When Einstein Went to Roswell by Dr. Peter Strassberg -An Interview

 

I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Peter Strassberg about his book, When Einstein Went to Roswell. The material about Roswell and UFOs was limited with the majority of the book dealing with his theories about astrophysics and gravity. The real problem with the book was the sixty some pages at the back that were MJ-12 documents that had been copied from the Internet and published without critical comment.

Dr. Peter Strassberg

About the first thing I learned during the discussion, because I asked about it, was if he had been in contact with Tony Bragalia. Bragalia had published, on his website, the tale of Shirley Wright, who claimed that she had accompanied Einstein to Roswell. Her story and her description of the area does not fit in with Roswell narrative as we know it, which is not to say that she didn’t accompany Einstein somewhere else to see the wrecked saucer and alien bodies. I believe, based on what she said, on her description of the security in place, and several other factors, that her tale is, at best, dubious.

I had wondered what documentation that Strassberg had, or what testimony he had, to corroborate the Einstein story. I learned it was his opinion that the MJ-12 documents he published were legitimate and because of that, the tale of Einstein in Roswell was confirmed. We did talk about the history of MJ-12, but he had no real knowledge of that and seemed somewhat surprised to learn about it. To him, the complexity of the MJ-12 documents and the information included in them, suggested they were authentic. However, if they weren’t authentic, and the evidence proves they are not, then the corroboration of the Einstein tale fails at that point.

He was impressed with the Shirley Wright end of it, she claiming to have accompanied Einstein to Roswell, and he had both read Bragalia’s article and listened to the short audio segments of Wright’s story available on his, Bragalia’s, website. I had the impression that he didn’t understand that I too, had listened to the audio segments, given some of his comments. While I found those audio clips impressive given the detail on them, I also realized there were great areas of contradiction. Having served as an Intelligence Officer in both the Air Force and the Army (and yes, Stan, on active duty), I realized that security was broken several times. Wright seemed to be suggesting that because she held some sort of security clearance, though we don’t know what kind or how high (secret? Top secret?) her clearance was, she was cleared to see and hear all. But even if she held a top secret clearance, that doesn’t mean she was cleared to see and hear everything that had been classified at that level. There is that important “need to know” caveat, and she had no need to know any of this. She even admitted that she had been quartered away from the main party during this trip, which suggests that she wouldn’t have been allowed into the secure areas. And when Einstein was allegedly show the alien craft and the bodies of the flight crew, she had no need to accompany him into the hangar, wherever it might have been.

What all this boiled down to was that Strassberg had thought the documents interesting, but as he said, repeatedly, he couldn’t prove they were real. My thought was that since he was the one presenting them as real in his book, wasn’t he obligated to find out if they were legitimate? A simple google search would have led to some of the criticism of the specific documents he used and that might have altered his opinion. It might not, but he would have had a better perspective on them.

He did say, however, that his book was more for entertainment than serious research, and that he liked to write. He gives the book away to his patience and makes no money on them. His other books were more scientifically oriented and, according to him, dealt with problems in the universe. This little venture into UFOs was something of a departure, though he did say he had an interest in the paranormal.

The problem here was the title of the book. It had very little to do with Roswell and Einstein. Had he explored that claim a little deeper, he might have realized that it was unlikely though if he had found Bragalia’s website, he would have taken that as corroboration. This is obvious because he used that information repeatedly to suggest that the MJ-12 documents were real. Such is the problem with the Internet.

And although I hesitate to mention it, he also accepted the Aztec UFO crash as authentic. As we talked about it, he was aware of Scully’s book, Behind the Flying Saucers, and seemed to know a little about that case. But the tale as he told it matches virtually nothing that has been reported on it. I was surprised he hear Strassberg talk about it as a landing rather than a crash, in fact, insisting that it was a landing rather than a crash. To amplify the difference between the information and what Strassberg was saying, he said that there were survivors. I believe he said that twelve alien beings had been found in cryonic suspension, including a number of infants. In the attempts to resuscitate those individuals, most were lost. One survived for a while and provided all sorts of details about its life and mission.

He seemed to be unaware of the history of Aztec. It matters little here what side you fall on, the information he had doesn’t track with any of it. I don’t believe he was aware of either Steinman’s or Ramsay’s books on the subject. Strassberg struck me as overly naïve on the topic, and I did mention that his book was something of a disserve because of the uncritical nature of it. I suppose I could say, the bad information in it and the reliance of the MJ-12 documents as evidence of the disservice.

In the end, his rallying cry seemed to be that he was not out to prove anything. His mission was to entertain, and to be fair, I had an entertaining hour chatting with him about all this, though not so much in reading his book. Of course, I don’t think I made much of an impression on him. As they say, he just wasn’t that into the topic. For him, UFOs are mildly interesting but not to the point of diving below the surface before committing his thoughts to paper (or should I say to electronic data in his computer).

Oh BTW, the book is not for those who have any knowledge of the UFO field. As Strassberg said, it was more for entertainment and seen as a research tool. In fact, according to the publisher, Full Court Press, they are “For the discerning author: Self publishing with style.” There seems to be no vetting of the information, but then, that is often a problem in the world today.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Robert Koford and the Aztec UFO Crash

This week I interviewed Robert Koford who has visited here frequently, commenting on various aspects of the UFO phenomenon. This discussion was inspired by his investigation into the Aztec UFO crash claim from March 25, 1948. This story has

Robert Koford

been around publicly much longer than the Roswell case but has far fewer witnesses and virtually no documentation to substantiate the crash. In fact, unlike Roswell where everyone agrees that something fell, with Aztec there are many members of the community who deny that anything happened. You can listen to the program here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/23484702

Bob bases his interest on a series of documents that suggest that General Carl Spaatz issued orders about an event on March 25. Although it seems to related to “flying discs”, one of the names given to the flying saucers, there is nothing to tie it to Aztec and apparently no one seems to know what triggered Spaatz’s response. You can see the documents and some of Bob’s arguments at his website found here: 

https://www.ourunconventionalskies.com/

As I mentioned on the show, I have addressed the Aztec crash on a number of occasions on this blog. For those of you interested in reading the background about the case, you can find it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/02/aztec-in-perspective-by-monte-shriver.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/02/aztec-in-perspective-by-monte-shriver_8.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/02/aztec-in-persspection-by-monte-shriver.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2012/06/aztec-karl-pflock-and-scott-ramsey.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2012/05/aztec-incident-by-scott-and-suzanne.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-aztec-incident-review-by-jerome.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/05/return-to-aztec.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-real-honest-to-goodness-date-of.html

And for those who would like to hear what Monte Shriver has to say about the crash, I interviewed him on the radio show/podcast. You can listen to it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/05/x-zone-broadcast-network-monte-shriver.html

And for those who worry about not providing Scott Ramsey with the opportunity to refute many of these points, I will note that I have invited him on the program several of times. He had refused all those opportunities. I have no plans to invite him again.

I hope that all this provides enough information for those interested in the Aztec case to make some sort of intelligent decision about the reality of this crash. Just for the record, I have copies of Steinman’s book UFO Crash at Aztec, and, of course Ramsey’s book, not to mention a variety of other magazine articles about it, including Coral Lorenzen’s investigation in the mid-1970s reported in The APRO Bulletin.

Next week, I’ll be talking with Michael Hall about his UFO experiences and his UFOiTeam. If you have questions, send them as a comment here and I’ll get to them during the show.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Monte Shriver (Aztec UFO Crash)

Monte Shriver

Although I have always thought that the evidence for a UFO crash near Aztec, New Mexico, in 1948, was probably false, this tale keeps popping up as if it is something real. I reached out to a former Aztec resident, a man who was in high school in Aztec in 1948, and who has spent the last several years investigating the case, Monte Shriver. (Interestingly, it was Scott Ramsey who rather nastily told me to invite Shriver on the show.) Shriver knew the people in Aztec who were supposedly aware of this crash and who, using the historical records and documentation available has provided a different perspective on the case. You can listen to the interview here:

http://differentperspective.rnn.libsynpro.com/a-different-perspective-with-kevin-randle-ep-0040-guest-monte-shriver-aztec-ufo-crash

(I have learned that if you go to YouTube and type in “A Different Perspective,” you’ll find all the programs there so that you can sort through the ones you wish to hear if this long link doesn’t take you to the right place.)

Our discussion sometimes moved into the minutia of the situation giving the impression of vital errors and while that might suggest trouble with the overall tale, I also thought it could be the sort of mistake that someone who hadn’t lived in the area would make. Aztec resident Shriver knew all the roads, rivers and ravines, but those outsiders investigating might just confuse one river for another proving only that sometimes the trivia is hard to keep straight. These were some of the things that Shriver pointed out, though I wasn’t overly impressed with what I think of as minor problems.

But there were, and are, other much larger problems with the tale. One of the alleged eyewitnesses claimed to have been working for the El Paso Natural Gas company in 1948 which was the reason he saw the crash but the records seem to indicate that the company didn’t arrive until a year or two later. And a photograph of “drip tanks” that were close to some kind of fire in 1948 that brought in other witnesses hadn’t been built until years later. If you want to follow up on this, you can read about all these things in Shriver’s own words here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Monte+Shriver

There are many problems with the Aztec UFO crash case, not the least of which is the lack of any sort of documentation from 1948. There are no newspaper articles, no military records and by the time you reach some of the FBI statements that have been available for years, you realize those are based on the book, Behind the Flying Saucers and not on evidence derived from the field.

Next week’s guest: Nick Redfern

Topic: His theory of what fell at Roswell.

Ufology in Decline, Part Two

Back more years than I care to think about it, I developed my interest in flying saucers. At that time I had questions and wrote to both APRO and NICAP. NICAP responded with a membership package and nothing else. APRO responded with a membership package but also took the time to answer my questions. Naturally, I joined APRO and developed a relationship with both Jim and Coral Lorenzen.

Over the years I spoke with Coral and Jim on many occasions, visited them in Tucson, which was their headquarters then, and met them in various locations. They asked me to investigate specific cases for them, which I was happy to do. Coral provided information for me to use in magazine articles with the only requirement that I mention them and APRO’s address in the text of the article which was never a problem. I don’t remember a single time that it was ever edited out or that an editor asked that I remove it.

Eventually I noticed that every case I was investigating turned out to have no solution. I knew that something above 90% of all sightings resulted in a conventional solution but I wasn’t finding that myself. I began to dig a little deeper and found that there were avenues that I sometimes failed to explore. I began to find solutions. I investigated a series of three photographs taken near Amana, Iowa that seemed to be unexplained but further analysis revealed that the streak of light seen on the pictures could be a private aircraft. Years later, with all the computer programs available, scans of one of the pictures showed the actual aircraft at the beginning of the streak of light. For more information see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/04/amana-iowa-sighting-november-22-1975.html

One of three photos taken over Amana, Iowa. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle

Blow up showing the aircraft at the beginning of the light
streak. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

I mention this to provide a context. Maybe we should think of it as becoming more professional in the investigations. Maybe it was just becoming more skeptical in the investigations. Whatever, I was finding far more solutions than I was unexplained cases.

One of the best examples of finding solid solutions is the Chiles-Whitted sighting which we have discussed before at:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/01/chileswhitted-and-skepticism.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/01/chiles-and-whitted-revisited.html

Given what we have learned in the last fifty years about bolides, about human perception and ambiguous stimuli, the answer here seems, at least to me, to have been found, yet there are those who will argue the point. To be fair and honest, there is a remote chance that Chiles and Whitted witnessed something other than a bolide, but the evidence now argues against that.

We have seen the Aztec UFO crash case revitalized once again. The first time was in the mid-1970s, then in 1986 when William Steinman wrote UFO Crash at Aztec and lately with Scott Ramsey, et. al. with their The Aztec Incident. There is still no solid documentation for the event and the few eyewitnesses that have been put forward are shaky at best. In fact, some of the information misrepresents the actual situation.

I could go on in this vein, suggesting the same trouble with the Kingman UFO crash, the Las Vegas crash, and several other sightings that seemed inexplicable at the time but now have what I see as logical and rational explanations. That is not to say that there won’t be those who wish to argue using outdated information or witnesses who have demonstrated that they are less than credible.

And this is the problem. When there is a solid explanation to one of the “classic” UFO cases, it seems to me that the solution should be embraced. I’m not talking about debunker solutions such as that offered by Philip Klass for the Coyne helicopter case. You can read my take on it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-coyne-helicopter-ufo-case.html

You can see a more detailed analysis of this in The UFO Dossier which came out last year. Of course that is my take on the case as well.

The point is that real solutions are being rejected in an attempt to preserve the status quo, which is not the way to do research. If there is an answer for a case, we shouldn’t reject it simply because we prefer the mystery of it. There are still many good cases that continue to defy explanation so that when a solution is offered that covers all the facts and makes sense, we shouldn’t reject it. Test the solution, yes, but reject it out of hand, no. That is why UFOlogy is in a decline. It is no longer about learning what is happening, it is no longer about finding an answer, it is now about making money, getting asked to lecture throughout the United States and in some very exotic location, and standing in the spotlight spouting what the audience might wish to hear.

Research is no longer about finding the truth and answers but in confirming a belief structure. Too many people only want validation for their beliefs and if the evidence aligns against them, they reject the evidence. They argue the trivia endlessly, applying their own opinions as if they are fact, and refuse to understand that others might know something about a case as well.

Until we pull back on the speculation, reject the use of anonymous witnesses when there is no other evidence available and concede that sometimes we can find solutions to classic cases, we’re just not going to advance. We’re going to be stuck in the 1940s, afraid of what is flying around over our heads, and unable to find any rational solutions. We’re just not going to get anywhere.

Howard McCoy and Roswell

In the search for documentation about the Roswell UFO crash, some evidence has surfaced, though it is not the sort of thing that the proponents were looking for. Though the documentation is not definitive, meaning that it does not mention Roswell specifically (nor does it mention Aztec for that matter) it does affect the overall notion that something alien fell out of the sky back in the late 1940s.

Colonel Howard McCoy

This is a letter, originally classified as “Secret,” written by Colonel Howard McCoy, who, at that time in late 1940s, was an intelligence officer who operated at the highest levels in the Air Force. He was at Wright Field in 1947 and was probably the author of the Twining Letter of September 1947, which announced that the phenomenon was something real and not illusionary or fictitious. He conferred with General Nathan Twining on a regular basis, and as I have pointed out repeatedly, was involved in studying these unidentified aerial phenomena since the days of the Foo Fighters late in the Second World War and the Ghost Rockets of 1946.

In a letter dated October 7, 1948, and sent to the CIA, McCoy wondered if they had any information about the UFOs and if they might have some sort of “domestic origin,” meaning, quite clearly, he wondered if it was a highly classified research project inspired by the CIA. McCoy wrote, “Your cooperation in so doing might greatly assist in identifying our own domestic developments from possible inimical foreign achievements.”

Okay, it really doesn’t say much, but you would think that if there had been a crash of an alien craft near Roswell (or Aztec for that matter), McCoy would be one of those on the inside who knew about it. He wouldn’t need to consult with the CIA to learn if they might know of some project that would account for the UFO sightings. The last thing that he would want to do is create an interest in searching for information about the flying saucers.

Don’t get fooled by the red herring that Stan Friedman has launched. True, the letter was only “secret” and we all suppose that the Roswell crash information would be “top secret,” and therefore couldn’t be mentioned in a document with a lower classification. But McCoy is asking for information and his request is classified at the appropriate level. That McCoy made the request at all is the important point here, not the overall classification of the letter. He could request the information he needed at a lower level of classification without violating any regulations and if the CIA needed to respond with top secret information, they certainly could have done that.

That he asked at all suggests that he didn’t have an answer, which, if Roswell was alien in nature, wouldn’t be true. He would have known about it. Instead, he was worried about some domestic program that might be under the auspices of the CIA. Had Roswell happened, the CIA wouldn’t have been involved, and even if they became interested at a later date, the Army had already collected the debris and moved it up the chain of command. The destination would have been Wright Field and if that was true, then McCoy would have been one of those officers who would have been responsible for the reverse engineering and gathering other information of intelligence value.

This letter does not bode well for the Roswell crash proponents. I don’t believe that McCoy, or anyone else in 1948, would have been writing these letters as a diversion in case sometime in the future, flying saucer information found its way into the civilian world. They assumed then that anything highly classified would remain that way nearly forever because that is the way it had almost always been. Civilians had no need to know or right to information that was the property of the military. True, some was released, but these officers in 1948 knew that information from the First World War was still highly classified. McCoy wasn’t writing the letter to dupe us; he was asking the CIA for help in identifying the problem… which was the nature of the flying saucers. He just didn’t seem know and he should have if there had been the crash of an alien craft near Roswell.

The Real, Honest-to-Goodness Date of the Aztec UFO Crash (Maybe)

It is now time to consolidate all the information we have gathered about the date of the Aztec UFO crash. It began when it was claimed that the date had been identified and agreed to by all the various UFO researchers for a long time. That didn’t seem to be right to me so I decided to take a look into it.

Yes, in my book, History of UFO Crashes, I said the date was March 25, 1948. I had gone through some of the literature on the subject and like everyone else; I liked the precision of having a single date for it. I also noted that this was a hoax, one that I believed everyone in the UFO community had accepted… well, there were a few who didn’t, but they seemed to be unaware of the history and in a relative minority.

Aztec, New Mexico. Photo courtesy of Paul Kimball.

I began a search for the original source of the March 25 date and couldn’t find it in the Scully’s early writing about UFO crashes. In fact, he didn’t even mention Aztec in the first article that he wrote in Variety in 1949.

I scanned his book, Behind the Flying Saucers, but found no date for the crash. There were a lot of dates in the book, but none for the Aztec crash. I also looked through J. P. Cahn’s article exposing the crash as a hoax. I found a reference for the Roswell crash with an exact date, or rather the date that the Army released the information that it had really been a weather balloon (or for the purists, it was the date that most of the newspapers in the country explained the Roswell crash.)

In the 1970s, the Aztec case resurfaced, but now there was a date associated with it. According to Robert Spencer Carr, the crash took place on February 13, 1948, (or more accurately, this is what Mike McClellan said in his Official UFO article.) But that date seemed to have slipped from the public consciousness because I don’t know if anyone else ever used it.

I also ran across a couple of references that suggested the crash took place in either the spring of 1949 or in October of that year. Both of these were rather obscure which might explain why no one mentioned them very often.

Then along came William Steinman and it seems that he was the one who pinned the date down to March 25. After Steinman, all who talked about the Aztec crash used that date.

All this actually proves is that the date had been relatively fluid with dates as late as October 1949 and as early as February 1948. That many now accept the March 25, 1948, date as accurate strikes me as somewhat absurd. Do we really want to accept this date by consensus or would we rather have something a little more tangible?

Here’s where I now dive into the pool. According to Scott Ramsey, his witnesses arrived at the scene of a fire that might have ignited some drip storage tanks that were nearby. He tells us that when Doug Nolan arrived, the fire was contained and the tanks were no longer in danger.

Okay, that makes sense, but what we’re being told is that this was not some small brush fire, but something larger that drew many people to the location of the UFO crash. The military arrived sometime later and took control of the area. Although this does not agree with much of what Scully had written in his book, the question that springs to my mind is, “What do the newspapers say?”

Granted, no one has found a newspaper article about the crash from that time in that area, but I think what we should have been looking for was a story about the fire. This is, or was, remote New Mexico and a fire of the magnitude of the one described would have drawn the interest of the local newspaper. There should have been an article about the fire in the newspaper.

Back in 1976, when McClellan wrote his article, he interviewed George Bowra, who had been the editor of the Aztec newspaper in 1948. According to that article, Bowra was convinced that “Nobody could have gotten in there and out without attracting a lot of attention.”

The follow up question is, “Did anyone check the newspaper for an article about a fire in Hart Canyon in 1948?” It would seem to me that if such an article appeared in the newspaper, it would be some corroboration for the tales told by some of these witnesses. Not much, but some.

I currently have no way of checking the newspaper records, other than a letter or email to the publisher, who might not be all that interested in looking for the story. I’ll give that a shot, but if there is someone in that area that wouldn’t mind taking a look through the newspaper (which would be the Aztec Independent-Review which ceased publication in the 1980s) for late March 1948 (or for some of the other dates mentioned for that matter), we might find the fire story and that might give us the opportunity to verify that much of the tale. If, and when, I get an answer, I’ll publish it here. Until then, the question remains, “Why did everyone settle on the March 25, 1948, date?”

Aztec and Roswell

As those of you who visit here on a regular basis know, there has been a question of when the Aztec crash took place. It was stated that March 25, 1948, was the agreed upon date by nearly everyone. It was considered solid, but I seemed to remember a number of different dates being offered, so, on a lark, I began looking into that. And I did find a number of different dates being offered until William Steinman seemed to settle on March date in his book UFO Crash at Aztec. After the publication in 1986, the date became solid.

The Roswell "Saucer" in Ramey's office.

But that's not the point here. In the search, I reread the J.P. Cahn story, "The Flying Saucers and the Mysterious Little Men," (who BTW, were described then as perfect humans of small stature with perfect teeth and dressed in 1890 garb), published in True in September 1952, I found an interesting sentence or two in that article. Cahn wrote, "Back on July 9, 1947, only two weeks after private flyer Kenneth Arnold had alerted the nation with his nine disks seen skipping 'saucer-like' near Mt. Rainier, Washington, Southwest newspapers headlined that a captured disk that had fallen on a New Mexico ranch was a dud. That one, when delivered to the Eighth Army Air Force, was identified as a tinfoil-covered reflector from a weather balloon. [which is seen in the photograph]."

Unless you're unable to read, that clearly is a reference to Roswell even though the town wasn't mentioned and it was made only a little more than five years later. I just found the reference interesting given that Cahn's article was about a different crash. I'm not sure that it means all that much, but thought I would mention it for what it's worth.

Return to Aztec

As those of you who visit here regularly know, I am not a fan of the Aztec UFO crash of 1948. I have followed the story since I was in high school and remember finding a copy of the True magazine article in a Denver used bookstore in the early 1960s. To me, it was the definitive investigation of the case. I watched in the 1970s as the story was revitalized for a few months, and then in the 1980s when William Steinman wrote his book about the case that was filled with misinformation, leaps of logic, and a really bad organization without an index.

We’ve seen another attempt at this with Stan Friedman leaping aboard the bandwagon of Scott Ramsey’s parade toward the ridiculous. Although Ramsey has claimed he has spent half a million dollars in his reinvestigation (and I have no reason to doubt that figure) but his attempts at revitalizing the tale have fallen short. He has no real documentation, he has some interesting historical facts that aren’t all that relevant and a few relevant ones that he believes are unimportant and some testimony that seems to be almost first hand but really isn’t.

While I would like to join that parade, the evidence, at least to me, falls way short, and I’m sure that I’ll be labeled just another debunker. It is far easier to label those who disagree with you than to respond to the criticisms that they might raise (Friedman called me an anti-abduction propagandist for my position on that topic).

Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. Picture copyright by Kevin Randle

For example, I found the Donald “Sam” Bass tale to be unreliable. Bass couldn’t be interviewed because he had allegedly died in an automobile accident while serving in Vietnam. I cited the list of those killed kept by the Park Service who maintains the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. as my source to reject the tale. Bass’ name was not on it. Ramsey said that they claimed that they might have missed some of the names though they had worked to make sure the memorial contains list all those who died in Vietnam. I said that if we had his serial number, we could gain his records as another way to check the tale. While Ramsey said he did have the serial number, he wouldn’t supply it to me so that I might verify the information about Bass.

Ramsey also used the “first-hand” testimony from Doug Noland. I was never sure if Ramsey actually interviewed Noland or if he was using a tape of an interview with Noland that had been made by John Lear. It is clear from the information available that Noland had not gone into the interview “clean.” I mean he had read Steinman’s book and was aware of the story. Noland didn’t seem to be a real good source, but there was a tape made of his discussion with Lear.

Now Monte Shriver in an email to me on April 30 he expanded on some of his criticism. He wrote:

In comparing Scott Ramsey's video presentations and the Books, he has Doug working for either El Paso Gas or El Paso Oil in 1948. In the book "The Pipeliners - The story of El Paso Natural Gas" at page 151, the company did not arrive in the San Juan Basin [which encompasses the Aztec area and a large part of the Four Corners] until the summer of 1950 (I [this being Shriver] have found several other inconsistencies between Scott's videos and the books). In a publication by The New Mexico Geological Society it quotes from a book by Thomas A. Dugan in a section called "The San Juan Basin-Episodes and Aspirations" as follows: "In February 1950, the Federal Power Commission issued a temporary permit to El Paso Natural Gas Company to lay a transmission line from the San Juan Basin to the California border. The final permit was issued July 14, 1950 and gas started moving through the line during late summer of 1951...Farmington and the San Juan Basin changed drastically and would never be the same again...El Paso immediately became the most active company and the leader of development in the basin in the fifties and sixties..." There is no record of any other company having the name El Paso Gas or El Paso Oil except for the El Paso Natural Gas Company.

In his book, Ramsey seems to indicate that he had interviewed Manuel Sandoval who was a law enforcement officer in 1948, but Ramsey told me that he had not interviewed him but members of the family and the story told might be third hand at best. I don’t believe that Ramsey was intentionally attempting to mislead here, but his writing style was not as clear as it could have been. Shriver, however, added a note about this, telling me:

Ramsey also has Manuel Sandoval patrolling a Southern Union Gas line from the San Juan Basin to Los Alamos in 1948. In Dugan's "The San Juan Basin-Episodes and Aspirations" he notes that "On March 3, 1949, The Atomic Energy Commission announced their plans to build a pipeline from a point about 25 miles south of Bloomfield to Los Alamos, about 30 miles northeast of Santa Fe. The gas would be purchased from Southern Union Gas Company; the line was to be completed before winter".  Ramsey's source has Mr. Sandoval patrolling the line more than a year before it was built".

None of this bodes well for the Aztec tale. I have mentioned in the past that there are no local newspaper articles about it, and some of the witnesses have altered their stories radically over the years and many of the long-time residents say that the crash never happened. The town seems to be split into those who believe the story and those who don’t, which is no real surprise. It does seem, as mentioned in other posts here, that the weight of the evidence suggests that this tale is not based in fact.

Shriver, who tells me he has “retired from rebutting Ramsey’s Aztec UFO claims,” has provided another rebuttal to the new version of the book. It is an interesting document, but for those without a board understanding of the Aztec crash claims, it will be difficult to follow. It is just one more nail in the coffin of a tale that should have been buried a long time ago.

For more information on the Aztec case, as published here in the last couple of years, please see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2012/05/aztec-incident-by-scott-and-suzanne.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/02/aztec-in-persspection-by-monte-shriver.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/02/aztec-in-persspection-by-monte-shriver.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/09/sam-bass-aztec-and-scott-ramsey.html

June Kaba and Roswell

I see that June Kaba’s tale is making the rounds again and although I hate to mention it because it will probably result in more hate email; I find her story to be unbelievable. She seemed to me to be a very nice woman who might have been lonely in her old age but the stories she told simply do not hang together and her observations of military life and organization are in error.

June Kaba at a wedding celebration in Ohio. She has her back
to the camera on the right.

I first learned of her when she contacted me after the Unsolved Mysteries broadcast about Roswell in 1989. Her story was that she, along with her pals met for coffee every morning before they had to be at work at 8:00. She wrote, “The scoop was that two little greenish men (bodies) from a wrecked flying saucer had been flown into the base during the night and were in a freezer locker in one of the hangers [sic] and that Aero Med lad had charge of them for examination.”

According to what she told James Clarkson on June 27, 1997, “It [the flight] came from New Mexico. He [the airman relating the tale] said what I brought in this morning… He said that he brought two little men in… He called them little green men. He described them as greenish-blue and they were four feet tall and they were dead.”

She said that it was an airman who had told her the tale and that he “seemed to know what he was talking about…” Later she would describe him as a master sergeant who might have been the crew chief on the aircraft.

Less than two hours later there was a memo “hand carried” to the office and each of those there were required to read it and then sign it. For the most part it was a standard security agreement that outlined the penalty for giving those who had no clearances information that was considered classified. According to Kaba, “This was the jist [sic] of the memo:

Some irresponsible person has started a false rumor about 2 green men from [a] flying saucer. This is nothing but a rumor and has no truth. Anyone repeating this rumor will be liable for dismissal and will be liable for $20,000 fine or 20 years in jail.

According to Kaba, this memo was “over the signature of the Laboratory chief.” Later she would suggest that the order came from a higher authority than the laboratory chief.

Of course this makes no sense. If it is a rumor then no law would be violated by repeating it. The memo does nothing other than reinforce the validity of what the airman said. The best course of action for those in charge, if they were worried about anyone repeating the “rumor,” was to caution them verbally. Why put something like that in writing where it might suddenly appear in the newspaper? Or that someone might find while searching through correspondence some years later? It would be of no value in a trial because to try someone for violating the order, it would have to be produced and that gives out the information about the bodies and the craft.

Kaba’s story was originally interesting to me because here was a witness who had been at Wright Field and offered us some testimony about the bodies arriving there. True, she saw nothing herself, but the circumstances seemed interesting and I wanted to follow up on it. Kaba then sent me several documents proving that she had worked there (or more accurately at Patterson Field and later at Wright-Patterson AFB) and had a security clearance. No evidence was located suggesting that she held anything higher than a secret clearance though she claimed top secret and a “Q” clearance, (according to Clarkson’s interview) which seemed to be related to the Department of Energy. There seems to be nothing in her background that would require a DOE “Q” clearance.

Originally, then, this tale seems related to Roswell, but the documentation doesn’t support that. It shows that she didn’t work there in July 1947. Her work record was somewhat spotty. She worked at Patterson Field from July 3, 1942 until June 30, 1943, when she quite to have a baby. Next she worked there from May 13, 1948 to July 21, 1948 when she left for health reasons. Her final work was from March 8, 1951 to May 2, 1952 when she and her husband moved away from the Dayton, Ohio, area. This removed her tale from that of Roswell because she had made it clear that the aircraft had landed the night before. I supposed if you wanted, you could suggest that this had something to do with the Aztec UFO crash, if you believe that tale.

In fact, in the attempts to validate some of Kaba’s information, researchers have relied on the MJ-12 parade of documents. The suggestion is that the nonsensical El Indio UFO crash of December 1950 might be one of the three that she meant when she said she knew of three UFO crashes. Unfortunately (and this we can’t blame on her because it was speculation by others), it is clear that the El Indio crash was invented by Robert Willingham in 1968. It was not one of the three.

For some reason she was not asked what the three crashes were. Once I learned that she had not been employed at Patterson Field during July 1947, I put the case on the back burner. She hadn’t mentioned to me that she knew of three crashes, only that she had been in Dayton when the airman talked of the bodies arriving the night before. When it was clear that Roswell couldn’t have been that crash, and in fact, her dates of employment didn’t lead to any specific case, I wasn’t sure if there was any significance to her tale.

There was one other fact, which now that it no longer matters to her, I can mention. She wrote to me on March 31, 1991, “Although I am classed as legally blind, my vision is peculiar in that I have so called tunnel vision. I suffered brain damage as a result of loss of blood.”

This then, seems to be the tale told by a lonely woman. It seems to be a confabulation rather than a blatant lie. It is clear from my correspondence with her that she did have knowledge of UFOs and claimed to have seen three herself. Given all of this, I had no reason to pursue the investigation. It seemed to me that it was a dead end and nothing I have learned since has suggested anything else.

Roswell vs. Aztec

No, this isn’t what you think. It was something that I noticed in a Billy Cox column which addressed Tom Carey’s appearance at the American University. Cox was discussing the purpose of the panel discussion and interviewed adjunct professor John Weiskopf who asked his honors students to consider the impact of ET themes

Display in the International Museum and
Research Center in Roswell.

on popular culture. Cox wanted to know if he had any regrets about asking Carey to appear. That started a discussion about Carey and his revelation about the Roswell Slides at the discussion and also reminded me of another lecture in front of college students that was somewhat similar.

Some sixty-five years before that, on March 8, 1950, a lecture about flying saucers was held at the University of Denver. This lecture became part of the mythology involved in the Aztec UFO crash and was given by a “mystery man” who was later identified as Silas Newton. Frank Scully, in Behind the Flying Saucers:

The negotiations between the faculty and the spokesman for the lecturer took months to arrange, as the speaker wasn’t keen about being “evaluated,” but when the science students voted 100 per cent to hear the lecturer, he acquiesced. Of these, 80 per cent said, after the lecture, that they were “impressed.” By a show of hands 60 per cent indicated they believed the man knew what he was talking about, that he obviously was a member of the group of scientists he described as having examined space ships which had landed on this earth from, in all likelihood,  another planet. More, they believed the mystery man of science had the best answer to the secret propulsion behind these flying saucers and that it was neither combustion nor jet.

William Steinman added a little to this in his UFO Crash at Aztec, published in 1986. He identified the instructor of the class as Francis F. Broman, who taught a basic science course. Steinman wrote that Broman had actually invited George T. Koehler to give the lecture, but Koehler said that his friend knew more about the subject, so it was Newton who gave the talk.

Steinman also mentioned that an intelligence officer had contacted Broman to learn more about the lecture. When Broman said that he hadn’t believed the tale but that he didn’t speak for everyone in the class that seemed to satisfy the officer. The call was terminated.

William E. Jones and Rebecca D. Minshall took up the investigation and reported their findings in the International UFO Reporter for September/October 1991. While they suggest that Steinman had almost everything right about the lecture, they reported that the name of the class, rather than Basic Science was Science and Man.

And they report, “The purpose of the lecture was to provide the students with an assertion against which they could apply the critical thinking methods that Broman was teaching.”

They also noted, “Broman found Newton’s claim about the crashed saucer unconvincing, as did many of those who attended his lecture. Further, Newton failed to live up to an agreement to allow his story to be critiqued using the methods being taught by Broman. As a result of statements made later by Broman about some aspects of the lecture, Broman was reportedly threatened with a lawsuit by the author of a book entitled, About UFOs. The dispute was settled out of court.”

Well, I’m not surprised by the threats of a lawsuit. That seems to be standard operation procedure in the world of the UFO. But the important points here, are the facts about the lecture, including that the professor and the students found Newton’s claims and evidence unconvincing.

So, fast forward 65 years.

Back to the original question.  Did he have any regrets about asking Carey to appear?  According to Billy Cox:

‘Mr. Carey surprised attendees and participants alike that evening at a near full capacity event (170 people) with his disclosure,’ Weiskopf stated in an email, ‘but many attendees whom I spoke with afterwards (including my students) said that they were quite skeptical of Tom Carey’s claim. Mr. Carey got what he wanted, his disclosure eclipsed much of the substantial discussions by the other three panelists who have remarkable careers and credibility. The lead teaser for WTOP’s radio coverage the following morning beginning at 6 a.m. contained three points, the most dramatic being Tom Carey’s leak.’

Tom Carey was, as you say, ‘the odd man’ out, but that was deliberate; that was intended,” Weiskopf went on. “If we present knowledge and experience of the same or identical frequencies, then we are only limiting ourselves.” He preferred instead to reflect on how the course forced his students to stretch, which he says manifested during a session with the speakers before the public event that evening: “It was a remarkable luncheon to watch my honors students question, challenge, and in some cases, retort or refute statements that the panelists made in their books/articles/interviews. In my course during the book discussions, my students were ‘less than kind’ in discusssing Tom Carey’s co-authored book Witness to Roswell. At the luncheon, two students told Mr. Carey face-to-face that they did not like his book nor did they believe it. They told him that his logic and conclusions were faulty.”

Weiskopf said it wasn’t his job to tell the class what to think. “When I taught this course I never colored any book, film, television show or blog with my personal beliefs or what I thought about the extraterrestrial issue, either in general or specifically. I allowed my classroom academic environment to unfold as objectively as possible allowing the students to ‘conclude, be confused or indecisive or become staunch believers’ on their own after examining and evaluating all of the data for 14 weeks.”

Bottom line: “I would hope that other universities and colleges would take the same bold and courageous step that American University did in supporting this extremely important event.”

The whole article can be seen here:

http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/15296/au-prof-the-kids-are-alright/

And here’s my point. Not much has changed in those 65 years. In 1950, the students, according to the best accounts, were not impressed with Newton. The reason was probably the lack of evidence. It was heavy on speculation and if you reject the Aztec crash, then it was heavy on fabrication.

With Tom Carey, the students, according to the best accounts, were not impressed with Tom. The reason was probably the hyperbole of his remarks and the lack of evidence. Of course, today, we know that the major problem is that the source of his information, those slides have been uncovered and that the body shown is not alien.

The real point is that we all need to look at the evidence with a little bit more skepticism, we have to be more diligent in our research, and we have to reject this will to believe. If we don’t, some 65 years from now someone might be writing a similar story (and hey, if I’m around, I’ll do it.)

Hilda Ray, Silas Newton and the Roswell Slides

Is there a connection between the Roswell UFO crash and the alleged crash at Aztec? Is there a reason to believe that the Roswell slides and Hilda Ray are that connection and is there documentation to prove it?

It seems that the connection had been made. It seems that Hilda Ray, an attorney, had represented Silas Newton in a 1946 court case. She was on the defense team that represented Newton. Documentation with her name on it had been found by someone and forwarded to various UFO researchers. It was speculated that Ray, because of her relationship with Newton might have mentioned something to him about the Roswell UFO crash and the alien bodies that sparked Newton’s claim of a crash near Aztec in March 1948.

This seemed to be a rather nebulous connection based in part on speculation. We don’t know when she might have been introduced to the Roswell case, if the slides that might have been hers were, in fact, of an alien killed in the crash or that she had any sort of inside knowledge. It also suggests that an attorney, who understood keeping secrets, would be discussing something like the crash with a man who was being defended engaging in a con… But I digress.

The problem? The court case cited, when accessed through independent sources has no mention of Hilda Ray as being associated with the defense. That site (or cite for those who have a pun oriented nature) can be found here:

https://casetext.com/case/newton-co-v-bockhold

Like so much of the UFO world, we are now encountering forged documents to derail the investigation into the slides. This doesn’t mean that the slides show an alien creature. That has yet to be proven to all of us out here. What it means is that someone out here, maybe with an interest in the Aztec case, is attempting to provide some legitimacy for Aztec. Not necessarily that there was a crash there, though there are certainly a number of people who believe that, but that the Aztec case is the Roswell case repackaged. Aztec is Roswell but with much of the information in error.

All that is interesting, but the truth is that currently, there is no connection between Hilda Ray and Silas Newton. Because Ray’s husband was involved in the oil industry, and because the Rays made it to some high profile golf tournaments (Newton, according to the records, was quite the golfer, winning a couple of tournaments) it might mean they ran into Newton at some oil function or at one of these matches, but that connection would be much more difficult to prove. Not to mention that Newton operated out of Denver and the Rays were in Midland… a fairly wide circle, so wide that their paths might not have crossed but if they had they might not have met each other.

Nick Redfern provides much more information on all this, including a column published on March 15, 2015 and a follow up published on March 16. You can read it here:

http://nickredfernfortean.blogspot.com/2015/03/roswell-slides-murky-development.html

At any rate we can now close the book on this particular diversion. It doesn’t prove anything other than document forgers are still running around inside the UFO community.