New Socorro UFO Landing Information

The other day Rich Reynolds over at the UFO Conjectures blog, sent me a link to a skeptics site. He wondered if I had seen the information published there about the Socorro UFO landing. I had not, but found the information interesting. You can see that here for yourself:

http://www.nmsr.org/socorro.htm

Dave Thomas, who hosts the site, gave me permission to quote from the two new stories that he had put up there. Neither had been available when I wrote Encounter in the Desert. Had they been, I would have mentioned them, though one is a tad bit farfetched.

Thomas published a letter from Ron Landoll, whose mother lived in Socorro at the time of Lonnie Zamora’s sighting. He related what she told him, but I am disinterested in it. The tale is second hand, but in this case, it turns out that this second-hand testimony accurately reflects what his mother told him. I’m ignoring it because the second letter published by Thomas is from Landoll’s mother, Dorothy.

There are some very interesting things in that letter. First, she wrote that she was at home, in Socorro, taking care of the baby (Ron) when her husband called. He was a senior at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (NMIMT) and said that the campus was “abuzz with a UFO that had been sighted.”

She turned on the radio and said that it was tuned to KOMA, which was (or is) an Oklahoma City station. I know that at one time it played rock and roll, because when I lived in Texas some four or five years after the Zamora case, I listened to it. But the real point here is that an Oklahoma City radio station was broadcasting the news of the UFO landing within, what minutes, certainly hours, of the landing. They, like other members of the media got onto the story quickly. This is a point that would become somewhat important later when two men from Dubuque, Iowa claimed to have been in Socorro at the time. Their story seemed to surface almost as did that from Zamora, but a careful reading of suggests it was an invention by those men for some reason. Some of the details they gave turned out to be from a different sighting. They’d gotten their facts mixed up.

The next morning, which would be April 25, 1964, the Landolls drove out to the site. Dorothy Landoll wrote to Thomas:

The next morning we drove out to the site. There was a police car sitting off to one side. There were perhaps 7 or 8 cars parked over to the other side and folks just standing around looking. There wasn't a lot to see. There was one round indentation in the dust near where we were standing (I don't know how many total) - about like what our tires were making. There was no indentation into the hard packed ground as some later stories said. I walked up to the little mesquite bush in the middle and it was somewhat blackened. I didn't touch it but it may have been burned a little and might have had a bit of oil on it. We stood around for a bit too and then left to go home.

While it is interesting to have another first-hand account of what was going on that next morning, it is also necessary to point out that there were impressions in the ground. These were seen by nearly everyone else and either the Army or the police had surrounded the markings with rocks to protect them. They were photographed by

Landing impression. Photo courtesy
of the USAF.

several people including members of the military. Jim and Coral Lorenzen published a picture of one of the landing gear imprints in the May 1964 edition of The A.P.R.O. Bulletin. That picture was taken by State Police Sergeant Sam Chavez.

Dorothy Landoll continued her narrative of the incident. She wrote that:

Holm Bursum III was president of the First State Bank and Polo Pineda was his right-hand man [were there]. At the time of the sighting, Polo was acting sheriff… [I worked at the bank and] still took my morning breaks with her, Polo and one of the tellers. On Monday morning we were in the kitchen when Polo came in… He was as mad as a hornet. Ruth asked him what was going on with the UFO. His first comment was that he'd been told that he wasn't to talk to anyone about what had happened but this was his town and he'd talk to whoever he pleased! He sat down with his coffee and proceeded to tell us.

She provided a synopsis of the Zamora tale and then added an interesting note. She wrote:

Lonnie Zamora was pursuing a vehicle going south near the edge of town when something caught his eye. He drove up on the mesa and looked down to see a round craft with two individuals in silver suits walking around it. After a minute or two they got in and it took off. Describing the craft, he said that it had markings on it similar to what Boeing puts on its planes. Lonnie was so upset/scared that he first headed to the Catholic church for confessional and then contacted Polo. Shortly after that, I was in the front of the bank and there were two obviously FBI men - black suits and sunglasses (which they took off as they entered). They went up to one of the tellers and asked for Polo. I went back and told Polo they were looking for him.

I would like to have known if there was anything more to this encounter between the sheriff and the FBI. We know that one FBI agent was there from the beginning. I don’t know of a second FBI agent in the area, but that doesn’t mean that there hadn’t been one.

It also seems a little strange that the FBI would tell the sheriff not to talk about this when the information had been broadcast on April 24, on a radio station that had the power to reach all the way to Socorro. And that station reached into several other states as well. It was one of the powerhouses of that era.

I do know that Captain Richard Holder, an Army officer involved within about 90 minutes, and the FBI agent Arthur Byrnes, had spoken to Zamora, suggesting that he not talk about seeing any beings associated with the sighting, and to keep the true insignia to himself. Byrnes thought the news media might be a little rough of Zamora for seeing “little green men,” and Holder thought keeping the insignia hidden would help to weed out copycats.

Landoll, in her letter to Thomas, also suggests a solution for the Socorro craft that Zamora reported. She wrote:

The following year we were living in Midland, TX, I'm guessing maybe May or June, my husband had brought in the newspaper and it was lying on the couch. I glanced down at it and hollered to my husband that Lonnie's UFO was on the front page of the paper. What I saw fit the exact description that Polo had given us. It was a photo of a LEM with an article. I wish I had kept that newspaper but it simply wasn't anything of consequence at the time.

And, for those of us who have been paying attention, the illustration drawn by Rick Baca, under the guidance of Zamora, does resemble the LEM. But documentation suggests that the prototype LEMs being tested in New

Rick Baca holding the illustration he made in
consultation with Lonnie Zamora. Photo
copyright by Rich Baca.

Mexico at the time were not powered. The testing involved a helicopter. It seems unlikely that this is the explanation, especially when it is remembered that the Captain Hector Quintanilla, the chief of Blue Book at the time, looked into that possibility. He carried a top-secret clearance, and personally checked at Holloman Air Force Base and the White Sands Missile Range to see if they might have the explanation for the sighting.

But this isn’t the only new additions to Thomas’s skeptics website. He received another communication that provided a much more exciting solution for the case. Kevin J. Ashley wrote that he had been a student at the NMIMT a few years later and that he had been interested in the Zamora sighting. According to him, once he graduated and was employed, he told co-workers about the case. He wrote:

In short, I know the answer to the Socorro Saucer Siting [sic] because I talked to one of the people who was on the other side of the arroyo that morning when Officer Zamora showed up. His name is Bruno R____ and he was a mining engineering student at Tech in the early 1960’s…

As I finished the story I noticed one of the other mining engineers who worked there leaning against the door and laughing. When I asked him what he was laughing at he said, “It was me.”

He then told his story about the incident. He said that he and another mining student were bored and looking for something to do that day. They got their hands on some dynamite (possibly from the dynamite shack mentioned in Officer Zamora’s account) and decided to have some fun setting it off under an old overturned metal barrel. The first time they did this the barrel went flying into the air which they found very amusing so they did it a couple more times. (It was probably the third explosion that attracted the attention of Officer Zamora.) Delighted with the result of the barrel being thrown in the air again, they set about putting together one more explosion. As they were bending down getting everything set they were apparently seen from across the arroyo by Officer Zamora. The two of them, who were wearing white coveralls, were seized with a sudden need to get the hell out of there because being caught doing a stupid stunt like this with dynamite would get them both expelled. (Officer Zamora notes in his statement that one of the persons looked at him and seemed very concerned.) Evidently the fuse had already been lit when Bruno and his friend legged it for their vehicle to get away. Office Zamora started toward the site when the explosion went off and as he dived for cover he lost his glasses. What he saw the couple of times he glanced up was the oil drum being projected upwards with flame coming out from the bottom. Bruno and his friend kept a low profile throughout the entire affair after that and I may have been the first person he told this story to. This was in 1980, sixteen years after the affair.

I suppose, we could believe that two college students, in their early 20s would be dumb enough to play with dynamite in that fashion. And we could believe that Zamora somehow concocted a craft that roared off into the sky out of this.

Ashley did, however, elaborate on what he had been told. This according to what Bruno R. told Ashely:

Reading over the account by Officer Zamora his original description seems to fit well with Bruno’s account. It is the “filling in” of details where the mystery arises. For instance, when people went back and found four burn spots, these became a configuration of thrusters from a vehicle, not the scorched remnants of multiple dynamite explosions. Also important is that this was not a hoax. Bruno and his friend were not trying to fool anyone. This is just a case of an observer trying to explain something that they have not seen before.

The problem here, however, is that the four markings were never considered to be marks of the thrusters, but marks made by the landing gear. The area that would have been under the center of the craft had showed evidence of high heat. No evidence that would have been left behind by dynamite explosions was found, which, I believe rules out this explanation.

Tony Bragalia, who is a proponent of the hoax theory, noted that Bruno R. thougt Ashely, had gotten some of the facts right. Bragalia theorized that three students had been involved, Zamora had been chasing a speeder and the roar of the craft did capture his attention. Bragalia also noted that this wasn’t “innocent” fun as suggested by Ashley, but that it was a planned hoax.

Ashley supplies a little more information about Bruno R. Apparently, he lives in Felton, California. Thomas didn’t follow up on the story imediately. I think he thought the same thing as me. It really is rather farfetched. But then, I do believe we should follow up because we don’t know exactly what Bruno said. I have tried to locate him given the information supplied, but have had no success. Bragalia is also trying. His resources in this are better than mine, so there might be more learned.

The real point here is that we have some new information. I find the tale told by Dorothy Landoll quite interesting because she said she was on the scene the next morning. She described what she saw… and importantly, felt no obligation to share that information with anyone until decades after the sighting. I’m hoping to reach her to find out why she didn’t come forward before now.

If I learn anything new about this, I’ll post it here. For now, you can read the entire text of the letters from the Landolls and Ashley at Thomas’s New Mexico Skeptics website, and for the complete story, you can take a look at Encounter in the Desert, which provides quite a bit of new and additional information about the Socorro Landing.

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

D. B Cooper (aka Dan Cooper) and History

History has done it again. Sucked me into another of their documentaries, this one just two parts dealing with the Dan Cooper (which everyone calls D. B. Cooper following the lead of one of the news organizations that got his name wrong so long ago) who hijacked an airplane back in 1971 or some 45 years ago. After all this

Dan Cooper then and Dan Cooper now.

time, after millions spent on official investigations and searches, History tell us “Case Closed?”

Spoilers Ahead, if anyone actually cares.

The show followed a group of old guys, which means they were basically retired, as they reopened the case. There were investigative journalists, a retired FBI guy, someone who knew how to access the military records in St. Louis, and a couple of others thrown in for good measure whose role I don’t remember and don’t care about.

I will confess here that after I discovered they were going to drag this out for four hours, less commercials (and other ancillary nonsense that cut the programming down to just under three hours) I was tempted to give up. I had noticed the question mark in the title, but I thought just this once we were going to get an answer.

There were some interesting discussions about how someone outside the aviation industry would know that the rear ramp in the Boeing 727 in 1971 could be lowered in flight. There were some interesting discussions about the dynamics of leaving a jetliner while in the air and whether such a jump would be survivable (which it is because it turns out others have done it) and there were some

Boeing 727 with rear ramp down.

interesting discussions about the skill set necessary to pull this off in 1971 before anyone had actually done it.

They did settle on a suspect, one who had been questioned by the FBI back in 1971, who apparently looked something like the composite sketch made at the time. The expert in military records retrieved said records from St. Louis. I picked up on two points. First he had apparently gone through the Warrant Officer Flight Program and successfully competed it. He served a tour in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot and received two Distinguished Flying Crosses (DFC). The man who checked the record was impressed with this because he said something about never having seen that before.

I seemed to remember someone having received the award something like seven times, so I googled this. I saw a citation for Bryan Compton, Jr. who was awarded a Silver Star in lieu of the sixth award of the DFC. I could go on but that pretty well shot down this idea that having been awarded two was something so rare and strange… The Air Force, during Vietnam, handed them out after so many missions (all we in the Army ever got was another Air Medal).

These guys did go talk to the FBI agent currently in charge of the case, presented their evidence naming this guy, but the FBI wasn’t overly impressed. They also talked to one of the flight attendants, Tina Mucklow and the co-pilot, William Rataczak who apparently haven’t talked to anyone about this in decades. There was a big build up to this and these old guys listened as the flight attendant and the co-pilot talked about what they remembered after 45 years, showed them the picture of the man they thought might be Cooper, played a videotape, and the flight attendant, who had spent some four or five hours close Cooper before he bailed, said she didn’t think their guy was Cooper.

I’m not sure how valuable that was, given the time that had elapsed, but the important point is that the one person in the world who was with Cooper the longest on the airplane, said, “No.”

Then we learn the FBI is busy packing up all the evidence, interviews and records to ship from their office in Seattle to Washington, D.C. because they have basically closed the case. They don’t believe that it will be solved after all this time. If I understood it correctly, it is sort of a still active case in the sense that it wasn’t solved, but there will be no more resources expended on it unless some startling new evidence is found… which seems unlikely.

One other thing, apparently none of the money was ever found, except for something like five grand found twenty miles from the flight path. A few thought the money was planted there sometime after the fact to throw off the search… the rest has never seen the light of day because the FBI has all the serial numbers.

And no remains of Cooper, or his parachute or any other tangible evidence has been found and while the area is remote, it’s not like it’s at the head waters of the Amazon or in the middle of Africa. Had Cooper failed which means had he cratered (died in the attempt) they believe something would have been found by now.

So, I was sucked into another of these programs that is going to offer a solution to a mystery and then doesn’t deliver on that promise. They just follow some guys around, listen to them talk about their theories and in the end we really don’t know more than we knew before the show began. It’s almost enough to make me block History on my cable box so that I don’t inadvertently get dragged into wasting more time watching people not solve anything… almost.

PS: If I have managed to get some of you to talk about Dan Cooper instead of D.B. Cooper, then it might have been worth it… though ABC News on July 12 referred to him as D.B. Cooper… makes you wonder about the quality of their other “news.” And, yes, I saw CNN’s story on the FBI closing the case on D.B. Cooper, but I haven’t worried about the quality of their news for a long time.

PS Squared: This was sort of inspired by a note at Rich Reynolds’ UFO Conjectures found here: http://ufocon.blogspot.com/ which referenced a commentary at Nick Redfern’s Mysterious Universe discussing UFO obsessions which is found here: http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/07/ufos-dont-let-them-rule-your-life/.

Project Shamrock, Lydia Sleppy and the FBI

Back in August 1945, Project Shamrock was created to accumulate data entering or leaving the United States telegraphically. It was operated by the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) which used the resources of the Army Security Agency (ASA), Naval Security Group, and later the Air Force Security Service. The AFSA eventually evolved into the NSA. Project Shamrock was a sister project for Project Minaret which was a way to monitor the activities of individuals through electronic surveillance. In other words, the government using these two projects was monitoring communications into and out of the United States whether by corporate entities, individuals, and anyone or anything else they wished to listen to.

Just to make it all clear for what follows, the TELEX (TELegraph EXchange) system, which used a rotary dial system to connect to a typewriter was developed in 1935. A single long distance telephone line could carry up to 25 TELEX channels at such an incredibility slow rate that in today’s world we would be unable to comprehend something like that. It was about 0.5% baud which was considered fast at the time. These TELEXs were also subject to the monitoring of Project Shamrock.

At the time, all these gathered messages were provided to the FBI, later the CIA, and several other governmental agencies so that they could monitor what was going where and to whom. In other words, and contrary to what some have published, there was an unauthorized capability to monitor the teletype messages being sent out of Roswell by various government agencies in 1947. It was an illegal operation that ran for decades.

So, when an FBI agent told Kal Korff in the mid-1990s that the FBI had no capability to monitor the teletype messages, that agent was unaware of the historical precedent of Shamrock and Korff, who was not interested in looking any further, did not discover Shamrock, though it had been exposed by Congressional investigation in May 1975. His analysis was inaccurate and incorrect. The statements by the FBI agent were irrelevant because he knew nothing about Project Shamrock.

What all this means is that the FBI could have been monitoring the radio station teletypes in New Mexico… and you might well wonder why. Because of the atomic research going on there and because the 509^th Bomb Group was a target of Soviet espionage because of who they were. Had the 509^th been at some other base, the Soviets would have been interested in that base (which makes you wonder why the 509^th was in New Mexico, close to that open border that would allow agents into New Mexico… why not put it in Kansas or Nebraska which would mean the agents would then have to travel a long way to see anything…).

So, when Lydia Sleppy said that her transmission of the story of the UFO crash was interrupted, it is possible that it happened. The technology existed to interrupt her, the technology to intercept the message existed and the project to read these messages was in place and had been for years. That it was an illegal operation made the secrecy of it even more important.

I will note here that the information about Shamrock tells us that the various agencies were given microfilm copies of all the relevant message traffic, which, for the most part were messages going out of, or coming into, the United States. But just because that was the way most of it operated doesn’t mean it was the only way it operated. The technology existed to monitor specific teletype machines and there is no reason to think there wasn’t a “real time” capability. That would have been of limited use because most of the data collected wouldn’t have been time sensitive. But that doesn’t mean that if such a critical circumstance was identified, they wouldn’t have been watching it more closely able to stop it if they believed it necessary.

None of this proves that the FBI, or anyone else, was watching Sleppy and her teletype in Albuquerque that closely. It only means that they could have, if they wanted, and given the timing and location, they just might have wanted.

Philip Klass and the FBI

A while back we discussed Phil Klass’ habit of writing to the employers of those who thought they had seen a UFO, or who investigated them, or just disagreed with him. He seemed outraged that there were people who didn’t accept everything he said, and took great offense at that. He would express his disappointment with those by creating a little trouble for them.

A few skeptics who visit here thought I was being overly harsh and a little unfair to Klass. They thought several examples were needed. But even with some acts I thought were over the top, those skeptics thought Klass had done nothing wrong. With Klass it seems to have been an on-going thing.

While going through the FBI files that dealt with UFOs, I came across a series of letters that Klass had sent to them. Apparently Klass was offended by an article written by Dr. J. Allen Hynek that had appeared in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. It was an article that didn’t actually advocate any particular position but suggested that UFO sightings reported to law enforcement entities would be of interest to those at Hynek’s new Center for UFO studies. It provided a way for law enforcement to respond to the concerns of the citizens without having to actually do anything. A sort of win - win. Law enforcement cleared the report and the CUFOS received it for further investigation, if necessary.

According to a Memorandum dated February 21, 1975, Mr. Heim, reported that Klass had called the editor of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. According to that document, Klass, “In strong terms laced with sarcasm, he derided our publication of the article by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, ‘The UFO Mystery,’ in the February, 1975, issue of the LEB. Klass suggested that by publishing this article, the FBI had given its endorsement to a hoax (that UFOs are extra-terrestrial in origin) and to a fraud (Dr. J. Allen Hynek).”

Importantly, according to the memorandum, “Mr. Klass was politely reminded that nowhere in Dr. Hynek’s article appearing in the Bulletin, or in numerous other of his writings which were examined by us, does Hynek suggest UFOs are extra-terrestrial in origin…” (Remember, this is 1975, about the time he was establishing CUFOS).

A letter dated June 14, 1975, written to then FBI Director Clarence Kelly, Klass renewed his assault. He wrote, “The enclosed photo-copy of a headline and feature story in the recent issue of ‘The National Tattler’ is a portent of the sort of ‘FBI endorsement’ for the flying-saucer myth that you can expect to see, repeatedly, as a result of an article about UFOs carried by the February issue of The Law Enforcement Bulletin.” While his source for this claim of FBI endorsement outrage is The National Tattler, hardly the pinnacle of journalistic excellence, that didn’t matter all that much to Klass, he quoted it anyway.

Klass added, “That article was written by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the spiritual leader of the vocal group of ‘believers’ and ‘kooks’ who claim we are being visited by extraterrestrial spaceships. And while the FBI did not endorse Hynek’s views per se, the decision to publish his article and to alert law enforcement agencies as to what to do ‘if they land,’ has embroiled the agency for all time.”

The telephone call then, was not enough to slander Dr. Hynek. When he didn’t receive the response he wanted, he renewed his attack, but toned down the rhetoric in the written communication. He just claimed that Hynek was the “spiritual leader” of, what to Klass, would be the other side. But he had learned that the FBI had not endorsed the opinion that some UFOs were alien craft merely that they approved of the idea of the UFO reports being relayed to a non-governmental agency to investigate. Hynek had offered the various law enforcement agencies an alternative to telling the public to call the Air Force or the local college authorities if they felt a need to make a report.

I am not sure what so annoyed Klass about this. Hynek asked for the various law enforcement agencies to relay the reports to the Center. I don’t know why Klass would object to this. It wasn’t as if he was attempting to force his belief structure on anyone. He was merely asking for information. Klass was actually attempting to somehow inhibit that flow.

There is nothing wrong with Klass contacting the FBI to respond to their publication of Hynek’s article. There is nothing wrong with Klass offering to write a rebuttal piece giving his opinions about the reality, or lack thereof, of UFOs. There is nothing wrong with Klass writing, “I would welcome the opportunity to present the other side of the UFO issue in The Law Enforcement Bulletin, and to thereby help remove the earlier seeming FBI endorsement of flying saucers.”

It was the language, the allegations and the name calling which is out of place. Reasonable people can reasonably disagree, but Klass wouldn’t leave it at that. He crossed a line, repeatedly, with his personal attacks and his shading of reality to suit his purposes. He was uninterested in debate; he was in a campaign to inflict his views on everyone else.

The point is that Klass did carry about a campaign against those with whom he disagreed. I know that I don’t attempt to suppress the opinions and beliefs of the skeptics who visit here (except when the insults become too personal) and welcome, for the most part, their view of the issues. But for a few, such as Klass, it wasn’t enough that he had what he believed to be the ultimate truth; everyone had to agree with that truth as well.

Lazy Journalists and UFOs

What in the world has happened to journalism in this country? Over the last weekend (15 – 16 April 2011) there was quite a stir about an FBI document (seen below) that some had found on a web site that posted a bunch of FBI documents. This one concerned a crash of a UFO in New Mexico with the recovery of alien bodies.

A real find...

Except those of us who have been in the UFO field for more than twenty minutes already had copies of the documents. I found them last century and when I say I found them, it was in a package of documents that the FBI had released to Dr. Bruce Maccabee in response to one of his FOIA requests. He, through the Fund for UFO Research, provided many of us with copies of the documents.

The document, with a subject of "FLYING SAUCERS, INFORMATION CONCERNING," (who developed this style for subject lines in government communications anyway) said, "An investigator for the Air Forces [sic] stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots."

The important clue in this document, which the journalists didn’t find and didn’t understand was, "According to Mr. (Redacted) informant, the saucers were found in New Mexico due to the fact that the Government has a very high-powered radar set-up in that area and it is believed the radar interferes with the controling mechanics of the saucers."

The consensus of UFO researchers is that the information came from Frank Scully who wrote Behind the Flying Saucers, about three UFO crashes, though only one was in New Mexico, and that the saucer had been brought down by radar. The journalists just didn’t know the history of this information and didn’t bother to check.

Scully reported on three crashes. The one in New Mexico and two in Arizona. Originally, he reported on one in northern Africa, but that seemed to disappear from his writings in later versions of these events.

Time magazine contained a story that was clearly the Aztec crash (from Scully) in January 1950. That might have inspired the tale given to the FBI.

To make this worse, if possible. Some of those lazy journalists, who apparently didn’t bother to check with any of us who have been around for a while, added the MJ-12 Operations Manual to the mix. This document surfaced in the 1990s and again the consensus is that it is a fake.

Yes, there are those who believe that manual to be authentic, but their arguments are weak. That is a debate that we’ll hold off until another time.

In the end, we have a sudden spike in interest in documents that have been around the UFO field for decades. The source of the original information is known and the events to which it refers have been identified. Very few believe it refers to real events. It seems the document was forwarded to the FBI as a matter of routine by an agent in Washington who had heard someone talking about this.

The real question is why would the agent have done that? Hoover, as we know, was interested in UFOs, so maybe the agent believed it was something the director would want to know. At any rate, we know the importance of this document... It has none.

Ralph Multer and the Roswell UFO Crash

Not all that long ago a couple of people asked me what I knew about this Ralph Multer guy. I hadn’t heard of him but did a little research and discovered he was about to be added to the list of Roswell witnesses. Well, not really. His family was saying that he had told them about his brush with the Roswell case so his name might be added but he wouldn’t be telling us anything new.

Multer, who was described by Ed Balint at CantonRep.com, as a blue-collar worker, a World War II veteran who had been wounded during the war and had participated in the Invasion of Iwo Jima, apparently told family before he died that he had seen something from another world. He was married young and worked at the Timken Company as a truck driver.

According to the family, he told them that he had hauled debris from the flying saucer crash for testing at the plant. He said he had been told, along with two fellow truck drivers to pick up a load from the rail yard. He said that three trucks, covered by tarps, carried the material to the Timken furnaces for testing. His truck had the largest of the loads.

When they arrived at the plant, the were met by the FBI agents. In an incredible breach of security, one of that agents told him that the metal had come from a flying saucer recovered in New Mexico. Multer was told by an FBI agent not to tell anyone about what he had seen. It was all highly classified.

According to the story, Multer talked to someone at the plant who told him that the metal couldn’t be cut and couldn’t be heated, let alone melted. It was lightweight and silver or gray, which isn’t much of a description.

This story apparently surfaced in the mid-1990s when William E. Jones and Irena McCammon Scott heard it from Multer’s widow. He died in 1982 without talking to anyone about it other than family. They, of course, believe it, insisting that Multer wasn’t a liar and didn’t tell tales.

So, what do we make of all this. Frankly, I’m quite skeptical of this story. Why? Because there is no reason for the Army to have taken that much debris to a private company to run these sorts of tests. The facilities at Wright Field, in 1947, could have run the tests and not risk compromising the case. Why take that chance?

And, of course, the testing was compromised by Multer. He told family about it, apparently all his life. He was told not to talk, but did anyway.

And here is something else. Why was the FBI involved at all? The Army could have assured that the truck drivers and all the other civilians were warned not to talk about the case. No reason to bring in the FBI or to let even more people in on the secret.

That’s why this case breaks down. There is no need to compromise security by using a civilian agency, no matter what sort of governmental contract work they might be doing, or had done. There was no reason to take three truckloads of the stuff to Timken for testing.

If you are attempting to keep a secret, you simply do not involve people who have no need to know. You don’t ship it to a location to be put on trucks to be driven to a civilian plant. You protect it carefully and run the tests in isolation on military facilities. You don’t involve the FBI or anyone else, if you can avoid that.

Ben Franklin said that three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. In this case, it seems that the Army was spreading the secret much farther than necessary.

And if they needed the special facilities at Timken to test the debris, there is absolutely no reason to tell the truck drivers what they are carrying. There is no reason to mention flying saucers or New Mexico. Just tell them it is a specialized aircraft from Dayton (location of Wright Field) and let it go at that.

In fact, there is no reason to give this information to the FBI agents. They could have done their jobs without knowing the material was from a crashed flying saucer in New Mexico. A cover story could have been invented... sort of like the Project Mogul story we’re saddled with today.

No, I am not buying this story, especially since there is no way to corroborate it. Without something more, we might want to note it in passing, but we certainly don’t want to add it to the lists of evidence proving Roswell was extraterrestrial. It doesn’t do that and it is an unnecessary diversion. Let’s just leave it at that.