David Grusch and the Latest Crash Retrieval Story

 

By now nearly everyone interested in UFOs, or rather UAPs, has heard about the latest revelations that the US Government has recovered not only alien artifacts, but apparently intact craft and the bodies of the pilots killed in UFO crashes. There are those who say this is the first time that anything like this has received positive public scrutiny, and all is backed up with endorsements by high-ranking military and government officials who are the same ones who have been making claims for years or who are not all that high ranking.

David Charles Grusch, who has some interesting credentials, has been interviewed by several journalists, who also have some interesting credentials, saying that there is evidence suggesting a secret program to recover the UFO material. We do know of a program called Moon Dust, that was originally hidden behind a curtain of classification, that had the mission of recovering unknown objects that have fallen to Earth that are of either foreign manufacture or unknown origin. This project, however, was not highly classified and operated in various government agencies including the Department of State. My book, cleverly called Project Moon Dust covers a great deal of that material, including reporting on the retrieval of many of these objects.

David Grusch and his visible resume.

In fact, Air Force Brigadier General C. H. Bolander made a statement in 1969 that said, “Reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security… are not part of the Blue Book system... [and] should continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedure designed for this purpose.” He meant that some sightings were not reported to Project Blue Book, the official and publicly identified entity responsible for UFO investigation. This then, could be interpretated as evidence of a secret investigation that was not known to the public, which is indirect confirmation of what Grusch has claimed.

Grusch was adamant that there are several craft, intact, and that the bodies of the pilots were recovered. Unfortunately, and one thing that we need to remember, is that he said he had not seen these himself but was telling what others he respected told him. He said there were documents, but those were not available at the moment. This is the same problem that has plagued such claims for decades.

I did talk to Daniel Sheehan, a lawyer who consulted for a time with the Carter Administration, who said that he too, had seen photographs of downed craft with American military personnel on the site and related, highly classified documents. That interview was reported in UFOs and the Deep State.

I mention those two books because, my research tends to validate some of what Grusch said. But we’re in the same place without the documents or photographs of the debris that we have always found ourselves. I have talked with people who claimed insider status, but who are reluctant to go on the record but talked of secret studies and investigations and recovered artifacts.

This is not the first time that someone has suggested evidence of a secret government program to gain some attention by the main stream media. However, in the past, those claims have never been proven and some of the documentation has been discredited by members of the UFO community.

In the mid-1980s, the media, the UFO community, and most of the United States were fascinated to learn of something called Majestic Twelve or MJ-12. The proponents, who had received several documents anonymously through the mail, alleged that the MJ-12 was a highly placed group of scientists, military officers and government officials who were responsible for the investigation of a UFO recovered outside of Roswell, New Mexico and other alleged crashes.

Those proponents were seen on various TV shows including Nightline, were the subject of a two-hour nationally broadcast documentary that described the whole MJ-12 operation, and were interviewed by countless newspaper reporters. There was very little initial skepticism because they had the documents to show, including a letter or memo written by and signed by then president Harry Truman. Although the coverage was initially positive, it was later shown that MJ-12 and all the subsequent documents were faked. I outlined all this in the book, Case MJ-12, which was updated not all that long ago. You can read more about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/09/mj-12-is-dead.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2006/08/mj-12-revisited.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/08/absense-of-evidence.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/10/end-of-mj-12.html

And, of course, you can read more information about it in Roswell in the 21^st Century and in Understanding Roswell. There is also a section on the Majestic War Plan, a real document that was code named Majestic but that has nothing to do with the MJ-12 or alien spacecraft but does suggest a real problem. There wouldn’t be two separate programs using the same classified code word because of the obvious confusion that would create. The Majestic war plan has a known provenance but the MJ-12 documents have none.

And another worldwide sensation that received positive media coverage was the announcement that several cans of black and white movie footage had been found that showed the autopsy of an alien being. There were claims that some of the footage showed President Truman on the UFO crash site. This was going to blow the lid off the whole UFO question.

One of the creators of the Alien Autopsy video with the crash victim.

Documentaries were prepared about the footage. Most of those documentaries provided little in the way of critical content. In a press conference held in London, attended by reporters and other interested parties from around the world, some of that footage was shown. Naturally, there were critics, but they were mostly ignored because there was actual film footage shown and a promise that more would becoming.

It was later revealed to be a hoax, with those who had created the alien creature providing photographs that showed the creation of the creatures. But the real point is that, in the beginning, those making the claims had something besides the second-hand statements of a man with good credentials. You can read more about the alien autopsy here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/03/why-im-beginning-to-dislike-ufology.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2012/05/aiien-autopsy-and-philip-mantle.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/05/alien-autopsy-and-h-beam.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2006/04/end-of-alien-autopsy.html

The definitive book on this is Philip Mantle’s Roswell Alien Autopsy. Given his sources, it pretty well ends the discussion.

Or the latest of the worldwide UFO phenomena with a promise of absolute proof including photographs of the alien bodies was announced just a few years ago. This was big news on the world stage for several months with the promise that all would be revealed. The story was that two people, from Midland, Texas, had been friends with President Eisenhower and he had allowed them to not only see the bodies of the beings killed in the Roswell crash, but allowed them to photograph them.

In the beginning, a very poor photo was released online, as sort of a teaser to the big presentation to be held in Mexico City. It was to be streamed live throughout the world, and interest was high for weeks prior to the presentation.

In the end, it was all hype and little else. When we finally saw a high-quality photograph, it took only hours to identify it as an unfortunate child who had died several hundred years ago. You can learn more about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2019/08/x-zone-broadcast-network-tom-carey.html

Although this post has a long list of other articles about the Roswell Slides, this one post might provide the best evidence against that whole sad saga. Just type Roswell Slides into the search engine for a more comprehensive list. And, of course, Roswell in the 21^st Century has a long analysis of the situation.

In other words, I’m cautious about all this latest interest from the whistleblower and would like to see some evidence other than second-hand statements before I climb out on a limb. As shown, we have been down this road before, and in many of those cases, there was some form of physical evidence attached to the claims being made. It might be in the form of documents, or it might be film of an alien being undergoing a rather cavalier autopsy, but it was something more than one man with good credentials making claims that can’t be backed up at this point.

Here's the thing. Too many of us want to believe, so we are sometimes blinded to the flaws in the story. I have talked to a general, who wished to remain anonymous, who said that the Roswell story was true. He had seen the evidence. Now, why would he risk his career to make a statement like that? I don’t know, but I heard him say it.

While two reputable journalists have reported on the story and the Grasch has been vetted, the point is that he has offered nothing in the way of corroborative evidence. He has promised it is out there but this is not the time to reveal it. So, I report on what has been said, I note that this is not the first time this has happened, and I wait patiently for the evidence to be presented. Until then, this tale joins all the others we have been fed over the years. Without the corroborative evidence, all we really have is an interesting story told by a man who has offered no evidence and that many of us want to believe.

Thoughts on the NASA Panel and a Suggestion for Data Collection

 

Yes, I did sit through most of the NASA presentations on what they insist on calling UAPs but we all know as UFOs. It was basically what I had expected. Long on talk but little of importance. They began by complaining about the harassment and bullying of the various panel members on social media. I thought, “Welcome to the world of UFO research.” I can’t tell you how many times I have had to deal with this sort of thing, which is to say that I ignore it, but it does happen.

Dr. Daniel Evans, who opened the Panel proceedings.

They also spent a great deal of time lecturing us on the scientific method and I wondered if that was for the coordination of the panel members or if that was to teach us out here about how science is supposed to work. And we learned many things that seemed irrelevant to me. For example, the FAA representative, Mike Freie, told us that the FAA radars filter the radar returns, meaning, that they don’t see objects that are too small, too low or too slow and those that are too high and too fast.

There was a discussion of past reports suggesting that the data collected was muddled and there was a lack of useful information. They complained that eyewitness testimony is often unreliable, which is certainly true, but it shouldn’t be rejected simply because it is eyewitness testimony.

In fact, some of the presentations suggested that not only eyewitness testimony was unreliable, but data collected by various instrumentation and sensors was almost as unreliable. These sensor arrays gather specific sorts of data which can be corrupted by a variety of outside factors. Or, in other words, they were suggesting that such data might as unreliable as eyewitnesses because of the limits of the sensors. I found this as a preliminary way of rejecting data collected by the arrays. A sort of built in excuse to ignore data that did not fit the bias of those reviewing it. In fact, Scott Kelly, a former astronaut, said later, “In my experience, the sensors kind of have the same issues as the people’s eyeballs.”

That idea was reinforced by some of the others. One of them mentioned that the data collection was not very good and there was a lack of quality control. I wondered if it would be rejected out of hand, which meant that important cases from the past would be ignored. In writing Levelland, I looked at a great many sources that included interviews conducted in 1957 and those that came about later. It was a huge task tracking down sources, but in the end, I believe that I had a very good idea of what happened there.

It wasn’t a matter of the witnesses having to guess about an object seen in the distance, but of the UFO landing close to them. They might not have been completely accurate about the size or the length of the sighting, but that is not a good reason to reject the data. Many made close hand observations and, according to the sheriff, there were dozens of witnesses to the UFO interacting with the environment. However, this sighting would be ignored because data collected in the past might be muddled. It seemed to me that an accurate program would look at a representative sample of these older cases which would help understand the current situation.

In what might have been one of the more important presentations, Sean Kirkpatrick presented an updated version of his report to the Senate, telling us that they had now received something like 800 sighting reports. He covered much of the same ground here as he had there, but the one point that I think was overlooked was that he suggested that only 2 to 5% of the sightings remained unidentified. We have moved from the place a couple of years ago when about 99% of the sightings had no solutions to this point of some 20 to 40 sightings have no solution. As the Condon Committee said half a century ago, and as the Air Force claimed during Project Blue Book, there will always be a residue of unexplained cases because of insufficient data.

In fact, they carried that theme throughout the presentations. The evidence of the past was poorly collected, the data were vague, or incomplete. This was an excuse to avoid the sighting evidence gathered in the past. They didn’t have to look at it because it was badly flawed. But this is the same thing that the Condon Committee said a half century ago and the same thing that the Robertson Panel said even earlier.

Part of that problem was those collecting the evidence, and here I’m thinking of official investigation, was that those responsible didn’t believe it was their job to properly collect data. They were going through the motions because the general population expected there to be an investigation. Rigorous investigation was not part of the Blue Book system for much of its existence.

Which, of course, brings me to the Bolender memo, in which an Air Force general did say that some cases were not part of the Blue Book system. You have to wonder where those cases went and why they were not part of the Blue Book system.

And, that’s not to mention that alibi for the classification of some sightings. We were told that the photographs might be classified, not because of the subject matter, but because of the platform used to capture the image. What was being said here was that the image wasn’t important, but what might be derived by studying the image would provide clues about the capability of our sensors and cameras. This was a way of saying, “Yes, we have classified photographs, but there is nothing interesting in them. We just don’t want to reveal our abilities in capturing the data.” It is a useful dodge if you do get an outstanding photo of a UFO, I mean a UAP, but you don’t want to share that image with the unwashed public.

I did notice one thing that I found a bit odd. Those speaking later, seemed to have responses to those who had spoken earlier. It seemed to me that there was a coordination among those speaking to be sure to mention the lack of evidence of alien visitation. These were just “drop in” comments, as if they were an afterthought, but I sensed a coordination here. Stay away from the dreaded association with UFOs but make these backhanded comments about there being no evidence that they had seen. Please note that they said that they had seen no evidence as opposed to there being no evidence. It’s all a matter of semantics.

The NASA Panel.

And for those of you who don’t read between the lines, let me point out that while something might be true, if you were unaware of that truth, and claimed that truth was, well, untrue, then you would be spreading a version of the truth. You weren’t lying, you were merely wrong. It could be a case of closing your eyes so that you don’t see the evidence that you don’t want to see.

So, when one of the panelists was asked about non-disclosure agreements signed by the astronauts who might have seen something about UFOs, the answer was that he wasn’t aware of any such agreements. Didn’t mean there weren’t any, only that he knew of none, which is not quite the same thing.

Maybe I’m oversensitive to the language here, after dealing with government bureaucrats for decades and listening to politicians not really answer a question, I listen to what is said.

This applies to statements about possible extraterrestrial craft in our atmosphere. The mention of alien visitation was avoided, with only minor references to the lack of evidence for that conclusion, stated by several, that there was no evidence of alien visitation. Later, apparently after the show was over, Scott Kelly said, “I want to emphasize this loud and proud. There is absolutely no convincing evidence for extraterrestrial life associated with unidentified objects.”

Please note the careful choice of words. He said convincing evidence and that makes me wonder what he might have seen… and how high is the bar on that. Does convincing evidence mean the wrecked craft and alien bodies or is the bar somewhat lower.

We do have statements from other astronauts that seem to contradict that statement. While Kelly might not have seen no convincing evidence, it seems that Edgar Mitchell has seen such evidence.

And I noted there seemed to be no sense of urgency here. The presentations were fairly routine and dealt with the trivia of investigation and lectures on scientific method, but no digging deep into the phenomena that has been around for decades.

However, the type of evidence that NASA, and AARO for that matter, are looking for is being gathered by Fran Ridge’s MADAR network.

As but a single example, on September 17 of last year, the witnesses, in Provo, Utah, were sitting on a rocky bluff when the man saw a bright, shiny object in the deep blue sky, which he thought was an airplane. But the object was hovering, which ruled out an airplane. The witness saw no movement, though there was a strong wind blowing, which would rule out a balloon.

He finally called to his wife, who saw the UFO and said that it was “really, really weird.”

The UFO began to descend rapidly, and the man used a cell phone to record the sighting, ending when he lost sight of it as it dropped lower. But a moment later, he spotted it hovering above the trees, seeming to fade in and out of visibility. Finally, it just disappeared completely.

The Utah Photo.

A MADAR site did register a magnetometer reading that was the highest at the time of the sighting. However, there was no compass variation and the other, closer MADAR Node was off line at the time. However, this sighting, like so many others on the MADAR network could supply the sort of scientific evidence that the NASA study requires, if they bothered to check it out.

One last observation about the NASA panel that is more nitpicking than anything of real substances. One of them mentioned Carl Sagan’s claim that extraordinary claims required extraordinary evidence. That quote was not from Sagan (though he might have said it) but originated, according to Jerry Clark, by Marcello Truzzi. Not a major point but I thought I would mention it.

My Latest Communication with Jacques Vallee

 

After Douglas Johnson’s revelation last week, based on an interview conducted by and taped by Tom Carey (seen below), I reached out to Dr. Jacques Vallee. The Carey interview told a story of the San Antonio UFO crash that differed significantly from that written about by Vallee and Paola Harris. I asked Vallee if he was aware of the Carey interview.

To my surprise, he not only responded, but did so rapidly. He confirmed that he knew of the interview, but made it clear that Reme Baca’s desire to make money off the sighting did not mean it was untrue. Many people in the UFO community were

making some money off their sightings or expertise. They wrote books and attended conventions and almost no one was criticized for it.

I had to agree with this. I have been accused many times of only being in it for the money. Didn’t matter that some of those slinging that allegation were writing books and giving interviews and were making some money off the field. I often wondered if we couldn’t say that about nearly everyone. They were in it for the money. Pick a vocation and wonder if the person involved was doing it for the love of the work or because there was money for doing it. But I digress.

Vallee’s response only covered that one, small aspect of what Baca had said to Carey. And, that wasn’t what I was interested in. I sent a second email, this time hoping for a more in-depth response. I mentioned some of the discrepancies in the two stories as told by Baca. I pointed out that Baca told Carey he was in a truck with Jose Padilla, not riding horses when they came across the downed UFO. I mentioned that Baca said they had taken the bits of debris from a back of an Army truck and not from the inside of the craft as told in the published version. I was just pointing out some of the real problems, the ones that would sink the San Antonio crash tale unless there was some way to massage the two versions into one.

It’s a week later, I have received no response. When you think about it, what can be said. The story changed in several radical and significant ways. Minor changes in a story that is decades old is not a major problem. However, when you go from stealing debris from the back of an Army truck to climbing into an alien craft and peeling that debris off the wall, that smacks of a lie.

When you go from driving a truck out in a search for a missing cow to riding horses, you have a major problem.

Couple this to all the other issues, such as claiming that a State Police officer named Eddie Apodaca came out to the site but there was no one by that name in the State Police in 1945, it is a real problem. Once again, I will note, much of this is laid out in Johnson’s reports which can be read here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-file-eddie-apodaca-the-real-policeman-who-cracked-the-trinity-ufo-crash-case/

The real point here is to note that Dr. Vallee was quick to respond with an email that didn’t address the main issues. He selected one minor problem with which I agree. That Baca wanted to know how to exploit his sighting is unimportant. But, when I pressed for more information on the major issues, there was no response.

And, in case you missed it, I believe the tale to be a hoax. It is not based in fact… well, that’s not exactly true. There is a New Mexico town named San Antonio and there were a lot of facts borrowed from the Roswell case.

Coast-to-Coast AM: FLIR and William Rhodes

I came across something the other day that suggests a partial solution to some of the questions being asked about UFOs. Officials have wondered how it can be that there is an object seen on radar, or by FLIR but not be seen by pilots sent to intercept them. The answer might be that it is the human ability to see only certain light waves.

We can see what is known as the visible light spectrum. That is bordered by the ultraviolet on one end and the infrared on the other. While we can’t see in the infrared, we have instruments that can. If a craft is concealed in an infrared cloud, it might be invisible to an interceptor pilot or witnesses on the ground, but could be seen by radar and by FLIR. Maybe this is a hint about a technology that could mask our aircraft in some fashion.

I confess that I’m not sure how this would work, or if it could work. I just noticed that a craft emitting an infrared light would not be visible to the human eye. Using infrared to mask a craft of any kind might not work, especially in daylight, but it could explain the sudden disappearance of a craft if the light it emitted changed from the visible spectrum into the infrared. It would seem to disappear while staying right there. I’m sure that some optical scientists might have something to say about this.

Of course, there are still sightings in which the witnesses can see the UFO. Such was a case from May 18 of this year. The witness, in El Reno, Oklahoma, was sitting on the deck in the rear of his house, when he noticed a shiny spot in the sky. He was curious about it and watched as it seemed to grow. After a minute, he could see a circular shape. It then turned sharply and accelerated, disappearing in a matter of seconds.

He said that he saw a definite shape that looked nothing like a conventional aircraft. By the time he realized what he was seeing, the UFO had disappeared. He thought about his cell phone too late to take any pictures.

For this month’s retro sighting, I’m looking at the William Rhodes photographs taken on July 7, 1947, in Phoenix, Arizona. He was walking from his house to his lab in the backyard when he heard what he described as a whooshing sound. He looked up and thought he was seeing one of the new jets, but quickly realized that it was something different. He ran to his lab for his camera and took two pictures.

The better of the Rhodes photographs

The other Rhodes photograph.

Although it doesn’t show in the photographs, the illustration that Rhodes drew shows a disk-shaped object. There were no propellers and no turbulent air behind the craft. He said that the UFO was circling but he took only one other picture. He only had two frames left on the film.

Rohodes illustration of what he saw and photographed.

The Air Force smear machine attempted to prove that this was a hoax. There was an issue with Rhodes’ claim of a doctorate, though his Navy service at the beginning of World War II was the source of the claim. They didn’t like that he was self-employed and said that he lived off his wife’s income. The truth was that he had several patents and that was sought by universities for his problem-solving ability. I talked to a man who knew Rhodes who told me that Rhodes was a clever fellow and a genius. You can read more about this aspect of the case here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/10/beyond-rhodes-photographs.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2006/11/more-of-best-ufo-photographs.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2012/04/kenneth-arnold-william-rhodes-and-maury.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/10/william-rhodes-and-his-phd.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/10/more-on-william-rhodes.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/07/air-force-character-assassination-and.html

The Air Force labeled the case as a hoax, though Ken Arnold said that he had been told by two Army intelligence officers that the Rhodes photographs resembled the craft that he, Arnold, had seen. I dealt with the case in depth in The Best of Project Blue Book.

As an addendum, to the story, this was a comment appended to one of the posts I had written about Rhodes:

William Albert Rhodes was my uncle. He passed away in 2007 at 90 years of age. His last wife (of six) Nancy lives still in their house on 13th place in Phoenix, she celebrated her 87 birthday last January. A long time resident of Arizona he lived in Phoenix when it was a small village of 35,000 people. In those days you were judged by what you knew and what you did rather than what a piece of paper said you knew. It was literally the Wild West at the time. Bill was friends with many leading people of the time including two men who were to become governors of Arizona. Intellectually Bill was brilliant and had many interests not limited to what I've read here. He was very active in the early radio music scene in Arizona. He played piano throughout his life at a very high level. He held many patents including the water welder, of which I have one in my garage. He worked extensively in the solar field and his home still has a hybrid solar panel for heating water and a "helioscope", which uses reflected light via mirrors to illuminate the inside of a building, among other innovations. He organized a "solar showcase" in Arizona in 1955, which while covered by the local media was a relative flop due, I believe, to entrenched corporate interests such as Arizona Public Service and Salt River Project. He was a "90 day wonder" and never said otherwise. No one who knew him even a little bit would think he didn't deserve to be called Dr. He invented Rhodes Gas and although it's now called Browns Gas it was his development and invention. He had some success in business but made many bad decisions and had no lasting business interests. He was used and abused business wise throughout his life. I know little about the UFO pictures having been born in 1947. He always kidded me and told me I was half alien. His personal life aside (obviously having had six wives) he wasn't the most stable of family men, but in the end he was one of a kind, complex, intelligent, flawed as most of us are.

I found it interesting and confirmed much of the other things that I had learned about Rhodes and his photographs. 

The Smoking Gun Proving the Trinity Tale is a Hoax

This is a fight that I really didn’t want to get into, but find myself dragged into it. I am surprised by the response that Dr. Jacques Vallee made to the issues raised by Douglas Dean Johnson’s May 1 analysis of the Trinity UFO crash. I found most of what was said to be weak. The main issues were not properly addressed and there were a few points that seemed to have escaped notice. I thought I would chime in with my own thoughts.

I’m not going to address all the problems with Vallee’s response here. For those interested, you can read Vallee’s response here:

https://visions13.wixsite.com/journo-jottings/post/jacques-vallee-hits-back-at-hoax-claims-over-trinity-ufo-crash-book

And you can read the rest of Johnson’s expose on the whole of the San Antonio UFO crash here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/

Like many others, I was bothered by the claim that the New Mexico National Guard would allow someone who was only thirteen enlist. The claim originated in an article Ben Moffett wrote for the Mountain Mail on October 30, 2003. Moffett wrote:

While at Socorro High School he left to join the National Guard at age 13, when very young children were allowed to sign up because of the World War II death toll in the New Mexico Guard. After leaving San Antonio [New Mexico], Jose [Padilla] continued guard duty in Van Nuyes, [sic] Calif., Air National Guard, and when the unit was activated, spent time in Korea.

That wasn’t the only reference to service in Korea. In their book, Vallee and Harris wrote:

On Friday, the 16^th of October 2020, Paola and I were back in Socorro one more time, to meet again with Mr. Padilla… Jose was recovering from an operation on his first bullet wound, the one from Korea.

This second reference puts Padilla in Korea and suggests something of a combat role though it is not claimed as such. They do offer a weak explanation for this discrepancy. In Vallee’s rebuttal, he wrote:

Here again, the reason for some of the uncertainty comes from the fact that he has resided in many places during his long life, had several marriages, misplaced or forget records along the way, and that any remaining private documents would still be in California where he used to live. In other words, he’s human. The few specific questions raised have simple answers, however. Jose was 16 in 1953, the last year of the Korean War., but no Pease treaty was ever signed. After the theoretical “cease fire” the US Army still needed boots on the ground for clean-up, repatriation of materiel, documentation and the like. Mr. Padilla has told us repeatedly that his service in Korea was during that phase, and that he was shot as part of the mop-up operations.

The explanation does not alter the original tale by all that much, other than to suggest that he was 16 rather than 13 when he joined the National Guard. As a former member of the military, I know that we were told to protect certain records such as our DD 214. This document verified military service and was necessary to validate that service when requesting various VA benefits. At the very least, with all his moves, Padilla should have kept a copy of that document. Yes, I have my DD 214s from my service as an enlisted man in the Army, another as a warrant officer in Vietnam, from my service in the Air Force in 1976 and in the Iowa National Guard. Padilla should have been able to supply such a document. And, in the event he lost all his military records, copies would be available at the Army Records Center in St. Louis. Verification of his military service is there and there is no reason that he, or for that matter Jacques Vallee, with Padilla’s permission, wouldn’t be able to offer the proof of this improbable story.

I will note that Johnson did contact the New Mexico National Guard. In two searches, there were unable to find any documentation to prove that Padilla had served. At this point, the only conclusion to be drawn is that Padilla never served in the New Mexico National Guard or the military. That certainly puts a cloud over many of his other claims.

As an aside, I have been challenged for decades about my claims of military service. I have been able to silence those claims by producing various documents, some of them from the late 1960s, and I too, have had many moves over the years but have been able to retain enough of these documents to prove my claims of military service.  Some of those documents are more than half a century old.

For those interested in more about Padilla’s alleged military service, including documents from the New Mexico National Guard, you can see them here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-file-jose-padillas-stolen-valor-military-claims-p/

One of the biggest problems is the tale that a New Mexico State Policeman, Eddie Apodaca, who was the police officer involved in the August 1945 UFO crash. According to Harris, Baca told her, “Jose came to over to my house, and I went with him to his house, where we met Eddie Apodaca who as a State Policeman, and a friend of the family. Faustino [Padilla’ father] had asked him to go with us to the crash site.”

The problem, outlined by Johnson, was that in 1945, Apodaca was not in New Mexico. He was in Europe at the end of the Second World War. He did not become a policeman until five or six years after the alleged UFO crash. You can read about the search for Eddie Apodaca here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-file-eddie-apodaca-the-real-policeman-who-cracked-the-trinity-ufo-crash-case/

Vallee’s response is not to provide some evidence that Eddie Apodaca was a state police officer in 1945, but to say there were six men named Edward Apodaca in New Mexico in 1980. But this doesn’t put any Eddie Apodaca in the state police in 1945. According to the records, there was no one named Eddie Apodaca in the state police, so it makes no difference how many were named Edward Apodaca if none of them were serving in the state police at the time.

I do wish, however, to deal with one important aspect of this case that is absolute nonsense. That is the attitude of the miliary, or rather, the alleged attitude of the military, when they arrived at the crash site to recover the craft. As I have mentioned in my review of the book, I found that attitude rather cavalier. The war in the Pacific had not ended, though there were suggestions of peace, and in 1944 and 1945, the Japanese had launched more than 9000 balloon bombs with the thought of setting forest on fire and hitting manufacturing centers. Some 250 of the bombs reached the United States. One of them killed six people in Oregon.

What this suggests is that if some sort of unidentified craft had fallen close to the Trinity Site where the first atomic bomb had been detonated, the military would have been quite interested. They would have retrieved that object and they would not have left it unguarded or their trailers unguard because they wouldn’t want curious civilians taking a look at what they carried. Of course, this sort of speculation is unimportant now because, in the original story, things were a little different. Actually, they were quite different.

Tom Carey

In what in another age might have been called burying the lead, there is an audio recording with Reme Baca in which the story of the San Antonio crash is, well, completely different. It provides the evidence that the San Antonio UFO crash is a hoax. Tom Carey interviewed him a couple of decades ago with that old, boring story. You can read about it and listen to the tape here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-file-the-reme-baca-smoking-gun-interview/

Although this should be the stake through the heart of the tale, I know, from experience, that there are those who will not accept the evidence. They were talk about government agents and threats of jail or death. They will suggest there is a core of truth to the story. In this case, I think there were two boys living in New Mexico in 1945 named Reme Baca and Jose Padilla. Other than that, I don’t think there is much else that is true.

Don’t believe that? Just revisit the Alien Autopsy hoax in which pictures of the creation of the alien have been published… Don’t believe me, well, just look again at the tales told by Philip Corso that have been debunked in a fashion not unlike that we have just seen here… Or, for that matter, look at the tales told by Robert Willingham and the Del Rio UFO crash. I have published at great deal about that.

The real problem here seems to be that AARO, that supposed investigation into UAPs, has heard this tale and found it compelling. I suspect, in the not-too-distant future, AARO will report that the story is a hoax and use it to compromise other UFO mysteries that have no explanation. They will tell us that they looked at the San Antonio case and discovered that two men invented the tale to cash in on the interest in UFOs. And with that, they will dismiss all the UFO, well, UAP, phenomenon as having been the work of overactive imaginations, misidentifications of nature objects, and people who wish to see their names in print or be interviewed to participate in documentaries. They’ll forget to tell you that it was members of the UFO community that exposed the hoax for what it is. They won’t mention the work of Douglas Johnson but they will tell you all about the investigation they conducted to prove the point.

At any rate, I hope the latest, with the taped interview available for all to hear, will be sufficient to end this controversy. I know it won’t, but I can hope. 

More Analysis of the Latest AARO Briefing

There has been a lot of chatter about the recent update from Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick of the official UAP investigation on the various UFO platforms. Jan Aldrich, a long time and careful researcher, provided an interesting take on all of it.

What I have hinted at, he said outright. This briefing was theater for the public and since this was an unclassified hearing, nothing of substance was mentioned during it. Alrich said that prior to this public hearing, the committee chair and the ranking member of the Senate committee had already had the classified version of the briefing. This, then was more reinvention of the wheel and an attempt to convince the public that something important was being done, even if the results were less than spectacular.

The somewhat less than spectacularly attended AARO Briefing

I have pointed out that the first official investigation was created by then Lt. General Nathan F. Twining in 1947 and was officially known as Project Sign but publicly as Project Saucer. This eventually evolved into Project Grudge and finally into Project Blue Book. Alrich suggests that Blue Book was a reinvention of Sign, but I believe the first reinvention was Grudge. No matter, attitudes and responses changed with each new project.

I should also point out because it is not part of the official record, that Twining had ordered an off-the-books investigation in December 1946. They were gathering data through military sources. The public knew nothing about this investigation and when Kenneth Arnold made news in June 1947, this unofficial investigation morphed into the official investigation.

Alrich suggests a shakeup in 1966 when Dr. James McDonald warned the AMC commander that the incompetence in Blue Book might not be good for career advancement for any number of people. The general then ordered a revitalization of Blue Book. The changes were made, but as officers were reassigned, the investigation soon slipped into the old patterns of do nothing and deny everything.

Alrich suggests the fourth reinvention was the Condon Committee. I think it was the fifth, with the 1953 Robertson Panel providing guidance on how the UFO investigation should proceed. Many of the ideas suggested by the Robertson Panel were incorporated into the Project Blue Book investigation with those in charge taking their cues from the panel’s recommendations. By including the Robertson Panel in the discussion, that would seem to make the Condon Committee the fifth attempt.

Here’s the interesting part of Alrich’s analysis. He mentioned that Blue Book closed in 1969 and the evidence is that it was, in fact closed. I interviewed Carmon Marano,

Carmon Marano

the last officer at Blue Book who explained how they were throwing out files, though he believed some of the information should be preserved. Since it was being destroyed, he took much of it home. That information eventually made its way to Rob Mercer. That information has yielded many good cases and leads. The point is that they were cleaning out the Blue Book offices because Blue Book had been closed.

But according to Alrich the Air Force continued to gather UFO information with only government input and no reports from the public. Does this sound familiar? It is what AARO has said it is doing… and I’ll note here that we do have evidence of this. The Hickson/Parker abduction was investigated by the Air Force in 1973. There is documentation that proves an Air Force interest in the case. The two men were interviewed at Keesler Air Force Base the day after the abduction, and they were interrogated by high-ranking base officers. And, importantly, the names of other witnesses to the abduction was also noted at the time. You can read more about this here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/10/coast-to-coast-calvin-parker.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2022/07/pascagoula-perspective.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/07/x-zone-broadcast-network-calvin-parker.html

The point here is simply that the current official interest in UFOs goes back decades. After a period of serious investigation, the military operations devolve into public relations attempts to convince the world that UFOs are not alien spacecraft and there is no mystery about them. The reality seems to be that each time to government tells us that they have no interest in UFOs, that is a lie.

This latest round of investigations and congressional hearing seems to be just so much eyewash to convince us that this is a serious attempt to find answers. But we’re getting nothing of substance and it appears that the Robertson Panel suggestion of more than 70 years ago is now in play. Show the public a mysterious sighting and then provide the mundane explanation for it. That should eliminate the public interest…

Of course, it hasn’t worked yet, but they can always hope that the fifth, or is it the sixth, attempt will by the charm. 

Myrtle Beach Photo - An Update

 

Back on March 16, I reported on a sighting from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. That report said:

There are still many sightings of UFOs inside our atmosphere such as the one from Myrtle Beach, SC, from March 6 of this year. The witness said that he was on top of a parking garage and looking for Venus and Jupiter. The witness saw two bright slanted disks in the south, and not the west where the planets were and he took a picture. He took a second picture only seconds later but the UFOs were gone.

I found the pictures intriguing because the witness said that he had out looking for Venus and Jupiter, which had accounted for dozens of UFO sightings. Since he was looking for the planets, it was clear to me that what he had seen were not those planets.

The Myrtle Beach photograph for those who missed it in the first go round.

Now, I have said, as I post these sightings, that if there is new and better information, I will pass it along. Just yesterday, I received an email from a Spanish colleague, Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, who pointed out that the objects in the photograph were lens flares. He provided a link to a website hosted by Juan Carlos Victorio Uranga, who had studied the photographs and provided the solution. You can see that analysis here:

https://misteriosdelaire.blogspot.com/2023/05/hay-muchos-avistamientos-de-ovnis.html

 

While the solution is interesting and is probably correct, I will have to note that the witness said that he saw two disks in the sky. That might rule out the lens flares. The sudden disappearance is interesting but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the slightest movement of the camera would change the angles and if the lens flare solution is correct, that would account for the UFOs disappearance.

You can decide for yourselves if you accept the solution. I have no reason to doubt it, other than the witness suggestion that he saw the UFO in the sky before he took the picture.

The Truth about Vallee's Trinity: The Best Kept Secret

Those of you who visit here often know that I’m not a fan of Jacques Vallee’s latest book, Trinity: The Best Kept Secret, because it is poorly researched, filled with irrelevant details and lacks even rudimentary corroboration. It is based on the stories told by two men who claimed, as children, they had witnessed the recovery of a UFO in August, 1945. That story is filled with contradictions, mistakes, and invention. Without some sort of additional testimony or evidence, it is just another wild tale told to promote the tellers into the mainstream of UFO research and pull the spotlight toward them for convention invitations (and yes, I know that only one of the two is left to tell the tale).

You can read my analysis, of the first edition of the book, and listen to my interview with Vallee here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/06/trinity-best-kept-secret-critique.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2023/01/trinity-ufo-crash-uaps-and-jacques.html

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

What should be the stake in the heart of this tale is now available. Douglas Dean Johnson has done the research into the story that Vallee and Paola Harris should have done before publishing the information. And there is one part of Johnson’s work that shows this better than any other. That is the claim that New Mexico State Police officer, Eddie Apodaca, was part of the adult witnesses (all conveniently unavailable) who saw the craft. Rather than lay all this out in my own words, let me direct you to the website created by Johnson so that you can read this whole sorry tale. I believe that once you consider the evidence that Johnson provides, which reaches way beyond the Apodaca insight, you’ll realize that Vallee, for some reason, climbed on the bandwagon and in doing so, tarnished his own reputation.

Jacques Vallee

You can read Johnson’s work here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-the-trinity-ufo-crash-hoax/

I will note that the sort of sloppy research engaged by Vallee is one of the reasons that we, in the UFO community, see little respect in the real world. Before the book was published, Vallee and Harris should have done the work that Douglas has now done. This tale is a hoax and it should be noted that it was we, inside the UFO community, who had worked to expose it.