X-Zone Broadcast Network - John Greenewald

I had the chance to talk with my friend, John Greenewald, about his book, Inside the Black Vault: The Government’s UFO Secrets Revealed. We did discuss more than just that and you can listen to the program here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17736668

John suggested that there is a cover up of UFO information and offered the evidence of it as it appears in many government documents. I had outlined a

John Greenewald. Photo
copyright by Kevin Randle

similar attitude based on a review of the administrative files that had been released as part of Project Blue Book. John suggested, as I have, that those who were creating the files, writing the reports, and doing the research believed that none of this would see the light of day. They had not anticipated the Freedom of Information Act which allows us all to see much of what was going on behind the curtains. The true attitudes and the real methodology used by those involved in UFO research can be seen. John pointed to a document from a Florida case from July 1969 where the Air Force officer in charge of the investigation had little respect for the witnesses, calling them names, and overlooking the fact that the witnesses were on active duty with the Air Force. It suggests an attitude of disbelief and outright hostility by the officer would was supposed to be gathering information. He wasn’t supposed to inject his own bias into that investigation.

We also talked about MJ-12, and I mentioned a document with a known provenance from 1952 that was code named “Majestic.” The problem is that it had nothing to do with UFOs. You can read about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/11/majestic-found.html

At that time, I was unable to update documents and illustrations to my blog. I don’t know what the problem was, but it was eventually resolved. Following are the four pages from that document.

Next time on A Different Perspective, I will be interviewing Larry Holcombe about his book, The Presidents and UFOs" A Secret History from FDR to Obama. If you have questions for Larry, post it as a comment. These are moderated so the questions won’t appear in the comment section. I’ll get to them during the interview.

John Greenewald's Thoughts on the Recent AATIP Article

(Blogger’s note: The article is reprinted with the permission of John Greenewald, he of the Black Vault fame. The following has to do with Tom DeLonge and his project that is related to disclosure. I have written about this a couple of times and you can read about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/12/tom-delong-disclosure-and-analytical.html

and here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/10/tom-delonge-and-ufos.html

And while the next link doesn’t deal specifically with the topic at hand, it does provide something about the knowledge being published. It might provide some insight. You can read it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Tom+DeLonge

What sparked John’s comments was an article about Britain’s Roswell which is, of course, the new name for the Rendlesham Forest encounter. Not to leave any of you hanging, you can read that article here:

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/690452/Rendlesham-Forest-UFOs-Aliens-ET-Pentagon-Advanced-Aerospace-Threat-Identification-Program

Following is John’s take on all this.)

I love how the story is getting bigger and better every time it’s told.

Now, AATIP was a “massive” project – can I ask where this article

John Greenewald - Photo
copyright by Kevin Randle.

actually bases that off of?  $22 million over 5 years is not “massive” and the whole point that Mr. Elizondo claims he retired was because the DoD wasn’t taking it seriously.

Second, yet again, the name is published with the wrong title. I stand by the fact that the actual name is “Advanced AVIATION Threat Identification program” and not “Aerospace” which is often published and even said in interviews by Mr. Elizondo himself.  I also have this IN WRITING from the Pentagon as proof.

That is not semantics, but rather goes to accuracy of reporting on the project, along with truly defining the SCOPE of the project.  There is a big difference between Aviation and Aerospace, but I just can’t quite understand why no one is asking about the discrepancy, even since the one who ran the program seemingly has it wrong as well.

As this gets blown bigger and more out of proportion as the media fills in the blanks, I fear this lack of real reporting, the disregard of actual facts, and the reality no one is truly asking questions other than the softball ones asked over and over, it will come back and bite us.  I have tried now for more than THREE MONTHS to do an interview with Mr. Elizondo to get his side. Not to be confrontational, but rather, be ACCURATE in my writing. I have been asked now many times to comment on radio, print and television, and have turned some down because it isn’t right for me to comment without getting responses from Mr. Elizondo.   

However, after speaking many times with the PR agent from TTSA and she kept saying she was “trying” – I gave up.  I feel more than THREE MONTHS, along with the offer to do it in whatever medium he wanted (live/in person, online video chat, recorded phone call or even in writing via email) is more than enough time. I am not Tucker Carlson from FoxNews, I get that, but you’d like they may want to address some of this to resources that can continue to give them positive coverage. 

Others are now writing about FOIA extensions (which are perfectly normal and standard) and somehow reading into this as proof there is a massive cover-up.  At the end of the day, there very well may be, but some are claiming and alleging a cover-up with zero evidence (but rather, citing standard FOIA response protocols as proof) and as each day passes when we have no updates from TTSA or real answers (yet) from multiple FOIA requests still open, the media (and SOME UFO researchers/bloggers) are just filling in the blanks with whatever assumption they’d like.

We need to get beyond that, and work together to find answers, not just make up the middle because we don’t have answers yet.

For those interested in a large, and growing, article profiling quite a few FOIA responses I have received along with addressing with detail some of these erroneous facts, I invite you to:

http://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/to-the-stars-academy-of-arts-science-tom-delonge-and-the-secret-dod-ufo-research-program/

There are my two cents…  

Rob Mercer and the Black Vault

I learned this morning (February 19) that many of the documents from the Project Blue Book days located by Rob Mercer through some very nice detective work, can now be accessed at the Black Vault, hosted by John Greenewald. As most of you know, the Black Vault is a huge site of documents recovered through FOIA

John Greenewald
(Photo copyright by Kevin Randle)

requests filed by John, and other documents provided by those who had recovered them in the past… which is to say, I suppose, that it is a huge sharing site that provides an important feature for those of us interested in UFOs including information on the people involved and what the government has learned and stored.

Rob Mercer had discovered that a box of Blue Book material was for sale on Craig’s List and bought it. Turned out it was a treasure trove of important information that had originally belonged to Carmon Marano, one of the last officers who worked at Blue Book. You can learn more about this here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/10/boxes-of-blue-book-material-on-craigs.html

And you can listen to my interview with Rob Mercer here:

https://youtu.be/FItr36JIf48

And you can listen to Carmon Marano talk about his time at Project Blue Book and how he obtained what turned out to be boxes of the UFO related material here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyz0ZAvhv7g

Or read about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/11/x-zone-broadcast-network-former-blue.html

I did ask Rob how the material had ended up at the Black Vault and he told me (well, answered an email):

I joined up with John last November to help with his UFO investigations team.  He knew about my Blue Book find and told me I could share some on his site if I wanted.  I had been sharing a few of them on my site for a few years, but never really got them on there the way I wanted because of the volume.  I had been wanting to put a collection together called "From the Desk of Project Blue Book" 

for some time, because that’s pretty much what it is.  I still have the case files to scan and put on, along with slides correspondences and some other miscellaneous papers. 

      For the last several weeks I have been going through them again and have found a few items that did not make it into Blue Books archives as far as reports. One item that comes to mind is a three page hand written letter from a gentleman in 1969, that witnessed an event in the 1920s in Phoenix Arizona. It is on the Black Vault.

http://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/desks-project-blue-book-sighting-report-phoenix-arizona-late-1920s/

As you can see, there is more to be scanned and digitized. As anyone who has scanned almost anything knows, it can be a long and involved process, but Rob has been working toward that end. Now, some of it can be found and viewed by those interested in it.

As a side note, I found that the information Rob had on the Socorro UFO sighting to be useful in my research and in the writing of my book, Encounter in the Desert which was published last October. For those interested, it can be found in your local bookstore and online at Amazon at:

https://www.amazon.com/Encounter-Desert-Randle-Kevin-ebook/dp/B072MQGD9K/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1519084216&sr=1-1&keywords=Kevin+Randle

Project Blue Book and the Missing Cases

As happens so often, I’m working on one project and get diverted to another. This time I was looking through the Project Blue Book file index and noticed that many of the reports were labeled as “case missing.” There was a solution attached to the sightings, but, of course the index told me nothing of the case.

I made a quick count, and given that there are a couple of pages missing in the copy of the index that I have, and given that the notations are sometimes obscured and some of the pages are barely readable, my count isn’t the most accurate. It does, however, reveal a trend that is somewhat alarming.

Part of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, one time how to Project Blue Book. Photo courtesy of USAF.

By my count, there are over 300 cases that are missing. Most have cards in the files with a little information on them… but this does demonstrate some of the rather sloppy gathering of information that went on… or maybe just suggests that some of those working at Blue Book over the years weren’t as careful as they might have been.

Sure, I know what you’re thinking. Just what were these cases?

I went through a couple of the microfilms to see what the project cards had listed so that we all would have an idea about them. Following is a sample of what I found.

On December 26, 1956, in DeFuniak Springs, Florida, the witnesses, who were civilians and military, watched a white, egg-shaped object with a red tinge around the edges. It was the size of a small grapefruit. It flashed with a very bright red light that was around a tenth of the size of the object. It was in sight for fifteen to twenty-five minutes.

An unidentified officer noted on the project card, “Concur with the reporting officer that sighting caused by a/c. Although there was a helicopter in the area and the details of the sighting indicate that this was the cause, the helicopter landed ten minutes before the object disappeared. However, time in sight might have been incorrectly estimated. Therefore, prob [sic] aircraft is evaluation of this sight[ing].”

The details are somewhat sparse but the report seems to indicate that the object looked to be the size of a small grapefruit rather than actually being that small. I’m a little amused that the “concurring officer,” whoever he might have been, tells us that the sighting was caused by an aircraft because there was a helicopter in the area, but adds that the helicopter landed before the object disappeared. Seems to be a bit contradictory to me.

However, it is fair to note, without knowing more about this case, and basing it only on the few lines on the project card, that it is difficult to argue with the conclusion. But then it is difficult to believe that one or more of these witnesses (and I deduced there was more than one based on the “source,” which was labeled as civilian and military), wouldn’t have been able to identify the object had it been that helicopter.

In another of those missing cases, that would have sent me on still another diversion a couple of years ago, we learn that on January 27, 1957, near Hellenburg, Germany, a civilian witness said that he (yes, I’m assuming the witness was male based on the period of the sighting, meaning more than half a century ago) saw a bell-shaped object that was intense black-white [and yes, it says that on the card] with a fiery red trail… [It] was observed for only 3 -  4 seconds. Exploded before it hit the ground.”

In the comments section, an officer wrote, “Everything here suggests that the object was, without a doubt, a bolide (fireball). See Dr. Olivier’s and Dr. La Paz rpts [reports].”

While it is probably a meteor and even with the officer writing that it was identified without a doubt, the case I labeled as “Probably Astronomical.” I just find that a little funny. And those reports by Olivier and La Paz were nowhere to be found as the index suggested.

The last one I’ll mention here is from Georgetown, Massachusetts, on February 8, 1957. The source is listed as a civilian and a FBI report (yes, a FBI report is listed as a source), which is somewhat curious. The summary said, “A very lengthy report to the FBI, which outlines a number of theories concerning ‘flying saucers,’ makes only brief mention of a UFO sighting. A few days after reading books by so-called UFO experts Scully and Keyhow [sic] source ‘saw a group of saucers.’…”

According to the comments, “Only the date is firmly established. Files show no reports of any strange or unusual objects for that particular date or area. Source is obviously a strong believer in ‘saucers’ which may have colored his very limited report.”

This case is somewhat revealing, providing clues about the thought processes at Blue Book. Their search of the files was only a search of the Air Force files at Blue Book and if a case was not in their files, then it simply didn’t exist, at least to them.

In searching the databases available to me in 2018, I found a listing that suggested that this as a disk-shaped object, but the source for that information was the Blue Book files. There is no indication on the project card of what shape the objects might have had. It only mentions saucers and that it was a daylight sighting.

Of course, with my access to many additional databases, I carried the search a little further but I wasn’t able to find anything more on the sighting, which is to say, that I didn’t find anything. Something might be there, especially for those who can access newspaper files. I did try the Black Vault, but could find nothing relating to this particular case there either.

I will note here, that most of the cases that are labeled as missing are of the same caliber, which means that I attach no significance to the fact they are missing. The problem is probably more related to sloppiness rather than attempting to hide anything because if you were hiding something, you wouldn’t list it in the index, noting that it was missing.

This rather quick survey, which allowed me to see some other things, is that many of the early cases were, in fact, classified. I found nothing listed as “top secret,” but there were many listed as “secret,” or “restricted,” and later as “confidential,” when the classification system was reorganized. Later, most of the files were not classified at all unless there was a national security aspect to them. That normally related to collection methods, though in the Belt, Montana case in 1967, the intrusion of a UFO over missile silos had national security implications.

The significance here is probably that some 300 cases are missing, but the cases themselves don’t seem to be all that important. It shows that those at Blue Book weren’t taking this seriously. They had reached a conclusion, or it might be said that their superiors had reached a conclusion, and they weren’t going to do anything to suggest those superiors might be wrong.

One thought did cross my mind. When there were inspections of their operation, and there would be inspections, how did they explain the missing cases? Could they just blame the earlier administrations… or did the inspectors, knowing the overall opinion of UFOs, just ignore the missing cases? There is nothing to suggest the missing cases were classified, and given that, there probably wouldn’t have been repercussions.

Anyway, this was something that I discovered that I found to be somewhat amusing. I thought I would share it.

The Roswell Slides After the Big Reveal

Well, the great reveal has happened and it was… not great. In fact, opinion seems to be running against the idea that this was an alien creature and with many inside the UFO community saying that they were underwhelmed. Even those who are solidly inside the extraterrestrial camp have expressed disappointment in the program and the slides with some suggesting this was all promotion for another Don Schmitt and Tom Carey Roswell book.

Tony Bragalia, who has worked with Schmitt and Carey for months if not years on this, is still convinced that it is nothing earthly and there are scientists who back up his claim. In an article that he has circulated this morning (May 6, 2015), he provided this statement from two of those scientists:

It's nothing like us, we can see that his feet and legs appear to be like that of a reptile and could have evolved from something like a gecko or some similar animal that became larger and developed a large brain and binocular vision. His nose is small, his mouth different from ours. There are parts that could have been removed during autopsy. I[t] seems to have no teeth.

Joint Statement, Luis Antonio de Alba, Anatomist and Physiologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Richard Doble, Canadian Physical Anthropologist.

Bragalia also wrote, quoting  Professor Rod Slemmons, Former Director of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography and 1950s Kodak Executive, “It would be really, really hard to fake these slides or to duplicate them if that is what you want to do [.]”

And while all that is somewhat interesting, it doesn’t actually prove anything other than these fellows have expressed an opinion about the slides that don’t actually say anything about it being obviously alien. In fact, the name of the Rochester, NY Photo-scientist who supposedly rendered a positive opinion on the slides dating was not revealed. Bragalia wrote:

The truth is that the name of the photo-scientist is known to researchers and others. It was not publicly revealed for a simple reason: the man was repeatedly harassed at home by strangers. It is known that skeptic Lance Moody and reporter Billy Cox both separately -and within a day of each other- found the leaked name of the scientist and saw fit to call him at home at night out-of-the-blue to question him. Bear in mind that this was before the scientists name had been properly revealed and well before his image analysis report was even released. Understandably, the man was angry and has indicated that he simply does not need this kind of thing in his life.

And while it is understandable that the man would have been annoyed at the telephone calls, it is also understandable that others would want to corroborate the information that was being circulated by those who allege the slides show an alien creature. The real problem here is that they leaked the name, unintentionally, and then are appalled that others wish to verify the information. Lance Moody has written that the Rochester scientist’s verdict wasn’t nearly positive as others have suggested and that he was not named in the great reveal suggests that there are problems with the claims about his testimony.

Or, in other words, the point is moot because the witness was not there to be asked a few questions to clarify the situation.

John Greenewald was as unimpressed as were so many others. To his Black Vault site at:

http://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/the-roswell-slide-alien-kodachrome-slide-released-but-just-one/#

he posted some rather negative words. “When I woke up the morning of May 6, 2015, I expected to at least see 10, maybe 20, maybe even 50 headlines about this.  What did I see? At 8 am in the morning, well after the first news cycle… there were about 3. And those articles ripped apart this story, and profiled it as the joke it was.”

Greenewald quoted from the UK’s Daily Mirror which had said:

Two photographs of a “dead alien” were unveiled at a big money event last night – and immediately dismissed as fake.

A series of ‘UFOlogists’ appeared at the Be Witness meeting last night to reveal images of an extraterrestrial who supposedly crashed to Earth during the infamous Roswell incident in 1947.

The images were found by former journalist Adam Dew, who reportedly turned down interviews with magazines that wanted to cover the story because “they were not offering any compensation” [Which, of course, shows that they weren’t interested as alleged, they just weren’t interested in handing over some cash].

He claimed to have taken steps to verify the pair of alien snaps and said Kodak experts had dated the film to 1947.

But the rest of the world has not had the chance to test the rigour of his methods, because high resolution images of the alien are not yet available.

They are likely to be sold through his production company Dew Media alongside a documentary about the discovery of the slides.

The photos were supposedly found in Arizona, hidden in a collection of snaps owned by oil geologist Bernard Ray and his wife Hilda Ray, who have both died.

Nick Pope, a researcher who headed up a UFO investigation wing at the UK Ministry of Defence, told Mirror Online he was “underwhelmed”.

“It could be a model, or it could simply be a fake image, dressed up to look like a Forties slide,” he said.

Greenewald concluded, “Others took to social networks, and quickly were able to find nearly identical looking ‘bodies’ right here from human civilizations. This, even further, supports the theory this is nothing more than a museum artifact.”

Bragalia, however, wrote, “An overnight poll conducted by Coast-to-Coast radio has thus far tallied over 800 respondents to a survey asking what the nature of the creature:

42% say it is not an alien image.

58% believe it to either be that of an alien, or that they are simply not
certain what it is.

The figures, however, aren’t quite that supportive when broken down. It is true that 42.1% voted that it is not an alien, only 28.55% voted that it was, leaving 29.35 % voting that they were unsure. It could be said, that over 71% voted no or unsure, which is nearly three-quarters of those who expressed an opinion. I asked Bragalia and he agreed that what he had written about this was misleading, suggesting that I could correct that.

Here’s what I think, if anyone actually cares at this point. We haven’t had a good look at the high resolution slides and have been offered excuses for why that hasn’t happened. The slides seem to depict a creature, cadaver, corpse, in a museum setting rather than the expected situation if it was truly alien. The array of expert opinion we were told would be offered has not materialized and the statements that have been made seem to be weak. Already there have been pictures of mummies in various museums that seem to resemble to a high degree the body in the slide. There is nothing to tie this to Roswell and I will point out that both Carey and Schmitt did say that these weren’t “Roswell” slides, but their commentary seemed to suggest they believed otherwise.

They provided some witness testimony but it did little to validate the slides. Carlene Green, whose father, Homer Rowlette, said that he had seen the bodies. There are those who worry about the color of them she mentioned, but that isn’t the problem here. She is a nice woman I interviewed a number of years ago, but she didn’t see anything herself. She is a second-hand witness who can only report what her father told her so long ago.

We still have nothing for the provenance; we still don’t know who took the slides, when they were taken, or who even owns them now. It could be Adam Dew who has said that his company owns them, or it could be the brother of the woman who found them. That point has not been clarified.

Today, May 6, we really don’t know anything more than we did on May 4. Nothing was clarified at the big reveal. We have the names of some of the scientists, but certainly not in the numbers we expected. We have a better resolution of the slides, but rather than clarify, they have not done that. They seem to be of a creature in a museum setting given what is seen in the background, but we don’t know. At the end of the presentation we are as confused as we were before it started.

Can anyone say Alien Autopsy?

Project Blue Book, John Greenewald and the Latest

(Blogger's note: This is the latest from John Greenewald about the uproar over the Project Blue Book files. Although annoyed at the MSM for not understanding the story and believing that this was something new, I am not annoyed at John for getting the material published at his Black Vault site. It was a service to all of us interested in this. And yes, I have used the Fold 3 site, but then, I do have a complete set of the Project Blue Book files on microfilm. Sometimes it was easier to locate a case at Fold 3 then in the confusing filing system used for Project Blue Book. Anytime information is restricted, for whatever reason, it is a sad day for all of us.)

January 29^th, 2015 – It is with great frustration to announce, that Ancestry.com, and their subsidiary Fold3, has laid down a claim to copyright on the Project Blue Book material – which has long been labeled as “public domain” by the National Archives & Records Administration (NARA).

   

Ancestry.com is claiming ownership to the digital version of this material – despite me having records that Fold3 doesn’t even have in their archive and I received under the FOIA starting back in 1996.  They simply claimed it was 100% theirs and I was forced to remove it.

Because of my attempt with properly crediting Fold3 with a DIRECT LINK to their site as partial credit for some of the material, they used that show of proper credit by me to issue a copyright claim under the Digital Copyright Millennium Act (DCMA). Anyone who knows anything about the law can attest; you are “guilty until proven innocent” so this was the beginning of the end. I never hid from Fold3 as a source, and even brought them up in some media interviews I did take part in, which were all cut out. No one cared about that part of the story – this new archive was what they wanted to report on because it was simple, straight forward, easy and free. And people loved it.

Based on an evidence-less claim I was forced to remove the entire site.  That’s right, there was ZERO evidence submitted to my web hosting provider of ownership or copyright or license, but rather, they simply placed the accusation which is all it takes.

In good faith, I took the site down in hopes a compromise could be reached. They already had credit given on the front page of the site for some of the material, and that link alone resulted in a 12%+ increase in their entire statistics since they posted records in 2007, and my link multiplied their weekly hits by 10x, yes ten times, in only 5 days (statistics are posted on their page, so I am not guessing on those statistics but rather took notes).  

I stated there was much more information here than is cited to Fold3, but they didn’t care.  I offered giving them a full 100% “share of voice” banner ad to advertise Fold3 (in addition to the link already driving them traffic), or to sell ads with no profit share to me, and they didn’t care. I asked if they would work with me on any capacity, because CLEARLY interest was being generated by my audience (and obviously not by theirs) but they didn’t care.

In the end – they offered I become a member of their affiliate program – and offer a link to them in exchange for a portion of sales generated. ie: You have to sign up with them, pay a membership, and they give me a percentage.  I quickly declined. (Blogger's note: So it is clear, there are no fees required for viewing the Project Blue Book files. There is a requirement for membership, but there is no cost there either.)

This is public record material, and it should remain so. To lay ‘exclusive’ claim to it in the digital world, when both sites (my site and theirs) offer it for free – is ludicrous and a waste of time and money for everyone.

But at the end of the day, I am proud to have brought attention to information that although has been available for quite some time – the public at large never knew it existed.  I will let Google Trends prove my point.  Here is the popularity of Project Blue Book, since 2005, and a graph relating to people searching for information on it. (Blogger's note: The graph simply will not print here but there is a tremenous spike in traffic just as John has suggested.)

I am proud to be the one who caused such an uproar of interest by the public and the media (despite some erroneous facts in the reporting).

Did some media outlets misreport? Yes, and if this page was still up, there was a message on the front page setting the record straight. 

But, call it corporate greed, a legal loophole, or a grey area in the copyright law, all of that is gone in the name of getting your personal information, and your credit card, by a corporation that has a wallet much thicker than mine. I’ll let you decide what the right label is to put on this entire mess.

Does all of this upset you? Me too!  And I invite you to express your thoughts to Ancestry.com, Fold3, and anyone else you’d like to express your disappointment:

Fold3

355 South 520 West
Suite 250
Lindon, UT 84042
Ph 1-800-613-0181
support@fold3.com

Ancestry Inc. Corporate Headquarters
360 West 4800 North
Provo, UT 84604
Ph 801-705-7000
Fx 801-705-7001
support@ancestry.com  

In 18+ years, I’ve never seen anything like this, and it is a sad day for the world of public domain, public information, public record and the idea of “Freedom of Information”.

I have vowed from day 1, never to fall into the pit of desire of placing a price tag on PUBLIC information. It’s a shame I am very much alone in that belief.

Sincerely,

John Greenewald, Jr.
The Black Vault
http://www.theblackvault.com

Project Blue Book Files and John Greenewald

(Blogger’s Note: John Greenewald has posted the following at various sites and I thought it interesting enough to post here. He gave permission and provides his perspective on the situation as it has developed over the last few days. I think John is getting some unfair bad publicity out of this and thought all along that the problem were the reporters who know nothing about UFOs, care little about UFOs and are happy to wallow in their ignorance.)

John wrote:

Just wanted to set the record straight. ,

First off, I never, EVER, made it appear these documents were newly declassified. The media created that, and many outlets copied each other. Many of the stories you see, I was never even interviewed for, yet I am quoted extensively.

Second, I went out of my way to say these documents have been available, even in some places online, during the course of the interviews I did do.  But, I converted them to a comprehensive and user friendly database, that quite simply was a format that was not available anywhere else and this was the first time the public could get unrestricted access to them. IE: it was free, required no registration, was searchable, and you could download them all with a few clicks in PDF format.

Third, I gave credit to the investigator who compiled the 130,000 jpeg images, which he then started circulating for someone to figure out how to convert them to a better format about 8 months ago.  For a couple months, no one did anything with them (but circulated a torrent file), and although I offered to help store the files on the web, I felt I wasn’t smart enough to convert them to something that was web-friendly.  After about 3 months, and I noticed no one cared or was able to take the project to the next level, with the full knowledge of the one who compiled the data, I built the entire database. Converted 130,000 jpeg images (which are just about as useless as microfilm, but at least they were digitized) to a us3r friendly format.

Here was the full process

• -          I created the scripts to convert the 130,000 jpegs into more than 10,000 .pdfs
• 
  
• -      I then created acrobat action scripts to OCR (text recognition) 10,000 pdfs  and at the same time, created filters to pass the images through to make them more readable to the human eye then their existing format
• 
  
• -     I then programmed the entire site in HTML 5, built the indexes broken down by decade, and uploaded the 220GB of material to my server
• 
  
• -   I then created a massive search engine that mined the 10,000 pdfs and created a searchable index which is what you see today
• 
  

   The original compiler wanted no credit but to that of a nickname which is what I’ve given out and posted on my page as the top, #1, credit.

There have been a select FEW that are going around claiming quite a bit, and attacking me personally.  What the media says, or reports on, is out of my control but I have done everything to the best of my ability to circulate the proper information, nothing but the facts, and give credit to where credit is due.

At the end of the day, the media and the hundreds of thousands of people a day who are now hitting the archive obviously were not aware these records were available, so even though some of the news stories became factually incorrect, who cares?  Regardless of that fact we can easily set them straight on, the mass media attention, much of which is very good press, is all fantastic for this field. 

Those that are beating a dead horse, are simply wasting time.

Sincerely,

 John Greenewald, Jr.

The Black Vault
http://www.theblackvault.com  Government Secrets

Project Blue Book Declassified - Really?

I’m watching the ABC Evening News, something I attempt to avoid because there is so little news in the broadcast (but that’s another story) and they tell me that the Project Blue Book files are now declassified and on line. I’m wondering what they mean because they have been on line for quite some time.

They’re referring to John Greenwald’s efforts to post all of these files at his Black Vault website, and his effort is commendable. But NICAP had many of the files on line for years and I have never found a gap in the Fold 3’s Blue Book files also on line. Or, in other words, the only “news” here is that John has provided us with another site where we can see these files.

ABC also seemed to suggest that this was something new. The Air Force had finally released all of the files of its investigation, except, of course, they did that in 1976. I made a trip down to Maxwell Air Force Base and spent time going through the files*. Anyone could have done it but the fact the files had been declassified hadn’t been announced publically. There had been some sort of announcement in an Air Force bulletin that I happened to see, so I made arrangements to take a look.

And once those files were transferred to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., they were more accessible to the public. You could buy the microfilm copies for something like eight or ten dollars a roll back then, but there were ninety some rolls of them. Over the years I actually managed to obtain a full set of the microfilms, so I’ve had all of the Blue Book files in my office for a couple of decades.

The statistics “announced” by ABC didn’t tell the whole story either, and they seemed to think Blue Book began as a result of the Roswell UFO crash (Roswell isn’t even mentioned in the Blue Book files except a short paragraph in a newspaper clipping that is part of another file), but actually the idea for an investigation can be traced back to December 1946 and probably had more to do with the Ghost Rockets of Sweden and some sightings in the US than it did with either Roswell or the Kenneth Arnold sightings. I laid this out in Government UFO Files, along with documentation to support the idea.

They said that 701 cases of the some 12,000 remained unidentified but the truth is that many of the cases are labeled, but not identified. These are labeled as “insufficient data for a scientific analysis.” In many of those cases all the information necessary for a complete investigation is included, but it is labeled that way. This was an attempt to reduce the number of unidentified cases by labeling them as something else and that is all that it was.

In addition to that, many cases that are labeled with a solution are clearly in error. For example, the Portage County UFO chase of 1966. (It was on April 17 and involved several police officers, deputy sheriffs and their supervisors and a stylized version was seen at the beginning of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. See also my posting here on May 20, 2014 for more information.). It has been explained as a combination of Venus and a satellite. The police officers saw the satellite in the west and as it passed over them, as they chased it across Ohio and into Pennsylvania; their attention was then drawn to Venus. The trouble here, as outlined in the Project Blue Book files is that there were no satellites visible in that part of the United States at that time of the morning. Letters and other documents in the Blue Book file prove this, yet the satellite portion of the solution is allowed to stand.

To make it worse, drawings made by the police officers show what was visible in the sky. Those drawings mark the position of the UFO, that of the moon, and that of Venus. Or, to put a point on it, the police officers did see Venus and identified it as such. But the label on the case, which is clearly in error, is allowed to stand and the case is shown to have a solution.

There are many such cases in the Blue Book files. Cases in which the solutions are simply not borne out of the documentation available. Yet we continue to hear about only 701 unidentified cases when the number is probably closer to 5000 when the solutions are examined carefully and those labeled as insufficient data are included. Insufficient data is not a solution, but is a label other than unidentified.

It was good to see a news report that treated UFOs seriously. It was not so good to see facts and figures used that were clearly inaccurate. I’m sure John knew the difference but I’ll wager that the reporter looked at a few things on line, misunderstood them, and ran with his story. The best thing about all this is that you don’t have to believe me. You can look it all up in the Black Vault.

*Bob Cornett and I might have the first outsiders to go through the Blue Book files. The first thing we did was list all the unidentified cases complete with the names and locations. When the files were released into the public mainstream the names had been redacted. We could, of course, put the names back in… but the job of redacting was poorly done and in most of the case files you can find the names. A complete listing of the unidentified cases is available in Project Blue Book – Exposed in both hardback and as a Kindle ebook.

I will note that Jack Webb, in preparation for his TV series about Project Blue Book paid to have all the files microfilmed. We all owe him thanks for doing that.