The Observer Anti-Roswell Article: A Brief Response

 The Observer published an article by Bernie O’Connor suggesting that the story of an alien event in Roswell is a hoax based on the recovery of a Project Mogul balloon. I don’t know why it is so difficult for those on the skeptical side of the fence to realize that the Mogul explanation doesn’t work. Simply put, Flight No. 4, the culprit in all this, was cancelled. That is based on the documentation available.

For those interested in the original article, I believe the current issue of The Observer can be seen here:

https://theobservermagazine.substack.com/about?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

In the following rebuttal to this claim, and the interview that O’Connor conducted with Colonel Walter Klinikowski which is the source for his report, I provide some additional commentary. As most of you know, I have worked on the Roswell UFO crash story for about thirty years, I thought some of my insights might be helpful in understanding this latest piece. To show that I have been around for a long time, I’ll tell you the Delta pilot reference is Kent Jeffrey, who wrote the Roswell Initiative and later repudiated it. I covered this in an entry in The Roswell Encyclopedia that was published in 2000. Kent’s MUFON article, abbreviated and published with his permission is included in that book.

Kent Jeffrey, Tom Carey and Kent's father in New Mexico. 
Photo by Kevin Randle.

The reason that I, and others did not bother with Colonel Klinikowski, is his statement that he wasn’t in Roswell at the time of the event, though he was assigned to the base at time. According to the base telephone directory, he was assigned to Operations. In July 1947, the Operations Officer was Lieutenant Colonel Joe Briley, who made comments that contradict Klinikowski. But, like Klinikowski, he didn’t see anything himself, but in talking with others concluded that something important had happened. Briley told me that the story of Blanchard’s leave was a cover story so he could go to the crash site without reporters wondering where he had gone. Blanchard would not have gone to the site for what amounted to a weather balloon and common radar reflector.

Klinikowski clearly supported the Project Mogul theory, telling us that the project was highly classified, but the truth is, the ultimate purpose was classified, but the experiments in Alamogordo were not. Pictures of one of the arrays appeared in the Alamogordo News on July 10, 1947. Charles Moore, who worked on the New York University balloon project there told me that he had purchased the step ladder that appears in one of the pictures, linking it to what he insisted on calling the New York University balloon project rather than Project Mogul.

Charles Moore reviewing winds aloft data. Photo by
Kevin Randle.

The ladder to which Moore referred. Picture from the
Alamogordo News, July 10, 1947.

Here’s one of those facts that gets overlooked. Dr. Albert Crary, who was the leader of the balloon project, used the name Mogul at least three times in his unclassified journal and diary notes, proving that they knew about Mogul. Again, the ultimate purpose was not known, but the name, Mogul, was. I’ll note that in the book, Roswell in the 21^st Century, there is a long appendix that covers the whole Mogul tale.

Thanks to Colonel Richard Weaver, who ran the Air Force investigation about Roswell in the 1990s, we have copies of the data collected by Crary’s experiments in New Mexico. The problem here is that Mogul balloon flight in question, No. 4 was not flown. According to the documentation, it was to be launched on June 4, 1947, but was cancelled because of clouds. Charles Moore told me that the next flight, No. 5, was configured exactly like No. 4, and Flight No.5 had no radar targets, an important point. Moore would later claim that they received data from Flight No. 4, but there is nothing recorded for it. They did release a cluster of balloons later in the day, on June 4, that was not a Mogul flight and never strayed from the range.

In his article, Bernie O’Connor wrote: “I [meaning Klinikowski] wasn't even in Roswell when it happened and when I got back to town there was some mention of it. The debris landed on my cousin by marriage's ranch and his name is Dewey Stoke and he never saw this stuff because it was picked up by the Air Force people from the base of Roswell and they took the stuff and shipped it off to Wright Patterson Air Force Base which was the home of what was then called the Air Technical Intelligence Center.”

But here’s part of the problem. The debris landed on a ranch owned by the Fosters and Mack Brazel recovered some of it. He took it to the Chaves County Sheriff (Roswell) and George Wilcox called out to the air base. Jesse Marcel, Sr., responded and did not recognize it as balloon debris though he was familiar with weather balloons and radar targets. Some of that early debris was sent on to Fort Worth Army Air Field where Colonel (later brigadier general) Thomas DuBose had it sent on to Washington, D.C. Dewey Stoke never saw the stuff, so I must ask, “What is his purpose in this tale?”

Bud Payne, who was a New Mexico judge, told Don Schmitt and me, where he had seen the field of metallic debris. It was on the ranch managed by Mack Brazel, and he put us on the same bit of ground where Bill Brazel found some of the metallic debris days and weeks later.

We do have testimony from Bill Brazel who handled debris, and his description of a gouge in the terrain. He provided descriptions that vaguely match some modern material such as fiber optics. Jesse Marcel, Sr. and Jesse Marcel, Jr., provided descriptions that eliminate Earth-based technology.

Bill Brazel in 1989. Photo by Kevin Randle

There are eye witnesses to both the debris field and impact site. General Arthur Exon told me and Don Schmitt that he had flown over the two sites, which would tend to rule out a Mogul flight since it would not have gouged the terrain or been scattered over two separate sites that were miles apart. All of it would have stayed clumped together.

Finally, Bernie O’Connor wrote, “The problem with Roswell, as well as with any other classic UFO cases, is the fact that one small bit of new evidence presented—the offhand comment by an authority figure, or the rediscovered testimony or official document—can upend the whole belief scenario. Humpty-Dumpty could have a great fall.”

If anyone wishes for a little bit of documentation. Major Patrick Saunders was the base adjutant in 1947. On the fly leaf of The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, Saunders wrote, “This is the truth and I still haven’t told anybody anything!” He signed it, “Pat.” Any yes, I verified the signature with Saunder’s son, using the flight records of the senior Saunders.

The Saunder's statement in The Truth
About the UFO Crash at Roswell.

The authority figure is Colonel Klinikowski. However, Colonel DuBose, who was responsible for sending some debris to Washington, D.C., said that the balloon material was substituted for the debris taken to Fort Worth by Marcel. Marcel said that the material in the photographs taken in General Ramey’s office was not what he had taken to Fort Worth. Brigadier General Arthur Exon provided testimony about the material arriving at Wright-Patterson in 1947, including comments about those who examined it saying they could not identify it. Do my authority figures, who were there and handled the debris trump those cited by O’Connor? Does it suggest that there is more to this story than meets the eye?

And I haven’t even mentioned Major (later Colonel) Edwin Easley, the provost marshal on the base who told me that the extraterrestrial path was the correct one to follow. I had asked him if we were on 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.”

Major Edwin Easley

Please notice here that I have quoted from members of Colonel Blanchard’s primary staff who were there and made their own observations of the debris and who were on the sites of the wreck. These are statements they made to me, or to Don, or Tom Carey or that were wrote down.

Butch Blanchard told Chester Lytle that four bodies had been recovered. Given the nature of their friendship and the high-level trust by Blanchard in Lytle, this is a somewhat telling statement. It is difficult to believe that Blanchard would say that to anyone if it was not true. Art McQuiddy, who was the editor of the Roswell Morning Dispatch told me that they put wreckage on an aircraft and flew it on to Fort Worth. Not exactly proof positive, but a suggestion that what was found was something more than an off-the-shelf-weather balloon and a somewhat degraded rawin radar reflector.

As can be seen, I was aware of Klinikowski through his conversations with Kent Jeffrey. He had nothing to contribute to the investigation beyond the balloon theory, one that Don Schmitt and I explored early in our investigation and rejected for lack of proof, meaning eyewitness testimony and the documentation of balloon flights that removed Mogul from the equation.

For those interested and who have read The Observer article, there is another problem. Bernie O’Connor reported that Klinikowski said, “Well with two other full colonels and a fellow named Weinbrenner (Col. George R. Weinbrenner) who was the Commander of the Foreign Technology Division and Walter Vitunac (Col. Walter Charles Vitunac) who was the former Director of Collection and then me, who was the Director of Collection.”

The suggestion that Weinbrenner was one of the top officers who did not believe in the alien explanation is repudiated here. Tony Bragalia provided additional commentary at his website. You can read it here:

https://substack.com/redirect/297ee407-8ebb-4cb0-a64b-5446b232dd65?j=eyJ1IjoiZ2ZicmIifQ.fyOy7XcsRMdZdNETog-CMWQrAzIY0u-O58q7WQBlqUU

What all this suggests is that there are far more witnesses, both first and second hand who have come down on the side of an alien event. Don Schmitt, Tom Carey and I have talked with dozens of them. To me, the weight of the evidence leans toward the extraterrestrial. All known terrestrial explanations have been eliminated.

Eric Davis, Again

 

The Devoid (Billy Cox), columnist at the Miami Herald, reignited the Admiral Thomas Wilson debate not all that long ago. Although it seemed that most of mainstream Ufology had realized that the story told by Dr. Eric Davis about his clandestine meeting with the Admiral was probably more hyperbole that truth, there are still those who believe the information is leading us to disclosure. You can read the article here:

http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/16000/eric-who-the-admiral/#comment-588557

I bring all this up because, a while back, Dr. Davis had suggested, on Coast-to-Coast, that the Del Rio UFO crash was real. That crash is based on the information of a single witness who had claimed to be a retired Air Force colonel, a former Air Force fighter pilot, and a veteran of the Korean War. I explored all this at length in a posting on this blog that you can read here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/09/dr-davis-confirms-del-rio-ufo-crash.html

Given that the Del Rio story is a hoax, and the lone witness to it has been less than honest about it, this does cast a shadow over the credibility of Dr. Davis. I mean, if he truly had inside information, he would have known the Del Rio crash was a hoax.

Robert Willingham, pretend
Air Force Officer.

I exposed it as such in 2010 in my book, Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky. I also gave a presentation at the MUFON Symposium in Denver about Robert Willingham, the discredited source, and why his tale should be rejected. This merely means that the information I uncovered was available long before Dr. Davis had his conversation with Admiral Wilson (which, BTW, Wilson has denied ever having taken place).

In the last few days, a number of people have been discussing this on the Internet, and I wouldn’t mention it but their experiences seem to match my own. As I said in the post, I had emailed Dr. Davis a couple of times, even asking George Knapp for some help in making contact, but never heard a word back from Davis. The excuse was that Dr. Davis was getting plenty of emails from all over the world and I certainly could understand his failure to reply to me.

However…

I wasn’t the only one having that sort of problem. André Skondras told Philip Mantle had he had attempted to contact Dr. Davis but hadn’t heard back. Given that had been less than twenty-four hours after he had sent his email, that wasn’t all that surprising. Now, several days later, he still hasn’t had a response.

That’s not the end of it. Don Schmitt reported, “Tracy Torme had asked me to contact Davis after his failure when he and James Fox were shooting the forthcoming docu-film. He never responded to email or personal calls. Next, because Davis was listed at that time as a MUFON consultant, I asked Jan Harzan to make the same effort. Same result.”

This was important because of Don’s efforts and the suggestion that MUFON Executive Director Jan Harzan was involved (made long before Harzan’s arrest). While I fully understand Dr. Davis ignoring some of these requests, as a consultant to MUFON, you’d think that a response to the Executive Director would be forthcoming.

This has now taken a different path with a suggestion that we contact Admiral Wilson, who has repeatedly denied that he knew Davis and wouldn’t recognize him if he walked into the room. Since the Admiral has been contacted and responded a number of times, I don’t know what good it will do to bother him again. He’s not going to change his mind.

I’m reminded of the note Kent Jeffrey received from the late Colonel Robert Barrowclough, who, in 1947, was one of the senior officers at the Roswell Army Air Field. In that note dated June 15, 1997, Barrowclough wrote, “Thank you for the copy of the [MUFON] UFO Journal on the Roswell Myth. Maybe some of those crack pots will quit calling me up and say I’m covering up a deep gov’t secret.”

Even if Admiral Wilson did know something, he would be obligated to deny it if it was still classified. I’m not saying that he does, only that continued pestering of the man will not yield any positive results… especially since he is on the record, repeatedly, as saying he had no such discussion with Dr. Davis.

The key here is Dr. Davis, but it seems to be a key that is lost. Since Dr. Davis has proclaimed a well-known hoax (Del Rio) as being authentic, I fear that there is nothing more to learn from him. All we end up doing is chasing a claim that cannot be verified and it does nothing to advance our knowledge. It only diverts us from a path that could yield better results.

Dr. Eric Davis and Admiral Thomas Wilson - Redux

The Devoid (Billy Cox), columnist at the Miami Herald, reignited the Admiral Thomas Wilson debate several days ago. Although it seemed that most of mainstream Ufology had realized that the story told by Dr. Eric Davis about his clandestine meeting with the Admiral was probably more hyperbole that truth, there are still those who believe the information is leading us to disclosure. You can read the article here:

http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/16000/eric-who-the-admiral/#comment-588557

I bring all this up because, a while back, Dr. Davis had suggested, on Coast-to-Coast, that the Del Rio UFO crash was real. That crash is based on the information of a single witness who had claimed to be a retired Air Force colonel, a former Air Force fighter pilot, and a veteran of the Korean War. I explored all this at length in a posting on this blog that you can read here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/09/dr-davis-confirms-del-rio-ufo-crash.html

Given that the Del Rio story is a hoax, and the lone witness to it has been less than honest about it, this does cast a shadow over the credibility of Dr. Davis. I mean, if he truly had inside information, he would have known the Del Rio crash

Dr. Eric Davis

was a hoax. I exposed it as such in 2010 in my book, Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky. I also gave a presentation at the MUFON Symposium in Denver about Willingham and why his tale should be rejected. This merely means that the information I uncovered was available long before Dr. Davis had his conversation with Admiral Wilson (which, BTW, Wilson has denied ever having taken place).

In the last few days, a number of people have been discussing this on the Internet, and I wouldn’t mention it but their experiences seem to match my own. As I said in the post, I had emailed Dr. Davis a couple of times, even asking George Knapp for some help in making contact, but never heard a word back from Davis. The excuse was that Dr. Davis was getting plenty of emails from all over the world and I certainly could understand his failure to reply to me.

However…

I wasn’t the only one having that sort of problem. André Skondras told Philip Mantle had he had attempted to contact Dr. Davis but hadn’t heard back. Given that had been less than twenty-four hours after he had sent his email, that wasn’t all that surprising. Now, several days later, he still hasn’t had a response.

Don Schmitt

That’s not the end of it. Don Schmitt reported, “Tracy Torme had asked me to contact Davis after his failure when he and James Fox were shooting the forthcoming docu-film. He never responded to email or personal calls. Next, because Davis was listed at that time as a MUFON consultant, I asked Jan Harzan to make the same effort. Same result.”

This was important because of Don’s efforts and the suggestion that MUFON Executive Director Jan Harzan was involved. While I fully understand Dr. Davis ignoring some of these requests, as a consultant to MUFON, you’d think that a response to the Executive Director would be forthcoming.

This has now taken a different path with a suggestion that we contact Admiral Wilson, who has repeatedly denied that he knew Davis and wouldn’t recognize him if he walked into the room. Since the Admiral has been contacted and responded a number of times, I don’t know what good it will do to bother him again. He’s not going to change his mind.

I’m reminded of the note Kent Jeffrey received from the late Colonel Robert Barrowclough, who, in 1947, was one of the senior officers at the Roswell Army Air Field. In that note dated June 15, 1997, Barrowclough wrote, “Thank you for the copy of the [MUFON] UFO Journal on the Roswell Myth. Maybe some of those crack pots will quit calling me up and say I’m covering up a deep gov’t secret.”

Even if Admiral Wilson did know something, he would be obligated to deny it if it was still classified. I’m not saying that he does, only that continued pestering of the man will not yield any positive results… especially since he is on the record, repeatedly, as saying he had no such discussion with Dr. Davis.

The key here is Dr. Davis, but it seems to be a key that is lost. Since Dr. Davis has proclaimed a well-known hoax (Del Rio) as being authentic, I fear that there is nothing more to learn from him. All we end up doing is chasing a claim that cannot be verified and it does nothing to advance our knowledge. It only diverts us from a path that could yield better results.

Ben Games and Roswell

About a year ago, Billy Cox, writing in the Herald Tribune in Florida, told of an aging pilot, Ben Games, who said that he had served with Lieutenant General Laurence C. Craigie. Games, who was giving a talk to a UFO group, said that in the summer of 1947 he had flown Craigie, to Roswell, New Mexico to investigate what had been reported as the crash of a flying saucer.

In that talk, Games only suggested they had remained overnight in Roswell and that Craigie had then returned to Bolling Army Air Field (near Washington, D.C.) to meet with President Harry Truman.

Cox also noted that Games had a copies of various DD-214s, which is the standard military discharge papers, showing a strange 44 year military career. He also had his personal flight records back to 1942, but raising a red flag is the missing documents that would cover the critical July 1947 period. He has no explanation for that.

Tony Bragalia talked to Games recently, and I verified much of what transpired in that telephone interview. Games said, again, that they made an unscheduled flight into Roswell from Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, and that Craigie remained there for several hours. They then flew on to Washington, D.C. so that Craigie could meet with the president.

Games seemed to believe that Craigie was a close friend of General Curtis LeMay, who, in 1947 was in charge of Research and Development for the Army Air Force. Craigie worked for LeMay, and that would mean, of course, that Le May knew about Roswell because he would have sent Craigie to New Mexico, and, more importantly, would tend to corroborate the tale told by the late senator and Air Force Reserve major general, Barry Goldwater.

Remember, Goldwater once asked LeMay to show him the special room where it was alleged that debris and possibly bodies from the crash were housed. Goldwater told many that LeMay’s answer was "Not only no, but hell no, and if you ask me again I’ll see that you’re court martialed." Confirmation of this attitude came from Goldwater himself and I have a copy of a letter sent to former Roswell researcher Kent Jeffrey that tells us as much (seen here).

Games, who is 84, according to what he has said, is a retired major who holds a PhD, flew in World War II, Korea and Vietnam and has some 737 recorded combat hours. Craigie, for those interested was the first American military pilot to fly a jet. Craigie (seen here) would later establish Project Sign.

What this does is provide us with some information about who was involved in the crash retrieval, gives some corroboration that President Truman was kept informed (which, had there been a crash, is not that difficult to believe), and hints, once again at the importance of what fell. Games made it clear that had it been a weather balloon, or even a balloon array, those in Roswell, as well as those coming in to investigate including Craigie, would have recognized it as a balloon. While those in Roswell wouldn’t have been able to follow it all the way to Mogul, if that was the answer, Craigie certainly could have. Games made it clear that neither he nor Craigie saw a balloon.

Games said that he had been living out of the country, working for, or heading up, several airlines and hadn’t realized how big Roswell had become. He said that he had not been sworn to secrecy. When he learned about the discussions of Roswell, he realized how he fit into the overall picture.

If there is a flaw in this story, it’s those missing flight records. Some military pilots keep them religiously and others rely on the documentation supplied by Operations. He has other records to cover many other periods, but the critical ones, that would show a trip into Roswell are missing. How many times have we heard that? "I have everything but what I need to prove a point."

I’m not saying anything other than those missing records bother me. It would have been nice for Games to be able to corroborate that flight into Roswell. That certainly would have silenced the critics but because the records are missing, they will have a field day. Games’ information could be important, but we just don’t know. Just once I wish we could get our hands on the documentation because no matter how good a cover-up might be, it just can’t be this good.

Brigadier General Harry Cordes

There has been a great deal revealed about the Roswell case in the last few months. New witnesses, well, second-hand witnesses have been quoted extensively. Men and women who say that family members told them about the UFO crash, but who had not seen anything themselves have been located. With a second-hand witness, it is always possible that he or she miss heard or misunderstood what was being said.

But sometimes we get a hint of a first-hand witness and have those statements corroborated by a second-hand witness. Sure, this is confusing, but let’s just take a moment and examine one such case.

We know that 1st Lt. Harry N. Cordes served with the 509th Bomb Group in Roswell in 1947, specifically with the 393rd Bomb Squadron. And yes, his picture is in the Yearbook that Walter Haut prepared.. According to his official Air Force biography, in 1946 General Cordes [as a lieutenant] participated in the first atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. From 1946 to 1949 he was assigned to the 509th Bombardment Group, Roswell Air Force Base, N.M., as a radar observer on a B-29 crew. His crew won the first annual SAC bombing competition in 1948. He entered pilot training in August 1949 and when he graduated in 1950 returned to the 509th Bomb Group as a pilot and was later aircraft commander of a B-50. He served in a variety of assignments after he left Roswell, and eventually, as a brigadier general (seen below) assumed duties as deputy chief of staff, intelligence, at the Headquarters of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), Offutt Air Force Base in April 1970. He retired on July 1, 1973 and he died on May 10, 2004.

Cordes has been reported as saying that when he was assigned to the CIA one of the first things he had done was look for the Roswell files but they were missing. It is an interesting statement, but by itself, means little.

Tony Brangalia decided to follow up on this. He located Cordes widow who told him that she was surprised that Cordes would say anything like that to anyone outside the family. But then she went on and confirmed the fact saying that he told her that he had unsuccessfully tried to find the Roswell file back in the 1950s.

According to the notes that Brangalia shared with me, as a lieutenant, Cordes admired Jesse Marcel, Sr. (who was an intelligence officer and Cordes would find himself assigned to intelligence later in his career) and said that there was no reason for him to lie about anything. She said that Glenn Dennis’ nurse had been committed to a home before she died (Hey, I’m just reporting what was said, but here is a little corroboration for the Dennis story). She said that Blanchard was "a believer and anyone in the military who wanted to stay in didn’t talk about it."

Because she had grown up on a farm near Roswell and had worked in the First National Bank there, she knew many of the players in this story, knew some things about the case outside the military. She said that she had lived two doors down from the Wilcox family and said that they "were threatened and were afraid for their own reasons."

Working in the bank she heard things from the ranchers and wrote, "At the bank I heard the ranchers discussing Mack Brazel and they thought his new red pickup was his payoff."

But her story wasn’t just about what she had heard in the bank. She wrote, "My story begins the night of July 3rd with my family in Ruidoso where we always celebrated the 4th and I had to close the bank and was tasked with icing the soda and beer and driving to meet them. As I made the usual rounds for ice I was told that the Air Base had bought all the ice so I went to the train station looking for dry ice but was told the AFB had wiped them out..."

She added, "Then when our family returned that week to go back to our ranch to attend to our stock we were barred from the Pine Lodge hiway by camaflogued [sic] airmen with machine guns that some fear entered the picture. Many stories at the bank from early rising ranchers about long trucks covered in canvas going to the base before dawn!!"

She said, "My husband flew 25 different planes including the U-2 and Air-borne [sic] Looking Glass [which was the airborne command post during the Cold War] and said there was nothing hidden at Area-51 except planes [sorry Bob Lazar fans]. He also wondered his whole life why there was a cover-up and yes, he did tell me that he perused the files as a CIA agent but found everything empty."

I will note here that there is nothing in Cordes official biography that suggests he was detailed to the CIA, but, by the same token, there are gaps in it. However, after his completion of Command and Staff School he was assigned as an intelligence staff officer which could mean he worked with the CIA and would have had some access to their records.

There is one other point to be made here. Kent Jeffrey, as he was conducting his Roswell research, contacted Cordes. Apparently Cordes said nothing to him about his involvement or knowledge but referred Kent to George Weinbrenner. Jeffrey wrote about this saying, "After my conversations with Klinikowsky and Vatunac, Harry Cordes, a former 509th pilot and a retired brigadier general suggested I call a former acquaintance of his, George Weinbrenner, who had also been at the FTD [Foreign Technology Division, where Klinikowsky and Vatunac had also served]... Weinbrenner told me pretty much what I had already learned from Klinikowsky and Vatunac, but it was interesting to talk to him, nonetheless. With respect to the crashed UFO subject, he also found it humorous and stated that if something like that had happened, I would have know about it..."

But now we have evidence, from both Cordes and his widow that Cordes knew about it. So the question is, why didn’t Weinbrenner know? Could it be that Weinbrenner was keeping the secret? And why would Cordes tell Jeffrey to talk to Weinbrenner?

In the end, we have an intriguing story that begins with a quote from a former Air Force brigadier general and then we have additional information from his wife. First-hand quotes from the general, first-hand quotes and observations from the wife, and then her memories of things her husband had shared with her. Maybe not the smoking gun, but certainly interesting testimony to add to the stack.

I Understand Kent Jeffrey

Back in the mid-1990s, airline pilot Kent Jeffrey (in th red shirt with Tom Carey center, and Colonel Jeffrey on right) developed an interest in the Roswell case. He believed, at that time, that something alien had fallen there and that the cover up of it should be broken. He believed that we all had the right to know what happened and he was willing to put up some of his own money and his own time in an attempt to learn the truth.

He began the Roswell Initiative which was a worldwide petition to the US government to release all its Roswell information and all its UFO files. He put it online and he gave copies to friends in other countries to demonstrate the worldwide interest in learning the truth. He met with the witnesses and offered them the services of a legal team if they got into trouble for telling what they knew. He traveled to Roswell to meet them.

About the time that we arrived at the 50th anniversary of the crash, in July 1997, Kent had changed his mind. He believed that the Roswell crash, if there was anything at all, was caused by something mundane. He no longer thought of it as extraterrestrial and he appeared on several radio and television shows explaining why he had changed his mind. I debated him in a couple of those forums and responded, at length, to his article about what he thought of as the "real" truth that appeared in the MUFON UFO Journal.

He did complete his Initiative and delivered some twenty or thirty thousand petitions to Washington, but included a letter that watered down the whole thing. It sort of undermined the power of the petitions by saying that he now believed Roswell was explained, but there were still UFO truths to be learned.

I won’t go into all of that here. In wrote about it in the Roswell Encyclopedia, including Kent’s article. He granted permission to use it and though I edited it slightly because of space limitations, I didn’t change it. For those who wish to read this, they can do so in that book.

I will note, however, that one of Kent’s reasons for changing his mind was because he had attended some of the 509th Bomb Group reunions, talking with officers who served in Roswell in 1947 and who said they had heard nothing about the UFO crash. They said that had it happened, they would have known.

I don’t believe that is right, given the nature of security regulations and how these things work. I believe that if the crash was highly classified, many of these officers might have heard rumors, but they wouldn’t have been involved in the retrieval and now, fifty and sixty years later can provide us with nothing more than their opinion that nothing happened. Kent thought this persuasive. I do not.

It was Frank Kaufmann who might have killed it all for Kent, though I don’t know this for certain. I know that Kent, and his father, a World War II triple ace, meaning he shot down, at least, fifteen enemy aircraft, met with Frank on a couple of occasions in Roswell. Frank told them the same story that he had told me and others. He talked of his hobnobbing with generals, and mentioned General Robert Thomas who had sneaked into Roswell in the guise of a warrant officer... or, at least that was what Frank said.

But Kent’s father was a retired, high-ranking Air Force officer and had friends who could check all this out. He could find no evidence of this General Thomas and this, I believe made Kent suspicious.

Given all this, I believe Kent decided that there couldn’t have been a crash because he would have been able to get something from these officers at the reunions. He would have found some trace of this General Thomas even if the general would corroborate any of the story. And his failure to find independent corroboration of the crash beyond those in Roswell talking about it suggested to him that there had been no crash.

I think Kent was further disillusioned by some of the "revelations" about Major Jesse Marcel. Marcel’s entire military record was leaked into the public arena in violation of the 1974 Privacy Act. You can read the story of Marcel in the Archive in the April 2007 list on this blog.

And he had talked with officers who had been at Wright Field or who had been part of the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) and who told him that nothing happened. Kent believed this to be the truth, though had there been a crash and had they been ordered not to talk about it, they very possibly would have said nothing happened. The lies told would be lies to protect national security and would therefore be part of the job.

I talked to a general who had been the chief of ATIC, or had overseen a larger part of the intelligence operation at Wright-Patterson AFB and when I asked him some questions he said, not kindly, "I don’t know who you are and I don’t know what is still classified and what is no longer classified and I can’t talk to you."

For a few moments more I tried to ask questions but it was clear that he wasn’t going to tell me anything. Does this prove a cover up in Roswell? No, it proves that there are military secrets and some are better at keeping them than others.

Kent didn’t get a chance to talk to Edwin Easley or Chester Barton, who worked for Easley and only had a couple of interesting things to say about the crash. He didn’t talk to Marcel but he was concerned about the contradictions in the Marcel’s military record and what Marcel had told Bob Pratt. He was concerned with the denials of men who claimed if something had happened, they would have known it, never understanding that sometimes military secrecy trumps friendship and those who thought they would have known were not inside the loop and they didn’t know.

I think Kent’s attempts to validate the information failed him and he lost some of his confidence in the Roswell case. I think that learning that Kaufmann was not who he claimed to be before we knew it for a fact, shook him. I think that learning that Glenn Dennis’s nurse didn’t exist under the name Dennis gave us, eliminated one of the better testimonies that led to the extraterrestrial. At the end of the day, there just wasn’t sufficient evidence for Kent to conclude that Roswell was alien. The Air Force explanation, the failure of so many of the eyewitnesses, and the damage done by those inventing their tales was enough for Kent. He concluded that Roswell was nothing alien.

I understand this because I too think some of the same things at times. Rumors should have circulated at Roswell among the pilots and surely some of them would have heard enough to suggest the crash was real. But I also know, having served with various military units that some secrets simply do not leak and sometimes those who think they have an inside track do not.

And while I might sometimes have my doubts about all Marcel said, when we look at his record we see a fine officer. Some of the things he told Bob Pratt are not borne out in the record, but then, it is possible that Pratt got some of it wrong. I do know the words are important and that Marcel never claimed his was a pilot as some have reported but said only that he had flown as one, and that is an important difference.

And I have watched the collapse of some testimony. Gerald Anderson was clearly making it up. It wasn’t quite as clear with Frank Kaufmann, but he too, was making it up. Glenn Dennis seemed to have a solid tale, but there were little things that went wrong with it. We learned the truth about him when he began to blame others for misunderstanding about the nurse’s name. The destruction there was more subtle, but when he began to say he had made up the nurse’s name, it reset everything to zero. Not quite as evident as Frank’s faked documents but enough to suggest Dennis was no more honest about this than Kaufmann.

So Kent looked at all this and decided that it was evidence that nothing alien happened. It could be explained as the Air Force said it could. Kent just couldn’t find sufficient evidence otherwise.

When I looked at this cesspool of useless evidence, I sometimes thought the same things. But then, I did talk to Edwin Easley and Chester Barton and a dozen others. I know what Easley told me but circumstances prevented a recording of the critical statement. For Kent that was a failure, but I heard what the man said. I can’t prove it for others, but I do know what was said.

And, I haven’t even touched on what Brigadier General Arthur Exon (seen here) told me. Yes, the debunkers and the Air Force have had little to say about him. So there are those who talk of something alien and who are who they claimed to be and who just might know something about it.

All that was too late for Kent. And if I hadn’t had the chance to talk to some of these people, then I might just agree with him. But I did talk to them, and I have talked to others, so I’m not as jaded as he has become. I can understand how it happened and the difference between the two of us is that I talked to some of the people he didn’t.