March 29, 2015 — James Carrion

[Sentry]

I found the recovered military saucer story that James Carrion mentioned,
better yet, it came up in a discussion with him and Stanton Friedman:
Re: Roswell & Flying Saucers

You can read the full newspaper story on it here from the
Roswell Morning Dispatch, - July 8, 1947 "Report Flying Disk Found"
PROJECT 1947 - UFO REPORTS 1947

In 1950, Henry J. Taylor resurrected the story as supporting evidence that saucers were a secret US military project.

 

[Open-Minded-Earthling]

Great find Sentry! That's very interesting, especially, to learn Carrion and Stanton have been debating this as far back as 2012. I wonder if there have been other email exchanges between them before that???

One thing is for certain. It's obvious lots of this material and "saucer shapes" was aloft in the air in Texas too... "Gerick said one piece looked like tin foil, but when he picked it up, it appeared to be celluloid." These materials cannot survive space, reentry, or drifting and flying around for long in our atmosphere before crashing randomly. These were extremely light weight hollow objects meant to ride the wind, or possibly be pulled through the air and/or connected together for line formations by an invisible [to the human eye] kite-line.

The July 8, 1947 AP article notes "over 50 Texans have reported seeing the mysterious objects during the last ten days."

Going over the AP wires it seems this message was meant to be shared and reported to the masses.

 

[Constance]

I found the recovered military saucer story that James Carrion mentioned,
better yet, it came up in a discussion with him and Stanton Friedman:
Re: Roswell & Flying Saucers

You can read the full newspaper story on it here from the
Roswell Morning Dispatch, - July 8, 1947 "Report Flying Disk Found"
PROJECT 1947 - UFO REPORTS 1947

In 1950, Henry J. Taylor resurrected the story as supporting evidence that saucers were a secret US military project.

The concluding paragraph of Carrion's 2010 email to Stanton linked in the UFO Updates extract:

"As I aim to prove that UFOs were promulgated in 1947 as a Cold War deception operation, tracking the whereabouts of those that would be “in the know” about what really happened surrounding Maury Island, Kenneth Arnold and Roswell is paramount. As newspaper articles and other corroborating documents confirm, there definitely seems to be something mighty fishy happening in Texas that first week of July, 1947."

Not only in Texas and not just during the first week of July 1947. There's a great deal more to be 'tracked' concerning the ufo wave over the US in 1947. Ted Bloecher's research into newspaper reports of US sightings in the US over the spring/early summer of 1947 is essential reading for anyone tempted to believe that this was all "a Cold War deception operation." Bloecher's catalogue of sightings can (and should) be read in full at the link below along with all the other research contributions re the 1947 Ufo Wave [and precedents elsewhere] gathered at the NICAP link below. Hand-waving about 'ufo hysteria' based in misperceptions just doesn't cut it, and nor does the notion that this history can be accounted for as "a Cold War deception operation."

1947 Chronology

"Created December 14, 2005, updated: 29 March 2015

The wave of 1947 has always intrigued me for several reasons. All the other waves had a precedent. This wave had come before all of them, had come out of nowhere, and was an entirely new phenomena. The descriptions of the objects seen over a six week period were very similar and half of the sightings involved daylight objects, many of them described as "flying discs". The wave suddenly ended with the reported crash of a strange object at Roswell, New Mexico. For what we know about the wave of 1947 today we have Ted Bloecher, and a few others, to thank. What you are about to read, not counting the BB documents and NICAP reports, encompasses well over 500 pages.

This project involves a number of people. First of all, this is an on-going project, and Ted Bloecher is helping us to constantly update his 1967 work. The entire updated version as presented today is available on the NICAP site. Over a thousand incidents, many of which are included in the chronology below, are listed in the charts from "The Report on the UFO Wave of 1947" (Reference 1). We also wish to thank Wendy Connors and Mike Hall for allowing us to post their great book, "Alfred Loedding and the Great Flying Saucer Wave of 1947". No 1947 work would be complete without the aid of Jan Aldrich of Project 1947. With the help of William Wise (Project Blue Book Archive), and Dan Wilson (digging out the cases from my checklist), the task was much easier. But without Brad Sparks' updated list, the Comprehensive Catalog of Project Blue Book Unknowns, the entire project would have been impossible. And our thanks go to Jean Waskiewicz who created the online NICAP DBase (NSID) that helped make it possible to link from the cases to the reports themselves. To view the 1947 sightings listed by Blue Book click here. Be sure to click on and read the two great books below. But first, let's let Ted Bloecher do the introduction.

Francis Ridge
NICAP Site Coordinator"

Read on . . . . .

 

[Constance]

Here is a direct link to the whole of Bloecher's compendium of newspaper reports concerning the US wave of 1947, originally published in 1967 with an introduction by James McDonald. As Francis Ridge notes in the introductory material at the NICAP page I copied above, Bloecher has been continuing to add to this research in recent years. Details of the additional research into the 1947 US Wave identified by Ridge above will have to be sought out at the specific websites of those research projects.

Report on UFO Wave of 1947 Menu

 

[Goggs Mackay]

@Sentry - Curt, damn fine job buddy - you nailed that interview and you were totally on the ball and full of great questions. It was great to hear you back on the show and there is no doubt we can look forward to another appearance by you in the future.
Well done!

 

[withoutlimits09]

I found the recovered military saucer story that James Carrion mentioned,
better yet, it came up in a discussion with him and Stanton Friedman:
Re: Roswell & Flying Saucers

You can read the full newspaper story on it here from the
Roswell Morning Dispatch, - July 8, 1947 "Report Flying Disk Found"
PROJECT 1947 - UFO REPORTS 1947

In 1950, Henry J. Taylor resurrected the story as supporting evidence that saucers were a secret US military project.

Nice exchange there, surprisingly, Stanton holds and own and does a good job of pointing out flaws in Carrion's very limited view of the Roswell case. There was a lot going on, which included a lot of people, for it all to have been JUST a "code breaking" exercise predicated on a falsely reported newspaper article.

 

[Pigsinzen]

I enjoyed the guest & guest host. Mr. Carrion doesn't sugar coat his opinions when it comes to Mufon. Personally I think he is holding Mufon accountable for some questionable decision making & for some of the garbage they've attached their name too, and I wish ufology had ten more just like him.

I also agree with Mr. Carrion's statement that certain ufologists have a tendency to ignore evidence that might disprove a personal theory or belief.

 

[withoutlimits09]

I enjoyed the guest & guest host. Mr. Carrion doesn't sugar coat his opinions when it comes to Mufon. Personally I think he is holding Mufon accountable for some questionable decision making & for some of the garbage they've attached their name too, and I wish ufology had ten more just like him.

I also agree with Mr. Carrion's statement that certain ufologists have a tendency to ignore evidence that might disprove a personal theory or belief.

Agreed, but Carrion also ignores the mountain of FOIA declassified reports, that were never previously publicly released, never meant for public consumption (in order to "code break"), that seem to suggest both our military and intelligence agencies were dealing with objects in the sky they could not explain.

Again, these were classified internal communications, not press-releases meant to goad the Russians into encrypting the story in their spy communications. So although he could be on to something, there is also plenty of evidence that shows our military and intelligence agencies took UFOs very seriously, had things flying in the skies they could not explain, and fought hard to keep that information secret as evidenced by the later declassified material.

So he too is guilty of playing the same game. His myopic look at the subject in terms of his "deception" thesis does not explain away large swathes of information, although he does ignore it or make light of it....because it doesn't fit with his world-view.

 

[Wade]

But James has never denied that there are instances of unexplainable events. It's just that there are certain events that have entered UFO lore that he feels needs to be reevaluated. I don't think he owes it to us to point out legitimate events...but seems willing to offer some up if asked.

On the other hand if he does join us once again, I did have another question for him on the original question thread that I will ask again here in case he logs on and that is if the previous mentioned cases ( Roswell, ghost rockets, Maury Island, Kenneth Arnold sightings ) are instances of military actions and even though were not necessarily done to conjure up any sensations of extraterrestrial visitation the fact remains there is a number of sightings starting with the 1947 flap that bear thinking about. was this whole flap a combination of military action , paranoia and misidentification ? Even if there was one singular event in the flap that couldn't be explained by conventional means the timing is extraordinary and should be addressed . As I alluded to in the original thread it's almost as if the four cases started the ball rolling to a phenomena that continues today. What happened in our national/international psyche that brought on thoughts of ET ? We recently got over a war that brought us the nuclear age, rocketry of our own and other advancements yet our knee jerk reaction to explaining unidentified flying objects is aliens. Burnt had a good question about foo fighters, I still wonder if the military didn't take note and have some suspicions and wanted muddy the waters for some reason. Or, in lieu of that Like I mentioned maybe Mr. Wells broadcast did hit us more deeply (psychologically) than we thought.

 

[Constance]

Agreed, but Carrion also ignores the mountain of FOIA declassified reports, that were never previously publicly released, never meant for public consumption (in order to "code break"), that seem to suggest both our military and intelligence agencies were dealing with objects in the sky they could not explain.

Again, these were classified internal communications, not press-releases meant to goad the Russians into encrypting the story in their spy communications. So although he could be on to something, there is also plenty of evidence that shows our military and intelligence agencies took UFOs very seriously, had things flying in the skies they could not explain, and fought hard to keep that information secret as evidenced by the later declassified material.

So he too is guilty of playing the same game. His myopic look at the subject in terms of his "deception" thesis does not explain away large swatches swathes of information, although he does ignore it or make light of it....because it doesn't fit with his world-view.

Very well said. I totally agree.

 

[Sub-light]

Okay I'm listening to the James Carrion review for the first time so I am reacting right now because I just heard it. I have no problem with his theory that certain sightings and events could be confused with military action for deceptions on part of the intelligence community. However, I have been reading a lot about the early 1947 sightings during the summer. I have been reading all of the case reports in project sign pertaining to that summer. I've also been looking at is many newspaper clippings from that particular three-week period as well. I am not a ufologist, I do not consider my self part of the UFO community or anything. I don't have any smoking gun stories to tell you I don't have any cocktail party stories to tell you about General "This" or Senator "That" or anything like that. What I will say is this... I am 100% sure that there was a group of a specific type of vehicle flying around the country during that three week period. The reports were vary consistent to specific shape and size and characteristics. They point to a real event with a real vehicle. It's also important that you take into account people like Astronaut Gordon Cooper, Who in interviews suggested that the shape seemed logical to him for a vehicle requiring reentry. No one at that time seem to deny that this was a real phenomenon with a specific type of machine. The Air Force included. Also take into account the rand corporation involvement.
I'm not going to say that I'm sure these things came from another planet but, I will tell you this, they were some type of flying machine. I don't see how that had anything to do with government deception. I don't see how Ghost Rockets had anything to do with the particular circular shaped air vehicles described in the reports. If you strip away all of the modern-day conjecture about UFOs and flying saucers and just look at 1947 from a fresh unpolluted's perspective you have to come to the conclusion that this was a real phenomenon of an actual FLYING vehicle of some type The size of a C 54 aircraft. No Earthly air-vehicle anything like that has ever been seen since. So what the heck were they?
One last thing, as I listen to him I just don't think his case is that strong all he seems to be saying is that there was weird stuff going on with the government of that time and at some of these things could be mistaken for that. big deal, that doesn't answer the question of why there were large aircraft size circular almost lifting body shape vehicles flying. No explanation I have ever heard from anyone has ever made any sense to me. They were either from another planet or another time or they were unmanned vehicles. But they were not conceived on this planet during that time.

 

[mike_thoth]

The one thing that these discussions highlight is the drastic need of proper UaP analyses & in the absence of real evidence & real conclusions people take sides in a turf war which stunts progress. I see it very similar to the effect the scientific establishment has had on the UFO community in general. By ignoring the subject & pretending there is nothing too it, very odd belief systems spring up as people try to fill in the unknowns with hypothesis of their own. The same has happened with the 'official' ufo organisation approach, many old timers stick to their guns & Carrion in some ways does the same by insisting many accounts are deception related. Ultimately Carrion maybe correct in many instances but he also acknowledges there are real UaP encounters, consider the pre 1947 cases. In any case these situations can be addressed by taking the approach Vallee has advocated in the recent CNES workshop in Paris. The setting up of a global database of genuine encounters (combined he estimates there are at least 200,000 genuine cases in different databases) that can have statistical analysis ran on them individually & combined once new software structures can be written to accommodate the unstructured nature of many cases. Once this has been done real questions can be postulated & perhaps answers will be forthcoming for many fundamental questions. These deception cases could then be filtered. I have mentioned the Pentacle memo previously but have not heard Carrions take on this, perhaps it will be in his book which I confess not to have read yet. In any case the 120 or so scientists involved in the CNES conference realise this work can be started now so let's hope that the proper research is done that the like of MUFON stop f'&$%# about with TV shows & start to find answers.

 

[junius]

An interesting read perhaps Mr Carrion may like to see: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB506/docs/ciasignals_16.pdf

 

[Constance]

An interesting read perhaps Mr Carrion may like to see: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB506/docs/ciasignals_16.pdf

Fascinating. Thank you for posting it.

 

[Sub-light]

Well, one thing I feel like I have to say here is this. I think sometimes the UFO community at large is hung up on a few things. I think there's too much emphasis on the "evil" conspiracy aspect of it all. I think part of this is due to a post Watergate antigovernment mistrust and the "them" culture. I understand why people feel that way but it leads to a lack of focus. The other problem IS lack of focus itself. There are too many theories.
We are like the Mayans trying to figure out what those giant canoes are doing out in the ocean and where they came from and who the people on them are. In Their case the simplest answer would've been the truth. They were people from another world who came across the ocean.

 

[Stagger Lee]

Interesting post. It was the Aztecs biggest mistake, believing the Spanish were gods and not gold hungry men. The opportunity to destroy them and their ships was lost and small pox was the final blow.

 

[Sub-light]

Vary true. However my personal view on the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors is more like this; I don't think of them as Conquistadors. I'm more of the belief that they would be more like The Pilgrims on The Mayflower. Again one other hang-up with UFO theory is that they all have to have traveled here at LIGHT SPEED or faster. Why? Again the Americas first contact with Europeans was from people in Sail Boats, not the Concorde. If ET would just be trying to save it self from a planetary disaster (like in the movie Interstellar) they wouldn't care if it took a life time to travel the distance. Now, I know people out there will hate me for saying this but.... I think that we (not sure when exactly but probably in the 30s or 40s) were the host of refugees form a near by star system who came here at Sub Light (get it now ) speed and that a an interstellar version of the Mayflower is parked out in or near the Astroid Belt and that's it. There's no one zipping back and forth to some star system at "Warp 8". This is why the government always would say "They Don't represent a threat". Do you all realize how powerful that statement was back in the 50s? It's like saying "yeah they're real but we aren't worried about it so go back to what you were doing and let us handle it".

 

[Creepy Green Light]

No wonder MUFON got disenchanted with Carrion. James knows what he's talking about, does the proper research, and has no problem throwing the BS flag as often as he sees fit.

 

[junius]

Another interesting development that may interest Mr Carrion regarding this subject... How the KGB archives will be opened and information declassified - Uaposition

 

[Creepy Green Light]

Eh,

Didn't really care for this episode. Carrion knocks MUFON for not being serious researchers or conducting themselves "professionally," but then posts a provocative, and useless message goading MUFON on their facebook page. I don't think his post helped UFO research, I don't think it got us closer to the truth, nor do I think it began a constructive dialog in a mature manner. It was an attempt to troll them and get a rise out of a select people. It worked, and they inappropriately (I believe) deleted his post.

Carrion seems to behave like a scorned ex-lover or girl friend left at the alter. It is very clear he is bitter due to his falling out with MUFON, but rather than go away and pursue decent research, he just goads them and spends too much of his time criticizing them. They have a bad UFO show, move on, don't watch it, write more about ghost rockets and give it away for free...who cares!

Curiously, for a guy to have such strong opinions about current day MUFON, he admits, he has no idea how it is currently run, what research is being conducted, where the money is being spent, or what their position is. He isn't even sure how a director is selected these days. However, despite his ignorance he goes on...

Clearly, Carrion is a bright guy, though it is hard to see his position as being objective. He wants good research, in a "scientific manner" but then engages in childish name calling by referring to Stanton Friedman as a "coward." Not sure, that term is used at too many "scientific conferences" nor is it even productive.

Finally, my biggest complaint with Carrion is one which I have with others, that is he views the topic entirely through his colored lens. Carrion claims his passion is "Cold War and Intelligence History." As such, he of course can write most early UFO cases away as "cold war and intelligence" operations. Simiarly, Dolan, sees the topic as it pertains to "The National Security State" and pushes the idea of secrecy in government...why? Because that is his background. Similary, Friedman sees everything in terms of Roswell and MJ-12, why? Because that was his start in this business.

At the end of the day, I am not sure Carrion is doing anyone any favors. His work into ghosts rockets may very well be interesting, but it is hard to take him seriously, or want to engage his work, when he sounds like a bitter bride left at the alter of MUFON.

This was the best episode of The Paracast in the last 12 mos. James called out the fledgling, about-to-be-obsolete & defunct organization. They've had this coming. If all investigators were like James, this mystery would probably be solved. Once James realized the gravity of how incompetent and embarrassing MUFON is, he walked out on them. I can totally see how & why he says he is so embarrassed to let his son know that he was the leader of that 3 ring circus for a period of time. He calls out Jaime M. (Mexico) in the same manner. I know myself and a ton of other listeners are looking forward to the next time James Carrion is a guest.