But it turns out that one of the newspaper stories mentioned Chris Rutkowski, a UFO researcher in Canada, that I know. So I asked him what he knew about the case. He wrote that, “I can tell you what I know about the Ottawa ‘crash,’ although I’m not convinced anything really crashed!”
He said that he had called the MUFON representative in the area, but she hadn’t interviewed any of the witnesses. He said that some people who had seen the police searching the area stop the search after the mass was located, and some of them thought a cover-up was now in place because there was no new information. There was speculation that the US, here meaning the CIA I suppose, was now somehow involved, though Rutkowski didn’t subscribe to those ideas.
He wrote to me, “From piecing together what info I have, here’s what I think happened: Lights were seen in the sky and loud booms were heard along the Ottawa River. I spoke with a reporter, and he said that it was his impression that the lights were seen ‘towards’ the other side of the river from where the witnesses were located. (It’s a very wide river at that point.) I do not think anyone saw anything ‘crash’ or (more likely) ‘splash’ into the water. It was assumed that falling lights must have been on a falling object and that since the rive was in that direction, whatever was falling must have fallen into the river.”
Rutkowski did learn that some people had been setting off fireworks that might well account for the booming because sound carries well over water. He didn’t know what the object that had been detected was, writing, “Who knows? A car? Jimmy Hoffa? The Ottawa River is like the one that flows through my city, and they’re always pulling things out of it.”
Rutkowski said that the key would be to find the two witnesses who might have seen the lights smashing into the water. “Until then, we have no convincing evidence that a UFO crashed in Ottawa on July 27th.”
6th Annual Crash Retrieval Conference
Don Schmitt led off the 6thAnnual UFO Crash Retrieval Conference in Las Vegas on Friday, November 7 with his argument that many of the latest testimonies gathered about the Roswell case were deathbed utterances.
After the introduction by conference host Ryan Wood, Schmitt began his hour with a description of deathbed statements, their validity in court and if these Roswell testimonies were somehow ruled invalid, then all such testimony would be invalid. This was a theory with which I didn’t agree and I was a little disappointed with these legal arguments rather than updated Roswell information.
But then Schmitt began to talk of what he and Tom Carey had learned in the last several years from witnesses who had not been previously interviewed. Most of it was actually from family members, talking about what a father and husband had said in the last days of life.
Typical of these was that of Frank Cassidy who told his wife, Sarah, that he had been posted as a guard at Hangar 84. Cassidy was a soldier with the 1395thMP Company who said that he had seen the alien bodies in the hangar. But as happens so often in the Roswell case today, it wasn’t Frank who told this tale, but his wife.
For me, the biggest revelation might have been Bessie Brazel Schreiber’s recanting of her earlier statements that she, with her father and little brother had recovered the remains of a balloon in July 1947, which explained the Roswell crash case. She was one of the darlings of the skeptical crowd.
Now Schmitt said that what she remembered might have been a different incident. She was no longer sure that it related to the Roswell UFO crash, but was a weather balloon and debris they picked up sometime later.
Following Schmitt and a short break, George Noory, host of Coast-to-Coast, held a meet-and-greet which was more of a free ranging question and answer session. Noory was smooth as always and that showed why his program was so popular. Noory was quick to thank Art Bell for establishing the show and building the international audience.
Noory left, with some of the speakers to do his Friday night show while most of his fans remained for a “Meet the Speakers” event and then a panel discussion. Ryan Wood started but had to join Noory for his radio show, leaving the hosting duties to Steven Bassett, who reminded me of Mel Brooks. It was the energy he brought to the table, his quick wit and sense of humor, and the way he moved around.
After all the questions were answered in the hall, after the lights were turned out, Don Schmitt and I went in search of a late dinner. This was like so many late night sessions we’d had in the past. We talked of many things, some of them relating to UFOs and the current state of the Roswell research. So many of the first-hand witnesses had died and those who still lived were low-ranking enlisted men. I believe that it because they were younger than the sergeants and the officers in 1947. After sixty years, their ranks have thinned.
On Saturday, the first speaker was Dr. Robert Wood who was going to talk about “Forensic Linguistics and the Majestic Documents.” This was one that I wanted to hear because, as most know, I have long suspected that the documents were faked. I know that Dr. Wood is sincere in his belief that they are real.
Although he began with a discussion of Albert Einstein and a document he had co-authored with Robert Oppenheimer, I was more interested in what Wood called the “Burned Memo.” This document, coming from Tim Cooper, recipient of many MJ-12 documents, interested me because it is an original. Though someone had tried to burn it, and the scorch marks are evident, it is a document that could be tested forensically.
This document is clearly related to MJ-12 and it lists MJ-1 as the Director of the CIA (DCI) and author, and was sent to MJ-2 — MJ-7 but not the other members of the organization. There is a list of tabs and these were included with the document.
Dr. Wood submitted the documents for forensic testing and Erich J. Speckin, a forensic chemist wrote, “… The red stamp ink is not inconsistent with stamp ink that was commercially available during that time. The typewriting is also consistent with carbon transfer that was available at that time frame.”
The one problem with this is the provenance, which has been one of the major stumbling blocks of MJ-12 from the beginning. Wood did say that the memo came from McLean, VA and that it had been tracked to a meter authorized to the CIA but not exactly where it had originated and who, exactly, had sent it to Cooper. Wood seems, however, to have moved closer to authenticated MJ-12.
Although Dr. John Alexander didn’t speak until Sunday morning, part of his speech concerned MJ-12. He used the example of Watergate to argue against the authenticity of MJ-12. He mentioned that in the Watergate leak, there had been direct contact between the reporters and the leakers, one of whom was Mark Felt, known then as “Deep Throat”. The MJ-12 documents had been dropped in a mailbox without anyone knowing who the leakers were.
He expanded on this noting that leaks about the Atomic Bomb, the Stealth Fighter, and the Glomar Explorer, all important government secrets and all leaked into the public arena, had not been dropped into mailboxes. All had been through direct contact. There was a provenance for each of them.
Keeping with this, Alexander said about Watergate that the identity of the sources had been vetted, but MJ-12 the sources were anonymous. The information about Watergate went to a powerful newspaper and the MJ-12 documents went to relative unknowns. He said that the information about Watergate was given to national reporters, there were massive resources to be brought to the investigation, that the President was responsible, there was hard evidence, and people went to jail.