'X' Zone Broadcast Network - Tom Deuley, Del Rio UFO Crash and Alien Abduction

This week I spoke with Tom Deuley, who has been around the UFO field for a long time. I believe I first met him in San Antonio at a UFO conference in the 1990s. One of the things he talked about was the Del Rio UFO crash. This was a tale told by

Tom Deuley

Robert Willingham, who claimed to be a retired Air Force colonel, fighter pilot and a veteran of the Korean War. I had investigated his background in the early 2000s after learning that no one else had done that. He had been accepted as an Air Force officer without much in the way of question or documentation. For those who wish to explore the Willingham saga at length, you can read about it here:

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

Embedded in that article are links to other stories about Willingham and his tales of UFO crashes… yes, crashes. Eventually, he claimed to have been on the scene of seven crashes. What are the odds?

Tom added a note to the Willingham saga that provides additional insight into the man and his stories.

We also talked about the Ambient Monitoring Project, which was designed to monitor the surroundings of those who have reported abduction. It’s a passive system without either audio or visual capability. The system records a variety of conditions in the bedroom and according to Tom, if the temperature varies by as little as a degree, that is noted. The theory was to gather data in a scientific way that could provide clues about the abduction phenomenon.

What I found interesting, on one hand, was that they had trouble finding people to participate in the program. However, thinking about it, I’m not sure that I would want a device that monitored the conditions in my bedroom. They did find a few who participated and the amount of evidence collected, given the way the system worked, seems to be overwhelming. Although the monitoring aspect has been concluded, analysis of that data is a Herculean task and is continuing.

Anyway, you can listen to the show in the audio player on the left, or you can link to it here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/48898776

Next up is Terry Lovelace. I haven’t had him on the program in quite a while. We’ll be talking about his abduction experience, his abduction research and his delving in to past lives… which will give me the chance to bring up Conversations, which is the book I wrote about my experience with a woman who seemed to have had a past life, or rather, several of them. 

Coast to Coast AM - Repeatability

 One thing that we all look for in the world of the UFO is some kind of repeatability. That means, simply, that people in other locations and other times report a craft that is similar those reported earlier. One of the problems in the UFO field is the wide variety of craft that are reported with very few cases in which a similar craft is seen somewhere else at some other time. An example of this are the photographs taken first in McMinnville, Oregon, in 1950 and later in Rouen, France in 1954. A similar object seen and photographed at widely separated locations.

The top photo is from McMinnville and the bottom from Rouen, France. I am
making no claims about the authenticity of either picture. I'm only pointing
out that the images are a match for one another.

Fran Ridge, of the NICAP website and the MADAR program, alerted me to a sighting that has some aspect of repeatability. He posted about a sighting he sent to the National UFO Reporting Center last year. According to him, on September 3, 2021, he, and 14 others were in The Poconos, when they watched a lighted object for five minutes.

According to his report, they were doing what he termed as a sky watch event in Blooming Grove Pennsylvania. At 9:44 p.m. two of them saw three lights slowly moving away from them around the Sterling, Pennsylvania area heading towards Scranton, Pennsylvania. They used high power binoculars to watch the craft. To the unaided eye it was three yellowish-pinkish lights in a row. The color reminded Fran Ridge of mercury vapor lights. The lights were about the size of a pencil eraser held at arm’s length. The lights were arranged in a horizontal pattern. When Fran and the others looked through the binoculars, they began to suspect they might be seeing the back of a craft that was very large. It moved very slowly and they watched it for about five minutes, until they lost sight of it behind the tree line. Fran said it was too slow to be an airplane.

What Fran found particularly odd was that through the binoculars, he could see that under the three yellow lights there were three tiny red lights that blinked randomly and not sequentially. One would blink once and then a second later another would blink. They thought they might be looking at the back of a large black triangle. He also noted that they didn’t take a photo of the UFO.

That was one sighting of a craft with a specific set of lights. The MUFON Case Management System, had a report from December 14, 2021, from a witness, in West Dundee, Illinois, who saw an object that Fran believed was similar to the one he had seen in September. Although there wasn’t a photograph, the drawing submitted by the witness looked like the object Fran and the others had seen.

There were two additional sightings made in Illinois, and all three took place in December, within a day or two of each other. All three were of triangular-shaped objects. Importantly, in the case from Macomb, Illinois, the witness made a video with a cell phone.

Fran posted a photograph of an object taken on the night of January 31, 2008 in Indiana. This too, reminded him of the object he had seen and it seemed to be related to the Illinois sightings as well.

Photograph supplied by Fran Ridge of an object that resembled the one he saw.

In all of the cases reported here, the object had a line of lights on what seemed to be the rear, and in all the cases, it seemed that the UFO was triangular shaped. This does suggest the note of repeatability that I mentioned earlier.

I’ll say here that the December Illinois sightings are part of the MUFON Case Management System and are still under investigation. If I find additional information about them, I’ll post it.

'X' Zone Broadcast Network - Clas Svahn: Ghost Rockets, Swedish UFO Research and the AFU

 

My guest this week was Swedish Ufologist, Clas Svahn. Like me, he had become interested in UFOs at a young age, and like me, he wanted to get the first-hand observations of those who reported UFOs. We both were interested in checking the information that was circulating about UFOs. You can watch the show by accessing it on the video log to the left and listen to it by accessing the audio version just below.

Clas Svahn

One of the first things I asked about was the Ghost Rocket sightings made in Scandinavia and then in northern Europe. It had seemed that they began in 1946 and by the end of the year, had tapered off. According Clas, that wasn’t quite accurate. He mentioned sightings from the 1930s, though these seemed to be more about strange lights in the sky rather than some solid craft. After the end of the Second World War, the sightings of cigar-shaped craft began in depth, and although it was reported that the phenomenon disappeared by the end of 1946, sightings continued until the 1990s.

One of the interesting aspects of this were reports of the rockets dropping into lakes around Sweden. According to Clas, they were seen o hit the water and caused huge splashes. Comprehensive searches by military divers failed to find wreckage or evidence of these events. Clas said that there were no crashes onto land, contrary to what had been reported by others.

I did ask about reports that the Swedish military had suppressed newspaper reports of the Ghost Rockets, but Clas said that wasn’t the case. He also mentioned that he had seen the military files about the Ghost Rockets. Like others, I had heard that the Soviets (as opposed to the Russians) had been using the Ghost Rockets to intimidate the Swedish government, but that seemed to be wrong as well. Clas had the opportunity to review the Russian files on the rockets and there was no evidence of the Soviets using them or knowing what they were.

In the end, there seems to be no solution. The identity of the Ghost Rockets, whatever they might be, was not discovered. The important thing here was that the man who had done extensive research into the Ghost Rockets said that he didn’t know what they were which seems to be the same conclusion reached by the Swedish military.

Clas said that there was a serious attempt by the military to find an answer. Unlike the situation here, in Sweden, there was good cooperation between the military authorities and the civilian researchers. Having had access to more than a thousand reports made over the years, Clas found no evidence of the sort of sloppy and biased work done in the United States by the Air Force, the CIA and the Condon Committee.

We also talked about the Archives for the Unexplained (AFU), which began in 1973 and continues until today. According to Clas, that archives span more than 7000 square feet and is expanding. The collection includes the files and data from around the world but seems to have a disproportion of English-speaking files, many of them collected from Great Britain. This is an on-going project and much of the material has been scanned so that it is digitally available to researchers around the world. As noted in the name, they collect more than just UFO data, but have an interest in all paranormal activity. They are cooperating with the CUFOS project designed to digitize the Center’s UFO files. Those interested can find more information at www.afu.se.

Next week, I’ll be chatting with Tom Deuley about his investigations into UFOs. He has been around this field about as long as I have. We’ll get some interesting insights from him.

Coast to Coast AM: Witness Video Tapes and EM Effects

 

Back in 1994, the Air Force investigated the Roswell case. They used information supplied by CUFOS, MUFON and FUFOR. When they finished, rather than return the materials to those organizations, they stuffed it all in boxes and sent it to the National Archives. I mention this because that material is now on line, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing by itself. However, given that the material is listed as having come from the Air Force suggesting some sort of official approval, it now has added credibility. Several of the tapes are on line with hundreds of thousands of views but with no disclaimers and no commentary about the reliability of the information. At least two of those tapes, are from witnesses who were discredited at the time of the Air Force 1994 investigation.

These are the statements provided, in the early 1990s by Gerald Anderson and Glenn Dennis. The interviews were conducted to gain a knowledge of the Roswell UFO crash. It might be said that these were preliminary interviews and that the witnesses had not been fully vetted. Later, additional information was learned which suggested that these two witnesses could not be trusted.

Anderson, for example, was caught in a number of lies including his claim he had been a Navy SEAL. He identified his high school anthropology teacher as the leader of the archaeologists on the Plains of San Agustin who seen the crashed disk. Anderson, who was five at the time, said the archaeologist was Adrian Buskirk… but Buskirk denied that he had been there and was, in fact, in Arizona at the time.

Anderson was also caught, and later admitted to forging a telephone bill, that became part of the overall investigation. Rather than repeat this information now, you can read about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/05/gerald-anderson-stan-friedman-and.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/08/stan-friedman-vs-philip-klass-whats.html

And I mention this posting because, embedded in it are several other links that have some relevance to this discussion. For those who wish to follow this to the extreme and get a clearer picture of some of this nastiness, you can read that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2019/03/x-zone-broadcast-network-fallout-from.html

I will also note that the Glenn Dennis testimony has collapsed as well. That is another of the videos released through the National Archives which is wrapped in a mantle of credibility because it was part of the Air Force investigation. However, had the Air Force completed their investigation in a professional manner, they would have learned that the nurse Dennis talked about never existed. And, of course, if there was no nurse, then his importance to the story is reduced if not completely negated.

The National Archives. Photo by Kevin Randle.

As I mentioned, releasing the interviews might not be a bad thing. The problem is that there is no commentary accompanying that release to suggest the information is problematic at best.

Without some sort of clarification, people are now watching those tapes and believing the tales told which provides an inaccurate picture of the events in 1947. I thought it necessary to warn others that some of the videos should not be accepted as fact. I’ll provide additional information on my blog.

The other thing that has happened this week is that Rich Reynolds, over at his UFO Conjectures blog was suggesting no causal link between the stalling of car engines and the close approach of UFOs. I believe the Levelland case, in which witnesses at multiple locations independently reported their cars stalling when the glowing UFO approached provides that causal relation.

Through out that discussion, he seemed to be saying that collecting the data does not advance our knowledge. I confess that I’m somewhat confused by his arguments there but then we could say the same thing about most of the UFO phenomenon. Collecting the data in the world today is the same as collecting the data a half century ago. Another report of a strange light in the sky or a silver disk flying over does nothing to advance our knowledge. I think what Rich is suggesting that we begin to think beyond the collection of the data and find a way to use it to advance our knowledge.

Although such cases are rare, they are a small subset of the overall UFO phenomena, and these sorts of cases are still reported. On January 22 of this year, the witness driving near Wichita, Kansas, at about 10 p.m., noticed a bright light off to the left. He first thought was it might be the landing light from an aircraft, but it kept approaching and there was no landing field nearby.

As the UFO flew over the car, the engine began to sputter but then it returned to its normal operation. He could see an object behind the light that he described as an oval or egg-shaped, and watched as it turned and approached again. As it did, the engine died and the headlights faded. For a moment, the UFO hovered over the car. The man tried to restart the engine but it reacted as if the battery was dead.

After a minute or so, the UFO began to rise, and then shot off, disappearing in seconds. When it was gone, the headlights came on and he could restart the engine. I will note here that he had to take an action to restart the car.

This is all the information I have on this case. The witness requested his name not be used. While I appreciate his desire to remain unidentified, especially in the world today, it does decrease the overall value of the report.

On July 8, 2014, near Joplin, Missouri, the witnesses, that included a retired commercial airline pilot and his wife, were driving home when they were flagged down by a man, whose dog was barking and acting wild. I will note here that animal reactions to UFOs is another aspect to these EM Effects.

The man pointed to an object in the sky that seemed to be hovering about 300 feet off the ground. It was an off- white color and was illuminated by a yellowish light coming from the inside.  It had dark, square windows.  It began to descend, as if it was going to land. As it reached tree top level, some sort of mist formed around it. The witness was using a spotlight to search the fields. After driving about a mile, the spotlight went out and the seatbelt warning began to sound. The jeep’s automatic transmission would not change gears. This is still another aspect of these sorts of cases. The engines are not affected but other components are. The witnesses continued the search but the UFO was gone. After a short time, all the components began to work properly.

These sorts of cases do supply some clues about some UFOs, but certainly not all. Not every close approach by a UFO result in this sort of interaction with the environment. Still, the cases are more interesting that lights in the distance.

Coast to Coast AM - Christopher Mellon and Cigar Shaped UFO Sightings

 

Christopher Mellon, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton  and George W. Bush Administrations and a the Staff Director of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, published a long article about the Air Force lack of transparency in the current crop of UAP sightings.

Christopher Mellon

I mention this because, in his analysis, he failed to mention the deceit of the Condon Committee. That was the University of Colorado study, funded by the Air Force, in which the conclusions were written before the study was conducted. A letter from an Air Force officer told the Committee members what the conclusions were to be and those were the conclusions reached. This alleged scientific study is often cited by skeptics as evidence that there is no alien visitation. This is why I’m somewhat critical of the renewed efforts to resolve the UFO situation. You can see the Hippler letter here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/03/hippler-letter.html

And you can read the entire Mellon article here:

https://thedebrief.org/why-is-the-air-force-awol-on-the-uap-issue/

There is another aspect to this that worries me and it had to do with a quote from Mellon. Leslie Kean reported Mellon said:

I highly doubt DoD or any other government agency is concealing UFO information. I participated in a comprehensive review of DoD's black programs and spent over a decade conducting oversight of the national foreign intelligence program, an almost totally separate world of secrets. I visited Area 51 and other military, intelligence and research facilities. During all those years, I never detected the faintest hint of government interest or involvement in UFOs. ... While a few new, previously overlooked documents might turn up (the bureaucracy is never perfect), I do not believe they would resolve the UFO issue or provide significant new insights. I can think of one lengthy UFO report that is classified only due to concerns over sources and methods. In fact, it identified a convincing conventional explanation for the pilot sightings in this particular case. There are lots of classified documents related to activities at Area 51, where high security is needed. But this is all legitimate stuff the American people would support. They have nothing to do with UFOs, to the best of my knowledge.

While I understand that people can modify an opinion based on new and additional information, it is disturbing to read that Mellon said he was involved in reviewing black projects and found the least interest in UFOs by the government. This statement is inaccurate because government interest in UFOs transcended the end of the Condon Committee, transcended the end of Project Blue Book and survived the compromise of Moon Dust. In other words, those of us on the outside of these inner government circles can point to government interest. And I haven’t even mentioned the poor explanations for some very puzzling cases.

Since you asked, I will point to the Levelland sightings of November 1957. No matter what you think about alien visitation, you must admit that ball lightning does not explain the stalling of car engines over a period of two hours and at multiple locations. I just published a comprehensive look at the Levelland sightings.

All this does suggest the latest trend in the UFO field, which is a renewed, official interest in UFOs, even if we can see the government playing fast and loose with the facts. How else to explain the continual delay in providing the proper and accurate information to Congress and to those of us outside of Washington, D.C.

 Another trend is the  increased sightings of cigar-shaped craft, many of them reported to MUFON. On December 12, 2021, the witness, in Titlow Hill, California, saw a dark object with a cigar shape. It moved at a constant speed and made no noise. The witness watched the UFO through a finder scope attached to a larger telescope. He said that the UFO was barely visible against a very dark gray sky. There was a pair of lights on the front end, one on the nose and the other lower on the leading edge. There was a line of rectangular lights along the center of the craft.

He watched as the object changed direction and moved closer. It then disappeared behind a tree line to the east. When the object disappeared, he grabbed his binoculars. He did run across the road in an attempt to spot the object again, but it was gone.

Also on December 12, of last year, the witness, in Rancho Mirage, California, saw several lights moving slowly. The craft was cigar shaped. It moved from south to north and then seemed to dissolve. There were no clouds where it disappeared and he could see stars in the area. He spotted several private planes but they were not flying as high as the UFO. Instead, it seemed to be at the same level as commercial aircraft, and was about the size of four of them put together. He did say that he had seen the Star Link Satellites before and that this was nothing like that.

On December 3, the witness, on the way to his girlfriend’s house in Chesterfield, Virginia, spotted something strange off to the left. He thought it might be a reflection or some other rather mundane object but then realized this was a massive craft. He said that it was cigar shaped, seemed somewhat bulky, and that it had a large light that looked like windows that were sectioned off.

Finally, on December 3, 2021, the witness saw a distant object hover for about twenty minutes. It flashed two red lights and one gold light sequentially and it had two other white lights on it. The UFO moved slowly to the north and then did a circular loop. He said that it was big and cigar like. He said that hovered after the loop and then sped away.

As I say, each of the sightings lasted much more than a minute and several of them were accompanied with video, which was reported to MUFON and are now part of their Case Management System.

There is one additional case to be mentioned because there is some interesting video that goes with it. This was an object reported over Norway. It might be returning space debris, and at one point, the first video goes out of focus so that the object looks like a fuzzy orb. I mention this case, only because of the videos that go with it. You can see the video here:

https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/2022/02/really-fast-ufo-sighting-over-northern-parts-of-norway-2022-norwegian-mainstream-medias-reports.html 

As always, I’ll keep my eyes open and if there is additional information about any of the cases mentioned here, I’ll publish it as well.

'X' Zone Broadcast Network: Dr. James Horan and the Journal of Scientific Exploration

 

This week I spoke with Dr. James Horan, who is the new editor of the Journal of Scientific Exploration. We had published an article about the Ramey Memo in the Journal in Spring 2002. You can listen to the discussion here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/48669630

We did talk about the Ramey Memo and that much could be learned from it. Because it was a document with a known and proven provenance, the legitimacy of

Dr. James Horan

it was not in question. The photograph shows General Ramey holding the document. We know that J. Bond Johnson took the picture and given that it was transmitted over the INS newswire with a time and date stamp on it, we know the picture was taken on the afternoon of July 8, 1947. I have to laugh because this is so well documented while other documents just show up in mail boxes with no clue as to where they came from and no way to verify the legitimacy of the documents. Just type Ramey Memo into the search engine and you will find a number of articles and discussions about it.

We discussed the experiment we conducted as a way of testing whether or not priming had any influence in the interpretation of the Ramey Memo. For those interested in the experiment, it can be found here, in the Spring 2002 edition of the Journal of Scientific Exploration:

www.scientificexploration.org

And, of course, we had to talk about the beginning of his interest in the Roswell case and the fact that there is no controversy about one aspect of it. Everyone agrees that something fell. It is the identity of the object that is in question. I did mention that the Air Force, in their massive report issued in the middle of the 1990s, pretty well eliminated any explanation other than a Project Mogul balloon. Of course, I, was well as many others, find that explanation lacking any authenticity. There was nothing classified about the balloon launches in New Mexico. It was the ultimate purpose that was classified, but even the name, Mogul, was known to those involved with the project.

All this sort of bypasses the discussion about vetting the witnesses, the difference between anecdotal testimony and scientific observation, and some of the failures of the Roswell witnesses. This wasn’t a way to dismiss the Roswell case, but a way of validating aspects of it.

We wrapped up our discussion with some comments about Avi Loeb’s Galileo Project and the search for alien artifacts. Loeb’s theories, while not universally accepted in the scientific community, have moved the discussion from the realm of the impossible to the realm of learning a new way of finding other intelligent life forms out there.

And, of course, we provided additional information about the Journal and Society for Scientific Exploration.

Next up is Clas Svahn, a Swedish UFO researcher, whose interests expand beyond just the UFO. We’ll talk about his latest book, Files of the Unexplained.

Coast-to-Coast AM -- UFOs and Cameras

For this week, I thought that I would just mention a few interesting sightings, including three in which there seemed to be some kind of EM Effect. I was actually looking for cases in which cell phone cameras failed but ended up with these that involved a trend for that sort of thing if not something that reflected it perfectly.

On November 24 of last year, just after midnight, a woman was driving along the Savannah Highway near Hollywood, South Carolina. She said, “I was driving home and saw a very bright light in the distance… I pulled my car over to try to figure out what it was and realized it was moving in my direction.”

She said there were two, massive objects with lights so bright that she could see little in the way of details. They were low in the sky and had a rounded shape and she thought they were much lower than airplanes would be flying. As they flew over, she heard nothing other than a quiet hum. They moved smoothly, according to her and disappeared heading toward the Atlantic Ocean. She told the investigators that she felt no physical or psychological effects from the experience.

She did take pictures of the objects and they were published in the latest MUFON Journal.

South Carolina MUFON Field Investigator William Brumleve, closed the case as an Unknown Aerial Vehicle.

William Puckett

On October 10 of 2020, the witness reported to William Puckett’s UFOSNW website, that he saw glowing globe he described as big as the moon. Something black flew out of the globe and as it did, he said that his phone cracked.

I was interested in this because of the damage done to his phone, apparently by passing of the object. Although he said he sees these things frequently, which suggests some sort of terrestrial explanation, the damage to cell phones is becoming an aspect to some of these sightings. Puckett posted it without comment and you can see it here:

https://www.ufosnw.com/newsite/large-oblong-object-about-the-size-of-the-moon/

Keeping with this theme of camera failures, on May 29, 2020, the witness, in Newton-Abbot-Devon, England, reported that he was outside, looking for the ISS when a strange object caught his eye. He zoomed in with his Nikon P900 camera. He said that there was a silver, metallic saucer that had large, black-tinted windows that were shaped like semi-circles. He said that he saw six such windows as the UFO rotated slowly and was enveloped in a cloud.

At that point, he snapped a picture and wondered if the cloud was some sort of way for the UFO to conceal itself when it drifted over his house. He said that he tried to take another picture, but the camera malfunctioned. He set it down on the garden table, and watched as the UFO slowly floated off, into the distance where he lost sight of it. You can see the pictures here:

https://www.ufosnw.com/newsite/large-silver-metallic-saucer-becomes-enveloped-by-cloud/

Finally, is a case from Selma, Texas, on April 21, 2020. Although this doesn’t deal with the cell phone camera failing, it does fit into the trend. The witness and his daughter were looking up, into the sky when a huge, triangular craft appeared. It was moving at a steady pace and it looked as if there were little wings on it, but it was making no noise. When it disappeared, the witness, who had been using his cell phone to play music through the car radio, unplugged it. The phone was then filled with static and was muffled, trouble might have been caused by the close approach of the UFO.

The common thread tonight was the interference from UFOs, causing the failure of some of the electronic components cell phones and cameras. I’m looking for more cases in which the cell phone cameras fail because they could provide a clue about energy fields associated with some UFO close encounters. 

'X' Zone Broadcast Network - William Puckett

 

This week I invited William Puckett on the program to talk about what was happening in the world of UFOs.  He hosts a website, www.ufosnw.com, on which he posts sighting reports made to him. Many of them include pictures and videos of those sightings that allows the reader to decide if the object is something strange or something that has a terrestrial explanation. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/48569631

Before I brought on William, I mentioned something that bothers me. I have been

William Puckett

working on a book Understanding Roswell, which is a deeper look into the backgrounds of some of the witnesses. The dilemma is what to say about someone’s background in this world of cancel culture. I’m thinking specifically of Jesse Marcel, Sr., because it seems, based on everything that we have seen, read and heard that Jesse tended to spin a tale or two.

I mentioned specifically, the tale about preforming an appendectomy on a soldier while being given the instructions by a surgeon using the radio. In Linda Corley’s book, For the Sake of My Country, she mentioned Jesse beginning to tell the story and his wife, Viaud, saying something about it, suggesting she didn’t believe it.

There are other areas of embellishment that can’t be proved and, in some cases, have been disproved. I hesitate to mention all this because of the family. Jesse

Jesse Marcel, Jr.

Marcel, Jr., was a man of great integrity. I know of no embellishments he made to his testimony about the UFO recovery.

The other side of this is that Jesse Marcel Sr. telling of his involvement in the retrieval isn’t stand along. There are many others who talked about those events, corroborating what Marcel, Sr. said. If we didn’t have that additional testimony, we could easily reject all that Marcel, Sr. said. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of embellishment to that tale.

My hesitation is what good does it do to mention all this? It doesn’t alter the case, which, if it was stand alone, it certainly would. Take Marcel out of the picture and we still have every member of Colonel Blanchard’s senior staff that we were able to interview suggested it was something extraterrestrial other than a single officer.

William mentioned that he had the opportunity to interview Jesse, Jr. a number of times found him, as did I, an honest man. Jesse, Jr. was a good man, and if he was still alive, I probably would have kept some of the trouble with Jesse, Sr. to myself. As it is, in the upcoming book, Understanding Roswell, I look at this a little more deeply.

When we finally got around to talking about William’s website and experiences, I asked about the Star Link Satellites because it seemed they were responsible for a number of UFO sightings. Such reports had become so common, that William stopped noting them at his website. There are some pictures of those satellites on his website.

We talked about the number of pictures that have been reported over the last few years. William explained that there was a way to determine if a picture had been manipulated by looking at the meta data available. If there had been an alteration, that could be determined and the photo could be rejected. He also said that he doesn’t post pictures that are obvious fakes.

One of the interesting things he mentioned was that in many cell phone pictures of anomalous green objects might be an artifact from the camera. When the camera was pointed, more or less, in the direction of the sun, the “lens flares” tended to manifest as something green.

I also asked if the upswing in triangular-shaped objects might be the result of some sort of evolution in terrestrial aviation technology. It seemed to me that with so many sightings of them in the world today, it might be a new technology that is Earth-based, rather than something interstellar. He had noticed a similar trend.

He did provide information on a couple of interesting cases that suggested EM Effects as well. It was a wide-ranging conversation. There is a link to EM cases on his website, and, of course, my book, Levelland, is all about EM Effects for those interested in pursuing that line of investigation.

Next week, I’ll be talking with Dr. James Horan, who has done some scientific research into the Roswell case in general and the Ramey Memo in particular. He is also the editor of the Journal of Scientific Exploration. We’ll delve into the Ramey Memo and some of his other UFO investigations. If you have questions, put them in the comments section of the blog. I won’t post them, but will try to get them answered.

Charles Moore and the Array, New Mexico, UFO Sighting

 

Dr. Abraham Loeb, he of Harvard and the Galileo Project, is beginning research to identify alien objects passing close to Earth that originated outside our Solar System. He is looking up, into the sky, rather than down, at the ground. As he said to me, he is uninterested in UFO reports from the past, suggesting, with some justification, those sighting reports have been poorly collected and are absent of scientific objectivity. The past is cluttered with hoaxes and hallucinations and

Dr. Avi Loeb

delusions. This renders much of the information as unreliable in the eyes of the scientist and of no interest to him and those working at the Galileo Project.

That attitude seems to have changed, slightly, in the past few weeks. Loeb has invited a number of those associated with the UFO community to join his consulting team. These include Lue Elizondo, Kevin Knuth, Chris Mellon, Nick Pope, Robert Powell and Gary Voorhis, who is the founder of something called UAPsx and is a first-hand witness to tic-tac incident on the USS Nimitz in 2004. Most importantly, Loeb has now added Jacques Vallee to his consulting team as well.

 I will note here for no reason, that nearly everyone on this list has some connection into a government agency. I have to wonder if this has something to do with having had government security clearances in the past. I have been approached by others whose first question to me has often seemed to be if I still had my top-secret clearance.

Anyway, while Loeb’s criticism about the gathering of UFO data being less than scientific, that doesn't hold true for all UFO reports. Charles B. Moore, yes, the Roswell balloon guy, made a UFO report to Project Blue Book. His sighting was labeled as "unidentified," by the Air Force investigators. The sighting, made near Array, New Mexico, on April 24, 1949, isn't very spectacular, except that it is

Charles Moore

multiple witness and used instrumentality to observe the object. Moore, along with a crew from General Mills, identified as Akers, Davidson, Fitzsimmons and Moorman and a Naval officer Douglas C. McLaughlin (also identified as Robert or "R" McLaughlin in some reports) were launching the balloons. Brad Sparks has suggested that McLaughlin was not physically at the site, but in the Public Information Office.

They had "released 350-gram balloon about 1020 MST and were following it with a standard ML-47 David White Theodolite." Moore made a reading at 10:30 a.m. and then took over at the theodolite.

His report, originally classified as “secret” but later downgraded to “restricted,” (and proving that some of the UFO sightings were classified) was made to what was then known as Project Sign. He wrote that he had looked up to acquire the balloon with the unaided eye and spotted what he thought was the balloon. Moore later wrote:

We thought we had the balloon when we picked up a whitish, spherical object right along the direction the theodolite was pointing… The object was drifting east rapidly… but we had thought to encounter similar balloons. When the distance between the theodolite and the supposed balloon became apparent, I took over the theodolite and found the true balloon still there, whereupon I abandoned it and picked up the object after it came out of the sun. The object was moving too fast to crank the theodolite around; therefore, one of the men pointed the theodolite and I looked. The object was ellipsoid... white in color except for a light yellow of one side as though it were in shadow. I could not get a hard focus on the object due to the speed at which the angles changed. Therefore, I saw no good detail at all.

"The object," according to Moore, "was not a balloon and was some distance away. Assuming escape velocity, a track is enclosed which figures elevation above the station of about 300,000 feet over the observed period. If this is true, the flight would have probably gone over the White Sands Proving Ground (later White Sands Missile Range), Holloman Air Force Base, and Los Alamos."

They lost sight of the object in the distance, after watching it for about 60 seconds. They had made measurements using their equipment and a stopwatch but took no photographs.

Moore’s statement isn’t the only one available. In March, 1950, True, published an article by Commander Robert B. McLaughlin (which means this is in conflict with the Blue Book file that mentions Douglas McLaughlin). According to him, an accurate plot of the UFO’s course was made and that he, McLaughlin, at least, saw the object in cross section, reporting that it was elliptical in shape. He definitely believed that the object was 105 feet in diameter and that it was about fifty-six miles high, which is just a shade under 300,000 feet. Although this seems to be a first-hand account by McLaughlin, Sparks suggested it was written in a way to give that impression or changed by an editor to provide additional credibility.

Document from Blue Book Showing the original
classification as "Secret" and later down
graded to "Restricted."

McLaughlin, or those with at the site, calculated the speed as five miles per second and that, at the end of “its trajectory, it served abruptly upward.” He wrote that this resulted in an increase in altitude by twenty-five miles in about ten seconds and would have had more than twenty times the force of gravity.

In an interesting note, McLaughlin wrote, “Close questioning of the observers prior to the official report that went to ‘Project Saucer’ [the public name of Project Sign] at Wright-Patterson Field in Dayton, Ohio, produced an almost unanimous judgement that the object was discus-shaped and that it was a flat white color. High-powered binoculars showed no exhaust trail, no stream of light or other evidence of a propulsion system. And no sound.”

There is another point that must be made. In a document found in the Blue Book file, Major Joseph O. Fletcher, the Director, Base Directorate for Geophysical Research wrote, “It is felt that although the theodolite and stop-watch were of great assistance in making estimates, the principal factor responsible for the unusually specific information contained in this report, is that Mr. (name redacted, but is Moore) was made aware of in advance what factors should be observed in case such an object was sighted. Therefore, it is urged that your office issue advanced observation instructions to people who might be in a position to make observations and turn in reports.”

These two sentences suggest that someone had briefed Moore on what to do if he saw something strange while conducting his experiments, and that others should be briefed on this as well. Someone believed that flying saucers would be seen around the White Sands area and that proper observations must be made. In other words, they were actually planning for the event.

Dr. Donald Menzel, he of Harvard at the time, later did what the Air Force couldn't in their investigation in 1949. He identified the object seen by Moore and his crew. According to Menzel, the object was a mirage. That is, Menzel believed it to be an atmospheric reflection of the true balloon, making it appear as if there were two objects in the sky instead of one. He was so sure of this that he told Moore about the solution.

Moore, however, was an atmospheric physicist. He was as qualified as Menzel to discuss the dynamics of the atmosphere, and, according to him when interviewed on El Paso radio station KTSM in March 1995, the weather conditions were not right for the creation of mirages. Since Moore was on the scene, and since his training qualified him to make judgments about the conditions of the atmosphere at the time of the sighting, his observations are more important than Menzel's wild speculations.

When Moore spoke to Menzel, the Harvard professor, would not listen to what Moore had to say. Menzel had found, what to him was a satisfactory solution for the sighting, and he didn't want to discuss it seriously, or have his conclusions challenged. Air Force investigators, however, left the sighting labeled as "unidentified."

This boils down to a lesson for all of us. We learn here about the mental gymnastics used by some to explain any sighting regardless of the facts. Here was a case where a trained scientist, technicians and military personnel saw something strange, tracked it, and used their instruments to gather data. The object was measured to be 300,000 feet in the air, moving rapidly. They knew it wasn’t a balloon and described a craft with an elliptical shape.

Given the nature of the data gathered, given that the UFO was seen through “high-powered” binoculars, given that the angles and trajectories were measured using the theodolite, and that the sighting was timed, lasting more than a minute, this should be the sort of scientifically gathered information that Dr. Loeb would want. While it certainly doesn’t fit into the Galileo Project, meaning the UFO was inside the Earth’s atmosphere instead of flying through space beyond it, the case does provide some insight into the phenomenon and might provide clues about what to look for in the future. It merely suggests that some UFO reports might be useful as the search for other extraterrestrial objects continues.