Roswell and the Dog that Didn’t Bark

Here’s
an interesting revelation. I was watching the recent Unsolved Mysteries
report on the Roswell case and Colonel Richard Weaver said something that
caught my attention. He was talking about having reviewed a million documents
and files and miles of microfilm during his review of the Roswell case. The
implication is that they, meaning he and his team, had made a Herculean effort
to find evidence and failed do it. His conclusion, based on his investigation,
was the correct conclusion but it wasn’t accurate.

Don
Schmitt, Tom Carey and I had done the same thing, and I could name a couple of
dozen others who had followed leads, researched specific aspects of the Roswell
case and in the end, there was limited documentation mainly in the form of
newspaper stories and the testimony of hundreds of people who had first or
second-hand observations. In other words, the documentation was limited, the
testimonies were called anecdotal, and we all had searched for documentation
and other testimony for nearly forty years for it.

And
then I had a thought. I had made a comprehensive search for mention of Roswell
and documents relating to it in what could be considered the microcosm of
Weaver’s world and search, of Project Blue Book. Although it had officially
begun as Project Sign in January 1948, its records begin earlier, even with
sightings that pre-dated the Kenneth Arnold sighting of June 24, 1947. In fact,
the earliest dated case in the Blue Book files is from June 2. When you look at
the record of sightings for July 1947, they cover a single-spaced page. The
military was investigating what was happening during the summer that preceded
the creation of the official investigation in 1948.

When
the Army announced, on July 8, 1947, that they had found a flying saucer, it
was international news. I will say that nearly every newspaper in the United
States covered the story in some form, beginning with the early announcement on
the afternoon of July 8 and ending the next day when Brigadier General Roger
Ramey announced it was just a weather balloon. Pictures of Ramey, his chief of
staff, Colonel Thomas Dubose, and Major Jesse Marcel, holding pieces of the
weather balloon, were printed in the newspapers the next day.

There
are stories of crashed UFOs in the Blue Book files in July 1947. The solutions,
all legitimate, ranged from advertising gimmicks to small saucers created to
fool friends. A report, from Shreveport, Louisiana, even came to the attention
of then FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover. That caused us a great deal of
aggravation as we tried to reconcile a note written on an FBI document by
Hoover with that report. It had nothing to do with the Roswell case. The file
for that case, dated July 7, 1947, is quite thick. And no, I believe the military
was correct in labeling it a hoax.

The
point here is that by July 8, the military was gathering sighting reports and
there are 47 cases for the month in what are now the Blue Book files. There are
alleged crashes, files that are labeled as “Folders,” because of the thickness
of the file, and many in which there is a notation for a report but labeled as
“case missing.”

What
I noticed is several crash reports, comprehensive investigations, and an apparent
real effort to determine what was going on. All this happening with the “high
profile” cases that were extensively investigated and not a single file
dedicated to the Roswell case. Here was the story that probably generated some
of the highest interest around the world and there is no file on it. The only
reference I can find in the Blue Book files is the third paragraph of a four-paragraph
story that mentions, in passing, that the officers at Roswell had received a
“blistering rebuke” for their claim they had a flying disk.

Colonel
Weaver had access to a great deal more official information than any of the
civilian researchers and said that he found nothing. I say, I looked through
the Blue Book files, which I’m sure were reviewed by Weaver’s team, and they
found nothing there either. It made me wonder why a great deal of effort was
expended investigating many reports from July 1947, but there is no reference
to what could be called the most important story from July 1947. A single
mention in a newspaper clipping buried in another Blue Book file but nothing
that referenced Roswell specifically.

Doesn’t
my search, of the Blue Book files, mirror the research done in the 1990s by the
Air Force? There should have been a rather thick file on the Roswell case that
included not only newspaper clippings, but the pictures of three of the
principals in that case. True, the balloon explanation was floated (pun
intended) within about three hours of the initial story, but it was a story of
international interest. Walter Haut, the Public Information Officer in Roswell
at the time, told me that he received telephone calls from around the world.

Walter Haut being interviewed. Photo by Kevin Randle.

But
there is nothing in the files except that one paragraph in a newspaper
clipping. I did ask Haut about that blistering rebuke and he told me that it
never happened. His words were something to the effect that if he’d been called
by the Pentagon and chewed out, he would remember it.

Again,
my point is that a search of the Blue Book files, which were dedicated to
gathering UFO information, has nothing about Roswell. It was a case filled with
military officers which means it was originally reported officially, but there
is no file. Why the emphasis on other reports of crashes and other generic
sightings but nothing on what was the biggest UFO story for two days in July? Sure,
had it been included in Blue Book, it would have been labeled as a balloon, but
that isn’t there. Nothing…

Just
as Colonel Weaver found with his inside sources, high-level security clearance
and his orders that came, virtually, from the Secretary of the Air Force, no
documents relating to Roswell, I found nothing in the declassified Blue Book
files. It should have been there, but it was not.

One
final comment about all this. For those who would argue that the secrecy was to
protect Project Mogul, I point to the newspapers, especially the Alamogordo
News, on July 10. There was a long article about the balloon project being
carried out at the Alamogordo Army Air Field. Pictures showed a Mogul array
(and no, they didn’t call it a Mogul array in the article), explained what they
were doing and what it all meant. Charles Moore, one of those working on the
project told me that he had bought the ladder that was featured in one of the
pictures.

Alamogordo News with pictures of a Constant Level Balloon launch, which is a Project Mogul balloon launch published on July 10, 1947.

This
means, of course, that what was happening in Alamogordo was not highly
classified. The balloon launches were conducted by the civilians from the
University of New York attempting to create what they called a Constant Level
Balloon, meaning it would remain at a certain altitude. Although offered as the
solution in 1947, it did not explain what had been found. I have already, many
times, explained this about the Mogul solution, the one that the Air Force used
to solve the mystery of what fell decades after the fact.

I
found Colonel Weaver’s comment on the Unsolved Mysteries show quite
telling. There should have been specific documentation that lead to the
constant level balloons but not back to Project Mogul. The search would have
ended with the balloons from Alamogordo. By the mid-1990s, Mogul was no longer
a secret, and several UFO researchers were aware of it. We all had been talking
about it for years before the Air Force came up with it as the solution for the
Roswell case.

Weaver’s
comment, about finding nothing is quite telling. The significant fact, as
Sherlock Holmes said in the murder case he was investigating, was that the dog
didn’t bark. The significance fact here is as Weaver said he found nothing
about the Roswell case in all those files both classified and unclassified.
This lack of results screams the problem, because there should have been
something given the impact of the original news release and widespread interest
in the tale. You might say that this is another example of the dog not barking.
*

*I
thought a note of explanation might be necessary for those who haven’t read the
Holmes story. There was a murder committed, and Holmes was investigating. All
thought it might be a stranger, but Holmes said that the watch dog didn’t bark.
It meant that the murder was someone the dog knew, so it didn’t bark.