Lazy Reporting About Roswell In NY Times, my favorite paper? #13

Roswell gets complicated so fast, controversial so fast, I'm always wanting to start with something simple, like Robert Porter's story.

Porter, a staff sergeant, flew with boxes of Roswell crash stuff to Fort Worth.   His cargo was transferred from his B-29 to a B-25 he was told was continuing to Wright-Patterson in Ohio. In moving the material out of his plane, he picked up one box that was like picking up an empty box. He was asked, "Did you ever find out what was in the boxes brought from the crash site?"

"No."

"What did you think about it?"

"It wasn't a weather balloon."

Project Mogul was operating in New Mexico.  What sense would there be in hurrying such stuff to Ohio?  It's just one more unexplained oddity.

Now let's see if we can take a simple look at Walter Haut's statements.  He was the public relations officer.  Per Haut in video on You Tube (accessed Jan 2017), his commander Colonel Blanchard called and said the unit was in possession of a "flying disc."  Haut took Blanchard at his word and released it to the press.  Decades later the Air Force concluded WHATEVER they found that day was most likely to be Project Mogul debris.  Mogul first used "meteorological" (weather) balloons, and later switched to neoprene.  The NY Times wrote,  "Numerous balloon flights carried both sensors and, to aid tracking, radar reflectors. To the untrained eye, the reflectors looked extremely odd, a geometrical hash of lightweight sticks and sharp angles made of metal foil."

Three questions:  First, does the odd "hash" of sticks and "metal foil" sound like something you would rush to a base five states away in Ohio?  Second, would an Air Force colonel describe it as a "flying disk?"  Third, would a dozen sort-of know-nothing civilians be likely to see the mix of sensors and reflectors and the hash and jump to the conclusion they weren't made on Earth?  The short answer to all three questions is no.  Would Colonel Blanchard have been looking with an untrained eye?   Well, he wasn't on Project Mogul.  Did he know about it?

Okay, let's take on the NY Times.  I tend to give it a great deal of weight, have high regard for its reporting.  

In the Air Force report concluding the Roswell debris was most likely a Mogul balloon, they couldn't be completely certain because the Mogul debris no longer existed. We have a conclusion based on a "preponderance of the evidence," not "beyond a reasonable doubt." The Times' Bill Broad (Sept 18, 1994) spelled out details about Mogul.  Broad is a Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist who in 1994 had been at the Times 13 years.  Sounds very reliable to me, which only deepens the mystery, since he appears to ignore important issues in his article, including the Times' and our precious freedom of the press.  After explaining Mogul, he devoted five paragraphs to statements from "flying saucer cultists."  He listed books they've written, told how they've come up with a theory that the gov is hiding aliens from Roswell, and quoted them calling the new report a bunch of "pap."

 To me this was like focussing on a lawyer's statement outside a courtroom, instead of taking a detailed or even a cursory look at the evidence itself.  Granted, the evidence is old but I read the Times to dig deeper than what I can read from the cultists in 10 minutes on the Net.   I think it verges on bad reporting on about four levels.

Level One.  Our Pulitzer prize winner could have reported on censorship of the press.  The BBC did.  In the 1980s it interviewed Frank Joyce, who worked at Roswell's radio station, KGFL.  In 1947 Joyce made the on-air announcement that the Army said it had a flying disc in its possession.  Joyce said that, later that day, he picked up the phone to hear a young woman's voice telling him a Colonel from the Pentagon was ready to talk to him.  The man "read me the riot act" in a powerful voice, "of the type that really conveys menace and power." Joyce said.  'You're gonna get in a lot of trouble for this.'  I said, 'Look, I'm a civilian.  You can't tell me what to do in stories I put on the air.'  And he says, 'I'll show you what I can do!' Bang, hung up the phone."

Oh, that's how we want our Army acting, alright.  Why delve into that?  Then George Roberts of KGFL told the BBC of a call Walt Whitmore, station owner, got from [New Mexico's senator Chavez] from Washington who said, 'Look, if you put out any stories on this, you're gonna lose your license.  It's not gonna be over a period of time.  It's gonna be the same day that we tell you you're off the air."   What the station was about to air was an interview with discoverer Mack Brazel, with details about the debris.  That's dictatorial intimidation.  It was followed by false imprisonment of Joyce. Carey, p. 62.

Why wasn't that more significant than what a bunch of nuts are doing? 
Why are cultists more useful to the public discussion than press censorship? 

Level Two.  Leave aside press issues.  Broad could have written what military officers present at Roswell in July, 1947 have done, that contradicts the established account.  He could have spelled out Haut's take on the "flying disk" report (above).  He could have told us a little about Jesse Marcel.  Or another few military types who later on contradicted the official summation.

Level Three.  Here's a beef of a different type.  Broad said witnesses claimed to handle gear that was "incredibly thin and strong."   In this context this is misleading because the word "incredibly" is out of place.  It gives the wrong impression by understating the case greatly.  This was material thin and strong beyond what those who handled it had ever seen produced on Earth. "Incredibly thin and strong" makes it sound like Kevlar. When was the last time you heard someone seeing Kevlar wonder how it could have been made on Earth?  They don't. Yet the Times describes the alleged material about as it would Kevlar.  Repeatedly Roswell witnesses doubted that what they saw or handled could have come from an Earthly source.  We're not talking about three witnesses, but 20 or maybe 40.  To that many people, the material did not seem "incredible," it seemed unEarthly, and there's a massive difference.  Why wasn't that seeming contradiction to the Air Force report worth discussion, Mr Broad?

I'm reminded of the science principle that one exception to an established theory undoes the theory.  "We have absolutely no credible reason to believe in extraterrestrial technology" is the established approach (although an Army panel in about 1948 didn't agree).  So it takes a cultist to go interview the 20 witnesses who say they have personal experience to contradict what is established?  What does that make me if I keep writing Roswell blogs?  Hell, this is #13.  Maybe I'm on the Far Side already.  What if I go to the museum in Roswell?  Just an idle tourist yawning at the pics of E.T.?  Now if I just knew how to use a yawning emogie.

Level Four:   Since the Roswell debris no longer exists, the Air Force could not present clear evidence that it was Project Mogul stuff.    Yet the Times writes Mogul debris "littered the New Mexico countryside."  Sounds like it could have become somewhat common.  It was neoprene rubber with some sticks, sensors, and metal foil tethered to it.   Still, academy-educated Colonel Blanchard described something he saw as a flying disc, and the Times displays no interest in exploring the apparent contradiction.

Next time we may look at evidence about the military's motives in the period of the 1994 report as unearthed by Howard Blum.  Did that color how thorough the 1994 report was?  In the meantime I'm sure Bill Broad will be posting comments below to help me see what I've missed.  Maybe he'll offer to meet me in Roswell for spring break.