My Latest Communication with Jacques Vallee

 

After Douglas Johnson’s revelation last week, based on an interview conducted by and taped by Tom Carey (seen below), I reached out to Dr. Jacques Vallee. The Carey interview told a story of the San Antonio UFO crash that differed significantly from that written about by Vallee and Paola Harris. I asked Vallee if he was aware of the Carey interview.

To my surprise, he not only responded, but did so rapidly. He confirmed that he knew of the interview, but made it clear that Reme Baca’s desire to make money off the sighting did not mean it was untrue. Many people in the UFO community were

making some money off their sightings or expertise. They wrote books and attended conventions and almost no one was criticized for it.

I had to agree with this. I have been accused many times of only being in it for the money. Didn’t matter that some of those slinging that allegation were writing books and giving interviews and were making some money off the field. I often wondered if we couldn’t say that about nearly everyone. They were in it for the money. Pick a vocation and wonder if the person involved was doing it for the love of the work or because there was money for doing it. But I digress.

Vallee’s response only covered that one, small aspect of what Baca had said to Carey. And, that wasn’t what I was interested in. I sent a second email, this time hoping for a more in-depth response. I mentioned some of the discrepancies in the two stories as told by Baca. I pointed out that Baca told Carey he was in a truck with Jose Padilla, not riding horses when they came across the downed UFO. I mentioned that Baca said they had taken the bits of debris from a back of an Army truck and not from the inside of the craft as told in the published version. I was just pointing out some of the real problems, the ones that would sink the San Antonio crash tale unless there was some way to massage the two versions into one.

It’s a week later, I have received no response. When you think about it, what can be said. The story changed in several radical and significant ways. Minor changes in a story that is decades old is not a major problem. However, when you go from stealing debris from the back of an Army truck to climbing into an alien craft and peeling that debris off the wall, that smacks of a lie.

When you go from driving a truck out in a search for a missing cow to riding horses, you have a major problem.

Couple this to all the other issues, such as claiming that a State Police officer named Eddie Apodaca came out to the site but there was no one by that name in the State Police in 1945, it is a real problem. Once again, I will note, much of this is laid out in Johnson’s reports which can be read here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-file-eddie-apodaca-the-real-policeman-who-cracked-the-trinity-ufo-crash-case/

The real point here is to note that Dr. Vallee was quick to respond with an email that didn’t address the main issues. He selected one minor problem with which I agree. That Baca wanted to know how to exploit his sighting is unimportant. But, when I pressed for more information on the major issues, there was no response.

And, in case you missed it, I believe the tale to be a hoax. It is not based in fact… well, that’s not exactly true. There is a New Mexico town named San Antonio and there were a lot of facts borrowed from the Roswell case.

Coast-to-Coast AM: FLIR and William Rhodes

I came across something the other day that suggests a partial solution to some of the questions being asked about UFOs. Officials have wondered how it can be that there is an object seen on radar, or by FLIR but not be seen by pilots sent to intercept them. The answer might be that it is the human ability to see only certain light waves.

We can see what is known as the visible light spectrum. That is bordered by the ultraviolet on one end and the infrared on the other. While we can’t see in the infrared, we have instruments that can. If a craft is concealed in an infrared cloud, it might be invisible to an interceptor pilot or witnesses on the ground, but could be seen by radar and by FLIR. Maybe this is a hint about a technology that could mask our aircraft in some fashion.

I confess that I’m not sure how this would work, or if it could work. I just noticed that a craft emitting an infrared light would not be visible to the human eye. Using infrared to mask a craft of any kind might not work, especially in daylight, but it could explain the sudden disappearance of a craft if the light it emitted changed from the visible spectrum into the infrared. It would seem to disappear while staying right there. I’m sure that some optical scientists might have something to say about this.

Of course, there are still sightings in which the witnesses can see the UFO. Such was a case from May 18 of this year. The witness, in El Reno, Oklahoma, was sitting on the deck in the rear of his house, when he noticed a shiny spot in the sky. He was curious about it and watched as it seemed to grow. After a minute, he could see a circular shape. It then turned sharply and accelerated, disappearing in a matter of seconds.

He said that he saw a definite shape that looked nothing like a conventional aircraft. By the time he realized what he was seeing, the UFO had disappeared. He thought about his cell phone too late to take any pictures.

For this month’s retro sighting, I’m looking at the William Rhodes photographs taken on July 7, 1947, in Phoenix, Arizona. He was walking from his house to his lab in the backyard when he heard what he described as a whooshing sound. He looked up and thought he was seeing one of the new jets, but quickly realized that it was something different. He ran to his lab for his camera and took two pictures.

The better of the Rhodes photographs

The other Rhodes photograph.

Although it doesn’t show in the photographs, the illustration that Rhodes drew shows a disk-shaped object. There were no propellers and no turbulent air behind the craft. He said that the UFO was circling but he took only one other picture. He only had two frames left on the film.

Rohodes illustration of what he saw and photographed.

The Air Force smear machine attempted to prove that this was a hoax. There was an issue with Rhodes’ claim of a doctorate, though his Navy service at the beginning of World War II was the source of the claim. They didn’t like that he was self-employed and said that he lived off his wife’s income. The truth was that he had several patents and that was sought by universities for his problem-solving ability. I talked to a man who knew Rhodes who told me that Rhodes was a clever fellow and a genius. You can read more about this aspect of the case here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/10/beyond-rhodes-photographs.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2006/11/more-of-best-ufo-photographs.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2012/04/kenneth-arnold-william-rhodes-and-maury.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/10/william-rhodes-and-his-phd.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/10/more-on-william-rhodes.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/07/air-force-character-assassination-and.html

The Air Force labeled the case as a hoax, though Ken Arnold said that he had been told by two Army intelligence officers that the Rhodes photographs resembled the craft that he, Arnold, had seen. I dealt with the case in depth in The Best of Project Blue Book.

As an addendum, to the story, this was a comment appended to one of the posts I had written about Rhodes:

William Albert Rhodes was my uncle. He passed away in 2007 at 90 years of age. His last wife (of six) Nancy lives still in their house on 13th place in Phoenix, she celebrated her 87 birthday last January. A long time resident of Arizona he lived in Phoenix when it was a small village of 35,000 people. In those days you were judged by what you knew and what you did rather than what a piece of paper said you knew. It was literally the Wild West at the time. Bill was friends with many leading people of the time including two men who were to become governors of Arizona. Intellectually Bill was brilliant and had many interests not limited to what I've read here. He was very active in the early radio music scene in Arizona. He played piano throughout his life at a very high level. He held many patents including the water welder, of which I have one in my garage. He worked extensively in the solar field and his home still has a hybrid solar panel for heating water and a "helioscope", which uses reflected light via mirrors to illuminate the inside of a building, among other innovations. He organized a "solar showcase" in Arizona in 1955, which while covered by the local media was a relative flop due, I believe, to entrenched corporate interests such as Arizona Public Service and Salt River Project. He was a "90 day wonder" and never said otherwise. No one who knew him even a little bit would think he didn't deserve to be called Dr. He invented Rhodes Gas and although it's now called Browns Gas it was his development and invention. He had some success in business but made many bad decisions and had no lasting business interests. He was used and abused business wise throughout his life. I know little about the UFO pictures having been born in 1947. He always kidded me and told me I was half alien. His personal life aside (obviously having had six wives) he wasn't the most stable of family men, but in the end he was one of a kind, complex, intelligent, flawed as most of us are.

I found it interesting and confirmed much of the other things that I had learned about Rhodes and his photographs. 

The Smoking Gun Proving the Trinity Tale is a Hoax

This is a fight that I really didn’t want to get into, but find myself dragged into it. I am surprised by the response that Dr. Jacques Vallee made to the issues raised by Douglas Dean Johnson’s May 1 analysis of the Trinity UFO crash. I found most of what was said to be weak. The main issues were not properly addressed and there were a few points that seemed to have escaped notice. I thought I would chime in with my own thoughts.

I’m not going to address all the problems with Vallee’s response here. For those interested, you can read Vallee’s response here:

https://visions13.wixsite.com/journo-jottings/post/jacques-vallee-hits-back-at-hoax-claims-over-trinity-ufo-crash-book

And you can read the rest of Johnson’s expose on the whole of the San Antonio UFO crash here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/

Like many others, I was bothered by the claim that the New Mexico National Guard would allow someone who was only thirteen enlist. The claim originated in an article Ben Moffett wrote for the Mountain Mail on October 30, 2003. Moffett wrote:

While at Socorro High School he left to join the National Guard at age 13, when very young children were allowed to sign up because of the World War II death toll in the New Mexico Guard. After leaving San Antonio [New Mexico], Jose [Padilla] continued guard duty in Van Nuyes, [sic] Calif., Air National Guard, and when the unit was activated, spent time in Korea.

That wasn’t the only reference to service in Korea. In their book, Vallee and Harris wrote:

On Friday, the 16^th of October 2020, Paola and I were back in Socorro one more time, to meet again with Mr. Padilla… Jose was recovering from an operation on his first bullet wound, the one from Korea.

This second reference puts Padilla in Korea and suggests something of a combat role though it is not claimed as such. They do offer a weak explanation for this discrepancy. In Vallee’s rebuttal, he wrote:

Here again, the reason for some of the uncertainty comes from the fact that he has resided in many places during his long life, had several marriages, misplaced or forget records along the way, and that any remaining private documents would still be in California where he used to live. In other words, he’s human. The few specific questions raised have simple answers, however. Jose was 16 in 1953, the last year of the Korean War., but no Pease treaty was ever signed. After the theoretical “cease fire” the US Army still needed boots on the ground for clean-up, repatriation of materiel, documentation and the like. Mr. Padilla has told us repeatedly that his service in Korea was during that phase, and that he was shot as part of the mop-up operations.

The explanation does not alter the original tale by all that much, other than to suggest that he was 16 rather than 13 when he joined the National Guard. As a former member of the military, I know that we were told to protect certain records such as our DD 214. This document verified military service and was necessary to validate that service when requesting various VA benefits. At the very least, with all his moves, Padilla should have kept a copy of that document. Yes, I have my DD 214s from my service as an enlisted man in the Army, another as a warrant officer in Vietnam, from my service in the Air Force in 1976 and in the Iowa National Guard. Padilla should have been able to supply such a document. And, in the event he lost all his military records, copies would be available at the Army Records Center in St. Louis. Verification of his military service is there and there is no reason that he, or for that matter Jacques Vallee, with Padilla’s permission, wouldn’t be able to offer the proof of this improbable story.

I will note that Johnson did contact the New Mexico National Guard. In two searches, there were unable to find any documentation to prove that Padilla had served. At this point, the only conclusion to be drawn is that Padilla never served in the New Mexico National Guard or the military. That certainly puts a cloud over many of his other claims.

As an aside, I have been challenged for decades about my claims of military service. I have been able to silence those claims by producing various documents, some of them from the late 1960s, and I too, have had many moves over the years but have been able to retain enough of these documents to prove my claims of military service.  Some of those documents are more than half a century old.

For those interested in more about Padilla’s alleged military service, including documents from the New Mexico National Guard, you can see them here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-file-jose-padillas-stolen-valor-military-claims-p/

One of the biggest problems is the tale that a New Mexico State Policeman, Eddie Apodaca, who was the police officer involved in the August 1945 UFO crash. According to Harris, Baca told her, “Jose came to over to my house, and I went with him to his house, where we met Eddie Apodaca who as a State Policeman, and a friend of the family. Faustino [Padilla’ father] had asked him to go with us to the crash site.”

The problem, outlined by Johnson, was that in 1945, Apodaca was not in New Mexico. He was in Europe at the end of the Second World War. He did not become a policeman until five or six years after the alleged UFO crash. You can read about the search for Eddie Apodaca here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-file-eddie-apodaca-the-real-policeman-who-cracked-the-trinity-ufo-crash-case/

Vallee’s response is not to provide some evidence that Eddie Apodaca was a state police officer in 1945, but to say there were six men named Edward Apodaca in New Mexico in 1980. But this doesn’t put any Eddie Apodaca in the state police in 1945. According to the records, there was no one named Eddie Apodaca in the state police, so it makes no difference how many were named Edward Apodaca if none of them were serving in the state police at the time.

I do wish, however, to deal with one important aspect of this case that is absolute nonsense. That is the attitude of the miliary, or rather, the alleged attitude of the military, when they arrived at the crash site to recover the craft. As I have mentioned in my review of the book, I found that attitude rather cavalier. The war in the Pacific had not ended, though there were suggestions of peace, and in 1944 and 1945, the Japanese had launched more than 9000 balloon bombs with the thought of setting forest on fire and hitting manufacturing centers. Some 250 of the bombs reached the United States. One of them killed six people in Oregon.

What this suggests is that if some sort of unidentified craft had fallen close to the Trinity Site where the first atomic bomb had been detonated, the military would have been quite interested. They would have retrieved that object and they would not have left it unguarded or their trailers unguard because they wouldn’t want curious civilians taking a look at what they carried. Of course, this sort of speculation is unimportant now because, in the original story, things were a little different. Actually, they were quite different.

Tom Carey

In what in another age might have been called burying the lead, there is an audio recording with Reme Baca in which the story of the San Antonio crash is, well, completely different. It provides the evidence that the San Antonio UFO crash is a hoax. Tom Carey interviewed him a couple of decades ago with that old, boring story. You can read about it and listen to the tape here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-file-the-reme-baca-smoking-gun-interview/

Although this should be the stake through the heart of the tale, I know, from experience, that there are those who will not accept the evidence. They were talk about government agents and threats of jail or death. They will suggest there is a core of truth to the story. In this case, I think there were two boys living in New Mexico in 1945 named Reme Baca and Jose Padilla. Other than that, I don’t think there is much else that is true.

Don’t believe that? Just revisit the Alien Autopsy hoax in which pictures of the creation of the alien have been published… Don’t believe me, well, just look again at the tales told by Philip Corso that have been debunked in a fashion not unlike that we have just seen here… Or, for that matter, look at the tales told by Robert Willingham and the Del Rio UFO crash. I have published at great deal about that.

The real problem here seems to be that AARO, that supposed investigation into UAPs, has heard this tale and found it compelling. I suspect, in the not-too-distant future, AARO will report that the story is a hoax and use it to compromise other UFO mysteries that have no explanation. They will tell us that they looked at the San Antonio case and discovered that two men invented the tale to cash in on the interest in UFOs. And with that, they will dismiss all the UFO, well, UAP, phenomenon as having been the work of overactive imaginations, misidentifications of nature objects, and people who wish to see their names in print or be interviewed to participate in documentaries. They’ll forget to tell you that it was members of the UFO community that exposed the hoax for what it is. They won’t mention the work of Douglas Johnson but they will tell you all about the investigation they conducted to prove the point.

At any rate, I hope the latest, with the taped interview available for all to hear, will be sufficient to end this controversy. I know it won’t, but I can hope. 

More Analysis of the Latest AARO Briefing

There has been a lot of chatter about the recent update from Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick of the official UAP investigation on the various UFO platforms. Jan Aldrich, a long time and careful researcher, provided an interesting take on all of it.

What I have hinted at, he said outright. This briefing was theater for the public and since this was an unclassified hearing, nothing of substance was mentioned during it. Alrich said that prior to this public hearing, the committee chair and the ranking member of the Senate committee had already had the classified version of the briefing. This, then was more reinvention of the wheel and an attempt to convince the public that something important was being done, even if the results were less than spectacular.

The somewhat less than spectacularly attended AARO Briefing

I have pointed out that the first official investigation was created by then Lt. General Nathan F. Twining in 1947 and was officially known as Project Sign but publicly as Project Saucer. This eventually evolved into Project Grudge and finally into Project Blue Book. Alrich suggests that Blue Book was a reinvention of Sign, but I believe the first reinvention was Grudge. No matter, attitudes and responses changed with each new project.

I should also point out because it is not part of the official record, that Twining had ordered an off-the-books investigation in December 1946. They were gathering data through military sources. The public knew nothing about this investigation and when Kenneth Arnold made news in June 1947, this unofficial investigation morphed into the official investigation.

Alrich suggests a shakeup in 1966 when Dr. James McDonald warned the AMC commander that the incompetence in Blue Book might not be good for career advancement for any number of people. The general then ordered a revitalization of Blue Book. The changes were made, but as officers were reassigned, the investigation soon slipped into the old patterns of do nothing and deny everything.

Alrich suggests the fourth reinvention was the Condon Committee. I think it was the fifth, with the 1953 Robertson Panel providing guidance on how the UFO investigation should proceed. Many of the ideas suggested by the Robertson Panel were incorporated into the Project Blue Book investigation with those in charge taking their cues from the panel’s recommendations. By including the Robertson Panel in the discussion, that would seem to make the Condon Committee the fifth attempt.

Here’s the interesting part of Alrich’s analysis. He mentioned that Blue Book closed in 1969 and the evidence is that it was, in fact closed. I interviewed Carmon Marano,

Carmon Marano

the last officer at Blue Book who explained how they were throwing out files, though he believed some of the information should be preserved. Since it was being destroyed, he took much of it home. That information eventually made its way to Rob Mercer. That information has yielded many good cases and leads. The point is that they were cleaning out the Blue Book offices because Blue Book had been closed.

But according to Alrich the Air Force continued to gather UFO information with only government input and no reports from the public. Does this sound familiar? It is what AARO has said it is doing… and I’ll note here that we do have evidence of this. The Hickson/Parker abduction was investigated by the Air Force in 1973. There is documentation that proves an Air Force interest in the case. The two men were interviewed at Keesler Air Force Base the day after the abduction, and they were interrogated by high-ranking base officers. And, importantly, the names of other witnesses to the abduction was also noted at the time. You can read more about this here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/10/coast-to-coast-calvin-parker.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2022/07/pascagoula-perspective.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/07/x-zone-broadcast-network-calvin-parker.html

The point here is simply that the current official interest in UFOs goes back decades. After a period of serious investigation, the military operations devolve into public relations attempts to convince the world that UFOs are not alien spacecraft and there is no mystery about them. The reality seems to be that each time to government tells us that they have no interest in UFOs, that is a lie.

This latest round of investigations and congressional hearing seems to be just so much eyewash to convince us that this is a serious attempt to find answers. But we’re getting nothing of substance and it appears that the Robertson Panel suggestion of more than 70 years ago is now in play. Show the public a mysterious sighting and then provide the mundane explanation for it. That should eliminate the public interest…

Of course, it hasn’t worked yet, but they can always hope that the fifth, or is it the sixth, attempt will by the charm. 

Myrtle Beach Photo - An Update

 

Back on March 16, I reported on a sighting from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. That report said:

There are still many sightings of UFOs inside our atmosphere such as the one from Myrtle Beach, SC, from March 6 of this year. The witness said that he was on top of a parking garage and looking for Venus and Jupiter. The witness saw two bright slanted disks in the south, and not the west where the planets were and he took a picture. He took a second picture only seconds later but the UFOs were gone.

I found the pictures intriguing because the witness said that he had out looking for Venus and Jupiter, which had accounted for dozens of UFO sightings. Since he was looking for the planets, it was clear to me that what he had seen were not those planets.

The Myrtle Beach photograph for those who missed it in the first go round.

Now, I have said, as I post these sightings, that if there is new and better information, I will pass it along. Just yesterday, I received an email from a Spanish colleague, Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, who pointed out that the objects in the photograph were lens flares. He provided a link to a website hosted by Juan Carlos Victorio Uranga, who had studied the photographs and provided the solution. You can see that analysis here:

https://misteriosdelaire.blogspot.com/2023/05/hay-muchos-avistamientos-de-ovnis.html

 

While the solution is interesting and is probably correct, I will have to note that the witness said that he saw two disks in the sky. That might rule out the lens flares. The sudden disappearance is interesting but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the slightest movement of the camera would change the angles and if the lens flare solution is correct, that would account for the UFOs disappearance.

You can decide for yourselves if you accept the solution. I have no reason to doubt it, other than the witness suggestion that he saw the UFO in the sky before he took the picture.

The Truth about Vallee's Trinity: The Best Kept Secret

Those of you who visit here often know that I’m not a fan of Jacques Vallee’s latest book, Trinity: The Best Kept Secret, because it is poorly researched, filled with irrelevant details and lacks even rudimentary corroboration. It is based on the stories told by two men who claimed, as children, they had witnessed the recovery of a UFO in August, 1945. That story is filled with contradictions, mistakes, and invention. Without some sort of additional testimony or evidence, it is just another wild tale told to promote the tellers into the mainstream of UFO research and pull the spotlight toward them for convention invitations (and yes, I know that only one of the two is left to tell the tale).

You can read my analysis, of the first edition of the book, and listen to my interview with Vallee here:

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

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2023/01/trinity-ufo-crash-uaps-and-jacques.html

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

What should be the stake in the heart of this tale is now available. Douglas Dean Johnson has done the research into the story that Vallee and Paola Harris should have done before publishing the information. And there is one part of Johnson’s work that shows this better than any other. That is the claim that New Mexico State Police officer, Eddie Apodaca, was part of the adult witnesses (all conveniently unavailable) who saw the craft. Rather than lay all this out in my own words, let me direct you to the website created by Johnson so that you can read this whole sorry tale. I believe that once you consider the evidence that Johnson provides, which reaches way beyond the Apodaca insight, you’ll realize that Vallee, for some reason, climbed on the bandwagon and in doing so, tarnished his own reputation.

Jacques Vallee

You can read Johnson’s work here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-the-trinity-ufo-crash-hoax/

I will note that the sort of sloppy research engaged by Vallee is one of the reasons that we, in the UFO community, see little respect in the real world. Before the book was published, Vallee and Harris should have done the work that Douglas has now done. This tale is a hoax and it should be noted that it was we, inside the UFO community, who had worked to expose it.