Semantics and Melvin Brown

In the last few days, I have been involved in a couple of discussions over what has amounted to little more than semantics. People have been concerned about what some words mean and the usage of them. One way to illustrate all of this is to look at the story provided by Beverly Bean, whose father, Melvin Brown told family about his involvement in the Roswell case.

I am using the short section about the Melvin Brown that appeared in Roswell Revisited to help clarify this point. I believe that people reading The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell understood perfectly that we hadn’t interviewed Brown himself, but that the information came from family members we did interview. The footnotes provided the information about how we had gathered the data. In fact, it is clear from other sections of the book that the information didn’t come from Brown himself, but from his daughters and wife. Only those with half a brain didn’t get it and there are plenty of people out there like that.

Here’s where we are on this aspect of the case. I wrote in Roswell Revisited that Beverly Bean is a pleasant English woman, who told researchers about her father, Sergeant Melvin Brown (Yearbook picture seen here), who had been stationed at Roswell in 1947. Unlike some of those who have told stories about Roswell, Brown is in the Yearbook (just like a high school yearbook that contains the pictures of about 80% of everyone assigned to the base) that Walter Haut created in 1947. It is a document that allows us to verify that a soldier did, in fact, serve at Roswell during the critical period without having to gather information from the records center in St. Louis.

Like so many of the others, Brown didn’t tell his story to investigators and it didn’t surface until after Jesse Marcel began talking of the crash in 1978. Interestingly, one of the documents offered by Bean to prove her father served in Roswell was an order with several names on it including Jesse Marcel.

In a video-taped interview conducted in England by Brad Radcliff on January 4, 1991, Bean said, "Dad used to tell us this story and he didn’t tell us often."

He told his daughter, according to what she said on tape, that he "had to go out into the desert. All available men were grabbed and they all went out into the desert in trucks where a crashed saucer had come down."

Brown and another soldier whose name he never gave to his daughter, were pulled aside for guard duty. They were told not to look under the tarp in the truck, but Bean said, laughing, that the minute someone tells you that, the first thing you do is take a look. She said that he dad told her, "He and this other guy lifted up the tarpaulin or something..."

She said that she and her sister now argue about the number of alien creatures under the tarp. Bean says it was two, but her sister insists that it was three. No matter now. The point is that Brown described the creatures for them.

According to her, "He said they were smaller than us, not more than four foot tall... much larger heads than we have. Slanted eyes and [the skin was] yellowish."

Bean wondered if he had been scared but he said that he wasn’t. He thought they had nice faces and they looked as if they would have been friendly. According to Bean, he repeated that as often as he told the story, which, over the years was fewer than a dozen times.

Bean, of course, sometimes pestered him for more information. After the release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in 1977, she asked him about the movie and how authentic it might be. He said that it was the biggest load of crap he’d ever seen and not like the real thing at all. When she tried to learn more, he told her, "That’s all I can tell you. I can’t tell you anymore."

The late Karl Pflock, in his book, Roswell, Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, complained that Bean’s story was second hand and that neither her sister nor her mother would comment on it. Pflock had to know that both the mother and the other daughter had confirmed the tale because he had access to the video tapes of those 1991 interviews. He is right about this being a tale told by the daughters and wife of the man who lived it. There is nothing that can be done about that. By the time Brown’s name surfaced in the investigation, he had died from complications of various lung diseases, but it is not true that his wife or other daughter refused to talk.

Ada Brown (seen here) added little to the complex tale told by Beverly Bean when she was interviewed on video tape in 1991. She merely confirmed that she too had heard about the crash over the years and that it was something from another world. She seemed a little uncomfortable sharing a secret left by her husband.

Bean’s sister, Harriet Kercher (seen below), on January 4, 1991, was also interviewed on video tape. She had heard her father tell his tales a couple of times when Beverly was there, but there was one incident when Beverly was absent and her father gave her just a little more information.

Kercher, in her early teens said that she was with friends when she saw something flash by. Her friends saw it too, and then, in the distance, that something reappeared and seemed to be coming at them. Kercher said they were frightened by that shiny object but they weren’t far from her house so they ran there, slamming the door behind them.

Her father met them and asked them why they seemed to be in such a panic. Kercher said that her father, after hearing the tale of the shining object, told her, "It’s nothing to be frightened about."
The friends didn’t understand, exactly, what he meant and he told them about the crashed flying saucer, saying that there were a few bodies on it. He provided few new details. He just made it clear that there was something about the creatures that suggested to him that they were not to be feared.

But, as Pflock said, these were second-hand reports and they could be the misinterpretation of the original story... It is not proof, or even a suggestion of proof of something extraterrestrial.

What this shows, simply, as that I have been fair with the reporting of this story. It is clear from this that Brown told us nothing himself. In my previous books, it was clear that Brown had died before any of us had a chance to interview him. By lifting quotes out of context it looks as if I had tried to mislead the reader. The truth is, all the information was there for the reader so that he or she could decide the merits of the information for him or herself.

For those who are interested, I have a few hardback copies of The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell available. It listed for $19.95, but I’ll sell them for a mere ten bucks (plus the shipping and handling because I won’t pay the postage and the cost of the envelopes... just five dollars)...

And for those interested, Roswell Revisited is available now from either Glade Press, PO Box 460, Lakeville, MN for 12.95 plus $5.00 for shipping and handling...

Or from me for the same price and shipping and handling...

Or take both for $20.00 and still for the $5.00 shipping and handling. You can find me at:

Kevin D. Randle
PO Box 10934
Cedar Rapids, IA 52410

Milton Sprouse, Roswell Witness?

Milton Sprouse, 86, (seen below) spent ten years as a soldier stationed at the Roswell Army Air Field, and yes, he was there in July 1947 when the UFO crashed.

Sprouse’s name surfaced recently when he was interviewed by Gary Warth of the North County Times.

I talked to Sprouse the other day so that I could clarify some of the questions I had about what he had seen and who he had talked to.

I asked him if he had seen anything personally and he said, "I did not. I was a crew chief on a B-29 and I had to stand by my airplane in case it needed to fly." He said that he had been in Tampa, Florida for three days and had returned on the day that it happen. That was when his friends told him about the crash.

But he said that a number of his friends were taken out to what I think of as the debris field and participated in the clean up there. Sprouse suggested that about 500 soldiers were on that field, moving shoulder to shoulder and picking up everything they could find (Recreation for the Showtime movie Roswell, seen below).




He said that these men hadn’t seen the bodies because they had already been removed, and they didn’t see a craft. He did say, "There were big pieces... up to twelve inches or bigger all over that ranch. But they didn’t recognize what any of it was."

He said that they laughed about the weather balloon explanation. He said, "I’ve seen weather balloons. They’ve been launched all around my airplane there at Roswell many times." Which suggests that nearly everyone in Roswell would be familiar with what a weather balloon looked like and it seems unlikely anyone would be fooled by such debris.

One of this friends, a barracks buddy, had been a medic and had, one night, been called to the hospital. Sprouse said, "I lived in the barracks. I was single at the time... One of the barracks buddies was a sergeant and he worked in the Medics. He lived in the barracks. And he got a call to report to the hospital and he went up and when he come back he said, ‘You wouldn’t believe what I been through and what I’ve seen.’ He didn’t have too much to say about anything because they told him not to talk about everything and we didn’t get much from him but later on he did say he was one of the few enlisted there and there were two doctors and two nurses in there. And of course he left right after that incident and never said good-by to us or nothing."

Sprouse also told me that had recalled all the newspapers, meaning the July 8 edition of the Roswell Daily Record in which it was reported that a flying saucer had been found, were picked up by the officers (Front page seen below). He said, "They gave that story out first from the base. Walter [Haut] gave it out. Blanchard and Ramey must have okayed it because they gave it out and they printed the paper and then that’s when they recalled it, recalled all the papers and denied it and brought in that weather balloon."

There are a few problems with Sprouse’s story. First is that he can’t remember any of the names of those who went out onto the debris field for the retrieval. He said that the names we found in the Yearbook for his crew were those who had joined him later, after these events. He said that his aircraft commander was Colonel William H. Harrison, and Harrison was certainly an aircraft commander at Roswell in the right time frame. But, when Sprouse called Harrison, he was told that he, Harrison, remembered very little. In fact, according to Sprouse, Harrison said, "‘I don’t remember, Milt, who you are.’ And he and I were friends because I was his crew chief for a heck of a long time. I flew all over the world with him... but I didn’t get to talk to his wife or nothing because he hung up on me after a while and I’ve never called him again because it was a waste of time because he didn’t know who I was and we had nothing to talk about in common."

Second, while I have heard tales of newspapers printing flying saucer stories and that someone made an effort to recall all those newspapers, this is not something that had been associated with the Roswell case until now. It wasn’t effective because we have all seen the newspaper. I suppose they might have wanted to get it off the base to inhibit the soldiers talking about it and didn’t care what was left in the civilian community, but that makes no real sense.

Finally, we have been unable to discover who the medic was. He’s just another unnamed source who might have been a staff sergeant at the time, and who might have been promoted to what was known as a technical sergeant (now known as either a platoon sergeant or a sergeant first class) but that doesn’t help us much. There are eleven men in those two grades in the Yearbook (one of the pages for the Medics seen below). Yes, it will take some time to check them out with no guarantee that anyone of them will be the right guy. Haut said that fifteen to twenty percent of the soldiers at Roswell were not included in the Yearbook for a variety of reasons.

So, we are left with a second-hand story that might provide us with some clues about the Roswell case. We might be able to learn the name of Sprouse’s medic friend, then we might be able to find him, and he might still be alive. Of course the case is important enough that we should make these efforts.

As I learn more about this, I will publish the results. Until then we have an interesting tale that might grow into something important. Without additional corroboration we will have to leave it at that. It might be of importance. And then again, maybe not.

FAKERS! Part Two

We talked about fakers a while ago, meaning people who have claimed to be things they are not. We have looked at UFO witnesses, researchers, advocates, and whistle blowers who used supposed military backgrounds or high levels of education to prove that what they say is true. What they tell us is often in conflict with what their records say and the apologists have excuses for that including that the government, in its all powerful, all knowing capability has been able to alter the records of those people to make them look bad.

Now we have more evidence of fakers in our world. According to an article published in the Seattle Times and written by Jennifer Sullivan, Jesse MacBeth, 23, who claimed to be a decorated hero who fought in Iraq, who said he was an Army ranger, and who said that he had killed more than 200 people including some who were praying at a mosque, has been sentenced to jail from making false statements to the Department of Veteran Affairs. MacBeth had spoken at anti-war rallies and had appeared in an anti-war video that had been circulated on the Internet. It was learned that MacBeth had spent only six weeks in the Army at Fort Benning, and never completed basic training. He had claimed to be a corporal who had been awarded the Purple Heart.

The whole story can be seen at:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003895483

_webmacbeth21m.html

Yes, I know this has nothing to do directly with UFOs and the paranormal, but it does address, again, this growing trend to make up things, find a forum, and have your point of view published so that the world can see it. We don’t know how much damage this guy might have done and here I’m only thinking of the soldiers in the field in Iraq. We know these sorts of things are picked up and broadcast around the world and once the man, or woman, is exposed, that is not as actively reported. His false claims are out there for future generations to find and read and many times these are not linked to the stories exposing the faker. It tars his with lies all those who have served honorably.

As just one example, there is the discredited "Winter Soldier" hearings organized in 1971 by Vietnam anti-war protestors. There men told their tales of horror, of atrocity, and even John Kerry was there smearing the names of all those who had served honorably in Vietnam (and his attitude then didn’t stop him from trying to promote himself as a war hero when it became politically expedient to do so in 2004 by claiming two tours in Vietnam... one on a deep water Navy ship that patrolled for some weeks off the coast of Vietnam and the second for maybe three months on a Swift Boat on the rivers in Vietnam... total time "in county" about four months as compared to 12 months for soldiers and 13 for Marines, but I digress). Rarely in the stories about those "hearings" reported during the 2004 election was it mentioned that the hearings had been discredited and those telling their tales of horror had not served in combat, had not served in Vietnam and in some extreme cases, had not served in the military (For a better discussion of this see B. G. Burkett’s Stolen Valor, page 131 - 134.)

So now I have that off my chest, I’ll move this on to UFOs and paranormal phenomena. I saw, not long ago, an attempt to rehabilitate Philip Corso. He was the man who claimed to have been promoted to colonel after his retirement, though he had only served as a lieutenant colonel on active duty. His excuse was that he thought he had been promoted upon retirement though no evidence for that promotion had ever been offered.

In this attempt, it was noted that the Congress, in the 1950s, had passed a law that gave officers in the Reserve a promotion on retirement to make up for the disparity of promotions while they served. Their counterparts on active duty were promoted faster. The problem is that the law didn’t apply to Corso. While he may have held a Reserve commission as opposed to a regular commission, he was serving on extended active duty. In other words, he was promoted as a member of the Active Component and not as a member of the Reserve.

Here’s the difference. Reserve officers served one day a week for four hours and then were required to attend annual training for two weeks a year. Their rate of promotion, because of the limited time in training was longer than that of the soldiers on extended active duty. Note here, this is the situation in the 1950s when Corso was on active duty. Later it changed to one weekend a month made of four, four-hour training periods and, of course, the two weeks (fifteen days, actually) for annual tour.

So, even though the law existed, it didn’t apply to Corso. This misunderstanding comes from those in the civilian world who don’t know the some of the terms and methods of the military. Reserve officers serve on extended active duty and are promoted with their fellows with regular commissions. In fact, officers often hold two ranks... that is the grade in which they serve and their permanent rank. So a colonel might hold the permanent rank of major and when released from active duty would revert to that permanent rank.

There is one other problem here. Upon retirement, a soldier would retire in the highest grade held. At Roswell, in 1947, there was a master sergeant serving out his last year or so on active duty. During World War II, he had served as a brigadier general. When he retired, he would retire as a brigadier general.

And we haven’t even touched on bevet ranks, which were used quite a bit during the Civil War. George Custer was a captain until bevetted to brigadier general of volunteers. When the war ended, he should have reverted to captain but friends in high places secured him a commission as lieutenant colonel in the Seventh Cavalry, and we all know how well that worked out.

When you get right down to the bottom line on this, an argument over the "real" rank of Corso isn’t of overwhelming importance and it could be argued that he made a simple mistake. This whole Reserve-Active thing with two different grades and types of commissions can be confusing to those of us who are involved in it, not to mention those outside the military.

If we are concerned about the veracity of Corso, we can find our answer in other areas, including the slippery way that he got Senator Strom Thurmond to write an introduction for his Roswell book. When the book was released, Thurmond was outraged, saying that the book for which he had written an introduction was not the book that had been published. For those who wish to know more, look for Roswell Revisited from Galde Press (FATE magazine, PO Box 460, Lakeville, MN 55044) Chapter Seven.

What this demonstrates is that we have people claiming to be soldiers who were not, but get publicity because they say the things people want to hear. MacBeth lied about his military experiences, but since he was anti-war, he was given a forum. Certainly not the first one to do this nor the first one to be exposed. And to the credit of the Seattle Times they exposed him as soon as they had the evidence.

Corso bumped himself up a grade for no reason I can understand. All he had to do was admit the truth, say it was a mistake and carry on. Instead he decided to say that he had been promoted in the Reserve and when no evidence of that was found, his defenders began to look for other excuses.

So now we come to me. I have read, on the Internet, from a number of places, including an exopolitics and UFO site in Australia, that I look too fat to be a soldier (and they do publish a picture that makes me look fat) but they have also picked up a picture of me in uniform, sitting in the throne room of an ancient Babylon king. Since Babylon is in Iraq, this pretty much puts me into that conflict.

But they ask exactly what my background is and I’m thinking that it’s a fair question. After all, I have said I was in the Army and in the Air Force and then in the National Guard. Seems like I am jumping all over the place.

Unfortunately, I must now reveal that I entered active duty with the Army in July 1967 (more than forty years ago) having just graduated from high school about a month earlier. I went through basic training (which all soldiers do) and moved on to my advanced individual training, which, in my case was helicopter flight training (See below for picture of me with part of the flight school class). In August 1968, I finished flight school, was discharged from the Regular Army, appointed a warrant officer in the Reserve and immediately called to active duty (and yes, that’s how they did it with nearly all of us who went through the warrant officer flight program. In my class only one pilot was assigned duty other than Vietnam and that was because his brother, also in that class, was going to Vietnam with the rest of us).

In September 1968 I was sent to Vietnam (See below for a picture of me at Cu Chi, RVN) and in September 1969, I returned home. I spent another two years on active duty and then was honorably discharged. I moved to Iowa, joined the Iowa National Guard as a helicopter pilot and began attending the University of Iowa.

I learned that the Air Force was looking for men (at that time, women did not receive flight training) to teach to fly jets. It sounded like a good idea so I joined Air Force ROTC, which, by law, meant I had to sever my association with the National Guard. I was taken into the Air Force Reserve as an enlisted man (which was the custom at the time) and began the training. About the time we all were to graduate, we were told that the Air Force was experiencing a reduction in force (RIF, for those you like acronyms) and we were told that few of us would receive slots for pilot training but we could all take our commissions or not, as the mood moved us.

I took mine and waited for a pilot slot to open. I learned it would be more than two years, but there was another choice. I could serve 90 days of active duty and that would be it. Well, I didn’t want to get my life in order for two years and then the Air Force turn it upside down, so I opted for the 90 days. At the conclusion, I was offered a job with the Reserve unit and I took that, entering into the Air Force Reserve. Eventually, I was promoted (on schedule) and reached captain. Finally, I finished with that, entered what is known as the Inactive Ready Reserve (IRR) and was eventually discharged, honorably. After more than 14 years of active and reserve duty for retirement purposes but with more than 23 years of overall service (yes, this is another confusing mess created by military regulations and their attempts to calculate retirement points), I had little connection to the military.

Then came 9/11. I had completed some advanced education including a MA in Military Studies with an emphasis in Intelligence and I believed I could offer some sort of help. I talked to the Army first, for some reason wishing to rejoin it. I talked to the Army Reserve and the National Guard and while they both were enthusiastic, they didn’t get very far. I talked to the Air Force, but they were less than impressed. I even talked with the Navy, thinking I hadn’t been in the Navy yet. Nothing seemed to work well. I was offered the chance to join the National Guard, as a sergeant rather than a captain, but I wasn’t too keen on that idea.

Finally, I was offered a commission as a captain in the Iowa National Guard and accepted it. Less than four months later that unit was called to active duty and three months after that, we were on our way to Kuwait and then Iraq. I spent over eleven months in theater before we were rotated home (See left for picture of me sitting in Saddam's chair in the Green Zone and below for me staninding on top of a building at the Baghdad International Airport). From that point, I spent another three months on active duty as the OIC (Officer in Charge) of the redeployment effort. About a year later I was promoted to major and continue my service in the National Guard with various calls to active duty for short periods.

I will point out here that I do have an appointment as a major general in the State Guard Association of the United States, the same organization to which Stephen Lovekin belongs. I belong to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and have published science fiction stories and books.

I mention all this because I have criticized the Disclosure Project and Michael Salla of Exopolitics fame for not vetting their witnesses, believing that the vetting process would solve many of their problems. If you build a structure based on the stories told by these witnesses and some of them are inventing their tales, then your structure is flawed. If you don’t understand the backgrounds, then you can make mistakes.

But, if I am going to criticize the backgrounds of these people, then I should be willing to provide some information about my background. It is one thing to sit on the sidelines and snipe and it is something else to jump into the fight.

I will note one other thing. Sometimes others make mistakes for you. On my first UFO book, the editor identified me as a captain, USAF (Ret). That was his mistake. He had seen my name saying, Captain USAFR and thought the "R" was for retired, not realizing it was for Reserve. Someone wrote a long article explaining that I had lied about this and there was no way that I could be retired. Forgetting for a moment that I had joined the Army in 1967 and this article was written in 1989 (which meant that I could have retired after twenty years), I wrote to him explaining the mistake. He seemed to have accepted this because he didn’t publish the article.

This just proves that mistakes are made, often by those who don’t know the military very well. Corso could have said that the publisher had made a mistake with his rank and we all would have nodded and said, "Happens all the time," but instead he made up an excuse. Then, to compound it, another excuse was invented, mentioning a public law that was irrelevant to the discussion. All of this simply cast a shadow over Corso and his inclusion in the Disclosure materials.

And once again, we reach the main point here. There are fakers out there who claim military service when they have had little or none. They claim medals they didn’t earn and ranks they didn’t obtain. There are those who claim to be colonels in mythical organizations as if this somehow improves their credibility. Until recently, there wasn’t much that could be done. Now, there are various new laws and some of these people are being prosecuted.

We, in the UFO community, have enough problems that we don’t need to get mixed up in these little fights. All we need to do is check the information as best we can. Sometimes we do make mistakes (and do I really have to mention Frank Kaufmann here?) and we should correct those when made. What we don’t need to do is to defend those who have lied to us, reach for explanations that don’t apply, and continue to hang on in the face of new information.

Maybe we can learn something from the Seattle Times. I hope that we do, but I have been around the UFO field long enough to know that we won’t.

More On Frank Kaufmann

In the last few hours I have received a number of emails asking if I thought that Frank Kaufmann might have been an agent of disinformation. That implies that Kaufmann had some real role in the cover-up, though he might not have been the insider that he claimed to be. The short answer is, "No."

Kaufmann was an opportunist whose name was provided by Walter Haut. I wish that I had the opportunity to question Walter about this, but like so much else in the case, when I learned the truth, it was too late to ask the questions.
Following is some of the documentation that Frank offered as his proof. And there is short commentary about why one document or another is faked.

Frank offered a couple of letters showing intelligence assignments, one signed by Robert J. Thomas, who Kaufmann claimed variously was a warrant officer, a major and a brigadier general, and while it is not impossible for one man to hold those ranks at various points in a military career, according to Kaufmann, he held them all at once.

The second letter is signed by Lester M. Garrigues and is dated 25 July 1947. To Kaufmann’s surprise, Garrigues was still alive and provided the Center for UFO Studies with this analysis:

As I had mentioned to your before, I was transferred from Roswell with my last duty day being June 2, 1947, and was then on leave and enroute to China where I was assigned as Personnel Advisor to the Chinese Air Force beginning July 11, 1947.

In other words, Garrigues wasn’t even in the United States on 25 July. To prove his point, he provided documents showing that he had left Roswell and wasn’t writing any letters about the crash or the people.

Next is the Easley letter. I suspect the signature is authentic, meaning, simply that it was lifted from one letter and applied to the next. A little white-out and a Xerox machine make it look real. The problem, as pointed out by other researchers is that some of the office symbols used here, while authentic, were of offices that did not exist in 1947, proving this document a fake.

And finally are the two separation documents. One showing that Frank’s military career was in personnel and that he was a clerk, never rising above staff sergeant (second document) and the other showing his intelligence training and his rank as a master sergeant. It is clear, based on research and other documents that the claim of intelligence training, intelligence assignments and the rank of master sergeant (first document) is not true.

What we have is a clever man with two typewriters from 1947, a supply of paper from 1947, documents with real signature on them and a little knowledge of how these things work. But there is nothing in the Frank Kaufmann stories that is helpful to us, he was not an agent of disinformation and the faster we forget about him, the better we all are going to be.

The Frank Kaufmann episode does raise one important question. If we are to believe the latest Walter Haut affidavit, and if Walter was the insider that he claimed to be in that affidavit, then how come he pointed us to Kaufmann, and why didn’t he know that Kaufmann was making it all up?

The New Debunkers: Sparks and Greenwood Rehash Klass

(Blogger's Note: Although I believe there is little value in continuing research into the Majestic-12 papers, I know there are many honest investigators who believe otherwise. Two the the most vocal, hardworking, and careful of those people are Robert M. and Ryan S. Wood. After the Brad Sparks, Barry Greenwood paper at the most recent MUFON Symposium, the Woods created a rebuttal. I asked them for permission to post their article in the interest of fairness. The following is their view of the MJ-12 situation as it stands today.)

The New Debunkers

Dr. Robert M. Wood &
Ryan S. Wood

In this years' MUFON symposium proceedings Brad Sparks and Barry Greenwood claim to show new "proof" that the Majestic 12 documents are a hoax. Through a tangle of theories worthy of the late debunker Philip Klass - they claim that the MJ-12 documents stem from isolated hoaxers at Kirtland Air Force Base (AFB) who defrauded even the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Ignoring critical evidence in the MJ-12 documents and claiming vast knowledge of the intelligence world, Sparks and Greenwood scoff that the MJ-12 documents do not deserve further study.

By contrast, the Majestic Documents Research Team, led by Dr. Robert M. Wood and Ryan S. Wood, believes that serious researchers deserve more than tabloid conspiracy theories and urge those who are informed on the extent of Majestic research to read the new MUFON paper to judge for themselves if it is based on relevant and reliable new evidence with sound reasoning. Below we touch on key issues. We remain confident that many of the MJ-12 documents show evidence of authenticity and that Sparks and Greenwood do indeed describe an early hoax, though not the one they claim. Since their paper's publication, we learn that Mr. Greenwood has disputed Mr. Sparks's version, and so has another claimed co-author Ms. Mary Castner who has challenged Sparks's version.

Sparks and Greenwood claim to be reporting the results of "a research project to review and investigate the secret Pratt tapes and files." None of the secret tapes or files are shared word-for-word, so the reader has no way to assess independently the credibility of this new source of information at the paper's MUFON release. Sparks and Greenwood claim that these tapes and files, when added together with other well-known material, make it clear that a few individuals in the Air Force have been responsible for faking several classic documents relating to MJ-12, the alleged government project to study UFOs in sophisticated detail.

Although most of the Sparks, Greenwood (and Castner?) focus is on the so-called Aquarius documents and the related Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD), the inference and statement is that all MJ-12 documents are fake, noting that the authors Wood and Wood "apparently have never met an MJ-12 document they did not like" and were "overly accepting." Actually, we have long thought that the Aquarius document was indeed a hoax just as stated.

Furthermore, we have possession of individual pages of original, old paper documents stamped MAJIC with the proper age of red ink. Such facts have been totally ignored by the paper, which largely focuses on the deceptions going on for potential fakery in the late 1970s and 1980s.

BACKGROUND

The fundamental story told by the MJ-12 documents is this: unconventional craft have maneuvered over the United States, causing enormous concern to our nation's security agencies, and some craft have faltered to earth where highly secret, and sometimes illegal, operations have recovered extraordinary technology and non-human creatures. All means were authorized to hide and discredit these phenomena. If you do not believe such events are possible, then you will reject the MJ-12 documents, and you will interpret other information through this same lens of denial. Conversely, if you suspect such events may have happened, you would expect to see some leaked documents like MJ-12 from whistleblowers.

Indeed, Sparks has a often billed himself as "the original Roswell skeptic" and disparages the increasing wealth of eye witness testimony. (More recently, Sparks says he has "reluctantly" concluded something unusual may have happened but will not state what. Sparks and Greenwood have long debunked MJ-12 and label those who believe the documents deserve serious research as either gullible or dishonest. Years before their alleged "new" evidence, they denounced anyone corroborating phenomena that the Majestic papers describe in compelling detail. Sparks dubbed the late Lt. Col. Philip J. Corso as "a fraud in the most embarrassing way [who] just cannot resist putting himself at the center stage of great events of history."

While describing UFO debunker Phil Klass as "my friend and colleague," Sparks dismisses Edward J. Ruppelt, respected former director of Projects Grudge and Blue Book and author of the book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, as demonstrating "a pattern of deceit" detrimental to UFO research. Mr. Sparks appears to be the only person to have come to this conclusion. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt himself was open-minded about UFO's, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."

CLAIMED AUTHORITY

MUFON readers deserve to know Sparks's and Greenwood's predisposition, since their paper rests squarely on the authors' mindset, extensive speculations and theories. While Sparks and Greenwood may not judge Corso worthy of "center stage" (although Corso served at far higher levels than they) - the paper begins with page after page of Sparks's claims, such as interviewing "some 100 CIA Directors, Deputy Directors, Assistant Directors, and various intelligence officials of the CIA, NSA, DIA, Air Force and Naval Intelligence and other agencies"; uncovering "the watershed event in all of government history in UFO studies"; and explaining the Kenneth Arnold sightings as "a spectacular meteor fireball that escaped back into space instead of the classic 'discs' which launched the modern UFO era in 1947."

According to his lengthy credits: "Brad also discovered that the CIA had concluded at that point that UFO's were extraterrestrial (until the AF deception), and this was confirmed by the CIA director and deputy director of its Office of Scientific Intelligence." He presents no evidence. Sparks writes: "He [Brad himself] is presently reconstructing the full history of U.S. Intelligence Community involvement with UFO's." (We wonder how he knows, unless he is a member of the Senior Intelligence Service, with clearances equal to the Director of National Intelligence, with a need-to-know and a large staff. Is it possible that his claimed conversations with some secret-keepers has, just possibly, left a few things out? Or that FOIA requests barely scrape the surface?)

Yet with the exception of compiling lists of Blue Book cases, Sparks has scarcely published, and we look forward to seeing evidence of his work that purportedly offers the definitive version of "all of government history in UFO studies" and a "full history of U.S. Intelligence Community involvement with UFO's." Sparks and Greenwood (who more modestly states he has been "a financial and electronic distribution clerk for the U.S. Postal Service since 1970") say they co-founded Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS), but this means little in recent decades since their admitted falling out with attorney Peter Gersten, its director, "in the early 80's" -- nearly twenty years ago.

THE REAL TOPIC

While introducing many other tangents and theories, they claim to focus on tabloid-style revelations that the late Mr. Robert Pratt, retired reporter for the "National Enquirer," made notes and telephone recordings of his conversations with Mr. William L. Moore and former Air Force Technical Sergeant Richard C. Doty. Apparently, MUFON secreted Pratt's recordings in files marked "PRATT SENSITIVE," and we wonder about their legality (Sparks's paper describes them as "secret" recordings), despite reported insistence by Pratt's widow that the telephone recordings were not illegal. (Moore and/or Doty can confirm whether or not they knew their conversations were being tape recorded over the telephone.)

Yet MUFON readers and serious researchers will recognize Moore and Doty, the Pratt sources, as two of the most notorious sources in Ufology. Moore, we recall, informed a stunned MUFON conference that he had collaborated with security officials to deceive them. Doty has fed story after dubious story to several researchers.

It is on this alleged loom and from this thread that Sparks and Greenwood weave a tapestry of accusations from which they conclude MJ-12, in Greenwood's words, is like Hitler's "Big Lie." Greenwood reassures us, however, that "it is not necessarily true that all conspiratorial behavior by government representatives should be viewed as part of official policy." And Sparks reassures us that "one cannot in general infer the existence of a supersecret merely from such efforts as AFOSI's [Air Force Office of Special Investigations] to protect the AF's turf against UFOlogist challengers." Instead, they claim, MJ-12 is the invention of a small coven of turf-conscious Air Force officials all by themselves in New Mexico, hating ufology and feuding with the NSC, CIA, Army and Navy.

We are not so readily assured. Greenwood, it is reported, believes this was done for profit. Sparks says it was done in a kind of anti-ufology 'hatred.' We are not convinced to cease our investigations based on Sparks's assurance not to "infer a "supersecret," but just to see it as a scuffle among a few 'lone gunman' Air Force folks in New Mexico against, among others, the purportedly gullible Central Intelligence Agency and the purportedly innocuous, Presidential-level National Security Council.

SOURCES AND METHODS

We want to state clearly that the Majestic Documents Research Team cannot yet give a direct account of the Pratt papers. All we have had till recently are Sparks's and Greenwood's (and Castner's?) interpretations. MUFON released Pratt's materials specifically to the two and did not give any hint to us of their contents and impending, dramatic release. Sparks and Greenwood (and Castner?) had the time they wanted in secret to construct their nearly 70-page, circular paper. We were offered the opportunity to respond initially on two weeks' notice without access to the alleged evidence. Because we brought this clearly to MUFON's attention, MUFON has now agreed to make at least some Pratt material available online, and we hope the entirety of what they hold in private.

We expect to give an update on the Pratt papers in the October MUFON journal. It may prove that the Pratt papers are a separate matter from the MUFON conference paper (hereinafter referred to as Sparks's paper, given that Greenwood and Castner have, perhaps for different reasons, disavowed Sparks). But there are points already clear about Sparks's paper itself.

Sparks's paper elevates Pratt. He writes: "Pratt had written extensively about UFO's as a reporter for the 'National Enquirer,' during a serious phase of the 'Enquirer's' history when it exercised responsible journalism." MUFON readers may want to get a strong cup of coffee as they consider this case. Linda Moulton Howe has written about evidence that the "National Enquirer" was established from the outset as a front for CIA disinformation. In his book The Missing Times: News Media Complicity in the UFO Cover-up, journalist Terry Hansen writes:

The newspaper's historical ties to powerful organizations such as the OSS, the CIA, the Pentagon, the White House, and the Mafia, raise troubling questions about its true agenda. To the uninitiated, though, the Enquirer seems hardly worth taking seriously. With its blaring, often absurd headlines and near-ubiquitous location alongside grocery store checkout stands across the nation, the Enquirer has become both a cliché and the butt of jokes among those who consider themselves sophisticated media consumers. There's much more to the National Enquirer than meets the eye, however. To see why, we need to review the Enquirer's fascinating origins, with particular emphasis on its ties to the U.S. intelligence establishment.

Even if we accept that Pratt remained blissfully innocent of the phony newspaper from which he retired, Pratt is not a fount of perfect recollection. Hansen reports that he questioned Pratt's involvement in an Enquirer story tending to discredit reports that UFO's appeared over ICBM missile bases. Hansen writes:

"Is there any reason to believe this story was purposely leaked to the Enquirer?" I asked Pratt. "None whatsoever," he replied. Following my initial series of questions, Pratt did further research on the matter and was now less confident in his first response. "By coincidence, just a few hours after sending you the answers to your first set of questions, I came across some documents relating to the 1975 over-flights," he wrote. "And there is a possibility that you may be right that someone did tip off the Enquirer with the intention of discrediting the information. [In respect to his contacts with UFO sources, again his memory wanders] This whole thing surprises me because I have no recollection of receiving such a phone call, nor do I remember working with Brad Sparks [the other researcher mentioned in his notes] on these incidents," Pratt added.

So we learn that Sparks has not approached the "PRATT SENSITIVE" files from a disinterested perspective. He had a history with Pratt, and we should know more about it. We are told further that Pratt secretly recorded telephone conversations concerning Moore and Doty leaking research by UFO researcher and nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman. It is on the basis of Pratt, Moore and Doty - that Sparks's contentious paper alleges its proof.

REAL HOAX

From page to page of conspiracy theories qualified by "supposedly" - "assume/assumes /assumed" - "seem/seemed/seems/seemingly" (Acrobat software gives an easy word count of all these instances) there are then juxtaposed absolute assurances such as: "Moreover there is no known precedent in AFOSI history or U.S. intelligence history or world intelligence history of an active duty intelligence officer forging documents for sale or for profit." MUFON readers will decide for themselves whether Sparks and Greenwood can know any such thing.

But MUFON readers will not have to decide whether the paper presents new arguments, since the evidence is crystal clear that it does not. Perhaps to sad surprise, the paper is a rehash and gloss on a report published by Philip Klass himself in the "The Skeptics UFO Newsletter" (SUN) #44, March 1997 - ten years before the Sparks's paper presented at the recent MUFON conference. (The Klass article is available after some digging online at http://www.csicop.org/klassfiles/SUN-44.html. If it disappears from the Internet, we will be glad to provide a full copy.) Greenwood and Castner will have to say whether they knew the paper rehashes Klass, but at the outset of his original article, Klass compliments Sparks himself by name:

On April 16, 1983--less than two years before William L. Moore and Jaime Shandera claim they received the "Top Secret/Eyes Only" MJ-12 documents from an unknown source--Moore reportedly sought the reaction of his friend Brad Sparks, a respected UFO researcher, to the idea of creating such counterfeit government documents. Sparks strongly recommended against it. Later, when Sparks called Stanton T. Friedman, he was shocked to discover that Friedman defended Moore's idea. Moore explained to Sparks that his and Friedman's efforts to locate persons who had been involved in (alleged) crashed-saucer recovery operations in New Mexico, and subsequent related events, had run into a dead end. During the April 16, 1983, meeting in Berkeley, Calif., Moore suggested that counterfeit government documents containing crashed-saucer information could be used to induce former military personnel to speak out and ignore their secrecy oaths. Sparks urged Moore not to resort to bogus documents, pointing out that if they contained any factual errors, this would identify the documents as counterfeit to those privy to the true facts. This, Sparks warned, could ruin Moore's reputation. SUN first learned of Sparks' involvement in mid-1991 but he was reluctant to speak out.

We wonder, honestly, how Klass knew Sparks's thoughts. Nevertheless, from there, Klass's article covers the arguments that the current Sparks paper presents as new, although now they are presented with the patina of allegedly new evidence from Pratt's possibly covert telephone recordings. It is interesting that Klass even cites how "extremely painstaking analysis by UFO-researcher Robert G. Todd has revealed one of the cleverest counterfeit Roswell-related documents ever discovered". Sparks likewise cites Todd seven times in the recent paper. We invite MUFON readers and serious researchers to observe the multiple parallels between the Klass article and the current paper. They could not be more plain.

The hoax, we think, might be to argue that Sparks's paper represents anything significant or new - except perhaps the "wilderness of mirrors" in which some UFO researchers (Sparks and Moore), prominent debunkers (Klass), tabloid reporters (Pratt) and government agents (Doty) have conducted decades of hidden discussions - more than most of us realize

EVIDENCE

We keep going back to seeking the evidence. That is the task of the Majestic Documents Research Team. Again, Sparks (and Greenwood or Castner?) state that "the overly accepting Woods have apparently never met an MJ-12 document they did not like." Interestingly, the precursor Klass article brings up the so-called Aquarius briefing, as does Sparks in his rehash. In point of fact, as noted above, Dr. Bob Wood has stated that he does not believe the Aquarius document is authentic. We recognize that the Majestic documents may be tainted with some that "poison the barrel." We do not know the actual motives if this is the case, though we do know clearly that this is a well established disinformation technique. Pratt himself quotes estimates that it would take only a minimal effort by security agencies to co-opt and compromise "ufology" organizations. The same is true of seeking to discredit valid leaked documents.

We are ready to believe or disbelieve based on the truth indicated by open evidence and sound reasoning. Our team's website (a) discusses explicit issues of authentication; (b) assigns ratings based on explicit factors, which differentiates documents; and (c) candidly discusses psychological warfare and disinformation. Ryan Wood of our team was the first to report in the highly praised book MAJIC EYES ONLY that the source known as "Cantwheel" admitted some of the documents he conveyed were "obvious fakes" re-typed from originals so that the recipient would not be vulnerable under espionage laws. Wood writes candidly that this must "raise questions about apparent delivery of some documents in facsimile, designed to avoid legal consequences. We must research this further, and it does raise serious questions."

We do not have space in this article to provide exhaustive discussion of our research over the past decade into the Majestic documents. We have published steadily in print and online - as has Stanton Friedman and others - and we will continue the professional discussion this November at the fifth annual "UFO Crash-Retrieval Conference" in Las Vegas, NV. Nevertheless, let us offer a few final comments here.

The Sparks paper makes repeated disparaging statements about Mr. Timothy Cooper. We do know from an official citation that Cooper's father was commended for work on the Air Force UFO program, which could explain why Tim Cooper might be trusted as a recipient of a number of the MJ-12 transmittals. In a detailed presentation to the Society for Scientific Exploration in 2004, Dr. Wood documented that 103 documents totaling 3,766 pages had emerged from multiple sources, not only through Cooper as sometimes alleged. He noted that expert forensic analysis had not supported allegations that Cooper had typed the documents. Cooper - who has never sought publicity nor money for the documents, some of which he himself doubted - voluntarily took a lie detector test concerning the documents and did poorly only on questions relating to revealing source names he had sworn to protect.

What we do know is that we have found extensive corroboration of the documents' content from known and accepted sources, as well as detailed and before-unknown correspondence of MJ-12 documents to others accepted as authentic. Not all documents present the same level of assurance, although some are convincing. Furthermore, among the documents are some that we have in original paper and ink. Expert forensic testing finds that the paper and ink fit their claimed historical timeframe. Elsewhere we have discussed openly and in detail the reasons we believe this body of documents - whose volume, variety and detail are staggering - deserve serious, intensive study.

Even then, in theory, they could be faked with the extensive funds, underlying research, and exhaustive man-hours of a determined and expert intelligence apparatus. But we have not yet by any means come to this conclusion. Some could be faked to "muddy the waters" and discredit authentic leaks. While Sparks's paper (Greenwood may agree or possibly Castner?) theorizes that the MJ-12 documents (all 3,766 pages in exacting, varied detail) were faked by a few Air Force miscreants in New Mexico and deceived the naVve CIA itself, we know from excellent work by one of our team members that some documents were mailed to Cooper with postage from a meter that was traced to CIA Headquarters. At root, the MJ-12 papers describe elusive, UFO phenomena that thousands of people have observed worldwide and that have not, we believe, all been faked by the United States Air Force. Nor, we believe, have all these documents.

DISINFORMATION

One area in which we must agree with Sparks, Greenwood (and Castner?) is this: some entities have acted aggressively to deceive and subvert UFO research in the public realm. No doubt, given the infamous and clumsy Doty affair, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations has played a part. But we find no evidence to support Sparks's and Greenwood's conclusion that the MJ-12 documents come from a few 'lone-gunman' hoaxers at Kirtland AFB. A longtime expert consultant to the authors gave us permission to quote him directly (though he frankly avoids professional association with "ufology"):

Having served in matters with the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Intelligence Community, I can say that the paper's conclusion has no bearing on how government works. The welter of supposition that leads to claiming a mid-level enlisted man fronting for a few security officers in a single OSI district in New Mexico discounts ample evidence that DCI Smith and the Psychological Strategy Board were involved deeply with this subject well beyond the Air Force. That a local AFOSI office would feel free to fake NSC documents is akin to the counter help at McDonalds feeling free to write and publish a false corporate annual report and expect it to fly on Wall Street. The very last thing such a group could do is to fake other agencies' documents without incurring extraordinary bureaucratic and political penalties. The gratuitous argument about the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit (IPU), thrown in with the kitchen sink, runs counter to publicly admitted facts and has nothing to do with the Pratt materials. The author has a penchant for claiming inside knowledge that he refuses to reveal or substantiate.

While the recent MUFON paper stands principally on its claims to privileged access not only to Pratt's notes and "secret" telephone recordings but also to a vast trove of alleged "insider" information from military, intelligence and other government sources, it is reasonable to ask whether and how Sparks and his cohorts could know what they claim. What has been their involvement, and by what expertise can they tell us how the Executive Office of the President (the institutional home for the National Security Council) actually functions with regard to UFOs? And how has their interpretation of alleged "inside" knowledge been influenced by pre-existing relationships between Sparks, Moore, Doty, Pratt and Klass? There are connections and disconnections that require considerably greater explanation.

These honest questions reflect a general problem in studying UFOs and related institutions and commentators. The Majestic 12 documents report perhaps the most intensive effort ever imagined to hide UFO phenomena in order to preserve power and privilege (some legitimate, some not). Can we doubt that such efforts would include classic ploys to discredit leaks, denigrate open research, and confuse and fracture public and professional interest?

During the years in which the "PRATT SENSITIVE" files were withheld even from dues-paying MUFON members and expert advisors, we must conclude that the public ufology organizations have been as jealous of their own files as the intelligence agencies have been of theirs! (Some have argued that ufology organizations are convenient instruments for security agencies to keep tabs on public awareness of specific sightings and of leaks, though we hope not to go so far!). In the midst of secrecy, uncertain intentions and misty credentials, some ufology data have certainly sparked sensationalism here and there -- bred more heat than light -- but ultimately been lost or buried as factions fall prey, despite the best efforts of honorable persons, to incapacity, manipulation and finally irrelevance.

CONCLUSION

After careful study of MUFON's paper, we are not dissuaded from further Majestic document research. In fact, we believe that the importance of these documents remains clear. The Majestic 12 documents are either the fire, or they are the smoke from the fire. Just as we endorse those who honestly and capably seek physical evidence and while we admire the pioneers who have explored psycho-spiritual implications of UFOs -- we must also face that the revolutionary possibility of visitation by non-human sentience must have surely engaged our political, military, intelligence and other social institutions at a deep level. The Majestic 12 documents -- including those that may have been faked for purposes important to discover - can illuminate these issues.

New views, even controversial, can be valuable, so we do not object to honest debate. Yet we believe this latest paper from Sparks, MUFON and perhaps others (we need to know, for example, what Greenwood and Castner have to say for themselves) raises keen questions about the standards of evidence, caliber of reasoning and processes of professional discourse affecting UFO studies -- versus the standards in professional disciplines where many of us have worked at responsible levels for decades. We will discuss this further at the fifth annual UFO Crash Retrieval Conference in Las Vegas this November .

This paper leads us to consider that there are important systemic issues determining whether "ufology" proves to have enduring value, or is bypassed in years to come by far stronger institutions in the mainstream. That is, whether "ufology" advances to the mainstream in line with the standards of scholarly integrity, due process and credentialing that typify the best of modern science in a free society. The challenge is clear for public ufology organizations: They must do what they have long sought from government. They must open their files for full, free and open research. Make their data sets fully available. That way, we will lessen the instances of unproductive grandstanding; selective release of "secret" files for the claims of a few; and embarrassing spats that have long discredited the UFO field.

Finally, we want to be clear. The Majestic Documents Research Team does not question the great majority of military and intelligence professionals who honorably defend our Nation. There are secrets that should be kept, and laws with institutional checks and balances that govern how this is done. On this too - the collective of Sparks, Greenwood, Pratt, Moore, Doty and Klass do not enlighten us.

How Did Frank Kaufmann Slip Through?

Let’s talk about Frank Kaufmann. He told a marvelous story of being one of the insiders who knew everything about the Roswell UFO crash, retrieval and cover up. He talked from the first moment I interviewed him in 1990. He was cagey at the time, hinted that he knew quite a bit about the case, but was somewhat reluctant to talk about it.

First question... how did I learn about Frank Kaufmann? Walter Haut told me that someone I would want to talk to was Frank. Walter hinted that Frank had some inside knowledge that would be helpful. I called Frank not long after Walter had given me his name.

Frank told me (and several others) that he had been at the base in July 1947. He hinted then that he had been part of the military, but the truth was, he was assigned there in a civilian capacity. Frank said that when the war ended, he was not going to be released from the service because he was in a critical job. They decided that he could do it as a civilian and draw less attention to himself, so he was released from active duty in 1946.

Frank provided a copy of his separation paper showing that he had been a master sergeant and that he had some very specialized intelligence training. The document looked to be authentic and in one sense was (seen above is the doctored version of Frank's separation papers).

Frank’s picture appears in the Yearbook that Walter Haut put together in 1947. Frank is receiving a medal from Payne Jennings. Studying the picture carefully (seen here), I believe the medal to be a World War II Victory Medal, though I don’t know why there were be a presentation for it. Everyone who served in the military during WWII received it.

Those in Roswell I asked about Frank, including Walter Haut told me that he was honest and that, according to Walter, "Anything Frank tells you is golden."

Each time we began to waver, each time we began to suggest that we were getting nowhere, Frank would come up with another bit of documentation. He provided notes, on authentic paper from the era (that is post WW II) that suggested they were old. Don Schmitt told me, based on his experience as an artist (yeah, I listened to that), that he thought the drawings were quite old (they would have been around fifty years old at the time) which suggested that Frank had made them in 1947.

The paper was the kind used by the military during the war, and included the little "Buy War Bonds," logo.

He gave me a copy of a page from the log book that documented the time of the crash, according to what Frank said. We talked to William Woody, a young man in Roswell in 1947, who told us of seeing the craft in the sky and Frank’s notes seemed to confirm what Woody said. Since the two didn’t know one another, there was no collusion between them.

Later he would give me a letter signed by Edwin Easley, that said, "For the purpose of analysis and evaluation, the craft recovered is being assumed to be manned craft of unknown origin and may in fact represent an interplanetary craft of some kind."

Yeah, this would be a smoking gun document, but it seems that a couple of the office symbols used didn’t exist in 1947. To Frank’s credit, he did spell marshal correctly, as in provost marshal.

He provided a document dated 25 Sep 47 that begin in part, "In accordance with (which we would now write as IAW) directive from the Directorate of Intelligence, Air Intelligence Division... the following military/civilian personnel will adhere to the duties and responsibilities as outlined in AIRD Manual E723."

Frank's name tops the list, as do the names of other members of "the nine" that Frank had identified.

This letter also said, "It is recommended that... be initiated whenever possible to include:

Official denial
Discredit/discourage witnesses..."

And was signed by Robert J. Thomas, Major, Air Corps.

He gave me a document dated 25 July 47 that said, "In accordance with directive from headquarters Strategic Air Command... the following military/military civilian personnel are relieved from duty assignment on Project AIRD 723, as it pertains to recovery 'Flying Disc...'
And Frank's name is at the top of the list.

So, we had Walter Haut giving us Frank Kaufmann, we had some of the people in Roswell vouching for him as an honest man. We had some documentation that did prove some of what Frank was telling us... and quite frankly, as Karl Pflock pointed out, we had the will to believe.

There wasn’t really much evidence to show that Frank was lying at the time some decided that he was. If you accepted the Mogul myth, as Karl did, then you knew that Frank was lying, but if you thought the crash might have been extraterrestrial, then Frank could be telling the truth. He would give us pictures and shows us documents and hint that other things would be given to us when the time was right.

There were little confirmations. Frank said the craft fell late on the evening of July 4, and that worked out so that Woody and his dad went out looking for it on the weekend rather than on a Tuesday night and that seemed more logical.

He said that he had met Werner von Braum and when we questioned that, he produced a "Congressional Recognition" which was an official document showing that von Braun had been in Roswell to help dedicate the museum about Robert Goodard. So, Frank, who was the Executive Vice President of the Roswell Chamber of Commerce was there. One paragraph said, "Frank Kaufmann... has, through the years, made a notable contribution. National leaders such as Dr. von Braun..."

So, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Frank had been at the same event as von Braun. I mean we have all had a chance to talk to celebrities in strange circumstances. Who would have thought that I would meet David Letterman in Baghdad? (Letterman and me in Baghdad.)

Frank’s stories all unraveled right after he died in 2001. Dr. Mark Rodeghier of the Center for UFO Studies, with Mark Chesney and Don Schmitt were in Roswell and were asked by Kaufmann’s widow, a very nice lady named Juanita, if they would check his papers to make sure there were no obligations that he had failed to meet prior to his death. While searching those papers, they found the evidence that Frank had forged many of the documents, that he had a supply of the old paper, that he had been nothing more than a staff sergeant (which is not to say that staff sergeants aren’t important, only that he hadn’t been a master sergeant), that he had two old typewriters, and other bits and pieces. It meant that th Kaufmann tales were little more than the inventions of a clever man.

So, to answer the question, how did he slip through? His name had been provided by Walter Haut, he was vouched for by Walter and others (such as Robert Shirkey, an operations officer at Roswell in 1947), and he had some documentation.

For those interested, I had written to St. Louis in an attempt to get Frank’s record and was told, "If the record were (sic) here on July 12, 1973, it would have been in the area that suffered the most damage in the fire on that date and may have been destroyed."

In another attempt, made in 2003, they provided no records other than to write, "This veteran was a member of the Army of the United States from August 5, 1942 to March 27, 1944. He was honorable discharged as a staff sergeant." This isn’t correct. According to Frank’s "real" separation, he was discharged on October 30, 1945. I don’t know why those in St. Louis reported the date as 1944.

Needless to say, had this information been available to me ten years earlier, I could have avoided the embarrassment of believing that Frank Kaufmann had anything of value to contribute to the investigation.

I don’t know how we go about preventing this in today’s world. Yes, we should be more skeptical and yes, we should check out as much as we can. Independent documentation is necessary, and it is good to have someone vouch for the witness. But Frank had the documentation. The verification of his military service simply didn’t work and I don’t know why. The Records Center in St. Louis should have been able to do something more than say the records burned and later providing inaccurate information.

Frank appeared to be who he said he was. He was clearly in Roswell at the right time and he clearly had been assigned to the base. We had documentation, we had others vouching for him. The only thing we could have done is not report his story, but then where would we be.

We’ve all been fooled. Some by Gerald Anderson who seemed to be credible but was not. Glenn Dennis who told a marvelous tale with a missing nurse, only to change the name, and the conditions when it was found there had been no nurse by that name. Jim Ragsdale told of seeing the crash and seemed to have some inside knowledge that, at one time, corroborated part of Frank’s story, but later blew up just as badly.

I suppose all we can do is look at the tales with a skeptical eye, search for verification and report the facts as we learn them. Otherwise we’ll just never get anything done.

I will point out one other sad fact here. As we, meaning Don Schmitt and I were working on this investigation, there were many who wondered where our financing originated. They thought MUFON, the Center or FUFOR was providing it. Both the Center and FUFOR did contribute, but nowhere near the amount we needed. It came from our own pockets and one of the ways to recover some of that money was to publish what we had. Yes, it was premature and preliminary, but it was also necessary so that we could continue. We went with the best we had. Unfortunately, at this point, people were coming out of the woodwork with great stories of the crash. I mean, it was great to begin a lecture by saying, "This story starts like those Science Fiction tales in the movies... a couple in a desert area and something falls from the sky..."

So we published what we had, but then, Karl Pflock published what he had and while he was right about Kaufmann (and for the wrong reasons) he was wrong about others including Brigadier GeneralArthur Exon whom he virtually ignored. We were attempting to increase our cash for more research. The solution would be funding for UFO investigation so that the money doesn’t come out of the pockets of the researcher... or investigators who are rich enough to finance their work. (Frank later in life seen here.)

I really have no solution for this problem of financing. I’ll also note that some aspects of the UFO field are revisited periodically because there are those who believe it with a passion. We have contactees, cattle mutilations (yes, I’ll stir up that hornets nest again) the Allende Letters and so on, all coming back so that we don’t progress. We do the same things over and over and don’t progress at all. We stagnate and never realize it.

FAKERS!

I have noticed that a quick way to build credibility in the UFO field is to put a military rank in front of your name. The higher the rank, the more credibility. The problem here is that some claim a rank they never held, some claim a rank even without military service, and some claim a rank simply because it strokes their egos.

Claims of military service slice across all areas of life. Some of it seems harmless enough, but what about those veterans who actually served? Don’t they deserve the respect they earned, and why should they share it with those who wished they had served but hadn’t?

A couple of years ago I happened to be reading the obituaries in the local newspaper and came across one that mentioned the man had been a Vietnam Veteran. Something wasn’t right about that and I finally realized what it was. The man had been born in May 1957, which meant he would have turned 18 a couple weeks after Saigon had fallen in April, 1975. I knew that men and women signed up for service before they turned 18 and that a person could enter active duty at 17 and a half. But, I also knew that it was policy not to send anyone into combat until he had turned 18. American troop involvement on the ground in Vietnam had ended several years before Saigon fell and that only specially trained troops were there in 1975.

All this is a long-winded way to say that the man wasn’t a Vietnam Veteran because he simply wasn’t old enough. There seemed no reason to expose his claims now. He was dead and the family had enough grief. They didn’t need some stranger telling them that their son and husband had been lying about his Vietnam service.

This man was not alone in inventing his tales of Vietnam and military service. I met a man who claimed to be a Marine sniper who had engaged in "wet work." He said that he had been in both the Air Force and the Marines and he had the discharge papers and other documents to prove it. The problem was that he had never seen a day of active duty in the Air Force other than a six weeks summer training session required of nearly all Air Force ROTC cadets before graduation.

His Marine experience was even thinner. When the Air Force reduced the size of its various components, all Air Force ROTC cadets were given the choice of opting out, taking a commission and spending 90 days on active duty, or waiting for the Air Force to find a pilot slot for them on extended active duty. This fellow opted out and signed up for Marine Officer Candidate School with a promise that he would be offered aviation training upon completion of that school. He decided he didn’t want to do that, so, without a day of service in the Marines, he was given an honorable discharge. He had not been overseas, he had not been trained as a sniper, and he had never been in combat.

Gerald Anderson, he who claimed to have seen the crashed flying saucer on the Plains of San Agustin, appeared on the scene after Unsolved Mysteries ran a segment on the Roswell UFO crash case. Anderson claimed that he had been there in 1947 and to prove that he was a credible witness said that he had been a chief of police and he had been a Navy SEAL engaged in secret missions in Southeast Asia. According to various records, Anderson had been the only police officer in a small Missouri town so his exaggeration that he was the chief of police was unimportant. In fact, it was more of a joke than an actual claim.

The record about his Navy service is less clear. He might have been in the Navy, though no one has confirmed that to this point, but it is clear that he was not a Navy SEAL and had not engaged in secret missions in Vietnam or Southeast Asia. According to the Web site real Navy SEALs established, Anderson had not been a SEAL.

In fact, as we examine the rolls of those who have claimed military service, we find, literally, thousands of fakers. Men who dodged the draft in the 1960s claim Vietnam service. Others were in the military during the war but were not "in country" related tales of horrific combat. One of the pretenders was Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa who claimed to have been a fighter pilot in Vietnam. The truth was that he had ferried aircraft into Saigon’s Ton Son Nhut air field, but he had stayed no more than two or three days each time. He engaged in no combat missions and his official senate biography which claimed such service now suggests he was a "Vietnam Era vet." If nothing else, Harkin did set foot in Vietnam. Some of the fakers weren’t even in the service, let alone in Vietnam but tell detailed stories of their fights against the communists.

This might seem like a modern phenomenon. In today’s world people are struggling for some sort of identity and Vietnam Vet is as good as any other. But, looking back into history, we find that there were always those willing to steal the glory from those who deserved it. Look at any significant event in our history and there are those who have claimed to been involved.

During World War II, D.S. "Sonny" Desvergers, was a Marine who had some of the most unbelievable war experiences ever claimed. According to a document found in the Air Force’s Project Blue Book files, "Once during a birthday party, Desvergers stated that during the war he was a Marine and had been on sea duty on a battleship. He stated that one day he was contacted by an Officer of Naval Intelligence who asked him to go on a secret mission. He was taken to Washington and given a briefing by a group of Colonels then taken to California to go to school with some more Colonels from Washington. He was flown to the Pacific to map Jap[anese] held islands that were unchartered (sic). He stated that he was taken to the island under cover of darkness in a PBY aircraft along with his surveying cryptography equipment and that as they approached the island a life raft was inflated and thrown out the waist window of the PBY. The PBY landed in the dark in unchartered waters next to the raft [which makes no real sense because it would have been safer to land and then inflate the raft] and put Desvergers and his equipment into the raft. With the cover of darkness he paddled up to the beach and buried all his equipment. Desvergers stated that at the beginning of the story the island was 7 x 3 mi. long and at the end, it was 25 x 50. After about two weeks of hiding from the Jap[anese] all day and digging up his equipment and surveying at night, he had mapped the island. In many cases he had brushes with Japanese Officers and once during his two weeks he was lying in some bushes hiding during the day when the Jap[anese] walked by so close to him they could touch him. When the job was finished he had set up a rendezvous with the PBY and it landed at night. However, the Jap[anese] saw the airplane land and knew that he was on the island. He inflated his rubber raft and started paddling toward the aircraft but the Japanese started to fire at him and sunk his life raft, however, in the raft he had a Gibson Girl radio with a balloon for an antenna. He quickly inflated the balloon, crawled on it and flowed out to the PBY. As he was being picked up by the aircraft, people were reaching out of the hatch helping him. During the time the Jap[anese] were shooting at them and several of the sailors who were helping him were badly wounded."

This is the type of story that Hollywood would make into a movie and that is the real problem here. It is exactly the kind of story Hollywood would invent for a movie because it would never happen in real life. First, this smacks of being just another war story. Secret missions are not developed in that fashion and they don't select the soldiers, or in this case a Marine, in such a haphazard fashion. These missions are given to highly trained personnel who have expertise that is critical to the successful completion of the mission. They are not given to PFCs who have no special training or expertise and who seem to be out of touch with reality.

But more importantly is the service record of Desvergers. Here is a man who was in the Marines during the Second World War. It was a time when the expansion of the various services, including the Marines, demanded huge numbers of recruits. The fighting in Europe, Africa, and the Pacific were grinding up men in terrible numbers. Yet, according to the record, Desvergers had been tossed out of the Marines with a less than honorable discharge in 1944. As noted in the Blue Book record, "He had been booted out of the Marines after a few months for being AWOL and stealing an automobile." He apparently went from lone hero to disgraced Marine in a very short time.

This is not the only discrepancy found. He had told many friends at various times that he had been a PFC test pilot in the Marines and had flown every type of naval and Marine fighting aircraft. Of course, prior to the war, the Marines did have "flying sergeants," that is, enlisted men who were pilots. They had no PFC test pilots, however.

Nor was the Civil War immune from its fakers. The last three survivors of the Civil War, on the Confederate side, appear to have been lying about their service. According to many newspapers, and supported by the documentation available, the last authenticated survivor of the Civil War was a Union soldier, Albert Woodson, who died in 1956.

There are, however, Web sites, histories, magazine articles and newspaper reports that give the honor of the last of the Civil War soldier to die to Walter W. Williams of Houston, Texas. Although there were a few who were skeptical, no one bothered to check the record until William Marvel wrote about it in Blue & Gray magazine in 1992. Marvel used old census records, the existing military records from various archives and other sources of documentation. He learned that the Confederacy had little in the way of records about who served, though they had some. Williams’ name appeared in none of those documents, but, according to Marvel, that didn’t mean he hadn’t served in some capacity. The search couldn’t end at that point.

Williams, according to what he told reporters, friends and family later in his life, was born in 1846, but later suggested it had been 1842. That meant he was somewhere between 112 and 117 when he died in 1959. He had, again according to what he said, been a resident of Mississippi when he enlisted in Tennessee in a Texas regiment that was serving in Virginia. Possible, of course, but not likely. He later claimed that he had served with Quantrill’s Raiders in Missouri and Kentucky.

Marvel found Williams on a census record from Hawamba County in 1860 on which he was listed as a five year old boy. That meant he was born, not in 1842 or 1847, but in 1855. Marvel found that in every census he gave a birth date that was consistent with being born in either late 1854 or early 1855. The census of 1910, which carried a column to designate those who had served in the Civil War, contained no such designation for Williams. He would have been, at best, eleven when the war ended.

However, in 1932, Williams applied for a Confederate pension. At that point he began to exaggerate his age. The best evidence available, and it seems to be conclusive, is that Williams, who also went by the name of Walter G. Williams, was not a veteran of the Civil War.

In fact, in the Blue & Gray article, Marvel wrote, "Every one of the last dozen recognized Confederates was bogus. Thomas Riddle was only five when the Confederacy collapsed, and Arnold Murray only nine. William Loudermilk, who insisted he fought through the Atlanta Campaign at 16, did not turn 14 until after Appomattox. William Bush and a reputed Confederate nurse named Sarah Rockwell were not 20 years old in the summer of 1865, but 15."

Marvel pointed out that most of these imposters were in it for the money and that it was "a common scam." They tacked a few extra years on their ages, claimed service in some "obscure militia unit" and then could claim a state pension.

The real problem here is not that these people have claimed to be something they are not, but that they are creating an oral history of events that didn’t happen. In today’s world, with the explosion of Web sites, small press book publishers, hundreds of magazines, and now television documentaries, these faked tales are told time and again and become part of our history. On more than one Web site, including an educational site, John Salling is listed as the last of the Civil War soldiers to die, though the documentation proves otherwise. Why should Salling be given the recognition that belongs to Albert Woolson?

The problem is even worse for the Vietnam War. While claims to have served are not, in a historical context, all that important, it is the oral tradition that these fakers leave behind. The impression, based on these stories is that the American Army, and American soldiers, were out of control in Vietnam, killing anything that moved whether a combatant or not. The tales of these fakers are used to prove that point over and over, and have been used to justify murders in the United States.

B.G. Burkett, who has exposed more fakers than any other researcher or Vietnam Vet, reported that time and again, his information about fakers was met with scorn. Typical of these was the story of Robin Wright, who claimed to be a highly decorated SEAL and who, during his third tour in Vietnam was in an aircraft crash in the Vietnamese jungle between the beach on the South China Sea and the Da Nang airfield.

A rescue helicopter dropped a paramedic and then both Wright and the medic were hauled up. As Wright reached the helicopter, he was hit twice, in the back. For his heroics, either on this mission, or on others, Wright claimed that he had been awarded the Navy Cross, the United States’s second highest medal for valor, a couple of Silver Stars, the third highest, and, at the very least, one Purple Heart.

Articles about Wright were published in Guideposts, a religiously oriented magazine and in Panama City, Florida News-Herald. Larry Bailey, a real SEAL who had retired and was writing freelance articles, suggested that the story told by Wright and published by the magazine and newspaper was filled with technical mistakes that a true SEAL would not have made. Bailey’s research showed that Wright’s military record proved that he had not trained as a SEAL. His records did show that he had served in Vietnam, but earned only the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Campaign Medal and the Vietnam Service Medal. He had no Navy Cross, no Silver Stars and no Purple Heart.

Years in the future, as people, for whatever reason, begin to research the Vietnam War, they’ll come across these stories of faked heroism or rampant American atrocities in Vietnam, or thousands of others like them, and assume that they are true. Why should they doubt the magazines or the newspapers? They were only printing what they believed to be the truth. And, of course they’ll be believed because the person relating the tail could put a military rank in front of his, and in a few cases, her name.

Without some sort of balance, the legacy of the faker will overshadow the accomplishments of those who served. Stories of atrocities and murdered women and children make for much more exciting reading than the stories that most Vietnam Veterans can tell. They served their country, sometimes by merely stringing communications wire, or building barracks, or refueling aircraft. They spent their year in Vietnam doing a needed job that was no more exciting than working for the telephone company or building houses or pumping gas. They did all that was asked of them, and the little glory they gained is being stolen by those who inflate their records, or who never set foot in Vietnam or who never served.

And now the war in Iraq, not even concluded is dogged by those who claim participation but have none. One man in a letter to me said that he had been in northern Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction before the US invasion of that country. Another man wrote a series of articles detailing American atrocities that never happened. He hoped to snag a book deal so that he could continue to spin his false tales. He didn’t care that his lies were making it tougher for the soldiers in the field.

As a sad sidebar to this, I wrote an article and sent it to be published in the magazine of one of those veteran’s organizations. They rejected it and I was surprised, until I thought about it. Of course, I was challenging some of their membership and membership is the key to such an organization. They weren’t as worried about the credentials of those belonging as they were worried about maintaining the membership numbers and keeping the dues coming in.

So, how does all this relate to UFOs and the paranormal? Well, how many of those running around in the UFO field are claiming a military background or a military rank actually earned the distinction? Who can demonstrate that background and who cannot? Maybe it’s time, once again, for those claiming a military rank to prove that they truly deserving of that rank. If a man claims to be a colonel, then he should have to prove that he holds that rank in a recognized military organization. If he can’t do that, or dodges the question, then everything else he says must be looked at carefully.

Philip Corso said that he was a colonel but his records clearly show that he never climbed above lieutenant colonel. He said that he thought he had been promoted when he retired, but that didn’t happen. An honest mistake? Possibly. If nothing else, Corso did serve in the military and had climbed to field grade rank.

But others just make it up, append the rank to their names and then insist on calling themselves by that rank. They invent organizations to justify their claims, but never offer any proof that the claims are true.

In this world all too often that somehow gets overlooked. It’s too easy to accept the information as fact, even when it flies in the face of logic. The point here is to merely suggest that we look at this a little more closely. If a man lies about his rank, his educational background, his accomplishments, then how much of his research can we believe.

And that, I guess, is the real point here. A man’s real background may not be all that important to understanding what he says, but his track record is. If he can’t be trusted to tell the truth about that, what can he be trusted to tell us that we wish to know?