The Roswell Provost Marshal ; Easley vs Darden

For those interested in the minutiae of the Roswell case, there has been a discussion about the roles of the Provost Marshal that involved Major Edwin Easley and Major Robert Darden. Both men served as Provost Marshal at the Roswell Army Air Field. The trouble is who had what authority at what is considered the Impact Site in July 1947, where a major component of the alien craft and the bodies of the flight crew were found.

Although, the documentation that I reviewed, suggested that Easley was the Provost Marshal when Don Schmitt and I interviewed Sheridan Cavitt, he mentioned that Darden was the Provost Marshal. I believe that was the first time that Darden’s name had come up with us. We checked out Darden, and Easley told me that Darden had become the Provost Marshal in 1948. Both men had a connection to that office.

Sheridan Cavitt in 1990. Photo by Kevin Randle

The problem arose in an interview of former Counterintelligence agent, Master Sergeant Lewis “Bill” Rickett conducted by Dr. Mark Rodeghier of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies. Although Don Schmitt conducted more interviews with Rickett than any other researcher, Fran Ridge used Rodeghier’s January 1990 interview for the basis of his analysis.

Rickett tells Rodeghier that Cavitt wanted to show him, Rickett, something. They drive about forty-five minutes outside of Roswell which puts them on a site much closer than that near Corona where the debris field was located. Ridge wrote:

Rickett and Cavett arrive near the final impact site and are a short distance down a hill not far from all the activity. There are four or five military vehicles, up about a half a mile or so down the road.

Rickett: What's going on up there?

Cavett [sic] is silent for a while, staring ahead as he drives onward.

Rickett: I don't recognize this place.

Cavett: You'll see. And Darden's even got some of HIS men up there.

Rickett realizes something important is going on. Major Robert Darden is allegedly Chief of Security [assigned to the 390^th Air Service Squadron according to some]. So, they drive up to the first checkpoint, which is Maj. Edwin Easley's MPs. The guards look at them and one of them confronts Rickett. 

Don Schmitt (right) and me (left) on the Impact Site in 2023.

There is the point where the Rodeghier interview becomes interesting. According to Rickett, they had reached the crash site, though he doesn’t know that yet. Ridge wrote:

Rickett: This is kind of hard to believe. It looks to me like something landed here. But if it landed here, I don't see any tracks. I don't know how anything could land here and not leave tracks. The sun is pretty bright. Have you been over there? Don't you see what I see? Looks like there's..............I guess that's metal.

Rickett at that time was approximately fifteen to twenty feet from various closer pieces [of debris].

Rickett: Is it hot? (radioactive) Can you touch it?

Darden is shaking his head no to the first question:

Darden: Yeah, be my guest. That's what I wanted you to ask me. As for the strange wreckage, it was very similar to that found by Marcel and Cavett on the Foster ranch; thin, light, and strong.

Rickett picks up a piece of it, a slightly curved piece of metal, real light. It is about six inches by twelve or fourteen inches. Very light. Rickett crouches down and tries to bend it.

Cavett looks over at Darden and laughs.

Cavett: Smart guy. He's trying to do what WE couldn't do.

In Witness to Roswell Tom Carey and Don Schmitt report, based on Schmitt’s interviews with Rickett, “Rickett picked up a piece of it [metallic debris], about 4 inches by 10 inches, placed it over his knee, and tried to bend it. He couldn’t. Cavitt and Easley laughed at him because they had tried and failed at it too. Rickett had never seen a piece of metal that thin that could not be bent. “The more I looked at it, I couldn’t image what it was.”

Here’s where we run into trouble. In July 1947, Easley was the base Provost Marshal. He was responsible for law enforcement and base security. His subordinate, Captain Beverly Tripp was the commanding officer of the 1395^th MP Company. The 390^th Air Service Squadron, whose area or responsibility included the Silverplate B-29s, which had been modified to carry the atom bomb. Those working on the Silverplate required a higher clearance because of that.

In July 1947, the commanding officer of the 390^th was Lieutenant Colonel Walter Y. Lucas. In July 1947, Darden worked as an air inspector, which takes him out of the picture.

We can confirm this by looking at the telephone numbers in the base telephone directory. In July 1947, Darden’s number was 311 and that number was also found under the Air Inspectors section, with 311 assigned to the administrative office. There is nothing there to hint at an association with the 390^th ASS.

We can follow this train of thought, that is what the telephone numbers can tell us about the assignments of the men in July 1947. We can track who worked where because of the phone numbers listed and the buildings to which those numbers were assigned telling us where they were. All the numbers assigned to the Provost Marshal’s office are in building 418, the Intelligence Office is Building 31 and the Air Service Squadron is in building 670. Darden was in building 81, which is separated from those with security and intelligence.

I also found an interesting reference to the mission of the 390^th in the August 1947 Unit History. It said:

The 390^th Air Service Squadron has been divided the personnel section into three sub-sections to wit: Payroll and Service Records Section, Classification Section and Personal Affairs Section. Emphasis has been placed on a cross-training program so that at least two clerks are qualified to handle each job.

There is nothing to suggest that Darden had any role in July 1947 that would have put him in charge of security on the impact site. That sort of security would have fallen to the Provost Marshal and the MP company. While Rickett did mention Darden in a specific role in 1947, it seems that Rickett remembered Darden as a Provost Marshal but, as noted, Darden didn’t have that job until 1948.

Ridge relied almost solely on Rodeghier’s interview. But Rodeghier had a comment that is relevant to the discussion here. Rodeghier, in an email to Tom Carey, Don Schmitt and me on December 17, 2025, wrote, “In my interview, I let Rickett speak and didn’t correct him because I wanted to get his story as he would tell it. Given what I knew at the time I figured that he was wrong about Easley, but I wanted him to speak freely.”

I’ll note here, that when Don and I spoke to Sheridan Cavitt in Arizona, he was quick to ask if we had spoken to the Provost Marshal. He said that the man’s name was Darden. I believe he was attempting to point us in the wrong direction. I learned that Darden had been the Provost Marshal in Roswell but not in July 1947.

Ridge has, I believe, interpreted points where Rickett mentioned the Provost Marshal that meant it was Darden. It’s a case of a flawed memory. I know how that happens. I used to say that I left my Thanksgiving meal on the serving tray in the mess hall (or Dining Facility in today’s parlance) because, in 1968, the flight had been scrambled on a mission. But two or three years ago, as I was reading the letters I had sent home from Vietnam, I discovered, we hadn’t been anywhere near our mess hall because we had staged near Tay Ninh to assist in a prisoner’s exchange. We were there in case something had gone wrong. I noted that we were provided with a promised meal while there and was outraged that we had to pay for it.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, we had been scrambled out of the mess hall on several other occasions and my clearest memory was leaving a tray in the serving line. It just didn’t happen on Thanksgiving. The point is, Darden was the Provost Marshal at the base, just not in July 1947. When Ridge writes, “Major Robert Darden is Chief of Security,” he is wrong about this. Darden probably wasn’t even on the Impact Site. He was, as noted above, assigned in July 1947 to Administration as an air inspector and was in a building away from the Provost Marshal, and the 309^th. I find no connection to a law enforcement, intelligence function, or anything to indicated he was the Chief of Security in 1947. I did find that the Troop Information and Education Officer, the Recruiting Office, and the Ground Safety and Engineering Officer were in building 81.

I found a map of the base. It provides an overview of how the various operations and functions on the base were grouped. It is not the best map but you can access that map here:

https://dn721606.ca.archive.org/0/items/dr_walker-air-force-base--roswell-new-mexico--preliminary-master-plan-maste-13219233/13219233.jpg

Map of the Roswell Army Air Field (Walker Air Force Base. It is not the best example

This doesn’t mean we can reject all that Rickett said. The essence the interview is accurate, it’s just that he got one of the names wrong. This is what happens when a theory is built on a single bit of evidence when other bits are out there but ignored. We must review all the evidence to determine how it all fits together. In this case, Rickett does mention Darden as the Provost Marshal, which is correct information, it’s just he wasn’t the Provost Marshal in 1947. Other testimony and documentation proved this.

TheSneezingMonkey Fails in Debunking Roswell

I am growing very tired of the Internet and the number of people who use it to expose their ignorance. Please note the term ignorance. I am granting them the intelligence to realize their mistakes when speaking about UFOs. When they claim a deep dive, it seems to be into the shallow end of the pool, and I realize my task is greater than I thought.

Let’s talk about TheSneezingMonkey and his latest rant about some things Ufological. It is clear to me, that he just doesn’t bother with the deep dive research he claimed which, in the world today and the Internet, is much simpler than it was even a decade ago. The answers are out there, if you’re smart enough to find them.

Take the analysis by TheSneezingMonkey when he is talking about the Kenneth Arnold sighting of June 24, 1947. He grabbed several explanations but he talked about the Flying Wing, suggesting that it might be what Arnold had seen. He did question if there would have been several of them flying in formation.  

He was talking about the YB-35 Flying Wing which did exist at the time. Several of them were being tested at Muroc Army Air Field (later Edwards Air Force Base). What he didn’t find, and what I published more than two decades ago, is that in June 1947, all of them were grounded.

Here’s what I know about that. The YB-35, a full-scale Flying Wing, first flew on June 25, 1946 from Muroc AAF. On September 11, 1946, the YB-35, suffering from gear box and propeller problems was grounded. A full-scale flying program would not resume until February 1948. There were test flights made on June 26, 1947 (two days after the Arnold sighting) but the single aircraft did not leave Southern California. The Flying Wing simply was not available in the numbers or location to be seen by Arnold. It really has no place in this discussion in the world today.

Arnold's original drawing to the Army. It looks nothing like the Flying Wing,
which is probably a better way to eliminated that aircraft as the source

But what really set the tone here was a comment made to the YouTube channel by someone calling himself or herself @RUTHAN667. That comment said, “Rosswell is mostly based on Marcell story and he is proven liar, got his moment of fame, lied to be pilot, lied about that he shoot down 5 planes.. Whole family, started finding diaries and milked story dry.. Later someone invented 2nd crash, bodies.. Brasel imprisonning. Corso cashed on it too.”

Well, it’s not Rosswell but Roswell and it’s not Marcell but Marcel. From there we move into territory that isn’t as black and white as it seems. While I wouldn’t call Jesse Marcel, Sr. a liar, the problem is that he made some claims that were less than truthful. He didn’t say he was a pilot, but had flown as a pilot while serving in the Pacific with the Army Air Forces during World War II.

True, I’m splitting a fine hair here, and it seems unlikely that an officer who is not rated would accumulate that much flight time. I can envision him getting some stick time but not 3000 hours. I can say that I flew as a door gunner in Vietnam but I was not rated in that position. I was a helicopter pilot and later an aircraft commander and accumulated just under 2000 hours during that portion of my career. I’m willing to give him a pass on that particular claim because of the way things worked in aviation units. Clearly, Marcel did participate in combat missions during his tour in the Pacific and was awarded two air medals for that.

Kevin Randle in Vietnam in 1969

However, as we break this down, Marcel apparently told Bob Pratt that he, Marcel, had five air medals for shooting down five enemy aircraft. I got Marcel’s records and the Unit Histories from the units in which he served. There is no indication that he shot down any enemy aircraft. The Army Air Forces kept records of the majority of those who downed enemy aircraft and Marcel’s name does not appear on the list. And yes, that list includes the names of the men who shot down enemy aircraft in all theaters of the war, and those flying as gunners but not pilots. The enlisted man with the most recorded kills shot down 19 enemy planes, but he was not a pilot. I believe it was Richard Bong who holds the American record with 40. Pappy Boyington, I believe shot down 28 (though I think he was only credited with 26).

At any rate, Marcel doesn’t get a pass on this. There is simply no evidence to support his claim of five air medals (though I have the citations for the two he did receive).

There are other things that he said that we can’t verify. His testimony is problematic. I will note, however, where we have additional witnesses and documentation, then what he said was probably accurate. He did travel to the Brazel (Foster) ranch and he did gather up metallic debris. He did escort that material to Fort Worth.

Bill Brazel and Don Schmitt on the Debris Field, 1989.
Photo by Kevin Randle.

The whole Marcel family did not begin to find diaries. In going through the papers and files handed down from Jesse Marcel, Sr. to his son and then to the grandchildren in 2013, they did find a “Memorandum Book,” which the Army passed out by the thousands. I have two of them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that Marcel was the author of the notations and even if he was, there is nothing in that diary to confirm the events of July 1947. The criticism about finding diaries is inaccurate.

The idea that “later someone invented 2nd crash, bodies…” is not an accurate picture either. The trouble was that we had Bill Brazil, the son of the man who found the debris field, showing us where he had picked up some of the strange debris. It is located southeast of Corona, New Mexico. We, that is Don Schmitt, Tom Carey and I were able to find witnesses to that field other than just Marcel (and these include Sheridan Cavitt, the CIC officer who accompanied Marcel out to the field). Bill Brazel took Don and me to the debris field. He parked his truck and said that this was where he had found some of that debris. Others, such as Loretta Proctor and Bud Payne pointed to the same location.

However, during our investigation, we interviewed several officers and senior NCOs who talked about a much shorter trip to the crash site. While it took three hours or more to arrive at the debris field, they talked about a short trip of under an hour. These included Bill Rickett and Chester Barton. Brigadier General Arthur Exon told us about two sites, oriented northwest to southeast that he had flown over in the weeks that followed. Eventually, witnesses to that second site, where bodies were located, were found.

Don Schmitt and me on the Impact Site, 2023. Site was identified by
several eyewitnesses.

The stories were not invented but recovered through careful investigation and corroboration. It is established that there were two sites and we, Don, Tom and I invented nothing. We just went where the testimonies took us and reported accurately what others said. In many cases, it took long contact with the witnesses for them to trust us with the tale, and then, often, only if we didn’t reveal who they were.

Mack Brazel, the man who started this by taking samples of the metallic debris to  Chaves County Sheriff George Wilcox, was held at the Roswell Army Air Field. The base Provost Marshal, Major Edwin Easley, told me Brazel had been held in the guest house, which not the same as being in the stockade, but then, if you’re not allowed to leave, what really, is the difference?

We, Don, Tom and I talked to neighbors of Mack, such as Marian Strickland, who told us he complained about being held on the base. Neighbor Floyd Proctor told researchers that he’d seen Mack in Roswell in the company of several Army officers. That suggests that the story about his being held at the base is true even if the cell didn’t have bars... just guards watching.

So, we see that @RUTHAN667’s rant contains a single fact about Marcel embellishing his resume, which really is lying no matter how I attempt to sugarcoat it. And there are other things that Marcel said that weren’t true. If Marcel was the single witness to this, we could certainly dismiss it as a tale invented by him. But, every member of Colonel Blanchard’s primary staff that we interviewed, with a single exception, verified parts of the story. When we expanded the search to other members of the 509^th Bomb Group, we found many officers and enlisted men who were involved in bits and pieces of the story. They might have seen only some of the metal recovered, or were involved in security at various sites, and even a few who did mention the bodies, the story is not stand alone. Many of them did not approach us. We found them and asked questions about those events.

I’ll note here that Major Easley, told me that the craft was extraterrestrial. Well, it was a little different than that. I asked him if we were following the right path. He asked what I meant by that and I said, “We think it was extraterrestrial.” He said, “It’s not the wrong path.”

Major Edwin Easley in 1947. Photo courtesy
of the Roswell Army Air Field Yearbook.

There is so much more that could be said here. You want to talk about mistakes we made. Sure. We believed that Frank Kaufmann was telling the truth until we found evidence that he wasn’t. We, again Don, Mark Rodeghier, Mark Chesney and I exposed those lies in an issue of International UFO Reporter.

But the only fact that @RUTHAN667 got right was that Marcel claimed five aerial victories and had none. Everything else is misinterpretation of the facts or ignoring body of evidence that has been accumulated, vetted, repaired and reported by us. I would suggest reading Roswell in the 21^st Century and Understanding Roswell that I wrote and Tom Carey and Don Schmitt’s Witness to Roswell to get a better interpretation of the situation. And if you want the other side, I’d recommend Karl Pflock’s Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe. I’d especially recommend you read the affidavit section of his book. These affidavits were gathered by several of us over many weeks.

I suggest that you, @RUTHAN667, do a little more research before you shoot your mouth off (and learn to spell) and TheSneezingMonkey, if you’re going to be skeptical and claim a deep dive, do a great deal more research.

If the mood moves me, I think next time I’ll attack the Washington National sightings. I interviewed two of the officers who were in the radar room during some of those sightings, and have transcripts of interviews with one of the fighter pilots who talked about the lights surrounding him during an attempted intercept.

And don’t even get me started on the Pascagoula abduction. Yes, I talked to both Hickson and Parker and TheSneezingMonkey wasn’t even close on his ridiculous analysis. 

X-Zone Broadcast Network - John Greenewald vs Tony Bragalia

 

This week we had a special edition of A Different Perspective with guests Tony Bragalia and John Greenewald. The idea to discuss Tony’s claim that the Pentagon had confirmed they were in possession of alien debris and that they were conducting reverse engineering on it. We began with Tony describing what he had discovered through his FOIA campaign directed at various government agencies. You can listen to the first part of the program here.

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/44336683

John did present his side of this conversation as well, explaining, again how the FOIA worked and that sometimes the material sent was not necessarily what had been requested. He was of the opinion that what was addressed in the email didn’t necessarily relate to the specific request. The FOIA officers attempted to fulfill the request in compliance with the law.

John Greenewald

Tony mentioned a connection between his investigation into Nitinol metal and Titanium. He mentioned that General Exon had talked about the ultra-high purity of Titanium. I said that I didn’t remember General Exon saying anything about Titanium in my interviews with him and I asked for the citation. Tony didn’t have it at his figure tips but promised to send it to me later.

You can listen to the exchange on the first part of the program. It begins at 24:32 minutes in the show. Tony said, “…he told you, on tape, that he understood that some of the [Roswell] wreckage being tested was comprised in part by special processed Titanium, so we begin to examine specially processed Titanium in these documents…”

I said, “I do not remember Exon saying anything about the Titanium.”

Tony said, “It’s in your book and I will cite and send it to you…It’s in your books… you certainly did talk about Titanium and Arthur Exon and his mention of specially processed Titanium.”

Tony did send a citation. The reference came from my book Roswell UFO Crash Update and Tom Carey and Don Schmitt’s Witness to Roswell. The information originated in Don’s interview with Exon in June 1990. It said:

I don’t know, at that time, if it was Titanium or some other metal… or if it was something they knew about and the processing was something different.

Tony has taken that single, rather unimportant reference to Titanium as the possible metal recovered and turned it into a positive identification of the metal from Roswell being Titanium. So, in one way, Tony was right. Exon did mention Titanium but in the long haul, it is not as important as Tony has made it out to be. It wasn’t a positive identification of Titanium, and there was no mention of any sort of processing related to the Titanium. Exon did talk about special handling of the debris but it wasn’t necessarily related to Titanium as Tony suggested.

Arthur Exon. Photo by
Tom Carey.

Lewis Rickett, who had been the NCOIC of the Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) office in Roswell, handled some of the debris and said it reminded him of Cold Rolled Steel. He also pointed out that it was very light weight and very strong. I mention this only to point out that those who actually handed the metal had different opinions of it. General Exon never handled the debris, a point that Tony has overlooked. This sort of thing will become important in the second hour of the show.

It was in the second hour that things became somewhat acrimonious. You can listen to that portion of the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/44336808

I brought up the problem with Tony’s analysis of the Dr. Herbert Dick interviews that dealt with the situation on the Plains of San Agustin in July 1947. You can read about that in detail in the following posting. I believed it had some relevance in the way Tony had described the situation and as the one who actually interviewed Dr. Dick, I believed that I had a better handle on it. The discussion related to Tony’s misunderstanding of what Dr. Dick had said and his, Tony’s, somewhat over the top description of what he believed had happened.

It was here, as I was attempting to explain the significance of Tony’s analysis of Dr. Dick’s statements that Tony kept interrupting me. I told him he would understand if he would just let me finish. Finally, annoyed with his constant interruptions, I told him to “Shut up.” Not exactly the most professional way to handle this, but I had sent him what I thought of as the rules for this discussion. One of them those rules was not to interrupt because I would provide an opportunity to respond later. He just hung up.

In our email exchange that followed, I provided additional information about Dr. Dick and my interview with him. Dr. Dick told me that he arrived on the Plains in July 1947. He didn’t think it was in the first week, which was the critical time. Later, Art Campbell found documents that put him on the Plains on July 1. Tony had written that Dr. Dick had categorically denied he had been there in July and Campbell’s discovery proved that he had. Of course, Dick never denied he had been there, only that he wasn’t there at the very beginning of the month.

Tony later wrote in an email that he had been right about Dr. Dick and that I knew it. I was the one who talked to Dr. Dick, I knew what he had said, and there was never any question about him being on the Plains in July 1947. The question was about when he arrived. Putting him there on July 1, was a blow to those who accepted the Plains San Agustin crash.

Don Schmitt on the Plains of San Agustin. Photo by Kevin Randle.

With Tony gone, John and I completed the show. In the last segment of the show, I mentioned that John had just written about a Pentagon release of more video. We discussed the implications there, along with what it meant to the UFO report due to Congress in July, and the possibility that some of these sightings were drones.

We also, briefly, touched on the Roswell Slides. Tony had been a vocal advocate of the validity of the slides. Once the slides were available to the public, the image on the slides was quickly identified. It is just another example of Tony’s advocacy for a position that isn’t as solid as it could be.

Next week is the second part of the show, which is available now through the embedded audio player or by using the links above.

Roswell and Matilda O'Donnell MacElroy

 

There are times when I am truly amazed at the credulity of the UFO community. Cases that are admitted hoaxes resurface with “new” evidence but are still admitted hoaxes. Cases that have been shown to be fake, resurface as others seem to believe that we have missed an important fact. And there are some that should have never taken off, given the “evidence” surrounding them.

Just the other day I was treated to a renewed interest in the story of Matilda O’Donnell MacElroy who claimed to be a former member of the military who had been in Roswell in 1947 and who had communicated with an alien creature that survived the crash. There is so much wrong with this, that I can’t believe that anyone took it seriously.

An alleged photograph of MacElroy... this is a picture of a 
commissioned officer and not an NCO.

Let’s just begin with the photograph on the cover of the book. It is of an Army nurse, who may or may not have been MacElroy. The trouble here is that MacElroy claimed to have been an NCO but the woman in the picture is in an officer’s uniform. Clearly there is a problem here that is never clarified and this is the first hint of trouble.

We’re told that MacElroy was a nurse, but, of course, her name doesn’t surface in any of the documents we have that provide listings of those serving in Roswell in 1947. She said that she was an NCO, but Army nurses, in fact all military nurses, are commissioned officers, so she wasn’t a nurse. Some sort of technician, maybe? Well, we have no information suggesting that there were any female medical technicians assigned to Roswell in 1947, so that doesn’t work. Besides, she said that she wasn’t a technician.

Then we have the trouble with her rank in 1947. She said, because she had made telepathic contact with the alien, she was assigned as its “companion?” or some such nonsense. She was given a raise and promoted to Senior Master Sergeant. This was a rank created by the Air Force (which didn’t exist in July 1947) in June of 1958. 

She said that she drove Mr. Cavitt out to the site where one was alive. But, in all my conversations with Cavitt, in all the questions Don Schmitt and I asked him about others who might have some knowledge, and in all the names that Cavitt supplied, hers never came up. Of course, Cavitt, as a captain, wasn’t authorized a driver. Either he, or one of the others assigned to the CIC office, would have driven the vehicles.

Bill Rickett, the number two man in the CIC office, and who was willing to answer all the questions put to him, never mentioned a female driver assigned to their office and never mentioned a female who had worked with them, even on a temporary basis. At some point as the questions were asked about those working in the office, this would have been mentioned.

What we see here is someone spinning a tale who knows nothing about the military or the rank structure or its history. It’s as if he (and yes, I mean he) is pulling the details out of thin air because they sound good.

Here is what we are told in the very beginning of the book, Alien Interview: The Letters and Notes of Matilda O’Donnell MacElroy. “This special READERS EDITION of ALIEN INTERVIEW [emphasis in original] contains only the original Letters, the personal Notes written by Matilda O’Donnell MacElroy, and a copy of the U.S. Army Air Force Top Secret Official Interview Transcripts received by Matilda in 2007.”

Except, of course, it wasn’t the U.S. Army Air Force in 1947 but was, in fact, the U.S. Army Air Forces. True, a minor error, but one that suggests that the writer didn’t really understand the situation in 1947 and one that those in that branch of the military service would not have made.

And why would a top secret document be sent to a witness. She would have no need for it and would not have the capability to properly store it. But, then, since we don’t have that document, we don’t really know what was in it, how accurate it might be, or if it existed at all.

But then there is the Disclaimer. It removes all doubt about the authenticity of the book. I don’t know why more people haven’t paid attention to it. The Disclaimer said:

As far as the Editor of the book, “Alien Interview” is concerned, and for all practical purposes, the content of the book is a work of fiction. The Editor makes no claim to the factuality of the content, and in fact, cannot prove that the alleged author actually ever existed. Although some of the dates, locations, persons and incidents described may be factual or based on fact, there is no evidence to authenticate that equally as many may be subjective contrivances of the author.

All of the information, notes and transcripts received by the Editor are contained in the complete, original form, as represented in the book. The Editor is no longer in possession of any original documents or copies of original documents from the author, i.e., Mrs. MacElroy.

Some material contained in the book may have similarities to Earth philosophies as the variety of these are too numerous to list, and bear too many fundamental similarities to be easily differentiated. Although the book discusses the origins of the universe, the time track of the physical universe, paranormal activities or immortal and/or extraterrestrial beings, “aliens” or “god”, it is in no way the intention of the Editor to represent, endorse, forward or assume the viewpoint of the author, any political doctrine, economic vested interest, scientific hypothesis, religious practice or philosophy, whether terrestrial or extraterrestrial.

The notes and transcripts contained in the book, are solely and only based on the representations and documents provided by the author, the late Matilda O’Donnell MacElroy, unless otherwise specifically annotated by Footnotes in the Appendix of the book.

The Editor is not responsible for any assumptions, inferences or conclusions made by the reader based on the material in this book, which are solely and only the responsibility of the reader.

What is true for you, is true for you.

Lawrence R. Spencer – Editor

I’m not sure if I need to say that Spencer wrote that he had none of the documentation that was sent to him. He says that he no longer has possession of it which means that we can’t independently test any of it. We have only his word that those documents ever existed but with so many flaws in the story, it seems unlikely that they ever did. In fact, at one point he says that he can’t even prove that MacElroy existed and that he only spoke with her one time, on the telephone, for about twenty minutes. Certainly not a ringing endorsement for the validity of the tale.

In what should have been, and should be nearly the first thing said about the book, Spencer wrote, “As far as the Editor of the book, “Alien Interview” is concerned, and for all practical purposes, the content of the book is a work of fiction.”

At that point, I have to ask, “Why should we treat it any differently?” He said it is a work of fiction and with that disclaimer, we should have no further reason for discussing the book in a forum about UFOs. He said he had none of the documentation and he couldn’t prove that MacElroy ever lived. The book belongs in the realm of science fiction, not very good science fiction, but science fiction nonetheless. All questions about the importance of the book and the authenticity of the information have been answered. It is a work of fiction. End of discussion.

Roswell Documentation vs. Roswell Eyewitnesses

Since I have now annoyed all my friends with my analysis of the Roswell documentation and how some of it is quite suggestive that nothing alien fell there, I thought it time to annoy all my skeptical friends. Lining up against that documentation is the testimony of some people who were on the scene in 1947. This is based on the documentation we can find about them and the stories they tell us in the world today.

Walter Haut, for example, either wrote the press release claiming the 509^th had found a flying saucer, or he took the dictation from Colonel William Blanchard to create the press release. At this point it doesn’t really matter. The press release

Walter Haut being interviewed.
Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

was issued and it claimed they had “captured” a flying saucer in the Roswell region. The definition of flying saucer confuses the issue, because in 1947, there was no universally accepted definition. It could mean almost anything you wanted it to mean. But here’s the deal. It is vague to the point of being opaque. We don’t know what it means.

I have never understood the reason for the press release. If Blanchard was attempting to grab credit for solving the flying disk mystery, the press release was unnecessarily obscure. Compare it to the story out of Circleville, Ohio, in which a farmer found the remains of a weather balloon and rawin reflector on his land. We have a story in the local paper that identifies the farmer as Sherman Campbell and includes what is claimed a picture of his wife. When I talked to the family, I learned it was actually his daughter holding the rawin target. The point is that the Circleville newspaper story was clear and it included a photograph. The Roswell press release told us nothing of real importance, provided little in the way of verification and had no photograph.

We do have testimony from Haut, which, if we limit it to what was said in the press release, and what he said to us for decades before expanding his story, we learn that what was found was something strange. No, it tells us nothing about the alien nature of the crash, just tells us that Blanchard and company were perplexed by something they should have been able to identify easily if it was a weather balloon. No reason not to supply the explanation if it was something mundane, like was done in Circleville.

If we wish to get to the extraterrestrial, then there is Edwin Easley, who was the provost marshal (please note the proper spelling of marshal here) in Roswell. When I asked him if we were following the right path, he asked what I meant by that. I told him that we (meaning Don Schmitt and I) believed that the craft had been extraterrestrial. He said, “Well, let me put it this way, it’s not the wrong path.”

Taking that a step farther, he told family members about the alien “creatures.” That was his word to them, not mine. Sure, that statement is second hand at best because we learned it talking to family members, but hey, it does confirm his mindset on this.

No, there is no reason for Easley to have lied about it. He was very reluctant to talk, didn’t grant much in the way of interviews, and you won’t see him showing up in any of the old documentaries. I was always of the impression he wished to help me, but he had taken an oath in 1947 and he wasn’t going to break the oath.

There is Joe Briley, the operations officer in 1947. He said a couple of things that don’t take us directly to the extraterrestrial but do lead us to the highly unusual. He told me, when I mentioned, “…You heard the stories…” that “And then the story was changed immediately. As soon as the people from Washington arrived.”

Jesse Marcel

Yes, it is clear from the conversation on the tape that we’re talking about the UFO crash tale. I really don’t say anything specifically about it, but Briley knew why I had called him. In fact, later in the interview, he told me, “I just was not brought into that at all even though Butch [Blanchard] and I were extremely close.”

And later still, he said, “I don’t think Butch was stupid enough to call a weather balloon something else.”

Okay, this doesn’t get us to the extraterrestrial, but it does move us away from the conventional. It suggests things in Roswell were, well, up in the air in 1947.

I haven’t touched on Jesse Marcel, Sr. yet. He was quite clear in his statements about what had happened. There are any number of videos of him telling us that it was something “that wasn’t built on Earth but it had come to Earth.”

If he was stand alone, we could certainly dismiss his testimony. But it is not and while it is true that he seemed to drift all over the place before he died, he did say some provocative things about what he had seen and had done. These were backed up by his son and his wife. Still, we need to sound a note of caution when dealing with the senior Marcel.

Before this gets too long, let’s move onto Bill Brazel. Here was another man

Bill Brazel and Don Schmitt on the debris field.
Photo copyright by Kevin Randle

extremely reluctant to talk about what he had seen. He did find a few scraps of the material that his father, Mack, described as having come from “that contraption I found.”

This debris included something that resembled fiber optics, a lead foil that seemed to have a memory, returning to its original shape when crumpled, and something that was as light a balsa but with a strength that rivaled steel. Although he lost the debris to Air Force personnel in 1949, he did show it to several others including Sallye Tadolini. Some of these witnesses, who handled the debris have affidavits about it.

Of course, Mack had shown a bit of the debris to Floyd and Loretta Proctor. She told me about the fire-resistant capabilities of the material. She mentioned, as did Marian Strickland, that Mack had been held by the military authorities for a number of days.

And I don’t want to forget Bill Rickett, the CIC NCOIC in Roswell in July 1947. He talked about his trip to see the crash site, some of the debris that he saw there, and some of the people on the scene including Sheridan Cavitt and Edwin Easley.

Here I could mention Frankie Rowe who wasn’t lying about what she said. True, she is second hand, having heard about the crash and the creatures from her father, fire fighter Dan Dwyer. But her sister confirmed the story and ironically, one of the fire fighters who Karl Pflock interviewed and used to dismiss the story,

Karl Pflock

actually told me, that Dwyer had gone to the crash site in his private car. The fire fighter, C.J. Smith, told me about Dwyer’s trip when I asked, simply, “Did you know Dan Dwyer.” Smith’s response was, “He went out there in his car.”

These are some of the things that I think about when I’m not worrying about the documents that I mentioned in the last post. Most of the people mentioned here, and a dozen or two more that I could have brought up argue against the documents conclusion. While it is true that a few people might be inventing their tales, and we’ve had more than our share of them, there are some very solid people who had talked about their involvement. If I’m willing to concede some points based on the documentation, it seems only right that those at the other end of the spectrum admit that there are some disturbing testimonies. They all aren’t lying, looking for their fifteen minutes, and just wishing to have an interesting story to tell.

Oh, and before this degenerates into another long discussion about the foibles of human memory… yeah, I get it. But not all memories are flawed and inaccurate. Many times, the person gets the facts right as has been shown by numerous scientific investigations, and yes, I know about Elizabeth Loftus’ work on false memory. Her work demonstrates how such memories can be created, so we don’t really have to talk about that. We just have to remember that sometimes, the person relating the tale has the details right, was actually there, and is telling the truth as best he or she can…

John Keel was Right - Another New Roswell Witness

Well, it’s happened again, just as John Keel said it would. As I have mentioned before, Keel had written in 1991 that by the end of the century (meaning going into the 21^st century) there would be dozens of people, if not hundreds, claiming to have been in Roswell at the time of the UFO crash. Another one has appeared on the scene by the name of Charles H. Forgus, a soldier who served during the Second World War and who was a deputy sheriff in 1947. No, he wasn’t a deputy in Roswell but one in Big Spring, Texas, which is Howard County.

Here’s how this plays out. According to him, he, with the Sheriff in Big Spring, had traveled to Roswell to pick up a prisoner. While they were on their way, they heard, over the police radio, about the flying saucer crash. They drove out to the site, saw hundreds of soldiers, though Forgus didn’t know which branch of the service they were in (the US Army on their fatigues should have been a big clue), and saw a huge disk crashed into the side of a mountain.

He was asked if there were lights on the craft and he said, “No, they went out when it banged into the wall in the creek. It was like a mountain on the side of the creek.” (Though I’m not sure how he would have known that the lights went out when it hit because he wasn’t there.)

He also said, “We couldn’t see that well because of the trees. It was in a riverbank. It slammed into a river bank. I saw them lifting one up with the crane.”

I recognized the place he was talking about. I had been there, I had walked the land and I knew that there was no creek or river there but from the picture that had been printed in The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, it looked as if there was. You can see for yourself that his description matches the picture except for the water.

He added, “The saucer hit the bank on this side of the creek and I was standing on the other side of the bank, at the top of the hill. I was looking down at the site…” (This is the point of view of the picture.)

Kaufmann's alleged crash site. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

This is what Frank Kaufmann had said as well. Same description of the craft having hit the side of the canyon wall near what looked like a creek or river. Of course, we all know that Kaufmann’s testimony has been discredited. And if Forgus is describing the scene as if he was standing on a cliff some distance away, then his tale is bogus as well.

Forgus added some detail that is interesting, but also somewhat contradictory. I know this because I have been to that place. From where he was allegedly standing, he said he could see the bodies, though he didn’t have a good description of them. He talked about the big eyes. He said, “They eyes looked like the ones we see on television and the pictures of them.”

But he was so far away, according to him, it is difficult to believe that he would have seen the eyes. The real clue is about having seen alien creatures on television. He just picked the most popular version of the aliens to describe.

Here’s another nugget. According to several of the witnesses, and this includes CIC agent, Bill Rickett, William Woody and former part owner of KGFL radio Jud Roberts, the roads out to the area had been blocked and the crash site was cordoned off. Forgus and his sheriff wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere near the site before they would have been stopped by the military. Forgus made it clear that the military was already there with hundreds of soldiers, a big crane and trucks to remove the craft (Can you say “Alien Autopsy?”). If that is true, then the cordons were up and a sheriff from Texas wouldn’t have been allowed to penetrate it. He and Forgus would have been stopped before they got close enough to see anything at all simply because they weren’t military, they weren’t the local law enforcement and they had no legal authority in New Mexico.

The other part of the story that fails is that they heard about this on the police radio, which seems unlikely, but even if that had been true, they wouldn’t have heard instructions on how to find the place. You can’t see it from the main roads, and the gravel and dirt roads into the area are quite rough and quite confusing. If you don’t know where you are going, you’d get lost. Without someone leading them in, or precise directions which wouldn’t have been broadcast, they would never have found their way to the crash site.

This story was uncovered by Philip Mantle and was told to Deanna Bever in 1999, a Los Angeles private investigator. The tale appears in the book, UFOs Today: 70 Years of Lies, Disinformation and Government Cover-Up by Irena McCammon Scott, Ph.D. and published by Flying Disk Press. It was edited by Philip Mantle.

The 1949 Roswell UFO Crash

The other day, as I was looking over some of my old files and interviews I found an interview that I had done nothing with at the time. At the risk of offending all those who get annoyed if I mention Roswell and accuse me of being obsessed with it, I thought this might be of interest. I remember nothing about this interview. It took place in late 1995 with Colonel Claude N. Burcky, who, in 1947 was a major assigned to the 390^th Air Service Squadron.

Claude N. Burcky

I confirmed that I was talking to the right man and that he had been in Roswell in 1947 (though the Yearbook confirmed that as well). He told me, “I was base operations officer… and I knew of it [the alleged crash] and we knew that security requirements relative to it…” (I must note here that in July 1947, there were two base operations officers. First was Lieutenant Colonel James Hopkins and then Lieutenant Colonel Joe Briley.)

But Burcky told me he hadn’t seen anything first hand. He said, “Since I didn’t see anything and the only thing that I was told was that such and such hangar was off limits to everyone and that the parts, pieces and so forth that were picked up and put on this trailer… and put into that hangar and no one could get in there until the stuff was moved.”

He also said that he had heard the stories of alien bodies but that he had not seen them himself. So, he was providing some interesting second-hand testimony about what went on during that time but given the state of Roswell research today, it really adds little to our knowledge and might be seen as complicating it even more. I asked about the debris, but he hadn’t seen any of it either, and only knew what he had heard.

I said, “So you really didn’t see anything like that yourself? So all you’re really aware of is some event took place.”

He said, “Yeah, and I assigned a guy to drive the trailer, the vehicle that went out… you see it happened on the bombing range.”

And this is where the tale became interesting because the bombing range was south of the base and that suggested something had happened much farther south of Roswell. I had heard nothing of a crash site south of Roswell and even today there seems to be nothing to support that idea and I’ve talked to a number of people about this. Everything was more or less north of town and more or less north of the base. This didn’t fit with what I knew.

But there was something that I did know. There was a reported crash south of Roswell in 1949 and wondered if that might a source of confusion.  I learned that on February 11, 1949, Paul L. Ryan, in the AFOSI 17^th District at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque prepared a report about an “Aerial Phenomena,” that had been observed on January 30. He wrote, “…Mr. Charles Naffziger, Administrative Supervisor, advised that a peculiar light or aerial phenomena had been observed at 1755 hours [or about six in the evening], 30 January 1949, in the vicinity of Walker AFB [originally Roswell Army Air Field], Roswell, New Mexico, and that Sgt. Edward P. McCrary, a tower control operator of Walker AFB be contacted.”

The next day, January 31, several of those at Roswell were interviewed about the sighting. The official report said:

…a blue-green light resembling a flare was observed travelling on a horizontal line. This light came out of the North headed South at an estimated altitude of 2,000 feet, moving slowly, and disappeared in the vicinity of SE Walker Air Force Base. To some observers, this phenomenon disappeared in its entirety while other statements mention a disappearance as a disintegration into a shower of smaller lighted fragments such as a shower of sparks. The only sound accompanying this object was heard by Sgt. McCrary, who described it as a high pitched whining noise similar to a blowtorch. All of these observers sighting this light from a position west of it while facing east.

One of those men was Sergeant Raymond D. Platt, who I interviewed more than forty years later. He provided a little more detail, saying the he, “didn’t believe it was a flying saucer. He believed it to be a meteor.” In 1949 he was “interrogated by base personnel, the CIC and the FBI.”

He said it was flying very slow, was very bright and it exploded into six or seven pieces. It was travelling at a very shallow angle, going from north to south and was bright white and blue. It burned out after it exploded, which is why he lost sight of it.

There were other reports of this object from other areas around Roswell. In Alamogordo, Major James C. Petersen, said that he had sighted a single bright green object looking to the east. He said it was a bright green fireball of flame travelling in a southerly direction, without evidence of smoke or trail of any kind. He lost sight of it when it, according to him, seemed “to fizzle out.”

Also in Alamogordo, Wilfred T. Martin, who worked as a technician for the Boeing Aircraft Company, said that about six in the evening, he saw a single green fireball to the east and travelling to the south. He saw no signs of an exhaust; he watched for about ten seconds and said that it did not explode.

Martin was with Sergeant Maurice C. Anthon at the time and who was also interviewed about the sighting in 1949. He said, “I observed an object that appeared to be travelling diagonally across in front of me… Its distance seemed very close and appeared to be travelling very slowly… Gentle downward glide, bright burning (Green and yellowish light) a fizzling out and then a bright burning, and then appeared to die out. This could have been the effects of its passing beyond my view.”

PFC Ira W. Vail, assigned to the weather detachment at Holloman AFB in Alamogordo told investigators in 1949 that he had “seen a green ball of flame with a trail of some kind in an Easterly direction.” Vail described the object as traveling in a Southerly direction and added that the object was visible for approximately six seconds. Vail described the object as “bright green and disappeared without exploding.”

There were other, similar reports coming from other parts of New Mexico and west Texas. The track of the object, or the green fireball, could be plotted based on the observations of the witnesses, and the investigators took many of them to the places where they had seen the fireball to get accurate measurements suggesting height and direction. Using the information gathered from more than 100 witnesses, Dr. Lincoln La Paz set out in an attempt to find where the object came to earth, if it was an ordinary meteor. He said that he’d have very good luck in the past finding the remains of meteors (in this case a meteorite.

According to the report, “Special Agent [Lewis] Rickett [a member of the Counter Intelligence Corps stationed in Roswell and who said he was involved in the UFO crash there in 1947] continued the search throughout Southeast New Mexico and West Texas from 1400 hours, 2 February 1949, to 2400 hours 8 February 1949, in the company of Dr. Lincoln La Paz of the University of New Mexico.”

A verbal report of that activity was made to the Scientific Advisory Board Conference of February 16, 1949. La Paz said:

In the case of the January 30^th fall, due to the fact that there had been a large number of military personnel alerted, we were able to obtain observations within a minute after the fall occurred and pursued the investigation over a distance of 1,000 miles – in Texas mud primarily – in some ten days’ time interviewing literally hundreds of people, we saw not one substantial account of noise produced by the meteorite fall…

These lines are drawn [on a map of observers’ sightings, giving direction of the object from the observer and the direction of travel] from the points of observation. The center… of the points of appearance is somewhere Southwest of Amarillo or South-southwest of Amarillo. The disappearance point is in the vicinity of Lubbock, Texas.

La Paz explained that his plots suggested that the meteorite, if that was what it was, should have struck the ground near Lamesa, Texas, which is to the south of Lubbock. Working with a team, including military men such as Rickett, Platt and Neef, they searched the area for several days without results. La Paz was puzzled because in similar cases of large, bright meteorites, he had had great success in recovering fragments.

What struck me here was that Burcky talked of something to the south of the base and this was in the general direction of the bombing range. Platt said that he had been interrogated by people from the base, the CIC and the FBI which suggests that they thought there might be some sort of national security implication but not necessarily indicative of alien visitation. This also sort of describes La Paz, a civilian who was in Roswell interviewing the witnesses. It might be that Burcky confused his statements about what happened in 1947 with what happened in 1949.

Just to end a bit of confusion, it is clear to me and practically anyone else who looks at the 1949 sighting is that it was one of the green fireballs. There was a classified study of them being made in 1949 so there was a national security implication. When the sightings ended, even though there was a bit of controversy about what the green fireballs really were, it was determined that they posed no threat. The documentation and reports were eventually declassified so that we all can see what was being done back in the late 1940s.

I believe that I did nothing with this report because it suggested another site south of Roswell and there was nothing else to back it up. There was no testimony from any ranchers, no soldiers said they had gone out there, and everything else pointed to the events north of town. The report is just one of those anomalies that spring up when dealing with memories that are decades old, though I suspect that those who enjoy creating long lists of UFO crashes will use this tale to validate those claims regardless of the solution. The January 1949 event was a green fireball and not an alien ship.