It was KFGL that made the most of the story. Joyce had his original, late Sunday night interview with Brazel. Then, as the story began to expand, and the timing here is critical, Whitmore decided to head up to Corona to find Brazel. Even today that’s about a three hour drive and the roads today are far superior to what they were in 1947.
At the Brazel ranch, they talked to Brazel and then suggested they go back into Roswell for another interview. According to Walt Whitmore, Jr., son of the majority owner, Brazel spent the night at the Whitmore house. He was up early the next morning and told the younger Whitmore about the crash and how to find the site.
Once back in Roswell, they recorded the interview on a wire recorder, the predecessor to the tape recorder. Judd Roberts had been the minority owner of radio station KGFL in 1947 and he told me on several occasions that the most interesting interview with Brazel was the one Whitmore had made but never broadcast. Orders from members of the New Mexico congressional delegation to Whitmore prevented the broadcast. According to Roberts, if they played the interview then they could begin looking for something else to do. Their license to broadcast would be pulled immediately.
Roberts said that the interview contained information about the crash. Once Whitmore had finished his interview, he thought that the Army would be interested in what Brazel had seen and what he had to say. Whitmore then escorted him out to the base to see if anyone there had any questions for Brazel.
Brazel, now under military escort, was eventually taken to the offices of the Roswell Daily Record where he was again interviewed and now gave the description of debris that matched that of the weather balloon. His story, according to Frank Joyce had changed from what he said a couple of days earlier.
Brazel, in Roswell, was seen by neighbors who recognized him, who were surprised by his somber attitude and who saw the military officers with him. One of those neighbors, Floyd Proctor would comment on Brazel’s failure to acknowledge him a number of times. It just didn’t seem to be like Brazel to ignore his friends.
The Associated Press
Although Brazel was at the offices of the Roswell Daily Record, he was now interviewed by two men from the Associated Press, Jason Kellahin and Robert Adair. They had come in from Albuquerque, or maybe it should be said, they were ordered to Roswell by the Albuquerque office. Strangely, the accounts of the two men would differ significantly.
I was able to interview Kellahin in Santa Fe in January 1993. He was gracious enough to invite me into his home and we went into a back den or office to tape the interview. I mention this because as we walked through parts of the house I noticed that he had books about the Roswell case sitting out. This, I believe, is an important point.
We talked briefly about various things as I set up the camera. Once it was running, I moved away from it, and asked him to give me his name for the record and asked what he was doing in July 1947. He told me he was working for the Associated Press. Sometime afterward, he would give up his journalism career and move into law.
Kellahin told me that they got the call from the Associated Press in the morning and then he, along with Adair drove down toward Roswell. Kellahin said that they had directions to the ranch where the thing fell and that it wasn’t all that far south of Vaughn, which sits on the highway running from Albuquerque to Roswell. In Vaughn, they made the turn off the main highway and went looking for the ranch, which they found with no trouble.
Kellahin told me, “There were cars there and officers from the air base were there but they were down at the south end of the field we went into. We stopped and saw where the debris was laying on the ground. This man from Albuquerque with me, he had a camera. He took some pictures of the stuff laying on the ground and of the rancher who was there, Brazel, I believe his name was… Brazel was there and he [the photographer] took his picture… I talked to him. He told me his name and we had been told it was his ranch.”
Kellahin said that they spent nearly two hours on the ranch, watching a half dozen military men and Brazel as they walked the Debris Field. There was only about a half acre of debris, according to Kellahin. To him it was just some silver-colored fabric and very light wood but certainly nothing extraordinary.
He said, “You couldn’t pick it up and have identified what it was. You have to have known. But it was a balloon. It looked more like a kite than anything else.”
Finished with searching the field and the preliminary interview with Brazel, Kellahin and Adair climbed back in their car and continued their trip to Roswell. In Roswell, Kellahin said they headed over to the offices of the Roswell Daily Record, where he saw Brazel again. About the only thing Kellahin can remember that Brazel said was that if he found anything else, he was going to keep his mouth shut. Kellahin also told me that Brazel was escorted by a couple of Army officers while at the newspaper office, which corroborates that aspect of the tale from still another source.
All that finished, he sat down, wrote his story and then put it on the AP wire that night. He said that Adair developed his pictures and sent them out as well. Special arrangements had been made to do that.
There are some problems with Kellahin’s story. Sure, I’m asking him to go back (at the time of the interview) nearly fifty years but he was the one who said that he remembered what happened. It’s clear to me, however, and based on what I saw as I walked through his house, that he has tried to refresh his memory by reading about the case, including pulling the stories about it that had appeared in the newspapers. That might be a reason for the discrepancies between what actually happened and what he said he remembered.
Kellahin identified Adair for me, telling me that he lived in Albuquerque. It was Don Schmitt who interviewed Adair and fortunately for all of us, he recorded the interview. Say what you will about Don Schmitt, but I have Adair’s words on tape so we know that it is accurate.
Adair’s story, according to that tape is significantly different than that told by Kellahin. First, Adair said that he wasn’t in Albuquerque when the story broke, but was on assignment in El Paso. There is some discussion by various researchers about the nature of that assignment. Kellahin said that Adair was little more than a teletype operator so he would have been repairing equipment, though Adair said he was assigned as a reporter. (Schmitt asked Adair about Kellahin and Adair asked, “What did he do? meaning he didn’t remember him) What is really important here is Kellahin said they both were in Albuquerque and drove to Vaughn and then Roswell together and Adair said he was in El Paso and actually flew to Roswell. He said that he had been told to charter an airplane to get there.
Before landing in Roswell, at the small, municipal airport, Adair said they flew northwest, looking for the crash site. He told Schmitt, on tape, “We could make out a lot of stuff… [it] looked like burnt places… It wasn’t too distinct… I guess it’s about forty feet by forty feet… I remember there were four indications.”
Adair said that at one location, as they flew low to get a better look, he saw guards, or soldiers on the field waving at them. He wasn’t sure if the soldiers were trying to wave them off to keep them from landing or attempting to signal something else. He could see other soldiers posted around guarding the place.