Holder's "Five-Page Report" - Updated

Carmon Marano

Let’s try this one more time. I had found a reference to a five-page report written by Captain Richard T. Holder in a letter written by Dr. James McDonald. When searching for the documentation, I was using a Xerox copy of the Project Blue Book file, which, I have learned, was somewhat jumbled. I was interested in this five-page report because I could find no such report in the Blue Book files. I believe I have now sorted this out and can say, “There is no five-page report.” That means that I have found the documents and they run to more than five pages. I wonder where McDonald got the idea there were only five pages.

Searching through the Blue Book documents that were recovered by former Project Blue Book officer, Carmon Marano, which seem to be everything that was in the official file, I found a “table of contents” for a section in a folder inside the original folder also labeled with the date. That table of contents labeled the tabs, the first of which was Tab A, Lt. (sic) Holder report. That was everything that I believed was part of that original report, plus several other documents. Following, are the images of that whole section of the Blue Book file.

It is clear that the handwritten notes on the drawings made by Lonnie Zamora were made by Holder and that the illustrations were made on the evening of April 24 and in the early morning of April 25. Notice that Zamora did sign them.

Following is a three-page report that is credited to Holder. It is nearly the same as another report credited, in the Xerox file that I have, to Major William Conner, who was the UFO officer (as well as a public relations guy at Kirtland AFB). What I believe happened is that Connor used the Holder report for the basis of his report, though I’m not sure that I understand the rational for it. He added nothing to the report that would suggest a reason for retyping it. It is clear, from the small illustrations in Connor’s report, that they are not the same (meaning here the oval is larger, the symbol is more compact and the final image has a symbol on it that seems to be a hybrid of the description).

Other than some minor changes, and the names having been redacted from Connor’s report, but not in Holder’s, this is a transcript of the interview with Zamora conducted by Holder and Brynes that first night.

For comparison, here is the report attributed to Major Connor so that you all can see for yourselves what the differences are.

This, I believe, should be the end, the very end of the episode. Had it not been for McDonald’s mention of the five-page report, I’m not sure that I would have been able to put all this together. Again, there are many people who contributed to this including Carmon Marano, Ben Moss, Tony Angiola, Rob Swiatek and Rob Mercer. I have used the Project Blue Book microfilms, the Fold3 website, the Xerox copy provided to me by the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, documents retrieved from the files of Dr. James McDonald and a couple of anonymous contributions. This wouldn’t have been possible if not for the Internet and the cooperation of the people named here… and couldn’t have been done anywhere as quickly without these resources.