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From: Dennis <dstacy@texas.net>
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 16:50:42 -0500 (CDT)
Fwd Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1998 11:05:23 -0400
Subject: Re: -[For The Record]- P-1947: Death of Roswell

>From: Greg Sandow <gsandow@prodigy.net>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
>Subject: Re: -[For The Record]- P-1947: Death of Roswell
>Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 18:25:14 -0400

>>Dennis

>I'll take a crack at it, Dennis.
>
>The folks who kept their lips zipped did so at the time of the
>event, when the fuss about security would have been at its
>height.

>The folks who talked did so many years later, when they felt,
>variously, that nothing would happen to them, or that it was
>high time the story came out. Most of them in any case were
>civilians or relatively low-ranking military or ex-military
>types. The people who were silent, in the '40s, were high
>ranking and centrally located, in places like the Pentagon.

>If you examine some of the Roswell testimony, you find people
>talking about whether and why they should say anything. Their
>comments cover the waterfront, and are, I'd think, what you'd
>expect from human beings coping with a dilemma. Pappy Henderson,
>according to his wife, talked because he'd read something about
>the crash in the National Enquirer. That made him think the
>whole thing was out in the open. (Which might not make sense to
>a sophisticated newspaper reader, but why assume Henderson was
>one?)


Greg,

Sometimes you're so sensible as to be downright scary! However,
since the CIA is paying my salary and dental...

Let's start with humans and human nature, which is what you do.
Anyone who's ever been a member of a carpentry crew, a
fraternity, or athletic squad, or merely worked in an office,
knows that probably 80% of what passes for conversation during
the day is something that might be called banter.

There is no compelling reason to think that the men and women
stationed at Roswell in 1947 were any different. I don't think
any of us envisions a base full of lip-zipped zombies walking
around for several days after the news of the recovery of a
flying disc made the local paper. So Henderson flies a plane
with a crate on it. A crewman asks Henderson, "What we got?"
Henderson says, "I don't know." Crewman says, "They didn't tell
you!" and then launches into banter, maybe gigging Henderson for
the next couple of hours, all the way to Ft. Worth, telling him
about the bodies he's "seen," which are now onboard.

Did it happen that way? I don't know. _Could_ it have happened
that way, as far as Henderson himself (and others) was
concerned? Of course (speaking in general terms, before Rudiak
responds.) To the best of my memory, Henderson didn't actually
see bodies, he was only told about them. And I'm not sure the
argument wouldn't apply anyway, if not to Henderson, then to
others.

Point is, Henderson believes he's flying bodies and responds
"truthfully" whenever anyone asks, or when he sees a newspaper
headline 50 years later referencing same. Yeah, I was there. I
flew that flight! And he's telling absolutely the complete truth
as he knows it. How many others are in a possibly similar
situation of repeating scuttlebutt? We don't know.

>Edwin Easley was clearly bothered by his oath never to speak.
>It's fascinating to hear the tape of his first interview with
>Kevin. When he's asked about the crash he falls silent, and
>finally says he can't talk about it. Later he expands on that,
>saying he was sworn to secrecy.  But still he tries to help
>Kevin, volunteering relatively harmless information (he suggests
>other people Kevin might talk to). It's hard not to feel,
>listening to him stay on the phone for 20 minutes or say when he
>started by saying that he can't talk, that he's torn. He'd like
>to tell someone what happened, but thinks he shouldn't.
>

This brings me to a major carp I might as well get out of the
way now: the absence of interview transcripts in any of the
major Roswell books. Maybe this was a decision on the part of
the various publishers, I don't know. All I do know is that it
leaves the reading public largely in the dark.

For example, in the Randle Report, p. 201, Easley is quoted as
saying, "Let me put it this way. That is not the wrong path."

In Conspiracy of Silence Randle quotes him as saying (p. 29),
"That's the right path. You're not following the wrong one."

Same sense, admittedly, but what does it say about Randle's
reliability as a reporter? Is he quoting two different audio
tapes? Is he even quoting?

(I'm quoting the above from another source; if they've failed
me, may saucer debris rain on their head and, yea, even on the
heads of their grandchildren. But the point about the absence of
full transcripts would still apply.)

>Remember that, if the crash happened as advertised, this might
>have been the biggest thing some of these people were ever
>involved with. Imagine keeping a secret like that. It might not
>be easy. I know Dennis doesn't trust the second-hand account of
>Melvin Brown's alleged testimony, but Brown's daughter (whom
>I've watched on video) does mention something consistent with
>what I'm saying. She says that late in his life, his father got
>obsessed by the crash, thinking that he'd kept the secret all
>his life and now deserved some kind of compensation.
>

And the idea of compensation doesn't raise any red flags with
you? Then you're at least as unsuspecting and forgiving as you
are otherwise sensible. Could it possibly be that Brown's
obsession had anything to do with cashing in on Roswell's
newfound popularity, the same way that Anderson and Corso, and
who knows who else, tried to do? Regardless of whether he
actually participated in anything unusual or not? After all, he
was there and we weren't. But who are we to argue with the camp
cook?

Nor the notion that history had come knocking on their
collective doors, with the underlying assumption that saying
nothing much happened wasn't likely to get you much notice? See
the sad saga of Corso, who apparently wasn't willing to play
second fiddle to anyone when it came to Roswell, even though he
wasn't even there.

Contrary to what some may think, it gives me no pleasure to draw
attention to a particular witness's character or motives. The
only reason to do so is because of the number of patent frauds
and exaggerators that _have_ been found out and exposed for what
they are. Military rank, in and of itself, is no yardstick of
veracity. Marcel is not a god by which all other lesser mortals
are to be measured, dependent on whether or not their accounts
agrre with his. If the Corso episode didn't teach us that, then
it didn't teach us anything.

>
>See, Dennis? That wasn't hard. There's no inconsistency here.
>
>Greg Sandow
>

Nothing is hard, given an agile mind and a bank account of
assumptions. But I still prefer Jethro Tull's (or Ian
Anderson's) observation that "nothing's easy."

Flute, please!

Dennis