Jan Aldrich and the Ramey Memo Update

(Blogger's Note: With the kind permission of Jan Aldrich, I am posting his apology to us about the Ramey Memo. This isn't so much as a "gotcha" as it is an illustration on how gentlemen in our modern society should conduct themselves. Jan made an error because a couple of links didn't work when he first attempted to use them. He responded with what he believed to be an oversight on our part as we attempted to decipher the Ramey Memo. Realizing his error, and finding the links were now working, he reassessed his reaction and offered an apology. I would like to see more of this, which is not to say apologies but all of us acting or reacting with such class.)

I want to make a public apology to Kevin Randle, Isaac Koi and the Above Top
Secret website.  I based my criticism on an incomplete view of the so-called
Ramey Memo on the Above Top Secret website.

When I first tried to click on the URL Isaac provided on the Above Top
Secret Website, there was no response. Attempting a search I got various
discussions and claims above the item, but not the latest posting.  Talking
to Barry after I told him his efforts were not represented there. I did
know that Barry had provided his assessment of the item to Kevin Randle who
had used it on his blog.  Barry indicated that the blog and other items were
indeed on the Above Top Secret website not just a compilation of previous
items on the subject.  Checking again, they sure were!   The URL worked and
all items from Kevin Randle's blog and Barry Greenwood's work were on the
website.

I am not trying to excuse for my posting.  My responsibility was to
thoroughly check the site before shooting from the hip on something.  So I
am now on Patrick Gross' "UFO Stupid" list up close to the top.

Previously, I had rather sharp exchanges with the late J. Bond Johnson on
this subject both in public and off-line about this subject which moved to a
threatened law suit on his part so maybe I am too sensitive about this
subject.*

Again, I humbly apologize to all concerned and to the readers of the various
email lists for my irresponsible actions in this matter.

Jan L. Aldrich

*J. Bond Johnson threatened to sue me on a number of occasions if I didn't retract the statements I had made about what he told me, all of which were recorded on audiotape. Given the circumstances, I would have almost enjoyed the lawsuit which would have vindicated my position on the matter. Johnson, instead, insisted on claiming I had misquoted him, I had maligned him, I had recorded him without his permission (though on tape you hear me ask if he minded if I recorded the conversations) and other assorted allegations. He, of course, never initiated the legal action, I suspect because he knew the truth and knew he had said all the things I claimed he did. Too often in the world of the UFO, we resorted to lawsuits when it seems that a careful word here or there would resolve the issue.

Jan Aldrich, Barry Greenwood and the Ramey Memo

Jan Aldrich seemed to be upset that we are attempting to read the Ramey memo and has likened the effort to that of the promoters of the Not Roswell Slides. I fear that he has misunderstood our mission or maybe he assigned his own beliefs to what he thinks we are doing as opposed to what we are actually doing, but the point is that this is nothing like the fiasco that is the Not Roswell Slides.

We have not expressed a point of view about what the message says… Oh, sure, David Rudiak believes that it is a classified document that might hold important information, but that is not the driving force for us. David would be delighted if we were able to validate his interpretation of the memo including the phrase, “victim of the wreck,” but we have been unable to clarify the image enough to make that call.

Jan is concerned that we won’t mention Barry Greenwood’s interpretation of part of the memo, though such a concern is unwarranted. In fact, more than six years ago, I had explored Barry’s suggestion about his reading of part of the memo. You can read that posting here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/ramey-memo-and-barry-greenwood.html

At that time David argued passionately that Barry’s interpretation didn’t quite fit all the known facts. We have to remember that David has worked on all this extensively for many years and believes that he had established to a high degree of certainty what the memo says. There is a great deal of agreement with his analysis inside the UFO community… the problem is, as anyone who looks at the memo can see, there is ambiguity in the interpretations. If there was none, then we would be having another conversation.

Jan’s point seems to be that we’ll ignore the conflicting data pretending that it doesn’t exist. However, we have attempted to look at all the evidence, including much of what Barry has written and incorporate that in our paper as it deals with the history of the attempts to read the memo. I have, for example, explored the possibility that J. Bond Johnson, the reporter/photographer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, brought the document into Ramey’s office with him, which would make it wire service copy. David disagrees for several reasons including that while Johnson had said just this in some of his earlier interviews, he also repudiated that claim in many of his later interviews. Johnson realized that if it was wire service copy, then the importance of the memo was badly degraded but if it was a classified document, then this could be the “smoking gun.”

But here’s my point. It is true that David is quite passionate in his opinion, which doesn’t make it wrong. Jan is quite passionate in his opinion, which doesn’t make it wrong. Where Jan missed the boat is with his idea that we are attempting to recreate a Not Roswell Slides presentation that will ignore any evidence that conflicts with what Jan believes is our mission. But rather than hide the data, or obscure it with digital tricks, we have made everything available on line for those who wish to look at it. All we are attempting to do is clarify what the memo says not force an interpretation on everyone. We are attempting to solve the riddle and while no matter what we learn, there will be detractors, in the end we hope to have provided an answer for this… a true answer and not one that appeals to one end of the spectrum or the other… an answer that will resolve the issue.

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.

J. Bond Johnson's Statement on His Visit to General Ramey

Since it has been suggested that Ramey had invited reporters from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram to his office, and since some of the quoted material came from a web site that hosted an interview with J. Bond Johnson, the reporter, I thought I could clarify some of this by posting the following. This is from my second interview with Johnson, made about a month after he called me, left his telephone number on my answering machine asking me to return the call. I note here that Johnson claimed I had called him cold and he had no opportunity to review his notes or the

Johnson's picture of General Ramey
holding the memo. Photo copyright
by the University of Texas at Arlington.

newspaper articles that appeared in 1947… though in the first interview he actually reads the July 9, 1947 article that he claimed to have written. Or, in other words, he was not called cold. There are other indications in that interview that he had already reviewed his “UFO” file, that he had talked to Betsy Hudon at the University of Texas at Arlington, and he was aware that she had forwarded a copy of my letter to him which gave him my telephone number. She wouldn’t tell me who he was but she did say she would forward a letter to him to facilitate our communication.

In my March 24, 1989 interview, I said, “Could you just sort of tell me what you did… what transpired when your editor gave you the assignment to go out to the base.” In response, Johnson said:

My name is initial J Bond, it’s also James Bond Johnson. I’m the original [referring obviously to the master spy by the name of Bond, James Bond). I was a reporter and back up photographer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in July 1947 after having served in the Air Corps as a pilot-cadet in World War Two.

On the… Tuesday, July 8, 1947, late in the afternoon, I returned from an assignment to my office in the city room of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram which was both a morning and afternoon newspaper. My city editor of the morning paper ran over and said, “Bond, have you got your camera?” I said, “Yes,” I had it in my car. I had a four by five Speed Graphic that I had bought recently and I kept it in the car because I was working nights and police and so forth and had it at the ready. He said, “Go out to Ramey’s office and, he said, they’ve got something there [and] that to get a picture. I don’t recall what it he called it. He said they’ve flown something down… I don’t think he called it something… he gave it a name because I was kind of prepared for what I was going to see. He said something crashed out there or whatever and they’re… we just got an alert on the AP wire [emphasis added to prove a point] … though it might have been the UPI… that the Air Force or the Air Corps as it was called then [actually it was the Army Air Forces in July 1947] is flying it down from Roswell on orders from General Ramey. It would be located in his office. It was or would be by the time I got out there.

So I drove directly to Carswell [Fort Worth Army Air Field in July 1947] and my recollections now are I went in and I opened my carrying case with my Graphic and I had brought just one holder with me with two pieces of the 4 X 5 film. Black and white of course. I posed General Ramey with this debris piled in the middle of his rather large and plush office. It seemed incongruous to have this smelly garbage piled on the floor… spread out on the floor of this plush, big office that was probably, oh, 16 by 20 at least.

I posed General Ramey with this debris. At that time, I was briefed on the idea that it was not a flying disk as first reported but in fact was a weather balloon that had crashed. I returned to my office. I was met by a barrage of people that were unknown to me. These were people who had come over from Dallas… In those days, any time we had… we normally bussed any prints that we were sending to the AP, we bussed them to Dallas to be transmitted on the wire photo machines. We had a receiver but not a sender in Fort Worth in those days. And no faxes.

After a discussion of how they transmitted the pictures and we chatted about all the pictures including the ones of Major Jesse Marcel that Johnson would later claim he hadn’t taken, he said, “It is entirely possible that I was briefed by the PIO.”

We can take this even further. Dennis Balthaser published an interview with Johnson that can be found here:

http://www.truthseekeratroswell.com/james-bond-johnson.html

During that interview, Balthaser said, “Finally, another researcher seems to remember a statement you made that the paper in General Ramey’s hand was a press release that you handed to General Ramey. Can you verify that as a true statement you would have made in a previous interview? If yes, please explain.”

Johnson said, “Yes, that was an early speculation of mine that I might have handed Ramey the copy of the AP ‘flash’ my editor had given me regarding the Roswell crash craft being flown to Fort Worth. Obviously I was in error in that speculation.”

What all this shows is that the information about the debris going to Fort Worth was in an AP news alert and had nothing to do with Ramey inviting people out to the base. We don’t have to speculate about this because we have the information from the reporter who was involved in it provided before he began think of himself as “the Roswell photographer.”

We can corroborate all of this from the news stories that appeared at the time and the chronology that was published in the Daily Illini. I also recovered a transmittal letter sent with the photographs that gave the date as July 8, 1947, the time as 11:59 p.m. and the photographer as J. Bond Johnson.  Later, we can see that Johnson dramatically altered his story attempting to put himself into the spotlight. He went so far as to deny that he had written the story that appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on July 9, a story that he had told me he had written. He said during my first interview with him, “Seven nine [July 9] is my story on the front page that was in earlier … [which, of course, negates the idea that I called him cold and he hadn’t reviewed his UFO file].”

The problem for Johnson’s claim that they didn’t know what it was when he was there is the last paragraph in that article. It said, “After his first look, Ramey declared all it was was a weather balloon. The weather officer verified his view.”

For those who wish to follow this to its end, I did a blog posting on October 9, 2009, about the whole Johnson tale. It can be found here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/10/ufos-ramey-memo-j-bond-johnson-and-me.html.

This then should end the idea that Ramey invited anyone out to his office. The story was on the news wire and the astute editors and reporters would think of calling Ramey on their own. He received telephone calls from far away and even did a telephone interview with a reporter on the West Coast. The idea that it was a weather balloon quickly killed the story and just hours after it broke on the news wires the interest faded.

But the point is that Ramey did not call anyone and invite them to his office. The testimony and the evidence negates that idea. Johnson may have well taken the teletype alert with him but we don’t know. He might well have taken it into General Ramey’s office but we don’t know. The evidence for that is contradictory because Johnson spun many tales about what he did and didn’t do in General Ramey’s office. However, given what we can prove, it would seem that we no longer have to speculate about the reason Johnson went out to the base.

Ramey Memo and Victims of the Wreck

We have been privileged to learn the importance of the Ramey memo based not on the research currently underway but on the opinion that there is no alien visitation so that there is nothing in the memo to lead in that direction. We’re told that even if it says, “Victims of the wreck,” as many UFO researchers suggest, it doesn’t mean that what fell was alien. It seems that we should just give up because we all know there is no alien visitation and continued attempts to read the memo are a waste of time.

Can the Ramey memo clarify this situation?

Actually, yes.

There are some things we can say about it now. The source of it is limited. J. Bond Johnson, the reporter/photographer who took the picture said, at one time, that he had brought the document into the office with him and handed it to Ramey. Later, realizing that this sort of negated the value of it, repudiated that claim. He hadn’t brought it in. Instead, it was a document that he had taken off Ramey’s desk and handed it to him so that Ramey had something in his hand for the photographs. I’m not sure what the rationale for this would be, other than to suggest that it was something inside the office and that makes it more important.

If Johnson hadn’t brought it in, then what is it?

It could be the draft of a press statement that Ramey planned to give or release. If so, then it would be unclassified and would probably not reveal much of anything. The draft would have been sitting on his desk for Johnson to grab, or Ramey, knowing he was meeting with a reporter to grab so that he was holding it when Johnson entered the office.

It could be a teletype message that came through the base communications center. That would give it an “official” status, but not necessarily one of great importance. Unclassified messages did come through the center and they were routine matters. Nothing that would be Earth shattering. It could easily be a summary of what was being reported in the media and provide some guidance to Ramey for his meeting with members of the press or for handling the queries that were being made.

There were also classified messages coming thought the communications center. Given the few words that can be read, it would seem that this memo deals with Roswell, and given the purpose of the reporter’s visit, that seems to underscore the connection to Roswell. If it does say, “Victims of the wreck,” does that change the tone of the discussion?

We’re told by skeptics, or rather one in particular, that the military wouldn’t use “victims,” but rather refer to them as “casualties.” If they were alien creatures, I’m not sure that would apply, but then, I don’t think that single phrase gets us to the extraterrestrial automatically anyway. It would seem that if the message does say “victims,” then the Mogul explanation is ruled out, but then I believe other facts have done that. This isn’t important.

To understand the real meaning of “Victims of the wreck,” we have to view it in context, and the context, if it can be read with any sort of clarity and consensus, would provide the information to understand the use of that term… or, in other words, that statement is not stand alone and cannot be stand alone. It must be viewed in the context of the message and if we can see that phrase with clarity, then the context probably would be understood as well.

While “Victims of the wreck,” might not take us immediately to the extraterrestrial, it would certainly start us on the path. The context would take us the rest of the way, or maybe more accurately, could take us the rest of the way. In some of the interpretations of the memo, there is enough there that the extraterrestrial would be the most likely answer... but before we get into a long discussion about this aspect, let me say that at the moment, we don’t have that context. We have many different interpretations.

And that is the problem. There are many different interpretations, many at odds with one another. We don’t have a consensus. In fact, there is not a consensus on “Victims of the wreck.” There are those who say that the phrase is actually, “Remains of the wreck,” which gives us a completely different interpretation, one that does not automatically rule out Mogul.

So, Johnson might have brought the document into the office. It might be the draft of a press release for Ramey. It might be a message that is unclassified or one that is classified. The question is if we can read the text, can this be clarified?

Yes.

There seems to be a “signature” block at the bottom of the message. If that can by read, it would provide a clue about the source of the document. If it is a “sign off” from a teletype then it probably came from the newspaper. If it’s Ramey’s signature, then it is probably a press release from his office. If it is someone else’s or a different organization, then we might be able to deduce whose and from where and that would be a valuable clue.

But here’s the real point. Until we learn if the new, improved scans provide us with some additional clarity, all of this is speculation. We really don’t know no matter who says what about the situation. I would have thought the skeptics would applaud the effort to clarify the situation. There has been little push back from the other end of the spectrum, even though a clear message might take down one of the best bits of evidence for the alien nature of the Roswell crash.

The Size of the Debris Field

Since I posted the article that suggested that Bessie Brazel’s testimony might be in error and that it was contradicted by that given by so many others, we have been all over the board. Nearly everyone was selecting that data which tended to support their position and ignore everything else. So, I thought I would take some of those points and provide the data available about them. I realize that some of you are so far to one side or the other that any sort of compromise is impossible, but for those who are interested in all the information, I will try to publish a series of articles that look at some aspect of this case.

First, I’ll tackle the size of the debris field because it seems to range from a square mile down to an area about 200 feet in diameter. That’s quite a big difference, and I know that we’ll never reach a consensus, but heck; we might have a little fun and learn something by accident.

The testimonies given after 1978 which is when Jesse Marcel, Sr. was identified as having recovered pieces of a flying saucer provide some of the data. Marcel himself told Bill Moore (The Roswell Incident, p. 63) that it was “about three quarters of a mile long and a couple of hundred feet wide.”

Stan Friedman, in his book, Crash at Corona (p.10) wrote of Marcel’s description, “The area covered with wreckage was roughly three quarters of a mile long and several hundred yards wide.”

Moore also quotes Walt Whitmore, Jr. as giving a description. Whitmore hadn’t seen the field before the Army cleaned it up, according to his testimony at that time. Moore wrote (p. 89), “Several days later Whitmore, Jr., ventured out to the site and found a stretch of about 175 – 200 yards of pastureland uprooted in a sort of fan-like pattern with most of the damage at the narrowest part of the fan.”

Whitmore told Karl Pflock (p. 154), “The debris covered a fan- or roughly triangle-shaped area, which was about 10 or 12 feet wide at what I thought was the top end. From there it extended about 100 to 150 feet, widening out to about 150 feet at the base. This area was covered with many, many bits of material.”

Bill Brazel, who hadn’t seen the debris in the field except for the small pieces he said he had found, also talked of a gouge that ran through the pasture. He said that it was narrow at one end spread out toward the center and then narrowed again. Although he didn’t give us a length of the gouge, he eventually took us to what he thought of as the top of the gouge. Later, during the CUFOS archaeological dig there, we measured down from that point, about three quarters of a mile, placing little flags along the way.

Flags placed to show the gouge during the CUFOS
archaeological dig in the early 1990s.

Bud Payne, who was a judge in New Mexico, said that he had been out to the debris field but had been turned back by the military cordon. He did get close to it and this would be irrelevant, except he took me out to the location he thought was the debris field. When he stopped his vehicle and we got out, I nearly stepped on one of those little flags we had placed there. We have attempted to gather them all but had missed the last one. Payne took me to the same three quarter of a mile stretch of New Mexico desert and through this provided, to a degree, the size of the field.

And, of course, there is the testimony in the affidavit signed by Bessie Brazel. She said, “There was a lot of debris scattered sparsely over an area that seems to me now to have about the size of a football field [or about an acre].”

The most widely quoted size of the field is that given by Marcel. It can be found in a number of books but as noted here, it is traceable to that interview supplied to Bill Moore.

We are told, of course, that these memories are decades old and might be unreliable. Studies of memory and how it works suggest that confabulation (as opposed to lying) can often fill in gaps in memory, that each time a memory is accessed it is subject to alteration, and sometimes the memories simply no longer exist, yet the witness (I can think of no other word that fits here because they were involved in 1947) as he or she concentrates begins to put together a story that seems plausible.

We do have quite a few newspaper stories that were written in 1947, literally within hours of some of the men walking the fields, so that their memories should be clear and accurate. I say this knowing full well that some of the information given to the reporters was less than accurate and some of it that was published had been misunderstood.

The Roswell Daily Record, for example, reported, “The rubber [from the debris] was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards in diameter.”

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, in a later edition of their “Disc-overy Near Roswell Identified as Weather Balloon by FWAAF Officer,” reported, “Brazell [sic], whose ranch is 30 miles from the nearest telephone and has no radio, knew nothing about flying discs when he found the broken remains of the weather device scattered over a square mile of his land.”

The Albuquerque Tribune, in a story attributed to Jason Kellahin on July 9 reported, “Scattered with the materials over an area about 200 yards across were pieces of gray rubber.”

What does this tell us about the size of the debris field? Not much, actually. Those who wish to believe it was small, have several sources they can quote. Cavitt, in his interview with Colonel Richard Weaver didn’t provide a very vivid account of the size. He said that it was about twenty feet, but the statements were somewhat confusing. He might have been describing what he suspected was the size of the object or he might have been describing the distribution of the debris. He told Weaver, “Some here, some here, some here. No concentration of it. No marks on the ground, dug up, anything hidden or anything like that, just out on the territory around the bottom of New Mexico…” 

I don’t believe Whitmore’s testimony on this is reliable but suspect there was some collusion between Max Littell of the Roswell museum and Whitmore to come up with some debris, no matter what it was. They talked about creating a display in Roswell, but I don’t believe that Littell had thought that through. If Whitmore’s debris were pieces of a balloon, as he suggested to Pflock, then the mystique of the Roswell case eroded at that point and not many people would drive out of the way to look at a museum dedicated to a weather balloon.

Whitmore had told Moore that the site had been cleaned before he got there but contradicted that when he told Pflock that he saw the debris and even claimed to have some of it. The debris had been locked in his safe deposit box, but when the box grew too full, he moved the debris to his “junk room.” Although searches were made, nothing was ever found. It was just one more bit of debris that vanished.

There is Jesse Marcel’s testimony about the size of the field which he gave after 1978, but there is one story that provides some corroboration which was published in 1947. In Linda Corley’s book, Marcel said, “It was about a mile long and several hundred feet wide of debris.”

Brazel, according to one newspaper account agreed with that size, saying it was scattered over a square mile of the land. This was in a story other than the one written by J. Bond Johnson.

Returning to the Roswell Daily Record, Brazel, it seems, was saying that the debris field was about 200 yards in diameter and the Albuquerque Tribune changed the wording to 200 yards across which is not quite the same thing but is close. The by-line on the Albuquerque Tribune story, as noted, was by Kellahin, so he was apparently working from his notes made in Roswell.

All this means is that if you are a skeptic, you have some evidence that the size of the debris field was relatively small. If you are a believer, you have some evidence that the debris field is relatively large. You have the majority of the testimonies suggesting a large field from the record after 1978 but Bessie Brazel suggests it was about 100 yards by 50 yards, or about the size of a football field.

Or, in other words, this is a wash. Whatever side you come down on, there is testimony to support it. Not exactly a profound finding but just an observation that suggests there are facts for everyone to cherry pick.

The Roswell Slides - A Matter of Provenance

I have said for a long time that one of the major hurtles in this slides controversy is the lack of provenance. According to the various inside sources including Tom Carey, Tony Bragalia and even Adam Dew, they simply don’t know who took the pictures, when they were taken and where they were taken. To make matters worse, there is no solid chain of custody for the slides. There are gaping holes in this important part of the story.

Back on February 20, 2015, Adam Dew, under the user name SlideBox Media, posted to Rich Reynolds UFO Conjectures blog the following:

A quick timeline as I understand it: Hilda died in 1988. Slides were discovered when emptying out a garage outside of Sedona (Cottonwood we think) in 1998. Slides were deemed interesting (obviously old color slides) but not fully examined until around 2008. While I think that the home may have belonged to Hilda’s lawyer, there is no way to know for sure as the woman who found them [the slides] didn’t keep records of the homes she cleaned out… I don’t think the slides came from Hilda’s home.

Could this be any vaguer?  The home might have belonged to Hilda’s lawyer but they don’t know. The house might have been in Sedona, but they’re not sure. There is no way to verify whose house it was and there is little to link the slides to Hilda Ray other than some of the other slides were marked with her name. He doesn’t think they came from Hilda’s home.

And with that we return to the question of provenance. They have absolutely nothing to go on given that statement. By comparison, the Ramey Memo has a provenance that is iron clad. No, I don’t want to discuss the various interpretations of the memo; I just want to establish how solid a provenance can be.

General Ramey is in the picture holding the document in question. J. Bond Johnson, the man who took the picture has been interviewed repeatedly about it, and while he certainly slid off the rails as time passed, there is no doubt that he was in Ramey’s office and he took the photograph. Even without his statements we would know this because the picture was transmitted over the news wire (INS) back in the day. Attached to the picture from the Bettmann Photo Archive, was a noted that it had been sent at 11:59 p.m. on July 8, 1947. Even if we didn’t have this, the picture had been published in various newspapers on July 9, 1947. The negative, which can be matched to picture, was stored at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram until it was given to the Special Collections at the University of Texas at Arlington so that the chain of custody has been preserved as well. I can’t think of another document dealing with the Roswell case that has such a provenance or chain of custody.

But you can see the difference. With the Roswell Slides, all that information simply doesn’t exist and I don’t know how you can ever gather it given what the current owner of the slides says. The chain of custody is broken in several places and because Dew has not revealed the name of the woman who supposedly found the slides so that she could be interviewed by independent researchers (and I doubt that he will give up the name) then that is just one more hole.

So why do we believe that these slides show alien creatures recovered outside of Roswell? Well, the film was apparently manufactured in 1947 which is not to say that it was exposed in 1947. The slide holder was used from something like 1940 to 1949, which opens up the range. Photo experts have suggested that the range could be even greater, though that isn’t much of an issue given all the other problems.

I have yet to hear a good reason for looking at these slides which were unlabeled and apparently separated from the others in the collection and concluding that they showed an alien body. If you’re the average guy, sitting out there looking at the slides and see a strange body on them, I don’t see how you can (a) conclude they are of alien creatures and (b) that they have anything to do with Roswell. The Rays lived in Midland, Texas and not Roswell and the slides were found in Sedona and not Roswell and are now in Chicago. Right now we don’t even have a good chain of custody from Sedona to Chicago.

This also generates another question that can be easily answered. Were all the slides in the box stamped with Hilda Ray’s name? Were others stamped with her husband’s? And if so, then how do we conclude that the slides belonged to the Rays other than proximity? Or I should say alleged proximity.

At this point, with Dew making so many claims, it seems that there is no way to provide a provenance or chain of custody. Any such attempt will be seen in the same light as that of Ray Santilli as he continued to change the story about who had owned the Alien Autopsy film and how he had come into possession of it. Dew has sort of locked in the tale of a house owned by someone, that was cleaned by someone who found the slides, which sat around for basically decades before anyone got around to looking at them and then deciding they showed an alien creature, an amazing deductive link.

This could spell the end of the slides saga simply because there is no way to verify how they came into existence or why those who saw them originally assumed they showed an alien creature. Without the important questions of provenance and chain of custody answered, there is no real reason to assume the being on the slides has anything to do with the Roswell case, or that it is an extraterrestrial creature. This is basically the same stumbling block that so many of us interested in the case have encountered before and there is no reason to assume that anyone outside of the UFO community is going to care about this… and there might not be that many inside who do.