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:
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.
I have noticed an odd and irritating human characteristic from interviewing criminal suspects and from several alleged witnesses to alien encounters over the years - no matter how much the facts of the situation contradict their narrative, they won't admit the truth. I believe at this point that Vallee is refusing to admit that he booked passage on the Titanic even though he knows that the TRINITY UFO Crash is a fiction contrived as a possible money-making scheme. He also is more than smart enough to know that Paola Harris's interview technique of non-stop leading questions of an excessively "cooperative" witness like Jose Padilla has yielded a completely unreliable narrative. There is so much fabrication in the stories told by Baca and Padilla, I am really glad that it does not involve a real extraterrestrial artifact. It would be tragic for UFOlogy if it was anything exotic. And don't get me started on using Stolen Valor to bolster the credibility of Jose Padilla.
ReplyDeleteToo bad Dr. Vallee has smeared his reputation a bit with this story. His lack of response to your second inquiry says volumes. Well, we all make mistakes from time to time.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, I'm really looking forward to your analysis of the recent NASA UFO public hearings. You probably have it on your to-do list so I apologize for bugging you about it. Whenever these hearings (or anything UfO related) take place, the first thing I say to myself is, "I wonder what Kevin Randle has to say about it."
This piece is spot on. I too have found Jacques Vallee to be displaying (or affecting) baffling evasiveness and obtuseness on the recent revelations-- not only about the Reme Baca "first draft" revealed in the Tom Carey interview, but about the entire panoply of revelations that scream "hoax." Instead, Vallee allows Jose Padilla to tell him new lies; Vallee writes them down and shovels them out (I speak here of Vallee's May 15, 2023 "rebuttal"), rather than insisting on documentation of the revised stories. Quite remarkable. I would bet a large sum that Jose Padilla never served in the military at all, and I highly doubt that he carries two bullets in his body.
ReplyDeleteAs to the Tom Carey interview, to my mind we are not talking about one story told twice with discrepancies, but two entirely different scripts that share little more than protagonists (the two story-tellers) and a general locale. One of most indigestible divergences is the YEAR. The physical and temporal proximity to the first atomic blast is a major element in the Vallee narrative found in TRINITY: THE BEST-KEPT SECRET. It has also been a major theme of Paola Harris since she first became the public apostle for the story in 2010. In that story that millions have now heard (translations into multiple languages), the sounds of the first atomic blast are practically still ringing in their ears when the boys hear the UFO crash; they think it is another atomic blast. But in the Baca story as told to Carey, the boys head out on their excursion A FULL YEAR after the blast. It is pretty hard to explain why Baca would have changed that element, if anything anomalous had really happened in 1945.