The real problem might be Marcel's claim of three thousand hours of pilot time and eight thousand total flight hours. That seems to be what he said to Pratt. But searches of FAA records show no pilot's certificate for Marcel, and when he was filling out his forms to join the service, he made no claim of such extensive flight experience prior to entering the Army.
Clearly some of that experience was gained in the Army Air Force. As an intelligence officer in aviation units he would be expected to fly on a number of occasions. In a unit that had strategic bombers as its main equipment, there would certainly be a number of long, high-hour flights. For someone with nine or ten years of active service, it is not unreasonable to expect him to have several thousand hours of flight time as a crewman on those missions.
The real question comes down to his claim of three thousand hours of pilot flight time and no record for it. Marcel, in the Pratt interview claimed that he began flying in 1928, the same year that the FAA was formed. In the beginning the licensing requirements were much looser and more difficult to enforce. It is easy to believe that, in the late 1920s and the 1930s, someone would fly without the benefit of a government license to do so.
Marcel worked for Shell Oil Company as a map maker and he used aerial photographs in his work, according to his military file. Records from that time at Shell Oil are hard to locate and the specific aviation records have long been lost. If they could be found, the records might shed some light on Marcel's claim that he began flying in 1928. It could be that, as part of his cartographer's duties, he was required to fly. It could be that he acted as co-pilot on those flights. If true, it explains quite a bit. This is speculation on my part and the truth is, the records that we do have do not corroborate Marcel’s claims as to pilot time.
When his record is examined there are some conclusions to be drawn. First, Marcel didn't claim to be a rated military pilot. Anyone who reads the transcript carefully realizes that Marcel never said that he was a pilot, only that he had flown as one. It's not the same thing, though it is splitting a fine hair.
Second, to believe that Marcel was a liar, his military record must be accepted as one hundred percent accurate. This is not true. The missing citation for the Bronze Star demonstrates that. If that is missing, what else can be missing?
There is nothing in the Marcel record, at this point, to allow us to brand Marcel as a liar. There are disagreements between what he allegedly said to Pratt, how Pflock interpreted those comments, and what is in the record. There are even discrepancies between what is in Marcel's personal file and other records in which he is mentioned. But none of these discrepancies are of much consequence and can be explained as simple mistakes in Pratt's transcript or the military record or even in Marcel's memory.
The skeptics and the debunkers seem to believe that if they can destroy Marcel's reputation then the whole Roswell case collapses. But they do not report that Marcel was held in high esteem by the officers appointed above him. His officer ratings by Blanchard and those at Eighth Air Force are all excellent. Even the rating in the months that followed the Roswell crash, Marcel was rated as an excellent officer.
The only negative to be found is a suggestion that he tended to over react to some situations. Debunkers have used this to suggest that Marcel invented the Roswell crash because of this overreaction. Of course, they always neglect to report that Marcel was seen as a perfectionist and this caused him to micro-manage some aspects of his job. This is certainly not a major criticism and is of little real consequence in the overall picture.
What is seen, in the end, is a man, Major Jesse A. Marcel, Sr. who was promoted to lieutenant colonel shortly after the Roswell crash, who served his country with distinction and valor, and who was just who he said he was in July 1947. That is, he was the air intelligence officer of the only nuclear strike force in the world at the time.
This was a man whose military record does not reflect what he told a single reporter some thirty years later. The points of the discrepancy are little more than trivia. They simply are not relevant given the nature of the interview, the military record, and Marcel's otherwise exemplary career and character.
Verification of the Alien Crash
The Roswell case does not rise or fall on Marcel because he isn't the only man who told the tales of the alien spacecraft. As noted earlier, others on Blanchard's staff confirmed the alien nature of the craft recovered. So even if what the skeptics report about Marcel was true, it would mean little in the overall scheme of things. It's a shame that the memory of a fine officer and World War II veteran has to be attacked because there are those who can't handle the truth. Jesse Marcel deserved better from everyone.
But in this world, perception is everything and the Air Force understands that as well. Remember, they produced two books about the Roswell case, the first, longer, focused on Project Mogul as the culprit and used interviews conducted with very few people about the Roswell case. Most of the witnesses interviewed were members of the Mogul Project.
What is missing from the Air Force investigation is an interview with Brigadier General Arthur Exon. Here is a retired Air Force officer who was available to the Air Force and who had said some astonishing things about the Roswell crash as noted by Greg Sandow earlier. He did talk of bodies, of debris, and of first-hand observations. When the Air Force was conducting its investigation, Exon was alive and available to speak to them, on the record. Why did they leave out any mention of him or his comments?
There were others they could have interviewed as well. Some of those, such as Bill Brazel, were not in the military during the Roswell case, though Bill had served in the Navy during the Second World War. The Air Force set a precedent by interviewing Charles Moore who, as far as I know, has no military background at all. So, it wasn’t as if they weren’t going to interview civilians.
They couldn’t interview Edwin Easley because he had died before their investigation, but they could have listened to the tapes of the interviews I conducted, they could have seen the notes I made, and finally they could have interviewed his family members about his comments. Granted, the interview notes and the interviews with the family are not as good as listening to the man himself, but they could have done that. I offered them copies of the tapes and notes, but they just weren’t interested.
We could have done the same with the interviews with Bill Rickett who did say he had seen a military cordon in direct opposition of what Sheridan Cavitt said to their investigator Colonel Richard Weaver. They could have had both audio and video tapes of those interviews with Bill Rickett and while certainly not as good as interviewing the man himself, certainly more instructive than ignoring his testimony altogether.
The same could have been done with Brigadier General Thomas DuBose, who, as a colonel, was Ramey’s Chief of Staff. Video-taped interviews of the man existed and what he says on the tape flies in the face of some of the things the Air Force issued in their report.
There is some controversy surrounding what DuBose has said, but that conflict is simply resolved. Use only those portions that were recorded and ignore those that have no unfiltered notes. That means, simply, ignore the statements of those who cannot produce a taped back up. I can say this because I have the taped back-ups and those others do not.
I know why the Air Force ignored all that testimony. No matter what we’ve seen in the past, how various writers and investigators have handled the statements made by Exon, DuBose, Easley, Marcel, and the others, the Air Force didn’t want to be put in a position of calling retired officers liars. What if Exon took offense at being labeled a liar and decided to sue? The consequences would be ugly, no matter what was learned or what the truth was.