From: KRandle993 <KRandle993@aol.com>
Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 17:14:01 EDT
To: webmaster@ufomind.com
Subject: J. Bond Johnson

[Posted with permission]

Once again I find myself having to defend my reporting of the events that took
place outside of Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. Once again, I'm being accused of
misquoting a source now that the source has changed his story significantly,
with the obvious intent of moving himself from obscurity into the spotlight.
And, once again, I have the audio tape back-up to show that my quotes were not
wrong, but that the source has made the mistakes as he has altered his story
so that he can become more important to the Roswell case.
I first learned about J. Bond Johnson in 1989 as I began to actively
investigate the Roswell UFO crash case. Photographs of material claimed to be
debris from the crash site had been taken in the office of Brigadier General
Roger M. Ramey on July 8, 1947. It was clear from the captions that the
photographs were in the possession of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram because
they had been taken by one of their photographers. I called them only to learn
that many of their photographs had been donated to the Special Collections
being housed at the University of Texas at Arlington library.
So I called there and spoke to Betsy Hudon who was in charge of that
collection. I told her what I wanted and she told me that they had four
photographs taken of Roger Ramey with a rawin target device on July 8. I asked
for copies, and they were sent. I probably should note here, for
clarification, that the labeling at the library said they had four pictures of
Ramey but in reality two of them were of Major Jesse A. Marcel, Sr.
While talking to her, she mentioned that another fellow had recently called
about those same pictures and said that he was the man who had taken them. If
that was true, here was a witness who had been in General Ramey's office at
the critical time on July 8. He might be able to provide some valuable insight
into those events that transpired in there.  Here was a man to whom I had to
speak.
But Hudon didn't think it was right to give me his name. I asked her if she
would forward a letter to him, from me, and that way he could contact me, if
he wanted. She said that would be fine. I wrote the letter, sent it, and she
forward it on to, at that point, the unidentified photographer.
Within days I heard from J. Bond Johnson. He wanted to talk about the events
in Ramey's office. I called him back on February 27, 1989 and we spoke for
about forty minutes. I recorded the conversation so that a record of it
exists. A record that Johnson now denies, by the way.
This was the first big break in my Roswell investigation. A few days before, I
had interviewed Bill Brazel in Carizozo, New Mexico, and he had confirmed his
handling of the strange metallic debris, his father's discovery of the field
of metallic debris, and the suggestions by military officials that neither
Brazel nor his son talk of what they had seen. But Brazel had spoken to
others, telling them much the same thing that he told me. Johnson was a new
witness, one who had not been identified by others and who had not been
interviewed by others. Here was the first, critical discovery.
Looking at the transcripts of that interview now, I see where my enthusiasm
has overwhelmed me. Listening to the tapes, I can hear where I should have
spent more time listening and a little less time talking about the case. From
some of my comments I can see where the criticism that I was coaching the
witness might originate. Well, not really, but then, a sharing of information
before I have fully questioned the witness is not the best interrogation
technique. I should  have been quiet.
For example, Johnson said, "I took the picture of General Ramey and the
wreckage. General Ramey was the commander of the Twentieth Air Force at that
time. Or maybe not the Twentieth, maybe the Fifteenth."
I said that I thought it was the Eighth Air Force, but Johnson said, "I think
that's not right." Of course it was right, but it could be suggested that I
was coaching the witness when all I was doing was correcting a minor, factual
error that means nothing in the overall picture.
After that, Johnson said, in a fairly disjointed way, "The Star-Telegram. The
interesting things that you get into, that you may know about... oh, those
pictures have been used on a couple of TV shows. One was Star Trek. No,
Star... In Search OF which Leonard Nimoy was the host of. And I was sitting
watching the TV and it popped up and showed this picture and oh, there's my
picture. That kind of thing..."
Johnson then brought Marcel into the story, saying that Alan Lansbury, the
producer of In Search Of had hosted a party to which Johnson was invited. He
said, "This major was going to be there, the one from Roswell."
I asked, naturally, "Marcel?" Again it might be seen as coaching the witness,
though Johnson already knew the name. He just couldn't think of it at that
moment.
"Is he the one that got the..."
I interrupted to say, "He was the one that went out and picked up the
material."
"From the rancher, yes. He heard about it in a bar and the guy says, ëOh, I
got one of those out at the place.'"
I said, again, filling in detail, "Wait a minute. The problem is that Mac
Brazel found the thing on his ranch and he contacted the folks at Roswell.
There was a subsequent story. His son, Bill Brazel came down to take care of
the ranch because his dad was being held at Roswell and undergoing tests or
something like that. Bill Brazel picked up some of the material. He found some
scrape of it and he was in the bar talking about it and the Air Force came out
the next day and picked it up. The fellow who came out was a fellow named
Armstrong."
"That wasn't the major there?"
"No."
"The major was the intelligence officer or something like that."
I said, "Okay. Marcel was the intelligence officer. He was the one who went
back to the ranch and picked it all up. So you met Major Marcel."
"Marcel, yes. He has a son. I saw the son interviewed on TV recently."
"Yeah," I said. "That is exactly right. I was hoping that you have found
Armstrong by mistake."
"The son said interesting things. That the father came home and told us about
the bodies and so forth. And then said that we can't talk about it or don't
tell anybody and so forth."
This confused me because to this point in my investigation, I hadn't heard
anything about Marcel and bodies. I asked, "Marcel mentioned bodies?"
"No, the son."
My question was, quite naturally, "Marcel says that his father mentioned
bodies."
Johnson replied, "Came home and told us about it."
But the truth is, Jesse Marcel, Jr. has claimed all along that his father
never mentioned bodies at all. In fact, this has become one of the stumbling
points of the Roswell case. If there had been a crash, the intelligence
officer should have been brought in to all aspects of it. That would mean he
knew about the bodies, yet he never mentioned a word about them, contrary to
what Johnson believed.
Having finished with that, Johnson finally said, "My interesting part of this,
having taken the picture and now going back and looking at the picture because
I didn't have a copy of it [meaning, I suppose that he didn't have an original
print but did have the photograph as it had appeared in the newspaper in
1947]... is that I don't know whether the Air Force was pulling a hoax or not.
It looks like a kite..."
We discuss the sequence of events, and how Johnson ended up in Ramey's office.
Johnson then said, "Right. That was a hoax, I think. That's when they called
and what I saw. I think I was duped." Note that I haven't said a thing about
this aspect of the case. Johnson himself had come to the conclusion that he
had been duped.
I agreed with his assessment. I said, "Yes. You and all the rest of the
reporters were duped."
"That we saw... that they came up with this weather balloon thing as an
added... that's my feeling. I never saw the real stuff [emphasis added]."
Again this was a spontaneous comment by Johnson. I was trying to figure out
how everything had happened and Johnson was throwing in comments about it with
no help or coaching from me.
He continued, "Then they came out with that story almost simultaneously that
the weather balloon thing..."
At this point in my investigation, having just started, I made a basic
assumption. I was aware of a quote attributed to Marcel (by William Moore in
The Roswell Incident) that suggested that if he was in the photograph, it
showed the real debris, but if it was anyone else, then it was not the real
thing. Since Marcel had talked of reporters being present, and since Colonel
Thomas DuBose, Ramey's chief of staff in 1947, had mentioned three or four
reporters present, and, since Johnson was saying that there had been no other
reporters in Ramey's office when he was there, I concluded that Ramey had met
with the press twice. Johnson noted that he did not attend a press conference,
but had just met Ramey in his office to take his photographs.
Johnson said that he took two pictures. One of Ramey, and one of Ramey and
DuBose. He didn't know who had taken the pictures of Marcel and seemed to be
surprised that there were pictures of him in the file at the University of
Texas. It was clear from all the pictures that Marcel was near the same debris
that Johnson had photographed with Ramey and DuBose. In other words, and
contrary to the suggestions by William Moore, there were no photographs of the
real debris with Marcel in them, only the weather balloon spread out on the
floor in General Ramey's office.
Johnson told me, "I took two pictures and then they said, but that time they
said, ëOh, we've found out what it is and you know, it's a weather balloon and
so forth.' No big deal. I didn't press it. I accepted that. I was rather
naive. I accepted that."
After we discussed the mechanics of transmitting stories over the AP wire, I
said, "You went back to..." Johnson interrupted to say, "The Star-Telegram and
gave them the wet prints of the thing. They wanted them right out. I went in
and developed them and gave them wet prints. And I wrote..."
Here is an example of where it would have been better to listen. Johnson said,
"I wrote..." The implication is that he wrote the story that he now denies he
wrote. In another interview, and even later in this first one, he would
confirm this. He said, "Seven nine [July 9] is my story on the front page that
was earlier in the day. That's when they debunked it."
And in a later interview, commenting on the article in the newspaper, he said,
"Okay, this is the article I wrote that was on the front page on seven nine."
And later still, he said, "I went ahead and got the facts and came back and
there wasn't any other reporter who wrote it for the Star Telegram. I wrote it
that night."
So what we see is that Johnson was told that the debris on Ramey's floor was a
weather balloon and that he wrote an article about it. That article appeared
in the July 9 edition of the Star-Telegram. These are two of the things that
he claimed I got wrong and that I refuse to change. Of course, I do have the
quotes on tape.
About a month later, I talked to Johnson again. I had had the chance to digest
the materials that had flooded in and had a better feeling for what the
situation was in Fort Worth in July 1947. I had been able to eliminate some of
the material that was obviously in error. To get a better picture, I asked,
Johnson, simply, "Could you just sort of tell me what you did... What
transpired when your editor gave you the assignment to go out to the base."
The story he told was essentially the same as it had been during our first
conversation. He told me how the assignment had been made, and how he had
gotten out to the base. Then he said, "I posed General Ramey with this debris
piled in the middle of his rather large and plush office. It seemed
incongruous to have this smelly garbage piled up on the floor..."
Next Johnson made the statement that he claims he never made and that I have
somehow misquoted, even when the quotes are on tape. He said, "I posed General
Ramey with this debris. At that time I was briefed on the idea that it was not
a flying disk as first reported but in fact was a weather balloon that had
crashed."
There is it, from Johnson himself, once again. Ramey told him, there in the
office, that it was nothing more than a weather balloon. He suggests that the
context of the quote is such that I have somehow asked a question that he
didn't understand. But the quote comes about in a long narration as Johnson is
telling me what happened. I hadn't asked a question.
There are other facts that Johnson has challenged about my stories, some of
which are ridiculous. He now seems to feel that he must discredit me because
his own stories have put him into conflict with himself. I am somehow
responsible for the earlier quotes that he doesn't believe reflect reality. Or
rather, don't reflect reality as he now misremembers it.
Johnson, for example, claims today that I called him cold. That I did not
provide him with any copies of photos or other materials to refresh his
memory. That, because of this, he was confused when he spoke to me. Of course,
had I given him the materials he suggests that I should have, that would be
coaching the witness.
But the point is irrelevant. I found Johnson because I was attempting to
locate copies of the pictures that were taken in General Ramey's office. I
found Johnson because he had done the same thing and had already received
those pictures. And, in our very first interview, he was talking about the
article that appeared in the Star-Telegram that he said, at that time, he had
written. In other words, he already had copies of everything that I could have
sent him, had I been inclined to do so. He already had the material to refresh
his memory.
And, I couldn't have called him cold as he claims because I didn't know who he
was. Betsy Hudon sent my letter on to him to allow him to initiate the
contact, which he did. Without a first call from him to me, there would have
been no contact. When he did call, he was already well aware of the subject.
He now says, in direct conflict with what he said a number of times in
different interviews, that he insisted there was no balloon in General Ramey's
office when we talked. He claims that I insisted there was, arguing with him.
His own photographs, however, prove him wrong because the balloon is visible
in the photographs.
He now claims that he didn't write the article that appeared in the newspaper
the next day, but only after claiming to me, on tape that he did. The problem
he has with it today is what it says. If General Ramey didn't know what the
debris was, it would have been reflected in the article. It is not.
The last paragraph of the article is the deadly one. It said, "After his first
look, Ramey declared all it was was a weather balloon. The weather officer
verified his view." This is, of course, in direct conflict with what Johnson
claims today, but more importantly, if he wrote the story, it verifies my
version of the first interviews.
Johnson has also claimed that he had tried, without success, to get me to
correct some of the inaccurate quotations I have attributed to him. But the
problem is not me. I did talk to him about this after he changed his story. I
read his quotes to him from my transcripts. He denied that he would say
anything like that because it wasn't true. He couldn't remember what he had
said, just that it couldn't be true.
I sent him a tape so he could hear what he said. I sent him a tape so that he
would understand that he would say those sorts of things because he had said
those sorts of things. He provided no answer to me except to suggest that if
had said some of the things he had spoken in error when we talked.
The truth is I wrote letters to him on February 14, 1991, February 16, 1991
and August 4, 1991, asking him specific questions about his allegations. On
the fourteenth, for example, I wrote, "In reviewing my tapes, I learned a
couple of other things that are at odds with what you are now saying. On the
tape, you said, ë...See, I went there not as a reporter but there was not
anybody else there. I went ahead and got the facts and came back and there
wasn't any other reporter who wrote it for the Star-Telegram on that night. I
wrote that that night.'" Those are his words, not mine.
I also noted in that letter, "You might well ask how we know which article you
wrote. On the tape you say, ëOkay, this is the article that I wrote that was
on the front page on seven nine (July 9, 1947) and says, ëDisc-overy Near
Roswell Identified As Weather Balloon by FWAAF Officer,' and it's quite a long
article.'" That is the article that ends with the quote that Ramey identified
it immediately.
On the sixteenth, I sent him copies of the tapes. I pointed out that Johnson
would now be able to hear himself say the things that I had quoted him as
saying. Johnson now claims that he listened to the tapes but could never hear
himself saying the things that I claimed he said. But the tapes do verify what
I have claimed.
The August 4 letter pointed out that I had sent him the material proving I was
right. I had suggested that I was sorry if the events as they were being
played out embarrassed him, but it was a situation that I hadn't created. And
as I have noted I heard nothing from him in response to my letters.
In other words, I called the man, I wrote the man, and I supplied copies of
the various materials he asked me to supply, and he didn't write back.
Instead, he suggests that he had tried to get me to correct the statements
without ever proving that my statements were in error. He believes them to be
in error and apparently does not believe himself because he has heard himself
make the statements I said he made.
Johnson claims that he has been quoted by other investigators as saying that I
put words in his mouth. I challenge him to come up with a quote that is not
reflected in the tapes. I have put no words in his mouth, but quoted his own
words to him. He just doesn't like the sound of them now as he tries to
convince people that he was the Roswell photographer.
What we have here is a man who claims to have never written speculative
articles about Roswell. Who claims he has nothing to sell to a public eager to
buy almost anything Roswell related. Yet he bills himself as the Roswell
Photographer as he attempts to pull the spotlight in his direction. He is, in
reality, the Fort Worth photographer who took several pictures of a weather
balloon in General Ramey's office.
The sad thing here is that if he had left well enough alone, if he had just
told his tale consistently through the years, he would have something valuable
to contribute to the Roswell case. It would be valuable to hear about his
interaction with General Ramey, even if, during that interaction, he learned
that the material was a balloon. But for Johnson, that isn't good enough. Now,
he must claim that I misquoted him so that he can boost his importance.
Unfortunately for him, the tapes exist. Even sadder, he has copies of them but
he apparently won't listen to what he has to say.

Some of the important quotes:

Johnson alleged that he had never suggested that it was a weather balloon or
that he learned that in General Ramey's office. But here is what he said:
Johnson (February 27, 1989): So they came up with this weather balloon thing
as an added... that's my feeling and that I never saw the real stuff. So that
would be my feeling now... Then they came out with that story almost
simultaneously afterwards... the weather balloon thing.

Johnson (February 27, 1989): That's all that I think was there. I took the
two pictures and then they said, by that time they said, ëOh we've figured it
out now what it is... it's a weather balloon and so forth and no big deal so I
didn't press it. I accepted it. I was rather naive and accepted it.

Johnson now claims that I called him cold, but the truth is, he knew about me
and what I was researching. Listen carefully, as I explain it to him, and he
says that it was what he had been told as well:
Randle and Johnson (February 27, 1989: KDR: Interesting you should ask because
some other guy had called to ask about those and he said he was the
photographer. I said, "Oh, I need his name." She said, "Well I really don't
feel right about giving it to you.
JBJ: Yeah, that's what she told me.
KDR: I said, "Call I send you a letter and you can mail it to him and that
way if he wants to contact me, it's his option." She said that she would be
happy to do that. So, I've been waiting to hear from you and get that list
from her. This was in January that I was doing this.

Johnson claims that he didn't write a story about the events, but here is what
he said about that:
Johnson (February 27, 1989): Seven nine [July 9] is my story on the front page
that was in earlier that day. That's when they debunked it. [He then reads
from his story].

And again, so there can be no confusion, here is what Johnson said about the
timing of the announcement that they had a weather balloon:
Johnson (March 24, 1989): It seemed incongruous to have this smelly garbage
piled up on the floor... spread out on the floor of this rather plush, big
office that was probably, oh, 16 by 20. I posed General Ramey with this
debris. At that time I was briefed on the idea that it was not a flying disk
as first reported but in fact was a weather balloon that had crashed.

In case it wasn't clear that he wrote the story, that his wording was vague,
here is what he said about it later:
Johnson (March 24, 1989): Do you have the articles from the Fort Worth Star-
Telegram dated seven nine [July 9].
KDR: No, I have nothing from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
JBJ: This is the article that I wrote. It was on the front page on seven nine
and it says "Disc-overy Near Roswell Identified As Weather Balloon by FWAAF
Officer." And it's quite a long article and that was my story...

And where did Johnson get the facts for the article? He tells us.
Johnson (March 24, 1989): It's entirely possible that I was briefed by the
PIO. Probably was. Because those facts track with my story.