Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Don Schmitt, Adam Dew and the Roswell Slides

Adam Dew
In the last several weeks, I have been asked if Don Schmitt had ever said anything about the interview I had conducted with Adam Dew in November 2017 on the X-Zone Broadcast Network. Since I interviewed Don a couple of times, I thought that those interested could figure out on their own what his reaction might be. Listen to what Don said and what Adam said, compare the two and decide who is telling the truth and who is not. For those interested, you can listen to the interviews, starting with Dew, here:


And Don Schmitt here:
and here:

And you can read my somewhat short analyses of the shows, again starting with Dew, here:


Don Schmitt. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle
And Don Schmitt here:

And here:

This, I think, will provide the information necessary to form an opinion about the veracity of the various tales. I did ask Don if he had listened to Adam’s interview. He emailed me that:

These were what we relied on as provided by [Joe] Beason for attempted analysis by Rudiak and others. We were never allowed possession of either slide or any slides for that matter for dating, examination, or independent testing. We relied strictly on scans provided by Beason [the man who had the slides originally] throughout our association. The second slide was only a tight shot of the body which did not enable us to see what was clearly a museum setting in the background. When I confronted [Jaime] Maussan in his office in Mexico City the day after the presentation, I demanded to see the image of the entire second slide. Placard withstanding, it was indeed a museum. Now, reexamine the placard image as provided by Beason and tell me that what you see is not undecipherable script writing - not the block lettering which truly is in the originals. You will also recall that after Mexico City I confronted Dew and demanded that they publicly release the slides to end any final dispute. He declined stating "What good would that do? They have been tested enough." I persisted and believe my wait will be infinite.
Placard scans supplied to Don Schmitt.
He did include a copy of the scan that had been supplied to both Tom Carey and him, which was supplied to David Rudiak to see if David might be able to draw out something of significance. They don’t supply much in the way of information and are only of the placard and not of the whole display.


As I have said, I’ll let both men, Don and Adam, speak for themselves on this. I believe that each of us can infer from their statements where the truth lies. I will say, however, that it seems to me, when we find ourselves in these sorts of situations, the truth is usually found somewhere between the two opposing camps. Though I don’t solicit comments but let those who wish to comment do so, in this case, I would be interested in anything anyone has to say about all of this. I have my own bias which, naturally, will color what I believe to be the truth, though I try to be as objective as possible.

Oxnard UFO Sighting - 22/23 March 1957

Sometimes I chase footnotes and sometimes I’m just following up on a case and sometimes I just stumble into something that is important. This time I was researching a case from 1957, which is something we all should do… take a long look at some of the old reports to see if we can learn anything new about them not
Dick Hall
just look at cases from 1957.

This particular sighting, one that Dick Hall included in his The UFO Evidence, and one that was prominently featured in NICAP’s The U.F.O. Investigator in July 1957. Hall wrote:

Confidential report obtained from CAA (now FAA) radar operator confirming visual sightings at Oxnard AFB and vicinity. Report certified by NICAP board members…
At 9:55 p.m., Mr. K. E. Jefferson, Pasadena, saw a brilliant flashing object moving over Downey. Between that time and midnight, police switchboards throughout the Los Angeles area were flooded with hundreds of calls reporting a UFO. The reports poured into the Pasadena Filter Center.
According to Capt. Joseph Fry, commanding officer of the Center, the first official report came in at 11:10 p.m.; at which time Capt. Fry notified Air Defense Radar.
“Between 2310 (11:10 p.m.) and 2350,” Capt. Fry said in a statement to newsman Russ Leadabrand, “we had many reports. We had reports that indicated the UFO was orange-red, flashing a bright white light. Some of the callers claimed they heard the ‘sound of reports’ when the light flashed from the object.”
At the Filter Center itself, Air Force T/Sgt. Dewey Crow and newsman Les Wagner watched the UFO maneuver slowly around the area for over an hour. Just after midnight, Mrs. Robert Beaudoin [I have never found a reference to her first name in all the documentation that I have reviewed], wife of an Oxnard AFB Captain [would this be known as credibility by marriage], telephoned the base tower to report sighting the UFO. It was described as a large, silent object, flashing brilliant red light, and maneuvering above the Santa Rose Valley.
An F-89 interceptor [actually there were two] attempted to locate the object but the Air Force denied it was able to make contact, although at the same time witnesses on the ground could see the UFO plainly near one of the Oxnard runways.
Reports continued into early morning hours, with witnesses in various locations describing objects which sometimes hovered, and sometimes moved swiftly.
The CAA radar report, obtained later, virtually proved that unexplained objects were operating over Los Angeles. The radar operator’s report:
“At 2350 (11:50 p.m.) I was watching the radar scope when noticed a target about 15 miles northwest and moving northwest. At first I thought it was a jet, then I noticed it was moving much faster than anything I had ever seen on the scope. About 40 miles northwest it came to an abrupt stop and reversed course, all within a period of about three seconds. It then traveled back along its course for about 20 miles, reversed course again and disappeared off the scope at 50 miles (our radar reaches out only 50 miles).
“Approximately 5 minutes later 2 more targets appeared and disappeared off the scope in the same direction as the first; and these we had time to clock. They traveled 20 miles [the actual letter said 30 miles] in 30 seconds which figured out to 3600 mph. A minute or so later a forth target appeared in the same area as the other 3, 10 or 15 miles northwest, and went off the scope to the northwest at 3600 mph.
“Our radar does not give height of aircraft so I couldn’t give you the height, however they had to be about 10,000 feet or lower because our radar’s maximum height is about 10,000 feet.”
This case is not nearly as strong as it seems here. The timeline is inaccurate. This happened, I believe because of the timing of the sightings, which is to say that they started late in the evening of March 22 and carried over into the early morning of March 23. A second series of sightings started in the Los Angeles area late in the evening on March 23, or about 22 hours after the first report.

To clarify, Beaudoin’s sighting was made on March 22, at 11:50 p.m., and lasted into the early morning of March 23. Please notice here that Beaudoin’s sighting began on March 22. Hall, suggested the series of sightings began with Jefferson’s sighting at 9:55 p.m. on March 23. In other words, Jefferson’s sighting was made some 22 hours after Beaudoin and isn’t part of the same series, though they are in the same general area of southern California.

The radar contact at the Long Beach tower was in keeping with Beaudoin’s sighting, but none of the fighters’ on-board radars detected the target and according to the Blue Book file, there were no radar reports from Oxnard AFB. That makes the radar confirmation somewhat problematic.* Sure, it can be argued
No, not UFOs. Venus (ironically the larger of
the lights) and Jupiter. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle
that the Air Force lied about the lack of radar confirmation, but there is no evidence to support that.

What we have here is a case that began on the evening of March 22 and carried over into the morning of March 23. Although Beaudoin’s sighting was corroborated by her daughter (though no one seemed to have interviewed her), the sheriff’s deputies who were on the seen reported nothing to confirm the sighting. They believed they were seeing stars.


The next day’s sightings from the Los Angeles area do not seem to be part of the Oxnard sighting of the night before. When separated, the Oxnard sighting loses much of its importance because it is basically single witness since the daughter was not interviewed and the sheriff’s deputies on the scene said they didn’t see anything extraordinary. This is a case that should be removed from the files, or, at the very least, marked as “astronomical phenomenon.”

*Although it might be irrelevant, the Long Beach Tower radar reported a failure some 17 minutes after the sighting. That might be coincidence, or it might have caused the radar returns. There is no evidence to support either contention.

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Curse of Oak Island - They Hit an Obstacle

I don’t know how many of you caught it, but on the Curse of Oak Island, there was a big reveal. Remember, they brought in all this expensive, modern equipment so that they could dig down in what they thought was the money pit. They were lining the excavation with huge hollow, steel tubes, in an effort to defeat the alleged booby traps that had confounded treasure hunters for two centuries plus.

That worked just fine and they drilled down to bedrock and said they couldn’t drill any deeper. They found no treasure. They found no real sign of treasure. Rather than concluding that there was no treasure, they decided, since there was money left over, and they needed to fill out the season on cable’s number one show (at least they tell us that it’s the number one show), they had missed the real money pit. They needed to move some twenty or so feet away and do it again.

Remember that when the original searchers, back at the turn of the 19th century had dug down some 90 feet, the shaft filled with water. No amount of pumping could reduce the water level and they noticed it rose and fell with the tides. The money pit was connected somehow to the ocean (which, when you think about it, suggested that the pit hadn’t been booby trapped, but they had connected to the ocean at the bedrock level…) but, never mind.

So, now they are digging their new shaft and lining it with more steel to defeat the booby traps, but this time, as they dug lower they hit a metal shelf of some sort. They were talking about being unable to easily penetrate it, and had stopped drilling to figure out what to do.

But, before they designed their attack plan, the shaft filled with water. The steel of the tubes had not failed, but the water flooded in. Modern technology was able to pump the water out so that they might examine what they had hit. Again, before they could get a look, the water came back and they decided that the safest way to examine the point of the stoppage was to send down a diver. I’m thinking safest? Really?

That overlooked the real clue. There is no way that a booby trap connected to the ocean would have filled that shaft. They had blocked all the possible outlets with their steel tubes. There was no sign of a failure of that metal. It meant that the water was coming up from below. It meant that they had hit the water table of the island at that point. No booby trap to keep anyone from getting at that nonexistent treasure. No clever design to protect the treasure… no, just the natural geology of the island getting in their way.

That also suggested what had defeated all those other diggers from the past. They had reached a point where the natural water table was tapped and the rising and falling that marked the tides showed that the water was coming up from the bottom rather than from those mythical booby traps on the sides.

So, they had their answer, but it didn’t dawn on them what they had. No, instead they’re going to send down a diver to check out the obstruction and see if there is a way to penetrate it. Sure, I’ll bet modern technology can defeat that obstacle as well, but once they are beyond that, they’ll have another shaft that reaches the bedrock without giving up any treasure.


But then they tease us by saying they have found a gem quality ruby on the island. I might have missed exactly where they found it, but it seemed to be on the surface. I’m getting tired of these little hints of something great that just never pan out. They have pushed this just about as far as they can… I think the viewers are beginning to give up on anyone finding a real treasure there.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Rob Mercer and the Black Vault

I learned this morning (February 19) that many of the documents from the Project Blue Book days located by Rob Mercer through some very nice detective work, can now be accessed at the Black Vault, hosted by John Greenewald. As most of you know, the Black Vault is a huge site of documents recovered through FOIA
John Greenewald
(Photo copyright by Kevin Randle)
requests filed by John, and other documents provided by those who had recovered them in the past… which is to say, I suppose, that it is a huge sharing site that provides an important feature for those of us interested in UFOs including information on the people involved and what the government has learned and stored.

Rob Mercer had discovered that a box of Blue Book material was for sale on Craig’s List and bought it. Turned out it was a treasure trove of important information that had originally belonged to Carmon Marano, one of the last officers who worked at Blue Book. You can learn more about this here:


And you can listen to my interview with Rob Mercer here:


And you can listen to Carmon Marano talk about his time at Project Blue Book and how he obtained what turned out to be boxes of the UFO related material here:


Or read about it here:


I did ask Rob how the material had ended up at the Black Vault and he told me (well, answered an email):

I joined up with John last November to help with his UFO investigations team.  He knew about my Blue Book find and told me I could share some on his site if I wanted.  I had been sharing a few of them on my site for a few years, but never really got them on there the way I wanted because of the volume.  I had been wanting to put a collection together called "From the Desk of Project Blue Book" 
for some time, because that’s pretty much what it is.  I still have the case files to scan and put on, along with slides correspondences and some other miscellaneous papers. 
      For the last several weeks I have been going through them again and have found a few items that did not make it into Blue Books archives as far as reports. One item that comes to mind is a three page hand written letter from a gentleman in 1969, that witnessed an event in the 1920s in Phoenix Arizona. It is on the Black Vault.
As you can see, there is more to be scanned and digitized. As anyone who has scanned almost anything knows, it can be a long and involved process, but Rob has been working toward that end. Now, some of it can be found and viewed by those interested in it.

As a side note, I found that the information Rob had on the Socorro UFO sighting to be useful in my research and in the writing of my book, Encounter in the Desert which was published last October. For those interested, it can be found in your local bookstore and online at Amazon at:


Monday, February 19, 2018

Project Blue Book and the Missing Cases

As happens so often, I’m working on one project and get diverted to another. This time I was looking through the Project Blue Book file index and noticed that many of the reports were labeled as “case missing.” There was a solution attached to the sightings, but, of course the index told me nothing of the case.

I made a quick count, and given that there are a couple of pages missing in the copy of the index that I have, and given that the notations are sometimes obscured and some of the pages are barely readable, my count isn’t the most accurate. It does, however, reveal a trend that is somewhat alarming.

Part of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, one time how to Project Blue Book. Photo courtesy of USAF.
By my count, there are over 300 cases that are missing. Most have cards in the files with a little information on them… but this does demonstrate some of the rather sloppy gathering of information that went on… or maybe just suggests that some of those working at Blue Book over the years weren’t as careful as they might have been.

Sure, I know what you’re thinking. Just what were these cases?

I went through a couple of the microfilms to see what the project cards had listed so that we all would have an idea about them. Following is a sample of what I found.

On December 26, 1956, in DeFuniak Springs, Florida, the witnesses, who were civilians and military, watched a white, egg-shaped object with a red tinge around the edges. It was the size of a small grapefruit. It flashed with a very bright red light that was around a tenth of the size of the object. It was in sight for fifteen to twenty-five minutes.

An unidentified officer noted on the project card, “Concur with the reporting officer that sighting caused by a/c. Although there was a helicopter in the area and the details of the sighting indicate that this was the cause, the helicopter landed ten minutes before the object disappeared. However, time in sight might have been incorrectly estimated. Therefore, prob [sic] aircraft is evaluation of this sight[ing].”

The details are somewhat sparse but the report seems to indicate that the object looked to be the size of a small grapefruit rather than actually being that small. I’m a little amused that the “concurring officer,” whoever he might have been, tells us that the sighting was caused by an aircraft because there was a helicopter in the area, but adds that the helicopter landed before the object disappeared. Seems to be a bit contradictory to me.

However, it is fair to note, without knowing more about this case, and basing it only on the few lines on the project card, that it is difficult to argue with the conclusion. But then it is difficult to believe that one or more of these witnesses (and I deduced there was more than one based on the “source,” which was labeled as civilian and military), wouldn’t have been able to identify the object had it been that helicopter.

In another of those missing cases, that would have sent me on still another diversion a couple of years ago, we learn that on January 27, 1957, near Hellenburg, Germany, a civilian witness said that he (yes, I’m assuming the witness was male based on the period of the sighting, meaning more than half a century ago) saw a bell-shaped object that was intense black-white [and yes, it says that on the card] with a fiery red trail… [It] was observed for only 3 -  4 seconds. Exploded before it hit the ground.”

In the comments section, an officer wrote, “Everything here suggests that the object was, without a doubt, a bolide (fireball). See Dr. Olivier’s and Dr. La Paz rpts [reports].”

While it is probably a meteor and even with the officer writing that it was identified without a doubt, the case I labeled as “Probably Astronomical.” I just find that a little funny. And those reports by Olivier and La Paz were nowhere to be found as the index suggested.

The last one I’ll mention here is from Georgetown, Massachusetts, on February 8, 1957. The source is listed as a civilian and a FBI report (yes, a FBI report is listed as a source), which is somewhat curious. The summary said, “A very lengthy report to the FBI, which outlines a number of theories concerning ‘flying saucers,’ makes only brief mention of a UFO sighting. A few days after reading books by so-called UFO experts Scully and Keyhow [sic] source ‘saw a group of saucers.’…”

According to the comments, “Only the date is firmly established. Files show no reports of any strange or unusual objects for that particular date or area. Source is obviously a strong believer in ‘saucers’ which may have colored his very limited report.”

This case is somewhat revealing, providing clues about the thought processes at Blue Book. Their search of the files was only a search of the Air Force files at Blue Book and if a case was not in their files, then it simply didn’t exist, at least to them.

In searching the databases available to me in 2018, I found a listing that suggested that this as a disk-shaped object, but the source for that information was the Blue Book files. There is no indication on the project card of what shape the objects might have had. It only mentions saucers and that it was a daylight sighting.

Of course, with my access to many additional databases, I carried the search a little further but I wasn’t able to find anything more on the sighting, which is to say, that I didn’t find anything. Something might be there, especially for those who can access newspaper files. I did try the Black Vault, but could find nothing relating to this particular case there either.

I will note here, that most of the cases that are labeled as missing are of the same caliber, which means that I attach no significance to the fact they are missing. The problem is probably more related to sloppiness rather than attempting to hide anything because if you were hiding something, you wouldn’t list it in the index, noting that it was missing.

This rather quick survey, which allowed me to see some other things, is that many of the early cases were, in fact, classified. I found nothing listed as “top secret,” but there were many listed as “secret,” or “restricted,” and later as “confidential,” when the classification system was reorganized. Later, most of the files were not classified at all unless there was a national security aspect to them. That normally related to collection methods, though in the Belt, Montana case in 1967, the intrusion of a UFO over missile silos had national security implications.

The significance here is probably that some 300 cases are missing, but the cases themselves don’t seem to be all that important. It shows that those at Blue Book weren’t taking this seriously. They had reached a conclusion, or it might be said that their superiors had reached a conclusion, and they weren’t going to do anything to suggest those superiors might be wrong.

One thought did cross my mind. When there were inspections of their operation, and there would be inspections, how did they explain the missing cases? Could they just blame the earlier administrations… or did the inspectors, knowing the overall opinion of UFOs, just ignore the missing cases? There is nothing to suggest the missing cases were classified, and given that, there probably wouldn’t have been repercussions.


Anyway, this was something that I discovered that I found to be somewhat amusing. I thought I would share it.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Project Moon Shadow, Randy Cramer and the Templeton Spaceman

Yes, I have hit a dry spell. There really isn’t anything new to say about Curse of Oak Island as they chase the Knights Templar and other false leads. They haven’t found anything significant but you have to give them credit for keeping this thing going for so long with so little to show for it.

But, in the last couple of days I have been asked a couple of questions and saw a picture of a “spaceman” on the Internet, so I thought I might combine a couple of these things. I suppose I could break it up into a couple of new posts, but there just isn’t that much to say about any of this that hasn’t been said before.

I was asked about NASA’s, or maybe the US’s “secret space program,” a ridiculous concept that belongs right up there is with the contactees of the 1950s and the gunman on the Grassy Knoll.

First, there was this nonsense of Project Moon Shadow, which apparently recruited kids as young as four to introduce them to the military operations on Mars and in space. Sounds like Ender Wiggin, recruited to fight the “buggers” in the science fiction novel, Ender’s Game. Anyway, Randy Cramer, who originally came out as Captain Kaye, said that he would taken from his bed for days or weeks at a time and then returned to his bed within minutes of his disappearance so it was never apparent that he had been gone. At 17, he was “involuntarily recruited” (I think the real term is “drafted”) to help protect five civilian settlements on Mars. Never mind that there is no corroborating evidence for this, that we’ve had spacecraft (as have other nations) in orbit around Mars for decades and we’ve had rovers on Mars since the 20th century. There is nothing seen there that would suggest any of this… oh, wait, I forgot, NASA and the other world space programs routinely delete anything that would suggest this is true which is why we don’t see it. It is a secret after all.

Nope. I don’t believe any of this, and while the stories being told aren’t even good science fiction. I’m not sure why anyone would accept any of this as true, but apparently there are many who do. If you’re interested in these tales as just stories, fine, but if you believe this nonsense you are in need of some professional help.

Solway Spaceman aka the Templeton Spaceman
Second, on one of the news feeds, was the Solway Spaceman or the Cumberland Spaceman. The picture was taken back in the 1960s by Jim Templeton so it is also known as the Templeton Spaceman. Anyway, he didn’t see the figure in the viewfinder of the camera as he took a picture of his daughter. It looked like someone in a space suit complete with visor and this puzzled Templeton. He took the photograph to the police, who did investigate but didn’t find a solution that was satisfactory.

British UFO investigator, David Clarke, has proposed what seems like the best solution. According to him, Templeton’s wife, Annie, who was wearing a light blue dress and had short dark hair, wandered into the frame, unseen by Templeton. The camera viewfinder only showed about 70% of what would be captured on film. With her back to the camera, and her light blue dress washed out by the bright sun, it is possible that it was her in the picture. According to Clarke, other pictures taken at the same time, showed the dress in the same washed out color and the haircut that suggests some sort of helmet.

To me, this very plausible explanation makes sense. I mean, if there had been a spaceman wandering around the park that day, wouldn’t there have been other reports, and possibly other pictures. Looking at it with the thought it might be a woman with her back to the camera, you can see that as well.


The problem here, with both these stories is that one is absurd and the second is an optical illusion. Both have solutions. One you don’t believe because there is no reliable, corroborative evidence and the other we know what was seen. Yet, both of them have popped up again, this week and we shouldn’t have to deal with either of them. As I have said in the past of many other UFO cases, these two should be relegated to footnotes if not forgotten completely. That, of course, will never happen and in ten years I’ll probably have to revisit these reports to explain all this again.

Tuesday, February 06, 2018

Curse of Oak Island and the Knights Templar Cross

I now understand why the Laginas boys are chasing the Knights Templar again. It has nothing to do with that lead cross recovered during one of the recent metal detector sweeps. I believe it has to do with the upcoming programs on History about the Knights Templar. It is known as cross (forgive the unintentional pun) pollination.

But first, I journey into the past. Remember that old program, Chasing UFOs? They went to Roswell, camped out on the debris field (or so they said) and found a button off an Air Force uniform that some said proved the Air Force had been there… but all it really proved was that someone didn’t know his or her history. In July 1947, when it is said the UFO crashed, the Air Force didn’t exist as a separate branch, and if a button from a Class A uniform was found that had any relevance, it would have been from an Army uniform. It was clear to me that someone had planted that button out there for those camping to find. Someone who didn’t know the history of the military and someone who didn’t know that the debris field had been searched many times by many people using a variety of methods and the button had escaped detection. For more information on this, see:



So now we move to the Curse of Oak Island, and it had seemed that they had abandoned the Knights Templar connection a couple of seasons ago. Now they were back following those leads, which took them again to Europe, particularly France, where they found a Templar cross carved into the stone of a dungeon. It was a strange looking cross, with the left arm longer than the right and a bit of a loop, or maybe an “eye” at the top. They point this out to us, calling it a Templar cross… But you can find the images for the Knights Templar cross here:


And none of them look like the cross on Oak Island or the one carved into the wall of that dungeon which is seen here.

And then, coincidentally, a cross made of lead, was found on Oak Island that bears a striking resemblance to the cross craved in the dungeon. Extraordinary coincidence, or maybe something a little bit sinister?

It seemed to me, as mentioned on the program, that the cross was in very good condition, and had it been hiding there on the island all these years, you would expect it to be somewhat degraded… but not it was buried and they had unearthed it during all their boring around on the island. It wouldn’t have been exposed to the elements they way it would have been on the surface.

I’m not sure that I buy that because even if buried, it would have been exposed to chemicals in the soil and to the water that seems to be so close to the surface. To me it looked too pristine.  But hey, just my opinion…


Until I saw the promo for the upcoming programs about the Knights Templar. Now it seems to be cross promotion and a way to spin off a new series because it is becoming clear that the Laginas aren’t going to find any treasure. They’ve played around on the island for years, brought in amazing technology, dug down to the bedrock in what they said was the original money pit and they have no treasure. The string has just about played out.