In the last day or so, I have been asked about the
press release issued by Walter Haut concerning the discovery of a flying disk
near Roswell. We can argue all day about what it was, but that term was used in
the press release. The Roswell Daily
Record reported that military had “captured” a flying saucer in the Roswell
region. What is interesting now is that some are wondering if the Roswell Daily Record put the press
release on the news wire and the source of that information is quoted as
evidence is Philip Klass.
In his book, The
Real Roswell Crashed Saucer Coverup, Klass wrote, on page 16 (of the
hardback), “The newspaper sent its blockbuster story out over the Associated
Press wire service, resulting in a deluge of inquiries.”
In a world where the slightest mistake that I have
made, even those of more than 40 years, are broadcast today to prove I’m a
sloppy researcher, those of the skeptics and debunkers are often overlooked. I
point this out because, I’ll now give you the sequence of events and how the
story made it into the national press (the term for media at the time).
After a staff meeting held at the 509th
Bomb Group on Tuesday, July 8, 1947, the base public affairs officer, First
Lieutenant Walter Haut, received a telephone call from Colonel William
Blanchard, the Group commander. Haut would later say that he didn’t remember if
he was given the details over the phone or if he went to Blanchard’s office. He
didn’t remember if Blanchard gave him the completed press release or just the
details with instructions to write it. He was then to deliver it to the four
media outlets in Roswell, that is, the two radio stations and the two
newspapers. In another relatively unimportant discrepancy to this basic story,
Haut would say that he drove the release into town, or he would say that he
used the telephone and dictated it to them. Either way, the press release went
out to the media, and then was put on the news wire by Frank Joyce of radio
station KGFL and George Walsh of radio station KSWS. Who got it on the wire
first doesn’t really matter to us here because the point is that the Roswell Daily Record did not put in onto
the Associated Press wire but we can answer that question as well.
Walsh remembered that Haut had telephoned the
press release to him “about mid-day.” He copied the press release exactly or
almost exactly, as Haut read it to him over the phone. According to what Walsh
told me, he in turn called it into the Associated Press in Albuquerque. From
there the release was put on the AP wire and that story was published in a
number of newspapers.
Joyce, on the other hand, told me that Haut had
brought the press release to him at the radio station. He said that he put it
on the United Press news wire and he kept the press release. Fearing that
someone would return to confiscate it, he hid it but to no avail. It has since
disappeared.
Art McQuiddy, who was the editor of the Roswell Morning Dispatch told me, “I can
remember quite a bit about what happened that day. It was about noon and Walter
brought in a press release. He’d already been to one of the radio stations, and
I raised hell with him about playing favorites.”
Unfortunately for McQuiddy, the Dispatch was a morning newspaper, so
there wasn’t much for him to do with the story. He said, “By the time Haut got
to me, it hadn’t been ten minutes and the phone started ringing. I didn’t get
off the phone until late afternoon… The story died, literally, as fast as it
started.” MQuiddy’s timing is slightly off as we’ll see later.
There is a document, created in 1947, that
provides the exact times for some of this and helps us understand what was
going on. According The Daily Illini,
the first of the stories on the Associated Press wire appeared at 4:26 p.m. on
the east coast. That would mean that the stories went out from Albuquerque,
sometime prior to 2:26 p.m.
The Associated Press version, as it appeared in a
number of west coast newspapers said:
The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a
reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb
Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to
gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers
and the sheriff’s office of Chavez County.
The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell
sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc
until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff’s office, who in turn
notified Major Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence
Office.
Action was immediately taken and the disc was
picked up at the rancher’s home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field
and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters.
At 4:30 p.m. (EST), there is the first “add” to
the AP story, which mentioned “Lt. Warren Haught [Walter Haut],” who was
described as the public information officer at Roswell Field. This new
information suggested that the object had been found “last week” and that the
object had been sent onto “higher headquarters.”
The original United Press bulletin, which went out
fifteen minutes later, at 4:41 p.m. (EST), according to newspaper sources,
said:
Roswell, N.M. – The army air forces here today
announced a flying disc had been found on a ranch near Roswell and is in army
possession.
The Intelligence office reports that it gained
possession of the ‘Dis:’ [sic] through the cooperation of a Roswell rancher and
Sheriff George Wilson [sic] of Roswell.
The disc landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime
last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher, whose name has not yet
been obtained, stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the
Roswell sheriff’s office.
The sheriff’s office notified a major of the 509th
Intelligence Office.
Action was taken immediately and the disc was
picked up at the rancher’s home and taken to the Roswell Air Base. Following
examination, the disc was flown by intelligence officers in a superfortress
(B-29) to an undisclosed “Higher Headquarters.”
The air base has refused to give details of
construction of the disc or its appearance.
Residents near the ranch on which the disc was
found reported seeing a strange blue light several days ago about three o’clock
in the morning.
Here’s what all this minutia tells us. Walsh put
the story out first with Joyce following by fifteen minutes. The Roswell Daily Record had nothing to do
with that. There are two versions of the story that differ enough to suggest
that Haut dictated them over the telephone to Walsh and Joyce. What we don’t
know is how long the vetting process took, meaning simply, that the time of the
two press releases does not reflect the time they arrived in the news wire
offices. McQuiddy could be right about the time Haut got there, but it wasn’t
all that long after the stories arrived that they were put on the wire.
What’s all this prove? Very little, really. We
have been able to assemble, from various documents and newspaper stories, a
timeline for the release of the information. Doesn’t mean it was a flying disk
from another world, only that we have been able to trace, to a fair degree of
accuracy, the sequence of events.
We haven’t been able to learn if Haut met with
Blanchard in person or talked to him on the telephone. We don’t know if Haut
wrote the release or if Blanchard dictated it to him. I’m not sure that these
questions are important today because we do have the release as it appeared in
two forms in the newspapers and we do know that it originated with the 509th
Bomb Group… Oh, and we know that Philip Klass made up the comment about the Roswell Daily Record putting it on the
news wire.
