Was He Really Joe King?

 

There are times when I find sightings that seem to fit into a pattern and are considered to be important. I was working on a book that dealt with the 1973 sightings, using a variety sources. The A.P.R.O. Bulletin published a sighting report in the March/April issue that began on page three. It said:

At about 4:30 p.m. on the 22^nd of March, 1973, Mr. Ron Miller and Joe King were enroute from Southeast Missouri State University, east of Patterson in Wayne County on Missouri State Highway 34. They observed a metallic-looking object which appeared to reflect the sunlight. They stopped the car to get a better look, glanced away for a second and when they looked back the object was gone.

I was providing the context for the wave of UFO sightings in 1973 and this short case added to the long list of reports from a specific area. In the rough draft of my book, I wrote:

The A.P.R.O. Bulletin published another sighting made by Ron Miller and Joe King. They were described as college students who said they had seen a metallic object that was reflecting sunlight. The stopped to get a better look but the object had vanished.

I was preparing the second draft, reviewing the cases when I spotted something that made me wonder if this sighting wasn’t a hoax. Give a look at the information provided by Coral Lorenzen in her report in the Bulletin and my short write up see if you can find the problem.

Jim and Coral Lorenzen, the leaders of APRO.

I decided that I wasn’t interested in a case with a witness named Joe King… joking. Yes, I did find a long list of people with that name including an actor born in 1883, a famous singer and the son of Stephen King who writes under the pen name Joe Hill. I do wonder why parents would do this to a kid, but I digress.

The trouble here is that we’re dealing with UFO sightings and there are dozens of cases in which young men of high school and college age engage in pranks and tricks and jokes. There simply isn’t enough information in the case to use it even if the name is real. Given that, I mention this because we need to be alert about this sort of information when investing UFO sightings. There is no way, in the world today, for me to verify the validity of the report. Had I been the original investigator, I would have asked for some sort of identification to make sure that I wasn’t been pranked by Joe King.

Given the few details of the sighting and the name of one of the witnesses, I took the sighting out of the book. All it had added was one more UFO sighting in the Piedmont area in 1973 and there are literally dozens of others. Many of those sightings can be found in The A.P.R.O. Bulletin.

The Last of the Gilles/Randle Debate

Quick note... This is the last of this argument because, as I say at the end, Gilles refuses to listen, rejects facts and endorses unverified testimony.

Greetings Kevin (Galileo, I suppose?)

I made you "Chess and Mat", whatever your new post concerning the question I previously adressed to you.

You didn’t have Check and Mate, except in your own mind. And what about the questions that I asked you? You seemed to have missed those.

Tom Carey, center, on the Debris Field. Please note the terrain.

It is the same concerning "the flakes" question:Read Sunlitle 4-4.

Same when I'm correcting you regarding fight#5,then #4...

Same as Mann reusing the tape,

Same as you not presenting Dubose's statments in Pflock's book to your readers...

Well, let’s see… you ask questions but refuse to answer mine. This should be a two-way street, not just one in which you stand on the corner and shout insults.

I am truly sorry that you are incapable of understanding my responses. I tell you again, Flight #4 was cancelled. There was a cluster of balloons launched later in the day, but the documentation in various reports, all available thanks to the Air Force in their big book about Roswell confirm this. We learn what these clusters were and they were not numbered Mogul flights. Charles Moore said that Flight #4 was configured the same way as #5, and that it performed as well as #5, if not better. That makes no sense, since there was no data recovered because it was cancelled… and if it was cancelled, then it couldn’t have dropped debris on the ranch. How hard is that to understand?

I have explained to you that in the early 1980s, Johnny Mann believed the important case was the Pascagoula abduction and saved the raw footage. However, the tape of Marcel that was used in the broadcast was SAVED, and he was quite clear on what he had seen and his conclusions based on those observations. So, your point is misleading… and I remind you that Mann said that at the time of the interviews Pascagoula was more important than Roswell because Roswell had not been fully investigated. I now expect you to take that statement out of context, since that seems to be your technique… He told me that reusing the raw footage tape had been a mistake. Get it? Given the timing and the situation when he conducted those interviews, the world vision was different than it is today.

I did not use Shandera’s statements as published in Karl’s book because that information had been debunked. Shandera did not record his interview, nor did he take notes. If you know otherwise, please provide links to that evidence. Please note this is the same situation in which I found myself with Mann. You reject it because of no taped interviews. Why do you accept Shandera’s claims, which have been contradicted by several others but reject Mann’s, which in the larger context is, more or less irrelevant.

We have Dubose on tape; he told others that the material was switched. What you probably don’t know, and probably will not care about, is that Shandera and Bill Moore were touted their new witness, J. Bond Johnson, who took six of the photos in Ramey’s office. Although they interviewed Johnson, it was after I had located him and conducted two or three hours of interviews all on tape. Johnson told me, that the material in Ramey’s office was a weather balloon… but, after Shandera and Moore interviewed him, the story changed and the debris in the pictures was the real stuff and because of that, they needed Dubose to say that it hadn’t been switched. Given all that, and that I had tapes of Johnson saying six or seven times that the stuff was the weather balloon, they needed Dubose to change his story. So, all we have is Shandra’s statement, without benefit of tape saying the opposite. Since I know that the information is invalid, I saw no reason to confuse the issue with it.

I did notice that you didn’t bother reading Dubose’s affidavit about what transpired in Ramey’s office, which, by the way, confirms my version of events in Ramey’s office suggesting that it was not the real stuff. So, why don’t you mention the affidavit? Isn’t that more egregious than me not bothering to repeat the lies you are so fond of in Karl’s book? Shandera has nothing and I have Dubose’s affidavit (not to mention the tapes and other witnesses again) … Aren’t you obligated to mention all that?

How do you make the decision about what to believe? You reject Johnny Mann because I didn’t tape the interview but you accept Jaime Shandera’s claim, which were not taped. Double standard.

Don Schmitt and me on the Impact Site closer to Roswell. Please note the
difference in the terrain. If there were two site, then Mogul is eliminated.

Well, if a Alien (ET) crash in Roswell is still your Cup of Tea. Your belief is yours, the facts NOT.

My true belief is that there is currently no viable explanation for the material recovered by Brazel on the ranch, nor the evidence that was found on the second site. I have said that it does not take us directly to the extraterrestrial and I would like some additional evidence. I’m just not going to push a balloon explanation when the documentation, testimonies and other evidence argue against it.

You also wrote: "the experts claimed something but we later learned they had it wrong". And you are comparing you to Galilleo!

This is absolute bullshit… I was suggesting only that once rigidly held beliefs were changed when new and better information was found. I could use several other examples and I thought the mention of the Coelacanth would have demonstrated that. When the first was caught in 1938, the majority of the scientists rejected it because everyone knew the Coelacanth had been extinct for 75 million years… when a second was caught, they began to realize that they still existed and the tone of the argument changed.

Or you could tell me that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a huge meteor impact and you could point to some scientific evidence for that. However, new information tells us that some dinosaurs survived that catastrophe and evolved into birds. Just shows that scientific thought evolves and only those with closed minds reject new information when it becomes available. This is apparently a concept that confuses you.

Excepted you are one of the "past" expert, here.

I'm very sad how you have turned, but cause Roswell you have so time and ressource devoted: it is normal when chess and mat, you are summoning special card "Galileo"

I’m am very sad that you are unable to grasp simple facts, that you reject evidence that doesn’t fit your narrative without evidence to back up that rejection and that you often resort to insults… Oh, and you never answer any questions, just throw out more nonsense.

BTW: I am concluding this conversation at this point because it is a waste of time with someone who simply can’t understand the facts. I have provided accurate information, notes on sources, and documentation but you rely on debunked material, misconceptions about events in Roswell and Alamogordo, and change facts to suit your narrative. And as Mark Cuban would say, “For those reasons I bow out of this conversation.”

More Information and Discussion about Mogul

 

Here’s a bit of irony. For some reason, I am unable to post comments on my blog. There is a glitch somewhere which I have failed to find. So, to respond to the various comments, I have chosen to post them here with either some or all the other comments. Mine will be in this font and color.

 

David Rudiak in his comment had a bit of a quibble with my statements about the staged launch in Alamogordo on July 10. My response is, “But my point was that the equipment being photographed was part of the gear from the NYU balloon project. Charles Moore told me that the ladder in the picture was one that he had bought. Didn't really say it was like a Mogul launch and was aware that there were rawins in the photographs. Only that the experiments in Alamogordo were not secret as proven by the press conference held on July 10.”

 

Gilles, in one of his many posts in the last couple of days, wrote:

You [meaning me] wrote:"But the balloon in the photos is not strips nor flakes. The photo balloon is again seemingly intact and appears pliable with pleats in it.
It isn't a balloon that was left exposed in the hot desert sun for a month."

Given that I have been at this for more than 30 years, I have no memory of such a quote, which is to say, it is something that I might have said decades ago but probably not. If I had more specific information so that I could review the context, we might understand this and if I actually said it.

In Sunlite 4-4, "we" already counter-argumented such false-claims (as in other our experiments): https://www.astronomyufo.com/UFO/SUNlite4_4.pdf

I think I understand this, which is a counter to the idea that the balloon envelop was not as degraded as it should have been after a month on the ground or was more degraded than it should have been if it had only laid out there for a couple of days. I will note that the rawin target seemed to have been shredded more than would be expected given its construction but I’m not sure that I was ever a part of such discussions. Clearly, what was photographed in Ramey’s office was a single balloon and a single rawin.

Now, I have a CRUCIAL question to You (I mean a "chess and mat"'s one). Just wondering your answer at my turn.

In Albert Crary's diary we have this line:

"Flew regular sono buoy in cluster of balloons and had good luck on receiver on ground but poor on plane."

If Albert Crary "had good luck on receiver on ground", what it means for you for the cluster of balloons embarking a sunobuoy, June, the 4th?
Canceled or have flow?

Chess and Mat.

The cluster of balloons was not a Mogul array and was launched later in the day on June 4. Charles Moore, however, as I have noted, eventually told us, without a shred of documentation, that Flight #4, a full array, constructed like that launched the next day, Flight #5, was sent up around three in the morning, in violation of the rules under which they were operating. That was not a cluster of balloons, which is something different. Two claimed separate events.

Greetings Kevin,

Sorry to have been rude: I only wanted to point you were NOT saying or presenting all to your readers (Dubose different antagonist/mutualy exclusive claims for example).

See below…

"So, I ask you, what time was Flight #4 launched"…

The answer is quite simple if you ask me and allow me to reply: Flight #5 was launched June, the 5th. Flight#4, the day before. Flight #6, June, the 7th.
Each ones during "Alamogordo II expedition".

Also (in order to PROOVE launches before fight #5 in Alamogordo):

May 28 Wed. « B-17 in from Watson with Mears, Hackman, NYU and Alden. They [Mears, Hackman, NYU and Alden] plan to flight test ballon tomorrow. [Moore is not YET at Almogordo]
May 29 thurs. « Mears and Hackman got balloon ascension off about 1 pm today with B-17 plan to follow it. »
You then have a launch here!

Moore arrived at Almogordo June the First (and was not present for the previous one) ===> June 1 sun. « […] arrived at Alamogordo about 0930. […] C47 with Moore, Schneider and others from NYU. Also Ireland, Minton, Olsen. NYU men worked on balloon in north Hanger.

June the 4th : Flew regular sono buoy in cluster of balloons and had good luck on receiver on ground but poor on plane. Out with Thompson pm. Shoot charges from 1800 to 2400. 

Didn’t asked for the dates, asked for the times of the launch on June 4. Charles Moore has provided more than one. So, what TIME was Flight #4 launched?

FLEW is probably a word a little French can't understand? Or???? We have at least TWO launches here, whatever you may write.

According to Moore, yes, there were two launches, one a full array and one that was a cluster of balloons that carried a sonobuoy up… and given the circumstances, probably never left the confines of the Alamogordo and White Sands test ranches.

You well know Flight #5 was retrieved near Roswell by the entry "B-17 and personnel out to Roswell. Recovered equipment some 25 mi east of Roswell." So, it makes perfect sens the remains of the fligh of the day befaore in the vincinity too...

Please, not you as invoking special MAGIC the Gathering cards "Roswell's game" , Rudiak, Sparks or Moore calculations. It such calculations, a simple data missing is like a butterfly effect, and we have not the all at the time to enter in a "computer".

Hadn’t planned on it, but we seem to have several individuals calculating the flight path of Flight #4 based on the winds aloft data and the shifting times supplied by Charles Moore. You might not like it, but the preponderance of the evidence seems to suggest that the flight would not have gotten to within 17 miles of the Brazel ranch as Moore claimed. I’ll note that 17 miles is a long way from the actual debris field.

And I notice that you again warn against using evidence that conflicts with your personal and often inaccurate beliefs.

"what was happening in Alamogordo was NOT classified."

Don’t know how to make it clearer. Even Charles Moore said that the experiment there were not classified. Publishing the information in the newspaper proves that those experiments were not classified. Ultimate purpose was classified, but not the experiments in Alamogordo.

What can I reply for such a false claim? If we follow you, Mogul was not top secret, the NYU team was not in Almogordo in charge of this project in the time and space of the Roswell event. Alamogordo was not a field for secret projects.

You do not follow me. The ultimate purpose of Mogul, to spy on the Soviets was highly classified. What the NYU team was doing in NM was not. I fail understand why you are incapable of grasping this simple concept.

Imho, NYU team was in hollidays at Alamogordo and launched ballons for festivities or bithdays of the crew's members here.... Seriously!

Your opinion on this is nonsense, again revealing that you do not understand the situation in 1947.

Gilles

Greetings Kevin and all,

"According to the written record Mogul Flight No. 4 was cancelled. There is no equivocation about it."
I will not more comment, cause after & in your own post you conceeded Flight "4" have flown. Therefore, it was a flight #4. That's a point I wanted you admit. Then "there is no equivocation" is wrong^^

Nope. Did not concede that Flight #4 flew. Said they launched a cluster of balloons later in the day, but that was not a full array. Two separate events… one that was a full array, according to Moore, that was cancelled and one that flew because, as Moore told me, “You can’t put the helium back in the bottles.” This was the cluster of balloons.

"The documentation from the New York University balloon project shows that the first successful flight in New Mexico was Flight No. 5."

Not exactly the documentation shows, Kevin. But:

It [Flight #5] was the first flight with telemetry and full heavy load.

I meant by that, "succesfull" not means "have flown" nor there is no previous flight which have been launched and the strange logic you present to your readers.

You are splitting a fine hair here. The record shows that Flight #5 was the first successful flight and does mention carrying a full load. But Moore said that Flight #4 was just like Flight #5, which means it too, was set up with the heavy equipment. It is you who seem incapable of grasping the finer points here.

For your Roswell big case or for such a magnitude, you admit yourself that Mann reused the tape!

At the time, Mann believed that the more important story was the Pascagoula abduction. That was his opinion, which he later conceded was wrong. But he was filming in the early 1980s before the Roswell story had gained traction. Your analysis here is wrong, but I’m not surprised by that.

 "If that statement is accurate, then the discussion and the investigation end right there".
So, there are statments who are accurate and others, not. And you are cherry-picking and choosing the ones you want?

Pot calling the kettle black. You do the same thing. You warn against using other evidence which does not agree with your opinion even when that testimony is relevant to the discussion.

Excepted "my" statment (of Marcel) is the first occuring of all. I choose the first dated claim cause several socio-psychological variables which can occure after more and more interview. You choose the second ones. Well, we have a different methodology!

Again, nice job of creating a situation that doesn’t exist. I normally, please note the qualification, try to present all the evidence and testimony to provide the readers with enough information to sort it out for themselves. Not sure to what you refer here, but again, note the qualification.

Concerning Dubose statments, you are ONE MORE TIME not saying the full true to your readers (sorry to be so rude) in order to maintain the Myth.
He said in the press conference that none piece was switched!

As You know at the first place ( as Roswell affair specialist) is that:

In "The Roswell Ufo Crash: What They Don’t Want You to Know", book by K. Pflock, there is the interview of Dubose made by Shandera. Shandera is presenting the Debris's pictures
Shandera: « two ufologists (Kevin Randle et Donald Schmitt) are claiming that the debris in Ramey office were switched and you have a weather- balloon".
Dubose : "Balivernes ! those pieces were never switched !"
Shandera pursues: "Then you are saying that the pieces in Ramey office really were the pieces coming from Roswell?"
Dubose : "It is absolutely right".
Shandera : "it is possible that Ramey or someone else have ordored the switch whithout informing you?"
Dubose: "I was here, and I was in responsabity/charge of such debris, they never have been switched".

Q.E.D.

Thank you for demonstrating your double standard here. You reject my statements about what Mann said to me, which is your right, but then quote from Jamie Shadera’s statements about what DuBose said to him without any tapes or notes. Shandera himself has said he didn’t tape the conversation. Not to mention that DuBose told others such as Kris Palmer and Don Ecker that the material was switched. And we do have DuBose’s statements on tape.

You didn’t bring up his affidavit in Pflock’s book, which said, “The material shown in the photographs in Gen. Ramey’s office was a weather balloon. The weather balloon explanation for the material was a cover to divert the attention of the press.”

So, who is being disingenuous here? You seem to have left some documentation and evidence out of your response.

Yourself wrote "other evidence, some of which had been taped." Mines had been taped too! And you well know it like a little French using not his native tong

You may well have tapes, but Shandera didn’t tape his interview with DuBose. If you know otherwise, please provide links.

"And, in addition, I hope this is my last word on this very narrow aspect of the Roswell case."
Hum, I again doubt of your statment: In general, one or two times by year, or a little less - I conceed -, you post a "anti-Mogull" offensive thread, as if you will obtain by it an Alien craft crashed in Roswell^^
I dont see why it will change!

So, information that disagrees with you is offensive… I find it offensive to reject evidence for the preconceived notion that there is no possibility for interstellar flight, therefore what fell at Roswell must be a balloon flight that was cancelled.

I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to dealt with information that it in error and false. But there is so much wrong out there that a couple times a year I feel the urge to correct some of it.

But remember, you started this because you objected to my note in a comment that Johnny Mann had interviewed Marcel who said the material in Ramey’s office was not the material he brought from Roswell. Take a look at the Internet, and you fine dozens of articles promoting the Mogul theory with not a comment about the alternative. In the public relations war, your side has won, as it did when claiming the Sun revolved around the Earth until Galileo looked through his telescope and the Coelacanth had not been found until another was pulled up years later, and dozens of other times when the experts claimed something but we later learned they had it wrong.

But note that I said this narrow aspect of the case and I’ll leave it at that.

A Mogul Response to Gilles and Bamm Bamm Bahama

(I will note that arguments made by these two people do not seem to address the evidence that removes Flight #4 from the story. We have documents to prove that Flight #4 never flew but this idea seems to have taken over. Too many sources have accepted that solution for Roswell without critical review. I have looked at some of this in the following. David Rudiak has posted comments to the original article, covering some of the same evidence. David proves links to his website and I suggest that those who wish a detailed explanation should look at Appendix C in Roswell in the 21st Century.)

Gilles –

I am getting tired of your insults. You are suggesting that I’m lying to my readers. You wrote, “As (usual now ?), you are not saying the true to your readers.”

I don’t know what other conclusion I can draw. I also realize that there is no evidence that I can cite suggesting that what was going on in New Mexico was unclassified that you will ever accept. I do not know what you mean by, “In Mogul (top secret 1A classified), only the obtained scientific dataes and how the devices are arranged were classified top secret 1A.”

But here’s the thing. You do not publish photographs of this alleged top-secret equipment on the front pages of newspapers. The Soviet spies wouldn’t have to do anything, other than buy a newspaper… and there were dozens of newspapers, on July 10, 1947, that published pictures of the New York University balloon project, which was the experiments to create a constant level balloon.

Can I tie this to those launches? Of course, there is a ladder in the center picture. Charles Moore told me that he had bought that ladder with petty cash. This proves the connection and negates the claim that what was happening in New Mexico was top secret. What you have failed to do is separate the ultimate goal of spying on the Soviets, which was top secret, from the experiments in New Mexico, which were unclassified.

The idea that the purpose was highly classified was the reason for the extraordinary efforts to recover every little scrap of the material scattered over two separate sites. If you have read Albert Crary’s diary notes, and the Technical Report 1 that you insist on citing, you see that in no other case were such measures were applied. They just didn’t care about the recovery and in one case noted that the terrain was too rough for recovery… or, in still another case Crary, with the remains of a balloon in the rear of his weapons carrier, actually stopped at Roswell Army Air Field to refuel… As an aside, Moore claimed that two weeks later, in a similar circumstance, he was turned away from the base and had to refuel elsewhere, which is another of his lies.

The point is that thee experiences, based on the documentation, not to mention some of my discussions with Moore, prove that what was happening in Alamogordo was NOT classified.

I don’t know how to make this more evident. Maybe by pointing out that there were no classification markings on any of the documentation, which there would have been if the reports and all had been classified. Once they were declassified, there would have a red pencil mark drawn through the classification, or they would have been redacted completely.

What nonsense are you now going to spout, with invented claims… remember, you cautioned that I don’t mention Linda Corley (yes, I have slightly changed gears here) making some absurd claim that Friedman had heard the tapes. Were you suggesting (a) that it was Friedman who originally recorded the tapes or (b) that after Corley loaned them to him that he altered them? Just what were you suggesting without a shred of evidence?

So, what the newspapers PROVE is that what was happening in Alamogordo was unclassified. The mere act of publishing those pictures, with military cooperation, prove the balloon project was unclassified.

I point out that you accept everything that suggests what fell was the remains of a balloon and reject everything else which doesn’t seem to be a proper skeptical attitude. So, I ask you, what time was Flight #4 launched… Charles Moore has provided two or three answers.

Just wondering.

 

The front page that shows the balloon launches proving that what was

happening in New Mexico was NOT highly classified.

Bamm Bamm Bahama

Although David Rudiak has covered some of the following points, I will expand on all that. First, let me say that I do like the form of your analysis. It is the sort of analysis I was taught to do when I studied for my masters in Intelligence. But there are a couple of flaws that render your conclusion badly flawed.

You begin with a few key points about the photographs in General Ramey’s office. I won’t go over those points because there is nothing wrong with what you wrote, though I might argue that the real debris had not been fully collected and moved by the time the photos were taken. I base this on the timeline and the suggestion that collecting the material would have taken longer. This is based on the testimony of several of those who collected the debris after Marcel returned to Roswell late on July 7.

You conclude that the pictures were taken for consumption rather for documentation. I would agree with this.

You then ask, ‘Why stage them?” And this is the first assumption made that is in error. I will split a fine hair here, and say again, that the purpose of Project Mogul was to spy on the Soviets, but the balloon flights in New Mexico were not highly classified. Charles Moore made a point of saying that the balloon flights were to develop a constant level balloon array. Such an array could have all sorts of scientific purposes other than spying on the Soviets. And, I’ll point out that the Japanese had developed a balloon borne weapon during the Second World War that suggested a military application. They used their constant level balloons to bomb the US. They launched some 9000 of them, and nearly 300 reached the US. Six people in Oregon were killed by one of those balloon bombs.

You suggest that photographs of the arrays would provide the Soviets with intelligence that would allow them to deduce acoustic detection methods and reveal radar reflector design. Except the rawin radar reflectors had been used since the end of the war and were used by weather stations all over the US. That seemed to negate one of your premises.

You write, “So yes—showing “nothing to see here, just a weather balloon” was textbook counter-intelligence. The goal wasn’t fooling Americans; it was not educating Soviet scientists who were absolutely reading U.S. newspapers.”

The problem here is that you do not account for the pictures published on July 10 in newspapers all around the country. It is the reason I posted the Alamogordo News article about the balloon arrays, including very specific pictures. Those pictures were also meant to fool the public but also revealed some of the intelligence you suggest they would want to conceal.

You suggest that had such a crash be alien, would we expect follow-up or reconnaissance craft?

Just for the sake of argument, had it been alien in nature, we have no real idea what they would do. What we would do in a similar circumstance is not necessarily what another sentient lifeform would do. We can guess but we cannot logically deduce anything about their reactions without some knowledge about them and their societies.

But I’m going to the biggest flaw in your analysis and that is the reliance on Mogul Flight #4. If it never flew, then that negates your analysis. Dr. Crary’s diary showed the flight was cancelled. Yes, there was a cluster of balloons flown later, but that was a cluster and not an array. The documentation available tells up how those clusters were made.

Your analysis does not allow for two crash sites. The Debris Field found by Mack Brazel is one. There are multiple witnesses to that site. Bill Brazel said there was a gouge down the center, indicating that something had hit and then bounced. Charles Moore said that if there was a gouge, then their balloon arrays would not account for that evidence.

The second site, closer to Roswell, was first discussed with us by Bill Rickett, the NCOIC of the CIC in Roswell. He did not see the Debris Field, but was taken to a site about 45 to 60 minutes from Roswell.

He is not the only witness to that second site. Brigadier General Arthur Exon told us about the two sites that he had flown over. If there were two sites, then a balloon array is eliminated.

I could to other flaws in your analysis such as the radar coverage in that are in July 1947 was spotty at best. Nothing was monitoring 24/7 and the closest of those radars were at White Sands.

So, where are we? Unfortunately, I must agree with your conclusion, or rather modify it. If we eliminate Mogul as a viable explanation, then we have no other terrestrial explanation for the debris. We can say that the only conclusion left is the extraterrestrial. To quote Sherlock Holmes, “"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

(Bottom Line: If there was no Flight #4, then there was no balloon to drop debris on the Brazel (Foster) ranch, and if there was no balloon debris, then what was found? If there was a gouge down the center of the debris as described by Bill Brazel and Judge Bud Payne, then, as Charles Moore said, it was not one of their balloons. If there were two sites, as mentioned by Bill Rickett and confirmed by General Arthur Exon, then Mogul is eliminated as the culprit. If the debris was as described, meaning the metal that could be folded and would unfold itself assuming its original shape, then Mogul is not the answer. I just mention these things that have been ignored in this discussion.)

Gilles Fernandez, Project Mogul and More Roswell Minutia

 

For those tired of the Roswell minutia, you can blame Gilles Fernandez for this trip down memory lane. In my post about the material photographed in General Ramey’s office, I wrote, in response to a question by another commentator, “Marcel told reporter Johnny Mann of WWL-TV in New Orleans that stuff in that photograph was NOT the stuff he had brought from Roswell. Thomas DuBose, the Eighth Air Force Chief of Staff (a very high-level position) that the stuff in the photographs (and he's in two of them) was switched. It wasn't the real debris.”

Thomas DuBose with Don Schmitt after one of the interviews

in Florida during our investigation of the events in 1947.

Gilles, in response to that quote, asked, “Concerning the so-called "Johnny Mann's interview: You can provide us such an interview and record? A link, PLEASE? And then the audio source, we can or not?”

A fair question that was somewhat hostile, though I would point out that the skeptical community accepts all that Charles Moore said about Project Mogul without critical comment, but I digress.

The short answer is that there is not an audio source. I did not record the conversation because, at the time, it didn’t seem to be all that important. Mann was just one more voice confirming that Marcel had said those pictures were not of the material he had found. All this had arisen, back in the mid-1990s, as we all began to question the source of the material that had been photographed in Ramey’s office. Skeptics were pointing out that the photographs published in The Roswell Incident, were cropped versions of larger photographs that clearly did show a rawin radar target, badly degraded and the neoprene envelop of a weather balloon. Those of us who saw the whole picture back in the early 1990s knew what they showed even before the skeptics began to beat their drum.

Bill Moore, according to The Roswell Incident, wrote, “Actually,’ said Major Jesse Marcel, shown kneeling here amid what he described as some of the less spectacular pieces of wreckage,’ this material may have looked like tinfoil and balsa wood, but the resemblance ends there.” That quote attributed to Marcel, and found as captions to the pictures in The Roswell Incident, is confusing.

Major Jesse Marcel in General Ramey's office with

the remains of the rawin radar target.

If that statement is accurate, then the discussion and the investigation end right there. The full, uncropped version proved that because it shows a weather balloon and rawin radar target. But, because nothing is ever simple in UFO investigations, that’s not the end of it.

I knew that Johnny Mann had interviewed Marcel in the early 1980s and had even taken him back to Roswell so that they could film a segment for Mann’s television station, WWL-TV in New Orleans. Mann said he also traveled to Pascagoula to interview Hickson and Parker about their abduction. At the time, Mann thought the abduction was the bigger story, so, after the segments aired, they reused the tapes, so the raw footage was no longer available… except they kept the raw footage of Hickson and Parker interview (which, I probably should mention to Philip Mantle and Irene Scott).

Mann had a copy of The Roswell Incident with him and he showed the pictures to Jesse Marcel, saying, “Jess, I gotta tell you, that looks like the remains of a weather balloon.”

Marcel said that it wasn’t the stuff that he had brought from Roswell. It was something else. The implication was that it had been switched. As far as I know, Bill Moore never produced a tape of Marcel saying it was the real stuff as quoted in his book. And I have no tape of what Mann said to me because I didn’t tape the conversation.

Why not, you might ask?

Because there was other evidence, some of which had been taped. Colonel Thomas DuBose, the 8^th Air Force Chief of Staff, and who appears in two of the pictures taken of the material in Ramey’s office, confirmed that the material had been switched. In an interview, conducted in 1991 and is on tape, said that “the switch was made to get the reporters off the general’s back.”

General Roger Ramey and Colonel Thomas Dubose
with the substituted wreckage in Ramey's office.

So, while I don’t have a tape of what Mann said to me, we do have a taped interview from another source telling us that the material in the pictures is not the stuff that Marcel had brought to Fort Worth.

During the filming of UFOs Are Real, Marcel, at one point, said that if he was in the pictures, then it was the real stuff, but then, shown the pictures taken in Ramey’s office said, “There’s a picture in the same room [meaning Ramey’s office]. It’s not the material I brought there [meaning to Fort Worth].

(For those interested, this came from the shot script for UFOs Are Real, Tape One, Page Two).

Then it gets worse if possible. Marcel is quoted in the transcript, apparently paraphrasing Ramey, “You can go ahead and scatter some of those pieces on the floor for the photographers and press but make sure they don’t get any details about anything.”

There was a question asked at that point in the interview. “Was that the actual material you had found?”

“I prepared that for the press. (That big piece was not part of it). [parens in the original document.]

(This came from the shot script for UFOs Are Real, Tape Two, Page One).

Marcel then adds, “Let me show you something. There’s a picture of the same room. It’s not the material I brought there.” That, of course, are the six pictures shot by J. Bond Johnson, a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and sent out over the news wires. Given the available documentation, we know those photographs were taken on July 8, 1947.

On tape three the interviewer said, “I talk about the book I’m showing him [which must be something with the pictures from Ramey’s office.] Book in Jesse’s lap showing warrant officer [Irving Newton]. The interviewer asked, “This is not the material you found?”

This means that Newton, seen in the seventh of the pictures kneeling with the balloon, is not what Marcel had brought to Fort Worth.

Marcel responded that question, saying, “Definitely not.”

This came from the shot script for UFOs Are Real, Tape Three).

Confusing enough?

Now we get to Linda Corley who interviewed Marcel in his home in Houma, Louisiana, in 1981 as part of her graduate studies. Gilles is quick to warn me not to bring up Corley because of Stan Friedman. Gilles wrote, “Maybe, you will next point to me Linday Corley 1981 tapes. Please, dont (sic) do this, I know how Stanton Friedman "recorded" this again.”

I’m not sure, but I believe the accusation is that Friedman altered the tapes that Corley had loaned him. He makes this allegation without evidence; however, it is an attempt to eliminate Marcel’s claim that the material in the pictures was not the debris he had recovered on the Brazel ranch. A point that Marcel made repeatedly to others.

Remember, all this started because I had mentioned the Mann interview, which I hadn’t recorded. Gilles has disposed of this by suggesting the interview can be rejected because there is no way to verify it. I did, provide the information in the mid-1990s when it would be possible to corroborate the statements with Mann himself.

Corley’s critical information was published in her book, For the Sake of My Country, when she asked Marcel about the pictures in Ramey’s office. He said, “What you see in there is nothing but a piece of brown paper that I put over so that the news media couldn’t get a picture of what I had.”

Corley asked, Oh, you were covering the stuff?

Marcel replied, “I was covering it. But nobody knew that. I was told by my commanding general, ‘Just don’t say anything. Don’t show anything…’”

Later he said, “You see this picture right here? That’s a fake. After I left there… He claimed it was fragments of a weather balloon… This is part of a weather balloon.”

There is another aspect to this that seems to be important. Marcel told Corley that he had never met either Bill Moore or Stan Freidman in person. They had only talked on the telephone. That made we wonder if Marcel made his statements about the real material without seeing the pictures. Knowing Stan Friedman, I can’t believe that he hadn’t sent Marcel copies of those pictures, but if he hadn’t, then Marcel might have been confused on the issue. That suggests that other pictures had been taken with the real debris at some other time in a different location but we have never found those, if they exist.

The problem here is that this is my speculation but it is based on extrapolations from the situation at the time and the fact that when Marcel saw the pictures from the book, said that is wasn’t the stuff that he had taken to Fort Worth.

There is another aspect that Gilles keeps harping on, which is related to but not essential to this conversation. He wrote, more than once, “You are wrong and somehow "betraying" your readers: Technical report 1 PROOVES it flaw.”

This is a reference to Flight #4, which becomes clear in the rest of Gilles’s comment. I believe he is suggesting that because it was not recorded and absent in the tables, it didn’t exist. He wrote:

If this flight is not reported and/or recorded in the tables, it is for what I wrote, than in my blog or in my book:*** is not present in the table summary that it was canceled or never existed, but because:

Or no attempt or no materials to control/record the altitude were made.
Or because special gear or technic tested.

Or due to different failures on ground or during the flight.

You wrote: "that are missing HERE" (the caps lock are mines) in this interview. You well know the original question (it was concerning the tables and the absence or missing flights in the tables); therefore why some flights are missing in the tables."you don't have it there": "there" = in the tables.”

While I admire anyone who can communicate in a foreign language, I do not speak or read French. I do have a limited knowledge of Spanish and have communicated with Spanish speakers in their language but I imagine they have some difficultly in understanding me. But, as they say, “I digress.”

I believe the claim here is that I created the idea of Flight #4 as a way of eliminating the debris displayed in Ramey’s office from the conversation. But I’m not the one to introduce that concept into the discussion. In a “white paper” created by Charles Moore, an engineer working with the balloons in Alamogordo, we learn the following:

According to C.S. Schneider’s progress report for May 1947, NYU Flight #3 from Bethlehem, PA on May 8 was the last attempt to carry instruments aloft before June 4, whereas they accent on June 5 was identified as NYU Flight #5. On this basis, I [Charles Moore] think the June 4^th balloons carried NYU Flight #4, although there is no mention of this flight in the NYU summary because no altitude data were obtained.

Charles Moore reviewing the winds aloft data that I suppled for the
analysis of the track Flight #4 might have followed. Yes, I have
published this before but it shows that I followed all paths
searching for the truth. I did work with Moore.

The Skeptical Inquirer provided us with 70 facts about the Roswell Incident. Kendrick Fraizer wrote:

The reporter should have told readers what we now know (almost certainly) the debris to have been: remnants of a long vertical “train” of research balloons and equipment launched by New York University atmospheric researchers and not recovered—specifically, Flight No. 4. The research team launched NYU Flight #4 on June 4, 1947, from Alamogordo Army Air Field and tracked it flying east-northeast toward Corona. It was within seventeen miles of the Brazel ranch when the tracking batteries failed and contact was lost.

And this comes from Smithsonian Magazine, written by Pat Trenner and published on July 7, 2010:

Mogul Flight 4 was launched from Alamogordo on June 4, 1947, and is likely the source of the debris Brazel brought to Sheriff Wilcox. 

According to Charles Moore, there was a Flight #4 but no data was recovered so there was no entry in that Technical Report 1. But Charles Moore provided comment in various places including his: March 16, 1995 paper, “The New York University Balloon Flights During Early June, 1947, and additional information from the Air Force report that includes Technical Report 1 that are relevant to the discussion.

According to the written record Mogul Flight No. 4 was cancelled. There is no equivocation about it. The flight was cancelled, which should be the end of the story… but no, Albert Crary’s diary, one of those records, and part of the source material, mentions that a cluster of balloons was flown on the date in question. This was allegedly Flight No. 4.

The documentation from the New York University balloon project shows that the first successful flight in New Mexico was Flight No. 5. But Moore claimed that Flight No. 4 was just as successful; they just didn’t record it (see page 11 of his white paper). If it was as successful, then why not record it and tout it as the first successful flight in New Mexico? Why not report the data collected rather than leave it out of the record altogether. Why would Crary say the flight had been cancelled if it had actually flown and was successful?

This, I believe, negates the claim that there was no Flight #4 to be cancelled and certainly refutes the idea that this was somehow my creation. Even Charles Moore referred to Flight #4 suggesting that it had performed as well as Flight #5.

But now we come back to Johnny Mann and what he said to me. Gilles Fernandez would like something more concrete than my reported conversations with Mann. At that time, I had called Mann to ask him about his interview with Marcel, it just wasn’t that important to record it. I didn’t record it because I was verifying the facts as laid out in other, recorded interviews and published information from other researchers. I asked about the pictures and Mann told me that Marcel told him that the material was not what he had found in the field. We have Marcel on film and on tape saying the same thing in other interviews.

That same afternoon, I called Jesse Marcel, Jr. and basically asked the same question and got the same answer. Since there was documentation that Marcel, Sr. had made the statements to others about the debris being switched, it seemed to be unnecessary to record the information. Even if you reject what Mann told me, or more importantly, you reject Mann’s statements without a tape or recording to consult, all these other sources confirm that Marcel said, repeatedly, that the pictures taken in Ramey’s office was not the material he had found in the field.

I don’t mind Gilles asking the question, but given all this other, documented testimony, it seems to be irrelevant. Eliminate the Mann interviews that I conducted, there are all these other statements made by Marcel about the pictures, many of them on tape.

We’re back to the point about what we want to believe about those events. We do have Colonel DuBose telling us that the material in Ramey’s office was switched. When we, and I mean Don Schmitt, Tom Carey and I, investigated this, we had statements from two of the men in the office that day, DuBose and Marcel. We can prove what they said because of the recorded interviews. My discussion with Mann added the same thing. Marcel denying what was seen in the pictures was the material Brazel had found and Marcel recovered.

This then, is my long response to the question as by Gilles Fernandez. No, I have no recording of my interview with Johnny Mann, but then I can point you to other recordings and documentation that verifies the information as I reported it.

Now, it’s up to you, as the reader, to decide where the truth lies in all this. Clearly Marcel seemed to contradict himself on the matter and we can speculate about why that is. But the point here, is that I have additional evidence that verifies the information that Mann supplied to me. I didn’t invent the quotes as has been alleged.

I hope the answer to Gilles Fernandez’s question is adequate. He doesn’t have to believe me, but there is confirmation about the accuracy of the statement. And, in addition, I hope this is my last word on this very narrow aspect of the Roswell case.

(PS) For those of you playing along at home, let me point out another item that is consistently misstated. While the ultimate purpose of Mogul was to spy on the Soviets was top secret, the activities in Alamogordo were unclassified. This is the reason that a Mogul array was photographed and article about the balloon project was published in newspapers around the country on July 10.

The front page of the Alamogordo News on July 10, showing off the balloon arrays
in the attempt to prove that the project was responsible for the Roswell debris.

Get it? They made no Herculean effort to recover the remains of other flights because there was nothing in them that would reveal the purpose of the flights and it wouldn’t lead to Mogul. Photographs and newspaper article were not violating national security. As a former Air Force intelligence officer, I understand these things. I could talk all day about the activities in Alamogordo and it was no violation or compromise of project. If I mentioned the purpose, then I would be in trouble because that was what was classified. Can we retire this nonsense now?)