X-Zone Broadcast Network - Peter Davenport

I had invited Peter Davenport on the show because one of my other guests, several weeks ago, had said some unpleasant things about Peter and his UFO Reporting

Peter Davenport

Center. My plan was to ask him about that interaction but we didn’t get to it on the program. However, I already knew the answer because I had mentioned it to him earlier in an email. His response was that he didn’t remember the encounter… which isn’t surprising since he receives, literally thousands of inquiries, reports and communications a year. He did say that sometimes those calling in want to chat about more than their sighting and he just doesn’t have time to go into all that. I understand given some of the email requests I get. The one that made me laugh was someone wanted copies of all the UFO pictures I have. No mention of compensation for the time, effort or money spent to fulfill the request.

Instead, we talked about his first UFO sighting as a youngster in St. Louis, Missouri. By a strange coincidence, I had sitting on my desk a loose-leaf binder that held the first half of the Project Blue Book index to their sightings… It holds maybe 6000 of those reports, and since Peter’s report fit into the time frame of the binder I had, I looked it up. I mentioned on the program that I would report on what I found when I researched the two sightings that fit into his time frame. You can, of course, listen to the program here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/22215295

Peter’s sighting didn’t seem to fit the information the Air Force collected, which means only that the Air Force hadn’t collected it. Both files were short and the Project Cards hold the relevant information about those sightings. As I say, these are from the right time frame but are not related to what Peter and many others had seen that night.

Project Cards from the Blue Book files.

We also got around to the first UFO investigation he had made back as a teenager working for a newspaper. While he wasn’t on the scene during the Exeter, NH, sightings, he did interview the principals within days of the events. He talked, in person, with the two police officers, walked the scene of the sighting and talked with the civilian witness over the telephone.

The Phoenix Lights came up next, and we got his perspective on the events that took place in March 1997. I did say something about Mike Rogers providing his take on the sightings and found that while there was disagreement between what Mike had seen and what Peter had learned, there was also points of agreement. Nothing said by Peter contradicted anything mentioned by Mike, though we didn’t get too deeply into that.

I have been looking into the drone sightings in Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming recently, and have communicated with some of those doing the ground work in the investigation. Next week, I’m going to try to put all the information into some sort of a cohesive analysis. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to resolve the issue to everyone’s satisfaction, and in fact, not even sure that I’ll be able to resolve anything, but I do hope to provide some solid information. If you have questions, send them through the comments section here and if I have a good answer, I’ll give it on the show.

SS Cotopaxi - No Longer a Victim of the Bermuda Triangle

On December 1, 1925, the crew of SS Cotopaxi radioed that the ship was taking on water and listing during a storm. On December 31, the ship was officially listed as overdue. With that, it entered the legend of the Bermuda Triangle as one of those mysterious disappearances that so many find fascinating. Charles Berlitz in his

SS Cotopaxi?

book The Bermuda Triangle lists the SS Cotopaxi as one of the major ships that disappeared. Although there are sources that suggest 32 passengers, the description of the ship suggests that those 32 people were sailors and not really passengers.

I will note here that many of the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle were not all that mysterious. In many cases, such as this one, the weather was bad and was, at least, a contributing factor. This is not to mention that many of the “facts” reported about these disappearances were not actual facts but speculations by the writers who believed that something strange was happening.

But those of us interested in facts, try to check beyond the original story which means not giving up once we have the preliminary information. On my radio program, A Different Perspective, I did mention the Cotopaxi had been found. CBS news was one of the sources that I used in that preliminary work. You can see that story here:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bermuda-triangle-ship-found-underwater-explorer-believes-hes-found-ship-that-vanished-nearly-100-years-ago/

and this is from the Science Channel (and yes, it’s a tad bit long):

https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AwrJ61f.BTJeu.EAIipXNyoA;_ylc=X1MDMjc2NjY3OQRfcgMyBGZyA21jYWZlZQRmcjIDc2ItdG9wBGdwcmlkA2hOeXBpeklfUjlTU3U0TnVfZ2s2cUEEbl9yc2x0AzAEbl9zdWdnAzQEb3JpZ2luA3NlYXJjaC55YWhvby5jb20EcG9zAzAEcHFzdHIDBHBxc3RybAMwBHFzdHJsAzMzBHF1ZXJ5A3NzJTIwY290b3BheGklMjBmb3VuZCUyMHNjaWVuY2UlMjBjaGFubmVsBHRfc3RtcAMxNTgwMzM2NzU5?p=ss+cotopaxi+found+science+channel&fr2=sb-top&fr=mcafee&type=E211US105G0

and another source found here:

http://whatliesbeyond.boards.net/thread/10666/lost-ship-cotopaxi-augustine-coast

It seems, however, that a number of years ago, there was a story circulating that suggested the Cotopaxi, floating and abandoned, had been found by the Cuba Coast Guard. The story circulated widely on the Internet. This turned out to be a hoax. But this latest tale is different if for no other reasons than the ship was found underwater and divers, working with the Science Channel were among those who found it.

To add a bit of perspective to all this, I’ll mention again, I was an Air Force intelligence officer and I served, for a number of years with the 928^th Tactical Airlift Group, which was subordinate to the 440^th Tactical Airlift Wing. Those you follow the Bermuda Triangle nonsense, know that the 440^th lost a C-119 in the Bermuda Triangle in June 1965. Contrary to reports in many of those earlier sources such as the Berlitz book, wreckage was found during the search for the missing plane and crew.

Once, while at 440^th Wing Headquarters, I asked a couple of the officers about the loss. They told me they’d found wreckage and wanted to know if I wanted to see it… in those pre-cell phone days, we all didn’t have cameras in our pockets so, no, I don’t have any pictures. I did see some of the wreckage and reported on this case here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/06/editorial-comment.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/05/fake-news-abc-and-bermuda-triangle.html

According to some researchers, there are many victims claimed by the Deadly Triangle… but some of those others have been found. The Freya, a German Bark was discovered drifting and abandoned in the Bermuda Triangle… Except, of course, it was actually found in the Pacific Ocean, which means it wasn’t lost in the Triangle.

But I digress for the moment…

I believe, given the latest and best evidence, that the SS Cotopaxi has been found under water. The Science Channel will supply the evidence in a couple of days. At that point we’ll all have the information and can judge if this is another hoax, a mistake, or if the ship can be removed from the list of the disappearances in the Triangle as some of those others have been.

I will note, as mentioned in one of the latest articles, that the geographical coordinates put it north of the original Triangle, which means it hadn’t belonged there in the first place.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Tom Whitmore

This week I talked with Tom Whitmore, a member of the MUFON broad of directors and a man who has been interested in the UFO phenomenon for decades. I had approached him because I knew that he had an interest in MJ-12 and I thought

Tom Whitmore

that we’d have an interesting discussion on that topic. You can listen to the program here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/21966402

I had mentioned the fatal flaw in the Eisenhower Briefing Document that proves that both the document and MJ-12 are hoaxes. You can read that analysis here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/06/mj-12-and-cognitive-dissonance.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/09/truth-mj-12-and-fatal-flaws.html

MJ-12, of course, was not the only thing that we discussed. We actually began with the travesty that is known as Project Blue Book airing on History. Of all my colleagues in the UFO community, I don’t know of one who approves of the show… it is doing a great disservice to UFO research with its suggestions of cover-up, threats, and adding details that never happened to cases we all know. The post following this one goes into the reasons that this show has taken a nose dive.

After exploring this, we did talk about the real oversight committee and how it would have been formed. You can read about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/08/wheni-began-roswell-investigation-with.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/08/mj-12-unholy-thirteen-and-roswell.html

We eventually got around to President Jimmy Carter and his desire to declassify, or in the world today, disclose, the hidden information about UFOs. Daniel Sheehan, a lawyer who worked with Marcia Smith, had some inside knowledge about this. We did talk about Linda Moulton Howe who had seen a document that was alleged to have been used to brief President Carter about UFOs. I covered this at length in Case MJ-12. You can find the updated version of the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Case-MJ-12-Kevin-D-Randle-ebook/dp/B07DKJP2YH/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Case+MJ-12&qid=1579811832&sr=8-1

Next week, I’ll be talking with Peter Davenport about his UFO Reporting Center. If you have questions, let me know in the comments section here. I’ll try to get them asked during the show.

History's Project Blue Book - What a Disaster...

Last year I took a lot of flak for my suggestion that History’s Project Blue Book wasn’t all that bad. I could separate the fact from the fiction and found the shows enjoyable. They didn’t take too many liberties with the facts and that could be excused in the interest of dramatic storytelling. Can you think of a program or movie that didn’t take some dramatic license to put together a compelling drama that had to play out of a couple of hours?

But the new season has started with a case that is not part of the Project Blue Book record. As I have said, repeatedly, the only mention of the Roswell case is in the third paragraph of a four-paragraph newspaper clipping found in another case file. All it says is that the officers in Roswell had received a “blistering rebuke” for their announcement they had “captured” a flying saucer. In the more than 12,000 cases and the more than 130,000 pages found in the Blue Book files, Roswell makes up such a tiny faction that no one ever noticed.

Jesse  Marcel, Sr.

To take it further, Roswell wasn’t even on the radar of UFO researchers until 1978 when Jesse Marcel, Sr. told Stan Friedman and Len Stringfield that he had picked up pieces of a flying saucer when he was the air intelligence officer at the Roswell Army Air Field. Prior to that, references to Roswell were difficult to find and if it was mentioned at all, it was nearly always dismissed as a weather balloon or a hoax.

But now according to History’s latest installment of their not-so-much-based-on-fact- but-more-fiction than-necessary-program we’ve given up on reality. Rather than dealing with the case in 1947, we are stuck in 1952 and the Roswell case has somehow surfaced again. Hynek and Quinn have learned something about it and are on their way to Roswell… and it is at this point, I suppose, I should mention “SPOILERS.”

At one point in this bizarre chronology, the military is on high alert, with the suppression machine in full operation. The town is sealed off with no one allowed to arrive or depart. Roads are blocked by armed guards who do not know what they are doing… I say this because as Hynek and Quinn drive up, someone begins to take shots at them… guards, Hynek, Quinn, their jeep, barrels, whatever. The guards immediately desert their post to chase the sniper. They abandon it completely so that Hynek and Quinn can continue their journey. I suspect the guards were punished, off-screen, for their dereliction of duty.

Sure, I’ve skipped some of the nonsense. Quinn and Hynek going out to talk to a witness, knock on the door, which opens because not only wasn’t locked, it wasn’t even latched. Even though the owner isn’t there, they walk in anyway. They find evidence laid out nicely for them and then Hynek finds a fake saucer in the backyard as the owner returns.

Meanwhile in Ohio, Mimi Hynek is joining some UFO group and convinces the leader to “loan” her his private notes… I don’t know if he ever gets them back, but he does show up at her house.

We have a flashback to dozens of people walking the debris field in 1947 picking up souvenirs, even though in real life, the field is isolated and Mack (they spell it “Mac”) Brazel tried to convince his nearest neighbors to take a drive down to it. Loretta Proctor told me that tires cost money and gas cost money, and even though Brazel showed her a piece of debris, she and her husband, Floyd, just didn’t want to go out to look at the field. (Sure, this is a little confusing, but just remember that was a flash back to 1947 from the perspective of 1952).

They got so many little things wrong, it seemed that they just gave up and filmed whatever pleased them. Uniforms wrong, a camouflaged jeep that should have been painted blue, and, of course, the conflict between Hynek and Quinn and the brass hats running the cover up. Worst of all, they suggest the rancher was beat up while in military custody… this is an outrageous idea. There is no evidence that any one was harmed by any military personnel in 1947… of course, I will note that several of the witnesses suggested they were threatened if they talked about what they had seen. Not really the same thing. Threats that were never carried out then or now.

At the end of the show, they bring up Mogul as the solution for the debris and this is what really annoyed me. They made the debunked claim that Mogul was highly

Mogul array in flight in 1947.

classified. The problem is that while the purpose was classified, the experiments going on in New Mexico were not. Dr. Albert Crary, leader of the New York University study in New Mexico, as well as others on his team, knew the code name, Mogul. Crary mentions it in his field notes. Pictures of a Mogul array appeared in newspapers on July 10, 1947. And, Mogul was off-the-shelf weather balloons and rawin radar reflectors that had been in use for years. Nothing to fool anyone even if they were strung together.

The capper here, however, is the fact that Mogul Flight No. 4, the alleged culprit for leaving debris on the ranch managed by Mack Brazel, NEVER flew. Dr. Crary’s field notes, written at the time, said the flight was cancelled due to clouds at dawn. Charles Moore, who made the claim that Mogul balloons were responsible, and who, using winds aloft data, showed that Flight No. 4 got with in 17 MILES of the ranch, lied about the launch times. He had to or the winds aloft data proved that the balloons didn’t even get that close. But hey, close counts in hand grenades, dancing and atomic weapons.

According to the written records, as opposed to the fifty-year-old memories, the launch would have taken place around 5:20 in the morning, but as I say, it was cancelled. They flew a cluster of balloons later in the day, but a cluster of balloons does not make a Mogul array. To make this work, however, Moore had to keep pushing back the time of the launch until it came in the dark, which was in violation of the regulations they worked under. You can read about all this here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/08/there-was-no-flight-no-4.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Mogul

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/07/mogul-and-roswell.html

There are other articles there as well, but I think these cover the point. Just type Mogul into the search engine and all the articles that reference Mogul will appear. I’ll suggest that you can also use Google and again, type in Mogul to receive additional information, much of it supporting the Mogul theory. I disagree with those, obviously, but for a complete understanding, it is always good to look at opposing points of view.

So, this is where I climb off the band wagon. This episode has done a real disservice to UFO research. There is nothing that actually relates to Project Blue Book other than the name Hynek. Everything else in here has nothing to do with reality.

And yet, I’ll watch next week because one of the actors, Neal McDonough, is in the show… not to mention Littlefinger as Hynek. Yeah, this has nothing to do with the quality of the program. I just thought I would mention it.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Year End Wrap Up (belated)

This week I wanted to wrap up some of the things from last year, provide a little more information about some things for the new year, and talk about some items that were allegedly found in President Ronald Reagan’s diary in years gone by. You can listen to the program here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/21729801

I did break from my tradition of refusing to engage in political commentary but

Nineteen-year-old Kevin
Randle as a helicopter pilot.
(Note the peace symbol on the
revolver.)

only to point out that those of us who live in states that have early caucuses or primaries have been bombarded by political ads for more than a year. I did announce that I would run for president in 2024 but only to get a jump on those who are thinking of running then. I can start annoying people right away with this.

I also brought up the “cancel culture” in the UFO field in which you are required to buy into every subset imaginable. You have to accept cattle mutilations, abductions, crop circles, MJ-12, contactees, UFO crashes… everything that comes down the pike because, well, who would make up this stuff. I advocated for a little bit of evidence before we leap off the support cliff.

And yes, I did tell a war story or two, but only because I have had some requests to talk a little bit about my military experiences. I thought that some might have been confused by my service in the active duty Army including a tour in Vietnam, taking AFROTC in college after that, active duty in the Air Force, participation in the Air Force Reserve, and finally my service with the Iowa National Guard which included a tour in Iraq. Given I was a pilot in the Army but only had ground assignments in the Air Force, all of this might have been somewhat confusing. You can verify my Vietnam service and my hitting the land mine with a helicopter at the 187^th AHC website found here:

http://www.187thahc.net/roster/roster_r.htm#r

and here (look for May 16):

http://www.187thahc.net/Incidents/incident_69.htm

I worried about bringing up some of the dark side of Stan Friedman, but thought that these were some things that needed to be mentioned. Yes, I do have documentation to support all this. You can learn about the “Black Sergeant” episode here, for example:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2008/09/black-sergeants-and-stan-friedman.html

Finally, I talked about my research into the Deep State and specifically about some information about a diary kept by Ronald Reagan, or for Reagan or something like that. While I found the information entertaining, I didn’t find much to believe. You can read it here:

https://www.disclose.tv/transcript-released-detailing-cia-briefing-president-reagan-on-alien-encounters-312340

Next week I’ll be joined by Tom Whitmore.  Tom is a MUFON board member and has been researching the history of MJ-12. That alone might provide for some interesting exchanges. We’ll look at other aspects of the UFO phenomenon as well. If you have questions, send a comment and I’ll get to them during the show.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Kenneth Dudley

This week I talked with Kenneth Dudley, who has said of himself, “I know more than anyone else in the UFO world about what has happened and this is a national security issue…” He also has suggested that his field of expertise is military intelligence and UFOs.” I thought this might make for an interesting show. You can listen to the program here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/21485151

We did talk about his becoming interested in UFOs after he was involved in a car

Kenneth Dudley

accident but no one seemed able locate the woman who caused it. He found her in Colorado, but in his discussion with her, remembered a UFO sighting he’d had in October 1973, along I-70 near Green river, Utah. I will note here, apropos of nothing at all, I have driven through Utah on I-70 a number of times, and it is a long, lonesome road. There used to be a sign as you entered the western end that the next service stations were 138 miles away. That’s been changed in the world today with the creation of several service station plazas, but in 1973, that sign just underscores how deserted that stretch of highway used to be.

His sighting wasn’t all that spectacular, just a glowing disk close to the ground that took off in a burst of speed. It wasn’t in sight for very long, and I mentioned that it was quite mundane, in terms of detail. Of course, if you were the witness, your perspective would be somewhat different. Since Dudley said he nearly hit the UFO, he thought of it as a little more exciting.

For corroboration, he mentioned that radars at Cheyenne Mountain had tracked the UFO at about the time of his sighting. Without a little more information, I wasn’t all that sure that the connection could be made or that this could be considered corroboration.

One of the views along I-70 in Utah.

When he talked about the trouble in the UFO community and the seeming lack of interest in his sighting, I suggested it might be his claim about knowing more than anyone else in the UFO world. He did backtrack on that.

He mentioned five people who had died when they came in contact with UFOs but couldn’t provide any names. I confess that I didn’t help. I thought of Mantell (who was chasing a UFO but I think that has been identified in the world today) and of Cash-Landrum, both of whom claimed health issues after they witnessed a close approach of a diamond-shaped UFO. The event and health problems might have contributed to their deaths years later. That would have led to another discussion which I feared would take up too much of our limited time. I had other things that I wanted to address.

We also talked about the national security implications, with Dudley citing the shutdown of missile launch systems. While an outsider having the ability to disable missiles and preventing their launch certainly has national security implications, the connection to UFOs is somewhat tenuous. The Air Force, of course, denied that a UFO had been involved, but they didn’t offer much in the way of solution either.

Next week, I’m going to take some time to look at some of the issues that are floating around the UFO world. At the moment, I am thinking about addressing what is known as “cancel culture,” meaning you must embrace all aspects of the UFO world or you’re considered a debunker, a look at Stan Friedman’s dark side, and the Deep State influence in UFO investigation. If you have questions, or points you might wish to make, append them at the end of this column and I’ll try to get to them.

History's Project Blue Book Returns

For those who are interested, History’s Project Blue Book returns on Tuesday, January 21. Normally, I wouldn’t bother with this but I have seen one of the trailers and I have some other information about the show that I thought I would mention.

First, however, let me say that those who visit here regularly know that I was something of a fan of the show. I pointed out, repeatedly, that I viewed it as science fiction rather than science fact and the claim that it was based on the Project Blue Book files was stretching things quite a bit.

What caught my attention in the latest trailer was a mention of Roswell. Roswell, of course, refers to the UFO crash, something that Project Blue Book ignored… or, if you wish to be totally accurate, Project Sign ignored. For those who aren’t immersed in the history of the Air Force UFO projects, Sign was first, followed by Grudge and then Blue Book. Roswell happened five years before Grudge evolved into Blue Book.

Make no mistake here. These projects weren’t separate entities. Sign became Grudge which became Blue Book. All the files collected by Sign eventually ended up in Blue Book… or I suppose, more accurately, the files stayed in place and only the name was changed to hide the truth.

Having spent years reading the Sign/Grudge/Blue Book files, and having looked, specifically, for anything related to Roswell, I can say without fear of contradiction, there is nothing there about Roswell in the files. The only mention of the case is in a newspaper clipping that is part of another sighting report. In third paragraph of that story is the claim that the officers in Roswell had been issued a blistering rebuke for the press release about “capturing” a flying saucer. Walter Haut told me, repeatedly, that there had been no rebuke.

And that’s it. Nothing else.

Other, similar cases, meaning those that contain information about flying saucer crashes, are there. Shreveport, Louisiana, (July 7, 1947) has a file about the hoax in which a small, saucer-shaped object supposedly crashed onto a street. It was recovered. J. Edgar Hoover was annoyed that the “Army grabbed it” before his FBI could get there. There is no doubt that this was a hoax.

Black River Falls, Wisconsin (July 11, 1947) was reported to Sign. It was another small disk, weighing something like a pound and a half. This too, was a hoax. This

Jesse Marcel, Sr.

too, has a case file.

The point is that Roswell was national news at the time. Even if a solution was offered within three hours of the information hitting the wires, it was still a big story. In those others, it was civilians who found the objects, but in Roswell, the recovery was made by military personnel including a member of the counterintelligence corps (Sheridan Cavitt) and the 509^th’s air intelligence officer (Jesse Marcel, Sr.). But there was no case file… and I find that a bit strange.

The point here, however, is that Project Blue Book (Sign) never investigated the case and there is no evidence that Roswell was even discussed by those assigned to the project. Without seeing the episode, I have to say this. “The only thing about the episode that is true is that there was a Project Blue Book and Dr. J. Allen Hynek was the scientific consultant. Everything else will probably come from the imagination of the writers, producers and those others involved in making the show.”

I fear this will inject more nonsense into the Roswell case and the last thing that serious research needs is more nonsense.