Chasing Footnotes and Cannon Air Force Base

It’s been a while since I had a post about chasing footnotes and while this isn’t quite the same thing, it did sort of begin there.

Fran Ridge

Fran Ridge, who runs the NICAP website (http://www.nicap.org/), which is filled with all sorts of interesting information, posed a question about a UFO sighting that was part of the comprehensive Blue Book Unknown (BBU) list prepared by and updated regularly by Brad Sparks. That sighting was described as:

Like to have more on this RR case anyone has it.
May 18, 1954; Cannon AFB, New Mexico (BBU)

 7 p.m. 2 witnesses saw a house-size lens-shaped object
 land near railroad tracks, kicking up a small
 sand storm in the desert. One witness approached it, then
 ran away in fear. (Vallée Magonia 129; BB files??)

Michael Swords took a run at the question but didn’t seem to have a very good answer about the case. He wrote:

I'm curious to know where the "BBU" comes from. It's not impossible that this is a BBU, but the source cited doesn't lead to that. Vallee's source is listed as Binder. That's Otto Binder, not the best source to begin with. Binder had a newspaper column which would feature readers' UFO accounts that were mailed to him. Some of these had a ring of truth to them, but they were just that --- essentially "letters" to a UFO interested person who did no investigation. Binder was a writer as a profession, so I can't damm him for making some money out of this. He picked several of his more intriguing letters and published them in FATE of February 1968. The relevant letter quoted there sounds good (and it has a second letter in support) but it is only a letter claim. (Vallee is always doing this by the way--- picking some flimsy mention of something and putting it in the MAGONIA catalog. Often these citations have errors. A error here might be that the location of the claim was not in Cannon AFB but more truly might be labeled "Clovis, NM". (a small matter.) ) In Binder's article, he says that the witness claims that a small mention of the case appeared in FATE of November 1954. That would be potentially encouraging to me, but I could not find it there on a thumb-through.

So, two mysteries for me: A) --- major --- how did this get a BBU?
      B) --- minor --- is it actually mentioned in FATE back in 1954?

There is, allegedly, a DATA-NET report of this --- date unknown to me. Hynek also allegedly mentions something like this in his UFOExp --- I got lazy and didn't search after that claim. (hard to believe Hynek would ever mention anything from Binder in that book, but maybe something more substantial could be there.

Following Mike’s lead, somewhat, I looked at the Project Blue Book master index and found that there were no sightings listed for May 18, 1954, and none in New Mexico for the entire month. All that meant was that the mention of “BB files??” as one of the sources could be eliminated. The sighting was not part of the Blue Book system.

This led to another brief exchange. Fran had noted that this was case no. 1018, in the BBU but when I looked at the copy I had it wasn’t the same. I wrote, “I just looked at both Brad’s BBU and the Blue Book master index and the case no. 1018 is from California and not New Mexico. The case from May 18, 1954 is labeled as case 836 in Brad's listing (or at least in the copy I have) but only questions if it is found in the BB files. I can't find anything in the BB master index that matches this, though, I haven't spent a great amount of time looking. I can say that there is no listing for May 18, 1954 in New Mexico in the BB files.”

Turned out that my version of Brad’s BBU was older than the one used by Fran. He had an updated version and 1018 was the Cannon AFB (Clovis) entry. This was becoming somewhat confusing but would become more so as time passed. But that still didn’t put the report into the Blue Book system.

Barry Greenwood seemed to have come up with that connection. He wrote, “There is a listing for Oceanside CA in the OSI records for May 18, 1954 (Roll 90, frame 269. Roll 91, frames 990 – 991, Blue Book Archives.)”

I went back to the Blue Book microfilms (as I keep saying, I have them all), and found that the first reference to the Oceanside sighting is a letter dated June 28, 1954 (the date on the copy I have is a little difficult to read) that has a subject of “Sighting of Unidentified Aerial Object on 18 May 1954 over Oceanside, California. SPECIAL INQUIRY.”

There are no details in that letter other than saying that a “Spot Intelligence” report had been sent dated June 10, 1954 and gave the OSI district that had responsibility for the case. The report was not located with this letter.

The second entry, in Roll 91, that Barry mentioned, was the spot intelligence report which provided some details. The information was that:

SYSNOPSIS: On 27 May 1954, advice was received by letter from the District Intelligence Officer, Eleventh Naval District, San Diego, California, to the effect that [name redacted but is clearly, Higgins, Squadron Leader, Royal Air Force, on duty with the Marine All Weather Fighter Squadron El Toro 542, Marine Base, California, reported sighting an unidentified flying object while flying in the vicinity of Oceanside, California, 1240 hours, 18 May 1954.

Interestingly, the Blue Book entry for this, in Brad’s BBU was number 1017, which is, of course, the one just prior to the case that stared all this. For those interested in the details of the sighting, though sparse, Brad had reported it as:

May 18, 1954; 10-15 (or 6-7) miles SE of Lake Elsinore, Calif. (BBU 2994) 12:48 p.m. RAF Squadron Leader Donald R. Higgin, assigned to USMC All Weather Fighter Sq, El Toro MCAS, Calif., while flying an F3D-2 jet fighter at 15,000-16,000 ft on a heading of 240° magnetic [255° true] at 300 knots IAS and descending, saw a dark blue almost black gun-metal "glint" delta-shaped object, about 22-23 ft long and 20 ft wide, with 3 fins of equal size and shape, at his 11 o'clock position just above the cockpit of his wingman flying another F3D-2 about 250 ft away. Object was on a head on collision course but before Higgin could radio warning it passed under his wingman and between their aircraft, descending at a 25°-30° angle on a heading N of about 30°

There is nothing in the report by the OSI that suggests a solution or much of an investigation and Brad’s entry does nothing to clarify any of this. The names have been redacted, but as I have noted on many occasions, those responsible for removing the names did a terrible job. In fact, in one paragraph, none of the names were reacted, and given the ranks of those involved in the sighting as well as their military organizations, it is simple to put the names back in. We know who had seen what.

I will note that two copies of the spot intelligence report were sent on to ATIC, which, in 1954, had responsibility for Blue Book. That surprised me because there was no enter on May 18, 1954, for any sighting in the United States, but Blue Book should have had a copy given the regulations in force at the time.

There was documentation in the file for the Oceanside case but these were in the administrative section and not part of the investigative files. Fran asked a question then that got me to thinking. He wondered if the Lake Elsinore sighting that was part of the BBU was the same as the Oceanside sighting that were part of the administrative files. It was clear from the documentation that some of the names in the Oceanside sighting were the same as those from the Lake Elsinore sighting which meant that it was the same report. I took a look at the master index again and noticed that there was a sighting on May 10, 1954, for Lake Elsinore.

The illustration of the object
over Lake Elsinor in the
Oceanside UFO file.

I looked at the Blue Book microfilm and found the same pages from the OSI section but this one also included a statement from the pilot and his radar officer and the illustration that was not available in the administrative section. There was, of course, the Project Card, which suggested that the pilot might have seen a lenticular cloud, but also noted that such clouds are rare at the altitude reported and that they persisted much longer than the sighting lasted. The conclusion was that lenticular cloud did not provide a proper resolution and the case was labeled unidentified.

About the time that I was finding this, Brad Sparks pointed Fran to the same sighting. We had all found the sighting from Oceanside and had now resolved the discrepancy between it being at Oceanside and Lake Elsinore. There was no doubt, given the documentation that we were all talking about the same sighting. Lake Elsinore merely pinpointed the location while Oceanside provided a larger, general area.

What are the conclusions here?

Well, it seems that the original source for the Cannon AFB (Clovis) case was Otto Binder and those of us who have been around for a while realize that he is not the most credible of sources. The case was picked up by Jacques Vallee but he apparently did nothing to validate the information. I could find nothing in the Blue Book files about it and believe that it should be removed from the Catalog that Brad Sparks has been creating (I say creating because, as mentioned, it seems he regularly updates it).

The second part of this is the sighting from Oceanside, California. We have the details of the sighting, that include the pilot’s statement. It seems that those at Blue Book did know of it because the spot intelligence report but were unable to identify the cause of the sighting. Interestingly for me, I had included, in my book Project Blue Book – Exposed, a list of all the Unidentified cases. Somehow, I had missed that one. It is not listed by me. *

Here’s what I take away from all this. Fran asked a question over the Internet about 10:00 in the morning. There were responses from a number of people, and by four, we had found some of the answers. We had the documentation and resources to get to the bottom of the case. By noon the next day we had found the Oceanside (Lake Elsinore) sighting in the Blue Book files, but nothing to support the Cannon AFB sighting other than a reference that began with Otto Binder. The Cannon AFB case is mildly interesting but not actually part of Blue Book, and I had reached, at least in my mind, a valid conclusion or two about the reliability of the Cannon AFB sighting. There is nothing beyond what Binder had written and this case should be eliminated from the various listings in which it appears.

* Here’s something I noticed about the list of Unidentified sightings in my book, which I had always thought was important because Bob Cornett and I had been through the files before they had been redacted. We had listed every unidentified case including the names of the witnesses… I have since learned that others managed to do the same thing. I bring all this up because, for some strange reason, I have no unidentified cases listed for 1954. There are a number of them, but when I prepared the list for the book, I overlooked them. 

The Shaver Fiction = Carrion’s Latest Proof?

(Blogger's Note: Brad Sparks did what I had planned to do which was provide some information suggesting that Carrion's theory was not built on a solid foundation. He has been on this psy-op explanation for the 1947 UFO wave for a long time. This new aspect, published recently has some flaws, as Brad points out. Brad's analysis follows.)

James Carrion's latest blog posting claims he now finally has "proof," "hard evidence," that US deception operations fabricated the flying saucer flap of 1947 and launched the whole modern UFO era in order to perpetrate a strategic deception on the USSR.  We will leave aside for now the basic questions of how major sightings at Muroc Field (future Edwards AFB) Flight Test Center and by White Sands rocket scientists can be explained by such a vast deception operation. 

http://historydeceived.blogspot.be/2016/08/human-deception-at-playduring-ufo-wave.html

His "proof" is what is now his central figure in the entire plot, a "Col." Carl Goldbranson, and an FBI memo of July 21, 1947, released decades ago.  But Carrion has so far failed to prove that Goldbranson did anything more than ask the FBI to investigate a notorious character who supposedly knew the origin of flying saucers and whose location and timing supposedly coincided with certain incidents in early July 1947.  That's what's in the FBI memo.  

And it's late in the game, long after the 1947 saucer flap ended on about July 10, with Goldbranson's response very slow and lackadaisical for something supposed to be part of some hush-hush strategic deception operation.  Shouldn't Goldbranson have been doing "this" (whatever "hands dirty" stuff it's supposed to be) before the flap, before, say Kenneth Arnold? 

Carrion apparently missed the fact that it was the infamous Richard Shaver whose name got through the document censors in one place of the FBI memo.  Yes, the Richard Shaver of the lunatic Shaver Mysteries, full of "deros" or "deranged robots" -- the so-called robots who were not actually even robots (how deranged is that?!?) -- and Lemuria tales. 

Carrion has failed even to prove that Goldbranson was continuing his wartime deception duties 2 years after the war, in peacetime, in the face of his FBI memo placing Goldbranson in the wrong agency (Army Intelligence), not on the deception staff (Joint Chiefs). 

But Goldbranson did not even ask the FBI to perpetrate any deception!  How is asking the FBI to investigate someone amount to carrying out a deception??  Does any of this deceive the Soviet intelligence agencies?  And into believing what?  That a marginal character like Richard Shaver of the Shaver Mystery stories and the "truth" about underground worlds and Lemuria, was a credible bearer of intelligence about flying saucers being US secret weapons??  The Kremlin halls would have been shaking with laughter at such "capitalist" insanity. 

Carrion charges that Goldbranson was "getting his hands dirty in the UFO controversy of 1947" and "had no reason to be involved unless he was actively promoting a deception plan."  Again, how is asking the FBI to investigate a crackpot amount to "actively promoting a deception plan" against the USSR??  How is asking for investigation a getting of one's "hands dirty"?  Seems like a fair-minded gathering of information, that's all.  

At best, if Goldbranson was indeed working in some deception activity, then this seems to be a cover-one's-bases effort to make sure Shaver wasn't a Soviet deception against us through Shaver's promotion of cuckoo saucer-like tales -- not a strategic deception but mere harassing disinformation to keep our counterintelligence agencies busy chasing after windmills.  

Carrion evidently has not figured out that Shaver's name and his location at "Lily Lake" are apparently redacted from the FBI memo of July 21, 1947, cited by Carrion as his bombshell "proof" that UFO's in 1947 were a US strategic deception against the USSR.  The "Shaver" name appears in one place Carrion seems to have overlooked, which the FBI reviewers let slip through the censorship.  If Carrion does know it was Shaver, it is odd that he would withhold discussion of that vital and discrediting point.  

But the claim (by anyone), regardless whether Carrion knew it was Shaver (that only makes it worse), of having answers to the saucer mystery, made in a mysterious anonymous telegram to the AAF (from Shaver's cohort Ray Palmer??), certainly sounds like crank material. 

In another place in the redacted FBI memo, the same paragraph naming Shaver (by accidental slipup of the censors), it states that the two saucer (UFO) sightings on July 7, 1947, occurred "in the proximity of [Lily Lake]" (I supplied the 9-space redacted text here).

So that, plus the unsigned telegram to the AAF on July 5 naming [Shaver] at [Lily Lake, McHenry, Illinois] as someone who knew the origin of flying saucers was sufficient cause for Col. Carl Goldbranson to ask the FBI to "conduct some investigation of Shaver" (reviewer slipped and left Shaver's name in here).  (My thanks to Isaac Koi for supplying the info about Shaver's residence in 1947 at Lily Lake, McHenry, Illinois, and Mary Castner at CUFOS for background info on the area.) 

But Col. Goldbranson is described by the FBI as with ARMY -- "Intelligence Division of the War Department" -- NOT the AAF, and NOT the Joint Security Control of the JCS (Joint Chiefs of Staff), in charge of deception planning and possibly operations.  

Did the FBI get this wrong?  Did the FBI Liaison Agent S. Wesley Reynolds who knew all the top intelligence generals and officers in the military, CIG and State Dept just not know who Col. Goldbranson was? Did Goldbranson lie to the FBI about who he worked for?  Maybe, but Carrion needs to prove it. 

Right now, Carrion has not even proved that his crucial proof, Goldbranson, even worked on deception operations in 1947.  Maybe he did, but no such proof is given, it's just hinted at, and insinuated, Goldbranson "would" have been perfect to "fill that billet."  But did he?  

Carrion makes a crucial mistake in misreading Goldbranson's rank as of mid-1947 (his source seems to say G was a Lt. Col. and not full Colonel until December 1948).  This means Carrion has the wrong guy on the wrong staff of Joint Security Control even by his own argument.  

FOOTNOTE:  Carrion makes much out of a May 1947 charter for the postwar continuation of the Joint Security Control (JSC) group of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  First off, only the Special Section of the JSC conducts cover and deception planning and coordination according to the charter.  

The JSC charter states that only 2 AAF officers served on the entire staff of 10, and these were an AAF Colonel and a Lt Colonel.  The AAF Colonel served on the Executive Section (admin) but did double-duty on the understaffed deception-op Special Section.  But Goldbranson was a Lt Colonel and evidently not this guy, not this Colonel.  The AAF Lt Colonel served on the Security Section doing security policies and declassifications of documents for historical purposes (almost FOIA-like!).  If Goldbranson was there then he would have been this guy, the Lt Colonel, doing security work not deception ops.  If I am wrong about this Carrion needs to prove it with specific documentation proving that Goldbranson really was on the deception Special Section and that he was even on the JSC at all in July 1947.  

Carrion has some interesting and provocative ideas but unfortunately does not prove his case, in fact does not even make a prima facie (on its face) showing, one that appears to hold together at first glance.  

The FBI memo is a killer by putting Goldbranson in a completely different, wrong agency, right on the face of it, and he didn't catch that or did but doesn't try to explain that (no doubt part of the whole "deception" coverup, of course he might say).  He needs direct evidence, not speculative inference, and needs to make a tighter, more logical case.  I am willing to consider it and give it a fair hearing. 

Brad Sparks

MJ-12: The Beginning

My friend, Alejandro Rojas, has posted to the Open Minds YouTube channel an analysis of the beginnings of MJ-12. It is based on some original research he conducted through interviews with some of those involved and on FOIA requests that he has made recently to the U.S. Air Force. The thirty minute program can be found here:

http://www.openminds.tv/majestic-12-ufo-disinformation-scandal-video/28049

There are two additional points that I think should be made that add some context to this story. First, Stan Friedman told me about twenty years ago when we were in California on a research trip that Bill Moore had said he had run into a wall on his Roswell research. Moore said that he was thinking of creating a “Roswell-type” document to shake things loose. Moore apparently thought that if he had an official looking document it might induce some of the reluctant witnesses to tell all that they knew.

Friedman has since denied that the conversation ever took place. Fortunately this isn’t one of those “he said, he said” situations. There are others who heard a similar tale. Brad Sparks said that Moore had told him much the same thing and he, Sparks, called Friedman, saying that it was a really bad idea. The information about Sparks and his memory of this can be found on the Internet. For more information see:

http://www.roswellfiles.com/FOIA/majestic12.htm

While I hesitate to mention this, simply because it comes from Philip Klass and will be rejected out of hand by many here is another source:

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/klass_files_volume_44/

Those who wish for more information or other corroboration can conduct their own searches. Just remember, that I’m reporting what Friedman said to me and I’m noting that he now denies he said it.

The second point is how the documents were released. Alejandro reported that Timothy Good received the Eisenhower Briefing Document [EBD]before it entered the public arena. But that copy came from Bill Moore and that can be proved as Barry Greenwood demonstrated. The copy of the EBD has a chevron-like artifact on several of the pages. Since it does not appear in the same place on other pages, it means that it is an artifact produced by a specific copier. It floats from page to page.

Okay, you say, but so what?

That chevron-like artifact also appears on the EBD released by Moore, but it is not in the same place as it is on the pages released by Good. In other words, the EBD copies were produced on the same copier and that means there was a single source for them. One person made several Xerox copies and sent one of them to Good.

Since it was Moore who had the original film negatives, it would seem that Moore made copies of them and sent them off. Moore, then, was the source of the copies that Good had. Good simply jumped the gun, revealing the existence of the EBD to the press before Moore had a chance to do so.

It is clear that Moore’s copies were made from the pictures printed from the 35 mm film on which the EBD fell into his hands. If he wanted copies of it, he could run all that he needed… but there is that chevron artifact that appears on his copies as well as those given to Good. Or, in other words, it was Moore (or one of his buddies) who made the Xerox copies from the originals, and that links Moore to the copier and to Good.

So, while it might be said that Good’s copy came from another source, it is clear that his copies came from the same copier that Moore used. There is a single source for all the copies and that is the film sent to Jaime Shandera, Moore’s pal in California.

I thought these two points should be made. But there is the new information revealed by Alejandro that should convince even more people that MJ-12 is a hoax and that not a single document linking the U.S. government to something called MJ-12 has ever been independently found. I can’t FOIA a government agency and receive a series of documents as we can in so many other UFO related matters.

I have said for years that MJ-12 should be relegated to a footnote in the history of UFO studies, but it keeps appearing. I know that Alejandro’s piece will not end the debate, but, at least, it comes from a different perspective.

Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary - July 22, 1947

The other night as I was cursing the cable I blundered into another of those UFO programs filled with hysterical narration and a belief that nearly every outrageous claim is based in reality. In this case they were talking about the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit as if the documentation existed to prove that the Army had, at one time, investigated UFOs under that unit title. They flashed some documentation but in today’s world with nearly everyone and her brother creating UFO documents for fun and profit you would think that a little caution would be called for. But there was really nothing in the documentary to suggest that this wasn’t true other than a mention of the “controversial MJ-12” documents.

I had thought that it had been fairly well established that this IPU information had been discredited and was a little surprised to see it being used as evidence that MJ-12 was real, as was the Roswell UFO crash along with a similar event over on the Plains of San Agustin (or more accurately, a point to the southeast of Socorro, but more on that later). So I wondered just what do we know about the IPU and where did that information originate.

It seems that in 1977 Larry Bryant had filed a somewhat generic FOIA request with the Army asking about their gathering of UFO reports. Eventually, in response, the Army said that their records had been sent to the Air Force in 1962 so they no longer had anything related to UFOs. If you look at the timing here, you’d see that the Air Force was also attempting to get rid of the UFO investigation or relegate it to the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Information (SAFOI), so the Army, having the perfect place to dump their UFO material, did so. All this means that at the time no one wanted to get stuck with the UFO problem.

Bryant filed another request and in 1978 the Army came back with what they termed an “institutional memory,” which was their way of saying they’d asked an older member of the team what he could remember. He said that in 1958 the UFO reports were processed by the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit. This was set up in 1958 after the launch of the Soviet satellites in late 1957. According to the institutional memory, all the material gathered was sent to the Air Force in 1962. The IPU was abolished at that point.

Brad Sparks believed that the actual name was probably something like the Intelligence Processing Unit and the function was that of gathering all sorts of intelligence reports about all sorts of things to be distributed to the various commands and activities where that information could be exploited. According to Sparks, based on his review of various organizational charts and other documentation, he found the name of the IPU was actually Input Processing Unit, and if Sparks was right about its function, then this name makes more sense than the more exciting Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit.

And while you could argue that Sparks has gotten this wrong, though the evidence supports him, there seems to be one fact that is not in dispute. The IPU did not begin to function until 1958. There is no evidence that it existed prior to that.

But then documents from the IPU began to surface. They seemed to come from a man named Timothy Cooper who received them from a fellow named Thomas “Cy” Cantwheel which is a pseudonym so that he can’t be traced and his claims about his background can’t be independently verified. One of the documents that relates to the IPU is labeled Top Secret and it mentions only those with “Majic access may have access.” This strikes me as a rather wishy-washy way to say that “Access to the document is restricted to those with Majic clearance,” but then, that’s just my personal opinion.

The document is the “Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary,” and it is classified as “Top Secret – Ultra.” There is a problem with this as well. A classified project known as “Ultra” existed during World War II. Ultra was an attempt to gather and decrypt Nazi communications at the highest level. By the end of the war this was an Allied effort that was of significant importance and certainly contributed to the defeat of the Nazis. But the point is, the classification for the project was Top Secret Ultra and that was for that specific project which has nothing to do with UFOs.

Overlooking this, the document lays out the “facts” about the Roswell UFO crash. The problem here is that investigations as outlined in these documents have been superseded by new and better information. It places a part of the crash at Site LZ - 2 (which I suppose is Landing Zone 2) some twenty miles southeast (that’s right, southeast) of Socorro, which moves it from the Plains of San Agustin to “Lat. 33 – 40 – 31, Long. 106 – 28 – 29, with Oscura Peak being the geographic reference point.” Overlooking the fact that the coordinates would have been listed as 33.40.31N and 106.28.29W (33° 40' 31" N, 106° 28' 29" W), those coordinates are not on the Plains of San Agustin, but southeast of Socorro. While the Barnett story is questioned and certainly does not relate to the Roswell crash, it was clear that he was talking about the high country meaning the Plains and not someplace to the southeast.

For those keeping score at home and who don’t have Google Earth on their computers, those coordinates, along with Oscura Peak, are on the White Sands Missile Range near the Trinity site. It’s difficult enough to get onto the debris field found by Mack Brazel since it is private property surrounded by BLM land. No one is going to drive out onto the missile range to dig on that site, let alone get near the Trinity site without permission. As far as I know, no one has been there to see what might have been left behind.

In fact, that leads to another question. Why is it that they have the coordinates for LZ – 2, but not for the Brazel ranch site? I suspect the reason is that when this document was created, the coordinates of the Brazel site were known to very few people and if the document had the wrong coordinates, that would call its legitimacy into question. The hoaxer just didn’t know those coordinates.

These few things should be enough for those paying attention to reject this document as fraudulent. It should be enough to prove that this document is a forgery and a not very clever one at that. It does nothing to support the idea of the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit because the document is an invention created in the 1990s, after the publication of the various books about the Roswell crash, but the forger didn’t seem to have looked at a map, which proves the forgery. (Or maybe I should say he did look at a map and picked the location because of its highly restricted access. He didn’t have to worry about someone going there to see what they might find.)

In fact, I can date it even better than that because it does mention Mogul and no one was talking about Mogul until the early 1990s. It is unlikely that a report created in 1947 would refer to the balloon project by that name. It probably would have referred to it as the New York University balloon project or the constant level balloons rather than Mogul, if mentioned it at all. More likely it would have just mentioned weather balloons if it was felt necessary to make that connection. All that does is allow us to date the time of creation for the document and point to another flaw in it.

But, remember, the IPU, by whatever name, didn’t exist in 1947 and wouldn’t exist for another decade according to the best information available. This document does nothing to prove that the name of the organization was the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit because the document is a fake.

In fact there is no real documentation confirming the existence of such an organization at all. It was the “institutional memory” who created the name based on what he remembered. That “institutional memory” was Craig Hunter who, some two decades after the fact, mentioned all that he remembered about the IPU. There is no official document with the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit name on it…

Oh, I know what you’ll say. There are letters to researchers that prove the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit existed, or exists, because it is referred to as the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit in these official communications. In one of those, written by Lieutenant Colonel Lance R. Corine, it says, “As you note in your letter, the so-called Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit (IPU) was disestablished…”

In other words, Corine is not actually confirming the existence of the IPU as the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit because that is the name of the unit used by William Steinman in his letter to the Army. Steinman gave them the name. Yes, the IPU existed but it was not the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit. It was the Input Processing Unit, which certainly isn’t the same thing.

And, yes, this is splitting a fine hair, but the point is, other than the “institutional memory” of the name, the letters cited as proof seem to be responding to information included in the FOIA requests. I’d like to see a document from a government source (other than MJ-12, of course) that uses the name Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit on it. Brad Sparks said that he’s seen organizational charts with IPU on them, but not that particular name.

The evidence for the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit is one man’s memory that seems to be contradicted by the documentation from official sources, which you all are now free to reject because it is from official sources and is all part of the bigger conspiracy. Everything, including to those letters to researchers, points to the creation of the IPU in 1958 which means that a document that was allegedly created in 1947 using the name Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit is a fake. And if it is a fake then those using it in a documentary to support another aspect of the UFO phenomenon have failed to prove their point. A fake document proves absolutely nothing and shouldn’t be used as evidence for the existence of something else.

Oh, I do get it. Those producing documentaries don’t have the comprehensive knowledge needed to understand what is going on. They must rely on the “experts” to understand what they are being told… and too often there are competing points of view. Sometimes the information is easily available and the evidence of fraud is almost overwhelming but they still use it to bolster their case. They want to believe just as badly as some of those in the field want to believe so the negative evidence is reduced to a single sentence or phrase that is almost mumbled. The “controversial” comment is misunderstood by many, suggesting that there is still an open question. In this case, with this organization, the IPU, and this particular document, there is no real controversy. The results are in and the document is a fake. 

David Rudiak Joins the Dream Team

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Latest on the Trindade Island Photographs

The photographs that were taken at Trindade Island off the coast of Brazil in 1958 are again the subject of a number of new reports. The most comprehensive of those was published at

www.ufo.com.br.

You need to click on the picture of the UFO and then on the English translation to read the whole story of the investigation of the pictures and the evidence they present. You probably should also be aware that the picture on the home page rotates among several so you need click on the proper one.

The upshot of the article, written by Alexandre de Carvalho Borges and translated by Eduardo Rado and Thiago Ticchetti, is that the pictures of the Saturn-shaped UFO are a composite created by Almiro Barauna and not of a craft from another world.

This was a theory floated just last year when a Brazilian television program suggested this was a hoax. I wrote in a previous blog (which you can now skip if you read it before):　

Back on January 1, 1958, a photographer on the Brazilian ship, Almirante Saldanha, took four pictures of a "Saturn-shaped" object as flew over the island of Trindade off the coast of Brazil. Almiro Barauna developed the film about an hour later. He and Captain Viegas entered the ship’s darkroom together. After developing the negatives, Barauna at first, thought that no image had been picked up, but Viegas, looking carefully, spotted the UFO.

That, in a nutshell, is the story. There are, according to some sources, many witnesses to the craft. Skeptics suggest that few others saw anything at all. That is a matter for another time.

What brings all this up is that a Brazilian TV network, Fantastico, just broadcast a story that suggests, finally, an answer about authenticity of the pictures has been found. According to Fantastico, "This Sunday (August 15), for the first time Fantastico reveals the truth about the Trindade Island UFO. A friend of the family told what she heard from the photographer himself [Almiro Barauna] he had hoaxed the images, it was a montage. ‘He got two kitchen spoons, joined them and improvised a spaceship, using as a background his fridge. He photographed the fridge door with the object in perfect illumination. He laughed a lot about it,’ revealed Emilia Bittencourt. Barauna’s files are in possession of his niece, who didn’t want to record an interview, but confirms the hoax."

The idea that the pictures were faked has been around almost from the moment they were taken. Donald Menzel, the Harvard astronomer who never met a UFO case he liked, claimed, at first, that an aircraft, "flying through humid but apparently super-cooled atmosphere," could become so completely enveloped in fog that it could take on the appearance of a Saturn-shaped object.

Okay, but I’m not buying this.

And apparently Menzel wasn’t either because later, in his book The World of Flying Saucers, he wrote that the case was a hoax. He said that Barauna had faked the pictures with a double exposure.

More likely than the fog-shrouded airplane but a statement without a fact to back it up. You can’t just declare something a hoax because you don’t like it and have no other evidence except your opinion that it is a hoax.

My first thought on reading this latest revelation from Fantastico was that the explained the case.

My second thought was, "Not so fast."

Yes, I’m aware of work done by many researchers in their analyses of the pictures and that some have said they found evidence of fraud in the photographs. Some of it is impressive work.

But I’m also aware of the claim that there were many witnesses to the object’s flight, and it would mean that a couple of dozen were in on the hoax and never breathed a word about it... until now.

But the person making this new claim of hoax is not a relative, or a witness for that matter, but a neighbor and she has no evidence to back up her accusation. There is also a niece, unidentified other than as a niece, who says she has Barauna’s files and she confirms it is a hoax.

Here’s the deal... and I’m sure even the skeptics will agree with this. Let’s wait on the final pronouncement until the files surface and prove the hoax. In the last few years, we’ve had several people come forward explaining that their UFO photographs, none quite as famous as these, were faked. I have no problem with the photographer telling me he or she faked the pictures. That seems to be solid evidence.

In this case, however, we don’t have the photographer, but a neighbor. And the niece who has the files. Let the documentation from the files be reviewed before we completely close the case. If it is a hoax, so be it, but let’s wait until we have the absolute proof before we label it. That might be coming soon.

Now we have more of that evidence thanks to UFO Brazil and Carvalho Borges. The new information comes from the nephew of Barauna, Marcelo Ribeiro, who said he kept the secret for fifty-three years. According to him, the photographs are faked.

Asked what is the truth about the pictures, Ribeiro said that they are not true because there was no flying saucer. He asks, "If there had been one, wouldn’t some of the others on the ship have taken pictures of it?"

Strangely, he then refutes the tale from Fantastico TV, saying that Emilia Bittencourt had told nothing but lies. She knew nothing about the pictures or how they were created.

Ribeiro said that the people on the boat did see something but that it was a strange cloud formation or something else natural. He said that his uncle, who had been taking pictures underwater when the object was first seen, climbed onto the boat but had no unexposed film in his camera. Figuring out that he could make money, he pretended that he took a number of pictures before returning to his cabin for another roll of film. When he returned, there was nothing in the sky but he took several pictures anyway.

Ribeiro makes it clear that there was something in the sky, but it wasn’t a spaceship. Ribeiro doesn’t believe in alien visitation because they would be billions and billions of light years away. I mention this only because it is so wrong. The closest star is only 4 light years away and there are many, many stars within fifty lights... which is not to say that travel among them is possible, only that it is more likely than dealing with another galaxy a billion light years away.

Anyway, Ribeiro claims that his uncle, once he had taken pictures of the landscape, developed them on the ship on the orders of the ship’s captain. He had no photographic paper and showed the captain the wet negatives. Ribeiro suggested that by pointing to certain areas on the negatives, his uncle was able to convince others including the captain that the object was there when it was only some artifact in the clouds.

I do know that it is difficult to identify things on a photographic negative and I know that if you point to something and suggest it is an object, many people will agree with you. I don’t know how successful this might be in the circumstances described here.

But now we move into an area that suggests that the photographer was able to think ahead... or an area that suggests this latest explanation falls short. According to Ribeiro his uncle realized the commercial value of a high quality photograph of a UFO and knowing that set the stage while on the ship. He knew that he would make money.

Once the ship returned to port, Ribeiro’s uncle, Barauna, left, taking with him, the negatives he had shot. At home, in his studio (or laboratory as they suggest in the article) he experimented with various objects until he settled on bus tokens. He photographed them against a black background and then printed his pictures with one negative and then another creating a composite that held both the ground details and the UFO.

At this point I suppose I should mention that Barauna had, in the past, done an article about the creation of UFO photographs. He was a skilled technician, some might say an artist with a camera, and creating the composite and then a negative from that wouldn’t have been difficult for him. Done properly, no one would be able to tell that the composite print and negative made from it were a double exposure, at least according to Ribeiro. The print would look just like, well, the photographs that we’re all familiar with.

Now comes the rest of the story. Ribeiro said that Barauna shared the story with him but didn’t want him to tell anyone because he would be "demoralized" which might be a poor translation. It probably should be discredited. At any rate Barauna didn’t want his nephew to say anything until after he was gone.

So now, with his uncle safely buried, Ribeiro is saying that the pictures were faked for the money they would make. It was sort of a spur of the moment plan conceived on the ship as the crew and others were standing around thinking they had seen the Saturn-shaped object.

The article’s author, Alexandre de Carvalho Borges, said that in 2003, he had called Barauna,s friend, Amilcar Vieira, who had been on the ship and asked about it. Vieira said that he had seen the object. Ribeiro agreed that Vieira had seen something, some object, just not the thing in the photographs and certainly not a craft from another world. Ribeiro suggested that if others were standing around, pointing at the object in the sky, that strange cloud formation or natural phenomena, Vieira would have seen it too. That’s just human nature. It is the interpretation of the object that is in question here... and, of course, the real shape of it.

I asked both Jerry Clark and Brad Sparks what they thought of the newest information. Both had studied the case in the past.

Jerry (Jerome) Clark detailed the case in the second edition of his classic The UFO Encyclopedia, wrote, "The latest developments, like the ones last year, look pretty questionable, with some very serious problems coming out of the gate.

Sparks wrote, "All I would say is that the double exposure theory is rubbish and a violation of the basic physics of photography. A double exposure cannot possibly take away light from an image, it can only add to it (a "double" exposure is the taking of two pictures on the same frame of film without advancing the frame). Yet, parts of the UFO image are darker than the sky, which is not possible for a double exposure. If the fake UFO is photographed over the sky-and-Trindade island background then no part of the UFO image can be darker than the sky onto which the fake UFO is filmed."

And both of them suggested that I contact Martin Slough for his opinions on the case. Slough had been studying the case in depth for many years and had been one of the first to suggest that we not take the new information at face value without some further research.

Martin Shough was quick to respond. He hadn’t been very impressed with the revelation of Emilia Bittencourt last year, isn’t much more impressed with this latest story. He wrote to me:

I should perhaps add that the possibility ...that Ribeiro is [blending] memories of various discussions related to the several "trick shots" which everyone knows Barauna was involved with.

Ribeiro mentions the Mundo Illustrado photos and the Carioca fleet bus tokens, making an explicit connection to what he remembers Barauna telling him re[garding] the Trindade case... We know Barauna must have been often asked 'Did you fake it?' and 'How did you fake it?' or 'If you had faked it, how would you have done it?' - the latter being the question that the Navy technicians astutely asked him in 1958.

Ribeiro no doubt correctly characterises Barauna as a great talker and a joker who loved to hold forth, and he must have talked about his escapades many times. ...Of course he may have told Ribeiro that he faked them. Ribeiro may have added some confusion to the core of a true memory. But given the inconsistencies in the story I'm afraid we have to place it in the category of questionable hearsay. Sadly no amount of questioning of Ribeiro now is likely to encourage him to reflect on the story he has made so public, and the witnesses he says he could have added in his support are unfortunately dead. It's a shame he didn't produce this story years ago.

I'm not sure it is true that microscopic examination of grain structure would fail to spot [douible exposure]. The double exposure doubles the numerical grain density in the region of the UFO on the final fake negative. It may be difficult to spot this doubling, given that the background is not very emphatic and of course the grain structure is a fuzzy, flocculent mess that's difficult to quantify, but it is not the case that there is just no possible physical trace of the operation in the grain structure, as Ribeiro seems to suggest. There could be a detectable trace and the Navy people might have looked for it. I would like to see this tested.

And there is something here that Martin, Clark and Sparks didn’t address and that is Ribeiro’s story is second hand. We are warned, repeatedly, about the value, or lack of value, of second-hand testimony. It is often flawed, misunderstood, and many times impossible to corroborate. Here we have a story told by the nephew of the original photographer about how the Trindade Island photographs has been faked, but we don’t have the same sort of confession by the original photographer.

All three of them said that we shouldn’t accept this new claim as authentic without some kind of corroboration... just as we shouldn’t accept a UFO claim as authentic without the supporting evidence.

I will note here that over the years many of those who took pictures of UFOs have come forward to tell us that they faked them. Some of those were teenagers when they did it and a few were young adults, but the point is that they did confess. With the Trindade Island photos we have no such confession except for the uncorroborated claims of a nephew... and interestingly, those of Bittencourt, who he says was lying about it.

It seems to me, given all this that we don’t have a real solution. We have some uncorroborated testimony from the nephew of the man, but we don’t have anything like that from the photographer himself. Barauna said, repeatedly, that the pictures were authentic... except, allegedly, to a couple of family members.

I had hoped, with this latest revelation, we would come closer to a solution for this case but that hasn’t happened. We still don’t know if the object photographed was real, was alien, or a trick whipped up in a photo lab. I’m afraid it just might remain that way.

Cash Landrum and Crash Retrievals

One of the strange things about writing a book is that sometimes the comments or criticisms come in a short period of time.

What do I mean?

My book, Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky was published in May and in the last week or ten days I have heard from several people who wished I had included the Cash-Landrum case in the book. That is an interesting case and I believe John Schuessler did a very comprehensive study of it which has been published.

The problem for me is that I don’t view the case as a crash/retrieval. I see it as something that might have been an emergency close approach, or just a close approach without the emergency, or some kind of terrestrially-based test, but not a crash of an extraterrestrial vehicle. For that reason, I left it out.

What I know about the case is what everyone else knows and is based on the research of those who studied it in person. I have never spoken to any of those who were originally involved, though I do know John Schuessler. He is one of those who has devoted a great deal of time to the study of UFOs and this case took place almost in his backyard.

It was December 29, 1980, when Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Landrum’s seven-year-old grandson, Colby saw the strange object as they returned from dinner. Thinking that it was an airplane heading to a nearby airport, they thought nothing of it. But as they rounded a curve on the rural road, they saw the light approaching them at treetop level.

Fearing that they would be burned alive, Landrum screamed for Cash to stop. The road was narrow and Cash was unable to turn to car so that they could escape. But there was no other traffic, so Cash got out, walking to the front of the vehicle. Landrum also got out but her grandson so upset she got back in.

They could feel heat from the diamond-shaped object that was about 100 feet away. The car became too hot to touch and Landrum put her hand on the dashboard and left an imprint. Cash needed to use part of her leather jacket to protect her hand so that she could open the door.

There was a final blast of heat and the object ascended slowly. As it cleared the treetops, helicopters appeared from all directions. The object and the helicopters then disappeared from sight.

When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Cash started the car and they began to head home. As they rounded another curve on that same road, they saw the object again, and Cash counted 23 helicopters near it. Landrum thought there were 25 or 26 of them. Cash was able to pull off the road. When the object and the helicopters were again out of sight, Cash then drove home.

Later that evening Cash became sick, the symptoms like that of radiation poisoning, at least according to some. She was hospitalized twice for treatment. The Landrums were also sick, but not to the same degree as Cash, which might be as simple as Cash being outside the car longer and her exposure greater.

The case was, of course, investigated. Cash eventually sued the government for 20 million dollars alleging that her illnesses were caused by the close approach of the craft. She was eventually treated for various cancers 25 times and had undergone two operations. The helicopters were obviously US government and they should have been protecting her. The case was dismissed in 1986. Cash died some twenty yeas later.

The suit was dismissed, according to the ruling, because there was no evidence that the diamond-shaped craft was any type of government test vehicle and they were hard pressed to find witnesses to the formation of helicopters. A few witnesses were found who said they had seen the fleet, but no physical evidence or documentation was ever located.

I will point out here, based on my experience as a helicopter pilot, that I find it difficult to believe they could hide an air operation of this magnitude. The helicopters would have had a crew of three and maybe four meaning almost 100 men (and given the date of this, I wouldn’t expect any women in the flight crews), not to mention the logistical support necessary. You’d have to supply a refueling point, as well as other considerations but no trace of any of that was ever found or documented. Something like that, on that scale, would be impossible to hide.

Nearly everyone, skeptics and believers alike, suggest that the illnesses sounded like radiation sickness. One of those who doesn’t is Brad Sparks. He presented a number of reasons including the rapid onset of the symptoms and the lingering nature of them as reason to suspect another cause. Philip Klass was interested in the health of the three victims prior to the encounter.

The bottom line for me, and my book on UFO crashes, is that there is no hint of a crash here. A close encounter of the second kind, meaning a close approach of a UFO, but not a crash. For that reason, I didn’t even consider this case for my book.

Lies and Moore Lies

Let the firestorm begin.

Yes, I have grown tired of the double standard applied to Roswell witnesses by nearly everyone. If the witness says what you want to hear, then he, or she, is believed. If not, then the smear begins.

Every little slip is suddenly a false claim or a lie or a slander, and the person is attacked, vilified, and left for dead. It doesn’t matter if the attack is accurate or invented, just as long as it is nasty.

I suggested that we cut Major Jesse Marcel, Sr. (seen here) some slack because what he said in an interview with Bob Pratt didn’t conform, perfectly, to what his military records said. There are those who suggest that Marcel engaged in nothing more outrageous than a little resume inflation. Others said that this proved he was nothing more than a despicable liar and if he told you the sky was blue, you had better go out to look.

What it really boils down to is that Marcel apparently told Pratt he had some advanced education and the records only seemed to bear out about a year and a half with no degree. The Pratt interview suggested Marcel said that he had a degree, or so it seems, but the transcript provided is a little garbled and the tape no longer exists. Attempts to verify an advanced degree for Marcel have failed.

I thought we could all agree that Marcel was who he said he was, that is, the Air Intelligence Officer of the 509th Bomb Group because the records proved that. We could see that he was respected by his superiors and that the "mistake" over the weather balloon had not damaged his career. When discussing the relevant portions of the Roswell case, Marcel hadn’t told any lies. He might not have told everything he knew, but he wasn’t lying.

I suggested that we could show that Charles Moore, of Project Mogul fame, had engaged in a little of the same thing, that is, what he said wasn’t reflected by the record. He had told people that he didn’t know the name of Mogul until Robert Todd told him. The record showed that the Mogul name was known to the participants in the project as early as 1946. A slip of the tongue or a lapse of memory. I wasn’t going to call him a liar over that.

It turns out that this wasn’t really a lapse of memory because I now have the full story on the letter Moore (seen here) sent to James van Allen. Moore, according to Brad Sparks, reviewed his files for James McDonald, and pulled out the letter. According to the annotations on it, Moore reviewed that letter in 1969. He was explaining who the Bob who signed the letter was, meaning R. B. McLaughlin. Moore clearly knew that he was being described as the chief engineer for Project Mogul.

To me, this is just as egregious as Marcel talking about his college education. If you are going to reject one, then you must reject the other. To do otherwise is to employ a double standard.

It does get worse for Moore, however. In 1995, he attacked the veracity of Frank Kaufmann, claiming that Kaufmann was lying because there was only a single SCR-270 radar at White Sands in 1947. It had, according to Moore, a range of only 39.7 miles (I really like these precise numbers because they have the ring of authenticity to them when you’re inventing details.)

But here’s what I know. In December 1941, the SCR-270 radar detected the Japanese attack force at 130 miles from Pearl Harbor. The operators there thought that it was a flight of incoming B-17s they had been told would be landing on that Sunday morning. The point is that they detected the enemy at more than 39.7 miles.

In fact, the radar could detect aircraft at more than 100 miles if they were flying high enough. According to the information I have, if the target is at one thousand feet, the radar would spot it about 20 miles away; at 5000 feet, it would detect the aircraft at 50 miles; and at 25,000 feet it would detect the aircraft at more than 100 miles. We have to assume that Moore just invented the 39.7 mile range as he wrote about Kaufmann or he wouldn’t have come up with the 39.7 mile figure, which is ridiculous, but certainly looks impressive.

However, in 1994, in his interview with Air Force investigators about the Roswell case, Moore mentioned the multiple radars that were at either White Sands or Alamogordo (entrance for White Sands seen here). So he knew the truth a year before he went after Kaufmann.

Brad Sparks tells me that he has copies of July 1947 teletype messages from Moguls AAF liaison group and the AMC Watson Labs that routinely report on V-2 launches where there were four radars listed at White Sands, including two, not one, SCR-270s, and that two of the radars, the CPS-4 and the CPS-5 tracked the V-2s up to a hundred miles.

To make it worse, according to a 1948 paper written by Moore, he tells us that they tracked the Mogul balloons up to 65 miles with the radar, not just to 39.7 miles that he claimed was the range of the SCR-270. And we know, that they could track the balloons to 110 miles if they were above 25,000 feet.

What all this tells me is that Moore had a vendetta against the military and the Army at Roswell, and I suspect it began when the Army refused to help them with their balloon experiments. I say this with confidence because I listened to him complain about the Army being too busy to help the "college boys" with their weather balloons. College boys was his term, not mine. After nearly 50 years, he was still annoyed with them and saw this as a way of payback. Make them look like idiots because they couldn’t tell the difference between an alien spacecraft and basic weather balloons with rawin radar targets.

My point here, however, is if we’re not going to cut some slack for Jesse Marcel, then I see no reason to cut any for Moore. It is clear that Moore wanted to attack the credibility of the Army and used this to do it. And this attitude calls into question all his work with the winds aloft data proving, in his mind, that one of their balloon got to within 17 miles of the Brazel ranch... never mind that he couldn’t prove there was Flight No. 4 to leave the debris, and forget that Crary’s diary said the first flight in New Mexico was number five. I think Moore knew the truth about this too but chose to obscure these facts because they didn’t fit into his agenda.

While I am sympathetic to Moore because of his current health problems, that doesn’t change the facts. He has been misrepresenting various aspects of the Roswell case from the moment he learned about it. And if Marcel doesn’t deserve some consideration, then neither does Moore.

As an aside, and as Brad Sparks mentioned, this doesn’t change the fact that Frank Kaufmann was inventing his role in the Roswell case. You can’t reject him because of his claims about the radars... but you certainly can because of other aspects of his tale. And if you are confused, I will say this. I still believe that we must reject Kaufmann because of all the other lies he told