obtained, it was obvious all the photos showed the same stuff. At that point ETHers were in a predicament - and the only way out was to somehow plant the idea that a switch was done at the very beginning, before any pics were taken."

Much more has been learned about the seven photographs we know about (or is it eight with the addition of the clearer one found in the Bettman Archives), but you've indicated that you don't want to bother to read the forthcoming Regehr-Morris book to find out what they've discovered. I'm betting you'll be reading that book.

KRandle said...

Brian and CDA -

Do either of you ever plan to acknowledge that by the time we get to my statement that so outrages you, it was well established that Johnson had already arrived at that conclusion, that he had been investigating all this himself, that he had copies of his July 9 article in hand, had met with the Marcels, and had friends from Wright Field who suggested the alien nature of the evidences in Roswell? Or, in other words, this criticism is misplaced given what Johnson already knew and had said to me so that my statement, in context, is not as egregious as the two of you seem to think. Just wondering, and if yo don't plan to acknowledge this, then what motivation do I have to address anything that either of you raise in the future? Clearly your bias and agenda is evident to anyone who has spent time reading your comments.

Jeanne Ruppert said...

From what I've read recently (at links provided by Isaac Koi and at David Rudiak's website), it was Johnson who founded the Roswell Photo Interpretation Team [RPIT], which included Ron Regehr, Neil Morris, David Rudiak, and other researchers, and whose research will be reported in detail in the forthcoming book by Regehr and Morris. If I recall correctly, this research project began in the early 1990s. More can be learned about the RPIT at this link:

http://www.abcfield.force9.co.uk/rpit/index.html

and by googling 'Ron Regehr, Neil Morris, Roswell photographs', which produces links to discussions of the project at ufo updates in 2007 and additional references to it by other researchers. For example:

http://ufoupdateslist.com/2007/may/m02-003.shtml

http://ufoupdateslist.com/2007/may/m02-013.shtml

http://www.realityuncovered.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=392&p=5029

http://www.outtahear.com/beyond_updates/report.html


cda said...

Kevin:

I acknowledge the full answers you gave to my 7 questions a while back. Thank you for these. The point about Johnson was that you were the first (I think) of the Roswell authors/researchers to interview him. I did also say that until we had seen the full transcript(s) of your interviews, whether by phone or in person, we could not say whether you did lead him towards the ETH theory. It was Brian, followed by me, who suggested you might have, but I did add the rider that we did not possess the full transcript.

Jeanne:

Those early UFO 1940s reports were hardly in the minds of the guys in Washington when Roswell occurred. Neither were the foo fighters or the Scandinavian ghost rockets. At least not as far as the security of the US was concerned. True, there were official reports on both, but it was only the post-Arnold era of 2 weeks that really bothered the Washington officials. I therefore do not think for a moment that anyone in the military or in government had prepared for an alien invasion in July. Therefore there were no thoughts, ideas or preparations, secret or otherwise, for such an event. Therefore Roswell, had it been a genuine ET crash, WOULD have taken everyone by surprise, and how!

Brian B said...

Kevin:

"Do either of you ever plan to acknowledge that by the time we get to my statement that so outrages you, it was well established that Johnson had already arrived at that conclusion?"

Yes you clarified it just fine. Thanks.

David Rudiak said...

From what I've read recently (at links provided by Isaac Koi and at David Rudiak's website), it was Johnson who founded the Roswell Photo Interpretation Team [RPIT], which included Ron Regehr, Neil Morris, David Rudiak, and other researchers, and whose research will be reported in detail in the forthcoming book by Regehr and Morris. If I recall correctly, this research project began in the early 1990s. More can be learned about the RPIT at this link:

Jeanne, just for the record, I was never part of RPIT. Regher and Morris were and I think two others whose names escape me.

RPIT was put together in 1999 (or maybe 1998) by Johnson and were the first people to attempt a full read of the Ramey memo. Regehr was the first to propose VICTIMS and Morris WRECK. They also had WEATHER BALLOONS and AT FORT WORTH, TEX, but not "DISC" (where they instead had "CRASH", one too many letters). For the signature they had mystery man TEMPLE. Other words/phrases they read that are now generally agreed upon are YOU FORWARDED TO THE, MEANING OF STORY, LAND, and CREWS. (However, I haves since changed my opinion that MEANING is more probably RELEASE and CREWS may be TEAMS, but these are not earthshaking changes. TEAMS instead of CREWS would not change the meaning in the least anyway.)

When I independently ordered 8x10 prints in 2000 and started reading, I quickly changed "CRASH" to "DISC" (now very strongly agreed upon), TEMPLE to RAMEY (again strongly agreed upon), and their MAGDALENA (2 letters too long) to ROSWELL.

Brad Sparks would letter write me and say he attempted to read it back in 1985 and was coming up with "DISC", WEATHER BALLOONS, and AT FORT WORTH, TEX, so credit for being the first to come up with these words should go to him. He would later independently read ROSWELL and RAMEY where I had it, also telling me he deliberately did not read anybody else's interpretation so he wouldn't be influenced. The major disagreement (last I heard from him years ago) was FINDING instead of VICTIMS.

I heard Regehr on the Paracast a few months back, and apparently his book with Morris includes their analysis of other details in the photos (not the memo), which I have in the past found to be erroneous. E.g., I think they are still arguing that there is real Roswell debris mixed in with weather balloon debris, including "hieroglypics" on the sticks. It just looks like all rawin target debris to me, the "hieroglyphics" being nothing but foil/paper shards left behind when the foil/paper covering was torn loose from the balsa sticks from where it was glued on.

David Rudiak said...

CDA declared psychically:
Those early UFO 1940s reports were hardly in the minds of the guys in Washington when Roswell occurred. Neither were the foo fighters or the Scandinavian ghost rockets. At least not as far as the security of the US was concerned. True, there were official reports on both, but it was only the post-Arnold era of 2 weeks that really bothered the Washington officials. I therefore do not think for a moment that anyone in the military or in government had prepared for an alien invasion in July. Therefore there were no thoughts, ideas or preparations, secret or otherwise, for such an event. Therefore Roswell, had it been a genuine ET crash, WOULD have taken everyone by surprise, and how!

CDA, many of us continuue to be amazed at your psychic superpowers, knowing with such certainty across space and time exactly what was in the minds of those involved

Gen. Vandenberg, for one, had been the Director of Central Intelligence at the time of the ghost rockets only a year before and had reports sent to him about what what going on there. So do you suppose it was remotely possible, as acting head of the AAF in 1947 during the flying discs and Roswell, that Vandenberg could have drawn an obvious connection that it was a continuation of the same phenomenon that had alarmed military analysts in Europe in 1946?

According to Greek's top physicist, Dr. Paul Santorini, who went public 20 years later, he had headed a Greek Army investigation into the ghost rockets being seen over Greece. He said they quickly came to the conclusion that they were not ordinary missiles. But before they could investigate further, it got blocked by foreign officials, including scientists from Washington who flew in to secretly confer with them. Later he told researcher Raymond Fowler that secrecy was invoked because the ghost rockets represented a superior technology against which we had no defense.

In case you want to claim this was just decades-old testimony again, there is now a 1948 USAF Europe Top Secret document (declassified 50 years later) where they state they were told by the Swedish military that their analysts thought the ghost rockets (and flying saucers) did not originate form any nation on earth, therefore ET.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_rockets#/media/File:1948_Top_Secret_USAF_UFO_extraterrestrial_document.png

"When officers of this Directorate recently visited the Swedish Air Intelligence Service, this question was put to the Swedes. Their answer was that some reliable and fully technically qualified people have reached the conclusion that 'these phenomena are obviously the result of a high technical skill which cannot be credited to any presently known culture on earth'. They are therefore assuming that these objects originate from some previously unknown or unidentified technology, possibly outside the earth."

But since you know so definitely nobody would have been thinking along these lines prior to Roswell, there would have been no contingency plans for such an event. Never mind that a number of ghost rockets had been seen and heard by many to crash into lakes and the Swedish military had conducted extensive searches for debris, but could never find any. The idea of these things crashing was not new.

However, I would agree that such a crash in the U.S. probably would have come as a shock to most (though maybe not to somebody like Vandenberg who already knew of ghost rocket crashes). I disagree that no contingency plans might have been in place, given the prior UFO history of foo fighters and ghost rockets. The Pentagon has contingency plans for just about everything imaginable. And the guys in charge were used to high stress situations. (Remember WWII?)

KRandle said...

CDA -

You have proved that you don't know your UFO history. Colonel Howard McCoy was heavily involved in the investigation of the Foo Fighters. He was one of the points of contact and aware of what was happening with the Ghost Rockets. His name surfaces in some of the documents. In December 1946 McCoy was tasked with creating an unofficial project to investigate these sightings and it was probably McCoy who drafted the Twining letter. So, yes, they knew what had happened, they knew that the invasion fleet, if it was standing by, had not been deployed for four or five years so they had an idea of what was happening and how to respond to it. It is a fallacy to think they only had two weeks of reports to worry about. They had years to formulate a policy on what to do, based on what they might see. In fact, if you look through the Blue Book files, you see references to cases from the Ghost Rockets but those cases didn't make it into the Blue Book files.

Jeanne Ruppert said...

cda said...

Kevin: I acknowledge the full answers you gave to my 7 questions a while back. Thank you for these. The point about Johnson was that you were the first (I think) of the Roswell authors/researchers to interview him. I did also say that until we had seen the full transcript(s) of your interviews, whether by phone or in person, we could not say whether you did lead him towards the ETH theory. It was Brian, followed by me, who suggested you might have, but I did add the rider that we did not possess the full transcript."

If I might respond to your remark to Kevin, I find it curious as well as unreasonable that you need to place some kind of onus on Kevin for alluding to the alien theory re: ufos in his interview with Johnson. Do you think Bond Johnson lived in an individual informational vacuum, much like the one you suggest afflicted the entire AAF and the military as a whole by the summer of 1947?


You also wrote:

"Jeanne: Those early UFO 1940s reports were hardly in the minds of the guys in Washington when Roswell occurred. Neither were the foo fighters or the Scandinavian ghost rockets. At least not as far as the security of the US was concerned. True, there were official reports on both, but it was only the post-Arnold era of 2 weeks that really bothered the Washington officials. I therefore do not think for a moment that anyone in the military or in government had prepared for an alien invasion in July. Therefore there were no thoughts, ideas or preparations, secret or otherwise, for such an event. Therefore Roswell, had it been a genuine ET crash, WOULD have taken everyone by surprise, and how!"

I've never thought or said that the US military and government anticipated "an alien invasion in July." But I have no doubt they were aware of repeated anomalous flying objects encountered in all three theatres during WWII, obviously concerned about the nature of the Scandinian 'ghost rockets', and well aware of the repeated 'ufo' incursions over Hanford, Oak Ridge, and atomic research and testing installations in New Mexico.

For more information about ufo encounters and military and governmental responses to them during and after WWII, read Keith Chester's extensive historical research in his book Strange Company: Military Encounters with UFOs in World War II.

David Rudiak said...

During the flying saucer wave of June/July 1947, the newspapers were also mentioning the ghost rockets and foo fighters. So not exactly forgotten even in the civilian sphere, which had reported both phenomena in the U.S. to a limited extent.

Thanks for the tidbits on McCoy's history, which I either never knew or had forgotten.

Brian B said...

@ Rudiak

"Never mind that a number of ghost rockets had been seen and heard by many to crash into lakes and the Swedish military had conducted extensive searches for debris, but could never find any."

On August 22, 1946, the director of the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), Lt. Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, wrote a Top Secret memo to President Truman, perhaps based in part on information from Doolittle and Sarnoff. Vandenberg stated that the "weight of evidence" pointed to Peenemünde as origin of the missiles, that US MA (military attaché) in Moscow had been told by 'key Swedish Air Officer' that radar course-plotting had led to conclusion that Peenemünde was the launch site. CIG speculates that the missiles are extended-range developments of V-1 being aimed for the Gulf of Bothnia for test purposes and do not overfly Swedish territory specifically for intimidation; self-destruct by small demolition charge or burning."

Now of course we have to reject Vandenburg's opinion because after all, he was part of the "grand conspiracy" to hide ET contact, right? Of course he was! Sly devil!

Never mind that a majority of these "ghost rockets" were later identified as meteors sighted during known meteor showers (in daytime too), or that some metallic debris supposedly found was actually magnesium, a metal being experimented with for aviation purposes since the early 1900's and later used to test incendiary bombs that burn until they are slag.

And never mind that while some people did suggest the phenomenon was inexplicable and possibly ET (the Swedes mainly), nothing was ever found to prove that. Nothing.

As you said, they supposedly crashed but left basically no remains. I didn't know that alien spaceships were known to crash and leave no debris at all! Invisible saucers maybe?

And never mind that the Germans had designed and tested remote control rockets during WWII at Peenemünde that included the Wasserfall Ferngelenkte FlaRakete (Waterfall Remote-Controlled A-A Rocket) and the radio controlled Backebo rocket, one of which just happened to crash in Sweden in 1944, or also the radio controlled Henschel Hs 293 glide bomb rocket.

And never mind that Roswell ET fans don't like to acknowledge Nazi German weapons development because it takes away from the sensational claims that everything not totally explainable in life or history originates from outer space.

I mean if we can't explain it that's got to be proof that ET is visiting earth, right?

Jeanne Ruppert said...

David Rudiak wrote:

"Jeanne, just for the record, I was never part of RPIT. Regher and Morris were and I think two others whose names escape me.

RPIT was put together in 1999 (or maybe 1998) by Johnson and were the first people to attempt a full read of the Ramey memo."

Thanks for that correction and for the information re when RPIT was established. In some of the discussions of RPIT that I linked, your work with the Ramey memo was mentioned and credited. I think both Regehr and Morris have also referred to the importance of that work, so I guessed that you were working with them. I'm sorry to hear that so far you do not think they've improved understanding of what appears in the debris photographs. I'm hoping for more in the Regehr/Morris book, and also hope you'll review it.

Brice said...

@David Rudiak :

"E.g., I think they are still arguing that there is real Roswell debris mixed in with weather balloon debris, including "hieroglypics" on the sticks. It just looks like all rawin target debris to me, the "hieroglyphics" being nothing but foil/paper shards left behind when the foil/paper covering was torn loose from the balsa sticks from where it was glued on."

Yes that's part of what Ron Regehr was saying in this paracast interview if I recall exactly. And if I understood correctly he was also giving the hint that these "real debris" were the sticks that appear thicker in the photos than the other ones (thinner) that were used to compose the structure of the rawin target.

@All :

I don't really catch what's the big deal whether or not the AAF had already a plan at hand for an ET invasion/crash or not. As recalled by Kevin and David Rudiak, there are enough documents to attest that some in the commands were well aware of the UFO phenomenon and had already undertook some investigations. Whether or not some "plan" was existing in july 1947, or caught by (relative) surpprise, it wouldn't have prevented the AAF to take decisions and act very quickly. That's the job of the military to have to deal with emergency situations and make fast decisions for everchanging situations.

Isaac Koi - New Uploads said...

David Rudiak said : "Jeanne, just for the record, I was never part of RPIT. Regher and Morris were and I think two others whose names escape me".

Ben Field and Marilyn Ruben (as well as Regehr, Morris and James Bond Johnson).

William Strathmann said...

I am wondering if either of you, Kevin or David Rudiak, know when Marcel’s B-29 took off? Or when it arrived at Ft. Worth? Those times should have some impact on how to understand the Johnson photo shoot issue, IMHO.

It appears certain that Marcel’s flight would have been ordered after Blanchard ordered Haut to issue the press release, which, according to your timeline Kevin, was at about 09:30.

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.co.il/2013/01/the-roswell-time-line-july-8-1947.html

But did Marcel’s flight take off even later, after Haut had delivered the press release to the news outlets (which seems to have been much more than an hour later)?

Then too, it seems to me that Marcel’s B-29 would not take off unless Blanchard had already called Ramey to coordinate, to make sure that Ramey was going to be around his office in FTW to see the debris and thus having an impact on the Johnson photo shoot.

Now if I remember the thrust of some of your recent posts, Kevin, you suggest that Blanchard thought the retrieved material was merely unclassified debris, and that the Roswell press release he issued was intended to be something like the recent Circleville press release.

But if so, then the question arises: Why bother sending the general material that Blanchard thought was unclassified debris? Why send it post-haste to FTW? On the other hand, if, after 09:30, Blanchard did become aware that the debris actually should be classified and thus of interest to Ramey (and also justifying Marcel's flight) then why not preemptively pull out the stops, nip the bud, and cancel the Roswell press release?

Frank Barnes said...

FYI -RE:Roswell info from the mid 1960's

Mr. Randle,

I just listened to your Oct 28, 2015 interview on "Podcast UFO". In that interview you mentioned that you could not find anything mentioned about Roswell before the mid 1970's. I have a small amount of information concerning Roswell from the mid 1960's that I thought you may find of interest. I don't want to publish it here as I mention friends of mine who I don't want to publish their names in the open here. It has some detail that supports the story of Roswell. Please contact me via my gmail and I will be glad to send you privately what I have.

Frank

Paul Young said...

Brian Bell said..."As you said, they supposedly crashed but left basically no remains. I didn't know that alien spaceships were known to crash and leave no debris at all! Invisible saucers maybe?

And never mind that the Germans had designed and tested remote control rockets during WWII at Peenemünde that included the Wasserfall Ferngelenkte FlaRakete (Waterfall Remote-Controlled A-A Rocket) and the radio controlled Backebo rocket, one of which just happened to crash in Sweden in 1944, or also the radio controlled Henschel Hs 293 glide bomb rocket."


Can't you see the contradiction in your post Brian?


The big difference between the German rockets and the Ghost Rockets is that the German ones left debris...very large amounts of unwanted debris, I might add. (Just ask anyone unfortunate enough to have been living in London and the surrounding counties during WW2)
Even the ones that didn't detonate caused extensive damage and left craters.

Lance said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lance said...

Just so we are clear, what Marcel did for this case is far more damaging than Kevin is letting on.

First, Marcel said (twice!) that the stuff we see him with in the photos, photos that Marcel would have seen on the front pages of newspapers IS the real alien stuff.

Then when shown a picture, he then said that it wasn't the same stuff (not yet having fabricated the switched debris story, I don't think he said much more).

Next Marcel shows up with another story: now he is saying that there was a mixture of the "real" stuff and the prosaic debris but that he was hiding some of the real stuff behind a paper.

Finally, Marcel gets his story in alignment with the party line: the real debris was switched with the fake.

The above basic facts aren't disputed (as far as I know) by anyone with knowledge of the case.

But it is clear evidence of lying and trying to please the believers.

There is much more (or actually less) about Marcel that, to an objective person, would tend to sink Roswell from the get-go. And the excuses for the above only amplify the fact that this is pseudoscience with its characteristic unfalsifiability.

The basic believer response is just to look away, but then, what else can they do?

Lance

cda said...

Lance:

Yes you have highlighted the basic silliness of this Marcel photo affair. First we have it that Marcel was pictured with the real debris (This was when Bill Moore showed him only a cropped photo, i.e. about one third of the total area shown in the full photo). Then when shown another photo (also cropped) he mentioned the 'switch', because the two pics at that time looked different. Then 6 photos were found and shown uncropped, and thereafter, for a while anyway, all 6 photos showed only the 'switched' balloon (as per Randle/Schmitt). Now we have it from some writers that these same 6 photos, or at least some of them, show BOTH the real debris and the switched balloon! The new Regehr-Morris book appears to support this.

This is getting insane. How on earth are we supposed to know what to believe? Same with duBose. He tells Randle one thing and Moore & Shandera another. Naturally Kevin discounts what he told M/S. As for Johnson, he too cannot settle on what really happened at FW, or anything. The photographic evidence is thus a shambles.

If anyone wants to know why the scientific establishment ignores, or laughs, at the Roswell affair, they need look no further than this.

As to preparations for a possible ET visit that may have been in place in June/July of 1947, please someone show us some official documentation which indicates this. In fact I have never heard of any such preparations that exist even TODAY.

DR:

Why not look at that paragraph from the formerly top secret USAF Europe document again. You will see no names in it, and all you get is the writer saying USAF officials spoke to Swedish ones, who had gathered from "some reliable and fully technically qualified people" etc, etc. In other words, nobody knows who they were, and never will.

Were the Swedes also prepared for an ET invasion? I think not. You do realise that these so-called "reliable and technically qualified people" MAY boil down to just one (unknown) person.

Were not the members of the top secret 1948 "Estimate of the Situation" committee also similarly technically qualified? Yet to this day nobody really knows who they were. And their 'Estimate' was junked soon afterwards, by the very General Vandenberg who supposedly knew all about Roswell. (Secret taken to his grave maybe?)

As to my assumed psychic powers, I may organise a psychic gathering, a seance, in which the medium, possibly myself, contacts General Ramey to learn the great earth-shattering secret he allegedly took to his grave. No promises of success, however.

KRandle said...

All -

This conversation is ended now because it doesn't relate to Johnson and what he did or said. Skeptics, please note that I have given you the last word on this.

cda said...

Kevin:

I wish to add one extra "last word", and on-topic. I think everyone contributing to this topic should read the original 12-page article entitled "The Fort Worth press conference: the J.Bond Johnson connection" in I.U.R. Nov - Dec 1990 (vol. 15 no.6) by yourself and Don Schmitt. Part of the initial 40-minute telephone interview you did with Johnson on Feb 27, 1989 is given. It is very enlightening, but people will have to decide for themselves what to make of it. I cannot tell precisely how much of that interview transcript is printed, but what is there is certainly worth reading.

Without going into the all the details, I will only say that my impression is that Johnson's memory was weak and he seemed not know how many of the 6 photos were his and how many were due to someone else. There is also discussion of things like if and when the balloon switch was done, the Marcel connection and 'bodies', etc.

It should be read by everyone interested in the Fort Worth 'connection'. I have not managed to read it all yet.

KRandle said...

CDA -

You missed my point, and it isn't clear. I cut off only the conversation about Marcel and not the discussion about Johnson and his activities... That discussion should continue if anyone cares to continue. We'll talk about Marcel sometime later, as the mood moves me.

David Rudiak said...

William Strathman wrote: (1 of 2)
I am wondering if either of you, Kevin or David Rudiak, know when Marcel’s B-29 took off? Or when it arrived at Ft. Worth? Those times should have some impact on how to understand the Johnson photo shoot issue, IMHO. It appears certain that Marcel’s flight would have been ordered after Blanchard ordered Haut to issue the press release, which, according to your timeline Kevin, was at about 09:30.

The information is conflicting. According to AP stories from July 9, "The weather device was flown to Fort Worth army airfield by a B-29 from Roswell army airfield at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the command of Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey...”

But AP also reported: “After Col. William H. Blanchard, 509th Commanding Officer, reported the incident to Gen. Ramey, he was ordered to dispatch the object to Fort Worth Army Air Field immediately. About that time word broke from Roswell that a flying disc finally had been found. After his first look, Ramey declared all it was was a weather balloon. The weather officer verified his view.” [Note Ramey reported IDing weather balloon immediately]

According to this, the order from Ramey didn’t come until the afternoon, around when the press release came out.

Similarly, we have the following in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram story (which Bond Johnson originally claimed he had written after speaking to Ramey and from which AP stories are derived):

"Marcel brought back the discovery to Roswell Army Air field early Tuesday morning, and at 8 a.m. reported to his commanding officer, Col. William H. Blanchard... Blanchard, in turn, reported to General Ramey, who ordered the find flown to Fort Worth immediately. About that time, word broke from Roswell that flying disk finally had been found. In a matter of minutes, wire services across the nation were screaming for news of the discovery and the airwaves were full of the story."

The story broke about 2:30 in Roswell or 3:30 in Fort Worth. According to this, Marcel wasn't ordered and didn't leave until "2-ish" Roswell time.

Similarly, asst. op officer Lt. Robert Shirkey remembers getting back from lunch, with Blanchard walking in and asking where his B-29 was. Soon after it taxied up to the loading dock. Shirkey saw the B-29 being loaded with boxes of debris (much more than just a weather balloon and radar target). He saw Marcel boarding the plane.

It took several hours to prep a plane like a B-29 for flight. So my interpretation is that maybe Marcel was ORDERED to Fort Worth at 10:00 but didn't actually leave until several hours later.

But did Marcel’s flight take off even later, after Haut had delivered the press release to the news outlets (which seems to have been much more than an hour later)?

Yes, though I think a little before the press release went on the wire. At the other end of the timeline, the Dallas Morning News said Ramey's intel officer Major Kirton told them at 5:30 (CST) that the object had been definitively IDed as a "rawin" device, meaning Marcel had already arrived and had his photo taken by Johnson, and weather officer Newton had also been there.

Bond Johnson would likely have been dispatched by his editor at the FWST shortly after 4:53 (CST) with the first AP bulletin mentioning Ramey. A UP bulletin at 4:42 (CST) had Roswell base stating Marcel was at Fort Worth but might be back on his way to Roswell. (latter statement definitely not true--Marcel returned a day later)

And various newspaper articles had Ramey on the phone talking to the Pentagon and reporters starting about an hour after the base press release (or ~4:30 CST), claiming the object was in his office, but giving descriptions suggesting nothing was there yet and he was just stalling for time (such as claiming the "box-kite" would have been 25 feet in diameter if reconstructed).

David Rudiak said...

(2 of 2)
Back in Washington, Gen. Vandenberg left his office at around 4:15 (CST) and didn't return for an hour. During this time he was reported going to the AAF press room, taking charge, and directing phone calls to Ramey and Roswell to supposedly find out what had happened. (Hence the AP bulletin at 4:53 with Ramey saying he was forwarding the disc to Wright Field, Johnson being dispatched to the base as a result, etc., taking about 1/2 hour to get there.)

Put this altogether and my best guess is that Marcel left Roswell about 2:00 (MST) or 3:00 CST, given B-29 flight speeds and time to get to Ramey's office, arrived there about 5:00 CST as Ramey was finishing up his phone calls, conferred briefly with Ramey, then somewhere between 5:15 and 5:30 Johnson was admitted to Ramey's office, took his pictures, and spoke to Ramey, Dubose, and maybe Marcel (all 3 quoted in the FWST story the next morning that Johnson claimed he wrote).

Then too, it seems to me that Marcel’s B-29 would not take off unless Blanchard had already called Ramey to coordinate, to make sure that Ramey was going to be around his office in FTW to see the debris and thus having an impact on the Johnson photo shoot.

Yes, coordination would have been necessary for Ramey to get all his ducks lined up. For one thing, he had to get a shill balloon and weather target from somewhere if they weren’t already at his base, meaning they would have to be flown in. There has been speculation that the balloon/radar target was in the paper packages that Sgt. Robert Porter recalled being loaded into Marcel’s B-29 (in addition to OTHER DEBRIS). If that was the case, then Ramey would have had to wait for Marcel’s flight before proceeding with the photo op, and would have to improvise in the meantime his debris descriptions, as he seemed to be doing when speaking on the telephone.

Now if I remember the thrust of some of your recent posts, Kevin, you suggest that Blanchard thought the retrieved material was merely unclassified debris, and that the Roswell press release he issued was intended to be something like the recent Circleville press release. But if so, then the question arises: Why bother sending the general material that Blanchard thought was unclassified debris? Why send it post-haste to FTW? On the other hand, if, after 09:30, Blanchard did become aware that the debris actually should be classified and thus of interest to Ramey (and also justifying Marcel's flight) then why not preemptively pull out the stops, nip the bud, and cancel the Roswell press release?

The stuff was being treated as highly classified, according to quotes from Ramey, saying that Washington had imposed a "security lid" and he hadn't let anyone see or photograph it yet as a result. (At the same time claiming it was nothing to get excited about, it looked like a foil-covered box-kite, etc.) There’s another news story saying Roswell base also refused to release details about what the disc looked like. To this point, it was clearly still being treated as something very sensitive and classified. That makes no sense if somebody like Blanchard or Ramey or the Pentagon throught it was mundane and not classified prior to this. And there would have been no need to fly it on to Wright Field after first stopping in Fort Worth. (Even though after weather officer Newton’s final balloon ID, Ramey supposedly cancelled the flight.)

The FBI was told that the object resembled a radar target suspended from a balloon, but that Wright Field by telephone disagreed, and ABC News radio later that night reported that Wright Field said they were still expecting the disc, but it hadn’t arrived yet. (1000 mile flight from FW to WF would take about 4 hours.)

Brian B said...

"Yes that's part of what Ron Regehr was saying in this paracast interview if I recall exactly. And if I understood correctly he was also giving the hint that these "real debris" were the sticks that appear thicker in the photos than the other ones (thinner) that were used to compose the structure of the rawin target."

Actually I listened to Regehr on Paracast today.

He's claiming some odd stuff.

1) Johnson took only four of the seven photos, and there were three different photo ops with three different photographers at different times.

2) That the debris is not "mixed" but the ACTUAL spacecraft wreckage.

3) That Johnson has looked at the photos and stated he didn't know what it was either.

4) Based on light and shadows, photos were taken at 3:15 pm.

5) Photos show hollow tubular bars with hieroglyphics, and one photo shows bent metal strips not used on Mogul balloons.

There's more, but mainly he's claiming that the photos show the real alien material not balloon material.

It's all here at:

http://www.theparacast.com/podcasts/paracast_150517.mp3

Brian B said...

Forgot to mention Regher says there are "seven photos" based on one that turned up in the Northeast.

He calls it the "lost photo".

Brian B said...

@ Paul

"Can't you see the contradiction in your post Brian?"

No. It's presumed by those who reported it that the rockets were made of magnesium and that they were designed to incinerate and burn down to nothing, mainly slag.

We have no proof alien vessels fire missiles or are made of magnesium, but we do know humans have used it in aerospace manufacturing.

Jeanne Ruppert said...

Brian Bell said...

"Forgot to mention Regher says there are "seven photos" based on one that turned up in the Northeast.
He calls it the 'lost photo'."

Glad to hear that you listened to the paracast interview with Ron Regehr. If I recall correctly, he said that the photo located at Bettman was one of the Johnson six, but clearer, more distinct in details. It might be that the photo sent {by someone, apparently not Johnson} was a fully dried print, the ones used by AP having been wet when Johnson delivered them for AP to process for the wire.

But someone else had a camera in Ramey's office at the time of the photo shoot -- whoever took the photo of Johnson kneeling on the floor arranging the debris, which you can see in Dennis Balthaser's interview with Johnson at this link:

http://www.truthseekeratroswell.com/james-bond-johnson.html

There is more of interest to read in that interview concerning Johnson and the photographs.

Brice said...

David Rudiak said :

"Put this altogether and my best guess is that Marcel left Roswell about 2:00 (MST) or 3:00 CST, given B-29 flight speeds and time to get to Ramey's office, arrived there about 5:00 CST as Ramey was finishing up his phone calls, conferred briefly with Ramey, then somewhere between 5:15 and 5:30 Johnson was admitted to Ramey's office, took his pictures, and spoke to Ramey, Dubose, and maybe Marcel (all 3 quoted in the FWST story the next morning that Johnson claimed he wrote)."

"Yes, coordination would have been necessary for Ramey to get all his ducks lined up. For one thing, he had to get a shill balloon and weather target from somewhere if they weren’t already at his base, meaning they would have to be flown in. There has been speculation that the balloon/radar target was in the paper packages that Sgt. Robert Porter recalled being loaded into Marcel’s B-29 (in addition to OTHER DEBRIS). If that was the case, then Ramey would have had to wait for Marcel’s flight before proceeding with the photo op, and would have to improvise in the meantime his debris descriptions, as he seemed to be doing when speaking on the telephone."

If we suppose/accept the idea that the weather balloon in the photos was some "demo material" and not the real debris, then it gets very tricky in the timeline IMO :

If there was no plan to conceal the real debris before Ramey saw it, then if we accept that Marcel arrived at Fort Worth around 5:00, it leaves too little time for (Ramey) checking the real material, deciding what to do (maybe needing to inform and get some orders from superiors?), finding a weather balloon at hand and staging the stuff in his office for JBJ arriving there around 5:15~5:30. Also, if contacted by the Star telegram for a photo-op before JBJ was dispatched (which we can suppose it could have been) or in anycase upon JBJ's arrival at the base, it would seem improbable that Ramey would authorized a photo session if he wasn't sure yet about what to do or had everything already set, which wouldn't have been the case at the time of JBJ's departure (before 5:00) or if caught by surprise upon unexpected JBJ's arrival at the base. So IMO there's not enough time in this timeline to account for the idea of the switching of the debris and the staging in Ramey's office which yet we know was done around 5:30 because of JBJ's photos. I believe it would have needed Marcel's plane arriving maybe 1~3h before to leave enough time for all these developpements to take place.

Brian Bell said :

"2) That the debris is not "mixed" but the ACTUAL spacecraft wreckage."

Not sure about this, I seem to recall he said they were mixed actually because of of this difference in the thickness of the real and fake sticks debris.

Paul Young said...

The VI and VII rockets were noisy in the extreme. The roar as it came in followed by the whistle after its fuel ran out and it dropped to earth was practically the hallmark of the damned thing.
Yet the so called "Ghost Rockets" managed to fly practically in silence? That's a remarkable leap in technology in such a short time!

Not only that...on the odd occasion they were seen coming down, they always came down in lakes! If this was by design then they were magnificently more accurate than the rockets the Germans aimed at London...ie...by firing them in the general direction of that city, and giving them just enough juice to make the trip!

The suggestion by Brian, I'm presuming, is that these things had been commandeered by the Russians when discovered at Peenemünde (or wherever)and they then tested them by shooting them at Sweden??! (Quite what the Swedes had done to deserve this, I don't know! Saab's aren't THAT bad to drive and they hadn't, yet, inflicted ABBA onto the world.)

You'd think that if the Russians had aquired such brilliant technology, they would have tested them somewhere over their own vast, vast, VAST country. Somewhere they could have tracked the things all the way down the range. From launch till eventual landing/crashing back to earth...and be able to study the remains in peace and quiet.

I haven't got a clue what these things were and certainly wouldn't rush to say they came from another planet. They didn't seem to display the extreme ,maneuvreability of the foo fighters or the flying saucers, but they were different enough from the German rockets to suggest that you can't hang that on them.

Paul Young said...

Brice said,...."So IMO there's not enough time in this timeline to account for the idea of the switching of the debris and the staging in Ramey's office which yet we know was done around 5:30 because of JBJ's photos. I believe it would have needed Marcel's plane arriving maybe 1~3h before to leave enough time for all these developpements to take place."

I expect Ramey and his superiors in Washington had already decided that this was going to be a weather balloon (no matter what) before he had even ordered Blanchard to transport the disc to him.
The weather balloon wreckage was probably already in boxes on the floor in Rameys office before the real McCoy had even left the Roswell Air Base.

Brian B said...

@ Brice

""2) That the debris is not "mixed" but the ACTUAL spacecraft wreckage."

Not sure about this, I seem to recall he said they were mixed actually because of of this difference in the thickness of the real and fake sticks debris."

Listen again. He makes a few odd comments that contradict themselves. It may just be the way Regher interviews - he doesn't appear to have had much experience with it. In the interview he also claims:

1) Rawins weren't used on Mogul balloons because they were tracked by radio signals by the radiosondes, not radar.

2) No "string" or "tape" in the debris photos demonstrates the material isn't from a Rawin.

He is asked specifically and replies the debris in the photos is the real alien stuff. He says quote "...there could be some Rawin mixed in...I don't know.." But goes on to say he doesn't think so.

cda said...

If anyone, Regehr or anyone else, claims the photos show either the real debris or a mixture of real and substituted debris, does this not completely destroy the idea that the debris was from an ET craft? The whole point of the 'balloon switch' (if it was done at all) was to fool the press & public, and thus NOT to allow anyone to photo the actual ET debris, because the latter was essentially top secret. Now we hear, from an ET believer, that the actual debris is depicted!

So we read, again, of conflicting accounts. What on earth is going on? Can someone, please, insert some common sense into all this? What say you, Kevin?

I suppose one answer is that the retrieved ET debris just happened (!) to resemble balloon/radar target debris so closely that the press and public would not know the difference anyway. Ha Ha.

Truly the mind boggles.

cda said...

Paul:

"The weather balloon wreckage was probably already in boxes on the floor in Rameys office before the real McCoy had even left the Roswell Air Base."

So you think Ramey planned and prepared this 'switch' even BEFORE seeing the debris for himself?

You are taking this to new heights, or depths, according to viewpoint. I suppose he might have been told by Blanchard by phone that the ET craft debris resembles terrestrial balloon debris. But in this case the switch was hardly necessary, was it?

If, on the other hand, the ET debris was vastly different from anything terrestrial, do you REALLY think Ramey, or anyone else, would have been stupid enough to try and fool the public that it was all a fuss about a simple weather balloon & radar target, knowing that there was always the risk of something going wrong, the secret leaking out and Ramey looking the biggest fool on earth?

As I said above, the mind boggles.

Brian B said...

@ Paul

I do believe people saw something, but just because it wasn't explainable to them doesn't mean it was alien.

Photos of reported ghost rockets are actually meteors in the atmosphere.

They can be seen in daytime too. I've seen two significantly large meteors in broad daylight and they are impressive. One can easily think them a falling rocket or a crashing airplane as they hang in the sky for quite a while. In both cases I could have sworn they landed just a mile ahead of me...but they didn't. They eyes and the mind can play tricks.

As for noise its presumptuous to suggest they were all "relatively silent" when witnesses have stated:

"We heard this sound like an airplane cruising along without accelerating.."

"..there was a swooshing sound.."

"A hissing or rumbling sound was sometimes reported."

As for debris:

"...the Swedish Air Force officer who led the search, Karl-Gösta Bartoll (photo right), submitted a report in which he stated that the bottom of the lake had been disturbed but nothing found and that "there are many indications that the Kölmjärv object disintegrated itself...the object was probably manufactured in a lightweight material, possibly a kind of magnesium alloy that would disintegrate easily, and not give indications on our instruments."

"Echo, radar, and other equipment registered readings but gave no clue as to the nature of the objects". It was also stated that fragments alleged to have come from the missiles were nothing more than ordinary coke or slag."

"...nearly one hundred impacts have been reported and thirty pieces of debris have been received and examined by FOA" (later said to be meteorite fragments)."

Overall this is just another case of people seeing something inexplicable to them, but with no evidence for alien contact.

The official reports also determined that only 225 day time sightings went unexplained out of the 1,000+ sightings reported. So the number isn't as large as people claim.

As for the Soviets, when did the Stalin regime ever care about violating western airspace for any reason? They captured German technology and tested it. We know that for a fact, even if they didn't admit it outright then or even now. We know magnesium alloys were being used and tested; we know guided missiles were in existence; we know Stalin was concerned about nuclear disadvantage and in 1947 even authorized development of the formerly German anti-podal bomber; we also know the Russians held Peenemünde.

So why does this have to be proof of alien contact?

Paul Young said...

cda said, "So you think Ramey planned and prepared this 'switch' even BEFORE seeing the debris for himself?"

Yes, absolutely.

It has to be noted here that it has already been admitted in the "Roswell: Case Closed" document that this REALLY was a COVER-UP.
Whether or not you believe it was a flying saucer that crashed at Roswell...or go with the LATEST official explanation from the US Govt.. ie that it was a mogul, it was a cover-up and Ramey was amongst the thick of it.

Be it UFO or Mogul... either way, what Ramey was going to display in his office was going to be a weather balloon.

He didn't have to wait for the stuff to arrive from Roswell! He didn't need to. The decision that this was all a silly mistake, and it was just a weather had already been made.

cda said...

Paul:

I think you misunderstand. Yes Ramey COULD conceivably cover up some secret terrestrial US device such as Mogul, if the authorities above him so desired. What he could NOT cover up is the arrival of an ET craft (at least not with any degree of certainty).

The point being that once an ET craft had landed, or maybe crashed, there was always the likelihood of a more ET landings and even a mass ET invasion, over which neither Ramey nor anyone else had control.

This is the big difference. So I say that Ramey, had he known, or suspected, the ET nature of what crashed, would certainly NOT have tried to spin it into a simple earthly weather balloon. No 'spin doctor' would try this one on the public!

cda said...

Kevin:

We need a discussion on the causes of topic drift, don't we?

Brice said...

@Paul :

"I expect Ramey and his superiors in Washington had already decided that this was going to be a weather balloon (no matter what) before he had even ordered Blanchard to transport the disc to him.
The weather balloon wreckage was probably already in boxes on the floor in Rameys office before the real McCoy had even left the Roswell Air Base."

If we suppose this then it still remains somehow tricky with the time line because you have the 1st PR of a "flying disc" that broke at 2:30 pm in Roswell. So if the story of a weather balloon was already decided before the supposed arrival of Marcel at Fort Worth at 5:00, I guess it would still have to be somewhat after the 1st PR broke in Roswell, otherwise the RAAF coud just have announced that they had found a weather balloon in the 1st PR. Why issue a PR about a flying disc only to back away from it a few hours later? Another possibility might be that Marcel arrived significantly earlier than 5:00 at Fort Worth as it seems there is some uncertainty on the time of the flight, but I confess I lack some knowledge on the case so I don't if this fit or not with other informations/testimonies...

@Brian Bell : I recalled some things differently (ie mixed debris - and actually I can't really imagine how R.Regehr could argue that there wasn't some weather balloon/rawin target in the material in the photos) but sorry I don't have quite the motivation to listen again to the interview...

@CDA:

"If anyone, Regehr or anyone else, claims the photos show either the real debris or a mixture of real and substituted debris, does this not completely destroy the idea that the debris was from an ET craft? The whole point of the 'balloon switch' (if it was done at all) was to fool the press & public, and thus NOT to allow anyone to photo the actual ET debris, because the latter was essentially top secret. Now we hear, from an ET believer, that the actual debris is depicted!"

In this scenario (switched material), regardless of the nature of the debris (ET craft ot something else), it would indeed be totally incoherent to have mixed up things, that would have been an inimaginable mistake.

"So I say that Ramey, had he known, or suspected, the ET nature of what crashed, would certainly NOT have tried to spin it into a simple earthly weather balloon. No 'spin doctor' would try this one on the public!"

Why so? there would be many reasons for that : avoiding any unpredicted earthshaking reaction from the population, the lost of confidence of the population in the power of the government/military to protect its people, the greed to keep the material recovered for its own country in the hope of taking advantage of it...

Unknown said...

Brian,

4) Based on light and shadows, photos were taken at 3:15 pm.

If this guy Regher actually said that it's the best joke I've heard in months. How the hell could pictures taken in an office indicate the position of the sun? It indicates the position of the flash attachment on the camera. Film and lenses available for the Graphic were far too slow for indoor photography without flash.

This clown is a joke. And Brian, I'm pretty sure you agree.

Don said...

Brice: "If we suppose this then it still remains somehow tricky with the time line because you have the 1st PR of a "flying disc" that broke at 2:30 pm in Roswell."

According to the Roswell Daily Record, July 8, 1947, there was a "noon announcement" locally, at least. It was probably a bulletin on KSWS, and perhaps also, KGFL. Its story was not the "canonical" press release ("Haughts Statement") for several reasons. Noon, 2 hours and 26 minutes before the first AP bulletin. No source I am familiar with has the "canonical" press release on the wires at 2:26pm MT. The Daily Illini has no mention of the press release -- the "statement".

The RAAF was in the broadcast range of both stations. I doubt there was much else to tune in.

Regards,

Don

Brice said...

Neal Foy said :

"Brian,

4) Based on light and shadows, photos were taken at 3:15 pm.

If this guy Regher actually said that it's the best joke I've heard in months. How the hell could pictures taken in an office indicate the position of the sun? It indicates the position of the flash attachment on the camera. Film and lenses available for the Graphic were far too slow for indoor photography without flash."

I didn't remark the time you (Brian) mentionned which is not in accordance with JBJ's testimony at all (late afternoon) - I recall R.Regehr said they were able to estimate the time of the picture but not if he gave a precise time (it didn't strike me in anyway at the time). Now, since the AP info broke at 2:30 pm in Roswell, either this estimation of 3:15 pm is quite dubious/false or JBJ's recollections are completely false (it was not late afternoon and it wasn't the AP story that had the editor of the Star Telegram think of sending JBJ to take photos of the material).

@Neal Foy: Regehr said the time could be estimated because of the cast of the shadow of some sort of "special pillar" (?) situated outside and dating from 1947 if I recall exactly.

KRandle said...

All =

The discussion of the Ghost Rockets ends now. We'll take that up at a later date. Talk about topic drift.

Brian B said...

@ Brice

Regher did say 3:15 pm - it's in the recording of Paracast. He said they needed to establish a precise timeline and by analyzing the light in the photos determine it was 3:15 pm.

He also determined using the lines in the carpet that there were three different cameras used hence three different photographers. He used the lines to evaluate camera focal length - or that's what he claims.

Brian B said...

@ Paul and CDA

Well if you take Regher's opinion, Rawin targets weren't used then and there was no switch at all in the office. He says the stuff shown is the real alien material, and at least two photos (presumably Johnson's) were doctored afterwards to mask elements so that when printed in the newspapers it wouldn't be questioned. He says analyzing the different photos shows this clearly. In other words he backs Marcel's initial testimony the stuff on the floor is the real alien craft debris.

I don't have anything against Regher or his co-author, but agree with CDA this just muddies the water so much that the focus for him is not on the memo but the debris itself which for them clearly contains alien symbols and metal never used on Rawin targets us no supporting string.

David Rudiak said...

Neil Foy wrote: (1 of 2)
Brian Bell: "4) Based on light and shadows, photos were taken at 3:15 pm."

If this guy Regher actually said that it's the best joke I've heard in months. How the hell could pictures taken in an office indicate the position of the sun? It indicates the position of the flash attachment on the camera. Film and lenses available for the Graphic were far too slow for indoor photography without flash.


Neil,

Some mistaken notions here by you, but their calculated time is still completely bogus. They are not talking about an indoor shadow, but an outdoor one. There is a crack in the curtains in the Ramey memo photo, and through it you can see something OUTSIDE IN THE SUN (which they presume to be car bumper with license plate holder) casting a shadow on the ground. Treating the shadow like a sundial (with hidden assumptions they don't discuss, such as building orientation), they come up with the 3:15 figure.

The basic idea was clever, but badly flawed in the execution. One BIG problem, among many, is that 3:15 in Fort worth was about 10 minutes BEFORE the AP newswire (3:26 CST) first broke the Roswell base flying disc story. According to Johnson, he also remembered it taking roughly 30 minutes to get from his newpaper to Ramey's office, Add maybe a few more minutes for chit-chat with Ramey and getting to the photos. In other words, RPIT/Johnson was now claiming that Johnson was dispatched to Ramey's about 45 minutes before there was even a story! How can this be? Time travel?

The newspaper articles also make it very clear that the photos could not have been taken until approximately 2 hours after the first AP newswire. E.g., news stories AFTER the newswire quoting Ramey (indicating Ramey talking on the phone starting about an hour later) that he hadn't seen it yet himself but would go take a look, or that he hadn't let anyone else see or PHOTOGRAPH it because of the "security lid" imposed by Washington. How could any of that be, if Ramey had let Johnson in and let him photograph the scene and himself with the weather balloon over an hour earlier?

Johnson's original story was that his editor was following the AP wire bulletins, and that was how they found about Ramey's involvement. We know that time precisely, because Ramey wasn't mentioned by AP until 4:53 CST, saying he was forwarding the "disc" on to Wright Field. Add ~30 minutes to that, and Johnson wouldn't arrive at Raemy's until ~5:20.

The way Johnson spun it is that Ramey supposedly owed his newspaper a favor, therefore gave the newspaper an exclusive before there was a story. This was supposedly based on the recollection of a living FWST employee, whose name was promised multiple times, but never provided. Even if one buys that, it still doesn't explain the time-travel aspects, or the obvious contradictions in Johnson's first interviews in 1989 with Kevin, vs. what he was claiming a dozen years later.

I have also examined the shadow using a 3D ray-trace reconstruction (POV-ray) of the office, debris, and outside. First of all, RPIT assumed the sun was directly to the left, which they ASSUMED to be due West. If that was the case, the shadow should have been cast due right. But it is slanted diagonally right and up, or away from the camera at about a 45 degree angle, suggesting the sun was really to the left and BACK of the camera. If you look at aerial photos of the base, most of the old buildings near the flight line are oriented DIAGONALLY from NW to SE, NOT along a N-S/E-W grid. A western afternoon sun with a building oriented NW to SE would thus cast the observed DIAGONALLY-ORIENTED shadow.

David Rudiak said...

(2 of 2)
Further, I found that if the shadow had been cast by a car bumper with the sun directly left, the bumper would have had to be floating independent of the rest of the car, because the the engine compartment/hood, would have blocked the sun.

I found, assuming a car, that the requisite shadow would NOT be cast by a car bumper, but by the front edge of the right front tire, with no car body in the way. I could get a good match to the orientation and length of the shadow when I placed the ray-tracer light source at a position the sun would have been in Fort Worth at about 5:15 p.m. (probably around +/- 15 min error)--not RPIT's 3:15 p.m.--or in the proper time frame of what other evidence indicates (like the 4:53 AP wire first mentioning Ramey).

This is just one of many serious problems with the RPIT analysis of Johnson's photos (not talking about the Ramey memo here). I actually agree with Brian Bell's skepticism on this (hell hath frozen over), with the caveat that my criticisms are based on actual detailed analysis of the problems with their theories. E.g., their argument of another photographer besides Johnson because the rug stripes have different flare angles is based on not taking basic perspective into account. In some photos, the photographer was kneeling; in others standing (3D reconstruction again). That accounts for the differences in flare, not a second camera and photographer.

Brian B said...

@ Rudiak

David, how can Regher's new book and anything he has to say be helpful to anyone's position? That junk on the floor is clearly balloon material - I think we can all agree on that!

cda said...

Brian and DR (and anyone else):

We now have three different situations, as postulated by various Roswell researchers, regarding the Ft. Worth photographs:

1. The ETHers scenario:

The debris shown in the photos is substituted balloon stuff organised by General Ramey beforehand. This was because he dare not, and could not, allow the real ET stuff to be photographed, due to it being declared top secret, either on orders from Washington or by Ramey himself.

2. The skeptics, and the USAF, scenario:

The debris is the actual debris recovered from the ranch. Since this closely resembles balloon & radar reflector debris, we can assume this is what 'crashed' and was recovered from the Foster ranch.

3. The 'have your cake and eat it' scenario:

The debris was a mixture of the real debris from the ranch and some locally substituted balloon debris, done to befuddle the press and public.


Take your pick. A fascinating case indeed, but what a shambles.

Don Maor said...

CDA, There is another ETH possibility, the 4th scenario:

4) It is NOT important what really was the debris photographed. Happy synchronism of life made that some involved people conflated two events: A) the crash found by Brazel, and (B) another one which involved a whole downed disc and fully physical alien bodies. The relationship between the two events created a flow of information which endangered the secret of the real disc and the retrieval of alien bodies. Even military people were probably confused and at first conflated both events, and the historical story that we now see corresponds to the efforts by military to decouple both events.

cda said...

Don Maor:

Of course! To speak nothing of a 5th scenario, and maybe even a 6th or more. The possibilities are endless, aren't they?

As for what is really shown in those photos, I leave it to your, and others peoples', fertile imagination. The whole scene could even be a psychic projection onto the physical plane.

But I suspect Kevin would rather we avoided this route.

Don said...

David, a question:

Do you think the story attributed to Wilcox, that Brazel thought the object might be a "weather meter" and that it was about the size of the safe in the Wilcox' office, is describing (or attempting to describe) an assembled rawin? A bit torn up from the fall, it's true, but still a recognizable shape.

None of the descriptions of what we call the "debris field", or the debris thereon, match what was photographed in Ramey's office, but the "weather meter" story seems really obviously false.

Best Regards,

Don

Don Maor said...

CDA said:

Of course! To speak nothing of a 5th scenario, and maybe even a 6th or more.

Or maybe it is only that your scenarios are too simplistic CDA. For example, taking your simplistic scenario #2, you could cite evidence for it as follows: "uhhhm, let's see...given that Brazel reported some set of debris of different types, and there were not alien bodies included in the mix of materials reported by Brazel, that can only imply that no alien bodies were ever found in Roswell. eeehhm...see? I solved the Roswell case because I am brilliant..."

Of course dear CDA, things are not that easy.

David Rudiak said...

Don wrote:
Do you think the story attributed to Wilcox, that Brazel thought the object might be a "weather meter" and that it was about the size of the safe in the Wilcox' office, is describing (or attempting to describe) an assembled rawin? A bit torn up from the fall, it's true, but still a recognizable shape.

The story added that Wilcox's safe was about 3' by 4', which is about the size of an assembled rawin taget--4 feet across. (An unassembled one folded flat into a triangle would be 4' x 2', so that's a possibility too.)

So, yes, I think Wilcox claiming that Brazel came in saying he thought he had found a "weather meter" and giving a size about that of a rawin, would be consistent with Wilcox saying Brazel HAD found a weather radar target.

Now throw in another thing that AP quoted Wilcox on:

http://www.roswellproof.com/AP5_July9.html

"The sheriff said he called Maj. Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th (atomic) Bomb Group intelligence office at once, and the officer accompanied Brazell [sic] back to the ranch to recover the object.

"Wilcox said he did not see the object but was told by Brazell it was "about three feet across." The sheriff declined to elaborate. "I'm working with those fellows at the base," he said."

Thus when pushed by some reporter on more details as to what Brazel supposedly found, Wilcox refused to answer, citing that he was "working with... the base". This alone tells us Wilcox was NOT a free agent telling it as it was, but telling a story in coordination with the base.

Another problem with Wilcox's story was that Brazel directly contradicted him, instead saying he came into the sheriff's office and told the sheriff he thought he had found a "flying disc". Then at the end of his interview, Brazel disavowed finding any sort of weather device, saying he had previously found two other weather balloons on his property and this didn't resemble those in any way. Given that, why would Brazel come in and tell the Sheriff that he thought he found a "weather meter"?

Another question that begs itself is why didn't Brazel simply bring in what he said he had found? Another part of Brazel's story was gathering up all the "rubber strips" and sticks, foil/paper into two bundles which he said weighed maybe 5 pounds. He drives the long trip to Roswell to report to the Sheriff, then brings nothing with him to show or back up his story? How hard would that have been?

This becomes doubly puzzling when you throw in Marcel's story from Fort Worth about Brazel first hearing about the saucers in Corona the night of July 5, then thinking maybe he had found one "rushed out" the next morning to retrieve the debris he had supposedly gathered up mid-June before going to Roswell. Why go through the trouble of traveling to the debris field first thing (7 or 8 mile), then not bother to bring anything with you when you special to Roswell to report your flying disc find?

None of the descriptions of what we call the "debris field", or the debris thereon, match what was photographed in Ramey's office, but the "weather meter" story seems really obviously false.

Yes, I agree. Even ignoring decades later testimony of highly anomalous debris, Brazel's descriptions alone do NOT match what Ramey showed in his offfice. Where are the "rubber strips"? Why wouldn't Brazel recognize Ramey's intact weather balloon when Brazel said he knew what those were since he had found them before and what he found this time didn't resemble one "in any way?" And where is Brazel's "flower tape" in the photos, which nobody has been able to find even after scrutinizing multiple photos in high resolution?

Don said...

David: "This becomes doubly puzzling when you throw in Marcel's story from Fort Worth..."

This is where we can speculate about JBJ. Who interviewed Marcel in Ft Worth? Was Marcel anywhere in Ft Worth except in Ramey's office? Unless JBJ interviewed him, there must have been another reporter there, either before, during, or after the big reveal. Isn't this where Marcel described the debris field? As I recall, that description is about something more than a radar target and balloon.

Agree on the situation Wilcox was in. I wonder who the "fellows" were.

Best Regards,

Don

David Rudiak said...

Brian Bell said,

"David, how can Regher's new book and anything he has to say be helpful to anyone's position? That junk on the floor is clearly balloon material - I think we can all agree on that!"

Yes, that is ONE thing we can agree on.

[However, I won't say that is something we can ALL agree on, because then Terry might attack me with "unanimous as defined by Rudiak." Or that people being "serious" in giving such an opinion are only "those who agree with Rudiak." Or my claiming some sort of overwhelming consensus exists is "comical". Or ZoamChomsky will comment that overwhelming consensus proves nothing: "a billion Chinese" agreeing there is only a weather balloon and radar target there "cannot make [this] an objective fact." Thus, according to other resident skeptics here, we can never prove anything 110%, therefore the overwhelming consensus across the UFO political spectrum that it IS just stupid balloon/target there proves nothing. Maybe Regehr/Morris/Johnson ARE right that it is real flying saucer debris. The rest of us are being gullible, "biased" balloon "believers: "seeing only what we want to see."]

What I have seen Regehr and Morris claim about the various Ramey photos in the past has not impressed me (again not talking about the Ramey memo, but large-scale details like rug stripe flare they claim shows a different photographer there), and is full of bad assumptions and reasoning (different stripe flair angles really the result of photos being taken either kneeling or standing).

However, they have raised some interesting ideas, even if ultimately flawed in execution (e.g., shadow outside window giving photo time). So I will read their book when it comes out, because maybe there is a nugget or two buried in there, even if badly misshapen. (I actually like different perspectives if well reasoned and argued--you know, SERIOUS arguments, not BS or trolling.)

Also, I will probably learn some background history of the RPIT group and their early reading of the Ramey memo that I currently don't know.

David Rudiak said...

Don wrote:
David: "This becomes doubly puzzling when you throw in Marcel's story from Fort Worth..."

This is where we can speculate about JBJ. Who interviewed Marcel in Ft Worth? Was Marcel anywhere in Ft Worth except in Ramey's office? Unless JBJ interviewed him, there must have been another reporter there, either before, during, or after the big reveal.


JBJ did proudly take credit initially (when Kevin first interviewed him) for the Star-Telegram story and the AP stories derived from it quoting Marcel (and Ramey, and Dubose). If it wasn't JBJ, then maybe another reporter called from the newspaper or later appeared out there, or JBJ didn't go alone and forget or declined to mention them. Or another possibility is that the quotes came from Ramey's PIO, Cashon, who passed them off to JBJ or someone else at the newspaper. The latte scenario r was probably the case with weather officer Newton's photo and maybe quotes. The photo definitely was not taken by Johnson but someone else, perhaps Cashon, then delivered to other news agencies.

JBJ claimed he was the only reporter there. Against this, when I and others interviewed Newton, he recalled multiple reporters being there, but I haven't been able to get a trace from newspaper articles on who they might have been. Marcel was supposed to have gone directly to Ramey's office from his plane. Marcel in later interviews likewise said there were multiple reporters waiting when he got to Ramey's office, but he couldn't speak to anyone until he had first seen the General, but I can't find a trace on who they might have been either. AP may have sent out reporters from Dallas and UP was also aware of Marcel being in Fort Worth, so these are possibile news item sources too.

In the case of AP, another part of Johnson's story is they brought a wirephoto machine from Dallas to the Star-Telegram to get Johnson's photos out on the wire as quickly as possible. (The only two photos I've seen anywhere credited to AP are one of the two taken of Marcel, and the Ramey/Dubose photo exposing the Ramey memo. The other Ramey/Dubose photo was sold to another news agency.)

Isn't this where Marcel described the debris field? As I recall, that description is about something more than a radar target and balloon.

Yes, it is in the Star-Telegram and AP quotes that Marcel described a "square mile" debris field, but ALSO describes debris that sounds exactly like a radar target (especially the FWST story with Marcel giving stick dimensions) and also torn "synthetic rubber", also calling it a "target balloon". But then, all he had to do was describe what was at his feet that very moment. (Marcel was also a radar intelligence officer, so likely would have known all along about radar targets. Dubose, uniquely quoted in the Star-Telegram, clearly knew about them, saying they were used in air-sea rescue during the war. Dubose later became AF head of air-sea rescue.)

www.roswellproof.com/FortWorthST_July9.html
www.roswellproof.com/AP1_July9.html

Agree on the situation Wilcox was in. I wonder who the "fellows" were.

I would guess "fellows" like Cavitt, or Army CIC, who I strongly suspect of cooking up the weather balloon story (not Ramey). Wilcox's "weather meter" quote appeared VERY QUICKLY about 3:00 p.m. Roswell time in UP bulletins, or about half an hour before Ramey and minions began spinning the story in the direction of weather balloon in outside phone calls, or only about half an hour after AP first broke the story at about 2:30 p.m. This is one of multiple reason why I think the weather balloon story was cooked up well ahead of Ramey's photo-op.

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

(Ramey's intel officer Kirton speaking to Reuters and the FBI using "hexagonal" to describe the rawin is another indication, something that had to be scripted ahead of time. Kirton may have been CIC as well.)

Brian B said...

@ Rudiak

Thanks for the answer.

On your other comments I've always thought these explanations COULD be applied to your thoughts.

"Rubber strips" - My thinking is that he was describing the sunburnt rubber balloon shards. He just referred to them as "rubber strips" instead. It's possible some did shred into strips if the balloon(s) burst on impact.

"Weather balloons" - I suspect Brazel was describing that he had previously found the typical balloons, maybe even in better shape than what he brought in, but that he had not previously seen Rawin targets all busted up

Also, I don't think we can presume the junk on Ramey's floor was everything they ever found. My thinking is they brought some with them but not everything. It is possible they added some newer stuff to beef up the quality of debris though, especially if what they had was so damaged it couldn't be easily recognizable.

On the flower tape, I can't be certain but when the USAF came out with their first report in the 1990's, I recall it hit national news and in one of the national (or possibly local) broadcasts there was actually a modern photo of this tape, a very small yellowed period example was briefly shown. I recall this very clearly, but ever since I have never been able to source that photo.

I believe the tape existed, but I do agree there is no tape easily seen if present in the Ramey photos.

Neil said...

To follow up David Ruiak's post the Reuters report is very telling and was obviously made before the "Weather Balloon" cover story was put into effect. Kirton issues the statement as quotes from Ramey himself the telling parts of the quotes to me being his use of "tinfoil or other shiny material" as a discription of the debris and that he also states "but none of the men at this base recognize it as an army type balloon". But they had std "pilot" balloons and radar reflectors on the base and the Fort Worth Start Telegram published photos of a staged launching of same on the 10th July.

Neil Morris

Neil said...

There was some debate in the comments above over the number of photos taken of the debris in Ramey's office. There are 7 photos that I am aware of, the 4 we believe Bond took of Ramey and DuBose, 2 of Marcel and the 1 of Newton. Only 2 of the Ramey/Dubose survive as negatives along with the two Marcel image negatives.

Don said...

David, Marcel's comments in Ft Worth do not support Ramey's rawin story. It may mean Marcel's comments were made before the big reveal, which would mean Marcel was 'out of the loop' of the single weather balloon and single rawin story Ramey told.

Another matter is the local radio broadcast. I don't think we can say with certainty that the quotes and attributions to Ramey in the press in Ft Worth were made during the photo shoot, but might be from the broadcast. The confusion is due to the substance of both being the same. Do we know which came first, the broadcast or the photo op?


Neal: "Kirton issues the statement as quotes from Ramey himself the telling parts of the quotes to me being his use of "tinfoil or other shiny material" as a discription of the debris and that he also states "but none of the men at this base recognize it as an army type balloon".

From memory: In Ft Worth, the rawin is "definitely" army and there was an "instrument" attached which had not yet been recovered. I believe the comments were attributed to Ramey. David likely has it memorized 8-) but I'll have to look it up.

Best Regards,

Don

Steve Sawyer said...

"In the early Moguls (which is what we would be talking about here), they used Naval sonobuoys for microphones, which were cylinders. The special acoustic microphones were still being designed and hadn't been deployed (not sure if they ever were).

"It thus becomes academic what their shape was, since they didn't exist yet.

"As for Ramey's intel officer Major Cashon speaking to Reuters and the FBI and saying the object resembled a hexagonal radar target suspended from a weather balloon, the description allegedly coming from Ramey, the "hexagonal" description was a direct reference to the radar target, not a piece of equipment."


Ah! I see now. Thank you, David.

Standard cylindrical Navy sonobuoys only used in the preliminary state-side testing phase. And Kevin was also kind enough to email me three schematic scans from the USAF Roswell tome, that show the general shape of the payload. The radiosonde is a separate module, mounted above the sonobuoy.

And so, not disk or hexagonal shaped. Just something that looks like a small gas cylinder with a couple openings for the microphones.

Of course, that then begs the primary question: where did the reference to a "disk" being found and then coming into the "possession" of the RAAF come from that appeared in Haut's press release?

BTW, I recommend Don Ecsedy's "Foreshadower" website for his very detailed look at the Blanchard/Haut press release, related Roswell issues, and selected UFO case data. There are nine separate pages there, on Roswell, noted in the right sidebar.

Here's the first one:

http://www.foreshadower.net/roswell-press-release-comparison.php

David Rudiak said...

Steve Sawyer wrote:
"Of course, that then begs the primary question: where did the reference to a "disk" being found and then coming into the "possession" of the RAAF come from that appeared in Haut's press release?"

Ramey and his minions started changing the story within about an hour of the press release to the "hexagonal" radar target being the "flying disc". The "hexagonal" description (given to Reuters and the FBI) is a tipoff this was a cover story, since this description would ONLY apply to the profile of a fully assembled and intact target, and then only if viewed directly from above or below:

www.roswellproof.com/Rameys_hexagon_story.html

It's been suggested that the Circleville, Ohio, radar target crash reported nationally July 6 and July 7 was the inspiration for the July 8 radar target explanation for Roswell. I think that is probably correct. (E.g., the Fort Worth Star Telegram carried a photo of same on their front page July 7.)

The problem here is that nobody who actually examined the Circleville object seriously thought it was anything other than a weather device of some kind. The partial, deflated weather balloon still attached to it was one dead giveaway. (Ramey's full weather balloon displayed with the broken target should have been a similar dead giveaway.) Instead, people like the farmer who found it ir a local reporter who examined it said that, gee, it looks like a weather device, but maybe people seeing it in the air might mistake it for a flying disc, and maybe these things explained the recent spate of flying disc reports.

http://www.roswellproof.com/balloon_crashes.html
http://www.roswellproof.com/Circleville.html

Indeed, by the night of July 8, shortly after Ramey's weather balloon debunking, one reporter was being told in a teletype that, "INTELLIGENCE DIV WASHDC SUGGEST SAUCERS ARE RADAR TARGET FOR WEATHER OBSERVATION PURPOSES":

http://project1947.com/roswell/wkzo.htm

UP and INS reported the next day in their Roswell stories that the military was running a "concentrated compaign" to stop all the saucer rumors, in other words debunkery. This mostly took the form of multiple balloon/target demos with the usual comment that these explained the flying saucer reports (and Roswell):

www.roswellproof.com/balloondemos.html

No good explanation has ever been given for why Roswell base would ever label what was recovered anything other than a misidentified weather balloon with its radar target, instead calling it a "flying disc" in an official press release. The only "explanation" is that the base was run by drooling idiot officers, either for their incredible inability to identify an obvious weather device, or knowing better and still calling it a "flying disc", which could only create flood of press inquiries and make them look like idiots. This is why I call such a lame "explanation" drooling idiot theory.

Don said...

David: "No good explanation has ever been given for why Roswell base would ever label what was recovered anything other than a misidentified weather balloon with its radar target, instead calling it a "flying disc" in an official press release."

David, they would have been "drooling idiots", as well, if they had said they had a flying disc,

"The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc"

I direct attention to the indefinite article: "a disc". This disc explains what the rumored "the flying disc" actually is. We all know what the reality was: a rawin target.

I have found one 1947 news story that printed "the disc" in a recap. It turns up again in the news stories about the ufo confab somewhere in Texas in 90 or 91.

Maybe the Ramey memo will clarify things. As of now, though, the best evidence that what they had wasn't a balloon and target, is transporting it to Wright Field. In the UP, AP, and the noon announcement of the Daily Record, the flight is in the past tense. It had occured then before noon, which means it was prior to any publicity. If the evidence is strong it was going to Wright Field, then we know it was at least categorized as "foreign" by those who saw it at the RAAF.

If it had been any kind of balloon device, Marcel would've called Alamogordo and ask if they'd lost a balloon.

The notion that the press release said the RAAF had the flying disc, is my main disagreement with both Roswell skeptics and advocates.

Best Regards,

Don

David Rudiak said...

David, they would have been "drooling idiots", as well, if they had said they had a flying disc,

According to Haut's second affidavit, it was a calculated risk to acknowledge to locals that something had been at a ranch without giving too much away, mainly the more important 2nd crash site with bodies and some sort of intact craft (escape capsule?).

"One of the main concerns discussed at the meeting was whether we should go public or not with the discovery. Gen. Ramey proposed a plan, which I believe originated from his bosses at the Pentagon. Attention needed to be diverted from the more important site north of town by acknowledging the other location. Too many civilians were already involved and the press already was informed. I was not completely informed how this would be accomplished."

"At approximately 9:30 a.m. Col. Blanchard phoned my office and dictated the press release of having in our possession a flying disc, coming from a ranch northwest of Roswell, and Marcel flying the material to higher headquarters. I was to deliver the news release to radio stations KGFL and KSWS, and newspapers the Daily Record and the Morning Dispatch."

"...Upon his return from Fort Worth, Major Marcel described to me taking pieces of the wreckage to Gen. Ramey's office and after returning from a map room, finding the remains of a weather balloon and radar kite substituted while he was out of the room. Marcel was very upset over this situation. We would not discuss it again."

And Marcel's recollection of what happened in his Bob Pratt interview was:
1) Before the flight, the base's "eager beaver" PIO [Haut] had supposedly leaked the story to AP, causing him to get numerous phone calls from everywhere and reporters showing up asking to see the material, but he wasn't able to tell them anything or show them anything.
2) Blanchard ordered him to Wright Field in the morning, but first stopping in Fort Worth to see Ramey.
3) When he got to Fort Worth, he was again greeted by a myriad of reporters, but he couldn't talk to them until he first had seen Ramey.
4) Ramey pulled him from the flight to Wright Field and sent him back to Roswell, with debris being transferred from the B-29 to a "transport". (Same story as Robert Porter, on Marcel's flight.)

Now, trying to make this all coherent and lining up with what we have learned since then, there is no way that Marcel could have received all those phone calls or have been pestered by reporters until Haut delivered Blanchard's press release to the local media at around noon, or until AP finally put the press release on the wire at 2:26. 2:26 would be too late for Marcel to leave, get to Ramey's, speak to Ramey, be photographed, and for the weather's officer's definitive ID reported by the Dallas newspaper at 4:30 (Roswell time).

Therefore, if Marcel's memory of being bothered by reporters was correct, then it had to be between when Haut delivered the PR noonish and when Marcel left (no later than 2:00-ish to make the timing properly work out. This might also explain why AP and the Roswell D. Record used Marcel's name in their versions of the press release, whereas UP didn't mention Marcel at all in their version. It could have been due to AP and the RDR doing follow-up calls to the "intelligence office" that the RDR said released the information around noon.

The only thing that makes sense to me for other reporters (including those with microphones according to Marcel) greeting him in FW might be that they were from the local radio station that Ramey spoke to afterward.

My point here is that Marcel being hounded by reporters could not have happened if his flight left in the morning as reported. It had to be in the early afternoon.

William Strathmann said...

But David, from what I've read, Haut's second affidavit also says:

(8) On Tuesday morning, July 8, I would attend the regularly scheduled staff meeting at 7:30 a.m. Besides Blanchard, Marcel; CIC [Counterintelligence Corp] Capt. Sheridan Cavitt; Col. James I. Hopkins, the operations officer; Lt. Col. Ulysses S. Nero, the supply officer; and from Carswell AAF in Fort Worth, Texas, Blanchard's boss, Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey and his chief of staff, Col. Thomas J. Dubose were also in attendance. The main topic of discussion was reported by Marcel and Cavitt regarding an extensive debris field in Lincoln County approx. 75 miles NW of Roswell. A preliminary briefing was provided by Blanchard about the second site approx. 40 miles north of town. Samples of wreckage were passed around the table. It was unlike any material I had or have ever seen in my life. Pieces which resembled metal foil, paper thin yet extremely strong, and pieces with unusual markings along their length were handled from man to man, each voicing their opinion. No one was able to identify the crash debris.

So, has anyone verified Ramey's and Dubose's presence at the staff meeting in Roswell that morning at 07:30? If not, then how much confidence should one put in the second affidavit? I seem to recall reading that Schmidt wrote the text of the second affidavit and Haut simply signed. So, even if Haut was of "sound mind," it doesn't mean that he has perfect memory from more than 50 years earlier. If the second text is suspect, then Don's comment/question above about "drooling idiots" for publicising the event is still on the table, IMHO.

Don said...

David, we are reading two different sets of documents, the contemporary ones and those from decades later. You critique the earlier material in the light of the later. I do the opposite.

If we remove the AP stories and the UP quotes of AP stories, then the press release and Haut vanish from our contemporary texts. Yet, the UP has the contents of the press release; DXR54 has the words and phrases in the right order, among comments and adds. The Daily Illini has the first mention of Haut at 4:30 and who is probably George Walsh at 5:09. That's the timeframe of "Haughts Statement". Like the UP, the RDR doesn't mention Haut or a statement, including in the Brazel interview. The AP's Kellahin does. So, for me, all I've got for 'Haut' is George Walsh said he was the source of the 'statement', and later, Haut does not deny it. Haut (like apparently everyone else, skeptics included) thought the press release said the army had a flying disc. The press release text is about as stable as unset cement.

We disagree on how to determine a chronology for the events of these few hours, and probably cannot resolve the disagreement because we each weigh the evidence differently. One of my goals is to find strong evidence that something was shipped to Wright Field from the RAAF in early July before any Roswell flying disc publicity. That such a thing is mentioned in the news stories makes them worth tracking down, if possible.

I don't think the times of the events in Fort Worth as you present them would be altered much if the flight arrived earlier than assumed. It does open up some time to make some counter-publicity arrangements and get the story straight (such as what a rawin looks like, etc).

Best Regards,

Don

David Rudiak said...

William Strathman wrote:
So, has anyone verified Ramey's and Dubose's presence at the staff meeting in Roswell that morning at 07:30?

No. In my case, all I've looked at are the newspapers. I did, however, verify that Ramey was away from Fort Worth base on Sunday, July 6, like Dubose remembered. So was base commander Col. Hewlitt Wheless, leaving deputy C/O Col. Alvin Clark in charge of the base. This lends credence to Dubose's story of a very secret night shipment of debris from Roswell to Washington through Fort Worth with Clark acting as "colonel courier", as ordered by Gen. McMullen over the phone.

If not, then how much confidence should one put in the second affidavit?

If there was no paper trail left behind, there is no way to verify it. Doesn't mean it didn't necessarily happen. It wouldn't be that difficult for Ramey and Dubose to fly to Roswell in an emergency, only a 2 hour plane ride away. If you assume there was indeed great urgency involved, it isn't implausible that Ramey might fly there to personally deal with a crisis situation, instead of just doing it over the telephone.

I seem to recall reading that Schmidt wrote the text of the second affidavit and Haut simply signed.

The affidavit was written by Schmitt based on numerous conversations by Schmitt and Carey over the years with Haut. Haut was also saying the same things about Ramey and Dubose being there to other people, such as Wendy Connors 2 years before the affidavit:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Haut_2000_interview.html
http://ufoupdateslist.com/2007/jan/m16-001.shtml

When I interviewed Haut in Roswell in 2001, or between Connors interview and the affidavit, he seemed very much of sound mind to me, though deflecting questions saying that nobody can exactly remember things from 50 years ago. We all know that, but it doesn't mean EVERYTHING we or other people remember is unreliable. I still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first learned Kennedy had been assassinated. (However, I couldn't verify my memory in any way to someone else.)

As for the procedure in which it was signed, Haut was given extensive time to review the affidavit and make corrections or changes as he deemed necessary:

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

So, even if Haut was of "sound mind," it doesn't mean that he has perfect memory from more than 50 years earlier. If the second text is suspect, then Don's comment/question above about "drooling idiots" for publicising the event is still on the table, IMHO.

If Haut didn't remember perfectly, then somehow this makes the drooling idiot theory viable? I don't see how one thing follows from the other.

It wasn't just Haut who said the weather balloon was a cover story. So did Marcel and Dubose. They would ALL have to have severe memory impairment. We also have news stories from that day, showing that Ramey did indeed start changing the story from flying disc to weather balloon only an hour after the base press release went national on the newswire. Or as Haut put it interviewed by Connors: "I would guess that information came to Ramey and he was told to go ahead and put it out at such-and-such a time. I'm sure they had this orchestrated pretty well."

The stories told by various principles such as Marcel, Ramey, Wilcox, and Brazel were also grossly inconsistent in various details, also verified by the photos Ramey had taken that day in his office, showing a relatively fresh singular balloon and radar target. And then there was the undeniable national weather balloon debunkery campaign of the saucers afterward using weather balloon/radar target demonstrations, documented in the newspapers.

So it isn't all just Haut's "ureliable" 50-year-old memories pointing us in the direction of a cover-up.

Terry the Censor said...

> if it was to conceal the real nature of the debris it certainly worked because the story was dead in about 24 hours.

He says 68 years later!