Patrick Saunders, Covert Roswell Whistleblower

 

I have said, repeatedly, that I will name names and provide documentation about what they have said. One of the most interesting of those who spoke about the Roswell crash was Patrick Saunders, and he provided information about both the recovery of an alien craft, with the bodies of the pilots, and about the threats made to those involved in the events of July 1947.

Patrick Saunders, the Roswell Army Air Field adjutant in July 1947, died in 1995, but not before leaving a legacy of information about his role in the retrieval and cover up. Had something happened in Roswell, no matter what it had been, as the adjutant and a member of Colonel William Blanchard’s primary staff, Saunders would have been in on it. And, according to the information I have, he was not only in on it, he played a major role in it by orchestrating a significant part of the cover up.

Saunders was born in Alabama in 1919 in Florida. He attended the University of Florida and graduated from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and the Air War College. During the Second World War he flew 37 combat missions and was awarded the Legion of Merit, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, and the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters. Patrick Saunders died in November 1995, after a fall that put him into the hospital.

I first talked to Saunders on June 14, 1989, as I was beginning my research into the Roswell case. I have the notes taken during that conversation but there is no recording of it. There was nothing in that conversation that was contradicted later, other than his somewhat sarcastic remarks about the alien bodies.

He told me he had just gotten out of the hospital after a heart attack, which, had I known, I would have waited several weeks before calling him. That didn’t mean he wasn’t up to a telephone conversation and when I asked about the possibility of the UFO crash, he said that he knew nothing about the little green bodies and said that the whole thing was a big joke. He did confirm that he had been the 509th adjutant for only a few weeks when the events of July 1947 transpired.

On September 12, 1996, I received a letter from Evelyn P. Smith, who had known Saunders well. She wrote that while discussing these events with her, he said, “I never saw the little men. The creatures are in deep freeze at Wright-Pat.” Clearly, this was meant as something of a joke by Saunders. He would later contradict that statement in talking to his son, Tim Saunders.

During my 1989 telephone call, he said that there had been many rumors flying about the base at the time. I asked if he could remember any good rumors and which of those might have some truth to them. He said, simply, "I can't specify anything." Saunders, it seemed, was suggesting that he was not a witness to the story. Or rather, that was what he led me to believe at the time.

We did talk, briefly, about the events on the Brazel (Foster) ranch and he responded that he just couldn’t help. Not that it wasn’t true or that he didn’t know anything, just that he couldn’t help, which suggested there was another factor in play. He would explain that to one of his daughters in the mid-1990s.

But that wasn’t the end of it. I learned that later, after both UFO Crash at Roswell and The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell were published, he bought copies. In fact, he bought lots of copies to send to both close friends and family.  

A quotation, in his own handwriting, "Here's the truth and I still haven't told anybody anything! Pat," is on the flyleaf in The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, which was labeled, "Damage Control." His comment is presumed to refer to that specific page but could refer to more of the information printed in the book.  It said:

Files were altered. So were personal records, along with assignments and various coding and code words. Changing serial numbers ensured that those searching later would not be able to locate those who were involved in the recovery. Individuals were brought into Roswell from Alamogordo, Albuquerque and Los Alamos. The MP s were a special unit constructed of military police elements from Kirtland, Alamogordo, and Roswell. If the men didn’t know one another, or were separated after the event, they would be unable to compare notes and that would make the secret easier to keep.

Saunder's note on the flyleaf to The Truth
about the UFO Crash at Roswell.

Tim Saunders, on July 13, 2023, confirmed that the writing, and the signature were those of his father. In a comparison with notes and signatures in Patrick Saunders personal flight logs, it was obvious that the same hand had written both those flight log notations and the inscription on the flyleaf.

Tim Saunders. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle.

On the flyleaf to UFO Crash at Roswell, and sent on to his daughter, he wrote, "You were there! Love, Dad." It said:

TOP SECRET

Rickett, the senior counterintelligence man and the Provost Marshal walked the perimeter of the debris field examining the wreckage scattered there. Most of the pieces were small, no more than a few inches long and wide, but some measured a couple of feet on one side.

The came to one piece that was about two feet by two feet. According to Rickett, it was slightly curved. He locked it against his knew and tried to bend it or break it. The metal was very thin and very lightweight. Rickett couldn’t bend it at all. As they prepared to leave the crash site, the senior CIC agent turned to Rickett. "You and I were never out here," he said. "You and I never saw this. You don’t see any military people or military vehicles out here either."

"Yeah," Rickett agreed. We never even left the office."

Of course, it could be argued, and probably will be, that the messages are opened to interpretation. Here is a man who was at Roswell during the critical weeks suggesting, obliquely, that the information about the crash, retrieval and cover up is real. According to one letter I received from one of his children, Susan Saunders Simmons, her father had "At one point... bragged to me about how well he had covered the ‘paper trail’ associated with the clean up!"

Susan Saunder's letter about the Roswell UFO Crash.

And as happens all too often in this case, she wrote that they, Saunders’ children, were looking for his flight records. According to them, those records contained some relevant information but she didn’t tell me what, and it seems that the records provide no real clues about what had fallen near Corona.

In the months before he died, he confided in several close and lifelong friends that suddenly, the officers of the 509th Bomb Group were confronted with a technology greater than that of Earth. They, meaning the creatures in the flying saucers, had control of the sky. The Air Force was powerless against them. And they, the members of the Army Air Forces, had just seen the power of control of the sky. It was one of the factors that defeated the Axis Powers in the Second World War.

Saunders went on, telling people that military officials had no idea about what their, the pilots of the UFOs, intentions might be. Their technology was more advanced than that of the United States. Top military leaders didn't know if the alien beings were a threat so the government was reluctant to release anything about them.

He did warn those he talked with to be careful. He was aware of the threats that had been made and he believed that those making them were serious. Here was a retired Air Force officer who was warning his family to be careful about what they said and who they said it to. One of his daughters wrote, "...he asked me a lot of questions probably to see if, in fact, I had read [UFO Crash at Roswell] carefully. Then he wanted me to understand that he felt the threats to people who ‘talked’ were very real..."

Confirmation that Saunders talked about threats.

Tim Saunders reinforced this as well, telling me that his father was concerned about those threats. He suggested that his father sharing the information with the family could endanger them. He suggested his initial reluctance to talk about what he had seen in 1947.

So, once again, I’m confronted with information, from a reliable source, Patrick Saunders, through family members, that suggests that threats were made. The people who heard those threats believed them to be real, though I know of no instance when any of the threats were carried out.

I’ll note one other thing. When the Air Force was making their Roswell investigation, they did not interview Saunders, though they certainly had the chance. He wasn’t all that old, only 76, and while his heart might have been weakened, he certainly had the strength to sit through an interview with another Air Force officer.

There is another aspect to this as well. While Saunders did suggest that tales of little green men bogus, he provided a different take on it to family members. Tim Saunders told me that in the months prior to his father’s death, he did talk, briefly about alien bodies. According to Tim Saunders, his father said that there had been four bodies recovered and that he, Patrick Saunders, had seen them.

What's important here is that Saunders did not share this information with UFO researchers or outsiders at all. He kept it to himself, telling close friends and family only after the story had been told by so many others. It can't be said that he was seeking fame or fortune by creating a tale to put himself in the limelight. He told only his closest friends and family and cautioned them about revealing too much.

Saunders, when he prepared for his own funeral, added a note to his list of accomplishments, mentioning his role in Roswell. It was there beside the notes of his Air Force service, flying "the Hump" in the Chinese-Burmese-Indian Theater in the Second World War, and the list of the awards and decorations he acquired during his military service. Clearly the events in Roswell were important to him.

What we have now are several statements, written in his own hand, and shared with friends and family. Statements that suggest that Saunders was deeply involved in the Roswell events and they had nothing to do with a balloon, regardless of the mission of that balloon or who was claiming that it was a balloon.

The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony

(Blogger’s Note: I normally don’t publish press releases but this is an important book. It provides research on the viability of witness testimony. We all should be aware that sometimes what a witness says is not accurate. Sometimes it is a matter of perception and sometimes that witness testimony has been contaminated by hearing others or seeing other narratives. Those interested in investigating UFOs should be aware of the problems with witness testimony. Take a look at the book.)

 

The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony V.J. Ballester-Olmos & Richard W. Heiden (Eds.) For 76 years, casual observers around the world have reported sightings of aerial phenomena unexplainable to them. More elaborate personal experiences have been reported by others whose testimony speak of close interactions with fantastic flying machines that land, from which strange beings descend, and even kidnap the onlookers. In the absence of compelling physical evidence of the reality of these narrations, how should science study immaterial observations and test these claims? The very standard of reputable witness reliability is at stake here.

The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony is the first major book to comprehensively focus on the discussion and current views on problems and challenges posed by the reliability of UFO testimonies.

 This is a cross-disciplinary compendium of papers by 60 authors from 14 different countries. They are specialists in social, physical, and biological sciences, including psychology (predominantly) as well as psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, folklore, religion, journalism, engineering, computing, medicine, education, analysts with experience in the critical study of UFO perceivers, and other professionals. This volume shares thematically convergent ideas about the plausibility of alternate explanations for an alleged close-range UFO phenomenon.

The 57 chapters in this book are divided into seven section headings: Case Studies, Psychological Perspectives, On Witness Testimony, Empirical Research, Anthropological Approach, Metrics and Scaling, and Epistemological Issues. There, the subject matter is analyzed from statistical work to clinical assessment, psychometrics, comparative and evaluation inquiry, and other topic perspectives.

Some extracts from the Foreword, written by Dr. Leonard S. Newman, Professor of Psychology at Syracuse University:

The contributors to this book include some very smart people. There are all sorts of issues to which they could be devoting their intellectual energy, and all sorts of scholarly and research contributions they could make. They don’t have to write thoughtful and rigorous chapters for a book called The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony, but this is what they have done. And so, the work continues, as attested to by the papers in this volume. I’m not sure if there exists any collection of papers on any topic that can claim to comprehensively summarize everything that is currently known about it. But this one comes pretty close.

This 711-page book has been released online in the Academia.edu portal, from where it can be downloaded for free at:

https://www.academia.edu/101922617/The_Reliability_of_UFO_Witness_Testimony

Simultaneously, UPIAR Publishing House (Turin, Italy) has published two softcover, A4 format print editions, one in black & white, another in full color (ISBN: 9791281441002).

To purchase the book, go through this link: http://www.upiar.com/index.cfm?artID=201 Four outstanding academics have provided praise notes to this volume.

They wrote: Elizabeth Loftus, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Irvine, USA When ordinary citizens claim to have extraterrestrial encounters, such as seeing UFOs or meeting with alien beings, what should we think? Did the alien abduction really happen or was it a hoax? Is someone deliberately lying? Are they false memories? Readers will be enthralled by the fascinating case histories that are presented in The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony, a volume where sixty experts examine these issues with depth and insight. These cases teach us a great deal about how humans come to believe they have experienced bizarre events that may have never occurred at all.

Steven Jay Lynn, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Binghamton University (SUNY), USA This captivating book will appeal to anyone interested in UFOs (and who isn’t?), the vagaries of memory, eyewitness perception and misperception, critical analysis of puzzling phenomena, and evaluating scientific vs. pseudoscientific claims. This volume ranks in the elite category of essential reading for students, scientists, and the seriously curious among us, and therefore has my highest recommendation. Bravo!

Henry Otgaar, Ph.D., Professor of Legal Psychology, Maastricht University, the Netherlands, and Leuven Catholic University, Belgium Claims of UFO sightings and experiences continue to fascinate us. This book has collected a unique and diverse set of case studies and critical articles on how such experiences unfold and what the authenticity of these claims is. The collection of these different articles is truly groundbreaking and is the first-ever complete assemblage concerning the validity of UFO testimony.

Benjamin E. Zeller, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of Religion, Lake Forest College, Illinois, USA In referring to extraterrestrial contact, Carl Sagan said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This fine book seeks to contextualize what such evidence entails. Its contributors analyze UFO sightings and cases both famous and obscure, recent and historical, and quite international in scope. They draw from an impressive range of methodological, academic, and scientific perspectives, and consider such topics as the nature of cognition, memory, types of belief and testimony, psychology, and the rationality of belief. Skeptics, believers, and scholars of ufology will all find this book fascinating!

For additional information please contact: UPIAR Publisher: info@upiar.com Editor: V.J. Ballester-Olmos, ballesterolmos@yahoo.e 

Whistleblowers, Crash Retrievals and Me

 

I have to tell you that I find all this hysteria and awe over the revelations of the alleged whistleblower and some of his compatriots in all this talk of UFO crash retrievals to be somewhat funny. I have watched videos of alleged reporters listening to the uncorroborated tales of spaceship crashes and the retrieval of the alien flight crew and exclaim they have chills up and down their spines because of what they are hearing. It is as if none of this has been said before.

So, what is the difference here?

These latest tales are supposedly wrapped in the cloak of whistleblower testimony to members of Congress. Of course, that’s not new either. There have been meetings between witnesses to the strange events and Congress in the past. Jesse Marcel, Jr., who actually handled bits of the debris recovered by his father on that ranch northwest of Roswell in 1947 was invited to the hill. Get that? It was not some guy who had heard stories, but the actual witness himself, telling these Congressional representatives what he had seen himself.

Don Schmitt and I talked with Jesse Marcel, Jr. on several cases. We heard him describe the material that he had handled. We heard about the strange symbols he had seen on some of it. And we heard about the strength of some of that debris.

We talked with Bill Brazel, the son of the man who reported the crash to the authorities in Roswell. He told us of material that mimicked fiber optics long before fiber optics existed. He talked of material that was as light as balsa and that he couldn’t even get a sliver with a pocket knife that he was to cut barbed wire. And he told us of a foil that, when wadded into a ball, it would return to its original shape.

Bill Brazel, who handled some of the
metallic debris.

Get it? We were talking with the people who handled the material and we were naming names. And, we have it all on audio, and in some cases, videotape. And we have affidavits signed by those witnesses attesting to the validity of what they said.

As for the tales of alien flight crew recovered, one of the new crop of journalists, or story tellers, said that in his reporting he had left out some of that information because it was too sensational. Thirty years ago, Don Schmitt and I not only reported on the retrieval of the alien flight crews, we named names. We had testimony from officers who had served with the 509^th Bomb Group in Roswell talk of alien bodies.

Of course, Jesse Marcel, Sr., the air intelligence officer of the 509^th, was the first to talk of the retrieval. He started the ball rolling. I talked with the base Provost Marshal, Edwin Easley, who retired as a colonel, who told me that he had been sworn to secrecy about what had happened. But who also told me when I asked if we were following the right path, meaning we thought it was extraterrestrial, he said, “Well, it’s not the wrong path.”

Major Jesse Marcel, Sr.

Both Don Schmitt and I talked to Brigadier Arthur Exon, one time the base commander at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. He confirmed for us that it was the crash of an alien craft and that bodies were recovered. Although he had not seen the bodies himself, those he knew and trusted at Wright Patterson said there had been bodies. Here was an Air Force brigadier general confirming the Roswell crash… And did I mention that he had flown over the two crash sites, which, of course was first hand testimony.

Brigadier General Arthur Exon

And for those who believe that a weather balloon and rawin radar reflector was the cause all the hoopla in Roswell, Colonel Thomas DuBose (later brigadier general) told us that the material in the pictures was not the material recovered at Roswell. He was there, in Fort Worth, when the pictures were taken, and was even on one of them.

Colonel Thomas DuBose with BG Raney
with the weather balloon.

Let’s not forget the story told by the late Senator Barry Goldwater, a brigadier general in the Reserve. He had asked his pal, General Curtis LeMay about the so-called Blue Room at Wright-Patterson AFB. This was an area that was claimed to house alien artifacts, and maybe even alien bodies. LeMay’s response wasn’t to laugh at Goldwater, but to deny him permission to enter and that if he ever asked again, he, Goldwater would be court martialed. I don’t how LeMay would have done that because the publicity would reveal the secret. Goldwater confirmed the story on several occasions.

Of course, I can go on. I spoke to a brigadier general, in the Pentagon. Yes, he was in the Pentagon and so were Don Schmitt and me. Of course, we weren’t very deep inside the building and the discussion didn’t last very long, but he did tell us that he couldn’t get at the Roswell files but did confirm they exist. How is this information any different that the uncorroborated tales told by the new whistleblowers?

As an Air Force intelligence officer, and later as an Army intelligence officer, those who knew me, knew of my interest in UFOs. They would tell me things that they heard. One of the wildest stories, one that I just didn’t report on because, like what we have today, I can’t validate it. I know of no reason the man would invent the tale and he told me merely because he believed I wouldn’t ridicule his story.

Although he wouldn’t give me a location or an exact date, he said that he had been on TDY because he held an undergraduate degree in biology, and while there were other officers who had the same training, they simply didn’t have the same level of security clearances and sometimes that is the limiting factor. There were other officers with better training but they couldn’t get the necessary clearances in the necessary time frame.

He had been flown to the famous undisclosed location, had gone through a rigorous decontamination process to ensure that he wouldn’t be carrying any, and he used the term, human genetic material, into the clean room. He was suited up, and while guards stood outside, he entered that sterile environment. He had thirty minutes to examine the specimen. Again, that was his word.

The being was humanoid, but clearly not human. He didn’t supply much in the way of a description. Ironically, he did say that the skin had a greenish tint. The being wasn’t exactly green and my source wasn’t sure if the color was the result of decomposition or the attempts to preserve the unique biological sample, which, given this was the military he called a UBS.

He couldn’t tell much about it and realized that he was out of his depth. True, he had the degree in biology, again, this was a unique sample. His examination was superficial. He said that the head was light-bulb shaped, the eyes were small and he wondered if they came from a world with bright sunlight. The being was five to five-five. The hands contained six fingers that were long and thin and looked almost like tiny tentacles.

At that point, I think he realized that he was telling me more than he should have. He grinned and just asked, “What do you think?”

I had heard several similar stories, meaning tales of alien bodies including one in which the man, a retired officer, told me about meeting with a living alien creature. I’m not sure if they creature had been found near Roswell or was from some other event. He also mentioned that he had been sent to Roswell in the very early 1950s to go through the records at the base to remove and destroy any that hinted of the unusual events of July 1947.

There isn’t a lot of consistency in these sorts of tales. I just stuffed them and search for some sort of confirmation, which, of course, I have not found. Just a tales told as we discussed lots of other things. Just stories dropped into conversation every now and then.

So, what do you do with all this? Well, I forgot about it until we started to hear more about whistleblowers and tales of alien crash retrievals and dead alien pilots they tell today. There is no real substance to these stories. They are just tales told by one officer to another or hinted at in other discussions. In that first case, both of us had, at the time, top-secret clearances and even though I am interested in UFOs, there was a hint that the story shouldn’t be repeated.

And that’s where we are today. A couple of guys, identified as whistleblowers, hinting at such stories, as if this is something new. They provide nothing to be checked but promise more. At least Don Schmitt, Tom Carey and I, when reporting these tales, provide names, dates, locations and often have taped backup, which can be supplied to prove that we aren’t inventing the tales.

So, if you wish to read about crash retrievals, (a term created by the late Len Stringfield decades ago), take a look at what we have learned, from some highly placed sources who we identify… and if you wonder why the Air Force, during their investigation in 1995 ignored some of the information and recordings supplied by named, high-ranking officers that we offered to them, I believe the answer is obvious. The Air Force didn’t want to call retired, high-ranking officers liars.

David Grusch and the Canadian Letter

 

For all those who had asked, yes, I have seen the Canadian letter that George Knapp and Jeremy Corbell talked about. Yes, it is interesting, but not necessarily for the reasons some have suggested. And while it is interesting, it doesn’t, exactly, validate the information shared by David Grusch but does suggest an interest in the topic of UFO crashes by a Canadian government official.

George Knapp

Oh, and while some have questioned the authenticity of the letter, it is real.

In the last several weeks, we have been bombarded by UFO stories, NASA committee meetings and Senate hearings. Although nothing of real substance came from the meetings, hearings and now this letter, it does suggest a change in attitude. The letter does not confirm what David Crush was saying, but it does demonstrate a new interest in the topic at the higher levels of various governments. No longer are we subjected to the tongue-in-the-cheek snide comments by educated people who are too sophisticated to believe that UFOs might represent an alien technology. Now, we see those educated people wondering if the information leaking might not have an undercurrent of legitimacy. Just maybe this is something that should be watched.

I see from the various Internet discussions I have with colleagues around the world, that all this demands a cautious approach. We don’t want to be overly enthusiastic about the information without having the opportunity to vet that information. We need sources and documents to do that.

There is one point in the Canadian Letter that I haven’t seen addressed anywhere and that refers to a 1950 interest in the topic. A Manitoba member of Parliament, Larry Maguire, wrote to the Canadian Minister of Defence, concerning the new or renewed interest in what is now called UAPs. The sentence that caught my eye said, “As Minister of National Defence, you may not be aware Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) has participated in efforts to analyze UAP [UFO], which is publicly traceable to circa 1950.”

Larry Maguire

It was the 1950 date that drew my attention because that seems to relate to what has become known as the Sarbacher episode. According to William Steinman, he received a copy of an interview between Robert I. Sarbacher and Wilbert B. Smith that was conducted on September 15, 1950. The interview notes apparently were made by Lieutenant Colonel Bremer:

Smith: I am doing some work on the collapse of the earth’s magnetic field as a source of energy, and I think our work may have a bearing on the flying saucers.

Sarbacher: What do you want to know?

Smith: I have read Scully’s book [Behind the Flying Saucers] on the saucers and I would like to know how much of it is true.

Sarbacher: The facts reported in the book are substantially true.

Smith: Then the saucers exist?

Sarbacher: Yes, they exist.

Smith: Do they operate as Scully suggests on magnetic principles?

Sarbacher: We have not been able to duplicate their performance.

Smith: Do they come from some other planet?

Sarbacher: All we know is, we didn’t make them, and it’s pretty certain they didn’t originate on earth.

Smith: I understand the whole subject of saucers is classified.

Sarbacher: Yes, it is classified two points higher than the H-bomb. In fact it is the most highly classified subject in the U.S. Government at the present time.

Smith: May I ask the reason for the classification?

Sarbacher: You may ask, but I can’t tell you.

There was a final note that said the interview was written from memory but he, and I don’t know which he it was, though I suspect it was Lieutenant Colonel Bremer who “tried to keep it as nearly verbatum [sic] as possible.”

Steinman contacted Sarbacher about the conversation. Sarbacher confirmed that the interview had taken place. Steinman followed up with additional questions, which Sarbacher answered. On November 29, 1983, Sarbacher sent a letter to Steinman. The pertinent parts of that letter follow:

Relating to my own experiences regarding recovered flying saucers, I had no association with any of the people involved in the recovery [Steinman had supplied a list of names who were alleged members of MJ-12] and have no knowledge regarding the dates of recovery.

I did receive some official reports when I was in my office at the Pentagon but all those were left there as at the time, we were never supposed to take them out of the office.

About the only thing I remember at this time is that certain material reported to have come from flying saucer crashes were extremely light and tough.

I will note here that this exchange took place in 1983, after the publication of The Roswell Incident, but the idea of UFO crashes was not wide spread in the general public and I have no way of knowing if Sarbacher was familiar with the story. It was only after 1990 that the Roswell information exploded.

However, and relevant to the discussion is information reported by others. According to Dr. Bruce Maccabee and Jerry Clark, Sarbacher was “ignorant of UFO history.” They reported that he didn’t even know what Project Blue Book was, which suggests that Sarbacher had not been contaminated by all the reporting about the Roswell crash.

Sarbacher, in that same letter, wrote, “I remember in talking with some of the people at the office that I got the impression these ‘aliens’ were constructed like certain insects we have observed on earth, wherein because of the low mass the inertial forces involved in operation of these instruments would be quite low.”

This story received widespread coverage in the UFO community. Both Stan Friedman and Jerry Clark contacted Sarbacher and he confirmed the accuracy of what Steinman had reported, meaning that the notes and conclusions were accurate, but the information might be considered speculative. It was also noted that Sarbacher’s information was all second hand. He had read reports, he had talked with people involved but he had seen nothing himself.

There is one other important point. Sarbacher had been a member of the Research and Development Board, where some of the UFO information had been discussed. T. Scott Crain interviewed Fred A. Darwin who had served as the executive director of the board. Darwin told Crain:

Bob Sarbacher… had virtually no connection with the activities of the Research and Development Board… I got Bob appointed to membership on the Guidance and Control Panel. After a couple of months, the Chairman requested his replacement; he never came to the meetings.

This does not, of course, negate what Sarbacher had written to Steinman and told others. It only suggests that his information about the flying saucer crashes falls into the category of hearsay rather than observation.

I believe that the reference in Maguire’s letter was to this information, the Canadian connection to it and a desire to ensure that proper authorities in Canada were aware of some of the UFO history.

What this letter tells me is that Maguire was concerned about Canadian involvement in the renewed interest in UFOs, and that he wanted to alert the Defence Minister about it, in case he wasn’t current on UFO history.

While the letter does mention the renewed interest in UFOs, and the US Congress interest in the topic, it says nothing about the reliability of David Grusch’s information. And, if he was referring to the 1950 information, I suspect he was, then this does little to validate that data. We are left right where we began, which is without public corroboration of Grusch’s claims. It is just another instant of second-hand stories that seem to provide important clues about UFOs and it does suggest where some of the information that Grusch talks about originated. It just is not the smoking gun that we need.

Update on Grusch on June 25

 

On June 25, there was another video put up on YouTube about David Grush and his claims of captured or retrieved alien craft, and the bodies of the alien pilots. It is a long interview and you can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVjzYwQDzeg&t=1144s

Here’s one of the things I found interesting. They made it clear that Grush had not been before a senate committee and he apparently had not talked to any of the senators. He did meet with senators’ staffs and answered their questions. It also seems that he met with, and was questioned by members of the House. I don’t know how long that session, or those sessions, lasted. I will not speculate about his being under oath or if those sessions were somewhat less formal.

I will also note that in the above commentary, there was discussion of the body language analyses that have been done. I did watch one and it seemed the conclusion was a more or less, “I don’t know.” There were no significant indications of lying, but there were hints that he might not have been comfortable with what he was saying. Well, if he’s spilling secrets, I can imagine that some of the questions might have made him nervous.

Here's the thing about this that I simply do not understand. He is not the first person with interesting credentials to make these claims. I too, have talked with military officers who have some knowledge of UFOs, crash retrievals, and the recovery of the alien flight crews.

Brigadier Arthur Exon told me about the material from the Roswell crash being taken to Wright Field, later Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He said that he talked with those involved in the analysis of the material. He said, “We heard the material was coming to Wright Field.”

Brigadier General Arthur Exon

I asked about bodies and General Exon said, “There was another location… where they did say there were bodies… they were all found outside the craft but were in fairly good condition.”

And he said that one of the bodies had been taken to Lowry Army Air Field near Denver because the Army had a mortuary service there. They would know the best way to preserve what might be a unique biological sample. Exon said all this on audio tape.

I asked him, specifically and he told me, “Roswell was the recovery of a craft from space.” I have a letter from him in which he acknowledges that all the quotes in the book, UFO Crash at Roswell were accurate and this is one of those quotes.

The point is that here is an Air Force general acknowledging that the military had recovered a craft not built on Earth and piloted by beings who were not human. Yet this information was of no interest to the main stream media and our attempts to share that information with the Air Force during their investigation was not acknowledged.

Chester Lytle had a distinguished career. He was involved in creating the trigger for the first atomic bombs, helped develop hydrofoil technology and was a colleague of William Blanchard who was the commanding officer in Roswell in July 1947. Don Schmitt and I interviewed Lytle several times and he shared with us several UFO stories in which he was one of the primary witnesses. The most important thing he said, however, he told to Robert Hastings, who reported it in his book UFOs and Nukes.

According to Hastings, Lytle told him as he, Lytle, was making an emergency trip to Chicago on an Air Force transport, Blanchard, traveling with him, told him a little more about the strange craft that had been found in Roswell in 1947. Blanchard, who was the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force in the 1960s, told Lytle that a spacecraft had crashed near his base and that there had been four bodies recovered.

Hastings wrote, “Startled by Lytle’s unexpected admission, I [Hastings] asked, ‘Blanchard actually told you that the Roswell object was an alien spacecraft?’ Lytle replied emphatically, ‘Oh, absolutely!’”

Patrick Saunders, who was the adjutant at the Roswell Army Air Field in 1947, bought copies of both UFO Crash at Roswell and The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell. He wrote on the flyleaf of one of those books, “Here’s the truth and I still haven’t told anybody anything!” He signed with “Pat.”

On that page, with a heading of “Damage Control, was a description of some of the activities at the RAAF. It said:

Files were altered. So were personal records, along with assignments and various codings and code words… After the impact site was cleaned, the soldiers were debriefed, and the bodies and the craft removed, silence fell. It would not be broken for almost forty-five years.

Patrick Saunders statement about the accuracy
of the information included in the book.

And not to drag this out much longer, Edwin Easley, who was the Provost Marshal in Roswell, told me that he had been sworn to secrecy, that Mack Brazel (the man who reported the wreckage to the base) had been held in the base guest house for a number of days, confirming that end of the story, and mentioned “the creatures,” to family members just prior to his death in the 1990s.

The real point here is that in the last few weeks we have been bombarded by reports from David Grusch about what he heard from sources he refuses to identify, and that the US Government has, in its possession both craft and bodies from an alien source. But this is exactly what Don and I reported in the early 1990s complete with the names of sources and documentation confirming the credentials of those sources. Yet the main street media is acting as if this is something new.

I might add here, that I served as both an Army and an Air Force intelligence officer. I served in Iraq and was decorated with the Bronze Star Medal and the Combat Action Badge. In other words, I have some of the same credentials as does Grusch, and when Don and I published our books on Roswell, the response from the media was underwhelming.

My research, and Don’s research didn’t end there. I have since published Roswell in the 21^st Century and Understanding Roswell, which I believe bring the whole of that case into sharper focus. And before someone mentions the nonsensical Mogul explanation for the debris recovered, I might suggest you consult both the books which demonstrate that Mogul is not a viable answer.

If you are starved for names, dates, sources and documentation, these books provide it and as my old nemesis used to say, “It only takes one case to prove that UFOs are extraterrestrial.” Roswell is that case and the evidence overlooked for decades is out there for those interested in reading about it.

David Grusch and the 1933 Italian UFO Crash

 

One of the problems we face after David Grusch began his whistle blowing campaign is that he provided almost no information about his sources, about the UFO crash retrievals he alleged were real and provided no documents to support his claims. All that was coming but given the rules, regulations and laws, he was unable to produce any of the required information that would allow us to vet anything he said and validate his tale.

However, we can deduce some of this by comments he has made, especially during the interview that was broadcast on one of the fledgling all-news cable channels. I’m going to ignore his comment about “The Program,” which might or might not be the real name of a clandestine program because there just isn’t enough information about it to make any analysis meaningful. I will say, however, that we know about Project Moon Dust that had a UFO component, and that after the name was compromised in the mid-1980s, the name was changed and we were told that even the name was classified. Not that the project had been cancelled, only that the name had been changed and was still gathering UFO related material under umbrella of national security.

David Grusch and his military resume.

Grusch did name two UFO crashes. He mentioned both a crash in Italy in 1933 and, of course, Roswell. There was no danger in mentioning Roswell because of the controversy wrapped around the story. While the government explanation was Project Mogul, the available documentation eliminates that answer. I have written about that explanation of Roswell for, literally, decades, and believe there is no viable, terrestrial explanation for what was recovered. For those who wish to pursue my reasons for that, I suggest typing Mogul into the search engine here, or read either Roswell in the 21^st Century or Understanding Roswell.

The real trouble comes from the reference to the 1933 crash in Italy. I had not heard about this and I have spent decades researching claims of UFO crashes. The Italian story comes from documents, received anonymously in the mail by Italian researchers. This smacks of the tales of MJ-12, documents that were received anonymously in the mail by American researchers. Those documents are considered to hoaxes by the majority of UFO researchers today.

Briefly, Grusch said that the UFO was retrieved in northern Italy in 1933, and was recovered by Mussolini’s fascist government. The Pope learned about it and told the US government. The material was recovered by the US after the end of the Second World War.

The story of the 1933 crash, as told by Roberto Pinotti, an Italian journalist and UFO researcher, was that the object fell in Magenta, Lambardy, Italy, on April 11, 1933. The object was described as “saucer-like” and the event resulted in an investigation by an Italian intelligence unit called RS/33 Cabinet. The UFO was stored in the hangars of SIAI Marchetti in Vergiate. Mussolini believed the craft was a secret weapon of either the Nazis or the Allies.

Pope Pius XII learned of the craft and may have been told about it by Mussolini himself. When Mussolini signed a treaty with Hitler, the Pope worried about the craft and told the US about the object. It was after the war that the craft made its way to the United States.

Lue Elizondo, who was involved in UFO investigations, said that he had seen documents from Mussolini’s office that he found, “compelling.” He seemed to suggest that the craft might not have been alien but was some sort of advanced craft using jet engines that had been developed by the Nazis. The timing, however, doesn’t seem to fit. April 1933 is too early for the development of the jet engines and the design might have been something created by the Horten brothers attempts to build a “tailless” aircraft.

There were tales of bodies that made their way, and I say allegedly here, to Wright Field. They were badly mangled, looking as if they had been in a car wreck, but whose heads were fairly intact. They were seven feet tall, had long blonde hair, clear blue eyes, small noses, small mouths, thin lips and no signs facial hair.  The conclusion, based on the examination of those bodies was that they were not human.

One of the gates to Wright-Patterson AFB. Photo by Kevin Randle.

Now here is a connection that will raise a few eyebrows. There is an account from another source to corroborate some of these details. William Brophy, said that his father, who was a lieutenant colonel, had seen the bodies at some point and told him, the son, about them. Yes, this is the same Lieutenant Colonel Brophy who supposedly flew over, or landed near, or was somehow a witness to the 1945 UFO crash described by Jacques Vallee in this book about the San Antonio (Trinity) crash. The younger Brophy’s entry into this case taints it, just as it has the San Antonio crash.

At any rate, this is the tale of the 1933 crash, not cluttered up with any sort of corroboration except for those documents that have been floating around for decades. The trouble there, according to an Italian researcher, Giuseppe Stilo, writing in UFO Rivista di Informazione Ufoligica, those documents are faked. The documents arrived anonymously and were reported to have originated in “archival sources that no one has been able to identify and verify.”

Another problem is that those holding what has been termed “The Fascist Files,” is that disinterested third parties, in this case the CISU (Centro Italiano Studi Ufogici, an Italian research group) requested an opportunity to examine the documents but that has not happened in more than twenty years.

Also disturbing, is the lack of citation of the sources. We have dealt here, on this blog, with anonymous sources in various public arenas and more often than not, when the original source is identified the information attributed to that source has been distorted, or worse, the source denied the information.

A second article, “Fascist files” Under Scrutiny, by Massimiliano Grandi, published in UFO Rivista di Informazione Ufoligica (number 29) provided more information on these documents. Published with the article are photos of the documents which demonstrates there are documents, but that doesn’t mean they are authentic because the originals have not been subjected to independent forensic examination. This is the same problem we had with the MJ-12 documents. The originals were not available for disinterested third party examination.

Grandi provides additional arguments about the authenticity of the documents and the failure to corroborate any of the sources or other information. He concludes, however:

…we would like to firmly reiterate that despite the critical tones – the intent of those who want to study such an affair cannot be to try to prove the ‘falsity’ of those papers. This would be illogical. This falsity is not proven now, but it was intended to point out that there are numerous serious weaknesses in the reasons made to support the importance of the documents.

On the basis of the evidence so far produced, we believe that an Abrahamic faith is indeed required to condition the conclusions drawn by Pinotti and Lissoni about the contents of these documents.

Or, in other words, they found nothing to indicate that the documents were authentic and without additional information, the case for the 1933 crash and retrieval is not proven. It is up to the supporters to provide that proof and for more than twenty years they have failed to do so.

If this revelation about the 1933 Italian UFO crash is accurate, then it casts a shadow over the whistle blower who suggested that he learned it from his inside sources. It means that he accepted the original publication of the material without critical thought or even making a basic Internet search because he assumed that the information was accurate. It would seem that an insider, with access to what must be highly classified information, would have been aware of the controversy surrounding this case. He wouldn’t have mentioned it as one of two that he believed to be authentic.

Since he didn’t mention the names of any of his sources, we are unable to vet them and their reliability. We now enter an area of speculation. I have run into information that Grusch had spent time at the Skinwalker Ranch. Jerry Clark had mentioned to me that linking Grusch to Skinwalker as a way of questioning his credibility was unfair. Many have traveled to Skinwalker. But my point wasn’t about the paranormal research going on there, but who conducted the research and who had visited there. That put Grusch in touch with some formerly high-ranking government and military officials, not to mention Bigelow Aerospace. Remember, Grusch had talked about some of the evidence of the crashes and the recovery of material from those crashes had been provided to corporate America. One of those specifically named by sources other than Grusch was Bigelow Aerospace.

Given that connection, then it follows that we can deduce some of the names of those involved, and we can deduce some of the other crashes that might have been mentioned. Given where some of the information has recently surfaced that included the names of Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, I believe that one of those crashes is the 1945 claim of the recovery of a craft near San Antonio, New Mexico. The story was told by two men, who had been boys in 1945, who saw the craft crash, saw the wrecked craft on the ground, the alien creatures that flew it, and the Army recovery operation.

Although the story has been accepted by some very smart people, some of them who have been around the UFO field for decades, Douglas Dean Johnson, in a comprehensive investigation that does cite sources and does provide documentation, has thoroughly debunked the tale. The shifting nature of the important features of the story suggest it is untrue. Tom Carey recorded an interview with Reme Baca, one of those witnesses, before the story received any wide spread treatment and the recording is of an event that doesn’t match much of the later story. You can read Johnson’s research and listen to Carey’s interview and analysis by other, disinterested third parties here:

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-file-the-reme-baca-smoking-gun-interview/

https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/crash-story-the-trinity-ufo-crash-hoax/

https://www.davidhalperin.net/

Given the direction of all this, I wonder if the Del Rio UFO crash in northern Mexico, just across the border from Texas, isn’t on the list. This tale appears in the MJ-12 Eisenhower Briefing Document as one of the authentic crashes, though they have moved it from Del Rio to the south, in the area of El Indio/Guerrero. There are those who believe the story because a retired Air Force colonel was the one who told it and he signed an affidavit attesting to the authenticity of his information. However, it turned out the witness, Robert Willingham, was not an Air Force colonel and his story had more changes than that of Reme Baca. You can read about how it unraveled here and that will also provide links to other Willingham and MJ-12 analysis:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/06/mj-12-and-cognitive-dissonance.html

I would guess that another of the crashes that Grusch might promote is the Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, event of December 9, 1965. Stan Gordon has spent decades in research of this case and is convinced that it was an alien spacecraft that crashed. Leslie Kean, along with Gordon attempted to recover records of the crash from NASA. Gordon has found many people who saw part of the final flight of what he thinks of as alien spacecraft. I too, thought that this was one of the best UFO crash stories, and Gordon has produced some compelling evidence. However, in the world today, the answer for that event might be a meteor. A bolide, which is a very bright meteor, fell about that time, with remnants found in southern Canada.

Stan Gordon of Kecksburg UFO Crash fame.

I wonder if Shag Harbour might not be on the list. This case had many witnesses who saw something fall into Shag Harbour in 1967. There was both a law enforcement response as well as a military one. The object was not recovered, and the evidence seems to suggest that it eventually managed to leave the harbour for deeper waters. Not so much of a crash as an emergency landing. There are many witnesses, as I noted, and there are many official documents about it. Chris Styles and Don Ledger are responsible for finding the documentation and the other information that suggests that this was an anomalous event.

These are some of the obvious tales of UFO crashes that had received mention in various books, magazine articles and TV documentaries. These are the prominent ones that many accept as authentic crashes. There are some lesser known crashes that might make the list such as the one over Las Vegas in April, 1962.

There was a report of a “brilliant red explosion” over Las Vegas that was witnessed by dozens, if not hundreds. Couple this to events in Utah of an oval-shaped craft landing and then taking off, and there is a hint of a “forced landing,” if not an actual crash. Sheriff’s deputies told me of a search for the downed craft that was never located. At this point, my investigation suggests that the Las Vega end of it was a bolide that exploded in the upper atmosphere.

I suppose I could go on with this speculation, but without Grusch telling us what specific events he had encountered, what he had heard from those highly-placed sources, and what is on those documents that he has seen but hasn’t produced, all we can do is speculate.

What I do know at this point is that Grusch’s mention of the Italian crash calls part of his story and one or more of his sources into question. Insiders would know the truth about this case, if they had heard about it. That casts something of a shadow over his whistle blowing.

However, those of us who have been around the UFO field long enough have been fooled by sources that seem to have inside information, only to learn that their sources were no better than ours. The UFO field is littered with the tall tales that, originally looked good but have fallen when better research was presented. Four of the most recent examples are the MJ-12 documents, the Alien Autopsy, the Project Mogul explanation for Roswell, and what I have called the Roswell Slides. The truth about all these has been published and you can read about it on this blog by typing in the keywords, or read about in my latest books about Roswell mentioned earlier.

At this point, I’m hopeful that Grusch will be able to provide the information we need to vet his tales, but as we said in the military, “Hope is not an option.” All I can really say is there are a few red flags but these simply are not enough to reject the information that Grusch has provided. As Jerry Clark said to me, we do need to wait to see how this plays out and where the truth finally is found.