Friday, April 22, 2016

Twining vs Roswell

There are those who believe that Lieutenant General Nathan F. Twining’s letter of September 23, 1947, closes the door on the Roswell crash. They cite the line about the lack of crash recovered debris as proof that there was no crash because all the testimony gathered from so many of the officers in Roswell and Fort Worth pointed to Wright Field as the destination of the crash debris. If such was the case, then Twining had to know because he was the commander there and since he mentioned the lack of crash debris, it must not exist.

Stan Friedman has countered this by claiming that the letter was only classified secret and if Roswell was an alien spaceship, then that information would have been classified as top secret. That would prevent the information being included in
Wright Field, now Wright Patterson AFB. Photo
courtesy of the USAF.
a letter with a lower classification… and to include it would have raised the classification to top secret. He is right that the inclusion of top secret material raises the classification but he is wrong about why there is no mention of the Roswell crash in the letter. That answer lies in the history of its creation, something that is rarely examined.

Those whose responsibility it was to determine the nature of the saucers  in 1947 wondered if the saucers might not be a highly classified research project, which meant that a few, at the very top of the chain of command, would have access to that information. Army Brigadier General George Schulgen and FBI Special Agent S. W. Reynolds believed that it was a waste of time, money, and personnel to investigate something that would eventually lead to that classified project which would remain classified but might be compromised by the investigation.

Major George Garrett, working under Schulgen, also believed that nothing useful would be found by additional Air Force investigation. Garrett and Schulgen decided that the answer was held above their pay grade and thought of a way to pass the buck back up the chain of command. They were quite certain that when they assembled their information in what might be considered an intelligence Estimate of the Situation, they would be told that those at the top knew what the flying saucers were and there would be no need to continue to investigate.

Garrett began his work on this, what I think of as a mini Estimate in July, 1947. He selected sixteen flying saucer reports with two to be added later, that seemed to demonstrate the truly unusual nature of the phenomenon, and then provided his analysis of the data that had been collected. It might be said that he drew on these specific cases because he, along with Schulgen, believed they most accurately described the objects seen, the maneuvers they performed, and they would most likely lead to the conclusion that these sightings were of a classified project then in development. They thought they would be told to quit because of that.

Typical of those reports was a sighting, from Manitou Springs, Colorado, that happened sometime between 12:15 and 1:15 p.m. on May 19, 1947 (and I note here that I found no evidence that it was reported prior to Arnold, which is an important consideration for me but not necessarily anyone else). This was a silver object that remained motionless, giving the three witnesses a good look at it, and then made a number of aerobatic maneuvers before disappearing at incredible speed. The sighting report mentioned that it had been watched through optical instruments and had been in sight for over two minutes meaning they had time to study it carefully.

Garrett also reported on a case from Greenfield, Massachusetts on June 22, 1947. According to the files:

Edward L. de Rose said, “...there appeared across his line of vision a brilliant, small, round-shaped, silvery white object” moving in a northwesterly direction as fast as or probably faster than a speeding plane at an estimated altitude of 1,000 feet or more. The object stayed in view for eight or ten seconds until obscured by a cloud bank. It reflected the sunlight strongly as though it were of polished aluminum or silver… He said it did not resemble any weather balloon he had ever seen and that “I can assure you it was very real.” 
According to the information available, this was a case that had been secretly investigated by the FBI, and given Special Agent Reynolds’ participation with Schulgen and Garrett it is not difficult to believe that the FBI was involved.

Garrett’s Estimate also included a sighting that involved multiple witnesses and pilots. The information shows that two Air Force (at the time Army Air Forces) pilots and two intelligence officers saw a bright light zigzagging in the night sky over Maxwell Air Force Base on June 28, 1947. The sighting lasted for about five minutes.

Captain Ed Ruppelt, one time chief of Project Blue Book reported it this way:

That night [June 28, 1947] at nine-twenty, four Air Force officers, two pilots and two intelligence officers from Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama, saw a bright light traveling across the sky. It was first seen just above the horizon, and as it traversed toward the observers it “zigzagged,” with bursts of high speed. When it was directly overhead it made a sharp 90-degree turn and was lost from view as it traveled south.

Though not relevant to our discussion here, the eventual label applied to the case was that this was a balloon. Although it seems that four officers, including the intelligence officers, would have been able to identify a balloon if that was what they had seen, the Air Force concluded otherwise. It would also seem that the maneuvers of the object would rule out a balloon, regardless of how strong the winds aloft were blowing.

This gives a brief glance at a few of the cases that Garrett selected for his Estimate. With Schulgen’s approval, the document was submitted to those at the Air Materiel Command for analysis. It is clear that it received some attention and it is clear that the report was given to Colonel Howard McCoy for his review.

Colonel Howard McCoy. Photo courtesy of the USAF.
McCoy, as those of you who have read my most recent books know, had been involved in the investigation of these aerial phenomena since the Foo Fighter sightings of the Second World War. And, when the Ghost Rockets were sighted over Scandinavia beginning in 1946, McCoy had a role in investigation of them, though that role was in the background. The Swedish government, fearing the Ghost Rockets were some sort of intimidation ploy by the Soviets, didn’t want overt participation by American military officers.

According to information developed by Wendy Connor and Michael Hall, McCoy had been tasked in December 1946, to create an unofficial project to gather and analyze data about all this. It was a small investigation operating from a locked office that had very restricted access by a limited number of officers. When the Arnold sighting was reported six months later and caused all that trouble, the unofficial investigation evolved into an official one. And when Garrett’s Estimate arrived in Ohio, McCoy was the natural choice to review it.

McCoy then, wrote the response to be signed by Twining. I seriously doubt that he undertook the task without consultation with Twining. It seems that this response was drafted using only the information supplied by Schulgen and Garrett and that McCoy added nothing to it or more accurately, those at Wright Field added no additional data to it. As I have mentioned in the past, I think of this in the vein of lawyers at a trial who are aware of other relevant information but do not include it because of some outside force. They make their case based on the evidence at hand and admissible and not on other information floating around them. The jury never learns about it or in this case Schulgen and Garrett never learned about it.

On September 23, 1947, Schulgen, Garrett and the others received the written response from Twining’s staff. This response was telling them that the phenomenon was “something real and not visionary or fictitious.” Not only that, Twining was telling them that his command didn't know what the flying disks were and that they should be investigated, though it can be argued they had a good clue based on what had fallen near Roswell.

If the flying disks were a U.S. project, then the last thing anyone at the higher levels of the chain of command would have wanted would be an official investigation. Any investigation would be a threat to the security of the project. To end such an investigation one of those on the inside of the secret would have to drop a hint to someone on the outside. If, for example, it was such a secret project that General Twining and the AMC were outside the loop, then another general, on the inside, could call Twining to tell him to drop the investigation. He wouldn't have to spill any details of the secret project, only tell Twining that it was something he didn't need to worry about and the answer was not Soviet or anything else that could threaten national security. Twining would then end his inquiries secure in the knowledge that the solution to the mystery was already known to someone inside the US military and the government.

That didn't happen. Instead, Twining suggested that a priority project, with a rating of 2a, be created to investigate the flying saucers. He wanted information found and reported to his office. The priority level of the new project also suggested that Twining wanted his answers quickly because he was under pressure from above to end the panic that Ruppelt had reported in the Pentagon in the summer of 1947.

According to Ruppelt, there were two schools of thought about all this. One believed that the Soviets, using their captured German scientists had developed the flying disks (I reported this in The Government UFO Files). ATIC technical analysts searched for data on the German projects in captured documents in the United States, and intelligence officers in Germany were doing the same there.

It became clear, however, that the second school of thought, that is, that the UFOs were not manufactured on Earth, began to take hold when no evidence was found that the Soviets had made some sort of technological breakthrough. Even if they had, it seemed unlikely that they would be flying their new craft over the United States. If one crashed, the Soviets would have just handed their breakthrough to the US government. This is probably the inspiration for the paragraph that laments the lack of crash recovered debris, which is a reference to the lack of this sort of information contained in the material written by Garrett.

All this really does, however, is suggest that the door to the Roswell crash was not completely shut by Twining’s (McCoy’s) letter. Those on the extraterrestrial side of the argument should be disturbed by Twining’s letter but those on the skeptical side of the fence should also note that there is still a gap through which the Roswell saucer can be flown. The Twining letter does not completely rule out the crash when the history of that letter is understood.

57 comments:

Unknown said...

Interesting article!! I asked my friend, who is a historian to take a look into this time period and he was quite astonished, how serious this topic was and that even an "interplanetary explanaion" was considered.

james tankersley said...

i think if Twining had knowledge of any kind of crashed flying saucers, that he would have wrote such a statement as lack of any crashed saucer debris to cleverly keep this TOP SECRET kind of information from leaking out to the public and those in the military who did not have a need to know, especially if he was a major part of the group who wanted and evidently keep this incident covered up at all costs. as to why they wanted to keep this event covered up? its very obvious that some branches of the United States Government and the military did not know for absolute certainly what they were dealing with, who these visitors or creatures were, where they came from, though it was very obvious to anyone they did not come from this planet when first discovered, and even more important why they were here. you can tell by the way this memo was written that he had to find a way not to disclose information in case it was ever leaked out. these people who were in charge of the ongoing cover up were not stupid people. they knew what were doing, and they did it well.

cda said...

James:

You are echoing Stanton Friedman perfectly! Unfortunately, the passage of time has disproved him. But I am not going into all this again. There is not the minutest chance that after 7 decades this so-called ETH 'secret' would still be top secret, secret or anything else.

Incidentally, there is no documentary evidence that Generals McCoy or Twining had EVER HEARD of the Roswell event. None whatever.

Brian B said...

@ all

"Army Brigadier General George Schulgen and FBI Special Agent S. W. Reynolds believed that it was a waste of time, money, and personnel to investigate something that would eventually lead to that classified project which would remain classified but might be compromised by the investigation."

>>> This is a good point and one that demonstrates that it's possible within the military to keep a classified project secret even from top brass in the same branch of service. The reason of course is national security and concern for unintentional compromise.

That point is often contested by ET'ers as something that couldn't be done and hence "evidence" the military wouldn't develop advanced technology and keep it secret from themselves. Obviously these men thought differently.

@ James

"I think if Twining had knowledge of any kind of cashed saucers, that he would have wrote such a statement as lack of crashed saucer debris to keep this TOP SECRET..."

>>> If so that would make Twining, a commanding general no less, a deliberate and premeditated liar who preferred to falsify official documents to deceive his own superiors. That would make him ultimately unethical and unfit for command, but also liable under military law. Liars tend to be habitual, meaning if he did lie then his entire military record should demonstrate his complete ineptitude for command. But it doesn't... You should remember the memo was internal and classified, therefore never intended for public consumption. Are we to assume that Twining had mystical powers insomuch that he could predict 50 or 60 years into the future ufologists would seek his document so therefore he lied to obfuscate the truth?

KRandle said...

Brian -

You say, " If so that would make Twining, a commanding general no less, a deliberate and premeditated liar who preferred to falsify official documents to deceive his own superiors. That would make him ultimately unethical and unfit for command, but also liable under military law."

Except, in this case, it was Lieutenant General (three stars) Twining, responding to an enquiry from Brigadier General (one star) Schulgen, so he wasn't lying to a superior but telling a subordinate that the material that subordinate had supplied had contained nothing about crash recovered debris which would have decided the question. It wasn't a lie.

And, given the nature of dealing with classified material, can you think of no reason that it would be permissable for one officer not to reveal information to another who did not hold the proper clearance? Can you think of an instant when one governmental official told a lie for reasons of national security?

Finally, in the world of classifications, those documents at the lower levels are routinely marked for downgrading at three year intervals so that a letter classified as secret would be automatically downgraded to confidenial after three years and then to unclassifed three years later (or maybe FOUO)... secret material can be marked so that the routine is not followed and top secret requires a review, so Twining, knowing how the system worked may well have deduced that his response to his subordinate might actually be declassified and end up in civilian hands.

In the end, it is not Twining lying but omitting data that would not advance his agenda. And, remember, he was responding to a specific request filled with specific information.

So, this particular argument does nothing to advance the discussion here.

cda said...

Kevin:

You are clutching at straws. The Twining memo is quite sufficient for reasonable researchers to conclude: "no ET hardware at Roswell or anywhere else (up to that date)". I agree there are many others of a conspiracy mindset who will conclude the opposite, or who will say the opposite is still possible.

There are other memos, during 1948 & '49, mentioned by Karl Pflock, which bolster the Twining memo. He discussed them in an article in FORTEAN TIMES, Sept 1998.

So to suggest the door on 'Roswell was ET' is still open, even if only slightly, is pure wishful thinking. All right, I'll grant there is an exceedingly remote possibility that an ET craft did crash at Roswell, and maybe at Aztec too!

New Mexico, as I said before, is the "Land of Enchantment".

ElSopa said...

Kevin -

Kevin what do you think it happened in Roswell? Not asking about a recap of all the evidence, just what do you feel it happened?
Sometimes Im sure it was nothing extraterrestrial and sometimes I think it was alien :/

David Rudiak said...

An undiscussed aspect of the Twining memo, pertaining to what contents it could contain, was the distribution list at the end. The recipients weren't just Schulgen and company, but ultimately EVERYBODY named on the list, Twining strongly urging a BROAD investigation of the flying saucers by multiple government agencies:

It is recommended that:-

"3a. Headquarters, Army Air Forces issue a directive assigning a priority, security classification and Code name for a detailed study of this matter to include the preparation of complete sets of all available and pertinent data which will then be made available to the Army, Navy, Atomic Energy Commission, JRDB [Department of Defenses Joint Research and Development Board, soon to be just the RDB, headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush], the Air Force Scientific Advisory Group [or Board, AFSAB], NACA [National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, later NASA], and the RAND and NEPA [Nuclear Energy for Propulsion of Aircraft] projects for comments and recommendations, with a preliminary report to be forwarded within 15 days of receipt of the data and a detailed report thereafter every 30 days as the investigation develops. A complete interchange of data should be affected."


Thus it wasn't just the Air Force that Twining wanted deeply involved in the investigation, but all military branches plus multiple scientific research and development and national security advisory groups. A number of names of people associated with these groups later pop up in UFO investigations, in particular the RDB and Vannevar Bush, which the Wilbert Smith Canadian papers from 1950/51 finger as housing the supersecret group looking into the "modus operandii" of the saucers, or a back-engineering project. It's also not hard to see how NACA, the NEPA project, plus the AFSAB would figure into such an effort, the AFSAB, including the present day, being involved in the development of "black projects" or SAPs (Special Access Programs). Right next door to the AFSAB at the Pentagon is the main AFOSI [AF counterintelligence] branch, charged with maintaining secrecy of SAPs and sealing leaks, the same guys who wrote the 1994/95 Roswell Mogul report and 1997 Roswell crash dummies report.

However, the point I'm making here is that while SOME people within each of these groups named in the Twining memo might have a complete need-to-know (NTK) for top secret material regarding UFOs (such as a saucer crash), not everyone within these projects would NTK. Highly sensitive material would need to remain highly compartmentalized to limit leaks. This is how ALL top secret programs are handled (like the Manhattan Project), where the guy in one building might have access to certain secrets, but didn't know what the guy in the next building was doing, even though the work of both was critical to the overall success of a project. Maybe only a few key administrative figures would know the full story.

Thus the Twining memo (assuming Twining DID know about Roswell) would have to strike a balance of disclosing just enough for everyone named to treat the subject matter with total seriousness, but not disclose too much, namely top secret material that not everyone should know about. Key people who did NTK more could be read in individually later as the need arose.

The other critical part of the Twining memo is Section 2 at the top where it is stated, "2a. The phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious.
b. There are objects probably approximating the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft."


No equivocation there! These were REAL aircraft, "not visionary or fictitious"; all these agencies were to treat them as absolutely real. Now how could Twining and his people know that unless they had some VERY substantial evidence, either in the form of something like actual debris or other extremely solid, material evidence, like unequivocal photos and radar data?

Bob Koford said...

Good Evening, All

There might be another example of this type of thing. Some documents I read over the years, regarding the Ghost Rocket phenomena over Sweden and Greece, stated that no debris was ever recovered or analyzed.

Yet, there is the (originally classified Top Secret)document written by Colonel (General Staff Corps) Edwin K. Wright, DDCIG, on 1 August 1946. [quoted from UFOS and Government, cr 2012 The UFO History Group]

It states:

"2. ...the Swedish General Staff has as yet been unable to reach firm conclusions on the basis of fragments recovered"

KRandle said...

CDA -

Thanks for the opportunity here. Yes, I get that some believe that the Twining memo is the end of an alien event near Roswell, but I thought my reasoned explanation, based on my military service would demonstrate that there is a hole in it. But that wasn't the purpose of this posting...

So, the real question is, "If you accept the Twining document as completely closing the alien door, how is it that you reject the documentation that proves Mogul Flight No. 4 was cancelled?"

Dr. Crary's field notes said that it was cancelled. The typed version of his diary said that it was cancelled. It does not appear in the sequence of launches. The FAA (CAA) rules under which they operated required them not to launch into a cloudy sky. We have a definition of what a cluster of balloons was that comes from the documentation written by those participating in the balloon flights. And when I lay this all out, I am asked if it isn't possible that the field notes are inaccurate, if they are incomplete, if there isn't some other possibility for Flight No. 4. The answer is no, but that doesn't stop people from coming back to it, in light of all the documentation that argues otherwise... So, why is it that a basically throw away line in an analysis of specific information that contained no reference to crash recovered debris is seen as the end of aliens in Roswell, but all the evidenced arrayed (pun intended) against Flight No. 4 isn't sufficient to eliminate it?

Just wondering...

David Rudiak said...

If CDA, Brian Bell, etc., want to take the Twining memo as "proof" that there was no Roswell crash, then without further interpretation, then they must necessarily accept that Twining ALSO declared the saucer undeniable REAL ("NOT visionary or fictitious"), also high performance aircraft/objects of unknown origin, and likely NOT made by the U.S. (NOT one of BB's secret projects) or of a foreign power (Russia), though leaving the latter two as outside possibilities.

However, it seems very unlikely Twining and his engineering/intel people at Wright Field, would not know of such a conventional aircraft project in the U.S., nor would they likely be strongly recommending an extensive investigation into something that would be one of our own secret projects.

Nearly 70 years later we can state these REAL saucer-shaped, high-performance aircraft were definitely NOT made by us or the Russians, since there has never been any record of any such project.

I still pose the question, why did Twining and his men think the saucers to be absolutely real and strongly recommend an investigation, if there was no convincing evidence to support such a conclusion?

Bob Koford mentioned the Swedish ghost rocket investigation and recovered fragments. The Swedish military investigators came to the conclusion that the ghost rockets and saucers WERE indeed extraterrestrial in origin, as this USAF Europe Top Secret document from Oct. 1948 PROVES:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1948_Top_Secret_USAF_UFO_extraterrestrial_document.png

Funny, the experts who actually studied the data kept coming to the conclusion that UFOs were quite real and probably NOT made by anyone on planet Earth, not public mass hysteria and not "brain glitches". (The Swedes, e.g., are known to have tracked 200 ghost rockets on radar, so PHYSICAL evidence of reality quite independent of eyewitness testimony.)

Brian B said...

@ Kevin - you wrote:

"....secret material can be marked so that the routine is not followed and top secret requires a review, so Twining, knowing how the system worked may well have deduced that his response to his subordinate might actually be declassified and end up in civilian hands."

AND

"So, this particular argument does nothing to advance the discussion here."

>>> Actually it does because you're claiming there's a tiny interpretive loophole in Twining's memo that allows for an alien crash at Roswell to be completely hidden and therefore likely.

To which I respond:

A. If your claim is true, that Twining deliberately chose to obfuscate facts because Schulgen didn't have the need to know, he might have alleviated his concerns by simply:

1) Calling Schulgen on the phone and dictating the memo's content without ever putting anything in writing to avoid declassification issues. The memo was already marked "secret".

2) Or better yet, simply classify the silly document at a higher level -- top secret -- to minimize declassification risk altogether!

Simple solutions if you want to keep subordinates in the dark with no paper trail.

Let me further add:

B. Documents written by high ranking generals are routinely circulated, filed, and kept for some time. An authorized person holding the proper classification level (as Twining) would potentially have access to the memo then or in the future. So Twining preferred to write documents with false information even though someday he knew these memos may be accessed by authorized personnel seeking factual, not misrepresented data?

C. While the memo was meant for Schulgen, you failed to acknowledge that correspondence written by command officers is also subject to review by superiors. Unless Twining was so powerful he could say or write anything without repercussion.

D. Your statement that Twining "...may well have..." is pure conjecture. We know what he wrote and therefore can conclude he penned what he intended without weaving in secret conspiracy plots and deliberately deceptive memos.

In the 23 September 1947 memo he offers information that hardly demonstrates his belief "flying discs" are extraterrestrial - in fact it demonstrates the opposite based on his assessment.

Twining describes discs that exhibit qualities very unlike advanced alien technology:

- Contrails from exhaust...
- Disciplined formation flying....
- Rumbling or roaring sound....
- Speeds around 350 mph...(not fast)
- 7000 miles range....

His concluding statements:

- Disc technology observed can be replicated by the U.S...

- Development of such technology must be kept separate from other classified projects...

- Discs observed may already be classified U.S. projects unknown to him or AMC...

- Crash evidence from flying discs is currently not in his possession...

- The discs may be foreign aircraft...

Schulgen adds further descriptive characteristics in his draft memo:

- Extreme maneuverability and ability to hover...

- An oval or disc with dome shape on top...

- Absence of exhaust trail although often emitting a bluish color like Diesel exhaust or brownish smoke from a catalyst or chemical agent...

- The ability to quickly disappear by high speed or disintegration...

- The ability to suddenly appear without warning...

- Evasive ability being manually operated or by electronic or remote control....

- Ability to cut a path through clouds...

To an unbiased reader what's being described is an unconventional terrestrial aircraft with advanced flight characteristics previously unknown. In fact, the craft sounds more like a VTOL with supporting thrusters such as a ramjet or repulsive engine.

Additionally if Twining meant to keep Schulgen in the dark, how was Schulgen able to get additional descriptions of the craft? Why also was the memo given to the Condon Committee in 1969 when it wasn't declassified till the late 1970's?

cda said...

Kevin:

In the end it hardly matters whether Flight 4 existed or not. What really matters is what documentation there is that suggests an ET craft crashed to earth. As it stands, Twining wrote that there are NO "crash recovered exhibits" or some such wording. Therefore, as far as he and his team knew there were no such exhibits or material. I could go a step further and say it more or less proves Twining had NEVER HEARD of Roswell, or Aztec either. Therefore any material that DID crash (at Roswell or anywhere else) was definitely NOT considered as part of a flying saucer. Therefore what landed or crashed at Roswell was NOT an unknown craft. Period.

Yes we can all have doubts about Mogul flight 4. But the end result is the same: Nothing in the category of an unknown craft (ET or Russian etc) had been recovered up to the date of Twining's memo, Sept 23. The only way out is to assume Twining was lying.

I refuse to go over this pointless argument again over 'secret' and 'top secret' documents. I leave this to Stan Friedman, David Rudiak and others.

John's Space said...

I believe this topic is where I first joined this blog. At the time I was pro-UFO and anti-Roswell. The Twining memo seemed to be the final door on Roswell. My rationale for this was that when the Roswell story took off those managing the cover up knowing that there was nothing to it decided to use it to distract urologists and waste their efforts. The MJ-12 documents were concocted to assure that outcome. The absurd explanations of Roswell in the 1990s by the Air Force reinforced this effort. Neat theory, right?

Kevin argument does challenge this theory. And, he is right that false information has been used to keep people at lower levels of clearance or need-to-know from finding out about things that are ultrasensitive. For example the way the Enigma decoding operation was handled by the UK/US during World War 2.

So basically the memo doesn't settle Roswell at all. What it does indicate is that the very high levels of the Air Force did think that UFOs were real. That they merited a serious investigation. This investigation concluded that UFOs were extraterrestrial (interplanetary), the study was terminated, and a strict policy of denial followed.

What is interesting is that if Kevin's pro-Roswell theory is true why did Twinging request the study? He presumably knew the answer and decision makers above him had decided that it was very top secret. Wouldn't all of the requested investigations tend to compromise this big secret? In fact when higher ups were faced with the Estimate of the Situation, they shut Sign down and replaced it with a disinformation project named Grudge.

Or, perhaps he didn't know the answer? Is that possible? That the Roswell crash debris were stored in a classified facility on his base but he didn't really "know" what it was. He may have had some suspicions but like Schulgen wasn't cleared. Maybe this request to launch a study was a way to "ping" the system to see what the reaction would be. Also, signing that memo was one his last acts as commander of the air material command.

KRandle said...

Brian -

You still don't get it... Twining's response was written based on the information supplied by Schulgen. There is no record of a call between Twining and Schulgen which certainly doesn't preclude that possibility, or what is known as a back channel communication.

CDA -

You still don't get it either. My question is why you accept the Twining memo as the absolute truth, even after I have laid out the historical framework for it, yet continue to reject the documentation that Flight No. 4 never launched. I want to know why you reject this documentation...

cda said...

Kevin:

The Twining memo states that no crashed exhibits of flying discs had been recovered as of Sept 23. The Roswell 'crash' took place over two months earlier. Had this been a genuine UFO crash, Twining would have known about it and, most probably, have seen the debris himself. So to give a slight loophole for yourself you have to suggest other possibilities to explain Twining's negative answer. In plain English, NO hardware means precisely that. As I said before, there is at least one McCoy memo from 1948 that re-inforces what Twining wrote in Sept '47.

Concerning Flight 4, I do not care one iota whether this specific flight went up or not. The point being that even if it did not, the descriptions given at the time, plus the photos at Ft Worth, amply support the idea that the debris was a balloon + radar target and NOT an ET craft. You reject this because you, and many others, prefer to accept the anecdotal tittle-tattle obtained from people 40 years later; plus the alleged cover-up, etc.

When you finally discover some official memos or documentation written in the late 40s that say "crash recovered exhibits" were found, analysed and proven to be extraterrestrial in nature, your case will be established. I challenge you now to do so.

Brian B said...

@ Kevin

You wrote:

"You [Brian] still don't get it. Twining's response was written based on the information supplied by Schulgen."

>>> Instead of pressing a case that Twining's memo leaves the door open to AMC's hiding alien technology collected near Roswell, it's best to present the memo in the broader context of Air Force correspondence at that time.

Singling out this one memo as a potential "loophole" ignores how it fits into the chain of memos between various intelligence offices leading up to the Air Forces' official study -- Project SIGN.

Some facts worth mentioning:

1) General Schulgen and Colonels Taylor and Garrett were first given the job of investigating the saucer problem with S.L.Reynolds and the FBI peeking over their shoulders.

2) After evaluating some cases and coming up empty on their origins (foreign or domestic), Schulgen wrote General Twining at AMC for an opinion on their nature, presuming perhaps it was a classified project, and thus providing descriptive characteristics of the discs.

3) To my knowledge Schulgen's letter to Twining has never surfaced. We don't know what it asked. But we know conversations between various Air Force intelligence offices had been describing the same flight characteristics for discs observed.

4) Though Schulgen wrote to Twining, he was really writing to Colonel Howard McCoy (Chief of Intelligence, AMC). McCoy would've been the one to answer Schulgen's questions.

5) We know McCoy asked T2 and T3 to answer the questions and to provide their assessment of the disc's capabilities. You can read who he invited right on the memo.

6) These engineers offered their opinions and confirmed similar if not identical disc characteristics as described by Schulgen.

7) To their knowledge they also confirmed; a). Nothing like the flying disks were being developed at T-3 (other than Alfred Loedding's saucer concepts), b) Doing so is expensive but possible, and c). They had no knowledge of any other projects elsewhere.

8) Under normal protocol McCoy (or someone in T-2) would've prepared a draft copy of the memo, all staff sections would have reviewed it for comments and corrections which would then be given to Twining for his comments and corrections, and finally a typed version for his signature. Procedure required the original draft copy to be retained.

So your previous response suggesting Twining may have used the classified system and deliberate omissions to deny Schulgen and keep the truth from public eyes makes little sense given the full story.

In the same breath, if Schulgen's office had already conducted case studies on reliable disc sightings, had forwarded those to AMC requesting an opinion, and got back a response suggesting that an informal study be initiated to further study the discs, we can hardly conclude Twining was hiding anything.

In fact Schulgen then drafted a memo describing what AMC engineers were looking for, and based on recommendations from Paperclip scientists at AMC, recommended the Horton Brothers be found.

There's nothing here to really back the ETH. Nothing at all.

If anything the memos are describing advanced technology within current capability (but expensive), from a source most likely foreign based on captured German technology.

james tankersley said...

i still don't think that any kind of sensitive information regarding things like the crashed Roswell flying saucer would have ever been revealed in a memo like this because as I stated before, the military and the United States Government did not know how they were going to further proceed on to what just fell in the desert a few months earlier......a craft evidently not from this earth with its strange occupants. all on the understandable grounds of NATIONAL SECURITY and a need to know basis not to mention a possible public panic if these strange occupants looked anything like the big headed bug eyed creatures often reported in much of UFO lore these days. i recognize there have been similar and conflicting witness report as to what the occupants looked like and how many civilian and military witnesses viewed them up close and personal. I don't know if that issue will ever be resolved satisfactorily because of too many people coming forward to just put themselves in the spotlight and be on TV. This ongoing problem has further clouded the reality of the event especially when these people cant backup their claims and are discovered lying about their role in the event.

Anthony Mugan said...


The wide circulation list is a very fundamental point, and the point Kevin makes reflects normal intelligence practice as I understand it.

The circulation list David highlights may also give us a clue as to why the recommendations of the Twinning memo (a large scale inter-agency study) did not transpire - at least not in the form recommended.

This is speculative on my part, but with some documentary support.

If you were convinced that you were dealing with something 'real' then you would want to develop programmes of work in several areas.
a) Capability - what are the performance characteristics, tactical approaches used, weaponry etc.? This is a straight Air Technical Intelligence job
b) Intent - can we deduce this? E.g. Is there evidence of a reconnaissance pattern? Is this worldwide or just in the USA? Are there indications of hostile intent? Any trends in these patterns? This draws on the raw data that informs (a) but is a Air Intelligence Analysis job

capability plus intent = threat (eventual answer - not a threat to national security as whilst capability is considerable, intent appear non-hostile).

c) Origins - Given the focus on looking at the Soviets in the early days of all this origins may not have totally clear. However finding out what the Soviet's were doing / thinking would also feed into points a and b. This goes to Air Intelligence Requirements and out from there
d) What can we learn - does this give us insights of use in the major R&D issues of the time (rockets, atomics, radar) plus aerodynamics, materials etc.? This is a JRDB / NEPA / AFSAB job.
e) How do we manage the public (and politicians)? This is not mentioned in the memo

In other words the memo reflects a set of recommendations written for a relatively wide audience that recognises the seriousness and urgency of the situation. It does this however from a military and technical R&D perspective and does not consider at all the very considerable political issues this generates.

What actually seems to have happened is a technical intelligence exercise to capture data (which quickly had to be limited into a public facing raw data gathering exercise with a main focus on 'explaining' reports). There then appears to be a second tier study probably focused in the RDB (the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board keep cropping up in this story as well). This conclusion is based on the Smith memo and the comments in Ruppelt's book, combined with Sarbacher's comments. Walker and Exxon may also connect into this. This second tier has to stay classified or it would rather blow the public relations side of things. This latter consideration can not have changed significantly in the last seventy years as the basic facts of the situation and the basic issues raised regarding the public are little changed.

We shouldn't underestimate how difficult it probably was to get a coherent approach to all this in the midst of major reorganisations emerging from the National Security Act. The basic approach seems to be in place quite quickly but to really get quite refined only after the Robertson Panel. By the 1960's Blue Book could be dispensed with as the raw data collection side of it was being done by the civilian groups.

So - to come back to the original article - I don't think the memo allows us to firmly conclude anything, either way, about Roswell.

Paul Young said...

cda..."Concerning Flight 4, I do not care one iota whether this specific flight went up or not."

That's quite a staggering statement considering the whole of the "Case Closed" report's final standing on the Roswell event hinges on the debris being that of a mogul...and the only mogul it could have been is Flight 4.

You must know the implications of flight 4 never flying is proof positive that a section of the US government, and military, are STILL lying to their citizens.

What could possibly be that important after 70 years?

Don said...

The 'Twining Memo' is the opinion of "the Command" regarding a selection of flying disc reports presented to it. Their opinion is that the "phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious."(2a)

Is there any paragraph in the 'Memo' supporting their opinion? Do they offer any reason(s) for their opinion?

The "objects" are "approximately the shape of a disc" and aircraft-sized(2b)

Some reported "objects" are probably natural phenomena (2c)

Considering the reported performance characteristics, they might be piloted or automatic or remotely controlled. (2d)

(Further reported descriptions)(2e,1-6)

It is currently possible "to construct a piloted aircraft which has the general description of the object in (e) above" (2f)

It would be "extremly expensive" to do so. (2g)

Then comes 'h'

They might be domestic (h1) -- meaning the USN

The might be foreign (h3) -- meaning the USSR

Their opinon is the phenomenon is real, so, since they (the folks in paragraph 1) don't have such an object, they must be from another source, foreign or domestic (these are very 'material boys')

But h2 is the interesting sub-par:

"The lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which would undeniably prove the existence of these objects."

Obviously, if their opinion is the discs are real then someone foreign or domestic would have "exhibits", but we -- "the Command" don't have any.

But why do they assume such exhibits would be "crash recovered"? There are other possibilities, especially if the "objects" are domestic. And why the 'undeniably'? Seems to indicate perhaps heated disputes.

Regards,

Don

Don said...

CDA "The Twining memo states that no crashed exhibits of flying discs had been recovered as of Sept 23."

No it doesn't. It reads that they (all the units mentioned in par. 1, or "the Command") don't have any exhibits. They had no idea if anyone else did, the AAF, or "foreign" or "domestic" (h1, h3). They were only speaking for themselves, not the USN or the USSR -- or any unit in the AAF not them.

Regards,

Don




cda said...

Don:

I agree that Twining's memo does not strictly rule out the possibility that some other branch of the AF or the navy might have had access to "crash recovered exhibits". But this is hardly the point, since pro-ETHers stress that the Roswell debris was shipped to Wright Field for examination (or at least the bulk of it was). They insist that people like Generals Exon and du Bose said precisely this, 40-odd years later. It certainly was the logical place for the debris to go, if it indeed went anywhere beyond Roswell & Ft.Worth.

Here we have Twining in Sept '47 and McCoy in '48 telling us in official memos that NO such unidentified hardware had ever been brought to the USAF at Wright Field for study.

Therefore we have written evidence from people on high that what duBose and Exon 'remembered' decades later is false.

This is good enough for me. Instead Kevin and his 'gang' insist on Twining's memo having other possible interpretations, with Stan Friedman banging on about 'secret' vs 'top secret' and so on.

Whether the debris was foreign or whether it was ET, the plain truth is: NONE of it came to their technical HQ at Wright Field for analysis. If any ETHers say otherwise, let them produce a document to prove their point. (MJ-12 was a brave attempt to do precisely this).

KRandle said...

Brian –

You, of course, added nothing new to the conversation other than your speculation. Most of what you said was covered in this post or others that preceded it.

We know that Garrett forwarded 16 sighting reports that he (and by extension Schulgen) thought were indicative of a phenomenon that deserved further study. They believed, at that time, it was a classified research project and believed that Twining’s response would be to end the investigation. We know that McCoy was the author of the letter, prepared for Twining’s signature, and may assume that Twining was involved in the creation of it. We know that a classified staff study would have limited circulation to avoid compromise. While almost every officer has a secret clearance the other end comes into play which is need to know. So we know everything that Brian has “shared” with us without telling us anything of importance.

But, of course, he doesn’t ask the relevant question or make the relevant point. If Twining is attempting to hide the idea that there was crash-recovered-debris at Roswell, why in the hell would he suggest an investigation into the flying saucers? Wouldn’t this invite compromise?

To which I would answer that it is possible that this debris, which for the sake of this argument we’ll say was of alien origin, may not have provided much else in the way of answers. By limiting it to a classified project he was limiting access to it and keeping civilians away from it (by telling them the name was Project Saucer which in the world of the uncompromising is a LIE and have them searching in the wrong place) and gathering information that might help unlock the secrets of that debris. He needed information, but those doing the investigation are kept away from the top secret ultimate solution. Is he playing a dangerous game? Of course, but he does need the information.

My real point here, the one dodged repeatedly by CDA and ignored by Brian, is the simple question… If you accept this document as proof there was no Roswell crash then how can you ignore the documentation from Dr. Crary’s field notes and diary that tell us there was no Mogul Flight No. 4? Why is one document believed totally and the other open to questions about its reliability?

Brian B said...

A few thoughts for all to ponder:

Don has a good point and it shouldn't be lost.

It's obvious this memo is referring to AMC and what they know or don't know about the discs. AMC is confirming they don't have any Roswell debris. So in a sense CDA is correct about that.

But as Don stated, this can only apply to AMC, and specifically the areas McCoy brought together to discuss it. It certainly does not refer to the entire US military establishment. So yes, as Don noted, that really only leaves the USN or the Soviets as the source of the craft.

However, CDA's point does confirm AMC DID NOT have any type of captured "disc" material in their possession in September 1947. That means Roswellian supporters who insist alien crash debris was secretly flown from Fort Worth to AMC in July 1947 are wrong.

The only way to escape this conclusion is to insist Twining deliberately hid information by editing the McCoy memo before he signed it, with the intention of duping Schulgen and his intelligence office.

That makes no sense when Schulgen was the one largely supplying the disc specifics to AMC, following which Twining agreed with those characteristics, confirmed it could be replicated, and then asks Schulgen to undertake a broader unofficial study to evaluate the situation.

Anthony is also correct when he states the level of confusion demonstrated by this memo. The entire series of internal correspondence available to us today indicates not only confusion, but duplication of effort and intra-branch rivalry among various intelligence offices.

We can't forget the FBI also wanted in on this investigation, as the agency was quite powerful in those days by nature of having grown its own intelligence gathering system during WW2.

In my opinion all of the correspondence indicates no one had a crashed alien saucer in their possession from anywhere - Roswell or otherwise. Additionally they didn't have any material from a domestic saucer either.

Even so, these men were still very concerned about the source of the flying objects and our national security. Their natural presumption (perhaps preliminary conclusion) was that the discs were either of Soviet or domestic origin.

There's no hint of alien anything in this memo or other related correspondence.

Furthermore, Kevin recently highlighted yet another document that clearly supports CDA's conclusion that AMC did not have saucer material in their possession, nor any such material within the Air Force as a whole.

"Air Intelligence Report No. 100-203-79", written in December 1948, makes this clear. In that document (marked "Top Secret") saucer reports considered credible by Air Force Intelligence are highlighted. Their case file reaches back far enough to mention the Arnold and Rhodes sightings but nothing related to Roswell.

There's no mention of the Roswell incident being one of the more credible disc cases. And there's no reference to alien spacecraft debris from Roswell being linked to the credible sightings reported.

"Air Intelligence Report No. 100-203-79" concludes with a summary not any different than Twining's memo written a year earlier. In fact, it states Air Force Intelligence still doesn't know what the discs are, and the real possibility they remain terrestrial craft either foreign or domestic.

For ET supporters, the only way out of this conundrum is to claim these and all other related documents are faked, or perhaps disinformation, or even legitimate documents but telling only half-truths to hide a major alien secret from the American public. In doing so alien supporters typically claim the REAL documents are still hidden and therefore unavailable by nature of a massive worldwide coverup.

Unfortunately, claiming the evidence exists and that it will never be seen is simply the fantasy of conspiracy prone minds.

Brian B said...

@ Kevin

Well perhaps the information isn't new to you, but other casual readers who don't have interest in combing through years of your blog posts to connect the dots on this topic (intelligence correspondence and Twining's memo).

Your focus on this memo (written by McCoy) is another myopic attempt to single out one document that in your opinion leaves the door open to Twining conducting a "dangerous game" of calculated words and deception to find his answers about aliens while deliberately duping his own men, playing one office off the other, purposely misdirecting subordinates, and intentionally confusing a national security issue to serve his own needs.

Once again if this is your stance, Twining was unfit for command. If not then you'll have to explain what type of training you and general officers recieved that encourages (if not totally endorses) your deliberate deception of fellow officers in national security matters just to accomplish your personal mission.

I realize you've recieved intelligence training, but do tell us how and under what circumstances commanding generals are given complete authority to decieve everyone everywhere through tactics that not only cost U.S. taxpayer dollars, but diminishes the military and creates a wild goose chase for nothing while making fools out of fellow officers at the risk of total failure and breach of national security.

If that's what generals are allowed to do, it's time to sweep the Pentagon clean (both then and now).

And regarding Flight #4, you must not have read (no surprise there) or recalled my prior statements. I've already written that based on the information at hand, we have to conclude Flight #4 was not the culprit. I may not like that, but based on what we have to examine (right or wrong), it's a conclusion we must accept until other information points otherwise (if that's even possible).

That an error (omission) in Crary's diary can explain this has not left my mind. Or likewise that the material found was from some other balloon experiment of little importance.

But we don't have anything at present that can demonstrate that sufficiently. It may still exist somewhere but we don't have it.

So as I wrote we'll go with what we've got until something can reliably change that.

As for CDA, he's the only one who can answer for himself, but for me he's already done that in a prior post.

KRandle said...

Brian -

You still do not get it. The Twining memo was based on information supplied through BG Schulgen and was an analysis of those cases. They added nothing to the mix. Twining didn't lie, he didn't edit, he reviewed and I'm sure that he and McCoy discussed the issue, but in the end, it was an analysis of the information supplied.

And that is all that this memo means. It is not based on anything wider than those cases supplied. All it says is that the phenomenon is something real, which means that it is not invented, spots in front of the eyes, illusion or delusion. There is something going on which might be domestic, might be foreign or might be something else... but the point is that it is based on those cases supplied.

Mr. Sweepy said...

Kevin, I read the article and comments. Interesting. One thought is, could the document been later upgraded to Top Secret? People do make mistakes and maybe this is one case. Second, have you ever seen any military documents with one than one security classification? Curious about your thoughts.

KRandle said...

Brian -

I will add that high rank is not a prerequisite for access to classified material and a top secret clearance does not mean you have access to all top secret material. Protecting the classified material is one of the jobs of those who have access to it. When you understand that you can stop making dumb arguments.

Craig McDaniel -

Of course there are documents with more than one classification on them but they are documents on which the classification was downgraded. Rarely are they upgraded... but the old classification is marked through.

cda said...

Kevin:

I take Brian's side here. His last comment matches exactly what I think and say.

You are straining credibility when you say Twining merely answered Schulgen's points, "And that is all that this memo means. It is not based on anything wider than those cases supplied".

Do you really suppose Twining would have ever mentioned the complete lack of "crash recovered exhibits" in this memo if AMC indeed had such "exhibits", quite irrespective of whether Schulgen had brought it up in the first place?

What you are saying, in effect, is that Twining's thoughts were:

"Schulgen asked us (i.e. Twining et al) about certain specific UFO cases. These were all aerial sightings. He never referred to Roswell or any UFO crashes, so although we have the Roswell disc here at AMC and have determined it to be extraterrestrial, I'll keep quiet and not tell Schulgen about it".

A preposterous notion! Is this your thesis, as a 'way out' of your Roswell dilemma?

It sounds to me as if you are making a desperate last stand to keep the 'Roswell is ET' myth alive (similar to that Ramey memo that certain others go on about).

If an official document says X equals Y you will try your best to find a way for it to mean X does not equal Y. (Just as Stan Friedman did with that FBI teletype).

Brian B said...

@ Kevin

Your responses keep contradicting themselves to the point they're not only confusing but clearly aimed at distorting the obvious for sake of bending it towards your speculative hypothesis or agenda.

Here's why:

You wrote - "My real point here, the one dodged repeatedly by CDA and ignored by Brian, is the simple question… If you accept this document as proof there was no Roswell crash then how can you ignore the documentation from Dr. Crary’s field notes and diary that tell us there was no Mogul Flight No. 4?"

So let me get this straight. You post an article about the Twining Memo (Twining vs Roswell) articulating the story behind the Twining response, but you really wanted a discussion about why skeptics accept Flight #4 as the only answer behind Roswell?

Yes that's confusing.

You also wrote - "Brian, you still don't get it."

Yup. You're right. I'm confused by your method and logic. It's as if you posted an article about the Easter Bunny vs the Tooth Fairy but really wanted a discussion about Santa Claus.

Most of us, both skeptic and believer, are discussing details of Twining's Memo and various interpretations thereof. As a reader I find that worthy. I don't see any connection behind Flight #4 and Twining's Memo; two separate events and neither mentions the other.

Then you seemingly contradict yourself by stating AMC added nothing to Schulgen's material.

"It seems that this response [Twining Memo] was drafted using only the information supplied by Schulgen and Garrett and that McCoy added nothing to it or more accurately, those at Wright Field added no additional data to it."

"They [AMC] added nothing to the mix."

...contradicted by...

"In the end, it is not Twining lying but omitting data that would not advance his agenda."

"Twining's response was written based on the information supplied by Schulgen."

We agree that Schulgen supplied the initial disc descriptions to AMC along with their performance characteristics for T2 and T3 (Intelligence and Engineering) to opine.

But you maintain AMC "added nothing to the mix" and Twining was "omitting data that would not advance his agenda" in his response to Schulgen, which by your statements indicates he was simply restating data already supplied to him by Schulgen less confirmation about aliens, which Schulgen must have known since he supplied the data to AMC in the first place.

How does AMC "omit data" while "adding nothing to the mix" when "Twining's response was written based on the information supplied by Schulgen?"

Confusing indeed.

If that logic holds, then Schulgen must have been an idiot too for not recognizing his own information was regurgitated back to him less something important that he already knew.

This sort of twisted logic is why ufology suffers despair.

What you apparently want to say is Twining didn't confirm an alien origin for the discs or a domestic one either.

But unfortunately the claim that AMC "added nothing" is unfounded.

They did:

1) They didn't know what the objects were but surmised Soviet or domestic aircraft.

2) Engineering determined it can be built using current technology although expensive.

3) That such an undertaking needs to be a separate project.

4) The phenomenon was real.

5) That an unofficial project be launched to further investigate the discs.

It's amazing you claim AMC "added nothing to the mix" when clearly they assessed the situation and recommended actions noted above.

Let's remember the original request from Schulgen has never surfaced from any FOIA, meaning your argument that Schulgen supplied all of the recommendations to Twining, and that Twining simply edited them and sent them back is unfounded.

But then again your goal was not a discussion of Twining's memo but rather a confession from skeptics as to why they accept Flight #4 as Roswell's explanation.

Don said...

Kevin: "All it says is that the phenomenon is something real, which means that it is not invented, spots in front of the eyes, illusion or delusion. There is something going on which might be domestic, might be foreign or might be something else... but the point is that it is based on those cases supplied."

We agree. There are a few interesting things about the 'Memo'. Unless I totally miss it, the 'Memo' does not provide the reasons for the opinion. Why not? Is it in another document?

The opinion "is based on those cases supplied". So, they were preselected for a purpose. I don't know if we have a list of those cases and if they would lead anyone to that conclusion. Certainly skeptics should be skeptical of an disc opinion based on "reports" only.

It seems obvious they were interested in saucer reports that gave the impression of Horten-like supersonic aircraft -- that's what the memo describes as the "phenomenon".

As for the Memo's connection to Roswell, I don't see any. But here's a few coincidences:

This is the third 1947 document that refers to crashed discs (the others are the two newspaper stories about Roswell mentioned in another recent discussion).

This is the second 1947 document referring to a flying disc reality (the other was the canonical Roswell press release).

This is the second 1947 document indicating a dispute or disagreement regarding the saucer reality among the principals.

"The lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which would undeniably prove the existence of these objects."

This reads like an insertion (redaction) into an already existing draft. The discussion probably wasn't too different than this discussion -- one between advocates and skeptics. It may be evidence of two factions, one faction unwilling to sign onto the 'Memo' unless it noted the absence of physical evidence. The word "undeniably" is unnecessary in h2, except as a concession to a skeptical faction.

In the final news stories after Ft Worth, we learn there were "diehards among the principals" who did not agree with the Ramey's rawin story (and several military and civilian meteorolgists are quoted expressing degrees of skekpticism).

So, what were the reasons for the opinion? And why "crash recovered exhibits" only?

Best Regards,

Don

Bob Koford said...

To all:

In actuality, there has been evidence for this type of thing in the BB files all along. That is, that one group not informing the others about certain parts of the whole story.

First of all, it seems likely, because of what certain of the documents within the files say, that the Army General Staff is the reason the Air Force is gathering the data in the first place. This would mean that the Joint Chiefs were the top dogs, and others in the Air Force knew it. For all we know this might have been in place even before the Roswell affair. If certain aspects could't be discussed out of turn, then they weren't going to do it at any level. Especially if, because the Army was in control, the others might not have known the full story anyway.

When you consider the McLaughlin affair that took place a few years later, remember that the Army PIO was the one who ordered the other parties in the room to ignore what the Commander was saying, because "the Army still considered the subject SECRET."

McLaughlin even balked, saying something like, "whaddya mean, everybody knows this stuff...its no secret," whereupon the Army PIO got very agitated with him. It was clear that McLaughlin was purposely trying to buck the secrecy.

There are other examples in the files as well, showing a discrepancy between the different Armed Forces, as to whether or not there was anything that could't be talked about.

cda said...

Brian:

What Kevin is saying, in a roundabout way, is this:

Since Schulgen did not refer to Roswell (or any other landed/crashed disc) in his memo to Twining on flying discs, so Twining, despite having an actual crashed disc his possession at Wright Field, deliberately told Schulgen exactly the opposite in his reply.

As I said before, Kevin is desperately trying to show that if an official memo says X is false, it may still (by a suitable re-interpretation) actually mean X is true.

Kevin made a fatal mistake in bringing up the Twining memo. It has been public for 40 years now and we still have the ETHers trying to make it mean the exact opposite of what it says!

Don said...

"The lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which would undeniably prove the existence of these objects."

Due to the absence of a comma between "exhibits" and "which", it is possible to read it as not that there were no exhibits, but there just wasn't any of the exhibits that was undeniable proof.


Regards,

Don

David Rudiak said...

There is a VERY strong back-engineering component to the Twining memo, first stating that it might be possible to build a disc with some of the observed characteristics (but would be "extremely expensive", a true understatement). It strongly urged an official investigation with a wide distribution list, including multiple agencies involved in advanced aeronautical research and development, namely:

JRDB/RDB: Research and Development Board, headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush (the same group that met in a suddenly called meeting by Gen. Vandenberg the morning of July 8, 1947, simultaneous with the staff meeting at Roswell, also fingered by the Smith/Sarbacher/Canadian embassy 1950/51 documents as housing a supersecret group headed by Bush investigating the "modus operandi" of the saucers.

NACA: National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, became NASA in 1958. Vannevar Bush headed this 1940-41. Bush remained on the Board of NACA through the end of 1948. Dr. Jerome Hunsaker (MIT) was chair 1941-1957.

NEPA: Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft. An Air Force project, headed by Gen. Curtis LeMay (Deputy head of AF R&D who was briefing Vandenberg just before that JRDB meeting July 8, 1947). Another briefer was Dr. Henry Bowles, of MIT, a close associate of Bush, and advisor to the Secretary of Defense. Another important figure in NEPA was Dr. Edward Condon (yes, THAT Condon).

RAND: Acronymn for Research ANd Development: Created by Gen. Hap Arnold (head of AAF), the same Dr. Bowles, and others in 1945, operated under Douglas Aircraft initially. They reported directly to Gen. LeMay. First white paper was in 1946: "Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship" (artificial satellites).

Air Force Scientific Advisory Group: Started by Hap Arnold during WWII, initially headed by Dr. Theodore von Karman. LeMay again played an important role in setting it up and was an ex-officio member, more or less running the operation out of his Pentagon office.

You'll notice a great deal of crossover between these groups in personnel and R&D. Guys like LeMay and Bush had their fingers in a lot of pies and everybody knew everybody else.

The NICAP website has some important historical contextual info on the Twining memo, including the fact that the complete memo shows HEAVY input from five heads of the aeronautical engineering department, T-3. (written in script at end of memo). Therefore it WASN'T just an intelligence memo of T-2 written solely by Col. McCoy with Twining signing off on it.

http://www.nicap.org/twining_letter.htm

Other notable items:
1. Twining had the authority and had already launched his own investigation around July 2 (in fact was quoted in the newspapers saying people were obviously seeing something and they were looking into it. Similar quotes from Vandenberg appeared July 4).

2. BEFORE writing Twining, LeMay was first contacted asking if maybe the discs weren't one of our own projects. LeMay said no (sorry, Brian Bell), therefore further investigation seemed warranted. Then Twining/AMC was contacted.

3. Alfred Loedding, civilian engineer with T-3/AMC, was heading the disc investigation and in August learned of AAF Air Intelligence radar cases from Japan, which AMC didn't have. He told McCoy who requested the reports. AF intelligence completed an analysis of the radar cases (but it is unclear if they shared with AMC). In any case, it would seem the REALITY of the discs (Schulgen/Twining/AMC) was NOT based on just eyewitness reports, but independent PHYSICAL corroboration of reality. (Roswell or no Roswell).

Not mentioned at the NICAP site but known to be true, AMC a month after the Twining memo was already beginning wind tunnel tests on disc models, so engineering studies were under way before Project Sign was official set up at the end of December.

Mr. Sweepy said...

Kevin, Thank you for the reply to my question about security classifications. I have purchases a couple of your books and taken an interest in the subject after seeing a very big cylinder that was close. So in short, I am fairly new at analyzing the UFO subject and understand the high level of interest in the subject.

The reason for the question about security is I tend to stand back and look at the big picture first before going into details. Part of the big picture I see is not only did Twitting, the US military to the White House have their hands on something totally new and unexpected but they had immediate new problems to deal with like raising the security. The military didn't want the FBI or other government organizations involved that had civilian control or people they couldn't trust or control themselves. This left Twitting and the other Generals creating the rules as they go along. Clearly Ramey didn't know what to do but learned really quick if he had to throw good officers under the bus.

So back to my original question about security. Someone or a group decided to create a whole new security class far higher than any other to date in July 1947. Rules was created on the fly and day to day in 47 and 48. This created much confusion in the top and higher levels of the military. Whoever was a part of that team is something you are looking at as I read you comments.

Is this a good summary of your research and thoughts? Again I am new at this but I do have solid decision marking experience from business. Thanks again.



KRandle said...

CDA -

I am attempting to put this all into a historical context with military secrecy and security, chain of command, and classification thrown into the mix. Given all that, in its historical context the Twining memo does not close the door completely, especially when you review other government secrets and the attempts to keep them out of the hands of those who have no need to know. My point (among others) was to provide the historical context and to show that this is not the death sentence for the Roswell case. It is extremely worrisome and that some see it as the end of the discussion is understandable.

Craig McDaniel -

Actually when you reach top secret, code words come into play. This is why some claim that the Roswell case was classified two points above top secret. According to that way of thinking, the Roswell case would have been noted as "Top Secret - Annex - Chase so that to see the Roswell material, you would need not only a top secret clearance but also one that that was top secret - annex and to get to the really good stuff you would need top secret - annex - chase (and for all the nuts out there, I made up these two codes words just as an illustration... they are not real).

You could say that Garrett might have had a top secret clearance but didn't have either the annex or the chase endorsement... maybe Schulgen had top secret annex but not the chase endorsement so he would see some of the stuff but not all of it. Please note, again, that we're dealing with government classifications, but the code words of annex and chase, and who might have held what endorsement is clearly my speculation, used to illustrate the system.

cda said...

Kevin:

"This is why some claim that the Roswell case was classified two points above top secret."

Who made this claim? I have only read of one such mention of "two points above...", and that was by the Canadian Wilbert Smith in his notes after an interview with Robert Sarbacher in Sept 1950. But he was referring to UFOs in general, not to Roswell. Moreover, his actual words were "two points higher THAN THE H-BOMB".

In fact, in all the Smith memos and correspondence referred to by David Rudiak (above), there is a total absence of any mention of Roswell.

A further point: There is no documentation at all to indicate Roswell was ever 'top secret', let alone above this level. It is, and always has been, merely an assumption made by the ET brigade, based on interviews 40-odd years afterwards.

I am willing to stand corrected if you can supply something indicating Roswell was ever "two points above top secret".

Brian B said...

@ Don

"Due to the absence of a comma between "exhibits" and "which", it is possible to read it as not that there were no exhibits, but there just wasn't any of the exhibits that was undeniable proof."

>>> Well if Roswellians are correct, months ahead of this memo a super-secret cargo of crashed debris and dead alien bodies were flown to AMC for evaluation. That included "memory foil" that was so strong it couldn't be broken and yet "poured like liquid metal". So I think your suggestion might be incorrect. If those "exhibits" weren't convincing enough as undeniable proof then again the folks at AMC were blundering fools to state they didn't have enough debris to confirm ET crashed. I think it more likely they wrote the truth - they had nothing.

@ David

"LeMay was first contacted asking if maybe the discs weren't one of our own projects. LeMay said no (sorry, Brian Bell), therefore further investigation seemed warranted."

>>> It works both ways David. If Twining didn't tell Schulgen the truth as Kevin claims, then obviously LeMay could have lied too. In fact, LeMay may have known of a secret project all along and let his subordinates simply chase ghosts as means to deflect attention from the real story just as Kevin claims Twining did with Schulgen. If one of them can supposedly lie about aliens to hide the truth, they could have easily lied about domestic secret projects just the same. There's nothing in these documents that leans towards ET unless you take each statement out of context and read into it what you want.

And by the way, those wind tunnel tests you mentioned at AMC which began prior to the end of 1947....well facts have it that was Loedding's work which began before July 1947. It has nothing to do with crashed alien saucers. In fact it favors my hypothesis more.

@ CDA

Indeed this seems to be the case. It's probably why some knucklehead chose to insert alien nonsense into the Schulgen memo. If they don't say what you need them to say, I guess ufologists simply prefer to alter the documents and broadly circulate them.

KRandle said...

CDA -

You misread (to some extent). I was asked a question about this idea that there was a classification, or classifications, above top secret. I used the Roswell case in my illustration, and the idea that something was classified two points above top secret. It was not meant to prove anything, other than how some of these classifications worked, and that this idea of two points above was actually sort of a lateral step. So in this case all that really mattered was the discussion of classifications rather than a suggestion that Roswell was classified as anything...

David Rudiak said...

The following is anecdotal in nature, but indicates some of those involved with Project SIGN (and the earlier Twining memo) DID know about Roswell:

1. Kevin in his "UFO Casebook" said he ran into a Colonel, formerly with Project Sign. At the time of the Sign 1948 Estimate of the Situation, the Colonel had ben a lieutenant. He claimed Sign personnel did know about Roswell at some level and they included New Mexico crash debris in their list of evidence in their first draft of the Estimate before Gen. Vandenberg ordered it removed.

2. Twining's son, Nathan Twining Jr., said his father never provided any details about Roswell, but the Roswell incident (i.e. saucer crash) was treated as a historical fact within the Twining family.

3. In communications I had with researcher Wendy Connors, she said that based on interviews with some surviving Sign personnel, Col. McCoy DID know about the Roswell crash but lacked clearance to get at the actual data. He was very frustrated by this. This is another way of looking at any claims by him that they lacked crash debris. He didn't directly know, so he couldn't make any definitive claims that they did have crash debris.

However she was was told two members of Sign WERE directly involved with Roswell: civilian engineers Alfred Loedding and George Towles. Loedding was said to have visited Roswell many times afterwards and Towles "was sent to Roswell in place of Col. McCoy because he was the person who handled all deeply classified material coming into and out of WPAFB." Loedding and McCoy were key Sign personnel writing the fabled 1948 Estimate of the Situation stating that flying saucers were ET.

Neither Loedding or Towles is listed among the five engineering heads at the end of the Twining memo. According to the Project 1947 website, they were (handwritten at end in more complete copies):

"This letter was coordinated by:
Col. Moore Ch. Aircraft Lab
Mr. A. Dicky Ch. Propeller Lab
Gen. D. L. Putt Engr. Div
Col. Minty Ch. Power Plant Lab
Gen. Brentnall T-3

The only name I recognize was Gen. Donald Putt. The late Joel Carpenter has some background on Gen. Putt in his article on the Lockheed Kelly Johnson UFO sighting of 1953.

http://www.nicap.org/reports/lockufoinc.htm

According to Carpenter, Putt was one of the engineering stars of the A.F., with a degree from Cal Tech. He was the military supervisor of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, one of the groups on the distribution list of the Twining memo. He was anything but hostile to UFOs, in fact, "In December 1948 Project RAND missile expert James Lipp had written a paper at Putt's request that examined the possibility that UFOs were extraterrestrial spacecraft that used propulsion principles comparable to known or foreseeable rocket technology. (The fascinating paper was published as an appendix to the final report of Project SIGN.)"

Project RAND was another R&D group on the Twining distribution list. In 1953, Putt was championing the Canadian AVRO saucer project to back-engineer a working saucer (but using human jet technology). You'll notice the AVRO engineers were basing the design of their chopped saucer on Kenneth Arnold's descriptions of what he saw, since their head engineer considered this sighting to be reliable. The AVRO project never did produce a working saucer, but the point is back-engineering attempts WERE undertaken, and this was a strong component of the Twining memo.

Not only did the Twining memo state the saucers were REAL, further actions on their part for years afterward indicated they were treated with total seriousness. Engineers tend to be very hard-headed, practical people, who are only interested in things they think are real and can be made to work.

Don said...

Brian Bell said...

@ Don

"Due to the absence of a comma between "exhibits" and "which", it is possible to read it as not that there were no exhibits, but there just wasn't any of the exhibits that was undeniable proof."

>>> Well if Roswellians are correct, months ahead of this memo a super-secret cargo of crashed debris and dead alien bodies were flown to AMC for evaluation. That included "memory foil" that was so strong it couldn't be broken and yet "poured like liquid metal". So I think your suggestion might be incorrect. If those "exhibits" weren't convincing enough as undeniable proof then again the folks at AMC were blundering fools to state they didn't have enough debris to confirm ET crashed. I think it more likely they wrote the truth - they had nothing.

***
ET is not my issue. 2h is 'uncertain' as to whether they had no exhibits at all, or had exhibits which, however, did not undeniably prove the existence of the object of their opinion. Do you think they were considering ET? Whatever exhibits they might have had, they wouldn't have to have added up to, or even suggested, a supersonic aircraft.

cda said...

Don:

I agree that Twining's memo does not strictly rule out the possibility that some other branch of the AF or the navy might have had access to "crash recovered exhibits". But this is hardly the point, since pro-ETHers stress that the Roswell debris was shipped to Wright Field for examination (or at least the bulk of it was). They insist that people like Generals Exon and du Bose said precisely this, 40-odd years later. It certainly was the logical place for the debris to go, if it indeed went anywhere beyond Roswell & Ft.Worth.

***

ET is not my issue. Do you know why "the command" was of the opinion flying discs were real? I don't. If you know, please, refer me to the document. My guess, fwiw, is it was the "evasive" action reported. It suggests intelligence which is why they then refer to the discs being "controlled either manually, automatically or remotely."

And why "crash" only? Why choose that alone as the source of undeniable proof?

You tell me.

Regards,

Don

cda said...

Don:

The reason the guys at AMC were of the opinion the flying discs were 'real' is that there were, in those early days, a large number of sightings compressed into a small timeframe (2 or 3 weeks), and that many of the observers were military or experienced civilian pilots. I assume it was this that caused Twining and his guys to opine the sightings were real. They did not want to offend observers. 'Real' used in this sense merely means not imaginary. They had seen something real.

I agree Twining could have used the word 'landed' instead of 'crashed', or even both words. One can always say a memo or letter could have been worded, or punctuated, better, but this hardly advances the ET cause, does it?

cda said...

DR:

By admitting points 1, 2 & 3 in your posting are anecdotal in nature, you have seriously weakened your case that Twining (and AMC) knew about Roswell. Where are the documents about Roswell? Why have none surfaced after all this time? These 'witnesses' are simply repeating what interviewers put into their minds several decades afterwards, and what the interviewers wanted to hear. Had any of the 'witnesses' even heard of the case until 1980 when the first book came out? I wonder.

Of course Twining's son said Roswell was "treated as a historical fact within the Twining family". But not before c. 1980, I am positive.

Brian B said...

@ Don

"Do you think they were considering ET? Whatever exhibits they might have had, they wouldn't have to have added up to, or even suggested, a supersonic aircraft."

I'm in agreement with CDA's explanation.

Credible people saw "something" flying which they couldn't identify. If I'm not mistaken, they (USAF) didn't start chasing these things with orders to shoot them down until 1952.

It was the Flap of July 12-29, 1952 that got the Truman administration all worked up since the rash of sightings were all clustered over the Nation's Capitol.

The press reported the USAF gave orders to shoot down UFO's which was confirmed by a USAF public information officer stating, "The jet pilots are, and have been, under orders to investigate unidentified objects and to shoot them down if they can't talk them down."

"Talk them down.." is interesting in that it shows four years after the Twining memo they were still thinking these objects were terrestrial in nature and obviously piloted.

What does that tell us?

So if they really thought they were piloted by Martians or people from Venus what made them think other worldly creatures would understand and speak English?

At the same time the USAF also countered that by stating the objects showed no evidence of intelligent control. Probably to calm the public's fears the craft weren't the Soviets planning some clandestined bombing raid on Washington, DC.

All of this lead up to Maj. General Samford's famous press conference at the Pentagon where he stated the investigation would continue but that most sightings were misidentifications of natural phenomenon and showed no discernible pattern or evidence warranting concern over national security.

So in this case, 1947, there wasn't any mandate to chase saucers yet. That came four years later.

cda said...

Brian:

I like your quote about Martians/Venusians understanding English! Reminds me a bit of those contactees Adamski and Allingham in the days of old.

Re Gen. Samford's press conference of July 29, 1952, don't forget that Gen Roger Ramey spoke near the end, I believe about radar, scrambling of jets, and UFOs. This was the same man who, according to the ETHers, knew all about the Roswell aliens and, of course, took the great secret to his grave. (Every time we talk about ETs I can picture Ramey rolling in his grave!)

Don said...

CDA: "The reason the guys at AMC were of the opinion the flying discs were 'real' is...that many of the observers were military or experienced civilian pilots. I assume it was this that caused Twining and his guys to opine the sightings were real. They did not want to offend observers. 'Real' used in this sense merely means not imaginary. They had seen something real."

That may be; it's as good a guess as any. My point is we do not know their reasons. I doubt though they would recommend an expensive project just to not offend the observers. The "something" that was real was pretty well defined in the "Memo": a supersonic aircraft.

The skeptics' opinion must be: they were wrong. From our near 70 years later vantage, we know there were no supersonic aircraft in 1947.

Regards,

Don

Don said...

CDA: "I agree Twining could have used the word 'landed' instead of 'crashed', or even both words. One can always say a memo or letter could have been worded, or punctuated, better"

I'm not sure of this, but I think 'crash recovery' may be a 'term of art' referring to air technical intelligence work.

"but this hardly advances the ET cause, does it?"

ET is your problem.

Regards,

Don

KRandle said...

All -

This idea that there had been no intercepts, or attempted intercepts prior to the Washington National sightings (which were by no means the only sightings in the country at the time) is false. While not all had permission to fire, there are newspaper articles from the July 4, 1947 weekend of aircraft either on alert or in the air searching for the flying saucers with an idea of photographing them. In January 1948, Thomas Mantell was asked to intercept and identify a UFO near Fort Knox, Kentucky.

And on a historical note, Chuck Yeager made the first supersonic flight in the Bell X-1 in 1947 (October I believe but I'm to lazy to look it up.)

Don said...

Brian, you may not know (but CDA surely does) that I am not a participant in the ET/No-ET debate. Any pro or anti ET comment directed to me is misdirected. That skeptics are satisfied the 47 wave was not about ET spaceships is a matter of indifference to me, as is the satisfaction of ET advocates that there were ET objects. That's why I write ET is your problem (and CDA's, David's, Kevin's).

"Credible people saw "something" flying which they couldn't identify. If I'm not mistaken, they (USAF) didn't start chasing these things with orders to shoot them down until 1952.

It was the Flap of July 12-29, 1952 that got the Truman administration all worked up since the rash of sightings were all clustered over the Nation's Capitol.

The press reported the USAF gave orders to shoot down UFO's which was confirmed by a USAF public information officer stating, "The jet pilots are, and have been, under orders to investigate unidentified objects and to shoot them down if they can't talk them down."

Did anyone ask about how long a time they "have been" under such orders? David or Kevin can note the details of the AF's preparedness prior to 1952 re the saucers. 1948 has a series of encounters, too. But you are probably right that there was no presidential or pentagon "mandate" then...that I know of.

As for documents from the era from whatever source, they cannot be read as if they were addressed to us. None of the writers and editors ever gave a instant's thought that they would be read in the 21st century, and in many cases that no one but those on the distribution lists would ever read them. This is even true of newspapers, the 'shelf life' of which is a few hours.

Mostly I dislike importing in to the 1940s, the rhetoric of ufology (both advocate and skeptic) which begins after 1949 and is really ETology.

Regards,

Don

Brian B said...

@ Don

"From our near 70 years later vantage, we know there were no supersonic aircraft in 1947."

As Kevin stated, Yeager hit the supersonic mark in 1947. And I'll add that obviously they were working on that effort long before 1947 in order to accomplish it.

There were other projects underway at the same time and BEFORE.

The historical record shows supersonic ramjets and turbojet engines were basically designed as early as 1929. The Soviets flew unmanned prototype rockets at supersonic speeds in 1934. Every major power had been pursuing it before WW2. It wasn't technology developed after 1947 but well before.

I believe this is why the USAAF was concerned over the disc's being powered by supersonic jet engines.

Soviets 1947 - Supersonic antipodal bomber based on the Sanger-Bredt suborbital bomber which a 1947 USAAF Technical Intelligence Report highlighted had been started by the Germans at Lofer in 1945.

There were others that were intended to achieve supersonic speeds as well:

France 1947: Leduc 0.10 ramjet

Britain 1944: Miles M.52

Germany 1943-1945: Too many to mention

My point is engineers had already demonstrated supersonic technology and capability long before 1947. I believe the concern was somebody had finally put it into practical military use before the US.

Don said...

Brian, your reply reads as if I had written no one had any idea of supersonic flight until the 'Memo'. Awareness of it, as well as orbiting weapon and recon platforms, "true spaceships", and automatic or remote "push button warfare" etc, was well developed by AAF propaganda from at least mid-war, and written about in the Sunday supplements and in "Popular" this and that magazines. It was an initiative from the very top -- General Arnold, and he founded RAND to develop the concepts. I am certain Colonel McCoy represented Arnold's vision (I don't know about Twining or Schulgen). Also, along with McCoy, Loedding.

We don't know the reasons for their opinion, but we can guess that the selection of disc reports provided them included observations of objects that conformed to General Arnold's vision of how a US Aerospace Force would be equipped.

One way of characterizing the "Memo" is as an appeal for funding.

Regards,

Don

Mr. Sweepy said...

Kevin and others,

I don't know if this as dawned on anyone but there has been no mention of the Cape Girardeau crash. I think this event which was 6 years earlier is important when it comes to Roswell. I believe that Cape Girardeau craft would have ended up at Wright Patterson. At the time during 1941 the closest military base looks to be Fort Leonard Wood which is about 100 to 150 miles from CG. The problem back then was the roads were terrible, no helicopters to fly the wreck craft out and likely to big for a railroad flat car. So what happened to it. Well the military could have temporary buried the craft until they get their hands around the problem. But did this craft end up at WP? Hell today, a craft recovery team are more like NASCAR teams from several recent reports. Back in the 1940's craft recovery wasn't organized and this also has come out in the Roswell/Twinning documents. Also back in the early 40's there were deep Christian religion beliefs then. Maybe this also had an effect on the decision making about the down craft in Cape Girardeau. This was and still is bible belt and surely shocked all those who were involved. It's possible the craft was buried and forgotten intentionally but that is speculation.

If the down craft did end up at Wright Patterson this would have been a blue print for how to handle a future down alien craft if it was to happen. Of course this is where we are now. I also tend to think that some if not most of the same players (Generals) that have been mentioned in this discussion about Roswell would have been mentioned in Cape Girardeau. The security would have been in place and established. However when I read the Twinning related documents, I read a sense of confusion and in decision. Even the security on the documents should have been higher than Secret then.

Here are a could of links you might want about WWII bases and medical personal heads.
http://militarybases.com/army/

If our ET's for either CG or Roswell was examined by military WWII doctors, there is a good chance that the name(s) were on this list:
http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/Malaria/DEFAULT.htm
and
http://history.amedd.army.mil/biographies.html
Take a look and see if any names look familiar.

Unknown said...

Mr. Randle, Mr. Rudiak

I think it´s interesting to mention the Air Force Regulations regarding FLying saucers which was brought out by Major Gen. Richard E. O'Keefe years later , which was sent out by he Air force to its commands and leaked by NICAP.

While the document considered UFOS as serious buisness it also informed the staff that ""no physical or material evidence, not even a minute fragment of a so-called flying saucer, has ever been found."

I found this interesting, when this info came out to public, there were doubts regardig the truthfullness of the communication of the Air Force.
The Air Force 1)was seriously concerned about UFOs behind the scene
2) the Air Force hide facts
3) the Air Force silenced their personel

These doubts didn´t come from Ufologists, but from none other than Admiral Hillenkoetter!! He demanded : ""It is time for the truth to be brought out in open Congressional hearings,", which says a lot about the transperancy, the Air Force had on this issue.
Taken these comments from an Admiral, it make it more plausible that Twining didn´t mention the recovered material in this memo .



Clarence said...

..about Twining and that as base commander "he had to know" about the Roswell debris. Can we be sure about that with a high degree of certainty? If I recall correctly, for many months prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, there was a secret military listening post in or very near near the Pearl Harbor naval base (the small group was tasked with intercepting and decoding Japanese radio transmissions). The commander of the US Pacific Fleet, Admiral Kimmel, was never made aware of the facility, and yet FDR and Kimmel's superiors *were* aware of it's existence. Is it possible a situation similar existed with Twining and the Roswell debris?

Bud Ekins said...

The Twining memo makes sense if the Roswell incident was caused by illegal high altitude experiments with mutant humans as implied by the research of Nick Redfern. Twining would have known about those crashes and therefore they are not mentioned in his memo because they did not involve "flying discs". The lack of "crash recovered exhibits" more or less kills off the possibility of Roswell being an ET event. With hindsight asking for "pieces" of a UFO might be as naive as asking for a "piece" of a poltergeist - both these phenomena exist but are likely of extra-dimensional origin.