Sunday, July 08, 2018

Jesse Marcel's Journal

Jesse Marcel, Sr.
As you all know, one of the problems with the Roswell case is that we have been unable to find any letters, diaries, journals, or notes that were written in 1947 that would tell us about the crash. There have been hints about this, but to this point, none of those hints produced anything that is conclusive. Inez Wilcox, wife of the Roswell sheriff, had written a story about her “four years in the county jail,” talking about what it was like to be the wife of the sheriff. Although the original article contained nothing about the crash, she added a page later that talked about that. Unfortunately, the document was undated, so didn’t help us at all. She could have written her story sometime after 1978 when Jesse Marcel, Sr. told Stan Friedman and Len Stringfield about picking up pieces of a flying saucer in New Mexico.

Jesse Marcel, Sr. Photo
copyright by Kevin
Randle.
Now I learn, through emails sent to me by several colleagues, that we might have some of those documents. Christina Stock reported in the Roswell Daily Record, that Marcel Sr. might just have left that sort of documentation. Jesse Marcel III, the grandson of Jesse Sr. and son of Jesse Sr., announced that they had found a “treasure trove” of documents relating to his grandfather’s military service, including a journal kept by the senior Marcel. If such a journal contains references to what he saw on the Brazel ranch that day in July 1947, and if it contains descriptions of the find, and if it makes any reference to alien beings, that would be huge. Here would be a document that contains information written in 1947 while still fresh in the mind and that would not be contaminated by everything that followed when the Roswell case exploded into the mainstream in the late 1970s.


As I say, this could be the sort of documentation that we all have been waiting for. True, it’s not something official from the US government, but it would be something written in the proper time frame and that would make it a very important document. The lack of any thing like that, written at the time in the form of letters, diaries or journals, has always been a worry for all of us. If this pans out, it might be the key to unlocking the mystery.

219 comments:

1 – 200 of 219   Newer›   Newest»
Larry said...

Was there any indication what the plan is for releasing the documents to the public?

Paul Young said...

That would be great, but I won't be holding my breath. Jesse Marcel jnr. was subject to as much ridicule as his father and would have been highly motivated to find information like that within his father's belongings/estate, which would go some way to back up his/their story.
Call me paranoid but I'd find it suspicious that Marcel III could come up with evidence that Marcel II couldn't.

David From AU said...

Website matter: On any browser I use, each new article now seems to appear in a different typeface and size from the one before. This isn't a huge deal of course, but it arguably makes the blog look a little messy and inconsistent in appearance.

TheDimov said...

My immediate sentiment echoed that of Mr Young's above, that surely Jesse Jr would have hunted down any and everything to do with his father, who he sincerely adored, it seems strange he never had access to this newfound cache. Having said that, if something is found that progresses the case in a big way as hoped, who cares what the circumstances, and I certainly hope there is something to be found in this trove.

cda said...

I have to agree with Paul Young. I certainly will not be holding my breath.

Kevin: Why not ask yourself a very simple and very obvious question. Why has such a critical document, or documents, about intelligent beings from elsewhere visiting planet earth, suddenly come to our notice 71 years after it supposedly happened?

I think, deep inside, you know the answer.

Lance said...

If only there was a festival or museum that could take advantage of such an announcement...

Maybe Professor’s Cary and Schmitt could do the “verification”.

09rja said...

The problem with any diary or document written (at any point) by Jesse Marcel Sr. is......how far can you trust Jesse Marcel Sr.? The record indicates that he had a tendency to exaggerate things. So really it comes back down to him thinking he recovered something extraordinary at the Foster ranch when he probably didn't.

And even when he began talking.....he never mentioned anything about a (whole) intact craft or alien bodies. Hopefully Marcel III isn't going to pull a Gerald Anderson on us.

Cabbages&Kings said...

I have to admit, after 30 years of following UFO research, I'm convinced at this point that much of Roswell has CI written all over it; our national security/intelligence apparatus was tightly wound, knowing that Soviet priority #1 was acquisition of atomic weapons. Roswell AAF being the home of the 509th BG, it would be a natural target of Soviet intelligence operations. With the enormous amount of media attention paid to the relatively very recent Kenneth Arnold sighting, a "barium meal test" (also known as a "canary trap") utilizing the "flying disc" theme would serve multiple CI purposes.

The latest round of highly publicized UFO news from December 2017 (AATIP etc.) sees Elizondo, Fravor et al. making the interview rounds, and once again, Hal Puthoff and friends are in the thick of things. Will spoon-bending and remote viewing make a comeback, too? Perhaps I should invest in mood rings and Pet Rocks. This is not to say I consider the UFO subject to be unworthy of serious attention; I simply am of the opinion that in those cases where the prosaic is eliminated, the nature of the phenomenon remains largely unknown- however, the usefulness of it to CI and PSYOP has been known and exploited for decades.

Brian B said...

That’s interesting. If they are authentic (or can be authenticated) and genuine, there would almost certainly be some commentary on the incident.

If there’s not however, and I would think in a personal journal there would be given his claims, then I’m even more convinced Marcel exaggerated the importance of this event.

In fact, the journal might just prove he made up his entire crash story.

Of course, if that’s the case, we won’t ever hear about it because I highly doubt Marcel III would ever release any of it. Too much family reputation at stake.

Not holding my breath either.

John Steiger said...

Mr. Bell: "In fact, the journal might just prove he [Marcel, Sr.] made up his entire crash story." This statement reveals how far out and afield into Fantasyland your view toward the July 1947 Roswell event really is.

Jesse Marcel, Sr. is hardly the only firsthand witness substantiating Roswell as an ET event.
Bill Brazel, Jr.; Sleppy, Rickett, Adair, Easley, Gonzales, Gen. DuBose, Gen. Exon, and Rowe all provide convincing testimony independent of Marcel, Sr. substantiating Roswell as ET.

cda said...

John S:

Unless you believe in the conspiracy or cover-up thesis, please tell us why the witnesses you have named kept their silence over such an earth-shattering event (which would rank as one of the most important scientific discoveries ever made) until some 35 to 50 years afterwards.

My own answer is that NONE of these people ever suspected the event to be ET at the time it happened. They only did so decades later when the publicity was rampant and they could get their names in print or appear on TV/radio.

ETH never entered their heads at the time. Why should it?

The current news about Marcel's 'documents' and possible pieces of hardware will fizzle out into nothing of value to science.

starman said...

John Steiger, I agree. As you know, Marcel went to the ranch only after Brazel came to Roswell with debris.
That said, I'm sure this "journal" is just the latest scam intended to muddy the case.

KRandle said...

All -

Let's be clear on this. I don't believe that this is a scam. I believe that they found the documents recently. They seem to include military records, which would be of Jesse Marcel's military service. I have a banker's box filled with documentation that is of no importance to anyone other than me, and I'm sure that this will be the bulk of the material found. The interesting thing is the journal and it really depends on the date of it and what it says. Could be important... whether it validates the extraterrestrial or suggests something of a more mundane nature. I look forward to learning what is found and how it will affect the whole of the Roswell case.

KRandle said...

David -

I sometimes change the font, just for variety and the mood I'm in. No fan of Times New Roman, but do like Courier and Bookman Old Style. However, these don't always translate to the blog for a reason I do not understand. I just thought the change was nice.

09rja said...

"My own answer is that NONE of these people ever suspected the event to be ET at the time it happened."~CDA
-----------------

I think Marcel Sr. did. But he had a tendency to "magnify problems he is confronted with". (A quote from a performance review in Marcel's own military record.)

I think Marcel Sr. (and Jr. who served his country in Iraq in his 60's) was a honorable guy who served his country well. But this misinterpretation of some wreckage just got away from him (and everyone else).

Nitram said...

BB wrote

"In fact, the journal might just prove he [Marcel, Sr.] made up his entire crash story."

Only BB and CDA think nothing crashed! Must agree with John - it shows a very narrow understanding of the July 1947 Roswell event.

As far as the journal goes, it is funny the timing of this announcement - maybe they could have waited until July 2022 (being the 75th anniversary) to look in the cupboard!
Sorry Kevin, but like Lance I just couldn't contain myself...

Regards
Nitram

John Steiger said...

cda: You underestimate the ability of the military to intimidate witnesses to an ET event. You further underestimate the loyalty of members of the military to uphold a sworn oath to secrecy. In addition, some of these witnesses were only exposed to a small part of the event -- why should they suspect an event of such magnitude given their level of exposure?

Addenda: cda, personally I actually hold you in high regard as an interesting contributor to Dr. Randle's blog (!) -- but I simply do not agree with your assessment on a number of points, particularly in regard to Roswell.

09rja: If Marcel's interpretation of the wreckage was mistaken, then literally scores of others were similarly mistaken. I believe this highly unlikely.

couldbebetter said...

Shocking to see the negative attitude on something not even public yet. Being skeptical is
good, but most here have anything but an open mind. Whatever crashed in 1947, the US military
made certain it was covered up and swept under the rug. Look at the "Roswell Report, Case
Closed," which mentions all of the records that were illegally destroyed. Strange that
people such as Sen. Barry Goldwater and Astronauts gordon Cooper and Buzz Aldrin all had interesting views of the UFO phenomenon yet most of the posters here reject anyones statement.
Why the negativity and outright hostility? Reminds me of fanatics that must get others to accept
their point of view. (Something is very wrong with such people.) I hope Mr. Randle will
keep this forum open to intelligent and toughtful discourse on the subject.

Unknown said...

The article at the Roswell Daily Record seems to show that the grandchildren are out to vindicate grandpa. I doubt that that is a good sign.

https://www.rdrnews.com/2018/07/05/marcel-family-shares-never-before-seen-artifacts-treasure-trove-for-ufo-researchers-historians-will-shine-light-on-roswell-incident/

Lance, as far as TC and DS go, it looks like they are busy with other things, also reported at the Roswell Daily Record:

https://www.rdrnews.com/2018/07/08/two-roswell-incident-authors-review-findings/

starman said...

cda wrote:

"My own answer is that NONE of these people ever suspected the event to be ET at the time it happened. They only did so decades later when the publicity was rampant...."

This is absurd. Many years before 1978 Roswell was thought to be ET. Edwards mentioned it in a book published around 1966. Including it in a book about flying saucers-thought by Edwards to be ET--shows how it was interpreted, even if the case was still dormant at the time.

09rja wrote:

"But this misinterpretation of some wreckage just got away from him (and everyone else)."

Wreckage from what, exactly?? MOGUL? And if Marcel sr and "everyone else" at the base, made an awful mistake, causing a big, senseless ruckus, it's a bit surprising that the careers of these men, notably Blanchard, don't appear to have been adversely affected.

09rja said...

"Wreckage from what, exactly?? MOGUL? And if Marcel sr and "everyone else" at the base, made an awful mistake, causing a big, senseless ruckus, it's a bit surprising that the careers of these men, notably Blanchard, don't appear to have been adversely affected."~starman

--------------------
No "everyone else" didn't make that mistake. Sheridan Cavitt didn't and Irving Newton didn't. Both identified all this stuff (back in '47) as being a bunch of garbage. And unlike Marcel, Newton (who was a weather forecaster) knew equipment like this when he aw it.

Lance said...

@ Starman:

It is so depressing to try to teach people to read.

CDA said that "NONE of these people ever suspected the event to be ET at the time it happened" Obviously he is talking about the 1947 people around Roswell.

You then mention Frank Edwards 1966 book (which was extremely brief about Roswell and almost wholly forgotten). What does that have to do with the 1947 participants? Nothing.

Your disconnect from reality appears to be almost complete. Please carry on.

UFO believers make the world a worse place to live.

Paul Young said...

anonymous...No "everyone else" didn't make that mistake. Sheridan Cavitt didn't and Irving Newton didn't. Both identified all this stuff (back in '47) as being a bunch of garbage. And unlike Marcel, Newton (who was a weather forecaster) knew equipment like this when he aw it.

Cavitt visited the ranch along with Marcel.
If Cavitt knew, the minute that he saw the debris, that it was a wrecked balloon...then why didn't he tell Marcel what it was?
My understanding is they drove there together. Did they sit in that car going back to the base in complete silence...one of them thinking it was a weather balloon and the other thinking it was a flying saucer!
And why didn't Cavitt tell the guys (Blanchard, etc) instead of letting them make muppets of themselves by broadcasting to the world they'd found a flying disc?

09rja said...

Cavitt visited the ranch along with Marcel.
If Cavitt knew, the minute that he saw the debris, that it was a wrecked balloon...then why didn't he tell Marcel what it was?
My understanding is they drove there together. Did they sit in that car going back to the base in complete silence...one of them thinking it was a weather balloon and the other thinking it was a flying saucer!
And why didn't Cavitt tell the guys (Blanchard, etc) instead of letting them make muppets of themselves by broadcasting to the world they'd found a flying disc?
~Paul Young

Well for one thing, Cavitt said he really wasn't involved with it after it was brought back to the base. (You don't see him in the pictures taken of the junk.....pardon me: crash debris in Ramey's office.) So Marcel's version of events is what got broadcasted to everyone at the base. Secondly, (IIRC) Marcel outranked Cavitt. So he probably didn't want to undermine him. And finally, the whole thing blew over anyway once everyone figured out what the stuff was anyway.

Lance said...

@Paul Young:

Although it has been explained multiple times to believers, I'll try again:

Flying Saucer did not mean in 1947 what YOU now believe it means.
People all over (including authorities like police) were labeling trash much like that found on the ranch as "Flying Disks". Indeed there was a Texas story of foil and melted plastic being called a Flying Disk in the Roswell newspaper on the very morning of the press release.

So Cavitt and Marcel certainly would have recognized that the stuff they found was foil paper, balsa wood, etc. But Marcel could have (and apparently did) believe that the stuff also was possibly one of the Flying Disks he had read about in the paper. This belief may well have been encouraged by the rancher's suggestion that this was the case.

So there is no mystery to this. Cavitt could have simply not known what to say about the stuff--maybe it could have been a flying disk for all he knew.

Now hopefully this is a clear enough explanation of the skeptical side of things. Most believers simply use a hand wave to dismiss it so that they don't offend their religion. If you have questions, however, I am happy to answer.

Lance

John Steiger said...

09rja: Sheridan Cavitt is a proven liar. First Cavitt denied he was even in Roswell in July of 1947, then he admitted he was in Roswell, but he did not participate in any debris recovery, and then he admitted he did participate in the debris recovery, but it was only a weather balloon so why all the fuss? There is no credibility in what Cavitt states.

Paul Young: The generally accepted involvement of Cavitt vis-a-vis Roswell, is that he drove to the Foster Ranch debris field in another vehicle but at the same time as Jesse Marcel, Sr., and then later on drove along with Lewis Rickett to the impact site off Highway 285 north of Roswell.

09rja: As for Irving Newton, he wasn't even in New Mexico in early July 1947, let alone in Roswell. Rather, he acted as Gen. Ramey's unwitting stooge identifying planted wreckage in the General's office unrelated to the Roswell debris.

Lance: Terribly sorry to disappoint you so ...

starman said...

Lance wrote:

"Obviously he is talking about the 1947 people around Roswell."

But after writing "None of these people ever suspected the event to be ET at the time it happened," cda said:

"They only did so decades later when the publicity was rampant." He was talking about the same people, presumably from '78 onwards.

As Edwards's book clearly shows, the second statement is false. Roswell WAS considered an ET event, LONG before the "publicity was rampant." (What Friedman heard about Marcel, before he even met him, also shows cda is wrong.)

09rja wrote:

"...... and Irving Newton didn't."

But Newton was only called by Blanchard to identify the remains of a balloon, after that trash had replaced what Marcel--according to his testimony--originally brought in.

cda said...

Paul Y:

Your remarks about Cavitt only reinforce the doubts I and others had, and have, that Cavitt was ever involved in the 'incident'. If you trace the history of this affair you will find that Marcel initially, when interviewed in 1978 by Moore & Friedman, COULD NOT REMEMBER who it was who accompanied him to the site.

Later Marcel did seem to recall his name (or rather a name of sorts), but thought it was 'Cabot', but he did not really know. Cavitt only got involved because Moore eventually tracked him down and interviewed him, and Cavitt's initial responses would cause any reader to have doubts as to whether he was ever there or not. Cavitt's name does appear on a paper he jointly wrote about the green fireballs episode (the Roswell AF base was part of this), and everyone who talks about Roswell always assumes Cavitt was Marcel's partner in '47. Look at Cavitt's responses to the USAF interview with him and the doubts and inconsistencies are all too obvious.

I do not consider it has ever been proven that Cavitt was indeed Marcel's partner that day they went to the ranch. Cavitt's involvement may well have been in something else entirely. Distant memories are the cause of all that is wrong with Roswell. Exactly the same can be said about Rickett. We know HE WAS involved with the green fireballs as there is documentation to prove it. We DO NOT know, with any degree of certainty, that he was ever involved with the Roswell case of July '47.

The whole case rests entirely on distant recall, as there is no written record. We MAY get something of value from Marcel's supposed diaries or notes he made, but I predict we shall, again, just see a trail of completely useless data. And this supposes the data will ever be made public.

09rja said...

"Sheridan Cavitt is a proven liar. First Cavitt denied he was even in Roswell in July of 1947, then he admitted he was in Roswell, but he did not participate in any debris recovery, and then he admitted he did participate in the debris recovery, but it was only a weather balloon so why all the fuss? There is no credibility in what Cavitt states."~John Steiger
----------
On that basis, if he is a liar, then so is Jesse Marcel and a lot of other Roswell witnesses (whose testimony evolved over time). Marcell initially couldn't even remember who he went out there with and only recalled that it was the "late 40's". Since this thing was nothing to Cavitt, I'm not surprised at all he probably couldn't remember much about it at first.

09rja said...

"But Newton was only called by Blanchard to identify the remains of a balloon, after that trash had replaced what Marcel--according to his testimony--originally brought in."~Starman
-------------------
Yeah that's according to Marcell who also claimed he attended multiple universities (and obtained degrees for which no one can find any record) and also that he was a pilot. (And he never was.) I've tried to be a gentleman about it, but if you want to get right down to it: those are the facts. And there is a whole lot more there if you want to get into it.

cda said...

Starman:

You need to read THE ROSWELL INCIDENT, the original Roswell book, by Berlitz & Moore to see that Marcel did indeed admit that one of the photos showed the actual recovered debris. He then said the other pics showed substituted debris. This is totally senseless. Why on earth should he pose for several photos - one showing the real debris, the others some assumed false stuff?

To put it simply: Marcel did not know what he was talking about. It makes no sense at all, and the reason he said this was because he was shown a cropped photo, not the full photo (as was later depicted in the Randle/Schmitt book). Since this cropped photo differed from the others he was shown, he felt quite happy, maybe under a bit of pressure from Moore & Friedman, to say it was real but that the other photos were phony!

From this and this alone arose the dotty idea that Ramey substituted a real balloon for the actual debris in the six or seven photos shown. Once ALL the photos were shown in full, it became obvious that they all depicted the same stuff. Hence it was ersatz debris(it could hardly be the real ET craft could it?!).

The idea of the false debris being planted for the real debris is a total myth, but persists because pro-ET writers want it to be so.

I no longer have Frank Edwards' book, so cannot tell what he wrote (it wasn't much) except that his 'facts' about the case were quite wrong. He was known to be an inaccurate and imaginative writer when it came to UFOs. One of Keyhoe's buddies I believe.

There is NOTHING in print to show that anyone, in 1947, thought a real ET craft had been recovered. But there are claims, from testimony taken 35-50 years afterwards, that some witnesses had that view. Even the word 'crash' was not used in '47. It was merely the landing of a light instrument. The 'crash' concept only arose post-1978.

And we are told that the military forced (even by alleged death threats!) such witnesses to keep quiet about an ET visit to earth for decade after decade, because the public and the scientific fraternity could NEVER, in any circumstances, be told. And that the documentation on it is still, after 70 years, top secret.

Thus the scientific world is still being denied the great truth, so we are supposed to believe.

Nitram said...

CDA wrote:L

"I do not consider it has ever been proven that Cavitt was indeed Marcel's partner that day they went to the ranch. Cavitt's involvement may well have been in something else entirely."

Therefore another secret that remains to this day after 70 years. But CDA overlooked the earlier post from John Steiger:

"Sheridan Cavitt is a proven liar. First Cavitt denied he was even in Roswell in July of 1947, then he admitted he was in Roswell, but he did not participate in any debris recovery, and then he admitted he did participate in the debris recovery, but it was only a weather balloon so why all the fuss? There is no credibility in what Cavitt states."

So, we can now be fairly certain that Cavitt new the answer, but kept it all secret for some reason. It makes you ask the question - what was so important that he would keep secret?

Nitram said...

Lance, perhaps you can help!

Can we perhaps agree that if:

- The material in the office was switched.

Then mogul goes out the window? Can you at least concede this?

I will concede that if the material shown in the photos is the same material found then there is no coverup...

Can't wait to hear from you Lance.

Regards
Nitram

Nitram said...

CDA wrote:

"And we are told that the military forced (even by alleged death threats!) such witnesses to keep quiet about an ET visit to earth for decade after decade, because the public and the scientific fraternity could NEVER, in any circumstances, be told."

This isn't entirely accurate either. The military used threats to ensure witnesses did not reveal what they saw, NOT NECESSARILY because it was ET. There is a subtle, but important difference here.

Finally and for the 1,473rd time, this is not a secret because we are here discussing it.

Regards
Nitram

09rja said...

"I no longer have Frank Edwards' book, so cannot tell what he wrote (it wasn't much) except that his 'facts' about the case were quite wrong. He was known to be an inaccurate and imaginative writer when it came to UFOs.~CDA
-----
I had that book myself (lost it in a accident around the house last year).....but I did write up what he said on the Roswell incident:

"There are such difficult cases as the rancher near Roswell, New Mexico, who phoned the Sheriff that a blazing disc-shaped object had passed over his house at low altitude and had crashed and burned on a hillside within view of the house. The Sheriff called the military; the military came on the double quick. Newsmen were not permitted in the area. A week later, however, the government released a photograph of a service man holding up a box kite with an aluminum disc about the size of a large pie pan dangling from the bottom of the kite. This, the official report explained, was a device borne aloft on the kite and used to test radar gear by bouncing the signals off the pie pan. And this, we were told, was the sort of thing that had so excited the rancher. We were NOT told, however, how the alleged kite caught fire-nor why the military cordoned off the area while they inspected the wreckage of a burned-out box kite with a non-inflammable pie pan tied to it.

Those were the halcyon days of the "flying saucers" and nobody -or almost nobody- questioned such preposterous statements as the one just quoted. What was actually in that filed I do not know. And those who do know are not permitted to discuss it -publicly.
"

--'Flying Saucers-Serious Business', by: Frank Edwards, (1966), p.41-42 (paperback edition)

And Mr. Edwards had (apparently) been mentioning this in his lectures in the 1950's. The earliest mention I can find of the Roswell incident (post-1947) is in 'Flying Saucers on the Attack' (by: Harold Wilkins) in 1954.

Paul Young said...

Yes...I have to admit that Cavitt certainly is an enigma when it comes to the Roswell case.
I really can't make up my mind over his role in the whole thing.

Maybe the clue is in his job title..."counter intelligence officer".

Basically, this is a guy whose profession was all about NOT TELLING THE TRUTH...
Confusing a situation...
;..Distraction. (Don't look over there...look over here.)

Counter intelligence personnel (like Cavitt) convinced the Nazi's that D-Day Landings were targeting beaches around Pas de Calais ... NOT Normandy.

Therefore...if Sheridan Cavitt told you that today is "pancake tuesday" then rest assured that "pancake tuesday" , IT IS NOT!
...and if he tells you the debris at Foster Ranch was that of a balloon, it most definitely was anything but a balloon.

John Steiger said...

Paul Y: cda insists that evidence for Roswell as ET "rests entirely on distant recall." But in doing so, cda discounts the following: Bill Brazel remembering that his father was held prisoner and incommunicado at RAAF for the best part of a week until Mac altered his story to comport with the AAF's account of the case; a 200 yard long (two football fields) gouge which suddenly appeared in the debris field at Foster Ranch and attested to by multiple witnesses; two separate crash sites extant at the same time in July 1947 (again multiple witnesses incl. two from flyovers); multiple witnesses confirming the heightened security and military presence at both Foster Ranch and along the west side of Highway 285 north of Roswell in early July 1947; General DuBose - Ramey's Chief of Staff - confirming Marcel's account that the debris switch was made to fool Newton, the press and ultimately the public into believing that no ET debris was found even though scores of witnesses physically handled such debris and confirmed its nonterrestrial qualities; Lydia Sleppy's interrupted teletype communication of the crash ordering her to cease transmission; and Frankie Rowe's family threatened with death by the military -- who ostensibly exists to protect the citizenry -- if they even talk about the Roswell ET.

But the Air Force wants you to believe that Roswell was just a weather balloon. And cda and others of like disbelief refuse to accept the truth of the above.

starman said...

09rja:

While I doubt the "treasure trove" of new documentation will prove Roswell was ET (if the journal mentions it at all, it may only so so in codified language) there MIGHT be some verification of other things Marcel said. We'll see. I also recall KDR once wrote that those things may not really matter because Marcel was who he said he was--the intel officer at Roswell at the relevant time.

cda:

I have no doubt that Marcel was photographed with the real debris, but that does NOT mean it was among the photos taken by reporters and shown to the public! Presumably, those came a bit later, after a substitution was made. I'm sure this was discussed before. KDR noted Marcel stated the (publicly known) photos do not depict him with the real debris. A switch HAD to have occurred. Marcel would've had to be retarded to mistake obvious balloon junk for exotic debris, and you don't get to be a Major, and intelligence officer, by being retarded.
No, the notion of a "crash" at Roswell existed LONG before 1978. Those who have the 1966 book by Edwards can see this on page 41. An object had CRASHED and burned. Likewise, Roswell was clearly considered ET before 1978. Friedman first heard about Marcel when someone told him he had handled "flying saucer pieces." For many years before 1978, flying saucers were equated with ET.

cda said...

Nitram:

"So, we can now be fairly certain that Cavitt knew the answer, but kept it all secret for some reason."

You are "fairly certain" Cavitt knew the answer, are you?

I am equally certain he knew nothing of the sort, and am doubtful if he was even present or involved in the affair at all.

I also suggest you may be writing tongue-in-cheek. A very tempting thing to do when discussing Roswell.

And yes, Marcel certainly DID initially say one of those damned photos showed the actual debris, but the others only showed substituted debris. Later, Kevin insisted ALL showed the substituted stuff. (You see the real stuff was far too secret to ever be shown to the public). As our anonymous contributor says: all the said photos show the same debris. Whether it was launched from Alamogordo or Alpha Centauri, alas we know not.

james tankersley said...

I dont believe Jessie Marcel SR lied or made up anything about his involvement in the Roswell UFO crash at all and now, thanks to the fact that virtually all the original eyewitnesses that knew what happened at Roswell are now dead and can not be cross examined it is easy to sit there and say he exagerated his role in the events since he cant defend himself, and i am not impressed at all by all the skeptics saying all this one tiny bit without iron clad proof that would support these claims. I also highly doubt that he would write anything about what he knew about the UFO crash in a journal or diary because he has admitted time and time again that he was part of the cover up as it happened and so it was deemed as a HIGHLY CLASSIFIED national security issue that could not be revealed to the public no matter what the circumstances are since at first the military did not know what the hell they were dealing with, and understandably so! He had to follow those orders as an intelligence officer and soldier serving his country.

Lance said...

Can we perhaps agree that if:

- The material in the office was switched.

Then mogul goes out the window? Can you at least concede this?

I will concede that if the material shown in the photos is the same material found then there is no cover up...

===

Ok...not sure of the value of that.

As you see above, the dyed in the wool believers above dishonestly state their assertions as fact. John Steiger seems particularly duplicitous.

In trying to pretend that the Roswell case (as saucer nuts love it) is based on anything other that distant memories, he brings up the following.

1. Sleppy's silly claim about the teletype. Where is the 1947 evidence for that?
2. Bill Brazel's Jr'.s tale. Where is the 1947 evidence for that?
3. The gouge in the ground. Where is the 1947 evidence for that?
4. Heightened security at the base and cordoned off roads. Where is the 1947 evidence for that?
Etc. Etc.

The sad state of affairs is that UFO buffs cannot understand the difference between someone CLAIMING something and the the establishment of the truth of that claim with real evidence.

As long as it supports their tawdry religion, of course. Disconfirming evidence, they bend over backwards to discredit somehow.

James Tankersley piously preaches how he doesn't believe Saint Jesse ever lied. Praise Saucer Jesus! Which of Jesse's stories about the debris in the photos was the true and holy truth then, James? You do realize he told at least 4 different tales--tales that discredit each other?. I'm sure you will choose best one.



Best,

Lance

Clarence said...

Brian Bell: ..what if an authenticated part of Jesse Marcel's diary/papers contained an explicit reference to the "fact" of a crashed saucer and it's dead crew; would you then consider that as a "smoking gun" and then become a UFO believer...:)...?

cda said...

09RJA and Starman:

I request you to look at the first sentence of what Frank Edwards wrote about Roswell, i.e. the very first sentence of 09RJA's quote, and tell me how many falsehoods you see, and whether we should take what Edwards wrote on Roswell or ANYTHING ELSE regarding UFOs, seriously at all.

Oh and the rest of that quote is just as bad. Yet he was supposed to be a famed journalist and broadcaster. "Serious Business" eh? Sure!

Tim Printy said...

For those who still question if Marcel stated that the newsmen saw the debris, just watch UFOs are real. At time 40:00 in the Youtube selection, he clearly states, "The newsmen saw very little of the material...very small portion of it...." In other words, the material he recovered was in the photographs (just not all of it)! This mirrors where he was quoted in "The Roswell incident" that he was photographed with the actual debris.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJz6M8WEU20

KRandle said...

Tim -

You're absolutely right about what Marcel said in that film... which is obviously inaccurate, meaning that the debris in Ramey's office was a weather balloon and rawin radar target.

However...

Marcel, when shown those pictures in The Roswell Incident, told WWL-TV reporter Johnny Mann that "That wasn't the stuff I found."

On the shooting script for what I believe is the UFO's Are Real documentary, it says that they are looking at the Berlitz and Moore book. It says:

"I talk about book I'm showing him." (Either the producer or director).

Then the description "Book in Jesse's lap showing Warrant Officer he discusses borders present. (I believe borders refers to the way the picture had been cropped.)

Then the question, "This is not the material you found?"

Marcel. "Definitely not."

Yes, I know the question was leading. Yes, I know that Marcel sometimes had trouble with exaggerations. Yes, I know that we have contradictory statements here. I present this only so that the full spectrum of information is available.

Tim Printy said...

Kevin,
Based on what he said in the film can we actually prove what he said was accurate? You act as if it was 100% proven, which you cannot do. You quote a Mann interview but was this recorded? If so, where can it be found? Even if this is exactly what Marcel stated to Mann, I could easily make the argument that Marcel decided to change his story instead of looking silly in front of a reporter. Isn't that a possible interpretation of events or can you prove that is not the case? Of course, we also have Marcel supposedly telling the press in 1947 that what was seen in the photographs was what he picked up at the ranch (see Fort Worth star telegram article of July 9). Then there is Marcel's statement to Corley, where he stated that the debris was in the photograph but beneath the brown paper wrapping! I don't know about you but there doesn't look like there is anything beneath the paper at all. Again, this can be interpreted as Marcel trying to explain his belief that he was photographed with some of the debris.

John Steiger said...

Lance: The 1947 evidence for the Roswell ET that you deny without basis for doing so is found in the literature of authors such Dr. Randle and others.

If anyone is "particularly duplicitous" re: Roswell, it is you.

Lance said...

John Steiger, I suspect that the first person who would disagree with you is Kevin. But that is because he is honest (a trait you ought to look into).

KRandle said...

Tim -

I think you missed my point. You provided quotes attributed to Marcel that suggest the material in Ramey's office was the material he brought from Roswell. If that is true, then the answer is a balloon and rawin and we all go home. I pointed out that he is on the record saying just the opposite, which is that the material was not what he brought from Roswell.

You mentioned Corley's interview in which he said the real material was hidden under the butcher's paper on Ramey's floor, which, I think we all agree is probably not true.

I could argue that the quotes attributed to him in the newspaper the next day were lifted from an 8th Air Force press release but won't because I have no evidence for it...

My real point is that we can argue about his all day but the bottom line is that I have quotes that prove one thing and you have quotes that prove something else. All the quotes are from Marcel, so I guess you just pick one side of the fence. I just wanted it known that there was a variety of quotes to choose from and that all should be acknowledged.

Oh, and Johnny Mann had recorded the Marcel interview. It was part of a week long series that he had done for WWL-TV in the early 1990s and included a visit with Hicks and Parker. At that time Mann believed their story to be the important one and saved those tapes. Those with Marcel, except for just a few minutes have been lost.

But here is the take away from this. Marcel said both things and both can't be right. The truth may lie somewhere in the middle, or at one end of the spectrum. I guess you just pay you money and pick your side. Without being more specific, I have a side and I don't believe that it will make some people very happy.

Nitram said...

Lorrie Causey wrote

"if an authenticated part of Jesse Marcel's diary/papers contained an explicit reference to the "fact" of a crashed saucer and it's dead crew; would you then consider that as a "smoking gun"..."

Considering that, according to Marcel Jnr, Jesse never mentioned anything about bodies then you would have to think the diaries/papers are forgeries.


Lance

You simply don't seem to understand that because someone doesn't accept/believe the (ever changing) airforce explanation doesn't automatically make them a "crazy saucer nut".

Nitram said...

Tim Printy wrote:

"Of course, we also have Marcel supposedly telling the press in 1947 that what was seen in the photographs was what he picked up at the ranch (see Fort Worth star telegram article of July 9). Then there is Marcel's statement to Corley, where he stated that the debris was in the photograph but beneath the brown paper wrapping! I don't know about you but there doesn't look like there is anything beneath the paper at all."

As already written, there are a number of contradictory statements made by Marcel.
I have discussed the matter with KR on a number of occasions and like me, he agrees that it is ridiculous that the stuff could have been hidden by Marcel behind the paper wrapping.

But Marcel of course has also stated on the record that the material was switched.
I personally find this to be the most likely explanation.
Marcel of course would have recognised the material for what it was...

It has been explained at length why the mogul explanation doesn't work by a number of people who comment here regularly.
Dealing with Cavitt, he said he recognized the material immediately, but neglected to tell anyone. He also stated that he wasn't in Roswell at the time of the crash.

As our blog editor would say "the real point is that we can argue about this all day but the bottom line is that I have quotes that prove one thing and also have quotes that prove something else. All the quotes are from Cavitt, so I guess you just pick one side of the fence. I also want it known that there are a variety of quotes to choose from and that all should be acknowledged."

Sadly many of the "investigators" who post here simply choose to ignore the comments that don't fit with their world view.

My own opinion is that both the ET and mogul explanations are highly unlikely to be correct.

There is some strong indications however that what was recovered at Roswell was not mundane and accordingly the fact that there is no plausible terrestrial explanation gives hope to the possibility of something new...

Perhaps you might like to consider this question - if it can be shown that the wording in the memo is "victims of the wreck" then what do you think it refers to?
In addition if it can be proven that there was no mogul material recovered on the foster ranch then what do you think the material was?

Finally Tim, I do enjoy looking at your monthly publication, particularly the "Roswell corner, from time to time and I wish you continued success with your work.

Kindest regards
Nitram.

Mr. Sweepy said...

One question about Roswell that I never heard about. This is, Did Marcel or any of the military people talk with you about security personal in 1947? There was one interview with Frankie Rowe that happened maybe 15 years ago that she talked about being threatened with "burial in the desert" and she was crying that was very real to me. We heard or read other stories about the cover-up agents in Roswell but next to nothing about who they are have ever come to life. Any stories about this people you can share with us about?

Mr. Sweepy

starman said...

cda:

We're well aware of the errors in Edwards's account (although a rancher did notify a sheriff, who called the military). At the time people were still unwilling to discuss the case, so Edwards had little information. In addition, KDR said he wrote from memory. Nevertheless his account clearly shows that Roswell DID involve a CRASH and WAS considered ET (or it wouldn't have been included in a work on flying saucers).

cda said...

I'll repeat something I have said before (probably to Nitram's chagrin). It is this:

Some of the witnesses, including Marcel, uttered remarks like: "yeah, this stuff was like nothing on earth, it came from an extra-terrestrial vehicle".

My immediate question to all of them, had I been lucky enough to speak to them, would be:

"How do YOU know what an ET vehicle looks like? Are such vehicles known to science? Where have you got the idea that ET vehicles are visiting our planet at all?"

What I am saying is that these witnesses NEVER suspected any ET vehicle in 1947. It never entered their heads. They only got the idea planted in their minds during the years from c. 1978 onwards, either by the interviewers or by reading books, hearing gossip or watching TV shows on UFOs.

So if Marcel, or anyone else, claimed they handled debris from an ET craft, they simply do not know what they are talking about. Naturally, the rest of their testimony is highly suspect because of this.

cda said...

Starman:

"Nevertheless his account clearly shows that Roswell DID involve a CRASH and WAS considered ET (or it wouldn't have been included in a work on flying saucers)."

All this means is that Edwards, an ET fanatic, decided the incident was a 'crash' and was considered ET (again by Edwards). So all you have dug up is that a certain ET enthusiast, writing in 1965/66, attached an ET dimension to a mundane event involving the landing and recovery of a light instrument. I repeat: there was NO mention of a crash in 1947. This only came decades afterwards, either in Edwards's book or in the Berlitz/Moore book. Take your pick. But please, do not try and persuade us that either ETs or a crash were being talked about in 1947.

Of course, I can't read people's minds, but I am pretty certain nobody even thought of such a possibility at the time.

starman said...

Nitram Ang wrote:

"My own opinion is that both the ET and mogul explanations are highly unlikely to be correct.

There are strong indications however that what was recovered at Roswell was not mundane and accordingly the fact that there is no plausible terrestrial explanation gives hope to the possibility of something new."

If there is "no plausible terrestrial explanation" what else could it have been but ET? The holy ghost or something? :) "No plausible terrestrial explanation" (for something clearly artificial) implies something NOT of this Earth, or an alien civilization.

09rja said...

"What I am saying is that these witnesses NEVER suspected any ET vehicle in 1947. It never entered their heads. They only got the idea planted in their minds during the years from c. 1978 onwards, either by the interviewers or by reading books, hearing gossip or watching TV shows on UFOs.~CDA
------
I think for most that is probably true.....but according to at least one witness (i.e. Irving Newton), Marcel (right there in General Ramey's office) tried to convince him that it was extraterrestrial. And apparently Marcel believed that for the rest of his life. Indeed Marcel did influence others to think that: The radio station manager that first mentioned Marcel to Stanton Friedman noted the fact Marcel thought it was a ET craft. The rest is history. (Right or wrong.)

Nitram said...

Hello Starman

You have a point of course, however I am still not convinced of anything...

Let us assume there is life on other planets (not accepted)then we also have to assume that they have somehow travelled many light years to get here (also not accepted).

I would feel more certain if I had proof that:

1. There was a "second site"...
2. There were "dead bodies" at that site and maybe
3. The Ramey memo does say "victims of the wreck".

I am not 100% convinced of any of the three points above.

Regards
Nitram

james tankersley said...

I believe Jessie Marcel knew that the wreckage from that UFO was unusual since he could not identify the material or what kind of craft it came off of because he was trained to know what balloons, aircraft, radar reflectors and so on would look like so he had to make that assumption as a strong possibility like it or not! The wreckage found clearly was not debris that would come off any special top secret balloon no matter how special that type of balloon was! Even his son Jessie could not find any positive match of any wreckage that would explain it in conventional terms while he too was in the military and he searched and examined all types of balloons, aircraft, missiles, bombs, you name it while he was serving as well. i know some of you skeptics will say Jessie JR was only 11 years old when his father showed him the UFO wreckage so he would not be a reliable witness, but it must be remembered that he was put under hypnosis to better recall what exactly happened and so a clearer picture would develop from doing that.

starman said...

Hello Nitram Ang,

You should see some of Morrison's posts in the paracast. While neither ET life nor interstellar travel are verified (as far as we laymen know) the ETH makes certain predictions which have been verified. It predicts, for example, that exoplanets exist and are common.

Even if you dismiss stories of a second site and associated bodies, the highly unusual nature of debris from the Foster ranch is highly suggestive of (or indicative of) a civilization beyond the level of anything terrestrial, hence ET.
Btw the fact that DEBRIS (whatever its origin) was found also suggests a crash....even if the term wasn't used at the time.

Tim Printy said...

Sorry to beat a dead horse again Kevin but did I read correctly that you don't have any recording/transcript of these quotes by Marcel to Mann? Exactly where do these Marcel statements you are using come from then? Are they second hand from Mann? If so, don't we run into the problem of using hearsay as a primary source? If you do have any transcripts or tapes, is it possible that you can post them on your blog or is there a copyright problem with sharing them?

KRandle said...

Yes, Tim, it really is a dead horse...

However...

Mann had the recordings, but they are now gone. Mann's statements were confirmed the cameraman who was there and heard them... and Marcel's son said that Jesse Sr. had told him the same thing.

To me, this is really a nonissue because of the lack of primary source material. I had been making the point, which seems to be lost to many, that there are many quotes attributed to Marcel and it is up to the individual to assign a weight to them. I wasn't advocating a position, merely reminding others as to the situation, which, BTW, was laid out in Roswell in the 21st century.

09rja said...

""I believe Jessie Marcel knew that the wreckage from that UFO was unusual since he could not identify the material or what kind of craft it came off of because he was trained to know what balloons, aircraft, radar reflectors and so on would look like...~james tankersley
-------
When did he receive such training and what did it consist of?

Paul Young said...

cda...

You have said (many, many times on this blog) that secrets can't be kept for 70 years. I highlighted the Whitechapel Murder's previously, but here's some light reading for you.... when you get a minute to drag yourself away from ET related blogs and websites.
(a strange hobby for someone who claims to not believe they even exist.)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/18/foreign-office-historic-files-secret-archive

Some key points here.
Though the general rule is that secret files should be released after 30 years ..."unless the department has received permission from the lord chancellor to hold them for longer.".
This absolutely backs up the claim that, so long as the political will prevails, files can be kept under wraps indefinitely.

"The secret archive is also beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act."

...and one part of the article that may interest you is the bit which mentions some files go back to the Crimean War, 1856.

Secrets can't be kept secret for 70 years? pffft

Paul Young said...

I don't know how many times Marcel was interviewed in the years after he first went public in 1978
...but how many times did he say (when interviewed) the debris in Ramey's office was switched
...and how many times (when interviewed) did he say the debris in Ramey's office is exactly what he collected from Foster Ranch?

I mean, he must have been mithered for an interview many times in those eight years.

If it was just the one interview that he said it, out of a load of other interviews...is it not just possible he was having a "senior moment"? (I'm 55 and I can tell you that i have em.)

I also wonder if this was one of his later interviews?
He was a very poorly man toward the end and (I don't know) but ...was he being treated with Chemotherapy or Radiotherapy. Could battling the dreaded "C" mean he might ramble in a certain interview if he was having a bad day?

cda said...

09RJA:

You quote me correctly, but then quote a statement from Irving Newton (made post-1978) on what Marcel told him in Ramey's office in 1947.

This is the very thing that reinforces my contention of the complete lack of evidence of ET thoughts or testimony in 1947. The VERY FACT that Newton is, 30+ years later, recalling a conversation from '47, possibly accurately, possibly not, cannot be taken as true evidence from 1947.

The ONLY way to get around this would be to locate a genuine written record, or tape recording, taken at the time, of someone's thoughts or sayings at that time. Quoting someone's memory of what happened decades earlier merely adds to the vast amount of (in fact the whole of) the historical testimony involved in the Roswell affair.


James Tankersley:

Do you really believe the evidence of Jesse Marcel jr, obtained under hypnosis, is worth anything at all? I doubt even Kevin takes it seriously. But this was only obtained 30 to 40 years later (!), yet you place great reliance on it. Amazing!

09rja said...

"The ONLY way to get around this would be to locate a genuine written record, or tape recording, taken at the time, of someone's thoughts or sayings at that time. Quoting someone's memory of what happened decades earlier merely adds to the vast amount of (in fact the whole of) the historical testimony involved in the Roswell affair.~CDA
---------

I hear you CDA. I was just thinking out loud on how this legend got started. And I think a big part of it is what Marcel thought he found. (And what a retired nuclear physicist did with that.)

John Steiger said...

cda: Mac Brazel genunely knew he was held prisoner at RAAF in early July 1947, Frankie Rowe genuinely knew herself and family were threatened with death by miltary personnel in this same timeframe, and many, many witnesses genuinely handled "memory metal" which was unknown on Planet Earth then or now.

Although none of this may be written down contemporaneous to 1947, such lacking does not make these witnesses' testimony untrue. Your objections are unfounded.

Nitram said...

Paul Young wrote:

"I don't know how many times Marcel was interviewed in the years after he first went public in 1978
...but how many times did he say (when interviewed) the debris in Ramey's office was switched
...and how many times (when interviewed) did he say the debris in Ramey's office is exactly what he collected from Foster Ranch?

I mean, he must have been mithered for an interview many times in those eight years.

If it was just the one interview that he said it, out of a load of other interviews...is it not just possible he was having a "senior moment"?"

Kevin - could you give your take on this please? As someone who has met with the Marcel's you are more qualified that most I guess to answer Paul's query...

I look forward to hearing what you have to say.
Thank you.

Regards
Nitram

james tankersley said...

09RJA.......ARMY AIR FORCES TRAINING COMMAND was where Jessie Marcel SR completed his training of advanced radar technology while he was serving as an intelligence officer of the 509th bomb group. There is no reason whatsoever lame balloon wreckage and radar targets would have fooled him. His radar school diploma can be seen in the book his son Jessie JR wrote before he passed away called THE ROSWELL LEGACY. I highly recommend you look at that book for more of that kind of information as it may answer other questions you may have.cda.... of course hypnosis is amazing as it has been used and shown to work very well in a lot of instances by a great many people as it will make you remember a lot of forgotten memories so there is no reason it would not work here, otherwise it would not still be in use! I also find it very compelling Frank Edwards book FLYING SAUCERS SERIOUS BUSINESS mentions a road cordon blocking others from going to the Roswell crash site as nobody should have even mentioned that during that time period when the military covered the UFO crash up immediately after they found the wreckage on July 1947 ( Frank Edwards book was written in 1966). Somebody had to reveal that to Frank probably from the military who knew that UFO crashed otherwise he should have never known that since the crash was highly classified!

cda said...

Paul:

I put it to you that some 'secrets' are a bit, i.e. a lot, different from other 'secrets'.

Do you really suppose that the 'Jack the Ripper' murders fall into the same category as a known ET visit to Earth (if it happened)?

Do you really suppose, when scientists the world over have been looking for, and maybe even hoping to discover, ET life for several centuries, that a few select military guys of just one country know this secret and have kept it from the rest of the world for 70 years?

If your answer is 'yes' than you are clearly living on a different planet from me.

Can't you see that such a notion is preposterous, and that this is the whole essence of why Roswell was not, repeat not, an ET event? The ONLY reason the great, alleged 'Roswell file' is still top secret is because certain writers keep insisting it is, not because such a file ever existed. Dammit, what if the 'crash' recurred somewhere else, maybe in Europe? I suppose the EU Commission would then hush it up, if they could!

Yes, some secrets can be kept for 1000 years maybe. So what? These are the secrets nobody cares about or is interested in.

BTW, I do not believe the hidden Whitechapel files contain anything definitively pointing to the Ripper's identity, even if the said person had royal connections (which again is just more supposition).

starman said...

cda wrote:

"Do you really suppose, when scientists the world over have been looking for, and maybe even hoping to discover, ET life for several centuries, that a few select military guys of just one country know this secret and have kept it from the rest of the world for 70 years?"

First, had it not leaked out to some extent, we wouldn't be discussing it now.....But more importantly, the issue is not just ET LIFE, but an SUPERIOR ALIEN CIVILIZATION, capable of arriving HERE, and doing just that.
When evidence of life was detected in a meteorite from Mars, there was no need for a coverup, because such a discovery (even had it been verified) would've had little if any bearing on our lives. It would've been a purely academic thing. An ET Roswell is FAR different. As I tried to explain before, at least twice....the key difference between ETs arriving here and other scientific discoveries is that the former is emphatically NOT just an academic matter! It has the potential to WREAK HAVOC ON PRESENT SOCIETY. There could be panic, a questioning of current beliefs, crumbling of the present power structure....
We know that governments can keep secrets for very long periods of time. The ULTRA secret, for example, was kept for 30 years after WWII, even though it was of great potential interest to millions who lived and fought in WWII, historians etc, and there wasn't even any urgent need to keep it after the war. Considering the potential impact of superior ETs, from Roswell, or wherever, the powers that be obviously have a VERY strong incentive to keep it under wraps.

09rja said...

Yes, some secrets can be kept for 1000 years maybe. So what? These are the secrets nobody cares about or is interested in.~CDA

Bingo. That's what these people don't get. Why did Daniel Ellsberg (for example) leak the Pentagon papers? (Risking jail time.) Because he thought (among other things) the people had a right to know this important info.

And not one guy who has come across this info on Roswell over the years thought it was worth leaking? Come on.

And no: the "leaks" that have happened so far don't count because they haven't proved anything. Nobody is debating if the Pentagon papers are real....we still are with MJ-12.

09rja said...

09RJA.......ARMY AIR FORCES TRAINING COMMAND was where Jessie Marcel SR completed his training of advanced radar technology while he was serving as an intelligence officer of the 509th bomb group.~james tankersley

Kevin was talking about this on Martin Willis's show the other night. (Good show by the way.) Not sure how far I trust this either. People complete training/courses all the time and still miss things. I'm not sure how intensive it was regarding all the objects that would be present on a Mogul project however. In any case, Marcel's tendency to exaggerate things cannot be ruled out as a possible explanation.

Paul Young said...

cda..."BTW, I do not believe the hidden Whitechapel files contain anything definitively pointing to the Ripper's identity, even if the said person had royal connections (which again is just more supposition).

How do you know? The files are secret.

..........

starman..."As I tried to explain before, at least twice....the key difference between ETs arriving here and other scientific discoveries is that the former is emphatically NOT just an academic matter! It has the potential to WREAK HAVOC ON PRESENT SOCIETY. There could be panic, a questioning of current beliefs, crumbling of the present power structure....

Spot on. I'd also add that if the people charged to look into the ufo problem had no real idea of the ET's agenda, (and couldn't do anything about it even if they DID know the agenda)...then that's a damned good reason not to discuss it with Joe Public.

..........

Anonymous...
"And not one guy who has come across this info on Roswell over the years thought it was worth leaking? Come on.

You obviously have never heard of a bloke called Jessie Marcell Snr

People from Roswell AAB did leak it. If no one leaked it...why are we talking about it and why have umpteen books and documentaries been made about it?

You can't protect leaks but you can protect secrets...This is why counter-intelligence was invented.
Sheridan Cavitt, old bean, was a dab hand at it.

KRandle said...

All -

For crying out loud, can we stop with the Ripper murders? It is not relevant to the topic of this post... If you want to know the truth, read Conversations...

09rja said...

We know that governments can keep secrets for very long periods of time. The ULTRA secret, for example, was kept for 30 years after WWII, even though it was of great potential interest to millions who lived and fought in WWII, historians etc, and there wasn't even any urgent need to keep it after the war.~Starman

And what did that revelation change? What did it mean after WW II was over? Let me answer that for you: pretty much nothing. Do you think info on alien visitations would be of a bit more interest than some obsolete WW II code?

And in actuality, the fact that we broke enemy codes really wasn't concealed. For example, in 1942, the Chicago Tribune printed an article that implied we had broken the Japanese naval codes by saying the navy knew in advance they were going to hit Midway. The government didn't want to prosecute because they didn't want to call more attention to the article.

09rja said...

You obviously have never heard of a bloke called Jessie Marcell Snr.~Paul Young

A guy who falsely claimed he was a pilot and attended multiple universities (from which at least one of them he claimed he earned a degree).....none of whom have a record of him?

People from Roswell AAB did leak it. If no one leaked it...why are we talking about it and why have umpteen books and documentaries been made about it?~Paul Young

Leaks that have gone nowhere.

Tim Printy said...

Marcel's course did not involve any radar reflector/radiosonde training. The record shows the course was focused on the use of the bombing radar on the B-29 (AN/APS-15). It was all about navigating, bombing, and scope interpretation using that radar. In other words, it was a user course for a specific radar. Marcel could not take that training and suddenly become an expert on all types of radar equipment.

Paul Young said...

Marcell embellished his pilot record in the years after he retired from the military seems clear.
Then again, what is a fact is that he was an intelligence officer who was sent to examine the original debris field. He was the "on the spot" investigator.

So, the reply to your ... "And not one guy who has come across this info on Roswell over the years thought it was worth leaking? ... would be; "Well for starters, the very first bleedin person who saw it, leaked it."

KRandle said...

All -

Do any of you really believe that Marcel couldn't recognize a weather balloon and a radar reflector when he saw it?

A farmer near Circleville, Ohio found one about the same time as the events near Roswell and he recognized it for what it was. He took it to the sheriff who recognized it, and it was displayed in the window of the newspaper office.

Sheridan Cavitt, according to his interview with COlonel Richard Weaver, recognized the balloon and target while standing in the field with Marcel, so, even if Marcel didn't recognize it, you would think they would have discussed it.

Tim - you know as well as I do that in military classes you often learn "nice to know information," which might not be part of the training, but are offered up because you might encounter the problem later. Do you think it is impossible for Marcel's radar classes might not have exposed him and the others to the Rawin targets?

The 509th was part of Operation Crossroads, which was the testing of atomic weapons in the Pacific in 1946. They used the Rawins as they gather the weather information. Isn't is possible that Marcel would have seen them at that time?

So, isn't it time for us to give this particular argument a rest? Unless someone has something completely different, shouldn't we all agree that it seems unlikely that Marcel didn't know what a weather balloon and Rawin target looked like?

cda said...

Paul:

Not to prolong this agonising debate (or 'investigation' as Nitram would put it), I presume it is your belief that NEVER, in any circumstances, can poor Joe Public be told that an ET race exists and has visited our planet in recent times.

This is because we might all panic if we knew. If past opinion polls are to be believed, the majority of Americans already know, or think they know, this 'truth' and don't appear to be panicking, do they?

But that's how science advances, according to the conspiracists. "We just cannot tell the people". However, we (i.e. us top military guys) can keep the secret to ourselves, because we are superior to the public and would never panic.

Boy, what an argument! So why aren't you in a state of panic right now? Why isn't Kevin, or any other ETHers?

cda said...

Kevin:

I totally agree with you about Marcel. But he said very little in 1947.

The point is that even if he did recognise the debris at the time, which seems very likely, he was ordered to transport it to Ft Worth for further examination. Once this happened, things started to get 'interesting'. Naturally, 30-35 years afterwards, his mind had turned more to UFOs and he became, shall we say, more receptive to authors and interviewers who wanted to slant the whole story towards the crash-landing of an ET craft. Also, getting a bit of publicity played its part.

Tim Printy said...

Kevin-
That is pure speculation. I spent 6 months at electronics school (communications and radar repair) with a three week course on radar operations. I then branched off to communications repair. The radar techs went to the other part of the class. However, the radar sets were there for everyone to look at and examine. They ran the radars at the school doing surface search tests. Not once did I ever hear anything about radar targets and balloons. I then spent time at a school we taught radar. I took the radar course. Once again there was no mention of balloons and radar targets. Now, you want everyone to believe that Marcel was taking a course on an airborne radar used for navigation and bombing (which was a short four week course) and they would suddenly show them a radar target used for weather measurements? You have seen the course and you know exactly what was in the course. There was no mention of using radar targets for weather observations in the course. Why would the instructors even be aware of RAWINs when their expertise lay in the bombing radar?
You are also making a big deal out of the Operation crossroads. What evidence do you have that Marcel observed the daily release of weather balloons with the targets attached? They released balloons without the targets as well. Do you have evidence that they launched these target balloons near Marcel's office/barracks/dining facility? You have to demonstrate he would have seen these events and not speculate that he might have and, therefore, knew what an ML-307 looked like.
The bottom line is that you are speculating and not producing a single fact other than Marcel was at the Kwajalein where some place on that island atoll (which is pretty big) they launched balloons with targets and that he attended a school about using the airborne radar on a B-29 (which there is no evidence that they mentioned such targets). Your claim is not based on facts and, therefore, the argument is just as strong as the claim that Marcel never saw a radar target before July 1947.

starman said...

@09rja:

Of course evidence of alien visitation would be of greater interest than a WWII code. But as I pointed out, it might be too damaging to society to reveal it.

09rja said...

Marcel's course did not involve any radar reflector/radiosonde training. The record shows the course was focused on the use of the bombing radar on the B-29 (AN/APS-15). It was all about navigating, bombing, and scope interpretation using that radar. In other words, it was a user course for a specific radar. Marcel could not take that training and suddenly become an expert on all types of radar equipment.~Tim Printy

Thanks for the info Tim.

Tim - you know as well as I do that in military classes you often learn "nice to know information," which might not be part of the training, but are offered up because you might encounter the problem later. Do you think it is impossible for Marcel's radar classes might not have exposed him and the others to the Rawin targets?~KRandle

Exposing him to it and him recognizing it later on are 2 different things. As I noted above, people complete training/courses all the time and still miss things. People sit through college classes entire semesters and get Fs. (Assuming they give those anymore.)

To use an anecdote from my own profession: I am a engineer who is licensed (as a PE/SE). To maintain our licenses, many states now require obtaining CEU/PDH hours for renewal. This means attending seminars in some cases. A few years back I went to one in Atlanta (given by ASCE). At the end we had to take a short quiz (which you (unofficially probably) got unlimited shots at). I (fortunately) got it on the first try after less than 10 minutes, so I hung around and talked to the instructor about specific problems I had seen related to the seminar. In my mind, I had decided I would stop talking once the last guy passed. Well, 30 minutes went by and 2 people still couldn't pass it.......a hour or so went by and the last guy was on his third shot. I asked the instructor: "I'm not holding you up am I?" His reply (in a whisper):"Not as long as this guy can't pass." When I left (after 1.5 hrs and counting) he still hadn't passed the thing. (He may still be down there trying to make it!) And again: we are talking a group of degreed, licensed engineers here. Not a bunch of winos.

So the point is: training doesn't guarantee anything.

Lance said...

"Do any of you really believe that Marcel couldn't recognize a weather balloon and a radar reflector when he saw it?"

Kevin, do you not understand that skeptics see this question as dishonest?

In our scenario Marcel knew the material was just junk BUT he also surmised that it might have been one of those Flying Disks which he was reading about in the paper every day (which were also composed of junk).

You may think our scenario wrong which is fine but to continuously dredge up the above question seems to indicate willful misunderstanding. It's a straw man argument--which is a fallacy.

Goddamn--I explained it above even in this thread.

Lance

KRandle said...

Tim -

Of course it was speculation but didn't you ever have a military class in which you received "nice to know" information? I remember an intelligence class in which we had the opportunity to tour an AC-130. Had no relevance to the class. It was just nice to know. I'm merely suggesting that he might not have been completely ignorant of what a rawin looked like.

Lance -

The question is not dishonest because of all the other things surrounding it including Cavitt's claim to Weaver and Ramey's order to take it all to Fort Worth. There is no reason for the trip to Fort Worth for the great reveal of the rawin and weather balloon. They could have done that in Roswell with the guys from the AP. They did it again in Alamogordo with the guys from Mogul.

09rja said...

Marcell embellished his pilot record in the years after he retired from the military seems clear.
Then again, what is a fact is that he was an intelligence officer who was sent to examine the original debris field. He was the "on the spot" investigator.

So, the reply to your ... "And not one guy who has come across this info on Roswell over the years thought it was worth leaking? ... would be; "Well for starters, the very first bleedin person who saw it, leaked it."


So you admit Marcell lied about his record yet we are supposed to trust him here? Interesting.

And again: let me know when these "leaks" prove the case. Or to put it another way: the next time you here someone debating if Iran-Contra actually happened or if the Pentagon papers are real.....you let me know ok?

09rja said...

Of course evidence of alien visitation would be of greater interest than a WWII code. But as I pointed out, it might be too damaging to society to reveal it.~Starman

Today? I find it hard to believe anyone in charge would think that. I'll give the Roswell advocates this: in 1947 it would have had fundamental changes on society and I can see that as a argument as to why it could be concealed. But they would still conceal it on that basis? Preposterous. Most people are accustomed to the idea of ETs at this point.

starman said...

@cda:

Just because those in the military, and most of the public, perhaps 70-90%, can deal with the revelation of ET without panic (or nervous breakdown) that still leaves too many others unready for disclosure. In the future, as willingness to accept the idea of ET continues to spread, things could be different. But for now, if a tenth of the population has a highly adverse reaction, the damage to society could be excessive. And as I wrote, panic is only one of the possible consequences. Even the most intelligent and composed people may draw certain conclusions at variance with what we were all taught, or certain core values of this culture. They may question the legitimacy of present authority. I don't think the powers that be would want that.

Paul Young said...

cda... ...I presume it is your belief that NEVER, in any circumstances, can poor Joe Public be told that an ET race exists and has visited our planet in recent times.

Here's my take on it. Currently, I can't see any circumstances where previous events would be "disclosed" voluntarily. My own opinion is that they have managed to ride out Roswell. The story resurfaced too late. Everyone who matters is dead and too many hoaxes/chancers got in on the act and muddied the waters.
UK govt refuse to even talk about Rendlesham.

I reckon it's going to take a future event that can't possibly be denied. I'm talking either a crash with not just wreckage of a ufo but bodies too, in some heavily built-up area with hundreds and hundreds of witnesses...or the ET's actually "out themselves" by just making an obvious gesture. (The landing on the White House lawn/Bucks House/Red Square scenario.)

I think we both would agree that a Phoenix Lights/Stephenville type event wouldn't cut the mustard. There's just too much new, domestically produced, high-tec secret hardware flying about these days that, even it were a real ET vehicle,...it would be explained away as a terrestrially made proto-type...
...and no video/photograph is ever going to convince anyone any more, even if it were a real ET vehicle, (me included), because of how simple they are to fake.

The short answer to your question is "NO, they won't tell Joe Public (yet) because they don't need to."

Paul Young said...

Anonymous..."So you admit Marcell lied about his record yet we are supposed to trust him here?"

There are enough people to back up Marcel's take on Roswell to believe he was telling the truth. And the incredible response to the event from the US govt/military, starting from day one, till now...suggests something extraordinary happened there. The phrase "don't throw out the baby with the bath water" comes to mind here"

And, as I have shown. Secrets can be kept secret for donkeys years...even if "leaks" can't. And if you don't believe me, file a FOIA on (how can I say this without KR shouting at me again) the events in East London during the summer/autumn 1888...and let's see how far you get.

Anonymous...I'll give the Roswell advocates this: in 1947 it would have had fundamental changes on society and I can see that as a argument as to why it could be concealed. But they would still conceal it on that basis?

If they know little more today than they did in 1947 on who they are...and what's their agenda, then yes.

Paul Young said...

Lancelot...

"In our scenario Marcel knew the material was just junk BUT he also surmised that it might have been one of those Flying Disks which he was reading about in the paper every day (which were also composed of junk)."

OK. Under your scenario,...If Marcell had been reading about those "flying disks in the paper every day", then he would also have read that they were ALREADY being associated with ET's immediately after Kenneth Arnold reported his sighting.
Arnold also estimated that what he saw could have been travelling at up to 1700 MPH.

So if Marcell "surmised" that what he found might be one of those flying disc that "he had been reading about"...then it follows that he was also surmising that it might be ET and it might be able to fly at 1700 MPH

Do you honestly think that Marcell believed that the heap of junk in Ramey's office could fly at 1700 MPH???

Of course not! And that's why the real debris HAD to have been switched.
Marcel, (even if he had had his brain removed) wouldn't...COULDN'T... confuse that pile of trash with something from another planet that could travel at super-sonic speed.

KRandle said...

I want to make two points here. One not so important and the other sort of a comment on the direction the commentary has taken.

First, Jesse Marcel, Sr. didn't say he was a pilot, but said he had flown as one, which is am important distinction. I can say, without fear of contradiction, that I flew as a door gunner in Vietnam. As a member of an aviation unit, I filled in at that slot because of circumstances. I think all of us, in the unit flew as door gunners at one time or another, so Marcel's claim of flying as a pilot in a bomber group is not without precedence.

BUT... his claim of 3000 hours as a pilot is excessive. I had a full combat tour as a pilot and only managed about 1200 hours. And in my three years on active duty at that time, probably only acquired about 1600 hours total, and I was a pilot, not just getting stick time... so, his 3000 hours seems to be quite the exaggeration.

Second, the point here was to announce that documentation from Jesse Marcel, Sr. had been found and there were indications of a journal with that material. If that journal covers his time in Roswell, that will be an important find, regardless of what it says, or doesn't say. It will be only the second time that something like that has appeared. It is the reason I posted the article about Ruth Barnett's diary. We need to wait to see what it says.

My other comments were made to suggest that we don't have a totally black and white situation with some of this. We can't know everything that was said in Marcel's radar classes. While it is true that the syllabus contained nothing about radar reflectors and te like, we don't know that someone might not have brought it up. While I was in the Officer's Advance Course in Military Police, we had a long discussion about the invasion of Normandy, which, had nothing to do with the class. I'm not saying it was discussed, only that it might have been.

The release of the records that are being reviewed by the Marcel family now may shed some light on the discussion. As I say, it seems that we find ourselves in the weeds at the moment. I hope this new material will help us understand what happened back then.

Brian B said...

One only needs to climb back into history and American culture in 1947 to realize NONE of these men (at the time) were thinking “extraterrestrials” or “spaceships”. That includes Marcel Sr.

In fact, most of the early newspaper reports following Arnold’s sighting suggested what people were seeing MIGHT be Soviet test rockets, some sort of nuclear device, or secret Soviet spy weapons. These early devices were typically referred to as “missiles” NOT alien spaceships. No one knew what they were and plenty were later hoaxed.

Almost all of the testimony by so called “Roswell Witnesses” collected 40 years later is altered by modern influences and the bloating of facts by misrepresentation and exaggeration. Add to this the medical reality of aging minds and you get one massively altered story that typically fits MODERN DAY descriptions of an “alien saucer crash”.

If anything people were more concerned that “Martians” might be visiting, but even then it wasn’t very wide spread.

The first descriptions of the material found on the ranch highlighted pretty common stuff, slightly unusual, but by no means mysterious or “alien”. The descriptions first given prove this.

It’s only decades later that people began saying the material had odd properties of the kind that it had to be made on another planet. “Tinfoil, wood, rubber, and a cylindrical device” was described long before any photos were taken, stories about material being switched, aerial flyovers, 20 mile debris fields, gouges in the sand, alien bodies, etc.

Besides, it’s good for a small rather isolated New Mexico town to gain some tourist business by hyping up an interesting story like this. Some of these “witnesses” helped propel their hometown’s fame and prosperity by these “enhanced” stories.

If nothing else they gained notoriety.

It would be fascinating if a spaceship had crashed, but there’s nothing that leads conclusively to this.

Hence, why aren’t there more diaries, letters home, teletypes, photos, and souvenirs from that incident?

Well because it was mundane.

If Marcel’s diary has any notes referencing his decades later claims, he would have made it known. We also would have heard about it by now. Does it take years and years for Marcel III to release such a fantastic find? Nope. Forge one? Maybe...

We haven’t heard anything because there’s nothing to hear.

Tim Printy said...

There seems to be the belief that Marcel and the RAAF had access to a 1947 version of the internet where they had knowledge of all the news media reports and what was defined as a flying disc. What UFOlogists might call a UFO/Flying disc was not clearly defined in July of 1947. The RAAF probably only had access to a limited amount of media reports and what had appeared over the newswire AND in the local newspaper. Speaking of which, how many have noted the "flying disc" story, which appeared in the Roswell Daily dispatch on the morning that Jesse Marcel brought the debris to RAAF (The morning of the 8th). It can be found at http://www.project1947.com/fig/1947f.htm
Both discs recovered in the story were made from some sort of tin or aluminum foil. According to that article, these objects drew interest from military officials giving credence to the idea that these objects may have been legitimate. If Blanchard, or somebody on his staff, had read the story in the morning paper and saw the debris Marcel collected (assuming it was the debris in the Fort Worth photos), they could easily have drawn a link to the two items and felt that they had found one of those flying discs.

09rja said...

"There are enough people to back up Marcel's take on Roswell to believe he was telling the truth."~Paul Young

No, not really. Every one of those stories has holes in them. Combine that with the complete lack of physical evidence AND the the fact that not one credible foreign Intel source believes it either.....and you have serious room for doubt.

"And, as I have shown. Secrets can be kept secret for donkeys years...~Paul Young

Well, what you have shown is that "secrets" nobody cares about can be kept.

"And if you don't believe me, file a FOIA on (how can I say this without KR shouting at me again) the events in East London during the summer/autumn 1888...and let's see how far you get."~Paul Young

Which (of course) proves nothing with what is being concealed. We've already been around that track several times.

09rja said...

First, Jesse Marcel, Sr. didn't say he was a pilot, but said he had flown as one, which is am important distinction. I can say, without fear of contradiction, that I flew as a door gunner in Vietnam. As a member of an aviation unit, I filled in at that slot because of circumstances. I think all of us, in the unit flew as door gunners at one time or another, so Marcel's claim of flying as a pilot in a bomber group is not without precedence.

BUT... his claim of 3000 hours as a pilot is excessive. I had a full combat tour as a pilot and only managed about 1200 hours. And in my three years on active duty at that time, probably only acquired about 1600 hours total, and I was a pilot, not just getting stick time... so, his 3000 hours seems to be quite the exaggeration.
~KR

Lets consider what several Roswell investigators said on this point. In Berlitz and Moore's book (in 1980) Marcel is noted as:

"Flying as bombardier, waist gunner, and pilot, he logged 468 hours of combat flying in B-24s, was awarded five air medals for shooting down five enemy aircraft, and was himself shot down once (on his third mission)."

Needless to say: that isn't true. He won 2. And the citations say nothing about him having personally shot down anything. Nothing I have seen show he was trained as (fro example) a waist gunner.

In the Unsolved Mysteries episode in 1989 (in which you and Friedman worked on as consultants and no debunker was involved), Marcel was referred to as "an experienced combat pilot whose primary duty in peacetime was to investigate air accidents". Needless to say: that wasn't entirely accurate.

There are not a lot of innocent explanations on Marcel's claims. I don't for one second believe (for example) Bob Pratt just misunderstood that Marcel claimed he attended all those universities and got a BS in nuclear physics.

"Second, the point here was to announce that documentation from Jesse Marcel, Sr. had been found and there were indications of a journal with that material. If that journal covers his time in Roswell, that will be an important find, regardless of what it says, or doesn't say. It will be only the second time that something like that has appeared."~KR

Fair enough.....but I question how far we can trust that journal.

cda said...

Kevin:

You know deep down that nothing will emerge from Marcel's diaries etc to support the great ET cover-up thesis. They may (if they are ever released and if they are genuine) give some idea of his activities during the early post-war period.

I have great doubts that they will mention Roswell at all, in any shape or form. But, as you say, we must wait and see. If perchance these diaries DO mention Roswell and even hint at ETH, we can be certain that a new debate will immediately ensue as to whether they are fakes.

What I am saying is that everyone should be on guard against fakery. We should also not get too worked up that anything will be revealed at all.


Paul:

Nobody ever said the debris in Ramey's office looked like it could travel at supersonic speeds! Even ETHers do NOT claim that the craft shown was the ACTUAL spaceship. More likely it was the 'Earth component', i.e. the flimsy part the ETs made to fly in our atmosphere once the main spaceship arrived. Unfortunately even this flimsy craft could not withstand our atmosphere and crashed. You see, the ETS were so clever they managed to construct their scout craft to so closely resemble our balloons and box-kite attachments that they fooled us into thinking it was one of those. The upshot of this is that no substitution was necessary at Fort Worth, and what is depicted in those photos is the REAL THING (but not the actual interplanetary or interstellar spacecraft, which of course never landed).

I put this forward as a new hypothesis.

Nitram said...

Hi Lance

As one of the champions for Project Mogel could you please give us the answer to Paul's query:

"Do you honestly think that Marcel believed that the heap of junk in Ramey's office could fly at 1700 MPH???"

If the answer is no are you then saying that the real debris HAD to have been switched?

Have a good day Lance

Regards
Nitram

Brian B said...

Kevin wrote:

“Don't you think that you should wait to see the evidence before suggesting forgery?”

Sure, I’m waiting like everyone else. My point though is basically the same as CDA’s — there are people out there who will do anything to keep the Roswell story alive. By that I mean keep the ETH alive and viable despite no real evidence that actually gets us there.

Marcel Sr. would have clearly shared his diary with researchers if he wanted to prove he was correct about what he claimed happened. I mean clearly if this was such a world shattering event covered up then and also now, Marcel Sr. would have written about it in a private journal. Why not? I mean was the Army going to shoot him because he kept a journal? No. Did they search his home? No.

So let’s be realistic — if he made entries describing ET visitation or even a cover up of specific ET materials why wouldn’t he have made a diary entry about it?

Unless his diary was about flowers, favorite recipes, or his ham radio interests.

Something as significant as the crash of an alien space ship would have made the cut as quality material in anyone’s journal if it really happened.

I suspect there’s no such entry. It wouldn’t take months and months to turn the page to July 1947 to see his entries.

The long wait seems like another strategy to drive interest in the Roswell hopefuls. Suspense is good for business. Especially when so many folks have leveraged things like slides of a mummified boy as evidence of extraterrestrial visitation.

Tim Printy said...

Kevin,
Once again, I don't want to deal with speculation too much (even though my hypothesis speculates that the article was read by somebody and had some effect on the command staff). Do we have any evidence of message traffic stating to be on the lookout of alien spaceships? As best I can tell no traffic from higher commands that stated to be on the lookout for alien spaceships in early July of 1947. Speculation in news accounts may or may not have been read the by the command staff at RAAF. They were aware of the reports but may have not been that aware of what people thought they were. Once again, I suspect that it is possible that this article played a role in Blanchard issuing his press release that they had captured a flying disc.

Tim Printy said...

Nitram,

Can you tell us where Marcel stated he saw the object he recovered flying at 1700mph? I recall him saying the object did not impact the ground and he speculated that it must have exploded above the ground because the debris was scattered all over the place.

Mr. Sweepy said...

I have read a lot about the Roswell weather balloon theory on this blog and here are some points that are overlooked.

Weather balloons back in the 40's and into the 60's were pre-digital. Being analog they communicated by way of radio. So why ask? No one has mentioned about this unit being recovered. Only the radar deflector pieces. These radio pieces were somewhat big and bulky to my understanding especially because they were battery powered. So what happened to them if they existed.

Second there were storms in the area of or about the time that the balloon in question was about to be launched. This doesn't seems to be logical and likely would have violated safely protocols back then.

Third, if there was a real weather balloon that was launched in good weather, there is a problem with this as well. These balloons were designed to fly very high and in the jet stream. The summer jet stream goes from southwest to the northeast or close to it in New Mexico. Once these weather balloons get close the jet stream they are moving at a very fast pace. In short it wouldn't take long before they hit the Texas or Oklahoma Panhandle.

This is why I have issues with the balloon theory and why they don't hold weight with me. For those who believe that these were real weather balloons and not what Marcel claims, let's see your scientific evidence that the balloon was real.



Paul Young said...

Anonymous..."Well, what you have shown is that "secrets" nobody cares about can be kept."

Going with that logic...you are suggesting that big secrets aren't kept..it's only the little secrets that can be kept.

......

cda... "Nobody ever said the debris in Ramey's office looked like it could travel at supersonic speeds!

If you read my post again you'll see that I was going with Lancelot's scenario... ie, that Marcell, when he first came to the debris field, wondered if he had come across the "flying discs" he had read about. If this scenario that Lancelot paints is correct...then the only flying discs he could have read about were Ken Arnold's (considering the terminology had only been invented for Arnold's sighting only a week or so earlier).
Therefore, if Marcell had read about Arnold's sighting he would also have read Arnold's estimated speed of these objects (up to 1700 mph).
Following this scenario...if the junk in Ramey's office was the same junk he found at Foster Ranch, then if he thought that stuff could bob along at 1700 mph, then he would have had an IQ substantially lower than that of Curly Howard.

Catch my drift?

KRandle said...

Tim -

You forgot to mention the message traffic to and from the base that might have dealt with the problem of the flying saucers... and your forgot to mention that there was discussion that some of the sightings might have been of interplanetary craft... and you forget to mention the science fiction of the era that dealt with similar questions. The idea was out there, floating around. Just saying that there was discussion, not that it was at the top of anyone's list.

O9rja -

There is documentation that Marcel did have 468 hours of flight time... I found the citations for his two Air Medals and both were for meritorious service. Had he shot down any enemy aircraft, there certainly would have been a mention of it in the Unit Histories... and I have copies of them (along with a picture of Marcel in the South Pacific briefing flight crews).

I would be careful about quoting from Berlitz and Moore since Moore described his book as "disgraceful hodgepodge of fact an fiction."

And, I believe what is taking so long about these revelations is that forensic testing is being conducted that will, at the very least, demonstrate that the journal entries were written in the proper time frame.

Brian -

Don't you think that you should wait to see the evidence before suggesting forgery?

CDA -

I thought that I had made it clear that I didn't expect any shattering revelations from this new material. I can only hope that there will be something that that allows us to answer some questions.

Paul Young -

I wasn't shouting, just making a comment about the irrelevance of the Jack the Ripper diversion.

KRandle said...

Tim -

Just suggesting that there was the idea of interplanetary craft floating around in 1947... There was from 1945, I believe, the movie serial (in 15 Chapters) The Purple Monster Strikes which is credited as the first aliens from space invasion movie.

And you know as well as I that message traffic had a limited lifespan. When it expired, it was destroyed so that it didn't clutter up the files... or if it was one of those that went out to all commands but had no immediate relevance to you, it was destroyed.

All -

I say again, there has been information shared that the Marcel family found a box or two of Jesse, Sr. stuff that is being reviewed, and if I understand it correctly, being forensically tested. Like most of you, I'm awaiting the results.

KRandle said...

Mr. Sweepy -

Weather balloons and rawin radar reflectors were often released with no attached radio transmitters. They were tracked visually, which was the point of the radar reflector. It had multiple shiny surfaces to reflect light. Some had lights attached at night and some had radio equipment. Just depended upon the weather station, the time of day, and the data they wanted to collect.

09rja said...

Going with that logic...you are suggesting that big secrets aren't kept..it's only the little secrets that can be kept.~Paul Young

I prefer to think of it as significant vs. insignificant. Daniel Ellsberg didn't risk what he did over exposing some $500 hammer-for-the-Pentagon story.

Once you come to understand that....you'll get what I am saying.

09rja said...

O9rja -

There is documentation that Marcel did have 468 hours of flight time... I found the citations for his two Air Medals and both were for meritorious service. Had he shot down any enemy aircraft, there certainly would have been a mention of it in the Unit Histories... and I have copies of them (along with a picture of Marcel in the South Pacific briefing flight crews).

I would be careful about quoting from Berlitz and Moore since Moore described his book as "disgraceful hodgepodge of fact an fiction."


So running with the assumption of Moore & Berlitz messed it up......what is the explanation for the interview with Pratt? I don't know what you're thoughts on Pratt are, but I've heard a lot of other UFO investigators endorse him as credible (including Stanton Friedman). Furthermore, where did the writers of Unsolved Mysteries get the idea he was a pilot?

It's a little too much of a coincidence that these innocent mistakes kept following the guy around.

Nitram said...

Tim Printy (with a wide grin) wrote:

"Can you tell us where Marcel stated he saw the object he recovered flying at 1700mph? I recall him saying the object did not impact the ground and he speculated that it must have exploded above the ground because the debris was scattered all over the place."

Ok, I agree with the second part. The first part relates to a post from Paul Young which I plagiarized - it made me laugh, so I had to repeat it.
Paul has already responded to a similar question about his post so I will steal (mostly) his words again:

If you read my post again you'll see that I was going with Lancelot's (aka CDA's student) scenario... ie, that Marcel Snr, when he first came to the debris field, wondered if he had come across the "flying discs" he had read about.

If this scenario that "CDA's student" paints is correct...then the only flying discs he could have read about were Ken Arnold's (considering the terminology had only been invented for Arnold's sighting only a week or so earlier).
Therefore, if Marcel Snr had read about Arnold's sighting he would also have read Arnold's estimated speed of these objects (up to 1700 mph).

Following this scenario...if the junk in Ramey's office was the same junk he found at Foster Ranch, then if he thought that stuff could bob along at 1700 mph, then he would have had an IQ substantially lower than that of Curly Howard."

Essentially the mogul explanation is fairly silly.

What I also find hard to take seriously, is that Lance, when we discuss Roswell privately, often asks me what my biggest objection to the mogul solution is!
It's such a hard question to answer because there are so many problems with the mogul argument... let me list some:

1. Flight 4 was cancelled
2. Everybody knows what tin foil looks like.
3. You don't call a press conference to explain tin-foil.
4. Only person who handled the material AND recognised it was Cavitt.
5. Cavitt didn't tell Marcel about it because he (Cavitt) wasn't there at the time.
6. Tin foil doesn't have special "memory metal" properties (as noted by some of the witnesses who DID handle the material)...

Accordingly, Lance thinks I am a believer/crazy saucer nut because I don't accept the "official" (ever-changing) explanation (again another crack up!)

Having said all this Tim, the ET explanation (which I don't agree with either) also "has a few problems".

Marcel was the only person on the debris field who was also, later in Ramey's office. Accordingly he was the only person who could have said the stuff was switched.

This doesn't prove anything ET - if the stuff was not switched then the case is closed - what was recovered was a weather balloon and we have proof of "drooling idiot" theory.

If what crashed was NOT mogul doesn't mean the default position is alien (this is something that the debunkers have great difficulty getting their heads around).
No, it simply means we have no plausible explanation for what Marcel and company held in the hands on the Foster ranch...

Perhaps you might like to consider this question - if it can be shown that the wording in the memo is "victims of the wreck" then what do you think it refers to?
In addition if it can be proven that there was no mogul material recovered on the foster ranch then what do you think the material was?

Finally Tim - you may have missed this from an earlier posting - I do enjoy looking at your monthly publication, particularly the "Roswell corner", from time to time and I wish you continued success with your work.

Kind regards
Nitram

cda said...

Kevin:

Like you, I really would like this latest box of Marcel Sr to contain something useful. But previous such 'discoveries', after promising so much, have got us nowhere. That is why I have grave doubts that this latest 'box' will provide anything useful to science.

Why is there this big delay, anyway? It only raises suspicions. And why must it be "forensically tested"? And who is doing this "testing"? If something like a diary or a box of documents turns up, it should be presented to the public as it stands, not subject to some secret analysis and testing beforehand. Those interested can then do their own analysis, including proper scientists if they so wish.

I therefore assume there is some planned agenda behind this announcement, probably to revive interest in the case after the slides fiasco and the various earlier worthless claims that surfaced about bodies, hardware, photos and documents.

I do hope nobody is going to claim that they were on the point of releasing this box when mystery agents suddenly turned up and confiscated its contents.

Still, let's look on the bright side. Maybe this finally is the REAL THING. Maybe.

Brian B said...

Here’s the real problem with Marcel actually taking this material, whatever it was, to his house. It could have been hazardous.

Marcel claimed to know everything there was to know about weather balloons etc., but as a guy who served at the only atomic bomb airbase in the world he obviously knew nothing about radiation exposure.

If he really though this foil was from an alien spaceship, he must have wondered if being exposed to it himself might be dangerous, that it might be radioactive, or have alien biological contaminants of some kind.

But no, he brought this potentially hazardous material home to show his wife and son, so they could ogle over it and get contaminated.

That really makes him look stupid.

If what ETH’ers claim is true, that Marcel was a brilliant and highly competent guy, this sure makes him look otherwise.

What really happened?

Most likely he knew the material was harmless because it resembled materials he had already seen or handled. He just hadn’t encountered them scattered in pieces that far out in remote lands.

Likewise, even though it was perhaps familiar, he may actually have thought it came from one of those mysterious objects flying in the sky, which again many people really thought might be Soviet missiles, spy devices, or even foil kites made in the shape of a pancake.

Clearly no one would bring home hazardous extraterrestrial materials to their home and expose their family to it.

So either he was a total incompetent working at an atom bomb airfield, or in truth he knew it was more mundane but still unusual, not a national secret, and clearly not an alien spaceship from another world.

All that talk decades later was just old age and his propensity to spin a good yarn.

As the newspapers showed, many people thought these objects were made from foil, which by the way was a relatively new product in the US and not widely known.

“Reynolds Wrap” foil was first commercialized to the public in 1947!

What a coincidence!

Prior to this no one had it in their households. So yeah, foil might have actually fooled this guy into thinking it was a saucer made of strange material, but not an interplanetary space craft unless you believe he was really that stupid to handle it without testing.

Mr. Sweepy said...

Kevin,

Here is a page about 1940 to 1960 balloons:
http://www.airvectors.net/avbloon_3.html

My point was the evidences weighs in favor of Marcel and there was no balloon. There are way to many factors that have not been resolved and not just about a weather balloon construction. I don't understand why they would chance sending off this is questionable weather balloon either very shortly before the said weather storm in the area or during the storm.

These weather balloons were fast movers when they got to the jet stream and to a level above the clouds and the storm. And has in my other post, it wouldn't have taken long for one of these balloons to move out of state in short order.

Tim Printy said...

Nitram,

I disagree about the MOGUL explanation and addressed some of your objections in SUNlite 5-5. I am not going to go over this again point by point because it is a waste of my time as we argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The bottom line is that facts are hard to come by from an event that happened in 1947 and just about everything can be interpreted one way or the other depending on how you look at the source. Nobody can definitively say the debris was, or was not, switched at Fort Worth. Nobody can definitively state what happened on June 4th at Alamogordo either. There are multiple possibilities. I will just leave it at that. Thanks for the compliment on SUNlite.

cda said...

Kevin:

Who is this Christina Stock, the one who wrote the piece about Jesse Marcel's 1947 notes and diaries in the Roswell Daily Record?

And which edition of the RDR does her article appear in?

Is Jesse III available for interview, and why the delay in doing so (in view of the assumed importance of his discovery)?

09rja said...

@Brain Bell: Those are excellent points.

starman said...

Brian Bell wrote:

"If he really thought this foil was from an alien spaceship, he must have wondered if being exposed to it himself might be dangerous, that it might be radioactive, or have alien biological contaminants of some kind."

But there was no evidence of this. Brazel showed no sign of adverse health effects, even though he had been exposed to a large quantity of strange material at the debris field two days (or so) before Marcel got there. Likewise Brazel's neighbors, the deputy and the sheriff weren't sickened prior to Marcel's exposure to the stuff. Biological contaminants were particularly unlikely because the field had no reported bodies. Therefore, while the material was extraterrestrial, it didn't appear hazardous.

Paul Young said...

Anonymous. Fortunately, you don't get to dictate what is, and what is not, a significant secret.

Paul Young said...

Brian..."If he really though this foil was from an alien spaceship, he must have wondered if being exposed to it himself might be dangerous, that it might be radioactive, or have alien biological contaminants of some kind."

This is a very good point and something that has bothered me as well. Why bring a substance, completely unknown, into the family home?

If I were trying to square the circle,maybe I'd say that "back in the day" people would smoke cigars, sat on the sofa while cradling their baby...bring their asbestos laden cover-all's home from work for the wife to wash...drive up and down the motorways and not strap their kids into seatbelts, let alone specially made booster seats. Devil's advocate (again) might say that Marcell was simply "a man of his time" and the acute "health and safety" considerations that we take for granted these days...simply weren't given too much thought then.

Not buying that Brian? (Yep...it's a bit of a stretch, I'll admit.)

james tankersley said...

Brian Bell....Did you not know that Jessie Marcel checked the wreckage for radiation before picking it up? And i assure you he took it home to show his wife and son because the strange wreckage was unlike anything he has ever seen and he could not identify any of it as debris coming off an aircraft, missile, or a special top secret balloon train or bomb. The special top secret balloon explanation for the Roswell crash is way overdone now and no matter how special these balloons may sound or look, the fact is this does not explain the wreckage one tiny bit PERIOD!

cda said...

James T:

You do realise that Marcel, in showing the debris to his family, was breaking his security oath? All the books tell us that this debris was TOP SECRET, don't they? Therefore Marcel showed his family top secret material. That makes him look a bit of a fool.

Of course you could argue that the material had, at that point in time, not yet been classified as top secret. Therefore Marcel was still at liberty to show it to his wife and son, even though he KNEW it was very likely top secret ET material.

But I hope we don't enter a debate over this. It is my fault for bringing it up, eh?

cda said...

Kevin:

Isn't it time you spoke to either Christina Stock or Jesse Marcel III? Please tell us your plans in this. (That is if you still attach any importance to it).

09rja said...

Fortunately, you don't get to dictate what is, and what is not, a significant secret.~Paul Young

No I don't.....but common sense does.

Brian B said...

Nitram said:

“Everybody knows what tin foil looks like. You don't call a press conference to explain tin-foil.”

Again you failed to do your homework. As I’ve already written, ALUMINUM FOIL was introduced for sale to the US public in 1947! NO ONE knew what it was until then because it wasn’t available in any form that an average person, or even military personnel, might instantly recognize what it was.

You’re using modern day thinking. Until 1947 people used waxed paper to wrap things in. Thin aluminum (it wasn’t run by the way) was not a well known item at all as you claim.

Brian B said...

@starman who wrote:

“But there was no evidence of this. Brazel showed no sign of adverse health effects, even though he had been exposed to a large quantity of strange material at the debris field two days (or so) before Marcel got there. Likewise Brazel's neighbors, the deputy and the sheriff weren't sickened prior to Marcel's exposure to the stuff. Biological contaminants were particularly unlikely because the field had no reported bodies. Therefore, while the material was extraterrestrial, it didn't appear hazardous.”

My point is Marcel Sr. didn’t even consider any of this. There’s no mention then or in his interviews that he KNEW it was alien material “from another world” and had concerns over it bringing to earth an unknown deadly contagion.

These guys were briefed on radioactivity (supposedly), and had served in the Pacific where plenty of biological and viral illness stemmed from simply living in a jungle.

For him to make ZERO mention of even a passing thought of exposure makes him an IDIOT or in reality a guy who knew the material was harmless and not alien.

He never once mentioned asking Brazel if he and his kids were sick or showed signs of radiation exposure which by the way wouldn’t necessarily show up a day or two later as you claim. Just because someone doesn’t look ill or present an illness doesn’t mean they aren’t ill. There’s a contagious stage to all illnesses that’s typically unknown to the person infected.

And before someone shouts out “....but they held Brazel against his will and did a physical on him...” that info is incomplete and sketchy. If they thought Brazel was infected then they should have done exams on Cavett and Marcel, Marcel’s family, and certainly Brazel’s son and daughter. But they didn’t.

So either they were all idiots and failed to contain what might have been an unknown contagion from an alien planet that might have killed everyone on earth, OR they knew this stuff wasn’t that deadly and had little significance.

After all, we quarantined all of our astronauts in the early days for fear they might bring something back to earth from the moon or just from being exposed to space.

james tankersley said...

cda......you dont get it, Jessie Marcel was so excited by how all this wreckage looked, he just had to show this to someone he knew he could trust or share it with. No matter how TOP SECRET this material would end up being afterwards, if it is harmless and looked spectacular to begin with, then why would you not want to show it to someone you knew you could trust? I mean come on, why would he wake up his wife and son in the middle of the night to show lame balloon junk parts, cardboard sticks, string, rubber, and so on he himself has already seen numerous times before as an intelligence officer?

Louis Nicholson said...

(Correction I had initially said James T) Cda said:

"You do realise (sic) that Marcel, in showing the debris to his family, was breaking his security oath? All the books tell us that this debris was TOP SECRET, don't they? Therefore Marcel showed his family top secret material. That makes him look a bit of a fool.

Of course you could argue that the material had, at that point in time, not yet been classified as top secret. Therefore Marcel was still at liberty to show it to his wife and son, even though he KNEW it was very likely top secret ET material."

Why would Marcel think it was or would be "top secret material" just because he thought it was ET? Was there a government regulation or manual in existence at the time which said it was? Also, if it was top secret than why did the Air Force issue a press release telling the whole world about this top secret material being found?

Also, do we have documentation as to just what Marcel's security oath was? I'm extremely doubtful it mentioned anything about what to do with suspected ET material.

One burning question I have about this whole Roswell thing, is whether anyone, at any time, interviewed Marcel's wife or checked to see if she ever wrote anything about seeing the debris.

Paul Young said...

09rja said...
No I don't.....but common sense does..


Well, there you have it! Some anonymous wonder, (too gutless to even identify himself), has solved the conundrum that has puzzles "Ufologists" for decades.

ET's can not have visited Earth...because "common sense" says so.

Therefore...Timothy Good, Kevin Randle, Stan Friedman, Jacques Vallée...you chaps might as well make yourselves a cup of cocoa and go to bed....the UFO problem has been dealt with.

Paul Young said...

If something isn't significant, why would the government insist on it being kept secret.

09rja said...

Well, there you have it! Some anonymous wonder, (too gutless to even identify himself), has solved the conundrum that has puzzles "Ufologists" for decades.~Paul Young

Well UFO buffs are easily puzzled (and bamboozled). And why this hang up on my identity? What possible difference would that make?


If something isn't significant, why would the government insist on it being kept secret.~Paul Young

I've already explained that one (in the other thread). In case you have some sort of learning disability.....again: in many cases we are talking embarrassing stuff, concealing names, the fact the surveillance is happening, and so forth. In other words: stuff that is meaningless to the average person....but is important to them. Anyone who knows anything about Intel knows this.

Louis Nicholson said...

Brian Bell said:

"As I’ve already written, ALUMINUM FOIL was introduced for sale to the US public in 1947! NO ONE knew what it was until then because it wasn’t available in any form that an average person, or even military personnel, might instantly recognize what it was."

This may not be true, Brian. According to the Aluminum Association's website in their section entitled “The History of Aluminum Foil (www.aluminum.org/product-markets/foil-packaging):

 “Production of aluminum foil in the United States started in 1913. The first commercial use: packaging Life Savers into their now world-famous shiny metal tube. The demand for aluminum foil skyrocketed during World War II. Early military applications included the use of foil strips, dropped from bombers, to confuse and misguide radar tracking systems. Aluminum foil was so vital to the defense effort that families were encouraged to save strips of foil. In many towns, the collected foil balls could be exchanged for free entry to a movie theater. “

I submit that anyone who was in the military air services (and more than likely outside of those services) during WW2 would have known what foil looked and felt like.

james tankersley said...

Brian Bell......I find it EXTREMELY hard to think aluminum foil is spectacular in any way or form no matter what year it was introduced in! I dont think anyone in the 509th bomb group in Roswell would be so dumb to think flimsy lame foil of that type would come off an alien space craft! Not even a 5 year old child would think that! Remember what Jessie Marcel said about the foil like material he picked up? He stated it was thin foil he could not bend, break, or burn and tear making it very obvious he did not know what the hell it came off of and that it was not any thing he has ever seen before or since! The bigger piece of debris was hit on by a sledge hammer and bounced off upon impact! Plus you could wad up some of the strange foil material in your hand and when let go it would straighten itself back out IMMEDIATELY!

starman said...

james tankersley wrote:

"Did you not know that Jessie Marcel checked the wreckage for radiation before picking it up?"

This better answers Brian Bell than my previous comment.

As for aluminum foil, the key issue wasn't appearance but strange properties like reverting to its original form, and apparent indestructability.

KRandle said...

For those interested in such things, finding a weather balloon and rawin target wouldn't have been all that difficult. As mentioned, they had them in Roswell, and the weather station in Fort Worth used them, and many, many were available at Fort Sill near Lawton, Oklahoma, home of Army Artillery. They were used for calculating winds for firing of that artillery.

And, there would have been no reason to fly anything to Fort Worth. Cavitt said he recognized the debris as a weather balloon (though he told me that he wouldn't have been involved in chasing a weather balloon). Those in Roswell should have recognized it then and didn't need to send it to Fort Worth for identification, unless, of course, they were attempting to divert attention from Roswell to Fort Worth.

The real conundrum here is why the issued the press release at all. If it was a balloon, there was no reason for it. A rancher finds a weather balloon (or Mogul array), and it clearly is of terrestrial manufacture. He picks up the debris and that's it. No reason for any of the rest of it, which suggests something unusual. No reason for the press release, which draws attention to Roswell, until the stuff gets to Fort Worth.

Oh, and the FBI telex isn't written until after the stuff gets to Fort Worth and one or two of the officers there have already told newspaper reporters that it is a weather balloon. The FBI didn't go check it out, they just talked to the guys at the airfield who gave them the weather balloon story. The whole thing makes little sense...

Which means that something unusual was found by Brazel. Something he couldn't identify. Something that created such a mess that he drove into Roswell to alert the military about it. What all this translates to is a simple fact that whatever Brazel found, it was not a weather balloon and a rawin target, though that is what was photographed in Ramey's office.

Louis Nicholson said...

Part 1 of 2
Kevin Randle said:

"The real conundrum here is why the[y] issued the press release at all. If it was a balloon, there was no reason for it. A rancher finds a weather balloon (or Mogul array), and it clearly is of terrestrial manufacture. He picks up the debris and that's it. No reason for any of the rest of it, which suggests something unusual. No reason for the press release, which draws attention to Roswell, until the stuff gets to Fort Worth."

To me, this is the REALLY BIG issue in the Roswell saga. Kevin, you have said for years that the main problem with Roswell case is the lack of corroborating documentation in the form of letters, diaries or journals notes or other paperwork that was generated at or around the time of the crash. However, I believe that we always had such documentation in form of the initial RAAF press release in which they said it was a flying saucer. I believe that press releaseshould be considered at the very least, almost as valuable as any diary or letter from a first person witness for the following reasons:

1) The press release was issued by, and officially approved by, the Roswell Army Air Force. I do not believe anyone disputes that RAAF Commander Col. William Blanchard ordered Lt. Walter Haut to draft the release. I'm sure Col. Blanchard checked out the debris and Marcel's claims to his satisfaction before issuing such an earth- shattering public statement.

As Kevin pointed out, if the debris was mundane, why would Col Blanchard bother issuing a release? If he wanted to satisfy the public's curiosity about what crashed, he would just say what it was. If it was some top secret project, why would he issue any information at all? Or he could have just lied from the beginning by saying it was a weather balloon and be done with it. What would he and/or the air force have to gain by making up a story that it was flying saucer?

Could we imagine a scenario happening today in which a weather balloon (or other such mundane object) falls from the sky and the U. S. military tells the media it was a flying saucer and they recovered it? Sure, one can argue that the military back then was not as sophisticated as today's military, but most would agree that the powers commanding the mighty 509th Bomber group were not stupid or incompetent.

Louis Nicholson said...

Part 2 of 2
2) Some may argue that not only did Marcel make an idiotic tremendous blunder in not identifying the debris as a balloon, but Col. Blanchard also idiotically misidentified it or stupidly just took Marcel's word that he picked up pieces of an ET craft and ran to the press with it.. If Blanchard made such a ridiculous error, than why would the air force continue to promote him to the point he became a four star general? I know I wouldn't.

The press release can be read here: (http://www.angelfire.com/indie/anna_jones1/daily_record.html). It states that Marcel and “a detail from his [Intelligence] department” recovered the craft. Why can't this information have the same weight as a diary or note made by Marcel himself? Sure, one can argue that this is second hand information and therefore not credible, but a diary entry can also be attacked as being unreliable for a host of reasons. At least with this press release, we had Lt. Walter Haut's and Col. Blanchard's stamp of approval as to the authenticity of the information. In a personal note, we would not have anyone standing behind the statement other than Marcel himself. Plus, Marcel and other witnesses have corroborated the information since then. Therefore this release should perhaps be given more weight than a self-serving statement made in a personal note.

3) The release mentions Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot's observations of a saucer shaped ufo in Roswell, a few days prior to the crash. There is no indication that their observations had anything to do with what crashed at Roswell and therefore may be logically deemed as being irrelevant. However it does give some credence to the notion that other Roswell people saw something similar in appearance to what the crash witnesses observed. More importantly, it lets the public know that when the RAAF are talking about flying discs in the article they are referring to ET UFOs (and not something else as some skeptics have tried to argue). Mr. Wilmot, who the release avers “is one of the most respected and reliable citizens in town” initially wanted to keep his and his wife's observations secret until someone else would admit to seeing one. But then, according to the release, he decides to tell the RAAF about it at few minutes BEFORE they announce anything about the Roswell crash. What made him decide to divulge his story before the Roswell news came out? Sounds like he knew about a UFO crashing at Roswell before the air force told anyone. What did he hear, how and from and from whom? Also, given that a third party (the air force) vouches for his credibility in the article, it should be given more weight (although its relevancy is admittedly minimal) than if he had written it in a journal or diary. How many people would believe he was one of the most credible people in Roswell if the only source of that assertion was himself?

At any rate, maybe I am missing something, but I just can't see any reason why anyone in the Air Force would issue that first press release UNLESS IT WAS THE TRUTH. Right now, I strongly believe that Co.l Blanchard decided to tell the public the truth but his superiors later decided to cover it up and ordered him to do so. And for being such a great team player, he was later rewarded with several promotions. Plain and Simple.

09rja said...

"And, there would have been no reason to fly anything to Fort Worth. Cavitt said he recognized the debris as a weather balloon (though he told me that he wouldn't have been involved in chasing a weather balloon). Those in Roswell should have recognized it then and didn't need to send it to Fort Worth for identification, unless, of course, they were attempting to divert attention from Roswell to Fort Worth."~KR

Cavitt was out of the picture by the time him and Marcel got back to the base. (They went back in separate vehicles.) Blanchard made the mistake of listening to Marcel.....the press release went out.....then came the orders to fly it to Ft. Worth for identification.

This whole thing goes back to Marcel.

Paul Young said...

Anonymous wrote
"Well UFO buffs are easily puzzled (and bamboozled). And why this hang up on my identity? What possible difference would that make"

It suggests a lack of guts and lack of conviction to use an anonymous tag to attempt to belittle people genuinely puzzled by the ufo phenomenon. Much as I heavily disagree on much that Messer's Moody and Bell come out with, at least they have the decency to express their views without hiding who they are. There are other anonymous posters here but I can't think of any who are so aggressively against the ETH to not give it even the slightest consideration.

09rja said...

"It suggests a lack of guts and lack of conviction to use an anonymous tag to attempt to belittle people genuinely puzzled by the ufo phenomenon."~Paul Young

Well what it suggests is:

1. This is my Google account name that I use on multiple sites (including YouTube). To avoid personal harassment, I obviously wouldn't use my real name.

2. The level you would stoop to in a argument. We should be able to discuss the facts here without getting personal (or knowing anyone's name). I couldn't care less what your name is.

3. That you have clearly lost this argument. You know someone has when they resort to these type of tactics.

cda said...

Kevin:

Your 'conundrums' can be answered without much difficulty.

1. Why was the debris sent to Fort Worth?

Answer: because of all the flying disc publicity of the past two weeks and the fact that Gen. Ramey wanted to see it to satisfy his curiosity. It was he who requested it, so Blanchard obeyed his orders.

2. Why issue a press release at all?

Answer: Most likely to get the base some publicity, even if the stuff had probably been identified (with slight doubts, maybe). Haut had perhaps acted a bit too hastily, I agree.

3. The FBI telex makes every sense, since the USAF was duty bound at the time to inform the FBI of any 'flying disc' finds, if there were doubts about its identity. As the telex says, it was done because of the impending publicity in the press and radio, and the AF wanted to keep the FBI 'in the loop'. Perfectly natural.

4. Something a bit unusual was indeed found by Brazel. "Unusual" here can mean rare, confusing at first, widely scattered, dismembered, discoloured, with strange 'writing' on it, in fact anything you like. Balloons and Rawin targets HAD been found before, but this one was scattered over a very large area and maybe parts of it were, shall we say, 'weather affected' after a 3-week exposure. Also, remember the find was during a 'flying disc' scare period.

What this translates into is a simple fact that what was found in the desert is the same as:
(i) the object(s) in the photos
(ii) the object described in the telex
(iii) the object Ramey described on local radio that evening

cda said...

Louis Nicholson:

The object seen by the Wilmots was NOT part of the press release from the AF base. It was a quite separate affair and was seen several days earlier. Whether you want to associate it with the Roswell 'crash' is your own decision, but there is absolutely no established connection between the two cases.

KRandle said...

CDA -

1. If the debris was a weather balloon, there was no reason to send it to Fort Worth. Colonel Blanchard could have just told him, "General, it's a weather balloon." The end.

2. Why did the base need any publicity? It wasn't a commercial operation relying on visitors. And Haut didn't act hastily. He was ordered by Blanchard to issue the press release.

3. The military was not duty bound to tell the FBI anything. Two separate organizations with two different functions. Remember Hoover's complaint in the La. case that the Army grabbed it and wouldn't let the FBI see it.

4. There was nothing sufficiently unusual to fool anyone into thinking it was something other than what it was. What was displayed in Ramey's office was clearly a weather balloon, and the balloon story is what the Army was telling the FBI (but the FBI agent hadn't seen it) and it is certainly the object described by Ramey on the radio... but none of that negates the possibility that it was something else entirely.

Paul Young said...

Anonymous...you haven't "won" even one arguement here. Relentleesly rubbishing a subject, anonymously, is trolling.

cda said...

Paul:

It is not that ETH deserves consideration (which I agree it does); it is that those who promote it always follow this by telling us that this or that government (usually the USA) has known this truth for 7 decades and is still withholding it from the public and, more importantly, the whole of the scientific community, some of whom have devoted their careers to searching for extra-terrestrial life.

I am a UFO skeptic. This does NOT mean that I reject every UFO report ever made. However, when it comes to 'conspiracy' matters I certainly draw the line. Kevin won't like me bringing this up again, but 'Jack the Ripper' is hardly a good comparison to make!

09rja said...

"Anonymous...you haven't "won" even one arguement here."~Paul Young

Yes I have....when people resort to the tactics you have.....you know it right then and there.

Paul Young said...

Tactics? One doesn't need tactics. I simply demonstrate a few facts that show proof that secret files are still being kept for more than 70 years...or in the case of the Crimean War, files still secret from as long ago as 1856.

Watching you desperately attempt to ignore the fact that things can be kept secret for so long is hilarious.

Tactics? Chuckle. :-)

Nitram said...

BB wrote

"Again you failed to do your homework...You’re using modern day thinking. Until 1947 people used waxed paper to wrap things in. Thin aluminum (it wasn’t run by the way) was not a well known item at all as you claim."


"I find it EXTREMELY hard to think aluminum foil is spectacular in any way or form no matter what year it was introduced in!"
“Production of aluminum foil in the United States started in 1913. The first commercial use: packaging Life Savers into their now world-famous shiny metal tube. The demand for aluminum foil skyrocketed during World War II. Early military applications included the use of foil strips, dropped from bombers, to confuse and misguide radar tracking systems. Aluminum foil was so vital to the defense effort that families were encouraged to save strips of foil. In many towns, the collected foil balls could be exchanged for free entry to a movie theater. “

I submit that anyone who was in the military air services (and more than likely outside of those services) during WW2 would have known what foil looked and felt like."


Thank you James & Louis for your partial quotes above - you are both essentially correct and while I might not have quoted everything you said in your rebuttal posts you are correct and BB's post is inaccurate.
I didn't bother to contradict BB - no doubt David Rudiak had a good laugh also reading his comments.

Regards
Nitram

Nitram said...

CDA hilariously posted...

"Your 'conundrums' can be answered without much difficulty."

If the answer to the answers were so simple I would suggest that Kevin & David, who's IQ's are probably 300+ (in total) would have "solved the mystery" decades ago...

Kevin answered:

"Why did the base need any publicity? It wasn't a commercial operation relying on visitors. And Haut didn't act hastily. He was ordered by Blanchard to issue the press release."

Yes, a fairly silly statement from CDA - any further thoughts about why the base would want publicity? Lance, what do you think of CDA's comments?

Why I agree that what crashed was not ET, many of your comments CDA, along with BB's, simply create unnecessarily noise and are distracting.
Perhaps you could give a little bit more thought to your comments before posting...

Regards
Nitram

Nitram said...

CDA wrote:

"The object seen by the Wilmots was NOT part of the press release from the AF base. It was a quite separate affair and was seen several days earlier. Whether you want to associate it with the Roswell 'crash' is your own decision, but there is absolutely no established connection between the two cases."

Again, selecting facts to suit a theory....
If the Roswell crash "was" an ET event then it would appear quite likely that the two events are connected and further that the Ramey memo has something to do with it also...

Sorry, can't help but ask - have you watched the "Roswell Incident" yet CDA?
Amazing how much you know without having been there or spoken with anyone who was there at the time...

But that's debunkery for you...

Paul Young said...

cda,"I am a UFO skeptic"...
There's absolutely nothing wrong with healthy scepticism...in actuality it's crucial for the field of investigation. It's when a total boor comes along, as we get here occasionally,(another anonymous wonder is operating here presently, in fact.) and disregards the subject totally, that the status of that person changes from sceptic to debunker.
Hell...Even I'm a sceptic on about 99.9% of ET reports. I can only think of 6 or 7 that are a "very possibly ET" for me.

What the "holier than thou" armchair debunkers forget though is that it's the scepticism of certain ETH'ers who have probably done more to knock certain things on the head than anyone else. KR's sung from the rooftops about MJ12 and Glenn Dennis, for example.
However, there are some things that governments don't want us knowing (for various reasons)...and if you believe everything the governments tell us is true (and that you're a "conspiracy theory nut" if you question things)...then I really don't know what more I can tell you.

Nitram said...

Hi Paul

"ET's can not have visited Earth...because "common sense" says so."

I hear your frustration, but maybe I can get you to back down just a bit please before things get out of hand and the posts start getting deleted...

Perhaps someone does have a good reason for not showing his identity?

I note also that you have asked a number of very good questions which Lance and his team have failed to respond too...

Regards
Nitram

09rja said...

Tactics? One doesn't need tactics.I simply demonstrate a few facts that show proof that secret files are still being kept for more than 70 years...or in the case of the Crimean War, files still secret from as long ago as 1856.

How many times do we need to go over this? You cannot name a single case of any "files" concealing some Earth-shattering secret. That's one of the best tests right there. The other is the fact no foreign Intel source even hints at this. You think a 70 year reverse engineering project on maybe the biggest story ever would have been completely missed by other nations Intel services? Preposterous on it's face. No example for it either.

The Crimean War? You must be kidding.

09rja said...

What the "holier than thou" armchair debunkers forget though is that it's the scepticism of certain ETH'ers who have probably done more to knock certain things on the head than anyone else. KR's sung from the rooftops about MJ12 and Glenn Dennis, for example.~Paul Young

Are you kidding me? Who believed Dennis, Gerald Anderson, Jim Ragsdale, Kaufmann, etc in the first place? It was several different UFO investigators (including KR). And a these people still believe Jesse Marcel Sr.....in spite of the fact he lied to investigators.

Paul Young said...

Nitram... "I hear your frustration, but maybe I can get you to back down just a bit please before things get out of hand and the posts start getting deleted...

Sometimes Nitram, I have to wonder what the hell you're talking about.

09rja said...

Perhaps someone does have a good reason for not showing his identity?~Nitram Ang

Why would anyone care what anyone's real ID is for a conversation on a blog? (The only people who do are usually interested in some type of personal harassment.)

"I hear your frustration,...."~Nitram Ang

The frustration is in his (and many other UFO buffs) inability to place things into context and understand what they are reading. Notice his complete misunderstanding of what I said. Note this exchange:

Paul Young: Fortunately, you don't get to dictate what is, and what is not, a significant secret.

Me: No I don't.....but common sense does.

Paul Young: ET's can not have visited Earth...because "common sense" says so.

Note the fact he is misinterpreting my disbelief that the government could conceal this with the notion that no ET has ever visited here. Obviously those are seperate questions. That's a real problem with a lot of people in this field.

There is also the issue (common among conspiracy buffs) that they haven't done their homework. Anyone familiar with (for example) the history of the FOIA knows stuff gets concealed all the time (and ergo is called a "secret") that really doesn't mean anything. Kevin himself pointed this out on Martin Willis's show a few weeks back:

"Stan [Friedman] use to have a document that he finally got through FOIA and it had like pages and pages of everything blacked out and you'd see one word or a page number here and there and it was just absolutely worthless. We finally got the rest of the document and we understand now it had really nothing to do with UFOs, the reason it was classified is it talked about listening posts that were based in Turkey that were monitoring Soviet communications. So at the time it was a national security item."~Kevin Randle on the Martin Willis Show (7/17/18 at about the 1:36:25 mark)

cda said...

Nitram (or Martin):

One of those who hide their identity on this blog is none other than yourself.

You suggest Kevin and David together possess IQs of 300+. Maybe you conclude from this (if your figures are right) that these two must know what they are talking about re Roswell, while the rest of us do not.

I put it to you, and Kevin & David (if he is still active) that the object seen by the Wilmots has no connection whatever with the debris found by Brazel in the desert.

The Wilmots saw their object streak by overhead on the evening of July 2, shaped like a saucer or maybe two saucers. The Roswell debris was first found scattered over the desert floor on June 14 and does not resemble a saucer in any shape or form.

Do you STILL think there even MIGHT BE a connection between the two events? You say that if it was an ET event then it is "quite likely" there is a connection. Really? I suppose the Wilmot's craft possibly emanated from Alpha Centauri whilst the Brazel object came from Zeta Reticuli. So yes there indeed might still be an exceedingly (!) small connection.

Being someone of a lowish IQ (much lower than your own or of that of David or Kevin) I can see that further discussion is pointless. I am just not up to the intelligence required.

Kevin:

You might like to consider allowing only those with a proven high IQ of 150+ to comment on this blog.

cda said...

Nitram asks about the RAAF base and publicity. There is no reason for any AFB to want publicity in the normal course of events.

But here we had an exception, namely the 'flying disc' publicity of the previous 2 weeks. If there was the slightest chance of gaining hold of actual hardware, as Brazel's discovery was, than it is indeed likely that an AFB would welcome the chance of some publicity in recovering the stuff and announcing it, even if it were later to end up as something conventional.

A case of being "fustest with the mostest". RAAF had the real hardware, so they thought. Therefore why not announce it to the world, before any other AF base could do so?

By the way: Would Nitram care to comment on the IQ of Walter Haut?

Paul Young said...

Anonymous..."Why would anyone care what anyone's real ID is for a conversation on a blog?"

Because (and certainly in your case) anonymous posters tend to be a gutless boor.

Anonymous..." Are you kidding me? Who believed Dennis, Gerald Anderson, Jim Ragsdale, Kaufmann, etc in the first place?"

Not me. I never believed them. However when people inject themselves into a story, to nail them as liars, certain people had to get off their backsides and investigate them thoroughly to eliminate them from the saga. The ETH'ers have been predominant in doing the leg work. ( Don't forget the targets of the hoaxers are usually the "believers".)

Anonymous..."The Crimean War? You must be kidding."

Nope... Files still secret and access still denied 150 years after the event. When the powers that be don't want little people (like you) prying...they keep them secret.

Paul Young said...

Anonymous..."Why would anyone care what anyone's real ID is for a conversation on a blog?"

Because (and certainly in your case) anonymous posters tend to be a gutless boor.

Anonymous..." Are you kidding me? Who believed Dennis, Gerald Anderson, Jim Ragsdale, Kaufmann, etc in the first place?"

Not me. I never believed them. However when people inject themselves into a story, to nail them as liars, certain people had to get off their backsides and investigate them thoroughly to eliminate them from the saga. The ETH'ers have been predominant in doing the leg work. ( Don't forget the targets of the hoaxers are usually the "believers".)

Anonymous..."The Crimean War? You must be kidding."

Nope... Files still secret and access still denied 150 years after the event. When the powers that be don't want little people (like you) prying...they keep them secret.

Nitram said...

CDA blustered:

"One of those who hide their identity on this blog is none other than yourself."

09rja posted:

"Why would anyone care what anyone's real ID is for a conversation on a blog? (The only people who do are usually interested in some type of personal harassment.)"

I'll leave you two to sort that out...

CDA continues:

"You suggest Kevin and David together possess IQs of 300+. Maybe you conclude from this (if your figures are right) that these two must know what they are talking about re Roswell, while the rest of us do not."

Yeah , my figures are right. Nobody in the world knows more about Roswell than DR & KR, although we do have a few comedians who have never been to Roswell, who have never spoken to any of the witnesses and who post here for some reason, that would argue the toss!

CDA continues firing off target...

"I put it to you, and Kevin & David (if he is still active) that the object seen by the Wilmots has no connection whatever with the debris found by Brazel in the desert."

That is your opinion only. "If" it is later proven that Roswell was an ET event then I would give a very high likelihood that the Wilmots saw it first?!
Remember that nobody else thinks that the Ramey memo is a sci-fi novel either...


CDA concluded:

"Being someone of a lowish IQ (much lower than your own or of that of David or Kevin) I can see that further discussion is pointless. I am just not up to the intelligence required."

Don't be too hard on yourself. You & BB do come up with some ideas that nobody would ever think of and it is all part of solving this investigation...

Regards
Nitram

Nitram said...

CDA wrote

"By the way: Would Nitram care to comment on the IQ of Walter Haut?"

Ok - I'll bite - more information please?

Regards
Nitram

Nitram said...

Paul wrote:

"Sometimes Nitram, I have to wonder what the hell you're talking about."

Well, the "toilet" analogy post was perhaps a little OTT...

starman said...

cda wrote:

"The Roswell debris was first found scattered over the desert floor on June 14...."

Lol, first the Foster ranch was not a "desert." More importantly Brazel's public statement reflected military coercion and coaching. I'd sooner believe what he told his son, who found some of the material himself.

cda said...

Kevin:

Please, settle this once and for all. What is your IQ? I only ask because Nitram raised this matter and he appears to believe that only those whose IQs are 150+ are fit to discuss Roswell. The rest of us are mere "comedians", as he puts it.

Nitram:

Even if the object turns out to be ET (say before the year 3000) Brazel still saw it first. Compare the dates if in doubt. The Wilmots saw it on July 2; Brazel discovered it on his ranch on June 14. There COULD be a sort of time-reversal here but, as I say, my IQ is too low to comprehend such things.

09rja said...

"Because (and certainly in your case) anonymous posters tend to be a gutless boor."~Paul Young

Well you certainly are. But it isn't unusual for people who believe in these theories to get their arguments blown out of the water and start getting personal. It's consistent regardless of what theory we are talking about. Like I said: you know someone has lost the argument when they do it.


"Not me. I never believed them. However when people inject themselves into a story, to nail them as liars, certain people had to get off their backsides and investigate them thoroughly to eliminate them from the saga. The ETH'ers have been predominant in doing the leg work. ( Don't forget the targets of the hoaxers are usually the "believers".)"~Paul Young

lol UFO researchers (who believed Roswell involved ETs) held these guys up as telling the truth in the first place. (See (for example) later editions of Friedman's books on this subject where he disavows Anderson after previously endorsing him. Kevin endorsed some of these people himself.) So you want to say these same people deleted them "from the saga" when they are the ones who found them and (originally) said they were credible?! Unreal.

If ever anyone needs a sample of how people in this field think....this is about as good as it gets.


"Nope... Files still secret and access still denied 150 years after the event. When the powers that be don't want little people (like you) prying...they keep them secret.~Paul Young

Yeah, we've been over that one. I may try writing it in braille next. But if you want to believe there is a "secret" file somewhere that says we've got ETs out in Area 51 somewhere.....I guess that is your privilege.

KRandle said...

CDA -

I don't think I'll answer that personal question because I doubt you'd believe the answer anyway.

Nitram said...


CDA wrote

... "Nitram raised this matter and he appears to believe that only those whose IQs are 150+ are fit to discuss Roswell. The rest of us are mere "comedians", as he puts it."

I never said you needed an IQ of 150+ to discuss Roswell. But yes, I think you should ask more questions CDA, rather than putting forward theories that simply have no basis in realty for example (and I will only give one example but there are many) that the Ramey was writing a "sci-fi novel" - that one takes the cake...

Not all the believers/skeptics are clowns - I never said that either.

But CDA, if Tiger Woods had a blog about Golf, I'm sure you would want to disagree
about what club selections he made over the course of 18 holes...

Paul Young said...

Seems "Anonymous" is happy to boor a blog and belittle its main subject matter...but insists on the mask of anonymity for fear of things getting personal. Hmmm, my initial analysis was correct then. He's simply trolling the blog.

Brian B said...

Paul wrote:

"Watching you desperately attempt to ignore the fact that things can be kept secret for so long is hilarious."

I do agree with Paul that SOME things can and have been "kept" secret for many decades and well beyond what anyone might think. I gave my own recent example (further up the comments) about how the US kept secret the truth that US soldiers deployed to Imperial Russia were held captive till their death and never released by the communists, and that information held from 1918 to about 1994 or so -- a good 76 years all for the sake of maintaining "relations" with the Soviets and not upsetting the families of the deceased. So it is "possible" for sure.

However, where I (and CDA) likely part ways with Paul, is that such a "discovery" would perhaps, and most probably, be "leaked" by someone credible. Some might say it already has been in the sense that all those supposedly honest former government and military men and women who have come forth to declare ET is alive and well are in fact the "leakers". But most can't prove a thing, don't have any evidence, and many have lied for personal notoriety. At least Snowden took documents to prove his claims.

But the fact remains there really is no reason why any government would purposely keep it secret for 100 years or more, or even the next 100 years. Most people don't give a rip about aliens. Science is trying to find them, and many people already think they exist. They aren't going to care one way or another, and all that hullaballoo about "society and religion breaking down" and "governments collapsing" is pure rubbish.

Most corporations would actually try to attempt to capitalize on the revelation, not run scared. And people are too busy with their children, jobs, politics, world events, etc. to even care one iota about an alien visitation in 1947.

So if "they" are keeping secrets about "it", then "it" is probably something else. Certainly not aliens.

Brian B said...

@Louis Nicholson who wrote:

"...but I just can't see any reason why anyone in the Air Force would issue that first press release UNLESS IT WAS THE TRUTH."

It was the "truth" as they saw it. As we've said already, people were looking for silver discs, foil objects, etc. that appeared to fly in the sky perhaps even like kites. The military was interested too and seeking some answers. They found some junk where typically junk doesn't get found, it was foil-like, and Brazel said it "might be from a flying saucer". So Blanchard trusted his men, or at least Marcel, and said if that's what it is then let people know we found one. Don't underestimate the ego's of elite military men looking to get recognized for a major discovery. They published what they thought it was at the time...that's all. And don't forget that Haut once said in a local TV interview at the Roswell UFO festival that "the entire thing was just one big mistake" and then later recanted it and blamed the media for their error, after he recognized he just hurt his town's special revenue generating event (and his UFO museum).

@Nitram Ang

Well "Angie Martin" or whatever your real name is (I suspect perhaps you're Linda Moulton Howe...or perhaps you're Stan Friedman himself?). In any case who cares. You've been hiding for this long so it doesn't matter. But as Paul has said, its a bit hard to take an anonymous troll seriously when she interjects nothing but conflict into a discussion.

And because you seem to be the queen of history regarding aluminum foil production and its use in the common kitchen, I might add some of your notions are incorrect.

Wax Paper (Butcher paper) was commercialized to households in 1927 until replaced in the US by Reynolds Wrap (aluminum foil) in 1947. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to track this history and aluminum foil was not prevalent in grocery stores or kitchens until 1947. That's a fact.

What you are referring to is the invention of "tin foil" which used actual tin and was invented in Europe in the late 19th Century. Sure, a guy in Switzerland invented "tin foil" in 1910, and some attempted to produce it in the US in 1913, but it never saw wide spread use until 1947.

The scrap drives you're referring to during WWII were for ALL METALS not just aluminum. Pots, pans, etc. Sure some new candy wrappers did employ aluminum foil, but it was backed by paper. Basically a silver paper -- not aluminum foil as known after 1947.

The fact that the military used some foil for various purposes makes little difference here. You are assuming that Marcel was fully knowledgeable about ALL military inventions and materials during WWII as if he were some sort of Einsteinium Encyclopedia of WWII materials and their uses. I doubt that's the case, and if he heard that flying saucers might be made of aluminum or some metal, finding a large amount of it in the desert may have perplexed him. And if I am wrong, and you (and your quoted friends) are correct, then IF Marcel knew what foil was, then why didn't he simply assume all that foil in the desert was actually from some experimental drop of yet another WWII era radar concealment test?

PS. Your friends' quotes are unfortunately plagiarized directly from www.aluminum.org

Louis Nicholson said...

Brian Bell wrote:
“It was the "truth" as they saw it. As we've said already, people were looking for silver discs, foil objects, etc. that appeared to fly in the sky perhaps even like kites. The military was interested too and seeking some answers. They found some junk where typically junk doesn't get found, it was foil-like, and Brazel said it "might be from a flying saucer". So Blanchard trusted his men, or at least Marcel, and said if that's what it is then let people know we found one.”

As we all know, in 1994, U.S. Air Force officially stated that the actual truth of what crashed was a Project Mogul balloon. Are you saying that Col. Blanchard (as well as Major Marcel) would have been completely oblivious to Project Mogul, if that was in fact what crashed? You say because they found “some junk where typically junk doesn't get found, it was foil-like, and Brazel said “it might be from a flying saucer,” Blanchard (because of his ego and a desire to know answers about UFOs) decided it MUST NOT BE Project Mogul, MUST NOT BE a common weather balloon that were flown almost daily and MUST NOT BE anything else mundane, but rather IT MUST BE WITHOUT ANY DOUBT one of the most sensational things imaginable, a flying saucer from another world.

For some strange reason, there's been some discussion in this blog about certain people's I.Qs. I wonder what Col. Blanchard's I.Q. was for him to make such a ridiculous decision as you have proffered?

Now some skeptics will say that the Project Mogul explanation was a lie and that is why Col. Blanchard didn't know about it but it still was not an ET event. As has been argued ad nauseam, why would the Air Force lie if they had nothing to hide? What man-made project could have been so secret in 1947 that they found it necessary to lie about in 1994?

Paul Young said...

BB..."I do agree with Paul that SOME things can and have been "kept" secret for many decades and well beyond what anyone might think. I gave my own recent example (further up the comments) about how the US kept secret the truth that US soldiers deployed to Imperial Russia were held captive till their death and never released by the communists, and that information held from 1918 to about 1994 or so -- a good 76 years all for the sake of maintaining "relations" with the Soviets and not upsetting the families of the deceased. So it is "possible" for sure."

That's all that I've been saying...that if the political will is there, then secrets can be kept until deemed necessary.
The sticking point is, "what is...and what isn't", worth keeping secret. I honestly can't get why some people would think an alien event might not be worth keeping...yet accept that files on something like the Crimean War, can!

BB..."However, where I (and CDA) likely part ways with Paul, is that such a "discovery" would perhaps, and most probably, be "leaked" by someone credible. Some might say it already has been in the sense that all those supposedly honest former government and military men and women who have come forth to declare ET is alive and well are in fact the "leakers".

I'm one of those "some".
I'd say credible people have leaked!
Pioneering astronauts like Cooper and Mitchell wouldn't have "gotten the job" if they weren't exceptional and credible men.
When people of the calibre of Admiral Hill-Norton (a man who could only be credible) believe things were being kept from him, you have to sit up and listen.

Could Hynek be classed as a credible person? No one (to my knowledge) studied American cases to the degree he did.

But yes...irritatingly for a believer of the ETH, cast iron evidence is seemingly out of reach. (And it drives me up the wall.)


BB..."But the fact remains there really is no reason why any government would purposely keep it secret for 100 years or more, or even the next 100 years."

Yes. This is probably the question I find most difficult to explain away and proper UFOlogists (not armchair enthusiasts, like me) can't agree on either. My own theory, as you know, is that maybe the knowledge on who they are and what do they want, hasn't progressed much since "foo-fighter" days...so what was considered keeping quiet about in the mid-40's stands for today.

BB..."They aren't going to care one way or another, and all that hullaballoo about "society and religion breaking down" and "governments collapsing" is pure rubbish."

I totally agree about the society thing. If the UN made an official statement tonight...I'd still have bills to pay so I'd be in work tomorrow morning...(telling everyone "I told you so...you all owe me a pint of bitter.)

The religious aspect is much less predictable because various religions vary dramatically. Difficult to predict the short-term reaction. But yes...I'd agree that it shouldn't be enough to keep the rest of us in the dark over.


BB..."So if "they" are keeping secrets about "it", then "it" is probably something else. Certainly not aliens."

For the life of me, I can't think what else would warrant such an Herculean effort to hush up.
Extra-dimensional hypothesis, generally speaking, boils down to the same thing as the ETH...as in it would be proof of other intelligent life in a place other than here.

**********
Such a breath of fresh air to discuss things with a genuine sceptic who has the nerve not to be worried about sharing who he is.

09rja said...

"Seems "Anonymous" is happy to boor a blog and belittle its main subject matter...but insists on the mask of anonymity for fear of things getting personal. Hmmm, my initial analysis was correct then. He's simply trolling the blog."~Paul Young

Considering what you have said here (i.e. your toilet jokes on the other thread, etc), you've got a brass set in saying that. But no, I am not here to "troll" at all. Just because the Roswell case is weak.....don't get mad at me.

09rja said...

"That's all that I've been saying...that if the political will is there, then secrets can be kept until deemed necessary.
The sticking point is, "what is...and what isn't", worth keeping secret. I honestly can't get why some people would think an alien event might not be worth keeping...yet accept that files on something like the Crimean War, can!"
~Paul Young

The differences have been explained to you multiple times on other threads. (Probably here too....but I didn't even bother to look back.

But in case you are forgetful let's revisit the top things Paul is still struggling with and provide him with answers (yet again):

Secrets can be kept for more than 70 years...as demonstrated.

Yes, meaningless/insignificant secrets can be kept.

Why conceal for so long if the secret is insignificant.

Organizations like the CIA routinely hide things like that to conceal names, means of intelligence gathering, the fact they are gathering Intel in the first place and so on. In other cases they are covering up outright wrongdoing (like plotting with the mob to kill Castro or other embarrassing stuff). These things undermine their credibility and can make asking for funding more difficult. To the average person, it's meaningless.....on Capital Hill.....it makes things difficult. Obviously a crashed UFO doesn't quite fall into this category.

And obviously "significant" otherwise they wouldn't be kept secret for so long.

Significant to them.....to most everyone else....not so much (as explained). Some of the revelations of (for example) of the Church Committee got mostly yawns out of the average person. But for the CIA, it was a PR nightmare.

How do you know what are in those files? They're secret.

We have a track record to look at. Saying there is proof of some ET crash in a file out at Langley ignores what has happened to secrets anywhere near of this magnitude in the past: either it's leaked by a insider or discovered by foreign Intel. neither has happened with any of these "crashes". And no, none of the so-called leaks in this constitute real leaks because we are still debating if it happened. Nobody is debating if the Pentagon papers are real or if Iran-Contra actually happened.

Hopefully that makes things clear for you.

"Such a breath of fresh air to discuss things with a genuine sceptic who has the nerve not to be worried about sharing who he is."~Paul Young

And knowing who he is changes what?

cda said...

Paul:

The only reason Lord Hill-Norton believed that things were being kept from him is that he was an ETHer and the government spokesmen were not. Thus whenever someone from on high made a negative pronouncement about UFOs, Hill-Norton, as a believer, decided that ET existence was a well-kept secret, even from him.

You seem to think that because of his rank his knowledge of these matters was worth its weight in gold. Quite wrong: he merely thought that as an Admiral of the Fleet he would be 'in the know' if ETs existed.

The same applied to Lord Dowding and his own position as leader of the Battle of Britain. He was deeply immersed in ufology, spiritualism and goodness knows what else. Just because he was at the top of the RAF did NOT make him any more of an authority on UFOs than you or I. He was just keen on unconventional subjects.

Astronauts Cooper and Mitchell have had their own sightings explained long, long ago. The same applies to them: they became UFO enthusiasts. They had UFO experiences and got a bit 'hooked' on ETH.

It should have become apparent by now that the reason cast iron evidence is seemingly "out of reach" (to quote yourself) is because it does not exist.

But don't get despondent, it might really exist one day. But not in our lifetimes, I am very certain.

cda said...

09RJA:

Re your debate with Paul:

Probably the best reason why no agency in the USA would ever try to keep a known ET crash or landing secret is that if such an event should happen once, say in the USA, it is very probable that it would happen again somewhere else, i.e. in another country, who might well behave quite differently and release the great news at once (after verification of course).

Surely no country wants to 'lose out' on announcing such a monumental scientific discovery and risk another country getting in first with the news. That alone, I suggest, is sufficient to almost totally rule out the dotty idea that any one country, such as the USA, possesses this news and has done so for 7 decades.

09rja said...

"It should have become apparent by now that the reason cast iron evidence is seemingly "out of reach" (to quote yourself) is because it does not exist."~CDA

Bingo! That's the part that should give them pause.

Paul Young said...

cda... The question was whether or not these people were credible people.

Nitram said...

BB wrote

"Wax Paper (Butcher paper) was commercialized to households in 1927 until replaced in the US by Reynolds Wrap (aluminum foil) in 1947. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to track this history and aluminum foil was not prevalent in grocery stores or kitchens until 1947. That's a fact."

Assuming what you say is correct, do you have evidence of any other fathers waking their families in the early hours of the morning (in 1948 or later years) to show them tin foil?

The point is BB - it doesn't have "memory metal" abilities and it's not that amazing to look at...

BB continued to copy and paste...

"Sure some new candy wrappers did employ aluminum foil, but it was backed by paper. Basically a silver paper -- not aluminum foil as known after 1947."

So, essentially what fooled Marcel Senior was the lack of paper backing!
Also, nobody has seen tin foil (with or without paper backing) flying at 1700 miles an hour if we link up the dots with Lance's scenario.

BB & CDA - Just because the mogul case is weak.....don't get mad at me.

cda said...

We have had a lively and lovely debate here on this blessed Roswell (non) event. As I recall, it all arose out of Marcel's 1947-48 diary which his grandson has recovered and which we all eagerly await to see if it does, finally, contain the great truth about the debris in the desert (and maybe whether the Wilmots really saw the same thing as Brazel stumbled across on his ranch).

So let us all await, with our hearts beating ever faster, to learn the contents of Jesse Marcel's diary.

Any news yet, Kevin, or do have to wait until the year 3000?

Paul Young said...

cda...Surely no country wants to 'lose out' on announcing such a monumental scientific discovery and risk another country getting in first with the news. That alone, I suggest, is sufficient to almost totally rule out the dotty idea that any one country, such as the USA, possesses this news and has done so for 7 decades...

This point you keep making, cda, is nearly as daft as your claim that things can't be kept secret for 70 years.
Do you really think that if a future UFO crash happened in New Guinea and some cannibalistic tribe retrieved it, that it would make a jot of difference to their scientific standing in the world?

Are you having a laugh?


In any case...if the Americans thought they couldn't stand to have their noses put out of joint, all they'd have to do (now that the cat is out of the bag)...is to THEN release their own files and say "well, actually, we've had one since 1947."


Think about it cda. If tonight a UFO crashed and was retrieved and shown to the world, proving the ETH...then the last thing the worlds population and science communities would be remotely arsed about is WHO announces it.

Louis Nicholson said...

CDA said:

“Surely no country wants to 'lose out' on announcing such a monumental scientific discovery and risk another
country getting in first with the news. That alone, I suggest, is sufficient to almost totally rule out the dotty idea that any one country, such as the USA, possesses this news and has done so for 7 decades. “

I know UFO lobbyist Steven Bassett has been spouting the notion that the U.S would very much like to be the first country to disclose if governmental disclosure were to ever take place. However, why assume that the U.S. or any other country would actually want to be the first to disclose? Such a move may have substantial dangers.

First, even if a government were to release thousands of documents attesting to their knowledge of the existence of aliens along with clear video and still photos of same, many people just wouldn't believe it and as a result, may develop great disdain for the government. They would say its all fake news and there's some hidden agenda behind the blatant lie. Indeed, look how many people, including many UFO researchers and believers, who refuse to even acknowledge that what is depicted in the Tic Tac and Gimbal videos is even a true unknown object (let alone possibly ET), despite a highly credible and highly trained Navy pilot seeing the object with his own eyes and the objects appearing on radar as described. Such persons disbelieve only because they disbelieve and nothing else.

Second, for those who would believe the disclosure, there is still a real mystery as to whether a substantial number of them would have great fear and possibly display some anti-social behavior as a result. Maybe all governments would rather another one take the lead in disclosure so they can observe how the world reacts before they say anything about what they know.

Third, given that the U.S. has, in my opinion, repeatedly lied about their knowledge of ET, it would seem they would never want to voluntarily disclose so they would not have to admit that they lied in the past. For example, if Russia suddenly disclosed, the U.S. would probably act surprised like everyone else never admitting that they have known about ET, and covered up that knowledge, for many years. They would just continue the cover-up of what they knew in the past forever.

Nitram said...

Paul kicking CDA to the floor:

"Think about it cda. If tonight a UFO crashed and was retrieved and shown to the world, proving the ETH...then the last thing the worlds population and science communities would be remotely arsed about is WHO announces it."

Paul, to be fair the Yanks do like to be the first to discover things and did get their noses a little out of joint not being the first to invent the TV...

CDA - you missed the earlier post:

"I think you should ask more questions CDA, rather than putting forward theories that simply have no basis in reality..." If you get my drift...

And yes, you and the other Roswell novice BB give me a good laugh...

cda said...

Yes, this topic has drained and exhausted me in my advancing years. Paul and Nitram clearly have the knowledge and higher intelligence needed to deal with Roswell. My IQ is simply not up to it.

I therefore concede the above points to them and retire from this particular debate (or investigation as Nitram calls it).

09rja said...

""Think about it cda. If tonight a UFO crashed and was retrieved and shown to the world, proving the ETH...then the last thing the worlds population and science communities would be remotely arsed about is WHO announces it."

Paul, to be fair the Yanks do like to be the first to discover things and did get their noses a little out of joint not being the first to invent the TV...
~Nitram Ang

So if being first means nothing in international politics (or apparently matters only to the USA).....why (for example) the Space Race/Moon Race between the USSR and the USA?

Paul Young said...

I don't see the government of Iceland jumping up and down over their boy, Leif Erikson, not getting enough credit for making it to the "New World" hundreds of years before that Columbus chap.

starman said...

Being first certainly means something but as I and Louis Nicholson have noted, with regard to disclosure of advanced ETs, there are other considerations, potentially far more important and lending themselves to caution.

09rja said...

"I don't see the government of Iceland jumping up and down over their boy, Leif Erikson, not getting enough credit for making it to the "New World" hundreds of years before that Columbus chap."~Paul Young

Who exactly is Iceland in international competition with at this point? Again you people ignore the context of the situation (i.e. in 1947). World history is filled with rivalries and competition. Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of history knows this.

09rja said...

"Being first certainly means something but as I and Louis Nicholson have noted, with regard to disclosure of advanced ETs, there are other considerations, potentially far more important and lending themselves to caution."~Starman

Those reasons are (of course) nonsense. For example, to say they would worry about such disclosure making them look bad (for covering up) could easily be handled by a incoming administration. They could simply say: "This is privy to the executive branch.....the last guys were not honest enough to tell you....but I am!"

Worried about trusting government? Who trusts gov in the first place? Total nonsense.

Nitram said...

Starman wrote

"Being first certainly means something..., with regard to disclosure of advanced ETs, there are other considerations, potentially far more important and lending themselves to caution."

While I personally don't believe that we have ever been visited, I think Starman's comment above is fair and reasonable.

Regards
Nitram

Mr. Sweepy said...

Kevin,

In my original point about the weather in the Roswell around the time of the said crash, I found after researching your own footnote the following:

From:
https://www.theufochronicles.com/2018/05/an-extraterrestrial-flying-disk-crashed-near-Roswell.html

"On or about July 8, 1947 a press release was issued stating personnel from Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) had retrieved the remnants of a crashed flying disk (Mutual UFO Network [MUFON], n.d.-b). Although, nobody actually saw the disk in the air, the press release conveyed that a flying disk had crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico (Rudiak, 2001a). Allegedly, the flying disk was damaged during a powerful storm. As might have been predicted, a military whitewash followed (Olmsted, 2009)."

My point is clear. Why would the army air force even attempt to launch a balloon of any type during a storm? Common sense is says that you wait after the storm has passed or if this was a simple weather balloon, why all the security? And it if was a weather balloon why not simple make a telephone call to let the Roswell air force base know that it had been launched?

Weather balloons were common in the 1940's and surely this was no big deal. That is part of my reasoning why the UFO story told by Marcel.

Brian B said...

“I don't see the government of Iceland jumping up and down over their boy, Leif Erikson.”

>> Paul, you know that’s a pretty lame example. Would Icelanders even care?

“..with regard to disclosure of advanced ETs, there are other considerations, potentially far more important and lending themselves to caution.”

>>Starman, are you referring to the “billions” of people who would go “crazy” seconds after hearing the news thus toppling governments world-wide and placing society in utter chaos? Let’s get real, even the threat of Avian Flu hasn’t done such things and it’s a far greater, deadly risk.

“...and did get their noses a little out of joint not being the first to invent the TV...”

>>Nitram loves to keep silly nonsensical examples alive. The reality is a US born Mormon boy named Farnsworth actually “invented” modern electronic TV long before RCA, which is a US corporation. You’ve watched “Contact” one too many times.

“They would say its all fake news and there's some hidden agenda behind the blatant lie. Indeed, look how many people, including many UFO researchers and believers, who refuse to even acknowledge that what is depicted in the Tic Tac and Gimbal videos ...”

>>Louis, those videos have repeatedly been shown to be terrestrial in nature. Not alien spacecraft. This is true of both skeptics and alien believing UFO buffs (like John Leer).

https://www.metabunk.org/nyt-gimbal-video-of-u-s-navy-jet-encounter-with-unknown-object.t9333/

starman said...

@Brian Bell

We have the means to deal with flu, but our ability to deal with advanced ETs is questionable at best. Nor can we be sure of their motives. Since the government can't assure us they aren't dangerous nor protect us if they are, I think the psychological reaction (following disclosure) could be highly adverse. Hence it is prudent not to reveal their existence.

@09rja

I think blame for lying and covering up is the least of the government's worries.

Paul Young said...

The point is that "being first" to announce the ETH is a reality, would be irrelevant around 10 minutes after that announcement...almost immediately, much more important questions would be on the agenda.

Brian...the Icelandic thing displays that people can claim Columbus discovered the New World till the cows come home...but we all know an Icelander did.
Iceland don't feel the need to scream from the rooftops same as USA wouldn't be that bothered...and in any case if USA felt the need for one-upmanship...they could release their earlier retrievals (IF they have any)...at any time.

KRandle said...

Mr. Sweepy -

Not my article and not my footnote. Take a look at the article again for the author's name. I pointed everyone to it for a full explanation of what the new theory was. I would not have written, "On or about July 8..." knowing full well that the date was July 8.

And finally, anyone who has watched the weather channel knows that what is happening some 75 miles away often has little to what is happening overhead. A look at the winds aloft data show that sometimes the data are missing with no explanation for their absence. No data gathered, no data received, no balloon launch... just a variety of problems. I think you read too much into that article.

09rja said...

"Paul, you know that’s a pretty lame example."~Brian Bell

Pathetic is what I would call it. Completely ignores the context of the times.

Paul Young said...

Not pathetic. An accurate comparison.

09rja said...

"Not pathetic. An accurate comparison."

Completely laughable comparison. The present day Icelandic government going on about Leif Erikson's discoveries over a thousand years ago....being compared to the United States government (at the beginning of the Cold War) immediately revealing that they were in possession of proof of ET life? (Not only giving the USA good PR but also sending a message to the USSR that we now possessed technology that makes the A-bomb look like a sling shot.)

Completely ridiculous. Like I've said before: you guys just can't place anything in the proper context.

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