Another Roswell Witness - Sort Of

Nearly thirty years ago John Keel, one of those self-styled UFO researchers that Ken Macdonald complained about in his June 2, 2018 AOL Newsribol article about Roswell, said that by the turn of the century (meaning in 2000), there would be hundreds of new witnesses clamoring for their place in the Roswell mythology. Turns out he was right (not about the mythology but about the new witnesses). People have been all over the place claiming to know something special or someone special or something important about the Roswell case.

Macdonald writes about the Roswell story as if this is something new but draws his information from the Roswell Daily Record article published in 1947. He even includes the irrelevant tale of Dan Wilmot, a Roswell resident who saw something on July 2, 1947. That Wilmot made the report about a craft in the sky doesn’t necessarily mean that what he saw was what was responsible for the debris found by W.W. “Mack” Brazel in early July 1947.

What annoyed me first here was this idea that the alien spacecraft was spying on our testing of nuclear weapons, according to what Macdonald wrote. Of course, those of us who can think beyond the end of a sentence realize the flaw in this theory. The first atomic explosion took place in July 1945, with two more in Japan in August 1945… So, if it was atomic explosions that grabbed the aliens’ attention, wouldn’t they have gone to Japan rather than New Mexico? There had been more explosions there.

And since we know the speed of light, and even if we grant the alien ability to spot these brief flashes of very bright light on the Earth’s surface, from where do the aliens originate? Even granting them Faster-than-Light travel, the light from those detonations had only been traveling for two years. Do the aliens have an outpost in our Solar System? Maybe on that ninth planet out in the Kuiper Belt somewhere that some astronomers claim is there?

But what really annoys me is that we have another, new but unidentified, witness to the bodies from the Roswell crash. Oh, he

Nope. Not the real creature, just a model
made for the ShowTime Movie, Roswell.

didn’t see them in New Mexico, but in Ohio, sort of like Philip Corso didn’t see them in New Mexico but in Kansas.

According to this story (and please don’t tell it’s been around for a couple of years because I know that) Raymond Szymanski, who says he worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as an “engineer and high-level researcher,” for 39 years, is the man behind this tale. He said that he was privy to some of the biggest and darkest secrets floating around the base which included the cover up of the Roswell crash.

He, himself, saw underground tunnels and chambers under the base, and this was where the material, and by material, I mean the craft and bodies recovered at Roswell, were stored. Now, he didn’t see the Roswell stuff, only these secret tunnels and chambers and given the history of Wright-Pat, and the paranoia of the Cold War, wouldn’t underground shelters and tunnels be something you’d expect? A purpose other than hiding alien bodies I mean, but I digress.

Szymanski tells of a friend, Al, who spilled the beans to him. Szymanski, according to what he has said, was a “young co-op student barely in his first week” and was let in on the secret… Security

Obviously, the gate to Wright-
Patterson AFB.

clearances take a while to complete, so this is an amazing breach of military etiquette, but I’ll ignore that because it really doesn’t make a lot of difference here.

He talked of a small group of 10,000 people that he had now joined. I don’t know if all 10,000 were at Wright-Pat or scattered among research facilities around the country… anyway, that’s a lot of people in on the secret and not exactly a small group.

But here’s the deal with this tale. We don’t know who Al is. We just have the first name and a suggestion that he was an important man or scientist. And we have Szymanski’s claim that “everyone” he talked to about this over the years didn’t deny the rumors… No one suggested he was out of his mind, but according to him, he has no smoking gun.

So, here we are, with another man claiming some sort of inside knowledge about the Roswell crash but unlike so many others, he admits that he hasn’t seen the bodies or the craft, only been told about it by people he finds to be reliable. But how many times have we been down that road only to learn that the sources for the information are not credible? I’m not even going to bother naming the names because those who visit here on a regular basis, or who have read Roswell in the 21^st Century, know how many have fallen to increased scrutiny.

No, right now I’m not buying this and I don’t really know why AOL Newsribol thought it necessary to dredge up this tale again. It is clear that the story was based on newspaper articles and press releases and that the writer did very little if anything to verify the information. That’s left, I guess, to we self-styled UFO researchers. Too bad so much is ignored by self-styled investigative journalists.

General Exon and Disappearing Airplanes

Since I’m off on this General Exon rant, I thought I’d add another level to it. As I went back over the material that I had gathered in all forms which are the telephone interviews, emails and letters, and a personal meeting at Wright-

Arthur Exon

Patterson Air Force Base, I came across some information that hadn’t really registered at the time (though I did provide Philip Klass with a complete transcript of the interview, so he missed it too). It does, however, affect the overall importance of the information that he provided about the Roswell UFO crash.

First, a bit of a back story here. In my conversations with him, he mentioned that he was going to be at Wright-Pat for a golf tournament. Since Ohio is a lot closer to my home than California, I arranged to meet him there. He had suggested a time and I was at the front gate early enough that I wouldn’t miss him. The security police were checking IDs and asking for those of us who wished to enter the base to have some sort of a sponsor. I called Exon (in these pre-cell phone days), but there was no answer in the VOQ (Visiting Officer’s Quarters). Though I hadn’t wanted to do it I finally flashed my military ID, which, of course, negated the problem. Since I had an Air Force ID card (at the time I was still serving with the Air Force), they had no problem with me entering the base unescorted, and issued the temporary pass for me and my vehicle.

I drove to the VOQ, knocked on the door, but there was no answer. We’d had an appointment, but it seemed he was not interested in keeping it. As I turned to leave, he stepped into the hall, returning to his quarters. Trapped, so to speak, he had no choice but to go to lunch as we had planned. I always wondered why, after agreeing to meet me, he worked so hard to dodge me. He hadn’t counted on me having a military ID so that I could enter the base unescorted.

I’m not sure of the relevance of this little anecdote, but relate it anyway. I wondered if he had been “talked” to by some of his pals at a higher level, or if there had been an official visit of some sort that cautioned him about talking with us about UFOs and Roswell. That doesn’t prove that what he said was the whole truth, only that someone might not have appreciated his candor in talking with me and some of those others.

Now, on to the real point here. In my first conversation with him, back on May 19, 1990, he told me about four aircraft that had disappeared as they attempted to intercept a UFO. Given that, I had asked, “All four of airplanes disappeared?”

He said, “Yeah. And they don’t know what happened. If they went out oversees or out over the water which was not likely.”

“They were scrambled out of Kentucky?”

“Kentucky or Tennessee,” he said. “There were four of them that were scrambled. They were all lost.”

I asked, “Nobody ever found any wreckage or have any clues as to what happened to them?”

“That’s right. Not that I know of. That’s all been investigated before and it’s a matter of record and it’s kind of a mysterious thing.”

Well, it’s not a matter of any record that I can find. In all my searching, I never came across a story of four aircraft, scrambled to identify an intruder, that disappeared in the way he described. Exon said that it had happened in the mid-1950s, when he was assigned to the Pentagon, so he thought that was where the story originated.

My theory on this is that Exon was talking about Mantell. I say this because four aircraft were involved in the intercept and that it took place in Kentucky. Other than that, there isn’t much of a match. None of the planes disappeared and only Mantell was lost. Although we don’t know exactly what happened, there is a good theory about that.

I suppose an alternative theory is that this had something to do with the Flatwoods UFO case from September 1952, but there is no good documentation about aircraft disappearing in the big fur ball (fighter pilot talk for the aerial dogfight) that allegedly took place).

At any rate, I have found nothing that truly fits in with what Exon said. I think these were fragmented memories put together as people asked him questions about UFOs and what he knew about them. Bits of things that he overheard and put together but were unrelated. Aircraft scrambled to intercept UFOs, aircraft in Kentucky crashing while chasing UFOs, and aircraft disappearing over water (think Flight 19 and the Bermuda Triangle).

While this doesn’t overly affect what he said about other aspects of the UFO phenomena, we do have the notes that suggest his discussion of the UFO investigative teams which was technically true is not completely accurate. This is the problem when we begin to access memories that are decades old. Sometimes they are accurate, sometimes they are partially true, and sometimes they are cobbled together from fragments that might not be connected. It’s why documentation from the era is so important. Without that, we end up with some truly interesting tales that might not be completely grounded in reality.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Former Blue Book Officer, Carmon Marano

Carmon Marano

This week I had the opportunity of interview former Air Force officer Carmon Marano who had been on the staff of Project Blue Book. How do I know? First, Ben Moss sent me a picture that showed the Blue Book Staff and he is the lieutenant standing, more or less, behind Hector Quintanilla. Second, in reviewing the UFO sightings from Minot Air Force Base in 1968 I found a number of memos for the record that he had written. Finally, of course, he said exactly that and unlike so many others who have said they were part of Blue Book, we can actually prove it with him. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyz0ZAvhv7g

This provided us with the opportunity to learn a little about the internal workings of Blue Book at the end of its existence. The University of Colorado study, known as the Condon Committee that was going on at the time, seemed to have sucked some of the life out of Blue Book. What I found interesting was his comment, when asked about how they acquired their cases, said that most of them came from around Wright-Patterson Air Force, which is Dayton, Ohio, and from the surrounding two or three states. At the end they weren’t getting many reports from other areas and a quick survey of the master index from Project Blue Book confirmed this. A large number of the cases were from Ohio. Sure, there were cases from other parts of the country and the world, but most of them came from

The Project Blue Book Staff

Ohio. This was something I hadn’t noticed.

I also asked about some of the cases that were unidentified. He seemed to suggest that the majority of the cases they received had mundane explanations. He did mention one from around the Miami area that involved a couple of ministers in a private plane. I understood that he was talking about something that happened nearly fifty years ago, but this simulated my curiosity. I thought it would be easy to find, so I started looking through the Blue Book master index but then noticed, in 1968, there was a gap. Somehow the pages from the end of August through November were missing.

In Project Blue Book – Exposed, I published a long list of all the unidentified cases. It took almost a whole minute to find this particular sighting. Although that contained just the bare bones of the report it was more than enough for me to find the details in the Blue Book files. According to the project card:

A light doing acrobatics near Ocala [Florida] for 15 minutes [September 15, 1968] but did not gain on it. Light rose and quickly disappeared among stars. Almost immediately a second but white light was seen under the haze above Ocala. This rapidly came toward them on collision course and pilots thought it was a sidewinder [missile]. Light made a sharp 90 [degree] turn and then disappeared. Third part of observation came when they approached Miami. Palm Beach Center informed them their radar had object following them, asked them to make a 360 [degree] turn. Pilot thought he identified light but was not certain. The most significant part of observation was the “sidewinder collision” part. Pilots would probably not have reported total incident had it not been for the seeming near collision with light.

The project file contains a couple of transcripts, both of them of Dr. Allen Hynek interviewing Air Force officers who interviewed the pilots. They do note that the lights were in sight for quite a while, about fifteen minutes, and that they did perform various maneuvers.  There is some discussion about the radar sighting as well. The one thing I did notice was that there were passengers in the plane but they had the cabin lights on and were reading so they didn’t see anything.

So we learned something about the internal workings of Blue Book, were treated to some discussion of various cases, and found out how all those files came into the hands of Rob Mercer of the Miami Valley UFO Society. Rob will be on the show on November 16.

Next week: John Shirley

Topic: UFOs and skepticism.

Korffed Again

I haven’t wanted to turn this blog into a way to reply to others who disagree with me. I have attempted to be restrained in what I said about other researchers, especially those with whom I disagree. But Kal Korff just keeps sniping from the bushes, making allegations that are simply not accurate, and believing that somehow he will eventually be vindicated.

There are those who have advised me to ignore his comments and frankly, I’m inclined to agree with them. Why supply any sort of credibility to him by responding?

Good question.

Simply put, sometimes you just have to defend yourself. And sometimes its just fun.

But, before I get off on that, let me ask a simple question or two. Kal Korff claims to be a captain in an Israeli organization that he now describes as a "‘meta-organization’ so there won’t be some fancy building that can be targeted." He says that you can’t "Google" it because the English version of the name isn’t quite accurate and you need the Hebrew name. So, why not supply that as some have requested? The only things you can learn about this secret organization that Korff insists on naming only in the loose English translation takes you back to Korff driven documents. If another researcher attempted to pull off something like this, Korff would be all over him.

On the X-Zone radio show, Korff provided a little more information, saying that S3 was a civilian organization. So why the military rank structure? And if it is Israeli, then why is Korff wearing American captain bars (seen above at the left) rather than the Israeli insignia for the rank of Seren (seen at the left... the Israeli name for captain) in the picture he produced to "prove" that he was really a captain (seen below at the left... yeah it's difficult to see, but those sure look like American captain bars to me)?

But, once again, I digress. Korff seems to be obsessed with this idea of an independent audit of our respective works to find out who made the most mistakes. Or rather, he is going to audit my work because he believes his is so well done that there are no errors in it. Well, I know of one researcher, Greg Sandow, who did look at one aspect of this controversy and who did produce a review of the claims each of us made in our respective books.

But who really cares about such an audit? Isn’t that the job of the reader? Can’t he or she look at the information contained in each book and decide whose more closely follows the truth and who supplies the most credible explanation for the crash at Roswell?

As just a single example, I have a letter that Greg Sandow posted on UFO UpDates a number of years ago. Sandow looked at how Korff treated the testimony of the late Brigadier General Arthur Exon and provided an interesting commentary about Korff’s book and his opinions on about Exon. In response to some of the Korff nonsense, Sandow wrote:

Now a look at Kal's comments on General Arthur Exon. Remember my disclaimers -that I'm not commenting on the nature of the Roswell crash, or on the overall worth of Kal's book. I won't be drawn into arguments about those subjects. I'm only commenting on three passages in the book...

What does Kal say? Something really sharp: "There is no excuse for how Exon's 'testimony' is misrepresented in the Randle-Schmitt book. It is blatant fiction on the part of the authors...Randle and Schmitt were deceptive in their presentation of both Exon's recollections and his supposed 'involvement' in the Roswell affair."

So what's that about? The indictment, as it turns out, rests on one lone accusation, that Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt presented Exon's remarks as if he were relating first-hand testimony, when actually he was only reporting things he'd heard from others. This, in some ways, is a remarkably trivial charge. Why do I say that? Well, suppose that it's true. Then we can shout "gotcha" to Randle and Schmitt, and we'll be careful to check anything either of them says in the future.

But then what did Exon say even as a second-hand witness? As Kal himself tells us (see p. 93 of his Roswell book), Exon talks about Roswell debris being flown to Wright-Patterson. "The boys who tested it," Exon says, "said it was very unusual....It had them pretty puzzled." First-hand, second-hand....either way we've got a banner headline, even if Exon never said one word beyond what Kal quotes. An Air Force general, even if he's only giving his general impression of what he's heard about Roswell, says the same things about the Roswell debris as some of the controversial first-hand witnesses do! If you put any weight on Exon's impressions, the Mogul theory [the glorified weather balloon explanation offered by the Air Force in 1994] takes a big hit. Isn't that more important, in the overall scheme of things, than any question about Randle and Schmitt? And, as we'll see, Exon said much more than that.

But then is Kal right to say Randle and Schmitt distorted Exon's remarks? I don't think so, for three reasons.

(1) I've heard Kevin's first interview with Exon on tape, and read Kevin's scrupulously accurate transcript. I thought Exon said exactly what he's quoted as saying in Kevin's book.

(2) Even the passage Kal quotes doesn't support his view. Here's how Kal presents it: "To read the Randle-Schmitt book, it appears that Exon corroborates the Roswell UFO recovery by providing impressive-sounding testimony that appears to be firsthand. 'We heard the material was coming to Wright Field....It was brought into our material evaluation labs. I don't know how it arrived but the boys who tested it said it was very unusual.' Exon described the material: '[Some of it] could be easily ripped or changed....there were other parts of it that were very thin but awfully strong and couldn't be dented with very heavy hammers....It was flexible to a degree,' and, according to Exon, 'some of it was flimsy and was tougher than hell and almost like foil but strong. It had them pretty puzzled.'"

"To almost anyone reading this," Kal writes, "it would appear that...[Exon] was a firsthand source who was present and personally saw what he describes." But I don't see it that way at all. Consider these statements: "We heard the material was coming....I don't know how it arrived, but the boys who tested it said...It had them pretty puzzled." Isn't it clear that Exon isn't speaking of first hand knowledge? Who wouldn't understand that Exon didn't handle this debris himself?

A page later in the Randle-Schmitt book comes another Exon quote, which Kal doesn't reprint: "The metal and material was unknown to anyone I talked to. Whatever they found, I never heard what the results were. A couple of guys thought it might be Russian but the overall consensus was that the pieces were from space."

Again, it's perfectly clear that Exon didn't handle or analyze the material himself, and even that his knowledge was limited. But he appears to think he'd spoken to people who knew at least something about what the analysis had shown. How sure was he of this knowledge? Let me quote a few suggestive passages. First, an Exon quote from Randle's book: "I know [my emphasis] that...[General Ramey] along with the people out at Roswell decided to change the story while they got their act together and got the information into the Pentagon." (UFO Crash at Roswell, paperback, p. 111.) Another Exon quote from Randle: "I just know [again my emphasis] there was a top intelligence echelon represented and the President's office was represented and the Secretary of Defense's office was represented..." (He's talking about the secret UFO
committee that he's sure existed; UFO Crash, p. 232.)

And here's something Exon said on the tape, which wasn't quoted in Randle's book. Kevin asks, referring to stories we've all heard about alien corpses at Wright-Patterson: "You've heard the rumors about the little bodies, haven't you?" "Yes, I have," answers Exon. "In fact, I know people that were involved in photographing some of the residue from the New Mexico affair near Roswell." [My emphasis.] Here's something else, about how Exon knows that there were alien bodies from Roswell at Wright-Patterson: "People I have known who were involved with that" told him so. [Sandow’s emphasis.]

Look back at the quote Kal thinks is so damning: 'We heard the material was coming to Wright Field....It was brought into our material evaluation labs. I don't know how it arrived but the boys who tested it said it was very unusual.' Exon described the material: '[Some of it] could be easily ripped or changed....there were other parts of it that were very thin but awfully strong and couldn't be dented with very heavy hammers....It was flexible to a degree,' and, according to Exon, 'some of it was flimsy and was tougher than hell and almost like foil but strong. It had them pretty puzzled.'"

Given the full context of Exon's remarks...and bearing in mind everything I've quoted from Kevin's interview with him....isn't it clear (a) that Exon certainly thought he knew quite a bit (even if not first hand) about the subjects he was quoted on, that (b) he says quite clearly that he'd talked to people who were involved first-hand, and (c) that therefore the passage Kal quotes from Kevin's book is really quite reasonable in both its tone and content? I don't think it misrepresents Exon at all. (Here's another quote from Exon, from the tape: "Most of the people you're talking to are a little bit like me. Close enough to know that there was something happening. They had no direct responsibility for any of it." Anyone who reads the complete sections on Exon from Randle's books will, I think, form exactly that impression.)

This is by no means everything that Sandow said about Korff’s reporting on Exon but does address the issue. Now, to be fair, I say once again, that I know Greg, he has visited my house, and I gave him access to everything I had on the Roswell case, letting him pick and chose what he wanted to see. He was able to review all of the Exon testimony and there is other later testimony that others have gathered about what Exon said.

So, here we are, at the end of the day, reviewing the same material that was reviewed ten years ago. It shows that an independent researcher, who has no dog in this hunt, reviewed part of Korff’s work on Roswell and part of mine. He concluded that my reporting of the Exon testimony was accurate and Korff’s conclusions were not driven by the facts. The question then becomes, "Who is misrepresenting the data?" Or an even more critical question, "Did Korff ever interview Exon, or was he working from my notes and letters from the general?"

But the real point of all this is that Korff slings allegations, threatens all sorts of dire consequences, but provides no evidence to make his case. I say, let the reader take a look at all the Roswell works and decide who is closer to the truth... And, I predict that it won’t be Korff.