KDR: That may well be. Then it talked about they had come from Dallas and they set up the portable.
JBJ: Yes, they had come from Dallas. These were the technicians. These were people I didn't know. They were pushing me.
With that we discussed the genesis of the term flying saucer and some of the technology available during the late l94os. Johnson mentioned that the Star-Telegram did a morning radio program from the news room where the late-breaking stories were read for the listeners. But then we returned to the discussion of the factual errors that Johnson now claimed had crept into our article.
JBJ: That was [a] factual error that Ramey, you said in here [IUR], that Ramey told me that it was a weather balloon.
KDR: That's what you told me. JBJ: No. That was in error because…
KDR: That's what you told me.
JBJ: Okay. He didn't know because I remember asking him and he shrugged and he said, kinda like, “How the hell should I know?"
KDR: You told me originally that Ramey told you it was a weather balloon.
JBJ: Well, I wouldn't have because even when we got back to the office and I know he didn't say that. The facts of the other people. They were very excited and anxious to get that and get it on the air and they were, ah, to get it transmitted. That's why I had to rush it out so quickly, to give them a wet print and, ah, they were on the deadline of the East Coast with the- it was late in the day and they're three hours later [sic]. This is what I remember talking about, and they had an East Coast deadline. But they didn't at that time know, there had been no cover story. That came some time later before I left the office. I think I normally left there about seven or seven-thirty unless I went to a dinner meeting to cover that or something. Okay, because Ramey, whatever, when he explained about the weather balloon, came along after.
KDR: You said to me and I quote exactly from our March 24 interview. You said to me, "I posed General Ramey with this debris. At that time I was briefed on the idea that it was not a flying disc as first reported but in fact was a weather balloon that had crashed." That's exactly what you told me on the tape so if there is a factual error it's because I was going with what you told me.
JBJ: Okay. Well.I don't know.I didn't make a recording of it. I'd like to hear it. Ah, but, that wouldn't have figured. I wouldn't have said that.
KDR: That's exactly what you said to me.
But Johnson wasn’t finished with his additions to his story. He was invited to speak to various groups and to various venues and in each of these he had something new to add. Most of the time the details were refuted by facts such as newspaper articles or other documentation. Sometimes, however, these changes raise interesting questions.
And that leads to the point about wha this has to do with the Ramey memo. To fully understand, it was necessary to review much of this history. Now we get to the meat of the story.
In a report at www.geocities.com/Area51/Hollow/8827/partwo.html, Johnson wrote:
I was given the wire service "flash" announcement of this rapidly developing story by my city editor and I headed for the air base. Upon arrival at Ramey's office, I learned that the general was out but expected to return momentarily. The debris, transported from Roswell in a series of "meat wrapper" paper covered packages, had been deposited on the carpet in the general's office. Just one package was opened partially. Some packages, still sealed, were scattered around the office.
While Colonel DuBose went out to look for the general, I was left alone in the general's rather spacious office. This gave me an opportunity to further unpack and to "pose" some of the pieces of wreckage. I well recall how frustrated I was at the burned and smelly debris and how little opportunity this would permit for a good news photograph.
When the General entered the room I handed him the "flash" announcement printed from the news wires. He read it with interest. I then took a couple of shots of him, still wearing his hat in his office, examining the debris with the "flash" announcement held in his hand.
So now we have Johnson suggesting that he had taken the “flash” message out to Ramey’s office with him. We don’t need to infer it from other statements he made, but have those exact words.
I suppose I should point out that while Johnson was photographing the debris and Ramey, he asked Ramey what it was and again claims that Ramey said he didn’t know. He then asked DuBose to join Ramey and took two more pictures. Finally, he photographed Marcel with the stuff, so we now have a sequence in which the pictures were taken. Ramey first, then Ramey and DuBose and finally Marcel. The picture of Newton would come much later and was taken by someone else.
And, finally, the real point. If Johnson handed the “flash” message to Ramey, then we know the source and it is not the military. We know that it would contain the information that was on the news wires about the crash, which means it would mention Roswell and Fort Worth and we can see, easily, that the words weather balloons, though misspelled are on the paper.
But with this story, nothing is ever easy. Johnson claimed here that he had unwrapped some of the packages when he was left alone in Ramey’s office. If this is true, then we can deduce from this that no classified material would have been left unguarded in that office.
What do we know? Johnson did go out to the base and he did take photographs. The ones I found at Bettman Photo Archives clearly credit the photograph to J. Bond Johnson.
Johnson told me that he had written the article that appeared in the July 9 editions of the Star-Telegram, the last line of which said, “After he took a first look, Ramey declared all it was was a weather balloon.” This, of course, refutes Johnson’s later claims that Ramey said he didn’t know what it was.
Timing is everything and we have lots of documents that provide timing. One newspaper even provided a timeline of the events beginning with the 2:26 (MST) message that a flying saucer had been captured. This means, of course, that the message arrived in Fort Worth at 3:26 pm (CST). Within an hour, or about 4:20 according to the San Francisco Examiner, Ramey was already calling it a weather balloon and radar reflector.
If we retreat slightly on the timeline, and project into it. We can speculate that Johnson was handed the story about 3:30. He said at one point it took about 30 minutes to get to the base and in another story it took about 20 minutes. It is doubtful that he would have arrived at Ramey’s office much before 4:30, and if that it true, then we know that Ramey had already released the weather balloon story.
There is another point here and it explains why Johnson repudiated taking Marcel’s picture. Given the timing of the flight from Roswell to Fort Worth, not to mention the timing of getting from the flightline to Ramey’s office, Marcel couldn’t have arrived much before 5:30, though he could have gotten there closer to five. At any rate, he was there at some point while Johnson was still there, and if that is true, then Ramey had released the weather balloon story already and wouldn’t have told Johnson that he didn’t know what it was.
There is a story in the Dallas Morning News that says their reporter had talked to Major E. M. Kirton, an intelligence officer at the Eighth Air Force Headquarters, and was told that what had been found was a weather balloon. The interview took place at 5:30 p.m. which means that while Kirton is being interviewed by the Dallas newspaper, Johnson is either still in Ramey’s office or has just left.
Just after 6:00 p.m., Irving Newton receives a telephone call to get over to Ramey’s office immediately. If he doesn’t have a car, he’s to steal one. He arrived shortly after that and immediately identified the material on the floor as the debris from a rawin target. He told me that he had launched hundreds of them during the invasion of Okinawa during the Second World War.