Or is that the case? Lieutenant Kirk, in his report in 1957, sent a copy of the statement made by Major John E. Albert on September 26, 1957 on to ATIC. The very first paragraph seems to suggest that notification was made to Campbell Air Force Base which should have, according to regulations in effect at that time (1955), reported it in official channels. The regulation is quite clear on the point and it doesn't matter if everyone in the military believed the sighting to be a hoax, a hallucination, or the real thing, it should have been investigated.
That investigation would not have been conducted by ATIC and Project Blue Book but by the 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron. The version of AFR 200-2 in effect at the time, tells us exactly what should have happened to the report. It should have been passed on to the 4602d. If that is the case, it apparently disappeared there.
In the statement, Albert said, "On about August 22, 1955, about 8 A.M., I heard a news broadcast concerning an incident at Kelly Station, approximately six miles North of Hopkinsville. At the time I heard this news broadcast, I was at Gracey, Kentucky on my way to Campbell Air Force Base, where I am assigned for reserve training. I called the Air Base and asked them if they had heard anything about an alleged flying saucer report. They stated that they had not and it was suggested that as long as I was close to the area, that I should determine if there was anything to this report. I immediately drove to the scene at Kelly [for some reason the word was blacked out, but it seems reasonable to assume the word is Kelly] Station and located the home belonging to a Mrs. Glennie Lankford [again the name is blacked out], who is the one who first reported the incident. (A copy of Mrs. Lankford's statement is attached to this report)."
Albert's statement continued, "Deputy Sheriff Batts was at the scene where this supposed flying saucer had landed and he could not show any evidence that any object had landed in the vicinity. There was nothing to show that there was anything to prove this incident.
"Mrs. Lankford was an impoverished widow woman who had grown up in this small community just outside of Hopkinsville, with very little education. She belonged to the Holly Roller Church and the night and evening of this occurrence, had gone to a religious meeting and she indicated that the members of the congregation and her two sons and their wives and some friends of her sons', were also at this religious meeting and were worked up into a frenzy, becoming emotionally unbalanced and that after the religious meeting, they had discussed this article which she had heard about over the radio and had sent for them from the Kingdom Publishers, Fort Worth, Texas and they had sent her this article with a picture which appeared to be a little man when it actually was a monkey, painted silver. This article had to be returned to Mrs. Lankford as she stated it was her property. However, a copy of the writing is attached to this statement and if it is necessary, a photograph can be obtained from the above mentioned publishers."
There are a number of problems with the first couple of paragraphs of Albert's statement, but those are trivial. As an example, it wasn't Glennie Lankford who first reported the incident, but the whole family who had traveled into town to alert the police.
The third paragraph, however, is filled with things that bear no resemblance to reality. Lankford was not a member of the Holly Rollers, but was, in fact a member of the Trinity Pentecostal. Neither she, nor any of the family had been to any religious services the night of the "attack." She couldn't have heard about any article on the radio because there was no radio in the farm house. And there was no evidence that Lankford ever sent anywhere for any kind of article about flying saucers and little creatures. In other words, Albert had written the case off, almost before he began his "investigation" began because of his false impressions. Apparently he was only interested in facts that would allow him to debunk the case and not learning what had happened during the night.
Further evidence of this is provided in the next paragraph of his statement. "It is my opinion that the report from Mrs. Lankford or her son, Elmer Sutton, was caused by one of two reasons. Either they actually did see what they thought was a little man and at the time, there was a circus in the area and a monkey might have escaped, giving the appearance of a small man. Two, being emotionally upset, and discussing the article and showing pictures of this little monkey, that appeared like a man, their imaginations ran away with them and they really did believe what they saw, which they thought was a little man."
It is interesting to note that Albert is not suggesting that the witnesses were engaged in inventing a hoax. Instead, with absolutely no evidence, Albert invented the tale of a monkey that fooled the people. That does not explain how the monkey was able to survive the shots fired at it by the terrified people in the house, especially if it was as close to the house as the witnesses suggested. In other words, with shotguns and rifles being fired at the little man, someone should have hit it and there should have been broken bits of monkey all over the farm land.
But Albert wasn't through with the little monkey theory. "The home that Mrs. Lankford lived in was in a very run down condition and there were about eight people sleeping in two rooms. The window that was pointed out to be the one that she saw the small silver shining object about two and a half feet tall, that had its hands on the screen looking in, was a very low window and a small monkey could put his hands on the top of it while standing on the ground."
The final sentence of Albert's account said, "It is felt that the report cannot be substantiated as far as any actual object appearing in the vicinity at that time." It was then signed by Kirk, who was reviewing everything for the Air Force.
What is interesting is that Albert, and then Kirk, were willing to ignore the report of the object because there was nothing to substantiate it. But, they were willing to buy the monkey theory, though there was nothing to substantiate it either. They needed a little man for the family to see and they created one because a "monkey might have escaped."
Glennie Lankford might have inspired the little monkey story with her own statement. In a handwritten statement signed on August 22, 1955, she wrote, "My name is Glennie Lankford age 50 and I live at Kelly Station, Hopkinsville Route 6, Kentucky.
"On Sunday night Aug 21, 55 about 10:30 P.M. I was walking through the hallway which is located in the middle of my house and I looked out the back door (south) and saw a bright silver object about two and a half feet tall appearing round. I became excited and did not look at it long enough to see if it had any eyes or move. I was about 15 or 20 feet from it. I fell backward, and then was carried into the bedroom.
"My two sons, Elmer Sutton aged 25 and his wife Vera age 29, J.C. Sutton age 21 and his wife Aline age 27 and their friends Billy Taylor age 21 and his wife June, 18 were all in the house and saw this little man that looked like a monkey."
So the Air Force seized on her description and turned it into a possible solution, suggesting, with no justification that the Suttons had been attacked by a horde of monkeys which were immune to shotguns. They overlooked the evidence of the case, dispatched someone to look into it unofficially, and then denied that they had investigated.
That was the pattern they would follow with almost every case in which alien beings were reported. If you saw the creatures, then clearly you had psychological problems. The exception that proves the rule is, of course, the Lonnie Zamora landing case from Socorro, New Mexico in 1964.
Keeping with their tradition of labeling cases but not solving them, the Air Force officers, as they had done in the Kelly-Hopkinsville case, decided that the Cisco Grove witness had psychological problems. There is no need to investigate if the witness is unreliable. Can we say that we are surprised with the cavalier way they treated the evidence, that is, the arrowhead, passing it along and then losing it? Can we say that we're surprised with the way they handled the investigation considering the track record they had already established? Can we say that we're surprised with their conclusion, considering their belief that UFOs don't exist and if you see the creatures from one, then you must be psychologically disturbed?