The Roswell Report - Case Closed... Maybe Not

Here’s something that I don’t believe anyone has commented on. The Roswell Report – Case Closed document issued through the Air Force and written by Captain James McAndrew is based on lies, and if that is the case, then the document is flawed and unreliable.

You might well ask, “What do you mean?”

First, in explaining that anthropomorphic dummies were responsible for the reports of bodies involved with the Roswell crash, McAndrew relies on statements

Jim Ragsdale. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle

made by our old pal, Jim Ragsdale. In fact, this becomes quite important in proving that the Air Force experiments with high altitude ejection systems and other tests were responsible for the tales of bodies being recovered. McAndrew wrote:

Testimony attributed to Ragsdale, who is deceased, states that he and a friend were camping one evening and saw something fall from the sky. The next morning, when they went to investigate, they saw a crash site:

“One part [of the craft] [brackets in McAndrew version] was kind of buried in the ground and one part of it was sticking our [out] of the ground.” “I’m sure that [there] was bodies… either bodies or dummies.” “The federal government could have been doing something they didn’t want anyone to know what this was. They was using dummies in those damned things… they could use remote control… but it was either dummies or bodies or something laying there. They looked like bodies. They were not very long… [not] over four or five feet long at the most. “We didn’t see their faces or nothing like that… we just gotten to the site and the Army… and all [was] coming and we got into a damned jeep and took off.”

This testimony [meaning Ragsdale’s statements] then describes an assortment of military vehicles used to recover the “bodies.”: “It was two or three six-by-six Army trucks a wrecker and everything. Leading the pack was a ’47 Ford car with guys in it… It was six or eight big trucks besides the pickup, weapons carriers and stuff like that.” Ragsdale also said that before he left the area he observed the military personnel “gathering stuff up” and “they cleaned everything up.”

…In his testimony, Ragsdale made numerous references to equipment vehicles, and procedures consistent with documented dummy recoveries for projects HIGH DIVE and EXCELSIOR. The repeated use of the term “dummy” and the witness’ own admission that “they was using dummies in those damned things” and “I’m sure that was bodies… either bodies or dummies” leaves little doubt that what he described was an anthropomorphic dummy recovery.

And that would be a powerful argument except for one fact. Ragsdale was lying. He hadn’t been out there, he hadn’t seen anything fall from the sky and he hadn’t seen dummies to be confused with alien bodies.

McAndrew goes on to explain, “If the witness was even a short distance from odd looking anthropomorphic dummies, it would be logical for him to believe, when interviewed 35 to 40 years after the event, that he ‘thought they were dummies or bodies or something.’

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And I could go on; pointing out more mistakes in McAndrew’s attempt to convince us all that Ragsdale had seen one of these dummy recoveries, but why? Ragsdale was lying and McAndrew, when he wrote his report, could have found that out. In my book, also published in 1997, The Randle Report, I expose the Ragsdale tale for

Max Littell, closest to the camera, then Walter
Haut and Don Schmitt. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle

the lie that it is. I also detail how Max Littell had manipulated the story so that he would have something to talk about when reporters, researchers, and documentarians came to the museum in Roswell. Since my book and McAndrew’s were published in the same year, it would mean that we had access to the same information. McAndrew just didn’t bother to check to see if anything new had been learned about Ragsdale before creating his tale of anthropomorphic dummies.

To make it worse, William P. Barnett, writing in Crosswinds in August 1996, provides, in great detail, the various problems with the Ragsdale story. It is quite clear at that point that there is nothing of value here and that Ragsdale, with coaching from Littell, has changed the story. McAndrew, with the resources of the USAF behind him, should have been able to learn all about the Ragsdale tale. Since it is clearly untrue, it renders all the discussion about Project High Dive and Excelsior, anthropomorphic dummies, and government experimentation moot. The foundation of McAndrew’s theory, which is the Ragsdale nonsense, is erected on quicksand.

There are other problems as well. On page 46 of his report, McAndrew compares a drawing of a triangular-shaped object provided by Frank Kaufmann with “A tethered ‘Vee’ balloon shown… at Holloman AFB, N.M. in March 1965. This experimental balloon, is strikingly similar to the ‘alien’ craft.’”

Unfortunately for McAndrew, and something that he might have suspected when he wrote his book, Kaufmann was not telling the truth. It wasn’t until after 2000 that Kaufmann was exposed, thanks to the work of Mark Rodeghier, Mark Chesney and Don Schmitt. Given that, we can now say that his analysis of comparing the object drawn by Kaufmann to that launched at Holloman is in error as well.

Glenn Dennis

He also attacks the “missing nurse” story told by Glenn Dennis. The problem here, as it is with these other tales he uses is that the Dennis story is bogus as well. There is no missing nurse, information which was available in 1997 but McAndrew failed to find. Wouldn’t a stronger case be made by pointing this out rather than going off on the tangent that he does?

Maybe the most egregious error by McAndrew (and I’m being a bit generous here) is the illustration on page 6 that shows a long Mogul array. Although he suggests that the illustration is similar to the one found by Mack Brazel, it is actually from Mogul Flight No. 2 which had a configuration different than those used in New Mexico. He says nothing about that which is misleading at best.

What is given here is a report used to explain away the tales of bodies by suggesting government experiments in the 1950s. Had McAndrew done his homework, had he investigated all this rather than just read a bunch of books and official documents, he actually could have made a much stronger case. As it is, his argument fails because he used bogus information to support it.

Before anyone feels the need to point out that this sword cuts both ways, let me note that while Phil Klass and Karl Pflock rejected Ragsdale and Kaufmann, they did so only because they did not believe that anything alien fell near Roswell. They were right for the wrong reason, but it was those of us on the other side of the fence that worked to expose these people when we learned the truth. It would have been better had we known the truth before we promoted their tales and it took us a while to get to that point, but we did arrive at it… I have seen nothing from McAndrew acknowledging that his book was based on that same false information.