David Grusch, UFO Crashes and Analysis (Updated June 12, 2023) (Updated June 13, 2023)

While Canada burns down and it seems that the leaders and former leaders of this country are accused, and in some cases indited, for breaking various federal laws, there are those more interested in crashed UFOs, or as is becoming the more correct term, UAPs. David Charles Grusch, whose credentials have been cited by many as impressive, claimed that the US Government has, in its possession, recovered alien spacecraft and the bodies of the alien crew. Overlooked here is the fact that he also said that he could produce no documents or pictures because of national security. I’ll concede that if he had pictures of aliens or alien spacecraft, that would be a national security issue.

Even without naming names and without the documentation, Grusch had been greeted with enthusiasm rather than skepticism by most of the mainstream media. Few worried about the lack of verifiable sources and fewer still mentioned it. Now, Michael Shellenberger issued his own statement saying that he knew of, at least, a dozen downed alien craft and that every five years we get one or two recovered for one reason and another. An unnamed source supposedly shared this information with AARO but AARO’s response suggests they don’t have access to that information.

Sean Kirpatrick at the Senate Hearing. He would say that he has seen no evidence
of alien material .

Of course, the Pentagon released a statement. Susan Gough told Fox News, “To date, AARO has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.”

That is similar to the statements made after the NASA meeting held on June 7. Several of the participants, when addressing this particular claim, said that they had no knowledge or had seen nothing to suggest that the government or the military had any sort of alien material or recovered craft.

After the meeting, Scott Kelly said, "I want to emphasize this loud and proud.
There is absolutely no convincing evidence for extraterrestrial life
associated with unidentified objects."

And, of course, comes the part that I love. More than one reporter trotted out the stale line about the Roswell UFO crash, claiming it was a “test balloon from Project Mogul.” It doesn’t seem to have occurred to those reporters that the Mogul explanation is just another in a long line of lies about the Roswell UFO case. According to the documentation, published by the Air Force, but overlooked by the media, is that the culprit in this, Mogul Flight No. 4, was cancelled. It did not fly and neither does this explanation.

But that does take us to Roswell, where a great deal of this all started. Don Schmitt and I have interviewed many high-ranking individuals about crashed UFOs and some of them have gone on the record. One of the first was Brigadier General Thomas DuBose, who, in 1947, was the Chief of Staff of the Eighth Air Force with headquarters at Fort Worth Army Air Field, later Carswell Air Force Base.

Interviewed in 1991, on tape, DuBose mentioned that the debris displayed in General Ramey’s office was not the material recovered outside of Roswell. Skeptics have pointed at the pictures of that debris as evidence for the Mogul explanation. In one of the pictures, we see Thomas DuBose proving that he was there, in the office, when the debris was displayed and identified as the material found outside of Roswell. He explained that there had been a switch, and that this was not the material that had been brought from Roswell. He said, “…actually it was a cover story, the balloon part of it for the remnants were taken from this location and Al Clark took it to Washington… That part of it was a cover story that we were to give to the public and the news and that was it.”

Since the material displayed in Ramey’s office is clearly the remains of a weather balloon and a rawin radar reflector, and since General DuBose said, on video tape, that it was not the debris brought from Roswell, it seems that Mogul is removed as an answer.

General Roger Ramey (left) and Colonel Thomas
DuBose (right) with the alleged Roswell debris.
DuBose would say that this is not the material
brought from Roswell.

Also, in the Army Air Forces in July 1947, was Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Exon, later a brigadier general. He was stationed at Wright Field which would eventually evolve into the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where he would later serve as the base commander. Exon acknowledged, more than once, that unusual material had arrived at Wright-Patterson. He told Don and me, on audio tape, “We heard the material was coming to Wright Field… It was brought into our material evaluation labs. I don’t know how it arrived but the boys who tested it said it was very unusual… [Some of it] could be easily ripped or changed… there were parts of it that were very thin and awfully strong and couldn’t be dented with very heavy hammers… It was flexible to a degree and some of it was flimsy and was tougher than hell and almost like foil but strong. It had them pretty puzzled.”

Exon also said, on tape, “The metal and material was unknown to anyone I talked to. Whatever they found, I never heard what the results were. A couple of guys thought it might be Russian, but the overall consensus was that the pieces were from space.”

And to quote just one more officer who was stationed at Roswell in 1947, Major (later colonel) Edwin Easley told me that it was something from space. Oh, not in so many words. During one of the interviews, I had asked him if we were following the right path.

He asked, “What do you mean?”

I said, “We think it was extraterrestrial.”

He said, “Let me put it this way, it’s not the wrong path.”

So, the officer in charge of the base security and who served as the Provost Marshal, and later retired as a colonel, said, basically, what was found was from outer space. He was in charge of security at the crash site and for the material, and the bodies, when they were brought to the base.

Here are three officers, two generals and one colonel who were suggesting that Roswell was a cover up and that we had something from space. Project Mogul doesn’t figure into it and offers no real counter to the statements of these men, or a few dozen others who were involved. And even though we used their names and provided copies of the tapes to other interested parties, the story didn’t get all that much traction at the time. Instead, we were attacked as charlatans who believed everything we were told and who cherry-picked the data to make our case.

As an interesting aside, Don and I met with a reporter at the Chicago Tribune in the early 1990s. We met her in a hallway for the interview. She was an intern who told us that her editors didn’t believe in UFOs and therefore weren’t overly interested in the testimony that we had recovered, even though we could name names, provide contact information, and even had limited documentation. The sophisticated reporters and editors were uninterested unless it was to prove they were all too sophisticated to believe in UFOs.

Here today, we are bombarded with stories about crashed UFOs and alien pilots, and the mainstream media seems to be bending over backwards to tell these tales without critical comment. What’s the difference? We could name names and they do not.

David Charles Grusch has said that he talked to several people, respectable people, highly placed people who would be in the jobs to know, that there had been several UFO crashes and that dead alien pilots had been found. He provided no names and said that he wasn’t allowed to provide any documentation. He just could tell us what he had heard.

We are told about his credentials which are impressive, but that doesn’t translate into evidence. It is second-hand testimony without any specifics. Did anyone notice that. He said there were multiple UFO crashes but didn’t tell us anything about them. Isn’t that interesting. The mainstream media has provided Grusch with a platform but hasn’t managed to get any of those specifics.

However, there is another player. Michael Shellenberger is on stage now. He claims that he knew there were twelve alien craft in the possession of the US government. He dodged the questions about the recovery of an alien flight crew. He mentioned that he had talked to multiple sources. He said they were high-ranking military officials, intelligence officers and civilian contractors who verified what Grusch had said. But here, again, he provided no names, no documents but only said that these unidentified people were reliable.

One of the reporters actually said that it was intriguing that there were things that he had left out of the story. I suppose that this means that Don and I should have left things out of the information that we published three decades ago. Maybe they would have listened to us then and followed up on the Roswell case while the witnesses, the dozens of witnesses, were still alive to tell their stories.

Shellenberger did mention a crash around the testing site for the atomic weapons. This might be a reference to Roswell, though it is more likely a reference to the 1945 San Antonio, New Mexico, crash referred to by Jacques Vallee. If it is the Trinity tale, that undercuts the reliability of what Shellenberger has to say because the Trinity story is a hoax.

That we have no information about any specific crashes and given that we have no idea who all these reliable sources are, I worry about the validity of the information. There is another point to be made here.

Several years ago, I communicated with a former Air Force Officer who said that in the early 1950s, he had been assigned to an Air Force communications center. He told me that he had seen classified documents pass through the center that mentioned a UFO crash in Scandinavia. He told me he had seen the documents personally and knew that it was true. He didn’t have copies of the messages because they were, at the time, classified, so he wasn’t allowed to keep them.

The Spitzbergen message sent through the Air Force communications
channels. It shows the officer was accurate in claiming he had
seen a classified message, but it was not the whole story.

I believe him, and if the documents referred to a real incident, that would be even more impressive. However, I do have copies of those documents, and they were released at the same time the Project Blue Book files were declassified. The document outlined the information about the Spitzbergen UFO crash in 1952. The best information currently available is that the story is a hoax, and the original newspaper cited as the source does not exist. It is just another of those stories that dot the UFO landscape.

What this demonstrates is that there are sources out there who can say, without lying, that they had seen official documents about crashed UFOs. The problem is those documents are often among the first to cite the information and it is in later documents that the truth is learned. That officer I communicated with told the truth. He just didn’t know the outcome. I’m not sure that once the hoax was uncovered, that another message, or group of messages would have passed through that communications center. If they did, the officer hadn’t seen them.

There is one other fact that I have just learned about. On Monday, June 12, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Grusch is going to give the last presentation. This is something that is hosted by Dr. Steven Greer, whose CSETI organization once had a list of over 300 UFO crashes. I have been unable to find that list today, though it was once easily available on the Internet.

UPDATE (June 12, 2023) : Here is something that I just learned that has some relevance to the story: STATEMENT FROM DAVID GRUSCH - “I took my job very seriously, and early on, I allowed various individuals that alleged they had information to speak their truth as part of my evaluation process. I have not been mentored by anyone, and my public disclosure has been done independently under my own free will. I emphatically request that Steven Greer cease using my name to promote his personal agenda”

Update 2: (June 13, 2023): David Charles Grusch did not make a presentation at the Greer Press Conference on June 12. Douglas Dean Johnson tells me that he, Johnson, spoke with Grusch colleagues who confirmed that Grusch will not have an association with Greer. This should end the speculation that Grusch will appear on any venue that is associated with Greer. I will note, however, that the information published here about Greer is relevant to the discussion because of the talk of alien spacecraft crashes. And yes, I liked that last little bit of alliteration.)

Back on May 9, 2001, Greer held another event at the National Press Club. Interestingly, he excluded members of the Fund for UFO Research, though I don’t know what the rational for that might have been. However, Greer had made many startling claims then such as, “We have learned from three separate, corroborating sources that since the early 1990s, at least two extraterrestrial spacecraft have been targeted and destroyed by experimental space-based weapon systems.”

Dr. Steven Greer at the National Press
Club in 2013.

One of the claims that caught my attention was, “Multiple new independently corroborating witnesses told us of the crash and retrieval of ET spacecraft in 1947 in New Mexico and in 1948 in Kingman, Arizona.”

Clearly, the first reference is to Roswell but I’m unsure about the second. There has been a report, circulated for years, of a crash near Kingman, but that was in 1953, not 1948, and it is a hoax.

Here’s the point of this brief interlude. Greer is holding another such press conference, and as I say, it will feature Grusch, telling his stories. I had wondered about Grusch’s sudden appearance on the UFO scene with tales of UFO crashes and hidden information. This is, of course, the same drumbeat that Greer has been making for decades. Any association with Greer would raise red flags but in this case it seems to be a false flag. As noted, Grusch will have no association with Greer. (Added June 13, 2023)

Don’t get me wrong, I believe Grusch is telling the truth as he knows it, but without additional information, which we never seem to get, you have to wonder about the validity of it. Without sources, or with others who have been running in these same Ufological circles for years providing some sort of validation for Grusch, you must be skeptical. Had Grusch added just a bit more information, such as location of the crash sites, or the names of some of the witnesses, his revelations would, at least to my way of thinking, have been more plausible. But without that information we are at the same place we were thirty years ago.

Here’s where we are on this. We have no new information, just new faces. We have no documentation, photographs or names of the sources. We are just supposed to believe these anonymous sources but if the last few years have taught us anything, anonymous sources are nearly useless. There is no way to vet them or their information, and often times they are speaking of rumor rather than fact.

The few names we do have are those who have worked with and have known Grusch for years. They validate his character but not necessarily his information, which is a subtle but important point. And one of the names offered, Jonathan Grey, we are told is a pseudonym, which, again, allows for no vetting and does nothing to validate the information.

To my way of thinking, if just one of these new claims could be validated, it would be a great boost to my reporting, and the reporting of Don Schmitt and Tom Carey, and so many others. But while we named names and sources for those who wished to check our work, that hasn’t happened here. So, until we get some better information, I’ll be without a final opinion. I fear this will end up just like so many other attempts to bring this all to a conclusion. We’ll be left with questions but with no one to supply the proper and verifiable answers. 

'X' Zone Broadcast Network - Greg Lawson and His Roswell Book

Greg Lawson was the guest today. He is a former police officer, former soldier, former airman and former sailor. He has been studying the paranormal for decades, and

Greg Lawson

has a special interest in the Roswell UFO case. His book, Roswell: The After Action Report is different from the other books in that he attacks the question as a police investigator rather than as a UFO researcher. It means that he comes at the case from, well, a different perspective. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/47299923

He did surprise me by suggesting that Thomas DuBose, the Chief of Staff for the 8^th Eighth Air Force in Fort Worth in 1947 was a major witness, and maybe the most important of the witnesses. He thought that because DuBose was on both ends of the coverup, whatever the cause of the coverup was, he would have a special insight. Others who fit into that category such as General Ramey and Colonel Blanchard had died prior to the renewed interest in the case. DuBose left some video evidence about what he had seen and done.

We also talked about Jesse Marcel, Sr. and his involvement in the case. I’d just gone through the interview with Bob Pratt done in 1979. You can see Pratt’s notes and transcript of that interview here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/09/jesse-marcel-sr-bob-pratt-and-interview.html

The pages of the interview are at the end of the posting. You can see Marcel’s words, and the way the notes were taken. That provides some insight into this aspect of the case.

Having gone through that interview again, I was a little disturbed by some of the claims Marcel had made about his military service and his educational background. These have been reported on in the past, including Marcel’s claim about shooting down five enemy aircraft. No record of his claim exists, and as I learned, records of this sort of activity do exist. The Air Force (okay, the Army Air Forces) kept track of that during the war. One sergeant flying as a gunner in a bomber is recorded as having shot down 17 enemy planes. The list begins with those having downed a single enemy craft but Marcel’s name does not appear on the list anywhere.

That and other embellishments would be devastating to the Roswell case if there were not other witnesses to the crash. That means, simply, that if Marcel was stand alone, his testimony about the crash could be dismissed, but there are, literally, dozens of other witnesses to some aspects of the case. That includes the majority of Blanchard’s primary staff, to other officers and enlisted soldiers who participated in some aspect of the recovery and civilians who found debris or witnessed some other aspects of the case. In other words, Marcel’s tale of the UFO crash and the look of the debris is corroborated independently by others.

We eventually got around to Mogul and the Air Force offer of the balloon arrays as the culprit in the recovery. Here, I probably should mention, again, that everyone agrees that something fell near Roswell. It’s the identify that is in question. I’m not going to report the list of reasons that Mogul doesn’t work here again. Those interested can pick up a copy of Roswell in the 21^st Century for a detailed analysis, or just type Mogul into the search engine on this blog and you’ll have more than enough information.

There were many other things that I wanted to explore, but we just ran out of time. The conversation was interesting, at least for me and that’s what counts (well, it’s really the audience interest that counts. My interest is a gauge of that). I’ll have Greg back on the program in the future so that we can hit some of the other points.

Next up is the long-promised interview with Stan Gordon. We’ll get his take on the Kecksburg UFO crash. And the following week, I’ll talk with Dr. Peter Strassburg about his book, When Einstein Went to Roswell. 

Thomas DuBose and the Switched Roswell Debris

Let’s chase a footnote or two, something we haven’t done for a while. I was reading a paper that was discussing the debris displayed on the floor in Brigadier General Roger Ramey’s office. Photographs of the debris were found decades ago and some of the

Brigadier General Roger Ramey and
Thomas DuBose (seated) looking at
the material on the floor in
Ramey's office.

negatives are housed in the Special Collections in the library at the University of Texas at Arlington. It is clear in the uncropped photographs that the material on the floor of Ramey’s office is a weather balloon and the torn-up remnants of a rawin reflector. The discussion was that the material shown there had been switched from the real debris that Major Jesse Marcel had brought from Roswell. In this latest analysis, it was said that the debris had not been switched, which, of course, means that a weather balloon had been brought from Roswell by Marcel. You can read about this here:

An Extraterrestrial Flying Disk Crashed Near Roswell in 1947: Not a UFO

The specific quote in that paper concerning all this is, “Decades later, during an interview, DuBose was asked if the original debris in General Ramey’s office had been switched with the remnants of a weather balloon [as Marcel had claimed]. DuBose answered that the material was never switched.”

Footnotes in that article, lead us to Kal Korff. That specific quote is in the middle of information that was attributed to Korff in an article that appeared in The Skeptical Inquirer Volume 21.4, found at:

https://www.csicop.org/si/show/what_really_happened_at_roswell

Specifically, the quote is this:

Q. There are two researchers ([Don] Schmitt and Randle) [parenthetical statement in the original] who are presently saying that the debris in General Ramey’s office had been switched and that you men had a weather balloon there in its place.

A. [DuBose] Oh Bull! That material was never switched!

Q. So what you’re saying is that the material in General Ramey’s office was the actual debris brought from Roswell?

A. That’s absolutely right.

Later, to reinforce this idea, Korff in that same article wrote:

Q. Did you get a chance to read the material and look at the pictures?

A. Yes, and I studied the pictures very carefully.

Q. Do you recognize that material?

A. Oh yes. That’s the material that Marcel brought into Fort Worth from Roswell.

Given the way the article is structured and the information provided, that would be the end of the trail. Korff provided no footnotes or references for the quoted material, only that DuBose denied the material had been switched. It leaves the impression that Korff might have conducted the interview, though that is not said anywhere in the article. We just have DuBose quoted as the source with no information on how those quotes were gathered.

That might have been a problem for someone not immersed in the Roswell minutia who wished to chase footnotes. I know, however, where the quotes come from originally. They appeared in Korff’s less than accurate account of his alleged investigation into the Roswell case. He wrote on page 129 of the hardback edition of his crummy book:

In a revealing interview he granted to UFO researcher and television producer Jamie Shandera, DuBose put to rest the “mystery” of the so-called substituted wreckage and has exposed it for what it is – another Major Marcel myth! The initials “JHS” stand for Jaime Shandera and the initials “GTD” denote Gen. Thomas DuBose.

In this version, which now gives us more information about who conducted the interview (including the initials of the participants rather than a “Q” and “A”), Korff wrote:

JHS. There are two researchers (Schmitt and Randle) [parenthetical statement in the original] who are presently saying that the debris in General Ramey’s office had been switched and that you men had a weather balloon there in its place.

GTD. Oh Bull! That material was never switched!

JHS. So what you’re saying is that the material in General Ramey’s office was the actual debris brought from Roswell?

GTD. That’s absolutely right.

JHS: Could General Ramey or someone else have ordered a switch without you knowing it?

GTD: I have dame good eyesight – well, it was better back then than it is now – and I was there, and I had charge of the material, and it was never switched. [Emphasis added] [by Korff in the original].

You’ll note that this is the same interview that appeared in The Skeptical Inquirer. The footnotes in the book take us to Focus, Volume 5, (New Series) dated June 30, 1990. It was also published in the MUFON UFO Journal, No. 273, in January 1991. The quotes are the same in all these various locations, so that we have traced the original back to interviews conducted by Shandera.

Here’s what we learn about those interviews. “…Gen. DuBose was recently interviewed first by telephone and later at his home by Fair Witness Project [Bill Moore’s organization to investigate UFOs] Board member Jaime Shandera.”

We now know who gathered the information, when it was gathered (meaning late 1990 and early 1991), and what it is claimed to have been said. But, unlike many of these chasing footnotes articles, there is more to the story. I have a great deal of other information that affects how this all plays out and it was information available to anyone who looked for more than just their confirming evidence...

First, according to both General and Mrs. DuBose, Shandera neither recorded the conversation held at the DuBose home, nor did he take notes. We’re left with only Shandera’s claims of what was said, and the information in quotation marks is more likely a paraphrase than actual quotes. There is no way to verify the accuracy of the quotes.

Although Shandera has been asked, he apparently did not record the telephone conversation either. He has never suggested that he took any notes during that conversation, so, once again, we have no way to verify the veracity of his claims.

On the other hand, DuBose was interviewed in Florida by Don Schmitt and Stan Friedman on August 10, 1991. That interview was recorded on video tape so that a record of DuBose’s exact words is available for review. In that interview, DuBose was asked pointedly if he had ever seen the Roswell debris and he responded, "NEVER!" That means, quite clearly, that the debris in Ramey’s office was not what had been brought from Roswell.

After the Shandera interview was published, DuBose was again interviewed and asked if he had ever seen the real debris and again he answered, "NO!" And, again, that refutes the information that is traced back to a single source, which is Shandera.

This could be construed as just another debate between two factions with no way to resolve it. However, DuBose spoke to others when asked about this particular point. Billy Cox, at the time a writer for Florida Today interviewed DuBose for an article he wrote for the November 24, 1991, edition of the newspaper. Cox reported that DuBose told him essentially the same story that he told the others except Shandera. Here was a disinterested third-party reporting on the same set of circumstances, but he didn't get Shandera's version of the events.

In a letter Cox send me dated September 30, 1991:

I was aware of the recent controversy generated by an interview he (DuBose) had with Jaime Shandera, during which he stated that the display debris at Fort Worth was genuine UFO wreckage and not a weather balloon, as he had previously stated. But I chose not to complicate matters by asking him to illuminate what he had told Shandera; instead, I simply asked him, without pressure, to recall events as he remembered them...he seemed especially adamant about his role in the Roswell case. While he stated that he didn't think the debris was extraterrestrial in nature (though he had no facts to support his opinion), he was insistent that the material that Ramey displayed for the press was in fact a weather balloon, and that he had personally transferred the real stuff in a lead-lined mail pouch to a courier going to Washington ...I can only conclude that the Shandera interview was the end result of the confusion that might occur when someone attempts to press a narrow point of view upon a 90-year-old man. I had no ambiguity in my mind that Mr. DuBose was telling me the truth.

Cox isn't the only one to hear that version of events from DuBose. Kris Palmer, a former researcher with NBC's Unsolved Mysteries reported much the same thing in 1991. When she spoke with DuBose, he told her that the real debris had gone on to Washington in a sealed pouch and that a weather balloon had been on the floor in General Ramey's office.

Don Ecker

But the most enlightening of the interviews comes from Don Ecker formerly of UFO magazine and now the host of Dark Matters Radio on KGRA digital radio. Shandera had called Ecker, telling him that he would arrange for Ecker to interview DuBose about this issue. Ecker, however, didn't wait and called DuBose on his own. DuBose then offered the weather balloon/switch version of events. When Ecker reported that to Shandera, Shandera said for him to wait. He'd talk to DuBose.

After Shandera talked to DuBose, he called Ecker and said, "Now call him." DuBose then said that the debris on the floor hadn't been switched and that it was the stuff that Marcel had brought from Roswell. It should be pointed out here that Palmer called DuBose after all this took place. Without Shandera there to prime the pump, DuBose told weather balloon/switch version of events. It was only after close questioning by Shandera could that version be heard. It is not unlike a skillful attorney badgering a witness in a volatile trial. Under the stress of the interview and the close questioning, the witness can be confused for a period of time. Left alone to sort out the details, the correct version of events bubbles to the surface.

The point here is that sometimes following the footnotes to their source isn’t enough. You have to explore other avenues of information to ensure that the footnotes are accurate. In this case, because I’m immersed in the minutia of Roswell, I knew where to look for the additional information and that additional information paints a different picture than that found if you only followed the footnotes to Korff.

Brigadier General Arthur Exon and J. Bond Johnson

The other day I was interviewed by Whitley Strieber for his radio show/podcast about my book, Encounter in the Desert. I mentioned the book just because I could and hope that some of you will be inspired to buy it.

Anyway…

During the course of the interview, we touched on the Roswell UFO crash case, and he mentioned Brigadier General Arthur Exon who had become one of the important witnesses in the case. He said that Exon was a witness that Stan Friedman had found but I said, “No,” I had discovered Exon (this is

BG Arthur Exon

something that has happened before… Friedman getting credit for something he hadn’t done, and yes, I can provide other examples).

Naturally, he asked how I had learned of Exon, and I explained that J. Bond Johnson had mentioned the name to me and I had tracked him down, calling him in 1990. But, that got me to thinking about all this and I went back to my notes and files about the interviews with Exon.

For those who don’t know, I had called him, but rather than mention Roswell, I said that I was interested in tracking some of the information about ATIC and Project Blue Book, retrieval operations or four separate incidents, figuring that once we got into the topic of UFOs, we could expand from that.

After we had discussed those incidents, which had nothing to do with Roswell and the name of the town hadn’t even been mentioned, we did finally get to the meat of the interview. Most of that isn’t all that important here. I did ask him if he had heard about the rumors of little bodies and he said, “Well, yes, I have. In fact, I know people that were involved in photographing some of the residue from the New Mexico affair near Roswell.”

And that was the first mention of Roswell in the conversation.

I asked if this was from 1947 and he said, “Yeah. It was in the late 40s.”

He then said, “What they had done… this fellow was in [the] PR business apparently in command there at Roswell at the time of the sighting was found when the rancher reported it and some of the people as you obviously know collected a good bit of the information and took it into the commander’s office and took photographs. This fellow took the photographs of the residue. I’m talking about metal and stuff.”

I suppose you all can figure out the next question I asked. “Do we know his name?”

Exon said, “His name is Johnson. He lives here in Long Beach…”

Naturally, I said, “I know him. James Bond Johnson.”

Exon said that he didn’t know him all that well but did say that he had his telephone number. I already had that as well.

Yes, I know what you all are thinking but that interview took place on May 19, 1990, before we all learned the truth about Johnson and his ever-shifting story. At the time I knew that Johnson held a commission and was a colonel in the Reserve. I hadn’t really thought about this in a long time, and in 1990, I didn’t realize the importance of the statement.

And, to be fair, I did provide copies of the transcript to several people including Philip Klass, Karl Pflock, Don Schmitt and Tom Carey. One page was missing from that I had sent Klass, and I replaced it. The point is that these people, and probably a couple more have had this information almost from the time that I collected it. Had the Air Force, during their investigation contacted me about Roswell, I would have sent them copies of the tape. In fact, I offered copies of a number of the taped interviews to them, but they seem uninterested in them. I always thought it was because they didn’t want to have to attack the reputation of a general officer.  Had they taken the tapes, they would have had all this information as well.

The other thing here is that Exon was right about knowing one of the photographers who took pictures of the residue. Johnson did take them and it was from Johnson that I got Exon’s name. I shared that information with Stan Friedman when were both in Roswell to film the segment of Unsolved Mysteries that dealt with Roswell.

What is the take away here?

Exon’s information about the photographer isn’t startling, and in fact, is somewhat depressing. Johnson took pictures of the weather balloon debris in General Ramey’s office. He didn’t photograph anything of overwhelming importance. Exon provided some additional details, but the fact of the matter is, that Johnson didn’t photograph an alien spacecraft and Exon’s statements didn’t do anything to provide additional information on this aspect of the case…

But I’ll bet my skeptical pals will suggest this is another reason that we should not place any emphasis on Exon’s statements. This is another example of how jumbled his memories were nearly a half century after the fact.

(For those who would like to but the book, Encounter in the Desert, you can find it here:

https://www.amazon.com/Encounter-Desert-Alien-Contact-Socorro/dp/1632651130/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1513042152&sr=8-1&keywords=encounter+in+the+desert

Thanks.)

This and That

As many of you know, I have been reviewing a large number of UFO files and have found some things that don’t warrant a complete blog post but that are interesting. For example, Ramey Air Force Base in Puerto Rico was not named for Roger Ramey but for Brigadier General Howard Knox Ramey. This Ramey learned to fly in 1918 and by the time the Second World War broke out he had moved up the ranks. In

BG Howard Knox Ramey

January 1943 he was named the commanding officer of the V (Fifth) Bomber Command. In March 1943 while on a reconnaissance fight over the Torres Strait he disappeared. Neither his body nor any wreckage from the aircraft were found. If I had to guess, I would say that the Japanese spotted his aircraft and shot it down. 

The point is that Ramey Air Force Base was named for him, contrary to what some others have suggested. Roger Ramey’s widow told me it had not been named for her husband when I asked her about that in the early 1990s.

Here's something that a number of people might have seen but it might not have registered with them. In the Roswell Daily Record of July 9, in the article entitled, “Ramey Says Excitement Not Justified,” which, of course is his answer to the Roswell debris, there is a paragraph toward the end that says, “A public relations officer here said the balloon was in his office ‘and it will probably stay right there.’”

Although the article is in the Roswell newspaper, the dateline is Fort Worth which means the public information officer who was quoted is not Walter Haut but probably Major Charles A. Cashon, the 8^th Air Force PIO. (There are those who suggest that I haven’t carried out a complete investigation of the Roswell case, so, to prove a point, I will tell you that Cashon was not rated as flight crew and that his address in 1947 was Rt. 1, Box 220, Weatherford, TX, which was about a thirty-minute drive from the base.) This tells us where the debris from Ramey’s office went once he was done showing it to the press, though I wonder why Cashon would want it cluttering up his office and why no one bothered to take additional pictures (Oh, wait, this was 1947 when cameras were expensive and film was expensive and no one cared about a wrecked weather balloon anyway).

Speaking of balloons, Irving Newton, the warrant office who “identified” the balloon for Ramey and the press, said that he knew immediately that is was a balloon, though in interviews he said a colonel had met him before he got to Ramey’s office. Newton said the colonel told him they thought it was a weather balloon and wanted him to identify it (does leading the witness count here?) Anyway, Newton, in a February 20, 1995 letter to me, wrote, “The Rawin target and balloon in question was only used at limited locations and to my knowledge not at Fort Worth, not even all weather personnel were familiar with them, but we used them at Tinker Field (Okla City) during training and for Atomic tests…”

Atomic tests like that of Operation Crossroads in which the 509^th Bomb Group participated including Jesse Marcel. And, according to the L. J. Guthrie, of the Roswell weather station, they had been “dabbling with radar controlled balloons,” (which strikes me as a load… radar controlled balloons?) and that he believed based on the descriptions, what Brazel found could have been one of theirs. An Albuquerque weatherman said that they launched rawins with the weather balloons as well.

None of that proves much one way or another. I just thought these various items about the balloons or more specifically the rawin from Ramey’s office landing in the possession of Cashon to be interesting.

I thought I would just throw this information out there. I’m sure that I have opened the gates to all those who need to question absolutely everything even if there is nothing very controversial in the comments here. These are just little bits of information that probably add nothing to our overall understanding but I found them somewhat amusing.

Ramey Memo and Victims of the Wreck

We have been privileged to learn the importance of the Ramey memo based not on the research currently underway but on the opinion that there is no alien visitation so that there is nothing in the memo to lead in that direction. We’re told that even if it says, “Victims of the wreck,” as many UFO researchers suggest, it doesn’t mean that what fell was alien. It seems that we should just give up because we all know there is no alien visitation and continued attempts to read the memo are a waste of time.

Can the Ramey memo clarify this situation?

Actually, yes.

There are some things we can say about it now. The source of it is limited. J. Bond Johnson, the reporter/photographer who took the picture said, at one time, that he had brought the document into the office with him and handed it to Ramey. Later, realizing that this sort of negated the value of it, repudiated that claim. He hadn’t brought it in. Instead, it was a document that he had taken off Ramey’s desk and handed it to him so that Ramey had something in his hand for the photographs. I’m not sure what the rationale for this would be, other than to suggest that it was something inside the office and that makes it more important.

If Johnson hadn’t brought it in, then what is it?

It could be the draft of a press statement that Ramey planned to give or release. If so, then it would be unclassified and would probably not reveal much of anything. The draft would have been sitting on his desk for Johnson to grab, or Ramey, knowing he was meeting with a reporter to grab so that he was holding it when Johnson entered the office.

It could be a teletype message that came through the base communications center. That would give it an “official” status, but not necessarily one of great importance. Unclassified messages did come through the center and they were routine matters. Nothing that would be Earth shattering. It could easily be a summary of what was being reported in the media and provide some guidance to Ramey for his meeting with members of the press or for handling the queries that were being made.

There were also classified messages coming thought the communications center. Given the few words that can be read, it would seem that this memo deals with Roswell, and given the purpose of the reporter’s visit, that seems to underscore the connection to Roswell. If it does say, “Victims of the wreck,” does that change the tone of the discussion?

We’re told by skeptics, or rather one in particular, that the military wouldn’t use “victims,” but rather refer to them as “casualties.” If they were alien creatures, I’m not sure that would apply, but then, I don’t think that single phrase gets us to the extraterrestrial automatically anyway. It would seem that if the message does say “victims,” then the Mogul explanation is ruled out, but then I believe other facts have done that. This isn’t important.

To understand the real meaning of “Victims of the wreck,” we have to view it in context, and the context, if it can be read with any sort of clarity and consensus, would provide the information to understand the use of that term… or, in other words, that statement is not stand alone and cannot be stand alone. It must be viewed in the context of the message and if we can see that phrase with clarity, then the context probably would be understood as well.

While “Victims of the wreck,” might not take us immediately to the extraterrestrial, it would certainly start us on the path. The context would take us the rest of the way, or maybe more accurately, could take us the rest of the way. In some of the interpretations of the memo, there is enough there that the extraterrestrial would be the most likely answer... but before we get into a long discussion about this aspect, let me say that at the moment, we don’t have that context. We have many different interpretations.

And that is the problem. There are many different interpretations, many at odds with one another. We don’t have a consensus. In fact, there is not a consensus on “Victims of the wreck.” There are those who say that the phrase is actually, “Remains of the wreck,” which gives us a completely different interpretation, one that does not automatically rule out Mogul.

So, Johnson might have brought the document into the office. It might be the draft of a press release for Ramey. It might be a message that is unclassified or one that is classified. The question is if we can read the text, can this be clarified?

Yes.

There seems to be a “signature” block at the bottom of the message. If that can by read, it would provide a clue about the source of the document. If it is a “sign off” from a teletype then it probably came from the newspaper. If it’s Ramey’s signature, then it is probably a press release from his office. If it is someone else’s or a different organization, then we might be able to deduce whose and from where and that would be a valuable clue.

But here’s the real point. Until we learn if the new, improved scans provide us with some additional clarity, all of this is speculation. We really don’t know no matter who says what about the situation. I would have thought the skeptics would applaud the effort to clarify the situation. There has been little push back from the other end of the spectrum, even though a clear message might take down one of the best bits of evidence for the alien nature of the Roswell crash.

Ramey Memo Update

The best case of provenance that I have ever seen is the Ramey Memo. We have a picture of Ramey holding the document, we have been able to interview the photographer, and we know the date on which it was taken because we have not only a dated document that was transmitted with the picture, but it appeared in newspapers around the country the next day. The only point of dispute is what the memo actually says. Parts of it are easily read and others are obscured to the point where it is sometimes just a best guess. If the memo could be completely deciphered it might provide a clue about what fell near Roswell and would be some of the best documentation available.

This might be the first time that the entire negative'
has been printed in decades. Photo copyright
University of Texas at Arlington, Special Collections.

The answer always seemed tantalizing close but just out of reach. The ability of equipment and software to pull information off the photograph just wasn’t good enough to do it in the 1990s. Scans had been made years ago from the original negatives but newer equipment and better software might have changed all that. Martin Dreyer, a researcher living in New Zealand, was interested in the memo and believed that modern equipment might be able to pull something new from the negative. He began to work toward that aim.

For almost two years, he talked to various experts in photography, software and those who had great experience in recovering information hidden in photographic negatives. The consensus seemed to be that it would be possible to extract more and better information from the memo using a variety of these new and modern techniques.

The next step was to learn if the University of Texas at Arlington Special Collections would allow the negative to be subjected to another round of scrutiny. Although interested in learning what might be found, they were also concerned with the process. They didn’t want to damage negative any further. The handling of it as well as subjecting it to scans in the past caused it to acquire some scratches and a little dirt but they were assured that this new analysis would be nondestructive.

Brenda S. McClurkin was the contact at UTA and provided a great deal of assistance in getting the permissions to have the negative scanned using a variety of techniques and equipment. She arranged for the use of photographic microscope at UTA that could read the negative.

At the end of April 2015 David Rudiak traveled to the Dallas – Fort Worth area and to the University of Texas at Arlington. Working with those at UTA, as well as some independent experts in photography and forensic analysis, they made dozens of new scans under a variety of conditions hoping to clarify the memo enough that a consensus of the wording could be formed. Some of the letters were lost in the debris on the negative and in the fact that the memo was slightly folded and parts of it were not directly facing the camera. Had J. Bond Johnson, the original photographer, been a foot closer the image might have been easily resolved.

It had been hoped that the new techniques would produce immediate results but that didn’t happen. The photographic process used only cleaned up the memo marginally. There was no new and great revelation. That suggested that the application of software was needed, which, unfortunately could lead to claims that the image had been manipulated to produce specific results.

After the disappointment with the results, and after seeing the results of the Roswell Slides Research Group’s success in reading the placard in front of the image on those slides, it was decided to open the analysis to a wider audience. The original idea had been to release the best results with all the information about the resolution of the image but now that moved into a new arena. With the cooperation of those at UTA, and at their suggestion, the best of the scans will be posted to various locations on the Internet, and as soon as possible to this blog along with the links to those other images.

Again, the work has been less than spectacular. It seems that the image has been cleaned up to a small degree but not to the point where what are considered the critical areas could be read.  Work is continuing, but it is painstakingly slow and as mentioned, disappointing. The hope now is that if the images are put up in open source that the same thing that happened with the (Not) Roswell Slides can be accomplished with the Ramey memo. Maybe someone will have the right software or have a new idea about the way to attack this that will allow the memo to be read. At the moment we are not much closer to a solution than we were. It is still just beyond our grasp. 

Jason Kellahin and his Roswell Tale

(Blogger’s note: Since this has come up, I thought I’d republish, with appropriate updates, the article from my The Roswell Encyclopedia about this. I believe I was the first to interview Jason Kellahin, first briefly on the telephone, and then in his home. I did notice one thing as we walked through his house. There was a copy of The Roswell Incident on his desk, as well as a number of newspaper articles about the Roswell crash that he referred to periodically. Clearly he had been reviewing that material before I had arrived and just as clearly that influenced what he told me based on the documented facts available. That interview was videotaped and a copy was provided to the Fund for UFO Research and does not agree with the affidavit that he signed some time later.)

Jason Kellahin was an AP reporter based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the summer of 1947. He received a call from the New York office of the Associated Press telling him that he needed to get down to Roswell as quickly as possible. According to Kellahin, "We [Kellahin and Robin Adair] were informed of the discovery down there...the bureau chief sent me and a teletype operator from the Albuquerque office." Please note that he specifically mentioned the discovery down there.

I interviewed Kellahin in his home more than forty years later and he told me then, "It must have been in the morning because we went down there in the daytime. It would take a couple of hours to get down there..."

Jason Kellahin at his home.

Kellahin continued, saying, "We went down to Vaughn [New Mexico]. Just south of Vaughn is where they found the material."

The ranch, according to Kellahin, wasn't very far from the main highway (Highway 285) from Vaughn to Roswell. They turned from that highway just south of Vaughn, onto the Corona road. They were driving to the west and saw "a lot of cars and went over. We assumed that [this] was the place. There were officers from the air base. They were there before we got there." This does not agree with the affidavit that Kellahin would sign sometime later.

Kellahin described military cars, civilian cars and even police vehicles parked along the side of the road. In one of the fields adjacent to the road, at the far end of it, were a number of military officers, not more than five or six of them. Kellahin left his vehicle and entered the field where he saw the scattered debris.

"This man from Albuquerque with me [Adair], he had a camera. He took some pictures of the stuff lying on the ground and of the rancher who was there...Brazel was there and he [the photographer] took his picture."

Kellahin asked Brazel a few questions, interviewing him there, in the field. "I talked to him. He told me his name [Brazel] and we had been told it was on his ranch."

Convenience store in Vaughn, NM.

Kellahin didn't remember much about what Brazel had said. "About the only thing he said he walked out there and found this stuff and he told a neighbor about it and the neighbor said you ought to tell the sheriff...it was the next day [he] went down to Roswell."

Standing there in the field, near the debris, Kellahin had the chance to examine it closely. "It wasn't much of anything. Just some silver colored fabric and very light wood...a light wood like you'd make a kite with...I didn't pick it up. In fact, they [the military] asked us not to pick up anything...You couldn't pick it up and have identified it. You have to have known [what it was]. But it was a balloon. It looked more like a kite than anything else."

The debris covered a small area, not more than half an acre. The military men were standing close by as Kellahin interviewed Brazel but didn't try to interfere. "They weren't paying much attention. They didn't interfere with me. I went wherever I wanted to go. They didn't keep me off the place at all. Me or the photographer." Kellahin tried to talk to the military people, but they didn't give him any information. "They were being very, very cautious because they didn't know."

He didn't have much time for the interview because the military officers came over and told him they were finished and were going to take Brazel into Roswell. With Brazel gone and the cleanup of the debris finished, there wasn't much reason for the AP reporters to remain. Kellahin and Adair continued their trip to Roswell, arriving before dark.

Kellahin confirmed some of this, saying that "We went down to the Roswell Daily Record and I wrote a story and we sent it out on the AP wire...Adair developed his pictures and set up the wire photo equipment and sent it out."

The story about all this that appeared in the newspaper ended saying, "Adair and Kellahin were ordered to Roswell for the special assignment by the headquarters bureau of AP in New York."

Kellahin, when he left the ranch, had expected to see Brazel in Roswell, the next day, but said, "I don't recall that I did. I think the military was talking to him and wouldn't let him talk to anyone else to my recollection...I saw him there but...there were some military people with him."

Following the story as far as he could, Kellahin talked to Sheriff Wilcox. "When we got down there to the newspaper, he was there. I saw him there or at his office...By that time the military had gotten into it. He was being very cautious."

"It was a weather balloon," said Kellahin. "In my opinion that's what it was. That's what we saw. We didn't see anything else to indicate it was anything else."

Once they finished in the newspaper office, Kellahin returned to Albuquerque and Adair was ordered to return to El Paso to finish his job there. By the time Kellahin arrived in to Albuquerque, there was a new story for him that had nothing to do with flying saucers. Another assignment that was just as important as his last.

There are some points that must be made. The raw testimony from Kellahin must be put into context with that provided by others, including Adair. Both Kellahin and Adair were trying to answer the questions as honestly as they could, attempting to recall the situation as it was in July 1947. However, they are at odds with one another. There clearly is no way for Adair to be both in El Paso as he claimed and in Albuquerque as suggested by Kellahin.

Given the circumstances, there are some things that can be established. A number of newspaper articles about the events, written in 1947, have been reviewed. Although many of them had no by-line, they did carry an AP slug and did identify the location as Roswell. Since Kellahin was the only AP reporter there, assigned by the bureau chief in Albuquerque at the request of the AP headquarters in New York, it is clear that he wrote the articles.

The first problem encountered is Kellahin's memory of getting the call early in the morning. That simply doesn't track with the evidence. Walter Haut's press release was not issued until sometime after noon on July 8 and it didn’t go out on either the news wires until later. George Walsh of radio station KSWS remembered that Haut had telephoned the press release to him “about mid-day.” He copied the press release exactly, as Haut read it to him over the phone. Walsh, in turn called it into the Associated Press in Albuquerque. From there the release was put on the AP wire and that story was published in a number of newspapers.

There is a document, created in 1947, that provides the exact times for some of this. According The Daily Illini, the first of the stories on the Associated Press wire appeared at 4:26 p.m. on the east coast. That would mean that the stories went out from Albuquerque, sometime prior to 2:26 p.m.

That means there would be no reason for the AP to assign a reporter (Kellahin) on the morning of July 8. There was no story about the flying saucer until that afternoon. And, by the morning of July 9, the story was dead and no reason to send anyone to Roswell. The photos had already been taken of the debris in Fort Worth and the information about the nature of the debris had already released to the press. Besides, the story in the July 9 issue of The Roswell Daily Record makes it clear that they, Kellahin and Adair, had already arrived in Roswell, coming down on July 8.

Second is the story that Kellahin saw the weather balloon on the Brazel ranch. His description of the location, south of Vaughn but just off the main highway to Roswell is inaccurate (which is the advantage of having been there myself. I knew what the terrain looked like and how close, or far, it was from the highway.) The debris field, as identified by Bill Brazel and Bud Payne, is not close to the Vaughn - Roswell highway. In fact, the field where the debris was discovered is not visible from the roads around it. It is a cross country drive into a shallow valley.

More importantly, by the time Kellahin could have gotten to that field, the balloon should have been removed if it was just a balloon as described by Kellahin. In fact, according to Marcel and the newspaper articles, the balloon was already in Fort Worth if we believe what has been reported. After all, a balloon wouldn't have taken long to collect and Marcel had done that the day before.

Kellahin said in his affidavit that he had visited Brazel at the ranch house, met Brazel’s wife and young son. That is different from what he told me, and from the neighbors said and what Bill Brazel said. After meeting Brazel at the ranch house, they drove to the field where the debris was found.

Kellahin's testimony of seeing a balloon out in the field is intriguing, not because he is an eyewitness to the balloon on the crash site, but because of what it suggests. If there was a balloon, it would mean that the Army had to bring one in. In other words, they were salting the area, and that, in and of itself, would be important. It would suggest that the Army had something to hide, if they were planting evidence.

Given the sequencing of events, based on the newspaper accounts and other testimony, the earliest that Kellahin could have been in the field was late in the afternoon (around four or five p.m.) on July 8. However, by that time, Marcel and the special flight from Roswell were already in Fort Worth. If the balloon explanation is accurate, then the evidence had long since been collected and there would be nothing for Kellahin to see.

Kellahin also said there had been photographs taken while on that field. These photos, according to Kellahin had been transmitted from Roswell. The photo of Brazel transmitted, however, was one that had been taken, not in the field, but in the newspaper offices. If there were pictures taken in the field they have never been printed. Had they existed, even if of poor quality, they would have been printed. After all, what could be better than pictures of Mack Brazel with the debris in the field? Here was the most persuasive of evidence… Brazel, military officers, standing in the field with the remains of a balloon but apparently those pictures were never printed by any AP newspaper at any time.

By contrast, the seven pictures taken in Ramey's office were printed throughout the country. All seven have been located. Even the fairly rare picture of Irving Newton was printed in Texas newspapers and was used by the editors of Look when they printed their Flying Saucers special in 1966. But those that Kellahin claimed had been taken of Brazel on his ranch with the debris clearly displayed have never been found. That suggests that Kellahin's memory is flawed on this point.

The best evidence available is that Kellahin did not stop at the ranch on his way down to Roswell. He is mistaken about that. The lack of the photographs and evidence about the location of Brazel on the afternoon of July 8 suggest it. The location that Kellahin gives is in error though he does suggest in his affidavit that rather than stumbling upon the field, he was led to it by Brazel. The ranch was not close to Vaughn, and the debris field is not close to any road.

By the time Kellahin and Adair arrived in Roswell and were ready to begin reporting, some of the pressure was off. Ramey, in Fort Worth, explained that the material found in Roswell was nothing extraordinary. The FBI had issued a telex that suggested it was a balloon after discussing all this with Major Kirton in Fort Worth though it doesn’t seem the FBI bought the explanation. No longer was New York demanding pictures. In fact, several pictures had already been taken in Fort Worth.

The interview with Brazel occurred on the evening of July 8, according to the newspaper article in the July 9 edition of The Roswell Daily Record. Brazel was brought in by the owner of KGFL, Walt Whitmore, Sr. Brazel was then interviewed by Kellahin, as well as a reporter for the Roswell Daily Record. The pictures transmitted, those of Brazel and George Wilcox, are ones that had been taken in the office for that purpose. Kellahin wrote his story, which appeared in the newspapers the next day.

With the story dead, Kellahin was ordered to return to what he had been doing. He left Roswell. Kellahin believed that nothing extraordinary had been found and there was no reason for the events to stick in his mind.

The point here, however, is that if you accept any of the Kellahin testimony as fact and use it to bolster a theory, you are building on a shaky foundation. We can document who was doing what and where at the time and Kellahin’s story does not match any of that. Yes, he was in Roswell and yes, he did interview Brazel, but he didn’t see him at his ranch, there are no pictures of Brazel in that field, and the time line suggested by Kellahin is badly flawed.