Back
in August 1945, Project Shamrock was created to accumulate data entering or
leaving the United States telegraphically. It was operated by the Armed Forces
Security Agency (AFSA) which used the resources of the Army Security Agency
(ASA), Naval Security Group, and later the Air Force Security Service. The AFSA
eventually evolved into the NSA. Project Shamrock was a sister project for
Project Minaret which was a way to monitor the activities of individuals
through electronic surveillance. In other words, the government using these two
projects was monitoring communications into and out of the United States
whether by corporate entities, individuals, and anyone or anything else they
wished to listen to.
Just
to make it all clear for what follows, the TELEX (TELegraph EXchange) system,
which used a rotary dial system to connect to a typewriter was developed in
1935. A single long distance telephone line could carry up to 25 TELEX channels
at such an incredibility slow rate that in today’s world we would be unable to
comprehend something like that. It was about 0.5% baud which was considered
fast at the time. These TELEXs were also subject to the monitoring of Project
Shamrock.
At
the time, all these gathered messages were provided to the FBI, later the CIA,
and several other governmental agencies so that they could monitor what was
going where and to whom. In other words, and contrary to what some have
published, there was an unauthorized capability to monitor the teletype
messages being sent out of Roswell by various government agencies in 1947. It
was an illegal operation that ran for decades.
So,
when an FBI agent told Kal Korff in the mid-1990s that the FBI had no
capability to monitor the teletype messages, that agent was unaware of the
historical precedent of Shamrock and Korff, who was not interested in looking
any further, did not discover Shamrock, though it had been exposed by
Congressional investigation in May 1975. His analysis was inaccurate and
incorrect. The statements by the FBI agent were irrelevant because he knew
nothing about Project Shamrock.
What
all this means is that the FBI could have been monitoring the radio station
teletypes in New Mexico… and you might well wonder why. Because of the atomic
research going on there and because the 509th Bomb Group was a
target of Soviet espionage because of who they were. Had the 509th been
at some other base, the Soviets would have been interested in that base (which
makes you wonder why the 509th was in New Mexico, close to that open
border that would allow agents into New Mexico… why not put it in Kansas or
Nebraska which would mean the agents would then have to travel a long way to
see anything…).
So,
when Lydia Sleppy said that her transmission of the story of the UFO crash was
interrupted, it is possible that it happened. The technology existed to
interrupt her, the technology to intercept the message existed and the project
to read these messages was in place and had been for years. That it was an
illegal operation made the secrecy of it even more important.
I
will note here that the information about Shamrock tells us that the various
agencies were given microfilm copies of all the relevant message traffic,
which, for the most part were messages going out of, or coming into, the United
States. But just because that was the way most of it operated doesn’t mean it
was the only way it operated. The technology existed to monitor specific
teletype machines and there is no reason to think there wasn’t a “real time”
capability. That would have been of limited use because most of the data
collected wouldn’t have been time sensitive. But that doesn’t mean that if such
a critical circumstance was identified, they wouldn’t have been watching it
more closely able to stop it if they believed it necessary.
None
of this proves that the FBI, or anyone else, was watching Sleppy and her
teletype in Albuquerque that closely. It only means that they could have, if
they wanted, and given the timing and location, they just might have wanted.
Why do you say this monitoring was illeagal?
ReplyDeleteWhile your article is interesting historically on the activities of AFSA and ASA your conclusion of the FBI undertaking real time monitoring of Roswell’s telex messages is mostly speculation. It really makes no difference to the credibility of Lydia Sleppy’s story whether the Army could monitor Telexes. As her affidavit states
ReplyDeleteAs I typed McBoyle's story, a bell rang on the teletype, indicating an interruption. The machine then printed a message something to this effect: "THIS IS THE FBI. YOU WILL IMMEDIATELY CEASE ALL COMMUNICATION."
Apparently she had to flip a switch to either send or receive messages; therefore the FBI couldn’t have interrupted her as she stated, which certainly casts doubt on the rest of her affidavit.
Larry -
ReplyDeleteIt was illegal because there was no court order allowing the monitoring. It was suspended in the mid-1970s when Congress learned what was happening.
Steve M -
You missed the point. I said the capability existed, not that anyone was monitoring the radio stations that closely. Others had said the FBI (or any other government agency) couldn't have monitored the teletypes because the technology didn't exist. I say that it did.
In the original statement given by Sleppy, she said nothing about the FBI. That it was the FBI was introduced later.
Originally the skeptics had said that her transmission couldn't have been interrupted. Her affidavit mentioned a bell that would ring if there was an in coming transmission so that when the bell rang she would have flipped the switch. In other words, her transmission could have been interrupted. She mentions the bell, she just didn't say she flipped the switch, which, of course, she did.
There was nothing in her statement that was impossible as had been suggested. I thought the Project Shamrock information interesting. It doesn't prove anything about Sleppy, only that what she claimed could have happened.
Kevin:
ReplyDelete"In the original statement given by Sleppy, she said nothing about the FBI. That it was the FBI was introduced later".
How right you are.
Her original statement (to Stanton Friedman) did NOT mention the FBI. Neither was the FBI mentioned in "The Roswell Incident". I have not checked to see if it was mentioned in any of Moore & Friedman's follow-up papers.
So how did the FBI get in there? Do you know? Someone put the idea into her head, maybe? If so, who?
I notice that on p.208 of your first Roswell book it is claimed that the FBI interrupted Sleppy's teletype.
Who told you the FBI did the interrupting? Sleppy herself, or Stan Friedman, or ....
Steve M wrote:
ReplyDeleteApparently she had to flip a switch to either send or receive messages; therefore the FBI couldn’t have interrupted her as she stated, which certainly casts doubt on the rest of her affidavit.
The way the system worked, if the bell rung while you were transmitting a message, it was a signal that the receiver wasn't getting the message properly, there was dropout or garbling of text, etc. Remember this wasn't the modern computer age with optic fibers, error correction, electronic switching, etc. These were noisy telephone lines where errors in transmission/reception were very common.
So a bell was a signal to stop transmitting because the other side wasn't getting the message. At that point Sleppy would flip a switch putting the teletype into receive mode so that the other side could send a message saying what they didn't get.
That is when she would have received a message ordering her to cease transmission. Yes, she wasn't physically cut off, but this is still clearly a form of being cut off unless you want to risk the wrath of the government agency ordering you to stop.
Sleppy's story NEVER wavered on the point that she was ordered to cease transmission of the story of the crashed flying saucer that she was getting from McBoyle. Whether it was the FBI or someone else is a secondary point. The point Kevin was raising was that the FBI and other government agencies WERE monitoring teletype lines, certainly for foreign transmissions under the secret Operation Shamrock. Someone spilling possible atomic secrets would be of special concern to the FBI and others in New Mexico (e.g., Army CIC), so the point is the teletypes might very well be monitored there as well. Sleppy's teletype was a dedicated line to ABC news and would be easy to monitor.
As presented one must imagine that the FBI was only monitoring one line and had a person on hand with the authority to immediately stop that (completely inconsequential) transmission.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds reasonable in conspiracy land.
But hey, can we see a copy of the FBI's warning?
Because that would be a good piece of evidence. It would also be the only piece of contemporaneous evidence that actually supports the Roswell myth.
Every other piece of contemporaneous evidence, any documents, interviews, photographs ALL lead away from the OMG aliens idea.
But, of course, Sleppy's document doesn't exist.
The methodology of finding one fact unrelated the the mythology and extrapolating that to pretend that it provides some sort of support for the story is stock in trade amongst conspiracy buffs.
And it works for them, I suppose.
Lance
CDA -
ReplyDeleteAll I know is that sometime between the first published account of Lydia Sleppy in 1976 and my interview with her in 1990, the FBI appeared in the story. I have often wondered if that happened because of the FBI TELEX of July 8 and she jumped to a conclusion.
Of course, rejecting out of hand everything is stock in trade for debunkers... and apparently an inability to understand what is said another.
Lance -
Very Snarky, my man. All that I'm saying here is contrary to the nonsense reported by Kal Korff, they was a capability to intercept the transmission and that there was a program that involved every telegraph message into and out of the US at the time. I'm saying that given the atomic secrets floating around NM in 1947, it is not outside the realm of possibility... We know that the FBI was involved in monitoring all this. That is not to say that the FBI did monitor or that they attempted to stop this particular transmission, only that the capability was in place. You cannot reject Sleppy for the reason Korff gave... you can reject her if you wish, for whatever reason, but Korff was wrong on this point.
CDA -
ReplyDeleteThe second paragraph was supposed to follow Lance's comment, not yours. Don't know why it flipped like that.
I can imagine military intelligence, the CIC, or the FBI monitoring communications in Roswell, but why Albuquerque?
ReplyDeleteThe most likely source of the interruption would be whoever was on the receiving end. Who was on the receiving end?
Regards,
Don
Kevin:
ReplyDeleteYour idea that Sleppy put the FBI into her tale after she learned of the Dallas FBI teletype is probably correct. Either that or Friedman spoke to Sleppy, suggested it to her, and she agreed.
Whatever happened that day in Albuquerque, it is clear that her story has got embellished with time.
Look at those teletypes Frank Joyce collected from the same day. A few of these were quite long and detailed yet none were interrupted.
My own view is that Sleppy's 'interrupt' was a simple malfunction of the machine or system. We still don't know (and she never told us) how far into her message this 'interrupt' occurred, and whether it had any relevance.
It is easy to bring it into the Roswell affair because it adds another bit of intrigue to the tale.
"Look at those teletypes Frank Joyce collected from the same day. A few of these were quite long and detailed yet none were interrupted."
ReplyDeleteIt was ok to publish after the official press release, not before.
Regards,
Don
Don said, The most likely source of the interruption would be whoever was on the receiving end. Who was on the receiving end?
ReplyDeleteABC news headquarters in Hollywood, according to Witness to Roswell page 60. I have the 2007 edition.
The most likely cause of an interruption would be a technical glitch (cda) or the receiving end (Don). Both of those causes would only create the need for a later attempt at transmission. It's plenty clear no attempt was made, implying that Sleppy was instructed by someone not to send again. If that instruction didn't come from a message from the teletype, then the other suspects are McBoyle who was the reporter feeding her the story or her supervisor, Karl Lambertz, who Sleppy asked to witness the transmission. McBoyle says to Sleppy over the phone, "Wait a minute.... I'll get back to you" but never did. He didn't want to discuss it later with the authors of Witness to Roswell but according to an earlier post by Kevin (May 2, 2008), "McBoyle told me that he wasn’t sure what he had seen, but knew that it wasn’t any kind of a weather balloon, or array of balloons."
If an instruction did come over the teletype to halt transmission from the government, let me suggest a possible scenario of how this came to be. As Lance has commented, this would take somebody actively monitoring teletype transmissions in real time. The press release and resulting media feeding frenzy could have resulted in Shamrock switching from passive surveillance to pro-active censoring. In other words, they were passively monitoring traffic when the press release hits the wires and did not have the capability to attempt to stop traffic at that time, but then after some unknown time delay set up shop and begin censoring. Don has suggested that Lydia's message was sent prior to the press release. I don't think the time line is well enough known to be sure which came first.
That's my hypothetical scenario, but I don't put much stock in it. To me somebody got to Boyle and instructed him not to send the story and to not talk about it. Sleppy comes up with the creative idea of blaming a teletype message for the interruption, possibly because the bell did ring on her machine at the time creating a temporary delay, as a way of covering for Boyle - keeping the heat, so to speak, off him to explain why the story was never later transmitted, because she knew he didn't want to talk and wouldn't explain himself.
JAF, by at the receiving end, I mean the message ordering Lydia to cease may have come from those on the receiving end. It might not have been an FBI tap on the line. For the pre-FBI versions of the story, that seems the best explanation. For whatever reason (perhaps an official request) she was ordered by the receiver to cease transmitting. Just a guess at an alternative.
ReplyDelete"Don has suggested that Lydia's message was sent prior to the press release. I don't think the time line is well enough known to be sure which came first."
True. However, there is no other likely time for McBoyle's call. I think there is evidence that the local media had the story before the press release was delivered to them.
Regards,
Don
Lance wrote:
ReplyDeleteAs presented one must imagine that the FBI was only monitoring one line and had a person on hand with the authority to immediately stop that (completely inconsequential) transmission.
That sounds reasonable in conspiracy land.
But hey, can we see a copy of the FBI's warning?
As presented, the debunkers Mogul Flight #4 balloon myth requires that one must imagine a balloon flight with absolutely no documentation to support that it ever existed.
That sounds reasonable in debunko zealot conspiracy land.
But hey, can we see a copy of the Mogul documents that prove there actually was a Flight #4 instead of a small diary statement that the flight that day was cancelled because of cloud cover?
Too hard? How about the flight summary page listing an actual flight instead of a blank for #4, along with blanks for #2, #3, and #9, all known to be cancelled flights.
Because that would be a good piece of evidence. It would also be the only piece of contemporaneous evidence that actually supports the Roswell myth.
Because that would be a good piece of evidence. It would also be the only piece of contemporaneous evidence that actually supports the debunking zealots' Mogul Flight #4 balloon myth.
Every other piece of contemporaneous evidence, any documents, interviews, photographs ALL lead away from the OMG aliens idea.
Every other piece of contemporaneous evidence, any documents, interviews, photographs ALL lead away from the OMG Mogul Flight #4 idea.
But, of course, Sleppy's document doesn't exist.
But, of course, those Mogul Flight #4 documents don't exist.
The methodology of finding one fact unrelated the the mythology and extrapolating that to pretend that it provides some sort of support for the story is stock in trade amongst conspiracy buffs.
And it works for them, I suppose.
The methodology of finding one fact unrelated to the debunking mythology and extrapolating that to pretend that it provides some sort of support for the story is stock in trade amongst debunking conspiracy buffs.
And it works for them, I suppose.
Don wrote:
ReplyDelete"Look at those teletypes Frank Joyce collected from the same day. A few of these were quite long and detailed yet none were interrupted."
It was ok to publish after the official press release, not before.
Quite, and Joyce's collection shows at least one missing UP telex (DXR 53; DXR = Denver) preceding the first clearly Roswell one (DXR 54 at 2:41 PM--"More flying discs", referring back to DXR 53) that came out 15 minutes after AP had put out its version of the press release at 2:26 PM.
When I spoke to Joyce, his memory was that the teletypes had gone dead for several hours after he was first contacted by Haut around noon about the press release.
Hard to know what to make of this without some documentation to back up the memory. A large regional blackout would have attracted notice and maybe something like newspaper comment. A small regional one or local one maybe not.
My personal suspicion is that it would be the Army CIC monitoring the telex phone lines, not the FBI. One possible indication of this was Gen. Ramey's slip-up early on in the story, such as reported by the Washington Post, where Gen. Vandenberg at the Pentagon was reported directing phone calls to Ramey from their public relations office. (Vandenberg was out of his office for an hour starting about 50 minutes after the Roswell press release went public on the AP wire.)
"They got from Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey, Eighth Air Force Commander, a description of the object. It was 'of very flimsy construction--almost like a box-kite', made of wood and with a cover 'like tinfoil'. . .
"Ramey said he hadn't actually seen it himself as yet. He went to take a look, and called back that it was about 25 feet in diameter. He said he was shipping it on to Wright Field, Ohio, but would have one of the meteorological officers look at it first. . . ."
Where did Ramey's "25 feet in diameter" description come from for a 4 foot diameter "box-kite" radar target? No way you can actually mistake one for the other.
Back to the Sleppy story. McBoyle supposedly described a "crushed dishpan" object 25-30 feet in diameter. (Note, this was much later from McBoyle, not Sleppy.) Speculation: If Army CIC was monitoring the telex lines and Sleppy before the press release and Ramey's later 25-foot statement, fearing that maybe the story was leaking out they had Ramey describe a 25 foot "box kite". Later in other stories this morphed to 20-25 feet, then it was the balloon carrying the radar target that was 20 feet in diameter (such as in FBI telegram).
FBI director Hoover grousing two days later about lack of cooperation from the Army in letting them examine a disc (citing the "La." case) plus the FBI Roswell telegram suggests the FBI was not totally in the loop and would not be monitoring the teletype lines in real time. We also know of instances of CIC agents posing as FBI to hide their involvement.
In the Sleppy story, if the warning said the FBI was ordering her to cease transmission, she would have no way of really knowing who was behind that transmission. I think the CIC would be the more likely culprit posing as the FBI, since they would fully know what was going on, unlike the FBI, which was deliberately held at arm's length.
As to the question of when the Sleppy incident occurred, most likely on July 8 before the press release went out on the AP wire at 2:26 PM Roswell time.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Sleppy's affidavit, she remembered McBoyle calling their office before noon. On the other hand, she also remembered McBoyle saying he had run into Brazel that morning in a Roswell coffee shop and Brazel offered to take him out to the ranch. If he met Brazel at 8:00 AM and they immediately left, it would take a good 3 hours or maybe more to get back to the ranch, so now at least 11:00 AM and then spend a little bit of time there. Then McBoyle would have to get to the nearest phone to call the story in to Sleppy. Before noon seems a bit iffy at this point, but early afternoon before the press release hit the wire seems very possible.
Sleppy also recalled:
"I told McBoyle the teletype had been cut off and took the rest of his story in shorthand, but we never put it on the wire because we had been scooped by the papers."
So this raises the question how long would they wait before trying to transmit the story again? After 2:26 PM when the AP wire went out would be when they were "scooped" by the official story, i.e., the Roswell base press release and all the that followed. Also the Roswell Daily Record with their version of the story hit the streets at around 3:30 PM, meaning they had gone to press at least an hour earlier. So they were "scooped" by the RDR as well.
This brackets the time frame somewhat, though it is still ambiguous. What I am curious about is whether Sleppy literally couldn't transmit until later because their line went dead for a few hours until the official story went out, much as Frank Joyce recalled happened to him in Roswell.
Or was it a matter of where they nervously discussed amongst themselves when they should try again after receiving the first warning, i.e., the telex line wasn't physically dead? Unfortunately Sleppy was never asked about or brought up such matters, which might have been very revealing.
In the original article in SAGA magazine, winter 1974 (by Stan Friedman and Ann Slate) Sleppy tells Friedman that McBoyle was trying to track down the crashed saucer rumor and that he "also claimed he had seen metallic pieces of the UFO being carried into a waiting AF plane which was destined for Wright-Patterson AFB."
ReplyDeleteIt was as Sleppy was typing this (or something like it) that the interrupt supposedly occurred. But did it?
Just how did McBoyle manage to get onto a top secret military base to witness this debris being loaded? And how did he know its destination? Was he privy to the great secret, or is this just more hogwash? I know what I would choose.
This story appeared in 1974. I suggest McBoyle lifted most of it from other teletypes he had seen minutes earlier, and NEVER went out to the base at all.
You can assess the value of the rest of Sleppy's tale from that.
Dr Rudiak,
ReplyDeleteYour argument might hold some weight in the real world if OMG aliens! were a proven fact.
In the real world this is not the case.
It is not up to skeptics to prove anything.
I perfectly well agree that we don't know for sure all the particulars about the Mogul flights. Mogul is just presented as a possible solution.
It is interesting that you seem to agree that all the actual real world evidence (as opposed to the inferences you have made up in your head) leads away from canonical Roswell mythology.
Unless you are speaking to your conspiracy choir on the esteemed Dream Team "investigative" team, not everyone accepts the fantastic web you have woven.
Nor, I suggest, should they.
You are not on the same footing as those who propose prosaic explanations. At least not with the horrible evidence that supports your case.
Of course, you undoubtedly see things differently.
Lance
It is not up to skeptics to prove anything.
ReplyDeleteNonsense! SOMETHING happened at Roswell, hence the official base press release of recovering a "flying disc". This wasn't put out by "saucer zealots".
If skeptics propose Mogul as the "solution" then they are responsible for coming up with the proper evidence to prove it, instead of pointing to a nonexistent Mogul flight (nonexistent as PROVEN by the actual Mogul records).
It is no different than any other "explanation" or theory, prosaic or otherwise. The burden of proof is on the proponent.
I perfectly well agree that we don't know for sure all the particulars about the Mogul flights.
Translation: Lance in classic spin mode. There is zero evidence for a Mogul Flight #4, instead the evidence is all the other way--there was no flight. Along with similar intended flights #2, #3, and #9, they were all cancelled for various reasons, which is the real reason there are blanks in the project summary tables for these flights and comments in the project reports about why they were cancelled.
This is a lot different than claiming we don't know the "particulars". There were no "particulars" to record because they never flew.
Mogul is just presented as a possible solution.
More spin. In fact, you sound like you are channeling Col. Richard Weaver who has used identical Orwellian doublespeak language. Stop pretending. It has been presented as the definitive solution.
Fine, if it was a lost Mogul, show me the actual flight records (not a vacuum in the flight records), maybe a quote from Mack Brazel that he found a lot of twine mixed up with the "rubber and sticks" instead of a complete denial of finding anything like that. Maybe you could document what happened to the rest of the Mogul debris, instead of Ramey's displayed singular weather balloon/radar target. Maybe you could come up with interviews from multiple senior officers involved (like Marcel, Rickett, Haut, Dubose) that they found a balloon crash, instead of the exact opposite. At best all you could cite would be CIC guy Sheridan Cavitt who was telling the original 1947 tiny balloon crash story and denying Charles Moore's "flower patterns" from the alleged Mogul debris.
It is interesting that you seem to agree that all the actual real world evidence (as opposed to the inferences you have made up in your head) leads away from canonical Roswell mythology.
Lance, Lance, you keep making stuff up. Anybody who has read what I've written knows I think the "real world evidence" (now there's a loaded and leading choice of words) tells us the military couldn't tell a straight story then or now. The official story is all over the place and sometimes preposterous. It began as a "flying disc" (original press release). Then it was quickly changed to an ordinary single weather balloon/radar target. (Ramey's story and photos) No, it was large Mogul balloon train that has no documentation as to its existence. (modern USAF counterintelligence 1994-1995), followed by the reported bodies were time-warped crash dummies from the 1950s (ditto source).
Instead, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence from the hundreds of people interviewed and the highly conflicted and ever-changing story is of a cover-up of whatever happened, and it wasn't some stupid balloon crash.
In her 1993 affidavit, Ms Sleppy wrote McBoyle said Brazel offered to take him to the ranch, not that he went to the ranch with Brazel. She wrote McBoyle told Lambertz that planes arrived to take the object away, not that he, McBoyle saw the object being loaded onto a plane.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Don
David, don't forget the 25 foot disk in the list of AF Roswell myths. It is my favorite Roswell story and right from General Ramey, himself.
ReplyDeleteWhat Ramey said he was looking at was a 25 foot diameter disk made of sticks and foil, with no place for a pilot or engine. See? Common household ingredients, sticks and foil. Not a flying disc.
I assume some bright bulb pointed out that the AF had no way to explain how any 25 foot diameter disk, no matter what it was made of, could have landed on the Foster Ranch. So, they scaled it back and pulled out a rawin, which needed merely a balloon to get to the ranch.
Regards,
Don
Don:
ReplyDeleteYou quote from Sleppy's affidavit that "she said McBoyle told Lambertz that planes arrived to take the object away, not that he, McBoyle saw the object being loaded onto a plane."
This contradicts what she told Friedman in 1974, which I have quoted. She told him that not only had McBoyle seen the stuff loaded onto the plane at the air base but that he knew its destination!
Which do you believe, if any?
My position is clear: McBoyle NEVER went to the ranch, and NEVER went to the Air base. Either Sleppy is confused, or she is making up bits of the story, or Friedman has got it wrong.
Which is it?
And in view of this, why should we take any notice of the rest of Sleppy's tale? Was she really interrupted or not? I suspect it is the usual 'too many interviews' again, so that we cannot say what happened with any certainty.
Notice that I am sticking to the original topic not venturing off, once again, to Mogul, Ramey, Marcel and so on.
I don't know if it contradicts what she told Friedman in 1974. It does contradict what Friedman attributes to her in 1974 -- the 1993 affidavit being 'in her own words'. I try to keep quotations, direct attributions and implied attributions sorted out.
ReplyDeleteDespite the variants, the basic story is unchanged: she received a call about a crashed saucer, which she attempted to transmit, but failed to do so. Over two decades, her story is filled in with Roswell detail -- and it is obviously a Roswell story. Whether the "fill" was actual recollection of 1947 or backfill from what she learned later, I don't know, nor do I know whether the 1974 Saga story accurately reflects what she said, but I doubt anyone suggested it to her.
Regards,
Don
CDA: "And in view of this, why should we take any notice of the rest of Sleppy's tale?"
ReplyDeleteFor the same reason we have to take notice of Edwards 1956 tale, because they both appear 'de novo', without any history behind them. They contain details that were not in any 1947 newspaper story. If you think they were made up tales, then I have to entertain the notion that they were making up stories about an event that was otherwise forgotten.
"Which do you believe, if any?"
Not a matter of belief, but seeing if the pieces of the puzzle fit or not. The puzzle, for me, being what the Roswell newspapers and radio stations were doing. They are under-investigated, under researched, but I think they are key to understanding the story. So, for me, it is not the FBI interrupt that is of interest or even Ms Sleppy and the ever-sorcerous Mr Friedman, but John McBoyle and KSWS.
In fact, if anyone...JAF or David have a bibliography of interviews, statements, affidavits of Roswell radio and newspaper folk, I'd appreciate a copy. It shouldn't be too long.
Regards,
Don
Don said, In fact, if anyone...JAF or David have a bibliography of interviews, statements, affidavits of Roswell radio and newspaper folk, I'd appreciate a copy.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could help, but I can't. I'm pretty much a newbie when it comes to a detailed knowledge of Roswell. I'm not worthy enough to be mentioned in the same sentence with David!
I will suggest a way to judge the credibility of the various statements by Sleppy. What she has experienced herself will be the most credible. What she says X told her such and so will be somewhat less credible. What she says X told Y who in turn told her will be the least credible. As an example of the last, we have her declaring in her affidavit that Lambertz told her that McBoyle "saw planes come in from Wright Field, Ohio, to take the think (sic) away." This is classic hearsay and runs a high risk of being in error no matter what Sleppy's sincerity is, especially when you throw in the many years which have transpired since Sleppy heard whatever Lambertz told her.
Don pointed out that Sleppy said McBoyle claimed Brazel offered to take him out to the ranch, not that he went. Of course, who could turn down such an offer? Not even Lance or cda, I imagine. But I'm thinking Brazel was with Walt Whitmore Sr. at that time, and that he might have objected. Whitmore might even be the person who supposedly interrupted McBoyle on the phone and started arguing with him.
Note that there is the possibility of a contradiction between what Sleppy told David Rudiak,
Sleppy also recalled:
"I told McBoyle the teletype had been cut off and took the rest of his story in shorthand, but we never put it on the wire because we had been scooped by the papers."
and how the story is related in Witness to Roswell, which is that McBoyle gets interrupted by someone and tells Sleppy to wait and that he would get back to her, which he never did.
Don wrote:
ReplyDeleteDavid, don't forget the 25 foot disk in the list of AF Roswell myths. It is my favorite Roswell story and right from General Ramey, himself.
I agree. Also the quote from Marcel saying debris was scattered over a square mile (he repeated that to Leonard Stringfield 30+ years later), and the quote from Sheriff Wilcox admitting that he was "working with those fellows at the base." (No doubt CDA believes the nefarious Stan Friedman had a time machine and made them say these things.)
What Ramey said he was looking at was a 25 foot diameter disk made of sticks and foil, with no place for a pilot or engine. See? Common household ingredients, sticks and foil. Not a flying disc.
Yes, that's the bewildering part. A 4-ft across radar target couldn't possibly be confused with a 25-foot diameter object. So why was Ramey quoted saying it? This is after he supposedly went to his office to have a look (according to the Washington Post story).
At least Sheriff Wilcox stuck to the "working with the base" script. He claimed Brazel came in describing an object about as big as the Sheriff's safe, or 3-4 feet in size. But he also claimed Brazel came in thinking he had found a "weather meter." That contradicted Brazel later that day who instead said he told the Sheriff he thought he had found a "flying disc" and asked the Sheriff to keep it quiet. (Of course, Brazel also denied finding any sort of weather balloon at the end of his interview, yet that is all Ramey displayed, another serious contradiction in the official story.)
It is also interesting that Ramey was the one who introduced the possibility of a crew, but debunked the idea saying the object was too flimsy to have carried a pilot.
The military also introduced the idea of the flying discs being "space ships" by similarly denying the possibility in a press release from the Pentagon that came out just before the Roswell press release. (UP story) Just another of those many Roswell "coincidences."
I assume some bright bulb pointed out that the AF had no way to explain how any 25 foot diameter disk, no matter what it was made of, could have landed on the Foster Ranch. So, they scaled it back and pulled out a rawin, which needed merely a balloon to get to the ranch.
IMHO, the cover story was always going to be the rawin, hence Ramey using the "box-kite" and sticks and foil description. He was also using "hexagonal" to describe the shape, when this only might apply to an intact and assembled rawin in profile, not at all what was eventually displayed (broken, torn, flattened and spread out on his carpet). So the "hexagonal" shape was part of the script provided to Ramey. Note that "hexagonal" is now approaching disc-like in shape, part of the deliberate confusion process in equating the very un-disc-like rawins to a flying disc.
But the question arises why the 25-feet, which is highly inconsistent with a rawin? I think that may bring us back to the Sleppy/McBoyle story, because Sleppy's story was always McBoyle describing something that looked like a crushed dishpan, and McBoyle later interviewed said it was 25-30 feet in diameter (and apparently not saying much more). If military counterintelligence thought that maybe this part of the story had leaked out (maybe in Sleppy's initial transmission to ABC news before being ordered to stop transmitting?), they may have added the 25 foot diameter description to Ramey's script.
As the day wore on, the script changed to the object being 20-25 feet in diameter (e.g. ABC news radio broadcast, which has survived and might support the Sleppy story), then it became the balloon that carried the disc = rawin was 20 feet in diameter (e.g. FBI Dallas telegram).
DR:
ReplyDelete"...because Sleppy's story was always McBoyle describing something that looked like a crushed dishpan".
No it was not.
When did this "crumpled [or crushed] dishpan" description first emerge? It was certainly not in Sleppy's tale to Friedman in 1974 (unless Friedman omitted it). It DOES appear in "The Roswell Incident" early in chap 2, as well as the quote, from McBoyle to Sleppy: "The whole area is now closed off. And get this - they are saying something about little men being on board".
In other words, by 1979 when lots of interviews were carried out, Sleppy was telling Moore & Friedman that McBoyle related to her on the phone about little men being aboard the crashed saucer!
Tell me if you still believe McBoyle ever went out to the ranch.
Can you or anyone else decipher all this garbage and say what really happened over this teletype and when?
Moore gives the date of the teletype as July 7 and the time as 4 pm. He later changed this to July 8 which has the advantage of being correct. But the time?
As for McBoyle stating the object was 20-25 feet wide, did he see it himself (I am positive he did not) or was he going by the press reports of decades before? Also, when exactly did McBoyle make this statement? If you recall, he initially refused to talk about it at all, saying to Friedman "Forget about it...it never happened".
What a shambles the Lydia Sleppy affair is.
David, the unexceptional place for Ramey's disk phone call would be after Marcel had arrived and the goods he brought set out on the floor of Ramey's office, but before the Reveal. Ramey takes a peek at the stuff staged on his office floor and comments on it to the reporter.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if Ramey is commenting before Marcel arrived, then I think we have evidence of the cover-up on the hoof, from 1947, with no ambiguous memories or contaminating investigators involved.
The early descriptions, weather meter, instrument, device never mention anything about balloons. Ramey's disk story has no balloons.
Soon we have "rubber strips", which to some means "pieces of neoprene balloon rubber".
"Of course, Brazel also denied finding any sort of weather balloon at the end of his interview..."
Rather, at the end of the Daily Record version. We don't actually know when, in the course of the interview, Brazel said anything.
Kellahin's AP story did not include the descriptions in the last part of the Daily Record version. Otherwise, except for the local detail lead in the Daily Record, the two versions track pretty closely. His story has a laser-focus on the the rawin. No balloons. If he did record the same material as the Daily Record, perhaps his editor cut it out. I haven't found another account that includes that material. Oh, yeah, Brazel's balloon was 12 feet in diameter.
It was the editor's choice to end with a balloon description and then have Brazel directly quoted saying it wasn't a weather balloon. This editorial decision is one of several I have concerning the texts, captions, headlines and layouts of the Daily Record stories. If it were one person, one editor (on usenet back when you may recall I expressed irritation at the "editorial voice" of the Daily Record. It still nags me), then he was worth talking to about Roswell.
Regards,
Don
Kevin
ReplyDeleteThanks for this interesting information. I had not heard of this project / capability before. At the very least, combined with the international interest generated by the press release on the 8th July, this information moves the credibility of the idea that relevant sources could have been monitored in real time from very remote to within the limits of technical capability, as you point out.
Dr Rudiak and Lance...
In terms of the discussion above regarding Mogul Flight 4 and if it existed or not, Crary's diary is phrased somewhat oddly. It states that the flight was cancelled but in the next scentance states that the balloon cluster was released. This appears to indicate that the formal flight was cancelled and, as would apparently be normal practice, the balloons later released as there was no way of extracting the helium. Other equipment would usually have been stripped off. Whilst both the delay in releasing the cluster and the removal of equipment sit awkwardly with the Mogul hypothesis which needs both an early launch time and a fully equipped flight, we must acknowledge that we can not formally confirm either the precise time of launch or the level of equipment carried. I am not persuaded by the overall Mogul hypothesis (in fact extremely sceptical on the basis of the required trajectory of the flight), but on the basic question of was something launched, yes, something was.
Despite Project Shamrock, that the teletype used by Ms Sleppy that day would have been 'tapped' seems a stretch, and moreso that the project had send/receive setups so that they could interrupt an ongoing send/receive. In any event, such a setup probably couldn't be achieved on the fly as a response to McBoyle's in progress phone call.
ReplyDeleteThe most likely place for a tap was on the KSWS phone lines. According to one of the Sleppy versions, McBoyle stopped and told Ms Sleppy to forget about it. This sounds like someone 'official' ended his call. If the line was tapped the 'official' could have learned where Ms Sleppy was sending to. Then, it would take a phone call to the nearest 'official' office to the receiving end, and have them call or visit and order the transmission to stop. The person on the receiving end then typed the order to Ms Sleppy.
David notes the conflict between the CIC and the FBI, however at this time the old cooperation (going back through their predecessor agencies to WWI) was still in force. In the Rhodes case, we can read the breakdown of that relationship in real time. However, on July 8, 1947 CIC special agents in civilian clothes were identifying themselves as "government agents" with the cooperation of the FBI (if the CIC agents were identified as being from the Army, they referred to themselves as "military intelligence" as can be seen in the Arnold case a few days later).
Regards,
Don
Quoting Kevin from:
ReplyDeletehttp://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2008/05/more-on-lydia-sleppy.html
"Long thought to have died, she was located by Stanton Friedman in October 1990 and interviewed. Apparently Friedman had forgotten that he and Bobbi Slate had used the Sleppy story long ago (or even he failed to make the connection after he began his Roswell research)."
This would seem to be evidence that in the 1973-1974 story, Ms Sleppy related nothing Roswell specific. OTOH, it might simply be authorial rhetoric, so to speak. Research is dull. Nobody is funding scholarly UFO work with critical apparatus. One must create reader interest in a work intended to be popular with the general reader. She was thought to be dead, but was found.
On the third hand, referring to the ambiguous and detailess 1973-1974 piece, might be embarrassing, in light of the new specifics. Or it just took too many pages to explain and was cut by the publisher as dull and of no reader interest.
Regards,
Don
Thanks Anthony,
ReplyDeleteYes, it does look as though something was launched. Everyone knows this.
But Dr, Rudiak uses pedantic semantics to say that Flight 4 doesn't exist, etc.
Who cares if it was called flight 4?
Lance
The results of the 1990 interview with Lydia Sleppy by "the ever-sorcerous Mr Friedman" (as Don so aptly phrased it above; Milton even looks the part!) are detailed in Crash at Corona. In conflict with Lydia's later affidavit, Friedman says the time of the phone call from McBoyle was around 4 PM (page 130) and claims McBoyle had been to the Foster ranch.
ReplyDeletehe'd been out there [presumably at the Foster ranch]
when they took it away. (page 77)
No explanation for how the 4 PM time was arrived at, nor is there any explanation of the "it" that "they" took away. Odds seem pretty good to me that this is referring to Marcel and Cavitt's visit of the previous day, when Boyle was not actually present.
In this 1990 interview Lydia does say there was a teletype interruption, but does not mention McBoyle being interrupted by anyone. She says that after the teletype interruption, she took the rest of McBoyle's story by shorthand so they could call the story in.
Don wrote:
ReplyDeleteDespite Project Shamrock, that the teletype used by Ms Sleppy that day would have been 'tapped' seems a stretch, and moreso that the project had send/receive setups so that they could interrupt an ongoing send/receive. In any event, such a setup probably couldn't be achieved on the fly as a response to McBoyle's in progress phone call.
Without question, we know the AAF was well aware of Brazel's reported flying disc by July 6 or 7 and Marcel/Cavitt were out at his place July 7. There are other indications of things being in motion on July 7. Haut's affidavit says he became aware of the other crash site the afternoon of July 7. Back at the Pentagon, Gen. Vandenberg was acting oddly that afternoon, first personally trying to kill another crashed disc story out of Houston (a hoax), then canceling a dental appointment and personally going to the airport to pick up AAF Secretary Symington. This strongly suggests an urgent piece of business that Vandenberg didn't think could wait. At the same time, NM Senator Carl Hatch's office called the White House and requested a private meeting with Truman.
My point is that there would have been a full day to set up press surveillance if they were trying to keep the story contained.
The most likely place for a tap was on the KSWS phone lines. According to one of the Sleppy versions, McBoyle stopped and told Ms Sleppy to forget about it. This sounds like someone 'official' ended his call. If the line was tapped the 'official' could have learned where Ms Sleppy was sending to. Then, it would take a phone call to the nearest 'official' office to the receiving end, and have them call or visit and order the transmission to stop. The person on the receiving end then typed the order to Ms Sleppy.
Since news stories would be called in to KSWS, tap the phone lines, both audio and teletype. As soon as McBoyle called in they would be alerted to the leak. As Sleppy started transmitting, it would be a simple matter to send the bell alert, she switched to receive mode, and then got the message ordering her to stop transmitting.
This wouldn't be Project Shamrock per se, but an emergency surveillance because of the situation. Or maybe the teletype lines were always monitored in Albuquerque because of the concern over atomic secrets. In fact, one of the major news stories at the time besides Roswell was of the possible loss of atomic secrets. Roswell or no Roswell, surveillance may have already been in place because of this.
David notes the conflict between the CIC and the FBI, however at this time the old cooperation (going back through their predecessor agencies to WWI) was still in force. In the Rhodes case, we can read the breakdown of that relationship in real time. However, on July 8, 1947 CIC special agents in civilian clothes were identifying themselves as "government agents" with the cooperation of the FBI (if the CIC agents were identified as being from the Army, they referred to themselves as "military intelligence" as can be seen in the Arnold case a few days later).
The CIC generally didn't like it known who they were or represented. I'm dubious about the FBI carrying out the surveillance because Hoover didn't seem to be in the loop 2 days later. It would be a simple matter for the CIC to impersonate the FBI in a message to Sleppy, if that is what happened. Of course, all we can do is speculate here.
JAF, I tease CDA over his opinion Stan Friedman contaminates Roswell witnesses by providing them with information about Roswell so that he can get a response to his liking. Most of us would consider it attempting to aid recollection. I hate the infatuation skeptics have for treating interviews as if they were in a court of law, and I'm bemused by investigators falling into the trap with their "affidavits", "witnesses", and "testimony" etc.
ReplyDeleteStan obviously wasn't such a Svengali for Saga, as the story demonstrates:
"...a woman with a responsible position at a radio station received a call from the station manager."
Ms Sleppy would have known the call didn't come from her station's manager, but from another station. So, Stan got that scrambled.
Some Roswell witnesses knew more about Roswell than Stan or any of us can imagine (Marcel Sr, for instance). Let's say I disagree with CDA about Friedman's subliminal 'calibration' of witnesses.
JAF: "In this 1990 interview Lydia does say there was a teletype interruption, but does not mention McBoyle being interrupted by anyone. She says that after the teletype interruption, she took the rest of McBoyle's story by shorthand so they could call the story in."
From The Roswell Incident
"Moving the telephone from her neck to her hand, she informed McBoyle that the teletype had stopped at her end.
This time, according to her recollections, he seemed not only excited but under pressure and apparently speaking to someone else at the same time. His voice seem strained. ‘Wait a minute, I’ll get back to you... Wait... I’ll get right back.’ But he did not.
[]
As Lydia still had McBoyle on the phone she told him what had just comeover the teletype and asked: "What do I do now?"
His reply was unexpected. "Forget all about it. Younever heard it. Look, you're not supposed to know. Don't talk about it to anyone."
Regards,
Don
Anthony Mugan wrote:
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the discussion above regarding Mogul Flight 4 and if it existed or not, Crary's diary is phrased somewhat oddly. It states that the flight was cancelled but in the next scentance states that the balloon cluster was released. This appears to indicate that the formal flight was cancelled and, as would apparently be normal practice, the balloons later released as there was no way of extracting the helium. Other equipment would usually have been stripped off.
We are getting well off the topic of Sleppy, etc., but oh well. In the case of similarly cancelled predecessors, Flights #2 & #3 back East, it was explicitly stated that this is what they did. Reusable equipment was stripped off and the already filled and non-reusable weather balloons were cut loose. In the case of #3, it was also stated a chase plane followed the balloons, probably for practice. In the case of the presumed Flight #4, Crary's diary also notes a sonobuoy being lofted by the cut-loose balloon cluster and the testing of reception in the air and on the ground. Like #3, this sounds like trying to salvage something useful from an aborted constant-altitude flight.
Whilst both the delay in releasing the cluster and the removal of equipment sit awkwardly with the Mogul hypothesis which needs both an early launch time and a fully equipped flight, we must acknowledge that we can not formally confirm either the precise time of launch or the level of equipment carried. I am not persuaded by the overall Mogul hypothesis (in fact extremely sceptical on the basis of the required trajectory of the flight), but on the basic question of was something launched, yes, something was.
Something was launched, but clearly not a constant-altitude flight. But the Air Force and Charles Moore insisted that debris descriptions and trajectory called for a constant-altitude flight, i.e. a true numbered Mogul flight, yet none existed. Moore's trajectory model for "#4" absolutely demanded it (yet he still had to cheat in numerous ways to get it to the ranch). The winds otherwise would not have possibly permitted it.
Anthony, basically I am in agreement with everything you've said, but the skeptics seem to want to have it both ways. It had to be true Mogul, fully-configured, constant-altitude flight, yet none existed. So then they (e.g. Lance) shift the goal post and say well something went up, and that's good enough. But it isn't good enough, for all sorts of reasons.
Even if this particular balloon cluster and sonobuoy miraculously made it to the Foster Ranch, we still have no descriptions of a sonobuoy recovery there, no balloon rigging (specifically denied by Brazel), and no reason for a test flight of a sonobuoy to carry radar targets (no tracking required). Brazel described "rubber strips", not an intact weather balloon as shown by Gen. Ramey, and Brazel also insisted he was very familiar with weather balloons and denied finding any.
It would also require people like Marcel and Blanchard to be drooling idiots to think they had recovered one of the reported supersonic "flying discs", and Blanchard a bigger idiot still to authorize a press release to that effect.
David "This wouldn't be Project Shamrock per se, but an emergency surveillance because of the situation. Or maybe the teletype lines were always monitored in Albuquerque because of the concern over atomic secrets. In fact, one of the major news stories at the time besides Roswell was of the possible loss of atomic secrets. Roswell or no Roswell, surveillance may have already been in place because of this.
ReplyDeleteWasn't Sandia being built at this time?
If the atomic secrets story you refer to is the one about the two army sergeants who had been stationed at Los Alamos, about a theft that had occurred a few years earlier, I highly recommend reading up on it. It is off-topic here, but if you are interested in it, I can send you my thoughts on it. A fascinating story that has a local angle for me (one of the defendants was from my hometown).
"The CIC generally didn't like it known who they were or represented. I'm dubious about the FBI carrying out the surveillance because Hoover didn't seem to be in the loop 2 days later. It would be a simple matter for the CIC to impersonate the FBI in a message to Sleppy, if that is what happened. Of course, all we can do is speculate here."
Among the things I've learned from research into the 1940s is don't underestimate the CIC.
In light of the soon-to-be trash can/toilette seat cover memo, Roswell would have fit the AF criteria for an FBI case, supposedly being a smashed up kite and balloon on the ground. I've made the point before that the Roswell press release records the transfer of authority over the case from the civilian (sheriff's office) to the Army Air Force. Truman that summer had issued an Executive Order giving the FBI authority over domestic civilian investigations (thus, delimiting both the new CIA and the military). That's one reason the issue came to a breaking point between the CIC and the FBI.
In any event, I do think Ms Sleppy's story that she received a call from another radio station about a crashed saucer, but that she was unable to transmit it, is true. I don't know how the later Roswell-specific details were developed. The known Roswell stories at the time would have aided her recollection. Whether she incorporated items directly from the later stories or whether she was aware of those items in 1947 (or 1973), I do not know.
Regards,
Don
"... and Blanchard a bigger idiot still to authorize a press release to that effect".
ReplyDeleteAnd Blanchard a still bigger idiot for immediately going on leave (!), despite the fact that something highly important and unusual had just been recovered (i.e. probably an unearthly vehicle), a hurried conference had just been held (see Haut's 2nd affidavit) and an important cover-up had just been put in place.
Never mind, Blanchard, as base commander, had to take his vacation, didn't he?
A likely scenario!
But are we off topic?
CDA: "Never mind, Blanchard, as base commander, had to take his vacation, didn't he?
ReplyDeleteA likely scenario!"
Like this: it was necessary that the press release not get on the wires before Blanchard and Marcel were off the base (for insurance Jennings flew the plane to Ft Worth). But the leak created a problem.
The press release had no other names. Haut (which was misspelled) was mentioned in the AP story. The national press could call the Chaves County Sheriffs Department; Wilcox was prepped for that (working with the fellows at the base), or call the RAAF and ask for "Haught", where Haut would be prepared for any calls, too, until the press was drawn to the Ft Worth Reveal. It worked and Ramey didn't have to make the national broadcast he had planned, making a mountain out of a molehill -- if nothing had happened as the Roswell skeptics have it.
Regards,
Don
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCDA wrote:
ReplyDeleteAnd Blanchard a still bigger idiot for immediately going on leave (!), despite the fact that something highly important and unusual had just been recovered (i.e. probably an unearthly vehicle), a hurried conference had just been held (see Haut's 2nd affidavit) and an important cover-up had just been put in place.
Never mind, Blanchard, as base commander, had to take his vacation, didn't he?
A likely scenario!
Things are never so simple. As Kevin can tell you, when they interviewed Lt. Col. Joseph Briley, who became the 509th operations officer right afterward, Briley referred to the leave story as a "screen" and said he had personal knowledge that Blanchard had actually gone to the debris field.
Gen. Arthur Exon, who knew Blanchard well, likewise said that Blanchard's leave was a "screen." It was his job as commanding officer to go into the field and make a determination.
Blanchard was supposed to be in Santa Fe the next day (July 9) to sign a proclamation with Gov. Mabry, but it never came off. According to the Santa Fe paper, Mabry and his wife suddenly took off for the mountains.
So why did Mabry stand up Blanchard? Maybe because it was like Exon said--Blanchard's leave was a screen and instead Blanchard went out into the field to make a personal determination.
Going on leave is also a good way to make somebody unavailable for comment. Indeed, UP reported July 9 in their standard Roswell story that, "Efforts to contact Col. Blanchard brought the information that 'he is now on leave.'" How convenient!
His replacement, Lt. Col. Paynes Jenning, who you would think would stick around the base and run it after Blanchard supposedly went on leave, instead piloted Marcel's plane to Fort Worth to see Gen. Ramey before Blanchard's "leave" even started. Apparently the weather balloon debris Ramey displayed was incredibly important and demanded that the acting base commander pilot the plane and leave nobody in charge at Roswell. You would think there were a least a handful of qualified pilots at the base who could have carried the all-important weather balloon to Ramey, but apparently not. Of course, being away from the base also made Jennings rather hard to contact by reporters.
Gov. Mabry also suddenly disappeared, another good way to make him unavailable for comment in case he had been read in on what was happening. Marcel disappeared to Fort Worth, under the control of Gen. Ramey, and also stayed there another day, by which time the story had died, the press having accepted the weather balloon story.
Another principle mentioned back then was Walter Haut (who generally got blamed in the press for the initial press release). When I spoke to Haut he said he let his staff answer the telephones.
Sheriff Wilcox got stuck answering the phone himself and had trouble telling a straight story. However, he admitted "working with those fellows at the base" so a straight story from Wilcox you were unlikely to get.
Brazel, as we know, suddenly showed up in Roswell that evening instead of being back at the ranch taking care of his livestock. He was interviewed at the Roswell Daily Record, but according to multiple eyewitnesses, he was taken there and left by military escort and was held at the base for several days, also making it rather hard for anyone to carry out a follow-up interview.
Don't the morning reports for July show that Blanchard did indeed go on leave? It is there in black and white.
ReplyDeleteAre we supposed to believe these reports were also faked to cover up the recovery of an ET craft? Boy does this yarn get crazier and crazier.
Perhaps Blanchard secretly returned from his vacation within a few hours so he could keep a close watch on Brazel who was by then in custody at the base. Sure!
Dr Rudiack
ReplyDeleteThanks for the clarification. Yes we do seem to broadly in agreement one.
Kevin
In terms of the main post I wonder if there are any examples of this kind of real time intervention in a transmission on any other topic? This sort of thing would have to be used very sparingly and only on sensitive items so there may not be many examples in the public domain, but if something similar could be shown to have occurred even once it would add to the general credibility of Lydia Sleppy's report
The lack of information about the three versions of the Lydia Sleppy story means I cannot consider them worth my time. The vicissitudes of authors in magazine and book publishing are irrelevant since 1995 when the www has been generally available. It is not my problem, but Stan Friedman's. It is his responsibility to cast light on the matter. Until such an event, I'll have to consider only her affidavit of 1993, since there are fairly good odds with it that I am reading what she wrote or said.
ReplyDeleteIt's my attitude towards anything published about Roswell.
Regards,
Don
CDA said:
ReplyDelete"Don't the morning reports for July show that Blanchard did indeed go on leave? It is there in black and white.
Are we supposed to believe these reports were also faked to cover up the recovery of an ET craft? "
I was going to ask if someone knew of a paper trail for Blanchard. It seems the answer is partially yes.
If the base log says that Blanchard went on leave, and he was, in fact, gone from his office at the base for a period of time covered by his leave orders, how is that in any way fake? It seems to me the report accurately describes what actually transpired (but I'm assuming doesn't describe why--I haven't read it).
In the military chain of command (and it is referred to as the chain of "command", not the chain of "suggestion' or chain of "opinion"), a high ranking officer and base commander of a special (i.e., nuclear) weapons bombardment group doesn't just not show up for work one day without official approval. I believe in the military world that would be considered desertion of post, dereliction of duty--that kind of thing. So Blanchard would have to have been covered by official leave orders for the time he was gone, or he would have been thrown in the brig upon his return.
So,who signed his leave orders? I believe Ramey was Blanchard's immediate superior and would normally have been the only one who could have given him permission to be absent from his post, for whatever reason. I wonder if Kevin or someone else with military experience knows whether there is some other individual who can grant a base commander leave?
So, I would say that the report is probably not "faked" in the sense that Blanchard was probably acting under real leave orders signed by Ramey, and the base log accurately reflects that fact.
What he was doing for the period of time he was out of the office is a different question, and the base log would not necessarily have anything to say about that. The fact that Blanchard had a meeting previously scheduled with the governor on July 9th that he had to hastily cancel seems to imply that the reason for Blanchard's leave must have come up equally hastily. It would be interesting to see a copy of his leave orders, if such still exist; they would show when leave was requested, when it was granted, and who approved them.
Larry:
ReplyDeleteAre you trying to find an excuse for the log saying Blanchard was on leave when he wasn't?
Here we have a situation (allegedly) where the base commander has had a top level meeting, phone calls & teletypes have been whizzing to and fro between Roswell, Ft Worth and even Washington. An ET craft has supposedly crashed to earth and its occupants are ready for shipment to AF headquarters. Everything is being controlled from the top and absolute secrecy is being enforced.
But still the base commander Blanchard manages to go for a vacation, and the daily logs reflect this. Absolutely astonishing!
Is this log true or false? What does "going on leave" mean? Does it mean creeping out for a few hours, then returning to take charge of the great emergency, or does it mean going on maybe a fishing expedition, like General Spaatz had just done?
If I were Blanchard I am certain I would be so excited at the great discovery that thoughts of a taking a vacation would be a zillion miles away.
CDA: "What does "going on leave" mean?"
ReplyDeletePaid absence from duties. Like 'vacation', for a civilian employee, is the general sense of it. But there are various kinds of situations that may be covered by the term "leave", and there may be differences between those for officers and men. It depends, too, on the era, as the rules get revised.
It may be the case that meeting with Mabry was to be done "on leave". I don't know.
Larry: "I was going to ask if someone knew of a paper trail for Blanchard."
There used to be a catalogue of his archived papers on the old AHFRA website (defunct). There was nothing listed for 1947 when I looked in 1997.
Regards,
Don
CDA:
ReplyDeleteBlanchard was indeed officially on leave (his deputy Lt. Col. Payne Jennings signed an order making him base commander July 8) but that doesn't tell us what Blanchard was up to.
Blanchard was scheduled to meet Gov. Mabry the following day to sign the Air Force proclamation (Aug. 1 all over the country was scheduled as a ceremonial day of the Air Force's separation from the Army). But Blanchard didn't show up and the Santa Fe New Mexican has Mabry and his wife instead suddenly heading for the mountains. (This was followed by Mabry then going to a governor's conference in Salt Lake City.)
So what happened? This can be documented, so unlike you I am not using my psychic powers to say that for unspecified reasons Blanchard and Mabry did not meet as scheduled. This also indicates that "leaves" aren't strictly vacations and official business can still be carried on even during leave. The New Mexican also recorded that Blanchard met with NM Lt. Gov. Joseph Montoya July 15 and finally signed the AF proclamation, so again business during leave.
(Another example of officers doing business on leave was Gen. Carl Spaatz, C/O of the AAF, who was test-flying a new Boeing jet July 3 and giving a speech 4th of July speech in Seattle while supposedly on a fishing trip to Oregon, then suddenly showed up in Texas July 10 for another supposed fishing trip, placing him in close proximity to Ramey and the goings-on in Fort Worth.)
The unexplained cancellation of his meeting with Mabry certainly leaves time for Blanchard to carry out OTHER business July 8 and 9 at the start of his leave, such as going out to the crash site(s) to make a personal determination, as his op officer Lt. Col. Briley and Gen. Exon indicated he did.
Blanchard's presence on the base would no longer be necessary once the Pentagon took over such an important operation and had others taking care of the recovery operation. Blanchard's replacement, Lt. Col. Jennings, has been placed by Robert Porter (who was on the flight) piloting Marcel's plane to Fort Worth to see Ramey, a rather odd duty for the acting base commander when they probably had a hundred pilots who could have done the same thing. So obviously his presence wasn't required either. Why would Jennings immediately leave his post as base commander as soon as he assumed it and fly weather balloon debris to Fort Worth?
Getting key witnesses "out of Dodge" is also a good way to keep them from being pestered by reporters during delicate times. So Blanchard gone, Jennings gone, Marcel gone, etc.
Another example of disappearing witnesses whisked away to avoid the press was Cmdr. Robert McLaughlin, head of the Naval missile team at White Sands, who wrote a sensational article for TRUE magazine, March 1950, that the UFO sightings at White Sands were extraterrestrial craft. Ruppelt wrote the Navy moved him out of White Sands and put him in charge of a ship in the Atlantic, making him unavailable to reporters.
And yet another example is Col. Richard Weaver, the head debunker for the Air Force in their 1995 Roswell Report. Reporters trying to speak to him were informed that he had retired the day after the release of the report and thus was no longer available for questioning. In reality, he had been reassigned back to Langley and the press had been lied to about his retirement. Other attempts to get further details about the Roswell Report from Pentagon spokespeople were met with "no comment" responses. E.g., reporter Ralph Steiner taped the following message from one of Weaver's underlings when he called the Pentagon, "...there are no interviews being given about the Roswell Report. The Report speaks for itself."
Good lord.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to discuss any topic with someone who doesn't understand the difference between an inference and a fact. Or the difference between first person and third person testimony.
Lance
CDA said:
ReplyDelete“Are you trying to find an excuse for the log saying Blanchard was on leave when he wasn't? ……. Is this log true or false? What does "going on leave" mean?”
I thought my statement was fairly clear, but maybe not. Let’s try again.
1. In military parlance, “leave” is official permission to be physically absent from one’s normal, assigned duty station and one’s normal, assigned duties. It is a violation of the code of military conduct to be Absent (from one’s duty station) With Out Leave, or AWOL.
2. I assume the Base Log was making a true statement that Blanchard was on leave (i.e., physically absent from his normal duty station and not conducting his normal Base Commander duties) for the period in question starting on July 9. I haven’t read the Log entries in question, so I don’t know what the precise wording was or what the duration of his leave period was.
3. Blanchard suffered no repercussions for being absent from the base he commanded, so I infer that he was not AWOL.
4. Since he was physically absent, but not AWOL, I infer he had official permission (“leave”) to be absent.
5. Blanchard was directly under Ramey’s command; that means Ramey was the individual who ultimately granted Blanchard’s leave.
6. Ergo, whatever Blanchard’s true purpose was for being physically absent from his office—trout fishing along a stream, or inspecting pieces of a crashed UFO (however you want to define that term)—his absence reflected Ramey’s active knowledge and permission. Blanchard was doing what his boss (Ramey) wanted him to be doing.
Geez -
ReplyDeleteLet me get this straight... I post a story about Project Shamrock which was an illegal operation that monitored incoming and outgoing messages. I suggested, that with this illegal operation, it was possible for someone, not necessarily the FBI, to have been monitoring the teletype traffic in New Mexico, especially because of attempted Soviet spying, so it wasn't impossible for some agency to tell Sleppy to stop transmitting. Didn't say it happened that way or that Shamrock had anything to do with it... just that it was possible... and now we're arguing about Blanchard's leave?
I will say one thing about this and it is that Blanchard, as the base commander, had authority to grant himself leave. He would have checked with Ramey, but it would be expected that Blanchard would follow the regulations and that he would do nothing to jeopardize the efficiency of his command.
And off we go into another strange land.
Kevin, I haven't found anything about Project Shamrock that indicates it had operators who could intercept teletypes real time and send to the target teletype. But I've just browsed the surface. Maybe someone knows. If it didn't it means the intercept had to occur on the phone call, and if McBoyle was prevented from finishing, as one version has it, then it was on the KSWS end. No reason why it couldn't be on the KOAT end, though.
ReplyDeleteWas there an FBI office, or other known FBI presence in Roswell in 1947?
I understand that she was sending to ABC in Hollywood -- a place of special interest to the FBI and their political allies in 1947. Maybe Project Shamrock, too.
A tap on either phone could lead to a call to the FBI in Los Angeles. The FBI and the CIC were still cooperating on that date. It's possible.
But it might have been a saucer joke on Sleppy by the Hollywood operator (who might have thought Sleppy's story was a prank on him or her).
I haven't read of any investigation into the Hollywood end of the handshake.
Regards,
Don
Kevin, if you see no connection between the Sleppy story and Blanchard's leave, then we are all wasting our time posting here.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Don
Don -
ReplyDeleteI didn't say there was no connection between Blanchard's leave and the Sleppy story, I said that I had done a posting about Project Shamrock and the interception of message traffic. I said that there was already an illegal operation in place to intercept messages and one of those who received the messages was the FBI.
Shamrock seemed to be a collection activity aided by those running the telegraph operations... and that TELEX was a telegraph operation that used the telephone lines for transmission which meant there was a possibility of interception.
The real point, however, was that Shamrock existed and it was illegal.
I will say one thing more about Blanchard's leave, which really has nothing to do with this post... that is that I know of no one who begins a leave on a Tuesday unless there is a special circumstance. The leave removed Blanchard from the reporter's line of sight... as did sending Marcel to Fort Worth and Brazel to the guest house on base.
If we were going to stay on topic, then it the discussion would be about Shamrock and the possibility of intercepting a TELEX transmission, which, according to Korff was impossible and the FBI wouldn't do it. I say it was possible, it didn't have to be Shamrock (which suggests a state a mind about prying into what were private communications), and that it might have been something else.
Besides, I thought all this Blanchard leave stuff had been hashed out fifteen years ago and we, once again, begin to cover ground that has been covered without either side wishing to suggest the other might have a point.
Kevin:
ReplyDeleteI concede that you have a point about Sleppy's teletype. It possibly COULD have been interrupted by the FBI or some other official body. But was it? We will never know.
As to Blanchard's leave, you say the topic "had been hashed out fifteen years ago". I do not have access to UFO blogs or discussions going back 15 years, so perhaps you can tell us what conclusions, if any, were reached.
And I fully expect that in years to come Sleppy's teletype will again be a subject for discussion & debate.
Exciting stuff, isn't it?
McBoyle could have had his story broadcast over the air once he found out teletype transmission was interrupted. He had it already written. Why didn't he? He's the station manager. It would be the next logical step.
ReplyDeleteKevin interviewed Sleppy and McBoyle's mutual boss, Merle Tucker, owner of both KSWS in Roswell and KOAT in Albuquerque. This is from UFO Crash at Roswell:
According to Tucker, he knew that McBoyle had tried to get out to the site of the crash and that he had been intercepted by the military. Once McBoyle returned to Roswell, the sheriff went to see McBoyle and told him not to talk about it.
Tucker mentioned that McBoyle had been giving information to Sleppy over the phone, that he had talked about a "crushed" dishpan and about burn spots on the ground. But when Tucker asked him about it specifically, McBoyle said he couldn't talk about it. McBoyle refused to say anything more.
Now we have evidence that would give the military reason to tap KSWS phone(s): McBoyle had attempted to visit the site and this had bothered them enough to get the sheriff to give McBoyle a warning.
The military asked the sheriff to give McBoyle a warning? Most strange. Why could not the military give McBoyle this warning themselves when they "intercepted" him (with or without threatening him being turned into dog food)?
ReplyDeletecda, the military may have warned McBoyle themselves also. The military doesn't have jurisdiction over a civilian's everyday life the way the local sheriff does (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act). Because McBoyle was a news reporter, I would expect he had frequent contacts with the sheriff and a warning from him would have an immediacy and impact that a similar warning from the military alone would not. Stereo is more realistic than mono, don't you agree?
ReplyDeleteCDA said:
ReplyDelete“The military asked the sheriff to give McBoyle a warning? Most strange.”
No, not at all. You might think it strange if you are ignorant of the laws in the US that govern the interaction between civilians and the military.
As I was composing this response, I noticed JAF covered some of the same information. From Wikipedia:
“In the United States, a federal statute known as the Posse Comitatus Act forbids the use of the United States Army, and through it, its offspring, the United States Air Force as a posse comitatus or for law enforcement purposes. “
The military is allowed to interact forcibly in a limited fashion with civilians on military bases, or in areas legitimately but temporarily under military jurisdiction, such as crash sites of military aircraft, or recovery sites of weapons, and other specified conditions. In these cases, a civilian attempting to cross a cordon line can be forcibly stopped, detained in order to ascertain their identity, and even threatened with deadly force (in those exceptional cases where it is authorized) to prevent them from interfering with vital military functions or compromising the security of highly classified activities.
If the military authority on the scene determines that the presence of the civilian in question is inadvertent, accidental, or otherwise not a willful attempt to interfere with military matters, the detainee can be released and instructed to stay away.
On the other hand, if the military authority decides that the individual represents a persistent threat they can seek to have that individual become the subject of police action (all the way from being cited for trespassing to being prosecuted for espionage). In that case, the individual will be turned over to civilian authorities that do have some law enforcement function, such as the local sheriff.
In fact, the sequence of events that McBoyle described is pretty much exactly what would happen today if a civilian tried to make an unauthorized entry into an area under military control, such as the Nevada Test Site, an Air Force base, Area 51, etc.
CDA also asked:
“Why could not the military give McBoyle this warning themselves when they "intercepted" him…….”
How do you know they didn’t? Both things could have happened. The military could not, by themselves execute police powers, but they could certainly inform an intruder that they would press charges via the local law enforcement authority if the intruder did not heed the first warning and stay away. McBoyle’s testimony indicates that the military set in place the foundation for following this course of action, if necessary, by contacting the sheriff’s office after first intercepting McBoyle.
Kevin, I hadn't noticed, but it is odd Blanchard would start leave midweek, and following a holiday. His leave then may not have been a typical vacation type one. His meeting with Mabry could have occurred on leave. The niceties of Leave are a bureaucratic, administrative matter worth chapters in the manuals.
ReplyDeleteThe reason we're going over Blanchard's leave again is because CDA has gone coy and naive on us, again.
It would be useful to know when Blanchard's leave started (or when Jennings assumed command). It would also be useful to know when Marcel's plane left for Ft Worth, and when it arrived.
On July 8 a lot of things in Roswell and the RAAF are happening, and happening at the same time or nearly so. It is a short timeframe and minutes may count. Like a classic British detective story, the proof may come down to the times and stops in the railway schedule.
I don't think anyone here doubts phone lines (including teletypes) were 'tapped' by the authorities whenever they pleased. Phone companies have always been cooperative on that. I doubt Shamrock was involved, at least on the Albuquerque end.
***
Various delimitation agreements and executive orders defined the areas of responsibility of civilian and military agences for investigations in the civilian sphere. The CIC followed them if there was nothing to their advantage in breaking them.
It is, in my opinion, one reason for the press release -- to document the transfer of the case from the civilian to the military jurisdiction, done voluntarily by the civilian agency (Chaves Co. Sheriffs Department).
Regards,
Don
Because of the changes and contradictions in various accounts of the Sleppy story over time, I have to look at what is common among them and what is required to fill out the basic 'received text', absent the conflicting details.
ReplyDeleteJohn McBoyle calls Lydia Sleppy with a Roswell crashed disc story. She puts it on the wires, but is interrupted by someone, identifying as the FBI, who orders her to stop transmitting.
Is this story true? I can't see a reason to doubt it any more than the other KSWS story, the Walsh/Kellahin story. As for the FBI part, even if it was a practical joke from the receiver end, the above basic Sleppy story would still be true.
But what about the details in the various accounts, including Sleppy's 1993 affidavit?
Unlike the basic story, the detailed versions combine to throw doubt on the basic story. Too much creative editing, perhaps.
Regards,
Don
If one checks out a short history of the Army CIC (and its post war successors) over on Wikipedia, you will find that the CIC was involved in domestic surveillance during WWII and illegally involved in the 1960s (1500 agents) in watching any political demonstration over 20 people.
ReplyDeleteDuring WWII they had a major involvement in security for the Manhattan Project, thus a strong presence in New Mexico. In 1947 we know they had agents in Albuquerque and Roswell (Cavitt and Rickett being two in Roswell).
During WWII they worked in conjunction with the FBI, but then something happened in 1943 when their domestic surveillance suddenly ceased (rumored that they bugged Eleanor Roosevelt) and their spying/counterintelligence activities were restricted to overseas (though this probably did not apply to the Manhattan Project security).
The article does not delve into domestic spying activities immediately post-war, but I would guess they still had major involvement in protecting atomic secrets in New Mexico, hence might be monitoring the press for possible leaks. Apparently in 1959 they compiled a 30 volume history of the CIC, a censored copy of which can be found at the National Archives. I doubt anything incriminating about Roswell will be found there, but it might provide insight into how they operated domestically in the immediate post-War period.
Project Shamrock was not real-time monitoring of the telex lines. At the end of the day, the major telex companies would hand over their foreign transmissions/receptions to the Armed Forces Security Agency (later the NSA), who would analyze them for threat/national security content and then disperse to other agencies like the Secret Service and FBI as needed.
Of course, this does not preclude limited real-time taps of the phone and telex lines if deemed necessary, and I suspect this could have been done by Presidential Executive Order, or maybe agencies like the FBI or CIC doing illegal surveillance on their own initiative, as they seemed to be prone to do at times. Historically all sorts of illegal things have been done in the name of national security.
The extent of Army intelligence operations within the army during WWII. The CIC was an investigation arm of this system. The scaling down after the hot war would encounter scaling up for the cold war in 1947:
ReplyDelete"The scope of the CIC's responsibilities was vastly increased in March 1942, when the Army expanded its existing countersubversive program and gave it new guidelines, modeling it after the similar Army program of World War I. The new countersubversive operation latticed the nation's military establishment with "an elaborate and fine network of secret agents."26 Intelligence officers secretly recruited informants within each unit, on an average ratio of one informant to every thirty men, resulting in a program of enormous proportions. By the summer of 1943 there were 53,000 operatives in just one of the nine service commands in the continental United States and over 150,000 such reports were being filed monthly once the system became fully operational. Although the countersubversive program was administered by unit and installation commanders, not by the Counter Intelligence Corps, CIC agents were assigned to follow up reports of subversive activity. At the War Department level, the process was monitored and coordinated by the Counterintelligence Group of the Military Intelligence Service, which exiled those suspected of sedition to special holding units in the remoter parts of the country"
-- ARMY LINEAGE SERIES
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE
John Patrick Finnegan
Lineages Compiled by
Romana Danysh
Center of Military History
United States Army
Washington, D. C., 1998
Regards,
Don
Don wrote:
ReplyDelete(Basic Sleppy story) John McBoyle calls Lydia Sleppy with a Roswell crashed disc story. She puts it on the wires, but is interrupted by someone, identifying as the FBI, who orders her to stop transmitting.
In the 1974 Saga Magazine and 1980 Roswell Incident, the source of the interruption is not identified. Otherwise this is the basic Sleppy story that is consistent in ALL version in multiple books and her affidavit. McBoyle called her about the crashed saucer, she tried to put the story over the teletype but was cut off.
The basic story was also confirmed by her and McBoyle's boss Merle Tucker when he was interviewed.
...But what about the details in the various accounts, including Sleppy's 1993 affidavit?
The Sleppy part about the object looking like a crushed dishpan appears in all accounts except the very cursory initial 1974 Saga report (which also doesn't ID her or McBoyle and somewhat misidentifies McBoyle as "THE station manage" rather than the affiliate station manager in Roswell). The crushed dishpan part was also confirmed by Tucker and McBoyle himself when interviewed. According to Kevin, McBoyle also told him what he saw had nothing to do with a balloon.
Unlike the basic story, the detailed versions combine to throw doubt on the basic story. Too much creative editing, perhaps.
I think part of the problem is the story being filtered through multiple researchers/authors. Inconsistencies can arise because we aren't hearing the story straight from Sleppy herself but others interpretation of it.
The rest may be confusion over decades by Sleppy herself over who exactly said what to her E.g., in her affidavit she said that acting station manager/program director Karl Lambertz, who she remembered standing right being her as she tried to transmit, spoke to McBoyle the next day and then relayed what he said to her. Sleppy remembered Lambertz telling her that McBoyle said the military had isolated the area where the saucer was found and was keeping the press out. He saw the planes come from Wright Field to take it away, and were either taking it back to Wright Field or to Texas.
In another version ("Crash at Corona") Sleppy allegedly had McBoyle tell her they were taking it to Texas over the telephone. In "The Roswell Incident", later she met McBoyle and he told her he witnessed a plane take off with the object for Wright Field. But in her affidavit she said McBoyle would never discuss the matter with her again.
In the original SAGA version, McBoyle saw them carrying pieces of the saucer onto a plane bound for Wright Field (doesn't say how Sleppy learned of this info).
So is this confusion on Sleppy's part or confusion on the author's part? The basic story here remains the same: McBoyle somehow learned there were planes coming from Wright Field and something was flown to Wright Field or Texas.
There are other details that are the same basic story but not exactly the same. E.g., in one version the phone conversation is interrupted by arguing on McBoyle's end and McBoyle hangs up telling her to forget it, it is then she tries to get the story out on the teletype and is cut off. In another, she is cut off but continues getting the rest of the story from McBoyle, but never gets the story out by phone or wire because they were scooped by the newspapers.
These variations in the details of how the details were learned I see to be much less important than the core story, which has remained the same in version after version. I have no doubt McBoyle called Sleppy about the crashed saucer, Sleppy tried to get the story out over the teletype and was cut off by somebody (even if it was some joker at ABC News at the other end of the line instead of the FBI). Various parts of Sleppy's story was also corroborated by her boss Tucker and McBoyle (e.g. "crushed dishpan"), so it isn't just Sleppy's story alone.
Don wrote:
ReplyDelete""The scope of the CIC's responsibilities was vastly increased in March 1942, when the Army expanded its existing countersubversive program and gave it new guidelines, modeling it after the similar Army program of World War I. The new countersubversive operation latticed the nation's military establishment with "an elaborate and fine network of secret agents."26 Intelligence officers secretly recruited informants within each unit, on an average ratio of one informant to every thirty men, resulting in a program of enormous proportions. By the summer of 1943 there were 53,000 operatives in just one of the nine service commands in the continental United States and over 150,000 such reports were being filed monthly once the system became fully operational."
This is interesting Don. It is saying the military units themselves were laced with CIC "snitches", not officially CIC but reporting to the CIC of anything suspicious.
Thus I can see some truth in even Frank Kaufmann's story of being a secret CIC agent, not verified in his service record, but would being a secret informant appear in one's service record? I doubt it.
It would be an exaggeration of his role, but he still might have had a CIC connection. And he could remain an informant in Roswell afterward, as he said he was.
Although the quote applies to wartime CIC operations, I can see an outfit like Roswell, the sole A-bomb squadron, being infiltrated with CIC informants. One in thirty men is a lot. It would mean over 100 CIC informants at Roswell alone if the CIC kept up this level of internal spies post-War. If an event like Roswell came along, it would be a very good way of learning of men who weren't keeping their mouths shut. Your own buddy might just be a CIC rat and tell on you. And an informant could probably learn quite a bit about what happened just to listening to the scuttlebutt. Again this might apply to somebody like Kaufmann.
David wrote: "These variations in the details of how the details were learned I see to be much less important than the core story, which has remained the same in version after version."
ReplyDeleteI agree the basic story itself is significant and for that, the details don't matter.
"In another, she is cut off but continues getting the rest of the story from McBoyle, but never gets the story out by phone or wire because they were scooped by the newspapers."
Where it matters is none of the versions have McBoyle relating the press release story.
Her 1993 affidavit also contains the "missing time" element which we find in the accounts from the Roswell radio and newspaper people. Ms Sleppy's reminds me most of McQuiddy's affidavit.
Regards,
Don
David: "It is saying the military units themselves were laced with CIC "snitches", not officially CIC but reporting to the CIC of anything suspicious."
ReplyDeleteOne reason why I say don't underestimate the CIC in the 1940s. In peacetime, the CIC's job was to identify possible subversives in the military. The term in 1947 was "disloyalty", but sometimes "disaffection". The reason is obvious: they were possible sources of espionage and sabotage.
The history of the CIC's predecessor organizations demonstrates the army's degree of cooperation with the Justice Department regarding domestic spying, and the organization of civilian groups as their informants, going back to WWI. This was not covert, but a vigilantism supported by the Justice Department.
Regards,
Don
Good evening Kevin.
ReplyDeleteThank you for covering this question. I think it is extremely probable that a group other than the FBI would be monitoring in the area. I am currently reading many documents I got from the CIa history release, and a few of them deal with Col. Behns (ITT), but I have not read those yet. If I notice anything odf interest I will let you know,
Another question I now have might be best directed to David:
Could it be possible that the interrupted Sleppy message is related to the "Ramey Memo"?
Best Regards,
Bob
David said:
ReplyDelete“Project Shamrock was not real-time monitoring of the telex lines. At the end of the day, the major telex companies would hand over their foreign transmissions/receptions to the Armed Forces Security Agency (later the NSA), who would analyze them for threat/national security content and then disperse to other agencies like the Secret Service and FBI as needed.”
That’s my reading of it as well. The historical descriptions of Shamrock indicate that there was no physical “tapping” of lines at all in that project, because there was no need for it. Certain executives in each of the major 3 telecommunications companies simply agreed to supply copies of telex messages moving into and out of, New York, where the overseas telex cables terminated.
And:
“Of course, this does not preclude limited real-time taps of the phone and telex lines if deemed necessary, and I suspect this could have been done by Presidential Executive Order, or maybe agencies like the FBI or CIC doing illegal surveillance on their own initiative, as they seemed to be prone to do at times.”
I also agree. Tapping a telex line should not be any more difficult, physically, than tapping a voice phone line. Once a “tap” is in place the only additional complexity is de-modulating the telex signal that is intercepted. This is exactly what the telex terminal itself does, so the problem is no more complicated than obtaining a duplicate telex terminal.
An executive order may not even have been necessary, depending on which Agency was doing the monitoring. My hunch (and I will clearly label it as such) is that it may have been the Atomic Energy Commission, which had its own security and intelligence apparatus, separate from those of the military and executive branch agencies (such as FBI, Central Intelligence Group, etc.)
Although the text of the Atomic Energy Act is publicly available, I have been singularly unsuccessful in finding out any information regarding the authority and rules under which their security and intelligence apparatus operated.
Recall that, when the Manhattan Project started it was an Army project, so it would have made perfect sense that security and intelligence was the purview of the Army CIC. After the passage of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (which took effect in January, 1947) I would have to assume that most of the security and intelligence functions regarding atomic energy would have to have been transferred to the AEC.
They may have been the ones monitoring internal US telecommunications in areas surrounding atomic energy installations and advising the FBI of potential security breaches. And it may have been entirely legal.
Bob Koford wrote:
ReplyDelete"Could it be possible that the interrupted Sleppy message is related to the "Ramey Memo"?"
I don't see a connection the Ramey Memo, but I do see a _possible_ connection to one of Ramey's reported comments (Washington Post) that the supposed "box-kite" in his office, after viewing it, would have been 25 feet across if reconstructed.
Sleppy never mentioned McBoyle mentioning a size to the object (other than perhaps Brazel having to tow it off the field into a shelter), but McBoyle interviewed shortly before he died reportedly said the "crushed dishpan" was 25-30 feet across.
Pentagon spokespeople would then reiterate Ramey's figure, changing it to 20-25 feet, then the balloon became the 20 foot object. ABC News (who Sleppy was telexing to) also repeated the 20-25 foot number in a news broadcast (which has survived).
So the question arises why would Ramey change a 4-foot radar target into a 25 foot object? Was Ramey aware of the possible leak from McBoyle to Sleppy and maybe ABC News and trying to cover for it?
Another factor is the time. Ramey would have made this comment somewhere between 3:30 to 4:00 Roswell time, which in two versions of the story was approximately when Sleppy thought McBoyle had called (in her affidavit she had it before noon). She also said they never got McBoyle's story out because they were scooped by the newspapers. The scooping would have been the press release from the base, which first went out on the AP wire at around 2:30 p.m.
To speculate some more, McBoyle would most likely have called in BEFORE the press release went out over the wire, else Sleppy and her boss would have been aware of it. Instead, she suggested the press release came out shortly after McBoyle called and she was cut off on the telex.
So my guess is that McBoyle called someTIME after 2:00 and before 2:30. Sleppy never did telephone in the alternate story because the press release went out very soon after McBoyle called.
Do we really need all this speculation? What is the point of it, and all the associated 'could be' and 'might be' this and that?
ReplyDeleteWe can agree that Sleppy's teletype could conceivably have been interrupted, maybe by the FBI, maybe by the CIC. The purpose of such interruption is unknown, and always will be.
We can be equally certain that McBoyle did NOT go out to the ranch, and probably never attempted to; neither did he see anything on the AF base. In the latter case he would not have been permitted on the base because of security. So he never saw anything being loaded onto a plane, at any time. My assumption is that the only information McBoyle ever had about the case in '47 is what he saw on the teletype wires just before he contacted Sleppy.
Anything he told interviewers was decades afterwards and could have been lifted from some of the early books & articles. He initially refused to say anything about it, telling Friedman: "Forget about it... it never happened".
So what DID happen? Nobody knows, and nobody ever will. Yet we all like to pretend what 'might' or 'could' have happened.
And remember that nobody who had not been out there before could possibly have driven out to that remote desert ranch without Brazel accompanying them. Having just come into town early on July 8 I am positive he did NOT go out there again that day just to take a radio or newspaper reporter to see the place (and then return to Roswell yet again)!
He was supposed to be under strict control of the AF once he got into town, wasn't he? And later incarcerated at the base for a week, according to legend?
@DR:
ReplyDelete"The point Kevin was raising was that the FBI and other government agencies WERE monitoring teletype lines, certainly for foreign transmissions under the secret Operation Shamrock."
* * *
"Project Shamrock was not real-time monitoring of the telex lines. At the end of the day, the major telex companies would hand over their foreign transmissions/receptions to the Armed Forces Security Agency (later the NSA), who would analyze them for threat/national security content and then disperse to other agencies like the Secret Service and FBI as needed."
David, I'm glad you clarified and corrected your initial comment, above, that government agencies were monitoring teletype lines under Operation Shamrock (which would suggest a form of active, real-time monitoring) was not quite accurate. As you noted later in this thread, Operation "Shamrock was not real-time monitoring of the telex lines."
For historical accuracy it should be noted that Operation Shamrock was, essentially, a passive or "after-the-fact" surveillance program, and that, particularly in July of 1947, it is extremely unlikely that any aspect of Operation Shamrock, per se, was involved in any real-time tapping or active monitoring of domestic telegraph/TELEX communications.
Operation Shamrock, which began operation in August, 1945 (and continued until it was shut down in May, 1975), was actually first begun by the U.S. Army Signals Security Agency (ASSA, later renamed the Army Security Agency, or ASA, and a component of the AFSA, predecessor of the NSA), whose representatives approached the three primary telegraph companies at the time, RCA Global, ITT World Communications, and Western Union International "to seek post-war access to foreign governmental traffic passing over the facilities of the companies."
After agreement with the three companies was reached, the ASSA sent military couriers to New York City, where the main overseas telegraph cables terminated, to pick up daily the punched paper tapes (which were the media used to generate the transmission of telegrams) for relay back down to ASSA headquarters for review at Arlington Hall Station, Virginia. Later, post-1947, microfilm copies of the traffic was provided to the ASSA.
But, in reference to the subject of this post, it is most likely that in July of 1947 the original procedure of obtaining the punched paper tape (or later, microfilm) copies of telegraphic traffic, and relay by courier to ASSA, for later review and analysis, was in place.
What this means is that, contrary to Kevin's speculations about Operation Shamrock, that "...there was an unauthorized capability to monitor the teletype messages being sent out of Roswell by various government agencies in 1947" and "...when Lydia Sleppy said that her transmission of the story of the UFO crash was interrupted, it is possible that it happened. The technology existed to interrupt her, the technology to intercept the message existed and the project to read these messages was in place and had been for years," any such capability would not have been under Operation Shamrock, since during that period, less than two years after it began, Shamrock depended on belated copies of telegraphic traffic, "after the fact" of either incoming receipt or outgoing transmission had already occurred, not live, real-time monitoring.
I have found no evidence of any real-time, active monitoring of ongoing telegraphic traffic domestically under Operation Shamrock or any other intelligence program during the period concerned.
For practical purposes, considering the volume of domestic teletype traffic (not to mention international) versus the governmental resources and manpower available for real-time monitoring (and the related technology required) at that time, any such real-time monitoring of traffic would have to have been relatively limited in scope, and on a quite specific basis. But not Operation Shamrock.
See: http://bit.ly/aPS8By
Thanks for the above, Steve Sawyer (and David Rudiak).
ReplyDeleteThis brings to mind a point that I wanted to bring up but that I figured had already been discussed:
I have some experience working with teletypes at TV stations and radio stations when I was kid.
My memory is that when we wanted to send something out (which was rare), we had to prepare a punch tape that punched a paper roll as we typed. You would prepare your entire message offline on the paper tape and only then would you send the message by feeding the paper tape through a reader.
In this manner, there would be little possibility of being interrupted while typing---would Sleppy have been working on a teletype that was always live as she described?
Lance
Don wrote:
ReplyDeleteWhere it matters is none of the versions have McBoyle relating the press release story.
Also that nobody--Sleppy, McBoyle--seemed aware of the press release when McBoyle phoned in, thus probably the incident took place before the press release went out over the AP wire. This is also supported by Sleppy saying they never phoned the story in because they were soon scooped.
Her 1993 affidavit also contains the "missing time" element which we find in the accounts from the Roswell radio and newspaper people. Ms Sleppy's reminds me most of McQuiddy's affidavit.
I don't quite follow you on the missing time aspect. Frank Joyce, not McQuiddy, told me he remembered the teletypes going dead for several hours, though he wasn't clear when this happened. I would hazard a guess after Haut delivered the press release around noon. There was that puzzling 2+ hour gap between Haut contacting all the media in Roswell and when the press release finally went out on the wire. Except that was the story being called into AP HQ in Albuquerque. But if it was called in, why didn't they quickly put it out? Maybe because the teletype lines went dead in Albuquerque as well?
Going over McQuiddy's affidavit, he notes that George Walsh, the program manager at KSWS, was the one who beat him to the story by breaking it on AP before he could. McBoyle was the station manager of KSWS. So Walsh called AP in Albuquerque and McBoyle called their senior station in Albuquerque to teletype ABC News in Hollywood. I confess I'm a bit confused why the two men chose two different routes of reporting the story.
cda wrote: (Part 1)
ReplyDeleteWe can be equally certain that McBoyle did NOT go out to the ranch, and probably never attempted to;
What's with the royal "we"? As usual, Christopher, you are so "certain" about everything when the rest of us have mostly questions.
Did McBoyle go to the ranch? I don't know. Did he try and get intercepted by the military before he could get out there? I don't know. Did he get the story from Brazel at the coffee shop and never leave Roswell? Maybe, but in all the incarnations of the Sleppy story nobody ever said that. He did at least try and he saw something, that "crushed dishpan" object which is a near constant throughout the story, including from McBoyle. He either saw it at the ranch or being hauled out of there.
neither did he see anything on the AF base. In the latter case he would not have been permitted on the base because of security.
Which would be a fair point, except you also try below to suggest "nothing happened" because when Friedman approached McBoyle that's what he said and refused to talk. So "nothing happened" but Boyle couldn't get on the base because of the security over absolutely nothing happening. You can't have it both ways.
So he never saw anything being loaded onto a plane, at any time.
Suppose when he went to the ranch he was picked up by the Army and brought back to the base for a little debriefing. That would be one way for McBoyle to get on the base, even with heavy security, that wouldn't require a commando raid. In the process he might have seen them loading planes with material.
My assumption is that the only information McBoyle ever had about the case in '47 is what he saw on the teletype wires just before he contacted Sleppy.
Now that's just nonsense. For one, McBoyle's/Sleppy's/Merle Tucker's story was nothing like the press release story. Also McBoyle would not need to phone in an already sent-out teletype wire story. Isn't that the point of having teletypes, which they could have read right there in Albuquerque without McBoyle having to double-report the SAME story over the phone?
Anything he told interviewers was decades afterwards and could have been lifted from some of the early books & articles.
You seem to be forgetting that the Sleppy/McBoyle story first came out before any books or articles. And you had other witnesses, like Sleppy/McBoyle's boss Merle Tucker partially corroborating the story, saying he heard about it afterward (though he was mainly concerned at the time about his staff having done something that might threaten a new license). In "The Roswell Incident" they said he vividly remembered it, and also remembered that people refused to talk about what happened afterward when he tried to get to the bottom of it. Tucker, they said, was also reluctant to talk about it.
The part about the object looking like a crumpled dishpan was not in the initial, very abbreviated 1974 SAGA account, but was in the 1980 Roswell Incident. So Sleppy could hardly have learned about it from there either, now could she?
He initially refused to say anything about it, telling Friedman: "Forget about it... it never happened".
So let's see, to CDA it still makes sense that McBoyle calls Sleppy to report a crashed flying saucer, but nothing ever happened? What, he made the thing up as a practical joke on Sleppy? Sleppy made it up? Tucker made it up?
It is also interesting that in one version that is also what Sleppy remembered McBoyle telling her over the phone when he was cut off, also McBoyle refusing to talk to her about it afterward.
Response to CDA, part 2:
ReplyDeleteSo what DID happen? Nobody knows, and nobody ever will. Yet we all like to pretend what 'might' or 'could' have happened.
Yet CDA agains says he knows for certain that certain things did or did not happen. He knows for certain that McBoyle never went to the ranch, that he couldn't have seen the planes being loaded at the base, and below he is again certain that Brazel could not have taken McBoyle back with him to the ranch. CDA's psychic powers are amazing!
And remember that nobody who had not been out there before could possibly have driven out to that remote desert ranch without Brazel accompanying them.
First of all, how does CDA know that McBoyle had never been out there before and would not know his way? Second, wouldn't the same logic apply to somebody like Cavitt, who denied in his AF interview ever meeting Brazel, yet somehow going out to the ranch and finding his tiny balloon crash no bigger than his living room? Does that story pass the smell test? Yet Cavitt was the big AF eyewitness to nothing but a balloon crash happening.
Having just come into town early on July 8 I am positive he did NOT go out there again that day just to take a radio or newspaper reporter to see the place (and then return to Roswell yet again)!
Well not exactly. According to Walt Whitmore Jr. and Judd Roberts, Whitmore Sr. heard of the story, went out to the ranch, and brought Brazel back to town the night of July 7/8, with Brazel staying at Whitmore's house after recording an interview. Whitmore Jr. remembered Brazel preparing breakfast and leaving early the next morning. That is the likely way Brazel came back to town and why McBoyle might run into him that morning in a coffee shop.
He was supposed to be under strict control of the AF once he got into town, wasn't he?
No, they caught up with him later, THEN he was under their control. This could have been after he went back to the ranch with McBoyle.
And later incarcerated at the base for a week, according to legend?
Yes, but according to multiple interviewed witnesses, including the provost marshal and Brazel's son. The "legend" word is the usual debunking slant, like calling everything about Roswell a "myth", as if the whole thing was made up.
Note, this is the best-known example of a civilian being taken back to the base for a little debriefing, so again no commando raid necessary.
David, a few years ago I thought the 'missing time' occurred in Albuquerque. Haut visits or calls Walsh around noon; Walsh calls Kellahin and reads him the story -- then 2 1/2 hrs of nothing.
ReplyDeleteI changed my mind about it. Now, I think the 'missing time' occurred in Roswell. The first clue came from parsing the UP and AP versions of the press release, plus the Daily Record (RDR) story. Since both wire services had the identical storyline or chronology, the same words and phrases in the same order, at the same time, then it is required that the UP also had 2 1/2 hrs of 'missing time', because KGFL and KSWS had the same story at noon. BTW, this also negates the Printy article Haut Hero Or Mythmaker, and therefore, also, Pflock's Saucer Smear article it was based on.
The RDR version isn't the press release. The RDR didn't have it, if it had had it, in time to publish. Its stories never mention Haut or a press release or statement.
McQuiddy has Haut arrive at the RMD a little before noon, and he complains about the advantage KSWS had over him and had gotten the story out. How could McQuiddy be uncompetitive if Haut handed him the story at noon?
How is any of this possible a little before noon?
And now the Sleppy affidavit. McBoyle calls around noon, but Sleppy doesn't get the story recorded before the AP story is on the wire. Thus, the 'missing time'appears.
The RDR doesn't say the press release was delivered at noon. It says the story was "announced" at noon. According to Walsh's affidavit he broadcast the story as a bulletin. If KSWS did, then it is more than likely KGFL did, too. Therefore everyone listening to the radio at noon in Roswell and the RAAF heard the story. The story didn't go national until 2:26pm MT.
RMD didn't get the press release until around 2:26. The RDR didn't get the press release (if they ever did) until it was too late to change the front page...so...1:30? 2pm? Walsh's 2000 LA Times interview does not include Walsh transcribing the story during Haut's call, but makes a distinction between the noon phone call and later reading the story, bringing Walsh in line with the rest of the local media accounts.
As Haut said in his 2002 affidavit:
"Too many civilians were already involved and the press already was informed. I was not completely informed how this would be accomplished."
I see a mea culpa in that last sentence.
Regards,
Don
Don,
ReplyDeleteRegarding the press release "missing time" conundrum, the unaccounted for time between when Haut supposedly hand-delivered the press release to the four Roswell media outlets around noon, yet 2-1/2 hours elapsed before the story finally made it onto the AP wire, I still find the lapse baffling. We have discussed this in email, and I still don't understand it.
Your theory is that maybe Haut called everybody around noon saying there he would bring the written release later, maybe providing a few details over the phone. But three out of four media outlet people disagree, except for Walsh, who remembered Haut calling him with the release. Everybody else remembered Haut bringing the written release in person around noon. Haut remembered delivering it around noon, then going home in town to have lunch with his wife.
Joyce remembered questioning Haut in person about it since he thought it unwise to be saying they had recovered a disc in the name of the Army. Haut reassured him he had Blanchard's authorization to release the story. Joyce, a UP stringer, had no telex transmit capability and had to take the written release to the Western Union office to get it out. But when he did this is unclear and why the disagreements with the other press release versions?
There are obvious similarities in the three surviving versions of the release or phoned information that we have (UP, AP, and the Roswell Daily Record). (The Morning Dispatch, being the morning paper, unfortunately never published the initial story from Haut, only the weather balloon story.) However, there are also major differences.
Why didn't UP mention Marcel by name like AP and the RDR? Why did UP misspell Sheriff Wilcox's name? (Wilson) surely Joyce and Haut would have known better. Where did UP get the item about the ranch neighbors seeing a "strange blue light" at 3:00 a.m. several days before? Why did AP say Marcel had "loaned" the "disc" to "higher headquarters" instead of "flown" it as UP did? Was it a phone transcription error by Walsh to Kellahin, or as Haut later claimed, reporters were confused over the word "flown", thinking Marcel had actually flown the disc, so Haut changed the word to "loaned"? Why did AP leave out the line in UP and the RDR about the object being inspected at the base but no details about its construction or appearance were provided?
I can understand some newspaper editing of the release by RDR before going to print rather than direct quoting, but you would think AP and UP wire versions would be exactly the same, yet they weren't.
The other "missing time" theory by me would be based on Joyce and Sleppy remembering the telex lines being killed, perhaps just Roswell and Albuquerque. But that isn't totally satisfactory either since nobody else mentioned it. Also they could just keep phoning the story elsewhere until they found someplace where the lines were still working. Or maybe they thought it was a technical glich and just decided to wait?
A third possibility is that everybody sat on the story for 2+ hours while they first did some fact checking before putting out such a sensational story. But would everybody do that rather than scooping the others?
Regarding Sleppy's affidavit about McBoyle calling before noon, this disagrees with earlier memories by her that McBoyle perhaps called around 4:00. I think it would have been about halfway between the two, or around 2:00, before the AP version press release went out at 2:26, so they weren't aware of it, and just before they were "scooped" by the press release itself, since Sleppy remembered not phoning in the McBoyle story as a result.
DR:
ReplyDeleteThe reason I am positive McBoyle never visited the ranch is that as soon as the military recovered the object and took it into custody, i.e. early on July 8, the 'legend' has it that the stuff was immediately classified and the ranch put under control of the USAF.
Naturally, this is not my take on the matter at all, but it is the essence of the ET believers' argument - that the whole thing quickly became highly classified. This being the case, Brazel would NOT have been allowed back that day to show some radio or press reporter the ranch, would he?
So your idea that Brazel would have escorted McBoyle back to the boondocks, allowed him to see the ranch and debris field and travel with him back to Roswell on July 8 is nonsense. It simply does not fit the timescales or the security aspect.
So it is you that is trying to have it both ways. Either the site was left open or it was sealed off by the USAF at once. Which is it?
Yes the whole case is full of 'could be' and 'might be' but I have no hesitation in saying that if the debris was kept strictly top secret, as you insist it was, and a cover story invented for it all (as you also insist it was), then McBoyle did NOT either visit the ranch or see anything loaded onto a plane either at the base or anywhere else.
And if he claimed decades later that he did so, he is guilty of a 'terminological inexactitude'.
Don wrote about Haut's 2002 affidavit:
ReplyDelete"Too many civilians were already involved and the press already was informed. I was not completely informed how this would be accomplished."
I see a mea culpa in that last sentence.
I disagree. Haut was talking about the morning staff meeting where they discussing whether to tell the public the story. Haut's affidavit said Ramey was there and said they would try to divert the public's attention from the more important crash site north of town with craft and bodies by acknowledging the more remote and less important debris site at the ranch. Haut said he didn't undertand how they planned to do this at the time, but soon learned that morning when Blanchard ordered him to put out the press release which only mentioned the ranch.
The other statement about the press already being informed is not talking about the LATER press release, but perhaps about press people like Joyce, Whitmore, Roberts, and McBoyle already having heard the story when Brazel first came to town and perhaps when Whitmore brought him back from the ranch for an interview (when McBoyle supposedly first learned of Brazel's find). I'm not aware of other Roswell press people being aware until the later press release.
Lance said:
ReplyDelete“My memory is that when we wanted to send something out (which was rare), we had to prepare a punch tape that punched a paper roll as we typed. You would prepare your entire message offline on the paper tape and only then would you send the message by feeding the paper tape through a reader.
In this manner, there would be little possibility of being interrupted while typing---would Sleppy have been working on a teletype that was always live as she described?”
I’m not an expert but from the internet search I’ve done over the last few days, it seems that telex machines could operate either way. Telex users basically paid, by the minute, for use of a telex circuit with keyboard terminals at either end. Apparently, you could sit at the terminal and type a message in by hand, but that would take more time and cost more money. If you were willing to compose your message off-line on a paper tape punch machine you could presumably send your message in a shorter period of time at less cost. I assume that Sleppy was probably a pretty fast typist in her day, considering her job duties, so there may not have been much difference in the time it took her to send a message manually.
Thanks you, Larry.
ReplyDeleteLance
David, here's a comparison of the three versions.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.foreshadower.net/roswell-press-release-version-comparisons/
AP published "Haughts Statement" as a quotation, separate from the news story it might be embedded in. The UP didn't do that. The earliest version we have (DXR54) from UP is a write-up of Haughts Statement as a news story. However, as the linked table proves, the UP news story uses the same language in the same order as Haughts Statement. There are also AP stories incorporating the Statement in a news story rather than as a set-off transcription or quotation.
The table makes it clear how different the RDR story is from the other two, and how similar those two are to each other.
There is a big hole in the RDR story: there is no mention of how the RAAF and Marcel found out about the disk and Brazel -- a key moment in the press release -- note, too, the edit at this point in the AP story ("the sheriffs office, who..."), as well as the UP's Sheriff Wilson. So, it is a problem in all three.
If the local press found out about the story at the latest around noon, there was plenty of time to make phone calls to Wilcox and the RAAF. That would account for the different details in the stories.
Contra Pflock, the comparison of the UP and AP demonstrates there were at least two copies of the press release in Roswell, and not just a "file copy" at the RAAF. Although DXR54 was sent at (I think) 2:41, we know there was a DXR53 and likely within minutes before DXR54. This means both versions were on the wire at the same time or nearly so. Thus it is impossible for the UP to have copied the AP (and then rewrote it as a news story).
Walsh was called by Haut, and so was Joyce, according to an Albuquerue Journal story on him during the 50th.
"Joyce recalls that Walter Haut called that afternoon to tell him he was bringing over a press release..." Then it describes the details you wrote above.
As for the RMD, McQuiddy's confusion about time is obvious. He could not have complained to Haut at noon about losing out to Walsh -- or at any other time before 2:26pm. Thus there are odds Haut called the RMD, too, around noon.
I cannot find out who at the Daily Record spoke to Haut that day, or who took delivery of the press release. In a video interview made in (I think) 1991, and archived at the NARA, Haut describes going to the RDR. He says he gave the press release to an editor who had his desk near the front of the office. Unfortunately, the interviewer's next question wasn't "Do you remember the editors name?" (was the interviewer Schmitt?), but how did he react. He was unimpressed. He just set it aside, Haut said.
Wouldn't do the editor much good if his paper was already at the printers. It was old news.
There are a number of problems that may never be resolved. An important one is that of 'directionality'. When Walsh says Haut said "We captured a flying saucer"
http://articles.latimes.com/2000/sep/08/entertainment/ca-17315
is Walsh recalling what Haut actually said or is he glossing it with the now famous RDR headline? If that's what Haut was saying on the phone, then now we know where the RDR got its headline.
Are the references to the press release being distributed around noon, actual recollections, or are they being glossed with the RDR story of the noon announcement?
Regards,
Don
"Too many civilians were already involved and the press already was informed. I was not completely informed how this would be accomplished." Haut, 2002
ReplyDeleteDavid, yes it wasn't until after the decision was made that Haut found out that the public would be notified by press release. So, Haut was not in the loop for the plan.
Haut was ordered to distribute the press release. He did. But first he made some phone calls.
I don't think anyone at the planning meeting expected that.
Regards,
Don
It seemed like the 'missing time' occurred at the Albuquerque AP office, but it was just an inference. The evidence for it appeared in the Roswell news media material, which indicated the 'missing time' occurred in Roswell, instead. But it doesn't have to be inferred from Sleppy's affidavit. The language is there, and so we have evidence for it in Albuquerque, too.
ReplyDeleteSo, we have Walsh to Kellahin and McBoyle to Sleppy happening simultaneously. Walsh finishes dictating and nothing happens for 2 1/2 hours. Then Walsh's story gets on the wires. McBoyle and Sleppy are interrupted for something like 2 1/2 hours. McBoyle's story is not put on the wires. The reason given is that AP already had published it...except McBoyle's story is not the same one as Walsh's. Also, so what if the AP had the story. This was ABC.
If McBoyle's story was stopped because it was not the press release story, then why was Walsh's story, which was the press release story, delayed for 2 1/2 hours?
Regards,
Don
Don wrote:
ReplyDeleteHaut was ordered to distribute the press release. He did. But first he made some phone calls.
I don't think anyone at the planning meeting expected that.
So in this scenario, the press release itself wasn't the mistake but the unwitting premature release by Haut before the military had all their ducks lined up. That's what may have caught the Pentagon by surprise.
But I'm not sure this still makes total sense, since I would think that Blanchard would tell Haut not to send out the release until given a final go-ahead or a specific time. Also we still have testimony of Haut bringing the written release around noon to local news media, but you believe this may be years-later confusion between Haut phoning everybody around noon but not delivering a physical release until later.
There is still the "missing time" conundrum between the noon release (phone or physical) and the 2-1/2 hour delay until the story got on the wire. So was this the telex lines being shut down for a period, as Joyce/Sleppy remembered, or calls being made first to fact-check the story before sending it out? One problem with the latter scenario is nobody remembers the phones ringing until AFTER the release went out on the AP wire.
Somewhere differences--including subtractions, additions and alternate wording--crept in between the various versions of the story put out by AP/UP/RDR. Or were they handed slightly different copy in order to deliberately confuse the situation?
(I asked Haut about the latter possibility and he didn't think that would have happened, since all outlets got the same releases.)
CDA wrote:
ReplyDeleteThe reason I am positive McBoyle never visited the ranch is that as soon as the military recovered the object and took it into custody, i.e. early on July 8, the 'legend' has it that the stuff was immediately classified and the ranch put under control of the USAF.
Naturally, this is not my take on the matter at all, but it is the essence of the ET believers' argument - that the whole thing quickly became highly classified. This being the case, Brazel would NOT have been allowed back that day to show some radio or press reporter the ranch, would he?
The standard "ET believers'" "legend" (I prefer to call it a historical reconstruction) is that there were at least two crash sites of significance: the Brazel debris field and a site closer to and north of Roswell where there was a main craft and bodies.
The latter was discovered sometime on the morning or maybe noon of July 7, according to Haut's 2002 affidavit (plus suspicious activity by Gen. Vandenberg back at the Pentagon starting around 1-2 p.m. trying to kill one crashed disc story then cancelling a dental appointment to personally pick up AAF Secretary Symington at the airport). The point here is that crash site #2 (not the Brazel place) would have been secured on July 7, so indeed McBoyle could not have gone there.
But the Brazel debris field? Marcel and Cavitt had been there all day July 7 and Marcel we know didn't return until late night, first stopping at his house. He didn't report to Blanchard until around 7:00 a.m. At that point, yes, Blanchard would start to organize security and recovery. But that could take a few hours. The point here is that in the early morning, the Brazel debris field site was NOT secured.
In the meantime, probably around 8:00 a.m., McBoyle met Brazel in a coffee shop, Brazel offered to take McBoyle back to the ranch. Because the ranch was not yet secured, there was a small window of opportunity for McBoyle to have gone back with Brazel and seen something, maybe arriving at the ranch just before a cordon got thrown up around it. (This would also be where the military caught up with Brazel again and put him on ice.)
This is a speculative scenario to demonstrate that it was quite possible for this version of the McBoyle story to have happened. Thus I am not so absolute as CDA that McBoyle could not have visited the ranch. And to say that McBoyle never even tried is just CDA's clairvoyant powers at work again channeling the dead.
David: "So in this scenario, the press release itself wasn't the mistake but the unwitting premature release by Haut before the military had all their ducks lined up. That's what may have caught the Pentagon by surprise."
ReplyDeleteYes.
"But I'm not sure this still makes total sense, since I would think that Blanchard would tell Haut not to send out the release until given a final go-ahead or a specific time."
Yes, I agree, but mistakes happen. We don't know who was at fault. Haut? Blanchard? Ramey? The CIC (if it was their plan)?
They needed to answer the local issue, especially the Roswell press. They feared the story would go national, so they had to 'own' it to control it. The matter of timing the release has to have reasons. They would want to get Blanchard and Marcel out of range of the press, make certain Wilcox was on-board, wrangle down Brazel, and carry on with clean-up operations.
They wouldn't know what the response to the press release would be, but they might expect an influx of reporters.
The RAAF would know the story was out as soon as George Wilcox broadcast it as a news bulletin. I'd expect KGFL to have done the same.
From Walsh's 1993 Affidavit
"(9) Sometime that same afternoon, Haut called for the second time. He was quite indignant. "What the hell did you do?" he asked. I told him. He then said he had not been able to make a call out of his office since his initial conversation with me. He also said, "I got a call from the War Department that told me to shut up." This was very unusual, so I asked if the department had given him a correction or another contact to provide the media. He told me his orders were to, quote, shut up, unquote."
Regards,
Don