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If there are any questions about this, they can be addressed in the comments section of this blog. We are now working to get the images posted on a site that will allow others to take a look at them and provide any thoughts on how to resolve them.
12 comments:
Hello Kevin
Thanks for the update - it would be great to have a website dedicated to the work being done on the memo and were people can post constructive comments as to what other methods could be employed (and progress made) to read the thing.
Lance has also created a "drop box" where the files can also be obtained.
Maybe if we work together as a team we can achieve something.
Regards
Nitram
Didn't the USAF commission some agency to try to enlarge and decipher the contents of this infamous memo back in 1995? It is mentioned in their Roswell Report. Has anyone ever discovered what agency this was and heard anything directly from them?
Has the methodology improved since then? The fact that the USAF reported negative findings on this memo but would not name the said agency suggests to me that either the firm did not want their name associated with crashed saucers (a bit like Battelle in the 1950s) or there never was any such agency or firm, and that no real analysis was done.
What is the super deciphering technology that did not exist in 1995 but possibly does in 2015?
Wouldn't it be interesting if the anonymous ETH proponent and the anonymous, knee-jerk skepto-bunker were the same person? Our intrepid skepto-bunkers would challenge others to prove they are not. I think that is the way it works with our so-called skeptics. There is no supposition too ridiculous to require an explanation or refutation. It is interesting that Martin and cda were the first two posts. They are convincing me a round of Locke and Demosthenes might be entertaining. I could be a fanatical ETH'er and a moronic skepto-bunker and argue with myself. Just kidding, but there is no better situation to illustrate how anonymity is counterproductive in this type of community. While I am kidding, I also challenge anyone to prove that cda and Martin are not the same person.
Rusty:
Our fingerprints and DNA are quite different, as is obvious from our different attitudes and the wording of our blog posts.
Having said that, I agree that there are cases in the past where one person has assumed the role of two in a debate. One was when Patrick Moore, the esteemed astronomer, debated with himself under two assumed names in a 'way out' magazine called COSMIC VOICE back in the 1950s. This was shortly after Moore had authored a spoof contactee book, under another name, purely to prove that anything Adamski can do, he could do better.
CDA wrote:
Didn't the USAF commission some agency to try to enlarge and decipher the contents of this infamous memo back in 1995? It is mentioned in their Roswell Report. Has anyone ever discovered what agency this was and heard anything directly from them?
National Reconnaissance Office of the CIA. Nobody has ever heard anything directly from them.
The first director of the NRO was Arthur Lundahl, who headed the Navy team that analyzed the Tremonton UFO film and concluded unidentified (not birds, not balloons, not planes, etc.). The CIA snapped him up after his Tremonton work to head the new NRO. Lundahl was a pioneer in image analysis (headed analysis of U-2 Cuban missile pictures and briefed Kennedy) and was known to have an intense interest in UFOs, with a huge UFO library in his home. The NRO also did some analysis of UFO photos for the Condon committee.
The point only being it is not surprising that the NRO might logically be used for photo analysis by the Air Force, though IMHO they did a lousy analysis of the Ramey photo. (Maybe being given poor images or insufficient time to carry out a proper analysis.)
Has the methodology improved since then? The fact that the USAF reported negative findings on this memo but would not name the said agency suggests to me that either the firm did not want their name associated with crashed saucers (a bit like Battelle in the 1950s) or there never was any such agency or firm, and that no real analysis was done.
The Air Force published their radar target analysis (only half completed), but not their Ramey memo analysis, so SOMETHING was done by somebody. The AF claimed only that the lab was unable to "visualize" any "details" because images were of "insufficient quality" for ANYTHING to be read in the memo. What images, what image quality, what analysis, what report? Nobody knows. Details of methodology are everything in trying to determine if a study has merit, but they provided zero details, just a sweeping claim that nothing could be read.
But the fact is, some things definitely CAN be read in the memo, so how could the super-dooper NRO fail to read at least WEATHER BALLOONS, or FORT WORTH, TEX?
Either an analysis was done and SOMETHING could indeed be read (VICTIMS? DISC?) which they didn't want getting out, or they were given such crappy images to work with that nothing indeed could be read (total incompetence in doing analysis), or they were the typical "skeptic" spending two microseconds of "analysis" and declaring nothing could be read.
Dennis Balthauser spent considerable time writing FOIA's to try to get his hands on the report, only to be given a repeated run-around by the Air Force. As I wrote 3 years ago on Kevin's blog:
Dennis Balthauser has tried in vain, starting in 1999, to get the Air Force to produce documentation that the national level lab claimed nothing could be read... Starting with a Pentagon FOIA request, Balthauser got the standard AF talking point that they were not a repository for UFO information and referred him instead to Blue Book microfilm at the National Archives. This is the exact same runaround that so infuriated Congressman Schiff to begin with and launched the GAO investigation. In a follow-up FOIA, Balthauser noted he wasn't requesting UFO information but documentation of a statement in an official Air Force government report that had been published only a few years before. Then Balthauser got another runaround, being referred to AF archives in Maxwell AFB in Alabama, who continued to stall and dodge his inquiries. Dennis provides the correspondence at his website:\
http://www.truthseekeratroswell.com/foia-requests.html
Although not documented here, Dennis has told me he eventually got referred back to the National Archives. Over 10 years later the AF still cannot produce any report from the unnamable lab to back up the non-readability claim.
All -
I am astonished how quickly this whole nonsense erupted... The original post, for those of you who can read, was merely saying that the copyright issues about the scans of the negative had been worked out... and suddenly we're off on a tangent, well, it's not even a tangent because it is so deep into the weeds that no connection could be made. I have three solutions here... deactivate comments so that we don't have to put up with this nonsense, ban certain individuals from this blog because their comments are rarely relevant, or shut the whole thing down... I'll let you all figure out which I selected.
So, we go back to the original idea of the posting here though I let the conversation about the Air Force attempting to read the Ramey memo because it does sort of figure into all this. All other comments, as you can see, are gone... shouldn't have been watching football when I could be sitting in front of the computer waiting to see what ignorance will be coming through.
Steve,
You are correct. In my haste to post I confused NRO with NPIC (National Photo Interpretation Center), which was under the CIA initially (and first headed by Art Lundahl). The NPIC was still going in 1994 when AFOSI was doing their Roswell "investigation" (and thus available for Ramey photos analysis).
That the NPIC (not NRO) was the AFOSI's "national level organization" that did the analysis had long been suspected, but it was only recently that a VERY credible source disclosed it was the NPIC.
@ DR:
If a "VERY credible source" disclosed NPIC was the "unnamed agency," who might that be, if you can say? And if not, why not? Even if the source cannot be named for whatever reason, what was the content or basis of his disclosure?
I think someone should definitely file two FOIAs, one on the CIA's DS&T division, and a parallel one on the NGA. It would be valuable to find out what NPIC did in regard to the AFOSI/USAF report on the Roswell incident in regard to governmental efforts to decipher the Ramey memo, IMHO.
[Does anyone know if this has been attempted before or not?]
That, and the documents that might be released as a result, even if redacted, might tell us if the USAF made a credible, sincere effort to read the Ramey memo or not, and if they did not, that raises certain questions as to how and why that may have occurred, or the motives involved.
That, depending on the results of any such "paired" FOIAs, might also shed light on the nature and thoroughness (or lack thereof) of the USAF's effort to find out about the Roswell incident itself. I'd suggest that could be rather important.
Steve, All -
The very credible source, Colonel Richard Weaver, gave the information to me. I filed FOIA for information and received a reply from the CIA telling me that they didn't exist in 1947 because I asked about the picture and the Ramey memo... they didn't read or didn't care that I referred to the study having been initiated in 1994. I filed a FOIA with the new home of the organization but have received nothing, not even the required by law notification that they would process the request. David was being unnecessarily careful in his response, but there was nothing I received from Weaver to suggest that the information was in any way confidential.
If I remember correctly, Mark Rodeghier, director of CUFOS, had contacted Weaver about 20 years ago and asked him who the high-level photoanalysis lab was. Weaver told him, sorry, but he couldn't disclose it. So at one time its identity was considered highly confidential (probably to avoid those nosy "believers" from filing FOIAs asking them for more information--like the actual reports instead of AFOSI's version of their conclusions).
Thus I wasn't sure if Weaver still maintained some degree of confidentiality about this. But according to Kevin, apparently not. Maybe because FOIA has been so gutted the last dozen years since 9/11 that agencies feel they no longer need to comply with the legal provisions of FOIA, like even acknowledging receipt of your request and eventually responding with some sort of answer, no matter how half-assed, evasive, or disingenuous. As Kevin wrote not long ago, unless you have a lot of money to burn to file a lawsuit to legally force them to comply with FOIA, they can thumb their nose at you with impunity. Nobody seems to be enforcing FOIA law when it is ignored.
Check and checkmate. As DR wrote:
"As Kevin wrote not long ago, unless you have a lot of money to burn to file a lawsuit to legally force them to comply with FOIA, they can thumb their nose at you with impunity. Nobody seems to be enforcing FOIA law when it is ignored."
But as a last resort re the Ramey memo, why not mount a crowdfunding campaign for the purpose of filing such a lawsuit? There must be an attorney or two willing to prosecute such an effort, perhaps even pro bono. Once in process, such a lawsuit would receive media attention and stimulate public interest in the memo (and perhaps additional private funding).
Public attention would then be focused on the attempts by researchers to discern key words and phrases in the memo, the agreement on certain words and phrases, and their clear ramifications. In the internet world, the issue could well 'become viral'.
Eventually the most readable text achieved might be carried in the media, presenting an intriguing puzzle for all who see it. It would be difficult for the PTB to quell that interest once provoked. And a judge in a position to [and under pressure to] declare the inquiry a 'national security' issue would be hard put to rationalize that judgment given the date of the memo. To identify the 1947 Ramey memo as a national security issue would be to acknowledge the reality of the ufo coverup in the U.S.
Again, as DR wrote:
"Nobody seems to be enforcing FOIA law when it is ignored."
That development itself would become the issue, and for all who are not blind it would demonstrate the significance of Roswell as the event that initiated the massive secrecy engineered around the ufo phenomenon.
It might work, and it's worth trying, imo.
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