Roswell, UFOs and the Unusual

Bad Astronomy and UFOs

Here’s something that I find incredibly amusing. An expert in one subject being asked an opinion in an related subject and then answering the question with misinformation. You would think that a scientist would want to know the facts before he made a claim that is so easily refuted.

I’m thinking here of Phil Plait and his Bad Astronomy column in which he talked about UFOs just a couple of days ago. He was suggesting that when he lectured, he was often asked if he believed in aliens and flying saucers. His answer was, “Yes and no.”

He meant, quite clearly, and he did explain it, that he believed there was life on other planets, mainly those outside the Solar System and that he didn’t believe we were being visited. His reasoning? He wrote:

Amateur astronomers, of course. They are dedicated observers, out every night peering at the sky. If The Truth Is Out There, then amateur astronomers would be reporting far and away the vast majority of UFOs.

But they don’t. Why not? Because they understand the sky! [Emphasis in original] They know when a twinkling light is Venus, or a satellite, or a military flare, or a hot air balloon, and so they don’t report it.

That, to me, is the killer argument that aliens aren’t visiting us. If they were, the amateur astronomers would spot them.

The problem here is that astronomers, both professional and amateur have reported UFOs, and if we add in atmospheric scientists, we increase the pool of those who understand the sky and who have reported UFOs.

Examples you say?

Certainly. The one that springs immediately to mind is Clyde Tombaugh who was credited with discovering the now dwarf planet, Pluto (seen here with three of its four moons). In 1949, at 10:45, Tombaugh, his wife and his mother-in-law saw something strange in the night sky. The full report is now housed at the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies in Chicago, and I have held the original report in my hands (and I wonder what that document would bring on eBay?).

Tombaugh wrote, “I happened to be looking at the zenith… when suddenly I spied a geometrical group of faint bluish-green rectangles of light… As the group moved south-southeasterly, the individual rectangles became foreshortened, their space of formation smaller… and their intensity duller, fading from view at about 35 degrees above the horizon… My wife thought she saw a faint connecting glow across the structure.”

I’m sure that we’re about to hear that Dr. Donald Menzel, the UFO debunker and critic of anyone who suggested that any UFOs are anything other than misidentifications or hoaxes, was able to solve the sighting. He suggested that “a low, thin layer of haze or smoke reflected the lights of a distant house or some other multiple source.”

Tombaugh, who saw the objects replied to Menzel, who didn’t see them, writing, “I doubt that the phenomenon was any terrestrial reflection, because in that case some similarity to it should have appeared many times… nothing of the kind has ever appeared before or since.” Well, a UFO sighting by one astronomer does not make the complete case, so let’s take a look at that paragon of scientific investigation, the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objectsnow almost universally called the Condon Committee. They, of course, didn’t bother with their own research, but quoted from Project Blue Book Report No. 8 dated 31 December 1952.

The Blue Book astronomical consultant (which they don’t name but everyone today knows it was Dr. J. Allen Hynek) interviewed 44 astronomers about their attitudes about UFOs and found, not surprisingly, that most were completely indifferent to UFOs, or at best, mildly interested. Only eight said they were very interested.

The important point here is that five of them, according to Hynek, “made sightings of one sort or another. This is a higher percentage than among the populace at large. Perhaps this is to be expected since astronomers do, after all, watch the skies.”

Hynek said that when he told these astronomers that there were some cases that were highly interesting and in which there was no easy solution, their interest was “almost immediately aroused.”

This, of course, goes back to the original comment that amateur astronomers don’t see flying saucers and if they don’t, then there simply can’t be anything to the reports of them. But here we’re talking about the professionals, who confided in Hynek because he was a colleague. Hynek, because of his position with Project Blue Book had some inside knowledge about the UFOs that had been reported and he was taking the whole thing seriously.

Hynek, in his report added another comment that explains part of this perception that astronomers don’t see UFOs. Hynek noted, “And certainly another contributing factor to their desire not to talk about these things is their overwhelming fear of publicity. One headline in the nation’s papers to the effect that ‘Astronomer Sees Flying Saucer’ would be enough to brand the astronomer as questionable among his colleagues.”

So now we learn that astronomers do see UFOs and they do not report them for fear of professional ridicule. I heard one professional astronomer, in the 1970s, when asked what he thought of Hynek’s work reply, “Allen always wanted to discover a new constellation.”

What that tells us is that Hynek’s interviews of two decades earlier were still true in the 1970s, and we know that it is true today. We still have the professional scientists making pronouncements on the topic without benefit of personal knowledge. They are all too willing to dismiss the topic without bothering to learn the facts because, to do so, they would have to wade through oceans of ill-informed skeptical comment, such as Menzel’s dismissal of Tombaugh’s sighting.

But let’s ask one other question. When does anecdotal testimony become scientific observation? When does the training of the person making those observations suggest some sort of expertise? Does a pilot, military or commercial, with tens of thousands of hours in the cockpit, who is familiar with what is in the sky, make anecdotal statements or refined scientific commentary?

What about the use of instrumentation? Charles Moore, the man who claims to have launched the balloon array that explains the Roswell UFO crash has his own, unexplained UFO sighting. On April 24, 1949 Moore and four Navy technicians in New Mexico were tracking a weather balloon using a theodolite that consisted of a 25-power telescope equipped to provide readings on vertical and horizontal bearings. Given his observations as it passed in front of a mountain range, he estimated the UFO was traveling at 18,000 mph, before it disappeared in a sharp climb.

Here was a man who was familiar with the sky, who watched the object through a theodolite so that he could make educated estimates of the object’s ability, and who reported this to Project Blue Book. The sighting is labeled as “unidentified.”

Menzel, of course, knew that this couldn’t be anything extraordinary. According to him he could identify the object. In a conversation with Moore, Menzel said that it was no object at all but a mirage, an atmospheric reflection of the true balloon, making it appear as if there were two objects in the sky instead of one. He was so sure of this that he told Moore about the solution.

Moore, however, describes himself as an atmospheric physicist and considers himself as qualified as Menzel to discuss the dynamics of the atmosphere. And, according to Moore in an interview I conducted on El Paso radio station KTSM (seen here), the weather conditions were not right for the creation of mirages that day. Since Moore was on the scene, and since his training qualified him to make judgements about the conditions of the atmosphere, his conclusions are more important than Menzel’s wild speculations.

Moore is no fan of the extraterrestrial, as evidenced by some of his statements about the Roswell case and UFOs to various writers, including me. But, his sighting stands as one that should be counted as a scientific observation rather than as mere anecdotal testimony.

I could go on, but what’s the point. I have refuted the original idea that astronomers do not see UFOs. I have provided the documentation for this claim, and for those interested in Moore’s sighting, it is housed in the Project Blue Book files. Only the names have been removed, but we can, in most cases, put those names back in. In my Project Blue Book Exposed, I have a listing of all the Blue Book unidentified cases.

So, now that we know that astronomers do see UFOs and some even report them, where do we go? These scientists are familiar with the sky, they understand what is in the sky, but sometimes they see things that are extraordinary and that do not fit into the nice little categories we have created for them. Sometimes, you could say, they see flying saucers.

Bad Astronomy Part 2

Phil Plait (seen here) of Bad Astronomy fame strikes again. This time, rather than making a pronouncement that is not backed up by facts, he raises a couple points that are worth examining because I am nothing if not reasonable.

He wrote, “What do I count as evidence? Hard, physical data. Not eyewitness reports (because even the most highlycredentialed person in the world can misidentify something, or not understand what they are seeing, or may suffer from an episode, or decide to lie, or just be simply wrong).”

Fair enough. He wants “hard physical data” and not creepy eyewitness statements, so I will ignore the highly-qualified, technically-oriented people who have reported UFOs. I will ignore the statistic that tells us that the higher the educational level and the longer the object, thing, light was observed, the less likely it would be identified in the mundane, which is, of course, the opposite of what the skeptics would tell us. No eyewitness testimony… well, not much, anyway.

And yes, I’m aware of all the problems associated with eyewitness testimony. I would think, however, a multiple witness sighting, with those witnesses separated by miles and independently reporting the same thing would go a long way to providing some strong, if not hard, evidence.

Yes, you always want examples and here I’ll refer to the Levelland, Texas sightings of November 2, 1957 with witnesses in thirteen locations reporting an object close to the ground that interfered with the electrical systems of cars, stalling engines, causing radio stations to fade and lights to dim until the object moved away and disappeared.

The Air Force investigated but only found three witnesses and to the Air Force, if they didn’t talk to the witnesses, then they simply didn’t exist. The Air Force attributed the sightings to thunderstorms in the area (down town Levelland seen here), though the storms were over when the sightings began.

In the end, we are left only with the statements of the witnesses, even though the object interacted with the environment, we only have the testimony of the witnesses to that. We have the witnesses making their reports prior to any media suggestion, and the reports match, generally, but in the end, we have only eyewitness testimony and Phil Plait said he didn’t want to hear it.

He also said, “Not fuzzy photos.”

Again, fair enough. I will point out here that while about 99 % of the UFO pictures were taken by teenaged boys and 99 % of those are faked, there are some very good pictures out there and they weren’t taken by teenaged boys.

Here I think of the pictures (seen here) taken by Paul Trent of McMinnville, Oregon on May 11, 1950. According to their story, Evelyn Trent had been out feeding the rabbits when she spotted a slow moving saucer-shaped object coming from the northeast. She alerted her husband, who came out, saw the object and rushed back inside to grab a camera.

Trent took a picture, advanced the film manually (in those pre-motor driven or digital days) and took a second. Before the object disappeared, Paul Trent’s father glimpsed it.

Now, in what Phil Klass, the late UFO skeptic found strange, the Trents did not immediately have the film developed but waited to finish the roll. Trent did, eventually mention the sighting to his banker, Frank Wortman, who got the pictures for a display in the bank window, which lead to a newspaper interview, and eventual national interest.

The Condon Committee examined the photographs as part of their alleged scientific study. Dr. William Hartmann did the analysis and in the report wrote, “…it is unlikely that a sophisticated ‘optical fabrication’ was performed. The negatives have not been tampered with.”

Okay, so Hartmann is telling us that the object in the photograph is real in the sense that it is not some kind of optical trick and he is telling us that the negatives have not been altered. What you see on the film is what was in the sky. He sees nothing to suggest trickery at this point.

His conclusion is, “This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated, geometric, psychological and physical appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disk-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within sight of two witnesses. It cannot by said that the evidence positively rules out a fabrication, although there are some physical factors such of the accuracy of certain photometric measures of the original negatives which argue against a fabrication.”

For a report that suggested there was nothing to these UFOs, this conclusion seems to strongly indication otherwise. But, of course, that’s not the point here. We just needed to find a sharp photograph.

The debunkers, and here I’m thinking again of Phil Klass and Robert Sheaffer, know that there is no visitation and therefore any evidence offered to the contrary must be in error. Klass, in his UFOs Explainedand Sheaffer in his The UFO Verdict Examining the Evidenceclaim to have found proof of fraud. Klass claims that the shadows, underneath the eaves of the garage are too dark and given the orientation of the garage proves that the photographs were taken, not in the evening, but in the morning, and if this is true, then they were taken in the reverse order. Case solved and evidence dismissed.

Dr. Bruce Maccabee (seen here), an optical physicist who worked for the Navy, and is a believer in UFOs as extraterrestrial craft, disputed this claim. He said that the shadows were due to random light scattering and based this on the clouds in the photograph. He said the shadows were not strong enough for Klass’ claim.

Two problems for Klass. He never explained the motive for saying the pictures were taken in the evening, if they were morning shots and he couldn’t get around the unsophisticated nature of the Trents. Not a single person ever expressed any doubts about the Trent’s sincerity and no one ever suggested they would have been able to fake a photograph using a 1950 box camera.

Of course, I could say to Phil Plait, I don’t want to see fuzzy photos of extra solar planets and I don’t want to hear about some esoteric wobble in the star that tells me there is something orbiting it. I want some hard evidence that these things exist and not theoretical constructs, but that would be splitting hairs.

I could say the same thing to palaeontologists who give me pictures of what dinosaurs looked like based on some bones. I could say how do you end up with a hunting strategy used by predators based on bones… and by the way, explain fossilization so that it makes some sense in the real world rather than this idea that minerals in the soil replace the structure of the bone. Real evidence and not just theory. But I digress…

Phil Plait also said, “Not fuzzy video.”

Okay, how about 16 mm color film? Here I move onto shaky ground but only because the film is of two bright white lights moving across Great Falls, Montana in the middle of the day in the summer of 1950.

Nick Mariana, the manager of a minor league baseball team had gone to the field to check it out when he saw two bright objects in the sky. He ran back to his car, retrieved his 16 mm movie camera and made a short, color film of them as they crossed the sky, flew behind a water tower and then disappeared.

The sighting was also witnessed by Virginia Raunig, Mariana’s secretary. She told investigators she had seen “two silvery balls.” Mariana said they had a definite disk shape and he thought they were about fifty feet across and about three or four feet thick.

Quite naturally the Air Force investigated the film and just as naturally, they thought the objects were two F-94 jets that might have been in the area at the time. Sunlight from the fuselage washed out the other details. Mariana and Raunig said they had seen the jets in another part of the sky (Great Falls UFOs seen here and in blow up below).

Ed Ruppelt, the chief of the Air Force investigation in 1952, when the film was reexamined reported, “We drew a blank on the Montana Movie — it was an unknown.”

Dr. Robert M. L. Baker, had looked at it in 1955, reported that if the objects had been the jets, given all the information he had, they would have been identifiable as jets on the film. He ran experiments using a similar camera and filmed objects at various distances to reach his conclusions. He reaffirmed them in 1972.

Quite naturally, the Condon Committee wanted to study the film, after it had been examined by other experts. Dr. Hartmann wrote, “Past investigations have left airplanes as the principal working hypothesis. The data at hand indicate that while it strains credibility to suppose these were airplanes, the possibility nonetheless cannot be entirely ruled out.”

Depending on the exact date of the sighting, there might have been two airplanes in the area. Hartmann wrote, “Assuming the 15 August date was the correct date, Air Force investigators found that there were two F-94 jets in the vicinity and that they landed only minutes after the sighting, which could well have put them in circling path around Maelstrom AFB [Great Falls], only three miles ESE of the baseball park. However, Witness I [Mariana] reported seeing the two planes coming in for a landing behind him immediately following the filming… thereby accounting for those aircraft.”

Yes, yes, these are points of light, but they are on film and clearly Mariana didn’t have the equipment or expertise to fake something like that, especially in 1950. He also said that the Air Force had removed the thirty-frames from the film and in those frames you could see the disk shape. The Air Force said that they had removed a single frame because the sprockets were broken and they just wanted to repair it.

I could mention the Trementon, Utah film (frame seen here) made in 1952 by a Navy warrant officer, but again, it’s just bright lights in the daytime sky. The warrant officer said that he had seen the disk shape as the objects had passed over his car, but by the time he got his 16 mm camera out of the car the objects had moved off and only the bright glow showed against the bright blue sky.

Phil Plait said, “I want hard, physical data. I want an alien on the White House lawn. I want a piece of metal with clearly non-terrestrial isotope ratios of components, or be composed of some currently non-discovered element. I want some piece of predictive evidence — a map of an alien world that can eventually be verified, or an alien-given advance in physics that can later be verified with the LHC or some other cutting-edge technology. And nothing vague like ‘a unified field theory exists’; it has to be definite and precise, so that there is no controversy.”

How about instrumentation with visual confirmation? In other words, radar sightings along with both commercial and military pilot observation?

In July 1952, radars at the Washington National Airport showed numerous blips. Air Traffic Controllers, when they asked pilots for visual confirmation received it. Radars at other locations confirmed the sightings as well, and jet interceptors, vectored into the area also saw the objects. In one case the fighter was surrounded by the objects before he was able to break away.

The Air Force said that the sightings on radar were the result of temperature inversions over Washington, D.C. at the time, but were unable to explain the visual sightings or why the radars in different locations, and different scopes had the same objects on them. Weather experts said that the inversion layers were not strong enough to create the blips and besides, the Air Traffic Controllers were familiar with blips created by the inversion layers (yes, I know that the inversion level bends the radar beam giving a false echo but that just didn’t fit the flow of my sentence).

The Air Force wrote off the sightings as weather related, but independent analysis by atmospheric experts suggest they overreached for the explanation. The Air Force abhorred an “unidentified” sighting which is why so many in their study were marked as “Insufficient Data for a Scientific Analysis.” It wasn’t explained, but then, it wasn’t unidentified either. About 40 % of their sightings were marked as “Insufficient.” Condon, by the way, had about 30 % as unidentified which doesn’t include the sighting identified “as a natural phenomenon that it has never been seen before or since,” but which is never identified.

Phil Plait then asked, “Do you think this is too demanding? I have news for you: you’re asking me to believe in something that will revolutionize all of human existence. I think demanding some actual evidence for such a thing is not only nottoo much to ask, but is to be demanded.”

As a note to Phil Plait, no, I don’t think this is too demanding. Yes, we’re asking you to accept the idea that we have been visited. No, not nearly as often as has been reported by some, but often enough to get noticed and certainly often enough to leave some of the evidence you require. They only question left is will you look at it all, believer and skeptic, or will you just assume that the skeptical information is somehow more accurate than that assembled by those on the other side of the fence? When the opening premise is that there has been no visitation and therefore anything that suggests visitation is in error, you are not going to learn much of anything.

This means that the skeptics have obscured the truth, provided ridiculous explanations and written off cases as hoaxes when they have absolutely no evidence of hoax.

You want an example?

Sure. The Lubbock Lights photographs. True, they show indistinct blobs of light, but they are flying in a “V” formation. Carl Hart, Jr., who took the pictures in 1951 said that he didn’t know what they were then and when I interviewed him in the 1990s, he said the same thing. He didn’t know what he had photographed.

Dr. Donald H. Menzel, the Harvard astronomer who attacked all things UFOlogical suggested, at first, the lights were mirages, but mirages don’t fly in “V” formations. He then said, without a shred of evidence to support it, that the photographs of the lights were a hoax. No exactly the scientific method in action. Besides, if they weren’t a hoax, then Menzel had no scientific explanation for them, but since we all know that there is no visitation, it must be a hoax.

So, I support all we need to know now is if this brief survey of some of the evidence is of sufficient strength to create a desire to learn more by Phil Plait, or will we just hear more reasons to ignore it. True, I’m not talking about aliens on the White House lawn or pieces of debris with strange isotopic ratios, but I am providing cases where the UFO interacted with the environment, pictures that was not fuzzy objects and movie footage from the early 1950s that have been examined by some of the leading experts. The best they can do is suggest hoax, often without a shred of evidence to suggest hoax because the only other explanation can’t be right. If McMinnville, if Great Falls, if Levelland were not hoaxes, then just what were they.

Amateur Astronomers, Bad Astronomy and UFOs

Not all that long ago we had a couple of discussions about amateur astronomers and UFOs, meaning here, alien spacecraft. I had mentioned a couple of instances in which amateur astronomers had seen UFOs, in this case meaning something unidentified which, of course could also mean alien spacecraft.

Once again, in just looking at the UFO Investigator(January 1974 issue, page 1)that came on the DVD supplied by the Center for UFO Studies, I found a couple of stories about amateur astronomers and UFOs. Terence Dickinson, of the Strasenburg Planetarium in Rochester, New York, said that he, with five students, were studying Jupiter, when they spotted five steady lights in the southern sky on October 24, 1973. The UFOs climbed higher and seemed to get brighter.

Dickinson watched the objects through an eight power spotter scope while students kept the objects in sight without an optical aide. They all said that the objects climbed for about two minutes until they were about 55 degrees above the horizon and all were as bright as Venus with a single exception at the rear of the formation that also had a “pinkish” cast.

The objects were flying in a “V” formation that in military terms would have been a heavy right, meaning it was more checkmark shaped than an actual “V.” The lights of the object were steady, and were estimated to be about two miles away and at about 10,000 feet.

Dickinson and his students were not the only ones to see the objects. Richard Quick, Director of the Libraries at State University of New York at Geneseo, provided corroboration of the sighting in a detailed letter to Dickinson.

I suppose I should mention that Dickinson was a member of NICAP at the time of his sighting. Working with Dr. Stuart Appelle, a NICAP regional director, they attempted to find a prosaic explanation but civilian and military authorities, including NORAD, said that none of their aircraft were in the area at the time of the sighting.

A month earlier, meaning the December 1974 issue of the UFO Investigator, the headline in big bold type across the front was “President and Vice President of Long Island Astronomical Society Sight UFO.”

On Sunday, October 21, 1973, Lee Gugliotto and James Paciello, were on the second floor terrace of Gugliotto’s home, looking for meteors when a reddish star attracted their attention. They watched it for a moment and then returned to their wives. About two hours later, they returned to the terrace and noticed the red light again. It seemed to move to the west and then began to come right at them until they could see a ball shape. Eventually the object was about the third of the size of a full moon and as bright as Venus.

As the object was about to disappear over the house, Gugliotto and the women hurried downstairs with the intention of following the object. Paciello stayed were he was, watching. A white glow appeared and was quickly replaced by three blinking lights that were evenly spaced on the object. One was green, one red and one white. Paciello noted that the lights were not blinking in a regular pattern, nor were the spaced as the navigation lights on an airplane would be.

Paciello joined the others and they drove down the hill, keeping the object in sight until it faded away in the haze. They then returned home and called the police.

NICAP’s regional investigator, Diana Russell, obtained a detailed report and learned that others in the area had also seen the object. She learned that small aircraft were spotted during the sighting so that everyone could compare the navigation lights on an aircraft, and the general shape of the aircraft with the object. They said that the airplanes looked like “pin dots by comparison to the size of the UFO.”

Again, I should note, as did the UFO Investigator, that although the witnesses had an interest in UFOs, “they did not immediately leap to the conclusion that they were experiencing a UFO sighting.”

Marc Levine, Director of the Planetarium at Vanderbilt Museum, who knew both the men, said, “If they say something was up there that did not belong there I would have to go along with them.”

So, there are two more reports by amateur astronomers but in each case the object is called a UFO as opposed to an alien spacecraft. Of course, the reports also suggest that all other explanations, from man-made to natural have been eliminated. The amateur astronomers are familiar with what in the sky, as Phil Plait has told us repeatedly, and checks for aircraft, satellites, or other Earth-bound craft had failed. That suggests to me that we can say that here are two more reports of flying saucers (though none were of the objects saucer shaped).

I mentioned these because, once again I stumbled over them as I was looking through the UFO Investigator for something else… The 1973 date should give it away. That was during the big “occupant” wave of the fall when lots of people were seeing lots of UFOs and many of them had landed with the creatures from the inside being seen on the outside.

I suppose the question now becomes, how many of these sorts of sightings do we have to report before Phil concedes that amateur astronomers do see UFOs, and in many cases those UFOs are alien spacecraft…

Yes, I can hear him now, explaining that a light in the sky, even one under close observation, does not necessarily mean alien spacecraft. We don’t know that these were alien spacecraft. We just know that they were strange objects that seem to have no Earthly explanation but that doesn’t lead us directly to the extraterrestrial. We need something more to get there.

I suppose that the best we can hope for is Phil to concede that amateurs do report UFOs, but that doesn’t mean they have reported an alien ship. We are, however, getting closer.

Phil Plait Strikes Again

Well, I see that good old Phil Plait (seen here) of the Bad Astronomy web site has struck again. I’m not sure why, if he is so convinced there is nothing to UFO reports, he feels the compulsion to return to the subject so often, but he does. And, surprising me if no one else, he makes grandiose claims that are not supported by any real evidence. Instead we are treated to his uninformed opinion and a suggestion that he “…got some amusement from it [arguing with we uninformed UFO nuts], I’ll admit, since trying to reason with some people is clearly a losing game.”

Oh, Phil, I understand what you mean. I keep putting out facts and then have to listen (well read actually) your opinions. I quote the sources and you quote your own mind. Clearly this is a losing game… but it is somewhat amusing.

And then he retreats into his favorite, though unsupported argument that “Astronomers, both amateur and professional, are constantly viewing the sky. There are tens of thousands of amateurs out there out observing all the time: a large sample population, and far larger in observing manhours than the regular population. If UFOs are so common, then why do we not see an unusually large number of reports from astronomers?”

Good question Phil… of course, I might ask who all these astronomers viewing the sky are since it seems that many of them are using instrumentation to view very narrow fields rather than standing around outside with a pair of binoculars, but I digress.

Or, I suppose, I could point out that pilots, especially those on long, overnight flights, get good views of the night sky and they do report UFOs frequently. Some have noted that their corporate leaders frown on UFO reports and encourage the pilots not to make them, but again, I digress.

I will point out, again, that there is a negative impact on the careers of astronomers would report UFOs. Once again, I’ll point to the study conducted for the Air Force by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, in which he suggested that if any astronomer reported a flying saucer, meaning an alien spacecraft (and as opposed to a UFO) it would be headlined the next day and the following day the man’s, or woman’s, career would end.

Hynek, in fact, was sometimes ridiculed by his colleagues in the field. I took an astronomy course while at the University of Iowa and we were treated to an appearance, guess lecture you might say, from James A. van Allen… yes, the radiation belt guy. Someone asked about Hynek and the answer was, “Allen always wanted to discover a new constellation…”

Which was strange because I had a couple of serious conversations with van Allen about UFOs. He seemed interested in the topic but was disturbed by the lack of critical standards. Too much passion in a field that could stand a little dispassionate research.

Hynek’s study, to get back on topic, showed that astronomers actually reported UFOs at a slightly higher rate than the general population. So, Phil’s comment about astronomers and sky observations is right. They should see UFOs at a higher rate and according to the available statistics, do.

I could, once again, cite some of those who have reported, not UFOs, but flying saucers. Clyde Tombaugh (seen here) comes immediately to mind with his sighting near Las Cruces, New Mexico, of something with square, glowing windows. Donald Menzel, the rabid anti-UFO guy, a man who never met an explanation other than extraterrestrial that he didn’t like, explained Tombaugh’s sighting as lights from houses reflected in the light haze over the city… Except Menzel wasn’t there and Tombaugh was. Tombaugh was a qualified observer who said there was no light haze over the city so it didn’t matter what Menzel thought. Menzel’s explanation didn’t work but Menzel didn’t care because he had explained the sighting.

Which isn’t to say that Tombaugh saw a craft built on another planet, but that he saw something sufficiently strange that he couldn’t identify it as Venus or a weather balloon. This would be a real UFO, reported by an astronomer, but not while he was working out at the observatory, but while he was sitting in his backyard looking at the night sky.

Plait also gets worked up because of the sheer number of UFO reports. Plait wrote, “My assertion is that this is because the vast majority of UFO reports from people are misidentified objects like Venus, the Moon, satellites, balloons, and so on. These are things every amateur astronomer has seen countless times, and knows are not alien spaceships bent on probing the backsides of rural citizens. While this does not mean every single observed object is something more mundane, it does mean that the huge numbers quoted by UFOlogists are most certainly wrong.”

Well, again, this isn’t quite right. True, there are a large number of UFO reports but it is also true that the vast majority are of mundane things. Everyone who studies UFO reports will tell you that ninety to ninety-five or six percent are of mundane objects. We get it and we identify them.

I have reported here, and have mentioned in various lectures and speeches, that I investigated a case with a domed disk and alien creatures made by two witnesses. I solved the case because I went out and looked. For those interested in the details, see the Mount Vernon, Iowa sighting on the April 2007 blog.

And, yes, I have listened to people describe Venus, including those who suggest they have seen searchlights playing down from it. And people who saw very bright meteors. And listened to some strange stories but with no other witnesses, think of them as insufficient data though I suspect I might have an answer.

So, yes, there are thousands of UFO sightings and only a few of them are of interest to us here. And while Plait trots out that old cliche about rural citizens, those of us who have studied the phenomenon (meaning the UFOs as opposed to all the other things often lumped in) we know that the statistics show that the higher the level of education and the longer the sighting, the less likely it is to be identified.

And I have to wonder about the perception that everyone who lives in a rural environment is some kind of a rube unable to tell a weather balloon from Venus from a structured craft that out performs those structured craft we build. Does living in a city confer some sort of additional intelligence on an observer, or is this just another example of a cultural bias? Are we who live in Iowa, or Nebraska or Wyoming, or West Virginia somehow less intelligent than those who live in Washington, D.C. or Los Angeles?

I guess my question would be when is Plait going to take a look at the actual data rather than live by his personal bias? That is something most of these nay-sayers never do… oh, they’ll talk about no physical evidence, they’ll claim what we do have is anecdotal, but they won’t sit down to look at it.

If they do, and still feel there is nothing to UFOs, then hey, they’ll be in a better position to argue the case. But maybe they’ll understand that the evidence they desire is right there. All they have to do is look.

I Understand Kent Jeffrey

Back in the mid-1990s, airline pilot Kent Jeffrey developed an interest in the Roswell case. He believed, at that time, that something alien had fallen there and that the cover up of it should be broken. He believed that we all had the right to know what happened and he was willing to put up some of his own money and his own time in an attempt to learn the truth.

He began the Roswell Initiative which was a worldwide petition to the US government to release all its Roswell information and all its UFO files. He put it online and he gave copies to friends in other countries to demonstrate the worldwide interest in learning the truth. He met with the witnesses and offered them the services of a legal team if they got into trouble for telling what they knew. He traveled to Roswell to meet them.

About the time that we arrived at the 50^thanniversary of the crash, in July 1997, Kent had changed his mind. He believed that the Roswell crash, if there was anything at all, was caused by something mundane. He no longer thought of it as extraterrestrial and he appeared on several radio and television shows explaining why he had changed his mind. I debated him in a couple of those forums and responded, at length, to his article about what he thought of as the “real” truth that appeared in the MUFON UFO Journal.

He did complete his Initiative and delivered some twenty or thirty thousand petitions to Washington, but included a letter that watered down the whole thing. It sort of undermined the power of the petitions by saying that he now believed Roswell was explained, but there were still UFO truths to be learned.

I won’t go into all of that here. I wrote about it in the Roswell Encyclopedia, including Kent’s article. He granted permission to use it and though I edited it slightly because of space limitations, I didn’t change it. For those who wish to read this, they can do so in that book.

I will note, however, that one of Kent’s reasons for changing his mind was because he had attended some of the 509^th Bomb Group reunions, talking with officers who served in Roswell in 1947 and who said they had heard nothing about the UFO crash. They said that had it happened, they would have known about it because nothing was that secret.

I don’t believe that is right, given the nature of security regulations and how these things work. I believe that if the crash was highly classified, many of these officers might have heard rumors, but they wouldn’t have been involved in the retrieval and now, fifty and sixty years later can provide us with nothing more than their opinion that nothing happened. Kent thought this persuasive. I do not.

It was Frank Kaufmann who might have killed it all for Kent, though I don’t know this for certain. I know that Kent, and his father, a World War II triple ace, meaning he shot down, at least, fifteen enemy aircraft, met with Frank on a couple of occasions in Roswell. Frank told them the same story that he had told me and others. He talked of his hobnobbing with generals, and mentioned General Robert Thomas who had sneaked into Roswell in the guise of a warrant officer… or, at least that was what Frank said.

But Kent’s father was a retired, high-ranking Air Force officer and had friends who could check all this out. He could find no evidence of this General Thomas and this, I believe made Kent suspicious.

Given all this, I believe Kent decided that there couldn’t have been a crash because he would have been able to get something from these officers at the reunions. He would have found some trace of this General Thomas even if the general would corroborate any of the story. And his failure to find independent corroboration of the crash beyond those in Roswell talking about it suggested to him that there had been no crash.

I think Kent was further disillusioned by some of the “revelations” about Major Jesse Marcel. Marcel’s entire military record was leaked into the public arena in violation of various rules. You can read the story of Marcel in another article included here.

And he had talked with officers who had been at Wright Field or who had been part of the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) and who told him that nothing happened. Kent believed this to be the truth, though had there been a crash and had they been ordered not to talk about it, they very possibly would have said nothing happened. The lies told would be lies to protect national security and would therefore be part of the job.

I talked to a general who had been the chief of ATIC, or had overseen a larger part of the intelligence operation at WrightPatterson AFB and when I asked him some questions he said, not kindly, “I don’t know who you are and I don’t know what is still classified and what is no longer classified and I can’t talk to you.”

For a few moments more I tried to ask questions but it was clear that he wasn’t going to tell me anything. Does this prove a cover up in Roswell? No, it proves that there are military secrets and some are better at keeping them than others.

Kent didn’t get a chance to talk to Edwin Easley or Chester Barton, who worked for Easley and only had a couple of interesting things to say about the crash. He didn’t talk to Marcel but he was concerned about the contradictions in the Marcel’s military record and what Marcel had told Bob Pratt. He was concerned with the denials of men who claimed if something had happened, they would have known it, never understanding that sometimes military secrecy trumps friendship and those who thought they would have known were not inside the loop and they didn’t know.

I think Kent’s attempts to validate the information failed him and he lost some of his confidence in the Roswell case. I think that learning that Kaufmann was not who he claimed to be before we knew it for a fact, shook him. I think that learning that Glenn Dennis’s nurse didn’t exist under the name Dennis gave us, eliminated one of the better testimonies that led to the extraterrestrial. At the end of the day, there just wasn’t sufficient evidence for Kent to conclude that Roswell was alien. The Air Force explanation, the failure of so many of the eyewitnesses, and the damage done by those inventing their tales was enough for Kent. He concluded that Roswell was nothing alien.

I understand this because I too think some of the same things at times. Rumors should have circulated at Roswell among the pilots and surely some of them would have heard enough to suggest the crash was real. But I also know, having served with various military units that some secrets simply do not leak and sometimes those who think they have an inside track do not.

And while I might sometimes have my doubts about all Marcel said, when we look at his record we see a fine officer. Some of the things he told Bob Pratt are not borne out in the record, but then, it is possible that Pratt got some of it wrong. I do know the words are important and that Marcel never claimed his was a pilot as some have reported but said only that he had flown as one, and that is an important difference.

And I have watched the collapse of some testimony. Gerald Anderson was clearly making it up. It wasn’t quite as clear with Frank Kaufmann, but he too, was making it up. Glenn Dennis seemed to have a solid tale, but there were little things that went wrong with it. We learned the truth about him when he began to blame others for misunderstanding about the nurse’s name. The destruction there was more subtle, but when he began to say he had made up the nurse’s name, it reset everything to zero. Not quite as evident as Frank’s faked documents but enough to suggest Dennis was no more honest about this than Kaufmann.

So Kent looked at all this and decided that it was evidence that nothing alien happened. It could be explained as the Air Force said it could. Kent just couldn’t find sufficient evidence otherwise.

When I looked at this cesspool of useless evidence, I sometimes thought the same things. But then, I did talk to Edwin Easley and Chester Barton and a dozen others. I know what exactly Easley told me but circumstances prevented a tape recording of the critical statement. For Kent that was a failure, but I heard what the man said. I can’t prove it for others, but I do know what was said.

And, I haven’t even touched on what Brigadier General Arthur Exon told me. Yes, the debunkers and the Air Force have had little to say about him. So there are those who talk of something alien and who are who they claimed to be during the interviews and who just might know something about it.

All that was too late for Kent. And if I hadn’t had the chance to talk to some of these people, then I might just agree with him. But I did talk to them, and I have talked to others, so I’m not as jaded as he has become. I can understand how it happened and the difference between the two of us is that I talked to some of the people he didn’t.

Klass, Shandera and DuBose

The debate over the events near Roswell, New Mexico of July 1947 have taken several subtle turns over the years. For those not familiar with them, arguments from the skeptical community can be convincing. The problem is that many of these arguments are often founded, not in research, but in the semantics of the situation. With the debate reopened with the publication of The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, and later by the 60^thAnniversary of the crash, it is now important to understand exactly what is being said. The arguments over the credibility of forty year memories (at the time the interviews were conducted) and the events that took place in Brigadier General Roger Ramey's office on July 8, 1947 can be illustrative in attempting to understand the whole situation.

Philip Klass (seen here), in one of his attempts to undermine the research being done into the Roswell case, has presented theories that can't be substantiated. He has taken rumor and speculation and attempted to turn it into a thought provoking piece on why the memories of witnesses and the testimonies of those witnesses should be ignored. But Klass, in writing his article, has ignored the documents and the testimony that fly in the face of his beliefs.

Using the debates between Donald Schmitt and Kevin Randle, and Jaime Shandera and William Moore as the springboard, Klass writes, "The controversy has served to demonstrate how fragile and uncertain are the 40+ year old recollections of surviving principals — which is hardly surprising."

Klass continues, writing, "Seven different photos have been located which were taken in Gen. Ramey's (Brigadier Roger Ramey, commanding officer of the Eighth Air Force) office on the late afternoon/early evening of July 8, 1947, and two of them show Ramey and Col. DuBose (later Brigadier General Thomas J. DuBose) examining the debris. All photos show the same debris. Moore/Shandera claim this is the same debris recovered by Marcel (Major Jesse A. Marcel) from the Brazel (W.W. Mac [sic] Brazel) ranch and that photos show the remains of a crashed saucer. Randle/Schmitt disagree and say the photos show the remains of a balloon-borne radar tracking device which Gen. Ramey substituted for the authentic debris (Ramey, kneeling and DuBose shown here)."

To this point, Klass has provided the reader with an accurate account of the situation. The facts, as outlined are correct. However, Klass then makes the assumption that is not true. He writes, "The fact that all seven photos taken in Ramey's office show the same debris challenges the credibility of Maj. Jesse Marcel's 30+ year old recollections which form the cornerstone of the Roswell crashed saucer myth, at least for Moore, Friedman and Shandera.”

These facts do not challenge Marcel's recollections, but Moore's reporting of those recollections. That is the subtle, yet real, difference here that is missed by Klass and the other debunkers.

Klass continues, writing, "According to Moore's book [The Roswell Incident], when Marcel (now deceased) was interviewed in the late 1970s, he said that 'one photo (taken in Ramey's office showing Marcel examining the debris) was pieces of the actual stuff we found. It was not a staged photo. Later, they cleared out our wreckage and substituted some of their own. Then they allowed more photos.' Yet all of the photos taken in Ramey's office on July 8, 1947, including two (not one) with Marcel, clearly show the same debris."

The problem isn’t with Marcel, but with Moore’s reporting of the incident. In fact, Moore provides us with three versions of that one interview, one published in his book, one circulated a couple of years ago, and another in Focus, his publication.

But we can take this one step farther. Marcel, when shown a copy of one of the photos printed in The Roswell Incident, reported, "No. No. That picture was staged. That's not the stuff I brought home." This is a fact overlooked or ignored by the debunker camp.

A disinterested third party, Johnny Mann, reported that. His interest was only in learning the truth and is not a party to the so-called dispute. The exchange between Mann and Marcel was witnessed by another man, Julian Krajewski.

In fact, Marcel said as much on audio tape. Linda Corley had a chance to interview Marcel in 1980. During that interview, Marcel told Corley that the photographs did not show the material that he had found on the ranch. They were staged photographs. Please remember that. Marcel said that the material in the photographs was not the material he found on the ranch and that claim is on audio tape and has been reviewed by others.

The point of the dispute is not Marcel's memory then, but the reporting of his testimony. Moore has yet to offer the true version of the statement. We do have testimony, from a variety of witnesses, including those who showed Marcel the pictures that refutes both Moore's claim and Klass' assumption. We should not, then, condemn Marcel's 30+ year memory for facts that come from third parties.

Switching gears, Klass moves on to Colonel Thomas J. DuBose the Chief of Staff of the Eighth Air Force in 1947. Klass reports, "In Dec. 1990 issue of Focus, Shandera's article includes what he says are verbatim quotes from two interviews with DuBose — one by telephone and one in person when he recently visited DuBose at his home in Florida. After asking DuBose if he had read the Moore/Shandera articles that Shandera had earlier sent to him, and if he had 'studied the (Ramey office) pictures', DuBose reportedly replied: 'Yes, and I studied the pictures very carefully.' When Shandera asked if DuBose recognized the material, DuBose reportedly replied: 'Oh yes. That's the material that Marcel brought in to Fort Worth from Roswell.'"

Klass continues, writing, "But Randle and Schmitt got a conflicting response when DuBose was interviewed earlier — on August 10, 1990. The interview was videotaped and hypnosis was used to try to enhance DuBose's 40+ year old recollections. In this interview, DuBose said that the material photographed in Ramey's office was NOT the debris that Marcel brought, i.e. that bogus material had been substituted. But then Shandera visited DuBose and asked him if there had been a switch, DuBose reportedly replied: 'Oh, bull! That material was never switched.'"

Kal Korff weighs in on this argument himself. Although he doesn’t say that the quotes are verbatim, he writes to suggest just that. No where does he say that the quotes attributed to DuBose come from Shandera’s memory of the interview and not from tapes or notes.

Korff wrote, “In a revealing interview he granted to UFO research and television producer Jamie [sic] Shandera, DuBose put to rest the ‘mystery’ of the so-called substituted wreckage and has exposed it for what it is another Major Marcel myth! The initials ‘JHS’ stand for Jamie H. Shandera and the initials ‘GTD’ denote Gen.Thomas DuBose:

JHS: There are two researchers (Don Schmitt and Kevin Randle) who are presently saying that the debris in General Ramey’s office had been swtiched and that you men had a weather balloon there.

GTD: Oh Bull! That material was never switched!

JHS: So what you’re saying is that the material in General Ramey’s office was the actual debris brought from Roswell?

GTD: That’s absolutely right.

JHS: Could General Ramey or someone else have ordered a switch without you knowing it?

GTD: I have damn good eyesight — well, it was better back then than it is now — and I was there, and I had charge of that material, and it was never switched[Emphasis added.]

Korff goes on with this, writing, “In a third interview conducted a couple of weeks later by Shandera while visiting DuBose’s home in Florida, the general related the following details:

JHS: Now as to this Roswell business — let’s begin with when Jesse Marcel came over from Roswell with this material.

GTD: Yes. Well, as best I can recall, I met the airplane that came in from Roswell and I took a canvas mail pounch with this debris over to General Ramey’s office…

JHS: Did you see additional debris on the plane?

GTD: No, I was just handed this canvas mail pouch with the stuff in it, and [I] headed straight to Roger’s [General Ramey’s] office. [Emphasis added.]

JHS: Now again, these other researchers (Schmitt, Randle and Friedman) are saying that you guys switched this stuff and that this stuff was some kind of a weather balloon, and that you did that to fool the press and the press never saw the real stuff.

GTD: Nah.

Again, the controversy isn't about 40 year old memories of a witness but about the reporting of those memories by two separate groups. It is interesting that Shandera's reporting is in direct conflict with what was reported first in The Roswell Incidentand later by me.

It is also important to point out that according to both General and Mrs. DuBose, Shandera neither recorded the interview nor took notes when he talked to them in Florida. We have Shandera's unsubstantiated claim that DuBose (seen here with Don Schmitt) said the debris in Ramey's office was the real debris, which is consistent with the story that Shandera and Moore were pushing at that time, but that is not consistent with the independent testimony of the witnesses, or with the documentation available.

Korff noted that this dialogue was taken from an article that Bill Moore and Jaime Shandera wrote for the MUFON UFO Journal. Although he requires me to produce some kind of verification for what I write, Shandera seems to get a pass from him. He just quotes from the article, as if that is a final authority, never mentioning that there is no corroboration for Shandera’s version in either taped interviews or notes taken at the time.

Other the other hand, we have supplied copies of the video-taped interviews to The J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, the MUFON UFO Journaland the Fund for UFO Research. We have quoted exactly from that tape. Shandera and Moore have yet to offer independent and disinterested third parties copies of their tapes of their interviews. If they would do so, then the question about the debris in Ramey's office could be cleared up.

We asked DuBose pointedly if he had ever seen the Roswell debris and he responded, "NEVER!" After the Shandera interview was published, we asked him again, if he had ever seen the real debris and again he answered, "NO!"

This could be construed as just another debate between two factions, ours and theirs with no way to resolve it. However, we aren't the only ones to whom DuBose spoke. Billy Cox, a writer for Florida Todayat the time, interviewed DuBose for an article he wrote in the November 24, 1991 edition of the newspaper. Cox reported that DuBose told him essentially the same story that he told us. Here was a disinterested third party reporting on the same set of circumstances, but he didn't get Shandera's version of the events.

In a letter dated September 30, 1991, Cox wrote, "I was aware of the recent controversy generated by an interview he (DuBose) had with Jaime Shandera, during which he stated that the display debris at Fort Worth was genuine UFO wreckage and not a weather balloon, as he had previously stated. But I chose not to complicate matters by asking him to illuminate what he had told Shandera; instead, I simply asked him, without pressure, to recall events as he remembered them…he seemed especially adamant about his role in the Roswell case. While he stated that he didn't think the debris was extraterrestrial in nature (though he had no facts to support his opinion), he was insistent that the material that Ramey displayed for the press was in fact a weather balloon, and that he had personally transferred the real stuff in a lead-lined mail pouch to a courier going to Washington…I can only conclude that the Shandera interview was the end result of the confusion that might occur when someone attempts to press a narrow point of view upon a 90 year old man. I had no ambiguity in my mind that Mr. DuBose was telling me the truth."

Cox isn't the only one to hear that version of events from DuBose. Kris Palmer, a former researcher with NBC'sUnsolved Mysteriesreported much the same thing. When she spoke with DuBose (seen here), he told her that the real debris had gone on to Washington in a sealed pouch and that a weather balloon had been on the floor in General Ramey's office.

But the most enlightening of the interviews comes from Don Ecker formerly of UFOmagazine. Shandera had called Ecker, telling him that he would arrange for Ecker to interview DuBose. Ecker, however, didn't wait and called DuBose on his own. DuBose then offered our version of events. When Ecker reported that to Shandera, Shandera said for him to wait. He'd talk to DuBose.

After Shandera talked to DuBose, he called Ecker and said, "Now call him." DuBose then said that the debris on the floor hadn't been switched and that it was the stuff that Marcel had brought from Roswell. It should be pointed out here that Palmer called DuBose (seen here) after all this took place. Without Shandera there to prime the pump, DuBose told our version of events. It was only after close questioning by Shandera could that version be heard. It is not unlike a skillful attorney badgering a witness in a volatile trial. Under the stress of the interview and the close questioning, the witness can be confused for a moment. Left alone to sort out the details, the correct version of events bubbles to the surface.

Klass, and later Korff, ignore this because it simply doesn’t fit with their view of the situation. If there was no switch, then we have prima facie evidence that what was found was a balloon and it doesn’t matter if it was Mogul or anything else. On the other hand, if the debris was switched, then what we see in the pictures is not what Marcel found and the door is again opened.

It should also be noted that DuBose hasn't actually changed his testimony at all. The real confusion comes from his statement that the debris on the floor in Ramey's office was not switched. We had suggested that the debris Marcel brought to Ramey's office was switched with the balloon. Dubose said that the debris on the floor wasn't switched. That statement is correct. The debris on the floor was not switched. It was always a balloon. The real debris was never on the floor in Ramey’s office, contrary to what has been reported by others.

I could go into a longer explanation of the situation in Ramey's office on July 8, 1947, but have done so in the November/December 1990 issue of The International UFO Reporterand the April 1991 issue of the MUFON UFO Journal. Both publications provided detailed accounts of those critical hours, including a long listing of sources used in the preparation of the articles. It is interesting to note that Shandera and Moore quote sources but never supply copies of the tapes or transcripts to independent third parties. I have done both.

Klass, as he continues his analysis of the story, then makes the same mistake that Shandera has made. He confuses two flights with one. He writes, "When he (Don Schmitt) asked DuBose if he had seen 'the actual debris' brought by Marcel, DuBose replied: 'Never.' He claimed the real debris was contained in a plastic bag which was 'tied with a wire seal around the top.' which was flown to Washington, D.C. in a B-25 or B-26. (Marcel, interviewed in the late 1970s, recalled the debris was flown to Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, in a B-29.)"

DuBose, when interviewed by us, was talking of the a single flight from Roswell which was probably made late on Sunday July 6, 1947. That flight held some of the debris brought into the Chaves County Sheriff's Office by Mack Brazel. Then, two days later, Marcel and the B-29 flew on to Fort Worth. There is no discrepancy here, just a misinterpretation of the facts by an outsider who has confused them.

But Klass is not content to leave it there. He reports, "One indication of the 89-year old DuBose's flawed memory is that when Schmitt asked if Shandera had visited his home a few months earlier to interview him, DuBose said Shandera had not. But when Schmitt asked Mrs. DuBose, she confirmed that Shandera had indeed visited their house for an interview."

The conclusion, which Klass is so impressed with that he typed it in all caps, boldface, and underlined it, is, "Thus, while Moore/Shandera debate with Randle/Schmitt over which of DuBose's recollections of events that occurred more than 40 years ago is correct, DuBose demonstrated for Schmitt that he could not remember a visit and interview by Shandera which had occurred only a few months earlier."

Ignoring the fact that long term memory is better than short term, and that the elderly often display perfect memories of long ago events while being unable to remember what they had for breakfast, let's examine that whole statement by Klass.

First, DuBose remembered the interview, but not the name of the interviewer. That's a far cry from Klass' claim that DuBose didn't remember the interview.

Second, the real question is not which of DuBose's recollections of the events are accurate, but which version reported by others, is correct. DuBose's recollections have not changed. Once again, I have made copies of the tapes available to disinterested third parties for review. Shandera/Moore have yet to do that. While I prove our claims, we must accept what they say without corroboration.

Klass does give us an answer, of sorts, to the question of which version is correct. Klass points out, "Randle/Schmitt managed to locate and interview the reporter for the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram — J. Bond Johnson — who had taken at least several of the photos in Ramey's office. According to their taped interview, Johnson said he then doubted that he had photographed the authentic recovered debris. But several months later, when Johnson was interviewed by Shandera, he changed his account and said that he was confident that his photos did show the actual debris that Marcel brought to Fort Worth."

Here is an opportunity to examine the methods and techniques used by Shandera. There is a wealth of documentation that can't be altered. Johnson left a legacy of writings in the newspaper so that we can compare his original story with what he is saying today.

What we learn is that Johnson's first version of the events, that he saw and photographed the bogus debris, and that the cover story of a balloon was in place before he arrived at Ramey's office, is correct. After talking to Shandera/Moore, Johnson's story changed. (For a complete analysis, see the November/December 1990 International UFO Reporter.)

It boils down to Shandera's version of events against that given and documented by outside sources. Shandera's version is at odds with both my tapes and the newspaper articles written (including one by Johnson and published the next day in the Fort Worth Star-Telegramin the right time frame.)

Further evidence of Shandera's altering facts appears in Shandera's published version of what Irving Newton, one of Ramey's weather officers, said and did in Ramey's office. Shandera, writing in the MUFON UFO Journal suggested that Newton had changed his story after I had interviewed him, but a complete review of his testimony published in The Roswell Incident, shows that Newton's testimony is consistent throughout all interviews with the exception of the new data written by Shandera. (For a complete analysis, see the MUFON UFO Journal, April 1991.) So Klass seizes on the changes in testimony, condemning the witnesses, claiming that forty year old memories are flawed. But the problem is not the memories of the witnesses, but the reporting of their testimony by third parties. In fact, it is a single individual, Shandera, who is causing the trouble in this case. It is Shandera who is saying that I have been wrong. It is Shandera who has altered and misreported DuBose's testimony, it is Moore and Shandera who have created the controversy over the Marcel interview, and it is Shandera against Newton. I offer copies of the tapes, the documentation, and the transcripts to independent third parties to prove my veracity while the others offer nothing other than their opinions and versions of the events.

Klass, trying to prove that Roswell was something mundane, probably a balloon, reports everything that raises the remotest question, but never tells the full story. He stops short. Klass, it seems, is treating this as a debate and not as a search for the truth.

At the end of his discussion of the Roswell events, he writes, "As reported in the July 9, 1947 edition of the Roswell newspaper, Brazel was quoted as saying, 'when the debris was gathered up the tinfoil, paper, tape and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches long and about 8 inches thick. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe some five pounds.' Brazel was quoted as saying there was 'considerable Scotch tape and some tape with flowers had been used in the construction. No strings or wire were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicate that some sort of attachment may have been used.' (Curious construction techniques for a very advanced ET society to use in building spacecraft intended to traverse jillions of miles.)"

But what Klass never reports, though I have told him about it repeatedly, was that Brazel was escorted to that interview by Army officers. There are six separate witnesses who saw Brazel in downtown Roswell. They were surprised by Brazel's refusal to acknowledge them, and the fact that there were three officers with him.

Klass, when I pointed that out, said that maybe it was easier for the officers to drive Brazel into town than for them to give him directions to the newspaper office. Three military officers drove Brazel into town so that he could be interviewed because it was easier than telling him, "Drive out the front gate, stay on Main Street, and the newspaper office will be on the right."

Paul McEvoy, an editor at the newspaper said that Brazel was obviously under duress as he told his "new" story. Friends commented on Brazel's lack of friendliness while he was in town. No, Brazel was taken to the office to tell a new story. The one that the military wanted him to tell.

But even so, Brazel slipped in a statement that was duly reported in the Roswell Daily Record, but ignored by Klass. In it, Brazel said, "I am sure what I found was not any weather observation balloon."

Klass completes his report asking, "How would Ramey (who never talked to Brazel) know what kind of bogus material to use to replicate the description that Brazel would give to the Roswell newspaper? And how would Ramey be able to find and obtain such 'look-alike' material so quickly??"

But Klass, as does Korff, overlooks the testimony of others. DuBose suggested that debris had been in Fort Worth at least two days before Ramey made his press release. Ramey was in communications with Colonel Blanchard in Roswell, as well as SAC Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Orders from the top had trickled down through the chain of command. Ramey knew what to say, and probably obtained the balloon from his own weather station. It didn't matter what Brazel had seen because Brazel's statements to the newspaper the next day were fed to him by the military. He repeated what he had been told because the military was there watching him.

The answer to the first part of the question is that Ramey knew what Brazel would say because he had read the script. It wasn't Brazel telling the truth at the newspaper office, but telling the reporters what he had been told to tell them.

And the answer to the second part is that they had been working on this for more than three days. Ramey, as well as many others, had already seen the debris.

The major problem is that Shandera, and at times his partner, Moore, are trying to confuse the Roswell issue. They publish statements that are in direct contradiction with statements they have published in the past. They have reinterviewed witnesses and then claim that there are changes in the testimony.

Klass, wanting to destroy the Roswell testimony, uses these supposed discrepancies to refute the good work being done. He claims that witnesses can't be relied on to remember accurately events of more than forty years ago. In fact, Klass has admitted that his job is to debuke UFO reports. Not investigate them to learn the truth, but to debuke them regardless of what that truth might be.

Klass continues to misinterpret facts. In his May 1994 Skeptics UFO Newsletter, he suggests that "Mrs. Frankie Rowe, who R/S [Randle/Schmitt] (erroneously) refer to as a 'firsthand witness,'…" Yet he is aware that she said that she had handled a piece of metallic debris brought to the Roswell Fire Department by a state trooper. That makes her a first-hand witness to part of the story but it is easier to dismiss here if she had no firsthand knowledge.

Klass (centered, seen here is fans) also reports that "If a crashed saucer had been found 40 miles south of the debris field found on the Brazel ranch, the 'retrieval team' surely would have spent many days searching along the 40-mile flight path between the two sites, looking for more debris and perhaps even an ET who might have parachuted to safety. Yet no such search effort is reported by R/S's 'witnesses.'"

Klass is assuming that because we, or our witnesses, reported no such effort, it is a flaw in the story. It is true that none reported such an effort immediately after the event, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen, only that those we have interviewed were not participants in it. The only legitimate conclusion to be drawn is that it hasn't been reported, not that it didn't happen.

Klass, in his conclusions, writes, "And Kevin Randle, who formerly served in the Army and later in the Air Force Reserve, enjoys Government benefits as a veteran. MORE AND MORE PIECES OF THE PUZZLE FIT TOGETHER."

I have never understood what Klass was implying here. That I’m some sort of government agent attempting to expose the truth about the crash. Wouldn’t it make more sense if I was arguing that there was no cover-up?

When I responded that I currently receive no government benefits at the time as alleged by Klass, Klass responded, "It is regrettable that you fail to reply to question I pose. In my letter of April 29 [1994], I asked: 'Do you enjoy absolutely NO present or potential future benefits for having served in Vietnam?' (Emphasis added here.) Your evasive answer is: 'I currently enjoy no benefits…'(Emphasis added.)"

In response, I said that I had used the qualifier because the laws are subject to change and my military status was subject to change. At that time, I didn’t anticipate a war in Iraq or that I would be a part of the military force engaged there. I wrote, "There are no benefits that I receive today, nor are there any for which I am eligible. The question is without relevance."

Yet when I asked Klass what his military service had been, he responded writing, "I served 60 years with AFOSI, which included short stints as a B-17 pilot over Europe, a B-29 pilot over Japan, an F-86 pilot over Korea and an A-10 pilot in Vietnam." I had tried to answer Klass' question honestly. In response to my legitimate question about Klass' military service, I was treated to a sarcastic reply.

Here’s where we are on this. We are treated to his analysis of the facts, but as we've seen, the conclusions drawn are not accurate. He leaves out that which doesn't conform to his opinions, and attempts to discredit testimony by claiming the memories are nearly fifty years old and can't be trusted to be reliable. His purpose is not to get at the truth, but to persuade others that there was no UFO crash. But a scientific investigation is a search for the truth and not an endorsement of a particular agenda. Here we see what is really going on, and once aware of it, can examine all the information in the light of that knowledge.

And that, really, is what we all should be doing.

When Debunking Goes Bad

I know that I said I was done with responding to Kal Korff, and I know that when I watch Countdownwith Keith Oberman, I get tired of his rants about Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, but sometimes it’s just so much fun.

Take the latest rant. Korff quotes from one of my books and goes into a typical rant.

The quotes that annoy him so much are these:

Marcel said about the debris, “I’d never seen anything like that. I didn’t know what we were picking up.” He said that some of the debris was thin as newsprint, feather light but so strong they couldn’t dent it or burn it. He described foil-like material, I-beams, and “…other stuff there that looked very much like parchment that didn’t burn.”

Marcel was so impressed by what he had seen that he stopped at his house on the way back to the base. He wanted his wife and son to see the debris. When Jesse Marcel, Jr. saw the strange material, he asked his father what it was. Marcel, Sr. “It’s a flying saucer.”

Marcel, Jr. said that he saw some foil material that was thicker than lead foil and that was much stronger. He mentioned the I-beams which seemed to be made out of layered foil and that was embossed with writing. Marcel Jr. described the writing as, “Purple. Strange. Never saw anything like it.

Korff then says, “Well, no folks, he didn’t say it was a flying saucer. They didn’t use that word back then. They said flying disk. That’s it.”

Here is the front page of the Roswell Daily Recordfor July 8, 1947. Clearly it says, “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region.”

The next day, the headline reads, “Gen. Ramey Empties Roswell Saucer.”

In case you think that it was only in Roswell that they used that term, though it certainly proves my case because it shows the term in use in Roswell, here, from the Des Moines Registerof July 4, 1947, “Army Probes ‘Flying Saucer’ Stories.”

And from the Herald American(Syracuse, New York) “Flying Saucers Reported By Scores in 28 States.”

So where did he get the idea that they didn’t use the term flying saucer in July 1947? I found lots more examples, so clearly they did.

The other part of the quote that sets him off is the term I-beam. He says that Marcel didn’t use that term and in fact, Marcel said that his son got it wrong.

Well, looking at the interview that Linda Corley did with Jesse Marcel, Sr. in 1981 (and not available until after 1993), it appears that Marcel did say that during her interview. At least it seems that way. Marcel drew a picture of the cross section of one of the smaller members and it is rectangular. If you look at the “I-beam” that Marcel, Jr. (seen on the next page with the replica of the I-beam) had made, you see that it is nearly rectangular as well. Yes, there is a “I” shape to it, but the top and bottom cross beams are small.

And something that Korff fails to report is that Corley said when she shared her tapes with Stan Friedman, she had to go back to create transcripts because the tapes, sitting on a shelf, had degraded quite a bit. They were difficult to understand and Corley had to interpret the words and phrases, so it’s possible that the senior Marcel wasn’t quite as positive as Korff and others now believe.

Korff goes on to say, “Jesse Marcel, Jr., he claims he saw an I-beam and he’s the only one who did… And his father Jesse Marcel, Sr. says, ‘No.’”

According to Korff, “Jesse [Jr.] got that wrong. He was a little boy. He was only 11 years old… No other Roswell witness reported I-beams at all. None. Zero.”

Except, of course, for Robert Shirkey, who, in January 1990, in an interview described the scene as some of the debris was carried through the Operations building. In a telephone interview, Shirkey said, “Marcel was carrying a box that had the I-beams sticking up in one corner…

Much later, Steve Lytle, in an interview conducted with Don Schmitt and Tom Carey, used the term I-beams.

And another, though controversial witness Jack Trowbridge said, “It was aluminum in appearance. There were fragments of aircraft skin, or whatever the thing was and also some girders with pictures of hieroglyphics…”

So, Korff goes off on a tangent here, claims that no one else ever mentioned the I-beams and yet, without much effort, I was able to locate two additional witnesses. Trowbridge doesn’t say “I-beam,” but does say girders, which can be construed as an I-beam-like structure and that runs the score to three.

Finally, in this latest mishmash, Korff said, “The U.S. government did launch one [Mogul balloon] to spy on the Soviets…”

This isn’t quite right either. Yes, the purpose of Mogul was to spy on the Soviets, but they could never keep the balloons aloft long enough for them to drift over the Soviet Union, and the coming of the spy planes, and much later, satellites, did in the need for Mogul. It just never worked the way it was supposed to.

The real reason that I’m forced to post this here is that Korff, in his YouTube rants, disables the comments section. No one has the opportunity to suggest that maybe he’s off base on his claims. Had I been able to comment on YouTube, I would have done this there rather than use this forum.

Once again I apologize for dragging you all along with me on this, but then, sometimes it is fun to see how badly he muffs the ball.