Understanding Roswell - Addendum 1

 As has become normal, in reviewing one thing, I find another that is of interest to all of us here. To get to that point, let me explain that for decades, I have believed that the Glenn Dennis tale of a call from the Army about small coffins and later of a nurse who had seen the bodies of the alien flight crew killed in the Roswell crash, was bogus. I believed that because, after we had proven there was no nurse in Roswell named Naomi Self and that there had been no nurse anywhere in the Army named Naomi Self, Dennis changed the name. Not exactly a small difference.

Glenn Dennis

I’ve laid all this out in several arenas, explaining why this, and a few other things, led me to the conclusion that the Dennis testimony was fabricated. There was some evidence to the contrary. L. M. Hall, a former military police man at the Roswell Army Air Field, and later a motorcycle police officer and then police chief in Roswell provided some confirmation of the Glenn Dennis tale. Hall signed an affidavit about his experience. He wrote:

One day in July 1947, I was at Ballard’s on a break, and Glenn and I were in the driveway batting the breeze. I was sitting on my motorcycle, and Glenn stood nearby. He remarked, “I had a funny call from the base. They wanted to know if we had any baby caskets.” Then he started laughing and said, “I asked what for and they said they wanted to bury those aliens,” something to that effect. I thought it was one of those “gotcha” jokes, so I didn’t bite. He never said anything else about it and I didn’t either.

Ballard's Funeral Home in Roswell, New Mexico.

I hadn’t thought about this little bit of information in a long time because I didn’t believe Glenn Dennis. However, there is another aspect to this story. After I had published a story about all this in April 2020, in a post to the blog, I received an interesting comment. You can read that story here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/01/glenn-dennis-revisited.html

There were 47 comments on that story, some of which were others repeating the same tired arguments about the reliability of the Dennis testimony. However, you can read the comment here (it is number 47):

I'm Chief Halls Granddaughter, Cynthia (Hall) Ortiz. Ramm is my mother's maiden name and an alias. My Granlaw [sic] didn't say anything that he actually saw but just verified what Dennis said. He was a city councilman at the time of his affidavit. That museum makes a ton of money for Roswell so they revived the story for that reason and frankly it was a brilliant idea. The story at home from was that he didn't believe aliens even exist much less that they landed in Roswell and his affidavit is frankly indicative of that as it's basically benign. It's not a smoking gun for sure.

The point is that if Dennis was lying, then the affidavit is in error. Dennis may well have told Hall the story, and Hall believed it but it probably wasn’t told to him in 1947. Dennis didn’t become involved in all this until the 1990s. Prior to that, Dennis was a non-entity in the Roswell tale and now he has been rejected as a participant.

I just thought that it was interesting that we have a different perspective on both Dennis and Hall at this point. All Hall ever did was suggest that Dennis had told him the story about small coffins in 1947 and I believe that is in error. At this point, Hall becomes a footnote in the sorry saga of Glenn Dennis and his ordering child-sized coffins.

Roswell Revisited or I Fly Solo on the 'X' Zone Broadcast Network

 

This week, because it was the 75^th anniversary of the Roswell crash, and because everyone that I would have wanted for a guest was either celebrating the 4^th  of July, recovering from that celebration, or had travelled to Roswell, I flew solo. My plan was to cover some of the high points… and low points in my investigations into the Roswell crash.

But first, I had a rant or two. I mentioned that I was not a fan of Amazon’s new rating system for books. You could give one star but didn’t have to give a reason. While I appreciate four- and five-star ratings, when we fall to the other end, I’d like to know why the rating was so low… And many times, when there is a review, it has nothing to do with the quality of the writing or information, but with the condition of the book. I have no control over that. One of those who actually provided a review mentioned that the pages were falling out. Not my fault. You need to take that up with publishers and book binders. I just wonder how often the reader is offended by something I don’t control.

I did mention that the negative reviews, as opposed to just the negative ratings, sometimes provide feed back that does help. One of those suggested that one of my books just seemed to be an excuse to denigrate other researchers. While that wasn’t the intent, I could understand the comment and could, next time, be cognizant of that and tone down the rhetoric.

The second rant came about because I had just seen an unqualified comment on another website in which the host said that Project Mogul was the cause of the debris and that it was top secret which was why there had been such an effort to recover it. I just wish these people would do a little research and learn that what was going on in New Mexico was not highly classified. It wasn’t classified at all and that negates this excuse. For those interested in the on-going arguments, just type Project Mogul into the search engine on the left and you can sort through all my postings on it.

From there, I moved onto the meat of the program, explaining how I had become involved in the original Roswell investigation. It was an outgrowth of a purposed debate about UFOs between science fiction writers and investigators from the Center for UFO Studies. It looked as if it was going to be one-sided, so I jumped to the pro side. It’s all explained in the show, which, of course, you can listen to hear:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/50491419

Or watch here, if you want to see me talk about UFOs and Roswell for an hour:

https://rumble.com/v1bdonf-a-different-perspective-with-kevin-randle-roswells-75th-anniversary.html

In the second segment, I did talk about our first trip Roswell and how it didn’t look all that good until we met with Bill Brazel. Here was a guy who had handled the debris and who had gotten part of the story from his father, Mack.

Bill Brazel in 1989. Photo by Kevin Randle

I also talked about my conversations with Edwin Easley, the Roswell Provost Marshal in 1947. I believe I have mentioned this on several occasions, but for this program, I wanted to hit the high points.

In the third segment, because it was necessary, I addressed some of the problems with the Roswell story. These were embodied by Frank Kaufmann, Glenn Dennis and the Plains of San Agustin. Although Don and I had accepted the tales told by Frank Kaufmann, and how they were backed by Walter Haut, we were the ones that finally exposed his stories. True, others had denounced him earlier, but they based it, not on evidence, but in their belief there was no alien component to the Roswell story. Mark Rodeghier, Mark Chesney and Don Schmitt had gathered the initial evidence, and I provided some documentation that ultimately proved the case.

Glenn Dennis. Not the most credible source.

In the final segment, I mentioned one of the things on which we all agree and that is that something fell in Roswell. Once again, because it is part of the story, I touched on the Project Mogul nonsense.

I also mentioned, because there is a note of irony in it, that the Air Force, during their investigation confirmed many of the things that we had said about the alternative explanations. In other words, we agreed that it wasn’t an errant missile or rocket from White Sands, it wasn’t an experimental aircraft, it wasn’t some kind of accident involving atomic weapons or that it was an early experiment in space flight that had gone horribly wrong. Of course, we disagreed with their final conclusion about Project Mogul.

Next time, I’ll be talking with Blair MacKenzie Blake about the Allende Letters and our separate investigations into them, including getting copies of the Varo edition of Morris K. Jessup’s book that might have sparked this whole controversy.

Glenn Dennis, Naomi Self and David Wagnon

Almost from the moment that Glenn Dennis told his tale of Naomi Self, the nurse who told him about the alien bodies, there has been controversy. Although Dennis had given us the name early in our investigation, and, in fact, provided her name to almost anyone who asked for it, comprehensive searches for her failed to find her. There was simply no documentation to show that Naomi Self had been stationed at Roswell, that there had been no nurse in the US Army at the time with that name, and no evidence that she even existed in this capacity beyond Glenn Dennis’ mind.

Except for the testimony of one man.

David Wagnon.

According to what he told various researchers, and attested to in a signed affidavit, he was assigned to the medical unit, Squadron “M,” in 1947. He said that he had arrived in Roswell in April 1946, as a private first class, and remained there for two years. He said he was a technician in the base hospital laboratory. Interestingly, in his signed affidavit, he said that he recalled nothing about a flying saucer crash but said that he did remember a nurse named Naomi Self assigned to the base hospital.

In his affidavit, he wrote, “She was small, attractive, in her twenties, and, I believe a brunette. I seem to recall that Miss Self was transferred from RAAF while I was still stationed there, but I am not at all certain about this.”

In the next paragraph, Wagnon exposed the lie. He wrote, “Miss Self’s name really stuck with me because it is somewhat unusual and she was dating the local Red Cross representative, who was quite a bit older, probably in his late forties. I do not remember the man’s name, but do recall he had an office in town and was always hanging around Squadron ‘M’ and the emergency room.”

Here's the trouble with this. We know that there was no nurse named Naomi Self. Dennis said he made up the name. He told us he invented the name to protect her identity because he had promised her that he wouldn’t tell anyone who she was. This, of course, was not true. Dennis only said this when confronted with the information that none of us could find any nurse by that name in the Army in the 1940s or practicing in a civilian capacity in Roswell at that time.

Glenn Dennis

In one conversation I had with Dennis, he seemed angry that we hadn’t found the nurse. He said to me, “I gave you the name.” He was telling me that he had given me, and by extension, others, the real name and stuck with that until he was told there was no nurse in Roswell, either military or civilian by the name of Naomi Self. Then he came up with the story that he had made up the name.

I will note here Wagnon is not in the Yearbook nor did I find reference to him in the Unit History. As far as I know he provided no evidence to anyone that he was actually there in 1947, and even if he was, his recollections about Self are invented because no one by that name had been stationed in Roswell in July1947.

Dennis, in the tale he created, said that she had been a good Catholic girl. Wagnon must have missed that because he claimed, in his affidavit, that she’d had an abortion, he believed, at the Brooks Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, which is a major military hospital. Overlooking the fact that Dennis had said she was a good Catholic girl, who wanted to become a nun, the military would not have been performing abortions in 1947.

Wagnon’s tale is not to be believed. It is just another of the many that dot the Roswell landscape. It should be ignored, just as the tale of Naomi Self (or Selff as some have spelled it) should be ignored. None of this is true. 

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Steven Bassett , Disclosure and Death Threats

Steve Bassett, he of the Paradigm Research Group, was my guest this week. I thought we would talk about Disclosure and what it would mean. We did take a few excursions into other arenas, however. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/43938587

Steve began with providing a definition of Disclosure, but then moved onto the possibility of Congressional Hearings that would lead to Disclosure. He believes that

Steven Bassett

the time is ripe given what is happening in the world. Disclosure is the goal now, though I wondered if there was any political benefit to Disclosure. To me, the government operates not for the benefit of the governed, but to retain their power. We’ve seen plenty of examples of this in the last several years.

We did discuss, briefly, the erosion in trust, not only in the government but in the mainstream media as well. Although I didn’t mention it during the show, I was thinking of the Washington Post recent admission that they had run with a story about telephone calls and what was said based upon, apparently, a single source. Other outlets picked up the story, suggesting that the had confirmed the information. Recent events showed that the story was not accurate and the Washington Post printed a retraction.

We also talked about the implications of full Disclosure and what that might mean. Steven cited our bombardment of alien stories, programs, movies, books, documentaries and various other cultural aspects filled with the idea of alien visitation. He suggested that it was now so embedded in our culture that there wouldn’t be a big shock if the government announced that aliens had been visiting Earth for decades, if not centuries.

I did mention that contact with a technologically superior civilization resulted in the destruction of the technologically inferior civilization. Steven thought that I was talking about conquest but I was actually talking about the impact of the technology on the civilization. The technology could undermine the civilization causing radically alterations to it. Steven wanted to talk about the Aztecs and the Spanish, which wasn’t quite the point I was driving at.

Steve brought up some of the testimony by Roswell witnesses, suggesting dozens had been threatened with death if they talked about what they had seen. I thought that some of that might have been overblown and was the result of soldiers, who had been exposed to classified information being reminded that, well, disclosure of that information could result in prison and fines. Others, such as Glenn Dennis had been discredited.

Steve did send an email about this, naming several witnesses who had been threatened in this fashion, including George Wilcox, the Roswell Sheriff, quoting the Anaya brothers. Although I find that somewhat problematic, I will note two things here. One is that Barbara Dugger, granddaughter of the sheriff reported the same thing, and that this testimony is second hand at best.

He also said that Mack Brazel told radio station KGFL minority owner Bob Wolf that “Those people will kill you if I tell you what I know.” This happened in 1963 not long

Mack Brazel

before Brazel died. But once again, it is second-hand information related to researchers Tom Carey and Don Schmitt years later. It does seem odd that in all our discussions with Bill Brazel, he never mentioned anything like that.

During the show, I brought up Frankie Rowe, but it didn’t seem, in the initial interviews with her, that the threats had been, well, deadly. Instead, she said that she was told that her parents would end up in Orchard Park, which had been a POW camp during the Second World War.

Dr. Lejeune Foster, another of these “witnesses,” was not in Roswell in 1947. She was a doctor in San Diego, supposedly called in because of her expertise on the spinal cord and her high security clearance related to her work during the Second World War. According to the family members and her housekeeper, she returned from examining the bodies a changed woman. She said that as she was debriefed, she was told that if she talked she would lose her license to practice medicine and that she risked being killed. But researchers did not get that information from her, but her family who aren’t specifically identified.

My point was that we have no direct quotes from those involved that suggest death as the penalty for telling what they knew. We have the stories of family members and friends told literally decades after the fact. As I mentioned, the military members would have been told that the release of classified information to those not cleared would result in severe penalties of imprisonment and fine. Over the years, in the telling of the tales, those penalties might have been exaggerated. We have seen the sifting of stories as they are told and retold. Steve did mention that he didn’t believe that the military would have carried out the threats, but I have to wonder if they had been made.

Steve did predict that would we see some changes in the government position of UFOs in the very near future, suggesting the possibility of Congressional hearings in the weeks to come. He was explaining how these things come about, which, in and of itself, might be educational.

Next week is Lawrence Spencer. We’ll be talking about his book based on his contact with Matilda O’Connell MacElroy who claimed to be a technician in Roswell at the time of the crash. Should be an interesting interview. 

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Don Schmitt (Roswell Revelations and the Jesse Marcel Journal)

 

In the first of two parts, I spoke with Don Schmitt and although I had planned to devote very little of the show to Roswell, we ended up examining some aspects of the case in depth. You can listen to it here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/43273308

We began discussing the Not Jess Marcel’s Journal. For a couple of years, we had heard that the family had found a Journal in Marcel’s personal papers that covered the period of the Roswell crash. Though we were told that the family was attempting to verify the validity of the Journal and forensically checking the paper and the ink to be sure it wasn’t a modern forgery, we weren’t told much more. Now, we had the chance to learn so much about it and the big revelation was that Jesse Marcel had not written it.

Don Schmitt

We were then told that Patrick Saunders might have written because a very short sample of Saunders’ printing seemed to match, somewhat, the printing in the Journal. We don’t know why, since the producers interviewed Saunders relatives, they couldn’t have gotten a larger sample of Saunders’ hand writing. The only sample they had was one that I had sent them.

We also talked about the Ramey Memo, the source of it, and the latest attempt to read it. From all that has been said, the latest scans, which took it down to the molecular level, are probably as good as it will ever get. An advance in AI might be required before all that can be put to bed. At least that was the consensus of those who made the scans.

During the program that examined Not Jess Marcel’s Journal, they used a short clip of Frank Kaufmann. Don said that he talked to the producers after that show aired and complained about it. One of them said that one of the writers had said that it didn’t matter because all the witnesses were lying anyway. I’m not sure how you’d get so many people to lie about this, but the statement seems to undercut the validity of their research.

We also talked about Walter Haut and his original support of Kaufmann. I still believe that it harms Haut’s reputation, but Don was of the opinion that his support of Kaufmann predated his learning of all the tales that Kaufmann was telling. I don’t know, maybe, but I still worry about it.

We did discuss Glenn Dennis’ missing nurse. I think there are some very interesting comments made about all that and the validity of the Dennis tale. And, we wondered why the military would ask for child-sized coffins when adult coffins would have worked just as well. The problem was they were apparently looking for coffins that could be hermetically sealed. No need to be child-sized, other than to fit part of the narrative.

Next week, Don and I pick up on the second hour of the discussion. We both promise that it won’t have anything to do with Roswell. If there are questions, append them here and I’ll try to get to them.

Glenn Davis, First-Hand Witness... I Mean Glenn Dennis

 

It keeps happening and its still annoying. When Air Force officer James McAndrew finished his report about Roswell that dealt with the bodies, he apparently packed up everything. That material eventually ended up at the National Archives, with a note that the tapes and files had been sent by the Air Force. It provided a note of authenticity to those tapes.

I don’t believe that the Air Force conducted any those interviews. The tapes were provided by others including the Fund for UFO Research. In other words, they came from the private sector, yet the way the are displayed suggests they came from the military. I mention all this because I have become aware of another website which has posted the interview with Glenn Dennis without comment or permission. To make it all worse, if possible, they label is as “W. Glenn Davis, alleged firsthand witness to events at Roswell Army Air Force Hospital concerning recovered alien bodies.”

Glenn Dennis, Obviously.

Other than getting Dennis’ name wrong, and the name of the base wrong, they make no comment about the validity of Dennis’ testimony. It has been exposed as a hoax. Dennis told numerous lies about his involvement in the case. It was clearly invented and we, and by we, I mean a number of people attempting to verify his tale, were unable to do so. The nurse never existed, he changed her name, and when confronted about this told additional lies. You can read more about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/04/glenn-dennis-lies.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/01/glenn-dennis-revisited.html

For those interested in the truth, we really should remove Glenn Dennis from the story. He had no special knowledge, he wasn’t involved, and the tale of the child-sized coffins was probably appropriated from another witness… And we haven’t even discussed the need for child-sized coffins. Would those of any size have done the job?

Without the National Archives making this video available and creating the idea that it was the military who gathered the data, it adds a level of credibility that the Dennis testimony does not deserve. Since I was one of the initial investigators, and since my voice is one of those heard on the tape, I should know. The best thing is to remove the video so that it confuses no one else.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Tom Carey (And an Analysis of Glenn Dennis)

This week’s guest was Tom Carey. He had emailed me about the interview I had conducted with Don Schmitt. He was concerned about Don’s comments about the Glenn Dennis testimony. I thought I would bring him on to talk about his perspective of what Dennis had said over the years. You can listen to that interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/27293948

For a long time, I have been worried about the viability of the Dennis testimony. He had been caught in telling a number of lies and giving us all a false name for the nurse. That element of the story completely broke down as I, as well as others including Vic Golubic, attempted to find the nurse, or to even verify her existence in Roswell. When all that failed, meaning we had actually proved a negative (that

Tom Carey

she didn’t exist under the name provided), Dennis changed the story and the name.

Tom’s position is that while Dennis did lie about many aspects of his involvement, there was a core element that was true. That is, there had been telephone calls from the base to Ballard Funeral Home asking about child-sized caskets. I wondered about the necessity for child-sized caskets. Wouldn’t an adult size casket worked since the apparent reason was to provide a hermetically sealed coffin? The size didn’t really matter. Although I didn’t say it, I was wondering if the idea the coffins were child sized didn’t appear later in the tale… if, indeed, there had been such a request.

The validity of the Dennis tale had been reduced to this single point and it seemed that both Tom and I agreed that Dennis might not have been a participant in these events, but heard about them from his colleagues. At any rate, it seems to me, that the Dennis tale should be reduced to a footnote in the history of Roswell.

Although I didn’t say it was clearly as I would have liked, I was suggesting that this tale told by Dennis, and the idea of a nurse involved in a preliminary autopsy at the base, simply doesn’t have any first-hand testimony to back it up. I was talking about the level of the evidence to support the theory. That there was no documentation for it and that I didn’t understand why the military would have found it necessary to involve a civilian doctor when there were doctors or equal or

Glenn Dennis

better qualifications assigned to the base. Why bring in civilians which would tend to compromise security?

I was looking for something a little more solid than the children of those involved telling the story that their parents might have told. At best, all this is second-hand testimony, and might be third-hand. I didn’t make the point that we were treading on very thin ice when we moved into the realm of Glenn Dennis’ missing nurse, and the civilian doctor brought into the tale. Not to mention that the original story by Dennis was that he had something going on with the nurse, that she was military, and that she had been transferred off the base in the days that followed the recovery. Tom did say that the name of the nurse would appear in his book Roswell: The Ultimate Cold Case – Closed, which will be available on June 15, for those who wish to follow this thread to its ultimate conclusion.

I looked at the Dennis testimony at length in Roswell in the 21^st Century, which would provide, well, a different perspective. You can also read more about this controversy here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Glenn+Dennis

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2019/12/glenn-dennis-and-interview-on-youtube.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-i-learned-about-roswell-mortician.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/01/glenn-dennis-revisited.html

The one question that I shouldn’t have asked was if the failure of the Dennis testimony reflected on the veracity of the Walter Haut tale. Haut, because of who he was in 1947, should have known if Dennis had been involved or not. After all, it was Haut who had given us Dennis’ name. I didn’t really have time to explore this fully and that turned out to be something of a distraction to the overall conversation.

In the end, Tom said that he believed the story, had the name of the nurse (which would be, at the very least, the third name associated with the tale), and that while Dennis might not have been involved, he had heard the story from those who had been, and that he, Dennis, then injected himself into the tale. That’s not the first time that we, meaning Don Schmitt, Tom and I had run into that sort of thing.

At any rate, we did get a different perspective on the tale of the missing nurse and Tom’s reasons for accepting it. I find the testimony weak, but that’s just my opinion on all of this. Tom was much more impressed with it.

Next week, I’ll be wrapping up the Flight 19 disappearance and what I have learned about the Bermuda Triangle, including my nearly first-hand experience (well, I was assigned to the unit that lost a C-119 in the Triangle, though at the time I was still in high school) and the competing theories about what had happened to the flight. If you have a question, as always, plug them into the comments section, and I’ll try to address them during the show.

Glenn Dennis Lies?

As those of you who pay attention know, I had Don Schmitt on the radio show/podcast not all that long ago. We were talking about our investigation into the Roswell UFO crash (among other things) from the perspective of all that we had done. I asked him, given what we know today, if he still believed the Glenn Dennis tale. His answer somewhat surprised me.

Before I get into that, and as I have learned by surfing the net and watching television, now that I have teased you with this, I will go off on another tangent. In the end, it will make sense and it is something that I believe is necessary when we begin to talk about Glenn Dennis.

First, I have noticed that one of the Dennis interviews has appeared on YouTube and attributed to the National Archives. The source, according to the notes on YouTube, is the US government suggesting there is some credibility to the tale. I have written to the Archives telling them that the voices you hear interviewing Dennis are not government investigators, but are Don Schmitt, Mark Wolf and me. A copy of the tape was supplied to the Fund for UFO Research and it was, in turn, loaned to the Air Force during their search for any documents relating to Roswell. When the investigation was completed, rather than returning the tape, all the materials those Air Force officers had collected, were boxed up and sent to the National Archives. This included material that was clearly marked for return to those who had provided it.

To digress, as I was going through those boxes at the National Archives, I found a

The boxes of the Roswell material at the
National Archives. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle.

court martial of a doctor who had been stationed in Roswell in 1957, which was completely irrelevant to the Roswell investigation. In that particular material was a notice that the record was to be returned to the Judge Advocate in the Air Force. Instead it was in a box that dealt with the Roswell crash. I pointed this out to someone at the Archive, suggesting the record be returned to the original source as was noted on the first page of the document. I don’t know if that happened.

The same thing happened with the tape of Glenn Dennis. It was to be returned to the Fund, but that never happened. Instead, it was put into some sort of video file at the archive that was eventually uploaded to YouTube. I have attempted to get it taken down but only because the labeling on YouTube gives the interview more credibility than it deserves, given what we know about Glenn Dennis in 2020. I have also tried to get the source updated so that the tape can be properly evaluated.

Glenn Dennis. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle.

When Dennis first appeared on the Roswell scene, his name provided by Walter Haut, it seemed that Dennis was a credible source. He told a wonderful story about someone at the base ordering child-size coffins and later meeting with a nurse who told him about the alien creatures. She provided a drawing to show him what they looked like and then burned it. Dennis said that she was killed in an aircraft accident sometime after she was transferred from Roswell.

As many of you already know, there were no nurses killed in an aircraft accident as Dennis had described which seems to be the first lie. He gave a name for the nurse, but there is no evidence that a nurse with that name ever served in the Army or in Roswell, which would be the second lie. Confronted with this fact, he changed the name of the nurse and then blamed us, UFO researchers, for getting the information wrong, which would be the third and fourth lies. He then gave us a new name for the nurse, which would be the fifth lie. It was at this point that I decided that the Dennis tale was bogus.

Don, along with Tom Carey, believed that there was some truth buried somewhere in the tale. In Witness to Roswell, they quoted L.M. Hall, a former Roswell MP who

Ballard Funeral Home. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle.

was a police office in Roswell in 1947. He told them:

One day in July 1947, I was at Ballard’s [Funeral Home] on a break, and Glenn and I were in the driveway “batting the breeze.” I was sitting on my motorcycle, and Glenn stood nearby. He remarked, “I had a funny call from the base. They wanted to know if we had several baby caskets.” Then he started laughing and said, “I asked what for and the said they wanted to bury [or ship (noted added in original)] those aliens,” or something to that effect. I thought it was one of those “gotcha!” jokes, so I didn’t bite. He never said anything else about it.

This seemed to be some corroboration for the tale told by Dennis, but was it enough to overcome the lies that he had told about the nurse? And when confronted by those lies, said that he had never given us the real name, that

he had told us he wasn’t going give us the real name and then supplied another. At what point do we look at the Dennis tale and say these new lies are just too many?

The last time that I had asked Don about Dennis tale, he said that he still believed in it. I could tell then that he was disturbed by some of the information that had come out in the last twenty-five years and that his resolve was weakening. Then, when I asked Don about Dennis on the radio show, he said that he didn’t have much faith in the Dennis tale anymore. It was an interesting revelation. You can listen to our whole talk here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/24743637

Tom Carey, who has been working with Don for a couple of decades listened to the show and thought that Don had not fairly described the situation with Dennis. He wrote to me, “On your show, Don said that ‘The Nurse’ we were looking for actually worked at Ballard’s Funeral Home, and that’s how Glenn learned what was then taking place at the RAAF base hospital. Wrong. [emphasis in original]. The nurse worked at the Marshal & Marshal [actually Marshall & Marshall] medical clinic in Roswell and accompanied one of the doctors there who had been called out to the base when the little bodies started arriving there. Here’s the kicker. Her husband worked at Ballard’s as an embalmer [emphasis in original] – the same as Glenn Dennis. That’s where Glenn got his nurse story. I came across the information by chance in the 1947 Roswell City Directory (I have a photocopy of it) [as do I] after interviewing someone who knew the name of the doctor from M&M who had been called out to the base.”

There are some wide-ranging implications in this statement, not of least of which is the confirmation that Dennis was lying. Unlike what Dennis had said, at best, he might have overheard a conversation, but he seemed to have no direct knowledge from an alleged participant. According to Tom, 1LT Adeline Fanton was the nurse he was referring to rather than the nonexistent Naomi Self. Fanton, who was a nurse at Roswell in 1947, was dead by the time researchers began looking for her. Dennis had no fear of contradiction given the circumstances. The point really is that Dennis had no inside knowledge that was based on his personal observations. Rather, he plugged himself into the tale and all he did was divert resources that could have been better used elsewhere. Dennis should be written out of the story completely, taking his place alongside Gerald Anderson and Frank Kaufmann.

This does expose one of the problems with the Roswell case. Twenty-five years ago, the case was much more robust than it is today. There are cracks in the case that we all have uncovered over the years. Tiny things that, by themselves, aren’t all that important but in the aggregate, weaken the case. It just isn’t as solid as it used to be.

If you are interested in what is the best information available about Roswell today, take a look at Roswell in the 21^st Century. You’ll see some of the problems and some of the best of the witnesses today.

Glenn Dennis and the Interview on YouTube

On Monday, someone had posted to Facebook, a YouTube link to an interview with Glenn Dennis conducted on November 19, 1990. Dennis is seen in casual clothes, relaxed, and told the story of his missing nurse, his involvement in the Roswell UFO crash case, and what all he knew about it. He told an intriguing story that has many people convinced that what he said was true. That was underscored by the source of the tape which was listed as the Department of Defense, Department of the Air Force, Office of the Secretary. Office of the Administrative Assistant. Office of the Deputy for Security and Special Investigative Programs. Research Declassification Team.

All that is untrue.

Glenn Dennis in 1990.

Oh, the tape was made on November 19, 1990, and it was Glenn Dennis sitting in the chair in Roswell, but the government, the Air Force, and all those others mentioned had nothing to do with the creation of the tape, and that is the real problem here.

The first interviewer’s voice you hear on the tape is Don Schmitt. The second is Mark Wolf and the third is me. This was an informal interview and was conducted mainly by Mark Wolf with both Don and me offering questions and advice.

Two days later we did a more formal interview that I conducted. These were done as part of the documentary, UFO Secret – The Roswell Crash. I have the original tape (on Beta, if you can believe that) of the first interview. Mark Wolf took the second interview with him when we all left Roswell. Wolf was afraid that something might happen to the tape as he passed through airport security and since I was driving back home, I took the first interview with me. His thought was that we wouldn’t lose both interviews.

Wolf said later that there had been some trouble at one of the airport check points and he thought someone might have searched his luggage and had fiddled with the tape. When he got home, he found that there was nothing wrong with any of the tapes, other than evidence of a close examination of them.

Given the state of the investigation in 1990, we had no reason to suspect that Dennis might not have been as candid as he could be. After all, it was Walter Haut who supplied Dennis’ name. Subsequent research demonstrated the unreliability of Dennis’ testimony. You can read about that journey here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/01/glenn-dennis-revisited.html

(As an aside, you can see a picture of Glenn Dennis from that interview posted to that YouTube entry.)

The real problem here is that the posting of the Dennis interview to YouTube does not cite any of this. Instead, it looks as if some government agency conducted the interviews and that provides a note of authenticity to the tape. Comments are not allowed which prohibits me from providing the necessary context for the interview and the resulting investigation.

This worries me because those not familiar with the story will now believe that Glenn Dennis was involved in the case and that his nurse friend was killed not long after her involvement in Roswell. What might not be clear is that there is no truth to what Dennis said on the tape other than his name, he lived in Roswell and that he had worked at Ballard’s Funeral Home.

There is enough of these fake stories circulating through Ufology in general and the Roswell case in particular to alter the truth. It is a problem because all too often those doing research will find the confirming information and look no further. This tape should be labeled for what it is… the fantasy of a man who had no real involvement other than he lived in Roswell in 1947.

I should note here that I have notified the National Archives of the error in claiming the tapes were created by those government agencies cited. No military or government agencies were involved in this interview and we supplied copies of the tapes to the Air Force during their investigation and to both CUFOS and FUFOR in the earlier 1990s. Since comments are not permitted on YouTube to correct the error, I have suggested that the posting is in violation of copyright. Had the source been revealed, this drastic action would not have been needed.

Why I'm Beginning to Dislike the UFO Field - Part Four

I was going through old files with an eye to weeding out the nonsense, the useless, the outdated and the duplications. As I was doing that, I turned over a newsletter from December 1996 and on the back found a note that I hadn’t seen before. It explained that I hadn’t been invited to participate in the Roswell 1997 celebration because I had libeled someone. My first reaction was that is a strange barb to throw at me considering all the false allegations that had been tossed my way over the years, including some from those on the committee to invite the speakers to the celebration.

But, I got to thinking about this and wondered to what it could refer. Back in that era, 1997, I did a monthly column for the Roswell Daily Record about all things UFO. I was asked to provide the column and I received no pay for it. I just thought it was a good avenue to promote the UFO situation as I understood it and to expose some of the nonsense that lingered in the field.

At one point, in that time frame, I was in the newspaper office when one of the editors approached me saying that they couldn’t run the latest column. I had libeled Dr. Donald Menzel in it. I pointed out that I had libeled no one and what I had written about Menzel was true… an absolute defense in a case of libel.

He didn’t want to debate the point even when I said that I could offer the evidence. He didn’t care because he saw it as libel. I then said that you can’t libel the dead and that since Menzel was a public figure, the threshold for libel was much higher. He didn’t care about that either and I told him he was free to print the column or reject it but I hadn’t libeled Menzel or anyone else.

And then I wondered if this could refer to the stories told by Gerald Anderson, he of the Plains of San Agustin crash. He claimed as a small boy he had been on the crash site and told a wonderful story about it, giving us the name of the archaeologist who was there, Dr. Winfred Buskirk. We, and by we, I mean Tom Carey, located Buskirk so that we had the chance to interview him. Buskirk, of course, said that he hadn’t been on the Plains in July 1947 because he was in Arizona doing research for his Ph.D. thesis. When I talked to Buskirk, he said that he had been a teacher at the Albuquerque High School and according to the school records, Anderson had been in his archaeology class… We had now connected Buskirk and Anderson, not on the Plains of San Agustin in 1947 but in the Albuquerque High School about ten years later.

Anderson, of course, denied the connection and even produced a Xerox copy of his high school transcript to prove he hadn’t taken Buskirk’s class but the real point is that we had put them into the same school at the same time. When we asked for a copy of that alleged transcript to be sent directly to a disinterested third party for verification, Anderson absolutely refused. It was obvious to most of us that Anderson had modified the transcript to validate his claim and actually hadn’t been very clever about it.

So, I was telling people that Anderson had lied about his high school class and his high school association with Buskirk. It was obvious that he had forged this document (and I have other documents that he forged as well) and it was clear that his tale of seeing a crashed alien craft on the Plains was complete fabrication. I was calling him a liar in the hopes he would sue me for saying those things. In discovery, as part of the lawsuit process, I would be able to get an official high school transcript to prove that Anderson was in Buskirk’s class and Anderson knew that would happen.

While it could be claimed that I had, in fact, libeled those people, the truth was a little more complicated than that. As I mentioned, the truth is an absolute defense so that all I had to prove was that Anderson had lied, and I had the documentation to prove it. The real problem was somewhat deeper than that.

From the left, Don Schmitt, Walter Haut and Max
Littell. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

Around that same time, I was in the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell. Max Littell, one of the founding members along with Walter Haut and Glenn Dennis, came flying out of a back-office yelling that I was only in this for the money and that I wrote science fiction (I wonder where he had heard that?).

Truth be told, in all the various presentations I had made in Roswell, I always returned the honorarium to the hosts, taking only my expenses, except for the last time. I don’t know of any other researcher who has done this, and at the time Littell was shouting at me, I had not only donated money to the museum, I had arranged for a set of UFO magazines to be donated to them, which, of course meant that I had paid for them… and I never received a thank you for any of that.

But Littell had a bee in his bonnet about something and continued to make false statements. I think it all relates to the Jim Ragsdale tale that Littell began to push around that time. Ragsdale claimed that he had seen the object fall, had seen the bodies of the alien creatures, and had witnessed the military retrieval operation. Littell and Ragsdale entered into some sort of financial arrangement with an eye to developing the land where this alleged UFO fell. The trouble was that the site Ragsdale originally pinpointed was not the site that he and Littell were pushing at the time. I was a thorn in that idea because I knew what Ragsdale had originally said and had a tape of that interview. Later, it became clear that the Ragsdale tale was just that, a tale, with no basis in reality but in 1997 the financial rewards for Littell and Ragsdale were great. They had collaborated on a booklet about the case. Littell’s assault seemed to have grown out of that.

The point here isn’t all the nastiness involved, not to mention the false allegations about money or the suggestion that somehow writing science fiction disqualified me from UFO research (an allegation that only seems to apply to me because I had never heard any other researcher who has written science fiction to be disqualified by that same allegation).

The real point here is that you must toe the party line. You are not allowed to suggest that something might not be as accurate as thought and you must never question a witness story. You are required to believe it, all aspects of it, no matter how strange or ridiculous it has become. Deviate from that and you are a “debunker” whose mission is to divert attention from the truth, a pawn of the CIA, probably on their payroll, and to undermine the true stories being told that suggest alien visitation. Never mind where the evidence points, you are required to embrace it all whether it is crop circles, cattle mutilations, abductions, contact with the space brethren or any of the other sub-genres that can be appended to the UFO field.

I’m not sure who planted the story that I libel people, but I have a very good idea who it was. It was just another attempt to destroy my credibility because I didn’t happen to agree with some of his beliefs about UFOs.

As I mentioned earlier, this all began when I found that note on the back of a newsletter. I just thought I would mention it in the off chance that we all might be able to reduce the animosity in the field even if we disagree with one another, but I have little hope of that happening, given some of the emails I have received in the last few days… oh, I don’t take them seriously… I do read them and save them because you just never know when something said by someone in those emails will become important in proving a point at a later date. 

Hangar 1 and the Roswell Case

By a somewhat strange coincidence, I happened on an episode of Hangar 1 just a couple of weeks after I had interviewed Jan Harzan, MUFON Executive Director. I hadn’t realized that the opening of the show made such a big deal out of “MUFON’s Archives” stored in this huge warehouse-like hangar. Harzan told me that when the producers arrived, they asked where the files were and the current director said, “Over there in Hangar One,” and a title was born. Many of MUFON’s files are

no longer in a hangar… and the hangar shown on the beginning of the program does not exist as a MUFON warehouse.

Yeah, that’s splitting a hair because television is a visual medium and the producers of television shows are in need of stunning visuals which that hangar is. I can live with that as long as we all understand that Hangar 1, as described, does not exist.

But then they delved into the Roswell UFO crash and fell badly off the rails. It started with the mispronunciation of Mack Brazel’s last name and continued on to invented quotes for Jesse Marcel. The Chaves County sheriff, George Wilcox, did not go out to the ranch managed by Brazel and upon his return alert the intelligence officer at Roswell. Instead, Brazel brought some of the debris into the office in Chaves County and the sheriff then called the base alerting, indirectly, Major Jesse Marcel. The sheriff did not go out because the Brazel ranch was in Lincoln County.

Hangar 1 brought in General Nathan Twining, who, in 1947, was the commanding officer of the Air Materiel Command, and later the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They point out that Twining had created the first official UFO investigation and cloaked it in secrecy… but failed to mention that in the letter in which he calls for the creation of that study, he also cited the lack of crash recovered debris.

They talked about Glenn Dennis’ missing nurse, never revealing that the search for her failed and upon that point Dennis then changed the story about her, her name and why he had given us the name he did. They showed a drawing of the alien creature claiming it was made by the nurse but, of course, it wasn’t. The drawing was made by Walter Henn under Dennis’ direction. I happen to have the original

drawing, with includes a couple of changes made by Don Schmitt, also under Dennis’ direction. (Given the circumstances, I might own the copyright on it.)

The drawings made under the direction of Dennis, original artwork by Walter Henn,.

Then, in what I found outrageous, they begin to cite the secret or shadow government that was created at that time, July 1947, under the name MJ-12. They mention in passing that it is somewhat controversial but we all realize that is just a way to dismiss the claim of controversy. They suggest that everyone knows that it is real. This is where they completely lost me because the consensus seems to be that MJ-12 is a hoax. I laid all this out in Roswell in the 21^st Century, in which I devote the massive Appendix A to a comprehensive analysis of the whole sorry episode. I have found what I believe to be the fatal flaw which brings down all of MJ-12. For those who haven’t figured it out yet, MJ-12 is a hoax that began in the 1980s.

And we must never forget the Hangar 1 report of the “star soldier,” who claimed to have been abducted at 17, served for twenty years fighting the alien enemy on Mars, only to be returned to his bed 15 minutes after he left. This wasn’t part of the most recent episode I watched, but it is part of the series. This is fiction complete and total and to suggest any sort of reality to it makes the whole field of UFO research look bad.

Don’t get me wrong (though I know that many will), I don’t object to this show on principle, but only because they “report” everything as if it is a foregone conclusion for reality. They pay lip service to some of the criticisms of various investigations and sightings, but ignore most of that criticism. While this is supposed to be a documentary, remember what Jan Harzan told me during our discussion of it, “Television is not a documentary.” This is all television and they, MUFON, have no real control over what the producers say or do.

Or, in other words, it’s not their fault.

Here’s now what we know, based on some of what Harzan said. The show wasn’t really a documentary. You couldn’t do justice to the five or six cases examined in each episode, but it was good for business with more sightings being reported and more people joining the organization. They aren’t above running with a story that nearly everyone knows is complete fiction. I suppose we could deduce he was saying was that they did it for the membership gains and the money it brought in.

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.’

”

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.