Annie Jacobsen, Area 51 and UFOs

Okay, let’s see if I have this straight. In 1947, the officers and men of the 509th Bomb Group found the remains of a crashed flying saucer. They took parts of it to Fort Worth where Brigadier General Roger Ramey and one of his weather officers, Warrant Officer Irving Newton (seen here), identified it was a common weather balloon and radar reflector.

The press, which had been very interested, suddenly couldn’t care less and didn’t ask how the highly trained officers of the only nuclear strike force in the world at the time could make such a stupid mistake. They didn’t wonder if the men with their fingers on the triggers might not be as trustworthy as everyone hoped. No, they bought the story and went on their way.

Then Jesse Marcel Sr., who had been the air intelligence officer in 1947, began to tell ham radio friends that he had picked up the pieces of a flying saucer in 1947. Articles were written, followed by a book, but the Main Stream Media (hereafter MSM), yawned because they knew that there were no flying saucers The Air Force had said so.

Interest in the Roswell crash built anyway and move articles and books were written. Television documentaries were made, many times without unnamed sources, but the actual people appearing on camera to tell their tales. MSM yawned because these were crazy old men and women whose memories were playing tricks on them. Besides, there were no flying saucers because the Air Force said so.

But suddenly there was real interest and a New Mexico congressman began to ask questions about the Roswell UFO crash. He wanted an investigation into this. The MSM paid attention because Steven Schiff was a real congressman and that made the story credible... though why escapes me... which is not so say that I didn’t find Schiff credible.

The Air Force investigated, issued a final report, and found that what fell at Roswell was a... weather balloon. Oh, no longer was it just a regular weather balloon, it was Project Mogul, so highly classified that not even the scientists working on it knew the name. This became the accepted truth because the Air Force said so.

Of course Project Mogul (balloon launch seen here) was just regular weather balloons and rawin radar reflectors, just like the tens of thousands that had been launched all over the country for years and there was no reason to be fooled by them even if they were tied together in long arrays. Project Mogul turned out not to be so highly classified... just the ultimate purpose was. But the MSM bought the story because there were no flying saucers. The Air Force said so.

No one in the MSM bothered to ask a couple of simple questions like, “If you’re investigating a UFO crash in New Mexico, why didn’t you interview the more of the men who were there at the time? Why just Sheridan Cavitt? Why not Brigadier General Arthur Exon? Why not Patrick Saunders? Why five men who worked on Project Mogul, some of whom weren’t even in New Mexico in 1947?

No one in the MSM thought about that.

“But what about the bodies?” someone, not a member of the MSM, asked.

The Air Force came out with a second final report to explain the bodies. These were anthropomorphic dummies dropped during high altitude parachute and balloon tests in the 1950s. Never mind that the earliest any were dropped near Roswell was 1957 and that the dummies looked exactly like what they were. This is the solution and the MSM believed this nonsense because the Air Force said so.

Then my friend (at least I think of him as a friend) Nick Redfern (seen here) said, “Not so fast.” He had uncovered information that suggested the recovery at Roswell was really the end result of experiments using deformed Japanese and some kind of experimental craft. At least this provided a reason for the cover up... not some kind of secret balloons.

Not many accepted this and the Air Force remained silent. I think they had learned their lesson. Don’t get involved in these crazy flying saucer stories. Leave it to the kooks, which is not to say that Nick is a kook.

But Redfern was wrong about this and we know because a “journalist” meaning a person with ties to the MSM has said that the Roswell crash was the result of a collaboration between Joseph Mengele and Josef Stalin using stolen Horten Brothers “flying wing” type aircraft to give it an alien appearance. Never mind that the Air Force had access to the Horten Brothers designs after the collapse of Nazi Germany and should have recognized the craft if that is what it was.

But the MSM media listens to this because Annie Jacobsen, who is a contributing editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine said that she interviewed a guy, who remains nameless and he said so. Deformed children the result of the horrific “experiments” of Mengele in some kind of Horten Brothers flying wing for the extraterrestrial flavor. Stalin thought this “War of the Worlds” scenario would create public panic, though I’m at a loss to understand what he would have gained by this.

Did anyone ever notice that the Nazis and Stalin were enemies? Did anyone notice that Mengele had fled to South America and was no longer any sort of important person in 1947?

Enough of this latest nonsense. I do not understand why the MSM will listen to this sort of uncorroborated crap, but will ignore the information provided by the men and women who were there. Clearly the MSM does not have a grasp of history, they don’t know that we, meaning the Roswell researchers looked at the Horten Brothers aircraft designs(seen here) (and that we know the flying wing is inherently unstable and didn’t work well until computers could compensate for the tendency of the craft to flip) and we looked at many alternative explanations.

We can stop now because we have the answer... Stalin, Mengele, deformed children and a bizarre attempt to create a panic in the US is responsible for the crash... But when the Air Force buried the story, why didn’t Stalin pull a few strings at his end to interest the MSM? Why’d he let it die?

And for those interested, I have said for years that the big secret at Area 51 was that it was where the next generation of military aircraft were tested. It has nothing to do with UFOs... but the MSM isn’t interested in that opinion either.

Real Aliens, Space Beings and Creatures from Other Worlds

Brad and Sherry Steiger (seen here) have turned out another winner with their Real Aliens, Space Beings and Creatures from Other Worlds. The title, I think, says it all. This is a book about aliens, though not necessarily from other planets.

“What does that mean?” you might ask.

We’ll get to that in a moment. First I should point out that I have known Brad Steiger for decades. We have talked on the telephone many times, we have emailed one another frequently, and we have appeared on radio shows that the other hosted. I knew, when I had a Saturday evening show on KTSM that I could always call Brad at the last minute if a guest canceled, and I knew that he would be an interesting interview.

The first time that I spoke to him, which I’m sure he doesn’t remember was as I was writing my first book on the paranormal. As a reference, I was using a book he had written. I was interested in the story of Oliver Thomas, a Welsh lad who had vanished in 1909 as he carried water from the family well.

I happened to know where Brad lived at the time and I was able to get his telephone number from directory assistance. I called and asked my question about the case.

“It’s a hoax,” Brad told me.

He said that he had learned that after his book was published, but he was quick to point out the truth, now that he had it. His philosophy at the time was to believe what people told him until he learned that they couldn’t be trusted. I thought it was a fine philosophy even if it let you down sometimes...

My own experience has been that too many people will lie about too much for reasons that seem to be vague. They’ll lie for the personal glory. They’ll lie for the little fame it might bring them. They’ll lie to put one over on someone else. They’ll lie just for the hell of it.

Anyway, Brad was quick to tell me the truth and I certainly appreciated that.

So now we have a new book by Brad and Sherry and it is a compendium of tales about alien creatures that might come from other planets, might be travelers from our future or might be interdimensional beings. They cover all the theories here.

They begin with the biggest of the UFO cases which is the Roswell UFO crash and wind their way through the history of alien contact whether from the contactees of the 1950s, the abductees of the 1990s or the sightings by people of strange beings throughout the centuries.

This is a book for the novice, who has just discovered the UFO field. It provides the basics to understanding where we have gone since the beginning, providing a glimpse into UFOs.

This is a book for those who have been around for a while but who have had their research diverted into one of the many subset of the UFO phenomenon. It provides the basic information so that detailed research can be designed for a long term study.

For those who wish a good primer on UFOs, and for those who wish an encyclopedia of information about the last fifty or sixty years of alien adventures, this is the book to have. It is literally everything to everyone.

If I were to complain about it, I would mention that it is not as detailed as I would like, but then the book would probably have been so big that you’d need a crane to lift it. If there is a case for which I need additional information, Real Aliens, Space Beings, and Creatures from Other Worlds provides the starting point. It gives me the clues I need for my specialized research.

This is one of those books that belongs in every UFO researchers’ library. And if you’re not one of those, a UFO researcher, then it is just a fun read. Informative, provocative, and intelligent. A valuable resource.

Kingman UFO Crash... Really?

To prove my point, that those who offer solutions to some of the UFO cases are not invited to many conferences, I have just learned of an event in Kingman, Arizona in celebration of the UFO crash there. It seems to make no difference that the sources for this information about the crash is shaky at best. Anyone who has an alleged UFO crash near them seems to be gearing up for a festival of some kind.

Let’s review the facts.

The original story, as near as I can tell, came from a fellow who was originally identified as Fritz Werner. He told of a classified mission he had been assigned in May 1953. According to what he told UFO researchers, he had been flown to Phoenix and then bused to a site in Arizona that he believed was near Kingman. Once on site, he engaged in important and classified work.

He told Jeff Young and Paul Chetham about this in 1971. He said, “the object was not built by anything, obviously, that we know about on Earth. This was 1954 [clearly his memory was in error because he later corrected it to May 21, 1953]. At that time I was out of the atomic testing, but I was still with the Air force and this was the time I was on Blue Book. There was a report that there was a crash of an unexplained vehicle in the west and they organized a team of about forty of us. I was one of the forty.”

All well and good, but there is no evidence that Werner was ever a member of Project Blue Book.

Later he would be interviewed by Ray Fowler. He would give a slightly different version to Fowler, but explained that he’d had been drinking martinis prior to that first interview with Young and Chetham. That would explain the discrepancies because he tended to make things up when he drank, according to him.

Later we would learn that Fritz Werner was really Arthur Stancil and later that his name was Arthur Stansel. The story would be unsupported by any documentation other than a notation on Stansel’s personal calendar for May 20 and 21, 1953.

The May 20 entry said, “Well, pen’s out of ink. Spent most of the day on Frenchman’s Flat surveying cubicles and supervising welding of plate girder bridge sensor which cracked after last shot. Drank brew in eve. Read. Got funny call from Dr. Doll at 10:00. I’m to go on a special job tomorrow.”

The entry for the next day said, “Up at 7:00. Worked most of the day on Frenchman with cubicles. Letter from Bet. She’s feeling better now – thank goodness. Got picked up at Indian Springs AFB at 4:30 p.m. for a job I can’t talk about.”

And that’s it. That’s the extent of the documentation. Jottings on a calendar that could mean practically anything... and a note that he had a job he couldn’t talk about. Not the brightest thing to have written down if he truly had a job he couldn’t talk about.

I will note that searches of the local newspapers, meaning those within 100 miles including Las Vegas, have turned up nothing. No UFO sightings at the right time and nothing to suggest that something crashed. Just the story told by Arthur Stansel, first to two young neighbors and later to Ray Fowler.

And with Stansel telling everyone that when he drank, he told stories, his credibility suffers. He told Fowler that he had had four martinis before the young men showed up. I don’t know why he would continue to push the story when Fowler arrived except that he might have liked the attention the tale drew.

But then Don Schmitt told me of a second witness... well, not exactly a witness, but someone who could corroborate the tale. According to the information he gave to me, Judie Wolcott said that her husband had been in the control tower the night the object crashed. Later, after he had been sent to Vietnam, he wrote her a letter that mentioned the UFO crash. He didn’t supply many details and said that he would tell her more when he returned. Unfortunately, he was killed in Vietnam and the letter he wrote had disappeared.

Okay, that was corroboration, after a fashion. It would have been nice to have the letter, especially since it would have been dated before Stansel told his tale to Fowler and that tale found its way into a national UFO magazine.

Then the daughter of Judie Wolcott called me and told me that her mother tended to make things up and that her father had not been killed in Vietnam. In fact, neither of the men Wolcott had married were killed in Vietnam. There was no letter and no strange confession.

So, there really was no evidence for a Kingman crash. We can find no trace of it in any of the documentation and this includes the newspapers of the time. Remember, all the crashes that have some solid supporting information also have newspaper articles about them. Roswell, Las Vegas, Shag Harbour, Kecksburg and so on. Many of the alleged crashes listed on so many web sites have newspaper articles about them, even when we are able to put a mundane answer on them... but not so Kingman.

Hey, I hope their festival was a great success and that those in attendance learned something of importance. I hope they do it again next year and that it becomes a tradition in the town. Kingman is a nice little city and I have always enjoyed my time there, limited though it might have been.

This little piece is not quite as altruistic as it might seem. I have a long article about the entire Kingman Crash story in Philip Mantle’s UFO Matrix, which has just been published. You can view information about the magazine at http://www.ufomatrix.com/.

But there was no UFO crash there... there was one a couple of hundred miles northeast in Nevada in 1962 but nothing near Kingman. Maybe Las Vegas incident was close enough.

UFO Crashes and Len Stringfield

Not all that long ago, I found a report on the MUFON Symposium held in Denver, Colorado in 2010. The author reported on my presentation which was a tribute to Len Stringfield (seen here) and the pioneering work he had done on UFO crash/retrieval cases.

I pointed out that Len had opened the door for the rest of us, and a subset of the UFO field, that is crash/retrievals, was now something that was viewed with new interest and new respect. If not for Len’s work, we wouldn’t be looking at these cases simply because we had been "educated" by the destruction of the Aztec UFO Crash case and the information about the reliability of the two men who were at the heart of it.

In his landmark paper, Len began with what seemed, in 1978, to be a strong report given the source of the information. I confess that the fact the witness claimed to be a retired Air Force colonel colored my thinking about it. In fact, in A History of UFO Crashes, I gave the case high marks. Later, in Crash - When UFOs Fall from the Sky, I would reevaluate the case. I thought of it as taking it to the end, which, I believe Len would have wanted.

In his 1978 presentation in Ohio at the MUFON Symposium, Len reported:

In 1948, according to reports from hazy sources, a UFO with occupants numbering anywhere from one to sixteen, had crashed in a desert region of the southwest United States or Mexico and was retrieved by U.S. military authorities. But the reports never got beyond rumor because 1948 was the year when Frank Scully’s book unloaded an alleged hoax on the public about a crashed UFO in Aztec, New Mexico.

In the Fall of 1977 new word of a 1948 crash came to me from a well-informed military source. His information, however, was scanty. He had heard from other "inside" military sources that a metallic disc had crashed somewhere in a desert region. His only details indicated that the craft had suffered severe damage on impact and was retrieved by military units.

By coincidence, months later in 1977, I was to learn more about a crashed disc occurring in 1948. This came from researcher Todd Zechel, whom I had known since 1975 when he became Research Director of Ground Saucer Watch. Formerly with the National Security Agency, Zechel stated that an Air Force technician told him that his uncle, then a Provost Marshal at Carswell Air Force Base near Ft. Worth, Texas, had taken part in the recovery of the crashed UFO which was described as a metallic disc, 90 feet in diameter.

The crash occurred about 30 miles inside the Mexican border across from Laredo, Texas, and was recovered by U.S. troops after it was tracked on radar screens. The job assigned the Provost Marshal, now a retired colonel, was to cordon off the crash site.

The retired colonel [Provost Marshal], now living in Florida, was tracked down by Zechel. Among other facts revealed by the colonel was that one dead alien was found aboard the craft which was described as about 4 feet, 6 inches tall, completely hairless with hands that had no thumbs.

Zechel learned from his source that the troops involved in the retrieval were warned that if they said a word about the incident they would be the "sorriest people around".

Continuing his investigation, Zechel pieced together other eyewitnesses to the 1948 event. In his statement, Zechel relates the following: "I traced another Air Force colonel, now retired in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He had seen the UFO in flight. He was flying an F-94 fighter out of Dias [in reality Dyess] Air Force Base in Texas and was over Albuquerque, New Mexico, when reports came of a UFO on the West Coast, flying over Washington State. Radars clocked its speed at 2,000 miles per hour.

It made a 90 – degree turn and flew east, over Texas. The colonel, then a captain pilot, actually saw it as it passed. Then suddenly it disappeared from radar screens. At Dias base, the radar operators plotted its course, and decided it had crashed some 30 miles across the Mexican border from Laredo. When the captain got back to base, he and a fellow pilot got into a small plane and took off over the border after the UFO. When they landed in the desert at the crash site, U.S. troops were there before them.

The craft was covered with a canopy, and the two pilots were not allowed to see it. They were then called to Washington, D.C. for debriefing and sworn to secrecy about the whole event.

Those are the basics of the case, and I selected this one, I say, not only because it was the first in his original paper, but because he had more to say about it later. And, I have found a great deal of information about the case in the last year or so. Some of you might have recognized the details as presented here, but are puzzled by the date.

In his The UFO Crash/Retrieval Syndrome published in January 1980, Len reported that a fellow named James Minton had told him about another fellow, named William Draeger who talked about a UFO crash in 1950.

Len wrote, "I knew the incident well, and that it had been disputed by some researchers, however, I had not pursued the case beyond having referred to the alleged crash in my pervious paper. At that time, I had used information related by Todd Zechel to the Midnight Globe (not exactly the most reliable of sources). Since, further research into the case by Zechel and others has revealed that not only the year of the incident was wrong, having changed from 1948 to 1950, but also the crash site was changed."

He printed a letter from Draeger who said that he had learned more about the crash, including information from an unnamed high-ranking Mexican Army officer. Draeger said he talked to the general on the telephone who told him that he knew about the crash but he had no papers or documents to prove it. Draeger asked if the general would go on camera for an interview and the officer agreed. When they arrived at his home, however, the general denied any knowledge of the incident. On camera, the general said he knew nothing about the crash.

Since that time, I have learned that Zechel never bothered to "vet" the retired colonel he had found in Pennsylvania. Everyone, including Len, believed that Zechel had done that. When I attempted to verify the "colonel’s" credentials, all I could learn was that he had been a low ranking enlisted soldier who entered the service in December 1945 and was released from active duty in January 1947.

I have learned that the this colonel, the Pennsylvania man, was an officer in the Civil Air Patrol who has now changed the date of the crash to 1954, or 1955, or maybe 1957. He wasn’t flying F-94s out of Dyess because the F-94 didn’t exist as an operational fighter in 1948 and Dyess didn’t exist in 1948. He has made many changes to the original story as some of his "facts" were found to be inaccurate.

And, I found, in the forerunner to the MUFON UFO Journal, Skylook, an article from 1968 that gives us the original information that set Zechel on his quest, and which, I believe, would have tipped off Len to the believability of the sighting if he had known about it. According to that article:

Col. R. B. Willingham, CAP squadron commander, has had an avid interest in UFO’s for years, dating back to 1948 when he was leading a squadron of F-94 jets near the Mexican border in Texas and was advised by radio that three UFO’s "flying formation" were near. He picked them up on his plane radar and was informed one of the UFO’s had crashed a few miles away from him in Mexico. He went to the scene of the crash but was prevented by the Mexican authorities from making an investigation or coming any closer than 60 feet. From that vantage point the wreckage seemed to consist of "numerous pieces of metal polished on the outside, very rough on the inner sides."

Len’s research here, then, provided some of the basics of the case and opened it up to the research of many others. When Len first reported the case in 1978, it seemed to be a very good one, especially because of the high rank claimed by the witness. Later, as I became interested in UFO crash/retrieval stories, I accepted it as well because an Air Force colonel had signed an affidavit about it. High-ranking military officers simply wouldn’t jeopardize their reputations by telling a story that was so incredible unless it was true. I knew of many witnesses who claimed high military rank who had not attained it but just claimed it, but I was also convinced that a real officer who had worked all his career to get to this high rank would not make up such a story. I believed then, as Len did, there was some truth to this. But it all hinged on that Air Force colonel. Without him, the tale took a nose dive.

As I have reported in the past, the man was not an Air Force officer, but a CAP officer. The difference is that CAP officers are volunteers in a civilian auxiliary of Air Force, but they are not Air Force officers. Those who have served in the Air Force or the CAP know the difference. This guy, Robert Willingham tried to blur the difference to make him into something that he wasn’t.

So now I have taken one of Len’s first reports, actually Abstract I from his 1978 MUFON presentation and followed the investigation to the end. We now have what I believe to be a solid answer for this case which is, simply, it didn’t happen. Len started this process by publishing his information about it and I ended it for him. I believe Len would appreciate what we all have learned about this case. He would appreciate that we could now close it.

But this was not a criticism of Len or his work. He used, in 1978, the best information available to him. In 1980, he added to our knowledge by reporting on the changes to the case which made him suspicious. It wasn’t until 2008, as I was preparing my book on UFO crashes, that I found, originally through the Internet, more data, and that I discovered no one had bothered to learn if Willingham was telling the truth about his military career. Len thought others had done it and I thought others had done it. It wasn’t until I asked those others what they knew that I learned that truth.

This case unraveled because of Len’s work. He raised the original suspicions about it. He was the one who supplied the information about the shifting date, and without Len, we would never have learned what we did.

In that article I saw, it seemed to suggest that I was criticizing Len, but such was not the case. He was a valuable member of the UFO research community, and would have published the latest and best information the moment he had it. Len’s work and legacy can’t be ignored. He was a true pioneer, a true researcher, and the UFO community is much poorer with him gone.

The Disclosure and UFOs Poll

The latest poll has been concluded and I have to say that the overall results do not surprise me, but I am stunned to see that so many still believe Disclosure is at hand. I don’t know if these votes were cast by the same people who voted that way last time and didn’t bother to read the analysis or if they are simply that clueless.

As everyone can see, the majority of the 192 votes (58 or 30%) were cast by those who believe there is nothing to disclose. This suggests we might have a nice mix of skeptics who visit the blog, and those who believe the government has been honest in its reporting on UFOs.

Over on the Magonia blog, the majority, 61% (47) votes, were cast by those who believe there is nothing to disclose. I think that addresses the difference in the average readers there. More of their readers are skeptical and maybe leaning toward the debunking end of the scale.

Magonia voters didn’t have a chance to vote for “Not for Years.” Fifty-two people (27%) suggested that it wouldn’t be for years here.
I had a category of “Never, but They Know) which received 34 votes or 17% of the total. Magonia had a similar category of “They Know but Won’t Tell Us,” which got 17 votes or 19%.

We both had a “It’s Coming,” category. Twenty-seven (14%) thought it was coming sometime in the future. At Magonia, it was simply labeled “Sometime,” and received 17 votes or 19%.

I had a category of “Disclosure is at Hand,” that received 21 votes, or 10%.

Anyone who has been around the UFO field for a while knows, as I pointed out last time, that rumors of Disclosure have been around for nearly as long as the public interest in UFOs. The first rumor of Disclosure that I know of was the one swirling around The Day the Earth Stood Still (no, the good one in 1950 and not the latest one that sucked all the charm, wit, and intelligence from the movie). Disclosure didn’t happen in 1950 and it is not going to happen now unless something radically changes.

That change could be the landing of an alien craft that can’t be denied, hidden or covered-up. It would be a world event that would require the governments to acknowledge that aliens are here. Until the aliens, if they are visiting, decide to announce it, I don’t see our government making any change in its policies.

What we learned in this poll was that on both sites (and both sides of the ocean) the largest number of voters agreed that there was nothing to disclose. My majority was half of that at Magonia.

Interestingly the “Never, but They Know,” category over at Magonia commanded at larger percentage than it did over here... that is 19% to 17%, but then I have five categories to their three.

The bottom line seems to be that the majority of the voters don’t believe there will be any sort of Disclosure, either because there is nothing to disclose, or that the government is not inclined to disclose any time in the near future.

All of this suggests that those suggesting Disclosure is at Hand have failed to convince the majority of the people that such is the case. It might be that they have failed to make a case for Disclosure is at Hand, or we all are so aware of what is happening, we know that Disclosure will not be coming. Either way, the poll suggests it won’t happen for a long time if ever.

Project Mogul, UFOs and Soviet Nuclear Detonations

There has been a rumor circulating about the success of Project Mogul. It has been said that Mogul did detect some American atomic testing and it was successful in detecting the first Soviet nuclear test on August 29,1949.

I was dubious.

I have, in the past, read through all the massive information published about Mogul and the tests. My interest, naturally, centered around the June and July, 1947 flights in New Mexico. These are at the heart of the Roswell controversy. From all that I had read or seen, Mogul was never deployed. It was too expensive and wasn’t all that reliable, though in later years they were very successful on some very, long-range flights.

I also believed that the first Soviet nuclear test had been detected through atmospheric monitoring and seismic recordings. Radiation from the test drifted over monitoring stations and the seismic readings allowed intelligence agents (well, the scientists who monitored such things) to pinpoint the location. I found nothing about Mogul being used.

Tony Bragalia in an email to me, mentioned that Mogul had been successful in detecting that first Soviet test. I asked for the source and he pointed me to an Internet report by Richard A. Muller, who is a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley.

That web address if fairly long. It is:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8F__2Z3Ne9kJ:muller.lbl.gov/teaching/physics10/old%2520physics%252010/chapters%2520(old)/9-SecretsofUFOs.html+%22project+mogul+and+the+%22lying+disks%22%22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.com

I emailed Dr. Muller and frankly, expected no response. I mean the guy has published books, does television shows and teaches classes. His website is quite complex and interesting. I figured that he would be too busy to answer my question about the source and I was afraid my name might annoy him. I am, after all, on the other side of the debate.

Dr. Muller responded within a couple of hours, and given the time (early morning) I sent my email, I was surprised. He was quite courteous in his reply, and supplied what information he could.

He wrote, "I am afraid that I don’t have a hard source for that information; it was something that I was told, and I’m not sure by whom... I don’t have a hard reference for that. Sorry."

In the grand scope of Roswell research, this means very little. Even if Mogul had eventually worked, it doesn’t change what people believe about the Roswell case. All this does is suggest that reports of Mogul success are little more than rumors.

If someone has better information than this, I’m sure that he or she will let me know. But, until we can verify it, the fact is that there is no hard source for the suggestion that Mogul worked (which means in this context, that it didn’t detected the Soviet test).

Lazy Journalists and UFOs

What in the world has happened to journalism in this country? Over the last weekend (15 – 16 April 2011) there was quite a stir about an FBI document (seen below) that some had found on a web site that posted a bunch of FBI documents. This one concerned a crash of a UFO in New Mexico with the recovery of alien bodies.

A real find...

Except those of us who have been in the UFO field for more than twenty minutes already had copies of the documents. I found them last century and when I say I found them, it was in a package of documents that the FBI had released to Dr. Bruce Maccabee in response to one of his FOIA requests. He, through the Fund for UFO Research, provided many of us with copies of the documents.

The document, with a subject of "FLYING SAUCERS, INFORMATION CONCERNING," (who developed this style for subject lines in government communications anyway) said, "An investigator for the Air Forces [sic] stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots."

The important clue in this document, which the journalists didn’t find and didn’t understand was, "According to Mr. (Redacted) informant, the saucers were found in New Mexico due to the fact that the Government has a very high-powered radar set-up in that area and it is believed the radar interferes with the controling mechanics of the saucers."

The consensus of UFO researchers is that the information came from Frank Scully who wrote Behind the Flying Saucers, about three UFO crashes, though only one was in New Mexico, and that the saucer had been brought down by radar. The journalists just didn’t know the history of this information and didn’t bother to check.

Scully reported on three crashes. The one in New Mexico and two in Arizona. Originally, he reported on one in northern Africa, but that seemed to disappear from his writings in later versions of these events.

Time magazine contained a story that was clearly the Aztec crash (from Scully) in January 1950. That might have inspired the tale given to the FBI.

To make this worse, if possible. Some of those lazy journalists, who apparently didn’t bother to check with any of us who have been around for a while, added the MJ-12 Operations Manual to the mix. This document surfaced in the 1990s and again the consensus is that it is a fake.

Yes, there are those who believe that manual to be authentic, but their arguments are weak. That is a debate that we’ll hold off until another time.

In the end, we have a sudden spike in interest in documents that have been around the UFO field for decades. The source of the original information is known and the events to which it refers have been identified. Very few believe it refers to real events. It seems the document was forwarded to the FBI as a matter of routine by an agent in Washington who had heard someone talking about this.

The real question is why would the agent have done that? Hoover, as we know, was interested in UFOs, so maybe the agent believed it was something the director would want to know. At any rate, we know the importance of this document... It has none.

Neil deGrasse Tyson and UFOs

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the man who killed Pluto, has entered a new arena but it is one with which he is unfamiliar...

Okay, he didn’t kill Pluto and I’m not sure this nonsense about planets and dwarf planets is worth much debate. In the 19^th century we had Ceres as a planet and then the king of the asteroids and now a dwarf planet with Pluto, and with three other objects that are so far from the sun in it was only recently that they were found.

My problem was his suggestion that there is nothing to UFOs because the government is lousy at keeping secrets. The thinking, I guess, is that if UFOs are extraterrestrial and the government knows it for whatever reason, why that information would have leaked long ago. I’m not sure why he, and so many others, believe this nonsense, but clearly he does.

Has the government kept secrets?

Here is the conundrum. If it can keep secrets, then we wouldn’t know because the secrets would be, well, secret. How do we know if it has successfully kept secrets?

I suppose we could look at the track record. We know about the Tuskegee Syphilis study only after it had been going on for forty years. A whistle blower provided two newspapers with the information which led to the end of the study. I’m not going to comment on the ethics of something like this, other to say I am horrified by it.

Yes, you say, they kept the secret for forty years, but it did come out. Only shows that some secrets are kept for a long time.

Then I could mention Operation Solo, which I have addressed before. This was an FBI operation that put a spy into the top reaches of the Soviet government. Morris Childs was a leader of the American communist party in the 1930s until he became disillusioned with it. Cooperating with the FBI, Childs maintained his association with the communists in the Soviet Union, becoming a trusted communist. He was so highly respected that they shared many of their secrets with him... and sometimes shared secrets they didn’t know they were sharing because they didn’t know he spoke Russian.

This operation was so secret that others working in the FBI office in New York which oversaw Childs didn’t know about it unless they were directly involved. It was so secret that presidents were not briefed on it. The only exception was right after Gerald Ford became president and he was to meet with Soviet officials. The FBI told him the source of their information to boost his confidence in his dealings with the Soviets.

This operation ran from the 1930s to the 1990s when Childs retired and the Soviet Union collapsed. Only then was he recognized for his contribution to the United States, after there was no longer a need for the secrecy and there was no longer a danger to him.

This proves that secrets can be kept. So, to Dr. Tyson, I say, one of your reasons for rejecting the notion of UFOs is invalid.

As for Roswell, I would say, the secret hasn’t been kept. We are talking about it. People have come forward, credible people, to tell us what they saw. It’s just that those editors of newspapers, which would jump at the chance to expose another government secret do not believe that there has been alien visitation and since they don’t believe, they are not going to listen to anyone who suggests otherwise.

Oh, I know that we have let this get away from us. We had to put up with the contactees who told of visits to the other planets of the solar system, talking of environments that we know now do not exist.

We have been the victims of hoaxes. Nearly every photograph ever taken of a UFO has turned out to be a hoax.

And we have had Roswell witnesses who were once respected but who are no longer considered credible.

And we have had the Air Force providing explanations that are preposterous but people believe them because it is easier to accept these answers than suggest something alien has visited. I would throw out the Mogul explanation right here because anyone who looks at it rationally realizes that it doesn’t fit the facts. But there are many people who believe it anyway.

Alien visitation is, you might say, a self–keeping secret. It is such an astonishing secret that people just refuse to believe it. I tell you about a UFO crash and you just cannot accept that such a thing has happened so you don’t bother to look into it... or invent reasons to reject it.

In the end, all I can say to Dr. Tyson is one of your expressed reasons for rejecting alien visitation is invalid. With that eliminated, maybe we should move the discussion to the evidence that does exist and not the speculation that interstellar travel is impossible. Maybe we should all look at the evidence.

The Betty Hill Star Map - Revisited, Again

I was reading an article by John A. Johnson in the latest Sky & Telescope (which suggests something about my eclectic interests) and was struck by his opening comments. He suggested that an alien astronomer searching for Jupiter-like planets would not be inclined to look at our solar system. And, he mentioned that if you were searching for small, rocky planets, then you would be more likely to find those orbiting dwarf stars.

What has this to do with us, you might ask.

Glad you did. See, back in the 1970s Marjorie Fish, in attempting to find the star system from which the abductors of Barney and Betty Hill originated, made a model of our section of the galaxy. She assumed, and I’m not sure that it was a bad assumption at that time, that those aliens’ home world would be close to us, galactically speaking. They probably didn’t come from a world across the galaxy, though when we begin to speak of interstellar flight, we really have nothing on which to base our assumptions. Once you have solved the problems of interstellar travel, the distances, however great, might not mean all that much. We just don’t know.

But I digress...

When Fish put together her model, she ignored the red dwarf stars because there were so many of them in the vicinity of Earth and they probably didn’t have anything interesting going on around them anyway. Astronomic thinking at that time suggested that dwarf stars wouldn’t have planetary systems. We now know there are planets circling many of these stars.

What all this means, simply, is that the Fish model, and the conclusion that some of the aliens originate from Zeta I and Zeta II Reticuli has been superceded by better information. The evidence that suggested this is no longer accurate. Fish needed to include those dwarf stars in her models.

Again, this isn’t a criticism of the work done by Fish. At the time she constructed her models and did her research, she had the best information available. In today’s world we know that some of her basic assumptions were wrong.

And I haven’t even mentioned that the newest star catalogs have revised the distances to some of the stars that she did use and that earlier information has been found to be inaccurate. In other words, some of the stars that she included in her survey are now outside the parameters that Fish set.

This means that we can no longer say, with any degree of certainty, with any degree of confidence, that the Zeta Reticuli system is the home of any alien race. Until this research is redone, we can no longer say that we know where some of the aliens originate. The evidence just is no longer there.

Frank Feschino and the Flatwoods Monster

Let’s talk about the Flatwoods Monster one more time. This is a case, because of its high strangeness, that is easy to dismiss. A flying saucer landing on a hill with some kind of floating creature coming from it. One that might have had glowing eyes or one that might have "shot" rays from its eyes. Something that might have left landing traces that no one bothered to document at the time. And one in which the craft and creature disappeared before the corroborating witnesses could get there to take a look around.

And one that I found difficult to believe because one of the researchers, Frank Feschino, had posted on a web site a quote attributed to me about his book claiming that the Air Force had engaged in combat with the flying saucers after an order had been given to "Shoot Them Down."

What have we learned in the last week.

The webmaster, Alfred Lehmberg, came forward and said that Feschino had nothing to do with that mistake. Lemberg said that he had taken the quote from a closed discussion group and attributed it to me because I had started the specific thread. Someone else, posting a comment to that thread had made the comment and Lehmberg didn’t pay close attention to the attribution. An honest mistake, he said.

I can live with that. People make mistakes in attribution.

(Richard Dolan, in his massive UFOs and the National Security State makes something of an error in attribution. In writing about the testimony of Barbara Dugger, he credits, in a footnote, Stan Friedman and his book. If you follow that to Friedman’s book, you find the interview attributed to me. Don Schmitt and I had conducted it and provided a copy of the video tape to the Fund for UFO Research. Friedman, and Don Berliner used the tape as a source in their book. So, the attribution was essentially correct, but the original source of the interview had not been made clear. But I digress...)

What this also means is that Feschino had nothing to do with the misidentified quote.

What it also means that one of the reasons to reject the information in his books has been eliminated. You might find his work sloppy or that he leapt to conclusions, but you can’t say he was responsible for the misidentified quote. That belongs to Lehmberg and he has taken complete ownership of it.

Where does that leave me on the question of the Flatwoods Monster. Well, in this world, in which it would be nice to be invited to speak at all these conventions, where it would be nice to have others buying the books that I write, I find it difficult to say something or embrace something in which I have doubts. If I embraced everything... abductions, cattle mutilations, crop circles, every strange and bizarre UFO story... then I would find myself on lots of convention programs. But I just can’t do that.

I have to believe what I say about the topic and with the Flatwoods Monster, I have difficulty embracing the tale as told. It seems that the bolide explanation for the sighting is reasonable. It seems that the hysteria of the witnesses contributed to their sighting. It seems that, by September, 1952, with the newspapers filled with stories of flying saucers, reasonable to believe that the idea of alien visitation wasn’t all that far from the minds of the witnesses. It all seems a reasonable explanation to me.

But Frank Feschino has found some interesting information. I do not know why an officer in the National Guard would talk about deploying soldiers into the area. Deployment of National Guard forces is strictly controlled, if for no other reason than purposes of pay. An officer can’t order his soldiers into the field unless there is imminent loss of life and then he better have some very persuasive evidence.

So, I suppose as some say, this would be in my gray basket (though I dislike that term) but it would be a very light gray. I don’t believe there is much of substance here, but it never hurts to take a closer look. Sometimes I find that I have been mistaken... but only sometimes.

The Flatwoods Monster

Since I was asked about this case, I thought that I would review it and see where we are on it today. I will tell you that the first thing I found was a web site promoting a book about the case (or the follow on book that is an outgrowth of this case as seen here) that I hadn’t read, though I knew about it. I wouldn’t have mentioned this, but the first thing I saw was a quote, from me, endorsing the book, using language that I wouldn’t use and failing to identify me as a retired Army officer.

Given this, I’m more than a little concerned about the validity of anything that appears in the book, or the research that produced it. Using me to endorse the book when I did no such thing suggests someone who is less than candid in other areas of research. The only question is who is responsible for the quote and why was it even put up. I’ll have more on this in a later post.

The Kelly-Hopkinville UFO Occupant Sighting

The Project Blue Book files contain very few cases in which alien creatures were reported. The most famous example is the Lonnie Zamora sighting from Socorro, New Mexico in 1964, which, in a twist for the Air Force was labeled as "Unidentified." For this discussion, we’ll let that go and look at another of the Blue Book cases, although, according to a letter in the files, "the incident has never been officially reported to the Air Force, [and] it has not taken official cognizance of the matter."

What that letter, dated 29 Aug 1957 referred to was a landing and an attack by aliens near the small town of Hopkinsville, Kentucky a few days earlier. A group of people there were confronted by very strange, alien creatures (Illustration based on witness statements seen here). The Air Force would create an "information" only file about the case and ask a couple of officers to "look into it." Two years later, as questions began to be asked, the Air Force would initiate a short investigation but apparently only so they would be able to answer questions about an investigation, rather than actually attempt to learn anything about the sighting.

The story officially began early on the evening of August 21, 1955, when Billy Ray Taylor, a young friend of Elmer "Lucky" Sutton, had gone to the well behind the farmhouse, and came running back telling all that he had seen a flying saucer. The object, described as bright with an exhaust that contained all the colors of the rainbow, passed above the house. It continued over of the fields, finally came to a hover, and then descended, disappearing into a gully.

No one in the Sutton house, including Glennie Lanford, Lucky Sutton, Vera Sutton, John Charley (J.C) Sutton, Alene Sutton, three Sutton children, June Taylor and O.P. Baker, believed the story of the flying saucer. None of them considered walking out to the gully to see if something might be down there. The whole idea was preposterous.

Not long after Taylor told his tale, the dog began to bark. Taylor and Lucky Sutton went to investigate that, but the dog ran under the house, not to reappear that night.

Out in the fields, away from the house, was a strange, hovering glow. As it approached, they could see a "small man" inside it. He was about three and a half feet tall, with a large head that looked to be round, and long, thin arms that extended almost to the ground (Seen here). The creature's hands were large and out of proportion with the body, and were shaped more like a bird's talons than a human hand. The two eyes were large and seemed to glow with a yellow fire.

As the creature continued to move toward the house, the two men retreated, found a rifle and a shotgun inside, and then waited. When the creature was within twenty feet of the back door, both men fired at it. The creature flipped back, regained its feet and fled into the darkness.

The two men watched for a few minutes, searching for the creature and then walked into the living room where the others waited. The creature, or one just like it, appeared in front of one of the windows and the men shot at it, hitting it. This one also did a back flip and disappeared.

Now the men decided it was time to go out to learn if they had injured or killed the creature, or animal, or whatever it was. Taylor was the first out, but stopped on the porch under a small overhang. A claw-like hand reached down and touched his hair. Alene Taylor grabbed him to pull him back into the house. Lucky, pushed past him, turned and fired up, at the creature on the roof. It was knocked from its perch.

Someone, probably Taylor, shouted, "There's one up in the tree."

Both Taylor and Lucky shot at it, knocking if from the limb. But it didn't fall to the ground. Instead, it seemed to float. They shot again, and it ran off, into the weeds.

At the same moment, another of the creatures appeared around the corner of the house. It might have been the one that had been on the roof or one of those seen in the backyard. Lucky whirled and fired. The buckshot sounded as if it hit something metallic like an empty bucket. Just as had the others, the little creature flipped over, scrambled to its feet and fled, moving rapidly into the darkness.

Having failed to stop the creatures with either the shotguns or the .22 caliber rifle, Lucky decided to leave them alone. Someone noticed that the creatures only approached from darkened areas. It seemed that they were repelled by the light.

At some point they heard noises on the roof and went out the back door to investigate. One of the creatures was back on the roof. They shot at it, knocked it off the roof, but it floated to a fence some forty feet away rather than falling to the ground. Hit by another shot, it fell from the fence and ran away, seeming to use its arms to aid its locomotion.

Some of the others in the house were still unconvinced that there were real creatures outside, believing instead, that the boys were playing some sort of a prank on them. With the lights in the house turned out, they had taken up a position close to one of the windows. Taylor told Lankford to wait and she would see for herself.

After twenty minutes or so, one of the creatures approached the front of the house. According to Lankford, it looked like a five gallon gasoline can with a head on top of two thin, spindly legs. It shimmered as if made of bright metal.

Lankford, who had been crouching quietly near the window for a long time, tried to stand, but fell with a thud. She shrieked in surprise and the creature jumped to the rear. Taylor fired at it through the screen door.

About three hours after the first creature had been seen, about 11:00 that night, they decided it was time to get out. Everybody ran to the cars. One of the kids was screaming and had to be carried. They all raced to the Hopkinsville police station for help.

At the police station, there was no doubt that the people have been frightened by something. Police officers, and the chief, interviewed after the events, made it clear they believed the people had been scared by something. That doesn't mean they were "attacked" by strange little metallic men, but does mean they were relating what they believed to be the truth to the assembled police officials.

Within minutes, the police were on their way back to the house, with some of the Sutton men in the cars. The police also called the Madisonville headquarters of the Kentucky State Police. A call was even made to the chief, Russell Greenwell at home. He was told that a spaceship had landed at Kelly. Greenwell then told the desk sergeant that it had better not be a joke.

There were now Kentucky State Police, local police, the Chief, and a sheriff's deputy either heading out to the Sutton house, or already there. One of the state troopers, who was only a few miles from Hopkinsville, on the road to Kelly, said that he saw what he called several meteors flash over his car. They moved with a sound like artillery, and he looked up in time to see two of them. They were traveling in a slightly descending arc, heading toward the Sutton house.

The yard around the Sutton house was suddenly filled with cars, and more importantly light. The men tried to point out where the various events had taken place. The chief searched for signs that anyone or everyone had been drinking but found nothing to indicate that anyone had even a beer. Glennie Lankford later said that she didn't allow alcohol in the house.

Once the police arrived, the situation changed radically. Although the atmosphere was tension charged, and some of the police were nervous, they began to search for signs of the invasion from outer space. There were apparent bullet and shotgun blast holes in the screens over the windows, and there was evidence that weapons had been fired, but there were no traces of the alien creatures. The hard packed ground did not take footprints.

The search of the yard and fields around the house revealed little, except a luminous patch where one of the creatures had fallen earlier and was only visible from one angle. The chief said that he saw it himself and there was definitely some kind of stain on the grass. There is no evidence that anyone took samples for analysis later.

But with no real evidence to be found, with no alien creatures running around, and with no spacecraft hidden in the gully, the police began to return to their regular, mundane duties. By two in the morning, only the Suttons were left at the house.

A half an hour or so after the last of the police left, and with the lights in the house down, Glennie Lankford saw one of the creatures looking in the window. She alerted her son, Lucky, who wanted to shoot at it, but she told him not to. She didn't want a repeat of the situation earlier in the night. Besides, the creatures had done nothing to harm anyone during the first episode.

But Lucky didn't listen to her. He shot at the creature but the shot was no more effective than those fired earlier in the night. Other shots were fired with no apparent affect. The little creatures bounced up each time they were hit and then ran away.

The little beings kept reappearing throughout the night, the last sighting occurring just a half an hour before sunrise. That was the last time that any of the beings were seen by any of the Suttons or their friends.

Although it seems that military personnel, from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, did visit the Sutton house, and interviews with the witnesses were conducted in 1955, an investigation by the Air Force didn't take place until two years later. According to Project Blue Book files, apparently, in August, 1957, prior to the publication of a magazine article that would review the case, someone in the Air Force decided they should "investigate."

In a letter from the ATIC at Wright-Patterson, to the commander of Campbell Air Force Base, Wallace W. Elwood wrote, "1. This Center requests any factual data, together with pertinent comments regarding an unusual incident reported to have taken place six miles north of Hopkinsville, Kentucky on subject date [21 August 1955]. Briefly, the incident involved an all night attack on a family named Sutton by goblin-like creatures reported to have emerged from a so-called 'flying saucer.'"

Later in the letter, Elwood wrote, "3. Lacking factual, confirming data, no credence can be given this almost fantastic report. As the incident has never been officially reported to the Air Force, it has not taken official cognizance of the matter." Here, once again is the Air Force attitude that if the case has not been reported to them, then it simply doesn’t exist.

The matter was apparently assigned to First Lieutenant Charles N. Kirk, an Air Force officer at Campbell Air Force Base. He apparently spent about six weeks investigating the case before sending the material on to ATIC on October 1, 1957. He researched the story using the Hopkinsville newspaper from August 22, 1955 and September 11, 1955. He also had a letter from Captain Robert J. Hertell, a statement from Glennie Lankford, one of the witnesses, and a statement given to Kirk by Major John E. Albert about his involvement in the case, and a copy of an article written by Glennie Lankford.

Albert's statement provides some interesting information. Remember, the Air Force was claiming that the case had not been officially reported and therefore the Air Force had not investigated. It seems that here we get lost in the semantics of the situation and the question that begs to asked is, "What the hell does all that mean?"

It sounds like a police officer who, seeing a robbery in progress, then ignores it because it hadn't been reported to the station and he wasn't dispatched by headquarters. A police officer can't ignore the crime and it seems reasonable to assume that the Air Force shouldn't have ignored the story. The sighting was outlined in the media including the radio broadcasts, and newspapers from various locations around the country were reporting what had happened. Although the Air Force officers at Blue Book or ATIC must have known that the sighting had been made, they chose to ignore it. If the sighting wasn't reported through official channels, directly to them, then it simply didn't exist. Since no one reported this case through official channels, the sighting could be ignored.

Or was it? Lieutenant Kirk, in his report in 1957, sent a copy of the statement made by Major John E. Albert on September 26, 1957, to ATIC. The very first paragraph seems to suggest that notification was made to Campbell Air Force Base which should have, according to regulations in effect at that time (1955), reported it in official channels, to ATIC and therefore Blue Book. The regulation is quite clear on the point and it doesn't matter if everyone in the military believed the sighting to be a hoax, or if they thought the sighting too outrageous, it should have been investigated because the regulations required it.

That investigation would not have been conducted by ATIC and Project Blue Book but by the 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron. AFR 200-2 tells us exactly what should have happened to the report. It went on to the 4602d and apparently disappeared into some bureaucratic limbo there.

In the statement found by Kirk, Albert said, "On about August 22, 1955, about 8 A.M., I heard a news broadcast concerning an incident at Kelly Station, approximately six miles North of Hopkinsville. At the time I heard this news broadcast, I was at Gracey, Kentucky, on my way to Campbell Air Force Base, where I am assigned for reserve training. I called the Air Base and asked them if they had heard anything about an alleged flying saucer report. They stated that they had not and it was suggested that as long as I was close to the area, that I should determine if there was anything to this report. I immediately drove to the scene at Kelly [for some reason the word was blacked out, but it seems reasonable to assume the word is Kelly] Station and located the home belonging to a Mrs. Glennie Lankford [again the name is blacked out], who is the one who first reported the incident. (A copy of Mrs. Lankford's statement is attached to this report)."

Albert's statement continued:

Deputy Sheriff Batts was at the scene where this supposedly flying saucer had landed and he could not show any evidence that any object had landed in the vicinity. There was nothing to show that there was anything to prove this incident.

Mrs. Lankford was an impoverished widow woman who had grown up in this small community just outside of Hopkinsville, with very little education. She belonged to the Holly Roller Church and the night and evening of this occurrence, had gone to a religious meeting and she indicated that the members of the congregation and her two sons and their wives and some friends of her sons', were also at this religious meeting and were worked up into a frenzy, becoming emotionally unbalanced and that after the religious meeting, they had discussed this article which she had heard about over the radio and had sent for them from the Kingdom Publishers, Fort Worth 1, Texas and they had sent her this article with a picture which appeared to be a little man when it actually was a monkey, painted silver. This article had to be returned to Mrs. Lankford as she stated it was her property. However, a copy of the writing is attack to this statement and if it is necessary, a photograph can be obtained from the above mentioned publishers.

There are a number of problems with the first couple of paragraphs of Albert's statement, but those are trivial. As an example, it wasn't Glennie Lankford who first reported the incident, but the whole family who had traveled into town to alert the police

It is the third paragraph, however, that is filled with things that bear no resemblance to reality. Lankford was not a member of the Holly Rollers, but was, in fact a member of the Trinity Pentecostal. Neither she, nor any of the family had been to any religious services the night of the "attack." This unsubstantiated allegation was made in a recent book, suggesting, once again, that the religious tone of the family had somehow contributed to the attack on their house. Or rather, that they were "hysterical" people who would see things that simply were not there.

And, Lankford couldn't have heard about any "article" from the newspapers or magazines as it was read on the radio because there was no radio in the farm house. And there was no evidence that Lankford ever sent anywhere for any kind of article about flying saucers and little creatures, those painted silver or any other color. In other words, Albert had written the case off as a hoax, almost before he began his "investigation" because of his false impressions. Apparently he was only interested in facts that would allow him to debunk the case and not learning what had actually happened.

I have to say, at this point, I would have been quite skeptical of this tale. It is outrageous and beyond belief, but then, things we do today would have been thought of as outrageous and beyond belief fifty years ago. So, we approach with a skeptical attitude, but we listen to what the witnesses have to say and look for ways to corroborate their statements.

Further evidence of the investigators attitude is provided in the next paragraph of his statement. "It is my opinion that the report Mrs. Lankford or her son, Elmer Sutton [name deleted but it is reasonable to assume it was Elmer Sutton], was caused by one of two reasons. Either they actually did see what they thought was a little man and at the time, there was a circus in the area and a monkey might have escaped, giving the appearance of a small man. Two, being emotionally upset, and discussing the article and showing pictures of this little monkey, that appeared like a man, their imaginations ran away with them and they really did believe what they saw, which they thought was a little man."

It is interesting to note that Albert is not suggesting that Lankford, the Suttons, and the Taylors (other members of the family present that night) were engaged in inventing a hoax. Instead, with absolutely no evidence, Albert invented the tale of an escaped monkey that fooled the people. That does not explain how the monkey was able to survive the shots fired at it, especially if it was as close to the house as the witnesses suggested. In other words, with shotguns and rifles being fired, someone should have hit it and there should have been broken bits of monkey all over the farm land. And, remember, the various witnesses talked of a number of little men, not a single individual.

But Albert wasn't through with the little monkey theory. "The home that Mrs. Lankford lived in was in a very run down condition and there were about eight people sleeping in two rooms. The window that was pointed out to be the one that she saw the small silver shining object about two and a half feet tall, that had its hands on the screen looking in, was a very low window and a small monkey could put his hands on the top of it while standing on the ground."

The final sentence said, "It is felt that the report cannot be substantiated as far as any actual object appearing in the vicinity at that time." It was then signed by Kirk.

What is interesting is that Albert, and then Kirk, were willing to ignore the report of the object because there was nothing to substantiate it, other than the witness testimony that there had been an object. Both Albert and Kirk were willing to buy the monkey theory, though there was nothing to substantiate it either. They needed a little man, of at the very least, a little humanoid creature for the family to see and they created one because a "monkey might have escaped."

Glennie Lankford might have inspired the little monkey story with her own words. In a handwritten statement signed on August 22, 1955, said, "My name is Glennie Lankford age 50 and I live at Kelly Station, Hopkinsville Route 6, Kentucky.

She continued:

On Sunday night Aug 21, 55 about 10:30 P.M. I was walking through the hallway which is located in the middle of my house and I looked our the back door (south) and saw a bright silver object about two and a half feet tall appearing round. I became excited and did not look at it long enough to see if it had any eyes or move. I was about 15 or 20 feet from it. I fell backward, and then was carried into the bedroom.

My two sons, Elmer Sutton aged 25 and his wife Vera age 29, J.C. Sutton age 21 and his wife Aline age 27 and their friends Billy Taylor age 21 and his wife June, 18 were all in the house and saw this little man that looked like a monkey.

So the Air Force, which, of course, didn’t investigate sightings of creatures at the time, seized on her description and turned it into a possible solution, suggesting, with no justification that the Suttons had been attacked by a horde of monkeys which were immune to shotguns. They overlooked the evidence of the case, or ignored the testimony, dispatched someone to look into it unofficially at the time, and then denied that they had ever investigated.

From my point of view, which is sympathetic to extraterrestrial visitation, this case is extremely weird. Like those Air Force officers, I would be inclined to ignore it, just as most of us ignore the tales of the contactees. But then again, I would want to follow up on this case, talking to the witnesses and looking for evidence, unless there was something else going on...

And there might have been. Back in 1955 there were only a few nuclear stockpiles in the world and one of them was at Campbell Air Force Base, not all that far from Hopkinsville. Could it have been that some high-ranking Air Force general, who knew what was stored so close to this alien invasion site, wanted the story buried, not because of the alleged little creatures but because he didn’t want a lot of reporters in the area asking a lot of questions that might compromise an atom secret.

No, the storage of the weapons there has little to do with the story but the story focuses attention on the area. The Air Force, not one at the time to favorably entertain any UFO stories and especially those with creatures, didn’t bury the case because of the UFO connection, but because of the secret facility close by.

This is one case that I’m quite ambivalent about. It seems quite improbable, based on what we know, but then, it seems improbably that the whole family would get caught up in this story without some sort of precipitating event. I would think there is a core of truth in the tale, but I don’t know what it might be...

Maybe radioactive monkeys that had been exposed to the atomic weapons after they escaped from that mythical circus that was in town... Hey, it would make a good movie and we could have a lot of fun with it. But that doesn’t answer the question about what happened that night. That’s just something we might never know.

Disclosure Poll, Part 2

As I was putting the last poll together, I came at it from a believer’s perspective. The questions all suggested there was something to be Disclosed, meaning, of course, that there was alien visitation. A number of people have pointed out that those assumptions were flawed. There should have been a "Never" answer, and more importantly, a "Nothing to Disclose" answer.

Because of that, I thought I would throw up another "Disclosure Poll," with those answers on it and see if I received significantly different results.

Over at the Magnoia Blog:

http://pelicanist.blogspot.com

they are running a similar poll. It will also be interesting to see how their results compare to mine. Their philosophy is somewhat different than mine so their readers will have a different perspective on the universe than we do over here.

Vote away... and thanks.

Disclosure Poll

The results are in and not too surprising. More than half of the voters in this unscientific poll believed that Disclosure wouldn’t happen for years (that is 54 of the respondents or 56%).

The next large bloc of votes (24 and 25%) thought there would be Disclosure, but it wasn’t coming soon. That means that more than three-quarters of the respondents don’t believe in Disclosure anytime soon.

Fewer than ten voters (9 and 9%) thought that Disclosure was at hand. I don’t know why they’d believe this, given the history of this phenomenon. It’s been around, in the public consciousness for more than sixty years and at times it seems we are no closer to a resolution than we were at the very beginning.

And the smallest group ( 8 and 8%) think Disclosure is coming soon. That’s a fairly vague term and is, of course, my fault. I should have defined what I meant by soon... which is sometime in about a year or so.

All this means is that the majority of us have no faith in the government coming clean about UFOs. The majority of us realize that the status quo is going to remain, well, the same...

Unless some outside force acts. By this I mean that the aliens land to tell the world they are here. In the world of secrecy you do not say that which you know to be classified to those not cleared to hear it, even if the secret is out and everyone knows it. You are still required to keep it a secret. This explains why sometimes you hear a government employee denying something that we all know is true. We are not cleared and he is going to obey the law about the disclosure of classified information.

But once the aliens land further confirmation of their presence will not be required. We’ll all know the truth. Until then, we will continue to argue alien visitation. We will cite proof which the debunkers will reject based not so much on evidence as on their belief that aliens couldn’t reach here from there. The distances in space are too vast... and they will reject the proof available because they know there is no alien visitation and if there is no alien visitation there can be no proof.

And yes, this is a little bit more supportive of the ETH than I wanted, but sometimes I just get tired of the arguments. Donald Menzel says that the Lubbock Lights photographs are a hoax because there is no other answer except ETH... Phil Klass rejected McMinnville because it was either alien or a hoax and since there are no aliens, it must be a hoax.

Disclosure is a different matter. There were those, in the 1950s, who believed the government was preparing us for Disclosure with the release of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Others believed, in 1977, Disclosure was at hand with the release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In the world today, there isn’t that sort of movie tradition, though science fiction films that deal with alien invasion, alien visitation and alien reality do very well at the box office (It’s amazing to me that the Oscars have not recognized how well science fiction does with everyone but the pretentious voters who claim they don’t watch science fiction, but I digress).

This survey says that most don’t believe Disclosure is near and that is my attitude as well. Back in the mid-1990s we came close, with the massing of evidence about the Roswell case and the general interest in UFOs, but the opportunity was lost. The big propaganda machine was able to divert attention and provide explanations for Roswell... It made no difference that those explanations didn’t fit the facts as long as there was an explanation and the news media, who are too sophisticated to believe in alien visitation was right there to promote the message (Don Schmitt and I, at one point in the mid-1990s were at a major Chicago newspaper (No, not the Sun-Times) for a scheduled interview. We were met by an intern who told us that she had the assignment because her editors didn’t believe in UFOs... let’s not check the facts, let’s just make sure that our belief structure is kept intact... but I digress again.)

So, barring some extraordinary event outside the capability of the government to control, there will be no Disclosure. Those on the outside think that throwing rocks at the glass house of UFO secrecy will eventually work. Unfortunately, the glass is bullet proof and the rocks bounce off.

Budd Hopkins, Walter Webb and the Santa Rosa UFO Crash

It seems that I am unable to get away from the alleged Santa Rose UFO crash of 1963. I have additional information about the episode that Budd Hopkins reported in his "Deconstructing the Debunkers: A Response." Since this has become something of an important case, not for the information contained in it but because of the conflicting views about, I thought we’d take a last, final run at it. (For those who wish to begin at the beginning, please see my posting about Santa Rosa on February 7 of this year).

I want to make one quick point that seems to have been lost, at least in my recital of the case. The Santa Rosa crash was originally discovered by two MUFON members identified by Hopkins as Brenda and Tom. They passed the case along, or rather, helped arrange for Hopkins to meet Beanie, currently the only known witness to the craft and bodies.

We pick up the narrative at the point that Hopkins wrote, "Meanwhile my friend Robert Bigelow agreed to pay my way to Santa Rosa, and that of astronomer Walter Webb, to look further into the case, and I immediately took him up on the offer... She [Beanie, the woman who witnessed the UFO crash/retrieval] was a short, plump, feisty woman who, like me, had suffered from both polio and cancer, but she seemed to be truthful and quite intelligent, speaking in a charming, homespun, country argot. Later, when Webb arrived, we chatted about the case which seemed to him rather dubious; for many researchers, UFO crash-retrievals were - and still are - a hard sell. I was also aware that he was not informed about many aspects of the Beanie case of which I had become aware. Essentially Walt was an astronomer, not someone with extensive experience in working face to face with people like Beanie and I was right to be concerned."

I had suggested, early on that Webb thought, that the Beanie case wasn’t worth further research when he learned the preliminary details. I was, of course, looking at this with hindsight and knew that Webb eventually came to believe that the case wasn’t an important one. He told me, however, "In the beginning we both [Hopkins and Webb] were impressed with what seemed like a consistent and somewhat logical story." This is, of course, in conflict with what Hopkins wrote.

And I think today, and even a decade ago, the idea of UFO crashes was not a hard sell for many researchers. The Roswell case had changed attitudes and almost everyone was now open to the theory that something might have crashed somewhere at some point. The idea had, in the 1970s and the 1980s, been a hard sell, but by the mid-1990s, many of us were looking at these stories carefully thanks to the work of Len Stringfield and his 1978 MUFON Symposium paper outlining many crash cases that he thought deserved another look. But this is a matter of perception and who is to say that my perception is correct and that of Hopkins is wrong?

Hopkins wrote, "In a rented car Walt, Beanie and I drove out to Santa Rosa and when we arrived at the house of the widow of the ambulance driver, I asked Walt to wait in the car for a few minutes until I came out and invited him in. I was afraid that two strangers 'from the East,' charging in together at an elderly woman's house, bearing a tape recorder and microphone, might seem a bit off-putting."

I certainly understand this, especially if the way hasn’t been cleared. But then, the people must have expected something about why they were gathered there. The situation as described by Hopkins might be somewhat different. Rather than Hopkins and Beanie entering the house when they arrived, Beanie went in first, to get acquainted with her old friends while Hopkins and Webb left to eat supper at a local restaurant. This provided Beanie with the opportunity, and I stress this, opportunity to "coach" the witness. I’m not saying it happened, just that there was the opportunity.

As they returned from their meal and pulled up to the house, the widow’s son, wife and children "trooped in from across the street and stood in the crowded room," according to what Webb told me. Webb speculated that there might have been some kind of signal to alert them or maybe they were just watching for the car to return. We now see that the situation, as described by Webb, suggests there had been some communication between Beanie and the widow and we weren’t going to see her facing the strangers from the east alone.

Hopkins then, according to his own report said that he entered the house and was "... received politely by our hostess..." He talked with them for a while and then mentioned he had a colleague out in the car. He said that he made up some excuse for leaving Webb in the car and went out to get him. Webb then entered the house and set up his equipment.　

About Webb’s entrance, Hopkins wrote, "If Walter Webb had set off a small cherry bomb in the room he couldn't have caused more of a disruption."

Webb told me that he brought in his tape recorder and that "Hopkins was aware that I had the device." It wouldn’t make a lot of sense for Hopkins not to know that Webb had planned to record the witness. The best way to take notes is with a recorder because you have the witnesses words right there. I don’t know how many times I have been accused to having misquoted a witness only to be able to prove, with the tape, that the witness said exactly what I reported he or she said. According to Webb, and his notes of the session, "It was only afterward that the informant [Beanie] said the recorder might have been a distraction."

Webb said later that they had agreed from then on not to pull out recorders or cameras until everyone was comfortable with the situation. Here, however, there seemed to be a sense of urgency to document the widow’s tale as it would support Beanie’s story.

Apparently both Hopkins and Beanie complained to Bigelow about this horrendous situation (yes, that is a little bit of hyperbole on my part). But what came from that was about twenty minutes of recorded interview with the various "participants." (And again, the quotes are mine, suggesting that these people, other than Beanie, participated only in the interview, but had not been at the scene of the alleged crash.)

Hopkins, as I noted in an earlier post, said that he returned later, in 1997, to conduct additional interviews and believed he was no longer a stranger to the family and developed a warm friendship with the witness. I have no doubt that this is true. Hopkins seems to be a very nice man, able to relate well to a variety of people, except, in my experience, those who might disagree with him. I found myself on the enemies list after the publication of The Abduction Enigma.

No, I’m not surprised about that. I knew that the message of that book would not be one that those who embraced all of the alien abduction field would want to read. We, meaning Russ Estes, Bill Cone and I were suggesting that alien abduction was less about aliens than it was about researcher manipulation of the situation. We drew the parallels among alien abduction, Satan Ritual Abuse (SRA) and past life regression.

But at the far end of the spectrum, I have had some very cordial email conversations with Hopkins... of course I was reviewing his book, Art, Life and UFOs. Draw your own conclusions.

The point is, however, that Hopkins continued his investigation of the Santa Rosa crash/retrieval without the help of Walter Webb. As I explained in the earlier post, he gathered more information from Beanie but was unable to find any substantial corroboration for her tale. Hopkins suggests there would be no reason for the government, or in this case "the Air Force to have gone to the ambulance and removed everything from the rear area – the sheets, various pieces of portable equipment and so on."

And there is no proof that this ever happened. All we know is that the widow seemed to corroborate that and the operative word here is "seemed."

Carol Rainey, in her article about Hopkins had reported that there had been a long list of possible witnesses to the case. In rebuttal, Hopkins wrote, "The first time I visited Santa Rosa, Beanie and I made a long drive to another town some distance away. She thought that a certain young trooper just may have been the officer in the second car that day, and through Tom [another trooper] we learned his address. I suggested that we not call the man in advance, that we just show up to take anyone there by surprise and thereby get a thoroughly unrehearsed account. [An ambush with recorders and cameras?] So we drove and drove, endlessly it seemed [which, given this is New Mexico, isn’t all that much of a surprise], and when we arrived, the ex-trooper's divorced wife was home and told us that her husband had moved out years ago and she had lost contact with him, though she recalled that he was possibly working for a security company in the far east somewhere. That was that, and I only mention this abortive trip because my ex put it this way: "Neither she [Beanie] or Budd had tracked down or spoken to any of the long list of witnesses." [Emphasis is Hopkins’] I wish we had had even a short list of witnesses from this thirty-year-old incident, but we didn't, so apparently the helpful Ms. Rainey invented such a list for us, but then scorns us for not trying to find them."

But Webb suggests that there had been a long list of possible witnesses and other informants that he had supplied to both Hopkins and Beanie. According to him, neither acted on the list, meaning that no one attempted to find any of those people. And yes, I have seen the list. These included some relatives of Beanie who might have heard her talk about the crash in earlier years, people at the hospital who might have been involved in some fashion, and others who could have had some knowledge... not that they necessarily did, but the questions that should have been asked never were. There were names connected with each of Webb’s suggestions.

Yes, I know from my own experience that sometimes the importance of a witness gets jumbled in the telling. I had once been told of an Air Force officer who had flown President Kennedy in Air Force One to see the Roswell alien bodies. When I finally located the officer I learned that he had been an alternate pilot on Air Force One, had flown with President Kennedy on board and that he, the pilot, had seen a UFO with an alien pilot visible. So the lead, which was supposed to confirm the alien bodies in storage story turned into something else. But it was a lead that had to be followed.

Hopkins wrote, "She [Rainey] quotes from an early letter from Walt Webb in which he berates Beanie for reporting some details about her initial experience which vary, one from one another."

But that’s not quite accurate. Webb said that he berated no one but had questioned Hopkins about some of the conflicting details that had emerged as he learned more about the case. Not embellishments, or additions to the story that could be memories that she had just accessed. Webb also pointed out that he was unaware of the changes when he traveled to New Mexico with Hopkins, and that when he wrote to Beanie, he hadn’t yet seen the transcript of the first interview. Webb’s letter to Hopkins was talking about changes in the story from the time that the MUFON representatives questioned Beanie and when Hopkins and Webb arrived on the scene. It wasn’t about embellishment. It was about contradictory information.

In fact, the one that caught my eye was that in the first interview, conducted by MUFON members in Albuquerque, Beanie said there were two bodies, one outside the craft and one partially out. She told Hopkins and Webb that there had been three bodies, all outside. Not the sort of detail that you would expect to change so significantly.

Here is something else to ponder. We now have information about the Santa Rosa UFO crash from three sources. You might say that two of those sources, Rainey and Hopkins have an interest in the way the story is perceived. I would say that Webb is a disinterested third party except that Hopkins called Webb’s investigatory skills, his experience working with potential abductees, and his motives in the case into question as a way to distract attention from the real weaknesses of the case.

The only person we haven’t heard from at this point is Beanie. I know what the various researchers will say. I know what the details are and have heard those details from three separate directions.

But I also know that there is simply nothing to support this tale. It is, in the end, single witness, and it doesn’t matter if you believe Rainey’s, Hopkins’ or Webb’s version. They all agree that it is single witness... No, the widow and her son didn’t see anything themselves. At best they heard about something strange and the son does seem to mention "alien bodies," but he didn’t see them. Worse still, the son’s memory might have nothing to do with the Santa Rosa crash.

Now I believe we all have enough information to make an intelligent determination about the case and the controversy that has erupted around it. Is this a good sighting, based on the story of an admittedly likeable woman? Does the lack of corroborative detail, other than some vaguely remembered events that might or might not be relevant suggest there is something of value here? Or have we found ourselves in another of Ufology’s turf wars where the cult of personality is more important than finding our way to the truth?

The answers to those questions are, at least to me, obvious. There was no Santa Rosa UFO crash and unless, or until, some kind of corroborative detail is found, this is just another footnote to what is becoming a long and overblown list of UFO crashes. And that is all is should be.