The UAP Report and an Historical Perspective

(NOTE: Although it is not relevant to the following discussion, I wanted to mention that Tucker Carlson, as he began his report about the UAP study, mentioned the Roswell UFO crash. He showed one of the pictures of Brigadier General Roger Ramey crouching near the balloon wreckage that was claimed to have been part of the debris recovered. Carlson mentioned that a balloon was probably responsible for the Roswell debris and while this has been the Air Force (well, Army in the beginning) explanation, it fails to explain any number of facts. There is no good terrestrial explanation for what fell at Roswell and for those who wish to follow up on that I suggest looking at Roswell in the 21^st Century. That book provides the evidence that demolishes the balloon explanation for Roswell… now that I have that off my chest… now an analysis of the latest government report on UFOs… I mean UAPs.)

General Ramey and Colonel Dubose with the wreckage of a rawin
radar target and the blackened balloon envelope. According to
both Dubose and Jesse Marcel, that was not the material
found near Corona and flown to Fort Worth.

We now have access to the report on UAPs that was required as part of the Covid-19 stimulus package for some bizarre reason. It is nine pages long and readily available on the Internet for those who wish to read it themselves. I found it here:

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf

Briefly, it is made up of 144 reports (but not necessarily 144 separate events) and notes that only one has been identified with any degree of certainty. That was a partially deflated balloon. The others are not identified but the report notes that there probably isn’t a single explanation for the sightings and that they don't have complete information on many of them. They wrote, however:

Limited data and inconsistency in reporting are key challenges to evaluating UAP [meaning UFO in the classical sense]. No standardized reporting mechanism exited until the Navy established one in March 2019 [except of course Air Force regulations that were rescinded a long time ago and the JANAP 146 series which were standardized]. The Air Force subsequently adopted a mechanism in November 2020, but it remains limited to USG reporting. The UAPTF regularly heard anecdotally during its research about other observations that occurred but which were never captured in formal or informal reporting by those observers [which is a fancy way to say that if it wasn’t reported, then it doesn’t count].

Here’s where we are today. There is no discussion of hoaxes, illusions or misidentifications and no suggestion that drunks, or the uneducated are those who are reporting UFOs (well, UAPs). Instead, the report suggests that most of the cases are of physical objects. Not only that, a high number of the cases, that is 80 of them, have multiple chains of evidence, meaning that they are captured on radar, and infrared electro-optical seekers and there is a visual component, meaning people, as well.

There are reports of flight characteristics that suggested an advanced technology but there is nothing to actually suggest alien visitation. The report does not rule out the possibility, however. To bolster their claim that this is something unusual, and that no government on Earth has any equipment that can operation in the envelopes exhibited by these objects, they note the unusual flight characteristics and that the sightings are found near military training areas. Robert Hastings reported years ago, and has been collecting data for decades, that suggests an interest in our nuclear capability with sightings around military installations. He detailed this in his book UFOs and Nukes.

One thing that came up and I mentioned it before on this blog was the danger of a midair collision. In the report there is a mention of eleven cases in which pilots reported near misses. I quoted the commanding officer of VFA-11, a strike fighter squadron, who wrote, “…although this report is primarily submitted for tracking purposes, it is only a matter of time before this results in a mid-air collision…”

And while all of this is exciting and suggests a change in attitudes, I worry about the history of government investigations into and announcements about UFOs. During the summer of 1947, and according to Captain Ed Ruppelt, the Pentagon had been in a panic about these flying saucers or flying disks (which I mention to begin the evolution of names for these things). They didn’t know what was going on, only that something was flying around the US and the military seemed unable to stop it. This was a national security problem.

In September, 1947, Lieutenant General Nathan Twining, commander of the Air Materiel Command, provided an analysis of the situation. He wrote (and this has been quoted for decades) “The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.”

He also wrote, “The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically or remotely.”

And he wrote, “The possibility that some foreign nation has a form of propulsion possibly nuclear, which is outside of our domestic knowledge.”

Or, in other words, Twining’s letter (probably written by Colonel Howard McCoy for Twining’s approval and signature) concluded, nearly 75 years ago, what this latest study has just concluded. It means that three quarters of a century ago, the US military was worried about flying saucers, didn’t know what they were, and that Twining called for the establishment of a program, a fairly high priority program, to find the answers to the flying saucers. It was kept inside the military establishment and it is not clear if the contents of the letter were released to Congress or the President at that time.

We know that after time had passed and the invasion fleet, neither alien nor Soviet had arrived, the pressure was off. The priority investigation devolved into nothing more than a clearing house for reports to be filed and forgotten… that is until the summer of 1952, and UFOs (as they were now called) were seen over Washington, D.C.

The heightened interest in UFOs, inspired by the sightings known as the Washington Nationals, resulted in the formation of the CIA sponsored Robertson Panel. The members were scientists, all who seemed to believe that those seeing UFOs were not the brightest and that there was really nothing to UFOs. This was the bailiwick of the unenlightened, the uneducated and the ignorant.

The Robertson Panel examined, for five days, the best evidence about the UFOs. These included movies taken over Great Falls, Montana and Tremonton, Utah. It included cases that seemed to be difficult to resolve and other evidence suggesting that UFOs might be something other than terrestrially based craft. The panel, in its final report, suggested:

1. Pursuant to the request of the Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence, the undersigned Panel of Scientific Consultants has met to evaluate any possible threat to national security posed by Unidentified Flying Objects ("Flying Saucers"), and to make recommendations thereon. The Panel has received the evidence as presented by cognizant intelligence agencies, primarily the Air Technical Intelligence Center, and has reviewed a selection of the best documented incidents. 

   2. As a result of its considerations, the Panel _concludes_: 

        a. That the evidence presented on Unidentified Flying Objects shows no indication that these phenomena constitute a direct physical threat to national security.

We firmly believe that there is no residuum of cases which indicates Phenomena which are attributable to foreign artifacts capable of hostile acts, and that there is no evidence that the phenomena indicates a need for the revision of current scientific concepts.

   3. The Panel further _concludes_:

        a. That the continued emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena does, in these parlous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs of the body politic.

We cite as examples the clogging of channels of communication by irrelevant reports, the danger of being led by continued false alarms to ignore real indications of hostile action, and the cultivation of a morbid national psychology in which skillful hostile propaganda could induce hysterical behavior and harmful distrust of duty constituted authority. 

   4. In order most effectively to strengthen the national facilities for the timely recognition and the appropriate handling of true indications of hostile action, and to minimize the concomitant dangers alluded to above, the Panel recommends:

          a. That the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired;

          b. That the national security agencies institute policies on intelligence, training, and public education designed to prepare the material defenses and the morale of the country to recognize most promptly and to react most effectively to true indications of hostile intent or action.

We suggest that these aims may be achieved by an integrated program designed to reassure the public of the total lack of evidence of Inimical forces behind the phenomenon, to train personnel to recognize and reject false indications quickly and effectively, and to strengthen regular channels for the evaluation of and prompt reaction to true indications of hostile measures.

In other words, the Robertson Panel was unimpressed with the evidence, they saw no evidence of a real national security threat, and thought that the best thing to do was to debunk UFOs and that training programs would bring about the changes in public attitudes and the reporting of UFOs that the Panel thought appropriate. They wanted to take UFOs out of the headlines and out of the official communications channels.

And while the Air Force began the debunking program, they continued to collect UFO reports. Their answers to extraordinary cases were extraordinarily uncomplicated. The Levelland UFO reports of stalled car engines was reduced from more than a two dozen witnesses at thirteen separate locations to just three who had seen the object. The cars were stalled, not by some electromagnetic effect but by a broken rotor in one case and a postulated mist in the other two. In the end, the Air Force wrote off the case as ball lightning, paying no attention to the fact that the very existence of ball lightning was being debated by scientists. In any case, ball lightning is extremely rare, never manifests itself in a form more than two feet in diameter, and lasts for mere second. The Air Force had taken the recommendations of the Robertson Panel to heart and were acting to, well, suppress the data.

Although it seemed that the Robertson Panel was advocating an end to UFO programs, the investigation of UFOs would continue for another sixteen years with various government agencies and officials suggesting an end to the program. That opportunity came in the late 1960s with the creation of what has become known as the Condon Committee. After eighteen months of investigation, Dr. Edward Condon issued his report. Like the Robertson Panel before, he determined there was no national security implications, that nothing of scientific value could be learned by further study, and that the Air Force end its investigation. You might say, this was Robertson 2.0

So, after some twenty-two years of official investigation, Project Blue Book, which began in secrecy in 1948 (publicly called Project Saucer with the classified name of Sign) ended. Nothing more could be learned by further study. Project Blue Book was closed and the Air Force began a campaign of convincing people that they were no longer interested in UFO sightings. Of course, this wasn’t true because their mission demanded that they investigate the penetration of the defense zones around the country. And there are many pictures of American fighters “escorting” Russian bombers that have penetrated those zones and were flying over the United States.

Russian bomber escorted by American fighter.

All of this brings us back to the latest report, which, I suppose could be seen as Twining 2.0. This latest report actually nullifies the Condon Committee report… at the moment. This latest is telling us that something real is going on and that it deserves some investigation.

Once again there is an issue with national security. Now we are concerned about midair collisions. And most astonishingly, we see that something over 99% of the reports are unidentified but that might because of a lack of data or investigation. We don't know how many of these reports are from the same events, meaning the number of incidents might be lower. Blue Book “solved” all but just about five percent of the more than 13,000 cases reported to them but there are thousands labeled as "insufficient data for a scientific analysis," which is not a solution. Condon left more than a third of the cases unresolved.

Twining was concerned and suggested a priority investigation, which he got. Within months, it had degenerated into little more than a filing cabinet for reports thanks to the influence of the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Hoyt S. Vandenburg. No one was interested in doing any actual investigation when it was clear that Vandenburg had his own ideas. Over the years, and beginning in the early 1950s, the emphasis was on solutions rather than investigation. Slap on a solution and be done with it.

Condon was told what his conclusions were supposed to be before any investigation was conducted and he went out and found them. Condon’s job was to kill Blue Book and that he did. Now, when scientists tell us that the “scientific” investigation found nothing of substance, we can say, but this new UAP report did. That is one of the important take-aways here.

However, and this is what concerns me, is if this isn’t the implementation of the Robertson Panel idea. Show the public a very mysterious sighting and then reveal what it really was. Convince the public, and by extension the Congress, that while there is something real happening, it is not alien and it is not a technological leap forward by a competitor on this planet.

For us, the point is that they didn’t come out and say that there was alien visitation, but then they didn’t rule that out either. They kept that door open, however slightly. The only question left for us is if this was Robertson 3.0 and Condon 2.0 or if this is something that is going to produce unbiased and accurate results. Are we going to learn something of value or is it going to be hidden under a pile of security regulations and government obfuscation or is it going to actually provide some useful answers?

I say we’ve been down this road before and it depends on which fork is taken. Are we nearing Disclosure or is this just another attempt to teach us the “truth” about flying saucers… I mean UFOs… I mean UAO*… I mean UAPs.

 

*For those interested, Coral Lorenzen of APRO came up with the term Unidentified Aerial Object in an attempt to remove preconceived notions about what they are… She failed. 

The Congressional UAP Report

 

As many of you know, I have been suggesting that the report due to Congress Friday will be less than startling. I believe, based on the past, and on some of the things being said, that the report will focus on about 140 cases in which there were limited, obstructed views of the UFOs/UAPs and there will be a suggestion that drones, which are unmanned so that the effects of excessive accelerations won’t have a human crew to crush, are responsible for many of those sightings.

We have also heard that the equipment being used and the tactics employed during these events are considered top secret. The fear inside the military and the Department of Defense is that the revelation of these classified tactics and equipment will negatively affect national security. Or, in other words, these national security concerns will conceal the real nature of the UFOs/UAPs and we’ll be left with the same sort of nonsense that has been going on for decades.

Jacques Vallee

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with Jacques Vallee about a classified section of Project Blue Book. He suggested that the cases hadn’t been classified, but that was not accurate. Many of the early cases were classified as secret. You can see where the classification markings have been crossed out. And that didn’t address the issue of a secret, hidden part of Blue Book.

I had asked about this because of information I had received while writing UFOs and the Deep State. I had heard that there was a classified section to Project Blue Book and those files had never been released to the public. It could be said that national security was the reason but that is just an excuse to hide information that the DoD and the government, and by extension, the Deep State doesn’t want published. This hints at a less than comprehensive report.

The other thing that sometimes is overlooked is that before there was an official investigation, General Twining of the Air Materiel Command, had ordered an unofficial investigation beginning in December 1946.  This was the result of the incomplete study of the Foo Fighters of the Second World War, and a failure to find an explanation for the Ghost Rockets that had been reported in Scandinavia and later in northern Europe in 1946. Colonel Howard McCoy had been one of the intelligence officers involved in both these investigations. He was privately gathering information about UFOs through military channels.

Twining’s order came six or seven months before Kenneth Arnold made his sighting in June 1947. At that point, that unofficial investigation morphed into an official one. Orders were issued and Project Sign began in January 1948… but, the public was told the name was Project Saucer. In other words, evidence of the cover up began with the creation of Project Sign. Information flowing from that investigation to the public was not as complete as it could have been.

After an internal fight in the DoD about the reality of UFOs, and a hint that the Chief of Staff of the Air Force was less than enthusiastic about the existence of alien spacecraft, it was announced that Project Sign had been concluded and an official report was issued. There were no national security issues, and no evidence that alien spacecraft were flying around.

However, it was merely a name change. Project Grudge was born with the same people in the same offices at the same base. Following the script written before, in 1952, it was announced that Project Grudge had been concluded. The huge report claimed there were no national security issues and there was no evidence that alien spacecraft were flying around.

Ed Ruppelt

But it was another name change and Project Blue Book was born into this rather chaotic system. Ed Ruppelt, at the time a first lieutenant, was given the task of reorganizing the investigation. For several months, he upgraded the system and the investigations, gathering as much information as he could.

In January, 1953, the CIA sponsored a panel to review the evidence. The chairman, Dr. H. P. Robertson, did not believe that there were alien spacecraft visiting Earth. He chose the panel members based, not on their unbiased opinions, but on their holding the same beliefs about the flying saucers as he did. It wasn’t a panel to review the data but one designed to destroy interest in the topic and convince the civilian world that there were no UFOs visiting Earth. It was hoped that this blatant appeal to authority would end interest and speculation about UFOs. The Deep State was still not interested in sharing its information with the public.

Although the panel’s report was classified, and the recommendations were that UFOs be “debunked,” Project Blue Book remained in operation until 1969. It was ended as a result of the University of Colorado study paid for by the Air Force. Dr. Edward Condon concluded that there were no national security issues, there was nothing to be learned from further study, and the Air Force had done a good job just as he had been hired to do. You might say that this was Robertson 2.0.

There were, of course other issues. The official figures for Blue Book were that the Air Force had investigation 12,618 sightings and of those, 701 remained unidentified. This is not true.

There are more than 13,000 sightings in the files. Many are in a section labeled “Additional Reported Sightings (not cases).” These are everything from newspaper clippings to intelligence reports on some of the sightings but were not, apparently, submitted through an official channel and were not investigated further. They were merely filed and then, routinely, ignored.

Although there are only 701 sightings labeled as “unidentified,” there are many more which are not identified. I took a look at a representative sample of cases labeled as “insufficient data for a scientific analysis,” and found there are something like 4000 labeled that way. It means there is no solution for the sighting but it is outside the dreaded “unidentified” category. It is labeled but not solved.

And I haven’t even mentioned those cases that do have solutions that make no sense, given the facts. The Levelland, Texas, sightings of November 1957 are a good example. Witnesses at least thirteen separate locations reported the UFO close to the ground and that the operation of their motor vehicles was impaired. The Air Force explanation is “ball lightning.” This overlooks the fact that ball lightning is extremely rare, it lasts for seconds and is rarely over 18 inches in diameter. Witness testimony refutes ball lightning as a solution, but the Air Force has the case labeled and that was the whole point.

I will note here that Condon carried on that tradition. About a third of the cases investigated by the Condon Committee had no solution to them. One was labeled as a phenomenon so rare it had never been seen before or since.” Not much of a solution but then, they didn’t leave it as unidentified.

And that brings around to Friday’s projected release of the UFO/UAP study. If history is any guide, then we will see the same sort of misdirection, misinterpretation, and misinformation. Senator Marco Rubio has suggested just that. He said that he believes the report “will provide more questions than answers,” and that it “will hold back a lot, partly because the technology we use to capture and analyze the images are top secret.” He did suggest that “If they classified something spicy in it, ain’t no way that doesn’t leak.”

The problem here is that an unnamed source leaking highly classified material about UFOs/UAPs might not be believed. It will look just like so much other false information coming from the government. Without a source and without some sort of extra evidence, the leak will be ignored.

In other words, I think this is going to be Condon 2.0. An attempt to avoid answering the questions by hiding the information under the mantle of national security and answers that provide no information. It won’t move us toward Disclosure or revelation about what is happening and what is being seen and photographed, but then that’s what the Deep State wants. Keep it buried to keep them in power.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Nick Redfern and his book "Diary of Secrets: UFO Conspiracies and the Mysterious Death of Marilyn Monroe."

 

This week I reached out to Nick Redfern to talk about his new book, Diary of Secrets: UFO Conspiracies and the Mysterious Death of Marilyn Monroe. I’m pretty sure that putting Marilyn Monroe’s name on the cover is a good marketing ploy and it’s not as if there hasn’t been rumors about Marilyn, UFOs and JFK. Maybe he did tell her something about alien visitation… or maybe not. It depends. I thought this would be a good way to also mention my book, UFOs and the Deep State. Afterall, we were both writing about the same thing, more or less. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/45330557

Nick Redfern

Nick suggested the book was part investigation and part travelogue, meaning that he was telling the story of his investigation into the connection between Marilyn and the Deep State and what she might have known about UFOs and by extension, Roswell. Nick mentioned that she knew Dorothy Kilgallen and her connection to a UFO crash tale that supposedly came from Lord Mountbatten. That story has been floating around the UFO world for a long time and there has been no confirmation that it was true.

There is an alternative to this, however. It wasn’t her knowledge of UFOs and the connection to the British lord that got her killed. It was what she knew about the connection between JFK and the mob. You can read about that here:

https://nypost.com/2016/12/04/dorothy-kilgallens-tell-all-on-a-mafia-don-might-have-got-her-killed/

In fact, from what Nick said, it might be that little he uncovered during his search was true. He mentioned Lee Israel, a successful writer in the 1960s and 70s, who found herself without much of an audience in the 1990s. When she needed cash, she resorted to forging documents. I wrote about her a while back and you can read it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2019/09/faked-documents-more-than-youd-think.html

That also took us, briefly, to the fiasco of CBS News’ report on then President George W. Bush’s service with the Air Guard at the time of the Vietnam War. This was about forged documents and how these things can be created without the detailed knowledge of the situation. You can read about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/08/truth-and-mj-12.html

While Nick and I do discuss, briefly, MJ-12, we both have come to the same conclusion about it. But Nick had experience with Tim Cooper who received thousands of pages of documents relating to MJ-12. Again, that is ground that has been covered, but then Nick provides more information about it. Once again, we have documents that can’t be traced to a government source. Cooper got them from a guy named Cantwheel, who got them from someone else. So many fakes have been dropped on the UFO community with such lame provenance. That should be the giveaway.

Nick, I think, had some fun with the book, explaining how he got information, who he interviewed as he traveled around, and he got to poke at a mystery that has confused us all for decades. If nothing else, his insight into these mysteries, even if unresolved, should be of interest.

Coast to Coast - Drones and the Upcoming UAP Report

 

It’s been a quiet week around the UFO world. I found a report about drones on a website called The War Zone written by Adam Kehoe and Marc Cecotti. For the full article, see:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40904/faa-data-shows-strange-pattern-of-military-encounters-with-unidentified-aircraft-in-sensitive-airspace  

According to them, using FOIA, they obtained data recovered from the FAA about drones operating in, around, and over the United States. They said that many of the incidents have been out, far out, over the oceans and have affected both Navy and Air Force pilots.

Analysis of that data show that the majority of the incidents involved F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, with most of the events reported between 2013 and 2014.

Although national security rears its ugly head, the real problem is safety issues and the commanding officer of VFA-11, a strike fighter squadron, wrote, “…although this report is primarily submitted for tracking purposes, it is only a matter of time before this results in a mid-air collision…”

According to The War Zone, and here is where it becomes of interest to us, the majority of the incidents happened over water in military test and training areas. In one of the incidents, the E-2 Hawkeye, an electronic warfare and command and control aircraft, reported an unidentified and unknown aircraft flying at 16,400 feet.

In another incident, an F-18 pilot saw four unidentified aircraft, one colored red and the others black, hovering at 11,000 feet over 100 miles from the North Carolina coast.

I don’t have to tell you the impact this sort of information will have on the expected Congressional briefing scheduled for June 25. If these are the sorts of incidents that have been investigated and then reported in that briefing, it is going to suggest a terrestrial explanation for the current crop of UFO/UAP sightings.

However, on September 17, 2017, two silver, cylindrical objects were spotted in the vicinity of Washington, D.C. The pilot of an F-16 sighted the objects at 4000 feet in a Temporary Flight Restricted zone about 2 miles from the Joint Base Andrews. That is the base where Air Force One is housed, and from which the President flies. This seems to make it a matter of national security, and I wonder how the upcoming report is going to spin this. The pilot’s description seems to rule out drones and other terrestrial aircraft.

I will note here that a spokesman for the Department of Defense Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force said that the purpose of the task force was to examine “incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace.”

The War Zone reported that their attempts to gather more data via FOIA, produced little to no results. However, it seems that some of the questions asked in those FOIA requests were answered in FOIA material provided to John Greenewald over at the Black Vault.

When John Greenewald and I talk about the upcoming report being Condon 2.0, this is what we mean. We have a series of sightings of what might be drones, but are labeled as unidentified aircraft. Drone allows the Navy and the Air Force to investigate without having to invoke the dreaded alien spacecraft scenario. It will provide answers that the majority of the public and certainly the majority of the Congress will accept. Their attitude will be they were right to be worried by these events, but we see that they are not something involving extraterrestrial visitation. It means that the Deep State has dodged the bullet once again.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Kathleen Marden

 

This week I chatted with Kathleen Marden, the niece of Betty Hill. Kathleen has taken the lead in abduction and experiencer research in recent years. We, of course, talked about the Hill abduction before moving off into the larger field with other, more plentiful players. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/45236351

Kathleen mentioned that there was new evidence in the Hill abduction. Betty Hill’s dress, the one she had been wearing that night, was reexamined. Small blood stains, found on the back, belonged to spiders. I’m just not sure how that would have happened and certainly has no relevance to the abduction.

Kathleen Marden

Stains on the front, in the area that would have covered the abdomen, had DNA on it, but not blood. I’m still not certain how this is evidence of the abduction because I would expect Betty Hill’s DNA to be in all sorts of locations on the dress. Kathleen seemed to believe that the discovery was significant.

One of the things that has interested me for a long time was the star map that Betty Hill had drawn. Marjorie Fish had done an analysis many years ago identifying Zeta I and Zeta II Reticuli as the source of, at least, some of the alien ships. Given the changes in our knowledge, I wondered if some of the information used by Fish hadn’t been updated. Kathleen mentioned that an Astro-physicist had done an update and found that Fish was close to right. However, that Astro-physicist also suggested two other stars as the possible source… but I don’t have the names. I will also mention that it is clear that the scientist was a woman because Kathleen kept saying, “Her,” but wouldn’t supply a name.

We moved onto the larger issue of alien abduction. Kathleen talked about a major study with several hundred participants. We discussed the test results. I was looking for a commonality of traits. Were there too many left-handed people involved? Was there a prevalence of one blood type over another? Characteristics that were not readily visible to the unaided eye. Seems that there are some. Kathleen mentioned migraine headaches, for example. I wondered if the headaches were the cause of the belief in abduction if they were the result of an abduction.

Toward the end, I asked about physical evidence. Apparently, there is a tape of an encounter, which Kathleen describes in detail. She will be showing the tape and stills from it at an upcoming conference in Michigan. I confess that I would like to see it, because, from the description, there is very little that suggests a hoax or misidentification, but without seeing it, I just can’t be sure… and no, I’m not going to mention the Roswell slides here (oops, I just did).

Next week is Nick Redfern. We’ll be talking about his latest book and I’ll sneak a few plugs in for my latest.

Condon Committee Negated

 

More than fifty years ago, the Air Force, believing that they were on the spot about UFOs, paid the University of Colorado more than a half a million dollars to investigate the subject. The claim was that this would be a scientific study into the reports of UFOs and a search for evidence. Dr. Edward U. Condon, a respected nuclear physicist who had once headed the National Bureau of Standards and was one-time president American Association for the Advancement of Science, was chosen to lead the project. He was selected, according to some sources, because he had no expressed bias about UFOs.

Dr. Edward U. Condon

That wasn’t the case.

Early on, in the investigation, an exchange of letters between Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hippler, who served in 1967 in the Air Force’s Science Division, Directorate of Science and Technology, and Dr. Robert Low, who was a member of Condon’s staff, outlined what was expected which was contrary to the stated purpose of the study. Hippler wrote:

This is an informal letter expressing some thoughts on our round- table discussion on the UFO program, and does not constitute the formal letter requested by John Coleman.

There are two items which leave me a little uneasy. The first is the Wertheimer Hypothesis, and its corollary that one cannot "prove" the negative on extraterrestrial visitations. The second is an apparently obscure understanding of what the Air Force wants. Since I will discuss this second item, you will see why this is an informal letter expressing my own opinion–and hence is not binding on you.

On the first item, I wish to present a slightly different approach. When we first took over the UFO program, the first order of business, even before approaching AFOSR, was to assure ourselves that the situation was as straightforward as logic indicated it should be. In other words, we too looked to see if by some chance the intelligence people have information other than what exists in Blue Book files. There were no surprises. While there exist some things which may forever remain unknowable in the universe, certainly an extraterrestrial visitation must fall in the "knowable" category. An alien would not come light years merely to pick up surreptitiously some rocks, or melt holes in reservoir ice (al la Edwards). He would have long since gone through the geologic bit, and would be fairly knowledgeable of the make-up of stars and planets. You have stated that President Truman was unaware of the Manhattan Project until he became President. In that same time period, physicists not connected with the project were aware of the possibilities and knew that something was going on.

No one knows of a visitation. It should therefore follow there has been no visitation to date. As you are aware, if UFOs are an Air Force "sacred cow," the other services in the usual competitive spirit would not be constrained by this "sacred cow." Nor the “fear of panic” holding anyone’s tongue. No one is reticent about the horror of an ICBM attack. Words such as “end of civilization have been used many times.

This brings us to the second item. When you have looked into some sightings and examined some Blue Book records and become acquainted with the true state of affairs, you must consider the cost of the Air Force program on UFOs, and determine if the taxpayer should support this for the next decade. It will be at least that long before another independent study can be mounted to see if the Air Force can get out from under this program. If the contract is up before you have laid the proper groundwork for a proper recommendation, an extension of the contract would be less costly than another decade of operating Project Blue Book.

Condon understood exactly what was being asked of him even if others didn’t. Just three days after reading the letter, Condon was in Corning, New York, to lecture scientists including members of Corning Section of the American Chemical Society and the Corning Works Chapter of Sigma Xi. He said, “It is my inclination right now to recommend that the government get out of this business [UFO investigations]. My attitude right now is that there is nothing in it. But I am not supposed to reach that conclusion for another year.”

What this demonstrates is that the fix was in. Although this was supposed to be an unbiased, dispassionate examination of the UFO phenomenon, it was, in fact, a program designed to explain away UFO sightings by wrapping it all in the mantle of science. And, for fifty years, we have heard about the Condon Committee’s negative findings and its conclusions that there is nothing of scientific value in continuing to study UFOs.

I’ll add here that another purpose of the committee was to determine if there was a national security implication in the sightings. They found that there was not even though they had run into that national security implication in the Belt, Montana/Malmstrom Air Force Base sightings of March 24, 1967.

In the end, Project Blue Book was closed and the Air Force claimed that they were no longer interested in collecting information about UFOs.

BUT –

All that has been negated by what we have learned recently. There have been many government programs to collect UFO data around the world, including one that we know as Moon Dust. According to the documentation available, Moon Dust continued until 1985, when the program was exposed. In a letter to UFO researched Robert Todd, an Air Force officer explained that Moon Dust was compromised. The name was changed but that name was classified, implying that the investigation had continued.

We have, of course, learned about the AATIP program, which again, was a study of UFOs. It was discontinued a couple of years ago. But Congress, as part of a Covid-19 relief package included a mandate for a study of UFOs with a report due 180 days after passage of the package. It was announced, just days ago, that the report would be submitted on June 25.

Here is what has been overlooked.

The New York Times reported, “U.S. Find No Evidence of Alien Technology in Flying Objects, but Can’t Rule It Out Either.”

This effectively negates the Condon Report which did rule out alien technology. The latest information tells us that there is something to be learned from further study of UFO reports and it doesn’t matter if they are alien, natural phenomena, terrestrial technology or something we haven’t even considered. The point is, we can now throw out the conclusions of the Condon report, study the case files because there is some solid investigation in them, and reevaluate our position. But we can no longer say that science investigated and found there was nothing to study.

The idea that there is no alien visitation based on the Condon Committee’s investigation has just been rejected by the headline that tells us that though they have no evidence of alien technology, they cannot rule it out, which is exactly what Condon did.

The next time someone says that we know there are no alien spacecraft because of Condon’s “Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects,” we can respond with, well, that might be what they said but it doesn’t seem to have been true then and certainly is not true now. The latest investigation, conducted by a mandate of Congress, says that such a conclusion can’t be ruled out. At this point we are starting from ground zero and given the history of UFO research, that’s not a bad thing.

Coast to Coast - The UAP, DNI Report

I have updated this report a half dozen times in the last 24 hours because more information keeps leaking into the public environment. I will note that we have reached June (obviously) and that the report about what we now call UAPs rather than UFOs is due to Congress, allegedly arriving on June 25, the anniversary of the Custer disaster at the Little Bighorn. Or for those on the other side would say, the Battle of the Greasy Grass.

I say allegedly because these things have a way of slipping. There are all sorts of tricks used to make it seem that the requirements have been met, but, of course, the true spirit is sometimes overlooked. We have heard a lot about this since the mandate was passed as part of one of the Covid-19 relief packages last year. I will also note that this was supposed to be an unclassified report about these UAPs, but there is discussion about a classified appendix to it, which we, outside the Congress, will not see. The important note, however, is that it was to be an unclassified report but almost immediately there was talk of a classified section.

These recent video recordings of UFO sightings have spurred a renewed interest in UFOs and is the cause of the Congressional interest. While all that sounds good on paper, I have been hearing some disturbing things about the report. There are some rumors that the report will be delayed because the 180-day time frame did not allow for the collection of the data from the various government agencies. That is always a problem. Multiple government agencies have multiple agendas, which sometimes don’t fit together. Although we have a release date, it might not be met.

We have heard from the former Director of National Intelligence, the DNI, John Ratcliffe that the government has “a lot more” sightings of the UAPs. Importantly, he said, “When we talk about sightings, we are talking about objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots, or have been picked up by satellite imagery that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain. … traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom.”

Ed Ruppelt

I need to point out that we can look at the long history of UFO sightings and see the same observations made decades ago. Ed Ruppelt, one time chief of Project Blue Book, tried to determine how the UFOs could exceed the sound barrier without the sonic boom. It was something that plagued them in the 1950s. Even artillery rounds, that move faster than sound make, well, a sound. Those interested in ballistics will tell you that the crack associated with pistol and rifle fire is the sound of the bullet breaking the sound barrier. Only .22 caliber short rounds do not break the sound barrier which is why some assassins prefer to use that round. (And yes, there is a sound when the weapon is discharged, but that is not the same as the crack.)

On June 1, just last Tuesday, questions about the timing were directed at Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby who said that the report was coming from DNI and that the release of the “Congressionally mandated study,” was up to him.  He also refused respond to an inquiry that they, in the Pentagon, have ruled out the possibility of lifeforms out there, meaning beyond Earth. That rumor does persist. And, according to some of the leaked information, they didn’t find aliens… I’m not surprised.

The New York Times reported on June 3, that “U.S. Finds No Evidence of Alien Technology in Flying Objects, but Can’t Rule it Out, Either.” This is, of course, what I think of as weasel wording. It tells us nothing at all.

They go onto to say, “The report determines that the vast majority of more than 120 incidents over the past two decades did not original from any American military or other advanced U.S. government technology, the officials said. That determination would appear to eliminate the possibility that Navy pilots who reported seeing unexplained aircraft might have encountered programs the government meant to keep secret.”

This sort of dancing around the point is, of course, exactly what I thought would happen because we have seen this all before. In 1969, the Condon Committee, the

Dr. Edward Condon

study commissioned by the USAF at the University of Colorado, didn’t find any evidence of alien visitation either. The conclusions at the end of that “scientific” study was that the Air Force had done a good job of investigation, nothing could be learned by further investigation, and there were no national security aspects to the UFO/UAP sightings.

That was it. Condon found what he was required to find, as outlined before the study even began, and the Air Force used the report to close Project Blue Book, one of the goals of the investigation. That was the end of official investigations into UFO sightings and if you saw something strange, well, the advice was to call local law enforcement if you felt threatened. If you think that is overstating the case, see:

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

But now we know all that isn’t true. Other agencies have been investigating UFOs. One, operating under the name “Moon Dust,” operated until 1985, when that name was compromised. The evidence suggests only the name was changed but the investigations continued. Now we know about the AATIP program, which was another study or investigation, or at the very least, a collecting of UFO information, that was operating in this century. What that means is simply that the Condon Committee wasn’t a scientific investigation, but was a public relations move. Given all that, maybe we can retire the tired suggestion that science looked at the UFO sightings and determined there was nothing to worry about. Seems that there is something to worry about based on what the government has been doing for the last decade or so.

Lue Elizondo, who sparked some of this interest when he leaked the Tic-Tak footage, just last week filed an Inspector General complaint against what he said was a DoD “disinformation campaign” against him for speaking out about the UFO situation.

Although it seems that Elizondo is interested in clearing his name, he also said he was trying to get the Pentagon to clear up, what he called “the ambiguity about UFOs, that there are different groups that are responsible for responding to this particular phenomenon. They’re not briefing each other on this.”

Which does play into the trouble with the required report, gathering the information from the various organizations that control it, and writing the report for Congress that is unclassified. None of this bodes well for disclosure of UFO information, but that has been the problem for decades. Those in charge simply don’t want the information disseminated to the general public and the reason for that is laid out in UFOS and The Deep State. 

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Jacques Vallee and Paola Harris and Trinity.

In what I think of as a special edition of A Different Perspective, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Jacques Vallee and Paola Harris, authors of Trinity: The Best Kept Secret. The program was an hour long, as usual, but we didn’t get to half the questions or comments on my list. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/45140594

Paola Harris

We did get into the background of the story and those of you who visit here, know the tale. Two young boys see something crash, see the occupants of the craft, and then witness the lousy attempts at retrieval by the Army. It is clear that both Vallee and Harris accept the tale as authentic, with Vallee going into detail at how well youngsters can recall an event without embellishment. Of course, this overlooks the fact that the interviews were conducted, not with children at the time of the event, but with men decades later. It is clear that there are areas of contamination.

Much of the detail seemed to be reminiscent of the Roswell crash including the claim that lightning might have brought down the craft, about the Army recovery, and finally the descriptions of the aliens as looking like Jerusalem Crickets. This was the description provided by Frankie Rowe based on her experiences in the Roswell case. To me it was one more proof that the tale told isn’t so much about an observation by the boys but a borrowing of details from the widespread literature from Roswell.

I did ask Vallee about his use of the Aurora, Texas, UFO crash of 1897 as part of the history of UFO sightings. I mentioned that I had been to Aurora before all those others arrived, that I had interviewed some of the long-time residents who still lived there, and that two, count them, two, histories of Wise County had no mention of the crash. I have written about all that on this blog.

We did get to the Socorro UFO landing. I asked about his support of one symbol over the other, that Zamora himself had drawn, but again, the conversation diverted to other matters. Trivia? Sure, but it suggests something about the scholarship in the book.

There were many other matters as well. In the end, however, it was clear that there were only two witnesses who said anything about the crash who could be thought of as eyewitnesses. The third witness interviewed for the book, Sabrina Padillo, hadn’t even been born in 1945 to see the crash, but did inspect the alleged crash site in 1960.

Rather than go on, I’ll just point out that Vallee and Paola said that there was no documentation, the physical evidence that was talked about didn’t exist in today’s world, other than a couple of pieces that, when analyzed didn’t demonstrate an extraterrestrial origin. In other words, it was metal that could have been manufactured on Earth but that didn’t rule out an extraterrestrial origin, according to the analysis.

I will mention a fourth name, Bill Brophy, who talked about his father having flown over the crash site in 1945 (Exon and Roswell springs to mine here). According to Brophy, his father saw the two boys on the scene, the burned area and possibility the crashed object. But, again, the information was second hand and I have been working with those in Alamogordo in an attempt to verify both Brophy’s story and try to find any of those others assigned to the base at the time. Given it was 1945, and you can presume that nearly everyone assigned there would have been at least 20 in August 1945. It means the likelihood of finding anyone still alive is remote.

Next week, I’ll be talking with Kathleen Marden, who has an updated or expanded version of her book, Captured!. It deals with the Barney and Betty Hill abduction and we’ll see where it goes. 

Trinity: The Best Kept Secret - A Critique

The much-anticipated book by Dr Jacques Vallee and Paola Harris, Trinity: The Best Kept Secret, finally dropped and we now have a very good idea of what is in it. The publicity running up to the publication suggested that we’d learn about a UFO crash that preceded Roswell by two years and was based on the eyewitness testimony of two men and as a surprise or special element, we’d learn of a third witness to these incredible events.

Dr. Jacques Vallee

The story as told, and outlined on this blog just a few weeks ago, was that two boys, ages 7 and 9, not only found a crashed object that didn’t resemble any Earth-based aviation technology, but they had seen the crash. There was a hint that it might have been brought down by lightning in one of those strong thunderstorms that frequent New Mexico in the late summer or it hit a tower that caused it to crash. For those who want to see that earlier post, you can read it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-san-antonio-ufo-crash.html

The boys, identified as Reme Baca and Jose Padilla, had approached the area cautiously and saw, not only the ruined craft, but small creatures that seemed to teleport from one position to another. Those beings provided telepathic pictures to the boys, who lingered in the area for longer than they should.

Ms. Paola Harris

Back at the ranch house, in San Antonio, New Mexico, they told family about what they had seen. There was no immediate follow up, but a day or so later, the fathers and a New Mexico State Policeman, made their way to the scene of the crash. Although the boys were told to stay back, the adults approached the craft. One or two of them might have crawled up inside. Today that makes no real difference because none of those adults are alive for interviews or to confirm the story.

There was no sign of the small creatures when the adults made it to the crash site. Speculation is that they might have been captured by the Army, but I suppose, it is equally possible that they were rescued by their fellow aliens. At any rate, the beings disappear from the story and are never heard of again.

The military arrived at some point. Eventually, they asked permission to cut a fence and install a gate and to cut a road across the ranch to the area of the crash. The boys, hiding from the military, kept a watch on this. The boys talked of the soldiers’ attempts to clean up the debris. Although the soldiers collected all of the debris, it seems they kicked pieces of it aside and dumped it into crevasses. They covered this with a thin layer of dirt meaning that it might be found in the world today… maybe.

Although the Army was interested enough in the crash to recover the vehicle, they seemed to be less than enthusiastic in protecting the find. Once they had brought in the flatbed truck to move the wrecked vehicle from the scene, the soldiers departed, apparently going into town for a meal or two. In other words, they left the truck, the spacecraft, the debris and everything else unguarded.

The boys, having spied on the soldiers, understood their routine and once the site was abandoned, they wandered down to the blue-tarp-covered object sitting on that unguarded flatbed. Now, Jose, apparently the more adventurous of the two, peeled back part of that blue tarp and crawled up into the UFO. He stole a bit of a panel from inside and explored part of the craft. These descriptions were overly detailed, and not really what would you expect from someone who was 9 at the time, telling the tale decades later. Very detailed but probably not precise.

The boys carried away a great deal of the debris. If I understood the story, some of that debris, thin strips of metal that is reminiscent of the memory metal described by Bill Brazel of Roswell fame, was divided up and handed out as decorations for Christmas trees… a fairly cavalier way to treat samples of metal created on another planet. At this point, meaning here in 2021, all that material has disappeared so that there is nothing left that can be tested and analyzed.

Eventually, the Army drove the tarp-covered UFO from the area, and life returned to normal, or as normal as it could be after seeing an alien spacecraft. Neither Reme nor Jose talked much about it in the decades that followed.

Or rather they did mention it once in a great while. Don Schmitt told me, during his recent appearance on the A Different Perspective Radio Show/Podcast, that he’d met with Reme in the late 1990s after some presentation that Don had given. Don lost interest when Reme mentioned the Plains of San Agustin as the location of the crash, suggesting some sort of confirmation of the Barney Barnett tale.

That isn’t the only worrisome part of the story the boys told and that is the cavalier way the Army operated. I simply do not believe that the Army would go to the trouble of cleaning the area, but bury some of the debris on site rather than picking it up to be taken away. I don’t believe they would have left the scene unguarded at all, but especially after they had loaded the craft onto the flatbed truck… and knowing that Army trucks, as most Army vehicles, do not use keys to start them. I can believe that the boys were clever enough to avoid detection by the soldiers as they spied on the operation from a distance, but I do not believe they were allowed to get inside the craft after it had been loaded on the truck. By allowed, I mean that the truck was left in the field without any guard on it. The soldiers might not have known the craft came from another world, but they would have known that it represented a technology unknown to American science at the time. That alone would have demanded an around the clock guard detail.

Two points need to be made here. Don was not the only UFO researcher to be approached with the story of the crash. In the book, Vallee and Harris note that Baca had also sought out Stan Friedman who seemed to be equally uninterested… and second, Don might have misunderstood about the location on the Plains. Seems that those living in San Antonio referred to the area around the town as the Plains as well. At any rate, neither Stan nor Don followed up on this bizarre tale.

But the Vallee/Harris book is about more than just the San Antonio crash. There is a section that deals with some of the other events concerning UFOs and crashes. The first is the Aurora, Texas, crash of April 1897. This is quite disturbing because of the history involved. I have written about this case a number of times. I was among the very first to visit Aurora in the early 1971. The consensus of those living there, at that time, was the story was a hoax. Those at the Wise County Historical Society (Aurora is in Wise County) told me that two histories of the county had been written in the decade that followed this alleged crash but neither history mentioned it. Since there was no Air Force or CIA to suppress the information, you have to wonder why, if it was a real event, that any mention of it was omitted in both those histories. That doesn’t bode well for the Aurora tale. You can read more about my investigation here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2005/03/aurora-texas-story-that-wont-die.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/12/jefferson-airship-vs-aurora-crash.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/09/ufo-crashes-fifty-years-before-roswell.html

There is one additional comment to make. According to the Vallee/Harris book, a piece of metal picked during one of the modern treks to the crash site up in Aurora was scientifically tested. The tests showed that it was made of an alloy that did not exist in 1897 and wouldn’t be created until 1908. Seems like a bit of extraordinary evidence, except the fragment was recovered much later than 1908. Nothing ties it to the 1897 event, other than it was found somewhere around Aurora. Obviously, it was dropped sometime after 1908.

It is also disturbing that Vallee and Harris take the Maury Island hoax as something authentic. That story, actually investigated in depth by the Air Force, as well as many others, is also a hoax. Although Vallee/Harris acknowledge the hoax explanation, they also wonder how “…any such statement can be drawn by the reported facts.”

This statement is in error. I have looked at the Maury Island case extensively, and you can read about that in Alien Mysteries, Conspiracies and Cover-ups. The story has been well researched by a number of investigators. George Earley was one of those and reported his findings in UFO, issues 155, 156 and 157. According to Earley, Harold Dahl’s son, Charles, who was supposed injured during the sighting was interview years later and said that it never happened. A search for medical records to verify the injury failed to find any mention of it.

In other words, the reported facts in the Maury Island case, all of them, support Ed Ruppelt’s statement in his book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. Ruppelt described the Maury Island event as the direst hoax in UFO history. No evidence has been presented to reverse Ruppelt’s observation.

More problems develop in the discussion of the Socorro UFO landing. I was intrigued to learn that Lonnie Zamora was related, by marriage into the Padillo family. His cousin married Zamora, which connects them to another big UFO event in New Mexico. This is not to mention that Socorro is about fifteen or twenty miles from San Antonio.

For years researchers have suggested the Zamora case was single witness to the UFO landing. Vallee and Harris wrote that there were eleven witness who saw the object and two who were “auditory” witnesses, meaning they’d heard the roar but saw no object. The problem is that none of these witnesses are identified with the exception of Paul Kies and Larry Kratzer. The two men had told a reporter in Dubuque, Iowa, that they had been driving through Socorro about the time that Zamora was engaged with the UFO. They saw the thing take off in a cloud of dust and smoke.

The trouble here is that their stories just do not fit into the Socorro scenario. Kies said that there had been a large burned area in the desert and that the exhaust had melted a pop bottle. He couldn’t have seen these things given they were just driving through Socorro and hadn’t stopped to inspect the site. More importantly, the melted pop bottle description was from a sighting near La Madera, New Mexico, a day or so later, which also received some national attention.

Ralph DeGraw, an Iowa UFO researcher, interviewed both witnesses some years later. While what they said then generally agreed with the account in the newspaper, DeGraw found some important discrepancies, including Kratzer’s description of the craft. He said that it was silver with a row of dark round, mirror-like windows. This was a major departure from Zamora’s description that had no windows and suggests invention by the witness.

One of the other points of disagreement about the case is the description of the symbol seen by Zamora. Ray Stanford identified the “real” symbol reported by Zamora. The trouble here is that the symbol, three horizonal lines through an inverted “V” is not the symbol that Zamora drew for the military, nor is it the one that he drew on the scrap of paper moments after the UFO departed. While Vallee and Harris endorse the inverted “V”, Zamora, on the scrap of paper, drew an “umbrella” like symbol with an inverted “V” under it and a line, like the shaft of an arrow, up into the “V”. That scrap of paper was turned over to the Air Force and can be seen in the Project Blue Book file.

Zamora's drawing on the scrap of paper minutes after the UFO disappeared.

Ironically, that symbol was originally endorsed by Stanford in a letter dated May of 1964. He wrote that the inverted “V” was the fake symbol. In the years from writing that letter to writing his book, he changed his mind. But Zamora, on the night of the sighting, drew a number of illustrations for both the FBI and the Army and he signed them. The “umbrella” symbol was the one he signed.

Lonnie Zamora's drawing of the craft and the symbol made on April 24, 1964

In the end here, Stanford said there were eleven witnesses other than Zamora, but offers no names. Vallee and Harris repeat this without names, other than Kies and Kratzer, whose tale has been discredited. Vallee wrote that a single witness is no witness. I would suggest that an anonymous witness, or even nearly a dozen anonymous witnesses are of absolutely no value and worth less than that single witness. In 1964, no one bothered to get the names or tried to locate any of these witnesses. Now we are again treated to the information about a UFO sighting but that information has no real value.

The final chapters of the book are devoted to this new witness to the San Antonio crash promoted by Vallee and Harris. At the end of the book, they identify her as a relative of Padillo. The problem? She was born in 1953 or eight years after the sighting. She talks about handling some of the debris, but the piece, or pieces, she had been given, are long gone. She talked about family stories, but she witnessed nothing first hand other than a large burned area that might have had nothing to do with the original crash. She is emersed in the family history, she is aware of UFO history, but can’t contribute much of value to the story.

Here’s one of the things to take away from this latest book. Both Baca and Padillo talk about many aspects of the UFO field. They talk about knowing people at the Foster ranch near Corona where Mack Brazel discovered a field of metallic debris. We have the family relation to Zamora which suggests more infusion of UFO material into the family lore. Then, we have many aspects of the Roswell case inserted into this new tale. The UFO crashed during a storm, as was suggested at Roswell. Lightning brought it down, as happened at Roswell, but I wonder that if a race can create interstellar craft, they would be able to avoid destruction by lightning. There was memory metal and even a discussion of fiber optics, just like Roswell.

The big thing that caught my attention was a description that suggested the aliens looked something like the Jerusalem Cricket… the very description supplied by Frankie Rowe when talking about the aliens at Roswell. There are just too many of the descriptions that are drawn from the Roswell case. To me, this suggests contamination rather than corroboration. It suggests that both men were well aware of the UFO field long before they began to talk of their childhood experiences. They had a better than average knowledge of what had been reported about UFOs and UFO crash/retrievals before they began talking about the UFO crash near San Antonio.

To make this worse, if possible, it is claimed that this tale of a crashed spacecraft is the first in our modern era. This, however, isn’t true. In the Spring of 1941, there are reports of something crashing near Cape Girardeau, Missouri. The tale is told by one woman who, while she didn’t witness the craft and bodies herself, is aware of what her grandfather had seen and had done. She is well-versed in the family history. Len Stringfield laid out the details in one of his updates to crash/retrievals, this one published in 1991. There is another witness who knows the story including the brother of the local sheriff and even the report of a picture of one of the alien beings. Of course, that picture has been lost, but the evidence for the Cape Girardeau crash as just as solid as that for the Trinity crash. For some reason it is not mentioned in the Vallee and Harris book. I mention this only because it suggests a long history of UFO crash tales that are based on limited eyewitness testimony and family members who died long before they could be interviewed. And they are told in the same era, that is, the 1940s.

All this and I haven’t even touched on the structure of the book. It is filled with oat meal. This is a writing term that refers to filling to make a story longer. Sure, I enjoyed reading about some of the history of the creation of the atomic bomb, but it has no relevance to this story. The fact that the first nuclear explosion took place at Trinity, not all that far from San Antonio means nothing… unless you believe that the aliens had been watching for that flash everyone talked about. Of course, you have to wonder where they were to have seen that and gotten here so quickly. It matters not what their technology can do, the speed of light is the limiting factor. Even if these aliens can exceed the speed of light, or bend the universe to allow interstellar flight, the flash of the bomb would only travel at the speed of light. If the aliens could detect such a flash against the backdrop of the sun and if it happened on the side of the planet facing them, the fastest they could have detected the explosion is about four years afterward, if they inhabited a planet in the Alpha Centuri star system. If they live in another star system, then their response would take even longer.

Ignoring that, we still have a book filled with a family history that does nothing to validate the story. It is a travelogue. It is a walk though some of UFOs greatest hits, many of which have little in the way of evidence to back them up. And even if these ancillary tales were all true, that does nothing to validate this particular story.

It is filled with a wonder of the events but little in the way of analysis. It tells the story of two boys who seemed to have been wise beyond their years, able to avoid the Army which failed at even the barest level of security. We are told of soldiers who were lazy, not picking up all the debris, but hiding from their superiors. That debris would still be there for UFO hunters to find except is now beyond recovery. Flood control projects that altered the terrain significantly and buried the debris under twenty or thirty feet of mud and dirt. No way to find it now.

This is certainly much longer than I anticipated, but we need to understand what we have here. It isn’t a scientific search for evidence but more of science fiction story told for entertainment. There is no physical evidence presented but talk of such evidence just out of our reach. There is no real attempt to validate the story or provide citation for the claims. It is a story that has borrowed elements from other tales in the hope it will be seen as corroboration rather than plagiarism. Oh, I don’t mean that either Vallee or Harris stole the story from others, only that the witnesses have been contaminated by decades of UFO tales written about, broadcast and even incorporated into movies. It is too bad that no one wrote anything down in a letter or a journal in 1945 or 46 but that’s just too much to hope for. Somehow the alleged evidence is never found and, in the end, we are left with a tale told by two old men, and one old woman, who said they experienced it as youngsters.