(Blogger’s
Note: For those interested in more information about this, I
interviewed James Carrion on my A Different Perspective radio show. You can
listen to both hours here:
And
for those who wish to read the book, you can find it here:
All
this will provide information about Carrion’s theories, some of my thoughts on
them, and additional points of view.)
In
the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I have been involved
in the investigation of the Roswell case for more than thirty years. I am deep
into the minutia of the case and know where the mistakes were made and what
witnesses are more than likely being less than candid. In other words, you
might think that I
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James Carrion. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle |
bring bias to this examination of The Roswell Deception, but I believe I can view it in a very
dispassionate light. I have tried to separate what might be considered a
kneejerk reaction to a new theory that moves us beyond those which has been
traditionally assigned to the Roswell case.
Before
we begin, there are a few things that I want to make clear. Just looking at
this book as an historical thesis, we are shown a history of the United States
as it existed in the late 1940s. We are shown the paranoia that seemed to run
rampant, the distrust of our one-time ally, the Soviet Union, and a belief that
if our government did it, there are good reasons for it. This is all
demonstrated through the newspaper articles and government documents that are
linked to the book through the Internet.
There
are “mini-biographies” of many of the people who populated the upper echelons
of both the military and civilian worlds in the late 1940s. Those are interesting
in and of themselves but some of them are irrelevant to understanding UFOs. To
learn a little more about the men who were running things gives us an insight
into the how and why of certain decisions were made but that doesn’t really
help us understand the philosophy of the times.
There
was a great deal of information about the use of deception during the Second
World War. This included the use of faked divisions, rubber tanks and military
vehicles, and radio traffic designed to convince the Germans that the coming
invasion of France would be directed at the Pas de Calais rather than Normandy
as but one example. This was designed to prove that militaries, including the
United States, had successfully engaged in deception in recent history.
Second,
and of little importance, are a number of small errors that do suggest a
problem with the overall scholarship. Walter Haut is continually referred to as
Warren Haught, the name that so many newspapers used for him. I’m not sure why
this wasn’t picked up and corrected. It doesn’t seem that Carrion realized
this.
In
keeping with misnamed people, Carrion refers to Major Curtan and provides
information about Major Eugene Curtain (page 204). But this is irrelevant
because the man in Fort Worth was Major Edwin M. Kirton. The FBI didn’t bother
to get the correct spelling of the man’s name. They just assumed it was spelled
“Curtan.”
Third,
there were other things. COMINT, which is jargon for communications
intelligence is defined as code breaking. True, code breaking is part of the
COMINT mission, but it goes far beyond that. It is monitoring of
communications, the interception of those communications and study of them.
There are many aspects to COMINT.
Fourth,
is the constant suggestion that the men of the 509th Bomb Group were
“handpicked.” There is no evidence that this is true, especially when we look
at the unit rosters from the summer of 1947. Edwin Easley complained that his
MPs were routinely rotated out of the group, to be replaced by others who now
had to be trained in the procedures for handling the atomic weapons and
secrets. There didn’t seem to be anyone handpicking them.
And
there are assumptions that are not backed up by evidence. Often, we read about
what the Soviet analysts would think about a flying saucer case, or how they would
have interpreted certain information, but that is all speculation. At one
point, Carrion wrote, “Astute Soviet intelligence analysts would have paid
attention to the flying disc news reports quoting the anonymous Cal Tech
physicist.” No documentation has been offered to prove that these assumptions
are valid, and in some instances, we find them contradicted in later portions
of the book.
Before
we get too deep into the book, we are told, “…the flying saucer stories that
proliferated in the summer of 1947 were part and parcel of a U.S. led strategic
deception operation…that U.S. had amazing aerial technology… goals to stay
Stalin’s hand from invading Europe, smoke out spies and to break Soviet codes…”
It
is later in the book that we move back to the flying saucers beginning with an
analysis of the motives behind the Kenneth Arnold sighting. This was one of
those aerial deceptions that Carrion wrote about. Arnold, the man who launched
the flying saucers, was lured into the area by a reward offered for finding the
wreckage of a Marine aircraft that had crashed some months earlier, killing all
aboard but that had not been located. The theory, according to Carrion, was
that the military would be interested in the Pacific Northwest because this was
the route that Soviet missiles would take during an attack. By providing an
opportunity for someone, anyone, to see these radical new aircraft, in the Pacific
Northwest, it would suggest to the Soviets that the U.S. capability was far
superior than it actually was. This would prevent the Soviets from attacking
Western Europe and by extension, the United States.
The
flaw here is that the U.S. had nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union did not.
This would seem to be the real deterrent and this aerial deception was
unnecessary. If the U.S. could obliterate the Soviet Union with those atomic
weapons, that would keep the Soviets in check, at least until they developed
their own atomic arsenal. Mutually assured destruction would stay their hand at
that point. Carrion suggested that we had few actual bombs and that convincing
the Soviets that we had a delivery system that they could not defeat was the real
purpose.
But
what was it that Arnold saw that was so radical that he didn’t recognize it as
terrestrially based aircraft? According to Carrion (page 84), “Perhaps Arnold
was not familiar with the flying wing designs which were tailless, even though
they were
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| XB-35 |
not a military secret. Newspapers reported in May 1946 the test
flight of three N9M flying wings… and Northrop’s giant XB-35 winged bomber…”
The
problems with this are many. Only four N9Ms were built. One crashed in 1946,
two had been detailed to the Air Force for training and by June 1947, it seems
that only one was flying. These were test aircraft and only about a third the
size of the XB-35, so it is debatable that had there been nine of them and they
might not have been visible at the distance reported by Arnold.
As
for the larger XB-35, in June, according to the documentation, there were only
two in existence. According to the PIO at MUFOC Army Air Field, “None of our
flying wings has been in the air recently.”
This
seems to negate the idea that Arnold saw something that was part of an aerial
deception, which undermines the theory in the book. If it wasn’t an aerial
deception, then what Arnold saw has another explanation. Carrion counters by
saying that they might have been towing something, though it is difficult to
believe that the inherently unstable XB-35 would be capable of towing anything.
Carrion
tells us (page 114), that the deceivers had anticipated that the Arnold story
would be a “flash in the pan,” so they began feeding new sightings to
reporters, which, according to Carrion’s theory, culminated in the Roswell
case. This seems to suggest they anticipated Roswell, or had planned it in
advance. This would keep flying saucers in the news. But the day after the
Roswell crash was reported, the news was that both the Army and the Navy had
moved to suppress news stories about flying saucers. Rather than encouraging
the proliferation of flying saucer tales, they were trying to keep the media
from publishing more about them.
But
more importantly, Carrion offers no documentation and no evidence that anyone
was watching the flying saucers with an eye to keeping the story alive. No evidence
that the Soviets were interested in it, or that the aerial deception had been
created to suggest a superior aircraft. In fact, there are news reports and
speculation that the flying saucers were “… a Soviet plot to create US panic.”
This is a Soviet aerial deception.
Carrion,
in writing about the Roswell crash, noted, as did some newspapers, that there
had been a “blistering rebuke” (page 201) to the 509th subordinates
for issuing the press release. Walter Haut, however, told me there had been no
such rebuke. Maybe the press assumed it or maybe a spokesman said it, but those
in Roswell were unaware of it. Karl Pflock, in his book (Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, page 290,
reported that George Walsh had received a second call from Haut asking what he,
Walsh, had done because he, Haut, had just received a call telling him to shut
up. Of course, there is no documentation for
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Walter Haut. Photo
copyright by Kevin Randle |
this either and it conflicts with
what Haut himself had said repeatedly.
On
that same page, Carrion wrote, “Something that didn’t smell right in this news
article was the revelation that ‘not all the principals were satisfied with the
announcement that the wreckage found on the New Mexico ranch was that of a
weather balloon.’ Which principals? Making a baseless statement was borderline
gaslighting the public.”
But
the answer to that question is there in the newspapers. Mack Brazel, who found
the original wreckage, was quoted as saying that he had found weather
observation devices on two other occasions and this was nothing like those (Roswell Daily Record, July 9, 1947, page
1.)
Eventually
we learn that “Lieutenant Warren Haught delivered two entirely different press
releases to the local Associated Press and United Press outlets – a purposeful
decision that will make sense later in the story.”
Which
might be true if there were, in fact, two different press releases delivered to
the media outlets in Roswell. Walter Haut told me that he wasn’t sure if he
had, in fact, delivered the press releases in person. He might have read them
over the telephone. Both George Walsh and Jud Roberts said that there was no
hard copy of the release (and a news wire copy reported that the press release
was verbal and not written). They received it over the telephone and since one
of the recipients, Walsh worked for the AP and another, Frank Joyce, worked for
the UP, it seems that this explains the subtle differences in the two. It was
not some sort of clever deception to out spies or break codes but just the
expected differences that would develop in the ways that the press release was
distributed to the news wires and then published in the newspapers.
But
there is a third version of the press release which, of course, suggests that
Carrion’s claim is wrong. Haut provided the press release to the Roswell Daily Record. Their story is
different than those reported by the UP and AP. In other words, rather than
having been filtered through Walsh and Joyce, and then rewritten by editors at
the two wire services and later by editors at the newspapers that reported it,
the Roswell Daily Record had the
information directly from Haut. They wrote their story based on what Haut told
them and not what have been sent in to the wire services.
Carrion,
however, suggests that this is unimportant how many press releases there were
because all the key words were in both of them (A Different Perspective radio broadcast). That would allow for the
code breaking operations to go forward… but, if there was actually no need for
two or more releases, why even create them?
Later,
we are told (page 248), “Bottom line being that Blanchard would never have
unilaterally sent out the press release unless he was under orders to do so.”
A
page later, Carrion wrote, “one question that has not been adequately answered
however is who authorized the Roswell press release to be sent out. As it was
highly unlikely that Colonel Blanchard pulled the trigger on this decision, UFO
proponents shift the finger to SAC’s deputy Commanding General Clements
McMullen.”
These
are more bold statements that have no facts to back them up. Blanchard, as both
the 509th and the base commander, certainly had the authority to
send out the press release. He was not required to ask permission from his
higher
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| Colonel William Blanchard |
headquarters. Notice that in one statement we are told he would never do
it and in the next that it was highly unlikely. We are not told who these UFO
proponents are.
Without
actually supplying any documentation that the Soviets were at all interested in
the Roswell crash, and with the story not only printed in newspapers all around
the country, it was killed within three hours. It was claimed they had a flying
saucer and then it was nothing more than a weather balloon and you have to ask,
would the Soviet spies inside the United States actually be interested enough
in this tale, as it developed, to transmit to Moscow using a code? Why not just
send the information in the clear, referencing all the newspaper articles about
it? No reason to encode it. Send clippings out in a diplomatic pouch because,
once the explanation had been offered, there was no urgency to get the
information to the Soviet Union. Carrion suggested to me that Stalin wanted the
information fast and that couriers and diplomatic pouches would take too long (A Different Perspective radio broadcast).
Having
provided an explanation for the Roswell crash, that is an aerial deception to
fool the Soviets and a way of providing hints about Soviet codes, Carrion moves
back to Kenneth Arnold. This time, however, Arnold isn’t the witness, he is the
investigator. Ray Palmer, a Chicago publisher, wanted Arnold to investigate the
Maury Island UFO incident. This was a semi-flying saucer crash. It was more of an
emergency landing, but it resulted in damage to a fishing boat, the death of a
dog, and injuries to the son of one of the men on the boat.
Maury
Island is a notorious hoax. The investigation into it indirectly resulted in
the deaths of two Army Air Forces officers. The aircraft they had used to
travel to meet with Arnold developed engine trouble. It crashed after the crew
chief and a passenger parachuted to safety. The pilots were unable to bail out
and died in the crash.
All
of this, from the Arnold sighting to Arnold’s investigation into Maury Island
is an unnecessary diversion. Palmer, who had printed stories called the Shaver
Mystery in his science fiction magazine, saw Arnold’s sighting as a way of
validating some of those science fiction tales. The Shaver Mystery suggested a
race hidden inside the Earth was responsible for all the troubles we face on
the surface. The flying saucers were manifestations of craft used by those
hidden away. Since the Shaver Mystery had been presented as truth hiding in
fiction, and because these stories had boosted his circulation amazingly, Palmer
wanted more. If the flying saucers could be tied to Shaver, then that would be
best.
Arnold
was to investigate Maury Island, the sighting reported by Harold Dahl and Fred
Crisman. It has become clear over the years that Maury Island was a story
invented by Dahl and Crisman to capitalize on the flying saucer craze of the
moment. But there was an earlier connection. In 1946, Crisman had sent a letter
to Palmer’s magazine suggesting that while he, Crisman, served in the China-Burma-India
Theater during the Second World War, he had found one of the hidden caves that
lead into the inner Earth. He could corroborate some of the Shaver Mystery with
his first-hand observations.
All
of this, about Maury Island and landed flying saucers, would have been ignored,
if not for mystery calls made to newspapers about Arnold’s investigation of
Maury Island. It seemed that the caller knew everything that was going on in
Arnold’s hotel room as he interviewed the witnesses and discussed the matter
with Captain E. J. Smith of United Airlines who’d had his own flying saucer
sighting a few days earlier. This greatly disturbed both Arnold and Smith, and
at one point, they nearly torn the room apart looking for hidden microphones.
But
there were no hidden microphones and although the mystery caller was never
identified, it is clear that it was either Dahl or Crisman. (On A Different Perspective, Carrion
suggests that it was David Johnson). Given the nature of Crisman, he was
probably the one making the calls. He never provided information to which he
had not been privy. To prove he was on the inside, he was able to give the
names of the two officers killed in the plane crash before they had been
publicly released, but only because he had met them that day in Arnold’s room. Dahl
and Crisman had tried to give the Army Air Forces officers some of the
recovered residue from the damaged saucer but both officers knew what it was
and it wasn’t part of a flying saucer. This is contrary to what Carrion
suggested. George Early, in UFO, laid
all this out in a series published in October, 2010; January 2011, and finally
in October 2011.
The
one very interesting point that comes out in all of this is that a fellow,
David Johnson, had a large role in keeping the flying saucers in the newspapers.
He seemed to have inserted himself into all Maury Island investigation through
Arnold. Johnson, according to Carrion, singlehandedly convinced another
newspaper reporter to push the Maury Island story out, over the news wire.
Johnson was in communication with Arnold and knew Arnold’s plans. Johnson and
Arnold would later go flying in search of the flying saucers, and Johnson would
have his own sighting. If there was an outsider, a ringleader in this grand
deception on a local level, then David Johnson would be a prime candidate for
that. As I say, this is an interesting point made in Carrion’s book and on A Different Perspective. That alone
might be enough for us all to take notice of it.
The
one name that doesn’t surface in the book is that of Colonel Howard McCoy. He
was involved with the Foo Fighters during the Second World War, he investigated
the Ghost Rockets over Scandinavia in 1946, and then was a part of the early
investigations of the flying saucers. He was an intelligence officer who seemed
to be on the inside of everything, which makes him a candidate for the Roswell
deception.
But
the real point here is that contrary to Carrion’s belief that this was part of
the grand deception, Maury Island was nothing more than a hoax carried about by
two men who did not have sterling reputations and a Chicago publisher who
wanted to boost his science fiction magazine’s circulation. They offered
nothing that would be of interest to anyone other than those who thought the
Shaver Mystery is real. The perpetrator of this was not some government
organization but a magazine publisher who wanted to validate the Shaver Mystery
to keep his circulation high. In this case, it was for the money.
This
review could go on for much longer with these sorts of revelations. The problem
for Carrion is that while he supplies links to interesting documentation, he
has nothing that proves his case. He does not supply the smoking gun but
suggests this lack of evidence is proof of it. He wrote, “The ‘perfect
deception’ is a classic example. It is out there somewhere, but like the
perfect crime, it manifests itself only in results. It is difficult to prove,
and harder to study because quite often the study would attack comfortable
beliefs.” (page 214)
Which
is a way of saying that it must be true because we can’t prove it. We can only
look at the results, but the results are inferred from documentation and
information that is sometimes vague and sometimes irrelevant. The foundation is
very weak and nearly nonexistent.
Worse
still is what Carrion wrote early in his book. “Unfortunately, no U.S.
strategic deception operations since WW2 have been declassified so I cannot
offer official smoking gun documents that confirm unequivocally that the U.S.
perpetrated strategic deception in the year of 1947…”
Carrion
does provide an interesting history of the paranoid world of 1947, of the
espionage going on by the United States as intelligence officials read all
telegraph messages leaving the United States in something known as Operation
Shamrock which was exposed decades ago. But all that does not lead us to an
aerial deception of the magnitude claimed, that was designed to keep the
Soviets from invading western Europe, to keep them from launching missiles over
the Pacific Northwest and to help break the codes being used by Soviet agents.
He
wrote that he was supplying a theory that could be falsified. In this case, we
can say that Arnold had not been fooled by flying wing aircraft as part of an
aerial deception because there were not sufficient flying wing aircraft to form
a flight of nine. Of course, it might have been some other aircraft, or flying
wing aircraft towing something, but again, the evidence does not support such a
claim.
We
can say that the Roswell press release was not part of a purposeful deception
because there were not two purposeful versions. There was the single version
that Haut supplied over the telephone and any variation of that version is the
result of the communication over the telephone, the notes taken by those who received
the calls, and the stylistic differences between the two wire services.
Besides, with the information about the crash out in the public arena, and
identified within three hours as a weather balloon, there would be no reason
for Soviet spies to send a coded message about anything even if they thought
there was something important there. In other words, the two purposeful
versions did not exist and the documentation and testimony bears out this
conclusion.
We
can look at the Maury Island affair as a hoax dreamed up by two men with the
assistance of Ray Palmer. It was a ploy to validate the Shaver Mystery and not
some conspiracy by a secret government agency to convince the Soviets that we
had superior military aircraft. Arnold was not part of the deception. He was
just a handy foil for those perpetrating the hoax.
But
in the end, Carrion admits that he provides a lot of speculation but no real
evidence. While he challenges us to “falsify” his theory, to do so, we need
access to still classified records of this grand deception. The problem is,
such records might not exist and might never have existed. We can’t falsify the
theory by proving an alternative to it because we need those records to do so.
The
book is interesting for those of us interested in the minutia of the time, and
the theory is clever, but it fails without any sort of evidence. Speculation is
fine, but in the end, there is nothing left… the foundation is built on quick
sand and rapidly collapses without the support necessary to make the case. Read
the book for the history of time, for the information about the cases on which
it touches, but remember that the theory is not proved.
