What Really Happened at Roswell? 6th Annual Crash Retrieval Conference
Don Schmitt led off the 6thAnnual UFO Crash Retrieval Conference in Las Vegas on Friday, November 7 with his argument that many of the latest testimonies gathered about the Roswell case were deathbed utterances.
After the introduction by conference host Ryan Wood, Schmitt began his hour with a description of deathbed statements, their validity in court and if these Roswell testimonies were somehow ruled invalid, then all such testimony would be invalid. This was a theory with which I didn’t agree and I was a little disappointed with these legal arguments rather than updated Roswell information.
But then Schmitt began to talk of what he and Tom Carey had learned in the last several years from witnesses who had not been previously interviewed. Most of it was actually from family members, talking about what a father and husband had said in the last days of life.
Typical of these was that of Frank Cassidy who told his wife, Sarah, that he had been posted as a guard at Hangar 84. Cassidy was a soldier with the 1395thMP Company who said that he had seen the alien bodies in the hangar. But as happens so often in the Roswell case today, it wasn’t Frank who told this tale, but his wife.
For me, the biggest revelation might have been Bessie Brazel Schreiber’s recanting of her earlier statements that she, with her father and little brother had recovered the remains of a balloon in July 1947, which explained the Roswell crash case. She was one of the darlings of the skeptical crowd.
Now Schmitt said that what she remembered might have been a different incident. She was no longer sure that it related to the Roswell UFO crash, but was a weather balloon and debris they picked up sometime later.
Following Schmitt and a short break, George Noory, host of Coast-to-Coast, held a meet-and-greet which was more of a free ranging question and answer session. Noory was smooth as always and that showed why his program was so popular. Noory was quick to thank Art Bell for establishing the show and building the international audience.
Noory left, with some of the speakers to do his Friday night show while most of his fans remained for a “Meet the Speakers” event and then a panel discussion.
Ryan Wood started but had to join Noory for his radio show, leaving the hosting duties to Steven Bassett, who reminded me of Mel Brooks. It was the energy he brought to the table, his quick wit and sense of humor, and the way he moved around.
After all the questions were answered in the hall, after the lights were turned out, Don Schmitt and I went in search of a late dinner. This was like so many late night sessions we’d had in the past. We talked of many things, some of them relating to UFOs and the current state of the Roswell research. So many of the first-hand witnesses had died and those who still lived were low-ranking enlisted men. I believe that it because they were younger than the sergeants and the officers in 1947. After sixty years, their ranks have thinned.
On Saturday, the first speaker was Dr. Robert Wood who was going to talk about “Forensic Linguistics and the Majestic Documents.” This was one that I wanted to hear because, as most know, I have long suspected that the documents were faked. I know that Dr. Wood is sincere in his belief that they are real.
Although he began with a discussion of Albert Einstein and a document he had co-authored with Robert Oppenheimer, I was more interested in what Wood called the “Burned Memo.” This document, coming from Tim Cooper, recipient of many MJ-12 documents, interested me because it is an original. Though someone had tried to burn it, and the scorch marks are evident, it is a document that could be tested forensically.
This document is clearly related to MJ-12 and it lists MJ-1 as the Director of the CIA (DCI) and author, and was sent to MJ-2 — MJ-7 but not the other members of the organization. There is a list of tabs and these were included with the document.
Dr. Wood submitted the documents for forensic testing and Erich J. Speckin, a forensic chemist wrote, “… The red stamp ink is not inconsistent with stamp ink that was commercially available during that time. The typewriting is also consistent with carbon transfer that was available at that time frame.” The one problem with this is the provenance, which has been one of the major stumbling blocks of MJ-12 from the beginning. Wood did say that the memo came from McLean, VA and that it had been tracked to a meter authorized to the CIA but not exactly where it had originated and who, exactly, had sent it to Cooper. Wood seems, however, to have moved closer to authenticated MJ-12.
Although Dr. John Alexander didn’t speak until Sunday morning, part of his speech concerned MJ-12. He used the example of Watergate to argue against the authenticity of MJ-12. He mentioned that in the Watergate leak, there had been direct contact between the reporters and the leakers, one of whom was Mark Felt, known then as “Deep Throat”. The MJ-12 documents had been dropped in a mailbox without anyone knowing who the leakers were.
He expanded on this noting that leaks about the Atomic Bomb, the Stealth Fighter, and the Glomar Explorer, all important government secrets and all leaked into the public arena, had not been dropped into mailboxes. All had been through direct contact. There was a provenance for each of them.
Keeping with this, Alexander said about Watergate that the identity of the sources had been vetted, but MJ-12 the sources were anonymous. The information about Watergate went to a powerful newspaper and the MJ-12 documents went to relative unknowns. He said that the information about Watergate was given to national reporters, there were massive resources to be brought to the investigation, that the President was responsible, there was hard evidence, and people went to jail.
With MJ-12, the documents were sent to people with limited or no experience, they had limited resources, claimed that “They” were responsible without explaining who they were, had conspiracy theories as evidence, and that those releasing the documents had committed treason. In other words, we could learn more by exploring the sources of the information on true leaks such as Watergate but we were left with nothing to corroborate the MJ-12 leaks.
So, we had two sides of the issue. One with new documents and new testing, and one with interesting questions that have yet to be answered. What this told us all was that the MJ-12 debate would rage for some time.
When Wood concluded, Nick Pope, who worked in the British Ministry of Defence and who had worked the UFO desk for three years, talked about what was in the British Ministry’s “X-Files.” Over the next several years, all the files will be released into the British National Archives that can be found at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk. Pope warned that there would be no “smoking gun” in the files and he should know because he was responsible for creating many of them and had certainly reviewed most. There are, however, interesting items in those files and one of them is illustrative. It provides us with a glimpse on how these things work and this insight might help in understanding MJ-12, though Pope certainly didn’t suggest that.
In the batch of files most recently released, Pope said, “…I discussed in my various media interviews was that of Milton Torres, a United States Air Force pilot who stated that on 20thMay 1957 he was ordered to open fire on a UFO that was being tracked on radar. He was based at RAF Manston in Kent [England] and was scrambled to intercept a UFO that had been tracked over Kent. He claims that he came within seconds of firing off a salvo of 24 rockets when the UFO accelerated away at a speed of about Mach 10. Torres stated that he was subsequently warned t stay silent about the incident and only mentioned it years afterwards, at a reunion.” All well and good, but the problem with this released file is that the information came from neither the USAF nor from the MoD. Instead it was a transcript of an interview taken years later by a UFO researcher. So, it comes from the MoD, but it is not an official document. That, according to Pope is a real but subtle difference.
Pope was followed by Jim Marrs who wanted to talk about the Rise of the Fourth Reich and what he thought of as “The Nazification of America.” He did provide a link to UFOs, suggesting that the Nazis had developed the craft and he suggested that the Nazis had created an atomic weapon and were preparing to attack New York using it. When the Third Reich fell, some of the material that would have been used in the German atomic weapons was transferred to the United States, according to Marrs, who then referenced his upcoming book. That allowed us to finish work on our atomic bomb.
He did point out how the equipment, especially the helmets of the American Army have changed to look more like those of the Nazi Army of World War II. I had been struck by that as well, but the explanation seems to be more rooted in protecting our soldiers with the new Kevlar helmets than a move to a Nazi tradition. The American helmet is undergoing a new design, one to offer protection but that will allow soldiers to fire from a prone position without the body armor pushing on the back of the helmet, forcing it down over the eyes. The new helmet doesn’t resemble the old Nazi one quite so much.
Linda Moulton Howe led off the afternoon session with her discussion of the Bentwaters case of 1980. She provided a look at the history of the base and into various radar operations there. This in an attempt to learn if there might be an electromagnet, or rather, a terrestrial explanation for what happened in 1980.
At Bentwaters, over the Christmas holidays of 1980, lights, and possibly an object was seen over the base and on the ground in the woods outside the perimeter. Air Force security police and Air Force officers responded. John Burroughs, one of those security policemen wrote, in 1980, “The lights were red and blue, the red one above the blue one and they were flashing on and off.
Because I never saw anything like that coming from the woods before, we decided to drive down and see what it was.” Later a letter written by the then Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt would detail some of this. Halt, interviewed a number of times made it clear that he was as far forward as anyone, meaning closest to the lights with the exception of Burroughs and one other airman.
I met Burroughs once in Phoenix as the both of us were to be interviewed on a radio station. He offered me a ride to and from the station and we had time to discuss the case. He told me then that he had seen some strange things but didn’t go into great detail. Had I known then what I know now, I might have pressed for more information.
Burroughs, under hypnotic regression, and according to Howe a very trouble man, told more of what he had seen that night. He talked of communication with the lights, suggesting that the lights spoke to them. According to Burroughs, the light was the life from the craft.
Howe also had hypnotic regression sessions with Jim Penniston. He too reported communication with the lights and talked of them being travelers from the far future. They were attempting to gather chromosomes to prevent the race from dying.
Nick Redfern followed Howe and he revisited the Tunguska explosion of 1908, looking at the theories surrounding the event. He talked about it being caused by a comet, an asteroid, or an alien spaceship. He did mention that it was clearly an air burst. The devastation photographed by scientists in the 1920s resembled that of an atomic attack.
I had the opportunity to talk to the late Dr. James A. van Allen about this event. Redfern had said there was no crater or meteoric debris left and this was a point I raised with van Allen in the 1970s. He told me that the object, he believed it to be a comet, had virtually disintegrated so there would be no crater and that some meteoric material had been found that was consistent with a comet but the area is swampy. That might account for the lack of great chucks of debris.
Redfern left it in the hands of the audience, though my impression here was that he preferred the spacecraft scenario. I think it was a natural event and that we were lucky it hadn’t happened over a large, populated area.
Richard Dolan, author of UFOs and the National Security State, talked about his next book, providing an outline of the chapters. He added some detail as he worked through his presentation and much of it sounds intriguing.
The evening presentation and the keynote address was given by KLAS-TV investigative reporter George Knapp. Knapp had investigated the May 14, 2008 UFO crash near Needles, California. This case had everything from a UFO sighting and obvious crash retrieval, Men in Black, to mysterious government agents and disappearing witnesses.
Knapp, an entertaining speaker came prepared with video reports and witness testimony. He told of an object that fell at about three in the morning and a strange fellow he described as “Bob on the river,” meaning that he bobbed around like a boat. Bob told of a cylindrical-shaped object that fell with an audible shock. He said that five helicopters arrived within twenty minutes, recovered and carried the still glowing thing from the crash site.
Bob then disappeared, but that was more of Bob’s desire to remain left alone than anything else was. Knapp did find him and we all saw interviews that were conducted on Bob’s boat.
The Men in Black, were government agents, but their role had nothing to do with the UFO. They were responsible for transporting hazardous and valuable material. Knapp was allowed to see some of their facilities and training, but only after following them along the highway and provoking a confrontation… well, more of a meeting than a confrontation. They did stop to meet Knapp. Knapp was satisfied they had nothing to do with the UFO.
The thing that fell, a UFO by any definition probably wasn’t of extraterrestrial origin. Knapp told me in a private conversation, though he made it clear in his presentation, that he thought it was some kind of an experimental aircraft that crashed. It might have been one of the unmanned aerial vehicles that have become so popular with the military.
James Clarkson, on Sunday, told us of his investigation into something that crashed in the Elk River area in Washington State. According to the newspapers, and he found only five articles about the event, on November 25, 1979, something did crash. Clarkson found many witnesses to the “arrival of a fiery object… The unknown object impacted and may have exploded.” Clarkson also found witnesses to a military presence, learned that roads had been blocked by armed soldiers, and that an explanation of “maneuvers in the area” had been offered. This answered no questions about the event.
Clarkson provided eyewitness testimony about an object that seemed to have brightly glowing windows and seemed to be on fire. He didn’t believe any of the explanations offered about the event and is continuing his work.
The second to the last presentation at the conference was that of Stephen Bassett. I’d watched him working on his computer almost the whole time we were there. He sat at his table with his laptop, outside the conference hall with his laptop, and nearly everywhere else with it. He told later me that he had been working on his presentation.
Like his impromptu hosting of the panel discussion on Friday, he seemed to fill the stage. He said that he rejected much of what John Alexander had said.
Bassett believes in MJ-12 and exopolitics. In fact, not long before he had taken the stage, we had discussed some of the exopolitic witnesses and what I thought of as their lack of credentials. Although I think he might have been winning our debate when we had to quit, I really hadn’t had the chance to explain much of my reasoning.
Bassett wandered the stage explaining that the cover-up had started in 1947 with Brigadier General Roger Ramey who gave us the weather balloon explanation for the Roswell crash. He told us how to find lots of UFO articles archived and other relevant information published on his website at www.paradigmresarchgroup.org. He predicted that next spring something big was going to happen. The disclosure about UFOs was coming, thanks in part to the new president.
His was the only presentation to receive a standing ovation. I’m not sure if it was the content or a tribute to Bassett. He did make even the mundane interesting.
I closed out the conference, updating my work on the Las Vegas UFO crash. I showed how the Air Force manipulated the records, separating the sighting into two events so that explanations could be offered and provided the testimony of a general from NORAD who saw the thing in the air.
But a conference is more than just speakers on a stage. Here there were a “Meet the Speakers for Dessert and Drinks” and a banquet at which each speaker hosted a table. At the rear of the conference room each of the speakers had a table. All of this means that there was an ample opportunity for the speakers to interact with the attendees.
I heard a wide variety of stories such as that from those of a man who said his friend was killed in a gunfight with aliens at Dulce to the man who insisted that MJ-12 was real and I should listen carefully to what Dr. Wood said (which I had). I saw Don Schmitt surrounded more than once by people asking about Roswell and Jim Marrs always had people waiting to talk with him. Nick Redfern sat at his table most of the conference, as I did at mine, listening to the speakers and talking to those to wished to learn more about our specific points of view.
Before I arrived in Las Vegas I had worried that economic fears would inhibit turn out, but I was told that more people were at this conference than the one last year. People were interested in the subject and besides, it was in Las Vegas (and no, I didn’t spend a dime in the casino, though I threatened to enter one of the poker tournaments).
By Sunday night, most of the attendees had left, some of the speakers caught early flights and the rest were just tired. But I heard no one complain about the venue or the opportunity to share ideas and information. In the long run everyone seemed well satisfied and quite a few mentioned their anticipation of next year’s conference.