Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit - Part Two

There is another alleged MJ-12 document that suffers from many of the same problems as the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary and this is the Majestic Twelve Project, Annual Report which is believed to have been created during the summer of 1952. This is another of the documents provided by Timothy Cooper through his source of Thomas Cantwheel, that unidentified man who claimed to have been on the inside of UFO crashes investigations and with the Majestic Twelve or some such.

These are the conclusions from a larger document which rehashes some of the information from other documents and adds to the knowledge that we have been told is highly classified. It is clear from the document that, “…no country on this earth has the means and the security of its resources to produce such [meaning an interplanetary craft].”

It is noted that “The occupants of these planform vehicles are, in most respects, human or human-like. Autopsies, so far indicate, that these beings share the same biological needs as humans.”

One of the things that would become important in understanding the veracity of the document said, “The ATIC Interrogation Reports, numbered 1 to 93 (the last dated December, 1950), present significant information on a broad variety of subjects and areas where witnesses were obtained subsequent to the post-1947 incident. The un-published documents consolidate records of interrogation derived from the accumulated reports of interviews of selected witnesses from New Mexico and military personnel involved in removal of evidence.”

It is after Section P labeled as “Government Policy of Control and Denial,” a list of statements about all these events is found. For example, it said, “The Panel’s review of the AEC and AFSWP investigation of Site L-1 and the Air Force Site L-2, has led the Panel to conclude that the objects under study, are the result of a high altitude ejection of a [sic] escape cylinder from a fatal mid-air collision of two unidentified circular planform aircraft of interplanetary nature.”

As had been seen in the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary, there are the coordinates for L-2 [which is why the two documents can be tied together] and they are written in the same weird format, meaning “Lat. 33-40-31, Long. 106-28-29.… this site yielded the most material for analysis.”

We learn that Site L-2 is associated with Site L-1, again for which no coordinates are provided, which also seems strange. The descriptions of both sites seem to match to some degree and that “impact and the debris pattern… and debris pattern suggests that the craft hit the ground at a sharp angle and continued to remain airborne until coming to rest at Site L-2.”

Then comes a statement that turns part of this upside down. According to the document “The second craft that impacted at Site L-3, provided very little evidence that it too was similar in design, so the impact was vertical in nature and at very high speed. It is believed that the debris discovered on 2 July 1947, by a local rancher was the result of a mid-air collision with an X-plane from HAFB [Holloman Air Force Base]; another unidentified object; or possibly collided with both…”

According to the document, “There were five recovered bodies, two of which were found in a severely damaged escape cylinder, and the remaining three were found some distance away from the cylinder. All five appeared to have suffered from sudden decompression and heat suffication [sic] (recovery and autopsies of the occupants are covered in detail in a separate study GRAY SUIT within Projects 612 and 621…”

Later, it is noted that tissue samples from the contamination of four technicians involved in the recovery were being held at Fort Detrick, MD.

And to make matters worse, there is the note, “Detection of a high altitude explosion was recorded by a Project MOGUL constant level balloon on 4 July 1947.”

At another point it said, “On 6 December 1950, MAJCOM-4 alerts MAJCOM-1 of a breach in DEW Greenland of a UFO on a south-westerly course. HQ IPU alerted and dispatched a scientific team to El Indio-Guerrero on the Texas-Mexico border. MAJCOM-4 orders a recovery team from Project Stork and MOON DUST to crash site…”

But here’s the problem with those things mentioned above. They are out of place. They shouldn’t be in this document because they didn’t exist at the time it was supposedly written. Or other, better information has superseded it. Newer information has shown where the older data are wrong. For example, the document states that “…ATIC Interrogation Reports, numbered 1 to 93 (the last dated December, 1950), present significant information on a broad variety of subjects…” But, according to Brad Sparks, ATIC wasn’t formed until May 1951 and therefore could not issue a series of reports before its existence.

Although there is the discussion about some sort of mid-air collision, the best evidence today is that there was a single craft that scattered its debris over three sites, all of them between Corona, New Mexico and Roswell. There is no evidence of a crash near the Trinity Site, other than in the MJ-12 documents. While an argument can be made that the information we have today does not completely eliminate the collision scenario, it can also be argued that it is out of date information that was the current thinking by some in the mid-1990s. That dates the creation of the document to that time.

Then, unlike the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary, this document adds a third site. This might be an attempt to account for the later information coming from UFO researchers in the 1990s. Realizing that something else had come down between the Brazel ranch debris field and Roswell, the forger added this new detail to conform to the new and better information. As an aside, this information should have appeared in the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary, since it would have been available in July 1947. This all, of course, is indicative of a hoax rather than the truth.

Worse still, is the suggestion that Mack Brazel had found the debris field on July 2. It has been claimed by some that the crash took place either late on July 2 or early on July 3. Brazel found the debris on July 3 or 4, according to some of the scenarios, but none of them include finding debris as early as July 2.

The idea of a collision between an experimental aircraft out of Holloman is not borne out by research. Air Force investigation showed that no military aircraft, either in the regular inventory or in the experimental stages disappeared in early July 1947. Those on the inside of these organizations, with the clearances necessary, would know this. They might speculate about a collision with an unknown object but they would know that it was not an aircraft of any type.

We move into trivia again. Holloman Air Force Base was, in fact, the Alamogordo Army Air Field in 1947, but I suppose you could argue that someone writing about this in 1952 would use the current name of the air field rather than the older name.

Almost the same could be said about the tissue samples were sent to Fort Detrick. The problem here is that Fort Detrick was Camp Detrick in 1952. The new designation would not be made until some four years after the document was allegedly written. Yes, you could say that it is a minor mistake that might have been made by someone who was not fully aware of how the Army designated their installations. Even someone inside the Army might not understand this. The question to be asked is how many of these sorts of errors are allowed before it becomes clear that the document was not written by an insider?

Part of that answer is found in the next statement about a MOGUL balloon detecting the collision or explosion on a July 4. First, there was no July 4 MOGUL flight and there is no indication that any sort of explosion detected by MOGUL. This is not to mention that it contradicts the other information suggesting that Brazel found the debris on July 2. If the alleged detonation was detected by the July 4 flight, then how is it linked to an event that happened two days before it was launched?

But it is the next paragraph that proves the document a hoax. It begins with a date of December 6, 1950, and claims that the UFO breeched the DEW in Greenland. The problem is that the DEW line didn’t exist in 1950 and according to Brad Sparks the name wasn’t even “coined until the MIT Project Lincoln Summer Study Group report of September 1952. The DEW line was not started until 1954.”

Even worse, according to the document, “HQ IPU alerted and dispatched a scientific team to El Indio-Guerrero on the Texas-Mexico border.” This is based on the testimony of Robert Willingham, who claimed that as a high-ranking Air Force officer and fighter pilot, he had seen the crash. The trouble is that Willingham was neither an officer nor a fighter pilot and his story has been discredited. It would seem that a tale, invented in the 1960s by Willingham and that has undergone several revisions since then, would not appear in an authentic document created more than a decade before Willingham made his first claim.

Finally, we know that Project Stork was the analysis done by Battelle and had nothing to do with crash retrievals. Although it began early enough to be mentioned in this document, it is clear that the author didn’t know what Project Stork was.

Attached to this is the mention of the MOON DUST team but this is a real problem. According to documents that I located in the Project Blue Book files and a letter dated December 12, 1957, MOON DUST began in the fall of 1957. In other words, it would not exist for five years and there is no way for it to deploy a team in 1950.

To summarize (which is to say, let’s beat this dead horse), this document is filled with internal contradictions, it is filled with inaccurate information, and it contains information that would be correct if the programs, units and projects actually existed in 1952. While it might be argued that this is a draft (which would have been destroyed when the final draft was completed) so that you might expect the typos, misnamed military organizations, and some inaccurate information, all of which would be corrected in the final draft, there is no way to explain the predictions for the future.  There is no way for the author to know the DEW line would be created two years in the future, would know that it would be called the DEW line before the name was coined, and no way to know that MOON DUST would be created some five years later. These, to me, are the fatal flaws.

For those interested, there are more examples of this in the document. I just didn’t bother to enumerate all of them. And yes, I know that the comment will be made that the way to discredit a leak of classified information is to pump false information into it so no one knows what is accurate, what is false, and the whole thing is rejected. But that isn’t the point here. These documents just appeared in Timothy Cooper’s mail box and the trail basically ends there.

Without a provenance, without an eyewitness, without anything to allow us to validate the documents, there is but one sane course. Ignore them. Reject them. Move our research efforts into another arena. Unfortunately, the facts about this document are not enough to remove it from the case. Instead it is considered highly reliable by some in the UFO community.

There is one other thing to be said. During all my investigations into the MJ-12 documents, regardless of source, Stan Friedman, Dr. Robert Wood and Ryan Wood, have answered most of my email questions. All are aware of my personal belief in MJ-12 but they do respond and I appreciate that. It would be simple for them to ignore my questions but they don’t. I thank them for putting up with my questions.

Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary - July 22, 1947

The other night as I was cursing the cable I blundered into another of those UFO programs filled with hysterical narration and a belief that nearly every outrageous claim is based in reality. In this case they were talking about the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit as if the documentation existed to prove that the Army had, at one time, investigated UFOs under that unit title. They flashed some documentation but in today’s world with nearly everyone and her brother creating UFO documents for fun and profit you would think that a little caution would be called for. But there was really nothing in the documentary to suggest that this wasn’t true other than a mention of the “controversial MJ-12” documents.

I had thought that it had been fairly well established that this IPU information had been discredited and was a little surprised to see it being used as evidence that MJ-12 was real, as was the Roswell UFO crash along with a similar event over on the Plains of San Agustin (or more accurately, a point to the southeast of Socorro, but more on that later). So I wondered just what do we know about the IPU and where did that information originate.

It seems that in 1977 Larry Bryant had filed a somewhat generic FOIA request with the Army asking about their gathering of UFO reports. Eventually, in response, the Army said that their records had been sent to the Air Force in 1962 so they no longer had anything related to UFOs. If you look at the timing here, you’d see that the Air Force was also attempting to get rid of the UFO investigation or relegate it to the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Information (SAFOI), so the Army, having the perfect place to dump their UFO material, did so. All this means that at the time no one wanted to get stuck with the UFO problem.

Bryant filed another request and in 1978 the Army came back with what they termed an “institutional memory,” which was their way of saying they’d asked an older member of the team what he could remember. He said that in 1958 the UFO reports were processed by the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit. This was set up in 1958 after the launch of the Soviet satellites in late 1957. According to the institutional memory, all the material gathered was sent to the Air Force in 1962. The IPU was abolished at that point.

Brad Sparks believed that the actual name was probably something like the Intelligence Processing Unit and the function was that of gathering all sorts of intelligence reports about all sorts of things to be distributed to the various commands and activities where that information could be exploited. According to Sparks, based on his review of various organizational charts and other documentation, he found the name of the IPU was actually Input Processing Unit, and if Sparks was right about its function, then this name makes more sense than the more exciting Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit.

And while you could argue that Sparks has gotten this wrong, though the evidence supports him, there seems to be one fact that is not in dispute. The IPU did not begin to function until 1958. There is no evidence that it existed prior to that.

But then documents from the IPU began to surface. They seemed to come from a man named Timothy Cooper who received them from a fellow named Thomas “Cy” Cantwheel which is a pseudonym so that he can’t be traced and his claims about his background can’t be independently verified. One of the documents that relates to the IPU is labeled Top Secret and it mentions only those with “Majic access may have access.” This strikes me as a rather wishy-washy way to say that “Access to the document is restricted to those with Majic clearance,” but then, that’s just my personal opinion.

The document is the “Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary,” and it is classified as “Top Secret – Ultra.” There is a problem with this as well. A classified project known as “Ultra” existed during World War II. Ultra was an attempt to gather and decrypt Nazi communications at the highest level. By the end of the war this was an Allied effort that was of significant importance and certainly contributed to the defeat of the Nazis. But the point is, the classification for the project was Top Secret Ultra and that was for that specific project which has nothing to do with UFOs.

Overlooking this, the document lays out the “facts” about the Roswell UFO crash. The problem here is that investigations as outlined in these documents have been superseded by new and better information. It places a part of the crash at Site LZ - 2 (which I suppose is Landing Zone 2) some twenty miles southeast (that’s right, southeast) of Socorro, which moves it from the Plains of San Agustin to “Lat. 33 – 40 – 31, Long. 106 – 28 – 29, with Oscura Peak being the geographic reference point.” Overlooking the fact that the coordinates would have been listed as 33.40.31N and 106.28.29W (33° 40' 31" N, 106° 28' 29" W), those coordinates are not on the Plains of San Agustin, but southeast of Socorro. While the Barnett story is questioned and certainly does not relate to the Roswell crash, it was clear that he was talking about the high country meaning the Plains and not someplace to the southeast.

For those keeping score at home and who don’t have Google Earth on their computers, those coordinates, along with Oscura Peak, are on the White Sands Missile Range near the Trinity site. It’s difficult enough to get onto the debris field found by Mack Brazel since it is private property surrounded by BLM land. No one is going to drive out onto the missile range to dig on that site, let alone get near the Trinity site without permission. As far as I know, no one has been there to see what might have been left behind.

In fact, that leads to another question. Why is it that they have the coordinates for LZ – 2, but not for the Brazel ranch site? I suspect the reason is that when this document was created, the coordinates of the Brazel site were known to very few people and if the document had the wrong coordinates, that would call its legitimacy into question. The hoaxer just didn’t know those coordinates.

These few things should be enough for those paying attention to reject this document as fraudulent. It should be enough to prove that this document is a forgery and a not very clever one at that. It does nothing to support the idea of the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit because the document is an invention created in the 1990s, after the publication of the various books about the Roswell crash, but the forger didn’t seem to have looked at a map, which proves the forgery. (Or maybe I should say he did look at a map and picked the location because of its highly restricted access. He didn’t have to worry about someone going there to see what they might find.)

In fact, I can date it even better than that because it does mention Mogul and no one was talking about Mogul until the early 1990s. It is unlikely that a report created in 1947 would refer to the balloon project by that name. It probably would have referred to it as the New York University balloon project or the constant level balloons rather than Mogul, if mentioned it at all. More likely it would have just mentioned weather balloons if it was felt necessary to make that connection. All that does is allow us to date the time of creation for the document and point to another flaw in it.

But, remember, the IPU, by whatever name, didn’t exist in 1947 and wouldn’t exist for another decade according to the best information available. This document does nothing to prove that the name of the organization was the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit because the document is a fake.

In fact there is no real documentation confirming the existence of such an organization at all. It was the “institutional memory” who created the name based on what he remembered. That “institutional memory” was Craig Hunter who, some two decades after the fact, mentioned all that he remembered about the IPU. There is no official document with the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit name on it…

Oh, I know what you’ll say. There are letters to researchers that prove the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit existed, or exists, because it is referred to as the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit in these official communications. In one of those, written by Lieutenant Colonel Lance R. Corine, it says, “As you note in your letter, the so-called Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit (IPU) was disestablished…”

In other words, Corine is not actually confirming the existence of the IPU as the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit because that is the name of the unit used by William Steinman in his letter to the Army. Steinman gave them the name. Yes, the IPU existed but it was not the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit. It was the Input Processing Unit, which certainly isn’t the same thing.

And, yes, this is splitting a fine hair, but the point is, other than the “institutional memory” of the name, the letters cited as proof seem to be responding to information included in the FOIA requests. I’d like to see a document from a government source (other than MJ-12, of course) that uses the name Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit on it. Brad Sparks said that he’s seen organizational charts with IPU on them, but not that particular name.

The evidence for the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit is one man’s memory that seems to be contradicted by the documentation from official sources, which you all are now free to reject because it is from official sources and is all part of the bigger conspiracy. Everything, including to those letters to researchers, points to the creation of the IPU in 1958 which means that a document that was allegedly created in 1947 using the name Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit is a fake. And if it is a fake then those using it in a documentary to support another aspect of the UFO phenomenon have failed to prove their point. A fake document proves absolutely nothing and shouldn’t be used as evidence for the existence of something else.

Oh, I do get it. Those producing documentaries don’t have the comprehensive knowledge needed to understand what is going on. They must rely on the “experts” to understand what they are being told… and too often there are competing points of view. Sometimes the information is easily available and the evidence of fraud is almost overwhelming but they still use it to bolster their case. They want to believe just as badly as some of those in the field want to believe so the negative evidence is reduced to a single sentence or phrase that is almost mumbled. The “controversial” comment is misunderstood by many, suggesting that there is still an open question. In this case, with this organization, the IPU, and this particular document, there is no real controversy. The results are in and the document is a fake. 

The Roswell Slides - Once Again

Although this might be considered kicking the sleeping dogs and stirring the pot unnecessarily, I think it important to address this issue one more time. I have, previously, denied that I was involved in the investigation of the slides that allegedly show the body of an alien creature. When I said that I hadn’t participated in the investigation, some saw that as a lie on my part, but the truth then, as now, is that other than a few limited enquiries made prior to learning more of the story, I did not investigate.

To recap, about a year ago, rumors began to circulate that members of the Team had learned of two slides that showed an alien creature on a gurney. At that time, I knew nothing about this and the claim that we all were obligated to remain silent because of some kind of nondisclosure agreement (NDA) was untrue. Nick Redfern seemed to have some information about that and I called him. He told me the story and I had no reason to doubt what he was saying which is not to say that it was accurate. Nick was telling me what he had been told without investigation on his part (sort of the same thing I’ve been saying).

I emailed the members of the team, telling them what I knew and that I had signed no NDA. I was surprised to learn that Nick's information was accurate. There were two slides and an NDA had been signed. At this point, realizing that anything I said publicly could be construed as a violation of the agreement, meaning simply that the man holding the slides would believe that either Tom Carey or Don Schmitt had told me about the slides violating the NDA. This was not true. I would have liked to publish on my blog that information because my source on it was Nick Redfern, but I was afraid that the slide owner would not believe I had learned about them from another source.

That was the extent of my “investigation.” I learned that others were working on this and that anything I did could compromise their working relationship with the source. Once in a while, I would hear something new, mostly from Nick or at Rich Reynolds’ UFO Iconoclasts blog. But I was getting no new information from those involved in the investigation and was offering no advice, other than to suggest that I thought the whole thing problematic. There was no provenance for the slides and no one really knew who the photographer was. This is the same basic problem that haunted the MJ-12 nonsense for years.

At one point late last summer, after suggesting these problems, I was shown a research protocol for validating the slides. I did not solicit the document. I was provided with it because of a negative comment I had made in another arena. At the time, I thought the document was telling me about things that been done, but on rereading it, realized it was merely a proposal for investigation.

All this is just a preliminary to remind those who have not been paying attention the circumstances of this dust up. I had told many that I wasn’t involved in the investigation and I mentioned to a few that I knew some of the details but not all of them. In fact, when Nick said that the “nether” regions of the alien were covered, I thought he meant by a cloth, not by a hand-lettered sign. Such was my knowledge of the slides and my “investigation” into them.

Just a few days ago I received a copy of UFO Today. Philip Mantle supplied it to me and I found the article “Do Slides from 1947 Show A Roswell Humanoid,” written by Tony Bragalia. It is a recap of the investigation into the slides and how Tom and Don came into possession of them. It was similar to a piece he had published last year. Tony wrote, “My research associates, pioneer Roswell investigators and authors Tom Carey and Don Schmitt, began a dialog with…” Well, for my purposes here, the rest of the sentence is irrelevant (oh, okay, it said, “…with a brother and his sister, a onetime estate-cleaner.” See? It was irrelevant.).

At that point Tony tells how the unnamed brother and sister got their hands on the slides and how the discovery of them eventually reached Tom and Don. He goes into some detail about the woman who originally owned the slides, supposedly, I guess, inherited from her husband and the like. For those interested, check out the UFO Today web site to learn how you can acquire that issue of the digital magazine.

Later in the article, Tony wrote, “Anyone who may know more about Ray [the man who owned the slides] (or his professional colleagues) are encouraged to contact a Roswell investigative team member – Tom Carey, Don Schmitt, David Rudiak or this author with any relevant information.”

See, once again my name is left out. Why? Because, I was not involved in the investigation. These four were working on it without consulting me. This article, I believe, proves that I wasn’t involved in it. I was knowledgeable (as were several others), but not involved.

True, I had some inside knowledge, but that isn’t the same as participating in an investigation. I have inside knowledge of Project Blue Book (well, not so inside anymore) but I didn’t investigate UFOs for the Air Force or Project Blue Book. Yes, I know that this will do nothing to convince those who believe I lied about it that I did not. But maybe some of those who are sitting on the fence will understand that sometimes situations are just not black and white and sometimes people just make errors.

I hope that information from one of those who did participate and are participating in the investigation will be good enough but I know it won’t. They are too deeply invested in the idea that I was a participant in the investigation. Sometimes you just get caught between the rock and the hard place and there isn’t much you can do about it. This is not the first time that something like this has happened to me… guilt by association… but I can hope it will be the last.

The Demise of UFO Magazine

Today, while searching for information about something else, I saw that there was an Internet listing that suggested there was an “Important Message from UFO Magazine.” Having contributed to it frequently, and because I know those who have been involved with it in the past including Don and Vicki Ecker, I clicked on the link. I mean, the magazine hadn’t been around for a while and I wondered what was going on. What I found was this:

The owner of UFO Magazine, Inc. has officially noticed [sic] that he is putting UFO Magazine, Inc. up for sale. We do not know If [sic] there is currently a buyer, or who the buyer is, or when the sale will be effectuated.

However, in anticipated of that proposed sale, the owner UFO Magazine, Inc. has directed us to terminate all publication of UFO Magazine including, but not limited to, the fulfillment of any subscriptions. Because we are precluded from any future publication specifically containing the trademark of UFO Magazine, Inc., you should direct all inquiries regarding UFO Magazine to:

UFO Magazine, Inc.

5455 Centinela Avenue

Los Angeles, CA. 90066.

This website contained a number of comments about this, though many of them have no relevance to the discussion at hand. Bill Birnes explained some of the back story to the acquisition of the magazine and how he became involved with Philip Corso and UFOs. It was that association with Corso that eventually lead to Birnes’ association with UFO Magazine.

Also in the comments section, Birnes wrote, “Because, as a result of our license revocation, we will be precluded from publishing any new issues of UFO Magazine…” He then outlined the options available to subscribers to satisfy them about the unfulfilled part of their subscriptions.

This is just another example of a publication founded prior to the Internet to find itself in financial difficulty. In the case of UFOs, I wonder if blogs like this one, and websites such as UFO Chronicles (though I’m not suggesting any wrongdoing or blame here), haven’t contributed to the problem. Why buy a magazine when there is so much UFO content on the web for free? I charge nothing for those who wish to read what I have to say here and Frank Warren of UFO Chronicles makes his content free as well. I could name a dozen, two dozen or more blogs and web sites that provide a wide range of UFO information from the ridiculous to the credulous to the hostile to the well-researched and thought out.

The point here is not the diversity of writers, opinions, information or content but that it is free for those interested. Why buy a magazine when you can read it all on the Internet? It isn’t just the UFO magazines that find this, but a wide range of publications. It seems unless it is related to celebrity gossip, tattooing, guns or cars and motorcycles, no one is buying magazines.

So UFO Magazine is gone the way of so much else these days. Say what you will about it, the magazine did supply a wide range of opinion and content. We now have one less source of information.

Project Blue Book, the RB-47 and Moon Dust

 Yes, I put Project Blue Book, RB-47, and Moon Dust in the title and story because it is a good draw to the blog, but also because all these things are related in a way. I’ve been looking into the RB-47 case and this resulted in a review of the material that can be found in the Project Blue Book files.

What I found strange was that Project Blue Book files about the RB-47 case contained two long documents that were written in 1971, or some 18 months to two years after Blue Book was officially closed. One was the long analysis written by Dr. James McDonald and the other was a rebuttal of sorts, written by Philip Klass. The project card, which identified the source of the UFO report as American Airlines Flight No. 655, carried a note to refer to McDonald’s report. A letter, contained in the file and dated January 1972 mentioned that a copy of Klass’ document was being sent on to the Project Blue Book Case File. So, in the years that followed the end of Blue Book, material was still being added to it.

That might not be a bad thing and as near as I can tell, both documents seemed to have been added with almost no comment. This makes the file a better resource, but then, what else in the Blue Book Files has been altered over the years?

I do know that while Blue Book was in operation that files were removed. Prior to Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of June 24, 1947, there had been other UFO reports. One of those was from meteorologists in Virginia in April 1947. There is no case file in Blue Book but there had been something about it at one point. In the Final Report on Project Grudge, these sightings were mentioned. All this means is that the Blue Book files were altered while the project was in operation, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, except when they were taking material out never to be seen again.

In the RB-47 case, there are contradictions that were not resolved by the Air Force investigators which demonstrate the level of concern for the truth they displayed in 1957. According to the interview with Major Lewis Chase, the pilot of the RB-47, the ground radar station known as UTAH (Duncanville, Texas), a CIRVIS report, as required by regulations, was made of the radar sighting of a UFO. However, a TELEX in the files seems to show that no such report was made. Although the TELEX has been redacted, after a fashion, and the statement about the radar sighting is somewhat obscured, it seems to prove that no ground radar sighting was made at UTAH.

But the question is if the two statements are mutually exclusive. Chase referred specifically to a CIRVIS report and was told that one had been filed. The TELEX doesn’t mention CIRVIS, only that the ground-based radar didn’t track the UFO. To this point I have been unable to find a CIRVIS report, which probably means that one was not filed. That question, though, remains unanswered and I continue the search.

Finally, as mentioned before, as I was searching for other things in the Blue Book files, I found references to Moon Dust. This demonstrates that Moon Dust did have a UFO component and that it was used in some cases for UFO research. All the cases I have located can be explained in the mundane or are of observations that were so fleeting and so vague to be nearly useless. There are a few references, just four or five that I have found and that is all. These cases take place just a couple of years after the RB-47 sighting. In other words, Moon Dust cases did, for a short period, find their way to Blue Book but after those few months, nothing else is mentioned, as far as I can find now.

This just proves that after all these years since the Project Blue Book files made their way into the public arena, there are still nuggets to be found. There are more than 12,000 cases in the files, and thousands of pages of other documents, reports, memos, directives, and administrative materials. Even after more than thirty years, they haven’t been fully researched.

Oh, and just to be clear on this, I don’t see anything nefarious in the additions of the McDonald and Klass documents to the files, only that it is curious.

The RB-47 Case, American Airlines and Original Sources

Over the last several weeks I have been looking into the RB-47 UFO sighting from July 17, 1957. It is an interesting case with the possibility of multiple chains of evidence but that is a discussion for another time. Right now I’m more interested in the problem of original sources.

Let me explain.

I thought that I would see what Richard Dolan had to say about the case and was a little surprised that he devoted only about a half page to it. What I found more interesting is a second case he described on that same page. He wrote, “On the same day as the RB-47 incident, an airliner one hundred miles east of El Paso nearly collided with a UFO ‘at least the size of a B-47.’ Two passengers were injured and hospitalized; no known aircraft was near.”

Well, I recognized the report because this aspect had been presented in some of the RB-47 case notes I had seen and was actually connected to it. The footnote didn’t provide much illumination. It took me to Timothy Good’s 1988 book, Above Top Secret and page 283.

Good reported, “On 17 July 1957, Flight 655 en route from Dallas to Los Angeles with Captain E. [identified as Ted in some sources] Bachner at the controls had a near miss with an object ‘at least the size of a B-47,’ 100 miles east of El Paso, Texas. Two passengers suffered slight injuries and had to be taken to hospital on landing. No known aircraft were in the vicinity at the time.”

His footnote cited Coral and Jim Lorenzen in UFOs: The Whole Story which was published in 1969. They mentioned it on page 79 in the Signet paperback. I didn’t have this book in my library and the reason seemed to be that I spent most of 1969 outside the United States. I didn’t have the opportunity to see it.

But, knowing Coral Lorenzen and the way she created her books, I thought that there might be a mention of this in The APRO Bulletin. I checked the September 1957 issue and on page three found another reference, which would be indirectly, I believe, the original source of the quotes by Dolan and Good.

Here we learn that “Ted” Bachner of American Airlines was flying a DC-6 and was about an hour out of Dallas. He said that he spotted an object about ten miles away, climbing fast. It was coming at him and he said that when he saw it wasn’t going to miss, he “dumped my ship [dived] 200 feet in a right turn. It whipped only 50 feet over our heads. It sure looked big up there.”

Lorenzen concluded her report writing, “It has been definitely established that no planes were in the area at the time.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. In the original reports found in the Project Blue Book file, it was suggested that the other aircraft was a B-36 but there were none of those in the area at the time which doesn’t, of course, eliminate all aircraft.

The El Paso newspapers, not to mention the Blue Book files, establish that American Airlines Flight No. 655, did serve to avoid another object. Two passengers were injured, and this, because it was a near miss, required documentation, reports and investigation. The mysterious object in the near miss was American Airlines Flight No. 966.

Brad Sparks interviewed American Airlines Director of Operations Larry L. Strain on February 3, 1976, who said that both Bachner and the captain of 966, T. A. Hinson, agreed in their written statements on file that they had been involved in the near miss on July 17. In other words, the pilots of both aircraft had been found and both had submitted the required documentation for a near miss, which allowed investigators to identify the specific flights.

There is additional documentation. In a November 8, 1957 letter by Roy Keeley of the Department of Commerce to Brigadier General Harold Watson and eventually forwarded to Major George Gregory at Blue Book, Keeley wrote, “….incident mentioned occurred on July 17, 1957, near El Paso, Texas, and involved American Airlines’ Flight No. 655. Investigation of this incident definitely established the fact that the unidentified flying object was American Airlines’ Flight No. 966, which had previously departed El Paso, Texas, enroute to Dallas, Texas.”

It is certain that this “UFO” case has been identified. Coral Lorenzen can be forgiven because, when she prepared The APRO Bulletin, the information was that Flight 655 had nearly missed an unidentified object. The solution wasn’t provided until some months later. That solution was part of the Blue Book file which was not only classified in 1957 and in 1969 when her book was published, but misfiled so that even the Condon Committee investigators couldn’t find it in the late 1960s.

But decades later, when Good and Dolan were writing, that solution was available. The August/September 1957 issue of NICAP’s U.F.O. Investigator contained information about the incident with the note that “a scheduled flight of an eastbound four-engine airliner was undoubtedly the ‘unknown’ though no negligence was indicated.” (Which was published after Coral Lorenzen’s note in the APRO Bulletin, but before her book was published… she should have known about it at that time.)

Klass referenced it in his 1974 book UFO’s Explained as part of his flawed analysis of the RB-47 case (which is a discussion for another time… but he puts Flight 966 in the traffic pattern at Love Field, Dallas when it was actually nearer El Paso).

 I found the problems with the sources by following the trail. I shouldn’t have had to do that. Other writers should have done it first when they cited the case. I found it all because I was attempting to verify, from original sources, what was claimed. I had an advantage, having read the various other accounts of the RB-47 incident that predated either Dolan’s or Good’s books but they should have found some of them as well.

The footnote I could have created for this aspect of the case would be (remembering that Good’s book was published in 1988 and Dolan’s in 2000):

Clark, Jerome. UFO Encyclopedia, Second Edition. Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1998: 781 – 783; Dolan, Richard. UFOs and the National Security State. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads, 2000: 199; Gillmor, Daniel S.  ed. The Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. New York: Bantam Books, 1969: 260 – 266; Klass, Philip J. The RB-47 Case – A New Explanation. Washington, D.C.: The Author, December 30, 1971 (see also, Klass, Philip J. UFOs Explained. New York: Random House, 1974; 186 – 215); McDonald, James E. “Science in Default: Twenty-two Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations.” In Carl Sagan and Thornton Page, eds. UFOs – A Scientific Debate, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972: 56 – 70; Printy, Tim. “The RB-47 Case: UFOlogy’s Best Evidence?” SUNlite 4,1 (January/February 2012): 1, 5 – 38; Project Blue Book Files, Microfilm Roll 28, Case 4810; “Scientists Say Near Collisions May Involve Space Vehicles,” The U.F.O. Investigator, August/September 1957: 9,; Thayer, Gordon David. “RB-47 Radar/Visual Sighting.” In Ronald Story, ed. The Encyclopedia of UFOs. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1980: 297 – 298; “Two Planes In Near Collisions With UAO,” The A.P.R.O. Bulletin, September 1957: 3

These entries refer, for the most part to the American Airlines flights and how they crept into this case. In the last few years I have tried to make the footnotes and citations as complete as possible. Quoting a single source that is not the original source doesn’t have the credibility that a footnote that refers to the original source or that provides information on a variety of sources has.

And for those who had not been keeping score, it is clear that the Air Force explanation for the RB-47 case, that it was the American Airlines airplane does not work because the aircraft were nowhere near one another. At the time the crew of the RB-47 was reporting a visual UFO sighting, that airliner was more than four or five hundred miles away in El Paso, sitting on the ground. 

The Curse of Oak Island on History

(Blogger's Note: Please take a look at the follow up articles on this blog. Beginning in January 2015, look for The Curse of Oak Island - An Expanded History.)

History (formerly the History Channel where they once actually examined some history) just finished its run of documentaries titled The Curse of Oak Island. This is the Nova Scotia location where it is alleged that pirates… or Knights Templar ... or Roger Bacon ... or some unknown person or persons buried something of great value centuries ago.

For those who don’t know, sometime in the late 18^th century, three teenage boys exploring Oak Island found a place where it seemed something might be buried. They dug down, found a layer of wooden planks, tore them out and dug some more finding additional layers of planks every ten feet or so. They never managed to dig deep enough to find out what was hidden there. They only had hand tools and physical strength to do it. Over the next 200 or so years, dozens have attempted to get to the bottom of what was termed the money pit. Somewhere around the 90 foot level, the pit began to fill with water, stopping the attempts to dig deeper. It was cleverly booby-trapped and has defied modern technology to recover the treasure.

The rising and falling level of the water in the pit seemed to be related to the tides and that led to the discovery of a tunnel system that fed the sea water into the money pit blocking attempts to dig lower. Under the beach sand in a cove, a layer of coconut fiber was found which seem to have been used to keep the sand from packing and to keep the booby trap viable. A similar tunnel was found on the other side of the island as well, meaning it was a complicated system of traps.

Various companies and consortiums have attempted to excavate the money pit over the years, some of them reaching down some 200 feet. Cameras have been lowered and video has been made. A few links of gold chain have been recovered, and even at today’s prices, it didn’t amount to much.

Six people have died during these operations and the legend has it that seven must die before the money pit will yield its treasure.

In the 1980s a corporation was formed to finally get to the treasure. They had some ten million dollars pledged for the operation, but the stock market collapse ended the attempt. From that point not much had been done, at least as far as I know.

The latest attempt, reported over a series of programs for History, wasn’t much more successful than all those other tries and certainly didn’t add much to our knowledge of the money pit. Rick and Marty Lagina, who managed to gain control over much of the island, were behind this latest attempt. They screwed around showing us the same scenes over and over, they put a camera down one of the drill holes and claimed they had found an ax, a box, and a body, though it was difficult to make those things out. And that was similar to something that had been done decades earlier.

They then went to one of the beaches that seems to be somewhat artificial and that has that layer of coconut fiber under the sand. When first discovered decades earlier, it had been dated to sometime before the money pit was discovered. Now there were new samples of the fiber that were tested using better equipment and methods. This time it was dated to sometime in the 13^th or 14^th century, which is interesting but not proof of much of anything. We already knew that it was old.

The Lagina Brothers talked to a fellow who using an original folio of Shakespeare and a link to a constellation which was then applied to Oak Island fit into the discovery of some apparently artificially places stones. It seemed to be a stretch to me. Going from the work of Shakespeare to a constellation then then onto some landmarks on the island was a few too many leaps of logic. I’m not sure what they were trying to prove and thought of this as oat meal… meaning that it was filler to expand the series one more episode. It was just too much of a stretch.

Anyway, one of the points of this guy’s heavenly system seemed to be hidden in a swamp and they decided that they needed to drain the swamp, something no one else had ever thought of, which, of course, didn’t surprise me. So away they went, draining the swamp but having to comply with environmental regulations about how it could be done. They never did manage to completely drain it, but they did seem to remove quite a bit of water leaving a muddy quagmire that they seemed only too happy to muck about in (yes, I used that term on purpose).

They spent time using metal detectors and then diving into the mud. They spent a lot of time pulling vegetation out of the mud, found some flat stones, and then a copper coin. They were able to learn that it was an old Spanish coin which, when all is said and done, this was their big discovery. One Spanish coin that was neither gold nor silver but copper which is something, I suppose.

In the end, they found nothing that wasn’t already known. They didn’t add to our knowledge of what might be hidden on Oak Island, though I am becoming convinced that there is nothing there to be found. Maybe there was once, but whoever buried probably retrieved it.

But, what the heck, it’s the money of History and the Lagina brothers and if they want to spend their money on this quest, then more power to them. I wish them well, I hope to learn what they find if anything, and wonder if they’ll be back for a new season. If not, it’ll be just one more on-going mystery that isn’t all that important.

The Bermuda Triangle and the C-119 Disappearance

As most of you know, I spent some time as an Air Force intelligence officer. I was assigned to the 928^th Tactical Airlift Group which was part of the 440^th Tactical Airlift Group which was headquartered at General Billy Mitchell Field in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During that time, there was an intelligence conference held in Milwaukee (and of no importance at all, it was here, late at night I first saw ZULU). The relevance of all this somewhat personal information will become obvious in a moment.

Now, according to Bermuda Triangle lore (and to Gian Quasar) on June 5, 1965, “a C-119 vanished somewhere over the Bahamas bound for Grand Turk Island while flying the busy skyway…” He suggests that the entire radio log between the aircraft and ground stations is available but that “it does not explain the disappearance.” It does “admit peculiarities in radio reception that are remarkably identical with other planes lost in the Triangle…” He notes that the last radio message was not heard in Miami as expected but in “New York, a distance of 1,300 miles away (!).”

An officer interviewed about this said, “We know that everything was fine about thirty minutes before landing. The pilot, Major Louis Giuntoli had made a position report about eleven p.m.”

Others, such as the International UFO Bureau suggested that a UFO reported by James McDivitt was somehow tied to the disappearance of the aircraft. At the time McDivitt and Ed White were on a Gemini mission in orbit and those at the International UFO Bureau thought that the astronauts might have seen the UFO that captured the aircraft. McDivit would later point out that UFO meant unidentified flying object and nothing more, at least to him at the time.

A search was launched when the aircraft failed to arrive at its destination and radio contact could not be established. According to Triangle lore, the search was called off on June 10 when no clues were found.

But that changed on June 12, 1965 when debris, stenciled with serial numbers and the tail number of the aircraft was recovered. Although this debris was not from the outside structure of the aircraft, it was equipment that was carried in it. About a month later a wheel chock, stenciled with the tail number was found near Acklins Island, in the general area where the first wreckage was located.

So, wreckage was found, though the aircraft itself was not. Now, as a member of the 928^th TAG, I was able to talk with those at the 440^th (see how all this comes together eventually?). They gave me some additional information and then asked if I wanted to see some of the debris, which they still had there. Naturally, I said that I did and was shown a few scraps that had been recovered.

These officers suggested that the C-119 lost an engine just after that final position report had been made. There was a corresponding electrical failure at the time, which was not all that unusual, according to what they told me. The pilots would have had no lights and no radio. And this particular aircraft had a history of electrical system problems. Given all that and that it was night and that it is often difficult to distinguish the horizon at night over water especially if there was a light haze (which is to say that the weather was clear but that a light haze tended to blend the sea with the sky so that there is not a definitive line, the deck was stacked against them.

In other words, this was an aircraft accident that wouldn’t have been noticed by anyone but the friends and family had it not happened in the geographic confines of the Bermuda Triangle. But the plane didn’t disappear without a trace as has been suggested. Wreckage was found, and found along the airways where it would be expected.

For me, this is always a test case. If those writing Triangle lore were not aware of these facts, and remember, I actually talked to people who were assigned to the unit when the accident occurred and I saw some of the wreckage recovered, it suggests that those others’ research is lacking. There is an explanation here and we don’t need to venture into the paranormal to find it. Tragic though it was it really has nothing to do with the Bermuda Triangle other than as a geographic location.

Oh, and that radio message picked up in New York. Radio skip is a well-known phenomenon. Back in the olden days of analog TV, I once watched thirty or forty minutes broadcast from Miami before the atmospherics changed and I lost the signal. I was more than 1300 miles from Miami at the time. This is an irrelevant fact that proves nothing other than radio waves sometimes bounce far and wide.

The Bermuda Triangle and ABC Evening News

In the category of “What Isn’t News,” we have the ABC Evening News on Sunday night (February 9) telling us that scientists have come up with a solution for the Bermuda Triangle. Really? I thought it had been explained more than thirty-five years ago, and in fact, on this very blog several years ago I offered an explanation that I thought was reasonable.

Here’s the deal. Back in the mid-1970s, when I was much younger and believed that those writing books and magazine articles actually engaged in original research and first-hand reporting, I thought there was something mysterious about the Bermuda Triangle. One day, in the local bookstore, I saw a paperback copy of Lawrence David Kusche’s book, The Bermuda Triangle – Solved (copyright 1975). I bought one because I believed that if I was to argue successfully against the Skeptics, I should know what they had to say.

Kusche convinced me that he had solved the mystery. His book, unlike so many others, didn’t rely on what others had reported. He went to the original source material. He found the original insurance papers, the original investigations and the original newspaper articles. He named names and sources so that those of us who followed wouldn’t have to sort through piles of irrelevant material, but could see, for ourselves, exactly what was going on and why Kusche was right when so many others were wrong.

I have found that too often others writing on a topic will look at what the other writers have said, but do not search the original sources to verify the information. Case in point? The disappearance of Oliver Lerch from South Bend, Indiana. Morris K. Jessup, in his book, The Case for the UFO, told us that the facts of the Lerch disappearance were written down at the police department for anyone who cared to look.

Well, I cared to look, and the South Bend police told me that their records didn’t go back into the 1880s. There had been a fire in the 1920s that destroyed most of them. Jessup was wrong about this and I don’t know where he got his information but it was repeated in several other books.

Oh, I checked with the newspapers and searched for other documentation, but none ever surfaced to prove the case. In fact, the available documentation showed that nothing like it had ever happened in the South Bend area. The Lerch story was a hoax but it had been reported as fact by those others who apparently didn’t care to look.

And this is the situation with the Bermuda Triangle. Each mistake was copied by the next writer until it seemed that something truly mysterious was happening in the Bermuda Triangle. Kusche, on the other hand, checked the original sources and offered plausible and well researched explanations for some of the most mysterious of the disappearances. In one incredible case, the ship hadn’t disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. It had been lost in the Pacific Ocean.

And now ABC News tells us they have the solution. It is bad weather in the area. Well, of course, that played a role in many the disasters, but the real solution is all those others who didn’t bother to do any original research. It is those others who didn’t look at weather records and didn’t look at official reports and didn’t bother with the insurance papers. That was the source of the mystery and that is what supplied the solution.

I just thought it was strange that in a news broadcast that has, what, twenty-two minutes to give us the important information of the day, would waste time telling us something we’d known since the middle of the 1970s.

I wonder if they heard about the Internet? That might have told them something about the case that would have suggested that this wasn’t news. 

Philip Corso One Last Time

I am often surprised at the support that some alleged UFO witnesses manage gain in the face of their repeated deceptions. Admitted hoaxes are still reported as true with the added claim that the CIA forced the change as a way of explaining that new infomation. Failure to supply any documentation or evidence for their claims is ignored. And even with that, there are those who continue to support the most outrageous of claims. Even the ridiculous words of those witnesses don’t seem to change opinions as the situations develop.

For those who seem to believe that there is something important in what Philip Corso said, I say, read the document published by Open Minds. It took me several attempts to download this book written by Corso without the filters offered by Bill Birnes, and it is certainly a revelation. It provides insight into Corso’s personality and suggests reasons for the stories he told. That publication can be found here:

http://www.openminds.tv/dawn-of-a-new-age-the-philip-corso-manuscript/3661

What I found particularly funny was that Corso seemed to explain how anthropomorphic dummies used in high altitude parachuting experiments could fall in 1957 and be part of the Roswell UFO crash in 1947(which is not to say that he mentioned this specifically, only that his tale would explain it). These aliens, you see, are traveling through time, which explains how they manage the vast distances between stars in our section of the galaxy. As they were entering our time stream in 1947, these two craft collided with one falling in 1947 but the other not coming down until 1957. So, there was a collision, at least according to Corso, but the two craft didn’t fall in the same location or at the same time.

The first fell where Mack Brazel found it and the second fell some ten years later and in the vicinity of the White Sands Missile Range… at least that seems to be what Corso was suggesting. I’m not sure how he linked the two events, but that is what he said.

And the one that cracked me up was Corso’s claim that the Soviets and Joseph Stalin were interested in the Roswell crash. It seems, though the writing is sometimes confusing, that in 1947, Stalin created a review board of highly trained and respected scientists to investigate this UFO crash. Assigned to the board was Yuri Gagarin… who, if Corso had bothered to check, he would have learned was just 13 in 1947.

The point here is that we don’t know what else has he invented. Those who support Corso would be better served by offering evidence of his claims rather than attacking those of us who ask the tough questions about all that he has said.

At any rate, it will be interesting to see the spin for this unfiltered manuscript provided by Corso. It is a quite revealing document. It moves even farther into the world of Fantasy Land. It gives us an insight that we didn’t have and gives us even less reason to believe Corso’s wild tales. 

Philip Corso Interview with Budd Hopkins, Filmed by Carol Rainey

Nearly everyone agrees that many of the tales told by Philip J. Corso are not grounded in reality. When challenged, he often backtracked, blamed his co-author, or said that he hadn’t seen the galleys (we call them page proofs now) of the book. In any case, he has little credibility… especially after the great switching of the Introduction caper (meaning that Strom Thurman wrote the introduction for a different book, and yes, I have even more evidence for that… In fact, in a document entitled Alien Source: The Roswell UFO Crash and Today’s Technological Miracles which was a proposal for his book The Day After Roswell, it said, “Sen. Strom Thurmond wrote a glowing introduction to Col. Corso’s first book, I Walked With Giants: My Career in Military Intelligence.” But, of course, there was no such book and the “glowing introduction” became part of The Day After Roswell. Bait and Switch? Probably more like there was no first book and they had a perfectly good introduction. Why get rid of it? Just put it in the other book. ).

Carol Rainey filmed an interview between Corso and Budd Hopkins made at one of the UFO conferences held at San Marino in 1998. Hopkins and Corso sat in the lobby, discussing what Budd thought of as some errors in the story told by Corso. He was concerned about the lack of corroborative witnesses and that few people were named. Budd wanted to be able to find some of those Corso allegedly hand bits of alien debris to so that he could verify the tale. Corso makes it clear that he was rarely, if ever (which means it wasn’t exactly clear) that he met with those scientists, engineers and industrialists. Someone else put the debris into their hands…

Anyway, for those who would like to watch this interview, it can be found at:

http://youtu.be/pY6s-D-jgaA

It is interesting to see how Corso deals with some tough questions. We have Carol to thank for this short glimpse into the tales told by Corso.