Response (of sorts) to Reflections

I rarely respond to reviews of my books because there really is little point to it. I am often astonished on how widely the reviews can vary from someone who loves a book to someone who hates it. In one case a reader (of a different UFO book) was outraged that the book had my name at the top of every other page, complaining that I had such a monestrous ego that I had to see my name on each page... except I had nothing to do with the page layout, the design of the page or what would be at the top of each page. An artist at the publisher had made all those decisions without consulting me.

But with my book, Reflections of a UFO Investigator, there is one point that seems to have appeared frequently and I’m not sure that it is a fair criticism. It has been noted that about a third of the book was devoted to my Roswell investigations, and they did take up a great deal of my time and money, so you would expect a large chunk of the book to deal with that.

That’s not the real problem. It is this idea that I seem to be well grounded in the other aspects of my research. I have offered solutions for many UFO cases, understand that the alleged witnesses sometimes lie for no real reason, that sometimes memory plays tricks on the mind, and that there is no overwhelming evidence for the Roswell case other than limited documentation and a whole bunch of credible eyewitnesses.

These reviewers seem to think that if I applied my methodology to Roswell with the same vigor that I apply it to other cases, why then I would realize that Roswell is explained by Project Mogul...

Makes no difference to these reviewers that Mogul is totally inadequate, that it is based on false assumptions and Air Force maneuvering. Makes no difference that some of it is based on decades old memories or that some of those who claimed it was Mogul had other agendas when they began spouting this solution.

Nope... I’m just too blind to see the forest for all the trees... or maybe too blind to see the balloon debris for all the claims of strangeness attached to it.

But let’s turn this around on them. First, we have Flight #4 which, according to the documentation was cancelled. Charles Moore told me that when that happened, they stripped all the equipment but let the balloons go because they couldn’t put the helium back in the bottles.

So, there was no Flight #4...

Not so, say the proponents, because Dr. Albert Crary’s diary suggested some sort of a launch which was not a real flight, but one to test the equipment since they couldn’t do anything else that day. Some sort of launch with a sonobuoy so they could listen for the radio signals and test the tracking using a B-17.

We know this because Charles Moore said so... even though he is recalling events that took place decades earlier and there seems no reason to remember this particular flight. Nothing extraordinary happened during it, but Moore remembered it anyway.

Then, we have the flight path of the balloons. We don’t know where it went because, well, it wasn’t a real flight and those records were either lost or never made. That doesn’t matter because Charles Moore said that he remembered losing track of the flight near Arabela, which suggested it headed off to the northeast, more or less in the direction of the Brazel (yes, I know the ranch was owned by the Fosters at the time) ranch, where Brazel found it some time later.

Now, this flight was made on June 4 and Brazel supposedly didn’t find it until June 14, or sometime after that, and then didn’t bother to mention it until the July 4 weekend. Never mind that, according to Bill Brazel, the section of the ranch where the debris was found was an important one because it was where the sheep were watered. They checked it out, if not every day, every other day, so the balloon and its debris would have been found much earlier, if that was the source of the debris.

We can discount what Bill said because his memories were decades old and he was confused. Even though he had found some of the debris and his descriptions fit, sort of, that of a balloon remains, though they seemed to be much tougher than anything on a balloon. Yes, he said it was like balsa, meaning light and not very dense, but it was also something that he couldn’t cut with his pocket knife, but hey, those memories are decades old and we can ignore them.

Charles Moore, using winds aloft data that I supplied to him, which, eventually he conveniently forgot (and yes I even have a letter from him asking for additional charts) used that data to postulate the path of his Flight #4, which he said was last seen near the Brazel ranch. Never mind that the winds aloft data was often incomplete and only went to 20,000 feet in 1947 anyway, he was able to tell us what the balloons would do when they reached 80,000 feet.

And guess what, the balloons were heading in the direction of the Brazel ranch. We know this because Moore said so, and he could be believed. His memory was solid and he had the calculations based on incomplete data and his speculations.

So, for those who believe I simply did not review the Roswell data with the same critical eye as I did other investigations, I say, you missed the boat on that one. I say that you have offered no alternative explanation for the debris that was collected under such strict security that some will still not talk about it. I say you should use the same critical eye on the Mogul explanation that you have used on the whole of the Roswell case and ask if you haven’t, just maybe, leaped to the conclusion that you want rather than another that you have constantly ignored.

But here is the difference between the reviewers who make these claims and me. I’m not so locked into one explanation that I won’t look at others. I’m not so locked into the witness stories that I won’t keep attempting to verify what they had said (I think I was one of the first to expose Frank Kaufmann after we had the proof, and to expose Gerald Anderson when we had the proof, and a couple of others who were less than honest... and yes, I know that other researchers called these people liars first but they had no evidence of it. I waited until I knew for certain and yes, I was premature in releasing some of that data).

But say one thing about Charles Moore and the gloves come off. His memories were intact. He had the proof. He was able to identify the Roswell debris when so many others failed...

And I won’t even mention Sheridan Cavitt and his laughable interview with Colonel Richard Weaver.

(Now let’s all start repeating the same things over and over without listening to the other side at all...)