Did Albert Einstein Visit Roswell

 

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.