Korff goes on with this, writing, “In a third interview conducted a couple of weeks later by Shandera while visiting DuBose’s home in Florida, the general related the following details:
JHS: Now as to this Roswell business — let’s begin with when Jesse Marcel came over from Roswell with this material.
GTD: Yes. Well, as best I can recall, I met the airplane that came in from Roswell and I took a canvas mail pounch with this debris over to General Ramey’s office…
JHS: Did you see additional debris on the plane?
GTD: No, I was just handed this canvas mail pouch with the stuff in it, and [I] headed straight to Roger’s [General Ramey’s] office. [Emphasis added.]
JHS: Now again, these other researchers (Schmitt, Randle and Friedman) are saying that you guys switched this stuff and that this stuff was some kind of a weather balloon, and that you did that to fool the press and the press never saw the real stuff.
GTD: Nah.
Again, the controversy isn't about 40 year old memories of a witness but about the reporting of those memories by two separate groups. It is interesting that Shandera's reporting is in direct conflict with what was reported first in The Roswell Incidentand later by me.
It is also important to point out that according to both General and Mrs. DuBose, Shandera neither recorded the interview nor took notes when he talked to them in Florida. We have Shandera's unsubstantiated claim that DuBose (seen here with Don Schmitt) said the debris in Ramey's office was the real debris, which is consistent with the story that Shandera and Moore were pushing at that time, but that is not consistent with the independent testimony of the witnesses, or with the documentation available.
Korff noted that this dialogue was taken from an article that Bill Moore and Jaime Shandera wrote for the MUFON UFO Journal. Although he requires me to produce some kind of verification for what I write, Shandera seems to get a pass from him. He just quotes from the article, as if that is a final authority, never mentioning that there is no corroboration for Shandera’s version in either taped interviews or notes taken at the time.
Other the other hand, we have supplied copies of the video-taped interviews to The J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, the MUFON UFO Journaland the Fund for UFO Research. We have quoted exactly from that tape. Shandera and Moore have yet to offer independent and disinterested third parties copies of their tapes of their interviews. If they would do so, then the question about the debris in Ramey's office could be cleared up.
We asked DuBose pointedly if he had ever seen the Roswell debris and he responded, "NEVER!" After the Shandera interview was published, we asked him again, if he had ever seen the real debris and again he answered, "NO!"
This could be construed as just another debate between two factions, ours and theirs with no way to resolve it. However, we aren't the only ones to whom DuBose spoke. Billy Cox, a writer for Florida Todayat the time, interviewed DuBose for an article he wrote in the November 24, 1991 edition of the newspaper. Cox reported that DuBose told him essentially the same story that he told us. Here was a disinterested third party reporting on the same set of circumstances, but he didn't get Shandera's version of the events.
In a letter dated September 30, 1991, Cox wrote, "I was aware of the recent controversy generated by an interview he (DuBose) had with Jaime Shandera, during which he stated that the display debris at Fort Worth was genuine UFO wreckage and not a weather balloon, as he had previously stated. But I chose not to complicate matters by asking him to illuminate what he had told Shandera; instead, I simply asked him, without pressure, to recall events as he remembered them…he seemed especially adamant about his role in the Roswell case. While he stated that he didn't think the debris was extraterrestrial in nature (though he had no facts to support his opinion), he was insistent that the material that Ramey displayed for the press was in fact a weather balloon, and that he had personally transferred the real stuff in a lead-lined mail pouch to a courier going to Washington…I can only conclude that the Shandera interview was the end result of the confusion that might occur when someone attempts to press a narrow point of view upon a 90 year old man. I had no ambiguity in my mind that Mr. DuBose was telling me the truth."
Cox isn't the only one to hear that version of events from DuBose. Kris Palmer, a former researcher with NBC'sUnsolved Mysteriesreported much the same thing. When she spoke with DuBose (seen here), he told her that the real debris had gone on to Washington in a sealed pouch and that a weather balloon had been on the floor in General Ramey's office.
But the most enlightening of the interviews comes from Don Ecker formerly of UFOmagazine. Shandera had called Ecker, telling him that he would arrange for Ecker to interview DuBose. Ecker, however, didn't wait and called DuBose on his own. DuBose then offered our version of events. When Ecker reported that to Shandera, Shandera said for him to wait. He'd talk to DuBose.
After Shandera talked to DuBose, he called Ecker and said, "Now call him." DuBose then said that the debris on the floor hadn't been switched and that it was the stuff that Marcel had brought from Roswell. It should be pointed out here that Palmer called DuBose (seen here) after all this took place. Without Shandera there to prime the pump, DuBose told our version of events. It was only after close questioning by Shandera could that version be heard. It is not unlike a skillful attorney badgering a witness in a volatile trial. Under the stress of the interview and the close questioning, the witness can be confused for a moment. Left alone to sort out the details, the correct version of events bubbles to the surface.
Klass, and later Korff, ignore this because it simply doesn’t fit with their view of the situation. If there was no switch, then we have prima facie evidence that what was found was a balloon and it doesn’t matter if it was Mogul or anything else. On the other hand, if the debris was switched, then what we see in the pictures is not what Marcel found and the door is again opened.
It should also be noted that DuBose hasn't actually changed his testimony at all. The real confusion comes from his statement that the debris on the floor in Ramey's office was not switched. We had suggested that the debris Marcel brought to Ramey's office was switched with the balloon. Dubose said that the debris on the floor wasn't switched. That statement is correct. The debris on the floor was not switched. It was always a balloon. The real debris was never on the floor in Ramey’s office, contrary to what has been reported by others.
I could go into a longer explanation of the situation in Ramey's office on July 8, 1947, but have done so in the November/December 1990 issue of The International UFO Reporterand the April 1991 issue of the MUFON UFO Journal. Both publications provided detailed accounts of those critical hours, including a long listing of sources used in the preparation of the articles. It is interesting to note that Shandera and Moore quote sources but never supply copies of the tapes or transcripts to independent third parties. I have done both.
Klass, as he continues his analysis of the story, then makes the same mistake that Shandera has made. He confuses two flights with one. He writes, "When he (Don Schmitt) asked DuBose if he had seen 'the actual debris' brought by Marcel, DuBose replied: 'Never.' He claimed the real debris was contained in a plastic bag which was 'tied with a wire seal around the top.' which was flown to Washington, D.C. in a B-25 or B-26. (Marcel, interviewed in the late 1970s, recalled the debris was flown to Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, in a B-29.)"
DuBose, when interviewed by us, was talking of the a single flight from Roswell which was probably made late on Sunday July 6, 1947. That flight held some of the debris brought into the Chaves County Sheriff's Office by Mack Brazel. Then, two days later, Marcel and the B-29 flew on to Fort Worth. There is no discrepancy here, just a misinterpretation of the facts by an outsider who has confused them.