| COLONEL BLANCHARD'S PRESS RELEASE
Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 15:41:57 -0600
Larry Miller has submitted some interesting material that we are posting. Here is his bio. Francis Ridge
Colonel Blanchard's Press Release
(First published in The American UFO Newsletter [TAUFON] VOL. 4 No. 19, Jan./Feb. 1998) It is my personal opinion that the UFO phenomenon is real and very complex in nature. However, I find the Roswell story full of what appear to me to be gross inconsistencies, logical absurdities and strong, unsettling indicators of hidden agendas being worked by the various "terrestrial" forces that seem to be feeding into it. I also appears to me to have been deliberately manipulated into a world class legend about extraterrestrial contact and government cover up complete with a cast of heroes, villains, saints, and a rigid dogma that seems to have virtually captured most of the attention and resources of the various mainstream UFO groups at the expense of more meaningful research into the UFO phenomenon. I will hereafter refer to this as the Roswell Legend. For these reasons, Roswell has come to fascinate me, and I have devoted considerable time and thought to analyzing its many facets. To try to cover all of the reasons why I believe that the "king has no clothes" with respect to the Roswell Legend in one article for TAUFON is impossible. When discussing the Roswell Legend with my friends, I like to start by sharing my thoughts about a key element in the beginning of the Legend which is the press release by the Roswell base commander, Colonel Blanchard, announcing unequivocally that the U.S. Army Air Force at Roswell had recovered a crashed disc. These comments are strictly my opinions based solely on my reading of material referenced in the next paragraph. The authors on the subject whose work I have read and studied and who want to promote the Roswell Legend seem to use the press release as some sort of prima facie item of proof of their case without ever subjecting it to any critical examination. I would argue that a close examination of that element of the story raises significant suspicions of something else going on and something quite different from that which the pro-Roswell Legend elements would like to believe. I have read thoroughly The Roswell Incident by Berlitz and Moore, UFO Crash At Roswell by Randle and Schmitt, Crash At Corona by Friedman and Berliner, and a host of articles on the subject in various newspapers and periodicals including a recent interview with former Roswell Base Public Information Officer, Walter Haut, by the Albuquerque Journal during the Roswell 50th year celebration. The fairly consistent basics of the story of the events leading to the press release from all my various sources are that Major Marcel returned from the debris field in the wee hours of the morning with a car load of allegedly strange material. Eventually, he had an early morning staff meeting with Colonel Blanchard who is supposedly shown a few small pieces of this strange stuff. Blanchard's reported immediate actions are logical and consistent with standard military procedure in cases where a commanding officer doesn't know what he is dealing with and suspects potentially significant national security issues may be involved. He reportedly orders the entire area sealed off and strong security measures put in place. So far so good, and his actions make sense, especially in light of the testing of all sorts of advanced rockets, etc. at nearby ultra secret bases such as White Sands. Then, out of the blue, Colonel Blanchard calls Lt. Haut into his office and orders him to make a press release announcing as a certainty that a crashed disc had been recovered. I very much believe that the precipitous nature of the order and the unqualified certainty of the press release is very important to note and, to me, strongly indicate that a hidden agenda was at work. In other words, I would argue that, at this point, the story of Blanchard's role in things departs logic and common sense unless there was more going on than has been revealed. Ordering the press release was totally inconsistent with his own just delivered instructions for tight security and totally in violation of all the training in such matters that a senior military officer gets during their career. As a former career military officer, I can assure the reader that every professional military officer knows that press releases from senior military commanders in the field on anything other than trivial, non-controversial matters must be reviewed and approved at the highest levels in Washington. Violation of this rule gets your career ruined very quickly. That Blanchard would on his own initiative order such a momentous press release, which was roughly equivalent to announcing the Second Coming of Christ, after only a cursory look at a few small pieces of the debris and a brief conversation with one major on his staff is not remotely believable to me, especially since he suffered no adverse consequences for his action and was later reportedly promoted to general. Further, according to the above sources, a sizable force of federal agents and soldiers conveniently and instantly materialized all over not just the Roswell area, but all over New Mexico to cause what appears to have been deliberate mayhem among the local citizens with rather dramatic efficiency, speed, organization and heavy handed, gestapo-style theatrics. I would argue that the reported heavy handed actions of this army of agents and soldiers was totally unprofessional and totally unnecessary in the context of the situation unless they were part of a bigger, hidden agenda. As I study the accounts of this blitz, I sense "showmanship" at work. This certainly arouses my suspicions that these forces were pre-staged with a well orchestrated game plan and were just waiting for their cue, which was Blanchard's expected press release. I found it interesting to note that Randle and Schmitt in their book noted above made what I regard as a rather clumsy effort to explain why Blanchard would, in the context of the story to that point, do something so illogical as to order his famous press release. Unable to come up with my postulated reason that made any sense, they finally state on page 57 of my Avon 1991 paperback copy, "Blanchard acting on orders issued in Washington, D.C., ordered Walter Haut, the PIO, to issue a press release saying they had recovered a flying disc.'" (Italics added by this author for emphasis.) Having casually dropped this devastating bomb right into the guts of the traditional Roswell Legend in the form of a definitive statement of alleged fact, they just simply ignore the incredible implications and moved on. They offer no source for such a definitive statement nor do they offer any comment or speculation as to who in Washington might give such an order and why. In summary, based solely on the version of events related in the above referenced sources, I am forced to strongly suspect that Blanchard, when he ordered his famous press release, was following orders from the highest levels in Washington in accordance with a scripted plan. I believe that pursuing who in Washington gave him his orders for that press release and why is where real Roswell investigators ought to be looking. |