Roswell and the Dog that Didn't Bark

Here’s an interesting revelation. I was watching the recent Unsolved Mysteries report on the Roswell case and Colonel Richard Weaver said something that caught my attention. He was talking about having reviewed a million documents and files and miles of microfilm during his review of the Roswell case. The implication is that they, meaning he and his team, had made a Herculean effort to find evidence and failed do it. His conclusion, based on his investigation, was the correct conclusion but it wasn’t accurate.

Don Schmitt, Tom Carey and I had done the same thing, and I could name a couple of dozen others who had followed leads, researched specific aspects of the Roswell case and in the end, there was limited documentation mainly in the form of newspaper stories and the testimony of hundreds of people who had first or second-hand observations. In other words, the documentation was limited, the testimonies were called anecdotal, and we all had searched for documentation and other testimony for nearly forty years for it.

And then I had a thought. I had made a comprehensive search for mention of Roswell and documents relating to it in what could be considered the microcosm of Weaver’s world and search, of Project Blue Book. Although it had officially begun as Project Sign in January 1948, its records begin earlier, even with sightings that pre-dated the Kenneth Arnold sighting of June 24, 1947. In fact, the earliest dated case in the Blue Book files is from June 2. When you look at the record of sightings for July 1947, they cover a single-spaced page. The military was investigating what was happening during the summer that preceded the creation of the official investigation in 1948.

When the Army announced, on July 8, 1947, that they had found a flying saucer, it was international news. I will say that nearly every newspaper in the United States covered the story in some form, beginning with the early announcement on the afternoon of July 8 and ending the next day when Brigadier General Roger Ramey announced it was just a weather balloon. Pictures of Ramey, his chief of staff, Colonel Thomas Dubose, and Major Jesse Marcel, holding pieces of the weather balloon, were printed in the newspapers the next day.

BG Roger Ramey and COL Thomas Dubose with
the balloon wreckage that served as a
cover for the real wreckage.

There are stories of crashed UFOs in the Blue Book files in July 1947. The solutions, all legitimate, ranged from advertising gimmicks to small saucers created to fool friends. A report, from Shreveport, Louisiana, even came to the attention of then FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover. That caused us a great deal of aggravation as we tried to reconcile a note written on an FBI document by Hoover with that report. It had nothing to do with the Roswell case. The file for that case, dated July 7, 1947, is quite thick. And no, I believe the military was correct in labeling it a hoax.

The point here is that by July 8, the military was gathering sighting reports and there are 47 cases for the month in what are now the Blue Book files. There are alleged crashes, files that are labeled as “Folders,” because of the thickness of the file, and many in which there is a notation for a report but labeled as “case missing.”

What I noticed is several crash reports, comprehensive investigations, and an apparent real effort to determine what was going on. All this happening with the “high profile” cases that were extensively investigated and not a single file dedicated to the Roswell case. Here was the story that probably generated some of the highest interest around the world and there is no file on it. The only reference I can find in the Blue Book files is the third paragraph of a four-paragraph story that mentions, in passing, that the officers at Roswell had received a “blistering rebuke” for their claim they had a flying disk.

Colonel Weaver had access to a great deal more official information than any of the civilian researchers and said that he found nothing. I say, I looked through the Blue Book files, which I’m sure were reviewed by Weaver’s team, and they found nothing there either. It made me wonder why a great deal of effort was expended investigating many reports from July 1947, but there is no reference to what could be called the most important story from July 1947. A single mention in a newspaper clipping buried in another Blue Book file but nothing that referenced Roswell specifically.

Doesn’t my search, of the Blue Book files, mirror the research done in the 1990s by the Air Force? There should have been a rather thick file on the Roswell case that included not only newspaper clippings, but the pictures of three of the principals in that case. True, the balloon explanation was floated (pun intended) within about three hours of the initial story, but it was a story of international interest. Walter Haut, the Public Information Officer in Roswell at the time, told me that he received telephone calls from around the world.

Walter Haut being interviewed.
Photo by Kevin Randle.

But there is nothing in the files except that one paragraph in a newspaper clipping. I did ask Haut about that blistering rebuke and he told me that it never happened. His words were something to the effect that if he’d been called by the Pentagon and chewed out, he would remember it.

Again, my point is that a search of the Blue Book files, which were dedicated to gathering UFO information, has nothing about Roswell. It was a case filled with military officers which means it was originally reported officially, but there is no file. Why the emphasis on other reports of crashes and other generic sightings but nothing on what was the biggest UFO story for two days in July? Sure, had it been included in Blue Book, it would have been labeled as a balloon, but that isn’t there. Nothing…

Just as Colonel Weaver found with his inside sources, high-level security clearance and his orders that came, virtually, from the Secretary of the Air Force, no documents relating to Roswell, I found nothing in the declassified Blue Book files. It should have been there, but it was not.

One final comment about all this. For those who would argue that the secrecy was to protect Project Mogul, I point to the newspapers, especially the Alamogordo News, on July 10. There was a long article about the balloon project being carried out at the Alamogordo Army Air Field. Pictures showed a Mogul array (and no, they didn’t call it a Mogul array in the article), explained what they were doing and what it all meant. Charles Moore, one of those working on the project told me that he had bought the ladder that was featured in one of the pictures.

Alamogordo News with pictures of a Constant Level Balloon launch, which
is a Project Mogul balloon launch published on July 10, 1947.

This means, of course, that what was happening in Alamogordo was not highly classified. The balloon launches were conducted by the civilians from the University of New York attempting to create what they called a Constant Level Balloon, meaning it would remain at a certain altitude. Although offered as the solution in 1947, it did not explain what had been found. I have already, many times, explained this about the Mogul solution, the one that the Air Force used to solve the mystery of what fell decades after the fact.

I found Colonel Weaver’s comment on the Unsolved Mysteries show quite telling. There should have been specific documentation that lead to the constant level balloons but not back to Project Mogul. The search would have ended with the balloons from Alamogordo. By the mid-1990s, Mogul was no longer a secret, and several UFO researchers were aware of it. We all had been talking about it for years before the Air Force came up with it as the solution for the Roswell case.

Weaver’s comment, about finding nothing is quite telling. The significant fact, as Sherlock Holmes said in the murder case he was investigating, was that the dog didn’t bark. The significance fact here is as Weaver said he found nothing about the Roswell case in all those files both classified and unclassified. This lack of results screams the problem, because there should have been something given the impact of the original news release and widespread interest in the tale. You might say that this is another example of the dog not barking. *

 

*I thought a note of explanation might be necessary for those who haven’t read the Holmes story. There was a murder committed, and Holmes was investigating. All thought it might be a stranger, but Holmes said that the watch dog didn’t bark. It meant that the murder was someone the dog knew, so it didn’t bark.

June Crain - Witness?

 

Over the last few years, June Crain has appeared as one of those who handled the metallic debris that has been dubbed memory metal, and she claimed inside knowledge of the events surrounding the Roswell crash. She also claimed to have information about the alien bodies that had been recovered and their transport to Wright Field. Unfortunately, much of this information about her is inaccurate.

On April 18, 1990, June Crain, or as she signed her name then, June Kaba, wrote to me after I appeared on Unsolved Mysteries. The call center there provided her with my address and she wrote, “I will send you info on the flying saucer men at WPAFB [Wright-Patterson AFB] referred to in ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ on TV.”

She added, “I first want you to send me a letter assuring me you will keep my identity a secret. When I tell you the reason for the secrecy, I think you will understand why no one will tell you about the ‘little green men’ at WPAFB.”

I wrote back to her that I would not reveal any information about her. While I didn’t reveal her name, she did, eventually contact other UFO researchers without invoking the caveat that she remain anonymous. One of them did release her name but I suspect it was because she allowed it. No matter now, she passed away in 1997.

She wrote back and told me the story of hearing about the alien creatures that were taken to Wright-Pat. She wrote:

We at WPAFB-WADC [Wright Air Development Center] at Dayton, Ohio, Wright Field would meet for coffee in one of the lab offices before we went to work and chat. We were all people cleared for Top Secret plus and we would feel free and at ease talking among ourselves. I worked in Parachute lab (later Rocketry).

This particular morning things were really on a buzz. When I got there at 7:45 AM. the scoop was that two little greenish men from a wrecked flying saucer had been flown into the base during the night and were in a freezer locker in one of the hangers (sic) and that Aero Med lab had charge of them for examination. The person who was doing the talking seemed to know what he was talking about.

Time to go to work and everyone still excited over the happening.

Approximately at 9:30 a memo was hand carried and each of us had to read it and sign it. This was the jist (sic) of the memo:

Some irresponsible person has started a false rumor about 2 green men from Flying Saucer. This is nothing but a rumor and has no truth. Anyone repeating this rumor will be liable for dismissal and will be liable for $20,000 fine or 20 years in jail.

This memo was over the signature of Laboratory chief.

Needless to say all talk stopped and I never heard anything about it again.

I have kept this to myself for nearly 40 years but I have always wondered what the real story was.

She said nothing else about this, or the flying saucer crash, but did provide some information about others who have seen UFOs. She mentioned that she had seen them on two occasions. She supplied the basics of those sightings, but frankly, I wasn’t interested in more saucers in the sky. I was interested in the little green men being housed at Wright-Pat.

There were some problems with her story. First was the lack of a date for the “little green men” tale. She seemed to have assumed it was Roswell. Or maybe that was my assumption in the beginning because I knew of no other crash stories that resulted in the recovery of bodies that were reliable.

One of the red flags was her claim that she had a top-secret clearance and that before beginning work, others with such high clearances sat around chatting. The implication was that the shared some of those secrets because they all had the clearances. But it just doesn’t work that way and those of us who have held top secret clearances know it. Along with having the proper clearance, you also need to have a need to know. If something classified as top secret is shared with someone without their need to know, then this is a violation of the regulations.

Later, in an interview conducted by Jim Clarkson, she would tell him more about her high-level clearances. She said, “And I had top secret clearance and later then finally gave me ‘Q’ clearance which is what at that time was the highest clearance that you could have, because I was in very sensitive, doing very sensitive work.”

Clearly, she didn’t know what a “Q” clearance was then, or what it is now. It is not a higher level of a top-secret clearance but what is known as DOE security clearance that is equivalent to a DoD top secret clearance. The “Q” relates to atomic or nuclear related materials. Many of those at the Roswell Army Air Field had “Q” clearances because they worked, or had the potential to work, with atomic weapons. But a low-level secretary who worked at Wright-Patterson in an office that had nothing to do with atomic energy wouldn’t be granted a “Q” clearance. It sounds impressive, but in this case it is untrue.

Clarkson, in his research, could only verify that Crain held a secret clearance. Every officer, with very few exceptions, has a secret clearance. Nearly every top-level NCO will have, at least a secret clearance, and depending on the job, many lower ranking soldiers have secret clearances as well. On the other hand, top secret clearances are a different matter, and there is no evidence that June Crain had such a clearance.

We run into another problem here and that is attempting to learn exactly when that soldier, who she later said was a master sergeant, had appeared in her office. Or rather the problem is what UFO crash she was talking about. Remember she said, “…that two little greenish men from a wrecked flying saucer had been flown into the base during the night…” That statement eliminates Roswell.

How do I know? Because the documentation available shows that she was first employed at Wright-Patterson on July 3, 1942, and according to the reporting of others she had stayed on the job until May 2, 1952. However, she didn’t work there continually for those ten years. After just under a year on the job, on June 30, 1943, she quit to have a baby. This is the first major gap in her employment.

On May 13, 1948, she was again hired at Wright Field, but left on July 21, 1948, after about eight weeks, because of ill-health. And her final employment there was from March 8, 1951 until May 2, 1952, or just a little over a year.

Her total employment at Wright-Patterson AFB was just under three years, spread out over that ten-year period. And, since she wasn’t employed there in July 1947, when, if we have the information right, the alien bodies were brought in, the master sergeant couldn’t have told her that they had just flown them in because she didn’t work there at the time. This is one of the reasons that Don Schmitt and I dropped her as a witness.

There is not a reported UFO crash at the times that she worked at Wright Field or Wright-Patterson AFB. The closest is the alleged Aztec crash in March 1948, but even that is six or eight weeks too early for her.

In discussing the bodies arriving at Wright-Pat, Crain displays a total lack of understanding about the military protocols on aircraft. In an effort to make the master sergeant sound more important, she said, “… but the person that brought them in, he was a master sergeant, and you understand that when a military airplane takes off, there’s always an enlisted man in charge. You know that, don’t you?”

She compounds the error, saying, “So, when an airplane takes off, until the moment that the plane takes off the ground the military personnel, the officer, is in charge of the airplane. But the moment it is off the ground, the enlisted man has charge of the airplane until she lands.”

This is, of course, complete nonsense. In Army aviation, as in other military branches, the officer in charge is the aircraft commander. He or she might not be the senior officer on board, but in all things aboard the aircraft during its operation, the aircraft commander is in charge, not some enlisted soldier. As but a single example of this, I was a warrant officer in Vietnam. I was appointed an aircraft commander and often times, the co-pilot was a higher-ranking officer, probably a first lieutenant or a captain. The aircraft commander was appointed based on his experience in Vietnam and number of hours of flight time and not based on his rank.

Crain’s comments about who was in charge of the aircraft are inaccurate, which is not to say that the load master or the flight engineer, depending on the specific task, might be in charge of getting certain tasks completed while on the ground. However, at no time were either of them in charge. That is the role of the aircraft commander who is always an officer.

In my communications with her, there is nothing to suggest that she had seen any bits of memory metal. She stuck with the tale of hearing about the two little bodies brought into Wright-Patterson. According to her, another soldier showed up sometime later and told her that he had a piece of the spaceship. She said that he told her, “I just came back from New Mexico and I brought it back with me.”

She provided a description of the metal, saying that it was super strong. It was some of the memory metal that others had talked about. The problem here, is the same with the bodies and that’s the timing. There is no way that he could have gotten his hands on any of the metal when she said he had just come back from New Mexico. She simply didn’t work at Wright-Pat at anytime to make this tale plausible.

Finally, she said that she had been a high-level secretary at Wright-Pat and that was why she allegedly had a top-secret security clearance. Documents she supplied to me simply do not bear this out. In a document dated March 16, 1951, during her last employment at the air base, she is rated as a GS-3, which is among the lowest. These were considered entry level positions then and now the GS-3 rating is assigned to an intern or student. While she might have held the secret clearance that Clarkson verified for her, she would not have had the top-secret clearance she claimed.

June Crain (Cubbage) pay sheet showing her employment grade.

There is enough wrong with what she said, what the documentation proved, and the timing of the various events, that she is eliminated as a witness. She had an interest in UFOs, and contrary to what Clarkson said, she did have books about UFOs. I know because I sent her some in the early 1990s.

This is a chapter in our search for information and evidence that we can now ignore. I would suggest that her tales be relegated to a footnote, but we now have so many of those such as Gerald Anderson, Glenn Dennis and Frank Kaufmann, that we don’t need another one cluttering up the landscape.

Darwin Rasmussen and the Roswell Bodies

In keeping with my series on Chasing Footnotes, I have found a subtopic that is almost as interesting (well, it is to me) which is finding original sources (which, of course, is sort of the same thing). Not all that long ago I ran across an analysis of the Roswell case in which it was claimed that Captain Darwin Rasmussen (later Colonel) had assisted Major Jesse Marcel in recovering the alien bodies. I have never heard anything like that and it puzzled me because, as far as I knew, only Stan Friedman and I had interviewed Rasmussen’s cousin, Elaine Vegh.

Now that you all are thoroughly confused, let me explain. Back in 1990, I learned of Elaine Vegh whose claim to fame in this arena was that her first cousin, Darwin Rasmussen, had been a career Air Force officer who was stationed in Roswell in 1947. According to her, she had been standing near her father when Rasmussen reportedly said, “…never doubt that there is a cover up here. We did pick up bodies and the Air Force does have them.”

She also said, “He had seen what was picked up. He had seen the craft.”

First, before the skeptics all go nuts, let me point out that this is a second-hand story of an overheard conversation that had taken place at least a decade and a half prior to that. As evidence of anything, it isn’t worth very much. Elaine Vegh was probably relating the story as best she could remember, but see didn’t see anything herself and her memory of this is somewhat clouded… I’ll get back to this.

That was really all she said to me. Her cousin had been part of a retrieval team; he had seen bodies and the wrecked craft. She had nothing in the way of evidence, there are or were no family letters or documents, and according to Vegh, Rasmussen said, “I was there… but we were told to forget what we saw…”

Well, Rasmussen’s picture is not in the Yearbook, but that doesn’t matter. I have a copy of the Roswell base telephone directory published in August 1947, and his name is in there. That puts him in Roswell at the right time. I also found his name associated with a 509^th flight crew.

Second, this little tale has not been used very often. Friedman seems to have ignored it, and given everything, I’m not overly surprised. It is second hand without any corroboration. Rasmussen died in 1975 and Vegh’s father died in 1983. No one else heard the conversation and there wasn’t much in the way of detail.

Yes, I used it in UFO Crash in Roswell and Tom Carey and Don Schmitt used it in Witness to Roswell, interestingly without providing credit for the interview. Their footnote just mentioned an interview in 1990 (March 1, 1990 to be precise) but failed to mention that I conducted it, taped it, and supplied a copy to Don. Anyone reading their book might conclude they had conducted the interview.

There was a reference to Rasmussen and what he had seen at:

http://www.truthenginebook.com/Ros1b.html

In this case, it was suggested that Rasmussen had seen four bodies and Vegh did say that he, Rasmussen "... had first hand knowledge of four beings and their craft..." Here Rasmussen is described as the Operations Officer for the 715^th Bomb Squadron which was part of the 509^th. The referenced sources here are both UFO Crash at Roswell and Witness to Roswell. In Witness to Roswell he is described as a flight operations officer and in UFO Crash at Roswell as an Operations Officer (and unfortunately the organization is misidentified as the 718^th). I have since located some records that showed he was assigned to an aircrew as a radar officer for Operation Crossroads. That information, which does not relate to Roswell, can be seen here:

http://www.atomicvetkin.com/hotplanes.htm

Another reference found retold the story, clearly from UFO Crash at Roswell, but the text does identify the source, and it comes back to me. It adds nothing to it until that recent note that injected Jesse Marcel into it by someone else.

I can find nothing to explain where the idea came that Rasmussen had mentioned Marcel. Tracing the tale to the source, which is probably me given that Friedman didn’t use it, I know that Vegh did not say that to me. The conclusion that I draw is that someone somewhere just assumed that Marcel would have been involved and injected him into a tale in which his name had not surfaced. In Witness to Roswell Carey and Schmitt argue that Marcel had to have seen the bodies so it is not a large step to Marcel and Rasmussen being together at some point. This, I believe, is an assumption made by them but is not based on any testimony.

And finally let’s talk about that clouded memory. Vegh had said that she had overheard the story when she was 10 or 12. In 1990, and I’m sure she would be annoyed for me saying this, she was 62. She also said that she had graduated from high school in 1945… which means that, if she had the timing right, this had nothing to do with Roswell…

That’s a point she figured out later as we discussed this. I mentioned that the crash was in 1947 (is that such a big secret that I should have kept it to myself… and oh, she had seen the Unsolved Mysteries broadcast before we spoke so I wasn’t giving away anything and we had talked about the date throughout the interview) she said, “I graduated high school in 1945 so I must have been little older.”

So, we see that her original memory was of her overhearing this when she was younger was inaccurate, and I’m not sure that’s the real problem here. Misremembering her age seems fairly trivial in the overall scheme of things. The real problem is the lack of corroboration for the story. True, her cousin was in Roswell at the right time, and since he died in 1975, this would have been before all the Roswell information came out (she didn’t mention it until 1990 remember) but there is just nothing here we can prove. It is a story with almost no real foundation, told by a sincere woman who clearly believes it, but it is also told by a woman who did not accurately remember her age at the time. This tale is one of those little bits of trivia that seem to dot the Roswell landscape.

June Kaba and Roswell

I see that June Kaba’s tale is making the rounds again and although I hate to mention it because it will probably result in more hate email; I find her story to be unbelievable. She seemed to me to be a very nice woman who might have been lonely in her old age but the stories she told simply do not hang together and her observations of military life and organization are in error.

June Kaba at a wedding celebration in Ohio. She has her back
to the camera on the right.

I first learned of her when she contacted me after the Unsolved Mysteries broadcast about Roswell in 1989. Her story was that she, along with her pals met for coffee every morning before they had to be at work at 8:00. She wrote, “The scoop was that two little greenish men (bodies) from a wrecked flying saucer had been flown into the base during the night and were in a freezer locker in one of the hangers [sic] and that Aero Med lad had charge of them for examination.”

According to what she told James Clarkson on June 27, 1997, “It [the flight] came from New Mexico. He [the airman relating the tale] said what I brought in this morning… He said that he brought two little men in… He called them little green men. He described them as greenish-blue and they were four feet tall and they were dead.”

She said that it was an airman who had told her the tale and that he “seemed to know what he was talking about…” Later she would describe him as a master sergeant who might have been the crew chief on the aircraft.

Less than two hours later there was a memo “hand carried” to the office and each of those there were required to read it and then sign it. For the most part it was a standard security agreement that outlined the penalty for giving those who had no clearances information that was considered classified. According to Kaba, “This was the jist [sic] of the memo:

Some irresponsible person has started a false rumor about 2 green men from [a] flying saucer. This is nothing but a rumor and has no truth. Anyone repeating this rumor will be liable for dismissal and will be liable for $20,000 fine or 20 years in jail.

According to Kaba, this memo was “over the signature of the Laboratory chief.” Later she would suggest that the order came from a higher authority than the laboratory chief.

Of course this makes no sense. If it is a rumor then no law would be violated by repeating it. The memo does nothing other than reinforce the validity of what the airman said. The best course of action for those in charge, if they were worried about anyone repeating the “rumor,” was to caution them verbally. Why put something like that in writing where it might suddenly appear in the newspaper? Or that someone might find while searching through correspondence some years later? It would be of no value in a trial because to try someone for violating the order, it would have to be produced and that gives out the information about the bodies and the craft.

Kaba’s story was originally interesting to me because here was a witness who had been at Wright Field and offered us some testimony about the bodies arriving there. True, she saw nothing herself, but the circumstances seemed interesting and I wanted to follow up on it. Kaba then sent me several documents proving that she had worked there (or more accurately at Patterson Field and later at Wright-Patterson AFB) and had a security clearance. No evidence was located suggesting that she held anything higher than a secret clearance though she claimed top secret and a “Q” clearance, (according to Clarkson’s interview) which seemed to be related to the Department of Energy. There seems to be nothing in her background that would require a DOE “Q” clearance.

Originally, then, this tale seems related to Roswell, but the documentation doesn’t support that. It shows that she didn’t work there in July 1947. Her work record was somewhat spotty. She worked at Patterson Field from July 3, 1942 until June 30, 1943, when she quite to have a baby. Next she worked there from May 13, 1948 to July 21, 1948 when she left for health reasons. Her final work was from March 8, 1951 to May 2, 1952 when she and her husband moved away from the Dayton, Ohio, area. This removed her tale from that of Roswell because she had made it clear that the aircraft had landed the night before. I supposed if you wanted, you could suggest that this had something to do with the Aztec UFO crash, if you believe that tale.

In fact, in the attempts to validate some of Kaba’s information, researchers have relied on the MJ-12 parade of documents. The suggestion is that the nonsensical El Indio UFO crash of December 1950 might be one of the three that she meant when she said she knew of three UFO crashes. Unfortunately (and this we can’t blame on her because it was speculation by others), it is clear that the El Indio crash was invented by Robert Willingham in 1968. It was not one of the three.

For some reason she was not asked what the three crashes were. Once I learned that she had not been employed at Patterson Field during July 1947, I put the case on the back burner. She hadn’t mentioned to me that she knew of three crashes, only that she had been in Dayton when the airman talked of the bodies arriving the night before. When it was clear that Roswell couldn’t have been that crash, and in fact, her dates of employment didn’t lead to any specific case, I wasn’t sure if there was any significance to her tale.

There was one other fact, which now that it no longer matters to her, I can mention. She wrote to me on March 31, 1991, “Although I am classed as legally blind, my vision is peculiar in that I have so called tunnel vision. I suffered brain damage as a result of loss of blood.”

This then, seems to be the tale told by a lonely woman. It seems to be a confabulation rather than a blatant lie. It is clear from my correspondence with her that she did have knowledge of UFOs and claimed to have seen three herself. Given all of this, I had no reason to pursue the investigation. It seemed to me that it was a dead end and nothing I have learned since has suggested anything else.

Jesse Marcel Has Died

Just minutes ago I received some very sad news. Jesse Marcel, Jr. died of a heart attack on August 24. He was alone, at home, apparently reading a UFO book when he died.

I have known Jesse for more than a quarter century. I first met him while we both

Jesse Marcel in 1994.

were in Roswell to film a segment for the old Unsolved Mysteries that aired on NBC. We had gone out to dinner with a number of those in town for the program and since we shared a military background, including that of Army Aviation, we connected immediately. As medical doctor, he was trained as a flight surgeon and I, of course, had been a helicopter pilot.

From that point I met him quite a few times as we both explored the Roswell UFO crash case. He, as a young man, boy really, of eleven was exposed to metallic debris that his father had brought home late that July night. He told the story to all who would listen with little in the way of variation.

I learned of the special bond he’d had with his father. He told me that that one day, he had asked his father what the atomic bomb looked like and Jesse, Sr. had drawn a picture of “Fat Man.” He then shredded it and burned the pieces. Although reluctant to share they story outside a small circle of friends, he did mention it at the Citizen Hearing in Washington this last May.

Over the years, I had the opportunity to interact with Jesse and never had reason to doubt his sincerity. He truly believed that he had handled material made on

Jesse with I-beam replica.

another planet and might have the first person in modern history to have seen writing created on another world. He had small, replica I-beams made with those symbols on it, and while it is just a replica, it is a very interesting one.

But what I think of mostly, these days is his military service. He had retired from the Montana National Guard as a colonel but was recalled to active duty for service in Iraq. Before he deployed, he asked me if he should take a personal computer with him and I said it had been the best investment I had made, if only for the DVD player in it.

His service there seems to have affected him more deeply than did mine. He spent a year there treating those who needed his help, but came back suffering from PTSD. The deployment cost him his medical practice because he could no longer trust his hands. Loud, sudden noises caused him to jump. He was more on edge, nervous, than he had been before going to Iraq. It was something that the government failed to recognize in the way they should have. He was a patriot who served without complaint, did what was asked of him and made the sacrifices he had to make.

I last saw Jesse in Washington, D.C. in May. He was there with several family

Jesse with daughter Denise.

members and offered his story to the former representatives and senators. They all seemed captivated by what he said, probably because he was one of the few first-hand witnesses to some of the Roswell events present. While many of us could talk of what we had been told by witnesses over the years, Jesse could talk about what he had seen and done personally in July 1947. He handled the debris.

He did call the International UFO Museum in Roswell this year telling them that this would probably be the last year he could attend. His health, while seeming not all that bad, did limit what he could do and how far he could travel. I suspect that he thought his health would deteriorate making a trip to Roswell extremely difficult if not impossible in the near future.

Jesse was a friend and a fellow warrior. I always believed that he understood more about my service in foreign lands because he shared those experiences. We connected on a level that others could not because of that military experience. Though we were never in the war zones at the same time, we did see many of the same places under similar circumstances. He served when he was needed, helped those who needed it, and contributed to our knowledge. I know that I will miss him, though not as much as his family

Roswell Transparency

We have always thought of the new investigation as transparent… oh, I have refused to answer Lance’s questions about the Nuns and how we obtained that information, but that is only because Lance seemed to believe I somehow owed him an explanation. Had he not been so nasty about it, I would have given him what he wanted long ago, but I’m not going to be manipulated in such a transparent way. He’ll just have to wait to learn what I know about this and how the information was originally obtained… and from whom we got it.

 

That said, I was reviewing the video interview of Marian Strickland on Friday as I looked for some information about the “strange thunderclap” during that July 1947 storm. I knew that she had said something about it and wanted to quote her exactly. In that interview, which was conducted by Don Schmitt, Don Berliner and me at Strickland’s home in Roswell, she said (about something else), “Mack thought it was a weather balloon or some sort of experiment. He was glad to do the government a favor to bring them the pieces.”

(I will note here that this interview, along with several others has been posted to YouTube by someone else. This interview had been arranged by me, recorded on my equipment, with questions by Schmitt and Berliner as well as me. Since this material is copyrighted, I’m tempted to have it taken down because whoever posted it had no right to do so… On the other hand, I think everyone should have access to the interviews so that they can see that we have quoted from them accurately and we don’t get into these meaningless little fights about the source and hints of some kind of conspiracy to hide information.)

This one sentence seems to suggest that Brazel knew it was a balloon and if you had a period after he said, “…balloon,” then you’d have a very good case for it. But she adds “or some sort of experiment.” That suggests he didn’t really know what he had found, and other information, from those who actually handled the debris could be cited to eliminate the balloon answer.

I could also mention a story appeared in the Roswell Daily Record on July 9 where he first seemed to describe balloon-borne debris but then takes it back when he said that he had found other weather observation devices and this didn’t resemble them.

In other words, a single sentence in a single interview, said by a woman talking about this in 1991, some 44 years later, doesn’t really give us much. She, as one of those who had been tangentially involved in 1947, meaning she didn’t really see anything, and according to her description, she wasn’t part of the discussion around her kitchen table in the days that followed Brazel’s return to the ranch.

She said, “They were around my table… Mack and I don’t know whether Bill Brazel was there. I don’t remember that. Mack and my kids and Lyman. I was busy carrying the coffee pot. I really heard my sketches [snatches?] of the conversation.”

So, she wasn’t privy to the entire conversation, and I suspect the weather balloon was something that came about later, after the newspaper articles, after The Roswell Incident, after Unsolved Mysteries, and after a host of other discussions about Brazel and what he might have found. Or, in other words, as our skeptical friends so often remind us, these sorts of memories are the result of other influences.

Karl Pflock (whose book it seems some of the skeptics don’t believe I have read… I actually have an autographed copy) only mentioned Strickland twice and in neither case, he didn’t mention that one line. He had access to the tape because Don Berliner had been with me and I had given a copy of the tape to the Fund for UFO Research and Pflock was a member of the FUND. He even mentioned the tape in a footnote, suggesting that the interview was available on the FUND’s Recollections of Roswell. Pflock ignored this little nugget that would have furthered his case.

This is, of course, the sort of thing that we’ve been looking for because it might help us understand what was going on in 1947. But it also has to be put into context because something taken out of context can be twisted around so that it means nearly something else… and if you don’t believe that, you don’t live in a state that is under constant bombardment with political ads.