I Explain Mogul one LAST Time

I’m going to go through this just one more time so that when this stupid question resurfaces, I can point to this post. Project Mogul is NOT the solution to the Roswell crash. The documentation argues against it; the testimony argues against it and the constant level balloon experiments conducted in Alamogordo in June and July 1947 were NOT classified. Those statements alone should be sufficient to eliminate Mogul, but as I have been told, because this is my claim, I must present the evidence.

Okay. I get it.

The documentation, according to both the field notes and the diary kept by Dr. Albert Crary, the man leading the testing, proves it. According to him, Flight No. 4, the alleged culprit in all this, was cancelled at dawn because of clouds.

List of the New York University balloon flights showing Flight No. 5 as the 
first flight in New Mexico. Table from Air Force report. 

A quick explanation here. These flights were made up of arrays of neoprene rubber balloons. These were off the shelf balloons. The newer, polyethylene balloon didn’t arrive until later. There was nothing about these balloons that would not be easily identified by those who found them whether they were farmers, ranchers or military officers. In fact, one such balloon that included a rawin radar target was found near Circleville, Ohio in July 1947 and everyone knew what it was.

Sherman Campbell's daughter with the rawin
target found on his farm in July 1947. Even the 
daughter recognized it as terrestrial.

We know the construction of Flight No. 4 because, Charles Moore, an engineer on the project, told me that it was configured just like Flight No. 5, which had no rawin targets attached. How do I know? Because in the big Air Force report contained schematics and there were no rawin targets on Flight No. 5. That does mean that the material displayed in General Roger Ramey’s office of the alleged wreckage brought from Roswell was faked because it showed the degraded remains of a rawin target.

The fallback position is that the field notes say they launched a cluster of ballons. However, we do have a schematic for the cluster of balloons, shown on the page next to that for Flight No. 5 and it shows no rawin targets.

Schematic of Flight No. 5 as shown in the Air Force report.

In other words, the documentation provides us with the make-up of Flight No. 4 and the balloon clusters. We find NO rawin targets. This, again, underscores the deceptive nature of the photographs taken in General Ramey’s office.

Here’s another fact. According to the documentation, the rules under which they operated in New Mexico prohibited flights at night or in cloudy weather. The long arrays, approaching 600 feet in length, were considered a hazard to aerial navigation. Crary’s June 4 entry tells us that the flight was cancelled at dawn because of cloudy weather, which means it NEVER flew. The diary entry also tells us they flew a cluster of balloons, which, given the sequence, would have been launched later in the day. Charles Moore, however, tells us, in direct contradiction of this, that Flight No. 4 was launched around 2:30 a.m., in violation of the rules under which they operated.

Why would he say this?

Because, according to the winds aloft data, a launch at dawn, (data which I originally provided to Moore) would NOT have taken the balloons to within 17 miles of the Foster (Brazel) ranch. According to Moore, in winds aloft data he received from a weather station in Orogrande, NM, a front had passed through Alamogordo about dawn (which explains the clouds). He needed data from hours earlier to project a path that would have taken the balloons in the northeastern direction toward the ranch.

Here’s a point that some of the skeptics miss in all this. I had obtained the microfilmed winds aloft data (up to 20,000) from the National Weather Service. Looking at them, I realized any conclusions I drew from them would be ignored. I was in contact with Moore. I sent him copies of the relevant charts. After several days, he asked for additional charts which I sent along. See, I was looking for expert opinions and analysis of those charts. I was in search of the truth rather than a confirmation of my opinion, which, had not been solidified until the Air Force published their report and we had the listing of the balloon flights in New Mexico.

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

I will also note here that both Brad Sparks and David Rudiak, whose backgrounds provided them with the necessary expertise to analyze the data, independently came to the same conclusion. Moore had fudged the numbers to show that Flight No. 4 would have gotten close to the Foster ranch. Their analysis did not support Moore’s projected flight path. This was an analysis of the winds aloft data gathered prior to the front moving through Alamogordo, which caused the cancellation of Flight No. 4.

Let’s recap. Flight No. 4, the culprit in all this was cancelled at dawn, it was not launched hours earlier as claimed by Moore. According to Moore, Flight No. 4 was configured the same as Flight No. 5, which contained no rawin targets. The cluster flight, for which we do have some schematics, do not show rawin targets as part of those earlier flights.

There is one other annoying point here. I keep hearing that Project Mogul was highly classified and that is the reason that the Army worked so hard to cover up the recovery of the material found by Mack (when will these people learn to spell his first name?) Brazel. But what was going on in New Mexico was NOT highly classified. In fact, two days after the Roswell Daily Record announced the Army had captured a flying saucer, newspapers around the country published pictures of these arrays and an explanation of what was going on in Alamogordo. True, the ultimate purpose of Mogul was classified but that classification did not apply to the experiments in Alamogordo as proven by the newspaper.

Alamogordo News on July 10, 1947 showing photos of
the equipment used in the balloon launches. The ladder
in the photo is one that Moore bought in NM for that
purpose. This shows that the experiments in NM were
NOT classified.

I’m going to leave it here. I believe the documentation, the testimonies of some of the participants, and other information rules out Flight No. 4 as the culprit. If it didn’t fly, it left no debris and that explanation for what fell near Corona on the July day in 1947, is rejected. There is other evidence, but this should be sufficient to prove the case.

So, you ask me what I think. I believe that among those of us who have investigated this in depth, that is Stan Friedman, Don Schmitt, Tom Carey, the Air Force and me, we have eliminated all the terrestrial explanations. Does that mean what fell was part of an alien craft? No, it means there is no terrestrial explanation currently available. That suggests something off world, but only suggests it. There might be some super classified file gathering dust in one of those warehouses full of old documentation, but no one has found it. I believe that if something like that existed, when the Air Force investigated the crash back in the mid-1990s, they would have trotted it out. That they didn’t suggests there is no such alternative explanation.

We are left with the literal definition of an “unidentified.” We don’t know what it was, but it was NOT a Project Mogul balloon.

UFO Sghtings and Alien Visitation - A Book to Annoy Everyone

Brad Steiger and I used to argue about who had written the most UFO books. I thought it was him and he thought it was me. I think, in the end, based on the count on Good Reads, I won the contest. Brad wrote more books that I had, but he delved into many areas of the paranormal that I did not. On the other hand, I have written dozens of books of science fiction and what used to be termed action/adventure, many of them under the name Eric Helm.

This is just my way to mention that my latest book UFO Sightings and Alien Visitation: Fact vs Falsehoods, is about to be released. This was a strange book for me. It started out as something different. When it was finished, I didn’t like it. I said that I didn’t want it published. The publisher worked with me and we changed into something that I think is important. It is a book that will annoy believers and skeptics alike.

Available on Amazon after
August 24, 2026.

There is a chapter about the Kingman UFO crash which is subtitled, “Anatomy of an Investigation.” I believe that it covers that alleged crash investigation in great detail and actually contains information that hasn’t been widely published. I mention this because the original source of the tale is Arthur Stansel who was an accomplished engineer and is probably an unreliable source.

I also take a long look at the Pascagoula abduction of Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker in 1973. Yes, I interviewed both the men and provide some documentation that changes the complexion of the story because I identify witnesses to the abduction… Well, that’s not quite the case. Philip Mantle and Irene Scott found many of those witnesses. It strengthens the case.

With the Rendlesham Forest landing in 1980, there was a discussion about the number of nights involved with the sightings. I think I have straightened that out, having talked with Johns Burroughs, Jim Penniston, and Charles Halt. The problem seemed to be a series of sightings just after midnight on one day, then another series on that same day but after dark and then a third night on the next day… if that makes sense.

Just one more little clue about the book and it provides a new take on Project Moon Dust. No, I didn’t unravel the trouble with the project on my own. Brad Sparks was the one who provided the new information. Yes, there was something called Moon Dust and yes it had a UFO component. It’ just not what we thought.

The real point here is that the book was developed under the guidance of Roger Jänecke of Visible Ink. It’s a much better book and has something for everyone on all sides of the UFO question. You can find it on Amazon.

I do ask one thing, however. If you decide the book is not for you and you give it a low rating, please tell me why. Two reasons for this. Sometimes the reason has nothing to do with the writing or content but with problems with the manufacture of the hard copy books or the distribution which has nothing to do with me. It’s an unfair criticism. But two, if you object to the writing, the tone, or the conclusions, put that in the ratings. While I don’t care for poor ratings, if I know the reason, I might be able to fix the problem in the next book.

And now, view me nodding with and evil smile on my face thinking, “Oh yeah, there will be a next book.” 

Wikipedia Nonsense and Project Mogul

 

Well, it’s happened again. Just when I thought I could ignore the Project Mogul nonsense, I get sucked right back in. I was attempting to learn something else, when I came upon the Roswell entry in Wikipedia. It showed bias by accepting theory and speculation as if they are established facts. Those alleged facts are simply wrong.

I wouldn’t even bother with this, but the new first sentence in the discussion of Mogul is now filled with errors. It said, “By 1947, the United States had launched thousands of top-secret Project Mogul balloons carrying devices to listen for Soviet atomic tests.”

I suppose I need to point out here that in the past, that first sentence actually claimed, “In 1947, a Project Mogul balloon NYU Flight 4, launched June 4, crashed in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico.”

Why the change? Because someone noticed that NYU Flight 4 had been cancelled at dawn. It did not fly and if it didn’t fly, well, it couldn’t drop anything on the Brazel (Foster) ranch, which is not all that close to Roswell.

The second problem is that the statement was too specific. It gives us information that can be checked through documentation on the Internet, the Air Force report The Roswell Report: Fact vs Fiction in the New Mexican Desert, in Karl Pflock’s book, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe and in my book, Roswell in the 21^st Century. In other words, a little research calls the Flight No. 4 explanation into serious question and I have cited both skeptical and positive sources.

So, now we have a more generic opening sentence filled with those fictions I mentioned earlier. In June 1947, the first of the New Mexico balloon arrays were launched from the Alamogordo Army Air Field. Not thousands by 1947, and by September, 1947, there had been only seventeen launches, three of those on the east coast and two that were cancelled.

There were no top-secret Project Mogul balloons in New Mexico in 1947 because there was no such thing and never was a top-secret Mogul balloon. Charles Moore, who was an engineer on the balloon project in New Mexico, made it clear to me that their equipment was off-the-shelf weather balloons, just like those launched several times a day from weather observations stations all over the United States. There was nothing classified about their research. Although he claimed that he didn’t know the name of the project in 1947, the Mogul name appears in Dr. Albert Crary’s field notes and diary showing that the name was known to members of the research team.

The official record of balloon flights in New Mexico in June 1947.

There is another point that is rather subtle but one that is important. What was happening in New Mexico with the NYU balloon flights was not classified. The ultimate purpose, to spy on the Soviets, was classified. We know this because on July 10, the Alamogordo News carried a story about the research going on at Alamogordo Army Air Field complete with pictures of one of the long arrays displayed. Moore told me that the ladder in one of the pictures was a ladder he had bought with petty cash which ties all this together.

Newspaper story about NYU balloon launches in July 1947. A very fully
way to deal with "top-secret" material.

The True Story of Flight #4

The Wikipedia entry told us, “On June 4, researchers at Alamogordo Army Air Field in New Mexico launched a long train of these balloons; they lost contact with the balloons and balloon-borne equipment within 17 miles (27 km) of the ranch managed by W. W. "Mac" [sic] Brazel near Corona, New Mexico, where a balloon array subsequently crashed.”

According to Crary’s notes, the June 4 launch, which is listed as the culprit here, was cancelled at dawn that morning because of cloudy weather. Those in Alamogordo operated under strict government rules because the array trains could be a hazard to aerial navigation. They were required to post a NOTAM warning pilots about that hazard, which underscores the danger of these long arrays.

Crary wrote in his field notes, later transcribed to his diary, “June 4 Wed. Out to Tularosa Range and fired charges between 00 [midnight] and 06 this am. No balloon flight again on account of clouds [emphasis added].” For some reason, those of the skeptical bias seem to ignore that statement, inventing alternative meanings behind it. I believe it is destructive to the Mogul explanation because, there was no launch of a full array on June 4.

To be fair, because I think of this as an investigation and not a debate, I note that, according to Crary’s notes, “Flew a regular sono buoy up in a cluster of balloons and had good luck with receiver on the ground but poor on the plane.”

This is the “real” Flight #4 according to those skeptics including Karl Pflock. Charles Moore claimed that this cluster of balloons was a full array which he claimed was the first successful flight in New Mexico. He said that it had been configured the same as Flight #5 but there was no data recorded from it. You have to wonder how it was launched before it was cancelled and why the documentation tells us the balloon cluster was launched later in the day. But mostly you must wonder if Flight #4 was so successful, why no data was recorded from it.

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

Moore told me that Flight #4 was as successful as Flight #5. He told others the same lie. This claim is an obvious contradiction to the documentation that is available because, if it had collected data, it would be listed.

Added to that question is why Flight #5, which did fly the next day, has the notation “First successful flight carrying a heavy load.”?

The next entry, for June 5, clarifies the situation. Crary wrote, “Up at 4 to shoot two charges for balloon flight. Whole assembly of constant altitude balloons set up at 0500.” This underscores that Flight #5 was the first full array launched in New Mexico.

The New York Times endorsed the idea that there was something extremely unusual about the Mogul arrays. According to that story, “"...squadrons of big balloons ... It was like having an elephant in your backyard and hoping that no one would notice it. ... To the untrained eye, the reflectors looked extremely odd, a geometrical hash of lightweight sticks and sharp angles made of metal foil. ... photographs of it, taken in 1947 and published in newspapers, show bits and pieces of what are obviously collapsed balloons and radar reflectors.”

This is a reference to the photographs taken in Brigadier General Roger Ramey’s office on July 8. Ramey was the commanding officer of the 8^th Air Force in 1947 and had ordered, according to various sources, samples of the debris brought to his office. Major Jesse Marcel, who had collected some of the debris on July 7, was the man who brought it forward. Those photographs do show the remains of a neoprene weather balloon and the remnants of a rawin radar target. However, both Marcel and Colonel Thomas Dubose, who are in those pictures, have testified that the material in the pictures was not the material recovered on the debris field. Both said that the real material was switched with that of the weather balloon and radar reflector before being shown to J. Bond Johnson from the Fort Worth Star Telegram who took the pictures.

Jesse Marcel with the wreckage of a rawin radar
reflector. The balloon envelope is the black
mass behind him. July 8, 1947

What we now know is there weren’t squadrons of big balloons as reported in The New York Times, but an array of standard weather balloons, recognizable, even when arranged in a long array. There was nothing about the balloons that would render them unrecognizable. The daughter of Sherman Campbell was pictured in newspapers around the country displaying the remains of a rawin target her father had found on his farm near Circleville, Ohio around the same time. It seems that farmers who had no experience with weather balloons or radar targets was able to identify the remains as such when a trained intelligence officer and the chief of staff of the Eighth Air Force was not.

Newspaper photo of Sherman Campbell's
daughter with a rawin target her
father had found in 1947.

Here's another problem for the Mogul explanation. According to what Moore told me when I visited with him in Socorro, New Mexico, the mythical Flight #4 was configured exactly like Flight #5. The problem then is that the schematic for Flight #5 contains no rawin targets, which The New York Times described as “the reflectors looked extremely odd, a geometrical hash of lightweight sticks and sharp angles made of metal foil.”

All of this should render the Mogul balloons as a non-answer. It is, however, the only terrestrial explanation left to explain the debris. The Air Force proved that in their report when they wrote the other alternative explanations had been eliminated. Take it off the table and there is no other culprit.

Mack Brazel, the Rancher Who Found the Debris

One of the facts that is rarely mentioned by the skeptical side of the argument is that Mack Brazel, who took the samples to the Chaves County Sheriff, George Wilcox, knew what weather balloons looked like. In the Roswell Daily Record article published on July 9, Brazel said that he had found weather balloons on other occasions, but this was not like those.

The second problem here is that Flight #4 was allegedly launched on June 4, but Brazel didn’t take samples of the debris to the sheriff until more than a month later. Descriptions of the debris scattered in the pasture suggest that it was so some much debris that the sheep refused to cross the field for water. According to Bill Brazel, son of Mack, and Tommy Tyree, a sometimes ranch hand, Mack was in the field at least every other day, meaning that he would have found the debris on June 5 or 6, if we believe the newspaper story. Given the location of the debris and the water source, Brazel would have reported it with in a day or two. He wanted those responsible for scattering the debris to clean it up because, according to Tommy Tyree, the Proctors, Bill Brazel and Bessie Brazel Schreiber, the debris so densely packed or blowing around that the sheep refused to cross it. Brazel wanted to know who was going to clean up the mess. The neighbors suggested the Army. This tidbit of information is just another reason to reject the Mogul explanation.

Bill Brazel in 1989. Photo by Kevin Randle

Bessie Brazel Schreiber was fourteen years old in 1947 and in an affidavit signed on September 9, 1993, provided her perspective about the events. She said that she and her younger brother, along with her father were on the ranch in July 1947. She said that right around the fourth, her dad had “found a lot of debris scattered over a pasture some distance from the house… None of us was riding with him when he found the material…”

Please note the date. The Roswell Daily Record reported that Brazel had found the debris in the middle of June. Here, Schreiber said that her father found the debris much later than claimed in the newspaper which would eliminate the Mogul explanation.

She said, “there was a lot of debris scattered sparsely over an area that seem to me now to have been about the size of a football field. There may been additional material spread out more widely by the wind, which was blowing quite strongly.”

For those interested, a football field is about the size of an acre. That’s much larger than Cavitt’s claim of about 200 feet and smaller than Marcel’s three quarters of a mile given for the size of the debris field.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the weasel words used by her. She said that the area seemed to have been and there may have been… both statements don’t suggest a strong memory of the event but are probably based on information she heard later, picked up from family and various articles, documentaries and books.

The important point is that she said her father located the debris during the July 4 weekend, which refutes the Daily Record article claiming a mid-June date. The truth here is that I’m reluctant to quote from her affidavit because later, in conversations with her brother, Bill, she reputed it all, suggesting that she might be remembering some other event. I feel obligated to mention her affidavit because it is part of the research and provides information that supports both sides of the argument. To ignore it is to reject part of the story with which I disagree.

Debris Arrives in Roswell

When Brazel went to Roswell to find that assistance for cleaning up the mess, he stopped first at the sheriff’s office. According to Phyllis McGuire, daughter of the sheriff and who was there when Brazel came in, he carried samples of the debris. While McGuire being in the office might seem strange, the sheriff’s family lived in an apartment above the jail. It was early Sunday afternoon when Brazel arrived. She saw the bundle of material.

After Marcel arrived, that debris was taken to the base and then flown to Fort Worth. Colonel Dubose said that, on orders by General Clements McMullen, that debris was flown to SAC Headquarters. Colonel Al Clark, who was the Assistant Chief of Staff for Supply (G4) in Fort Worth, flew the material on to SAC HQ. It is impossible to believe that this debris would pass through so many hands and not be recognized as balloon and rawin debris, if it was that. Remember, Sheridan Cavitt told Colonel Richard Weaver in the mid-1990s, that he recognized it as balloon debris when he first saw it out in the field.

Sheridan Cavitt in 1990. Photo by Kevin Randle

Of course, Cavitt told Don and me that in July 1947, he was too busy to be involved in any balloon retrieval. He denied he had gone out to the impact site, despite Bill Rickett telling us otherwise. Rickett said that the site was less than an hour from Roswell and that several of the senior officers were there.

But Cavitt changed the story and told Weaver he had been on the debris field. He didn’t remember if Marcel was there or not, but that he, Cavitt, knew it was a balloon. He didn’t explain why he didn’t mention that to Marcel nor did he explain why he had withheld this important intelligence from Blanchard or the other staff officers in Roswell.

All this is to provide some perspective for my suggestion that Wikipedia’s bias is showing. Nearly every source cited in the footnotes is from a skeptical publication or a writer with a skeptical point of view. Looking at some of the source material used, I can point to repeated errors. Donovan Webster provides us with many examples of this from suggesting the Mac [sic] Brazel was 80 miles from Roswell to reporting, “Seeking answers, he contacted Colonel “Butch” Blanchard, commander of the Roswell Army Airfield’s 509th Composite Group, located just outside of town. Blanchard was stymied. Working his way up the chain of command, he decided to contact his superior, General Roger W. Ramey, commander of the 8th Air Force in Fort Worth, Texas.”

Colonel William Butch Blanchard.

Although it is unclear who the “he” is, but the information was relayed to Marcel and not Blanchard. It was Marcel who was stymied and accompanied Brazel back to the ranch with Cavitt of the Counterintelligence Corps. Marcel was not accompanied by Sheriff Wilcox.

It’s here where we run into another aspect of this and that’s the size of the debris field. Marcel told researchers that it was about three quarters of a mile long and two hundred feet wide. Marcel said that it looked as if something had exploded in the air and didn’t mention a gouge. He said that he saw no evidence that anything hit the ground.

Cavitt, however, said the debris field was only about two hundred feet square, which suggests the remains of a Mogul flight. To him there was nothing unusual about the debris field, yet he spent a couple of hours out there. Marcel suggested that Cavitt head on back to the base, while he, Marcel, gathered some of that debris to take back to Roswell.

Bill Brazel and Don Schmitt on the debris field in 1989. 
Photo by Kevin Randle

Although Marcel didn’t mention a gouge, Bill Brazel did. He said that it ran down what would have been the center of the debris field. According to what he told Don and me, it was narrow at the beginning, widened out to about ten feet and then narrowed at the far end. It suggested that something had bounced and then gaining flight for another fifteen or twenty miles. I’ll speculate here that Marcel was looking for an impact crater where the object had hit. Seeing the debris field, it was his memory that the object had exploded in the air.

Brigadier General Arthur Exon and the Roswell Case

In one of the more outrageous examples of misinformation, Wikipedia claimed “The book [UFO Crash at Roswell] claimed that General Arthur Exon had been aware of debris and bodies, but Exon disputed his depiction.”

Brigadier General Arthur Exon.

Karl Pflock is probably the source of this information, but Pflock doesn’t actually write that. He wrote, “As we will see, General Exon has quite a different take on what he actually said and intended to convey.”

But what actually happened was the Stanton Friedman made the original allegation against Don and me because Exon talked about an oversight group he identified as “The Unholy Thirteen.” That information, from an actual living source who was there, was in conflict with Friedman’s defense of MJ-12 documents. If the group, as described by Exon existed, that undercut the validity of MJ-12. Friedman said that Exon had told him that we, or more accurately in this case I, had misquoted him.

But that’s not what Exon said originally. In a handwritten letter dated November 24, 1991, Exon set the record on this straight. He wrote:

I’m sorry that a portion of my interview has given you trouble. I will acknowledge that the “quick” quotes does have me saying that my flights later much later [emphasis in the original], varified [sic] the direction of possible flight of the object…

Further, you both likely recall on many occasions during my visits with you in person and on the phone when you wanted me to meet others – that I did not know anything first Hand. Although I believe you did quote me accurately, [emphasis added], I do believe that your writings gave me more credence and impression of personal & direct knowledge that my recordings would indication [sic] on their own! [Emphasis in original]. I felt that throughout the portions where my name was used, the quotes were O,K. but the authoritative emphasis was yours. I want to say that so far your use of my name and discussions have not given me any problem. So let’s leave it at that. I did enjoy your and Donald’s efforts in digging into who knows what!

I’m returning the copy of your books. I’ll be glad to pay for it but would appreciate it being autographed.

For those interested in a more comprehensive analysis of this whole situation, you can find it here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-general-exon-quotes-again.html

And here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/04/i-havent-wanted-to-turn-this-blog-into.html

And here, you can see a copy of Exon’s letter to me and Greg Sandow’s analysis of the importance of the Exon testimony here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-general-exon-quotes-are-accurate.html

Karl Pflock, in his book, later followed up with that weak sentence in an earlier chapter, with a paragraph. He wrote:

…However, what of the recollections attributed by Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt to retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Arthur E. Exon?

When first made public in 1991, it seemed Exon’s memories of the possibility that bodies had been flown from Roswell to Wright Field in 1947 might be based upon firsthand information. If so, this would be highly significant, especially since Exon also seemed to have firsthand knowledge of the debris field and crash site, as well as a shadowy high-level group established to keep the truth about Roswell under wraps. However, in a lengthy September 1992 telephone conversation, Exon told me [Pflock] his comments about bodies and debris at Wright Field were based solely upon rumors he heard from colleagues at Wright Field and nothing more. As for the “control group,” he said he merely was making educated guesses as to who likely would have been selected for such a group. Finally, with respect to his alleged knowledge of the debris field and crash sites, he told me he remembered flying over several sites in New Mexico quite some time after July 1947, on missions that had nothing to do with the Roswell incident. One such location might have fit what he had been told about the crash site by ufologists because it had vehicle tracks running to it.

I find the use of the term “rumor,” to be somewhat reductive. One definition of rumor is, “information or a story that is passed from person to person but has not been proven to be true.”

I can argue that there are elements of what Exon said that are true based on other testimony and documentation. Exon was the source for us, but he was not the only source talking about what he had learned from those who had seen the bodies and who had studied the strange metal that had been delivered to Wright Field.

It is true, that the information was second hand from Exon but it strains the term rumor as it was applied here. Exon made it clear that he knew those who told him about the bodies and about the metal. It wasn’t gossip he’d overheard in the Officers Club or tales told out of school. These were men he trusted telling him, specifically about the strange metal recovered on the debris field and later from a photographer who told him about the bodies.

The real problem here is that I have published, in several places, the transcripts of what Exon told me and later told Don. I shared those transcripts with both Pflock and Philip Klass. Pflock knew about the letter that Exon had sent to me, but that didn’t stop him from suggesting that we misrepresented Exon. Both the letter and the tone of our book, suggested that Exon was telling us what he had learned from his colleagues and that his first-hand observations were from a flight over the debris field and the impact site. Both Friedman and Pflock knew the truth about the source of the information and both distorted that information for their own purposes.

I will note that Pflock did not supply transcripts of his interview with Exon. He put his spin on it but Exon told me, in his letter what he meant. As I say, this takes it from rumor to  a higher level of information.

I made it clear, in UFO Crash at Roswell, the information was not from direct observation by Exon, but came from discussions with those directly involved. The information rises above the definition of rumor but it is still second hand.

But Exon also talked about two distinct sites, which we have thought of as the debris field near Corona, New Mexico and the impact site much closer to Roswell. As mentioned earlier, Rickett described in detail his trip to the impact site with Cavitt. Contrary to Pflock’s reporting, Exon flew over those sites which makes that first hand testimony with corroborating statements by others. And, importantly, he mentioned two sites and not several different sites. Exon was telling Don and me about two distinct sites.

There is one other interesting fact that has not been mentioned. While we were attacked about what Exon had said and done, the final statement in that segment of the book, Exon said, “Roswell was the recovery of a craft from space.” There is nothing in the notes or interviews by others that this statement is in dispute.

An interesting side note that has some relevance to the discussion is that Exon had a copy of the book. He had read the segments about him and he didn’t challenge any of the statements as inaccurate. He challenged the importance of the quotes he had made, but he wrote that the quotes were accurate and that includes the last one attributed to him. “Roswell was the recovery of a craft from space.”

A Final Word

This has grown much longer than I intended. The original point was to show the bias in Wikipedia about the Roswell crash/retrieval. Nearly every source they quoted was from the skeptical side of the argument. I believe that by correcting some of the mistakes made, I have shown the bias. Even a quarter of a century after we updated the spelling of Mack Brazel’s name, they can’t get it right. Even after thirty years of explaining that the operation in Alamogordo was not highly classified and showing pictures that appeared in the newspapers of the time, we are still told it was highly classified. And in this latest version of the article in Wikipedia, they have printed “facts” that are easily checked but no one bothered with that.

I could even point out that the three thousand dollars offered for proof of a flying disk, some of that information was not widely available until after Brazel had gone into Roswell. A thousand dollars was only available during the July 4^th weekend and the announcement of a thousand from another source wasn’t reported until Monday after Brazel had returned from Roswell.

I don’t suppose that Wikipedia will correct the errors and provide information from the other side of the argument. But I will note one other fact. Much of the information reported in Wikipedia is from published sources that have quoted other sources. The information that Don, Tom Carey and I reported on was gathered in interviews with the participants. We didn’t read a bunch of books and articles; we talked to the people who were there and involved. That should count for something.

The End of the Roswell Daily Record?

 

While in Roswell for the festival, I noticed that the Roswell Daily Record in the vendor’s box was from Thursday. One of the locals told me that the paper was no longer a daily but was now a weekly. I wasn’t surprised because many of the formerly daily newspapers had reduced their publication schedules.

The Roswell Daily Record building in the 1990s. The tree is gone.
Photo by Kevin Randle.

Our local paper had gone from a daily to three times a week. It was published on Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday. It was a thinner paper and the color that had once brightened it was basically gone.

On July 13, the owners of the Daily Record announced that the newspaper, that had alerted the world to the Roswell crash in 1947, would cease operation. I suppose the Internet, cable news and a nation that preferred listen to their news rather than read it in a newspaper had all contributed to its demise.

But then, just hours, well, maybe a couple of days later, the Daily Record reported that Pat Davis, founder and publisher of the New Mexico News Group and Ctrl+P Publishing had bought the newspaper. It was announced:

After this week’s announcement that the paper would close, we looked for ways to write a new chapter for the paper, not an obituary. For the first time in over 100 years, the Beck family is trusting someone else to lead the paper through whatever comes next. We don’t take that responsibility lightly. To be clear, we can see that their tough decisions and dedication to mission have prepared it to serve for another generation. We're stepping in with new resources to ensure the Daily Record remains in service. Importantly for Barbara [Beck, the owner] and I, this deal ensures the paper remains 100% New Mexico-owned and locally staffed. In the meantime, we’ve provided some help to ensure payroll and the presses keep running.

New Mexico News Group will begin publishing in August which is basically next week. I don’t know what the publishing schedule will be or when the first issue will appear. But the important point here is that for now the Roswell Daily Record survives.

Roswell Nurse Photographs the Bodies - I Don't Think So

 

By happenstance, I came across a YouTube video that claimed an interview with a woman who had been a surgical nurse in Roswell in 1947. The claim was that Margaret Ellen Dodd had been tasked with taking pictures of the alien bodies recovered. She said that she had been told to do this because, as a surgical nurse, she wouldn’t be upset by the circumstances. It was in 1985 that she told the story to an Albuquerque UFO researcher. It was the only time she talked about those events. You can watch the video here, though I do hesitate to provide the url… this really shouldn’t be rewarded, given the circumstances.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veF9PaZ10wg

Well, naturally, this caught my attention because in my decades of research, I had never come across this nurse. I seemed to remember that Tom Carey might have mentioned a nurse with that or a similar name, so I sent him an email. While I waited for a response, I made what are the normal checks. She doesn’t appear in the Yearbook created during the summer of 1947 by Walter Haut. She doesn’t appear on the morning reports for that year. Anytime there is activity about a soldier, joining the unit, leaving it, going on leave or returning from leave or being unavailable for duty, that sort of thing, that soldier’s name, or in this case, that nurse’s name would appear in the record. Hers did not.

Tom Carey at the Roswell UFO Museum.

She was reported to be a lieutenant. This meant that she wasn’t a civilian that somehow found herself with that strange assignment… not to mention wondering why they would want a nurse to take the photographs. There was a complete photo lab assigned to the base and if they needed a photographer, one of the men assigned there would have been a better selection. Some of them had even photographed the graphic remains of aircraft accidents.

I hadn’t expected a return to my query quite as quickly as it came. Tom wrote back reporting:

I just spent an entire morning researching the names cited in your email below and basically came up empty because: they're all most likely dead; their ages are/were unknown at any point in time, which would have been a big help in any search; and the alleged nurse's last name ["Dodd"] I assumed was her maiden name but could have been her married name? I don't know. 

Anyway, here's what I did find out, which didn't lead me to a touchdown in the end. In the '47 RAAF yearbook, there is a "Pfc. Willy Dodd" pictured in "Squadron S," which is composed of all black airmen. Since the alleged nurse Margaret Ellen Dodd was an officer, I assumed a relationship as being unlikely. 

More interesting, however, was a listing in my photocopy of the '47 Roswell City Directory for a "Harry Dodd" whose occupation was given as an "orderly at Saint Mary's Hospital" in Roswell. Even though I had no idea of his age, this was interesting enough to spur me to see if I could find this fellow with my search engine using various age groupings. I also limited my search engine to search just the states of NM and AZ for this fellow. To cut to the chase, I could not find a connection of any of the names that resulted with any combination of the nurse's possible names.

Finally, I located an "M.E. Heid" in my copy of the 1993/1994 Roswell White Pages, but according to you[r] email she passed away in 1991 in Tucson, AZ.

That was basically what I had learned as well. No independent corroboration for this tale. We are told in the video that the nurse only spoke with the Albuquerque researcher once and never said anything else about it. According to the video, she had died in 1991 at the age of 67.

However, in video, it is claimed that the researcher produced a report but that was eventually confiscated by the government when he died in 1993, also at 67. He did make eleven copies of it and sent it out to various UFO researchers. I wondered why Stan Friedman hadn’t been one of them. Had he had that report, then his book, written with Don Berliner, would have carried the tale. It did not.

In fact, I wondered why none of those researchers ever stepped forward with their copy. A document like that, created in 1985 before the case blew up in the 1990s would have been very valuable.

There were other red flags, things that only those of us who had been researching the case for decades would know. The hospital at the base, in 1947, wasn’t the fancy brick structure that was created in the 1950s. It was a series of buildings that housed the various specialties and functions. A nurse who had been assigned there would have known that.

The last of the original base hospital buildings. The others are long gone.

Tom did one other thing. He sent a copy of my email to Tony Bragalia to see what he could learn. He provided the following information from the content creator, Contact Redacted, with the important points highlighted by Tony:

I've always been fascinated by aliens, UFOs, classified reports, and the mysteries surrounding them, including alleged abduction and contact accounts. On this channel, we'll examine the evidence and explore what may have been lost, erased, or kept hidden. Disclaimer: This channel features exploratory interpretations and speculation about unexplained phenomena, presented through investigative-style storytelling rather than established fact. The perspectives and visual representations are dramatized or creatively constructed for storytelling purposes. Some visuals may be generated, enhanced, altered, or reconstructed using automated or generative artificial intelligence tools to create a more immersive viewing experience. The content presented here should not be considered factual and is intended solely for commentary and entertainment.

This then, should end any acceptance of the tale as real. The content creator tells us that the content should not be considered factual. Apparently, those who have posted comments to the video didn’t bother to check out his bio and see he had created three other videos (as of this writing) in a similar vein.

This should be the end of this. A story told for entertainment but not as a part of the history of the Roswell case. But then I looked at the comments and was further appalled by what some of those said. They were treating the story as if real but adding to it. Glenn Dennis was mentioned several times, but Dennis invented his connection to the Roswell crash and the story of a missing nurse. Dennis had said that she had been killed in an aircraft accident that claimed four other nurses.

Glenn Dennis in the mid-1990s.

Back in the early 1990s, both Don Berliner and I searched for evidence of that aircraft accident. I won’t go into the details because I have reported on them several times in books, articles and on this blog. There was no evidence of such a crash.

The point is that there seem to be many out there who still accept the Dennis tale as accurate, though the truth has been available for decades. There are those who tell us who Dennis’s nurse might be, mentioning real nurses who were in Roswell in 1947, but that hasn’t panned out either. And when Vic Golubic confronted Dennis about the name of the nurse Dennis had provided (Naomi Self, or Selff), Dennis then said that wasn’t her real name. Golubic managed to obtain a roster of some 125,000 nurses who had served in the Army but Naomi Self didn’t appear on that massive roster.

Back when Dennis first began telling the tale, told me that he had warned us that he wasn’t going to give us the real name. But he never said that to me, nor did he tell those others such as Karl Pflock and Philip Klass. Had Klass had the information back in the early 1990s, he would have spread the information far and wide. Now, confronted by the fact that we had actually proved a negative, that no one by the name Naomi Self had been stationed at Roswell, he changed the name.  For me, the lie about her name was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In 1997, in The Roswell Report, I outlined all this, meaning that information has been available for three decades. The Glenn Dennis lies just will not die.

I’m stuck in an endless loop of trying to publish accurate information about the Roswell case, but the false things we have been told and the witnesses who were less than candid keep popping up. Dennis made up the tale. Now we have Contact Redacted inventing a new one that is being immediately accepted as real.

Before I sign off here, just let me say that anyone could have attempted to follow up on this through sources available on the Internet. Anyone looking at it should have seen the red flags… witnesses that are dead so they can’t be questioned, names of people who weren’t in Roswell in 1947, a failure to understand military protocol, and a failure to produce an alleged taped interview with one of the witnesses or a copy of that original report that has eleven copies out there, somewhere.

Sadly, the easiest way to check this out was to click on the content creator’s name that would have taken you to his website, where he tells you this is a story that he invented. That should be the final line in this but Tom and I wanted to drive a stake through the heart of the tale. I just can’t wait for the next time someone cites this as important new information when all it does is obscure the truth.

The Roswell Festival - The FBI Telex

 

While on the Roswell Panel at the Festival, I mentioned that we’d found no documents relating to the Roswell crash/retrieval in all the data that had been dumped in the last few months. This is an important point that I’ll come back to later.

The International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell.

One of the panelists, and I don’t remember who, mentioned that the FBI Telex that had originated in the Dallas office on July 8, 1947, was included. Importantly, the only thing that had been redacted in that document said, “Major Curtan [actually Kirton] further advised that the object found resembles a high altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector, but that telephonic conversation between their office and Wright Field had not [two words redacted] borne out this belief.”

It was mentioned that the whole line had been redacted. If true, this was an important discovery because it suggested that someone had redacted the one line that told us the balloon explanation had been denied by those at Wright Field. This would suggest that the transparency claims were not true.

Reacting that line made no sense to me because we’d had an unredacted version of the Telex for more than three decades with nothing redacted. In fact, when the GAO made their investigation in the mid-1990s, the complete, unredacted version as published (with the exception of those two words mentioned earlier).

I believed that the document had surfaced in the third of the data dumps. I searched for it but couldn’t find it. I then sent out an email to many colleagues because, as I say, this could be an important find. I figured someone would have the information, saving me the time looking for it.

Within an hour I learned from Joachim Koch that the document had surfaced in the first of those data dumps. He sent the link to the specific set of documents. It was on page 70 of a much longer document. See can see the file here:

65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_001

The problem, however, is that the whole line was not redacted as had been suggested. Just two words were eliminated and it seemed that it was because of a misspelling. What might have been an important find turned out to be an overreacting to deleting a misspelling. The redaction, while not necessary was of little consequence.

But that led me to another aspect of this. There are many of us looking for information about the Roswell crash/retrieval in those data dumps. Say what you will, take whatever position you believe… it was alien, it was terrestrial, it was Mogul… the newspapers on July 8 and July 9, were filled with stories about the crash. In fact, some of them carried a timeline that covered the release of the information to the conclusion that it was a balloon. The whole cycle lasted about three hours. That means from the time that the press release was given to the media to the time that General Roger Ramey claiming was just a weather balloon.

Walter Haut, the 509^th Bomb Group officer who handed out that press release told me, as he had anyone who asked, that he received telephone calls from around the world and a stack of post cards and letters asking for more information. Haut regretted that he hadn’t save those cards and letters for the stamps on them. We know that reporters were covering the story and again, I spoke to many of them but they were diverted to the balloon story almost from the time they learned at it. At that point, the story died.

Walter Haut at home in 1991. Photo by Kevin Randle

For that short period, this was a very important, front-page story that had all the news media chasing it. Mark Rodeghier even found a national ABC news radio broadcast about it and I have dozens of those newspaper clippings as well.

Here’s the point for those of us who have searched through the data dumps about UAP which are supposed to prove the transparency of the new government policy. I ask, where is the information about Roswell? Where are the newspaper clippings because, in these data dumps, there are dozens of newspaper articles that include other claims of UFO crashes.

The very first article found in the pdf. which contains the FBI Telex, is a July 8 story about a Catholic priest, Joseph Brasky, who found a metal disk. The object was about 18 inches in diameter, resembled a saw blade and was still warm when Brasky found it. He reported the find to the FBI. They seemed uninterested in it.

The point? This obviously terrestrial artifact is reported at length, but the Roswell case, is oddly missing.  There should be other mentions of it. In the Project Blue Book files, there is a single mention of the crash and that refers to a telephone call from Washington, criticizing the officers at Roswell for releasing the information. It is the third paragraph in a four-paragraph newspaper story in another article. All this suggests that the claim of transparency is little more than lip service. At least until we get data we didn’t already have.