Chasing Footnotes and Cannon Air Force Base

It’s been a while since I had a post about chasing footnotes and while this isn’t quite the same thing, it did sort of begin there.

Fran Ridge

Fran Ridge, who runs the NICAP website (http://www.nicap.org/), which is filled with all sorts of interesting information, posed a question about a UFO sighting that was part of the comprehensive Blue Book Unknown (BBU) list prepared by and updated regularly by Brad Sparks. That sighting was described as:

Like to have more on this RR case anyone has it.
May 18, 1954; Cannon AFB, New Mexico (BBU)

 7 p.m. 2 witnesses saw a house-size lens-shaped object
 land near railroad tracks, kicking up a small
 sand storm in the desert. One witness approached it, then
 ran away in fear. (Vallée Magonia 129; BB files??)

Michael Swords took a run at the question but didn’t seem to have a very good answer about the case. He wrote:

I'm curious to know where the "BBU" comes from. It's not impossible that this is a BBU, but the source cited doesn't lead to that. Vallee's source is listed as Binder. That's Otto Binder, not the best source to begin with. Binder had a newspaper column which would feature readers' UFO accounts that were mailed to him. Some of these had a ring of truth to them, but they were just that --- essentially "letters" to a UFO interested person who did no investigation. Binder was a writer as a profession, so I can't damm him for making some money out of this. He picked several of his more intriguing letters and published them in FATE of February 1968. The relevant letter quoted there sounds good (and it has a second letter in support) but it is only a letter claim. (Vallee is always doing this by the way--- picking some flimsy mention of something and putting it in the MAGONIA catalog. Often these citations have errors. A error here might be that the location of the claim was not in Cannon AFB but more truly might be labeled "Clovis, NM". (a small matter.) ) In Binder's article, he says that the witness claims that a small mention of the case appeared in FATE of November 1954. That would be potentially encouraging to me, but I could not find it there on a thumb-through.

So, two mysteries for me: A) --- major --- how did this get a BBU?
      B) --- minor --- is it actually mentioned in FATE back in 1954?

There is, allegedly, a DATA-NET report of this --- date unknown to me. Hynek also allegedly mentions something like this in his UFOExp --- I got lazy and didn't search after that claim. (hard to believe Hynek would ever mention anything from Binder in that book, but maybe something more substantial could be there.

Following Mike’s lead, somewhat, I looked at the Project Blue Book master index and found that there were no sightings listed for May 18, 1954, and none in New Mexico for the entire month. All that meant was that the mention of “BB files??” as one of the sources could be eliminated. The sighting was not part of the Blue Book system.

This led to another brief exchange. Fran had noted that this was case no. 1018, in the BBU but when I looked at the copy I had it wasn’t the same. I wrote, “I just looked at both Brad’s BBU and the Blue Book master index and the case no. 1018 is from California and not New Mexico. The case from May 18, 1954 is labeled as case 836 in Brad's listing (or at least in the copy I have) but only questions if it is found in the BB files. I can't find anything in the BB master index that matches this, though, I haven't spent a great amount of time looking. I can say that there is no listing for May 18, 1954 in New Mexico in the BB files.”

Turned out that my version of Brad’s BBU was older than the one used by Fran. He had an updated version and 1018 was the Cannon AFB (Clovis) entry. This was becoming somewhat confusing but would become more so as time passed. But that still didn’t put the report into the Blue Book system.

Barry Greenwood seemed to have come up with that connection. He wrote, “There is a listing for Oceanside CA in the OSI records for May 18, 1954 (Roll 90, frame 269. Roll 91, frames 990 – 991, Blue Book Archives.)”

I went back to the Blue Book microfilms (as I keep saying, I have them all), and found that the first reference to the Oceanside sighting is a letter dated June 28, 1954 (the date on the copy I have is a little difficult to read) that has a subject of “Sighting of Unidentified Aerial Object on 18 May 1954 over Oceanside, California. SPECIAL INQUIRY.”

There are no details in that letter other than saying that a “Spot Intelligence” report had been sent dated June 10, 1954 and gave the OSI district that had responsibility for the case. The report was not located with this letter.

The second entry, in Roll 91, that Barry mentioned, was the spot intelligence report which provided some details. The information was that:

SYSNOPSIS: On 27 May 1954, advice was received by letter from the District Intelligence Officer, Eleventh Naval District, San Diego, California, to the effect that [name redacted but is clearly, Higgins, Squadron Leader, Royal Air Force, on duty with the Marine All Weather Fighter Squadron El Toro 542, Marine Base, California, reported sighting an unidentified flying object while flying in the vicinity of Oceanside, California, 1240 hours, 18 May 1954.

Interestingly, the Blue Book entry for this, in Brad’s BBU was number 1017, which is, of course, the one just prior to the case that stared all this. For those interested in the details of the sighting, though sparse, Brad had reported it as:

May 18, 1954; 10-15 (or 6-7) miles SE of Lake Elsinore, Calif. (BBU 2994) 12:48 p.m. RAF Squadron Leader Donald R. Higgin, assigned to USMC All Weather Fighter Sq, El Toro MCAS, Calif., while flying an F3D-2 jet fighter at 15,000-16,000 ft on a heading of 240° magnetic [255° true] at 300 knots IAS and descending, saw a dark blue almost black gun-metal "glint" delta-shaped object, about 22-23 ft long and 20 ft wide, with 3 fins of equal size and shape, at his 11 o'clock position just above the cockpit of his wingman flying another F3D-2 about 250 ft away. Object was on a head on collision course but before Higgin could radio warning it passed under his wingman and between their aircraft, descending at a 25°-30° angle on a heading N of about 30°

There is nothing in the report by the OSI that suggests a solution or much of an investigation and Brad’s entry does nothing to clarify any of this. The names have been redacted, but as I have noted on many occasions, those responsible for removing the names did a terrible job. In fact, in one paragraph, none of the names were reacted, and given the ranks of those involved in the sighting as well as their military organizations, it is simple to put the names back in. We know who had seen what.

I will note that two copies of the spot intelligence report were sent on to ATIC, which, in 1954, had responsibility for Blue Book. That surprised me because there was no enter on May 18, 1954, for any sighting in the United States, but Blue Book should have had a copy given the regulations in force at the time.

There was documentation in the file for the Oceanside case but these were in the administrative section and not part of the investigative files. Fran asked a question then that got me to thinking. He wondered if the Lake Elsinore sighting that was part of the BBU was the same as the Oceanside sighting that were part of the administrative files. It was clear from the documentation that some of the names in the Oceanside sighting were the same as those from the Lake Elsinore sighting which meant that it was the same report. I took a look at the master index again and noticed that there was a sighting on May 10, 1954, for Lake Elsinore.

The illustration of the object
over Lake Elsinor in the
Oceanside UFO file.

I looked at the Blue Book microfilm and found the same pages from the OSI section but this one also included a statement from the pilot and his radar officer and the illustration that was not available in the administrative section. There was, of course, the Project Card, which suggested that the pilot might have seen a lenticular cloud, but also noted that such clouds are rare at the altitude reported and that they persisted much longer than the sighting lasted. The conclusion was that lenticular cloud did not provide a proper resolution and the case was labeled unidentified.

About the time that I was finding this, Brad Sparks pointed Fran to the same sighting. We had all found the sighting from Oceanside and had now resolved the discrepancy between it being at Oceanside and Lake Elsinore. There was no doubt, given the documentation that we were all talking about the same sighting. Lake Elsinore merely pinpointed the location while Oceanside provided a larger, general area.

What are the conclusions here?

Well, it seems that the original source for the Cannon AFB (Clovis) case was Otto Binder and those of us who have been around for a while realize that he is not the most credible of sources. The case was picked up by Jacques Vallee but he apparently did nothing to validate the information. I could find nothing in the Blue Book files about it and believe that it should be removed from the Catalog that Brad Sparks has been creating (I say creating because, as mentioned, it seems he regularly updates it).

The second part of this is the sighting from Oceanside, California. We have the details of the sighting, that include the pilot’s statement. It seems that those at Blue Book did know of it because the spot intelligence report but were unable to identify the cause of the sighting. Interestingly for me, I had included, in my book Project Blue Book – Exposed, a list of all the Unidentified cases. Somehow, I had missed that one. It is not listed by me. *

Here’s what I take away from all this. Fran asked a question over the Internet about 10:00 in the morning. There were responses from a number of people, and by four, we had found some of the answers. We had the documentation and resources to get to the bottom of the case. By noon the next day we had found the Oceanside (Lake Elsinore) sighting in the Blue Book files, but nothing to support the Cannon AFB sighting other than a reference that began with Otto Binder. The Cannon AFB case is mildly interesting but not actually part of Blue Book, and I had reached, at least in my mind, a valid conclusion or two about the reliability of the Cannon AFB sighting. There is nothing beyond what Binder had written and this case should be eliminated from the various listings in which it appears.

* Here’s something I noticed about the list of Unidentified sightings in my book, which I had always thought was important because Bob Cornett and I had been through the files before they had been redacted. We had listed every unidentified case including the names of the witnesses… I have since learned that others managed to do the same thing. I bring all this up because, for some strange reason, I have no unidentified cases listed for 1954. There are a number of them, but when I prepared the list for the book, I overlooked them. 

Billy Meier Beyond the Time Barrier

I know that it is best to let sleeping dogs lie (and you can take that two ways considering where I’m going with this), but I saw something that set me to laughing. I was watching an old 1960 science fiction movie, this one Beyond the Time Barrier. It takes place in both 1960 and 2024 after a pilot in an experimental aircraft somehow “breaks” the time barrier.

The world of 2024 is nothing like I imagine it will be not so far in our future, but in the movie, it is 64 years in their future (and, technically 64 years in the future for those who made the movie). According to their history, we had reached the moon and there were human colonies on both Mars and Venus (and I’ll bet the air conditioning bill on Venus is astonishing). But there was some kind of plague that had devastated the human population turning it into those who were mutated and those who weren’t quite as mutated.

Okay, so at about 33:00 minutes into the movie, we get a little bit of this alternative history. One of those scientists who hadn’t traveled through time said to the major who had, “The plague we’re talking about hadn’t happened in your world in 1960. It began in 1971.”

The major asked, “Atomic war?”

“No, no. The feared nuclear war never occurred…”

“If it wasn’t nuclear war, what caused it?”

And here is where we find the world of the UFO meeting the world of science fiction. The answer was, “A bombardment of toxic radiation from outer space… The people of your world are concerned about nuclear fallout. Well, the danger is in the other extreme. The tons of radioactive dust that has mushroomed up into the ionosphere [though he might have said atmosphere] from the very first A-bomb test… that dust has remained up there and it is slowly destroying the protective screen that has filtered out cosmic rays from outer space since time began.”

Sound familiar? Can we think of anyone who has made a similar claim in our shared reality?

The major then said, “Then all the nuclear explosions that have ever taken place have contributed to this.”

“Yes.”

So, here we have a claim that atomic testing has damaged the ozone layer though they refer to it as the protective screen that was made in 1960. It preceded that made by science by a number of years and beat Billie Meier by what, a decade and a half?

Yes, I know that his supporters will say that he never saw the movie (and yes, it was a pretty crappy “B” movie) but there is no way of knowing if he ever encountered it in his worldly travels. I will note that I saw The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on three continents in the late 1960s, so it is certainly possible. (North America, Australia and Asia, though much later I also saw parts of it in Europe which ups the count to four).

The point, however, is that this sort of thinking, that atomic testing had depleted part of the ozone layer had been around a long time before Meier ever mentioned it. You just can’t say that no one was talking about it before Meier brought it up because the idea had filtered down, into some rather cheap science fiction of 1960 and was an old idea by the time Meier got to it.

The Anomalist, Mysterious Universe and The UFO Dossier

I am not as good at promoting my books as I could be. Oh, I mention them when the opportunity presents itself, and Roswell in the 21^st Century gets a plug on every radio show but, for the most part, I’m not out there banging the drum at every opportunity. However, sometimes, I find an opportunity to not only promote one of my books, but also turn the spotlight on a colleague. This time it’s Nick Redfern who just posted, to the Australian website, Mysterious Universe, a very nice review of The UFO Dossier. If you’d like to read what Nick had to say, you can read it here:

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/08/the-ufo-dossier-reviewed/

I will note, as a writer, I have long ago learned that no matter what you write, it is going to offend someone. He or she will not care for a conclusion you reach, or an analysis of a sighting, or even how the book has been laid out… in one extreme

Nick Redfern

case I was accused of having such a big ego I had to see my name on every page. Of course, it was on every other page, but more importantly, I had nothing to do with the layout of the book, that had been done by the publisher, but I digress.

The point is that it is always a pleasure when someone writes a nice review of a book you have written, and done that without a suggestion from me. Had I not been reading the latest at The Anomalist (see http://www.anomalist.com/), I wouldn’t have known the review existed, but since it does, I’ll point you all to it.

And, in a strange coincidence, I’ll be interviewing David Booher about his book, No Return: UFO Abduction or Covert Operation, published by Anomalist Books, which is relevant to this whole discussion. In The UFO Dossier, I report on a strange case that Coral and Jim Lorenzen were involved in back in 1959, concerning a soldier going by the name of Gerry Irwin. It is a strange case that had no real resolution back in 1959, but Booher, located Irwin some 50 years after the event and provides more information about what happened. This means that I’ll have the opportunity to promote, not only Booher’s book about the case, but also my book which does mention it (pages 134 – 141, if you must know).

X - Zone Broadcast Network - Greg Bishop

Greg Bishop

This week I spoke with Greg Bishop of Radio Misterioso fame. I had thought we’d talk about some of the UFO cases that he found interesting if they weren’t more than ten years old. But he mentioned an interest in trends and patterns and we then ended up talking about some of the trouble with abduction research. You can listen to the show here:

https://youtu.be/4Xyxz_ZMJSA

When we finished our discussion of abduction research, which was more of an analysis of the research techniques and how out-of-date they had become, we switched topics. We both seemed to believe that MUFON had lost its direction, moving from UFO investigation and research into a profit driven organization which is to say that money was more important than the research. An analysis of the symposium program seemed to reinforce that view, suggesting the speakers had been picked because they might fill seats with their tales of alien wars on other planets. Although there is no real proof that any of that happened, those wars on other planets, this secret space program as they called it was of great interest to some. It didn’t really matter that most of what was being said was preposterous as long as they paid for their entertainment.

Next week’s guest: David Booher

Topic: The Gerry Irwin UFO encounter 

I Retract My Original Billy Meier Comment

Several weeks ago, I made a suggestion that the speakers invited to the MUFON symposium sounded a little absurd because of the lack of corroboration for their time travel claims. I had also wondered why the Billy Meier supporters hadn’t been offered a similar invitation to support his claims. It seemed if the leadership of MUFON was interested in allowing the membership to come to their own conclusion about some of these absurd claims, then Billy Meier and his supporters should be afforded the same courtesy. But then in the comment section of the post, I had written, “This post was about some of those invited to speak at the next

Billy Meier

MUFON Symposium and not an avenue to promote a contactee [Billy Meier] case that I believe to be untrue.”

This was a fairly innocuous statement. Didn’t really say much other than I thought the claims to be untrue. I wasn’t calling Billy Meier a liar, I wasn’t saying the case was a hoax, only that I didn’t believe it, which I had thought was my right. I was immediately attacked. It was claimed that I had “defamed” Billy Meier, and that I should offer proof that Meier hadn’t been in communication with alien beings. I should either put up some evidence or retract the statement.

I did explain that I was familiar with the case and that the evidence offered to support it was weak at best… well, not in those words. I mentioned that I had read a couple of the books about Meier, but was attacked for being out of touch. I did think that it wasn’t really my responsibility to prove Meier hadn’t met with aliens and traveled around the galaxy, but theirs to prove he had.

Whatever…

So, now I would like to retract that initial and rather benign statement.

I have spent the last several weeks looking at all sorts of material about Billy Meier. I read his predictions, seen many of his photographs, looked at the analyses of the metal he said came from his space traveling pals. I looked at the “pro” sites and those that were “con.” I followed up on the predictions, and tried to learn more about the photographs. I have looked at both sides of the coin, listened to the promoters and detractors and realized that my statement was simply my belief based on what I had found in earlier research. It had been written as a polite and somewhat cordial way of letting the readers know that I didn’t believe the story which was not the same thing as saying it was a hoax.

Today, I’ll say this. The Billy Meier contact case is a hoax. The evidence offered in support is weak, often inaccurate, and those believing Meier will not listen to anything that suggests Meier has not flown around the galaxy in alien spacecraft. Dozens of his pictures have been proven to be fake, but that’s because the Men in Black substituted faked ones for the real ones, we’re told. Meier’s predictions that had seemed to be so accurate were not made before anyone on Earth was aware of the situations mentioned as claimed. When it was pointed out that the trouble with the ozone layer was known and published in a variety of sources before Meier said a word about it, the answer was he couldn’t have seen those sources. The supporters move the goalposts so that any evidence presented is never enough.

I say again, this case is a hoax. Meier has not traveled around the galaxy. He has faked pictures. His predictions are found to be wrong or based on information that is already in the public arena.

Here’s the irony. Had the supporters just ignored the statement of my opinion rather than attacking me personally, not many who visit here would have paid much attention to it. Now, however, I have published a number of articles showing that Meier was wrong, Meier faked photographs, and that he has offered no independent corroboration of his contact claims. Even his ex-wife has said it was all a hoax.

Believe him if you will, but don’t demand that I believe him with such shoddy evidence, faked photographs, and an analysis of metal that came from a man who was deep into the New Age (BTW, telling us of his expertise and credentials, which are quite impressive, is known as “appeal to authority” which isn’t evidence). No, I don’t believe Meier and believe that he had engaged in a decades long hoax that too many have accepted as real.

But in case you have somehow missed it. I retract that original statement as too benign and too cordial. It should have been much stronger. It should have been much more negative. Meier is not in contact with aliens. There is no independent evidence to support it. He has invented his tale and fooled thousands of people. It is all untrue.

Those are the facts. Get over it.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Retrospective After One Year

Kevin Randle

For those of you who have been following the program, you know that we’ve hit the one-year anniversary. I began the show in the middle of August, 2016 and we are now in the middle of August, 2017. I thought it would be appropriate to talk about some of the things we had done with the show or revisit some of the points that might not have been as clear as possible. You can listen to the show here:

https://youtu.be/PODfBnFRT-c

For those who need it, here is a brief rundown on the show. I mentioned a little more about my Vietnam service because there were those who had asked for it in emails to me. Not much, but a little bit.

I also talked about what has happened since I did the shows about the Socorro UFO landing, about those I had talked to since then, and my investigation about some aspects of what was said. This resulted, indirectly, with a book coming out in October entitled, Contact in the Desert, about the Socorro case.

The third segment was about the controversy that has erupted over who Jack the Ripper really was. I had mentioned before, a book I had written called, Conversations, in which I identified a man who was supposedly Jack the Ripper. There are two candidates floating around in the last couple of months… James Maybrick and H. H. Holmes. I mentioned that in Conversation, it was Montague John Druitt (all of which I have discussed in the post following this one).

Finally, I talked about Roswell and some of the trouble that has developed in what was once a very robust case. I have touched on some of this in the past. There wasn’t much new in that segment, just a clarification of some of the trouble that has developed in the last few years.

Next week’s guest: Greg Bishop

Topic: UFOs (what else?)

Jack the Ripper - Identified?

For those of you keeping score at home, we now have the identity of Jack the Ripper. I know this because History is airing a multi-part series about H. H.

H. H. Holmes

Holmes, a notorious 19^th century conman and killer. He was allegedly hanged in 1896 after being convicted for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel. But according to those on History, they have linked, sort of, Holmes to the Ripper murders in 1888, a time that Holmes might have been in London according to passenger lists of various steam ship lines of the times. An H. Holmes does appear arriving in London prior to the first murder and seems to have left at the last. Of course, according to them, Holmes used a variety of identities and in a time in which no documentation was needed to move about the world, he could have traveled under one of those names… There is no evidence that the H. Holmes that appeared on the list was the Holmes. Many people have the same name and if you don’t buy that, just google your own name and see how many you can find.

But wait, there’s more, as they say on television. We now have a diary apparently kept by one James Maybrick. It surfaced a couple of decades ago, in 1993, when it was published. At the time most rejected it as an authentic diary of Jack the Ripper. The diary passed into the hands of Robert Smith (and to prove a point, I interviewed a Robert Smith in conjunction with the Roswell UFO crash but it was not the same guy, obviously) who claimed to have been a writer. Three years after that, Smith said that he had made up the whole thing… but, of course, he later retracted that statement.

James Maybrick

There has been a number of tests run on the ink in the diary and they all seem to confirm that it is from a period prior to the writing of the diary which simply means that it can’t be ruled out as an authentic document. Had the ink formula been developed after Maybrick’s death, that would have been proof the diary was forged.

As happens in Ufology, in Ripperology (if that’s really a word), nothing is ever that simple. There is now a team of experts who say that the diary is real. Bruce Robinson, who lead the team, said that they have evidence that the diary is genuine and that Maybrick was Jack the Ripper. The problem here? Robinson is a film maker and is working on a documentary about Jack the Ripper.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

So, we have two suspects being touted as the real Jack the Ripper, all of this coming out in the last few months. But what would Jack the Ripper be if there isn’t a third or fourth suspect? I mention this simply because, several years ago I completed a book, Conversations, that dealt with past life regressions that had originally started as an abduction case. In one of those lives, the subject, whom I called Jenny, told of being one of two men who had worked in tandem as Jack the Ripper.

Although originally reluctant to provide a name, she did give clues to his identity.

Montague John Druitt

Eventually, because of those clues she gave us we learned that the Ripper had been Montague John Druitt, a lawyer and the son of a doctor. That implied that he had some sort of the specialized knowledge that it is claimed the Ripper had.

As mentioned, she said that there were two men involved which explained some of the original problems with identifying the Ripper. There is legal precedence for this. There are cases in which neither person might have killed had the other not been there as some sort of symbiotic relation. That kind of thing was seen by the two men who killed the Clutter family in Kansas, or the Hillside Stranglers, or even the Manson clan.

Although these names all surfaced at some point, Maybrick and Holmes are the two being pushed today. I included Druitt because that was the name I had learned in those regression sessions, but also because of the suggestion that the Ripper wasn’t one man but two.

We are at the point, which is a point that has been around for decades, that you look at the evidence and pick your Ripper. There is solid evidence that points to each of these men, and other evidence that seems to exclude them. If I was forced to make a choice, I think it would be Maybrick, but I’d be rooting for Druitt just so that it would be another confirmation of Jenny’s weird tale.

General Exon and Disappearing Airplanes

Since I’m off on this General Exon rant, I thought I’d add another level to it. As I went back over the material that I had gathered in all forms which are the telephone interviews, emails and letters, and a personal meeting at Wright-

Arthur Exon

Patterson Air Force Base, I came across some information that hadn’t really registered at the time (though I did provide Philip Klass with a complete transcript of the interview, so he missed it too). It does, however, affect the overall importance of the information that he provided about the Roswell UFO crash.

First, a bit of a back story here. In my conversations with him, he mentioned that he was going to be at Wright-Pat for a golf tournament. Since Ohio is a lot closer to my home than California, I arranged to meet him there. He had suggested a time and I was at the front gate early enough that I wouldn’t miss him. The security police were checking IDs and asking for those of us who wished to enter the base to have some sort of a sponsor. I called Exon (in these pre-cell phone days), but there was no answer in the VOQ (Visiting Officer’s Quarters). Though I hadn’t wanted to do it I finally flashed my military ID, which, of course, negated the problem. Since I had an Air Force ID card (at the time I was still serving with the Air Force), they had no problem with me entering the base unescorted, and issued the temporary pass for me and my vehicle.

I drove to the VOQ, knocked on the door, but there was no answer. We’d had an appointment, but it seemed he was not interested in keeping it. As I turned to leave, he stepped into the hall, returning to his quarters. Trapped, so to speak, he had no choice but to go to lunch as we had planned. I always wondered why, after agreeing to meet me, he worked so hard to dodge me. He hadn’t counted on me having a military ID so that I could enter the base unescorted.

I’m not sure of the relevance of this little anecdote, but relate it anyway. I wondered if he had been “talked” to by some of his pals at a higher level, or if there had been an official visit of some sort that cautioned him about talking with us about UFOs and Roswell. That doesn’t prove that what he said was the whole truth, only that someone might not have appreciated his candor in talking with me and some of those others.

Now, on to the real point here. In my first conversation with him, back on May 19, 1990, he told me about four aircraft that had disappeared as they attempted to intercept a UFO. Given that, I had asked, “All four of airplanes disappeared?”

He said, “Yeah. And they don’t know what happened. If they went out oversees or out over the water which was not likely.”

“They were scrambled out of Kentucky?”

“Kentucky or Tennessee,” he said. “There were four of them that were scrambled. They were all lost.”

I asked, “Nobody ever found any wreckage or have any clues as to what happened to them?”

“That’s right. Not that I know of. That’s all been investigated before and it’s a matter of record and it’s kind of a mysterious thing.”

Well, it’s not a matter of any record that I can find. In all my searching, I never came across a story of four aircraft, scrambled to identify an intruder, that disappeared in the way he described. Exon said that it had happened in the mid-1950s, when he was assigned to the Pentagon, so he thought that was where the story originated.

My theory on this is that Exon was talking about Mantell. I say this because four aircraft were involved in the intercept and that it took place in Kentucky. Other than that, there isn’t much of a match. None of the planes disappeared and only Mantell was lost. Although we don’t know exactly what happened, there is a good theory about that.

I suppose an alternative theory is that this had something to do with the Flatwoods UFO case from September 1952, but there is no good documentation about aircraft disappearing in the big fur ball (fighter pilot talk for the aerial dogfight) that allegedly took place).

At any rate, I have found nothing that truly fits in with what Exon said. I think these were fragmented memories put together as people asked him questions about UFOs and what he knew about them. Bits of things that he overheard and put together but were unrelated. Aircraft scrambled to intercept UFOs, aircraft in Kentucky crashing while chasing UFOs, and aircraft disappearing over water (think Flight 19 and the Bermuda Triangle).

While this doesn’t overly affect what he said about other aspects of the UFO phenomena, we do have the notes that suggest his discussion of the UFO investigative teams which was technically true is not completely accurate. This is the problem when we begin to access memories that are decades old. Sometimes they are accurate, sometimes they are partially true, and sometimes they are cobbled together from fragments that might not be connected. It’s why documentation from the era is so important. Without that, we end up with some truly interesting tales that might not be completely grounded in reality.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Don Schmitt

Don Schmitt. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle

This week I noted that the show has been on the air for a year.  I spoke with Don Schmitt. We covered the Roswell festival and how it had evolved into more of a circus than a symposium on what had happened in Roswell so long ago. The city sees it as a way of attracting tourists and the International UFO Museum and Research Center thinks of it as more of an opportunity to contribute something to UFO research. You can listen to the show here:

https://youtu.be/t1GAupYNIIw

We did touch on the article that I had just published about Brigadier General Arthur Exon and his discussion of special teams deployed to investigate UFOs. It suggests the Air Force was taking the problem a little more seriously than they would have us all believe. For those of you too lazy to scroll down through one article, you can read the post here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/08/arthur-exon-and-investigative-teams.html

We also talked, briefly about the beginnings of MUFON and how Walt Andrus had started the organization in the late 1960s. We did lament the slow evolution from a UFO research group into a platform for too many New Age messages, but then, that was just us.

Next week’s show: “A Look Back at the Last Year.” 

Arthur Exon and the Investigative Teams

As happens all too often, as I’m searching for something else, I stumble onto a document that helps explain information I had found in the past. Brigadier General Arthur Exon, who was the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base commander, a position similar to that of a mayor, told me during an interview on May 19, 1990, that he was responsible for dispatching aircraft to carry investigators to important

Brigadier General Arthur Exon.

UFO sightings. He said:

Well, the way this happened to me is that I would get a call and say that the crew or the team was leaving and they knew… there was such and such a time they wanted an airplane and pilots to take “X” number of people to wherever, you know. They might be gone two or three days or might be gone a week. The would come back and that would be the end of it. So, there would be certain people in FTD [ATIC evolved into FTD in 1961] that would lay the missions on… I know they went out to Montana and Wyoming and the northwest states a number of times in a year and a half… They went to Arizona once or twice.

These special teams, or these people, would apparently come from around the United States and their assignment was to investigate a UFO sighting according to Exon. He didn’t have much in the way of details about these special flights, but the implication I took away from this was that the teams, or the team members, were a specially trained group who were investigating UFOs at a higher level than Project Blue Book. It was clear that they weren’t part of the Blue Book operation.

We (Don Schmitt and I, who first interviewed Exon) asked if the men were assigned to Wright-Patterson. Exon said, “No. They would come from Washington, D.C.” He also said that the team would be made up of eight, maybe fifteen people, the number probably dictated by the sighting they were investigating. The idea was that if anyone checked, they would learn that the team had been dispatched from Wright-Patterson as a way of disguising the nature of this somewhat secret activity.

During my interview with Exon, I wanted to know if he knew who the controlling agency or agencies were. I thought FTD was one of those agencies, but Exon said, “I don’t know they were controlling but I know where the assignments came from.”

I asked, “That was basically your control? FTD?”

He said, simply, “Yeah.”

The conclusions that I drew, and the conclusions that Don drew, were that teams, controlled at a different level, but that were not assigned to Blue Book were called in for special investigations. This, according to Exon, was in 1960 and 1961.

But it turns out, according to the documentation that I have just found, this assumption is not true. Oh, the documents were there in the Project Blue Book files for anyone to find who scanned through the boxes and boxes of data as it is contained on microfilm. As, I say, I was looking for something else when I found this.

According to the documents, in a draft of a staff study that was declassified in 1969 but suggested in a document dated December 17, 1958, that:

To provide a flexible investigative force which will not cause a particular drain on any one office within ATIC [think FTD at this point] the Commander has approved the establishment of a volunteer force which will work under the direction of the Aerial Phenomena Group of the Air Science Division when actually engaged in field investigation of UFO sightings. The general ground rules for their employment are as follows:

A total group of from 18 to 20 volunteers will be selected from company grade officers [lieutenants and captains] and NCO’s presently assigned within ATIC. This group will for the most part be people who do not have much opportunity to travel during the normal course of their duties. Once selected they will be given a 20 hour course of instruction in interrogative and investigative procedures and will be checked out on equipment pertinent thereto [the class syllabus was included in the documentation]. Once trained two of these individuals will be placed on alert each week to undertake such investigations as may arise during the week. Orders required for TDY [temporary duty] travel will be processed by the Aerial Phenomena Group citing funds programmed by that Group for such travel. A separate project nick-named “Horse Fly” [which is the first time that I have heard of this project] will be established to provide military airlift for investigators to and from the nearest Air Force installation to point of UFO sighting. Flyaway kits of equipment will be issued by and specific flight arrangements will be made by the Aerial Phenomena Group.

It is estimated that each investigator can plan on about 5 TDY trips of 3 days duration per year.

FTD Building at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Photo courtesy of USAF.

The officer who signed the document was William E. Boyd, who was a colonel at the time and listed as the Chief of Staff at ATIC. Although what I found was a draft, there was additional discussion about this later but it apparently was implemented. While the suggestion is that the alert teams would be made up of two individuals, there was nothing in the original document to suggest that the deployment teams were restricted to the two people on alert. This sounds suspiciously like the teams that Exon spoke about when he talked to me, though he seemed to have overestimated the size. They didn’t come from Washington, D.C as he suggested, but they were not all consolidated in a single office within ATIC. They would come from a number of locations within ATIC to deploy into the field.

Given that the documents were originally classified (confidential, I believe), and given the nature of the assignment, I don’t believe that there was any reason for Exon to have denied the request for the assets needed. It would have come from inside ATIC [or later FTD], or possibly from the Pentagon, authorizing the use of military equipment to move the personnel into the field. Since it involved specific intelligence, which in this case would be a UFO sighting or landing, there would be no reason to brief Exon on the specific mission. The request would have the proper authorization, and in fact, given the nature of it, and the various authorizations approved, there would be no reason for Exon to handle this personally. Someone on his staff could certainly have made the arrangements and if there were questions about the authorizations, those might have been bumped up to Exon for resolution, but I doubt that would be necessary. This suggests the reason that Exon was rather vague on the nature of the assignments. He wouldn’t be doing the work himself, one of his staff did, and Exon was probably briefed on this, as he would be on other aspects of the operations at Wright-Patterson that fell under his area of authority. At the time, this would not have been a big deal, but the routine movement of assets to a location where their expertise would be of value.

This means, I suppose, that we shouldn’t draw any specific conclusions about the nature of these teams, simply because we now know about their formation, their purpose, and their deployments. They were sent to investigate UFO sightings that would require the expertise that these officers and NCOs brought to the table based on their 20 hours of classroom work so that they knew, at least in a rudimentary sense, what they were doing.

What I don’t know at this point is where their reports would have been sent. Probably to the Aerial Phenomena Group, which would have been housed at ATIC and then FTD when the name change came about. All I really know is that the teams were formed and were apparently deployed on a number of investigations. While all this is interesting, it seems to lessen the importance of the information supplied by Exon, but it does give another avenue of investigation. It will be interesting to see if I can find the results of those investigations that Exon mentioned.

Rich Reynolds Has "Mini" Stroke

As many of you know, on Sunday nights, I am tuned into Game of Thrones on HBO. I communicate with Rich Reynolds about the program and we discuss, via email, our thoughts on each week's episode. On Saturday night I had emailed him that there were 27 hours before the next installment and he noted that he had his popcorn ready. After the "Spoils of War" episode that saw the deployment of one of the dragons (Drogon, if you must know), we had talked about Dani having complete air superiority, and this week Cersei Lannister learned that they could not defeat Dani because she had three dragons...

But not long after the latest episode aired, I learned that Rich had not seen it. He had been in the emergency room with what he termed a mini-stroke. This morning I learned that he'd had an MRI and that he would be in the hospital for a couple of days. It sounds as if the stroke was not life threatening (if that is really possible) and that a friend had recorded the episode for him to watch once he gets back home.

He asked me to post something about this. I suppose it was so that his followers, on his various blogs and Facebook pages would know that he would be out of the loop for a couple of days. I know that most of us wish him a speedy and complete recovery, and that we all hope that he can return to his blogs in the near future.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

In keeping with the tradition that no good deed goes unpublished, and as a way of explaining how I was dragged into this nasty fight over the reality of the Billy Meier contact claims, I thought a note of explanation was warranted. In the words of Robert E. Lee, I didn’t want this fight but the fight is here.

I had criticized MUFON for the choice of speakers at the recent symposium thinking that guys claiming to have traveled through time or some such nonsense were just not credible. Jan Harzan said that they were invited to tell their stories so that the membership could decide for themselves if there was any reason to believe them. A nice thought, but I had wondered why the same opportunity wasn’t extended to Michael Horn who is the official American spokesman for Billy Meier. Horn responded with a kind note about that.

Then I created the trouble. In a comment to one of the posts, I wanted it to be clear that I was not an advocate of Billy Meier. I included what I believed to be a somewhat innocuous statement. I wrote, “This post was about some of those invited to speak at the next MUFON Symposium and not an avenue to promote a contactee case that I believe to be untrue. Let's take it back to that discussion.”

This ignited the firestorm. I had now defamed Billy Meier. I needed to retract the statement immediately or offer evidence that Meier was not in contact with alien creatures (to be fair, they really aren’t creatures but are very human and speak in the vernacular of the day, but of course that could be translation trouble rather than their actual words). I really didn’t want to get into this because it seemed it would be a colossal waste of time. But the attacks became more vicious and more personal. It was even announced that I would debate Michael Horn. Of course, I had agreed to no such debate but as Horn told me, he’d already announced it on his site. That made no difference to me because I hadn’t even been asked before he made the announcement.

I did mention that I had read a couple of the books about Meier, but that was rejected as too little. I needed to retract my statement which was my opinion based on what I had seen or read. There were demands for evidence that Meier was not in communication with these aliens. I thought it was they who should be offering proof that the contacts had taken place. Why, according to them, there were hundreds of pictures, 125 witnesses, metal from the aliens, and all those predictions made by Meier which had come true and been confirmed by later events as we had been told, repeatedly.

There was another challenge for a debate, this one engineered by Horn with Rob McConnell. I said, “No.” I could see no good coming from this, but once again Horn had jumped the gun promoting this debate and then claiming I had backed out. No such thing. I had never agreed.

In the meantime, knowing that it was a lost cause, I put together some information about the Meier contacts, including an article that suggested a number of photographs that were allegedly taken by Meier had been shown to be fakes. These were blurry, out of focus, hard to see photographs of many things including satellites in space, these aliens he was in contact with and even dinosaurs. I was informed that although the pictures were linked to Meier, he had never taken them. All these dozens of faked photographs had been planted on Meier with an eye to discrediting him. The Men in Black had done it. The CIA was responsible for it. It made no difference that the photographs had originally been credited to Meier, they were now saying that they had not been taken by him.

In the meantime, Rob McConnell had worked to set up a debate between Horn and me. I was reluctant but agreed to do it. Almost the next day, Horn published an article calling me all sorts of names including a coward. McConnell, incensed by the attack, cancelled the debate. Please notice here that I didn’t back out of this either. It was cancelled by the host for reasons that he explained at length in a news release.

I will note here one thing that Horn didn’t know because, frankly, it’s none of his business. Many of the anti-Meier comments to my blog, while interesting and filled with good information, contained claims I was not comfortable posting such as allegations of plagiarism by Meier. I have tried to keep everything relevant and have criticized some of those posting that the tone of the comment was not in keeping with the civilized discourse that I want on this blog. Some of them made allegations that while they might be true (though I don’t know they are) and certainly suggest something about the character of those involved, this isn’t the place to discuss them. All those comments have been rejected whether they have come from Horn or others or whether they support Meier or don’t.

I was looking into some of the claims of Meier (and not allegations about his personal life), that is his predictions that came out of the contacts and there were a lot to choose from. I learned that Meier had predicted that the ozone layer had been damaged and that, according to him, terrestrial scientists were unaware of this. Turned out, based on documentation, terrestrial scientists were aware of this and one of the earliest comments was published in 1969, seven years before Meier mentioned it. Made no difference because the Meier supporters said that he would have no way of seeing these articles and journal papers in which this information had been published. The real point, however, was that the information was out, in the public world before Meier had addressed the problem, and out there in forms that Meier could have seen.

I learned that Meier had predicted that Jupiter had more than the 14 moons that had been found so far in the 1970s. When it happened, that new moons had been discovered, we were told this confirmed what Meier had said, though we learned of the new moons from the Voyager space probes which had an additional mission of finding new Jupiter moons. That mission suggested that our scientists knew there would be more moons orbiting Jupiter. Meier’s suggestion was not the reason for this additional research mission and when we looked at some of Meier’s predictions about Jupiter, we learned they were wrong. There weren’t 17 moons but nearly 70. The one Meier said was closest to Jupiter was, in fact, third from that planet.

Io. This is about the only picture I
could find that was somewhat
relevant to this post. NASA photograph.

Meier also said in his 115^th Contact, that “the moon, Io, once was totally covered with water.” He also had claimed, Io’s ocean was “chiefly potassium salts and sulfur combinations would constitute the surface [of Io] and deep into it, and that everything has settled as a very thick crust, after the masses of water on this satellite had receded.” However, Voyager summary papers in Science on June 1 and then on November 23, 1979, cite no evidence that Io ever had a liquid ocean and that “unlike the other satellites, Io has no water absorption features.”

I could go on but the spin will start soon.

In fact, what I found, is that all the websites and information that suggests Meier is in contact with aliens are traceable back to supporters’ websites. The independent sites, that have no connection to Meier almost universally dismiss him. Oh, there are a few exceptions but the arguments used in support are the same trite and often inaccurate ones used by Meier’s supporters. The preponderance of the evidence simply does not line up in support of Meier’s claims.

My point here is that I was challenged to prove that Meier wasn’t in contact with aliens, which is a very difficult task… Oh, not because he is, but that it is very hard to prove a negative. The evidence however, such as the doctored and faked photographs tend to prove he is not. Just how many fakes does it take before someone says, “This is one too many,” and someone else laughs at the idea that the Men in Black had faked them to make him look bad.

How many failed predictions do we need to find before someone says, “This is one too many.” What we find by looking at many of the predictions is that they reflect the terrestrial science of the time and not what we know now. Again, some of the proof revolves around Jupiter’s moons (pun intended), but other proof, about planets beyond Pluto tells us more. Information about two planets beyond Pluto was found to have been published seventy years before Meier said a word about it and we now know that there are not two planets beyond Pluto as he said. There are three accepted by the IAU and another bunch that are awaiting confirmation by the IAU. Whatever the final number is, Meier had it wrong.

There is the metal that was analyzed by Marcel Vogel who had a wonderful career with IBM (and other places) and who holds a number of patents suggesting that he is one smart dude. He was a chemist whose interest in luminescence sparked a number of important discoveries. He also, according to Gary Kinder, in Light Years, analyzed the metal given to Billy Meier by his Pleiadean pals. Vogel said that the sample contained thulium but another investigation by the Independent Investigations Group said that the element was aluminum. Of course, Vogel was involved in a number of “fringe” investigations so his conclusion about the strangeness of the metal is not surprising. However, the Independent Investigations Group is an organization of skeptics who investigate fringe science and extraordinary claims from a rational, scientific viewpoint so that their conclusions are not surprising either. The problem here is that, according to Kinder, the sample has disappeared and it seems that no one in the Meier camp is interested in providing additional samples for independent testing. (Yes, I get that samples of alien metal are difficult to obtain, but then, Meier’s pals have supplied him with many opportunities to prove the contact real.)

The real question here is just how many of these things do we have to show before people realize that the predictions in the Contacts are not as accurate as have been claimed. We have found evidence, a preponderance of the evidence, that Meier has provided no special insight into the things he had discussed, and much can be traced to the scientific thought and the articles in the popular press at the time the claims were made. That not only suggests the source, but that his information did not come from aliens.

But to get back to the original point… why was my rather benign comment suddenly a point of major contention? Aren’t I allowed an opinion of my own rather than one forced on me by the supporters of a rather dubious claim? I mean, all I said was that I didn’t believe in the contact stories, which, had everyone just let that go, would have been buried in the comments section of this blog where, in a couple of weeks, only a few people would see it. Now, thanks to the controversy, there are multiple postings with evidence suggesting that the Meier story may not be based in our shared reality. I don’t think this controversy had done much to change anyone’s mind, but we do have to ask if all the hostility was necessary. I think not, but the last time I expressed an opinion, some people just went nuts.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Peter Robbins

Peter Robbins - photo copyright
by Kevin Randle

This week I reached out to Peter Robbins to talk about his experiences in the world of the UFO. Yes, I sort of asked the lame question about how he got started but only because I wasn’t sure how it had happened. That took us into the world of alien abduction, a place that I hadn’t wanted to visit. But Peter had worked for a long time with Budd Hopkins, was familiar with the abduction phenomenon, and had a personal experience with abduction that I thought was interesting. You can listen to the program here:

https://youtu.be/4pIAG5J9O94

For those who remember, Carol Rainey visited the program about a year ago. She is a documentary producer who was married to Budd Hopkins for ten years. Her take on this was somewhat different. For those who missed that program, you can listen to it here:

https://youtu.be/uE_B7E6FBSA

There were a number of topics discussed with Carol that concern the research by Budd into all of this. You can find that article, with those links here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Carol+rainey

We spent the last part of the program taking about Rendleshaw Forest and the trouble with Peter’s book (written with Larry Warren). Peter was quite candid in what he said about it, and that there were things in the book that he now knows were not true. For more information see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/10/ufology-in-decline.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ufo-expert-accuses-co-author-10527844

And to get to the other side of the road:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-AWEm3RZRA

http://sacha-christie-infomaniachousewife.blogspot.com/2016/12/peter-robbins-splits-with-larry-warren.html

I have posted the information that Peter provided to clarify some of the issues in his book with Warren. They are lengthy posts and in the second part, the documents did not reproduce properly. They will be missing. They follow this post.

Next week’s guest: Don Schmitt

Topic: Roswell UFO festival/ Roswell UFO case/ MUFON.