After reporting this incident to the command post, Salas phoned the security controller, who told him that the man who had approached the UFO had not been seriously injured, but was being evacuated by helicopter to the base. Once topside, Salas spoke directly with the security guard, who repeated that the UFO had a red glow, adding that it appeared to be saucer-shaped. He also repeated that it had been hovering silently just outside the front gate. Salas sent a security patrol to check the launch facilities after the shutdown, and they reported sighting another UFO, and then immediately lost radio contact with him. When Salas and his crew were relieved by the next shift later that morning, the missiles had still not been brought online.
Despite extensive efforts by both on-site technicians and Boeing engineers, no cause for the shutdowns was ever found. According to Boeing engineering team leader Robert Kaminski, "There were no significant failures, engineering data, or findings that would explain how 10 missiles were knocked off alert." He added that there was no technical explanation that could explain the event. The systems could be taken off-line via the introduction of a pulse of electric current directly at the computer controller, but the only way a pulse or noise could be sent in from outside the shielded system was through an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from an unknown source. Such pulses typically occur immediately after the detonation of a nuclear device in the general area, but no such detonation had occurred. Other sources of EMPs at that time would have involved the use of huge pieces of specialized equipment, none of which was present at the site. There was also some speculation that the events could have been caused by a massive power failure, but according to William Dutton, another Boeing engineer who investigated this as a possible explanation, there were no such power anomalies in the area. A pulse of some sort caused those missile shutdowns, but the source of that pulse is still a mystery.
Late in 1975, UFOs returned to the area around Malmstrom Air Force Base. Once again they repeatedly hovered over and interfered with ICBM facilities. Though these incidents continued throughout the course of several months and received a lot of press coverage in Montana, they were mostly ignored by the national news media. They did, however, become the subject of a now out-of-print book, Mystery Stalks The Prairie, by Keith Wolverton (who at the time was deputy sheriff of Cascade County), and journalist Roberta Donovan. A series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits uncovered more information, and Air Force records show that during the same period, UFO activity occurred at other military bases in the northern part of the United States. Though some folks have speculated that these events were merely elaborate Air Force tests of the security of the nation's nuclear weapons forces, military eyewitnesses and Air Force records would seem to negate that theory.
Not surprisingly, the Air Force has maintained for many years that no reported UFO incident has ever affected national security. However, considering that large numbers of Air Force personnel reported sighting UFOs at the time many of our strategic missiles became inoperable, I find it difficult to believe the Air Force's claim. I'd say it's pretty hard to ignore the national security implications of the incidents described here. In one previously classified message regarding the Echo Flight incident, SAC headquarters described it as a loss of strategic alert of all 10 missiles within 10 seconds of each other for no apparent reason, saying that the event was a "cause for grave concern."
Another even more frightening event occurred not in Montana, but in what was then the Soviet Union on October 4, 1982. In Byelokoroviche, Ukraine, where a nuclear missile launch site is located, local residents reported a large flying saucer hovering over the nearby missile silo. According to ex-KGB Colonel Igor Chernovshev, the launch crew stationed in the launch control room reported that signal lights on both control panels started to light up, indicating the missile was being prepared for a launch. This launch sequence continued for 15 seconds, stopping just before the launch would have occurred. This could have happened only on receipt of a launch code from Moscow. An investigation team analyzed the electronic complex involved, but no technical problems were discovered, and Moscow did not dispatch the launch codes.
I agree that these incidents are a cause for concern. But I also see them as yet more evidence that we are not alone. And even more than concern or fear, I find that to be a cause for great wonder.
Chapter 8
"Along for the Ride of My Life": Linda's Story
So far this book has been focused upon my recollection of my own experiences, the fruits of research and interviews I've done throughout the years, and, ultimately, how being at "ground zero" of the Roswell controversy has affected my life. The story wouldn't be complete, however, if I didn't place significant emphasis upon the effects this tale has had upon my family. I'm not so egocentric as to believe that I'm the most qualified to tell that part of the story. For that reason, I'm going to step away from the task of writing the book for a while, and let my wife, Linda, take over.
Linda has been a real source of strength for me, supporting me when I was frustrated, sharing my tears and my laughter, and generally being the one person upon whom I could always count when life got difficult. If for no other reason than fairness, she deserves to have her say, and readers deserve to hear the voice of someone intimately involved in this whole story, yet perhaps a bit more objective than I. Besides, why should I have to do all the work to get this stuff out there for you to read? On that note, I think I'll go out and enjoy the mountain air for a while. So here is my lovely wife, Linda.
— Jess
Well…isn't it just like Jess to drop this in my lap, so he can go out and play?! And not to even give me an easy opening line, like "Once upon a time."
To say the least, Roswell has been an adventure for me. As a small child who grew up terrified of the Northern Lights, and who became hysterical when I first saw the Russian satellite Sputnik in the 1950s, I think I've come a pretty long way.
My part in the Roswell story began in 1979, when I went to work as a nurse at Helena Ear, Nose, and Throat Clinic, and met Dr. Jesse Marcel. One morning over coffee, Jess's office manager made some mention of UFOs, and Jess told me that some kind of UFO had crashed outside of Roswell, New Mexico, when he was a kid. I had been exposed to stories about the missile sites outside of Great Falls, Montana, and sightings of Sasquatch. My father was a veterinarian, and was occasionally called out to investigate cattle mutilations in the area, and frequently told us stories about what he saw. So, even though the cattle-mutilation phenomenon did not become a big deal in the UFO community until many years later, I had at least a vague awareness that some strange things were happening for which nobody seemed to have a good explanation.
Even so, we hadn't actually heard anything about UFOs when I was growing up, at least not anything that made much of an impression on me. I had spent the first half of my life in rural Montana. You know, Big Sky Country, where the deer and the antelope play, and rattlesnakes hide. I think that at the time, the entire state of Montana had maybe 200,000 people. Heck, until the early 1960s, my family didn't even have a television. My first experience with anything "off-planet" was a huge country party that the people in my town threw in honor of Sputnik, which I not only failed to attend, but actually spent the entire time hiding in my closet, certain that it was the end of the world.