The Roswell Deception - A Review

(Blogger’s Note: For those interested in more information about this, I interviewed James Carrion on my A Different Perspective radio show. You can listen to both hours here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/16732614

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/16732644

And for those who wish to read the book, you can find it here:

http://files.afu.se/Downloads/Books/Other/Carrion,%20James%20-%20The%20Roswell%20Deception.pdf

All this will provide information about Carrion’s theories, some of my thoughts on them, and additional points of view.)

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I have been involved in the investigation of the Roswell case for more than thirty years. I am deep into the minutia of the case and know where the mistakes were made and what witnesses are more than likely being less than candid. In other words, you might think that I

James Carrion. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle

bring bias to this examination of The Roswell Deception, but I believe I can view it in a very dispassionate light. I have tried to separate what might be considered a kneejerk reaction to a new theory that moves us beyond those which has been traditionally assigned to the Roswell case.

Before we begin, there are a few things that I want to make clear. Just looking at this book as an historical thesis, we are shown a history of the United States as it existed in the late 1940s. We are shown the paranoia that seemed to run rampant, the distrust of our one-time ally, the Soviet Union, and a belief that if our government did it, there are good reasons for it. This is all demonstrated through the newspaper articles and government documents that are linked to the book through the Internet.

There are “mini-biographies” of many of the people who populated the upper echelons of both the military and civilian worlds in the late 1940s. Those are interesting in and of themselves but some of them are irrelevant to understanding UFOs. To learn a little more about the men who were running things gives us an insight into the how and why of certain decisions were made but that doesn’t really help us understand the philosophy of the times.

There was a great deal of information about the use of deception during the Second World War. This included the use of faked divisions, rubber tanks and military vehicles, and radio traffic designed to convince the Germans that the coming invasion of France would be directed at the Pas de Calais rather than Normandy as but one example. This was designed to prove that militaries, including the United States, had successfully engaged in deception in recent history.

Second, and of little importance, are a number of small errors that do suggest a problem with the overall scholarship. Walter Haut is continually referred to as Warren Haught, the name that so many newspapers used for him. I’m not sure why this wasn’t picked up and corrected. It doesn’t seem that Carrion realized this.

In keeping with misnamed people, Carrion refers to Major Curtan and provides information about Major Eugene Curtain (page 204). But this is irrelevant because the man in Fort Worth was Major Edwin M. Kirton. The FBI didn’t bother to get the correct spelling of the man’s name. They just assumed it was spelled “Curtan.”

Third, there were other things. COMINT, which is jargon for communications intelligence is defined as code breaking. True, code breaking is part of the COMINT mission, but it goes far beyond that. It is monitoring of communications, the interception of those communications and study of them. There are many aspects to COMINT.

Fourth, is the constant suggestion that the men of the 509^th Bomb Group were “handpicked.” There is no evidence that this is true, especially when we look at the unit rosters from the summer of 1947. Edwin Easley complained that his MPs were routinely rotated out of the group, to be replaced by others who now had to be trained in the procedures for handling the atomic weapons and secrets. There didn’t seem to be anyone handpicking them.

And there are assumptions that are not backed up by evidence. Often, we read about what the Soviet analysts would think about a flying saucer case, or how they would have interpreted certain information, but that is all speculation. At one point, Carrion wrote, “Astute Soviet intelligence analysts would have paid attention to the flying disc news reports quoting the anonymous Cal Tech physicist.” No documentation has been offered to prove that these assumptions are valid, and in some instances, we find them contradicted in later portions of the book.

Before we get too deep into the book, we are told, “…the flying saucer stories that proliferated in the summer of 1947 were part and parcel of a U.S. led strategic deception operation…that U.S. had amazing aerial technology… goals to stay Stalin’s hand from invading Europe, smoke out spies and to break Soviet codes…”

It is later in the book that we move back to the flying saucers beginning with an analysis of the motives behind the Kenneth Arnold sighting. This was one of those aerial deceptions that Carrion wrote about. Arnold, the man who launched the flying saucers, was lured into the area by a reward offered for finding the wreckage of a Marine aircraft that had crashed some months earlier, killing all aboard but that had not been located. The theory, according to Carrion, was that the military would be interested in the Pacific Northwest because this was the route that Soviet missiles would take during an attack. By providing an opportunity for someone, anyone, to see these radical new aircraft, in the Pacific Northwest, it would suggest to the Soviets that the U.S. capability was far superior than it actually was. This would prevent the Soviets from attacking Western Europe and by extension, the United States.

The flaw here is that the U.S. had nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union did not. This would seem to be the real deterrent and this aerial deception was unnecessary. If the U.S. could obliterate the Soviet Union with those atomic weapons, that would keep the Soviets in check, at least until they developed their own atomic arsenal. Mutually assured destruction would stay their hand at that point. Carrion suggested that we had few actual bombs and that convincing the Soviets that we had a delivery system that they could not defeat was the real purpose.

But what was it that Arnold saw that was so radical that he didn’t recognize it as terrestrially based aircraft? According to Carrion (page 84), “Perhaps Arnold was not familiar with the flying wing designs which were tailless, even though they were

XB-35

not a military secret. Newspapers reported in May 1946 the test flight of three N9M flying wings… and Northrop’s giant XB-35 winged bomber…”

The problems with this are many. Only four N9Ms were built. One crashed in 1946, two had been detailed to the Air Force for training and by June 1947, it seems that only one was flying. These were test aircraft and only about a third the size of the XB-35, so it is debatable that had there been nine of them and they might not have been visible at the distance reported by Arnold.

As for the larger XB-35, in June, according to the documentation, there were only two in existence. According to the PIO at MUFOC Army Air Field, “None of our flying wings has been in the air recently.”

This seems to negate the idea that Arnold saw something that was part of an aerial deception, which undermines the theory in the book. If it wasn’t an aerial deception, then what Arnold saw has another explanation. Carrion counters by saying that they might have been towing something, though it is difficult to believe that the inherently unstable XB-35 would be capable of towing anything.

Carrion tells us (page 114), that the deceivers had anticipated that the Arnold story would be a “flash in the pan,” so they began feeding new sightings to reporters, which, according to Carrion’s theory, culminated in the Roswell case. This seems to suggest they anticipated Roswell, or had planned it in advance. This would keep flying saucers in the news. But the day after the Roswell crash was reported, the news was that both the Army and the Navy had moved to suppress news stories about flying saucers. Rather than encouraging the proliferation of flying saucer tales, they were trying to keep the media from publishing more about them.

But more importantly, Carrion offers no documentation and no evidence that anyone was watching the flying saucers with an eye to keeping the story alive. No evidence that the Soviets were interested in it, or that the aerial deception had been created to suggest a superior aircraft. In fact, there are news reports and speculation that the flying saucers were “… a Soviet plot to create US panic.” This is a Soviet aerial deception.

Carrion, in writing about the Roswell crash, noted, as did some newspapers, that there had been a “blistering rebuke” (page 201) to the 509^th subordinates for issuing the press release. Walter Haut, however, told me there had been no such rebuke. Maybe the press assumed it or maybe a spokesman said it, but those in Roswell were unaware of it. Karl Pflock, in his book (Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, page 290, reported that George Walsh had received a second call from Haut asking what he, Walsh, had done because he, Haut, had just received a call telling him to shut up. Of course, there is no documentation for

Walter Haut. Photo
copyright by Kevin Randle

this either and it conflicts with what Haut himself had said repeatedly.

On that same page, Carrion wrote, “Something that didn’t smell right in this news article was the revelation that ‘not all the principals were satisfied with the announcement that the wreckage found on the New Mexico ranch was that of a weather balloon.’ Which principals? Making a baseless statement was borderline gaslighting the public.”

But the answer to that question is there in the newspapers. Mack Brazel, who found the original wreckage, was quoted as saying that he had found weather observation devices on two other occasions and this was nothing like those (Roswell Daily Record, July 9, 1947, page 1.)

Eventually we learn that “Lieutenant Warren Haught delivered two entirely different press releases to the local Associated Press and United Press outlets – a purposeful decision that will make sense later in the story.”

Which might be true if there were, in fact, two different press releases delivered to the media outlets in Roswell. Walter Haut told me that he wasn’t sure if he had, in fact, delivered the press releases in person. He might have read them over the telephone. Both George Walsh and Jud Roberts said that there was no hard copy of the release (and a news wire copy reported that the press release was verbal and not written). They received it over the telephone and since one of the recipients, Walsh worked for the AP and another, Frank Joyce, worked for the UP, it seems that this explains the subtle differences in the two. It was not some sort of clever deception to out spies or break codes but just the expected differences that would develop in the ways that the press release was distributed to the news wires and then published in the newspapers.

But there is a third version of the press release which, of course, suggests that Carrion’s claim is wrong. Haut provided the press release to the Roswell Daily Record. Their story is different than those reported by the UP and AP. In other words, rather than having been filtered through Walsh and Joyce, and then rewritten by editors at the two wire services and later by editors at the newspapers that reported it, the Roswell Daily Record had the information directly from Haut. They wrote their story based on what Haut told them and not what have been sent in to the wire services.

Carrion, however, suggests that this is unimportant how many press releases there were because all the key words were in both of them (A Different Perspective radio broadcast). That would allow for the code breaking operations to go forward… but, if there was actually no need for two or more releases, why even create them?

Later, we are told (page 248), “Bottom line being that Blanchard would never have unilaterally sent out the press release unless he was under orders to do so.”

A page later, Carrion wrote, “one question that has not been adequately answered however is who authorized the Roswell press release to be sent out. As it was highly unlikely that Colonel Blanchard pulled the trigger on this decision, UFO proponents shift the finger to SAC’s deputy Commanding General Clements McMullen.”

These are more bold statements that have no facts to back them up. Blanchard, as both the 509^th and the base commander, certainly had the authority to send out the press release. He was not required to ask permission from his higher

Colonel William Blanchard

headquarters. Notice that in one statement we are told he would never do it and in the next that it was highly unlikely. We are not told who these UFO proponents are.

Without actually supplying any documentation that the Soviets were at all interested in the Roswell crash, and with the story not only printed in newspapers all around the country, it was killed within three hours. It was claimed they had a flying saucer and then it was nothing more than a weather balloon and you have to ask, would the Soviet spies inside the United States actually be interested enough in this tale, as it developed, to transmit to Moscow using a code? Why not just send the information in the clear, referencing all the newspaper articles about it? No reason to encode it. Send clippings out in a diplomatic pouch because, once the explanation had been offered, there was no urgency to get the information to the Soviet Union. Carrion suggested to me that Stalin wanted the information fast and that couriers and diplomatic pouches would take too long (A Different Perspective radio broadcast).

Having provided an explanation for the Roswell crash, that is an aerial deception to fool the Soviets and a way of providing hints about Soviet codes, Carrion moves back to Kenneth Arnold. This time, however, Arnold isn’t the witness, he is the investigator. Ray Palmer, a Chicago publisher, wanted Arnold to investigate the Maury Island UFO incident. This was a semi-flying saucer crash. It was more of an emergency landing, but it resulted in damage to a fishing boat, the death of a dog, and injuries to the son of one of the men on the boat.

Maury Island is a notorious hoax. The investigation into it indirectly resulted in the deaths of two Army Air Forces officers. The aircraft they had used to travel to meet with Arnold developed engine trouble. It crashed after the crew chief and a passenger parachuted to safety. The pilots were unable to bail out and died in the crash.

All of this, from the Arnold sighting to Arnold’s investigation into Maury Island is an unnecessary diversion. Palmer, who had printed stories called the Shaver Mystery in his science fiction magazine, saw Arnold’s sighting as a way of validating some of those science fiction tales. The Shaver Mystery suggested a race hidden inside the Earth was responsible for all the troubles we face on the surface. The flying saucers were manifestations of craft used by those hidden away. Since the Shaver Mystery had been presented as truth hiding in fiction, and because these stories had boosted his circulation amazingly, Palmer wanted more. If the flying saucers could be tied to Shaver, then that would be best.

Arnold was to investigate Maury Island, the sighting reported by Harold Dahl and Fred Crisman. It has become clear over the years that Maury Island was a story invented by Dahl and Crisman to capitalize on the flying saucer craze of the moment. But there was an earlier connection. In 1946, Crisman had sent a letter to Palmer’s magazine suggesting that while he, Crisman, served in the China-Burma-India Theater during the Second World War, he had found one of the hidden caves that lead into the inner Earth. He could corroborate some of the Shaver Mystery with his first-hand observations.

All of this, about Maury Island and landed flying saucers, would have been ignored, if not for mystery calls made to newspapers about Arnold’s investigation of Maury Island. It seemed that the caller knew everything that was going on in Arnold’s hotel room as he interviewed the witnesses and discussed the matter with Captain E. J. Smith of United Airlines who’d had his own flying saucer sighting a few days earlier. This greatly disturbed both Arnold and Smith, and at one point, they nearly torn the room apart looking for hidden microphones.

But there were no hidden microphones and although the mystery caller was never identified, it is clear that it was either Dahl or Crisman. (On A Different Perspective, Carrion suggests that it was David Johnson). Given the nature of Crisman, he was probably the one making the calls. He never provided information to which he had not been privy. To prove he was on the inside, he was able to give the names of the two officers killed in the plane crash before they had been publicly released, but only because he had met them that day in Arnold’s room. Dahl and Crisman had tried to give the Army Air Forces officers some of the recovered residue from the damaged saucer but both officers knew what it was and it wasn’t part of a flying saucer. This is contrary to what Carrion suggested. George Early, in UFO, laid all this out in a series published in October, 2010; January 2011, and finally in October 2011.

The one very interesting point that comes out in all of this is that a fellow, David Johnson, had a large role in keeping the flying saucers in the newspapers. He seemed to have inserted himself into all Maury Island investigation through Arnold. Johnson, according to Carrion, singlehandedly convinced another newspaper reporter to push the Maury Island story out, over the news wire. Johnson was in communication with Arnold and knew Arnold’s plans. Johnson and Arnold would later go flying in search of the flying saucers, and Johnson would have his own sighting. If there was an outsider, a ringleader in this grand deception on a local level, then David Johnson would be a prime candidate for that. As I say, this is an interesting point made in Carrion’s book and on A Different Perspective. That alone might be enough for us all to take notice of it.

The one name that doesn’t surface in the book is that of Colonel Howard McCoy. He was involved with the Foo Fighters during the Second World War, he investigated the Ghost Rockets over Scandinavia in 1946, and then was a part of the early investigations of the flying saucers. He was an intelligence officer who seemed to be on the inside of everything, which makes him a candidate for the Roswell deception.

But the real point here is that contrary to Carrion’s belief that this was part of the grand deception, Maury Island was nothing more than a hoax carried about by two men who did not have sterling reputations and a Chicago publisher who wanted to boost his science fiction magazine’s circulation. They offered nothing that would be of interest to anyone other than those who thought the Shaver Mystery is real. The perpetrator of this was not some government organization but a magazine publisher who wanted to validate the Shaver Mystery to keep his circulation high. In this case, it was for the money.

This review could go on for much longer with these sorts of revelations. The problem for Carrion is that while he supplies links to interesting documentation, he has nothing that proves his case. He does not supply the smoking gun but suggests this lack of evidence is proof of it. He wrote, “The ‘perfect deception’ is a classic example. It is out there somewhere, but like the perfect crime, it manifests itself only in results. It is difficult to prove, and harder to study because quite often the study would attack comfortable beliefs.” (page 214)

Which is a way of saying that it must be true because we can’t prove it. We can only look at the results, but the results are inferred from documentation and information that is sometimes vague and sometimes irrelevant. The foundation is very weak and nearly nonexistent.

Worse still is what Carrion wrote early in his book. “Unfortunately, no U.S. strategic deception operations since WW2 have been declassified so I cannot offer official smoking gun documents that confirm unequivocally that the U.S. perpetrated strategic deception in the year of 1947…”

Carrion does provide an interesting history of the paranoid world of 1947, of the espionage going on by the United States as intelligence officials read all telegraph messages leaving the United States in something known as Operation Shamrock which was exposed decades ago. But all that does not lead us to an aerial deception of the magnitude claimed, that was designed to keep the Soviets from invading western Europe, to keep them from launching missiles over the Pacific Northwest and to help break the codes being used by Soviet agents.

He wrote that he was supplying a theory that could be falsified. In this case, we can say that Arnold had not been fooled by flying wing aircraft as part of an aerial deception because there were not sufficient flying wing aircraft to form a flight of nine. Of course, it might have been some other aircraft, or flying wing aircraft towing something, but again, the evidence does not support such a claim.

We can say that the Roswell press release was not part of a purposeful deception because there were not two purposeful versions. There was the single version that Haut supplied over the telephone and any variation of that version is the result of the communication over the telephone, the notes taken by those who received the calls, and the stylistic differences between the two wire services. Besides, with the information about the crash out in the public arena, and identified within three hours as a weather balloon, there would be no reason for Soviet spies to send a coded message about anything even if they thought there was something important there. In other words, the two purposeful versions did not exist and the documentation and testimony bears out this conclusion.

We can look at the Maury Island affair as a hoax dreamed up by two men with the assistance of Ray Palmer. It was a ploy to validate the Shaver Mystery and not some conspiracy by a secret government agency to convince the Soviets that we had superior military aircraft. Arnold was not part of the deception. He was just a handy foil for those perpetrating the hoax.

But in the end, Carrion admits that he provides a lot of speculation but no real evidence. While he challenges us to “falsify” his theory, to do so, we need access to still classified records of this grand deception. The problem is, such records might not exist and might never have existed. We can’t falsify the theory by proving an alternative to it because we need those records to do so.

The book is interesting for those of us interested in the minutia of the time, and the theory is clever, but it fails without any sort of evidence. Speculation is fine, but in the end, there is nothing left… the foundation is built on quick sand and rapidly collapses without the support necessary to make the case. Read the book for the history of time, for the information about the cases on which it touches, but remember that the theory is not proved.

Edwin Easley and Me

Since we’ve reached a point where evidence has evaporated into opinion, let’s take a look at what Edwin Easley told me. I don’t believe anyone else ever talked to him, so while what is read in the cold prose on the sterile page, I listened to his inflections, his hesitations, and what he said based on my experience as a military

Edwin Easley.

intelligence officer.

First, nothing he said takes us directly to the extraterrestrial in the first interview. He said he was sworn to secrecy, but you could say that this is what is told to those in classified briefings about almost anything. Classified briefings frequently open with a warning that the contents are classified and disclosure to those not cleared can result in a prison term and hefty fine.

Second, he said that he had promised the president that he wouldn’t talk about it. Does that mean he talked to Harry Truman personally, or did Truman send a representative to Roswell to learn what those officers knew and tell them that it wasn’t something they could talk about openly. I believe that Easley told the president’s representative that he wouldn’t talk about it.

Third, that the president was involved moves us from the really mundane. In other words, it suggests that Mogul, for example, is not the answer. The balloon launches in Alamogordo were detailed in the newspaper on July 10, 1947. Clearly, the recovery of the remains of a balloon array wouldn’t have caught the president’s attention, and no one would care if anyone talked about it. True, the purpose was classified, but no one was talking about the purpose, only the activities in New Mexico.

Fourth, is there a terrestrial explanation for this sort of response? In 1947, the size and shape of the atomic bomb was classified. If the 509^th Bomb Group had dropped a mock up somewhere in the desert, that might have required some sort of higher level response. I’m not sure what the intelligence value would have been just by seeing the mock up and estimating the size, but it was classified.

So, we have an explanation for the effort to conceal what had been found near Roswell that isn’t of alien manufacture. It is something that would have been concealed, though you would think that Jesse Marcel, Sr., would know what the bomb looked like, and would have known what it was, but that’s an argument for later.

What else did Easley say during that conversation?

Well, he said he was the provost marshal, or rather confirmed that he was. But, heck, I had that information from the Yearbook and the Unit History, and from some of those who served at Roswell in 1947. No great revelation there.

When I asked if he had been out to the crash site, he said, “I can’t talk about it. I told you that.”

Well, that does, sort of, suggest he had been out to the crash site, but doesn’t move us to the extraterrestrial. We all know that something fell in 1947, it’s the identification of it that has us somewhat confused.

Later, however, when I mention that Colonel Briley had said that the provost marshal had been out to the crash site, Easley said, “He doesn’t know what he was talking about.”

So, that sort of suggests that he wasn’t out to the crash site. However, as the provost marshal, he would have had the ultimate responsibility for the security at the crash site. He certainly could delegate it to another of his officers, but since it is his responsibility, he would have gone out at least once. Whatever happened, Easley going out or not, doesn’t take us to the extraterrestrial.

James Breece

He does suggest that we talk to the rancher, but doesn’t really remember the name. He suggests we talk to Breece, though he called him Freeze. We learned that Breece had died before any of us got deep into the investigation.

In the end, the important point here is that he mentioned having been sworn to secrecy and that he promised the president, or the president’s representative that he wouldn’t talk about it. This merely suggests that something important had happened, but nothing that takes us to the extraterrestrial.

I talked to him three more times about this. The second was on June 23, 1990. The first thing that I asked him was, “How are you doing?”

He said, “Pretty good.”

I asked about Blanchard’s staff meetings and Easley said that he attended those, but didn’t remember much about the meeting held on July 8, 1947. My thought here was that had it been a normal meeting, he probably wouldn’t remember anything, but then, had they discussed the material that Marcel found, if it was of alien manufacture, that

William Blanchard

would have made the meeting special.

I asked if his MPs would have guarded the airplanes involved in transporting the debris, and he said they guarded all the airplanes, meaning all those assigned to the 509^th. He did say that none of the MPs were on the flights to Wright Field. That didn’t mean much because they were never used as guards on the flights anyway.

He told me that he hadn’t talked to anyone else about this, meaning, none of the people he knew in 1947 or any other investigators. That means that my interviews with him are unique.

I had thought that if I could arrange for a general officer to call to tell him that he could speak with me candidly about these events, it might free things up. His response was, “I don’t think so.”

He confirmed, again, that he was in Roswell in July, 1947, but we’d already had the documentation to prove it.

He said again, that he really couldn’t talk about it. In fact, at one point I suggested that he seemed to be uncomfortable about talking about this and he said, “Yeah. Sure do.”

The conversation was fairly short, but friendly. I learned very little from it, though his reluctance to talk about it suggested something big had happened. It doesn’t mean that it was extraterrestrial, only that it was something that had been classified in 1947 (not necessarily meaning covered up). He knew that I was thinking of extraterrestrial, but he wasn’t giving me much in the way of information.

The last recorded conversation was on August 13, 1990. It was a wide-ranging conversation that wasn’t really an interview. In fact, the first ten or fifteen minutes was just that, conversation. I did mention that we, meaning Don Schmitt and I, might be down in Fort Worth and wondered if we might stop by. He said, “Fine by me.”

I finally said, “I haven’t asked any specific questions.”

Easley said, “I noticed that.”

We did finally move onto some questions, but it was more about the people who had been assigned to the Roswell Army Air Field in 1947. I asked if he was aware of the guards used outside of town had been transferred out of Roswell not long after this event. He said, “No. Just not aware of it.”

But he did say that the entire 1395 MP Company had been transferred not long after everything ended. My impression here was that the transfer had been planned prior to July because the company wasn’t needed in Roswell. Easley had the 390^th Air Service Squadron whose job it was to patrol the base, mount the guard, and the like. In other words, their duties mirrored those of the MP company.

I then began to look through the Yearbook index that George Eberhart had prepared. We’re just chatting about the people he might have known and where they might have gone after leaving Roswell. I’m looking for people that Easley would have known such as the senior officers and NCOs and who might have been involved in the recovery.

He then volunteered, without a real question from me, “There weren’t too many of them involved in that.”

This suggested that the number of officers and men involved in the operation, whatever it might have been, was limited. You can mount a guard, create a perimeter around something but the men standing guard are far enough away, or the object is masked in some fashion, that they don’t know what it is all about. They just know that they had been given a guard assignment on that day. Again, an interesting little piece of information, but not one that takes us to the extraterrestrial.

The next time that I talked to Easley was from the office of the Center for UFO Studies and was the last time. Since I was spending a couple of hundred dollars a month on telephone bills (back before cell phones and unlimited talk), the chance to follow up on some calls without having to pay for them was important. One of those I called was Edwin Easley. Since I didn’t have a recorder on the telephone, I took notes.

Interestingly, one of the things he said was that he didn’t remember the MPs being transferred after the event, other than the whole 1395th. In the Unit History, there is a letter in which he mentions that there had been a high turnover in the 390^th Air Service Squadron. They were being transferred in large numbers. I thought, based on the letter, it was a “train the trainers” type situation. In other words, these men were now trained in dealing with atomic weapons and security and since other units were now going to become part of the atomic strike force, more trained MPs were required. Those in Roswell were transferred so that they could train other MPs at other bases in the procedures related to atomic weapons.

He also said that the material had been sent to Dayton, but then, there is the FBI document which made that suggestion back in 1947. This does not take us to the extraterrestrial. It merely means that the debris, whatever it might have been, was sent to Dayton and the Air Materiel Command for identification as far as he knew. Easley said that this had been a verbal order from Colonel Blanchard, the 509^th commander, which would be a little unusual, but not overwhelming so. Paperwork to cover the flight could be created later.

The shipment to Dayton also fits in with some of what those who were working the balloon projects had said about the events in 1947. They had been asked to identify the debris that came from Roswell, according to them. It might have been from one of their balloon projects that was responsible. Easley said nothing about balloon projects.

The Roswell Guest House. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle.

Easley also said that Brazel had been brought to the base for several days. Easley was not involved in the interrogation of him. He just said that Brazel had been held in the guest house, which is not as bad as being in jail, but if you’re not allowed to leave, it is sort of, the same thing.

He also said that all the paperwork had been sent on to the Pentagon, though I confess, I’m not sure what all that paperwork might have been. Patrick Saunders, the base adjutant in 1947, did tell family members that they had been able to bury the paperwork on all of this. Neither of these points leads to the extraterrestrial.

At the end of the conversation is where I asked him the one important question. I asked if we, meaning Don Schmitt and me, were following the right path. He asked, “What do you mean?”

I said, “We think it was extraterrestrial.”

Easley said, “Let me put it this way, it’s not the wrong path.”

This is the one point in which we moved from the terrestrial to the alien. It is actually the only point in my interviews with Easley that anything like that had come up. Since I was the one talking with him, and I was listening carefully to him, there is little doubt about what he meant.

But let’s look back on some of this. I’d made it a point to mention that I was a fellow military officer and that I had been a pilot in the Army and an intelligence officer in the Air Force. I told him that one of the things that I found funny was that when I went to Dayton, to Wright-Patterson AFB to meet General Exon, we had gone to lunch at the officer’s club. Exon had told me to park in one of the three spots reserved for general officers.

I had built up a rapport with Easley. He was comfortable talking to me and I was careful to keep the conversation light. We had talked about keeping secrets, and at one point he asked me what I would do in his position. I told him, frankly, that I like to think I would have shared the information, but I told him that I probably wouldn’t. The oath took precedence over what feelings I might have about telling what I knew to those who wanted to know but had no authorization to know it.

I had asked him again that if I knew a general who had been involved in some fashion, who had talked to us, and who had, at one time, been the base commander at Wright-Patterson, would that be helpful. He didn’t think so and I think he knew that the base commander was not necessarily the senior officer on the base. He functioned more as the mayor of a city, overseeing the daily operations that would have included policing the base, maintenance of the facilities and the like. In the Army, they now call that the “Mayor’s Cell.”

In those discussions with Easley, I got the impression he wanted to help as much as he could without violating what he thought of as his promise to the president. No, as I say, I don’t think he actually talked to Harry Truman, but to a representative of Truman, which is, sort of, the same thing.

He didn’t give away much, and I think that most of what he said wasn’t what he considered to be part of the great secret, whatever that great secret might have been. The only slip was the comment that “There weren’t too many involved in that.”

When I asked about following the right path and he mentioned that it wasn’t the wrong path, that was the closest that he came to giving away anything important. Again, in was in the context of a larger conversation that dealt with some of the trivia about Roswell. We had been talking about Brazel being on the base. I believe that he wanted to help as much as he could without violating the oath, which explains the wide-ranging conversations we had which only, occasionally, touched on important, relevant topics.

This explains why I hadn’t made transcripts of these conversations. There are only one or two things that are relevant and the rest were just talks between two former Air Force officers… true, he retired in 1962 and I wasn’t commissioned into the Air Force until some thirteen or fourteen years later, but we did have the bond. I guess it was more of a link than a real bond.

A couple of other things to come out of this. I asked him, at the beginning of each conversation, how he was doing. He always said, “Fine” or “Pretty good.” Can’t believe how those statements have become relevant in the world today.

And I always asked if I had additional questions, would it be all right to call back, and being the gracious individual he was, he always said, “Sure.”

When all is said and done, there isn’t much here for any of us. Clearly, as we all know, something happened. There was an event that was classified. Some of the people at the base were involved and others were not. Easley, as one of the senior officers and the provost marshal, was one of those who were. He only said one thing to me that suggests that the event was extraterrestrial, and that was his round about comment that it was not the wrong path. Not really an admission of much of anything.

If we wish to plug in the statement that comes from Dr. Granik, we have to remember it is, at best, second hand. At worse, it’s probably third hand. If he was not in the room when Easley said, “Oh, the creatures,” then he heard it from family members. He had a professional relationship with one of Easley’s daughters who worked in the same hospital as he did. And please don’t read anything into the comment about professional relationship. I mean that they knew each other, might have taken a lunch together, but had only that professional relationship. I know how the minds of those in the UFO community work… or in reality, disfunction.

I will also note that I have been rejecting, in the last ten years or so, this type of second-hand testimony because it is, well, second hand. Doesn’t mean it is wrong or inaccurate, it just means that there is no way to verify the validity of it, we can’t ask the original source, and what they thought they heard might not have been what was actually said.

I am a little annoyed that Edwin Easley’s reputation had been muddied up slightly. I don’t think he did anything to deserve that and I have said as much in the comments section of the posting found at:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/08/roswell-documentation-vs-roswell.html

The original source of those comments has been caught lying about all sorts of things. Add to it his confusion between the family of Curry Holden and Edwin Easley, we can reject all that he said about this. Especially when it is remembered that he never talked with Easley.

That leaves back where we started, which is, there isn’t a lot here on which to hang a hat. A couple of comments that can be interpreted in a number of ways and one that suggests, indirectly, the extraterrestrial. In the great scheme of the world, I know that Easley’s one comment doesn’t carry much weight. To make it worse, it was the one time that I didn’t record the conversation. I planned to follow up on it, didn’t know that the time was running out, and tried to arrange things too late. He became ill not long after we talked.

That’s where we are here. An interesting comment, heard only by me and no way to prove he said it. I have my notes, but that doesn’t really do us much good because, as we have seen way too often, notes can be whatever the writer wants them to be.

Easley tells us something happened, some of the personnel on the base were involved, but he doesn’t give away very much. It proves he was an honorable man, trying to keep the secret but wanting to help me in my research. It doesn’t prove much of anything else, when you look at it dispassionately.

Roswell Documentation vs. Roswell Eyewitnesses

Since I have now annoyed all my friends with my analysis of the Roswell documentation and how some of it is quite suggestive that nothing alien fell there, I thought it time to annoy all my skeptical friends. Lining up against that documentation is the testimony of some people who were on the scene in 1947. This is based on the documentation we can find about them and the stories they tell us in the world today.

Walter Haut, for example, either wrote the press release claiming the 509^th had found a flying saucer, or he took the dictation from Colonel William Blanchard to create the press release. At this point it doesn’t really matter. The press release

Walter Haut being interviewed.
Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

was issued and it claimed they had “captured” a flying saucer in the Roswell region. The definition of flying saucer confuses the issue, because in 1947, there was no universally accepted definition. It could mean almost anything you wanted it to mean. But here’s the deal. It is vague to the point of being opaque. We don’t know what it means.

I have never understood the reason for the press release. If Blanchard was attempting to grab credit for solving the flying disk mystery, the press release was unnecessarily obscure. Compare it to the story out of Circleville, Ohio, in which a farmer found the remains of a weather balloon and rawin reflector on his land. We have a story in the local paper that identifies the farmer as Sherman Campbell and includes what is claimed a picture of his wife. When I talked to the family, I learned it was actually his daughter holding the rawin target. The point is that the Circleville newspaper story was clear and it included a photograph. The Roswell press release told us nothing of real importance, provided little in the way of verification and had no photograph.

We do have testimony from Haut, which, if we limit it to what was said in the press release, and what he said to us for decades before expanding his story, we learn that what was found was something strange. No, it tells us nothing about the alien nature of the crash, just tells us that Blanchard and company were perplexed by something they should have been able to identify easily if it was a weather balloon. No reason not to supply the explanation if it was something mundane, like was done in Circleville.

If we wish to get to the extraterrestrial, then there is Edwin Easley, who was the provost marshal (please note the proper spelling of marshal here) in Roswell. When I asked him if we were following the right path, he asked what I meant by that. I told him that we (meaning Don Schmitt and I) believed that the craft had been extraterrestrial. He said, “Well, let me put it this way, it’s not the wrong path.”

Taking that a step farther, he told family members about the alien “creatures.” That was his word to them, not mine. Sure, that statement is second hand at best because we learned it talking to family members, but hey, it does confirm his mindset on this.

No, there is no reason for Easley to have lied about it. He was very reluctant to talk, didn’t grant much in the way of interviews, and you won’t see him showing up in any of the old documentaries. I was always of the impression he wished to help me, but he had taken an oath in 1947 and he wasn’t going to break the oath.

There is Joe Briley, the operations officer in 1947. He said a couple of things that don’t take us directly to the extraterrestrial but do lead us to the highly unusual. He told me, when I mentioned, “…You heard the stories…” that “And then the story was changed immediately. As soon as the people from Washington arrived.”

Jesse Marcel

Yes, it is clear from the conversation on the tape that we’re talking about the UFO crash tale. I really don’t say anything specifically about it, but Briley knew why I had called him. In fact, later in the interview, he told me, “I just was not brought into that at all even though Butch [Blanchard] and I were extremely close.”

And later still, he said, “I don’t think Butch was stupid enough to call a weather balloon something else.”

Okay, this doesn’t get us to the extraterrestrial, but it does move us away from the conventional. It suggests things in Roswell were, well, up in the air in 1947.

I haven’t touched on Jesse Marcel, Sr. yet. He was quite clear in his statements about what had happened. There are any number of videos of him telling us that it was something “that wasn’t built on Earth but it had come to Earth.”

If he was stand alone, we could certainly dismiss his testimony. But it is not and while it is true that he seemed to drift all over the place before he died, he did say some provocative things about what he had seen and had done. These were backed up by his son and his wife. Still, we need to sound a note of caution when dealing with the senior Marcel.

Before this gets too long, let’s move onto Bill Brazel. Here was another man

Bill Brazel and Don Schmitt on the debris field.
Photo copyright by Kevin Randle

extremely reluctant to talk about what he had seen. He did find a few scraps of the material that his father, Mack, described as having come from “that contraption I found.”

This debris included something that resembled fiber optics, a lead foil that seemed to have a memory, returning to its original shape when crumpled, and something that was as light a balsa but with a strength that rivaled steel. Although he lost the debris to Air Force personnel in 1949, he did show it to several others including Sallye Tadolini. Some of these witnesses, who handled the debris have affidavits about it.

Of course, Mack had shown a bit of the debris to Floyd and Loretta Proctor. She told me about the fire-resistant capabilities of the material. She mentioned, as did Marian Strickland, that Mack had been held by the military authorities for a number of days.

And I don’t want to forget Bill Rickett, the CIC NCOIC in Roswell in July 1947. He talked about his trip to see the crash site, some of the debris that he saw there, and some of the people on the scene including Sheridan Cavitt and Edwin Easley.

Here I could mention Frankie Rowe who wasn’t lying about what she said. True, she is second hand, having heard about the crash and the creatures from her father, fire fighter Dan Dwyer. But her sister confirmed the story and ironically, one of the fire fighters who Karl Pflock interviewed and used to dismiss the story,

Karl Pflock

actually told me, that Dwyer had gone to the crash site in his private car. The fire fighter, C.J. Smith, told me about Dwyer’s trip when I asked, simply, “Did you know Dan Dwyer.” Smith’s response was, “He went out there in his car.”

These are some of the things that I think about when I’m not worrying about the documents that I mentioned in the last post. Most of the people mentioned here, and a dozen or two more that I could have brought up argue against the documents conclusion. While it is true that a few people might be inventing their tales, and we’ve had more than our share of them, there are some very solid people who had talked about their involvement. If I’m willing to concede some points based on the documentation, it seems only right that those at the other end of the spectrum admit that there are some disturbing testimonies. They all aren’t lying, looking for their fifteen minutes, and just wishing to have an interesting story to tell.

Oh, and before this degenerates into another long discussion about the foibles of human memory… yeah, I get it. But not all memories are flawed and inaccurate. Many times, the person gets the facts right as has been shown by numerous scientific investigations, and yes, I know about Elizabeth Loftus’ work on false memory. Her work demonstrates how such memories can be created, so we don’t really have to talk about that. We just have to remember that sometimes, the person relating the tale has the details right, was actually there, and is telling the truth as best he or she can…

Recanting Roswell Certainty

At the risk of annoying a few and because it seems that some people have absolutely no reading comprehension, I thought I would address, once and for all, this notion that I have recanted on Roswell. I believe it came about because some people are incapable of understanding a simple title of three words. They seem to understand the first two, but not the third. And, I thought that since there have been many commentators on this, but none of those with two exceptions bothered to communicate with me I would clear the air. In the time of “fake news” it is easy to understand how this happens but that doesn’t make it right.

North Main Street, Roswell. Photo

copyright by Kevin Randle.

Jerry Clark wrote a review of my book, Roswell in the 21^st Century for Fortean Times. It was titled, “Recanting Roswell certainty.” That third word should have put the whole thing into the proper perspective, but some couldn’t get past the first two which were, “Recanting Roswell.” Adding that third word certainly changes the meaning of the title.

In the early 1990s, after Don Schmitt and I had interviewed dozens of witnesses, from senior members of Colonel William Blanchard’s staff to ranchers living in the Corona area, I was absolutely convinced that what had fallen was an alien craft. We had testimony from those who claimed to have been deeply involved, who had seen the craft, the bodies, the clean-up efforts, and participated in the movement of all that material to Wright Field. We had many leads to follow, we had more witnesses to interview, and I believed that for the most part, these people were relating what they had seen and done back in July 1947. We even had learned of a diary kept by Catholic nuns that told of the object in the sky which would have been a nice bit of documentation.

This was before I had read a book, Stolen Valor, about alleged Vietnam veterans who were lying about their service in Vietnam. Some had been clerks. Some hadn’t served in Vietnam. Some hadn’t even been in the military. The best example of all this is that in 1990 there were an estimated 2.5 million Vietnam vets. Men and women who had actually served in country. There was a question on the 1990 census that asked if you were a Vietnam vet. Thirteen million answered, “Yes.” That meant that 10.5 million were lying about it for no apparent reason other than it made them feel good. All this provides an insight in to the Roswell case and the number of people who claimed inside knowledge.

In the world today, as I have learned more about the witnesses and have been able to cross check information, it is clear to me that the Roswell case is nowhere as robust as we had thought. I laid out the case, as I understand it, based on the evidence I have seen, the interviews I have conducted and the research I did and we are left with a multiple witness case without sufficient documentation and without any sort of physical evidence. Not exactly the robust case I had once believed it was.

The trick for everyone is to read the entire title of the review. We all know that something fell at Roswell. The debate has been over what it was. At one time I would have told you it was alien. Today I tell you that I just don’t know. For me there isn’t a good explanation which I guess means that the solution is unknown rather than alien.

Who Told Walter Haut about the Debris Field?

Since this debate about the press release has gained a little traction here, I thought I’d add a few facts and perspective to see if we can’t reach some sort of a reasonable conclusion. We do have a great deal of information and while some of it is in dispute, there are aspects of it on which we all seem to agree.

Given the testimony we have and the articles that appeared in the newspapers of

Jesse Marcel, Sr.

the time, it seems that Major Jesse Marcel, Sr. and Captain Sheridan Cavitt followed Mack Brazel out to the ranch sometime on Sunday July 6. Marcel, in his interview with Linda Corley suggested they had left in the early afternoon, but I think it was more likely they headed out later in the day. In today’s world, it takes about three hours to drive from Roswell to the ranch. In 1947 the roads wouldn’t have been quite so good and the route might not have been quite so direct. It might have taken four or five hours. With sunset coming sometime around 9:00 p.m., and Marcel’s suggestion they arrived about dusk, it seems they might not have left Roswell much before four in the afternoon.

There is also a question of where they stayed the night. We had heard that it was the “Hinds” house which in the 1990s was a one-room shack that was used to store hay. It was some five or six miles from the actual debris field. If, on the other had they stayed at the ranch house (which, I believe had been, at the very least, remodeled in the 1980s or so) then they were some fifteen or twenty miles from the debris field.

The Hinds house near the Debris Field.

Marcel said that they had cold beans and crackers for dinner. He said nothing about the time they might have gotten up the next morning which is July 7. We know, ironically, based on the Mogul records that sunrise was about five and in similar circumstances, meaning outside my comfort zone, that I would have awakened about dawn. Marcel said nothing about breakfast, what time they got up, or what they did before they went out to look at the debris field.

Given all this, I would suspect that they arrived at the field no earlier than eight, but hell, that’s a wild ass guess. If I was Marcel or Cavitt, I’d want to get home as quickly as possible, so the earlier, the better. As I said in another post, Brazel saddled two horses and he and Cavitt rode out while Marcel drove his car. If they were at the Hines house, the travel time might have been thirty to sixty minutes. If they were farther north, at the location of the ranch house, travel time could have been longer. No one asked about that and there is no one to ask in the world today. All we can do is guess based on other timing.

Bill Brazel showing us the Debris Field

Marcel said that the debris field was three-quarters to a mile long and a couple of hundred feet wide. Bill Brazel, when he took us out to the field showed us basically where it started and where it ended. We later measured that at about a mile long. This was based on what Brazel said was the length of the gouge, which is a detail that Marcel never mentioned.

We have no idea how long they spent on the field. Cavitt told Colonel Richard Weaver that he recognized the debris as the remains of a weather balloon

An older Sheridan Cavitt.

immediately, but no one asked Cavitt why he hadn’t mentioned that to either Marcel or to Blanchard. (I will note here that according to what Cavitt told me, he hadn’t been there… this was after he had given his interview to Weaver.) Anyway, Marcel eventually told Cavitt to head on back to the base. He stayed, and according to what Marcel told Corley, stuffed his car with the debris, which, of course, suggests something more than a weather balloon.

As I’ve said, I don’t understand how they could have spent more than an hour or so at the field, but if they were walking the whole thing to make sure they saw everything around there, it might have taken longer. I have no idea how long it might have taken Marcel to load his car, and we have no information if they had eaten breakfast. I mention this simply because if Marcel, on his way home, stopped for lunch, then that adds time to the trip. Again, according to what Marcel told Corley, he got home late, but we don’t know exactly what that means either. All we really know is that Marcel did not go out to the base that night. He went in the next morning, that is, July 8.

So now we come to the point of this long recap. How did Walter Haut learn about the debris recovery? Haut said that Blanchard had called him and either dictated the press release to him or gave him the major points and Haut wrote it. Marcel

Walter Haut

said that they had an “eager beaver” press officer which tells us nothing about how Haut learned about the recovery or if he made a habit of issuing press releases on his own.

Here are a few facts that are new. Based on information in the Roswell airfield telephone directory, I know that Blanchard’s office was in building 810. Marcel had his office in building 31 and Haut’s office was in building 82. What this means is that Haut wouldn’t have run into Marcel in the hallway or near a coffeepot as they came to work or went about their duties. There is no evidence that they would have mingled in a professional sense other than both would have been in attendance at the staff meetings but Marcel would have been considered a member of the primary staff and Haut on the secondary. That means Haut’s job was not essential to the main operation of the bomb group but that Marcel’s was.

So again the question that must be asked is, “How did Haut learn about the recovery?”

And the only answer that works is that Blanchard told him. Cavitt, as the counterintelligence guy would not have wanted to talk to the PIO, nor would he want to be associated with any sort of investigation that would call attention to him, his subordinates or his duties. In fact, in 1947, even his rank was classified so that no one knew what rank any of the counterintelligence guys held or as Cavitt said to me, “You didn’t really want anyone to know that a sergeant was investigating a colonel so our ranks were classified. No one knew what rank we were.” The exception to that would have been Blanchard and some of the senior officers but not many.

Although Marcel lived on the same street as Haut, their houses were a few blocks apart and it seems they didn’t socialize that much. Since they worked in separate buildings, there is very little chance that they ran into each other on the morning of July 8 so that Marcel could tell Haut that he had picked up the debris. Even if they had met, it is unlikely that the topic would have come up. Marcel would have been reluctant to talk about it given the nature of his job. If you had no need to know, then you were outside the loop.

That leaves us with Blanchard. Haut told us that Blanchard called him and told him to issue the press release. Blanchard was the one to make that decision and Blanchard was the only one who had the information and the contact with Haut. There were only three people who knew about the recovery (and I exclude Brazel here because on that morning he was still at the ranch) and two of them wouldn’t have said a word about it to Haut if for no other reason than they wouldn’t have seen him that morning.

I think that we can now end the discussion of who authorized the press release. Without Blanchard telling Haut about the recovery and providing details, Haut wouldn’t have had the information. If Blanchard gave him the information, then it was a tacit approval of the press release. If Blanchard had not dictated it to him but only gave him the basic information, Haut could easily have called back to read him the final draft but, no matter how you slice it, Blanchard is the common denominator here.

I can see no other way, given the facts, which Haut would have learned about the recovery. He could not decide on his own to write the story because he didn’t know about it. He was given the information by Blanchard and told to issue the press release. This should stop the endless speculation about Haut issuing the release on his own.

(Note: All pictures copyright by Randle except those of Marcel and Haut.)