A Look at a Portion of Jay Stratton's "Out of the Shadows"

 I freely admit that this is based more on the information found in reviews and promotional material about Jay Stratton’s book, Out of the Shadows, than it is about what we find in the book as a whole. I want to address his comments about the Roswell UFO crash/retrieval because that tells us something about the value of the book and his expertise. Those who visit here regularly know that I, along with Tom Carey and Don Schmitt, have been investigating the Roswell events for more than three decades. For example, Don and I interviewed Bill Brazel, one of the sons of the man who found the wreckage, in February 1989. That interview was recorded and provided some insight into the case that was unique at the time. In fact, Stan Friedman used that interview in his book with neither credit nor attribution to help validate his work.

Bill Brazel and Don Schmitt on the Debris Field in March 1989. Photo by Kevin Randle.

In Stratton’s book, according to a reporter who interviewed him, Johnny Dodd, Stratton wrote about an “80-year long disinformation campaign” covering the attempts to reverse engineer recovered alien craft and technology by various defense contractors who held material in their secure facilities. I’ll note here that those contractors don’t fall under the FOIA regulations and claims of proprietary information allows them to refuse all FOIA requests. It is a good way for the government to bury information out of the reach of FOIA, but that’s an argument for another time.

Stratton said, “The Roswell crash of 1947, confirmed by a source: ‘The crash broke into two pieces, and everything was recovered — the crash and non-human bodies.’”

What is extraordinary about this is that Tom, Don and I have been saying those same things for thirty years. But what separates us from Stratton is that we interviewed the men who were in Roswell in 1947 and those who participated in the recovery and the coverup. We interviewed every member of Colonel Blanchard’s primary staff with two notable exceptions about their roles in the recovery. Each of them, including those we didn’t interview but who were questioned by others, provided information that the event was real with lone the except of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Barrowclough, the base executive officer, the third highest-ranking officer there.

Major Edwin Easley, the Provost Marshal in Roswell in 1947, and the man in charge of security at the two crash sites, made many interesting comments to me during several interviews. He repeatedly said that he couldn’t talk about it because he had been sworn to secrecy and that he had promised the President that he wouldn’t reveal what he knew. While I’m sure that he didn’t speak directly to the President, he did tell the President’s representative that he wouldn’t talk about it. However, he told me, indirectly during a telephone conversation with me while I was at the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago that the path to the extraterrestrial was not the wrong path to follow. We have a letter dated late in 1947, from the Secret Service, thanking him for his recent assistance which seems to confirm part of what Easley said.

Before you mention the contradiction in the above, I’ll note that in my interviews with Easley, I had the impression that he wanted to help with our investigation but that pesky promise not to talk got in the way. Telling me that Brazel was held in the guest house at the base, for example, didn’t violate that promise because we already knew that Brazel had been held in Roswell for six to ten days. Easley just told me that Brazel wasn’t in the stockade, but in nicer quarters at the BOQ. That he was not allowed to leave without a military escort underscored the jail like nature of his stay.

Stratton said that he learned in the course of his work, citing an insider, that the “much-discussed, much-mocked stories of a UAP crash in Roswell, N.M. — complete with dead extraterrestrials — are true.” But he doesn’t identify the source of this extraordinary information. Such information must be thought of as suspicious. Before you mention that we, Tom, Don and I, have reported the same thing, I’ll note that we do identify our sources.

Tony Bragalia has reported that Stratton's source for his Roswell statements was a high-up guy at Lockheed-Martin whose last name was Ryder, now deceased. According to Tony, Ryder took over the famous "Skunk Works" after its founder, Kelly Johnson, passed away.

Tom noted that we know that the Roswell UFO did not "break-into-two-pieces " as Ryder claimed. We know there were two sites where wreckage was found. One was the Debris Field where Mack Brazel discovered the broken-up pieces of wreckage and the second site where the craft and bodies were found.

General Arthur Exon told Tom, Don and me, that bodies had been recovered and that one had been sent to an Army facility in the Denver area to study ways to preserve the sample. Gathering the remains of alien creatures wasn’t something that happened every day. While Exon said that he hadn’t seen the bodies himself, he did say he was told this by fellow officers at Wright Field who had been directly involved about them. The point here is that a retired Air Force general was telling us that bodies had been recovered long before Stratton made his revelations.

Regarding that aspect of the case, Dodd wrote that Stratton claimed one alien survived. According to Dodd’s reporting: “Some were dead on arrival. Others, allegedly, were alive but later perished, refusing food or contact. Communication was limited and often futile.” 

We learned long ago from various witnesses that one or more of the aliens had survived the crash. Part of that information came indirectly from Dan Dwyer, a Roswell firefighter who visited the site in his personal car and Sheriff George Wilcox who told his wife that one of the creatures had survived the crash. Barbara Dugger, granddaughter of the sheriff wondered if he had tried to help the surviving entity.

Roswell Fire Fighters including Dan Dwyer, witness to the bodies.

In other words, Stratton is providing nothing new here. Tom, Don and I had been reporting this for more than three decades. I have reported on this on this blog many times.

Regarding these entities, as described to Stratton, he writes: “Some were dead on arrival. Others, allegedly, were alive but later perished, refusing food or contact. Communication was limited and often futile.” 

Don and Tom developed testimony that suggested one of the creatures, maybe the sole survivor, was seen walking into the base hospital. Personally, I was always somewhat dubious of the claim of a survivor, but now there is a former Pentagon official confirming there was, at least, one survivor. His revelation validates our research, but then, he doesn’t provide any evidence other than what he had been told by an unidentified source.

Tom, Don and I, interviewed several soldiers who saw the alien bodies and we also exposed many of their tales as untrue. As we continued our investigation, we were able to separate the story tellers from those who had real information about the bodies. That number of those telling the truth was quite small.

The point of this commentary is that Stratton’s revelations about the Roswell crash/retrieval were reported by us decades earlier. Our reporting was ignored or attacked because we all knew that alien visitation was not real. There are now those who are reporting the same thing, who have not been ridiculed but they don’t name the names. We did and do so that the sources can be evaluated. I am annoyed that we have been ignored for years, but delighted that what we reported is being confirmed, again, by the alleged insiders. Too bad all this new interest wasn’t made thirty years ago when many of the witnesses we revealed were still alive to confirm their roles in the recovery. So much has been lost to time