UFO UpDates Mailing List
From: David Rudiak <DRudiak@aol.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 00:59:39 EDT
Fwd Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 08:02:07 -0400
Subject: Re: Evidence for Rudiak Et Al
>From: Dennis Stacy <dstacy@texas.net>
>Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 14:08:32 -0500 (CDT)
>Fwd Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 23:38:48 -0400
>Subject: Re: Evidence for Rudiak Et Al
>OK, here's some contrary evidence.
<snip>
>It's only one person's account and opinion,
>of course, but nonetheless directly relevant to the issue of the
>recovery of strange material and/or bodies at Roswell (or not).
In what follows, I don't see anything particularly relevant in
this person's account as to the recovery of strange material,
except for his opinion that it couldn't have been very important
because nobody of importance that _he was aware of_ was involved
in transport of the debris. As it turns out, there is other
witness testimony that base commanders and deputy commanders
were indeed involved with transport of the material.
What it does directly address are Glenn Dennis' claims about
goings-on and autopsies at the base hospital and the mysterious
nurse. And that's about it.
>It's also relevant to the issue of how Roswell has been
>investigated and reported in the main.
That would, of course, include people like Dennis Stacy, who so
far hasn't done a very good job of relating anything relevant to
Roswell in an accurate or coherent manner.
>Those who haven't seen it, should find it interesting.
OK. Believe it or not, I actually haven't seen it. Thanks.
>In 1947, Lorenzo Kent Kimball was a captain stationed at the
>base hospital in Roswell. I've extracted this from his web page,
>'Roswell From a Personal Perspective', which can be found at:
>http://www.inconnect.com/~lorenzok/roswell.html
>In 1995, he was interviewed by a Japanese film crew about the
>alien autopsy. As you'll see below, Stan Friedman interviewed
>him as early as 1992. I've not had time to go back to check to
>see if he appears in any of Friedman's books about Roswell
Friedman has had two books on Roswell. "Crash at Corona" also
came out in 1992, so I rather doubt if Kimball (who indicates he
was first interviewed in the Fall 1992, i.e., late in the year)
could have been incorporated into the book. Sheesh!
"Top Secret/Majic" came out in 1996, but dealt almost entirely
with the issue of whether a secret Majestic 12-type group may
have existed. It has one brief mention of Glenn Dennis, dealing
with Dennis' alleged calls from the base and being told of
bodies retrieved from the desert. The book does not deal with
the nurse or autopsies at the base hospital.
>or in any of the Randle/Schmitt books
Published in1991 and 1994. Obviously he couldn't be in the 1991
book. And anything he told the Japanese film crew in 1995 or
what he learned from early 1994 onward (such as speaking to the
hospital head in 1995) couldn't make it into the 1994 book. It
is obvious from Kimball's comments, that he looked into Roswell
in more depth after first being approached by Friedman, and has
learned or surmised or formed opinions about various things
since then. In fact, if Dennis Stacy would actually bother to
read Kimball's article, Kimball states that his negative
opinions of some things in the Friedman and Randle/Schmitt books
were formed AFTER he read them in the books.
So without knowing exactly what he said in 1992, which may have
been little more than he didn't know Glenn Dennis or of any
unsual activity at the base hospital, its a little disingenuous
at this point to insinuate that Kimball's testimony has been
suppressed since then.
The principals, however, will have to speak for themselves of
exactly what they knew and when they knew it. I certainly don't
know, and neither, obviously, does Dennis Stacy.
> or articles (while Glenn Dennis
>was being highly touted as a reliable source). Perhaps they, or
>someone else, can tell us, as his absence would be curious,
>given all the attention showered on Dennis.
>Interestingly, I
>didn't find his name in the index to the McAndrew report,
>either, even though he would have highly bolstered the AF
>version of events. (Another reason for suspecting that McAndrew
>may have been more of a bureaucrat than a master cover up
>artist.)
So let's see. It's "curious" in Stacy's way of thinking that
Kimball isn't mentioned by Friedman or Randle in their books
published years ago, when this would require Kimball's current
opinions, some acquired after reading their books, to be
incorporated retroactively into those very books. The mind
spins! That's a real classic of Stacy illogic.
However, the fact that McAndrew also fails to use Kimball, only
as recently as one year ago, somehow exhonerates him of being an
Air Force propagandist. Whew!
Yes, we do indeed see from Stacy's verbal machinations how all
this is relevant to the issue of how Roswell has been
investigated and reported in the main, including by the former
editor of the MUFON Journal.
>[Kimball's remarks follow to the end. They have been shortened
>for space considerations.]
>ROSWELL FROM A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE
>In 1947 I was a Captain, U.S. Army (Medical Administrative
>Corps) assigned to Squadron M (Base Hospital), 509th Bomb Group
>at Roswell Army Air Base. My primary duty was Medical Supply
>Officer for the Base Hospital. You would think that with all of
>the books that have been written, TV shows fictionalizing the
>incident, and the coverage the summer of 1997 in the media
>(major articles in the New York Times, cover stories in Time
>Magazine and Popular Science) that there must have been a great
>furor at the Base at that time (July 1947). To the contrary,
>life went on as usual. Most of the medical staff spent their
>time at the Officer's Club swimming pool every afternoon after
>duty hours. The biggest excitement was the cut-throat hearts
>game in the BOQ and an intense bingo, bango bungo golf game at
>the local nine hole golf course for a nickel a point!! There was
>absolutely NO unusual activity on the Base, no base alerts, no
>hysteria, no panic in July 1947. Life went on as usual.
Comment: So because this one person saw no unusual activity at
the base hospital _while he was on duty_, or when he was on the
golf course, or down at the base swimming hole or drinking hole,
we are supposed to conclude that nothing at all unusual could
have happened anywhere on the base at all hours of the day and
night. That makes zero sense. Kimball, e.g., would have had no
clearance to be down at the flight line or in the hangars, so
anything going on down there would have been strictly off-limits
to him. And he certainly would have been totally unaware of any
military activity off in the desert somewhere.
>In fact, the first I heard of this "cataclysmic event" was in
>the Fall of 1992 when I was called by Stanton Friedman to see if
>I could verify any of the activities that allegedly occurred at
>the Base Hospital concerning the recovery of alien remains.
>Friedman had found my name and picture in the 1947 RAAF
>Yearbook. My wife, Jane (who was with me in Roswell and who
>worked on the base), and I decided we had better try and find
>out what had supposedly happened. We did a library search and
>later obtained the Friedman/Berliner book and the Randle/Schmitt
>book cited above.
>What we have found is that much of what is in
>these books concerning the Base Hospital is incorrect and more
>fiction than fact.
So this directly addresses the question of whether Kimball's
current opinions would be in these books. Well, no, duhhh,
obviously not, if that wasn't obvious all along. He didn't form
these negative opinions about information in the books until
AFTER he had read the books. Dennis Stacy could have figured out
that much just by reading Kimball's article.
>In Crash at Corona, Glenn Dennis, a young mortician employed by
>the Ballard Funeral Home in Roswell, is reported as having
>brought an injured GI "to the base infirmary, which was in the
>same building as the hospital and mortuary." (p.116) Dennis is
>also quoted as saying he had received numerous calls from the
>Roswell AAF mortuary officer concerning sealed caskets . One of
>the photographs following p. 70 is captioned: "Rear of the
>hospital at Roswell Army Air Field. It was here that Glenn
>Dennis parked and walked in while small humanoid bodies were
>being prepared for shipment." Dennis, in his statements, tells
>of discussions with a young nurse, later identified as Naomi
>Maria Selff, who told him(Dennis) details about "three little
>bodies" being autopsied at the Base Hospital.
>FACTS:
>1. There was no mortuary on the Base. There was no AAF mortuary
>officer with such an assignment. As Medical Supply Officer I was
>responsible for obtaining, maintaining and issuing all supplies
>and equipment for the Base Hospital and any functions of a
>mortuary officer would have been within my responsibilities. I
>never met Glenn Dennis and I don't recall ever calling him for
>anything.
What I don't understand from this statement is how the base
dealt with any deaths at the base, which must have occurred now
and then. Where did they take the bodies; how did they prepare
them for burial or transport? The base hospital very likely
would have served as a makeshift "mortuary," since most
hospitals do have morgues. All we may have here is a semantic
problem, where morgue would have been a more appropriate term
than mortuary.
A medical supply officer I can see being responsible for
obtaining caskets, but where would he get the caskets on short
notice? And would a medical supply officer be responsible for
embalming?
Karl Pflock when he was initially supporting Glenn Dennis'
story, noted that the position of base mortuary officer was
usually assigned to a junior officer who was neither a doctor or
mortician. If something came up, he would probably have to
consult with an expert. That would certainly seem to be the case
with Mr. Kimball, since he states he was just the medical supply
officer, not a mortician and not a person with medical training.
Kimball states he never spoke with Dennis, and I have no reason
to doubt this. But its also conceivable that another non-expert
like Kimball could have posed as the base mortuary officer and
called Dennis for advice.
Dennis' story of these phone calls was partly corroborated by
former Roswell police chief E.M. Hall who says Dennis discussed
the requests for such caskets for "bodies from a flying saucer"
several days after the newspaper stories about a crashed flying
saucer. So if Dennis made up this part of his story, he
apparently first did it a very long time ago.
(I also have this vague memory - somebody correct me quick if I
am wrong - that Rickett or maybe someone else stated that Cavitt
was the one that made the calls to the civilian mortician for
advice.)
>2. There was no nurse named Naomi Maria Selff assigned to the
>Base Hospital during the period I was assigned there
>(1946-1948). I was well acquainted with all five nurses assigned
>during this time and none of them anywhere near fit Dennis'
>description of the nurse he knew. Further research by UFO
>researcher Victor Golubic has determined that no nurse by that
>name was ever commissioned in the U.S. Army or assigned to the
>Army Air Force.
OK, I think it's now been well-established that there was no
"Naomi Selff." Perhaps Dennis' involvement was limited entirely
to phone calls from the base, which he apparently mentioned
clear back in 1947, but his nurse and her description of
autopsies was an elaborate embellishment he added 40 years
later. Dennis may still have been involved in some way. I don't
think that has been ruled out yet.
>3. The photograph cited above is of a two story brick structure.
>The entire hospital complex was a World War II cantonment type,
>one-story, wooden frame structure. There were NO two story
>buildings and NO brick structures in the complex.
I'm not sure this has anything to do with Glenn Dennis, unless
the incorrect description of the hospital complex came from him.
In this case, it would impeach his testimony of having been
there.
>In their book, The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, Randle
>and Schmitt state that a Major Jesse B. Johnson, Squadron M,
>509th Bomb Group, (Base Hospital), was the base pathologist, who
>assisted in a preliminary autopsies on alien bodies. In their
>footnotes to Chapter 10, Randle & Schmitt claim that "Johnson's
>position as a pathologist has been verified by a number of
>former members of the 509th Bomb Group {and} verified by the
>509th yearbook and the RAAF unit history."
Well, once again, Stacy's question has been answered by Kendall
himself. He dismissed this account about Johnson doing any
autopsies AFTER reading about it in the second Randle/Schmitt
book. That could hardly have been incorporated into the book
retroactively, could it?
>FACTS:
>1. There was a physician named Jesse B. Johnson assigned to the
>Base Hospital. However, he was a 1st Lt., not a Major, and he
>was a radiologist, not a pathologist. He had no training as a
>pathologist and would have been the last member of the medical
>staff to have performed any autopsy on a human much less an
>alien!! He is identified as a 1st Lt in the 509th Yearbook.
>2. After I learned of these assertions, I called Doctor Jack
>Comstock, who, as a Major, was the Hospital Commander in 1947,
>and in 1995 was living in retirement in Boulder, Colorado. I
>asked him if he recalled any such events occurring in July of
>1947 and he said absolutely not. When I told him that Jesse B.
>was supposed to have conducted a preliminary autopsy on alien
>bodies, he had a hard time stopping laughing - his response was:
>PREPOSTEROUS!!
>3. Major Comstock lived in the Hospital BOQ, located in the
>hospital complex. Any unusual activity was immediately reported
>to him by members of the medical and nursing staff. He told me
>(this was in 1995 prior to his death in February 1996) that
>NOTHING of this nature occurred in July 1947 at the Base
>Hospital.
Obviously a second-hand account which also assumes Comstock
would talk about it with Kimball. That's not necessarily the
case if Comstock was adhering to a security oath.
Despite these obvious caveats, I see no reason at this point to
assume Kimball didn't talk with Comstock, or that he
misrepresented what Comstock told him, or that Comstock knew
anything and was concealing it from Kimball. I take these
statements at face value for the time being. Nothing unusual
happened at the base hospital in July 1947 that either of these
men was aware of.
>CONCLUSIONS AND OBSERVATIONS:
>From first-hand knowledge, I am reasonably certain that no
>alien bodies were brought to the Base Hospital in July 1947
>where "preliminary autopsies" were supposedly conducted. There
>was no nurse by the name of Naomi Maria Selff ever assigned to
>Squadron M, 509th Bomb Group. The statements made by Glenn
>Dennis are not credible. The accounts in the Randle/Schmitt book
>concerning Jesse B. Johnson are fiction.
>Note about Doctor Jack A. Comstock: Following graduation from
<snip Comstock military bio for brevity>
>My wife, Jane, and I knew Jack very well and considered him a
>good friend. He was one of the most honest and conscientious
>officers I knew during my 20 years of service. In all of our
>travels together and there were many, he never once mentioned
>any unusual "incident" as having occurred in Roswell in 1947. It
>is inconceivable that any alien bodies could have been brought
>to the Base Hospital at that time without his knowledge. It just
>did NOT happen.
This is an interesting perspective, but again does not
absolutely rule out that Comstock would simply not talk about it
with Kimball or anyone else, no matter how good friends they may
have been. However, I have no reason to doubt Kimball's opinion
on this at the moment.
>Major General William H. Blanchard, USAF (1916-1966)
<Snip rest of Blanchard's military bio for brevity>
>I served under General Blanchard's command with the 509th Bomb
>Group (1946-1948) and when he commanded the 7th Air Division in
>England (1957-1960). My assignment in the 7th Air Division was
>as Executive Officer to the Command Surgeon. I was promoted to
>the grade of Lt. Colonel during this assignment. As such I
>attended most 7th AD staff meetings and on a number of occasions
>I flew with General Blanchard on inspection trips of SAC units
>then based in various parts of England, Spain and North Africa.
>This summary of General Blanchard's career and my assignments
>under his command are noted here for the following reason:
>I got to know General Blanchard very well as an officer under
>his command at Roswell AAF and with the 7th Air Division. He
>was, as his record surely reflects, an outstanding officer, who
>was highly respected. According to Lt. Haut's testimony about
>the event, Colonel Blanchard ordered him to issue a press
>release announcing that a "flying disk" ha[d] been recovered.
>While I am sure this is how Lt. Haut remembers it, I would argue
>that this not the action that a responsible commander would have
>taken given the importance of such a discovery. He would have
>first reported the fact to his commander, General Ramey, at Hq,
>8th Air Force.
I think this is a relevant observation that based on Kimball's
sense of the man, Blanchard would not have operated outside of
the regular chain of command. In fact, for what they are worth,
there are newspapers accounts that Blanchard first contacted
Ramey of the find before shipping it to Fort Worth.
However, I don't see where Kimball is going with this. The
crashed disk press release was nonetheless issued with
Blanchard's authorization (there are also news accounts to this
effect). If Blanchard was acting within the chain of command
(based on this witnesses assessment of his character), then the
implication is that Blanchard himself was ordered from above to
issue the press release. That has further profound implications
as to what was going on.
I think Kimball is trying to make the point that the press
release was issued only because Blanchard had already made a
determination and decided that what was found was not
significant. But this completely ignores statements made by
Blanchard to other witnesses, or the fact that the Pentagon and
Ramey were initially reported as saying the matter was highly
classified, or similar statements of very high level
classification from witnesses like Gen. Dubose. So this theory
just doesn't hold up. Obviously the matter was considered to be
one of great importance.
> Also, if Colonel Blanchard had believed that this
> "finding" was of such magnitude it is highly unlikely that he
> would have delegated the responsibility of transporting the
> debris to others. He would probably [have] done so himself.
Kimball is obviously not aware of the testimony of Sgt. Robert
Porter, who was on the B-29 with Marcel to Fort Worth. According
to Porter, the plane was piloted by the base Deputy Commander,
Lt. Col. Payne Jennings, who as it turns out assumed command of
the base that very day when Blanchard was reported to have gone
on leave.
So obviously Blanchard did believe that this "finding" was of
enormous importance, if that wasn't already obvious from
military statements right after the press release of high
classification.
The witness is also apparently not aware of Gen. Dubose's
testimony. Dubose was handling phone communications at Fort
Worth. He was notified from Roswell of the find, and relayed
this up the chain of command to Gen. Clarence McMullen in
Washington. McMullen order him to send samples to Washington by
"colonel courier." Dubose stated that Col. Alvin Clark, the
asst. base commander at Fort Worth AAF, acted as a courier to
Washington for this earlier debris shipment.
Again, according to this witness' own assessment, this would
indicate considerable importance being attached to the debris.
>And he surely would have avoided any publicity until he knew
>what he was dealing with.
Not if he was acting within the chain of command (which this
witness insists he would have been doing) and was ordered to do
this.
Ironically, though this witness doesn't seem to realize it, he
is actually lending support to the theory that the press release
being part of an elaborate counterintelligence sting. A vaguely
worded account of what happened is ordered put out from above,
it causes a media feeding frenzy, but then Gen. Ramey almost
immediately ridicules the whole thing as a weather balloon,
which killed the story for good. The following day, the UP in
their opening sentence of their Roswell story, reported that the
Army and Navy were engaged in a concentrated campaign to stop
all the flying saucer rumors. This was immediately followed by
military demonstrations of weather balloons and radar targets,
and given out as the undoubted explanation for all the flying
saucer reports. The Roswell crashed disk press release and
weather balloon debunking can then be viewed as the opening
volley in this military saucer debunking campaign.
>Those of us who served in the 509th Bomb Group at the time had
>considerable pride in our unit and respected our commanders. I
>believe we would have acted responsibly and promptly if there
>had been such a "cataclysmic event." The accusations that any of
>us have been involved in some sort of massive cover-up is
>ludicrous for one simple reason: Nothing occurred to cover up!
This witness was a junior medical officer at the time with no
general access to all parts of the base, and can only tell us
what he observed from a very limited perspective, much of it
seeming to be the base golf course and swimming pool.
Last year, the Safeway grocery only one block from where I live
was victim of an armed robbery by a gang of teenagers. Things
like that just don't happen routinely in the town where I live.
Yet I didn't learn of it until I read the story in the newspaper
two days later. A few years before this, the liquor store
across the street from the Safeway burned down in the middle of
the night. Being asleep, none of us was aware this happened
until late the next day . The point is that nobody can be in all
places at all times, and we can thus remain blissfully unaware
of highly unusual events happening practically on our doorstep.
I think this witness' testimony obviously impeaches Glenn
Dennis' story of the nurse or that there may have been autopsies
at the base hospital. However, it does not necessarily
discredit the part of Dennis' story of being contacted from the
base by somebody representing himself as the base mortuary
officer. That person didn't have to be the actual mortuary
officer.
It also has no relevance as to whether highly unusual debris or
even a craft may have been recovered and dealt with elsewhere on
the base. It also doesn't address other accounts where the
bodies were handled and boxed for transport in a hangar, rather
than at the base hospital.
We should also contrast Mr. Kimball's opinions with those of the
last known Roswell nurse, as interviewed in OMNI magazine in
1995. Like Kimball, she knew the other four nurses, but not
Glenn Dennis or anybody with the name of Selff. And like
Kimball, she had personally witnessed nothing suggesting a crash
or unusual goings-on at the base hospital. So far so good.
However, she felt that a crash and body recovery was plausible,
based on her readings. "I know that something went on, and I
know it was very hush-hush. And I know I didn't know anything
about it at the time. It was closed up tight as a drum, you
know, by the base officials." She also said she heard nothing
directly from base personnel, but that was the norm at Roswell.
Everybody kept their mouths shut if they knew anything
sensitive.
So here's another witness in a comparable position to Kimball
who does not fully agree with his assessment. She had some
awareness of something unusual going on and of it being
suppressed, even if Kimball did not. Maybe she didn't spend as
much time as he did on the golf course and playing cards. And
she certainly didn't share Kimball's opinion that various base
personnel would never engage in a cover-up. If they knew
something important, they would not talk about it.
In the end, where does Kimball's story leave us? It provides us
with yet another perspective, however limited, of what may have
occurred or not occurred, particularly at the base hospital. On
many matters, however, it tells us nothing. It is just one
more witness' story, much of it little more than conjecture.
There are other witnesses, some of much higher rank, who give us
a different perspective, often pointing to something extremely
signficant happening at the base in July 1947. Yet somehow
their stories aren't considered "evidence," whereas Kimball's
is. And so it goes.
David Rudiak.
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