The End of the Roswell Daily Record?

 

While in Roswell for the festival, I noticed that the Roswell Daily Record in the vendor’s box was from Thursday. One of the locals told me that the paper was no longer a daily but was now a weekly. I wasn’t surprised because many of the formerly daily newspapers had reduced their publication schedules.

The Roswell Daily Record building in the 1990s. The tree is gone.
Photo by Kevin Randle.

Our local paper had gone from a daily to three times a week. It was published on Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday. It was a thinner paper and the color that had once brightened it was basically gone.

On July 13, the owners of the Daily Record announced that the newspaper, that had alerted the world to the Roswell crash in 1947, would cease operation. I suppose the Internet, cable news and a nation that preferred listen to their news rather than read it in a newspaper had all contributed to its demise.

But then, just hours, well, maybe a couple of days later, the Daily Record reported that Pat Davis, founder and publisher of the New Mexico News Group and Ctrl+P Publishing had bought the newspaper. It was announced:

After this week’s announcement that the paper would close, we looked for ways to write a new chapter for the paper, not an obituary. For the first time in over 100 years, the Beck family is trusting someone else to lead the paper through whatever comes next. We don’t take that responsibility lightly. To be clear, we can see that their tough decisions and dedication to mission have prepared it to serve for another generation. We're stepping in with new resources to ensure the Daily Record remains in service. Importantly for Barbara [Beck, the owner] and I, this deal ensures the paper remains 100% New Mexico-owned and locally staffed. In the meantime, we’ve provided some help to ensure payroll and the presses keep running.

New Mexico News Group will begin publishing in August which is basically next week. I don’t know what the publishing schedule will be or when the first issue will appear. But the important point here is that for now the Roswell Daily Record survives.

Roswell Nurse Photographs the Bodies - I Don't Think So

 

By happenstance, I came across a YouTube video that claimed an interview with a woman who had been a surgical nurse in Roswell in 1947. The claim was that Margaret Ellen Dodd had been tasked with taking pictures of the alien bodies recovered. She said that she had been told to do this because, as a surgical nurse, she wouldn’t be upset by the circumstances. It was in 1985 that she told the story to an Albuquerque UFO researcher. It was the only time she talked about those events. You can watch the video here, though I do hesitate to provide the url… this really shouldn’t be rewarded, given the circumstances.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veF9PaZ10wg

Well, naturally, this caught my attention because in my decades of research, I had never come across this nurse. I seemed to remember that Tom Carey might have mentioned a nurse with that or a similar name, so I sent him an email. While I waited for a response, I made what are the normal checks. She doesn’t appear in the Yearbook created during the summer of 1947 by Walter Haut. She doesn’t appear on the morning reports for that year. Anytime there is activity about a soldier, joining the unit, leaving it, going on leave or returning from leave or being unavailable for duty, that sort of thing, that soldier’s name, or in this case, that nurse’s name would appear in the record. Hers did not.

Tom Carey at the Roswell UFO Museum.

She was reported to be a lieutenant. This meant that she wasn’t a civilian that somehow found herself with that strange assignment… not to mention wondering why they would want a nurse to take the photographs. There was a complete photo lab assigned to the base and if they needed a photographer, one of the men assigned there would have been a better selection. Some of them had even photographed the graphic remains of aircraft accidents.

I hadn’t expected a return to my query quite as quickly as it came. Tom wrote back reporting:

I just spent an entire morning researching the names cited in your email below and basically came up empty because: they're all most likely dead; their ages are/were unknown at any point in time, which would have been a big help in any search; and the alleged nurse's last name ["Dodd"] I assumed was her maiden name but could have been her married name? I don't know. 

Anyway, here's what I did find out, which didn't lead me to a touchdown in the end. In the '47 RAAF yearbook, there is a "Pfc. Willy Dodd" pictured in "Squadron S," which is composed of all black airmen. Since the alleged nurse Margaret Ellen Dodd was an officer, I assumed a relationship as being unlikely. 

More interesting, however, was a listing in my photocopy of the '47 Roswell City Directory for a "Harry Dodd" whose occupation was given as an "orderly at Saint Mary's Hospital" in Roswell. Even though I had no idea of his age, this was interesting enough to spur me to see if I could find this fellow with my search engine using various age groupings. I also limited my search engine to search just the states of NM and AZ for this fellow. To cut to the chase, I could not find a connection of any of the names that resulted with any combination of the nurse's possible names.

Finally, I located an "M.E. Heid" in my copy of the 1993/1994 Roswell White Pages, but according to you[r] email she passed away in 1991 in Tucson, AZ.

That was basically what I had learned as well. No independent corroboration for this tale. We are told in the video that the nurse only spoke with the Albuquerque researcher once and never said anything else about it. According to the video, she had died in 1991 at the age of 67.

However, in video, it is claimed that the researcher produced a report but that was eventually confiscated by the government when he died in 1993, also at 67. He did make eleven copies of it and sent it out to various UFO researchers. I wondered why Stan Friedman hadn’t been one of them. Had he had that report, then his book, written with Don Berliner, would have carried the tale. It did not.

In fact, I wondered why none of those researchers ever stepped forward with their copy. A document like that, created in 1985 before the case blew up in the 1990s would have been very valuable.

There were other red flags, things that only those of us who had been researching the case for decades would know. The hospital at the base, in 1947, wasn’t the fancy brick structure that was created in the 1950s. It was a series of buildings that housed the various specialties and functions. A nurse who had been assigned there would have known that.

The last of the original base hospital buildings. The others are long gone.

Tom did one other thing. He sent a copy of my email to Tony Bragalia to see what he could learn. He provided the following information from the content creator, Contact Redacted, with the important points highlighted by Tony:

I've always been fascinated by aliens, UFOs, classified reports, and the mysteries surrounding them, including alleged abduction and contact accounts. On this channel, we'll examine the evidence and explore what may have been lost, erased, or kept hidden. Disclaimer: This channel features exploratory interpretations and speculation about unexplained phenomena, presented through investigative-style storytelling rather than established fact. The perspectives and visual representations are dramatized or creatively constructed for storytelling purposes. Some visuals may be generated, enhanced, altered, or reconstructed using automated or generative artificial intelligence tools to create a more immersive viewing experience. The content presented here should not be considered factual and is intended solely for commentary and entertainment.

This then, should end any acceptance of the tale as real. The content creator tells us that the content should not be considered factual. Apparently, those who have posted comments to the video didn’t bother to check out his bio and see he had created three other videos (as of this writing) in a similar vein.

This should be the end of this. A story told for entertainment but not as a part of the history of the Roswell case. But then I looked at the comments and was further appalled by what some of those said. They were treating the story as if real but adding to it. Glenn Dennis was mentioned several times, but Dennis invented his connection to the Roswell crash and the story of a missing nurse. Dennis had said that she had been killed in an aircraft accident that claimed four other nurses.

Glenn Dennis in the mid-1990s.

Back in the early 1990s, both Don Berliner and I searched for evidence of that aircraft accident. I won’t go into the details because I have reported on them several times in books, articles and on this blog. There was no evidence of such a crash.

The point is that there seem to be many out there who still accept the Dennis tale as accurate, though the truth has been available for decades. There are those who tell us who Dennis’s nurse might be, mentioning real nurses who were in Roswell in 1947, but that hasn’t panned out either. And when Vic Golubic confronted Dennis about the name of the nurse Dennis had provided (Naomi Self, or Selff), Dennis then said that wasn’t her real name. Golubic managed to obtain a roster of some 125,000 nurses who had served in the Army but Naomi Self didn’t appear on that massive roster.

Back when Dennis first began telling the tale, told me that he had warned us that he wasn’t going to give us the real name. But he never said that to me, nor did he tell those others such as Karl Pflock and Philip Klass. Had Klass had the information back in the early 1990s, he would have spread the information far and wide. Now, confronted by the fact that we had actually proved a negative, that no one by the name Naomi Self had been stationed at Roswell, he changed the name.  For me, the lie about her name was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In 1997, in The Roswell Report, I outlined all this, meaning that information has been available for three decades. The Glenn Dennis lies just will not die.

I’m stuck in an endless loop of trying to publish accurate information about the Roswell case, but the false things we have been told and the witnesses who were less than candid keep popping up. Dennis made up the tale. Now we have Contact Redacted inventing a new one that is being immediately accepted as real.

Before I sign off here, just let me say that anyone could have attempted to follow up on this through sources available on the Internet. Anyone looking at it should have seen the red flags… witnesses that are dead so they can’t be questioned, names of people who weren’t in Roswell in 1947, a failure to understand military protocol, and a failure to produce an alleged taped interview with one of the witnesses or a copy of that original report that has eleven copies out there, somewhere.

Sadly, the easiest way to check this out was to click on the content creator’s name that would have taken you to his website, where he tells you this is a story that he invented. That should be the final line in this but Tom and I wanted to drive a stake through the heart of the tale. I just can’t wait for the next time someone cites this as important new information when all it does is obscure the truth.

The Roswell Festival - The FBI Telex

 

While on the Roswell Panel at the Festival, I mentioned that we’d found no documents relating to the Roswell crash/retrieval in all the data that had been dumped in the last few months. This is an important point that I’ll come back to later.

The International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell.

One of the panelists, and I don’t remember who, mentioned that the FBI Telex that had originated in the Dallas office on July 8, 1947, was included. Importantly, the only thing that had been redacted in that document said, “Major Curtan [actually Kirton] further advised that the object found resembles a high altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector, but that telephonic conversation between their office and Wright Field had not [two words redacted] borne out this belief.”

It was mentioned that the whole line had been redacted. If true, this was an important discovery because it suggested that someone had redacted the one line that told us the balloon explanation had been denied by those at Wright Field. This would suggest that the transparency claims were not true.

Reacting that line made no sense to me because we’d had an unredacted version of the Telex for more than three decades with nothing redacted. In fact, when the GAO made their investigation in the mid-1990s, the complete, unredacted version as published (with the exception of those two words mentioned earlier).

I believed that the document had surfaced in the third of the data dumps. I searched for it but couldn’t find it. I then sent out an email to many colleagues because, as I say, this could be an important find. I figured someone would have the information, saving me the time looking for it.

Within an hour I learned from Joachim Koch that the document had surfaced in the first of those data dumps. He sent the link to the specific set of documents. It was on page 70 of a much longer document. See can see the file here:

65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_001

The problem, however, is that the whole line was not redacted as had been suggested. Just two words were eliminated and it seemed that it was because of a misspelling. What might have been an important find turned out to be an overreacting to deleting a misspelling. The redaction, while not necessary was of little consequence.

But that led me to another aspect of this. There are many of us looking for information about the Roswell crash/retrieval in those data dumps. Say what you will, take whatever position you believe… it was alien, it was terrestrial, it was Mogul… the newspapers on July 8 and July 9, were filled with stories about the crash. In fact, some of them carried a timeline that covered the release of the information to the conclusion that it was a balloon. The whole cycle lasted about three hours. That means from the time that the press release was given to the media to the time that General Roger Ramey claiming was just a weather balloon.

Walter Haut, the 509^th Bomb Group officer who handed out that press release told me, as he had anyone who asked, that he received telephone calls from around the world and a stack of post cards and letters asking for more information. Haut regretted that he hadn’t save those cards and letters for the stamps on them. We know that reporters were covering the story and again, I spoke to many of them but they were diverted to the balloon story almost from the time they learned at it. At that point, the story died.

Walter Haut at home in 1991. Photo by Kevin Randle

For that short period, this was a very important, front-page story that had all the news media chasing it. Mark Rodeghier even found a national ABC news radio broadcast about it and I have dozens of those newspaper clippings as well.

Here’s the point for those of us who have searched through the data dumps about UAP which are supposed to prove the transparency of the new government policy. I ask, where is the information about Roswell? Where are the newspaper clippings because, in these data dumps, there are dozens of newspaper articles that include other claims of UFO crashes.

The very first article found in the pdf. which contains the FBI Telex, is a July 8 story about a Catholic priest, Joseph Brasky, who found a metal disk. The object was about 18 inches in diameter, resembled a saw blade and was still warm when Brasky found it. He reported the find to the FBI. They seemed uninterested in it.

The point? This obviously terrestrial artifact is reported at length, but the Roswell case, is oddly missing.  There should be other mentions of it. In the Project Blue Book files, there is a single mention of the crash and that refers to a telephone call from Washington, criticizing the officers at Roswell for releasing the information. It is the third paragraph in a four-paragraph newspaper story in another article. All this suggests that the claim of transparency is little more than lip service. At least until we get data we didn’t already have.

Roswell Festival 2026

 

For those interested, I was at the Roswell Festival over the July 4^th weekend. I look at this as an opportunity to connect with other UFO researchers and those who had UFO experiences. This year, among those there were Don Schmitt, Travis Walton, Kathleen Marden, Ben Hansen, Thom Reed, Frank Kimbler, Marc D’Antonio and Dennis Balthaser. Along with the individual presentations, there were panel discussions on the Roswell case and alien abductions.

The International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell.

Ironically, I sat in on the Abduction Panel with Travis and Kathleen. I was there to talk about the Hickson/Parker abduction from Pascagoula in 1973. What had impressed me about this case was there were witnesses to the abduction, four of them named in an Air Force document dated the next day. That underscored the validity of the report.

Kathleen mentioned that there were similar revelations about the Barney and Betty Hill case, meaning additional witnesses, not to mention the radar tracking from Pease AFB and an Air Force investigation that was less then reliable. She didn’t supply the names of the witnesses and I didn’t ask, which I should have.

She also mentioned there had been some updated work on the Marjorie Fish star map model that had been described by Betty Hill. Fish gathered astronomical data about the stars around our sun out to about fifty light years. It was Fish who discovered that the Zeta Reticuli star system might be the home world of some of the alien visitors.

Kathleen Marden

In the past, I had been critical of Fish’s work. It was an exceptional job, but the data she used was now out of date. Star system distances have been updated with some moving in and others moving out of her designed range. She also left out red dwarf stars because there are so many within fifty light years of Earth. Her thinking was there would be no reason to visit those systems, but our latest data suggests some of red dwarf systems are worthy of attention. I mention this here but it didn’t come up during the panel discussion.

One of the things about the festival is that you get to meet many people who have had UFO experiences. Of those, a man of about thirty-five or forty told me about seeing an object come out of the sea, hesitate for several seconds and then climb away at high speed. He was close enough to get a good look at it. He said the UFO was rounded, maybe more egg-shaped than circular and had a blue haze surrounding it.

I also talked with a guy who had seen a triangular-shaped UFO that hovered overhead for four to five minutes, before drifting to the west. As it began to move, an Air Force fighter appeared in the east. I’m not sure if that was coincidence or deliberate, but the presence of the fighter appeared to have caused the rapid acceleration of the UFO.

And I talked to a few people who had multiple sightings. In the Project Blue Book days, they would have been labeled as repeaters and their reports would be automatically rejected. One of the men talked of seeing glowing balls of light in the distance, somewhat reminiscent of the World War II Foo Fighters.

I always thought of the repeaters as being lucky. There was a man, not at the festival, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records had been struck by lightning five times. The very definition of a repeater who proved that some people were in the right place (or in his case the wrong place) to make multiple sightings.

The point here is that it is never proper technique to dismiss a witness or evidence because of a personal bias. Some people have the luck and some don’t. I’ve said that my only possible sighting was a point of light in a polar orbit seen in early 1967. Given the timing, I don’t believe it was one of ours, meaning Earth based, but then it was just a point of light flying from north to south at a steady speed.

There was a panel discussion about the Roswell case but it didn’t dwell on the well-known aspects of it. There was a question about the destruction of classified material during that panel and a fact that was discovered by the search for documents. There is also the question about why documents of historical significance would be destroyed. Although there is talk of a nefarious purpose, I noted that as an intelligence officer, I had destroyed many documents. Most were irrelevant to my mission and others were out of date, requiring destruction.

I did note that those communications and documents created at the highest levels would have been preserved but without a proper name we might never find them. I mentioned a FOIA request I had submitted for a document. I had the name of the document, the name of the author, the name of the organization for which it was created and the date on the document. My request was refused because they wanted more specific information. It was an excuse to refuse releasing the material by fulfilling the requirements of the FOIA law without providing the requested information.

Maria Tellier, the MUFON New Mexico director gave a presentation on the 1964 Holloman UFO landing. The case was the alleged communication between one of the alien races visiting Earth and several high-ranking humans stationed at Holloman AFB. According to information published in UFO’s Past, Present and Future by Robert Emenegger in 1974, “The [base] commander and two officers, along two base Air Force scientists arrive [at the UFO landing site] and wait apprehensively. A panel slides open on the side of the craft.

“Stepping forward, there are one, then a second and a third – what appear to be men dressed in tight-fitting jump suits. Perhaps short by our standards, with an odd gray-green complexion, eyes set wide apart. A large, pronounced nose. They wear headpieces that resemble rows of a rope-like design.”

I mention all this for those who might not be aware of the rumored landing of a craft at Holloman Air Force Base. According to Emenegger, there is film of the landing. While I find the tale wild even by UFO standards, Tellier provided an interesting take on the story.

There were a wide range of other activities, most of which I didn’t attend. The festival has expanded beyond the research aspects of the Roswell case to become a celebration of alien visitation. Many of the businesses have an alien theme and one of the McDonald’s restaurants has a definite flying saucer aspect to it.

The Roswell Flying Saucer McDonal's Restaurant.

There were a costume contest, a 5K race and a parade. Main Street in front of the museum was closed off for vendors who provided a variety of food and other souvenirs. Of course, it was hot out in the street, so I stayed in the museum where there was air conditioning.

Main Street closed and filled with the vendors.

Finally, one comment. During Travis’s presentation, two young men who had a video camera and an agenda, interrupted the show to ask pointed questions. It was clear that they were looking for clicks and while it was Travis’s job to answer those questions, they should have waited until the presentation was over. The audience had no interest in their opinions. Sometimes those playing journalist seem to believe they are owed answers. In reality, they should have been interested in the truth rather than creating a video for clicks.

I had a very good time in Roswell. The staff of the museum was courteous and worked to make sure everything ran smoothly. The one unscripted presentation came when one of the speakers didn’t arrive. Don was asked to fill in, and I suggested we do something together. It had been a long time since we had been on stage together, but it worked well. As Don said later, “Just like old times.”

We have already talked about doing that next year.

And as a commercial message, I have a new UFO book to be published on August 25, called UFO Sightings and Alien Visitation. It is a book that follows my chasing footnotes, providing some solutions to UFO cases and underscoring the reality of others.

Baker Overland "Finds the REAL Roswell Crash Site," or How to Pretend to Investigate the Case

 

Normally, I ignore many of these analyses of the Roswell case. Baker Overland just posted “I Found the REAL Roswell Crash site.” I was interested in the real crash site but all he did was trespass on private property and cross Bureau of Land Management land (BLM) without permission. The real site he found, was the one that Don Schmitt and I located in 1989 with the help of Bill Brazel.

Bill Brazel and Don Schmitt on the "Real" crash site in 1989 They are standing

near the spot where Baker Overland stood to make his video. Photo by Kevin

Randle.

Let me back up a moment. He tells us about Mac Brazel, not realizing he was really Mack Brazel. He mispronounces Brazel and Carey, gives us pictures of people who were in Roswell at the time, but the pictures not of those people. We get plenty of video of him driving around in New Mexico that has little to do with the topic. Although he talked of doing a deep dive, it was into the shallow end of the pool.

We get him standing at the northwest corner of the Debris Field. Bill Brazel took Don and me there. Baker Overland talks of it being a crater. His analysis of the size of the saucer based on the size of the crater is utter nonsense. According to Bill Brazel, who was on the site within days of his father reporting it to the Army in Roswell, said there was a gouge. It was narrow at the top, spread out to about ten feet across at the center and then narrows at the other end. In other words, the object skipped along the ground before becoming airborne again. He never made it to the impact site where the craft and bodies were found. He apparently never made it that far in his Internet research.

He travels over to the VLA, the Very Large Array, radio telescope facility. He hints that it might have been built in New Mexico because of the Roswell crash… no, it was the isolation of the area and the terrain that helped isolation that was the reason for the location of the VLA. Nice pictures but it has nothing to do with Roswell.

The VLA near Magdalena, New Mexico. Photo by Kevin Randle.

He mentions Mogul, telling us the ultimate purpose of it but fails to mention that what was going on in New Mexico was unclassified. The balloon arrays were long but there was nothing on them that would have fooled anyone. And, the culprit in this, Mogul Flight No. 4, was cancelled. It never flew.  Charles Moore, one of the engineers on Mogul, told me that Flight No. 4 was configured the same as Flight No. 5, but there were no rawin targets on Flight No. 5. I suppose this is somewhat confusing, but I’ve made this argument on this blog several times and in one of those posts, are reference to several of the others. You can access that information here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/05/coast-to-coast-mogul-and-updates.html

Charles Moore, champion of the Mogul theory. His analysis of the
information is a complete invention not based on the facts of the case.
Photo by Kevin Randle 

I guess the point is that he didn’t find the Roswell crash site because Don and I had already located it with the help of Bill Brazel. He provides a brief history that is untrue. Had he tried a little harder he would have learned more about the case. He never made it to the impact site, though Don and I were there in 2023 when Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries spent an hour on the case. He brought in a lot of material that wasn’t even good speculation. It was one of the worst examples of putting Roswell in the title as click bait, implying he had found the real site, but Don and I had been there decades earlier.

Don and me on the impact site about thirty miles southeast of the Debris
Field, the real crash site. Photo taken in July 2023 for the Netflix Roswell story.

This is the problem with the Internet. There is a great deal of information on about any topic you care to research. But this also takes time to understand how that information fits together. This was just a reason to use Roswell in the title and spend a little time in New Mexico. Real research requires due diligence. That didn’t happen here.

Nick Pope is Gone

 

For those who might have missed the sad news, Nick Pope, onetime British Ministry of Defence UFO expert has died. His wife, Elizabeth Weiss said, “My heart is breaking. Nick passed away this afternoon (April 6) at our home."

Nick Pope at the Las Vegas Crash Conference.

Inside the UFO community, Nick was well known for his expertise on the subject and for the insider information he offered. He was a cautious researcher who was bound by his connections to official documents that often required him to protect some of the information he had learned from classified sources. But his intimate knowledge of the UFO phenomena provided him with an insight to many of the important cases.

With Jim Penniston and John Burroughs, he wrote what is one of the best books about the Rendlesham Forest UFO sightings of late December 1980. His book, along with that written by Charles Halt, who was the deputy commander at the time, provides us with a greater understanding of that event.

I met with Nick on several occasions and even shared a dinner table with him. Quite naturally, our talk surrounded UFOs. Although we sometimes differed on certain UFO cases, it was always a cordial conversation. His knowledge was extensive and his contacts were many. He brought a clarity to the topic that others failed to grasp.

Elizabeth Weiss provided some of the medical details, telling us that Nick suffered from Stage 4 esophageal cancer that took his life at 60. It is always a sad note when a colleague passes. We begin to think of what we should have done when we had the chance. I wish his wife my best in this tragic time.

Mike Rogers "Confesses" to the Hoax

 

When I learned that Mike Rogers had passed, I put a short note up on this blog. It wasn’t so much an obituary as a notice that he was gone. I shared some of my interactions with him which I believed to be of interest, but drew no real conclusions about the validity of some of the things he’d said in the past.

Mike Rogers. Photo Courtesy of Mike Rogers.

Charlie Wiser posted a comment to that article that said:

Mike Rogers' daughter took his confession on his death bed - he confessed (for the second time) to hoaxing the TW sighting with Travis, confirming his role at the fire tower (the UFO) - he was to stop at a certain viewing point for Travis to get out, then generate panic in the truck and drive away fast after the zapping, to leave the impression Travis was abducted. Given the various changes and contradictions in their stories over the years in response to skeptical pushback, this version fits the actual facts.

Mike also confessed to the first part of the Phoenix Lights (V-shape) in which he was so interested for the past 20 years. If we read his "speculation" as confession - a lightweight wire-and-plastic construction lifted by helium, with DEFINITELY!! exactly 7 lights no matter what people reported, released near Prescott that traveled with the wind speed and direction to Casa Grand - we might solve that part of the sighting. He agrees the second part was flares.

Before I announced on Coast-to-Coast AM that Rogers was gone, I had read the comment. I told the executive producer about it with the caveat that I had not had a chance to vet the information and I wasn’t comfortable mentioning the hoax claim. I did know about some of the acrimony between Travis Walton and Mike Rogers and I knew they had put it behind them. So, I just made the announcement about Rogers’s passing on air and let it go at that.

Travis Walton at the Roswell UFO Festival.

Now I have the other side of the story, which has done nothing to resolve the issue, but does give us, well, a different perspective. André Skondras posted the following that is relevant:

Somewhere In The Skies podcaster Ryan Sprague shared Jennifer Stein’s response regarding Mike Rogers’ alleged deathbed confession about the Travis Walton case. Stein has a wonderful documentary called “Travis: The True Story of Travis Walton.”

“I think it’s incredibly disrespectful to tamper with Mike’s final statements. I do not believe he made any kind of deathbed confession, because filmmaker Patrick James visited him three days before his passing and got a completely different story directly from Mike. Patrick James, an Arizona filmmaker, will be releasing a documentary about the Walton case soon.

‘If this were truly a final statement, why didn’t his daughter post the audio? Why just a text, and then take it down? A lot of things don’t add up. I don’t believe it’s a legitimate post. I suspect it’s Charlie Wiser trying one last time to convince the world that the Walton case is a hoax. I find this behavior sad and disrespectful. I had very nice, respectful texts with Mike Rogers in the weeks before he passed, and he never mentioned any of this.’”

[https://youtube.com/.../UgkxJkWlurO32s0SAlrY...](https://youtube.com/.../UgkxJkWlurO32s0SAlrY...)

Full interview:

[https://www.youtube.com/live/iNo6BqnzY2Q...](https://www.youtube.com/live/iNo6BqnzY2Q...)

[https://x.com/likeitmatters3/status/2036941617685553567?s=43](https://x.com/likeitmatters3/status/2036941617685553567?s=43)

But to repudiate this information, Wiser published the following to the comments of the previous post. “His daughter published a summary of it on Quora - she says it was recorded. She's deleted the post now but a screenshot is on my Twitter. She's currently deciding how best to release the information.”

Although this is evidence that she posted it, that she has since deleted is currently significant. That she said that there was a recording is also significant, as is the fact that the information is no longer available to us. Without that recording, we aren’t left with much evidence expect the apparent fact that she did post it.

I confess that I’m confused by all this and it is something that happens far too often in the UFO field. I can’t count the number of times that I have run into this sort of thing. Two completely different points of view proving that a certain case is a hoax and the other underscoring the importance and validity of the event. Just look at the rumors, half-truths and outright lies that surround the Roswell crash case.

On the other hand, it is often important that we have all the information about a case, a report, a statement that illustrates the conflict so that we might come to a conclusion that fits our belief structure. This means that some who know that there is no alien visitation believe any UFO sighting that isn’t a mistaken view of natural world phenomena about us is a hoax. On the other side are the true believers who accept any story about alien visitation no matter how outlandish that claim might be.

I try to fall in the middle of that continuum because I don’t know that alien visitation is impossible but that I would like some stronger evidence proving that visitation. Here is an example of what I mean because there are two camps. Either Walton was abducted by aliens or he invented the tale with some help.

I could argue either side of the debate because the published information. Philip Klass’s attack on the case is filled with holes, but there are contradictions in Walton’s story as well. There are Roger’s statements that no one saw Walton abducted because they had driven off. So, where was he for those five days? It is a case of I just don’t know.

But the point here is that the tale of a “deathbed confession” by Rogers doesn’t seem to be accurate. That, of course, leaves us right where we were when we entered the debate. Logic suggests it must be a hoax given the problems of interstellar travel and some of the best evidence suggests that Walton was “taken.” To draw a proper conclusion, we simply need more and better information.

Mike Rogers Has Died

 Mike Rogers, who was the leader of the logging crew that included Travis Walton, died on February 6, 2026. He became something of a controversial character in the tale, often accompanying Walton to various UFO conventions, appeared with him on several documentaries, and was a featured character in the movie about the abduction, Fire in the Sky. He eventually said that no one saw Walton abducted, but seemed to believe that was what happened.

He was a gifted artist and many of the drawings and paintings of the Walton case were the work of Rogers. He was also somewhat hot headed and sometimes saw conspiracy where none existed. When I interviewed him for my X-Zone radio show and podcast, there was a glitch in the taping which he believed was our attempt to sensor some of the things he said. It was just a glitch which arose out of the complications of creating a show with the host in Iowa, the guest in Arizona and the producer in Canada. Sometimes the Internet did not cooperate and sometimes mistakes were made.

Rogers's interpretation of the Walton aliens. Used with
permission of Mike Rogers.

During that interview, Rogers said that the Phoenix Lights were not the important sightings. He, among others in widely spread parts of Arizona and southern Nevada had seen a large, triangular object that traveled across most of Arizona. He provided a detailed description of that UFO, but the lights seen over Phoenix dominated the news media reporting of the events that night.

As we discussed the Walton abduction, I told him I thought it was a little chicken that he and the others left Walton behind. True, they did return, but that was after Walton disappeared. That is, of course, why no one saw Walton abducted, but they did see him hit with that beam of light.

On March 19, 2021, Mike Rogers in a Facebook post wrote, "I, Michael H. Rogers, being of sound and rational mind, do hereby give notice that I am no longer to be considered a witness to Travis C. Walton's supposed abduction of November 5, 1975.”

That set off a firestorm of controversy. After that, Rogers told me that he not only hadn’t seen Walton abducted, but that he had been saying that for years. It was only in 2021, that people noticed. Given that discussion, I wasn’t sure exactly what Rogers was saying but note that it doesn’t bode well for the Walton tale.

To make matters worse, a couple of days later, Rogers told movie producer Ryan Gordon, " We were talking about creating a UFO hoax, okay? I don't know how the UFO got there. But I remember... when I was driving the truck and he jumped out; it was all deliberate. It was all a staged thing, okay? He ran up there and there was something about the UFO not being real, although it looked real.’”

Rogers and Walton later reconciled and Rogers issued a statement retracting his confession but the damage was done. And there was the important point that Rogers said that no one saw the abduction and that, of course, included Rogers.

I am told by others that Rogers liked to carve, built furniture and had a silly side. I had heard that he wasn’t well these last few months, and am surprised that word of his passing is nearly six weeks old. He was 78

Why Jesse A. Marcel Dropped out of the Investigation

People occasionally ask me why Jesse Marcel, Sr. was left out the investigation once he had returned from the Debris Field with samples of the strange, metallic material. They say that you don’t leave your Intelligence Officer out of the investigation.

Good question and interesting point.

Fran Ridge and I were discussing who ran security at the Impact Site, he mentioning Robert T. Darden and me saying it was Major Edwin Easley. The documentation seemed to be on my side in this, but that doesn’t matter here. The point was that it caused me to review the transcripts of the separate interviews with Bill Rickett conducted by Don Schmitt and Mark Rodeghier. Turns out there was a clue about why Marcel disappeared from the event after he had gone out of the Debris Field.

Rickett, in describing his trip to the Impact Site, mentioned that they had expected Marcel to be there, but he wasn’t. Given the time line, the reason was that Marcel had been sent to Fort Worth with samples of the debris. While the investigation was continuing in Roswell, and had shifted to the Impact Site where the craft and bodies were found, Marcel was in Fort Worth meeting, first with General Ramey and later with the press. Although Marcel had been ordered not to say anything to reporter J. Bond Johnson, who took six photographs of the balloon debris, he was later quoted in the Fort Worth Star-Telegraph about what he had seen.

Don Schmitt and me on the Impact Site. It was much closer
to Roswell than the Debris Field near Corona.

By the time that Marcel returned from Fort Worth, the clean up on the Impact Site had been completed, the material taken to the base and stored in a hangar there.

Marcel was out of the loop for two reasons. First, he had been identified in the press release, which made him a target for reporters. That wasn’t a problem, because, he was in Fort Worth while the investigation and clean up continued in Roswell. Once Ramey declared it was a weather balloon, the reporters disappeared. Second, by the time he returned, the investigation, such as it was, had been completed in Roswell. If the craft was alien, the information about it would have been classified as top secret. There was no reason to expose Marcel to what had been learned while he was in Fort Worth. There was nothing he could add to the discussion at that point.

Did Marcel know about the recovery of the bodies? I would say, based on my experience as an Intelligence Officer, probably. But he hadn’t seen them. He had heard about them but he was uncomfortable talking about something that he hadn’t seen with his own eyes. He had seen the debris field and tested some of the debris. He said that it was from something that had not been made on Earth. He had not seen the bodies. As I say, I suspect that he had heard the rumors, but to him they were only rumors. He didn’t mention them for that reason.

It was Rickett’s statement about Marcel coming out to the Impact Site that sort of triggered these thoughts. You don’t expose more people to the secrets than are necessary. With the cleanup complete, there was no reason to bring Marcel into the event. It was over.

In fact, it seems that Marcel had asked Sheridan Cavitt, the CIC OIC in Roswell about a report he had written. Cavitt refused to show it to him, suggesting again, that Marcel had no need to know. The event was over.

And Ben Franklin had said that three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. You simply did not provide information to someone who had no need to know, and by the time Marcel returned from Fort Worth, he had no need to know.

Okay, let the firestorm begin… I just handed in the book manuscript that I have been working on these last several months and am between projects. For those keeping score at home, I’m about to begin another of the Vietnam Ground Zero books written by “Eric Helm.” 

Did the Balloon Debris Ever Reach Wright-Patterson AFB?

 

David Rudiak

Every once in a while, something new about the Roswell case pops up. David Rudiak was making a somewhat routine search of the newspapers from July 1947 and found the following from the Dayton Hearld for July 9. You might say that it provides a different perspective on our ongoing search for evidence about the Roswell events.

According to the newspaper, under the headline, “Field Test ‘Out’ On ‘Flying Disc.’”

Wright Field will not receive the weather device which for a while yesterday was believed to be a flying disc.

Plans to send the object here for study were changed when the identification was made.

The office of technical intelligence received the following message from headquarters of the Army Air Forces this morning:

“In view of positive identification of this object as a Rawin high altitude sounding device (radar target) it appears unnecessary to forward it to you.”

The FBI telex that went out from Fort Worth on the evening of July 8, was based on an interview of Major Curtan (who, in reality, was Major Kirton) who told the FBI agent that the object was “hexagonal in shape and was suspended from a ballon (sic) by cable, which ballon (sic) was approximately twenty feet in diameter… Disc and balloon being transported to Wright Field by special plane for examin[ation].”

To me, the news article suggests that the material was not sent on to Wright Field because it was identified in Fort Worth as a common weather balloon and not an alien space craft. There was no reason to send it to Wright Field with the identification and photographs made in Fort Worth. That would suggest that the interviews conducted by the Air Force in 1994 reflected poor memory about the event but were important because they underscored the Mogul explanation.

The article says the balloon and the rawin
target were not sent on to Wright-Pat.

And, I suppose the skeptics will say that it was just one more way to cover up the super-secret Mogul project. Why bother with follow up interviews or ask to see the balloon and rawin target at Wright Field because it was identified as just a common balloon and radar target?

But looking at the interviews conducted by the Air Force, several of the retired officers were asked, specifically, about a cover up. Albert Trakowski, told Colonel Jeffrey L. Butler and First Lieutenant James McAndrew, “Concerning a cover story for the project Mogul, there was no planned cover story. I do not recall any documentation nor any efforts develop a cover story even though security for Mogul was of great concern.”

And, Trakowski said, “I became aware of this only after Colonel [Marcellus] Duffy called me from Wright Field from his home. This was just an informational call, he just wanted to let me know that someone had come to him with some debris from New Mexico and he said, ‘this sure looked like some of the stuff that you launched from Alamogordo.’ Duffy was very familiar with the various apparatus and materials for the project, so if he said that it was debris from the project, I’m sure that’s what it was. He was not concerned with a breach of security for the project.”

What we have here, then, are Trakowski and Athelstan F. Spilhaus, relating what Colonel Duffy might have done. Spilhaus wrote, “All the NYU personnel had left Alomogordo [sic] when the ‘material’ was brought in – someone stated that it may have been Col Duffy’s and therefore was sent to him at Wright-Patterson – not because it was extraterrestrial. It is a logical reason to send it (the debris from the desert) there – not because it was special – Col Duffy was a fine officer and I’m sure he’d recognize it.”

Trakowski and Spilhaus, as second-hand witnesses, were providing information about the debris being forwarded to Wright Field, but suggesting it was just a few samples. Yet we have first-hand testimony from eyewitnesses suggesting more than just a few scraps of the material hand carried to Wright Pat. In fact, crates had been constructed to house the debris for the trip out of Roswell.

There were already pictures of Jesse Marcel, Roger Ramey and Thomas Dubose published in the newspapers with that balloon and target. Sort of a “Nothing to see here. Move along,” ploy. I mean, who, really thought it was an alien spacecraft in those pictures until Jesse Marcel began talking about it in those terms in 1978, so long after the event.

But since the balloon experiments being conducted in New Mexico weren’t classified, though there seemed to be a great deal of concern about possible security breaches of the ultimate purpose. The next day, that is July 10, more pictures of the balloons and rawin targets were published in newspapers around the country. You must wonder what those officers interviewed in 1994 were talking about given the documentation from 1947.

What we do have is the newspaper article that David found, telling us that the flight to Wright Field was cancelled, and the second-hand memories of two of those involved in some fashion with Mogul, telling us that Duffy had identified it. This really boils down to which of the witnesses to you care to believe. But I will note that if General Ramey and his weather officer, Warrant Officer Irving Newton, had already identified the material and given that identification to the press, what purpose would be served by sending it on to Duffy at Wright Field?

Nick Pope: A Sad Note

 

Just last night, I received some sad news about Nick Pope. He published a brief message that said:

A while ago, following some digestive issues, I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Unfortunately, it's Stage 4 and has metastasized to my liver. While I know that it's kindness and hope that leads people to suggest healers and supposed miracle cures, and to say things like "fight it", and "you can beat it", I'm afraid my diagnosis and my situation leaves no doubt whatsoever: I can't beat it.

Nick Pope at a UFO Crash Conference held years ago in Las Vegas.

What an amazing adventure I've had! A 21-year career at the UK Ministry of Defence, where I got involved in subjects ranging from financial policy to counter-terrorism; from military policing to UAP. And I saved six cows; it's a long story! The things I've done; the places I've been; the people I've met; and the secrets I've been privy to. I wouldn't have swapped it for the world. And then a second career, where my previous government UAP role brought me to the attention of the world's media, leading me to become a regular commentator on TV news shows and documentaries, as well as consulting and acting as spokesperson on various UFO and alien-themed movies, TV series and video games. The media called me the real Fox Mulder!

The true highlight, of course, is life with my wonderful, beautiful and incredibly smart wife, Elizabeth. She's a real-life Agent Scully: a scientist, a skeptic and a redhead. We met randomly in the lobby bar of the Fairmont Hotel in downtown San José (she was an anthropology professor at San José State University) in October 2010 and got married 3 months later. We applied successfully for my Green Card and she had me shipped over and imported to the U.S., where a new adventure began, as Elizabeth and I enjoyed wildlife watching at our wonderful home in Tucson, desert hikes, film noir, true crime, country music, Sunday lunches with my in-laws, and much more besides. Recently, we had an amazing one-year adventure in New York City, living 5 minutes from Times Square, and having a wonderful view of the Empire State Building from our apartment window.

We proofread each other's books and articles (I love commas, hyphens and exclamation points way more than Elizabeth, and managed to win at least a few of those battles), and I'm supporting her in her ongoing fight for free speech, academic freedom, and keeping political correctness, superstition and identity politics out of science and academia. The White House Press Secretary Tweeted one of her recent newspaper articles, which shows the huge impact she's having.

Nick Pope at the Las Vegas Crash Conference.

I kept working for as long as I could (right up until last week), with my various film/TV interviews, conference appearances, and live events, including my position as moderator of Ancient Aliens Live - where I think I did 94 shows. Sadly, the time has come where I've had to step away from this work.

A lot of people have followed my work on UAP. I'm loath to use the word "fans", because I'm not a celebrity. But I am a public figure, and many people have followed me on my journey as I've sought to keep the UAP subject in the public eye, and to frame it as a defense, national security and safety of flight issue - as well as a fascinating science problem. Some of this work has been public knowledge, but some such work, of necessity, has been done behind the scenes. I hope I've helped move the needle forward. But most people, of course, know me through my media interviews and live events. To everyone who's followed me on my journey, thank you - and good luck with your own journeys. I wish you every success and happiness.

It's all been amazing, and I'm grateful for the things I've done, not mournful for the things that I won't now get to do.

Per Aspera Ad Astra!

Nick Pope, Tucson, Arizona, February 12, 2026

I wish Nick all the best in this tough time.