Project Blue Book Goes Nuts

I am not sure why they bother to call the program Project Blue Book. This season, the cases that have been examined are not part of Blue Book. In fact, the only link is J. Allen Hynek, who was the science consultant to Project Blue Book for years. Captain Quinn is an invented character, as are the two generals that are running around guiding the Blue Book cover up. But in the whole history of Blue Book, the officers did not investigate the Roswell crash nor were they worried about Area 51,

Littlefinger

and did little or nothing with alien abduction. In other words, there is virtually no connection to what the Blue Book staff actually did and what the show portrays.

I’m not sure that analysis of the program, as a look at cases that are, more or less, based on facts, is relevant. I can point to dozens of items that are based on nothing more than a writer’s imagination and some of that isn’t all that imaginative. Dozens of people walking the Roswell debris field. A rancher shooting an alien. An autopsy that was faked but about to be broadcast nationally anyway, except Hynek stopped the transmission because he recognized the light pattern of the studio. A general about to water board a witness… I could go on, but what’s the point.

Skip ahead to this latest episode. It’s based on a report that an Air Force enlisted man was killed by aliens and the officer with him is about to be accused of murder. Total nonsense. This is the story of Major William Cunningham and Sergeant Jonathan Lovette. I’m not sure that I even wish to repeat the details. For those interested, here’s a link:

https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/06/bizarre-cases-of-mysterious-deaths-and-human-mutilations/

I will, however, point out that the story was supposedly detailed in Blue Book Special Report #13. No one has ever found a copy of it, most don’t believe that it ever existed, and this particular tale was related by Bill English, who said that he had been in the Army’s Special Forces (Green Berets) and that he had been a captain. Unfortunately, English’s service record does not bear this out. I reported on this here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-nuns-story-roswell-edition.html

For those who do not wish to read the entire article, here is the relevant section that deals with English:

Now for some of the other, worrisome, bits of this. Bill English, it seems, was not a Special Forces officer as he claimed, and if the documents I have seen from St. Louis Army Records Center are accurate, and this is the same guy, he was not an officer and not in Special Forces. That certainly taints any information that he supplied.

This isn’t much, but it does tell the story. For those interested in more details, here is English’s service record, such as it is, provided by the archives in St. Louis:

Bill English's Service Record as supplied by NARA in St. Louis.

The point here is that the story about this mutilation is untrue, it is not part of the Blue Book files that have been released, and, it comes from a source that is dubious at best. Rather than giving us stories that have some sort of basis in reality, we have drifted into the realm of science fiction. I use that term advisedly because true science fiction is predicated on actual science and if it is not, then it is fantasy. I realize that this is a very restrictive definition and that some things that are called science fiction aren’t, but that’s an argument for another time.

The real point is that so far, this season, they have not dealt with anything that is in the Project Blue Book files. They have drifted into that nebulous world of UFO reporting that infects the Internet, but is often little more than fantasy.

Next week they are apparently heading to the Kelly-Hopkinsville for the home invasion sighting. While there is information about it in the Project Blue Book files, it is not considered an official case. The report is labeled as “information only” which means there was no Blue Book investigation. It is a fine hair to split, but one I thought I would split anyway.

I now only watch this show because it seems that someone is always smacking around Littlefinger… I’ll leave it to you to figure out the reference.

Max Littell and the Roswell Nuns

I suppose this could be called another of my “Chasing Footnotes” posts, but that isn’t quite right. Many will remember that Lance Moody was annoyed with me for the Catholic Nuns story as outlined in The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell. I won’t dwell on that and those who wish to read about it can use the search engines supplied or look at:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-nuns-story-roswell-edition.html

What brings this up is that I found another reference to the nuns in a publication that I had no hand in. According to that booklet called, The Jim Ragsdale Story:

Mother Superior Mary Bernadette and Sister Capistrano reported seeing a bright object plunging toward the ground late in the evening of July 4, 1947. The two Sisters were on duty at St. Mary’s Hospital, located on South Main Street in Roswell, New Mexico. Many points of concurrence do fit the reports of others, especially Jim Ragsdale’s eye witness account of a UFO crash, during this rather short time frame. Be assured that the nuns told it exactly like it was on that 4^th of July night in 1947.

The author, who is unidentified in the booklet but is probably Max Littell, then, wrote, “Let us do some speculating together with established facts and figures.”

He suggested that some might believe the nuns could have been watching fireworks set off by Roswell residents celebrating the nation’s birthday. But he also wrote that the nuns would have known the difference between the fireworks and the bright object they saw. He uses the location of the hospital as a way of suggesting that the nuns were looking toward the west and would have been able to see the object fall near Boy Scout Mountain some fifty miles away where Ragsdale, in later years, claimed he was camping. This was some of the new corroboration for the Ragsdale tale, according to Littell.

While I could suggest this is also independent corroboration of the nun’s story, I don’t actually know that it is. Littell worked very hard to remove all trace of Don Schmitt and me from the Ragsdale tale and I have no doubt this extended to his coverage of the nun’s story.

In a chapter called “Max Littell Meets Jim Ragsdale,” he wrote, “In 1993, shortly after opening the Museum, we did have an investigator/author visiting us, and when his partner took the car on another errand, he needed a ride to his motel. I offered, and the individual said, ‘Great, but I need to go by and see a party on the way… This party turned out to be Jim Ragsdale.”

So, let’s put this in a different perspective. The investigator/author was Don Schmitt and, of course, the partner was me. I had to go out to interview a witness west of town, who, it turned out, had nothing to add to the Roswell case. Don, with Littell and Mark Chesney, drove over to see Ragsdale.

In the same vein, Littell wrote after Don had completed the interview, “Getting out of the car, the writer said…” Once again, Littell has referred to the person as the writer, but it was still Don Schmitt. In fact he never identifies either Don or me as those involved in this first telling of the Ragsdale tale or that we were the ones who found him in the first place.

Littell then wrote, “The investigator had apparently recorded the interview, or had taken enough notes [the interview was recorded so that it can be verified that Ragsdale changed his tale] that he could prepare a statement from Ragsdale. He asked if I could get the statement signed and notarized. Since I have been a notary for fifty years, I said that this could be easily accomplished.”

And here’s where the tale again slips off the rails. Littell wrote, “Within a few days, the instrument [affidavit] arrived, and I met Ragsdale for the first time. The instrument was read to him, he signed it, and I mailed it back to the investigator. Notaries do not make copies of the instrument, so I do not remember any of the statements made.”

Well, the interview took place on January 26 and the statement was signed on January 27, not a few days later. In an unsigned note on the letterhead of the International UFO Museum and Research Center, Littell wrote, “Kevin: Three Notarized copies exist. This one [sent to me], One left with the Ragsdales and one in our file…”

Or, in other words, Littell did make copies for us and sent them to us, but kept one for their files at the Museum. Therefore, Littell knew exactly what it said and it did not agree with the longer one he obtained in 1995.

What all this tells us that we can’t trust Littell’s version of these events and that he was working hard to remove from the record any mention of Don’s January 26 interview and my April 24, 1993 interview. Copies of the interviews were supplied to the Museum. If those were mentioned, then questions would be raised about the validity of Ragsdale’s later version of events and the new affidavit because it would be clear that Ragsdale had significantly changed his story and that we had quoted him accurately in our reporting of the first version.

This was all a long-winded way to suggest that I believe the information about the nuns was lifted from The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell. It seems from the way it was worded that Littell had interviewed the nuns or someone associated with them, but there is nothing there that Don and I didn’t already know. Littell is dead and Ragsdale is dead so I can’t ask where the information originated. It is possible that Littell talked to one of the nuns who was still in Roswell, the one that Bill English told us about and Sister Day told us about, but I simply don’t know. If Littell did, the criticism is the same because he used the same source we did, no one has been able to locate the alleged diary entries after years of trying and there is no other corroboration for the tale.

While the information in Littell’s booklet about Ragsdale could be seen as confirmation of the nun’s story, I simply can’t tell if it was newer and better information or if he simply used the material that Don and I had gathered and shared with him. This is a dead end and it is in no way corroboration for the nun’s story.