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From: Greg Sandow <gsandow@prodigy.net>
Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 19:01:04 -0400
Fwd Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 02:40:33 -0400
Subject: Korff on Roswell (1)

I've read parts of Kal Korff's book about Roswell, and I have a few
comments.

In case anyone thinks it's not fair to comment after reading only
part of the book, let me say that the parts I've read are
self-contained, and that I've looked up all references in the index
to the witnesses they talk about. Because the index turns out to be
inaccurate - most of the pages cited for Pappy Henderson, for
instance, have no mention of him - I can't guarantee that I haven't
missed something. Still, I think my comments are justified, as you'll
all be able to see in this and two following messages.

Three points before I start.

(1)	It's crucial to have independent studies of the extraordinary
claims made about Roswell. Kal has done us all a service.

(2)	 One of Kal's criticisms is correct, and important. He notes that
many witnesses cited in the pro-Roswell books were never interviewed,
and that information about what they supposedly did, saw, or said
comes second-hand, from people who knew them. Nevertheless, the books
refer to things these people said as if they were direct quotes.
"Melvin Brown said," we'll read, when the correct statement would be
"According to his daughter Beverly Bean, Melvin Brown said?" Good
catch, Kal.

(3)	In nothing I'm about to say am I trying to settle the larger
question of what crashed at Roswell. Maybe it was a Mogul balloon,
maybe it was a UFO, maybe it was a dinnerplate thrown by an angry
wife from another planet (to cite a theory put forth in a science
fiction story published in the '50s, by a writer who thought it would
be fun to take the notion of "flying saucers" literally"). I'm not
taking a stand on any of this, and I won't be drawn into arguments
about it.

That said, it's time for business.

I'll begin with Kal's comments about Pappy Henderson, the pilot who
allegedly flew the UFO wreckage to Wright-Patterson air force base.
Though Kal mentions Henderson elsewhere in the book, he principally
discusses him on pp. 94-95. There we read first that Henderson
"cannot be considered [a witness] for one simple reason: Pappy
Henderson was _never interviewed_ about his purported involvement by
UFO investigators." (Kal's emphasis.)

True enough, Henderson was never interviewed, but I wonder why Kal
emphasizes this so strongly. No UFO researcher claims to have talked
to Henderson, and while I've granted Kal's point about the free and
easy way that researchers sometimes cite second-hand testimony, here
he sounds overly legalistic.

Is Henderson, strictly speaking, a "witness"? Who cares? That's a
semantic question. What matters is whether we can give him any weight
at all when we sum up the Roswell evidence. Elsewhere, Kal notes the
source for Henderson's supposed remarks -- reports from his wife and
one of his friends. Is this admissible testimony? Of course it is.
Note that I'm not asking whether the statements by family and friends
are true. I'm asking whether it's fair to cite them. And the answer,
very clearly, is yes, if you look at what's done outside the UFO
field. Testimony about what other people said is allowed in court.
It's frequent in magazine and newspaper journalism. It's common in
biographies. It's expected in historical research. Why shouldn't it
be allowed about Roswell? (Assuming, of course, that it's put forth
as such, and given no more weight than it seems to deserve.) How can
Kal banish Henderson from any discussion of the case?

But Kal's reason becomes clear in the next paragraph. He writes:
"Unfortunately, the only 'proof' that Henderson was even involved in
the Roswell recovery comes from rumors and scuttlebutt courtesy of
some of the surviving members of his family and a few acquaintances."
And here I cry foul. "Rumors and scuttlebutt"? Those words would
describe what we'd have if, let's say, Henderson's second cousin
thought she remembered an aunt saying that Henderson's wife had
talked about her husband flying alien debris -- something vague,
impossible to verify, and several steps removed from the person we
really care about.

But that's not the situation at all. The key witness is Henderson's
wife, Sappho. As I read in Kevin Randle's notes of his interview with
her, she remembers that Henderson read a Roswell story in a tabloid
(probably the National Enquirer, in the days when it covered UFOs).
As she remembers, ""He said, well, I been wanting to tell you this
for years, but I guess now it's not a top secret if they're putting
it in the paper. And he said, 'I'm the guy who flew the wreckage of
the space vehicle to Dayton, Ohio.'"

Stanton Friedman and Don Berliner, in their Roswell book "Crash at
Corona," quote a much lengthier statement, saying exactly the same
thing. And, Friedman and Berliner say, Sappho Henderson's
recollections were confirmed by her son and daughter, by one of
Henderson's cousins, by his friend John Kromschroeder, and by an
unnamed member of Henderson's air division, who heard Henderson talk
about Roswell at a reunion in 1982, and after some intial skepticism,
ended up believing him.

All these people say they heard Pappy Henderson say more or less
exactly what his wife says she heard him say. Whether we choose to
believe them all (and, assuming we trust them, whether we believe
that Henderson was telling the truth) is yet another story. But this
isn't "rumors and scuttlebutt." Suppose we were reading one of Kitty
Kelley's biographies. Suppose she reported a second-hand story about
Frank Sinatra or Nancy Reagan, which she'd heard from six different
people, who said they were there. Wouldn't we take it seriously? Why
then does something very similar, but this time about an alleged
Roswell participant, get dismissed as "rumors and scuttlebutt"?

Kal can think anything he wants about Pappy Henderson. But here he
misstated the facts.

Greg Sandow