Probably
not.
Which
is not to say that the story told by Dr. Shirley Wright is completely in error.
There are, however, some disturbing aspects of it. These are subtle things that
civilians might not know when discussing military operations, military
intelligence and military secrecy.
But
first, there is the description of the base where Albert Einstein and Wright found
themselves. It is not the Roswell Army Air Field. The description doesn’t
really match much of what was there in 1947. It’s not all that isolated from
the town and even if they had arrived by commercial air into Roswell, the drive
to the base wouldn’t have taken all that long.
 |
| Albert Einstein in 1947. |
I
believe, at the point, that Wright, hearing all the conversation about Roswell
just assumed that was the base. She originally said it was in the desert
southwest and that covers a lot of territory. I could make a case for them
landing in Alamogordo, which is about 100 miles from Roswell. And there would
be a drive over to what was then the White Sands Proving Ground… though this
isn’t quite right either.
Len
Stringfeld thought it might have been Muroc, which became Edwards Air Force
Base. That seems to be a better fit for what Wright described, but there really
is no evidence that anything from Roswell was taken there. It was all flown out
of Roswell and went to the east.
Could
we have the sequence wrong? Sure. But I don’t think so. The testimony of too
many suggest a transfer of materials to Wright Field and then to other points.
General Arthur Exon talked of the bodies arriving at Wright Field and one of
them being sent to Lowry in Denver. Given the timing, Lowry, which became surrounded
by various communities, would have been on the edge of them in 1947. But then,
it was just a single body and not the craft.
But
the idea that this was from Roswell is probably the result of contamination by
Stringfield. He wrote:
After
pinning down the time-frame of her trip with the eminent scientist to the early
part of July in 1947 (which wasn’t easy) [parenthetical statement in original]
I asked the key question: Was the saucer you saw the one that crashed near Roswell”
Her non-committal response: “No one said that it was from the Roswell crash,
but I did hear that name pop up during my trip. Now, remember, I told you, they
didn’t tell me anything of important, no secrets [emphasis added] or
details. My boss who had the right clearance made a report, which I didn’t see.
I was just told to keep my mouth shut.”
The
real problem is the misunderstanding about how classified material is handled
and what it means to have a security clearance. Just because you might hold a top-secret
clearance, doesn’t mean that you have access to everything that is classified.
You also need to have a need to know. If you don’t, then your access will be
denied.
The
situation described does not make sense in that arena. Wright told Shelia Franklin
that she, Wright, was 18 in 1947 and was “one of the students chosen to study
advanced physics with a world-famous scientist [Einstein] at an eastern
university [Princeton].” All right, I suppose that might happen.
It
was in that summer that Einstein found himself at an emergency meeting that was
a gathering of many elite scientists and military leaders. Einstein had asked
Wright to go with him. She had a security clearance because all his students
studying with him that summer were required to have them.
But
what does that mean? Was she cleared for top secret? Just secret? Were there
any caveats on that clearance? We just don’t know. We’re told she had a
security clearance that is supposed to answer all these questions. The level of
the clearance is important and without that information, we have no way to
evaluate this claim.
Anyway,
Einstein and Wright are taken to this area, where the flying saucer and
apparently the bodies of the alien flight crew are kept. An area that is probably
not Roswell.
Here’s
a point that makes little sense. Wright said that she and Einstein were taken
across the desert to a base with scattered buildings. She said, according to
Stringfied, “Unlike the others in her group, who probably stayed at the base,
she was escorted to a small motel.” She had been segregated from the rest of them,
suggesting that she was not needed to attend the meetings, nor was she wanted
at them.
Then,
according to what she told Len Stringfield; she became more involved in what
was going on. According to Stringfield:
During
her stay at this location, Professor Simpson [Wright, the pseudonym Stringfield
gave her] recalls visits to a well-guarded old hangar. Inside, she got her
first glimpse of the aliens on display for all to see. “Some of the
specialists,” she said, “were allowed closer looks, including my boss. To me,
they all looked a like, all five of them (emphasis in original). They
were about five feet tall, without hair, with big heads and enormous dark eyes.
And, yes, their skin was grey with a slight greenish tinge but for the most
part, the bodies were not exposed, being dressed in tight-fitting suits. But I
heard they had no navels or genitalia.” After a brief pause, Simpson [Wright]
went on. “One of the aliens stood out above the rest. It had a bilious green
fluid oozing from its nostrils. But it was strange; after exposure to the air,
the ooze gradually became bluish, suggesting maybe a copper or cobalt base. I’m
guessing it might have seeped from a gall bladder-like organ. In fact, I
wondered if it was still alive, but I wasn’t close enough to see any body
movement or hear any comment from the medics.”
She
also said that at the far end of the hangar, she could see the spacecraft. It
was disc-shaped. She said that she was bad at judging distances and size but
that it took up about a quarter of the hangar floor, which is, of course meaningless
without knowing the size of the hangar.
Given
that she was on the periphery of the event, and given that she served no useful
purpose on the trip, why was she allowed into the hangar at all? She already
said that she had been separated from the rest of the group. She said she was
told no secrets. What is important here is that even if she had a top-secret
clearance (which I doubt) she had no need to know. Why bring her in on this at
all? She is just one more potential leak.
To
make this potential leak even more relevant, she told Stringfield she had 48 35mm
photos of that scene in the desert. In a tale that is somewhat reminiscent of
the Roswell Slides, we now have another civilian with a dubious connection to
the case, photographing the scene. She said that she had photos, which, of
course, would substantiate the tale. It would be difficult, if not impossible,
to create four dozen pictures of alien bodies, body parts, the alien craft, and
the scientists standing around them.
But
as happens in all these stories, those photographs are unavailable. Most disappeared
when her car was stolen. The pictures were in her briefcase in the car but you
have to wonder why she was carrying them around in a somewhat cavalier fashion.
However, she still had a few of the pictures. She promised to send copies but
according to Stringfield, they never arrived.
Here’s
where we are. We have a story told by a rather prominent university professor,
who tells the story in a straight forward and convincing manner. Like Rich Reynolds,
I was impressed with her answers during the short clips that were available. It
sounded as if she was telling of an experience she lived rather than one she
made up. She didn’t grope for the details.
We
get a vague description of the base and her activities. I’m not overly concerned
about that. If you are dropped into an unfamiliar environment, you might
certainly be confused about the location. Her description of the trip out into the
desert hints that there were no real landmarks or indications of where she was.
The
trouble, for me, arises in the terrible lapse of security. If we grant that
what fell near Roswell was an alien spacecraft, then we must also assume that
it would be highly classified. You wouldn’t want our competitors in the world
to know that we had an alien technology that if we could understand, would
propel us far ahead of them. To this end, you would limit access to the information
to a very few who might be able to help you understand that technology. That
would not extend to young assistants to those summoned to the secret location.
There is simply no way that she would have been allowed to see what she claimed
to have seen.
To
make it worse, she talked about dozens of photographs. We don’t know if she
took them or how she gained possession of them, but this would be a horrible
lapse of security. I’m not even sure that Einstein would have been in possession
of these photographs, if they ever existed… But all this speculation is
irrelevant. The photographs are gone and the claim of evidence that can’t be
produced is no evidence at all.
While
this doesn’t negate the entire story, for me it raises more than a few red
flags. I would think that we might be able to learn what Einstein was doing in
July 1947, and if he could have made a trip into desert southwest. Before we
accept or reject this tale, we need to find additional data.
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