The Victorio Peak Treasure

Like the treasure stories from Oak Island, the exact location of this treasure is well known. According to the legend, it is hidden deep in a cave in the San Andres Mountains north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, on what it now part of the Army’s White Sand Missile range. The exact location is in a mountain known as Victorio Peak.

Victorio Peak. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle

There had been rumors of a large cache of gold bullion hidden in the San Andres Mountains for decades. A Jesuit priest, Father La Rue, who was working in the area around 1800, learned from a sick Spanish soldier that there was a huge vein of gold some two days from what was then Paso del Norte and now known as El Paso, Texas. Apparently, La Rue, working with the local indigenous population, set up a mining operation in the Organ Mountains, which border White Sands and are just south of Alamogordo, New Mexico, which is north of El Paso. For two years La Rue mined the gold, stockpiling it nearby.

As with most such stories there are slight variations to the myth. La Rue discovered that the Spanish were about to send soldiers to learn what happened to him. Or the story of the massive wealth that La Rue had acquired found its way back to the Spanish in Northern Mexico. Nothing stirs the fires of the Spanish conquistadors in the New World like tales of massive wealth and stacks of treasure. An armed expedition was sent north to find La Rue and what he considered his gold.

To prevent the Spanish from taking the treasure, La Rue hid all traces of his mining activity, hid the gold he had refined into crude bars in a cave and then sealed the cave’s entrance so that others would not find it. Although there was talk of his mining the Organ Mountains, it seems more likely that the mine was in the San Andres Mountains. It was here that the treasure was concealed.

Before La Rue could escape, the Spanish expedition arrived and attacked. La Rue and those with him were captured. He was tortured but refused to reveal the location of the gold. Sometime during the process, La Rue died, and with him, the exact location of the treasure was lost. All those with him were also killed without revealing the location of the gold. With La Rue dead, and without a map to the treasure, the Spanish soldiers returned to Mexico empty-handed. Although there were those who thought that a proper expedition, with the resources for a long search would produce results, no one ever returned to make that search.

Doc Noss and the Cave of Treasure

Milton Ernest “Doc” Noss, who claimed he was two-thirds Cheyenne, was born in Oklahoma and worked throughout the southwest during his life was the man who originally found La Rue’s lost treasure. Although called “Doc,” he had no medical degree and was reported to have been arrested in Texas for practicing medicine without a license. That wasn’t his only trouble with the law or the truth.

Jim Eckles, who began working for the Public Affairs office at the White Sands Missile Range, told reporter Carl Knauf, a staff writer for the Albuquerque Journal, that he had he’d dug into Noss’ background and learned “quite a bit about Doc Noss.” He had traced Noss from Oklahoma to New Mexico and said that Noss had been arrested for various crimes. Noss was not exactly the most reliable of sources.

White Sands Missile Range located near Victorio Peak. Photo
copyright by Kevin Randle

It was in 1937, Noss, and his wife, Ova (sometimes called Babe) were living in the vicinity of Hatch, New Mexico. He spent his time hunting and prospecting in the area around Victorio Peak, which was not yet part of a government reservation. During one of those hunting and prospecting trips, Noss was caught in a cold Spring shower and sought shelter under an outcropping of rock near the summit of Victorio Peak.

This was a place that had been used for centuries by other indigenous hunters, not to mention the Spanish, Mexicans and Americans. Noss saw the evidence of those earlier hunters but didn’t know if they had lived there long or were just camped there for the temporary shelter. Sitting there, waiting for the rain to stop, he noticed a stone that looked as if it had been worked in some fashion. Noss reached down but at first, couldn’t budge it. He tried digging around the edges. Given he had nothing better to do, he kept at it until he could work his fingers under it and lift it.

What he found was a shaft that descended deep into the darkness of the mountain. Now he was curious about the shaft, but it was too late in the day to do anything about it. He was not equipped for a reconnaissance. The next day, he returned with a flashlight, rope, and a canvas bag. He was unable to probe very deep into shaft, but he found enough of interest that he wanted to come back.

In a slightly different version of the story, R.L. Coker told Los Angeles Times columnist, Robin Abcarian, that he had been with Noss when he made the initial discovery. He said that he and Noss were at the top of the Victorio Peak hunting deer. Coker said that Noss knew where there was a spring that the deer would approach looking for water. Noss said that he felt a breeze that he first thought might have been a snake, but realized it was coming up from under a rock. Moving the rock aside, Noss found the entrance into the cave. Apparently, they didn’t explore it then and I must mention that Coker’s name didn’t come up in the original tale told by Noss.

In the days and weeks that followed, Noss returned to the shaft whenever possible. He did reach the bottom, but his flashlight was inadequate for the task of lighting the way once he was deep inside the mountain. Eventually, he found an underground stream but couldn’t see the other side and was initially afraid to cross it without proper preparation.

On another trip into the mountain not long after that, he did cross the stream while Ova waited for him above him. She kept herself busy making coffee and sandwiches as he searched the cave far below her. Hours later, when he emerged from the shaft, he had his canvas bag with something heavy in it. He tossed a black bar on the ground near her, but like Noss, she thought it was nothing more than lead brick.

Years later there would be another minor controversy about that bar. Ova, giving a deposition about the first entry into the cave, said that she was the one who scraped at it, discovering it was gold. Noss said that he discovered it was gold while sitting around the fire after having brought it to the surface. Although it makes no difference today who first found that it was gold, you have to wonder why he would have carried a lead brick out with him given the descriptions of the various types of treasure he had found in the cave.

Noss told Ova there were stacks of the bars in the cave eventually suggesting there might be as many as 16,000. He said that he had also found uncut gems including rubies, Spanish coins, and religious artifacts such as a gold Virgin Mary. There were other manufactured artifacts including swords. He found chests that held clothes and Wells Fargo strong boxes. He was telling Ova that he had found a huge treasure, much of it, though not all of it, gold bullion, which is an interesting point that has often been overlooked.

Noss was smart enough to know that any news about the find would fill the area with other treasure hunters, prospectors, con artists and government officials who would claim the treasure for the United States. There would also be trouble with the law. In 1937, it was illegal for a private citizen to own gold bullion. If the word got out about the gold bars, Noss might find himself in jail on federal charges. He cautioned Ova that they could tell no one about the treasure because of the real consequences.

But he didn’t bother to heed how own advice. He showed a gold bar to a friend in what is now known as Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. When asked if he had found it in the Caballos Mountains, Noss said, “That’s right.” It wasn’t long before those mountains were filled with the people Noss had feared would arrive, but he didn’t care. The Caballos were far from the true site in Victorio Peak.

Noss was convinced that he had found a huge treasure that would make him one of the richest men in America. It was difficult to get at the gold and even harder to drag it out. Some of the bars weighed eighty pounds according to the legend. Still, he, according to the tale, hauled dozens of smaller gold bars out. He hid them around the area, telling no one where these bars were stashed. He was trying to think of a way to convert the treasure into money without violating the law or alerting others to the location of the gold.

Here was the real dilemma to the Noss story. He found immense wealth that it would eclipse the fortunes of the richest men in America, according to what Noss told Ova at the time. There were coins and jewels that would be of great value to collectors, which could have been sold to those collectors without violating any federal law. There was silver bullion hidden in there as well. There were legal means of disposing of the wealth without mentioning the gold, but Noss avoided all those. He apparently never consulted with anyone who could have helped him legally, preferring to enlist the aid of outside investors. He was willing to spread the wealth around, if he could get his hands on it with their help.

He complained that one passage into the treasure cave was so narrow that he had to crawl forward carefully, his shoulders scraping on the rough stone walls. In 1939, he hired an explosives expert named Montgomery to widen the passage. Montgomery, of course, used too much explosive and collapsed the tunnel, filling it with debris. Access to the treasure room was now impossible by the original route, but who cared? Noss had already removed enough of the gold to make him wealthy, if he could just figure out a legal way to convert the gold into cash.

More coming in the next installment… “Gold Bars and Tales of Treasure.” 

A Photographic Conumdrum

 

Going back to check dates and photographs, I have found something of a conundrum. The following sighting is found in the National UFO Reporting Center data base on December 18, 2022. According to the information, the daughter of the witness was on the outside deck in Stevensville, Montana, when she spotted a set of triangular lights. She called the witness but the lights were gone. Both witnesses watched the area where the triangle had been and after a few seconds saw a bright blue flash just before the lights reappeared. The lights rapidly disappeared into the south. Although the witnesses took a photograph, it was obscured by smoke and lacked detail. The sighting lasted about a minute.

Not a particularly interesting sighting except for one thing. They noted that the object they saw looked like photographs taken in the same area on August 30 of last year in Great Falls, Montana.

According to details, the witness was standing on the porch. An object that was flashing was overhead. The witness thought it was a star or satellite but stepped off the porch to get a better recording. The object moved slowly, flashing red top and bottom every second. While recording the witness heard a loud whirring sound. The triangular object was in sight for four or five minutes. Here is the photograph for that object.

As I was looking for the photograph to post to my blog, I found the following information from August 30, 2022, also from Stevensville, Montana. It just noted that the object or lights were triangular and that the daughter had taken “and underexposed picture and inadvertently caught the image of the lights. The sighting was brief. Here is that photograph.

Now, the question becomes, was this just a simply mistake on the part of the webmaster, thinking that the December picture, which mentioned the August picture, were taken on the same date. Was this an attempted hoax and when the first attempt failed to get attention, a second was attempted?

Anyway, we now have both pictures for comparison, and I’m more than a little concerned about the legitimacy of the sightings. Could be nothing more than a simple mistake, but still, I have to wonder. And yes, when I get the chance, I'll try to straighten this out.

AARO, MADAR and an Australia Video

A couple of weeks ago, I reported that Sean Kirkpatrick of AARO, had said that they were going to investigate UFO sightings going back to 1997. Not long after that, Christopher Mellon said that the investigation was going to begin with sightings in 1945. I believe the difference is that Kirkpatrick was talking about the official DoD and DNI investigation and Mellon was referring to the NASA end of the probe. Not exactly contradictory statements, just a difference in the investigative philosophy of two separate but parallel investigations.

I have also heard that originally the idea was to investigate reports back to 1947 when the flying saucers were reported in the United States. There had been sightings prior to Ken Arnold’s of June 24, 1947, but they had gone unnoticed by the press and the general public. Arnold’s sighting captured the attention of the country and after that the newspapers were filled with reports from around the country and around the world.

The 1945-time frame came, according to some, to take the investigation back to the Foo Fighters of World War II. These sightings were never explained and when the war ended the imperative to find an explanation disappeared. That was also cover the Ghost Rockets seen over Scandinavia and then northern Europe in 1946. Again, no solid explanation has been offered for those sightings.

The classic Foo Fighter photograph. There is some controversy about the
reliability of this picture, but it represents the basic description.

As I have said, there are many good reports being made today. On September 4 of last year, the witness in Montara, California said that he saw a large, cylinder-shaped object at the top of a mountain. He said that it was close to a man-made structure. He thought it was some sort of parking garage because there was a cork screw pattern on one side. It was tall and smooth and had a black stripe on it. At the top were several smooth, silver cylinders and to the right was a structure that hung over the edge of the mountain.

The primary witness didn’t get a good look at the structure, but the secondary witnesses did. The object was in sight for one to two minutes. As they rounded the mountain, they looked back up but the object, whatever it was, had disappeared. There was a corresponding spike in the magnetometer at one of the MADAR Node sites providing a secondary chain of evidence.

A much better sighting occurred on August 11 of last year near Willimantic, Connecticut. According to the witness, two objects were seen flying side by side. They were triangular shaped and had a series of lights on them. The UFOs passed directly overhead, flying low with no noise. The objects moved straight up and disappeared.

According to Fran Ridge, there were three important points. A specific time was given. The witness said, "they then moved straight up quickly,” indicating a vertical ascent. And finally at Newington, Connecticut, which is only 27 miles west of the sighting area, MADAR Node106 had a noticeable increase in the magnetometer reading. The onboard compass had varied for 3 minutes and the sighting lasted three minutes.

From Sydney, Australia, comes a video taken by a woman identified only as Tanya on January 18 of this year. She was sitting on the balcony when the UFO caught her attention. She thought it might be a meteor, but then realized that it had stopped to hover. She said that it then shot off at high speed.

The UFO is a bright, white object seen against a blue sky. The motion seems to be the result of the object’s motion, though the camera does move. There doesn’t seem to be a break in the filming, based on the time code with the video. You can see the video here:

https://apple.news/AedbeXE50SqGE_BMFZcAmlw

Ross Coulthart, who investigates UFOs and who watched the video, said that it moved too fast for a drone, though he couldn’t rule that out completely. He said that it didn’t move like other aerial craft, such as a balloon. He did say that it would help if there were other witnesses. 

Chasing Footnotes - The Kevin Randle Edition (Sort of)

 

Well, this isn’t exactly chasing footnotes but it comes close. Curt Collins sent me an email about a photograph that had accompanied a magazine article that I had written in the 1970s. This was a time when there were half a dozen magazines that were devoted to UFOs and I was writing articles for them to, at first pay my college bills, and later to earn a living. Curt wrote:

I'm hoping you can answer a question, hopefully an easy one. Your article, "The Truth about the 1957 UFO Flap," Official UFO, March 1977, labeled as being by Kirby. 

Your article, "The Truth about the 1957 UFO Flap," in Official UFO, March 1977, labeled as being by Kirby. I suspect this is a photo from somewhere else, but if it is from Kirby, can you verify it and tell me where you found it?

 

Two of his photos were submitted to the Air Force, and as far as I know only one has ever been published. I came across an ad that stated there were 6 photos by Kirby. So, if this is one of the others, I'd love to know about it.

 

I looked at the picture and had no memory of having submitted it. I did recognize some of the other pictures with the article. They had come from the Project Blue Book files. I believe now that the editor of the magazine, or one of the other staff members, had found the picture and included it with my article.

The magazine picture that began the hunt.

I did remember, however, that I had seen the picture before. In my mind, I could see that it was on the cover of a magazine. I don’t know why I had such a clear memory of it and it took me about ten minutes to find the magazine. It was in a file of random UFO magazines, meaning simply that I only had an issue or two of the magazine, rather than the number I have for others such as UFO Report or UFO.

I scanned the cover and emailed Curt a copy of the cover and the title page that provided information about the publisher, which, I suspect, was of little help. Other than learning that the picture was in a magazine for 1968, this did little to make an identification.

Not long after that I received an email from Curt that said he found the original story. It said:

RCAF pilot Childerhose Canada 1956 Photo over the Canadian Rockies near Ft. MacCleod, Alberta by Canadian Air Force pilot R. J. Childerhose.

A Royal Canadian Air Force pilot while flying in a 4 plane formation at an altitude of about 11 km on 27-Aug-1958 [sic], saw and photographed a bright disc, that was remaining stationary between the clouds.

From a letter to Philip Klass: “I had the object in good view for upwards of 45 seconds. It was stationary, with sharply defined edges. Looked like a shiny silver dollar sitting horizontal. The light emitted was much brighter than the existing sunlight and overexposed the film causing the blurred edges in the picture… It neither moved nor changed shape while I had it in sight.”

From a letter to Dr. James McDonald: “the photo of the bright object doesn’t represent quite what appeared to the naked eye. When I first saw the object it appeared as a very bright, clearly defined discoid, like a silver dollar lying on its side. The photo makes it look like a blob of light, the result of light intensity. It appeared much brighter than that (sic) of the sun which, of course, was setting behind the clouds up ahead. What appears in the Kodachrome slide is a disappointment, really.” It was in good view for some minutes because I looked at it trying to figure out what I was seeing and I called the attention of the formation to it before remembering that I had a camera in my leg pocket.”

That wasn’t the end of it for me. Curt supplied the photographer’s name and provided the information from a story about the picture. I used that and learned more about Childerhose. It turns out that the pilot held several aviation records and was a respected airman. Dr. Bruce Maccabee investigated the photograph several years ago and published a paper about what he had learned. You can read the paper here:

http://data0.eklablog.com/scienceetovnis/perso/brucemaccabeechilderhose.pdf

Included in that paper was an affidavit completed by Childerhose about the event. Rather than retype it here, following is that affidavit.

I will note that this is an interesting case now that we have more information about it. It’s the sort of case that AARO would investigate if it happened in today’s environment. And think about it. A multiple witness sighting that has a photograph for additional support. Information could be derived from the photograph that could improve our overall knowledge.

Anyway, I will note that the cover of the magazine doesn’t provide us with the best look at the photo, but it does give us a clue about the case. Given that the picture was taken nearly 70 years ago, there isn’t much we can do with it today. And had it been taken today, there is so much more we could have done with it. Here, however, is the journey I took to get to this point, sparked by Curt Collins and my memory of seeing the magazine cover.

Trinity UFO Crash, UAPs and Jacques Vallee

 

Once again, I find myself wondering just what in the hell is going on, though I suspect we are being set up. We have heard, in the last few weeks that the new government investigation into UFOs, I mean UAPs, is only going to deal with military sightings and then we’re told that they’re going to look at sightings going back to 1996. There was a story that NASA was going to investigate sightings starting in 1945. And now we learn that the government is going to investigate the crash of a UFO in 1945.

This latest is from Nick Pope who made the claims on Tucker Carlson’s show, mentioning what he called the “Roswell before Roswell.” The problem is that this refers to case that Dr. Jacques Vallee promoted in his book, Trinity: The Best Kept Secret. It is the story told by a man, who in 1945 was a child. He claimed that he, and his child-aged pal, stumbled on the recovery of this avocado-shaped UFO that crashed near the site of the first atomic explosion, known now as the Trinity Site.

Nick Pope at the Las Vegas Crash Conference

Vallee has contributed a great deal to the study of what we now must call anomalous phenomena, which are, of course, the latest in a long list of names that began with flying saucers. I do not understand Vallee’s interest in this tale, nor his lack of critical thinking about it. He seems to have embraced it when the evidence, from the source is dubious at best. I’ve gone through this at length in the past and you can read my analysis of his book and the tale here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/06/trinity-best-kept-secret-critique.html

Let me point out here, that Reme Baca, the man with the story, approached Stan Friedman and later Don Schmitt in the 1990s. At that time, the crash seems to have happened over on the Plains of San Agustin. Baca wanted to know how to sell the story. Neither Friedman nor Schmitt were interested in it after doing a bit of the preliminary work. They recognized the flaws in the story, including details that seemed to have been borrowed from the Roswell crash.

When I heard about this story back in 2010, I was bothered by the military reaction, or rather, their lack of urgency when presented with the crash of an aerial vehicle that was obviously not of American design. The Japanese had bombed the American mainland starting in 1944 which killed six Americans using balloon bombs. These were the only deaths on the American mainland caused by enemy action. The point is, this avocado craft could be the vehicle created to kill Americans and destroy property. The military would have had no way of knowing anything about this craft at the time but would know that it was critical for them to find out immediately.

We learn that Baca and his pal watched the military retrieval operation from hiding off and on for a couple of days. Toward the end, when all, and I mean ALL, the soldiers left the site, they were able to explore the craft. I can think of no circumstance in which such an unknown vehicle, once loaded on the flatbed truck for removal, would have been left unguarded. Why didn’t they just drive off at that point?

And, we are told that the boys, and later several adults, walked the site, recovered samples of debris, some of which was later incorporated in Christmas decorations. But, of course, all that debris has disappeared and is therefore unavailable for analysis.

I believe that no one reading the book, which presents scant evidence for the event, would believe this fairy tale. It makes no sense at all. Vallee makes the case for other such events in the book as a way of validating the Trinity crash. But I have gone into that at length in other postings about some of that evidence, which you can read here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2005/03/aurora-texas-story-that-wont-die.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/12/jefferson-airship-vs-aurora-crash.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/09/ufo-crashes-fifty-years-before-roswell.html

And you can listen to my interview with Vallee and Harris about Trinty and other aspects of the UFO phenomenon here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/45140594

As I said, this smacks of a set up. The government is now going to investigate this tale of a crash seriously, only to discover that it is not based in reality. They can then say, “Why, yes, we did investigate this, and like all other claims of a spacecraft crash, we found that it was not true. Like Roswell, there is no substance to this.”

Again, as I have said in the past, this is right out of the debunking playbook described by Dr. H. P. Robertson in 1953. He, and his CIA-sponsored panel, after a week of reviewing the UFO evidence assembled by Project Blue Book and the Air Force, decided that the evidence did not support the conclusion of alien visitation. They suggested that the public be told of mysterious UFO events and then trot out the explanations, removing the mystery. They suggested that teachers not allow students to read books about UFOs for book reports. They had a whole program to stimy interest in UFOs, which, for some reason they believed posed a threat to national security… but all that is a discussion for another time.

I wonder if we can find parallels with this thinking in our government today… but I digress.

Trinty is not a true story. It is based on two first-hand witnesses, only one of whom is alive today. They incorporate the statements of a second-hand witness or two in this tale. There are many better cases for the government to research if they truly wish to understand what has gone on over the last 80 years. If they’d like a list, I can provide one for them… cases of multiple witnesses with physical evidence, interaction with the environment, radar sightings and photographs and film (and no, I do not have a single case will all those elements, but I can name several that do contain multiple chains of evidence.)  

However, this story would not be on that list. And that’s the real point. Why waste time on a case that even the most enthusiastic UFO researcher knows isn’t true?

Ed's MP Story

 

Given the track record of “Ed,” and his drumbeat support of the thoroughly discredited Alien Autopsy film, I normally ignore his comments. We’d just go around again with his demand that I look at the evidence, which I have, and his denial of the evidence that it is a hoax. We have photographs from the process of crediting the aliens, we have the statements by Ray Santilli who has admitted to fake nature of some of that film, and we have the complete collapse of the alleged photographer’s story. We have piles of evidence showing the film is faked against a lack of anything substantial showing that the film is real.

Creating the alien creatures for the Alien Autopsy.

HOWEVER…

Ed, in an attempt to reinforce his personal belief structure in the face of the overwhelming evidence, sent this:

All, The MP wrote that the crash happened on the 2nd of July, and everything was cleaned up by the 4th. Mack found the wreckage from the explosion that caused the crash about five miles away after rain and thunder the night before. The weather info supports this version. https://ufology.patrickgross.org/rw/w/anonymousmp01.htm Ed

But rather than ignore the comment completely, I did check out the web address because there are sometimes nuggets of interest hidden in them. While Ed continues to support the MP story, it is interesting that the web address is not quite as enthusiastic as Ed. At least that was my take on it. I just wondered if anyone other than Ed was impressed with the MP’s story and what they might have thought about the comments at the end of the email exchange.

I suppose the real point here is that I get tired of fighting the same fights over and over. The goalposts are moved or the data are rejected out of hand because they don’t support the belief structure. I see two people presented with the same facts come to mutually exclusive conclusions.

My search has been for the truth. Not my truth or your truth but the truth. I freely admit that the Roswell case is not as robust as I once thought but I also know that Mogul is not the answer. I realized that people like Glenn Dennis and Frank Kaufmann have hurt the investigation with their, I was going to say confabulations but what I really mean are their lies.

So, take a look at the MP’s story, at the comments at the end. Look for the internal inconsistencies and think about the way these things would operate in a military environment. Not how it is portrayed by Hollywood or told by people with no experience, but how it actually is.

And, let me know in the comments what you think about it.

ARRO's Annual Report on UAPs (UFOS)

 

In what was breaking news yesterday but today is just a reminder of the past, we learn that the required Annual Report on UAPs has been released into the public arena. It is only eleven pages long with many of those eleven pages only partially filled. There are no redactions because this is the unclassified version that tells us little or nothing about the sightings but does tell us more than we need to know about the mechanics of this new investigation.

The Executive Summary is four paragraphs that do not fill the page. It tells us that, added to the 144 reports gathered over the last 17 years and were mentioned in the first public report, there were 247 new sightings added to that list. There were also another 119 that “were either since discovered or reported after the preliminary assessment period.” That made for a grand total of 510, as of August 30 of last year. They note that additional information will be found in the classified version of the report.

Both the AARO and the ODNI (Office, Director National Intelligence) suggested that the increase in UAP reports (UFOs) was due, in part, to a better understanding of the possible threat of UAPs as either a hazard to aerial navigation or adversary collection methods. Or, in other words, they’re not thinking in terms of alien visitation but in terrestrial intervention.

After a long paragraph that it filled with acronyms there is a final paragraph that reinforces the idea that UAPs (UFOs) continue to penetrate restricted air space, which leads back to threats to aerial navigation and intelligence collection by our adversaries in the world… or, what amounts to a repeat of the second paragraph.

The third page (page one is a table of contents) is “Scope and Assumptions,” which establishes reporting requirements, who is responsible for what and a list of government organizations that lists the agencies involved that includes intelligence agencies, the various branches of the military, NASA, the FAA and NOAA.

The assumptions are that there are multiple factors for seeing UAP (UFOs), that the reports are from the “observer’s accurate recollection of the event and/or sensors that generally operate correctly… AARO acknowledge that a select number of UAP [UFO] incidents may be attributable to sensor irregularities or variances…”

An example of a sensor irregularity.

The fourth page is devoted to “Governmental Changes to Manage UAP [UFO] Issues.” This is more government boilerplate providing information about who will do what and how it will be done. It tells us nothing about the sightings or the investigations, just who will coordinate with whom and lots of alphabet agencies mentioned.

Page five is “Continued Reporting and Robust Analysis Are Providing Better Fidelity on UAP [UFO] Events, but many Cases Remain Unresolved.” While this promises some interesting information, it is just more numbers about the reports, which were provided in the Executive Summary. It does tell us about AARO’s initial “analysis and characterization of 366 newly identified reports” that left 171 that were said to be uncharacteristic and unattributed UAP reports which is a way of saying that they were currently unidentified. Of those 366 reports, 26 were unmanned Aircraft or UAVs, 163 were balloons or balloon-like entities, their word and not mine, and 6 were clutter meaning birds or weather or other such things.

They finish that section by mentioning, once again the possible hazard of collision that would require operators to adjust flight patterns “in response to their [UAP] presences in the airspace, operating outside of air traffic control standards.” This means that pilots might have maneuver to avoid hitting one of these UAPs (UFOs).

In the summary (which covers about half a page), they again noted that the UAP (UFO) continue to represent a hazard to flight safety and pose a possible adversary collection threat. AARO has been established as the DoD focal point for UAP (UFO) reports and coordinated efforts among the various government agencies have resulted in increased data sets. In other words, it seems like a high school student who was told to write an eleven-page theme and used repetition to reach the required length and to make statements that look impressive but say nothing.

However, we have no details on the reports, what investigative methods were used, and that the numbers were often repeated. They report on 510 reports, they mention 366 reports that were gathered in addition and that 119 reports were not included in the assessment period. And they have explained, to their satisfaction, 195 of the reports.

There were three appendices, that included Key Terms, the ARRO Establishment of Office and Duties, and telling us that an Annual Report is due on October 31 of each year until 2026.

In other words, there wasn’t much in the report that provided any insight into what was happening or how the investigations were conducted, size of the operation or any description of the UFO sightings made. Just numbers reported and governmental boilerplate that clarified nothing and a seemed suggestion that there was an increase in UFO sightings when in reality it was merely an increase in reporting. As I mentioned, the next scheduled report is on October 31. You can see the whole report here:

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Unclassified-2022-Annual-Report-UAP.pdf

I will note that we are seeing more mainstream media reporting of UFO sightings and we see a change in attitude of those in the media. No longer are UFO reports met with scorn, but with a wait and see attitude. However, most of those reporters know little or nothing about the UFO field and accept with little or no questioning of the source and their proclamations. Although there is an overall improvement in the reporting by the media, there is still a gap between what it true, what is perceived and what the government would like us to believe.

We’ll have to wait to see if anything new comes out of this renewed interest in UFOs, or if it will degenerate to the point it reached when the Condon Committee conducted what was allegedly a scientific investigation. We’re still in the phase I think of as Twining 2.0 where there seems to be an interest in investigation rather than explanation. It will be interesting to see when we reach Robertson 2.0, which is the debunking feature.

The real point is that there is nothing in this new report that tells us about the sightings. We are given numbers and a list of agencies and a schedule for reports. We expect that some sightings, maybe most, will have mundane explanations but we have no details at all. In the past, with Project Blue Book and other investigations, we saw how the data were manipulated to obtain a specific result. Here we see the beginnings of that same sort of manipulation. We have a mystery and then we find a solution to convince people there was  no mystery. That is right out of the Robertson Panel Playbook. We need more than eleven short pages that include a table of contents and a list of definitions. We need an avenue to the truth.

Alamogordo Balloon Launch - A Better Picture

 For those still interested in Mogul and who had a hard time making out the picture of the two weather balloons and two rawin targets I posted here, I found a better copy. This is still somewhat hard to see, but it does provide enough for some comparisons. I will note that while this picture is dated as July 10, 1947, the illustration that launched this bit of research is not dated in that fashion. It comes from Charles Moore who has been caught more than once altering the data to fit his claim that he "launched the Roswell Crash."

A much better copy of the picture from the Alamogordo News, July 10, 1947.
I tip of the hat to Terry the Censor for the photo.

The real problem for the picture is that this is obviously not a full Mogul array, but more of a cluster of balloons and radar targets. As you can see, there isn't much in the way of material in the balloons and the targets, and does not account for the descriptions of the debris field offered by several eyewitnesses. The main exception would be Sheridan Cavitt who told me, as he told others, that the debris field was rather small and that he recognized the debris as the remains of a balloon.

At any rate, this is an interesting picture and I must wonder if it was the inspiration for the illustration that Moore offered. Of course, if these balloons were actually launched, they couldn't account for the find by Mack Brazel because Jesse Marcel and Cavitt had already been there.

For the sake of clarity, and to make the point that I want all the information available to me available to all who wish to see it, I thought it important to publish the picture.

 

"New" Mogul Illustration?

 

Yeah, I know that I said that I wouldn’t say anything more about Project Mogul because, to me, that explanation simply does not work. There is too much that argues against it, two of the facts being that Flight No. 4 had been cancelled and that the early flights in New Mexico did not contain any rawin radar reflectors as part of the array. If there were no rawins, then the explanation failed at that point.

However, I then found a website that devoted a segment to the Roswell case and used an illustration from New York University that was labeled “Typical radar target flight train used by the NYU balloon group in 1947.” As you can see, it matches none of the other illustrations for Project Mogul.

The website didn’t provide much in the way of a source, but indicated that it came from the massive Air Force report, The Roswell Report: Fact vs Fiction in the New Mexico Desert. It was included in the section that contained the interview with Charles Moore but it doesn’t tell us anything else about the original source of the illustration.

I have been through, page by freaking page, of the technical reports and other documentation about Project Mogul and the operations in Alamogordo. I have seen, literally, dozens of illustrations and photographs of those balloon arrays launched there in June and July 1947, that this new illustration matches none of that.

The only thing I have found that remotely matches is a picture from the Alamogordo News on July 10 that shows two weather balloons and two rawin targets about to be launched. Moore told me that the ladder in that picture was one that he had bought with petty cash. The only copies of that photograph that I have are poor quality reproductions from a copy machine.

Center picture shows weather balloons and rawin targets.

The question that arises, given all the data that I have seen about Project Mogul, and all the interviews I had with Charles Moore, not to mention discussions with James McAndrew and interviews with Colonel Richard Weaver, is where were these radar target trains launched, and more importantly, when.

I will note here that had Mack Brazel found one of these, which contained three to five balloons and three rawin targets (though I don’t know why they’re need three), he would have been able to pick up the debris in a few minutes. He wouldn’t have been worried about someone cleaning up the big mess that was the motivation for the trip into Roswell.

I will also note that upon landing, there were be no reason for the targets to be ripped up into pieces as shown in the pictures in General Ramey’s office. In fact, we do have pictures from a balloon landing near Circleville, Ohio, in early July and the rawin was recovered virtually intact.

Daughter of Sherman Campbell holding the
rawin target he found in his field

The real questions about this illustration is where is the original source, were there other NYU balloon projects in New Mexico in 1947, and when were these small clusters of balloons launched? This seems to be one of the many red herrings (is this now an offensive term for some maligned group?) that have been floated (pun intended) about the UFO crash in New Mexico.