There
has been some discussion about those of us who seem to dwell in the past in our
UFO research. One of the reasons I live there is because I have been around
forever and have data going back decades. To prove this point I have been
looking into the case of Carroll Wayne Watts who claimed a contact/abduction
that hit the national media in February 1968.
As
I have mentioned several times, I was at the Army’s Primary Helicopter Flight
School in Mineral Wells, Texas, in March 1968. I wasn’t stationed all that far
tiny Loco, Texas, where Watts lived. I was able arrange to meet with Watts on
Saturday, March 9, 1968, at his house. I recorded the interview, created a
transcript, and I still have the tape. And yes, it hasn’t degraded so that you
can still listen to it.
The
point, however, as I reviewed the Watts interview and the other material
related to the case such as the Project Blue Book file, I found a couple of
paragraphs that haven’t really been examined. While it is clear that the Watts
tale is a hoax, there was something that Hector Quintanilla, then the chief of
Project Blue Book, wrote that is somewhat disturbing. He was describing his
involvement in the case and told reporters from Amarillo who called him:
Shortly
thereafter two reporters from Amarillo called. Apparently the story leaked and
[name redacted but is clearly Watts] had told them that he would have no story
for them until he had confirmation of the pictures from me. This, of course, he
never got. I told the reporters how I felt, but that they might have a good
story of the perpetration of a hoax if they looked into it.
Dr.
J. Allen Hynek, then the Air Force consultant to Project Blue Book, said:
If this is a hoax, it is a very, very
clever one. In fact, it would be such a clever hoax that it would be almost as
interesting as what this farmer claimed has happened to him.
What
we see here is a subtle manipulation of the press. The real story isn’t about
the UFO, the pictures that Watts had of the object (which the Condon Committee
and the Air Force managed to lose), but how the hoax had been perpetrated. This
is an attempt to divert attention from Watts and his story of contact with the
UFO into that of a clever hoax.
However,
the Air Force reports on the sighting which included interviews with Watts and
other witnesses ended saying, “Conclusive findings and cause are undetermined.”
As
I say, having interviewed Watts myself, I don’t believe the
story. What is
disturbing is that Hynek suggested the better story is how the hoax was
perpetrated, and Quintanilla telling reporters the same thing, that the more
interesting story is how the hoax was perpetrated. Then the Air Force and the
Condon Committee lost the pictures and you have to wonder about just what was
going on behind the scenes in the Air Force and at the University of Colorado.
The only surviving picture allegedly taken by Watts. |
In
fact, Watts sent me a letter about those pictures, saying that he thought they
were safer at the University of Colorado. Guess that didn’t work out so well.
All
this suggests a rather cavalier attitude to this sighting in particular and the
UFO investigations in general. You have to wonder what they might have found had
they actually done what they had been tasked to do, that is, investigate UFOs
to learn if there was anything of scientific significance that could be
discovered. Instead, they attempted to manipulate the media by telling them to
figure out how the hoax was perpetrated… something that neither the media nor
the Air Force actually discovered.
4 comments:
Most abductee cases are almost uniformly lacking in (believable) detail....it's tough to get much out of them.
The "unidentified" looks like a picture of a crayon imposed on a backdrop. If you look closely you can even make out the bands on the wrapper.
I can guess what happened to those pictures. They wound up in some imagery analyst's "Too hard" box, it never got worked, and then got shredded before a quarterly security audit. Now if it wound up at the University then I'm not sure what happened but probably the academia equivalent to whatever the Air Force calls shamming.
The object looks like a CO2 cartridge, maybe that is why the Air force called it a hoax.
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