Hangar 1 and the Roswell Case

By a somewhat strange coincidence, I happened on an episode of Hangar 1 just a couple of weeks after I had interviewed Jan Harzan, MUFON Executive Director. I hadn’t realized that the opening of the show made such a big deal out of “MUFON’s Archives” stored in this huge warehouse-like hangar. Harzan told me that when the producers arrived, they asked where the files were and the current director said, “Over there in Hangar One,” and a title was born. Many of MUFON’s files are

no longer in a hangar… and the hangar shown on the beginning of the program does not exist as a MUFON warehouse.

Yeah, that’s splitting a hair because television is a visual medium and the producers of television shows are in need of stunning visuals which that hangar is. I can live with that as long as we all understand that Hangar 1, as described, does not exist.

But then they delved into the Roswell UFO crash and fell badly off the rails. It started with the mispronunciation of Mack Brazel’s last name and continued on to invented quotes for Jesse Marcel. The Chaves County sheriff, George Wilcox, did not go out to the ranch managed by Brazel and upon his return alert the intelligence officer at Roswell. Instead, Brazel brought some of the debris into the office in Chaves County and the sheriff then called the base alerting, indirectly, Major Jesse Marcel. The sheriff did not go out because the Brazel ranch was in Lincoln County.

Hangar 1 brought in General Nathan Twining, who, in 1947, was the commanding officer of the Air Materiel Command, and later the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They point out that Twining had created the first official UFO investigation and cloaked it in secrecy… but failed to mention that in the letter in which he calls for the creation of that study, he also cited the lack of crash recovered debris.

They talked about Glenn Dennis’ missing nurse, never revealing that the search for her failed and upon that point Dennis then changed the story about her, her name and why he had given us the name he did. They showed a drawing of the alien creature claiming it was made by the nurse but, of course, it wasn’t. The drawing was made by Walter Henn under Dennis’ direction. I happen to have the original

drawing, with includes a couple of changes made by Don Schmitt, also under Dennis’ direction. (Given the circumstances, I might own the copyright on it.)

The drawings made under the direction of Dennis, original artwork by Walter Henn,.

Then, in what I found outrageous, they begin to cite the secret or shadow government that was created at that time, July 1947, under the name MJ-12. They mention in passing that it is somewhat controversial but we all realize that is just a way to dismiss the claim of controversy. They suggest that everyone knows that it is real. This is where they completely lost me because the consensus seems to be that MJ-12 is a hoax. I laid all this out in Roswell in the 21^st Century, in which I devote the massive Appendix A to a comprehensive analysis of the whole sorry episode. I have found what I believe to be the fatal flaw which brings down all of MJ-12. For those who haven’t figured it out yet, MJ-12 is a hoax that began in the 1980s.

And we must never forget the Hangar 1 report of the “star soldier,” who claimed to have been abducted at 17, served for twenty years fighting the alien enemy on Mars, only to be returned to his bed 15 minutes after he left. This wasn’t part of the most recent episode I watched, but it is part of the series. This is fiction complete and total and to suggest any sort of reality to it makes the whole field of UFO research look bad.

Don’t get me wrong (though I know that many will), I don’t object to this show on principle, but only because they “report” everything as if it is a foregone conclusion for reality. They pay lip service to some of the criticisms of various investigations and sightings, but ignore most of that criticism. While this is supposed to be a documentary, remember what Jan Harzan told me during our discussion of it, “Television is not a documentary.” This is all television and they, MUFON, have no real control over what the producers say or do.

Or, in other words, it’s not their fault.

Here’s now what we know, based on some of what Harzan said. The show wasn’t really a documentary. You couldn’t do justice to the five or six cases examined in each episode, but it was good for business with more sightings being reported and more people joining the organization. They aren’t above running with a story that nearly everyone knows is complete fiction. I suppose we could deduce he was saying was that they did it for the membership gains and the money it brought in.