The Roswell Provost Marshal ; Easley vs Darden

For those interested in the minutiae of the Roswell case, there has been a discussion about the roles of the Provost Marshal that involved Major Edwin Easley and Major Robert Darden. Both men served as Provost Marshal at the Roswell Army Air Field. The trouble is who had what authority at what is considered the Impact Site in July 1947, where a major component of the alien craft and the bodies of the flight crew were found.

Although, the documentation that I reviewed, suggested that Easley was the Provost Marshal when Don Schmitt and I interviewed Sheridan Cavitt, he mentioned that Darden was the Provost Marshal. I believe that was the first time that Darden’s name had come up with us. We checked out Darden, and Easley told me that Darden had become the Provost Marshal in 1948. Both men had a connection to that office.

Sheridan Cavitt in 1990. Photo by Kevin Randle

The problem arose in an interview of former Counterintelligence agent, Master Sergeant Lewis “Bill” Rickett conducted by Dr. Mark Rodeghier of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies. Although Don Schmitt conducted more interviews with Rickett than any other researcher, Fran Ridge used Rodeghier’s January 1990 interview for the basis of his analysis.

Rickett tells Rodeghier that Cavitt wanted to show him, Rickett, something. They drive about forty-five minutes outside of Roswell which puts them on a site much closer than that near Corona where the debris field was located. Ridge wrote:

Rickett and Cavett arrive near the final impact site and are a short distance down a hill not far from all the activity. There are four or five military vehicles, up about a half a mile or so down the road.

Rickett: What's going on up there?

Cavett [sic] is silent for a while, staring ahead as he drives onward.

Rickett: I don't recognize this place.

Cavett: You'll see. And Darden's even got some of HIS men up there.

Rickett realizes something important is going on. Major Robert Darden is allegedly Chief of Security [assigned to the 390^th Air Service Squadron according to some]. So, they drive up to the first checkpoint, which is Maj. Edwin Easley's MPs. The guards look at them and one of them confronts Rickett. 

Don Schmitt (right) and me (left) on the Impact Site in 2023.

There is the point where the Rodeghier interview becomes interesting. According to Rickett, they had reached the crash site, though he doesn’t know that yet. Ridge wrote:

Rickett: This is kind of hard to believe. It looks to me like something landed here. But if it landed here, I don't see any tracks. I don't know how anything could land here and not leave tracks. The sun is pretty bright. Have you been over there? Don't you see what I see? Looks like there's..............I guess that's metal.

Rickett at that time was approximately fifteen to twenty feet from various closer pieces [of debris].

Rickett: Is it hot? (radioactive) Can you touch it?

Darden is shaking his head no to the first question:

Darden: Yeah, be my guest. That's what I wanted you to ask me. As for the strange wreckage, it was very similar to that found by Marcel and Cavett on the Foster ranch; thin, light, and strong.

Rickett picks up a piece of it, a slightly curved piece of metal, real light. It is about six inches by twelve or fourteen inches. Very light. Rickett crouches down and tries to bend it.

Cavett looks over at Darden and laughs.

Cavett: Smart guy. He's trying to do what WE couldn't do.

In Witness to Roswell Tom Carey and Don Schmitt report, based on Schmitt’s interviews with Rickett, “Rickett picked up a piece of it [metallic debris], about 4 inches by 10 inches, placed it over his knee, and tried to bend it. He couldn’t. Cavitt and Easley laughed at him because they had tried and failed at it too. Rickett had never seen a piece of metal that thin that could not be bent. “The more I looked at it, I couldn’t image what it was.”

Here’s where we run into trouble. In July 1947, Easley was the base Provost Marshal. He was responsible for law enforcement and base security. His subordinate, Captain Beverly Tripp was the commanding officer of the 1395^th MP Company. The 390^th Air Service Squadron, whose area or responsibility included the Silverplate B-29s, which had been modified to carry the atom bomb. Those working on the Silverplate required a higher clearance because of that.

In July 1947, the commanding officer of the 390^th was Lieutenant Colonel Walter Y. Lucas. In July 1947, Darden worked as an air inspector, which takes him out of the picture.

We can confirm this by looking at the telephone numbers in the base telephone directory. In July 1947, Darden’s number was 311 and that number was also found under the Air Inspectors section, with 311 assigned to the administrative office. There is nothing there to hint at an association with the 390^th ASS.

We can follow this train of thought, that is what the telephone numbers can tell us about the assignments of the men in July 1947. We can track who worked where because of the phone numbers listed and the buildings to which those numbers were assigned telling us where they were. All the numbers assigned to the Provost Marshal’s office are in building 418, the Intelligence Office is Building 31 and the Air Service Squadron is in building 670. Darden was in building 81, which is separated from those with security and intelligence.

I also found an interesting reference to the mission of the 390^th in the August 1947 Unit History. It said:

The 390^th Air Service Squadron has been divided the personnel section into three sub-sections to wit: Payroll and Service Records Section, Classification Section and Personal Affairs Section. Emphasis has been placed on a cross-training program so that at least two clerks are qualified to handle each job.

There is nothing to suggest that Darden had any role in July 1947 that would have put him in charge of security on the impact site. That sort of security would have fallen to the Provost Marshal and the MP company. While Rickett did mention Darden in a specific role in 1947, it seems that Rickett remembered Darden as a Provost Marshal but, as noted, Darden didn’t have that job until 1948.

Ridge relied almost solely on Rodeghier’s interview. But Rodeghier had a comment that is relevant to the discussion here. Rodeghier, in an email to Tom Carey, Don Schmitt and me on December 17, 2025, wrote, “In my interview, I let Rickett speak and didn’t correct him because I wanted to get his story as he would tell it. Given what I knew at the time I figured that he was wrong about Easley, but I wanted him to speak freely.”

I’ll note here, that when Don and I spoke to Sheridan Cavitt in Arizona, he was quick to ask if we had spoken to the Provost Marshal. He said that the man’s name was Darden. I believe he was attempting to point us in the wrong direction. I learned that Darden had been the Provost Marshal in Roswell but not in July 1947.

Ridge has, I believe, interpreted points where Rickett mentioned the Provost Marshal that meant it was Darden. It’s a case of a flawed memory. I know how that happens. I used to say that I left my Thanksgiving meal on the serving tray in the mess hall (or Dining Facility in today’s parlance) because, in 1968, the flight had been scrambled on a mission. But two or three years ago, as I was reading the letters I had sent home from Vietnam, I discovered, we hadn’t been anywhere near our mess hall because we had staged near Tay Ninh to assist in a prisoner’s exchange. We were there in case something had gone wrong. I noted that we were provided with a promised meal while there and was outraged that we had to pay for it.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, we had been scrambled out of the mess hall on several other occasions and my clearest memory was leaving a tray in the serving line. It just didn’t happen on Thanksgiving. The point is, Darden was the Provost Marshal at the base, just not in July 1947. When Ridge writes, “Major Robert Darden is Chief of Security,” he is wrong about this. Darden probably wasn’t even on the Impact Site. He was, as noted above, assigned in July 1947 to Administration as an air inspector and was in a building away from the Provost Marshal, and the 309^th. I find no connection to a law enforcement, intelligence function, or anything to indicated he was the Chief of Security in 1947. I did find that the Troop Information and Education Officer, the Recruiting Office, and the Ground Safety and Engineering Officer were in building 81.

I found a map of the base. It provides an overview of how the various operations and functions on the base were grouped. It is not the best map but you can access that map here:

https://dn721606.ca.archive.org/0/items/dr_walker-air-force-base--roswell-new-mexico--preliminary-master-plan-maste-13219233/13219233.jpg

Map of the Roswell Army Air Field (Walker Air Force Base. It is not the best example

This doesn’t mean we can reject all that Rickett said. The essence the interview is accurate, it’s just that he got one of the names wrong. This is what happens when a theory is built on a single bit of evidence when other bits are out there but ignored. We must review all the evidence to determine how it all fits together. In this case, Rickett does mention Darden as the Provost Marshal, which is correct information, it’s just he wasn’t the Provost Marshal in 1947. Other testimony and documentation proved this.

TheSneezingMonkey Fails in Debunking Roswell

I am growing very tired of the Internet and the number of people who use it to expose their ignorance. Please note the term ignorance. I am granting them the intelligence to realize their mistakes when speaking about UFOs. When they claim a deep dive, it seems to be into the shallow end of the pool, and I realize my task is greater than I thought.

Let’s talk about TheSneezingMonkey and his latest rant about some things Ufological. It is clear to me, that he just doesn’t bother with the deep dive research he claimed which, in the world today and the Internet, is much simpler than it was even a decade ago. The answers are out there, if you’re smart enough to find them.

Take the analysis by TheSneezingMonkey when he is talking about the Kenneth Arnold sighting of June 24, 1947. He grabbed several explanations but he talked about the Flying Wing, suggesting that it might be what Arnold had seen. He did question if there would have been several of them flying in formation.  

He was talking about the YB-35 Flying Wing which did exist at the time. Several of them were being tested at Muroc Army Air Field (later Edwards Air Force Base). What he didn’t find, and what I published more than two decades ago, is that in June 1947, all of them were grounded.

Here’s what I know about that. The YB-35, a full-scale Flying Wing, first flew on June 25, 1946 from Muroc AAF. On September 11, 1946, the YB-35, suffering from gear box and propeller problems was grounded. A full-scale flying program would not resume until February 1948. There were test flights made on June 26, 1947 (two days after the Arnold sighting) but the single aircraft did not leave Southern California. The Flying Wing simply was not available in the numbers or location to be seen by Arnold. It really has no place in this discussion in the world today.

Arnold's original drawing to the Army. It looks nothing like the Flying Wing,
which is probably a better way to eliminated that aircraft as the source

But what really set the tone here was a comment made to the YouTube channel by someone calling himself or herself @RUTHAN667. That comment said, “Rosswell is mostly based on Marcell story and he is proven liar, got his moment of fame, lied to be pilot, lied about that he shoot down 5 planes.. Whole family, started finding diaries and milked story dry.. Later someone invented 2nd crash, bodies.. Brasel imprisonning. Corso cashed on it too.”

Well, it’s not Rosswell but Roswell and it’s not Marcell but Marcel. From there we move into territory that isn’t as black and white as it seems. While I wouldn’t call Jesse Marcel, Sr. a liar, the problem is that he made some claims that were less than truthful. He didn’t say he was a pilot, but had flown as a pilot while serving in the Pacific with the Army Air Forces during World War II.

True, I’m splitting a fine hair here, and it seems unlikely that an officer who is not rated would accumulate that much flight time. I can envision him getting some stick time but not 3000 hours. I can say that I flew as a door gunner in Vietnam but I was not rated in that position. I was a helicopter pilot and later an aircraft commander and accumulated just under 2000 hours during that portion of my career. I’m willing to give him a pass on that particular claim because of the way things worked in aviation units. Clearly, Marcel did participate in combat missions during his tour in the Pacific and was awarded two air medals for that.

Kevin Randle in Vietnam in 1969

However, as we break this down, Marcel apparently told Bob Pratt that he, Marcel, had five air medals for shooting down five enemy aircraft. I got Marcel’s records and the Unit Histories from the units in which he served. There is no indication that he shot down any enemy aircraft. The Army Air Forces kept records of the majority of those who downed enemy aircraft and Marcel’s name does not appear on the list. And yes, that list includes the names of the men who shot down enemy aircraft in all theaters of the war, and those flying as gunners but not pilots. The enlisted man with the most recorded kills shot down 19 enemy planes, but he was not a pilot. I believe it was Richard Bong who holds the American record with 40. Pappy Boyington, I believe shot down 28 (though I think he was only credited with 26).

At any rate, Marcel doesn’t get a pass on this. There is simply no evidence to support his claim of five air medals (though I have the citations for the two he did receive).

There are other things that he said that we can’t verify. His testimony is problematic. I will note, however, where we have additional witnesses and documentation, then what he said was probably accurate. He did travel to the Brazel (Foster) ranch and he did gather up metallic debris. He did escort that material to Fort Worth.

Bill Brazel and Don Schmitt on the Debris Field, 1989.
Photo by Kevin Randle.

The whole Marcel family did not begin to find diaries. In going through the papers and files handed down from Jesse Marcel, Sr. to his son and then to the grandchildren in 2013, they did find a “Memorandum Book,” which the Army passed out by the thousands. I have two of them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that Marcel was the author of the notations and even if he was, there is nothing in that diary to confirm the events of July 1947. The criticism about finding diaries is inaccurate.

The idea that “later someone invented 2nd crash, bodies…” is not an accurate picture either. The trouble was that we had Bill Brazil, the son of the man who found the debris field, showing us where he had picked up some of the strange debris. It is located southeast of Corona, New Mexico. We, that is Don Schmitt, Tom Carey and I were able to find witnesses to that field other than just Marcel (and these include Sheridan Cavitt, the CIC officer who accompanied Marcel out to the field). Bill Brazel took Don and me to the debris field. He parked his truck and said that this was where he had found some of that debris. Others, such as Loretta Proctor and Bud Payne pointed to the same location.

However, during our investigation, we interviewed several officers and senior NCOs who talked about a much shorter trip to the crash site. While it took three hours or more to arrive at the debris field, they talked about a short trip of under an hour. These included Bill Rickett and Chester Barton. Brigadier General Arthur Exon told us about two sites, oriented northwest to southeast that he had flown over in the weeks that followed. Eventually, witnesses to that second site, where bodies were located, were found.

Don Schmitt and me on the Impact Site, 2023. Site was identified by
several eyewitnesses.

The stories were not invented but recovered through careful investigation and corroboration. It is established that there were two sites and we, Don, Tom and I invented nothing. We just went where the testimonies took us and reported accurately what others said. In many cases, it took long contact with the witnesses for them to trust us with the tale, and then, often, only if we didn’t reveal who they were.

Mack Brazel, the man who started this by taking samples of the metallic debris to  Chaves County Sheriff George Wilcox, was held at the Roswell Army Air Field. The base Provost Marshal, Major Edwin Easley, told me Brazel had been held in the guest house, which not the same as being in the stockade, but then, if you’re not allowed to leave, what really, is the difference?

We, Don, Tom and I talked to neighbors of Mack, such as Marian Strickland, who told us he complained about being held on the base. Neighbor Floyd Proctor told researchers that he’d seen Mack in Roswell in the company of several Army officers. That suggests that the story about his being held at the base is true even if the cell didn’t have bars... just guards watching.

So, we see that @RUTHAN667’s rant contains a single fact about Marcel embellishing his resume, which really is lying no matter how I attempt to sugarcoat it. And there are other things that Marcel said that weren’t true. If Marcel was the single witness to this, we could certainly dismiss it as a tale invented by him. But, every member of Colonel Blanchard’s primary staff that we interviewed, with a single exception, verified parts of the story. When we expanded the search to other members of the 509^th Bomb Group, we found many officers and enlisted men who were involved in bits and pieces of the story. They might have seen only some of the metal recovered, or were involved in security at various sites, and even a few who did mention the bodies, the story is not stand alone. Many of them did not approach us. We found them and asked questions about those events.

I’ll note here that Major Easley, told me that the craft was extraterrestrial. Well, it was a little different than that. I asked him if we were following the right path. He asked what I meant by that and I said, “We think it was extraterrestrial.” He said, “It’s not the wrong path.”

Major Edwin Easley in 1947. Photo courtesy
of the Roswell Army Air Field Yearbook.

There is so much more that could be said here. You want to talk about mistakes we made. Sure. We believed that Frank Kaufmann was telling the truth until we found evidence that he wasn’t. We, again Don, Mark Rodeghier, Mark Chesney and I exposed those lies in an issue of International UFO Reporter.

But the only fact that @RUTHAN667 got right was that Marcel claimed five aerial victories and had none. Everything else is misinterpretation of the facts or ignoring body of evidence that has been accumulated, vetted, repaired and reported by us. I would suggest reading Roswell in the 21^st Century and Understanding Roswell that I wrote and Tom Carey and Don Schmitt’s Witness to Roswell to get a better interpretation of the situation. And if you want the other side, I’d recommend Karl Pflock’s Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe. I’d especially recommend you read the affidavit section of his book. These affidavits were gathered by several of us over many weeks.

I suggest that you, @RUTHAN667, do a little more research before you shoot your mouth off (and learn to spell) and TheSneezingMonkey, if you’re going to be skeptical and claim a deep dive, do a great deal more research.

If the mood moves me, I think next time I’ll attack the Washington National sightings. I interviewed two of the officers who were in the radar room during some of those sightings, and have transcripts of interviews with one of the fighter pilots who talked about the lights surrounding him during an attempted intercept.

And don’t even get me started on the Pascagoula abduction. Yes, I talked to both Hickson and Parker and TheSneezingMonkey wasn’t even close on his ridiculous analysis. 

Roswell Revisited or I Fly Solo on the 'X' Zone Broadcast Network

 

This week, because it was the 75^th anniversary of the Roswell crash, and because everyone that I would have wanted for a guest was either celebrating the 4^th  of July, recovering from that celebration, or had travelled to Roswell, I flew solo. My plan was to cover some of the high points… and low points in my investigations into the Roswell crash.

But first, I had a rant or two. I mentioned that I was not a fan of Amazon’s new rating system for books. You could give one star but didn’t have to give a reason. While I appreciate four- and five-star ratings, when we fall to the other end, I’d like to know why the rating was so low… And many times, when there is a review, it has nothing to do with the quality of the writing or information, but with the condition of the book. I have no control over that. One of those who actually provided a review mentioned that the pages were falling out. Not my fault. You need to take that up with publishers and book binders. I just wonder how often the reader is offended by something I don’t control.

I did mention that the negative reviews, as opposed to just the negative ratings, sometimes provide feed back that does help. One of those suggested that one of my books just seemed to be an excuse to denigrate other researchers. While that wasn’t the intent, I could understand the comment and could, next time, be cognizant of that and tone down the rhetoric.

The second rant came about because I had just seen an unqualified comment on another website in which the host said that Project Mogul was the cause of the debris and that it was top secret which was why there had been such an effort to recover it. I just wish these people would do a little research and learn that what was going on in New Mexico was not highly classified. It wasn’t classified at all and that negates this excuse. For those interested in the on-going arguments, just type Project Mogul into the search engine on the left and you can sort through all my postings on it.

From there, I moved onto the meat of the program, explaining how I had become involved in the original Roswell investigation. It was an outgrowth of a purposed debate about UFOs between science fiction writers and investigators from the Center for UFO Studies. It looked as if it was going to be one-sided, so I jumped to the pro side. It’s all explained in the show, which, of course, you can listen to hear:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/50491419

Or watch here, if you want to see me talk about UFOs and Roswell for an hour:

https://rumble.com/v1bdonf-a-different-perspective-with-kevin-randle-roswells-75th-anniversary.html

In the second segment, I did talk about our first trip Roswell and how it didn’t look all that good until we met with Bill Brazel. Here was a guy who had handled the debris and who had gotten part of the story from his father, Mack.

Bill Brazel in 1989. Photo by Kevin Randle

I also talked about my conversations with Edwin Easley, the Roswell Provost Marshal in 1947. I believe I have mentioned this on several occasions, but for this program, I wanted to hit the high points.

In the third segment, because it was necessary, I addressed some of the problems with the Roswell story. These were embodied by Frank Kaufmann, Glenn Dennis and the Plains of San Agustin. Although Don and I had accepted the tales told by Frank Kaufmann, and how they were backed by Walter Haut, we were the ones that finally exposed his stories. True, others had denounced him earlier, but they based it, not on evidence, but in their belief there was no alien component to the Roswell story. Mark Rodeghier, Mark Chesney and Don Schmitt had gathered the initial evidence, and I provided some documentation that ultimately proved the case.

Glenn Dennis. Not the most credible source.

In the final segment, I mentioned one of the things on which we all agree and that is that something fell in Roswell. Once again, because it is part of the story, I touched on the Project Mogul nonsense.

I also mentioned, because there is a note of irony in it, that the Air Force, during their investigation confirmed many of the things that we had said about the alternative explanations. In other words, we agreed that it wasn’t an errant missile or rocket from White Sands, it wasn’t an experimental aircraft, it wasn’t some kind of accident involving atomic weapons or that it was an early experiment in space flight that had gone horribly wrong. Of course, we disagreed with their final conclusion about Project Mogul.

Next time, I’ll be talking with Blair MacKenzie Blake about the Allende Letters and our separate investigations into them, including getting copies of the Varo edition of Morris K. Jessup’s book that might have sparked this whole controversy.

The General Exon Quotes are Accurate and I can Prove it

 

About once a decade, someone challenges the information and the reporting of what Brigadier General Arthur Exon said to Don Schmitt and me in 1990. True, there were several challenges at that time and a number of writers did what they could to

General Exon

dismiss Exon’s statements without bothering to interview him though Karl Pflock did call him in 1992.

In Pflock’s book, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, he mentions Exon only briefly in two places. On page 36, Pflock wrote:

In 1989, Roswell authors Randle and Schmitt located retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Arthur E. Exon. The general was stationed at Wright Field in July 1947 as a lieutenant colonel and student at the Air Force Institute of Technology, following an assignment on the staff of the Air Materiel Command, also at Wright Field. According to Randle and Schmitt, Exon was aware alien bodies and debris from Roswell were on the base and knew of research being conducted on the debris. Randle and Schmitt also reported that Exon told them he flew over what may have been the debris field and crash site and knew of a high-level group established to control “access to the wreckage, bodies and information about the crash.” As we will see, General Exon has quite a different take on what he actually said and intended to convey.

This really doesn’t say much but it does, to some extent, provide an introduction to Exon and a suggestion that our reporting, that is Don’s and mine, was more enthusiastic than the information warranted. On page 124, Pflock wrote:

…However, what of the recollections attributed by Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt to retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Arthur E. Exon?

When first made public in 1991, it seemed Exon’s memories of the possibility that bodies had been flown from Roswell to Wright Field in 1947 might be based upon firsthand information. If so, this would be highly significant, especially since Exon also seemed to have firsthand knowledge of the debris field and crash site, as well as a shadowy high-level group established to keep the truth about Roswell under wraps. However, in a lengthy September 1992 telephone conversation, Exon told me [Pflock] his comments about bodies and debris at Wright Field were based solely upon rumors he heard from colleagues at Wright Field and nothing more. As for the “control group,” he said he merely was making educated guesses as to who likely would have been selected for such a group. Finally, with respect to his alleged knowledge of the debris field and crash sites, he told me he remembered flying over several sites in New Mexico quite some time after July 1947, on missions that had nothing to do with the Roswell incident. One such location might have fit what he had been told about the crash site by ufologists because it had vehicle tracks running to it.

With that, Pflock is finished with his discussion of Exon and what he said. We have no way of judging what Exon might have said to him because no recordings exist of the conversation. Without going into depth about this, there are a couple of important points to be made here. Just what did Exon say to me during the May 19, 1990, interview with him? Although I didn’t ask about Roswell, I did mention flying saucers and retrievals. Exon said to me:

As a result of that, I know they saw the one sighting and then where there, a good bit of the information came down. There was another location where it was, where apparently the main body of the spacecraft was, where they did say there were bodies there. I’ve been, I’ve got special information, but it may be more rumor than fact about what happened to those bodies, although they were all found apparently outside the craft itself, but were in fairly good condition. In other words, they weren’t broken up a lot.

…But one of them was that it went to the mortuary outfit, I think it was in Denver, where these people were being identified. But the strongest information was that they were brought into Wright-Pat. But whatever happened to the metal residue, I imagine it’s still there in the [unintelligible] some place.

While Exon does mention rumors, it seems, based on the context here, that he was referring to what happened to the bodies rather than there being bodies. Of course, that’s my somewhat biased interpretation and others might believe he was suggesting that all the information about the bodies was rumor. It is clear that Exon is not suggesting that he had seen the bodies himself.

We can see, however, that Exon had some information about bodies. He also has some very specific information about those bodies which would seem to make the information a little stronger. But it is also interesting that these rumors came from his colleagues at Wright Field and you have to wonder what would prompt them to invent such stories and then share them, especially in 1947. From the history, it is clear that the Air Force was downplaying the Roswell crash and didn’t even create a file for their records.

Exon, in my interview with him, moved from talking about the bodies directly into this control group, which is something he mentioned spontaneously with no prompting from me. He said:

Of course, President Truman and General Spaatz [commanding of the Army Air Forces in 1947], the Secretary of Defense [although that office wouldn’t exist for another few months], who has now passed away, and other people who were close to the ones who made up the key investigative teams in relation to the released information.

This means it was Exon who introduced the idea of this special investigative team into the conversation and it was not some leading question from me. He then said:

One of my officers who did some research, who worked for me at Wright-Patterson, who had done some research on this as part of his school, came up with a deal that there was great concern at that time and there was fear that the people would panic if the sketchy information that they had such as what was it and where did it come from and what was their mission and so on and so on, got out. So, they decided to make it a national cover up. And that there probably wouldn’t be much released until everybody who as involved in it, including the 13 people I’m talking about and their immediate staff who made up the, oh what was it, the twelve people who made up the investigative team had passed away.

This really doesn’t sound like idle speculation, but does seem to suggest some inside knowledge of what was happening in 1947. Exon wasn’t a guy deeply emersed in UFO lore, though he did have some specialized knowledge based on his military career. He might have been guessing about some of the participants, but he was talking about something with which he was familiar.

On June 18, 1990, Don Schmitt met with Exon in California. Although there were problems with the tape recording, important parts of the interview were recorded. Don had asked about any name for the operation and Exon finally said:

They were involved in what to do about the residue from that, those two findings.

Don said, “You say those two?”

Probably part of the same accident, but two distinct sites. One, assuming that the thing, as I understand it, as I remember flying the area later, that the damage to the vehicle seemed to be coming from southeast to northwest but it could have been going in the opposite direction but it doesn’t seem likely. So, the farther northwest pieces found on the ranch, those pieces were mostly metal.

The point is that Pflock, in his analysis, provides us with nothing to review. He wrote that Exon said this and that and was somewhat dismissive of what we had written. However, when the context of what Exon said to Don and me, it suggests a somewhat more intimate knowledge of the situation based on his own experiences and the information gathered in conversation with those directly involved.

Philip Klass, in his book, The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Coverup, doesn’t directly address Exon’s testimony. Klass wrote, quoting Pflock, “Moreover, the GAO will pursue its own hands-on review of Air Force records, paying particulate attention to such ‘oversights’ as the bodies issue and, it is hoped, the reasons for the Air Force’s failure to interview retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Arthur E. Exon.”

This seems to suggest that Pflock believed that Exon was critical to understanding the Roswell case. I suspect that Pflock thought that, under questioning by his fellow Air Force officers, Exon would be a little more forthcoming with information about what he had seen, what he had done and what he had heard. I suspect the Air Force avoided Exon because they didn’t want to call a high-ranking and highly decorated Air Force officer a liar.

Klass noticed the same thing. The only other mention of Exon in Klass’ book was a footnote on page 143. Klass wrote, “This criticism of the USAF for failing to interview Exon is surprising in view of Pflock’s own interview with him, as reported in Roswell in Perspective (p. 30) [the forerunner to his book on the topic and is essentially the same thing he wrote there].”

Klass then recapped that information and said nothing more about Exon and the possible importance of these interviews. We are left chasing the footnote back to Pflock but we are unable to assess the importance of that because we don’t have access to Pflock’s interview.

Stan Friedman also spoke with Exon, and, according to Friedman, Exon said that Don and I had misquoted him. I pointed out that I had the interviews on tape and Friedman’s response that he didn’t care what I had on tape, it was what Exon told him (Friedman) and he was going to keep saying we had misquoted the general. Ironically, this would become important, but not for the reasons that Friedman thought.

Knowing that I had carefully transcribed the interviews from the tapes, I knew that I had not misquoted Exon. Since Friedman insisted, he was still going make this false charge, I sent a copy of the book, a copy of the transcripts, and copies of the tape to Exon and asked what I had gotten wrong.

Exon reviewed the material that I sent and then wrote a response. Exon, in his letter to me of November 24, 1991, wrote, “Although I believe you did quote me accurately, I do believe that in your writings you gave more credence and impression of personal and direct knowledge that my recordings would indicate on their own.”

At that point, no more was heard from Friedman about misquotes. Friedman’s false claims were relegated to the trash. But now we had a statement from Exon saying that the quotes were accurate. We are arguing about interpretation at this point. Following is the letter from Exon.

It was Kal Korff who took things to the extreme with his endless assaults and misquoting of me and his claims that we were misleading the public in a very non journalistic way. I have addressed those comments at length before now. Greg Sandow, a disinterested third party who had the opportunity to review the transcripts, listen to the tapes, and ask a few other questions provided an in-depth analysis of Korff’s suggestions. You can read that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/04/i-havent-wanted-to-turn-this-blog-into.html 

And, of course, for those who would like to review Sandow’s analysis for themselves, you can read his entire report in the following:

Which brings us to the latest challenge. A fellow had emailed Mark Rodeghier that he wanted to review the material, that is our tapes, transcripts and other assorted contacts with General Exon. Rodeghier replied that he was unable to locate the material requested. I believe that is because the CUFOS office had been closed as the rents skyrocketed (or the landlord wanted to sell the building). The files were split among several places, and if I understand the situation, many of the files had been transferred to Texas for a project to scan the material as a way of saving it and making access available to researchers.

This prompted the man to suggest that he was now going to tell anyone who asked him that the information that Don and I had published was “unsubstantiated” unless the material “miraculously” reappeared. Had he bothered to contact either Don or me, we could have supplied the material. I have the tapes. I have the transcripts. I have the notes from the meetings with Exon.

But the point here is that none of that is necessary and even if the source material no longer existed, I can prove the accuracy of the quotes. Exon supplied that when he reviewed the material. That was the irony of Friedman’s attack. Had Friedman not claimed we had misquoted Exon; I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to ask Exon what was inaccurate. That, of course, resulted in Exon’s review of the material and his letter saying the quotes were accurate. What better endorsement could we have? The man himself said the quotes were accurate.

And even if that didn’t exist, there is still the review of the material by Greg Sandow, who mentioned the accuracy of the quotes in the books that Don and I wrote. In other words, there is nothing unsubstantiated in the books and our take on the interviews have been validated.

I hope that this is the last time that we have to go through this, though it is sometimes a little bit of fun. A challenge to our reporting, validated by those involved, meaning Exon, and then the review of all that material by another who also provided a written commentary on it.

This means that those who read the books, who look at the testimony of Exon, can rest assured that we accurately reported what he said. The interpretation of those statements might be an area for additional discussion, but that discussion begins with the importance of what Exon said and not the accuracy of the quotes.

Yes, I'm Annoyed Again...

 

More annoyance at the ignorance that is published in the world today. Sure, I could go off on a political rant here, but that’s not necessary. I saw a magazine a few minutes ago called The Complete Guide to Unsolved Mysteries. No, I didn’t buy it because it was nearly fourteen bucks but I also wondered about the accuracy of their analysis of these “Unsolved Mysteries.”

I searched for a publisher and a list of writers but couldn’t find it. I looked it up on Amazon and the publisher is listed as “Generic.” That means, at least to me, that the publisher was somewhat ashamed of the magazine and didn’t want to be identified with it.

But that’s not what set me off. Naturally, as you would expect, I looked at the few

Frank Kaufmann (left) receives an award at the RAAF in 1947,

hundred words that dealt with Roswell. Not a particularly astute analysis and one that is flawed. According to them, the book I wrote with Don Schmitt, the Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell claimed that the bodies had been shown to President (wait for it) Dwight Eisenhower. I defy them to find any place that either of us has made that claim. We wouldn’t do it because we both know that Harry Truman was president in 1947 and that Eisenhower wouldn’t become president until January 1953.

We did have testimony that one of the flights out of Roswell took bodies to Washington, D.C. so that the president could be brought up to speed. But, as I say, that president was Truman. That information, BTW, was provided by Frank Kaufmann, who has since been discredited by the work of Mark Rodeghier, Mark Chesney and Don Schmitt. Rodeghier and I wrote an expose of Kaufmann a number of years ago in the International UFO Reporter, providing the proof that Kaufmann was not who he claimed to be.

True, we all make mistakes and mine was believing that Kaufmann was telling the truth. But, I was a participant in exposing his lies so that he could be removed from the tale, other than as a footnote. And, of course, that demonstrates that I, as well as my colleagues, continue to search for the truth about Roswell. The real point is that the publisher of the magazine had so little faith in the product that the company name appears nowhere in the magazine. That, I believe, says it all about the reliability of the information contained between the covers.

Chasing Footnotes - Howard Lake, Minnesota (UFO Occupant) Edition

 

It has been a long time since I was able to chase a footnote or two but I have finally had a chance to do it again. I was working on another project and came to a case that fit into that framework. In UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference written by Mark Rodeghier and published by CUFOS, he cited the following:

January 25, 1967: 0430 –

U.S., near Winstad, Minnesota: The engine of a car stalled and the driver got out and saw a bright light coming nearer. It landed on the road on a tripod: it was 25 meters (75 feet, more or less) in diameter, longer than it was wide. A man-like figure got out of the object, checked the exterior of it, then got back in. The object then departed and the car could be restarted.

According to the notation at the end of this short entry, Rodeghier cited a report by Jacques Vallee in his Passport to Magonia. That reference said:

812 [Numerical sequence in the listing of cases]

January 25, 1967: 0430 –

Winsted (Minnesota). A civilian man, 32, driving to work in his 1964 Chevy truck, had to stop and inspect the vehicle when its engine stalled. Only then did he observe an intense light to his right, coming closer. He saw it land on the road, and locked himself inside the cabin. The craft settled on a tripod landing gear; it measured 25 m in diameter and was 10 m high. Something similar to an elevator came down from it, and a man dressed in blue coveralls “with something like a glass fishbowl on his head,” of medium height, seemed to check something and left.

This was attributed to Atic, which seems to mean ATIC, which in turn suggests the case is part of the Project Blue Book files. There is no listing in the files for a case in Winsted, Minnesota, on that date. There is, however, a case from Howard Lake, Minnesota, on that date with a time of 1100Z (which translates to 0500 local time in Minnesota, if I have calculated the time zone differences correctly). For those with a map, you will find that Howard Lake and Winsted are not all that far apart in the southcentral part of Minnesota. I’m not sure if that information is overly relevant.

The Howard Lake Project Card

The Project Card provides enough information so that we can see that this is the correct sighting. The Air Force listed the case as “Insufficient data for evaluation.” This means that I have found another case in which an occupant was seen that wasn’t immediately written off as some sort of psychological problem with the witness.

The case, as reported in the Blue Book Project Card, said:

Observer was working on his truck when he noticed a very bright light to his right. It came closer and landed on the highway. The object was approximately 75 feet long and 30 feet wide. It made a loud whistling noise and the witness could hear it from within his truck. A man left the craft dressed in a silver blue tight fitting suit with a fish bowl on his head. This man walked around the craft then walked back inside. The craft then took off.

Contact was not made with the individual because of no such address. Also personnel at AF Reserve Unit were unable to locate the individual at the Gleason Construction Company for additional information.

There is another document in the Blue Book files which seems to be a narrative as reported by the witness. His name is redacted but the report was made by Howard Lenz of Howard Lake, Minnesota.

This is the one-page narrative in the Blue Book file. It is clear that the document is the result of Lenz calling in on the morning of the sighting. Lenz reportedly said:

SUBJECT: REPORT OF A UFO                                    25 January 1967

A Mr. [name redacted but is Howard Lenz], Howard Lake, Minnesota [handwritten zip code 55349 written about the town name] age 32 years, called to report the following incident [hand written telephone number and a note that said Winsted, Minn].

He was on his way to work this morning (works for the J. B. Gleason Construction Company) [handwritten telephone number noted] and between 4:30 and 5:00 AM, south of Howard Lake near highways 101, 5 and 212, his pickup truck quit. He drives a 1964 Chevrolet pickup. He went out and looked under the hood and he noticed a very bright light to his right “like a light from a welder’s torch”. It came closer and landed on the highway. He became freightened [sic] and ran into his car and locked the doors. This light was approximately 75 feet long and 30 feet wide. While he was watching it three legs came out of the bottom like they were on springs. It made a loud whirring noise and he could hear it through the windows of the car. Then an elevator like object came out of the bottom and a man walked out. He was dressed in a silver blue tight fitting suit with a “fish bowl” on his head. He was of average height and build. He walked over to the side of the “thing” to check on something then walked back in. It then took off. It all took about three or four minutes.

Mr. Lenz sounded quite upset. He asked what he should do. I asked if he had called the newspapers. He said no, and wondered if I had had any other calls reporting this incident. I said no. He said he was going to call his wife and then decide further what should be done. I told him I would contact him if we hear anything further concerning this UFO. He said he wasn’t drunk and doesn’t read science fiction and is of sound health. He does wear glasses but his eyes…

That is where the narrative ends. There is no additional information in the file, other that an envelope that shows the letter had been returned because “Addressee unknown.” More disturbing than the letter being returned was that an inquiry made to the Gleason Construction Company failed to find an employee named Howard Lenz.

According to a letter in the file, signed by Colonel James C. Manatt, they had sent Lenz a copy of their UFO report form, FTD Form 164, along with a return envelope but as seen, that letter was returned. There seemed to be no follow up.

This is where the trail ends. Just the report written by an unidentified member of the Air Force, an attempt to communicate with Lenz, the returned envelop showing that the man apparently didn’t live in Howard Lake and his alleged employer who didn’t know who he was.

I have to admit here that I don’t find this report credible if only because it seems that Lenz is a fake name. I also noticed that in the descriptions of the sighting published later, there seemed to be facts added that were not in evidence. Rodeghier, for example, reported that once the object departed the car, truck actually, could be restarted. This is a logical assumption, but I’m not sure that it is a relevant conclusion. Clearly, the truck was restarted, but I don’t have any idea if the departure of the craft was a factor. This could be because we don’t have the second page of the narrative.

In fact, I’m just not sure that the alleged arrival of the craft is the reason the truck stalled in the first place. There is a great deal of information that needed to be gathered. The missing, second sheet of the narrative might have answered the question. I searched not only my digital copy of the Blue Book files, but went back to the microfilm copy to see if that page had been left out. I believe, based on this, I have seen the entire Blue Book file.

Although it seems to have been reported only to the Air Force, I did check both the APRO Bulletin and the NICAP UFO Investigator to see if there was additional information. I found nothing relating to this sighting but did learn that a major flap was in progress at that time. APRO printed several photographs taken in late 1966 and early 1967. NICAP announced “Major Sighting Wave.” This suggests that the Lenz tale didn’t appear out of nowhere. UFOs were in the news, as was the beginning of the Condon Committee and its investigation. In fact, according to NICAP, “Two more U.S. newspapers in December joined the growing ranks of publications endorsing the need for scientific study of UFOs.”

There are no other sources of information on it that I can find, and I have traced it to its origination. If Lenz is still alive, a real possibility, he would be nearly 90 and probably wouldn’t be able to add anything, if Lenz was his real name. There seems to be nowhere else to go.

The Roswell Report - Case Closed... Maybe Not

Here’s something that I don’t believe anyone has commented on. The Roswell Report – Case Closed document issued through the Air Force and written by Captain James McAndrew is based on lies, and if that is the case, then the document is flawed and unreliable.

You might well ask, “What do you mean?”

First, in explaining that anthropomorphic dummies were responsible for the reports of bodies involved with the Roswell crash, McAndrew relies on statements

Jim Ragsdale. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle

made by our old pal, Jim Ragsdale. In fact, this becomes quite important in proving that the Air Force experiments with high altitude ejection systems and other tests were responsible for the tales of bodies being recovered. McAndrew wrote:

Testimony attributed to Ragsdale, who is deceased, states that he and a friend were camping one evening and saw something fall from the sky. The next morning, when they went to investigate, they saw a crash site:

“One part [of the craft] [brackets in McAndrew version] was kind of buried in the ground and one part of it was sticking our [out] of the ground.” “I’m sure that [there] was bodies… either bodies or dummies.” “The federal government could have been doing something they didn’t want anyone to know what this was. They was using dummies in those damned things… they could use remote control… but it was either dummies or bodies or something laying there. They looked like bodies. They were not very long… [not] over four or five feet long at the most. “We didn’t see their faces or nothing like that… we just gotten to the site and the Army… and all [was] coming and we got into a damned jeep and took off.”

This testimony [meaning Ragsdale’s statements] then describes an assortment of military vehicles used to recover the “bodies.”: “It was two or three six-by-six Army trucks a wrecker and everything. Leading the pack was a ’47 Ford car with guys in it… It was six or eight big trucks besides the pickup, weapons carriers and stuff like that.” Ragsdale also said that before he left the area he observed the military personnel “gathering stuff up” and “they cleaned everything up.”

…In his testimony, Ragsdale made numerous references to equipment vehicles, and procedures consistent with documented dummy recoveries for projects HIGH DIVE and EXCELSIOR. The repeated use of the term “dummy” and the witness’ own admission that “they was using dummies in those damned things” and “I’m sure that was bodies… either bodies or dummies” leaves little doubt that what he described was an anthropomorphic dummy recovery.

And that would be a powerful argument except for one fact. Ragsdale was lying. He hadn’t been out there, he hadn’t seen anything fall from the sky and he hadn’t seen dummies to be confused with alien bodies.

McAndrew goes on to explain, “If the witness was even a short distance from odd looking anthropomorphic dummies, it would be logical for him to believe, when interviewed 35 to 40 years after the event, that he ‘thought they were dummies or bodies or something.’

”

And I could go on; pointing out more mistakes in McAndrew’s attempt to convince us all that Ragsdale had seen one of these dummy recoveries, but why? Ragsdale was lying and McAndrew, when he wrote his report, could have found that out. In my book, also published in 1997, The Randle Report, I expose the Ragsdale tale for

Max Littell, closest to the camera, then Walter
Haut and Don Schmitt. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle

the lie that it is. I also detail how Max Littell had manipulated the story so that he would have something to talk about when reporters, researchers, and documentarians came to the museum in Roswell. Since my book and McAndrew’s were published in the same year, it would mean that we had access to the same information. McAndrew just didn’t bother to check to see if anything new had been learned about Ragsdale before creating his tale of anthropomorphic dummies.

To make it worse, William P. Barnett, writing in Crosswinds in August 1996, provides, in great detail, the various problems with the Ragsdale story. It is quite clear at that point that there is nothing of value here and that Ragsdale, with coaching from Littell, has changed the story. McAndrew, with the resources of the USAF behind him, should have been able to learn all about the Ragsdale tale. Since it is clearly untrue, it renders all the discussion about Project High Dive and Excelsior, anthropomorphic dummies, and government experimentation moot. The foundation of McAndrew’s theory, which is the Ragsdale nonsense, is erected on quicksand.

There are other problems as well. On page 46 of his report, McAndrew compares a drawing of a triangular-shaped object provided by Frank Kaufmann with “A tethered ‘Vee’ balloon shown… at Holloman AFB, N.M. in March 1965. This experimental balloon, is strikingly similar to the ‘alien’ craft.’”

Unfortunately for McAndrew, and something that he might have suspected when he wrote his book, Kaufmann was not telling the truth. It wasn’t until after 2000 that Kaufmann was exposed, thanks to the work of Mark Rodeghier, Mark Chesney and Don Schmitt. Given that, we can now say that his analysis of comparing the object drawn by Kaufmann to that launched at Holloman is in error as well.

Glenn Dennis

He also attacks the “missing nurse” story told by Glenn Dennis. The problem here, as it is with these other tales he uses is that the Dennis story is bogus as well. There is no missing nurse, information which was available in 1997 but McAndrew failed to find. Wouldn’t a stronger case be made by pointing this out rather than going off on the tangent that he does?

Maybe the most egregious error by McAndrew (and I’m being a bit generous here) is the illustration on page 6 that shows a long Mogul array. Although he suggests that the illustration is similar to the one found by Mack Brazel, it is actually from Mogul Flight No. 2 which had a configuration different than those used in New Mexico. He says nothing about that which is misleading at best.

What is given here is a report used to explain away the tales of bodies by suggesting government experiments in the 1950s. Had McAndrew done his homework, had he investigated all this rather than just read a bunch of books and official documents, he actually could have made a much stronger case. As it is, his argument fails because he used bogus information to support it.

Before anyone feels the need to point out that this sword cuts both ways, let me note that while Phil Klass and Karl Pflock rejected Ragsdale and Kaufmann, they did so only because they did not believe that anything alien fell near Roswell. They were right for the wrong reason, but it was those of us on the other side of the fence that worked to expose these people when we learned the truth. It would have been better had we known the truth before we promoted their tales and it took us a while to get to that point, but we did arrive at it… I have seen nothing from McAndrew acknowledging that his book was based on that same false information.