Thomas DuBose and the Switched Roswell Debris

Let’s chase a footnote or two, something we haven’t done for a while. I was reading a paper that was discussing the debris displayed on the floor in Brigadier General Roger Ramey’s office. Photographs of the debris were found decades ago and some of the

Brigadier General Roger Ramey and
Thomas DuBose (seated) looking at
the material on the floor in
Ramey's office.

negatives are housed in the Special Collections in the library at the University of Texas at Arlington. It is clear in the uncropped photographs that the material on the floor of Ramey’s office is a weather balloon and the torn-up remnants of a rawin reflector. The discussion was that the material shown there had been switched from the real debris that Major Jesse Marcel had brought from Roswell. In this latest analysis, it was said that the debris had not been switched, which, of course, means that a weather balloon had been brought from Roswell by Marcel. You can read about this here:

An Extraterrestrial Flying Disk Crashed Near Roswell in 1947: Not a UFO

The specific quote in that paper concerning all this is, “Decades later, during an interview, DuBose was asked if the original debris in General Ramey’s office had been switched with the remnants of a weather balloon [as Marcel had claimed]. DuBose answered that the material was never switched.”

Footnotes in that article, lead us to Kal Korff. That specific quote is in the middle of information that was attributed to Korff in an article that appeared in The Skeptical Inquirer Volume 21.4, found at:

https://www.csicop.org/si/show/what_really_happened_at_roswell

Specifically, the quote is this:

Q. There are two researchers ([Don] Schmitt and Randle) [parenthetical statement in the original] who are presently saying that the debris in General Ramey’s office had been switched and that you men had a weather balloon there in its place.

A. [DuBose] Oh Bull! That material was never switched!

Q. So what you’re saying is that the material in General Ramey’s office was the actual debris brought from Roswell?

A. That’s absolutely right.

Later, to reinforce this idea, Korff in that same article wrote:

Q. Did you get a chance to read the material and look at the pictures?

A. Yes, and I studied the pictures very carefully.

Q. Do you recognize that material?

A. Oh yes. That’s the material that Marcel brought into Fort Worth from Roswell.

Given the way the article is structured and the information provided, that would be the end of the trail. Korff provided no footnotes or references for the quoted material, only that DuBose denied the material had been switched. It leaves the impression that Korff might have conducted the interview, though that is not said anywhere in the article. We just have DuBose quoted as the source with no information on how those quotes were gathered.

That might have been a problem for someone not immersed in the Roswell minutia who wished to chase footnotes. I know, however, where the quotes come from originally. They appeared in Korff’s less than accurate account of his alleged investigation into the Roswell case. He wrote on page 129 of the hardback edition of his crummy book:

In a revealing interview he granted to UFO researcher and television producer Jamie Shandera, DuBose put to rest the “mystery” of the so-called substituted wreckage and has exposed it for what it is – another Major Marcel myth! The initials “JHS” stand for Jaime Shandera and the initials “GTD” denote Gen. Thomas DuBose.

In this version, which now gives us more information about who conducted the interview (including the initials of the participants rather than a “Q” and “A”), Korff wrote:

JHS. There are two researchers (Schmitt and Randle) [parenthetical statement in the original] who are presently saying that the debris in General Ramey’s office had been switched and that you men had a weather balloon there in its place.

GTD. Oh Bull! That material was never switched!

JHS. So what you’re saying is that the material in General Ramey’s office was the actual debris brought from Roswell?

GTD. That’s absolutely right.

JHS: Could General Ramey or someone else have ordered a switch without you knowing it?

GTD: I have dame good eyesight – well, it was better back then than it is now – and I was there, and I had charge of the material, and it was never switched. [Emphasis added] [by Korff in the original].

You’ll note that this is the same interview that appeared in The Skeptical Inquirer. The footnotes in the book take us to Focus, Volume 5, (New Series) dated June 30, 1990. It was also published in the MUFON UFO Journal, No. 273, in January 1991. The quotes are the same in all these various locations, so that we have traced the original back to interviews conducted by Shandera.

Here’s what we learn about those interviews. “…Gen. DuBose was recently interviewed first by telephone and later at his home by Fair Witness Project [Bill Moore’s organization to investigate UFOs] Board member Jaime Shandera.”

We now know who gathered the information, when it was gathered (meaning late 1990 and early 1991), and what it is claimed to have been said. But, unlike many of these chasing footnotes articles, there is more to the story. I have a great deal of other information that affects how this all plays out and it was information available to anyone who looked for more than just their confirming evidence...

First, according to both General and Mrs. DuBose, Shandera neither recorded the conversation held at the DuBose home, nor did he take notes. We’re left with only Shandera’s claims of what was said, and the information in quotation marks is more likely a paraphrase than actual quotes. There is no way to verify the accuracy of the quotes.

Although Shandera has been asked, he apparently did not record the telephone conversation either. He has never suggested that he took any notes during that conversation, so, once again, we have no way to verify the veracity of his claims.

On the other hand, DuBose was interviewed in Florida by Don Schmitt and Stan Friedman on August 10, 1991. That interview was recorded on video tape so that a record of DuBose’s exact words is available for review. In that interview, DuBose was asked pointedly if he had ever seen the Roswell debris and he responded, "NEVER!" That means, quite clearly, that the debris in Ramey’s office was not what had been brought from Roswell.

After the Shandera interview was published, DuBose was again interviewed and asked if he had ever seen the real debris and again he answered, "NO!" And, again, that refutes the information that is traced back to a single source, which is Shandera.

This could be construed as just another debate between two factions with no way to resolve it. However, DuBose spoke to others when asked about this particular point. Billy Cox, at the time a writer for Florida Today interviewed DuBose for an article he wrote for the November 24, 1991, edition of the newspaper. Cox reported that DuBose told him essentially the same story that he told the others except Shandera. Here was a disinterested third-party reporting on the same set of circumstances, but he didn't get Shandera's version of the events.

In a letter Cox send me dated September 30, 1991:

I was aware of the recent controversy generated by an interview he (DuBose) had with Jaime Shandera, during which he stated that the display debris at Fort Worth was genuine UFO wreckage and not a weather balloon, as he had previously stated. But I chose not to complicate matters by asking him to illuminate what he had told Shandera; instead, I simply asked him, without pressure, to recall events as he remembered them...he seemed especially adamant about his role in the Roswell case. While he stated that he didn't think the debris was extraterrestrial in nature (though he had no facts to support his opinion), he was insistent that the material that Ramey displayed for the press was in fact a weather balloon, and that he had personally transferred the real stuff in a lead-lined mail pouch to a courier going to Washington ...I can only conclude that the Shandera interview was the end result of the confusion that might occur when someone attempts to press a narrow point of view upon a 90-year-old man. I had no ambiguity in my mind that Mr. DuBose was telling me the truth.

Cox isn't the only one to hear that version of events from DuBose. Kris Palmer, a former researcher with NBC's Unsolved Mysteries reported much the same thing in 1991. When she spoke with DuBose, he told her that the real debris had gone on to Washington in a sealed pouch and that a weather balloon had been on the floor in General Ramey's office.

Don Ecker

But the most enlightening of the interviews comes from Don Ecker formerly of UFO magazine and now the host of Dark Matters Radio on KGRA digital radio. Shandera had called Ecker, telling him that he would arrange for Ecker to interview DuBose about this issue. Ecker, however, didn't wait and called DuBose on his own. DuBose then offered the weather balloon/switch version of events. When Ecker reported that to Shandera, Shandera said for him to wait. He'd talk to DuBose.

After Shandera talked to DuBose, he called Ecker and said, "Now call him." DuBose then said that the debris on the floor hadn't been switched and that it was the stuff that Marcel had brought from Roswell. It should be pointed out here that Palmer called DuBose after all this took place. Without Shandera there to prime the pump, DuBose told weather balloon/switch version of events. It was only after close questioning by Shandera could that version be heard. It is not unlike a skillful attorney badgering a witness in a volatile trial. Under the stress of the interview and the close questioning, the witness can be confused for a period of time. Left alone to sort out the details, the correct version of events bubbles to the surface.

The point here is that sometimes following the footnotes to their source isn’t enough. You have to explore other avenues of information to ensure that the footnotes are accurate. In this case, because I’m immersed in the minutia of Roswell, I knew where to look for the additional information and that additional information paints a different picture than that found if you only followed the footnotes to Korff.

Latest MJ-12 Documents: A Final Look

For those of you who tuned into Midnight in the Desert to listen to me discuss the latest MJ-12 document release, well, I was bumped early in the evening because Heather Wade had “overbooked the show.” At least I wasn’t dragged off by security for refusing to give up my place at the microphone… which couldn’t have happened since I was at home and she controlled the telephone system anyway.

But I did listen to the beginning of the program because like so many others, I wondered what Stan Friedman would say about the authenticity. Like many of us, he was interested in the source of the documents. They had seemed to excite him in earlier statements, but he now was somewhat more neutral though a careful reading of them should have given away the false nature of them... The mere mention that the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit (IPU) was involved should have been a huge red flag. The IPU has been identified and it has nothing to do with aliens or UFOs or anything of the nature. For more about the IPU see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=IPU

I found one point hilarious and which nearly everyone has failed to mention. The first page says, “READ-AND-DESTROY. I have to wonder how the document survived with that instruction on the first page, which also argues against authenticity. I will note here that a top secret document’s destruction must be documented saying that it has been properly destroyed. Whoever “stole” this one would have had to violate that rule because he would have had to sign the destruction form.

Heather wouldn’t name names, and in one respect I understand that but that also tends to undermine the validity of the documents. She did say that the person who “stole” them originally had died so that he or she can’t be questioned about how he or she gained possession of them.

Heather hadn’t received the originals either. They had come to her in a .pdf file, which, as I have noted in the past, does not allow for much in the way of a forensic analysis of the paper, ink or anything else that might be gained by examination of the originals. We are left with a study of the format, the font, if the documents conformed to others created at the highest-levels of the government and if the documents fit into our current understanding of the situations being discussed in them.

Instead of analysis of these latest documents on the show, we were treated to another waltz down MJ-12 memory lane from the alleged moment the original documents first arrived at Jaime Shandera’s house in 1984 to the point we have reached now. There was nothing new here, other than listening to Stan talk about all his visits to archives, and he enjoys to do so (and hey, that is fun going through all this material, looking for that single and often elusive nugget) and things he had learned about the men who were named to the original MJ-12 committee, all of which was irrelevant to understanding these new documents.

For those who haven’t looked at them yet, though they can now be accessed through a variety of websites including that for Midnight in the Desert. You can still find them here if you are still interested:

http://midnightinthedesert.com/exclusive-ultra-top-secret-assessment-situation-statement-position-ufos/

I have outlined some of the many mistakes in these documents already and find it difficult to believe that something created at this level would be so riddled with errors. I am sorely tempted to enumerate the errors in the Roswell section but will refrain from doing that. Anyone interested can take a look at Roswell in the 21^st Century (or almost any of the other Roswell books) and compare the information there with that in this document. The errors will be apparent and we have to think that anyone who was far enough inside of the loop to be writing this document would be cognizant of the facts of the case.

I’m going to move onto the Aztec case which was covered in depth here. Stan had made a big deal out of the research in Scott Ramsey’s book while he was on Midnight in the Desert and how careful and meticulous it has been. But this document is at a wide variance with what Ramsey published. This sets up a conundrum… if the document is accurate, then Ramsey is wrong but if Ramsey is right, then the document is fake and I haven’t even mentioned the possibility that both are wrong and Aztec is a hoax.

According to the document, on March 25, 1948, the craft was watched on three radars “belonging to the recovery network of the White Sands Test Range and located in classified areas of southwest New Mexico.” In 1948, it was the White Sands Proving Ground, and if the radars were in southwest New Mexico, that would have prevented tracking of the object to low altitudes in northern New Mexico because the mountainous terrain would have been in the way. In fact, once you get very far north of White Sands, their radars aren’t much good for an object below 10,000 feet. Radar is line of sight.

Again, according to the document, the crash site was secured by 10:45 p.m. that night, which meant that no civilians would have been gathered at the site on the morning of March 25 to watch the military arrive because the object had yet to crash according to these new documents. And, if the civilians were on hand to see the military to arrive, it would have had to be on the morning of March 26, but then the site was already secured and the civilians would have been prevented from getting near.

We are treated to a reference to the base at Flat Rock, Nevada, which, of course, was the scene of much of the action in The Andromeda Strain. We learn that the Blue Berets (whoever they are… no, they don’t exist) came in disguised as National Guard, but I’m not sure how you pull that off since the uniforms worn by the National Guard are the same wore by those on active duty with the Army. I suppose they removed their Blue Berets and wore regulation headgear.

Stephen Bassett

But there really doesn’t seem much reason to drag this out. The documents are faked. I spoke with Stephen Bassett yesterday afternoon, and almost the first thing he said to me was that he too thought the documents faked. We discussed some of the bloopers in text, the problems with the classification markings, and all the other errors. Bassett said that he didn’t think these were disinformation, but more likely just someone outside the government who had too much time on his hands. I’ll add someone who didn’t actually know much but who had gotten his hands of William Steinman’s book UFO Crash at Aztec.

What we need to do now is place these documents in the same file folder with the Roswell Slides, the alien autopsy and little grey men who like strawberry ice cream and Tibetan music. Footnotes in the great journal of UFO information, or maybe, even better, have them all deleted from anything to do with UFO research because they have only distracted us. They have added nothing to our knowledge.

The Plains of San Agustin Crash Revisited

Since it has been brought up here in the last couple of days, and since we might have beaten the Roswell Slides issue to death, at least for the time being, I thought we might look at the Plains of San Agustin crash scenario once again. Remember, to disagree with me doesn’t make you a liar, just someone with a different opinion. When you don’t bother with searching all aspects of an event, then you become an advocate for that event. I have looked into this case for a long time, and given everything that I have found, I simply cannot shoe horn it into a July 1947 time frame.

You might say that this story begins when Stan Friedman met a couple, Vern and Jean Maltais, in Bemidji, Minnesota, on October 24, 1978. They wanted to tell him of Barney Barnett and a UFO crash that Barnett had told them about many years earlier. He related the tale in his book, Top Secret Majic on pages 18 – 19.

According to Friedman, they were told by Barnett he had found a flying saucer crashed with four bodies lying around it. The military arrived and told Barnett and members of an archaeological team to leave the area. Friedman wrote, “They had no date for the Barnett story.” Please note here that Stan is making this claim about the lack of a date when first told this tale.

Later, however, the date was narrowed down when Vern and Jean Maltais told Bill Moore they visited the Barnetts in February, 1950 (See The Roswell Incident, pages 53 – 58). It was during this visit that Barnett said that he had seen the crashed saucer. Jean Maltais, when asked where the craft had crashed, said, “…I don’t exactly, recall. It was somewhere out of Socorro. He may have said exactly, but I don’t recall. I remember he said it was prairie – ‘the Flats’ is the way he put it… Barney traveled all over New Mexico, but did most of his work directly west of Socorro.”

According to what the Maltais told Moore during his interview with them, Barnett was out on assignment near Magdalena, New Mexico, which is west of Socorro. The story was that Barnett thought at first it was a plane crash but when he got closer, crossing a little more than mile of desert, he saw that it was a saucer-shaped craft, twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter. It was a flash of sunlight from the metallic craft that caught his attention.

Maltais said that Barnett saw some bodies. They were dead, according to what Barnett told Maltais. There were bodies both inside and out, and Barnett said that the ones outside had been tossed out by the impact. He described them as being like humans but they weren’t human. The heads were pair shaped, their arms and legs were skinny, the eyes were small and they had no hair. They were smaller than humans and the heads were larger than those on human bodies.

There were other witnesses there, according to what Maltais heard and what he told me during interviews in August, 1989 and July 1990. These were archaeologists who had been working nearby and apparently had seen the object fall the night before. Barnett seemed to think they were from an eastern university, but Moore reported they were from the University of Pennsylvania. These witnesses have never been located though searches for them have been made.

Not long after Barnett arrived, the military turned up, and took over. They condoned the area and escorted everyone off the site after warning them not to talk about it.

Barnett apparently didn’t keep the secret very long according to others interviewed. In 1947, J. F. “Fleck” Danley was Barnett’s boss. Bill Moore asked Danley about the story. Danley said that Barnett had come into the office one day and said that the flying saucers were real. Danley had been in a bad mood on that day, said that the flying saucers weren’t real and he wasn’t interested in discussing it further. But Danley, thinking about it, felt bad, so he asked him about it sometime later. Danley said Barnett mentioned something about the “Flats” but couldn’t remember much else including when this conversation might have taken place.

Moore returned to the topic four months later and again talked to Danley. At that time Danley said that he remembered the date and was sure that it was sometime early in the summer of 1947. In interviews I conducted with Danley in October 1990 and June 1991, he suggested that he didn’t have a clear memory of when Barnett had told him about the crashed saucer, and in fact, didn’t have a clear idea where Barnett had been on the day he told Danley about the saucer.

Danley mentioned that Barnett was a soil conservation engineer who worked out of Socorro and a satellite office in Magdalena. He did mention that Barnett occasionally made it into Lincoln County, New Mexico but that was rare. Please notice that it was Danley that provided the information that Barnett occasionally got into Lincoln County, in which Corona and the Foster ranch are located. Interestingly, Danley remembered Barnett said something about Carrizozo when he mentioned this in a May 14, 1991 interview. He said that Barnett told him about the crash but he didn’t remember him saying anything about bodies or creatures. Please note that Danley said that Barnett didn’t say a thing about bodies… yes that is redundant, but necessary.

To make this even more complicated, Friedman said that he had “reinterviewed Danley and several others who knew Barney in 1990 [clearly Friedman means he interviewed the people in 1990 and not that they knew Barnett in 1990] and again was told ‘in the Plains.’” Of course, many of those people said “the Flats,” which Friedman, with some justification, translated into the Plains.

These were not the conclusions of others. Jaime Shandera, at the UFO Expo West in Los Angeles on May 11, 1991, was lecturing about the Plains of San Agustin. According to information supplied by Antonio Huneeus and Javier Sierra Shandera had this to say:

The people that supposedly found stuff in Socorro did not find stuff in Socorro. The party of archaeological people and the Barney Barnett part of the story; they were at the Corona site, not in Socorro. I know [this is] the way you understand it because it’s the way it’s always been written and even the way it was written in The Roswell Incident. That’s wrong. There is new evidence that it was all in the Corona site. The way it happened was this – there were not two sites that were more than one hundred miles or so apart … and the so-called Roswell site was just outside of Corona. The archaeologists and Barney Barnett part of it, that was over in Corona. There was no person that found anything in San Agustin.

There were others who talked to Barnett about the case. Stan Friedman interviewed a military reserve officer from New York, William Leed who said that in “the early 1960s,” a fellow officer had told him about Barnett. Leed arranged to go to New Mexico soon after to talk to Barnett about the crash.

Leed did hear the story from Barnett, thought that Barnett was sincere and was impressed that Barnett wouldn’t talk to him until Leed showed him a military ID. Leed made it clear that he was there on a personal quest and this had nothing to do with the military or official business.

There is nowhere in the various interviews with Leed that provide a date or a location. It is assumed that the date is early July, often on the second, and the location is out on the Plains, not far south of Highway 60. Friedman wrote of this meeting between Leed and Barnett, “No reason to think it was other than ‘on the Plains,’ but offers no quotes suggesting that Leed believed this.

In the 1990s, Friedman placed an ad in the Socorro newspaper, asking for anyone who had information about the Barnett story to contact him. One of those who did was Harold Baca who in the 1960s lived across the street from Barnett. He said that as he helped Ruth Barnett take care of an ailing Barnett, he heard about the crashed flying saucer from Barney who was convinced that his cancer was the result of breathing contaminated air near the wrecked saucer and the bodies, at least that is what Baca told me in an interview in June 1991. Baca seemed to think that it had happened “out on the plains.”

Friedman found addition witnesses who suggested that Barnett had said that he was on the Plains. These included the late Marvin Ake, who said he had heard the story “many years earlier, but provided no date and an unidentified and retired postmistress from Datil who said the saucer had been trucked through Magdalena at night. 

Others in the area also remembered discussion of a flying saucer crash on the Plains, but some of them couldn’t remember if they had heard about it in the late 1940s, or sometime after the publication of The Roswell Incident. That was what Johnny Foard told me during an interview on February 9, 1992.

The problem with all this is that Barnett died in 1969 before anyone was talking about flying saucer crashes in New Mexico in 1947 other than mentioning the Aztec case. The interviews are all with people attempting to remember what was said decades earlier and give it some sort of time frame. The contamination of the witnesses can be seen in the evolution of their stories. Vern and Jean Maltais, for example, and according to what Friedman has written, had no date for the story. It wasn’t until later that they seemed to narrow it down and that it could be suggested as July 1947.

The same thing is seen with Fleck Danley. He did not have a time frame or a solid location for the crash until after he had talked to researchers. Other witnesses were vague saying that Barnett had said it was twenty years earlier (Baca) who talked to Barnett about it in 1968 so it provides something of a time frame but one that is still vague.

Then there are people who were on the Plains in July 1947 and said nothing happened. Herbert Dick was one of them. He was excavating the Bat Cave beginning on July 1, 1947, according to a letter I believe was uncovered by Art Campbell in a Harvard archive. The Bat Cave is situated on the eastern side of the Plains with a panorama view from Datil to Horse Springs. If something had fallen and then been recovered in early July 1947, Dick was in a position to see it. We know this because they were excavating the human habitation in the Bat Cave, which means they were near the entrance, and their camp site was on the only flat piece of ground near the cave and facing west. But, according to Dick, they saw nothing.

One other interesting point. In a communication I had with Dick he said that he was not a big fan of the government. If he had seen anything, he wouldn’t keep it a secret. He would tell, but unfortunately, he hadn’t seen anything.

It is for these reasons, that is the lack of first-hand corroboration of the Barnett tale, the inability of the first people to talk of what Barnett said to provide a location and date and that the only source of the information is Barnett that I say, with confidence, that nothing happened there in July 1947.

MJ-12 and 1985

While I know that many people are tired of the arguments about the authenticity of MJ-12, and while I really don’t want to open up another assault on my integrity based on my objections to MJ-12 documents, I have discovered something about them that hasn’t been reported. It suggests, once again, who might have had a hand in creating the documents, and it reinforces the idea that these documents were created in the mid-1980s for personal gain and not in 1952 for the President-elect.

I was searching for another file, when I noticed one that was out of place. I opened it out of curiosity and found some notes that related to MJ-12. What this told me was that at the UFO Expo West in Los Angeles on May 11, 1991, Jaime Shandera was lecturing about the Plains of San Agustin. He had this to say:

The people that supposedly found stuff in Socorro did not find stuff in Socorro. The party of archaeological people and the Barney Barnett part of the story; they were at the Corona site, not in Socorro [Plains of San Agustin]. I know [this is] the way you understand it because it’s the way it’s always been written and even the way it was written in The Roswell Incident. That’s wrong. There is new evidence that it was all in the Corona site. The way it happened was this – there were not two sites that were more than one hundred miles or so apart … and the so-called Roswell site was just outside of Corona. The archaeologists and Barney Barnett part of it, that was over in Corona. There was no person that found anything in San Agustin.

Remember, this was in May 1991, and had nothing to do with what Don Schmitt and I had written in our book, UFO Crash at Roswell, that would be published in July 1991, though we had come to the same conclusion. Barnett was not over on the Plains. In May 1991, no one had seen Ruth Barnett’s diary, which, of course, ended the discussion. Karl Pflock and I would publish an article some ten years later that not only suggested that Barnett had not seen the object on the Plains, but that his story had nothing at all to do with Roswell crash.

On that same day, that is May 11, 1991, Antonio Huneeus and Javier Sierra interviewed Bill Moore about some of the things that Shandera had said earlier. Moore was talking about the Gerald Anderson tale and why he did not accept it as authentic. (Interestingly, one of the reasons he rejected it was because the military was segregated in 1947, not realizing that white officers commanded the black units, so one of his reasons for rejecting the tale is false, but that doesn’t matter here.) He confirmed that he was on board with Shandera about the Plains, saying, “There is no reason to believe anything occurred on the Plains of San Agustin on that particular date.…”

Which is, of course, what I and many others have been saying for years. Nothing happened on the Plains. But then Moore said the thing that is quite revelatory. He said, “The original hypothesis was that the object had come down in two places, the first being the Brazel site, the second being the Plains of San Agustin, and that in 1985 I abandoned [it] simply because the only witness who put the thing in the Plains of San Agustin at all was Barnett’s boss, Danley, [who] it turned out, was not sure of the place, and it turned out that Barnett could have been up at the Brazel site…”

Here’s what we know now. According to the documentation supplied by Moore in various arenas, Shandera received the Eisenhower Briefing Document on December 11, 1984. This is based on their displaying of a mailing envelope with a December 1984 date on it (postmarked from Albuquerque, which I mention simply because if I don’t someone will criticize the lack of my noting it) but we have no way of knowing if that envelope actually contained the film. There is nothing to tie it to the film and the EBD. We can document the first public mention of the EBD by a London newspaper on May 3, 1987, though Just Cause did publish a list of members of MJ-12 in December 1985 but not the documents themselves. Prior to that, we have nothing that is reliable about the EBD. We can accept the December 11, 1984, date as reliable, or we can reject it. It actually means little because it is impossible to prove that the date is accurate.

Now, based on the 1991 interview, we have Moore’s statement that he had rejected the idea of a Plains of San Agustin crash in 1985 which, as I noted, is interesting. He tells us that he has rejected it because Danley couldn’t actually provide a location or date for Barnett’s story. This is something that I had noticed when I interviewed “Fleck” Danley in October 1990. It was clear that he couldn’t remember much about what Barnett had said and had I been of a mind, I could have convinced him of almost anything. I realized that his information was severely compromised.

But here’s the thing. Moore, in 1991, was saying that he rejected the Plains of San Agustin in 1985, not because he had in his hand the EBD which mentioned nothing of a crash there, but because he found the Danley information to be wanting. It would seem to me that if I was in possession of a document which gave me precise information about a UFO crash and that had been prepared for the man who would be taking over as President in a few months, that would be the most important source for a change in the basic story. If the Plains was left out of the briefing that would tell me that the information about the Plains was inaccurate and that would be a better source than that of a witness who was easily confused. Or, in other words, I would have said I have a document that tells me the Plains story is no good.

That is, unless I know something about the EBD that others don’t know. If I know the source of the EBD, and I know the document can’t be trusted, then I don’t use it to suggest there was no crash on the Plains. I say something about the lack of reliability of Danley’s testimony.

The other side of this is that we can trace the EBD back to Bill Moore and Jaime Shandera and no further. They are the sources for this document and it seems that they, or at least Moore, are not confident enough in it to use is as source material for his analysis of the situation in 1947. That tells us something very important about the EBD. It tells us that Moore finds the EBD unreliable, and if he has no confidence in it, why should the rest of us?

I will say one other thing. The information contained in the EBD was the best available in the mid-1980s. This is proved once again by Moore’s comment that he abandoned the Plains idea in 1985. He is telling us quite a bit in that one short statement. We should all listen to what he had to say about this because it does answer a couple of burning questions.

MJ-12 and Major Contradictions

 Here’s something that I have never understood. How can you hold two beliefs that are contradictory? If one is true, then the other cannot be true. They cancel out one another.

Here’s what I mean. For the sake of argument, let’s say that the Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD) received by Jaime Shandera is authentic (which means only for this point). It tells of two crashes, one on the Brazel ranch and the other in December 1950 in the El Indio – Guerrero area near the Texas – Mexico border. It tells us that four “human-like beings” had been found some two miles from the main debris field and all four had been killed in the crash. Other details, such as the name of the base at Roswell, the creation of the Air Force Project Sign, and Arnold sighting of June 24, 1947, suggest that the creator of the document had knowledge of the history of the UFO phenomenon.

There are those who believe this document but who also believe there was a crash on the Plains of San Agustin which might have been part of the Roswell crash, and another event near Aztec, New Mexico in March 1948. The question that arises from this is if the EBD was created for President-elect Eisenhower, why are these other two crashes left out? There is no reason to hide that information from Eisenhower, unless those creating the EBD knew that those events hadn’t happened? In other words, they didn’t include them because they knew they were faked.

Taking this a step further, and because we’ve just discussed the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit, we see in those two documents the information about a UFO crash near the Trinity site on the White Sands Missile Ranch. While it could be said that this is part of the events on the Brazel ranch, it was not mentioned in the EDB. The documents talk of five creatures rather than four and, importantly, mention that Eisenhower, then the top officer in the Army, would be briefed in August 1947, eliminating the need for a briefing in November 1952.

If we look at the First Annual Report, it mentions three sites. Two are on the Brazel ranch and one at the Trinity site. Again, this is in conflict not only with the EBD but also the IPU summary. So which of these documents is accurate and which are fakes? And isn’t it possible that all three are fake?

As mentioned in the past, the El Indio – Guerrero crash of December 6, 1950, has but a single witness and the credibility of the crash rests on his shoulders. In the mid-1980s when the EDB was released, nearly everyone in the UFO field accepted this case because the witness was a retired Air Force colonel who had been fighter pilot. The trouble is that he is neither and he changed the date of the crash three or more times. Given those facts, it seems logical to reject his claims of a UFO crash, and if that is true, what does that mean for both the EBD and the First Annual Report, which contain that information?

I had planned to talk of other MJ-12 documents that seem to contradict one another, but this all makes the point. There are fatal flaws in each of the documents. Any document created at the supposed level at which these were created would be accurate. There wouldn’t be the sort of elemental errors seen here. If there were three crashes, then three crashes would have been mentioned.

I will point out one other obvious thing because there are some who don’t seem to get it. In various MJ-12 documents there are anachronisms… that is, there are things mentioned that did not exist when the documents were allegedly created. I’ve pointed out that the First Annual Report written in 1952 mentions Project Moon Dust which wasn’t created until late 1957 as an example. The MJ-12 manual SOM1-01 sent to Don Berliner some time ago, suggested as one of the cover stories to suggest to the press that the debris was from a “downed satellite.” The manual was allegedly created in 1954 when there were no satellites to crash and scatter debris. Such a suggestion prior to October 1957 would raise more questions than it answered.

What all that means is that the documents have some real problems that are not easily explained. They contain information that just wasn’t available when they were allegedly created and they seem to be predictive of the future. Or, more precisely, this seems to suggest the documents are forged.

However, the real question that I have is how one person can hold two sets of beliefs that are mutually exclusive. If the EBD is authentic, then the tales of other crashes, on the Plains of San Agustin and at Aztec must be false… and if those are real events, then why are they not mentioned in the EBD? One set of facts or documents must be wrong and given everything else we know, it seems obvious that all of the documents are fraudulent… but as they say, “That’s just my opinion

MJ-12: Beating the Dead Horse

I have been reviewing the history of MJ-12 and I have found something interesting. The first mention of MJ-12 was not when Bill and Jaime Shandera received the undeveloped film. It wasn’t even when Moore was planning a novel with Bob Pratt, one-time editor of the MUFON Journal and former reporter for the National Enquirer.

No, the first mention of MJ-12 was in 1981 in a one page document that seemed to be a legitimate AFOSI teletype message that has become known as the Aquarius Telex or the Aquarius Document. It is, in fact, a retyped version of an AFOSI report on UFOs photographed and filmed by Paul Bennewitz over Albuquerque, New Mexico. Although the majority of this document seems to be from a real report, there is one line that is not in the original. It says, “Results of Project Aquarius is still classified Top Secret with no dissemination outside official Intelligence channels and with restricted access to MJ - Twelve. [Emphasis added.]”

Here was a mention of MJ-12 that seemed to have gone unnoticed. A few UFO researchers attempted to learn about Project Aquarius with little luck but none seemed interested, at that time, in MJ-12. Eventually some, such as Lee Graham and Barry Greenwood, using FOIA, attempted to find additional information. Graham learned more when Bill Moore showed him a copy of the Eisenhower Briefing Document. Graham was able to provide a list of the names of those associated with MJ-12 to Greenwood.

The point is, however, that MJ-12 was mentioned long before the undeveloped film arrived in 1984. Moore, in fact, contacted Bob Pratt and told him about MJ-12 in 1982 with the idea of writing a book. Pratt felt that Moore didn’t have enough evidence to warrant a nonfiction book, but thought they could discuss it in a novel. Pratt’s working title? MAJIK – 12.

I have, over the last several months attempted to get the major proponents of MJ-12 to discuss this. Robert Wood has responded that he was going to do something about it, let me know what he thought about it, but that response has not arrived. Stan Friedman wrote, in response to my first inquiry that he was about to catch a plane but would have something later. He has yet to provide that, let alone respond to my last email.

MJ-12 didn’t just appear when the film arrived at Shandera’s house. It had been mentioned before, and a novel had been written about it. Pratt thought, when the MJ-12 stories hit the press in 1987, they should attempt to sell the novel once again. He wrote to Moore suggesting that, but never got a response.

You have to wonder about the reality of something that appeared for the first time in a document that was later to be declared a hoax (or rather the version that MJ-12 was a retyped version that added the line about Project Aquarius and MJ-12). Here’s the thing that hasn’t been discussed. Let us say that there is a highly classified project known as MJ-12… So secret that virtually nothing about it has been found. Now suppose that you want to introduce disinformation into the UFO community to confound it, and you have a mission of discrediting Paul Bennewitz because his research could expose a real, non UFO related but classified project. You create a fake document and ensure that it falls into his hands, hoping he would run to the media with it. Once he had done that, then you whip out the real document to prove he has an altered one… and you imply that he is responsible for the alteration and you demonstrate that he is unreliable.

So far, so good. But the very last thing you are going to do is put in that disinformation the name of a real, highly classified project that is so secret that no one outside a small exclusive circle knows about. To do so would be expose that project to scrutiny by UFO researchers who are responsible for thousands upon thousands of FOIA requests. You’ve now given them information that they shouldn’t have. There is no reason to expose MJ-12, if it exists, in a document meant to discredit Bennewitz.

In other words, this first mention of MJ-12 in this document that is an admitted retyping of an actual AFOSI message means that MJ-12 is fraudulent. The MJ-12 committee doesn’t exist… and those who retyped the AFOSI message (Bill Moore admitted it was a retype at a meeting of FUFOR) would not have access to that information. They couldn’t put MJ-12 into it because they would never have heard of it. This Aquarius Telex then, argues against the existence of MJ-12. This was a misstep by those who were inventing MJ-12. It should not have surfaced so early. It should have remained hidden until the film arrived. This, you might say, is the clue that undoes MJ-12

The Balloon Switch in Ramey's Office

Cruising the blogoshpere the other day, I happened on a site that told me that the Roswell case was basically over and for proof offered the fact that the debris in General Ramey’s (that is Brigadier General Roger Ramey, at the time the commander of the Eighth Air Force) office had not been switched. This was based on an interview that Jaime Shandera had conducted with Colonel Thomas DuBose.

For a little background, let’s review. In July 1947, seven pictures were taken in Ramey’s office of the material brought from Roswell. From the pictures, it’s clear that what Major Jesse Marcel, the Air Intelligence officer is holding, are the remnants of a rawin radar detector, launched by weather services to track winds aloft. In this case, the skeptics have suggested it was part of an array train that was used by the then highly classified Project Mogul.

The point is, if this is truly what Marcel found in the desert, and this is truly the stuff that he brought from New Mexico, then we have solved the mystery. Roswell was a weather balloon and for some bizarre reason neither Marcel nor the commander of the 509th Bomb Group, Colonel William Blanchard were able to recognize it.

But in all things Roswell there is a complication. Colonel Thomas DuBose (seen in an official photograph at the left), the Chief of Staff of the Eighth Air Force, the parent organization to the 509th , and who appears in two of the pictures, said that the real debris was switched and that what was left was the balloon material. If true, then what is in the pictures tells us nothing about what was found in Roswell, and the idea of a cover-up is planted. If it was a balloon, even a top-secret Mogul balloon, there was no need for a switch.

The debate over the events near Roswell have taken several subtle turns in the past and this latest posting is not the first time that these questions have been addressed. For those not familiar with them, arguments from the skeptical community can be convincing. The problem is that many of these arguments are founded, not in research, but in the semantics of the situation. With the debate reopened with the publication of The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell and now with that posting in the blogosphere, it is important to understand exactly what is being said. The arguments over the credibility of forty year memories and the events that took place in Brigadier General Roger Ramey's office on July 8, 1947 can be illustrative in attempting to understand this whole situation.

Philip Klass (self described as the smartest, Handsomest and sexiest of the UFO researchers seen at the left), in one of his attempts to undermine the research being done into the Roswell case, has presented theories that can't be substantiated and which, like those on that blog, are only part of the story. He has taken rumor and speculation and attempted to turn it into a thought provoking piece on why the memories of witnesses and the testimonies of those witnesses should be ignored and centered it around Thomas DuBose and what happened in Ramey’s office. But Klass, in writing about this, has ignored the documents and the testimony that fly in the face of his beliefs which, all too often, is the tactic used in debate, but certainly not in scientific research.

Using the disagreements between Jaime Shandera and William Moore and me (as did the recent blogger) as the springboard, Klass writes, "The controversy [about what happened in Ramey’s officer] has served to demonstrate how fragile and uncertain are the 40+ year old recollections of surviving principals -- which is hardly surprising."

Klass continues, writing, "Seven different photos have been located which were taken in Gen. Ramey's office on the late afternoon/early evening of July 8, 1947, and two of them show Ramey and Col. DuBose examining the debris (seen at the left with Ramey kneeling and DuBose in the chair). All photos show the same debris. Moore/Shandera claim this is the same debris recovered by Marcel (Major Jesse A. Marcel) from the Brazel (W.W. Mack Brazel) ranch and that photos show the remains of a crashed saucer. Randle/Schmitt disagree and say the photos show the remains of a balloon-borne radar tracking device which Gen. Ramey substituted for the authentic debris."

To this point, Klass has provided the reader with an accurate account of the situation. The facts, as outlined are correct. However, Klass then makes the assumption that is not true. He writes, "The fact that all seven photos taken in Ramey's office show the same debris challenges the credibility of Maj. Jesse Marcel's 30+ year old recollections which form the cornerstone of the Roswell crashed saucer myth, at least for Moore, Friedman and Shandera."

These facts do not challenge Marcel's recollections, but Moore's reporting of those recollections. That is the subtle, yet real, difference here.

Klass continues, writing, "According to Moore's book [The Roswell Incident], when Marcel (now deceased) was interviewed in the late 1970s, he said that 'one photo (taken in Ramey's office showing Marcel examining the debris) was pieces of the actual stuff we found. It was not a staged photo. Later, they cleared out our wreckage and substituted some of their own. Then they allowed more photos.' Yet all of the photos taken in Ramey's office on July 8, 1947, including two (not one) with Marcel (one of which is seen on the left), clearly show the same debris."

Moore, however, provides us with three versions of that interview, one published in his book, one circulated a couple of years ago, and another in Focus, his now defunct publication.

But we can take this one step farther. Marcel, when shown a copy of one of the photos printed in Moore’s The Roswell Incident, reported, "No. No. That picture was staged. That's not the stuff I brought home."

A disinterested third party, Johnny Mann, reported that. Mann, at the time, worked for a television station in Louisiana and was doing a series on UFO sightings. One of the segments was about Roswell and he interviewed Marcel in New Mexico. His interest was only in learning the truth and is not a party to the so-called dispute. The exchange between Mann and Marcel was witnessed by another man, Julian Krajewski.

In fact, Marcel said as much on audio tape. Linda Corley had a chance to interview Marcel in 1980. During that interview, Marcel told Corley that the photographs did not show the material that he had found on the ranch. They were staged photographs.

The point of the dispute is not Marcel's memory then, but the reporting of his testimony by others. Moore has yet to offer the true version of the statement. We do have testimony, from a variety of witnesses, including those who showed Marcel the pictures that refutes both Moore's claim and Klass' assumption. We should not, then, condemn Marcel's 30+ year memory for facts that come from third parties.

Switching gears, Klass moves on to Colonel DuBose, which addresses the argument in the blogosphere. Klass reports, "In Dec. 1990 issue of Focus, Shandera's article includes what he says are verbatim quotes from two interviews with DuBose -- one by telephone and one in person when he recently visited DuBose at his home in Florida. After asking DuBose if he had read the Moore/Shandera articles that Shandera had earlier sent to him, and if he had 'studied the (Ramey office) pictures', DuBose reportedly replied: 'Yes, and I studied the pictures very carefully.' When Shandera asked if DuBose recognized the material, DuBose reportedly replied: 'Oh yes. That's the material that Marcel brought in to Fort Worth from Roswell.'"

Klass continues, writing, "But Randle and Schmitt got a conflicting response when DuBose was interviewed earlier--on August 10, 1990. The interview was videotaped and hypnosis was later used to try to enhance DuBose's 40+ year old recollections. In this interview, DuBose said that the material photographed in Ramey's office was NOT the debris that Marcel brought, i.e. that bogus material had been substituted. But then Shandera visited DuBose and asked him if there had been a switch, DuBose reportedly replied: 'Oh, bull! That material was never switched.'"

Again, the controversy isn't about 40 year old memories of a witness but about the reporting of those memories by two separate groups. It is interesting that Shandera's reporting is in direct conflict with what was reported first in The Roswell Incident and later by me.

It is also important to point out that according to both General and Mrs. DuBose, Shandera neither recorded the interview nor took notes during the interview in Florida. We have Shandera's unsubstantiated claim (and Klass’s description of the verbatim quotes) that DuBose said the debris in Ramey's office was the real debris, which is consistent with the story that Shandera and Moore were pushing, but that is not consistent with the independent testimony of the witnesses, or with the documentation available.

We have supplied copies of the video-taped interviews to The J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, the MUFON UFO Journal and the Fund for UFO Research. We have quoted exactly from that tape. Shandera and Moore have yet to offer independent and disinterested third parties copies of their tapes, if they exist at all. If they would do so, then the question about the debris in Ramey's office could be cleared up.

We asked DuBose pointedly if he had ever seen the Roswell debris and he responded, "NEVER!" After the Shandera interview was published, we asked him again, if he had ever seen the real debris and again he answered, "NO!"

This could be construed as just another debate between two factions, ours and theirs with no way to resolve it. However, we aren't the only ones to whom DuBose spoke. Billy Cox, at one time a writer for Florida Today interviewed DuBose for an article he wrote in the November 24, 1991 edition of the newspaper. Cox reported that DuBose told him essentially the same story that he told us. Here was a disinterested third party reporting on the same set of circumstances, but he didn't get Shandera's version of the events.

In a letter dated September 30, 1991, Cox wrote, "I was aware of the recent controversy generated by an interview he (DuBose) had with Jaime Shandera, during which he stated that the display debris at Fort Worth was genuine UFO wreckage and not a weather balloon, as he had previously stated. But I chose not to complicate matters by asking him to illuminate what he had told Shandera; instead, I simply asked him, without pressure, to recall events as he remembered them...he seemed especially adamant about his role in the Roswell case. While he stated that he didn't think the debris was extraterrestrial in nature (though he had no facts to support his opinion), he was insistent that the material that Ramey displayed for the press was in fact a weather balloon, and that he had personally transferred the real stuff in a lead-lined mail pouch to a courier going to Washington ...I can only conclude that the Shandera interview was the end result of the confusion that might occur when someone attempts to press a narrow point of view upon a 90 year old man (DuBose with Don Schmitt seen on the left). I had no ambiguity in my mind that Mr. DuBose was telling me the truth."

Cox isn't the only one to hear that version of events from DuBose. Kris Palmer, a former researcher with NBC's Unsolved Mysteries reported much the same thing. When she spoke with DuBose, he told her that the real debris had gone on to Washington in a sealed pouch and that a weather balloon had been on the floor in General Ramey's office.

But the most enlightening of the interviews comes from Don Ecker of UFO magazine. Shandera had called Ecker, telling him that he would arrange for Ecker to interview DuBose. Ecker, however, didn't wait and called DuBose on his own. DuBose then offered our version of events. When Ecker reported that to Shandera, Shandera said for him to wait. He'd talk to DuBose.

After Shandera talked to DuBose, he called Ecker and said, "Now call him." DuBose then said that the debris on the floor hadn't been switched and that it was the stuff that Marcel had brought from Roswell. It should be pointed out here that Palmer called DuBose after this took place. Without Shandera there to prime the pump, DuBose told our version of events. It was only after close questioning by Shandera could that version be heard. It is not unlike a skillful attorney badgering a witness in a volatile trial. Under the stress of the interview and the close questioning, the witness can be confused for a moment. Left alone to sort out the details, the correct version of events bubbles to the surface.

It should also be noted that DuBose hasn't actually changed his testimony at all. The real confusion comes from his statement that the debris on the floor in Ramey's office was not switched. We had suggested that the debris Marcel brought to Ramey's office was switched with the balloon. Dubose said that the debris on the floor wasn't switched. That statement is correct.

What this means, quite simply, is that the debris Marcel brought from Roswell was never displayed on the floor in Ramey's office. Marcel unwrapped one of the packages containing the real debris and set it on Ramey's desk. The two officers then studied a map of the debris field in another room. When they returned, the debris had been removed from Ramey's desk and the weather balloon was displayed on the floor.

I could go into a longer explanation of the situation in Ramey's office on July 8, 1947, but have done so in the November/December 1990 issue of The International UFO Reporter and the April 1991 issue of the MUFON UFO Journal. Both publications provided detailed accounts of those critical hours, including a long listing of sources used in the preparation of the articles. It is interesting to note that Shandera and Moore quote sources but never supply copies of the tapes or transcripts to independent third parties. I have done both.

But Klass is not content to leave it there. He reports, "One indication of the 89-year old DuBose's flawed memory is that when Schmitt asked if Shandera had visited his home a few months earlier to interview him, DuBose said Shandera had not. But when Schmitt asked Mrs. DuBose, she confirmed that Shandera had indeed visited their house for an interview."

The conclusion, which Klass is so impressed with that he typed it in all caps, boldface, and underlined it, is, "Thus, while Moore/Shandera debate with Randle/Schmitt over which of DuBose's recollections of events that occurred more than 40 years ago is correct, DuBose demonstrated for Schmitt that he could not remember a visit and interview by Shandera which had occurred only a few months earlier."

Ignoring the fact that long term memory is better than short term, and that the elderly often display perfect memories of long ago events while being unable to remember what they had for breakfast, let's examine that whole statement by Klass.

First, DuBose remembered the interview, but not the name of the interviewer. That's a far cry from Klass' claim that DuBose didn't remember the interview.

Second, the real question is not which of DuBose's recollections of the events are accurate, but which version reported by others, is correct. DuBose's recollections have not changed. Once again, I have made copies of the tapes available to disinterested third parties for review. Shandera/Moore have yet to do that. While I prove our claims, we must accept what they say without corroboration.

Klass does give us an answer, of sorts, to the question of which version is correct. Klass points out, "Randle/Schmitt managed to locate and interview the reporter for the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram -- J. Bond Johnson -- who had taken at least several of the photos in Ramey's office. According to their taped interview, Johnson said he then doubted that he had photographed the authentic recovered debris. But several months later, when Johnson was interviewed by Shandera, he changed his account and said that he was confident that his photos did show the actual debris that Marcel brought to Fort Worth."

Here is an opportunity to examine the methods and techniques used by Shandera. There is a wealth of documentation that can't be altered. Johnson left a legacy of writings in the newspaper so that we can compare his original story with what he is saying today.

What we learn is that Johnson's first version of the events, that he saw and photographed the bogus debris, and that the cover story of a balloon was in place before he arrived at Ramey's office, is correct. After talking to Shandera/Moore, Johnson's story changed. (For a complete analysis, see the November/December 1990 International UFO Reporter.)

It boils down to Shandera's version of events against that given and documented by outside sources. Shandera's version is at odds with both my tapes and the newspaper articles written (including one by Johnson and published the next day in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in the right time frame.)

In fact, further evidence of Shandera's altering facts appears in Shandera's published version of what Irving Newton, one of Ramey's weather officers, said and did in Ramey's office. Shandera, writing in the MUFON UFO Journal suggested that Newton had changed his story after I had interviewed him, but a complete review of his testimony published in The Roswell Incident, shows that Newton's testimony is consistent throughout all interviews with the exception of the new data written by Shandera. (For a complete analysis, see the MUFON UFO Journal, April 1991.)

So Klass seizes on the changes in testimony, condemning the witnesses, claiming that forty year old memories are flawed. The problem is not the memories of the witnesses, but the reporting of their testimony by third parties. In fact, it is a single individual, Shandera, who is causing the trouble. It is Shandera who is saying that I have been wrong. It is Shandera who has altered and misreported DuBose's testimony, it is Moore and Shandera who have created the controversy over the Marcel interview, and it is Shandera against Newton. I offer copies of the tapes, the documentation, and the transcripts to independent third parties to prove my veracity while the others offer nothing other than their opinions and versions of the events.

Klass, trying to prove that Roswell was something mundane, probably a balloon, reports everything that raises the remotest question, but never tells the full story. He stops short. Klass, it seems, is treating this as a debate and not as a search for the truth.

At the end of his discussion of the Roswell events, he writes, "As reported in the July 9, 1947 edition of the Roswell newspaper, Brazel was quoted as saying, 'when the debris was gathered up the tinfoil, paper, tape and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches long and about 8 inches thick. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe some five pounds.' Brazel was quoted as saying there was 'considerable Scotch tape and some tape with flowers had been used in the construction. No strings or wire were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicate that some sort of attachment may have been used.' (Curious construction techniques for a very advanced ET society to use in building spacecraft intended to traverse jillions of miles.)"

But what Klass never reports, though I have told him about it repeatedly, was that Brazel was escorted to that interview by Army officers. There are six separate witnesses who saw Brazel in downtown Roswell. They were surprised by Brazel's refusal to acknowledge them, and the fact that there were three officers with him.

Klass, when I pointed that out, said that maybe it was easier for the officers to drive Brazel into town than for them to give him directions to the newspaper office. Three military officers drove Brazel into town so that he could be interviewed because it was easier than telling him, "Drive out the front gate, stay on Main Street, and the newspaper office will be on the right."

Paul McEvoy, an editor at the newspaper said that Brazel was obviously under duress as he told his "new" story. Friends commented on Brazel's lack of friendliness while he was in town. No, Brazel was taken to the office to tell a new story. The one that the military wanted him to tell.

But even so, Brazel slipped in a statement that was duly reported in the Roswell Daily Record, but ignored by Klass. In it, Brazel said, "I am sure what I found was not any weather observation balloon."

Klass completes his report asking, "How would Ramey (who never talked to Brazel) know what kind of bogus material to use to replicate the description that Brazel would give to the Roswell newspaper? And how would Ramey be able to find and obtain such 'look-alike' material so quickly??"

But Klass again overlooks the testimony of others. DuBose suggested that debris had been in Fort Worth at least two days before Ramey made his press release. Ramey was in communications with Colonel Blanchard in Roswell, as well as SAC Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Orders from the top had trickled down through the chain of command. Ramey knew what to say, and probably obtained the balloon from his own weather station. It didn't matter what Brazel had seen because Brazel's statements to the newspaper the next day were fed to him by the military. He repeated what he had been told because the military was there watching him.

The answer to the first part of the question is that Ramey knew what Brazel would say because he had read the script. It wasn't Brazel telling the truth at the newspaper office, but telling the reporters what he had been told to tell them.

And the answer to the second part is that they had been working on this for more than three days. The craft and bodies had been found before Brazel walked into the sheriff's office. Ramey, as well as many others, had already seen the debris, and he may have seen the craft and the bodies. Remember, DuBose was in charge in Fort Worth because Ramey was off station on Sunday, July 6.

The major problem is that Shandera, and at times his partner, Moore, are trying to confuse the Roswell issue. They publish statements that are in direct contradiction with statements they have published in the past. They have reinterviewed witnesses and then claim that there are changes in the testimony.

Klass, wanting to destroy the Roswell testimony, uses these supposed discrepancies to refute the good work being done. He claims that witnesses can't be relied on to remember accurately events of more than forty years ago. In fact, Klass has admitted that his job is to debuke UFO reports. Not investigate them to learn the truth, but to debuke them regardless of what that truth might be. This is, of course, in direct conflict with the supposed by-laws and purpose of CISCOP (or as it is now called CSI). Klass headed their UFO subcommittee. Just how scientific are their investigations if Klass's expressed purpose is to debuke?

Klass also reports that "If a crashed saucer had been found 40 miles south of the debris field found on the Brazel ranch, the 'retrieval team' surely would have spent many days searching along the 40-mile flight path between the two sites, looking for more debris and perhaps even an ET who might have parachuted to safety. Yet no such search effort is reported by R/S's 'witnesses.'"

Klass is assuming that because we, or our witnesses, reported no such effort, it is a flaw in the story. It is true that none reported such an effort immediately after the event, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen, only that those we have interviewed were not participants in it. The only legitimate conclusion to be drawn is that it hasn't been reported, not that it didn't happen.

We are treated to his analysis of the facts, but as we've seen, the conclusions drawn are not accurate. He leaves out that which doesn't conform to his opinions, and attempts to discredit testimony by claiming the memories are nearly fifty years old and can't be trusted to be reliable.
Which brings us back to the blogosphere of today and a continuation of this debate. The blogger reported only what Shandera had found and said nothing about the controversy. The blogger might have been unaware that this whole thing had been studied in the past and that Shandera’s version of events has been seriously challenged.

Which leads to the final point here. To understand the Roswell case, it is necessary to review all the relevant material and not just that which supports a single point of view. Nothing in this case is easy, as I have just demonstrated. There is an immense amount of information out there, much of it in conflict... but the conflict often centers around divergent points of view of the researchers and not the testimony of witnesses. To understand this means you have taken a step in understanding the Roswell events.