Monday, March 31, 2014

The Eisenhower Briefing Document, MJ-12, and the Del Rio UFO Crash


I have argued for years that the Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD) is not authentic. I have argued that it was created in the early to mid-1980s because the information contained in it reflected the UFOlogical thought of that time. The one paragraph that seemed to prove that more than any other was the one referring to the December 6, 1950 crash near El Indio – Guerrero area of northern Mexico. I had suggested that this is the sighting made by Robert Willingham and that we know that he has changed so much of the information about it that it is clear that it never happened.

“Why bring this up now?” you may ask.

Because I have additional information thanks to Isaac Koi, Greg Long, and James Carrion. Let’s take this all one step at a time.

Apparently on October 19, 1994, Greg Long received a telephone from W. Todd Zechel, who then launched into what was pretty much a monologue according to a document created by Long (which makes sense since I too received one of these Zechel telephone calls in which he talked and talked and talked until his father yelled for him to get off the telephone). Long made notes, and the important part of that document, at least to us here, said:

Zechel talked about his research into the Del Rio case. He described how John Acuff [one time director of NICAP] had put NICAP’s cases in storage. Maccabee stole documents from the NICAP files. There was a particular file that Zechel read regarding a crashed object in Del Rio. Zechel tracked down a name, Colonel Willingham, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, flew to Pennsylvania, and interviewed him. Willingham admitted that he saw the crashed object. To assess Willingham, Zechel got the colonel’s military records and proved he was authentic.
Later in this same document, in a section labeled “Hoax,” Zechel again alludes to the Del Rio case. He wrote, “[Brad] Sparks responded that he felt only two of the cases showed some promise: the Roswell incident of 1947, which Moore had written about, and one that reportedly occurred in Dec. 1950 near the Texas/Mexico border.

And later still, Del Rio is connected to the El Indio – Guerrero case, when talking about the EBD received by Shandera, Zechel wrote:

Billed as a briefing paper prepared for ‘President-elect Eisenhower,’ the document ‘ contains a rather lengthy description of the Roswell incident – which just happens to verify Moore’s contentions and misrepresentations of the facts – but only a spare paragraph describing a second incident in December 1950. According to the new, improved model:
On 06 December 1950, a second object, probably of similar origin, impacted the earth at high speed in the El Indio – Guerrero area of the Texas – Mexico boder (sic) after following a long trajectory through the atmosphere. By the time a search team arrived, what remained of the object had been almost totally incinerated. Such material as could be recovered was transported to the A.E.C. facility at Sandia, New Mexico for study.
Zechel then explains how this information about the crash had come into the hands of Moore and one of his cohorts, Richard Doty. He suggested that a manuscript that he had written was “either given or sold… to Bill Moore…”

To follow through on this linkage, and to prove that the information about the El Indio – Guerrero crash is that from Del Rio and Robert Willingham, Zechel wrote:

The point is that Moore… obtained two separate manuscripts I had written about the crashed saucer case which reportedly occurred in Dec. 1950, near the Texas – Mexico border. The first manuscript… gave the location of the incident as near Laredo, Texas. The second manuscript… gave the date of the incident as happening between Dec. 5 and Dec. 8, 1950, and the location as near Del Rio, Texas… No witnesses that I know of support the El Indio location given in the ‘briefing paper,’ but, on the contrary several eye-witness accounts have verified the Del Rio site. Moore, however, would not have known that, since I myself did not know these facts until a couple of years after I left Hollywood.
More telling than this is what Zechel believed about how this particular case came to be part of the EBD. Zechel wrote:

What I’m saying is that he [Moore] clearly knew, based on my manuscripts and Brad Sparks’ input, that he had to acknowledge the 1950 case in the ‘briefing paper,’ but with all the bitterness, acrimony, jealousy and hate he feels toward me … he just had to burn that sucker up!
And, in case that hasn’t made the connection between the Willingham tale and that from the EBD, in a letter to Walt Andrus at MUFON, dated December 8, 1978, Zechel wrote:

What I did say is that I had an affidavit from the retired Lt. Colonel (emphasis in the original) – the former pilot who flew down to the crash site – about his knowledge of the incident, which is limited to seeing the object in the air and covered by a canopy on the ground.
This retired Lt. Colonel is Robert Willingham who did sign an affidavit about the crash. So, we know that Willingham is the source of the Del Rio case, who also suggested that the crash was near Laredo. We know that Zechel was sharing information with Bill Moore, though it isn’t clear that the sharing was voluntary or if Moore acquired the information through some devious means. We know that in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, many in the UFO field believed the Willingham story because he was a retired military officer who signed an affidavit and Zechel claimed that he had verified his records (which by the way is untrue because it is clear that Willingham’s records reveal he was a low-ranking enlisted man with 13 months of active duty). We also know that Zechel was claiming other witnesses, but none have surfaced to this point.

But now the Willlingham story is in tatters. As mentioned here before, he was neither a retired Air Force officer nor a fighter pilot and if that is true, then he was not in a position to see any crash of anything. We know, based on the available documentation that Willingham originally claimed that the crash had taken place in 1948, and while Zechel attempted to vilify Len Stringfield for saying this in his 1978 presentation about crashed UFOs, we know, from the available documentation that Willingham himself is responsible for this “error.” Zechel moved the date to conform to information about a security alert in December 1950, but there is nothing to suggest the alert had anything to do with a flying saucer crash.

What all this does is prove that one segment of the EBD is based on a hoax and that does not bode well for the remainder of the document. If this paragraph is faked, then what else in it is faked and isn’t a reasonable conclusion that it is all faked? I think that we now have all the information we need to connect all the dots and with that, we can draw the conclusion that the EBD is a fake based on faulty information and complete invention. We can now move onto other, more important things.

12 comments:

  1. I agree that there other, more important, things to talk about. Maybe the forthcoming Roswell slides will turn out to be worth talking about. But it is a very big 'maybe'.

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  2. Interesting article Kevin.

    I only disagree with you when you try to move to other "more interesting things".

    Sorry but if this trend is confirmed, it could become a proof that the EBD is a hoax. Not uninteresting.

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  3. Correct me if I am wrong, but what I see is Kevin somehow choosing to believe some selected claims coming from Zechel in the middle of a storming show of Zechel's flaws, red herrings, hatred, lies, etc.

    Certainly, Kevin's blogpost does not look as fatal flaw of the EBD.

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  4. Don –
    I see where you are coming from, but the evidence doesn’t rest solely on Zechel but on an array of other evidence. The original tale, told by Robert Willingham was published in MUFON’s Skylook (March 1968), which was their publication then. It provides the initial details of this crash. For this tale to be credible, Willingham must be credible, but the evidence shows that rather than being an Air Force officer and fighter pilot, he was a low-ranking enlisted man with about 13 months of military service.

    Zechel entered the picture and changed the date of the crash to coincide with an alert that took place in December 1950, which was done to add credibility to the tale. The information was shared with Bill Moore, and Moore reported on it in The Roswell Incident (see page 131, hardback) showing that Moore knew about it.
    There are a number of people, in the late 1970s and early 1980s who believed this tale because it came from a source who was allegedly a retired Air Force officer. Moore was in possession of the information and the EDB is traceable back to Moore and no further.

    But take all that out of the equation, and you are left with a tale of a UFO crash without any other source. There are no other witness statements, there are no documents, and there is nothing to confirm this statement. It is a hoax that can be traced to a single source, Willingham, and a date of creation, 1968.

    So, if there was no crash in that area, and all the evidence points to a hoax, then there would be no reason for it to be included in a document prepared to brief the president. If it is included, and we know it is a hoax, then doesn’t that suggest that the document is a fraud? How do we get around that point?

    Take Zechel out, use the information provided by Willingham, though you’re going to have to specify with sets of data you want to use (1. Three objects in formation, one crash, date 1948. 2. Single object crash, date 1950. 3. Single object crash, date 1954 or maybe 1955, as just a few examples) and why is there all these problems with the original data. Given what we know, if the EBD is authentic, then there is no reason for this information to be included… that it is, tells us all we really need to know about the EDB.

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  5. Kevin:

    I don't see any solid reason to connect without doubts the reality of the "Del Rio" alleged case to the reality of the "El Indio Guerrero" alleged case. IMO, two scenarios are possible (maybe among others)

    First possible scenario: The "Del Rio case" is unreal, a hoax, created by the now infamous Wilinham, but the hoax is inspired on a similar case, REAL, which happened in Dec 1950 near "El Indio Guerrero".

    Second possible scenario: The "Del Rio" case is a real case, which happened in 1948, near Del Rio and is independent of the case occurred at El Indio-Guerrero in 1950. Any connection between the two is merely inside the minds of UFO feverish researchers trying to reduce the complexity of the hundreds of UFO cases, landings and incidents occurred during the late 1940 and the whole 1950 decade.

    If Moore et al are the guys who created the EBD, a question pops up:
    ¿From where got Moore et al the location name "El Indio - Guerrero"? Did they just closed their eyes and then put a finger in the Texas map?

    Other question to be answered before any lucubration is:
    ¿What really triggered the alert of Dec. 1950? Responding this question would really solve the problem. The absence of any answer until this day most probably means that it is UFO related. Something happened in that date.

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  6. What if the inconsistencies are a means to debunk public perspective??? Something obviously took place... Why document an incident unless it happened???

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  8. @Don:

    Did you read any of the articles at the links I provided to you above regarding how and why MJ-12 and the related EDB, C/T, Forrestal, and SOM 1-01 documents are a now proven hoax and fraud?

    If not, your really need to do some reading, and the required research, before more "armchair" speculation about MJ-12 and related matters, like the fraudulent "Del Rio" and "El Indio - Guerrero" UFO "crashes."

    The real answers to your repeated questions and doubts are there, in the data, as Kevin has cited now several times to you.

    If you don't take the time and make the effort to do what I'm suggesting, and find out for yourself, instead of rehashing what should be obvious to you by now, and as Kevin and David Rudiak have documented, then I'm afraid your "will to believe" and consequent confirmation biases in favor of the MJ-12 documents and supposed crashes cannot be remedied. FYI, DIY.

    For those interested, here is a link to the .pdf document noted by Kevin as "... additional information..." uploaded by James Carrion, former director of MUFON, and cited by Isaac Koi on the Google group, the UFO Collective, to the aforesaid Zechel documents.

    I've read all 159 pages, and it's quite intriguing and revealing for a variety of reasons. I urge you, Don, to check out the citations and links I've already given you for your edification.

    The "W. Todd Zechel files":

    https://app.box.com/s/zkq4xq2v32gwnren8rlx

    Zechel, by the way, died in late 2006.

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  9. The photograph of Robert Willingham is of him as a Major in the Civil Air Patrol. Air Force officers typically only begin wearing a Senior Member CAP uniform following their discharge from the military, since CAP is a civilian program. It is highly unlikely that an Air Force officer would go from a higher military rank to a lower CAP rank upon joining CAP.

    What he is not wearing is just as important -- no pilot's wings. A former military pilot would be entitled to wear them in CAP, and would almost certainly do so, the CAP and Air Force wings are the same.

    I suspect that Willingham was never a Lt. Colonel and Air Force pilot, and may not have been in the Air Force at all.

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  10. haints -

    There is no requirement for Air Force officers, upon discharge, to join the CAP. People who have never served in the military can join the CAP and become officers. In the 1960s, that was much easier than it is today. It is clear from the military records that Willingham never served in the Air Force, was not an officer, and was not a fighter pilot. In another picture from the late 1960s or early 1970s, he is wearing both military awards and decorations along with those from the CAP. This proves it is a CAP uniform because the Air Force does not authorize the wearing of CAP awards on the Air Force uniform. However, the CAP does authorize the wear of military awards on the CAP uniform. BTW, the military awards that Willingham is wearing were not awarded to him. This is a case of stolen valor.

    The truth is that Willingham was an officer in the CAP and tried to convince people it was part of the Air Force Reserve. There are those who didn't understand the distinction, believing that the CAP was a branch of the Air Force. The CAP is an important organization, but it is not a part of the Air Force but an auxiliary of it,made up of civilian volunteers. They receive no pay, they are not awarded retirement points but they do preform an important function in search and rescue.

    The bottom line here is that Willingham lied about his military service, lied about his flight experience and lied about seeing the UFO crash, which, ironically, was included in the fake Eisenhower Briefing Document, proving it is fake.

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