X-Zone Broadcast Network - Tom Carey

This week I spoke with Tom Carey of Roswell fame. We had agreed that we’d talk, briefly, about the slides that supposedly showed the body of an alien creature. In 

the end, we didn’t make it to any other topics. The show provided some insight how all this shook out and gives a little bit of additional information. You can listen to it here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/18821590

This whole slide thing is quite complicated and I have written about it on several different occasions. My book, Roswell in the 21^st Century, contains a look at the whole tale. I also explored it on this blog. You can read much of that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-roswell-slides-are-not-roswell.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/02/roswell-slides-update.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-roswell-slides-gift-that-keeps-on.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/05/tony-bragalia-and-end-of-roswell-slides.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/11/anthony-bragalia-roswell-slides-and-ufo.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-roswell-slides-matter-of-provenance.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-roswell-slides-and-mummys-placard.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/08/tom-carey-doubles-down-on-roswell-slides.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/06/second-photograph-found-of-roswell-alien.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/05/roswell-slides-statement-by-tom-carey.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-roswell-slides-and-aztec-ufo-crash.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/05/not-roswell-slides-and-richard-dolan.html

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

Well, this is a long list of the articles devoted to the Roswell Slides. There are more articles there which you can access just by typing Roswell Slides into the search engine. It was quite the topic at the time with many people interested in what could have been the ultimate proof of the Roswell case… well, maybe not the ultimate proof, but it would have gone a long way establishing the credibility of the case.

At any rate, we hear Tom tell us that he is now convinced that the slides show an unfortunate child whose body had been excavated decades before the photograph was taken. It is an interesting coincidence that the pictures were taken in 1947. However, given the location, the latest they could have been taken was May 1947, which, of course, removes them from the Roswell case.

At any rate, this tale, which should have become a footnote to the Roswell case took on a long life. In this interview, Tom puts some of the questions to rest. It is clear, at this point what was in the photographs.

Roswell vs. Circleville

It has been suggested that a find of a weather balloon sometime prior to July 5, 1947, is similar to that made in Roswell a few days later. A story, headlined, “Flying Disc Believed Found on Pickaway [Ohio] Farm,” published on July 5, 1947, in the Circleville Herald, is similar to that published on July 8 by many newspapers around the county including the Roswell Daily Record. It is believed that this is, in a similar sense, the Roswell story and how the same explanation can be applied in Roswell that was applied in Ohio.

That short article in the Ohio newspaper and later picked up by other media said:

One of the flying discs puzzling aviators all over the United States was believed Saturday to have been found on a Pickaway County farm.

Sherman Campbell who lives on Westfall Road in Wayne Township, near the Pickaway-Rose county line reported the finding of a star-shaped silver foil covered object which he believed is one of the mystery “flying saucers.” While working in the field he spotted a strange object. He described his find as 50 inches high, 48 inches wide and weighing about 2 lbs. He said the silver foil was stretched over a wooded frame. The star-shaped object had 6 points.

He said there was a balloon attached which had deflated and there was no way of knowing how big it was. Discovery of the object was the first reported in the country. A Coast Guardsman on the West Coast reported photographing one from a distance, but no one has seen a flying disc close.

It is quite clear from the article that Campbell recognized it for what it was when he found it, meaning that he knew that it was a balloon-borne device, and he had the balloon. He was not talking about anything else and the original description, meaning the first reporting of it, is quite clear. He thought that when airborne, the six-pointed star, if spinning, could give the impression of a disc shape in bright sunlight.

Contrast this to the press release that was put out by Walter Haut, on orders from Colonel Blanchard. Here too, it is claimed that they had recovered a flying disc, but they believed, it seems, that a balloon and radar target did not explain it.

The Associated Press version, as it appeared in a number of west coast newspapers said:

The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509^th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office of Chavez County.

The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff’s office, who in turn notified Major Jesse A. Marcel of the 509^th Bomb Group Intelligence Office.

Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters.

There is no clue here that any of those involved, the rancher, Brazel; the sheriff, Wilcox; the intelligence officer, Marcel; or the base commander, Blanchard, knew it was a balloon or balloon-borne device. By the time we get to Ramey’s office, and we have photographs of the alleged debris, it is quite clear that it is a balloon and radar target. The blackened balloon can be seen in the picture as well.

Campbell knew what it was when he found it, and according to later articles, the sheriff knew what it was when he saw it, and later the object found in Ohio was displayed in the newspaper office. They didn’t notify the military, and although the story was widely reported in Ohio, no military officers, no FBI agents, and no local authorities arrived to take charge of the debris. It was eventually returned to Campbell, at least according to what his daughter told me twenty some years ago.

The other report from Roswell, that is the original United Press bulletin, said:

Roswell, N.M. – The army air forces here today announced a flying disc had been found on a ranch near Roswell and is in army possession.

The Intelligence office reports that it gained possession of the ‘Dis:’ [sic] through the cooperation of a Roswell rancher and Sheriff George Wilson [sic] of Roswell.

The disc landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher, whose name has not yet been obtained, stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the Roswell sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office notified a major of the 509^th Intelligence Office.

Action was taken immediately and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home and taken to the Roswell Air Base. Following examination, the disc was flown by intelligence officers in a superfortress (B-29) to an undisclosed “Higher Headquarters.”

The air base has refused to give details of construction of the disc or its appearance.

Residents near the ranch on which the disc was found reported seeing a strange blue light several days ago about three o’clock in the morning. 

Again, the contrast is startling. In Ohio, there was a description of the object found, and there is no one confusing it for something more than it is, or was. In Roswell, though many had examined the debris, there is no clue that this might be a balloon and radar target. Just several people, including many who should have known better, unable to identify what turned out to be, if we accept the cover story, a weather balloon.

Photo of balloon and rawin from
the Circleville newspaper.

You have to ask yourself, how is it that those in Ohio knew that it was a balloon and those in New Mexico did not? Isn’t it interesting that both stories talk of the balloon debris being found “last week,” though in Roswell that was eventually changed to “three weeks ago”? Isn’t it interesting that eventually, the balloon and radar reflector are displayed in Fort Worth, but not in Roswell? And if our old friend Sheridan Cavitt is to be believed, he knew the instant he saw it what it was, but made no attempt to inform either Marcel or Blanchard. Why did he remain mum, when he was with Marcel out in the field, or when he, with Marcel and some of the wreckage were examined by Blanchard in his office on the morning of July 8?

You might ask yourself (and I do, risking the wrath of the skeptics), did those in Roswell, who might well have known about the Circleville case, take a cue from there, changing the storyline so that it mimicked that in Ohio to hide the facts in New Mexico? Did they change the narrative so that reporters, and civilians, would not be inclined to ask the difficult questions that were then never asked?  

The two storylines are interesting, to say the least. Of course the spin put on them takes you in a direction that you might wish to take… that is, they are so similar that Roswell is clearly a balloon… or they are similar to a point, but there is no mention of the balloon debris in the first of the Roswell stories. You might say that the Ohio report seems to underscore the mundane nature of the debris found in Roswell. The two stories are the same… and yet, they are not.

But the real question… the real difference…  is the reaction of the military to these two events. At Circleville they ignored it. Clearly it is a balloon and posed no threat. The day after the press release in Roswell, both the Army and the Navy begin to suppress stories of the flying saucers. Why would they do that? What is the difference here? Why, suddenly, on July 9 do they care that people are seeing flying saucers but they had not cared prior to that?

Who Put the Roswell Press Release on the News Wire?

In the last day or so, I have been asked about the press release issued by Walter Haut concerning the discovery of a flying disk near Roswell. We can argue all day about what it was, but that term was used in the press release. The Roswell Daily Record reported that military had “captured” a flying saucer in the Roswell region. What is interesting now is that some are wondering if the Roswell Daily Record put the press release on the news wire and the source of that information is quoted as evidence is Philip Klass.

In his book, The Real Roswell Crashed Saucer Coverup, Klass wrote, on page 16 (of the hardback), “The newspaper sent its blockbuster story out over the Associated Press wire service, resulting in a deluge of inquiries.”

In a world where the slightest mistake that I have made, even those of more than 40 years, are broadcast today to prove I’m a sloppy researcher, those of the skeptics and debunkers are often overlooked. I point this out because, I’ll now give you the sequence of events and how the story made it into the national press (the term for media at the time).

After a staff meeting held at the 509^th Bomb Group on Tuesday, July 8, 1947, the base public affairs officer, First Lieutenant Walter Haut, received a telephone call from Colonel William Blanchard, the Group commander. Haut would later say that he didn’t remember if he was given the details over the phone or if he went to Blanchard’s office. He didn’t remember if Blanchard gave him the completed press release or just the details with instructions to write it. He was then to deliver it to the four media outlets in Roswell, that is, the two radio stations and the two newspapers. In another relatively unimportant discrepancy to this basic story, Haut would say that he drove the release into town, or he would say that he used the telephone and dictated it to them. Either way, the press release went out to the media, and then was put on the news wire by Frank Joyce of radio station KGFL and George Walsh of radio station KSWS. Who got it on the wire first doesn’t really matter to us here because the point is that the Roswell Daily Record did not put in onto the Associated Press wire but we can answer that question as well.

Walsh remembered that Haut had telephoned the press release to him “about mid-day.” He copied the press release exactly or almost exactly, as Haut read it to him over the phone. According to what Walsh told me, he in turn called it into the Associated Press in Albuquerque. From there the release was put on the AP wire and that story was published in a number of newspapers.

Joyce, on the other hand, told me that Haut had brought the press release to him at the radio station. He said that he put it on the United Press news wire and he kept the press release. Fearing that someone would return to confiscate it, he hid it but to no avail. It has since disappeared.

Art McQuiddy, who was the editor of the Roswell Morning Dispatch told me, “I can remember quite a bit about what happened that day. It was about noon and Walter brought in a press release. He’d already been to one of the radio stations, and I raised hell with him about playing favorites.”

Unfortunately for McQuiddy, the Dispatch was a morning newspaper, so there wasn’t much for him to do with the story. He said, “By the time Haut got to me, it hadn’t been ten minutes and the phone started ringing. I didn’t get off the phone until late afternoon… The story died, literally, as fast as it started.” MQuiddy’s timing is slightly off as we’ll see later.

There is a document, created in 1947, that provides the exact times for some of this and helps us understand what was going on. According The Daily Illini, the first of the stories on the Associated Press wire appeared at 4:26 p.m. on the east coast. That would mean that the stories went out from Albuquerque, sometime prior to 2:26 p.m.

The Associated Press version, as it appeared in a number of west coast newspapers said:

The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509^th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office of Chavez County.

The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff’s office, who in turn notified Major Jesse A. Marcel of the 509^th Bomb Group Intelligence Office.

Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters.

At 4:30 p.m. (EST), there is the first “add” to the AP story, which mentioned “Lt. Warren Haught [Walter Haut],” who was described as the public information officer at Roswell Field. This new information suggested that the object had been found “last week” and that the object had been sent onto “higher headquarters.”

The original United Press bulletin, which went out fifteen minutes later, at 4:41 p.m. (EST), according to newspaper sources, said:

Roswell, N.M. – The army air forces here today announced a flying disc had been found on a ranch near Roswell and is in army possession.

The Intelligence office reports that it gained possession of the ‘Dis:’ [sic] through the cooperation of a Roswell rancher and Sheriff George Wilson [sic] of Roswell.

The disc landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher, whose name has not yet been obtained, stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the Roswell sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office notified a major of the 509^th Intelligence Office.

Action was taken immediately and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home and taken to the Roswell Air Base. Following examination, the disc was flown by intelligence officers in a superfortress (B-29) to an undisclosed “Higher Headquarters.”

The air base has refused to give details of construction of the disc or its appearance.

Residents near the ranch on which the disc was found reported seeing a strange blue light several days ago about three o’clock in the morning.

Here’s what all this minutia tells us. Walsh put the story out first with Joyce following by fifteen minutes. The Roswell Daily Record had nothing to do with that. There are two versions of the story that differ enough to suggest that Haut dictated them over the telephone to Walsh and Joyce. What we don’t know is how long the vetting process took, meaning simply, that the time of the two press releases does not reflect the time they arrived in the news wire offices. McQuiddy could be right about the time Haut got there, but it wasn’t all that long after the stories arrived that they were put on the wire.

What’s all this prove? Very little, really. We have been able to assemble, from various documents and newspaper stories, a timeline for the release of the information. Doesn’t mean it was a flying disk from another world, only that we have been able to trace, to a fair degree of accuracy, the sequence of events.

We haven’t been able to learn if Haut met with Blanchard in person or talked to him on the telephone. We don’t know if Haut wrote the release or if Blanchard dictated it to him. I’m not sure that these questions are important today because we do have the release as it appeared in two forms in the newspapers and we do know that it originated with the 509^th Bomb Group… Oh, and we know that Philip Klass made up the comment about the Roswell Daily Record putting it on the news wire.

James Carrion, The Roswell Deception and the Press Release

This is a different post than I had planned. After reading James Carrion’s The Roswell Deception, I was planning to do a short article about one tiny aspect of it. It was something that seemed to undermine his premise, but as I was searching for additional information, the tone changed and I made a discovery or two that I thought important.

James Carrion. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle

To bring everyone up to speed on this, let me say, “This isn’t a review of The Roswell Deception. It is an analysis of a single statement that seems to be at odds with the facts, but it is an important discrepancy.”

For those who haven’t read the book, Carrion proposes that the flying saucer craze of 1947 including the crash of something near Roswell was a grand deception. It had two purposes. One was to convince the Soviets that we, meaning the United States, had an airplane that was far superior than anything the Soviets had. Military strategists had learned during the Second World War that control of the air was an important part of winning the war on the ground.

The second was to either expose Soviet spies in the United States, or to gather through the use of deception, information that would help break the codes that the Soviet Union was using. In time of war, not to mention during time of peace, being aware of the other side’s strengths, weaknesses and worries would help in any sort of negotiations. Knowing the enemy’s goals in advance would help to blunt them and, by extension, improve our position in the world.

These were the reasons for creating the aerial deceptions and the activities designed to keep it going. Carrion believed that the Roswell crash, and more importantly, the stories around it were necessary for the deception.

With that in mind, he wrote, “Lieutenant Warren Haught [Walter Haut… I don’t know why he couldn’t get the name right] delivered two entirely different press releases to the local Associated and United Press outlets – a purposeful decision that will make sense later in the story.”

The most obvious problem is the assertion that there were two different press releases and that it was purposeful. There is no evidence to support the idea that there was any sort of purposeful decision here. The evidence suggests otherwise and here’s why.

Simply, I have found more than two versions of the press release. There was one version that appeared on the United Press wire service, one that appeared on the Associated Press service, and still another version that appeared in The Roswell Daily Record. Many of the newspapers printed their own versions, rewritten by their reporters or editors to fit their formats and style.

For those interested, George Walsh of radio station KSWS was the first to get his version of the press release on the AP news wire at 2:26 p.m. (MST). It said:

The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509^th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office of Chavez County.

The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff’s office, who in turn notified Major Jesse A. Marcel of the 509^th Bomb Group Intelligence Office.

Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters.

Frank Joyce, at radio station KGFL, followed about fifteen minutes later with the United Press version. It said:

KGFL Radio Station in the late 1940s.

The Intelligence office reports that it gained possession of the “Dis:” [sic] through the cooperation of a Roswell rancher and Sheriff George Wilson [sic] of Roswell.

The disc landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher, whose name has not yet been obtained, stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the Roswell sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office notified a major of the 509^th Intelligence Office.

Action was taken immediately and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home and taken to the Roswell Air Base. Following examination, the disc was flown by intelligence officers in a superfortress (B-29) to an undisclosed “Higher Headquarters.”

The air base has refused to give details of construction of the disc or its appearance.

Residents near the ranch on which the disc was found reported seeing a strange blue light several days ago about three o’clock in the morning.

The last of the versions was published by the Roswell Daily Record. It is different than the other versions. It said:

The intelligence office of the 509^th Bombardment group at Roswell Army Air Field announced at noon today, that the field has come into possession of a flying saucer.

According to information released by the department, over the authority of Maj. J. A. Marcel, intelligence officer, the disk was recovered on a ranch in the Roswell vicinity, after an unidentified rancher had notified Sheriff Geo. Wilcox, here, that he had found the instrument on his premises.

Major Marcel and a detail from his department went to the ranch and recovered the disk, it was stated.

After the intelligence office here had inspected the instrument it was flown to higher headquarters.

The intelligence office stated that no details of the saucer’s construction or its appearance had been revealed.

Articles in other newspapers, especially those on the west coast, offered variations of the press releases. The Oroville, California Mercury-Register, for example, reported, “Possession of a ‘flying disc’ was disclosed today by the intelligence office of the 509^th bomb group of the Roswell army airbase.”

Walter Haut. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle.

An analysis from all these sources show that the same information is the basis for all of them, but there are subtle differences. This happened, I believe, because Walter Haut phoned it in, so to speak. Haut told me, as he had many others, that he wasn’t sure if he had hand carried the press release to the four media outlets in Roswell or if he telephoned each of them and read it to them. That would account for the subtle differences, at least partially.

Art McQuiddy, who in 1947, was the editor of the Roswell’s Morning Dispatch told me (see UFO Crash at Roswell, pp. 70 – 71; Pflock, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, p. 266), “I can remember quite a bit about what happened that day. It was about noon and Walter [Haut] brought in a press release… By the time Haut had gotten to me it hadn’t been ten minutes and the started ringing. I didn’t get off the hone until late afternoon.”

On the other hand, Karl Pflock in his book wrote (p. 244), “Among other things, they [teletype messages retained by Frank Joyce of the information communicated by the United Press] confirm Roswell AAF did not [emphasis in original] distribute a written press release on the Brazel discovery.”

Can we resolve this?

Yes. I think the answer is in the subtle differences found in each of the versions. Had Haut taken the press release into the various offices, then the content would be virtually the same. The big difference is with the version published in the Roswell Daily Record. It smacks of the local newspaper being familiar with the players, the locations, and the situation. Had they had a printed version of the

Roswell Daily Record. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle.

press release, their version would have followed those others with, of course, the local modifications.

There is another aspect of this. As I was looking for copies of both the AP and the UP versions, I was struck by a thought. I had been given, by Frank Joyce, copies of the wire service copy from 1947. There were Joyce’s notes written on it. I wondered, if in the early 1990s, after we’d talked to Joyce, and Moore had talked to Joyce, if maybe, Joyce had cobbled this together. He would have been familiar with the style of the news wires in 1947, he had moved from Roswell radio station, KGFL, up to Albuquerque’s KOB. He knew Haut and the boys in Roswell, so there was a possibility that he had been able to create something in coordination with Haut and the others that none of us would challenge.

And, more importantly, Joyce had told us, that is Don Schmitt and me, that within the days, possibly hours of the original press release, the military had come by KGFL and swept the office for any paper or evidence of the crash. Given that we were hearing about military attempts to suppress the information from a number of people, that just seemed to be a part of the larger picture.

It wasn’t until recently that I had another thought on this. If the military had searched the radio station, why hadn’t they taken the teletype messages that Joyce had saved. If he had hidden that material, why wasn’t the press release with it? And, why was the military even bothering with this? The story was out and the press release, maybe not verbatim, but close enough to the original had already been circulated so that it was of no importance. We knew, pretty much, what it said.

Given all this, I believe that we can conclude that Haut didn’t visit each place, but used the telephone. Art McQuiddy might believe that Haut visited him, but he would be wrong about that. When I interviewed Jud Roberts about running into the military cordon of the area, he told me that there had been a blue staff car parked by the side of the road. In July 1947, the staff cars would have been green, given this was the Army. It wasn’t until after the Air Force became a separate service that the staff cars would have been painted blue. Was Roberts lying? No, he had just spent decades looking at Air Force blue cars. The point is that he might have actually remembered the staff car by the side of the road, but in his mind it was blue.

We can conclude, then, based on the evidence, based on Walter Haut’s vague memory, and the information printed in the newspapers, that there might have been a written press release that Haut read to the media sources over the telephone. However, if he was working from notes rather than a completed release, then we can see that there would have been other, subtle differences interjected in the press release.

As for the original reason to begin this rather esoteric look at that one paragraph that Carrion wrote, we conclude that Carrion was wrong as well. There weren’t two different press releases issued as a way of exposing Soviet spies or as a means of cracking Soviet codes. There was a single press release, delivered over the telephone that created the differences. And from that point, the newspapers updated, edited, and added to the press release meaning that there weren’t two versions, but many. On this point, Carrion’s theory about two press releases, fails.

The Roswell Slides ARE NOT the Roswell Slides

So now we’re told that the Roswell Slides might not be linked to Roswell and that the name, Roswell Slides was invented by the debunkers and is not a term used by anyone on the inside. For the latest interviews with Don Schmitt and Tom Carey, see The Conspiracy Show hosted by Richard Syrett which can be found here:

https://youtu.be/fQyAVrFnTos?t=1h3m59s

The segment with Carey and Schmitt starts at the 1:04:20 mark of the show and they are on for about thirty minutes. You’ll just have to fast forward through the first hour to get to the Carey and Schmitt interview.

Here’s what we learn by listening to this. According to Tom Carey, the couple who took the slides was well connected to the Eisenhowers. The wife was a “high-powered lawyer in Midland, Texas and the husband was an oil field geologist.” Part of his territory was New Mexico. Please note that Carey is suggesting that the Rays, whose name he does not use, were the ones who took the photographs though all that can be said is that they may have owned the slides at one time decades ago. The provenance of the slides is still very shaky.

Carey then went on to explain how the slides were originally discovered. He said:

Current owner came into possession of the slides around 1990. The husband [Bernerd Ray] died in 1982 and the lawyer wife [Hilda Ray] died in 1988 [though not mentioned, it seems that they had divorced at some point]. During a clean out of their house, in their garage, one of the people who was part of the cleanup crew discovered this huge box of color slides, Kodachrome slides, and she said, “Oh, these look interesting,” so she kept them. She took them home instead of taking them to the dumpster. She took them for herself because nobody wanted them… so she kept them and didn’t look at them for a number of years [which seems strange after she had determined they were interesting, but never mind]. She finally looked at them and these two slides… were separate from all the others. There were over 400 slides in total. But there were these two that were taped in an envelope to the underside of the lid to the box. So she looked at those and she got spooked… She shipped the whole box to her relative who has them now. He was no UFO guy but he looked at these two slides and he says, “I don’t know what this is…” he had heard about Roswell… So he looked at them and I better contact somebody who knows something about this.

Of course, in his position, my first thought would have been to search for someone who knew about the Roswell UFO case. Carey said that the man had gone to the Internet (which is something I bet we all do now a days) and looked for something about Roswell. Carey’s name came up and the man set an email.

During the interview, Schmitt suggested that the “debunkers” had labeled them the Roswell Slides and they had not made that connection meaning that the slides were connected to Roswell. Syrett, in recapping some of this said that Carey and Schmitt weren’t linking these images to Roswell but there was a possibility that there was a connection (or in the words of nearly everyone else, let’s beat around the bush some more).

All though the interview, however, Carey talked as if it was an already established fact that the slides were from the Roswell case. Continuing in that vein, Schmitt said, “The dating of the slides is from 1947 to 1949. As we will be demonstrating at the event in May, there were specific areas that the photographers visited… both worked in west Texas and New Mexico… the circle of friends were closely linked to Eisenhower.” Or, in other words, this is connected to Roswell even though these people lived in Midland, Texas and had pictures of Eisenhower in his uniform.

The link to Eisenhower seems to be based on the fact that some of the slides in the box of 400 were of Eisenhower, which doesn’t link them to him personally other than they were in the same place at the same time… Just as I was in the same place as David Letterman and I even have a picture of me standing next to him, but we are not closely linked.

During the interview, Carey was asked about what linked the eyewitness testimony to other alien bodies. He said:

[The] woman standing by a glass slab… the body lying on it appears to be 3½ to 4 feet tall… large inverted pear-shaped head but there is one item on it, on top of the head that was described by one of the first-hand witnesses, one of the first ones to the crash site… the local fireman named Dan Dwyer who described when he got home that night and he told his family about it… they asked him, “What did it look like?” Instead of giving a detailed description he just said, “Child of the Earth.” [Which is an insect also known as the Jerusalem cricket]… It’s something on the head, I don’t want to give anything away here… there is something on the top of the head that one of the eyewitnesses described and it’s on this particular creature on the slide… That’s why Dan Dwyer called it the Child of the Earth.

But what Carey doesn’t say here, and which is extremely important is that Dwyer was never interviewed by any of the UFO researchers and calling him a first-hand witness without explaining the circumstances is misleading. Dwyer died before the interest in Roswell was renewed. Contrary to the impression that this is first-hand testimony, it was relayed by Frankie Rowe, Dwyer’s daughter. While I believe that Rowe is telling us what she believes to be the absolute truth, it is second hand from her so anything deduced from the testimony is shaky at best.

Apropos of nothing, Carey did mention that this ranked as a “smoking gun,” slightly better than the “smoking gun” of the Ramey memo. Both, according to Carey, are extremely important bits of evidence and, of course, the Ramey memo is directly related to Roswell.

What have we learned here?

Well, the Roswell Slides don’t necessarily show a creature from the Roswell crash, at least according to Schmitt. But then both he and Carey talk as if it was already proven that the creature, whatever it was, is from the Roswell crash.

The slides were apparently in a vacant house for two years before they were found, and then the woman who found them and took them, didn’t look at them for a number of years. She was so freaked out by them that she sent all the slides to her brother…I mean a relative, who apparently did nothing with them for years. Then about three years ago this fellow, who lives in Chicago, looked at them and thought he had better find someone who knew something about Roswell. He emailed Carey.

We also learned that when they attempted to interest American scientists in the slides, no one would come forward. The news media was equally unimpressed, but foreign scientists have examined the slides and made comment about them. Two of them are Canadian anthropologists who were not named but whose analysis will be part of the Mexico City show. They will be named there. All this data and much more will be presented in Mexico City.

And, although they suggest that the slides aren’t linked to Roswell, when they begin to talk about them, it is clear that is exactly what they think. And if they don’t, then why bring poor old PFC Benavides into it so that he can say that the creature in the photograph looks like the bodies he saw in Roswell? While they might not like the name the Roswell Slides and don’t refer to them that way, it is what they believe. All we can hope for is that they’ll have some better evidence about the slides than they have mentioned in the various interviews so far. The story of how the slides ended up in the hands of UFO researchers doesn’t allow for evidence of who took the pictures in the first place or for an unbroken chain of custody. There are still too many loose ends. I do hope they can do better in Mexico City.

The Roswell Festival 2019

The Roswell Festival might be considered the highlight of the tourist season in New Mexico. Tens of thousands of people make it to Roswell for the Festival and hundreds of thousands visit the International UFO Museum and Research Center during the year. Top of the line hotels are found in the city and the downtown area reflects the economic boom that UFOs have created.

I made it to the festival for the first time in seven years and saw that much has changed. There is now a big display from The Day the Earth Stood Still and people lined up to have their pictures taken with Gort. Science fiction, though not a huge part of the museum, does have its place and I’m not sure that is such a bad thing. After all, I have written a number of science fiction novels, something that a few in the UFO field never failed to mention.

The Day the Earth Stood Still in the Roswell Museum. All photographs copyright by Kevin Randle.

One of the first things I did, on the first morning before the Festival began, before the opening “Meet and Greet” took place, was approach Derrell Sims. I mentioned something about a fellow Vietnam Veteran and he was quick to point out that he was a Vietnam Era Veteran. That means he served in the military during the war but that he had never deployed incountry (which is how we say served in Vietnam). He then launched into his resume of military service which has been well publicized over the years.

My plan was to interview six of the men and women who had been invited to give presentations. There were troubles with this from the very beginning. It started with getting the microphone, computer and WiFi connection operating. I had planned to use Skype video, but we just couldn’t get a good signal strength for it to work properly. I finally settled for four shows using only audio.

I, along with several others including Paul Davids, Tom Carey, Don Schmitt, Don Burleson and Frank Kimbler, were on two panels about the Roswell case. There were some interesting nuggets dropped there. I had mentioned that there were avenues of investigation to be followed, including research into the Ramey Memo. I did say that we hadn’t found any metallic debris but Frank said that wasn’t exactly accurate.

Don Schmitt, Kevin Randle and Frank Kimbler on the Roswell Panel. In the interest of full disclosure, this picture
is from an earlier Festival panel discussion on the Roswell case.

Frank, in his work with the Roswell case, had been finding bits and pieces of metallic debris out on the Foster (Brazel) ranch. Much of it is still being analyzed. Frank did say it was difficult to find labs to do the analysis when they learned that it related to the Roswell case.

This is something that I think all of us have encountered. Don and Tom said that as they attempted to interest anthropologists in certain aspects of the Roswell investigation, they would bail at the first mention of Roswell.

In researching the Ramey Memo, I have run into the same thing. Photo analyses and other experts backed away the moment Roswell was mentioned. Others who helped didn’t want their names associated with anything to do with Roswell.

All this means is that Frank’s trouble in finding labs for the analysis rings true. And, it is too bad that Roswell has become something of a problem for scientists and technicians who would like to investigate but fear for their professional reputations. 

Frank told me something else that I found important but that has nothing to do with UFOs. Back in the 1970s I saw a movie, McKenna’s Gold about the Lost Adams Diggings. That was a very rich placer gold deposit that had been guarded by the Apache. Adams, and several others, were taken to that hidden canyon and told not to venture above the waterfall. Of course, they did, and found a hard rock gold mine. The Apaches, angered by this violation, killed the miners except for Adams, who through good fortune, escaped to tell the tale.

I had pretty well decided that this was just another fabled gold mine story that dots the old west. There are those who believe it and spent time searching for it. Frank told me that he had found the right canyon, that it does exist, and strangely, he told me where it is… southwestern New Mexico. He’d been there, seen the landmarks that Adams had described, seen the gold of the placer deposit and knew he had found the right place. Then, to compound the story, he told me specifically where it is… Apache Box Canyon, which you can basically drive to… and Google Earth will show you the way.

But I digress.

I did talk briefly with Travis Walton, who seemed to be surrounded by fans most of the three days of the Festival. I didn’t interview him while in Roswell (though that had been part of my plan), he did agree to do the radio show later. I plan to interview him in August.

The real question was if anything new about the Roswell case turned up during the Festival. While on a panel to discuss all things Roswell I had mentioned that we were running out of avenues to explore. There was the investigation into the Ramey memo, but at this stage is seemed a long shot to think we’d ever come to a consensus. Out technology isn’t quite there and given the circumstances might never get there.

Tom and Don also mentioned additional witnesses but the problem here is that we’re now dealing with the descendants of those who were there. Such interviews

Tom Carey signing books in Roswell.

do present some problems since we’re not dealing with just old memories, but with old memories that could be misinterpretations of what was said by those telling the tales to their children. We’re moving far away from the primary sources which is not a good thing.

I gave two presentations. One was “Roswell in the 21^st Century,” which was derived from my book by that name.  It was a look at some of the evidence that had collapsed in the last 20 years, but also look at some of the positive things uncovered in that same time frame.

I think one of the best things was the value of the Jim Ragsdale story. He was the guy who said that while out in the desert, with a woman to whom he was not married. They had seen the object fall and crash near them. Ragsdale was later said that he had seem dummies or bodies, he wasn’t sure which. He repeated the word “dummies” several times. James McAndrew who wrote the anti-Roswell book, Case Closed for the Air Force, used Ragsdale’s testimony to prove that what was seen were anthropomorphic dummies dropped years after the Roswell crash. But, if Ragsdale was lying, as now seems to be the case, then his testimony about dummies or bodies is irrelevant, and a conclusion based on his testimony is fatally flawed. In other words, the Air Force used a lie to prove that these anthropomorphic dummies were what Ragsdale and others had seen. There were no alien bodies at all.

Kathleen Marden chatting with a visitor.

I did chat with Kathleen Marden for an hour, which was recorded there in Roswell to be broadcast on my radio show/podcast in the near future. We discussed the Barney and Betty Hill abduction, the star map, and other aspects of the abduction phenomenon. She seemed to have a good grasp on the topic, though I wasn’t in complete agreement with her on many of the points.

While there I did have the opportunity to speak with dozens of people. Although many seemed to understand that we lack the proof positive of an alien event, too many others seemed to embrace all the craziness from the Philip Corso story to the MJ-12 nonsense. There were some who were quite well versed in UFOs and others who were there because, well, there was a festival going on and it sounded like fun. I even saw a few people dressed as Storm Troopers (the Star Wars kind) and a couple of others in costumes from other science fiction universes. (But since I write science fiction myself on occasion, I didn’t mind chatting with those people.)

Most of my time was spent either arranging interviews for the radio show or conversing with those who were visiting the museum. I was there, at the museum, from the moment it opened until it was closed. But I just didn’t have a chance to sit in on other presentations. There were three tracks of programming, not to mention the special sessions held by some of the presenters. Too much to do and too little time to do it which, for a Festival, is probably a good thing.

I should note that the museum staff worked very hard to put on a good Festival, but had time to help me with my problems in setting up for the radio interviews. I never heard an angry word from any of them. They worked to keep everything flowing smoothly and the crowds happy. They did a great job and I never heard anyone complain about the programming, the presentations or the availability of the staff to help out.

The last thing was a tribute dinner for Stan Friedman who had died several weeks earlier. Given my experiences with Stan, some of the things he said about me, and his attempts to stop the publication of Don’s and my book, UFO Crash at Roswell, I just didn’t feel the need to attend. Instead I had Church’s Fried Chicken.

Main Street closed for the vendors during the Festival.

For those interested in analysis, I think the Festival has gone in the direction of creating a festival in recent years. While there was programing that related to UFO research, there were many other activities that had nothing to do with that. Main Street near the museum was shut down for all sorts of vendors, some of which had little or nothing to do with UFOs. Not that I’m criticizing that, just noting it in passing.

The International UFO Museum and Research Center.

For those interested in UFOs in general and Roswell in particular, the annual Festival is one of those must attends. The opportunity to talk with the researchers, those who have spent decades investigating Roswell, and others who have spent the same kind of time researching other aspects of the UFO field, is the big plus. I was able to answer lots of questions about the case that might not have been explained in detail in books, magazine articles and TV documentaries.

As for the Festival, it is something that those interested in UFOs should attend, at least once.

The Roswell Rock

So now we have the Roswell Rock. What is it? Just a rock found in New Mexico with some sort of crop circle design on it that some think is beyond our capability to make. There seem to be no tool marks found under microscopic examination, it seems to have some strange magnetic properties and it was found within twenty-five miles of the site that is alleged to have contained the alien bodies.

It now takes it place with all those other things that have been identified with Roswell such as the Mexican Roswell, the British Roswell, the Chinese Roswell, the Russian Ros… well, you get the point. Stick Roswell in the name somehow and you have a built in audience, even if the event or thing you are describing has nothing to do with Roswell or aliens or a crashed spacecraft.

Stick this rock up there with all the other failed artifacts that have been presented from the bit of debris announced with such fanfare in 1997 as material with a known chain of custody was announced… only that the chain of custody was not presented and never has been. And let’s not forget the scientist who was claiming the isotopic ratios of the metal were not found on Earth (except, of course, they were not naturally occurring but were found on Earth) and the scientist changing the story when independently interviewed.

And let’s not forget the other bit of metal that was taken under police escort for scientific testing only to learn that it was jewelers’ scrap. Nothing extraordinary about it, except for the story that it was part of the spacecraft.

 Or the button found on the debris field that proved an Air Force connection of some kind. But it was clear that the button had been planted there for discovery by the researchers in Chasing UFOs. The Air Force didn’t exist (it would have been the Army) when the UFO allegedly crashed and the button was much too pristine. I had Air Force buttons that had not been outside in thirty years that were in worse shape because of simple neglect than this button that had been out in the weather for more than sixty years.

And now we have this rock with a strange carving on it that resembles the sort of symbols found in crop circles. In fact, Colin Andrews, one of the leading expects on crop circles said that it was an almost exact copy of a crop circle. Please note the qualifier here… almost an exact copy.

I suppose what we’re supposed to deduce here is that this rock had been in the spacecraft before the crash and that somehow it was ejected with no sign of the destruction of the craft, to be found, literally miles and miles from the crash site by a bow hunter. And while I have no doubt that the man is telling his story accurately, meaning he found the rock while bow hunting, the fact he was in New Mexico doesn’t mean that this rock had anything to do with the events of July 1947 and there is absolutely no way to connect it to 1947, just as they had been no way to connect any of these other items to the crash.

Here is where we slide off the rails completely. Colin Andrews was able to identify the crop circle and said that it was nearly a match for one created by Julian Richardson, which means it wasn’t alien in the beginning. It was a manmade crop circle and if the design on the rock was almost exactly like that of a manmade crop circle you have to ask, “What are the odds?”

We also saw, in a documentary about the Roswell Rock, an artist who creates designs by sandblasting the surface of rocks, duplicate, to a great degree the design on another rock. But he took only thirty minutes to do it and didn’t bother to polish it much at all. Had he taken more time, then he might have been able to match it to an even closer degree.

But the endgame seems to be the Roswell Alien Encounter Festival 98. According to some who were there, a company known as MLennuim Productions was selling rocks with crop circle designs on them, some looking quite a bit like the design on the Roswell Rock. This should be the last gasp of the alien nature of the Roswell Rock. Humans were making them and selling them in Roswell… so, I guess, it is legitimate to call it a Roswell Rock but it has nothing to do with alien visitation.

We can close another chapter on the Roswell UFO crash. Clearly the rock had nothing to do with it and had it not been found in central New Mexico, no one would have taken a second look at it. For those interested, a quick search of the Internet will provide other examples of these rocks. With all of this arrayed against the Roswell Rock, we have the answers we need… and it wasn’t necessary to devote an hour of TV time to the discussion. It should have taken five minutes, but then, what do you do with the other fifty-five minutes (minus the commercials)?