Aztec, Scott Ramsey and Fred Reed

After my book, Crash – When UFOs Fall from the Sky was published, Scott Ramsey told one radio show host that he wanted to debate with me about the Aztec UFO crash. I declined, but only because I hadn’t read his book so I wasn’t aware of what Ramsey might have learned. I try to keep an open mind, although the Aztec crash seemed to have been proved a hoax more than once long ago.

Since that time, I have seen Ramsey’s book, spoken with him twice, and exchanged emails with him. I didn’t want to review the book because it seemed to be filled with errors, some minor and some egregious. I suggested that it was a fun little book, which it is in a distorted, perverted sort of way, but it is also a dishonest book, leaving out information that would underscore the false nature of the Aztec case.

There is the story of Fred Reed (although he is identified as Art Reed in, at least, one place on page 198). Reed, according to Ramsey was a former OSS member (the OSS being the Office of Strategic Services, a World War II organization that gathered information about the Axis and operated behind enemy lines), who was sent into Aztec to clean up after the saucer either crashed or landed, depending on which interpretation of the event you chose to believe.

According to Ramsey, in a 1999 interview with Reed, he learned that Reed and his team "...were dispatched to aircraft crash sites from time to time, especially when they were prototype aircraft of something secret..."

Fair enough. Nothing too outrageous here.

Reed said that they were brought in to make it look as if nothing had ever happened. He said that one of those times was "in the area northeast of Aztec, something big had been removed. I can tell you that."

He talked about seeing large equipment tracks, areas where trees had been damaged and the like. They were told to pick up everything from cigarette butts, c-ration cans, or whatever and bury them 18 inches deep, which doesn’t seem all that deep to me and which would leave the evidence on site for others to find. In fact, had I been in charge, I would have had them remove anything like that rather than leave it behind, but then, that’s just me.

Reed said that he had cleaned up a lot of places over the years. He suggested that some of these were just experimental craft and they wanted nothing left for enemy agents (well, that’s my interpretation of it) to find.

But then Reed told Ramsey, "You have a bunch of young guys traveling and living in motel or hotel rooms, and at night we would talk. We never heard the word Flying Saucer or Flying Disc, but years later I ran into my old C.O. and asked him what the hell crashed up in Aztec back years ago. He responded it was no aircraft, but he hinted to a flying disc."

Okay, we now have a hint about it, but Ramsey asked Reed to be more specific and according to Ramsey, Reed said, "My. C. O. said it was no aircraft – nothing as far as the U.S. was concerned. He alluded that it was one of those flying discs."

Overlooking the fact that it seems strange that the C.O. would share classified information with Reed (which does happen after so many years), this is very good information from a first-hand witness... Or is it?

It seems that in the days prior to Ramsey’s interview with Reed, Reed wrote a letter to Aztec Local News. In the March 27, 1999 letter, Reed wrote:

Dear Sir,

Today, my wife and I took advantage of the big celebration and went out to the site of the UFO crash of late 1948 in Hart Canyon. The workers who dedicated their time to this presentation of an important part of New Mexico history are to be commended. The road signs to guide the visitors were strategically placed, and the plaque marking the spot was in the right place. The aliens had built stone cairns marking the path from the oil field road to the crash site. These cairns are still in place today. The trees around the crash site open to the south, which is a typical distress signal for extraterrestrials.

The area looked essentially as it had in 1948 when the OSS sent our group there. We were to make a detailed survey of the area and report back to them, which we did. We were then reassigned elsewhere. We were never told what the OSS was looking for.

But a traveling survey crew like that eats in cafes, sleeps in motels, has no close family, and knows intimately only the men they work with. So, of course, we spect many long nights trying to figure out just what did happen in Hart Canyon.

We had heard rumors that a UFO had crashed there. But it did not look like a crash site. And we had heard that army personnel had rushed in there and cleaned up the site. But it did not look like a clean-up site either. One thing did stand out. There appeared to be some heavy traffic - not on any graded road - leading through the large rock slides to the canyon northwest of the site.

So what it boiled down to was this: No UFO crash. Instead, the UFO landed there for some specific intent to place (bury?) some instrument or thing there. They they got into their saucer and flew away. All of the other stories were put out by the government to cover up what they did not know about it. I guess the answer might be found in the old files of the OSS. But not in my time.

Yours truly,

Fred Reed 　 There is a great deal wrong with this, but look at the differences in the stories. Now he is talking about it being an OSS mission, unaware, at the time, that the OSS had ceased to exist in the months following the war, replaced by the Central Intelligence Group that was replaced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Note also that he is not ambivalent about the object that crashed. It is alien, and the trees on the south side of the site are open which is "typical" of an extraterrestrial distress signal.

He also wrote, "The aliens had built stone cairns marking the path from the oil field road to the crash site. These cairns are still in place today." That observation is missing in his interview with Ramsey about a week later.

Although the letter was written in 1999, it would seem that a document, created prior to the first interview would be valuable. It would suggest that the investigator had not contaminated the witness... except in this case, the story changed radically. The letter should raise red flags about the importance and the reliability of the witness. Such radical alterations suggest that the witness is not being candid with the interviewer and is taking his cues from him.

Paul Kimball, who produced and directed a documentary about the Aztec UFO crash noted on his blog:

1. Reed, in his letter, specifically states that nothing crashed on the mesa. Instead, the "rumour" that he heard was that a flying saucer had landed, planted a device, and then flown away - NO recovery! After his interview with Scott, this had changed to "a crashed flying saucer" that had been recovered by the military.

2. Reed, in his letter, refers to several stone cairns which the aliens had left in place to mark the road from the oil road to the "crash site" (note the contradictory statement even within this letter - "crash site" vs. "landing site"). After his interview with Scott, we now have the "out of place, large concrete pad" that had been poured to aid in the recovery.

3. Reed, in his letter, states that the "clean-up" operation occurred in late 1948. After his interview withe Scott, this date has been "corrected" back to April, 1948.

4. Reed, in his letter, talks about how the trees around the crash site open to the south, which is a "typical distress signal for the aliens." This ridiculous statement, which shows more than anything else that Reed is blowing smoke, is nowhere to be found after his interview with Scott.

5. Reed, in his letter, states that his group was sent to the site to make a "detailed survey of the area" and "report back" to the O.S.S. After the interview with Scott, this has morphed into a "cleanup" operation, despite the fact that in his letter, Reed stated that "We had heard that army personnel had rushed in there and cleaned up the site."

This should drive a stake into the heart of this testimony. Given this letter, written days before the Ramsey interview, it is clear that Reed’s story evolved quickly and drastically. Since Ramsey had a copy of the letter, he should have reported on these problems but did not.

Yes, we all have been caught by "witnesses" who were spinning tales. Frank Kaufmann and Gerald Anderson spring to mind. But in those cases, neither had presented a story that was so clearly changed from the beginning so quickly. Anderson began to adjust his tale, adding information to cover discrepancies, but not within a week of his original interviews. Kaufmann was able to produce documents to support his stories because he had a stash of old military letterhead and a couple of vintage typewriters.

But the other side of that coin is that when I learn that a witness has fabricated some of his testimony, inflated his credentials by claiming military rank and awards that were unearned, or made other statements that can’t be verified, I expose them myself. Here we have a case in which the testimony is at odds with what was written just days earlier, but there is no indication in subsequent reporting that the man has radically altered his statements.

And yes, I know that the telling of a tale from memory often has little twists and turns and that is expected. But this goes far beyond that. While I could accept the OSS statement if the guy had served with them during the war and continued with them through their various permutations, the other changes are just too much. It should have raised red flags, as Paul Kimball suggested, but those seem to have been ignored.

Karl Pflock, to his credit, had made it clear that he couldn’t name the source for the Newton diary and he couldn’t prove there was a diary. He thought the information should be published, probably with the hope that someone else, with similar knowledge would come forward to prove the case. Here, we just have the contradictory information ignored, but it should also be published.

What this means, simply, is that we have a compelling reason to reject the Reed testimony. The story is inaccurate, it is contradictory, and it detracts from the case for the Aztec crash. It should be published so that those who wish to judge the reality of the Aztec crash for themselves will have access to all information available. It shouldn’t be forgotten or ignored by the new primary investigator on the case.

And as an aside, I should make it clear that I do not believe there was a crash, landing, touch down, or anything else involving an alien craft near Aztec in 1948. The story is clearly the invention of a con man who hoped that the idea of alien technology would create interest in his oil finding (doodlebugs) gadgets. That the story survives until today is a testament to the lack of research capabilities of some of those in the UFO field.

Aztec, Karl Pflock and Scott Ramsey

In his book, The Aztec Incident, Scott Ramsey is quite annoyed with Karl Pflock over Karl’s claim that he’d seen a diary reportedly kept by Silas Newton, one of the original Aztec crash proponents. Karl’s report, in which he claims that Newton wrote that the Aztec crash was a hoax, seems to prove that there was no Aztec crash... but to be fair, can we trust that assessment?

Karl Pflock

A moment to recap, if necessary. Karl told me, as he peddled Roswell in Perspective, that editors at Prometheus had said that his book wasn’t skeptical enough. I would have thought the criterion would be for evidence to support the skepticism rather than skepticism for the sake of skepticism, but that is an argument for another time.

In the past I have noted two points where Karl printed his skeptical arguments that were flawed, but no one from that side of the fence questioned these claims. In one, he took Don Schmitt and me to task for suggesting that Corporal E. L. Pyles had seen an airborne object that might have been the thing that crashed. He said that Pyles could not remember the date, but a paragraph or so later, mentioned that Pyles noted that when he read the newspaper report about the flying saucer "capture" he thought that might have been what he had seen. In other words, Karl seemed to corroborate our claim that the incident took place in the first week of July, 1947. (Well, we put a precise date on it based on other information and I hope to get to the bottom of that during our investigation.)

The second was his dismissal of the Frankie Rowe story that her father had been to the crash site. Karl mentioned three firefighters he had interviewed, but when I interviewed one of them, the story was slightly altered. No, the stuff Karl published was accurate, it just wasn’t everything that the man knew about the situation. Karl, to give him the benefit of the doubt, cut his interview short after he had the information he wanted rather than all the information available.

I mention this because another story has developed and it has to do with one aspect of the Aztec crash, or rather one of the original and primary, though second-hand witnesses to the Aztec crash. Silas Newton was the original source for the story that Frank Scully published about the UFO crash at Aztec in his Behind the Flying Saucers.

According to what Karl wrote in Anomalist 8, Spring 2000, pages 137 to 161, he had learned from an unnamed source that Silas Newton had left, not really a diary, but a memoir of sorts, that talked about the Aztec crash. Karl said that after the Albuquerque Journal ran a story about the Aztec crash on May 17, 1998, he received a telephone call from a "source" who said he had a document written by Newton. Karl asked for a copy and was told, "Absolutely not," but that he could see it if he wanted to. On July 11, 1998, according to Karl, he met with the source for the first time.

Over about the next year, he met with the source and talked with him on the telephone a number of times. Although he got to see the document, he wasn’t allowed to photograph it or to have any other sort of photo copy. He was allowed to read it, take notes and even copy what he wanted in his own hand, but nothing more. He just wasn’t allowed do anything that would prove the document existed.

Karl did say that he didn’t know what Newton’s handwriting looked like, but was able to obtain, through William Moore, a holographic copy of Newton’s will, which is, of course, a handwritten copy. To his admittedly untrained eye, the writing on both documents looked the same. So, for Karl, this was a sort of corroboration.

The main point here is that, according to Karl in what he copied from the Newton diary, "The Aztec saucer tale, including all of the associated landing claims was a hoax. Newton invented the tale to give his "doodlebug" [which is a device that allegedly find oil or other minerals with a machine] pitch – in his words – ... a big secret feel."

Karl also wrote, "Now we come to what, if true, may be a significant new development in this wild affair. After the Denver Post revealed he was Scientist X, [which refers to a lecture at the University of Denver in 1950 where Newton laid out the Aztec crash tale as well as other flying saucer information] Newton received two visitors at his Newton Oil Company office in Denver. These men claimed to be with a highly secret U.S. government entity, which they refused to name. Newton writes [again according to Karl] ‘They grilled me, tried to poke holes in my story. Had no trouble doing it and laughed in my face about the scientific mistakes I made. They never said so, but I could tell they were trying to find out if I really knew anything about flying saucers.’

"Newton’s visitors told him they knew he was pulling a scam and then gave him what may have been the surprise of his life. ‘Those fellows said they wanted me to keep it up, keep telling the flying saucer story and the people they worked for would look out for me and for Leo...’"

What Karl had done, was not only expose Aztec as a hoax, but also hinted that there was a governmental agency in the background who wanted this hoax story to be repeated. They had something they were hiding, though Karl didn’t speculate about what that secret might be.

This is devastating information for those who accept the Aztec crash story as real. The man who claimed responsibility, Newton, had written down that he made up the story to lend credibility to his "doodlebug" and that the government knew it. They just didn’t care.

Scott Ramsey, however, suggests in his book, The Aztec Incident, that he quizzed Karl on these points and others sometime later, in 2002, during one of the Aztec UFO conventions. According to Scott, he asked if Karl had compared any known samples of Newton’s handwriting to the diary. Karl told him, "...he could not find any comparisons to do such a thing. Karl could see that I was becoming amused at how he ignored his former Intelligence training in allowing such unsupported or unverified statements, so he backed down to telling me that the source was Silas Newton’s nephew..."

Scott wrote, "My conclusion remains that no diary exists and the false Newton story was either fabricated or Karl himself was the victim of a hoax."

Karl did, according to what he published two years earlier, however, have samples of Newton’s handwriting, and it looked to be the same as the diary. In fact, according to what I was told, Karl had been able to locate several samples of Newtons’ handwriting.

But Scott is right about one thing. If a proponent of a crashed saucer story came out with this sort of unsupported information, we would all be right in suspecting it. Without the diary, without the name of the source, without some sort of independent corroboration, we would reject it out of hand... knowing that it is up to those telling the story to prove it true.

Given some of the things that have appeared in the past such as Karl’s claim that Corporal Pyles couldn’t remember the month of his "sighting" ,but then saying a paragraph later that after he saw the story in the Roswell Daily Record if what he saw was tied to the UFO crash, and his partial interview with one of the Roswell firemen, you have to wonder about the value of his Aztec revelations. You have to wonder if Karl wasn’t a little too enthusiastic about the "Newton diary," which, of course, does not make the Aztec crash reality.

There is one other point, though I’m not sure of the relevance. Back in the 1970s, just as the cattle mutilation phenomenon was gaining some national attention, two fellows, Daniel Kagan and Ian Summers convinced a publisher to allow them to investigate the case. While in Colorado Springs, at the home of a private detective, they met a fellow who claimed his name was Kurt Peters... Kurt with a "K". They later identified that fellow as Karl Pflock. Karl himself admitted as much decades later in the pages of UFO when he tried to make light of the little deception, writing, "I was a Ufologist for the CIA...".

It was, of course, all tongue-in-cheek. It was meant to suggest that these stories of his spying on the UFO field for the CIA were nothing more than mere rumors that seemed to circulate throughout the UFO field. You know that you have made it when people begin to accuse you of working for the FBI, the CIA, AFOSI or a number of other agencies.

Karl explained "Kurt Peters" this way. "Erianne [the Colorado Springs private detective who was interested in cattle mutilations] needed a writer to collaborate on a book. I needed a money-maker, and this seemed just the ticket. I could have saved myself well-deserved embarrassment if I had not allowed my critical judgment to be shouldered aside by visions of fame and fortune."

Karl continued, "Not long after our book proposal began making the rounds of publishers, Erianne was contacted by Kagan and Summers, who said they were working on a book about the mutilations mystery. Rivals!... I suggested it might be useful for me to be at the meeting. However, there was a chance that Kagan and Summers might recognize me by name as a writer and put two and two together. Erianne suggested I use a pseudonym and say I was a researcher who sometimes helped him on cases. Thus the misbegotten ‘Kurt Peters’ was born."

Of course, this whole thing sounds somewhat bogus. Kagan and Summers wouldn’t care that Karl was working on a book about the mutilations because they had already sold theirs. And there really was very little chance that they would have recognized Karl’s name since he hadn’t published much, though he had worked as an editor at a small publisher at one time.

This little episode allows us a glimpse of some of Karl’s thought processes. In the end, it might mean nothing, other than he was attempting to protect his book project (which never saw the light of day) but then, it was a calculated deception.

While Karl’s tale of Newton’s diary is suspect, if for no other reason than Karl never revealed his source, he didn’t have a copy of the diary other than the notes he had taken, and no one else has seen the diary, it doesn’t mean that the Aztec crash is real. It only means that Karl’s revelations, while extraordinary if true, are simply unsubstantiated hearsay. There is no way to verify any of those revelations unless the source reveals the information to another.

The Aztec case remains with no real evidence to support its reality and a provenance that seems to return to Silas Newton, who told it to Frank Scully. Newton was charged with fraud and other crimes on several occasions dating as far back to 1928 and as recently as 1972, just prior to this death. As a witness, as a source, Newton leaves a great deal to be desired.

So, here’s where we are on this. I can’t give much weight to Karl’s claims of a Newton diary simply because none of the evidence has been seen by anyone other than Karl. If the situation were reversed, that is, a witness came forth with some documentation to prove Aztec real but the source was not revealed and the documentation was not revealed, we’d all be quick to condemn it. (Think of Virgil Riggs here... the former Air Force enlisted man who met with Donald Bass who said it was real, but no one has heard from Bass in decades.)

That is the situation we have here. Nothing to support Karl’s claims, and so, until we see more evidence, until the source talks to someone else, the tales of Newton’s diary are simply unsubstantiated hearsay and that’s really all they are.

The 2012 Roswell Festival - Galaxy Fest

For those keeping score at home, this year’s Festival in Roswell is known as Galaxy Fest. It runs from June 29 through July 2 with most of the activities centered around the International UFO Museum and Research Center in downtown Roswell.

Normally, I wouldn’t post something like this because it is little more than an advertisement for the Roswell Festival, but this year things are a little different. Don Schmitt informed me that the director of the museum, Julie Shuster, was taken ill a couple of weeks ago and will be laid up through the festival. Although I believe she wants to participate, I don’t believe her health will allow it this year.

I know that a lot of work goes into coordinating something on this scale. The logistics from providing all the support for the speakers, authors and celebrities who will be there, to getting the programs put together, the advertising necessary, and all sorts of other activities to make sure that everyone who attends has a good time can be overwhelming (and I’ve only mentioned a couple of the behind the scenes tasks needed to complete the whole package... I mean, do they have the equipment set up to project the slides for the speakers... whose going to man the front door, the gift shop, who gets what space for the outside vendors area... and so on and so on).

Given Julie’s (Julie Shuster seen here) dedication to the museum and the festival, I thought it appropriate to mention it here... and hey, it is my blog so I get to make the rules.

No matter what you believe about the Roswell UFO crash, it is a good time, and if you want to believe in Mogul, you’ll have an opportunity to argue with many who disagree... But remember, the point is to share information, not impress your point of view on the world.

Kenneth Arnold and the Flying Saucers

It has become a matter of conventional wisdom, that is, the idea that "flying saucer" is a misnomer, invented by a newspaper reporter who had been listening to Kenneth Arnold talk of a motion of nine objects he saw near Mount Rainier, Washington in June, 1947. It didn’t describe the shape of the objects, according to the skeptics, but the motion as they flew. They moved like saucers skipping across a pond and were not circular like a, well, saucer.

Bill Bequette is often credited with coming up with the term, "flying saucer," after Arnold described the motion of the craft. In later interviews, Bequette denied this, and it seems that the available written record bears this out.

According to one newspaper account, printed on June 25, Arnold was quoted as saying, "He said he sighted nine saucer-like aircraft flying..."

From the Hayward, California Daily Review of June 26, we see a quote attributed to Arnold. "They were shaped like saucers and were so thin I could barely see them."

From San Antonio on the same date is "Arnold described the objects as "flat like a pie pan."

Bequette, in the East Oregonian reported, "...flat like a pie pan and somewhat bat-shaped..." which is a hint that there was something scalloped in the rear, like the wings of a bat.

On June 26, Arnold was interviewed on KWRC (radio, if it is necessary to make that distinction given the date... yes, I know there was commercial television but not much and certainly not in that area in 1947), and he said, "They looked something like a pie plate that was cut in half with a sort of a convex triangle in the back."



Arnold's Drawing for the Army.

The point here is that all these statements were made, literally, within hours of seeing the objects (I suppose you could say that as much as 48 hours had passed, though I think the time was shorter than that). It wasn’t until The Coming of the Saucers was published in 1952 that the stylized, blunt-nosed and decidedly scalloped trailing edge was seen. This was, I believe, the firm hand of Ray Palmer. As an editor, he had a habit of re-writing and guiding articles in the direction that he wanted them to go. Arnold often said that he wasn’t much of a reader and had little time for the sorts of things that interested Palmer.

By June 28, the term, "flying saucer" was firmly affixed to the story. In one newspaper, the East Oregonian, the story began, "Kenneth Arnold said today he would like to got on one of his 1200-mile-an-hour ‘flying saucers,’..."

So, what did the damned things look like, when we examine those stories told in the hours and days after the event? Arnold provided, for the Army, a report on what he had seen and provided a signed drawing of the flying saucer. It certainly does have a rounded appearance, but the back end of it is flattened. There is no cut out on his drawing and the there is no hole, or cockpit in the center, as shown in the later versions.

Ray Palmer, who was in the process of creating Fate with Curtis Fuller, wanted a story from Arnold for the first issue of the magazine. On the cover were these yellow disks that had holes in the center because Palmer was pushing the Maury Island tale and those witnesses (well, alleged witnesses but admitted hoaxers, which makes them liars) said the objects they saw were donut shaped.

Then, with The Coming of the Saucers, the shape evolved into the classic crescent and bat-like trailing edge we see today. Gone is the hint of a saucer shape and while there is a cockpit on top, there doesn’t seem to be a hole through the center.

It seems to me that Arnold was describing something that was more saucer shaped than not, and that his description, though denied later, was of a saucer-shaped object. The drawing he made and sent to the Army is much more likely to be the best illustration of the object because it was the one made closest to the event. By 1952 and his book with Ray Palmer, all sorts of pressures had been brought, including Palmer’s attempts to validate the Maury Island nonsense.

The stylized Arnold "saucer."

Bequette, then, did not originate the term and the invention of it can be given to Arnold, based on his descriptions as published within a day or two (though I could have said hours here), and to headline writers who have a habit of attempting to lure readers to a story with something inspiring, graphic, spectacular or odd... or all of the above.

And flying saucers were born, not out of a misunderstanding about the shape of the objects seen, but out of the description supplied by Arnold.

It should also be noted that in following stories by other witnesses, objects were described as flying saucers that were cigar shaped, ball shaped (or spherical) triangular and a half dozen other ways. While these clearly were not saucer shaped, they were all lumped into the same grouping, here meaning unidentified objects in the sky and not necessarily anything else. But invention of the term comes directly from the Arnold sighting and the descriptions he gave to various reporters and not to a misunderstanding.

　

The Aztec Incident by Scott and Suzanne Ramsey

The Aztec Incident, Scott and Suzanne Ramsey, Aztec.48 Productions, Mooresville, NC, 221 pages, no index.

Let me say first that this was a fun book to read. I have been aware of the alleged Aztec UFO crash almost from the moment that I became interested in UFOs. I remember, while still in high school so many years ago, reading J. P. Cahn’s expose of the story in a back issue of True. I was especially interested because I was living in Aurora, Colorado which is, of course, right next door to Denver (and in fact, when most people ask about it I say Denver unless they are familiar with the area), and Denver had a prominent role in the original story.

That said, I found the book somewhat disappointing, but that might be a result of hearing, for the last several years, about a new investigation that had uncovered new and important clues. I had heard about new witnesses to the crash and new information that should be quite persuasive for those with an open mind.

There are two new first-hand witnesses, both no longer available for interview. One of them, Doug Noland, tells a robust tale, but is slightly contaminated because he approached William Steinman who wrote about the Aztec crash in the mid-1980s. While it certainly makes sense for a witness who knows something about the case to come forward, it isn’t as clear cut as if the Ramseys found him through investigation and there is nothing in the book to tell us that.

To make it worse, Noland’s tale mirrors part of the Frank Scully story as reported by Scully in Behind the Flying Saucers. Scully wrote of Dr. Gee and the scientists who watched the crashed saucer for two days before they approached and how, with a pole poked through a small hole in a porthole, tripped a switch that opened the craft.

In fact, the Ramseys go out of their way to avoid much of what Scully reported about the Aztec crash, seeming to ignore Scully’s first, tongue-in-cheek references in his newspaper column, the crashes in other parts of the United States and the world, or that the crew had been dressed in garb reminiscent of the 1890s, but they all had perfect teeth.

Anyway, Noland claimed, and the Ramseys reported, that those on the scene, including workers for the El Paso Oil Company, and an apparent horde of other on-lookers, climbed all over the craft. It was Bill Ferguson, a friend of Noland’s, who used the pole to probe the broken porthole, opening the ship.

It was sometime after that, after Noland and his pals got a look inside, that the military arrived. True, there were some police on the scene early, but they did nothing to dissuade the civilians from their close examinations. But Noland’s tale about the scene differs in these ways, from that told by Scully.

One of the policemen identified is Manuel Sandoval, who was from Cuba, New Mexico, not all that far from Aztec. The problem here is that the Ramseys did not interview Sandoval, though you wouldn’t know that from the book, and it was only a distant relative who suggested that he had heard Sandoval talk about the UFO crash.

The other first-hand witness, Ken Farley, came down to the Aztec area to pick up a friend and saw all the commotion. The friend with Farley, who is never identified, saw the craft and the bodies but the reason for being in the area is a little farfetched.

There is the tale of Virgil Riggs (though on a copy of orders published show the name spelled Virgel... but then, these sorts of things often contain misspellings), who lived in Aztec as a kid, heard the stories of the crash, but saw nothing himself. His own father didn’t believe it happened, but Riggs ran into a fellow while serving in the Air Force in England who had seen it all. This fellow airman, named Donald Bass but who was called Sam, told a first-hand tale, but Bass was dead, according to family, killed by a hit-and-run driver in Vietnam.

The Ramseys didn’t check out that story, and not being Vietnam Veterans themselves, probably didn’t realize that there are many such tales floating around. It took me about a minute to find a web site based on the names on the Vietnam Memorial that listed every American service member who died there. No one named Bass was killed in a hit-and-run in Vietnam and no one who served in the Air Force named Bass died in Vietnam. Clearly the story told to the Ramseys was untrue.

There were some other similar problems. There are many documents in the book, but there is little explanation about them, and some clearly have nothing to do with the Aztec case. One of them that I think of as the Hoover memo, is a handwritten note by Hoover that mentions "...full access to discs recovered. For instance, in the La case the Army grabbed it..."

But this is a reference to the Shreveport, Louisiana hoax of July 1947 and has nothing to do with Aztec. And, since it refers to a hoax, it does nothing to support any crashed disk recovery, regardless of location or time frame.

That is the real problem here, which is information is thrown at the reader, but some of it is irrelevant and some of it unexplained. That detracts from the overall message of the book, which is that Aztec is a real UFO crash.

Although the Ramseys fail to prove the point, this is an amusing book. For those interested in UFO crashes, or the whole Scully story, this provides an interesting take on it. The evidence is very weak and certainly does not overcome the baggage of the Aztec case. For historical purposes, this is an interesting book. For evidence of a crash, it fails to convince.

Alien Autopsy and Philip Mantle

Philip Mantle, Roswell Alien Autopsy published by RoswellBooks.com, Edinburg, Texas, 293 pages with an index.

　
　

Philip Mantle, a British UFO researcher has been involved with the alien autopsy almost from the moment that it was announced to the world that the film existed. He has met with all the primaries in the case, including those who hold the film, those who have examined it, and those of us who have researched it and UFOs for many years. If someone was going to write the definitive book about the alien autopsy, it would be Philip Mantle.

In great detail, Mantle outlines the whole story of the alien autopsy from the first public mention of any sort of film footage by Reg Presley of the Troggs (yeah, the Wild Thing group), to the worldwide interest in it. He explains how he entered into the investigation nearly two decades ago and what he has learned along the way.

For those interested in all details of how the film was found, or maybe I should say, for those interested in the various versions of how the film was found and what was on it, this is the book. In fact, that is what is good about this book. It provides the information in a chronological form but with all the variations on what was said and by whom as more was learned about it.

Mantle presents the material in a fairly neutral form and I did find that somewhat disconcerting. I would have liked to see more commentary from him about the various aspects of the case. Don’t get me wrong, he offers opinions, but most of them are from those who have had some involvement in the alien autopsy case whether from the point of their creation of it to those who were on the fringes of the research about it.

In the end, I had a fairly clear idea of what Mantle thought, though some of that comes from the words of others. For example, the last chapter is the words of Mark Center who has a negative opinion of the film. And information just before that are my thoughts based on the admittedly unscientific poll I ran here about the reality of the film and the surprise, at least for me, that so many thought there was something of value in a study of the film.

And just before all that is a long interview with Spyros Melaris who said that he was deeply involved in the production of the autopsy film, which, if true, means the whole thing is a hoax. Refuting him, somewhat, is a chapter dealing with Ed Gehrman, an American who claims, among other things, that he has found the real crash site based on information supplied by the cameraman... or rather information supplied by the cameraman through Ray Santilli. Gehrman asks, "If there was no cameraman, how could he describe a real site in New Mexico?"

But that doesn’t do much to validate the alien autopsy and in the end, it is clear that all aspects of it have been explained. The evidence presented, including interviews and discussions with those who have the inside knowledge of the case should convince nearly everyone about the truth behind the alien autopsy.

Mantle’s book provides all the information that is needed to understand the autopsy from the very beginning. He leaves a little wiggle room at the end, though it is fairly clear what the conclusion of the reader should be. This is the one book to own if you have an interest in the alien autopsy, if you are interested in this one aspect of the Roswell UFO crash case, or you just would like a glimpse into the British world of music and television production.

The Roswell Investigation and the Skeptics

I have seen, over the last several months, nothing but criticism from the world of the skeptic about our efforts to assemble a team to investigate the Roswell claims. We have published little about our investigation, other than to announce the members of the team, and the skeptics and debunkers have found nothing to like about it. They are convinced that all we will do is reinforce the ideas that have already been published. That is, we’ll endorse the extraterrestrial and that is it.

In fact, I believe that the only answer they will accept is that Roswell was something mundane, most probably a weather balloon array launched from Alamogordo on June 4, 1947. If we determine anything else, regardless of what evidence we might uncover, it will be rejected as more of the same. They all know that there has been no alien visitation and therefore anything that suggests otherwise is the result of poor technique and investigation on our part.

Any eyewitness testimony that suggests otherwise is the result of poor memory, confabulation or outright lying. Nothing these people say will be believed, unless they provide testimony that what fell was something mundane, most probably a weather balloon array launched from Alamogordo on June 4, 1947.

If, however, the eyewitness testimony reinforces the balloon explanation, then those memories are accurate and reflect reality. It doesn’t matter if those memories are can be proven false with documentation, they must be believed because they lead directly to the accepted explanation.

As I say, all this is ridiculous because we haven’t completed our work. We have developed some interesting leads, but the skeptics are already rejecting our research without seeing any of it.

I’ll give you two minor examples of what we have found. First, I spent some weeks trying to learn if there was any sort of archive that would house NOTAMs. Now, I realize that there really is little of historical value in a NOTAM. These are simply notices to airman about temporary conditions that would affect flight operations. It might be a runway closing, it might be something about lighting at an airfield, or it might be something that could pose a threat to aerial navigation such as the launch of an array of balloons that could cause trouble for an aircraft.

You would think that the answer would be simple to find, but it wasn’t. I called, wrote, emailed and communicated with a couple of dozen different agencies most of them within the FAA. I finally learned that no such archive exists. The rules said that the NOTAMs be held for a short period and then destroyed when no longer useful.

When you think about it, that makes sense since there would have been tens of thousands of them and most would have little historical importance. In other words, once the runway was reopened, who really cared that it had been closed for two weeks half a century earlier... Or that the arrays of balloons that could create an aerial hazard were no longer being launched around Alamogordo. It would have been nice to see, exactly, how the NOTAM was worded, but that information is long gone.

The second point is also relatively minor. The skeptics complain that no one saw the object in the air. We, and by we I mean Don Schmitt, Tom Carey and I have found several different witnesses to an object in the sky at the right time. First was William Woody, who recently died, and who, as a youngster saw something streak across the sky while working outside late one night with his father. Days later, they thought they would go in search of it but were turned back by the military cordon.

Second was E. L. Pyles, who was serving with the 509^th Bomb Group in 1947. He said that as he was walking across the base, he saw something flare across the sky. Karl Pflock dismissed this testimony, writing that Pyles couldn’t remember much. Pyles, according to Karl, said, "It was in forty-seven. I don’t remember the month or the date."

In the next paragraph, in attempting to learn about the time of night, Karl asked a couple of questions. Pyles replied that a "few days later," he saw the "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer" story. That means that he couldn’t put an exact date on it, but did identify it as the first week in July, 1947, contrary to Karl’s statement a couple of sentences earlier. In other words, Karl’s criticism was inaccurate, but the skeptics never called him to task on it.

Third are the nuns. We had information based on what had been written in personal diaries. We believed then, and I believe now, that information is accurate. We, as had others, traced those diaries to Oklahoma, but we now have new information on their location. We are attempting to get permission from the church to review them and end this problem. In other words, we hope to see the diary entries in question.

What the diaries would do was put a date on this astronomical phenomenon, whatever it might have been. We should get a good description of it as well as the time it fell. It could be an important bit of documentation. Of course, until we see the actual entries, we won’t know how good that documentation is or even if it is there.

I remember back in the bad old days as the Condon Committee was working their magic, and those on the skeptical side complained that the UFO enthusiasts would accept no answer other than we were being visited. I realized then that Condon had a tough job because of that.

Now I see the same thing from the other side of the fence. It would be nice if the critics would wait until we complete our work and publish the results. They might be surprised by what we find...

Then again, we might be.

ABC News and the X-Files

I have to tell you that I am really annoyed. Just last night, April 23, I happened to see on ABC News, the story of a meteor (or meteoroid, if you wish to get technical because it was still in the air) that had been seen over Nevada and California. It lit up the sky, roared above the witnesses, and generated any number of calls to emergency numbers whether 9-11, or sheriff and fire departments.

It seemed that almost everyone knew, pretty much was it was.

An astronomer said later it was probably a small asteroid, about the size of a minivan that had exploded above the ground. He said one this size hits the atmosphere about every year. Bits and pieces of it were picked up and I suspect the Meteorite Men (of Science Channel fame) were probably there within hours finding more.

So far, so good.

But ABC just couldn’t resist relating this to UFOs and alien visitation. (True, it was extraterrestrial, but it then wasn’t alien.)

They played the theme from X-Files. They made reference to UFOs. All in good fun.

Except no one, but them, thought of this. The question is, "Why?"

To me, and I’m sure the people who are interested in these things, meaning meteorites, we didn’t need the landscape cluttered with UFOs and the X-Files. I enjoyed seeing the pictures and wondered why there was no video of this event. Surely a security camera somewhere, or someone with a cell phone or I Pad, managed to get a little bit of it.

Anyway, ABC proves, once again, what is wrong with the MSM (Main Stream Media). They just can’t help themselves. They just have to inject a bit of personal opinion into the news... and was it news on Monday night when they reported on it? Everyone I know had already heard the story and seen the pictures.

Lost Mack Brazel/Walt Whitmore Interview - Part II

(Blogger's Note: Once again Blogger has changed their formatting again and some of the nice features that used to be there have been altered. I'm not please with the way this looks, but as I learn the system, again, we'll get back to the old, nicely composed blogs.)

I have received the open letter that Dave Aaron sent about his lost tape of the alleged Mack Brazel/Walt Whitmore interview. It is a rant of twelve pages that takes twists and turns that have nothing to do with the interview but goes off into directions to support a point that might not be defensible (and which has now been altered to correct some of the errors he made).

Let’s look at some of the facts that don’t seem to be in dispute. According to what he says, he received an interview that he said was of Mack Brazel and Walt Whitmore, Sr., the majority owner of Roswell radio station KGFL. He said that a letter came to him from someone who said he had the tape of the wire recording, but Aaron couldn’t remember who, and that he offered the tape for sale, but can’t say who bought them. All of this was destroyed when, apparently, the city removed everything from his house or to be precise, the house he had once lived in and in which his material had been stored.

In other words, no evidence remains to tell us who had the tape (or wire recording), where he might have gotten it (remembering that those in Roswell told us that the original had been confiscated and that the KGFL studio had burned and all their records were lost), or how he would know that the voices on the tape were those of Mack Brazel and Walt Whitmore.

When we learned of this controversy, a few weeks ago, Don said that he would call and find out what he could about this. Here was a lead that begged to be followed and we did it as quickly as we could. Don sent out an email about this, telling us all (and by all, I mean Tom Carey, Tony Bragalia, and me) what he had learned in the conversation with Aaron (and like him, I regret that no one thought to make a tape of that conversation because then we would know exactly what was said and what was not.)

In Don’s email to all of us, he wrote:

Based on my phone conversation with Mr. David Aaron, who owns an extensive UFO library of photographs and related videos, I was able to quickly arrive at the final solution to his claim of having received the long rumored Brazel interview. Mr. Aaron had received an anonymous letter in 2003 with the claim, "My Dad recorded this interview about a UFO crash that happened back in 1947." It was also claimed to have been transferred from an original wire recording onto audio cassette tape. Mr. Aaron was made the recipient of a copy for the sole purpose of adding it to his collection and then offering copies for sale to the public. As recently publicized, there was a garage fire which all but destroyed Mr. Aaron's collection. Almost everything is either fire or water damaged and believed to be beyond salvaging.Mr. Aaron states that he originally only listened to a short portion at the beginning of the tape in question. He did not make notes.

He did not have the tape transcribed.

To the best of his recollection he sold nine copies since 2003.

All of the invoices and sales records were destroyed in the fire.

He does not have the original letter or does he remember the name of the gentlemen who first contacted him.

Mr. Aaron advertised the tape as the Brazel/Whitmore interview based on his own reading of the Roswell Incident.

As to the original owner, the names of Whitmore, Roberts or Joyce were not correct.

He has never had any further contact with the owner and does not remember the city or state from which it arrived.

He is not aware of anyone else possessing a copy.

He informed me that it was an interview of Mack Brazel at radio KGFL.

As we know, the only interview Brazel did on the air was recanting the flying saucer story.

Mr. Aaron remembers that Brazel proceeded to describe all of the strange debris up at the ranch.

Mr. Aaron also recalled that as part of the announcers introduction of Brazel, he remarked, "Well, it's been couple of interesting days here in Roswell..."

My conclusion, simply put, is that someone claimed that the fictionalized interview of Mack Brazel and Frank Joyce at KGFL from the ROSWELL movie was the genuine article. It was audio-taped from the movie and nine years later, passed off to a collector of such artifacts, David Aaron, as a historic missing piece of the Roswell story. Without a copy of the original tape and no paper trail to the owner, all the facts point to a forgery. Until any additional information is forthcoming, this tale was just destroyed by the same fire.

For me, this ended the story. There were no records to provide the names and addresses of anyone. There was no way to verify that the voices on the tape belonged to Mack Brazel or Walt Whitmore, Sr., and there was no way to contact any of the people who might have bought the tape so that we could get copies to listen to ourselves. There was simply nowhere to go with this item because of the lack of information about it.

I noted in my original story that unless or until someone who had bought the tape came forward, there would be no real answer for this, but based on the apparent remembered first line, it seemed likely to all of us that the interview was the one from the Roswell movie. As I said then, I could hear the voice of Bob Gunton saying it.

There really wasn’t much else to say about it, until now. Aaron, it seems, was annoyed with my story and makes some claims about it. So, let’s look at it from a different perspective.

It is clear from the article that appears at:

http://bit.ly/GN9gKz

that the city destroyed his collection. The author, Ryan Dube at Top Secret Writers.com, wrote, "In July 2011, the city of Calimesa, CA destroyed one of the largest single video and audio UFO collections in the world in a single afternoon."

Please note the use of the word, "Collection." That will become important later.

The story continued, "...this event really happened at a small house in Calimesa. Sherry the woman that lived at the house was found passed–away in the house on Tuesday [that is, July 2011]. By Friday, the city had hired Ecology Control Industries (ECI) to clean out the house."

The story explained that the house was "formerly owned by both Sherry and her former boyfriend – David Aaron."

So the crew came in and moved Aaron’s collection (please note that I use the word advisedly) out of the garage into a large container to take to the dump or to be destroyed. No matter how you view it, this massive library was in ECI’s way and nothing Aaron could do would stop them so late on a Friday afternoon.

The point here is that, in the end, everything that was housed in the garage, the good, the bad, the awful and the historic, was lost. At least according to Aaron (and this is supported by pictures posted at the Top Secret Writers web site).

Aaron, wrote, in his open letter, apparently quoting me, "Dave received the audiotape in 2003."

He responded, "Not true it was 2005 as it was the year I was helping homeless people."

All well and good, but let me point out that the letter no longer exists so we don’t know the date for sure, and since the conversation with Don wasn’t taped where the 2003 date was used, we don’t know what Aaron might have said. Maybe he told Don it was 2005 and Don got the year wrong... or maybe he, Aaron, made a mistake with the date. The real point is that the original letter is gone... destroyed in some fashion, so we can’t verify the date.

Aaron wrote, "Kevin Randle states: ‘A fire and water damage destroyed this UFO COLLECTION,’ IT WAS NOT A ‘COLLECTION’ IT WAS A LIBRARY of worldwide UFO information from around the world via video and audiotape." (I will note here that I have attempted to reproduce this just as Aaron wrote it with the exception of the underlining that went with it.)

Please note that he takes such offense at my use of the word "collection" though the original story by Rube used the same word. Please note that "library" is defined as "a collection of books," and note that he was so annoyed that he put in the capitals and the underlining. Finally, please note that the quoted line by me appears nowhere in my story on the case. I said nothing about a flood. This is his invention.

He continues, "Kevin in his blog goes on to state, "that neither he (me [here meaning Aaron, in case you’ve lost track in the confusion of pronouns]) Nor his source thought to contact any of the researchers who specialized in Roswell, nor that he did not take the tape to any news organization for release... WRONG AGAIN MR. RANDLE!"

He added, "Whom did I first contact about this audiotape? Not 1 but 3 emails, all sent from a different computer to non–other than MR. KEVIN RANDLE! Stating that I had information about the Roswell case that might be of importance. I asked the person that sent these email for me countless times if Mr. Randle responded to the email. The answer over an 8 month period was no!"

All well and good, except I did not receive any such emails. He might have sent them, and probably did, but they were lost in cyberspace at a time when most of my email was coming to me through my Army Knowledge Online account, and my time was being taken up by my military duties. So, if he reached out to me, I did not know it and did not respond. If he reached out, then it was a proper thing to have done and I’m sorry that we didn’t make a connection.

Later he wrote, "He [meaning me here] did not want to write the case as I related it to Donald Schmitt, and any excuse would do to add the words fire and flood to the destruction of our UFO audiotapes. Well so much for investigative journalism."

Except, of course, I didn’t say flood and I did get the word fire from Don and Don got the word fire from him. Aaron emailed me on April 19, 2012, saying, "I told Don that it was a possibility that they burned it up." So neither Don nor I invented the fire as Aaron now admits.

I will also note that in the comments section of my blog was the link to the original story which provided the facts as related by Aaron to Rube. To me, the important point was that the "collection" had been lost and it wasn’t all that important how it was lost. (And yes, I used the word "collection" here to jerk his chain once again.)

Of course the question that comes to mind is if the stuff was taken to the dump, could he recover some of it? Or, once there, because it was considered to be hazardous material, was it burned? He wrote to me that he had tried, eight times, to learn the fate of his material, but failed to do so. He provided pictures of the guys in white coveralls who were cleaning the house, but they don’t seem to be wearing face masks or any sort of head gear. Just white coveralls to keep their clothes clean as they emptied the house of all its material whether it related to UFOs or was the furniture and belongings of the owner.

And now we descend into another matter. Aaron wrote, "No matter how many re–writes writers do. I know that I heard not only on the Whitmore/Brazel 1947 Roswell interview, but also on thousands of audio and videotapes on UFOs sighted around the world and from our space programs as well. Who do some of you, think I am? The late Phil KLASS? James ‘Ice Crystals’ Olberg? What Donald R. Schmitt and Kevin D. Randle did to me, in 2012; is almost exactly what Captain James McAndrew did in 1997, and the rest of the UFO community, when he wrote ‘THE ROSWELL REPORT, CASE CLOSED’". (I note here, again, I have attempted to quote exactly from the rant including the misspelling of Oberg’s name, so that the rambling nature comes through.)

And how is that? Just how was what we did anything like what McAndrew did? Isn’t this just a tad over the top? (I will note here that in an email to me he wrote, "...please accept my DEEPEST apology for comparing this case with James McAndrew..." But, of course it is out there in cyberspace for all to read.)

I said his collection had been destroyed, though I should have labeled it as a "library," according to him. This criticism over terminology seems to only apply to me. I said that he received a tape from an unknown sender (meaning simply that he no longer knew the name, could not recover the name, and that the original letter was gone.) I said that there was no way to verify that the tape was of Mack Brazel and Walt Whitmore, given that both men were long dead and those who had the best chance of recognizing the voices were dead. (Well, I didn’t say that exactly, just that we couldn’t verify the voices on the tape). But when I said his "collection," he became annoyed with me.

He continued his rant, as if we had something against him. He wrote, "It seems that the recording we had of the BRAZEL/WHITMORE KGFL 1947 interview, somehow thought, ‘I got confused with the motion picture Roswell, and just listened to the audio track from the movie ROSWELL, where the director and the writers re–created that KGFL interview for the film. Schmitt and Randle, think someone tried to play or plan a hoax on THE CLEARINGHOUSE... Nothing could be further in error that Schmitt and Randle’s explanation of what I heard on that audiotape!"

And now for another point, Aaron wrote, "I kick myself today that I did not listen to that entire audiotape."

What?

He didn’t even listen to the whole tape? Then how did he know what was on it? He didn’t listen to it.

He then wrote, "So it was easier for Schmitt and Randle to come up with a cockamamie answer to what I listened to on that now destroyed audiotape."

In other words, he can’t prove that he ever had a Brazel and Whitmore interview, nor can he tell us what was said on it because he didn’t listen to much of it. Here was something that he described as important Roswell information, so important that he apparently sent me three emails about it, but he didn’t have the time to listen to the whole tape.

He doesn’t have the letter that told him about this. He doesn’t have the invoices of from those who bought the tape. He has his memory of what was said at the very beginning, he did not verify that the voices were actually those of Brazel and Whitmore, and yet we have become the bad guys in this. Just what the hell we were supposed to think about this tape, knowing that those who worked in the station in 1947 said the wire recording had been confiscated, and that the studio burned some years later, destroying their archives.

When it comes down to it, Aaron can’t prove anything about the tape. He can’t prove where it came from. He can’t prove that there was a tape (oh, he says that it’s listed in a catalog and that would prove there was a tape, but not what was on it). According to Don, as you saw above, Aaron said the opening was, "Well, it’s been a couple of interesting days here in Roswell," and that is a line right from the movie.

I could point out that he takes issue with my use of fire, but then said the material might have been burned. He wrote that I said something about a flood, but there was nothing about a flood in my posting. The only remaining point of dispute is the date and for all we know, he might have said 2003 when he meant 2005.

Now, if I wanted to play this game to the end, I would point out that Aaron wrote, "For you see Kevin Randle was helicopter pilot in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. (And possible in Vietnam.)"

Nope, I was an intelligence officer in Iraq and a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, as I have said on many occasions. Are these minor errors of great importance? Not really. I was in Iraq and I was in Vietnam and I was a helicopter pilot there. He just got a little confused. (He now writes that he will up date that information on his open letter, so he corrected the inaccurate information.) But I see no reason to ramble for twelve pages over something like that... besides I can prove these points, something that has been lost on Aaron. He can prove nothing about the tape and until he can, there is nothing to this story except the sad fact that Sherry has died, Aaron’s collection was taken to the dump and his word about what was on the tape does little to confirm what it was.

Kenneth Arnold, William Rhodes and Maury Island

This whole UFO thing is becoming quite confusing with little bits and pieces dropping in from all sorts of places. As I wrote a while ago, I had been driving into the Hy Vee grocery store parking lot when I got a call from someone wanting to talk about William Rhodes (See a series of postings in October 2010). That set off a bit of an investigation into the photographs he had taken on July 7, 1947, in Phoenix, Arizona.



Rhodes photograph.



The Air Force worked hard, I thought, to discredit Rhodes and their investigation into his background was some what snarky on the surface. They maligned his occupation, suggesting he was little more than a third-rate musician who lived off his wife’s salary as a teacher. They didn’t think much of his Panoramic Research Laboratory which seemed to be a well-equipped home lab, and overlooked that he held a number of patents. They mentioned that he claimed to be a doctor, but could find no reference in the telephone director showing that he was a physician or a vet, apparently never considering that he might hold a Ph.D or looking for other documentation besides that in the telephone book.

As I have noted before, this question of a post-graduate degree is a somewhat murky area and as James McDonald suggested, clouds his otherwise interesting tale of taking two photographs of a flying saucer. For some, this issue is enough to suggest the Rhodes photographs are a hoax. For others it is an aberration that suggests something about Rhodes’ personality but does not mean the pictures were faked.

I mention all this by way of background to a new point. I have been working on a book for Visible Ink Press and one of the things I have been doing is revisiting the Maury Island sighting. This took place on June 21, 1947, which is only a couple of days before Kenneth Arnold made his sighting, but it received no publicity, or interest, until after Arnold’s report exploded all over the newspapers and the world.

George Earley, who describes himself as an “Opinionated Oregonian,” and who had researched the case for a long time, published a four-part series in UFO magazine about the Maury Island case. (I will note here that Bill Birnes who is the publisher of UFO and who, on UFO Hunters on History (which used to be the History Channel, but they do little history any more), investigated the Maury Island case, published Earley’s series which seems to conflict with Birnes’ opinion of the sighting. It is always good to see opposing opinions freely stated without acrimony, but then, I digress).

You’re all probably wondering what this means and how does it all tie together. Simple. Earley, in part four of the series, mentioned that Arnold, who was investigating the Maury Island sighting for Ray Palmer of Amazing Stories, believed that he had gotten himself in over his head. Arnold just wasn’t sure what to do, but remembered that Lieutenant Frank Brown, who had investigated Arnold’s sighting, had told him to call if he had any questions. Arnold did that, calling Brown at Hamilton Army Air Field in California.

Brown, with Captain William Davidson, took a B-25 (with permission, of course) and flew up to Tacoma, Washington, where Arnold was investigating the case. They all got together in Arnold’s hotel room late in the evening where Arnold showed them the debris that had been recovered on Maury Island. Both Army officers seems to believe that the material was nothing more than smelter slag and believed the tale of the crippled UFO to be a hoax. (And while all that is not critical to this, I will note that I find no reason to disagree with the two officers and their analysis.)

Anyway, the point is, and according to Earley, Arnold asked the two officers what Army intelligence had learned about UFOs. Davidson then drew a picture and said, “This is a drawing of one of several photographs we consider to be authentic.”

All well and good, but what has this to do with anything else, you might ask? Well, Brown then said, “It came from Phoenix, Arizona the other day. We have prints of it at Hamilton Field, but the original negatives were flown to Washington, D.C.”

Earley then wrote, “If they were, the late Edward Ruppelt, one-time head of Project Blue Book, made no mention of them in his book.” (But there is a case file in the Blue Book files so Ruppelt had to know about it.)

It is clear to me, that those pictures were the ones that Rhodes had taken since there are no other photographs taken in July 1947 in Phoenix, Arizona. It is interesting that Brown mentioned Hamilton Field because Rhodes does the same thing. And Hamilton Field was part of the Fourth Air Force in 1947, and Rhodes had communications with officers at Fourth Air Force about his photographs as well.

Now I realize these statements, uttered so long ago by officers who would be dead a few hours later (their B-25 crashed and burned), doesn’t mean much in and of itself. But still it is an interesting bit of information buried in a long story about the Maury Island hoax written by Earley, a man who has long studied that case and is well-versed on the ins and outs of it.

And no, there is nothing more we can do. Brown and Davidson died within hours of the conversation., Captain E. J. Smith, an airline pilot who was also in the room during the discussion and who had his own UFO sighting on July 4, 1947, and Kenneth Arnold who asked the question are both gone as well. We only have the information provided by Arnold so long ago in his writings about UFOs, about a case that he didn’t investigate with pictures he probably didn’t see, and what we all know about the Rhodes photographs. It is interesting, as I say, but doesn’t prove much one way or the other.

Mack Brazel/Walt Whitmore Roswell Interview

Not all that long ago a story appeared about a fire in California in which a man, David Aaron, said he lost all of his collection of UFO related materials. Included in that was a reported interview of Mack Brazel telling about the UFO crash on the property he managed. If such was the case, it was something that I have never heard, and it was something that surprised others who had been researching the case for years. But more importantly, we might be able to learn something about what had fallen from the mouth of the man who had found it.

Don Schmitt was able to interview Aaron this last weekend (April 2012) and learned a little more about this. According to what Aaron told Schmitt, he said that he had received an anonymous letter in 2003 with the claim, “My Dad recorded this interview about a UFO crash that happened back in 1947.”

The letter also said that the recording had been transferred from the original wire recording onto cassette audio tape. That, of course tracked with what we all knew, based on interviews with Judd Roberts and others. They had a wire recorder they used at KGFL for news interviews in 1947.

Aaron said that he was able to make duplicate tapes and offered them for sale. I will note here that it seems odd that in 2003, when Aaron received the tape, that neither he nor his source thought to contact any of the researchers who specialized in Roswell, or that he didn’t take the tape to a news organization for release. And I wondered how you would verify that the voice on the tape was that of Mack Brazel which means that the source would have to provide some kind of documentation. Those who knew Brazel were few and far between in 2003, and I’m not sure that they would have recognized the voice after all these years if we could find them. Mack Brazel died in the early 1960s.

Aaron, however, added it to his collection and offered copies for sale. He said that he had sold nine copies of the tape, which also seems odd given what it was supposed to be. I would have thought that it would have done a little better than that.

He told Schmitt that he had made no notes of what was said, that everything was destroyed in the fire, that he did not have the original letter, did not remember the name of the man who contacted him, and he couldn’t provide the names of those who had purchased copies. What was interesting was that the tape wasn’t completely lost. Duplicates existed. All we had to do was find one of those who had bought a copy of the tape, but Aaron had no records of that either.

Aaron advertized the tape as the Brazel/Whitmore interview based on his reading of The Roswell Incident. Schmitt asked if the names Whitmore, Roberts or Joyce were the original owner, but Aaron said they were not.

Aaron told Schmitt that it was an interview with Brazel at KGFL radio, which suggested that this would be Brazel recanting the earlier, more exciting story.

Aaron never listened to the entire tape, which struck me as odd. Had I been given something like that, I would have listened to the whole thing. Aaron said that he listened to just the beginning, and then provided the clue we all needed. He said that he remembered the announcer saying, “Well, it’s been a couple of interesting days here in Roswell...”

Schmitt recognized the line as soon as Aaron told it to him, and as I was reading the information provided by Schmitt, I recognized it too. This is from the ShowTime original movie, Roswell, with an actor portraying Frank Joyce (Bob Gunton) preparing to interview an actor (Dwight Yoakam) playing Mack Brazel.

That seems to solve the riddle of how we all could have missed this. Someone audio taped the interview from the movie and presented it as the real thing. It explains why they hadn’t sent it on to one of the Roswell researchers. Almost any of us would have recognized it immediately.

As Schmitt noted, “Without a copy of the original tape and no paper trail to the owner, all the facts point to forgery. Until any additional information is forthcoming, this tale was just destroyed by the same fire.”

To finally put this to bed, we’d need to hear a copy of the tape, and there are nine of them out there. While that would prove it to be from the movie, Aaron’s memory of the opening line of the interview almost demolishes any possibility of this being the real thing. Just one more of the many interesting paths in the Roswell case.

The Demise of International UFO Reporter

Today brings sad news. The International UFO Reporter, the publication of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies has ceased publishing an ink and paper edition of the magazine. Volume 34, Number 2, the March 2012 issue is the last.

Mark Rodeghier, the scientific director of the Center, wrote that they had noted in recent years that many long time and respected UFO groups have closed. He mentioned SOBEPS in Belgium as one that had “produced a quality publication and did good work,” but that didn’t keep them safe from a decline in public interest.

Rodeghier wrote, “The CUFOS board has been monitoring these trends for many years and understands that a wider audience can be reached through the internet and other electronic formats. The number of Associates who receive IUR has reached that tipping point where producing a print publication no longer makes economic sense (truthfully, we passed this point a while ago but soldiered on out of inertia and a stubborn commitment to print).”

He continued, “Accordingly, we must announce that this issue [Volume 34, Number 2, March 2010] of IUR will be the last one produced in hard copy. Whether or not there will be an electronic version of IUR, and if so, its format and frequency, is still to be decided...”

He concluded by saying, “We thank all of our readers, our contributors, and our varied production and editorial teams who made IUR what many consider the best English-language UFO publication in history.”