X-Zone Broadcast Network - Steven Bassett , Disclosure and Death Threats

Steve Bassett, he of the Paradigm Research Group, was my guest this week. I thought we would talk about Disclosure and what it would mean. We did take a few excursions into other arenas, however. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/43938587

Steve began with providing a definition of Disclosure, but then moved onto the possibility of Congressional Hearings that would lead to Disclosure. He believes that

Steven Bassett

the time is ripe given what is happening in the world. Disclosure is the goal now, though I wondered if there was any political benefit to Disclosure. To me, the government operates not for the benefit of the governed, but to retain their power. We’ve seen plenty of examples of this in the last several years.

We did discuss, briefly, the erosion in trust, not only in the government but in the mainstream media as well. Although I didn’t mention it during the show, I was thinking of the Washington Post recent admission that they had run with a story about telephone calls and what was said based upon, apparently, a single source. Other outlets picked up the story, suggesting that the had confirmed the information. Recent events showed that the story was not accurate and the Washington Post printed a retraction.

We also talked about the implications of full Disclosure and what that might mean. Steven cited our bombardment of alien stories, programs, movies, books, documentaries and various other cultural aspects filled with the idea of alien visitation. He suggested that it was now so embedded in our culture that there wouldn’t be a big shock if the government announced that aliens had been visiting Earth for decades, if not centuries.

I did mention that contact with a technologically superior civilization resulted in the destruction of the technologically inferior civilization. Steven thought that I was talking about conquest but I was actually talking about the impact of the technology on the civilization. The technology could undermine the civilization causing radically alterations to it. Steven wanted to talk about the Aztecs and the Spanish, which wasn’t quite the point I was driving at.

Steve brought up some of the testimony by Roswell witnesses, suggesting dozens had been threatened with death if they talked about what they had seen. I thought that some of that might have been overblown and was the result of soldiers, who had been exposed to classified information being reminded that, well, disclosure of that information could result in prison and fines. Others, such as Glenn Dennis had been discredited.

Steve did send an email about this, naming several witnesses who had been threatened in this fashion, including George Wilcox, the Roswell Sheriff, quoting the Anaya brothers. Although I find that somewhat problematic, I will note two things here. One is that Barbara Dugger, granddaughter of the sheriff reported the same thing, and that this testimony is second hand at best.

He also said that Mack Brazel told radio station KGFL minority owner Bob Wolf that “Those people will kill you if I tell you what I know.” This happened in 1963 not long

Mack Brazel

before Brazel died. But once again, it is second-hand information related to researchers Tom Carey and Don Schmitt years later. It does seem odd that in all our discussions with Bill Brazel, he never mentioned anything like that.

During the show, I brought up Frankie Rowe, but it didn’t seem, in the initial interviews with her, that the threats had been, well, deadly. Instead, she said that she was told that her parents would end up in Orchard Park, which had been a POW camp during the Second World War.

Dr. Lejeune Foster, another of these “witnesses,” was not in Roswell in 1947. She was a doctor in San Diego, supposedly called in because of her expertise on the spinal cord and her high security clearance related to her work during the Second World War. According to the family members and her housekeeper, she returned from examining the bodies a changed woman. She said that as she was debriefed, she was told that if she talked she would lose her license to practice medicine and that she risked being killed. But researchers did not get that information from her, but her family who aren’t specifically identified.

My point was that we have no direct quotes from those involved that suggest death as the penalty for telling what they knew. We have the stories of family members and friends told literally decades after the fact. As I mentioned, the military members would have been told that the release of classified information to those not cleared would result in severe penalties of imprisonment and fine. Over the years, in the telling of the tales, those penalties might have been exaggerated. We have seen the sifting of stories as they are told and retold. Steve did mention that he didn’t believe that the military would have carried out the threats, but I have to wonder if they had been made.

Steve did predict that would we see some changes in the government position of UFOs in the very near future, suggesting the possibility of Congressional hearings in the weeks to come. He was explaining how these things come about, which, in and of itself, might be educational.

Next week is Lawrence Spencer. We’ll be talking about his book based on his contact with Matilda O’Connell MacElroy who claimed to be a technician in Roswell at the time of the crash. Should be an interesting interview. 

Barbara Dugger and History's Greatest Mysteries

 

I was a little disturbed by the Barbara Dugger (as opposed to Duggar) interview on History’s Greatest Mysteries, which is to say I wondered about some of the information contained in it. Don Schmitt and I interviewed Barbara on March 4, 1991, at her home. She was kind enough to sit down for us and tell us what she remembered about her discussion of the UFO crash with her grandmother, Inez Wilcox, who, for those of you who don’t know, was the wife of Sheriff George Wilcox.

Barbara Dugger

Prior to talking to Barbara, Don and I had interviewed her mother, Elizabeth Tulk and her aunt, Phyllis McGuire. Both of these women were the daughters of the sheriff. Phyllis had been in the jail house during some of the activities when Mack Brazel arrived with a few samples of the metallic debris.

Barbara told us that she and her grandmother, who she called Big Mama, had been watching a program about space when Inez said, according to Barbara, “I have something I have never told anyone and I don’t want you to discuss it with anyone… in the ‘40s, there was a spacecraft, a flying saucer is what they called it, [that] crashed outside of Roswell.”

Barbara continued, telling us what her grandmother had told her. “Your grandfather, George, was sheriff – very hesitant to talk but there was something [that] he said don’t tell anyone.”

Barbara, again quoting her grandmother said, “When the incident happened, the military police came to the jailhouse and told George, and I never told anything about this incident, [that if we] talked about it in any way, not only would we be killed but they would get the rest of the family.”

Barbara asked her grandmother if she had witnessed that threat. “Did you hear them say that Big Mama and she said, ‘Yes, I did.’”

According to Barbara, and I must say that this is in conflict with what some of the other witnesses, including deputies, “Someone came and told my grandfather about this incident that happened outside of Roswell. My grandfather went out there and when he got out there, there was a big burned area when he first approached… they saw debris… I don’t know if he was alone. She [Inez] didn’t go with him. It was in the evening.”

Barbara asked, “Did he see any little space beings? She [Inez] said, ‘Yes. There were four of them… they were like gray… their heads were large and the little suit they had on was like silk or something like that kind of material. They were gray.’”

Barbara was told, “He [George] came back into town and they had discussed the incident. They [the military] had thought it was fine to put it over the news and apparently something happened and it was not okay.”

There were phone calls from all over the world. According to what Barbara was told, “When they found out they came into the jailhouse and said you don’t say anything or you will die and Inez will die…”

Barbara again said, “He went out there to the site. I thought the site was just like thirty miles outside of Roswell… Granddaddy wouldn’t talk about it. It was a shock to him like you wouldn’t believe.”

She provided more of the description of what the sheriff had seen, based on what Inez told her. “There were little people lying out on the ground. [The] military came in and… tell you not to talk about it.”

Oddly, Barbara said that Inez never talked about it again. It was just that one time, though she wrote an article about in the late 1940s. That article does corroborate what Barbara said, but there is a problem with it, which I’ll get to in a moment.

Barbara asked, “Were those little men alive or dead and she said ‘I think one of them was alive,’ and I said, ‘Did Granddaddy help it.?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know,’ and that was that. She didn’t tell me anything else.”

Barbara said that Inez never said another word about it… except, there is that article that Inez wrote about “Four Years in the County Jail.”

This was an article about her experiences working for the county as the matron in the jail. Seems in the 1940s that the sheriff’s wife sort of inherited the job of matron when her husband was elected sheriff. I don’t know if it was a requirement or a bonus that came with the election of George.

In that article, seen here, is the mention of the flying saucer crash, as it was typed by Inez:

 

Inez Wilcox's article about the Roswell crash.

And here is the problem. That paragraph was not in the original story. It was added later. When the Berlitz and Moore book about the crash came out, it was announced in the Roswell Daily Record on June 11, 1980, with another article published on June 13, 1980. Inez’s article is undated and the insert about the crash is undated, but since it was written later as an addition to the original article, it is possible that it was inspired by the release of The Roswell Incident, the articles in the Daily Record and the eventual broadcast on In Search Of, which covered the Roswell story. Inez died on May 25, 1988.

And the additional problem is that the information is third-hand. George was first hand, Inez was second, and Barbara third. She’d seen nothing herself. She was relying on Inez, who had seen very little herself, and none of it had to do with the alien beings. George was no longer available for interview when we arrived on the scene in 1989.

Again, here is the problem. Ben Smith, or one of the producers interviewed Barbara, but they made no attempt to get that paragraph that Inez had written into the show. They made no mention of it. At least the paragraph moved the story to the second hand. But, to trot that out would be to diminish the importance of the Not Jesse Marcel’s Journal. Focus had to remain on the Journal to the exclusion of any other good documentation, with the exception of the Ramey Memo… which, they mentioned in the second episode and then seemed to forget.

Anyway, here is additional analysis of Barbara’s tale. I have no doubt that she believes it to be true. The trouble is that, at this late date, we can’t prove it… and the real shame is that Inez didn’t date anything. That would have helped.

Chasing Footnotes - Roswell and Original Sources

This is another of those posts that chases footnotes and though it begins with Richard Dolan, he is merely the starting point and this isn’t a criticism of his scholarship… well, maybe a little bit but you’ll understand as we get deeper into this. As an aside, and one that is not directed at Dolan here, I wonder how it is that some lies seem to mean nothing in our world of the UFO and simple mistakes are presented as false claims, and yes, this should become clear later as well.

Richard Dolan. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

Dolan provides a brief summary of the Roswell case in his book, and footnotes many of the comments he makes. He describes for us some of the testimony of Barbara Dugger. Dolan wrote:

Barbara Dugger was the granddaughter of Roswell Sheriff George Wilcox. She claimed that her grandmother, Inez (the wife of George Wilcox), said that after the incident, military police told the Wilcox couple that the entire family would be killed if they ever talked about it. Inez said George Wilcox had gone out to the site, saw a big burned area, debris and “four space beings” with big heads and suits “like silk.” One of the beings was alive. According to Dugger: “if she [Inez] said it happened, it happened.”

I have nothing to object to here. The information provided, is what Dugger told Don Schmitt and me when we interviewed her. It is the footnote that is somewhat annoying. The footnote takes us to Stan Friedman and Don Berliner’s Crash at Corona. There they tell us that I interviewed Miss Barbara Dugger in early 1991. The question is, shouldn’t Dolan have acknowledged the original source of the information, which clearly he knew because that information is in his source. And isn’t the original source, that is the interview that Don and I conducted, a better source than one that quotes me rather than us. Or, in other words, shouldn’t Dolan have referred to our original work rather than the intermediate report of Friedman and Berliner that used us.

Okay, that’s not really egregious. He did provide the information that takes you, eventually, to the original source. And, as we delve into this, we’ll find that Dolan quoted one of the sources he had, though a little research would have revealed the original source which is a better source than those repeating information.

What does this mean?

Dolan describes what Bill Brazel had said, which as you all know was a description of some of the debris he picked up, that his father had been held in Roswell for a number of days and then soldiers had shown up a few days after he had talked about finding the debris while in Corona. Dolan’s account, though short, is fairly accurate. He does misspell Mack Brazel’s name as Mac, but we all did that until Tom Carey learned that it had a “K” at the end. The footnote takes us to Friedman and Berliner again.

Bill Brazel. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

Here's where the problem develops. They wrote, “According to his son, Bill Jr., Mac never felt like he had done anything special.” They then quote from an interview with Bill in some detail. The problem is that neither Friedman nor Berliner were at that interview. It was conducted by Don Schmitt and me on February 19, 1989, in Carrizozo, New Mexico and was recorded on audiotape. The quotes appear in our book, UFO Crash at Roswell and there is no credit nor attribution for the information given by Friedman and Berliner. Dolan would have no way of learning the original source of the interview so the trail ends there… unless, of course, he had access to our book, which is cited in the footnotes in that same section and is mentioned in his bibliography.

And to make it worse, if possible, Friedman alters a portion of the quote for no reason other than to make it fit with his brief structure and to help prop up the failing Gerald Anderson tale. Friedman, quoting us, quoting Brazel, wrote, “I’m almost positive that the officer in charge, his name was Armstrong, a real nice guy.

Stan Friedman Photo copyright Kevin Randle.

He had a [black] sergeant with him.”

The trouble is, Brazel never said the sergeant was black, and the tape of the interview proves that he never said it. Later Friedman would claim that Brazel had used a racially charged word to describe the sergeant as a way of alibiing his change to our interview. Once again, I have the original tape and Brazel said nothing like that.

There is another point in which Dolan writes about Roswell, and mentioned the testimony of Robert Smith. Dolan briefly describes crates that had been built to transport some of the wreckage out of Roswell. He specifically mentions Robert Smith, and the footnote takes us back to Friedman and Berliner. There is a long quote from Smith in their book and according to them, “In a 1991 interview, he [Robert Smith] described his involvement.”

That’s a neat piece of writing that implies they were there for the interview without saying anything of the kind. What they don’t say is that Don and I interviewed, on videotape, Robert Smith and neither of them were there. The quotes come from our work with neither credit nor attribution.

These are just a few of the examples and I know what you’re thinking, “What difference does it make now?” Well, first I just came across a statement from Friedman saying that my work can’t be trusted because I write science fiction (as do how many others who also investigate UFOs…), that Anderson was responding to what he thought was an unfair characterization of him as a liar and that I’m an anti-abduction propagandist. But the great irony in all this is that prior to the publication of UFO Crash at Roswell, Friedman wrote a letter to our AVON BOOKS editor, John Douglas on June 11, 1990, and falsely claimed, “if once again there are many factual mistakes, flights of fancy, lifting my research much of which remains unpublished.”

(For those interested, Dick Hall in the May/June 1993 issue of the International UFO Reporter wrote that, “Randle alleged that Friedman and others, apparently acting in concert, had attempted to interfere with publication of the book UFO CRASH AT ROSWELL (then in preparation) by contacting the publisher, AVON BOOKS, making charges of plagiarism and generally impugning Randle’s character and integrity. I asked Randle for documentation, which he provided. I asked Friedman for an explanation and he never replied.”)

What happened here, as evidenced by the footnotes provided by Dolan, and by reading the information in the Friedman and Berliner book, was that they actually lifted the research conducted by Don and me and published it as their own without reference to us. In the wording of the statements… “According to his son, Bill Jr., Mac never felt like he had done anything special,” and “In a 1991 interview, he [Robert Smith] described his involvement,” they have not acknowledged the source of the information, or to use Friedman’s words to the AVON editor, they were “lifting my research …” Ironic isn’t it?

Friedman also talked of “flights of fancy,” which is a way of saying inventing imaginative fictitious scenarios, like suggesting the sergeant who visited Brazel was black for no other reason to make it fit in with the Glenn Dennis nonsense and to prop up Gerald Anderson by suggesting corroboration where none existed.

I was going to continue in this vein because there are many examples of these sorts of attacks on me. I know that while I was serving in Iraq, there were those inside the UFO community who questioned whether or not I was really there. Unlike some who have claimed extensive military service, I can actually prove what I say.

The point here is just that periodically I grow tired of the attacks because I happen to disagree with some of the nonsense being sprouted in the UFO community. The attacks are personal rather than an attempt to refute the evidence and when all else fails, just label me a debunker because we don’t have to deal with the truth of the statements.

And I sometimes wonder why, when we have shown that certain points of view are wrong, horribly wrong and laughably wrong, it seems to make no difference as long as that person has a message that people want to hear. It makes no difference if the message is filled with poor research, bad evidence, leaps of logic that are not justified by the information or who are caught in outright lies, people just ignore that, as long as the message fits into their belief structure. I had always thought that people wanted the truth, but obviously it is only their “truth” they wish to hear and that is why we still have people telling us the alien autopsy is real and some believe MJ-12 authentic. It would seem to me that when the evidence is stacked up, that should end the discussion but in the world of the UFO that never happens.

So, I chased a few footnotes here, saw that Richard Dolan hadn’t done the best job of sourcing his material (and sometimes it simply wasn’t possible for him to do that given the sources he used) and that sometimes the information was correct but those claiming to have done the research had “borrowed” it instead. I think we all now have a different perspective of some of this research and rather than respond to the issues raised here, I’ll bet we’ll all have to hear about my “day job” as a science fiction writer as if that somehow negates the points I’ve made. I just wish the UFO community would hold everyone to the same standards rather than personally attacking those who might have a different perspective.