Brazel in Custody in Roswell

As the debate in the last posting rages, and as we race toward 300 comments on it, there was one discussion in the debate that demonstrates the original point. I had suggested that we look at the evidence in a dispassionate matter. Instead, in some cases, it became a rejection of evidence because of a belief that such things just couldn’t happen.

Some of the skeptics have rejected the idea that Mack Brazel had been held by military authorities for about a week. Christopher Allan, for example, wrote:

Karl Pflock [seen here] went into the question of Brazel in his book, p.169-171. He concluded that it was very doubtful if such incarceration took place. But ETHers will insist it did. What on earth would they need a whole week to detain him for anyway? If they were determined to silence him they could do it in maybe 2 hours by getting him to sign a secrecy oath on July 8. That supposes the affair was already classified top secret. In which case he wouldn't have been permitted to even give his RDR [Roswell Daily Record] interview later that day.

But Karl Pflock is not the final authority on this, and in fact, he dismissed some data simply because he didn’t like it. That it agreed with the skeptical attitude doesn’t make it right. Let’s look at some of the facts.

Karl pointed out that I hadn't recorded the conversation with Easley, which is true. But I do have my notes written at the time, meaning as I was talking to Easley. About Brazel at the base Easley said (quoting from my notes and seen here), "Brought him to base... talked to him for several days... not involved in that (Easley saying that he was not involved in the interrogation). Brazel at the guest house."

This was, of course, the "top cop" at the Roswell base and who had not been interviewed by anyone until I talked to him. He was careful in what he said because, as he told me repeatedly, "I’ve been sworn to secrecy." (Which is an argument for a later time and one that I do have on tape.)

Not to mention that Pflock is, in essence, calling me a liar about this testimony. Yes, I sincerely wish I had it on tape, but that doesn’t change the fact that Easley said it to me and I was the first, and as far as I know, the only researcher to have talked to him... Karl presented nothing to refute this testimony other than mention it wasn’t on tape... just like some of the interviews he conducted but which he says he reported accurately.

Then we reject what Bill Brazel said about seeing the stories about his father in the newspapers and going out to the ranch to help him. Mack returned two or three days after Bill got there. Testimony provided by Brazel during my first interview with him in 1989.

Then we reject Marian Strickland, who actually said on video tape (I made the recording in 1990) that Mack sat in her kitchen and complained about being held in Roswell. (Lyman Strickland also said this but not to me. He had died before I traveled to Roswell.)Then we reject what Loretta Proctor said about Brazel being held in Roswell... As well as the testimony of several others who saw him in Roswell including Floyd Proctor and even Walt Whitmore, Jr. who said he saw Brazel at his father’s house, not to mention his being at the newspaper office sometime on July 8 to give the interview. Which, I point out again, puts Brazel in Roswell after his initial visit.

Floyd Proctor told Bill Moore, as reported in The Roswell Incident, about seeing Brazel in Roswell being escorted by the military. Now, given that Bill Moore described his own book as a "disgraceful hodgepodge of fact and fiction," and given that we have seen him manipulate witness testimony to fit his vision of events, skeptics would be well within their rights to reject these statements attributed to Floyd Proctor. And, if Proctor was stand alone, I would reject it as well.

However, I do know that some of the testimony reported in The Roswell Incident was accurate because the witnesses told me the same thing. And, Loretta confirms what her husband said. So, we can, if we want suggest this testimony is accurate. We might assign less weight to it than that given by other witnesses and reported by other writers, but it still has some value in the overall understanding of the Roswell case.

We also reject the testimony of other Brazel friends, Leonard Porter and Bill Jenkins, who talked of Brazel under military escort.

And, we reject the story told by Frank Joyce about Brazel visiting him, at KGFL in Roswell after he had been to the newspaper office. Brazel told Joyce that he was under orders to give this new tale or it would go very hard on him. We reject this because Joyce’s story has grown over the years... however, when I first interviewed Joyce, he made it clear that there were things he knew that he just hadn’t mentioned to anyone. In fact, he showed me a letter he had sent to himself, which was postmarked so that he could verify that he hadn’t "just remembered" or that he was now embellishing his account. But reject him anyway.

We accept what Bessie Brazel said, even though she said that she had accompanied her father into Roswell on the first trip and didn't remember the military following him back out (which is fairly well documented... I mean even Cavitt admitted that he went out to the ranch, which, of course directly contradicts her). She said that her father didn't return to Roswell, even though that also is documented. She said that no military came out to the ranch.

She also said that she knew it was a balloon when they gathered up the material, all of it, leaving none in the field for Cavitt and Marcel to see. It strikes me that if a 14-year-old girl could identify this as a balloon, why then Jesse Marcel, an adult with intelligence training, surely would have recognized it... but I digress.

So, what this means is that we reject all the evidence from several different sources including documents and testimony that does not support our point of view and accept the statements from a single source, even when that source has been contradicted by documentation, because it does.

Not to mention that Bessie Brazel herself repudiated the testimony. Said that she had confused the 1947 event with something that happened a couple of years later. So, even she isn’t sure about all this, but her story suggests balloon and nothing extraordinary so she is considered right and everyone else is wrong.

And now I have to hear, again, about how Karl Pflock had refuted the idea that Brazel was held in Roswell... The evidence shows that he was. Period. The length of time is an estimate based on what Bill said. That he arrived two or three days after his father left and his father return two or three days later. Four to six or seven days based on the man who should know.

These would be facts and no, they do not lead to the extraterrestrial but do suggest something out of the ordinary happened. The point here is that the skeptics are flat out wrong on this point. It will interesting to see if they will attempt to spin it in some fashion.