Satelloon - The Roswell Solution?

Almost from the moment that I became interested in the Roswell case, people were offering solutions for it. Like most everyone else, I thought that a balloon of some nature would answer the questions about the crash. After the first few days in New Mexico, as Don Schmitt and I talked to various people who claimed some inside knowledge of the case, we were disappointed. It seemed there was less than nothing… and then we met Bill Brazel whose tale matched that he had been telling for years about bits of metallic debris.

I mention all this by way of preamble. I didn’t begin believing that Roswell was the crash of an alien spacecraft, but something much more mundane. It was only after talking with Brazel and then many others that my attitude began to change.

At the same time, there were those who pushed the idea that it was some sort of balloon.   John Keel had suggested a Japanese Balloon Bomb, but that was quickly eliminated given the history of them and the circumstances in which they were launched. The Air Force settled on a Project Mogul array in the mid-1990s and at the risk of continuing a lot of unnecessary discussion that has been going on for years, I’m not sold on that. Documentation provided by the Air Force seemed to rule it out.

An inflated Satelloon.

Lately, Dr. Bob Gross introduced us to the Satelloon, which is, basically, a huge, aluminum-covered balloon designed for passive communications. These balloons would be launched into space, inflated, and then radio signals would be bounced off them. This idea was much more cost effective, according to various studies, than using a trans-Atlantic cable for worldwide communications. Of course, in 1947, there had been no artificial satellites launched into orbit. That was ten years away.

The idea of something like the Satelloon, however, was one proposed Arthur C. Clarke in the mid-1940s. He is considered the father of the modern communications satellite even though he had no hand in putting the things into orbit. And, of course, science fiction writers have always been on the forefront of scientific thought with visions of trips to the moon, to the planets of the solar system, and to thoughts of communications with alien civilizations to name just a few of the things they envisioned.

I have attempted to follow up on this Satelloon idea. I have contacted Dr. Gross, but his response was less than helpful. He said that he would think about my questions and decide if he wanted to answer them. These were such puzzlers as had he reviewed all the information supplied by Bill Brazel, meaning his descriptions of fiber optics and balsa-like material that was so touch he couldn’t get a shaving with his pocket knife. His response suggested he would think about it was dated July 21 but I have yet to hear another word from him.

What I have found, by reading his papers, listening to his interviews, is that he suggests that the testing of the Satelloons was imbedded in the testing of the Mogul arrays. Going through Dr. Albert Crary’s field notes on the New York University balloon project, and the other documentation available about these Mogul tests, there is no hint that this was done. Crary mentioned, not only the Mogul name in those notes, but other projects with which

A Satelloon.

they cooperated in some fashion and other equipment that could be relevant to their research. Had a Satelloon been embedded, there is a good chance that it would have been mentioned, but it was not. Is this proof positive? No.

I also note that the Mogul culprit, Flight No. 4, was cancelled according to the available documentation. That would have been launched at dawn on June 4 but wasn’t. There was a launch of a cluster of balloons carrying a sonobuoy later that day, but this was not a Mogul array, according to the documentation available. Charles Moore’s speculative track of Flight No. 4, required it to have been launched at 2:30 or 3:00 a.m., which would have been in violation of the regulations under which they operated. And, given that Dr. Crary noted that it was cancelled at dawn, it means that Moore’s calculations of the path were in error. I mention this only because the track that seemed to take the array in the direction of the Brazel (Foster) ranch is flawed. That means, of course, that whatever fell there did not include a Satelloon.

In my research, I noticed a couple of things. I see that there was nothing that suggested a Satelloon was available in July 1947 for testing with the Mogul arrays. The last relevant entry in Gross’s paper seems to be that no BoPET balloons, which were the type of balloon that would become the Satelloon, were available until 1952. Gross’s timeline then drops to the Roswell crash story and to speculation about satellites including Arthur Clarke’s 1945 paper. That doesn’t provide any documentation that a Satelloon was available in 1947.

Gross does point to the pictures taken in General Ramey’s office, suggesting they show the remains of a Satelloon. The truth is, the pictures show the remains of a rawin radar target and a neoprene weather balloon. There is nothing in those pictures to suggest the remains of a Satelloon.

Gross has suggested that he had other evidence, other documentation that will prove that a Satelloon is responsible for the debris found by Mack Brazel. He has yet to produce it, saying that he doesn’t want to lessen the impact of his upcoming book. This I understand. However, I have found nothing that would suggest that Satelloons were being tested in New Mexico in 1947 and nothing to suggest that they were being tested as early as 1947. The idea was there but the technology had not caught up with the theory. The best I can do is find information on testing in 1952.

Until, and unless, Gross provides the documentation, this is a theory that we must reject. If the documentation exists and we can verify its provenance, we have no choice. If the documentation is presented, at that point we can reevaluate the theory.

Treasure Quest and the San Roman Document

Brian Bell, who visits here with some regularity, and who often provides information and leads that are less than helpful, came through this last time. He suggested that the inverted V with the three lines through it was an old alchemy symbol. He provided a number of references, and sure enough, that symbol did appear, through rarely, on various charts. It represents amalgam, which is made up of mercury and another element.

The Inverted V with the three lines through it in the second row, second column.

The problem for us here, is that the inverted V sometimes is shown with four lines through it. This is also called amalgam. The four-line version is also part of the “Fire” element.

But this post actually goes beyond just this symbol. The San Roman Document, which is the alleged source of information about the Sacambaya treasure, has three symbols on it. So far, in the Treasure Quest search for that treasure, no one has bothered to tell us what the symbols mean, or if they are of importance.

The San Ramon Document with the three alchemy symbols on it.

The inverted V with the three circles, one at the apex, and one each on the legs, is also an alchemy symbol. It represents alcohol, or ethyl alcohol. I don’t know what the relevance to the treasure would be, but that symbol is clearly represented, and isn’t all that rare.

The third symbol which is a pyramid of balls, is the alchemy symbol for gravel. There is a variation of it with a cross at the top, which also represents gravel. And there is another variation in which it is called sand. Like the inverted V with four bars, this symbol is also associated with fire.

The San Roman Document is in Latin and I haven’t even tried to translate the parts we see on the screen. I just wonder if there isn’t something more hidden in it that might provide clues. I don’t believe what they have is an original, but, according to C. H. Prodgers, they have a copy of the original. We don’t know how accurate it might be.

Just one more thing. For those interested in UFOs, I have to wonder how a symbol from alchemy could end up on a craft from another world. If the inverted V is the correct symbol, then this is an amazing coincidence. If the inverted V is the correct symbol, then to me, this argues against an alien visitation. The coincidence is just too big for us to ignore.

And, I have to wonder if they inverted V is the correct symbol if there isn't some hidden meaning in using it in the hoax. If the Socorro landing was a hoax, then the clue to solving this might be in the symbol used... If that is the correct symbol.

Treasure Quest, Socorro, and the Zamora Symbol

I was watching Treasure Quest when they flashed the document that supposedly launched several expeditions into the Sacambaya region of Bolivia. I really wasn’t paying much attention because, well, we’re in the first couple of episodes where nothing much will happen. On the document were a couple of symbols. One of them I recognized.

Now, we go back to last year when I was working on a book about the UFO landing near Socorro, New Mexico. On the craft, as described by Socorro policeman Lonnie Zamora, was a strange symbol. I’m not going

into the controversy about the “real” symbol. I’m just going to concentrate on the one that was released to the press of an inverted “V” with three lines through it.

The alleged symbol seen on the Socorro spacecraft.

Friends, such as my pal Rich Reynolds, have searched for the symbol in various locations, documents, libraries, and archives, without finding a duplicate. But now, I’ve found one.

I don’t know if there is any significance to this. I don’t know what the symbol on the Treasure Quest document represents. I just happened to notice that the symbols were the same and found it odd

Symbol seen on the Sacambaya Document.

that this symbol is found on a document that was supposedly created a couple of hundred years ago matching one that was allegedly painted on the side of a spacecraft seen in New Mexico in 1964.

This is probably just a coincidence. The world is filed with coincidences. I just found it interesting and wondered if there was a connection…

For those interested in the Socorro landing and the trouble with the symbol, all that is outlined in the book Encounter in the Desert. Yes, I wrote it, but the chapter on the symbol explains the situation. While I believe the real symbol on the side of the craft was different than that originally reported, the real point is that someone came up with the inverted V with the three lines through it, and I just wondered where he got that idea. Is there some sort of terrestrial connection between that seen on that document and that Zamora had seen?

For those interested in more detail about the Socorro symbol controversy, see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-socorro-symbol-resolved.html

Edwin Easley and Me

Since we’ve reached a point where evidence has evaporated into opinion, let’s take a look at what Edwin Easley told me. I don’t believe anyone else ever talked to him, so while what is read in the cold prose on the sterile page, I listened to his inflections, his hesitations, and what he said based on my experience as a military

Edwin Easley.

intelligence officer.

First, nothing he said takes us directly to the extraterrestrial in the first interview. He said he was sworn to secrecy, but you could say that this is what is told to those in classified briefings about almost anything. Classified briefings frequently open with a warning that the contents are classified and disclosure to those not cleared can result in a prison term and hefty fine.

Second, he said that he had promised the president that he wouldn’t talk about it. Does that mean he talked to Harry Truman personally, or did Truman send a representative to Roswell to learn what those officers knew and tell them that it wasn’t something they could talk about openly. I believe that Easley told the president’s representative that he wouldn’t talk about it.

Third, that the president was involved moves us from the really mundane. In other words, it suggests that Mogul, for example, is not the answer. The balloon launches in Alamogordo were detailed in the newspaper on July 10, 1947. Clearly, the recovery of the remains of a balloon array wouldn’t have caught the president’s attention, and no one would care if anyone talked about it. True, the purpose was classified, but no one was talking about the purpose, only the activities in New Mexico.

Fourth, is there a terrestrial explanation for this sort of response? In 1947, the size and shape of the atomic bomb was classified. If the 509^th Bomb Group had dropped a mock up somewhere in the desert, that might have required some sort of higher level response. I’m not sure what the intelligence value would have been just by seeing the mock up and estimating the size, but it was classified.

So, we have an explanation for the effort to conceal what had been found near Roswell that isn’t of alien manufacture. It is something that would have been concealed, though you would think that Jesse Marcel, Sr., would know what the bomb looked like, and would have known what it was, but that’s an argument for later.

What else did Easley say during that conversation?

Well, he said he was the provost marshal, or rather confirmed that he was. But, heck, I had that information from the Yearbook and the Unit History, and from some of those who served at Roswell in 1947. No great revelation there.

When I asked if he had been out to the crash site, he said, “I can’t talk about it. I told you that.”

Well, that does, sort of, suggest he had been out to the crash site, but doesn’t move us to the extraterrestrial. We all know that something fell in 1947, it’s the identification of it that has us somewhat confused.

Later, however, when I mention that Colonel Briley had said that the provost marshal had been out to the crash site, Easley said, “He doesn’t know what he was talking about.”

So, that sort of suggests that he wasn’t out to the crash site. However, as the provost marshal, he would have had the ultimate responsibility for the security at the crash site. He certainly could delegate it to another of his officers, but since it is his responsibility, he would have gone out at least once. Whatever happened, Easley going out or not, doesn’t take us to the extraterrestrial.

James Breece

He does suggest that we talk to the rancher, but doesn’t really remember the name. He suggests we talk to Breece, though he called him Freeze. We learned that Breece had died before any of us got deep into the investigation.

In the end, the important point here is that he mentioned having been sworn to secrecy and that he promised the president, or the president’s representative that he wouldn’t talk about it. This merely suggests that something important had happened, but nothing that takes us to the extraterrestrial.

I talked to him three more times about this. The second was on June 23, 1990. The first thing that I asked him was, “How are you doing?”

He said, “Pretty good.”

I asked about Blanchard’s staff meetings and Easley said that he attended those, but didn’t remember much about the meeting held on July 8, 1947. My thought here was that had it been a normal meeting, he probably wouldn’t remember anything, but then, had they discussed the material that Marcel found, if it was of alien manufacture, that

William Blanchard

would have made the meeting special.

I asked if his MPs would have guarded the airplanes involved in transporting the debris, and he said they guarded all the airplanes, meaning all those assigned to the 509^th. He did say that none of the MPs were on the flights to Wright Field. That didn’t mean much because they were never used as guards on the flights anyway.

He told me that he hadn’t talked to anyone else about this, meaning, none of the people he knew in 1947 or any other investigators. That means that my interviews with him are unique.

I had thought that if I could arrange for a general officer to call to tell him that he could speak with me candidly about these events, it might free things up. His response was, “I don’t think so.”

He confirmed, again, that he was in Roswell in July, 1947, but we’d already had the documentation to prove it.

He said again, that he really couldn’t talk about it. In fact, at one point I suggested that he seemed to be uncomfortable about talking about this and he said, “Yeah. Sure do.”

The conversation was fairly short, but friendly. I learned very little from it, though his reluctance to talk about it suggested something big had happened. It doesn’t mean that it was extraterrestrial, only that it was something that had been classified in 1947 (not necessarily meaning covered up). He knew that I was thinking of extraterrestrial, but he wasn’t giving me much in the way of information.

The last recorded conversation was on August 13, 1990. It was a wide-ranging conversation that wasn’t really an interview. In fact, the first ten or fifteen minutes was just that, conversation. I did mention that we, meaning Don Schmitt and I, might be down in Fort Worth and wondered if we might stop by. He said, “Fine by me.”

I finally said, “I haven’t asked any specific questions.”

Easley said, “I noticed that.”

We did finally move onto some questions, but it was more about the people who had been assigned to the Roswell Army Air Field in 1947. I asked if he was aware of the guards used outside of town had been transferred out of Roswell not long after this event. He said, “No. Just not aware of it.”

But he did say that the entire 1395 MP Company had been transferred not long after everything ended. My impression here was that the transfer had been planned prior to July because the company wasn’t needed in Roswell. Easley had the 390^th Air Service Squadron whose job it was to patrol the base, mount the guard, and the like. In other words, their duties mirrored those of the MP company.

I then began to look through the Yearbook index that George Eberhart had prepared. We’re just chatting about the people he might have known and where they might have gone after leaving Roswell. I’m looking for people that Easley would have known such as the senior officers and NCOs and who might have been involved in the recovery.

He then volunteered, without a real question from me, “There weren’t too many of them involved in that.”

This suggested that the number of officers and men involved in the operation, whatever it might have been, was limited. You can mount a guard, create a perimeter around something but the men standing guard are far enough away, or the object is masked in some fashion, that they don’t know what it is all about. They just know that they had been given a guard assignment on that day. Again, an interesting little piece of information, but not one that takes us to the extraterrestrial.

The next time that I talked to Easley was from the office of the Center for UFO Studies and was the last time. Since I was spending a couple of hundred dollars a month on telephone bills (back before cell phones and unlimited talk), the chance to follow up on some calls without having to pay for them was important. One of those I called was Edwin Easley. Since I didn’t have a recorder on the telephone, I took notes.

Interestingly, one of the things he said was that he didn’t remember the MPs being transferred after the event, other than the whole 1395th. In the Unit History, there is a letter in which he mentions that there had been a high turnover in the 390^th Air Service Squadron. They were being transferred in large numbers. I thought, based on the letter, it was a “train the trainers” type situation. In other words, these men were now trained in dealing with atomic weapons and security and since other units were now going to become part of the atomic strike force, more trained MPs were required. Those in Roswell were transferred so that they could train other MPs at other bases in the procedures related to atomic weapons.

He also said that the material had been sent to Dayton, but then, there is the FBI document which made that suggestion back in 1947. This does not take us to the extraterrestrial. It merely means that the debris, whatever it might have been, was sent to Dayton and the Air Materiel Command for identification as far as he knew. Easley said that this had been a verbal order from Colonel Blanchard, the 509^th commander, which would be a little unusual, but not overwhelming so. Paperwork to cover the flight could be created later.

The shipment to Dayton also fits in with some of what those who were working the balloon projects had said about the events in 1947. They had been asked to identify the debris that came from Roswell, according to them. It might have been from one of their balloon projects that was responsible. Easley said nothing about balloon projects.

The Roswell Guest House. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle.

Easley also said that Brazel had been brought to the base for several days. Easley was not involved in the interrogation of him. He just said that Brazel had been held in the guest house, which is not as bad as being in jail, but if you’re not allowed to leave, it is sort of, the same thing.

He also said that all the paperwork had been sent on to the Pentagon, though I confess, I’m not sure what all that paperwork might have been. Patrick Saunders, the base adjutant in 1947, did tell family members that they had been able to bury the paperwork on all of this. Neither of these points leads to the extraterrestrial.

At the end of the conversation is where I asked him the one important question. I asked if we, meaning Don Schmitt and me, were following the right path. He asked, “What do you mean?”

I said, “We think it was extraterrestrial.”

Easley said, “Let me put it this way, it’s not the wrong path.”

This is the one point in which we moved from the terrestrial to the alien. It is actually the only point in my interviews with Easley that anything like that had come up. Since I was the one talking with him, and I was listening carefully to him, there is little doubt about what he meant.

But let’s look back on some of this. I’d made it a point to mention that I was a fellow military officer and that I had been a pilot in the Army and an intelligence officer in the Air Force. I told him that one of the things that I found funny was that when I went to Dayton, to Wright-Patterson AFB to meet General Exon, we had gone to lunch at the officer’s club. Exon had told me to park in one of the three spots reserved for general officers.

I had built up a rapport with Easley. He was comfortable talking to me and I was careful to keep the conversation light. We had talked about keeping secrets, and at one point he asked me what I would do in his position. I told him, frankly, that I like to think I would have shared the information, but I told him that I probably wouldn’t. The oath took precedence over what feelings I might have about telling what I knew to those who wanted to know but had no authorization to know it.

I had asked him again that if I knew a general who had been involved in some fashion, who had talked to us, and who had, at one time, been the base commander at Wright-Patterson, would that be helpful. He didn’t think so and I think he knew that the base commander was not necessarily the senior officer on the base. He functioned more as the mayor of a city, overseeing the daily operations that would have included policing the base, maintenance of the facilities and the like. In the Army, they now call that the “Mayor’s Cell.”

In those discussions with Easley, I got the impression he wanted to help as much as he could without violating what he thought of as his promise to the president. No, as I say, I don’t think he actually talked to Harry Truman, but to a representative of Truman, which is, sort of, the same thing.

He didn’t give away much, and I think that most of what he said wasn’t what he considered to be part of the great secret, whatever that great secret might have been. The only slip was the comment that “There weren’t too many involved in that.”

When I asked about following the right path and he mentioned that it wasn’t the wrong path, that was the closest that he came to giving away anything important. Again, in was in the context of a larger conversation that dealt with some of the trivia about Roswell. We had been talking about Brazel being on the base. I believe that he wanted to help as much as he could without violating the oath, which explains the wide-ranging conversations we had which only, occasionally, touched on important, relevant topics.

This explains why I hadn’t made transcripts of these conversations. There are only one or two things that are relevant and the rest were just talks between two former Air Force officers… true, he retired in 1962 and I wasn’t commissioned into the Air Force until some thirteen or fourteen years later, but we did have the bond. I guess it was more of a link than a real bond.

A couple of other things to come out of this. I asked him, at the beginning of each conversation, how he was doing. He always said, “Fine” or “Pretty good.” Can’t believe how those statements have become relevant in the world today.

And I always asked if I had additional questions, would it be all right to call back, and being the gracious individual he was, he always said, “Sure.”

When all is said and done, there isn’t much here for any of us. Clearly, as we all know, something happened. There was an event that was classified. Some of the people at the base were involved and others were not. Easley, as one of the senior officers and the provost marshal, was one of those who were. He only said one thing to me that suggests that the event was extraterrestrial, and that was his round about comment that it was not the wrong path. Not really an admission of much of anything.

If we wish to plug in the statement that comes from Dr. Granik, we have to remember it is, at best, second hand. At worse, it’s probably third hand. If he was not in the room when Easley said, “Oh, the creatures,” then he heard it from family members. He had a professional relationship with one of Easley’s daughters who worked in the same hospital as he did. And please don’t read anything into the comment about professional relationship. I mean that they knew each other, might have taken a lunch together, but had only that professional relationship. I know how the minds of those in the UFO community work… or in reality, disfunction.

I will also note that I have been rejecting, in the last ten years or so, this type of second-hand testimony because it is, well, second hand. Doesn’t mean it is wrong or inaccurate, it just means that there is no way to verify the validity of it, we can’t ask the original source, and what they thought they heard might not have been what was actually said.

I am a little annoyed that Edwin Easley’s reputation had been muddied up slightly. I don’t think he did anything to deserve that and I have said as much in the comments section of the posting found at:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/08/roswell-documentation-vs-roswell.html

The original source of those comments has been caught lying about all sorts of things. Add to it his confusion between the family of Curry Holden and Edwin Easley, we can reject all that he said about this. Especially when it is remembered that he never talked with Easley.

That leaves back where we started, which is, there isn’t a lot here on which to hang a hat. A couple of comments that can be interpreted in a number of ways and one that suggests, indirectly, the extraterrestrial. In the great scheme of the world, I know that Easley’s one comment doesn’t carry much weight. To make it worse, it was the one time that I didn’t record the conversation. I planned to follow up on it, didn’t know that the time was running out, and tried to arrange things too late. He became ill not long after we talked.

That’s where we are here. An interesting comment, heard only by me and no way to prove he said it. I have my notes, but that doesn’t really do us much good because, as we have seen way too often, notes can be whatever the writer wants them to be.

Easley tells us something happened, some of the personnel on the base were involved, but he doesn’t give away very much. It proves he was an honorable man, trying to keep the secret but wanting to help me in my research. It doesn’t prove much of anything else, when you look at it dispassionately.

Treasure Quest Season Three - Episode One

So, we’re off on another great trek, searching for a treasure that is more myth than reality, worth more than the others we’ve all chased these last few years. Oak Island is truly a money pit, but only because of all the money they have been throwing into it. The Treasure of the Trinity has disappeared into oblivion. Last night (August 24, 2018) they had the opportunity to let us in on the secret there, but passed on it. While introducing the new crew of treasure hunters in the latest incarnation of Treasure Quest, we saw our old pal Jeremy Whalen from the first two seasons. They showed us the golden, Inca icon they found at the end of season two, but didn’t tell us a thing about it. For two years we have waited for something that would tell us a little more about it, and we have nothing… which means, it wasn’t exactly the huge deal they claimed it to be.

And now we’re off searching for a new treasure in a new part of South America, one that is supposedly better documented. In fact, they showed us an old letter that explained where the treasure was hidden in a general sense, how it was acquired and they gave us a really brief history of the previous searches for it. But as I pointed out in an earlier posting, that letter’s origin is more than a little obscured and isn’t exactly the perfect source they suggested. You can read that post here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/08/treasure-quest-season-three.html

And. For those of you who wish to read the story in its original form and learn a little more about this, you can find the book here (Chapter VII):

https://archive.org/details/adventuresinboli00prodrich

Now, off we go on another adventure. We get to see them driving along what is allegedly a road, called the Death Highway because of all the people who have died on it. It’s little more than a path cut into the side of the mountain with almost no

Prodgers' Book where the
story is told.

room for two vehicles to pass. Drive off the edge and you drive into eternity. The fall is hundreds of feet.

They, of course, safely meet up with the rest of the team, and have to make the rest of the journey using burros to carry their equipment as they walk along beside them. I’m wondering if they had ever heard of a helicopter because I can think of no reason that a helicopter couldn’t have carried everything and everyone in without having to face the peril of the Death Highway or the trek with the burros, which had its own dangers.

As they’re walking along they hear something above them, and for a reason I have yet to figure out, turn to run back the way they came. It’s an avalanche, which is to say, a landslide of rock and dirt that blocks their path. A helicopter wouldn’t have had this trouble, but then, you don’t get the drama of a landslide. Besides, there is so much dirt and debris on the trail now they couldn’t dig it out, which adds to the drama…

But they can blow it up. No, they don’t have explosives, but they can make what they need from the material they carry. I’m a little worried about some of the stuff they have because, if you’re trekking in with burros, I’m not sure of the wisdom of carrying that extra weight, such as the propane tank. Seems like a waste of the limited carrying capability of the burros, when you consider the camera equipment, sound equipment, the digging equipment, and, of course, the food they’ll need not only for themselves but for the burros. But I digress.

They are successful in getting through the block, finally reach the valley where the three rivers converge (and no, it’s not Pittsburgh), and are almost ready to begin. The burros refuse to cross the water, though I don’t really know why, so they carry the stuff across themselves and begin their preliminary search.

They also are setting up their camp. They used all their matches making their explosive, but not to worry, they have a flint. One of them says that belly button lint makes a wonderful base for starting the fire. I have to wonder how you’d have enough belly button lint to be useful, but they spark the fire.

Using a metal detector in what they suggested were the ruins of the Jesuit mission built centuries ago, they found a goblet that had been buried for a long time. This truly was an interesting artifact but it doesn’t really mean there is a massive treasure hidden there as they claimed. But we’re at the end of the hour, so we don’t learn much more about it.

We have seen, in previews and teasers, them bringing in big machinery to help in the digging (which again, makes me wonder about the Death Highway and the burros) and poking a hole in the top of a tunnel or cavern. We see them coming to a wall in the tunnel that is clearly artificial. There are hints of coins being found and some sort of an underground lake. Along with the goblet, these are intriguing finds that hint at something bigger.

But then, when you read Prodgers’s book about Bolivia and this treasure, you learn that he broke into a tunnel, or tunnels, on several occasions, but he never found a treasure. That this new group has found a tunnel isn’t all that surprising, given the history of the area, but it is interesting. These might be tunnels that haven’t been explored for hundreds of years. Clearly, there is something in them, given the coins they will find in future episodes… but then, a few coins do not make a two billion dollar treasure.

Treasure Quest - The End of Season Two Recap (August 24, 2018)

At the end of the second season of Treasure Quest, we were treated to a find that was an Inca sun god icon and a bunch of little llamas that might have been made of silver. All those items suggested western South America and Peru. This was proof that they had found the Treasure of the Trinity. They were jumping around yelling because their quest had been successful. We were told at the time that they were going to get their various licenses and permits renewed to finish the job.

And then… Nothing.

Now, here we are two years later. On August 24, 2018, we were given a preview of

Not exactly what they found, but it gives you
an idea of the general look.

the new season of Treasure Quest where the “team” is searching for a new treasure. But we were also treated to a recap of season two that included the finding of that “gold” mask icon, the llamas and the jumping around. But we were told of anything beyond that.

What can we make of that?

Since it has been two years, and since we’ve heard nothing about the recovery of a major treasure, and they said nothing like that at the end of the recap, it means they found nothing important beyond what was displayed at the end of season two. If I was a cynical person, I would believe that the gold Inca sun god icon wasn’t really gold. After all, one of the treasure hunters said that gold was the only metal that didn’t corrode. He said that it looked as if it had been planted the day before so it must be gold. And, I’m thinking, maybe it was planted the day before. This wouldn’t be the first “reality” show in which the producers added a little bit of excitement to boost interest, excitement and ratings.

Now, I’m not saying that happened. I’m just wondering about it because, it did seem as if they had found something really important and valuable. For the last couple of years, I have been prowling the Internet looking for any hint that they had found the Treasure of the Trinity. There has been nothing. Not even that they had sold their gold artifact for hundreds of thousands of dollars, which they had suggested might be the value of it.

My conclusion is that they didn’t find anything more. Had their artifact been that valuable, it could have paid for another expedition, especially with their success. Since that didn’t happen, and the new season’s only connection to the last two is that it is called Treasure Quest (and the one guy from the other seasons on this new one), it is clear they didn’t find the big treasure.

I have to say, “I’m not surprised.”

Roswell Documentation vs. Roswell Eyewitnesses

Since I have now annoyed all my friends with my analysis of the Roswell documentation and how some of it is quite suggestive that nothing alien fell there, I thought it time to annoy all my skeptical friends. Lining up against that documentation is the testimony of some people who were on the scene in 1947. This is based on the documentation we can find about them and the stories they tell us in the world today.

Walter Haut, for example, either wrote the press release claiming the 509^th had found a flying saucer, or he took the dictation from Colonel William Blanchard to create the press release. At this point it doesn’t really matter. The press release

Walter Haut being interviewed.
Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

was issued and it claimed they had “captured” a flying saucer in the Roswell region. The definition of flying saucer confuses the issue, because in 1947, there was no universally accepted definition. It could mean almost anything you wanted it to mean. But here’s the deal. It is vague to the point of being opaque. We don’t know what it means.

I have never understood the reason for the press release. If Blanchard was attempting to grab credit for solving the flying disk mystery, the press release was unnecessarily obscure. Compare it to the story out of Circleville, Ohio, in which a farmer found the remains of a weather balloon and rawin reflector on his land. We have a story in the local paper that identifies the farmer as Sherman Campbell and includes what is claimed a picture of his wife. When I talked to the family, I learned it was actually his daughter holding the rawin target. The point is that the Circleville newspaper story was clear and it included a photograph. The Roswell press release told us nothing of real importance, provided little in the way of verification and had no photograph.

We do have testimony from Haut, which, if we limit it to what was said in the press release, and what he said to us for decades before expanding his story, we learn that what was found was something strange. No, it tells us nothing about the alien nature of the crash, just tells us that Blanchard and company were perplexed by something they should have been able to identify easily if it was a weather balloon. No reason not to supply the explanation if it was something mundane, like was done in Circleville.

If we wish to get to the extraterrestrial, then there is Edwin Easley, who was the provost marshal (please note the proper spelling of marshal here) in Roswell. When I asked him if we were following the right path, he asked what I meant by that. I told him that we (meaning Don Schmitt and I) believed that the craft had been extraterrestrial. He said, “Well, let me put it this way, it’s not the wrong path.”

Taking that a step farther, he told family members about the alien “creatures.” That was his word to them, not mine. Sure, that statement is second hand at best because we learned it talking to family members, but hey, it does confirm his mindset on this.

No, there is no reason for Easley to have lied about it. He was very reluctant to talk, didn’t grant much in the way of interviews, and you won’t see him showing up in any of the old documentaries. I was always of the impression he wished to help me, but he had taken an oath in 1947 and he wasn’t going to break the oath.

There is Joe Briley, the operations officer in 1947. He said a couple of things that don’t take us directly to the extraterrestrial but do lead us to the highly unusual. He told me, when I mentioned, “…You heard the stories…” that “And then the story was changed immediately. As soon as the people from Washington arrived.”

Jesse Marcel

Yes, it is clear from the conversation on the tape that we’re talking about the UFO crash tale. I really don’t say anything specifically about it, but Briley knew why I had called him. In fact, later in the interview, he told me, “I just was not brought into that at all even though Butch [Blanchard] and I were extremely close.”

And later still, he said, “I don’t think Butch was stupid enough to call a weather balloon something else.”

Okay, this doesn’t get us to the extraterrestrial, but it does move us away from the conventional. It suggests things in Roswell were, well, up in the air in 1947.

I haven’t touched on Jesse Marcel, Sr. yet. He was quite clear in his statements about what had happened. There are any number of videos of him telling us that it was something “that wasn’t built on Earth but it had come to Earth.”

If he was stand alone, we could certainly dismiss his testimony. But it is not and while it is true that he seemed to drift all over the place before he died, he did say some provocative things about what he had seen and had done. These were backed up by his son and his wife. Still, we need to sound a note of caution when dealing with the senior Marcel.

Before this gets too long, let’s move onto Bill Brazel. Here was another man

Bill Brazel and Don Schmitt on the debris field.
Photo copyright by Kevin Randle

extremely reluctant to talk about what he had seen. He did find a few scraps of the material that his father, Mack, described as having come from “that contraption I found.”

This debris included something that resembled fiber optics, a lead foil that seemed to have a memory, returning to its original shape when crumpled, and something that was as light a balsa but with a strength that rivaled steel. Although he lost the debris to Air Force personnel in 1949, he did show it to several others including Sallye Tadolini. Some of these witnesses, who handled the debris have affidavits about it.

Of course, Mack had shown a bit of the debris to Floyd and Loretta Proctor. She told me about the fire-resistant capabilities of the material. She mentioned, as did Marian Strickland, that Mack had been held by the military authorities for a number of days.

And I don’t want to forget Bill Rickett, the CIC NCOIC in Roswell in July 1947. He talked about his trip to see the crash site, some of the debris that he saw there, and some of the people on the scene including Sheridan Cavitt and Edwin Easley.

Here I could mention Frankie Rowe who wasn’t lying about what she said. True, she is second hand, having heard about the crash and the creatures from her father, fire fighter Dan Dwyer. But her sister confirmed the story and ironically, one of the fire fighters who Karl Pflock interviewed and used to dismiss the story,

Karl Pflock

actually told me, that Dwyer had gone to the crash site in his private car. The fire fighter, C.J. Smith, told me about Dwyer’s trip when I asked, simply, “Did you know Dan Dwyer.” Smith’s response was, “He went out there in his car.”

These are some of the things that I think about when I’m not worrying about the documents that I mentioned in the last post. Most of the people mentioned here, and a dozen or two more that I could have brought up argue against the documents conclusion. While it is true that a few people might be inventing their tales, and we’ve had more than our share of them, there are some very solid people who had talked about their involvement. If I’m willing to concede some points based on the documentation, it seems only right that those at the other end of the spectrum admit that there are some disturbing testimonies. They all aren’t lying, looking for their fifteen minutes, and just wishing to have an interesting story to tell.

Oh, and before this degenerates into another long discussion about the foibles of human memory… yeah, I get it. But not all memories are flawed and inaccurate. Many times, the person gets the facts right as has been shown by numerous scientific investigations, and yes, I know about Elizabeth Loftus’ work on false memory. Her work demonstrates how such memories can be created, so we don’t really have to talk about that. We just have to remember that sometimes, the person relating the tale has the details right, was actually there, and is telling the truth as best he or she can…

The Decline of Roswell - So Many Missed the Point

Over the last several days I have received a number of comments, privately, about my post, “The Decline of Roswell.” What is disturbing about it is that many people missed the most important part. They focused on the statement by Colonel Howard McCoy to The Science Advisory Board about his wishing one would crash. But, that is not the critical comment.

To recap, briefly. Those who follow this blog know that a while back I mentioned that Captain Edward Ruppelt, in a briefing he conducted in the early 1950s, had mentioned the lack of recovered crash debris. But Ruppelt had no need to know if there was crash recovered

Captain Edward Ruppelt

debris from earlier investigations. His mission was the investigation of sightings reported to the Air Force, and the gathering of what might be considered essential items of intelligence. He could do his job without being told that debris had been recovered from a crash. His statement isn’t particularly troubling, given the circumstances and his position in the UFO investigations.

There was another document, a top-secret report entitled Air Intelligence Report No. 100-203-79 and dated December 10, 1948, with a second version dated April 28, 1949. The officers responsible for it make no mention of crash recovered debris. But the officers involved suggested there could have been some project or information that would have explained everything about the flying saucers if a free flow existed. In other words, this report doesn’t exclude Roswell, given that the officers didn’t have access to everything, as they themselves, noted.

Lieutenant General Nathan Twining, in a letter he wrote on September 23, 1947, mentioned the lack of crash recovered debris. It might be important to know that the letter was probably written by McCoy for Twining’s signature. But the information used to form the opinion had been supplied by Lieutenant Colonel George Garrett through Brigadier General George Schulgen. The sightings and information supplied by Garrett contained no references to crash recovered material. Twining could accomplish his goal without referring to crash recovered debris and would have no motive for adding that information to his letter. The reference in the letter was about the lack of debris in the supporting documentation supplied, not actually saying that no such debris existed. It doesn’t close the Roswell door at all.

Then there was the quote from the Science Advisory Board in which McCoy said that they wished one would crash. The problem is that the information in the briefing was classified only as secret and some of the participants might not have held top secret clearances. Besides, we run into that pesky “need to know.” In other words, this is not the fatal bullet to the Roswell case, given the circumstances.

The real problem and the one that has been basically ignored by the various commentators here and in other arenas is McCoy’s letter to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force on November 3, 1948. It was a long letter discussing flying saucers. This was a recap of what they knew, or thought they knew about the “Flying Objects,” according to the documentation available. In paragraph 8, McCoy wrote:

The possibility that the reported objects are vehicles from another planet has not been ignored. However, tangible evidence to support conclusions about such a possibility are completely lacking (I have highlighted this because of its importance). 

This is the deadliest of the quotes. Because of who McCoy was, I

Colonel Howard
McCoy

believe that he would have known about any recovered crash debris. He had been running the unofficial UFO investigation until the Arnold sighting in June, 1947, when it became more of an official study. He was on the inside from the very beginning, and he was a key member of Twining’s primary staff.

The second real problem here is that McCoy would have no expectation that this letter would be seen by anyone other than those to which it was addressed and it was going to the top guy in the Air Force, especially since FOIA didn’t exist then. As I mentioned, he wouldn’t dare lie. If there had been a crash, he was writing to those who would know about it; more importantly these were the people who had to know about it because they would be directing policy. They might not have all the minutia of the crash or what had been learned by the reverse engineering, but they would know that there had been a crash of something that was highly unusual. They would know that this was a craft that had not been build on Earth.

When we look at those first few examples about a lack of crash debris, we can, I believe, with intellectually honest candor, suggest that this does not close the door on Roswell. There are cracks in those documents. But the last one, by McCoy, is the one we must look at carefully. There is very little wiggle room here. McCoy either didn’t know or he was lying to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Since it is clear that he wouldn’t lie to the top officer in the Air Force, we are left with the idea he just didn’t know. This seems to be preposterous. McCoy was in the inner circle…

That leads us to the conclusion, based solely on the documentation from that time frame that the answer to the Roswell crash does not lie with the stars.

There is, of course, always the possibility that there is missing information. And, we have to look at the testimony from those who seemed to have no reason to lie about this from Bill Brazel to Edwin Easley to Loretta Proctor and a dozen other low-ranking military men and to the civilians who lived in the area.

I can say, without fear of contradiction, that something fell near Corona, New Mexico in July 1947. The question is still, “What was it?” The answer, today, is less clear than it was a decade ago. All I can say is that this one letter from McCoy worries me greatly and it should worry anyone else who believes that Roswell has an alien solution.