Truth Contortionists

Have you ever watched a contortionist squeeze their way into the tiniest of spaces? They calculate every move, having practiced many times which limb and joint should precede which into the void - a carefully choreographed dance to occupy micro-spaces in ways the human form was never intended. Equally, in what has increasingly become a fact-free and conspiracy leaning society, we watch truth contortionists in our own politics twist their extreme “version” of the truth into public discourse while attracting new adherents with battle cries of combatting the “Deep State”. Q-Anon endorsers are elected to

By James Carrion The UFO Chronicles 8-4-2020

public office and whole swaths of the population, enduring the worse pandemic in 100 years, shun scientific experts in favor of conspiracy mongering and snake oil pushing politicians. People die.

And as I watch this train wreck of what I once thought was the greatest country on earth, with its supposed deep-rooted institutions and traditions of civility and decorum, literally going to hell in a handbasket fast, I can’t help but experience Déjà vu. I have seen this self-destructive and corrosive behavior before, in the world of UFOs.

The microcosm of UFO-world is both fascinating and exhausting to observe. It too is an alternative reality where facts are in constant free fall, conspiracy runs rampant and its truth contortionists are exceptionally adept at their trade. Instead of the Deep State it is the Cosmic Watergate, where the “Government” allegedly wages an almost century old war hiding the “truth” of extraterrestrials visitation to planet earth. In UFO-world, there is no middle ground in this war – you are either against the “truth embargo” or you are labeled a Government agent, an agitator, a disinformer, or a debunker.

Don Schmitt

To give you a taste of how UFO truth is stretched, warped and ultimately consumed by the public as “fact”, let me share with you a recent Facebook exchange with Donald Schmitt of “It was Aliens” Roswell fame. I want to focus on two specific areas – standards of evidence and factual reporting.

Let us begin with standards of evidence which are pretty much non-existent in UFO-world. Ufologists for some odd reason often either believe themselves exempt from professional standards of evidence or cherry pick the standards they employ.

Because the Roswell Incident suffers from a complete lack of public domain physical evidence, i.e. the bodies, the craft, etc., Schmitt believes that Roswell is foremost a people investigation. His reasoning is that if he finds the witnesses to the event, at some point the physical evidence is going to pop, and then he can call in the UFO-world equivalent of CSI to scientifically analyze the material evidence. By his reasoning, the real-world standards of evidence would be those that involve witness testimony, i.e. the same standards involved in civil or criminal proceedings. Fine, I can sort of agree with that.

So, let us examine legal standards of evidence. Direct evidence like witness testimony is admissible in a court of law when the witness is present in the court room and subject to cross examination by both the prosecution and the defense. Hearsay, where the witness is not available for cross examination, and instead their words are introduced by a third party, is not admissible with a few exceptions – one of these being the Dying Declaration exception which Schmitt not only endorses but believes trumps all prior testimony.

The Dying Declaration hearsay exception however does not exactly match up to Schmitt’s use of it. Dying Declaration is invoked for example if a person is murdered and they can name their murderer right before dying, or as another example,  a person confesses to a family member with their last dying words that they had committed a crime. But with Roswell, no crime has been committed; instead, we are talking about memories of an event.

Schmitt believes that if Roswell Witness A has been saying X for years, and now close to their death they state Y instead, in his opinion, this end-of-life change-of-heart deathbed testimony is superior to and supersedes any conflicting testimony the witness gave prior. I would love to hear real criminal and civil lawyers (I am not one) opine on this. This sounds like nonsense to me as this change of heart is not related to knowledge of a crime but the radically differing testimony of a witness.

This appears to be more akin to a contested will case. If I write up my will leaving all my assets to my children and toward the end of my life I write a new will leaving it all to my dog, well something’s up that prompted such a radical departure. The will gets contested and various factors like Lack of Testamentary Capacity (read mental capacity) and Undue Influence (prompting by others to modify the will) must be considered. The end of life will does not automatically supersede the prior.

Colonel Doyle 'Dode' Rees

The second issue I want to touch upon is factual reporting, i.e. telling it like it is, straight-up, without embellishment and without leaving out important details. Equally important is not obfuscating or making ambiguous statements that are open to assumption and interpretation. In our lengthy Facebook exchange, Schmitt has provided some glaring examples of non-factual reporting.

Let us take the case of Doyle Rees that Schmitt mentions in his book Cover-Up at Roswell: Exposing the 70-Year Conspiracy to Suppress the Truth.  Schmitt believes Rees provided deathbed testimony to back up Roswell as an alien event.

Rees is first mentioned at the end of chapter 6 in which Schmitt summarily disqualifies Sheridan Cavitt as a witness, because Cavitt allegedly repeatedly lied to Schmitt over many interviews. Here is an excerpt from the book:

Cavitt’s own former boss, Lt. Colonel Doyle “Dode” Rees, who was stationed at USA/OSI at Kirkland AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wrote a letter at our request to him around the same time. In it, he remarked, “When you call the press conference to tell the world, let me know, because I want to be there”.

 Note how this paragraph has a double connotation; that Cavitt was “in the know” and Rees was also potentially in on the secret and waiting for his more directly involved subordinate to spill the beans.  However, Doyle Rees (DR)  gave a taped interview to Sign Oral History Project’s Tom Tulien (TT) in October 1999, where Rees’ knowledge of the Roswell Incident comes into focus.

DR: [Laughing] Yeah. Well, I came after the Roswell incident. I came out there after that.

TT: Were you aware of that at the time?

DR: No, I wasn't. And one of my top officers was down at Roswell at the time, you know. You've probably heard of Sheridan Cavitt, have you?

TT: Yeah.

DR: Well, he was one of my top officers, and they've always - the people I've talked to – have always suspected that he was holding out. That his lips were sealed. And he told me - and I have lots of correspondence here with him - where he says, "I don't know anything." He says, "If I'd have known, I would have told you." But that may not be so - I don't know. If you're sworn to secrecy, maybe he's got to keep - maybe his lips are sealed, I don't know.

 This exchange paints a different picture. Rees believed Cavitt may have known more than he was saying but clearly professes his own lack of involvement or knowledge.

And in Sheridan Cavitt’s (SC) own May 24, 1994 interview with Colonel Richard Weaver (RW) as part of the US Air Force’s report on Roswell, Cavitt mentions the letter Rees sent him:

RW: Well the names I recognize here that were still: are Doyle Rees and John Stahl.

SC: Doyle is still alive. I have a letter from him.

RW: I think he's in the Association of Former OSI Agents.

SC: Yeah. Right.

RW: And I am also a member of that so I see a lot of that. So, I see a lot of their letters and stuff, pictures that they send.

MC: We get correspondence from Doyle… (NOTE: MC is Sheridan Cavitt’s wife)

MC: Nice, nice man.

SC: He is a nice man. And a nice family. I don’t know what the date on that is. Letter from Doyle, it says: “When you call the press conference to tell the world, let me know, because I want to be there.“ So, I just got reams of this stuff from books.

So, Cavitt acknowledges the letter from Rees with the “tell the world” message. None of this is technically non-factual, at least until Schmitt states this in our Facebook exchange.

Rees was not in Roswell and not involved as we have ever been able to determine. I quoted his letter which he was kind enough to have written on our behalf to Cavitt where he clearly implied that he had a BIG story to tell. We have that letter.

Put into context with Rees and Cavitt’s interviews, we see an alternate picture: Rees professes no knowledge of the Roswell Incident but believes Cavitt may be holding back something, although Cavitt has also denied any knowledge. Schmitt asks Rees to write the letter to Cavitt with the “tell the world” message. Schmitt states in a public forum that Rees was implying that Cavitt had a BIG story to tell. But who prompted Rees to write the letter in the first place? Schmitt & CO. This is a self-generated and twisted version of the truth where Schmitt is simply playing one witness against the other and then trying to attach importance to a letter that has no significance whatsoever.

To explore Doyle Rees (DR) knowledge or involvement with the Roswell Incident further, let us examine this excerpt from his interview with Tom Tulien (TT):

TT: Yeah, it is odd too that the whole thing began during the time that we developed nuclear capability.

DR: Yes, yes.

TT: And you know, the green fireballs around Los Alamos.

DR: Yes.

TT: You know, that is curious, too.

DR: Yeah, it, it's a strange thing. There isn't an answer to it yet, as far as I know. You can't dismiss it, because of the reports you get from good witnesses. But then on the other hand, why haven't we got the concrete evidence somehow. A photograph- or really a crash.

TT: Yeah.

DR: I have lots of reservations about the Roswell incident. I doubt that it occurred myself. I can't believe that it occurred, and it went to Washington, and went to Wright-Pat. And those of us who are in counterintelligence and intelligence - if that did occur we'd have had rumors of it, somehow.

 But I never did hear a rumor from within the Air Force that there was anything like that going on.

But I hope there can be a resolution to this and put it to rest. Or, if there is something to this, let's make an all-out effort to resolve it. Because if there are UFOs coming from other galaxies, they have some scientific information that would be awful valuable to us.

What is striking about Rees’ response is that he reveals his non-involvement or knowledge of the Roswell Incident, unprompted! Schmitt in his book paints a different picture:

"Rees refused to tell anyone about the '47 incident..."

When I asked Schmitt why he didn’t mention Tulien’s interview in his book, he initially gave lengthy and irrelevant explanations of how deathbed testimony was superior to prior testimony and argued this point ad nauseum, and only after much banter back and forth did he then claim he had never seen the Tulien transcript to begin with and only first heard of it when I brought it up. OK, benefit of the doubt granted.

But as oftentimes happens when one does protest too much while contorting the truth, slippage occurs where you say something that sounds good in the moment but does not exactly fit the overall story. Here’s some relevant Facebook exchanges where Schmitt talks about Rees:

Rees was not in Roswell and not involved as we have ever been able to determine. I quoted his letter which he was kind enough to have written on our behalf to Cavitt where he clearly implied that he had a BIG story to tell. We have that letter.

Rees was not at Roswell at the time of the incident, so he remains a non-witness. The only reason we sought him out was because he was Cavitt's boss and Cavitt wouldn't even admit being at Roswell in 47'.

For the umpteenth time; Doyle Rees was in Albuquerque at the time and not involved at Roswell.

The fact that you intentionally select a non-witness to argue your point demonstrates how flaccid your effort.

The fact that Rees was not at Roswell at the time of the incident is the bottom line.

If the best you or anyone else can do is relegate an individual who was 200 miles away from Roswell at the time to somehow being involved - your misrepresentation.

Which really begs the question, if Rees was such a non-character and the only reason Schmitt sought him out was because he was in Cavitt’s chain of command, why in the world would Schmitt write this about Rees:

"Unknown to his family, he was also involved with the CIC investigation of the Roswell Incident"

Twisting the truth here is saying it mildly.

Now to be fair to Schmitt, since he does place such importance on deathbed testimony, let me finish this off by relating the anecdote in the book where Schmitt ties in Rees’ alleged endorsement of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Summarized on Facebook:

Rees died in 2007 and according to his daughter Julie, who we interviewed in 2011, just before he died she was spending time with him at his home in Utah. One day she found him sitting in a chair staring through a window up at the sky. "What are you looking for Daddy? she asked. "I'm looking for UFOs. They're real, you know," he replied and then he added, "I saw the bodies."

The problem with this “deathbed” anecdote is that there is absolutely nothing to tie it to Roswell. Rees is not quoted saying “I saw the Roswell alien bodies” but it is a general statement in support of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis. This exchange remains hearsay and would not be considered anything close to a Dying Declaration. However, Schmitt believes this anecdote trumps Rees’ taped interview where he opines on the UFO phenomenon:

TT: You've been looking at this phenomenon for fifty years, what's your attitude about it these days? DR: About?

TT: About the phenomenon in general?

DR: Well, I would say this: I'm not convinced that there are UFOs. I'm convinced that people are seeing something that they are accused of being UFOs. Some of the testimony of the people that have observed them, and my own observation - it's something you can't just laugh about and forget about. They did -people that were honest and trustworthy - make awful sincere, honest reports on what they saw. I don't know. I'm not convinced that there are flying saucers. Yet, I'm - I can't understand, if there isn't a strange phenomenon going on, why people are seeing them. Not only in New Mexico or the Southwest - but all over the world. They're observed them all over the world. So, it's strange. But then it's strange, if there is such a thing - why haven't we had concrete evidence to show that there is? That would be my thoughts.

Rees did not deny the plausibility of UFOs but denied knowing what UFOs are, due to lack of evidence. Rees also denied any knowledge of the Roswell Incident itself.

To summarize, Rees when interviewed on tape in 1991 at the age of 91, by all appearances was in a sound state of mind, based on his coherent answers to Tulien’s questions, as reflected in the transcript. But then eight year later, in 2007 when he died at the age of 99, Doyle Rees allegedly had a radical change of opinion on UFOs. I say we contest the will!

Schmitt was livid that I called him out on these factual errors, and he did not hesitate to mention the 150 other witnesses that he had interviewed multiple times over many years. But if he is so nonchalant about distorting the record of one of the least important of the characters in his book, what are we to assume about the central witnesses that he attaches great importance to?

I’m happy to give him the benefit of the doubt, but if Schmitt really wants to avoid being labeled a truth contortionist, it would be in his best interest to release the complete transcripts of his witness interviews so we can judge their testimony for ourselves. Other wise we are at the mercy of his interpretations, factual errors, and unconventional standards of evidence and in UFO-world that bar has been set far too low for way too long.

VISIT JAMES' SITE ►

See Also:

Goodbye Ufology, Hello Truth

UFO Gatekeepers: You Shall Not Pass

Verification, Confirmation and Facts

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

Roswell Documentation vs. Roswell Eyewitnesses

Since I have now annoyed all my friends with my analysis of the Roswell documentation and how some of it is quite suggestive that nothing alien fell there, I thought it time to annoy all my skeptical friends. Lining up against that documentation is the testimony of some people who were on the scene in 1947. This is based on the documentation we can find about them and the stories they tell us in the world today. Walter Haut, for example, either wrote the press release claiming the 509th had found a flying saucer, or he took the

By Kevin Randle A Different Perspective 8-18-19

Walter Haut being interviewed.
© Kevin Randle.

dictation from Colonel William Blanchard to create the press release. At this point it doesn’t really matter. The press release was issued and it claimed they had “captured” a flying saucer in the Roswell region. The definition of flying saucer confuses the issue, because in 1947, there was no universally accepted definition. It could mean almost anything you wanted it to mean. But here’s the deal. It is vague to the point of being opaque. We don’t know what it means.

I have never understood the reason for the press release. If Blanchard was attempting to grab credit for solving the flying disk mystery, the press release was unnecessarily obscure. Compare it to the story out of Circleville, Ohio, in which a farmer found the remains of a weather balloon and rawin reflector on his land. We have a story in the local paper that identifies the farmer as Sherman Campbell and includes what is claimed a picture of his wife. When I talked to the family, I learned it was actually his daughter holding the rawin target. The point is that the Circleville newspaper story was clear and it included a photograph. The Roswell press release told us nothing of real importance, provided little in the way of verification and had no photograph.

We do have testimony from Haut, which, if we limit it to what was said in the press release, and what he said to us for decades before expanding his story, we learn that what was found was something strange. No, it tells us nothing about the alien nature of the crash, just tells us that Blanchard and company were perplexed by something they should have been able to identify easily if it was a weather balloon. No reason not to supply the explanation if it was something mundane, like was done in Circleville.

If we wish to get to the extraterrestrial, then there is Edwin Easley, who was the provost marshal (please note the proper spelling of marshal here) in Roswell. When I asked him if we were following the right path, he asked what I meant by that. I told him that we (meaning Don Schmitt and I) believed that the craft had been extraterrestrial. He said, “Well, let me put it this way, it’s not the wrong path.”

Taking that a step farther, he told family members about the alien “creatures.” That was his word to them, not mine. Sure, that statement is second hand at best because we learned it talking to family members, but hey, it does confirm his mindset on this.

No, there is no reason for Easley to have lied about it. He was very reluctant to talk, didn’t grant much in the way of interviews, and you won’t see him showing up in any of the old documentaries. I was always of the impression he wished to help me, but he had taken an oath in 1947 and he wasn’t going to break the oath.

There is Joe Briley, the operations officer in 1947. He said a couple of things that don’t take us directly to the extraterrestrial but do lead us to the highly unusual. He told me, when I mentioned, “…You heard the stories…” that “And then the story was changed immediately. As soon as the people from Washington arrived.”

Jesse Marcel

Yes, it is clear from the conversation on the tape that we’re talking about the UFO crash tale. I really don’t say anything specifically about it, but Briley knew why I had called him. In fact, later in the interview, he told me, “I just was not brought into that at all even though Butch [Blanchard] and I were extremely close.”

And later still, he said, “I don’t think Butch was stupid enough to call a weather balloon something else.”

Okay, this doesn’t get us to the extraterrestrial, but it does move us away from the conventional. It suggests things in Roswell were, well, up in the air in 1947.

I haven’t touched on Jesse Marcel, Sr. yet. He was quite clear in his statements about what had happened. There are any number of videos of him telling us that it was something “that wasn’t built on Earth but it had come to Earth.”

If he was stand alone, we could certainly dismiss his testimony. But it is not and while it is true that he seemed to drift all over the place before he died, he did say some provocative things about what he had seen and had done. These were backed up by his son and his wife. Still, we need to sound a note of caution when dealing with the senior Marcel.

Bill Brazel and Don Schmitt on the debris field

Before this gets too long, let’s move onto Bill Brazel. Here was another man extremely reluctant to talk about what he had seen. He did find a few scraps of the material that his father, Mack, described as having come from “that contraption I found.”

This debris included something that resembled fiber optics, a lead foil that seemed to have a memory, returning to its original shape when crumpled, and something that was as light a balsa but with a strength that rivaled steel. Although he lost the debris to Air Force personnel in 1949, he did show it to several others including Sallye Tadolini. Some of these witnesses, who handled the debris have affidavits about it.

Of course, Mack had shown a bit of the debris to Floyd and Loretta Proctor. She told me about the fire-resistant capabilities of the material. She mentioned, as did Marian Strickland, that Mack had been held by the military authorities for a number of days.

And I don’t want to forget Bill Rickett, the CIC NCOIC in Roswell in July 1947. He talked about his trip to see the crash site, some of the debris that he saw there, and some of the people on the scene including Sheridan Cavitt and Edwin Easley.

Karl Pflock

Here I could mention Frankie Rowe who wasn’t lying about what she said. True, she is second hand, having heard about the crash and the creatures from her father, fire fighter Dan Dwyer. But her sister confirmed the story and ironically, one of the fire fighters who Karl Pflock interviewed and used to dismiss the story, actually told me, that Dwyer had gone to the crash site in his private car. The fire fighter, C.J. Smith, told me about Dwyer’s trip when I asked, simply, “Did you know Dan Dwyer.” Smith’s response was, “He went out there in his car.”

These are some of the things that I think about when I’m not worrying about the documents that I mentioned in the last post. Most of the people mentioned here, and a dozen or two more that I could have brought up argue against the documents conclusion. While it is true that a few people might be inventing their tales, and we’ve had more than our share of them, there are some very solid people who had talked about their involvement. If I’m willing to concede some points based on the documentation, it seems only right that those at the other end of the spectrum admit that there are some disturbing testimonies. They all aren’t lying, looking for their fifteen minutes, and just wishing to have an interesting story to tell.

Oh, and before this degenerates into another long discussion about the foibles of human memory… yeah, I get it. But not all memories are flawed and inaccurate. Many times, the person gets the facts right as has been shown by numerous scientific investigations, and yes, I know about Elizabeth Loftus’ work on false memory. Her work demonstrates how such memories can be created, so we don’t really have to talk about that. We just have to remember that sometimes, the person relating the tale has the details right, was actually there, and is telling the truth as best he or she can…

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See Also:

The Decline of Roswell - Pt 2

The Decline of Roswell

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

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

Who Told Walter Haut about the Rowell Debris Field?

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By Kevin Randle A Different Perspective 9-12-15

     Since this debate about the press release has gained a little traction here, I thought I’d add a few facts and perspective to see if we can’t reach some sort of a reasonable conclusion. We do have a great deal of information and while some of it is in dispute, there are aspects of it on which we all seem to agree.

Major Jesse Marcel, Sr.

Given the testimony we have and the articles that appeared in the newspapers of the time,it seems that Major Jesse Marcel, Sr. and Captain Sheridan Cavitt followed Mack Brazel out to the ranch sometime on Sunday July 6. Marcel, in his interview with Linda Corley suggested they had left in the early afternoon, but I think it was more likely they headed out later in the day. In today’s world, it takes about three hours to drive from Roswell to the ranch. In 1947 the roads wouldn’t have been quite so good and the route might not have been quite so direct. It might have taken four or five hours. With sunset coming sometime around 9:00 p.m., and Marcel’s suggestion they arrived about dusk, it seems they might not have left Roswell much before four in the afternoon.

There is also a question of where they stayed the night. We had heard that it was the “Hinds” house which in the 1990s was a one-room shack that was used to store hay. It was some five or six miles from the actual debris field. If, on the other had they stayed at the ranch house (which, I believe had been, at the very least, remodeled in the 1980s or so) then they were some fifteen or twenty miles from the debris field.

The Hinds House Near the Debris Field

Marcel said that they had cold beans and crackers for dinner. He said nothing about the time they might have gotten up the next morning which is July 7. We know, ironically, based on the Mogul records that sunrise was about five and in similar circumstances, meaning outside my comfort zone, that I would have awakened about dawn. Marcel said nothing about breakfast, what time they got up, or what they did before they went out to look at the debris field.

Bill Brazel showing us the Debris Field

Given all this, I would suspect that they arrived at the field no earlier than eight, but hell, that’s a wild ass guess. If I was Marcel or Cavitt, I’d want to get home as quickly as possible, so the earlier, the better. As I said in another post, Brazel saddled two horses and he and Cavitt rode out while Marcel drove his car. If they were at the Hines house, the travel time might have been thirty to sixty minutes. If they were farther north, at the location of the ranch house, travel time could have been longer. No one asked about that and there is no one to ask in the world today. All we can do is guess based on other timing.

Marcel said that the debris field was three-quarters to a mile long and a couple of hundred feet wide. Bill Brazel, when he took us out to the field showed us basically where it started and where it ended. We later measured that at about a mile long. This was based on what Brazel said was the length of the gouge, which is a detail that Marcel never mentioned.

Sheridan Cavitt

We have no idea how long they spent on the field. Cavitt told Colonel Richard Weaver that he recognized the debris as the remains of a weather balloon

immediately, but no one asked Cavitt why he hadn’t mentioned that to either Marcel or to Blanchard. (I will note here that according to what Cavitt told me, he hadn’t been there… this was after he had given his interview to Weaver.) Anyway, Marcel eventually told Cavitt to head on back to the base. He stayed, and according to what Marcel told Corley, stuffed his car with the debris, which, of course, suggests something more than a weather balloon.

As I’ve said, I don’t understand how they could have spent more than an hour or so at the field, but if they were walking the whole thing to make sure they saw everything around there, it might have taken longer. I have no idea how long it might have taken Marcel to load his car, and we have no information if they had eaten breakfast. I mention this simply because if Marcel, on his way home, stopped for lunch, then that adds time to the trip. Again, according to what Marcel told Corley, he got home late, but we don’t know exactly what that means either. All we really know is that Marcel did not go out to the base that night. He went in the next morning, that is, July 8.

Walter Haut

So now we come to the point of this long recap. How did Walter Haut learn about the debris recovery? Haut said that Blanchard had called him and either dictated the press release to him or gave him the major points and Haut wrote it. Marcel

said that they had an “eager beaver” press officer which tells us nothing about how Haut learned about the recovery or if he made a habit of issuing press releases on his own.

Here are a few facts that are new. Based on information in the Roswell airfield telephone directory, I know that Blanchard’s office was in building 810. Marcel had his office in building 31 and Haut’s office was in building 82. What this means is that Haut wouldn’t have run into Marcel in the hallway or near a coffeepot as they came to work or went about their duties. There is no evidence that they would have mingled in a professional sense other than both would have been in attendance at the staff meetings but Marcel would have been considered a member of the primary staff and Haut on the secondary. That means Haut’s job was not essential to the main operation of the bomb group but that Marcel’s was.

So again the question that must be asked is, “How did Haut learn about the recovery?”

And the only answer that works is that Blanchard told him. Cavitt, as the counterintelligence guy would not have wanted to talk to the PIO, nor would he want to be associated with any sort of investigation that would call attention to him, his subordinates or his duties. In fact, in 1947, even his rank was classified so that no one knew what rank any of the counterintelligence guys held or as Cavitt said to me, “You didn’t really want anyone to know that a sergeant was investigating a colonel so our ranks were classified. No one knew what rank we were.” The exception to that would have been Blanchard and some of the senior officers but not many.

Although Marcel lived on the same street as Haut, their houses were a few blocks apart and it seems they didn’t socialize that much. Since they worked in separate buildings, there is very little chance that they ran into each other on the morning of July 8 so that Marcel could tell Haut that he had picked up the debris. Even if they had met, it is unlikely that the topic would have come up. Marcel would have been reluctant to talk about it given the nature of his job. If you had no need to know, then you were outside the loop.

That leaves us with Blanchard. Haut told us that Blanchard called him and told him to issue the press release. Blanchard was the one to make that decision and Blanchard was the only one who had the information and the contact with Haut. There were only three people who knew about the recovery (and I exclude Brazel here because on that morning he was still at the ranch) and two of them wouldn’t have said a word about it to Haut if for no other reason than they wouldn’t have seen him that morning.

I think that we can now end the discussion of who authorized the press release. Without Blanchard telling Haut about the recovery and providing details, Haut wouldn’t have had the information. If Blanchard gave him the information, then it was a tacit approval of the press release. If Blanchard had not dictated it to him but only gave him the basic information, Haut could easily have called back to read him the final draft but, no matter how you slice it, Blanchard is the common denominator here.

I can see no other way, given the facts, which Haut would have learned about the recovery. He could not decide on his own to write the story because he didn’t know about it. He was given the information by Blanchard and told to issue the press release. This should stop the endless speculation about Haut issuing the release on his own.

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See Also:

New Revelations On Haut Affidavit

Roswell Officer's Amazing Deathbed Admission Raises Possibility That Aliens DID Visit

1:01 pm: Lt. Walter Haut, Spokesman Who Announced Wreckage of Flying Saucer in Roswell, Died at 83!

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

Jesse Marcel, James McAndrew and Me

By Kevin Randle
A Different Perspective
6-2-09

     I recently had the chance to sit down with Colonel Jesse Marcel, Jr. (seen here) and we had a chance to talk about many things including some new stuff about the Roswell UFO case. Well, relatively new anyway.

Back in the mid-1990s, as the Air Force claimed to be investigating the Roswell UFO crash story, one of the officers, First Lieutenant (later captain) James McAndrew, called many of the witnesses and many of the investigators to talk with them. I spoke to him on a number of occasions and the tone was normally him trying to convince me to admit that I was only in it for the money. He told me that no one would think any less of me if that was the case. People would understand the motive.

I told him that I would have conducted the investigation and written the books if there had been no money involved. This was an important story and one that needed to be told. I pointed out that I had tapes of most of my interviews and that I would give him the telephone numbers of many of the important witnesses. This was all he needed to do to verify that what I reported was what they had said.

Yes, I fully understood that having taped interviews didn’t mean that the witnesses were telling the truth, but it would prove that I had reported accurately what I had been told. And yes, we tried to verify the information which is why I didn’t report about the former Air Force pilot who had been one of the alternate pilots on Air Force One, who had flown the aircraft when President Kennedy was on board, and that he had taken the president to see the bodies.

I found the pilot and yes, he had been an Air Force officer and yes, he had flown President Kennedy on Air Force One and yes he had seen an alien creature. However, he had not flown the president to a location to see alien bodies. He had been flying a fighter when he had seen a craft off his wing and inside the domed structure he had seen a creature. So, all the elements were there, they just didn’t add up to the whole that we had been told.

What was interesting about McAndrew was that he wasn’t interested in the tapes. He didn’t want to talk to the high-ranking military officers. He was more interested in telling me that he KNEW I was in it for the money. Not the truth but his belief.

Now, over the weekend, at the MUFON conference put on by the Illinois chapter of MUFON and hosted by Sam and Julie Maranto (seen here), I spent time with Jesse Marcel. It was late on the last day when the topic of McAndrew came up at the question and answer session held by all the presenters. I mentioned that McAndrew wanted me to flip and that he wasn’t interested in the tapes and telephone numbers of some of the key witnesses. I figured the Air Force didn’t want to be in the position of calling high-ranking officers, including one brigadier general, liars at best. This whole thing might suggest that the Air Force was lead by incompetents.

Jesse mentioned that McAndrew had called him several times and always pressed him on the details, suggesting mistakes. Jesse always told me that it hadn’t been a balloon. The debris he held and the debris he saw was not part of a balloon, or a balloon structure, or a Project Mogul array. It was strange stuff that was very lightweight and very strong. He didn’t know what it was.

Jesse then said at the end of the last call, McAndrew said, "Well, Colonel, we don’t know what you saw."

When you think about it, that’s an important statement. Here was McAndrew, trying to convince Jesse that he had seen parts of a Mogul array, trying to convince him of the new Air Force answer about the Roswell UFO crash, and finally admitting that he didn’t know what Jesse saw.

No, this doesn’t mean that McAndrew was conceding to Jesse that it was an alien spacecraft or anything else. It just means that McAndrew was admitting that he didn’t know what Jesse had seen (Jesse Marcel holding a replicate of one of the I-beams).


I will note here that the Air Force, in their investigation, did not report on all the interviews they had conducted with the researchers, with the witnesses and with the former and retired officers. Instead they focused on the members of Project Mogul, the civilians who launched the balloons in New Mexico, and Sheridan Cavitt, the Counter-intelligence Corps officer who lied about where he was in July 1947 but told the Air Force just what they wanted to hear.

And now we learn that the chief investigator told Jesse Marcel that he didn’t know what Jesse had seen. This seems to be a curious admission for the man. A moment of honesty hidden in all that governmental deceit.

Of course I know why they worked so hard to prove that Roswell was a balloon and not an alien craft. No matter what they said today, they were going to look bad and in any case they would be painting some top officials as liars. True, the lies might have been justified because of national security considerations, but they were lies nonetheless.

We have one new bit of information that doesn’t mean all that much in the overall picture, but does provide a glimpse into the background. The man who would be pushing the Mogul answer telling a witness that, "Colonel, we don’t know what you saw."

More . . .

See Also:

Jesse Marcel Jr. Recounts Handling Roswell Flying Saucer Wreckage

Credibility of Major Jesse Marcel and Jesse Marcel Jr.

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