Roswell: The First Witness featuring Maj. Jesse Marcel's Secret Diary

a reply to: Ectoplasm8

Great read, thanks. I've yet to go through all your links but I wonder if I could skip back to the point I made before regarding the involvement of General Ramey. Given that we can almost certainly say that it was a Mogul balloon and that further we know that the Soviets didn't test a nuclear device until 1949, doesn't it seem likely that the balloons were in fact measuring the consequences of the testing of such US devices? Or perhaps, as likely, may be moreso, the balloons were deployed to measure for Soivet tests but were found to be recording the on-going consequences of US testing and we're withdrawn quickly for the purposes of plausible deniability?

What do you think?

Stanton Friedman appears to have been serving as a gate-keeper. Possibly his death helps open a few previously impenetrable doors??

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

Nice idea. However I think Mogul was designed to detect the specific sound waves of a nuclear explosion. The problem is that the USA did not actually test any nuclear weapons in 1947 according to this list.

a reply to: mirageman

Do we not include Crossroads in 1946 of which General Ramey was the planner of the off-target Able? And from which, and more so from Baker, we now know the fall-out was dispersed as far as mainland USA?

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Ophiuchus1

Unless you're eating calamari (which is often used as bait), you should use the word bated.
idioms.thefreedictionary.com...

Ah, coming from a Master baiter (noun) himself.
2nd line

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

My understanding was that Mogul was designed to detect sonic waves generated by a nuclear blast. I don't think there was any testing of radioactive fallout included.

a reply to: mirageman

So how do we explain General Ramey's involvement at Roswell? He seems an odd-choice of who to call out, unless I'm missing something.

I suppose it could be just a coincidence.

originally posted by: KilgoreTrout
a reply to: Ectoplasm8

Great read, thanks. I've yet to go through all your links but I wonder if I could skip back to the point I made before regarding the involvement of General Ramey. Given that we can almost certainly say that it was a Mogul balloon and that further we know that the Soviets didn't test a nuclear device until 1949, doesn't it seem likely that the balloons were in fact measuring the consequences of the testing of such US devices? Or perhaps, as likely, may be moreso, the balloons were deployed to measure for Soivet tests but were found to be recording the on-going consequences of US testing and we're withdrawn quickly for the purposes of plausible deniability?

What do you think?

Stanton Friedman appears to have been serving as a gate-keeper. Possibly his death helps open a few previously impenetrable doors??

After our development of nuclear weapons in the 40s and shortly after the need to control the use of atomic energy, the Soviets didn't agree. We were concerned and needed to keep a watch on the other superpower. We developed listening device program for nuclear testing which ultimately failed.

As mirageman said, there was large amount of research and development of listening devices for the specific use for nuclear tests hundreds of miles away. It's possible it was also used to test fallout of our own testing I suppose but I don't think that was the primary reason.

originally posted by: Ectoplasm8

originally posted by: A51Watcher
So where did this nonsense about tape with symbols on it come from?

Jesse Senior and his son who also viewed the wreckage said there were I beams with symbols on them, not tape.

So where does the tape rumor come from?

Mac Brazel said in his July 9, 1947 newspaper interview:

There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument, although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction.

The letters he mentioned is probably the model number ML- 307C/AP radar target the Air Force updated the weather targets to have hand written on them.

The tape with flowers on it was part of tape used to attach the foil-backed paper to the small wooden beams. Radar targets were farmed out to various toy companies to construct. These companies were said by Albert Trakowski, Charles Moore, Jack Peterson to use Chinese style tape with little heart and flower designs. Jesse Marcel Sr also said to Bob Pratt in his interview in 1979 that there were symbols on it like Chinese writing. There's definitely a number of Chinese references to the symbols. I relate it to firecracker style of drawings/symbols used.

Hey thanks for the reply. I saw several comments about the alleged tape with symbols story with no attribution to the story and since the topic of this thread is about Marcel I wanted clarification mainly for readers.

Yes the tape with flowers on it story was indeed told by Brazel after being delivered to the interview on July 9th by the military who had detained him incommunicado for a week before this was delivered like a good boy and did as he was instructed.



July 9th 1947

Harassed Rancher Who Located 'Saucer' Sorry He Told About It

"Brazel was brought here late yesterday by W. E. Whitmore, of radio station KGFL, had his picture taken and gave an interview to the Record and Jason Kellahin, sent here from the Albuquerque bureau of the Associated Press to cover the story.

...I am sure that what I found was not any weather observation balloon, he said. But if I find anything else besides a bomb they are going to have a hard time getting me to say anything about it.


Walt Whitmore of radio station KGFL said that after the interview Mac told him solemnly "You know how they talk about little green men...Well they aint green. Whitmore had previously recorded an interview with Mac on the same day he brought the debris to Sheriff Wilcox. That interview was subsequently confiscated by the military after Brazel revealed its existence to his captors. Whitmore says that this first interview was much different than this later one.

Brazel's son says that in the weeks following, he would occasionally find scraps of the odd memory foil that the cleanup crews had missed and would store them in a cigar box. Foolishly he started taking them to town to show off. Word got around and the military showed up and confiscated them.

I don't see any mention of memory foil used in the construction of Mogul balloons.

originally posted by: A51Watcher
Yes the tape with flowers on it story was indeed told by Brazel after being delivered to the interview on July 9th by the military who had detained him incommunicado for a week before this was delivered like a good boy and did as he was instructed.

Something I've never understood about the strong arm by the military story is what Brazel ultimately said. The story goes that Brazel was escorted by the military throughout the town and they controlled what story he told. The military pushed the tale of a weather balloon story as a coverup for it being an actual alien spacecraft. During this interview in 1947, Brazel says:

I am sure what I found was not any weather observation balloon.

This goes against the cover story that the military coerced Brazel to say and what was printed in the newspaper. He puts himself, his family, and possibility of a new truck in danger by going against what the military would have said.

I don't see any mention of memory foil used in the construction of Mogul balloons

The radar targets tested by Charles Moore early on may have used a slightly thicker foil backed paper because they may have needed stronger properties to stay aloft higher altitudes or sustain flights for longer periods, but not metal of any sort was used. Brazel in fact said:

There was no sign of metal in the area

Brazel found this debris and bunched it up and put it under some brush intially. It was of no consequence to him at the time. He also mentions in his interview that the material made up of a bundle of three feet long 7 or 8 inches thick. This hardly seems like memory metal that rejuvenates back to it's original size. It also was broken apart and scattered across the desert in many pieces. Memory metal would snap back in shape and resist being folded into any shape to fit into a truck.
If he was interested in collecting a reward for the discovery of a disc, it would seem to me that he would have logically mentioned this memory metal if true.

There are a lot of inconsistencies in the story when you go beyond the story to tales other people have told about the story.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

All I see there is that Thurmond, who still regarded Corso as a person of integrity, but wanted to distance himself from the conspiracy part of the book.

He said ''I know of no such 'cover-up, 'and do not believe one existed.''

So what? That is the same statement that most ex-government people say. Perhaps they don't, but it certainly does not mean that all of the things Corso pointed out, were false.

I will not change my opinion, based on that.

It is way too easy to throw dead people under the bus and call them liars, when they can no longer defend themselves.

a reply to: charlyv

....It is way too easy to throw dead people under the bus and call them liars, when they can no longer defend themselves.

Let's not call him a liar. Let's call him someone who you trust to have told a convincing story.

I've already asked this earlier in this thread. So I'll ask again.

Considering all of his extraordinary claims. What did Phil Corso really ever prove?

In the case that you feel Corso proved none of his claims, you may choose not to answer at all.

originally posted by: KilgoreTrout
a reply to: mirageman

So how do we explain General Ramey's involvement at Roswell? He seems an odd-choice of who to call out, unless I'm missing something.

I suppose it could be just a coincidence.

Ramey was the Commanding Officer at Fort Worth where the wreckage was flown and photographed for the press. It could be as simple as the military wanting to end any further speculation about "Flying Saucers" without revealing Mogul. The equipment wasn't top secret but the purpose of the project was. So he called it a weather balloon and for thirty years that was all it was.

There is another theory proposed in the free book The Roswell Deception [pdf download link]. The gist of it is that an American intelligence operation was instigated after WWII to prevent another World War.

According to the author, James Carrion, a small group of intelligence operatives planted a trail in the media that would provide the Soviets with "false clues" about advanced secret weapons being developed. This included stories of movements of high ranking officials, flying disc stories and hints of weapons being tested. This could be used to develop potential code breaking opportunities as well.

The collateral damage was that it caused speculation about the origin of the flying saucers amongst the press and public. Kenneth Arnold's sighting and Roswell being merely two of hundreds of stories that circulated in the early years of the Cold War. I would add that it's only a theory but is well referenced and provides many sources to contemporary reports that aren't easily available elsewhere.

a reply to: mirageman

I think that America has fallen prey to it's own psyop.

If originally the goal was to confuse the soviets with UFO tripe, that clearly has not worked, for long anyway.

Russia can seemingly hack us at will, gaining access to much useful intel and technology.

While some of our best minds are obsessed with 'UFOs which don't even exist'.

We outsmarted ourselves, perhaps.

Now mind you, it's my position that *something* apparently anomalous exists, but it's hard to quantify.

But that doesn't excuse that we've seemingly shot ourselves in the foot.

originally posted by: charlyv
He said ''I know of no such 'cover-up, 'and do not believe one existed.''
So what?

Why do you think the senator wrote the glowing foreward for Corso's book in the first place?

Corso sent him an outline of the book and said it would be about his memoirs. There was no mention of a UFO or government conspiracy in the outline. So, Corso deceived his own friend the senator. Doesn't that speak to his deceitfulness that he could just as easily deceive the entire book-reading population?

Two men who think something happened at Roswell and don't believe the official story are Kevin Randle and David Rudiak. So if anybody was going to look for support for an interesting story from Corso, I would expect they would, but even they both recognize Corso's book is full of lies and BS. Randle wrote a blog post about it and Rudiak is one of the people who commented on the blog.

Philip Corso and The Day After Roswell, Again

Randle may be a Roswell story proponent but he doesn't accept any story that comes along, he does some fact checking and has found numerous problems with numerous witness accounts, including not only Corso's book, but also with claims from folks like Glenn Dennis and his fictitious story about a fictitious nurse Naomi Selff telling him about bodies.

So you can believe Corso if you want, but if you really want to know if he lied, you should at least check out Randle's investigation results. The comments are interesting too, which is where you can see Rudiak also mentioned finding BS in Corso's book.

Corso's book has been listed as one of the ten greatest literary hoaxes of all time, and even Randle and Rudiak say it contains fiction, so it's really astonishing to see you try to claim that Corso's book doesn't contain fiction.

The most interesting thing in the comments was that someone mentioned the old secret documents are supposed to be declassified at the end of 2021 or about a year from now, so we can keep an eye out to see if anything interesting pops up there.

originally posted by: A51Watcher
this was delivered like a good boy and did as he was instructed.

...I am sure that what I found was not any weather observation balloon, he said. But if I find anything else besides a bomb they are going to have a hard time getting me to say anything about it.

I agree with Ectoplasm, your characterization makes no sense to me either. If Brazel was "a good boy and did as he was instructed" as you put it, why would he contradict the official story it was a weather balloon? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

It sounds to me like contrary to you assertion, he was saying whatever he wanted to say, not what he was instructed to say.

originally posted by: Ectoplasm8
After our development of nuclear weapons in the 40s and shortly after the need to control the use of atomic energy, the Soviets didn't agree. We were concerned and needed to keep a watch on the other superpower. We developed listening device program for nuclear testing which ultimately failed.

As I understand it, all the experts begged the US not to carry out further nuclear tests because the results would be devastating. Despite that, the US went ahead and detonated Able. It was catastrophic. Again, all the experts begged the US to desist from testing. But Baker went ahead anyway. It was devastating beyond all expectations and continues to be. They finally agreed with the experts. Charlie was cancelled.

But ya know, there was cake.



Classy.

The Soviets simply responded to the threat that the US now posed and sought to defend themselves accordingly.

a reply to: mirageman

It caused speculation in a press that was largely controlled by John Foster Dulles and who's editors knew to call Allen Dulles if certain kinds of stories crossed their desks to play quid pro quo. They were all drinking buddies after all, many of them had served in the OSS together. All between pals.

The issue is not black propaganda, and of course the US and the Soviets were involved in that. The issue is the quality of the intelligence that the US were receiving and acting upon and further how that was utilised to engender domestic hysteria.

UFOlogy is a small off-shoot of a greater ideological struggle, I am sure we can all to some extent agree on that, that has snow-balled. It is not due to 'a small group of intelligence operatives', I think it is far more likely to be an unintended consequence of more institutionalised behaviours and directives.

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

Very nicely stated.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
If Brazel was "a good boy and did as he was instructed" as you put it, why would he contradict the official story it was a weather balloon? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

The one thing about Roswell that does not seem to make sense to me: Why would someone think a “bundle of tinfoil, broken wood beams and rubber remnants” would represent a flying disk that has been reported to achieve speeds of up to 1200 miles per hour?

A rancher maybe could have made this strange cognitive jump, but it allegedly persisted up to and including an official Army press release by the 509th Bomb Group?!

This initial official press release strangely did not refer to any crash or debris but suggested a landed (and intact) disc instead:

”The many rumors regarding the flying disk became a reality.” [...]
“The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the Sheriff’s office, who in turn notified Major Jesse A. Marcel, of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office.”
“Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Airfield and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters.”

In the famous famous July 8 front page, there is even a short statement from General Nathan F. Twining:

”Neither the AAF nor any other component of the armed forces has any plane, guided missile, or other aerial device under development which could possibly be mistaken for a saucer or formation of flying disks.”

So, why mistake the obvious remnants of a balloon for one (even a large one like a Mogul balloon)?

One day later, the `object’ and `disc’ suddenly turned into:

The bundle of tinfoil, broken wood beams and rubber remnants of a balloon was sent here yesterday by army air transport in the wake of reports that it was a flying disk.

They came upon a large area of bright wreckage made up on rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks.

This U-turn obviously made both the Rancher and Major Marcel look like total dorks!

If you were forced to give a false statement about tinfoil, sticks, and rubber, wouldn’t you at least add something to not look like a complete fool?
Maybe that’s what the farmer did.

(And maybe Major Marcel as well, by stating the debris contained parts that were not so obviously linked to a weather balloon, like metal that wouldn’t bend or dent and sticks that wouldn’t burn. These additions would still fall within the cover-up story but were just enough to save face.)

a reply to: Guest101
A similar question came up in Ectoplasm's thread. I wasn't there so I can't be sure what happened exactly, but I think I've pieced together an explanation from various sources that explains that, and I posted the answer in Ectoplasm's thread here.

I'm not going to repeat that entire answer here, but to summarize, Brazel found what he thought was a "just a bunch of garbage", the quote provided by his daughter who says she remembers her dad saying that when he found the debris.

Now, how did it turn from "just a bunch of garbage" into a disk? The offer of a reward so large that at the time, you could buy a car with it! But the offer was not for finding "a bunch of garbage" so he couldn't call it that. To collect the reward, he had to call it a disk, so, that's what he did when he tried to collect the reward, and the rest is history. It wasn't even his original idea, it was his neighbors who suggested he might be able to collect a reward.

So this is why Brazel calling it a "disk" wasn't some stupid mistake, it was intentional, to collect the reward. Once they had "disk" on the brain, others followed suit, even the FBI memo which says "The disc is hexagonal in shape and was suspended from a balloon by a cable, which balloon was approximately twenty feet in diameter" which also confirms Brazels statement it wasn't an ordinary weather balloon...those are much smaller; many are three feet in diameter.

vault.fbi.gov...