1. WOOD-LIKE TAN STICKS OR I-BEAMS WITH "HIEROGLYPHICS"
Loretta Proctor: Neighbor of rancher Mack Brazel; hard, uncuttable, unburnable balsa woodlike dowel
Major Jesse Marcel: Roswell chief of intelligence; hard, uncuttable, unburnable balsa woodlike rectangular beams with purplish hieroglyphics (also some testimony from his wife Viaud Marcel about hieroglyphics); drawing
1st Lt. Robert Shirkey: Roswell acting operations officer; saw metallic I-beam with purplish hieroglyphics being loaded onto Marcel's B-29
New! Brig. Gen. Steven Lovekin: Yardstick-like metallic beam with "encryptions" from a New Mexico crash shown him in a 1959 Pentagon briefing. Military still trying to decipher.
New! Steve Lytle: Said his mathematician father was tasked with deciphering the I-beam symbols
Charles Schmid: Allegedly on debris field; large woodlike beam with flower drawings
W/.O Irving Newton: Gen. Ramey's weather officer; tough balsa sticks with faded purplish symbols
LORETTA PROCTOR
(The Proctors were neighbors of Mac Brazel, the rancher who found the crash debris. They thought maybe he had found the remains of a flying saucer they had been hearing about and suggesed he go to Roswell and report his find.)
(F&B, interviewed July, 1990) "The piece he [Mac Brazel] brought looked like a kind of tan, light brown plastic. It was very lightweight, like balsa wood. It wasn't a large piece, maybe about four inches long, maybe just a little larger than a pencil. We cut on it with a knife and would hold a match on it, and it wouldn't burn. We knew it wasn't wood. It was smooth like plastic, it didn't have a real sharp corners, kind of like a dowel stick. Kind of dark tan. It didn't have any grain, just smooth. I hadn't seen anything like it."
(VIDEO1) "In 1947, I think it was the first of July, he came over with something that looked like wood that he had found over on the ranch and wanted us to take a look. ...The piece he brought up was about the size of a lead pencil and about 4 or 5 inches long. It was kind of a tan color, kind of what we would say plastic now, but we didn't have plastic then. You couldn't cut it, or burn it, or whittle it -- just very, very hard. It was very light, it seemed to be."
(Pflock, FUFOR, affidavit 5/5/91) "In July 1947, my neighbor William W. "Mac" Brazel came to my ranch and showed my husband and me a piece of material he said came from a large pile of debris on the property he managed. The piece he brought was brown in color, similar to plastic. He and my husband tried to cut and burn the object, but they weren't successful. It was extremely light in weight. I had never seen anything like it before."
(R&S1, 1989) " ...he did bring a little sliver of a wood looking stuff up, but you couldn't burn it or you couldn't cut it or anything. I guess it was just a sliver of it, about the size of a pencil and about three to four inches long. I would say it was kind of brownish tan but you know that's been quite a long time. It looked like plastic, of course there wasn't any plastic then, but that was kind of what it looked like. [Q: When he brought it up, did you try to cut it?] A: No, we didn't. He did..."
WILLIAM BRAZEL JR.
(Mac Brazel's adult son in 1947; returned to ranch while father was incarcerated by military and found some scraps of debris left behind after military cleanup):
(F&B) "[There were also] some wooden-like particles like balsa wood in weight, but a bit darker in color and much harder.... It was pliable but wouldn't break. Weighed nothing, but you couldn't scratch it with your fingernail. All I had was a few small bits. [There was no writing or markings on the pieces I had] but Dad did say one time that there were what he called "figures on some of the pieces he found. He often referred to the petroglyphs the ancient Indians drew on the rocks around here as "figures," too, and I think that's what he meant to compare them with."
"Some of it was like balsa wood: real light and kind of neutral color, more of a tan. To the best of my memory, there wasn't any grain in it. Couldn't break it-- it'd flex a little. I couldn't whittle it with my pocket knife."
[Quoting his father, Mac Brazel, some time after 1947] "[There was] some wood, and on some of that wood there was Japanese or Chinese figures."
(B&M; interview Dec. 1979) "There were several different types of stuff. ...it sure was light in weight. It weighed almost nothing. There was some wooden-like particles I picked up. These were like balsa wood in weight, but a bit darker in color and much harder. You know the thing about wood is that the harder it gets, the heavier it is. Mahogany, for example is quite heavy. This stuff, on the other hand, weighed nothing, yet you couldn't scratch it with your fingernail like ordinary balsa, and you couldn't break it either. It was pliable, but wouldn't break. Of course, all I had was a few splinters. It never occurred to me to try to burn it so I don't know if it would burn or not."
[Quoting his father] "Dad did say one time that there were what he called 'figures' on some of the pieces he found. He often referred to the petroglyphs the ancient Indians drew on rocks around here as "figures" too, and I think that's what he meant to compare them with."
(R&S1) "There were some pieces of wood ... like balsa wood. Real light, kind of a neutral color, kind of a tan. And I couldn't break it. [It would} flex a little. The longest piece I found, about six inches would flex a little. I couldn't break it and I couldn't whittle it with my pocketknife. ...I did try to whittle on that piece of wood. I didn't even get a little sliver off it."
[Quoting his father] "'Well, there was this big bunch of stuff. There was some tin foil and some wood and on some of the wood it had Japanese or Chinese figures.' Evidently it was some sort of inscription on part of this wood. Now I found a little piece of it but there was no writing on it."
(Chief intelligence officer and air crash investigator at Roswell AFB; he and Sheridan Cavitt were first military people at the Brazel debris field; Marcel is a key witness in the Roswell case):
(F&B) "A lot of it had a lot of little members [beams] with symbols that we had to call them hieroglyphics because I could not interpret them, they could not be read, they were just symbols, something that meant something and they were not all the same. The members that this was painted on -- by the way, those symbols were pink and purple, lavender was actually what it was. And so these little members could not be broken, could not be burned. I even tried to burn that. It would not burn."
(B&M; Interviews Feb., May, Dec. 1979 with Moore and Friedman) "There was all kinds of stuff -- Small beams about three-eighths or a half inch square with some sort of hieroglyphics on them that nobody could decipher. These looked something like balsa wood, and were of about the same weight, except that they were not wood at all. They were very hard, although flexible, and would not burn."
(R&S2) [He also described I-beam-like structures. Though unbendable or breakable, they did not look metallic. According to Marcel] "They were, as I recall, perhaps three-eighths of an inch by one quarter of an inch thick, and [came] in just about all sizes, none of them very long. [The biggest was] I would say, about three or four feet long [and] weightless. You couldn't even tell you had it in your hands." [He also noticed "indecipherable" two-color markings along the length of some of the I-beams] "I've never seen anything like that myself ... I don't know if they were ever deciphered or not ... Along the length of some of those [I-beam-like members], they had little markings. Two-color markings ... like Chinese writing. Nothing you could make any sense out of."
(Pflock, Bob Pratt interview, 12/8/79) [There were] "little members, small members, solid members that could not bend or break, but it didn't look like metal. It looked more like wood. They varied in size. They were, as I can recall, perhaps three-eighths of an inch by one-quarter of an inch thick, and just about all sizes. None of them were very long. [The longest was] I would say about three feet long. ... It was a solid member, rectangular members, just like you get a square stick. Varied lengths, and along the length of some of those they had little markings, two-color markings as I recall--like Chinese writing to me. Nothing you could make any sense out of. ... All the solid members were that way [long and slender]."
(Corley) [Speaking of "hieroglyphs" on beams] "That is something that we never deciphered what it was. There's a lot of it. I brought some stuff to her [Marcel's wife Viaud]. My wife saw that."
[Viaud Marcel] "I was the first one to say that it was hieroglyphics of some sort." [Corley: You were the first to say that, huh?] "Yeah. But I wouldn't know what it was."
[Marcel] "They tried to decipher that stuff. But as far as I know, they never did.
[Corley: The book said something about it didn't have drawings of animals, other than that, it looked like hieroglyphs?] [Viaud Marcel] "Yeah it looked like some kind of symbols. I should have said symbols instead of hieroglyphics. ..Little Jesse [Jesse Marcel Jr.] tried to draw it [the symbols]."
[Marcel] "Jesse tried to draw ... it was so irregular ... [Corley clarifies Marcel referring to the symbols being "irregular", not the beams. Marcel offers to draw his own version of symbols to compare it with his son's drawing.] No, no. Jesse [junior] didn't have that right, to begin with. He said they looked like 'I-beams'. But it wasn't. There were figures like this ...others like this ...curves ... this way ... that way [draws rough sketch with symbols like / | \ -- ( )]. ...It was on a beam. ...Let me give you a cross section of what it looked like. [Draws rectangular cross section with about a 2:1 ratio, doesn't specify dimensions.] ...They were purple and pink ... the main character might be pink and the tone behind it was purple. The others were purple ... and switched around. But it didn't mean anything. It was supposed to mean something. It could have been something for assembling the thing. I don't know. This is conjecture."
[Corley later adds her own notes and compares Marcel's drawing of symbols to Tironian script, a system of shorthand symbols dating back to the 4th century BC Greeks, later extended by the Romans in the 1st century BC and lasting about another 1000 years.]
[Later in interview. Corley: And it wouldn't burn, I think you said?] "Nope. You couldn't make a mark on that stuff. Like these little members there [pointing to drawing of beam]. I took my cigarette lighter and tried to burn some of that. It wouldn't burn. What appeared to be wood. It wasn't wood. ...But what was it? I still don't know."
(Fort Worth Star Telegram, July 9, 1947, late morning edition) "He bundled together the large pile of tinfoil and broken wooden beams about one-fourth of an inch thick and half-inch wide and the torn mass of synthetic rubber that had been the balloon and rolled it under some brush, according to Maj. Jesse A. Marcel of Houma, La., 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Officer at Roswell, who brought the device to
FWAAF."
(Examined debris when his father awoke family at 2 a.m. 11 years old in 1947)
(F&B) "Many of the remnants, including I-beam pieces that were present, had strange hieroglyphic typewriting symbols across the inner surfaces, pink and purple, except that I don't think there were any animal figures present as there are in true Egyptian hieroglyphics."
(B&M, interview April 1979) "Imprinted along the edge of some of the beam remnants there were hieroglyphic-type characters. I recently questioned my father about this, and he recalled seeing this characters also, and even described them as being a pink or purplish-pink color. Egyptian hieroglyphics would be a close visual description of the characters seen, except I don't think there were any animal figures present as there are in true Egyptian hieroglyphics."
(U.M.) "This writing [on a short piece of I-beam] could be described as like hieroglyphics, Egyptian-type hieroglyphics, but not really. The symbols that were on the I-beams were more of a geometric-type configuration in various designs. It had a violet-purple type color and was actually an embossed part of the metal itself."
(Pflock) "There was a series of geometric patterns embossed on the inner surface of a fragment shaped like an "I" beam strut. There were not recognizable animal figures such as seen in Egyptian hieroglyphics but the symbols resembled hieroglyphic type characters. . . . The color of the symbols was of a violet or purplish metallic hue. . . . I showed the above drawing to my mother who was also present and she concurs with the above description." [The drawing is of an I-beam about 18" long with two fractured ends with about 20 symbols along the inner surface, about 1/2" high.]
(Pflock, FUFOR, USAF, affidavit May 6, 1991) "...there were fragments of what appeared to be I-beams. On the inner surface of the I-beam, there appeared to be a type of writing. This writing was a purple-violet hue, and it had an embossed appearance. The figures were composed of curved geometric shapes. It had no resemblance to Russian, Japanese or any other foreign language. It resembled hieroglyphics, but it had no animal-like characters."
(R&S2) [Jesse, Jr., described the writing as ] different geometric shapes, leaves, and circles. [...the symbols were shiny purple and they were small, less than a fingernail wide. There were many separate figures.]
(KPFA) "...There were structural members that I felt looked like I-beams. I guess the major difference there was that on the inner surface of one of these I-beams there looked like there was some writing of some kind. The writing was a purplish-violet hue and was entirely within the member itself."
[Although some of the material he handled could possibly be interpreted as fragments of balloon wreckage, Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr. says there are enough differences to raise questions about the Air Force explanation.] "Well, I talked to Lt. Cantor [sp?] and I told him that they did make a good case for this being parts of a weather, [that is] Mogul device, because there are some basic similarities there. Then again, there are some things that are totally different too. So I can't reconcile what I saw with what a Mogul device would have looked like. As they said, the beams were balsa wood. Well, I know what balsa wood looks like 'cause when I was a kid, I made stick models all the time. And that sure didn't look like balsa wood, unless it was sprayed with aluminum paint, or something like that, to make it look like metal. And you know it was extremely light. I do recall one symbol for sure that was on the beam and that was like a truncated pyramid with a ball on top of it. It was the only symbol I can know for sure was on this beam. The rest of it, you know, was just various geometric designs."
(FOX) "I picked up this particular I-beam and held it up to my upper left to look at it with the kitchen light reflecting on the inner surface, and that's when I saw the writing, or the symbols of some sort. I thought at first this is hieroglyphics, or some sort of writing like that. It certainly looked alien to me." [Also shows Marcel Jr. handling replica of I-beam, about two feet long, one cm. high, aluminum in color, with lavender symbols.]
LT. JACK TROWBRIDGE, new witness
(Trowbridge is listed in the base yearbook as being with base headquarter but says he was assigned to Major Marcel's intelligence office)
(SCI FI video testimony, 2007) "Well on this particular evening we were having bridge at Major Marcel’s home. ...All of intelligence was there playing bridge, except Jesse. He was out with a pickup gathering his junk in the debris field. So when he came in it was fairly late, I believe. And we broke up the bridge game then to go out and see what Jesse brought in. And it was of great interest.
"It was aluminum in appearance. There were fragments of aircraft skin, or whatever the thing was, and also some girders with pictures of hieroglyphic-like things on it. I took them to be owls (?), but who knows?"
(Shirkey as acting operations officer the afternoon of July 8, 1947, saw a B-29 being loaded with debris picked up by Marcel & Cavitt at the debris field. The plane later took Marcel to Ft. Worth to meet Gen. Ramey.)
(Pflock, FUFOR, affidavit, 5/30/91, H&M) "I also saw what was described by another witness as an I-beam and markings."
(Pflock) According to Shirkey, Marcel and another member of the group carried open cardboard boxes filled with debris, including ... an "I-beam" about two feet long with peculiar markings on it.
(H&M) "I could see the hieroglyphs clearly, the signs were in relief and stood out."
(Shirkey, p. 72) "Standing only three feet from the passing procession, we saw boxes full of aluminum-looking metal pieces being carried to the B-29. ...sticking up in one corner of the box carried by Major Marcel was a small 'I-beam' with hieroglyphic-like markings on the inner flange, in some kind of weird color, not black, not purple, but a close approximation of the two."
(Shirkey, telephone interview, 3/1/05) “Marcel was carrying a box that had the I-beams sticking up in one corner and had the strange marks on it.” [Could you see the marks?] “Yeah.” [How far away were you?] (Laughs) “About 3 feet.” [Size?] “They were small—I’m trying to recall now. I think the center piece may have been a quarter of an inch… the top and bottom flanges are just a little smaller. It was about 18 inches long or so.” [You definitely saw the flanges at the top and bottom?] “Yeah.” [Color?] “Basically white with black—I think it was black—marks on it which I—you couldn’t understand what they were.” [Recall marks?] “No, I don’t.” [You recall the I-beams being whitish?] “Oh yeah.” [They weren’t metallic looking like the other debris?] “Not necessarily, no. It was only this one small one that they had.” [Just one I-beam?] “Yes, this was the initial group [of debris flights].”
BRIG. GEN. STEVEN LOVEKIN
(A Disclosure Project witness, Lovekin has recently testified to being intensively briefed on the UFO phenomenon when he worked in the Eisenhower and Kennedy White Houses in the Army Signaling Agency. The following debris he said he was shown in a Pentagon briefing around 1959. To hear audio testimony click on link. For video testimony click here. Lovekin is a practicing North Carolina attorney and Brig. Gen. in the Army National Guard JAG division.)
(During a Pentagon meeting discussing Project Blue Book materials)
"Colonel Hollobard [sp? perhaps Hollogard] brought out a piece of what appeared to be metallic -- it was a metallic piece of -- it looked like a yardstick. It had deciphering--it had encryption on it. He did describe them as being symbols of instruction. And that's as far as he would go. But he did infer that the instructions, whatever they might have been, were something that was important enough for the military to keep working on on a constant basis.
"It seemed giant-like when I saw it because it was the first time I had ever seen anything like this before. And all eyes were just peeled on that particular thing. And when he told us what it was, it was frightening, it was eery there. You could have heard a pin drop in the room when it was first mentioned.
"He said it had been taken from one of the craft that had crashed in New Mexico. It had been taken from a box of materials that the military was working on. They didn't use the word reverse engineering at that time, but it was something similar to the reverse engineering they felt like they needed to work on and that it was going to take years to do this."
STEVE LYTLE
(R&S2) Not all the analysis was done by men assigned to Wright field. Some of the analysis was made by scientists outside the base. Steve Lytle reported that his father, during his long career, had worked with Robert Oppenheimer on a number of occasions and projects. Lytle's father was a mathematician and, according to Lytle, had been given one of the I-beams recovered at the Roswell site, with an eye to deciphering the symbols.
CHARLES SCHMID
(Claims to have handled pieces of the debris on location in the desert. Schmid was a Roswell resident who lived north of town. He heard rumors about strange debris on the ranch and said he headed out there on his motorcycle to have a look for himself. He said he saw just the outer rim of debris, but left when he heard an engine approaching because he thought it was some big secret test of the Army.)
(VIDEO1) "There was some material that looked like wood, which I don't know if it was or not. It was broke, but it wasn't broke square, it was broke like a spear, off at an angle. It was about an inch thick, or an inch square [??, garbled], let's put it that-a-way. It had some writing that looked like flowers on just one side. It had pink petals, centered like a flower [?? partially garbled], and green mixed in, but you couldn't make no leaves out of it, or nothing like that. But it was green in between these flowers on that one side of this piece of wood."
(C&S, p. 49) I picked up a few pieces along the fence. They had funny writing on them and seemed real strong.
ALBERT BRUCE COLLINS
(Allegedly interviewed shortly before his death in 1990 by Tim Cooper, Collins claimed to be a metallurgist who worked for the University of California, Berkeley and Occidental College for the Manhattan Project from 1942 to the late fifties, allegedly developing alloys used for electro-magnetic propagation and magnetic propulsion. He further claims to have seen the Roswell craft in 1947 in Berkeley on a flatbed truck being backed into a warehouse and then worked on analyzing debris fragments. None of this story has been verified, including whether Collins even existed.)
(SR#6) [Collins heard rumors about] "unusual 'metal-like wood' being tested and results fed into a computer at Berkeley.
WALT WHITMORE JR.
[Walt Whitmore Jr was the son of the owner of Roswell radio station KGFL. Mac Brazel probably stayed at the Whitmore house the night of Marcel and Cavitt's visit to the debris field or the following night.]
(F&B) "[There were] some small beams that appeared to be either wood or wood-like, had a sort of writing on it which looked like numbers which had either been added or multiplied [in columns]."
"RELUCTANT" (Walt Whitmore Jr.)
(Karl Pflock's mystery witness, who claimed to have found balloon debris and still have it, but refused to identify himself, show the debris to anyone, and whose debris descriptions didn't match anybody else's. "Reluctant" turned out to be Walt Whitmore Jr. telling a very different story from his original one a dozen years before.)
(Pflock) "Some pieces [of foiled cloth material] were glued to balsa wood sticks, and some of them had glue on the cloth side with bits of balsa still stuck to it. . . . None of the sticks was more than a foot or so long."
BESSIE BRAZEL SCHREIBER
(Mac Brazel's daughter, 14 years old at the time of the incident)
(Pflock, USAF, affidavit 9/22/93) "Sticks, like kite sticks, were attached to some of the pieces [of foil-rubber like material] with a whitish tape."
CPT. SHERIDAN CAVITT
(Cavitt was in the senior Army Counter Intelligence Corp (CIC) officer at Roswell, was on Jesse Marcel's staff, and was on Brazel's debris field with Marcel on July 7, 1947 when they first went to investigate it, and returned the following day with assistant CICman, Lewis Rickett. However Cavitt, when interviewed by the USAF in 1994 by Col. Weaver, denied ever being with Marcel or meeting Brazel, saying he only went out with Rickett. When initially approached by civilian researchers, Cavitt also denied being at Roswell or being in any way involved.)
(USAF) He stated ... that the material he recovered consisted of a reflective sort of material like aluminum foil, and some thin, bamboo-like sticks. He thought at the time, and continued to do so today, that what he found was a weather balloon...
(Attach 18, Interiew) [After being shown photos of radar reflector debris in Gen. Ramey's office] "Yeah, I can't tell what those sticks look like. But, as I recall, to me they look like bamboo or some sort of very small lav type material ripped out." [Could you break or bend them, or...?] I didn't try"
[To Weaver's question as to whether he recalled seeing anything written or printed on it which Marcel called "hieroglyphics"] "No. But in reading over some of my other garbage here, I have seen some hieroglyphics. I don't think there were any claims these were the Roswell deal. Were there?" [Weaver: "Marcel claims"] "Marcel says so?"
"Well, some of these authors ... they skip from the Roswell incident to something that happened someplace else in the United States and they get a little confusing. You just read through it. I remember something about some hieroglyphics, not on that one. I didn't see anything. I do not remember any writing at all on the thing. But if Marcel saw something, maybe he did."
[Response to Weaver's hint that the Mogul balloons used tape with flowers on it.] "I don't remember anything like that."
Warrant Officer IRVING NEWTON
USAF (Ret), weather officer assigned to Fort Worth, where Roswell debris was sent. He was called in to identify debris at a press conference called by Gen. Ramey. Marcel and Ramey's chief of staff Col. Thomas Dubose (later General), said the real debris was swapped with a weather balloon, and that Newton only saw the alleged swapped weather balloon material. Dubose also said Newton never spoke with Major Marcel, but with a Major Cashon, Ramey's public information officer. Newton's story of his alleged confrontation with Marcel in front of reporters and Gen. Ramey is contradicted by 1947 newspaper accounts and Ramey's evaluation of Marcel a year later praising him as "outstanding." Note the evolution of Newton's testimony over the years and how it has become more elaborate.)
(B&M, July, 1979) "It was cut and dried. I had sent up thousands of them and there's no doubt that what I was given were parts of a balloon. I was LATER told that the major from Roswell had identified the stuff as a flying saucer, but that the general [Ramey] had been suspicious of this identification from the beginning... When I had identified it as a balloon I was dismissed."
(R&S2, 1989 interview) "The major [Newton didn't know Marcel or Cashon] kept pointing to portions of the balloon to ask if I thought it would be found on a regular balloon." [Newton said he had the impression the major was trying to save face and not appear to be a fool who couldn't tell the difference between a normal balloon and something from outer space.]
(USAF, from affidavit, Attach. 30, 1994): "...while I was examining the debris, Major Marcel was picking up pieces of the target sticks and trying to convince me that some notations on the sticks were alien writings. There were figures on the sticks, lavender or pink in color, appeared to be weather faded markings, with no rhyme or reason (sic). He did not convince me that these were alien writings."
(Fall, 1995, OMNI Magazine) "I remember Marcel chased me all around that room. He kept saying thinks like, 'Look at how tough the metal is,' 'Look at the strange markings on it.' He wouldn't have made such a big effort to convince me the thing was extraterrestrial if he thought we were looking at a weather balloon."
(Tim Shawcross, The Roswell File, 1997) [Shawcross: While not wishing to speak ill of the dead, he is less than generous in his estimation of the mental capability of Jesse Marcel and severely skeptical about his powers of analysis that day in the office with the 'wreckage' strewn over the floor in front of them. ...Newton's confidence is not unsettled by the assertion that the material could have been switched. It is based on his clear memory of how ...Marcel behaved while they were together in General Ramey's office.] "While we were in the office, he kept following me around with those sticks, those sticks had some hieroglyphic-looking things on there. He said 'Have you ever see this?' Well, I had never seen that, I had never seen that on any target that I had seen before; but it was on there. But this strongly indicated to me that he was trying to convince me that he had picked up this flying disc and this was an alien source and that I hadn't seen that; but all the rest I had seen."
(Personal telephone interview, 4/9/00) " I can just see it right now when it happened, even though it was 50 years ago. I'm in there talking to the General's aide and the General, and Brazil [meaning Marcel], he's scurrying around there. And he's going to impress me that that's a foreign -- look at on these kite sticks. You see all that foreign writing? That's foreign stuff. That's not U.S. He was just having a fit trying to convince me that this stuff was foreign and that was the stuff he picked up. ... I can just see him -- Marcel -- rushing around in there trying to convince me. And he had the stuff. And you could put the whole damn thing, like I say, in three commissary bags, which is grocery bags."
[Later] "Now part of this, they're like kite sticks, balsa wood, that was the framework for this target. And on that framework, those kite sticks, there were hieroglyphic-like marks, kind of purplish pink. And they looked kind of like Chinese writing or something. And this is what Marcel was pointing out to me. This was a fact that was on there. But I know damn well that it was not any foreign writing. And I didn't have any idea what it was until I finally met Moore, Prof. Moore from Socorro. And he explained to me that that was basically mylar, which was real new then, and they couldn't get it to stick where they wanted to. So they went to some toy store, of all places, and got some glue and they put the glue on those sticks. And then they put this, I say mylar, whatever it was, it was tinfoil material, and stretched it across, and that made it stick to those sticks. But then anyway, when it started coming apart, it had seeped through and made these impressions. And the sticks looked like they were balsa wood, real light weight stuff that would be carried aloft without too much trouble."
[Q: ...so you're saying what you saw was directly on the balsa wood, not on the foil?] A: Well, some of it would be on the foil too where the foil was up against the stick. But what Marcel was trying to show me was on the stick. And that's a fact, it was on there.
[Q: OK, it's kind of hard to understand how this stuff could leak through onto the stick. ... the specifications say ... Scotch tape.] A: Well, it leaked through. Now you can imagine... well if you take a piece of wood right now and rub some grape juice across it, that will seep into that wood.
[NOTE: Newton's statements above about the symbols being in contact with the wood and leaking through do not agree with a drawing made by Moore, showing only the edge of the tape in contact with the stick, but none of the symbols on the tape.]
[Later, reading to Newton from his Air Force affidavit 'It resembled a child's jack ... with metallic material between the legs. The legs were made of material appearing to be like balsa wood kite sticks but much tougher.' ]
[Q: (How did you know they were tougher?) They were balsa wood, weren't they?] A: "Well, I say they were, I don't know. I didn't break any of them. ...But they were lightweight and they -- I'd say, a quarter to a half inch basically. I'm not sure [?] about that either [not totally intelligible].
[Q: If it's balsa wood, then they would have been pretty fragile, presumably. ...I used to fly balsa wood kites when I was a kid. It says that you have them saying that they were much tougher than regular balsa wood.] A: "They seemed to be tough, but like I say, I didn't break one. They looked like balsa wood and they were light."
[(Continuing to read from affidavit) 'While I was examining the debris, Major Marcel was picking up pieces of the target sticks and trying to convince me that some notations on the sticks were alien writing.']
[Q: Did he actually say that?] A: "Yes".
[Q: Right in front of General Ramey and the reporters?] A: "Well, I'm not sure that he said it was 'alien' writing. He says but you can see that this is not American writing. This is some kind of foreign inscriptions. And I can't say definitely that he said it was 'alien' writing. But he did say you can see that this is some foreign writing."
[Q: ... people have used that statement to ridicule him ...that he was telling you that it was alien writing. (continuing to read from affidavit) 'There were figures on the sticks lavender or pink in color, appeared to be weather faded markings with no rhyme or reason. He did not convince me these were alien writings.' Again, it has you using 'alien writings' on here.] A: "There again, I can't say for sure that he was saying that it was alien writing. The only thing he says is that it was writing not of this world. [chuckles] And he didn't use those words either. But he said that you can see that this is foreign stuff. It's nothing that you or I -- he didn't even say that. But he implied that it was nothing that we would be writing on there. And that's true. Now it looked more like -- in fact I drew some things from my memory and sent them to -- how was he named, Jenkins? [means Kent Jeffreys] -- someone else like you who has been querying me over the years. But it didn't make any head nor tail of anything. It was just foreign garbage on there."
CHARLES B. MOORE
(Moore, like Newton, wasn't a direct Roswell witness, but the Project Engineer on the Project Mogul balloons, the secret project the USAF alleges was responsible for the Roswell crash. He has recently been caught hoaxing a trajectory calculation to take his hypothesized lost Mogul to the Brazel ranch crash site.)
USAF (interview)
Q: You indicated that the balsa wood [making up the radar reflector framework] was coated with some sort of glue such as Elmer's glue.
A: That's my memory. It wasn't completely coated. Some of it was and some of it wasn't.
Q: Some of the balsa wood is fairly dense, as far as being durable, and one of the descriptions concerning this "wood-like" material was that you couldn't dent it with your fingernail. So if you have a fairly dense balsa wood coated with a glue, it may be quite possible that a person would not be able to put their fingernail in it.
A: That's correct.
(Daily Record account, 7/9/47) Brazel related that on June 14 he and an 8-year old son, Vernon, were about 7 or 8 miles from the ranch house of the J. B. Foster ranch, which he operates, when they came upon a large area of bright wreckage made up on rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks. ... Maj. Jesse A. Marcel and a man in plain clothes accompanied him home, where they picked up the rest of the pieces of the "disk" and went to his home to try to reconstruct it. According to Brazel they simply could not reconstruct it at all. They tried to make a kite out of it, but could not do that and could not find any way to put it back together so that it could fit. ... When the debris was gathered up the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches long and about 8 inches thick. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds. ... There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument, although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction. [Brazel's description of "flower tape" is supposed to explain the other descriptions of "hieroglyphics."]
(Associated Press account by Jason Kellahin, 7/9/47) He described his find as consisting of large numbers of pieces of paper covered with a foil-like substance, and pieced together with small sticks much like a kite. Scattered with the materials over an area about 200 yards across were pieces of gray rubber. All the pieces were small. "At first I thought it was a kite, but we couldn't put it together like any kite I ever saw," he said. "It wasn't a kite." ... On July 4, he returned to the site with his wife and two of his children, Vernon, 8, and Bessie, 14. They gathered all the pieces they could find. The largest was about three feet across.
(A fake Mogul balloon launch was staged on July 9 for the press at Alamogordo by non-Mogul balloon launch personnel. The press story pictured the radar corner reflectors, allegedly responsible for the Roswell crash, and gave the following descriptions. Note the mention of retrieval messages being stapled to the stick frame, indicating the wood surface was relatively soft, despite current claims of Moore and the Air Force. The headline read "Fastasy of 'Flying Disc' is Explained Here," and was used as an explanation of the Roswell crash and other flying disc reports all over the nation.)
"Launching of the corner reflector radar experimental device is about to take place in the above picture. This is undoubtedly the device reported far and wide as the 'flying disc.' It is, in the above picture as snapped by a member of the Alamogordo News staff, shown to be a two-balloon carried pair of commonly used radar reflector paper triangles covered with tinfoil and held rigidly by small wooden strips. Each of these corner reflectors is held to the other and the two supporting balloons by twine. On the edges of the board frames of each 'flying disc' is stapled a slip of typed paper bearing the words, 'Property of Army Material Command Watson Laboratories Army Air Field, Alamogordo New Mexico."
