A Different Perspective

MUFON Changes Directors -- Again

2012-01-24T13:34:00.000-08:00

Once again the leadership of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) is changing. Clifford Cliff, citing a need for more family time, announced that he was handing over the reigns of the organization to David MacDonald on February 1. MacDonald is a current board member and the Kentucky State Director, Assistant Director of Investigations, is the STAR Team Administrator and does the testing of new field investigators.

MUFON began as the Midwest UFO Network in 1969 and part of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization. When then director Walt Andrus moved to Texas, the organization went with him and evolved into the Mutual UFO Network.

Andrus directed the organization for decades, finally handing the directorship to John Schuessler. From that point, the leadership passed through several hands, and now is about to be taken by MacDonald.

MacDonald is moving MUFON Headquarters from Colorado to Cincinnati, Ohio. MacDonald, who said he was excited about taking over, said that the headquarters would be more easily accessible to the membership. Cincinnati is within six hours of about 60% of the United States.

Anecdotal Testimony and Scientific Observation

2012-01-12T15:04:00.000-08:00

Here is a question that will become increasingly important in the coming years. When does anecdotal testimony become scientific observation? Or conversely, when does scientific observation deteriorate into anecdotal testimony?

We have been gathering data in the UFO field for decades (I’m not sure when a real effort began because we have divided everything into periods... The Great Airship of 1897, the Foo Fighters of WW II and the Ghost Rockets in Europe in 1946.) During some of those periods serious scientific investigations were attempted. The Foo Fighters were of intelligence interest during the war and were taken quite seriously by the military according to the good work done by Keith Chester. The Ghost Rockets were investigated by Lieutenant General Jimmy Doolittle in 1946, and the Air Force began a serious look at UFOs in 1948.

We have seen, in scientific enquiry where what would be considered in our world as anecdotal testimony has become scientific observation. Back in 1803, French naturalist, Jean-Bastiste Biot undertook a study of rocks that had fallen from the sky. The French Academy of Sciences, just the year before, had suggested that there were no rocks in the sky.

Here’s what is significant today. He talked to the witnesses of the falling rocks. These were untrained and unschooled people who had been on the scene when the rocks fell. He didn’t reject what they had to say because he knew that rocks couldn’t fall from the sky. He listened to them and recorded, carefully, what they had seen. He was careful to separate interpretation from the facts. This anecdotal testimony became scientific observation because it had been properly recorded even though the witnesses themselves were not scientists, and often had no formal schooling at all.

In today’s world, when we have witnesses to a UFO event, we are quick to dismiss their observations because they are anecdotal. They are not trained witnesses, even when we can talk to them within days of their sighting, even when they have written down what they have seen, and even if there is some sort of independent observations by instrumentality or photography. We argue about the validity of what they have seen because they are not reporting what we wish them to say.

A couple of years ago two young skeptics decided to perform an experiment to prove that eyewitnesses were unreliable and that UFO investigators were incompetent. They launched flares attached to balloons and waited for the UFO reports to come in...

But what we saw was that the witnesses, if they didn’t identify the balloons and flares for what they were, described, accurately, what they had seen. They talked about the nature of the lights, meaning they were red and moving slowly. They didn’t, for the most part, talk about anything other than the lights moving through the sky, though one of the witnesses did talk about a strange formation.

UFO investigators, called in, immediately identified the lights as of terrestrial manufacture and one police officer even told reporters that the lights were flares on balloons.

The point was that the witness testimony, and a careful listening to what the witnesses said, proved that they had been accurate. Trouble emerges when everyone begins to speculate about the nature of the lights... and most of these were reporters who tried to turn the story into something alien. One reporter even asking a child about aliens, when none of the witnesses had said anything about spacecraft or aliens.

Yes, I understand that with UFOs we need more than witness testimony, but the real question is why do we reject that testimony by labeling it as anecdotal? At what point can we accept the testimony as something more than the unschooled observations of the rube?

And why is it that only that testimony that seems to suggest that the observation was mundane is accepted at face value while that which suggests something strange is rejected automatically?

In other words, when does anecdotal testimony become scientific observation?

Reflections of a UFO Investigator

2012-01-04T12:51:00.000-08:00

For those keeping score at home, Anomalist Books has just published Reflections of a UFO Investigator, a look at my journey through the world of UFOs.

This book begins with my very first UFO “investigation” and ends last spring, just before I left for the Roswell UFO festival. It describes my UFO “sighting” and it talks about some of the surprising things that I learned as I traveled throughout the country investigating UFOs. It explains what led me to some of the conclusions I have reached, and talks about some of the troubles I have had during those searches.

For those interested, it is available at Amazon and is an ebook through Kindle and at Barnes and Noble.

Yes, this is a commercial announcement, but then you have to learn about the book someway. Give it a look, and I’ll answer your questions about it.
To order, see:

Anomalist Books:
http://www.anomalistbooks.com/book.cfm?id=61

Amazon US:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1933665564/theanomalist

Brad Meltzer's Decoded

2011-12-30T14:26:00.000-08:00

Those of you who have been reading the comments about the Fact or Faked: The Paranormal Files know that there has been some criticism about the same old, tired voices being interviewed on various TV shows (not that I’m particularly tired). Some viewers have liked the interjection of new blood into game and appreciate the new points of view.

While I agree with the philosophy, I will also note that there is a problem with these new voices. They often do not know the subject well enough to make intelligent comments about it... Or, they seemed surprised by the information they discover, never knowing that it has been circulating for years among those of us who study the field.

My latest case in point is Brad Meltzer’s Decoded on History (please note that History removed the “channel” from it’s name a while back). They decided to look into UFOs and seemed stunned to find that the reports come from more than the guys in bib overalls who quit school in the eighth grade (please note that this stereotype is suggested by the intellectuals who are too sophisticated to believe aliens have visited Earth.)

Here’s where I’m coming from. They go to Roswell and interview Julie (seen here), the daughter of Walter Haut, the PIO who issued the press release about finding the “flying saucer.” Of course, this is second-hand testimony, and Julie clearly believes what she is saying about what her father mentioned to her. But they don’t discuss the affidavit that Haut signed, and if they had asked some of us, we could have supplied video and audio tape of Haut himself talking about the things that Meltzer’s crew was getting second hand.

Meltzer mentions that while we all know something fell at Roswell, what we might not know was that just two weeks earlier, Kenneth Arnold had made the first sighting of a formation of objects. Well, sorry, but anyone who has paid any attention to UFOs, knows about Arnold’s sighting, knows when it took place, and even knows that the term “flying saucer” was coined at that time.

So, they talk about the Roswell (Main Street looking south toward the museum seen here) case but give us nothing new about it. Two people who were not involved describe the events in the briefest terms. If there was anything good about it, they rejected the balloon theory and didn’t even mention Project Mogul, that was, essentially, the balloon answer dressed in new clothes (I mention this with the fear that it will start another debate where everyone can copy and paste everything that they have said before, but this time I might just delete those comments).

Meltzer also talks about Project Blue Book, but says nothing about Sign, Grudge or Moon Dust (and for my skeptical friends, we do know that Moon Dust had a UFO component based on documentation). I don’t know if he didn’t know about them, or didn’t want to confuse the issue by talking about them.

They finally trot out to Area 51, mention the Extraterrestrial Highway (I bet the Air Force was thrilled when Nevada did that) and show the bullet-riddled sign announcing the route. But they drive toward the base, see the base security on the ridge watching them, and start climbing, on foot, toward the Air Force (or is it Wachenhut?) vehicle. When it moves toward them, they scramble back to their car and beat feet for Las Vegas.

They find a guy who was in security at Area 51 and he explains that he had access to everything on the base because of his security clearance... with the exception of one hangar. One weekend, on a fluke, he got a look inside, but he wouldn’t say what he had seen. It could have been anything or nothing. It was a good story, but it didn’t advance our knowledge at all. We know nothing now that we didn’t already know.

Oh, we’re treated to the Janet aircraft on the corner of McCarran, and we’re told that employees at the base fly out there everyday. But we already knew that, too.

We see John Lear and we learn about Bob Lazar, but there is nothing new there either. Meltzer does suggest that Lazar is surrounded in controversy, but then, we already knew that.

In the end, they sit around and we listen to them talk about the number of stars and the number of galaxies, and the size of the universe. But then, we’ve heard these discussions too and that aren’t particularly insightful. What we need is someone to tell us how to short circuit those vast distances.

Yes, I enjoy the show, but this one disappointed. It was a bunch of new people coming into the UFO arena, but they hadn’t done their homework (or they assumed that most people were as ignorant as they when it came to UFOs). They did suggest there are some strange things out there, but again, I believe that even my skeptical friends will agree that there is something strange out there.

In the end, it was a way to see where we stand in our search and we know that we’re way down the road from Meltzer and crew. Too bad they didn’t take time to learn a little more before they leaped into this one.

David Rudiak Joins the Dream Team

2011-12-22T11:25:00.000-08:00

We have expanded the team yet again. Dr. David Rudiak, who has done a great deal of work on the “Ramey memo” has accepted our invitation to join us as a consulting researcher along with Tony Bragalia and Chris Rutkowski. I’ll add here that we had planned on this long ago, but Tom thought I had sent the invitation to David and I thought he had. When we learned that neither had, I then sent one.

Rudiak (seen here at the International UFO Museum in Roswell, photo courtesy of Tom Carey) is one of the experts (and maybe only expert) about what happened in Ramey’s office on July 8, 1947. He wrote to me that, “I've reconstructed the debris in a computer ray-tracer and proven there is only one radar target there and probably one balloon (or what would fit in shoe box), in other words NOT what you would expect from a multi-balloon, multi-target Mogul but perfectly consistent with Ramey and Newton's description of a singular balloon/target and Dubose/Marcel's substituted weather balloon.”

He also said, “Another of my Roswell specialties are my various histories of the period. I have expertise in how the story was reported in numerous news outlets, not just a few. I think I have compiled the most extensive collection of U.S. and international Roswell stories anywhere. These stories present many angles and contradictions that just a few articles do not provide and tell us a lot about how the cover-up was handled. E.g., I have found only two or three newspapers out of hundreds carrying a rare AP sub-version quoting Sheriff Wilcox declining to answer further questions about the "disc" saying he was ‘working with those fellows at the base.’ That I consider to be very telling and corroboration for what his family was telling us decades later. Why are Marcel, Brazel, Wilcox, Ramey, and the press release telling sometimes very different stories, often contradicting the balloon story? Why do the AP, UP, and RDR versions of the press release differ in many details?”

David’s expertise isn’t limited to just the Roswell case, but includes the history of the time. He emailed me that, “And I think I may have the most extensive collection of UFO reports from the area, which I compiled from reviewing every regional paper I could lay my hands on. This demonstrates that Roswell didn't happen in a vacuum, which may have prompted Ramey, Kalberer, and White Sands commander Turner debunking the saucers over a week before Roswell blew up. One very interesting news article I have from a Las Cruces newspaper recounts how on the night of July 8 a fireball steaking out of the south over the Organ mountains broke up, followed by search lights from White Sands Proving Grounds sweeping the sky afterward for an indefinite period of time.”

He, along with Brad Sparks, reworked the mathematics of the Mogul flight number 4, which the skeptics claim is responsible for the debris, showing that it did not come nearly as close as Charles Moore, a Mogul engineer, suggested. (I’ll point out here the Moore’s calculations couldn’t bring the balloon array closer than seventeen miles.) Rudiak’s figures suggested that the balloon array launched from Alamogordo wouldn’t have come as close as Moore suggested. More importantly, it appears that there was no flight number 4.

Combine David’s training and research with the expertise and knowledge of other team members, including their various experiences in researching UFOs, participation in the military, and their understanding of the history of UFOs from the beginning (which is to say as far back as the nineteenth century and farther) and allows for the most comprehensive look at the Roswell case ever undertaken. David’s assistance and knowledge will prove invaluable in this research project.

The FBI Memo and Roswell

2011-12-11T09:47:00.000-08:00

Over the decades, a few documents relating to the Roswell UFO crash (or the Roswell events if you wish to remove UFO from the discussion) have been found. One of those developed after Army Brigadier General George F. Schulgen asked for FBI help “...in locating and questioning individuals who first sighted the so-called flying discs...”

On July 10, 1947, an FBI memo was created by D. M. Ladd for E. G. Fitch, outlining the Army request. That request was forward to Clyde Tolson, the number two man in the FBI at the time. Tolson endorsed the memo, writing on July 15, “I think we should do this.”

Hoover then endorsed the endorsement (seen here). He wrote, “I would do this but before agreeing to it we must insist upon full access to discs recovered. For instance, in the La. case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination.”

But Hoover’s handwriting was sloppy and the crucial point, the location, as “in the La case” has been disputed for years. It seems that it can also be read as Sw or Sov or 2a. Of course, if it said, “Sw” then that could refer to the Roswell case.

Tom Carey and I have been discussing this through email for a couple of weeks. I am of the opinion that Hoover wrote “La” and this refers to a case from Shreveport, Louisiana. It is clear that the Shreveport report is a hoax, given that the disc was recovered and examined.

According to information from the Project Blue Book files, the Headquarters, Air Training Command, the office of the AC of S, A-2 [Assistant Chief of Staff, Air Intelligence] Barksdale Field, LA, had received a report that a “Flying Disc [had been] found in Shreveport, Louisiana [on] 7 July 1947.”

In the course of their investigation, they found that the disc was small (seen here), there was an electronic starter attached to it that came from a fluorescent light and two condensers from electric fans. The man who built it, and whose name had been removed from the file, also said that he had used a torch to put soot on the edges so that it looked as if the disc had been spinning.

In other words, the evidence of a hoax is well established.

But there is more.

According to the documentation available, the FBI was alerted to the Shreveport case and FBI agents did interview one of the sources. The FBI memo on the case also said that the Army had taken the disc into their possession.

This case seems to fit facts and it is an “La.”

There is another piece to this. On July 24, 1947, there is another FBI memo. This one mentions the Hoover note but now it is typewritten. It says the same thing but the term has been identified. The crucial sentence says, “For instance, in the La. case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination.”

That seems to end the discussion, but Tom isn’t as sure as I am. He believes that J. G. Fitch, who provided the typewritten version, in his memo might have suffered from the same problems as the rest of us, meaning that he wasn’t sure what Hoover meant and that question remains open. Tom wants to pursue this a little further to see if he can find a concrete answer.

Tom plans to chase this using a couple of resources he has developed over the last few years. He thinks it is important enough to invest a little additional and effort in finding a solid, final conclusion. And that, really, is the purpose of the Team. To find final, solid answers to the questions that remain about the Roswell case.

Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files - A Third Time

2011-12-03T13:21:00.000-08:00

I know that I have been quite critical of Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files in the last few weeks. I said then, and I will repeat now, that I enjoy the show. In the last couple of episodes, I have found nothing about which to complain.

Let me explain.

In a recent episode,, they were going to investigate a picture of a ghost taken at the Birdcage in Tombstone, Arizona. This was a gambling hall and house of prostitution back in the days of Wyatt Earp. A couple of dozen people were killed there and there have been reports of all sorts of ghostly occurrences inside, including an interesting picture of what looked like a man in a coffin.

They interviewed the photographer who said that he had tried to explain the picture but could not. They studied the photo and tried a number of different ways to duplicate with props on the table and a moving flashlight, but could not. Then one of the team noticed an old-fashioned coffee grinder sitting on the table and wondered if a light passing behind it would create the effect seen on the video. When they flashed a light through it, the shadows on the wall matched, perfectly, the ghost picture. They had found the solution.

In another investigation of a formation of UFOs taken in Mexico, they attempted to duplicate the taped image. They ran a couple of experiments, but nothing looked like the video they had. Finally the tried launching white, helium-filled balloons as is often done during weddings in that region. Their formation of balloons matched the motion, speed, and the grouping of the objects on the tape. They had found the solution.

Finally, they had a tape of a UFO seen above the Griffin Park Observatory taken by a motorist one night as he traveled down an LA freeway. They couldn’t run their experiments on the freeway for obvious reasons. Instead, they recreated the section of the freeway down to the lights and freeway signs to an amazing degree of accuracy. Again they ran their experiments but couldn’t quite duplicate the video.

What they eventually did, was use a helicopter, apparently with either the landing lights or a searchlight on, which overwhelmed the navigation lights and the anti-collision beacon. The bright object looked just like that on the video, as the helicopter hovered. They then had it accelerate and it looked like the object that had been filmed except that there wasn’t a sudden, rapid acceleration at the end of the video, as the object disappeared.

However, with a little digital editing, something that nearly everyone can do in today’s environment, they were able to duplicate the original video. They then used a voice stress type analysis of the witness. While I’m not a big fan of these sorts of things, and I think the jury is still out on the validity of such tests, they determined that the man who took the video was not being completely candid. Given all that, I believe they had found the solution.

They have done some other very good work in the last few weeks. They found what produced a ghostly image in a Nevada grave yard. It was the same solution that I found while investigating the Joplin, Missouri Spooklight a long time ago.

Once again, I believe that we all should watch Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files because they do put the claims of paranormal activity to the test. They do find the solutions for many of the stories, legends, claims and videos they examine. Anyone who does this kind of work, without becoming just debunkers searching for any solution, deserves our support.

Roswell Dream Team - A Brief Update

2011-11-30T14:55:00.000-08:00

By examining a little of the material about the Roswell case, and here I mean a combination of documentation and testimony, we can draw a couple of conclusions in a limited way. I will note that I hold all the documentation for this, meaning I have copies of the relevant material, and I conducted the interviews with the witnesses, which include recordings of the conversations.

Here’s what we know and what we can prove.

According to the mythology of Roswell, the officers at Roswell were so confused by the Mogul arrays, they didn’t know that what they had were mere weather balloons and rawin radar reflectors. They flew the material to Fort Worth, their higher headquarters, where a low-ranking weather officer identified it all as nothing more than a balloon and foil-like rawin.

The problem here is that the timing doesn’t really work out if we believe that the men at Roswell didn’t know what they had until they got to Fort Worth. That would mean that the men in Fort Worth would be unable to identify it until the stuff arrived.

According to the time lines it was at 5:30 p.m. local time that the Dallas Morning News interviewed Major E. M. Kirton. According to the newspaper, the material found in Roswell was nothing more than a weather balloon.

But it was 6:00 p. m. local time that Warrant Officer Irving Newton (seen here with the rawin radar reflector) reported for duty, according to what he told me. The telephone in the office rang and he was ordered to report to Brigadier General Ramey’s office. He said that he was alone in the office and that he couldn’t leave. Ramey himself then called and told Newton, “to get your ass over here now. Use a car and if you don’t have one, take the first one with the keys in it,” according to what Newton said.

When he arrived, a colonel briefed him in the hallway (and if I was going to speculate here, I’d say that would be Colonel Thomas DuBose (later brigadier general), the Chief of Staff of the Eighth Air Force). Newton said that he didn’t remember who it was but that the message had been clear. “These officers from Roswell think they have found a flying saucer, but the general thinks it’s a weather balloon. He wants you to take a look.”

At that point, you might say, the air went out of the Roswell saucer. Nothing more than a weather balloon and a rawin radar target. Newton identified it as ordered and there is no question that the material, spread out on the floor, is the remains of a weather balloon and a radar target. From the photographs available, that is quite clear.

Okay, you say. So what?

How is it that Major Kirton could identify the material as a balloon before Newton arrived on duty, was called to Ramey’s office, and then identified it as a balloon? How did Kirton know this, at least, thirty minutes before anyone else supposedly knew?

Or is it that the cover story had already been decided upon and the actors in that little play were given their scripts. Kirton read from his, but he was more than thirty minutes too early. He should have said that the material was in Ramey’s office and it would be looked at by various experts...

In fact, why is it that only Newton was called forward to identify the material? Doesn’t this suggest that the fix was in?

And on a related point, while rereading the newspaper (specifically The Boston Herald of July 9, 1947) articles, I came across a statement by Brigader General Donald N. Yates, who in 1947 was the chief of the Army Air Forces weather service. He said, about the weather balloon and rawin radar targets, that only a very few of them are used daily, at some points where some specific project requires highly accurate wind information from extreme altitudes.

I mention this for two reasons. One is that in a letter to me, Newton used similar wording. He wrote, in 1995 I might add, that “The rawin target and balloon in question, was only used at limited locations...”

The suggestion here was that they were unusual and it wouldn’t be difficult for the men at Roswell to confuse this debris for something more exotic... except, the rawins and balloons were used at Operation Crosswords. These were the atomic tests in the Pacific in 1946, carried out with crews from the 509th, so the men at Roswell might well have been familiar with the look of the rawins.

And, second, there is the find from Circleville Ohio, as reported around the country in the days prior to the announcement from Roswell. Here a farmer found a weather balloon and rawin target in his field, but knew what it was. He took it to the sheriff, who knew what it was, and it was displayed in the window of the local newspaper, where, apparently everyone else knew what it was. Oh, they couldn’t have told you it was a rawin, but they would have told you that the object was a weather balloon and something attached to it.

Yet the guys in Roswell couldn’t identify it, even though they had the balloon envelop and the torn up target on display in Ramey’s office... and no one explained why the rawin was so torn up.

The real point here is that the timing was off, based on the documentation and testimony available. The timing of the announcements make it sound as if the answer was prepared before Newton arrived to give it. He was the window dressing. The expert who had worked with the rawins and the balloons and would know what it was. And the press, who ever they were (Newton mentioned several reporters) took that answer, as did Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter, J. Bond Johnson, and returned to their city rooms. In a couple of hours, it was reported that the Roswell debris was a “weather forecasting device.”

And that was the end of it... for more than thirty years.

Chris Rutkowski Joins the Team

2011-11-19T09:05:00.000-08:00

The Roswell Dream Team has expanded again. This time Chris Rutkowski (seen below), a well-known Canadian researcher has joined us.

We wanted to bring in someone with a skeptical bent but not someone who was rabidly anti-extraterrestrial. We wanted someone with an open mind, who would point out where we might have slipped off the rails, but not someone who would assume that we were wrong simply because there is no possibility of alien visitation. It is a fine line to walk, but we believe that Chris can walk that line.

Chris himself said, “Although I've been called both a skeptic and a believer (depending on whether you're hearing it from a ‘true believer’ or a skeptic), I tend to think of myself as an objective cynic. I sit on the fence when it comes to the question whether or not some UFOs are alien spacecraft. (The pointy slats are painful, but they can be endured.)”

About the Roswell crash case, Chris said, “I think we're a long way from declaring Roswell an ‘alien’ incident. True, according to some witnesses, the material recovered was unlike anything they had seen, and there certainly was an attempt by the military to cover up or obfuscate information about the event. It's a matter of speculation as to whether or not the material recovered was non-terrestrial in origin, since we don't have any on hand to test.”

He cautioned, and rightly so, that “We're relying on decades-old testimony in some cases, and more recently on memories of family members who may or may not recall with any accuracy statements or events from long ago. Furthermore, some military witnesses may still be reluctant to talk and some may still adhere to their military code of secrecy.”

Chris did provide us with some background information that is probably of interest to all. He wrote in a recent email to me, “My background in astronomy and education (BSc and MEd, respectively) fits well with my interest in science education, particularly when it comes to astronomy-related topics. I have greatly enjoyed showing people Jupiter's moons through small telescopes at public star fests, and telling them stories about how constellations got their names. And yes, the topic of UFOs falls under this broad category of astronomy-related subjects, although by history, not accurately. Astronomers are no better equipped than stock market analysts when it comes to dealing with objects reportedly moving low over witnesses' heads and over airports.”

Chris and Donna Rutkowski.

And he is not a newcomer to the world of UFO investigation. He told me, “... I've been investigating reports of UFOs since the 1970s. I've also been writing about cases and theories since about that time. With many hundreds of case investigations under my belt, I can say that there does not seem to be a single simple explanation for all reports. They're not all hoaxes or misidentifications of stars and meteors. They're not collective illusions. There's a residual percentage of cases which have enough data and detail to explain them as aircraft, stars, planets, balloons, etc., except they are not.”

The plan is to share everything with Chris and get his take on the importance of the information, the evidence, and the thinking involved. Chris said that he liked the idea of a “cold case” investigation and thought with Roswell it was something that was long overdue.

Tony Bragalia Joins Roswell Dream Team

2011-11-11T12:54:00.000-08:00

The response to the announcement of the creation of a “Dream Team” has been met with nearly unanimous approval. There have been the detractors, but there will always be detractors... Nothing can be done about that, other than to say, we haven’t completed the team, and why not wait for the results before you condemn the research.

Tony Bragalia, who is known to many of us as a tireless researcher and who has an interest in a wide range of topics inside Ufology, has agreed to come on board as a consulting researcher. He’ll be working with us as we begin our new research into the Roswell case.

We all have worked with Tony on a variety of investigations. He and I collaborated on a review of the Mac Magruder story that was given to researchers by Magruder’s sons. We tried to find out when Magruder would have reported for duty at the Air War College and if he would have been available to travel to Wright Field for some sort of involvement in the research about the Roswell crash.

The reason I remember this well was because I was in Des Moines after the Iowa National Guard had been activated for duty during the devastating floods in 2008 (yes, we’re still recovering from that but you’d never know by all the news coverage of it). We shared information over the Internet, backing up each other’s findings.

The thing here is that we all don’t agree on some aspects of the case. Tony and I learned that Magruder wouldn’t have made it to Ohio until April 1948 as part of his training, which seemed to suggest Magruder wouldn’t have been deeply involved. He and I agreed, but Don and Tom do not... though it is a relatively small point and one we will revisit during the investigation.

Tom, Don and I don’t agree with Tony’s conclusion that students from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology were responsible for the hoax in Socorro. Tony believes, based on some documentation and an interview with some that the landing was a trick played on Lonnie Zamora, though he might not have been the target. We, Tom, Don, and I think the evidence of a hoax is weak.

I mention these things just to show that we all are not in agreement on everything. It is a team of researchers who have their own opinions and read the evidence as individuals rather than by committee. This divergence of opinion should allow us to consider many different aspects and solutions as we attempt to put all this together.

I will note here that this is not the whole team. Other invitations have been issued and we plan to build a team of people that is diverse in opinion and complete in scope. There will be more announcements later.

Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files - Revisited

2011-11-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

I got to thinking some more about the Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files video of a UFO crash at the White Sands Missile Range and found it strange that they had not spoken to anyone who worked there. I know that during different aspects of my research, whether into the treasure hidden in Victorio Peak (no, I don’t think there is one) to other aspects of the UFO phenomenon, the Public Affairs Office had always been courteous. So I sent them a note asking about this.

Monte Marlin, of that office, replied quickly to me. He said that he once had a email response prepared that he sent out to all that asked about the tape, which struck me as a smart thing to do. It also struck me that for him to do that, it meant that there were others who also asked the question about the footage which isn’t a bad thing. I mean there were enough people asking about the validity of the tape that he felt compelled to create a generic response to save himself some time. (The missile park at White Sands seen below.)

He suggested that this particular test was part of “an infrared shot of a Navy missile test...The high powered optics tests are part and parcel of our test mission here at the missile range. The data we collect belongs to our ‘customers,’ the weapons developers and is used for technical purposes. Once in awhile the clips make their way to the general public...”

Marlin also noted, “There are many, many launch areas and instrumentation sites on this enormous missile range. It is not uncommon to see poles in video footage. The poles may carry cabling related to the test or some poles have markings so that when we look at the footage, we can measure time/space distance.”

Which I found interesting because one of the experiments they ran on Paranormal Files was an attempt to duplicate the footage using an array of cables. It suggests that they had talked to the PAO, understood how some of the tests were conducted, but that wouldn’t have been very dramatic on TV. So, they just passed on that and ran their test.

This, I think answers one of the questions about the show... but hey, don’t get the wrong idea. I enjoy it. They have done some very useful experiments and solved some interesting mysteries. In this specific case, I think the answer was handed to them but they had thirty minutes to fill. Talking to a guy in an office isn’t nearly as exciting as running experiments in the desert, especially when you get to blow up a model rocket.

Rowell Investigation Dream Team

2011-10-31T14:15:00.000-07:00

Tom Carey, (seen here signing a book at the Roswell festival in 2011) a UFO researcher living in Pennsylvania and one of the authors of Witness to Roswell, realized that there was a great deal of work left to be done on the Roswell UFO case. You might say that his dream was to pull all the information together, to locate and interview the witnesses who have yet to tell their stories, verify as best as possible the facts of the case, and write it all down in a coherent and rational analysis. To help with this project, Tom worked to bring together a team of researchers who understood this case. He succeeded in convincing both Don Schmitt and me to join him in his quest.

Don Schmitt had, in the late 1980s, realized there was still work to be done on the Roswell case. The surface had only been scratched by others. With the support of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, he began his research. One of the things he did was invite me to join him, believing that my military experience would be of help in understanding Army operations and in communicating with retired military personnel on their level.

As everyone who has been paying attention knows, Don (seen here are the Roswell Festival in 2011) and I had a falling out over some research techniques and matters unrelated to the investigation. While these seemed important then, it could be said that in time we reevaluated these issues. We reconnected after I returned from Iraq and it was as if no time had passed.

A couple of months ago Tom asked me if I was willing to join him in putting together what he thought of as the ultimate Roswell crash book. I was enthusiastic about the idea and readily agreed.

After Tom and I had discussed what we thought needed to be covered, Tom approached Don with the same idea. Don also thought it a good idea and the Dream Team was born (can I, as a participant, refer to it as a Dream Team?).

Although we are still, more or less, in the planning stages, we have already made some discoveries. I have learned of a doctor who might have participated in an autopsy of the alien creatures. True enough, we have heard this before, but the man is a doctor, was a doctor then, and is now willing to talk about what he had seen.

Also true, I have not verified all of what he said, but there are some indications that he is who he claims to be. I mention this only because it is one of the first things that we have learned.

We have also begun, again, to use FOIA in an attempt to learn more about the Air Force investigation of the Roswell case. This means, simply, that we have again gone to the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force to review documents that relate to their Roswell investigation. We wanted to know what transpired in the meetings, what was written in the memos, and what the internal reports might have said.

I tried this once before. I spent three years chasing this information, finally locating what they had at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. But all that was there was the results of that investigation and nothing about the internal operations of it (Air Force Roswell investigation files seen here. Instead there were video tapes of witnesses, most of them gathered for the Fund for UFO Research, a Court Martial of a doctor who was having an affair with a nurse in 1957 and completely irrelevant to the investigation, lots of reports on balloons and Mogul, but nothing that answered my basic questions. So now we’ve started that process all over.

What we want to do is distill the information. We want to eliminate the nonsense from the case, whether it is Air Force explanations or witness testimony that is irrelevant or untrue.

You might say that we are starting all over, on a cold case, reviewing everything related to determine what is important. Sure, we all believe that what fell at Roswell was alien, but we are going to take the path that leads to the truth. We will attempt to eliminate our personal biases in favor of determining what happened now nearly 65 years ago.

Periodically we will provide updates about the investigation, letting people know where we are going. We plan to pull it all together in a book that will answer the various questions as best we can. Yes, we know that we won’t be able to please everyone... what if we find a terrestrial explanation that actually works? Then the UFO community will be angry... And if we find that it was something alien, well, I doubt that the Skeptics will be satisfied.

So now we begin again, not from our own goal-line to be sure but somewhere down the field and this time we will find the answer and the proof to support that answer.

Fact or Faked: The Paranormal Files

2011-10-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

I watched Fact or Faked: The Paranormal Files today and had some questions. First, I enjoy the show and am all in favor of anything that brings a note of skepticism and research into these tales. But I sometimes wonder if they know the answer before they attempt their recreations.

Not all that long ago they aired some footage of a nighttime object falling that broke into three pieces before fading out. They interviewed a couple, here meaning a man and woman which I believe were mother and son, who had seen the lights and were puzzled by them. But they didn’t interview the photographer who took the video footage and who was known to them, about it.

They eventually put together a scenario that made sense, that is, parachutists with flares strapped to their boots. They confirmed that members of the Army’s Golden Knights expert parachute team had been practicing in the area and had been using flares. Nothing faked here, but an explanation in the mundane.

Good for them... but I wondered why they hadn’t interviewed the cameraman. He worked for a local TV station and would have had access to all sorts of equipment. But they didn’t talk to him... or rather, we saw no footage of them interviewing him. I suspect it was because he knew what he had filmed. Oh, maybe not right away, but by the time the team from Paranormal Files arrived, I suspect he knew the answer.

I mention all this because in the latest episode they had footage of a UFO crash that was taken at White Sands Missile Range in 1996 or 1997. The bright object comes down, strikes the ground, skips upwards, falls and then crashes and explodes. They went to New Mexico to see what they could learn about this event.

They never made onto the White Sands Missile Range, or if they did, they showed nothing from that. Instead, they showed warning signs about the range, a long distance photograph of it, and a short interview with a UFO researcher who didn’t even know that the unit at Roswell was the 509th Bomb Group and not a squadron, let alone much about anything else... or rather the interview seemed to show that.

Then they were off to California where they conducted their experiments. They made some elaborate attempts, eventually using a model rocket fired at a low angle that did skip across the ground but did not explode. They suggested that if the object in the film was some of sort of missile test that got away from those at White Sands, it wouldn’t have been designed the way a model rocket engine is. In other words, the White Sands test might well have exploded.

While their last attempt does resemble the original footage, I still wonder why they went to New Mexico and didn’t do anything there. Why didn’t they hit the missile range and ask some questions. At worst, they would have been turned away at the gate. The last time I was there, I had to show proof of auto insurance to get on the base but had no trouble. I’m sure that someone in the public affairs office would have been delighted to speak with them. It just struck me as a hole in their investigation.

They did no better with the second segment which was of a ghost taped in a Tonopah, Nevada cemetery. The image that had been captured on tape was striking in the way that it appeared, moved across a short stretch of the cemetery and then disappeared.

They noticed that the appearance of the phantom seemed to coincide with the lights on a nearby highway. They set up an experiment to test this and were able to recreate the image on their equipment. The answer seemed obvious, but one of those reviewing the tape mentioned there had been many eyewitnesses to these apparitions. He was suggesting that there might be something paranormal there because of the multiple reports.

Not so fast. I had spent time at the site of the Joplin Spooklight and know there are hundreds of witnesses to it. But that doesn’t make it a spirit or ghost. It is quite obvious that the Spooklight is the result of light refraction from a nearby section of highway. So, a boatload of eyewitnesses does not mean the Spooklight is anything paranormal. It means that those people have seen an ambiguous light and identified it as something paranormal. The same would apply to the Tonopah apparition.

My point here is that I am a little surprised at the direction some of their investigations take. I’m surprised that they don’t interview those I would think would be critical to understanding what is being seen and photographed and taped. It seems to me that they leave out some steps... but eventually get to the correct answers... and that, I suppose, is the real point.

We Have the Wrong Roswell Crash Site?

2011-10-05T13:46:00.000-07:00

This one is so funny that I have to laugh. I got into a discussion with someone about the location of the debris field as described by Bill Brazel. I was told that I had the wrong location.

How can this be?

Bill Brazel took me there himself.

It was early morning and we, and by we, I mean Don Schmitt and I, meant Brazel at a café in Capitan. He was driving an old red pickup and we left my car at the café. As we drove out of town, Brazel asked us if we wanted a beer. Don said he didn’t and I thought that one of us ought to have one with Brazel so I said, “Sure.”

Ah, there is nothing I like more than warm beer at eight o’clock in the morning.

Anyway, we drove out toward Corona, taking the back roads and arrived at the location where the thing, whatever it might have been, hit.

Brazel got out of the truck and pointed to the ground at his feet... No, there wasn’t a bit of debris there now. He just said that this was where he’d found a couple of the scraps.

I took a couple of pictures with Don and Bill standing there (which might be the only pictures of one of the prime witnesses on the actual debris field... and the pictures have been copyrighted, reproduction is prohibited.)

Brazel then explained where it had hit, how it had scraped along the ground, leaving a narrow neck that widened to about ten feet and then tapered again as if it had skipped. The ground was scraped to about a foot or so deep and Brazel said that it had taken a couple of years to grass back over.

No, I really don’t want to discuss all the variations about this and how Jesse Marcel never said anything about a gouge... Though “Reluctant,” Karl Pflock’s witness who was really Walt Whitmore, Jr., talked about an area of disturbed ground he had seen in one of his versions of events.

Anyway, it was Bill Brazel who showed me the site so I figure that I must have it right. (Please note these are two different pictures, though taken about the same time.)

When CUFOS did their archaeological site survey out there, we planted those little “utility” flags along the ground in a line about a half mile long where it seemed that Brazel had said the thing skipped. When we left, we pulled up all those flags, not wanting to leave anything behind that would annoy the ranch owners who had kindly allowed us to make the survey.

Archaeological dig on the ranch..

Sometime after that, Bud Payne, a Lincoln County judge who said that he had seen the military out there doing something, took us, meaning Don, Paul Davids, Robert Hastings, and me out to the site. As we got out of the truck, I looked down and saw one of the flags we had missed.

In other words, Bud Payne put us on the same stretch of New Mexican desert as did Bill Brazel. That would seem to confirm the location as given to us earlier.

Tommy Tyree, who worked for Brazel, told us of riding the range with Brazel when he pointed down into a sinkhole that had water in the bottom. Floating on it was a bit of debris... and before you ask, no, we didn’t find the sinkhole, Tyree didn’t know precisely where it had been, and the water would have been long gone (and the hole probably filled in). But he gave us directions out there and it was on the same bit of range as that shown to us by Bill Brazel.

(Off on a tangent, because I know people are going to start asking all sorts of questions... We were unable to locate the sinkhole and figured the sides had collapsed in the forty years or so before we got there. When we did the site survey, we dug around the roots of plants that looked old enough to have been there when the crash happened... We looked into animal burrows, hoping to find a scavenger that had found a bit of the debris... We used metal detectors and even tried an aerial survey in a rented plane... and no, we had no success in any of that.)

The real point here is that I’m certain we were in the right place because it is the place the witnesses took us to... independently of one another. True, there could have been some discussion over the years about the location among these various witnesses, but the point is Bill Brazel showed it to Don and me. I am not aware of him showing it to anyone else (though he certainly could have, I’m just not aware of it).

So, when people tell me I’ve got the wrong place, I wonder what is the source of their information. It didn’t come directly from Bill Brazel as did the information that I have. It didn’t come from a first-hand source, as did my information. It might have been derived some something that was told to me, or something that I, or Don, said, or from people we took out there said, but as far as I know, the two of us are the only two Brazel took out there. We have the right place.

Where Have the UFOs Gone?

2011-10-01T14:21:00.000-07:00

The late Karl Pflock and I used to talk about why there were no more really good UFO sightings. We weren’t getting the kind of reports that had been so prevalent at the beginning of the modern era. Nothing as robust or as interesting as those over Washington, D.C., or at Levelland, Texas. In today’s world, it seem as if the UFOs stayed up in the air, usually away from the witnesses, and did nothing other than cross the sky in a straight line.

Karl Pflock (right) and me.

We can point to all sorts of interesting sightings in the past, some of which had mundane answers and some of which are still puzzling today. There was, of course, the Arnold sighting. He believed he saw a number of objects that he timed as traveling at 1800 miles an hour, or much faster than anything flying at the time, other than rockets and missiles, and they didn’t fly in formation.

There is a possibility that another man, Fred Johnson, saw the same objects about the time that Arnold lost sight of them. He reported that his compass spun wildly while the objects were overhead, but when they disappeared, the compass settled down. You can argue, and I’m sure some will, that the Johnson sighting isn’t related to that of Arnold, or that it is a hoax based on the Arnold sighting, or if related, doesn’t really add much to our overall knowledge.

But the point is that there are two sightings that seem to go together to create a nice little anomaly. Arnold might have been fooled. Johnson might have been inventing the tale. Or maybe they both witnessed something unusual that provided interesting descriptions and even one of the first cases with electro-magnetic effects.

Or take the Washington Nationals from late July 1952. Here was a series of sightings spread over two Saturday nights in which airline pilots, jet interceptor pilots, people on the ground, and radar operators reported strange lights and strange blips over Washington, D.C.

I talked to both Al Chop and Major Dewey Fournet, both associated with the official UFO investigation in 1952, and who had been in the radar room on that second Saturday. They told me there had been one intercept that had gotten “hairy,” meaning dangerous. According to them, and they were watching in the radar rooms at Washington National and listening to the interceptor pilots talking to one another, as they Air Force attempted to catch the UFOs the interceptor pilot found himself surrounded by the lights. It was all tracked on radar. What the pilot, William Patterson said over the radio, the men in the radar center could see on the scope. Patterson decided to break off the intercept at that point.

It doesn’t matter here if you believe that Patterson intercepted and the radar showed alien craft. What matters here is the nature of the sighting, meaning it was robust. There were those in radar centers who watched it all on the scopes, there were the pilots seeing the objects where the radar said they were. The sightings lasted for hours, though not continuously, and there were many witnesses.

True, the Air Force eventually wrote the sightings off as temperature inversions, and it does seem that temperature inversion was responsible for some of the radar returns, but that doesn’t explain the lights in the sky and it doesn’t square with what the controllers, who saw the blips, said. They told investigators that they were familiar with the way weather phenomena were displayed on the radar scopes and these blips didn’t look like that.

In today’s world, we get nothing as interesting. Nothing with multiple chains of evidence, with literally dozens of witnesses. We have one or two people seeing a light, or we get a cell phone video that doesn’t do much to increase our knowledge. Just some image that could be almost anything but that has fooled the person who recorded it.

Karl and I tried to figure this out. I suppose you could say that people today don’t have the imagination of those fifty years ago. I suppose you could say that people today are more familiar with what is in the sky around them. I suppose you could say that we are all more in tune with our environment.

Or maybe you could say that the aliens, from wherever they came, have now gone home to study the data they collected. Think of it as our exploration of the moon. In 1969, and for the next couple of years, if you were living on the moon, you would have had lots of UFO sightings, including landings. But, since 1972, there hasn’t been a whole lot of activity. We gathered our samples and went home.

Oh, sure, the analogy breaks down when you say, “But we left physical evidence behind to prove we were there... and it was only the landings of astronauts that have ended. Other moon missions have been lost.”

But then I say, “Yeah, but the robust sightings have ended.”

Yes, there have been some interesting sightings. There are those from Bentwaters and, of course Belgium, but these are the exceptions. The older sightings have more witnesses, more data, more evidence than those of today, with rare exception.

Karl and I never really came to a conclusion about this, other than collecting more sighting reports wouldn’t expand our knowledge much. We never really found a satisfactory answer for the change. We agreed that older cases were more interesting than newer case but we didn’t really know why.

Oh, Karl believed that the Hills had been abducted, but I disagreed. I believed the answer would be found in the terrestrial. Neither of us thought much of the widespread claims of abduction, though it might have supplied part of the answer. Too many research assets were diverted into abduction research without much in the way of tangible results.

I suppose I could say the same thing about crop circles. These had once been called UFO landing sites, or UFO nests, but evolved into crop circles, which were another subset of the UFO phenomenon.

And I know the number of sightings has increased recently, but these are sightings, often with pictures that don’t add much to the case. Sometimes it’s clear that the pictures are lens flares, clouds, or other natural phenomena, and some times the cases are simple hoaxes.

The point, again, is that the sightings aren’t nearly as exciting as they were forty or fifty years ago, and I have no explanation for that. Maybe it’s all just a matter of perspective.

Kecksburg UFO Crash, Tim Printy and Steven Paquette

2011-09-24T15:19:00.000-07:00

Not all that long ago (this last week, actually) Tim Printy sent me a question about part of the Kecksburg UFO crash. He noted that I had mentioned an Air Force officer named Steven Paquette. I wrote in Crash – When UFOs Fall from the Sky, that a document in the Project Blue Book files suggested that he was stationed in New Hampton, Massachusetts, but he had been ordered to participate in the search. Printy wrote that he had been through the Blue Book files and couldn’t find this document.

He also found that an officer with the same name seemed to be stationed much closer to Kecksburg and that he had participated in other UFO investigations. In fact, it seemed that Paquette had an additional duty of investigating UFO sightings in his area, an assignment that fell to many lieutenants in the 1960s.

Printy wanted to know if I knew this about Paquette, and if I could supply the document that I had used as a source, and if there really was a New Hampton, Massachusetts. All very good questions.

So, I went through my Kecksburg file which is about six inched thick and located the document. It was a teletype message that is part of a newspaper story about the Kecksburg sighting. I had gotten it when I asked CUFOS to send me a copy of the Blue Book file on Kecksburg.

Then I looked through the Project Blue Book files, which I now have on microfilm thanks, in part, to Michael Swords and CUFOS, figuring I would find the document there. I was surprised at the size of the Blue Book file, but only because it was so thin. There were a number of “Memos for the Record,” and a final conclusion that the sighting was “Astro, Meteor.”

But the teletype message, and a large number of newspaper clippings that I had thought were part of the Blue Book file were not there. Clearly, the fellows at CUFOS sent me everything they had and that included research that had probably been part of the NICAP files and later the CUFOS files. It was a very complete package and based on what I had seen in the Blue Book files of other, similar cases, I wasn’t surprised by all the extra material. I now know that very little of this information made it into Blue Book.

Printy sent me links to a couple of files for Blue Book that were online and Paquette appeared in them. He wanted to know if I thought it was the same officer. Well, yeah, since the name is not Smith or Johnson, I think it was the same guy, though the spelling of the first name is Stephen rather than Steven.

Of course, this is the world of the internet, and I found that there were quite a few people named Steven Paquette running around. I also found a number of them named Stephen Paquette. Still, how many of them would have been lieutenants in 1965 and 1966 when the various Blue Book investigations were accomplished.

And what about this New Hampton, Massachusetts, which apparently doesn’t exist?

From reading the teletype (a copy of which I did email to Printy and no, the highlighted part does not mention Paquette, that's higher on the message) it seems the reporter was giving a nod to Paquette’s hometown, though it was obviously not in Massachusetts. Printy mentioned a New Hampton, New Hampshire and I know of one in Iowa (but a check of my Britannica Atlas shows only New Hamptons in Iowa and New York). With the information supplied by Printy, it’s clear that Paquette wasn’t stationed in Massachusetts at the time. He was probably from the east coast and the reporter just screwed up the state. And it seems that the spelling of his first name was screwed up by the reporter as well (at least that seems to be the most logical assumption here).

Paquette’s whole role in this seems to be clearer today thanks to Printy. There is no evidence that Paquette ever went to Kecksburg, and while I speculated he would not have had a role in this unless he was assigned to some kind of special unit, that speculation seems to be in error. Paquette was stationed in Pennsylvania at the time, seems to have been assigned as a UFO officer as an extra duty and was quoted by the newspaper simply because he was an Air Force officer who talked to a reporter about Kecksburg.

Thanks to Printy, we now have a little more information about the Kecksburg case and we know a little more about this, at the time, low-ranking Air Force officer. We can clarify his role and move on to other aspects of the case.

Philip Klass and the Socorro UFO Landing

2011-09-16T12:42:00.000-07:00

Although my posting had been about Philip Klass and some of his letter writing campaigns (which, of course, got nasty, his letters, not my posting), we have diverted into the Socorro UFO landing case and Klass’ investigation of it. We have gotten into arguments over semantics and site locations and just who owned what and when.

Philip Klass centered

First, the semantics. Some of us have suggested that Klass claimed the landing was a hoax created by the mayor of Socorro at the time, Holm Bursum and perpetrated by police officer Lonnie Zamora. Others suggested that Klass never said it, at least not in so many words.

Semantics.

Klass wrote, in his 1974 book, UFOs Explained (and I have a personalized, autographed copy), “The property where the UFO reportedly landed had, prior to the incident, been worthless ‘scrub land.’ But now, if the site became a long-lived tourist attraction, there could be need for refreshment stands, perhaps even a motel for those who might like to spend the night near the spot where an extraterrestrial spaceship had seemingly landed. By a curious coincidence, the property where the UFO reportedly landed was owned by Mayor Bursum, officer Zamora’s boss! The mayor’s principal business? He was the town banker and as such would not be unhappy to see an influx of tourist dollars.”

In his interview with Gary Posner published on the web at:

www.gpposner.com/Klass_inter.htm,

Klass makes this claim again. He said, “And I found out that Socorro's mayor owned the ‘landing site’ property and the town's only bank, and earlier had sought approval to build a new road to the UFO site for the benefit of tourists. So, when I wrote UFOs: Identified, I was confident enough to suggest that this case might be a hoax. And by the time my second UFO book, UFOs Explained, was published, I did unequivocally characterize the case as a hoax, as I've done subsequently regarding a number of other highly suspicious cases.”

For those of us who can understand this, Klass is saying that there was some kind of plot to develop a tourist attraction and the mayor was behind it. His subordinate was Lonnie Zamora. No, Klass doesn’t say they were working together on this, he just hints at it, knowing that we all can put it together. Since he is not actually making the allegation, he is safe from legal entanglements.

Posner (who is shown as “Skeptic,” in the online interview) said that the tourist attraction was never built. Klass has an answer for that, as well. He said, “Yes, but the plan had been initiated. On the first anniversary of the ‘landing,’ a newspaper article quoted a city official as saying outright that they intended to use it as a tourist attraction, and it reported that the road to the site had recently been upgraded. It also mentioned that a movie about UFOs had recently shot some scenes in Socorro. Perhaps when members of the City Council learned the truth, they opted not to proceed any further with the plans.”

But what is not said is that there is no evidence of this plan prior to the landing. They would have had no way of knowing that the landing report would get any sort of national publicity because most UFO sightings go unreported by the national media. They would have had to count on the Air Force investigation getting attention and that the attention would be from the media. If they were planning this all out, it was a very clever plan that worked... at least the part where they drew the national media attention.

The real flaw in Klass’ logic, however, is that the plan seemed to have been created after the media attention and someone thought there was a potential there. The real point is that even after they thought about it, the tourist attraction was never built.

Or maybe that’s not the real flaw... it seems that the mayor didn’t own the land in 1964. According to the Socorro newspaper, El Defensor Chieftain, which did a long story about the Socorro landing after it was suggested in 2008 that a historical marker be erected at the site, noted that the land in question had been part of the estate of Delia Harris in 1964. In 1968, the land was bought by the Richardson family and they apparently still own it. Mayor Bursum had never owned it. I don’t know where Klass got that idea. Maybe someone mentioned it to him and he believed it, figuring they should know.

Or maybe it was because in 1966 the Chamber of Commerce president, Paul Ridings, suggested they do something to promote tourism and thought the landing site would be a good place to start. They created a path lined with stones around a landing site, but it was in the wrong place. Apparently there was a lack of vegetation at the real site that frightened people. Some believed there was residual radiation, so they just moved the site over an arroyo or two. The mayor didn’t seem to have a hand in this aspect of it either.

But this leads to a second question. Which site did Phil Klass visit? If he was unaware that the Chamber of Commerce had moved the site, then his investigation would be flawed. His observations about the location and who could see what would be in error. Can we, at this late date, determine which site Klass “toured?”

Klass mentioned, in his book, “Although the policeman [Zamora] said the UFO’s [sic] roar could be heard over the noise of his speeding patrol car, from a distance of 4,000 feet, Mr. and Mrs. Felix Phillips, who lived only 1,000 feet from the UFO site reported they heard no such noise though they were home at the time.”

Klass also wrote (page 108, hardback, UFOs Explained), “During Hynek’s visit, he talked with one local resident who suggested that the case might be a hoax. The man was Mr. Felix Phillips, whose house is located only one thousand feet south of the spot where the UFO allegedly landed. Phillips said that he and his wife had been home at the time of the reported incident, and that several windows and doors had been opened – yet neither of them heard the loud roar that Zamora reported during takeoff... Hynek briefly mentioned the man’s suspicions in his second trip report to the USAF, but he strongly rejected all possibility of a hoax.”

In the online interview, Klass said, “When I interviewed a man who lived right near the landing site, and had been working in his garden when the UFO supposedly blasted off, he told me that he hadn't heard a thing, and that when he visited the site soon afterwards he saw no physical evidence to support Zamora's story and suspected that it was a hoax.”

Dr. J. Allen Hynek

Let’s answer the question about which site Klass visited. Based on this, I believe that Klass was on the correct site. He found the man who Hynek had interviewed. In the report that Klass cited, Hynek had written, “Although I made a distinct attempt to find a chink in [name redacted but is obviously Zamora] armor, I simply couldn’t find anyone, with the possible exception of a [name redacted, but I believe is Phillips] who has a house fairly near the site of the original landing, who did anything by completely uphold [again, the name is redacted but is Zamora] character and reliability, and I again talked with people who had known him since childhood.”

This then, suggests that Klass was on the right site. He is talking to the same man who Hynek interviewed. But then Klass slips off the rails, telling us the man was in his garden and that he saw nothing on the site.

One of the landing pad prints.

While I will give Klass the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he is talking from memory rather than inventing facts not in evidence, his claim that the man “visited the site soon afterwards he saw no physical evidence,” simply doesn’t make any sense. Why would he inspect the site if he heard nothing? What would be his motivation to walk over there?

More importantly, what about the claim that he saw nothing? This is in direct contradiction of the police officers, FBI agents, and Air Force officers who toured the site on the evening of the landing.

From Hynek’s first report (which I must assume that Klass saw since he was talking about the second report), “I questioned Mr Art Burns of the FBI, and several others who had been on the site within the first hours after the sighting as to the alleged freshness of the tracks. They were all of the opinion that the tracks were, indeed, fresh.”

Hynek also reported, “Although Zamora was the only witness to the actual sighting, nine people in all saw the markings.”

In Hynek’s second report, dated March 12 and 13, 1965, Hynek wrote, “All that seem definitely to agree on is that the green snakeweed and the green greasewood, which are notoriously hard materials to ignite, showed evidence of having been charred, as though they have been seared by a hot flame and not burned in an ordinary fashion.”

Regardless of the claim the Phillips saw nothing, there is good testimony that markings were there and that burning (or charring) of the bushes were there. Klass’ claims were in error, and if he had been speaking as one who thought that the UFO was extraterrestrial, these claims would have been challenged. They have not, until now.

Klass suggests that Phillips and his wife were home at the time. In his book, he wrote, “Phillips said that he and his wife had been home at the time of the reported incident, and that several windows and doors had been opened – yet neither of them heard the loud roar that Zamora reported during takeoff.”

In the Posner interview, he took it further, saying, “When I interviewed a man who lived right near the landing site, and had been working in his garden when the UFO supposedly blasted off, he told me that he hadn't heard a thing...”

This is a much more damaging statement. Rather than being inside with their doors and windows open, now Phillips is outside, where he should have been able to hear the UFO.

The maps that I have, crude though they all are, show that Phillips lived to the southeast of the landing site. This is important because, according to Hynek’s report, “The wind at that time was blowing very strongly from the south...”

Which means, of course, that the sound was blown away from Phillips. If he was inside, as had been suggested in the earlier accounts, including that by Klass, then there is a real possibility that he would have heard nothing. And, importantly, if he was inside, it would explain why he and his wife saw nothing. With no sound, they wouldn’t have gone to the windows so see what was making all the noise.

What we learn in this brief little study is that, semantics aside, Klass did hint that the mayor and Zamora were involved in a hoax to create a tourist attraction. It might be suggested that Zamora had been fooled, but the implication is clear. The fact is that no evidence has ever surfaced that anyone talked about a tourist attraction prior to the landing.

Klass was wrong about the ownership of the land and never presented any evidence that he knew who the owner was. He merely slung his allegation as evidence that the mayor wanted to create a tourist industry in Socorro, and by implication, make some money.

Klass has claimed the case was a hoax because Felix Phillips, who lived close to the site heard nothing. But Klass moves him from inside his house to the outside, working in his garden. He also claimed that Phillips walked the area of the landing but saw nothing.

But that doesn’t track with the evidence. There were a number of people who were there, who saw the physical evidence and who photographed it. While you might claim that the mayor and Zamora were involved in a hoax, you could not make a case for the FBI agent, Air Force officers and Hynek who did see the physical evidence.

Hynek, in his investigation made one observation that is important to us. He said the wind was blowing strongly from the south, and the map in Klass’ book puts the Phillips house to the southeast, meaning that the wind is blowing away from the witness. It is possible he heard nothing because of the wind.

For these reasons, we can reject the Klass conclusion of hoax because his evidence is, to put it kindly, quite thin. Does this mean that an alien craft landed in Socorro? No. It means that the case for a hoax, as identified by Klass, does not exist.

And, we’ve caught Klass in a couple of mistakes in his reporting of the case. I believe that there was nothing nefarious in his embellishments. It was, as the skeptical community is quite happy to point out, probably a problem with memory. Klass might truly have believed what he said in the online interview, but he was just as clearly in error.

But, I could say that Klass had accomplished his mission, which was to explain the Socorro landing. He said it was a hoax, and continued to say that far and wide. He said it enough that some people believe that it was a hoax. The problem is that Klass never proved it to be a hoax and he offered no evidence that it was.

Philip Klass and His Letter Writing Campaigns

2011-09-11T17:20:00.000-07:00

Lance objected to my word “routinely,” when I suggested that Philip Klass routinely contacted employers of UFO witnesses and investigators. Christopher Allen suggested that if I listed five examples, then that might cover the point.

What I should have said originally is that Klass (seen here) routinely caused trouble for the witnesses, researchers, investigators and believers in UFOs by writing letters to their families, friends and employers and that he harassed them periodically when they didn’t respond to him as he thought they should.

Here’s what we can prove.

Klass, using his power as an editor of Aviation Week (meaning he wrote his letters in the McDonald case on the magazine’s letterhead, suggesting the inquiry was not from Philip Klass private citizen, but from Philip Klass on the staff of the magazine) contacted the Office of Naval Research about Dr. James McDonald. He wanted to know if McDonald had been doing UFO research while on grant research in Australia.

The answer was yes, but the ONR knew about it and had tacitly approved what McDonald had been doing. Klass was not satisfied, though I don’t know why, or who he thought he was to object. He had raised what we all might agree was a legitimate concern about the misuse of government money for UFO research. ONR launched an internal audit and determined that what McDonald had done was not outside the rather wide scope of his research grant.

Klass, continued writing letters (no Lance, not one everyday), but enough to cause concern in the ONR. While the thinking at ONR is not known, it is known that the military, as well as others in Washington, D.C., respond quickly to inquiries from Aviation Week. Klass might claim that he was a private citizen concerned with taxpayer money, but he used the club of the magazine to get what he wanted. ONR decided not to continue funding McDonald’s research. We can guess why they made that decision, but it would only be a guess.

It is not clear if Klass’ superiors knew what he was doing or if they would have approved had they known in the beginning. By the time the question was raised about the legitimacy of Klass’ use of Aviation Week letterhead, the wagons were circled and other editors suggested they knew and approved of Klass’ action. Kind of the same circumstance that we find with McDonald and his superiors at ONR.

The point here is that Klass did contact McDonald’s superiors and slung allegations about the legitimacy of McDonald’s research. You can suggest that all Klass wanted to know was if McDonald had been conducting UFO research in violation of his grant, but once that question was answered, Klass should have moved on. Instead he continued to write letters. Obviously he had another agenda.

Had this been the only example of this sort of thing, then it could be overlooked. Maybe Klass had gone too far in his questioning and maybe he wrapped himself in the mantle of Aviation Week, but McDonald had used ONR funds to pursue his UFO research. When ONR didn’t complain, or rather announced that they found nothing improper, that should have been the end of it. Of course it wasn’t.

Klass did this again after Dr. Bob Jacobs wrote an article for the January 1989 issue of The MUFON Journal. In it, Jacobs said that he was a former Air Force officer and that he had been involved in a UFO sighting, which, I guess is now called The Big Sur UFO Filming. Jacobs said that the UFO was alien and that the Air Force had ordered him not to talk about what he had seen and what had been filmed. He wrote that he had been told, “Lieutenant Jacobs, this never happened.”

In his article, Jacobs referenced a paper, Preliminary Report on Image Orthicon Photography written by Kingston A. George. Klass, though he had all the information necessary, wanted Jacobs to send him a copy of the paper. Klass offered to pay for it but Jacobs didn’t like the tone of the letter. To him it seemed that Klass was ordering him to send the paper.

Jacobs refused, and Klass, apparently went ballistic. He wrote a two page report in his Skeptics UFO Newsletter (SUN) about Jacobs and the Big Sur sighting, suggesting somewhat unkindly that the whole thing was bogus.

Klass wrote, “JOURNALISM PROFESSOR (AND FORMER USAF OFFICER) ‘MANUFACTURED TALL UFO TALE, THEN ACCUSES THE GOVERNMENT OF COVERING IT UP.” (Those who have seen the SUN Newsletter know that Klass was in the habit of capitalizing, underscoring and using boldface type to emphasize his remarks, sometimes using all three at once.)

Jacobs suggested that he had cited his source properly, given Klass the name of it, the author and the date, and that was all he was required to do to properly source the document. Klass then wrote to Jacobs’ boss at the University of Maine in an attempt to discredit him.

Klass wrote:

Dear Prof. Craig:

I am writing to bring to your attention what seems to be to be unbecoming conduct on the part of a journalist and member of your faculty. One should expect a faculty member to serve as a role model for students in demonstrating the ethics and responsibilities of their profession. I refer to Dr. Bob Jacobs.

According to that letter, Klass introduced himself and then said he had become interested in Jacob’s claim that he had photographed a UFO. He wrote that he had offered to pay for the report mentioned earlier and that Jacobs had refused to send the document.

Klass then wrote:

I understand why Jacobs is reluctant to release this report. Based on my research, I’m confident the report would reveal that his ‘UFO tale’ is a cock-and-bull story.

If Jacobs were a young journalist working for the National Enquirer, or one of its even less scrupulous clones, I might be more tolerant of his behavior. But when a professor of journalism, who publicly accuses the USAF and the U.S. Government of ‘cover-up,’ resorts to intentional distortion of the facts to mislead his readers and then to cover-up, I am deeply distressed.

I hope you share my feelings.

It was signed by Klass.

This is akin to the tactic he used against McDonald and the ONR. But the University of Maine had no fear of Aviation Week or a UFO hobbyist (as Klass described himself in the letter) from Washington, D.C. Jacobs did not lose his job.

To read all of the article by Dr. Bob Jacobs, see:

www.nicap.org/bigsurrej.htm

But that’s not all.

When Stan Friedman (seen here in "lecture" mode) began to contemplate a move to Canada, Klass decided that he needed to save Canada from the foibles of Friedman. He wrote a letter that Richard Dolan found in Canadian archives in 2005.

According to Dolan:

The letter was dated August 15, 1980, and addressed to Dr. A. G. McNamara of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics. It was unsolicited, and is a straightforward character smear of Stanton Friedman, who was at the time in the process of moving to Canada. According to Klass, Friedman was a “full-time UFO lecturer (of the ‘snake-oil salesman’ variety).” He was moving to Canada "to become its chief UFO Guru." Friedman was ‘quite a showman’ whose lectures were ‘so filled with half-truths and falsehoods that it would take me several hours to offer a rebuttal. And like wrestling with an octopus, when you manage to pin down one leg, the other seven are still thrashing about.

The letter disparages Friedman’s professional credentials as a nuclear physicist, twice refers to Friedman’s "mountainous ego," and calls him "something of an outcast" within the UFO "movement." All in all, a nasty and underhanded little letter. Better yet, Klass enclosed a "White Paper" he prepared on Friedman "that illustrates the man’s modus-operandi and his distortion of facts." (This White Paper was not included in the material I saw at the archives.)

But why send the letter at all? Klass said he wanted to warn the good people at NRC that Friedman would now in all likelihood be directing his focus on them.

"I can assure you," Klass wrote, "that you and your associates will be publicly accused of a UFO Coverup (or ‘Cosmic Coverup,’ as he is prone to say) that ‘dwarfs the Watergate scandal.’" Also, "to alert you to deal cautiously with him knowing he is inclined to distort the facts and exploit any ambiguity in your statements."

The final statement is illustrative. "Please treat this letter in confidence, sharing it with appropriate associates as you see fit."

Dolan concluded, “In other words, tell as many people as you can, but behind Friedman’s back, please.”

For those who wish to read Dolan’s complete analysis of this incident, see:

www.keyholepublishing.com/New%20Klass%20Letter%20Found.htm

But that’s not all.

In a similar vein, as I joined the Air Force Reserve as an intelligence officer, Klass was in communication with the man assigned to do the background investigation. I know this because the man happened to live across the street from my father and told him I was being investigated for a security clearance. All I know was that Klass thought that it ironic that as a UFO investigator I had written magazine articles that suggested the Air Force was engaged in a cover-up of UFOs. He suggested they read those stories before deciding if I was worthy of the trust of the Air Force. After all, I had already demonstrated that I thought little of the Air Force and if trusted with its secrets, might I not leak them into the public arena.

I do know that the investigator did obtain some of the stories I had written about the Air Force, including one about the opening of the Project Blue Book files while I was still in Air Force ROTC. That story, and the others, did not seem to worry the Air Force. I was both commissioned and then granted a top secret security clearance (I'm standing on a building at the Baghdad International Airport in 2004).

Klass, in a move that I never understood, mentioned that I drew a number of unnamed benefits based on my military service. We exchanged a series of letters over this with Klass harping on these benefits. I told him repeatedly that after using the G.I. Bill for college and to buy my first house, I knew of no other benefits to which I was entitled. At that point I had not completed twenty years of military service (active duty and reserve and National Guard). Since then I have retired from the military with more than twenty years and do receive various benefits.

He didn’t like my answer and kept asking the question. However, when I asked about his military service he responded, sarcastically, about his long military record. Yes, it was all tongue in cheek and I understood that, but if he expected a serious answer from me, shouldn’t he supply a serious answer to my question? He did avoid service during WW II and Korea and was probably considered too old for Vietnam, though the Army didn’t think I was too old for Iraq.

But that’s not all.

J. Allen Hynek, who had once been an Air Force consultant to Project Blue Book, learned that Klass called McGraw-Hill about Hynek’s UFO book. According to Allan Hendry, Klass wanted to know why McGraw-Hill had a “UFO nut” on its payroll and suggested that McGraw-Hill fire him.

And when he wasn’t attempting to interfere in the private lives by attacking our livelihoods or our plans to move, he was busy assassinating the characters of those who disagreed with him or who claimed UFO sightings. The Travis Walton case proves the point with Klass’ continued assaults on Walton’s integrity and his prying into Walton’s past.

Let’s be clear on this. Background checks are important and necessary. When Robert Willingham claimed to be a retired Air Force colonel, it was necessary to learn if that is the truth. If Willingham was not an Air Force officer, then his story of the Del Rio UFO crash collapses. But my investigation was limited to the public sources available, and not a search through his entire background to find any dirt that I could. The issue was Willingham’s military service and not what he might have done as a teenager.

And, if a witness has a long history of deceit, is known for his tall tales or practical jokes, then it is necessary to learn that. But there becomes a point where that sort of investigation can become intrusive and borders on harassment. Klass was unaware of the line, or maybe he knew where it was, but simply didn’t care.

While he should get credit for learning about the first lie detector test taken by Walton, the one Walton failed, getting into Walton’s juvenile record is going a step too far. I’m not sure that a juvenile indiscretion, a one time thing, should become part of a UFO investigation, especially if the circumstances are as Walton laid them out in one of his long responses to Klass. A very well written and intelligent response appears in the 1996 updated edition of Fire in the Sky.

Walton is an extreme case, with Klass spending years attacking not only Walton but the fellows with him and his family. I think that dragging his family into it is another step too far. Call the case a hoax, suggest that it is not grounded in reality, but do you really need to attack the family as well.

Klass (back to the camera in Roswell, New Mexico) attacked Minnesota police officer Val Johnson, after Johnson said his police car was damaged, and he was burned, by a UFO. Klass called the case a hoax, which was calling Johnson a liar, in national publications and various other forums. Fortunately, Johnson’s boss, and the others in the area didn’t buy Klass’ assessment, which had been based on Klass’ opinion that there are no UFOs and therefore Johnson must be lying.

In another case, that of Australian Frederick Valentich, who disappeared in a small aircraft after reporting that he was under aerial assault by some undefined UFO, Klass told Don Ecker that Valentich was a drug smuggler. There is no evidence of this, other than Valentich seemed to have had four life preservers on his light plane. I’m not sure how Klass determined this, or if it was true, but the smear was there.

For more information about this see the Wikipedia entry about Klass and see:

http://darkmattersradio.com/?tag=philip-klass

In fact, we can look at case after case in which Klass had decided that the witnesses were lying. He claimed he could prove them to be a hoax, but his proof often fell short. He just didn’t have the information to prove a case a hoax, but since there were no UFOs, then, in some cases, that was the only possible answer.

To some, labeling a case a hoax is not a big deal. But the bottom line is this, especially when the case has received national, or international, publicity, labeling it a hoax is calling the witness, or witnesses, liars. If there is evidence that the case is a hoax, then yes, it should be labeled as such and we all, skeptic, debunker, researcher or enthusiast, should spread that solution far and wide.

But when there is no evidence of a hoax, but the only available answer left to explain a case in the mundane is hoax, then it should not be labeled as such. Klass had no evidence that Val Johnson had wrecked his police car on purpose and made up the story of the UFO, but Klass labeled it a hoax anyway.

A quick search in almost any reference will revel Klass’ investigations and his conclusions. Anyone will be able to see that Klass attacked not only the case, but the witness, or the investigator involved. His attitude seemed to be that if you can’t attack the case, then attack the witnesses.

Such conduct can be seen in the University of Nebraska seminar about UFOs to be held in 1983. According to Jerry Clark:

On August 23, 1983, an administrator at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln took a strange phone call from a man who had a complaint which he expressed at some length. When he finally got offf the phone, the administrator summarized the conversation in a memo to another university official:

“Mr. Phillip [sic] Klass ... is a member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal [CSICOP]. This committee has a much different view of unexplained phenomena than those groups we are working with as sponsors of "this conference [titled Exploring Unexplained Phenomena]. He was, in fact, quite adament [sic] in his position regarding the credibility of the conference presenters. Further, Mr. Klass has a personal feeling that the nature of this conference seriously questions the integrity of the United States Government. He feels that there is no scientific evidence to support the claims of the presenters and indicated that these organizations, by publicly questioning the government, lend support to the Communist movement."

On November 23 Klass wrote the administrator, who was startled to see large chunks of Klass' words from their three-month-old conversation quoted verbatim -- indicating, the administrator correctly surmised, that Klass had taped the two without informing him he was doing so. Klass said that since a "copy of your memo was 'leaked' to outsiders," he wanted to "clarify and expand upon statements" he had made. He said "we" -- presumably meaning himself and CSICOP -- did not seek to "prevent conferences or meetings by those who want to propose UFOs" but that he had some trouble with the university's sponsorship of a conference on the subject. What, he asked, would the university do "if the American Nazi Party came in and said they [sic] wanted to hold a conference?"

"I emphasize to you that I am not, repeat not, suggesting that any of the people or any of the organizations are in any way affiliated with Communist Fronts or with the Soviet Union. But as a patriotic American, I very much resent the charge of 'coverup', of lying, of falsehoods, charged against not one Administration, not two, but eight Administrations going back to a man from Missouri named Truman, a man named Dwight Eisenhower. Because if this charge is true -- Cosmic Watergate -- then all of these Presidents were implicated, and all of their Administrations.... [In making this charge, ufologists] seek what the Soviet Union does -- to convey to the public that our Government can not be trusted, that it lies, that it falsifies. Now I'm not so naive -- remembering Watergate -- to say that never has happened in history. But from my firsthand experience (i.e., 17 years in the field of UFOlogy), I know this charge is completely false. And I resent it as an American citizen."

Remarkably, Klass distributed copies of this letter to others, including me, on the evident belief that it would exonerate him, in other words demonstrate that when read in context his sentiments would sound rational. He would even charge that the administrator's paraphrase had been "inaccurate," when if anything it made Klass' charge sound marginally less nutty. As I wrote Klass on December 6, "In the past, when your critics have accused you of engaging in McCarthyism, they were using the term in a metaphorical sense. Now, it seems, they will be able to use it in the most literal sense."

For those who wish more information and to read all of Jerry Clark’s thoughts on this, see:

www.nicap.org/klassufo.htm

and

www.nicap.org/debunk1.htm

Phil Klass, of course, didn’t see it all quite this way. In an interview conducted by his friend, Gary Posner, he gave his own version of the events. Klass told Posner:

To the best of my aging recollection, I have never attempted to get any organization to cancel a pro-UFO conference or any of its selected speakers. But I know what you're referring to. Back in 1983 I received a phone call from a faculty member of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, who was embarrassed because the school was sponsoring a conference on the alleged "Cosmic Watergate Government UFO Coverup," and no skeptical speakers were on the agenda. So I decided to write a short article "needling" the university. But before doing so I needed to interview an appropriate official. So I called Prof. Robert Mortenson, the school's director of conferences, who expressed surprise to hear that no skeptics had been invited. He told me that he appreciated my concern, and that if they were to sponsor a UFO conference the next year, there should be a better effort made to balance the presentation. At one point during that telecon I did say that, although I am not suggesting that any of the people or organizations involved in the conference are in any way affiliated with communist fronts or the Soviet Union, nevertheless, their reckless "Watergate-type coverup" charges against eight administrations, going all the way back to President Truman, serve, not unlike communist propaganda, to foment distrust and suspicion of the integrity of our government. I also very distinctly remember telling Mortenson, "Let me emphasize to you that I am not, repeat not, suggesting that you cancel or terminate this conference." Again, that was in 1983. A newspaper article the following year quoted Mortenson as saying that the university had decided not to hold another UFO conference that year because the ones in 1982 and 1983 had lost money.

This was, of course, the excuse given for not holding another conference, though it came after the conference host demanded to know why the series had been cancelled.

Klass continued his version, saying:

...[F]ollowing our conversation, Mortenson wrote a brief memo about it to an assistant chancellor. But he misquoted me as having said that conferences like this "lend support to the Communist movement," which carries quite a different connotation -- I had been very, very deliberate in my choice of words to insure that I would not be misunderstood. Anyway, who leaked the memo I don't know. But photocopies of it were distributed at the conference. And the next issue of the MUFON UFO Journal said that I had tried to "scuttle" the conference because it, and others like it, were "aiding the Communist cause." In the same issue, MUFON's director, Walt Andrus, quoted the memo verbatim and even indicated that he had in his possession copies of Mortenson's original handwritten notes that he had jotted down during our conversation. So, armed with all that, one of my most vehement critics began to hurl the charge of "McCarthyism" against me -- even though I had earlier provided him with a verbatim quote of what I had actually said. Mortenson later denied in a letter to me that either he or his deputy had given his notes to Andrus, but he did say that copies of his memo had been sent to the program coordinator and the "file" for informational purposes. But as for exactly what I did say in that conversation, it is just as I told you. When I picked up the phone to call Mortenson, I was planning to write an article, but I never did because he sounded so gratified to learn from me that the panel was so biased, and even asked me if CSICOP would provide speakers for the next year's conference. And because I had planned an article, to assure accuracy I tape recorded that call and, fortunately, I still have that tape.

For those who wish to read all of Posner’s interview with Klass, see:

www.gpposner.com/Klass_inter.html

For all of this, I had a fairly cordial relation with Philip Klass over the years. We once went sailing on the Potomac and got stuck, momentarily, on a sandbar. In later years Klass didn’t remember this, but I did, probably because it is the only time that I went sailing.

We would speak at conventions, and as I have told others, on the last occasion that I saw him, I had to assist him up a couple of stairs to the elevators and then onto his hotel room. His health wasn’t as good as it had been in the past.

And for all the trouble he caused, he was not the worst of the lot. That distinction belongs to Kal Korff, who in today’s world attempts to market himself as a colonel and who has threatened to sue anyone who looks at him sideways. He is a vicious man filled with rage and makes up the most outrageous claims. When challenged with evidence, he quietly changes these claims, but never apologizes.

Of the two, I much prefer Klass who seemed to be a gentleman outside the UFO arena. Korff is just nasty. How you feel about all this is, I suppose, a matter of perspective.

Roswell and the Disappearing Debris

2011-09-06T17:39:00.000-07:00

I have never been a big fan of the paranoia that runs through the UFO field. I don’t believe Men in Black are stalking UFO witnesses or investigators. I don’t believe that black helicopters routinely inspect witnesses and investigators. I just don’t buy into all the paranoia that runs so deep.

But there are questions. Frank Kimbler (photo courtesy Alejandro Rojas of Open Minds), who teaches at the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, and who has spent time inspecting the terrain around the various debris fields and crash sites, has had some luck in finding strange debris. I say strange simply because it is not readily identifiable. He has just some scraps that he, as a geologist, was unable to identify with the equipment available to him. Doesn’t mean what he has is of alien manufacture or extraterrestrial origin. Just that it is a little odd.

On September 2, 2010, I received an email from Frank about a metal fragment he’d sent to Arizona State University for analysis, which is to say that I was just one of a couple of dozen recipients of the email. Frank send his concerns about his fragment to many of us.

Frank had received an email from Dr. Lynda B. Williams, a research professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU. She wrote that she had received his FEDEX package and that she had opened it on the lab bench, but found nothing inside.

She wrote, “I was expecting a 2mm foil and a standard. There is nothing in there but a black felt with gray sponge layer on top of a thin grey [yes, she used both spellings] sponge layer attached to white cotton. Which layer had the sample on it? I’m sorry, but its just not there!”

Frank wrote back:

The AH- 1 metal fragment was well packaged and I can't believe that it is lost. I did not forget to include the fragment. I can assure you it was in the small round box, directly on the top in plain sight in the box.

This UFO evidence stuff is an interesting game to play. Seems to be a great deal like cat and mouse, cloak and dagger and chess all wrapped in one.

I hate to say this but I was warned and should have never trusted sending an

alloy fragment to anyone, universities, or private labs I should have hand delivered it to the SIMS lab. So its my word against everyone else's; and its my fault. The stupid mistake I make will not happen again.

The metal fragment was in the round plastic box. The round plastic container has a small metal fragment about 1.5 x 2 mm in size. It was directly on top of the black material and visible just about dead center through the plastic top. The plastic container was wrapped in a small amount of bubble wrap and taped at both ends and placed in small brown padded envelope which was also taped and stapled at the top; this was placed in a Fed-EX mailer. Very static sensitive as I mentioned in the note in the package. There was no standard because it takes weeks to get those from ALCOA.

No other fragments will be sent to anyone. All specimens will be delivered by me, under private armed guard if needed, every step of the analysis will be supervised by me and a trusted scientist or individual.

He signed his name.

No, I have no explanation for this. I know that Frank would not be engaged in some sort of hoax to elevate the importance of his work. I don’t know how any governmental agency, if a governmental agency was involved, could have pulled this off. It is one of those mysteries that dot the landscape. (Debris photo courtesy of Frank Kimbler.)

I do know that back in 1990, after Mark Wolf, Don Schmitt and I had interviewed Glenn Dennis on tape for the first and second times, that Wolf gave me one set of interviews and he took the other set. He said that the package that contained his video tapes had been tampered with, but nothing was missing. He thought it strange simply because, on other assignments and documentaries, when they had transported video tapes, nothing had been disturbed. However, all the tapes were there and I had the duplicate (or rather the other interview) with me so it wasn’t as if anything was lost.

Make of this what you will. The sample has vanished from the closed package. Dr. Williams didn’t mention that she thought there had been tampering and she wasn’t looking for that. I do know that I have received some FEDEX packages in pretty sorry shape.

One fact remains. There was nothing in the package, and unless Frank is engaging in some kind of scheme, I have no explanation for this.

Extraordinary Claims...

2011-08-27T15:11:00.000-07:00

Not all that long ago I took on the propaganda phrase “Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.” I pointed out that it was used when there was no evidence for a particular theory and it is the last defense as a point began to collapse.

Proponents of the extraterrestrial theory for UFOs are not the only ones who had a pet and somewhat meaningless phrase. Debunkers ofter claim that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” They trot this out when it begins to look as if some of the evidence does support the idea of alien visitation. That the evidence isn’t overwhelming isn’t really the point here but this phrase is often used to belittle any solid evidence or ignore it completely.

It can be argued that a claim of alien visitation is extraordinary and to prove it there must be some very persuasive evidence. Two or three, or a dozen people standing around and seeing a light in the sky that seems to move with great speed, maneuver in a way that defies physics as we understand it, and then disappears “like a light being extinguished,” certainly isn’t extraordinary evidence. There are too many other explanations for that sighting including illusion.

In fact, sighting reports in and of themselves will probably never be sufficient to prove alien visitation. Even if those making the observations are classified as “trained observers” meaning scientists, or police officers or military and civilian pilots, or a combination of all three, it is still just a sighting. When everything is examined, the report is still just the observations of those men and women and certainly open to interpretation.

What is needed are observations that are accompanied by other types of evidence. What is needed are chains of evidence independent of one another. A photographic case that is witnessed by several, with radar or other instrumentality involved, and maybe landing traces, or bits of debris that seem to defy an earthly origin would be perfect. What is needed is a scientific study of a case that mirrors that done in the early nineteenth century by Jean-Baptiste Biot. He was the French scientist who put together a study of a fireball that had fallen in France about three weeks before he initiated his investigation and changed the science of the time.

He did interview witnesses about what they had seen. He didn’t reject them simply because they were poor, uneducated, or rural. He didn’t reject them because they were not scientifically trained observers. He took down all the eyewitness accounts that he could.

But he also gathered physical evidence in the form of the rocks that were alleged to have fallen from the sky. Under analysis, he was able to establish that they were unlike the other geological samples from the region and that they had been introduced at some point after a recent survey of the minerals had been completed. They must have arrived as the witnesses claimed. They must have fallen from the sky.

He was able to reverse the scientific thought of the time and convince his colleagues that rocks did fall from the sky. His evidence was not extraordinary. It was eyewitness testimony and an analysis of the rocks that had fallen based on that witness testimony.

In the world of UFO, we begin the fight with the vast distances encountered among the stars. Everyone, it seems, agrees with the idea that there is life out there in the universe somewhere and some of it is intelligent. But then there are those who tell us that even with that, these alien races have not solved the problem of interstellar flight because, if they had, well, they would be here by now.

When we suggest that Earth has been visited, we are told that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” and then dismiss everything that has been gathered as if it were not evidence, or, at least does not rise to the level of extraordinary evidence.

Okay, I can stipulate that much of the evidence has been poorly gathered. I can stipulate that the personal belief structures and the biases of those gathering the data come into play. I can even stipulate that many of those who have gathered the data were unfamiliar with the rules of evidence and scientific observation. But I will also note that some of those who complain about those of us who believe aliens have visited have done much to inhibit the gathering of proper data.

What do I mean?

Philip Klass routinely called the employers of witnesses, or investigators, of lecturers and researchers, and told them that their employees believed in alien visitation. He sometimes compared them to communists. He told half-truths about them. He attempted to silence them for reasons I do not now, and have not, understood. He wasn’t arguing evidence but attempting to silence these people through intimidation.

Klass would call venues hosting UFO conferences and suggest these same things, sometimes forcing the venue to be changed at the last minute. Klass, in fact, attempted to inhibit UFO investigation and once accused James McDonald of using government money to chase UFOs. The allegation was untrue but it caused McDonald a great deal of personal anguish and to what end? It didn’t stop the investigations and it might lead to an even more sinister consequence.

Klass wasn’t the only villain in this. The Air Force had a hand in it, though their role was never so outrageous. The official spokesmen, or those at Project Blue Book spokesman, believed the Air Force was wasting resources to investigate UFOs. They paid lip service to the idea of investigation and worked to avoid having to study the question. Documentation has been found that underscores that bit of reality.

How do I know?

The Levelland UFO case is illustrative. Here was a case that might have met this mythical idea of extraordinary evidence if it had been investigated properly at the time. It had multiple chains of evidence with many witnesses found at thirteen separate locations. In many of those locations there were multiple witnesses. There was evidence that the UFO interacted with the environment in a way that could be calibrated. There is even a hint of a landing trace which meant there would be physical evidence of the UFO’s presence. Or, at the very least, indirect evidence.

And what happened?

The Air Force almost called Major Donald Keyhoe, the director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena a liar for what he said about the Levelland UFO reports. Air Force spokesmen said that Keyhoe had claimed nine witnesses but their investigator had found only three. My point in today’s world is that I was able to identify many more showing both the Air Force and Keyhoe were wrong. Both underestimated the number of witnesses but both were too busy arguing this unimportant point to get to the heart of the matter.

Without going into detail about the case, we have sightings by law enforcement officers, travelers, ranchers, and a host of others. They reported that a close approach of the craft stalled their vehicles, dimmed their lights, and filled their radios with static. Not just one or two of these witnesses, but all of them at all the separate locations. All talked about this prior to news coverage and without consultation with witnesses at the widely scattered locations.

But no one was really investigating this case. The Air Force NCO sent in spent a day talking with three witnesses and if a witness did not talk to the Air Force, then that witness did not exist. Even with the suggestion that UFO could suppress the electrical fields around vehicles, the Air Force didn’t pursue the investigation. I would think that the weapon potential would have been obvious to anyone in a military arena and that should have interested them. Today we call that the electromagnetic pulse or EMP.

Don Burleson, a UFO researcher from Roswell, New Mexico, which is some three hours from Levelland, said that about a decade ago he talked to the daughter of the Levelland sheriff. According to that information, the sheriff was more deeply involved than he let on in 1957 and according to her, knew of a burned area on a ranch. Who knows what sort of evidence might, and I stress the might, have been found if properly investigated in 1957? Today this information, while interesting, is useless. We don’t have anything from the sheriff, there is nothing to see there, and we’re dealing with, at best second hand information. We’re only forty or forty-five years too late.

But here was a chance to learn something important. Here was a chance to pursue those multiple chains of evidence. Here was a chance to gather, within hours of the event, the observations of those involved. Here was a chance, a possible chance, to gather physical evidence. And in the end, it was lost because of a disbelief by those in charge of the Air Force investigation and a fight over how many witnesses there really were.

It is possible that the extraordinary evidence might have been gathered at this point. We don’t know because no one actually attempted to gather it at the time.

There are other cases that present these sorts of opportunities. The McMinnville pictures of 1950 show some sort of object that is not of obvious origin. There are the photographs that are available for analysis. There is the witness testimony. There are not a horde of witnesses, but there were two known and a possibility of a couple of others. This seems to be a case that is either of something not of terrestrial manufacture or it is a hoax. Maybe not extraordinary evidence but certainly interesting evidence suggestive of something that borders on the extraordinary.

There are the Washington National UFO sightings from July 1952. The Air Force eventually claimed that they were the result of temperature inversions over Washington, D.C. But there were sightings by civilian pilots, by military pilots, by witnesses on the ground, and importantly, radars. In one case, radars at three separate locations showed the objects. Multiple chains of evidence that suggested something extraordinary, but a case that was labeled quickly and forgotten.

My point here, however, is that each time we suggest a case has some interesting elements, we are reminded that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” I suspect, however, that if we produced an alien ship, there would be those who would believe that we whipped it up in a lab just to prove our point. There are people who argue that no man has ever walked on the moon. There are those who deny everything and base their denials on personal belief rather than evidence review.

But trotting out the argument doesn’t really provide much of an answer. It is a fall back position that allows the user to take what he or she believes to be the scientific high ground, and reject everything that is offered. Nothing will ever meet this arbitrary standard of extraordinary evidence. No matter what is offered, it will not be extraordinary enough. Just as some say, “Absence of evidence,” we have those at the opposite end of the spectrum saying, “Extraordinary claims...”

I merely suggest that we not allow ourselves to be diverted by propaganda such as this. Yes, we must improve our methodology, yes we must improve our techniques, and no, we really don’t need more sighting reports. What we must do is gather the evidence in a professional manner and present it in a professional manner. Once we do that, we can get away from the propaganda machine and just maybe learn a thing or two.

The McKnight Affidavit and the Roswell Crash

2011-08-16T13:16:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that if a skeptic writes something that is anti-UFO, it is accepted as fact immediately. If a proponent writes something that is pro-UFO, it is rejected immediately. There is no criticism of the anti stance, just acceptance of it all and no acceptance of the pro stance, just a rejection of it.

Such is the case with the McKnight Affidavit. Philip Klass, in his monumentally inept The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Coverup, wrote, “Important new evidence to further challenge [Frank] Kaufmann’s story emerged in early 1997 in the form of a sworn statement by Jim McKnight whose Aunt Florence owned the ranch on which the flying saucer allegedly had crashed. McKnight’s father owned the adjacent land. (McKnight’s affidavit, dated February 3, 1997, was obtained by officials of the Roswell International UFO Museum, in response to Randle’s challenge to the “new Ragsdale impact site” west of Roswell.) In McKnight’s affidavit he said, “No one in my family had any knowledge of such a [UFO] crash or military retrieval... I cannot believe that a convoy of Army trucks and cars could have come and gone without them noticing. If they had seen it, they would have told us about it” [emphasis in original].

No one pointed out the obvious flaw in Jim McKnight’s thinking which was, simply, if it had happened “they would have told us about it.” Well, maybe not. Families do keep secrets from one another, especially when they believe they are protecting their relatives.

The second flaw that is not so obvious, and not mentioned by Klass, is that Jim McKnight didn’t live in Roswell at the time of the event. If he wasn’t there, then he certainly could be telling the truth, as he knew it. He could honestly believe that nothing happened because he had seen nothing himself and heard nothing about it from the family. However, that is not quite the same thing as him having been in a position to see anything and report on it. If he wasn’t there, then how does he really know who saw what?

Klass continued with his speculations based on limited information. He wrote, “If there had been a military convoy, including a large crane to recover the crashed saucer, as Kaufmann claimed, it would have passed within a hundred yards of his Aunt Florence’s ranch house, McKnight told me during a telephone interview on March 21, 1997.” (McKnight ranch as seen in 1991).

All well and good, but how does McKnight or Klass know the route taken by the military to get to that site? How does he know that it would have passed within a hundred yards of the house?

Klass noted, “According to McKnight, although his aunt then resided in Roswell, where she taught school, during the summer months she usually [emphasis added] lived on the ranch.”

So, according to what Klass had been told, McKnight’s aunt might not have even been there in July 1947. She might not have been in a position to see the military as they passed within Klass’ estimated one hundred yards.

Klass wrote, “His aunt employed a hired hand to look after the ranch. He lived there permanently. Furthermore, there was no roadway west of the McKnight ranch that the military convoy could use to reach the ‘impact site,’ because of a macho [this I believe is a reference to Macho Draw] – a large creek be that often flooded. It was not until 1960 [emphasis in the original], according to McKnight’s affidavit, that his aunt ‘hired a bulldozer to build a crossing,’ over the macho that would enable cars to reach the Kaufmann ‘impact site.’”

Of course, the military convoy wouldn’t have worried about roads nor would they need one to get somewhere. The military vehicles were built to operate on rugged terrain without benefit of roads. Besides, the desert out there is fairly flat and military vehicles would have been able to cross it without a lot of trouble. I remember driving cars across some of that desert without much trouble (and, of course, I remember having difficultly getting cars passed some of the dips and turns in the alleged roads there).

The fact that the road today... or rather in the early 1990s, came within a hundred or two hundred yards of the decayed and collapsed ranch house is actually irrelevant. The military didn’t need roads to travel across the desert. If the road wasn’t there, then Klass’ estimate of the distance to the house is also irrelevant. Of course, none of the skeptics noted this.

McKnight said, “Never, never did the subject of such an event as the Roswell Incident come up for discussion. I know the people who settled in that harsh environment... No amount of military threats would have silenced them, especially when they talked among themselves.”

Then, not happy with just suggesting that nothing happened out in that area based on the testimony of a single man who wasn’t even there at the time, Klass wrote, “Several of Randle’s still-credible witnesses had recalled seeing a military patrol near Highway 285, seemingly positioned to keep any unauthorized visitors from turning off and driving to the ‘impact site’ on the McKnight ranch. But, if there had not been a UFO crash on the McKnight ranch, then the recollections of these witnesses were seriously flawed...”

Believing the single witness who was not there, Klass now rejects the testimony of witnesses who were there based on the single witness beliefs. If a single witness tells the story the skeptic wants to hear, then the single witness is believed and all other witness testimony is rejected.

I know the question being asked now is, “Why bring all this up today?”

Well, for one thing, I’m tired of being attacked for sloppy research when the evidence against my research is rather thin. In other words, I am defending my reporting of the facts (or to prevent a long and convoluted discussion, the facts as reported by various witnesses).

But there is a second reason. While in Roswell, I learned of a local who talked about the Kaufmann impact site. This witness said that her family, the McKnights, who were related to the Corns who owned the land in the 1990s... said that when the crash happened, one of the McKnights went over to a neighbor and asked them if they wanted to see the “little people.” Before they could get out there, the military had sealed off the site.

Why is this important? Well, it refutes the McKnight affidavit that Klass relied on. It refutes the idea that the family didn’t talk about this among themselves. It refutes the idea that the military couldn’t get out there without the McKnights knowing... well, they couldn’t because the McKnights did know.

At this point I just don’t want to reveal the source and I understand that skeptics and proponents alike will reject this story simply because there is no name attached to it. Right now I am comfortable with that. Right now, the name of the source is not important... What is important is that skeptics and debunkers accepted the McKnight affidavit without critical comment.

And, no, I am not suggesting that we reevaluate the Kaufmann story nor am I offering this as evidence that Kaufmann may have had some sort of inside knowledge. I am only suggesting that Klass et. al. rejected testimony from Bill Rickett, Willliam Woody, and Walt Whitmore among others who said they saw military vehicles parked on the roads leading off Highway 285 because Jim McKnight knew nothing of a crash. Klass’ conclusion that their memories were flawed was itself flawed.

And no, this does not take us to the extraterrestrial. It merely means that Klass’ analysis of the situation is flawed, but I have seen nothing from the skeptical side questioning what he wrote. One man, who wasn’t there in 1947 said nothing happened and Klass believed him. Those who were there in 1947 and who saw things themselves are rejected because, certainly, nothing could happened and therefore those who report it did, have flawed memories.

And maybe it’s Klass who should be accused of sloppy research. He got the answer he wanted and stopped looking. Those of us who understand proper research realize there is always another question to ask. That’s the only way to really do it. That’s how we get to the truth and not just what we want to believe.

The Roswell Festival, Part Two

2011-08-12T17:30:00.000-07:00

When ever I give a presentation, I always try to leave time for questions because I know there will be people whose interests are different than my own. I want to give them an opportunity to seek additional information or to provide their perspective on UFOs. I have learned some interesting things with this philosophy. I have also been dragged into some really dumb discussions.

Such was the case after my first presentation at the most recent Roswell UFO Festival. I had been describing my investigations as I moved through the world of the UFO and I spent some time on Robert Willingham.

Yes, I know that all this can become tedious, but then Willingham has really annoyed me. He claimed high military rank but was unable to provide any documentation to prove that he had been an officer in the Air Force or that he had been a fighter pilot. He just didn’t know some of the things that a long serving officer would know and there was nothing to back up his claims, as I have mentioned many times in the past. (I believe that those who have served understand my irritation, those who have not don’t believe claiming rank, awards, and training you don’t have is anything important.)

After most of the people had left the room (which was surprising because it was nearly a million degrees outside and the air conditioner was working), a fellow named Cal... no, not the guy hiding out in Prague or wherever, another guy who spells his name differently... wanted to engage in a discussion about Willingham.

Except it wasn’t much of a discussion but more of a philosophical debate on the rules of evidence as practiced in American courts. Not criminal courts but civil courts where the preponderance of the evidence is sufficient to win the case.

First, he wanted to know how I knew that Willingham had not been an Air Force officer and fighter pilot. I told him that I had searched all the appropriate data bases, gone through the various archives including that in St. Louis looking for any documentation, that I had been in touch with the flight schools in San Antonio where he would have trained (and where he said he trained) through the officer registries, through the archives in Denver, and found nothing to support his claim.

He then wanted to argue semantics. What if there was documentation to support the claims?

I tried to make it clear that there was none. Had there been anything, I would have found it. I had been to all the sources that should have had something but there was nothing there. The only documents available came from Willingham and I had been unable to verify their accuracy. In fact, it seemed that some of the documents had been altered.

He wanted to know if I would change my mind if there were documents indicating that Willingham was telling the truth, but to me the question was moot. There were no supporting documents.

He wanted to argue in the world of fantasy, and I wanted to stay in the world of reality. Had there been any doubt about what I had found, if there had been any gap in the information, then speculation could enter the picture, but the information was solid. There was no wiggle room.

Then he wanted to know that if we had presented the evidence in a court and 51% of the people found that Willingham was telling the truth, would I accept this judgement?

Well, no, because it really didn’t matter what the opinions were, only what the facts were. Let us say that a debate was arranged between Willlingham supporters and me. Let us say that we each presented the facts dispassionately. And then the audience (jurors) voted on who won. If the majority believed Willingham, would I concede the point?

Well, no, because in these arenas it sometimes didn’t matter what the facts were. People’s opinions sometimes weren’t persuaded by the facts. Often they wished to believe to the exclusion of the facts... Otherwise how to explain that people still accepted the Allende Letters as something important, even after Allende himself admitted the hoax? How to explain that some still believed the alien autopsy was real even after those involved in creating it said they had created it and explained how they had done it?

The point was that as far as I was concerned, as far as the facts were concerned, Robert Willingham had not served in the Air Force at any time, had not been a fighter pilot and had not been promoted to colonel (O6) by Lyndon Johnson. I even had found the original tale told by Willingham about his UFO sighting and learned it was significantly different from that he tells today and people still believe him.

But Cal still wanted to argue semantics. Would I accept the opinions of those informed about the case? Would I look at documentation supporting Willingham? Would I do this or was my thinking so rigid that I would ignore evidence if it showed something else?

I tried to make it clear that this was not a philosophical discussion. The research had been done. I had the information and there was no sense in talking in the hypothetical. There was absolutely no evidence to support Willingham’s claims. None.

And off he went on another tangent, wanting to suppose this and propose that to prove that Willingham might have been an Air Force officer...

Now before this too becomes tedious in the extreme, let me say one other thing. Willingham does not know the things a long serving officer would know. He doesn’t know about SOIs, Forward Air Controllers, the SOP for operating in a combat environment and a hundred other things that someone who had done that would have known. This by itself suggests that he was not an Air Force officer.

Cal wanted to control the conversation, but I grew weary of it. He wouldn’t listen, always proposing some new twist. He sounded like a negotiator who knew he would win if he just kept the air filled with his verbosity. But I would not concede his points, not because I was so rigid in my thinking, but because I knew the facts. He didn’t. He wanted to use speculation and I wanted to argue reality.

In the two days that followed, Cal would show up at my table and attempt to begin the conversation again. I would not allow it. It was useless. He had no intention of listening to the facts. He just wanted to argue about something and I didn’t want to.

I did learn one thing. Don’t argue with people who are uninterested in the facts. You can’t win, no matter what you have in the way of evidence. And some times they’re just interested in the argument and couldn’t care less about the facts.

Absence of Evidence...

2011-08-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

While in Roswell I had a chance, brief though it was, to talk to Stan Friedman. He had come up to me as I ate breakfast and suggested that I was probably correct about Robert Willingham which is surprising. Oh, not about Willingham because it’s pretty clear that he never served as an Air Force officer or a fighter pilot, but because of what it suggests about the MJ-12 documents. If Willingham’s tale is discredited, then MJ-12 is discredited because it mentions the Willingham story and there is no other source of information on Del Rio (or the El Indio – Guerrero UFO crash as it was disguised there).

When I said to Stan that there was no evidence of a Del Rio crash, he trotted out his propaganda argument that “Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.”

My immediate reply was, “It is when due diligence has been preformed,” which, of course I had done (and which, of course, sort of attaches a legal term to the argument).

But this whole thing got me to thinking about this “Absence of evidence” line and what it really means. It is the last ditch effort to support a concept, idea, theory, or story that has nothing else to support it. Stan didn’t suggest other sources of evidence for the Del Rio crash, he didn’t offer additional witness testimony, he didn’t produce newspaper articles that talked of some kind of UFO event in the area in the right time frame (which according to Willingham’s various tales was 1948, 1950 or sometime in the mid-1950s). No, he just quoted his line as if that ends the argument.

With that sort of an argument, no rational conclusion can be drawn. It doesn’t matter how much time, effort, or money has been put into an investigation. If you found nothing to support the story, then the fallback position is always, “Absence of evidence...”

Here is where we are with the Del Rio crash. The only witness to ever mention it has invented his military career and if he wasn’t a fighter pilot, then he was not in a position to see the UFO crash. If he wasn’t an Air Force officer, then he was never an Air Force fighter pilot and his story fails on that point.

Yes, Willingham has named other witnesses or potential witnesses, but then all of them are dead (which, coincidentally is the same problem with MJ-12... all the men named were dead before the document appeared). There has been no way to verify this story. We must accept it as Willingham tells it.

The only other reference to this case is in the MJ-12 documents. There are no other witnesses, no newspaper stories (and before you get wound up on that, remember even Roswell was mentioned in the newspapers, as was Las Vegas, Kecksburg, Shag Harbour, and several other suspected and alleged UFO crashes), and there nothing in the Project Blue Book files.

Nothing.

You must remember that if there was no Del Rio crash, yet it was mentioned in MJ-12, it would be the final, fatal blow to the Eisenhower Briefing document. There is no reason to include a hoax in the document, a hoax that wasn’t created until 1968, which, of course, means the author of the Eisenhower document was clairvoyant or the document was created after 1968. With Willingham’s latest date change, the crash didn’t happen until after the 1952 date appended to the Eisenhower Briefing Document, and is just one more suggestion the document is fraudulent.

So, let’s look at this “Absence of evidence” idea. In science, sometimes, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence.”

Take The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert T. Bakker and published by Zebra Non-fiction in 1986. On page 116, Bakker wrote, “A careful investigation of the quarry made it clear that something was wrong with the deep–lake theory. As a carcass sleuth looks for clues, he or she must be alert for negative evidence; sometimes what’s missing reveals more than what is present. And negative clues were everywhere in Sheep Creek. No fish bones or crocodile bones and almost no turtle remains (only one fragment of shell) were ever fund in the Sheep Creek limestone.”

In other words, “Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.”

Here’s where we find ourselves today. Robert Willingham is the only source available for the Del Rio crash and he has changed the location, date, number of UFOs, type of aircraft, and a host of other details three times. There is no other source.

Willingham was interviewed by Todd Zechel who was working with William Moore and the Del Rio case appears in The Roswell Incident. (And no, this isn’t a new source, but one that is traceable back to Willingham). It then appears in the MJ–12 papers because everyone thought that Willingham was a retired, high–ranking officer whose word could be trusted. If there was a Del Rio crash in 1948 or 1950 (depending on which version of Willingham’s story you trusted) and it was not included in MJ–12, well that would be evidence of a MJ-12 hoax. No one thought in terms of the Del Rio crash being faked when the MJ–12 papers appeared in the mid–1980s because, it seems, everyone accepted Willingham as authentic.

What evidence is there that something crashed near Del Rio, Texas, at any point in time? There is none. Nothing. The only conclusion to be drawn is that the Del Rio crash is a hoax (a much nicer word than lie) and if that is true, then the Eisenhower Briefing document is a hoax.

Unless, or until, someone can provide any sort of additional and credible evidence of an event near Del Rio, or the El Indio–Guerrero area, there is nothing more to be said. It is a case where “Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.”

Swedish UFO Crash

2011-07-30T12:54:00.000-07:00

There has been, circulating on the Internet, a story that a crashed flying saucer has been found in 300 feet of water in the Gulf of Bothnia. That is, in the ocean between Finland and Sweden. It was found using sonar, which detected a circular object some 60 feet in diameter.

Peter Lindberg, a Swedish researcher (for ancient shipwrecks and the like but not UFOs), while searching for a 100-year-old wreck that might contain some rare champagne, found the circular object. Lindberg did not suggest it was a flying saucer. That has been left to Internet enthusiasts who decided that anything circular and that size must be a crashed flying saucer.

Lindberg himself did not make that suggestion but did say that in his 18 years as a professional he had never seen anything quite like this. That did not mean that it wasn’t a natural formation, something made by humans, or be an anomaly created by the rough ocean floor and the depth at which the circular object was found. In fact, it might not be as perfectly circular as some speculate simply because the sonar being used didn’t have the ability to discriminate precisely at that depth.

At this point there is absolutely no reason to suspect that this is an alien craft of some sort. Lindberg has said that he is not interested in further in investigations. While the recovery of an alien craft could potentially be worth billions of dollars, the more likely scenario is that this circular object on the bottom of the ocean is just that... a circular object that has no value at all.

This should be viewed as a cautionary tale. Only the shape, circular, suggests that this might be of alien origin, and that is highly speculative. The most likely explanation is something mundane. Since Lindberg is the man who found it, and since he sees nothing of value there, and in fact, did not suggest it was alien, we would be wise to listen. Yes, we need to keep an open mind but not one that is so open our brains fall out. With nothing else reported, without further information, the logical conclusion is in the mundane.

I hope this case will not be added to some of the extremely long lists of crashed saucers that float about on the Internet. It doesn’t belong there unless and until there is more and better information.

Corporal Pyles and the Roswell Skeptics

2011-07-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

Here’s something that I don’t understand. In the rush to condemn all things Roswell, the debunkers often overlook glaring errors on the part of those UFO investigators they wish to believe. As a point in fact, we’ll take a look at what Karl Pflock wrote in his book, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and a Will to Believe when he told his version of the story of Corporal E.L. Pyles.

But first, a look at what Don Schmitt and I had to say about Pyles in our book, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell. I had written, “Fifteen miles southwest of the base, Corporal E. L. Pyles, on a detached facility, looked up to see what he thought at first was a shooting star, but larger. It moved across the sky and then arced downward. There seemed to be an orange glow around it, a halo near the front. Pyles believed the event took place between 11:00 p.m. and midnight because the lights at the facility were turned out after 10:30, and he would normally retire before midnight. He thought it was near the weekend, but couldn’t be sure of the exact day.”

Later in the book, in recapping the witnesses who had reported something in the sky, I wrote, “Corporal E. L. Pyles, southwest of Roswell, saw a falling star. He thought it was a falling star because it was ‘wrapped in orange.’ Like the others, he believed it happened just before midnight. It clearly was something large enough and bright enough to be seen thirty or forty miles away.”

Although we hadn’t actually assigned a date to this story, we do make it clear that we believed it happened in early July 1947 and given what we had been told by others, believed that the day was just before midnight on July 4.

Pflock, in his anti-alien Roswell book also reported that he had interviewed Pyles. According to Pflock, “I asked Pyles when this took place. He replied, ‘It was in forty-seven. I don’t remember the month or the date I saw it [emphasis in original]’ It seems it was summertime.’ I then asked him if he was on the main base, Roswell AAF, when he saw the ‘streak’. He said, ‘Yes, I was... I was walking across the drill field... there on the base... [with a] friend of mine... We both saw it.”

Now I freely admit this looks damaging for my research. We, meaning Don and I, had taken the story of a streak of light told by Pyles and put a date on it. It would seem that we were taking a story of a light in the night sky that could have been seen at almost any time in 1947 and placed it in a very narrow range without benefit of witness testimony and, in fact, in contradiction of what the witness told to Pflock. Pretty sloppy work, if that had been true.

But Pflock then wrote, “Next, I pursued the time of night the sighting occurred. Pyles said, ‘Well, it had to have been between, say, eight o’clock, probably... [and] eleven... [I couldn’t] pinpoint the time, but it was before midnight. I think we had been to the club, NCO club.’ A ‘few days later’ he saw the ‘RAAF Captures Flying Saucer’ story in the Roswell Daily Record, and he wondered if he and his friend had seen anything to do with it [reproduced here exactly as it appears in Pflock’s book, ellipses and all].”

So, after all the fussing around, and suggesting that Pyles couldn’t even give a month for the sighting and suggesting he barely remembered the year, he then provides a signpost in the available documentation. He said it was in the days prior to the newspaper article, or in other words, it could have been July 4 as we had suggested, and certainly was in that time frame according to what Pyles told Pflock. And we had pinpointed the time as prior to midnight, just as did Pyles in his conversation with Pflock.

What all this meant, in the long run, was that I was catching flack for misrepresenting the Pyles testimony when, in fact, what Pflock learned actually confirmed what we (and here I mean I) had reported. What I didn’t understand then, and what I don’t understand now, is why Pflock made a big deal out of Pyles not knowing when he saw the streak of light and a paragraph later limiting it to the first week in July. Didn’t anyone catch that inconsistency?

In fact, we have Pflock reporting that Pyles couldn’t even remember if it was summer (though he thought it might have been) but then saying that it was after eight and before midnight. Strange, selective memory, it would seem to me, though if you are reporting a light in the sky, it was probably after dark (well, dusk anyway).

Not to mention that no one seems to want to criticize Pflock for what might be an inaccuracy in his reporting. They all assume that he got it right without shading or manipulation and that I, along with Don, got it wrong.

This is the sort of trivia that has been going on for too many years. I now must defend my statements about the timing of Pyles sighting when it seems to me that anyone with any reading comprehension would understand that Pyles had confirmed, to Pflock, the timing of the event. He might not have been able to say July 4, but we, and here I do mean Don and me, had other information that suggested that date when we wrote our book.

In the end, what we see here is that Pyles confirmed the time frame for Pflock, but Pflock, for some reason didn’t seem to understand that Pyles put it in the first week in July. And the skeptics didn’t bother to question this. They just accepted the idea that we were wrong and Pflock was right, when it turned out that Pflock had, basically, confirmed what we had said.

The Roswell Festival - A Brief Interview

2011-07-21T14:01:00.000-07:00

While sitting at my table in the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, I heard a woman behind me say, “That was my father.” She was pointing to a picture of one of the soldiers assigned to the base in 1947.

I listened to her for a moment and then stood up to learn who she was and what she had been told.

Her name was Carlene Green (seen here pointing to her father's picture) who was the daughter of Sergeant Homer G. Rowlette, a member of the 603rd Air Engineering Squadron. And as established by the Yearbook produced by Walter Haut in 1947, he was clearly in Roswell at the right time.

According to what she said, she learned of her father’s part in the crash retrieval just days before he died. He was on a Gurney and about to be wheeled into an operating room when he asked her to come closer so that he could speak to her.

He told her that he had been at the base when the “spaceship” crashed and that he had seen it. He said that the craft was rounded and that he had seen three “little people,” and suggested that one of them had survived the crash.

He apologized for not telling her sooner but that he had told her brother the story sometime earlier. (The Yearbook picture of Sergeant Rowlette seen here).

Finally he cautioned her to keep it all to herself, or else.

This all happened in 1988, which is, of course, ten years after Jesse Marcel, Sr. told his story and eight years after the publication of The Roswell Incident. While the story of the Roswell crash wasn’t as well known then as it is today, there were television shows that touched on it, there were documentaries about it and some magazine articles that told of it. In other words, this information didn’t appear in the vacuum that existed prior to 1980.

And yes, this is another second-hand story. It would have been nice to find it prior to Rowlette’s death in 1988 but that didn’t happen. We are left with these tales and we each must decide how important they are to the overall case. It does provide some interesting details, some of which have been suggested by others, but in the end, it is still second hand.

At any rate, Carlene Green was a nice woman who took a few minutes to share with me the information her father had given her so long ago.

The Crash of Philip J. Imbrogno

2011-07-17T14:57:00.000-07:00

It has happened again in the world of the UFO. Another researcher, who talked of advanced degrees and of military service in the Special Forces has been found to have invented his background. Philip J. Imbrogno, who claimed a Ph. D. and service with the Army’s Green Berets had neither degree nor Special Forces training.

Lance Moody, who has appeared here in the past, wrote that he recently became interested in Imbrogna’s background and began a somewhat routine search to verify his credentials. Lance, on his web site at:

http://www.notaghost.com/2011/07/saucers-lies-and-audio-tape.html

wrote, “Recently, I became interested in the claims of ‘respected’ UFO and paranormal author, Philip J. Imbrogno. Imbrogno has written many paranormal books. Perhaps his best known was the account of the Hudson Valley UFO sightings he co-authored with J. Allen Hynek.”

The information provided by Imbrogo on his web site claimed, “"Imbrogno holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics, astronomy and chemistry from the University of Texas and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2010 he was awarded a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry from MIT. He is a staff member of the McCarthy Observatory in New Milford, Connecticut, and is a founder and former director of the Astronomical Society Of Greenwich, and former director of the Bowman Observatory."

As Moody noted, this suggested the Imbrogno, unlike so many others in the field, had a fine education and was a “real” scientist working in the paranormal arena. Radio show hosts often recited the information without bothering to check the validity of it (though I don’t really blame those hosts... they take the information supplied by the guest and because there are so many guests that it would be nearly impossible to check everything... besides, who would lie about something so easy to verify?).

Moody wrote, “A telephone conversation with the [MIT] office further determined that there has never been a student with the last name ‘Imbrogno’ attending classes at MIT. Wow. Can it really be that easy?”

The answer was, “Yes, it can be that easy.”

But Moody also received a written reply, which he published on his web site. No one by the name of Imbrogno had attended classes there. The registrar even checked on various spellings. Nothing.

Moody contacted Don Ecker of “Dark Matters” radio fame. Ecker said that he’d had Imbrogno on his radio show several times and when he and his wife, Vicki Ecker had been leading UFO, they’d published articles written by Imbrogno.

Ecker was somewhat skeptical of what Moody had found and cautioned that Moody had better be sure of his facts. I suggested the same thing. Be sure you’re right because you could cause yourself some real trouble.

But Moody had the goods. It made Ecker suspicious of Imbrogno. He wrote, “Then something else hit me. On the last two shows with Imbrogno he made a point of mentioning his ‘Viet Nam military service’ while a member of the U.S. Army’s elite Special Forces.”

This sent Ecker off in another direction. He began to investigate Imbrogno’s military claims. As with those from the academic world, Ecker was unable to verify that Imbrogno had ever served with the Army’s Special Forces.

Ecker sent a note to Imbrogno and a posted reply that sounded like Imbrogno that said, “One last thing Don, you are a great guy if you want my military record DD214. It will show I was a medic in the USAF and did a tour in indochina It might show I was attached to the army for a while I don't know when and where it was all pretty disorganized. I was part of a specialy trained group of medics (the first in line of what today is called a PA in medicine) Much more that a coreman [sic], more than a nurse, but less than a doctor. I was primarily stationed in Thailand, but was attached to a number of army units over the tour. I believe I was in every country in that area The hope was to increase the survival rate of the wounded getting aerovacted out. Get my DD214 it will show 90250 training... # I got punished and article 15 and had to run the VD clinic for a week.”

This answer is pretty disorganized and I’m not sure what to make of it. He is now suggesting he was a Air Force medic and was attached to the Army. While the Marines always use Navy “Corpsmen” (and wouldn’t he know how to spell it if he was a corpsman?) for their medics, the Army has had it’s own medics. It has no need to “borrow” them from the Air Force. And note that he has covered that by suggesting this service attached to the Army might not be reflected on his DD 214.

I’m not sure why Imbrogno doesn’t know what is on his DD 214. He should have received a copy when he left the service, and he would have been told that it was an important document. It is needed to apply for veteran’s benefits, some states use it to determine property tax reductions for veterans, and it is proof of military service.

Here’s where we are today. Imbrogno has dropped out of paranormal research, at least for the moment. One of his co-authors has severed her relation with him. He does not hold the academic honors he claimed and his military service was not with the Army’s Special Forces. He may or may not have served in Vietnam as a medic with the Air Force.

Don Ecker wrote, “As I was in the process of completing this report, no verification of Imbrogno serving in the U. S. Army’s Special Forces, much less MACV-SOG was found by the SF Association. Imbrogno offered no copies of his DD-214. (Military Separation documents.) Since this scandal broke he has with-drawn from paranormal research, changed his telephone number and gotten a new and covert email address. His former working partner, Ms. Rosemary E. Guiley has broken her working relationship from Imbrogno. The paranormal field has once again been given a huge black eye from another person that felt the need to lie … for whatever reason. Okay, this has happened in the past and will undoubtedly happen in the future. But there is more here than meets the eye if you stop to think about it.”

As Ecker suggested, this is just another black eye for the field. We have had a large number of these problems in the last few years and I suspect we’ll have more in the future. What we need to do is be sure that the people who have come forward to tell their tales and those who investigate them are who they claim to be. In today’s world it is very easy to verify claims and we should be doing so. It won’t stop this endless parade of fakers and phonies but it will limit the damage they cause. It will also mean that we can stop wasting our time and get on with the work that needs to be done.

The Roswell Festival

2011-07-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

Yes, I have returned from Roswell, my first visit there in nearly fifteen years. The town has grown quite a bit and it is surprising the number of new, top line hotels, franchise operations and the improvements to the city. The UFO business has been very good.

The UFO Festival, held over the Fourth of July weekend, which is the anniversary of the crash so many years ago, is a well planned and well executed event. The speakers and presenters cover the range of those inside the UFO field from abductees and abduction researchers, to UFO investigators to those who have had some kind of spectacular UFO sighting. And this doesn’t even mention the TV and movie stars who attended including Roy Thinnes of The Invaders (in color).

I arrived in mid-afternoon on Friday and found my table, in the museum where I could attempt to sell a few books and DVDs. I was paired with Robert Salas of the nuclear weapons intrusion fame. He is a retired government employee who served in the Air Force as a captain (but then who didn’t... which is just my way of saying that I had once been a captain in the Air Force, too).

The next day I managed to offend him but in this case actually proves the adage that no good deed goes unpunished. I had been joking with those circulating through the area, talking with them and not really pushing the books. A couple of people had asked the prices and I was explaining the charges and pointed at Salas’ single book to give the price.

He snapped, “I’m getting really tired of that.”

I thought it a somewhat unprofessional thing to say in front of those people but let it slide until they had moved on and we had a momentary break. I said that I had just been trying to help by directing their attention to his book, but he said that he didn’t need my help.

About thirty minutes later I went to lunch and when I came back, I was preparing for my presentation. I kiddingly said a couple of things (though I was sort of annoyed at his earlier outburst) about what had happened. When I returned from the presentation he’d taken his books and found another location, which meant I had the table to myself. That was fine with me.

Of course, while I was interviewing a very nice woman about her involvement with the Roswell crash, Salas was quick to join our private conversation and take over. Some of the questions he asked were those that I wanted to ask anyway, but he did just butt in. I said nothing to him about that, either in front of the woman or after she was on her way.

Salas, it seems, likes to be the center of attention. I had unknowingly taken that from him as I talked to those who had come to our table. But then, it is also true that some people have no sense of humor... and mine is sometimes a little over developed.

Anyway, I gave my presentations (there were two of them) without interruption or trouble (other than kicking the power cord out of the computer so it went into hibernation mode.) We got that fixed in minutes and I went right back into the presentation.

The museum had multiple presentations going on from nine to five or six but the highlight might have been the Roswell researchers panel held on Saturday night. Stan Friedman, Tom Carey, Don Schmitt, Frank Kimbler and I shared the stage talking about how we had been dragged into the Roswell investigations. (The people from the left are Kimbler, me, Schmitt, Carey and Friedman. Photo courtesy of Alejandro Rojas at www.openminds.tv/top-ufo-roswell-researchers-728/.)

The room was packed and there were people standing outside on the sidewalk waiting for an opportunity to get in. We all talked about how we became involved in the case and some of the side, often funny experiences we’d had in working the case.

Frank Kimbler told of his experiences in using a metal detector and other search techniques in an attempt to locate anything left over from the crash in 1947. I mention this only because people are always asking if we have ever attempted that and the answer was “Yes.” Included in that were archaeological site survey techniques and other accepted practices in an attempt to locate material of significance.

I provided a number of programs on my experiences as a UFO investigator going back to my high school years. At that time, when I interviewed my first witness, I had but one question that was important to me. I asked her if the object had been distinct or if it had been fuzzy. She told me it was about 200 feet over the barn and it looked quite solid.

By Monday, I was getting worn out. Right next to me was display that included the Headline Edition of ABC News which was a report on the UFO crash. It started with a number of loud beeps and never quieted down. It seemed to me that the moment it ended, someone else would push the button and it would start all over again.

That’s not to mention a rather impressive flying saucer display that went off with a roar every fifteen minutes or so, complete with smoke pouring out the bottom. That was a conversation stopper but it was also becoming tiring after three days of watching it.

Tom Carey and I went to lunch Monday (early because I was getting tired) and then, because of a report of something (alien bodies to be precise) buried on the outskirts of town, we went to look for that. The story was that we would find to headstones near a wall. It took us about fifteen minutes to find the location and then another fifteen to find the stones. Later, with digging equipment (read shovels here) others went out, but they found nothing alien buried.

No, I didn’t go to some of the other venues. There were all sorts of vendors selling everything from T-shirts to cold drinks. There were some tours and space related exhibits, but I spent most my time in the museum.

I did have breakfast every morning with Roy Thinnes (seen here), which was interesting and we went to dinner one night. That included Tom Carey and Don Schmitt. Other nights the three of us, Carey, Schmitt and I went to dinner without Thinnes (the Golden Corral if you must know because they have a very nice salad bar, vegetable bar and desert bar.)

I did talk to Stan Friedman on a couple of occasions. He made it clear that he believed that Robert Willingham was being less than candid about his UFO experiences, but that didn’t affect the MJ-12 papers. Carey wondered why he would bring that up one morning and I told him about Willingham being the only witness to the Del Rio UFO crash (and there will be more on this in a later posting).

Monday night there was a very nice little dinner in the museum for those of us who had done programs and for the staff who had worked so hard to make the Festival a success. The people behind the scenes, who make sure the rooms are cleaned, the equipment is in place and working, that the gift shop is manned, that the guests (meaning not only the speakers but all those who came to learn a little more about UFOs) were helped as needed, and that a thousand other little things were ready, were there to mingle with the rest of us. I hesitated too long and only managed to get one slice of pizza, but it was a good slice.

I blew out of town early on Tuesday morning for the long drive home. I hit no storms (and was told it hadn’t rained in Roswell since October), but did pass one SUV that was engulfed in flames. No one had been hurt and the ambulances and fire trucks were near so they had all the help they needed.

For me, and I sure for many others, the Festival was well worthwhile. I met some nice people, renewed a couple of old friendships, and wasn’t at all surprised that Travis Walton didn’t even say “Hi,” back to me. He had obviously read The Abduction Enigma and probably wasn’t too happy with our take on alien abduction.

Julie Shuster (seen here) has done a fine job of keeping her father’s vision of the museum alive. Walter Haut had told me long ago that he wanted to encompass everything in the UFO field, not just a narrow niche of Roswell or crash retrievals. He wanted all points of view covered, even those with which he might have disagreed including those of the skeptics. The museum reflects that vision. It covers quite a bit, even those things with which I disagree but that’s what makes this a good museum. It’s not just the one point of view, but many.

Jesse Marcel - A Dispassionate Look

2011-06-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

There has been, again, an assault on the integrity of Jesse Marcel, Sr., by one who has never served in the military and who seems to believe that if it didn’t appear in Marcel’s service record, then it must be a lie. Such simplistic thinking has, for too long, influenced both sides of the UFO question. In the real world there are shades of gray and we must remember that to understand much of what happens in UFOlogy we must be aware of that.

I thought that if we attempted a dispassionate look at Marcel, we might learn something. Oh, it’s not going to lead us to flying saucers and alien bodies, but it might teach us something about the case anyway.

Marcel, in discussing flying saucers (a term very much in use in 1947, though there are those who deny this) with his ham radio buddies in the late 1970s, said that he had picked up pieces of a flying saucer while he was stationed in Roswell (do I need to append New Mexico to this). It was just conversation among friends, but one of those friends was also a station manager in New Orleans who mentioned Marcel to Stan Friedman.

Friedman, and then Len Stringfield, interviewed Marcel who told them about picking up pieces of flying saucer. By searching newspaper files starting with the Arnold sighting on June 24, 1947, they found (or rather I am told William Moore found) a picture of Marcel holding up some of this alleged flying saucer debris on July 9, 1947.

So we come to the first question. In 1947 what did flying saucer mean? Was it a term applied only to alien spaceships or did it have a more general connotation?

Given what I have read in the newspapers and magazines from that era, it would seem to me that flying saucer meant any sort of object, mirage, or apparition seen in the sky. It didn’t necessarily mean spacecraft and I think that it rarely meant spacecraft.

True, that was sometimes the definition applied then but it wasn’t as fixed as it is now. So, when Marcel told his son he had pieces of a flying saucer, he might not have meant it was an alien ship.

I can, of course, interview the son about that and I remember the words he said his father spoke when Jesse Jr. found the writing embossed on the small I-beam. His father said that Jesse Jr. might have been the first person in the world to have seen writing from another world... but in this discussion, I’m thinking that flying saucer was a more generic term than it is today, which, of course doesn’t mean that Marcel wasn’t thinking alien in 1947.

If we look at his statements to various investigators, in front of the media, and to others he talked to, what he described is mainly bits and pieces of debris that had no real shape and provided no real clue to what the overall craft, or object, might have been. Bits of metal, thick paper and thin foil are basically bits of metal, thick paper and thin foil. It is not what you would expect to find littering a crash site, but then, you would certainly find that sort of thing scattered among the larger pieces unless the thing disintegrated or that the field Marcel walked was only part of the crash site. Others suggest that the main body of the craft had come down elsewhere and Bill Brazel told me there was a gouge suggesting something heavy had hit and skipped. Marcel didn’t mention the gouge and as far as I know, no one asked him about that specifically.

So, we have some metallic debris and the like which suggests a technology that was advanced beyond ours but the problem is not with the descriptions of the debris by Marcel but the interpretation put on it. It would seem that everyone, debunker, skeptic, researcher and believer concedes that Marcel handled the material that he claimed to have handled. No one is accusing him of lying about this.

The darling of the debunkers, Sheridan Cavitt, in his official statement to the Air Force, said that he didn’t remember if Marcel had gone out to the field with him or not. He didn’t deny it, he just wasn’t sure. What is important is that Cavitt talked about the debris, but his interpretation of it was that it was something of terrestrial manufacture and unimportant. He never explained why, after he had returned from the Debris Field he didn’t mention this to Colonel Blanchard, the 509^th Bomb Group commanding officer.

Yes, I know that Cavitt’s chain of command did not pass through the 509^th Headquarters, but instead to the CIC office in Albuquerque. But then, if Cavitt had accompanied Marcel to the Debris Field, Blanchard would have asked both what they had seen. Apparently Cavitt did not mention he thought it was all a balloon when he spoke to Blanchard.

But again, we have no evidence of Marcel lying. We have a disagreement as to interpretation of the debris they saw. Cavitt thought balloon and Marcel thought flying saucer.

We all seem to agree that Marcel went out to the Debris Field. We all agree that he found material that he believed to be exotic. We agree that he took it home and then out to the base. Marcel had not lied about any of that. Others witnessed various parts of that activity so we have independent corroboration.

We all agree that Marcel had been a major in 1947, he was the air intelligence officer of the 509^th Bomb Group, and that he held bits of what he believed to be a flying saucer, whatever definition we wish to apply to those words today. So where does this idea that Marcel was a liar come from?

It can all be traced to a transcript of an interview that was conducted by Bob Pratt in 1978. Pratt’s transcript is sometimes garbled with his questions or comments inserted into the middle of Marcel’s statements. I believe that Pratt was careful in transcribing what Marcel said, was less careful with his own comments, and while he would have understood the transcript completely though today we are sometimes confused.

Karl Pflock, in his Roswell book, printed the transcript, but he cleaned it up. He put his spin on some of the words, and as I have said before, the insertion of a comma in one place changes the meaning of the answer to one of those confusing questions.

Again there is little dispute about what he described as seeing on the Debris Field. The problem arises when we begin to compare his service record with what he said in the Pratt interview. Some of the things said here were not repeated to others, which makes me wonder how this came about.

At the being of the interview, Marcel said, "I had flying experience before going in service, started flying in 1928, so being in the air was not foreign to me."

This has been interpreted to be Marcel suggesting that he had been a pilot as far back as 1928, yet when he was asked, in a pre-commissioning interview in 1942 what his hobbies were, he mentioned photography and ham radio. He said nothing about aviation. But he did mention was a cartographer and that he worked from aerial photographs and part of his experience was flying over the areas.

However, and this is important, he said only that he had been flying since 1928 but not that he was a pilot. As part of his job as a cartographer, he flew but did not pilot the aircraft. We have a wash on this. No lie from Marcel, but a misinterpretation from those who wish to assassinate his character. I know from my own experience that when I first joined the Army I mentioned nothing about my previous flying experience, although most of it was as a student with limited hours as a pilot. What this all means to me is that Marcel had flown as part of his job but hadn’t piloted the aircraft and in his interview entering active duty simply did not mention this because, at the time, it was irrelevant and unimportant.

There are two other points in the Pratt interview that talk about flying experience. Marcel mentioned that he had 438 hours of combat time, which meant that he had flown into combat as a member of a crew. Some suggest he was a passenger in an aircraft that was flying into combat, but I suggest he was a member of the crew rather than just a passenger. The exact nature of his position in the aircraft is irrelevant and we have documentation to support his tale of combat flying hours.

He then mentioned that, "...[I] was intelligence officer for bomb wing, flew as pilot, waist gunner and bombardier at different times..."

Now we have Marcel saying he was a pilot, at least to those who weren’t paying attention. He said he had flown AS a pilot, not that he was one and this is a vital distinction. He was not claiming to have been rated and his military record reflects that he was not a military pilot. This does not mean he hadn’t flown as a pilot.

No one seems worried that he also said that he had flown as a bombardier or waist gunner. Again, he wasn’t saying that he had been trained in those positions, only that he had flown in them. This, to me, means he wasn’t lying, but giving an accurate accounting of his experience. In aviation units, those not rated in specific positions sometimes fly in them.

There is a scene in 12 O’Clock High in which they have returned from the first bombing mission in Germany. General Savage learns that half the ground staff has made the mission flying as waist gunners, men who were not rated in those positions but made the mission anyhow.

Yes, this is fiction, but my own experience in an aviation unit bears this out. I gave "stick time" to crew chiefs and door gunners and myself flew as a door gunner on occasion. Nothing in our records would reflect this.

In other words, I don’t see this as a lie by Marcel either. He had the opportunity to do those things and did them. They just weren’t mentioned in his military record and I wouldn’t expect them to be.

The problem is actually when he apparently said he had 3000 hours of pilot time. This is a huge number for someone who is not rated. I have something like 16 – 1700 hours, if you count everything, and I was rated.

But I don’t know how this number came up. In Pflock’s version of the interview, he has Pratt asking the question. According to that version, "Pratt: You had three thousand hours as a pilot – "

Marcel said, "Right [and] eight thousand hours [total] time."

The way it appears in the Pratt interview is "Q – 3000 hrs pilot (right) 8000 hrs flying time."

I could argue that it was Pratt who introduced this number into the discussion and we don’t know where it originated. I could argue that we don’t have Marcel saying this, but to be fair, he seems to be agreeing to it which is really the same thing.

In the end, it seems to me that the 1928 as the date when he started flying is irrelevant because that was when he started flying as a map maker. He didn’t say he started flying as a pilot in 1928. That is an assumption that others have made over the years and I don’t think anyone ever asked Marcel about this.

Later he said that he had flown as a pilot, and this too, is the truth. He wasn’t saying that he was rated or a pilot but that he had flown as one, as well as a waist gunner and bombardier. This too, seems to be the truth.

The problem for me is this claim of 3000 hours as a pilot and 8000 flying time. While I can ignore the 8000 hours total time simply because he was in aviation units and we know he had nearly 500 hours in combat make that total number a little more palatable.

But the 3000 hours of pilot time is quite worrisome... I can’t see how that is possible for a non-pilot even in an aviation unit. This would seem to be an embellishment but I have no evidence that the number is inaccurate... and in the end, no one else does either. Marcel never really did say he had been a pilot.

I suppose this could be seen as splitting a fine hair but do we really want to trash a man’s reputation for something like this... something that we can’t prove is a lie. It might just be true, though I find it hard to believe.

Those attacking Marcel also accuse him of lying when he said he was shot down once, on his third mission and that he claimed he was the sole survivor. The debunkers have gone wild with this claim which is really one that we can provide a resolution to.

Debunkers have said there was nothing in his file to show that he was shot down and I say there wouldn’t be unless he had been put in for an award of some kind. There is no place to make such a note and it was such a common occurrence that it didn’t merit mention.

Pflock, in his interpretation of this wrote, "Marcel: I got shot down one time, my third mission, out of Port Moresby.

"Pratt: Did everyone survive?"

"Marcel: All but one crashed into a mountain."

In this interpretation, Marcel is saying that everyone but one crashed into the mountain which means there was another survivor.

However, if I add a comma, I change the meaning. "Marcel: All, but one crashed into a mountain."

Now everyone, but a single poor soul survived.

In the Pratt interview, it appears like this, "... I got shot down one time, my third mission, out of Port Moresby (everyone survive) all but one crashed into a mountain."

No matter how you slice it, Marcel didn’t claim he was the only survivor as many of the debunkers allege. This is a clear win for Marcel. No evidence that he was lying and no evidence that he claimed he was the only survivor.

For me, the most troubling is the claims in the Pratt interview are for college credit and a college degree. Again, the Pratt transcript is garbled. In the Pratt interview, it said (and reproduced here exactly as it is in the transcript), "... degree in nuclear physics (bachelors) at completed work at GW Univ inWash. attended (LSU, Houston, U of Wis, NY Univ, Ohio State) , Docotr pool? and GW..."

Prior to entering the Army, Marcel mentioned that he had attended LSU for a year and a half, but there is a qualification on one of the documents. In parentheses, it said, "Uncredit." I have no idea what that means. Did he merely audit the classes? Did he flunk out? Did he receive an incomplete?

I did check with the other universities mentioned, asking each if there were any kind of extension courses that Marcel might have taken while on active duty. All replied that he hadn’t attended their schools in any official capacity. I do know that some of the military courses he took were taught at universities, but nothing to suggest any civilian education at them. The Pratt interview seems to be the only place he made these claims and they are not true.

In the end we have seem to have a single example of Marcel lying but even this makes no sense. Why claim to have attended so many schools? Why say this at all because someone was going to check?

Does this really suggest that we could trust nothing that Marcel said? We all agree that he walked the Debris Field. We all agree that he picked up the material. We all agree that something fell. But because we have some ambiguous statements on a transcript that is sometimes garbled, we’re simply going to reject everything that he said, even when it is corroborated by others whose testimony is trusted.

Since this is a dispassionate look, which means I’m not debating the point, but attempting to understand it, there is one other interview that is important. I don’t understand how the skeptics have missed it for the last decade but I have seen little mention of it (and now I’m sure it will be quoted to prove that Marcel was a liar... I can see the headline, "Jesse Marcel admits the Roswell case a lie.")

Dr. Linda Corley is from Houma, Louisiana, which was where Jesse Marcel lived. She said that in 1981, while working on a school project, she called Marcel and asked for an interview. She spent about four hours with Marcel and his wife, Viaud, and said that she "can’t remember a more pleasant or interesting visit."

Rather than repeat what she heard from Marcel during that interview because it is essentially what he said to everyone else, I’ll mention what happened in the days that followed. According to Corley, she received a telephone call from Marcel. She said, "I can still hear Jesse’s frantic voice on the telephone saying NOT to use any of the material obtained from my conversation with him. He seemed almost hysterical when he called my home, the first time, several days after the interview."

Then, according to Corley, "He stated that everything he told me was a lie."

She also said, "Well, I knew most of what he said was previously published material, given on other interviews, so I figured that this was only his way of trying to prevent me from using the information given me. But I did not know why. My heart really went out to him. He sounded so scared. The second telephone call was similar to the first. A day or so later he called to inquire if I had released any of the information to the press. I assured him that it was only for a school project but he insisted that I was going to the press with it. I tried to calm him and promised him that I would not use any of the personal information if he did not want me to. However, that did not seem to console him. I just didn’t know what to make of his strange behavior..."

So, contrary to what a debunker has written, Viaud Marcel never said it was a lie. That quote came from her husband under what sounded like duress. I don’t know why he would want to repudiate what he had said in the past, though I can speculate. However, this is to be a dispassionate look, so I’ll leave those speculations for later.

What we all really disagree about here is the interpretation that Marcel, in his later life, put on what he had found in New Mexico in 1947. Because some of us don’t agree with that interpretation, they’re going to smear his reputation, even though we know that the military records are often incomplete, that we can see how some conclusions about his statements were drawn both by Pratt and others who read his interview transcript later, and that there is confusion in what was actually said by Marcel.

I understand that some believe that if Marcel is eliminated from the Roswell case, major damage has been done, which I suspect is the reason for the smear campaign. But when you look at it carefully, all you see is that Marcel claimed to have picked up strange debris that he couldn’t identify. He was who he said he was, which means he was the air intelligence officer in 1947. He was on Blanchard’s staff and every other staff officer who was interviewed with a single exception agreed with him. He believed the material was of alien manufacture.

The confusion then, comes from the Pratt interview and Marcel’s actual record. You can decide if those discrepancies are enough for you to reject what he said or if they are the sorts of trouble you run into when looking at the written words of an interview made decades earlier and a set of military records that are even older.

Personally, in the end, I will not label Marcel a liar for those discrepancies simply because there are enough problems with my military records and what I know to be the facts in my record to suggest similar problems exist with Marcel’s records.

We can disagree about the interpretation but the case for Marcel being a liar is not proved. This, I believe, is the conclusion that a dispassionate look will sustain. We haven’t reached the extraterrestrial, but I think we understand a bit more of the situation in Roswell in 1947.

UFO Cover Up - The Early Days

2011-06-20T09:05:00.000-07:00

The other day I was on a radio show and the host asked if there was a cover up. I said, "Yes," and that I could prove it. The documentation available shows that the military tried to hide what it was doing with UFO investigations, sometimes in a not very clever way. Sometimes, I think it was just a case of incompetence rather than anything particularly nefarious.

In my search of UFO files, at the National Archives, at the Center for UFO Studies, and using the Project Blue Book files, I learned how some of this transpired. The following will provide a glimpse into the convoluted trail that leads into the cover up.

The military, after the code name Project Sign, the first of the official UFO investigations was compromised, claimed that the UFO investigation had been closed. They had merely changed the name and kept going under the code name of Grudge. Then, in December 1949, they announced that Project Grudge had been ended. The study hadn't ended, but continued, still using the code name Grudge. Later that name was changed and Blue Book was born.

In the beginning, Blue Book was a solid investigation of UFOs. But after the summer of 1952, that situation changed. Clearly UFOs were not something that were going to go away. Clearly the public interest, after more than five years, was at an all time high. Newspaper reporters and magazine writers were trying to learn everything they could about UFOs. Books on the topic sold well and more were scheduled to be published that year. Something had to be done to end the interest.

One of the responses was the CIA's Robertson Panel which would determine that there was nothing to UFOs, but more importantly, they didn’t threaten national security.

The other was a new set of regulations and a change in the way the UFO investigation was going to be handled. ATIC and Project Blue Book, who had been the main action addressees on UFO related items of intelligence were about to lose that distinctive status. New regulations, issued by the Air Defense Command on January 3, 1953 created the 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron (AISS). Other new regulations, including Air Force Regulation 200-2, dated August 1953, tasked the 4602d with the investigation of UFOs. All UFO reports would pass through the 4602d AISS prior to transmission to ATIC. That was a major change in the UFO investigation.

It is interesting to note that Ed Ruppelt, after briefing the members of the Robertson Panel, was on his way to Ent Air Force Base near Colorado Springs, the headquarters of the 4602d. He was scheduled to arrive on January 24, 1953 to "present a one hour briefing at Officers Call." The trip was arranged by Major Vernon L. Sadowski on January 7, 1953, or about a week before the Robertson Panel began its meetings.

But Ruppelt, in describing how the 4602d entered into the UFO investigation business, seemed to think it was the result, not of manipulation at the top, but because of his pushing from the bottom. He wrote, "Project Blue Book got a badly needed shot in the arm when an unpublicized but highly important change took place: another intelligence agency began to take over all field investigations...the orders had been to build it up - get more people - do what the [Robertson] panel recommended. But when I'd ask for more people, all I got was a polite 'So sorry.'...I happened to be expounding my troubles one day at Air Defense Command Headquarters while I as briefing General Burgess, ADC's Director of Intelligence, and he told me about his 4602d Air Intelligence Squadron, a specialized intelligence unit that had recently become operational. Maybe it could help..."

Ruppelt explained that he didn't expect much from Burgess. Ruppelt expected to write memos and letters and seal "it in a time capsule for preservation so that when the answer finally does come through the future generation that receives it will know how it all started."

This time things were different. Ruppelt writes, "But I underestimated the efficiency of the Air Defense Command. Inside of two weeks General Burgess had called General Garland, they'd discussed the problem, and I was back in Colorado Springs setting up a program with Colonel White's 4602nd."

In Ruppelt's book, he implies that all this happened late in the summer of 1953. Ruppelt's tour at Blue Book was scheduled to end in February 1953, and he departed for two months of temporary duty in Denver. He writes, "When I came back to ATIC in July 1953 and took over another job, Lieutenant Olsson was just getting out of the Air Force and A1/c (Airman First Class) [Max] Futch was now it...In a few days I again had Project Blue Book as an additional duty this time and I had orders to 'build it up.'"

So, Ruppelt, at the end of the summer, is talking to General Burgess and within weeks, he is told that the 4602d is available to investigate UFOs. Documentation, however, doesn't bear this out.

On March 5, 1953, months before Ruppelt met with General Burgess, a letter headed, "Utilization of 4602nd AISS Personnel in Project Blue Book Field Investigations," is sent to the Commanding General of the Air Defense Command and to the attention of the Director of Intelligence at Ent Air Force Base. The plan of action, outlined in the letter was approved on March 23, 1953.

In the letter, it was written, "During the recent conference attended by personnel of the 4602nd AISS and Project Blue Book the possibility of utilizing 4602nd AISS field units to obtain additional data on reports of Unidentified Flying Objects was discussed. It is believed by this Center that such a program would materially aid ATIC and give 4602nd AISS personnel valuable experience in field interrogations. It would also give them an opportunity to establish further liaison with other governmental agencies, such as CAA, other military units, etc., in their areas."

The interesting statement here, as in many of the other documents relating to the 4602d, is the idea that the field teams, by interrogating witnesses to UFO sightings, can gain valuable experience in interrogating people. Ruppelt pointed out that the 4602d had a primary function of interrogating captured enemy airmen during war. In a peacetime environment, all they could do was interrogate "captured" Americans in simulations. According to Ruppelt, "Investigating UFO reports would supplement these problems [wartime simulations] and add a factor of realism that would be invaluable in their training."

All this went on while Ruppelt was on temporary duty and someone else was heading Project Blue Book. It would seem that some correspondence between the ADC and ATIC would have been on file at Blue Book. Ruppelt, when he returned to ATIC, should have been aware that negotiations between the 4602d and ATIC were in progress. Yet his own book suggests he didn't understand that.

Upon publication of Air Force Regulation 200-2, in August 1953, a briefing about implementation of the regulation was held at Ent Air Force Base for members of the 4602nd. Publication of a regulation suggests that the changes had been in the planning stage for a long time. It suggests that the implementation of ADC regulation 24-3, published on January 3, 1953, was part of a larger plan. All of it was probably an outgrowth of the wave of sightings from the summer of 1952.

During the briefing, one of the officers asked, "What is the status of the 4602d in regards to this new UFOB regulation?"

Major BeBruler said, "I want to say that on this UFOB regulation that ADC will designate the 4602d as the agency to discharge its responsibility for field and certain preliminary investigations. Secondly, there will be a criteria established as a guide to determine when the field units will conduct a detailed follow-up investigation and when they will not."

This is important because it marks the shift in the UFO investigations. The Robertson Panel recommended no secrecy. They wanted to share everything with the public to prove there was nothing to hide. But that didn't happen. Instead, Blue Book was stripped of its investigative function and became little more than a public relations clearing house. The real investigations were conducted by the 4602d AISS, an intelligence agency of which no one outside a limited circle inside the intelligence community knew. Public questions about UFOs went to Blue Book but no one asked the 4602d what they were doing. They operated outside the spotlight of the media.

From the documentation available, it is clear that the investigative function after 1953 rested with the 4602d. UFO sighting reports were transmitted electronically to the closest of the field units for investigation. Once that investigation was completed, those sightings which were not identified were transmitted on to ATIC and supposedly provided to Project Blue Book.

Although AFR 200-2 was first published in August 1953, implementation of it seems to have lagged until August the following year. Reports available in the 4602d Unit History, originally classified secret, show that there was some reluctance to take on the task of UFO investigation.

This is not to suggest, from some of the early reports, that the 4602d was operating to suppress UFO data, though that was the effect. The men at the meetings, from the questions asked, seemed more concerned with the logistical support available to them to complete their mission rather than hiding anything about their work. The regulations at squadron and flight levels had not yet been written.

During the initial briefing held in 1954, Lieutenant Vaughn, said, "General Carey is very vehement in his desire to see these reports before they are sent anywhere. What will be done about that? He has seen this AFR 200-2, but before they are sent in, he still wants to see them."

Colonel White answered, "I see no objection to that, if they don't get tied up. There is nothing in 200-2 that says that written reports (AF 112) should go to General Carey. Again this is in his division area of responsibility. General Carey is one of the sharpest officers in the Air Force today, and if he wants you to do something like this in his area, it, of course, should be done. The one arrangement that I would make is that you should hand carry the reports to him."

The question that begs to be asked is if this was in some way an attempt to circumvent AFR 200-2 by General Carey. And why should the reports be hand carried to him?

The simplest answer is that General Carey, because the UFO program was moving into his area of responsibility wanted to be kept apprised of what was happening in the field. Hand carrying the reports just expedited the process. There seems to be nothing underhanded or nefarious in the operations as they were being established by the 4602d. They were tasked with a job and were attempting to carry it out to the best of their abilities.

What is important here is the shift of investigative responsibility. Ruppelt complained that his tiny shop was overworked and undermanned, and a splendid compromise was found. In reality, since none of this was made public until long after the fact, it is clear that it was one more aspect of the conspiracy of silence.

In 1947 and 1948 when Project Sign was created, the public name given it was Project Saucer. A review of the magazine articles and books released in that time frame speak of Project Saucer. Once the real name, Project Sign, was compromised, the public name of Saucer was scrapped. Officials then suggested that Sign had been closed and no new investigation had been undertaken. Of course, it was only a name change, the project still existed.

This time the name was left in place, but the location of the investigation shifted. Blue Book would issue press releases and reporters would call the project for information, but the investigation was now housed in the Air Defense Command and conducted by the 4602d as part of their training.

While it can be argued, persuasively, that military secrets are a necessity, and since Blue Book was well known by the beginning of 1953, the policy makes sense. But it can also be argued that the policy is an outgrowth of a desire to mislead the public about the reality of the situation. The question that can be asked, and frequently was, "How can anyone suspect the Air Force takes UFOs seriously if the investigation consists of an officer, an NCO, an enlisted man or two and a secretary?" The answer is, of course, not very.

But, of course, that wasn't the true picture. Investigation was continuing at a very high level with the addition of the 4602d's intelligence teams. More information comes from the unit history (originally classified as Secret) and dated from 1 January - 30 June 1955. "The 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron continues to conduct all field investigations within the zone of the interior to determine the identity of any Unidentified Flying Objects." The unit history also noted, "The responsibility for UFOB investigation was placed on the Air Defense Command, with the publication of AFR 200-2, dated 12 August 1954."

This merely confirms what we had suspected before. There was a secret study of UFOs conducted by the Air Force that was not part of the Blue Book System. Clearly ATIC was involved because regulations demanded it, but there is nothing to suggest that every report forwarded to ATIC made its way down to Blue Book.

I Understand the Skeptics

2011-06-08T14:25:00.000-07:00

I have always, in the past, rejected the idea of producing a top ten list of UFO sightings. I thought of it as a trap by the skeptics and the debunkers. They would take the list, find implausible solutions and then report that they had identified the UFOs as something mundane. They wouldn’t care if the solutions made sense or not. They would report that they had solved the cases and UFOs were nothing more than misidentifications and hoaxes.

There is good reason to believe that. Philip Klass was infamous for finding solutions that didn’t fit the facts. In Socorro he suggested it was a conspiracy between the then Socorro mayor and police officer Lonnie Zamora. Klass believed that the mayor had wanted to find an excuse to develop some land he owned and believed a UFO landing there would create a tourist attraction. We have since learned that the mayor didn’t own the land in 1964 and no real tourist attraction was ever developed.

Donald Menzel offered multiple explanations for the photographs taken over Lubbock, Texas in September 1951 but finally settled on "Hoax!" There is no evidence that it was a hoax and when I talked to the photographer, Carl Hart, some forty or so years later, he told me that he still doesn’t know what he photographed.

But there is no evidence of a hoax, unless, of course, you have the Menzel mindset. That is, there is no alien visitation and anything that suggests otherwise is either a misidentification or a hoax.

I now find myself in the same dilemma as the skeptics when it comes to the UFO subset of cattle mutilations. I entered the investigation in the early 1970s when Jim Lorenzen, then the International Director of APRO, asked me (and several others in several other locations) to look into some mutilations in Minnesota. After a week or so there, I had the answers to the questions about those specific mutilations and the extraterrestrial had nothing to do with it.

And in the years since, I have investigated other mutilations and I have kept up with the current literature on mutilations. I have read from both sides of the controversy including the two works that I think of as most important: the Rommel investigation done for the state of New Mexico, and Mute Evidence. I believe that anyone interested in cattle mutilations should have read both works but that isn’t the case. When I asked a proponent of mutilations about it quite recently, she said that she was unfamiliar with them.

Here’s the deal. Every case of mutilation that I have investigated has a rational, terrestrial explanation. Every one.

The answers ranged from scavengers to humans who thought it funny to carve up an already dead animal, but nothing with an extraterrestrial influence. There were suggestions, but those were based on speculation and the observations of those who didn’t understand the process of decay.

Periodically, I would look again at cattle mutilations, believing that as time passed, new information would surface. Instead it was the same sorts of arguments that hadn’t seemed all that persuasive in the 1970s. Ranchers who said they had never seen anything like it in the past. A surgical precision that couldn’t be duplicated by vets or doctors. Laser instruments that suggested a technology that was far beyond ours.

But, in the end, no one could explain why the aliens were doing it. What was the motivation? Why not just take the whole animal and not leave the remains?

As I have mentioned in the past, some one over at UFO UpDates asked for a list of reading material about mutilations and, of course, all those saying that UFOs were responsible were noted. I merely suggested that they also look at Mute Evidence and Rommel’s investigation for the state of New Mexico. I wasn’t advocating a position, merely providing, what I thought to be some useful references.

The response was typical. I was asked how I would explain various anomalies that some investigators had reported. I was asked how I would explain a lack of copper in the blood of the mutilated animal. I was asked how I would explain the lack of scavenger tracks on the ground near the dead and mutilated animal.

Well, the answers were there. Today, I would point to Fact or Fiction: The Paranormal Files on the SyFy Channel. They showed a picture of a dead and mutilated cow and said that there had been no animal tracks around it. But they didn’t mention the bird droppings that were quite obvious on the animal, even in the picture. There are many bird scavengers and no one seems to think of them.

They also tried to duplicate, using various instruments, the precision of the cuts on a mutilated animal and failed to do it. But they did run an experiment that suggested that some of these precise cuts were the result of the natural decomposition of the animal including some seemingly straight line incisions.

Their conclusion, which I’m sure annoyed not only some of the local ranchers but those who studied cattle mutilations, was that there was no evidence to suggest anything alien was involved.

Here’s the real point. Every time I believe that we had ended the conversation, someone says, "Yes, those are solved but what about this new and different case. How do you explain...?"

Usually it is just more of the same. What is anomalous to one is explained in the mundane to another. The solution, I suppose, would be a list of the ten most mysterious cattle mutilations and see if we could find solutions.

There are some truly mysterious cases and I learned of one in England not all that long ago. While mysterious, the solution, I believe, will be terrestrial rather than alien. I won’t say that I would be delighted if is was alien, but if that is the direction it took, then we who argue for the extraterrestrial nature of some UFO sightings would have some good evidence.

In a similar vein, Chris O’Brien, out there in Colorado, in the San Luis Valley is attempting to put up web cameras that could be used to spot the mystery mutilators and any space craft they might be flying. While I sort of trivialize it here, I do think it is a good idea. Anything that is done in an attempt to further our knowledge and to resolve an issue is a good thing. But the question is how long does it go on before he decides that there are no alien mutilators...

Obviously, if he caught something on tape, that would prove his point and we would have a very interesting bit of evidence. But I wonder if the same thing I heard about the lack of "classic" mutilations while Kenneth Rommel was investigating in New Mexico would be said in the San Luis Valley. While the cameras were operating, there just were no classic mutilations in front of them... Or if there was evidence of scavengers in what might look to be a classic mutilation, it would be dismissed because the damage didn’t mirror, exactly, some other mutilations.

The skeptics, I imagine, think the same thing about UFO sightings. They wonder just how many of the once classic cases that are now solved, at least for many of us, have to be defined as mundane before we give up the argument. In the last decade or so, many of them have fallen. I now believe that the Chiles-Whitted case of the cigar-shaped craft that rocketed past their aircraft was a bolide... an extremely bright meteor that seemed to come directly at them and fooled them.

I believe that the Mantell case, in which Thomas Mantell was killed chasing a huge object, is explained by a Skyhook balloon. I base that on the descriptions of the object that were provided by those who saw it as it drifted at 80,000 or a 100,000 feet above the ground.

I do not believe that a Project Mogul balloon is responsible for the debris found near Roswell. That doesn’t mean it was extraterrestrial, only that it wasn’t a balloon. I get to the extraterrestrial by other means and I reject Mogul because it doesn’t work, for all the reasons I have outlined here in the past.

So I understand the skeptics desire to have a list of the ten best cases so they could tackle them. I can easily think of ten cases with multiple chains of evidence but I fear that we have lost the opportunities that those cases would have supplied. We were so busy arguing about whether or not some UFOs represented alien spacecraft that none of us looked at the really good evidence when we had the opportunity.

I also know that some of the skeptics, but by no means all of them, would fail to make a dispassionate argument. They truly believe there is no alien visitation and therefore no evidence can prove alien visitation. Others would take that dispassionate look, but they would insist an very compelling evidence and rightly so.

I have no hope that anything will ever be resolved. Even if the spacecraft landed there would be those who believed it was some kind of fake. These are the same kind of people who believe the moon landings were a hoax, that the president’s birth certificate was faked, and that there is a colony on Mars (where I suspect the really rich will hide when the asteroid collides with Earth on December 21, 2012 and remember you heard it here first).

My real point is that I understand the skeptics frustration with UFOs, but then, I understand the other side of the coin as well. And I understand that nothing will be resolved until we can remove the emotion and belief structure from the equation. Humans haven’t been able to do that in all of recorded history and I doubt we’ll do it here. We can try, but I have little hope.

UFOs and the Main Stream Media

2011-05-29T12:32:00.000-07:00

The Main Stream Media (hereafter MSM) has, in the last few weeks reported on a couple of UFO related stories that could have had some significance if any of the alleged reporters had ever had an original thought. The clues were there, if they could think beyond the next martini... though I suppose their battle cry, “Fake it until you make it,” tells us something about them.

First there was the big hoopla over an FBI document that suggested there had been a UFO crash. But there were no names attached as the source and the information seemed to be that from the Aztec, New Mexico hoax of 1948. All of the information had appeared in magazines and books in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Without any names, vague locations, and general information, there wasn’t much to do with it.

What the MSM missed, was the fact that the document existed at all. Why would an FBI agent submit something like this? Obviously because he had orders to do so. No, not him specifically, but FBI agents in general. They were to be on the lookout for UFO related information.

We could go back to the July, 1947, when the then Army Air Forces requested FBI assistance in UFO investigations. J. Edgar Hoover, the then director, said that he would do it, but they had to be let in on all UFO information. Hoover mentioned “discs recovered” in his response, in this case a hoax from Shreveport, but the point is the FBI was interested in UFOs. The document in question showed that several years later, the FBI was still gathering UFO information regardless of the source or reliability.

If the situation had changed in those years from Hoover’s order... if the situation was such that the Air Force knew that there were no flying saucers, wouldn’t they have told the FBI? And then, wouldn’t the FBI stopped gathering UFO information, especially when that information was on the lunatic fringe side?

So, the reporters just told us that the document was out there, though we had known that for more than two decades. They didn’t bother to check around. They didn’t bother to see if there was anything important in the document. They just wrote their stories, their superficial stories, and ran off to the next one. They simply didn’t understand.

And then, second, we have to put up with the latest nonsense about Roswell, from a MSM reporter whole knows nothing about the case, has little clue about Area 51 and apparently knows next to nothing about aviation history. Hell, she doesn’t even know that Area 51 didn’t exist in 1951 and that it wasn’t named that because of alien bodies brought there in 1951.

Here’s the point. The MSM rejects the idea of alien spacecraft, looking down their noses at those of us who believe the evidence for visitation is persuasive. They are uninterested in looking at the evidence, but they do know that UFO stories and documentaries are good for ratings. So, while they’ll make fun of UFO reports and UFO sighters, they will also be sure to devote time to them to boost their ratings.

In fact, I just heard someone on television make the crack that those who see UFOs live in the rural south and don’t have a full set of teeth. Of course the MSM doesn’t know, and doesn’t care, that the best sightings come from those with college degrees and who had an opportunity to observe the UFO for a minute or more. It’s just easier to continue with the stereotype because to do otherwise would require some research.

For more than twenty years I have been publishing books about UFOs and UFO sightings. They range from The UFO Casebook which looked at a history of UFO reports with some commentary about those sightings to the highly skeptical The Abduction Enigma which suggested that alien abduction has a terrestrial explanation.

Of course The Abduction Enigma was overlooked by the MSM, though it would have reinforced their belief structure. They were more interested in a book published a decade later that reached the same basic conclusions that we did with The Abduction Enigma. We even had some of the academic credentials that the MSM like, but they ignored our book. The preferred the derivative book that came out later that gave no credit to the work we had done.

The real question here is if the MSM can’t be bothered with learning about a topic before they report on it, if they can’t be bothered with understanding what is happening, why should we accept anything they have to say about... well, anything?

Sure, you can say that reporting on UFOs is not up there with combat reporting, or election reporting, and those in the MSM take that seriously.

I say, “Oh really?”

Two examples.

While in Iraq, I happened to see Ted Koppel reporting on the conditions of the schools in Baghdad. He was at a school where he had found an open sewer just inside the school grounds. He was reporting on how horrible the conditions were.

My response? We had repaired, updated, and donated books, supplies and even computers to some 2500 schools in Iraq and he found the one we hadn’t gotten to yet. He made no mention of all that good work done by American soldiers.

Second, as I was working on a paper in a master’s program, I was reviewing the TET Offensive of 1968. Never mind that the reporters were caught off guard, though the military wasn’t... just look at how many high-ranking officers and political leaders predicted the offensive in the months before (even the ARVN First Division recalled its soldiers 48 hours before the launch of TET). Never mind that the reporters all reported from the Colon section of Saigon where there was great damage (for historic and racial reasons) but not from much of the rest of the city which was not on fire (flames and burning buildings look much better on the news than a downtown street with no damage).

What I learned was that many of the political leaders were not listening to the generals who were in Vietnam... they were taking their opinions from the reporters whose agenda was to look brave and to present their personal yet uninformed views of the situation. The question would be, “Just where did they get their military training, and how is it that they couldn’t understand the situation as it was rather than reporting on what they thought it was?”

So, they don’t get it when it comes to UFOs and in the greater scheme of things, that’s not as important as so much of the other things they don’t get. They just quote one another and worry about filling their time on the air rather than understanding what is really going on.

It is time that we stopped listening to them, their “informed” sources, and realize they just don’t have any inside track, inside knowledge, or even a realistic comprehension of the world around them. They are there to promote themselves, get into the big time, and make the big bucks. They often just don’t care about the truth.

How do I know? Nearly twenty years ago, just before an interview with a reporter for a major daily newspaper, I said that we could prove much of what we said about UFOs. The intern (no they wouldn’t waste the talent of a real reporter on this) said that the editors didn’t care. They knew there were no UFOs.

Just how do you fight that?

Annie Jacobsen, Area 51 and UFOs

2011-05-23T10:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, let’s see if I have this straight. In 1947, the officers and men of the 509th Bomb Group found the remains of a crashed flying saucer. They took parts of it to Fort Worth where Brigadier General Roger Ramey and one of his weather officers, Warrant Officer Irving Newton (seen here), identified it was a common weather balloon and radar reflector.

The press, which had been very interested, suddenly couldn’t care less and didn’t ask how the highly trained officers of the only nuclear strike force in the world at the time could make such a stupid mistake. They didn’t wonder if the men with their fingers on the triggers might not be as trustworthy as everyone hoped. No, they bought the story and went on their way.

Then Jesse Marcel Sr., who had been the air intelligence officer in 1947, began to tell ham radio friends that he had picked up the pieces of a flying saucer in 1947. Articles were written, followed by a book, but the Main Stream Media (hereafter MSM), yawned because they knew that there were no flying saucers The Air Force had said so.

Interest in the Roswell crash built anyway and move articles and books were written. Television documentaries were made, many times without unnamed sources, but the actual people appearing on camera to tell their tales. MSM yawned because these were crazy old men and women whose memories were playing tricks on them. Besides, there were no flying saucers because the Air Force said so.

But suddenly there was real interest and a New Mexico congressman began to ask questions about the Roswell UFO crash. He wanted an investigation into this. The MSM paid attention because Steven Schiff was a real congressman and that made the story credible... though why escapes me... which is not so say that I didn’t find Schiff credible.

The Air Force investigated, issued a final report, and found that what fell at Roswell was a... weather balloon. Oh, no longer was it just a regular weather balloon, it was Project Mogul, so highly classified that not even the scientists working on it knew the name. This became the accepted truth because the Air Force said so.

Of course Project Mogul (balloon launch seen here) was just regular weather balloons and rawin radar reflectors, just like the tens of thousands that had been launched all over the country for years and there was no reason to be fooled by them even if they were tied together in long arrays. Project Mogul turned out not to be so highly classified... just the ultimate purpose was. But the MSM bought the story because there were no flying saucers. The Air Force said so.

No one in the MSM bothered to ask a couple of simple questions like, “If you’re investigating a UFO crash in New Mexico, why didn’t you interview the more of the men who were there at the time? Why just Sheridan Cavitt? Why not Brigadier General Arthur Exon? Why not Patrick Saunders? Why five men who worked on Project Mogul, some of whom weren’t even in New Mexico in 1947?

No one in the MSM thought about that.

“But what about the bodies?” someone, not a member of the MSM, asked.

The Air Force came out with a second final report to explain the bodies. These were anthropomorphic dummies dropped during high altitude parachute and balloon tests in the 1950s. Never mind that the earliest any were dropped near Roswell was 1957 and that the dummies looked exactly like what they were. This is the solution and the MSM believed this nonsense because the Air Force said so.

Then my friend (at least I think of him as a friend) Nick Redfern (seen here) said, “Not so fast.” He had uncovered information that suggested the recovery at Roswell was really the end result of experiments using deformed Japanese and some kind of experimental craft. At least this provided a reason for the cover up... not some kind of secret balloons.

Not many accepted this and the Air Force remained silent. I think they had learned their lesson. Don’t get involved in these crazy flying saucer stories. Leave it to the kooks, which is not to say that Nick is a kook.

But Redfern was wrong about this and we know because a “journalist” meaning a person with ties to the MSM has said that the Roswell crash was the result of a collaboration between Joseph Mengele and Josef Stalin using stolen Horten Brothers “flying wing” type aircraft to give it an alien appearance. Never mind that the Air Force had access to the Horten Brothers designs after the collapse of Nazi Germany and should have recognized the craft if that is what it was.

But the MSM media listens to this because Annie Jacobsen, who is a contributing editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine said that she interviewed a guy, who remains nameless and he said so. Deformed children the result of the horrific “experiments” of Mengele in some kind of Horten Brothers flying wing for the extraterrestrial flavor. Stalin thought this “War of the Worlds” scenario would create public panic, though I’m at a loss to understand what he would have gained by this.

Did anyone ever notice that the Nazis and Stalin were enemies? Did anyone notice that Mengele had fled to South America and was no longer any sort of important person in 1947?

Enough of this latest nonsense. I do not understand why the MSM will listen to this sort of uncorroborated crap, but will ignore the information provided by the men and women who were there. Clearly the MSM does not have a grasp of history, they don’t know that we, meaning the Roswell researchers looked at the Horten Brothers aircraft designs(seen here) (and that we know the flying wing is inherently unstable and didn’t work well until computers could compensate for the tendency of the craft to flip) and we looked at many alternative explanations.

We can stop now because we have the answer... Stalin, Mengele, deformed children and a bizarre attempt to create a panic in the US is responsible for the crash... But when the Air Force buried the story, why didn’t Stalin pull a few strings at his end to interest the MSM? Why’d he let it die?

And for those interested, I have said for years that the big secret at Area 51 was that it was where the next generation of military aircraft were tested. It has nothing to do with UFOs... but the MSM isn’t interested in that opinion either.

Real Aliens, Space Beings and Creatures from Other Worlds

2011-05-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

Brad and Sherry Steiger (seen here) have turned out another winner with their Real Aliens, Space Beings and Creatures from Other Worlds. The title, I think, says it all. This is a book about aliens, though not necessarily from other planets.

“What does that mean?” you might ask.

We’ll get to that in a moment. First I should point out that I have known Brad Steiger for decades. We have talked on the telephone many times, we have emailed one another frequently, and we have appeared on radio shows that the other hosted. I knew, when I had a Saturday evening show on KTSM that I could always call Brad at the last minute if a guest canceled, and I knew that he would be an interesting interview.

The first time that I spoke to him, which I’m sure he doesn’t remember was as I was writing my first book on the paranormal. As a reference, I was using a book he had written. I was interested in the story of Oliver Thomas, a Welsh lad who had vanished in 1909 as he carried water from the family well.

I happened to know where Brad lived at the time and I was able to get his telephone number from directory assistance. I called and asked my question about the case.

“It’s a hoax,” Brad told me.

He said that he had learned that after his book was published, but he was quick to point out the truth, now that he had it. His philosophy at the time was to believe what people told him until he learned that they couldn’t be trusted. I thought it was a fine philosophy even if it let you down sometimes...

My own experience has been that too many people will lie about too much for reasons that seem to be vague. They’ll lie for the personal glory. They’ll lie for the little fame it might bring them. They’ll lie to put one over on someone else. They’ll lie just for the hell of it.

Anyway, Brad was quick to tell me the truth and I certainly appreciated that.

So now we have a new book by Brad and Sherry and it is a compendium of tales about alien creatures that might come from other planets, might be travelers from our future or might be interdimensional beings. They cover all the theories here.

They begin with the biggest of the UFO cases which is the Roswell UFO crash and wind their way through the history of alien contact whether from the contactees of the 1950s, the abductees of the 1990s or the sightings by people of strange beings throughout the centuries.

This is a book for the novice, who has just discovered the UFO field. It provides the basics to understanding where we have gone since the beginning, providing a glimpse into UFOs.

This is a book for those who have been around for a while but who have had their research diverted into one of the many subset of the UFO phenomenon. It provides the basic information so that detailed research can be designed for a long term study.

For those who wish a good primer on UFOs, and for those who wish an encyclopedia of information about the last fifty or sixty years of alien adventures, this is the book to have. It is literally everything to everyone.

If I were to complain about it, I would mention that it is not as detailed as I would like, but then the book would probably have been so big that you’d need a crane to lift it. If there is a case for which I need additional information, Real Aliens, Space Beings, and Creatures from Other Worlds provides the starting point. It gives me the clues I need for my specialized research.

This is one of those books that belongs in every UFO researchers’ library. And if you’re not one of those, a UFO researcher, then it is just a fun read. Informative, provocative, and intelligent. A valuable resource.

Kingman UFO Crash... Really?

2011-05-11T11:15:00.000-07:00

To prove my point, that those who offer solutions to some of the UFO cases are not invited to many conferences, I have just learned of an event in Kingman, Arizona in celebration of the UFO crash there. It seems to make no difference that the sources for this information about the crash is shaky at best. Anyone who has an alleged UFO crash near them seems to be gearing up for a festival of some kind.

Let’s review the facts.

The original story, as near as I can tell, came from a fellow who was originally identified as Fritz Werner. He told of a classified mission he had been assigned in May 1953. According to what he told UFO researchers, he had been flown to Phoenix and then bused to a site in Arizona that he believed was near Kingman. Once on site, he engaged in important and classified work.

He told Jeff Young and Paul Chetham about this in 1971. He said, “the object was not built by anything, obviously, that we know about on Earth. This was 1954 [clearly his memory was in error because he later corrected it to May 21, 1953]. At that time I was out of the atomic testing, but I was still with the Air force and this was the time I was on Blue Book. There was a report that there was a crash of an unexplained vehicle in the west and they organized a team of about forty of us. I was one of the forty.”

All well and good, but there is no evidence that Werner was ever a member of Project Blue Book.

Later he would be interviewed by Ray Fowler. He would give a slightly different version to Fowler, but explained that he’d had been drinking martinis prior to that first interview with Young and Chetham. That would explain the discrepancies because he tended to make things up when he drank, according to him.

Later we would learn that Fritz Werner was really Arthur Stancil and later that his name was Arthur Stansel. The story would be unsupported by any documentation other than a notation on Stansel’s personal calendar for May 20 and 21, 1953.

The May 20 entry said, “Well, pen’s out of ink. Spent most of the day on Frenchman’s Flat surveying cubicles and supervising welding of plate girder bridge sensor which cracked after last shot. Drank brew in eve. Read. Got funny call from Dr. Doll at 10:00. I’m to go on a special job tomorrow.”

The entry for the next day said, “Up at 7:00. Worked most of the day on Frenchman with cubicles. Letter from Bet. She’s feeling better now – thank goodness. Got picked up at Indian Springs AFB at 4:30 p.m. for a job I can’t talk about.”

And that’s it. That’s the extent of the documentation. Jottings on a calendar that could mean practically anything... and a note that he had a job he couldn’t talk about. Not the brightest thing to have written down if he truly had a job he couldn’t talk about.

I will note that searches of the local newspapers, meaning those within 100 miles including Las Vegas, have turned up nothing. No UFO sightings at the right time and nothing to suggest that something crashed. Just the story told by Arthur Stansel, first to two young neighbors and later to Ray Fowler.

And with Stansel telling everyone that when he drank, he told stories, his credibility suffers. He told Fowler that he had had four martinis before the young men showed up. I don’t know why he would continue to push the story when Fowler arrived except that he might have liked the attention the tale drew.

But then Don Schmitt told me of a second witness... well, not exactly a witness, but someone who could corroborate the tale. According to the information he gave to me, Judie Wolcott said that her husband had been in the control tower the night the object crashed. Later, after he had been sent to Vietnam, he wrote her a letter that mentioned the UFO crash. He didn’t supply many details and said that he would tell her more when he returned. Unfortunately, he was killed in Vietnam and the letter he wrote had disappeared.

Okay, that was corroboration, after a fashion. It would have been nice to have the letter, especially since it would have been dated before Stansel told his tale to Fowler and that tale found its way into a national UFO magazine.

Then the daughter of Judie Wolcott called me and told me that her mother tended to make things up and that her father had not been killed in Vietnam. In fact, neither of the men Wolcott had married were killed in Vietnam. There was no letter and no strange confession.

So, there really was no evidence for a Kingman crash. We can find no trace of it in any of the documentation and this includes the newspapers of the time. Remember, all the crashes that have some solid supporting information also have newspaper articles about them. Roswell, Las Vegas, Shag Harbour, Kecksburg and so on. Many of the alleged crashes listed on so many web sites have newspaper articles about them, even when we are able to put a mundane answer on them... but not so Kingman.

Hey, I hope their festival was a great success and that those in attendance learned something of importance. I hope they do it again next year and that it becomes a tradition in the town. Kingman is a nice little city and I have always enjoyed my time there, limited though it might have been.

This little piece is not quite as altruistic as it might seem. I have a long article about the entire Kingman Crash story in Philip Mantle’s UFO Matrix, which has just been published. You can view information about the magazine at http://www.ufomatrix.com/.

But there was no UFO crash there... there was one a couple of hundred miles northeast in Nevada in 1962 but nothing near Kingman. Maybe Las Vegas incident was close enough.

UFO Crashes and Len Stringfield

2011-05-07T11:11:00.000-07:00

Not all that long ago, I found a report on the MUFON Symposium held in Denver, Colorado in 2010. The author reported on my presentation which was a tribute to Len Stringfield (seen here) and the pioneering work he had done on UFO crash/retrieval cases.

I pointed out that Len had opened the door for the rest of us, and a subset of the UFO field, that is crash/retrievals, was now something that was viewed with new interest and new respect. If not for Len’s work, we wouldn’t be looking at these cases simply because we had been "educated" by the destruction of the Aztec UFO Crash case and the information about the reliability of the two men who were at the heart of it.

In his landmark paper, Len began with what seemed, in 1978, to be a strong report given the source of the information. I confess that the fact the witness claimed to be a retired Air Force colonel colored my thinking about it. In fact, in A History of UFO Crashes, I gave the case high marks. Later, in Crash - When UFOs Fall from the Sky, I would reevaluate the case. I thought of it as taking it to the end, which, I believe Len would have wanted.

In his 1978 presentation in Ohio at the MUFON Symposium, Len reported:

In 1948, according to reports from hazy sources, a UFO with occupants numbering anywhere from one to sixteen, had crashed in a desert region of the southwest United States or Mexico and was retrieved by U.S. military authorities. But the reports never got beyond rumor because 1948 was the year when Frank Scully’s book unloaded an alleged hoax on the public about a crashed UFO in Aztec, New Mexico.

In the Fall of 1977 new word of a 1948 crash came to me from a well-informed military source. His information, however, was scanty. He had heard from other "inside" military sources that a metallic disc had crashed somewhere in a desert region. His only details indicated that the craft had suffered severe damage on impact and was retrieved by military units.

By coincidence, months later in 1977, I was to learn more about a crashed disc occurring in 1948. This came from researcher Todd Zechel, whom I had known since 1975 when he became Research Director of Ground Saucer Watch. Formerly with the National Security Agency, Zechel stated that an Air Force technician told him that his uncle, then a Provost Marshal at Carswell Air Force Base near Ft. Worth, Texas, had taken part in the recovery of the crashed UFO which was described as a metallic disc, 90 feet in diameter.

The crash occurred about 30 miles inside the Mexican border across from Laredo, Texas, and was recovered by U.S. troops after it was tracked on radar screens. The job assigned the Provost Marshal, now a retired colonel, was to cordon off the crash site.

The retired colonel [Provost Marshal], now living in Florida, was tracked down by Zechel. Among other facts revealed by the colonel was that one dead alien was found aboard the craft which was described as about 4 feet, 6 inches tall, completely hairless with hands that had no thumbs.

Zechel learned from his source that the troops involved in the retrieval were warned that if they said a word about the incident they would be the "sorriest people around".

Continuing his investigation, Zechel pieced together other eyewitnesses to the 1948 event. In his statement, Zechel relates the following: "I traced another Air Force colonel, now retired in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He had seen the UFO in flight. He was flying an F-94 fighter out of Dias [in reality Dyess] Air Force Base in Texas and was over Albuquerque, New Mexico, when reports came of a UFO on the West Coast, flying over Washington State. Radars clocked its speed at 2,000 miles per hour.

It made a 90 – degree turn and flew east, over Texas. The colonel, then a captain pilot, actually saw it as it passed. Then suddenly it disappeared from radar screens. At Dias base, the radar operators plotted its course, and decided it had crashed some 30 miles across the Mexican border from Laredo. When the captain got back to base, he and a fellow pilot got into a small plane and took off over the border after the UFO. When they landed in the desert at the crash site, U.S. troops were there before them.

The craft was covered with a canopy, and the two pilots were not allowed to see it. They were then called to Washington, D.C. for debriefing and sworn to secrecy about the whole event.

Those are the basics of the case, and I selected this one, I say, not only because it was the first in his original paper, but because he had more to say about it later. And, I have found a great deal of information about the case in the last year or so. Some of you might have recognized the details as presented here, but are puzzled by the date.

In his The UFO Crash/Retrieval Syndrome published in January 1980, Len reported that a fellow named James Minton had told him about another fellow, named William Draeger who talked about a UFO crash in 1950.

Len wrote, "I knew the incident well, and that it had been disputed by some researchers, however, I had not pursued the case beyond having referred to the alleged crash in my pervious paper. At that time, I had used information related by Todd Zechel to the Midnight Globe (not exactly the most reliable of sources). Since, further research into the case by Zechel and others has revealed that not only the year of the incident was wrong, having changed from 1948 to 1950, but also the crash site was changed."

He printed a letter from Draeger who said that he had learned more about the crash, including information from an unnamed high-ranking Mexican Army officer. Draeger said he talked to the general on the telephone who told him that he knew about the crash but he had no papers or documents to prove it. Draeger asked if the general would go on camera for an interview and the officer agreed. When they arrived at his home, however, the general denied any knowledge of the incident. On camera, the general said he knew nothing about the crash.

Since that time, I have learned that Zechel never bothered to "vet" the retired colonel he had found in Pennsylvania. Everyone, including Len, believed that Zechel had done that. When I attempted to verify the "colonel’s" credentials, all I could learn was that he had been a low ranking enlisted soldier who entered the service in December 1945 and was released from active duty in January 1947.

I have learned that the this colonel, the Pennsylvania man, was an officer in the Civil Air Patrol who has now changed the date of the crash to 1954, or 1955, or maybe 1957. He wasn’t flying F-94s out of Dyess because the F-94 didn’t exist as an operational fighter in 1948 and Dyess didn’t exist in 1948. He has made many changes to the original story as some of his "facts" were found to be inaccurate.

And, I found, in the forerunner to the MUFON UFO Journal, Skylook, an article from 1968 that gives us the original information that set Zechel on his quest, and which, I believe, would have tipped off Len to the believability of the sighting if he had known about it. According to that article:

Col. R. B. Willingham, CAP squadron commander, has had an avid interest in UFO’s for years, dating back to 1948 when he was leading a squadron of F-94 jets near the Mexican border in Texas and was advised by radio that three UFO’s "flying formation" were near. He picked them up on his plane radar and was informed one of the UFO’s had crashed a few miles away from him in Mexico. He went to the scene of the crash but was prevented by the Mexican authorities from making an investigation or coming any closer than 60 feet. From that vantage point the wreckage seemed to consist of "numerous pieces of metal polished on the outside, very rough on the inner sides."

Len’s research here, then, provided some of the basics of the case and opened it up to the research of many others. When Len first reported the case in 1978, it seemed to be a very good one, especially because of the high rank claimed by the witness. Later, as I became interested in UFO crash/retrieval stories, I accepted it as well because an Air Force colonel had signed an affidavit about it. High-ranking military officers simply wouldn’t jeopardize their reputations by telling a story that was so incredible unless it was true. I knew of many witnesses who claimed high military rank who had not attained it but just claimed it, but I was also convinced that a real officer who had worked all his career to get to this high rank would not make up such a story. I believed then, as Len did, there was some truth to this. But it all hinged on that Air Force colonel. Without him, the tale took a nose dive.

As I have reported in the past, the man was not an Air Force officer, but a CAP officer. The difference is that CAP officers are volunteers in a civilian auxiliary of Air Force, but they are not Air Force officers. Those who have served in the Air Force or the CAP know the difference. This guy, Robert Willingham tried to blur the difference to make him into something that he wasn’t.

So now I have taken one of Len’s first reports, actually Abstract I from his 1978 MUFON presentation and followed the investigation to the end. We now have what I believe to be a solid answer for this case which is, simply, it didn’t happen. Len started this process by publishing his information about it and I ended it for him. I believe Len would appreciate what we all have learned about this case. He would appreciate that we could now close it.

But this was not a criticism of Len or his work. He used, in 1978, the best information available to him. In 1980, he added to our knowledge by reporting on the changes to the case which made him suspicious. It wasn’t until 2008, as I was preparing my book on UFO crashes, that I found, originally through the Internet, more data, and that I discovered no one had bothered to learn if Willingham was telling the truth about his military career. Len thought others had done it and I thought others had done it. It wasn’t until I asked those others what they knew that I learned that truth.

This case unraveled because of Len’s work. He raised the original suspicions about it. He was the one who supplied the information about the shifting date, and without Len, we would never have learned what we did.

In that article I saw, it seemed to suggest that I was criticizing Len, but such was not the case. He was a valuable member of the UFO research community, and would have published the latest and best information the moment he had it. Len’s work and legacy can’t be ignored. He was a true pioneer, a true researcher, and the UFO community is much poorer with him gone.

The Disclosure and UFOs Poll

2011-04-27T13:08:00.000-07:00

The latest poll has been concluded and I have to say that the overall results do not surprise me, but I am stunned to see that so many still believe Disclosure is at hand. I don’t know if these votes were cast by the same people who voted that way last time and didn’t bother to read the analysis or if they are simply that clueless.

As everyone can see, the majority of the 192 votes (58 or 30%) were cast by those who believe there is nothing to disclose. This suggests we might have a nice mix of skeptics who visit the blog, and those who believe the government has been honest in its reporting on UFOs.

Over on the Magonia blog, the majority, 61% (47) votes, were cast by those who believe there is nothing to disclose. I think that addresses the difference in the average readers there. More of their readers are skeptical and maybe leaning toward the debunking end of the scale.

Magonia voters didn’t have a chance to vote for “Not for Years.” Fifty-two people (27%) suggested that it wouldn’t be for years here.
I had a category of “Never, but They Know) which received 34 votes or 17% of the total. Magonia had a similar category of “They Know but Won’t Tell Us,” which got 17 votes or 19%.

We both had a “It’s Coming,” category. Twenty-seven (14%) thought it was coming sometime in the future. At Magonia, it was simply labeled “Sometime,” and received 17 votes or 19%.

I had a category of “Disclosure is at Hand,” that received 21 votes, or 10%.

Anyone who has been around the UFO field for a while knows, as I pointed out last time, that rumors of Disclosure have been around for nearly as long as the public interest in UFOs. The first rumor of Disclosure that I know of was the one swirling around The Day the Earth Stood Still (no, the good one in 1950 and not the latest one that sucked all the charm, wit, and intelligence from the movie). Disclosure didn’t happen in 1950 and it is not going to happen now unless something radically changes.

That change could be the landing of an alien craft that can’t be denied, hidden or covered-up. It would be a world event that would require the governments to acknowledge that aliens are here. Until the aliens, if they are visiting, decide to announce it, I don’t see our government making any change in its policies.

What we learned in this poll was that on both sites (and both sides of the ocean) the largest number of voters agreed that there was nothing to disclose. My majority was half of that at Magonia.

Interestingly the “Never, but They Know,” category over at Magonia commanded at larger percentage than it did over here... that is 19% to 17%, but then I have five categories to their three.

The bottom line seems to be that the majority of the voters don’t believe there will be any sort of Disclosure, either because there is nothing to disclose, or that the government is not inclined to disclose any time in the near future.

All of this suggests that those suggesting Disclosure is at Hand have failed to convince the majority of the people that such is the case. It might be that they have failed to make a case for Disclosure is at Hand, or we all are so aware of what is happening, we know that Disclosure will not be coming. Either way, the poll suggests it won’t happen for a long time if ever.

Project Mogul, UFOs and Soviet Nuclear Detonations

2011-04-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

There has been a rumor circulating about the success of Project Mogul. It has been said that Mogul did detect some American atomic testing and it was successful in detecting the first Soviet nuclear test on August 29,1949.

I was dubious.

I have, in the past, read through all the massive information published about Mogul and the tests. My interest, naturally, centered around the June and July, 1947 flights in New Mexico. These are at the heart of the Roswell controversy. From all that I had read or seen, Mogul was never deployed. It was too expensive and wasn’t all that reliable, though in later years they were very successful on some very, long-range flights.

I also believed that the first Soviet nuclear test had been detected through atmospheric monitoring and seismic recordings. Radiation from the test drifted over monitoring stations and the seismic readings allowed intelligence agents (well, the scientists who monitored such things) to pinpoint the location. I found nothing about Mogul being used.

Tony Bragalia in an email to me, mentioned that Mogul had been successful in detecting that first Soviet test. I asked for the source and he pointed me to an Internet report by Richard A. Muller, who is a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley.

That web address if fairly long. It is:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8F__2Z3Ne9kJ:muller.lbl.gov/teaching/physics10/old%2520physics%252010/chapters%2520(old)/9-SecretsofUFOs.html+%22project+mogul+and+the+%22lying+disks%22%22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.com

I emailed Dr. Muller and frankly, expected no response. I mean the guy has published books, does television shows and teaches classes. His website is quite complex and interesting. I figured that he would be too busy to answer my question about the source and I was afraid my name might annoy him. I am, after all, on the other side of the debate.

Dr. Muller responded within a couple of hours, and given the time (early morning) I sent my email, I was surprised. He was quite courteous in his reply, and supplied what information he could.

He wrote, "I am afraid that I don’t have a hard source for that information; it was something that I was told, and I’m not sure by whom... I don’t have a hard reference for that. Sorry."

In the grand scope of Roswell research, this means very little. Even if Mogul had eventually worked, it doesn’t change what people believe about the Roswell case. All this does is suggest that reports of Mogul success are little more than rumors.

If someone has better information than this, I’m sure that he or she will let me know. But, until we can verify it, the fact is that there is no hard source for the suggestion that Mogul worked (which means in this context, that it didn’t detected the Soviet test).

Lazy Journalists and UFOs

2011-04-19T14:34:00.001-07:00

What in the world has happened to journalism in this country? Over the last weekend (15 – 16 April 2011) there was quite a stir about an FBI document (seen below) that some had found on a web site that posted a bunch of FBI documents. This one concerned a crash of a UFO in New Mexico with the recovery of alien bodies.

A real find...

Except those of us who have been in the UFO field for more than twenty minutes already had copies of the documents. I found them last century and when I say I found them, it was in a package of documents that the FBI had released to Dr. Bruce Maccabee in response to one of his FOIA requests. He, through the Fund for UFO Research, provided many of us with copies of the documents.

The document, with a subject of "FLYING SAUCERS, INFORMATION CONCERNING," (who developed this style for subject lines in government communications anyway) said, "An investigator for the Air Forces [sic] stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots."

The important clue in this document, which the journalists didn’t find and didn’t understand was, "According to Mr. (Redacted) informant, the saucers were found in New Mexico due to the fact that the Government has a very high-powered radar set-up in that area and it is believed the radar interferes with the controling mechanics of the saucers."

The consensus of UFO researchers is that the information came from Frank Scully who wrote Behind the Flying Saucers, about three UFO crashes, though only one was in New Mexico, and that the saucer had been brought down by radar. The journalists just didn’t know the history of this information and didn’t bother to check.

Scully reported on three crashes. The one in New Mexico and two in Arizona. Originally, he reported on one in northern Africa, but that seemed to disappear from his writings in later versions of these events.

Time magazine contained a story that was clearly the Aztec crash (from Scully) in January 1950. That might have inspired the tale given to the FBI.

To make this worse, if possible. Some of those lazy journalists, who apparently didn’t bother to check with any of us who have been around for a while, added the MJ-12 Operations Manual to the mix. This document surfaced in the 1990s and again the consensus is that it is a fake.

Yes, there are those who believe that manual to be authentic, but their arguments are weak. That is a debate that we’ll hold off until another time.

In the end, we have a sudden spike in interest in documents that have been around the UFO field for decades. The source of the original information is known and the events to which it refers have been identified. Very few believe it refers to real events. It seems the document was forwarded to the FBI as a matter of routine by an agent in Washington who had heard someone talking about this.

The real question is why would the agent have done that? Hoover, as we know, was interested in UFOs, so maybe the agent believed it was something the director would want to know. At any rate, we know the importance of this document... It has none.

Neil deGrasse Tyson and UFOs

2011-04-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the man who killed Pluto, has entered a new arena but it is one with which he is unfamiliar...

Okay, he didn’t kill Pluto and I’m not sure this nonsense about planets and dwarf planets is worth much debate. In the 19^th century we had Ceres as a planet and then the king of the asteroids and now a dwarf planet with Pluto, and with three other objects that are so far from the sun in it was only recently that they were found.

My problem was his suggestion that there is nothing to UFOs because the government is lousy at keeping secrets. The thinking, I guess, is that if UFOs are extraterrestrial and the government knows it for whatever reason, why that information would have leaked long ago. I’m not sure why he, and so many others, believe this nonsense, but clearly he does.

Has the government kept secrets?

Here is the conundrum. If it can keep secrets, then we wouldn’t know because the secrets would be, well, secret. How do we know if it has successfully kept secrets?

I suppose we could look at the track record. We know about the Tuskegee Syphilis study only after it had been going on for forty years. A whistle blower provided two newspapers with the information which led to the end of the study. I’m not going to comment on the ethics of something like this, other to say I am horrified by it.

Yes, you say, they kept the secret for forty years, but it did come out. Only shows that some secrets are kept for a long time.

Then I could mention Operation Solo, which I have addressed before. This was an FBI operation that put a spy into the top reaches of the Soviet government. Morris Childs was a leader of the American communist party in the 1930s until he became disillusioned with it. Cooperating with the FBI, Childs maintained his association with the communists in the Soviet Union, becoming a trusted communist. He was so highly respected that they shared many of their secrets with him... and sometimes shared secrets they didn’t know they were sharing because they didn’t know he spoke Russian.

This operation was so secret that others working in the FBI office in New York which oversaw Childs didn’t know about it unless they were directly involved. It was so secret that presidents were not briefed on it. The only exception was right after Gerald Ford became president and he was to meet with Soviet officials. The FBI told him the source of their information to boost his confidence in his dealings with the Soviets.

This operation ran from the 1930s to the 1990s when Childs retired and the Soviet Union collapsed. Only then was he recognized for his contribution to the United States, after there was no longer a need for the secrecy and there was no longer a danger to him.

This proves that secrets can be kept. So, to Dr. Tyson, I say, one of your reasons for rejecting the notion of UFOs is invalid.

As for Roswell, I would say, the secret hasn’t been kept. We are talking about it. People have come forward, credible people, to tell us what they saw. It’s just that those editors of newspapers, which would jump at the chance to expose another government secret do not believe that there has been alien visitation and since they don’t believe, they are not going to listen to anyone who suggests otherwise.

Oh, I know that we have let this get away from us. We had to put up with the contactees who told of visits to the other planets of the solar system, talking of environments that we know now do not exist.

We have been the victims of hoaxes. Nearly every photograph ever taken of a UFO has turned out to be a hoax.

And we have had Roswell witnesses who were once respected but who are no longer considered credible.

And we have had the Air Force providing explanations that are preposterous but people believe them because it is easier to accept these answers than suggest something alien has visited. I would throw out the Mogul explanation right here because anyone who looks at it rationally realizes that it doesn’t fit the facts. But there are many people who believe it anyway.

Alien visitation is, you might say, a self–keeping secret. It is such an astonishing secret that people just refuse to believe it. I tell you about a UFO crash and you just cannot accept that such a thing has happened so you don’t bother to look into it... or invent reasons to reject it.

In the end, all I can say to Dr. Tyson is one of your expressed reasons for rejecting alien visitation is invalid. With that eliminated, maybe we should move the discussion to the evidence that does exist and not the speculation that interstellar travel is impossible. Maybe we should all look at the evidence.

The Betty Hill Star Map - Revisited, Again

2011-04-06T13:12:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article by John A. Johnson in the latest Sky & Telescope (which suggests something about my eclectic interests) and was struck by his opening comments. He suggested that an alien astronomer searching for Jupiter-like planets would not be inclined to look at our solar system. And, he mentioned that if you were searching for small, rocky planets, then you would be more likely to find those orbiting dwarf stars.

What has this to do with us, you might ask.

Glad you did. See, back in the 1970s Marjorie Fish, in attempting to find the star system from which the abductors of Barney and Betty Hill originated, made a model of our section of the galaxy. She assumed, and I’m not sure that it was a bad assumption at that time, that those aliens’ home world would be close to us, galactically speaking. They probably didn’t come from a world across the galaxy, though when we begin to speak of interstellar flight, we really have nothing on which to base our assumptions. Once you have solved the problems of interstellar travel, the distances, however great, might not mean all that much. We just don’t know.

But I digress...

When Fish put together her model, she ignored the red dwarf stars because there were so many of them in the vicinity of Earth and they probably didn’t have anything interesting going on around them anyway. Astronomic thinking at that time suggested that dwarf stars wouldn’t have planetary systems. We now know there are planets circling many of these stars.

What all this means, simply, is that the Fish model, and the conclusion that some of the aliens originate from Zeta I and Zeta II Reticuli has been superceded by better information. The evidence that suggested this is no longer accurate. Fish needed to include those dwarf stars in her models.

Again, this isn’t a criticism of the work done by Fish. At the time she constructed her models and did her research, she had the best information available. In today’s world we know that some of her basic assumptions were wrong.

And I haven’t even mentioned that the newest star catalogs have revised the distances to some of the stars that she did use and that earlier information has been found to be inaccurate. In other words, some of the stars that she included in her survey are now outside the parameters that Fish set.

This means that we can no longer say, with any degree of certainty, with any degree of confidence, that the Zeta Reticuli system is the home of any alien race. Until this research is redone, we can no longer say that we know where some of the aliens originate. The evidence just is no longer there.

Frank Feschino and the Flatwoods Monster

2011-03-31T14:39:00.000-07:00

Let’s talk about the Flatwoods Monster one more time. This is a case, because of its high strangeness, that is easy to dismiss. A flying saucer landing on a hill with some kind of floating creature coming from it. One that might have had glowing eyes or one that might have "shot" rays from its eyes. Something that might have left landing traces that no one bothered to document at the time. And one in which the craft and creature disappeared before the corroborating witnesses could get there to take a look around.

And one that I found difficult to believe because one of the researchers, Frank Feschino, had posted on a web site a quote attributed to me about his book claiming that the Air Force had engaged in combat with the flying saucers after an order had been given to "Shoot Them Down."

What have we learned in the last week.

The webmaster, Alfred Lehmberg, came forward and said that Feschino had nothing to do with that mistake. Lemberg said that he had taken the quote from a closed discussion group and attributed it to me because I had started the specific thread. Someone else, posting a comment to that thread had made the comment and Lehmberg didn’t pay close attention to the attribution. An honest mistake, he said.

I can live with that. People make mistakes in attribution.

(Richard Dolan, in his massive UFOs and the National Security State makes something of an error in attribution. In writing about the testimony of Barbara Dugger, he credits, in a footnote, Stan Friedman and his book. If you follow that to Friedman’s book, you find the interview attributed to me. Don Schmitt and I had conducted it and provided a copy of the video tape to the Fund for UFO Research. Friedman, and Don Berliner used the tape as a source in their book. So, the attribution was essentially correct, but the original source of the interview had not been made clear. But I digress...)

What this also means is that Feschino had nothing to do with the misidentified quote.

What it also means that one of the reasons to reject the information in his books has been eliminated. You might find his work sloppy or that he leapt to conclusions, but you can’t say he was responsible for the misidentified quote. That belongs to Lehmberg and he has taken complete ownership of it.

Where does that leave me on the question of the Flatwoods Monster. Well, in this world, in which it would be nice to be invited to speak at all these conventions, where it would be nice to have others buying the books that I write, I find it difficult to say something or embrace something in which I have doubts. If I embraced everything... abductions, cattle mutilations, crop circles, every strange and bizarre UFO story... then I would find myself on lots of convention programs. But I just can’t do that.

I have to believe what I say about the topic and with the Flatwoods Monster, I have difficulty embracing the tale as told. It seems that the bolide explanation for the sighting is reasonable. It seems that the hysteria of the witnesses contributed to their sighting. It seems that, by September, 1952, with the newspapers filled with stories of flying saucers, reasonable to believe that the idea of alien visitation wasn’t all that far from the minds of the witnesses. It all seems a reasonable explanation to me.

But Frank Feschino has found some interesting information. I do not know why an officer in the National Guard would talk about deploying soldiers into the area. Deployment of National Guard forces is strictly controlled, if for no other reason than purposes of pay. An officer can’t order his soldiers into the field unless there is imminent loss of life and then he better have some very persuasive evidence.

So, I suppose as some say, this would be in my gray basket (though I dislike that term) but it would be a very light gray. I don’t believe there is much of substance here, but it never hurts to take a closer look. Sometimes I find that I have been mistaken... but only sometimes.

The Flatwoods Monster

2011-03-23T14:40:00.000-07:00

Since I was asked about this case, I thought that I would review it and see where we are on it today. I will tell you that the first thing I found was a web site promoting a book about the case (or the follow on book that is an outgrowth of this case as seen here) that I hadn’t read, though I knew about it. I wouldn’t have mentioned this, but the first thing I saw was a quote, from me, endorsing the book, using language that I wouldn’t use and failing to identify me as a retired Army officer.

Given this, I’m more than a little concerned about the validity of anything that appears in the book, or the research that produced it. Using me to endorse the book when I did no such thing suggests someone who is less than candid in other areas of research. The only question is who is responsible for the quote and why was it even put up. I’ll have more on this in a later post.

That said, I did make a new survey of various sources about the case. The Air Force file on the Flatwoods, West Virginia sighting of September 12, 1952, contains a project card, that form created at ATIC that holds a brief summary of the sighting, what the solution is if one has been offered, and other such easily condensed data. According to the project card for the Flatwoods sighting there is the notation that the case was solved by the meteor that had been reported over the east coast of the United States on September 12. In fact, the only reference to anything suggesting a creature was on the ATIC Project Card where there is the note about the "West Virginia monster, so called."

All this presents a curious problem. Clearly the Air Force had heard of the case, and just as clearly they had written it off as a very bright meteor that had been reported over the eastern sea board on September 12. There is also a note that the meteor (or meteoroid for those of a precise and technical nature) landed somewhere in West Virginia (becoming a meteorite). Apparently the Air Force believed that the "landing" of the meteorite was enough to inspire local residents to imagine a creature on the ground. And, apparently, they believed that the meteorite would account for the reports of physical evidence.

Ufologist and biologist Ivan T. Sanderson, writing in his UFO book, Uninvited Visitors was aware of both the Air Force explanation and the meteorite that had been reported. Sanderson wrote,

"...we met two people who had seen a slow-moving reddish object pass over from the east to west. This was later described and ‘explained’ by a Mr. P.M. Reese of the Maryland Academy of Sciences staff, as a ‘fireball meteor.’ He concluded - incorrectly we believe - that it was ‘traveling at a height of from 60 to 70 miles’ and was about the ‘size of your fist.’... However, a similar, if not the same object was seen over both Frederick and Hagerstown. Also, something comparable was reported about the same time from Kingsport, Tennessee, and from Wheeling and Parkersburg, West Virginia."

The whole story, as it is usually told, begins with several boys playing on a football field in Flatwoods. About 7:15 p.m., a bright red light,"rounded the corner of a hill" crossed the valley, seemed to hover above a hilltop and then fell behind the hill. One of the boys, Neil (or sometimes Neal) Nunley, said that he thought the glowing object might have been a meteorite. He knew that fragments of meteorites were collected by scientists, so he suggested they all go look for it.

As they watched, there was a bright orange flare that faded to a dull cherry glow near where the object had disappeared. As three of the boys started up the hill, toward the lights, they saw them cycle through the sequence a couple of times. The lights provided a beacon for them, showing them where the object was.

They ran up the main street, crossed a set of railroad tracks and came to a point where there were three houses, one of them belonging to the May family. Kathleen May came out of the house to learn what was happening and where the boys were going. Told about the lights on the hill, and that "A flying saucer has landed," she said that she wanted to go with them. Before they left, May suggested that Eugene Lemon, a seventeen-year old member of the National Guard (which has no real relevance to the story, but is a fact that is always carefully reported) went to look for a flashlight.

They found the path that lead up the hill, opened and then closed a gate, and continued along the winding path. Lemon and Nunley were in the lead with May, her son Eddie, following, and they were trailed by others including Ronald Shaver and Ted Neal. Tommy Hyer was in the rear, not far behind the others.

As they approached the final bend in the path, Lemon’s large dog, which had been running ahead, began barking and howling, and then reappeared, running down the hill, obviously frightened. Lemon noticed, as the dog passed him, that a mist was spreading around them. As they got closer to the top of the hill, they all smelled a foul odor. Their eyes began to water.

Some of them reported that they saw, on the ground in front of them, a big ball of fire, described as the size of an outhouse, or about twenty feet across. It was pulsating orange to red. Interestingly, although it was big and bright, not everyone in the tiny party saw it.

Kathleen May spotted something in a nearby tree. She thought they were the eyes of an owl or other animal. Nunley, who was carrying the flashlight, turned it toward the eyes. What they saw was not an animal, but some sort of creature, at least in their perception. The being was large, described as about the size of a full grown man to the waist. They could see no arms or legs, but did see a head that was shaped like an ace of spades. That was a description that would reoccur with all these witnesses. No one was sure if there were eyes on the creature, or if there was a clear space on the head, resembling a window, and that the eyes were somehow behind the that window and behind the face.

Lemon reacted most violently of the small party when he saw the object. He passed out. There was confusion, they were all scared, and no one sure what to do. The boys grabbed the unconscious Lemon and then ran.

They finally reached May’s house. Inside, they managed to bring Lemon back to full consciousness. They called others, and a number of adults arrived at the May house. The group, armed with rifles and flashlights, headed back up the hill, to search for the strange creature. None of the men seemed to be too excited about going up the hill, and in less than a half an hour, they were back, claiming they had found nothing at all.

Still others, including the sheriff, eventually arrived. Most of them didn’t bother to mount any sort of search, and the sheriff, who was clearly skeptical, refused to investigate further than talking to May and the boys. I think it is important to note here that the sheriff had been searching for a downed small aircraft reported earlier. He found no evidence of an aircraft accident and no one reported any airplanes missing. The relevance of this will become clear later.

Two newspaper reporters, apparently from rival newspapers, did, at least, walk up the hill, but they saw nothing. They did, however, note the heavy, metallic odor that had been described by May and her group.

A. Lee Stewart, Jr., one of the editors of The Braxton Democrat convinced Lemon to lead them back to the spot of the sighting. Given Lemon’s initial reaction, it says something about the kid that he agreed to do so. They found nothing and saw nothing but did smell that strange odor.

The next day, there were some follow-up investigations. Some people reported that they had found an area where the grass had been crushed in a circular pattern. Sanderson, who visited the scene a week later, said that he and his fellow investigators were able to see the crushed grass and a slight depression in the ground. No one bothered to photograph this reported physical evidence which is one of the problems that seem to flow through UFO research. No one thinks to gather the evidence when the opportunity is there even if that evidence is a photograph of the ground.

Sanderson pointed out that the other physical evidence that had been reported, skid marks on the ground, an oily substance on the grass, and the foul odor, might have been part of the environment. The type of grass growing wild in that area gave off a similar odor and the grass seemed to be the source of the oil. Sanderson said that he couldn’t find the skid marks, and knew of no one who had photographed them.

Gray Barker, a UFO researcher, also arrived a week later and coincidently on the same day as Sanderson, found others to interview. He talked with A. M. Jordan, Neil Nunley’s grandfather who said that he had seen an elongated object flash overhead. It was shooting red balls of fire from the rear and it seemed to hover before it fell toward the hilltop.

Barker also interviewed Nunley, whose description of the craft disagreed with that of his grandfather though he did say the object seemed to stop and hover before falling to the hill. I wonder if the disparity came from the different perspectives of the witnesses. Sometimes the angles from which something is viewed seems to change the shape and the direction.

When this story is reported, it always seems to end here, with the one group, lead by May and Lemon, seeing the strange creature or entity. The investigations, carried out by various civilian agencies always fails to find any proof. Many believe that if there was some corroboration, if someone else, not associated with May and her group, had seen the creature, it would strengthen the report. Several years later, a men’s magazine carried another story of the Flatwoods monster. Paul Lieb wrote that George Snitowski, was driving in the Flatwoods area with his wife, Edith, when he saw the thing on the ground.

Snitowski didn’t tell his tale until two or three years after the fact. He then told it to an officer of the Flying Saucer Research Institute who published the account in the magazine. Looking at it from that point of view, that is, a tale told long after the national publicity that was provided for May and the others, there certainly is the hint that Snitowski was influenced by those articles. There is no proof he was, only the very real possibility.

Snitowski was, according to his story, returning home with his wife and their baby when, near Sutton, West Virginia, which is not far from Flatwoods, his car engine stalled. He tried, but couldn’t get it to start and because it was getting dark, he didn’t want to leave his wife and baby alone on the semi-deserted highway. He thought they would wait for morning, and then he would walk the ten or twelve miles to the closest town, if someone didn’t come along to give them a hand before then.

Snitowski said that a foul odor began to seep into the car making the baby cry. Snitowski didn’t know what this odor was but suspected it might be a sulfur plant nearby burning waste. It was then that a bright light flashed overhead and both Snitowski and his wife were confused by it. He said later, that looking down, into the woods, he could see what he thought of as some kind of dimly lighted sphere.

Snitowski finally got out of the car and started walking toward some nearby woods where he believed the earlier light flash had originated. Inside the tree line sat the sphere. As he moved deeper into the woods, closer to the sphere, he said that his legs began to tingle, almost as if they had gone to sleep. Slightly sickened by a foul odor, barely able to walk, he began to retreat, heading toward the car.

His wife screamed, and Snitowski yelled, "Edith, for God’s sake. What’s the matter."

She was unable to speak and Snitowski saw, leaning against the hood of the car, a strange creature. He couldn’t see it well because of the lack of lighting around the area, but he thought it was eight or nine feet tall, was generally shaped like a human, with arms and a head attached to a bloated body.

Snitowski reached the car, climbed in, and grabbed a kitchen knife that he had in the glove box. He forced his wife down, to the floor and begged her to silence the crying baby. He didn’t know what to do and said that the odor was now overpowering. But then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the object, the sphere, beginning to climb erratically into the sky. It stopped to hover several times, and eventually disappeared. Suddenly it swooped, climbed upward in a bright, dazzling light, and vanished. When he looked outside the car, the creature was gone.

Not knowing why, Snitowski tried to start the car now that the object was gone. Without trouble the engine started. They drove away, found a motel and checked in. The next morning they heard about the sighting from Flatwoods, but neither wanted to tell authorities what they had seen. Snitowski said that he didn’t want his friends and neighbors to think that he was crazy. Besides, he didn’t have any evidence about the creature or the UFO. There was only his story, corroborated by his wife.

If his report is true, and there is no way, today, to learn if it is, then it makes a nice corroboration for the Flatwoods case. The problem, however, and as outlined earlier, is that the Flatwoods case was national news the day after it happened. At that point, the story was contaminated because an investigator could never be sure that Snitowski, or anyone else who came forward with a report, hadn’t been primed by the story as published in the newspapers or even seen on television.

These two reports, by Snitowski and those in Flatwoods, were not the only ones made about that strange, tall, smelly, creature. About a week earlier, according to an investigation conducted by two Californians, William and Donna Smith, a twenty-one-year-old woman, who lived about eleven miles from Flatwoods, said that she had seen the creature that gave off the horrible odor. She was so upset by the encounter, that she was hospitalized for three weeks. Like Snitowski, she wasn’t interested in publicity at the time, so when the report from Flatwoods made the news, she elected to remain silent. There was no corroborating tales to support her.

Years later, in the mid-1990s, Kathleen May Horner, was interviewed about the sighting. She told investigators that the two men that everyone thought were newspaper reporters were, in fact, government agents. She also remembered that a local reporter received a letter from some unidentified government agency that revealed the creature was some sort of rocket experiment that had gone wrong that day. There had been four such "rockets" and all of them fell back to earth.

The government agents were able to recover all but one and that one had been seen in Flatwoods. It must be noted here that there is no corroboration for this story of government intervention and that it did not surface until forty years later.

There are few points of corroboration for this tale, even among those who were together that night. The descriptions of the craft in flight sound more like a bolide, that is, a very bright meteor. Newspapers from other communities in the region report on just such a meteor. P. M. Reese from the Maryland Academy of Sciences suggested the red fireball was relatively slow moving and 60 to 70 miles high.

We know, from our studies and from the various compilations of meteor falls on YouTube, that meteors can look just like aircraft crashing. We have seen how, as they break up, it seems there is a fuselage with lighted windows on it. They look remarkably like the descriptions of some famous UFO sightings including the 1948 Chiles-Whitted UFO case.

And we know that meteors can seem to climb, though that is an optical illusion, that they can seem to hover briefly, and that they can seem to maneuver, again an optical illusion. The witness testimony here is not sufficient to reject meteor, especially when it is remembered that the object was seen over a large region, suggesting something that was very bright and very high. People looking up into the night sky are simply unable to judge height and speed with any degree of accuracy. A meteor of sufficient size and brightness was seen that night.

Even if we reject, for whatever reason, the theory that any of the Flatwoods witnesses saw a meteor, we can look at the descriptions and how they vary. Even those who trekked up the hill report things differently, from the color and shape of the craft to even whether anything was sitting on the ground up there. Sanderson reported that the object was black but glowing red and shaped like the ace of spades, but Barker said it was spherical and some of those he interviewed said they hadn’t seen it at all.

Jerry Clark reported that the witnesses stuck to their stories but that doesn’t mean what they saw was grounded in our shared reality. That they were truly frightened only suggests they were telling the truth, but not that they saw an extraterrestrial being.

As I review the literature on this, I am struck by the disparity of the witness descriptions and how these sorts of things can be overlooked. I am surprised that there are descriptions of physical remains but there is little to document evidence. I am struck by a number of witnesses who said they saw the bolide and that the bolide was what everyone saw... and yes, many believe that a bolide has landed close by when it has either burned out and not touched down or it landed hundreds of miles away. In fact, several bolides have been reported to authorities as aircraft accidents... just like the one the sheriff investigated that night.

This case seems to be the result of the bolide and the hysteria brought on UFO sightings that were headline news around the country including the impressive sightings from Washington, D.C. It seems that those who climbed the hill, believing they were going to find a landed flying saucer, talked themselves into the hysteria and when they saw something in a tree with eyes that glowed in the light of their flashlights, convinced themselves they had seen an alien creature.

And, no, I’m not happy with this resolution. It seems that it makes too many assumptions. But the evidence for a UFO sighting and a landing is very weak at best. Given the timing of the sighting, given the lack of physical evidence, given the conflicting witness statements and given the well-known bias of the original investigators, and there isn’t much left here.

But there is that quote attributed to me on one of the sites that promotes this case as extraterrestrial and fair or not, that influences my perspective. If they would manufacture this quote, what else has been manufactured and who is responsible. I have tried to communicate with them but I have heard nothing from them.

In the end, I’m afraid that the terrestrial explanation is more likely the correct one here. I’m not completely sold on it but it seems that the preponderance of the evidence suggests that. Until something changes, that’s probably where it is going to stay.