Chasing References - Socorro Edition

As many of you know, especially those who visit here regularly, I sometimes chase footnotes because it provides, well, a different perspective on some UFO reports. Finding the footnotes to chase isn’t all that easy and it is usually the result of researching another aspect of the UFO field. Sometimes, however, it can be a single reference in a book or article that triggers a question or two.

Such is the case of an article in the September 2019 issue of The MUFON Journal. Yes, I touched on this in the report on my interview with Don Burleson, and I don’t mean to target him here, but there is a point that needs to be made. As noted, you can hear our discussion in the last half of the October 9 interview.

The statement in question, the one that caught my attention, and frankly the attention of some others, said:

April 24, 1964, when Socorro policeman Lonnie Zamora saw an egg-shaped, whitish object down in a gully and observed a red symbol on its surface. As investigator Ray Stanford discovered, authorities soon published an altered version of the symbol in order to guard against copycat reports, but area military pilots would have been given a classified briefing to warn them to be on the lookout for any airborne craft bearing the insignia the way Zamora had really seen it, an inverted V with three horizonal lines through its middle. Clearly the Socorro object and the Holloman object were somehow related, though I [Don Burleson] infer from various details that the Holloman object was probably larger.

The problem here is that there are errors in the thinking and speculation that is presented almost as if it is fact. The first real problem is the claim that the correct symbol is the inverted V with the three lines through it. This is the information supplied by Ben Moss, Tony Angiola and Ray Stanford. The trouble here is that

Zamora's sketch of the symbol made moments
after the object took off.

Zamora drew the correct symbol, that is an arc over an arrow with a line under it on two occasions. As the object departed, he drew the symbol on a scrap of paper and that scrap can be found in the Project Blue Book files. He signed that illustration.

On the evening of April 24, Zamora was interviewed by Captain Richard Holder of the Army and Arthur Byrnes of the FBI.  They suggested that Zamora not reveal the symbol to others to eliminate copycats, but he did draw it for them and he signed that image as well. This was what I think of as the umbrella symbol.

Zamora's drawing of the craft and the symbol
signed by him.

During the initial investigation, other military officers were involved during the investigation and they too, filed reports. In those documents, the umbrella symbol is identified as the true symbol.

Interestingly, Ray Stanford who was on the scene within days sent a letter to Richard Hall of NICAP in May 1964, a week or two after he had been to Socorro. In that letter he not only identified the true symbol as the umbrella symbol, but wrote that the inverted V with the three lines through it was the fake. Ten years later, when Stanford published his book, he had switched the symbols, now claiming that the inverted V was the true symbol.

Zamora had an illustration made of the craft that he had seen. The Socorro mayor thought it might be a good idea. The artist was Rick Baca. Under Zamora’s direction, the umbrella symbol was placed on that drawing.

The "Umbrella" symbol and the
inverted V with the lines through it,
as well as a couple of other variations.

Both Ben Moss and Tony Angiola believed that there had been a “secret” Socorro file that was separate from that found in the official files. All these official files entered the public domain when the Blue Book files were declassified in 1976. These unofficial “secret” files were obtained from Rob Mercer. The Socorro file was 200 pages that duplicated most of what was in the official file. In that unofficial file were two cards that held the inverted V. It is clear from the context that these cards were based on newspaper articles that were released in 1964. Ben Moss and Tony Angiola believed that this was the true symbol because it was in that file.

Carmon Marano, who was the last officer assigned to Blue Book, who had the responsibility of closing down the office after Lieutenant Colonel Hector Quintanilla had moved on to a new assignment, said that the information obtained by Rob Mercer was a document put together by those in the Blue Book office to show to reporters and others who were there to do research. You can listen to my interview with Rob Mercer here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/11/x-zone-broadcast-network-rob-mercer.html

In other words, it wasn’t an “official” document and it wasn’t a classified file about the Socorro landing. It was a briefing document for those without security clearances or who were civilians who had been granted access to the Project Blue Book files.

Rick Baca's drawing of the Zamora craft with the
"Umbrella" symbol added under Zamora's guidance.

What this means is that a suggestion that military pilots had been given a classified briefing containing the inverted V symbol, is in error because that is not the correct symbol. I can think of no reason that such a briefing would even take place. The pilots didn’t need to know what the symbol looked like. If they encountered an alien craft and saw a symbol, they could report that. If it doesn’t match that seen by Zamora, well, it just didn’t match. We can assume here that the military pilots wouldn’t be inventing a tale of seeing an object when they did not.

However, if you’ve told them what to look for, then you have contaminated the operation. You’ve told the pilots what they should see, and that means that they might just see what you told them to see. In other words, the classified briefing has defeated the purpose set out for it.

If you read the wording in The MUFON Journal paragraph carefully, you’ll notice the qualifiers. It said, “…area military pilots would have been given a classified briefing…” I asked Don Burleson for the source of this information. What I learned, from him, is that this was speculation based on what he believed would have happened. The real point is that no such briefing was given. It was pure speculation.

Here’s the problem with this. Someone else, writing a book about UFOs or an article about the Socorro sighting, might quote this particular paragraph, giving

the source as The MUFON Journal article. But there is no ultimate source for the information. The discussion of the symbol is flat out wrong and the classified briefing never happened. We follow it to this point and we can go no farther.

Although I don’t discuss the “classified briefing,” in Encounter in the Desert, my recent book on Socorro, I do discuss, at length, the whole sad tale of the true symbol seen by Lonnie Zamora. Much of that has also been discussed on the blog. You can read about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/09/x-zone-broadcast-network-ben-mosstony.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-final-analysis-of-socorro-symbol.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Lonnie+Zamora+symbol

In the future, as others research this case, I hope that they’ll find this as well. They’ll then know that there is a problem with that information. Maybe they’ll think twice about including it, or, if the do, they’ll qualify so that their readers will understand what has happened.

Rob Mercer and the Black Vault

I learned this morning (February 19) that many of the documents from the Project Blue Book days located by Rob Mercer through some very nice detective work, can now be accessed at the Black Vault, hosted by John Greenewald. As most of you know, the Black Vault is a huge site of documents recovered through FOIA

John Greenewald
(Photo copyright by Kevin Randle)

requests filed by John, and other documents provided by those who had recovered them in the past… which is to say, I suppose, that it is a huge sharing site that provides an important feature for those of us interested in UFOs including information on the people involved and what the government has learned and stored.

Rob Mercer had discovered that a box of Blue Book material was for sale on Craig’s List and bought it. Turned out it was a treasure trove of important information that had originally belonged to Carmon Marano, one of the last officers who worked at Blue Book. You can learn more about this here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/10/boxes-of-blue-book-material-on-craigs.html

And you can listen to my interview with Rob Mercer here:

https://youtu.be/FItr36JIf48

And you can listen to Carmon Marano talk about his time at Project Blue Book and how he obtained what turned out to be boxes of the UFO related material here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyz0ZAvhv7g

Or read about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/11/x-zone-broadcast-network-former-blue.html

I did ask Rob how the material had ended up at the Black Vault and he told me (well, answered an email):

I joined up with John last November to help with his UFO investigations team.  He knew about my Blue Book find and told me I could share some on his site if I wanted.  I had been sharing a few of them on my site for a few years, but never really got them on there the way I wanted because of the volume.  I had been wanting to put a collection together called "From the Desk of Project Blue Book" 

for some time, because that’s pretty much what it is.  I still have the case files to scan and put on, along with slides correspondences and some other miscellaneous papers. 

      For the last several weeks I have been going through them again and have found a few items that did not make it into Blue Books archives as far as reports. One item that comes to mind is a three page hand written letter from a gentleman in 1969, that witnessed an event in the 1920s in Phoenix Arizona. It is on the Black Vault.

http://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/desks-project-blue-book-sighting-report-phoenix-arizona-late-1920s/

As you can see, there is more to be scanned and digitized. As anyone who has scanned almost anything knows, it can be a long and involved process, but Rob has been working toward that end. Now, some of it can be found and viewed by those interested in it.

As a side note, I found that the information Rob had on the Socorro UFO sighting to be useful in my research and in the writing of my book, Encounter in the Desert which was published last October. For those interested, it can be found in your local bookstore and online at Amazon at:

https://www.amazon.com/Encounter-Desert-Randle-Kevin-ebook/dp/B072MQGD9K/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1519084216&sr=1-1&keywords=Kevin+Randle

Project Horse Fly - The Documents

My posting about General Exon and the project known as “Horse Fly” inspired one of those who visit here to file a FOIA request. Here is what he wrote:

Bombastic Bill has left a new comment on your post "Arthur Exon and the Investigative Teams":

So I recently filed a FOIA for Horse Fly for Wright Pat in the years listed above and I have received a reply from the Air Force: "A thorough search for these records by Office of Primary Responsibility (OPR) has not produced any responsive records relating to your request" So I don't know if Horse Fly is a bogus name or there was something I missed in filing the FOIA but as for the 1st time filling out a FOIA it was just nice to get a response! 

The question, I suppose, is how far back do their records go and do they retain any files that were part of Project Blue Book. We know, based on what Carmon Marano told us, that while the “official” files were sent to the Air Force Archives and later onto the National Archives, the “unofficial” files were going to be destroyed. He saved them and eventually they ended up in the hands of Rob Mercer.

Okay.

But it was in the Project Blue Book files that I found the reference to Horse Fly and the creation of teams to investigate UFO sightings. The documents were part of the administration files that were included with the Blue Book material. I found them on my microfilm and using my IPad, took several photographs off the microfilm reader. Not the best way to do it, but the way I could preserve the information for easy reference. More importantly, that provides the documentation seen here. These are the photographs.

They prove, only that the documentation exists, that FTD was involved and that there was a suggestion of creating the teams. When I get the chance, I’ll try to put up more of these documents.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Former Blue Book Officer, Carmon Marano

Carmon Marano

This week I had the opportunity of interview former Air Force officer Carmon Marano who had been on the staff of Project Blue Book. How do I know? First, Ben Moss sent me a picture that showed the Blue Book Staff and he is the lieutenant standing, more or less, behind Hector Quintanilla. Second, in reviewing the UFO sightings from Minot Air Force Base in 1968 I found a number of memos for the record that he had written. Finally, of course, he said exactly that and unlike so many others who have said they were part of Blue Book, we can actually prove it with him. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyz0ZAvhv7g

This provided us with the opportunity to learn a little about the internal workings of Blue Book at the end of its existence. The University of Colorado study, known as the Condon Committee that was going on at the time, seemed to have sucked some of the life out of Blue Book. What I found interesting was his comment, when asked about how they acquired their cases, said that most of them came from around Wright-Patterson Air Force, which is Dayton, Ohio, and from the surrounding two or three states. At the end they weren’t getting many reports from other areas and a quick survey of the master index from Project Blue Book confirmed this. A large number of the cases were from Ohio. Sure, there were cases from other parts of the country and the world, but most of them came from

The Project Blue Book Staff

Ohio. This was something I hadn’t noticed.

I also asked about some of the cases that were unidentified. He seemed to suggest that the majority of the cases they received had mundane explanations. He did mention one from around the Miami area that involved a couple of ministers in a private plane. I understood that he was talking about something that happened nearly fifty years ago, but this simulated my curiosity. I thought it would be easy to find, so I started looking through the Blue Book master index but then noticed, in 1968, there was a gap. Somehow the pages from the end of August through November were missing.

In Project Blue Book – Exposed, I published a long list of all the unidentified cases. It took almost a whole minute to find this particular sighting. Although that contained just the bare bones of the report it was more than enough for me to find the details in the Blue Book files. According to the project card:

A light doing acrobatics near Ocala [Florida] for 15 minutes [September 15, 1968] but did not gain on it. Light rose and quickly disappeared among stars. Almost immediately a second but white light was seen under the haze above Ocala. This rapidly came toward them on collision course and pilots thought it was a sidewinder [missile]. Light made a sharp 90 [degree] turn and then disappeared. Third part of observation came when they approached Miami. Palm Beach Center informed them their radar had object following them, asked them to make a 360 [degree] turn. Pilot thought he identified light but was not certain. The most significant part of observation was the “sidewinder collision” part. Pilots would probably not have reported total incident had it not been for the seeming near collision with light.

The project file contains a couple of transcripts, both of them of Dr. Allen Hynek interviewing Air Force officers who interviewed the pilots. They do note that the lights were in sight for quite a while, about fifteen minutes, and that they did perform various maneuvers.  There is some discussion about the radar sighting as well. The one thing I did notice was that there were passengers in the plane but they had the cabin lights on and were reading so they didn’t see anything.

So we learned something about the internal workings of Blue Book, were treated to some discussion of various cases, and found out how all those files came into the hands of Rob Mercer of the Miami Valley UFO Society. Rob will be on the show on November 16.

Next week: John Shirley

Topic: UFOs and skepticism.

The Socorro Symbol Conundrum

Since the discussion of the Socorro symbol isn’t confusing enough, here is another conundrum. I have in my possession handwritten documents that are apparently notes taken at some point after the landing. These notes were sent to me by Rob Mercer who acquired them from a former Project Blue Book officer. So we do have a provenance for them and a chain of custody though that chain might be a little bit cloudy.

On page 59, though I’m not sure what the numbers mean because it is a short document that begins on page 56, it says, “There were fresh imprints resembling a V with a bar across it …”

There is an illustration that accompanies this. It looks like this:

The "V" with a bar through it as shown in the

documents recovered by Rob Mercer.

The symbol is repeated on page 61. It suggests that it wasn’t a helicopter that left the imprint and that it looks more like a cattle brand.

Rob Mercer did ask the Blue Book officer about this and he said that the Socorro case was something that happened before he arrived. He told me the same thing. These were notes about the case that he discovered as he was cleaning out desks. The only thing that can be said is that they probably weren’t written by Hynek and probably not Holder because both are mentioned in the third person. Zamora is addressed as “Zamoro” in part of the document, which suggests they were written by someone who had only a passing knowledge of the case.

The question now becomes, was this imprint the inspiration for the story about the symbol with inverted “V” with the bars through it? Could it be that the description of the imprint was confused with the symbol Zamora saw? When we listen to the interview with Mike Martinez describing what Zamora saw could there have been some confusion there? It is very difficult to understand because it is lost in so much noise.

This really is an amazing coincidence when you think about it.

(And yes, for those of you keeping score at home, I have just thrown another monkey wrench into the equation, though if you’re paying attention, you’ll know what the correct symbol is.)

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Ray Stanford

For those of you who thought that this week’s show would feature Brad Steiger, I received an email from Brad saying that he was sick and would have to postpone. That left me with a hole, but I contacted Ray Stanford who graciously agreed to move his interview from November 9 to this week. Brad will be scheduled for a future show.

There were questions left over from my other Socorro UFO landing/Lonnie Zamora sighting show with Ben Moss and Tony Angiola and Ray was the man who had the answers. He went into detail about the picture he had taken of the dynamite shack that Zamora thought might have exploded, and what that photograph showed. We also discussed the idea that Zamora hadn’t talked of figures but only white coveralls. Ray, who might be the only living person who was involved in the original investigation in late April 1964, provided his insights into what he had seen, and what he had heard and how this white coverall confusion came to be.

You can listen to the program here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8QfQ4F_7ww

Ray Stanford wrote (for those who wanted to find a copy of his book), “The email address for people to use to pay for the book at PayPal is: raystanford38@gmail.com

“If you can post that with the statement that the signed, first edition, brand new book costs $50 + $10 for shipping and handling via Priority Mail, it will be appreciated.”

And, of course, there are those papers about dinosaurs that might interest some of you. As I mentioned, the address is a little complicated for a radio show. You can find them here:

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/newborn_dinosaur_discovered_in_maryland

and

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23020141?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

If all goes well, next week I’ll talk with a man who had been part of the Blue Book team for the last couple of years and who had the boxes that Rob Mercer found. He is fascinating if for no other reason than he was one of those assigned to Blue Book and we can prove it.

Boxes of Blue Book Material on Craig's List

Ben Moss and Tony Angiola are probably annoyed with me for sticking my nose into this Socorro investigation. As I have explained, they made some very interesting comments during my radio show and I believed those comments deserved some follow up. That has been the point of several of the postings here. It truly is a descent into the minutia of the case but it has been sort of fun for me, though maybe not so much fun for Ben or Tony.

There was some discussion about the symbol that Zamora saw on the object. Ben and Tony thought that the proper version was the inverted “V” with the three lines through it. They mentioned (or more probably Ben) that they had documents from the Blue Book files that had been found in a box of material purchased at a garage sale. Yes, I know this is beginning to sound like the slides fiasco all over, but there was a provenance for this box as well as a chain of custody. It did contain Blue Book files and it seemed, for a time, that it had once belonged to CPT Richard T. Holder, who had been the first of the military officials to interview Zamora. Holder was an Army officer rather than a member of the Air Force or on the Blue Book staff.

Naturally, I was interested in this aspect of it, especially since there were two documents in that recovered file, both handwritten and both without date or signature that seemed to suggest the inverted “V” with the three lines was the correct symbol. If it could be confirmed that it had been Holder’s son who had sold the box, then that changed the story slightly. I learned, indirectly from Ben, that an Ohio UFO investigator, Rob Mercer, had purchased the box. I wanted to talk to him about what he had found and to learn if there had been a context for those two handwritten notes. Ben had supplied a web site and there was contact information for Rob. I sent an email to him and he responded with a long explanation of how he had come into possession of these Blue Book files… and from the look of what he had posted to his web site, it was clear that he had documents from Blue Book as well as notes and comments made by someone who had been intimately involved with Blue Book. You can review that information here:

http://www.miamivalleyufosociety.com/inside-project-blue-book

(One of the things was the Tremonton, Utah UFO film taken by Delbert Newhouse that had a black line down the center of it… this was a scratch that was magnified with each reproduction of the film and was in the same place as a copy of that film I had received from Blue Book many years ago.)

Rob told me that he had found the material on Craig’s List and bought the box from the man who found it. Through some fine detective work, Rob was able to trace the information to a specific Air Force officer and eventually located the man. His identity was confirmed and he mentioned that he had additional boxes of information. He sent those on to Rob as well. Since some of the boxes contained actual copies of Blue Book cases, Rob was able to establish that the material in the boxes was legitimate and had been, at one time, in the possession of Blue Book or at the very least one of the men who worked at Blue Book. The former officer confirmed all this as well.

Illustration from the San Antonio,

Texas newspaper.

Given the way things had gone in the Socorro investigation, I was interested in those two handwritten notes that suggested the real symbol was the inverted “V” with the three lines through it. They seemed to confirm it, but as David Rudiak pointed out, that description had been published in newspapers on April 30, 1964. Some of the newspapers suggested Hynek as the source while others hinted at “witnesses” who had seen the original symbol as drawn by Zamora.

The key was the officer who had “saved” the material from destruction but the question was about the creation of the files. On October 20, 2016, I had an opportunity to interview the officer. I have a picture of him (courtesy of Ben Moss) standing in the Blue Book office with Lieutenant Colonel Hector Quintanilla and he confirmed that was a member of Blue Book at the end of the investigation.

The Socorro case, from April 1964, was before his time. He mentioned that Sergeant David Moody had been involved in that case, which, of course, we all knew based on what is in the Blue Book files not to mention newspapers from around the country. I knew that we were going back some 52 years, and if he hadn’t been there, I had little or no chance of learning how those documents had been created. I asked him about it, tried to put it into perspective, but since he had not created that specific file, he just couldn’t provide any useful information about it. All I can say with confidence is that the two documents, which reference State

Sergeant Moody on the left. US Air Force

photograph.

Police Sergeant Chavez, are handwritten and show the symbol to be the inverted “V” with the three bars. I don’t know whose handwriting it is, I don’t know when the notes were made, I don’t know if they are based on newspaper reports (the wording is very close) and I don’t know why these documents are not in the Blue Book file proper if they are representative of the symbol that Zamora saw though many of the newspaper articles that mention it are there.

The upside of this is that the officer has agreed to appear on my radio show for November 2. We’re not going to concentrate on Socorro on that show because his experiences at Blue Book were not during that time, but about the attitudes, investigations, and handling of UFO reports, including how he ended up with boxes of the material. I will note here that everything I have seen (and Rob Mercer has been most generous with that) has no classification markings on it. It was unclassified material so there is no real reason for him not to have it. (It wasn’t even marked “For Official Use Only,” which is a very low level of classification that doesn’t require safe guarding or accountability.)

After our service in Iraq, I was tasked with writing the Unit History. I had, in my possession, hundreds of documents from that time but none of them were classified.  These were notes from the staff meetings, the information from the change of shift briefings and from a dozen or so other things that would be of no real interest to the average person, but for a historian looking into the Iraq War fifty years from now, it could provide a glimpse into what we were doing. I have a copy of the history, which ran to more than 700 pages.

For those interested, Ray Stanford, who literally wrote the book on Socorro (as he likes to say) will appear on November 9, though I don’t think we’re going to devote the show to just the Socorro case. He wants to talk about some of the other cases he has been involved in.

So, the point here is this. Ben Moss and Tony Angiola sparked my interest in parts of the Socorro case. With their help, I delved a little deeper into this and through that research end up communicating with Rob Mercer (who will be on the show November 16) to talk about what he found in the files and some of the ancillary items that went with them. I also had the chance to talk with a former Blue Book officer. We now have the opportunity, together, to learn about how some of this played out and to learn a little about the inside workings of Project Blue Book.