Roswell Revisited

Let’s now take a step back and look at the situation in Roswell from the point of view of the media, which means the radio and newspaper reporters who were there or who would arrive there over the several hours when the story was huge. We know about crash because Jesse Marcel decades later told friends about it, but the investigation continued after his revelation because there had been articles in the newspapers that showed Jesse Marcel with the debris from a weather balloon. Those articles also helped identify others who might have had some knowledge of what went on in 1947 such as Sheriff Wilcox, Mack Brazel and the officers at Eighth Air Force. In other words, this was not a single witness case with only some dim memory from that single witness, but a multiple witness case with newspaper articles as limited corroboration that something extraordinary had happened.

With the newspaper reporters controlled by July 8, meaning their access to the relevant people was limited as the Army moved those people around, it is clear that the Mack Brazel interview, reported in the Roswell Daily Record had been staged for the press. Brazel had already been on radio station KGFL with reporter Frank Joyce to talk about what he had found on Sunday, July 6, according to what Joyce told me during several interviews. Joyce was sort of the utility player for the station who played the music, did the commercials and gathered and read the news.

On Sunday, July 6, Joyce, according to what he told me, called over to the sheriff’s office to see if there was anything going on that might be interesting. The sheriff gave the phone to Brazel and according to Joyce, Brazel told him about the metallic debris he had found. Joyce said that Brazel seemed to be shaken by his discovery, which, if all he had found was scattered metallic debris, doesn’t make a lot of sense. Joyce claims credit for telling Brazel to call out to the base and while he might have suggested it, the sheriff and his fellow ranchers had already told Brazel to do that.

Joyce said that he had the impression that Sheriff Wilcox didn’t believe much of what Brazel said. Joyce said that Brazel told him everything on the telephone, which means that he talked about the Debris Field and there is a hint in this that Brazel might have seen alien bodies at some point. There was just a hint of this, however.

Joyce thought little about the story on Sunday but he reported it anyway. Then, on July 8, Walter Haut came into the station with a press release and said, “I’m giving you an hour on this,” meaning that he wasn’t going to give it to the other media outlets in Roswell until after Joyce had it for an hour.

Joyce read it over and then told Haut, “Walter, you shouldn’t send it out.”

Haut said that it was what Blanchard wanted, it was Blanchard’s idea, so it was going to be released.

Haut told me, in response to questions that he remembered little about the creation of that press release. Blanchard had ordered it and Haut prepared it, taking it in turn to each of the newspapers and radio stations. He didn’t know who was first on the list that particular day, only that he made it a habit to rotate the order so that no one got everything first and no one got everything last.

The information about the crash broke at 2:26 p.m., according to a story that a member of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, Frank John Reid, found in the Daily Illni. According to that information, the Associated Press put the story of the crash on the wire announcing that a flying disc (flying saucer) had been found in Roswell.

At that point, according to Joyce, his telephone went crazy. He claimed that a Colonel Johnson called him from the Pentagon, screaming at him and demanding to know who the hell told him to make the press release. Joyce finally told Johnson he was a civilian and there was nothing Johnson could do to him. Johnson snapped, “I’ll show you what I can do to you.”

Joyce’s response, according to what he told me, was to find the press release and the subsequent story so that he could prove to his boss he hadn’t made it up. That, of course, wasn’t necessary because Whitmore knew about the crash. And, later Joyce could not produce the press release. He did, however, have some of the teletype traffic about the case that he showed to various researchers.

Joyce said that the craft was about thirty-five feet in diameter and that it was all beat to hell. But he didn’t see it himself and Brazel, who might not have seen that, didn’t give him the description. My assumption is that he learned that from Johnny McBoyle, another radio reporter at another station.

Johnny McBoyle and KSWS

McBoyle was a reporter and station manager for KSWS in Roswell, the competition for KGFL. McBoyle, at some point, had tried to get out to the crash site. He called back to the station and was on the telephone with Lydia Sleppy, the secretary, dictating to her what he had seen. He apparently had some luck because he said that the object looked like a crushed dishpan and there were burned spots on the ground.

Sleppy, in an interview conducted in February, 1993, told me, “He just called me and said he had something for me to put on the line… He said that he had gone into the coffee shop in Roswell and this rancher walked in… He [the rancher] had been out on the ranch… when he came on this thing that was all smashed up…”

But Sleppy had another aspect of the story that to some makes little sense. She said that she was putting McBoyle’s story out over the wire, typing it as he dictated it “when the signal came on that this was the FBI and we were to cease transmitting.”

There are those who suggest there is no mechanism for the FBI, or anyone else for that matter, to interrupt the transmission. There was a switch that had to be flipped from transmission to reception and if the switch is in the transmit position it can’t receive. Sleppy, however, is positive that her typing out McBoyle’s story was interrupted. She stopped typing and then McBoyle told her the rest of the tale.

She insists that the FBI halted the transmission. Of course everyone assumes that the transmission was interrupted by the FBI using the teletype when it would have easier for them to use the telephone and order the halt. It would have interrupted the transmission without the necessity of somehow blocking the teletype machine. Sleppy said it was interrupted and a telephone call is both possible and likely.

Merle Tucker, who owned the station, and who was out of town when the crash happened, was trying to buy more stations for his fledgling network. He was suddenly concerned, given the nature of the story and the alleged halt order from the FBI that he was going to get into trouble with the government, which would have to approve his licenses and the agreements to purchase the additional stations. He talked to McBoyle about it, but by that time, McBoyle was reluctant to say anything. Tucker told me during an interview conducted in Albuquerque, that McBoyle told him he couldn’t talk about it.

It was KFGL that made the most of the story. Joyce had his original, late Sunday night interview with Brazel. Then, as the story began to expand, and the timing here is critical, Whitmore decided to head up to Corona to find Brazel. Even today that’s about a three hour drive and the roads today are far superior to what they were in 1947.

At the Brazel ranch, they talked to Brazel and then suggested they go back into Roswell for another interview. According to Walt Whitmore, Jr., son of the majority owner, Brazel spent the night at the Whitmore house. He was up early the next morning and told the younger Whitmore about the crash and how to find the site.

Once back in Roswell, they recorded the interview on a wire recorder, the predecessor to the tape recorder. Judd Roberts had been the minority owner of radio station KGFL in 1947 and he told me on several occasions that the most interesting interview with Brazel was the one Whitmore had made but never broadcast. Orders from members of the New Mexico congressional delegation to Whitmore prevented the broadcast. According to Roberts, if they played the interview then they could begin looking for something else to do. Their license to broadcast would be pulled immediately.

Roberts said that the interview contained information about the crash. Once Whitmore had finished his interview, he thought that the Army would be interested in what Brazel had seen and what he had to say. Whitmore then escorted him out to the base to see if anyone there had any questions for Brazel.

Brazel, now under military escort, was eventually taken to the offices of the Roswell Daily Record where he was again interviewed and now gave the description of debris that matched that of the weather balloon. His story, according to Frank Joyce had changed from what he said a couple of days earlier.

Brazel, in Roswell, was seen by neighbors who recognized him, who were surprised by his somber attitude and who saw the military officers with him. One of those neighbors, Floyd Proctor would comment on Brazel’s failure to acknowledge him a number of times. It just didn’t seem to be like Brazel to ignore his friends.

The Associated Press

Although Brazel was at the offices of the Roswell Daily Record, he was now interviewed by two men from the Associated Press, Jason Kellahin and Robert Adair. They had come in from Albuquerque, or maybe it should be said, they were ordered to Roswell by the Albuquerque office. Strangely, the accounts of the two men would differ significantly.

I was able to interview Kellahin in Santa Fe in January 1993. He was gracious enough to invite me into his home and we went into a back den or office to tape the interview. I mention this because as we walked through parts of the house I noticed that he had books about the Roswell case sitting out. This, I believe, is an important point.

We talked briefly about various things as I set up the camera. Once it was running, I moved away from it, and asked him to give me his name for the record and asked what he was doing in July 1947. He told me he was working for the Associated Press. Sometime afterward, he would give up his journalism career and move into law.

Kellahin told me that they got the call from the Associated Press in the morning and then he, along with Adair drove down toward Roswell. Kellahin said that they had directions to the ranch where the thing fell and that it wasn’t all that far south of Vaughn, which sits on the highway running from Albuquerque to Roswell. In Vaughn, they made the turn off the main highway and went looking for the ranch, which they found with no trouble.

Kellahin told me, “There were cars there and officers from the air base were there but they were down at the south end of the field we went into. We stopped and saw where the debris was laying on the ground. This man from Albuquerque with me, he had a camera. He took some pictures of the stuff laying on the ground and of the rancher who was there, Brazel, I believe his name was… Brazel was there and he [the photographer] took his picture… I talked to him. He told me his name and we had been told it was his ranch.”

Kellahin said that they spent nearly two hours on the ranch, watching a half dozen military men and Brazel as they walked the Debris Field. There was only about a half acre of debris, according to Kellahin. To him it was just some silver-colored fabric and very light wood but certainly nothing extraordinary.

He said, “You couldn’t pick it up and have identified what it was. You have to have known. But it was a balloon. It looked more like a kite than anything else.”

Finished with searching the field and the preliminary interview with Brazel, Kellahin and Adair climbed back in their car and continued their trip to Roswell. In Roswell, Kellahin said they headed over to the offices of the Roswell Daily Record, where he saw Brazel again. About the only thing Kellahin can remember that Brazel said was that if he found anything else, he was going to keep his mouth shut. Kellahin also told me that Brazel was escorted by a couple of Army officers while at the newspaper office, which corroborates that aspect of the tale from still another source.

All that finished, he sat down, wrote his story and then put it on the AP wire that night. He said that Adair developed his pictures and sent them out as well. Special arrangements had been made to do that.

There are some problems with Kellahin’s story. Sure, I’m asking him to go back (at the time of the interview) nearly fifty years but he was the one who said that he remembered what happened. It’s clear to me, however, and based on what I saw as I walked through his house, that he has tried to refresh his memory by reading about the case, including pulling the stories about it that had appeared in the newspapers. That might be a reason for the discrepancies between what actually happened and what he said he remembered.

Kellahin identified Adair for me, telling me that he lived in Albuquerque. It was Don Schmitt who interviewed Adair and fortunately for all of us, he recorded the interview. Say what you will about Don Schmitt, but I have Adair’s words on tape so we know that it is accurate.

Adair’s story, according to that tape is significantly different than that told by Kellahin. First, Adair said that he wasn’t in Albuquerque when the story broke, but was on assignment in El Paso. There is some discussion by various researchers about the nature of that assignment. Kellahin said that Adair was little more than a teletype operator so he would have been repairing equipment, though Adair said he was assigned as a reporter. (Schmitt asked Adair about Kellahin and Adair asked, “What did he do? meaning he didn’t remember him) What is really important here is Kellahin said they both were in Albuquerque and drove to Vaughn and then Roswell together and Adair said he was in El Paso and actually flew to Roswell. He said that he had been told to charter an airplane to get there.

Before landing in Roswell, at the small, municipal airport, Adair said they flew northwest, looking for the crash site. He told Schmitt, on tape, “We could make out a lot of stuff… [it] looked like burnt places… It wasn’t too distinct… I guess it’s about forty feet by forty feet… I remember there were four indications.”

Adair said that at one location, as they flew low to get a better look, he saw guards, or soldiers on the field waving at them. He wasn’t sure if the soldiers were trying to wave them off to keep them from landing or attempting to signal something else. He could see other soldiers posted around guarding the place.

Finally they turned back toward Roswell. Adair didn’t have a good idea of where, exactly, they had seen the crash sites. He mentioned two of them, one with gouges in the ground and one that was covered with tall grass that was difficult to see. One of them looked as if something had set down hard and bounced back into the air so that there wasn’t much to see on the ground. Two crash sites that he thought might have been oriented from the northwest to the southeast, but he wasn’t sure.

In Roswell, at some point, he found Kellahin, and they both made their way to the Roswell Daily Record. According to the newspaper of July 9, special arrangements were made to transmit pictures from Roswell to the AP. According to the article, “Dispatch of pictures of W. W. [Mack] Brazel, who discovered a purported flying disk on the Foster Ranch, northwest of Roswell, was made on the instruments shown in the picture. The instruments were set up in The Record office last night and the pictures sent out by wire about six o’clock this morning.”

Were these the pictures that Kellahin talked about in his interview? The ones of Brazel, in the field, with the balloon and several Army officers? Pictures that could end the controversy here and now?

No. The reality is that no pictures of Brazel on the ranch, with the debris and with Army officers has ever surfaced and this suggests that such pictures were never taken. Had they been taken, they would have been printed somewhere, and someone, by now, would have found them. We’ve managed to find every picture that is of relevance to the case, but none of Brazel in the field with the balloon.

Yet, we do have documented evidence that Brazel was photographed and that pictures were transmitted from Roswell. In a story that appeared in the Roswell Daily Record dated July 9, and entitled, “Harassed Rancher who Located ‘Saucer’ Sorry He Told About It,” we learn more about the picture. And, it confirms some of the other information that we have gathered about the case.

According to that story, “Brazel was brought here late yesterday by W. E. Whitmore of radio station KGFL, had his picture taken and gave an interview to the Record and Jason Kellahin sent here from the Albuquerque bureau of the Associated Press to cover the story. The picture he posed for was sent out over the AP telephoto wire sending machine specially set up in the Record office by R. D. Adair, AP wire chief sent here from Albuquerque for the sole purpose of getting out his picture and that of sheriff George Wilcox, to whom Brazel originally gave the information of his find.”

For those wondering, one picture of Brazel, smoking a cigar has surfaced. He’s wearing his cowboy hat. It is credited as an AP Wirephoto, so it must be the picture sent out over the wire. It was not taken outside and it does not show any of the debris that Brazel found. It’s just a picture of Brazel, smoking.

The Press in Fort Worth

With these stories and pictures the interest shifted from Roswell to Fort Worth, Texas. Brigadier General Ramey had ordered Major Jesse Marcel from Roswell to Fort Worth and to bring some of the debris with him. Since Ramey commanded the Eighth Air Force, no one in Roswell could do anything other than comply.

In interviews conducted later, including those with Colonel Thomas DuBose, Warrant Officer (later major) Irving Newton, Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter J. Bond Johnson, and, of course Marcel, the sequence of events in Fort Worth could be deduced. Here we are only interested in how the media handled the situation.

According to interviews conducted with Johnson over a period of several weeks, he was the man who took six photographs of the debris in Ramey’s office and he was among the first to interview Ramey. Later he would claim that only he had interviewed Ramey, but other newspapers quoted their own reporters. When Johnson was there, no other reporters were. They could have come in later, or, more likely, most of these other interviews were done over the telephone, a practice that is even more common today.

According to the original interview, Johnson was in the office when his boss asked if he had his camera. He said he did and the man told him to get over to General Ramey’s office. “They’ve got a flying saucer and they’re bringing it up from Roswell.”

Johnson drove out to the base and was taken to Ramey’s office where there was wreckage scattered on the floor. According to what Johnson told me, the debris was flimsy stuff and smelled of burned rubber. Ramey told him that it was just a weather balloon that had crashed.

Johnson took six pictures that afternoon. Two of them showed Marcel crouched by the debris, two showed Ramey, and the last two showed Ramey and Dubose. Johnson didn’t know it then, but one of the pictures would become extremely important when UFO researchers began to reexamine the Roswell case (see the Ramey and the Smoking chapter).

Having used all his film, having learned what the debris was, Johnson returned to the newspaper office to develop the pictures. Just before midnight, long after Ramey had appeared on radio station WBAP in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to explain that the mystery was solved by a weather balloon, after another of his officers told the FBI that it was a weather balloon, and nearly two hours after ABC News “Headline” edition had also reported the solution, Johnson put his pictures on the INS photowire.

There was one other picture taken in Ramey’s office that night. Warrant Officer Irving Newton was photographed crouched by the same debris that appeared in the Johnson photographs. It is believed that the picture was taken by someone at the base rather than a reporter and I have suggested that was the Public Relations Officer, Major Charles Cashon.

Johnson said, originally, that he didn’t spend much time in Ramey’s office. He took the pictures, talked briefly to Ramey and DuBose but either said nothing to Marcel, or Marcel didn’t answer any questions. Marcel would later say that Ramey had told him to keep his mouth shut. Ramey certainly controlled the tone of the meting.

That night, according to what Johnson said originally, he wrote the article that appeared the next day in the newspaper. Johnson, in an interview with me, said, “Seven nine [July 9] is my story on the front page.”

That article, and that statement have become important as the story developed. According to the article, “After his first look, Ramey declared all it was was a weather balloon. The weather officer [Newton] verified his view.”

With that, the importance of the Roswell find was destroyed. For three hours the world believed a flying saucer had been found. Then Marcel arrived in Fort Worth, Johnson arrived at Raemy’s office, and the identity assigned to the material in Ramey’s office was established. Not a flying saucer as reported, but a weather balloon.

Confusion about Ramey and Marcel

Back in 1990, having spent a couple of hours talking to Johnson on the telephone, I reported what I had learned. I admit a little confusion, but it was borne, not of what Johnson was telling me then, but of what others had reported earlier. William Moore, who co-authored The Roswell Incident, had quoted Marcel as saying, “There was half a B-29-ful outside. General Ramey allowed some members of the press in to take a picture of this stuff but were not allowed far enough into the room to touch it. The stuff in that one photo was piece of the actual stuff we had found. It was not a staged photo. Later, they cleared out our wreckage and substituted some of their own. Then there allowed more photos. Those photos were taken while the actual wreckage was already on its way to Wright Field. I was not in these.”

Thirty years after the meeting in Ramey’s office (I hesitate to call it a press conference because that term seems to offend so many, yet by definition, that was what it was) controversy erupted. Johnson, after he had talked to me on audio tape on more than one occasion suddenly had a new story that was now in conflict with what I had written about him. In fact, he became quite vocal about it, claiming I had misquoted him repeatedly, that I had attempted to force my views on him, and the real story of what happened in Ramey’s office and later back at the newspaper was substantially different than what I had reported.

Others, in the 1990s, came out with a new version of Johnson’s involvement. In this one, according to Johnson, he had arrived at Ramey’s office and then been left alone inside it for a few minutes. Now Johnson unwrapped the packages brought from Roswell and spread them out on the floor… Or maybe, depending on Johnson’s mood, some of the packages were already opened and he just opened some others, arranging the debris for his photographs of it.

This has become a critical point, not so much because of the controversy about Johnson’s statements, but because of what was attributed to Marcel. Remember, he allegedly said that he was in the pictures of the real stuff and everyone else was in the pictures of the switched debris, which was, of course, that of a weather balloon.

The problem developed from Moore. He provided a transcript of his 1979 interview with Marcel, but now it was subtly different. It said, “There was half a B-29-ful outside. General [Roger Maxwell (first and middle name added by Moore)] Ramey allowed the press in to take TWO [emphasis added) picture[s] of this stuff. I was in one, and he and Col. Dubose were in the other [emphasis added]. The press was allowed far enough into the room to photograph this but weren’t allowed to touch it. The stuff in these photos was the actual stuff we had found. These were not staged photos.”

So, Moore was attempting to attribute the comments to Marcel, and it seems that the attribution is accurate. If so, then the Roswell case is solved as a balloon and we all go home. But there are additional facts.

Back in the early 1980s, New Orleans TV reporter Johnny Mann accompanied Marcel to Roswell to film a five part series on UFOs for his station. Marcel now made his home in Houma, Louisiana, which is close to New Orleans, so that made Marcel’s story of a UFO crash a local story.

Mann told me that once they arrived in Roswell, had been out to the desert, and were discussing the case, Mann showed Marcel the pictures taken in Ramey’s office. First was the highly cropped version that appeared in the Roswell Incident, and then the full pictures that appeared in many newspapers nationally, and the photos as they had been retrieved from the Special Collections at the University of Texas at Arlington. Mann told Marcel that it looked like a balloon to him.

Marcel told Mann that the material in the pictures was not the material he’d picked up in Roswell. These were, in fact, staged photographs taken in Ramey’s office.

We could suggest that Moore had made up the quote and then changed it as we learned more about the situation and more pictures were found. The problem is that Marcel, on tape, does, in fact, suggest that there were pictures taken of him with the real debris. Moore is guilty of changing the quote as his books, his articles, and his letters prove, but the original idea about Marcel and photographs of the real debris are not Moore’s inventions.

I did talk to Irving Newton. He is the warrant officer in the seventh photograph. He was quite clear about the situation. He told me he had been in the weather lab when Ramey called him and told him to get over to his, Ramey’s office and Ramey didn’t care how he did it. He was to steal a car if he had to.

Newton said that when he walked into the office, he recognized the balloon right away. He had launched, he said, hundreds of balloons and rawin reflectors during the Okinawa invasion so he was quite familiar with them. He said that Ramey was on Marcel’s back about making such a mistake and that he canceled the special flight that was to take the material on to Wright Field.

So, here’s what we know today. J. Bond Johnson took six photographs of Ramey, Ramey and DuBose, and of Marcel in Ramey’s office. Contrary to what Johnson has said in the last decade, it was clear at that time that Ramey told him it was nothing more important than a weather balloon and that is exactly what Johnson wrote when he returned to the newspaper. Ramey then expanded his explanation, telling radio station WBAP in the Fort Worth-Dallas area that what was found was a weather balloon. Other newspapers and radio stations picked up the story and reported that the excitement was over nothing more than a weather balloon and the story died.

There are two final points to be made here. One is that when witnesses begin to expand their stories and contradict themselves, we need to return to the record made at the time. Memories do, in fact fade, and what a witness says today has been colored by everything he or she has witnessed, how he or she has told the story in the past, or by the simple motivations of fame and fortune. Johnson clearly began to manipulate his story, trying to find a role for himself that was more important. He did take the pictures, he did talk to Ramey on July 8, and he did write a newspaper article that gave us a very nice look into the drama inside Ramey’s office. He then cluttered it all up by claiming he had photographed the real debris, that Ramey didn’t give him the cover story when he was there, and suggesting that others had misquoted him. In the end, we were able to dig through the nonsense and arrive at the truth, but only after Johnson had hurt the importance of his overall tale.

Second, there was one piece of evidence that came out of this, and it is in a picture Johnson took. Ramey, crouched by the wreckage, is holding a sheet of paper. In the 8 x 10 glossy prints from the Special Collections, there appears to be a gray smudge on the paper. Under magnification, it is clear that these are typewritten words on the paper and seem to be clear enough that some of the words can be read. Researchers, using larger blow ups, and using sophisticated computer equipment have been able to resolve more of the smudge. This might provide the smoking gun proving that Roswell was extraterrestrial. We’ll examine all of that later.