So Cullum Greene, who was my city editor, said "Bond, give us a wet print," which was not unusual. I normally operated on a very short time span at night or whatever… on an accident or a murder or whatever which I usually wound up taking pictures of. And, ah, he said, *Give us a wet print." So I went in. They had brought up a portable wire photo transmitter and had it set up there in the newsroom. There was some assorted people around there.
KDR: Other reporters? JBJ: No, these were technicians that had come over in the time that it had taken me to drive out to Carswell and interview Gen. Ramey, get briefed and come back to the office. They had come from Dallas and set up this wire photo machine. They were people I did not know. They were AP personnel.
KDR: Did you talk to Gen. Ramey very long?
JBJ: No. There wasn't much to say. As I remember, I probably wasn't there more than 20 minutes which was not unusual. Generals are pretty busy. You get in and I didn't have a whole lot to question him on. This was a very new thing because the very first article I saw in going back and researching it much later-the first story I found in the paper was July 6. I went in and developed those two [four] pictures and they were just identical almost. I came out with 8-by-10 wet prints and gave them to our photo people and they said thank you and by that time the telephone operator gave me a whole stack of messages that had come from all over the country. Everybody photo services like Blackthorn wanted exclusive photos and I could have retired very early. I had those two pictures so I had nothing to sell. I printed those two and that was it. The picture-it was too late in the day as I remember it. They didn't run it in the morning paper but they did run it the next afternoon and the following morning. Because the photographs I have now are-it ran on the morning of July l0 and the afternoon of July 9. It is entirely possible that I was briefed by the PIO. [Emphasis added.]
So now I have a narrative with no interruptions by me. Just Johnson telling his story from the top, explaining that it was really no big deal because Ramey knew it was a balloon. He has told me that he wrote the article that appeared in the July 9 newspaper and by one count of the whole transcript, he has repeated this seven times.
On August 4, after a couple of letters, I again spoke with Johnson for 28 minutes. Unfortunately, the tape malfunctioned so that all I have of that conversation are the notes I took. I simply wanted to go over some of the things again and check the exact sequence of events. I wasn’t concerned. All the information, with one minor exception, was on all the other tapes. Johnson said that it was late in the afternoon when he went to Ramey's office. He mentioned that he was mildly surprised that they were ready for him when he arrived. The front gate had been told he would be coming and there was a pass waiting there [He would later claim that this couldn’t be true because he was a member of the Civil Air Patrol and he had one of their stickers on his car so he had access to the base]. He was sent to Ramey's office and shown the weather balloon. He said that it smelled of burned rubber and wondered why it was so important that they would bring it up to the general's office.
Johnson said that it took him about 30 minutes to get to the office after he had been alerted. They had received a teletype (flash) message that the material from Roswell was on its way to Ramey’s office at Carswell. When he got there, the balloon was spread out on the floor, filling up one part of the room. He took his photos of it, spoke with the general, and then left.
Please note here that he said they had received a teletype message that the material was on the way to Ramey’s office and when he arrived the weather balloons were spread out on the floor. This will become important as we continue this long examination of the J. Bond Johnson episode.
But then the world shifted and Bill Moore and Jaime Shandera learned of J. Bond Johnson who they described as their new star witness. They interviewed him a number of times and now the story is different. Now, according to this version, Ramey didn’t know what it was in his office. Now Johnson believes that some of the real debris is mixed in with the balloon and rawin target debris. And now, Johnson was telling all who will listen that I have misquoted him.
In an article published in June 1990 issue of Focus, a newsletter created by Moore, Johnson saw the city editor, about 4 in the afternoon and was ordered out to the Fort Worth Army Air Field, later renamed Carswell. He said that it took him about twenty minutes to get there and since he was an officer in the CAP he only had to show his press pass to enter. He still stopped at the gate and he confirmed that he had to pick up his press pass there.
He went to Ramey’s office, which was different than his normal routine, and saw, in the middle of the room, the debris. He told Moore that there was an acrid odor of burned rubber. According to this version, Johnson asked Ramey what it was only to be told that Ramey didn’t know what the hell it was. He claimed to Moore and Shandera he hadn’t seen Marcel and because of that, the cover story was not in place at that time. Because of that, Johnson rushed back to the newspaper with his photographs.
Now Moore and Shandera claim that this new Johnson story, that is in conflict with what he had told me, “…holds up and sheds new light on the events. The photographs show the actual debris from the flying disc from Roswell.”
These conflicts aren’t over minor points in the story, but in significant details and changes nearly everything. Johnson had gone from a straightforward account to one that made him one of th few who had seen real debris. Not only that, he had photographed it and these, with a single exception, were the only photographs of that debris. In fact, Johnson would later claim that there were no other pictures of this. Only the six that he had taken. He denied that the photograph of Irving Newton showed the real stuff and that this photograph was unimportant and had not been published in newspapers of the time.
So I called Johnson because I had the tapes of our conversations and I knew what he had said then. And, I knew what he was claiming in his new story. I was interested in getting his reaction to these things. So I asked him about his quotes to me that Ramey had told him it was a weather balloon.
Johnson asked, “Why would Ramey have told me he didn't know what it was?”
KDR: I have no idea.
JBJ: It was kind of like- I don't recall the words, but when I went back they asked me, *What did he say it was?" He [Ramey] didn't have any idea.
KDR: In the story you wrote you said it was a weather balloon. JBJ: [Long pause.] Well, I didn't know that; I don't know what I wrote. Unless that was what you were just saying. [Long pause.] Because I didn't know that; I don't yet know that. And I'd have to look at one and see if it looked like it to me. I don't know what size they are…
KDR: They did this because the debris had been quoted as being torn up and wrecked. They ripped the thing apart when they brought it into Ramey's office so it grossly resembled the debris they had at Roswell.
JBJ: I remember that after I got out of the darkroom they had several messages to call people. That's what took up my time. I didn't even write an article then. But it was shortly after that that they received this cover story.
KDR: The cover story went out right away.
JBJ: They did not have it when I got back until after I had developed the pictures because then there would have been no urgency.
KDR: What you'd said to me was, "These were people who had come over from Dallas. In those days, any time we had… we normally bused any prints that we were sending to the AP, we bused them to Dallas to be transmitted on the wire photo machine. We had a receiver but not a sender in Fort Worth in those days. And no faxes."
JB,I; I would not have said bus unless that was just a slip of the tongue.