Kevin D. Randle
Project Blue Book: Exposed
Meet the Author
Kevin D. Randle has been reading science fiction almost from the moment he learned to read and he has been writing it almost as long. Randle is the author of more than twenty-five science fiction novels including the innovative Seeds of War.
Although writing was his first passion, the military is a close second. He served in the Army as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and an intelligence officer in Iraq where he earned the Combat Action Badge. Between those tours he served in the Air Force. He retired from the Army National Guard in 2009 as a lieutenant colonel.
His writing has spanned the gambit from action adventure to nonfiction including almost two dozen books about UFOs including the UFO Crash at Roswell that was made into the Showtime original movie Roswell. He has traveled the country gathering information for his UFO research.
He has been consulted for numerous television documentaries and has appeared on national television programs including 48 Hours, Good Morning America, Today, and Nightline. He has been on the wildly popular Coast to Coast talking about science fiction and UFOs.
He continues to write science fiction and research UFOs. He makes his home in Iowa.
Introduction
In the beginning, the Army Air Forces, in the guise of Lieutenant General Nathan Twining, suggested what would eventually become the Air Force's Project Blue Book. It was to be a priority project that was classified. Its mission was to determine what the flying saucers were and if they posed a threat to the security of the United States. For twenty-two years the Air Force collected the data, kept it hidden under security regulations, and denied that anything of importance had been found.
In the mid-1970s, the Air force declassified the files and private researchers, and those interested in Project Blue Book, would have an opportunity to review them. Within weeks of the low-key announcement, I found myself at Maxwell Air Force Base, home at the time of the Air Force Archives, with a magazine assignment to study the files. I also had lists of cases to review and questions to answer from the editor of the magazine and from Jim and Coral Lorenzen, the leaders of the now defunct Aerial Phenomena Research Organization.
Since that time, the files have been sanitized by Air Force officers who attempted to remove the names of witnesses, microfilmed, relocated to the National Archives, and for the most part, put them online. The ninety-six rolls of microfilm are available for purchase by individuals. Now everyone can own a complete set of the files, if finding them online seems to be too much trouble.
These files, that the Air Force suggested told the story of misidentifications, illusions, delusion, hoax, and fraud, and that reveal there has been no threat to national security, also tell many other stories. They tell of bungled investigations, shadings of the truth, and an attitude of disbelief. They tell the story of an attempt to dupe the public with what was believed to be a solid and impressive investigation paid for by and denied to the taxpayer. That simply is not the truth.
That myth, of reliable investigation, might have grown as a result of Captain Edward Ruppelt's fine book about his days as the chief of the Air Force UFO office, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. It tells an exciting story of late-night telephone calls, flights around the country to investigate puzzling reports, and briefings to the leaders of the military in Washington, D.C.
It is also a misleading book in that only for a short period, from the late summer of 1951 to the very beginning of 1953, or about eighteen months, was the investigation solid. Before that, and after it, Blue Book was an investigation in name only. By the time Blue Book ended in 1970, the officers assigned did little more than telephone witnesses to try to convince them they had seen a natural phenomenon, artificial satellite, Venus, plasma, or had misidentified conventional aircraft. The truth had taken a backseat to solving cases.
There is no doubt, and Ruppelt reinforces it in his book, that during the summer of 1947, the military was in a panic over the sudden appearance of flying saucers. If the objects were real, and even if they were piloted by Soviets, they posed a genuine threat to national security. If they were genuine, and not Soviet, the threat could be even higher. Something was invading our airspace and the Army Air Forces was powerless to stop it.
As time passed and the summer ended without the alien invasion fleet appearing, the officers at the highest levels in the Pentagon began to relax. They still needed to know what was happening, but, with each passing day, it became clearer that an invasion was not being planned. They could set up a project to see if they could learn about the flying saucers without having to worry about countering an invasion.
Twenty-two years later, in 1969, they announced that Blue Book would be closed and it officially ended in 1970. In the time of its operation, it had gathered thousands of reports. When it was declassified in 1975, I had a chance to examine the files and found that things were not quite as Ruppelt and others would have had us believe. I found that investigations were not carried out as we had been led to believe. I learned that the files held many interesting things which we all had been told did not exist.
For the first time, we were able to see what was in Blue Book and how the data were manipulated to provide a skewed picture of the situation. We could see that had the Air Force done the job it was supposed to be doing, our perception of the UFO phenomenon would be quite different. We probably would be trying to find out how they operated and where they originated rather than trying to prove there was nothing to them.
While there is no smoking gun in the Project Blue Book files, no one case that screams UFOs are extraterrestrial, there is a great deal of interesting evidence from eyewitness testimony to radar cases that are unexplained. There are photographic cases that provide strong evidence, and hints of other cases that somehow is just not available in the files.
One thing should be mentioned here. There is no reference to the UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, in this book because there are no references to it in the Project Blue Book files. Or rather, there is a single reference in a single file dated July 10, 1947, and it is part of a three-paragraph newspaper story. The middle paragraph mentions that the officers are Roswell had received a "blistering rebuke" for their claim to having captured one of the flying saucers. That is all that I was able to find about Roswell.
But there are lots of other interesting cases. I made some of my selections about the cases to include here based on the fame of the original sighting, how much had been reported on it before, and how it was difference than we had been led to believe. I selected others because they hadn't been reported but they demonstrated one of the many points to be made. These cases suggested something about the Air Force's handling of the situation and their drive to explain all sightings regardless of the facts.
And I tried to make the evaluations based on the information in the case files. But, I also did some independent research to provide a contrast for what the Air Force did and what was possible. Yes, I used the telephone, but I also visited some of the sites, have met some of the witnesses in person, and tried to go beyond the preliminaries. An investigation can take a number of avenues, all of which are acceptable.
What has been found in the Blue Book files is substantially different than what we have been told. The evidence for that is in the Blue Book files. I think they lead in the direction of extraterrestrial visitation. Others may disagree about the aliens, but will certainly agree all is not as we have been told.