During the early afternoon on July 8, 1947, the city editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram received the news that the “Flying Disk” recovered the day before outside Roswell, New Mexico was being flown to the Fort Worth Army Air Force base for analysis by 8th Air Force Commanding General Roger Ramey and his staff. The editor dispatched a young reporter-photographer to the FWAAFB to cover this event. Those 6 photos (5 of which survive) taken by James Bond Johnson today represent the only tangible evidence of what crashed on Foster’s Ranch.

J. Bond Johnson (as he prefers to be known), went on to become a highly educated and well respected psychologist and United Methodist minister.From his published résumé:

J. Bond Johnson, Ph.D. has been incurably curious for 74 years. This led to his becoming for five years a reporter-photographer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram then the South's largest newspaper -- and to pursuing university degrees in journalism, education, theology and psychology at Texas Wesleyan, Texas Christian, Southern Methodist and Claremont. He was a post doctorate fellow of the National Institute of Mental Health for three years of clinical psychiatry training in the post-graduate Department of Psychiatry, University of Southern California School of Medicine. He also received clinical training at the U. S. Public Health Service Hospital in Fort Worth, TCU-VA Veterans Guidance Center in Fort Worth, Metropolitan Hospital in Norwalk, Tri-City Mental Health Authority in Pomona, and Memorial Hospital Medical Center of Long Beach.

He has been an ordained United Methodist minister for 48 years and since 1960 has been a California board certified and licensed clinical psychologist. He was in private practice as a clinical and consulting psychologist in Long Beach for 31 years with specialties in family therapy, sports and industrial psychology. In 1970, he founded the Long Beach Youth Home, a residential treatment facility and school for emotionally troubled youths, and in 1974 he established Cedar House in Long Beach, which has become a national model in the treatment of child and spousal abuse. He recently retired as senior pastor of the First United Methodist Church of San Pedro.

He pioneered in studying the etiology of post-traumatic stress disorder, having interviewed returned prisoners of war, escapees and evadees during three wars. He served as an Army Air Corps pilot cadet in World War II, a Marine Corps captain (public information) during the Korean conflict and an Army psychological operations specialist during the Vietnam War. He has been a consultant to the National Security Council at the White House, he served on the Eisenhower Commission, which revised the Code of Conduct for prisoners of war and was a Pentagon consultant to "Operation Homecoming," the Department of Defense rehabilitation program for returning prisoners of war after the Vietnam War. He is retired from the U. S. Army in the rank of colonel after 33 years of active and reserve service. He is a past multi-term president of both the Long Beach and Los Alamitos chapters of The Retired Officers Association and is a life member of the U. S. Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association.

Johnson had forgotten completely the incident that would someday make him famous until about 1980 when he saw a television documentary that was part of the“In Search Of…” series.This episode, based on the recently published book The Roswell Incident (Moore and Berlitz), featured some of the photos he had taken in General Ramey’s office.It was only then that he became aware that perhaps that long-ago event might have been a lot more important than anyone at that time realized. He has since given numerous interviews to Roswell researchers and several news organizations; all who seek to uncover what really happened back in ’47.

Johnson’s recollections of that event have gone through several revisions, in part, he says, due to “two years of intensive research”. The difference in details are minor, but several detractors have seized on these discrepancies to buttress their opinions that the debris that Johnson photographed was somehow planted to deflect interest in the real debris that had been spirited away somewhere else.

Johnson was ushered into Gen Ramey’s office to find that there were “several” packages on the floor that contained the debris.Some of them had already been unwrapped, and Johnson helped to unwrap the rest of them, and then posed the debris with Maj. Marcel, Col. DuBose and Gen. Ramey.

“There is NO dispute that the pictures taken of Major Marcel were staged. I staged them. It has been published repeatedly that I helped to unpack the "flying saucer" crash debris that Marcel couriered from Roswell to Fort Worth on orders of General Ramey. Then I "posed" -- arranged, displayed -- the junk in an attempt to make a meaningful photo record and then took the six famous pictures of Major Marcel, General Ramey and Colonel [DuBose] examining the debris.”

Once the pictures were taken, Johnson rushed back to the Star-Telegraph to develop and print the pictures. It was still early in the evening when he was finished, but already several other news organizations, including the wire services, were clamoring for these pictures to go with their stories on the “Roswell Flying Disk”.

Today, Dr. Bond Johnson is one of the celebrities in the UFO world. Never afraid to speak his mind, he continues to correspond with researchers (and skeptics!), and occasionally gives lectures and interviews about his Roswell experiences. He has been busy lately working as a Project Director with Neil Morris and his Roswell Photo Interpretive Team to document and decipher the “strange glyphs” that they claim to have found in the Roswell Photos.

Johnson "has no reason to believe that what he photographed was other than the real Roswell Crash Debris" that Mac Brazel found, and Jessie Marcel brought in from Foster’s Ranch. That it looks exactly like the descriptions given by Mac, his daughter Betty, and the Proctors, is very compelling evidence. Jessie Marcel himself testified that the photos show the stuff he collected.

However, Johnson now says he is convinced that the debris is not that of a neoprene weather balloon and a ML-307 RAWIN radar reflector- despite the positive identification of Prof. Moore, who was part of the MOGUL team and who designed the #4 test flight. Indeed, he says he is now convinced that the debris is of unknown and possible extra-terrestrial origin, and proof of a continuing government/military cover-up! And despite Mac Brazel’s description of “…scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it…” (and many other similar witness descriptions), the RPIT is now working with a theory that the markings that are barely visible in the Johnson photos may be glyphs from 1000BC Egypt!

Several other sites have documented J. Bond Johnson’s role in the Roswell Incident.

http://adm2.ph.man.ac.uk/ftw-pics/index.htm

http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/jbond.htm

http://www.ufomind.com/people/j/johnsonj/