The Latest From ARRO: More of the Same

 

There are many of us old-timers in the UFO field who have been around for more decades that we care to admit and who can see the many flaws in the latest, and probably last ARRO report, given there is a new office and new investigation into UAP. We know the flaws in that assessment and the repeated lies that lace it. We have the documentation, the interviews, and the evidence to support that claim.

Before I get into the many flaws, let me point out one area that is positive. As I was working on The Government UFO Files, I mentioned an unofficial investigation that began in December 1946. This was based on the work of Keith Chester, Wendy Connors, Michael Hall, and Michael Swords. I had noticed that each time the US government was involved in investigations of mysterious objects beginning with the World War II Foo Fighters, then the Scandinavian Ghost Rockets and finally with some strange sightings by American service members, one name came up. Colonel Howard McCoy.

According to Connors and Hall, McCoy had been given an order by General Nathan Twining to set up an unofficial project to study these reports of strange objects. Most of the information they had, and that I had, was not completely documented. Connors and Hall believed that most of the files of this early project were buried under one of the golf courses at Wright-Patterson AFB. General Arthur Exon, who had been the base commander there in the 1960s, almost confirmed this to me when I met with him at Wright-Patterson.

Brigadier General Arthur Exon

I provided more information on this in The Government UFO Files, though I had wished there were some sort of official statement confirming that early, pre-Kenneth Arnold sighting of June 1947, project. With the release of the “AARO Historical Report, Volume 1,” we learn of Project SAUCER (1946/1947 - January 1948). (No one seemed to wonder how it could have been called Project SAUCER before Arnold’s sighting, but I digress).

In the background, we learn:

AARO reviewed official USG efforts involving UFOs/UAP since 1945… The exact date of the founding of this first effort as well as its official and unofficial name are unclear. According to one source, General Nathan Twining, Commander of the Air Technical Services Command, established Project SAUCER on December 30, 1947 [I believe this should be early December (maybe the sixth 1946) to collect and evaluate all information relating to UFO sightings which could be construed as of concern to national security. Captain Edward Ruppelt claimed that Project SAUCER was the informal name of Project SIGN, and it was designated a high priority. However, in an interview with an employee of Project SIGN, the employee claimed the project started a year earlier, in 1946 and that Project SAUCER was its original informal name.

The results, according to the report, were that Project SAUCER did not find evidence of extraterrestrial technology. But that really isn’t the point here. The AARO report confirmed the information about the early beginnings of research into these strange phenomena, pushing back the beginnings of the investigation by six or seven months. Makes you wonder what had happened to cause Twining to issue the order to McCoy and why none of those files were transferred to the first of the official projects.

I’m going to skip some of the other, earlier reports on various government run UFO studies because this would become much too long. I will point out that they lumped the Green Fireballs in with the UFO reports. This was Project Twinkle, which this new report does suggest that “That the literature is not clear if Project TWINKLE was officially supported by the original Project GRUDGE, but it was managed by the USAF’s Cambridge Research Laboratory.”

The report said in the “Results” section that “This project was only able to secure one camera, which was frequently moved between locations following fireball reports, and no photographs of the fireballs were ever taken.”

The problem is that there is documentation that there was one photograph taken of a fireball. A single picture, taken from a single location wouldn’t do much to provide data about the fireballs, other than showing there were fireballs. The ultimate plan, to use multiple cameras to take pictures from multiple angles, was never implemented.

I’m going to jump over several other reports, committee recommendations and conclusions to reach what might be the most egregious example of collusion between the Air Force and an American university.

When the Project Blue Book files were released into the public arena in 1976, Bob Cornett and I were able to review them while the files were still at the Air Force Archives at Maxwell Air Force Base. We found document after document explaining how various members of the government and the Air Force were attempting to end Project Blue Book for years. This was from the top of the civilian aspects of the government, various scientific boards and committees and the highest-ranking members of the Air Force. They wanted an excuse to close Blue Book.

To that end, the Air Force, following a plan to end Blue Book, searched for a university to take on a “scientific” study UFOs. The Air Force finally found the University of Colorado to accept their half-million-dollar grant (which, according to this new report, was only $325,000) and that Dr. Edward U. Condon would lead the effort. This would be an “objective effort” to find a solution to the mystery of UFOs.

To spell this out, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hippler sent a letter to what would be called the Condon Committee. Hippler wrote that the Air Force wanted to end Blue Book because of the cost to taxpayers. He pointed out that it was difficult to prove a negative and speculated on what an alien species would do if it was visiting Earth, though, according to him, there was no evidence of such. The point of the letter was to get the Air Force out of the hole that it found itself in. I printed the text of the Hippler letter in The UFO Dossier. And you can read more about the letter, as well some commentary about those efforts to end the Air Force investigation here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/03/hippler-letter.html

Dr. Robert Low, the number two man on the Condon Committee acknowledged the letter and in the text of his response wrote, “On the second page, you indicate what you believe the Air Force wants of us, and I am very glad to have your opinion.”

The text of that response was also published in The UFO Dossier. The Air Force wanted an investigation that would show there is nothing to UFO sightings, there is nothing to be learned of scientific value and there is no threat to national security.

While it might seem that the discussion is vague, just three days after that letter was received, Condon delivered a lecture to scientists in Corning, New York, telling them, “It is my inclination right now to recommend that the government get out of this business. My attitude right now is that there is nothing in it. But I’m not supposed to reach that conclusion for another year.”

While the Condon Committee found that the Air Force had done a good job of investigating UFOs, despite the ridiculous solutions appended to some sightings (the Lubbock Lights were birds despite the photograph that wasn’t birds; Levelland was ball lightning despite all the evidence that proved it was not), that there was no threat to national security (despite the sightings around Malmstrom Air Force Base proving otherwise) and that there was nothing of scientific value to be learned by continued investigation (despite the fact one of the sightings was explained as a natural phenomenon so rare it had never been seen before or since), they recommended that the investigation be ended. In 1969, the Air Force closed Project Blue Book. Of course, they did continue to investigate some UFO sightings and there was Project Moon Dust which had a UFO component to it that persisted until 1985 when the name was compromised. At that point, there was a new name, which was, according to the Air Force, properly classified. This means that the investigations continued, but it was all classified.

Of course, the real problem with the AARO report is the take on the Roswell UFO crash. I am not sure how someone who is supposed to be investigating the topic of UFOs with a dispassionate attitude can subscribe to the Project Mogul explanation. I am going to spend a little more time on picking apart the conclusions offered for the debris recovered at Roswell.

This segment begins saying, “According to press reports, President Clinton tasked former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger to determine if the USG held aliens or alien technology. President Clinton said, ‘As far as I know, an alien spacecraft did not crash in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947… [ellipses in original] if the USAF did recover alien bodies, they didn’t tell me about it… and I want to know.’”

This would not be the first time or the only time that a president, or presidents, were not told about ongoing intelligence operations. I point to Operation Solo, in which the FBI office in New York City did not tell several presidents that there was a spy with access to the highest levels of the Soviet government. The operation was run out of New York City to protect its integrity of the operation and to keep leak happy Washington out of the loop. This was exposed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the death of the spy, Morris Childs. The book, by John Barron, was called Operation Solo.

This doesn’t prove anything other that there have been times when information was withheld from presidents in the interest of national security. It is relevant only in proving that such things do happen, especially at the highest levels. In UFOs and the Deep State, I do mention the way that bureaucrats are able to dodge presidential inquiries.

The report then moves on to Congressman Steven Schiff, who initiated a GAO search for information from several government and military organizations about the Roswell case. This, of course, spawned an Air Force investigation into the Roswell case as well. The results were:

The [GAO] report stated that the USAF’s research did not locate or develop any information that indicated the “Roswell Incident” was a UFO event, nor was there any “cover up” by the USG. Rather, the materials recovered near Roswell were consistent with a balloon of the type used in the then-classified Project Mogul. No records showed any evidence that the USG recovered aliens or extraterrestrial material.

So, let’s break this down. First, there were several witnesses, high-ranking officers stationed at Roswell, who were not interviewed. Many of us, Bill Moore, Stan Friedman, Don Schmitt, Tom Carey, and me, to name a few, interviewed these men and had both audio and video tape of those interviews so that the validity of the quotes could be established.

Although I told Lieutenant McAndrew, who worked with Colonel Weaver that I could make all the information available, they seemed less than interested. This included a statement from Colonel Edwin Easley, the base Provost Marshal in 1947, to me about the extraterrestrial nature of the event. Specifically, I asked if we were following the right path.

Easley asked me, “What do you mean?”

“We think it was extraterrestrial.”

“Let me put it this way. It’s not the wrong path.”

Major Edwin Easley, Roswell Provost Marshal.

In fact, every member of Colonel Blanchard’s staff (Blanchard was the commanding office at Roswell in 1947) that we interviewed took us in the same direction with a single exception. I, among others, have laid this out in several books and articles, including Roswell in the 21^st Century and Understanding Roswell. Yes, all this is not the sort of thing that the GAO would have uncovered, but it is evidence of something strange.

The Air Force investigation did interview some former and retired officers, but ignored those who would have provided a different perspective. I think of General Arthur Exon who provided Don Schmitt and me with some very interesting information about what had been recovered in Roswell, including descriptions of the strange metallic debris that did not match the balloon material that is supposed to be what was recovered. To be fair, Exon didn’t see the metal himself but was reporting what he had been told by those who did.

I could mention here Master Sergeant Bill Rickett who was assigned to the counterintelligence office at Roswell in 1947. He not only handled the metal and provided descriptions to several UFO researchers including Don Schmitt and Mark Rodeghier. Rickett’s testimony is in direct conflict with that of Captain Sheridan Cavitt who was the officer in charge of the counterintelligence office in 1947.

This, I suppose, boils down to a case of who do you want to believe. I’ll note here that in the interviews that Don and I conducted with Cavitt, he lied to us repeatedly, telling us that he wasn't in Roswell in July 1947. Yes, I have that quote on tape.

Which leads to the “then-classified Project Mogul.” There are many problems with this. I laid it out at length in Roswell in the 21^st Century. While Mogul was classified, the experiments being conducted in New Mexico were not. The equipment was off-the-shelf neoprene weather balloons and rawin radar targets. That material would have been easily recognized by the officers at Roswell and that would have been the end of the story.

Charles Moore reviewing the winds aloft data I had
supplied. Photo by Kevin Randle

Photographs of one of the balloon arrays were published in the newspapers on July 10, 1947, which would have compromised the purpose of Mogul if anyone was paying attention. But the experiments in New Mexico were not classified and were run by a team from New York University. Although Charles Moore, one of the men working on the project in New Mexico, told me that he had never heard the name “Mogul” it was used in the field notes of Dr. Albert Crary, the man in charge of the research. Again, it was the purpose that was classified and not the experiments being conducted in New Mexico.

But here’s the real problem. It was alleged that Flight No. 4 was the culprit in this. It was to be launched on June 4, 1947, but according to the field notes, and the later analysis of the results of the flights, Flight No. 4 was cancelled. It did not fly. Later in the afternoon, those in New Mexico launched a small cluster of balloons that did not leave the confines of the ranges around Alamogordo Army Air Field or the White Sands Proving Grounds. It did not approach the Brazel (Foster) ranch where it was alleged the balloons were recovered.

What I fail to understand is how the skeptics and the scientific community can continue to demand documentation but ignore the written record that removes Flight No. 4 from the list of culprits. In other words, if the flight was cancelled, then it couldn’t have been responsible for the strange metallic debris found by Mack Brazel and some of which was recovered by Major Jesse Marcel.

I was going to end this long analysis here and provide a list of alternative sources of information, but just have to mention the last bullet point in the AARO. It said:

Reports of military units that allegedly recovered a flying saucer and its “crew” were descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in dummy recovery operations. Claims of “alien bodies” at the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) hospital were most likely the result of the conflation of two incidents” a 1956 KC-97 aircraft accident in which 11 Air Force members lost their lives: and a 1959 manned balloon mishap in which two Air Force pilots were injured.

The problem here is that some of the witnesses that Don Schmitt, Tom Carey, and I interviewed over the years, weren’t stationed in Roswell at the time of these later events. They wouldn’t have been “fooled” by the tragedy of the aircraft accident or the injury of others in the years after the reported UFO crash. There is not logical way that many of them could have conflated these two incidents into their memories of what they witnessed in July 1947.

There are other aspects of the overall report that can be refuted by evidence, which I have jumped over. The Robertson Panel of 1953, sponsored by the CIA, apparently had the final report written before the first day of testimony. Michael Swords provided an in-depth analysis of this, which would render the findings of the panel as irrelevant to anyone who understood the circumstances around its creation.

I have limited this analysis to the historical aspects of the report. Others, I’m sure, will attack the later material, including the UAP research of the last few years. For those interested in following up on some of this, or looking for more detail, you can read it on this blog by typing in a keyword sure as “Mogul.” Other sources, including special articles on this blog can be found here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/07/mogul-and-roswell.html

And here is a reference that not only provides additional information but also links to a series of blog posts about Mogul:

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

For those interested in the Lubbock Lights that the Air Force decided was birds, here is a long article that talks about much of that:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2023/02/coast-to-coast-am-lubbock-lights.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2019/01/historys-project-blue-book-lubbock.html

For those interested in the Levelland sightings of November 1957, might I suggest finding a copy of the book cleverly entitled Levelland. It is my analysis for that sighting as well as a look at the history about those sightings.

Condon and his committee never did much with the Levelland sightings. They are barely mentioned. Here is a new perspective on that aspect (and yes, I know it is supposed to be just UAP without the “S,” but I find that proofreading is not my strongest skill:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2022/08/nasa-and-uaps-ufos.html

And for a general overview of much of this, you can find information at this link. Yes, some of it will be redundant:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-latest-on-government-uap-report.html

I have published several books relevant to this conversation for those who wish to really to learn as much as possible. I would suggest, in no particular order, Understanding Roswell, Roswell in the 21^st Century (which contains a long analysis of the whole Mogul history,  Levelland, UFOs and the Deep State, and The Government UFO Files. You might also wish to look at the Carey and Schmitt books beginning with Witness to Roswell, and you might be interested in the book written by Colonel Weaver, the man who conducted the Air Force investigation called Backstory: Roswell. You might also wish to find a copy of the Air Force Report, The Roswell Report that contains much information about Project Mogul and the field notes and diaries kept by Dr. Albert Crary, that proved there was no Flight No. 4.

There are many other sources of information, but I’ll sure this is much more than most people wish to read. I mention all this to provide a sample of the work that I, among others, have done on this. If there are other questions, use the search engine on my blog, kevinrandle.blogspot.com.

Coast-to-Coast AM - The Lubbock Lights

 

First, there is an interesting MADAR report from Louisville, Kentucky on August 28 of last year. According to investigator Robert Speering, the witness reported seeing an object that was, at first hovering over his house and then slowly drifting off to the northeast. He said that he was nearly under the object that was flying at about 300 feet.

The UFO had a round bottom and had yellowish, reddish and orange lights with four dim white lights, all on the underside. The UFO itself was a large hexagon shape but with the white lights also in a hexagon shape. All the lights were steady. He said it looked as if the object was underwater and was changing shape slightly though it was above him during the sighting.

The man said that he hadn’t believed in UFOs or alien visitation prior to the sighting. He did say that nothing manmade could have operated the way this object did. He said there was no noise, except for a slight humming sound, gave off no heat and both hovered and flew in a straight line but there were no signs of wings. He said the object was about 60 to 80 around.

At about the same time as the sighting, the MADAR node, also in Louisville, detected an anomaly. The witness knew nothing of the MADAR node and the node operator knew nothing of the UFO sighting. Speering, as he crosschecked UFO sightings with MADAR detections spotted the connection. Additional investigation is being conducted.

Albuquerque Flying Wing and the Lubbock Lights

For this months, retro sighting, I’m looking back to the Lubbock lights from August and September 1951. This was a series of sightings located in the panhandle of Texas and parts of New Mexico. The first of the sightings that would become known as the Lubbock Lights, was made in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the early evening of August 25, 1951. A man and his wife (unidentified in the Project Blue Book files

but who are Hugh and Emily Young) watched a huge, "wing-shaped" UFO with blue lights on the trailing edge as it passed over the outskirts of the city. In his statement, found in the Blue Book files, Young said:

This aircraft was flying in a south by east direction at a speed I thought to be about 300 miles per hour.

The altitude was difficult to judge, but the aircraft was low enough so that the lights from Central Ave. reflected from the lower side of the wings.

This aircraft was unusual in the following ways, there was no sound of motors or jets in fact there was no sound at all that I could hear. I could see no fuselage on this aircraft. The size I judged to be at least one and one half times as large as a B-36 and was shaped like a V with the wings sloping back at an angle of about 15 degrees.

On the rear edge of the wings soft white lights were located in pairs with not less than six of these on each side of center. These lights were very different from motor or jet exhausts as seen at night. I am familiar with the appearance of these.

From the front edge of the wing stripe extended to the rear edge of the wings with the strip ending between the lights of each pair. These strips had poor reflection.

Each pair of lights were separated by about eight times the distance between the lights of one pair.

The wings appeared to retain their size from the center to the end without any taper.

No identification or markings could be seen and this aircraft had no colored lights of any kind that could be seen. The aircraft was in my sight about ½ minute.

This is a true description of the aircraft as I observed and remember it.

This was signed by Young and it was certified as a true copy by John T. Hagood, an Air Force captain. It is clear that the Air Force was taking the sighting seriously because Young was a security guard at the Sandia Labs, which was part of the Atomic Energy Commission and that provided a level of credibility to his report. In fact, it was noted in one of the reports that Young was “apparently reliable.”

There were additional details of the investigation included in the Blue Book files, along with a statement by Emily Young, whose name was redacted throughout the file. Her statement provided the same description as that of her husband. There is no reason to believe that they did not discuss the sighting with each other before the Air Force investigator arrived to take their statements.

In a confidential report submitted to the Inspector General at the 17^th District Office of Special Investigation, Colonel S. H. Kirkland, Jr. (who was stationed at Kirtland AFB) made a couple of important points. He wrote:

Reference is made to your Spot Intelligence Report of 27 August 1951, subject as given above [unconventional type of aircraft]. It is not known whether or not you are familiar with a report from OSI District Office No. 23, Carswell Air Force Base, Fort Worth, Texas, in which a similar sighting over Lubbock, Texas, on 25 August 1951 is reported…

Also enclosed are four photographs taken by Mr. [name redacted, but is Carl Hart, Jr.] on 30 August 1951 which are supposedly similar to those seen over Lubbock, Texas, on 25 August 1951. It is requested that these photographs by shown to Mr. [name redacted but is Hugh Young] and obtain his opinion as to whether or not this is what he saw over Albuquerque on the night of 25 August 1951. If he does concur that this is what he saw, have him sketch in the wing he reported seeing and obtain any other details that he may be able to give (Ibid.).

According to a letter found in the Blue Book files and dated 14 November 1951, the photographs were shown to the Youngs. They said that the formation of lights was similar to the wing that they had seen. At that point Young made the sketch that had been requested. Apparently, he drew the wing on one of Hart’s photographs and then provided a separate sketch as well.

Had it not been for the sightings over Lubbock within a couple of hours, the case would have had little real significance and would have been noted as just another “Unidentified.”

The Lubbock Lights

Not long after that, college professors in Lubbock, sitting outside on August 25, 1951, about 10 p.m. saw a group of lights fly over. They didn’t make much in the way of scientific observations and began to discuss what they should do if the lights returned. When the lights returned, the professors made some of their observations and called the local newspaper, wondering if there were any other reports of the lights.

The professors, W.L. Ducker, A.G. Oberg, and W.I. Robinson, were annoyed that they hadn’t seen more. They discussed what to do if the lights should reappear. Before the night was over, they had their chance and made a series of quick and well-coordinated observations.

The lights were softly glowing, bluish objects in a loose formation. The first group, they believed, had been in a more rigid and more structured formation than later groups but they hadn’t gotten a good look at them.

Jay Harris, the managing editor of the Lubbock Avalanche, first learned of the lights when Ducker called the news desk to tell of the sighting. Harris wasn't interested at first because it was basically about lights in the night sky, but Ducker convinced him that it was important. Ducker wanted a story written so that others who might have seen the lights could be found and comparisons with their information could be made. Harris finally agreed, but only if the newspaper could print Ducker's name because his position at Texas Tech gave him instant credibility. Ducker didn't like that condition and momentarily refused.

But a few minutes later, Ducker called back and said that the newspaper could use his name, and the names of Oberg and Robinson. The only condition was that Harris would have to get permission of the college (Texas Tech) public relations department before printing an of their names.

There were at least four others who saw the lights on that first night. Mrs. Earl Mediock, Mrs. F.A. Rogers, Mrs. R.A. Rogers (in the convention of the time, women were often identified by their husbands’ last name and their first names were not printed), and Professor Carl Henninger all reported seeing the lights at 9:10 P.M. That was the first flight described by the professors.

Joe Bryant of Brownfield, Texas, said that he also saw the lights on that night of August 25. According to him, he was sitting in his backyard when a group of the lights flew overhead. He said there was "kind of a glow, a little bigger than a star." A short time later, a second group of lights appeared. Neither group was in any kind of regular formation which differs from what the professors and those others had seen.

Bryant eventually saw a third flight that same night, but instead of flying over his house, this time the lights dropped down and circled the building. Now he could see the objects quite clearly and they were birds. One of them chirped and Bryant recognized them as "plover." The next day, as he read the account of the lights in the newspaper, he realized that if he hadn't identified the lights as birds, he would have been as fooled as the professors.

Over the next two weeks, the professors saw the lights on several occasions, but were unable to obtain any useful data. Joined by Grayson Meade, E.R. Hienaman and J.P Brand, they equipped two teams with two-way radios, measured a base line from the location of the original sightings, and sent the teams out to opposite ends of that base to watch. They hoped that sightings along the base line would provide them with enough information to allow triangulation which would allow them to determine the size, altitude, and speed of the lights,

They did manage to make a few observations over the next several weeks. The lights traveled through about 90 degrees of sky in a matter of seconds. They normally appeared 45 degrees above the horizon and disappeared about 45 degrees above the opposite horizon. During the first observation, the lights had been in a roughly semicircular formation. In subsequent sightings no regular pattern was noticed.

None of the deployed teams ever made a sighting, through on one or two occasions, the wives of the men, who had remained behind, said they had seen the lights while the men were at the bases. That would suggest that the lights were much lower than the professors had originally thought which would also reduce the estimated size and speed.

On August 30, the case took a radical turn. A nineteen-year-old amateur photographer, Carl Hart, Jr., (seen here)managed to take five pictures of the lights as they flew over his house. Because it was hot that night, he had pushed his bed close to the window and was looking out and up. He said, "I liked to sleep with the windows open with my head stuck out the window - and there they were." Knowing that the lights had returned on several occasions based on the articles in the newspaper, he grabbed his 35-mm camera, set the shutter at f-3.5 and went outside.

A few minutes later the lights flew over a second time and Hart took two photographs of them. Not long after that, another group of lights appeared, and Hart apparently took three additional pictures. Some controversy about the number of photographs developed in the weeks following the sighting.

Harris, who had spoken to Ducker on the first night, learned of the pictures when a photographer who worked for the newspaper periodically, called to tell him that Hart had just been to his studio to develop the film. Harris, reluctant as ever, suggested that Hart should bring the pictures by the newspaper office. It was the first tangible evidence that there was something to the stories. It was the first physical evidence of something in the sky.

Harris, and the newspaper's head photographer William Hams, feared a hoax. Harris, after seeing the photos called Hart a number of times and bluntly asked him if he had

faked them.  Hart replied that he hadn't faked anything. He had photographed something as it flew over his house in south Lubbock. Hart just didn't care what Harris thought. He didn't care about payment for the pictures either, though he eventually received about ten dollars for them from the newspaper. Later the pictures were printed in dozens of magazines and books, but Hart rarely received any payment for their use, though he was sometimes credited with having taken the pictures. He had failed to have any of the pictures copyrighted, on the advice of another photographer who said that the copyright would suggest hoax. That poor advice would surface in several other photographic cases.

"Advice from a friend and professional journalist at the time was that if [I] copyright them, somebody's going to think [I] faked them and [was] trying to make money out of them," Hart told me. "I was interested in that part of it [proving the pictures authentic] and didn't do it [copyright them.]"

Harris later decided to put the photos on the news wire, but before he did, he called Hart one more time. This time Harris warned Hart that if he found out the pictures were faked, there would be grave consequences and that Hart would never work as a professional photographer. Once the photographs went out on the wire, nationwide, Harris said, Hart's problems would be far worse if he was lying about them. Hart still insisted his pictures were authentic. There was no fraud.

Hams, however, decided that he was going to try to duplicate Hart's pictures. By doing that, Hams believed he might be able to figure out exactly what they showed, or, at the very least, how Hart had managed to take them. It might also suggest how he, Hart, faked them. Hams took a Speed Graphic camera loaded with a tungsten ASA 80 film and a GE#22 flash bulb in a concentrating reflector to the roof of the Avalanche building. It was the same equipment that he used to photograph night football games at the local high schools and college. Of course, a flash wouldn’t be effective if the objects were several hundred feet above him.

He waited, but saw nothing other than a flight of migratory birds. They were barely visible in the glow of the sodium vapor lights on the street five or six floors below him. They flew in a ragged V-formation, and he could see them dimly outlined against the deeper black of the night sky. He was surprised because they were so quiet. Ducks and geese, as they flew, could be heard squawking.

When Hams developed the film, he found an image that was so weak that he couldn't print it. He repeated the experiment on another occasion and failed again. From his own experience, he was convinced that Hart could not have photographed birds under any circumstances. That didn’t mean that he hadn’t faked them, only that they didn’t show birds.

The photographs became one of the most important aspects of the Lubbock case. Here was physical evidence that could be seen and tested. Measurements and studies of the photos could be made, and professionals could attempt to duplicate them. Hams, and the photography staff at the newspaper, could find no evidence of a hoax. They believed that if Hart faked the pictures, he was wasting his time in college. Clearly, he was the best photographer in the area. He would have a career in Hollywood special effects if he wanted... if he had faked them.

Hart continued to insist that he had not faked anything. In fact, he told me, "I heard some unofficial things that came out later... about [how] they thought I had faked them somehow or another." This is based on an experiment conducted by Dr. Donald Menzel, a Harvard astronomer and UFO debunker. He suggested lights reflecting off an inversion layer, one of his favorite explanations.

In September, 1951, the Air Force began the official investigation of the Lubbock Lights episode. The Albuquerque sighting was checked by intelligence officers from Kirtland AFB. They made several visits to the house of the witnesses and asked hundreds of questions during the interrogation. Emily Young provided a drawing of the object which was then forwarded to Wright-Patterson AFB. After several weeks, and partly because of the reliability of the witness, the sighting was listed as an unidentified. That is the way it was carried until the end of the official Air Force investigation in 1969.

In Lubbock, quite a bit of time was spent on the photographs taken by Hart, simply because they were evidence of the sighting. Although the official file contains the results of other aspects of the investigation, the majority of the paperwork covers the photographs.  Officers, including Lt. John Farley and Special Agent Howard N. Bossert of the Air Force Office of Special Investigation, both from Reese AFB, just outside of Lubbock, were dispatched a number of times with questions for Hart. Lieutenant (later Captain) Ed Ruppelt even made a special trip into Lubbock to conduct his own investigation into the lights and to interview Hart himself. The negatives were examined by a variety of military and civilian experts at photo labs at Wright-Patterson.

On September 20, 1951, Bossert and Farley interviewed Hart at his home and asked for the negatives. Hart could only find four of the five. The fifth negative was never found and it was not printed in any newspaper. Hart turned the negatives over the military for their analysis. Bossert's initial report, dated October 8, 1951, was sent to AFOSI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Copies were also sent to the commanding general of the Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson AFB, and to the commanding officer at Reese AFB in Lubbock

Between November 6 and 9, 1951, another investigation of the Lubbock Lights was conducted. Ruppelt, accompanied by Bossert, again interviewed Hart at his home and were told the same story that Hart had told during all the other interrogations.

"Hart's story could not be 'picked apart' because it was entirely logical," according to the official report. "He [Hart] was questioned on why he did certain things and his answers were all logical, concise, and without hesitation (Ruppelt, 1956)."

Ruppelt also interviewed the college professors. They provided signed statements about what they had seen and done and how they had attempted to gather scientific observations. In addition to recounting several flights, they mentioned an unusual event on September 2. While the flight passed directly overhead, as had the others, and was made up of 15 to 30 lights, one professor noticed an irregularly shaped yellow light at the rear of the formation. That was the only difference any of them had ever observed in relation to the lights.

A technical report, WCEFP-2-4, Physics Branch Sensitometry Unit, dated 29 November 1951, revealed nothing about the sightings other than that the lights photographed by Hart were individual lights and not part of a larger, dark object. The lights moved in relation to one another in the formation. The Air Force physicists did estimate that if the lights had been attached to an object one mile from the camera [or at 5,280 feet of altitude], it would have been 310 feet in diameter. If closer, it would be smaller, and if farther away, it would be larger. These were speculations because there had been no information on the negatives to provide clues to altitude or size.

The report concluded, "There is relative movement within the formation of spots, so that there are not lights on a fixed object." The important statement, however, came from the final conclusion. "The pattern of spot brightness is such as to prove conclusively that all 3 frames (negatives) - 5, 7, and 8 - were exposed to the same object pattern of spots.”

An examination of the photographs and the negatives turned up no evidence that Hart was lying. The sequence of shots, as he described them, was corroborated by the negatives. Hart's story was hanging together.

Ruppelt's interview in November was not the last conducted by the military. On December 2, Hart was questioned yet again. This time, according to the documentation in the Blue Book files, Hart was given his rights. These were explained to him as "The rights of a private citizen under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States...he acknowledged his understanding of such rights."

According to the AFOSI report, Hart was interviewed in private and was asked for a written statement. The statement said, "On August 50, 1951 [typographical error in letter of transmittal and not original statement] at about 11:30 P.M. took pictures of strange objects passing overhead from north to south. I saw three separate groups of objects. Two pictures are of the second group. Three are of the third group. The last negative was not found and is not in my possession."

Documentation in the Blue Book files, reveals an extraordinary effort went into investigating the Lubbock case, as opposed to many of the other investigations conducted by Air Force officers. Murray S. Sturgis, the Air Adjutant at Carswell AFB [Fort Worth, Texas] wrote, "Reference OSI Letter 24-0 dated 7 September 1951 to OSI, Hq USAF, concerning unidentified aircraft at Lubbock, Texas. Request A-2 [Air Intelligence Officer] forward by air mail as expeditiously as possible form 112 on subjects Carl Hart, Jr., Mrs. Tom Tilson, Mrs. M.G. Bethard; if possible forward by air mail original negatives of photographs Carl Hart, Jr., is stated to have taken..."

The "Report of Investigation" was written by Howard N. Bossert. He said that he, along with Lieutenant John Farley interviewed Hart at his home (this in addition to the other interviews with Hart at his home). Bossert reported that he found Hart to be "a very intelligent young man, very interested in photography, which is a hobby. He seemed sincere in his efforts to relate all incidents to the best of his ability."

Bossert learned that Hart had also seen the lights on September 1, but he hadn't photographed them then. At that time, no one was talking about UFOs in relation to the lights. Although the lights looked the same, Hart thought they were at a greater altitude and were in a single line. They flew from the northwest to the southeast.

By the end of the year, the Air Force investigation began to wind down. Investigators had spoken to all the witnesses several times, concentrating on Hart. After they interviewed Bryant, the man who had seen the plover, and to another west Texan, T.E. Snider, who reported he had seen the lights but identified them as ducks, the official answer became birds.

In still another, later report, Air Force investigators wrote, "It was concluded that birds, with street lights reflecting from them, were the probable cause of these sightings. The angular velocity was less. In all instances, the witnesses were located in an area where their eyes were dark-adapted, thus making the objects appear brighter."

Of course, that conclusion overlooks the fact that there are no migratory birds in the Lubbock area at that time of year. Loren Smith at Texas Tech told me that there are ducks that fly in V-formations in the area in late August. They just aren't migratory.

The Glossy Iris, for example, inhabits west Texas and does fly in the proper formation as suggested by the photographs. The problem, however, is that species is reddish-maroon and has no white to reflect the street lights no matter how bright those street lights might be. The Glossy Iris is not satisfactory as the explanation. In fact, there are no birds in west Texas that are satisfactory as an explanation for all the sightings.

The report continues, "Mr. Hart, when taking his pictures, had to do so by 'panning' his camera. Panning is quite difficult, and the relative high degree of success of this photographer is further indication that the angular velocity of the objects was not as high as estimated."

The report concludes, "The kind of birds responsible for this sighting is not known, but it is highly probable that they were ducks or plover. Since plover do not usually fly in formations of more than six or seven, ducks become the more probable..." Nor do plover fly in a “V” formation.

Such a solution might be the proper explanation for some of the sightings, especially those by Bryant and Snider. There might be other reports from the Lubbock area that are explained by the birds, but certainly not all of them. Each sighting should be investigated as a separate event because each was a separate event. Their relation to one another is simply the timing and the location. A solution for one set of sightings does not translate into a solution for the others. When that is completed, those left over should then be seen as the pattern.

The photographs taken by Hart show this. Clearly, the pictures taken by him do not show birds. Experimentation by professionals was unable to duplicate the photos taken by Hart. Project Blue Book records, however, list the case as solved - as birds.

But that wasn't the last of it. In June 1952, Dr. Donald H. Menzel, the Harvard astronomer and a rabid opponent of the alien visitation theory, published an article in Look claiming that the Lubbock Lights were not birds, but reflections of the city's lights... "mirages caused by atmospheric conditions known as 'temperature inversion.'" This is, of course, the same explanation that would be used to solve the mystery of the Washington Nationals that were seen over Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1952 a few months later.

Menzel, using chemicals, was able to reproduce what he claimed were the Lubbock Lights in his laboratory. His pictures, taken of stationary objects in his lab, showed lights in a similar formation, but the lights in his photographs were more diffused than those taken by Hart.

Interestingly, the early television show, Science Fiction Theater, had a story about UFO-like lights over a city. In the end, a scientist, using an aquarium filled with two chemicals to duplicate the temperature inversion, reproduced the objects seen by the story’s witnesses. This episode was clearly based on the Lubbock Lights and used Menzel’s theory as the basis for the tale’s explanation.

Dr. E.F. George, one of the scientists who had actually seen the lights, disagreed with Menzel’s explanation. He said, "I don't believe what I saw was a reflection from street lights." Since he had actually seen them, his testimony should take precedence over Menzel’s claims.

Ruppelt, in his book, examines the whole of the Lubbock Lights case from a unique perspective. He was one of the Air Force officers involved in the original investigation. He spoke to the individuals within weeks of the events, to the experts who could provide some information about the case, to scientists who might have a solution for the sightings and saw the area where Hart took his photographs. Unlike those who followed, he was on the scene which is often one of the most helpful aspects in an investigation.

Of the photographs by Hart, Ruppelt (1956) wrote, "...the investigation ended at a blank wall. My official conclusion, which was later given to the press, was that, 'The photos were never proven to be a hoax but neither were they proven to be genuine.' There is no definite answer."

Of the other sightings, Ruppelt wrote, "Personally I thought that the professor's lights might have been some kind of bird reflecting from mercury-vapor street lights, but I was wrong. They weren't birds, they weren't refracted light, but they weren't spaceships. The lights that the professors saw - the backbone of the Lubbock Light series - have been positively identified as a very commonplace and easily explainable natural phenomena."

Ruppelt then explained, in his 1956 book, that he couldn’t offer the final solution because it came from a professor who would be easily identified if the solution was published. Ruppelt said that it makes perfect sense to him, but he was going to honor his promise to the scientist that he wouldn’t use that explanation.

In the years before his death Ruppelt received letters from UFO investigators who wanted to know the final answer. Always Ruppelt answered the same way. He would not violate the confidence. But when Ruppelt died at a relatively young age, he left notes and documents, and in those notes and documents, now housed at the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, is Ruppelt's answer. The professors saw - fireflies.

Ruppelt's explanation is as ridiculous as that of all the others. It does not explain the situation nor does it explain the photographs. And, it doesn't explain why the professors only saw the fireflies at the end of August and the beginning of September 1951. Did the conditions around Lubbock change to produce an abundance of fireflies that year and then return to the original conditions so that they didn't fly over the city in later years. And when was the last time that fireflies were seen in any sort of formation. They might be seen as individual insects buzzing about, but not in any sort of V-shaped formation. Not to mention that they would have been described as flashing lights rather than steady as nearly all the witnesses claimed.

Often times, long after the event, a man who was responsible for a fake photograph, will confess. Those who have faked photographs as teenagers have come forward as adults to explain the situation. But Carl Hart is not among that rather large number. Interviewed again, in 1993, Hart told me that he had no explanation for the pictures. I asked if he believed in flying saucers. Hart said, "I don't particularly disbelieve." When asked if he knew what the lights were, he told me, "I really don't."

Carl Hart, Jr. died on September 24, 2020, in Lubbock.

(For those interested, the complete story of the Lubbock Lights appears in The Best of Project Blue Book, available at Amazon.com as an ebook and a hard copy edition).

 

The "Lost" UAP Report of October

 

Tennessee Republican Congressional Representative Tim Burchett, who won reelection on Tuesday, November 8, said recently that the UAP report that had been scheduled for release on October 31 but was delayed, will be a whitewash. He said that those in charge believe that we’re too stupid to handle the truth about alien visitors.

He said leaks suggested that 366 cases of UFO, I mean UAP, sightings would be explained. He also said that the report makes it clear that these sightings are of terrestrial objects rather than alien visitation. The sightings are the result of foreign drones and weather balloons. While drones are a new wrinkle, the weather balloon explanation has served the government well, used to explain everything from the Roswell crash to Gorman dog fight with a UFO. Of course, the balloon explanation fails for Roswell but that’s another story that will come soon.

Burchett said it was all about power. This is a reason for the continued cover up that I explored in depth in UFOs and the Deep State. Those in power feared their power would be diminished if the truth came out. In Washington, it’s all about the power and the financial rewards of that power.

History has provided us with examples of how that works and while overt conquest in not necessarily the problem, it is the introduction of a superior technology that can result in a shift of power. A rifle is a superior weapon to a bow and arrow, but it takes a manufacturing base to create and a supply system to produce the ammunition. Once the rifle is adopted as the weapon of choice, those who had relied on bows and arrows, which could be made by the individual, were now at the mercy of those who had the ability to manufacture the rifle. Their society was radically altered by that superior technology and the desire to have the latest and the best.

Of course, government officials have said that there are national security implications which are the umbrella used to bury the truth. Some times that is the truth, but more often than not it is a simple excuse for refusing to answer questions.

Republican Marco Rubio, has also called for the release of the information. He said that one of the explanations offered was “airborne clutter” and that investigators found no evidence of extraterrestrial life or, and I stress this, a technological advancement by a foreign foe, meaning Russia or China. Yet, hints in the new report suggest China and others are using drones to surveil our military exercises are a solution, which negates the denial of technological advancement.

But Congressional interest doesn’t translate into governmental action. After a series of sightings in Michigan in 1966, then Congressman Gerald Ford called for a Congressional investigation. The hearings, that lasted for a day, resulted in no known action on the part of the government or the Air Force. In the end, the official conclusion about the sightings by the officers of Project Blue Book was, yes, you remember, “Swamp Gas.”

While swamp gas might have explained a sighting or two, it did not cover the range of sightings by multiple witnesses in multiple locations. The Air Force conclusion of swamp gas remains as the explanation for the sightings. The Congressional influence did nothing to advance the investigation into UFOs, only suggested that there was nothing of importance to be learned and that only the uneducated and the unsophisticated reported UFOs.

What most people are missing here, in this latest round of Congressional interest, is that we had men running for federal office who were advocating research into UFO sightings and suggesting the government has been less than candid without journalist questions about the overall situation. There were no consequences for their opinions about UFOs or for the government lack of candor in answering those questions.

Remember Democrat Dennis Kucinich. He was making a run for the presidential nomination some fifteen years ago. Fox News reported, “Dennis Kucinich’s UFO Comments Prove He’s Nuts.” At least in today’s environment, those suggesting there is something to UFO reports aren’t dismissed as nuts. The news media seems to have softened their view but I fear the outcome will be the same. In other words, there will be some sympathetic press and then everyone will forget about the UFOs, or as they are now called UAPs.

One of the real problems it that they make no plans to review the history of UFOs. There have been many good cases with independent witnesses and multiple chains of evidence. Too often these sightings have been rejected because we all know there is no such thing as alien visitation. The Lubbock Lights from 1951 are rejected as birds, even with witness statements that suggest a craft and four photographs of them. The debunkers are now saying that the pictures are faked, but I talked to the photographer more forty years after the fact. He told me then that he still doesn’t know what he photographed. In so many cases of faked photos, the photographers have eventually come clean and admitted the hoax.

The Lubbock Lights photographs taken by Carl Hart, Jr.

There are the Washington National sightings of July 1952 with multiple pilots, both civilian and military reporting the objects. Radar sightings on multiple radars. And the official conclusion is temperature inversion.

Of course, the Levelland sightings of 1957 that was ball lightning. The Socorro landing of 1964 that some believe was a lunar lander suspended under a helicopter but no record of such a test at nearby White Sands at the proper time. The Michigan sightings, mentioned above that were labeled as swamp gas.

And since the end of “official” investigations, there have been good sightings that were belittled and categorized so that we don’t have to deal with them. Rendlesham Forest and the Cash-Landrum personal injury cases from December 1980 spring to mind here.

And, good reports being made today with calls for investigation but with no one wanting to review UFO history. These new investigators will be condemned to making the same mistakes because they won’t know what happened in the past. And in some cases, are refusing to even consider past sightings for reasons that are not viable.

The only upside for all this is that those calling for renewed investigations in the world today are not ridiculed as “nuts.” We do have some serious people who want serious investigation, but given the history, some of it briefly outlined here, I have little hope that we’ll have either an unbiased or scientific investigation. I believe that we are doomed to more of the same given the missed deadlines and the leaked information that we have seen recently.

Coast to Coast AM - Levelland and Sightings

The Internet is a wonderful tool. It provides us with the totality of human knowledge. Such is the case in and around Levelland, Texas, from November 1957. My pal, Rich Reynolds, at his UFO Conjectures blog, reported on October 6 of this year that a video of Sheriff Weir Clem, the Hockley County sheriff, meaning, of course, Levelland, as well as other witnesses, had been interviewed by a reporter in 1957. All this before the Air Force investigated. You can watch those interviews here:

https:youtu.be/8JgR0jpNb3A

Levelland was the scene of several UFO sightings in which the craft stalled car engines and dimmed headlights. As but a single example, Newel Wright, a nineteen-year-old college student at Texas Tech in Lubbock, was nearing Levelland when he glanced at his dashboard ammeter. Wright told the Air Force investigator, "I was driving home from Lubbock on state highway 116 at approximately 12:00 a.m. when the ammeter on my car jumped to complete discharge, then it returned to normal and my motor started cutting out like it was out of gas. After it had quit running, my lights went out. I got out of my car and tried in vain to find the trouble.

“It was at this time that I saw this object, I got back into my car and tried to start it, but to no avail. After that I did nothing but stare at this object until it disappeared about 5 minutes later. I then resumed trying to start my car and succeeded with no more trouble than under normal circumstances."

Sheriff Weir Clem and his deputies.

There were others who independently reported similar experiences. The UFO remained in the area for about two hours and witnesses reported watching the UFO for several minutes before it would lift off and leave the immediate vicinity. Once the UFO disappeared, the witnesses reported their cars could then be started. I have reported on all these sightings in depth in the book, Levelland.

And, in conflict with the Air Force report, the sheriff said that he saw an oval-shaped, brightly glowing object as he searched the area. He was accompanied by other law enforcement officers and there are indications that Air Force officers were there with him as well.

The sightings in the area didn’t end on November 3. Sightings of the UFO continued in New Mexico, stalling more cars. Military Police at Whites Sands also had encounters. The series of sightings are an important part of UFO history and have never been adequately explained, though the Air Force claimed ball lightning was responsible.

The White Sands MPs. Photo courtesy Glen Toy.

Moving into the modern world, on July 9, of this year, the witness and his family were water skiing in the Spencerville, Indiana, area. The main witness had stopped the boat to pick up his son who had fallen and looked toward a tree line on shore. He saw a white, round object travelling east to west at a high rate of speed. He said that it was moving faster than anything he had ever seen and was in sight for a minute or two. Both his son and wife saw the UFO as well.

The witness also operates MADAR Node 81 in Spencerville. Although there was no alert, a review of the recorded data showed a spike in the magnetometer, that is an electromagnet effect, at the time of the sighting. This also relates to the Levelland sightings in which there were reported EM Effects.

The investigation showed that object the witness reported was too slow for a meteor and too fast for an aircraft. He heard no sound associated with it and believed that it had been flying at about 10,000 feet. The witnesses saw no wings, or vertical stabilizer.

On October 6 of this year, the witness in Palm City, Florida, said that he saw a straight, long, white object that was not moving. He said, “The object appeared… to be bigger than a plane I’m flying… it did not move like a plane.” The UFO was in sight for about a minute. The witness said that he looked down to check his airspeed and when he looked back, the object was gone.

From Lynwood, California, on October 5 of this year, the witnesses saw what looked like fireballs. Five of them were close together and the sixth some distance off. The one farthest away was moving rapidly and changed color from orange to green. The witness reported that it had a cylindrical shape and was moving super-fast. The sighting lasted for a total of fifteen minutes.

The witness did take the following photograph of the UFOs. I have cropped the photographs to fit better on this space. 

Photographs are courtesy of the National UFO Reporting Center and the photographers.The upper photograph has the cylinder in the upper left and the bottom photo is the street scene with the formation of lights.