Roswell Revisited

So, suddenly, there are a number of people who were in Roswell in July 1947 and who claimed to have both handled the debris and who had seen the military cordon surrounding the Debris Field. These are reliable witnesses who reluctantly told their stories and whose descriptions of events generally matched one another. These were people who were found by researchers. Unfortunately, as the case became bigger and received more attention, others came forward to tell their tales. As we investigated them, we learned that some of them were inventing them.

Walter Haut, who insisted for years that he had just provided the press release to the various news outlets in Roswell also became the unofficial center of Roswell research. He would furnish clues and give the names of those who might not have been as involved as they would like others to believe. Walter became a conduit for the information.

Sitting in Haut’s front room one evening, I was asking about the mortician who I’d heard about. No one seemed to have a name, just a slight description. One man even told me that the man now worked part time in the Albuquerque Public Library. Haut, however, looked at me and said, “I know the name you’re fishing for. It’s Glenn Dennis.”

Glenn Dennis

According to the information publically available,Dennis lived in Roswell in 1947, but was not a mortician at the time, merely an embalmer. He worked at the Ballard Funeral Home on Main Street. Dennis was the most reluctant of witnesses, being cagey, suggesting that he wasn’t going to talk, but in the end always told his story to anyone who asked about it, especially if they had a video camera and access to the national media.

Dennis, in various taped interviews with various researchers and documentary producers and in discussions with me, said that he had been working alone when a call came in asking about coffins, small coffins, that could be hermetically sealed. This disturbed Dennis and he decided to drive out to the base. There, at the hospital, he found very unusual activity. Inside he saw a nurse he knew, later he said it was Naomi Self, and asked her what happened. She told him he needed to get out before he got into trouble but her warning was too late. An MP, a red-haired officer, spotted him and had him escorted from the hospital.

His story didn’t end there. He confessed that going into the hospital he’d looked into the rear of an ambulance and saw strange metallic debris stored in it. He said it looked like part of a canoe with unidentifiable writing on it.

And even that wasn’t enough. He met Self later and she described the events that had everyone worked up. Some strange little creatures had been brought into the hospital, apparently killed in some sort of accident. According to Dennis, she made a quick sketch of what the creatures looked like and provided a verbal description of the events. Before she left him that evening, she shredded the sketch so that small piece of evidence too, was lost.

Dennis, in interviews with researchers, was reluctant to provide the nurse’s name, saying that he had promised her that he would not break her confidence. He also said that he had written to her once, through an Army Post Office (APO) after she had given him her address when she was transferred in July 1947, supposedly because of what she had seen. His letter came back marked deceased and he was told that she had been killed with four other nurses in an aircraft accident.

I tried to verify this and searched through the New York Times Index. These are volumes that list all the articles from the Times according to type (and were a valuable resource prior to the explosion of information on the Internet). I could look through aircraft accidents, and look only at military aircraft accidents. There was enough information that if anything looked promising, all I had to do was pull the microfilm for that day and read the whole article. I failed to find anything that matched Dennis’ story.

That was one of the first failures to corroborate Dennis’ tale. His description of the base hospital in 1947 was inaccurate, but that certainly could be the result of a flawed memory. I attached no real importance to that mistake.

But the real search was for Naomi Self. Dennis was quite clear about the name. He told me he didn’t want it shared with others. He wanted a quiet search to find this woman he had known about forty years earlier. In fact, during a conversation one night, he wanted to know why I hadn’t found her. He’d given me the name months earlier. I told him we had searched and actually found four women named Naomi Self but none was the right one.

Dennis, however, wasn’t as tight lipped with Self’s name as he had often claimed. Others had it, some with the variation of Naomi Maria Selff. It didn’t matter.

Vic Golubic, a researcher then living in Arizona also learned the name from Dennis and began a search for her. He ran through the list of nurses assigned to the base from 1946 to 1948. He checked the local hospitals. He looked in the base telephone directory and then began a search through the records of the Army. He included intensive genealogical search of Minnesota families because Dennis thought she was from there. He identified and located the Cadet Nurse Corps Identification Cards. He went to the morning reports for the medical personnel at Roswell. He checked with the VA and other veteran organizations. In other words, he looked everywhere there should have been a trace of Naomi Self and he found none. He had, as they say, proved the negative. No one by the name of Naomi Self had served in any capacity at Roswell or even in the Army at the critical time.

As the research continued, Dennis began to spin the story. Now, he was telling people that when we pressed for a name, he gave us a fake name. He claimed that he had told us all at the time that he’d give us a name but that it wouldn’t be a real name. If we wanted a name, we could have one.

And then he said the name of the nurse was really Naomi Sipes. He’d just mislead us on the last name. But, of course, no nurse with that name appeared in any of the records that had been searched.

Finally, he said that he hadn’t given us any of her name. It didn’t matter that he had suggested earlier that we had failed him somehow by not finding his nurse. He had told her that he wouldn’t tell anyone who she was and he hadn’t.

This suggested that the nurse, and the story of the nurse, was the invention of Glenn Dennis. We’d been unable to verify almost everything he said about his involvement. All possible areas of documentation that he had suggested failed to produce results.

Looking back on it, it becomes clear that Dennis’ tale doesn’t emerge until the late 1980s, after the pictures of alien busts had appeared in the Roswell Daily Record and after there had been a book, magazine articles and a number of TV reports. It is also fairly clear that the story of the nurse given by Dennis, while exciting, is not based in fact.

Frank Kaufmann and The Nine

Walter Haut was also responsible for Frank Kaufmann. Haut told me that one man I’d want to talk to was Kaufmann. I could learn a great deal from him and I could find his telephone number in the Roswell telephone directory.

I called Frank Kaufmann for the first time on January 4, 1990 and told him that Walter Haut had given me his name. I mentioned that I was looking into the flying saucer event of July, 1947 and asked if he had been involved in some fashion.

His response, which would become typical of him was, “Well… I don’t know.”

He hinted during that first conversation that he knew a little more and for the first time introduced a warrant officer named Robert Thomas who would eventually evolve into a general who had been traveling in 1947 as a warrant officer. A general arriving at Roswell, especially after the announcement they had found a flying saucer would be big news. A warrant officer coming in wouldn’t stir much interest.

So Kaufmann was cagey, though he admitted to having seen the Unsolved Mysteries broadcast about the crash. He suggested that they were mostly right, but he objected to the Jesse Marcel story of taking debris home to show the family. Kaufmann said that it would have been classified before Marcel went to pick it up. He was saying the military had more information than they had admitted to having.

Over the next several years Kaufmann granted more interviews including a long one on video tape, and finally said that he had been deeply involved, that he was on the inside and had helped plan the retrieval and the cover-up. He worked with a corps of specialists of all ranks who became known, at least to him, as the Nine. He would provide some documents to prove his case and suggested that he had more and better documents that he would release some time later. He did show me a couple of those and one of them, if it could be believed, was the smoking gun. It was from Major Edwin Easley and it discussed the retrieval operation and suggested the craft was from another world. The date was late 1947 and there would be no way to counter such an explosive document.

Kaufmann took us to a site that he said was where the main craft and the alien bodies had been found. He described the scene in detail, even commenting on how peaceful one of the dead aliens looked. Later he would take others to a different location.

There were those who didn’t believe Kaufmann. Some thought his story was too good, some were convinced he was lying simply because they refused to accept the idea that an alien ship had crashed, and there were those who didn’t believe because Kaufmann had not told his story to them before giving it to me. Such is the nature of the UFO field.

On the other side were little things that seemed to corroborate Kaufmann’s story. Little details that he couldn’t have known at the time he was giving us the main pieces of his story and things we learned later. Of course, if you provide enough details, some of them are going to match newly discovered facts. This is called coincidence.

Kaufmann’s story unraveled after he died. In among his papers were found original documents, as well as the forgeries that proved he was lying. For example, he had made it clear that he was a former master sergeant who had specialized intelligence training. His military records showed that he had been a staff sergeant with training in administration but no intelligence courses. The document he had showed to prove his claims was not the same as the original found later. Clearly he had fabricated one.

So Kaufmann’s story, like that of Dennis, fell apart. The details didn’t match his claims and there was no reason to believe that he had been an insider. None of those he named as having been with him were ever found, though he had given us some names. No corroboration for his wild tales meant that we could now reject his story as invention.

Gerald Anderson

The same could be said for Gerald Anderson, who wasn’t one of Haut’s witnesses, but who surfaced after the Unsolved Mysteries rebroadcast in 1990. Anderson claimed that as a five-year-old boy he had been on a rock hunting expedition with his family when they had stumbled over the remains of a crashed disk on the western side of the Plains of San Agustin in New Mexico. This was the site that Barney Barnett, a soil conservation engineer had give to friends in the early 1950s. It was the only link to a craft and bodies that had been discovered until so many other witnesses surfaced in the 1990s.

Anderson told a marvelous tale of seeing the craft, four alien creatures lying near it. Three were dead and one injured, or maybe, according to Anderson two were dead, one was injured and one was attempting to help its fellows. The descriptions of the creatures varied as well, with Anderson changing his story as he learned more about aliens and what researchers expected them to look like.

Anderson, it seemed, now corroborated the Barnett tale of a crashed disk on the Plains of San Agustin, provided new and exciting details, including the descriptions of the aliens, and even talked of a nasty red-haired officer which corroborated part of the Glenn Dennis story. If what Anderson said was true, then an important witness had been found.

But there were problems with Anderson’s tale. He talked of a Dr. Adrian Buskirk who had been the leader of the archaeological party that Barnett had described. To make it even better, Anderson, a former police officer was able to provide an identi-kit sketch of Buskirk so that we would know the man if we could somehow locate him.

Tom Carey, who had studied anthropology as an undergraduate and as a graduate student began a search for Dr. Buskirk. Almost the first thing he did was find a reference to Dr. Winfred Buskirk who had written a book about the western Apache. Carey wrote for a copy of the dust jacket and received one. The picture of Buskirk matched, to a surprising degree that of the sketch that Anderson had supplied. Carey had found Anderson’s Buskirk.

Buskirk, when interviewed a few weeks later, said that in the summer of 1947 he had been on the Apache reservation in Arizona, but wasn’t all that far from the Plains. Buskirk said, however, he had not been involved in any of this because he had been too busy doing his research. Or as he said, he was too busy to engage in any archaeological sideshows.

Some investigators believed that Buskirk was lying about that because he held a reserve commission in the military. They believed that he was covering up the truth for the Army.

Buskirk, however, was quite open and answered all the questions I put to him. The question became, if Anderson hadn’t seen him on the Plains in July 1947, how would he be able to identify him. Anderson couldn’t have just pulled a name out of a hat and learned later that the man had been an anthropologist who was in the right region of the world at the time. There had to be a connection.

Buskirk himself, intrigued by the question, did some research of his own. Anderson, it seemed, had attended the Albuquerque High School where Buskirk taught a course in Anthropology. Anderson had merely identified his old high school teacher probably believing that Buskirk would be unavailable for interviews.

Transcripts from the high school and reviewed by Buskirk, showed that Anderson had taken the Anthropology class one semester and then transferred to French. That produced a connection outside of the Plains. What are the odds that Anderson and Buskirk would find themselves in the same high school?

There was another interesting aspect to this. The picture of Buskirk that Anderson supplied was clearly Buskirk as he appeared when Anderson would have known him as a teacher. Buskirk, in 1947, was a much slimmer man with a narrow face. Ten years later he had put on weight and had a much rounder face.

To complicate matters, Anderson began claiming that he and I had spoken for only 26 minutes on the telephone during our initial and only interview. I don’t know why this point was important to Anderson. He insisted it was true and he supplied his telephone bill to prove it.

My tape of the conversation ran to nearly an hour. I was able to get a copy of the telephone bill that Anderson supplied to one researcher proving he had talked to me for only 26 minutes, and a copy of the appropriate page from the telephone company. On the surface they looked the same, but in the end it was clear that Anderson had created the one with the 26 minutes on it. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted that he had forged the telephone bill to make me look bad. It was just one more proof that his story couldn’t be trusted.

In the end, Anderson’s tale did not support that of Barney Barnett because Anderson claimed to have been on the Plains on the wrong day. A diary kept by Barnett’s wife proved that Barnett was in Socorro on the day Anderson claimed to have seen him near the crashed flying saucer. Lest you think Anderson just misremembered the date, Anderson also had a diary. The dates were in conflict. Of course we had a source for the Barnett diary but the Anderson diary came from a conveniently unavailable aunt.

To make matters worse for Anderson, he had claimed to have been a SEAL during his Navy service in the 1960s. The SEALs, however, said they could find no record that he had trained with them or served with them. Anderson found himself on their “Wall of Shame” which named those who had claimed to be SEALs, but who had invented their affiliation with them.

Jim Ragsdale

On January 26, 1993, Jim Ragsdale told UFO researchers, for the first time, in some detail, how he had witnessed the crash of an alien spacecraft in July 1947, how he had watched the military begin the recovery operation, and how he, with a female companion, originally identified as Trudy Truelove, had picked up pieces of the strange metallic debris.

Don Schmitt had arranged to meet with Ragsdale and his wife at their home to discuss the story and he recorded the interview on audio tape. Schmitt sat down with Ragsdale, who, at the time was on oxygen due to his poor health. Schmitt had brought maps and photographs hoping that Ragsdale would be able to locate the crash site and confirm some of the information that had been developed over the last several months.After an inquiry about Ragsdale’s health, the interview began, Ragsdale said,“Hell, when it came down you couldn't really tell what it was… what you could still see, where it hit. I think it was two spaceships flying together and one of them came down and the other one picked up what they could and got out of there."

Ragsdale then said, "But it was either dummies or bodies or something there. They looked like bodies. They weren't very long… over four or five foot long at most. We didn't see their faces or nothing like that there, but we had just got to the site and we heard the Army, the sirens and stuff all coming and we got into the damn jeep and taking off. We had to hold a fence up and go up under the damn fence onto another ranch to come out from there."

Ragsdale and his female companion returned to the impact site the next morning. They heard the military arriving on the scene. He said, "Oh… it must have been… it was two or three six by six Army trucks, a wrecker and everything… and leading the pack was a '47 Ford car with guys in it… MPs and stuff…"

The interview was hard to follow because it seemed to be all over the map. A direct question about some aspect of the UFO crash was twisted until the talk was of something else. Ragsdale and his wife seemed to have their own agenda and attempted to direct the flow of the conversation. Only occasionally was it brought back to the UFO crash.

On April 24, 1993, I spoke to Ragsdale again because there were some points that needed to be clarified. For example, if he had witnessed the crash of what Ragsdale thought, at first, was some kind of government experimental craft, why hadn't he reported it to the sheriff or the military that night. Lives could be at stake.

Ragsdale said he had been drinking that night, and that he was out in the desert with another man's wife. Neither of them were supposed to be where they were. Besides, they couldn't see much that night. It wasn't until daylight that he had enough light to see the craft and the bodies. It wasn’t until daylight that he knew something had actually been wrecked.

There were, according to Ragsdale, "Small people there. Three or four bodies."

After arranging a financial deal with the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, Ragsdale radically changed his story. Now, according to him, the object passed through the trees to impact less than a hundred yards from where his truck had been parked. Ragsdale and his friend took flashlights and walked over, spending "considerable time looking around."

Now, rather than seeing bodies or dummies in the distance, Ragsdale was close enough to touch them. They were dressed in silver uniforms and wore a tight helmets. Ragsdale now claimed that he tried to remove one of the helmets but couldn't. The eyes, according to Ragsdale, were large and oval and didn't resemble anything human. Later still he would suggest that the skin of the dead alien beings was gray. The craft, according to Ragsdale, was about twenty feet in diameter, and had a dome in the middle.

In this interview Ragsdale said that it wasn't too long before they heard what they believed were trucks and heavy equipment coming. "We left and were not there when whatever it was arrived." This is, of course, in direct conflict with all the detailed descriptions offered by Ragsdale in earlier interviews.

Describing how to find the impact site, Ragsdale now said, "A sign post on the Pine Lodge Road indicates '53 miles to Roswell.' Near this sign is a road going south toward Pine Lodge… and the turn off to Arabella leads east and south. Two or 3 miles down this road towards Arabella is the site of our pickup that night and nearby is the impact site."

The discrepancies that have appeared are more than the minor changes expected as someone tries to remember events in the distant past. Researchers expect a story to shift with each telling simply because of the mechanism of memory, but these changes go beyond that. Ragsdale first reported seeing the bodies in the distance and then, in his second, more dramatic version claimed he tried to pull a helmet off one. He originally provided a vague description of the alien and then gave one that seems to match those given by people claiming to be abducted by aliens. Ragsdale said he watched the arrival of the military and described the convoy and later claimed to have left before the trucks were in view. Originally he said the crash site was thirty to forty miles north of Roswell to one that is now claimed to be sixty or seventy miles away.

The changes in the tale told by Ragsdale were detailed in The Jim Ragsdale Story, written by Max Littell. Littell told how he learned of Jim Ragsdale. "In 1993… we did have an investigator/author visiting us, and when his partner took the car on another errand, he needed a ride to his motel. I offered, and the individual said, 'Great, but I need to go by and see a party on the way, if it's all right.' This turned out to be Jim Ragsdale."

There was a suggestion of an affidavit, and Littell wrote, "Within a few days, the instrument [affidavit] arrived, and I met Ragsdale for the first time. The instrument was read to him, he signed it, the document was notarized, and I mailed it back to the investigator. Notaries do not make copies of the instrument, so I do not remember any of the statements made."

This where the statements made by Littell concerning that aspect of the episode divert from established fact. Ragsdale was interviewed by Schmitt on January 26, 1993, and the affidavit was signed on January 27. Mark Chesney, who had waited in the car with Littell and who had listened to the tape, suggested an affidavit be made. Chesney prepared a handwritten version. He discussed it with Littell and the two of them, in Littell's office, made a few changes. Then Littell, because he could type much faster than Chesney, typed it up. In other words, the instrument was not sent to Littell. He had a hand in preparing it as well as getting Ragsdale’s signature on it and once that was done, Littell notarized it. He sent the original to me, but kept copies in the files of the International UFO Museum.

These are but a few of the problems with the tales told by Ragsdale and now endorsed in the book The Jim Ragsdale Story. It is clear from these major changes that Ragsdale’s tale, while exciting, cannot be trusted. Few inside the UFO community believe much of what Ragsdale said during his many interviews. Because much of the material was recorded, the various versions can be compared and when that is done, it is clear that the information is invented and not very imaginative.

Lieutenant Colonel Philip J. Corso

Lieutenant Colonel Philip Corso interjected himself into the middle of the Roswell case in 1995 as he began shopping around a book about his experiences with both alien creatures and the metallic debris collected. His story, while exciting, has many holes in it and Corso himself, seems to have stretched the truth on more than one occasion.

The first, and probably the dumbest of these distortions is on the cover of his book. It said he was a colonel, but his military records showed that he had never risen above lieutenant colonel. When asked about it, Corso said that he assumed that he had been promoted on retirement, as sort of a going away present, but that just wasn’t the case.

Could this be classified as a simple mistake, no worse than some of the statements that other Roswell witnesses have made? Certainly. And if this was the only problem we could let it go there. But it’s not.

One of the most telling of the events surrounding the publication of Corso’s book is the Foreword written by Senator Strom Thurmond. Here seems to be an endorsement for Corso’s book from a man who has served in the United States Senate longer than almost anyone. When the book was published, Thurmond, objected, claiming that the Foreword he had written had been for a different book.

Corso tried to explain the mistake away, saying that Thurmond’s staff had written the Foreword but that “the old man knew it” and while they hadn’t really known the nature of the book, Thurmond did. The whole flap, according to Corso, was a misunderstanding about the nature of the book and who actually authored the Foreword. As a matter of courtesy, given the controversy, Simon and Schuster decided to pull the Foreword.

Karl Pflock, who had been around Washington, D.C. in various capacities, decided to look into the matter himself, believing that his friends and sources inside the Beltway would given him a unique perspective on the matter. Pflock, it turned out, knew the senator’s press secretary, and learned that “Yes, it’s true the foreword was drafted by one of the senator’s staff… It was done at the senator’s’s direction on the understanding he had from Corso that it was to be for Corso’s memoirs, for which he and his staff were supplied an outline, a document which made no mention of UFOs.” Pflock added, “I know of my own certain knowledge the senator was and is mad as hell about the cheap trick that Corso pulled on him…”

Pflock continued, pointing out that Deputy General Counsel Eric Raymond demanded, “Recall all copies of the first printing — failing that, remove all dust jackets with the senator’s name on them; stop using any reference to the foreword by the senator in promoting the book; do not use the foreword in any subsequent printings of the book; issue a statement acknowledging the truth, ‘to establish for the public record’ that the senator ‘had no intention or desire to write the foreword to The Day After Roswell,’ a ‘project I completely disavow.’”

The apology issued by Simon and Schuster was not as bland as Corso had characterized it but was, in fact, damning in its wording. It was clear that Thurmond did not know the nature of the book and that the outline he had read was for a completely different book. The publisher did remove the foreword from all subsequent editions of the book.

That, of course, was not the end of it. Don Ecker, writing in UFO magazine in the October/November 2001 issue, suggested that Thurmond had known the truth about the book and had signed a release from on February 7, 1997, prior to the publication of the book. On that release, it says in part, “… permission to use and publish the material described below, in any and all editions of the book presently entitled…” There is a blank space and the words “Roswell Book” have been typed in. To Ecker, that meant that Thurmond knew the nature of the book.

It’s a nice thought, but probably not true. The word Roswell might have meant nothing to Thurmond, and it is clear that the original outline submitted to the senator so that he, or his staff, could prepare a forward had nothing to do with Roswell, crashes or UFOs. Although it probably has nothing to do with this, it should be noted the UFO magazine publisher is William Birnes, Corso’s coauthor on the book.

Gildas Bourdais, a French UFO researcher of some standing, wrote, in late October 2001, that to him, this settled the matter. He supported Ecker’s conclusions then, but UFO research is also about reevaluation of information as we learn more, so I asked him about that in Late 2006.

Bourdais wrote, “Yes, I have changed my mind about the question of the release by Thurmond. It was a very tricky article by Don Ecker in UFO magazine, which kind of convinced me at the time that he was aware that the book dealt with Roswell. But I realized later that the argument was suspect.”

He added, “Today, I have mixed feelings about Corso, as a man. I realize that, to say the least, some parts of his story are not credible… But I remain perplexed by the man himself.”It seems, however, that Corso has a history of this sort of unreliable behavior. The FBI, for some reason (he probably annoyed someone with some power in Washington, D.C.) investigated Corso in the 1960s. They concluded, in part, “As a matter of background, as previously indicated in referenced memorandum, Corso is a self-styled intelligence expert who retired from the military approximately 3 years ago, and he has been working as one of Senator Strom Thurmond's many assistants. He has been somewhat of a thorn in our side because of self-initiated rumors, idle gossip and downright lies he has spread to more or less perpetuate his own reputation as an intelligence expert.”

I suppose I should point out here that this FBI assessment was written in a world where there was no Freedom of Information Act and therefore no reason for the FBI to create such an assessment if it didn’t reflect reality. In other words, those who might claim this was part of a smear campaign would have to explain the reasoning for creating this document when those writing it would expect it to remain hidden. This was not a smear of Corso to be used to discredit him later, but the opinions of those who knew him in the 1960s. This shows a pattern that would emerge in the 1990s as he attempted to inject himself, as an expert, into the Roswell case.

He also said that he was a member of the fictional MJ-12. To me, making such a claim shows that he was inventing tales to bolster his connection to the UFO community. While he didn’t make this claim often or widely, he said in one version of the proposal for his book that he was a member of MJ-12… a claim that was dropped from later proposals and not mentioned in the book, but a false claim nonetheless and indicative of his credibility as so aptly outlined by the FBI three decades earlier.

Corso did have his supporters inside the UFO community and some of them continue to be quite loyal in their support. What is interesting is what they now say in their support of Corso. One of them, Ed Gehrman, who seems to like the unpopular and controversial UFO claims and theories, wrote, “His own son [Philip Corso, Jr., who tried to take on his father’s work after his death] in a public forum (which he wouldn't allow to be taped) in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, (Journey's Beyond Conference)… claimed that only 10 % of the book [The Day After Roswell] was worthwhile because Corso had not been able to review it. That's correct. Col. Corso was not able to review the book but I think his son's statement is a bit of an exaggeration. Col. Corso stated many times that the main thesis of his book was absolutely true: he seeded alien technology to the US business community.”

Here’s the point. Corso’s son said that only about ten percent of the book was accurate… which means ninety percent is not. The younger Corso suggested it was because his father did not have the opportunity to review the manuscript after his co-author had finished it and it was sent to the publisher. As a writer, I know this to be false. There would have been ample opportunity for Corso to see what was written and correct it. That he didn’t question it is a tacit admission that he accepted the manuscript as accurate and it was only after the questions were raised that Corso and others began to claim he hadn’t had the chance to review it.

I’ll give Robert Gates, a careful UFO researcher, the last word on Corso here. He wrote, “He [meaning Corso] never admitted to making any mistakes. He merely maintained (last I knew) that Birnes stroked and joked the book. Birnes claims the book is accurate. The question comes down to what exactly was 'Birnes-ized' in the book? In essence the book… has been discredited to a degree by the supposed lead author, claiming that his co-author stroked the truth. So what is truth and what is stroked is not known.”

Walt Whitmore, Jr

There is one witness, unidentified by Karl Pflock in his book, who takes an important role in “proving” that Mogul is the solution and who was named "Reluctant" by Pflock. Reluctant provided the best clues to the Mogul balloon array explanation for the Roswell crash. Pflock wrote that Reluctant wanted to keep his name out of the story, and given the facts it is not surprising. If Reluctant was identified, it would become clear that Reluctant’s story, told to Pflock was significantly different than what he told William Moore in the late 1970s, when he, Reluctant, first appeared.

Today we know that Reluctant is Walt Whitmore, Jr., a life long resident of Roswell. He was in the house when his father brought Mack Brazel home, and heard the story of the debris field directly from Brazel. There is no reason not to identify Reluctant in today’s world. He died a number of years ago.

Describing the testimony of Reluctant (Whitmore), Pflock wrote, "… Brazel sketched a map for me, showing which roads to take and how to find the site. I drove there alone… a distance of 65 or 70 miles. No one was there when I arrived, I do not remember seeing any sign that anyone had been on the site… I am certain I was on the site before any military personnel got there."

According to Whitmore, "The site was a short distance from a ranch road. The debris covered a fan- or roughly triangle-shaped area, which was 10 or 12 feet wide at what I thought was the top end. From there it extended about 100 to 150 feet widening out to 150 feet at the base… The material was very light. I could see it blowing in the wind."

Whitmore, according to Pflock, described the material as"…white, linen-like cloth with reflective tinfoil attached to one side. Some pieces were glued to balsa wood sticks, and some of them had glue on the cloth side, with bits of balsa still stuck to it… None of the sticks was more than a foot or so long."

Whitmore told Pflock, and he told me in 1995, that he had collected some of the material and taken it home. Pflock reported that Whitmore told him, "It is… stored in a safe and secure place." He told me that place was his “junk room.”

Those aren't the only statements made by Reluctant on the record. Although the source is less than sterling, Charles Berlitz and William Moore report in The Roswell Incident that Whitmore"…said that while he did not see the actual crash site until after the Army Air Force had 'cleaned it up,' he did see some of the wreckage brought into town by the rancher. His description was that it consisted mostly of a very thin but extremely tough metallic foil-like substance and some small beams."

Other aspects of Whitmore’s statements to Pflock are corroborated by The Roswell Incident. According to the book, Whitmore"…ventured out to the site and found a stretch of about 175–200 yards of pasture land up-rooted in a sort of fan-like pattern with most of the damage at the narrowest part of the fan…"

Whitmore also provided Berlitz and Moore with a description of the material."…the largest piece of this material that he saw was about four or five inches square, and that it was very much like lead foil in appearance but could not be torn or cut at all. It was extremely light weight."

Comparing Whitmore's testimony to Berlitz and Moore with that given to Pflock and to me, a few changes are found. In the 1990s, however, Whitmore described seeing the debris, but with Moore he only described seeing the remains of the clean-up effort. When he mentioned seeing debris, it was in the custody of the sheriff.

Whitmore’s description of the material, as detailed in the Berlitz and Moore book, is more consistent with that provided by others such as Marcel, Brazel, and Rickett, than it is with his later interviews. When I spoke to him, it was clear that he was describing something that sounded like the material used in balloon construction. It is also clear that his description of the material has changed over the years.

Whitmore’s story has grown since he first told it to Moore. It has changed significantly since he first was interviewed, and his description now resembles a weather balloon. And, though he claimed to have bits of the debris, he was never able to produce it. Had he been able to do that, then the discussions about his testimony would be different. Without the debris to corroborate his tale, it is one that stands alone.

Where does all this leave us? The best tales told about Roswell, those that brought in alien bodies in a first-hand sense, have since been shown to be faked. Kaufmann, Anderson, Dennis and Ragsdale who said they had seen the bodies or in Dennis’s case, a drawing of them, were later discovered to have invented their Roswell connections.

Not only has this left a hole in the Roswell case, but it provides the skeptics with the ammunition to sink the whole report. They can point to the testimony of any of these men and say, “See, they were making it up and they fooled you.”

The response will be that we, who have investigated the Roswell case were the ones to expose these reports for what they were. The skeptics stood on the sidelines without having to get their hands dirty. So, yes, these men have been exposed, but remember who did the work to expose them.