Cash Landrum and Crash Retrievals

One of the strange things about writing a book is that sometimes the comments or criticisms come in a short period of time.

What do I mean?

My book, Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky was published in May and in the last week or ten days I have heard from several people who wished I had included the Cash-Landrum case in the book. That is an interesting case and I believe John Schuessler did a very comprehensive study of it which has been published.

The problem for me is that I don’t view the case as a crash/retrieval. I see it as something that might have been an emergency close approach, or just a close approach without the emergency, or some kind of terrestrially-based test, but not a crash of an extraterrestrial vehicle. For that reason, I left it out.

What I know about the case is what everyone else knows and is based on the research of those who studied it in person. I have never spoken to any of those who were originally involved, though I do know John Schuessler. He is one of those who has devoted a great deal of time to the study of UFOs and this case took place almost in his backyard.

It was December 29, 1980, when Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Landrum’s seven-year-old grandson, Colby saw the strange object as they returned from dinner. Thinking that it was an airplane heading to a nearby airport, they thought nothing of it. But as they rounded a curve on the rural road, they saw the light approaching them at treetop level.

Fearing that they would be burned alive, Landrum screamed for Cash to stop. The road was narrow and Cash was unable to turn to car so that they could escape. But there was no other traffic, so Cash got out, walking to the front of the vehicle. Landrum also got out but her grandson so upset she got back in.

They could feel heat from the diamond-shaped object that was about 100 feet away. The car became too hot to touch and Landrum put her hand on the dashboard and left an imprint. Cash needed to use part of her leather jacket to protect her hand so that she could open the door.

There was a final blast of heat and the object ascended slowly. As it cleared the treetops, helicopters appeared from all directions. The object and the helicopters then disappeared from sight.

When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Cash started the car and they began to head home. As they rounded another curve on that same road, they saw the object again, and Cash counted 23 helicopters near it. Landrum thought there were 25 or 26 of them. Cash was able to pull off the road. When the object and the helicopters were again out of sight, Cash then drove home.

Later that evening Cash became sick, the symptoms like that of radiation poisoning, at least according to some. She was hospitalized twice for treatment. The Landrums were also sick, but not to the same degree as Cash, which might be as simple as Cash being outside the car longer and her exposure greater.

The case was, of course, investigated. Cash eventually sued the government for 20 million dollars alleging that her illnesses were caused by the close approach of the craft. She was eventually treated for various cancers 25 times and had undergone two operations. The helicopters were obviously US government and they should have been protecting her. The case was dismissed in 1986. Cash died some twenty yeas later.

The suit was dismissed, according to the ruling, because there was no evidence that the diamond-shaped craft was any type of government test vehicle and they were hard pressed to find witnesses to the formation of helicopters. A few witnesses were found who said they had seen the fleet, but no physical evidence or documentation was ever located.

I will point out here, based on my experience as a helicopter pilot, that I find it difficult to believe they could hide an air operation of this magnitude. The helicopters would have had a crew of three and maybe four meaning almost 100 men (and given the date of this, I wouldn’t expect any women in the flight crews), not to mention the logistical support necessary. You’d have to supply a refueling point, as well as other considerations but no trace of any of that was ever found or documented. Something like that, on that scale, would be impossible to hide.

Nearly everyone, skeptics and believers alike, suggest that the illnesses sounded like radiation sickness. One of those who doesn’t is Brad Sparks. He presented a number of reasons including the rapid onset of the symptoms and the lingering nature of them as reason to suspect another cause. Philip Klass was interested in the health of the three victims prior to the encounter.

The bottom line for me, and my book on UFO crashes, is that there is no hint of a crash here. A close encounter of the second kind, meaning a close approach of a UFO, but not a crash. For that reason, I didn’t even consider this case for my book.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Curt Collins

This week’s show concerned the Roswell Slides and the Cash/Landrum sighting of December 1980. The guest was Curt Collins who runs the Blueblurrylines website that can be found at www.blueblurrylines.com. The show can be heard here:

https://youtu.be/Qe4FpMWUYGI

While I hadn’t planned to spend much time on the Roswell Slides, Collins provided some information that is important to those who read this blog and who have an interest in the Roswell Slides. He pointed out that according to what Don Schmitt said prior to the May 5, 2015, presentation in Mexico City, he had seen slides, and in fact was the first to meet with the owner (though it isn’t clear if he meant Adam Dew or Joe Beason). You can hear his statements of April 12,2015 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQyAVrFnTos

The relevant section comes at about the 106:00 point of the interview and with Tom Carey and then Don Schmitt talking about seeing the slides.

Tom Carey talked about the high resolution scans when he gave another interview on April 20, 2015 which can be heard here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nLCCoKwGd8

Tom Carey talks about receiving the high resolution scans of the slides in an email at 131:30 and then provides descriptions at 137:00 and 141:00.

You can also read, in detail, the story of the slides on this blog beginning in the months prior to the reveal in Mexico City. Just use the search engine and Roswell Slides. There is also a long chapter about them in Roswell in the 21^st Century.

While we didn’t get to the Cash/Landrum sighting until later in the show, you can find out more about it at:

www.blueblurrylines.com

Next week’s show: Carol Rainey

Topic: Abductions

X-Zone Broadcast Radio Network - Curt Collins

This week I talked with Curt Collins about research that he and others have been

Curt Colllins

conducting into the AATIP program and the relation between MUFON, Bigelow Aerospace, and research into UFOs. It seems to be a rather complicated relation and I fear that we might not have been able to cover it was well as possible given that complexity. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/24030651

And, you can read the first part of the report on how the money flowed from the government to Bigelow Aerospace to MUFON. As I said, repeatedly in the program, there was nothing nefarious in this, it just seemed to be a little too sneaky for me. In the world where we keep calling for transparency, not much of this was public while the program was in operation. You can read the first part of the story here:

https://www.blueblurrylines.com/p/only-three-of-participants-pictured.html

Although the show was made up of trying to understand all these links and what they meant, we did speak, briefly, about the Cash-Landrum UFO sighting and the relation to that in Rendlesham Forest at the same time. Both incidents resulted in what seem to be injuries to the parties involved. It is important to note that John Burroughs, one of the Air Force personnel involved at Rendlesham, was awarded full medical disability by the government because of his injuries.

By coincidence, next week, I’ll be speaking with Jan Harzan, the executive director of MUFON. We’ll talk a little bit about the revelations that Curt provided, but the program will reach into other arenas as well.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Michael Hall

Michael Hall was the guest this week. The former attorney, well, retired or semi-retired attorney and one of the founders of the UFOiTeam, provided information

Michael Hall

about this investigative group. They seem to have created technology that provides them with the opportunity to see UFOs on many occasions. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/23763926

We also talked about other aspects of the UFO phenomenon. Although Hall has no memory of an abduction, for example, he does have what he believes to be an episode of missing time. Members of his team do have abduction experiences. I have commented on alien abduction a number of times. You can find them on my blog just by typing alien abduction into the search engine. For those who want the short take, here are a couple of those columns:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2008/04/alien-abduction-in-pop-culture.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/08/abduction-enigma.html

And more relevant to our discussion is a posting about leading the witness which you can read here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2005/03/alien-abduction-and-leading-witness.html

Next week I’ll be talking with Curt Collins about the Cash-Landrum UFO encounter. He’s been researching the case for a number of years. If you have questions, post them in the comments section, and I’ll try to get them asked.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Kenneth Dudley

This week I talked with Kenneth Dudley, who has said of himself, “I know more than anyone else in the UFO world about what has happened and this is a national security issue…” He also has suggested that his field of expertise is military intelligence and UFOs.” I thought this might make for an interesting show. You can listen to the program here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/21485151

We did talk about his becoming interested in UFOs after he was involved in a car

Kenneth Dudley

accident but no one seemed able locate the woman who caused it. He found her in Colorado, but in his discussion with her, remembered a UFO sighting he’d had in October 1973, along I-70 near Green river, Utah. I will note here, apropos of nothing at all, I have driven through Utah on I-70 a number of times, and it is a long, lonesome road. There used to be a sign as you entered the western end that the next service stations were 138 miles away. That’s been changed in the world today with the creation of several service station plazas, but in 1973, that sign just underscores how deserted that stretch of highway used to be.

His sighting wasn’t all that spectacular, just a glowing disk close to the ground that took off in a burst of speed. It wasn’t in sight for very long, and I mentioned that it was quite mundane, in terms of detail. Of course, if you were the witness, your perspective would be somewhat different. Since Dudley said he nearly hit the UFO, he thought of it as a little more exciting.

For corroboration, he mentioned that radars at Cheyenne Mountain had tracked the UFO at about the time of his sighting. Without a little more information, I wasn’t all that sure that the connection could be made or that this could be considered corroboration.

One of the views along I-70 in Utah.

When he talked about the trouble in the UFO community and the seeming lack of interest in his sighting, I suggested it might be his claim about knowing more than anyone else in the UFO world. He did backtrack on that.

He mentioned five people who had died when they came in contact with UFOs but couldn’t provide any names. I confess that I didn’t help. I thought of Mantell (who was chasing a UFO but I think that has been identified in the world today) and of Cash-Landrum, both of whom claimed health issues after they witnessed a close approach of a diamond-shaped UFO. The event and health problems might have contributed to their deaths years later. That would have led to another discussion which I feared would take up too much of our limited time. I had other things that I wanted to address.

We also talked about the national security implications, with Dudley citing the shutdown of missile launch systems. While an outsider having the ability to disable missiles and preventing their launch certainly has national security implications, the connection to UFOs is somewhat tenuous. The Air Force, of course, denied that a UFO had been involved, but they didn’t offer much in the way of solution either.

Next week, I’m going to take some time to look at some of the issues that are floating around the UFO world. At the moment, I am thinking about addressing what is known as “cancel culture,” meaning you must embrace all aspects of the UFO world or you’re considered a debunker, a look at Stan Friedman’s dark side, and the Deep State influence in UFO investigation. If you have questions, or points you might wish to make, append them at the end of this column and I’ll try to get to them.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Ben Moss/Tony Angiola (Zamora Sighting)

This week’s show concerned the Socorro, New Mexico UFO landing and occupant sighting of April 24, 1964. My guests were Ben Moss and Tony Angiola of MUFON Virginia and their website can be found at www.mufonva.com. The interview can be found here:

https://youtu.be/xd5ToD13dlE

True Symbol

What was interesting in this interview, or what caught my attention was the discussion of the symbol that Lonnie Zamora reported on the side of the object. According to Moss and Angiola, the symbol that we all believed to be the correct one, the symbol that has been featured in magazines and documentaries, is wrong. Zamora was forced, by the Air Force, according to Moss and Angiola, to change the symbol from the inverted “V” with three horizontal lines through it to what I think of as the umbrella over an arrow. Moss and Angiola said they had found newspaper references to the correct symbol in the days that followed Zamora’s report. Rich Reynolds over at the UFO

Fake Symbol

Conjectures blog has explored this question several times.

The other points they made were that there had been reports of the object made to the Socorro police before Zamora’s sighing, that other police officers had seen something as well, that two men had reported seeing the same object as Zamora, and that others had seen similar objects around the area before and after Zamora. I have explored some of this in the past. See:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/10/lonnie-zamora-socorro-ufo-and-new.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/11/socorro-ufo-landing-and-new-witnesses.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/09/philip-klass-and-socorro-ufo-landing.html

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

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/11/socorro-ufo-landing-part-2.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/11/hector-quintanill-and-socorro-ufo-part.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/11/scorroo-ufo-landing-part-4.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2012/08/tony-bragalia-and-socorro-landing.html

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

The program airs on Saturday and Sunday nights at 9:00 p.m. and at various times during the week over several different aspects of the X-Zone Broadcast Networks. For a complete listing, see:

www.xzbn.net

Next week’s guest: Curt Collins

Topic: The Roswell Slides and the Cash/Landrum UFO sighting.

For those who have questions, you can leave them in the comments section of this blog. 

X-Zone Broadcast Network - David Halperin

I had the opportunity to talk with David Halperin about his new book, Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO. It is a somewhat skeptical treatise on the subject of UFOs, bringing it, you might

David Halperin

say, down to Earth. It is a new way of looking at UFOs, suggesting the subject is deserving of serious research, but that the emphasis has been all wrong. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/23845786

The discussion was somewhat wide ranging. I had been going to ask him about the Socorro UFO landing which he mentions in his book, but he brought it up first. Contrary to what we all might have expected, he has no explanation for what Police Officer Lonnie Zamora witnessed in April 1964. Given that the case doesn’t boil down to just Zamora’s observations but has physical evidence in the form of landing traces, there is no good explanation other than Zamora hoaxed the whole thing. The problem is, of course, that others reported the UFO in the sky prior to Zamora seeing the landing, and there is no evidence that Zamora hoaxed anything. I explored the case in depth in Encounter in the Desert.

We talked, briefly, about UFO abductions and the Barney and Betty Hill case. As most know, I’m a bit skeptical about these alleged longitudinal studies which require a huge logistical supply line that would span interstellar space. On the other hand, if there are alien abductions, then it would seem that the Hill abduction, which was more of a target of opportunity than a planned abduction, is a more likely scenario.

David also mentioned a sighting that I had investigated in which I found a solution but noticed the discrepancy between the statements of the two witnesses. This was the sighting from Mount Vernon, Iowa, that took place decades ago. You can read about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/04/sighting-report-november-17-1975.html

Finally, we got around to Project Mogul, which David brought up in his book. I had thought he was going to defend the idea but actually is bothered by some of the evidence suggesting that Mogul is not the answer. He liked the symmetry of the answer, but feared that it simply didn’t work. For those interested in an analysis of Mogul and some of the counter arguments, you can read about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/04/truth-about-mogul.html

In the coming weeks, I’ll be talking with Curt Collins about the Cash-Landrum sighting and Jan Harzan, the executive director of MUFON. If you have questions for either guest, post it in the comments section and I’ll get it asked during the interview.   

Coast to Coast AM Links

 I have some updates, as I have promised in the past. I have been in communication with the MUFON State Director for Iowa about the Christmas Eve UFO sighting and photographs from Bettendorf, Iowa. Unfortunately, there has been no investigation into the authenticity of those photos by Iowa, nor have they been investigated in Illinois or Missouri, according to the state directors there. I am somewhat surprised, given there is a series of photographs. You can see the photograph in the following post.

I have also reviewed information about some of the developments of triangular shaped aircraft and find that this seems to be the wave of the future. There are a number of aircraft in development, including some that have been tested recently that are triangular. I have all this updated here and for those interested in that story, it follows this posting.

It was reported, just Tuesday, April 5, that the newspaper, The Sun, had received 1574 pages of documents related to the AATIP program. What is important here are the documents are related to scientific reports, letters to the Pentagon and research into the biological effects of close approaches on humans. The documents also mention electromagnetic effects which is the topic of my book, Levelland. The book contains a much deeper analysis of those EM Effects.

Here's an interesting aspect of this. The report mentions 42 cases, based on medical files where humans were injured. Cash-Landrum and Rendlesham Forest spring to mind here. John Burroughs is the only American airman to have received a determination of a 100% disability because of the close approach of a UFO.

Also mentioned are an additional 300 cases that were unpublished and therefore unknown to us. We don’t know the extent of those injuries, though I have reported on a number of people who were harmed by the close approach of a UFO. For example, see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Kerman

I should point out, however, that of those 1574 pages, only 38 of them related to UFOs. Most of the documents related to items dealing with research related to space exploration.

Finally, the report also contains information on poltergeists, crop circles, spontaneous human combustion, alien abduction and other paranormal events. I’ll put a link on my blog to all the reports available at John Greenewald’s Black Vault. You see the full list and read the documents here:

https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/the-advanced-aerospace-weapon-system-applications-program-aawsap-documentation/

This doesn’t mean there are no interesting UFO reports out there. On February 28 of this year, the witness, in Georgetown, DE, reported a bright white oval that seemed to be hovering just above the treetops. The witness did take two photographs of the UFO that look somewhat like the tic toc objects reported by the Navy pilots. The object’s lights eventually changed then, and there was a diamond shaped pattern of lights in blue, red and green.

The Georgetown Tic Tac.

The witness then stopped the car and tried to get a video of the object, but was unable to get it going before the UFO disappeared. There was also a small plane flying in the area at the time, but it didn’t show up on the photos, which the witness suggested proved the UFO was large. I’ll note here that the photograph shows a shaking of the camera which does distort the image slightly.

A commercial pilot flying over Memphis, Tennessee, on January 31 of this year, saw a white, donut-shaped cloud that contained an object in it. There was no moon but there was a scattered undercast at about 10,000 feet. The object inside the donut was moving slowly. After about five minutes, the bright object disappeared and a minute later the donut faded.

What we are seeing here is that there are more photographs of strange being taken every day. We need to discriminate between those that have terrestrial explanations and those that show alien craft.

The "Lost" UAP Report of October

 

Tennessee Republican Congressional Representative Tim Burchett, who won reelection on Tuesday, November 8, said recently that the UAP report that had been scheduled for release on October 31 but was delayed, will be a whitewash. He said that those in charge believe that we’re too stupid to handle the truth about alien visitors.

He said leaks suggested that 366 cases of UFO, I mean UAP, sightings would be explained. He also said that the report makes it clear that these sightings are of terrestrial objects rather than alien visitation. The sightings are the result of foreign drones and weather balloons. While drones are a new wrinkle, the weather balloon explanation has served the government well, used to explain everything from the Roswell crash to Gorman dog fight with a UFO. Of course, the balloon explanation fails for Roswell but that’s another story that will come soon.

Burchett said it was all about power. This is a reason for the continued cover up that I explored in depth in UFOs and the Deep State. Those in power feared their power would be diminished if the truth came out. In Washington, it’s all about the power and the financial rewards of that power.

History has provided us with examples of how that works and while overt conquest in not necessarily the problem, it is the introduction of a superior technology that can result in a shift of power. A rifle is a superior weapon to a bow and arrow, but it takes a manufacturing base to create and a supply system to produce the ammunition. Once the rifle is adopted as the weapon of choice, those who had relied on bows and arrows, which could be made by the individual, were now at the mercy of those who had the ability to manufacture the rifle. Their society was radically altered by that superior technology and the desire to have the latest and the best.

Of course, government officials have said that there are national security implications which are the umbrella used to bury the truth. Some times that is the truth, but more often than not it is a simple excuse for refusing to answer questions.

Republican Marco Rubio, has also called for the release of the information. He said that one of the explanations offered was “airborne clutter” and that investigators found no evidence of extraterrestrial life or, and I stress this, a technological advancement by a foreign foe, meaning Russia or China. Yet, hints in the new report suggest China and others are using drones to surveil our military exercises are a solution, which negates the denial of technological advancement.

But Congressional interest doesn’t translate into governmental action. After a series of sightings in Michigan in 1966, then Congressman Gerald Ford called for a Congressional investigation. The hearings, that lasted for a day, resulted in no known action on the part of the government or the Air Force. In the end, the official conclusion about the sightings by the officers of Project Blue Book was, yes, you remember, “Swamp Gas.”

While swamp gas might have explained a sighting or two, it did not cover the range of sightings by multiple witnesses in multiple locations. The Air Force conclusion of swamp gas remains as the explanation for the sightings. The Congressional influence did nothing to advance the investigation into UFOs, only suggested that there was nothing of importance to be learned and that only the uneducated and the unsophisticated reported UFOs.

What most people are missing here, in this latest round of Congressional interest, is that we had men running for federal office who were advocating research into UFO sightings and suggesting the government has been less than candid without journalist questions about the overall situation. There were no consequences for their opinions about UFOs or for the government lack of candor in answering those questions.

Remember Democrat Dennis Kucinich. He was making a run for the presidential nomination some fifteen years ago. Fox News reported, “Dennis Kucinich’s UFO Comments Prove He’s Nuts.” At least in today’s environment, those suggesting there is something to UFO reports aren’t dismissed as nuts. The news media seems to have softened their view but I fear the outcome will be the same. In other words, there will be some sympathetic press and then everyone will forget about the UFOs, or as they are now called UAPs.

One of the real problems it that they make no plans to review the history of UFOs. There have been many good cases with independent witnesses and multiple chains of evidence. Too often these sightings have been rejected because we all know there is no such thing as alien visitation. The Lubbock Lights from 1951 are rejected as birds, even with witness statements that suggest a craft and four photographs of them. The debunkers are now saying that the pictures are faked, but I talked to the photographer more forty years after the fact. He told me then that he still doesn’t know what he photographed. In so many cases of faked photos, the photographers have eventually come clean and admitted the hoax.

The Lubbock Lights photographs taken by Carl Hart, Jr.

There are the Washington National sightings of July 1952 with multiple pilots, both civilian and military reporting the objects. Radar sightings on multiple radars. And the official conclusion is temperature inversion.

Of course, the Levelland sightings of 1957 that was ball lightning. The Socorro landing of 1964 that some believe was a lunar lander suspended under a helicopter but no record of such a test at nearby White Sands at the proper time. The Michigan sightings, mentioned above that were labeled as swamp gas.

And since the end of “official” investigations, there have been good sightings that were belittled and categorized so that we don’t have to deal with them. Rendlesham Forest and the Cash-Landrum personal injury cases from December 1980 spring to mind here.

And, good reports being made today with calls for investigation but with no one wanting to review UFO history. These new investigators will be condemned to making the same mistakes because they won’t know what happened in the past. And in some cases, are refusing to even consider past sightings for reasons that are not viable.

The only upside for all this is that those calling for renewed investigations in the world today are not ridiculed as “nuts.” We do have some serious people who want serious investigation, but given the history, some of it briefly outlined here, I have little hope that we’ll have either an unbiased or scientific investigation. I believe that we are doomed to more of the same given the missed deadlines and the leaked information that we have seen recently.

Committee on Oversight and Accountability Meeting November 13

Yes, I sat through the two hours and fifteen minutes (there about) of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability meeting about what is going on in the world of UAP. In the opening remarks by Nancy Mace, we are told that UAP demand attention (with which I think we all agree). Quoting a Colonel Carl, she said that there were non-humans interacting with us and that high-ranking people knew it. That is a somewhat provocative statement with which to open the hearing. You can watch the hearing here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT2iWKZr0qA

Robert Garcia told us that the Main Stream Media is taking the matter seriously, or more seriously than in the past. He also noted that the hearings were about getting at the truth.

There were those on the committee who told us other things that we all knew. We were told that the allegations by David Grusch have not been verified. Although Garcia didn’t elaborate, he was referring to the claim that there had been twelve crash retrievals. We are told that some of the committee members, maybe all of them, want more legislation for the study of UAP and we all know how well congressional legislation has been in helping us get at the truth in the past.

I noticed that we get some history, or rather a mention of history when Jared Moskowitz said that investigations went back to 1945, which is probably a reference to the Foo Fighters of the Second World War.

Once all the members had a chance to make statements, the emphasis switched to the witnesses that were retired Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet, Lue Elizondo, Michael Shellenberger and Michael Gold. They were asked, in turn they thought of the UAP situation and all suggested something outside of our technological abilities existed, but not that it was necessarily from alien visitation.

Swearing in of the witnesses. From left to right Rear Admiral Timothy Gallaudet,
Lue Elizondo, Michael Shellenberger and Michael Gold.

Gallaudet said that while serving in the Navy, in a large-scale exercise, he received an email about the intrusion of unknown craft that seemed to be a danger to that exercise, specifically, the aviation assets that were being employed. The email, from a higher authority, wondered if there was some secret project, to which he knew nothing that might account for these intrusions and if they continued, they would cancel the exercise. Gallaudet said that the next day, the email was gone and in the after-action briefings, that concern was never mentioned… And, now, as far as I know, based on the testimony, there are no copies of the email offered in evidence.

I hadn’t expected much in this hearing, but Lue Elizondo did make several comments that were interesting. He said that UAP were real and that the US was in possession of UAP material, though he didn’t specify what that material might be, and that some foreign nations also had access to some form of alien material.

Once they got beyond the opening statements which seemed to include most of the free world, each member in attendance was given five minutes to ask questions or to pontificate. Here is where I thought we might get into the nuts and bolts of the situation but that somehow evaded us.

In the questions address to Gallaudet, especially those about the intrusions during the exercise, we learned nothing new. His answers to some of those questions was that he was prohibited from talking about specifics in a public forum. He would answer them in a closed session.

We had a similar experience with Elizondo. He mentioned that those answers he could give were in his book, which had been in review by officials in the Pentagon for more than year before it was published. He said there were crash retrievals, but he would only talk about them in a closed session.

Later in the hearings, Elizondo would mention bodies. He said bodies were collected before he was born. I believe this is a vague reference to the Roswell case, which is from July 1947. But he would also say that he couldn’t talk about retrievals in an open session.

Shellenberger, who was the source of the information about Immaculate Constellation, said that he trusted his sources on that information, but he wouldn’t reveal them. He said that were either still in he government or had been in the government, but not in which agencies they have worked. He also said that his sources had told him that the government was sitting on piles of information about UAP, including high resolution photographs and other material. But he wouldn’t say who these sources were, only that they were credible, based on his knowledge of who they were and his checking out their backgrounds.

Gold provided a good answer on why some of this information has been hidden. It could expose weaknesses in our capability to respond to the threats. That would be information that our adversaries in the world would want to have.

Update: Shellenberger had provided a document about Immaculate Constellation to the committee members prior to the beginning of the session. Thanks to Nancy Mace, you can read that document here:

https://mace.house.gov/immaculateconstellation 

There is one point that I should make and here is probably the best place. There was a discussion that military personnel had been injured by UFOs and that those people were being compensated for those injuries. Once again, no names were offered, but I thought immediately of John Burroughs who had been injured during the Rendlesham Forest events of December 1980.

I also know of others who claimed they were injured by UFOs, including Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum, coincidentally during their sighting of a glowing, diamond-shaped object also in December 1980. Neither of the women were compensated by the government.

This provides a short rundown on what went on in those two hours and fifteen minutes of hearing. When one committee member said that those on the committee who wanted additional information and didn’t know where to begin to look for it (and I sympathize with them on that point), he was told that the information could be discussed in a closed session.

My problem was that we learned nothing new, there were no sources named or documents presented, other than one that was so heavily redacted that it was useless*, and all the information was second hand at best. I have said before and I’ll say it again, Don Schmitt, Tom Carey and I have talked to the men and women who had first-hand knowledge. We can name names and have taped, both audio and video, of these witnesses.

There were some positives that came out of the hearing. I mean, here was a hearing about UAP with suggestions of an off-world presence, observed technology that was beyond our means to create, an interest in the topic by the Main Stream Media that was not wrapped in ridicule, and a suggestion that an unbiased, scientific investigation was needed.  

The members of the committee seemed to be interested in the topic and were searching for answers rather than attempting to misrepresent the situation and taking the discussion into areas that have nothing to do with the problem. All the witnesses, who were under oath, when asked, answered that they believed, based on their person experiences that the answer was alien visitation or that they didn’t know what the answer might be. There didn’t seem to be anyone who ridiculed the idea that we have been visited alien creatures.

There was a suggestion that the stigma be removed from reporting of UAP because, to solve the problem, the information must be received by those who can use it. If people are afraid to report what they have seen or experienced, then no research can be conducted and we solve no problems.

In reality, this hearing was what I expected, long on suggestion but short on evidence. Too many times, the answer to a specific question was that the witness couldn’t talk about it in an open hearing, or that his sources would not be revealed. There was nothing that we, on the outside, could do to learn more, no real cases that we could study because we don’t have the necessary information, and a little too much speculation. I can’t say that I was disappointed in the hearing because I didn’t expect it to reveal very much.

Or, as my good friend from Operation Iraqi Freedom would say after many staff meetings, “There is two hours and fifteen minutes that I won’t get back.”

*Stan Friedman used to show a heavily redacted report that contained only one or two words per page. When the whole document was eventually released, we learned it had little to do with UFO research and a great deal to do with intelligence collections methods.