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From: James Easton <pulsar@compuserve.com> Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 19:23:25 -0400 Fwd Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 10:22:23 -0400 Subject: Re: PROJECT-1947 - Kent Jeffrey and Roswell Regarding... >Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 08:54:27 +1000 >From: John Stepkowski <legion@WERPLE.NET.AU> >Subject: Kent Jeffrey and Roswell John kindly posted the CNI News story - >"ROSWELL DECLARATION" AUTHOR REJECTS SAUCER STORY >But Eyewitness Jesse Marcel Says Debris Was Not Balloon Which reports that: >Reached by phone on April 29, Marcel told CNI News, "The [hypnosis] >session was interesting, but it sure didn't change my mind. My >recollections are the same." It seems those recollections have in fact changed, and significantly. Dr Marcel's description of the symbols had for some time remained consistent, for example, "It was like they were embossed...the metal had the same basic appearance of aluminum, kind of a dull, metallic finish, it wasn't polished. And the hieroglyphics were embossed on that. So they stood out from that". However, in the Union Pictures/Channel 4 "Incident at Roswell" documentary, Marcel was invited to watch and comment on Ray Santilli's brief "debris" footage. Marcel claimed that the symbols in the footage were different in two respects, their size and the point about the symbols being embossed. What Marcel actually says in the video is that the embossed symbols in the footage are different because, "the ones I saw were not raised above the level of the beam". I thought there might be some misunderstanding, although it wasn't obvious what that could be. This apparent anomaly and the commercial availability of a "replica" I-beam were discussed on the CompuServe MUFON forum. A gentleman called Miller Johnson was involved with Marcel in the replica production and one of the forum members, Dennis Murphy, spoke with him. Dennis reported, "I asked if Jesse Marcel Jr. knew whether or not the symbols were embossed into the I-beam. He stated that Jesse was not sure if they were or not. The subject had come up though". Also perhaps worth keeping in mind that whilst Maj. Marcel spoke of "little members with symbols" which were "very hard", he also claimed, "they did not look metallic...something like balsa wood". Dr Marcel however recalls they "sure didn't look like balsa wood, unless it was sprayed with aluminium paint or something like that". And whilst his son originally claimed the symbols were "actually an embossed part of the metal itself", Maj. Marcel claimed, "they looked like they were painted on". It's a point I had recently discussed with Bruce Maccabee and Bruce wondered if these were possibly descriptions of different types of debris. However, both father and son agree on some notable characteristics: Sr. - little members with symbols...about three-eighths or a half inch square... in just about all sizes, none of them very long...[The biggest was] I would say, about three or four feet long...all the solid members were that way [long and slender] Jr. - small, less than a fingernail wide Sr. - about the same weight [as balsa wood]...weightless...you couldn't even tell you had it in your hands Jr. - it was extremely light Sr. - along the length of some of those they had little markings...we had to call them hieroglyphics because I could not interpret them...they could not be read, they were just symbols Jr. - many of the remnants, including I-beam pieces that were present, had strange hieroglyphic typewriting symbols across the inner surfaces...imprinted along the edge of some of the beam remnants there were hieroglyphic-type characters Sr. - those symbols were pink-purple, lavender was actually what it was Jr. - pink and purple...a violet-purple type color... the writing was a purplish-violet hue...shiny purple What seems more likely is that Dr Marcel's apparently uncertain recollections as a young boy, are in fact describing the same debris which others spoke of, but his memories of the "metallic" beams are simply not accurate. Bruce noted, "Jesse emphasized that he only saw these markings when he held the beam up toward a light...". Another witnesses also attributed the same properties, but to tape which was attached to pieces of the debris. Bessie Brazel Schreiber claimed, "some of the metal-foil pieces had a sort of tape stuck to them, and when these were held to the light they showed what looked like pastel flowers or designs". She also recalled, "sticks, like kite sticks, were attached to some of the pieces with a whitish tape" and that the tape had "flower-like designs on it".The "flowers", " were faint, a variety of pastel colors". Pink, purple and violet, perhaps? Loretta Proctor reportedly confirmed that Mac Brazel mentioned, "a tape that had some sort of figures on it" or "which had printing on it" and that "the color of the printing was a kind of purple". She added, "he said it wasn't Japanese writing; from the way he described it, it sounded like it resembled hieroglyphics". Putting all of this together, it seems to indicate that what Dr Marcel first described as metallic I-beams with pink, purple, violet embossed "hieroglyphics", was likely to be the same type of material that others described as rather more mundane. Dr Marcel has also acknowledged that he can not accurately recall the shapes of the symbols he saw, save one which he remembers with any confidence and which reminded him of a "seal with a ball on its nose". If doubt exists, it relates solely to the reliability of Dr Marcel's recollections - not his integrity. >Marcel still thinks the debris he saw was stranger than anything from >a Mogul balloon. He's perfectly entitled to. The problem remains that there are clear descriptions of debris which was flimsy and part of it's construction was sticky tape! As Bessie Brazel Schreiber is quoted, "The debris looked like pieces of a large balloon which had burst". The other point of discussion with Bruce was the influential background of the time. I had put to Bruce: Brazel didn't of course know if anything had exploded over the Foster ranch, only that there was a lot of debris. As we know, at first Brazel apparently didn't consider the debris to be significant and it was only after a couple of days that he went back to the debris field and brought some pieces home. It was the following night, when in Corona, that he first heard about the "flying saucer" reports and it was suggested to him that he might have some pieces of one. >From Maj. Marcel's account in "The Roswell Incident", by Berlitz and Moore: "Brazel went into town - Corona. While he was there he heard stories about flying saucers having been seen all over the area". "The sheriff said that Brazel had told him that something had exploded over Brazel's ranch". "In my discussion with the colonel, we determined that a downed aircraft of some unusual sort might be involved". We can see how already there was the idea that an _unusual_ crashed aircraft might have been involved, that it might have _exploded_ over the ranch. This was of course before Maj. Marcel's trip to see the debris field. It was subsequent to this that Maj. Marcel decided that the wreckage was unequivocally from a "flying saucer". As Dr Marcel recalled in a June 1994 interview: "In 1947 that's when the term flying saucer first became popular, because there's a man Mr. Arnold, I think, who was flying in Mt. Rainier, Washington state; saw what looked this thing was, the remnants of a crashed flying saucer. So, they brought the debris in, and, as our house happened to be between where they were coming from and the airbase, so my dad swung by the house to show my mother and myself what this looked like, and he said "this is a flying saucer, at least portions of it". Q: So he actually said that to you? Dr. M: Yeah, this was about one or two o'clock in the morning, it was kind of a late night that day. Q: Did he have to wake you up? Dr M: Yeah, oh yeah. I was asleep, and I looked at these materials, very strange indeed, and, something very different, definitely not an airplane. Q: What was your first impression when you saw it? Dr M: Well actually, I had never heard of a flying saucer before, I didn't know what it was, but he said this is a flying saucer and well, what is that? And he said something that came from other places other than the earth here, no it wasn't built by any civilization that we have here. Q: So he had that in his mind right then? Dr M: Yeah, that was the thought that was planted in my mind, and when I saw that I could believe it very well because this was a very strange material, very exotic. In "The Roswell Incident", Maj. Marcel reportedly claims, "I didn't know what it was, but it certainly wasn't anything built by us...". Obviously, he wasn't privy to his country's top secrets and couldn't know for a fact it wasn't "built by us". It was, perhaps understandably, an assumption. Accepting that, it's not clear why the integrity of the late Maj. Marcel needs to be called into question. >Also noted in the KTVU story is the fact that Walter Haut, former >press officer for the 509th Bomb Wing at Roswell AAF who issued the >famous July 8, 1947 press release claiming recovery of a flying disc, >now says he had learned a few days after the announcement that "it >was a screwup." Haut's statement in the "Unsolved Mysteries" Roswell feature, is possibly of significance. Referring to the press release, he states: "I took the releases into town and that was one of the things that Colonel Blanchard told me to do, take it into town, because if there's any validity to this he didn't want the news media to feel that we had jumped over their heads and were not co-operating with them". This would seem to suggest the reason for a press release was exited speculation that a "flying saucer" had _possibly_ been found, but the validity of that claim remained uncertain. All of this is perhaps to a large extent peripheral. The foundation for believing that something of importance had truly happened at Roswell was Glenn Dennis's testimony. It was possible to offer rational explanations for most other aspects of the case, but who could have believed that the account of such an apparently sincere, conservative, elderly gentleman should be treated with such caution. If events at Roswell did have a prosaic explanation, the explanation for Glenn's testimony had to be that it simply wasn't accurate. Now that we know that seems to be the answer, and given reservations about the perhaps less convincing Mr Kaufmann, it's understandable why Kent Jeffrey - whom I know and have a high regard for - feels there's little evidence left to support a case for the recovery of an extraterrestrial craft and it's occupants. He may have joined the "dark forces", but those forces are proving to be seductive. James. E-mail: pulsar@compuserve.com
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