Another Roswell Witness - Sort Of

Nearly thirty years ago John Keel, one of those self-styled UFO researchers that Ken Macdonald complained about in his June 2, 2018 AOL Newsribol article about Roswell, said that by the turn of the century (meaning in 2000), there would be hundreds of new witnesses clamoring for their place in the Roswell mythology. Turns out he was right (not about the mythology but about the new witnesses). People have been all over the place claiming to know something special or someone special or something important about the Roswell case.

Macdonald writes about the Roswell story as if this is something new but draws his information from the Roswell Daily Record article published in 1947. He even includes the irrelevant tale of Dan Wilmot, a Roswell resident who saw something on July 2, 1947. That Wilmot made the report about a craft in the sky doesn’t necessarily mean that what he saw was what was responsible for the debris found by W.W. “Mack” Brazel in early July 1947.

What annoyed me first here was this idea that the alien spacecraft was spying on our testing of nuclear weapons, according to what Macdonald wrote. Of course, those of us who can think beyond the end of a sentence realize the flaw in this theory. The first atomic explosion took place in July 1945, with two more in Japan in August 1945… So, if it was atomic explosions that grabbed the aliens’ attention, wouldn’t they have gone to Japan rather than New Mexico? There had been more explosions there.

And since we know the speed of light, and even if we grant the alien ability to spot these brief flashes of very bright light on the Earth’s surface, from where do the aliens originate? Even granting them Faster-than-Light travel, the light from those detonations had only been traveling for two years. Do the aliens have an outpost in our Solar System? Maybe on that ninth planet out in the Kuiper Belt somewhere that some astronomers claim is there?

But what really annoys me is that we have another, new but unidentified, witness to the bodies from the Roswell crash. Oh, he

Nope. Not the real creature, just a model
made for the ShowTime Movie, Roswell.

didn’t see them in New Mexico, but in Ohio, sort of like Philip Corso didn’t see them in New Mexico but in Kansas.

According to this story (and please don’t tell it’s been around for a couple of years because I know that) Raymond Szymanski, who says he worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as an “engineer and high-level researcher,” for 39 years, is the man behind this tale. He said that he was privy to some of the biggest and darkest secrets floating around the base which included the cover up of the Roswell crash.

He, himself, saw underground tunnels and chambers under the base, and this was where the material, and by material, I mean the craft and bodies recovered at Roswell, were stored. Now, he didn’t see the Roswell stuff, only these secret tunnels and chambers and given the history of Wright-Pat, and the paranoia of the Cold War, wouldn’t underground shelters and tunnels be something you’d expect? A purpose other than hiding alien bodies I mean, but I digress.

Szymanski tells of a friend, Al, who spilled the beans to him. Szymanski, according to what he has said, was a “young co-op student barely in his first week” and was let in on the secret… Security

Obviously, the gate to Wright-
Patterson AFB.

clearances take a while to complete, so this is an amazing breach of military etiquette, but I’ll ignore that because it really doesn’t make a lot of difference here.

He talked of a small group of 10,000 people that he had now joined. I don’t know if all 10,000 were at Wright-Pat or scattered among research facilities around the country… anyway, that’s a lot of people in on the secret and not exactly a small group.

But here’s the deal with this tale. We don’t know who Al is. We just have the first name and a suggestion that he was an important man or scientist. And we have Szymanski’s claim that “everyone” he talked to about this over the years didn’t deny the rumors… No one suggested he was out of his mind, but according to him, he has no smoking gun.

So, here we are, with another man claiming some sort of inside knowledge about the Roswell crash but unlike so many others, he admits that he hasn’t seen the bodies or the craft, only been told about it by people he finds to be reliable. But how many times have we been down that road only to learn that the sources for the information are not credible? I’m not even going to bother naming the names because those who visit here on a regular basis, or who have read Roswell in the 21^st Century, know how many have fallen to increased scrutiny.

No, right now I’m not buying this and I don’t really know why AOL Newsribol thought it necessary to dredge up this tale again. It is clear that the story was based on newspaper articles and press releases and that the writer did very little if anything to verify the information. That’s left, I guess, to we self-styled UFO researchers. Too bad so much is ignored by self-styled investigative journalists.

Philip Corso One Last Time

I am often surprised at the support that some alleged UFO witnesses manage gain in the face of their repeated deceptions. Admitted hoaxes are still reported as true with the added claim that the CIA forced the change as a way of explaining that new infomation. Failure to supply any documentation or evidence for their claims is ignored. And even with that, there are those who continue to support the most outrageous of claims. Even the ridiculous words of those witnesses don’t seem to change opinions as the situations develop.

For those who seem to believe that there is something important in what Philip Corso said, I say, read the document published by Open Minds. It took me several attempts to download this book written by Corso without the filters offered by Bill Birnes, and it is certainly a revelation. It provides insight into Corso’s personality and suggests reasons for the stories he told. That publication can be found here:

http://www.openminds.tv/dawn-of-a-new-age-the-philip-corso-manuscript/3661

What I found particularly funny was that Corso seemed to explain how anthropomorphic dummies used in high altitude parachuting experiments could fall in 1957 and be part of the Roswell UFO crash in 1947(which is not to say that he mentioned this specifically, only that his tale would explain it). These aliens, you see, are traveling through time, which explains how they manage the vast distances between stars in our section of the galaxy. As they were entering our time stream in 1947, these two craft collided with one falling in 1947 but the other not coming down until 1957. So, there was a collision, at least according to Corso, but the two craft didn’t fall in the same location or at the same time.

The first fell where Mack Brazel found it and the second fell some ten years later and in the vicinity of the White Sands Missile Range… at least that seems to be what Corso was suggesting. I’m not sure how he linked the two events, but that is what he said.

And the one that cracked me up was Corso’s claim that the Soviets and Joseph Stalin were interested in the Roswell crash. It seems, though the writing is sometimes confusing, that in 1947, Stalin created a review board of highly trained and respected scientists to investigate this UFO crash. Assigned to the board was Yuri Gagarin… who, if Corso had bothered to check, he would have learned was just 13 in 1947.

The point here is that we don’t know what else has he invented. Those who support Corso would be better served by offering evidence of his claims rather than attacking those of us who ask the tough questions about all that he has said.

At any rate, it will be interesting to see the spin for this unfiltered manuscript provided by Corso. It is a quite revealing document. It moves even farther into the world of Fantasy Land. It gives us an insight that we didn’t have and gives us even less reason to believe Corso’s wild tales. 

Philip Corso Interview with Budd Hopkins, Filmed by Carol Rainey

Nearly everyone agrees that many of the tales told by Philip J. Corso are not grounded in reality. When challenged, he often backtracked, blamed his co-author, or said that he hadn’t seen the galleys (we call them page proofs now) of the book. In any case, he has little credibility… especially after the great switching of the Introduction caper (meaning that Strom Thurman wrote the introduction for a different book, and yes, I have even more evidence for that… In fact, in a document entitled Alien Source: The Roswell UFO Crash and Today’s Technological Miracles which was a proposal for his book The Day After Roswell, it said, “Sen. Strom Thurmond wrote a glowing introduction to Col. Corso’s first book, I Walked With Giants: My Career in Military Intelligence.” But, of course, there was no such book and the “glowing introduction” became part of The Day After Roswell. Bait and Switch? Probably more like there was no first book and they had a perfectly good introduction. Why get rid of it? Just put it in the other book. ).

Carol Rainey filmed an interview between Corso and Budd Hopkins made at one of the UFO conferences held at San Marino in 1998. Hopkins and Corso sat in the lobby, discussing what Budd thought of as some errors in the story told by Corso. He was concerned about the lack of corroborative witnesses and that few people were named. Budd wanted to be able to find some of those Corso allegedly hand bits of alien debris to so that he could verify the tale. Corso makes it clear that he was rarely, if ever (which means it wasn’t exactly clear) that he met with those scientists, engineers and industrialists. Someone else put the debris into their hands…

Anyway, for those who would like to watch this interview, it can be found at:

http://youtu.be/pY6s-D-jgaA

It is interesting to see how Corso deals with some tough questions. We have Carol to thank for this short glimpse into the tales told by Corso.

Philip Corso and The Day After Roswell, Again

(Blogger’s Note: In the last few days I have been asked about Philip Corso and his tales of seeing the Roswell bodies and of seeding alien technology into American industry. I have updated the information to reflect what we now know. This is my take on the stories Corso told, and once again, I find myself attempting to explain why I don’t accept what he said as real.)

As everyone now knows, Philip Corso burst on the Roswell UFO scene in the summer of 1997 with the publication of his book, The Day After Roswell. It was Corso’s story of his involvement with the flying saucer crash at Roswell, first as an officer at Fort Riley, Kansas, and later as a staff officer in the Pentagon, the Eisenhower White House, and finally on the staff of Lieutenant General Arthur Trudeau. Corso claimed that he had been responsible, under orders from Trudeau, for leaking bits and pieces of alien technology to American industry for reverse engineering, duplication and replication.

There is no doubt that Corso had served as a military officer and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He served in World War II and stayed on active duty until he retired and did work for Trudeau. Although he did say that he had retired as a full colonel, there is no evidence to back up this claim.

It was during his assignment at Fort Riley that Corso was introduced, according to him, to the alien crash at Roswell. Corso, again according to him, was an above average bowler and because of his skill was invited to participate on a Fort Riley team by then Master Sergeant Bill Brown (which is a name nearly as common as John Smith for those who wish to attempt to learn more about this guy). Corso was surprised because enlisted men weren’t supposed to fraternize with officers at that time, but apparently Corso’s skill was such that the master sergeant took a chance and breached military protocol.

The friendship that developed between Corso and the master sergeant, who he now called by the nickname Brownie, would play an important role in what would happen on the evening of July 6, 1947, after the arrival of a “secret” convoy. Corso was assigned as the post duty officer, in charge of security and as he described it, the “human firewall between emergency and disaster.” As he walked his post, checking the security, he failed to find Sergeant Brown where he was supposed to be. Instead, Brown was in the doorway of the veterinary clinic. There was something inside that Corso just had to see.

Forget for the moment that Brown would have had no reason to enter the building unless there was some sort of a disturbance inside, or that the secret convoy of five “deuce and half” (two and a half ton trucks) with its accompanying “Low boy” side by side trailers would have been guarded by the men who brought them to Fort Riley to ensure that the contents were not compromised. Forget also that the best evidence suggests that the material from the crash was shipped by air to its various destinations because it was the quickest and safest way to move it and the 509^th Bomb Group had access to a wide range of military aircraft. Corso, in his first-hand account, claimed that the convoy stopped at Fort Riley, and the Military Police assigned to it as guards were all armed, which, of course, they would be so that wasn’t unusual. These guards, once the material was secured in the veterinary clinic, apparently abandoned their posts to leave the guarding of the crates to the local soldiers. These guards would have been no reason to unload the cargo, so there is no reason that it would have been in the veterinary clinic but without this wrinkle Corso’s story collapses.

Those local soldiers, being curious men, began to search the material from the top-secret convoy. What they found so upset them that they risked the wrath of the post duty officer and court martial by telling him that there was something he had to see. Brown told Corso that he had to take a look at what the convoy was transporting. Corso warned Brown that he wasn’t supposed to be there and had better leave. Brown, apparently ignoring this advice, which would actually have the force of a lawful order, said that he would watch the door while Corso snooped.

Inside the building, Corso found the crates but hesitated at prying open any of them, which would have been closed with a seal to expose any tampering. He searched among them until he found one that had apparently already been opened by the Fort Riley soldiers so that the nails were loose. He opened that crate and then looked down inside. In a glass tube containing a blue fluid, floating, suspended, was what Corso thought, at first, was a small child. Then he knew it wasn’t a child, but a human-looking creature with “bizarre-looking four-fingered hands... thin legs and feet, and an oversized incandescent light bulb-shaped head...”

Rifling the crate, Corso found an Army Intelligence document detailing that the creature was from a craft that had crashed outside of Roswell, which also doesn’t make sense. The documents wouldn’t have been stashed in a crate carrying the body. The paperwork appeared to manifest the remains, first to the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, and then to Walter Reed Hospital for what Corso believed would be autopsy (which is in conflict with data provided by the late and former Brigadier General Arthur Exon). Of course, such a manifest would have been in the hands of the convoy commander rather than stuck in a crate where he wouldn’t have easy access to it. Corso, realizing that he was not supposed to have read the document, seen the creature, opened the crate, or penetrated the security around the cargo, put everything back the way he found it, and hurried outside. He told Brown that he had seen nothing and that he Brown, was to tell no one.

That wasn’t, of course, Corso’s last brush with the Roswell case. It was however, more than a decade before he again saw anything dealing with Roswell. Instead he had a number of military assignments, moving him to Washington, D.C., and then to Fort Bliss, Texas. At Bliss he was trained in anti-aircraft artillery, then assigned as an inspector of training and finally assigned as battalion commander for several weeks before he was reassigned to Europe. While at Bliss, according to Corso, he was assigned as the commander of the White Sands Missile Range. At least that is what he told reporters in the summer of 1997 as he was describing his background for them.

In Germany, in 1957, he was a commander of a Nike battalion. In March, 1959, he became the Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff at the Seventh Army Headquarters. In May 1959, he became an Inspector General at Seventh Army HQ, and continued in that assignment for about a year. In 1960 he returned to the United States. In 1961, he was assigned as a staff officer of the Plans Division in Washington, D.C. and then as a staff officer of the Army’s Foreign Technology Division until April 1961 when he became the Chief of Foreign Technology. Three months later he was reassigned as a staff officer at Plans and less than a year later he retired.

It was during the tour in 1961 that he became involved, once again, with the Roswell case. According to an affidavit prepared by Peter Gersten, and according to Corso, “...In 1961, I came into possession of what I refer to as the ‘Roswell File.’ This file contained field reports, medical autopsy reports and technological debris from the crash of an extraterrestrial vehicle in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.”

Corso’s job, in 1961, was to parcel the debris into American industry hands for research and development which doesn’t explain why he was exposed to information that was irrelevant to his assignment and in violation of the “Need to Know” rule. The idea here was to suggest to various companies that the small artifact or metal had come from an unknown source, which of course shows that there was no need to provide Corso with the background of a UFO crash. The expertise of the scientists at the companies was supposed to unlock the secrets of the debris. This led, according to Corso, to the creation of the transistor, night vision equipment, fiber optics, lasers, microwave ovens and a host of other recent developments though the scientific papers and history of the times suggests that this is not accurate.

All of this was outlined in Corso’s book which became news in July 1997. He appeared on NBC’s Dateline for an exclusive interview. About a week later he appeared in Roswell for a press conference, a lecture, and a book signing. For three weeks in August, his book appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.

Corso was, in 1997, the highest-ranking officer to write a book about Roswell and to make public claims about the case of what he had seen and done (Colonel Jesse Marcel, Jr. now holds that distinction). According to him, he had been a member of NSC, had worked inside Eisenhower’s White House, and had served with the Army’s Foreign Technology Division. If he could be believed, then here was the truth about the Roswell crash. Finally a witness with impressive credentials had gone on the record.

The stories told by Corso to friends and family are even more impressive than those detailed in his book. In a proposed chapter that was edited out of his book, Corso claimed that in 1957 he had taken command of missiles at Red Canyon, where he trained specialists in the management of sophisticated radar and range finding equipment. It was here that Corso saw a series of radar contacts showing objects that could outperform the best Air Force interceptors.

Corso, according to the details of the missing chapter, had been told to report all unidentifiable sightings and then, finally, was told to forget them. He also claimed that at “times of intense UFO activity during his tenure as commander... he is ordered to turn his targeting radars completely off because, he believes, the craft themselves are in danger from our missiles as well as from our high-energy radars.”

Naturally the claims of Corso were subjected to intense scrutiny. Problems with his book began to arise almost immediately. For example, Corso had claimed to be a member of the NSC in the Eisenhower White House. Herbert L. Pankratz, an archivist at the Eisenhower Library, reported Corso was not a member of the National Security Council or its ancillary agency known as the Operations Coordinating Board. There was nothing to link Corso to the NSC.

Corso, in his book, told of how he had intimidated the CIA director of covert operations after Corso learned the CIA was following him. He told Frank “Wiesner” that he was going to start carrying a gun and if he ever spotted a CIA agent following him, they would find the agent’s body with bullet holes in the head. Corso then noted that Wiesner was found dead in his London hotel room in 1961. Wiesner had killed himself by hanging, which is not to say that Corso’s threat so unhinged Wiesner that he committed suicide.

The problem is that most of the facts used by Corso to support this story, from the claim that he had charged into the Langley Headquarters of the CIA, to the facts surrounding the death of Frank Wisner (note correct spelling) are wrong. Corso couldn’t have charged into the Langley headquarters because they weren’t opened when Corso supposedly entered the building. Corso couldn’t have driven to Wisner’s office as he claimed because, in April 1961, Wisner was, in fact, assigned to the CIA’s London office. Wisner did, eventually commit suicide, but it was with a shotgun, at the family farm, and on October 29, 1965.

In what may be the most telling of the events surrounding the publication of Corso’s book is the Foreword written by Senator Strom Thurmond. Here seems to be an endorsement for Corso’s book from a man who has served in the United States Senate longer than almost anyone. When the book was published, Thurmond, objected, claiming that the Foreword he had written had been for a different book. The publisher, Simon and Schuster issued an apology and pulled the Foreword from future printings of the book.

Corso tried to explain it away, saying that Thurmond’s staff had written the Foreword and that “the old man knew it” and that they hadn’t really known the nature of the book. The whole flap, according to Corso, was a misunderstanding about the nature of the book and who actually authored the Foreword. As a matter of courtesy, given the controversy, Simon and Schuster decided to pull the Foreword.

Karl Pflock, who had been around Washington, D.C. in various capacities, decided to look into the matter himself, believing that his friends and sources inside the Beltway would give him a unique perspective on the matter. Pflock, it turned out, knew the senator’s press secretary, and learned that “Yes, it’s true the foreword was drafted by one of the senator’s staff... It was done at the senator’s direction on the understanding he had from Corso that it was to be for Corso’s memoirs, for which he and his staff were supplied an outline, a document which made no mention of UFOs.” Pflock added, “I know of my own certain knowledge the senator was and is mad as hell about the cheap trick that Corso pulled on him...”

Pflock continued, pointing out that Deputy General Counsel Eric Raymond demanded, “Recall all copies of the first printing - failing that, remove all dust jackets with the senator’s name on them; stop using any reference to the foreword by the senator in promoting the book; do not use the foreword in any subsequent printings of the book; issue a statement acknowledging the truth, ‘to establish for the public record’ that the senator ‘had no intention or desire to write the foreword to The Day After Roswell,’ a ‘project I completely disavow.’”

The apology issued by Simon and Schuster was not as bland as Corso had characterized it but was, in fact, damning in its wording. It was clear that Thurmond did not know the nature of the book and that the outline he had read was for a completely different book. The publisher did remove the foreword from all subsequent editions of the book.

This might seem as if it is an argument over trivia, but it does speak to the general attitude of Corso in constructing his book. If he was willing to mislead a United States Senator, one who Corso considered a friend, why believe that he wouldn’t want to mislead the rest of the country? The evidence is that he played fast and loose with the truth.

For example, it was Corso who said that he had been the commander at the White Sands Missile Range but a check of the Range’s website revealed that, with two exceptions, the Range had been commanded by a general officer. The first exception was Colonel Turner who had been the first commander, and the second was when a full colonel took over temporarily when the commanding general died. Corso’s name did not surface as a commander.

However, as noted, his records indicated that he had been a battalion commander at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. The two organizations, Fort Bliss and White Sands Missile Range, share some facilities. So, it might be said Corso was a commander at White Sands but not the commander. Clearly Corso was inflating his record when speaking to members of the press.

During those same press conferences, Corso made other statements that were quite revealing. He mentioned the Philadelphia Experiment, a hoax that began in 1956 when a man claimed he had witnessed, during the Second World War, Navy efforts to teleport a destroyer. The story is an admitted hoax, but Corso began telling reporters about the event, claiming that he had read the top-secret files about it.

Research into Corso’s claims showed that they were firmly grounded in the UFO community. Corso had read and reviewed everything that had been printed, published on the Internet, or shown in television documentaries over the last five or six years as it related to the Roswell case. There was nothing new in Corso’s book, except for his claim that he had seen one of the bodies at Fort Riley and then that he was the conduit for the alien technology to American industry. For evidence, he offered nothing more than his claim it happened and documentation offered as some sort of evidence had nothing to do with his claims.

In fact, when Corso came into conflict with other witnesses, or information that was contrary to his point of view, he retreated. He appeared on a radio program with Frank Kaufmann but at every point of disagreement, Corso deferred to Kaufman as if Kaufman was the real authority. Kaufmann’s tales have since been shown to be untrue, a fact which Corso should have known if he had the inside knowledge that he claimed he had.

He was quick to suggest that his information might not have been the best. In other cases, it seemed to have been the worst. The caption over a photograph in his book read, “Lt. Col. Corso was never able to confirm the veracity of the following purported UFO surveillance photos which were in Army Intelligence files as support for material for the R&D project to harvest the Roswell alien technology for military purposes.”

The first of the pictures is of a well-known hoax. The photographer, Guy B. Marquand, Jr. told various UFO researchers, as well as the editors of Look, that he was sorry, but it was a hoax. He had been young and foolish and thought it a great joke. It would seem that if Corso was on the inside as he claimed, he would have been aware that this particular UFO photograph was faked.

Given the information available, given the mistakes in Corso’s book, and given his inflation of his own importance during his military career, it seems that the logical conclusion is that Corso’s claims are of little value. They added nothing to what was already known, and certainly have detracted from the whole of the Roswell case. When his claims break apart, those who know little about Roswell become convinced that the whole case is built on structures similar to those built by Corso.

John Alexander - "UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities"

(Blogger's Note: A slightly different version of this review appeared in the Summer 2012 issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.)

UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities by John B. Alexander. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, 2011, 305 pp. $25.99 (hardback). ISBN 978–0–312–64834–3 

It is said that the truest test of a man’s intelligence is how much he agrees with you, and I find that Dr. Alexander and I share a great number of opinions. I looked first at the chapter about Philip Corso, who claimed an inside knowledge of the Roswell UFO crash and the government plans to exploit the find by seeding recovered material into American industry. Here Alexander writes not only from his experience in the Pentagon and classified operations, but as a friend of Corso. He spoke with him in the weeks prior to Corso’s death. But Alexander found many holes in the stories spun by Corso and in the end, while acknowledging Corso’s long military career, did not truly believe him. Here Alexander and I agree.

John Alexander

What was more fascinating was Alexander’s discussion of Congressional hearings about UFOs, and what disclosure would accomplish. Writing as an insider who has experience in this arena, Alexander suggested that neither hearings nor disclosure were going to happen for many reasons he carefully laid out.

One of those reasons was what almost any of us have observed ourselves. UFOs are a third rail in politics (though Alexander suggests they are tarlike), meaning that almost any expression of belief is the same as admitting to a belief in Easter Bunny. He provided examples of what happened after UFOs were mentioned in a debate with former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. From that point on, while commenting on Kucinich’s political ideas and theories, pundits found they had to remark about UFOs, always in a derogatory way. The UFO connection might have nothing to do with Kucinich’s political statements, but they were brought in anyway, as a means to discredit him.

Of Disclosure, the idea that the US government has many classified UFO documents to release, Alexander noted that there was nothing to actually disclose (an idea reinforced by a recent White House announcement that the government held no classified UFO files). The official investigation of UFOs by the Air Force had been released decades ago and a great number of the files and records from the now closed Project Blue Book are online, available to everyone.

Alexander scoffs at the idea of MJ-12, that is, the super-secret committee supposedly created by President Truman after the Roswell UFO crash. Unlike so many others who suggest the documents are faked based on analysis of the documents themselves, Alexander attacks from the way they entered into the public consciousness. Using Watergate as an example, he notes that the Watergate investigation was built on solid evidence from sources known to the reporters while MJ-12 is built on anonymous documents sent to an obscure movie producer. In leaks of real documents, those documents can be examined, the sources verified, and the information corroborated. With MJ-12, there are no original documents, there are no sources, and the information seems to be a hodge-podge of real data taken from historical sources rewritten to include references to MJ-12. Here again, Alexander and I agree.

And we certainly agree with his analysis of the Air Force sponsored University of Colorado study of UFOs known to many as the Condon Committee. He chides science for its refusal to look critically at the results of the study, which he describes as badly flawed. He notes scientists continue to use of the study to prove that nothing of scientific interest could be learned from a true examination of UFOs, when the contrary is true.  He suggests that many of the case studies cited by the Condon Committee were cursory at best and certainly inadequate for a true scientific analysis. Although he doesn’t mention it, one of the cases in Condon Committee report was concluded suggesting that it was caused by a phenomenon so rare that it had never been seen before or since. They don’t bother to identify that phenomenon. Alexander suggests that scientists actually read the report before relying on it to prove there is nothing of value in UFO research.

Where we part company is his analysis on the Roswell UFO crash case. He writes that he now subscribes to the Project Mogul answer. According to him, “While the Air Force report, Case Closed, provides conflicting information regarding classification, most of those involved agree it [Project Mogul] was both Top Secret and strictly compartmented.”

But this is simply untrue. While the ultimate purpose, to spy on the Soviet Union, was classified, the project itself and the equipment used by it were not. For the launches in June, 1947, the balloons were standard neoprene weather balloons and the radar targets were foil-covered devices known as rawins. The name of the project, contrary to what has been said many times by many other sources, was not classified and appeared in Dr. Albert Crary’s unclassified diary published in the Air Force study. Announcements of the launches were required by the CAA (forerunner to the FAA) because the balloon arrays could be a hazard to aerial navigation. Pictures of the balloon arrays were published in newspapers around the country on July 10, 1947. So much for a highly classified project.

What struck me most about this short segment of the book was how he let the sources get away from him. In other places, he carefully named those sources and their credentials. As an example, when writing about an intercept of a UFO by an American pilot stationed in England, he told us it was Lieutenant Milton Torres, who eventually earned a doctorate in mechanical engineering, that Torres taught at the university level, and he was a very credible source who had been sworn to secrecy about his UFO encounter. We learn all that we need so that we might verify what Alexander has written if we feel the need to do so.

With Project Mogul, we are not so blessed. In writing about the strange symbols reported by Jesse Marcel, Jr. (whose credentials are also carefully laid out for us by Alexander) Alexander said, “What was learned was that on the reflecting panels had been placed a specially designed code that could only be read by the people with access to the key. More important, it was stated that this code was not alphanumeric as are most that are frequently employed, but entailed the use of glyphs.”

In all my discussions with project engineers and others associated with Mogul, including Charles Moore who claimed he had “launched the Roswell UFO,” this was never mentioned. The best the Air Force could do was suggest that a flowered tape from a novelty company had been used to reinforce part of the rawin targets, but they produced nothing to prove it. If I wanted to verify Alexander’s new claim, I could not. Alexander did not provide the source for this unique bit of information.

For me, this discussion of Roswell was the big disappointment here. While Alexander chastised others for accepting much of the nonsense published in the UFO field including those scientists who make statements without bothering to learn the facts, this seems to be what Alexander has done in the Roswell case. He accepted the story of glyphs without proper analysis.

That said, this is a book that needs to be read and understood by all those inside the UFO community and by everyone who has an interest in these topics. Yes, he is going to annoy everyone regardless of personal beliefs with his opinions about UFOs. His insider status, his knowledge of how things work in both the world of congressional hearings and in the world of the military classification provides an interesting insight that those pushing for congressional hearings and full disclosure should read.

For the most part his use of names, dates, sources and personal experiences lend an even stronger note of credibility to his work. While he doesn’t use footnotes, he provides the source material in the text. It is clear that he knows what he is talking about and that he had, for the most part, the sources and data to back it up.

Here is a book about UFOs that is a must read for everyone. And if we disagree about the Roswell case, well then, we disagree about Roswell.

Roswell and Chase Brandon

In the last couple of days I have been asked about my opinion on the latest Roswell revelation. It seems that a fellow named Chase Brandon (a name that is difficult to believe) has claimed that when he worked for the CIA he had the opportunity to review, search, mosey around in a classified area where he could snoop into whatever file, box or crate that he wanted to.

This is a tale that reminds me of Philip Corso who had the chance to see an alien body when the convoy taking the Roswell creatures to Wright Field stopped overnight (RON, in military terms meaning Remain Over Night) at Fort Riley, Kansas. Some buddy of Corso was prying open the sealed crates that had been removed from the trucks and stored in a building for better security (which obviously didn’t work). This sergeant friend of Corso’s opened one, and then, in a further and more outrageous breach of military security, told his buddy, Philip about it. Corso showed up and did the same thing eventually telling the world about the alien creature he had seen.

So now we have Brandon entering what he said is called Historical Intelligence Collection which is a vaulted area (meaning it is like a bank vault) and that not everyone can get into it. He said he was just wandering around in there, reading the handwritten labels when one caught his eye. According to him, there was but a single word. Roswell.

Crapola, I say.

Why in the hell would they label this box of significant history with a word that, until recently was the name of a Civil War officer and the name of a couple of towns (not to mention Maggie Roswell of The Simpsons fame)?

And, of course, in this box was everything to tell him that it was an alien craft and not one of the super duper secret balloons that had an intelligence function. Nope, there were photographs and documents that proved this was an alien craft.

Of course he has nothing to back up his statement on this except he is reported to have served as a covert operations officer in the CIA’s Clandestine Service for 25 years, and spent his last 10 years as the agency's official liaison to the entertainment and publication industries (which is a real hint). I suppose if you work in the director’s office you have the authority to poke around just about anywhere, even if you are only the liaison to the entertainment industry.

The question that springs to mind is where was this guy ten years or twenty years ago? How come the GAO couldn’t find him to talk to him and how come the GAO didn’t get to look in the Historical Intelligence Collection as they searched for documentation about the Roswell case? Does this mean that the CIA lied to the GAO when they said they had no records about it? Maybe that investigation should be reopened.

The story does provide us with the answer to those questions, however. According to Brandon, he is hawking his science fiction book about alien contact and what happens to Earth when the aliens arrive. Rather than just another first contact book, Brandon now has a hook that will get people talking. He is writing with his knowledge of a real event because he saw a box marked, “Roswell.” Maybe some of this classified stuff made it into the book.

And nope. I do not believe his tale. Just as I didn’t believe Philip Corso’s tale when approached by others as Corso was peddling his book. Sometimes you have to see behind the scenes. This is a case where the veil is nearly transparent. Brandon wants you to buy his book… and though I do read science fiction, I won’t buy this one.

Philip Corso Was Not The Highest-Ranking Officer to Talk

Sometimes you see something that just makes no sense. I stumbled across several web sites that proclaimed that Philip Corso was the highest-ranking officer to talk about Roswell. Overlooking that much of what Corso claimed has been discredited, let’s just deal with this other claim.

First, we must realized that Corso was not a colonel (known as an O6 in the military) but was a lieutenant colonel (known as an O5). Some believed that he was promoted upon retirement, as often happens in the reserve, but there is no documentation to support this, and while Corso held a reserve commission, he had spent his career on extended active duty (known as EAD in the world of the military). That he was known as a colonel is a mistake though he would be addressed as “colonel” and referred to as “colonel” in conversation, in formal correspondence he would be addressed as “lieutenant colonel.” His rank insignia would be a silver leaf while that for a colonel is a silver eagle.

Second, there are two brigadier generals, Thomas DuBose and Arthur Exon who have spoken about the Roswell case. DuBose was General Ramey’s Chief of Staff (and not his aide as he has been identified on some of the sites) and told us about transferring debris from Roswell, through Fort Worth and onto Washington, D.C. He also said, on tape, that the material in Ramey’s office was parts of a weather balloon and not what had been found outside of Roswell and sent on to higher headquarters.

Exon was a lieutenant colonel at Wright Field in 1947 and later, as a brigadier general was the base commander at Wright-Patterson AFB (think of this as a mayor of a good-sized city). He told us (and here I think of me along with Don Schmitt and Tom Carey) about what he had seen and heard about Roswell, including flying over the crash site. His information about the case was both direct and indirect.

Third, there are Colonels... Patrick Saunders and Edwin Easley who were both at the base in Roswell in July 1947, and both who retired in a higher grade than Corso. Saunders is responsible for a notation in one of the Roswell books that I wrote with Don Schmitt that suggested that the cover up was in place, that it was an alien craft, and that he hadn’t mentioned it.

Easley was the provost marshal (think chief of police and please notice the spelling with but a single “L”) in Roswell and was responsible for the security at the crash site (whatever that crash might have been). He told me, in a private interview, that he believed it to be of an extraterrestrial craft. Yes, that’s a paraphrase of his saying that we weren’t following the wrong path when I said we believed it to be extraterrestrial.

When you look at it, you see that there are at least four officers of superior rank, who were actually in the right places to see something useful and not at Fort Riley in Kansas in July 1947. (I should point out here that I have nothing against lieutenant colonels, I was promoted to that grade upon retirement and that I spent three months at Fort Riley in 2003.)

Corso spun an interesting story, but the facts are he was not the highest ranking officer to talk about this, he was not in the right place to see anything in 1947, and there were gaps in his knowledge that would suggest he knew no more about this than someone who had read a few of the books and viewed some of the web sites. His story is interesting, but has little relevance to our understanding of the Roswell case.

Philip Corso and MJ-12

There are many levels to UFO research and there are many different people adding to the confusion because of their own agendas. Sometimes those agendas are relatively benign, and sometimes they are almost evil.

All this is a way of saying that not all that long ago I was talking to Bill Birnes of UFO magazine and The Day After Roswell. He asked me where I had gotten a copy of the proposal for the book. I told him that I was not comfortable revealing the source and although he made a guess or two, I refused to provide any additional information.

Birnes took that well and then said that Philip J. Corso, his co-author on the book had never claimed to have been on the MJ-12 committee. That reference had been added by a movie company that had been interested in doing some sort of feature film based on the book. Neither Corso nor Birnes had endorsed that statement.

If you read the book, you’ll find no claim that Corso was a member of MJ-12, either as a primary, alternate or assistant. Corso’s story has nothing to do with MJ-12 or any such committee other than in passing.

My point here is not to suggest that the book is factual, fiction, or a combination of the two. It is only to point out that the reference to MJ-12 and Corso’s participation in it was made by others who didn’t understand these sorts of things. It was made by those whose agenda was to make a film and make money and not to necessarily advance the state of UFO research.

Being on MJ-12 was not a claim made by Corso according to what Bill told me.

What this really means is that I can’t, and you can’t, reject Corso’s story because he said he was a member of MJ-12. You can reject for other reasons if you must, but this is not one of them.

Richard Hoagland, Philip Corso and Phobos

I have learned that Richard Hoagland, he of the face on Mars fame, has another startling revelation for us. He is going to announce that one of the moons of Mars is artificial and hollow. This would be, of course, absolute evidence that there is intelligent life beyond Earth.

I would be truly excited about this if this revelation was new. It is not. There has been speculation that the moons of Mars, both tiny and orbiting close to the planet, were artificial.
This from Wikipedia:

Around 1958, Russian astrophysicist Iosif Samuilovich Shklovosky, studying the secular acceleration of Phobos’ orbital motion suggested a "thin sheet metal" structure for Phobos, a suggestion which led to speculations that Phobos was of artificial origin.

Fred Singer, an advisor to Dwight Eisenhower said:

If the satellite is indeed spiraling inward as deduced from astronomical observation, then there is little alternative to the hypothesis that it is hollow and therefore martian made. The big 'if' lies in the astronomical observations; they may well be in error. Since they are based on several independent sets of measurements taken decades apart by different observers with different instruments, systematic errors may have influenced them.

The point is simply this. The idea that Phobos is artificial is nothing new. The new spin is that Philip Corso, he of The Day After Roswell fame, is the source for this. Bill Birnes, who co-authored the book with Corso tells me that Corso made no such claims.

Birnes said that he has been all through Corso’s papers and that nothing of the sort appears in them. I’m not sure why Hoagland wants to drag Corso into this, but according to Birnes, the information is in error. On this one, I think I’ll side with Birnes., Phobos

UFOs and Stolen Valor

I was searching the web the other night and came across an interview with a man I had written about in the past. He was not pleased with my assessment of his tale and wondered why I had not contacted him before I posted it. I was a little disturbed by his comments and then realized that I was suggesting he had been less than candid about his UFO involvement and he certainly had the right to feel annoyed. Of course, I believed then what I written and I have seen nothing in the last several years to change that opinion.

The point is that I find myself in a similar position today. I have been researching, for the last year, a story told by a man who claimed to be a retired Air Force colonel. Based on his supposed high rank, I accepted the story he told as authentic. I believed that a man who had obtained high military rank wouldn’t be lying about something like this... but that was before Philip Corso entered the picture and proved me wrong.

In this case, however, the man had not been a high-ranking Air Force officer as claimed and the only record of military service I could find was a short period starting in December 1945 and ending in January 1947. This would technically make him a veteran of World War II, though he entered the service after the surrenders of Germany and Japan. The war wasn’t declared officially over until some time in 1946.

He claimed that he had been an Air Force fighter pilot, but I could find no record to substantiate this, and if he wasn’t a fighter pilot, then his tale of a UFO crash was no longer credible. He had been, according to him, flying a chase plane during some kind of a bomber mission when he saw the UFO. But if he wasn’t a fighter pilot, then the reason for him being where he claimed to be was eliminated and his tale collapsed.

I did learn that he had a long association with the Civil Air Patrol, the official auxiliary of the Air Force, but that is a civilian, volunteer organization. I don’t know if Air Force personnel, who can also serve in the CAP, receive retirement points for that service. If so, I suppose he could claim some kind of lengthy Air Force service, but the truth is, he wasn’t in the Air Force as claimed, nor in the Air Force Reserve, so the point is moot.

According to documentation, he rose to lieutenant colonel in the CAP, but again, that is not the same as being a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. When questioned about his service, he provided several photographs and documents, but all of them related to the Civil Air Patrol. I have never seen a picture of him in an Air Force uniform, though it is clear from the photographs supplied that he was attempting to mask his CAP service by making alterations to the uniform.

I have since been given some documents that suggest service in the Air Force, but these came from the man, and I have been unable to verify their authenticity. I believe one of them to be a forgery and not a very clever one at that.

So, who is this guy you ask? This is where the trouble arises. In 2005 the US Congress passed the Stolen Valor Act which makes it a crime to wear ribbons or medals not earned. I have two pictures of him and in each he is wearing medals for which I can find no documentation. He is wearing an officer’s uniform and he is claiming to have served in the Air Force, either on active duty or the reserve long enough to have earned a pension. He claims it was denied because he talked to civilians about UFOs.

To identify this man now, who is 84 and whose health isn’t all that great, would be to bring addition attention and pressure to him. This is something that I’m not sure I want to do...

On the other hand, I understand the anger of veterans toward those who didn’t serve, or served in a limited way but who claim great things. One estimate, published in Military History magazine this month suggests there are 26 million people claiming to be veterans who are not. Thousands have received veteran benefits to which they were not entitled, taking money from the veterans who had earned it. I have seen men, and a few women, interviewed about their service, making claims that then tarnish the reputations of all of us who did serve.

But this guy is old, sick, and his family is not nearby. At the moment, nothing is gained by identifying him, at least in my mind. His story, however, does have a great impact on some avenues of UFO research, and that will be explored a little later.

FAKERS! Part Two

We talked about fakers a while ago, meaning people who have claimed to be things they are not. We have looked at UFO witnesses, researchers, advocates, and whistle blowers who used supposed military backgrounds or high levels of education to prove that what they say is true. What they tell us is often in conflict with what their records say and the apologists have excuses for that including that the government, in its all powerful, all knowing capability has been able to alter the records of those people to make them look bad.

Now we have more evidence of fakers in our world. According to an article published in the Seattle Times and written by Jennifer Sullivan, Jesse MacBeth, 23, who claimed to be a decorated hero who fought in Iraq, who said he was an Army ranger, and who said that he had killed more than 200 people including some who were praying at a mosque, has been sentenced to jail from making false statements to the Department of Veteran Affairs. MacBeth had spoken at anti-war rallies and had appeared in an anti-war video that had been circulated on the Internet. It was learned that MacBeth had spent only six weeks in the Army at Fort Benning, and never completed basic training. He had claimed to be a corporal who had been awarded the Purple Heart.

The whole story can be seen at:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003895483

_webmacbeth21m.html

Yes, I know this has nothing to do directly with UFOs and the paranormal, but it does address, again, this growing trend to make up things, find a forum, and have your point of view published so that the world can see it. We don’t know how much damage this guy might have done and here I’m only thinking of the soldiers in the field in Iraq. We know these sorts of things are picked up and broadcast around the world and once the man, or woman, is exposed, that is not as actively reported. His false claims are out there for future generations to find and read and many times these are not linked to the stories exposing the faker. It tars his with lies all those who have served honorably.

As just one example, there is the discredited "Winter Soldier" hearings organized in 1971 by Vietnam anti-war protestors. There men told their tales of horror, of atrocity, and even John Kerry was there smearing the names of all those who had served honorably in Vietnam (and his attitude then didn’t stop him from trying to promote himself as a war hero when it became politically expedient to do so in 2004 by claiming two tours in Vietnam... one on a deep water Navy ship that patrolled for some weeks off the coast of Vietnam and the second for maybe three months on a Swift Boat on the rivers in Vietnam... total time "in county" about four months as compared to 12 months for soldiers and 13 for Marines, but I digress). Rarely in the stories about those "hearings" reported during the 2004 election was it mentioned that the hearings had been discredited and those telling their tales of horror had not served in combat, had not served in Vietnam and in some extreme cases, had not served in the military (For a better discussion of this see B. G. Burkett’s Stolen Valor, page 131 - 134.)

So now I have that off my chest, I’ll move this on to UFOs and paranormal phenomena. I saw, not long ago, an attempt to rehabilitate Philip Corso. He was the man who claimed to have been promoted to colonel after his retirement, though he had only served as a lieutenant colonel on active duty. His excuse was that he thought he had been promoted upon retirement though no evidence for that promotion had ever been offered.

In this attempt, it was noted that the Congress, in the 1950s, had passed a law that gave officers in the Reserve a promotion on retirement to make up for the disparity of promotions while they served. Their counterparts on active duty were promoted faster. The problem is that the law didn’t apply to Corso. While he may have held a Reserve commission as opposed to a regular commission, he was serving on extended active duty. In other words, he was promoted as a member of the Active Component and not as a member of the Reserve.

Here’s the difference. Reserve officers served one day a week for four hours and then were required to attend annual training for two weeks a year. Their rate of promotion, because of the limited time in training was longer than that of the soldiers on extended active duty. Note here, this is the situation in the 1950s when Corso was on active duty. Later it changed to one weekend a month made of four, four-hour training periods and, of course, the two weeks (fifteen days, actually) for annual tour.

So, even though the law existed, it didn’t apply to Corso. This misunderstanding comes from those in the civilian world who don’t know the some of the terms and methods of the military. Reserve officers serve on extended active duty and are promoted with their fellows with regular commissions. In fact, officers often hold two ranks... that is the grade in which they serve and their permanent rank. So a colonel might hold the permanent rank of major and when released from active duty would revert to that permanent rank.

There is one other problem here. Upon retirement, a soldier would retire in the highest grade held. At Roswell, in 1947, there was a master sergeant serving out his last year or so on active duty. During World War II, he had served as a brigadier general. When he retired, he would retire as a brigadier general.

And we haven’t even touched on bevet ranks, which were used quite a bit during the Civil War. George Custer was a captain until bevetted to brigadier general of volunteers. When the war ended, he should have reverted to captain but friends in high places secured him a commission as lieutenant colonel in the Seventh Cavalry, and we all know how well that worked out.

When you get right down to the bottom line on this, an argument over the "real" rank of Corso isn’t of overwhelming importance and it could be argued that he made a simple mistake. This whole Reserve-Active thing with two different grades and types of commissions can be confusing to those of us who are involved in it, not to mention those outside the military.

If we are concerned about the veracity of Corso, we can find our answer in other areas, including the slippery way that he got Senator Strom Thurmond to write an introduction for his Roswell book. When the book was released, Thurmond was outraged, saying that the book for which he had written an introduction was not the book that had been published. For those who wish to know more, look for Roswell Revisited from Galde Press (FATE magazine, PO Box 460, Lakeville, MN 55044) Chapter Seven.

What this demonstrates is that we have people claiming to be soldiers who were not, but get publicity because they say the things people want to hear. MacBeth lied about his military experiences, but since he was anti-war, he was given a forum. Certainly not the first one to do this nor the first one to be exposed. And to the credit of the Seattle Times they exposed him as soon as they had the evidence.

Corso bumped himself up a grade for no reason I can understand. All he had to do was admit the truth, say it was a mistake and carry on. Instead he decided to say that he had been promoted in the Reserve and when no evidence of that was found, his defenders began to look for other excuses.

So now we come to me. I have read, on the Internet, from a number of places, including an exopolitics and UFO site in Australia, that I look too fat to be a soldier (and they do publish a picture that makes me look fat) but they have also picked up a picture of me in uniform, sitting in the throne room of an ancient Babylon king. Since Babylon is in Iraq, this pretty much puts me into that conflict.

But they ask exactly what my background is and I’m thinking that it’s a fair question. After all, I have said I was in the Army and in the Air Force and then in the National Guard. Seems like I am jumping all over the place.

Unfortunately, I must now reveal that I entered active duty with the Army in July 1967 (more than forty years ago) having just graduated from high school about a month earlier. I went through basic training (which all soldiers do) and moved on to my advanced individual training, which, in my case was helicopter flight training (See below for picture of me with part of the flight school class). In August 1968, I finished flight school, was discharged from the Regular Army, appointed a warrant officer in the Reserve and immediately called to active duty (and yes, that’s how they did it with nearly all of us who went through the warrant officer flight program. In my class only one pilot was assigned duty other than Vietnam and that was because his brother, also in that class, was going to Vietnam with the rest of us).

In September 1968 I was sent to Vietnam (See below for a picture of me at Cu Chi, RVN) and in September 1969, I returned home. I spent another two years on active duty and then was honorably discharged. I moved to Iowa, joined the Iowa National Guard as a helicopter pilot and began attending the University of Iowa.

I learned that the Air Force was looking for men (at that time, women did not receive flight training) to teach to fly jets. It sounded like a good idea so I joined Air Force ROTC, which, by law, meant I had to sever my association with the National Guard. I was taken into the Air Force Reserve as an enlisted man (which was the custom at the time) and began the training. About the time we all were to graduate, we were told that the Air Force was experiencing a reduction in force (RIF, for those you like acronyms) and we were told that few of us would receive slots for pilot training but we could all take our commissions or not, as the mood moved us.

I took mine and waited for a pilot slot to open. I learned it would be more than two years, but there was another choice. I could serve 90 days of active duty and that would be it. Well, I didn’t want to get my life in order for two years and then the Air Force turn it upside down, so I opted for the 90 days. At the conclusion, I was offered a job with the Reserve unit and I took that, entering into the Air Force Reserve. Eventually, I was promoted (on schedule) and reached captain. Finally, I finished with that, entered what is known as the Inactive Ready Reserve (IRR) and was eventually discharged, honorably. After more than 14 years of active and reserve duty for retirement purposes but with more than 23 years of overall service (yes, this is another confusing mess created by military regulations and their attempts to calculate retirement points), I had little connection to the military.

Then came 9/11. I had completed some advanced education including a MA in Military Studies with an emphasis in Intelligence and I believed I could offer some sort of help. I talked to the Army first, for some reason wishing to rejoin it. I talked to the Army Reserve and the National Guard and while they both were enthusiastic, they didn’t get very far. I talked to the Air Force, but they were less than impressed. I even talked with the Navy, thinking I hadn’t been in the Navy yet. Nothing seemed to work well. I was offered the chance to join the National Guard, as a sergeant rather than a captain, but I wasn’t too keen on that idea.

Finally, I was offered a commission as a captain in the Iowa National Guard and accepted it. Less than four months later that unit was called to active duty and three months after that, we were on our way to Kuwait and then Iraq. I spent over eleven months in theater before we were rotated home (See left for picture of me sitting in Saddam's chair in the Green Zone and below for me staninding on top of a building at the Baghdad International Airport). From that point, I spent another three months on active duty as the OIC (Officer in Charge) of the redeployment effort. About a year later I was promoted to major and continue my service in the National Guard with various calls to active duty for short periods.

I will point out here that I do have an appointment as a major general in the State Guard Association of the United States, the same organization to which Stephen Lovekin belongs. I belong to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and have published science fiction stories and books.

I mention all this because I have criticized the Disclosure Project and Michael Salla of Exopolitics fame for not vetting their witnesses, believing that the vetting process would solve many of their problems. If you build a structure based on the stories told by these witnesses and some of them are inventing their tales, then your structure is flawed. If you don’t understand the backgrounds, then you can make mistakes.

But, if I am going to criticize the backgrounds of these people, then I should be willing to provide some information about my background. It is one thing to sit on the sidelines and snipe and it is something else to jump into the fight.

I will note one other thing. Sometimes others make mistakes for you. On my first UFO book, the editor identified me as a captain, USAF (Ret). That was his mistake. He had seen my name saying, Captain USAFR and thought the "R" was for retired, not realizing it was for Reserve. Someone wrote a long article explaining that I had lied about this and there was no way that I could be retired. Forgetting for a moment that I had joined the Army in 1967 and this article was written in 1989 (which meant that I could have retired after twenty years), I wrote to him explaining the mistake. He seemed to have accepted this because he didn’t publish the article.

This just proves that mistakes are made, often by those who don’t know the military very well. Corso could have said that the publisher had made a mistake with his rank and we all would have nodded and said, "Happens all the time," but instead he made up an excuse. Then, to compound it, another excuse was invented, mentioning a public law that was irrelevant to the discussion. All of this simply cast a shadow over Corso and his inclusion in the Disclosure materials.

And once again, we reach the main point here. There are fakers out there who claim military service when they have had little or none. They claim medals they didn’t earn and ranks they didn’t obtain. There are those who claim to be colonels in mythical organizations as if this somehow improves their credibility. Until recently, there wasn’t much that could be done. Now, there are various new laws and some of these people are being prosecuted.

We, in the UFO community, have enough problems that we don’t need to get mixed up in these little fights. All we need to do is check the information as best we can. Sometimes we do make mistakes (and do I really have to mention Frank Kaufmann here?) and we should correct those when made. What we don’t need to do is to defend those who have lied to us, reach for explanations that don’t apply, and continue to hang on in the face of new information.

Maybe we can learn something from the Seattle Times. I hope that we do, but I have been around the UFO field long enough to know that we won’t.

More Roswell Debris?

Ten years ago, on the anniversary of the Roswell UFO crash, the talk of the festival (when not consumed with the nonsense spouted by Lieutenant Colonel Philip Corso) was a piece of metallic debris that had been subjected to chemical analysis and testing by a credentialed scientist. This debris, if it could be linked to the Roswell UFO crash, and we were assured that the chain of custody existed to do that, and if the analysis was accurate, would provide proof that the UFO was an extraterrestrial craft. There was no longer any reason for speculation.

Dr. Russell VernonClark (yes, the last name is spelled that way, run together) was hustled into Roswell for his morning presentation to a packed auditorium that was also well attended by members of the media. If what had been analyzed was an actual artifact from another world, as VernonClark said, then this was big news. Certainly the biggest in the last thousand years.

VernonClark, in his presentation said, "The atomic mass so differs from that found in known earthly elements, that it is impossible for it to be from Earth."

That would mean, of course, that it was of extraterrestrial manufacture. It would mean that an alien race had visited Earth and the evidence they left behind was now in the hands of investigators and scientists. VernonClark did not equivocate. He was definite about the meaning of his findings.

VernonClark was talking of the isotopic ratios that were not found naturally in Earth-based elements. It meant that the isotopes had to come from an outside source and that meant someone had brought them here from another world or so he concluded.

VernonClark, escorted into Roswell by UFO researcher Derrell Simms, having made his announcement, then fled from the auditorium. Some say they ran out the back door to a waiting car to get them out of town. At that point VernonClark was no longer available for questions.

Paul Davids, the executive producer of the ShowTime original movie, Roswell, took the stage to provide additional information about the artifact, but did not fulfill the promise to produce the chain of custody. Although the artifact supposedly was offered by a relative of the man who picked it up on the crash site, no name was given, no affidavit presented, and no way of checking the accuracy of the information about the discovery of the artifact was provided. In other words, we were required to take the information on faith and wait for further announcements.

There was no back up for the testing presented, although it was alleged that such additional and independent testing had taken place. Davids said it had been done but wouldn’t say by whom. He said, "This is so controversial that men’s reputations have been ruined over their seriously making conclusions."

A nice way to dodge the question and not provide the confirming evidence. Unfortunately, there is also a ring of truth in it. Credentialed people who have come out supporting an aspect of the UFO phenomena have found themselves on the short side of the debate. Dr. James MacDonald and his trouble springs to mind here.

Paul said that he wouldn’t explain who had the artifact, nor would he say how he could be sure that the artifact came from Roswell, though such a promise had been made. All he would say was that someone had given the artifact to Simms.

So it boils down to the testing of the artifact and what could be learned from it. Even if the debris hadn’t come from the Roswell UFO crash, the artifact itself seemed to scream extraterrestrial manufacture and that would still be big news even if it couldn’t be linked to the Roswell case. VernonClark had made it clear that his research had shown the artifact to be alien.

Other scientists, when contacted by reporters, said that the isotopic ratios described by VernonClark, while not natural, could easily be produced in an university laboratory. In other words, the artifact didn’t necessarily have to be alien.

In an article published by the Albuquerque Journal, reporter John Fleck quoted a number of scientists who disagreed with VernonClark’s conclusions. One of them, a University of Kentucky chemist Rob Toreki said, "You can do it here."

He meant that you could manipulate the isotopic ratios. And VernonClark eventually said the same thing. In a telephone conversation with me, he said it could be done so that the isotopic ratios, while not naturally occurring, could be produced in a lab. He added that it was an expensive proposition.

Other scientists suggested there were huge mistakes made in the original testing. They pointed out that one of the elements, Germanium-75, a radioactive isotope has a very short half-life and would decay into other elements in less than a day.

So where are we on this? First, there is no chain of custody that leads us to the Roswell crash site and therefore there is no provenance. We can’t say with any degree of certainty that the material came from the Roswell crash and without that we are left with an interesting anomaly that might not be connected to the Roswell case at all.

Second, the analysis seems to be flawed. The suggestion that the isotopic ratios are not naturally occurring leads to the conclusion that this artifact was manufactured but not to the extraterrestrial. Chemists and scientists say that all this can be created in a lab, and while a few suggest it would be expensive and difficult, others say that it is not. More importantly we then have VernonClark who tells us that he might have overstated the case and the it was possible to construct the material on Earth, effectively wiping away the extraterrestrial and extraordinary in this case.

And finally, and possibly most importantly, there is no follow up on this. I was in the auditorium when VernonClark made his announcement and I saw the reporters reactions. They were very interested, especially when they were promised the information to confirm the chain of custody and the results of additional, independent testing.

But that didn’t happen and I saw their reaction to that as well. If you are going to make an extraordinary claim, then you had better be prepared to provide the confirming evidence. And when you withhold that and other scientists do not agree with the conclusions you put forward, then you have lost your audience. Yes, they were very interested until they could not corroborate anything about the artifact.

The real proof here is that there has been no follow up. If this artifact was as extraordinary as claimed, then some of those dozens of reporters would have been following up on it. Even if the chain of custody couldn’t establish it as a piece of material from the Roswell UFO crash, it would still be an alien artifact and that would be a worldwide sensation.

When that last conclusion faded, the reporters lost interest. In the ten years to follow, there has been nothing more about this. No reports from other labs. No reports from the person who picked up the debris or the family or friends to establish the chain of custody and no new reports about the alien properties of the metal. It has become nothing more than an interesting footnote to the Roswell case and that’s it.