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The Roswell Corner
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MORE JARS
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Kevin Randle discussed one of the most recent JARS (Just Another Roswell Story) that has surfaced. Ralph Multer had told a story about hauling Roswell debris in the state of Ohio. Like all the other tales, there is nothing to support the claim. Still, it was accepted by some as potentially worthwhile. Randle thinks it does not pass the smell test. I suggest Randle not open the “Witness to Roswell” book because many of these stories could qualify as “putrid”.
SHERIFF WILCOX PSYCHOLOGICALLY SHATTERED BY ROSWELL?
Anthony Bragalia wrote a piece about George Wilcox and how he was mentally
distraught over the Roswell event. According to Bragalia, Wilcox decided not to run for re-election because of all the problems associated with the Roswell
event. However, he did continue to serve as Sheriff until 1950 and his wife was more than happy to run in his place in the 1950 primary.
To add to the mix of recollections by various people, Mrs. Wilcox once wrote a short booklet about her life, which included a brief description of the Roswell incident.
I remember when this document surfaced in 1997 or 1998. It appeared in a UFO magazine article called “The children of Roswell” (or something like that). I believe that this was an account written by Inez sometime in the 1950s or 1960s. It appears to be a mangled recollection of the events that were documented to have transpired that early July 1947. Some important details indicate she was working from her memory on the subject and did not remember accurately:
She claimed that an officer picked 1. up debris that Brazel brought into town. This disagrees with the contemporary
accounts in 1947. The AP reported that nobody saw the disc and Wilcox seems to be the source of that report. In the same issue of UFO magazine that Inez Wilcox’s
story appeared in, Bill Brazel was interviewed and he stated his father did not bring anything into town. Marcel Sr. never mentioned picking up any debris at the Sheriff’s office either.
Inez stated that almost as soon as 2. her husband got off the phone, some officer showed up to retrieve the debris. Jesse Marcel Sr. was the only person to go to the sheriff’s office. Nobody else is on record as having done so and it took some time for him to get there from the base so it was not immediately after the phone call occurred.
Inez also mentions all the phone 3. calls from around the world happening
about the same time. The fact of the matter is that the phone calls did not occur until 24 hours later (or 48 hours depending on which time line you prefer) when the press release was issued.
There are also some VERY important things to note that indicate her account was untainted by all the Roswell mythology:
There is no mention of death threats 1. to them or the local populace. As sheriff, Wilcox would have known about these things and his wife would be just as knowledgeable. She certainly would have mentioned the thug tactics described in the Roswell mythology.
There is no mention of alien bodies 2. or a crashed spaceship.
The rumors she describes about the 3. origins of flying saucers reflect the general ideas regarding UFOs in the late 1940s and early 1950s I am sure her statement of “a secret well kept” is what every Roswell proponent will focus their attention upon but it really is not that big a deal that she thought it was considered secret. One must look at the context in which this “journal” was written. She was attempting to put down her life ‘s story at Roswell in an effort to publicize. To only briefly mention the greatest event that ever happened in the town, indicates that it was an exciting but brief non-event. The lack of any mention about the subsequent wild stories concerning the Roswell incident (military raids, cordons, trucking a huge 4saucer through town, bullying MPs, exotic metals, great gouges in the earth, etc) implies that they did not happen. Such an event would have occupied far more space than a few paragraphs of her life story.
Nick Nickerson =
Warren “Nick” Nicholson
Mr. Bragalia has written to me about the person he called Nick Nickerson in his article about Nitinol. I could not find any record of a Nick Nickerson and it made me question the story. Well, it turns out there is no such person as Nick Nickerson working at Battelle. His name was Warren Nicholson. He does work there and is a long time UFO investigator/proponent.
He also was involved in securing the “confession” (if you can really call it that) of Mr. Ditter’s Zanesville hoax. Bragalia pointed me to the story in the Ohio MUFON directory called “The Zanesville, Ohio Photographs”. It was written by Warren B. Nicholson and Ronald Fisher. What is documented there is an open admission by Mr. Ditter AFTER the photographs were analyzed and found to be fraudulent. This confession occurred in October of 1971, four years after the photographs made headlines and long after the analysis had been done. It was not like Mr. Nicholson had done a lot of leg work. Ditter just bluntly admitted it after he presented Nicholson the report about the photographs. I surmised this back in SUNlite 2-5 (page 17):
If Nickerson obtained the confession, it was probably after all this (the analysis of the photographs) had occurred. At that point, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.
Based on this story, it seems that was the case.
Meanwhile, Bragalia admitted his mistake of getting the name wrong Using the nickname of “Nick” instead of his formal name of Warren probably led to this error. I am still wondering how he could call me “Tom”.
WHEN DID BILL BIRNES BECOME A RELIABLE SOURCE? I AM JUST ASKING.............
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Classified documents and Roswell
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James Moseley recently sent me a letter that he described as “an exclusive” concerning the recovered aliens and saucer at Roswell. It was a printed e-mail that Karl Pflock had sent him with some notes written on it. The content of the e-mail was another classified document stating that there was no physical evidence to examine from crashed flying saucers. In the late 1990s, these kinds of documents were presented by Phil Klass, Robert Todd, Kent Jeffrey, and Karl Pflock as evidence against the idea that there ever was a crashed spaceship at Roswell.
All of these documents were important items that needed to be considered. In a 1998 Fortean Times article, Karl stated, It is important to understand that the documents
in question were written decades before the passage of the US Freedom of Information Act in 1975 made it possible to peer behind the wall of American official
secrecy. They were created by those whose job it was to crack the flying saucer mystery, who wrote and spoke, certain no unauthorized person would ever be privy to their words. They were the products of, and addressed to, men who had fought World War II and were fighting the Cold War, men used to doing their duty with little fear of being second-guessed, who sat in the highest ranks of American intelligence and official science. They had no qualms about being forthright with each other inside the comfortable precincts of security classifications and Pentagon conference rooms. In fact, their responsibilities demanded it.1
These classified documents reflect the actual knowledge of these gentlemen at the time they were writing them. Not once, in all of the documentation released to date, is there any mention of a spaceship or saucer being actually recovered and studied by the USAF!
1947: Roswell and then...?
In July 1947, the Roswell event occurred.
If we are to believe the present mythology, hundreds, if not thousands, of airmen and civilians were quite aware of what happened in New Mexico that week. However, for some reason, the official record is barren when it comes to this momentous event. In fact, they seem to point towards a more terrestrial source.
The official record of the Roswell incident pretty much relies on news reports, unit histories, and an FBI telex. The morning reports/history of the Roswell Army Air Field/509th bomb group indicate no unusual activity despite hundreds of airmen supposedly being deployed throughout New Mexico to retrieve and transport a crashed saucer.
The first classified document (SECRET) of interest is the infamous Twining memo of September 23, 1947. While the document is mentioned in the three books The Roswell
Incident, UFO Crash at Roswell, and Crash at Corona, they focus only on the line, a. The phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious2. Strangely (or not so strangely), the following section is missing:
h. Due consideration must be given the following:-
(1) The possibility that these objects are of domestic origin - the product of some high security project not known to AC/AS-2 or this Command.
(2) The lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which would undeniably prove the existence
of these subjects.
(3) The possibility that some foreign nation
has a form of propulsion possibly nuclear, which is outside of our domestic knowledge.3 (my emphasis in bold)
Was it left out by accident or did h(2) scare the writers so much that they did not want their readers to see it?
Shortly after the Twining memo was released, there was another document about UFOs generated by General Schulgen on 30 October 1947 (Classified SECRET).
Its subject line is “Intelligence Requirements on Flying Saucer Type Aircraft” and speculates about what type of vehicle could be involved in these “Flying saucer” reports. Most important is this line:
For the purpose of analysis and evaluation of the so-called “flying saucer” phenomenon, the object sighted is being assumed to be a manned aircraft, of Russian
origin, and based on the perspective thinking and actual accomplishments of the Germans.
4
If the AF had recovered an actual flying saucer, why would they waste the time with this type of report and analysis?
1948: Sign up ahead!
At the end of 1947, project Sign was created in an effort to collect and evaluate UFO sightings. They were to determine
what the causes of these UFO reports were and work with various agencies
to accomplish this task. While there is the document often referred to as the “Estimate of the situation” (which suggested
the possibility that UFOs COULD be extraterrestrial but did not mention Roswell) described by Ruppelt, nobody has ever seen the document or any document
that suggested it really existed as described. However, there are other documents from the days of Project SIGN that demonstrate they knew nothing about the USAF having an actual crashed disc in their inventory.
During a SECRET briefing to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board given on March 17, 1948 (about 8 months after Roswell), Colonel McCoy (Deputy Commanding General Intelligence T-2 at Air Material Command (AMC)) stated,
... I can’t even tell you how much we would give to have one of those crash in an area so that we could recover whatever they are.5
Why would he state this, if he knew they had captured a crashed spaceship? If he knew they had such a device, he would not bother mentioning it if it were highly classified. However, he would not be so emphatic that they would like to recover one. Either he was “out of the loop” or the crashed saucer did not happen.
In October 1948, McCoy sent off a series of letters to all the intelligence agencies (CIA, Navy, and Army) asking for help. McCoy
states in all of these letters:
This Headquarters is currently engaged in an intelligence investigation of all reported
unidentified aerial phenomena. To date, no concrete evidence as to the exact identity of any of the reported objects has been received. Similarly, the origin of the so-called ‘flying discs’ remains obscure. The possibility exists that some of the sighted objects are of domestic origin... Your cooperation... might greatly assist in identifying our own domestic developments
from possible inimical foreign achievements.6
The key words were that no concrete evidence was available. Once again, we have McCoy confirming that he had absolutely
no knowledge of an alien spaceship
crash. McCoy’s letters were probably due to him feeling some heat from above about Sign’s apparent lack of progress on the UFO problem.
On November 3rd,1948, Major General Cabell, the head of intelligence himself, wrote to Sign (classified SECRET) requesting
some results after one year of work:
The conclusion appears inescapable that some type of flying object has been observed. Identification and the origin of these objects is not discernible to this Headquarters. It is imperative, therefore, that efforts to determine whether these objects are of domestic or foreign origin must be increased until conclusive evidence
is obtained. The needs of national defense require such evidence in order that appropriate countermeasures may be taken.7
McCoy would respond on the 8th with another secret memo. There he outlined everything that they conclude up to that point. One item mentioned is this:
The possibility that the reported objects are vehicles from another planet has not been ignored. However, tangible evidence to support conclusions about such a possibility
are completely lacking…. 8
Another item mentioned is clear cut:
10. In view of the above, the following conclusions are drawn:
a. In the majority of cases reported, observers
have actually sighted some type of flying object which they cannot classify as an aircraft within the limits of their personal
experience.
b. There is as yet no conclusive proof that unidentified flying objects, other than those which are known to be balloons, are real aircraft.
c. Although it is obvious that some types of flying objects have been sighted,
the exact nature of those objects cannot be established until physical evidence, such as that which would result from a crash, has been obtained.9 (my emphasis in bold)
Once again, McCoy is stating that there is no physical evidence for them to examine and that no crashes have yet been recovered.
All of this collection of data culminated in what became known as the Air intelligence report #203 (Appendix “A” was classified TOP SECRET). It concluded that these flying saucers, if they were real craft, could be one of two things. The first would be domestic devices like experimental craft. The other was the idea suggested by General Schulgen’s memo a year before. They suspected they were Soviet aircraft based on German designs captured at the end of the war. There was also concern that the propulsion plant might be atomic in nature. Additionally, appendix C of the study listed various UFO reports. Roswell was not one of them.
In all of these letters and reports that have been uncovered over the years, one major theme recurs. The USAF was more concerned that these reports were of Soviet
aircraft that were revolutionary in design and not concerned they indicated a potential threat from outside the Earth.
1949-1951 Does anybody care?
In 1949, Project Sign was changed to project Grudge. While UFOlogists suggest this as a change in attitude to go with the name, there still seemed to be a desire to get down to the UFO problem. In the Top Secret USAF director of intelligence’s report to the Joint Intelligence Committee on Unidentified aerial objects on 27 April 1949, we read:
Inasmuch as various surmises have been advanced that some of the reported observations may have represented “space ships” or satellite vehicles, a special study has been initiated with the Rand Corporation, under the Rand Project, to provide an analysis from this standpoint and also to provide fundamental information,
pertaining to the basic design and performance characteristics that might distinguish a possible “space ship.” Rand Corporation has also informed AMC that their analysis of all incidents leads them to the conclusion that there is nothing in any reported incidents which would go against a rational explanation. 10
Again, there is no mention of Roswell and the USAF commissioned RAND to look into the idea that these could be alien spaceships! If they had already recovered one, why spend the money on something they already knew?
1952-1954 Dazed in Dayton
General W. M. Garland, who would eventually take over at the head of ATIC, wrote a memo in early 1952 that addressed the UFO question again. As was the case in 1948, General Garland was concerned about these flying saucer reports being observations of Soviet aircraft.
The question remained why did the USAF have a fascination with the threat of Soviet aircraft being the source of these UFOs, when they already knew that UFOs were alien spaceships?
Bluebook spent most of 1952 chasing hundreds of UFO reports. By the end of the year, the CIA had become involved in the UFO question. They commissioned a blue ribbon panel of scientists to evaluate
the UFO problem in January 1953. This meeting was classified secret and is referred to as the Robertson Panel. Not once was a spaceship crash mentioned. Additionally, if they already knew that flying saucers were alien spaceships, why would they bother to waste these scientists time looking at UFO reports?
In 1953, Captain Edward Ruppelt gave a SECRET briefing to the Air Defense Command.
In this briefing, Ruppelt stated the following regarding the possibility that UFOs were alien spaceships:
However, there is no, and I want to emphasize and repeat the word “No” evidence of this in any report the Air Force has received…we have never picked up any “hardware.” By that we mean any pieces, parts, whole articles, or anything that would indicate an unknown material or object.
11 Once again, the crashed spaceship link is missing.
SR14 nixes the crash idea
Project Bluebook’s Special Report Number 14 is considered by some as one of the greatest documents produced about UFOs by the USAF. It was an effort by Battelle scientists to examine all the reports and analyze them scientifically. What did it say about crashed flying saucers?
It is emphasized that there was a complete lack of any valid evidence consisting of physical matter in any case of a reported unidentified aerial object.13
Why would these scientists at Battelle note they had no physical evidence when, according to some, they had all seen the debris at one point and had been trying to reverse engineer it?
The GAO is shutout
In the early 1990’s the Government Accounting Officer (GAO) was asked to look for documents pertaining to the Roswell “crash”. Despite examining the minutes of the National Security Council 1947-8, AMC research and development tiles 1947-50, and HQ Army Air Force message traffic 1947-54, the GAO could find no indication of any documents related
to Roswell:
The other government records we reviewed, including those previously withheld from the public because of security classification, and the Air Forces analysis of unidentified flying object (1) sightings from 1946 to 1953 (Project Blue Book Special
Report No. 14), did not mention the crash or recovery of an airborne object near Roswell in July 1947. Similarly, executive branch agencies’ response to our letters
of inquiry produced no other government records on the Roswell crash…As a final step, we reviewed Air Material Command
(Wright Field) records from 1947 to 1950 for evidence of command personnel involvement in this matter. We found no records mentioning the Roswell Crash or the examination by Air Material Command personnel of any debris recovered from the crash. 12
Were all these records that discussed the Roswell crash (which must be numbered in the hundreds/thousands) removed from the face of the earth? Were all the activities of AMC personnel edited to prevent anybody noticing them flying to Roswell and other places to examine the debris? Why isn’t there just a hint that something unusual had transpired? Is it because NOTHING out of the ordinary happened or is it because of the conspiracy has covered its tracks better than any other conspiracy before or since?
Smoke screen or self-deception?
All of these documents mean nothing to UFOlogists. Some have suggested that there was an alternate path of communication and all of this was a smoke screen. They insist that any records of a crash were destroyed or that those documents are so classified that nobody would ever see them. Stanton Friedman stated the government has lied before in the case of the Trinity explosion and the U-2 flight by Gary Powers. What he ignores is that these were all public statements and not classified documents. I am unaware of any classified documents that denied the existence of U-2 overflights or an atomic bomb was not exploded at Trinity. To lie to the public in order to cover-up a secret is one thing. To lie and refrain from mentioning the crash to each other in multiple classified documents is another.
UFOlogists will ignore these documents with the excuse that the great conspiracy required that these officers lie about crashed materials because they feared that someday it might be possible that the general public could see what was written. With that kind of logic, one can dismiss anything that was ever written by just simply stating it is part of the conspiracy.
Quelle: SUNlite 6/2010
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