Fake News, ABC and the Bermuda Triangle

I have to wonder about ABC News. When I heard that an airplane had vanished on a flight from Puerto Rico to Miami, I knew it wouldn’t be long before someone had to mention it was another mysterious disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle. A solution for that mystery has been available for decades and some of the planes listed as having vanished, in fact, did not. Wreckage has been found. I mentioned much of this a long time ago on this blog, and have, of course, promoted the book, The Bermuda Triangle Mystery – Solved by Lawrence Kusche a number of times. For those earlier posts see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-bermuda-triangle-and-abc-evening.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/06/editorial-comment.html

In this latest tragedy, ABC was the first that I saw that mentioned the Bermuda Triangle complete with a map showing the anchors of the triangle at Puerto Rico, Bermuda and Miami. They also mentioned the number of crashes of aircraft and sinking of ships in the area, never mentioning that the numbers are not significantly higher than those for other heavily traveled sea lanes.

From the information readily available, it seems that the aircraft crashed, though I have nothing to suggest why that happened. Wreckage identified as coming from the lost aircraft has been recovered by the Coast Guard. That tells me that the aircraft crashed, not that it disappeared.

A 440th Tactical Airlift Wing C-119.

Once again, I will note that while I was assigned to the 928^th Tactical Airlift Group, which was a unit subordinate to the 440^th Airlift Wing, I had an opportunity to talk with the pilots, crew, and command post staff about the loss of one of their aircraft in the Bermuda Triangle. They had wreckage from the aircraft that was identified with the unit numbers on it, not to mention the serial numbers of some of the parts recovered. The aircraft crashed; though it is still listed in many of the books about the Bermuda Triangle as having disappeared.

I suggest that the news media try to be a little more topical and get off their lazy butts and use Google. There they could learn that the Bermuda Triangle is a manufactured mystery that was the result of incomplete facts, flawed research and an abundance of imagination. Rather than fan the flames of mystery, try to learn the truth so that the story doesn’t become one more sensational chapter in a tale that is untrue. 

Cosmic Whistleblowers - Simon Sharman

The other day I had the opportunity to watch a documentary by Simon Sharman called Cosmic Whistleblowers. You can see a preview, or rather a short trailer about the film, here.

http://cosmicwhistleblowers.com/

This is sort of his pursuit of the “Roswell Slides” tale, his discussions with various individuals including some of those who were directly involved in the Roswell crash in some fashion, and with Don Schmitt and Tom Carey who have been investigating it for years. It ends just after the big fiasco in Mexico City and what

Tom Carey. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle

he learned about this after the fact, including information from the Roswell Slides Research Group and how they deburred the placard. It is an interesting story if for no other reason that you get to see the players in this little drama before Mexico City, during that presentation, and then the aftereffects of learning the truth.

Their website provides a short synopsis for the film. They describe it like this (and please ignore the all caps, but this is take directly from their site):

WHEN YOU LOOK AT ALL THE CONSPIRACY THEORIES THAT EVER WAS, THERE'S ONE THAT'S BIGGER THAN ALL OF THEM - THE ROSWELL INCIDENT.

THE LAST LIVING WITNESSES WHO SAW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN ROSWELL IN 1947 ARE FEW IN NUMBER AND ALL TOO SOON THEY'LL BE GONE FOREVER. WHEN THAT DAY COMES ANY CHANCE AT GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF THE MYSTERY WILL BE LOST AND THE ROSWELL UFO CASE WILL BECOME NOTHING MORE THAN A MYTH.

COSMIC WHISTLEBLOWERS IS ONE MAN'S QUEST FOR TRUTH ON A JOURNEY THAT TAKES HIM AROUND THE GLOBE IN SEARCH OF ANSWERS. YEARS IN THE MAKING, THE INVESTIGATION TAKES US TO THE HEART OF WHAT RETIRED THE NUCLEAR PHYSICIST STANTON FRIEDMAN ONCE DESCRIBED AS THE 'COSMIC WATERGATE'.

IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW THE FULL STORY BEHIND THE ROSWELL INCIDENT, YOU'D BETTER THINK AGAIN.

What caught my attention and this segment was obviously recorded before everything came crashing down (pun intended), was a statement by Tom Carey. He was explaining who was conducting which parts of the investigation and why they were allegedly being careful in their research, something that we all can understand. He said:

Don Schmitt and I want to get our own analysis. We’re not going to sign to something that blows up in our face. In this business that’s terminal.

It really does no good to go through all this again and you can read my analysis, reports, conclusions and opinions on all this by looking back on the blog, especially starting in February 2015 as more information was being revealed by those conducting their investigations. It is clear that bits and pieces of the story were being leaked by all sorts of people for their own purposes and to build suspense until the big reveal in Mexico City.

Tom said that a mistake of the proportions that had been made would be “terminal” but anyone who has been around the UFO field for a while knows that simply isn’t true. The only real mistake is to reveal the truth of a case that suggests something other than alien visitation. As long as you embrace all that suggests there is alien visitation, it really doesn’t matter all that much what mistakes you have made in the past.

The point is that they didn’t actually do their “due diligence” on the case, they didn’t get their own analysis and seemed to reject anything that suggested the slide showed anything other than an alien creature. We all seem to know this and most of us just ignore it. After all, anyone can make a mistake, even a huge one, and come back from it once enough time has passed.

Yes, I’m beating the dead horse here, but I found that one statement by Tom to be rather ironic. He wanted to be careful in his research of the slides because an error made there could be “terminal.” The error was huge, the data badly corrupted, the red flags ignored for a variety of reasons and even when the image was identified and other pictures of it found in a museum in the southwestern United States, there were, and are, arguments that it isn’t the same image. An examination of the slide, reveals the setting, and an examination of the picture taken as the child was recovered in 1898 show it to be the same as that on the slide, but people still seem to disbelieve it.

I mention all this simply because I’m not surprised by this. I have seen it time and again in the UFO field. Find the plausible (and that is the key word) explanation and no matter how solid that explanation is, it will be rejected by some… but then we know the moon landings were hoaxed, the Bermuda Triangle is dangerous and the Cardiff giant is real.

Turning the Field Over to the Youngsters

Several years ago, over at UFO Iconoclasts, now known as UFO Conjectures, Rich Reynolds thought it was time for all us geezers to get out of UFO research and turn the field over to the youngsters. His theory seemed to be that we’d gotten too set in our ways, weren’t coming up with anything new and had had seventy years to find a solution and we hadn’t done it. The young blood, not locked into any one theory, would think in new and innovative ways, progressing rapidly if we’d just get out of their way.

When I was studying for a Ph.D., one of the things we learned was to make a literature search of our topic to ensure that we weren’t merely covering old ground. The literature search would provide a springboard into new arenas and new thought so that we could build on what had gone on before rather than just duplicating research. We could advance the field, the theory, and the thought rather than just repeat the same mistakes that had been made before. We could actually contribute something new.

All well and good but in the last year, as I see more and more of what the new blood has brought to the field and the advances they have allegedly made, I suspect that Rich was wrong. The new blood and the younger researchers are doing nothing to advance the work. They are just grabbing onto the same nonsense that has distracted and derailed us. They don’t bother with any sort of literature search that today, with the Internet, is so much simpler. They just keep filling the air with the same tired rhetoric, learning nothing from the mistakes we made or advancing thought at all. It is a case of the same old same old.

You want an example?

Sure. I’ve been engaged in a discussion of the MJ-12 Manual SOM 1-01. It suffers from the same problem of all the other MJ-12 documents which is a lack of provenance, but that seems to make no difference to many. We don’t know where it came from, we don’t know what agency is responsible for it (though the logo on the front seems to suggest the War Department which disappeared in 1947 when the Department of Defense was created) and there seem to be anachronisms in it. It was suggested that wreckage from crashed and recovered UFOs be sent to Area 51/S-4. The trouble is that when the manual was allegedly written, there were no facilities at Groom Lake as it was known then to house the wreckage and no personnel available to exploit it if something did arrive.

One of those believing the manual was real, provided a link to a declassified document to prove that the term, Area 51, was in use because it appeared on maps of that part of Nevada. But that source also described exactly what was there in April 1955. It said, “On 12 April 1955 Richard Bissell and Col. Osmund Ritland... flew over Nevada with Kelly Johnson in small Beechcraft plane piloted by Lockheed's chief test pilot, Tony LeVier. They spotted what appeared to be an airstrip by a salt flat known as Groom Lake, near the northeast corner of the Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) Nevada Proving Ground. After debating about landing on the old strip, LeVier set the plane down on the lakebed, and all four walked over to examine the strip. The facility had been used during World War II as an aerial gunnery range for Army Air Corps pilots. From the air the strip appeared to be paved, but on closer inspection it turned out to have originally been fashioned from compacted earth that had turned to ankle-deep dust after more than a decade of disuse. If LeVier had attempted to land on the airstrip, the plane would probably had nosed over when the wheels sank into the loose soil, killing or injuring all of the key figures in the U-2 project.”

(see:  http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB434/docs/U2%20-%20Chapter%202.pdf)

What was the response? Well, maybe there were facilities in the area they didn’t see. Maybe there was a secret, underground AEC base. Maybe the CIA historian who wrote that section lied about it to keep the secret safe. No evidence of any of that. Just some wild speculation to reject the evidence that there was nothing there to be seen by those who had actually been there.

That same document also said, “Bissel and his colleagues all agreed that Groom Lake would make an ideal site for testing the U-2 and training its pilots. Upon returning to Washington, Bissell discovered that Groom Lake was not part of the AEC proving ground. After consulting with Dulles, Bissell and Miller asked the Atomic Energy Commission to add the Groom Lake area to its real estate holdings in Nevada. AEC Chairman Adm. Lewis Strauss readily agreed, and President Eisenhower also approved the addition of this strip of wasteland, known by its map designation as Area 51 to the Nevada Test Site.”

This would seem to be a fatal flaw in a document that has no provenance. We have a description of the area that would eliminate it as a site to send anything at that time. There was nothing there except an invisible facility. Doesn’t this one point actually make defense of the manual a very shaky proposition? Unless something else, with a proper provenance can be found, shouldn’t this guide our thinking?

Is there more?

Carlos Allende/Carl Allen

Well yes. We’ve just had another example which is the Allende Letters. I’m not going through that again but will say there is nothing left to this myth. Allende, who was born Carl Allen said that he had made it all up. Robert Goerman found Allen’s family and they said that Allen made up things like this all the time. Some of the problems discussed in the annotations in the book sent to the Navy have since been solved. Here I think of the disappearance of the Stardust, a BOAC passenger plane that disappeared allegedly in sight of the airport at Santiago, Chile. A decade and a half ago, the wreckage was found, providing us with a fatal flaw in those notations. For more details see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2006/08/disappearing-aircraft-part-1-stardust.html

More?

How about the Bermuda Triangle?

Back in the early 1970s, I believed there was something mysterious going on in the Bermuda Triangle. The list of ships and planes that had been lost in the area seemed to be overwhelming and nearly every one of them was gone without a trace. I remember being at a conference in Denver, Colorado, when Jim Lorenzen explained that it was truly mysterious because there was a case in which five Navy aircraft flying formation all disappeared. There was just no way that mechanical failure, weather, or about anything else could explain that disappearance.

440th C-119 like this one lost
in the Bermuda Triangle.

In the mid-1970s I spotted a book, The Bermuda Triangle Mystery – Solved by David Lawrence Kusche. I bought it thinking that I needed to understand what the skeptics were saying if I was going to be able to intelligently refute their arguments. But the book was filled with documentation and explanations that made perfect sense. Couple that to my talking with members of the 440^th Tactical Airlift Wing who had lost a plane in the Triangle and who told me the plane had crashed and the solution seemed confirmed. Not only that, they had bits of the wreckage to prove it… one of the mysteries solved to my satisfaction without having to read Kusche’s book. See:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-bermuda-triangle-and-c-119.html

Oh, and in the Navy records concerning the disappearance of Flight 19, we learn that five aircraft disappear when the flight leader orders it. He was hopelessly lost, flying around in circles and ignoring the advice from the rest of the squadron. Finally he said, “When the first man is down to ten gallons, we’ll all ditch together.” And that explains how five aircraft disappear at once.

I could go on, but need I? Sure there are those of us who are older that still subscribe to these things and there are those who are younger who do not. We older folks have learned ways of conducting the research that does provide us with some answers. Those younger folks are sometimes too willing to accept what they are told as the truth without asking some additional questions. I learned that lesson after believing some of those who told wonderful stories of their involvement in the Roswell UFO crash and reading Stolen Valor about all these people, men and women, lying about their military service, especially that in Vietnam. In other words, many of those telling us stories about the Roswell crash were lying about it and this included some of the most important witnesses.

Where does all this leave us? It would seem that we, of the old guard (aka old school) could provide some useful tips on conducting these investigations if those who are new school would bother to listen. This is where Rich slipped off the rails… we should be working together, those of us from years gone by providing information and guidance, and those who are relatively young providing new ways of looking at UFOs and providing new theories on what is going on. One group shouldn’t be forced out by another and all should be open to reevaluating what we sometimes think of as the proof positive. There is room for everyone if we’re all smart enough to recognize the abilities and experience of each other.

The Bermuda Triangle and the C-119 Disappearance

As most of you know, I spent some time as an Air Force intelligence officer. I was assigned to the 928^th Tactical Airlift Group which was part of the 440^th Tactical Airlift Group which was headquartered at General Billy Mitchell Field in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During that time, there was an intelligence conference held in Milwaukee (and of no importance at all, it was here, late at night I first saw ZULU). The relevance of all this somewhat personal information will become obvious in a moment.

Now, according to Bermuda Triangle lore (and to Gian Quasar) on June 5, 1965, “a C-119 vanished somewhere over the Bahamas bound for Grand Turk Island while flying the busy skyway…” He suggests that the entire radio log between the aircraft and ground stations is available but that “it does not explain the disappearance.” It does “admit peculiarities in radio reception that are remarkably identical with other planes lost in the Triangle…” He notes that the last radio message was not heard in Miami as expected but in “New York, a distance of 1,300 miles away (!).”

An officer interviewed about this said, “We know that everything was fine about thirty minutes before landing. The pilot, Major Louis Giuntoli had made a position report about eleven p.m.”

Others, such as the International UFO Bureau suggested that a UFO reported by James McDivitt was somehow tied to the disappearance of the aircraft. At the time McDivitt and Ed White were on a Gemini mission in orbit and those at the International UFO Bureau thought that the astronauts might have seen the UFO that captured the aircraft. McDivit would later point out that UFO meant unidentified flying object and nothing more, at least to him at the time.

A search was launched when the aircraft failed to arrive at its destination and radio contact could not be established. According to Triangle lore, the search was called off on June 10 when no clues were found.

But that changed on June 12, 1965 when debris, stenciled with serial numbers and the tail number of the aircraft was recovered. Although this debris was not from the outside structure of the aircraft, it was equipment that was carried in it. About a month later a wheel chock, stenciled with the tail number was found near Acklins Island, in the general area where the first wreckage was located.

So, wreckage was found, though the aircraft itself was not. Now, as a member of the 928^th TAG, I was able to talk with those at the 440^th (see how all this comes together eventually?). They gave me some additional information and then asked if I wanted to see some of the debris, which they still had there. Naturally, I said that I did and was shown a few scraps that had been recovered.

These officers suggested that the C-119 lost an engine just after that final position report had been made. There was a corresponding electrical failure at the time, which was not all that unusual, according to what they told me. The pilots would have had no lights and no radio. And this particular aircraft had a history of electrical system problems. Given all that and that it was night and that it is often difficult to distinguish the horizon at night over water especially if there was a light haze (which is to say that the weather was clear but that a light haze tended to blend the sea with the sky so that there is not a definitive line, the deck was stacked against them.

In other words, this was an aircraft accident that wouldn’t have been noticed by anyone but the friends and family had it not happened in the geographic confines of the Bermuda Triangle. But the plane didn’t disappear without a trace as has been suggested. Wreckage was found, and found along the airways where it would be expected.

For me, this is always a test case. If those writing Triangle lore were not aware of these facts, and remember, I actually talked to people who were assigned to the unit when the accident occurred and I saw some of the wreckage recovered, it suggests that those others’ research is lacking. There is an explanation here and we don’t need to venture into the paranormal to find it. Tragic though it was it really has nothing to do with the Bermuda Triangle other than as a geographic location.

Oh, and that radio message picked up in New York. Radio skip is a well-known phenomenon. Back in the olden days of analog TV, I once watched thirty or forty minutes broadcast from Miami before the atmospherics changed and I lost the signal. I was more than 1300 miles from Miami at the time. This is an irrelevant fact that proves nothing other than radio waves sometimes bounce far and wide.

The Bermuda Triangle and ABC Evening News

In the category of “What Isn’t News,” we have the ABC Evening News on Sunday night (February 9) telling us that scientists have come up with a solution for the Bermuda Triangle. Really? I thought it had been explained more than thirty-five years ago, and in fact, on this very blog several years ago I offered an explanation that I thought was reasonable.

Here’s the deal. Back in the mid-1970s, when I was much younger and believed that those writing books and magazine articles actually engaged in original research and first-hand reporting, I thought there was something mysterious about the Bermuda Triangle. One day, in the local bookstore, I saw a paperback copy of Lawrence David Kusche’s book, The Bermuda Triangle – Solved (copyright 1975). I bought one because I believed that if I was to argue successfully against the Skeptics, I should know what they had to say.

Kusche convinced me that he had solved the mystery. His book, unlike so many others, didn’t rely on what others had reported. He went to the original source material. He found the original insurance papers, the original investigations and the original newspaper articles. He named names and sources so that those of us who followed wouldn’t have to sort through piles of irrelevant material, but could see, for ourselves, exactly what was going on and why Kusche was right when so many others were wrong.

I have found that too often others writing on a topic will look at what the other writers have said, but do not search the original sources to verify the information. Case in point? The disappearance of Oliver Lerch from South Bend, Indiana. Morris K. Jessup, in his book, The Case for the UFO, told us that the facts of the Lerch disappearance were written down at the police department for anyone who cared to look.

Well, I cared to look, and the South Bend police told me that their records didn’t go back into the 1880s. There had been a fire in the 1920s that destroyed most of them. Jessup was wrong about this and I don’t know where he got his information but it was repeated in several other books.

Oh, I checked with the newspapers and searched for other documentation, but none ever surfaced to prove the case. In fact, the available documentation showed that nothing like it had ever happened in the South Bend area. The Lerch story was a hoax but it had been reported as fact by those others who apparently didn’t care to look.

And this is the situation with the Bermuda Triangle. Each mistake was copied by the next writer until it seemed that something truly mysterious was happening in the Bermuda Triangle. Kusche, on the other hand, checked the original sources and offered plausible and well researched explanations for some of the most mysterious of the disappearances. In one incredible case, the ship hadn’t disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. It had been lost in the Pacific Ocean.

And now ABC News tells us they have the solution. It is bad weather in the area. Well, of course, that played a role in many the disasters, but the real solution is all those others who didn’t bother to do any original research. It is those others who didn’t look at weather records and didn’t look at official reports and didn’t bother with the insurance papers. That was the source of the mystery and that is what supplied the solution.

I just thought it was strange that in a news broadcast that has, what, twenty-two minutes to give us the important information of the day, would waste time telling us something we’d known since the middle of the 1970s.

I wonder if they heard about the Internet? That might have told them something about the case that would have suggested that this wasn’t news.