MJ-12 and Cognitive Dissonance

In the world of the UFO, we frequently talk about cognitive dissonance, which is defined, simply as “the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or value.”

It means believing in two things that seem to mutually exclusive. We run into this, I believe, when we begin to talk about the Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD) and the second crash of a UFO on the Texas – Mexico border in December 1950.

Simply put here, if the EBD is authentic, then the information contained in it must also be authentic. If a portion of that information can be shown to be fraudulent, then the credibility of the entire document collapses at that point.

Here’s where we are on this. According to the EBD, “On 06 December, 1950 a second object of similar origin, impacted the earth at high

Robert Willingham, the man
responsible for the fatal flaw.

speed in the El Indio – Guerrero area of the Texas – Mexican border after following a long trajectory through the atmosphere. By the time a search team arrived, what remained of the object had bee almost totally incinerated. Such material as could be recovered was transported to the A.E.C. facility at Sandia, New Mexico, for study.”

The problem here is that this tale was told by Robert Willingham who had claimed to have been a fighter pilot in the Air Force and had retired (or rather left the service) as a colonel. I have, in the past, on this blog, explained why it is clear that Willingham was neither a fighter pilot nor a colonel. Rather than go into all the reasons again, just refer the articles that can be found here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/03/ihave-argued-for-years-that-eisenhower.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/08/absense-of-evidence.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/08/roswell-festival-part-two.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/07/del-rio-ufo-crash-and-mj-12.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2012/02/willingham-1978-interview.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/04/eisenhower-briefing-docu-12-and.htmlment-mj

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/10/end-of-mj-12.html

Well, I think everyone gets the point. I have written about this on many occasions and believed that this should have driven a stake, not only through the heart of the Willingham tale but through the EBD as well. That one paragraph is based on a hoax that those on the inside who were allegedly writing the EBD would have known was a hoax. Please note that other, known hoaxes were not addressed, including the famous Aztec hoax (which I mention solely to create more havoc).

Here’s the point of this short piece. At the Roswell Festival (I don’t remember if it was in 2011 or 2012) Stan Friedman came up and said, “I think you’re probably right about Willingham but not about the Eisenhower Briefing Document.”

Cognitive dissonance. Two mutually exclusive beliefs. One that Willingham had been lying about the El Indio – Guerrero UFO crash but that the EBD was real.

Yes, I know the fall back position. The EBD is disinformation, containing some real information but also some that is faked. But given the context and everything else, that makes no sense and does very little to establish the validity of the EBD. All it does is call into question the whole of MJ-12 without actually damaging the idea of an alien craft at Roswell. The EBD is seen as just a poor attempt by UFO researchers to provide documentation of UFO crashes. It doesn’t prove that Roswell wasn’t alien, only that this document was fraudulent.

But what I don’t understand is how you can see that the Willingham tale is bogus and not question the entirety of the EBD. There are other problems in the EBD, but this seems to me, to be the fatal flaw. The information is based on a lie, yet that isn’t enough to reject the EBD.

If there was any other source on the El Indio – Guerrero crash, that would be one thing, but all references to it, in various books, articles and documents are all traceable back to Willingham as the original source. He provided a number of dates and locations for the crash as the tide in the UFO community changed. Without Willingham and his ever-changing story, there would be no tale of this crash and if it hadn’t happened, then MJ-12 is equally bogus… yet there are those who hold these mutually exclusive ideas that the document is real but Willingham was lying… the very definition of cognitive dissonance, and that is what I don’t understand. How can you argue for the validity of one while confirming the other is untrue? I have yet to receive a good answer for the question that isn’t wrapped in a lot of rhetoric without explaining anything.

MAJESTIC FOUND !

A document labeled with the Majestic tag has been found. It has a proper provenance, which means the origin of the document can be traced by anyone who wishes to do so and there is no doubt it is authentic.

The first page, which was classified as Top Secret is entitled, “Report by the Joint Logistic Plans Committee the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Joint Logistic Plan for ‘Majestic.’”

There are some interesting things on that page. It identifies the problem, saying, “1. Pursuant to the decision by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on J.C.S. 1844/126, to prepare the Joint Logistic Plan in support of MAJESTIC*.”

The asterisk references the same document mentioned in the body of the text. It provides no more information about it, but it is interesting because it is a reference to another document which could be traced to provide additional authentication. It also suggests something about how these highly classified documents are created and how many of them are inter-related.

The rest of the document is merely other paragraphs that tell us very little about what Majestic is and everything that it does say could, in fact, be considered as evidence of MJ-12. This is a document that deals with logistics, which can be simply defined as the support needed for military operations. It could be said that this is a document that relates to the movement of an alien craft, the wreckage or debris, and the bodies of the alien flight crew from one location to another. This would be the plan to explain the mode of transportation, how many soldiers would be needed, how they would be fed and housed, the fuel supplies, weapons and ammunition, route information and bases where additional support could be found and anything else rated to all of this.

The second page is a list of those who will receive the information which is quite long. It is labeled, “Top Secret Security Information,” and is stamped, “Special Handling Required, Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals,” and for those keeping score at home is dated 25 September 1952. Please notice the dating format that is not 25 September, 1952.

But here is where we run into the first problem with all of this. At the bottom it is noted, “Forward herewith is a copy of the Joint Outline Emergency War Plan for a War Beginning 1 July 1952 MAJESTIC. This plan supersedes Joint Outline Emergency War Plan MASTHEAD, which was forwarded by SM-1197-51, dated 14 May 1951, copies of it will be either returned or destroyed by burning.”

This suggests that it has nothing to do with UFOs or the Majestic-12, but the argument could be made that this is “typical boilerplate,” meaning that the paragraph is sort of standard without a specific meaning other than instructions of removing the obsolete plan and replacing it with the new one. In today’s world it would be a “cut and paste” error. In 1952, such a thing is more difficult to explain.

The third page makes it clear what is being discussed and what Majestic really is and ends all our speculation. Stamped with a date of 2 OCT 1952 (as opposed to 02 OCT, 1952) and with “Top Secret Security Information, the letter, in paragraph one said, “Enclosure (1), with attached copies of Joint Outline Emergency War Plan “MAJESTIC’, is forwarded.” This is a war plan and has nothing to do with UFOs. The markings on it, made in 1952, show what they should have been as opposed to what they are on the MJ-12 documents and the EBD. Yes, there might be variations depending on military service branch and the level of classification, but here is something that shows what was being used at the time, how it was used and what the specific wording was and should have been. This does not bode well for MJ-12, not to mention the duplication of code words.

By duplication of code words, I mean that all code words for classified projects come from a master list so that there is no accidental duplication (Yes, the military sometimes uses civilian code words for projects, such as Project Saucer, but the real name was Project Sign). To use the same or similar code words would lead to compromise. Someone cleared to deal with the War Plan – Majestic - wouldn’t be cleared for the MJ-12 material, but the duplication of code words wouldn’t make that clear.

This is the same argument made for Majic. During WW II there was a highly classified project known as Magic. This similarity could lead to compromise, if you had two projects with such similar names.

The last page of the documents that I have makes it clear that there is no reason to assume this has anything to do with the investigation of alien craft, alien bodies or the recovery of an alien spacecraft. Paragraph 4 says, “The estimate of the Soviet Union’s capability to execute campaigns and her probable courses of action contained in the Enclosure does not take into consideration the effect of opposition by any forces now in position or operational, or of unfavorable weather or climate conditions.”

This is also classified as “Top Secret Security Information,” and is dated 12 September 1952 (again is relevant because it puts it into the time frame of the EBD and it shows the dating format as it should have been written), is signed by W. G. Lalor, Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy (Ret.), and is also noted as “Reproduced at the National Archives.”

This then, should be the absolute, final blow to the MJ-12 nonsense. There simply wouldn’t be two highly classified projects with the same code name operating at the same time and we have the documentation here to prove that Majestic existed but it wasn’t what we have been told.

It should be noted that I was alerted to this by my colleague Tony Bragalia. He suggested that this might have inspired the name Majestic-12 because here was a real project with that name. If the documents were still classified, meaning they couldn’t be released into the public arena, and in the 1980s, the classification might have held it would have been an interesting bit of corroboration. Someone could have stumbled over the top secret project with the name being found but nothing to identify exactly what it was. This would have hinted at a provenance and a high classification. Without some of the follow up documents, there could be speculation about what it meant, but no one would know. It would have provided an interesting time… until all the documents were found. Too bad that those proponents of MJ-12 couldn’t have found some of this twenty years ago. Oh, we’d know now what it was all about, but it sure would have given them a fine run.

And I have to wonder if Bill Cooper, in his claim to have seen documents labeled as Majestic might not have seen these documents. Given his claimed position in the Navy, he might have seen the cover sheets for this but had no chance to read the document to see what it was all about.

Tony added a note about all this, and how he came to find the documents. He provided the link so that those who wished to see the provenance would know where to look. He wrote that, “The reference linked below is what got me going down this research avenue. The Emergency War Plan -codenamed MAJESTIC - is highlighted in yellow in the military history book seen here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=SeeNAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA164&lpg=PA164&dq=%22plan+majestic%22+1952&source=bl&ots=jB7mbVYG8S&sig=GU5KwjiTYMHUIgPGzenVyGL00uI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uWhbVMehBYKgyATchYDADw&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%22plan%20majestic%22%201952&f=false

Added to the failure of the El Indio - Guerrero UFO crash that is part of the EBD and for which there is no evidence of it other than Robert Willingham’s obviously bogus tale, this should end, for all time any doubt about the fraudulent nature of the original MJ-12 documents. And for those who would now retreat to the argument that “Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence,” I would say, until you find something tangible, “Absence of evidence is, in fact, evidence of absence.” I have looked, others have looked everywhere that something like this would be noted, and nothing has been found.

This seems to be “Game Over.”

Richard French, UFOs and Roswell

(Blogger’s Note: This was a particularly difficult post to write. I have great respect for Lieutenant Colonel Richard E. French’s nearly three decades of military service including fighting in two wars. The problems arise, however, when we look into his claims of participation in UFO investigations and his claims of educational background. I have emailed him three times, including a draft of this article, asking for comment. He has failed to respond. It is with great reluctance that I post the following.)

Since the Citizen Hearing in Washington, D.C., I have looking into the background of retired Lieutenant Colonel Richard E. French. Here was a guy who was saying some amazing things about the Air Force investigation into UFOs and his

Richard French at the Citizen Hearing

participation in it. He was talking about how he had faked UFO sighting solutions, his personal knowledge of the Roswell UFO crash and how he had a hand in writing the “Blue Book.” He seemed to think that it was a document with a blue cover, and while the various incarnations of the official UFO investigation did produce reports, there was never anything that was actually the Blue Book.

His comments about there being two alien craft that crashed in Roswell, including one that was shot down by an experimental fighter, were quickly published all over the Internet pushing his name in front of many others. Additional comments about his involvement in UFO research, or rather debunking of UFO sightings, on orders by the Air Force, were accepted as authentic by many without bothering to check his credentials or if his story was consistent. It added a new level of conspiracy to the already cluttered landscape of the conspiracy minded.

While in Washington, D.C. for the Citizen Hearing, he was interviewed by Kerry Cassidy and that interview has been posted to the Internet. By watching it, we can

French swearing to tell the truth

see where all the problems lie with this tale. According to what he has said to her, he had spent 27½ years in the Air Force and that he spent most of his time as an Operations Officer. His records do not confirm he spent so much time in operations and that is really a trivial point. He also said that he was the youngest officer in the Air Force to hold the position as operations officer. This makes no sense because he doesn’t specify at what level he held the job though he does say that it was with the 8^th Tactical Fighter Squadron in Germany. That isn’t exactly a high level position and I would be surprised that he was the youngest ever to hold it. This seems like so much hyperbole to me.

In response to a question at 7:06 during the Cassidy interview, French said, “I have several tours. Three flying tours in Korea and about six or seven in Vietnam. Therefore I have a lot of stories. I have over 680 combat missions. I think that is more than twice as many as anyone else.”

This is not hyperbole and is not accurate. It is just wrong. According to his records, he entered active duty in the middle of 1952, and in August 1952 was assigned as an administration officer in FEAF (Far East Air Force… meaning Korea… or Japan supporting operations in Korea). He did receive, according to the records, the awards that suggest service on the ground in Korea. There is no evidence that he was a pilot in Korea.

In fact, according to the available records, he didn’t enter flight school until 1954, and since that school lasted about a year, there is no way he could have deployed to Korea as a pilot. The war ended in July 1953. He also attended advanced training at Nellis Air Force Base for eight additional months, meaning that it was mid-1955, at the earliest he could have been assigned as a fighter pilot.

The records I have stop in 1968 but they do indicate a short tour in Vietnam in 1965, where he was awarded an Air Medal. The citation said, in part, “Captain Richard E. French distinguished himself by meritorious achievement while participating in sustained aerial flight as a combat crew member in Southeast Asia from 18 July 1965 to 14 August 1965…”

It is unclear from the record if he was only in Southeast Asia for that nearly month long period, or if it was part of another, longer assignment. It is not clear that he was in even Vietnam at the time which means the flights could have originated from an Air Force base outside Vietnam with flights over it. His records do indicate, however, that he was an assistant operations officer with the 478^th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico during this time. So, it seems, based on the records, that it was not a full tour in Vietnam but a temporary duty assignment.

There is a citation in the record which places him in Vietnam in 1968, but I have nothing else about this. This could easily be and probably is a full tour in Vietnam. I have no records for anything beyond that, though it was in 1969 that Richard Nixon began to wind down American participation in the war. Given all this, it would seem that French can claim two “flying” tours in Vietnam. There might be another, but I have seen no record of it and as I say.

At 7:38 in the Cassidy interview, French said, “I have 121 American and foreign decorations. I look like MacArthur if I put everything on.”

That seems excessive and by my count, he is entitled to a minimum of 50 American and foreign decorations. This count is based on the records and the

Official USAF photo

official photograph of French taken in 1972. I am sure that this count is incomplete but it is far short of the claim. Unless there is additional information about it, including a complete list of all awards and decorations, then I would view this as hyperbole… as “resume inflation.”

The real trouble begins when we move away from his documented military career and into the claims he makes about UFOs, his part in the investigation of them, and his orders to debunk UFO sightings. At the Washington Citizen Hearing, French said that he was one of the few to see the Majestic Report referring of course to the Majestic-Twelve documents and what many of us believe to be a hoax. French talked about a meeting Truman held with a bunch of high level people including all the Chiefs of Staff about the Roswell case. They wrote a short report, which he claims to be the only living person to have seen (which of course makes it impossible to verify). He didn’t attend the meeting, and given his military career, I don’t know when he would have had the opportunity to see it, if you believe such a document ever existed.

About 18:50 into this Cassidy interview, he explains why they wanted to keep the Roswell UFO crash secret. Here is where another problem develops. According to what he said to others in other interviews, one of the alien spacecraft that crashed near Roswell in July 1947 had been shot down by a new weapon that worked along the lines of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). But when asked why the government kept the crash a secret, he said it was because we had no defense against the aliens and their craft. First he was telling us we could shoot them down and later saying that we had no defense against them.

Demonstrating that he had very little knowledge of Project Blue Book, at 20:07 in the interview he said, “At that time the Blue Book… had a blue cover but it contained all these different stories…” Here he seems to be suggesting a real blue book rather than an investigation of UFOs. He doesn’t get that Blue Book was a code name and not an actual book. He said, “Official Air Force Blue Book. It’s the Air Force official report on UFOs.” He even claimed authorship of part of it.

It would seem that an officer who had worked on the project would have known exactly what it was. True, there were a number of final reports, one for Project Sign and one for Project Grudge, not to mention a number of status reports issued in the early days, but there never was a “blue book.”

During that interview he said that he had just graduated from college when he went into the Air Force. He said in another interview that he attended Oregon State University. According to the university, he attended from 1947 to the winter of 1952 but didn’t receive a degree. Now, I know that sometimes the universities make mistakes, but the evidence from the official documentation doesn’t suggest a degree. While it is always possible that he finished his degree work after his military service, there is currently nothing in the record to indicate he earned his bachelor’s degree from Oregon State University.

He also mentioned that he had two Ph.Ds, one in philosophy and another in astrophysics, “from Kings College online education system.” I searched the Internet for any reference remotely like Kings College and found one in Great Britain that offered a degree in astrophysics, but in an email response to me, they wrote that they do not offer an online doctorate in astrophysics.

At about 36:00 in the interview he said did research at MIT and Stanford… this work was research on cancer and that he and another fellow invented a device that would get 50 miles to a gallon of gas in an old eight-cylinder Buick. He said that he couldn’t sell it because they invented when gas was thirty cents a gallon, but today, with the pressure to increase gas mileage, it would seem that they could. He said that is was some kind of light ring that went into the carburetor that created oxygen so that the fuel mixture burned more efficiently. There is currently no evidence to back up these claims.

As I listened to his interview with Cassidy, I was impressed by the robust tale that he told. It just didn’t seem to be the sort of thing that would be invented by the average guy. But then he mentioned his book, Macedonian Gray. Here’s the description from Amazon.com:

This book is far more than a simple battle scene narration. It's a story embracing courage, love, and a penetrating view of the human mind under extremes of stress. The central figure, a jet fighter pilot, spends years in spine chilling Korean and Vietnam combat plus cold war actions around the world. A naturally endowed psychic, he sees flashes of incidents past and future that he doesn't understand and fears to share. Among these are fortelling President Kennedy's death and predicting his own violent combat death that is vividly related in the opening chapter. The story flashes back to narrative form and follows the hero's life through a series of aerial actions, a failed marriage, romantic episodes and incidents, and a friendship of warriors that lasts through thick and thin. It reaches a startling conclusion when, after death, the man's immortal spirit endures afterlife pain and eventual reincarnation.

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In creating the “hero” of his book, he used autobiographical information to add a note of authenticity to the story. Many authors incorporate bits of their lives into the books they write. Here I think that French then turned the tables believing that some of the embellishments added for characterization were now traits he held as well. He invented a character and then became that character.

What disturbs me about all this is that it is clear that French served in the Air Force and did so honorably, but once that service ended he began to invent additional accomplishments. For some reason, he decided that he had been a member of Project Blue Book, though there is no evidence to support this. He decided that he had seen some Majestic-12 documents, ones that no one else has seen, but has offered no proof this was true. He decided that he talked to the late Philip Corso about UFOs and that he, French, somehow knew that Corso was telling the truth, though he gets much of the Corso story wrong.

He gave us a version of what happened at Roswell, but clearly he couldn’t have been involved in 1947 simply because he was not in the military at the time, wasn’t in the area, and had no reason to know about it. His tales, now repeated throughout the world, are second hand at best and pure fiction at worst. I am baffled why a man with the military record he has would embellish it to the point where it is almost unbelievable and insert himself into projects and incidents that he clearly could not have been involved in. We see some of the fiction in his claims of flying tours in Korea, and see those fictions grow as he moves through his career.

But I want to be fair here. Let me point out that the man had a distinguished career and was an Air Force officer. He began serving in 1951, as a second lieutenant commissioned after taking ROTC in college (though I should note that he entered the Army Reserve as a PVT in June 1948). That lead to an active duty assignment in the middle of 1952 and lasted until he retired, as a lieutenant colonel in August 1974. He served first with the AFOSI and later as a fighter pilot. He served in Korea, was awarded the decorations that would go with such an assignment and served in the FEAF (Far East Air Force). There is no question that he served in Asia during that war but he held a ground assignment.

In 1954, or about six to eight months after the shooting war ended, he was sent to flight school. Total training time, including his advance transition into the F-86 was about eighteen months.

From there he had a number of military assignments, including those you’d expect from an Air Force officer. He was a flight commander, a squadron commander and an operations officer at various bases and in various foreign countries

The records I have only cover his career until late 1968. I will note that according to the records, he was awarded a Silver Star, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, 24 Air Medals and a Purple Heart. Unlike so many others, he had a fine and distinguished career that required no hyperbole. He was an Air Force officer, he served in two wars, and was decorated for that service. There would be no reason for him to complicate his life by inventing tales about his service, what he did, and what he saw.

What this demonstrates is that even a man with a fine military career will invent tales to bring the spotlight on himself. Money doesn’t seem to be the motivation. It is the power of the spotlight and those who will believe practically anything as long as the message is one they wish to hear. Unfortunately, he now joins the ranks of Robert Willingham, Mel Noel, Gerald Anderson, Cliff Stone and Frank Kaufmann. The evidence is not there to support French’s tale of UFO involvement and inside knowledge. All he has done is muddy the waters even more for those of us trying to get a clear picture.

Willingham - A 1978 Interview

It seems that when you begin to spin lies, and when you provide interviews about those lies, you have an obligation to keep the information straight. If you say the event took place in 1948, then you can’t move it to 1950 or to 1955 without someone noticing. And you should know what type of military aircraft were available in the inventory in 1948 so that you don’t claim to have been flying something that wouldn’t appear for years. (I might point out that you should also remember the type of aircraft you were flying and I base this on my own experiences as a military pilot.) If you’re going to tell a good story, you should make sure that you have enough facts straight so that it can’t be broken apart quickly and easily, when people begin to investigate.

What brought this on?

Well, I just was given a transcript of an interview with Robert Willingham and his claim to have seen a crashed flying saucer. It is dated May 1978 and provides us with still another version of his story, or rather a modified version of that story.

According to it, in May 1978, he was a lieutenant colonel (an O5 in the military vernacular) in the Air Force, or so he said. Actually, as I have pointed out time and again, he was in the Civil Air Patrol, an auxiliary of the Air Force. It is made up of civilians who receive no real compensation for their service and are a vital part of the country’s search and rescue component, but who are not part of the Air Force or the Air Force Reserve.

The important point is that he was claiming to be a lieutenant colonel in 1978, because in a later interview given to the American Legion, he said that he was promoted to full colonel (O6) when he retired. That article, entitled, “Robert B. Willingham marks 60th year in American Legion,” said, “He did return to Archer City in 1980, on disability leave, when his mother became ill. He was a Lt. Colonel at the time, but President Johnson made him a full colonel after retirement.”

Lyndon Johnson wasn’t president after 1978 (or 1969 for that matter if you count the days prior to Nixon’s inauguration) and in fact had died in 1973. There is no way that Willingham could have been promoted to colonel by Johnson. The idea of President Johnson promoting someone appeared in one of the novels by W.E.B. Griffin. I don’t know if that is where Willingham got the idea, but it just doesn’t work the way Willingham said... or Griffin for that matter.

That 1978 interview provides another clue. They are talking about the analysis to the piece of metal that Willingham said that he had recovered at the crash site. He said that he had taken it to a lab in Hagerstown, Maryland for analysis. He claimed that he had given it to a Marine major who worked there. When he tried to learn what the major had found, he was told the man did work there but he couldn’t follow up on it. According to Willingham, that was because “we were getting ready to go to Korea...”

While nowhere in the interview do they discuss an actual date for the crash, this puts it before Willingham claimed he went to Korea, and in other interviews, he suggested he served there at the beginning of the war, or in 1950. So, while Willingham claims that Todd Zechel came up with the December 6, 1950 date, the fact is that Willingham himself came up with both the 1948 date and the later 1954 date.

I could go on because in this interview Willingham claims he was flying a F-94, but these weren’t in the inventory in 1948 or 1950... He talks about the UFO being confirmed by radar on the DEW Line, but it didn’t exist in 1948 or 1950.

But this is becoming overkill. Clearly the story has evolved, contains elements that are impossible given the timing, and is littered with contradictions. This 1978 interview, which was clearly coached given the questions and wording of the answers, proves that there is little truth in the December 6, 1950 crash or any other that Willingham claims to have seen. I hope this will end it, but given the nature of UFOlogy, I know that it won’t. Nothing ever dies in UFOlogy, it’s just repeated endlessly.

The Roswell Festival, Part Two

When ever I give a presentation, I always try to leave time for questions because I know there will be people whose interests are different than my own. I want to give them an opportunity to seek additional information or to provide their perspective on UFOs. I have learned some interesting things with this philosophy. I have also been dragged into some really dumb discussions.

Such was the case after my first presentation at the most recent Roswell UFO Festival. I had been describing my investigations as I moved through the world of the UFO and I spent some time on Robert Willingham.

Yes, I know that all this can become tedious, but then Willingham has really annoyed me. He claimed high military rank but was unable to provide any documentation to prove that he had been an officer in the Air Force or that he had been a fighter pilot. He just didn’t know some of the things that a long serving officer would know and there was nothing to back up his claims, as I have mentioned many times in the past. (I believe that those who have served understand my irritation, those who have not don’t believe claiming rank, awards, and training you don’t have is anything important.)

After most of the people had left the room (which was surprising because it was nearly a million degrees outside and the air conditioner was working), a fellow named Cal... no, not the guy hiding out in Prague or wherever, another guy who spells his name differently... wanted to engage in a discussion about Willingham.

Except it wasn’t much of a discussion but more of a philosophical debate on the rules of evidence as practiced in American courts. Not criminal courts but civil courts where the preponderance of the evidence is sufficient to win the case.

First, he wanted to know how I knew that Willingham had not been an Air Force officer and fighter pilot. I told him that I had searched all the appropriate data bases, gone through the various archives including that in St. Louis looking for any documentation, that I had been in touch with the flight schools in San Antonio where he would have trained (and where he said he trained) through the officer registries, through the archives in Denver, and found nothing to support his claim.

He then wanted to argue semantics. What if there was documentation to support the claims?

I tried to make it clear that there was none. Had there been anything, I would have found it. I had been to all the sources that should have had something but there was nothing there. The only documents available came from Willingham and I had been unable to verify their accuracy. In fact, it seemed that some of the documents had been altered.

He wanted to know if I would change my mind if there were documents indicating that Willingham was telling the truth, but to me the question was moot. There were no supporting documents.

He wanted to argue in the world of fantasy, and I wanted to stay in the world of reality. Had there been any doubt about what I had found, if there had been any gap in the information, then speculation could enter the picture, but the information was solid. There was no wiggle room.

Then he wanted to know that if we had presented the evidence in a court and 51% of the people found that Willingham was telling the truth, would I accept this judgement?

Well, no, because it really didn’t matter what the opinions were, only what the facts were. Let us say that a debate was arranged between Willlingham supporters and me. Let us say that we each presented the facts dispassionately. And then the audience (jurors) voted on who won. If the majority believed Willingham, would I concede the point?

Well, no, because in these arenas it sometimes didn’t matter what the facts were. People’s opinions sometimes weren’t persuaded by the facts. Often they wished to believe to the exclusion of the facts... Otherwise how to explain that people still accepted the Allende Letters as something important, even after Allende himself admitted the hoax? How to explain that some still believed the alien autopsy was real even after those involved in creating it said they had created it and explained how they had done it?

The point was that as far as I was concerned, as far as the facts were concerned, Robert Willingham had not served in the Air Force at any time, had not been a fighter pilot and had not been promoted to colonel (O6) by Lyndon Johnson. I even had found the original tale told by Willingham about his UFO sighting and learned it was significantly different from that he tells today and people still believe him.

But Cal still wanted to argue semantics. Would I accept the opinions of those informed about the case? Would I look at documentation supporting Willingham? Would I do this or was my thinking so rigid that I would ignore evidence if it showed something else?

I tried to make it clear that this was not a philosophical discussion. The research had been done. I had the information and there was no sense in talking in the hypothetical. There was absolutely no evidence to support Willingham’s claims. None.

And off he went on another tangent, wanting to suppose this and propose that to prove that Willingham might have been an Air Force officer...

Now before this too becomes tedious in the extreme, let me say one other thing. Willingham does not know the things a long serving officer would know. He doesn’t know about SOIs, Forward Air Controllers, the SOP for operating in a combat environment and a hundred other things that someone who had done that would have known. This by itself suggests that he was not an Air Force officer.

Cal wanted to control the conversation, but I grew weary of it. He wouldn’t listen, always proposing some new twist. He sounded like a negotiator who knew he would win if he just kept the air filled with his verbosity. But I would not concede his points, not because I was so rigid in my thinking, but because I knew the facts. He didn’t. He wanted to use speculation and I wanted to argue reality.

In the two days that followed, Cal would show up at my table and attempt to begin the conversation again. I would not allow it. It was useless. He had no intention of listening to the facts. He just wanted to argue about something and I didn’t want to.

I did learn one thing. Don’t argue with people who are uninterested in the facts. You can’t win, no matter what you have in the way of evidence. And some times they’re just interested in the argument and couldn’t care less about the facts.