Did Herbert Dick Lie about Being on the Plains of San Agustin?

 

A fellow identifying himself as Lemurian is often commenting here but most of those comments don’t see the light of day. That’s because they’re just nasty and often appended to the wrong posting. It’s as if he just clicks on one and then writes whatever moves him regardless of the topic. I delete them because they are nasty and inappropriate. Recently, however, he did provide a comment that wasn’t nasty, only inappropriate. He suggested that we all access a website that contained information about the Barney Barnett aspect of the Roswell case. You can access that story here:

https://www.ufoexplorations.com/other-roswell-crash-secret-of-plain

While the story is interesting, it is also somewhat misleading, and it is filled with misinformation. Please note here that I said “Misinformation,” rather than “Disinformation.” There is a difference.

Rather than go through this one segment at a time, I’ll just make a few general comments. First, there are no other first-hand witnesses to the Barnett tale. The archaeologists have never been found and the Gerald Anderson story, sometimes used to bolster the case, is a hoax. Anderson is little more than a footnote in the overall picture. He destroyed his own credibility by lying about his Naval career and forging a number of documents. For those interested you can read about it here (You’ll need to scroll down a bit to find the relevant segment:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/08/stan-friedman-vs-philip-klass-whats.html

I spoke with Fleck Danley, who was instrumental in providing a date for the Plains of San Agustin crash that Barnett had discussed. It was clear to me, that Danley had no real idea of when the alleged discussion with Barnett took place. Danley was pushed into agreeing with the July 1947 date by Bill Moore so that there would be a tale of alien bodies for his book, The Roswell Incident. Without Barnett, they had only stories of strange metal and the Army’s efforts to recover the debris and change the narrative.

Barnett’s wife, Ruth, kept a diary for 1947. It was, apparently, the only year in which she did that. I was able to obtain the diary from Alice Knight, Barnett’s niece, so that we might copy it. There is no mention of any event on the Plains that suggest Barnett was involved in anything unusual or strange. In fact, the only date in the diary that works, meaning that Barnett was out of his office and over in the area of the Plains to see the crashed saucer is on July 2, 1947. If we follow the conventional wisdom, that is a day too early because the Roswell crash took place later.

Although the counterargument is that Barnett wouldn’t have shared this startling information with his wife so we wouldn’t read about in the diary, there are no indications of anything unusual happening at the time. Barney didn’t come home upset, didn’t suggest anything out of the ordinary. Just that he’d been out of the office that day. Later, however, we see that Barnett told many people the story of crash including friends and family. You can read about this aspect of the case in Roswell in the 21^st Century. I will note here that no one has ever found a document in which any of that was discussed. You would think that someone would have written something that would provide a little corroboration in the proper time frame. Instead, all we have are memories that were decades old when they were finally discussed and Barnett had been dead for those decades.

There is one interesting point here. Although nearly everyone who discusses the story places it on the Plains of San Agustin, in reality, according to Jean Maltais, Barnett’s description was somewhat vague about the location. She only mentioned “the flats,” which could mean any number of places in New Mexico. Most ignore this minor glitch in the tale to focus on the Plains.

But let’s get to the meat of this claim. Tony Bragalia wrote about Dr. Herbert Dick, “While considering various archaeologists, researchers uncovered Harvard-trained Dr Herbert Dick. Dick was a noted archaeologist who passed away in 1992. Some years before his death however, he was located and questioned. Dick categorically denied that he had ever worked around the Plains of San Augustin region in July of 1947 (highlight added). Dick had told researchers he had not been there, telling one of them, "If I knew anything I would have told you." One of his dig party, Jeff Morris, also denied it. These denials were reported in early 1990's issues of the publication IUR – International UFO Reporter and elsewhere.”

Much of this is inaccurate. I did talk to Herbert Dick about this and rather than “categorically [denying] that he had ever worked about the Plains of San Augustin (sic),” the truth is that he wasn’t sure exactly when he arrived there in July 1947. What he denied was that he had seen any sort of a UFO crash retrieval operation on the Plains. This was not reported in the IUR as claimed.

Dick told me (not one of them) that if he knew anything about this, he’d tell me. What is important here that another member of his team denied that “it,” meaning, here, I suppose, that they had seen nothing suggesting a flying saucer crash. This was not reported in the IUR.

Although Bragalia wrote, “It turns out though that Dick had lied [highlight added] to these researchers when he was interviewed by them. In 2006 a revealing letter was uncovered by researcher Art Campbell. Campbell has been active in the UFO field for decades, including with NICAP. He is the author of "UFO Crash at San Augustin" and maintains the UFO Crash Book website. The documents that he discovered confirm that Dick had not told the truth. Dick was in fact at the Plains at the very time that he said that he was not.” As we have seen, Dick had told me he was on the Plains in July 1947, he just wasn’t sure exactly when he arrived.

Bragalia went even further, when he wrote, “A thorough search of records finds that no other group of archaeologists were working on the Plains in early July of 1947 except Herbert Dick and party – and Dick lied that [highlight added] he was even there. Lies are used [highlight added] to cover up the truth by those who wish to evade it. To have ever spoken of the event, Dick may have felt that he could have risked a security breach, his own professional advancement, future professional credibility, award of grant monies or – later in life – damage to his impressive professional legacy.”

But Dick didn’t lie. In an interview I conducted on June 23, 1991, Dick told me that he had worked in the area called Bat Cave on the southeastern edge of the Plains in 1947. He just wasn’t sure exactly when he arrived. The letters and notes found by Art Campbell, showed that he had arrived in time to have seen the crash, had it taken place on July 2, and would have been in a position to see the recovery operation in the days that followed, had there been one.

Don Schmitt at one of the alleged Plains of San Agustin crash sites. The Bat Cave
is across the Plains in the mountains seen behind Don.

I provided this information to Stan Friedman, telling him that Dick had been at the Bat Cave on July 1. Friedman’s response? He said we didn’t know how far back in the cave they were working and we didn’t know which way the cave faced. I told him that it faced to the west and that they wouldn’t be very deep because they were researching human habitation. Humans would have been very close to the mouth of the cave because to move in deeper would have put them in darkness. Besides, according to the information, the only level spot for camping was about a hundred yards from the mouth of the cave. They had a panoramic view of the whole of the Plains and the alleged crash site in the days prior to that alleged crash and of the recovery operation had there been one.

The point is that Bragalia’s speculations about Dick are not borne out in the interview I conducted with the man. According to Bragalia himself, he was using information provided by Campbell and the source mentioned, the International UFO Reporter, does not contain this information. Instead, it comes from Art Campbell’s analysis of the situation which is highly speculative. Campbell mentioned a paper found in The Magdalena Fact Book. This was a document that I created for the single meeting in Chicago to discuss the problems with the Plains of San Agustin tale. The book was created for the meeting, there were only five copies and I have one of them. I’m surprised that Campbell had seen a copy of it and can only guess that it was Friedman who showed it to him.

The real point here is that the information about Dick’s involvement, that he lied repeatedly about what he was doing and where he was, is inaccurate. Dick wasn’t confused. He had forgotten the exact date he arrived. He was quite candid in his conversation with me about where he was and what he was doing. What Dick’s statements do, corroborated by the documentation from by Campbell, is destroy the remaining threads of the Gerald Anderson claims of what he had seen on the Plains, and calls into question that Barnett saw anything there in the summer of 1947.

Dick denied the involvement because there was no involvement. I can say this with confidence because I talked to the man. I don’t have to rely on what others have said or written. I have the first-hand source, that trumps all the second and third-hand reports and all the speculation that permeates Bragalia’s article.

Bragalia’s analysis here is more of the same sort of over-the-top rhetoric we’ve seen before. He has taken some poorly researched information and created a scenario in his mind that fits into his theory. He writes in a fashion that suggests he knows what is going on, but a careful reading and an examination of all the facts, including my interview with Dick, show the flaws in his theory. He even cites a source that doesn’t exist.

One more thing for those of you of a conspiratorial mindset. According to Dick, he knew Winfred Buskirk (Anderson’s archaeologist on the Plains) in the 1940s. Since both were working on their PhDs at the time, and both were in New Mexico (well, Buskirk was working in Arizona in the summer of 1947, he lived in Albuquerque), it is not surprising. I just thought I’d mention it to stir the pot and before someone creates another whole scenario about government secrecy and lying anthropologists.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Rob Swiatek

Rob Swiatek, formerly of the Fund for UFO Research and lately as member of the board at MUFON joined me for this week’s show. We discussed the state of UFO research including how many reports have been made to MUFON in the last year (something like 3500) and why there don’t seem to be the same sort of robust reports that were made in the past. He suggested that sightings in which the occupants were seen were a mere handful of the reports made. And we discussed some of the better sightings from the last couple of years, including some interesting photographs. You can listen to the show here:

https://youtu.be/l8W0PV1QVE8

For those of you who were interested in the Kauai, Hawaii UFO photograph we discussed, Rob supplied additional information after the show. Following is the report and a black and white copy of the photograph.

For an in depth analysis of the photograph see Bruce Maccabee, “A Rare Photo Coincidence,” in International UFO Reporter for May/June 1990, pages 4-9, 22.

Next week’s guest: Robert Sheaffer

Topic: Bad UFOs (The name of his book).

The Timing of the Roswell Photographs

It has long been the contention of those who worked with J. Bond Johnson on the attempt to read the Ramey memo that Johnson did not take the two photographs of Jesse Marcel holding up what looks to be debris of a weather balloon. I never really understood why that was so because the pictures seemed to be of the same quality as those that Johnson did say he took.

The Roswell Photo Interpretation Team including Ron Regehr and Neil Morris, determined by looking at the shadows and sunlight as seen through the curtains

Ron Regehr (Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle

in Ramey’s office that the pictures of Marcel were taken at 3:15 p.m. and that would have been Tuesday afternoon, July 8, 1947. Given the timing of the events, as they have reconstructed them, this means that Johnson couldn’t have taken those two pictures. And, if their estimate of the time is correct, then their assumption is also correct.

I have never understood exactly how they made this interpretation. They talked of measuring shadows seen outside of Ramey’s office, but I don’t know if they had ever been to the base to make measurements, if the building in which Ramey had his office can be identified if it is still standing and how they determined the precise angle of the sun on July 8, 1947. What it is today doesn’t necessarily match what it would have been in 1947. Or, to put it in fewer words, I believe they made many assumptions to come up with the conclusions they wanted.

Here’s what we know based on the documentation. According to the time line published in the Daily Illini on July 9, the first of the AP alerts sounded at 4:26 p.m. Central Time (Fort Worth), or 3:26 Mountain Time (Roswell). Since Johnson had said, repeatedly he learned of the debris coming to Fort Worth from his editor and it seemed that the editor had the news bulletin, that means Johnson couldn’t have received word until after the Marcel photographs were taken.

The RPIT has concluded that there was another photographer there about two hours before Johnson arrived. It was this other photographer who took the two pictures of Marcel. Johnson at one point said that another fellow who worked at the newspaper in 1947 said that Ramey owed them a favor and had called the Star – Telegram to alert them about the situation. It was this man, never identified by Johnson or anyone else, who had taken those first pictures.

The problem here is that no one has ever come forward to claim to have taken the pictures of Marcel. After all the publicity surrounding these events, after all the times the pictures have been shown on television or published in books and magazines, it would seem that the man (and since this was 1947 I’m assuming it was a man) would have appeared to tell us that. Johnson, after all, and according to his own words, had been to Fort Worth to try to find his pictures after he had seen them on a television show or two.

And then there is where the negative of Marcel was filed. It was in the same envelop at the University of Texas – Arlington Library Special Collections as those of Ramey. That means the picture came from the Fort Worth Star – Telegram and that means they were taken by a photographer from that newspaper. But, again, according to Johnson, he claimed more than once he was the only one dispatched from there and to hear him tell it, he was the only one who took photographs in Ramey’s office, overlooking or belittling the picture of Irving Newton crouched in front of the same debris in relatively the same locations as it appears in the other photographers.

There is something else in all this. Johnson said that when he returned to the newspaper office, there was a “whole barrage” of people waiting for him. These were technicians from Dallas who had brought transmitting equipment to Fort Worth so that they could send a picture over the news wires. Johnson was told to develop the film and bring out a wet print because they were in such a big hurry to see what had been found and to get it out over the wire.

But, if there had been another photographer there, who could have been from a newspaper in the area though Johnson said it was from the Star – Telegram, he would have had, at the very least, a two hour head start on Johnson. His pictures,

Jesse Marcel with a view of the opening in the
curtains. Photo copyright by the Special
Collection, UTA.

of Marcel, would have gone out over the news wire probably before Johnson could have returned to his office in Fort Worth with his pictures, though there is no evidence of this. While Johnson’s pictures would have been important because they would have been different, they wouldn’t have been so critical that his editor wanted a “wet” print. They could have waited for Johnson to dry them properly. And, there is no indication from any of the archive services that any other picture, except the one of Newton which is clearly different than those first six, were ever taken.

Johnson had to be the photographer and the estimate of the time of the photographs based on looking through a slit in the curtains of Ramey’s office seems to be an amazing bit of deduction. The documentation from the time, Johnson’s own recollections of what he had been told and then related to me in the first two interviews he had ever given (yes, I was the first to interview him… I know this because I found in my notes that I had asked him about it and he said that no one had ever interviewed him) that Ramey told him it was a weather balloon, and what was written in that very first article in the Star – Telegram, sinks much of what he said later.

I won’t even bother to go through all of that again. Much of the information gathered in those first two interviews appeared in the International UFO Reporter (March/April 1990) and (November/December 1990). These articles outline the first interviews with Johnson and our (Don Schmitt and me) attempts to make some sense out of everything. The second article outlines the alterations in Johnson’s statements after his “interviews” with Bill Moore and Jaime Shandera. The critical interviews, that is, the ones I conducted are on tape.

The trouble here is that Johnson told so many stories, modified, changed and deleted information almost at a whim. We can believe the things that are corroborated by others and documentation and we can reject nearly everything else. Johnson’s desire to become an important part of the Roswell story ended up changing him from a valuable witness into just another clamoring for his fifteen minutes of fame regardless of the facts.

Kerman, California UFO Case - An Update

As I had hoped, the Manuel Amparano sighting and burn incident has caused some good discussion and a few irrelevant points (let’s look at Stephenville, Hasting’s work and the Phoenix Lights… though I’m surprised that no one mentioned the Washington Nationals, the Lubbock Lights photographs and the Levelland Sightings in their wishes to see information on other cases). The discussion did take a nasty turn when it appears that some couldn’t read what I had posted and when I attributed an International UFO Reporter article to Dr. Michael Swords that he did not write. That article follows:

I also used, as a source, the APRO Bulletin article that was probably written by Coral Lorenzen which follows:

There is also a new assessment of the case written by Jason Marzek for the Fringe Republic which can be found here:

http://fringerepublic.com/kerman-ufo-burning-061401/ 

And there is another assessment with some documentation embedded in it that can be found here:

http://www.examiner.com/article/ufo-evidence-just-the-facts-please

For those who wish another source, the NICAP.org website has a short article that references the IUR article from September 1978 on pages 10 – 11, which appears above, and articles from the Fresno Bee for May 19, 1978 and February 23, 1979.

Dr. Swords did write an article for the IUR, Volume 34, Number 4 (September 2011) which does mention the Kerman, California case, but only in a table on Foundational “burn-like” skin cases. It gives the date and nothing more. The coincidence here is that both articles were published in September in the IUR, though decades apart. There is no byline on the first IUR article. The only names associated with the IUR then were J. Allen Hynek and Allan Hendry. It would seem that Hendry was the author, though, as I say, there is no byline.

This is, however, a secondary issue. The question seems to be, where did the report of second degree burns come from? Clearly the man was burned as the documentation and the witness testimony establishes. Since there is documentation for third degree burns from both the sheriff and the medical facility, I’m not sure why we have bogged down in the question of the second degree burns.

At any rate, if this was one of the articles on chasing footnotes, I would have mentioned that the article attributed to Michael Swords was not written by him but it does appear in the IUR. I will note that I try to attribute the information to the proper source and give credit where credit is due. Here, I believed that Swords, because of the reference I had found, was responsible for the earlier article. So, we clear that up, and I apologize to Swords for dragging his name into this. We can move on to the other questions.

Oh, just for fun, I will note that most of us know that attempting to determine distance, size and speed of an unknown object seen in the night sky with no points of reference is nearly impossible… if the witness gets it right, I would suggest that it more luck than observational ability and that angular size, angle above the ground and direction would be more important than guesses about precise figures for size, distance and speed.

Chasing My Own Footnotes

(Blogger's Note: This probably not all that interesting to many people, but I thought of it as important, if only to improve the quality of footnotes and endnotes that we see in many books... Besides, at the moment I'm tired of the whole Roswell Slides saga and there is nothing new happening there at the moment. So, enjoy if you can.)

While I continue my quest to improve the footnotes used by us all, I thought I should detail my latest challenge. While working on another project, I was looking at the Spitzbergen UFO crash. I was aware that there was a report for it in the Project Blue Book files, but I couldn’t seem to lay my hands on it. I looked at my A History of UFO Crashes which had a footnote reference that said, “Project Blue Book files, September 1952.”

That didn’t tell me much and I pulled out the master index for Blue Book but couldn’t find the file there in September. I went back to the files and notes I had created for the Spitzbergen case but could find nothing there that was helpful. I went to a number of other sources, none of which seemed to have drawn on Blue Book for their information or if they did, they didn’t mention it.

There are, in the Blue Book index, a large number of cases that fall outside of the investigation. These are newspaper clippings and other sources that have provided information on a case but that is all that is available about them. I thought Spitzbergen would be included among these but that didn’t help.

Frank Edwards and Ryan Wood, who both had written about the case, provided some source material, but according to Ole Jonny Braenne, who wrote a detailed account of the sighting in the November/December 1992 issue of the International UFO Reporter, the story couldn’t be traced to any specific individual or organization. Some of those sources, as quoted by Edwards and Wood, couldn’t be verified and were nothing more than dead ends. An article was attributed to a reporter with the initials J.M.M. but no one was able to identify him. These various sources seemed to be circular meaning one lead to another that eventually led back to the first.

All of this was interesting, and Braenne’s report suggested that the story was a hoax, but that didn’t get me to the Blue Book source. I tried using Fold3 and their Blue Book archives but Spitzbergen didn’t come up in the search engine. I finally went back to the Blue Book Index and starting with June, ran down through them, searching for anything from Norway or Spitzbergen. I finally came to a notation for a sighting there on July 9, 1952, but the solution was “aircraft.” That didn’t seem right but it was the only reference I could find to Spitzbergen in the files in the right time frame.

I went to the microfilm and searched for the case. There is no “Project Card” for it. The case follows another in which there is no Project Card but I did find it. After all this, I found that the footnote should have read, “Project Blue Book files, July 9, 1952, case no. 1411.” That tells you everything you need to know about it, even to the handwritten case numbers that appear in the index and if you went to the NICAP Blue Book site, you could have gotten to it quickly and easily providing you knew the proper date.

I will note here that there are several different dates associated with the case which complicated my search and I knew that it was in the Blue Book files when I started. In A History of UFO Crashes the date is September 9, 1952 and in Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky it is listed as September 12, 1952. Frank Edwards in Flying Saucers – Serious Business quotes from a newspaper report dated September 4, 1955 (as if this wasn’t complicated enough already) published in the Stuttgarter Tageblatt (which apparently is the Stuttgarts Dagblad). The Stuttgarter Tageblatt does not exist. The first mention of the Spitzbergen crash, at least according to Braenne was in the June 28, 1952 Saarbrucker Zeitung and mentions that the disc-shaped object was apparently tied to the Soviet Union. Markings and lettering in the craft were in Russian. The original story did not mention an alien craft. Although this is the source of the following stories, as it spread, the information about the Soviet origin of the craft was lost and it soon became an alien spaceship.

For those interested in Spitzbergen, avoid most of the articles about this case and look for the IUR article by Braenne (though in Crash I do cite the Braenne article and provide a more detailed analysis that I have here). Braenne provides the most comprehensive examination of the information. For those who don’t want to look at all this varied information in varied sources, I tell you this case is a hoax … even though that is suggested in the documentation, it is listed in the Blue Book files as an Earth-based aircraft.

In today’s world, if I was to write a footnote for this case, it would be a little more comprehensive and would look like this:

For the most comprehensive analysis of the Spitzbergen crash, see Braenne, Ole Jonny. “Legend of the Spitzbergen Saucer.” International UFO Reporter, 17,6 (November/December 1992): 14 – 20. See also, Randle, Kevin D. Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky. Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page Books. 2010:  146 – 152: Wood, Ryan. Majic Eyes Only, Broomfield, CO: Wood Enterprises, 2005. 102 – 104; Steinman, William S. and Wendelle C. Stevens. UFO Crash at Aztec, Tucson, AZ: Wendelle Stevens, 1986: 353 – 357; Edwards, Frank. Flying Saucers – Serious Business. New York: Bantam Books, 1966: 44 – 48.

I could also mention that Donald Keyhoe in Flying Saucers from Outer Space, Harold T. Wilkins in Flying Saucers on the Attack and Jimmy Guieu in Flying Saucers Come from Another World do mention the story briefly, but I only have the Wilkins’ book which contains no index. I haven’t bothered to search out the information in it simply because I know that the case is a hoax. In fact, I mention these other works, including those in the footnote to provide a balanced view of the report. I could have avoided all this effort had I properly provided the information in my original footnote, but then, I did cite the source and in the end I did find the information there. It just wasn’t all that easy to do.

The Demise of International UFO Reporter

Today brings sad news. The International UFO Reporter, the publication of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies has ceased publishing an ink and paper edition of the magazine. Volume 34, Number 2, the March 2012 issue is the last.

Mark Rodeghier, the scientific director of the Center, wrote that they had noted in recent years that many long time and respected UFO groups have closed. He mentioned SOBEPS in Belgium as one that had “produced a quality publication and did good work,” but that didn’t keep them safe from a decline in public interest.

Rodeghier wrote, “The CUFOS board has been monitoring these trends for many years and understands that a wider audience can be reached through the internet and other electronic formats. The number of Associates who receive IUR has reached that tipping point where producing a print publication no longer makes economic sense (truthfully, we passed this point a while ago but soldiered on out of inertia and a stubborn commitment to print).”

He continued, “Accordingly, we must announce that this issue [Volume 34, Number 2, March 2010] of IUR will be the last one produced in hard copy. Whether or not there will be an electronic version of IUR, and if so, its format and frequency, is still to be decided...”

He concluded by saying, “We thank all of our readers, our contributors, and our varied production and editorial teams who made IUR what many consider the best English-language UFO publication in history.”