MJ-12 and Bill Moore

As I go through files and reports and other documents, I sometimes find a little item that was not very important a decade or two ago but that has taken on added significance. Such is a note about Barry Greenwood and the late Japanese UFO investigator Jun-Ichi Takanashi. Takanashi bought a copy of The Mystery of the Green Fireballs from Bill Moore which in and of itself isn’t all that exciting. Some of the documents that Moore had found were poor quality and difficult to read so that Moore, as apparently was his habit, retyped some of them to improve the legibility.

Takanashi wondered if the unusual dating format that Moore used in many of his letters and documents had been used in the original documents that Moore had retyped. That dating format was seen in some of them. Takanashi sent a query to Greenwood who then searched the Project Blue Book files until he located the original documents concerning the Green Fireballs. According to what Greenwood wrote in the June 1990 issue of Just Cause, “In all four cases where the documents were retyped, Moore had changed dates from the proper standard format to his own style by adding not only an extra comma to the dates but, in the case of the 9 February 1949 memo, a preceding zero before a single digit date where none had existed before!”

This is another bit of evidence that Moore had a hand in creating the MJ-12 documents. His unusual dating format has crept into other documents that he had admitted to retyping because of the poor quality of the originals. The two features, the extra comma and the use of the zero in front of the single digit dates, were not used by the military or the government at the time… For those who still believe that MJ-12 is authentic, this is just more evidence that it isn’t.

I should point out that Barry Greenwood printed this information twenty-five years ago so it has been out there for a long time. Although there are those who suggest they have found examples of government documents that reflect this bizarre dating format, it makes little difference because clearly Moore did use it. Besides, most of those other documents were created under special circumstances or by foreign military and government organizations. Apparently only Moore used it with any regularity and here it is another of his fingerprints on MJ-12. I wonder how many more we need.

The Roswell Slides and Me

This story actually begins in July 2011 when Tom Carey, Don Schmitt and I were all at the Roswell Festival. Tom suggested that he and I head over to Church’s Fried Chicken for lunch and I’m not one to refuse an invitation for Church’s. At lunch Tom said that he had been thinking about doing a sort of ultimate Roswell book and wondered if I was interested in that.

I said that I was, but didn’t mention that I had contacted a publisher about just such a book a couple of months earlier. I hadn’t heard back and thought this might present a problem if the publisher made some sort of offer especially since Tom and I had agreed that my name would go first on a hardback, if I could arrange that and his first if we went with his publisher. We hadn’t discussed the possibility of a book by a publisher who would produce a trade paperback.

We made some tentative plans but Tom said that he needed to finish a book with Don about Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. At this point that wasn’t much of a hurtle since we had nothing on paper and we had only just started the idea. The important points here were that we were going to work on a book about Roswell and it would be just the two of us.

Sometime later, after we all had left Roswell, Tom emailed me that he had told Don about the project because he felt some loyalty toward Don and Don had lots of media contacts (Too bad that loyalty didn’t work in the other direction). Since he had told Don about the book, there was nothing much that I could do at that point. In the meantime there were others brought into the project; Tony Bragalia and David Rudiak, both who had some important skills and resources. I worried about how we would split up the credit on the book and knew that publishers didn’t like three names on a book cover and we had moved beyond that.

Nothing much was done, other than my publisher wanted something a little more all-encompassing than a book about a single case so we figured out something else. I was also contacted by a hardback publisher from a prestigious house who was interested in the Roswell book. Everything seemed to be working out.

In July 2012 we were all again in Roswell, and we met late at night in the hotel’s breakfast area to talk about the book project. I mentioned that for this to work that we would need some additional information, some new witnesses, something that would set this book apart from the others. Tom and Don nodded their agreement but said nothing else about that. Remember, this is July 2012.

There was one other thing that I mentioned then and it was the nun’s diary. The story had been told to Don and me by an ex-Special Forces (Green Beret) officer and a woman who might have been a nun or who was still a nun and who verified the existence of the diary and what was written in it. Because these were Catholic nuns and I didn’t know the customs and courtesies of the Catholic Church, this was an avenue for Don to explore which he did (though he had apparently suggested to Tom that I had investigated it). I mentioned at the book meeting that this was something we should corroborate because it was a document created at the time that would provide some very important evidence. No one was going to dispute the provenance because it was held by the church and a photograph of the page would provide the evidence.

Lance Moody got his panties in a bunch over this, but I really wasn’t interested in that. He would have to wait for the investigation to play out and I wasn’t about to be stampeded into something because someone else wanted an immediate answer. I was confident I had it but I now wanted to be sure... Then I learned that the Special Forces officer had been a PFC when in the Army, wasn’t a Green Beret, and hadn’t been in Vietnam which shot his credibility all to hell. And I learned that the diaries had been traced to Oklahoma City and while I had believed they had been seen and verified, such was not the case. Once I learned where they were and arrangements could be made, I’d go look at them myself (and I practiced with my IPad photographing documents). I pushed and learned the diaries had been moved to Wisconsin, which was good, but that they only went back to 1960 which was bad. I asked questions, was told many things, but in the end, I don’t know where the diaries are, I don’t know what they say, and I don’t know if they even exist. Lance got his answer because it seemed that the book was not getting written as fast as I would like and I finally had an answer which would have appeared in the book, if we had written it.

Then in February 2013, Rich Reynolds published a column about some slides that had surfaced showing a body from the Roswell crash but we, meaning the team assembled for the reinvestigation, couldn’t talk about it because of some sort of a nondisclosure agreement that had been signed. I knew nothing of the slides and I had signed no such agreement. Nick Redfern seemed to be the source on this and since I know Nick, I called him to ask about it. He told me that the slides had been found when a woman had been cleaning out a house for an estate sale (though now we learn that it might have been a house that was about to be demolished). She had sent the slides to her brother and he eventually got in touch with Tom and Don (or Dew, after finding the slides sought out Tom and Don, whatever). The owner of the slides, before she died had been Hilda Ray, though I believe that Nick only knew her husband’s name at the time, which is, of course, Bernerd.

Nick said that the information came from a man who lived in Texas and who had been in Midland sometime earlier. He had overheard a conversation between two others talking about the slides and he thought that Nick might be interested. Well, that sounded a little nebulous, meaning only that someone overheard someone talking about slides of an alien creature and assumed that Nick would be interested and provided him with the information. No names except Ray, who had been a geologist in the Permian Basin which covered the territory between Midland and Roswell as well as a lot of other places, had been mentioned. This was all well and good, but I didn’t believe it and sent out an email to my colleagues on the team. Imagine my surprise when I learned that much of it was true. They had slides. They had been found during an estate sale. The family who had owned them was the Rays and they were now in the hands of someone else who had required a nondisclosure agreement before he would go any further in the investigative process. At least that was the story that I got at that time.

At this point I wanted to publish what I knew but also knew that if I did, the owner of the slides would assume that either Don or Tom had told me in violation of their agreement and that could really screw up the deal (which now doesn’t seem all that important.…I should have published what I knew and how I learned it and let the chips fall where they may). Since Tom was deeply involved I believed there was no need for me to inject myself into the investigation. I trusted that I would be told everything I needed to know as things progressed. That wasn’t actually the case, but there was nothing more for me to do about the slides without risking the whole deal for Tom and Don. Ah, loyalty in one direction… when will I learn?

At one point in early 2013, Tom called and told me a little more about the investigation. I learned what they were doing to validate the slides, meaning they were attempting to scientifically prove that the slides had been exposed in 1947 or thereabouts and wasn’t some kind of modern hoax. I believed that the chemical composition of the developing process would have changed as well as the composition of the film stock at some time after the 1940s. All that could be dated and would provide some evidence that the slides were real in the sense that they had been taken in the 1940s and showed an image that was not some sort of artificial construct made in the last couple of years. That wouldn’t mean that the image was of an alien creature only that this was not some sort of a modern hoax.

I asked Tom if I could see the slides but he said, “No.” There was that pesky nondisclosure agreement that he had signed and they weren’t letting anyone see them. That made sense and I didn’t have to see the slides right then anyway. They were doing what I would have been doing in an attempt to validate the slides. The only thing that wasn’t clear was who had actually taken them and if it was either of the Rays, then there was a major problem because neither of them were available for questioning and it wasn’t clear that they had taken them, only that they had copies.

In the meantime I was working on some of the book. I wrote the long appendix about MJ-12 because I thought it was a part of the story that had to be told, but that it shouldn’t be in the main part of the book. It ended up over 20,000 words with 180 footnotes. I wrote an appendix about Project Mogul, again because it was part of the story but it shouldn’t be part of the book. I believe that it removes Mogul from the case because, simply, Flight No. 4 was cancelled and the cluster of balloons flown later that day was just three or four balloons with a microphone and not one of the long arrays.

Tom was still busy with the Wright Field book so I undertook some of the earlier chapters as well… I sent those on to Tom, got his comments, but he was still busy with that other book. At the same time we were interviewing people who had been on the base in 1947, but we were now talking to the low-ranking end of the spectrum because those of a higher rank had been older in 1947 and most of them were gone. Don supplied some telephone numbers and I called a woman who lived on a ranch out near Corona. She told me that there was a diary available, but it was in one of the out buildings that was filled with the debris of several people. It was lost somewhere in there along with the snakes and the scorpions. Here, at last, was someone who talking of a diary written in the right time frame even if it was guarded by snakes and scorpions.

I called Tom and he told me that he’d already seen the out building and that he and Don had already been there and talked to the woman. She and her family smoked all the time so it seemed that the house was filled with a heavy blue haze and that apparently no one ever emptied an ashtray. Tom had seen the out buildings, plural, and they were filled from ground to ceiling with all sorts of boxes, furniture, broken machines, trash, and anything else you might think of. The least of the problems were the scorpions. I’m not sure why Don supplied the phone number but it seemed to be a dead end.

Tom finished the book about Wright Field but we still made no progress on our book, other than what I had done. I warned that the window was closing and we might lose the opportunity, but that didn’t have much effect. And I learned there was quite a bit of material about Roswell in the new book which wouldn’t help us with the sale of the new one. That was, of course, their decision and I had nothing to do with it or say about it other than to suggest that the publisher might see it as a liability.

In the meantime Reynolds was publishing updates on the slide investigation but he wasn’t getting the information from me. Tony Bragalia had an article about the slides, complete with the Rays’ names in Philip Mantle’s UFO emagazine’s first issue in 2013. So the information was getting out.

At this time it was becoming clear to me that this book project wasn’t going work. The window for the book was closing and we weren’t getting anywhere with it. This slide thing was taking more of Tom and Don’s time and everything seemed to be geared toward it. I wasn’t learning anything about the slides. The book project was dying so that I finally gave up on it.

At that time people thinking that I was on the inside were asking me questions about these slides. When they asked me about them, I said that I wasn’t part of that investigation. This was the truth. I did know some things that weren’t wider knowledge, but thought that information belonged to Tom and Don to release. Instead, I get labeled a liar. I think at this point it’s clear that I had no part in the investigation and that my questions to them went mostly unanswered. I’m no longer sure what Tom’s motivation for asking me to assist in a book about Roswell was, but it is clear to me that as time went on, his motivations changed. Somehow our working together on an important book took a backseat to the circus that is now the Roswell Slides.

If I asked questions about the slides, the refrain was much the same. They couldn’t tell me anything about it but I know that wasn’t the whole truth. Remember, back in 2012 when we had the book meeting? They said nothing about the slides then and you could suggest that it was because of the nondisclosure agreement.… except they had a paper copy of one of the slides with them and showed that to David Rudiak. Apparently they could disclose what they knew to him, but not to me. And, don’t forget, it was Tom who asked me to join him in the book project and then invited in Don without consulting me first. I was sort of stuck with that invitation but I also wondered if his invitation to Don had more to do with the slides than anything else.

The other problem was that as we all learned more about these slides, it began to sound like Alien Autopsy Light. Not a big video production like the Alien Autopsy, just two little slides that showed an unusual creature that for some reason every one of them assumed to be an alien and because the slides seemed to have been taken in the late 1940s that it was from Roswell. That would mean the slides were real, but that doesn’t mean it was of an alien creature either and frankly I’m not sure why that connection was made other than the dating of the slides to the late 1940s. It all seems somewhat problematic to me.

Although I wasn’t being included in the investigation and had no input into what they were doing, I was learning a little about it. From the very beginning I was worried about the lack of provenance. How were they going to establish a connection to Roswell if they didn’t really know who had taken the pictures? Like the rest of you, I have learned that the connection to the Rays might even be more nebulous than we thought. Adam Dew has written that Hilda had died in 1988 and the slides discovered when emptying out a garage (or attic) of a house outside of Sedona in 1998. That means the chain of custody is broken as well. Who owned the house for the ten years between Hilda’s death and the clean out... or is that some sort of a typo, which would confound the whole process regardless. Then we learn that they sat around for another ten years or so and that the sister of the man who now owns (or owned) them gave them to her brother (unless, of course, Dew now owns the slides though an arrangement with Dew. Is this getting complicated enough for you?) And let’s not forget that after the Mexico City circus, there is a chance that the slides will sell for a pile of money.

There is an additional problem here. The slides were found with those that apparently belonged to the Rays but there is actually nothing to connect them to the Rays. All the slides that belonged to them, if we believe what we have been told, were arranged carefully and many, if not all the others, were marked. These were not. They were separate and hidden in an envelope, which, if you think about it, doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Here we are with no provenance and a broken chain of custody. While they might have been taken in the late 1940s, the material about the Rays might be completely irrelevant. Discussion of their high level contacts, or the lack thereof, is also irrelevant. That they have pictures of Eisenhower in this general’s uniform (and in one of them, the picture is reversed because the ribbons are on the wrong side) only means that they managed to take pictures of Eisenhower. In today’s world, how many people who had no real connections have pictures of a high level member of the military or the government. A picture or two of Eisenhower or Sammy Snead doesn’t really suggest high level connections. Hell I have pictures of me with David Letterman in Baghdad and of Larry King in the deserts of Nevada... not to mention pictures of one of our Senators.

None of that explains how the Rays would have been able to obtain a picture of an alien creature. We all agree that if there was a crash and alien bodies were recovered, it would all be highly classified. I can think of no plausible scenario in which civilians, no matter how highly connected, would have had the opportunity to see, let alone photograph the body of an alien creature and get out of the room with their camera and film intact.

Most of us have only seen a poor quality copy of one slide. There is little detail visible, but there is enough to suggest what might have been photographed is a mummy, probably from South or Central America.… or could it be a body buried in the desert Southwest that was mummified by the weather. And, that provides an opportunity for the Rays, or some other civilian, to photograph what was found. Yes, I know that they all say it isn’t a mummy and claim once we see the high quality slide, we’ll all agree. But we haven’t seen them and if there are pictures of mummies that match, to a certain degree that body in the slide, then it is going to be a hard sell to convince many that it isn’t a terrestrially based mummy as opposed to some alien creature.

But here’s the thing. Without knowing who took the pictures, without knowing where they were taken, and with a range of when the film might have been exposed and developed, there is a major hole in the story. In the end, all that is really known is that there are two slides of an unusual creature that some believe to be alien, but without all the information, without a photographer to interview, and without additional information, such as a tissue sample with a proper chain of custody and evidence, all there is are the two slides and the circus atmosphere that is developing. Unless Tom and Don have some additional information, and from what Adam Dew is saying they don’t, then this will end badly unless there is a pile of money to be shared by them all.

Ask an Expert and Project Mogul

Once in a while (okay, more often than that) I engage in the beating of the dead horse and an opportunity for that arose today (February 25). It is my opinion that few thinking people actually believe the Project Mogul explanation for what fell near Roswell, but I have found some interesting things about this as I was researching another question and having been inspired by the Smithsonian’s latest “Ask an Expert.” I’m not sure what this Roger Launius is an expert in but clearly it is not the history of UFOs. He makes some elementary mistakes suggesting, for example, that Kenneth Arnold saw one flying saucer, crediting him with the creation of the term. He takes the American-centric view that this UFO craze started with Arnold, overlooking the Foo Fighters and the Ghost Rockets as I outlined in Government UFO Secrets which is a not subtle way to plug the book. And he was unaware that an unofficial investigation began in December 1946 at Wright Field so that it had been collecting this “aerial phenomena” data for months before Arnold entered the scene.

Anyway, he buys into the Project Mogul explanation and like too many he buys the Air Force document, their huge report that has very little relevance to the Roswell case (hundreds of pages are devoted to all sorts of reports on balloon flights) that “explains” the Roswell crash. He apparently was unaware that Flight No. 4 had been cancelled, that Brazel (whose name he mispronounces) was in the field where the debris was found nearly every other day so that the debris would have been found long before Brazel took it to the sheriff had that been true and that the configuration for the array used in the diagram does not match the configuration of the flights in New Mexico, no matter what Charles Moore claimed. In fact, we can see some of this deception in the Executive Summary of that massive report. I found the following statement on page 26. “Doctor Spilhaus, Professor Moore, and certain other members of the group were aware of the actual purpose of the project, but they did not know of the project nickname at the time.”

This struck me as silly. If you have a highly classified project and you can accomplish your mission without explaining the ultimate purpose to a bunch of civilians who are doing the “grunt” work with no need to know, it seems silly to compromise that mission by sharing information that is irrelevant to their goal. I mean, there was no reason for those in New Mexico working on what Moore was careful to claim was the New York University Balloon Project to know that it was to spy on the Soviets. They could have just as easily been told they needed the constant level balloons to measure radiation in the upper atmosphere so that they might better protect pilots of aircraft flying at those altitudes and later to astronauts as the orbited the Earth (if they were thinking that far ahead in 1947). Or they were engaged in attempts to study the “Jet Stream” which was not well understood in 1947.

I believe that the statement was the result of Moore saying, repeatedly, that he didn’t know the name of the project until Robert Todd told him in 1992 or thereabouts. However, the idea that those in New Mexico didn’t know the name is demonstrably false. All anyone had to do was flip back to Dr. Albert Crary’s diary that is published in the same massive report. You can read Crary referencing the “Mogul equipment” and the like on several occasions. The name wasn’t important, it was the ultimate purpose that was classified… and the research going on in New Mexico was anything but classified (though the recorded data was, for some reason, classified).

Taking this just one step farther, on page 27, the report tells us, “However, on July 10, 1947, following the Ramey press conference, the Alamogordo News published an article with photographs demonstrating multiple balloon and targets at the same location as the NYU group operated from at [sic] Alamogordo Army Air Field. Professor Moore expressed surprise at seeing this since his was the only balloon test group in the area. He stated, ‘It appears that there was some type of umbrella cover story to protect our work with Mogul.’”

Yeah, well, this doesn’t quite agree with what he had told me when I showed him the picture before the Air Force entered the case. He pointed to the ladder in one of those pictures and said that he had bought it with petty cash because they needed it to launch the balloons. So, he was aware of the demonstration in Alamogordo and while he might not have participated in it himself, it is clear that the Mogul equipment was being used.

You might ask, “What does this all prove?” And, who really cares for all this minutia? Well, I just thought it was it somewhat interesting because it demonstrates a willingness to accept anything said by those who claim it was a balloon and not a spacecraft. Many are quick to condemn the decades old memories of the witnesses who had talked about the crash, but accept without question those who say it was a balloon. Here, clearly, Moore’s recollections of the events are in error, documented error, but are accepted without question. And this lack of critical thinking is exhibited throughout Launius’ expert opinion.

Launius showed this to us in his video explanation of the Roswell case. If you have an interest in seeing it, it can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foJWblpzEjA&app=desktop

And, no this doesn't prove that what fell was alien. It simply provides additional evidence that it wasn't a Mogul balloon... and confirms that a high level of secrecy around Mogul existed is nothing more than a myth. It shows that some very smart people just don't care enough about UFOs to ask the skeptical questions.

Roswell Slides - Adam Dew on WGN (Chicago)

 We have now heard more about the Roswell Slides, again from Adam Dew and again on video, though this comes from WGN-TV in Chicago. Dew was interviewed about the slides. He told us that the Rays, Bernerd and Hilda, divorced in the 1960s. He remained in Midland and she went to Arizona. Dew said that people have been contacting him about the Rays, so he was learning a little more about them. He implied that the Rays had taken the pictures, probably Hilda, though it could have been Bernerd. At any rate, the slides had wound up in Hilda’s possession and were only discovered long after her death. Although it was suggested at the beginning of the story that it was Dew’s sister who had been cleaning the house for an estate sale, it was actually the sister of a friend. Much of this we had already heard and already knew.

For those interested, and for as long as it remains up, you can see the interview here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7n9GSez2jk

And now for a few observations from my end. I’ve sort of remained neutral on all this, but this preliminary nonsense is getting out of hand. A trickle of information leading to the big reveal on May 5… which reminds me of the trickle of information until the big reveal of the Alien Autopsy some twenty years ago. Remember we were being told all sorts of things about that, much of which turned out to be untrue such as Truman could be seen walking about on some of the footage and that there were more than two hours of film. We all now know that the Alien Autopsy was faked, those who created have been interviewed and the preliminary photographs taken as the alien was created have been seen. I published some of them, thanks to Philip Mantle in my book about alien conspiracies (and before my skeptical friends chime in, yes, they’re all basically about alien conspiracies but I mean the one called Alien Mysteries, Conspiracies and Cover Up.)

I believe it is safe to say that the slides are from the proper era. It seems that the coding on the edge is correct for 1947 and that the slides were mounted in cardboard sleeves available for a specific time seems to eliminate the other coding possibilities. Although we haven’t seen all the scientific testing that has been done and don’t have access to the chemical analysis of the film stock nor the chemicals used to develop and preserve the film, all do seem to be from the proper era. The slides were taken in the late 1940s, developed in that time frame, and are not part of a modern hoax.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the slides show an alien creature. Though we have a poor quality slide to use as a base, there have been many examples that seem to show similar creatures, mummies actually, found in museums. They are close to the image we all have seen and if it isn’t an exact match with that on the slide, I’m not sure that is a problem. What we need to see is something that is far removed from those examples. Something that is truly alien in nature and I’m not sure how you’re going to prove the creature is alien especially if you don’t know who took the pictures, when they were taken or where they were taken.

I’ve listened to the arguments such as in the 1940s the aliens in science fiction didn’t have big heads, but that isn’t much of an argument. And, there are some examples of just that. Here is something else about the science fiction literature of those times. When talking about an advanced species, about what humans will look like in the far future, it seemed to always big with big heads and spindly bodies. The idea was that the brain would evolve and grow and the rest of the body would degenerate and shrink. Aliens, often thought of advanced humans, sometimes took on those characteristics (for those interested in this, see “The Man Who Evolved,” by Edward Hamilton published in 1931... type the name into Google and take a look at the cover for the April 1931 issue of Wonder Stories) For that reason, I don’t think much of the argument that no one was talking of creatures like seen in the slides. I believe that in the 1940s, when people discussed the evolution of humans (and granted, that would be a small number of people) the big head little body was sort of the default setting.

The magazine cover can be seen here:

http://brendans-island.com/blogsource/20130220ff/20141006wonder-TheManWhoEvolved-collage-658.jpg

What all this means, simply, is even if they prove to the satisfaction of everyone that the film was exposed and developed in 1947 or 1948, they are not going to be able to prove it alien. The mummies seem to be too close and frankly, the best explanation is that the slides show a mummy found out in the desert. This has nothing to do with the Roswell case.

I hope for the best for them, but I fear it will end badly for them. Unless they have something better, something hidden from all of us and saved for the big reveal, I think we’re all going to be disappointed. This is, of course, just my opinion but since I have mentioned in the last couple of weeks, I figured I should make it official. I wish Tom and Don luck because they’re going to need it.

The Roswell Slides - An Update by Tony Bragalia

(Blogger's Note: This is a version of the posting yesterday. I had removed it for two reasons. One, the information about the hacking seemed to be irrelevant and accused certain people with it. That was inappropriate, I believed. Second, the comments section had turned so toxic that the discussion turned into a private war and was not appropriate. I now warn all that any comments that slide into name calling, unfounded allegations, and personal attacks will be removed. Keep the conversation civil and we'll all have no trouble. Deviate and the comment is gone.

There is a second problem that I have not been able to resolve and frankly, I don't want to spend the time to do it now. I cannot post the pictures. My solution is to send this to Frank Warren at UFO Chronicles along with the illustrations so that all can see them. Since there has been quite a bit of discussion about this, I believe that we all need to see the illustrations though one of them has been well published and the other shows the form that the slide was in before it was manipulated by others.)

THE ROSWELL ALIEN SLIDES AND THE TRUTH

BY

ANTHONY BRAGALIA

The announcement that slides dating from 1947 found to have belonged to lawyer Hilda Ray and her husband Bernerd Ray (a top oil exploration geologist working in NM and TX during that time) have caused what can only be described as an internet sensation. Awareness of the slides existence was heightened very recently by the fact that individuals have taken a “screen grab” of one of the slides that appeared in a documentary preview by one Adam Dew, entitled “Kodachrome,” and attempted to enlarge and enhance it.

Since then, opinions have been proffered and amateur “analysis” has been conducted. Verdicts on just what the slides show have been rendered, often with impassioned, mean-spirited response and heated accusations. Inflammatory remarks, name-calling and near-libelous allegations have been made by people who have not been privy to a clear version of the slide nor seen the other existing slide at all- and without the benefit of review of the professional, scientific study that has been conducted on the them. And this negative, knee-jerk reaction to the slides existence began far earlier, even before the release of any image at all!

The truth of the matter could not be more different from what the noisy naysayers maintain…

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING AT?

If, as the saying goes, a picture is worth 1000 words, this attempted enhancement gives only 250 of them. The fact is this: this is a video screen grab from a computer monitor –it is a picture of a picture of a picture- which has been taken at a distance of a slide in its frame. It is not a photographic print made from the slide, nor does it show the slide’s projected image on a screen.

Importantly, this poor-quality image is not even in color as are the original Kodachromes (a sepia-tone was applied to the image in the video.) The size and perspective of the being –and its texture and shape- is hugely distorted and important key details are unable to be seen.

A reproduction of an image can only be as good as its source material – and that source material was intentionally modified in the preview video. Bear in mind too that this is only one of the two slides that exists. This slide is the least interesting of the two. The other slide provides greater clarity and with far more detail revealed.

None of the photo-scientists who analyzed the slides were working with such degraded material like a video screen grab- they were working with the ‘raw’ original slides and with high-definition enlargements of them. This is not so of the many who give ill-informed opinions about them.

Finally, the image on the video was only offered as to give an idea or preview of the ‘real deal.’ It was not intended by any means whatsoever to be used to technically dissect the image or to offer the ‘full view’ of what the slides actually show. It is difficult to understand what some people do not understand about that.

FROM HOAX TO HYDROCEPHALIC-

DESPERATE ATTEMPTS FOR AN EXPLANATION

There have been cries from some quarters that the slides are not authentic, or depict a mummy or even a hydrocephalic deformity. And these cries are as loud as they are incorrect.

To address the question of dating of the slides and the possibility of photographic deception, here is a summation of analysis done by experts from industry and academia:

-The film is manufacture coded (edge code dated) as 1927 or 1947 or 1967

-The protective lacquer used on the film is from the 1930s to 1960, eliminating the year 1927

-The cardboard sleeve used is 1941-1949, eliminating the year 1967 and leaving 1949 as the latest date the film was exposed

By simple process of elimination using these findings, we are left with the year 1947. Allegations that somehow the owner of the film was able to locate, purchase and take undeveloped, pristine and preserved Kodachrome filmstock from the specific year 1947 and find a way to take a picture with it and have it successfully developed using the old stock is ludicrous. I challenge anyone anywhere at any time to today find such 1947 cardboard slide sleeves and unused 1947 Kodachrome film, find an appropriate camera, take a picture of what is shown, and then have it processed.

If the being depicted in the slide was made in 1947 was a model or dummy, it in no way correlates to the 1940s concept of what ‘Martians’ look like and everything like what witnesses to the bodies at Roswell reported. Too, the slides were found hidden amongst well over 100 other slides taken by the Rays in the 1940s, so everything must be viewed within this context.

To address the question of whether or not the being depicted is that of a mummy or of a hydrocephalic:

-Hydrocephaly is a condition whereby there is an abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles of the brain causing bulbous enlargement of the skull. The treatment is to use a cerebral shunt to regulate amount, flow direction and pressure of the fluid. However, there are two things that must be understood. According to the journal Annual Review of Hydrocephalus, the long-term survival of hydrocephalics before 1960 (the year shunts were introduced as a treatment) was exceedingly low. Dr. Spyros Sgourus says that there was “high morbidity and mortality associated with treatment of hydrocephalus in the 1930s and 1940s.” According to the Review, in the 1940s, before shunting was established, infants with hydrocephalus had a very poor prognosis for survival. The fact is that the being pictured in the slides is between 3.5-4.0 feet tall and because of this is not a hydrocephalic infant. The skirted female legs (stocky like Hilda Ray) shown in the slide give us a very good sense of the length of the being she is looking at.

-Clear versions of the slides depict a being whose anatomy does not correspond to a human being. The limbs (legs and arms) are exceeding thin, frail and fragile, characteristics that are not associated with hydrocephalus. In fact, the torso (which has been opened) and rest of the body look nothing like any known case of hydrocephalus in history. The skull too, is enlarged but not ‘bulbous’ which is characteristic of non-shunted hydrocephalics.

-The being’s head is severed from the body (not evident in the screen grab) and one eye is missing. The chest and the abdominal cavity are missing.  Hydrocephalic corpses are kept intact in medical study and display.

-The being has no teeth and has wide-set eyes. Lack of teeth and wide set eyes are not known to be conditions associated with hydrocephaly.

-In the actual slides it is evident that the being has only four fingers. To my knowledge, mummies and hydrocephalics are not typically missing a fifth digit.

-A detail not known or revealed to anyone but those who have seen the slides is that close-ups of the being’s face show a very ‘pointed’ chin, a chin that in no way resembles a human, mummified or hydrocephalic. In fact, the facial features do not in any way match that of other known hydrocephalics or mummies.

-One commenter (Gilles Fernandes) has shown a side-by-side comparison of the video grabbed slide and an infant mummy. He circles the feet of both, making a comparison and implying that they are one and the same. However, the image Mr. Fernandes offers is that of a specimen who is far, far shorter than 3.5-4.0 tall. And what is depicted in the slide is not a foot at all, but something else, perhaps a piece of debris lying on the surface. The being’s feet actually end behind the placard. In the actual slide there is even another similar, smaller such item which can be seen.

-This ‘placard’ is not very evident in the video grab image. However, it has been enlarged by experts and the writing, in red ink, is handwritten, not typed, as would be found in a biological display in a museum.

-Most importantly, the placard, as well as the support structure that the being rests upon, are clearly ‘temporary.’ The structure looks very make-shift, resembling a quickly-assembled ‘erector set’ type deal, with beams that have ratchet holes in them. The set-up in no way whatsoever resembles that of a professional museum display. It is not a well-crafted, pristine glass museum display box, but something not meant to be at all permanent. There is also a military-green blanket upon which the being rests, atypical of any such museum display of other biological specimens.

-Mummies are desiccated. This being was obviously either recently alive before the fatal pictures were taken, or had been embalmed.

-The Rays hid these two slides away and separate from the other slides found in a chest and were only discovered by the owners much later, as if to indicate that these two slides held special importance and meaning.

A CIRCUS- BUT WHO ARE THE REAL RINGMASTERS?

Some rabid skeptics have disparagingly termed the whole slide affair as ‘a circus.’ If it has in some way become one, it is not at all due to the actions of those who seek to study and present the slides. In fact it is outsiders who have tried to insert themselves into the saga who are the real ringmasters.

It began with a ‘leak’ of the story nearly three years ago.  An anonymous individual apparently contacted researcher Nick Redfern and divulged what he knew. Nick then –understandably- began contacting researchers to gain more information. When word of the slides existence became public, very sick behavior ensued:

-This author had his computer system hacked in an attempt to gain more information about the slides, or perhaps to obtain the slides themselves.

-Other researchers including Nick Redfern and Tom Carey (who had his stored documents ‘crypto-locked’ with malware) were also hacked.

-Information and names obtained from my stolen emails on the slides investigation was made public on a website (before being deleted.)  

-Some people began contacting -or threatened to contact- involved photo scientists and witnesses (including a 90 year old man) in an effort to either gain more information or to derail the investigation.

-Money was stolen from my credit card account in a ‘skimming’ scheme resulting from the hack of my computer system. Bank investigators are currently engaged in resolving this.

-Accusations of hoax were made even before any release of any type of the slides. I was directly accused of being ‘a liar’ and other defamatory and legally-actionable comments were made against me and my reputation.

-Phone calls were placed to me in the wee hours by blocked callers who threatened me with ‘exposure’ as a fraud and my family members have even been harassed.

-Some have recently blogged accusing investigators of “pretending” to be hacked to build publicity and mystery. Falsely reporting that a crime has been committed (charges have been filed with the FBI) is a federal offense.

MAKING MONEY ON THE SLIDES

Some have said that the whole thing has been done to make money. But what has really motivated the slides investigation is a sense of obligation to truth and to history. What these skeptics fail utterly to understand is the great expense –both personal and monetary- that this slide investigation has cost. Who do they think paid for the expert analysis of the slides? Who do they think paid for repeated visits to places like New Mexico, Texas and Rochester? Who paid for the hotels, car rentals, meals out? On whose dime and on whose time do they think all this investigation was done? This has all been self-funded by the owner and the investigators. And every moment that has been taken investigating the slides is a moment that has been taken away from making a living or time with family. Frankly the gall that some have to suggest that this should all be unpaid effort is beyond belief.  And despite attempts at gaining mainstream media interest, none was obtained. A public venue was chosen and a live broadcast planned (on May 5^th) that has to be paid for by someone, and a self-funded documentary such as Mr. Dew’s was produced. Skeptics should thank those involved, not condemn them. And as the discoverer of the slides, why shouldn’t the owner enjoy recompense? I cannot understand why some insist this should be a volunteer effort and that everything should be done for free. That said, this author has neither received nor sought any compensation- but I do not in any way at all find any fault for those that do.

WHAT THE SLIDES SAY ABOUT US

Perhaps as interesting as the remarkable story of the slides themselves is the remarkable story of how people have dealt with such news. Jealousy, a sense of exclusion, and an inability to accept the possibility of what the slides do represent have all been in evidence during the slides saga. The compulsion by some to insert themselves into the story and to offer their judgment even before the slides and study are presented is worthy of a psychology study. Indeed, what the slides say about life beyond Earth is as telling as those who live upon it.

Removal of a Post

Blogger's Note: I will confess that I didn't read this as closely as I should have and then spending something more than an hour attempting to be able to post to this blog, I believe this is more trouble than it is worth. Yes, I believe that we should learn all we can about the Roswell Slides and I also understand the attempts by some to protect the witnesses. I know that most of us would merely attempt to verify the information, especially when it has the potential to be explosive. But we are also dealing with private citizens who don't deserve an onslaught of telephone calls, some of which could get nasty.

Still, I understand the desire to verify the information. Sometimes things get changed from one investigator to the next, not as a result of deception, but misunderstanding. A case in point would be Thomas Dubose who seemed to tell two versions of the events in General Ramey's office, but one of those researchers was attempting to push a narrow point of view on a man who was 90 years old. Truth got lost in all that turmoil.

The real point here is that this turned nasty way too fast. There seemed to be little in the way of civil discourse and for that reason, I took it down. For those who desire information about the slides, let's see if we can't get something that deals with that specifically rather than some of the side issues.

But one thing that I want to make clear. Once those who hold the slides decided to make a public announcement about their existence and to provide some information about them, they should have expected all of us out here to want more specific information. They hold the cards, but they also opened the door. They demand patience but it is too late for that. If they don't like the tone of the discourse, they have the power to change it.

The Plains of San Agustin Crash Revisited

Since it has been brought up here in the last couple of days, and since we might have beaten the Roswell Slides issue to death, at least for the time being, I thought we might look at the Plains of San Agustin crash scenario once again. Remember, to disagree with me doesn’t make you a liar, just someone with a different opinion. When you don’t bother with searching all aspects of an event, then you become an advocate for that event. I have looked into this case for a long time, and given everything that I have found, I simply cannot shoe horn it into a July 1947 time frame.

You might say that this story begins when Stan Friedman met a couple, Vern and Jean Maltais, in Bemidji, Minnesota, on October 24, 1978. They wanted to tell him of Barney Barnett and a UFO crash that Barnett had told them about many years earlier. He related the tale in his book, Top Secret Majic on pages 18 – 19.

According to Friedman, they were told by Barnett he had found a flying saucer crashed with four bodies lying around it. The military arrived and told Barnett and members of an archaeological team to leave the area. Friedman wrote, “They had no date for the Barnett story.” Please note here that Stan is making this claim about the lack of a date when first told this tale.

Later, however, the date was narrowed down when Vern and Jean Maltais told Bill Moore they visited the Barnetts in February, 1950 (See The Roswell Incident, pages 53 – 58). It was during this visit that Barnett said that he had seen the crashed saucer. Jean Maltais, when asked where the craft had crashed, said, “…I don’t exactly, recall. It was somewhere out of Socorro. He may have said exactly, but I don’t recall. I remember he said it was prairie – ‘the Flats’ is the way he put it… Barney traveled all over New Mexico, but did most of his work directly west of Socorro.”

According to what the Maltais told Moore during his interview with them, Barnett was out on assignment near Magdalena, New Mexico, which is west of Socorro. The story was that Barnett thought at first it was a plane crash but when he got closer, crossing a little more than mile of desert, he saw that it was a saucer-shaped craft, twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter. It was a flash of sunlight from the metallic craft that caught his attention.

Maltais said that Barnett saw some bodies. They were dead, according to what Barnett told Maltais. There were bodies both inside and out, and Barnett said that the ones outside had been tossed out by the impact. He described them as being like humans but they weren’t human. The heads were pair shaped, their arms and legs were skinny, the eyes were small and they had no hair. They were smaller than humans and the heads were larger than those on human bodies.

There were other witnesses there, according to what Maltais heard and what he told me during interviews in August, 1989 and July 1990. These were archaeologists who had been working nearby and apparently had seen the object fall the night before. Barnett seemed to think they were from an eastern university, but Moore reported they were from the University of Pennsylvania. These witnesses have never been located though searches for them have been made.

Not long after Barnett arrived, the military turned up, and took over. They condoned the area and escorted everyone off the site after warning them not to talk about it.

Barnett apparently didn’t keep the secret very long according to others interviewed. In 1947, J. F. “Fleck” Danley was Barnett’s boss. Bill Moore asked Danley about the story. Danley said that Barnett had come into the office one day and said that the flying saucers were real. Danley had been in a bad mood on that day, said that the flying saucers weren’t real and he wasn’t interested in discussing it further. But Danley, thinking about it, felt bad, so he asked him about it sometime later. Danley said Barnett mentioned something about the “Flats” but couldn’t remember much else including when this conversation might have taken place.

Moore returned to the topic four months later and again talked to Danley. At that time Danley said that he remembered the date and was sure that it was sometime early in the summer of 1947. In interviews I conducted with Danley in October 1990 and June 1991, he suggested that he didn’t have a clear memory of when Barnett had told him about the crashed saucer, and in fact, didn’t have a clear idea where Barnett had been on the day he told Danley about the saucer.

Danley mentioned that Barnett was a soil conservation engineer who worked out of Socorro and a satellite office in Magdalena. He did mention that Barnett occasionally made it into Lincoln County, New Mexico but that was rare. Please notice that it was Danley that provided the information that Barnett occasionally got into Lincoln County, in which Corona and the Foster ranch are located. Interestingly, Danley remembered Barnett said something about Carrizozo when he mentioned this in a May 14, 1991 interview. He said that Barnett told him about the crash but he didn’t remember him saying anything about bodies or creatures. Please note that Danley said that Barnett didn’t say a thing about bodies… yes that is redundant, but necessary.

To make this even more complicated, Friedman said that he had “reinterviewed Danley and several others who knew Barney in 1990 [clearly Friedman means he interviewed the people in 1990 and not that they knew Barnett in 1990] and again was told ‘in the Plains.’” Of course, many of those people said “the Flats,” which Friedman, with some justification, translated into the Plains.

These were not the conclusions of others. Jaime Shandera, at the UFO Expo West in Los Angeles on May 11, 1991, was lecturing about the Plains of San Agustin. According to information supplied by Antonio Huneeus and Javier Sierra Shandera had this to say:

The people that supposedly found stuff in Socorro did not find stuff in Socorro. The party of archaeological people and the Barney Barnett part of the story; they were at the Corona site, not in Socorro. I know [this is] the way you understand it because it’s the way it’s always been written and even the way it was written in The Roswell Incident. That’s wrong. There is new evidence that it was all in the Corona site. The way it happened was this – there were not two sites that were more than one hundred miles or so apart … and the so-called Roswell site was just outside of Corona. The archaeologists and Barney Barnett part of it, that was over in Corona. There was no person that found anything in San Agustin.

There were others who talked to Barnett about the case. Stan Friedman interviewed a military reserve officer from New York, William Leed who said that in “the early 1960s,” a fellow officer had told him about Barnett. Leed arranged to go to New Mexico soon after to talk to Barnett about the crash.

Leed did hear the story from Barnett, thought that Barnett was sincere and was impressed that Barnett wouldn’t talk to him until Leed showed him a military ID. Leed made it clear that he was there on a personal quest and this had nothing to do with the military or official business.

There is nowhere in the various interviews with Leed that provide a date or a location. It is assumed that the date is early July, often on the second, and the location is out on the Plains, not far south of Highway 60. Friedman wrote of this meeting between Leed and Barnett, “No reason to think it was other than ‘on the Plains,’ but offers no quotes suggesting that Leed believed this.

In the 1990s, Friedman placed an ad in the Socorro newspaper, asking for anyone who had information about the Barnett story to contact him. One of those who did was Harold Baca who in the 1960s lived across the street from Barnett. He said that as he helped Ruth Barnett take care of an ailing Barnett, he heard about the crashed flying saucer from Barney who was convinced that his cancer was the result of breathing contaminated air near the wrecked saucer and the bodies, at least that is what Baca told me in an interview in June 1991. Baca seemed to think that it had happened “out on the plains.”

Friedman found addition witnesses who suggested that Barnett had said that he was on the Plains. These included the late Marvin Ake, who said he had heard the story “many years earlier, but provided no date and an unidentified and retired postmistress from Datil who said the saucer had been trucked through Magdalena at night. 

Others in the area also remembered discussion of a flying saucer crash on the Plains, but some of them couldn’t remember if they had heard about it in the late 1940s, or sometime after the publication of The Roswell Incident. That was what Johnny Foard told me during an interview on February 9, 1992.

The problem with all this is that Barnett died in 1969 before anyone was talking about flying saucer crashes in New Mexico in 1947 other than mentioning the Aztec case. The interviews are all with people attempting to remember what was said decades earlier and give it some sort of time frame. The contamination of the witnesses can be seen in the evolution of their stories. Vern and Jean Maltais, for example, and according to what Friedman has written, had no date for the story. It wasn’t until later that they seemed to narrow it down and that it could be suggested as July 1947.

The same thing is seen with Fleck Danley. He did not have a time frame or a solid location for the crash until after he had talked to researchers. Other witnesses were vague saying that Barnett had said it was twenty years earlier (Baca) who talked to Barnett about it in 1968 so it provides something of a time frame but one that is still vague.

Then there are people who were on the Plains in July 1947 and said nothing happened. Herbert Dick was one of them. He was excavating the Bat Cave beginning on July 1, 1947, according to a letter I believe was uncovered by Art Campbell in a Harvard archive. The Bat Cave is situated on the eastern side of the Plains with a panorama view from Datil to Horse Springs. If something had fallen and then been recovered in early July 1947, Dick was in a position to see it. We know this because they were excavating the human habitation in the Bat Cave, which means they were near the entrance, and their camp site was on the only flat piece of ground near the cave and facing west. But, according to Dick, they saw nothing.

One other interesting point. In a communication I had with Dick he said that he was not a big fan of the government. If he had seen anything, he wouldn’t keep it a secret. He would tell, but unfortunately, he hadn’t seen anything.

It is for these reasons, that is the lack of first-hand corroboration of the Barnett tale, the inability of the first people to talk of what Barnett said to provide a location and date and that the only source of the information is Barnett that I say, with confidence, that nothing happened there in July 1947.

Roswell Slides Today's (February 10) Update

Well, we all knew that this would blow up quickly once the slides were out… or I should say a poor copy of one of the slides were out. As we’ve all seen by now, that image is not very clear, it doesn’t have much in the way of color, and it provides us little in the way of information. Tom Carey told me yesterday that the slide is much clearer than that very poor image we have.

Today, that is February 10, Gilles Fernandez provided a photograph with “good rezolution [sorry, but I wanted to accurately report what Gilles had said though my first thought was to correct the spelling but should note that Gilles has a very good grasp of English].” He provided a link that shows a small body that looks similar to that in the slide:

http://i38.servimg.com/u/f38/19/01/83/59/roswel11.jpg

He also provided the location of the body seen in this photograph. It is the Museo de las Momias de Guanajuato.  He noted that he was asking a Spanish speaking colleagure for more information.  

He also provided another illustration at:

http://i38.servimg.com/u/f38/19/01/83/59/000_ro10.jpg

This is not the end of the story, of course. Tom Carey reported, “What we thought at first was the being’s foot (circled in the images) isn't a foot at all. It's something else (a piece of debris?) sticking up. The being’s feet actually end behind the placard. Yes, we were on to that almost two years ago. Of course this will not satisfy what's going on out there right now on the blogs, which is insane.”

It would seem then, that this picture, or this being, is not a surprise to Tom. It does look like what we see on the slide, but then, we don’t have a good look at the being on the slide.

So here’s where we are on all this. We haven’t seen a good version of the slide. We do have a very good look at the being in the museum. The two look very similar. Until we get a better version of the slide, it’s very difficult to compare the two.

There is one final comment to make. They released the information into the public arena. If the slide image is of poor quality, it is because of the way it was released. The point is, once they began to publicly talk about the slides and what they showed, then they should have expected some pushback by those who had waited (some not as patiently as others) for them to present their evidence… now we have a presentation for the presentation of evidence at a later date. I suspect we won’t know much more until May 5^th, but then they should have expected all the discussion. They have no one to blame by themselves.

Roswell Slide - Today's (February 9) Update

At the risk of opening the debate about my involvement in the investigation of the Roswell Slides though I haven't talked to Don in more than a year and much of what I know has come from Tom, I will note that the slide circulating on the Internet is the real deal. This is what they were given and have been attempting to vet for over two years. For some reason I cannot get photographs to load on this blog, though I have tried everything I can think of in the last several hours, and have even used other computers. The best I can do is note that the slide was published here:

http://bit.ly/1vcCMnC

You'll have to scroll down through some messages to see the image... or you can search for another example elsewhere. It seems that the slide has been shown on a number of web sites and blogs (too bad I can't be one of them).

I am told that the slides held by Tom and Don are of much better quality, the color is sharper, the image is clearer, but this is the first look that most of us have had of it.

I will also note that this discussion of dating the slides is a little off track because no matter what is learned about the when the film was manufactured and the methodology of Kodak's developing process, in the end, all that is available is the photograph. It is interesting, but I fear that it will do little to convince the world that aliens crashed at Roswell. I have been taking a somewhat wait and see attitude, I do not know what they have done or who they contacted to validate the Kodak information, nor do I know the name of the "Lieutenant" in the one short clip. All I know for certain today is that the image we have is of the actual slide.