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Roswell debris goes missing!
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Frank Kimbler announced in early September, that he had lost a piece of UFO debris he found at the crash site. He had mailed it via Fedex to a scientific laboratory for analysis. When it made it there, the package was apparently empty! There are three possibilities. The first being that it was never mailed in the package. The second was that the package was opened en route and the piece removed by the individuals/organization that opened it. The third possibility was that the piece was removed when it was opened at the lab by somebody. What is the most likely? Things that may you go hmmmmm.....
Kevin Randle complained about the location of the crash site
Somebody (he who shall not be named?) stated that Randle’s Bill Brazel site is the wrong crash location. Randle pointed out that Bill Brazel showed it to him and, therefore, this makes it correct. I wonder why two scientific digs/efforts (CUFOS and Doleman’s group) in the area turned up nothing significant but Frank Kimbler loitering around in the same area (according to Randle) managed to discover debris of “unusual nature”. What does this say for the two efforts previously conducted and why didn’t they find these things?
Proposed new Roswell UFO museum cancelled?
A new 25 million dollar UFO museum has been cancelled and the plot of land set aside for it is up for sale. The UFO museum plans on staying at its current location. Did somebody really think it was worth 25 million dollars to build a UFO museum? If people were really interested in investigating UFOs instead of promoting them, they could have found a way to put the 25 million dollars to good use instead of wasting it on some tourist trap.
Quelle: SUNlite 6/2011
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Getting the band back together
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Kevin Randle announced that the Roswell “dream team” (Carey-Schmitt-Randle) is assembling and promised new and exciting Roswell revelations. He has forgiven Don Schmitt for his past lies and sloppy/erroneous research and is now working with the infamous Carey/Schmitt authors to create a new opus that will put all skeptics to shame. If it is anything like “Witness to Roswell”, I would not expect much other than more unsubstantiated rumors, second (and third) hand stories, and unverifiable claims made by aging individuals who were located in Roswell at the time.
Randle then announced that Tony Bragalia and Chris Rutkowski were going to join this dream team. Rutkowski is an apparent agnostic about Roswell but we know that Mr. Bragalia makes some rather wild claims that will fit in well with Schmitt and Carey’s approach. I guess that means they are going to endorse his flawed work about Nitinol among other things.
Just as I was finalizing this issue, Randle announced that David Rudiak was also now a member of the “dream team”. This is no shock but he also mentioned that he had asked skeptics to join the “team” but they turned him down.
About a month before this, I had posed the question to several Roswell skeptics as to what their answer might be if they got an “invite” to the dream team (at that point in time, none reported being asked to join). I could not see any condition, where I would want to be involved and neither could anybody else. I am curious as to which “skeptics” were asked. It is not that we are not interested at looking at new information but the usual rumor, innuendo, and tall tales that have been presented seems to be what is going to result here. Actual verifiable documentation that supports the alien space ship crash version of events, is what they should be looking for.
It is noteworthy that the “dream team” did not include Stanton Friedman. Unlike Schmitt’s past transgressions, Friedman’s differing opinions about Roswell seems to make him “unfit” to be included in this august company! Perhaps there was only so much room for all the egos.
Shortly after the initial announcements, Kevin Randle posted the first “discovery” of the group. It was not really new. According to Randle, everyone pretty much knew the debris was weather balloon materials prior to the arrival of Irving Newton. This is supposed to mean it is evidence for a conspiracy. Of course, Randle ignores the testimony of Newton, who had stated that Ramey suspected it was from a weather balloon before he even arrived. Based on this, it is no surprise that before Newton arrived, several individuals had already told the media it was a weather balloon.
What this demonstrates is that, in its first swing at the Roswell case, the “Dream Team” immediately declared the case was a conspiracy/cover-up. So, instead of the promise of a new approach on the case, we got the same old one. I am shocked!
Who believes Roswell involved aliens?
A recent article with the title “Roswell, Aliens & Belief - Who Believes that Aliens
Landed at Roswell?” by Frank Borzellieri, appeared in the latest issue of Skeptic magazine. Borzelleri conducted an on-line poll to see what kind of people believe Roswell involved an alien spaceship crash. The bottom line is the following characteristics apply to those who believe in Roswell:
Religious beliefs1.
High School education or less2.
Conservative political beliefs3.
This was something of a shock to me because what I have seen of many Roswell supporters is that they were educated (or claimed to have college degrees) and liberal in their political positions. Maybe I have been talking to the wrong individuals. This poll, while interesting, does not add much to the Roswell story. I figured I would mention it here for information purposes only.
Debris everywhere!
Art Campbell sent me an e-mail alerting me to an upcoming revelation that the crash on San Augustin did occur and they have found debris that prove it.
I have heard this story before. The problem I have with the article I read is that they make all sorts of claims that the debris they found came from 1947 but there is no proof this. Couldn’t it have been left at the site in 1980, 1990, or 2000? I just can’t buy this seriously but we will have to wait. Stay tuned.......
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Marcel passes lie detector test!
At least that is what Tony Bragalia’s headline read. Bragalia apparently used the software given to him by this research institute that uses it for determining if people are lying. According to Bragalia, this software takes the transcripts of an interview and analyzes them for deceptive content. It all sounded pretty hokey to me when the claim is that you can take any transcript and tell if somebody is lying or not.
I decided to pull the thread on this and found some interesting information. The Mental Floss blog had a description of the software Bragalia was using. It seems it was primarily designed for looking at fraudulent e-mails/spam. I am not sure how well it transitions to transcripts, which is what Bragalia was doing. Their web site does have an on-line deception detector tool, which is probably what Bragalia used for his article. As a test, I used the deception detector tool by entering several texts from the bible (there is a minimum of 50 words required). Some of the texts were given the label as deceptive. I then lied to the on-line tool several times and it recognized no deception! In another test, I ran a few Frank Kaufmann (who has been discredited as a Roswell witness) quotes into the tool and it still reported no deception. Additionally, I was able to get some quotes made by Marcel and Dubose to come out “deceptive”. This tells me that this tool may work for detecting e-mail fraud but, in my opinion, it is inadequate for what Mr. Bragalia is proclaiming.
Quelle: SUNlite 1/2012
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If you are not with us....
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Anthony Bragalia continues to try and make something out of nothing. His latest article basically called two elderly gentlemen liars because they did not tell him what he wanted to hear.
Mr. Bragalia tried to interview two men who were supposedly in Roswell in 1947. However, one denied being stationed at Roswell even though he admitted to being a private in the Army Air Force in 1946 and some of 1947. The other mentioned being stationed there in 1946 but not 1947.
Tony Bragalia, as is his custom, implies that he could tell they were lying to him by the way they responded on the phone. According to Bragalia, the yearbook documents they were there and because they refuse to admit they were stationed there, they are being dishonorable.
Because he has a strong belief that there is a conspiracy and that these men will lie, cheat, or steal to hide their involvement, Bragalia has drawn his conclusion. However, he ignores possible reasons why they stated what they did. I can think of a few:
They don’t remember being there. • This is quite plausible especially if they felt they left at a certain time of year or were never there. One item I found revealing was an article called, “Phantom flashbulbs: False recollections of hearing the news about Challenger” (Neisser and Harsh). The study had students write what had happened the day after the Challenger accident and then, two and a half years later, repeat the report. About a third of the memories were inaccurate even though some of those individuals felt the later memories were accurate! One witness even moved their location from the school to her parent’ s house. The lesson here being that one can not consider any of these old memories to be 100% accurate. When talking about a private, who spent just a few years in the military over sixty years ago, it is not beyond the possibility that they would forget details or get them wrong from that time period.
They weren’t there in • JULY of 1947 as they stated. As best I can tell, the yearbook was printed sometime in mid-1947. It shows events from 1946 as well as 1947 so it encompasses that time period and not just the summer of 1947. If somebody was stationed there in 1946 but not 1947, they would probably appear in the yearbook.
There is the possibility that he got • the wrong individual in the case of the person, who claimed they were never stationed at Roswell. Bragalia states the surname is extremely rare. I looked into the RAAF yearbook and discovered three “Robert E.”’s for the first Air Transport Unit. Two fit the description he gave (the other being a sergeant and having a very common last name). While I could not find any mention of one of them in the newspaper archive, I did discover that a Robert E. Walthour (who is listed as a pfc in the 1st ATU) from Greensburg, PA had exited the Army in October 1945 (Connellsville, PA daily courier - Oct 16, 1945). When I pointed this out to Bruce Hutchinson, he followed up by looking into the national archives and discovered that there were three Robert E. Walthours from Pennsylvannia that served in the Army in the 1940s. Two of them enlisted in 1946 (in different locations and with different ages/backgrounds). Could Bragalia have gotten the wrong person (he did not respond to my two e-mail queries on this)? Even if it wasn’t, it demonstrates that it is possible to get two people with the same rare surname, serving in the military at the same time.
The person who denied being pres• ent at RAAF did purposefully lie to him but for reasons other than a UFO crash. Maybe he had military or personal reasons he did not want anyone to discover.
Bragalia misinterpreted what these • individuals told him. We have no recordings of what was actually stated so they can be verified. It is his interpretation of what they said in his article.Bragalia would later tell me that he had talked to two individuals who were at Roswell in July of 1947 and they told him that both individuals were there during that month. Bragalia simply accepts this claim as factual. I find the ability for anyone to remember such specific details after sixty years to be somewhat suspect.
In my opinion, calling these gentlemen “dishonorable” based on what they or others recall is just wrong and simply ignores all possibilities in favor of only one. Bragalia’s motto is apparently, “If you aren’t going to tell me what I want to hear, then you are lying and are part of the conspiracy.” I find this approach to a very controversial subject, highly biased and lacking in objectivity. If Bragalia wants to prove if somebody was or was not present in Roswell in July 1947, I suggest he obtain RAAF records or the person’s service record before calling that person a liar. What he has presented so far is speculative and subject to error.
As a side note, the interviewees did not recall the names of General Roger Ramey or Colonel Blanchard. I assume from Bragalia’s implication is they were denying they had contact with them on purpose. Because Bragalia apparently has little or no military background, he misses the obvious reason why these individuals did not remember them. A private is the lowest man on the totem pole and would not normally associate with high ranking officers in a large command like the 509th bomb group. Unless Blanchard and Ramey were as famous and flamboyant as George Patton, it is unlikely that a buck private, who served in their command but rarely had any close contact with them, would even remember them.
If this is an example of how the “dream team” is conducting its research, one can expect more of the usual wildly speculative conclusions and inaccurate research so common in the writings about Roswell.
Hitting the nail on the head
Nick Redfern’s blog posting about the infamous missing files was on target. I can’t count how many times I have seen various crash proponents make much out of this. It is nice to see that Mr. Redfern looked at it logically and was not blinded by an emotional tie to the case.
More wild speculation
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Tony Bragalia once again demonstrated his ability to twist logic in order to link just about anything to Roswell. In this instance, we have a March 10, 1950 letter written from Lt. Col. Robert Blount to a Dr. Robley Evans at MIT. Lt. Col. Blount discusses in the letter, an April 1949 report written by Dr. Paul Fitts concerning the psychological analysis of UFO reports. In the final paragraph of the letter, Blount writes:
It has been recently rumored that one of these so-called flying saucers crashed in Mexico; however, the details are somewhat bizarre at the moment. (my emphasis in bold and underlined).
Bragalia links this all to Roswell. He picks out the “bizarre” comment as meaning that it was “exotic”. However, it could also be interpreted to mean that the details were outrageous and difficult to believe. There is reason to suspect this was the case.
Back in SUNlite 3-3, I pointed out to my readers a lecture on March 8, 1950 at Denver University, where the Aztec story was being discussed. That next day an article in the Greeley tribune mentioned the lecture but also noted that Ray L. Dimmick had recently reported that he had seen or heard about a flying saucer crash outside Mexico City. The Dimmick story appeared in national newspapers on March 9th and 10th. The March 10th Long Beach Independent made it a front page headline (The image of that headline and the first part of the story is displayed above and to the right here). Several newspapers in the east had the story on page one (see story to the left). All mentioned an AF investigation into the story.
Is it any surprise that on the same day the story made news across the nation, Lt. Col. Blount wrote about a recent rumor regarding a flying saucer crash in Mexico? It appears to be just more than a coincidence that Blount would make reference to a recent rumor of a spaceship crash that had the same location as the Dimmick story.
When Gilles Fernandez pointed this story out to Mr. Bragalia, he dismissed it because it was only a rumor and Lt. Col. Blount would have not found the story credible enough to discuss it in this official correspondence. Of course, Bragalia completely ignores the context of the statement made by Lt. Col. Blount. He declared it a recent (i.e. in the past few days/months) rumor that is was bizarre (i.e. outrageous), and described the flying saucers as “so-called”. Since he was talking about UFOs in this letter, casually mentioning this news would not be out of the ordinary especially when he referred to it in the manner he appears to be describing.
In my opinion, Blount was referring to the Dimmick hoax and it had nothing to do with Roswell. As with many of Bragalia’s sensationalist writings, his failure to see beyond the Roswell myth prevents him from looking at more logical explanations.
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Quelle: SUNlite 2/2012
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The missing Brazel interview
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According to the latest news, Mack Brazel’s audio interview with Walt Whitmore in 1947 has existed for many years with Dave Aaron. Unfortunately, Mr. Aaron allowed this recording, as well as hundreds of others, to sit in his girlfriend’s garage. When she passed away, the city came in and had to clean it up because it was a health hazard. Apparently, there were lots of cats in the house. The recording apparently was destroyed.
This all sounded a bit strange to me. Am I supposed to believe that this recording, which was thought lost to the world all these years, was sitting in a pile of tapes in this garage for all this time? Why didn’t this UFOlogist get the tape and produce it for Roswell enthusiasts/investigators? He could have made a nice bit of coin selling it or he could have received some publicity. I can think of three scenarios regarding this tape:
The recording does not exist.1.
The recording exists but reflects the 2. same story told by Brazel to the Roswell Daily Record.
The recording exists and it is the 3. Roswell smoking gun where Brazel describes the bodies, the spaceship, and the cover-up.
I think one or two is most likely. #3 is highly unlikely because if the recording did contain this, it would not have resided in a garage all of these years.
About a week after this news became public, Kevin Randle revealed that Don Schmitt interviewed Mr. Aaron to resolve the issue. Schmitt discovered that Aaron had it in his possession since 2003 and hold sold copies of the recording to nine people. He also told Schmitt that he did not recall much of the recording but did remember how it opened. Schmitt recognized the words since they were from scene concerning the interview from the Showtime “Roswell” movie. In other words, it was not the real thing. So option one is applicable. The recording, as advertised (the actual interview and not a recreation), did not really exist.
Quelle: SUNlite 3/2012
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I know that some people find this a tired topic but I felt that I wanted to do one issue devoted to the subject. I do have some other articles in this issue but the main focus is on Roswell. Much of the content was inspired by some of the articles/books/blog entries written about the case over the last few years. I could have responded in those forums but I really hate arguing endlessly. No matter what argument that is presented, the Roswell proponents dismiss it or dream up some sort of conspiracy to explain away inconvenient testimony/documentation. It is a complete waste of time and achieves nothing. Meanwhile, on June 5th, the planet Venus transitted the sun and was observed/photographed worldwide by astronomers. While, birds, satellites, and airplanes were recorded, nobody recorded a single UFO passing in front of the sun. Sure, the sun is a small area of sky but if UFOs are as frequent as some claim (I recently saw a claim that a majority of UFO reports are unexplainable!), then one would think the odds would improve for at least one astronomer to have imaged such a craft passing in front of the sun. I saw no images of a UFO craft crossing the sun. I can also say the same for all my astrophotographs.
I shot eight five minute exposures of M97 and M108 on June 15th. In that short time period, I managed to record three satellites crossing a small field of view but I recorded no UFOs. I am not the only astrophotographer shooting the sky. Hundreds take images of the sky on every clear night. I am unaware of any recording a unexplained objects crossing their field of view. Doesn’t that say something about the frequency of UFOs?
As I stated last issue, I have changed the format of the newsletter from the three column format to a single column on each page. Some felt the three column format was archaic so I am honoring their request to a more internet friendly layout. I would love to hear feedback on this to see if I want to maintain this format in future issues.
Speaking of last issue, I want to confess that I made a correction to it a few days after posting it on-line. In the article concerning the April 1966 fireball, I showed an image of the Chiles-Whitted sketches and gave a year of 1947. It was actually 1948. I normally don’t go back and correct things but after this blatant mistake was pointed out, I went back and fixed it. I just wanted to publicly admit the error existed.
On a final note, readers should pay attention to Peter Merlin’s article. It is quite amusing and reminds of the behavior of my fellow submariners over the years. Military humor is something some civilians have a hard time appreciating.
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Mean old skeptics!
Kevin Randle “dissed” skeptics for being critical of “The Dream Team”. I find it amusing because all he and his fellow dream teamers had to do was keep their mouths shut that such a group even existed. Randle announced that the “Dream team” was being created in October of last year and then mentioned when various people were added to the team. Not surprisingly, the first article describing what the team discovered involved a conspiracy. When I, and other skeptics, comment about the “dream team’s antics, we are simply following their lead. I guess Mr. Randle is upset with those comments because they have not released their results yet. Again, he and his fellow Roswell investigators are the one’s announcing all of this information. I only comment based on what they state.
In the article, Kevin Randle suggests that skeptics will not accept anything but a mundane explanation for Roswell. Well....duh...that is why we are skeptics. Skeptics are more likely to accept a mundane explanation (and it does not have to be MOGUL) than an exotic one (alien spaceship) without something more convincing than memories and conspiracy theories. I will gladly accept good evidence. However, I have yet to see it. All I ever see is people trying to explain away inconvenient facts and promoting their personal point of view.
Randle also mentioned, in his comments section, news about the infamous nun’s diary that appeared in the book, The truth about the UFO crash at Roswell. In that book, it seemed as if the diaries had actually been read. Now Randle suggests that they have leads as to where these diaries are located. Does this mean that the diaries disappeared after they were read back in the early 1990s or that they were simply repeating what they thought was in the diaries? The diary is not that important as it only reports the observation of a bright meteor-like object. However, his recent statements have me wondering again if the diary ever existed in the first place. If it suddenly appears out of thin air, one might wonder if it was because of some clever skulduggery. I hope there will be an effort to authenticate them if they are found. It would not be the first time somebody created a hoax document about UFOs.
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Where were the B-29s?
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While reading through the newspaper archives, I stumbled across a reference to the 509ths B-29s, in the Amarillo Globe on July 2nd, 1947. Apparently, twenty-seven B-29s were in Vicksburg and some were scheduled to return to Roswell on the 4th of July. On their return to Roswell, they were scheduled to pass over Vicksburg, Little Rock, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, and Roswell. This group of planes was a combination of aircraft from Roswell, Tuscon, and Fort Worth. It is not clear how many were from Roswell but one can assume that probably one of the three squadrons that were part of the 509th was in the air show. The Tuscon bombardment group had B-29s also flying over Seattle and it seems possible that some of the other B-29s from Roswell might have been flying elsewhere for parades/air shows.
What does this say for all the activity that was supposedly occurring at Roswell Army Air Field, in the town of Roswell, and at the “crash site”. Supposedly, the entire base was locked down and personnel being sent out to establish the cordon, collect debris, retrieve the spaceship, etc. However, what the record shows is that probably a third, or more, of the group’s planes and their crews were away doing air shows for the various towns on the 4th of July. When the planes returned, the ground crews would have to be present to support their landing, unloading, and post-flight work.
Strangely, there is little or no mention by the various authors about these B-29s being “out of town”. There is also no mention of the town’s 4th of July celebration, which, I am pretty confident, occurred as planned. Remember, at the same time Roswell was probably celebrating the fourth of July with the usual fanfare (parades, picnics, dances, fireworks, etc.), a massive military cover-up operation was underway north of town. It would have been quite a show for interested civilians just to watch the convoy of trucks moving back and forth. One wonders why that wasn’t mentioned in the newspapers.
Quelle: SUNlite 4/2012
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