The Estimate of the [UFO] Situation (Secret Air Force Document): A Different Perspective

Tweet

By Dr Kevin Randle A Different Perspective 12-8-12

     While studying the legendary “Estimate of the Situation,” the document written in secret in 1948 by Air Force personnel in Dayton, Ohio, I came to understand some more about it. The Estimate, or EOTS as it has come to be called, was described by Ed Ruppelt, one time chief of Project Blue Book and Dewey Fournet, the Pentagon’s liaison for UFOs in the 1950s. They provided a limited listing of the cases included in it, and in today’s world, it is possible to access some of that information.

What struck me was the poor quality of some of the cases reviewed. Yes, the Arnold sighting that sort of began everything was in there. Today there are those who believe that Arnold was fooled by mirages, or by drops of water on the windshield, or snow blowing off the mountaintops, or by pelicans. None of the solutions is very satisfactory. The thing we don’t know is if the Johnson sighting, a prospector who was on the ground and seemed to have seen the objects about the same time as Arnold, was included in the report.

Many of the sightings that I have reviewed are not as strong as the Arnold case. Some are single witness and I believe were selected because they involved pilots or technically trained people. I would guess that those making the selections believed that pilots, especially fighter pilots, would be familiar with what was in the sky around them. Fighter pilots would have to make snap decisions about what they were seeing and their skills would have been honed during the war when a single mistake could kill them. Those selecting the cases respected the abilities of the pilots to quickly and accurately determine what they were seeing. Not too long before their lives would have depended on that ability.

And in the world of 1948, those with college degrees, especially those in the sciences or engineering would be given a higher credibility. The thinking was that these people had been exposed to a great many startling sights and would be able to identify a balloon, a celestial object, a weather phenomenon, when they saw it. If they reported something strange in the sky, then it probably did defy identification… which is not to say that it was an alien spacecraft.

At any rate, these seemed to be the sightings selected for the EOTS. Pilots, military officers, scientists, and technicians were those whose tales were taken, almost at face value. But when we look at the sightings today, they are very thin on evidence other than the observations of the witnesses. As but a single example taken this case from the Lake Meade area:

On 14 July 1947, 1st Lt Eric B Armstrong… departed Williams Field, Arizona at 1400 CST on 28 June in a P-51 for Portland, Oregon, by way of Medford, Oregon. At approximately 1515 CST on a course of 300 degrees, and a ground speed of 285, altitude 10,000 feet, approximately thirty miles northwest of Lake Meade, Nevada Lt. Armstrong sighted five or six white, circular objects at four o’clock, altitude approximately 6,000 feet, courses approximately 120 degrees and an estimated speed of 285 MPH. Lt. Armstrong said the objects were flying very smoothly and in a close formation. The estimated size of the white objects were approximately 36 inches in diameter. Lt. Armstrong stated that he is sure the white objects were not birds, since the rate of closure was very fast. Lt. Armstrong was certain that the white objects were not jets or conventional type aircraft since he has flown both types.

This report is from a single witness and the UFOs described are only three feet in diameter. He said they weren’t birds, based on the rate of closure, which meant that they were coming at him faster than his speed and that of the birds would account for. He didn’t believe the objects were meteors and he didn’t think they were conventional aircraft. The Air Force eventually determined that Armstrong had seen a cluster of balloons.

I don’t know why those in Dayton were impressed with this sighting, unless there is something more about it than is in the Project Blue Book file. There is no physical evidence, no photographs, and no radar tracks, nothing other than the observations of the pilot.

As I said, this is an example of the sightings reported in the EOTS. There are no indications from either Ruppelt or Fournet that there was anything more. While the document might have been thick, and it might have contained dozens of sightings (177 by one estimate), without some sort of tangible evidence, I’m not surprised that General Vandenberg rejected it. Hell, I’m usually on board with those who think that some UFOs might represent alien craft, but from what I’ve seen of the EOTS and the reports contained in it, I wouldn’t have found the conclusion of spacecraft supported by the evidence either.

That is why it was rejected, I believe. Not because of a culture at the Pentagon that thought all UFOs could be explained in the mundane, but because, in the words of Jason Robards in All the President’s Men, “You don’t have it.”

Robards meant that the conclusions of the reporters were not supported by the evidence and with the EOTS we see the same thing. To make it worse, this failed attempt to impress those outside the halls of ATIC at Wright Field damaged their case beyond repair. It might have signaled the beginning of what Ruppelt would call the “Dark Ages,” when all UFOs were to be explained… period.

Continue Reading . . .


See Also:

PROJECT SIGN UFO REPORT | 'Flying Triangle' Reported Over Vicksburg, Mississippi | 3-22-1949
Did The Phoenix Lights Craft Visit Vicksburg in 1949?

Project Grudge: Report On Incident 17
By J. Allen Hynek - Primary Witness - Kenneth Arnold

WHAT YOU CAN BELIEVE ABOUT FLYING SAUCERS
- Part I -

SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

Footnote in 'The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell' – The Nuns Story

Tweet

By Kevin Randle A Different Perspective 9-27-12

      It has been a matter of controversy, only on this blog, as one of the critics has demanded information about a footnote in The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell. I believe he suspected some deceit on my part, and I have refused to bow to his demand to answer his questions simply because I didn’t care for the tone of his comments on the blog, not to mention that I had supplied most of that information to him in the past. I had planned to hold off on this until we were ready to publish all our results, but that doesn’t seem to be close at hand, so, I decided to explain this here and now and address it in a footnote later, if we publish.

The offending paragraph, on page four of the hardback is, “In Roswell proper at Saint Mary’s Hospital, Franciscan Catholic nuns Mother Superior Mary Bernadette and Sister Capistrano making routine night observations, saw a brilliant light plunge to earth, due north of their location. They believed it was a disabled aircraft of some kind and recorded the passage in their logbook. The entry noted the sighting was late on the night of July 4, between 11:00 and 11:30 p.m.”

The footnote said, “Records held by the Franciscan Catholic nuns,” which, by the way, isn’t overly helpful.

So, what do I know now?

The information originated with Bill English, who had come to see a lecture by Don Schmitt and me in Alamogordo in the early 1990s. He approached Don after the lecture and told him about a nun, Sister Day, who was over in Roswell. He said that she had seen the diaries of the nuns mentioned above and gave him the information which he passed along to us. English, it seems, was a former Special Forces officer or so he claimed, and seemed to be a reliable source.

We were in Roswell the next day, or maybe a day later, and had a chance to chase this down. Sister Day was quite candid about what she had seen, and since information about the Roswell case was now being widely circulated, she remembered the entry quite well. She said that she had seen it herself, had told English about it, but that the diaries were no longer housed in Roswell. We’d have to follow the trail from there.

Since Don is Catholic, it seemed natural for him to follow up on this. He learned that the diaries have been sent to Oklahoma, and was in communication with church officials there in an attempt to find the right diaries. He talked to someone who said these records were in disarray. I believed that at some point the entry had been corroborated by church leaders, but neither Don nor I, had not seen it.

Using the information we had, based on what we had been told, I wrote the offending paragraph, but in the manuscript, the footnote is actually a little longer. Originally it said, “Records held by the Franciscan Catholic nuns as viewed by Sister Day.” Somehow that last bit was left out of the book… and yes, I had a chance to review the page proofs and didn’t catch the deletion.

Here’s what I know now. The records we want were sent from Oklahoma to Wisconsin, but we learned that they only went back to 1960. Where the diaries from 1947 are is, at the moment, the question that I can’t answer. We’re still trying to get that information.

Now for some of the other, worrisome, bits of this. Bill English, it seems, was not a Special Forces officer as he claimed, and if the documents I have seen from St. Louis Army Records Center are accurate, and this is the same guy, he was not an officer and not in Special Forces. That certainly taints any information that he supplied. That he was not an officer or in Special Forces does not change the underlying information because it was confirmed for us, by Sister Day.

At the time that the information was gathered, I was under the impression that some of the data we had was not known outside our small group. That is to say, our working hypothesis about the times and dates was known to a few people, but we weren’t being overly secretive about it. In other, clearer words, there were those outside our group who knew what dates and times we suspected as being accurate. Some of this information might even have been included in our lectures… and before anyone asks, we rarely wrote a script for those. We used the slides as our outline, spoke to them specifically as they appeared on the screen, and each lecture was different than the last.

English might have been aware of this information and it was English who provided the lead. We did talk to the nun, and she did give us the information. Don did attempt to verify it through the available records, and I thought that he had. That was my error.

In the end, this calamity of errors resulted in a footnote that seemed to suggest that I had seen the entry when I had not. The qualifier was left off, which I should have caught but did not. I should have been more careful in producing this bit of information, but then, I had three other sources for it, including a written record that supported it… That record, I’m sorry to say, was probably a forgery and is something that I now consider useless. The two other sources are still reliable.

In the end, here is where we are on this. I erred in not making sure we had the exact quote and could point to the exact place where the diary could be seen… and in the last twelve months of attempting to resolve this, have failed. I had a source who said she had seen the entry, remembered it because of the Roswell case, and because she was a nun, I had no reason to doubt her. If I had it to do over again, I would have made sure that it was understood that the information was reported to us, but that we had not seen the actual diary entry.

Here’s what I can say for certainty today. According to Sister Day, she saw what she was told were the diaries of Mother Superior Mary Bernadette and Sister Capistrano. She said that there was an entry in the diary about a bright light in the sky they believed to be a disabled aircraft. Sister Day believed this was on July 4, 1947.

The thing here is that as we work on our reinvestigation, this information, because of the initial source (English) is less credible would have been evaluated differently. We would give the benefit of the doubt to Sister Day, believing that she was accurately reporting what she saw, but until we could confirm it by finding the diaries ourselves, would be less forceful in our reporting of it. We would not overlook the possibility that English had contaminated the source before we had a chance to interview her. The diary entry would certainly answer that question.

But then, this was one of the purposes of the reinvestigation. See what has changed in the last decade or so, see what more has been learned, and see where we (and here, by we, I mean me) might have erred. This is the chance to correct those errors, look at everything closely with the magnifier of much better information, and see if we can reach some conclusions that would satisfy the majority of those who are interested in UFOs in general and Roswell in particular.

Continue Reading . . .


See Also:

Conspiracy Theories Propel AM Radio Show Into Top 10

Deconstructing The Debunkers: A Response
PART II

Roswell Debunker Charles B. Moore Had a UFO Sighting of His Own

[UFO] Skeptics or Debunkers?

SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

"[Colonel] Blanchard Then Told Lytle That An Alien Craft Had Crashed Near Roswell . . . Four Bodies Had Been Recovered"

Tweet

Blanchard, Lytle and Roswell

By Kevin Randle A Different Perspective © 8-30-08 – 2012

     Before we start, let me say this. I have known Robert Hastings for nearly twenty years and I have always been impressed with his integrity and his intellect. I knew Chester Lytle for a long time. He was a man of impressive credentials who had no reason to embellish his position and suggest UFO knowledge if he had none. In other words, talking about flying saucers wouldn’t have done him much good and certainly could have hurt him.

Now both of these men come together in Hastings’ UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites. Hastings had the opportunity to interview Lytle on a number of occasions and Lytle shared an interesting story about the Roswell UFO crash. I will note that Hastings had shared this information with me prior to the publication of his book, so I have known about it for some time, but he asked that I say nothing until his book was available.

According to Hastings, he was interviewing Lytle about his involvement with atomic energy and what he might know about UFO sightings near nuclear plants or facilities. Hastings said that with no prompting from him, Lytle moved on to the Roswell crash and told Hastings that William Blanchard (right), who had command of the 509th Bomb Group in Roswell at the time of the crash confirmed the alien nature of the event.

Lytle told Hastings that in February 1953, with Blanchard now a general officer, they were in Alaska while Lytle’s wife was in Chicago about to give birth. Lytle was desperate to get home and Blanchard said that they could take an Air Force aircraft to Illinois, land at one of the bases close to Chicago and Lytle could get home from there.

While on the flight, somehow the subject of UFOs came up, maybe because of a couple of sightings at Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage sometime earlier. Blanchard then told Lytle that an alien craft had crashed near Roswell. According to Hastings, Blanchard told Lytle that four bodies had been recovered.

Surprised by this, Hastings asked Lytle, "Blanchard actually told you that the Roswell object was an alien spacecraft."

Lytle said, "Oh, absolutely."

In break with the traditional story, Blanchard said that some of the bodies had gone originally to Muroc Army Air Field (now Edwards Air Force Base), but that they all wound up at Wright Field.

Now, granted, this is second-hand testimony about what Blanchard said, but there is no reason for Lytle to invent it, and it is quite clear that Lytle held many clearances and had been trusted with the secrets of the Manhattan Project. He was a credible man who would not have made up the story.

Of course, it fails on one point and that is that we can’t verify it with either Lytle or Blanchard. Both men are dead. The documentation that exists is quite limited and subject to various interpretations. At this point, this is an anecdote that provides a bit of insight into the crash... and it is the first time that Blanchard, through Lytle, put gave us a number of bodies. Blanchard, according to Lytle, said, "Four."

So what do we do? Add this to the list of stories about the UFO crash at Roswell and continue the search. Look for some additional corroboration but note that we had some reliable information that puts Blanchard in the center of this, just where he would have been as the commanding officer at the Roswell Army Air Field in July 1947.

For those interested in more of what Robert Hastings has reported, you can only order UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites at ufohastings.com.

Continue Reading . . .


See Also:

Former U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Supervisor Says the Roswell Object was an Alien Spacecraft

The General's Widow: A Roswell Tell-All

The Truth Is Out There: Roswell Incident Recalled By Local Vet

SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

Wilbert Smith and Project Magnet

Tweet

By Dr Kevin Randle A Different Perspective 2-17-12

TONIGHT (2-19-12) ON COAST TO COAST AM RADIO: Joining George Knapp, author Kevin Randle will discuss his life as a UFO investigator, traveling throughout the U.S. on his quest to learn the truth about one of the most puzzling phenomenons of our times.

     For some bizarre reason, the Wilbert Smith documents have gained new life and I’m not sure why. Smith was a Canadian radio engineer who worked with, or for the government and was well thought of. He was, for example, the Senior Engineer at the Canadian Department of Transport. He also, according to researcher Grant Cameron, was responsible for “Radio Ottawa” where the Canadian “spies” reported in and which also monitored Soviet communications. Yes, I wondered about Canadian spies as well, but that something for another time.

According to the latest information, this memo, written by Smith on November 21, 1950, has just been recovered from the Archives of the University of Ottawa. I guess that means that the document was found in their collection, but it has been available for a long time. Though originally classified as “Top Secret,” it has been downgraded over the years so that it is no longer classified (which means only that its classification was downgraded and says nothing about the importance of the information included in it.) The complete text says:

- click on image(s) to enlarge -

That is the full text of the document and it is clearly a document that was held at a high level of classification by the Canadian government. But there are some things that we can say about it.

First, this is a report by one man telling of his meetings with others and some of their discussions. For the parts that interest us, which is, of course, the material relating to UFOs, there is no outside corroboration of the facts as he stated. It is clear that he is reporting what he believes to be the truth, as told to him by others, but that doesn’t get us to a point where there is an official confirmation of the data by either the Canadian government or by the United States.

In that respect, this is similar to the FBI document that generated all that interest last year. Yes, that document referred to UFO crashes, and yes it was an official FBI document, but that report seemed to be generated by the Frank Scully book and not by anything official. This seems to be some of the same thing.

Might I relate a bit of personal experience here. I had appeared on a national television program in 1991 and before I could get home, some fellow had attempted to contact me with important information and with evidence in the form of classified documents. He had received them from an inside government source who was credible, but who, because of his government position wanted to remain anonymous.

What did he have?

The Eisenhower Briefing and the Truman memo from MJ-12. I don’t know where he got his copies, but by 1991, they were floating all over the place. If the man had truly gotten them from an inside source, and had we had the name of the source so that we could verify his government connections, that would have been one thing. But we didn’t, so that information was as useless as the rest of the MJ-12 documents.

This document created by Smith is a report by a member of the Canadian government about several issues, including the flying saucers. He does make reference to two books, one, Behind the Flying Saucers has been discredited, and the other, by Major Don Keyhoe does not talk of crashes and bodies, but of the cover up by the Air Force. Smith doesn’t mention any other sources of information and that seems to be a critical point here.

What we have to do is see it in the context of the time and the context with which it was written. It wasn’t an official government study approved up and down the chain. It wasn’t designed to prove anything about UFOs one way or another. It was simply a report by one man about a conference he attended and he mentioned the UFOs as part of the discussions that took place there, unofficially.

In other words, it is interesting, but it doesn’t provide the evidence of either flying saucers or government cover ups. It is a document composed of rumor without foundation, and unfortunately, that is all that can be said for it.

. . . More

See Also:

Flying Saucers or Not?
Canada Sighting Station To Seek Scientific Proof
11-11-1953

UFO NEWS | CANADA | Ottawa's X-Files: "Project Magnet Lasted Just Four Years Before the Plug was Pulled On Aug. 10, 1954"

KEYHOE: There was an official project called "Project Magnet,"

SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

UFO NEWS | Chris Rutkowski Joins Roswell Dream Team

Tweet

By Kevin Randle
A different Perspective
11-19-11

     The Roswell Dream Team has expanded again. This time Chris Rutkowski (seen above), a well-known Canadian researcher has joined us.

We wanted to bring in someone with a skeptical bent but not someone who was rabidly anti-extraterrestrial. We wanted someone with an open mind, who would point out where we might have slipped off the rails, but not someone who would assume that we were wrong simply because there is no possibility of alien visitation. It is a fine line to walk, but we believe that Chris can walk that line.

Chris himself said, “Although I've been called both a skeptic and a believer (depending on whether you're hearing it from a ‘true believer’ or a skeptic), I tend to think of myself as an objective cynic. I sit on the fence when it comes to the question whether or not some UFOs are alien spacecraft. (The pointy slats are painful, but they can be endured.)”

About the Roswell crash case, Chris said, “I think we're a long way from declaring Roswell an ‘alien’ incident. True, according to some witnesses, the material recovered was unlike anything they had seen, and there certainly was an attempt by the military to cover up or obfuscate information about the event. It's a matter of speculation as to whether or not the material recovered was non-terrestrial in origin, since we don't have any on hand to test.”

He cautioned, and rightly so, that “We're relying on decades-old testimony in some cases, and more recently on memories of family members who may or may not recall with any accuracy statements or events from long ago. Furthermore, some military witnesses may still be reluctant to talk and some may still adhere to their military code of secrecy.”

Chris did provide us with some background information that is probably of interest to all. He wrote in a recent email to me, “My background in astronomy and education (BSc and MEd, respectively) fits well with my interest in science education, particularly when it comes to astronomy-related topics. I have greatly enjoyed showing people Jupiter's moons through small telescopes at public star fests, and telling them stories about how constellations got their names. And yes, the topic of UFOs falls under this broad category of astronomy-related subjects, although by history, not accurately. Astronomers are no better equipped than stock market analysts when it comes to dealing with objects reportedly moving low over witnesses' heads and over airports.”

Chris and Donna Rutkowski

And he is not a newcomer to the world of UFO investigation. He told me, “... I've been investigating reports of UFOs since the 1970s. I've also been writing about cases and theories since about that time. With many hundreds of case investigations under my belt, I can say that there does not seem to be a single simple explanation for all reports. They're not all hoaxes or misidentifications of stars and meteors. They're not collective illusions. There's a residual percentage of cases which have enough data and detail to explain them as aircraft, stars, planets, balloons, etc., except they are not.”

The plan is to share everything with Chris and get his take on the importance of the information, the evidence, and the thinking involved. Chris said that he liked the idea of a “cold case” investigation and thought with Roswell it was something that was long overdue.

. . . More

See Also:

UFO NEWS | Tony Bragalia Joins Roswell Dream Team

Roswell Investigation Dream Team

Top Roswell Researchers on UFO Panel for First Time

SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

HELP SUPPORT THIS SITE

ABOUT DONATIONS

↑Grab this Headline Animator

UFO NEWS | Tony Bragalia Joins Roswell Dream Team

Tweet

By Kevin Randle
A Different Perspective
11-11-11

     The response to the announcement of the creation of a “Dream Team” has been met with nearly unanimous approval. There have been the detractors, but there will always be detractors... Nothing can be done about that, other than to say, we haven’t completed the team, and why not wait for the results before you condemn the research.

Tony Bragalia, who is known to many of us as a tireless researcher and who has an interest in a wide range of topics inside Ufology, has agreed to come on board as a consulting researcher. He’ll be working with us as we begin our new research into the Roswell case.

We all have worked with Tony on a variety of investigations. He and I collaborated on a review of the Mac Magruder story that was given to researchers by Magruder’s sons. We tried to find out when Magruder would have reported for duty at the Air War College and if he would have been available to travel to Wright Field for some sort of involvement in the research about the Roswell crash.

The reason I remember this well was because I was in Des Moines after the Iowa National Guard had been activated for duty during the devastating floods in 2008 (yes, we’re still recovering from that but you’d never know by all the news coverage of it). We shared information over the Internet, backing up each other’s findings.

The thing here is that we all don’t agree on some aspects of the case. Tony and I learned that Magruder wouldn’t have made it to Ohio until April 1948 as part of his training, which seemed to suggest Magruder wouldn’t have been deeply involved. He and I agreed, but Don and Tom do not... though it is a relatively small point and one we will revisit during the investigation.

Tom, Don and I don’t agree with Tony’s conclusion that students from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology were responsible for the hoax in Socorro. Tony believes, based on some documentation and an interview with some that the landing was a trick played on Lonnie Zamora, though he might not have been the target. We, Tom, Don, and I think the evidence of a hoax is weak.

I mention these things just to show that we all are not in agreement on everything. It is a team of researchers who have their own opinions and read the evidence as individuals rather than by committee. This divergence of opinion should allow us to consider many different aspects and solutions as we attempt to put all this together.

I will note here that this is not the whole team. Other invitations have been issued and we plan to build a team of people that is diverse in opinion and complete in scope. There will be more announcements later.

. . . More

See Also:

Roswell Investigation Dream Team

Top Roswell Researchers on UFO Panel for First Time

Stanton Friedman Reports On This Year's (2011) Roswell UFO ...

SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

HELP SUPPORT THIS SITE

ABOUT DONATIONS

↑Grab this Headline Animator

Roswell Investigation Dream Team

Tweet

By Kevin Randle
A Different Perspective
10-31-11

     Tom Carey, (seen here signing a book at the Roswell festival in 2011) a UFO researcher living in Pennsylvania and one of the authors of Witness to Roswell, realized that there was a great deal of work left to be done on the Roswell UFO case. You might say that his dream was to pull all the information together, to locate and interview the witnesses who have yet to tell their stories, verify as best as possible the facts of the case, and write it all down in a coherent and rational analysis. To help with this project, Tom worked to bring together a team of researchers who understood this case. He succeeded in convincing both Don Schmitt and me to join him in his quest.

Don Schmitt had, in the late 1980s, realized there was still work to be done on the Roswell case. The surface had only been scratched by others. With the support of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, he began his research. One of the things he did was invite me to join him, believing that my military experience would be of help in understanding Army operations and in communicating with retired military personnel on their level.

As everyone who has been paying attention knows, Don (seen here are the Roswell Festival in 2011) and I had a falling out over some research techniques and matters unrelated to the investigation. While these seemed important then, it could be said that in time we reevaluated these issues. We reconnected after I returned from Iraq and it was as if no time had passed.

A couple of months ago Tom asked me if I was willing to join him in putting together what he thought of as the ultimate Roswell crash book. I was enthusiastic about the idea and readily agreed.

After Tom and I had discussed what we thought needed to be covered, Tom approached Don with the same idea. Don also thought it a good idea and the Dream Team was born (can I, as a participant, refer to it as a Dream Team?).

Although we are still, more or less, in the planning stages, we have already made some discoveries. I have learned of a doctor who might have participated in an autopsy of the alien creatures. True enough, we have heard this before, but the man is a doctor, was a doctor then, and is now willing to talk about what he had seen.

Also true, I have not verified all of what he said, but there are some indications that he is who he claims to be. I mention this only because it is one of the first things that we have learned.

We have also begun, again, to use FOIA in an attempt to learn more about the Air Force investigation of the Roswell case. This means, simply, that we have again gone to the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force to review documents that relate to their Roswell investigation. We wanted to know what transpired in the meetings, what was written in the memos, and what the internal reports might have said.

I tried this once before. I spent three years chasing this information, finally locating what they had at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. But all that was there was the results of that investigation and nothing about the internal operations of it (Air Force Roswell investigation files seen here. Instead there were video tapes of witnesses, most of them gathered for the Fund for UFO Research, a Court Martial of a doctor who was having an affair with a nurse in 1957 and completely irrelevant to the investigation, lots of reports on balloons and Mogul, but nothing that answered my basic questions. So now we’ve started that process all over.

What we want to do is distill the information. We want to eliminate the nonsense from the case, whether it is Air Force explanations or witness testimony that is irrelevant or untrue.

You might say that we are starting all over, on a cold case, reviewing everything related to determine what is important. Sure, we all believe that what fell at Roswell was alien, but we are going to take the path that leads to the truth. We will attempt to eliminate our personal biases in favor of determining what happened now nearly 65 years ago.

Periodically we will provide updates about the investigation, letting people know where we are going. We plan to pull it all together in a book that will answer the various questions as best we can. Yes, we know that we won’t be able to please everyone... what if we find a terrestrial explanation that actually works? Then the UFO community will be angry... And if we find that it was something alien, well, I doubt that the Skeptics will be satisfied.

So now we begin again, not from our own goal-line to be sure but somewhere down the field and this time we will find the answer and the proof to support that answer.

. . . More

See Also:

Top Roswell Researchers on UFO Panel for First Time

Stanton Friedman Reports On This Year's (2011) Roswell UFO ...

The 'Other' Roswell Crash: The Secret of the Plains Revealed

SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

HELP SUPPORT THIS SITE

ABOUT DONATIONS

↑Grab this Headline Animator

Annie Jacobsen, Area 51 and UFOs

Tweet

By Dr Kevin Randle
A Different Perspective
5-23-11

     Okay, let’s see if I have this straight. In 1947, the officers and men of the 509th Bomb Group found the remains of a crashed flying saucer. They took parts of it to Fort Worth where Brigadier General Roger Ramey and one of his weather officers, Warrant Officer Irving Newton (seen here), identified it was a common weather balloon and radar reflector.

The press, which had been very interested, suddenly couldn’t care less and didn’t ask how the highly trained officers of the only nuclear strike force in the world at the time could make such a stupid mistake. They didn’t wonder if the men with their fingers on the triggers might not be as trustworthy as everyone hoped. No, they bought the story and went on their way.

Then Jesse Marcel Sr., who had been the air intelligence officer in 1947, began to tell ham radio friends that he had picked up the pieces of a flying saucer in 1947. Articles were written, followed by a book, but the Main Stream Media (hereafter MSM), yawned because they knew that there were no flying saucers The Air Force had said so.

Interest in the Roswell crash built anyway and move articles and books were written. Television documentaries were made, many times without unnamed sources, but the actual people appearing on camera to tell their tales. MSM yawned because these were crazy old men and women whose memories were playing tricks on them. Besides, there were no flying saucers because the Air Force said so.

But suddenly there was real interest and a New Mexico congressman began to ask questions about the Roswell UFO crash. He wanted an investigation into this. The MSM paid attention because Steven Schiff was a real congressman and that made the story credible... though why escapes me... which is not so say that I didn’t find Schiff credible.

The Air Force investigated, issued a final report, and found that what fell at Roswell was a... weather balloon. Oh, no longer was it just a regular weather balloon, it was Project Mogul, so highly classified that not even the scientists working on it knew the name. This became the accepted truth because the Air Force said so.

Of course Project Mogul (balloon launch seen here) was just regular weather balloons and rawin radar reflectors, just like the tens of thousands that had been launched all over the country for years and there was no reason to be fooled by them even if they were tied together in long arrays. Project Mogul turned out not to be so highly classified... just the ultimate purpose was. But the MSM bought the story because there were no flying saucers. The Air Force said so.

No one in the MSM bothered to ask a couple of simple questions like, “If you’re investigating a UFO crash in New Mexico, why didn’t you interview the more of the men who were there at the time? Why just Sheridan Cavitt? Why not Brigadier General Arthur Exon? Why not Patrick Saunders? Why five men who worked on Project Mogul, some of whom weren’t even in New Mexico in 1947?

No one in the MSM thought about that.

“But what about the bodies?” someone, not a member of the MSM, asked.

The Air Force came out with a second final report to explain the bodies. These were anthropomorphic dummies dropped during high altitude parachute and balloon tests in the 1950s. Never mind that the earliest any were dropped near Roswell was 1957 and that the dummies looked exactly like what they were. This is the solution and the MSM believed this nonsense because the Air Force said so.

   

Then my friend (at least I think of him as a friend) Nick Redfern (seen here) said, “Not so fast.” He had uncovered information that suggested the recovery at Roswell was really the end result of experiments using deformed Japanese and some kind of experimental craft. At least this provided a reason for the cover up... not some kind of secret balloons.

Not many accepted this and the Air Force remained silent. I think they had learned their lesson. Don’t get involved in these crazy flying saucer stories. Leave it to the kooks, which is not to say that Nick is a kook.

But Redfern was wrong about this and we know because a “journalist” meaning a person with ties to the MSM has said that the Roswell crash was the result of a collaboration between Joseph Mengele and Josef Stalin using stolen Horten Brothers “flying wing” type aircraft to give it an alien appearance. Never mind that the Air Force had access to the Horten Brothers designs after the collapse of Nazi Germany and should have recognized the craft if that is what it was.


But the MSM media listens to this because Annie Jacobsen, who is a contributing editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine said that she interviewed a guy, who remains nameless and he said so. Deformed children the result of the horrific “experiments” of Mengele in some kind of Horten Brothers flying wing for the extraterrestrial flavor. Stalin thought this “War of the Worlds” scenario would create public panic, though I’m at a loss to understand what he would have gained by this.

Did anyone ever notice that the Nazis and Stalin were enemies? Did anyone notice that Mengele had fled to South America and was no longer any sort of important person in 1947?

Enough of this latest nonsense. I do not understand why the MSM will listen to this sort of uncorroborated crap, but will ignore the information provided by the men and women who were there. Clearly the MSM does not have a grasp of history, they don’t know that we, meaning the Roswell researchers looked at the Horten Brothers aircraft designs(seen here) (and that we know the flying wing is inherently unstable and didn’t work well until computers could compensate for the tendency of the craft to flip) and we looked at many alternative explanations.

We can stop now because we have the answer... Stalin, Mengele, deformed children and a bizarre attempt to create a panic in the US is responsible for the crash... But when the Air Force buried the story, why didn’t Stalin pull a few strings at his end to interest the MSM? Why’d he let it die?

And for those interested, I have said for years that the big secret at Area 51 was that it was where the next generation of military aircraft were tested. It has nothing to do with UFOs... but the MSM isn’t interested in that opinion either.

. . . More

See Also:

VIDEO | INTERVIEW | Inside Area 51 with Author Annie Jacobsen

AUDIO INTERVIEW with Annie Jacobsen | Area 51 'Uncensored': Was It UFOs Or The USSR?

BOOK REVIEW | Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base

SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

HELP SUPPORT THIS SITE

ABOUT DONATIONS

↑Grab this Headline Animator