Roswell Revisited

So where are we today? Is the case for an alien spacecraft crash northwest of Roswell stronger or weaker after all the investigation, all the study and all the witnesses who told stories for their own amusement? Just what does the evidence tell us about Roswell that we didn’t know before and how does it help us understand the situation?

To answer these, and other similar questions, I’ll make a quick recap of the strongest to weakest evidence against, and then the strongest to weakest evidence for. Each reader will have to decide for him or herself which side of the fence to come down on. Each reader will have to set his or her own standards of evidence to decide.

Finally, because it is a question that I’m asked frequently, and given the nature of the case, one that comes from the changing landscape. I’ll point out which witnesses I still believe, which have been discredited to everyone’s satisfaction, and give a quick opinion on some other aspects of the Roswell case. These will be, of course, those who haven’t appeared in other sections of this book.

Documentation Against

To me, and I believe a large number of people, the strongest evidence against the crash is the documentation that is available in a large number of formally classified documents,especially those authored by or attributed to Colonel Howard McCoy and whose provenance is unquestioned. McCoy was, in the late 1940s, one of the few people who should have known about a flying saucer crash if one had taken place. His statements in high level meetings where the notes and minutes were kept and then classified and eventually unclassified, tell us a great deal.

McCoy’s statements in late 1947 and early 1948, including “So far no physical evidence of the existence of the unidentified sightings has been obtained… The possibility that the reported objects are vehicles from another planet has not been ignored. However, tangible evidence to support conclusions about such a possibility are completely lacking…” is quite important. There is no equivocation here. He is saying that he knows of no evidence that is suggestive of an alien space craft crash. The statement is strong and positive.

Less impressive are statements in the Air Intelligence Report No. 100-203-79. While it is true that they say nothing about any crash recovered debris, it is also true that the authors report they didn’t have access to everything out there. Because they didn’t see everything, and because they acknowledged that they didn’t see everything, it is quite possible that if Roswell was a real crash, they might not have had access to it. Although they held top secret clearances, it could be argued they didn’t have the need to know this particular top secret so they were not privy to it.

Arguments then, by the skeptics, that the officers writing the report would not lie to their superiors means there was no crash do not completely work. The men writing the report were not given access to everything and therefore could write with complete honesty that there were areas they simply could not penetrate. This, unfortunately for the skeptics, leaves the door open for a crash.

Similarly, the Twining Letter is not quite as definitive as it could have been. Brigadier General Schulgen, in Washington, D.C., asked Lieutenant General Twining for an assessment of the flying saucer hysteria. Twining responded saying that the phenomenon, that is, flying saucers, is real. He also noted that they had been an absence of crash recovered debris. That seems to be a fairly strong statement because Twining, as the commander of the Air Materiel Command, and to whose facilities the recovered debris and bodies of alien creatures would have been brought according to many witnesses, would, quite naturally, have known all about it. That he mentioned the lack of crash recovered debris seems to put a nail in the Roswell coffin.

The problem here, and I freely admit it is splitting a few fine hairs, is that the original document is classified secret, that it is being prepared for a lower-ranking officer, and that it is possible to accomplish the mission (here the establishment of an investigation into the nature of flying saucers) without revealing everything that he, Twining (or more probably, his subordinates who were told to write the letter for his signature) knows. He can, in the words of the skeptics, lie to the subordinate general without compromising the mission. In fact, he can accomplish all he wants without risking compromising the BIG secret.

Can we point to any examples in history? Of course. First, there was the breaking of many of the Japanese codes used during the Second World War. Those who knew this secret, and a vital, maybe the most important secret of the war in the Pacific, routinely lied to others to help keep that secret. I don’t believe anyone would fault them for that.

During the Cold War the FBI had a highly classified mission called Operation Solo. An American, because the Soviets believed him to be an important communist leader in the United States, was given access to the highest levels of the Soviet leadership. He was briefed and consulted by the most powerful men in the Soviet Union about many topics, and the man known as Solo reported it all to the FBI.

This was so highly classified that even presidents didn’t know about the operation. With the exception of Gerald Ford, presidents were not told where some of the most critical information they had originated (For those who want to know why Ford was told, it was because he was going to a critical meeting with his Soviet counterparts and seemed to lack confidence in the information he was given. To build up that confidence, Ford was told of the operation.) So, for Twining not to tell Schulgen everything he knew about flying saucers is not without precedence in both the civilian and military worlds.

The Air Force, apparently reacting to the probe launched by the GAO under pressure from New Mexico Congressman Steven Schiff, made their own investigations of the Roswell case in the mid-1990s. This was ordered by the then Secretary of the Air Force, Sheila E. Widnall. They produced two reports, one suggesting that what fell in Roswell was a balloon array from the then top secret Project Mogul.

In the other they included an explanation for some of the stories of the bodies which relied on the experiments conducted over New Mexico using anthropomorphic dummies. These dummies, dropped from high altitude began falling in 1952, but none fell near Roswell before 1957. The Air Force explained that “time compression” accounted for the discrepancy between the believe something had happened in 1947 and the actual events some years later.

Witnesses for the Opposition

Of lesser importance than the documentation, are some of the witnesses found by UFO researchers, or who have come forward to tell what they knew, or didn’t know. Again, starting with the most important and working to the less important, we will be able to access their impact.

Former captain, Doctor (as in Ph.D) Lorenzo Kent Kimball, was the medical supply officer at Roswell in July 1947. He worked at the hospital, knew the doctors and nurses, and probably many of the enlisted men who worked there. He would have hung around with the pilots and other officers of the command and would have been in a position to know about any unusual activity at the base. He is emphatic in his opinion that nothing happened, that the story of the preliminary autopsy at Roswell is false, and that the whole idea of a flying saucer crash is without merit.

He wrote in an Internet article that he had talked to a number of pilots who were in Roswell in 1947 and all said that nothing happened. He found no one to corroborate the story and was, I suppose the right work is livid, about the suggestion that anything like a flying saucer crash had taken place in Roswell.

Of lesser importance is the interview with Bessie Brazel Schrieber who was the daughter of Mack and who said she was at the ranch in July 1947. She said that she helped her father, along with her brother Vernon, pick up the remnants of what she believes was a balloon. She said that they put everything into four burlap sacks and stored it under the porch. She said that her father didn’t return to Roswell and didn’t stay there over night. Her story is in conflict with not only her brother, Bill’s story, but is contradicted by the newspaper articles printed in July 1947. Those articles do mention that she, her mother and brother helped clean the field, they also contain an interview with her father conducted in Roswell at the very time she said he was at home.

Finally, and probably least important is the testimony of Walt Whitmore, Jr., the man called Reluctant by Karl Pflock. When he talked to Pflock, and to me, he told of getting directions to the debris from Mack Brazel who had stayed the night at his father’s house. Right here we have a conflict in the skeptical witnesses. Bessie Brazel said her father was not in Roswell overnight, yet, Whitmore said he was and saw him at his father’s, Whitmore’s house.

Whitmore said, that Mack Brazel told him of the wreck and gave him directions to the ranch and the Debris Field. Using those directions, he drove to the Debris Field, found it, and recovered several small pieces of debris. He told Pflock, and he told me, that what he had found were bits of balloon. For years he’d kept them in his safe deposit box, but then moved them to his house where they were stored in his “junk” room.

He was never able to produce it. He had plans to display it in Roswell and seemed unconcerned that he was on the record as saying that when he arrived at the Debris Field, it had already been cleared by the Army.

Documentation for the UFO Crash

What might be the best piece of documentation is the Ramey Memo. We have a provenance for it because we can see Ramey holding it in a picture that we know was taken on July 8, 1947. Anyone looking at a good quality blow up of the picture can see there is writing on the document and with only a magnifying glass, we can see some words.

If the interpretation of the memo is accurate, and that is a big if, then the debate must switch from the Mogul balloons to something much more astonishing. If the interpretation is accurate, then there were “victims” of the wreck, there is talk of the beginning of a cover up, and there is a suggestion this all is linked to the flying disks meaning the flying saucers. If it is accurate, then we can begin trying to learn who those victims were and what the disk was.

On the down side, is, of course, the problem with the interpretation of the memo. Clearly is it not universally held. Skeptics, and some pro-UFO researchers, have suggested that the interpretation is more in the eye of the investigator than on the document itself.

There are, of course, those first newspaper reports where it was declared that the Army had captured a flying saucer. The words were unequivocal. They had a flying saucer. These were the first of the articles and it will be argued, with some justification, that the later reports are the more accurate ones. Though the explanation does seem a little thin.

And to be fair, I must note that Brigadier General Thomas DuBose, who was in Ramey’s office at the time did suggest that those later newspaper reports were part of a cover-up to “get the reporters off Ramey’s back.” That would suggest that the earlier reports more closely reflected history and the truth than those later reports.

More Eyewitness Testimony

The majority of the pro side of the case is made up of the eyewitnesses. Again, if their memories are accurateand they haven’t embellished what they saw and what they did, then the Roswell case is obviously extraterrestrial and now something of a more mundane nature.

We can start with Jesse Marcel, Sr. who said, repeatedly, that the object he found was something that came to Earth but it had not been made on Earth. He was trained in intelligence, knew the aircraft and the capabilities of most foreign nations, knew what was in the American inventory, and could recognize a balloon when he saw it. Had he misidentified a balloon in 1947, there was nothing to be gained by saying, in 1977, that it had been a flying saucer.

Although there are those who were clearly in Roswell in July 1947 who say that nothing happened, they aren’t the men in the key positions with one exception (and I should note here that the exception was not in Roswell on the critical days). That the pilots assigned to the various squadrons didn’t know what was happening at the higher levels isn’t surprising. What is important here is that the men who should have known, the Adjutant, the Intelligence Officer, the Operations Officer did know and confirm something stranger than a Mogul balloon fell.

We can add other witnesses who are credible such as Jesse Marcel, Jr., who saw and handled the debris. There is Bill Brazel who saw the markings on the ground, namely the gouge, and who handled small parts of the debris. Sallye Tadolini, the daughter of Marian Strickland, who handled a piece of debris that Bill Brazel had found. There is former 509^th sergeant, Robert Smith, who helped load aircraft with crates containing the debris, who saw a small bit of foil from the wreckage. Frankie Rowe, who skeptics ignore, who saw the foil the State Policeman had.

We can talk of a long list of people who ran into the military cordon around crash site including young William Woody, radio station owner Judd Roberts, CIC Master Sergeant Lewis “Bill” Rickett, and a dozen others. Even if the crash had been one of the Mogul balloons, there wouldn’t have been the extraordinary effort to retrieve the debris and keep civilians away. In other cases, the balloons were left where they fell and might still be out there today.

The Ugly

The Air Force, the skeptics, the debunkers, and quite a few people who never bothered to look at all the evidence, believe that Project Mogul is a viable explanation for what crashed at Roswell. Overlooking the fact that the Air Force tried to palm off this explanation, here meaning a weather balloon, withinhours, that they have come up with more ridiculous explanations for the Roswell debris, and forgetting that balloons of any sort don’t really explain the case, does Project Mogul make any sense at all?

First it must be remembered that the Air Force claimed that Launch No. Four, made on June 4, 1947 is responsible for the debris. They imply in their report that these balloons were something special. In fact, polyethylene, a material that was developed for constant level balloons might have fooled some of the less sophisticated witnesses because of its very nature, the descriptions of debris provided by the eyewitnesses suggests it was not polyethylene. However, the records show that the first of the polyethylene balloons was not launched until July 3, 1947 and therefore couldn't have been responsible for the material found on the Brazel (Foster) ranch.

Balloon Launch No. 4, according to the diary kept by Dr. Albert Crary, Project Mogul leader, was made of a cluster of regular meteorological balloons made of neoprene. It did contain a "sonobuoy" or microphone, but no "official" record was kept because no data of scientific importance was recovered. Charles Moore (one of the project engineers) said that he believed they had lost track of Launch No. 4. near Arabela, New Mexico which is twenty or thirty miles south of the Brazel ranch site. Unfortunately there is no documentation to support this claim.

The other important point, though the Air Force doesn't make it clear, is that there was nothing special about the balloons in Launch No. 4. There was nothing on it that would fool anyone. They were standard weather balloons, about 15 feet in diameter, and made of neoprene. Neoprene that, after exposure to sunlight, would turn from a tan to a black and begin to rapidly disintegrate. The black color wouldn't be uniform. The portions directly exposed to sunlight would blacken faster than those in shadow. The point is that the rubber reacted to the heat and light from the sun. Attempts to cut it, or to burn it, would have been successful. And surely someone, if not Marcel himself, would have recognized the material as having come from a neoprene weather balloon.

But what is important here is that the only documented record for Flight No. 4 mentions exactly what it was and there were no rawin targets on it to create the metallic debris. Dr. Crary's diary suggests that the first flight containing an entire array wasn't made until June 5 and that debris was recovered east of Roswell.

The Air Force maintains that the balloon laid in the field for more than a month. The Roswell Daily Record, on July 9, suggests that Brazel found the balloon first on June 14, ten days after the launch, but left it there for another three weeks. What the Air Force failed to mention is that in another article published on the same day, in the same newspaper, it was suggested that “The weather balloon was found several days ago near the center of New Mexico by Rancher W.W. Brazel.”

The Air Force also implied that the reason there was a cover up was to protect Project Mogul. While the project itself was highly classified, the balloons, rawin targets, and other equipment were not classified. There was little of intelligence value to be recovered by Soviet agents if they knew that balloons were being launched from the Alamogordo Army Air Field.

In fact there was so little of importance attached to the balloons that a story about them was published in the Alamogordo News on July 10. If Soviet agents were interested in Mogul and balloon launches, that article provided more than enough clues. There are photos of the balloon clusters, but more importantly, Watson Laboratories and some of the men involved in those launches were mentioned. The mission, of course, was not, but the fact there was a story at all tells us everything we need to know about the project.

Had what Brazel found been nothing more than an experimental balloon, there would have been no reason for the elaborate events that took place around it. Brazel would have recognized it and disposed of it without having to consult the local sheriff or the military at the Roswell base. This is especially true if Bessie Brazel is to be believed. She claimed they had picked it all up.

If it was only a balloon, as Sheridan Cavitt claimed, why didn't he mention it to anyone, saving the 509th from the embarrassment of announcing they had a flying saucer, only to have that statement challenged by the officers at the Eighth Air Force?

There is one other piece of evidence. Brigadier General Arthur Exon reported that in 1947 he had the opportunity to fly over the impact site and debris field. He said, "It was probably part of the same accident but there were two distinct sites. One, assuming that the thing, as I understand it, as I remember flying the area later, that the damage to the vehicle seemed to be coming from the southeast to the northwest but it could have been going in the opposite direction, but it doesn't seem likely. So the farther northwest pieces found on the ranch, those were mostly metal."

His testimony corroborates two sites, the orientation of those sites, and effectively eliminates Project Mogul. There is no way for Project Mogul to create two distinct sites that are part of a single event. Nor is there any way for Project Mogul to create the gouges mentioned by General Exon in other conversations. Weaver ignored Exon's testimony because of the damage it does to the Project Mogul theory.

In fact, the GAO, in their review of the situation for Congressman Steven Schiff examined the Air Force position and found it inadequate. The GAO report said, "The Air Force report concluded that there was no dispute that something happened near Roswell in July 1947 and that all available official materials indicated the most likely source of the wreckage recovered was one of the project MOGUL balloon trains."

It must be noted that the GAO did not endorse the conclusion, merely reported on it. It other circumstances, when GAO investigations have corroborated information, they have commented on it positively. In this case, there were no such positive comments.

Another aspect of The Ugly is Operation Majestic-Twelve, or, as it is popularly called, MJ-12. I have made the arguments against MJ-12 for years. There has been nothing to change that. I will go over, briefly, the arguments against MJ-12 which begins, frankly, with the lack of provenance. No one can say, for certain, where these documents originated. The copies we have came from an undeveloped 35 mm roll of film that was allegedly mailed from Albuquerque, New Mexico to UFO researcher Jaime Shandera who lived, at the time in southern California.

I asked Stan Friedman about this point, meaning the lack of provenance. On February 13, 2001, he wrote to me suggesting, “Lack of provenance is bothersome, but understandable. Whoever filmed the EBD [Eisenhower Briefing Document] and/or planted the CT [CutlerTwining Memo] was violating security by the filming and the release. Having a classified document is not against the law. Being an authorized recipient who leaks it to uncleared personnel is very much a violation. One might suggest that the lack of provenance is an indication of genuineness.”

Except in the world around us, the lack of provenance is considered a major stumbling block. The Hitler Diaries, the Jack the Ripper Diaries, and a couple of other hoaxes have been exposed simply because the documents had no provenance. They were found by someone and announced by the finder who couldn’t explain how he had come into possession of the documents. There was no way to trace them from the man who released them to the man who had supposedly written them in the beginning. Lack of provenance does not suggest authenticity of the documents and is not an indication of genuineness.

There might be a way to find out the truth on these first MJ-12 documents, that is, the Eisenhower Briefing Document and the Truman Letter attached to it. Philip Klass, the UFO debunker and opponent of MJ-12 has suggested that he talked to a question document expert who has declared that the documents were faked. At first, Klass only identified the man by his initials, PT, but later, in his skeptical newsletter about UFOs, revealed that it was Peter Tytell. Ironically, Friedman had sent copies of the original MJ-12 documents to Tytell for his analysis. Tytell, then, is an accepted expert by both sides in this debate, but one who is quoted only by the debunkers, and ignored by the proponents.

I had a chance to talk to Tytell and he told me that the typeface used on the Truman memo [meaning the font of the typewriter] was most consistent with a Smith-Corona P102 typewriter, which was used on typewriters made after 1966. If true, this, by itself, means the Truman memo is a fake since it was supposedly created in 1947. Even if we accept the idea that the document dates no earlier than 1952, the date of the Eisenhower Briefing, the date is still too early for this particular typewriter to be used.

Moore and Shandera, the men who had introduced the world to MJ12, in a special report they created, The MJ-12 Documents: An Analytical Report, mentioned a second expert, whom they do not identify, as saying that he thought the typeface was from a Ransmayer & Rodrian 664, but had no dates of manufacture. Still another unidentified expert said the typeface was from an Underwood UP3A, which was manufactured between 1933 and 1946. But they offered no evidence that this was the case and did not supply the names of either expert and did not offer an example of the typeface from that older typewriter.

So, the discussion of typefaces, which could be the critical blow to MJ-12, seems to be a wash, except for a couple of important facts. First, I have no idea who the two "experts" are who identified typewriters with unspecified manufacture dates or dates that precede the creation of the Truman memo. I do, on the other hand, know who the expert is who said that the type is from a machine manufactured after 1966. Tytell told me, "This is the slam dunk." To Tytell, the typewriter problem proved the memo a fake.

In fact, on February 13, 2001, Friedman added to his objections of Tytell’s comments. He wrote, “I am aware of Peter Tytell’s offhand, informal, unwritten comments about the typewriters. However, he has, to the best of my knowledge never provided a formal official written paid for analysis.”

In today’s world, this is known as spin. The conclusions are not what proponents want to hear, so they spin it, calling them informal and unwritten. But we do know why Tytell has not offered an official report. He wants to be paid for his analysis and until someone comes up with his fee, he isn’t going to provide the written document, though he was willing to discuss, with me, his conclusions.

Friedman also wrote, “I had spoken to a QD [questioned documents] man who worked for the USPO [which I assume is the United States Postal Service] who also disagreed with Tytell.”

But this provides no new or important information. Again, there is no name attached to this vague disagreement with Tytell, nor is there any indication of the man’s expertise. Working for the post office certainly doesn’t supply it, though working in some capacities in the post office might.

The second major problem on the Truman memo, again according to Tytell, is Truman's signature. The signature on the executive order matches, exactly, another Truman signature, this one from a letter dated October 1, 1947. The positioning of the signature on the memo also makes it suspect. Truman habitually placed his signature so that the stroke on the "T" touched the bottom of the text. On the disputed document that is not the case.

I asked Tytell specific questions about the Truman signature. To him, this was another "slam dunk." It was a second major problem with the document which shouted fake at him.

Tytell said, "Klass is the one who came up with the prototype signature. And that's an absolute slam dunk. There's no question about it. When you look at the points where it intersects the typing on the original donor memo [that is, the October 1, 1947 letter] for the transplant, you can see that it was retouched on those points on the Majestic-12 memo. So, it's just a perfect fit. The thing was it wasn't photocopied and it wasn't photographed straight on… The guy who did one of the photographic prints had to tilt the base board to try and get the edges to come out square so whoever did the photography of the pieces of paper was not doing this on a properly set up copy stand. It was done, maybe on a tripod, or it was done hand held. However it was done, the documents were not photographed straight on… There's a slight distortion of the signature but it is not enough to make the difference here. Nowadays it you could probably get it to fit properly with computer work but it's not that the signature is an overlay but it's that at those discrete points, and their dumb document examiners talked about the thinning of the stroke at this point. At that particular point, at the exact spot where it touches a typewritten letter and it has to be retouched to get rid of the letter."

The argument about the signature has moved into a new arena. Dr. Robert Wood, and his son Ryan, suggest that the Truman memo signature might be authentic because Truman used an “autopen” to sign some documents. This strange device would sign four documents at once. If true, then the signatures could be exact. To prove their point, they need to find one of the other two, but have been unable to do that.

Of course Tytell’s note that the signature on the Truman memo has been altered would rule out the autopen argument. There would be no reason to alter the signature if Truman had used an autopen, but would be if the signature was lifted, by copying, from one document and then pasted on another.

So, Tytell, who had originally been sent the documents by Friedman, concluded that they were faked. He believed that because of his expertise and the mistakes that he found in them. He communicated these negative results to Friedman, but Friedman ignored them. Instead, Friedman said that four other document examiners said the documents were authentic, but provided no name or credentials for any of them. Worse still, he supplied no written report from them so that we might assess the accuracy of what they found.

This is a very truncated version of the MJ-12 arguments and I believe that those interested might want to look at the following books to improve their understanding of the whole mess:

But before we leave MJ-12, there is one other thing that I believe is important to understanding the whole affair. I remembered something that Stan Friedman had told me a long time ago. Friedman told me that Moore had told him that he, Moore, was thinking about creating a “Roswell” type document because it might shake things loose. But what if the idea for this wasn’t Moore’s? What if it came from somewhere else?

Moore was also associated with Richard Doty, a former member of AFOSI who had lost his status as a member of AFOSI and finished his Air Force career in food service. This means, simply, that he was in charge of a Dining Facility or what we used to call a Mess Hall in the Army (now they’re DFACs which stands for Dining FACility).

Moore also said that he was responsible for some of the disinformation that was leaked to Paul Bennewitz. Moore said that he played along with this, even to the point of rearranging Bennewitz’s furniture to frighten him. Moore said he did it in the misguided belief that it would take him into the inner ring of the anti-UFO government programs so that he might be able to learn more about them and then expose them.

I thought at the time it was a load of crap, but probably because I was still being accused of being a government agent (this time by Don Schmitt who was supposedly my friend) and I knew this wasn’t true. But what if the government wanted to discredit UFO research. What if the plan was to throw out so many different ideas, so many tangents, that anyone who stumbled onto the right one might be dragged onto another. Or, if that didn’t work, just discredit all of UFO research by discrediting one small aspect of it.

For about twenty years we have been arguing the reality of MJ12. Great amounts of effort, research and money have been dumped into the chase of MJ-12 and that is effort, research and money that was not available for other, possibly more productive lines of inquiry. And in that time, we haven’t uncovered anything that advances our knowledge of UFOs in any helpful way. We have not found the smoking gun documents but have found dozens, if not hundreds that are faked. In fact, some of the evidence suggests there were all faked. It even tells us who did it and why, but still the debate continues.

So, where does that leave us today? Well, Bill Moore did claim to be a government agent, he did admit to the harassment of Bennewitz for the government and he did admit to spying on researchers for the Air Force. Moore was the first to tell us of MJ12 and it was Moore who worked to prove that MJ-12 was real. Maybe there is a connection here between the government and Moore that has accomplished the mission. Twenty years later and we’re still arguing about MJ-12 and when we divert our attention to MJ-12 we can’t focus it in other directions, and maybe that is the whole point.

The Bad

While not wanting to be a dead horse, I will mention, once again, those witnesses whose testimony is no longer considered to be viable. Probably the first name should be Frank Kaufmann. He provided quite a bit of information, he spun his tales for years, but in the end, it was nothing more than his fantasies. I don’t know why we should accept anything he said given what we know now. And no, I don’t believe he was an agent of disinformation. I believe he was making it all up as he went along.

Barney Barnett, who told the story of seeing a downed flying saucer out on the Plains of San Agustin falls into this category as well. The only evidence to surface was a diary kept by his wife, Ruth, which puts Barney in Socorro on the critical days. He told the story to friends and family, but there is no evidence to suggest it as a real event.

J. Bond Johnson burst on the UFO scene after it was discovered he had taken most of the photographs of the balloon in General Ramey’s office. But after telling a story that made sense and was corroborated by the newspaper articles of the time, Johnson decided that he had photographed the real debris and that Ramey had lied to him. Johnson’s story twisted and turned so often it was impossible to follow and even more difficult to believe. Had he stayed with the original tale, he would have been a valuable witness.

Bill Moore did much to promote the original Roswell story, but after that success, he began to tell all sorts of weird tales. Suddenly he was the target of government intelligence operations, received, through his friend, the MJ-12 papers, and then said he spied on other UFO researchers. His initial work got us all involved, but since then, there hasn’t been much of value.

I guess I’ll have to throw Kent Jeffrey in here too. He once was a strong supporter of the Roswell case and created the Roswell Initiative, which a petition to President to release all classified UFO material. His research, however, convinced him that the answer to Roswell was a Mogul balloon. He did deliver the petitions, but only after writing a letter that negated any affect they might have had. If I say nothing else about Kent it would be that I believe he is honest and sincere, but he is mistaken about Roswell.

Robert Shirkey who said that he was in the operations building as debris was carried through so that he got a look at it. Not much of a story, but one that helps no one and a story that I just find illuminating.

The Good

I have, of course, detailed many of the witness stories about the Roswell crash already. There are some that, given the nature of this work, have been skipped, or mentioned almost in passing. It’s not that I find their tales any less persuasive than before, it’s just they didn’t fit into this book.

For example, I have barely mentioned Pappy Henderson, one of the pilots who flew material to Wright Field. I believe his story to be accurate, and I believe that his wife, Sappho, who shared it with me was sincere. Karl Pflock dismissed the tale as one told by a well-know practical joker. The evidence simply does not back up that suggestion. It was merely a way to dismiss Henderson without dealing with the story.

I have, in the past, written about Sheriff Wilcox’s family and I have found nothing to suggest that they are making up anything. This includes his daughters, Phyllis McGuire and Elizabeth Tulk, and his granddaughter Barbara Dugger.

Military Reaction

The skeptics are fond of saying that if anything had happened, there would be a paper trail to follow. Here they are not referring to documents about the crash itself, but to the reaction of the military to such an event. They look at the schedules, the routines, and the missions of the military and say that nothing changed. No alerts. No one moved around to counter a threat. Nothing to suggest that intelligence gathering was increased. Everything remained the same.

Except that’s not quite accurate. First, we can find newspaper articles dated July 9, 1947 in which it is reported that the Army and the Navy moved to stop th rumors of flying saucers “whizzing” through the atmosphere. Notice the date. Just one day after it was announced that the Army had found a flying saucer.

For two weeks, or from June 24 when Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of nine objects near Mt. Rainier sparked the interest in flying saucers, the military had remained virtually quiet. Sure, there had been comments by officers that the flying saucers did not represent any sort of military project. There were stories in which highranking military officials denied knowing anything more about the flying saucers than did the general public. But that was really all that was talked about.

Then, suddenly, on July 9, they move to stop the rumors. Why would they do that on that specific date? What happened to suggest to them that it might be a good idea, not only to stop the talk, but to suppress it?

There is another bit of evidence. Edward Ruppelt, in 1951, took over Project Grudge, the Air Force investigation of flying saucers. Under his leadership, it evolved into Project Blue Book, and it became an real investigation into flying saucers. When his tour there ended, and when he was released from active duty, Ruppelt wrote a book about his experiences. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects is the standard in UFO research and it contains the sort of insider information you would expect from someone with Ruppelt’s credentials.

He writes about the summer of 1947 when no official investigation existed and when there were leaders at the pinnacle of military leadership who were concerned about flying saucers. He wrote, “By the end of July 1947 the security lid was down tight. The few members of the press who did inquire about what the Air Force was doing got the same treatment that you would get today if you inquired about the number of thermonuclear weapons stock-piled in the U.S.’s atomic arsenal. No one, outside of a few high-ranking officers in the Pentagon, knew what the people in the barbed-wireenclosed Quonset huts that housed the Air Technical Intelligence Center were thinking or doing.”

In other words, there was a reaction to the flying saucer situation and that reaction seems to be dated after the July 8 announcement. This is part of the limited documentation and insider information that we have. Granted, it’s thin, but then, if the recovery was as highly classified as suggested, you would expect the information to be thin.