X-Zone Broadcast Network - David Halperin

As I was doing research for another project, I had occasion to look up information on the Glassboro, UFO landing, and that lead me to David Halperin. He was the guest on A Different Perspective, the radio show. You can listen to it here:

http://differentperspective.rnn.libsynpro.com/a-different-perspective-with-kevin-randle-ep-0032-guest-david-halperin

We talked about the Glassboro landing, which he had investigated at the time, though as a teenager interested in UFOs rather than an adult with a predetermined bias. His investigation suggested to him that it was real, but events overtook him and within months, the case was an admitted hoax. He was, of course, disappointed about that, but it was the conclusion that the Air Force had reached, though NICAP had pronounced the case “Impressive.”

The NICAP U.F.O Investigator for September/October 1964 carried a front-page story about the landing including several pictures of their investigator and of the New Jersey State Police examining the landing site. The story, as told by NICAP, the Air Force and the newspapers, was that two men saw a red UFO slowly descending, land and then take off several minutes later. When it was gone, they searched the woods and found a crater with landing gear impressions around it. They never came forward to officially report the sighting but did tell two boys who were fishing about what they had seen. Those boys, in turn, told their father, Ward Campbell, who was the local NICAP representative.

This is the picture that I mention to
David with the State Troopers
looking into the crater.

From that point the story got out and Campbell quickly investigated and according to the U.F.O Investigator, “…established the facts which challenged the later Air Force conclusion that the case was a hoax perpetrated by youngsters in the area.”

The Air Force did investigate as required by Air Force regulations that were in effect at the time. Before they arrived, the sightseers (which would include a whole bunch of self-announced UFO investigators) had trampled the area. The Air Force, after their investigation and according to NICAP, finding “…three bubblegum wrappers, the remains of a cherry bomb and four footprints made by a pair of Ked sneakers… [and that it was] further claimed that the Air Force personnel, using elaborate camera equipment, had identified two teenage hoaxers by photographing the crowd.”

Then according to NICAP, “On September 30, newspapers reported the Air Force had called the case a hoax… The absurdity of this conclusion is apparent.”

But NICAP didn’t report that in January, one of the boys who had been involved in the hoax (not the two sons of Campbell), Michael Hallowitz, was fined fifty bucks for perpetrating the hoax, but all that was suspended. He did have to pay ten dollars court costs. He explained how he had done it and that he had the help of two others.

While you all might disagree with the Air Force conclusion, and you might notice that NICAP wasn’t above a little hyperbole in their condemnation of the Air Force, you can listen to Halperin give his tale of investigating the case and his disappointment when he learned it was a hoax. Just goes to show that the Air Force did, once in a while, get it right.

We also talked about his book, Journal of a UFO Investigator, which he described as a work of fiction, but that real world elements in it. The book does seem to give a glimpse into the world of flying saucers as it existed some fifty years ago.

Next week’s guest: Lorna Hunter

Topic: Minnesota UFO Sightings and Investigations.

Chasing Footnotes: The Chiles-Whitted Cigar... Again

As so often happens, I’m doing research on one thing and stumble onto something else that is interesting. Such is the case today. I was looking through Dick Hall’s The UFO Evidence when I noticed something that struck me as incorrect so I thought I would chase a footnote or two.

Hall wrote that the Chiles-Whitted UFO sighting on July 23, 1948, involved a physical manifestation which, in this case, was turbulence that rocked the aircraft. Both men reported they had seen a cigar-shaped craft that flashed by their airliner very early in the morning. Hall’s reference took us to Section V of his book, and noted that the Air Force contested the belief that there had been turbulence. The footnote said, “For additional details see Flying, July 1950; Saturday Evening Post, May 7, 1949.

Timothy Good in his Above Top Secret, wrote that Chiles said, “It [the UFO] veered to its left and passed us about 700 feet to our right and above us. Then, as if the pilot had seen us and wanted to avoid us, it pulled up with a tremendous burst of flame from the rear and zoomed into the clouds, its prop wash or jet wash rocking our DC-3.”

The trouble here is that in some of the first interviews conducted with Chiles and Whitted by military officials, they mentioned nothing about any sort of turbulence associated with the object. In a statement prepared by Chiles on August 3, 1948, and originally classified as “secret,” he wrote, “After it passed it pulled up into some light broken clouds and was lost from view. There was no prop wash or rough air felt as it passed.”

Whitted also provided a statement which is undated but is in his own words. He said, “We heard no noise nor did we fell any turbulence from the object.”

At some point after these statements were taken, the idea that there had been turbulence was introduced. I wasn’t sure when the idea there was turbulence was introduced but both Hall and Good mention it. Hall, in his The UFO Evidence, provided two sources and did mention that the Air Force rejected the idea. The important point here is that the case was classified so Hall did not have the benefit of those “official” interviews with the two pilots. He was working from the information in the NICAP files and from the two magazines he noted. The Saturday Evening Post article does not mention a thing about the turbulence. It gives a solid account of the sighting without that detail.

The Flying article that Hall referenced does contain the information. According to Curtis Fuller, who wrote the article, Chiles, quoted in a story written by Louis Blackburn of the Houston Press, said, “Then, as if the pilot had seen us and wanted to avoid us, it pulled up with a tremendous burst of flame from the rear and zoomed into the clouds, its prop wash or jet wash rocking our DC-3.”

Although I don’t have a copy of the Houston Press article, I do have another written by Albert Riley in the Atlanta Constitution. There is no date on the clipping, which was part of the Blue Book files, but the first paragraph mentioned the sighting “yesterday morning,” which does, of course provide a time frame. It contains the quote, “Then, as if the pilot had seen us and wanted to avoid us, it pulled up with a tremendous burst of flame from the rear and zoomed into the clouds, its prop wash or jet wash rocking our DC-3.”

And, I have another newspaper article that has no source (United Press in the dateline) but does include a date of July 24, 1948. In a quote that might be a little more invention than reality, it said that their DC-3 fluttered in the “prop-wash, jet-was or rocket-wash.”

Timothy Good quotes Chiles, but there is no footnote on the quote and the footnote on the next paragraph leads to The Coming of the Saucers by Ray Palmer and Kenneth Arnold. It doesn’t provide any solid information. I suspect his information will ultimately chase back to the Houston Press article that was quoted in Flying.

My original point here was going to be that this idea of a prop-wash had been added sometime later based on the documentation found in the Blue Book files. These were the statements allegedly signed by the witnesses but that isn’t exactly the case. Given that some of the information is redacted we are unable to see if there is a signature on Chiles statement rather than just a typed name and there is no place on Whitted’s statement for a signature which leaves us with a question or two. It does seem that within hours, they were talking about prop-wash, but all the quotes are basically the same suggesting a single source. And their statements to the Air Force, originally classified as “secret” suggest no turbulence.

It is clear that their statements are contradictory. They were all made within hours of the event. Chiles’ statement for the Air Force was completed and apparently signed days later but the newspaper quotes are from hours later. I had thought that we had a clear-cut case of embellishment based on the first statements found in the Blue Book files, but that isn’t true. We might suggest a bias by UFO researchers sometime later in adding the turbulence as an additional effect of the passing object but that isn’t correct. We might say the Air Force induced them to make the comments about no turbulence but there is no evidence of that. Given that both pilots mentioned no turbulence in their Air Force statements, I suspect both were asked the question about it during those interviews.

There really is no solution for this dilemma. I would say that the earlier statements, taken in the hours after the event are probably the most accurate, but it seems that they made both comments within hours of the sighting. In 1948, the Air Force was actually attempting to learn more about the flying saucers and the reporters who interviewed the pilots were trying to get a good but accurate story. In the final analysis, all I can say is that they mentioned turbulence and said that there had been none. Pick the quote that fits best into your own bias because I have no idea which is accurate.

BG Schulgen and His Memo

The other day Fran Ridge who hosts the NICAP web site, posted the following to members of the list:

I just wanted to ask all of you if you consider the ACTUAL Shulgen memo as indicative of Roswell knowledge.

3. Items of Construction

a. Type of material, whether metal, ferrous, non-ferrous, or non-metallic.

b. Composite or sandwich construction utilizing various combinations of metals, plastics, and perhaps balsa wood.

c. Unusual fabrication methods to achieve extreme light weight and structural stability particularly in connection with great capacity for fuel storage.

It is a complicated question and one that caused me a lot of thought. For example, why would this mention balsa wood? It is not a suitable material for constructing aircraft, except for models. It is light weight but not very strong. Why would they

Schulgen

include it in a list of materials used in the construction of any aircraft expect for some small, internal components though I can’t think of any them.

For the first part, the question about the type of material seems to be straight forward and we all know that metals, both ferrous and non-ferrous have been used in the construction of aircraft. Plastics, wood, and other material have also been used. Aircraft from the early days were often had a wooden frame covered with canvas or other clothe-like materials and then painted. By the time of the Schulgen memo (Schulgen was a brigadier general who had an interest in flying disks and was responsible for an early staff study of them that results in the Twining letter), aircraft were mostly metal and far more powerful and complex than those from the beginning of flight.

When I look at the third part, about the unusual fabrication methods, I can still see this as responding to some of the information that might have been captured during the Second World War and later from some of the work done by Soviet scientists. This might be a response to what the Nazis had attempted to develop, especially in their desire to attack the United States where weight and fuel would be a real consideration.

Where I stumble is this mention of balsa wood. While the idea of composites has been around for, literally, centuries, their use in the construction of aircraft, seems to be a natural outgrowth of the search for light weight, strong materials. All of this can be seen as thinking of a terrestrial nature and need not to have been inspired by anything recovered at Roswell… that is, until we hit the balsa wood.

If the Roswell answer, or rather the recovery of debris, included balsa wood strips, and if the nature of the recovery was not immediately understood, then a question about balsa makes some sense. But then you move to the rawin targets, which did include balsa structural members and there was nothing extraordinary or secret about their use in connection with balloon flights. They were being used by weather offices all over the United States.

Everything there makes sense when looking at terrestrial craft with the exception of the balsa wood. Some of those who handled the debris recovered at Roswell commented on the light weight, strong material they held. Bill Brazel said that it was light, like balsa wood, but extremely tough and was certainly not balsa.

So, the one point that stands out here is the reference to balsa. There are a couple of reasons to include that note, one suggesting a balloon as the solution and another that suggests something very advanced. In one case, I don’t see Schulgen as including it on the list because it would be clear that it was unsuitable for any sort of manned craft. On the other hand, if we’re talking about something that was balsa like, then that might suggest a connection to Roswell.

But in the end, I don’t think this is connected directly to Roswell. The information asked for is the sort of information you would expect in such an intelligence gathering function.

Ufology in Decline, Part Two

Back more years than I care to think about it, I developed my interest in flying saucers. At that time I had questions and wrote to both APRO and NICAP. NICAP responded with a membership package and nothing else. APRO responded with a membership package but also took the time to answer my questions. Naturally, I joined APRO and developed a relationship with both Jim and Coral Lorenzen.

Over the years I spoke with Coral and Jim on many occasions, visited them in Tucson, which was their headquarters then, and met them in various locations. They asked me to investigate specific cases for them, which I was happy to do. Coral provided information for me to use in magazine articles with the only requirement that I mention them and APRO’s address in the text of the article which was never a problem. I don’t remember a single time that it was ever edited out or that an editor asked that I remove it.

Eventually I noticed that every case I was investigating turned out to have no solution. I knew that something above 90% of all sightings resulted in a conventional solution but I wasn’t finding that myself. I began to dig a little deeper and found that there were avenues that I sometimes failed to explore. I began to find solutions. I investigated a series of three photographs taken near Amana, Iowa that seemed to be unexplained but further analysis revealed that the streak of light seen on the pictures could be a private aircraft. Years later, with all the computer programs available, scans of one of the pictures showed the actual aircraft at the beginning of the streak of light. For more information see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/04/amana-iowa-sighting-november-22-1975.html

One of three photos taken over Amana, Iowa. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle

Blow up showing the aircraft at the beginning of the light
streak. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

I mention this to provide a context. Maybe we should think of it as becoming more professional in the investigations. Maybe it was just becoming more skeptical in the investigations. Whatever, I was finding far more solutions than I was unexplained cases.

One of the best examples of finding solid solutions is the Chiles-Whitted sighting which we have discussed before at:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/01/chileswhitted-and-skepticism.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/01/chiles-and-whitted-revisited.html

Given what we have learned in the last fifty years about bolides, about human perception and ambiguous stimuli, the answer here seems, at least to me, to have been found, yet there are those who will argue the point. To be fair and honest, there is a remote chance that Chiles and Whitted witnessed something other than a bolide, but the evidence now argues against that.

We have seen the Aztec UFO crash case revitalized once again. The first time was in the mid-1970s, then in 1986 when William Steinman wrote UFO Crash at Aztec and lately with Scott Ramsey, et. al. with their The Aztec Incident. There is still no solid documentation for the event and the few eyewitnesses that have been put forward are shaky at best. In fact, some of the information misrepresents the actual situation.

I could go on in this vein, suggesting the same trouble with the Kingman UFO crash, the Las Vegas crash, and several other sightings that seemed inexplicable at the time but now have what I see as logical and rational explanations. That is not to say that there won’t be those who wish to argue using outdated information or witnesses who have demonstrated that they are less than credible.

And this is the problem. When there is a solid explanation to one of the “classic” UFO cases, it seems to me that the solution should be embraced. I’m not talking about debunker solutions such as that offered by Philip Klass for the Coyne helicopter case. You can read my take on it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-coyne-helicopter-ufo-case.html

You can see a more detailed analysis of this in The UFO Dossier which came out last year. Of course that is my take on the case as well.

The point is that real solutions are being rejected in an attempt to preserve the status quo, which is not the way to do research. If there is an answer for a case, we shouldn’t reject it simply because we prefer the mystery of it. There are still many good cases that continue to defy explanation so that when a solution is offered that covers all the facts and makes sense, we shouldn’t reject it. Test the solution, yes, but reject it out of hand, no. That is why UFOlogy is in a decline. It is no longer about learning what is happening, it is no longer about finding an answer, it is now about making money, getting asked to lecture throughout the United States and in some very exotic location, and standing in the spotlight spouting what the audience might wish to hear.

Research is no longer about finding the truth and answers but in confirming a belief structure. Too many people only want validation for their beliefs and if the evidence aligns against them, they reject the evidence. They argue the trivia endlessly, applying their own opinions as if they are fact, and refuse to understand that others might know something about a case as well.

Until we pull back on the speculation, reject the use of anonymous witnesses when there is no other evidence available and concede that sometimes we can find solutions to classic cases, we’re just not going to advance. We’re going to be stuck in the 1940s, afraid of what is flying around over our heads, and unable to find any rational solutions. We’re just not going to get anywhere.

Ufology in Decline

Jim Penniston (left) and John
Burroughs.

There are many sides to the Roswell case but what might be most disappointing and more evidence of a decline in UFO research is how contentious the debate has become among those investigating the case. The real problem is not the skeptics or the debunkers, but those who supposedly support the theory it was extraterrestrial in origin. Rather than consolidate the evidence and work for an ultimate solution whatever that solution might be, they argue over trivia, are unwilling to entertain another’s explanation and work to destroy the credibility of the witnesses they don’t like for whatever reason. A united front could provide a path to convincing evidence. Instead, the arguments lead to claims of poor investigation and a presentation of contradictory evidence that inhibits proper research and annoys just about everyone else.

Roswell isn’t the only case that suffers from these multiple viewpoints. The Rendlesham landing of December 1980 has the same problems. There were rumors about the case that began when Art Wallace (a pseudonym for Larry Warren) began to talk about the events. Later others came forward including John Burroughs and Jim Penniston who apparently approached closer to the landed object than anyone else. There was even a letter written by then Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt confirming some sort of unusual event had taken place during those nights in the forest.

Peter Robbins

Eventually Warren would team with Peter Robbins to write Left at East Gate about Warren’s experiences during some of the event. Others would investigate the case, learn the names of other service members who were involved and gather additional evidence. Skeptics provided what they thought of as logical explanations for the events, suggesting that the airmen had been fooled by a number of manmade and natural objects.

Burroughs and Penniston would team with Nick Pope who at one time worked for the British government investigating UFOs and write Encounter in Rendlesham Forest. Although they discuss Warren’s involvement in that book, or maybe alleged involvement, they don’t give it much weight. They do, however, credit him with being among the first if not the first to tell the tale.

So there is a point of contention between the two camps, with one side supporting Warren and suggesting that the other side is, shall we say, less than accurate. The other side points to the problems, briefly, with Warren’s account and his ever changing tale. It does little or nothing to provide a clear picture of what happened. In fact, Robbins was inspired to write a long rebuttal to Pope’s book and post it free online. It can be downloaded here:

http://www.kgraradio.com/peter-robbins-deception-a-review-and-critical-analysis-of-the-book-encounter-in-rendlesham-forest/

I suppose, in fairness, I should mention this is not a new problem. APRO fought with NICAP in the 1950s and 1960s and later with MUFON. Each pushed its own agenda and the truth sometimes got lost in the process. This infighting, which has been lamented in the past, seems to have become worse in the age of the Internet and the truth suffers. Or, in other words, Ufology is in decline.

Flying Saucers and Kenneth Arnold

(Blogger’s Note: Yes, I’ve touched on this before but in the last week or so the MSM, that is to say Time, published a UFO story that made the point that flying saucer was based on an error so of proving there is nothing to the sightings. I thought I’d take another run at this idea.)

I have seen recently more suggestions that the term, “Flying Saucer,” is a misnomer because Kenneth Arnold wasn’t describing the shape of the objects he saw but their motion through the air. Reports from June 1947, however, seemed to indicate that some objects were saucer shaped, and others, who were busy

The original drawing made by Arnold for the Army in 1947.

misidentifying mundane objects, whether natural or human constructed, began talking of flying saucers regardless of shape. It is a point that I find interesting.

When I was working on The Government UFO Files, I tried to track all this down. Looking at the newspaper reporting, at the Project Blue Book files, at the documentation that came from APRO, NICAP and other organizations, I tried to find any story published prior to June 24, 1947, that mentioned disk-shaped or saucer-shaped craft. I found virtually nothing.

Photograph by William Rhodes in July 1947.

There were many stories in the newspapers after Arnold about strange craft, and many of them referred to flying saucers even when the object reported was not saucer shaped. The term became a catchall for anything that people had seen and had been unable to identify. The best seemed to be a report in the newspaper from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that predated Arnold, but the truth was that while it seemed the man had seen the objects on June 24 (as best as I can figure) it wasn’t reported until days after Arnold so was no help in my quest. You can read about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-june-23-1947-ufo-sighting.html

On April 1, 1947, a series of sightings made by Walter Minczewski began near Richmond, Virginia that involved the U.S. Weather Bureau and seemed to meet my rather arbitrary conditions. This would later become Incident No. 79 in the Project Grudge final report. According to the information provided:

A weather bureau observer at the Richmond Station observed on three different occasions, during a six month period prior to April, 1947, a disc-like metal chrome object. All sightings were made through a theodolite while making pibal [balloon] observations.

On the last reported sighting, the balloon was at 15,000 feet altitude, the disc followed for 15 seconds. It was shaped like an ellipse with a flat level bottom and a dome-like top [emphasis added]. The altitude and the speed were not estimated, but the object, allegedly through the instrument, appeared larger than the balloon.

Another observer at the same station saw a similar object under corresponding circumstances, with the exception that her balloon was at an altitude of 27,000 feet and possessed a dull-metallic luster. There was good visibility on days of observation. Report of this sighting was not submitted until 22 July 1947.

AMC Opinion: There is no readily apparent explanation. If there were only one such object, it seems amazingly coincidental that it would be seen four times near the pibal of this station only. On the other hand, there would have to be a great number of these objects to rule out coincidence, and as they number of objects increases so do the chances of sightings by other witnesses.

Project Astronomer’s Opinion: There is no astronomical explanation for this incident, which, however, deserves considerable attention, because of the experience of the observers and the fact that the observations was made through a theodolite and that comparison could be made with a pibal balloon. The observers had, therefore, a good estimate of altitude, of relative size, and of speed – much more reliable than those given in most reports.

This investigator would like to recommend that these and other pibal observers be quizzed as to other possible, unreported sightings.

This series of reports, made by Minczewski, are not mentioned in the Project Blue Book Index, which lists only a couple of reports made prior to the Kenneth Arnold sighting. All were reported after the press coverage of the Arnold sighting, so there is no way to document the actual date of the sighting.

Ted Bloecher, in The Report on the UFO Wave of 1947, added some important details to the case. He wrote:

As early as the middle of April 1947, at the Weather Bureau in Richmond, Virginia, a U. S. Government meteorologist named Walter A. Minczewski and his staff had released a pibal balloon and were tracking its east-to-west course at 15,000 feet when they noticed silver, ellipsoidal object just below it. Larger than the balloon, this object appeared to be flat on bottom, and when observed through the theodolite used to track the balloon, was seen to have a dome on its upper side. Minczewski and his assistants watched the object for fifteen seconds as it traveled rapidly in level flight on a westerly course, before disappearing from view. In the official report on file at the Air Force's Project Blue Book, at Wright-Patterson Field, in Dayton, Ohio, this sighting is listed as Unidentified.

The point here is that we have a case of a disk-like object, and a date assigned by the Air Force about the sighting, but we have no documentation that I can find dated prior to the Arnold sighting. There might be something hidden away in the Weather Bureau records, or somewhere else, but I have nothing that pre-dates Arnold for this case.

And before I hear of all those sightings of disks and saucers from early in the 20^th century, I was looking for something in the months prior to Arnold. I arbitrarily set a year as the outside limit though I did look at the Foo Fighter reports. The Swedish Ghost Rockets in 1946 all seemed to be of something that resembled German vengeance weapons as opposed to flying saucers.

While the claim that “flying saucers” are the result of bad reporting and people leaping onto the bandwagon, there is some evidence that saucers had been seen prior to Arnold but there is virtually nothing in the record to show these sightings were reported prior to Arnold. That might be because no one thought much about it until the Arnold sighting hit the national press, but whatever the reason, the point is, I could find nothing about a saucer-shaped object dated in the months prior to Arnold (and to beat a dead horse, I have the reports published after Arnold that refer to events before Arnold, but nothing in the newspapers or anywhere else published prior to it). 

Roger Wescott, Roscoe Hillenkoetter and MJ-12

Although I really don’t have time for this, meaning more nonsense about MJ-12, Stan Friedman has complained that I, and Barry Greenwood and Robert Hastings, have ignored the report by Dr. Roger Wescott, who examined the Eisenhower Briefing Document to determine if it had been written by Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter.  There is nothing to say that he had been the author, no real reason to assume that he was, except that he had been the Director, Central Intelligence Agency, but this seems to be the belief. To me this is a ridiculous exercise simply because, without additional information, that question cannot be answered.

Here’s what we know. Wescott was a linguistics professor at Drew University and Stan wanted him to try to determine if Hillenkoetter had written the EBD. Along with the EBD, he gave Wescott some twenty-seven samples of what he believed to be Hillenkoetter’s writings. I’ll explain that “believed to be” in a moment.

Wescott, in his first analysis said, “In my opinion, there is no compelling reason to regard any of these communications as fraudulent or to believe that any of them were written by anyone other than Hillenkoetter himself.”

Okay, not exactly a ringing endorsement, but certainly doesn’t eliminate Hillenkoetter as the author. But then, in his book on MJ-12 (oh, I suppose I could be petty and not mention the title… Top Secret/Majic) Stan wrote, “Some people are upset that Dr. Wescott didn’t make a positive statement that his work proves Hillenkoetter wrote the briefing. Obviously, no such statement could be made. Somebody working for the CIA, for example, could have read Hillenkoetter’s papers and simulated his style.”

Seriously? You’re saying that someone could have simulated Hillenkoetter’s style? You’re saying that no matter how valuable Wescott’s analysis might be, it would never prove that Hillenkoetter wrote the EBD… then what is the point of even bringing him in to the discussion in the first place?

Wescott, in a letter in the July/August 1988 International UFO Reporter, wrote, “First, it’s clear that I’ve stepped into a hornet’s nest of controversy. Since I have no strong conviction favoring either rather polarized position in the matter, I may have been a bit rash to become involved, even as a somewhat detached consultant, in what amounts to an adversary procedure. On behalf of those who support the authenticity of the memo, I wrote that I thought its fraudulence unproved. On behalf of its critics, I could equally well have maintained that its authenticity is unproved. Whatever the probabilities of the issue, inconclusiveness seems to be of its essence.”

There is an additional problem here. Wescott was a NICAP special advisor in the late 1960s. He was familiar with the world of the UFO. It might be suggested that his analysis wasn’t that of a disinterested third party, and while he might not have had a dog in the MJ-12 fight, he knew something about UFOs.

Wescott’s analyses are not all that impressive. They are best described as he said himself as “inconclusive,” which means that Wescott’s analyses proved nothing and certainly are not supportive of the conclusion that Hillenkoetter wrote the EBD.

Now, here’s what I meant by those documents were “believed to be” written by Hillenkoetter. At the time the EBD was written, Hillenkoetter was a high-ranking military officer in a position of great responsibility. Are we to believe that he actually wrote all these sample documents himself, or is it more likely he turned to an aide, a secretary, a staff officer to actually write the various documents? In other words, Hillenkoetter said, “I need a briefing (or whatever, just insert your own sort of document in here) on (insert the situation here) and have it to me by Friday.”

This means that while Hillenkoetter might have provided the initial information, would have reviewed and edited the document, he didn’t actually write it. I can’t tell you how many times I was given information and told to put it together for a report or briefing for a higher ranking officer. While in Iraq, I was involved in a white paper in which I interviewed a number of generals, took documents created by operations officers and combat commanders, to create a single document which was authored by that higher ranking officer. Or, to put it bluntly, there were so many of us involved that no one author’s voice came through.

Sure, you all are thinking that MJ-12 was classified much higher and access to the information would have been available to far fewer people. But the overall concept still holds. Hillenkoetter would have assigned the initial work to some other officer, and while it might only have been one or two others, the point is, those one or two others would have been responsible for the first draft of the paper. Hillenkoetter would have reviewed it, and knowing how these things work, would have made alterations to it, but the overall voice would not have been his.

And before I have to hear that this was so highly classified, that there just wouldn’t have been those others involved, are we really supposed to believe that Hillenkoetter typed the thing himself. Regardless of the classification, there would have been underlings involved in the process. Think of the Manhattan Project here. Weren’t there many involved who weren’t physicists or scientists who took care of all the various documents that were created in the process of making an atomic bomb? They might not have had access to everything, but in each compartment, they would have been those responsible for all the paperwork.

So, even if you stipulate that Hillenkoetter is the author of the EBD, he probably wasn’t the writer. That was done by someone else (and let’s not forget about all those tabs which would not have been written by Hillenkoetter but by others considered experts in those specific topics).

This explains why I, and most of the rest of us, ignore what Wescott had to say. First, he suggested his analysis was inconclusive. Second, even though there were all those samples offered of Hillenkoetter’s writing style, they were probably written by someone else. And third, the same can be said of the EBD. The initial drafts probably weren’t written by Hillenkoetter, but probably by someone at a lower level which would have altered the “voice” and made it impossible to determine if Hillenkoetter was the author.

Or, to be blunt, all of this is an exercise in futility. None of it proves anything and our best course is to just ignore it as one more failed proof that MJ-12 is authentic.

And before anyone asks, there is no evidence that the EBD is anything other than a fraud, written by someone who had a specific agenda, and that agenda was not to brief Eisenhower.

Levelland, Texas Revisited

In an earlier post I had suggested the Air Force lied about some of the information hidden away in the Project Blue Book files. I had been going to expand on the comments about the Portage County UFO chase, but then remembered some of the things I had read about the Levelland, Texas UFO landings and EM Effects case of November 2, 1957.

What struck me as I read the file in years past was that the Air Force and Donald Keyhoe, at the time the Director of the civilian National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), were engaged in a publicity war, each suggesting the other was lying. The Air Force said there were only three witnesses but Keyhoe said there were nine. Well, both couldn’t be right so I thought I would take another look at what appears in the Blue Book files.

In a document from those files, I found the following statement. “Contrary to Keyhoe’s and Washington Press reports only three, not nine persons witnessed the incident.”

But later in the file, there is another document that said, “A mysterious object, whose shape was described variously as ranging from round to oval, and predominately bluish – white in color was observed separately by six persons near the town of Levelland.”

In a separate document which was apparently part of a newspaper account of the Air Force investigation, the reporter wrote, “The investigators said further (note the plural) [which is a parenthetical comment in the document] that they could find only three witnesses who actually saw the object.”

This could explain the discrepancy inside Air Force file which is to say that only three saw the object but the others were involved in the incident. This would mean that the Air Force, while not telling the whole story was only slightly shading the truth.

Except, in another part of the file, that included newspaper reports, it is clear that more than three saw an object as opposed to a streak of light. For example, the sheriff, Weir Clem, is reported to have said, “It lit up the whole pavement in front of us [he and a deputy] for about two seconds.” He called it oval shaped and said that it looked like a brilliant red sunset.

This brings up a separate issue, which is the color of the object. The Air Force focused on the blue-white light, suggesting that this was related to lightning, supposed to be flashing in the area at the time. But in several of the cases the witnesses talked about a bright red and if that was accurate, then the Air Force explanation fell apart or partially fell apart.

The Air Force eventually explained the case as ball lightning, a phenomenon that science was still investigating in 1957. Those descriptions found by the Air Force claimed it was a bright blue-white and ball shaped. What the Air Force didn’t bother to mention was that ball lightning was short lived, just seconds, and that it was extremely small, something on the order of eight or nine inches in diameter. The witnesses suggested something much larger.

This newspaper quote about the sheriff seeing something larger and oval from the time seems to corroborate statements made by Clem’s wife some forty or forty-five years after the fact. According to a report by Richard Ray of FOX News 4, Oleta Clem, the sheriff’s widow said, “Well, he just said he’d seen a thing that lit down in that pasture with lights all around. It come down and then it went back up as fast as it come down.”

So, we have Clem describing, in 1957, an oval-shaped object and we have his wife saying, in 2002, that he had seen a thing with lights all around. She is telling us he was closer than the Air Force gave him credit for and we had him, making statements in the public record in 1957 that says the same sort of thing. Is this good proof? Not really, but it is interesting testimony and it does suggest that the Air Force was playing fast and loose with the facts.

The Air Force file contains newspaper clippings that have the names of many of the witnesses, statements made by them about what they saw and what happened to their vehicles, and giving the hometowns or locations of these witnesses. Without too much trouble, it is possible to come up with the names of more than three people who saw an object, all available in the Project Blue Book files which negate the Air Force statements about the case.

And yes, I would agree that these newspaper reports are not the most reliable source of documentation, but it would have provided the Air Force investigators, if there had been investigators, a place to begin. Instead, they noted in the file that they hadn’t interviewed one of the primary “sources” because he didn’t live in Levelland, but outside the town… and as an aside, there was but a single investigator who spent most of a day attempting to find and interview witnesses rather than investigators.

What we have here is a clear case of the Air Force pretending to investigate a major sighting and then writing it off as ball lightning when everything argues against that explanation. There were multiple sightings of an object made by more than three people in separate locations, and who made the reports independently to various agencies including the Levelland sheriff and the news media.

The other thing that caught my attention was the NICAP investigator who showed up, one James A. Lee of Abilene, Texas, and said that he had been studying these things for twenty years. Since this was 1957, that would mean he started his investigations in 1937. I would have liked to know what sparked this interest. Had he seen something? Had he read Charles Fort? Did he know of the Great Airship of 1897, or one of the other airship waves that had happened? Or was this some sort of hyperbole to show his long and deep interest in UFOs? I don’t know, but found the qualification, mentioned several times, interesting.

The point here, however, is simply the nonsense of an argument over the number of witnesses rather than an attempt to interview them. Had this happened in 1957, in the days that followed the sightings, we might have learned something about UFOs, electromagnetic effects and a possible landing trace case. Instead we have a file labeled as “ball lightning” and witnesses who were not interviewed in 1957. Everyone dropped the ball.

Kecksburg UFO Crash, Tim Printy and Steven Paquette

Not all that long ago (this last week, actually) Tim Printy sent me a question about part of the Kecksburg UFO crash. He noted that I had mentioned an Air Force officer named Steven Paquette. I wrote in Crash – When UFOs Fall from the Sky, that a document in the Project Blue Book files suggested that he was stationed in New Hampton, Massachusetts, but he had been ordered to participate in the search. Printy wrote that he had been through the Blue Book files and couldn’t find this document.

He also found that an officer with the same name seemed to be stationed much closer to Kecksburg and that he had participated in other UFO investigations. In fact, it seemed that Paquette had an additional duty of investigating UFO sightings in his area, an assignment that fell to many lieutenants in the 1960s.

Printy wanted to know if I knew this about Paquette, and if I could supply the document that I had used as a source, and if there really was a New Hampton, Massachusetts. All very good questions.

So, I went through my Kecksburg file which is about six inched thick and located the document. It was a teletype message that is part of a newspaper story about the Kecksburg sighting. I had gotten it when I asked CUFOS to send me a copy of the Blue Book file on Kecksburg.

Then I looked through the Project Blue Book files, which I now have on microfilm thanks, in part, to Michael Swords and CUFOS, figuring I would find the document there. I was surprised at the size of the Blue Book file, but only because it was so thin. There were a number of “Memos for the Record,” and a final conclusion that the sighting was “Astro, Meteor.”

But the teletype message, and a large number of newspaper clippings that I had thought were part of the Blue Book file were not there. Clearly, the fellows at CUFOS sent me everything they had and that included research that had probably been part of the NICAP files and later the CUFOS files. It was a very complete package and based on what I had seen in the Blue Book files of other, similar cases, I wasn’t surprised by all the extra material. I now know that very little of this information made it into Blue Book.

Printy sent me links to a couple of files for Blue Book that were online and Paquette appeared in them. He wanted to know if I thought it was the same officer. Well, yeah, since the name is not Smith or Johnson, I think it was the same guy, though the spelling of the first name is Stephen rather than Steven.

Of course, this is the world of the internet, and I found that there were quite a few people named Steven Paquette running around. I also found a number of them named Stephen Paquette. Still, how many of them would have been lieutenants in 1965 and 1966 when the various Blue Book investigations were accomplished.

And what about this New Hampton, Massachusetts, which apparently doesn’t exist?

From reading the teletype (a copy of which I did email to Printy and no, the highlighted part does not mention Paquette, that's higher on the message) it seems the reporter was giving a nod to Paquette’s hometown, though it was obviously not in Massachusetts. Printy mentioned a New Hampton, New Hampshire and I know of one in Iowa (but a check of my Britannica Atlas shows only New Hamptons in Iowa and New York). With the information supplied by Printy, it’s clear that Paquette wasn’t stationed in Massachusetts at the time. He was probably from the east coast and the reporter just screwed up the state. And it seems that the spelling of his first name was screwed up by the reporter as well (at least that seems to be the most logical assumption here).

Paquette’s whole role in this seems to be clearer today thanks to Printy. There is no evidence that Paquette ever went to Kecksburg, and while I speculated he would not have had a role in this unless he was assigned to some kind of special unit, that speculation seems to be in error. Paquette was stationed in Pennsylvania at the time, seems to have been assigned as a UFO officer as an extra duty and was quoted by the newspaper simply because he was an Air Force officer who talked to a reporter about Kecksburg.

Thanks to Printy, we now have a little more information about the Kecksburg case and we know a little more about this, at the time, low-ranking Air Force officer. We can clarify his role and move on to other aspects of the case.

Del Rio UFO Crash and MJ-12

There is a flaw in the Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD) that has gone unnoticed since the MJ-12 controversy first erupted more than two decades ago. It is one that gives us a time frame for the thinking in the early 1980s and tells us that the document is a hoax. It goes beyond the misspellings, beyond the grammatical errors and beyond the flawed history. It tells us that the document is not authentic and even points a finger at one of those who might have had a hand in creating it... and no, it wasn’t the US government, the Air Force Office of Special Investigation (AFOSI) or any other official agency.

First, however, one question that has not been answered. If the document is authentic and if there were UFO crashes on the Plains of San Agustin and at Aztec, New Mexico, why is there no mention of either event in this briefing? It covers the Roswell crash and references one near Del Rio, Texas. It would seem that if a briefing was prepared to advise the President-elect, in this case Dwight Eisenhower, it would cover everything on the subject. That those two events were left out seem to indicate some kind of fraud somewhere.

That, however, is not the main point in this discussion. What I’m looking at is the case from Del Rio, Texas, as reported in the EBD. It said, "On 06 December, 1950, (sic) a second object, probably of similar origin, impacted the earth at high speed in the El-Indio – Guerrero area of the Texas – Mexican boder [sic] after following a long trajectory through the atmosphere. By the time a search team arrived, what remained of the object had been almost totally (sic) incinerated. Such material as could be recovered was transported to the A.E.C. facility at Sandia, New Mexico, for study."

The only report I know of that talks of a crash in December 1950 and on the Texas – Mexican border came from a man who said that he was a retired Air Force colonel. He originally told the story, in the late 1960s, to a reporter in Pennsylvania who was asking Civil Air Patrol (CAP) pilots about UFO sightings. Robert B. Willingham (seen here in his "Air Force" uniform) said that he had seen something fall close to the border. That story was sent on to the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in Washington, D.C., where it sat unnoticed for more than a decade. I now wonder if those making the original report about the story might have gotten the organization wrong. This will become clear later.

W. Todd Zechel, a researcher of mediocre ability, found the story and tracked down Willingham. He got an affidavit from Willingham, signed in 1977, giving additional the details of the crash. At the same time, Zechel was talking to William Moore about the case, hoping to write a book about it.

In fact, in The Roswell Incident, Moore wrote, "Then a second group, Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) was formed in 1978 under the directorship of W. T. Zechel, former research director of GSW [Ground Saucer Watch] and a one-time radio-telegraph operator for the Army Security Agency. CAUS’s announced aim was nothing less than an ‘attempt to reestablish that the USAF (or elements thereof) recovered a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft’ in the Texas – New Mexico – Mexico border area sometime in the late 1940s emphasis added)."

According to the work done by Len Stringfield, the original crash story was of an event in 1948, but it was after Zechel entered the case that the date shifted to December 6, 1950. The best evidence was the affidavit signed by Willingham, who was the witness and who, as a retired, high-ranking officer, gave credibility to the report.

But it seems that no one had bothered to check Willingham’s military record. I asked a number of people about it and they all assumed that Zechel had done so. I saw nothing to verify this, so I attempted to do it.

Robert B. Willingham, according to the Air Force Records Center in St. Louis, entered the Army in December 1945 (which technically makes him a veteran of World War II) and left the Army as an E-4 in January 1947. That is all the military service that I have been able to verify and we all now know how accurate that information is (see National Personnel Records Center and UFO Witnesses from February 6, 2010).

I did learn that he had a long association with the Civil Air Patrol and I have seen a plaque given to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Willingham for his years of service to the CAP. It is dated 1948 to 1973 and was from the Pennsylvania Wing, meaning he was in Pennsylvania at that time, which is in conflict for some of his claims of lengthy military service.

For those who don’t know, the CAP is an official auxiliary of the Air Force, but the members are all volunteers who have no real standing in the Air Force. Twenty years of service to the CAP doesn’t qualify one for a retirement pension from the military. Those who serve perform a valuable service in search and rescue and during times of local emergency. They just aren’t Air Force officers even though they wear modified Air Force uniforms and are addressed by military rank.

And if all that is true, then Willingham’s story, of seeing a UFO crash falls apart because he wasn’t an Air Force fighter pilot as he claimed, is not a retired military officer as he claimed, and wouldn’t have been in a position to see what he claimed to have seen when he claimed to have seen it.

But even if Willingham was less than candid about his military service, he now claims that the crash didn’t take place in 1950. That had been Zechel’s influence. According to Willingham he had seen the crash in 1954, or 1955, or maybe in 1957. He is no longer sure of the date. He only knows that it wasn’t in 1950... and even if Willingham is telling the truth now, it suggests that the information about Del Rio as it appears in the EBD is inaccurate which undermines the validity of MJ-12.

Of course, nothing is that simple in the world of the UFO. I had searched for the original article because I wanted to know what it said, in relation to what the 1977 affidavit implied and what Willingham has said over the last five or six years. While I have been unable to locate the newspaper article, I have found the next best thing.

In the February/March 1968 issue of Skylook, once the official publication of MUFON, I found a single paragraph that causes even more trouble for the Del Rio crash, and tells us something more about Robert B. Willingham. That article said:

Col. R. B. Willingham, CAP squadron commander, has had an avid interest in UFO’s for years, dating back to 1948 when he was leading a squadron of F-94 jets near the Mexican border in Texas and was advised by radio that three UFO’s "flying formation" were near. He picked them up on his plane radar and was informed one of the UFO’s had crashed a few miles away from him in Mexico. He went to the scene of the crash but was prevented by the Mexican authorities from making an investigation or coming any closer than 60 feet. From that vantage point the wreckage seemed to consist of "numerous pieces of metal polished on the outside, very rough on the inner sides."

So, let’s connect the dots. We know that Willingham told his story to a reporter in the late 1960s and that article may have gone to NICAP but certainly found its way to MUFON. Zechel allegedly discovered the article in the NICAP files and tracked down Willingham who confirmed what he had said and even signed an affidavit about it in 1977. Zechel, in communication with Bill Moore, told him about the Del Rio crash and provided details, which is verified, to an extent by the paragraph in The Roswell Incident. Bill Moore’s friend, Jaime Shandera received, in the mail, the film on which, when developed, he and Moore found the EBD. That document contains the information about Del Rio that we all now know is inaccurate, to put it kindly.

Now, if there was no Del Rio crash, then there is no reason for it to be mentioned in the EBD... and if it is, then the document must be a fake. Even if you accept the last dates provided by Willingham, the crash happened years after the document was written and couldn’t have been included unless the writer was clairvoyant or wrote the document sometime after 1952.

There is no other evidence of a crash at Del Rio. There are no hints in other documents, no other witnesses contrary to Willingham’s claims, and nothing to support the idea. Eliminate it completely, and the EBD falls with it. Change the dates because of what Willingham has said and the EBD fails again. This might be the final proof that the document is a fake... especially when all the other evidence is added in. This should put the whole thing to rest (though I now expect the vilification to begin).

Amateur Astronomers, Bad Astronomy and UFOs

Not all that long ago we had a couple of discussions about amateur astronomers and UFOs, meaning here, alien spacecraft. I had mentioned a couple of instances in which amateur astronomers had seen UFOs, in this case meaning something unidentified which, of course could also mean alien spacecraft.

Once again, in just looking at the UFO Investigator (January 1974 issue, page 1)that came on the DVD supplied by the Center for UFO Studies, I found a couple of stories about amateur astronomers and UFOs. Terence Dickinson, of the Strasenburg Planetarium in Rochester, New York, said that he, with five students, were studying Jupiter, when they spotted five steady lights in the southern sky on October 24, 1973. The UFOs climbed higher and seemed to get brighter.

Dickinson watched the objects through an eight power spotter scope while students kept the objects in sight without an optical aide. They all said that the objects climbed for about two minutes until they were about 55 degrees above the horizon and all were as bright as Venus with a single exception at the rear of the formation that also had a "pinkish" cast.

The objects were flying in a "V" formation that in military terms would have been a heavy right, meaning it was more checkmark shaped than an actual "V." The lights of the object were steady, and were estimated to be about two miles away and at about 10,000 feet.

Dickinson and his students were not the only ones to see the objects. Richard Quick, Director of the Libraries at State University of New York at Geneseo, provided corroboration of the sighting in a detailed letter to Dickinson.

I suppose I should mention that Dickinson was a member of NICAP at the time of his sighting. Working with Dr. Stuart Appelle, a NICAP regional director, they attempted to find a prosaic explanation but civilian and military authorities, including NORAD, said that none of their aircraft were in the area at the time of the sighting.

A month earlier, meaning the December 1974 issue of the UFO Investigator, the headline in big bold type across the front was "President and Vice President of Long Island Astronomical Society Sight UFO."

On Sunday, October 21, 1973, Lee Gugliotto and James Paciello, were on the second floor terrace of Gugliotto’s home, looking for meteors when a reddish star attracted their attention. They watched it for a moment and then returned to their wives. About two hours later, they returned to the terrace and noticed the red light again. It seemed to move to the west and then began to come right at them until they could see a ball shape. Eventually the object was about the third of the size of a full moon and as bright as Venus.

As the object was about to disappear over the house, Gugliotto and the women hurried downstairs with the intention of following the object. Paciello stayed were he was, watching. A white glow appeared and was quickly replaced by three blinking lights that were evenly spaced on the object. One was green, one red and one white. Paciello noted that the lights were not blinking in a regular pattern, nor were the spaced as the navigation lights on an airplane would be.

Paciello joined the others and they drove down the hill, keeping the object in sight until it faded away in the haze. They then returned home and called the police.

NICAP’s regional investigator, Diana Russell, obtained a detailed report and learned that others in the area had also seen the object. She learned that small aircraft were spotted during the sighting so that everyone could compare the navigation lights on an aircraft, and the general shape of the aircraft with the object. They said that the airplanes looked like "pin dots by comparison to the size of the UFO."

Again, I should note, as did the UFO Investigator, that although the witnesses had an interest in UFOs, "they did not immediately leap to the conclusion that they were experiencing a UFO sighting."

Marc Levine, Director of the Planetarium at Vanderbilt Museum, who knew both the men, said, "If they say something was up there that did not belong there I would have to go along with them."

So, there are two more reports by amateur astronomers but in each case the object is called a UFO as opposed to an alien spacecraft. Of course, the reports also suggest that all other explanations, from man-made to natural have been eliminated. The amateur astronomers are familiar with what in the sky, as Phil Plait has told us repeatedly, and checks for aircraft, satellites, or other Earth-bound craft had failed. That suggests to me that we can say that here are two more reports of flying saucers (though none were of the objects saucer shaped).

I mentioned these because, once again I stumbled over them as I was looking through the UFO Investigator for something else... The 1973 date should give it away. That was during the big "occupant" wave of the fall when lots of people were seeing lots of UFOs and many of them had landed with the creatures from the inside being seen on the outside.

I suppose the question now becomes, how many of these sorts of sightings do we have to report before Phil concedes that amateur astronomers do see UFOs, and in many cases those UFOs are alien spacecraft...

Yes, I can hear him now, explaining that a light in the sky, even one under close observation, does not necessarily mean alien spacecraft. We don’t know that these were alien spacecraft. We just know that they were strange objects that seem to have no Earthly explanation but that doesn’t lead us directly to the extraterrestrial. We need something more to get there.

I suppose that the best we can hope for is Phil to concede that amateurs do report UFOs, but that doesn’t mean they have reported an alien ship. We are, however, getting closer.