History's Project Blue Book - What a Disaster...

Last year I took a lot of flak for my suggestion that History’s Project Blue Book wasn’t all that bad. I could separate the fact from the fiction and found the shows enjoyable. They didn’t take too many liberties with the facts and that could be excused in the interest of dramatic storytelling. Can you think of a program or movie that didn’t take some dramatic license to put together a compelling drama that had to play out of a couple of hours?

But the new season has started with a case that is not part of the Project Blue Book record. As I have said, repeatedly, the only mention of the Roswell case is in the third paragraph of a four-paragraph newspaper clipping found in another case file. All it says is that the officers in Roswell had received a “blistering rebuke” for their announcement they had “captured” a flying saucer. In the more than 12,000 cases and the more than 130,000 pages found in the Blue Book files, Roswell makes up such a tiny faction that no one ever noticed.

Jesse  Marcel, Sr.

To take it further, Roswell wasn’t even on the radar of UFO researchers until 1978 when Jesse Marcel, Sr. told Stan Friedman and Len Stringfield that he had picked up pieces of a flying saucer when he was the air intelligence officer at the Roswell Army Air Field. Prior to that, references to Roswell were difficult to find and if it was mentioned at all, it was nearly always dismissed as a weather balloon or a hoax.

But now according to History’s latest installment of their not-so-much-based-on-fact- but-more-fiction than-necessary-program we’ve given up on reality. Rather than dealing with the case in 1947, we are stuck in 1952 and the Roswell case has somehow surfaced again. Hynek and Quinn have learned something about it and are on their way to Roswell… and it is at this point, I suppose, I should mention “SPOILERS.”

At one point in this bizarre chronology, the military is on high alert, with the suppression machine in full operation. The town is sealed off with no one allowed to arrive or depart. Roads are blocked by armed guards who do not know what they are doing… I say this because as Hynek and Quinn drive up, someone begins to take shots at them… guards, Hynek, Quinn, their jeep, barrels, whatever. The guards immediately desert their post to chase the sniper. They abandon it completely so that Hynek and Quinn can continue their journey. I suspect the guards were punished, off-screen, for their dereliction of duty.

Sure, I’ve skipped some of the nonsense. Quinn and Hynek going out to talk to a witness, knock on the door, which opens because not only wasn’t locked, it wasn’t even latched. Even though the owner isn’t there, they walk in anyway. They find evidence laid out nicely for them and then Hynek finds a fake saucer in the backyard as the owner returns.

Meanwhile in Ohio, Mimi Hynek is joining some UFO group and convinces the leader to “loan” her his private notes… I don’t know if he ever gets them back, but he does show up at her house.

We have a flashback to dozens of people walking the debris field in 1947 picking up souvenirs, even though in real life, the field is isolated and Mack (they spell it “Mac”) Brazel tried to convince his nearest neighbors to take a drive down to it. Loretta Proctor told me that tires cost money and gas cost money, and even though Brazel showed her a piece of debris, she and her husband, Floyd, just didn’t want to go out to look at the field. (Sure, this is a little confusing, but just remember that was a flash back to 1947 from the perspective of 1952).

They got so many little things wrong, it seemed that they just gave up and filmed whatever pleased them. Uniforms wrong, a camouflaged jeep that should have been painted blue, and, of course, the conflict between Hynek and Quinn and the brass hats running the cover up. Worst of all, they suggest the rancher was beat up while in military custody… this is an outrageous idea. There is no evidence that any one was harmed by any military personnel in 1947… of course, I will note that several of the witnesses suggested they were threatened if they talked about what they had seen. Not really the same thing. Threats that were never carried out then or now.

At the end of the show, they bring up Mogul as the solution for the debris and this is what really annoyed me. They made the debunked claim that Mogul was highly

Mogul array in flight in 1947.

classified. The problem is that while the purpose was classified, the experiments going on in New Mexico were not. Dr. Albert Crary, leader of the New York University study in New Mexico, as well as others on his team, knew the code name, Mogul. Crary mentions it in his field notes. Pictures of a Mogul array appeared in newspapers on July 10, 1947. And, Mogul was off-the-shelf weather balloons and rawin radar reflectors that had been in use for years. Nothing to fool anyone even if they were strung together.

The capper here, however, is the fact that Mogul Flight No. 4, the alleged culprit for leaving debris on the ranch managed by Mack Brazel, NEVER flew. Dr. Crary’s field notes, written at the time, said the flight was cancelled due to clouds at dawn. Charles Moore, who made the claim that Mogul balloons were responsible, and who, using winds aloft data, showed that Flight No. 4 got with in 17 MILES of the ranch, lied about the launch times. He had to or the winds aloft data proved that the balloons didn’t even get that close. But hey, close counts in hand grenades, dancing and atomic weapons.

According to the written records, as opposed to the fifty-year-old memories, the launch would have taken place around 5:20 in the morning, but as I say, it was cancelled. They flew a cluster of balloons later in the day, but a cluster of balloons does not make a Mogul array. To make this work, however, Moore had to keep pushing back the time of the launch until it came in the dark, which was in violation of the regulations they worked under. You can read about all this here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/08/there-was-no-flight-no-4.html

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

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/07/mogul-and-roswell.html

There are other articles there as well, but I think these cover the point. Just type Mogul into the search engine and all the articles that reference Mogul will appear. I’ll suggest that you can also use Google and again, type in Mogul to receive additional information, much of it supporting the Mogul theory. I disagree with those, obviously, but for a complete understanding, it is always good to look at opposing points of view.

So, this is where I climb off the band wagon. This episode has done a real disservice to UFO research. There is nothing that actually relates to Project Blue Book other than the name Hynek. Everything else in here has nothing to do with reality.

And yet, I’ll watch next week because one of the actors, Neal McDonough, is in the show… not to mention Littlefinger as Hynek. Yeah, this has nothing to do with the quality of the program. I just thought I would mention it.

Colonel Blanchard and the Roswell Press Release

I’ve been thinking about this press release issued by Colonel Blanchard that has the skeptics in such turmoil and I must confess worries me a bit as well. There just doesn’t seem to be any logic in it if we start with the premise that they thought they were finding parts of an alien spacecraft on the debris field.

But as I was driving across Nebraska, which is fairly boring, I got to thinking about this and what the press release actually said. The terminology is important and the lack of any real detail is also important. If we look at what was said about what was found on the ranch managed by Mack Brazel and what was seen by Jesse Marcel, Sr. and Sheridan Cavitt, we might be able to figure some of this out.

For those unfamiliar with what the press release said, this is the Associated Press version based on the information supplied by Walter Haut:

Roswell, N.M. – The army air forces here today announced a flying disc had been found on a ranch near Roswell and is in army possession.

The Intelligence office reports that it gained possession of the ‘Dis:’ [sic] through the cooperation of a Roswell rancher and Sheriff George Wilson [sic] of Roswell.

The disc landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher, whose name has not yet been obtained, stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the Roswell sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office notified a major of the 509^th Intelligence Office.

Action was taken immediately and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home and taken to the Roswell Air Base. Following examination, the disc was flown by intelligence officers in a superfortress (B-29) to an undisclosed “Higher Headquarters.”

The air base has refused to give details of construction of the disc or its appearance.

Residents near the ranch on which the disc was found reported seeing a strange blue light several days ago about three o’clock in the morning.

According to the best evidence available today, Brazel found a field that was covered in metallic debris a few days before heading into Roswell. He provided almost no descriptions of it but did want to know who was going to clean up the mess. Tommy Tyree, a sometimes ranch hand working for Brazel, explained that the material was so tightly packed that the sheep refused to cross it but that doesn’t tell us much about the density. All we know is that the material, and I’ll guess some of it stirring in the wind, frightened the sheep. There was enough of it to make it a chore to collect. Jesse Marcel, Sr., would later suggest that it was an area that was about three quarters of a mile long and a couple of hundred feet wide. Bill Brazel would talk about a gouge through the center of the area that was a half mile or so long which tells us nothing about the amount of debris but does suggest something about the length of the debris field.

We know, based on the records, that Brazel did drive into Roswell to talk with the sheriff and that the sheriff contacted the Roswell Army Air Field. Jesse Marcel, along with Sheridan Cavitt accompanied Brazel back to the ranch, arriving late in the day. It was too late that night to go out to the field, so they made that trip the next morning according to Marcel. Cavitt, according to what he told Colonel Richard Weaver, went out with Bill Rickett, his NCOIC, and thought that Marcel might have gone out with them (and it is here we see some of the trouble with memories that are decades old).

Marcel said that he, Cavitt and Brazel went out the next morning and gathered some of the debris. Marcel said that he told Cavitt to head back to the base and he would stay, though I don’t know why he would have done that. Marcel said that he filled his car with the debris and that he then drove back to Roswell.

And here we encounter the beginnings of the real problems. Even if Marcel moved slowly, it shouldn’t have taken no more than an hour to fill his car, and even if he drove slowly back to Roswell, it shouldn’t have taken no more than four or five hours, which would seem to put him in town in the early evening at the latest. Which, of course, suggests that he didn’t have to wake up his wife and son to show them the debris, which, according to Jesse Marcel, Jr., his father called a “flying saucer.” He might have stopped at the house to show them what he had found because it was parts of what he thought of as a flying saucer and for that reason it was mildly interesting. Flying saucer didn’t necessarily mean alien spacecraft at the time, though that was certainly one of the interpretations, one of the least likely of the interpretations, given the tone of most newspaper and radio reports.

The Circleville Flying Saucer

Now, here is what I’m thinking about this. On July 6, 1947, newspapers around the country carried the story of a flying disk recovered in the Circleville, Ohio area by a farmer, Sherman Campbell. Pictures of it were published in the newspapers, including one with Campbell’s daughter holding up what are clearly parts of a rawin radar reflector. Campbell identified it as did the local sheriff and newspaper reporters. Campbell though if it was high aloft with the wind causing the reflective surface to spin, it might look like a disk from the ground.

I don’t know if they saw or heard this story in the Roswell area, but it was national news and it certainly offered a plausible answer for some of the flying saucer/flying disk reports. Some sort of strange metallic debris with a nearly intact radar target had been found in Ohio. This might have suggested something to Blanchard.

So Marcel shows up early the next morning (which in the military wouldn’t have been all that early when you remember that flight operations as well as other tasks might start at four or five in the morning) and I would guess somewhere around seven or seven-thirty. According to what he would later say, and given the descriptions of the material recovered provided by Bill Brazel, Loretta Proctor, Bud Payne and Tommy Tyree, there wasn’t much in the way of diversity. They had some light weight wood that had the density of balsa, some wires that Bill Brazel suggested were like monofilament fishing line but that would transmit light, some foil and some parchment. Nothing to suggest an alien spacecraft, only some materials that were sort of familiar but a little bit different and nothing that would suggest any sort of identification. Besides all that, we have Cavitt telling Weaver that it was all a balloon (though Cavitt told me personally in 1991 that he had been too busy in July 1947 to go chasing balloons).

Blanchard probably (and note the qualification) looked at the debris, thought it nothing all that extraordinary but would be something that might be associated with the flying saucer stories. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing classified about the material. They hadn’t found a craft. They hadn’t found bodies. There was nothing to suggest that it was a project from White Sands or an experimental aircraft that had crashed. It was just a field filled with metallic debris… strange debris to be sure but nothing that would lead to the conclusion that it was extraterrestrial.

If Blanchard was aware of the report from Circleville, that might have inspired him to order Haut to issue the press release. Even if he hadn’t seen that story, he had certainly seen many others. Given the time, that is July 1947, few of the explanations suggested interplanetary craft as opposed to interstellar. Scientists, military officers and government officials were offering their take on the sightings but there was certainly nothing that was classified about it. Blanchard’s message center would have been receiving directions and intelligence about a wide variety of subjects on a daily if not hourly basis but I doubt that much space was wasted on flying saucers in those early days.

What this means is that on the morning of July 8, when Blanchard ordered Walter Haut to issue the press release, they weren’t dealing with classified material. They were dealing with some strange debris found by a rancher. They might not have known exactly what it was, but they weren’t thinking in terms of classified material. This explains the press release because it demonstrates that Blanchard was telling the local community they had found elements that might have been part of a flying saucer, whatever that might have meant at that time.

And it explains Marcel taking the material home to show his wife and son. In fact, given the nature of the debris, Marcel might not have felt it necessary to report it to Blanchard until the next morning. He stopped at his house, not necessarily to show them the debris, but because it was on his way to the base, the duty day was over, and there was nothing classified or critical in his possession. He could wait until the morning.

This would, of course, alter the various timelines created about these events, but it doesn’t change anything radically. All it does is provide an answer for why the press release was issued and why Marcel took the material home to show his wife and son. At that point nothing was classified. That would come later, when additional wreckage was found, but at that precise moment, they were dealing with the mundane and not the extraordinary.

Brazel in Custody in Roswell

As the debate in the last posting rages, and as we race toward 300 comments on it, there was one discussion in the debate that demonstrates the original point. I had suggested that we look at the evidence in a dispassionate matter. Instead, in some cases, it became a rejection of evidence because of a belief that such things just couldn’t happen.

Some of the skeptics have rejected the idea that Mack Brazel had been held by military authorities for about a week. Christopher Allan, for example, wrote:

Karl Pflock [seen here] went into the question of Brazel in his book, p.169-171. He concluded that it was very doubtful if such incarceration took place. But ETHers will insist it did. What on earth would they need a whole week to detain him for anyway? If they were determined to silence him they could do it in maybe 2 hours by getting him to sign a secrecy oath on July 8. That supposes the affair was already classified top secret. In which case he wouldn't have been permitted to even give his RDR [Roswell Daily Record] interview later that day.

But Karl Pflock is not the final authority on this, and in fact, he dismissed some data simply because he didn’t like it. That it agreed with the skeptical attitude doesn’t make it right. Let’s look at some of the facts.

Karl pointed out that I hadn't recorded the conversation with Easley, which is true. But I do have my notes written at the time, meaning as I was talking to Easley. About Brazel at the base Easley said (quoting from my notes and seen here), "Brought him to base... talked to him for several days... not involved in that (Easley saying that he was not involved in the interrogation). Brazel at the guest house."

This was, of course, the "top cop" at the Roswell base and who had not been interviewed by anyone until I talked to him. He was careful in what he said because, as he told me repeatedly, "I’ve been sworn to secrecy." (Which is an argument for a later time and one that I do have on tape.)

Not to mention that Pflock is, in essence, calling me a liar about this testimony. Yes, I sincerely wish I had it on tape, but that doesn’t change the fact that Easley said it to me and I was the first, and as far as I know, the only researcher to have talked to him... Karl presented nothing to refute this testimony other than mention it wasn’t on tape... just like some of the interviews he conducted but which he says he reported accurately.

Then we reject what Bill Brazel said about seeing the stories about his father in the newspapers and going out to the ranch to help him. Mack returned two or three days after Bill got there. Testimony provided by Brazel during my first interview with him in 1989.

Then we reject Marian Strickland, who actually said on video tape (I made the recording in 1990) that Mack sat in her kitchen and complained about being held in Roswell. (Lyman Strickland also said this but not to me. He had died before I traveled to Roswell.)Then we reject what Loretta Proctor said about Brazel being held in Roswell... As well as the testimony of several others who saw him in Roswell including Floyd Proctor and even Walt Whitmore, Jr. who said he saw Brazel at his father’s house, not to mention his being at the newspaper office sometime on July 8 to give the interview. Which, I point out again, puts Brazel in Roswell after his initial visit.

Floyd Proctor told Bill Moore, as reported in The Roswell Incident, about seeing Brazel in Roswell being escorted by the military. Now, given that Bill Moore described his own book as a "disgraceful hodgepodge of fact and fiction," and given that we have seen him manipulate witness testimony to fit his vision of events, skeptics would be well within their rights to reject these statements attributed to Floyd Proctor. And, if Proctor was stand alone, I would reject it as well.

However, I do know that some of the testimony reported in The Roswell Incident was accurate because the witnesses told me the same thing. And, Loretta confirms what her husband said. So, we can, if we want suggest this testimony is accurate. We might assign less weight to it than that given by other witnesses and reported by other writers, but it still has some value in the overall understanding of the Roswell case.

We also reject the testimony of other Brazel friends, Leonard Porter and Bill Jenkins, who talked of Brazel under military escort.

And, we reject the story told by Frank Joyce about Brazel visiting him, at KGFL in Roswell after he had been to the newspaper office. Brazel told Joyce that he was under orders to give this new tale or it would go very hard on him. We reject this because Joyce’s story has grown over the years... however, when I first interviewed Joyce, he made it clear that there were things he knew that he just hadn’t mentioned to anyone. In fact, he showed me a letter he had sent to himself, which was postmarked so that he could verify that he hadn’t "just remembered" or that he was now embellishing his account. But reject him anyway.

We accept what Bessie Brazel said, even though she said that she had accompanied her father into Roswell on the first trip and didn't remember the military following him back out (which is fairly well documented... I mean even Cavitt admitted that he went out to the ranch, which, of course directly contradicts her). She said that her father didn't return to Roswell, even though that also is documented. She said that no military came out to the ranch.

She also said that she knew it was a balloon when they gathered up the material, all of it, leaving none in the field for Cavitt and Marcel to see. It strikes me that if a 14-year-old girl could identify this as a balloon, why then Jesse Marcel, an adult with intelligence training, surely would have recognized it... but I digress.

So, what this means is that we reject all the evidence from several different sources including documents and testimony that does not support our point of view and accept the statements from a single source, even when that source has been contradicted by documentation, because it does.

Not to mention that Bessie Brazel herself repudiated the testimony. Said that she had confused the 1947 event with something that happened a couple of years later. So, even she isn’t sure about all this, but her story suggests balloon and nothing extraordinary so she is considered right and everyone else is wrong.

And now I have to hear, again, about how Karl Pflock had refuted the idea that Brazel was held in Roswell... The evidence shows that he was. Period. The length of time is an estimate based on what Bill said. That he arrived two or three days after his father left and his father return two or three days later. Four to six or seven days based on the man who should know.

These would be facts and no, they do not lead to the extraterrestrial but do suggest something out of the ordinary happened. The point here is that the skeptics are flat out wrong on this point. It will interesting to see if they will attempt to spin it in some fashion.