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.

Patrick Saunders, Covert Roswell Whistleblower

 

I have said, repeatedly, that I will name names and provide documentation about what they have said. One of the most interesting of those who spoke about the Roswell crash was Patrick Saunders, and he provided information about both the recovery of an alien craft, with the bodies of the pilots, and about the threats made to those involved in the events of July 1947.

Patrick Saunders, the Roswell Army Air Field adjutant in July 1947, died in 1995, but not before leaving a legacy of information about his role in the retrieval and cover up. Had something happened in Roswell, no matter what it had been, as the adjutant and a member of Colonel William Blanchard’s primary staff, Saunders would have been in on it. And, according to the information I have, he was not only in on it, he played a major role in it by orchestrating a significant part of the cover up.

Saunders was born in Alabama in 1919 in Florida. He attended the University of Florida and graduated from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and the Air War College. During the Second World War he flew 37 combat missions and was awarded the Legion of Merit, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, and the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters. Patrick Saunders died in November 1995, after a fall that put him into the hospital.

I first talked to Saunders on June 14, 1989, as I was beginning my research into the Roswell case. I have the notes taken during that conversation but there is no recording of it. There was nothing in that conversation that was contradicted later, other than his somewhat sarcastic remarks about the alien bodies.

He told me he had just gotten out of the hospital after a heart attack, which, had I known, I would have waited several weeks before calling him. That didn’t mean he wasn’t up to a telephone conversation and when I asked about the possibility of the UFO crash, he said that he knew nothing about the little green bodies and said that the whole thing was a big joke. He did confirm that he had been the 509th adjutant for only a few weeks when the events of July 1947 transpired.

On September 12, 1996, I received a letter from Evelyn P. Smith, who had known Saunders well. She wrote that while discussing these events with her, he said, “I never saw the little men. The creatures are in deep freeze at Wright-Pat.” Clearly, this was meant as something of a joke by Saunders. He would later contradict that statement in talking to his son, Tim Saunders.

During my 1989 telephone call, he said that there had been many rumors flying about the base at the time. I asked if he could remember any good rumors and which of those might have some truth to them. He said, simply, "I can't specify anything." Saunders, it seemed, was suggesting that he was not a witness to the story. Or rather, that was what he led me to believe at the time.

We did talk, briefly, about the events on the Brazel (Foster) ranch and he responded that he just couldn’t help. Not that it wasn’t true or that he didn’t know anything, just that he couldn’t help, which suggested there was another factor in play. He would explain that to one of his daughters in the mid-1990s.

But that wasn’t the end of it. I learned that later, after both UFO Crash at Roswell and The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell were published, he bought copies. In fact, he bought lots of copies to send to both close friends and family.  

A quotation, in his own handwriting, "Here's the truth and I still haven't told anybody anything! Pat," is on the flyleaf in The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, which was labeled, "Damage Control." His comment is presumed to refer to that specific page but could refer to more of the information printed in the book.  It said:

Files were altered. So were personal records, along with assignments and various coding and code words. Changing serial numbers ensured that those searching later would not be able to locate those who were involved in the recovery. Individuals were brought into Roswell from Alamogordo, Albuquerque and Los Alamos. The MP s were a special unit constructed of military police elements from Kirtland, Alamogordo, and Roswell. If the men didn’t know one another, or were separated after the event, they would be unable to compare notes and that would make the secret easier to keep.

Saunder's note on the flyleaf to The Truth
about the UFO Crash at Roswell.

Tim Saunders, on July 13, 2023, confirmed that the writing, and the signature were those of his father. In a comparison with notes and signatures in Patrick Saunders personal flight logs, it was obvious that the same hand had written both those flight log notations and the inscription on the flyleaf.

Tim Saunders. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle.

On the flyleaf to UFO Crash at Roswell, and sent on to his daughter, he wrote, "You were there! Love, Dad." It said:

TOP SECRET

Rickett, the senior counterintelligence man and the Provost Marshal walked the perimeter of the debris field examining the wreckage scattered there. Most of the pieces were small, no more than a few inches long and wide, but some measured a couple of feet on one side.

The came to one piece that was about two feet by two feet. According to Rickett, it was slightly curved. He locked it against his knew and tried to bend it or break it. The metal was very thin and very lightweight. Rickett couldn’t bend it at all. As they prepared to leave the crash site, the senior CIC agent turned to Rickett. "You and I were never out here," he said. "You and I never saw this. You don’t see any military people or military vehicles out here either."

"Yeah," Rickett agreed. We never even left the office."

Of course, it could be argued, and probably will be, that the messages are opened to interpretation. Here is a man who was at Roswell during the critical weeks suggesting, obliquely, that the information about the crash, retrieval and cover up is real. According to one letter I received from one of his children, Susan Saunders Simmons, her father had "At one point... bragged to me about how well he had covered the ‘paper trail’ associated with the clean up!"

Susan Saunder's letter about the Roswell UFO Crash.

And as happens all too often in this case, she wrote that they, Saunders’ children, were looking for his flight records. According to them, those records contained some relevant information but she didn’t tell me what, and it seems that the records provide no real clues about what had fallen near Corona.

In the months before he died, he confided in several close and lifelong friends that suddenly, the officers of the 509th Bomb Group were confronted with a technology greater than that of Earth. They, meaning the creatures in the flying saucers, had control of the sky. The Air Force was powerless against them. And they, the members of the Army Air Forces, had just seen the power of control of the sky. It was one of the factors that defeated the Axis Powers in the Second World War.

Saunders went on, telling people that military officials had no idea about what their, the pilots of the UFOs, intentions might be. Their technology was more advanced than that of the United States. Top military leaders didn't know if the alien beings were a threat so the government was reluctant to release anything about them.

He did warn those he talked with to be careful. He was aware of the threats that had been made and he believed that those making them were serious. Here was a retired Air Force officer who was warning his family to be careful about what they said and who they said it to. One of his daughters wrote, "...he asked me a lot of questions probably to see if, in fact, I had read [UFO Crash at Roswell] carefully. Then he wanted me to understand that he felt the threats to people who ‘talked’ were very real..."

Confirmation that Saunders talked about threats.

Tim Saunders reinforced this as well, telling me that his father was concerned about those threats. He suggested that his father sharing the information with the family could endanger them. He suggested his initial reluctance to talk about what he had seen in 1947.

So, once again, I’m confronted with information, from a reliable source, Patrick Saunders, through family members, that suggests that threats were made. The people who heard those threats believed them to be real, though I know of no instance when any of the threats were carried out.

I’ll note one other thing. When the Air Force was making their Roswell investigation, they did not interview Saunders, though they certainly had the chance. He wasn’t all that old, only 76, and while his heart might have been weakened, he certainly had the strength to sit through an interview with another Air Force officer.

There is another aspect to this as well. While Saunders did suggest that tales of little green men bogus, he provided a different take on it to family members. Tim Saunders told me that in the months prior to his father’s death, he did talk, briefly about alien bodies. According to Tim Saunders, his father said that there had been four bodies recovered and that he, Patrick Saunders, had seen them.

What's important here is that Saunders did not share this information with UFO researchers or outsiders at all. He kept it to himself, telling close friends and family only after the story had been told by so many others. It can't be said that he was seeking fame or fortune by creating a tale to put himself in the limelight. He told only his closest friends and family and cautioned them about revealing too much.

Saunders, when he prepared for his own funeral, added a note to his list of accomplishments, mentioning his role in Roswell. It was there beside the notes of his Air Force service, flying "the Hump" in the Chinese-Burmese-Indian Theater in the Second World War, and the list of the awards and decorations he acquired during his military service. Clearly the events in Roswell were important to him.

What we have now are several statements, written in his own hand, and shared with friends and family. Statements that suggest that Saunders was deeply involved in the Roswell events and they had nothing to do with a balloon, regardless of the mission of that balloon or who was claiming that it was a balloon.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Don Schmitt (Roswell Revelations and the Jesse Marcel Journal)

 

In the first of two parts, I spoke with Don Schmitt and although I had planned to devote very little of the show to Roswell, we ended up examining some aspects of the case in depth. You can listen to it here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/43273308

We began discussing the Not Jess Marcel’s Journal. For a couple of years, we had heard that the family had found a Journal in Marcel’s personal papers that covered the period of the Roswell crash. Though we were told that the family was attempting to verify the validity of the Journal and forensically checking the paper and the ink to be sure it wasn’t a modern forgery, we weren’t told much more. Now, we had the chance to learn so much about it and the big revelation was that Jesse Marcel had not written it.

Don Schmitt

We were then told that Patrick Saunders might have written because a very short sample of Saunders’ printing seemed to match, somewhat, the printing in the Journal. We don’t know why, since the producers interviewed Saunders relatives, they couldn’t have gotten a larger sample of Saunders’ hand writing. The only sample they had was one that I had sent them.

We also talked about the Ramey Memo, the source of it, and the latest attempt to read it. From all that has been said, the latest scans, which took it down to the molecular level, are probably as good as it will ever get. An advance in AI might be required before all that can be put to bed. At least that was the consensus of those who made the scans.

During the program that examined Not Jess Marcel’s Journal, they used a short clip of Frank Kaufmann. Don said that he talked to the producers after that show aired and complained about it. One of them said that one of the writers had said that it didn’t matter because all the witnesses were lying anyway. I’m not sure how you’d get so many people to lie about this, but the statement seems to undercut the validity of their research.

We also talked about Walter Haut and his original support of Kaufmann. I still believe that it harms Haut’s reputation, but Don was of the opinion that his support of Kaufmann predated his learning of all the tales that Kaufmann was telling. I don’t know, maybe, but I still worry about it.

We did discuss Glenn Dennis’ missing nurse. I think there are some very interesting comments made about all that and the validity of the Dennis tale. And, we wondered why the military would ask for child-sized coffins when adult coffins would have worked just as well. The problem was they were apparently looking for coffins that could be hermetically sealed. No need to be child-sized, other than to fit part of the narrative.

Next week, Don and I pick up on the second hour of the discussion. We both promise that it won’t have anything to do with Roswell. If there are questions, append them here and I’ll try to get to them.

Roswell, the GAO and Hiding Documents

Back in the mid-1990s, New Mexico Representation Steven Schiff asked the Air Force, and by extension other government agencies, what they knew about the UFO crash outside of Roswell. The Government Accounting Office, as it was then known, approached many of those agencies, asking for a search of their files for any documents relating to the event. Predictably, no one found anything that wasn’t already known. The FBI, for example, provided a redacted copy of a message from their Dallas office about information derived from their telephonic investigation of the incident, citing Major Curtan (actually Kirton). I’ve had a complete copy of the document for years which is why I know they misspelled Kirton’s name.

So what? You might be asking yourself.

I read now, of secret documents that come from the raid that killed bin Laden and that had been the subject of FOIA requests by various news agencies including the Associated Press. On May 2, 2011 (or the day after the announcement of the raid by the president), the AP requested “all videos and photographs taken during the raid…”

In March, 2012, according to the DoD response, they could find none of the files… where have we heard that before?

What has been learned, thanks in part to the document dump by Edward Snowden, is that the special operations commander, Admiral William McRaven, ordered the military files purged from the DoD computers and sent on to the CIA. This way they could more easily be kept from the public.

This was done in a blatant attempt (yes, those are my words) to evade the rules of FOIA and the appropriate federal regulations governing the release of this sort of information. The CIA can prevent the release of operational files and this can’t be challenged in court… well, I suppose it can be challenged, but the law would prevent the release.

So now we fall back to the middle of the 1990s, when agencies were searching high and low for any documents that related to Roswell and all said they had nothing that was responsive to that claim. Could it be that those files were moved to other locations to avoid release to the public?

No, I seriously doubt that it was done in response to Schiff’s request, but was

Patrick Saunders

actually done long ago to hide the paper trail for which we have searched for so long. Remember, Patrick Saunders told family members, specifically, daughter Susan, “how well he had covered the ‘paper’ trail’ associated with the clean up!” (She wrote to me on February 20, 1997).

In other words the government was not completely candid in what they had said about the records… or rather, I suppose you could say they were candid; they just looked in all the wrong places.

All this really does, I guess, is show us that the GAO investigation wasn’t the end all because we now know that they, meaning the government agencies and not necessarily the GAO, do hide information. This doesn’t prove that something about Roswell is hidden. It merely opens that door, just a crack.

And I suppose we just add this to all the other information that demonstrates that the government doesn’t release everything it has as we have seen time and again, whether it is the Air Force telling Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico that there never was a Project Moon Dust, to the Condon Committee telling us that UFOs have no effect on National Security. It means, unfortunately, much of what they say is not based in any known reality.

Philip Corso Was Not The Highest-Ranking Officer to Talk

Sometimes you see something that just makes no sense. I stumbled across several web sites that proclaimed that Philip Corso was the highest-ranking officer to talk about Roswell. Overlooking that much of what Corso claimed has been discredited, let’s just deal with this other claim.

First, we must realized that Corso was not a colonel (known as an O6 in the military) but was a lieutenant colonel (known as an O5). Some believed that he was promoted upon retirement, as often happens in the reserve, but there is no documentation to support this, and while Corso held a reserve commission, he had spent his career on extended active duty (known as EAD in the world of the military). That he was known as a colonel is a mistake though he would be addressed as “colonel” and referred to as “colonel” in conversation, in formal correspondence he would be addressed as “lieutenant colonel.” His rank insignia would be a silver leaf while that for a colonel is a silver eagle.

Second, there are two brigadier generals, Thomas DuBose and Arthur Exon who have spoken about the Roswell case. DuBose was General Ramey’s Chief of Staff (and not his aide as he has been identified on some of the sites) and told us about transferring debris from Roswell, through Fort Worth and onto Washington, D.C. He also said, on tape, that the material in Ramey’s office was parts of a weather balloon and not what had been found outside of Roswell and sent on to higher headquarters.

Exon was a lieutenant colonel at Wright Field in 1947 and later, as a brigadier general was the base commander at Wright-Patterson AFB (think of this as a mayor of a good-sized city). He told us (and here I think of me along with Don Schmitt and Tom Carey) about what he had seen and heard about Roswell, including flying over the crash site. His information about the case was both direct and indirect.

Third, there are Colonels... Patrick Saunders and Edwin Easley who were both at the base in Roswell in July 1947, and both who retired in a higher grade than Corso. Saunders is responsible for a notation in one of the Roswell books that I wrote with Don Schmitt that suggested that the cover up was in place, that it was an alien craft, and that he hadn’t mentioned it.

Easley was the provost marshal (think chief of police and please notice the spelling with but a single “L”) in Roswell and was responsible for the security at the crash site (whatever that crash might have been). He told me, in a private interview, that he believed it to be of an extraterrestrial craft. Yes, that’s a paraphrase of his saying that we weren’t following the wrong path when I said we believed it to be extraterrestrial.

When you look at it, you see that there are at least four officers of superior rank, who were actually in the right places to see something useful and not at Fort Riley in Kansas in July 1947. (I should point out here that I have nothing against lieutenant colonels, I was promoted to that grade upon retirement and that I spent three months at Fort Riley in 2003.)

Corso spun an interesting story, but the facts are he was not the highest ranking officer to talk about this, he was not in the right place to see anything in 1947, and there were gaps in his knowledge that would suggest he knew no more about this than someone who had read a few of the books and viewed some of the web sites. His story is interesting, but has little relevance to our understanding of the Roswell case.

The Roswell UFO Crash and Patrick Saunders

Patrick Saunders, who was the Roswell Army Air Field adjutant in July 1947, died in 1995, but not before leaving a legacy of information about his role in the retrieval and cover up. Had something happened in Roswell, no matter what it had been, as the adjutant and a member of Colonel William Blanchard’s primary staff, Saunders would have been in on it. And, according to the information I have, he was not only in on it, he played a major part in it.

Before we look at all that, let’s take a moment to get to know the man himself. Saunders was born in Alabama in 1916 and died 76 years later in 1995 in Florida. He attended the University of Florida and was graduated from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and the Air War College. During the Second World War he flew 37 combat missions and was awarded the Legion of Merit, the Silver Star, a Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters. Patrick Saunders died in November 1995, after a fall that put him into the hospital.

I first talked to Saunders in June 1989, as I was beginning my research into the Roswell case. He had just gotten out of the hospital after a heart attack, which, had I known, I would have waited several weeks before calling him. Sometimes my timing was very bad. That didn’t mean he wasn’t up to a telephone conversation and when I asked about the possibility of the UFO crash, he said that he knew nothing about the little green bodies and said that the whole thing was a big joke. He did confirm that he had been the 509th adjutant for only a few weeks when the events of July 1947 transpired.

I asked if he could remember any of the rumors and which of those might have some truth to them, he said, simply, "I can't specify anything." Saunders, it seemed, was not a witness to the story. Or rather, that was what he led me to believe at the time, which probably saved him from dozens of telephone calls from around the world wanting to know what the truth was.

But that really wasn’t the end of it. I learned that later, after both UFO Crash at Roswell and The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell were published, he bought copies. In fact, he bought lots of copies, because, according to what he wrote on the first page of The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, he believed that was the truth.

The quotation, in his own handwriting, "Here's the truth and I still haven't told anybody anything! Pat" is on the flyleaf in The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell which was labeled, "Damage Control," and his comment is presumed to refer to that specific page. It said:

Files were altered. So were personal records, along with assignments and various codings and code words. Changing serial numbers ensured that those searching later would not be able to locate those who were involved in the recovery. Individuals were brought into Roswell from Alamogordo, Albuquerque and Los Alamos. The MP s were a special unit constructed of military police elements from Kirtland, Alamogordo, and Roswell. If the men didn’t know one another, or were separated after the event, they would be unable to compare notes and that would make the secret easier to keep.

On the flyleaf to UFO Crash at Roswell, and sent on to his daughter, he wrote, "You were there! Love, Dad." It said:

TOP SECRET

Rickett, the senior counterintelligence man an the Provost Marshal walked the perimeter of the debris field examining the wreckage scattered there. Most of the pieces were small, no more than a few inches long and wide, but some measured a couple of feet on one side.

The came to one piece that was about two feet by two feet. According to Rickett, it was slightly curved. He locked it against his knew and tried to bend it or break it. The
metal was very think and very lightweight. Rickett couldn’t bend it at all. As they prepared to leave the crash site, the senior CIC agent turned to Rickett. "You and I were never out here," he said. "You and I never saw this.You don’t see any military people or military vehicles out here either."

"Yeah," Rickett agreed. We never even left the office."

Of course it could be argued, and probably will be, that the messages are opened to interpretation. Here is a man who was at Roswell during the critical weeks suggesting, obliquely, that the information about the crash, retrieval and cover up is real. In fact, according to one letter I received from one of his children, Saunders had "At one point... bragged to me about how well he had covered the "paper trail" associated with the clean up!"

In the months before he died, he confided in a number of close and life long friends that suddenly, the officers of the 509th Bomb Group were confronted with a technology greater than that of Earth. They, meaning the creatures in the flying saucers, had control of the sky. The Air Force was powerless against them. And they, the members of the Army Air Forces, had just seen the power of control of the sky. It was one of the factors that defeated the enemies in the Second World War.

Saunders went on, telling people that military officials had no idea about what their, the pilots of the craft, intentions might be. Their technology was more advanced than that of the United States. Top military leaders didn't know if the alien beings were a threat so the government was reluctant to release anything about them.

He did warn those he talked with to be careful. He was aware of the threats that had been made and he believed that those making them were serious. Here was a retired Air Force officer who was warning his family to be careful about what they said and who they said it to. One of his daughters wrote, "...he asked me a lot of questions probably to see if, in fact, I had read [UFO Crash at Roswell] carefully. Then he wanted me to understand that he felt the threats to people who ‘talked’ were very real..."

So, once again, I’m confronted with information, from a reliable source, that suggests that threats were made. The people who heard those threats believed them to be real.

I’ll note one other thing. When the Air Force was making their Roswell investigation, they did not interview Saunders, though they certainly had the chance. He wasn’t all that old, only 76, and while his heart might have been weakened, he certainly had the strength to sit through an interview with another Air Force officer. Colonel Richard Weaver, who conducted some of these interviews in 1994, would have been welcomed in the Saunders home, as he was in others. But Weaver didn’t bother to search out Saunders, just as he failed to find Brigadier General Arthur Exon or ask to hear the tapes and read the notes that I had made with Edwin Easley. Why talk to those men, when you knew that Sheridan Cavitt would follow the script and that the men of Mogul would offer the information you needed to follow that lead?

What's important here is that Saunders did not share this information with UFO researchers or outsiders at all. He kept it to himself, telling close friends and family only after the story had been told by so many others. It can't be said that he was seeking fame or fortune by creating a tale to put himself in the limelight. He told only his closest friends and family.

In fact, Saunders, when he prepared for his own funeral, added a note to his list of accomplishments, mentioning his role in Roswell. It was there beside the notes of his Air Force service, flying "the Hump" in the Chinese-Burmese-Indian Theater in the Second World War, and the list of the awards and decorations he acquired during his military service. Clearly the events in Roswell were important to him.

What we have now are several statements, written in his own hand, and shared with friends and family. Statements that suggest that Saunders was deeply involved in the Roswell events and they had nothing to do with a balloon, regardless of the mission of that balloon or who was claiming that it was a balloon.