Saturday, April 30, 2016

Viewing vs Victims of the Wreck

It’s funny how things sometimes work out. The investigation into the Ramey Memo seemed to have stagnated with nothing to really report. Then Rich Reynolds publicly wondered what was happening, so I finished up the post about it. And now, I have received both publicly at this blog and privately a number of emails about it, suggesting the critical word in that critical phrase might not be “victims.”
David Rudiak will tell us that the word “victims” has the right number of letters, and that words that begin with a “V” that fit with his word count and positioning are very few. Many can be eliminated because they are simply too strange to fit into Memo (violins, for example) because we can deduce the subject matter based on the words that are universally accepted as being in the text.
The Ramey Memo. Copyright by the University of Texas at Arlington.

Several have suggested that the word is not “victims but is “viewing.” It does contain the right number of letters and it does begin with a “V,” but it also alters the importance of the Ramey Memo if that is correct. “Victims of the wreck,” suggests casualties which implies a crew and that crew could be alien, depending on the rest of the Memo. However, “viewing the wreck,” tells us nothing about a crew and means that we might have something that had no organic component (which is my way of avoiding saying it was either alien, human or animal). And David will suggest that “viewing” doesn’t fit into the proper alignment of the letters eliminating it.

If it is “viewing,” then what we have is a suggestion that someone (Marcel and Cavitt?) had seen the wreckage, but doesn’t suggest anything extraordinary about it. The idea that it was “wreckage” does suggest something other than a balloon array no matter how exotic, because you just don’t think of balloon remains as being wreckage. That term suggests something more substantial was seen but that doesn’t take us to the extraterrestrial by any means.

In fact, if the word is “viewing” it sort of sucks the life out of the drama here. It could say all sorts of things, including “disc” and still provide a rather mundane answer. Given that this seems to refer to a flying disc and given that the term, “flying disc” meant any number of terrestrial based objects as well as the idea they might be interplanetary (as opposed to interstellar), we wouldn’t have the smoking gun that many thought it would be. Or, in other words, we have a rather mundane message telling Ramey that those “viewing the wreck” were reporting what they had seen.

Oh, it could mean that their opinions suggested something alien, but in the long run, we’d be left with the same arguments about the overall importance of the Memo.

And I will mention here, as sort of a cautionary tale, that J. Bond Johnson, who took the photograph that we’re all so interested in, claimed, at one time, he had carried the document into Ramey’s office and handed it to him. That would mean that this was a teletype message that went out over the news wire and wasn’t something generated by the military. True, he recanted that statement as soon as it became clear to him that it lessened the importance of the document, but it is a claim that he made (many of which were later found to be untrue).

Here’s where we are. There are a growing number of people who say that the word is “viewing.” Those suggesting this are not only those on the skeptical side of the fence, but some who believe the Roswell crash was alien, and a few who seem to be disinterested in the crash as an alien event but are interested in solving the riddle.


Again, I’m not sure if we’re ever going to be able to resolve this to the satisfaction of the majority in the way that the Roswell Slides Research Group was able to resolve the placard to nearly everyone’s satisfaction. I had hoped for a resolution, as did those working on this latest effort, but we just haven’t reached that point yet. As it stands now, most of the message is just beyond our capabilities to decipher it though there is still work being done. Maybe next week, next month or next year there will be a breakthrough but I’m not overly hopeful about that. We are stuck with a tantalizing clue that is currently just out of reach.

141 comments:

Don Maor said...

If I recall well, the proposal of the word "viewing" is NOT new. The previous word is clearly "the", so one should expect a clear noun after it. In this sense, the word "viewing" seems to be out of place.

Moreover, David Rudiak has provided a highly technical and multifaceted analysis to show that "victims" is the more likely word. How can the mere opinion of some people trump a detailed analysis?

Unknown said...

Either "viewing" or "victims" does not remove any possible aliens involved. Then again "victims" does not suggest aliens. Either word still rules in a terrestrial or extraterrestrial scenario. So I wouldn't say any drama has been sucked out of anything. Until it can be totally read, nothing has changed. However I do not see it ever being readable

KRandle said...

Don -

Of course it is not new. We've discussed it here in the past. It's just, in discussion with some others, they seemed to believe that "viewing" is the best interpretation. David has provided a very detailed argument about why he believes the word to be "victims" but we are still dealing with his interpretation. I believe that the majority of the people who visit here believe the word to be "victims."

Stephen -

My thinking is that if the word is "viewing" you have removed an element that is brought out by the word "victims." Both could lead to the extraterrestrial, but "victims" has the better chance of doing that, depending on the context of the rest of the memo. "Viewing" could lead there as well, again depending on the context, but I think that is less likely.

Unfortunately, I fear you are right about it never being read. There are still a couple of things that are being attempted, as I have mentioned, but unless things change radically, I don't think there will be a consensus.

TheDimov said...

Good point by Don, the preceding word is "the" and so the noun in 'victims' does fit a little better. It has been suggested that "disc" in quotation marks might suggest a negative connotation, like perhaps oh this 'disc' you've found, or perhaps referring to the newspaper article (if Haut had released it by then?), but I think it could also refer to the fact that the object's shape might roughly represent a disc shape, or that it was mangled and couldn't be adequately described and 'disc' was their best approximation. Just some thoughts anyway to add to the mix.

Having a look once again at the lower res photo, I see 'victims', or at least the 'M' is clearer to me. Its actually the word wreck that I'm not too sure about, I don't really see that, Ive looked at that word for ages and just cant really determine any letters. Sometimes "k" jumps out at me but that's about it.

I think the best bet now is that sometime in the future, or indeed now if we have it, is to remove all the noise in the letter that is non-text, if that were at all possible I think it would be quite helpful. So some program that can white out everything surrounding the text found in the memo. I think if we could just get 4 or 5 more words out of the memo it could really help with things a lot.

cda said...

Is there anything we can decipher with virtual certainty that proves the 'Ramey memo' is about the Roswell Incident at all? Is it still possible that the memo has no connection with Roswell?

The reason I ask is that if the said memo really does contain useful data about the case, it surely would still be around somewhere, and thus ought to have been available to the McAndrew/Weaver team in the 1990s. A bit like that FBI teletype.

Brian B said...

Here's a novel construct not even David has attempted.

Instead of trying to reduce the noise within the image to de-blur the text, estimate the size of the teletype and reproduce it using a vintage typewriter with the same font.

Then produce multiple versions using the various words in question.

Then position the examples exactly as seen in the original and take a clear photo of each from the same distance the original was taken - maybe slightly closer as the key is to first produce a clear readable image.

Next take each clear photo and ADD blur and noise to the image with software.

Finally analyze which text best illustrates the original seen in the original negative. Document everything each step of the way so your findings cannot be invalidated.

In other words, reverse your process!

Take a clear replica image and blur it up to see which is most similar to the original.

This approach is as valid as any and has been repeatedly used in scientific evaluations to explain how events unfolded in circumstances that at first seem inexplicable. This demonstrated by others who have since proven conspiracy theories right or wrong, such as how the Hindenburg exploded.

It's valid - try it, but don't forget where you got the idea from after you publish your findings.

Don said...

A reason for disk in quotation marks might be a general's discomfort with using a low brow slang expression (flying saucer or disk). I recommend the wikipedia article on "use-mention".

"U.F.O.s are the planets, mirages, meteors, stars, satellites, kites, and swamp gas, that are reported as flying objects, but cannot be immediatedly identified to the observer. Flying saucers are those craft commanded by little green men from Mars. They do not exist." -- T/Sgt David N. Moody, 1966.

Regards,

Don

Don said...

As to whether 'victims' is an appropriate word for describing space aliens in a crashed spaceship, a few years ago on this blog I cited a news story from 1940s about a train wreck. The train was hauling farm animals. The cows and chickens were referred to as "victims of the crash". So, 'victims', it's not just for people.

Regards,

Don

TheDimov said...

To me there is no problem at all with the usage of the term 'victims' for (possible) alien beings, as they apparently resembled human beings (or hey - crash test dummies, hehe), and it is a general term most suitable for the situation. Because if they didn't know what they had found they couldn't just go ahead and specify 'aliens in the wreck' straight away, they were playing it safe, and it had *just happened*, so it would be rather bold to immediately state 'aliens of the wreck' and disc without quotation marks, as they were simply playing it safe, just as you would do in such an incredible situation only hours later.


Brian B said...

@ Don who wrote:

"The cows and chickens were referred to as "victims of the crash". So, 'victims', it's not just for people."

I mentioned the same a few months back and I agree. Of course no one here did.

My suggestion at the time was that Brazel's sheep were the victims mentioned in the memo. Why? Because he claimed they wouldn't move through the debris to get to their water. That could mean some died as a result of the debris affecting them, and all the baloney about Brazel being paid to remain silent is really just the standard reimbursement the military gives when they damage personal property.

Of course they had no reason to disclose the reimbursement publically. There's no reason to tell a ranching community the presence of the military could be a risk for their livestock. And there's no reason to do it legally either.

And in the rare event this was a test of an airborne chemical dispersal weapon, they may have actually wanted the dead animals to test afterwards.

Not proven of course, but as you say it could be this is simply a reference to animals.

albert said...

I don't often agree with Brian, but I totally agree with his idea of reproducing the memo. I would add that the 'blurring' needs to mimic the irregular grain patterns of that shitty Ansco film*, perhaps relocating the blur mask several times and comparing the results.

This would have been child's play back in the day, when the exact camera and film were available.

It's definitely worth a try.
-------------
*If Kodak Panatomic X had been used, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion:)
. .. . .. --- ....

cda said...

I'll elaborate slightly on what I wrote above. My point is that the USAF, in the 90s, conducted a wide search (involving other agencies) for official documents relevant to Roswell. As far as I remember, they only located two, and both of these were useless (in fact both negative) to anyone hoping for an ET answer. Also, both were already known to the public for years.

They did note that many of the telexes and memos emanating from Roswell in that time period were destroyed or lost. This naturally caused ETHers to speculate, but skeptics quickly realised that had any of these been relevant to the ET cause, they would be too important to have been destroyed or lost.

The same would surely apply to the Ramey memo. It seems inconceivable to me that such an important teletype, or whatever, would have been destroyed had it contained the information ETHers say it contains.

So WHERE is this memo? If it was disposed of, it must have contained nothing of value to science, the military or anything else.

Anthony Mugan said...

At first sight the various '....ng' possibilities didn't look at all credible to me but in fact they need careful consideration when you look at the degree of match of each letter to a 'clean' version of the relevant font.
I'll give a fuller comment on Tuesday as I need to go back over some notes, but in the end, if memory serves, the '..ng' endings don't cut it....TBC

Brian B said...

@ Albert who wrote:

"I don't often agree with Brian, but I totally agree with his idea of reproducing the memo."

Thank you.

Now if you want to eliminate any criticism from skeptics such as me, my suggestion would be to also conduct your analysis in a controlled environment using basic scientific protocol.

1) As before, involve skeptics in the process both as participants and observers.

2) Conduct the analysis on all of the words deemed possible not just the ones you think are there. You must allow your desired read to be matched against alternative reads to allow for comparative analysis.

3) By controlled environment I mean replication of the same lighting, angle, position, etc. for each of the test memos analyzed. We already know what those conditions were from the original including time of day most likely photographed.

4) It's also more beneficial if you actually use the same black and white film on a vintage camera of same make.

5) I believe the telegraph may also have been produced using a standard ticker tape machine. That's the kind that types the message onto the thin gummed paper that is then stuck to the telegraph. If so, you'd have some advantage if you use a vintage machine to replicate it. Of course both ticker tape machines and manual typewriters were used to produce these memos.

TheDimov said...

..so they forwarded to the team at Fort Worth Texas a bunch of dead farm animals? It doesn't make sense in the context of the memo, or at least what can feasibly be read.

Don said...

Brian: "My suggestion at the time was that Brazel's sheep were the victims mentioned in the memo. Why? Because he claimed they wouldn't move through the debris to get to their water."

We set out a ceramic birdfeeder. Although we had fed the critters for years, this was a different thing in a different spot. It took several days for the sparrows (and squirrels) to get brave enough to approach it. I'd be interested in how Brazel's dogs responded. What dogs? I don't know...he was a shepherd; shepherds have dogs. Anyone know of a mention of Brazel's dogs?

"Of course they had no reason to disclose the reimbursement [for damages] publically. There's no reason to tell a ranching community the presence of the military could be a risk for their livestock. And there's no reason to do it legally either."

Lincoln County back then (and now, too, I'd guess) was very concerned about radioactivity due to Trinity, which affected zone reached to Roswell. Whether or not Roswell (The Incident) involved radioactivity is unknown, but I suspect the army would be concerned if there were rumours about radioactivity poisoning in the vicinity. I suggest if there were such concerns, the public would have brought it to the army. Due to "rumors" (press release), I don't think it was up to the army to publicize it or not, but rather to prevent the "rumors" from spreading beyond their control.

Regards,

Don

Brian B said...

@ Anthony

"At first sight the various '....ng' possibilities didn't look at all credible..."

Try "viewers" instead.

albert said...

@Brian,

4) & 5)

There are lots of variables at work here. Most difficult is recreating the exact typeface and the folds of the paper. Several different texts need to be written. It might be impossible to recreate the film/camera combination, due to aging of film, developer (who knows what they used?), flash, exposure, etc. Better to copy the negatives grain pattern from several different areas with the same exposure level, then create a blur mask from those. Super hi-res digital images can be used. Someone with experience in digital archival of film negatives would be nice to have on the team. It's possible that this procedure may be unique, so extra R & D time may be needed. It might be useful in other forensic applications.

It's a -lot- more work than applying software-only analysis (not taking anything away from the researchers), but I think the methodology has a good chance of, at least, increasing probabilities of certain words or phrases being more or less likely.

. .. . .. --- ....

David Rudiak said...

Some points: (1 of 2)

1. I was the one to first point out that VIEWING was a possibility. I want that in the record in case anyone wants to claim I’m not considering other possibilities. I discovered VIEWING was the ONLY other word that might make sense when I expanded the word search, using VI??I?? instead of VI??I?S. To see just how difficult it is to come up with alternate SENSIBLE words, I suggest trying to do these word searches for yourself at www.onelook.com. With VI??I?? over 220 words pop up, almost all the wrong part of speech (Grammar filter: VI??I?? has to be a noun since it follows THE), foreign words, or just plain godawful nonsense in context, such as VILLIFY, VIOLIST, VITRIOL, VIRTIGO, etc. (The context sensibility filter is extremely important. If the message was about music, words like VIOLINS or VIOLIST might be in the running, but NOT in THIS context.)

2. Full context: "(Something else was found) NEAR OPERATION AT THE (location under Ramey’s thumb) AND THE VI??I?? YOU FORWARDED TO THE ........ TEAM AT FORT WORTH, TEX. "VIEWING" is not particularly good English here, suggesting they were trying to forward a "VIEWING". Or if it was "THE WRECK" being forwarded, why put "THE VIEWING OF" in front of that? Key additional words here are "AND" and "NEAR OPERATION AT THE", suggesting something ELSE was found in addition to THE VI??I?? near some ongoing military “operation” (BIG cleanup “AT THE” Foster Ranch?). In this more complete context, grammar suggests that VI??I?? must be a concrete noun like VICTIMS (something that was found plus something else), not a gerund like VIEWING. Maybe somebody can come up with some other reading that would make grammatical/contextual sense, but I can’t. Remember, it CAN’T be something totally arbitrary, but has to respect word lengths and likely words/letters preceding VI??I. The phrase immediately preceding “THE VI??I??”, namely “AT THE (location) AND”, is very high confidence (close to 100%) as being the and any other reading must incorporate these words into it.

3. Can we please put this J. Bond Johnson nonsense to rest? Johnson did NOT hand Ramey a newswire bulletin he had brought with him. (Why would Ramey even be interested in it, or keep clutching it in all four photos of him?) If this were true, can anybody please point out to me which July 8 bulletin/news story had "THE VIEWING OF THE WRECK" in it, or other words of the Ramey memo like "WEATHER BALLOONS" or “YOU FORWARDED”? I have an extensive compilation of just about everything on Roswell, bulletins and newspaper stories, that came out July 8/9, 1947: www.roswellproof.com/press_coverage.html. Not a one has "the viewing" much less "and the viewing of the wreck you forwarded...." (the more complete context)

Here’s ANOTHER J. B. Johnson version of what happened that comes from Ron Regehr, who worked with him as member of the "Roswell Photointerpretation Team". According to Regehr, Johnson said he recalled an aide of Ramey's handing him the message as he walked into his office. This version might actually make sense, since Ramey seems to be trying to sneak a glance at the message when the photo of the Ramey message was taken, unlike the other 3 photos of him where he would not have been able to look at it.

If he wrote it, why would he want to look at it? Because this is a copy of what was previously sent; there is handwriting at the bottom, which I suspect represented a response from Washington that Ramey hadn’t seen yet (written down by an aide). The way I read the end of the memo, which I believe was addressed to Gen. Vandenberg at the Pentagon, there was a recommendation in the memo to use balloon demos with photos so that the "NEXT PR OF WEATHER BALLOONS WOULD WORK" better, i.e., would firm up the weather balloon explanation. The handwriting may say, "photos yes", or photos of weather balloon demos would be desirable to reinforce the story.

David Rudiak said...

(2 of 2)

4. Answer to CDA: Indisputable words like "WEATHER BALLOONS" and "'DISC'" indisputably establish this message as being about Roswell. (Doesn't hurt that "AT ROSWELL" is also in message or large black stamp at top ends in "LL".)

5. The discriminator between VIEWING and VICTIMS depends on the four letters they don't have in common. Regarding this, Ross Evans totally objective CAPTCHA experiment results had some 2000 readers overwhelmingly choosing "MS" at the end. Verdict to VICTIMS. My OCR program rating letter probability has "M" as #2 most probable, "S" as #1 most probable, vs. #5 for "N" and #7" for "G". Verdict, VICTIMS. Also doesn't hurt that "C" was rated

David Rudiak said...

I clipped off the end of my #5 above during my cut and paste. The complete #5 should have read:

5. The discriminator between VIEWING and VICTIMS depends on the four letters they don't have in common. Regarding this, Ross Evans totally objective CAPTCHA experiment results had some 2000 readers overwhelmingly choosing "MS" at the end. Verdict to VICTIMS. My OCR program rating letter probability has "M" as #2 most probable, "S" as #1 most probable, vs. #5 for "N" and #7" for "G". Verdict, VICTIMS. Also doesn't hurt that "C" was rated #5" while "E" was rated #21. Verdict, VICTIMS.

David Rudiak said...

Brian Bell wrote:
5) I believe the telegraph may also have been produced using a standard ticker tape machine. That's the kind that types the message onto the thin gummed paper that is then stuck to the telegraph. If so, you'd have some advantage if you use a vintage machine to replicate it. Of course both ticker tape machines and manual typewriters were used to produce these memos.

I've never heard of the military using "ticker tape machines". Isn't the reason the word "tape" in "ticker tape" is used because the printed message came out on a NARROW strip or tape of paper, not a full page, like in the Ramey memo?

Sounds like another of BB's endless wild goose chases that we're supposed to waste our time on. (Of course Brian is certainly free to waste HIS own time chasing his own wild gooses.)

I note Brian doesn't mention teletype machines or telexes, though the most likely source of such a printed message and which the military certainly DID use. Now here's an actual fact. A few years ago I visited in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, which had a vintage telex machine with what appeared to be vintage telex paper in it. The paper is not standard U.S. letterhead 8.5" wide, but ~8.25" wide (corresponding to international A4 letterhead, which is 8.27").

A few years ago I also used a morphing program to flatten the Ramey memo and superimposed a grid on it (the grid being standard 10 character/inch telex spacing). The paper when flattened is ~8.25" wide (or 82+ characters).

So this is direct evidence that the paper is from a telex machine, NOT a ticker tape, and probably not from a typewriter, which probably would have used standard U.S. civilian 8.5" wide letterhead or standard U.S. government issue 8.0" wide letterhead (standardized to civilian 8.5" only in the 1980s).

Brian B said...

@ Albert

Yes it's more complex than doing this at home. But like you I believe this method will produce better results since it replicates the memo in its possible variations and allows us to play with the results by superposing grain instead of trying to decipher it. Now the question is will anyone undertake it?

@ David

It seems to me the memo he is holding is not the typical sized sheet these things were typed on. Civillian telegrams followed the standard Western Union sized paper.

Ramey's memo appears to be cropped or typed on a much narrower slip of paper.

Can anyone produce a period example of a nonstandard personal military telegraph like this one?

David Rudiak said...

Brian Bell wrote:
It seems to me the memo he is holding is not the typical sized sheet these things were typed on. Civillian telegrams followed the standard Western Union sized paper.

Ramey's memo appears to be cropped or typed on a much narrower slip of paper.

Can anyone produce a period example of a nonstandard personal military telegraph like this one?


I already explained how I determined the width of the Ramey memo paper. (flattened message with morphing program, superimposed grid, measured grid lines across width of paper). It is the SAME width as standard telex roll sheet paper (~8.25 inches) as found in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. (You know, Silicon Valley, where they would be more apt to get such historical things right. There is also an old teletype at the Roswell UFO Museum with teletype roll paper in it--same width.)

So, Brian, what is your evidence the it "appears to be cropped or typed on a much narrower slip of paper"?

To compound your nonsense, you then refer to it as a "nonstandard personal military telegraph". How did you determine it was "nonstandard" and what was "personal" about it?

Evidence Brian, evidence, not your endless "because I think so". You do know what constitutes actual evidence?

Rusty L. said...

Actually, @DR. while ticker tape is not the correct term, ALL teletype machines also produced the message on paper tape. The page printers were actually a later addition. The tape used Baudot, a 5-bit system. How do I know? I was an Army radio teletype operator 30 years ago and looked at the dates on the machines I was using. The devices changed very little between my era and WWII. Please don't do the same type of knee-jerk response our pseudo-skeptics are so good at. It is so unfortunate that our anonymous pseudo-skeptics are sure, without any evidence, that these unfound memos did not exist, but if they had existed they would have been found. What ridiculous crap that doesn't merit inclusion in a serious discussion. While I agree with @Brian about further analysis that includes a cross-section of opinions, I have yet to see a single, actual skeptic here that begins with a neutral opinion and follows the evidence. Including a nitwit who begins with the mundane and refuses all evidence to the contrary is not particularly useful.

Clarence said...

Stan Friedman had a good line when describing certain skeptics (probably Phil Klass): they start with the premise that "...it can't be, therefore it isn't..". Surely not a good place to start for someone who claims objectivity...

KRandle said...

Lorrie -

And Stan starts from the premise, "It must be, therefore it is." Surely not a good
place to start for someone who claims to be a scientist.

Brian B said...

@ David who wrote:

"My bitter experience is the debunkers really don't give a damn what evidence exists favoring VICTIMS, since psychological denial is their thing and they don't really want to argue the evidence in a scientific way."

>> Well I can see you're frustrated yet again. However I must point out that I've given you an additional way of analyzing your precious memo using a tried and true scientific method. Yet all we hear is more of your rant. I didn't think you'd give it any merit or even a passing thought. Based on your comments above, you just want to do this your own way. So be it. Thus far your results are inconclusive to both skeptic and believer regardless of the biased claims you're correct.

You also write:

"To compound your nonsense, you then refer to it as a "nonstandard personal military telegraph". How did you determine it was "nonstandard" and what was "personal" about it?

>> Well it's "personal" because you claimed that yourself. You said Ramey sent this memo to Vandenberg when you wrote:

"A clear "VA..... in the address header suggests to me the memo was directed to General Vandenberg at the Pentagon, who newspaper confirmed being in contact with Ramey."

Are you now claiming there's more than one recipient and more than one author of the document? I didn't think so. Your memo is "personal correspondence" between Ramey and possibly Vandenberg, although that remains speculation no matter what you currently think of a blurry "VA".

>> And regarding my statement that the teletype is "nonstandard", it's quite obvious the formatting of this document lacks any consistency with standard military forms used at that time. So you just ignore this completely.

As Tim Printy has demonstrated quote:

http://www.astronomyufo.com/UFO/Ramey.htm

"The transmission of military messages is not just typing up a paragraph or two and sending it right away to the addressee. There are many items that need to be defined as well as the text. The military often uses forms to ensure all of the "X"s and "O"s are filled out correctly."

"Rudiak's interpretation does not seem to match the formats one might find in any type of document from the time period."

"After examining many of the documents available on line and elsewhere, I have yet to come across anything that resembles the document Rudiak has suggested in his interpretation."

Printy examined no less than EIGHT different types of standard by-the-book correspondence formats and not one matches what Ramey is holding. And yet again you ignore that.

So yes David that means the memo is "nonstandard" despite your reluctance to admit it.

And by-the-way, "ticker tape machine" is often slang for the earliest digital electronic communications medium. People today frequently use it to describe old telex machines that type characters onto paper tape as did the original ticker tape.

It's funny you insist on accuracy while ignoring it in your own efforts.

Don said...

I looked for other possibilities for the 'Ramey Memo' besides Roswell. Assuming 'Ramey' and victims/crash/wreck are in the memo, I looked for something that fit. I found one, which was the crash of a Barksdale AAF B-17 in Louisiana the first week of July 47 under mysterious circumstances. But if 'disc' and 'weather balloons' are there, there seems to have been nothing about them in the BAAF crash. If all four are to be read in the memo, it would have to be about Roswell, I think, and correspondence about it between Ramey and Vandenberg is reasonable.

It is not unthinkable that Ramey and Vandenberg would correspond about victims/crash/wreck, but unlikely about discs and weather balloons. Are there worthy alternate readings of those two?

As for taped telegrams, you can see them on ebay. At the moment they are all Western Union examples. The Ramey memo doesn't look like it is tape.

Regards,

Don

Unknown said...

David,

Is Ron Regehr still alive and willing to answer questions. Is he a photography expert? I"m asking because I think that a replication of the memo with different words and photographed as closely as possible to the original may have some merit

I would ask Ron if he ever discussed the camera and lens that Johnson used. If Johnson recalled the exact lens then we have a start. The camera is just a box so not that important although having the right one would eliminate a variable. The venerable Graphic camera was sold with a number of lens options, each with it's own characteristics due to lens design, manufacturing tolerances etc. The correct lens would be very important.

The film would be the next hurdle, the original film could be identified using the notch code, that's if a catalog of Ansco film could be obtained. A brief ebay search showed that 4x5 Ansco film with an expiration date around 1950 is being sold. The problem is getting film that old that isn't age fogged would be almost a miracle. Age fog reduces contrast, reduces film sensitivity or effective ASA/ISO. And increases development time. The reduction in contrast alone would make fogged film unsuitable for this experiment.

A suitable replacement of new manufacture may be possible. I would look for film manufactured in the former Eastern Bloc, that stuff was crap. Similar to Ansco which wasn't top notch film.

If the experiment could actually be accomplished then we have the blur that Brian mentioned, unfortunately the blur produced in a digital editor does not have the same look as blur produced inside the camera. Maybe some filter exists that would replicate in camera blur but it doesn't exist in normal Photoshop.

Another question for Ron would be if he asked Johnson exactly how the film was developed. This is important because if it was hot souped to shorten development time then the detail in the negative would be what we call blocked up, the exposure in the highlights bleed into the shadows, that would be the image of the paper bleeding into the image of the text in this case. It's random in nature so trying to decipher it using software would be dicey at best.

There is another solution that is very highly unlikely to be approved by the owner of the negative. It's called reduction, a process that uses a dilute concentration of a bleaching agent that removes silver compound from the negative very slowly. If done correctly it may reveal detail we can't see now.

cda said...

Don:

Without disputing your conclusions about the Ramey memo, I would put this to you: The FBI Dallas teletype was released long ago, and was found again by the USAF investigators when they searched for documents on Roswell in 1994. Therefore, if the Ramey memo contained anything of real interest to the case, is it not very likely that it would have been retained, and thus located by the same investigators?

My own view is that since it has obviously been destroyed or lost, it contained nothing of value to the case. But I could be wrong. Do you think such a telex or teletype would have been retained and still available, or not? Alternatively, do you think it might still be top secret and therefore unavailable?

And what does Kevin or DR think?

Don said...

CDA, I haven't come to any conclusions about the memo and wouldn't without viewing the original negative, myself.

If David's reading is accurate, the FBI memo is merely mundane chatter compared to the Ramey memo. They would not be treated the same way.

Regards,

Don

David Rudiak said...

Don wrote:

"It is not unthinkable that Ramey and Vandenberg would correspond about victims/crash/wreck, but unlikely about discs and weather balloons. Are there worthy alternate readings of those two?"

Don,

According to major newspapers like the Washington Post and NY Times (that had Pentagon correspondents), after the Roswell press release hit the newswires and the big kerfluffle began, Vandenberg dropped into the AAF press room at the Pentagon to personally handle the situation. It was then reported he directed calls to both Roswell and Fort Worth to supposedly find out what had happened.

Here's how the Washington Post reported it:

"...under the personal direction of Lieut. Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, acting AAF chief, who dropped into the Washington AAF public information headquarters in the midst of the excitement, they burned up the wires to Texas and New Mexico. . .
They got from Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey, Eighth Air Force Commander, a description of the object. It was "of very flimsy construction--almost like a box-kite", made of wood and with a cover "like tinfoil". . .
Ramey said he hadn't actually seen it himself as yet. He went to take a look, and called back that it was about 25 feet in diameter. He said he was shipping it on to Wright Field, Ohio, but would have one of the meteorological officers look at it first. . . ."

Vandenberg's daily log shows that he left his office about 5:15 p.m. EST, or about 45 min. after the press release, and didn't return for another hour. In this interval is when Vandenberg was in the press room and having Ramey called, with Ramey calling back. We can further bracket the time from AP bulletins, one at 5:53 p.m. EST with Ramey saying he would forward the object to Wright Field. However, likely Marcel and his B-29 flight of debris from Roswell was just arriving or hadn't quite got their yet, so there was really nothing in Ramey's office for him to see. This is further indicated by his description that the object "was about 25 feet in diameter," which would neither describe the small balloon envelope or torn-up radar target he would soon display.

This all strikes me as theater for the benefit of the press. For one, if Vandenberg really wanted to know what was going on he could have called more easily from his office or sent out his own wires. And Ramey was just stalling and improvising (because Marcel and/or the shill balloon debris had yet to arrive) with his weird 25-foot description and claiming the object was already in his office (when it wasn't).

So the newspaper stories are one reason I think Vandenberg and Ramey were in direct communication. The other is a very clear "VA....." up in the address header (about the only part of the header than can be clearly read), which I think means Ramey's memo was addressed to VAndenberg. As I interpret it, the memo was giving Vandenberg an update on what was found (paragraph 1: A WRECK... AND THE VICTIMS OF THE WRECK), and how the situation was being handled (paragraph 2), both internally (start of para. 2) and publicly (end of para. 2). That is why VICTIMS, "DISC", and WEATHER BALLOONS are all in there. The VICTIMS (paragraph 1) were IN THE "DISC" (start of para. 2), and the NEXT PR [press release] was going to be OF WEATHER BALLOONS (end of para. 2).

If you want to discuss what is REALLY going on, you don't do it in the Pentagon press room with reporters present, but on private phone lines or with secure telexes.

Nitram said...

CDA quickly wrote:

"Is there anything we can decipher with virtual certainty that proves the 'Ramey memo' is about the Roswell Incident at all? Is it still possible that the memo has no connection with Roswell?"

This is only a little more sensible than your "sci-fi novel" explanation...

As has been pointed out on a number of occasions the words "weather balloons" (which are readable)are a clear indication this is about Roswell.

Rather than trying to argue for the hell of it - why not do a little bit of detective work...

Regards
Nitram

Brian B said...

@ EVERYONE

Don wrote:

"The Ramey memo doesn't look like it is tape."

Thanks. I was hoping David could confirm but obviously not.

It's a little surprising that both skeptics and believers haven't spent any time investigating the teletype machine, telegraph process, and paper formats, choosing rather to focus just on memo's text interpretation.

Context is everything! If it's not gummed text tape on that memo this tells us something about what the document MIGHT be instead.

I believe this is a clue to understanding the memo's content that will add context for a much better read of the document.

Let me explain IN DETAIL since people here insist on every last reference possible to support one's opinion less one be criticized repeatedly as a "debunker", "skeptibunker", or "balloonatic".

>>>>>Please not this will be LONG but may help.<<<<<<

PART I of III:

UNDERSTANDING WHAT THE MEMO SAYS

To understand what the memo says we must identify what kind of document Ramey is actually holding. The "smoking gun" folks claim the document is a teletype that Ramey sent to someone else (Vandenberg perhaps). This idea implies Ramey is holding a COPY of what he sent, because of a teletype it couldn't be anything else but a copy of the message. But there remains the outside possibility the memo is something Ramey RECEIVED from someone else instead.

HOW WE TELL THE DIFFERENCE

By looking at how the telegraph process and how the machinery worked, we can answer this question. There are only so many teletype formats possible on both the transmitting and receiving ends of the system.

If Ramey transmitted a top secret telegraph, then what he's holding in the photo has to match what teletype machines actually printed. If not, then the paper has to be something else and likely mundane. For example, some have suggested the paper contains simple talking points typed for the press, or even Ramey's idea for a new science fiction book!

HOW THE PROCESS WORKED

The telegraph process had a transmission point (origin) and a receiving end (destination). Both ends used teletype machines with each configured to its purpose.

Depending on the machinery used. Each machine printed similar or dissimilar looking documents. The most common type of machine was the TELETYPE Model 15. It's very likely what Ramey is holding, if a teletype document, came from this model of machine or one very similar.

You can watch a Model 15 serving as an automated RECIVER at the link below.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml00ngVwrcU

As one can see, the Model 15 produces the kind of document Ramey is holding, but we can't be sure just yet. It may be a copy of something he sent or something he received. The telegraph process helps us decipher which is most likely.

Brian B said...

PART II of III:

TRANSMITTING vs RECEIVING

The transmitting process worked like this:

1) The person sending the message would usually write the content on a standard form (civilian or military) or dictate it to an operator who would then manually type it on a standard form. Tim Printy has examined at least EIGHT different military and government correspondence formats and has determined that what Ramey is holding IS NOT standard format. Read further to understand why.

2) The completed form would then be given to a transmission operator who would manually type the message again from the official form onto the teletype machine as shown in this 1943 photo (notice the paper text roll producing the transmission copy):

http://www.circuitousroot.com/images/artifice/telegraphy/tty/gallery/loc/owi-smith/8b05293u.png

In some cases communication centers acted as relay points having transmission operators retype a message they received into a teletype machine to send elsewhere as shown in the 1943 photo below (note the original teletype is identical to the one being typed).

http://www.galleyrack.com/images/artifice/telegraphy/tty/gallery/loc/owi-delano-atsf/8d27403u.png

On the receiving end the process worked differently depending on the equipment used to interpret and print the communique. There are at least four different contemporary methods used in 1947:

1) The incoming message was read from a perforated paper tape (ticker tape) and then manually typed onto a standard recipient form as shown in the 1943 photo below:

http://www.galleyrack.com/images/artifice/telegraphy/tty/gallery/loc/owi-bubley-wu/8d30853u.png

2) Same as previous but the perforated tape was fed into a teletype machine and printed automatically onto a continuous roll of paper as show in the 1942 photo:

http://www.circuitousroot.com/images/artifice/telegraphy/tty/gallery/loc/owi-collins-nyt/8d22740u.png

3) The incoming message was automatically typed in standard text by the teletype machine onto a gummed strip of paper tape which was then cut and pasted onto an official recipient form. This is shown in the 1943 photos below:

http://www.galleyrack.com/images/artifice/telegraphy/tty/gallery/loc/owi-bubley-wu/8d30836u.png

http://www.circuitousroot.com/images/artifice/telegraphy/tty/gallery/loc/owi-bubley-wu/8d30855u.png

These three methods are commonly seen in Western Union telegrams and were used concurrently in that era.

Finally, there was an additional method that worked like this:

4) The incoming message was automatically printed by the teletype machine directly onto a continuous roll of paper without a perforated tape needing to be fed into the machine as shown in this 1942 photograph:

http://www.galleyrack.com/images/artifice/telegraphy/tty/gallery/loc/owi-collins-nyt/3c12970u.png

The video of the Model 15 also demonstrates this process. In this case the text is directly typed onto the roll of paper.

Brian B said...

PART III of III

IF RAMEY'S MEMO SHOWS NO TAPE

If the document in his hand DOES NOT use gummed strips of text tape, then it definitely reduces the chance that the document is an INCOMING message of some kind intended for Ramey.

However it may still be an INCOMING message since these were also produced using methods 1, 2, and 3 noted above. Each of these three methods could produce what we see in the photo.

However we have to recognize that an OUTGOING message, as shown in the photos, remains a possibility too since all teletype machines printed a copy of what was typed manually.

We must also take into consideration the contents of the memo as best we can discern them. Obviously this is a document about Roswell based on the interpretive observations thus far where it's contents are readily discernible and agreed by all.

While the contents may be an incoming message, I am inclined to think it's an OUTGOING message given that the signature near the bottom reads better as "RAMEY" than it does "TEMPLE". I may still be incorrect though as opinions do vary.

I also conclude OUTGOING because:

1) Of the claim that Ramey was handed a COPY of a message he sent out by one of his aids as he entered the room. While circumstantial this is completely plausible. An aid would have brought him a copy from the teletype machine cut from the roll, rather than the dictation form stamped "sent" because it would have been retained by the transmission operator.

2) As Tim Printy has pointed out, file copies were kept because the process included the correspondence form dictated by the sender, and what I have JUST demonstrated is a text copy printed by the teletype machine from a continuous roll of paper on the transmission end.

QUESTIONS:

So is Tim Printy (and me) correct when he states this isn't a standard format for any official document? YES, because this is not the transmission form but the duplicate copy from the teletype print roll!

So is Rudiak right when he says this is an outgoing teletype in standard sized format? YES and NO. YES that it's an outgoing copy, and NO it's not a standard format because it DOESN'T have to be!

As demonstrated in the photos shown, each outgoing copy was manually typed into the machine which printed it onto a continuous roll of paper. Each outgoing message was a different size based on the amount of text it included

"So what?" some will say, "we already knew this."

Well not really because everyone THINKS this is the case but never really bothered to evaluate what kind of document Ramey could be holding relative to how these teletype machines work. Nothing that could confirm it.

I think this analysis factually supports the message is something Ramey sent out and not something he received.

Meaning:

1) It's very unlikely the document contains only typed copy of his speaking notes for the press. The format, capitalized text, and paper width is identical to what comes from a paper roll from a teletype machine.

2) The need for the document to conform to standard correspondence formats becomes a non-issue since what he's holding isn't the dictation form but a teletype copy from the print roll.

3) The size of the document, specifically its length, becomes a non-issue since the width establishes it came from a teletype machine and each message sent was longer or shorter depending on the amount of text.

4) The document is something sent from Fort Worth to someone or some group of people, and not something Ramey received (although that could be challenged).

5) That whomever "forwarded the wreck", if that is the correct reading, spoke to not only Ramey, but also someone at RAAFB and ordered it (whatever it was) to Fort Worth. This implies someone high in the chain of command.

David Rudiak said...

Rusty Lingenfelter,
Actually, @DR. while ticker tape is not the correct term, ALL teletype machines also produced the message on paper tape. The page printers were actually a later addition. The tape used Baudot, a 5-bit system.

However, Rusty, the Ramey message is on a sheet of paper, therefore any teletype punched tape isn't relevant to the discussion. In addition, the punched tape was the Baudot digital code for the characters, not the printed characters themselves. The coded punched tape was a primitive digital storage system and could be used to print a message on the local or distant teletype machine, but it was the teletype itself that printed out the message on regular sheet paper.

(I had a brief experience around 1976 with a teletype used as a keyboard to type in computer code for an early MINI computer, just before the MICROS arrived, with the program stored on the punched paper tape. But the more human comprehensible computer code characters were printed out on the teletype sheet paper, not the tape.)

Brian B said...

@ Neal

"I"m asking because I think that a replication of the memo with different words and photographed as closely as possible to the original may have some merit."

Ah....Neal? That was my idea.

But yes I do think it has merit because it's literally an angle that hasn't been tried but works and can be documented and controled scientifically.

My recent posts illustrate that if I'm correct, this is an outgoing copy from a teletype machine as David has indicated.

Since we can discern that it doesn't contain any text tape and was printed directly onto the paper, it would be very easy to work with one of the many museums that specialize in these machines. I'm thinking of one in the Northwest. They could produce mirror copies of various wordings on original paper direct from an original machine.

Easy I think. It's the blur, grain, and photography that's more difficult as you and others have noted.

But doable for certain.

My big question is this:

If after this evaluation we can all agree the memo does say "victims of the wreck", what will be the next collective step?

This still doesn't answer either side's question.

I feel it would be necessary to go back and challenge the USAF if the results are definitive, provable, and supported by this evaluation method which others could clearly replicate again to validate the outcome.

No it doesn't confirm ET, but it begs the question how the USAF might answer the challenge in regards to victims being involved.

One step at a time...

David Rudiak said...

I wrote:
However, Rusty, the Ramey message is on a sheet of paper, therefore any teletype punched tape isn't relevant to the discussion. In addition, the punched tape was the Baudot digital code for the characters, not the printed characters themselves. The coded punched tape was a primitive digital storage system and could be used to print a message on the local or distant teletype machine, but it was the teletype itself that printed out the message on regular sheet paper.

I'll have to partially correct that. In addition to perforated tape to save a message, teletype messages could indeed also be printed (not punched) onto narrow strips of sticky tape (generally on the receiving end) and then pasted onto a sheet of paper.

However, this is all academic, since the Ramey message is clearly printed directly onto a sheet of paper, not constructed out of rows of printed tape.

David Rudiak said...

Brian Bell wrote:
So is Tim Printy (and me) correct when he states this isn't a standard format for any official document? YES, because this is not the transmission form but the duplicate copy from the teletype print roll!

So is Rudiak right when he says this is an outgoing teletype in standard sized format? YES and NO. YES that it's an outgoing copy, and NO it's not a standard format because it DOESN'T have to be!


No, I have NEVER said I believed this had to be in some standardized format. That was Tim Printy. (Another of his debunking arguments, that this wasn't a military message, therefore unimportant, because it wasn't on a standardized form.)

I have always thought it was a copy off of a teletype machine, therefore onto plain paper, not some standard form which the original might have been written on (with the message then typed into a teletype for transmission).

However, I actually find myself in agreement with the rest of what Brian wrote (which has also been my position for about the last 15 years). The message was signed by Ramey and sent to higher HQ (an outward message, not incoming). A copy torn off the continuous roll of a teletype can have any length, thus the paper being nonstandard letter size in length is not an issue. (In the Ramey message, the paper is approximately square.)

The "YOU FORWARDED" in the message indicates a superior officer doing the ordering. (sending THE VICTIMS OF THE WRECK to Fort Worth). I think the recipient of the message was Gen. Vandenberg, at the time the acting AAF Chief of Staff at the Pentagon. Newspapers had him calling Ramey from the AAF Pentagon press room and the address header has a clear "VA" at the beginning of a line, again suggestive of VAndenberg. (The "B" is also relatively visible but less so.) And finally, he is one of the logical superior officers who would be doing the ordering.

(Gen. McMullen, Deputy C/O of the SAC, whom Gen. Dubose, said was early on giving the orders, such as forwarding debris from Roswell by special colonel courier to Washington, would be another logical person, but I see no indication of McMullen being anywhere in the message.)

Lastly, I think the end of the message was about what the public would be told (WEATHER BALLOONS) and how to better sell the official story (follow-up balloon/radar target demos, which historically also happened over the next few days). And this is why I think Ramey may have been holding the message copy in the photos (while trying to keep the back facing the camera). There is handwriting at the bottom, which I think was the brief response back on the recommendation for selling the story, namely "photos yes". Or perhaps "photos yes" was the official OK to go ahead with the photo op in his office and allow the infamous pictures to be taken. Ramey hadn't see the response back yet (perhaps taken by phone by an aid--the handwriting is not Ramey's).

Thus one of photographer J.B. Johnson's versions of what happened--aide handed Ramey the message as he walked into the office--makes a lot of sense to me.

Anthony Mugan said...


Hello all

PART 1 of 3

In terms of the specific proposal of VIEWING for the word often read as VICTIMS.

A while ago I did small pilot study to test a possible method of analysing the memo the results of which are relevant to this discussion. The following is intended only as a brief outline of the key points.

1. Methodology
I used a copy of the image of the memo from David R's webite (this was before the latest scans became public). I also used a set of characters of the relevant teletype font for comparison. I used Image J software to find the brightness of each point in a grid of 14 by 17 (x and y ) points for each letter space centred around the centre lines as constructed by David R and using a straight line best fit across each word in terms of the upper limit of the letter space.
I similarly digitised the brightness of the sample teletype font. As the Ramey memo is rather dark with lots of noise compared to a more straightforwardly black and white image for the sample font I then took the lower quartile for each letter in terms of brightness to represent 'dark' and took the rest as 'white'.
I then looked at the number of matched points that were 'dark' (i.e. assumed to be part of the relevant letter. You would expect to get some matches by chance, with this being in relation to the number of 'dark' points in the sample font for each letter. The can be easily evaluated using a Chi squared test to see if the degree of match was significantly different to chance or not.

As this was a pilot I focused only on the 'VICTIMS OF THE WRECK' alleged phrase and only calculated p values against letters in reads that had been proposed to that point, one of which was FINDING, so I have figures for the G.

2. RESULTS

Specifically in terms of the proposed G for letter 7 in the VIEWING proposal:
- G was not significant (p=0.73). This was the result of 22 matches against an expected 24 (rounded off)
-S was significant (p=0.04). This was the result of 24 matches against and expected 16 (again rounded off).

At this point we can conclude that a G is highly unlikely to be correct whilst a S is highly likely to be correct, but not with 100% certainty (that's the nature of p values).

TBC

Anthony Mugan said...

Part 2 of 3

In terms of other letters in the phrase which may be relevant to the VIEWING proposal and for which I have data:

letter 1 was as significant match with V (p=0.04) and not significantly similar to the other letters I tested (F and R).
Letter 2 was a significant match with I (p=0.0002) and actually significantly different from the only other letter I tested which was an E (in relation to the REMAINS proposal)
Letters 3, 4 and 5 are too blurred and didn't give good fits to anything I tested.

Very surprisingly letter 6 gave a significant match to N (p=0.006) and not to M (p=0.23). I say surprising as visually this looks very M like to me.

In terms of the wider phrase
For the next word (OF) both O and F were significant (p=-003 and p=0.05).
I didn't get a result for the word usually read as 'THE'
For the 'WRECK' proposal W came out as significant (p=0.04) and K also at p=0.04. The intermediate letters were too blurred to get any result.



TBC


Anthony Mugan said...


part 3 of 3

Taken in isolation at the level of analysis of individual letters we have something of a puzzle.

It looks highly likely that the word we are principally discussing has the following form
VI---(N???)S

This doesn't make a lot of sense in the context and David is absolutely correct to note that this is not a random selection of letters or a random selection of words

The rest of the phrase is very consistent with ....OF THE WRECK...'

Overall at this stage I would suggest
VIEWING is unlikely on statistical grounds
VICTIMS - seems to have an issue on letter 6 but gives a much better contextual fit.
Other proposed reads (FINDING, REMAINS) can be ruled out

For a variety of reasons I haven't taken this any further. One issue may be using the same lower quartile threshold for all letters regardless of the actual proportion of dark points expected - I may have a think about that.

cda said...

BB:

I agree it should be one step at a time. Somehow I doubt that anyone in authority in the USAF will now bother to answer questions about Ramey's 69-year old memo. They have better things to do with their time. But I still say that the actual memo ought still to be traceable if it contains anything of value either to the military or to science. However, since the investigators of 1994-5 could not locate it, there is zero likelihood that anyone could today. Thus it looks as if the matter will never be resolved.

For all I know, the word 'victims' is really 'violins' and the memo was about the upcoming local Fort Worth base orchestral concert. (Now watch Nitram Ang quote that against me one day).

albert said...

@Neal,
Trying to duplicate the conditions of the original photo isn't necessary (even though it's technically the best approach).

The first thing needed is an estimate of the resolution of the film/camera combination (using the most common lenses). An expert could determine this. The distance to the subject can be estimated. The key factor is the grain size compared to the character size as it would appear on the negative. This would give us the best case scenario. I don't recall, but the original negative seems out of focus. Since it's a flash shot, it implies improper focus setting, rather than camera motion. Speed Graphics had a focus scale on the slide. Pros are quite accurate at estimating short distances, f-stop settings, and shutter speeds. We hardly ever used light meters, even when shooting in available light. When using flash, the shutter needs to be opened just long enough to capture the flash, but not long enough to allow too much available light. F-stop is critical, since it determines depth of field.

In this case, we have shitty film (irregular grain patterns) and possible out-of-focus conditions, plus the unknown theoretical resolution. Even if conditions were perfect, the film grain is the deciding factor in the final sharpness of the image. We used to blow up 4x5 negatives to 15 foot wide prints. With perfect exposure and development (and ultra fine-grained film) the resolution was quite remarkable.

There's a big problem photographing black-on-white documents. The silver-halide grains respond to light and darken proportionally, so you get the background as black and the characters as white. As you pointed out, too much exposure, and the light bleeds into adjacent grains, reducing the contrast of the text, and even eliminating portions of the characters.

In this case, I believe the reduced resolution is due mainly to the irregular grain structure of the Ansco film.

I need to point out that this photos were intended for newspaper publication, so 'good enough' quality was, well, good enough. If you're shooting 4x5, you have a bigger margin for error, and you can use cheap film and developer. The biggest drawback was rate of exposures. That's why medium and small (35mm) formats replaced sheet film. Also the film was cheaper, and development time per shot was much faster.

Apologies to everyone for rambling on, but I think the approach we are discussing would be useful. The 'blur mask' approach may be unnecessary, and might need to be done with software, due to the random nature of the grain patterns. Actually, the term 'blur mask' should be 'grain mask', duplicating the loss of exposure (where there a no grains), and addition of exposure(where light bleeds) to adjacent grains.

In any case, a real photographic expert, and someone with digital image processing expertise will be needed.

I simple start would be to create some sample texts and do resolution tests. Someone like Bruce Maccabee could likely calculate the theoretical resolution given only a few variables. It's a start.

I predict that the theoretical resolution will be more than adequate for readability.

. .. . .. --- ....

cda said...

DR:

You wrote:

"Thus one of photographer J.B. Johnson's versions of what happened--aide handed Ramey the message as he walked into the office--makes a lot of sense to me."

It makes no sense to me. This memo is said by you to be 'Top Secret'.

Therefore an aide would NOT have handed the memo to Ramey just as a civilian photographer walked into the office. Also, was the aide himself cleared for access to top secret docs?

This whole discussion is getting nowhere, fast.

Brian B said...

@ CDA

"Somehow I doubt that anyone in authority in the USAF will now bother to answer questions about Ramey's 69-year old memo. They have better things to do with their time. But I still say that the actual memo ought still to be traceable if it contains anything of value either to the military or to science."

Yes that is probably true, but I still wonder.

For instance if something were to be found that validates say...a second gunman...in Kennedy's case, I think someone official would need to answer that question (of course his documents are scheduled to be released in 2017 unless extended).

And not to get off topic, my point being that if conclusive evidence were found in any investigative case yet unresolved, it would be worth pressing the issue publically. Murder cases are occasionally handled this way decades after unresolved closure.

I do agree that in principle, a document trail should exist unless it truly was purposely or inadvertently destroyed. Both are plausible.

We know that if Ramey has a teletype on his end, a duplicate existed on the other end, and perhaps the official transmittal form.

And yet sometimes there are examples of documents filed away in the wrong place and well forgotten.

Even so attempting to find them would be akin to digging through that mysterious warehouse at the end of Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark.

KRandle said...

CDA -

Of course the general's aide would be cleared for top secret... his job with the general would require it, which is not to say that everything would have been shown to him.

It would be the aide's function to ensure that the general did not reveal classified material by mistake. The aide would be close to the general during duty hours unless dispatched on some sort of errand for the general.

Brian B said...

Do we know who that aide was and did anyone every interview him? I'm sure if this was a momentous event he would have recalled something, even if it was mundane.

Paul Young said...

cda..."But I still say that the actual memo ought still to be traceable if it contains anything of value either to the military or to science. However, since the investigators of 1994-5 could not locate it, there is zero likelihood that anyone could today."

Maybe they DID trace it!

The problem here is that we have to take the word of these "investigators" that they didn't find the Ramey Memo.
(The very same people, who at the end of their "investigation", were expecting us to believe that the bodies reportedly found, were anthropomorphic dummies!)

KRandle said...

Ramey's aide was Captain Roy Showalter, serial number O41042, he was a pilot, and his date of rank was October 27, 1944. He was not interviewed. He had died prior to anyone locating him.

cda said...

Paul:

You are taking things a bit too far. If that report says the USAF investigators tried, and failed, to get the memo deciphered by some (unnamed) top photographic agency I think we should accept this as true. Some people believe they have identified the said agency.

This hardly makes a case for the USAF possessing the actual memo, does it? Say what you will about the Roswell report, but I do not accept that they lied or covered up over something like this.

Brian B said...

@ Kevin

That's unfortunate as he might have shed some light on this subject and others.

Paul Young said...

No cda. When I quoted you in my previous post, I presumed you were referring to the existence of the actual memo...not a deciphering of the photo of the memo.


I can't believe that the investigators/authors of "Case closed" could be so inept that they believed they were correct in blaming the reported "alien bodies" on dummies used in a test a few years in the future.
And if they weren't inept, then, to my thinking, they were blatantly lying.
Following that, I can't be too trusting in anything else they might say...Hence my comment that they could also be lying about NOT finding the Ramey Memo.

KRandle said...

CDA -

I know the agency involved, the name given to me be Richard Weaver, and I FOIAed the agency who told me "Our extensive search of ... records failed to identify any documents in our files that are responsive to our request..."

I take this to mean that a. there was nothing there and b. their work on this was so unimportant to them that they failed to retain any documentation about it. That doesn't meant it isn't important, only that it is unimportant to them.

Don said...

For those involved in scanning the memo photo:

How confident are you the negative that was scanned is the original negative and not a copy?

Regards,

Don

Brian B said...

@ Paul who wrote:

"I can't believe that the investigators/authors of "Case closed" could be so inept that they believed they were correct in blaming the reported "alien bodies" on dummies used in a test a few years in the future."

This begrudging comment is annoying because it's always presented as if USAF investigators pretended a 1952 project was operating in 1947.

ETH proponents love to take this out of context. You can read the actual text however you like, but it's what they were attempting to convey that's important, and NO they were not saying a 1952 project was operational in 1947.

What they clearly meant was the stories about bodies found in the desert were likely to have been from witnesses whose memories had been affected by a well known psychological condition that has aging people blending memories from one era into another creating a firm belief the two are one and the same.

This statement is factual and the clinical evidence has long since proven this happens to aging minds.

So Paul if you want to keep pumping out your alien supporting propaganda through your twisted interpretation of what they said just recognize it makes you out to be a cherry-picking conspiracist who loves misquoting reality.

That said, yes the USAF did a horrible job of properly explaining themselves on that aspect of the case leaving it wide open for people like you to plug away at their conclusions.

Mind you test dummies were not invented in 1952. As I have shown previously test dummies were used in WWII to evaluate ejection seats in their design stage.

cda said...

Perhaps we should stress the point that this scrap of paper in General Ramey's hand is the ONLY hard evidence left that has the slightest chance of demonstrating that Roswell was an ET crash (or landing). It is hard evidence because it is visible on a photograph even though it is, too all intents and purposes, indecipherable. No other 'hard' evidence exists anywhere and has not since 1947. Various hardware 'fragments' have turned up at times, and have been presented as possible proof but every one has so far bitten the dust. And nothing else in those Ft.Worth photos shows anything remotely suggestive of an ET craft.

Everything thus far presented is anecdotal verbal testimony. Some people accept this testimony, others, including myself, do not. And the contemporary press reports are useless for supporting ETH.

So what remains? This one indecipherable memo in a photograph now 7 decades old. The original memo is gone forever. Some hope, and say, the photo will crack the secret of intelligent life in the universe. Pure wishful thinking, but those interested will hold onto this idea forever and a day.

Occasionally miracles really do happen.

albert said...

@Don,

To copy a negative:

1. Make a contact copy onto reversal film to get a positive, then contact copy the positive to get another negative. Then there's the problem of the edge codes.

2. Use a special positive (non-reversing) film. AFAIK, these are no longer available in sheet film. They require special development processes.

It's highly unlikely that the negatives are copies.

What would be the point?

. .. . .. --- ....

Paul Young said...

Brian Bell..."ETH proponents love to take this out of context. You can read the actual text however you like, but it's what they were attempting to convey that's important, and NO they were not saying a 1952 project was operational in 1947."

If it was just the one person who got the year right about when they believed "Roswell" happened, but got mixed up over the year they thought they saw dead aliens...then I might have gone along with their "old persons memory malfunction" theory.
But since we have reports from multiple people, then it would seem the investigators/authors were simply desperate to write it off as a big mistake about seeing dummies years later.

So, on the contrary Brian, it's crystal clear as to what "Case closed" was alluding to.


Brian Bell..."That said, yes the USAF did a horrible job of properly explaining themselves on that aspect of the case leaving it wide open for people like you to plug away at their conclusions."

Ahhh right! It was just badly written! So people like me misinterpreted the conclusions...and people like you didn't? :-)

,,,,,,,,,

cda..."Some hope, and say, the photo will crack the secret of intelligent life in the universe"

I'd say that MOST of us who support the ETH for Roswell believe that the Ramey Memo is not proof of "intelligent life in the universe"...but it would go a long way to dismantling the ridiculous conclusion of the "Case closed" report that blames the whole event on a balloon and dummies...causing even more people to wonder why the heck US military are STILL lying about an event that took place 70 years ago.

Paul Young said...

ooops...Wanted to add this to my previous post but pressed "publish" instead of "preview"..

cda..." Pure wishful thinking, but those interested will hold onto this idea forever and a day.
Occasionally miracles really do happen."


This might be the miracle we're looking for! Did you pick up on this post on the previous "Ramey" thread by Brandon LaMaster?

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/21/us/project-vic-child-abuse/index.html

I wonder what it would take to ask the guys using this technique to run the Ramey scans through their new process.

Nitram said...

Don wrote:

"How confident are you the negative that was scanned is the original negative and not a copy?"

Simon, Jerry and David Rudiak were present a year ago when the mission was undertaken.
As they saw and handled the negative we can be fairly confident it is the original.

Regards
Nitram

Don said...

Albert: "To copy a negative:

1. Make a contact copy onto reversal film to get a positive, then contact copy the positive to get another negative. Then there's the problem of the edge codes.

2. Use a special positive (non-reversing) film. AFAIK, these are no longer available in sheet film. They require special development processes."

Or: 3. Photograph a print.

"It's highly unlikely that the negatives are copies.

What would be the point?"

For making prints, allowing the archiving of the original.

Regards,

Don

Don said...

Nitram: "Simon, Jerry and David Rudiak were present a year ago when the mission was undertaken.

As they saw and handled the negative we can be fairly confident it is the original."

If a copy had been made in July 1947, could they distinguish it from the original?

ps: the issue is the original will have greater resolution than the copy. I am not asserting the negative used is a copy. The curator of the collection it came from probably doesn't know, either. Get experts, negative, light table, and 'scopes together and take a look. Whether it is a copy or not will be evident.

Regards,

Don

KRandle said...

Don -

There were experts there, trained in forensic photography who were able to examine the negatives using light tables and microscopes. The negatives came from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram... it was not a copy negative. It was the original. We can now leave this part of the discussion.

Don said...

Thanks, Kevin.

Best Regards,

Don

Nitram said...

Hi Don

Hopefully Kevin will allow me another word or two...

Before Simon and Jerry made their trip to Texas they both asked me several times about the negative and, since they hadn't seen it, also wanted to confirm it was not a copy for the reasons you mention.

Both Kevin and David confirmed that is was the original to them, via email, and upon their examination, in person they concurred.

Regards
Nitram

Nitram said...

CDA wrote:

"For all I know, the word 'victims' is really 'violins' and the memo was about the upcoming local Fort Worth base orchestral concert."

I thought the point of these discussions was to try and make some headway.
If you want to make fun of all the work that people are trying to do on this investigation might I suggest there are other blogs where you can write your nonsense.
Again I'm a little surprised that Kevin bothered to allow your posting - but it is his blog and entirely up to him...

The reading of the "Ramey memo" may never be complete to everyone's satisfaction, but you need to be a little more sensible. It is written in English, it does contain the words "weather balloons" and if David and Kevin's "explanation" is correct (which I don't agree with, largely on the basis of "probabilities") then it would seem a good idea to see what can be done to decipher it.
If you have something (constructive, original and sensible) to add I would be delighted to hear it...

Even Lance agrees that trying to read the document is a good idea.

Brian B said...

@ Paul who wrote:

"But since we have reports from multiple people [refering to bodies], then it would seem the investigators/authors were simply desperate to write it off as a big mistake about seeing dummies years later.

>>> Well as it turned out Paul, I believe there were a total of eight witnesses who claimed to have seen bodies or knew of them.

Since the USAF report was published, all eight have been shown to have altered their stories or embellished them to the point their testimony is not just questionable it's worthless.

That leaves no one - not a single witness for any bodies.

Now, Kevin may not like me saying this but even I heard him say in a 2015 podcast he quote, "no longer believes any of these witnesses." That's not to say he rules out the possibility of bodies, but as he said their testimony is questionable and no longer warrants consideration.

I'm happy to point you to the pod cast interview.

Anthony Mugan said...

Are we not missing the point here.

The memo has first class provenance and whilst it will be rare, given the amount of noise in the image, for statistical approaches to be able to formally prove a specific word they do help identify more or less credible reads.

VIEWING is an unlikely word as the match of letter 7 to. g is very poor whilst the match to an S is statistically significant.
There is a very good chance the word contains VI ****S

Whilst I got a better fit to an N for letter 6 than an M the latter still came out with only around a 20% chance of getting that good a match or better ( I.e. a distinct possibility). Interestingly David R noted a better fit for the M coming out of his OCR work. I suspect I need to redo this with the new cleaner images....

We can therefore limit credible reads down to a small selection of words. This then gets very interesting when David's point is considered...the document has to make sense and is not a random selection of words.

For a whole variety of reasons I'm happy to stay short of formal proof on this one but it became blindingly obvious where this scentance in the memo is going

For someone who started looking at this with a hope / assumption that I could satisfy myself that Roswell was a mundane event that was quite a surprise and forced ( along with the NYU flight 4 issues) a significant shift in my interpretation of events.

albert said...

@Don,

"...Or: 3. Photograph a print...."

With what? The original Ansco sheet film? (see Neals comment above) New film with the wrong edge codes? Did someone want to create -exact- copies of the originals to pass them off as originals?

The process you describe used to be done often, but the copy negative would have been fine-grained, high quality film, not that Ansco crap. We used 8x10 negatives, so we could make contact prints. We could also enlarge to 5 x 20 -feet-.

Prints can easily be made from the original negatives, and today, prints are made with hi-res digital scans and commercial inkjet printers.

Notwithstanding the technical arguments, experts have already attested to the negatives provenance.

What more do you need?
. .. . .. --- ....

cda said...

Nitram (Angela Martin):

Clearly you either have no sense of humor, or you still believe this scrap of paper in Ramey's hand is worth deciphering.

If you follow the arguments on this blog and elsewhere on the Gen.Twining memo, and on other memos during that timeframe, you will notice that although these documents are perfectly readable, people differ over their meaning. People in fact dispute the meaning in that well known FBI teletype even though it is perfectly legible.

Here is my prediction over that Ramey memo: However much anyone manages to decipher it, however many words are eventually shown to be this, that or the other, there will STILL be a fierce debate over what those words mean, and the debate will rage forever.

In other words, the whole exercise looks to me a wasted effort. But, as I said earlier, as it is the ONLY 'hard evidence' OF ANY KIND on the Roswell affair, maybe it is worth a final try at decipherment. Maybe.

Let's face it, unless that memo definitely turns out to say there was an ET crash & recovery (which of course it won't), nobody is that interested in it, are they? Ceratin people are desperate for it to be the final proof of a massive ET cover-up, and not for any other reason.

Bill Moore told us long ago it was merely the text of Ramey's radio broadcast that evening. He deduced this without any optical aids! Can you disprove him?

Don said...

Thanks, Nitram.


David, re your response to my comment. I was probably not clear.

Under normal circumstances I would expect two generals to correspond about victims/crashes/wrecks on their watch (esp. ones with negative publicity potential), but not weather balloons and, at least prior to the 47 wave, discs.

The Barksdale B-17 was the only victims/crash I could find that Ramey might take an interest in -- or his superiors -- at that time. I could find no mention of discs or weather balloons re Barksdale.

If the readings you support are accurate, then the memo can only be about Roswell. Actually, if it is Ramey and Vandenberg, the 'weather balloons' and 'disc' are enough to point to Roswell.

Best Regards,

Don

KRandle said...

CDA -

Well, if Bill Moore said it, what more could we want? He hasn't been caught fudging information, he hasn't created any documents to help verify the Roswell case and he didn't admit to working with the AFOSI to the detriment of UFO research. Here is a completely reliable source telling us it is the text of Ramey's radio message, which, no matter how you slice it, based on what can be seen makes no sense, but what the heck, that must be the solution.

Don said...

Albert I have no idea what you are so worked up about. I asked if anyone has confirmed the negative is the original, is all. Kevin and Nitram have done so.

"Did someone want to create -exact- copies of the originals to pass them off as originals?"

blink

"What more do you need?"

Well, you to calm down. Thanks.

Regards,

Don

albert said...


@Paul,

The CNN article fails to mention the type of images. Assumming they were digital, the deblurring software would certainly work. You're dealing with perfectly arranged pixels, normally in a known orientation to the subject.

As we learned from the Not Roswell Slides team, deblurring software is not automatic; it requires some guesswork. It requires digitizing the analog image. Information not in the original cannot recovered. Interpretation of noisy text images is best done by the human eye/brain system, assisted by software.

I'll try to give an example of the problem: Imagine a piece of text, black type on white paper. Imagine a sheet of black plastic or metal, on which there are thousands of tiny holes, smaller than the width of the lines that comprise the characters, arranged in random patterns, yet closely spaced. Placing the sheet over the paper, you can read some of the letters, but not all, because some letters will have several possibilities. By shifting the sheet around, you will eventually have enough information to read the text. Does this make sense?

With the Ramey memo, we are dealing with a 'sheet' that we can't move. Worse, the clarity of the characters depends on -unexposed- areas of the film. If the focus is off, the edges of the characters will blur. Because the silver halide crystals clump together randomly and are widely spaced, (a characteristic of crappy film), white background can bleed into parts of the characters, obscuring the information. The photo industry has special test charts for evaluating lens resolution, and they are useful for evaluating film quality as well. I couldn't find any for Ansco film.

. .. . .. --- ....

Brian B said...

Returning to the memo --

As I stated earlier, context is everything. What do we know about the memo that's factual that everyone can agree upon to establish context?

1) It can be seen more than once in Ramey's hand with weather balloon debris in the press photos taken in July 1947.

2) The press photos were taken to aid the press in communicating what the USAAF stated was a mistaken announcement that they had recovered a flying disc.

3) The press photo negatives are the originals having not been altered.

4) The paper is not an official military document per se, as it isn't in standard document format.

5) Quite logically, and for all intensive purposes, it conforms to that which is produced from a period teletype machine.

6) It uses standard punctuation.

7) Some words are indisputably clear and recognizable.

8) Ramey's thumb, coupled with the angle which it is held, obscures pertinent words that might help clarify the document's content.

9) One study has demonstrated that priming one's audience as to the contents of the document yields different readings among cohorts given different primes.

10) Attempts to read the memo through various techniques has yielded inconclusive results.

What else?

albert said...

@Don,

I'm not 'worked up'.

I was simply trying to point out that there are -technical- reasons for making the 'copy' theory highly unlikely.

It's a legitimate question.

. .. . .. --- ....

David Rudiak said...

CDA scribbled with his crayon:
Bill Moore told us long ago it was merely the text of Ramey's radio broadcast that evening. He deduced this without any optical aids! Can you disprove him?

He purely SPECULATED that is what it was. Big deal! Are we supposed to put any stock in a guess vs. actually blowing the message up and seeing what is REALLY there?

Further, I CAN disprove it was Ramey's radio broadcast. From newspaper stories, we know some of the things Ramey said, like:

"the purported "flying disc" found on a New Mexico ranch had been identified as 'remnants of a tin-foil covered box-kite and a rubber balloon.'"

He went on the radio to "deflate" the 'wild stories'; the object was "a high-altitude weather observation device--a very normal gadget in weather bureau operations," or, "remnant of a weather balloon and a radar reflector."

"I don't say these devices are what people have called discs. There is no such gadget (as the disc) known to the army--at least this far down the line."

“In his broadcast, he said that anyone who found an object he believed to be a 'flying disc' should contact the nearest Army office or Sheriff's office.”

"To me the flying discs are just like the purple cow. I never saw one."

NOBODY, not even hard-core skeptics who spent more than two seconds looking at the memo, has ever claimed there was wording remotely like this in the memo. No "deflate", no "high-altitude weather observation device", no "gadget(s)", no "weather bureau", no “Army office” or “Sheriff’s office”, no "remnant(s)", no "radar reflector", no "tin-foil", no "box-kite", no "rubber balloon", no "flying disc(s)", and no "purple cow".

(Will Brian Bell now weigh in that Ramey was winking at us and letting us know that purple cows were the "victims" rather than Brazel's sheep?)

It would also be rather odd, if it were Ramey's radio address, to sign his own notes or write it up in paragraph form. It would also be very odd that it would be typed on paper that matches teletype paper width instead of standard letterhead.

So yes, absolutely NOTHING points to this being Ramey's radio broadcast. Next obfuscation please.

David Rudiak said...

To be perfectly fair to Don, before our two film experts got to Arlington, Texas and personally examined the negatives, there was some question in at least one of their minds whether the Ramey memo negative was an original and not a copy.

However, when they did examine all four existing negatives, they were all Ansco film stock and all with the same film holder notch patterns. Their conclusion was that they were original negatives. (I'm assuming, for one thing, perhaps wrongly, that a duplicate negative would not have the notch patterns.)

Expert Jerry Morelock's instant take on the Ramey memo negative when he eyeballed it was that it appeared to have been hastily developed, which he said was too bad because there would have been more contrast had it been fully developed. (This goes along with J.B. Johnson's story that there was a rush on the photos and he put the negative wet on the wirephoto machine to get it out as quickly as possibly.) Thus another small piece of evidence that this was the original negative.

Col. Weaver in his 1994 Roswell report summary said they made negative duplicates of the photos, but didn't go into details. If they were trying to work from that on the Ramey memo message instead of a good blow-up print (or negative) of the message, they would have been adding even more film grain noise. To have gone about it that way would have been incompetence on their part. Whatever they did, I wouldn't put much faith in their claims that nothing could be read in the message.

Brian B said...

David Rudiak baa-baa'ed:

"(Will Brian Bell now weigh in that Ramey was winking at us and letting us know that purple cows were the "victims" rather than Brazel's sheep?)"

Maybe! LOL

Cows get mutilated by your aliens, right?

Maybe your little grey friends also started with poor hapless sheep.....LOL

But more seriously, why continue to rant that the Ramey document bears conclusive evidence that you're right and everyone else in the entire world is wrong? You've stated almost a thousand times:

"I find as I monitor criticism of the Ramey "smoking gun", that most critics don't even bother to look at the images or maybe just glance at them. Instead I hear these annoying flippant dismissals of "faces in the clouds." They're like the clerics who wouldn't look through Galileo's telescope. (Rudiak Re: Roswell Online)"

Facts are without another (different) approach towards deciphering what it says you'll continue to catch flak from me and others that will simply blow holes in your current crash and burn conclusions.

You fail to even consider the method I suggested because I can only conclude you feel you've already deciphered the text - you just want people to believe you....

As Printy correctly pointed out, it's not Galelio but Percival Lowell that best describes your passion and frustration when he wrote:

"In the later half of the 19th century, the astronomer Percival Lowell (as well as a few others) made claims about seeing many different canals on the surface of Mars. He encouraged others to "look through the telescope" as well and some did see canals. Others did not (E. E. Barnard and E.M. Antoniadi to name a few) and, instead, only saw irregularities at the limits of perception. The mental interpretation of these irregularities (and some wishful thinking) created the canals and Percival Lowell vehemently argued his case for many years in astronomical circles. Often he proclaimed that those astronomers who did not see canals were using their telescope incorrectly. Lowell even conducted experiments in perception using distant telegraph wires to help justify his observations. Despite all his work, he could not convince those skeptics that the canals existed. In this case, the skeptics were proven right after the Mariner space probes visited the planet. Despite the actual existence of large chasms and gullies, not one of these features lined up with any of the canals drawn by Lowell and the others. Lowell had simply created the canals out of his perception of what he wanted to see."

albert said...

David,

I was unable to locate an exact match for the Ansco notch codes. Were the experts able to find them? Ansco stuff was poorly documented.

As I indicated to Don, I proposed 2 ways of copying a negative. He proposed a third, which is absolutely the simplest way. But you would need a high quality enlargement from the original negative. Why not work directly from that? And you can make as many prints as you want from the original negative.

If "...they made negative duplicates of the photos...", does that mean they shot enlargements made from the original negative?

I agree that your point about the procedure you mentioned would not be the best way to go. But it would pretty much guarantee failure.

I haven't tried this, but a contact exposure to a fine grained film would produce a positive image, which could be examined with a projector.

In the digital realm, I find extreme enlarging makes text harder to read. I prefer to 'back away' a little bit, and let my brain do the processing, prejudiced though it may be:)
. .. . .. --- ....

David Rudiak said...

Albert wrote: (1 of 2)

"Interpretation of noisy text images is best done by the human eye/brain system, assisted by software."

Yes, that's right. On the question of blur, if you look at the full Ramey/Dubose photo showing the memo, it is in sharp focus. (Unlike the other Ramey/Dubose photo, which DOES have some blur to it.) Various people have tried deblurring software (including myself) on the memo, without any improvement. That is because there is no significant lens or motion blur. As mentioned, the main problem is the random noise caused by the film grain, which tends to break up the letters.

However, while individual letters may be too ambiguous to be read on their own, the same is NOT necessarily true for whole words (all letters taken collectively) and phrases, in which multiple linguistic rules of a language plus the context come into play that can disambiguate, or at least greatly narrow down the possibilities. Thus word length (objectively determined), spelling, grammar, syntax (word orders), word probabilities, and ultimately sensibility to choose between remaining possible words. (In fact, mostly unconsciously, we use these linguistic rules every day to interpret noisy conversation or read bad handwriting, mostly with great accuracy.)

Thus I commonly use the example of the VICTIMS word. It is 7-letters long. Therefore only 7-letter English words need to be considered. It follows the most common word in the English language, THE, and is followed by OF (2nd most common word). Therefore English grammar further dictates it MUST be a noun, not some other part of speech. (the grammar filter) This eliminates all those 7-letter words that are the wrong part of speech.

While there is poor agreement on what the 3rd and 4th letters of the word are, there tends to be very strong agreement on most of the other letters. Thus when skeptic Ross Evans did a Web CAPTCHA experiment in which only individual letters were presented to some 2000 CAPTCHA readers, he reported that the overwhelming majority thought the other letters were V, I , I, M, S. Using these strongly agreed upon letters, the ONLY English word that would work is VICTIMS. The second and third letters don't even matter.

IF you try similar, possible English words like VIOLINS or VIRGINS, these must be thrown out because they make no sense in the given context (the sensibility filter). Ultimately, out of all the many thousands of 7-letter English words, when all the various linguistic filters are applied using most likely letters, all the squabbling comes down to a literal handful of words: VICTIMS, VIEWING, VENTING, FINDING, and REMAINS. Then in comes down to additional linguistic analysis as to how likely or appropriate gerunds like VIEWING, VENTING, or VENTING might be in the greater word context, namely... "(something else was found--perhaps "A WRECK") NEAR OPERATION AT THE (invisible location under Ramey's thumb) AND THE (VICTIMS word) OF THE WRECK YOU FORWARDED TO THE (invisible group ID under Ramey's thumb) TEAM AT FORT WORTH, TEX."

IN this more complete context, abstract gerunds for what was found with "THE WRECK" seem to be poor choices vs. a concrete, material noun, leaving only VICTIMS and REMAINS.

REMAINS, besides very few people reading it as such, also tests poorly when I apply a computer OCR program that rates relative letter probabilities. "I, M" are about equal to "E, N" overall, but the big discriminator is the first letter "V" at #2 vs. "R" at #8. I think it is also significant that "C" at #5 tests much higher than "M" at #15. So OVERALL, VICTIMS is the much more probable word than REMAINS. To give an example of how unlikely REMAINS, FINDING, and VIEWING are, they are all much lower in probability than the nonsense word VIRGINS. Only VENTING survives this VETTING process and are the only semi-sensible words close to VICTIMS in overall letter probability.

David Rudiak said...

(2 of 2)

Incidentally the OCR program works along similar lines to your example of perforated mask scanned over the letters. In this case the mask is the actual perfect font character, and the scanning takes place pixel by pixel, adding up all the matching pixels under the mask and subtracting all the mismatches. Within each letter box, the whole area is scanned and a location for maximum matching found, giving the letter probability for that particular letter in that letter box. The computer does this for all 26 letters and then ranks them by maximum found probability. The mathematical scanning, adding/subtracting process is called cross-correlation.

(Incidentally, to test a phrase like "THE VICTIMS OF THE WRECK" by scanning each letter pixel by pixel across all the letters typically takes on the order of at least 10 billion calculations. Until about the last 10 years, doing such testing by computer would not have been practical without access to a supercomputer. So yes, computers are very important in being able to carry out scientific testing.)

David Rudiak said...

Brian Bell wrote: (1 of 2)
What do we know about the memo that's factual that everyone can agree upon to establish context?
1) It can be seen more than once in Ramey's hand with weather balloon debris in the press photos taken in July 1947..

7) Some words are indisputably clear and recognizable.

9) One study has demonstrated that priming one's audience as to the contents of the document yields different readings among cohorts given different primes.
10) Attempts to read the memo through various techniques has yielded inconclusive results.


Most of what Brian wrote is indeed factual, but not items 9 & 10.

For #9, one study (Kevin and James Houran) CLAIMED to demonstrate (not "demonstrated") that context very significantly altered what was read. The real FACT is that the study demonstrated nothing of the sort, finding maybe 1% of words read under different contexts were perhaps so affected. (What they called "Exclusive words" to each group). So, contrary to the claims of the paper (and Brian), contexts were not all that important to the words people read. (Note, the average per person was only 3.7 words, so not a lot, but then the average time per person was also not a lot, only 15 minutes, or very little effort typically.)

Other words like "WEATHER BALLOONS" and "FORT WORTH, TEX" were found across all contexts (what they called "common words"), and therefore they agreed were readable and indeed there. These would fall in Brian's #7 "fact", words that are indisputably clear and recognizable. But there are more, a LOT more.

Fully half the words read they did not discuss at all, yet they had to be either "exclusive" or "common" across groups. These almost certainly were the common, short English grammar words in the message that make up the basic grammatical structure of a language, such as THE, OF, AT, OF, AND, etc. These are also "common" words". If you add those in with the other "common" words like "weather balloons", then about 98-99% of all words were “common” words read across all three groups.

A graphic with the basic statistics of the experiment:
www.roswellproof.com/Randle-Houran_table_2.gif

And my more complte discussion critical of the paper’s methods and findings:
www.roswellproof.com/randle_houran_graphics.html

Brian's #10, in part contradicts his #7, that there are parts that can be indisputably read. When I compared 9 serious readers of the memo (meaning spent considerable time on it, including a few skeptics), there was actually ~40% VERY STRONG to unanimous agreement on what the memo said and ~50% at least majority agreement. This included other critical words and phrases like "THE VICTIMS OF THE WRECK YOU FORWARDED", "THE 'DISC'", "AT ROSWELL", signed by RAMEY, and at least one or two uses of the word "TEAM(S)" or "CREWS".

To focus on just the critical word "VICTIMS", fully three techniques point to this being the word: 1) Strong majority opinion of human readers of the complete word (the "serious readers" I mentioned plus nearly 3000 readers of my website who weighed in on a web poll); 2) Heavy majority read of individual letters in a CAPTCHA experiment, the ONLY possible word fitting all those individual letters being VICTIMS; 3) My computer OCR read rating VICTIMS on top of all other proposed words in letter probability.

David Rudiak said...

(part 2 of 2)
So contrary to Brian's #10 "fact", the results have NOT been “inconclusive”. The message is indisputably about Roswell ("WEATHER BALLOONS", "DISC", "AT ROSWELL", etc.), it is not about something else entirely, It is also a military mesage, signed by RAMEY (sender), not someone else, and is NOT a civilian news bulletin (signed by Ramey, wording doesn't remotely match anything in the pubic record, "YOU FORWARDED" estabishes second person, not 3rd person of a real bulletin). "YOU FORWARDED" also establishes that it is addressed to higher officer who was doing the ordering, bodies or "VICTIMS" were involved and they were associated with an object that was still being referred to by Ramey as "THE 'DISC'". TEAMS/CREWS were also involved, including one to whom THE VICTIMS OF THE WRECK were being "FORWARDED" by the higher officer. Further, there is a reference to the original base press release (commonly read as "MISSTATE MEANING OF STORY" but might read slightly different, like ".....RELEASE OF STORY", but still generally agreed as being about the press release, followed by use of "WEATHER BALLOONS" as being the next release.

Now if Brian wants to split semantic hairs more, he can argue the exact nature of "THE VICTIMS" or the "THE 'DISC'" is not detailed in the memo itself, no "Martians" or "space ships" or words like that. But there is a greater historical context beyond the message itself, including witness testimony many years later. And contrary to another of Brian's generalities, it is very far from true that ALL witnesses to bodies or a craft or strange debris have been shown to be liars or not credible. The numbers of such witnesses number around 100, and only a small fraction of them have had huge holes poked in their stories. Everything else has been nitpicking and argument by assertion that not a single one of them is credible simply because a particular individual does not believe any of them are credible. Let us not confuse individual “opinion” with actual “fact”.

And there is further context from the time of how the military was trying to publicly kill the "rumors" about the discs using denials that they were "space ships" (including from Ramey a week earlier), authority figures mocking them, and debunking demonstrations of weather balloons. Behind the scenes, we now know that various groups in the military were treating them with dead seriousness as absolutely real (Schulgen/Twining/AMC/Project Sign), with Twining strongly urging a widespread investigation and back-enginering efforts to duplicate them.

Don said...

David: "..he put the negative wet on the wirephoto machine.."

He did?

"From an explanation from the Associated Press provided in 1955:

An ordinary photo print was wrapped around a cylinder on the sending machine. On the receiving machine, 20 or 2,000 miles away, and connected by leased wire, an unexposed negative was placed on an enclosed cylinder."

There are similar descriptions on the web, but I know nothing about the wirephoto process in 1947, and above may be inaccurate or incomplete, but maybe someone here knows whether wet negatives were used on send machines...or any negs, wet or dry.

Best Regards,

Don

David Rudiak said...

Brian digs up an old quote of mine:
"I find as I monitor criticism of the Ramey "smoking gun", that most critics don't even bother to look at the images or maybe just glance at them. Instead I hear these annoying flippant dismissals of "faces in the clouds." They're like the clerics who wouldn't look through Galileo's telescope."

Of course, by not looking through the telescope, I was referring to people who claim to know that it can't be read without making any attempt to study it.

This also ignores that I've ALSO written that the Ramey memo is NOT at all the same as "faces in the clouds" because the message is NOT random shapes but a printed message in English with definite rules of the language and other information (historical context) that can be used to disambiguate it. It has random noise on top of it (film grain noise) that causes ambiguity, but there is still an actual signal (printed message) within the noise. Science and engineering regularly deal with signal-to-noise problems, and there are various ways of attacking the problem to try to pull signal out of noise. Using the rules of English and context are ADDITIONAL INFORMATION over and above just the black and white splotches on the negative and can assist in separating signal and noise.

But since Brian usually knows little about what he loves to pontificate about, he then uses another tea leaf analogy, namely Percival Lowell seeing "canals" on Mars, citing none other than debunker Tim Printy as some sort of "authority",

Brian wries:
As Printy correctly pointed out, it's not Galelio but Percival Lowell that best describes your passion and frustration when he wrote: "In the later half of the 19th century, the astronomer Percival Lowell (as well as a few others) made claims about seeing many different canals on the surface of Mars. He encouraged others to "look through the telescope" as well and some did see canals. Others did not (E. E. Barnard and E.M. Antoniadi to name a few) and, instead, only saw irregularities at the limits of perception. The mental interpretation of these irregularities (and some wishful thinking) created the canals and Percival Lowell vehemently argued his case for many years in astronomical circles. Often he proclaimed that those astronomers who did not see canals were using their telescope incorrectly."

Well, Brian, again this is not correct or relevant, just as tea-leaf and faces-in-the-clouds analogies are not correct or relevant. Again, we are dealing with a WRITTEN, PRINTED MESSAGE in a presumed known language (would they use something other than English?) It is NOT a bunch of random features.

Brian as a matter of fact just stated as likely true or actual "facts", based on all these supposed Bell/Printy "Martian canal" words and MY analyses that I've been saying for YEARS, that the message was indeed a teletype, "it uses standard punctuation", it was probably from Ramey (one of my "Martian canal" words Brian agrees looks an awful lot like Ramey), "some words are indisputably clear and recognizable" (Brian seeing more Martian canals?), he also agrees it seems to have "victims" and "disc" in it (though disputes what they might mean), and agrees the words "you forwarded" together with Ramey signing it likely indicates this was addressed to higher command.

These are all things I have been saying for many years, not realizing I was actually looking at a photo of Martian craters. Brian says he agrees with many aspects of my Ramey memo analysis one moment, then attacks me as making it all up and comparing my readings to Percival Lowell seeing Martian canals. In other words, Brian wants to have it both ways. (Logical consistency gets in the way of trolling.) He can state certain things as facts or likely true, but I can't, because I'm just doing tea leaf reading, unlike the great and mighty Wizard of Bell.

Unknown said...

Anyone ever notice how chewed up Ramey's thumb looks? It must have been a cover-up Ramey must have been a nervous wreck wondering whether they were going to court-martial him if the truth ever got out. LOL

Brian B said...

@ David who wrote;

"And contrary to another of Brian's generalities, it is very far from true that ALL witnesses to bodies or a craft or strange debris have been shown to be liars or not credible. The numbers of such witnesses number around 100, and only a small fraction of them have had huge holes poked in their stories."

So you're claiming there are 100 FIRST HAND witnesses to both BODIES and STRANGE debris?

WHO are they?

No one because you're referencing second, third, and forth hand testimony some of which is dead man's testimony.

Produce the list of 100 first hand witnesses and what they actually claimed and when.

I think you must have drank one too many "Schmitt & Carey" on the rocks....

cda said...

As I said before, we have already got a dispute, EVEN IF the phrase David Rudiak says is in the memo is genuinely there. He claims "THE VICTIMS OF THE WRECK YOU FORWARDED" is there, with a high probability. Now suppose he is 100% right about this decipherment. We will then have a debate over whether Ramey meant the 'victims' (i.e. the bodies) were forwarded or whether it was 'the wreck' (i.e. the craft) that was forwarded. Or both maybe?

I cannot, in any circumstances, see anyone using such a phrase as "the victims of the wreck you forwarded" in a supposedly official document, not only because of its ambiguity but because of its sheer dreadful use of the English language. Imagine writing out "the victims of the wreck you forwarded" in a document! It is preposterous.

So I say, whatever DR's great decipherment analysis shows, the given phrase is NOT what is printed on that teletype. Try another phrase, please.

And no, I am not an English teacher.

Brian B said...

@ Stef

No no....not the thumb so much as the nail. I mean this guy must have had some hygiene problems or he was so busy he never had time to trim his dirty nails! Yuck...

@ CDA

"The victims of the wreck in the disc they will ship" is the phrase I see David puts out more often - at least from a jpg standpoint.

But yes, one could read this and others many different ways.

For example, the above could mean they left these poor dead superintelligent creatures from another world in their wrecked "disc" and shipped it as a single package blood, guts, and all. How gruesome....

I can just see them opening the side hatch and chucking in the twisted corpses of the poor little fellows who fell off their interstellar space ride. No wonder it smelled so bad...phew.

Unknown said...

CDA Good point regarding "The victims of the wreck you forwarded" It's not only grammatically ackward it's also very crass! Imagine talking about humans (or entities) like that! No respect for the dead or the misfortunate!

Don said...

CDA: "I cannot, in any circumstances, see anyone using such a phrase as "the victims of the wreck you forwarded" in a supposedly official document, not only because of its ambiguity but because of its sheer dreadful use of the English language."

We have only part of a sentence. Since it is a response, I think it likely the parties knew what they were referring to. Within a dialogue certain things are taken for granted by the parties, such as what they are going on about.

Regards,

Don

KRandle said...

David -

The point of the experiment was to test for priming, which demonstrated that those given a specific context reacted to that context, seeing in the ambiguous stimuli images that were precipitated by that context. It wasn't designed to prove that any specific reading of the memo was accurate or inaccurate, but to show that priming did influence the reading of the document. You can shout about this all you want, but it was not a criticism of the work you had done, but that those who followed along and were aware of your conclusions were influenced by those conclusions. In this case Brian's statement was an accurate representation of what the study found.

On the other hand, in my discussions with Tom Carey, he told me that the first time he projected the memo portion of the photograph onto a large surface, the word "victims" jumped out at him. He assured me that he was unaware of your interpretation of that section of the memo, so priming was not an influence on him.

CDA -

Something that is only addressed periodically is that if this was, in fact, a military message, then the rules of grammar as we use them might be altered. The one thing that has bothered me about the memo, that if it is from a military source, we see almost none of what I would think of as military jargon. I have seen messages that are nearly incomprehensible because of the jargon. And I have seen them that are nearly devoid of jargon.

David Rudiak said...

Don wrote:
There are similar descriptions on the web, but I know nothing about the wirephoto process in 1947, and above may be inaccurate or incomplete, but maybe someone here knows whether wet negatives were used on send machines...or any negs, wet or dry.

I got it wrong Don. Rereading, according to Bond Johnson, he made prints off the negatives (these are the Marcel and Ramey/Dubose photo with memo) and gave the PRINTS (not negatives) still wet to AP so they could transmit them immediately. (He also said AP in Dallas brought their wirephoto machine to the Star-Telegram so they could transmit direct from there.) It may be the negatives were also still wet when he made the prints.

One of our photo experts, Jerry Morelock, when first eyeballing the Ramey/Dubose negative on a light table, thought that maybe it had been rushed as well. (This was without knowing about Johnson's testimony.) As I very vaguely remember, I think his impression was due to it having mild water spotting, as if it hadn't been dried properly. He then said something to the effect that was too bad because if that was the case, because we lost a little contrast as a result.

(As an aside, while in grade school in the 1950s, I remember we did a field trip to the local newspaper where they demonstrated transmission of a photo on a wirephoto machine, "hi tech" back then. Oooh, ahhh, to school kids! We watched as it SLOOOWLY scanned line by line, like watching the grass grow. As I vaguely remember, the guy said it took something like half an hour to transmit one photo.)

Don Maor said...

Stef Bender good-goded:

"CDA Good point regarding "The victims of the wreck you forwarded" It's not only grammatically ackward it's also very crass! Imagine talking about humans (or entities) like that! No respect for the dead or the misfortunate!"

So in your view, any kind of disrespect for the bodies/victims, means there were no bodies? Really?

Don said...

The general style of the 1947 military official documents in PBB is passive voice. I think the first thing that caught my attention in the canonical Roswell press release is that everything up to action taken immediately is in the active voice, but what follows is in the passive, which might be a sign of editing or two authors.

If the Ramey memo is a telex and is part of an ongoing discussion, it may be "official", but not a typical formal report.

Regards,

Don

Brian B said...

@ David who wrote:

"...CLAIMED to demonstrate (not "demonstrated") that context very significantly altered what was read. The real FACT is that the study demonstrated nothing of the sort."

>>> Not to belabor the point, but the study DID demonstrate priming an audience with various contextual elements yielded readings that supported the contextual primes.

This is one of the many reasons I and others dismiss your online web survey hosted at your site. It also implies that if YOU already believe the contents deal with a crashed saucer and dead aliens, you too will succumb to the bias with which you approach the memo.

This is why a different method must be used if anyone ever hopes to gain insight as to what the memo really means, as in why is he holding it and for what purpose did it serve?

My impression is that you're "white knuckling" the memo to ensure it can only read what you want it to read.

As CDA has written, if a group of people were to accurately decipher some of the key phrases, and it turned out to be nothing more than suggestions about conducting upcoming weather balloon demos so the public understood that some of what they were seeing was balloons, I'm very certain you would reject that conclusion outright and continue pressing your case that you are correct and no one else could ever be.

If you reject the Randle/Houran study, you will obviously reject any study that opposes your personal conclusions.

David also wrote:

"Brian says he agrees with many aspects of my Ramey memo analysis one moment, then attacks me as making it all up and comparing my readings to Percival Lowell seeing Martian canals. In other words, Brian wants to have it both ways."

>>> No. While I agree it's a teletype paper copy written by Ramey using english words of which some are discernible, I've never stated that I agree it says "victims". That's why I wrote a previous note with alternative words such as "viewers" or "vestige".

What I have said is that if it does say "victims" that word alone does not prove these bodies were alien. They might have been human just the same.

It may indeed say "wreck" and "disc" but these words are unusually in quotes implying a reference to terms already used by the press or in discussion of what was found. These nouns DO NOT convey an extraterrestrial conclusion by any means, and neither would "victims" if it were proven to be there.

My Lowell comparison is made relative to YOUR conclusions which add up to a belief the memo is about an extraterrestrial space wreck.

Like Lowell, you keep squinting at your memo's image seeing things which other equally qualified people don't see. Like Lowell you claim that what you see is indeed what it is, and that no one will agree with you. Like Lowell who claimed qualified people were missing the obvious because they couldn't operate their equipment properly, you claim others aren't reading it properly because they see something else.

The Lowell analogy is Printy's, but clearly it fits like a glove.

David Rudiak said...

Brian Bell blustered: (1 of 2)
“So you're claiming there are 100 FIRST HAND witnesses to both BODIES and STRANGE debris?”

No, you are making things up again. I never said the roughly 100 witnesses were ALL first-hand or that they were witnesses to BOTH bodies and strange debris. I said there were about 100 WITNESSES (thus meaning both first or second-hand) to a craft, bodies, and/or strange debris being recovered. If I meant only first hand, I would have used "eyewitnesses", not witnesses.

My point, which you are again trying to obfuscate, is that there are a HELLEVA a lot of them, thus not so easily dismissed as ALL being "liars" or supposedly "discredited", as you have said in the past.

Regarding bodies, the vast majority are second-hand witnesses, usually wives or children or grandchildren of service personnel. There are a few claimed first-hand or eyewitnesses to alien bodies, including Haut, Sgt. Frederick Benthal (Army photographer flown in from Washington), Pvt. Eleazar Benevidez, and Sgt. Thomas Gonzalez.

Second-hand claims of bodies among military personnel came from people like Lt. Richard Harris, Jr. (who said Haut told him at the hangar of seeing an alien body in the hangar and suggested he go take a look; also admitted to covering up the financial paper trail); Sgt. Milton Sprouse (said a barrack mate of his who worked at the hospital told him of an alien autopsy there he was involved in, then disappeared); Lt. Chester Barton (said he was told that dead crew members, who he assumed were human, were taken to base hospital, then flown to Fort Worth); Lt. Robert Shirkey (saw debris being loaded into Marcel's B-29, later learned bodies were taken to base hangar), Vere McCarthy (saying he was told this by Cpt. Oliver Henderson, who also told his wife, daughter, and business partner that he had either seen the bodies and/or flown them as pilot to Wright Field); four sons of Marine Cpt. Marion McGruder (according to them, on his deathbed said he had later seen the surviving alien at Wright-Patterson). If you throw in three crew members of a B-29 on July 9 that flew a heavy guarded crate in the bomb bay to Fort Worth to be greeted by a mortician, that is three more: Sgt. Robert Slusher, PFC Lloyd Thompson, and Sgt. Arthur Osepchook.

If you throw in civilians, Fawn Brazel (said her grandfather Mack Brazel spoke of the "creatures"); Nancy Easley Johnston confirmed that her father Major Edwin Easley, provost marshal, likewise spoke of the "creatures" at Roswell on his deathbed, confirmed by a Dr. present, Harold Granek (sp?); three more witnesses to Cpt. Oliver Henderson alien body story (wife Sappho Henderson, daughter Mary Groode, business partner John Kromshroeder, who also said he was shown a piece of stiff metal debris by Henderson from the crash object). There are a few more.

David Rudiak said...

(2A of 2)
Relatives of military personnel saying they spoke about bodies included Steven Sain, son of PFC and MP Ed Sain, saying his father told him about guarding alien bodies in a tent (Ed Sain personally would only admit to being driven to the crash site and guarding the tent with orders to shoot to kill anyone unauthorized trying to enter, sounding suspiciously like the same tent in the field photographer Benthal said he was led to in order to photograph alien bodies inside); Leola Van Why, widow of MP Cpl. Raymond Van Why, who Sain said was with him, the widow saying her husband told her of being a guard at the site were the spaceship crashed; Larry Rowlette and Carleen Green, children of Sgt. Homer Rowlette, saying he told them of being part of clean-up crew, seeing the bodies and "spaceship" and handling debris, including "memory foil"; Monte Dalton, niece of Cpl Leo Ellington, also saying he was part of a cleanup crew and saw "three little men"; Rolland & Michael Menagh, sons of PFC Rolland Menagh, MP, who also guarded the northern site and saw the ship and three dead bodies, escorted the tarped craft on the flatbed back to the base hangar, passing through the center of town (see below for more witnesses to the flatbed with tarped object); Sgt. Thomas Gonzalez, another MP and a claimed eyewitness to the craft, bodies, and material. Among civilian/civlian, Frankie Dwyer Rowe said her fireman father Dan Dwyer told family of getting out to the site, seeing the aliens and a lot of debris (Rowe also an eyewitness to the "memory foil"); Barbara Dugger, granddaughter of Sheriff George Wilcox, said her grandmother told her of Wilcox getting to site and seeing four space beings.

Even disregarding Glenn Dennis as a credible 2nd-hand body eyewitness, he claimed first-hand knowledge of phone calls from the base inquiring about child-size caskets At least five witnesses confirm Dennis telling them AT THE TIME about the phone call for the small caskets, and at least two saying they heard the story from him within the next few years. Quite independently of Dennis, two witnesses from nearby Hagerman, N.M. either heard discussion about small caskets from Ballard Funeral Home people or said the family funeral parlor supplied the small caskets that Ballard did not have.

Regarding a craft, there are only a few claimed eyewitnesses to seeing an actual craft (such as Haut), a number of second-hand witnesses (above), but quite a few eyewitnesses to the military driving a flatbed truck down Main St. toward the base with a tarped object on it about 3:30 p.m. on July 8 accompanied by MPs. (About the same time that the Roswell Daily Record came out with their newspaper announcing in headlines that the Army had captured a "flying saucer" there.) Since it was tarped, they didn't see what was underneath (except for one who said he saw the object when the tarp lifted up), but there was good agreement on the general shape and size (oval-shaped and about the size of a VW Beetle). It was also seen south of town and at the base by Sgt. Earl Fulford, who knew the driver, headed for Hangar 84 (Fulford was also a debris field cleanup and “memory foil” eyewitness).

David Rudiak said...

(2B of 2)
There are more eyewitnesses to strange debris. I won't go into them all, but claimed eyewitnesses to the so-called "memory foil" (or other memory metal) including Major Jesse Marcel, Bill Brazel Jr. (and perhaps wife Shirley Brazel), Sgt. Robert Smith, Sgt. Earl Fulford, Frankie Dwyer Rowe, Sally Strickland Tadolini (who said Bill Brazel showed it to her), perhaps Sgt. Lewis Rickett of the CIC, Roswell residents Paul Price and Charles Schmid, maybe a few others. Second-hand witnesses included Brazel neighbor Marion Strickland (who heard it described by daughter Sally), Brazel neighbor Loretta Proctor (who said Brazel told her about it), Phyllis Wilcox McGuire (who said her father Sheriff Wilcox told her that Brazel brought it with him); Sgt. Milton Sprouse (who said crew members on his B-29 sent out to help clean-up debris told him about it); Gen. Arthur Exon; Helen Dwyer Cahill (said her sister Frankie Rowe told her about it); Larry Rowlette (said his father Sgt. Homer Rowlette told him about it--Rowlette also said he saw craft and bodies).

That isn't everybody, but a good fraction of them, showing that there are indeed dozens and dozens and dozens of such first and second-hand witnesses.

Now Brian, maybe you can now show us all your first and second-and witnesses to your Russian TU-4 crash or some other imaginary government super-secret project you claim explains Roswell. Can you name even one?

Nitram said...

BB posted earlier in the thread

"Here's a novel construct not even David has attempted.

Instead of trying to reduce the noise within the image to de-blur the text, estimate the size of the teletype and reproduce it using a vintage typewriter with the same font.

Then produce multiple versions using the various words in question.

Then position the examples exactly as seen in the original and take a clear photo of each from the same distance the original was taken - maybe slightly closer as the key is to first produce a clear readable image.

Next take each clear photo and ADD blur and noise to the image with software.

Finally analyze which text best illustrates the original seen in the original negative. Document everything each step of the way so your findings cannot be invalidated.

In other words, reverse your process!

Take a clear replica image and blur it up to see which is most similar to the original."

Not bad Brian, not bad at all.

I did discuss this idea (not exactly the way you put it, but essentially a "reversal process") over the phone with David before the relatively recent trip to Texas to examine the negative went ahead.

There are a number of problems with "my idea" which David kindly explained to me in detail. A lot of it was quite technical in nature and I have no desire to try and put all this done in writing other than to say that the idea has been considered before.

Regards
Nitram

Paul Young said...

Brian Bell... "Well as it turned out Paul, I believe there were a total of eight witnesses who claimed to have seen bodies or knew of them."

"...all eight have been shown to have altered their stories or embellished them to the point their testimony is not just questionable it's worthless.

"That leaves no one - not a single witness for any bodies."


There were quite a few more witnesses than eight...and maybe you don't believe any of them had any credibility. However, the authors/investigators of "Case closed" certainly thought that some of them were credible enough that they went out of their way to come up with a daft story to try and debunk them. Parachute test dummies, indeed! :-)

....

Brian Bell to David Rudiak..."You fail to even consider the method I suggested because I can only conclude you feel you've already deciphered the text - you just want people to believe you..."


Hmmm! Considering it's your idea Brian...and considering you believe it's "doable"...why don't YOU put the time into making your "method" come into fruition.

Personally, I believe...

(... in order to get all the countless permutations of the individual letters...
...to then take photographs of these (probable thousands)of permutations using the same type camera and film as used by the photographer...
...get the exact distance from camera to these thousands of "reverse engineered" memos,
...get the exact same scattered lighting in order to get the shadows on the thousands of "reverse engineered" memos correct...
...and have someone grip these thousands of memos in the exact same way Ramey did...in order to get the exact same thumb coverage...and exact same kinks and curvature on these thousands of memos, facing the camera at the exact same angle.)

...it to be a classic example of (what we call in England), "chasing yourself up your own a£$ehole."


So yes, Brian. It may be "doable", as you say...though rather time consuming.

Then again...the one person on this planet who seemingly has infinite time on their hands (other than a teenage prisoner who is just about to embark on an "all of life" jail tariff) to complete such a task...is you!

So you better get cracking, old bean! I look forward to seeing your results.

cda said...

DR:

I congratulate you on finding and naming so many people, be they 1st, 2nd or 3rd-hand witnesses, involved with the case.

But there comes a time when TOO MANY 'witnesses' spoil things. You have relied on quantity and not quality.

It is perfectly possible to go into the details of each and every one of those you named and show that their testimony is useless to science. It means virtually nothing. This is why scientists ignore this Roswell case and its unpersuasive testimony altogether. For example, how can ANY 'witness' 40-odd years later, describe bodies as alien, when he never saw them? Why would he use such a term? If he is relying on what someone else told him, then how did THAT person know the bodies were alien? The answer is: they didn't. Remember how nobody was supposed to know anything because it was all 'top secret' anyway?

All right, suppose Glenn Dennis was telling the literal truth about those caskets. Why should we suppose the caskets were for alien bodies and not terrestrial children? In all the years Dennis was at the funeral home, certainly SOME children would have died young and maybe needed caskets or coffins.

Also, there is no way we can tell what dates are being referred to, whether the caskets had anything to do with summer '47 or not. It is ALL, without exception, based on hearsay decades afterwards, and totally worthless as evidence for an ET visit to earth, by a crash or otherwise.

And so on with all those 100 or so 'witnesses'.

Don said...

David: "...and gave the PRINTS (not negatives) still wet to AP so they could transmit them immediately."

This is most likely the case, and not unusual practice for newspapers. Newspaper printed images are very lo rez, so high quality development for resolution was sacrificed for speed, and since the news was 'now', archival quality was even less a concern.

"...I think his [Jerry Morelock] impression was due to it having mild water spotting, as if it hadn't been dried properly."

Yes. There are some 'flaws' here and there probably due to water.

"He then said something to the effect that was too bad because if that was the case, because we lost a little contrast as a result."

In some spots. Was he referring to the memo area specically? There may be a few 'flaws' that might be due to water. Otherwise, it isn't 'blurry' due to anything but the size of the sample. Jpeg, being a lossy format, introduces its own information on the image which can create 'blur', at the level of magnification needed, it can lead one astray.

It may be possible to recover some text from the highlights, but the text in shadows is probably lost. The issue of film "grain" is due to the film emulsion being 3 dimensional. The opaque grains of silver can bunch up in-depth thereby obscuring it to our vision, but it is part of the photo image and not from outside it like 'flaws', embedded dust or scratches. Another consideration is the texture of the paper at magnification.

It was the base Ansco used (not the film-emulsion) that is a problem. It can shrink and cause dimensional distortion.

A wire photo negative will show scan lines at magnification. For Albert, wire photo negatives are a 4th way to make a negative, and possibly a lineage of negatives (or prints).

Best Regards,

Don

David Rudiak said...

Paul Young wrote: (1 of 2)
"There were quite a few more witnesses than eight...and maybe you don't believe any of them had any credibility."

Yes, that's right. There are quite a few more witnesses to bodies, first and second-hand, than just eight. Only a handful have claimed to be first-hand, the vast majority are second-hand, but there are an AWFUL LOT of them. Again, someone personally not believing ANY of them is NOT the same as actually demonstrating their credibility has been blown all to hell. Skeptics like Brian are claiming the latter--they have ALL been discredited, when instead, only a few have. Everything else is just personal disbelief.

I didn't list all the witnesses claiming to have some indirect knowledge of bodies. An important 2nd-hand witness I forgot to include was radio reporter Frank Joyce, who later in life said that when he spoke to Brazel on the phone when he first came to town and was at the Sheriff's office. Joyce said Brazel was very upset, and at first would only speak about the large amounts of debris, wondering how he was ever going to clean it up. Joyce told me he sensed there was more than that bothering Brazel and pressed him for more details. Brazel then very reluctantly told him he had found small, very smelly bodies. Joyce said he didn't believe the story, asking Brazel whether maybe they were something like monkeys from a V-2 test at White Sands. To that Brazel replied angrily with words to the effect: "They aren't monkeys and they aren't human." Joyce still had trouble believing the story, but then suggested Brazel contact the base.

A part of Joyce's original story is that later, AFTER the weather balloon story was put out, Brazel came by the radio station that night, again very stressed, to tell Joyce that he had made a mistake, saying it was really a weather balloon. To this Joyce said he responded with words like, "That isn't what what you originally told me. What about the little green men?" To this he said Brazel responded, "They weren't green", and then left. This was always very cryptic, until Joyce later said Brazel told him about the small bodies when they first spoke. (Joyce said Brazel also cautioned him it would be wise if he went along with the story, because they had been "hard on him" and they would be hard on Joyce too. Joyce is one of about a dozen eyewitnesses to Brazel being in military custody and likely coerced, the most notable being Bill Brazel Jr. and provost marshal Edwin Easley, who admitted to Kevin they held Brazel at the base for several days under armed guard.)

Now is Joyce as a body witness credible or not? I have heard the following arguments against Joyce being credible:
1) The story changed, with Joyce adding that Brazel told him about bodies only later on. [Yes, undoubtedly true, but does that alone make a witness "not credible"? Because of the extremely controversial nature of the story (which as we know from personal experience invites mass ridicule and personal abuse), a witness may have very good reasons not to tell everything up front. Same could be said for an eyewitness like Haut, who also added to his story later in life.]

2) It wasn't really Joyce's story (the "little green men" part) but Joyce's boss Walt Whitmore Sr. on his deathbed. (Turned out instead to be a misunderstanding/misquote by Bill Moore after interviewing Joyce, which Moore later admitted to.)

3) Joyce was mentally ill. (Joyce told me that from the stress of all that happened, he did have a mental breakdown several months later and was hospitalized for a year. But is that the same as Joyce being mentally ill 50 years later and fantacizing the whole thing?)

David Rudiak said...

(2 of 2)
4) Joyce also told a bizarre story about "the traveler", namely a day or two after his encounter with Brazel, his boss Whitmore, took him for a ride out to the tiny outpost of Lon, N.M., where he again met Brazel in a shack, Brazel again cautioning him that he should go along with the story. However, that's not the weird part. Accompanying Joyce and Whitmore was a strange-looking man whom Joyce called "the traveler", in a felt suit and perfectly proportioned, who remained completely silent. There was more to this story, which is all very X-files in its strangeness. (I read a very similar Texas newspaper story from Nov. 1957, by another UFO witness of a perfect man in a felt suit from a few years later while with a rancher named "Mack" in N.M.).

So is Joyce credible? To me it is ALWAY possible to dismiss an individual witness with various nitpicks, but I find it very hard to dismiss dozens of witnesses who may be telling similar or complimentary stories, especially if many don't know one another and there is no obvious reason for them to make it up.

(Yes, I found Joyce credible.)

Brian B said...

RUDIAK WROTE:

"And contrary to another of Brian's generalities, it is very far from true that ALL witnesses to bodies or a craft or strange debris have been shown to be liars or not credible. The numbers of such witnesses [to bodies and strange debris] number around 100, and only a small fraction of them have had huge holes poked in their stories."

FOLLOWED BY:

"Let us not confuse individual “opinion” with actual “fact”".

THEN HE STATES:

"No, you are making things up again. I never said the roughly 100 witnesses were ALL first-hand or that they were witnesses to BOTH bodies and strange debris."

Well David it seems you actually did say it as shown above.

In any case let's look at the three paragraphs you just wrote regarding the claim of "100 witnesses" to bodies and debris.

FACT:

Of the 100 witnesses you claim saw something, you are now saying ONLY THREE are first hand eye witnesses to alien bodies. That's only three in support of your "victims" reading.

Furthermore you write:

"Regarding bodies, the vast majority are second-hand witnesses, usually wives or children or grandchildren of service personnel."

- AND -

"Regarding a craft, there are only a few claimed eyewitnesses to seeing an actual craft (such as Haut), a number of second-hand witnesses (above), but quite a few eyewitnesses to the military driving a flatbed truck down Main St. toward the base with a tarped object on it about 3:30 p.m. on July 8 accompanied by MPs."

David "second hand testimony" counts as circumstantial or alleged testimony because it's based on a story told by someone other than the real witness!

Furthermore testimony about a "craft" isn't justified if a handful of people recall a truck carrying something under a tarp.

More importantly if they saw something the "size and shape of a VW Beetle", who's to say it wasn't an atom bomb with basically the same dimensions?

THREE BODY WITNESSES:

Let's look at the credibility of your ONLY body witnesses:

Pvt. Eli Benavides - ?

You mean Eleazar Benavides, aka Pfc. Eli Benjamin aka The Mystery Lieutenant in Adam Dew's Roswell Slides film trailer who said the mummy was an alien? Please spare me....

Sgt. Thomas Gonzales - ?

Gonzalez claimed he was assigned to guard the crash site. Interviewed 30 years later (1980's) he recalled seeing small bodies. Another guy jumping on the "bandwagon" after ufologists began interviewing folks. Funny he "recalled" it after investigators asked him if he saw alien bodies...

Sgt. Frederick Benthal - ?

The man claims he was flown to RAAFB on July 7 from DC to take photos, only to have them confiscated after which he was flown back to DC and warned never to talk.

David, there are very serious problems with his testimony.

But I'm certain you can answer these questions to support Benthal's story:

- RAAFB (the elite atomic bomb group) had no cameras or photographers available so one (two actually) were sent from DC?

- Who ordered him to go?

- How could he arrive on July 7 when Marcel was just discovering the stuff that day?

- He arrived before Haut's press release?

- Today it takes more than 7 hrs to fly DC to Roswell yet he traveled in a prop plane on July 6 before Marcel even saw the stuff? How is that even possible?

- Where are the records confirming flight, date, departure and arrival times, and aircraft type?

Your claim to "100" witnesses is really just THREE on the bodies issue. And second hand testimony is not solid evidence.

All hype and wishful thinking....

David Rudiak said...

In response to Brian Bell writing that I am ignoring his brilliant test of the Ramey memo (reproduce the photo), Paul Young responded:

(... in order to get all the countless permutations of the individual letters...
...to then take photographs of these (probable thousands)of permutations using the same type camera and film as used by the photographer...
...get the exact distance from camera to these thousands of "reverse engineered" memos,
...get the exact same scattered lighting in order to get the shadows on the thousands of "reverse engineered" memos correct...
...and have someone grip these thousands of memos in the exact same way Ramey did...in order to get the exact same thumb coverage...and exact same kinks and curvature on these thousands of memos, facing the camera at the exact same angle.)

Then again...the one person on this planet who seemingly has infinite time on their hands ...is you!


Yes, Brian is the typical lazy skeptic DEMANDING that I spent thousands of hours of MY time doing what HE thinks should be done.

In reality, it is impossible to perfectly reproduce the lighting, camera, film, paper curvature, film grain, etc. of the Ramey memo.

Rather than trying to find an old Speedgraphic camera, long extinct Ansco film, old flash bulbs, a room with similar dimensions, wall reflectance, and lights (which are unknown), etc., etc., a much more practical way of doing such an experiment is with computer simulation.

LONG before Brian was belligerently pontificating about things like this, I was already tackling many of these questions, such as trying to reproduce the paper creases and curvatures, seeing the effects of random noise on the lettering, looking at different interpretations, figuring out the distance and height of the camera (which I know from reproducing the picture in a computer ray tracing program--several hundreds of hours of work), etc.

I have also already (4 years ago) used a computer morphing program to flatten the memo. (How I also determined the paper width matches that of teletype roll paper.) This can also be run in reverse to curl a flattened memo up again, closely reproducing the creases, curvatures, angles, Ramey's obscuring thumb, etc. of the memo. This can be done with whatever lettering one might put on a flattened memo. One can't reproduce the lighting this way, but it gets us part of the way there. It might be possible to simulate the lighting in a computer ray-tracer inserting the 3D curled up memo into it. On top of this, computer software could try to reproduce the statistical distribution and shape of Ansco film grain, but a simple random noise generator common to Photo-shop like programs would probably be suitable.

Again a lot of work, probably a few more hundred hours at least, which I don't see Brian volunteering to do any of. I'm supposed to do it for him, unpaid.

What has Brian done to advance his proposed experiment? Again nothing, but accuses me of doing nothing (even though I've already done tons). Typical of Brian and most armchair "skeptics" like him. As they say in Texas, all hat and no cattle.

David Rudiak said...

Kevin wrote: (1 of 3)
The point of the experiment was to test for priming, which demonstrated that those given a specific context reacted to that context, seeing in the ambiguous stimuli images that were precipitated by that context. It wasn't designed to prove that any specific reading of the memo was accurate or inaccurate, but to show that priming did influence the reading of the document. You can shout about this all you want, but it was not a criticism of the work you had done, but that those who followed along and were aware of your conclusions were influenced by those conclusions. In this case Brian's statement was an accurate representation of what the study found.

However Kevin, that is NOT what your own data showed. I have read many hundreds of scientific journal papers, know how to analyze them for self-consistency, am not “shouting”, only giving a proper scientific peer review based on the actual statistics of your study. The numbers do the talking. Does your published data match your conclusions about the data? Did context “priming” SIGNIFICANTLY affect the words read, as you and Houran claimed? No, it ABSOLUTELY DID NOT. This proven below by the statistics.

A Net copy of the paper can be found here:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.564.9611&rep=rep1&type=pdf

The paper’s data is summarized in this graphic I derived from a table plus data provided in the paper (p. 14 text; p. 15, Table 3):

www.roswellproof.com/Randle-Houran_table_2.gif

For those who have not read the paper, there were three groups of readers (Roswell context group, Atomic testing context group, and a no context control group), of about 60 subjects each. The paper gave the average number of words read by each subject in each group, from which the total words per group can be calculated. So, e.g., the Roswell group, 4.6 words/subject average x 59 subjects = 271 words total. For the “atomic” group, it works out to 278 words, and the control group 94 words; total 643 words for everyone (or 549 words for just the two context groups).

When looking at the so-called “exclusive words”, i.e. words that were supposedly influenced by the Roswell or atomic context, the paper gave just 10 examples. For Roswell: REMAINS, FUNDAMENTAL, CRASH, UFO. For Atomic: GLASSES, MORNING, MEANING, FLASH, ATOMIC, LABORATORY.

While “crash” and “UFO” I think people would agree would be influenced by a Roswell context (though a truly knowledgeabe reader would have rejected “UFO” as anachronistic), why would very neutral words like “remains” and “fundamental” be “primed” by such a context? Similarly in the “atomic group”, what is specificaly “atomic testing” about neutral words like “morning” or “meaning”? In fact, “MEANING” was a consensus word of various Roswell context readers (in fact proposed BEFORE me by the RPIT group--don’t tell me MY reading had anything to do with it), so there is nothing “atomic testing” “primed” about it.

Would “glasses” be atomic testing influenced? Maybe, maybe not. Same with “flash”, which could be easily accompanied within a Roswell context as well. And “ATOMIC” and “LABORATORY” were other words (not consensus) read quite independently by some readers (e.g., Don Burleson, Tom Carey, William McNeff, Bob Koford) in a fully Roswell context.

Again, these were NOT MY proposed words that supposedly influenced them. (I will further note that the controversial keyword VICTIMS was NOT originally proposed by me, but by the RPIT group; I had nothing to do with it, only happen to be someone who agrees with their interpretation, as do MOST people. And while I did propose “DISC” after RPIT and then they and others agreed, totally unbeknownst to me, Brad Sparks was reading it 15 years before I did. So maybe, just maybe, when readers agree with one another it is NOT context “bias” but because the words actually DO look like that and they agree one interpretation is a better fit than another.)

David Rudiak said...

(2 of 3)
Thus out of this list of 10 supposedly context “primed” words, there are really AT MOST maybe 5-6 words that may have been somewhat or strongly influenced by context, hardly some huge “priming” effect, which was the major conclusion of your paper. Your paper also did not tell us how many instances of these “exclusive” words there were, but given the average words read/person was under 5 and under 20 minutes average was spent per person on the whole memo, I seriously doubt there were typically more than 1 or 2 instances of each “exclusive” word read.

However, we’ll never know, because in your paper you and Houran wrote that a referee asked for the number of instances of each “exclusive” word to back up your claim of a huge priming effect. To this it was then admitted that you didn’t know because a graduate student had supposedly thrown out the data sheets!

When I first read that, I think my jaw dropped to the floor in astonishment. How could you claim as the main conclusion of your study there was some huge context “priming” effect when you had NO SUPPORTING DATA to back up the claim?

To me, it looks like MAYBE 1% of all words read (~5-6 out of 549 total for the two groups) were actually somewhat or decidedly context influenced. That is an extremely feeble “priming” effect. Even if it was five times that (very doubtful, but we’ll never know), even 5% of words read is NOT some big effect.

Now let’s calculate the number of what you and Houran labeled “common” words read across all groups. In doing this calculation, I treated each word in phrases like “WEATHER BALLOONS” and “FORT WORTH, TEX” as individual words, then multiplied by the number of instances given for each phrase. (Thus 20 instances of WEATHER BALLOONS read by the Roswell group I treated as 40 words read total.) This came out to 196, 78, and 42 words for the three groups, or 316 total “common” words out of 643 total words. Thus nearly 50% of words read were “common” across all groups and presumably thus NOT influenced by any particular context. (Even you and Houran agreed with that.) That alone is FAR GREATER than the feeble maybe ~1% of words that were possibly influenced by different context.

But it is even worse than that. Out of 643 total words read (again, not me “shouting”, but hard statistics from your own data), only about half are accouinted for by your “common” plus “exclusive” words. This means that you and Houran LEFT OUT HALF OF THE WORDS as if they didn’t exist. Yet, by definiition, they too had to be either “common” or “exclusive” words. So what were they?

I think they were almost all undoubtedly also “common” words probably read across all groups, namely the most common grammatical words in the English language like THE, AT, OF, AND, etc., which make up roughly 40% of the message and are relatively easy for most people to pick out. (Besides how frequent they are in the language, because they are typically only 2-4 letters, there are far fewer possibilities in the English language for what they might be, again making it easier to figure them out.)

If you throw them into the mix, then as I previously wrote, probably closer to 98-99% of ALL words read were COMMON words that were clear enough to be read even WITHOUT knowing the true context. (Again, not me “shouting”, just the actual numbers speaking.)

David Rudiak said...

(3 of 3)
However, what you and Houran wrote in your abstract was the following:

“MANY participants indeed claimed to be able to read the document, although their subsequent solutions appeared to follow directly from the experimental suggestions.... However, a FEW words in the same locations in the document were consistently perceived across the three suggestion conditions and these matched the words identified in previous investigations.”

But what is written in the abstract as the key result (major “priming” effect) is, in reality, totally contradicted by the paper statistics. (These are just cold, hard numbers, not me “shouting”.) Very FEW words total (not “many” words by “many participants”) seemed actually influenced by given context (SOME, not all, of the “exclusive words”), and vastly more words (maybe ~50-100 times more!) were read across all groups (“common words”), though you and Houran failed to even mention half of them.

Thus context had very little to do with what was read, except for another statistic buried in your study that the Roswell context readers were about 2.5 times better at picking out the “common words” than the “atomic testing” group and 5 times better than the context-free control group. Thus knowing something about Roswell, that is CORRECT CONTEXT, did indeed seem to help pick out Roswell-related words like “WEATHER BALLOONS” and “FORT WORTH, TEX.” Even though this was a very obvious and robust effect, it was barely mentioned in the paper, and was attributed to the Roswell readers being more interested and reading a little bit more on average than the other two groups (20 min. vs. 16 min. and 14 min., which doesn’t really explain the HUGE difference in “common” words read by the Roswell group.)

Proper context you and Houran labeled as bias (or as Houran loves to call it in PsychoSpeak, a “confounding variable”), but I call it smart reading technique, and has been widely shown in iinguistic and psychological studies as extremely important in human language interpretation. Humans use it all the time to help pull signal out of noise when listening to speech in noisy situations or reading bad writing. That’s also true of studies of computer interpretation of speech or writing. Correct context can greatly boost accuracy.

The only thing your experiment actually demonstrated was, like many other studies, correct context helped enormously on reading words even you and Houran were forced to admit were likely there because all groups read them. And this result was swept under the rug, while you and Houran GROSSLY exaggerated the importance of reader bias on the handful of “exclusive words”, making that the centerpiece of your argument, even while admitting your grad student threw out the data and had no way to back it up.



cda said...

DR says at the end of his post: "Yes I found Joyce credible".

I do not.

DR wrote:

"Joyce apparently also told a bizarre story about "the traveler", namely a day or two after his encounter with Brazel, his boss Whitmore, took him for a ride out to the tiny outpost of Lon, N.M., where he again met Brazel in a shack, Brazel again cautioning him that he should go along with the story."

Yes, highly bizarre, considering this happened during the VERY PERIOD Brazel was supposedly held in custody at the Roswell AF base. Think of that!

So it was certainly not "a day or two" after his first meeting with Brazel. Just more confusion over dates and more useless tittle-tattle. If Joyce truly said this, his testimony is as good as worthless.

Still he did at least supply those lost teletypes. We should be grateful for small mercies.

KRandle said...

David -

To be fair here, there is Chester Barton who told Joe Stefula that he saw parts of what he believed to be the remains of a B-29. However, he also said that the amount of debris was small compared to what he thought would be left by the crash of a B-29. He also said that no part of the airplane was identifiable as an airplane.

So, we do have a witness who saw the wreckage, believed it to be a B-29 even though he could recognize nothing as that of a B-29... and we do know, based on my research and that of the Air Force that there were no aircraft accidents that covered the events at that time.

cda said...

Kevin:

I am baffled by your last comment. DR wrote how Chester Barton was told about dead crew members being taken to the base hospital then on to Ft. Worth. Thus Barton had second-hand evidence of the bodies. You now say Barton himself saw the wreckage that he identified as parts of a B-29, but that the quantity was too small for it to be a B-29. I do not understand Barton's reasoning here. Did he assume he saw ALL the wreckage?

You say Barton believed it to be a B-29 but could not recognise anything in the wreckage that came from a B-29. The obvious question is: "Why would Barton ever suppose the debris came from a B-29 if he saw no fragments in this debris recognisable as part of a B-29?"

What the above means, or seems to mean, is that Barton was told by someone about the bodies (making it second-hand testimony). He saw the wreckage himself (making it first-hand), thought it was a B-29 even though he recognised nothing in the wreckage as being part of a B-29!

I am still baffled. What is Barton talking about, and is this just another piece of useless or contradictory evidence? Coupled with this is the fact that another B-29 transported the whole lot, bodies and wreckage, to Fort Worth.

Confusing, to say the least.

Brian B said...

@ CDA and David:

I wrote a note two days back but am thinking Kevin chose not to post it because it didn't pass his "snarky" test.

It deals with Chester Barton. I've revised it as follows;

David wrote -

"Brian says all his theories are equivalent to the E.T. crash theory, but he can’t name even one witness to back his theories up."

Yes, actually I did name one when I wrote an alternative (speculative) theory (on the B-29/TU-4) to demonstrate there are other possibilities besides "aliens" that pick up on common threads which form the cornerstone of your alien crash claims.

Who? Chester Barton. He counts as a single witness David.

He's the witness who said he was sent out to a crash site believing it was a B-29.

He saw a burned area associated with the wreckage, but he said he couldn't immediately identify any of the parts as coming from a B-29.

He was also not allowed to get close to the wreckage and was asked to return to base because the debris was radioactive. He also claimed he was tested for radiation exposure when he got back to the base.

@ CDA

This all gives me the impression he still thought it to be an aircraft wreck, but the parts he saw weren't easily identifiable because they were likely small and at a distance.

He didn't say one way or the other about his belief in a second crash site, or whether he thought this was only a portion of the wreck and the rest (of the B-29) simply being somewhere out of sight.

As Kevin posted recently, Barton claimed it was a B-29 but couldn't immediately establish what parts he saw.

As far as bodies, I believe it's true he "heard" or was "told" there were four bodies taken back to the base hospital. If "heard" (as in rumor) that clearly is second hand story telling. But bear in mind David considers second hand testimony almost as significant as (if not equal to) first hand testimony.

However Barton never said he thought the bodies to be space aliens - that's just David hyping up his story line.

If he thought it was a B-29, he was probably thinking these were shards of aluminum from the fuselage with the rest of the wreck (engines, landing gear, propellers, etc) resting elsewhere. Aircraft can impact in such a way that only fragments remain. He didn't really need a complete B-29 parked on the ranch to convince him it was a B-29 because he clearly knew an aircraft can get totally demolished on impact.

That's just a guess. Clearly the "radiation" threat would have reinforced this was a plane possibly carrying atomic material.

As far as we know he stuck to his B-29 explanation. He never recanted and later confessed it was really tiny parts from a crashed spaceship carrying tiny aliens from another world.

If anything, some people use his testimony to "prove" there was a second UFO crash site (because he apparently saw it), while chucking his B-29 testimony since he couldn't identify the parts, while trumping up the "bodies" rumor to reinforce watch he really saw was a crashed alien saucer.

David Rudiak said...

CDA wrote bizarrely,
Yes, highly bizarre, considering this happened during the VERY PERIOD Brazel was supposedly held in custody at the Roswell AF base. Think of that!

Where was it ever written by anyone that Brazel was confined to the base 24 hours a day? In fact, it has been written numerous times that Brazel was seen by friends and neighbors around town surrounded by military. The military DID have vehicles, you know, was mobile, and could take him off base if it served their purposes.

Brazel was clearly taken to the Roswell Daily Record for his press conference late on July 8 (several hours after Ramey had put out the new weather balloon story). Two of the reporters who were there later told researchers that he was accompanied by military who waited outside. Some friends saw him being led away from the newspaper, again surrounded by military. Joyce probably saw Brazel at the radio station shortly after that, advising him to go along with the new story or things would "go hard on him".

One of those reporters (AP's Kellahin) also claimed to have seen and talked to him earlier north of town at a crash site crawling with military while Kellahin was driving to Roswell from Albuquerque to cover the story. I'm more dubious whether this took place (Kellahin claimed to see this at Brazel's place, but that was impossible given time constraints), but would illustrate Brazel not being on the base all the time.

So it was certainly not "a day or two" after his first meeting with Brazel. Just more confusion over dates and more useless tittle-tattle. If Joyce truly said this, his testimony is as good as worthless.

CDA's usual "certainty" where his "certainty" is based on nonsense assumptions. And the usual flippant dismissal of a witness (Joyce) based on CDA's personal bad logic, not necessarily the overall credibility of the witness.

It would have been NO PROBLEM for Brazel to have also been driven to Lon for another meeting with Joyce to warn him again, even while Brazel remained in military custody. As I already said, Joyce's story of the "traveler" is strange, yes, but hardly impossible. (Maybe making the situation bizarre was the whole point, in case Joyce ever told it again. I really don't see what Joyce had to gain by making it up.)

cda said...

DR:

"Where was it ever written by anyone that Brazel was confined to the base 24 hours a day?"

Read THE ROSWELL INCIDENT (UK edition, p.79) and see the testimony of his son. It is all there in one long paragraph. His son is surely the best person to know about this, if his memory can be trusted.

Also see the Randle/Schmitt book: UFO CRASH AT ROSWELL, p.224, where the authors construct a timeline. Brazel was, according to the authors, kept at the base for 7 to 8 days, not allowed to call his wife and was even given "a physical examination".

Are you now saying that Brazel was in held custody for a week, but was let out by the military at times, rather like a prisoner being given a 'home leave' now and again after serving half of his sentence? What on earth would be the point of this? And what was the point of ever keeping him in custody at the base at all? You have taken certain people's testimony at face value and are now trying to backtrack on it. Either he was held 'in jail' for 8 days or he was not. Which is it? If the former, the meeting with Joyce never happened.

I will sum up the story of Brazel's alleged period in custody as follows: ONE GREAT SHAMBLES (unless Kevin can demonstrate otherwise).

KRandle said...

CDA -

I will not respond to any questions about the motivation of Bill Moore in the book he described as "as graceful hodgepodge of fact and fiction." I have found numerous errors and there are quotes used in that book that have been "updated," though I do not know how you update a quote.

According to the information I developed from Bill Brazel,(and to be clear, Don Schmitt was involved in this as well), he saw his father's name in the newspapers and wondered what "the old man" had gotten himself into." Since it was the middle of the week, Bill told us that he couldn't get away so that he didn't arrive until the weekend and that his father returned two or three days later. We know Mack Brazel was in Roswell on July 9 because his story and pictures began to appear after the story got national coverage.

Marian Stickland said that Brazel complained to her husband (she was in the room but did not participate in the conversation) that he had been kept in jail. Edwin Easley said that Brazel had been held in the guest house, though if you are locked in and not allowed to go anywhere without escort, then it amounts to the same thing.

Friends of Brazel said that they had run into him in town, but he was being escorted by military men and Brazel didn't speak to them.

Oh, and Jud Roberts seemed to indicate that he, along with Walt Whitmore, had driven to the Foster ranch to retrieve Brazel. Once they had completed their interview, they took him out to the base.

So, we are sort of playing with semantics here. Was he in jail? Not really, but almost. Was he held for 24 hours? No, it was six to eight days. Did he roam around Roswell? Apparently, but in the company of soldiers. Otherwise he was on the base and I would guess, interrogated about what he had found.

This is really not a great shambles, if we take it all back to those who were in immediate contact with Mack Brazel, to the military men (Edwin Easley) who had some knowledge of this, and to Bill Brazel who told me (Don Schmitt and me, on tape) that it seemed his dad had been held for around a week. I don't bother with what Bill Moore reported because I talked to the people in Roswell about this.

cda said...

Kevin:

What you are saying is that Brazel was held in custody of the military for about a week, though not necessarily at the base. The impression your first two books give is that he was held AT THE BASE. The sightings of him in the town were all BEFORE he was taken to the base, if the various accounts are to be believed. In other words Brazel was held incommunicado and not allowed to call his wife, see anyone else (except when the military were watching) and was given a physical examination (for what purpose I wonder?).

Yes we are playing with semantics, and yes whichever way you look at it, Brazel was in custody of the USAF for 7 or 8 days. But the impression to readers is definitely that this was at the base and not outside it.

If David R wants to make Brazel meet Joyce somewhere outside Roswell during this period he (DR) will have to supply a way around this dilemma, or accept that this meeting never happened. OK so the military COULD have stood back and let Joyce talk to Brazel in some shack at a lonely outpost. But this sounds just too much like make-believe. If he was allowed visitors at the base, Joyce could easily travel there.

But the whole tale of him being a 'prisoner' at the base is just plain dotty. WHAT WAS HE BEING HELD FOR - some great crime against the army? It is the sort of thing he could have complained to his congressman about, if it really happened. Or his family could also have complained. They never did, nor did he.

It is just another 'episode' in this whole tale that is based on distant memories and reads like gross exaggeration or downright fiction.

KRandle said...

CDA -

The guest house was ON THE BASE. And the sightings of him in town were not all before he was taken out to the base. And he wasn't in the custody of the USAF but with the USAAF which is the Army... the Air Force wouldn't exist for another couple of months.

First you are on board with what his son and neighbors said, and not you're off on another tangent. He was held in the interest of national security and given the time, that is 1947, it is not outside the realm of reality. Your opinion of what happened is not the same as what did happen or that he would be so incensed that he would call his Congressman is not the way Mack Brazil would have reacted according to his son. If the Army had asked him to keep quiet about it, he wouldn't call a congressman to complain. He might mention it to his son or a close neighbor, but he wouldn't have talked about outside that small circle...

And who said that Joyce visited him at the base?

Brian B said...

@ CDA

I think the best way to understand Brazel's predicament is to consider him a "civilian detainee in USAAF custody."

Not quite a prisoner by definition, but detained in custody and not allowed to roam freely without a reason and only with military escort.

I'm sure there's a vintage army field manual describing the protocols (and laws) governing this sort of detention. We have to remember this was post WWII America and the Cold War.

Interestingly, we don't have any MP's testifying they knew why they held Brazel or what exactly occurred during his detention. I'm thinking someone would have known the reason and yet no witnesses ever surfaced saying, "I was one of the MP's who guarded Brazel, and we detained him for X days for reason Y."

To me that seems odd. Conspiracists will claim it's because they were all threatened in some way to keep silent for 30+ years and beyond.

Of course soldiers follow orders and they may have done what they were told to do without asking why a civilian was being detained under light guard.

Though it's hard to believe the folks at RAAFB made a regular habit of it.

The "physical exam" is also a mystery.

There's really no reason to examine the man unless there was concern he was exposed to something - Alien toxins? Atomic radiation? Contact with Soviet spies? Contain his gossip? Just plain harassment?

Seems to me if he was examined, there would be military medical records of the event on file somewhere, as well as written records of his detention via MP's and base command.

But no - nothing like this exists.

Also, if the debris was picked up and shipped to Fort Worth in just two days, why detain Brazel for a week?

@ David

"As I already said, Joyce's story of the "traveler" is strange, yes, but hardly impossible. I really don't see what Joyce had to gain by making it up."

Strange yes, but no more impossible than Sasquatch and the tooth fairy peering at the men through the cracks in the shed!

And Joyce?

He had plenty to gain just like the others. Namely notoriety, a little attention, the joy of a good prank, and generally trying to make his personal mark through a fictitious story.

Yes, we should all believe Joyce (and you) when he said that a "silent man of perfect proportions" named "The Traveler" mysteriously participated in this secret rondevu wearing a "dark colored felt suit".

If only Rod Serling were still alive....

cda said...

Kevin:

I never said Joyce visited Brazel at the base. I said he could easily have done so if he wanted to. Maybe I did not make it as clear as I should. Certainly preferable to a shack at some lonely outpost in the desert.

Rather than continue this debate, I will say we are way off topic. I am a bit surprised you have not pointed this out. The piece about Chester Barton was also off topic, so I believe.

But it happens an awful lot, doesn't it? That's because the whole tale is so exciting to recount over & over again.

cda said...

Brian:

Yes indeed. If a base diary or log existed with an entry like:

"July 9-16, local rancher detained in guest house for security reasons".

Just imagine what a huge difference it would make to the Roswell story. Alas, no such entry exists. A great pity. It would be one of those useful 'facts' that Nitram Ang seeks so much.

Don said...

Brian: "I'm sure there's a vintage army field manual describing the protocols (and laws) governing this sort of detention."

I would like to know, too, under what authority did the USAAF have to investigate and detain an American civilian in the US who had no association with the military, and who had committed no crime.

Regards,

Don

KRandle said...

All -

Back in 1947, I wouldn't be at all surprised if we could have found a log but then the base was closed, the 509th went to New Hampshire and then to Missouri, the units were dispersed and those records, now nearly 70 years old were either destroyed, or might be housed in any number of archives and all it would prove is that Brazel was in Roswell and a "guest" of the Army.

Here's something else... just a day or two ago, a professor was removed from a flight because some ignorant woman though his math notations looked like Arabic. So, in today's world, using notations that look to be Arabic is sufficient cause for you to be removed from a flight (I think he was allowed back on after the "authorities" were convinced that he wasn't a risk).

The point is that in 1947, the size and shape of the atomic bombs was classified information and if that was what Brazel had seen, then there are been a breach of security and while he was a civilian, the Army believed it had to investigate this breach of security. I'm not saying that it was a bomb, only that this would be one of a number of circumstances that could result in Brazel being detained... was it legal? Probably not. Should he have complained? He certainly could have, but then, he didn't officially, so he must have believed that the reason made sense.

I'm not sure where this part of the discussion is going especially when the original topic had to do with the Ramey Memo and not these ancillary issues.

David Rudiak said...

Brian Bell spun:
.Interestingly, we don't have any MP's testifying they knew why they held Brazel or what exactly occurred during his detention. I'm thinking someone would have known the reason and yet no witnesses ever surfaced saying, "I was one of the MP's who guarded Brazel, and we detained him for X days for reason Y."

To me that seems odd. Conspiracists will claim it's because they were all threatened in some way to keep silent for 30+ years and beyond.


Interesting, we DO have MANY witnesses (including a few saying they stood guard duty at the crash site, at the hangar, escorting alien bodies) testifying to many things regarding Roswell, very few of whom pointing to something mundane happening. More interestingly, we have NO witnesses testifying in support of any of Brian's harebrained alternate theories--ZERO, NADA.

Interestingly, we DO have the base provost marshal, Col. Edwin Easley telling Kevin that they did indeed hold Brazel at the base for several days under armed guard. Since he was actually there and in charge of detention, you would think Easley might know, even if none of the MPs involved has ever said anything. And if an MP or two did say something, Brian would dismiss what they had to say anyway, just like dozens of other Roswell witnesses I mentioned.

Brazel was NOT free to leave at any time, thus essentially a prisoner. Even without the "motivation" for holding him being made explicit (notice how Brian has tried to change the subject from Brazel being detained to WHY he would have been detained), that alone is a pretty damning confession, and indicates something of ENORMOUS importance happened to have done that, probably breaking the law by detaining a civilian. And it wasn't just Easley saying Brazel was detained, but a bunch of civilians (most first-hand witnesses) who said Brazel was in military custody, including his son Bill Brazel, who you would think might also know being the guy's son and all.

Of course, with Brian and fellow debunkers, it doesn't really matter how many witnesses are presented in support of the non-mundane. When I presented a LONG list of dozens of various witnesses (1st and 2nd hand) to bodies, anomalous debris, and a craft of some kind being retrieved, Brian in his majestic wisdom flippantly rejected them all, just because he personally didn't want to find any of the testimony credible. 2nd-hand witness: Nope reject. 1st-hand witness: Not enough of them, and those that exist are liars, all, reject, just because Brian says so.

Witnesses in support of Brian's many claims: None, and not necessary. Even with a score of ZERO, Brian still claims victory or a draw by denying the other side scored any points at all.

David Rudiak said...

Brian Bell wrote:
And Joyce? He had plenty to gain just like the others. Namely notoriety, a little attention, the joy of a good prank, and generally trying to make his personal mark through a fictitious story.

Speaking from personal experience again, Brian?

cda said...

Kevin & DR:

Will one or both of you please give a reference for Col.Edwin Easley telling Randle that Brazel was kept at the base, whether under armed guard or not, for a week.

I ask because in the only published interview recording between Randle & Easley (in ROSWELL UFO CRASH UPDATE - paperback 1995) there is the transcript of an interview with Easley at the back of the book, where Easley says virtually nothing and is very circumspect in his replies to questions; there is no mention of Brazel being held at the base or anywhere else. In fact Easley seems to deny even being at the crash site.

So unless Easley 'opened up' a bit in his other interviews, where and when did Kevin get this info about Brazel? And where, in Kevin's books/articles, is this referenced?

At the top of p. 41 of UFO CRASH AT ROSWELL it may give the impression that Easley told Kevin this story, but actually it came from Bill Brazel, not Easley. This merely brings us back to Bill Moore again, whom Kevin distrusts (as do we all).

KRandle said...

CDA -

I had more than a single conversation with Easley. He told me during my February 2, 1990, conversation with him that Brazel had been held at the guest house. He made no reference to armed guards though it does seem there was a guard. I believe I have mentioned it before but I'm not inclined to look it up at the moment... the reason... I'm just too lazy... but if you look in The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell (page 30 in the hardback) you'll find that reference...

And yes, Bill Brazel did tell us about his father being held, as did the neighbors, including Marian Strickland.

Did you happen to read my comment that we are way out in the weeds here, given the nature of the original post? You are quite fond of reminding us all that we have strayed from the original topic.

Brian B said...

@ David who wrote:

"Interesting, we DO have MANY witnesses (including a few saying they stood guard duty at the crash site, at the hangar, escorting alien bodies) testifying to many things regarding Roswell..."

So what? Brazel is key to the story and there are no first hand military witnesses for his detention - NONE - other than Easley claiming he knew Brazel was held at the base.

So who took him to town? Who interrogated him? Who medically examined him? Who guarded the guest house? Who told him he was a prisoner of the US Government?

You don't know.

So you blatantly ignore these elements of the story while trumping up the sensationalized junk - "saucer wreckage", "alien bodies", etc. blah, blah, blah...

Those other details are just as important - but NO - you selectively ignore them in favor of believing only the fantastic claims of people who jumped on the Roswell bandwagon (as did Joyce).

I know, in your mind "hundreds" of story tellers offering second, third, and fourth hand testimony is better than an any true eye witness....

@ David who wrote:

"When I presented a LONG list of dozens of various witnesses (1st and 2nd hand) to bodies, anomalous debris, and a craft of some kind being retrieved...."

You claimed "100" witnesses could testify to seeing bodies and wreckage....but you couldn't produce them! When you did you even wrote the majority were second or third hand witnesses!

As CDA pointed out - you choose volumes of crappy testimony over factual first hand testimony and tell the world that all of them experienced these things first hand.

Quantity over quality in David's little world of make believe aliens. Just another "spin doctor" telling tales.

GETTING BACK ON TOPIC:

David - In regards to the Ramey memo, if all we had were the principle players without all this second, third, and fourth hand testimony about dead aliens, would you still insist the contents of Ramey's memo dealt with a crashed alien saucer?

I mean if no one had ever said anything about dead aliens in the 1970-80's from the very beginning of the story unfolding, and all that existed was testimony about strange material and balloons, would you still believe the Ramey content dealt with aliens?

Probably not meaning you rely on that unsupported story telling testimony as key to your claims about the memo.

Paul Young said...

Joyce's story about the "traveller" seems a classic example of tactics used to detract from his testimony.
An early attempt at G-Men/MIB style diminishing of a witnesses credibility?

Brian B said...

@ Paul

"Joyce's story about the "traveller" seems a classic example of tactics used to detract from his testimony."

Other than it was Joyce who told the story....

So Joyce was a counter intelligence officer working to discredit himself or Brazel?

Your statement makes no sense given the situation.

Paul Young said...

Brian.
It's obvious that you're not a very busy person, but I am, so it becomes an irritation that you seem to need everything spoon fed to you.

Why was this odd looking and oddly dressed person (the "traveller") who seemingly had zero reason to be accompanying Joyce and the guy who drove them out (always forget his name) to meet Brazel in the shack...even there? According to Joyce he said nothing, contributed nothing...he was just there.
Seemingly, his only reason to be there...was to make Joyce look like some kind of barmpot when he, later, described the episode.
Similar incidents were reported many times during the 50's and 60's by witnesses to UFO -type events, where after reporting the incident some daft looking men, oddly dressed and seemingly out of place, turn up for no apparent reason. But when the witness then, later, refers to them,it makes them look foolish and detracts from their testament concerning their original UFO (or whatever) sighting...Hence my comment that Joyce may have been an early victim to this tactic.

...But you know all this already Brian.
And you knew where I was coming from in my previous post...so I can only imagine you wrote your above post, because you're bored and simply have a need to keep your post-percentage-rates high on this blog.

(If you're currently out of work Brian, can't you ask a neighbour if you can walk his dog or something?)

David Rudiak said...

For a more modern example of counterintelligence deliberately trying to make a UFO researcher/witness look balmy, look no further than the Paul Bennewitz affair. Bennewitz was fed bizarre disinformation about what the aliens were supposed to up to. He became increasingly paranoid and had a breakdown, requiring hospitalization. Was anybody going to pay much attention to the UFO data he had collected to that point (film and radio signal recordings), or would it be written off as the ravings of a loon?

Back in 1947, some aspects of the Maury Island incident when Kenneth Arnold investigated took on a Twilight Zone type strangeness, and Arnold was certainly no flake. Was somebody trying to disorient or discredit him because of all the publicity his report received and the high credibility with which it was treated?

One tactic of counterintelligence is to discredit your target. Look up the FBI's Cointelpro program, e.g., which targeted antiwar protesters and leaders such as Martin Luther King using any number of "dirty tricks".

Another example, Nixon's "plumbers" burglarized the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist hoping to get dirt on Ellsberg's mental state and discredit him.

Back to Joyce. Joyce did say it felt like the "traveler" was giving him mental directions, also when he got to the shed at Lon and was waiting for Brazel, time seemed to have a strange quality to it--he was having trouble telling how much time elapsed. You could write that off to Joyce being nuts, but it also sounds symptomatic of someone being drugged, such as with an opiode or hallucinogen.

Col. Charles Halt of Rendlesham infamy also claimed AFOSI worked over his guys with drugs, creating confusion in their minds over what really happened to them, also creating contradictions in their stories and subsequent loss of credibility.

cda said...

DR:

"Col. Charles Halt of Rendlesham infamy also claimed AFOSI worked over his guys with drugs, creating confusion in their minds over what really happened to them, also creating contradictions in their stories and subsequent loss of credibility."

Halt did not claim this until MANY years later. Are you saying that you accept that AFOSI actually did this drugs thing, or are you merely saying Halt related that they did?

You realise that, like Roswell, Rendlesham has mushroomed into a far bigger 'thing' than it was at the start. (So did Maury Island for that matter).

Brian B said...

@ CDA

No, what DR and Paul are saying is that they are convinced Men in Black are involved in both cases. The MB apparently can read minds, remote view, astral project, and give earth drugs to hapless media people like Joyce.

All from within their "perfectly proportioned bodies" clothed in "felt suits".

Paul Young said...

Many of the witnesses to the Rendlesham incident claim they went through a rather harrowing debrief at the hands of AFOSI.
In fact, it's one of the few things they actually agree on!!!
Penniston agreed to be injected with sodium pentothal, though he stresses that he only agreed to it because the way the "debrief" was beginning to shape, he was worried they would have given it to him anyway.
It seems clear that if the AFOSI agenda was more about messing with their heads than anything else, then they certainly appear to have achieved their goal because the biggest problem with the Rendlesham story is that the dozens of witnesses come over as being barking mad.
David's above comment describing AFOSI as working them over, is a fairly good assessment of how they were "debriefed".

KRandle said...

All -

I am not sure how we move from a discussion of the words in the Ramey Memo to drug induced interrogations and memories at Rendlesham Forest but that ends at this point.