David Grusch and the Canadian Letter

 

For all those who had asked, yes, I have seen the Canadian letter that George Knapp and Jeremy Corbell talked about. Yes, it is interesting, but not necessarily for the reasons some have suggested. And while it is interesting, it doesn’t, exactly, validate the information shared by David Grusch but does suggest an interest in the topic of UFO crashes by a Canadian government official.

George Knapp

Oh, and while some have questioned the authenticity of the letter, it is real.

In the last several weeks, we have been bombarded by UFO stories, NASA committee meetings and Senate hearings. Although nothing of real substance came from the meetings, hearings and now this letter, it does suggest a change in attitude. The letter does not confirm what David Crush was saying, but it does demonstrate a new interest in the topic at the higher levels of various governments. No longer are we subjected to the tongue-in-the-cheek snide comments by educated people who are too sophisticated to believe that UFOs might represent an alien technology. Now, we see those educated people wondering if the information leaking might not have an undercurrent of legitimacy. Just maybe this is something that should be watched.

I see from the various Internet discussions I have with colleagues around the world, that all this demands a cautious approach. We don’t want to be overly enthusiastic about the information without having the opportunity to vet that information. We need sources and documents to do that.

There is one point in the Canadian Letter that I haven’t seen addressed anywhere and that refers to a 1950 interest in the topic. A Manitoba member of Parliament, Larry Maguire, wrote to the Canadian Minister of Defence, concerning the new or renewed interest in what is now called UAPs. The sentence that caught my eye said, “As Minister of National Defence, you may not be aware Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) has participated in efforts to analyze UAP [UFO], which is publicly traceable to circa 1950.”

Larry Maguire

It was the 1950 date that drew my attention because that seems to relate to what has become known as the Sarbacher episode. According to William Steinman, he received a copy of an interview between Robert I. Sarbacher and Wilbert B. Smith that was conducted on September 15, 1950. The interview notes apparently were made by Lieutenant Colonel Bremer:

Smith: I am doing some work on the collapse of the earth’s magnetic field as a source of energy, and I think our work may have a bearing on the flying saucers.

Sarbacher: What do you want to know?

Smith: I have read Scully’s book [Behind the Flying Saucers] on the saucers and I would like to know how much of it is true.

Sarbacher: The facts reported in the book are substantially true.

Smith: Then the saucers exist?

Sarbacher: Yes, they exist.

Smith: Do they operate as Scully suggests on magnetic principles?

Sarbacher: We have not been able to duplicate their performance.

Smith: Do they come from some other planet?

Sarbacher: All we know is, we didn’t make them, and it’s pretty certain they didn’t originate on earth.

Smith: I understand the whole subject of saucers is classified.

Sarbacher: Yes, it is classified two points higher than the H-bomb. In fact it is the most highly classified subject in the U.S. Government at the present time.

Smith: May I ask the reason for the classification?

Sarbacher: You may ask, but I can’t tell you.

There was a final note that said the interview was written from memory but he, and I don’t know which he it was, though I suspect it was Lieutenant Colonel Bremer who “tried to keep it as nearly verbatum [sic] as possible.”

Steinman contacted Sarbacher about the conversation. Sarbacher confirmed that the interview had taken place. Steinman followed up with additional questions, which Sarbacher answered. On November 29, 1983, Sarbacher sent a letter to Steinman. The pertinent parts of that letter follow:

Relating to my own experiences regarding recovered flying saucers, I had no association with any of the people involved in the recovery [Steinman had supplied a list of names who were alleged members of MJ-12] and have no knowledge regarding the dates of recovery.

I did receive some official reports when I was in my office at the Pentagon but all those were left there as at the time, we were never supposed to take them out of the office.

About the only thing I remember at this time is that certain material reported to have come from flying saucer crashes were extremely light and tough.

I will note here that this exchange took place in 1983, after the publication of The Roswell Incident, but the idea of UFO crashes was not wide spread in the general public and I have no way of knowing if Sarbacher was familiar with the story. It was only after 1990 that the Roswell information exploded.

However, and relevant to the discussion is information reported by others. According to Dr. Bruce Maccabee and Jerry Clark, Sarbacher was “ignorant of UFO history.” They reported that he didn’t even know what Project Blue Book was, which suggests that Sarbacher had not been contaminated by all the reporting about the Roswell crash.

Sarbacher, in that same letter, wrote, “I remember in talking with some of the people at the office that I got the impression these ‘aliens’ were constructed like certain insects we have observed on earth, wherein because of the low mass the inertial forces involved in operation of these instruments would be quite low.”

This story received widespread coverage in the UFO community. Both Stan Friedman and Jerry Clark contacted Sarbacher and he confirmed the accuracy of what Steinman had reported, meaning that the notes and conclusions were accurate, but the information might be considered speculative. It was also noted that Sarbacher’s information was all second hand. He had read reports, he had talked with people involved but he had seen nothing himself.

There is one other important point. Sarbacher had been a member of the Research and Development Board, where some of the UFO information had been discussed. T. Scott Crain interviewed Fred A. Darwin who had served as the executive director of the board. Darwin told Crain:

Bob Sarbacher… had virtually no connection with the activities of the Research and Development Board… I got Bob appointed to membership on the Guidance and Control Panel. After a couple of months, the Chairman requested his replacement; he never came to the meetings.

This does not, of course, negate what Sarbacher had written to Steinman and told others. It only suggests that his information about the flying saucer crashes falls into the category of hearsay rather than observation.

I believe that the reference in Maguire’s letter was to this information, the Canadian connection to it and a desire to ensure that proper authorities in Canada were aware of some of the UFO history.

What this letter tells me is that Maguire was concerned about Canadian involvement in the renewed interest in UFOs, and that he wanted to alert the Defence Minister about it, in case he wasn’t current on UFO history.

While the letter does mention the renewed interest in UFOs, and the US Congress interest in the topic, it says nothing about the reliability of David Grusch’s information. And, if he was referring to the 1950 information, I suspect he was, then this does little to validate that data. We are left right where we began, which is without public corroboration of Grusch’s claims. It is just another instant of second-hand stories that seem to provide important clues about UFOs and it does suggest where some of the information that Grusch talks about originated. It just is not the smoking gun that we need.

Lue Elizondo and Two Crashes on the Same Day

 

While I was reading the material posted to the Anomalist website (www.anomalist.com), I followed a couple of links and came to a story headlined, “’Roswell Was Real, Claimed Apollo 14 Astronaut, Elizondo Suggests 2 UFOs Crashed That Day.” (No, the headline is not suggesting that Elizondo was an astronaut… I think they needed a semi-colon rather than a comma to make it clear.)

That headline intrigued me because of the suggestion that two UFOs had crashed on the same day. This was the theory spun by Stan Friedman in an attempt to validate the Plains of San Agustin crash site identified by Barney Barnett. Friedman’s theory was that the UFOs had collided with one falling to the Brazel (Foster) ranch near Corona, New Mexico, and the other coming down farther to the west, on the Plains.

I do not believe there was a crash on the Plains in July 1947, and the reason that theory was ever considered was that the original information, provided by Jesse Marcel, Sr., had no mention of alien bodies. Barney Barnett, however, who lived in Socorro, New Mexico, did tell of something falling on the Plains and that he had seen the bodies of an alien flight crew. Ruth Barnett kept a diary for all of 1947, and there is no mention of anything like that in her written record. I have explored this in the past, at length, and you can read more about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/07/finding-ruth-barnett-diary.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-plains-of-san-agustin-crash.html

The point is, given the information I have uncovered and the investigation that I conducted, there was no evidence substantiate the dual crash aspect of the Roswell case. In one of the more notorious tales told, Gerald Anderson, said that he was on the Plains that day and saw the crashed craft and the alien creatures. Friedman continued to support Anderson long after it was clear that Anderson lied about his involvement. You can read more about that here, but you need to scroll down to find the relevant information about Anderson:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/08/stan-friedman-vs-philip-klass-whats.html

Don Schmitt at the Anderson crash site with the Plains behind him. In the far distance is
the location of the bat cave where scientists were working beginning on July 1. They would have 
seen the crash had there been one, but none of them did.

To me, if Elizondo was, in fact, saying that two UFOs crashed that day, it suggested he was not on the inside because two UFOs had not crashed that day. The Barnett tale had been single witness with no corroboration, and in fact, scientists who were in the area at the time and who had a perfect view of the entire Plains, did not corroborate the story. Given all that, it seemed that Elizondo might not have been the insider that he claimed.

However…

And you knew there would be a “however”…

I wanted to know exactly what he had said, and I wanted to know where he had said it. According to the story in the Roswell Daily Record, Elizondo said, “Before I was part of AATIP, I had no idea about Roswell, other than that there was sort of some alleged crash at some point and some farmer found debris – but during my time with AATIP, there was some very interesting anecdotal information that suggests there wasn’t just one crash, there may have been two crashes, and that somehow it may have been related to some sort of testing that was being done at the time at White Sands, and that the material was recovered.”

He didn’t add much in that article about what he knew, only that these were things that he had heard from those who had been around since the days of Project Blue Book. This is exactly the same sort of thing that Don Schmitt, Tom Carey, and I have heard for many years from people who were actually in Roswell at the time or who were in the Army Air Forces when the object crashed. Brigadier General Arthur

Arthur Exon

Exon, for example, provided us with these same stories about what he had heard when he was assigned to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in 1947. Exon even talked about the recovery of alien creatures and what happened to the bodies once they had been moved out of Roswell.

My original purpose here was to suggest that if Elizondo was talking about two crashes on the same day, that would tend to undercut his importance to the UFO investigation given that there was only the single event. But the newspaper story doesn’t say anything about two crashes on the same day, only that there were two crashes. And, he says that these were anecdotal tales he had been told, not that he had seen documents or classified studies which changes the importance of what he said. Only that he had heard these things from others who he suggested would have known the truth.

This turned out not to be much of a chase for accurate information. I guess you could say that it was a “nothing burger.” I was intrigued by the headline that was inaccurate and reading the whole story gave the correct information. It does, however, show that Roswell is still alive in the UFO world.

The General Exon Quotes are Accurate and I can Prove it

 

About once a decade, someone challenges the information and the reporting of what Brigadier General Arthur Exon said to Don Schmitt and me in 1990. True, there were several challenges at that time and a number of writers did what they could to

General Exon

dismiss Exon’s statements without bothering to interview him though Karl Pflock did call him in 1992.

In Pflock’s book, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, he mentions Exon only briefly in two places. On page 36, Pflock wrote:

In 1989, Roswell authors Randle and Schmitt located retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Arthur E. Exon. The general was stationed at Wright Field in July 1947 as a lieutenant colonel and student at the Air Force Institute of Technology, following an assignment on the staff of the Air Materiel Command, also at Wright Field. According to Randle and Schmitt, Exon was aware alien bodies and debris from Roswell were on the base and knew of research being conducted on the debris. Randle and Schmitt also reported that Exon told them he flew over what may have been the debris field and crash site and knew of a high-level group established to control “access to the wreckage, bodies and information about the crash.” As we will see, General Exon has quite a different take on what he actually said and intended to convey.

This really doesn’t say much but it does, to some extent, provide an introduction to Exon and a suggestion that our reporting, that is Don’s and mine, was more enthusiastic than the information warranted. On page 124, Pflock wrote:

…However, what of the recollections attributed by Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt to retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Arthur E. Exon?

When first made public in 1991, it seemed Exon’s memories of the possibility that bodies had been flown from Roswell to Wright Field in 1947 might be based upon firsthand information. If so, this would be highly significant, especially since Exon also seemed to have firsthand knowledge of the debris field and crash site, as well as a shadowy high-level group established to keep the truth about Roswell under wraps. However, in a lengthy September 1992 telephone conversation, Exon told me [Pflock] his comments about bodies and debris at Wright Field were based solely upon rumors he heard from colleagues at Wright Field and nothing more. As for the “control group,” he said he merely was making educated guesses as to who likely would have been selected for such a group. Finally, with respect to his alleged knowledge of the debris field and crash sites, he told me he remembered flying over several sites in New Mexico quite some time after July 1947, on missions that had nothing to do with the Roswell incident. One such location might have fit what he had been told about the crash site by ufologists because it had vehicle tracks running to it.

With that, Pflock is finished with his discussion of Exon and what he said. We have no way of judging what Exon might have said to him because no recordings exist of the conversation. Without going into depth about this, there are a couple of important points to be made here. Just what did Exon say to me during the May 19, 1990, interview with him? Although I didn’t ask about Roswell, I did mention flying saucers and retrievals. Exon said to me:

As a result of that, I know they saw the one sighting and then where there, a good bit of the information came down. There was another location where it was, where apparently the main body of the spacecraft was, where they did say there were bodies there. I’ve been, I’ve got special information, but it may be more rumor than fact about what happened to those bodies, although they were all found apparently outside the craft itself, but were in fairly good condition. In other words, they weren’t broken up a lot.

…But one of them was that it went to the mortuary outfit, I think it was in Denver, where these people were being identified. But the strongest information was that they were brought into Wright-Pat. But whatever happened to the metal residue, I imagine it’s still there in the [unintelligible] some place.

While Exon does mention rumors, it seems, based on the context here, that he was referring to what happened to the bodies rather than there being bodies. Of course, that’s my somewhat biased interpretation and others might believe he was suggesting that all the information about the bodies was rumor. It is clear that Exon is not suggesting that he had seen the bodies himself.

We can see, however, that Exon had some information about bodies. He also has some very specific information about those bodies which would seem to make the information a little stronger. But it is also interesting that these rumors came from his colleagues at Wright Field and you have to wonder what would prompt them to invent such stories and then share them, especially in 1947. From the history, it is clear that the Air Force was downplaying the Roswell crash and didn’t even create a file for their records.

Exon, in my interview with him, moved from talking about the bodies directly into this control group, which is something he mentioned spontaneously with no prompting from me. He said:

Of course, President Truman and General Spaatz [commanding of the Army Air Forces in 1947], the Secretary of Defense [although that office wouldn’t exist for another few months], who has now passed away, and other people who were close to the ones who made up the key investigative teams in relation to the released information.

This means it was Exon who introduced the idea of this special investigative team into the conversation and it was not some leading question from me. He then said:

One of my officers who did some research, who worked for me at Wright-Patterson, who had done some research on this as part of his school, came up with a deal that there was great concern at that time and there was fear that the people would panic if the sketchy information that they had such as what was it and where did it come from and what was their mission and so on and so on, got out. So, they decided to make it a national cover up. And that there probably wouldn’t be much released until everybody who as involved in it, including the 13 people I’m talking about and their immediate staff who made up the, oh what was it, the twelve people who made up the investigative team had passed away.

This really doesn’t sound like idle speculation, but does seem to suggest some inside knowledge of what was happening in 1947. Exon wasn’t a guy deeply emersed in UFO lore, though he did have some specialized knowledge based on his military career. He might have been guessing about some of the participants, but he was talking about something with which he was familiar.

On June 18, 1990, Don Schmitt met with Exon in California. Although there were problems with the tape recording, important parts of the interview were recorded. Don had asked about any name for the operation and Exon finally said:

They were involved in what to do about the residue from that, those two findings.

Don said, “You say those two?”

Probably part of the same accident, but two distinct sites. One, assuming that the thing, as I understand it, as I remember flying the area later, that the damage to the vehicle seemed to be coming from southeast to northwest but it could have been going in the opposite direction but it doesn’t seem likely. So, the farther northwest pieces found on the ranch, those pieces were mostly metal.

The point is that Pflock, in his analysis, provides us with nothing to review. He wrote that Exon said this and that and was somewhat dismissive of what we had written. However, when the context of what Exon said to Don and me, it suggests a somewhat more intimate knowledge of the situation based on his own experiences and the information gathered in conversation with those directly involved.

Philip Klass, in his book, The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Coverup, doesn’t directly address Exon’s testimony. Klass wrote, quoting Pflock, “Moreover, the GAO will pursue its own hands-on review of Air Force records, paying particulate attention to such ‘oversights’ as the bodies issue and, it is hoped, the reasons for the Air Force’s failure to interview retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Arthur E. Exon.”

This seems to suggest that Pflock believed that Exon was critical to understanding the Roswell case. I suspect that Pflock thought that, under questioning by his fellow Air Force officers, Exon would be a little more forthcoming with information about what he had seen, what he had done and what he had heard. I suspect the Air Force avoided Exon because they didn’t want to call a high-ranking and highly decorated Air Force officer a liar.

Klass noticed the same thing. The only other mention of Exon in Klass’ book was a footnote on page 143. Klass wrote, “This criticism of the USAF for failing to interview Exon is surprising in view of Pflock’s own interview with him, as reported in Roswell in Perspective (p. 30) [the forerunner to his book on the topic and is essentially the same thing he wrote there].”

Klass then recapped that information and said nothing more about Exon and the possible importance of these interviews. We are left chasing the footnote back to Pflock but we are unable to assess the importance of that because we don’t have access to Pflock’s interview.

Stan Friedman also spoke with Exon, and, according to Friedman, Exon said that Don and I had misquoted him. I pointed out that I had the interviews on tape and Friedman’s response that he didn’t care what I had on tape, it was what Exon told him (Friedman) and he was going to keep saying we had misquoted the general. Ironically, this would become important, but not for the reasons that Friedman thought.

Knowing that I had carefully transcribed the interviews from the tapes, I knew that I had not misquoted Exon. Since Friedman insisted, he was still going make this false charge, I sent a copy of the book, a copy of the transcripts, and copies of the tape to Exon and asked what I had gotten wrong.

Exon reviewed the material that I sent and then wrote a response. Exon, in his letter to me of November 24, 1991, wrote, “Although I believe you did quote me accurately, I do believe that in your writings you gave more credence and impression of personal and direct knowledge that my recordings would indicate on their own.”

At that point, no more was heard from Friedman about misquotes. Friedman’s false claims were relegated to the trash. But now we had a statement from Exon saying that the quotes were accurate. We are arguing about interpretation at this point. Following is the letter from Exon.

It was Kal Korff who took things to the extreme with his endless assaults and misquoting of me and his claims that we were misleading the public in a very non journalistic way. I have addressed those comments at length before now. Greg Sandow, a disinterested third party who had the opportunity to review the transcripts, listen to the tapes, and ask a few other questions provided an in-depth analysis of Korff’s suggestions. You can read that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/04/i-havent-wanted-to-turn-this-blog-into.html 

And, of course, for those who would like to review Sandow’s analysis for themselves, you can read his entire report in the following:

Which brings us to the latest challenge. A fellow had emailed Mark Rodeghier that he wanted to review the material, that is our tapes, transcripts and other assorted contacts with General Exon. Rodeghier replied that he was unable to locate the material requested. I believe that is because the CUFOS office had been closed as the rents skyrocketed (or the landlord wanted to sell the building). The files were split among several places, and if I understand the situation, many of the files had been transferred to Texas for a project to scan the material as a way of saving it and making access available to researchers.

This prompted the man to suggest that he was now going to tell anyone who asked him that the information that Don and I had published was “unsubstantiated” unless the material “miraculously” reappeared. Had he bothered to contact either Don or me, we could have supplied the material. I have the tapes. I have the transcripts. I have the notes from the meetings with Exon.

But the point here is that none of that is necessary and even if the source material no longer existed, I can prove the accuracy of the quotes. Exon supplied that when he reviewed the material. That was the irony of Friedman’s attack. Had Friedman not claimed we had misquoted Exon; I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to ask Exon what was inaccurate. That, of course, resulted in Exon’s review of the material and his letter saying the quotes were accurate. What better endorsement could we have? The man himself said the quotes were accurate.

And even if that didn’t exist, there is still the review of the material by Greg Sandow, who mentioned the accuracy of the quotes in the books that Don and I wrote. In other words, there is nothing unsubstantiated in the books and our take on the interviews have been validated.

I hope that this is the last time that we have to go through this, though it is sometimes a little bit of fun. A challenge to our reporting, validated by those involved, meaning Exon, and then the review of all that material by another who also provided a written commentary on it.

This means that those who read the books, who look at the testimony of Exon, can rest assured that we accurately reported what he said. The interpretation of those statements might be an area for additional discussion, but that discussion begins with the importance of what Exon said and not the accuracy of the quotes.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Susan Swiatek

 

This week my guest was Susan Swiatek, the MUFON State Director for Virginia, a member of the MUFON Board, and a woman who has been around the UFO field for longer than she probably wishes to mention. We had an interesting discussion that covered many topics. You can listen to it here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/41575288

Susan Swiatek

We began talking about some of the problems with Stan Friedman’s Crash at Corona, including the rather dubious testimony of Gerald Anderson. Anderson’s credibility collapsed when he forged a telephone bill disputing the length of our first, and as it turned out, only conversation. He said that he had done it to make me look bad, but, of course, it had the opposite effect when I was able to prove it was a forgery. One of the first articles outlining the problem with Anderson can be see here (though the Anderson information is toward the end of the post):

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/08/stan-friedman-vs-philip-klass-whats.html

There is more about Anderson and the tales he told, but that gives you the idea. I put an entire Appendix in Roswell in the 21^st Century, outlining all this in great detail for those who wish to pursue it farther.

Special Colletion at UTA

Moving away from that part of the Roswell story, but continuing in that vein, we talked about the Ramey Memo, which has been a topic here on several occasions. I have even been to the Special Collections at the library at the University of Texas Arlington twice. You can read about this here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/10/josh-gates-ramey-memo-and-meme.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/12/jan-aldrich-barry-greenwood-and-ramey.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-ramey-memo-latest-information.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/09/ramey-memo-update.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/10/ramey-memo-and-victims-of-wreck.html

And, we did talk about the Fort Dix/McGuire Air Force Base incident in which it was alleged that an alien creature had been killed during an encounter there. Susan provided some insight to the event because of her friendship with George Filer, who was assigned to the base at the time. We both had read the book written by Filer that included the incident in it. I wrote a review of the book and you can read it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/09/george-filer-and-strange-craft.html

Finally, we talked about one of the UFO sightings in Virginia that she investigated recently. As usual, there was much more that we could have talked about, but time just slipped away.

X-Zone Broadcast - Robert Sheaffer Discusses Klass and Friedman

 

I invited Robert Sheaffer back on the program as a response to another radio show in which the host and the guest attacked Philip Klass. I didn’t think that it was a fair assessment of who Klass was and that his personality was similar to that of Stan

Robert Sheaffer

Friedman, who had partnered with that guest. You can listen to my show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/41089664

and the second hour here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/41089667

We did examine some of the things that Klass had done that were fairly nasty, but then we did the same thing with Friedman. You can get a better idea, along with some documentation here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/08/stan-friedman-vs-philip-klass-whats.html

And to learn a little about what Klass has done, in a somewhat similar vein, you can read it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/09/philip-klass-and-his-letter-writing.html

I did look at other aspects of some of Klass’ UFO investigations and you can see them by typing his name into the search engine on the blog. I also looked at Klass’ investigation into the Travis Walton abduction and Klass’ attempts to convince Steve Pierce to “confess” to the Walton hoax. Pierce never did, even with an offer of a large amount of cash offered by Klass.

In other words, we looked at how Klass had operated in the past and compared it to some of the things that Friedman had done in his campaign to become the Number One Guy in the world of UFOs.

As we discussed this, we also looked at some of the famous UFO cases, such as the Coyne helicopter sighting. I explained why I found some of what Klass had said about it to be inaccurate based on my experience as an Army helicopter pilot who had been through the same training as Coyne and his co-pilot. Naturally, you can read about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Coyne

We also talked about the Lubbock Lights case and in a discussion that was reminiscent of our Levelland discussion on another edition of the radio show. That means, simply, that Robert offered a possible explanation for the Carl Hart photographs taken in Lubbock. He supplied a link to that analysis, which, with luck, you can read here (I say that because the link might not work for everyone):

https://www.facebook.com/groups/470983769757563/permalink/688177534704851

I am not a fan of the explanation but will note, as I did on the show, that there seems to be only two solutions here. Hart either perpetrated a hoax or he photographed something that is truly anomalous. Having interviewed Hart in the 1990s, I accept his statement to  me that “I still don’t know what I photographed.”

The best part of the show, I believe, is that you had two guys on it, who look at the UFO phenomenon from opposite sides of the room. We could agree on a number of points without the discussion devolving into insults and accusations. We might disagree, but we did look at the other side to see if there were good points to be made. We also, in the course of the show, tried to provide references for those who were interested to follow up on what we said.

We pretty much left it at that point. What we did prove, if that is the right word, is that Klass was no worse than Friedman, and Klass might have been more honest in his assessments. He might have been blinded by his bias but there seemed to be no evidence that he fabricated or suppressed evidence… the same can’t be said about Friedman.

Note: Before I published the article about Klass and Freidman, I invited Kathleen Marden on this program. She declined the offer.

Stan Friedman vs. Philip Klass - What's the Difference?

 When Stan Friedman died, I had thought that it was inappropriate to mention many of the stunts that he had pulled during his UFO career. I thought that I might do something later, but as time passed, it seemed that the motivation had passed. Besides, he was no longer here to attempt to explain his actions, so I just never got around to writing anything about it.

All that changed when I listened to Richard Dolan and Kathleen Marden trash Philip

Philip Klass

Klass with rumors and half-truths. It stuck me that nearly everything they were saying about Klass could be said about Friedman with the exception of the wild claim that Klass had been a Soviet asset… which has become something of the go to position when assassinating someone’s character in the world today. Accuse them of collusion with the Russians.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Philip Klass had pulled some fairly dirty tricks in his Ufological career. I did a long post about this a number of years ago when challenged to provide proof of my claim about that. You can read that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2012/12/philip-klass-and-fbi.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/09/philip-klass-and-his-letter-writing.html

In the interest of full disclosure, I did know Klass on a personal level. While I was attending a DIA school in Washington, D.C., Klass took me sailing on the Potomac River. I visited him at his home, and over the years we had shared the dinner table several times. I had a long correspondence with him as well. The last time I saw him was in St. Louis in 2000 at the MUFON Symposium. He asked me to help him to his room. At that time, his health had deteriorated to the point it was difficult for him to get around.

This is, however, about Stan Friedman. I had known him for thirty years and if I remember correctly, first met him while in Roswell to tape a segment for Unsolved Mysteries. We had a number of conversations and even shared a meal or two. There

Stan Friedman

was no air of competition then. That would come later.

The animosity probably began when we met, along with Don Schmitt, in Illinois. I had approached Avon Books with a proposal to write a book about the Roswell case. An offer had been extended and it wasn’t much of a secret. Friedman suggested that we all work together. His name would go last on the book, he would receive a quarter of the money, and would provide assistance with witnesses.

We, meaning Don and I, had already had a taste of that assistance. Don had been attempting to find Bill Rickett of the Roswell CIC office. Friedman said not to bother because Rickett had died. Don did locate a telephone number and was talking to Mary Rickett, asking her questions, when she interrupted and asked, “Would you like to talk to Bill. He’s sitting right here.”

There are other examples of this, but they are really about trivia. Instead, let’s move onto other, more important issues. After we decided, that is Don and me, that we wouldn’t accept Friedman’s offer, he chose a different path. He sent to the publisher, Avon Books, and our editor, John Douglas, a letter dated June 11, 1990. There were a number of allegations in the letter. Friedman wrote:

I have been to Roswell twice in the past year and perhaps unfortunately have shared some of my recent research with Randle and Schmitt. As [Bill] Moore would have told you there was talk of a book by him, Myself and Jaime Shandera updating the Roswell story…

As you can tell from the enclosed paper I was not happy with the Roswell Incident because of the inappropriate material that was included, the misquotation of myself, and the absence of the contractually obligated acknowledgement of my major contribution. I am certainly anxious to see the Randle Schmitt book to see if once again my contribution is undervalued and if there are many factual mistakes, flights of fancy, lifting of my research much of which remains unpublished. I think the story needs to be told, but with full credit for my and other investigations… After all, by the end of 1985, Moore and I had located 92 persons connected with the event. It is difficult to believe that S and R didn’t depend strongly on that base for their book…

Anxiously awaiting a copy of the manuscript for review only.

Friedman letter to John Douglas

There are two points that need to be made. First, I spent nearly 24 hours on the telephone with the publisher’s lawyers, explaining how, where and when, we interviewed the witnesses. Finally, one of the lawyers asked if I had tapes and I said, “Both audio and video.” That ended the problem.

But remember how Friedman complained, “I am certainly anxious to see the Randle Schmitt book to see if once again my contribution is undervalued and if there are many factual mistakes, flights of fancy, lifting of my research much of which remains unpublished.”

This is exactly what he did in his book, Crash at Corona. There is a long quote from Bill Brazel, describing what his father, Mack Brazel, told him about finding the crashed object, and then a longer section that described what Bill had seen and found. The descriptions are on pages 84 – 85 of the original hardback edition of that book. This information came from an interview conducted by Don and me, at the Outpost in Carrizozo, New Mexico, on February 19, 1989. There is no reference to of our Brazel interview found in that book. It was lifted without permission or acknowledgement and is blatant plagiarism.

Left to right, Kevin Randle, Bill Brazel and Don Schmitt at the Outpost in Carizozo.

To make it worse, Friedman altered the interview by inserting a word into Brazel’s description of the four military men who came to see him. To make the testimony conform to that given by Gerald Anderson, Friedman put in the bracketed word “black” because Anderson told Friedman about a black sergeant who chased them off the crash site on the Plains of San Agustin.

Then, to explain this insertion, he claimed that Brazel had used a racially charged word to describe the sergeant. Bill Brazel, however, never had identified any of the soldiers as black. In a 1992 interview, when I asked him specially about this, Brazel said that none of them were black. Friedman had changed the testimony to suit his own beliefs and then lied about the reason for that change. You can read about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2008/09/black-sergeants-and-stan-friedman.html

Friedman, of course, backpedaled on his claims about our book once he received a letter from my agent’s attorney. In the July 30, 1990, letter, Friedman pointed out, “I did not allege plagiarism or infringement of copyright… I have had a number of friendly discussions with Kevin and Don concerning the book and am quite satisfied that my rights are not violated.” (Please note here that we are now Kevin and Don rather than Randle and Schmitt.)

That is far from the only example of Friedman taking our research without credit or attribution in his book; only the largest and most obvious. He quotes from Marian Strickland, a neighbor of Mack Brazel, about his treatment while a “guest” of the Army. Again, the information came from Don and me without credit nor attribution. We interviewed her in January 1990 and again in September 1990. We also took Don Berliner to meet with her but Friedman fails to mention it.

This all came to a head in 1993 when Dick Hall, of the Fund for UFO Research, got involved. He asked for evidence of my allegations and published his results in the May/June 1993 issue of the International UFO Report. He wrote:

Randle alleged that Friedman and others, apparently acting in concert, had attempted to interfere with the publication of the book UFO Crash at Roswell (then in preparation) by contacting the publisher, Avon Books, making charges of plagiarism and generally impugning Randle’s character and integrity. I asked Randle for documentation, which he provided. I asked Friedman for an explanation, and he never replied…

Other repeated ad hominem attacks shall go unmentioned. The concerted effort to derail the Randle/Schmitt book is indefensible.

Friedman and the Lecture Circuit

There is another aspect to all this as well. I had been invited to make a presentation in Cincinnati in the early 1990s. The hosts told me on the morning of the presentation that Friedman had called them, asking why they had invited me. He said to them, “Didn’t you want a scientist?”

I said that they should have said, “Sure. Do you know one?”

But there was really no way to change things around at that late date, even if Friedman had been successful in his attempt to get them to cancel my presentation. It hints at a larger problem.

Now, it can be said that I can’t prove this little interchange took place and that is true. The main host died a number of years ago. However, I’m not the only one who has had this problem. I have a letter, provided by Robert Hastings, who is well-known on the UFO lecture circuit and as the author of UFOs and Nukes. In a letter dated July 25, 1989, John J. Romero, Jr., Hasting’s attorney, wrote:

This letter shall acknowledge receipt of your [Friedman’s] correspondence dated May 26, 1989. In your letter, you state that you have not accused Mr. Hastings of fraud and that you have not defamed him. You further stated that you have “no intention of defaming him in the future…

In your letter of May 26, you suggest that our concern may be without merit. Please be advised that our position is based on the written statement of Ms. Karyl Kumer, Director of Student Support Services of Central Florida Community College. In her statement, Ms. Kumer unequivocally reports that you had previously informed her that Robert Hastings did not know what he was talking about, that he did not have the “real facts” and that “he was just another fraud.”

Ms. Kumer is prepared to sign an Affidavit, under oath, concerning the substance of that particular conversation.

Letter to Friedman documenting Friedman had lied about Hastings.

And to show that this was an on-going campaign by Friedman to take others off the lecture circuit there is a letter dated August 1^st, 1992 (A.D,) in which Jim Mosely wrote:

Re Friedman – I can only tell you, as I would tell anyone who asks, about my own experience with Uncle Stan: Back in 1966, the “marsh gas” flap in Michigan indirectly propelled me to stardom in the UFO field, and I ended up lecturing to over 100 colleges around the country, on the lucrative college circuit. Then, around 1970, Stan started to appear on the circuit. He was indeed better qualified than I was and I was getting tired of the thing anyhow – so I didn’t mind being squeezed out – BUT I did mind his method: Several colleges told me that after I was already booked, he would call more than once and plead that they cancel me and put him on instead. Dirty pool, I say. When I finally dropped off the college circuit in 1974, Stan once said to me on the phone, “I don’t have to think of you as a rival any more.”

Letter from Moseley documenting that Friedman attempted to get Moseley's bookings cancelled.

The Gerald Anderson Fiasco

Those of you who have visited here, or read any number of my books on the Roswell case, know that Don and I never accepted the Gerald Anderson tale of seeing a crashed saucer on the Plains of San Agustin. We had caught Gerald Anderson, one of Friedman’s primary witnesses, in a number of lies, changes of his testimony, and one of those flights of fancy that Friedman had been so worried about.

I was the first to interview Anderson when he returned my telephone call and because he claimed to be a first-hand witness to both the craft and the bodies, he could be important. That he was five at the time of the crash was problematic, and that he claimed the object crashed on the Plains was another worrisome fact. Almost as soon as I had gotten off the telephone, I sent an email to Friedman about Anderson and his claims. Because of what Anderson had told me, I knew that Friedman would want to know about it. This just proves that cooperation with Stan was always a one-way street. I’d send him information but never got any of it back.

Friedman, in his first telephone conversation with Anderson, told him not work with me, that I was former Air Force intelligence and that I wrote romances. He said to just work with him, cutting me out of the conversations and the investigations. In fact, according to Anderson, we’d only spoken for 26 minutes and the conversation wasn’t all that friendly, so this wasn’t a problem for him. I countered the claim saying that my tape of the interview ran to more than 50 minutes and was, in fact, quite friendly.

John Carpenter, brought in by Friedman to conduct part of the Anderson investigation, suggested that my tape was running slow. To prove the point, Carpenter sent me a copy of Anderson’s telephone bill showing a call lasting only 26 minutes. This was one of the biggest mistakes that Anderson made during his UFO period.

Friedman, of course, attacked me for calling Anderson a liar and suggested that I was nothing more than an anti-abduction propagandist. I’m not sure what my opinions on alien abduction had to do with the case at hand, but I suppose any mud that you can sling is better than no mud at all.

Because my telephone number was on the telephone bill, I took it to Southwestern Bell, and asked if they could validate it. Becky Pim provided a copy of the bill from their records. It did not match the one that Anderson had created. It verified what I had been saying about the length of the call. Anderson had forged the telephone bill. Eventually he admitted this when confronted by Carpenter and the evidence I had provided. This was all laid out in the September 1992, issue of the International UFO Reporter. See also John Carpenter’s article, “Gerald Anderson: Disturbing Revelations,” in the March 1993, MUFON UFO Journal.

Even though Anderson had admitted the truth, Friedman continued to support him, suggesting that Anderson had created the phone bill to make me look bad because of what I had said about him. This was an attempt to blame me for Anderson’s bad act. It was because, frankly, I was telling the truth about him and Anderson didn’t like it.

This led, however, to a much more important point. Anderson had identified the archaeologists that were supposed to have been on the Plains on that day in 1947. Anderson said the leader was Adrian Buskirk. Tom Carey, who holds an advanced degree in Anthropology, set out to find Buskirk. He found a Winfred Buskirk, who held an advanced degree in Anthropology. Using an “identi-kit” sketch of Buskirk provided by Anderson, it was clear that Winfred Buskirk was Adrian Buskirk. The problem was that Buskirk, in 1947, was not on the Plains of San Agustin but in Arizona conducting research for his Ph.D. dissertation.

The question was, if Anderson didn’t see Buskirk on the Plains, then how could he identify him as an Anthropologist. Buskirk, it turned out, had taught high school in Albuquerque in 1957, when Anderson was a high school student. Anderson attended that same high school, and, according to Buskirk, had taken his Anthropology course. That was the connection.

Buskirk had been as curious as we were about the connection and called friends in Albuquerque who were able to check Anderson’s high school transcripts. Although Buskirk didn’t remember Anderson, the transcripts proved the connection. Anderson, according to the documentation, had taken the Anthropology course. We’d not only put Anderson in the same high school as Buskirk, we’d put him in the same classroom.

Buskirk provided the names of several officials in case I wanted to verify the information about Anderson taking his, Buskirk’s Anthropology class, which was the only Anthropology course offered. I talked with those officials, who were looking at the transcripts as I spoke with them on the telephone. Anderson had taken the Anthropology class. Anderson, of course, denied this and produced a Xerox of his high school transcript, but it looked as if it had been modified, just as he had done with the telephone bill. It was another example of Anderson forging a document.

While you could say that Friedman was just supporting a witness whose story he believed, it is actually much worse. Friedman knew the truth about Anderson and his faked tale of being on the Plains with Dr. Buskirk. But Friedman wanted to preserve the story because it supported his theory of a collision between two saucers with one crashing near Roswell and the other falling on the Plains.

In a letter dated 19 August 1991, and apparently written at 9:00 a.m. Buskirk provided the last bit of evidence proving this. He wrote:

Mrs. Robert Klicker just called me from Albuquerque. She had received a call from Jim Hulsman, who had checked the school records for us. (Apparently Dr. [sic] Friedman had previously made inquiries of Hulsman).

Anderson had called Hulsman to tell him that he did not want Hulsman or the school to divulge any information about him. The conversation was, apparently, friendly, but Hulsman felt he, and perhaps Mrs. Klicker too, had been threatened with a possible law suit.

So, while Friedman was calling me names and defending Anderson as a credible source, he knew the truth. Anderson had identified his high school Anthropology instructor as the man on the Plains, regardless of the evidence against that claim.

Buskirk letter showing Friedman knew the truth about Anderson.

To make this worse, in a June 20, 1991, letter to George Eberhart, Friedman wrote, “(it) is probably right that Winfred Buskirk is the man in the Indentikit sketch… who would therefore be lying about where he was in July 1947. Coincidence???” Note that Friedman is quick to label Buskirk a liar without a shred of evidence that Buskirk was in New Mexico or lying. All the available documentation places him in Arizona on the critical days in 1947.

Tom Carey (left) and Stan Friedman in Roswell.

Tom Carey took some flak for his role in exposing the truth about Anderson. In a letter dated August 3, 1992, Dick Hall wrote:

I also have to say that your paper titled “Propagandist of the Year” (1/19/92), in which you call Thomas J. Carey a propagandist and make other insinuations, is just the sort of accusatory, unscientific, and unprofessional paper that is doing so much harm. Of course, many of your arguments are cogent, and important to anyone trying to obtain a clear picture, but the tone is insulting and the tactics – propagandistic! The cogency of some of your arguments gets lost in the gratuitous personal put-downs. And there is irony in your accusation that CUFOS engages in ad hominem attacks. You must have a very foggy mirror.

I have now read the CUFOS-FUFOR conference paper, and I have to say that Gerald Anderson’s credibility is severely damaged thereby (not by ad hominem attacks but by documented facts), and also your and Don’s [Berliner] integrity if the CUFOS remarks about your failing to live of up to the terms of the conference are accurate.

For those who wish to delve into this episode a little more deeply and see the manipulation of the data about Anderson, including Anderson’s lie about being a Navy SEAL see:

http://www.roswellfiles.com/Witnesses/anderson.htm

Brigadier General Arthur Exon

There are almost endless examples of Friedman’s attacks, but there is space for one more. Brigadier General Arthur Exon had been the base commander at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in the 1960s. He had inside knowledge on some of the

BG Arthur Exon

workings of the official UFO investigation, and provided information about it. That information was in conflict with Friedman’s belief in the mythical MJ-12. Since what Exon said tended to discredit MJ-12, that could not be tolerated by Friedman. To fix this, Friedman said that he had called Exon after the publication of UFO Crash at Roswell, read him the sections attributed to him, and then began saying that we had misquoted Exon.

I wrote to Friedman and told him we had the quotes on tape. He might not like the quotes but there were accurate. Friedman responded on October 31, 1991, writing:

I will continue to say you misquoted Exon since that is what he told me. After all the misrepresentations about what Anderson said both in your transcription and in your article, even misquoting you own transcription [another allegation that is unproved], as pointed out by John Carpenter, why should I believe anything you say about what you have on tape?

I sent a copy of the book and a copy of the tape to Exon. On November 24, 1991, he responded. He wrote:

I’m sorry that a portion of my interview has given you trouble. I will acknowledge that the quick quotes does have me saying that my flights later, much later verified the direction of possible flight of the object…

Although I believe you did quote me accurately, I do believe that in your writings you gave more credence and impression of personal and direct knowledge that my recordings would indication [sic] their own!

Exon letter confirming the accuracy of the quotes.

This is much longer than I intended and seems to have focused on the early 1990s. I have other letters, other quotes that are in the same vein. Allegations that he has invented, sometimes out of whole cloth. In the 1995 MUFON Symposium Proceedings, Friedman published “38 False Claims by Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt.” Eventually, I inherited them all because Don’s name was later dropped.

As but a single example of this Friedman wrote, “That S. T. Friedman knew all about an RS [Randle/Schmitt] alien tissue sample.”

To this day, I don’t know what that means and I never said anything of the kind. Friedman made this up.

The point here is that nearly everything said by Dolan and Marden in their discussion about Philip Klass can be said about Friedman. Both Klass and Friedman used the same tactics, wrote the same sort of letters, and accused those with whom they disagreed of nefarious ideas and deeds. (Klass, said that we were anti-American for challenging the government and, ironically Friedman accused us, at one point, of being government agents.) Friedman, at his lectures, often pointed out that I was only in it for the money and I as a fiction writer I could create imaginative scenarios.

I suppose that we all should now hold up to close scrutiny Friedman’s claims of MJ-12, a crash on the Plains of San Agustin, and his support of other crash stories. If he would manipulate the data as we’ve seen here, if he would attempt to silence the voices of those who disagreed with him, and if would change testimony of the witnesses to bolster his claims, what else might he have done to promote himself and denigrate others? How valuable is his research given all this?