'X' Zone Broadcast Network - David Marler and Triangular UFOs

 

My guest was David Marler, who I had invited on to talk about triangular-shaped UFOs and the scanning project that involved files and documents from a variety of sources, including CUFOS, NICAP and CSI (Civilian Saucer Intelligence). Before I introduced him, I had a couple of other comments to make. You can listen to the radio broadcast here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/49264301

And you can watch the show here:

https://rumble.com/vz47dh-kevin-randle-interviews-david-marler-cufos-scanning-project.html?mref=yqaz3&mc=8uhns

I mentioned that back in the middle of the 1990s, I hosted a radio show on KTSM-AM in El Paso, Texas. Although it was mainly about UFOs, I did delve into some

Hosting the radio show in Texas.

other aspects of the paranormal. I was able to book many guests who had experiences with UFOs, investigated UFOs, and believed them to be alien spacecraft. On the other hand, I couldn’t get any skeptics to participate in the program with the exception of Philip Klass, probably because I knew him personally.

This is relevant in the world today because it seems that it is easier to book a skeptic than someone on the other side of the fence. I’m not sure why, but I suspect it might be because they know they won’t get a free pass on my program. I’m going to ask tough questions and I expect the guest to answer the questions rather than dance off into evasion.

The second point I talked about was a new challenge to the veracity of the General Exon interviews. One fellow approached CUFOS asking for copies of the tapes and transcripts. Told that they were unavailable, he said that he would tell anyone who asked that the quotes were unsubstantiated.

Well, that’s untrue, and for those who would like to see the evidence, scroll on down to the following article. I’ve laid it out there, again, in great detail, including the letter from Exon acknowledging that the quotes are accurate.

David Marler

I brought on David Marler, and we began a discussion of the history of triangular-shaped UFOs. He did point out that sightings of triangles were not new, as some of the skeptics had suggested. One even talked about the inspiration being Star Wars… but, of course sightings of triangles predated the release of the movie in 1977

 As an example of these older triangle reports, he mentioned a sighting from the Albany, Georgia, area on January 28, 1953. It involved both a visual sighting and a radar contact. The Air Force labeled the visual sightings as “astro, (Venus),” meaning an astronomical answer, and the radar as “unidentified.”

Ed Ruppelt, wrote an article about UFOs for True, and one of the cases he touched on was this sighting. He wrote:

On January 28, 1953, at 9:35 p.m., a jet pilot near Albany, Ga., spotted “an extremely bright light” at 10 o’clock high. At first he thought it was another aircraft or an unusually bright star, but when he went up to 10,000 feet it appeared to be ahead and a bit below him. When first spotted, the light was white, but later it began changing constantly from white to orange and back to white again. The object was in view for 17 minutes. In the last 15 second it changed shape from circular to triangular, and the triangles split into two triangles – one immediately above the other – and both disappeared as if someone had snapped off a light.

The pilot called Albany, Ga., but before he could make his amazed report, ground asked him if he had seen anything unusual. They advised him that ground radar had picked up both his jet and a strange target. On the radar scope, when the jet had speeded up, the target had stepped up too, to maintain its lead on him.

There was, of course, a report to ATIC that provided some of the same information. The only differences are minor. For example, in the Air Force report, the object, for the last three minutes of the sighting, cycled from white to orange and back, but in the last fifteen seconds “turned a deep red color and triangular in shape… No trail or exhaust… PRPLN (propulsion) SYS UNK.”

David mentioned that the older reports suggested that the triangular craft were moving with the blunt end forward, which would not seem to be aerodynamic. Later reports had the apex leading which caused me to wonder if this might be a way to discriminate between something strange and something that reflects the current development of terrestrial craft.

We did talk about the scanning project which seems to be as massive as the one that Clas Svahn talked about a few weeks ago. There are many people involved in it including Jan Alrich and Barry Greenwood, as well as Mark Rodeghier. The ultimate goal is to create a digital archive that could be accessed by UFO researchers and interested parties on the Internet. The physical documents will end up in a collect at the university in Albuquerque.

Next week, I’ll chatting with Don Schmitt about the current state of UFO research and why we all should reject the nonsensical UAP designation. If you have questions, and Don has said that no topic is taboo, put them in the comments. They won’t be posted, and I’ll try to get them answered.

Levelland and the Dust Theory

 

A new theory about the cause of the Levelland car stalling incidents has been offered and it was noted in one of the comments to a posting here. The theory is that there was electrically charged dust, in the atmosphere, which had not been reported. This dust, sucked into the engines of the cars, caused the spark plugs to fire continuously, causing the engine to stall. Since many (half) of the cars in 1957 had six-volt batteries, this caused the headlights to dim. Once the discharge ended, then the car could be restarted. It was noted that the idea that the cars restarted spontaneously had been disproved by the original testimony. (Actually, one of the witnesses insisted that his car had restarted on its own). You can read the whole theory here:

https://midimagic.sgc-hosting.com/ufoclass.htm

A cursory reading of the information in the Project Blue Book files would tend to refute this theory. According to that documentation, there was light mist. A light mist would suggest there was no trouble with dust in the atmosphere.

In a report on November 7, 1957, and from the commander of the 1006^th AISS, the idea of bad weather was reinforced. It was noted, on a single page that seemed to be

Location of one of the UFO sightings.
Photo copyright by Kevin Randle

detached from the rest of the report, that “In the opinion of [the] investigator [Barth] following possibilities exist… 1. With amount of rain in area…”

Another message, sent about the same time, provided additional weather information about the conditions in Levelland. It reported that it was cloudy with a light drizzle. There was a handwritten comment that said, “Note!”

In a teletype document that seemed to have been separated from page one, page two of it said:

…conditions might have developed to bring St. Elmo Fire or the like pd [period]. 2. Possibility of excess burning gas from oil operations reflecting off 400 foot cloud cover pd [period]. 3. Possibility of downed power line sparking off wet ground. pd [Period] Southwest public service co. is checking with REA Coops (sic) on any other concern with power lines into area for failure pd. … Dr. Ralph S. [Underwood] cmm [comma] Texas Tech astronomy expert cmm [comma] stated that the following oossipilities (sic) existed as he understood the sighting cln [colon] natural phenomena not fully understood cmm possibly caused by rain cmm and he stated that the possibility existed they came from outer space but he personally did not believe this… Dr. Underwood also concured (sic) with numbers one and two above.

On page three of another report written by the commander of ATIC on the Joint Messageform – Continuation Sheet, and addressed to AFCIN (Air Force Chief of Intelligence) and to the attention of Major Byrne, there is more information about the Air Force belief in wet weather. The document said:

The following possibilities, repeat, possibilities, being checked, which could result in unusual phenomena observed particularly under darkness, mist and rain…

The Air Force was pushing the idea that weather, rainy weather, with low hanging clouds had something to do with the sightings. Each of the reports returns to the idea that rain, drizzle and clouds were responsible for the sightings.

In keeping with the Air Force explanation for the Levelland sightings, or rather using the information supplied by the Air Force and assuming that it was accurate, Dr. J Allen Hynek wrote a half page, single-spaced report that repeated much of what the Air Force had said. According to Hynek:

The phenomena reported seen causally interlocked with the meteorological conditions prevailing at that time; viz, low ceiling (400 feet), fog, mist, light rain and periodic lightning flashes. Our knowledge of such well-attested phenomena as ball lightning and related electrical discharges is not sufficient to pinpoint the exact cause of the present sighting. But there is no need to hypothesize “space craft” etc. in this matter since lightning flashes, alone, in a foggy, low-ceiling nocturnal meteorological setting is sufficient to produce weird effects, especially to imaginative minds…

Coming now to the phenomena of motor stoppage, etc. This was reported in three (3) cases [this is inaccurate]. One case momentary – loud noise of radio and momentary flutter of car light (typical of electrical storms). The other two cases indicated definite stoppage. Might not be possible, if indeed these occurrences were causally connected with the phenomena reported (rather than ascribable to coincidence -- after all, two car engines stopping one hour apart, in a lightning storm with high humidity [emphasis added], does not strain coincidence) to ascribe stopping to sudden deposition of moisture on distribution parts [emphasis added], especially if moisture condensation nuclei were enhanced by increased atmospheric ionization.

At some point, the low ceiling and the fog cited by those analyzing the sighting appeared, but, ironically, other documentation in the Blue Book files simply does not bear this out.

In fact, according to the local newspaper, Levelland Sun-News (found in the Blue Book file) on November 5 reported, “Weathermen said they could not explain away the sightings. There were no thunderstorms in the area and they scoffed at St. Elmo’s light.”

Don Berliner, who interviewed the Levelland Sheriff, Weir Clem, wrote, “Sheriff Clem remembers the night very well: ‘The moon was very bright. There were a few, thin, wispy clouds in the sky but not enough to obscure the moon.’” A bright, clear sky does not suggest that there was any dust in the atmosphere.

Some of the weather data found in the Levelland file, seems to bear out Clem’s memory. The sky was reported to have only four-tenths coverage, which means that the majority of the sky was clear. There is no information about the height of the clouds, only that they covered part of the sky. Various altitudes would suggest that the sky was not obscured by clouds and that there was no ceiling at 400 feet. Four-tenths coverage does not constitute a ceiling.

There is more trouble with the idea that the night was drizzly, misty or had a low overcast. * Dr. James McDonald, wrote, “[Troy] Morris was emphatic that the early hours of Nov. 3 were clear or nearly clear. He, himself, when he heard the reports, went out to have a look on the roads. He said he couldn’t understand why the Air Force would say that there were storms since there were Air Force investigators the following day.”

McDonald, to check out the weather aspect of the case said, “I dug out the weather maps and rainfall data. A large, high-pressure area was moving southward over the Texas Panhandle, completely antithetical to convective activity and lightning of any sort, and a check of half a dozen stations in the vicinity revealed that there was not even any rain falling during this period, nor had more than a small amount fallen hours earlier that day when a cold front went through.”

What this means is that even if there was no drizzle or mist at the time of the sightings, there had been rain earlier in the day. That, too, would have, dare I say it, dampened the dust. The weather data, available from various sources says that the surface winds were light and variable. This would suggest that there simply wasn’t the dust in the atmosphere to cause the engine problems suggested by the theory.

There is one other thing that I’m hesitant to mention and it’s simply that the stalling car engines and the dimming headlights were not regularly reported in the Levelland area. It would seem that it happened only on this one night and that would seem to negate the dust theory, especially when it affected only a few cars.

But the real point is that the weather conditions on that night, as documented, do not support the theory. Too many cars in too many locations in and around Levelland with drivers reporting trouble. Too many people independently reporting an object to law enforcement. And no replication of these conditions at other times. The evidence argues against the solution.

*Although I don’t accept all the Air Force reports on the weather, I mention them to underscore that I have examined the entire record. If you believe the Air Force, then the dust explanation fails. If you believe the information from the newspapers and the witnesses, and the data uncovered by Dr. McDonald, then the dust explanation fails. I wanted it understood that I looked at the entire weather record.

Chasing Footnotes - Howard Lake, Minnesota (UFO Occupant) Edition

 

It has been a long time since I was able to chase a footnote or two but I have finally had a chance to do it again. I was working on another project and came to a case that fit into that framework. In UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference written by Mark Rodeghier and published by CUFOS, he cited the following:

January 25, 1967: 0430 –

U.S., near Winstad, Minnesota: The engine of a car stalled and the driver got out and saw a bright light coming nearer. It landed on the road on a tripod: it was 25 meters (75 feet, more or less) in diameter, longer than it was wide. A man-like figure got out of the object, checked the exterior of it, then got back in. The object then departed and the car could be restarted.

According to the notation at the end of this short entry, Rodeghier cited a report by Jacques Vallee in his Passport to Magonia. That reference said:

812 [Numerical sequence in the listing of cases]

January 25, 1967: 0430 –

Winsted (Minnesota). A civilian man, 32, driving to work in his 1964 Chevy truck, had to stop and inspect the vehicle when its engine stalled. Only then did he observe an intense light to his right, coming closer. He saw it land on the road, and locked himself inside the cabin. The craft settled on a tripod landing gear; it measured 25 m in diameter and was 10 m high. Something similar to an elevator came down from it, and a man dressed in blue coveralls “with something like a glass fishbowl on his head,” of medium height, seemed to check something and left.

This was attributed to Atic, which seems to mean ATIC, which in turn suggests the case is part of the Project Blue Book files. There is no listing in the files for a case in Winsted, Minnesota, on that date. There is, however, a case from Howard Lake, Minnesota, on that date with a time of 1100Z (which translates to 0500 local time in Minnesota, if I have calculated the time zone differences correctly). For those with a map, you will find that Howard Lake and Winsted are not all that far apart in the southcentral part of Minnesota. I’m not sure if that information is overly relevant.

The Howard Lake Project Card

The Project Card provides enough information so that we can see that this is the correct sighting. The Air Force listed the case as “Insufficient data for evaluation.” This means that I have found another case in which an occupant was seen that wasn’t immediately written off as some sort of psychological problem with the witness.

The case, as reported in the Blue Book Project Card, said:

Observer was working on his truck when he noticed a very bright light to his right. It came closer and landed on the highway. The object was approximately 75 feet long and 30 feet wide. It made a loud whistling noise and the witness could hear it from within his truck. A man left the craft dressed in a silver blue tight fitting suit with a fish bowl on his head. This man walked around the craft then walked back inside. The craft then took off.

Contact was not made with the individual because of no such address. Also personnel at AF Reserve Unit were unable to locate the individual at the Gleason Construction Company for additional information.

There is another document in the Blue Book files which seems to be a narrative as reported by the witness. His name is redacted but the report was made by Howard Lenz of Howard Lake, Minnesota.

This is the one-page narrative in the Blue Book file. It is clear that the document is the result of Lenz calling in on the morning of the sighting. Lenz reportedly said:

SUBJECT: REPORT OF A UFO                                    25 January 1967

A Mr. [name redacted but is Howard Lenz], Howard Lake, Minnesota [handwritten zip code 55349 written about the town name] age 32 years, called to report the following incident [hand written telephone number and a note that said Winsted, Minn].

He was on his way to work this morning (works for the J. B. Gleason Construction Company) [handwritten telephone number noted] and between 4:30 and 5:00 AM, south of Howard Lake near highways 101, 5 and 212, his pickup truck quit. He drives a 1964 Chevrolet pickup. He went out and looked under the hood and he noticed a very bright light to his right “like a light from a welder’s torch”. It came closer and landed on the highway. He became freightened [sic] and ran into his car and locked the doors. This light was approximately 75 feet long and 30 feet wide. While he was watching it three legs came out of the bottom like they were on springs. It made a loud whirring noise and he could hear it through the windows of the car. Then an elevator like object came out of the bottom and a man walked out. He was dressed in a silver blue tight fitting suit with a “fish bowl” on his head. He was of average height and build. He walked over to the side of the “thing” to check on something then walked back in. It then took off. It all took about three or four minutes.

Mr. Lenz sounded quite upset. He asked what he should do. I asked if he had called the newspapers. He said no, and wondered if I had had any other calls reporting this incident. I said no. He said he was going to call his wife and then decide further what should be done. I told him I would contact him if we hear anything further concerning this UFO. He said he wasn’t drunk and doesn’t read science fiction and is of sound health. He does wear glasses but his eyes…

That is where the narrative ends. There is no additional information in the file, other that an envelope that shows the letter had been returned because “Addressee unknown.” More disturbing than the letter being returned was that an inquiry made to the Gleason Construction Company failed to find an employee named Howard Lenz.

According to a letter in the file, signed by Colonel James C. Manatt, they had sent Lenz a copy of their UFO report form, FTD Form 164, along with a return envelope but as seen, that letter was returned. There seemed to be no follow up.

This is where the trail ends. Just the report written by an unidentified member of the Air Force, an attempt to communicate with Lenz, the returned envelop showing that the man apparently didn’t live in Howard Lake and his alleged employer who didn’t know who he was.

I have to admit here that I don’t find this report credible if only because it seems that Lenz is a fake name. I also noticed that in the descriptions of the sighting published later, there seemed to be facts added that were not in evidence. Rodeghier, for example, reported that once the object departed the car, truck actually, could be restarted. This is a logical assumption, but I’m not sure that it is a relevant conclusion. Clearly, the truck was restarted, but I don’t have any idea if the departure of the craft was a factor. This could be because we don’t have the second page of the narrative.

In fact, I’m just not sure that the alleged arrival of the craft is the reason the truck stalled in the first place. There is a great deal of information that needed to be gathered. The missing, second sheet of the narrative might have answered the question. I searched not only my digital copy of the Blue Book files, but went back to the microfilm copy to see if that page had been left out. I believe, based on this, I have seen the entire Blue Book file.

Although it seems to have been reported only to the Air Force, I did check both the APRO Bulletin and the NICAP UFO Investigator to see if there was additional information. I found nothing relating to this sighting but did learn that a major flap was in progress at that time. APRO printed several photographs taken in late 1966 and early 1967. NICAP announced “Major Sighting Wave.” This suggests that the Lenz tale didn’t appear out of nowhere. UFOs were in the news, as was the beginning of the Condon Committee and its investigation. In fact, according to NICAP, “Two more U.S. newspapers in December joined the growing ranks of publications endorsing the need for scientific study of UFOs.”

There are no other sources of information on it that I can find, and I have traced it to its origination. If Lenz is still alive, a real possibility, he would be nearly 90 and probably wouldn’t be able to add anything, if Lenz was his real name. There seems to be nowhere else to go.

Arthur Exon and the Investigative Teams

As happens all too often, as I’m searching for something else, I stumble onto a document that helps explain information I had found in the past. Brigadier General Arthur Exon, who was the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base commander, a position similar to that of a mayor, told me during an interview on May 19, 1990, that he was responsible for dispatching aircraft to carry investigators to important

Brigadier General Arthur Exon.

UFO sightings. He said:

Well, the way this happened to me is that I would get a call and say that the crew or the team was leaving and they knew… there was such and such a time they wanted an airplane and pilots to take “X” number of people to wherever, you know. They might be gone two or three days or might be gone a week. The would come back and that would be the end of it. So, there would be certain people in FTD [ATIC evolved into FTD in 1961] that would lay the missions on… I know they went out to Montana and Wyoming and the northwest states a number of times in a year and a half… They went to Arizona once or twice.

These special teams, or these people, would apparently come from around the United States and their assignment was to investigate a UFO sighting according to Exon. He didn’t have much in the way of details about these special flights, but the implication I took away from this was that the teams, or the team members, were a specially trained group who were investigating UFOs at a higher level than Project Blue Book. It was clear that they weren’t part of the Blue Book operation.

We (Don Schmitt and I, who first interviewed Exon) asked if the men were assigned to Wright-Patterson. Exon said, “No. They would come from Washington, D.C.” He also said that the team would be made up of eight, maybe fifteen people, the number probably dictated by the sighting they were investigating. The idea was that if anyone checked, they would learn that the team had been dispatched from Wright-Patterson as a way of disguising the nature of this somewhat secret activity.

During my interview with Exon, I wanted to know if he knew who the controlling agency or agencies were. I thought FTD was one of those agencies, but Exon said, “I don’t know they were controlling but I know where the assignments came from.”

I asked, “That was basically your control? FTD?”

He said, simply, “Yeah.”

The conclusions that I drew, and the conclusions that Don drew, were that teams, controlled at a different level, but that were not assigned to Blue Book were called in for special investigations. This, according to Exon, was in 1960 and 1961.

But it turns out, according to the documentation that I have just found, this assumption is not true. Oh, the documents were there in the Project Blue Book files for anyone to find who scanned through the boxes and boxes of data as it is contained on microfilm. As, I say, I was looking for something else when I found this.

According to the documents, in a draft of a staff study that was declassified in 1969 but suggested in a document dated December 17, 1958, that:

To provide a flexible investigative force which will not cause a particular drain on any one office within ATIC [think FTD at this point] the Commander has approved the establishment of a volunteer force which will work under the direction of the Aerial Phenomena Group of the Air Science Division when actually engaged in field investigation of UFO sightings. The general ground rules for their employment are as follows:

A total group of from 18 to 20 volunteers will be selected from company grade officers [lieutenants and captains] and NCO’s presently assigned within ATIC. This group will for the most part be people who do not have much opportunity to travel during the normal course of their duties. Once selected they will be given a 20 hour course of instruction in interrogative and investigative procedures and will be checked out on equipment pertinent thereto [the class syllabus was included in the documentation]. Once trained two of these individuals will be placed on alert each week to undertake such investigations as may arise during the week. Orders required for TDY [temporary duty] travel will be processed by the Aerial Phenomena Group citing funds programmed by that Group for such travel. A separate project nick-named “Horse Fly” [which is the first time that I have heard of this project] will be established to provide military airlift for investigators to and from the nearest Air Force installation to point of UFO sighting. Flyaway kits of equipment will be issued by and specific flight arrangements will be made by the Aerial Phenomena Group.

It is estimated that each investigator can plan on about 5 TDY trips of 3 days duration per year.

FTD Building at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Photo courtesy of USAF.

The officer who signed the document was William E. Boyd, who was a colonel at the time and listed as the Chief of Staff at ATIC. Although what I found was a draft, there was additional discussion about this later but it apparently was implemented. While the suggestion is that the alert teams would be made up of two individuals, there was nothing in the original document to suggest that the deployment teams were restricted to the two people on alert. This sounds suspiciously like the teams that Exon spoke about when he talked to me, though he seemed to have overestimated the size. They didn’t come from Washington, D.C as he suggested, but they were not all consolidated in a single office within ATIC. They would come from a number of locations within ATIC to deploy into the field.

Given that the documents were originally classified (confidential, I believe), and given the nature of the assignment, I don’t believe that there was any reason for Exon to have denied the request for the assets needed. It would have come from inside ATIC [or later FTD], or possibly from the Pentagon, authorizing the use of military equipment to move the personnel into the field. Since it involved specific intelligence, which in this case would be a UFO sighting or landing, there would be no reason to brief Exon on the specific mission. The request would have the proper authorization, and in fact, given the nature of it, and the various authorizations approved, there would be no reason for Exon to handle this personally. Someone on his staff could certainly have made the arrangements and if there were questions about the authorizations, those might have been bumped up to Exon for resolution, but I doubt that would be necessary. This suggests the reason that Exon was rather vague on the nature of the assignments. He wouldn’t be doing the work himself, one of his staff did, and Exon was probably briefed on this, as he would be on other aspects of the operations at Wright-Patterson that fell under his area of authority. At the time, this would not have been a big deal, but the routine movement of assets to a location where their expertise would be of value.

This means, I suppose, that we shouldn’t draw any specific conclusions about the nature of these teams, simply because we now know about their formation, their purpose, and their deployments. They were sent to investigate UFO sightings that would require the expertise that these officers and NCOs brought to the table based on their 20 hours of classroom work so that they knew, at least in a rudimentary sense, what they were doing.

What I don’t know at this point is where their reports would have been sent. Probably to the Aerial Phenomena Group, which would have been housed at ATIC and then FTD when the name change came about. All I really know is that the teams were formed and were apparently deployed on a number of investigations. While all this is interesting, it seems to lessen the importance of the information supplied by Exon, but it does give another avenue of investigation. It will be interesting to see if I can find the results of those investigations that Exon mentioned.

Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit - Part Two

There is another alleged MJ-12 document that suffers from many of the same problems as the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary and this is the Majestic Twelve Project, Annual Report which is believed to have been created during the summer of 1952. This is another of the documents provided by Timothy Cooper through his source of Thomas Cantwheel, that unidentified man who claimed to have been on the inside of UFO crashes investigations and with the Majestic Twelve or some such.

These are the conclusions from a larger document which rehashes some of the information from other documents and adds to the knowledge that we have been told is highly classified. It is clear from the document that, “…no country on this earth has the means and the security of its resources to produce such [meaning an interplanetary craft].”

It is noted that “The occupants of these planform vehicles are, in most respects, human or human-like. Autopsies, so far indicate, that these beings share the same biological needs as humans.”

One of the things that would become important in understanding the veracity of the document said, “The ATIC Interrogation Reports, numbered 1 to 93 (the last dated December, 1950), present significant information on a broad variety of subjects and areas where witnesses were obtained subsequent to the post-1947 incident. The un-published documents consolidate records of interrogation derived from the accumulated reports of interviews of selected witnesses from New Mexico and military personnel involved in removal of evidence.”

It is after Section P labeled as “Government Policy of Control and Denial,” a list of statements about all these events is found. For example, it said, “The Panel’s review of the AEC and AFSWP investigation of Site L-1 and the Air Force Site L-2, has led the Panel to conclude that the objects under study, are the result of a high altitude ejection of a [sic] escape cylinder from a fatal mid-air collision of two unidentified circular planform aircraft of interplanetary nature.”

As had been seen in the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary, there are the coordinates for L-2 [which is why the two documents can be tied together] and they are written in the same weird format, meaning “Lat. 33-40-31, Long. 106-28-29.… this site yielded the most material for analysis.”

We learn that Site L-2 is associated with Site L-1, again for which no coordinates are provided, which also seems strange. The descriptions of both sites seem to match to some degree and that “impact and the debris pattern… and debris pattern suggests that the craft hit the ground at a sharp angle and continued to remain airborne until coming to rest at Site L-2.”

Then comes a statement that turns part of this upside down. According to the document “The second craft that impacted at Site L-3, provided very little evidence that it too was similar in design, so the impact was vertical in nature and at very high speed. It is believed that the debris discovered on 2 July 1947, by a local rancher was the result of a mid-air collision with an X-plane from HAFB [Holloman Air Force Base]; another unidentified object; or possibly collided with both…”

According to the document, “There were five recovered bodies, two of which were found in a severely damaged escape cylinder, and the remaining three were found some distance away from the cylinder. All five appeared to have suffered from sudden decompression and heat suffication [sic] (recovery and autopsies of the occupants are covered in detail in a separate study GRAY SUIT within Projects 612 and 621…”

Later, it is noted that tissue samples from the contamination of four technicians involved in the recovery were being held at Fort Detrick, MD.

And to make matters worse, there is the note, “Detection of a high altitude explosion was recorded by a Project MOGUL constant level balloon on 4 July 1947.”

At another point it said, “On 6 December 1950, MAJCOM-4 alerts MAJCOM-1 of a breach in DEW Greenland of a UFO on a south-westerly course. HQ IPU alerted and dispatched a scientific team to El Indio-Guerrero on the Texas-Mexico border. MAJCOM-4 orders a recovery team from Project Stork and MOON DUST to crash site…”

But here’s the problem with those things mentioned above. They are out of place. They shouldn’t be in this document because they didn’t exist at the time it was supposedly written. Or other, better information has superseded it. Newer information has shown where the older data are wrong. For example, the document states that “…ATIC Interrogation Reports, numbered 1 to 93 (the last dated December, 1950), present significant information on a broad variety of subjects…” But, according to Brad Sparks, ATIC wasn’t formed until May 1951 and therefore could not issue a series of reports before its existence.

Although there is the discussion about some sort of mid-air collision, the best evidence today is that there was a single craft that scattered its debris over three sites, all of them between Corona, New Mexico and Roswell. There is no evidence of a crash near the Trinity Site, other than in the MJ-12 documents. While an argument can be made that the information we have today does not completely eliminate the collision scenario, it can also be argued that it is out of date information that was the current thinking by some in the mid-1990s. That dates the creation of the document to that time.

Then, unlike the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary, this document adds a third site. This might be an attempt to account for the later information coming from UFO researchers in the 1990s. Realizing that something else had come down between the Brazel ranch debris field and Roswell, the forger added this new detail to conform to the new and better information. As an aside, this information should have appeared in the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary, since it would have been available in July 1947. This all, of course, is indicative of a hoax rather than the truth.

Worse still, is the suggestion that Mack Brazel had found the debris field on July 2. It has been claimed by some that the crash took place either late on July 2 or early on July 3. Brazel found the debris on July 3 or 4, according to some of the scenarios, but none of them include finding debris as early as July 2.

The idea of a collision between an experimental aircraft out of Holloman is not borne out by research. Air Force investigation showed that no military aircraft, either in the regular inventory or in the experimental stages disappeared in early July 1947. Those on the inside of these organizations, with the clearances necessary, would know this. They might speculate about a collision with an unknown object but they would know that it was not an aircraft of any type.

We move into trivia again. Holloman Air Force Base was, in fact, the Alamogordo Army Air Field in 1947, but I suppose you could argue that someone writing about this in 1952 would use the current name of the air field rather than the older name.

Almost the same could be said about the tissue samples were sent to Fort Detrick. The problem here is that Fort Detrick was Camp Detrick in 1952. The new designation would not be made until some four years after the document was allegedly written. Yes, you could say that it is a minor mistake that might have been made by someone who was not fully aware of how the Army designated their installations. Even someone inside the Army might not understand this. The question to be asked is how many of these sorts of errors are allowed before it becomes clear that the document was not written by an insider?

Part of that answer is found in the next statement about a MOGUL balloon detecting the collision or explosion on a July 4. First, there was no July 4 MOGUL flight and there is no indication that any sort of explosion detected by MOGUL. This is not to mention that it contradicts the other information suggesting that Brazel found the debris on July 2. If the alleged detonation was detected by the July 4 flight, then how is it linked to an event that happened two days before it was launched?

But it is the next paragraph that proves the document a hoax. It begins with a date of December 6, 1950, and claims that the UFO breeched the DEW in Greenland. The problem is that the DEW line didn’t exist in 1950 and according to Brad Sparks the name wasn’t even “coined until the MIT Project Lincoln Summer Study Group report of September 1952. The DEW line was not started until 1954.”

Even worse, according to the document, “HQ IPU alerted and dispatched a scientific team to El Indio-Guerrero on the Texas-Mexico border.” This is based on the testimony of Robert Willingham, who claimed that as a high-ranking Air Force officer and fighter pilot, he had seen the crash. The trouble is that Willingham was neither an officer nor a fighter pilot and his story has been discredited. It would seem that a tale, invented in the 1960s by Willingham and that has undergone several revisions since then, would not appear in an authentic document created more than a decade before Willingham made his first claim.

Finally, we know that Project Stork was the analysis done by Battelle and had nothing to do with crash retrievals. Although it began early enough to be mentioned in this document, it is clear that the author didn’t know what Project Stork was.

Attached to this is the mention of the MOON DUST team but this is a real problem. According to documents that I located in the Project Blue Book files and a letter dated December 12, 1957, MOON DUST began in the fall of 1957. In other words, it would not exist for five years and there is no way for it to deploy a team in 1950.

To summarize (which is to say, let’s beat this dead horse), this document is filled with internal contradictions, it is filled with inaccurate information, and it contains information that would be correct if the programs, units and projects actually existed in 1952. While it might be argued that this is a draft (which would have been destroyed when the final draft was completed) so that you might expect the typos, misnamed military organizations, and some inaccurate information, all of which would be corrected in the final draft, there is no way to explain the predictions for the future.  There is no way for the author to know the DEW line would be created two years in the future, would know that it would be called the DEW line before the name was coined, and no way to know that MOON DUST would be created some five years later. These, to me, are the fatal flaws.

For those interested, there are more examples of this in the document. I just didn’t bother to enumerate all of them. And yes, I know that the comment will be made that the way to discredit a leak of classified information is to pump false information into it so no one knows what is accurate, what is false, and the whole thing is rejected. But that isn’t the point here. These documents just appeared in Timothy Cooper’s mail box and the trail basically ends there.

Without a provenance, without an eyewitness, without anything to allow us to validate the documents, there is but one sane course. Ignore them. Reject them. Move our research efforts into another arena. Unfortunately, the facts about this document are not enough to remove it from the case. Instead it is considered highly reliable by some in the UFO community.

There is one other thing to be said. During all my investigations into the MJ-12 documents, regardless of source, Stan Friedman, Dr. Robert Wood and Ryan Wood, have answered most of my email questions. All are aware of my personal belief in MJ-12 but they do respond and I appreciate that. It would be simple for them to ignore my questions but they don’t. I thank them for putting up with my questions.

The Flatwoods Monster

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.

The Kelly-Hopkinville UFO Occupant Sighting

The Project Blue Book files contain very few cases in which alien creatures were reported. The most famous example is the Lonnie Zamora sighting from Socorro, New Mexico in 1964, which, in a twist for the Air Force was labeled as "Unidentified." For this discussion, we’ll let that go and look at another of the Blue Book cases, although, according to a letter in the files, "the incident has never been officially reported to the Air Force, [and] it has not taken official cognizance of the matter."

What that letter, dated 29 Aug 1957 referred to was a landing and an attack by aliens near the small town of Hopkinsville, Kentucky a few days earlier. A group of people there were confronted by very strange, alien creatures (Illustration based on witness statements seen here). The Air Force would create an "information" only file about the case and ask a couple of officers to "look into it." Two years later, as questions began to be asked, the Air Force would initiate a short investigation but apparently only so they would be able to answer questions about an investigation, rather than actually attempt to learn anything about the sighting.

The story officially began early on the evening of August 21, 1955, when Billy Ray Taylor, a young friend of Elmer "Lucky" Sutton, had gone to the well behind the farmhouse, and came running back telling all that he had seen a flying saucer. The object, described as bright with an exhaust that contained all the colors of the rainbow, passed above the house. It continued over of the fields, finally came to a hover, and then descended, disappearing into a gully.

No one in the Sutton house, including Glennie Lanford, Lucky Sutton, Vera Sutton, John Charley (J.C) Sutton, Alene Sutton, three Sutton children, June Taylor and O.P. Baker, believed the story of the flying saucer. None of them considered walking out to the gully to see if something might be down there. The whole idea was preposterous.

Not long after Taylor told his tale, the dog began to bark. Taylor and Lucky Sutton went to investigate that, but the dog ran under the house, not to reappear that night.

Out in the fields, away from the house, was a strange, hovering glow. As it approached, they could see a "small man" inside it. He was about three and a half feet tall, with a large head that looked to be round, and long, thin arms that extended almost to the ground (Seen here). The creature's hands were large and out of proportion with the body, and were shaped more like a bird's talons than a human hand. The two eyes were large and seemed to glow with a yellow fire.

As the creature continued to move toward the house, the two men retreated, found a rifle and a shotgun inside, and then waited. When the creature was within twenty feet of the back door, both men fired at it. The creature flipped back, regained its feet and fled into the darkness.

The two men watched for a few minutes, searching for the creature and then walked into the living room where the others waited. The creature, or one just like it, appeared in front of one of the windows and the men shot at it, hitting it. This one also did a back flip and disappeared.

Now the men decided it was time to go out to learn if they had injured or killed the creature, or animal, or whatever it was. Taylor was the first out, but stopped on the porch under a small overhang. A claw-like hand reached down and touched his hair. Alene Taylor grabbed him to pull him back into the house. Lucky, pushed past him, turned and fired up, at the creature on the roof. It was knocked from its perch.

Someone, probably Taylor, shouted, "There's one up in the tree."

Both Taylor and Lucky shot at it, knocking if from the limb. But it didn't fall to the ground. Instead, it seemed to float. They shot again, and it ran off, into the weeds.

At the same moment, another of the creatures appeared around the corner of the house. It might have been the one that had been on the roof or one of those seen in the backyard. Lucky whirled and fired. The buckshot sounded as if it hit something metallic like an empty bucket. Just as had the others, the little creature flipped over, scrambled to its feet and fled, moving rapidly into the darkness.

Having failed to stop the creatures with either the shotguns or the .22 caliber rifle, Lucky decided to leave them alone. Someone noticed that the creatures only approached from darkened areas. It seemed that they were repelled by the light.

At some point they heard noises on the roof and went out the back door to investigate. One of the creatures was back on the roof. They shot at it, knocked it off the roof, but it floated to a fence some forty feet away rather than falling to the ground. Hit by another shot, it fell from the fence and ran away, seeming to use its arms to aid its locomotion.

Some of the others in the house were still unconvinced that there were real creatures outside, believing instead, that the boys were playing some sort of a prank on them. With the lights in the house turned out, they had taken up a position close to one of the windows. Taylor told Lankford to wait and she would see for herself.

After twenty minutes or so, one of the creatures approached the front of the house. According to Lankford, it looked like a five gallon gasoline can with a head on top of two thin, spindly legs. It shimmered as if made of bright metal.

Lankford, who had been crouching quietly near the window for a long time, tried to stand, but fell with a thud. She shrieked in surprise and the creature jumped to the rear. Taylor fired at it through the screen door.

About three hours after the first creature had been seen, about 11:00 that night, they decided it was time to get out. Everybody ran to the cars. One of the kids was screaming and had to be carried. They all raced to the Hopkinsville police station for help.

At the police station, there was no doubt that the people have been frightened by something. Police officers, and the chief, interviewed after the events, made it clear they believed the people had been scared by something. That doesn't mean they were "attacked" by strange little metallic men, but does mean they were relating what they believed to be the truth to the assembled police officials.

Within minutes, the police were on their way back to the house, with some of the Sutton men in the cars. The police also called the Madisonville headquarters of the Kentucky State Police. A call was even made to the chief, Russell Greenwell at home. He was told that a spaceship had landed at Kelly. Greenwell then told the desk sergeant that it had better not be a joke.

There were now Kentucky State Police, local police, the Chief, and a sheriff's deputy either heading out to the Sutton house, or already there. One of the state troopers, who was only a few miles from Hopkinsville, on the road to Kelly, said that he saw what he called several meteors flash over his car. They moved with a sound like artillery, and he looked up in time to see two of them. They were traveling in a slightly descending arc, heading toward the Sutton house.

The yard around the Sutton house was suddenly filled with cars, and more importantly light. The men tried to point out where the various events had taken place. The chief searched for signs that anyone or everyone had been drinking but found nothing to indicate that anyone had even a beer. Glennie Lankford later said that she didn't allow alcohol in the house.

Once the police arrived, the situation changed radically. Although the atmosphere was tension charged, and some of the police were nervous, they began to search for signs of the invasion from outer space. There were apparent bullet and shotgun blast holes in the screens over the windows, and there was evidence that weapons had been fired, but there were no traces of the alien creatures. The hard packed ground did not take footprints.

The search of the yard and fields around the house revealed little, except a luminous patch where one of the creatures had fallen earlier and was only visible from one angle. The chief said that he saw it himself and there was definitely some kind of stain on the grass. There is no evidence that anyone took samples for analysis later.

But with no real evidence to be found, with no alien creatures running around, and with no spacecraft hidden in the gully, the police began to return to their regular, mundane duties. By two in the morning, only the Suttons were left at the house.

A half an hour or so after the last of the police left, and with the lights in the house down, Glennie Lankford saw one of the creatures looking in the window. She alerted her son, Lucky, who wanted to shoot at it, but she told him not to. She didn't want a repeat of the situation earlier in the night. Besides, the creatures had done nothing to harm anyone during the first episode.

But Lucky didn't listen to her. He shot at the creature but the shot was no more effective than those fired earlier in the night. Other shots were fired with no apparent affect. The little creatures bounced up each time they were hit and then ran away.

The little beings kept reappearing throughout the night, the last sighting occurring just a half an hour before sunrise. That was the last time that any of the beings were seen by any of the Suttons or their friends.

Although it seems that military personnel, from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, did visit the Sutton house, and interviews with the witnesses were conducted in 1955, an investigation by the Air Force didn't take place until two years later. According to Project Blue Book files, apparently, in August, 1957, prior to the publication of a magazine article that would review the case, someone in the Air Force decided they should "investigate."

In a letter from the ATIC at Wright-Patterson, to the commander of Campbell Air Force Base, Wallace W. Elwood wrote, "1. This Center requests any factual data, together with pertinent comments regarding an unusual incident reported to have taken place six miles north of Hopkinsville, Kentucky on subject date [21 August 1955]. Briefly, the incident involved an all night attack on a family named Sutton by goblin-like creatures reported to have emerged from a so-called 'flying saucer.'"

Later in the letter, Elwood wrote, "3. Lacking factual, confirming data, no credence can be given this almost fantastic report. As the incident has never been officially reported to the Air Force, it has not taken official cognizance of the matter." Here, once again is the Air Force attitude that if the case has not been reported to them, then it simply doesn’t exist.

The matter was apparently assigned to First Lieutenant Charles N. Kirk, an Air Force officer at Campbell Air Force Base. He apparently spent about six weeks investigating the case before sending the material on to ATIC on October 1, 1957. He researched the story using the Hopkinsville newspaper from August 22, 1955 and September 11, 1955. He also had a letter from Captain Robert J. Hertell, a statement from Glennie Lankford, one of the witnesses, and a statement given to Kirk by Major John E. Albert about his involvement in the case, and a copy of an article written by Glennie Lankford.

Albert's statement provides some interesting information. Remember, the Air Force was claiming that the case had not been officially reported and therefore the Air Force had not investigated. It seems that here we get lost in the semantics of the situation and the question that begs to asked is, "What the hell does all that mean?"

It sounds like a police officer who, seeing a robbery in progress, then ignores it because it hadn't been reported to the station and he wasn't dispatched by headquarters. A police officer can't ignore the crime and it seems reasonable to assume that the Air Force shouldn't have ignored the story. The sighting was outlined in the media including the radio broadcasts, and newspapers from various locations around the country were reporting what had happened. Although the Air Force officers at Blue Book or ATIC must have known that the sighting had been made, they chose to ignore it. If the sighting wasn't reported through official channels, directly to them, then it simply didn't exist. Since no one reported this case through official channels, the sighting could be ignored.

Or was it? Lieutenant Kirk, in his report in 1957, sent a copy of the statement made by Major John E. Albert on September 26, 1957, to ATIC. The very first paragraph seems to suggest that notification was made to Campbell Air Force Base which should have, according to regulations in effect at that time (1955), reported it in official channels, to ATIC and therefore Blue Book. The regulation is quite clear on the point and it doesn't matter if everyone in the military believed the sighting to be a hoax, or if they thought the sighting too outrageous, it should have been investigated because the regulations required it.

That investigation would not have been conducted by ATIC and Project Blue Book but by the 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron. AFR 200-2 tells us exactly what should have happened to the report. It went on to the 4602d and apparently disappeared into some bureaucratic limbo there.

In the statement found by Kirk, Albert said, "On about August 22, 1955, about 8 A.M., I heard a news broadcast concerning an incident at Kelly Station, approximately six miles North of Hopkinsville. At the time I heard this news broadcast, I was at Gracey, Kentucky, on my way to Campbell Air Force Base, where I am assigned for reserve training. I called the Air Base and asked them if they had heard anything about an alleged flying saucer report. They stated that they had not and it was suggested that as long as I was close to the area, that I should determine if there was anything to this report. I immediately drove to the scene at Kelly [for some reason the word was blacked out, but it seems reasonable to assume the word is Kelly] Station and located the home belonging to a Mrs. Glennie Lankford [again the name is blacked out], who is the one who first reported the incident. (A copy of Mrs. Lankford's statement is attached to this report)."

Albert's statement continued:

Deputy Sheriff Batts was at the scene where this supposedly flying saucer had landed and he could not show any evidence that any object had landed in the vicinity. There was nothing to show that there was anything to prove this incident.

Mrs. Lankford was an impoverished widow woman who had grown up in this small community just outside of Hopkinsville, with very little education. She belonged to the Holly Roller Church and the night and evening of this occurrence, had gone to a religious meeting and she indicated that the members of the congregation and her two sons and their wives and some friends of her sons', were also at this religious meeting and were worked up into a frenzy, becoming emotionally unbalanced and that after the religious meeting, they had discussed this article which she had heard about over the radio and had sent for them from the Kingdom Publishers, Fort Worth 1, Texas and they had sent her this article with a picture which appeared to be a little man when it actually was a monkey, painted silver. This article had to be returned to Mrs. Lankford as she stated it was her property. However, a copy of the writing is attack to this statement and if it is necessary, a photograph can be obtained from the above mentioned publishers.

There are a number of problems with the first couple of paragraphs of Albert's statement, but those are trivial. As an example, it wasn't Glennie Lankford who first reported the incident, but the whole family who had traveled into town to alert the police

It is the third paragraph, however, that is filled with things that bear no resemblance to reality. Lankford was not a member of the Holly Rollers, but was, in fact a member of the Trinity Pentecostal. Neither she, nor any of the family had been to any religious services the night of the "attack." This unsubstantiated allegation was made in a recent book, suggesting, once again, that the religious tone of the family had somehow contributed to the attack on their house. Or rather, that they were "hysterical" people who would see things that simply were not there.

And, Lankford couldn't have heard about any "article" from the newspapers or magazines as it was read on the radio because there was no radio in the farm house. And there was no evidence that Lankford ever sent anywhere for any kind of article about flying saucers and little creatures, those painted silver or any other color. In other words, Albert had written the case off as a hoax, almost before he began his "investigation" because of his false impressions. Apparently he was only interested in facts that would allow him to debunk the case and not learning what had actually happened.

I have to say, at this point, I would have been quite skeptical of this tale. It is outrageous and beyond belief, but then, things we do today would have been thought of as outrageous and beyond belief fifty years ago. So, we approach with a skeptical attitude, but we listen to what the witnesses have to say and look for ways to corroborate their statements.

Further evidence of the investigators attitude is provided in the next paragraph of his statement. "It is my opinion that the report Mrs. Lankford or her son, Elmer Sutton [name deleted but it is reasonable to assume it was Elmer Sutton], was caused by one of two reasons. Either they actually did see what they thought was a little man and at the time, there was a circus in the area and a monkey might have escaped, giving the appearance of a small man. Two, being emotionally upset, and discussing the article and showing pictures of this little monkey, that appeared like a man, their imaginations ran away with them and they really did believe what they saw, which they thought was a little man."

It is interesting to note that Albert is not suggesting that Lankford, the Suttons, and the Taylors (other members of the family present that night) were engaged in inventing a hoax. Instead, with absolutely no evidence, Albert invented the tale of an escaped monkey that fooled the people. That does not explain how the monkey was able to survive the shots fired at it, especially if it was as close to the house as the witnesses suggested. In other words, with shotguns and rifles being fired, someone should have hit it and there should have been broken bits of monkey all over the farm land. And, remember, the various witnesses talked of a number of little men, not a single individual.

But Albert wasn't through with the little monkey theory. "The home that Mrs. Lankford lived in was in a very run down condition and there were about eight people sleeping in two rooms. The window that was pointed out to be the one that she saw the small silver shining object about two and a half feet tall, that had its hands on the screen looking in, was a very low window and a small monkey could put his hands on the top of it while standing on the ground."

The final sentence said, "It is felt that the report cannot be substantiated as far as any actual object appearing in the vicinity at that time." It was then signed by Kirk.

What is interesting is that Albert, and then Kirk, were willing to ignore the report of the object because there was nothing to substantiate it, other than the witness testimony that there had been an object. Both Albert and Kirk were willing to buy the monkey theory, though there was nothing to substantiate it either. They needed a little man, of at the very least, a little humanoid creature for the family to see and they created one because a "monkey might have escaped."

Glennie Lankford might have inspired the little monkey story with her own words. In a handwritten statement signed on August 22, 1955, said, "My name is Glennie Lankford age 50 and I live at Kelly Station, Hopkinsville Route 6, Kentucky.

She continued:

On Sunday night Aug 21, 55 about 10:30 P.M. I was walking through the hallway which is located in the middle of my house and I looked our the back door (south) and saw a bright silver object about two and a half feet tall appearing round. I became excited and did not look at it long enough to see if it had any eyes or move. I was about 15 or 20 feet from it. I fell backward, and then was carried into the bedroom.

My two sons, Elmer Sutton aged 25 and his wife Vera age 29, J.C. Sutton age 21 and his wife Aline age 27 and their friends Billy Taylor age 21 and his wife June, 18 were all in the house and saw this little man that looked like a monkey.

So the Air Force, which, of course, didn’t investigate sightings of creatures at the time, seized on her description and turned it into a possible solution, suggesting, with no justification that the Suttons had been attacked by a horde of monkeys which were immune to shotguns. They overlooked the evidence of the case, or ignored the testimony, dispatched someone to look into it unofficially at the time, and then denied that they had ever investigated.

From my point of view, which is sympathetic to extraterrestrial visitation, this case is extremely weird. Like those Air Force officers, I would be inclined to ignore it, just as most of us ignore the tales of the contactees. But then again, I would want to follow up on this case, talking to the witnesses and looking for evidence, unless there was something else going on...

And there might have been. Back in 1955 there were only a few nuclear stockpiles in the world and one of them was at Campbell Air Force Base, not all that far from Hopkinsville. Could it have been that some high-ranking Air Force general, who knew what was stored so close to this alien invasion site, wanted the story buried, not because of the alleged little creatures but because he didn’t want a lot of reporters in the area asking a lot of questions that might compromise an atom secret.

No, the storage of the weapons there has little to do with the story but the story focuses attention on the area. The Air Force, not one at the time to favorably entertain any UFO stories and especially those with creatures, didn’t bury the case because of the UFO connection, but because of the secret facility close by.

This is one case that I’m quite ambivalent about. It seems quite improbable, based on what we know, but then, it seems improbably that the whole family would get caught up in this story without some sort of precipitating event. I would think there is a core of truth in the tale, but I don’t know what it might be...

Maybe radioactive monkeys that had been exposed to the atomic weapons after they escaped from that mythical circus that was in town... Hey, it would make a good movie and we could have a lot of fun with it. But that doesn’t answer the question about what happened that night. That’s just something we might never know.

I Understand Kent Jeffrey

Back in the mid-1990s, airline pilot Kent Jeffrey (in th red shirt with Tom Carey center, and Colonel Jeffrey on right) developed an interest in the Roswell case. He believed, at that time, that something alien had fallen there and that the cover up of it should be broken. He believed that we all had the right to know what happened and he was willing to put up some of his own money and his own time in an attempt to learn the truth.

He began the Roswell Initiative which was a worldwide petition to the US government to release all its Roswell information and all its UFO files. He put it online and he gave copies to friends in other countries to demonstrate the worldwide interest in learning the truth. He met with the witnesses and offered them the services of a legal team if they got into trouble for telling what they knew. He traveled to Roswell to meet them.

About the time that we arrived at the 50th anniversary of the crash, in July 1997, Kent had changed his mind. He believed that the Roswell crash, if there was anything at all, was caused by something mundane. He no longer thought of it as extraterrestrial and he appeared on several radio and television shows explaining why he had changed his mind. I debated him in a couple of those forums and responded, at length, to his article about what he thought of as the "real" truth that appeared in the MUFON UFO Journal.

He did complete his Initiative and delivered some twenty or thirty thousand petitions to Washington, but included a letter that watered down the whole thing. It sort of undermined the power of the petitions by saying that he now believed Roswell was explained, but there were still UFO truths to be learned.

I won’t go into all of that here. In wrote about it in the Roswell Encyclopedia, including Kent’s article. He granted permission to use it and though I edited it slightly because of space limitations, I didn’t change it. For those who wish to read this, they can do so in that book.

I will note, however, that one of Kent’s reasons for changing his mind was because he had attended some of the 509th Bomb Group reunions, talking with officers who served in Roswell in 1947 and who said they had heard nothing about the UFO crash. They said that had it happened, they would have known.

I don’t believe that is right, given the nature of security regulations and how these things work. I believe that if the crash was highly classified, many of these officers might have heard rumors, but they wouldn’t have been involved in the retrieval and now, fifty and sixty years later can provide us with nothing more than their opinion that nothing happened. Kent thought this persuasive. I do not.

It was Frank Kaufmann who might have killed it all for Kent, though I don’t know this for certain. I know that Kent, and his father, a World War II triple ace, meaning he shot down, at least, fifteen enemy aircraft, met with Frank on a couple of occasions in Roswell. Frank told them the same story that he had told me and others. He talked of his hobnobbing with generals, and mentioned General Robert Thomas who had sneaked into Roswell in the guise of a warrant officer... or, at least that was what Frank said.

But Kent’s father was a retired, high-ranking Air Force officer and had friends who could check all this out. He could find no evidence of this General Thomas and this, I believe made Kent suspicious.

Given all this, I believe Kent decided that there couldn’t have been a crash because he would have been able to get something from these officers at the reunions. He would have found some trace of this General Thomas even if the general would corroborate any of the story. And his failure to find independent corroboration of the crash beyond those in Roswell talking about it suggested to him that there had been no crash.

I think Kent was further disillusioned by some of the "revelations" about Major Jesse Marcel. Marcel’s entire military record was leaked into the public arena in violation of the 1974 Privacy Act. You can read the story of Marcel in the Archive in the April 2007 list on this blog.

And he had talked with officers who had been at Wright Field or who had been part of the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) and who told him that nothing happened. Kent believed this to be the truth, though had there been a crash and had they been ordered not to talk about it, they very possibly would have said nothing happened. The lies told would be lies to protect national security and would therefore be part of the job.

I talked to a general who had been the chief of ATIC, or had overseen a larger part of the intelligence operation at Wright-Patterson AFB and when I asked him some questions he said, not kindly, "I don’t know who you are and I don’t know what is still classified and what is no longer classified and I can’t talk to you."

For a few moments more I tried to ask questions but it was clear that he wasn’t going to tell me anything. Does this prove a cover up in Roswell? No, it proves that there are military secrets and some are better at keeping them than others.

Kent didn’t get a chance to talk to Edwin Easley or Chester Barton, who worked for Easley and only had a couple of interesting things to say about the crash. He didn’t talk to Marcel but he was concerned about the contradictions in the Marcel’s military record and what Marcel had told Bob Pratt. He was concerned with the denials of men who claimed if something had happened, they would have known it, never understanding that sometimes military secrecy trumps friendship and those who thought they would have known were not inside the loop and they didn’t know.

I think Kent’s attempts to validate the information failed him and he lost some of his confidence in the Roswell case. I think that learning that Kaufmann was not who he claimed to be before we knew it for a fact, shook him. I think that learning that Glenn Dennis’s nurse didn’t exist under the name Dennis gave us, eliminated one of the better testimonies that led to the extraterrestrial. At the end of the day, there just wasn’t sufficient evidence for Kent to conclude that Roswell was alien. The Air Force explanation, the failure of so many of the eyewitnesses, and the damage done by those inventing their tales was enough for Kent. He concluded that Roswell was nothing alien.

I understand this because I too think some of the same things at times. Rumors should have circulated at Roswell among the pilots and surely some of them would have heard enough to suggest the crash was real. But I also know, having served with various military units that some secrets simply do not leak and sometimes those who think they have an inside track do not.

And while I might sometimes have my doubts about all Marcel said, when we look at his record we see a fine officer. Some of the things he told Bob Pratt are not borne out in the record, but then, it is possible that Pratt got some of it wrong. I do know the words are important and that Marcel never claimed his was a pilot as some have reported but said only that he had flown as one, and that is an important difference.

And I have watched the collapse of some testimony. Gerald Anderson was clearly making it up. It wasn’t quite as clear with Frank Kaufmann, but he too, was making it up. Glenn Dennis seemed to have a solid tale, but there were little things that went wrong with it. We learned the truth about him when he began to blame others for misunderstanding about the nurse’s name. The destruction there was more subtle, but when he began to say he had made up the nurse’s name, it reset everything to zero. Not quite as evident as Frank’s faked documents but enough to suggest Dennis was no more honest about this than Kaufmann.

So Kent looked at all this and decided that it was evidence that nothing alien happened. It could be explained as the Air Force said it could. Kent just couldn’t find sufficient evidence otherwise.

When I looked at this cesspool of useless evidence, I sometimes thought the same things. But then, I did talk to Edwin Easley and Chester Barton and a dozen others. I know what Easley told me but circumstances prevented a recording of the critical statement. For Kent that was a failure, but I heard what the man said. I can’t prove it for others, but I do know what was said.

And, I haven’t even touched on what Brigadier General Arthur Exon (seen here) told me. Yes, the debunkers and the Air Force have had little to say about him. So there are those who talk of something alien and who are who they claimed to be and who just might know something about it.

All that was too late for Kent. And if I hadn’t had the chance to talk to some of these people, then I might just agree with him. But I did talk to them, and I have talked to others, so I’m not as jaded as he has become. I can understand how it happened and the difference between the two of us is that I talked to some of the people he didn’t.