X-Zone Broadcast Network - Dr. Michael Masters and Time Traveling UFOs

This week I interviewed Dr. Michael Masters, who has published a book suggesting that UFOs are the result of time traveling humans, at least in part. He has

Dr. Michael Masters

purposed, based on the evidence gathered by UFO researchers and the US military, that the descriptions of the “aliens” is more in line with human evolution than with alien creatures. While he does concede that evolution on another world, in environments similar to Earth, might generate similar forms, the more likely explanation is that the beings that have been reported are evolved humans. That leads us to time travel. You can listen to the discussion here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17595923

We do explore some of the anthropological evidence of earlier visitation and do examine the “Butterfly Effect.” This is, of course, the theory that Ray Bradbury purposed in a short story. Even the slightest change in the past could radically alter the future as the effects spread out like the waves formed when a rock is tossed into a pond. Time travel is a topic that presents all sorts of opportunity for wild thought. With Robert Charles Cornett, I wrote three science fiction novels that dealt with time travel beginning with Remember the Alamo!.

We also talked about his introduction into the world of UFOs, and how he began to develop his theory. Naturally, an hour seemed to be too short for us to get into the depth of his research and his theory. His book is Identified Flying Objects and can be found on all the normal platforms.

Next week, I’ll talk with Terry Lovelace, a retired attorney who will tell us about his lifetime of UFO experiences and abduction. In an interesting contrast, Lovelace will talk about the stigma he and his family faced because of his claims while Masters and his family weren’t ridiculed for their (his father’s actually) sighting. Two different experiences that tell us something about the history of UFOs.

Time Traveling Aliens and Dr. Michael Masters

Dr. Michael Masters*, author of Identified Flying Objects, has proposed that the occupants of those UFOs are time travelers. I mention this for a couple of reasons. First, it is my favorite theory which is not to say that it is the most likely explanation. Time travel is a fun subject, with all the contradictions in it. Robert Charles Cornett and I wrote three science fiction books using time travel as a basis, beginning with Remember the Alamo in which a group of modern soldiers, using modern weapons, are transported back in time to the Battle of the Alamo. Think Force Multiplier here. Machine guns against muskets.

Masters suggests in his book that given the majority of the descriptions of the alien creatures are humanoid, meaning two arms, two legs, two eyes and one head,

Dr. Michael Masters and a few of his ancient pals.

there must be a connection to Earth. I extrapolate from here that he is looking at the next evolutionary stage of the human and therefore the beings are from Earth. They are from our far future, using time travel so that they can study us as we have been studying the ancient people. They just have a better tool than we do because they can see us in action rather than guessing how we lived based on the material left behind

.

The second point is to announce that Dr. Masters will be appearing on my radio show A Different Perspective on the X-Zone Broadcast Network on April 10. For those who are unable to catch the program at that time, it will be available on line later in the day. As soon as the link is available, I’ll get it posted.

Although we’ve touched on the time travel aspect of the UFO phenomenon in the past, this will be the first time that it will be the focus of the discussion. Should be a lot of fun for everyone.

*For the record here and so that I don’t surprise anyone, I keep wanting to call him Tom McMasters. I don’t know why**, but I do know he is Dr. Michael Masters. Just thought I would mention it.

Though looking at his email address which is MMaster…, that might be the reason for the McMasters, but no reason for the Tom.

Chasing Footnotes and Cannon Air Force Base

It’s been a while since I had a post about chasing footnotes and while this isn’t quite the same thing, it did sort of begin there.

Fran Ridge

Fran Ridge, who runs the NICAP website (http://www.nicap.org/), which is filled with all sorts of interesting information, posed a question about a UFO sighting that was part of the comprehensive Blue Book Unknown (BBU) list prepared by and updated regularly by Brad Sparks. That sighting was described as:

Like to have more on this RR case anyone has it.
May 18, 1954; Cannon AFB, New Mexico (BBU)

 7 p.m. 2 witnesses saw a house-size lens-shaped object
 land near railroad tracks, kicking up a small
 sand storm in the desert. One witness approached it, then
 ran away in fear. (Vallée Magonia 129; BB files??)

Michael Swords took a run at the question but didn’t seem to have a very good answer about the case. He wrote:

I'm curious to know where the "BBU" comes from. It's not impossible that this is a BBU, but the source cited doesn't lead to that. Vallee's source is listed as Binder. That's Otto Binder, not the best source to begin with. Binder had a newspaper column which would feature readers' UFO accounts that were mailed to him. Some of these had a ring of truth to them, but they were just that --- essentially "letters" to a UFO interested person who did no investigation. Binder was a writer as a profession, so I can't damm him for making some money out of this. He picked several of his more intriguing letters and published them in FATE of February 1968. The relevant letter quoted there sounds good (and it has a second letter in support) but it is only a letter claim. (Vallee is always doing this by the way--- picking some flimsy mention of something and putting it in the MAGONIA catalog. Often these citations have errors. A error here might be that the location of the claim was not in Cannon AFB but more truly might be labeled "Clovis, NM". (a small matter.) ) In Binder's article, he says that the witness claims that a small mention of the case appeared in FATE of November 1954. That would be potentially encouraging to me, but I could not find it there on a thumb-through.

So, two mysteries for me: A) --- major --- how did this get a BBU?
      B) --- minor --- is it actually mentioned in FATE back in 1954?

There is, allegedly, a DATA-NET report of this --- date unknown to me. Hynek also allegedly mentions something like this in his UFOExp --- I got lazy and didn't search after that claim. (hard to believe Hynek would ever mention anything from Binder in that book, but maybe something more substantial could be there.

Following Mike’s lead, somewhat, I looked at the Project Blue Book master index and found that there were no sightings listed for May 18, 1954, and none in New Mexico for the entire month. All that meant was that the mention of “BB files??” as one of the sources could be eliminated. The sighting was not part of the Blue Book system.

This led to another brief exchange. Fran had noted that this was case no. 1018, in the BBU but when I looked at the copy I had it wasn’t the same. I wrote, “I just looked at both Brad’s BBU and the Blue Book master index and the case no. 1018 is from California and not New Mexico. The case from May 18, 1954 is labeled as case 836 in Brad's listing (or at least in the copy I have) but only questions if it is found in the BB files. I can't find anything in the BB master index that matches this, though, I haven't spent a great amount of time looking. I can say that there is no listing for May 18, 1954 in New Mexico in the BB files.”

Turned out that my version of Brad’s BBU was older than the one used by Fran. He had an updated version and 1018 was the Cannon AFB (Clovis) entry. This was becoming somewhat confusing but would become more so as time passed. But that still didn’t put the report into the Blue Book system.

Barry Greenwood seemed to have come up with that connection. He wrote, “There is a listing for Oceanside CA in the OSI records for May 18, 1954 (Roll 90, frame 269. Roll 91, frames 990 – 991, Blue Book Archives.)”

I went back to the Blue Book microfilms (as I keep saying, I have them all), and found that the first reference to the Oceanside sighting is a letter dated June 28, 1954 (the date on the copy I have is a little difficult to read) that has a subject of “Sighting of Unidentified Aerial Object on 18 May 1954 over Oceanside, California. SPECIAL INQUIRY.”

There are no details in that letter other than saying that a “Spot Intelligence” report had been sent dated June 10, 1954 and gave the OSI district that had responsibility for the case. The report was not located with this letter.

The second entry, in Roll 91, that Barry mentioned, was the spot intelligence report which provided some details. The information was that:

SYSNOPSIS: On 27 May 1954, advice was received by letter from the District Intelligence Officer, Eleventh Naval District, San Diego, California, to the effect that [name redacted but is clearly, Higgins, Squadron Leader, Royal Air Force, on duty with the Marine All Weather Fighter Squadron El Toro 542, Marine Base, California, reported sighting an unidentified flying object while flying in the vicinity of Oceanside, California, 1240 hours, 18 May 1954.

Interestingly, the Blue Book entry for this, in Brad’s BBU was number 1017, which is, of course, the one just prior to the case that stared all this. For those interested in the details of the sighting, though sparse, Brad had reported it as:

May 18, 1954; 10-15 (or 6-7) miles SE of Lake Elsinore, Calif. (BBU 2994) 12:48 p.m. RAF Squadron Leader Donald R. Higgin, assigned to USMC All Weather Fighter Sq, El Toro MCAS, Calif., while flying an F3D-2 jet fighter at 15,000-16,000 ft on a heading of 240° magnetic [255° true] at 300 knots IAS and descending, saw a dark blue almost black gun-metal "glint" delta-shaped object, about 22-23 ft long and 20 ft wide, with 3 fins of equal size and shape, at his 11 o'clock position just above the cockpit of his wingman flying another F3D-2 about 250 ft away. Object was on a head on collision course but before Higgin could radio warning it passed under his wingman and between their aircraft, descending at a 25°-30° angle on a heading N of about 30°

There is nothing in the report by the OSI that suggests a solution or much of an investigation and Brad’s entry does nothing to clarify any of this. The names have been redacted, but as I have noted on many occasions, those responsible for removing the names did a terrible job. In fact, in one paragraph, none of the names were reacted, and given the ranks of those involved in the sighting as well as their military organizations, it is simple to put the names back in. We know who had seen what.

I will note that two copies of the spot intelligence report were sent on to ATIC, which, in 1954, had responsibility for Blue Book. That surprised me because there was no enter on May 18, 1954, for any sighting in the United States, but Blue Book should have had a copy given the regulations in force at the time.

There was documentation in the file for the Oceanside case but these were in the administrative section and not part of the investigative files. Fran asked a question then that got me to thinking. He wondered if the Lake Elsinore sighting that was part of the BBU was the same as the Oceanside sighting that were part of the administrative files. It was clear from the documentation that some of the names in the Oceanside sighting were the same as those from the Lake Elsinore sighting which meant that it was the same report. I took a look at the master index again and noticed that there was a sighting on May 10, 1954, for Lake Elsinore.

The illustration of the object
over Lake Elsinor in the
Oceanside UFO file.

I looked at the Blue Book microfilm and found the same pages from the OSI section but this one also included a statement from the pilot and his radar officer and the illustration that was not available in the administrative section. There was, of course, the Project Card, which suggested that the pilot might have seen a lenticular cloud, but also noted that such clouds are rare at the altitude reported and that they persisted much longer than the sighting lasted. The conclusion was that lenticular cloud did not provide a proper resolution and the case was labeled unidentified.

About the time that I was finding this, Brad Sparks pointed Fran to the same sighting. We had all found the sighting from Oceanside and had now resolved the discrepancy between it being at Oceanside and Lake Elsinore. There was no doubt, given the documentation that we were all talking about the same sighting. Lake Elsinore merely pinpointed the location while Oceanside provided a larger, general area.

What are the conclusions here?

Well, it seems that the original source for the Cannon AFB (Clovis) case was Otto Binder and those of us who have been around for a while realize that he is not the most credible of sources. The case was picked up by Jacques Vallee but he apparently did nothing to validate the information. I could find nothing in the Blue Book files about it and believe that it should be removed from the Catalog that Brad Sparks has been creating (I say creating because, as mentioned, it seems he regularly updates it).

The second part of this is the sighting from Oceanside, California. We have the details of the sighting, that include the pilot’s statement. It seems that those at Blue Book did know of it because the spot intelligence report but were unable to identify the cause of the sighting. Interestingly for me, I had included, in my book Project Blue Book – Exposed, a list of all the Unidentified cases. Somehow, I had missed that one. It is not listed by me. *

Here’s what I take away from all this. Fran asked a question over the Internet about 10:00 in the morning. There were responses from a number of people, and by four, we had found some of the answers. We had the documentation and resources to get to the bottom of the case. By noon the next day we had found the Oceanside (Lake Elsinore) sighting in the Blue Book files, but nothing to support the Cannon AFB sighting other than a reference that began with Otto Binder. The Cannon AFB case is mildly interesting but not actually part of Blue Book, and I had reached, at least in my mind, a valid conclusion or two about the reliability of the Cannon AFB sighting. There is nothing beyond what Binder had written and this case should be eliminated from the various listings in which it appears.

* Here’s something I noticed about the list of Unidentified sightings in my book, which I had always thought was important because Bob Cornett and I had been through the files before they had been redacted. We had listed every unidentified case including the names of the witnesses… I have since learned that others managed to do the same thing. I bring all this up because, for some strange reason, I have no unidentified cases listed for 1954. There are a number of them, but when I prepared the list for the book, I overlooked them. 

Project Blue Book Declassified - Really?

I’m watching the ABC Evening News, something I attempt to avoid because there is so little news in the broadcast (but that’s another story) and they tell me that the Project Blue Book files are now declassified and on line. I’m wondering what they mean because they have been on line for quite some time.

They’re referring to John Greenwald’s efforts to post all of these files at his Black Vault website, and his effort is commendable. But NICAP had many of the files on line for years and I have never found a gap in the Fold 3’s Blue Book files also on line. Or, in other words, the only “news” here is that John has provided us with another site where we can see these files.

ABC also seemed to suggest that this was something new. The Air Force had finally released all of the files of its investigation, except, of course, they did that in 1976. I made a trip down to Maxwell Air Force Base and spent time going through the files*. Anyone could have done it but the fact the files had been declassified hadn’t been announced publically. There had been some sort of announcement in an Air Force bulletin that I happened to see, so I made arrangements to take a look.

And once those files were transferred to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., they were more accessible to the public. You could buy the microfilm copies for something like eight or ten dollars a roll back then, but there were ninety some rolls of them. Over the years I actually managed to obtain a full set of the microfilms, so I’ve had all of the Blue Book files in my office for a couple of decades.

The statistics “announced” by ABC didn’t tell the whole story either, and they seemed to think Blue Book began as a result of the Roswell UFO crash (Roswell isn’t even mentioned in the Blue Book files except a short paragraph in a newspaper clipping that is part of another file), but actually the idea for an investigation can be traced back to December 1946 and probably had more to do with the Ghost Rockets of Sweden and some sightings in the US than it did with either Roswell or the Kenneth Arnold sightings. I laid this out in Government UFO Files, along with documentation to support the idea.

They said that 701 cases of the some 12,000 remained unidentified but the truth is that many of the cases are labeled, but not identified. These are labeled as “insufficient data for a scientific analysis.” In many of those cases all the information necessary for a complete investigation is included, but it is labeled that way. This was an attempt to reduce the number of unidentified cases by labeling them as something else and that is all that it was.

In addition to that, many cases that are labeled with a solution are clearly in error. For example, the Portage County UFO chase of 1966. (It was on April 17 and involved several police officers, deputy sheriffs and their supervisors and a stylized version was seen at the beginning of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. See also my posting here on May 20, 2014 for more information.). It has been explained as a combination of Venus and a satellite. The police officers saw the satellite in the west and as it passed over them, as they chased it across Ohio and into Pennsylvania; their attention was then drawn to Venus. The trouble here, as outlined in the Project Blue Book files is that there were no satellites visible in that part of the United States at that time of the morning. Letters and other documents in the Blue Book file prove this, yet the satellite portion of the solution is allowed to stand.

To make it worse, drawings made by the police officers show what was visible in the sky. Those drawings mark the position of the UFO, that of the moon, and that of Venus. Or, to put a point on it, the police officers did see Venus and identified it as such. But the label on the case, which is clearly in error, is allowed to stand and the case is shown to have a solution.

There are many such cases in the Blue Book files. Cases in which the solutions are simply not borne out of the documentation available. Yet we continue to hear about only 701 unidentified cases when the number is probably closer to 5000 when the solutions are examined carefully and those labeled as insufficient data are included. Insufficient data is not a solution, but is a label other than unidentified.

It was good to see a news report that treated UFOs seriously. It was not so good to see facts and figures used that were clearly inaccurate. I’m sure John knew the difference but I’ll wager that the reporter looked at a few things on line, misunderstood them, and ran with his story. The best thing about all this is that you don’t have to believe me. You can look it all up in the Black Vault.

*Bob Cornett and I might have the first outsiders to go through the Blue Book files. The first thing we did was list all the unidentified cases complete with the names and locations. When the files were released into the public mainstream the names had been redacted. We could, of course, put the names back in… but the job of redacting was poorly done and in most of the case files you can find the names. A complete listing of the unidentified cases is available in Project Blue Book – Exposed in both hardback and as a Kindle ebook.

I will note that Jack Webb, in preparation for his TV series about Project Blue Book paid to have all the files microfilmed. We all owe him thanks for doing that.

I'm a Spy... According to Some

Well, it’s happened again. I’m a spy sent, in this case, to "investigate" the Center for UFO Studies and to dig up dirt. Those sending me were Jim and Coral Lorenzen who ran the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in Tucson, Arizona.

I have said before and I’ll probably say it again. You know you have arrived when you’re accused of being a spy for somebody. Years ago someone slung the allegation that I had worked with Hector Quintanilla on Project Blue Book. This is, of course, untrue.

Toward the end of Blue Book, I was still in high school. About a month after graduation I entered the Army for training as a helicopter pilot, which included basic training, pre-flight, and the various phases of flight school. That all lasted about thirteen months and upon graduation, I, along with every other member of my flight school class with a single exception, had orders for Vietnam.

Project Blue Book was officially closed in December 1969 while I was sill on active duty with the Army. Clearly I had no opportunity to participate in Blue Book investigations. I suspect that someone learned of my later association with the Air Force and just made an assumption... because no one would just have an interest in UFOs without some motivation such as an investigation assignment with the Air Force.

Back in the mid-1980s Bill Moore said that he had been spying on APRO for the Air Force and that he suspected there was another two or three working on the same assignment. He said this because the Air Force, according to him, was getting more information on APRO that he was supplying. He suggested that I was one of those others spying on APRO.

Again, I suspect he said this simply because, by that time, I had served on active duty with the Air Force and was a member of the Air Force Reserve. Of course his allegation was untrue and I say this so people will know that I deny it without getting lost in "weasel" words.

What is more interesting is Moore’s claim that he was spying on his fellow researchers. No, I don’t really think he was, though he might have believed that. I just don’t think the Air Force cared that much by that time.

And now the latest, slung by an anonymous source, who claimed that in 1984, at a MUFON function in San Antonio, she heard that I had been sent, in the mid-1970s by APRO to dig up dirt on Hynek. This too is untrue.

I did receive some assignments from APRO. One was for me to learn what I could about cattle mutilations in Minnesota. With Robert Cornett, I spent a week in the Minneapolis area talking to all sorts of people about the mutilations. What we learned then was that UFOs had nothing to do with those particular mutilations. There were terrestrial explanations for all the alleged mutilations we encountered, which is not to say, of course, that this investigation solved the entire mystery. It solved this one small part of it, and we sent our conclusions onto APRO headquarters.

The issue with the Hynek Story

I believe that this latest allegation is an outgrowth of an article and editorial published in Official UFO, volume 1, number 8, in May 1976. At the time Official UFO was one of several UFO related magazines including UFO Report, Argosy’s UFO and True’s UFOs and Flying Saucers Quarterly.

For those keeping score at home, one of the editors of one of those magazines warned me that if I wrote for Official UFO I would not be published again in his pages. I ignored his warning simply because I was a freelance writer and was attempting to make a living as a freelance writer. I wasn’t going to have a market closed on the say-so of some junior editor at another magazine, unless that magazine would pay me a retainer of some sort.

So, I was writing many articles for the many magazines and making a good enough living at it, even with the sporadic nature of payment, which seemed to be at the whim of the magazine.

The editor of Official UFO at the time was Bernard O’Connor who was a good guy and a good editor. He once sent a check for payment to Robert Cornett that was a dollar over the agreed on fee... the extra dollar was for a beer.

Artwork that accompanied
the story.

Anyway, O’Connor had a story called, "Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the Pied Piper of UFOLOG'Y," by Dick Ruhl. O’Connor wanted to use the story but it lacked something and it needed editing. O’Connor put Ruhl in touch with me and he asked me some questions about Hynek and the Center for UFO Studies. The one thing that stands out in my mind, at the time, was Hynek had been saying that the Center was on the stairs of his home... meaning they had not yet acquired offices. Later, they would have an office in the Wrigley Building in downtown Chicago. When Hynek showed a slide of the building where the office was, there were those who thought CUFOS occupied the entire building... but I digress.

Dick Ruhl interviewed me about my experiences and one of those related specifically to the cattle mutilations. I was given the name of a federal agent who had investigated the claims of one or two federal prisoners about their involvement in those mutilations. I took that as far as I could, but in the end was blocked by Hynek’s suggestion that there were too many people involved and too much information was flowing in too many directions. He suggested that some of us back off... or to be blunt, cut out of the loop. I continued on in another direction, eventually learning what I wanted to know. I related this to Dick Ruhl who included it in his article. I will note here because some seem to have missed it, those statements were in quotation marks which means I didn’t write that section, I told the story to Ruhl who put in it the article.

There was another event covered as well, but the same thing applies there. I related my experiences to Ruhl who included them in the article. When it was finished and submitted, O’Conner asked me to review it as would any editor. I think of is as looking at the grammar, syntax, sentence structure and flow. I might even have done some fact checking.

In the end, I was surprised to find my name on the story. I hadn’t really had a hand in writing it, other than the editorial work I had done. In the same issue there is a story that I did write about the Green Fireballs and Project Twinkle.

I did notice that O’Connor had something of an editorial in that issue and he talked about a UFO investigator at Hynek’s home. He talked about asking the secretary there to find a specific case file but after a search was unable to locate it. This investigator suggested that the files were on the stairs (which is where I learned this fact) and on the grand piano in Hynek’s home. For those interested, that was not me. I don’t know who it was and O’Connor does not identify him. I can see why some might have assumed that I was that investigator and that he operated as a "spy" to learn more about the operation of the Center as it existed in 1976. But, as I say, that was not me.

There is another aspect to all this that probably should be addressed. I have, for way over twenty years, been associated with CUFOS. I have been listed on the masthead of their publication for twenty years as a contributing writer and was a special investigator for them. In 1988, as they were gearing up their Roswell investigation, they approached me to assist them. They believed that my background as a military officer would be of some assistance in talking with those who were retired military.

I was asked then about the article that Dick Ruhl and I were listed as writing. I told them how it came about... besides, it really didn’t say anything all that nasty about Hynek, just suggested that, at the time, CUFOS was a black hole. Information went in but nothing came out. That changed later with the establishment of their magazine.

The bottom line is this. I didn’t spy on CUFOS for APRO and I didn’t spy on APRO for the USAF (I thought I’d keep that acronym thing going). I have not been a government agent reporting on the activities of the UFO community but I have reported (in magazines and books and not to any official, or unofficial agency, for those who read way to much into things)on what I learned during my investigations, which was sometimes not what others wanted to hear. I have reported on what I believe to be the important issues in the UFO field, and while I have used pen names on articles, I have not introduced myself using a fake name or misrepresented what I was doing. Yes, there have been allegations, but I am able to refute them with evidence. (I think of J. Bond Johnson and his associated nonsense here as he claimed to be the "Roswell Photographer").

I also realize that there are those who will not believe this because they simply have their minds made up about these spying allegations. Evidence means nothing to them and to them I say, "I don’t care." For the rest of you, these are the events as they happened (which sounds like a great line to start a movie).

Project Blue Book - Exposed...

Back in the olden days, while I was still in college and a member of Air Force ROTC, I learned that the Project Blue Book files were available for study and review at the Air Force Archives at the what was then called Maxwell Air Force Base. The announcement was made in an internal Air Force document, meaning, simply, that it was circulated inside the Air Force but not necessarily in the civilian world. It said that anyone who traveled to Alabama could see the material.

During those days I wrote articles for SAGA and its companion magazine, UFO REPORT. I called my editor there, who normally didn’t speak to me but had his secretary tell me to call back later. I mentioned that I could get into the Project Blue Book files. I didn’t say that anyone could, only that I had the opportunity. One of the senior editors called me back immediately, giving me an assignment and telling me what he would like to know.

I drove to Maxwell AFB with fellow writer and researcher Robert Charles Cornett (seen working on some of the files). We had no trouble getting onto the base because we were both members of the Air Force Reserve based on our status in AFROTC. In fact, we had a letter of introduction written by the detachment commander so they would know that we were members of the Air Force. We told the people there what we wanted but they hesitated, telling me that I had to request specific items from Blue Book, not just a vague desire to see the "files." I knew something about UFOs so requested specific files from Kinross and Levelland, for example. They just weren’t sure that they should be handing us this information.

After they had talked to a "Mr. Smith" in Washington, cooperation increased and we learned that there was an index, which we requested to see immediately. I never knew if they initiated the contact, or if, somehow, Mr. Smith knew we were there and wanted us to have what we needed. All I knew was that after this mysterious man talked to the archivists, they were happy to assist us in anyway they could.

They eventually told us about a master index to the sightings. This master index gave the dates of the sightings, location, names of the witnesses and the Air Force conclusion. Cornett and I went through the whole thing and copied the information of all the unidentifieds, most of the photo cases, landing trace cases, and anything else that struck us as important. I didn’t know how valuable that information would become later.

In the mid-1970s, Jack Webb decided to do a show called Project UFO (one of the actors and a producer for the show)for NBC. To assist him, the Air Force moved the Blue Book files to the National Archives (NARA... ever notice how everything is being reduced to letters because, I guess, it’s too difficult to say National Archives), where it was microfilmed. We have Jack Webb (seen below) to thank for that. Webb, as I understand it, paid the cost of the microfilming.

Over the years I have acquired a complete set of the Blue Book files on 94 rolls of microfilm. That collection is in no way unique. The J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies has a complete set and I suspect MUFON does too. What makes all this interesting is that the National Archives has now put all of Project Blue Book on line at:

http://www.footnote.com/image/

Then go to page three and scroll down. At the moment, you can search the files for free. I don’t know how long that will last.

These are high quality scans, for the most part and provide a glimpse into the Air Force handling of the UFO project. The problem is that before these files were released into the public arena, Air Force officers spent weeks going through them taking out the names of the witnesses. Oh, they did a terrible job of it. In the Arnold file, they went so far as to take Arnold’s initials out of a transcript of an interview with him, but left, scrawled in large letters on one page, "Arnold Sighting."

In other files, they took the names out of the Air Force generated reports, but left the names in newspaper articles that were filed with the reports. In other words, in some cases, you can put the names back in.

But remember, Cornett and I copied the names from so many of the case files that I, too, can put them back in. In fact, in Project Blue Book - Exposed, Appendix B is a listing of those cases, including the date and time, location and the witnesses, along with a brief description of the sighting. (Seen below, I'm working my way through some of the Blue Book material.)

For those who wish, I note, again, I have a limited number of the hardback copies of the book, Project Blue Book - Exposed, that originally sold for $22.95. For those interested in a copy, I would send it to you for just $10.00 plus shipping and handling of $5.00 (yeah, you have to pay the postage and for the envelop, but hey, you get the book for less than half price and if you tell me how you’d like it inscribed, why, I’d even sign it).

For those interested, send a check or money order to:

Kevin Randle
PO Box 10934
Cedar Rapids, IA 52410-0934