(Posted to the UFO Updates Mail List, June, 1997)

Kent Jeffrey, in his latest article, essentially challenges those of us who believe that something crashed outside of Roswell in July 1947 to prove the case to him. To do so, he suggests that we must deal with seven points that he brought up at the end of his article. He raises other questions in his article which are easily challenged, and he accuses us of selective reporting of the data. Let's take a quick look at some of that, and then answer his seven points one at a time. Please remember that I do not have endless space in which to address his comments and therefore have selected some of them for response but not others.

Kent writes, about the men of the 509th Bomb Group, "Most of them heard nothing about the supposed crashed-saucer incident until years later, after all the publicity started. The few men who did recall hearing about the incident at the time of its occurrence said that the inside word was that the debris was from a downed balloon of some kind and that there was no more than 'one wheelbarrow full'."

Overlooking the fact that highly classified events would not be discussed among the officers because they were, by definition, highly classified, let's look at a statement by Colonel (later brigadier general) Thomas DuBose.  According to him, and recorded on video tape (August 10, 1990), "He (Major General Clements McMullen, deputy commander of SAC) called me and said...Nobody, and I must stress this, no one was to discuss this with their wives, me with Ramey, with anyone. The matter, as far as we're concerned, it was closed."

What we have here is evidence of orders, coming from the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command that the officers of the Eighth Air Force and the 509th Bomb Group were not to discuss this matter amongst themselves. Those who were not involved would not be told about it because of the high classification. And those former members of the 509th who believe that had something like this happened they would have heard about it must rethink their theory. Many military units have secrets that are shared only with those who have a need to know. To suggest a sharing of classified material with those who are not cleared to hear it reveals a misunderstanding of how this works. And, remember, DuBose acknowledged that an order had been given.

Kent also uses the testimony that was published by William L. Moore in The Roswell Incident and later by Moore and Jaime Shandera in their articles about the debris taken to Brigadier General Roger Ramey's office. I have suggested all along that the debris photographed was not the real stuff. Kent, however, writes, "Among Marcel's responses were 'They took one picture of me on the floor holding up some of the less-interesting metallic debris...The stuff in that one photo was pieces of the actual stuff we had found. It was not a staged photo."

Kent does not report the rest of the quote which tends to refute his contention that the debris on the floor was never switched. Marcel supposedly also said, "Later, they cleared out our wreckage and substituted some of their own. They then allowed more photos. Those photos were taken while the actual wreckage was on its way to Wright Field. I was not in those." If that wasn't enough, when we check the record, we find that Moore and Shandera have published three versions of the original quote, each altered to fit the circumstances as they were developing during various investigations. Moore provided a transcript of the February 1979 interview with Marcel that now said, "General (Roger Maxwell) Ramey allowed the press in to take two pictures of this stuff. I was in one, and he and Col. DuBose were in the other. [Emphasis added to show the difference in the quote.]"

In their article "Three Hours That Shook the Press," Focus, new series Vol. 5, nos. 7-9, September 30, 1990, Shandera and Moore write, "In his interview with Moore (The Roswell Incident) Maj. Marcel maintained that the debris in the two photos of him is the real stuff [Emphasis added]."

So we see that the quotes by Moore and Shandera referring to the number of pictures taken in General Ramey's office, who was in those pictures, and the situation around them, can't be trusted. In fact, Marcel himself has been quoted by a disinterested third party. Reporter Johnny Mann accompanied Marcel to Roswell in 1980 to interview him about the UFO crash. Mann found the picture of Marcel posed by the weather balloon and told him, "Jess, I gotta tell you. This looks like a weather balloon."

According to Mann, Marcel said, "That's not the stuff I found on the ranch." In other words, the only ones to report that Marcel was photographed with the "real" debris was Moore and Shandera. All evidence to the contrary was apparently overlooked by Kent as he attempted to prove that what was on the floor in Ramey's office was the material found out on the Foster ranch. Kent also wrote, "Rancher Mac Brazel is quoted as talking about sticks, foil, and tape with flower patterns." But Kent doesn't quote the last, and possibly most important part of the July 9, 1947 story. Speaking of the balloon explanation, the newspaper reported, "Brazel said, that he had previously found weather observation balloons on two other occasions... but that what he found this time did not in any way resemble either of these."

But, if what was found was a Project Mogul balloon as alleged, or just any sort of balloon as Kent suggests, then it would have been exactly like those. That is what we are talking about when we talk of Mogul Flight #4. It was a cluster of regular weather balloons and contained nothing to fool Brazel, Marcel, or anyone else.

But, with space running out, let's look at Kent's seven points that must be addressed according to Kent himself. He wrote, "A machine with unimaginable technological sophistication and consequent incredible reliability would have simply broken down and crashed."

Even if the "perfect" machine could be built, there are always the human factors (in this case alien factor unless you want to believe them infallible too), and the environmental factors in this extremely weak argument. In today's world, aircraft are designed to withstand strikes by lightning. However, according to a recent PrimeTime Live on ABC, lightning was a contributing factor in the recent destruction of a commercial jet. Yes, the mean time to failure has improved. Yes, our computers, electronics, and machinery all operate much longer, but they do still break. And when they don't break on their own, there is always someone there to make a mistake causing them to break. In other words, this argument is without foundation. Kent next wrote, "The only known wreckage from this sophisticated vehicle, capable of interstellar travel, would have consisted solely of a few short beams, pieces of foil-like material, and small pieces of thin plastic-like material."

Yes, that is basically the debris as described by those who were on the Foster ranch. I would add the fiber optics described by Bill Brazel, Jr., but that doesn't alter Kent's point. There is not the range of debris you would expect from a crashing craft.

Of course, that doesn't cover the craft and bodies found elsewhere. Kent was quick to tell me, angrily, that there was no craft and there were no bodies and therefore his point remains valid. He rejects, out of hand, all reference to the craft and bodies, weakening his argument considerably. You can't reject testimony simply because you don't like it. If you can offer a reasonable motive for that rejection, then you can proceed with your case. If you reject it because it is inconvenient, then your point is not valid. Kent has ignored the statements by Major (later full colonel) Edwin Easley, Major (later full colonel) Patrick Saunders, Brigadier General Arthur Exon, Dr. W. Curry Holden, reporter Johnny McBoyle and many others. Each spoke of the second crash site in first-hand terms.

Kent's next point is "Despite the fact that this would have been the most spectacular event in recorded history, and despite the fact that word was already out that something had happened (because of Lt. Haut's press release), there was absolutely no contemporary discussion or talk about such an earthshaking event among the pilots and navigators of the close-knit 509th Bomb Group."

This is absolutely ridiculous when it is remembered that these were trained officers who were schooled in keeping their mouths shut and when it is remembered, according to General DuBose, orders had been issued. When the 509th was formed, with the purpose of dropping the atomic bombs, the men were brought to the base and told that they would be involved in a special assignment.

They were told to tell no one of this. As a security check, they were allowed to glimpse "special" equipment, or "special" orders. They all were given a leave before having to report back for training. Herculean efforts were made to track each of these men, engage them in conversation, and to see just how much they would talk about their "special" assignments, or the "special" equipment they saw. Each who mentioned anything as dismissed from the unit and returned to his original assignment. The point is, these men knew that you didn't talk out of school to anyone who did not have "A NEED TO KNOW."

Kent then wrote, "West Point graduate and retired general Thomas DuBose, would have had lied nine times in an interview when he stated that the debris (definitely that from an ML-307 radar reflector) shown in the pictures in Ramey's office was not substituted material and was "real debris" recovered from the ranch northwest of Roswell."

This is one of the weakest arguments that Kent has made. First, he accepts, as completely accurate, Shandera's interview with DuBose, but according to DuBose and his wife, Shandera took neither notes nor made a tape recording. In other words, we are treated to Shandera's version of the events with no corroboration.

But, when DuBose was asked if he had seen the Roswell debris, he said, "Never." After the publication of Shandera's interview, he was asked again if he had ever seen the real debris and in a letter, he wrote, "NO!" Billy Cox, a disinterested third party and a writer for Florida Today, interviewed DuBose for an article he wrote for the November 24, 1991 edition of that newspaper. Cox reported that DuBose told him essentially the same story as outlined in UFO Crash at Roswell. In a letter dated September 30, 1991, Cox wrote, "I was aware of the recent controversy generated by an interview he (DuBose) had with Jamie Shandera, during which he stated that the display debris at Fort Worth was genuine UFO wreckage and not a weather balloon, as he had previously stated. But I chose not to complicate matters by asking him to illuminate what he had told Shandera; instead, I simply asked him, without pressure, to recall events as he remembered them... he seemed especially adamant about his role in the Roswell case.

While he stated that he didn't think the debris was extraterrestrial in nature (though he had no facts to support his opinion), he was insistent that the material that Ramey displayed for the press was in fact a weather balloon, and that he had personally transferred the real stuff in a lead-lined mail pouch to a courier going to Washington... I can only conclude that the Shandera interview was the end result of the confusion that might occur when someone attempts to press a narrow point of view upon a 90 year old man. I had no ambiguity in my mind that Mr. DuBose was telling me the truth."

What we see here is that DuBose didn't lie nine times. We have a disagreement between what Shandera reported about what DuBose said, and the video tape and reporters notes of what DuBose actually said. The problem is not Dubose but Shandera.

Next Kent wrote, "Major General C.P. Cabell, Director of Intelligence for the Air Force at the Pentagon, who prepared a report on the unidentified flying object situation for the Secretary of Defense, astoundingly, would have been preparing the report totally ignorant of the fact that the Air Force was in possession of a crashed flying saucer."

Actually that is not exactly true. Can we find any instances in which military officers wrote to civilian representatives of the government and lied? Yes. Senator Jeff Bingaman asked the Congressional Inquiry Division, Office of Legislative Liaison about Project Moon Dust. Lieutenant Colonel John E. Madison wrote, "In addition there is no Project Moon Dust or Operation Blue Fly. Those missions have never existed." This is not an accurate statement.

More importantly, when Madison's statements were challenged, Colonel George M. Mattingley, Jr. wrote that Moon Dust had existed, but it was never used. Mattingley had to know that Moon Dust had been deployed. He gave Bingaman a history of Moon Dust. Therefore, Mattingley knowing lied to a United States Senator, as did Madison.

This is not exactly the same situation as described by Kent but it does establish a precedence. Yes, military officers have knowingly lied to the civilian governmental representatives when they believed national security was at stake.

Finally Kent wrote, "Three retired Air Force colonels, all former top officials at the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base would have been lying to me -- unnecessarily wasting inordinate amounts of their own personal time in a protracted game of charades." Again, this argument is weak on the face of it. If we look at history we find many examples of military officers serving in critical positions but not in possession of complete information. During the Second World War we had broken a number of the Japanese codes and were reading intercepted messages under the code name Magic.

Very few knew about it. I believe that MacArthur's staff in the Southwest Pacific contained two people who were "Magic" qualified, MacArthur and MacArthur's chief of intelligence. To suggest that Magic didn't exist because other, high-ranking members of MacArthur's staff had said they heard nothing about it is ridiculous. If you interview those men, would they be lying if they said Magic didn't exist, because, to them, it didn't. Finished with that, Kent asked, "What basis is there now for postulating the existence of a crashed UFO?"

Simple. The testimony of Edwin Easley, himself a retired colonel who told me the craft was extraterrestrial. The testimony of Patrick Saunders, himself a retired colonel who wrote on the flyleaf to The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell that "Here's the truth and I still haven't told anybody anything!" which he then signed. And the testimony of Arthur Exon, himself a retired brigadier general, who talked of two distinct sites, and who talked of the people at Wright-Patterson who had examined the debris and bodies of the alien creatures. My two colonels and one brigadier general trump Kent's three colonels.

The question that can be asked here, in sort of a reverse on what Kent has written is "Why would these men create this story if it was not true?" They did not seek the spotlight as so many others have. They did not expect a monetary reward for their information. In fact, they gained nothing by suggesting there was anything true to the story of the crashed saucer. Would they spend their time lying to me? Exon and I even ate lunch in the Wright-Patterson officers' club.

I had hoped, in reading Kent's article, I would find something that was persuasive. I had hoped that there would be a revelation that would suggest a good reason for Kent to so radically alter his position. That I didn't find. Kent has written that the case is closed. To his mind, he has solved it with interviews he conducted and his analysis of the situation. But such isn't the case because he dismissed too much of the testimony that doesn't fit with his view. As I said, you can't reject inconvenient testimony until you provide a proper framework for that rejection. He has failed to do so and therefore his reasons for rejecting the Roswell UFO crash are less than persuasive.

KRandle

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