Don Schmitt, Adam Dew and the Roswell Slides

Adam Dew

In the last several weeks, I have been asked if Don Schmitt had ever said anything about the interview I had conducted with Adam Dew in November 2017 on the X-Zone Broadcast Network. Since I interviewed Don a couple of times, I thought that those interested could figure out on their own what his reaction might be. Listen to what Don said and what Adam said, compare the two and decide who is telling the truth and who is not. For those interested, you can listen to the interviews, starting with Dew, here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/13469927

And Don Schmitt here:

https://youtu.be/t1GAupYNIIw

and here:

https://youtu.be/fo-gK4nwZ_k 

And you can read my somewhat short analyses of the shows, again starting with Dew, here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/11/x-zone-broadcast-network-adam-dew-and.html

Don Schmitt. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle

And Don Schmitt here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/08/xzone-broadcast-network-don-schmitt.html

And here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/09/x-zone-broadcast-network-don-schmitt.html

This, I think, will provide the information necessary to form an opinion about the veracity of the various tales. I did ask Don if he had listened to Adam’s interview. He emailed me that:

These were what we relied on as provided by [Joe] Beason for attempted analysis by Rudiak and others. We were never allowed possession of either slide or any slides for that matter for dating, examination, or independent testing. We relied strictly on scans provided by Beason [the man who had the slides originally] throughout our association. The second slide was only a tight shot of the body which did not enable us to see what was clearly a museum setting in the background. When I confronted [Jaime] Maussan in his office in Mexico City the day after the presentation, I demanded to see the image of the entire second slide. Placard withstanding, it was indeed a museum. Now, reexamine the placard image as provided by Beason and tell me that what you see is not undecipherable script writing - not the block lettering which truly is in the originals. You will also recall that after Mexico City I confronted Dew and demanded that they publicly release the slides to end any final dispute. He declined stating "What good would that do? They have been tested enough." I persisted and believe my wait will be infinite.

Placard scans supplied to Don Schmitt.

He did include a copy of the scan that had been supplied to both Tom Carey and him, which was supplied to David Rudiak to see if David might be able to draw out something of significance. They don’t supply much in the way of information and are only of the placard and not of the whole display.

As I have said, I’ll let both men, Don and Adam, speak for themselves on this. I believe that each of us can infer from their statements where the truth lies. I will say, however, that it seems to me, when we find ourselves in these sorts of situations, the truth is usually found somewhere between the two opposing camps. Though I don’t solicit comments but let those who wish to comment do so, in this case, I would be interested in anything anyone has to say about all of this. I have my own bias which, naturally, will color what I believe to be the truth, though I try to be as objective as possible.

'X" zone Broadcast Network - Don Schmitt and the State of UFO Research

This week Don Schmitt and I engaged in a wide-ranging conversation about the state of the UFO research, where it has been and where it was going. Although I had an agenda in mind, and in fact, written down, as usual, the discussion diverged from that almost immediately. You can listen to the program here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/49360091

And, there is a video version of the show as well that you can watch here:

https://rumble.com/v106pun-kevin-randle-interviews-don-schmitt-ufos-in-2022-part-one.html

I mentioned that my good friend, Bob Cornett had passed away on April 1. I talked about our trip to see the Project Blue Book files when they were first released into the public arena and some of our other adventures in investigating UFOs.

And, of course, in that discussion, I had to mention that the Blue Book files that dealt with the Levelland UFO sightings. That did lead us into a discussion of the way that the Air Force had investigated UFOs, especially after 1953.

We had to talk about the recent release of hundreds of pages of information about UFOs, or that they alleged were about UFOs. Most of them, the vast major of them, had nothing to do with UFOs. It was all part of the study that was done by Bigelow Aerospace.

We moved onto alien abductions. There seemed to be little disagreement between us about the nature of abductions. There was no question that those telling of abductions were relating what they believed to be the truth but the answer seemed to be more terrestrial rather than alien. Like much of the UFO field, there is no single answer.

MJ-12 was another topic that we talked about. We looked at the history of the documents and have come to the same conclusion about them. There are there very few who still believe that MJ-12 is anything authentic. Ryan Wood, as well as his father, Dr. Robert Wood, became the most vocal proponents of MJ-12.

We concluded the conversation with a quick discussion with Gerald Anderson claiming that he had seen the remains of a crashed UFO on the Plains of San Agustin. Again, there are very few who believe that in the world today.

Don Schmitt at the Anderson (Plains of San Agustin) crash site. The Plains
are behind Don,the mountains in the distance are the site of the Bat
Cave, where Herbert Dick and his crew were working at the
time of the crash.

That concluded the first hour, but the plan had been to carry on the discussion on the program next week. Of course, we recorded the second hour immediately, which I believe everyone knows we were going to do. To underscore the idea, it was a week later (which would be next week) we both put on jackets.

The first thing that we talked about were some of the Roswell witness, including some of the problems with their stories. Don suggested that Glenn Dennis, had told his story as a way to cover up an affair he was having with a nurse out at the base at the time of the Roswell crash. I wondered why Dennis would have been telling these stories to cover up the affair that had taken place nearly a half century earlier. You can listen to that hour here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/49360136

There is a video version of this hour as well. You can watch it here:

https://rumble.com/v106rp1-a-different-perspective-with-kevin-randle-interviews-don-schmitt-ufos-in-20.html

I did mention the some of the trouble with Walter Haut, and his endorsement of the Dennis tale. I have mentioned in the past, and again wonder about this in Understanding Roswell.

We do move on from Roswell, and cases in the past to more modern cases, or rather cases from the past that have only recently been reported which is not quite the same thing. That, of course, centered around Jacques Vallee’s book, Trinty, which was about a UFO crash near San Antonio, New Mexico, in 1945, or two years before Roswell.

Both of us found the book wanting, but more important, Don had talked with Remy Baca years before he linked up with Paola Harris, which led to Vallee. According to Don, the story changed significantly over the years.

We end the program with a discussion of drones that might account for some of the modern UFO sightings. And, we talked about the number of sightings of triangles. In fact, there are pictures of triangles that suggest many of the sightings are of terrestrially based technology.

Next up, if things work out, will be Michael Shermer. I mention “work out” because there are some problems with his schedule. If not, I’ll invite him on again in May 

Black Sergeants and Stan Friedman - UPDATED

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Roswell Provost Marshal ; Easley vs Darden

For those interested in the minutiae of the Roswell case, there has been a discussion about the roles of the Provost Marshal that involved Major Edwin Easley and Major Robert Darden. Both men served as Provost Marshal at the Roswell Army Air Field. The trouble is who had what authority at what is considered the Impact Site in July 1947, where a major component of the alien craft and the bodies of the flight crew were found.

Although, the documentation that I reviewed, suggested that Easley was the Provost Marshal when Don Schmitt and I interviewed Sheridan Cavitt, he mentioned that Darden was the Provost Marshal. I believe that was the first time that Darden’s name had come up with us. We checked out Darden, and Easley told me that Darden had become the Provost Marshal in 1948. Both men had a connection to that office.

Sheridan Cavitt in 1990. Photo by Kevin Randle

The problem arose in an interview of former Counterintelligence agent, Master Sergeant Lewis “Bill” Rickett conducted by Dr. Mark Rodeghier of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies. Although Don Schmitt conducted more interviews with Rickett than any other researcher, Fran Ridge used Rodeghier’s January 1990 interview for the basis of his analysis.

Rickett tells Rodeghier that Cavitt wanted to show him, Rickett, something. They drive about forty-five minutes outside of Roswell which puts them on a site much closer than that near Corona where the debris field was located. Ridge wrote:

Rickett and Cavett arrive near the final impact site and are a short distance down a hill not far from all the activity. There are four or five military vehicles, up about a half a mile or so down the road.

Rickett: What's going on up there?

Cavett [sic] is silent for a while, staring ahead as he drives onward.

Rickett: I don't recognize this place.

Cavett: You'll see. And Darden's even got some of HIS men up there.

Rickett realizes something important is going on. Major Robert Darden is allegedly Chief of Security [assigned to the 390^th Air Service Squadron according to some]. So, they drive up to the first checkpoint, which is Maj. Edwin Easley's MPs. The guards look at them and one of them confronts Rickett. 

Don Schmitt (right) and me (left) on the Impact Site in 2023.

There is the point where the Rodeghier interview becomes interesting. According to Rickett, they had reached the crash site, though he doesn’t know that yet. Ridge wrote:

Rickett: This is kind of hard to believe. It looks to me like something landed here. But if it landed here, I don't see any tracks. I don't know how anything could land here and not leave tracks. The sun is pretty bright. Have you been over there? Don't you see what I see? Looks like there's..............I guess that's metal.

Rickett at that time was approximately fifteen to twenty feet from various closer pieces [of debris].

Rickett: Is it hot? (radioactive) Can you touch it?

Darden is shaking his head no to the first question:

Darden: Yeah, be my guest. That's what I wanted you to ask me. As for the strange wreckage, it was very similar to that found by Marcel and Cavett on the Foster ranch; thin, light, and strong.

Rickett picks up a piece of it, a slightly curved piece of metal, real light. It is about six inches by twelve or fourteen inches. Very light. Rickett crouches down and tries to bend it.

Cavett looks over at Darden and laughs.

Cavett: Smart guy. He's trying to do what WE couldn't do.

In Witness to Roswell Tom Carey and Don Schmitt report, based on Schmitt’s interviews with Rickett, “Rickett picked up a piece of it [metallic debris], about 4 inches by 10 inches, placed it over his knee, and tried to bend it. He couldn’t. Cavitt and Easley laughed at him because they had tried and failed at it too. Rickett had never seen a piece of metal that thin that could not be bent. “The more I looked at it, I couldn’t image what it was.”

Here’s where we run into trouble. In July 1947, Easley was the base Provost Marshal. He was responsible for law enforcement and base security. His subordinate, Captain Beverly Tripp was the commanding officer of the 1395^th MP Company. The 390^th Air Service Squadron, whose area or responsibility included the Silverplate B-29s, which had been modified to carry the atom bomb. Those working on the Silverplate required a higher clearance because of that.

In July 1947, the commanding officer of the 390^th was Lieutenant Colonel Walter Y. Lucas. In July 1947, Darden worked as an air inspector, which takes him out of the picture.

We can confirm this by looking at the telephone numbers in the base telephone directory. In July 1947, Darden’s number was 311 and that number was also found under the Air Inspectors section, with 311 assigned to the administrative office. There is nothing there to hint at an association with the 390^th ASS.

We can follow this train of thought, that is what the telephone numbers can tell us about the assignments of the men in July 1947. We can track who worked where because of the phone numbers listed and the buildings to which those numbers were assigned telling us where they were. All the numbers assigned to the Provost Marshal’s office are in building 418, the Intelligence Office is Building 31 and the Air Service Squadron is in building 670. Darden was in building 81, which is separated from those with security and intelligence.

I also found an interesting reference to the mission of the 390^th in the August 1947 Unit History. It said:

The 390^th Air Service Squadron has been divided the personnel section into three sub-sections to wit: Payroll and Service Records Section, Classification Section and Personal Affairs Section. Emphasis has been placed on a cross-training program so that at least two clerks are qualified to handle each job.

There is nothing to suggest that Darden had any role in July 1947 that would have put him in charge of security on the impact site. That sort of security would have fallen to the Provost Marshal and the MP company. While Rickett did mention Darden in a specific role in 1947, it seems that Rickett remembered Darden as a Provost Marshal but, as noted, Darden didn’t have that job until 1948.

Ridge relied almost solely on Rodeghier’s interview. But Rodeghier had a comment that is relevant to the discussion here. Rodeghier, in an email to Tom Carey, Don Schmitt and me on December 17, 2025, wrote, “In my interview, I let Rickett speak and didn’t correct him because I wanted to get his story as he would tell it. Given what I knew at the time I figured that he was wrong about Easley, but I wanted him to speak freely.”

I’ll note here, that when Don and I spoke to Sheridan Cavitt in Arizona, he was quick to ask if we had spoken to the Provost Marshal. He said that the man’s name was Darden. I believe he was attempting to point us in the wrong direction. I learned that Darden had been the Provost Marshal in Roswell but not in July 1947.

Ridge has, I believe, interpreted points where Rickett mentioned the Provost Marshal that meant it was Darden. It’s a case of a flawed memory. I know how that happens. I used to say that I left my Thanksgiving meal on the serving tray in the mess hall (or Dining Facility in today’s parlance) because, in 1968, the flight had been scrambled on a mission. But two or three years ago, as I was reading the letters I had sent home from Vietnam, I discovered, we hadn’t been anywhere near our mess hall because we had staged near Tay Ninh to assist in a prisoner’s exchange. We were there in case something had gone wrong. I noted that we were provided with a promised meal while there and was outraged that we had to pay for it.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, we had been scrambled out of the mess hall on several other occasions and my clearest memory was leaving a tray in the serving line. It just didn’t happen on Thanksgiving. The point is, Darden was the Provost Marshal at the base, just not in July 1947. When Ridge writes, “Major Robert Darden is Chief of Security,” he is wrong about this. Darden probably wasn’t even on the Impact Site. He was, as noted above, assigned in July 1947 to Administration as an air inspector and was in a building away from the Provost Marshal, and the 309^th. I find no connection to a law enforcement, intelligence function, or anything to indicated he was the Chief of Security in 1947. I did find that the Troop Information and Education Officer, the Recruiting Office, and the Ground Safety and Engineering Officer were in building 81.

I found a map of the base. It provides an overview of how the various operations and functions on the base were grouped. It is not the best map but you can access that map here:

https://dn721606.ca.archive.org/0/items/dr_walker-air-force-base--roswell-new-mexico--preliminary-master-plan-maste-13219233/13219233.jpg

Map of the Roswell Army Air Field (Walker Air Force Base. It is not the best example

This doesn’t mean we can reject all that Rickett said. The essence the interview is accurate, it’s just that he got one of the names wrong. This is what happens when a theory is built on a single bit of evidence when other bits are out there but ignored. We must review all the evidence to determine how it all fits together. In this case, Rickett does mention Darden as the Provost Marshal, which is correct information, it’s just he wasn’t the Provost Marshal in 1947. Other testimony and documentation proved this.

Roswell Slides Statement by Tom Carey with Note from Don Schmitt

(Blogger’s note: Yes, I said there would be nothing more about the Roswell Slides, but I also said that if there was a statement issued by Tom and Don, I would publish it without editorial comment. There is a statement that Tom issued. Before it was published elsewhere, Don had asked for a couple of modifications. That statement was published before Don asked for the changes. This is the statement, slightly modified from the original version. Don made the changes.)

Don Schmitt

We believe that the recently released "reading" of the placard by the so-called "Roswell Slides Research Group" is still open to debate. Ever since Don Schmitt and I became aware of the slides three years ago, our modus operandi has been four-fold: (1) to authenticate the age and integrity of the slides; (2) to obtain professional anthropological and forensic opinion as to what the body on the slides represented; (3) to find out as much as we could about Bernerd and Hilda Blair Ray, the long-deceased owners of the slides; and (4) to "read" the placard located at the foot of the body on the slides.     

 

We physically took the slides to Kodak's historian, who is an expert regarding Kodachrome., and, using several parameters of interrogation, he determined that the slides dated from the 1947-49 time period (manufacture to exposure). For the most part, the American anthropologists we contacted did not want to even look at the slides when they learned that they might be "UFO-related." Those who did, however, did so "off the record." They all concluded that the body on the slides was not that of a mummy but possibly that of a congenitally deformed child. Fortunately, we were able to secure Canadian and Mexican anthropologists and forensic anatomical experts who went "on the record" at our May 5th "beWitness" event in Mexico City. In short, their detailed presentations concluded that the body on the slides was: not a mammal, not a primate and not human. One, Richard Doble, after a detailed morphological examination, concluded that the creature on the slides did not evolve on earth. You already have Doble's report, and the report of the two Mexican authorities is still in translation.

 

The Rays had no children or close relatives we could interview who could shed some light on their activities. Bernerd was an oil geologist whose zone of activity was the Permian Basin of west Texas and eastern New Mexico. He was also the President of a geological society in west Texas. Hilda was an oil attorney in Midland, Texas and an amateur pilot who, according a friend in the nursing home where Hilda passed away in 1988, was also friends with Mamie Eisenhower (General and later President Dwight D. Eisenhower's wife). There are a number of color slides in the collection that do appear to show Mamie Eisenhower in various situations. Prior to her death, Hilda Ray bequeathed almost $1M to the American Association of University Women.

 

Regarding the placard, we quickly determined that (1) its content would be key to interpreting the slides; and (2) we could not read it. So, we sent copies to Dr. David Rudiak and Dr. Donald Burleson. Both had done exemplary work in trying to decipher the so-called "Ramey Memo" - a situation very similar to placard issue here. Both responded to us that the placard was "unreadable." Through a contact, we had the Photo Interpretation Unit at the Pentagon in Washington, DC take a look at it. They said that it was "unreadable." A copy went to a company in New York now requesting anonymity that conducted the analysis on a major historical artifact. That company's response to us was that the placard was "unreadable." Another copy went to the people at Adobe, Inc. (manufacturers of Adobe Photoshop and the Adobe Reader on your computer). Their response?  "It's unreadable." A copy also was also sent to aggressive Roswell researcher Anthony Bragalia who also reported to me that it was "unreadable." (Bragalia has now aggressively joined in with our critics). Our own computer guy says that he applied the "SmartDeblur" software to the placard over a year ago without any success. He did so again this week to an enhanced, sharper version of the placard with the latest edition of the "SmartDeBlur" program, again without success.

 

Now, we are told (not asked) to believe that a cast of characters, one of whom has clearly become unhinged and was himself party to a known UFO body hoax some years ago, has used the same program (SmartDeBlur) on a distorted, "screen-grab" of the placard and is somehow able to "read" it when all of the above, some of whom had much more sophisticated equipment and techniques at their disposal, could not. I ask you, what's wrong with this picture?

 

Tom Carey

Finally, lost in all of the vile invective being hurled our way by the members of the RSRG and their fellow travelers, is what the analysis of the physical body on the slides is saying. The RSRG has used a note from an obscure late 1800's journal to weave their tale that the slides show the "mummified body of a two year old boy" (the word "mummy" or "mummified" appears nowhere in their alleged de-blurred "reading" of the placard). In their excitement to play "Gotcha!," it apparently has not crossed their thought processes (I'm being charitable here) that a mummy of a two year old boy several thousand years old would be less than half the size of the body shown on the slides!

 

So, what are we to make of all this? Jaime Maussan, Tom Carey and Don Schmitt, relied on all of the above to reach the conclusions that were reached. They were not our conclusions but those scientists we consulted. We have, at this point in the proceedings, have sent out additional copies of the placard image to third parties whose opinions we can trust to run the SmartDeBlur application on it and are prepared to abide by their findings, wherever the chips fall.

 

 

Tom Carey

(With modifications by Don Schmitt who added, “As I said to Tom this morning, if the independent analysis of the placard comes back in support of the opposition's read, then I will accept that read. I will remain a gentleman and concede that point.)

A Final Fatal Statement about the Roswell Slides

(Blogger’s Note: I had said that I would post, without comment, any statement from Don Schmitt or Tom Carey. I did that with Carey’s statement which suggested he was still of the opinion that the slides showed an alien creature. The note appended at the end, written by Schmitt, suggested that he was unaware that others had independently deblurred the note and that the placard was readable. Seeing that, and the information developed by Tony Bragalia that the mummy had been on display at Mesa Verde complete with a journal entry that matched, to a startling degree, the message on the placard. Shown this evidence, Schmitt has made the following statement. I have highlighted one of the statements because others have suggested that neither Tom Carey nor Don Schmitt have not repudiated their stance.)

Statement from Donald R. Schmitt

Don Schmitt

It would seem like I've been here before... Asking my friends and colleagues to accept my sincerest apology for my participation in the recent event in Mexico City. I accept full responsibility for the fact that I allowed myself to be drawn into this situation, albeit with the best of intentions, I sacrificed my better judgement by being overly trusting when I should have known better. As one strives to make up for the mistakes of the past, there are times that emotions cause one to outrun their headlights. In my case, I ran it right off the road. Through the years I have worked hard to earn back your respect and confidence in my work only to presently jeopardize it all. For that I am especially remorseful. I am afraid that after spending almost half of my life devoted to one specific investigation, I allowed the allure of final resolution cloud my skeptical nature to be replaced by a false vision of hope. I now realize that the image in the slides is a mummy as specified by the display placard. At this time I consider the matter concluded and intend on moving forward. My only desire is that you try to understand that I never willfully did anything to mislead or misrepresent what I thought was the truth and I only acted with the best of objectives. Still, if I have offended or hurt anyone through my participation in this event, you have my deepest apology and have every right to hold it against me. When the truth finally was made known to all of us, I realized that I could only blame myself for not only failing you, but more sadly, failing myself. I must do better. And with God's help and your understanding, I promise I will.

  

Sincerely,

Donald R. Schmitt

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Don Schmitt (Roswell Revelations and the Jesse Marcel Journal)

 

In the first of two parts, I spoke with Don Schmitt and although I had planned to devote very little of the show to Roswell, we ended up examining some aspects of the case in depth. You can listen to it here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/43273308

We began discussing the Not Jess Marcel’s Journal. For a couple of years, we had heard that the family had found a Journal in Marcel’s personal papers that covered the period of the Roswell crash. Though we were told that the family was attempting to verify the validity of the Journal and forensically checking the paper and the ink to be sure it wasn’t a modern forgery, we weren’t told much more. Now, we had the chance to learn so much about it and the big revelation was that Jesse Marcel had not written it.

Don Schmitt

We were then told that Patrick Saunders might have written because a very short sample of Saunders’ printing seemed to match, somewhat, the printing in the Journal. We don’t know why, since the producers interviewed Saunders relatives, they couldn’t have gotten a larger sample of Saunders’ hand writing. The only sample they had was one that I had sent them.

We also talked about the Ramey Memo, the source of it, and the latest attempt to read it. From all that has been said, the latest scans, which took it down to the molecular level, are probably as good as it will ever get. An advance in AI might be required before all that can be put to bed. At least that was the consensus of those who made the scans.

During the program that examined Not Jess Marcel’s Journal, they used a short clip of Frank Kaufmann. Don said that he talked to the producers after that show aired and complained about it. One of them said that one of the writers had said that it didn’t matter because all the witnesses were lying anyway. I’m not sure how you’d get so many people to lie about this, but the statement seems to undercut the validity of their research.

We also talked about Walter Haut and his original support of Kaufmann. I still believe that it harms Haut’s reputation, but Don was of the opinion that his support of Kaufmann predated his learning of all the tales that Kaufmann was telling. I don’t know, maybe, but I still worry about it.

We did discuss Glenn Dennis’ missing nurse. I think there are some very interesting comments made about all that and the validity of the Dennis tale. And, we wondered why the military would ask for child-sized coffins when adult coffins would have worked just as well. The problem was they were apparently looking for coffins that could be hermetically sealed. No need to be child-sized, other than to fit part of the narrative.

Next week, Don and I pick up on the second hour of the discussion. We both promise that it won’t have anything to do with Roswell. If there are questions, append them here and I’ll try to get to them.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Don Schmitt and a Variety of UFO Topics

As usual, when I get together with Don Schmitt, we have a wide-ranging conversation about many aspects of UFOs. I began the program complaining about the latest outrage in the magazine world when they write about UFOs. A long comment on that follows this posting on this blog.

Don Schmitt. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle

The topics on the program included the San Antonio UFO crash of 1945. Interestingly, Don related that he had spoken to Reme Baca a number of years ago, suggesting that, at first, Baca had set the crash on the Plains of San Agustin. He said that when Baca mentioned the Plains, Don tended to tune him out. I certainly understand that. We have found very little to suggest that anything happened on the Plains in 1947 and that the tales all came back to Barney Barnett. You can listen to the whole show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/44778844

Although no researcher ever had the opportunity to interview Barnett, who was the source for the Plains UFO crash, we both had the chance to speak with Barnett’s boss, Fleck Danley. Don said that Danley, when asked for a date of the conversation about the UFO crash with Barnett, thought that Barnett had said something about 1950. When I spoke with Danley, he seemed to indicate that it was 1947, but then, in the course of the conversation, I realized that I could get Danley to say whatever I wanted. He didn’t have a firm grasp on the situation and I spoke to Danley before interviewed him.

We did speak about the late Len Stringfield, crediting him with putting discussions of UFO crashes back on the table. Prior to that, the subject was nearly taboo in the UFO community. The blame for that was Frank Scully’s Behind the Flying Saucers, which mentioned three UFO crashes including the one near Aztec, New Mexico. That report was discredited by J. P. Cahn, and with that came the collapse of any discussions about crashes… until Len revitalized the topic with his research. Len is the one who came up with the term, “crash/retrieval.”

Len Stringfield.

We did tend to dwell on UFO crashes from that point in the conversation. I asked him what he believed were the best of them. Naturally, Roswell was first. Don thought the 1962 crash near Las Vegas was interesting. I said that the Air Force had been right in breaking the case into two parts, with some of this in Utah, and then the explosion seen over Las Vegas. I just am not sure that it still qualifies as a UFO crash.

He did surprise me by saying that the Kecksburg crash might have been a bolide or the return of terrestrial manufactured craft. The evidence does seem to lead in that direction, given what we know today.

We did end up talking about Shag Harbour, which I think of as more of an emergency landing rather than a crash. We both thought the documentation and the work of Chris Styles and Don Ledger are important in understanding the Shag Harbour event.

Next up is Rob Brun Del Re, author of UFOs: Proof Positive. We’ll be looking at the proof and discussing several aspects of the UFO field. 

Kurt Peters, Karl Pflock and Don Schmitt

You know, I sort of hate to bring this up, but since we’ve heard repeatedly about Don Schmitt’s misrepresentations in the mid-1990s, and because I’m tired of people quoting from Karl Pflock’s book as if it was handed down on stone tablets, I thought it time to stir this pot.

Does anyone remember Kurt Peters?

Back in the early 1980s, there was a lot of interest in cattle mutilations. Newspapers covered the story, UFO organizations were hip deep in it, network news broadcast segments about it, and several people planned to write books about it. Ian Summers and Dan Kagan did write one called Mute Evidence which was published in 1984. In it they mentioned they had met two men in Colorado Springs, George Erianne and a fellow who identified himself as Kurt Peters and said, “That’s Kurt with a ‘K’.”

As Summers and Kagan wrote in their book, they asked who he was and he said that he was just a “researcher” who sometimes worked for Erianne.

Summers and Kagan soon learned that a fellow named Karl Pflock had been working with Erianne. They put it together when a man they were interviewing told them about Karl Pflock, and said, “That’s Karl with a ‘K’.” They learned that Pflock and Erianne were writing a book about something called Project Jerome which was a secret germ warfare operation that had something to do with the cattle mutilations.

When Kagan and Summers returned to New York from Colorado, they learned that Karl was on the grievance committee for the Science Fiction Writers of America (OMG, he wrote fiction… well, that’s it for me… obviously he can’t tell fact from fiction… I wonder if Max Littell ever yelled at him for that), he served as an editor for the Libertarian Review and “that he liked to go around telling people that he had connections with the CIA.” Finally, they learned he was a senior editor for a publishing company that was outside New York.

So, if the information is accurate, Karl wrote a book or planned a book that suggested the cattle mutilations were some sort of germ warfare project, he said that he worked for the CIA, and he said his name was Kurt Peters… oh, and let’s not forget his ties to the Science Fiction Writers of America.

In the November/December 1993 issue of UFO (American version) Karl wrote an article called, “I was a Ufologist for the CIA…” This is sort of an explanation about his UFO career including his time at NICAP in Washington, D.C. and what he did with the CIA. Of importance here is the section labeled, “Kurt Peters & the Mutilations Caper.”

In an attempt to explain his deception (which reminds me of Don Schmitt’s explanation about why he kept his job at the post office a secret), Karl wrote:

In August 1978, I relocated to Colorado Springs – a move inspired by failed air conditioner on a miserable Washington summer day and the concurrent realization that a writer can live anywhere, not by my nonexistent spymaster. Naturally, some folks that otherwise. Their suspicions were “confirmed” when my name surfaced in Daniel Kagan’s and Ian Summers’s 1983 book Mute Evidence, a highly skeptical look at livestock mutilations and those the authors called “mutologists.” I had known about but had never seen the book and what Kagan and Summers wrote about me until Dick Hall passed along some extracts in late 1992.

During the summer of 1980, I was in desperate need of a commercially viable book project. A friend put me in touch with George Erianne, a well-known Springs private detective, who supposedly had the answer to the livestock mutilations. There were being perpetrated by a gang of rogue germ warfare researchers. Erianne claimed to have established this through his own investigations and information given him by small-town Colorado newspaper editor Dane Edwards, whom Erianne said was on the run from the rogue mutilators. (As I learned later, Edwards’ pursers actually were creditors and cops.)

Erianne needed a writer to collaborate on a book. I needed a money-maker, and this seemed like just the ticket. I could have saved myself well-deserved embarrassment if I had not allowed my critical judgment to be shouldered aside by visions of fame and fortune.

Not Long after our book proposal began making the rounds of publishers, Erianne was contacted by Kagan and Summers, who said they were working on a book about the mutilations mystery. Rivals! They would be in town in a day or two and wanted to interview George, who agreed to see them.

I suggested it might be useful for me to be at the meeting. However, there was a chance Kagan and Summers might recognize me by name as a writer and put two and two together. Erianne suggested I use a pseudonym and say I was a researcher who sometimes helped him on his cases. Thus was the misbegotten “Kurt Peters” born.

Soon after the interview, Kagan and Summers discovered the truth about my relationship with Erianne, confirming it in a telephone conversation with me. Coupling this with their accurate conclusion that the rogue researchers story was bogus, they reasonably but wrongly decided that Erianne and I were collaborating in an attempt to peddle a hoax. They included this accusation in their book, apparently without making any attempt to verify their hunch. This may well have soured certain editors on my work, and certainly it has added to the Pflock as a ufologist for the CIA myth. Anyway, it was my own damned fault.

So that is the spin that Karl put on this. It wasn’t his fault. It was Erianne’s fault because he suggested Karl use a fake identity. It was Kagan and Summers’ fault for incorrectly deducing that Karl and Erianne were attempting to peddle the germ- warfare-researchers causing the mutilations tale. They failed to confirm the information, but Karl had the chance to set them straight when he talked to them before they wrote a word of their book. Shouldn’t he have mentioned the problem because he was spreading it with Erianne, according to the information in Mute Evidence?

So, we have Karl Pflock lying about who he was, his association with Erianne and while he wrote that Kagan and Summers incorrectly suggested he was attempting to peddle his rogue chemical warfare researchers, he did nothing to set the record straight when he talked to them. Is this as egregious as Don Schmitt’s tales in the mid-1990s? I suggest they are but in the world today, Karl gets a pass on it but Don does not. Karl attempted to spin the story, just as Don did. There are some seeming contradictions in Karl’s article, but I don’t see anyone pointing these out endlessly.

Is this old news? Certainly. But some of those who insist on attacking Don for things done two decades ago and who are using Karl’s book as the end all source should realize that the same can be said about Karl spinning tales… or should we just look at Don’s or Karl’s latest work and decide if it rises or falls on its merits?

In the world of Ufology the side you take up is usually the one that falls under your own belief structure. Sometimes it has less to do with evidence and more to do with what you wish to believe. Was Karl’s lie about who he was as bad as Don’s lie about where he worked? Was Karl’s attempt to sell Kagan and Summers on the rogue chemical warfare agents as bad as Don’s claim about the nun’s diary? I’ll let you all decide… but to me, they look very similar.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Don Schmitt: Part Two (Socorro, Abductions, and Tony's Theory)

 

This was the second half of the interview with Don Schmitt. It began, however, with a quick monolog from me about Tony Bragalia’s recent posting about the government admitting that they had been analyzing UFO crash debris and a suggestion that it relates to the Roswell crash. You can read about it here:

https://www.ufoexplorations.com/?fbclid=IwAR2MHkazL25EHR2KQrWgbFESwzm2NY8KvYLgWSng2Lw8_PxmxIYgrcfdOVc

John Greenewald, of Black Vault fame, provided an analysis of the article that reached a somewhat different conclusion. You can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dZwqTvJu_s&feature=youtu.be

Don and I touched briefly on this. To give away the ending, we are both somewhat skeptical about Tony’s conclusions. John is more than a little skeptical, but if you read Tony’s article and watch John’s video, I think you’ll be in a position to make up your own mind.

Don Schmitt

I asked Don for some of the best UFO cases. We talked about the Socorro UFO landing and how the case has been strengthened over the years. Not only were there other witnesses who called the police, but there were other sightings around the area within hours of Zamora’s. These include another landing in La Madera, New Mexico, which is north of Socorro around the Santa Fe area, but other sightings including one by a military NCO. You can read the whole tale of my investigation in Encounter in the Desert. We also discussed Philip Klass’ explanation. You can also find more information about all this here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/11/socorro-ufo-landing-part-one.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/07/socorro-new-mexico-and-lonnie-zamora.html

Of course, we did talk about abductions and a couple of other cases that are interesting. Don suggested there were only a handful of cases that seem interesting including Villa-Boas in Brazil, Betty and Barney Hill ad Travis Walton. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/43394396

For those interested, we both agreed that the earliest cases are probably the best, simply because they were not influenced by cases that came before them and by the abduction researchers who often promoted their own agendas. Russ Estes, Bill Cone and I developed the theories surrounding abduction in The Abduction Enigma, which was published more than twenty years ago.

Don did mention a case he had investigated that involved a family and a lifetime of strife that resulted in all sorts of terrestrial problems. Although I had hoped to be able to supply a link to that information, there isn’t much that has been published about the case. I’ll try to get additional information.

Next week, David Marler is up, to discuss his investigation and findings about triangular UFOs. If you have questions, append them here.

The Roswell Slides and the Mummy's Placard

You would have thought that once the placard in the slide had been read, and once that there was nearly universal acceptance of the translation suggesting that the body in the slide is that of a young boy, the debate would have ended. But this is ufology when nothing is ever ended no matter what the proof might be. It doesn’t matter what can be shown because there are those who won’t believe anything unless it reinforces their own belief structures. Such are the Roswell Slides and the placard. We are now told that it doesn’t matter what the placard says because we have all that “scientific” evidence from all those “authorities” who have examined the body on the slides. They say the body isn’t human and the placard is wrong.

Just days after Don Schmitt had apologized for the fiasco in Mexico City, he was back telling us that the term, Roswell Slides, had been an invention of the skeptics and that neither he nor Tom Carey had ever called them the Roswell Slides… of course, overlooked in that was their attempts to link the slides to Roswell and that much of what was said and published revolved around Roswell. The Kodak expert dated the slides based on the coding, the slide mounts, and other information to the late 1940s, and former USAAF PFC Benavides said the body was like those he saw, so everyone thought of Roswell even if they hadn’t used the term, “Roswell Slides.”

On Jimmy Church’s radio show Friday night, May 29, Schmitt explained some of these things to us. The show and the Don Schmitt segment starting about twenty minutes in can be heard here:

https://www.spreaker.com/user/fade2black/ep-262

Schmitt suggested that it was strange that they had provided high resolution scans to various experts to look at the writing on the placard and were told that they couldn’t make out even one letter. Schmitt said, “What were they (the Roswell Slides Research Group, among all those others) reading? It was a screen grab.” He said that it was from the event in Mexico City and that the slides hadn’t yet been released. It was taken off the Internet. “And they’re able to read it…and nobody else has been able to read it… How do you explain that?”

Well, I can explain that because what Schmitt said was not exactly right. They all worked from a download of the slide that had been put up on Adam Dew’s website, which was a higher resolution scan than previously available and was posted not long after the May 5 extravaganza. They applied various software to that scan and were able to read the placard with relative ease. It wasn’t just the RSRG but others, unaffiliated with them, in various countries, who also read it and came to the same conclusions. Tony Bragalia and an unnamed colleague in Europe discovered a journal article, published in 1938, which contained nearly the same wording, provided a few additional clues, and the location of the museum… a museum setting that Richard Doble said looked nothing like any of the museum settings he had ever seen but then he was apparently never at Mesa Verde.

Schmitt and Carey had offered the scans to a number of organizations and individuals for their opinions on the placard. Schmitt has said that the Pentagon looked at it but couldn’t make out anything on it, implying that if the government couldn’t read then surely a civilian group wouldn’t be able to do so. Well, that’s not exactly the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Here’s what we know, based on what has been said about this in various forums including this one. In Mexico City, at the May 5 presentation, Schmitt claimed that the slides had been subjected to rigorous testing by experts in the field of photography. According to the newspaper accounts from Mexico City, “Exhaustive investigations by other photographic and medical experts have concluded that the photos are genuine. The experts list presented at the Mexico City event include Dr. David Rudiak, an expert in photographic analysis, Dr. Donald Burleson, a specialist in computer enhancement; Ray Downing, materials expert from the Studio MacBeth, New York; Col Jeffrey Thau associated with the Pentagon’s Photo Interpretation Department, and Prof Rod Slemmons, a former Director of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography.”

David Rudiak is not an expert in photographic analysis, but has experience in attempting to read the Ramey Memo. Because of that, he was asked to look at the placard with the body but was unable to unscramble or deblur the image on the scan he was given.

Colonel Jeffrey Thau is a retired Air Force officer who once had offices at both Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the Pentagon. The Photo Interpretation Department had been moved from the Pentagon to Fort Meade, Maryland. Their expertise was not in attempting to read messages on placards in museums that were obscured but in interpreting photo intelligence of various kinds including ground based military facilities and movements. It seems that this failed attempt to read the placard wasn’t actually an attempt by the experts at the Pentagon or Fort Meade, but friends seeing if they could make out anything on the placard as a favor to Colonel Thau. To suggest the Pentagon had attempted to read the message and failed was, at best, hyperbole.

"Light Blasted" Placard.

Or, in other, more precise words, those tasked with reading the placard, were not the experts they were claimed to be. To compound the problem, it is obvious that the scans submitted for the analysis were not the high resolution scans promised and had probably been manipulated to obscure the wording on the placard. The failure was not with those who had attempted to read the placard but with those who provided the original scans for analysis. And this explains why they were unable to do so. It wasn’t until a better quality scan was available and it has a provenance that is traced straight back to Adam Dew that the placard was read.

So, on the one hand, we’re told that they made a concentrated effort to read the placard but failed to do so. On the other hand, now that it has been read, and again, it seems that nearly everyone agrees with what it says, we’re told that they don’t care what the placard says.

Seriously, we’re supposed to buy that. They had suggested that reading the placard was important and that information on it would be critical to understanding exactly what is on the slides. Now that it has been read, we’re told, by Doble that the placard was created as a diversion so that the true nature of the being on display wouldn’t be obvious. He explains that he believed the general population was unprepared to learn there was alien visitation. That was the reason the placard said was created. It was to obscure the truth.

This is spin doctoring at its worst. The placard tells us what is on display. The journal article tells us more about the body. Now, with that information, we’re told that it is unimportant to what is on the slides. This is an indefensible position.

But it gets worse. The actual slides might tell us more. It is my understanding that they were numbered and those numbers were nine and eleven. Where is number ten, and what is shown on that slide? Does it make it clear that the body is a mummy? Is the placard facing the camera so that it can be read without using a computer program to deblur it?

What is unbelievable in this is that there is still an attempt to prove that the body is alien. And when the evidence argues against it, evidence right on the slide, we’re told that the slide promoters don’t care what the placard says meaning they don’t care what the evidence is. They still believe it is an alien because, I suppose, that is what they have to believe. No one wants to be this wrong about something they consider this important, this publically. But sometimes you just have to look at the evidence and realize that you blew it big time.