Steve Greer and Sirius

I have disagreed with much of what Dr. Steven Greer has done over the years. I suggested that he vet his witnesses with a little more enthusiasm and have found a few flaws in some of the witness testimony he has gathered. As a single example, he has an Air Force officer who talks about seeing a classified document come through the message center that describes a UFO crash. That is true.

Greer at Podium in Washington, D.C.

The problem? This refers to the Spitsbergen UFO crash. Several messages were exchanged in the early 1950s by various government agencies. Those messages have long been declassified and the crash has long been discredited. This specific case does nothing to advance our knowledge and gives us nothing of value. The tale is true, the officer did see the messages but they have been available to UFO researchers for decades.

Greer has a new passion that is Sirius. This is a feature length production that covers a great deal of territory, though my interest was in the remains of a little creature found in Chile a while ago. It is about six inches tall and according to reputable experts, lived to be six to eight years old.

True, I wasn’t all that interested in the discussion of the energy policies of the government, nor in the ways that energy can be produced without damage to the environment and little expense. Yes, that could potentially be of greater value than the little alien or little creature, but that was what I wanted to know about.

Greer took the podium and gave us an abbreviated lecture. He told us that many in the media, who had seen an advance copy of the movie, or had viewed it on the Internet before it was removed, said the DNA proved the little being was a human. But that wasn’t quite right. He noted that our genetic makeup matched that of the Neanderthal to more than 99% and that we shared 97% of our genes with the great apes.

This little creature had a genetic makeup that was about 90 or 91% of ours. That left some 9% that was unidentified. Greer said that this could be caused by problems with the computer analysis; it could be bad sequencing, or just damaged genes. There were many plausible answers for this discrepancy, but at the moment, there were none. Experts in genetics, top scientists in the field at prestigious universities were intrigued by these problems.

In fact, one of them, Garry Nolan, director of stem cell biology at Stanford University's School of Medicine in California, said that it wasn’t a monkey, that it had lived to six or eight based on an examination of the bones, and that it had been a living, breathing creature. In other words, Nolan, with the proper scientific credentials is just the sort of man you’d want to examine something like this.

And, as he pointed out, the creature, little human, tiny alien, whatever it might be, shouldn’t have been able to survive years given its size.

You could say that it was some sort of mutation that survived birth. A single example of a mutation that didn’t live long enough to reproduce, if it had ever been able. Greer, however, said that they may be other examples and he is chasing them down. One, in Russia, might have been seen alive by people who are still alive. In other words, there might be some very exciting evidence that these little things exist in the world today.

So, I found his documentary interesting, which is usually code for “I didn’t like it much but don’t want to say anything bad.” What I mean is that I didn’t agree with some of what he said, did enjoy the various clips of UFOs shown, and was very interested the information about the little being. Parts I ignored and other parts that I watched carefully.

But the point for me was the analysis of the little creature. Greer made it clear that the analysis was continuing and the final answer, if we get there, will be fascinating whatever it is.

Citizen Hearing on Disclosure

The Citizen Hearing on UFO Disclosure being held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. is now half over and I’m astonished at the abuse thrown by those not in attendance and the press seeking out the few who are members of the lunatic fringe. I have heard, repeatedly, about two who showed up wearing headbands with crystals but I never saw them (other than in a newspaper photo), and I have seen references to tinfoil hats which are not in evidence.

On the flip side, I see people smeared by association, called out because their views don’t match those of others, or something their children might have done. What it repeatedly overlooked, is the documentation presented, the credibility of many of the witnesses such as retired Air Force sergeants John Burroughs and Jim Penniston who were at the forefront of the Bentwaters encounter in 1980. Robert Salas, along with retired Air Force captain David Schindele and former captain Bruce Fenstermacher, who provided testimony about intrusions of UFOs over nuclear launch facilities and the momentary disabling of minuteman missiles, to name a few.

I have listened to the testimony of these men, I have known some of them personally for years, and I know the documentation supports the stories they tell. You might quibble about the alien nature of the encounters, but the documentation supports the events. Something happened at Bentwaters in 1980, missiles did mysteriously go off line at Malstrom Air Force Base in 1967, and national security was compromised. Again, you can argue the alien nature, but the events happened and they can be documented through government records.

But the media, or rather many of them, arrive with their preconceived notions, and rather than talk to the witnesses about what they saw, the researchers about what they have learned, the media look for a loon or two and then imply that the majority of those in attendance fit into that category.

Stan Friedman mentioned to me this morning that he had an email from a colleague? friend? acquaintance? Who felt the urge to ask how Stan could call himself a scientist…? nothing like rejecting an idea without looking at the evidence and attacking those who suggest that such evidence exists.

Each of the former senators or congressional representatives have mentioned the negative comments made to them, of the ridicule directed at them, and the bad press they have received. Few seem willing to listen to the testimony of those who have had documented experiences because it is simply too easy to look down their noses at those whose views do not agree with their own.

What I’m saying is that no one is looking at the information being shared by credible people, no one is asking if the health problems of some of the witnesses is not related to their UFO encounters, and no one is asking to see the evidence and the documentation.

No, they’re just more interested in displaying their superiority by making snide comments, tarring everyone with the same brush and ignoring the evidence. Or worse still, printing pictures of those painted green who weren’t at this event. That picture was taken somewhere else at some other time.

True, there are those here whose views I do not share, but if I avoid this venue, then my voice is silenced. If I do appear, then I join those in the tinfoil hats as some sort of kook, at least in the eyes of those offended by the Hearings.

Before you ask, yes, I listened to Steven Greer and found him to be quite entertaining. The audience was with him as he spoke and he is quite charismatic. I watched Sirius, and thought it spent way too much time on alternative sources of energy. I wanted to hear about the little alien, or maybe I should say, unusual little creature found. True, 90% of the DNA matched that of humans, but then some 9% didn’t, which doesn’t prove an alien connection. It is anomalous and interesting enough to engage very credible scientists at some very prestigious universities. That fact somehow gets lost.

In the past I have seen people review books without reading them, make statements about events they know nothing about, and offer opinions that are ill-informed. I wonder why those people do those things. Wouldn’t it be better to listen to the testimony, look at the background and the credentials of the witnesses, and then decide whether the effort was worth it? Why pass judgment before you see the results?

Historical UFO Research

After reading the article about the research into the June 23, 1947 Cedar Rapids UFO sighting, a few suggested that maybe we should do that for all these older sightings. I think that the idea might be more trouble than it is worth. Here’s why.

The Cedar Rapids case was important because it was alleged the sighting of a disc took place prior to Arnold and more importantly, it was documented prior to Arnold. Granted, the documentation was in a newspaper, but if the witness said that he had seen a disc-shaped object and it was reported before Arnold, it became important. It would suggest that the Arnold description didn’t have the influence that some have since claimed.

Now, as I explained, I looked at several sources, including Dick Hall’s The UFO Evidence. Some sources suggested the sighting was published in newspapers but I could only find a single footnote and it didn’t reference a newspaper article as the source. Instead, it cited Frank Edwards in a 1956 speech.

So I began the search which eventually revealed the sighting was not made on June 23, but on the 24^th, it didn’t happen in Cedar Rapids or Iowa, and it wasn’t published until sometime after Arnold. It became just another single witness sighting of something in the sky that did nothing to advance our knowledge of UFOs.

Many of these early sightings have nothing in them to help us. Many of the 1947 sightings that preceded Arnold were reported after Arnold. If there is no documentation to support the date, meaning something dated before the Arnold sighting hit the streets (meaning when it was published), then it does nothing for us. There are many of these, but in every case I have looked at, they were noted after Arnold.

I went back through Keith Chester’s marvelous Strange Company, looking for sightings of Foo Fighters that were described as disc shaped. The trouble was all of the sightings he collected were told to him long after Arnold had told his tale. That doesn’t mean that they were no good or were confabulations; it just means that they couldn’t be documented prior to Arnold.

This all came about simply because I wanted to document disc-shaped craft before Arnold… and there is very little to do that. Yes, I know that John Martin used the term in the late 19^th century but it was a description of size rather than shape.

Yes, I know that we can track through sighting reports from the early 20^th century and find some. But these are all prior to 1940. What I wanted to find was some disc-shaped craft reported between 1940 and Arnold in June 1947.

All this is a long-winded way to suggest that looking into the sightings that were reported after Arnold but claimed to have been made before Arnold isn’t going to help in what I wanted to do. Some of these sightings are of no real scientific value no matter when they were published. They were single witness and any evidential value they had has long eroded.

There is one thing that could be done. Everyone can do what I did with the Cedar Rapids sighting. Chase it down. If you live in a town with one of these old sightings, you might want to see if you can get to the original story and not the one that is currently being reported. If you find the information is accurate, so much the better… but I’ll bet that it has been skewed somehow. I don’t know how many times I have tried to chase a sighting to the original source only to find it is significantly different or even worse, was never reported. Someone made it up long after the fact.

The point is that some sightings are just of no real importance… others should be taken to the original source and see how that stacks up with what we see today… and finally there are some very important sightings that should be stripped of the rumors so that we can concentrate on the facts.

The Brookings Institution and Walter Sullivan

As I was looking into the history of the Brookings Institution report about their investigation into alien life and what would happen if we learned there were aliens out there, I made a somewhat startling discovery. Walter Sullivan, one time science editor of the New York Times had written a book, We Are Not Alone, in 1964, and he quoted from that report. He was writing about the short section that suggested that communication with an alien race might not be a good thing for the people of Earth… might not be bad, especially if it was only through radio astronomy, but there could be negative consequences.

 

He quotes exactly a long section from the report about what is found in “anthropological files” and how societies, “sure of their place” suffered from a variety of fates. The implication is that those societies were altered, often for the worse. I say just look at the history of contact between the old and new worlds to see what is meant.

Anyway, after these precise quotes (which I have not reproduced here) Sullivan begins to paraphrase. He wrote, “Such studies, the report continued, should consider public reactions to past hoaxes, ‘flying saucer’ episodes and incidents like the Martian invasion broadcast.”

But the report doesn’t say, “flying saucers.” The line paraphrased in the report says, “Such studies would include historical reactions to hoaxes, psychic manifestations, unidentified flying objects, etc. Hadley Cantril’s study, Invasion from Mars (Princeton University Press, 1940), would provide a useful if limited guide in this area.”

The structure of Sullivan’s quote seems to suggest that flying saucers belong in the hoax category and is somewhat dismissive of the idea of flying saucers. But the report used the term “unidentified flying objects” and it wasn’t next to the word, “hoaxes”, but separated from it. This seems to indicate Sullivan’s personal bias.

Now, let me say that my interpretation might be off base here. I just noticed the changing of the words and I remembered Ed Ruppelt explaining that the Air Force used the term, flying saucer, in a derogatory sense as in, “You don’t believe in those flying saucers do you?” Sullivan, by changing the term, was engaging in the same dismissive attitude… which, of course, is his right… except…

The way his sentence is structured, and the use of quotation marks around “flying saucer” suggests that the term was lifted from the Brookings Institution report. But the document doesn’t use the term, and the structure of that particular paragraph seems more benign to me.

Oh, I know, this isn’t a big thing. It was just something that I stumbled over and thought enough about it to mention it here. But it does, sort of, reveal an attitude that is found throughout the MSM and that is something that shouldn’t exist. They should keep the sneering attitude to themselves… and not only when writing about UFOs.

The June 23, 1947 UFO Sighting

I believe that I have found the original source for the story of a Cedar Rapids engineer who saw the flying discs. A headline in the Cedar Rapids Gazette said, “Flying Discs Seen By Railroad Man.” The problem? The newspaper is dated June 28, 1947 and appears two days after the Arnold story. And it didn’t happen in Cedar Rapids.

The article, which is not six lines or six paragraphs, but a little longer than that, said:

A railroad man said Friday [which is June 27, 1947 and eliminates the need for further information right there because the story appeared after Arnold] he saw “about nine” spinning discs speeding through the sky last Tuesday [June 24] the same day an Idaho flyer said he saw some flashing objects in the air.

Charles Kastl [yes, that is the way it is spelled consistently in the article], 60 [which means he would be 126 today], an employe [sic] of the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern railroad for 38 years, saw he saw the discs about 1:50 p.m. (CST) as he was walking along the highway to work.

No other person in the Joliet area reported anything unusual.

Kastl said he saw a string of flat, circular objects going faster “than any plane I ever saw” about 10 to 12 miles east of Joliet [Illinois]. They were flying about 4,000 feet, he said.

“They appeared to be very high, and were going from north to south,” he said. “I could see no connecting link between them, but they acted as though the leading disc had a motor in it to power the others, because when it flipped, the others would too. When it would right itself, the others would right themselves.”

Kastl said he did not tell anyone but his wife about seeing the objects until Friday, “because I didn’t think anything about it.”

When he returned from a railroad run Friday, however, he learned that Kenneth Arnold, Boise, Idaho, pilot had reported seeing objects similar to the ones he claimed to have seen. Arnold said he saw objects over the Pacific Northwest.

Charles Preucil, head of the Joliet astronomical society, said there would be no natural cause for a display such as Kastl described.

Given the information in this article and given the descriptions given for the Cedar Rapids sighting, I believe this is the source. It did not happen in Cedar Rapids, nor did it happen on June 23. I will assume here, risking fate, that someone (Frank Edwards?) miscalculated the date of Tuesday, believing it to be the 23^rd, and not realizing it was the 24^th.

In Alfred Loedding and the Great Flying Saucer Wave of 1947 by Michael Hall and Wendy Connors, the story was reported on page 22 as:

Thus, neither of those sightings made the papers before Arnold's account, but one story was actually reported to newspapers on the 23rd. The tale came from a railroad engineer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As he was climbing off his engine, he observed ten shiny disc-shaped objects flying in a string-like formation, "like wild geese." The six line story it generated produced little attention at the time.

 

Their footnote indicated that this information came from a speech given by Frank Edwards on April 28, 1956, to the Civilian Saucer Intelligence.

As I have mentioned, Richard Hall, in The UFO Evidence, reported, “6-23-47. Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 10 shiny discs “fluttering along in a string.”

Even if we wish to keep the entry as a reliable report, we now know that it didn’t happen on June 23 and it was not Cedar Rapids but Joliet, Illinois.

And as also mentioned, Robert Loftin, in his Identified Flying Objects reported, “June 23, 1947 – Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Railroad engineer saw ten shiny disc-shaped objects, very high, fluttering in a string toward the northeast.”

This should put to rest the idea that there was a sighting in Cedar Rapids on June 23 by an engineer. It should end the discussion that this case preceded Arnold by a day. Everything I have learned about it suggests that it happened on the day of the Arnold sighting but was not reported until two days later.

I will confess one other thing about this case. I don’t believe it. I think the guy was just spinning a tale about seeing something and because these things were now part of that news cycle, a reporter talked to him and wrote the story. The original importance of it had been the suggestion that it preceded Arnold, and without that, it is another single witness case that does not advance our knowledge…

And I will add this. It is frightening because of how far it has been circulated and how distorted it has become. I don’t know what motivated Edwards to quote it, and quote it so badly, but quote it he did. Others picked up on it without checking the original sources, and it took me quite a while to chase it down. If I could, I would strike if from the UFO literature, but books last a long time and the Internet might be forever. This will live on but I can hope that others will stumble across this information as they search for evidence.

Cedar Rapids Engineer Sees Disks - Beats Arnold by a Day?

I’ve been working on a new book and I was chasing down stories of flying saucers, flying discs, seen prior to June 24, 1947. Sure there are some, but all, or almost all, seem to have been reported after Kenneth Arnold’s story appeared in newspapers.

One of the best of these, reported in many sources, came from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and according to one document, “Thus neither of those sightings [one from El Paso, Texas and one from Wapakoneta, Oregon] made the papers before Arnold’s account, but one story was actually reported to newspapers on the 23^rd. The tale came from a railroad engineer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As he was climbing off his engine, he observed ten shiny disc-shaped objects flying in a string-like formation, ‘like wild geese.’ The six line story it generated produced little attention at the time.” The source of this, according to the footnote, was a speech given by Frank Edwards in April, 1956.

I have found references to it in other publications. Richard Hall, in his 1964 book, The UFO Evidence, lists it in two places, Section XI, page 129 and Section XII, page 152. Neither supplies much in the way of information. It is basically a recap of this other story and in neither place is there a source.

An Internet site listed Ted Bloecher’s The Report on the UFO Wave of 1947 as a source, but I was unable to find it there. If it is, I would hope that someone would point it out to me, but I don’t think they’ll find it. Bloecher used newspaper files for his documentation and so, if he didn’t find it in a newspaper, it was probably not published anywhere.

Now I was reading, the other day, a criticism of a UFO book, and it was suggested that primary sources were the best. Not witness testimony, but something that had been written down, such as a newspaper article or military document created at the time. If nothing else, that article could help establish the credibility of the sighting. Someone quoting another book would not be a primary source… it might be a secondary source, but might be even further removed from the primary source.

So, rather than quote those other books, rather than make a list of Internet and web sites that quoted the story, I thought about looking in the Cedar Rapids newspapers to find the original story. In June 1947, there were two newspapers in Cedar Rapids, The Cedar Rapids Gazette and the Cedar Rapids Tribune.

I carefully read the Gazette for June 23 and did not find the story. I went through the issue twice. I looked on June 24 but it was not there either. Nor was it there on the 25^th, 26^th, or 27^th. Of course, if printed after June 24, it was just another of the many cases that surfaced after Arnold’s report hit the national circuit.  Yes, I did find the Arnold story in the Gazette and thought the engineer story might be appended to it, but it was not.

The Tribune was not a daily paper and did not have an issue on June 23. I looked at several issues, but they didn’t even carry any flying disc reports. The newspaper was more geared to the local area.

And I was even allowed to search the library’s database for the newspaper articles. It wasn’t there, but then, I was told that they missed things in preparing the database. That it wasn’t there didn’t mean anything other than it wasn’t there. When appended to the other failed searches, that information becomes more significant.

While this sighting, if published on June 23, or even on June 24, would have been an important contribution to the UFO history, I was unable to find any documentation for it prior to Edwards’ 1956 speech. It does not appear in the Cedar Rapids newspapers, and I seriously doubt that any other newspaper would have carried it. Just nothing there of interest for them in it.

There is a school of thought that the case is listed in the Project Blue Book files, but it is from the Des Moines, Iowa area, happened on June 29, and involved a bus driver rather than a railroad engineer. But the details of the sighting are a match. The story was reported on July 8. If this is the right case, then it does nothing for us. It is just another of those sightings made after Arnold, reported after Arnold, and involves a single witness. The Air Force wrote it off as coming from an unreliable source.

I really wanted to document the details of the Cedar Rapids case, but simply could not do it. This is another “sighting” that should be removed from the various listings and databases. I don’t know how Edwards got it so twisted around, but I do know he didn’t get it from a newspaper in Cedar Rapids.

Project Contour and Alien Communication

As I was doing some research the other day, I came across some information from Mark Shippey (or information attributed to him) about a classified Air Force program known as Contour. This is how he explained it:

 

Today I met an old retired Air Force officer who claims that in the 1960s the Air Force conducted secret projects concerning possible communications with alien life forms…

He said one project was called “Contour”. He said that this project involved understanding “linguistic fundamentals of communication between different species”, and that one part of the project focused on understanding how “primates such as a gorilla might be taught to communicate.”

According to this retired officer, the Air Force was publically disregarding UFOs,” but privately was involved in “intense research concerning inter-species communication.”

He explained how one fascinating part of the project involved taking a gorilla that had been raised amongst humans and taught “basic sign language” back into the field to see how it related to and communicated with wild gorillas and if the domesticated gorilla could act as a “go-between” to communicate between the researchers and the wild gorillas.

All of this was supposed to have happened to, “help us learn fundamentals of language that could be helpful in communications with alien species.” 

I won’t go into the problems with this scenario as described, from the point that gorillas aren’t very receptive to new arrivals, to the point that the domesticated gorilla would not understand the wild gorillas’ communications having not interacted with them. Sort of like taking a baby of Japanese heritage raised in Oklahoma, for example, and dropping him or her into Tokyo and expecting some sort of psychic connection with the Japanese. The Oklahoma person would have no real connection with the land of his or her heritage and would be as out of touch with the Japanese as anyone plucked from another culture would be. The shared heritage might facilitate some interaction, but it really would have little impact on the meeting.

No, the problem with this tale, and I’m sure some of you recognize it, is because it wasn’t an Air Force project, but a plot point in a novel. Here’s what was written about it in the novel:

Pearl’s thesis attracted considerable attention, and funding from the U.S. Air Force, which had supported linguistic research since the 1960s. According to one story, the Air Force had a secret project called CONTOUR, involving possible contact with alien life forms. The official military position was that UFOs were of natural origin – but the military was covering its bets. Should alien contact occur, linguistic fundamentals were obviously critically important. And taking primates into the field was seen as an example of contact with “alien intelligence”; hence the Air Force funding. 

Now before we all take off on tangents to suggest this tale might be true, or have the elements of truth in it, let me point out the linguistic similarities between Shippey’s report and the paragraph in the novel. Let me point out that Shippey’s story surfaced in 1999 and the novel was published in 1980. Let me further establish that I have been unable to find any other references to Contour as a real project, even one with a different purpose.

And yes, I did try to find a Frederick Pearl who matched the description in the book. Yes, there are a couple of them. One, called Fritz, died in 1970 but was a gestalt psychologist and the other is an anthropologist, but is too young to have been writing papers on linguistics in the 1960s. The name seems to be an invention by the writer to advance the story and refers to neither a real person nor a real thesis.

At least this tale has not gotten wide spread circulation inside (or outside) the UFO community. There is no evidence that such a program ever existed, and for those who might suggest absence of evidence, well, they are required to produce some of it.

Oh, the novel? Congo by Michael Crichton…

Philip Klass Explains It All - Part Two

There are those who thought that I had been unfair to Philip Klass when I mentioned the article from the Bangor, Maine newspaper that reported his take on the Loring AFB unidentified craft (and note here that I didn’t use the more pejorative UFO). Turns out, there wasn’t much in that article that didn’t appear in his book, UFOs: The Public Deceived. It was just a little more condensed in the newspaper and some of the wilder assumptions made had been left out.

First, he seemed to be very annoyed that one of the newspaper reporters, in this case Ward Sinclair, had been dismissive of him, telling him, when asked if he had thought about calling Klass for his take on Loring, “No. In no way would I check with you. Why would I check with you? You’ve assigned yourself a credential that I have every right to be as suspicious of as Todd Zechel’s credentials.”

For those out of touch, Zechel claimed many things in his life that turned out to be less than credible and I wouldn’t cite Zechel as a source without checking out his information with other sources first. In fact, I would probably ignore anything Zechel said if there wasn’t any other source for it. In fact, if Zechel told me the sky was blue, I’d probably go out and look.

But I do understand Klass’ annoyance because, on the flip side, I’ve run into it. I was scheduled for an interview at the Chicago Tribune, but rather than a reporter from on staff, the interview was conducted by an intern in the hallway. She said that the editors knew there was nothing to UFOs so they weren’t overly interested in anything that might suggest they were in error. Sort of the same attitude that Klass had run into with Sinclair and sort of the same attitude we sometimes see here. A personal bias that colors thinking rather than an intelligent exchange of competing points of view.

The Bangor newspaper article had mentioned Klass’ theory that some radicals might have obtained a helicopter to acquire an atomic bomb. Well, in his book this isn’t quite as direct, but he is still of the opinion that a helicopter was responsible for the intrusion at Loring and there were radicals at the controls. In a footnote on page 97, he wrote, “At the time some radical groups protesting the war in Vietnam were resorting to violence and the use of explosives.”

And my criticism remains… didn’t these radicals, in October 1975, realize the war was over and the communists were in Saigon? Didn’t anyone point this out to Klass such as a copy editor… or maybe someone who had read the newspaper article about the fall of Saigon. This idea seems to be out of touch with reality but no one seemed to realize it. Not to mention that this has absolutely nothing to do with the sightings at Loring.

Klass did find that a helicopter had been scoping out part of Maine. He talked to a former sheriff deputy, Ivon Turmell, who reported on a helicopter landing at the Moosehead Motel. Klass wrote, “When I called Turmell, he told me that the red and white helicopter, built by Hughes Helicopter company, had created some talk in the small town [Rockwood], when it landed outside the Moosehead Motel and operated from this site for several days, taking off each morning and returning every night. When Turmell had called the owner of the motel out of curiosity, he learned that ‘the whole thing was very hush-hush,’ he told me, adding that the crew and maintenance personnel carefully avoided talking to other guests at the motel.”

 

Well, this is sort of interesting, I suppose, except for a couple of facts. According to Klass, in his book, this all happened “shortly” after the late-October incidents at the air base. And, Rockwood and the Moosehead Motel are some 120 miles from Loring AFB. Close in time and distance, but probably unrelated to the intrusions at the base. But someone was flying a helicopter, of some indistinct type, (which Hughes helicopter was it?) and they were in Maine. To Klass: Case Closed…

Klass wanted to know, “Could Rockwood’s ‘mysterious helicopter’ have been the same craft that reportedly penetrated Loring’s airspace on the night of October 27?”

No, and there is no apparent reason to connect the two events. Had we on this side of the fence attempted something like that, we would be condemned for “ufological thinking.” This is debunker thinking… just throw out a question about an event that might explain the sighting and then pretend that it does.

One other point should be made. The available documents show that there was an intrusion at Loring, and in at least one case, seemed to penetrate the weapons storage area. Although they mention that it was a helicopter in those documents, they were unable to identify it, catch it, or apparently stop it. Violating the restricted area and flying over the weapons storage area would be a matter of national security and should have caused a somewhat more robust Air Force response. The documents suggest that the Air Force couldn’t identify the helicopter but didn’t work very hard to find out who had committed the crime. I have to wonder if Klass could find a possible culprit by talking to an ex-deputy, couldn’t the Air Force have found the same culprit and wouldn’t they have followed up on it? It would seem to me that the Air Force would have investigated this, and since it goes unmentioned, means the helicopter had nothing to do with the intrusion.

 

So, they, debunkers and the Air Force, call it a helicopter though the witnesses on the ground, and sometimes within 300 feet of it, couldn’t recognize it as such. They described it as hovering, and dropping below radar coverage in the manner like that of a helicopter. The Air Force, rather than using the term UFO, chose to call it an unidentified helicopter. One witness, in November, did report a mysterious craft that did look like a helicopter, but then, that was in late November and that’s not part of the Loring sightings in late October.

The skeptics line up behind the Klass explanation because they all know that there can be no alien visitation. They accept his information about the helicopter, though it isn’t actually in the right place at the right time. They assume the witnesses, who mentioned a motion like that of a helicopter, meaning it hovered, just couldn’t identify it for some reason, and dismiss everything in that way. Nothing to look at here folks, just move along.

 

And now I must always add a caveat to these postings. No, this case does not prove alien visitation. It suggests something unidentified was seen over Loring, and the Air Force response seems inadequate given the penetration of the weapons storage area. The mystery helicopter was never found, and given the national security aspects, I would have thought the Air Force would have responded with more enthusiasm.

But, since it was a matter of national security, I don’t believe that all the relevant documents have been seen… nor do I expect them to be released through FOIA. This was, after all, a matter of national security.

An Airship Photograph

I am probably one of the worst people when it comes to promoting my work. I think that others should do that and that each book should generate interest because of what is in it rather than what I have to say about it. But, sometimes, there are reasons to promote what I have written… and sometimes it is important to report what others have done to make the book even better.

Such is the case with Alien Mysteries, Conspiracies and Cover-ups. One of those who was helping find illustrations made a telephone call that I hadn’t thought about. He found a photograph that I didn’t know existed.

Back in April, 1897, the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette carried a story about a Great Airship that had fallen, crashed, came to rest on the fairgrounds of Waterloo, Iowa. There was a human crew, complete with a German professor, and a tale of tragedy.

There was an airship on the ground, though no one, other than the crew, suggested it have ever been off the ground. After hours of telling the story to all who would listen, one of the men was recognized as a Waterloo resident and the tale collapsed. The hoax was exposed.

 

I had an illustration that appeared in the Cedar Rapids newspaper but since this was a hoax I never made the trip to Waterloo… oh, but I should have. Imagine my surprise and I first saw a photograph of the Waterloo airship from their newspaper, the Waterloo Courier. Not a drawing, wood cutting, or illustration. An actual photograph of the airship sitting in the bright sunlight of the nineteenth century.

 

As you can see, the Gazette drawing is accurate, but then, it’s not the same as a photograph from the Courier… which might be the only photograph of one of the Great Airships… and please note that I said, “Might.”

The point… the photograph appears in the book. It isn’t the only photograph. There are many, but it was the one that stunned me when I first saw it. Just never thought there would be an actual photograph… but it does suggest something about research. There is always another stone to be turned over, another archive to search, and another government office to deny that anything is out there.

For those interested, the book Alien Mysteries, Conspiracies and Cover-ups, should be available about now.

Aztec in Perspective by Monte Shriver - Part Three

(Blogger’s Note: The following is reprinted by permission. Given the length of the original article, I have broken it into three parts and will publish all three over the next week. It was written by one-time resident of Aztec, Monte Shriver, and provides an interesting insight into the alleged crash. This is Part Three, the final installment. Again, reprinted by permission of Monte Shriver.)

 

THE IMPROBABLE JOURNEY OF MANUEL SANDOVAL

 

Considering the timing related to the finding of the disc, I think it is reasonable to assume that it landed (crashed?) in Hart Canyon between 4:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m.  With sunrise being at 6:08 a.m., it had to be quite dark at the time the disc arrived. Why is this important? Because some time after the sun rose, Mr. Sandoval who followed the disc all the way from Cuba finally arrived at the site.  What we know about Mr. Sandoval is based upon interviews Mr. Ramsey conducted with Johnny Hernandez, Town Historian of Cuba, other residents of Cuba and from what Doug Noland told Mr. Ramsey. 

As related to Mr. Ramsey, Mr. Sandoval worked part time for the Cuba police department with the title of deputy sheriff. He replaced a Sam Sambrano who had been promoted to sheriff. These titles don’t make any sense. Bernalillo is the county seat of Sandoval County and that is where the sheriff’s office is located. In two visits with the Sandoval County sheriff’s office, they were unable to locate a Sam Sambrano who was sheriff in 1948. Normally, a sheriff is elected, not appointed unless there is a vacancy in the sheriff’s office. I suspect Mr. Sambrano was actually the police chief of Cuba. On page 2 of the Ramsey book, Doug Noland told Mr. Ramsey that “…Manuel Sandoval, explained that he was from the town of Cuba, N.M., and that he had followed the low flying disc-shaped craft in a northerly direction during the early morning hours…”. When Mr. Sambrano came to work on the morning of March 25, I suspect he wondered what happened to his night officer and his patrol car.

So what we are supposed to believe is that sometime after midnight on the morning on March 25, 1948, this craft flying very slowly and low enough for Mr. Sandoval to follow it, flew from Cuba to Counselors, turned north and headed down Largo Canyon towards Blanco. Don’t forget, Mr. Ramsey maintains that this was the correct route to Aztec in 1948 and that even today the trip (down Largo) is long and slow. So either the craft flew as slow as 20-30 miles per hour or perhaps it dropped bread crumbs for Mr. Sandoval to follow. Anyway, the craft turned left on SR 17 when it exited Largo Canyon, continued west through Blanco to Bloomfield. Why did the craft turn left on SR 17 when it exited Largo?  Because that is the only bridge over the San Juan River in the area. Why do I know it went west out of Blanco?  Because Sandoval said it almost hit a mesa near Bloomfield which is 9 miles straight west of Blanco. Now a Valentine Archuleta suddenly appears on the scene and says he saw the saucer pass over his ranch in the early morning hours(perhaps around 4:00 a.m.?), strike a ridge and head north towards Hart Canyon. I think this is the first time a Valentine Archuleta is mentioned in the Ramsey book so where did he come from? Is this the V. A. mentioned in Steinman’s book (page 258)? As related by Mr. Steinman, all V.A. could remember was that he saw the craft somewhere between 1948 and 1950!!!!!! In addition, V. A. lived in Blanco (although on the wrong river). So, did it hit the mesa at Blanco or at Bloomfield?

Let’s go back to Mr. Sandoval and the craft. After it hit the mesa near Bloomfield, it must have either turned north and went over Aztec or flew northeast from Bloomfield to Hart Canyon. This is apparently where Mr. Sandoval lost sight of the craft because if it crashed between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m., it took Mr. Sandoval another two hours or so to reach the crash site. If he followed the craft to Bloomfield from Blanco and if the craft flew to the northeast, the only logical way for him to go was through Aztec and then turn north on Highway 550. How did he know to turn up the Hart Canyon road? It must have been those danged bread crumbs again.  There is another option we should consider. Maybe the captain of the craft knew that SR 44 was paved all the way from Cuba through Counselors to Aztec and decided not to force Mr. Sandoval to drive that bumpy road down Largo Canyon in the dark.

On page 146, Mr. Ramsey again demonstrates his lack of knowledge of the New Mexico highway system. Don’t forget, Mr. Ramsey maintains that to get to Aztec from Cuba, the road turns north at Counselors and goes down Largo Canyon.  Yet Mr. Sandoval reportedly  watched for speeders on Highway 44 that connected Bernalillo to Farmington. This is the same road one uses to get to Aztec. SR 44 goes from Bernalillo through Cuba to Bloomfield. At Bloomfield you either continue north to Aztec or turn left and go to Farmington.

Mr. Hernandez told Mr. Ramsey that Andy Andrews, New Mexico State Police from Farmington and Mr. Sandoval got into an argument with Dr. Lincoln LaPaz from the University of New Mexico who was investigating “green light” sightings in the Cuba area. Mr. Hernandez said that one of the two officers “almost came over the table at LaPaz”. I asked Andy’s daughter, Evaleene, if her dad ever patrolled from Farmington to Cuba and had he ever mentioned anything about green lights and the incident with Dr. LaPaz. She said he did patrol to Cuba but that he never mentioned seeing any green lights or the incident with Dr. LaPaz. 

 

MOVING THE CRAFT TO LOS ALAMOS

 

In chapter nine, Mr. Ramsey and Mr. Metzger go into great detail about how one  could move the craft, separated into three pieces, using an Army M26 6X6 tractor and an M15 semi-trailer. I think the equipment as shown on page 159 would have worked quite well for the move of the craft.  According to Wikipedia, the M26 had a crew of seven, a top speed of 26 mph and a 140 gallon gas tank. To me, the devil is in the details and so I pose the following questions:

 

1.With the craft broken into three sections, were three M26’s used for the move?

 

2. Where were they located and how long did it take them to arrive on the scene?

3. If two 60 foot cranes were required, how were they transported to the site?

4. Assuming two bulldozers were required, were they driven to the site or hauled in on low-boy trailers?

 

Given the strange appearance of the M26 (the armored version) and M15 semi-trailer, how could they, along with the 60 foot cranes, not have been noticed on the way to the site, lumbering along at a top speed of 26 MPH.  

We are now all loaded and ready for the move. I assume we will have a convoy of three loaded M26’s, perhaps a fuel truck, 2 semi’s pulling low-boy trailers for the bulldozers (unless they were driven all the way) and an unknown number of support vehicles including outriders to clear the road ahead of oncoming traffic because of a load 50 feet wide. Let’s assume we make it down Pump Canyon to the San Juan River without being seen(Right!!!).  Pump Canyon enters the San Juan River just west of Archuleta, NM and east of Blanco, NM. Now I think it is important to discuss a little history of the area between Blanco and Archuleta.

The following information is taken from The Place Names of New Mexico -Revised Edition” by Robert Julyan: 1998 University of New Mexico Press

 ARCHULETA : “…settlement on S bank of the San Juan River…at Gobernador Wash…The Archuletas were among the first Hispanic settlers in this area in the 1870’s and their descendants still live in and around this tiny community…”.

BLANCO : When Hispanic settlers moved into the San Juan Basin in the 1870’s, Blanco was among their first communities, and because it was more centrally located with respect to Largo Canyon, site of much farming and ranching….”

 The point I wish to make here is that the area between Blanco and Archuleta has been continuously occupied and farmed since the 1870’s. On June 29-30, 2012 my wife and I drove both the north and south sides of the San Juan River from Blanco past Archuleta to the San Juan River Bridge (this bridge did not exist in 1948) on NM 173 and NM 173 did not run this way until 1963 when Aztec volunteers with help from the Ray L. Atchison Construction Company built the Navajo Dam road from Aztec. In 1948, NM 173  was a 14 mile long dirt road from Blanco to Aztec. When we drove the area we found that both sides of the river are extensively farmed and fenced.  I suspect that hasn’t changed much since 1948 or earlier. This is important when you consider how the convoy crossed the San Juan River.

 One can’t cross the river at the Pump Canyon entrance because of the high bluffs on the south side of the river. So you have to start moving down the north side of the river for a few miles until you can find a crossing. You may have to make your own road, go through fences, cross private property and ultimately find a place to cross the river. No matter where you cross the river, the bulldozers would be needed to blade an entrance into and out of the river for the crossing to be made. This convoy would have been the major topic of conversation in the valley and I suspect the property owners might have taken umbrage with their fences being cut and roads being cut across their property. Does anyone find it odd that there is no report of such an event ever happening in the area? Unless, of course, it didn’t happen at all. Certainly George Bowra would have reported it in the Aztec Independent Review. More about him later.

So now the convoy is headed up Largo Canyon as described by Mr. Metzger in his report to Mr. Ramsey: “The tightest clearance on Largo Canyon Road is 39 feet above ground level. Largo Canyon would have been the natural choice, since “U.S. HIGHWAY 550 HADN’T BEEN BUILT YET”(emphasis added) . He goes on to say it would be a simple matter to make it to Counselors. If this is the major road to Aztec, where is all the oncoming traffic and what about all the traffic following the convoy? How did they get around a 50 foot wide load? Apparently it was no problem.

Then Mr. Metzger makes one of the most incredible statements in the book when on page 158, he states “Once out of the canyon, traveling across the high desert north of Cuba, through Gallina, Abiquiu and Espanola northward around to the eastern slope of the extinct volcano where Los Alamos is located would be a relatively easy matter”. He obviously doesn’t know the difference between deserts and mountains and he overlooked the fact that you have to turn south at Abiquiu to head towards Espanola. I suspect he and the Ramseys have never even been on this road (SR 96).Before I get back to all the problems he overlooked in the easy drive from Counselors to Los Alamos, I wish you could all see the map of the recovery route as shown on page 160 of the Ramsey book. His route doesn’t even go through Gallina, Abiquiu and Espanola!!!! Instead, it goes from Cuba south to Bernalillo(not named on the map), through Santa Fe (not named on the map) and then on to Los Alamos. Credibility, Credibility, Credibility!

From Counselors, it is approximately 36 miles to where one turns left on NM  96 for the drive over to U.S. 84 so I will just mention a few issues worthy of consideration:

At Counselors, NM 44 goes SE towards Cuba. The load is 50 feet wide. I recently measured the width of old U.S. Highway 85 south of Socorro. This is the road on which I drove to college in 1952. The pavement is 24 feet wide. I suspect that in 1948, NM 44 was about the same width. That means that if the M26 drove down the center of the road, the load would extend 13 feet past the pavement on each side of the road - and this on the main road from Albuquerque to the San Juan Basin. The convoy could easily have been a quarter of mile long, perhaps even with a state police escort to clear the way of traffic. And no one saw it?????????

SR 96 from north of Cuba through Gallina to U.S. Highway 84 was a graded dirt road about 60 miles long. On this route, you pass by the villages of La Jara, Regina, Gallina and Coyote where you then had  to cross the Chama River to reach U.S. 84. These villages were settled between 1818 and 1911 (The Place Names of New Mexico, Second Edition 1998 by Robert Julyan). Surely, someone would have seen and reported this strange looking convoy. How did they cross the Chama River near Abiquiu? No mention is made of this feat.

North of Abiquiu, SR 96 ends at U.S. Highway 84, the major north/south route from Chama and Tierra Amarilla to Santa Fe, Albuquerque and points south. Again, here is a convoy going unnoticed with a 13 foot overhang on each side of the pavement on a major north/south route. The highway would have to be cleared. It seems that someone would have mentioned it.

And how about the town of Espanola? How do you get a convoy with a load 50 feet wide and 86.5 feet long unseen through a town the size of Espanola?     

How do you get from Espanola to Los Alamos? In the late 1940’s, I was returning to New Mexico from visiting relatives in Kansas. My uncle wanted to see Taos, so we drove from Taos to Espanola and my uncle decided to take a shortcut over the Jemez Mountains to Cuba. We went up a very steep and narrow road and ended up at the entrance to Los Alamos where we were turned around and ultimately found our way across the Jemez Mountains to Cuba. Remembering this steep and narrow road up to Los Alamos, I talked to the Los Alamos Historical Society, related my story to them about my trip with my uncle up the steep road and I asked them if, in 1948, it would have been possible for a load 50 feet wide and 86.5 feet long to have made it up that road. The answer was definite “No.” I was told that when they ultimately widened the road, the trucks moving the rocks had to backup several times just to negotiate the curves.

 

CONCLUSION

 

This, dear reader, concludes my review of the three books mentioned earlier. When I started this review I was a skeptic, but now, like George Bowra before me, I have not seen anything to convince me that a UFO landed in Hart Canyon. In Mike McClellan’s article (as reprinted on page 213 of the Steinman book,)the following is stated about George Bowra: “Bowra had been in Aztec for 70 years. He ran the paper for 44 years. “Nobody could have gotten in there and out (Hart Canyon) without attracting a lot of attention…Bowra stated emphatically that the roads have never been cordoned by anyone. He became interested enough in the story to speak with what he estimates to be over 100 people…None of them recalls the UFO landing or subsequent military movement…”.

Mr. Ramsey relied in a large part on his interviews with Mr. Noland, Mr. Farley. Mr. Riggs and Mr. Hernandez. I don’t doubt their veracity,  but I certainly do question their memories. I have already given my opinion on some of Mr. Ramsey’s research, particularly the highway routing in northwest New Mexico and his lack of detail on how the disc could have been moved. When Mr. Steinman placed Blanco on the banks of the Animas River, he lost credibility with me immediately.

 It is my intent to give credit to everyone whose work I have used. If I overlooked someone, I apologize. I have not used any UFO sites or books other than those I have mentioned. My conclusions are my own. I would encourage everyone to buy and read the three books I have here reviewed and draw your own conclusions about what did or did not happen in Hart Canyon. I would love to hear rebuttals from Mr. Ramsey, Mr. Steinman and Dr. Friedman about my review of their work. I am sorry I never had the opportunity to challenge them during the Aztec UFO Symposiums but I do thank them for helping raise money for the new Aztec Library. It is a far cry from the old one room Altrurian Library where I gained my love of reading. 

If I were to give an overall opinion of the three books I have just reviewed, I would have to quote one of my favorite college professors, Dr.. Claude Dove who would describe something questionable as “PIFFLE, PURE DAMN PIFFLE”. 

I could not close without noting that I have seen three UFO’s but they were just that -- unidentified flying objects. The first one I saw was in the late 1940’s. It was later reported to be a weather balloon. In the mid-1990’s, my wife and I were camped at Snow Lake in the Gila National Forest of SW New Mexico. Well after dark, I pointed out to her what I thought was a satellite moving from east to west in the night sky but when it was directly overhead, it made an abrupt left turn and headed straight south. I had never seen a satellite do that before. The other sighting looked like a hot air balloon on fire moving at low level from east to west. It was a short distance north of our house but then it abruptly turned north and disappeared in the distance. Dear Reader, your guess is as good as mine.

 

POSTSCRIPT

 

Since finishing my review of the three books about the alleged Aztec flying saucer, I decided to check the internet to see what information was there about UFO’s. It appears there has developed quite a “cottage industry” about UFO’s. This industry seems to feed on itself. I think Frank Scully did a great job of describing this cottage industry, although in a different context when he said “Men stay with what they believe, or fight for buggy whips in an era of automobiles for the simple reason that their livelihoods are all tied up in buggy whips”.

A Mr. Kevin Randle, in a May 30, 2012 posted on the internet, had two very interesting comments about the Ramsey book. As noted in the Ramsey book, The Aztec Incident - Recovery at Hart Canyon, Mr. Ramsey relied quite heavily on information he obtained for Doug Noland and Virgil Riggs. Mr. Randle notes that “Doug Noland tells a robust tale, but is slightly contaminated because he approached William Steinman who wrote about the Aztec Crash in the mid-1980’s”. He also notes that Mr. Riggs relied on a story about the Aztec Crash that was told to him by a Donald “Sam” Bass who was in the Air Force with Mr. Riggs.

According to Mr. Ramsey, his research revealed that Sam Bass had been killed in a hit-and-run accident while in the Air Force in Vietnam. On the other hand, Mr. Randle notes “No one named Bass was killed by a hit-and-run driver in Vietnam and no one who served in the Air Force named Bass died in Vietnam. Clearly, the story told to the Ramsey’s was untrue”.

If Mr. Randle is correct in what he reported, then I think the veracity of both Mr. Noland and Mr. Riggs must be questioned.

Monte Shriver

Las Cruces, NM
2012