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6/30/22: ROSWELL BEING 75 W/ DONALD R. SCHMITT

Ron Patton | June 30, 2022

Right after the Roswell UFO crash 75 years ago, there was a photo of Major Jesse Marcel and General Roger Ramey in the Roswell Record with Ramey holding a memo or message that is folded in his hand. You can barely make out some sentences in the message but later using advanced computer imagery there are those who have deciphered some of the words that were on the memo that may give clues as to what was happening on that day. If what they found was accurate, and others could corroborate what they had seen, then it was a breakthrough in the Roswell case. Here was a document with an indisputable provenance of what may have really occurred amid the coverup. Tonight on Ground Zero, Clyde Lewis talks with UFO investigator and author, Donald R. Schmitt about ROSWELL BEING 75.

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: 

It is the 75th Anniversary of the Roswell incident and it is great to be able to attend my third outing in New Mexico, observing the celebration or at least the remembrance of a reported saucer crash on July 8th, 1947.

Even after 75 years and constant reports of declassified UFO or UAP materials by the Pentagon, the government is still sticking with their 1994 report that eventually was released as CASE CLOSED during the 50th anniversary of the incident.

The 1994 Air Force report concluded that the predecessor to the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army Air Forces, recovered debris from an Army Air Force’s balloon-borne research project code-named MOGUL.

This report discussed the results of their research fitting their narrative that certainly is credulous.

It identified the likely sources of the claims of “alien bodies” at Roswell. Contrary to allegations, many of the accounts appear to be descriptions of unclassified and widely publicized Air Force scientific achievements. Other descriptions of “bodies” appear to be actual incidents in which Air Force members were killed or injured in the line of duty.

The events they say were compartmentalized and that events from 1947 were somehow smeared together over ten years creating the Roswell story that we know about where there was a saucer crash and the finding of dead occupants being sent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for evaluation.

According to the report, Air Force activities that occurred over a period of many years have been consolidated and are now represented to have occurred in two or three days in July 1947.

“Aliens” observed in the New Mexico desert were actually anthropomorphic test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high altitude balloons for scientific research.”

What is most interesting is this quote alone smears MOGUL and PROJECT HIGH DIVE from 1956. HIGH DIVE used gondolas and planes to drop the dummies and not Balloons.

Three tests utilized anthropomorphic dummies mounted on the door of an experimental gondolamany of the dummies were dropped over White Sands Test Range.

On July 8th, 1947 the Roswell Army Air Field issued a release that it had recovered a “flying disk,” fueling worldwide press attention.

Later it was reported that small bodies were found in the wreckage and that small coffins were ordered and the debris and the bodies were sent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

I happened upon a report a while ago about the famous picture of Jesse Marcell and General Roger Ramey in the Roswell Record — Ramey is holding a memo or message that is folded in his hand. You can barely make out some sentences in the message but later using advanced computer imagery there are those who have deciphered some of the words that were on the memo that may give clues as to what was happening on that day.

Enlargements of the memo or message revealed that some of the words could be read. Brad Sparks obtained a blowup and made an attempt to read the memo in 1980. He saw the word “BALLOONS.” In 1985, Sparks was able to pick out a few other words that are “unanimously or almost unanimously agreed-upon as being there words like “weather balloons”, “Fort Worth, Tex.”, and interestingly the word “disc.”

In 1998, J. Bond Johnson, who had taken six of the seven photographs in General Ramey’s office, including the one in which the message might be seen, decided to investigate further.

Johnson put together a team to inspect the photographs that included Ron Regehr, a space and satellite engineer. Using a huge enlargement of the photograph, a computer, and a variety of software and camera equipment, they were able to read more of the message that Ramey held. Or rather, they claimed that they could read it with some degree of certainty.

In the upper left-hand corner, they saw what they believed to be the image of a telephone and concluded that Ramey was holding a “telephone message sheet” because of this “telephone logo.” They then claimed to have “positively identified a number of words in the message. There were, quite naturally, gaps in what they could see, and noted that the message had been typed in all capital letters.

Their interpretation of the message was:

AS THE… 4 HRS THE VICTIMS OF THE… AT FORT WORTH, TEX… THE “CRASH” STORY… FOR 0984 ACKNOWLEDGES… EMERGENCY POWERS ARE NEEDED SITE TWO SW OF MAGDALENA, NMEX… SAFE TALK… FOR MEANING OF STORY AND MISSION… WEATHER BALLOONS SENT ON THE… AND LAND… rOVER CREWS… [SIGNED]… TEMPLE.

If what they found was accurate, and others could corroborate what they had seen, then it was a breakthrough in the Roswell case. Here was a document with an indisputable provenance. General Ramey was holding it in his hand, and copies of the photograph put out over the INS wire provided a time and a date.

Others began to request copies of the pictures from the Special Collections held at the University of Texas at Arlington Library. They brought their expertise to bear on the message in Ramey’s hand. To the delight of many, they could also see letters and images as suggested first by Sparks and then by Johnson and his team. The problem was that many of those doing the work were not seeing the same things.

For example, the telephone logo that Johnson’s team saw looked more like a smudge on the paper than anything else. One researcher said that the telephone looked more like the Liberty Bell as seen on the back of a Franklin half-dollar. It was, as Russ Estes described it, “Faces in the clouds.”

Neil Morris, a technician who works for the University of Manchester in England, began to work on the message as part of the team created by Johnson. His interpretation of the symbols did not agree exactly with that made by other components of Johnson’s team. He did do one thing that was beneficial and that was breakdown the message line by line so that it would be easy to follow his interpretation. He used capital letters to represent the parts of the message of which he was sure, lower case letters to represent his best guess of some letters, an asterisk to denote a letter he couldn’t decipher, and a dash where there was little more than a smudge on the message.

Morris’ interpretation of the message was:

(1)—————***ARY WERE ————–AS

(2)———-fxs 4 rsev1 VICTIMS OF THE WR eck and CONVAY ON TO

(3)———*** AT FORT WORTH, Txe.

(4)———–***S** smi Ths *ELSE* ***** unus-d**e T&E A3ea96 L******

(5)———SO ught CRASHE s pOw*** *** N***** SITEOne IS reMotely *****

(6)———***D* bAsE ToLd ***a* for we**ous BY STORY are 8*****

(7)——–lly thry even PUT FOR BY WEATHER BALLOONS n*d** were

(8)———-**** **la** l***denver*****

(9)

(10) Temple (Morris, 1998).

It was not an exact match for what Johnson had released and in fact, went off at a couple of new angles. In the new version, while the word “victims” remains, as does Fort Worth, Texas, nearly everything else is different. One of the major points in the Johnson version was the wording that suggested, “Emergency Powers are needed Site Two SW of Magdalena, Nmex.” It suggests that those interpreting the message were seeing, to some extent, exactly what they wanted to see.

John Kirby, a researcher who is interested in the Roswell case, and who worked for a huge company in the computer field, also looked at the message. Using his expertise and equipment, he was unable to see much of anything. He did agree that the third line was the words, “At Fort Worth, Tex.” The second line, which many consider the critical line, said, “…are the remains of the material you commanded we fly (Kirby, 1999).”

In still a different version, David Rudiak suggested only a little of what others had seen. According to him, and using the same mix of capitals for what he was sure of and lower case for what he suspected, he reported the message read:

(1) —————- officer

(2) —–(jul)y 4th the VictIMs of tHE weECK you fOrWArdEd TO The

(3) ——-EaM At FORT WORTH, TEX.

(4) ——-5 pM THE “DISC” they will ship [swap?] FOR A3 8th Arrived.

(5) —-or 58t(h) bom(be)r sq(?) Assit [Assess] offices? AT ROSwe(ll) AS for

(6) —54th SAID MIStaken——–[meaning? weather? balloon?] of [is] story And said

(7) news [clip, chat, dirt] out is OF WEATHER BALLOONS which were

(8)—– Add[And, Ask] land d———[dirt cover?] crews.

(9)

(10) rAMEy

Those weren’t, of course, the only interpretation that was made but everybody’s best guess shows that there was something more than weather balloons being discussed in the memo.

With the help of the media, and several “experts” the Roswell incident has become a fact mixed with pulp science fiction and disinformation levied by opportunists and the military combined.

That is probably the chief reason why the Roswell case is the case that most people perpetuating the cover-up wish would go away. Many “skeptics” and “debunkers” have come forward to say that UFO believers are chasing after the weather balloons of the gods and ignoring what they claim to be the real data that suggests that what crashed at Roswell was a weather balloon with crash test dummy occupants.

On June 24th, 1997, the Air Force used that explanation in their response to the GAO report which concluded:

“Aliens” observed in the New Mexico desert were actually anthropomorphic test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high-altitude balloons for scientific research.

The “unusual” military activities in the New Mexico desert were high-altitude research balloon launch and recovery operations. Reports of military units that always seemed to arrive shortly after the crash of a flying saucer to retrieve the saucer and “crew,” were actually accurate descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in anthropomorphic dummy recovery operations.

The Air Force was certain that their tidy little conclusion explained why they needed hermetically sealed coffins as reported by Mortician, Glen Dennis. This was why the witnesses were threatened by military personnel who warned that if anyone spoke about the incident they would be picking their bones out of the desert.

This is why they allegedly ordered a B-29 to fly the dummies and the weather balloon to Fort Worth and then to Wright- Patterson Air Force Base. The Air Force thought that it was wise to point out that many of the eyewitnesses to the events at Roswell were becoming senile and meshing many events into one solid one.

Over time, it was certain the Army Air Force was developing several “stories” that were misrepresentations of the events that really went on in 1947.

Many of the original witnesses maintained that it was the military that had meshed the events together, The project in which anthropomorphic dummies were used was called project “High Dive” and it was in operation in 1956. The project was not classified and the dummies were clearly marked so that if a wind carried them aloft and they were lost, civilians were offered a $25-dollar reward for their recovery.

Roswell — the incident was in 1947-and the beings were not dummies but of course, the Pentagon wishes to make all of the military personnel involved dummies.

They want everyone who still thinks that aliens crashed their dummies.

But now we are learning that they want to control the narrative and the more we review the Roswell history after 75 years, the more questions need to be answered.

It has to be down to cut through the legend and the mythology surrounding the incident.

It is for the Roswell being of everyone who is still interested in what happened in 1947.

It is not far from the truth when I tell you that nearly 70 years of Hollywood gerrymandering has made Roswell virtually unbelievable. The known facts have been embellished. A consensus history has been constructed by a small number of people who have never been to Roswell and have never talked to eyewitnesses.

If you don’t believe me, the next time someone in the mainstream media writes a story that deals with UFOs or ETs count how many times the words Roswell,  Area 51, and Hangar 18 come up. Also, read on and see how many times Roswell and Area 51 are somehow related in the same legend. Check out how many times alien bodies and Santilli’s alien autopsy film are somehow blended to show that all of them occurred in one big event.

Throw in a few crop circle legends, a cattle mutilation, and a few appearances by the Men in Black and you have a sensational news story. A story that has all of the gimmicks and trigger words that whet the appetite of what news people think the typical UFO enthusiast wants to hear.

The tales grow taller and the gimmicks sell t-shirts but the facts are still kept quiet even though the military has decided to open up about classified military encounters with UFOs.

I had a listener call me the other night and tell me that he felt that Roswell was all hysteria, kindled by the broadcast of the War of the Worlds in the 1930s. History, however, will show that this is not the case.

Roswell is the only event that kooky UFO followers treat as something equivalent to the “Modern Alien nativity” where UFO stories were a mainstay, thereafter. Many will completely overlook the events that set the stage for Roswell before the event, Maury Island and Kenneth Arnold, and the fact that Roswell was only “big news” 30 years after the crash Happened in 1947.

There needs to be some perspective when looking back at the events and how they transpired.

Roswell happened and then it was shut down with a fake weather balloon story and it wasn’t until the 1960s that the story was being unearthed as more and more military personnel came forward with the truth — some were afraid for their lives.

There is little doubt that something fell out of the sky and that it was unknown. The authorities knew it, and official action had to be taken.

This action led to the separation of the Army and the Airforce, the creation of the CIA, and President Truman signing the National Securities Act which basically established a single Department of Defense.

Many skeptics claim that all testimony about Roswell is simply an overreaction to a mundane happening yet we see the actions taken by a government scrambling for answers to a complex event, an event that has been kept secret for 75 years.

It is evident that the United States Government and the para-military are lying about what really happened in the New Mexican prairie and that they have smeared the reputations of honest and dedicated men who served the country during World War II. No veteran or serviceman who fought and served our country should be treated this way.

But many have been, such as Jesse Marcel and others.

There are many questions about Roswell that seem to go unanswered by the military. While the Roswell crash has produced very little evidence of extra-terrestrial origins, it needs to be stated that the military treated the wreckage and the occupants differently. All the witnesses say that it was definitely not a weather balloon.

This cargo was special and many actions by personnel need to be evaluated. Here are a few questions that need to be raised when dealing with the Roswell incident:

•Why was there a need for secrecy when something as simple as a weather balloon crashed at Roswell?

•If the balloon was a Top Secret spy balloon why was a picture of it splashed on the front page of newspapers around the world?

•If the balloon was used in a Top Secret military exercise then why did a farmer have to notify them of a crash? Wouldn’t something that important be tracked and if it fell to earth, wouldn’t it have been cleaned up and secured as soon as possible?

•Jesse Marcel and others used weather balloons every day. Wouldn’t they have known the difference? None of the witnesses recognized the wreckage.

•If what had fallen out of the sky was a secret military aircraft wouldn’t the 509th Bombing Group, a group used to secret activities like loading the atomic bomb be aware of that said aircraft?

The thing I find most unfortunate about Roswell is the government is banking on the idea that after all of the witnesses die off, you will forget about what happened there. They hope the myth-making processes which tend to cloud the facts will eventually grow into a sugar-coated unbelievable fairy tale.

A lot of the story already has because of lazy journalists and historians that have already made up their minds about what really happened.

History is doomed to say that Roswell was a place where a myth raged out of control about something strange that occurred in July of 1947. The truth will be taken to the graves of everyone that was affected.

In order to understand Roswell fully is to understand the social climate of the times. It is a matter of coincidence that the Roswell crash happened where it did. It is also synchronicity that a crash took place and the rumors were that it fell from another planet. Not long after, mankind decided it was time to break the bonds of earth. To this day we still try to venture into the cosmos, discover new worlds, and to explore the possibilities of life out there.

Who knows, maybe someday we will be able to fly to a planet and crash land in one of its deserts.

I can only hope the beings that find us are more merciful and kind than we were to them.

SHOW GUEST: DONALD R. SCHMITT

Donald R. Schmitt is a former co-director of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies in Chicago where he served as Director of Special Investigations for ten years. A six-time best-selling author, his first book, UFO Crash at Roswell, co-authored with Dr. Kevin D. Randle was made into the Golden Globe nominated best made for TV movie “Roswell.” Schmitt is also a co-founder of the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell which has the largest UFO library and research center in the world.  Recently, he’s become Director of the International Coalition for Extraterrestrial Research.

Written by Ron Patton

Comments

This post currently has 3 comments.

  1. M

    June 30, 2022 at 5:46 pm

    Clyde this looks to be an excellent show tonight. Looking forward to it. I was just researching the Ramey Memo myself just a couple of days ago. How very serendipitous.

  2. John Weiner

    June 30, 2022 at 7:02 pm

    Clyde,I remember hearing on ,”COAST TO COAST, WITH GEORGE NOORY,” some years ago the, or was it one of the survivors of that Roswell UFO CRASH was urged, and or allowed to contact his colleagues back on his,/ their home planet, using the ship’s surviving technology, that they eventually sent a delegation here to earth, having meetings of some sort with our military, sharing,/giving us at least some of their best technology, and apparently being good enough athletes to pick baseball up likity split playing with our military. Now I submit to you do you really think they would have given us any of their best technology if they didn’t think we weren’t treating their colleague(s), at least reasonably well?

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