The Schirmer Abduction

It was in the 1960s that the Air Force decided to hire a university to make an impartial study of UFOs to determine if there was a reason for the Air Force to continue to investigate them. The so-called Condon Committee, at the University of Colorado, was formed and began their work in the 1967. I won’t bother here with the details about why I think this was a set up and neither the Air Force nor Condon planned to make a true objective analysis. All this is important because, on December 3, 1967, during the investigative phase of the research project, a police officer in the tiny community of Ashland, Nebraska, reported that he had seen a UFO close to the ground, hovering no more than six or eight feet above the highway. When he turned on his bright lights for a better look, the saucer-shaped object brightened, tilted upward, and then with a siren-like noise, lifted and vanished.

Sergeant Herb Schirmer (seen below courtesy Warren Smith) opened his car door to watch as the craft rose, spouting a flame-colored material from under it. He would later say that he saw a row of seven portholes, oval shaped and about two feet across. He said he saw a catwalk around the object, below the portholes and that the surface of the object was polished aluminum that glowed brightly in reflected light.

The first part of the Condon Committee investigation of the sighting took place on December 11 and 12, 1967, and that date becomes important later. In the summary of the report, the Condon Committee investigator wrote, "Mr. Schirmer felt perhaps he had not been conscious during a period of approximately 20 minutes [emphasis added] while he was observing the UFO. He had a feeling of paralysis at the time, and felt funny, weak, sick, and nervous when he returned to the police station."

In another part of the investigation that would become important later, the Ashland police chief Bill Wlaschin, said that he checked the area the next morning but found nothing of great importance there. He did find a single piece of metallic-like material that he did not recognize. It looked to be a chip of aluminum paint but I found no analysis attached to that report or to the various other reports I have. In the published version of the Condon Committee, called the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (Bantam, 1969), the material was described as iron and silicon and since there was no real connection between the sighting and the material, no further analysis was done.

They searched the site where Schirmer, after hypnosis, would say the UFO had actually landed. They tested for radioactivity but found nothing.

A polygraph for Schirmer was arranged using an experienced official agency that Chief Wlaschin refused to identify. According to the chief, the test showed no indications that Schirmer was deceptive. In other words, he passed.

John Ahrens, of the Condon Committee returned to Ashland about a week later, on December 19, to give a psychological test to Schmirer. Schmirer agreed to take the tests.

On February 13, 1968, after the time discrepancy between Schmirer’s log and the time he returned from the UFO sighting became a concern, another interview was held. Remember, though, Schmirer said there was a short period in which he believed he had been unconscious, so the first real suggestion of missing time is probably attributable to Schmirer himself.

Some suggest that one of the scientists with the Condon Committee, probably Dr. Leo Sprinkle, suggested the missing time might be significant. However it happened, or who noticed it is not all that important, unless it was Schmirer who called attention to it first. Then we have him planting the seeds that would lead to his claimed abduction.

After further investigation, which included hypnotic regression, Sprinkle, worried about a perceived bias on his part, wrote:

The writer [Sprinkle] believes that there is sufficient empirical evidence to support the views that the following phenomena exist: hypnotic processes or varying levels of awareness; extra sensory perception and psychokenetic (sic) processes (ESP or psi processes); and spacecraft ("flying saucers") from extra terrestrial sources which are controlled by intelligent beings who seem to be conducting an intensive survey of the earth.

Because these views are different from those of many persons in contemporary society, the writer [Sprinkle] offers his impressions with the recognition that other observers may have obtained different, and even conflicting, impressions of the interview with Sgt. Schmirer.

Under the hypnotic regression, first with Sprinkle, and later regressions coordinated by Warren Smith, an Iowa writer whose work dealt with the paranormal, the unusual and the extraterrestrial, Schirmer told a story that was fairly consistent, though he added detail under the persuasion of hypnosis and the close questioning of the investigators. And there were his log entries that backed up, to a degree, the story he told.

In was early in the morning of December 3, that Schirmer began to suspect something was wrong. He told the original investigators that a bull in a corral at the edge of town was acting strangely and he was afraid that it might break out. At 2:30 a.m., according to what he wrote in his log, he was near the intersection of Highway 63 and Highway 6, when he saw an object hovering over the road. He didn’t believe, at that time, that it landed and only gave a description of it in the air. It eventually climbed out and disappeared. Schirmer then drove back to the police station to report in.

That was really all he had to say about the sighting. Later he would tell investigators that the craft hadn’t been hovering above the highway but was sitting in a field near it. Sprinkle wrote, "He [Schmirer] stated that a bright light had shone from the object upon the car and that he saw a ‘white blurred object’ which came toward the car. He said he felt he was in communication with someone in the object, and that he also felt the communication was in effect during the interview [meaning that while Sprinkle had him in a hypnotic state, Schmirer thought he was mentally in contact with the aliens]."

Schmirer told Sprinkle that he, Schmirer thought it would be wrong to say anything else about the sighting until they were in the proper place at the proper time. Schmirer resisted the attempts by Sprinkle to learn the proper time and place, so Sprinkle ended the session.

They did learn that a bright light came from the object, a white, blurred object approached the car and then seemed to fade, the craft them moved upward, a weird sound came from it and a bright red-orange glow came from under it. The UFO then shot straight up and out of sight.

After the session ended, Schmirer said that he thought the "white, blurred object" was something alive. He mentioned that he believed he had been in direct mental communication with someone on the craft. Schmirer believed that the craft used electrical or magnetic force which controlled gravity and allowed them to travel through space and that they were taking electricity from some nearby power lines. He said that the beings on the ship were based on Venus or Saturn but were from another galaxy and that they were friendly. They were here to keep the people of Earth from destroying the planet.

Schmirer agreed to take a number of psychological tests. Let’s just say that the results tended toward the negative. His I.Q., for example, was on the low side for conceptual thinking, but on the high side for dealing with concrete intellectual tasks such as puzzle solving.

The problem for the scientists at the Condon Committee were that, "His [Schmirer’s] performance on the word association test causes one to doubt his honesty in the UFO sighting, or at least seems to indicate that he himself disbelieves the credibility of the sighting."

But this doesn’t really tell us much. It could be that Schmirer was lying, but it could also be that he found the experience to be unbelievable. Given what he would later say, that he found the experience unbelievable isn’t much of a stretch.

The scientists also noted that "He is also preoccupied with seeing UFO objects." But they also noted that he was given the tests after reporting a UFO and that might account for his obsession at the time.

So now we move into a new arena. Warren Smith, a sometimes writer living in Clinton, Iowa, wrote in Gods, Demons and UFOs, that Schmirer contacted him. Schmirer, dissatisfied with the results of the Condon Committee investigation, wanted to push for answers.

Smith and paranormal expert and writer Brad Steiger met with Smith on several occasions. Under hypnosis conducted by Loring G. Williams, Schmirer added a great deal of detail. He said that the object was metallic and shaped like a football. It had flashing lights underneath it. He thought he heard a whooshing sound. Finally he saw legs coming from the bottom and it settled to the ground.

He originally hinted to the Condon Committee members that he had been prevented from using his pistol or his radio. Now he clarified that, telling Smith, Steiger and Williams that there was something in his mind that prevented him from acting.

Creatures, aliens, beings, something came from the craft and one of them stood in front of his car holding something. A greenish gas came out surrounding the car. Then the creature in front of the car pulled something out of a holster and there was a bright flash. Schmirer said that he was now paralyzed and passed out.

Schmirer was then walked to the craft. Under it, a hatch opened and a ladder came out. Schmirer noticed that the interior of the craft and the ladder were cold. He spent about 15 minutes on the craft and was "briefed" by the leader.

The creatures were about four and a half to five feet tall, wore close fitting uniforms with both boots and gloves. Their suits came up around their heads much like the hood on a skin diver’s outfit. On the left side was a small headphone with a small antenna sticking up from it. There was a winged serpent on the chest.

He said that the skin was a grey-white, that the heads were thin and longer than a human head, the mouth was a slit and the eyes had an Asian slant but did not blink (Drawing of alien by Schirmer seen here, courtesy of Warren Smith).

The leader told him many things. He said they have bases in the United States and off the coast of Florida. They have a base in the polar region and there are other bases off the coast of Argentina. Radar can knock their ships out of the air, but the mother ship destroys them before they can crash.

After the briefing, Schmirer was taken back to the hatch. The two crewmen who remained outside climbed back in. Schmirer walked back to his police car. He returned to Ashland and arrived at the police station about three. In his log he wrote, "Saw a flying saucer at the junction of highways 6 and 63. Believe it or not."

Warren Smith reported that he had found the landing site, an unplowed sloping field. Smith claimed to have seen landing gear markings and patches of grass that had been swirled and twisted. He wrote, "Some very impressive evidence has been embedded in an unplowed, sloping field just above the highway. Three-pointed tripod marks were sunk deep into the earth. Patches of grass in the field are swirled into an unusual pattern, as if the vegetation was whirled by some powerful centrifugal force. The patches of grass are darker in color; it grows higher and faster than surrounding vegetation."

He was there weeks after the investigators for the Condon Committee who reported nothing of the sort. Smith, who suggested that he was something of a photographer failed to take pictures of the evidence, or to even make notes and illustrations of it or later review.

You might say, at this point, that these are the facts and they are not in dispute... except that some of this isn’t factual and there are areas for dispute. Let’s take a look at this with a dispassionate eye.

We know that Schmirer reported seeing a flying saucer and that in his initial report it was in the air. We know that he logged the sighting and we have a record of that log. We know that there is a discrepancy between the times in his log and his return to the police station and that discrepancy is only about twenty minutes. Not very much time for him to be captured, taken into the craft and given both the tour and briefing that he later, under hypnosis, reported.

Here are a couple of things we don’t know. We don’t know who originally discovered the discrepancy in the times. Some suggest that it was one of the police officers, or possibly Schmirer himself that noticed the timing problems. Others suggest that it was Sprinkle.

I don’t know who did, but I do know, according to the notes made about the interviews with the Condon Committee members held in February, that there was a morning that was an "orientation session - Leo Sprinkle probed the witness and laid certain groundwork for the afternoon session." This was after the initial investigation completed in December.

What I don’t know is exactly what was talked about during that morning session. I had watched Dr. James Harder, in his preliminaries before hypnotic regression in another abduction case discuss details of other UFO sightings with the witness. Harder was looking for validation of the Barney and Betty Hill abduction and it is clear from his questioning of the witnesses under hypnosis and his discussions with them before and between sessions what he wanted.

I have been unable to learn the contents of the morning session held with Schmirer, but I would suspect a similar discussion. Sprinkle noted that "Sgt. Schmirer seemed to be faced with conflicting wishes: th desire to be seen as a competent observer and courageous policeman versus the desire to be considered ‘his own man’ rather than a puppet which could be controlled through suggestion and hypnosis."

This might be important because Schmirer, during that first hypnotic regression, refused to provide much information. Instead they used yes and no questions to get more information and I have a copy of those questions.

They hint at something more substantial, but offered little to suggest that he had entered the craft. Instead, he seemed to believe that he had been in "communication" telepathically with one of the aliens.

Now, in an aspect of the case that hasn’t been discussed much, but one that I find quite disturbing, Sprinkle wrote about a break in the questioning, "Sgt. Schmirer described some of his reactions to the sighting: he said that he drank two cups of hot, steaming coffee ‘like it was water,’ he claimed that he often experienced a ‘ringing,’ ‘numbness,’ ‘buzzing’ in his ears before going to sleep (around 1:30 a.m. or 2:00 a.m.): he believed he had experienced precognitive dreams... he said he felt concern and ‘hurt’ since the UFO sighting; he described disturbances in his sleep, including incidents in which he awoke and found that he was ‘choking’ his wife and ‘handcuffing his wife’s ankle and wrist; he said that his wife sometimes woke up during the night and placed his gun elsewhere so that it was not in his boots beside his bed where he had been keeping it."

Although Sprinkle had suggested that Schmirer was of "average or above average intelligence... He presented himself as a conscientious policeman who has a sixth sense or intuition about crime detection; he also seemed to gain satisfaction from the occasional need for violence in his work, although he spoke favorably about the use of MACE."

As noted earlier, Sprinkle mentioned his personal belief in a number of paranormal phenomena, which suggested he would be less likely to question Schmirer closely about portions of his report, the above seems to mitigate all that. This assessment, which is not nearly as bold as that of other scientists involved in the case, is, nonetheless quite troubling. It suggests a young man who has a number of possible psychological problems which could manifest themselves in the UFO report. Couple that to the Condon Report suggestion that "His performance on the word association test causes one to doubt his honesty in the UFO sighting, or at least seems to indicate that he himself disbelieves the credibility of the sighting," and the evidence for a UFO landing is not quite as persuasive.

On this one issue, which, frankly, can be reduced to whichever set of scientists you want to believe, the Schmirer case fails. Sprinkle reported on psychological troubles but not in the same, bold language used by others.

We can say, then, that the only real investigation was that reported by Warren Smith (seen here). Smith, contacted by Schmirer, arranged more hypnosis and the details of the abduction came out. The problem here is that we know that Schmirer had been exposed to the other abduction cases being reported. He had been lead there by Sprinkle and the Condon Committee.

But that isn’t the real problem. Warren Smith, who is quoted in some of the UFO books about abduction simply isn’t reliable. He made things up to pad a story. This is no speculation but fact. He told me this himself. He told the same thing to other researchers and writers, so everything that we have, attributed to him, must be carefully reviewed.

Is there evidence for Smith’s invention of details on this case? Certainly. Remember the landing traces he found that escaped the attention of others who searched the area first. He never offered any evidence, and if he had photographed the area, we might have then been able to show that the Condon Committee had been a little loose with the data.

Smith, in fact, goes after the Condon Committee turning each little difference into a mistake by the committee and then into something more than it was. Smith wrote, for example, "He [Schmirer] was identified as a Marine veteran instead of a Navy man."

But in their final report, the committee members wrote, "The trooper said that he had served with the U.S. Marines." It’s not really the same thing when you remember that the Navy supplies corpsmen to the Marines. So, he could have been in the Navy and served with the Marines. Not really much of a problem in the greater scheme of things.

Smith placed his own liberal interpretation on the transcript. He reported, "Did you attempt to draw your gun?" Schmirer, according to Smith answered, "I am prevented."

But the technique used by Sprinkle was a little more subtle. The question was phrased, "Did I take the gun out?" Schmirer indicated a "No." He was then asked, "Was I prevented from taking the gun out?" and Schmirer said, "Yes."

All this really means is that Smith was at odds with the Condon Committee. He offered evidence that the committee might have had information that was not released to the public. When Schmirer complained about a rash, or welt on his neck that appeared shortly after his sighting, and which faded in a couple of days, Smith thought something more about that. He wrote that Schmirer said, "One of those guys with the Condon Committee later told me that a welt at that spot is a sign of people who had a memory loss after they meet up with a UFO. It means that something more than a regular sighting occurred."

According to Smith, "Another member of Condon’s staff informed Schmirer that a contactee was being held at an undesignated government facility. ‘He said this was a Federal Hospital or something like that.’"

This is stunning information. It implies that not only were committee members hiding information about UFOs, they had a great deal of inside knowledge. And they knew that UFO witnesses were being illegally held by the government. Yet, in all the time since the committee ended its work, and with all the controversy around its work, including staff members who resigned because of the bias of the committee, these allegations have never resurfaced. And, they have never been corroborated.

Note here that Smith assigns the information to Schmirer and reports it in quotes. But he provides no information to back it up, and provides nothing that would make it possible for us to check the veracity of the information.

There was another man in the room during this session and that was Brad Steiger. He told me, "I was present for the one and only time that Williams regressed Herb. Warren really was unfamiliar with the process and pretty much let Schmirer talk. I really can’t recall that Warren asked any particularly leading questions during the session, which was pretty straightforward."

So far so good. But then Steiger told me, "I think it is fair to suggest that Smith may have elaborated considerably when he wrote the article for SAGA... It is also fair to suggest that Herb’s interview ‘grew’ and additional details came to both his and Warren’s fertile minds. I guess I never felt terribly convinced by the Schmirer case."

In the end we are left with two somewhat divergent accounts, one of which is rich in detail. But again, Smith gives us nothing solid. We must rely on Smith’s reputation for that, and Smith fails here.

When MJ-12 first broke, Smith called me with an amazing revelation. Back in the early 1950s, as he traveled around installing the latest printing equipment in newspapers, he made friends with a man from Texas. The man’s wife was on a dude ranch in the southern part of the state and she wrote about a UFO crash that had taken place. She mentioned names, locations, and it is clear that she, through Smith, was describing the Del Rio UFO crash as reported in one of the MJ-12 papers. Smith knew the man, and said the letters existed. If true, then documentation that was created in the early 1950s, that had a provenance, would corroborate some of the MJ-12 information.

But Smith was never able to produce the documents and letters and he soon lost interest. Later, he would suggest that he had the diaries of Ted Bundy... or rather, he wanted help to create them because they would sell for big money. This was a plan that he never put into action.

If there were two ways to do something, an easier, legal and ethical way, and a more difficult con, Smith would opt for the con every time. Ease of a task had nothing to do with his thought process. He wanted to score with the con and part of that was to invent information for his work.

He excused it, sometimes, by suggesting that he needed an item or two to flesh out a story. He told me that while working on a magazine article about Bigfoot, he needed another eyewitness account, so he invented two college girls in Missouri who had seen something strange. It was a minor part of the article, but the point is, he invented the tale.

Finally there is the drawing that Schmirer made of what the aliens looked like. Here is a point where the contamination might be seen. The alien leader (seen here and below), with the diver’s hood and the single earphone resembles the aliens in Mars Needs Women, which, coincidentally, had played in theaters only a few months before the sighting and regression. It is an image that has not been repeated in the UFO literature with any regularity.

It does suggest, however, that some of the details that appear in the UFO literate have their foundations in science fiction, both the movies and the magazines. So, when UFO researchers tell us that there is no influence by science fiction, they are mistaken.

Where does all this leave us? With a UFO sighting that is uncorroborated, details of an abduction that are out of science fiction movies, and rumors about abductees who are in federal mental hospitals and a committee of scientists who sold out, but let some of the hidden information out anyway.

Most important, however, is that this case is now forty years old and the best we can say is that Schmirer might have seen a UFO. Everything else is the product of contamination, a desire to validate the Hill abduction and invention by a writer who had the reputation for creating details to flesh out a story.

Given what we have learned in the last forty years, it is more likely that this abduction came from a disturbed young man who was aided by a writer who needed a story. He might have originally seen something, but the other details, added long after the fact, are more likely confabulation than alien intervention. This is a case that should be footnoted in the abduction research and then ignored. It teaches us nothing.

New Dwarf Planet

This one I missed. I was scanning the Internet the other day and for fun, I thought I would see if some of those sites that still talk of nine planets in the Solar System had been updated (No, they haven’t), when I discovered that the number of dwarf planets had increased by one. It seems that the object, once called Santa, was now named Haumea and was the latest of the Kuiper Belt Objects (aka Plutoids) to reach dwarf planet status.

This is a strange one for a couple of reasons. First, Mike Brown and his Caltech team said that they had discovered it in December 2004 while looking at images taken on May 6, 2004. They published an online abstract on July 20, 2005 and were going to announce the discovery at a conference in September. Before this got much farther, Jose Luis Ortiz and his team at the Instituto de Andalucia in Spain said that he had found the object on pictures they had taken in March 2003.

Brown learned that Ortiz had accessed his, Brown’s, observation logs, and Brown thought that Ortiz had done that so that he could backtrack to his own images. Ortiz denied that, but did admit he had accessed the logs, simply to be sure that they weren’t observing an object already cataloged.

I don’t know who is right here, but I do know that in the end, Brown’s team named the new object for the Hawaiian goddess Haumea. On September 17, 2008, the IAU said that this name had been accepted. This would seem to be proof that the IAU had accepted Brown and his team as the discoverers.

The second strange thing is that Haumea is elongated. It is not spherical, which means that it falls outside one of the criterion for a dwarf planet. They are supposed to be able to reach equilibrium, or, in other words, have a gravitational field strong enough to pull it into a relatively spherical shape. Since it rotates on its axis about once every four hours, it’s spinning faster than any other known equilibrium body in the Solar System, so this might account for its strange shape and allows it to slide past this idea that dwarf planets must be relatively spherical.

This is not to mention the size. It’s about 1150 km in diameter or about half the size of Pluto and Eris, a little smaller than Makemake and about twice the size of Ceres.

Like two of the other Plutoids, Haumea has a couple of moons, named Hiiaka and Namaka. Hiiaka was discovered first and is thought to be about 310 km in diameter. Namaka is smaller, closer to the planet, and was discovered not long ago.

There are quite a number of other objects that are being considered for dwarf planet status, including one in the asteroid belt, Vesta, which would join Ceres as the only dwarf planets between Mars and Jupiter. And there are discussions that one of the Trans Neptune Objects, something like two light years from Earth, is the size of Mars. Once the observational data are complete, it will be interesting to see how the IAU handles that. Will we get another class of planet that accounts for those at the edge of the Solar System, out beyond Neptune?

They’re still trying to decide if Charon meets the criterion for dwarf planet. Charon might not be orbiting Pluto, but the two of them orbit a central point not unlike a double star, and if true, then Charon would fit the definition of dwarf planet and its status would upgraded.

As I say, there has been quite a bit of change to the Solar System in the last few years. Planets demoted, dwarf planets defined, and the possibility of a Mars-sized object halfway to the next star, which might make an interesting way station if we get to the point of launching interstellar flights and it’s on the right side of its orbit... a bit of science fiction to brighten our day.

Black Sergeants and Stan Friedman - UPDATED

(Blogger’s Note: I asked Paolo Martinuz for permission to use the material he sent me and he granted. The original emails were sent from Stan Friedman to Paolo.)

In February 1989, I arranged for Don Schmitt and me to meet with Bill Brazel Jr. in Carrizozo, New Mexico (seen below, me, Bill Brazel and Don Schmitt), to discuss his memories of picking up fragments of debris from an alien spacecraft crash. I fully expected to learn that the testimony that had been attributed to him by others to be inaccurate and nowhere nearly as spectacular as reported. To my surprise, he confirmed that he had picked up the debris, which he described in terms that suggested something other than the terrestrial, that he had kept that debris in a cigar box that suggested there wasn’t much of it and it wasn’t very large, and that, finally, Air Force officers and enlisted men from the Roswell Army Air Field eventually visited him and confiscated it.

The substance of that interview was reported first in UFO Crash at Roswell and later in The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell. There is one line in that interview that sparked controversy in the early 1990s. Brazel, in describing what happened to the material, said, "I still am not really sure, but I’m almost positive that the officer in charge, his name was Armstrong. A real nice guy. Now he had a sergeant with him that was real nice. And I think there were two other enlisted men."

Stan Friedman used the same testimony in his Crash at Corona. Though he does not provide attribution, it is clear that he is quoting from the interview that Don Schmitt and I had conducted.

Friedman wrote that Brazel said, "I’m almost positive that the officer in charge, his name was Armstrong. A real nice guy. Now he had a [black] sergeant with him that was real nice. And I think there were two other enlisted men.

Jerry Clark, writing in the International UFO Reporter, notes this change. Commenting on Crash at Corona, Clark wrote:

In other ways it [Crash at Corona] is a flawed and disturbing work, an object lesson in the consequences of uncritical claimant-advocacy.

The most chilling example of this appears on page 85 [hardback] where we find these words attributed to Bill Brazel, son of Mac [sic] Brazel, the rancher who discovered the debris. Brazel reports four Air Force men called on him after learning that he had kept some of the material. One was an officer named Armstrong. "He had a [black] sergeant with him,’ the book reports, quoting Brazel. The same quote, taken from the same interview (conducted by Randle and Schmitt), appears on page 130 [paperback] of UFO Crash at Roswell, but without the bracketed word.

Brackets are placed inside quotes when a writer or editor wishes to clarify meaning or insert commentary or correction. Brackets are not supposed to be used, as they are here in the Friedman/Berliner book, to put words into someone’s mouth - especially when those words state something contrary to fact. Not only has Brazel never said the sergeant was black, he emphatically denies it.

So why the adjective between brackets? The answer is simple: To make Brazel’s testimony conform to [Gerald] Anderson’s. Anderson already knew of Armstrong and the sergeant from his reading of the Roswell literature. All Anderson did was to add a detail about the sergeant’s racial identity. By dropping in a bracketed word, which not only fails to elucidate but actively misrepresents Brazel’s testimony, Crash at Corona creates corroboration for Anderson’s story where none existed.

Why bring this up now, you might ask. It was discussed in the July/August 1992 issue of the International UFO Reporter. Simply because the issue has been raised again. Italian UFO researcher, Paolo Martinuz, who has been following the Roswell case for years and who is completing his own book about it, wrote to Friedman, asking him about the bracketed word.

According to the information I received from Martinuz, he asked Friedman (through email), "In the book "Crash at Corona" in the interview to Bill Brazel it’s quoted an important note during the talk of Brazel with Armstrong: He had a (black) sergeant with him. Why "black" is between brackets. Really Brazel said that the sergeant was "black"?

Friedman said, "He said... [it begins with an N and is a racially charged word]. I didn’t want to use the word."

This revelation surprised me since I had conducted the interview. After the original controversy erupted, I called Bill Brazel on December 5, 1992 to ask about it, and I recorded the interview (as I had the first). I said to him, "I’ve got one quick question for you if you don’t mind...Remember when we brought Don Berliner by? He’s now saying that you said the sergeant with Captain Armstrong was black."

Brazel said, "No. I didn’t say that. Cause it ain’t right."

"I just wanted to clarify that situation," I said.

"To my recollection anyway, that’s not right. I don’t think there was any colored people in the whole contingent."

One point to note here is that Don Berliner did have an opportunity to interview Bill Brazel in person and that was why I mentioned Berliner to Brazel. But Don Schmitt and I took Berliner to meet Brazel in his home and both Schmitt and I were present at that interview. Had the word come up then, we would have heard it and I certainly would have remembered it, especially in 1992. That was the reason I called Bill Brazel, to get him on tape about the use of the word black... no where had anyone suggested anything else.

So now the question becomes, why, after all these years do we have a new reason for the bracketed word? One that we can demonstrate is inaccurate based on the original 1989 interview, and confirmed by the 1992 interview. And yes, I listened to both tapes again to be sure of these points and I will note that Brazel did use the outdated and possibly offensive "colored" but he didn’t use the more racially charged term and, in fact, I never heard him say anything like that in all my discussions with him.

I emailed Friedman about this, providing him with a copy of the original article and asking if he had a comment. He wrote back that Don Berliner remembered the incident the same way he did. I take this to mean that Berliner remembered that Brazel had used the racially charged word and they had simply substituted the more acceptable term.

So I emailed Don Berliner about this, outlining, briefly what the controversy was about, meaning the insertion of the word into the interview that Schmitt and I conducted and this new allegation that Bill Brazel had used a very derogatory term.

Berliner wrote a brief note back and said, "I have spent very little time on Roswell matters in the past 15 years, and have no clear memory of what you and Stan are discussing."

The bottom line here is still that Brazel never used the word in my presence, never suggested that any of the soldiers who visited were black and, in fact, denied it, all on tape. I have both tapes and can prove that Brazel didn’t say it. There is no proof available that he did, and he, in fact, denies it.

I could say that we’re back to needing a reason to insert the word into the interview, but I think the reason is clear. Jerry Clark explained it. What I don’t know is why we have this latest version for doing that. Bill Brazel never said it and it should not have been included. It merely adds to the already confused picture of the Roswell case and that we don’t need.

Moore Knew Mogul's Name

Some things just never change. We have been bombarded for years by the idea that Project Mogul was so highly classified that even the men who worked on it didn’t know the name. I’ve argued that while the purpose was classified, the equipment wasn’t so the men at Roswell should have been able to identify for what it was, that is, weather balloons and radar targets. And now I learn that some of these assumptions simply aren’t true.

In Karl Pflock’s anti-Roswell book, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, we learn, on page 145, that Charles Moore (Seen here), one of the project engineers, didn’t even know the name of the project until 1992 when Robert Todd told him. It makes it sound as if Mogul was quite important and that it was so highly classified that it’s not surprising that the officers and men at Roswell didn’t know a thing about it.

I have reported, in the past, that Moore told me that he, along with a couple of others traveled from Alamogordo to Roswell to ask for assistance in tracking the balloon arrays. This would mean that there were officers and men at Roswell who did know about the project and what it was. And given the way the military works, at least one of those officers would have also been involved in the recovery on the Foster (Brazel) ranch and would have identified it.

And even if that wasn’t true, we also know that the Mogul people were required to issue NOTAMs, that is, Notices to Airmen, about the launches so that had this been what had been found, one of the men, probably the operations officer, would have suggested that the debris was actually one of these balloons, had it been.

Now we have even more evidence about this. Writing on Errol Bruce Knapp’s UFO UpDates, Brad Sparks tells us that Moore knew the name of the project long before Robert Todd told him what it was. Sparks gives us a look at a letter that was written in 1949, which was unclassified and which mentions Project Mogul by name. So, even the name of the Project was not classified.

The letter can be found at:

http://roswellproof.com/McLaughlin_Van_Allen_letter.html

In the letter, dated May 12, 1949, Robert B. McLaughlin is describing, for James A. Van Allen (seen here), that C. B. Moore, yes, our Charles Moore, who he was. He then writes, "In addition to this, he had been head of Project Mogul for the Air Force."

I suppose you could say that Moore was unaware of the letter but according to Brad Sparks, Moore had received a courtesy copy and the copy that Sparks reproduced came from Moore’s own files. So, it would seem that Moore knew the name long before Robert Todd told him what it was.

Even more impressive, are the diary notes written by Dr. Albert Crary, chief of the project and reproduced by the Air Force in their massive The Roswell Report released in 1995. In Section 17, Journal Transcripts, Albert P. Crary, April 2 1946 - May 8, 1946 and December 2, 1946 - August 16, 1947, we can see that on December 11, 1946... "Equipment from Johns Hopkins Unicersity (sic) transferred to MOGUL plane..."

On December 12, Crary noted, "C-54 unloaded warhead material first then all MOGUL eqpt (sic) which went to North Hangar." (See below.)

I’ve seen Jesse Marcel, Sr., the air intelligence officer at Roswell called a liar and worse over just these sorts of things. We can now document that Moore knew the name even as he insisted that neither he nor any of the others knew it in 1947. Clearly that statement is not accurate.

What we learn from all this is that even the name wasn’t all that important. While the ultimate purpose might have been classified, it is quite clear that not even the name was. Crary puts in it his diary and then McLaughlin writes about it in an unclassified letter, of which Moore has a copy.

So, once again, we can ask the question... How is it that these balloons, which were not classified, in a project with an unclassified name, could be mistaken for something extraterrestrial? The simple answer is, "They couldn’t."

And now we have more evidence that the situation in 1947 is not what we have been told by the Air Force and others. That makes Mogul and even less likely answer.

The Disappearance of Oliver Lerch-Larch-Lurch-Thomas

I first became aware of the story of Oliver Lerch as I was studying the strange case of the Allende Letters. These documents, or letters, including an annotated copy of Morris K. Jessup’s The Case for the UFO, arrived at the Office of Naval Research in the mid-1950s. The letters were thought, once, to explain some of the mysteries of the UFO phenomena, and, according to legend, were taken seriously by the Naval officers who saw them. Later investigations, and an admission by the man who sent them that they were a hoax, have rendered them nearly useless today, but that’s another story.

Such is not exactly the case for Jessup’s book about UFOs. Jessup was trained as an astronomer and wrote one of the many books about UFOs that entered into national distribution in the mid-1950s. In that book, he discussed strange disappearances, and one of those he wrote about was that of Oliver Lerch. He claimed it was real and the details of the disappearance were written down in the records of the South Bend, Indiana, Police Department for anyone who cared to check. With that sort of documentation this is one of the best of the mysterious disappearances that have been reported over the years.

According to Jessup’s version, Oliver Lerch, the twenty-year-old son of Thomas Lerch, had been sent out to draw water from the well because “throats were parched from singing” on that Christmas Eve, 1890. Around ten, Oliver’s mother asked him to go out to the well for water.

The day had been overcast with a light snow, according to the legend, but in the late afternoon, or early evening, the snow had ended and the clouds had blown away. All that was left was the new, white, unbroken snow to the well.

About five minutes later, the party was interrupted by the screaming of Oliver, shouting for help and that, “It’s got me.”

Of course they all ran out, and short of the well, Oliver’s footprints stopped. One of the two buckets he had been carrying was lying off to the side. All that was left of Oliver now was his voice, quieted by distance, still yelling for help. Some claimed it came from above, suggesting that whatever it was, it could fly. Later, some would report that “they” had him, but we don’t know who “they” were either.

This isn’t, however, the only version of the story that has been told over the years and I, for one, wanted to verify it. Using techniques that I had learned in college, I made a literature search, looking for anything that related to this report. I found that the boy was variously identified as Oliver Lerch, Oliver Larch, Oliver Lurch or Oliver Thomas. He was twelve, twenty, or twenty-two. The disappearance took place on Christmas Eve 1889, Christmas Day 1889, Christmas Day 1890 or Christmas Day 1909. He managed to walk through the new snow a distance of 50, 75, 90, or 225 feet before it, or they, captured him. He lived either in South Bend, Indiana or somewhere in Wales.

At this point I’d done no real investigation. I’d merely completed a literature search, though I confess that the discrepancies in the various accounts were worrisome. Not of overwhelming importance at this point, but certainly suggesting that something was wrong with the tale.

Since Jessup said wrote that everything was written down in the records of the South Bend Police Department, I called them. They told me that their records didn’t go back that far. There had been a fire and many of the police documents had been destroyed. They didn’t have anything prior to 1920.

I called the local newspaper. Elaine Stevens of the South Bend Tribune was kind enough to search the files for me. She sent a number of articles, all of which seemed to have been generated by the publication of Jessup’s book.

Francis K. Czyzewski had written a couple of articles in the 1960s about his attempts to verify the report. He said that neither he nor the local library could find any evidence that the incident had happened. He wrote, “Not a single paragraph about the disappearance of Oliver Lerch was printed anywhere. An independent investigating team from the South Bend Public Library had searched the old files of the South Bend News-Times as well as The Tribune. Not even an inkling of a story that could have shaken the nation. Police records dating back to 1890 were then said to be non-existent.”

Sarah Lockerbie, also of the South Bend Tribune, in the 1960s, wrote an article for their Sunday magazine about the disappearance. She spoke to members of a Lerch family who still lived in South Bend hoping there might be a family tradition she could tap into. Sherman Lerch, who had lived in the area all his life, told anyone who asked, including Lockerbie that the story wasn’t true.

I suppose it should be noted here that Lerch was giving this interview in the 1960s, and his father, who was also a resident of the area would have been alive at the time of the disappearance.

And there were a number of other witnesses named in the various books and articles about the disappearance which allowed for additional investigation. A Methodist pastor, Samuel Mallelieu, for example, was identified as having attended the ill-fated Christmas party, but a check with various churches failed to reveal anyone by that name living in South Bend in 1889 or 1890.

Another problem is that weather records for both December 1889 and December 1890 reveal that the weather was warm, with highs in the fifties and sixties. In other words, the weather was warm enough that there would be no freshly fallen snow for young Oliver and his footprints.

I found nothing to suggest the story, in this form, existed prior to the publication of Jessup’s book. Joe Nickell, however, writing in Fate, contacted an earlier contributor to that magazine, Joseph Rosenberger, who had published one version of the Lerch story in September 1950. Rosenberger said that there was no truth to the story. “It was all fiction for a buck,” implying that he had invented it.

Jerry Clark noted that the story actually pre-dated that when Rudolf H. Horst, who was the managing editor of the South Bend Tribune told British writer Harold T. Wilkins that the story was imaginary. Horst suggested that the story was known long before 1932, which, of course, makes you wonder about Rosenberger’s claim.

Additional research showed that a story about Oliver Morton Lerch was published in 1906 in The Scrap Book. It was in this version that rather than just disappearing and his disembodied voice being heard coming from the ground, it was suggested that his voice came from above saying that “It’s got me.” It is never identified.

This also seems to suggest that Rosenberger’s claim of having invented the tale for the money is not accurate.

There is a similar tale in a science fiction story by Ambrose Bierce published in 1893 which might be the basis for the Lerch-Larch-Lurch-Thomas tale. In this story the victim was Charles Ashmore who lived in Quincy, Illinois and is set in November 1878. Ashmore was making a trip to the well, his tracks stopped abruptly in the fresh snow, and the family could hear him calling for help from a long distance. It was altered later, with Ashmore given a new name and moved to South Bend for some unexplained reason.

Brad Steiger, in one of his many books, wrote about a variation of the tale in which Oliver Thomas, a young man living in Wales disappeared under circumstances that are remarkably similar to the American story. I called Brad to ask him about it and he told me that he had long since learned that the story was a hoax. When he learned the truth, he had tried to alert people, but sometimes they just wouldn’t listen.

All this suggests to me that the story, in all its various forms is a hoax. There was no Oliver Lerch, Larch, Lurch or Thomas to leave footprints in fresh snow or to be grabbed by it. Writers just accepted that others had checked the story. Jessup claimed it was all there in South Bend for anyone who wanted to check implying that Jessup himself had checked, but Jessup was wrong. There was nothing in South Bend, other than stories of others attempting to verify the story.

This is another of those tales that we can remove from our lists of the strange. I know that I sometimes wish these things were true, simply because I, like most everyone else, love a good mystery. This, however, is not one of them.

Corroboration for Frankie Rowe

I grow tired of having to repeat the same information over and over because the skeptics and the debunkers simply don’t want to hear it. Now I’m back defending Frankie Rowe (seen here) who has been called a liar for no reason that I can understand. She might be mistaken. She might be wrong. But she is relating the information to us as best she can.

Recently, on a skeptics forum, someone wrote about Rowe asking if it wasn’t true that it had been proven that her father had not been with the Roswell Fire Department. No, it’s not true and unless you can source your information, just keep it to yourself. This is just like the news media saying, "According to published reports," without saying where those reports were published.

I can say that according to published reports, Bill Clinton, while president, had meetings with alien creatures. Of course the report was published in the Weekly World News which was making it up, but it was a published report. Saying the source is a published report tells us nothing about the veracity of that report, but hey, it sounds good.

Had the skeptic wanted to know the truth rather than just hurl an accusation, he, or she, could have called the Roswell Fire Department and asked them. Or called the Roswell Library and have them look it up in the Roswell City Directory of 1947.

I have a copy of that Roswell City Directory (seen below) and it lists Dan Dwyer, Frankie’s father, as a lieutenant in the fire department and I have copies of the fire logs from June and July 1947 and find his name in there frequently. There is no question that Dan Dwyer was a member of the Roswell Fire Department in July 1947. On one page, we see that Dan was the officer in charge six times. On another page from late May through June 24, we see Dwyer or Dan as the officer in charge ten times.

But we can take this further right now. Skeptics have complained that Frankie’s story is stand alone, meaning that no one has corroborated it. Well, her sister, Helen Cahill, did tell me that she had heard the story of the crash and the threats made against her in the early 1960s. The story was not as robust as that told by Frankie and can be explained by the simple fact that in 1947 Helen was already married and living away from home.

Cahill also said that sometime in 1948, during a visit with her parents, her father (Dwyer) told her that something important had happened, but he couldn’t tell her because he was concerned about the safety of the family. Her mother, Minnie, said that Cahill’s father could tell her about it, but he was afraid that something would happen to her, Cahill, if he did. And yes, I have the signed, notarized statements in my files.

But now the story takes another turn. Karl Pflock rejected Rowe’s story because he’d talked to three former fire fighters who claimed no knowledge of the events and that the Roswell Fire Department didn’t make runs outside the city limits. He knew this because Max Littell, who had been a member of the city counsel in the 1950s told him so.

On June 21, 1947, according to the fire log, Pumper No. 4 made a run "out side city limit" (As seen on top entry of the Fire Record from Roswell).

So, it is quite clear that Frankie’s father, Dan Dwyer was a lieutenant in the Roswell Fire Department as the documentation shows. It is quite clear that the fire department did make runs outside the city limits. Maybe the next time the skeptics will take a moment, use the Internet and find out if the allegations are warranted.

Now, let’s talk about the new corroboration for Frankie... Tony Bragalia and I have been in contact with a former member of the Roswell Fire Department (and no, I’m not going to publish his name but if Christopher Allen would like it, I’ll email it to him for verification purposes - he is very old, a bit cranky and doesn’t need several dozen telephone calls). This man was interviewed by Pflock and Pflock cited him as saying the Roswell Fire Department didn’t make a run outside the city to the crash site.

For Pflock, this disproved Frankie’s story. And the man told us the same thing. The fire department didn’t make a run to the crash site. But then the retired fire fighter said something else. He told us that a colonel had come out from the base and told them not to go out there. That they, the military, would handle it.

I believe that Karl Pflock was an intellectually honest researcher who would have reported everything he learned rather than leaving out a critical piece of information like this, if he heard it. Once he was told that the fire department hadn’t made the run and that there was no documentation for the run, he stopped asking questions.

But I asked the retired fire fighter if he knew Dwyer and learned that he did (another corroboration for Frankie Rowe). I asked about Dwyer making a run outside the city and that was when I learned of the "colonel" who had advised against it. I was told that they didn’t make the run.

And then I was told that Dwyer (seen here with other members of the Roswell Fire Department), in his personal car did drive out to the crash site. Dwyer and not the fire department, which explains why there is no record of it and why other fire fighters didn’t remember it.

The retired fire fighter was quite clear about these points. They had been visited by an officer from the base, they had been told not to go out there, and Dwyer, in his personal car, did.

Does this prove the story to be true? Of course not. But it does prove that Frankie Rowe hasn’t been lying. She was telling us exactly what her father told her, what he had told her sister and what he had told his friend in the Roswell Fire Department.

It undermines some of what Karl published in his book because we were using the same sources and it is clear to me that Karl just didn’t ask the right questions to find out what happened. He only asked those that verified what he believed and asked no others. Sometimes asking the next question reveals information that you don’t want to hear. Trial attorneys are well versed in not asking certain questions.

Oh, one final thing. I do have the interview on tape... Tape solves many problems. When someone says I misquoted him or her, I can play the tapes. When someone challenges what I have written, I can play the tapes. More than once I have proven my point with those tapes. And here I can prove that this fire fighter said to me and said to Tony, just what I said that he did.

Blanchard, Lytle and Roswell

Before we start, let me say this. I have known Robert Hastings for nearly twenty years and I have always been impressed with his integrity and his intellect. I knew Chester Lytle for a long time. He was a man of impressive credentials who had no reason to embellish his position and suggest UFO knowledge if he had none. In other words, talking about flying saucers wouldn’t have done him much good and certainly could have hurt him.

Now both of these men come together in Hastings’ UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites. Hastings had the opportunity to interview Lytle on a number of occasions and Lytle shared an interesting story about the Roswell UFO crash. I will note that Hastings had shared this information with me prior to the publication of his book, so I have known about it for some time, but he asked that I say nothing until his book was available.

According to Hastings, he was interviewing Lytle about his involvement with atomic energy and what he might know about UFO sightings near nuclear plants or facilities. Hastings said that with no prompting from him, Lytle moved on to the Roswell crash and told Hastings that William Blanchard (seen here), who had command of the 509th Bomb Group in Roswell at the time of the crash confirmed the alien nature of the event.

Lytle told Hastings that in February 1953, with Blanchard now a general officer, they were in Alaska while Lytle’s wife was in Chicago about to give birth. Lytle was desperate to get home and Blanchard said that they could take an Air Force aircraft to Illinois, land at one of the bases close to Chicago and Lytle could get home from there.

While on the flight, somehow the subject of UFOs came up, maybe because of a couple of sightings at Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage sometime earlier. Blanchard then told Lytle that an alien craft had crashed near Roswell. According to Hastings, Blanchard told Lytle that four bodies had been recovered.

Surprised by this, Hastings asked Lytle, "Blanchard actually told you that the Roswell object was an alien spacecraft."

Lytle said, "Oh, absolutely."

In break with the traditional story, Blanchard said that some of the bodies had gone originally to Muroc Army Air Field (now Edwards Air Force Base), but that they all wound up at Wright Field.

Now, granted, this is second-hand testimony about what Blanchard said, but there is no reason for Lytle to invent it, and it is quite clear that Lytle held many clearances and had been trusted with the secrets of the Manhattan Project. He was a credible man who would not have made up the story.

Of course, it fails on one point and that is that we can’t verify it with either Lytle or Blanchard. Both men are dead. The documentation that exists is quite limited and subject to various interpretations. At this point, this is an anecdote that provides a bit of insight into the crash... and it is the first time that Blanchard, through Lytle, put gave us a number of bodies. Blanchard, according to Lytle, said, "Four."

So what do we do? Add this to the list of stories about the UFO crash at Roswell and continue the search. Look for some additional corroboration but note that we had some reliable information that puts Blanchard in the center of this, just where he would have been as the commanding officer at the Roswell Army Air Field in July 1947.

For those interested in more of what Robert Hastings has reported, you can only order UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites at ufohastings.com.

The Great Roswell Debate

As some of you know, I had been scheduled to debate the merits of the Roswell UFO crash case with one of the most vocal opponents. The debate, arranged by Rob McConnell of X-Zone Radio (see his website www.xzone-radio.com) was to take place on Thursday, August 28, but about two hours before the start, my adversary bailed with a lame excuse about terrorism. Unilaterally, he postponed the debate to December 7. Neither Rob McConnell nor I agreed to this change and it will not happen.

I make note of this here in case some of you may wonder why there was no debate (and others probably couldn't care less). He failed to appear, video taping some ridiculous excuse, in daylight hours, which means he planned to jump long before he notified McConnell. This is just another in the many strange tales that have come from him.

I will also note that he has a habit of bullying people, making claims that are soon disproved, and then attempts to hide the evidence of his failures. He changes the information to suit his purposes, has no ethical standards, and threatens those who disagree with him with lawsuits and worse.

I plan no further dealings with the man until he issues the apologies required for this bad behavior and several dozen other outrageous claims and mistakes he has made. For those who care to learn more about him, see kalisanidiot.blogspot.com.

Mac Magruder and the Air War College Part 2

Though I thought we would revisit the Mac Magruder story after the first of the year, I have new information. Magruder is the late Marine officer who lead a night fighter squadron during the Second World War and achieved some status in the Roswell UFO crash when his sons said he had told them of the crash long before Roswell was a household name. Magruder, at the time of the crash was assigned, according to them, to the Air War College at Maxwell Field and that students had been taken to Wright Field to view the wreckage, the bodies, and to provide insight into a possible release of information.

A few weeks ago I telephoned, emailed, and questioned various offices at Maxwell Field to learn when the class would have been in session, when the students would have arrived, and if they had made a trip to Wright Field during their studies. I was told then that the records I needed would not be available until a major renovation of the registrar and history areas was completed. However, Dr. James A. Mowbray said that he believed that the class was in session in July 1947 and he remembered that they had taken a trip to Wright Field. Good news for the supporters of the Magruder tale.

Now, however, I have later and better information. Another researcher, Aurimas Svitojus wrote for Magruder’s records from NPRC in St. Louis and received a reply that is interesting.

(Let me take a moment to digress. I’ve had sporadic success with St. Louis. Some records I have requested I have received quickly. Others, including my own, come in parts or not at all. My grandfather’s from World War I was destroyed by the fire, for example.)

According to the documents received by Svitojus, from the first of July to the nineteenth, Magruder was assigned as the commanding officer of VMF-542, a Marine aviation unit. (I’ll note here that he was assigned there as CO in June, but for our purposes, we’re only looking at July and later.)

On July 20, he was "...Detached to: AIR COMMAND AND STAFF SCHOOL, AIR UNIVERSITY, MAXWELL FIELD, ALABAMA."

The records show that he had an authorized delay in enroute from July 21 to 14 August and that from August 15 to August 26 he was to travel to Maxwell.

What this means, simply, is that he was authorized a leave of about three weeks and that he was then given 11 days to travel from his old station to Maxwell. The records suggest he reported in on August 27. He was assigned to the school beginning on August 1 and was released from that assignment on June 6, 1948.

This means that he was not at Maxwell in July so that a trip at the end of the month with his class did not happen. The school, according to the information began in early September. Although assigned there on August 1, the documents show he didn’t arrived until very late in the month.

There is no inconsistency here. This simply means that the morning reports from his Marine Squadron dropped him, and those at Maxwell would have picked him up. Both would have shown him on an authorized delay and this is more for accounting purposes than anything else.

The final bit we can pull from the records is that Magruder did go to Wright Field, but not until April of 1948. This was part of the training for the school. Students were often detailed to other, working bases to see those commands in operation.

What we can find out from Maxwell, once their renovations are complete are the dates that Magruder arrived (or verification of the date we now have), the dates that classes began, and finally, the dates of the trips they might have taken during the class sessions. All that information will be helpful in determining what happened and when.

I also asked for a complete roster of students in the hopes that we might be able to find some corroboration. This, I believe is a long shot given the timing. The students would be senior officers, probably in their late thirties. Since the school ended sixty years ago, any survivors would be in his 90s. Not impossible but so far, of those I have identified as students, all are now dead.

My reading of the records, however, suggests to me that Magruder was on leave in July and all the Air War College really knew about him was that he was a high-ranking Marine officer who had been assigned to the school. They would have known when to expect him, and I would be surprised to learn that he had no communication with the school prior to his arrival. There are mundane things like housing that needed to be arranged before classes begin.

But I see nothing to suggest that he would have been brought into the Roswell investigation at that point. The Army was trying to contain the information, not share it with those who had no need to know, and this is certainly a case where the officer in question had no need to know. Why even think about this?

The suggestion has been made that they had a captive audience of trustworthy men and they brought them in to gauge the public reaction. But couldn’t they do much the same thing by setting it up as a class assignment, what we now call a "tabletop" exercise, and gauge the reaction that way? They could even reference the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast for "real world" information. No need to compromise the secret here.

I know on this one I’m swimming against the current, but everything we’ve been able to learn to this point suggests that Magruder was not involved they way it has been alleged. That doesn’t mean that he wasn’t involved in some fashion, but a trip to Wright Field to view the craft and bodies just doesn’t make the grade.

Keeping Secrets for Decades

In the mid-1980s, Time magazine reported that a Soviet intelligence agent, who had been carefully trained, who had been provided with a good "legend" had been set down in Wisconsin. The agent rented an apartment, got a job, and settled in to routine. His mission was to establish himself as a loyal American. He was to remain in deep cover until a situation arose that would necessitate his activation. While walking down a road, about a week after his arrival in the United States, the Soviet agent was arrested by the FBI. The arrest was a stunning upset for the Soviets who had little respect for American intelligence operations. The arrest was the result of one of the most incredible intelligence operations of the Cold War. The arrest demonstrated that American intelligence had penetrated the Soviet Union to the highest levels and provided invaluable information to the American leadership.

That penetration was evidenced as early as 1956. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had begun a policy to "create and exploit troublesome problems" for the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev, speaking at the Twentieth Party Congress "laid bare many of the corruptions and rigidities of Stalinism in an effort to discredit competitors in the Politburo." It was Khrushchev’s idea to eliminate his competition for the top job by exposing the excesses that had been hidden during the Stalin regime. Khrushchev planned to consolidate his power around a denunciation of Stalin.

The speech was an explosive document that was only meant to be heard inside the highest levels of the communist party power structure. It was not meant to be heard by those under the communist government and certainly not meant to be heard by anyone in the United States. This speech, which discussed Stalin’s personal interventions in the affairs of Soviet satellites such as Hungary and Yugoslavia, resulted in a split that drove Yugoslavia toward alignment with the United States. From that perspective, it was a speech that shouldn’t have been made because of the far reaching political consequences outside the Soviet Union. Inside the communist power structure, it was a shrewd political move.

John Prados, in The Presidents’ Secret Wars, suggested that the speech was "political dynamite." He also suggested that a copy of the "secret speech reached the CIA from a contact with a European communist." The source of the speech was a tightly held secret that, in 1986, when Prados wrote his book had not been revealed. The real source of that speech was an American with the American Communist Party by the name of Jack Childs.

Childs knew the value of the speech and what it would mean to the view of communism held throughout the world. Childs knew because he, along with his brother, Morris, had been communists in the 1920s and the 1930s. They had both drifted away from the American Communist Party after they witnessed the discrepancy between what the communists said and what they did. Neither Jack nor Morris could understand how communist leaders could preach for the peasant and then participate in the purges that killed millions. Neither of the men could understand how the party leaders could live so well while so many of their fellow party members were starving.

Although Jack had given the FBI the text of Khrushchev’s 1956 speech that had done so much damage to the communist image, it was Morris Childs who provided the majority of the intelligence about Soviet internal policies. According to John Barron, Morris was the friend and confidant of Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, as well as leaders in China, North Vietnam, Cuba and Eastern Europe.

According to John Barron, "Many of the most famous figures of international communism personally knew Morris Childs and addressed him as Morris. To them, his credentials... were impeccable."

Childs was an American to be courted, to be trusted, and to be allowed to witness the workings of the communists throughout the world. From there he had a view that was better than that held be almost anyone else either communist or capitalist.

The information provided by Morris Childs was invaluable to American policy makers. On October 14, 1962, U-2 flights over Cuba took a series of photographs that were developed and submitted for analysis the next day. Late in the evening the photo interpretation specialists called the Pentagon to relay information that "ballistic missiles had shown up" in Cuba. Given the proximity of Cuba to the United States, the President (Kennedy) believed that such missiles could not be allowed to remain in Cuba. They were a threat to the safety of the entire free world.

On October 16, the President ordered more flights over Cuba and he ordered all "armed forces put on ‘alert 4,’ one step nearer a war footing." The President, by increasing the readiness of the American armed forces, was sending a message to the Soviets. He was telling the Soviet leadership that he considered the missiles in Cuba to be an important issue. By increasing the alert status, he was making a move that had no real world ramifications, other than moving the military to a higher level or readiness. American forces could be sent into combat faster than at a lower alert level.

On October 18, President Kennedy met with the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Khrushchev, through Gromyko, told the President that the Soviet assistance to Cuba was "by no means offensive." Of course, given the photographs of the ballistic missiles, Kennedy knew that wasn’t true. Ballistic missiles are an offensive weapon.

Two days later, on October 20, with additional evidence of missile sites in Cuba, Kennedy ordered a naval blockade. He delayed the implementation until American allies could be alerted. The blockade, according to some politicians was almost the same as declaring war. However, the Soviet Union did not challenge the blockade and no shots were fired. The situation was never pushed, by either side, to a point where they would have been no choice but to open fire. Once that threshold had been crossed, it would have been difficult to keep the situation from escalating into, at the very least, a naval war.

The Cuban missile crisis created a situation in which the power of the Soviet Union had been challenged. According to some politicians, if Khrushchev was pushed far enough, he would fight. The situation, as it developed in Cuba showed that such was not the case. Khrushchev was given an ultimatum which demanded the removal the missiles. He had but two choices. Remove them or face the very real threat of war.

The situation would seem to be extremely dangerous. President Kennedy was giving Khrushchev no real choice. The world, it seemed, was on the brink of war and then Khrushchev backed down. The Soviet dictator, who, in the United Nations had told the world he would bury the United States, ordered the withdrawal of the ballistic missiles. Kennedy drew a line in the sand and threatened a war. The situation in October 1962 was extremely grim and dangerous.

The question that can now be asked is if Kennedy was taking that big of a risk. Did he push Khrushchev because he knew what the Soviet response would be to the ultimatum? The answer, based on information supplied by Operation Solo and Morris Childs, is, "Yes. Kennedy knew what the Soviet response would be."

Childs had learned that the Soviet leadership were frightened by the prospect of nuclear war. They realized the devastation that would result and they knew that hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people would be killed. The Soviet leadership, while not overly concerned with the deaths of so many, did not want to be bombed back into an agrarian society. They had expended great national wealth in an attempt to enter the industrial age and compete with the free world. Nuclear war would turn that all around and the Soviet position of leadership would be lost. Kennedy knew this because of the work that had been accomplished by Childs. He knew, as he pushed Khrushchev, that Khrushchev would have no choice but to back down. While the rest of the world waited for the Soviet reaction to the American ultimatum, Kennedy knew what the eventual response would be.

Giving Kennedy the edge during the missile crisis was not the only important outcome of Operation Solo. Childs, in meetings with Soviet leaders, as well as with those in China, learned how wide the split between the Soviet Union and China was. American intelligence analysts believed that the rift between the two communist giants was not as wide as had been suggested publically.

In 1962, as the reports of a rift began to circulate, the analysts, cautioned against optimism. Roger Hilsman wrote in U.S. News and World Report, "So long as both partners [the Soviet Union and China] see the United States as the greatest obstacle to the attainment [of world revolution], they will try to patch over their differences and unite against the common enemy." Hilsman, like so many others believed that the communists would stick together simply because they were all communists. Their goal was to rule the world. Hilsman didn’t see the difference between Chinese communist and Soviet communist.

Morris Childs, however, listening to what the Soviets said in Moscow and what the Chinese said in Beijing, found that they were at odds with one another. When Khrushchev had renounced the policies of Stalin, the Chinese believed that it showed a Soviet move toward the west. Teng Hsiao-Ping, who lead the Chinese delegation during a negotiation in Moscow in July 1963, claimed that the Soviets were more interested in "better relations with the United States and India than with China." It was evidence for the rift, but it could also be interpreted as a negotiation tactic. The Chinese were attempting to position themselves in the most favorable place possible.

Childs believed, based on his discussions, that the Sino-Soviet split could not "be reconciled." Childs believed that there were fundamental differences in the Chinese and Soviet world view. These ideological differences were too great to overcome simply because both governments held a communist philosophy. Childs predicted that the rift would grow as the Chinese evolved their own theories of communism. The Soviet Union simply could not agree with the Chinese.

Childs intelligence value didn’t end there. He supplied consistent and important information until he finally retired in the 1980s. In 1987 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions to the security of the United States over several decades.

Now, having waded through all this, you might be wondering what relevance it has to UFOs. Well, this is a secret that was held by very few people for decades. Presidents were unaware of the operation. Other FBI agents, including those working in the same office building didn’t know about the operation. It was a closely held secret because if the Soviets ever learned about it, the conduit of information would be closed and more importantly, Morris would be killed.

The only exception to this secrecy, until the end of the mission, was President Ford. He had just taken over from Richard Nixon and was about to meet with the Soviets. He was nervous, even though he had been briefed on what to expect. To calm him, he was told about the source of the incredible information about the Soviets and their motives.

What this proves is that there are secrets that can be held for decades. They can be concealed from the president. They can be concealed from nearly everyone, if the stakes are high enough. So, when we say that governments can’t keep secrets, we have proof that they can. When we say that everything leaks, we can say that it doesn’t. There are people entrusted with secrets who can keep them, and keep them for years and years.

(Oh, for those interested in such things, Morris happened to be in the Soviet Union when President Kennedy was assassinated and the Russians received word. Although speaking to one another in Russian, because they believed that Childs couldn’t understand them, they disccused the ramifications of the murder. It was clear from their discussions that they had nothing to do with it.)

The story of Childs was reported by John Barron in his 1996 book, Operation Solo: The FBI’s Man in the Kremlin. It is a fascinating book and relevant because it turns some of our notions upside down.

Mogul Didn't Matter

I have discovered more evidence about the credibility of the secrecy around Project Mogul. This was the constant level balloon project blamed for the Roswell debris. It was a series of experiments, most of them in New Mexico, using a cluster of balloons and rawin radar targets, designed to keep balloons at a constant, high level in the atmosphere in an attempt to "listen" for Soviet atomic explosions.

When I say I discovered, it was really Robert Hastings, writing in his new book UFOS and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites. I have just applied an interesting paragraph from that book to what we know about Mogul and the secrecy around it.

Remember, the Mogul experiments began in New Mexico in early June and ended in September 1947. Stories about the balloon flights appeared in many newspapers beginning on July 10, just days after the officers at Roswell announced they had "captured" a flying saucer.

Hastings wrote, "In September 1947, Army Chief of Staff General Dwight D. Eisenhower directed the Army Air Corps to undertake the Constant Phoenix program, an on-going series of long-distance flights designed to detect atomic explosions ‘anywhere in the world.’ This high-priority activity was continued by the newly-created U.S. Air Force and, on September 3, 1949, radiation sensors abroad a USAF B-29 flying between Alaska and Japan confirmed the detonation of the first Soviet atomic bomb - some five years earlier than expected."

In other words, Mogul, to monitor Soviet atomic development was scrapped because a better method was found. Aircraft could maintain a constant level and could remain on station for hours at a time. A drifting balloon array moved with the vagaries of the winds and the sun (sun light could heat the balloon envelopes causing them to rise during the day). An aircraft could stay in virtually one place and when it needed to return for fuel or crew rest could be replaced in the same place by another aircraft.

At this point, Mogul was of no use. The secrecy requirement was gone. The original purpose, to spy on the Soviets wouldn’t be mentioned but the project no longer had the importance it once had. And, of course, with the deployment of spy planes and later satellites, the spying took on a much more sophisticated aspect than hanging some microphones on a balloon to drift over the Soviet Union.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with everyone knowing that there are dozens of spy satellites up there photographing everything down here, there was no need to keep the Mogul secret, so the Air Force trotted it out to explain the Roswell crash debris. Mogul was a high priority project, they say. It was top secret, they say. But in the end, it was just a bunch of balloons tied together, sometimes with microphones attached and sometimes not. Nothing unusual to fool ranchers, Army officers, sheriffs or anyone else who might have found the remains of Mogul.

For those interested in more of what Robert Hastings has reported, you can only order UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites at ufohastings.com.

Mac Magruder and the Air War College

The skeptics often accuse those of us who are convinced that something alien fell at Roswell and that some UFOs represent alien visitation of being shoddy in our investigations and have a will to believe nearly everything. But that sword cuts both ways and we can document time and again where skeptics have made pronouncements that fit their belief structures without bothering to corroborate their negative information.

Take, for example, the claim made on a skeptical web site that the tale of Mac Magruder, the late Marine colonel who, while at the Air War College, traveled to Wright Field to see the wreckage of an alien craft and the bodies of the crew is untrue. They reject the story, because, according to this site, there was no Air War College classes in session in July 1947 when this was to have taken place. The class didn’t begin until September 1947, so the Magruder tale can be rejected.

Tony Bragalia and I have been chasing this. We both know that you sometimes can’t rely on the information provided by others unless you check it out yourself. Too often the both skeptics and believers run with the first thing they have and don’t worry about consequences. We have, for the last few weeks, been trying to learn what we can from the various Internet sources available and then from a number of people at the Air War College.

First were the official biographies of some of the men who were in what was the second year-long class at the Air War College. This is the class that Magruder attended and there really seems to be no controversy about that. He was in that second class.

The official biographies Brigadier General Ethelred Lundy Sykes, Brigadier General John E. Frizen and Major General Dale O. Smith only tell us a little about the starting dates. Skyes, according to the biography, "Entering the Air War College at Maxwell Field, Ala., in July 1947, he graduated the following year."

According to the biography of Frizen, "From August 1947 to July 1948, he was a student at the Air Command and Staff School, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala."

Smith, according to his biography, "From the summer of 1947 to the summer of 1948, Smith attended the Air War College as a student."

Both Tony and I have talked to people at the Air War College including the registrar. We learned that the documents we needed, which were handwritten cards, the yearbooks, and other records, were currently boxed up because the office was undergoing a major renovation. This suggested that the claim the class didn’t start until September 1947 might be hearsay without the necessary corroboration.

Tony talked to the base historian and I talked to woman in the history office. They both said that they really didn’t know for certain because the records were unavailable at the moment, but those records would provide the information we sought. The woman I talked to told me in an email that the dates I had for the 1947 – 1948 class were correct, but since I had made queries about a couple of dates, her response wasn’t all that helpful.

Eventually we got to Dr. James A. Mowbray who had helped research and write the 1947 – 2007 AWC Alumni Review book. He is considered the resident expert on the subject.

Tony read to him a passage from Witness to Roswell by Tom Carey and Don Schmitt that said, "The Air War College had just commenced in mid-to-late July when they were all flown up to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio."

Mowbray found the sentence to be historically accurate and consistent. Mowbray was "one hundred percent certain there were classes in session in July 1947…" But he also said that the handwritten cards, currently in storage would confirm this. He said that he had analyzed them "many times" for his research on the AWC.

He did confirm an AWC class trip to Wright Field, though he couldn’t be certain that it was in July 1947. These were trips to learn about base operations and management systems and that many of the students [though I would suspect all] held high security clearances. From my experience, I know that some schools, before a student is accepted, require top secret clearances and the Air War College would certainly be one of them.

On the downside. Tony told Mowbray about the Roswell crash and Mowbray said, "It didn’t happen. This Magruder couldn’t have seen anything, because there was nothing to see."

He also said that few if any of the AWC students would have had any substantial "black project exposure." He said that he couldn’t think of any situation like Roswell that would involve students.

These were, of course, his opinions, based on his belief that the Roswell crash didn’t happen and if it didn’t happen, then Magruder couldn’t have seen anything. All we wanted to do was confirm the dates because the skeptics and debunkers had rejected the Magruder testimony based on that piece of information. Had the class not started until September, then the story could be rejected. That was not the case.

What we know now is that Magruder was in the second class. We know that classes were held in the summer and according to Mowbray, were a year long then, rather than the ten months of today. We can’t nail down, at this point, the exact date that Magruder might have arrived, nor can we nail down the exact start date. We can say that the dates given and the trips taken do not rule it out at this point.

Mowbray also made comments about the elderly, suggesting that they often confused dates, events, locations and memories and thought that Magruder was mistaken because of his age. But many elderly are as sharp as they ever were and do not confuse the events of their lives. We cannot reject the story simply because Magruder was old when he related the majority of the details.

Yes, we need to follow up on this when we can at the beginning of next year. Then we should be able to establish when Magruder arrived and when his class made the trip to Wright Field. At that point, with the documentation in hand, we’ll know if we can reject the story, or if we should attempt further confirmation. Unfortunately for us, learning that Magruder was there in July 1947 and that the class traveled to Wright Field in 1947 doesn’t prove that they saw the remains of an alien ship and the dead crew. It only proves that they could have.

But, at the very least, we’re attempting to get at the facts, rather than rely on the shoddy investigations of the skeptics and the debunkers. I would hope that before they start slinging loaded terms and mistaken conclusions, they would be sure of their facts.

The Las Vegas UFO Crash

The other day I received an email from a woman who had wanted to see the article from the Las Vegas Sun from April 19, 1962 which was headlined, "Brilliant Red Explosion Flares in Las Vegas Sky." She also wanted to see the article that accompanied it.

She wrote to the newspaper and was told they couldn’t help her because their archives had burned on November 22, 1963.

I found the excuse just a little far-fetched and wondered if they had blown her off they way they had me so long ago. I was chasing the same story, but I happened to be in Las Vegas and while the newspaper wouldn’t help, the local library and its microfilm could. I found the article and the accompanying story.

But this reminded me of the conversation I had with one of the reporters at the newspaper. One of the people mentioned in the article was Frank Maggio, described as a staff photographer. And, of course, was Jim Stalnaker who was the reporter on the story.

The reporter I spoke to was friendly, right up to the moment I mentioned UFOs. Then she turned hostile, lecturing me about the subject, claiming that she had never seen one and that proof of their visitation didn’t exist. To her, I was chasing ghosts.

I told her that the initial information had come from her newspaper and she said, "It’s all heresay. You can’t believe anything you read in the newspaper."

Let’s stop for a moment and look at that. A reporter for the newspaper just told me that you couldn’t believe anything you read in the newspaper. I thought that was a strange attitude for a reporter and if I had a subscription I would have cancelled it right then, citing as the reason that one of their reporters had told me I couldn’t believe anything printed in their newspaper.

But, since I knew that one of the witnesses, Frank Maggio worked for the newspaper, I asked about him.

"They’re all dead," she told me.

"Family?"

"No family. They’re dead."

This, I believe could be called the classical "dead end..." if I wanted to make light of it. But since she was hostile, and lying to me, I hung up and then looked in the Las Vegas telephone book. I found no listing for Frank Maggio, but did find one for a Maggio Photo Lab. Thinking it had to be the same guy, I called. It was.

He couldn’t remember anything about the sighting that wasn’t in the newspaper story. He had said that it was a "tremendous flaming sword." There was a series of bright explosions that broke up the trail across the sky and that it had vanished east of Las Vegas.

Over the next few weeks, I talked to twenty or thirty people who had seen something that night, read the Project Blue Book files on it, and although there had been a rumor that nothing about this event was printed in the newspapers, I found many articles about it. The object, whatever it was, had been seen as it crossed the United States from east to west, was tracked by radar, and seemed to make a looping turn over Reno so that it was heading to the south and then east when it appeared in the Las Vegas sky. Those watching it lost sight of it out near Mesquite, which is on the Nevada - Utah border.

The story is quite complex and I have done a long write up about it in A History of UFO Crashes, for those who wish more information.

But the point here is that sometimes those with the information just don’t want to be bothered with supplying it. That’s why I have put the entire newspaper article here, for those who might want to see it and can’t to Las Vegas to look it up for themselves.

The article follows: