Showing posts with label Secrecy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Secrecy. Show all posts

Friday, May 8, 2015

The Placard of the Roswell Slides: The Final Curtain


Special Rush report from The Roswell Slides Research Group


The Roswell Slides second biggest mystery was the content of the placard on the alleged alien body.

Several statements were made about it, some contradictory:








The Roswell Slides and the Truth by Anthony Bragalia
This ‘placard’ is not very evident in the video grab image. However, it has been enlarged by experts and the writing, in red ink, is handwritten, not typed, as would be found in a biological display in a museum.

Tom Carey was interviewed about the Roswell Slides on the March 22, 2015 episode of Jaime Maussan’s Contacto on Tercer Milenio TV. Carey said that experts have been able to read some words on the placard on the case and that, “debunkers will be disappointed.”


Tom Carey and Don Schmitt were interviewed, of the show's expert presentations, Schmitt said: 
This will be part of the event, part of the program in May, that all of these analytical reports, all of the analyses, all of the main experts as well as the photographic experts who examined- there’s a placard, very fuzzy, that can not be legibly read by the naked eye, yet we’ve had everyone from Dr. David Rudiak, to Studio MacBeth, even the Photo Interpretation Department of the Pentagon, as well as Adobe have all told us that it’s beyond the pale, that it cannot be read, it is totally up to interpretation. 
So, we truly feel we have performed due diligence; we have done everything we can to substantiate and prove what is contained within these slides, whether it is something of a human malady or something truly extraordinary. https://youtu.be/fQyAVrFnTos?t=1h24m2s





During BeWitness, it was announced that despite the work of a number of experts, the placard could absolutely not be read. 

In the second slide the placard was visible, and the writing was evident, if unclear.



News coverage, claiming the placard could not be read,


"We couldn't make anything clearly out of the placard... several others, who did not have much luck." - Adam Dew

"Nobody could read anything decisively in the placard, unfortunately. I am sure people will make attempts to do this going forward...." - Adam Dew

He was right, and most of the placard has now been read.

A member of The Roswell Slides Research Team used a newly acquired source image of the placard seen in front of the body. By manipulating the commercial software, SmartDeblur, he managed to significantly clear up the blurred text. Other members offered suggestions and helped narrow down the actual words.

Nab Lator deblurred the placard image.

Chris Isbert created an animated GIF to display the text.
http://s263.photobucket.com/user/europa73/media/macmini_1_zpsib9x40yc.gif.html


The first line was the most clearly resolved:
MUMMIFIED BODY OF TWO YEAR OLD BOY
There is little doubt that this is the true and correct text. The other 3 lines of the text are somewhat hard to read, some words more clear than others. The original results yielded:

MUMMIFIED BODY OF TWO YEAR OLD BOY

At the time of burial the body was clothed in a xxx-xxx cotton

shirt. Burial wrappings consisted of these small cotton blankets.


Loaned by the Mr. Xxxxxx, San Francisco, California



The entire effort only took hours, quite a difference from the claimed “years” of research that the Slides promoters camp claimed. Because the Slide hucksters haven’t released proper high resolution scans of the slides, our work was made more difficult. We could probably get clearer results from better images.

The mystery of the placard is solved, and so is the nature of the body in the case.

A boy, from Earth. 

The question then, becomes, how was this not discovered by the experts examining the case in the years of investigation?


Subsequent information filled in the missing placard letters. 


Mesa Verde Notes September 1938 Volume VIII, Number 1.


MUMMIFIED BODY OF TWO YEAR OLD BOY

At the time of burial the body was clothed in a slip-over cotton 

shirt. Burial wrappings consisted of three small cotton blankets. 

Loaned by Mr. S. L. Palmer, San Francisco, California.




The Roswell Slides Research Group

José Antonio Caravaca, Spain
Isaac Koi, UK
Nab Lator, France
Lance Moody, USA
Tim Printy, USA
Curt Collins, USA
Tim Hebert, USA
Paul Kimball, Canada
Gilles Fernandez, France
Trained Observer, USA
Chris Rutkowski, Canada
Roger Glassel, Sweden
S. Miles Lewis, USA

Thanks to our colleagues and associates, including Alejandro Espino (for the 
Israel Ampuero team, Spain), Philippe Hernandez, Jeff Ritzmann, Aaron J Gulyas, Irna France, Nick Redfern, Fin Handley and many, many more who provided help.


Monday, March 16, 2015

"Roswell Slides" or Fraud Prints?





“People are asking for science, but these are photos. 
There is only so much science you can get out of photos.” 
Adam Dew quoted at Open Minds


"Please, do not be skeptical, give it a chance, as you will see, 
it is much better than anything you have on TV sci-fi, 
and also the worst that could happen 
(no, not an alien invasion) 
is to come out with a new perspective, 
far from what they show you in the movies."
Jaime Maussan (translated) beWitness

A Roswell Slides Recap

To summarize the Roswell Slides history: Tom Carey put together a Dream Team to produce the ultimate Roswell book. The project got sidetracked, but Carey continued to work with his writing partner Don Schmitt, assisted by Anthony Bragalia and David Rudiak, who both had provided help for the Witness to Roswell book. Then, the slides entered the story. As much as possible, I’m going to let the players themselves tell the tale.


Top: Carey, Maussan, Schmitt
Bottom: Bragalia, Dew, Rudiak

Adam Dew makes a call

The slide collection seems to have been owned by a couple in Midland, Texas, Bernerd and Hilda Ray. Adam Dew claims that a friend’s sister salvaged some slides while cleaning out a house that was going to be demolished. 
“A quick timeline as I understand it: Hilda died in 1988. Slides discovered when emptying out a garage outside of Sedona (Cottonwood we think) in 1998. Slides were deemed intersting (obviously old color slides) but not fully examined until around 2008. While I think that the home may have belonged to Hilda's lawyer, there is no way to know for sure as the woman who found them didn't keep records of the homes she cleaned out. ...I don't think the slides came from Hilda's home.”http://ufocon.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-many-slides-stories.html
Adam Dew of SlideBox Media, LLC

The woman’s brother told Dew about the slides in 2012. Dew formed SlideBox Media, LLC and took the lead in marketing the slides. The show started coming together when he contacted Carey and Schmitt.


Secrets Exposed

Bragalia's article as printed in UFO Today magazine.



While the search for a profitable platform for the slides was on, details about them leaked out. Anthony Bragalia wrote an article outlining that the slides, showed a corporeal being. It was a humanoid, most certainly not of earth and it was dead.”  Based chiefly on Bernerd Ray’s profession as a geologist, Bragalia speculated that,
Given this background on the slides we are now confronted with an inescapable truth:
A prominent geologist who explored the New Mexico desert in the 1940s is directly associated with two 1947 Kodachromes depicting a humanoid corpse as found at Roswell.”
In other words: a weird picture of a body was found, and a scenario was imagined, trying to tie it to Roswell. In the comments, Bragalia states, “I am aware that two 1947 slides of a dead alien do not equate to tissue slides/samples or the actual cadaver itself. But given the confirmed authenticity and provenance of the slides- it is as close as we will ever come that kind of physical evidence.”

Provenance. That’s a funny word to use when there’s nothing to tie the content of the slides to UFOs, Roswell, the military or even the United States of America. It can’t be proven these slides were taken by the Rays. As Adam Dew notes, it can’t be determined who owned the house where the slides were found.

Wait and see, they say!

There is very little left to wait for, just the allegedly clear images of the slides themselves. The promoters and their associates have been discussing the details of the slides and voicing their conclusions about the slides since 2013. The delay in showing them was due to the search for a platform to release them, and they’ve chosen an entertainment venue,  Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City.

Due to the carelessness in the “Kodachrome - A Documentary - Official Trailer,” images of the slides have been isolated, and “leaked” online. According to one insider, it is as good or better than what he could see viewing them on a lap top.

Eyewitness testimony about the “Roswell Slides”


Larry Lemke posted about examining the slides, and has posted the best description available about what is depicted.

Early in March, 2014, I met with the owner of the slides, viewed them, and talked to him about his plans. (Actually, I viewed digital reproductions of the slides.) ... The owner affirmed that it is his intent to present the slides and their story to the public in a non-sensationialistic forum, after he has satisfied himself as to their authenticity. He feels he is nearing the end of that phase.

He goes on to describe the photographs:

1. There are 2 photos, taken in an indoor setting.

2. The photos are of poor quality (focus, exposure) compared to virtually all the other photos in the same collection. For this reason, edge detection, contrast enhancement and other photoanalysis techniques are warranted and are being used.

3. The photos appear to have been taken about 4 or 5 feet from the humanoid, from a position slightly above it.

4. To my eye, the humanoid is lying on a clear glass shelf and is surrounded by either clear glass walls and/or a full glass enclosure. The enclosure appears to be more like a rectangular box than like a bottle.

5. In one of the photos, a woman is standing behind the glass case (visible from approximately the waist down). In the other photo a man is visible in the same location, leading to speculation that the man and the woman traded places and took turns taking pictures.

6. The humanoid is not immersed in a fluid; it appears to be open to the air (at least if the lid were off).

7. The glass shelf/ box that the humanoid is on/in appears to be supported on shelf brackets that are connected to vertical, metal supports. The vertical supports are perforated at regular intervals (nominally, 1 inch spacing) by drilled holes. The shelf arrangement gives the appearance of a laboratory apparatus rack.

8. The humanoid is lying on its back, with its head to the camera’s left and feet to the right.

9. There is some type of placard on the front of the glass case, with (currently undecipherable, out-of-focus) writing on it. (Shades of the Ramey memo!) It is my suspicion that this placard is the source of the idea that the genital area of the humanoid was deliberately covered up in order to escape the wrath of the censors when the slides were developed. I don’t think that is the case. From what I could see, the genital area was not visible to the camera due to the view angle of the camera. I suspect that the placard simply serves to identify the contents of the glass case.

10. The proportions of the humanoid appear to be slightly different than a “normal” human, but probably, no single dimension of the body is outside the range of naturally occurring sizes. The length of the head (crown to chin) is approximately the same length as the torso (neck to crotch). The arm length (shoulder to wrist) is approximately the length of the torso (i.e., the wrist joint is approximately aligned with the hip bone). The leg bones are long, compared to the arms.

11. Given that the body is about 3 feet long, if it is human, then it must be either a child or an adult with a developmental disorder. (Human Trisomy 17 has been suggested as a candidate.)

12. I could not see digits on either the hands or feet, and so could not count them.

13. The mouth is open and no teeth are visible.

14. The skin of the humanoid is smooth and appears to have shrunk taut against the bones (ribs, legs, arms, cranium). Whether this is due to natural effects of death (saponification, dessication, etc.) or is the result of some post-mortem treatment (embalming, freezing, etc.) is not clear.

15. The head appears to have been severed from the top of the spinal column and then replaced, lying at an unnatural angle relative to the torso.

There is nothing in the photo that would either definitively connect this to the Roswell event or definitively disconnect it. Any connection is coincidental (it appears to have been taken at about the right time). http://ufocon.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-roswell-slides-may-not-see-light-of.html

Leaked slide image by Narrenschiffer 

The leaked image must not be all that bad. Lemke refers to it as showing more detail than what he was shown of the originals.

"Nearly a year ago I saw what I would consider low resolution computer screen images of the slides for a period of about 10 to 15 minutes. ... the images I saw at that time were of poor enough quality that I could not see other features that others were claiming to be present. ... It wasn’t until I saw the cleaned up images earlier today that I could see enough detail to form an opinion... Having looked at the cleaned up image produced by the Germans over at the UFO Conjectures site, it looks to me like a hydrocephalic child is a pretty good fit. ... possibly an Andean mummy.http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/02/roswell-slides-and-video-clips.html

Physical Evidence?

Supposedly, Kodak experts have certified that the slides are authentic. The team promoting the slides has focused on discussing their age and supposed authenticity of the slides, but that’s only a small part of what’s important about them. We need to see proof of several other things before they can be considered evidence of anything.

 Tom Carey was the one to first make an official teaser announcement about the slides and what he claims they are. “We have come into possession of a couple of Kodachrome color slides of an alien being lying in a glass case,” he said it was, “3 and a half to 4 feet tall, the head is almost insect-like. The head has been severed, and there’s been a partial autopsy; the innards have been removed, and we believe the cadaver has been embalmed, at least at the time this picture was taken. 


Tom Carey
In the promo video used in the beWitness press conference, Jaime Maussan asks Tom Carey if the slides are physical evidence, and Carey responds, "I think it's physical evidence. I think we have physical evidence." Carey then goes on to say, "A picture is worth a thousand words." 

No, it’s not physical evidence, and it’s important to understand when a picture has value. Usually, a photo can begin to be considered supporting evidence only when time, location and the photographer are known. In addition, it’s vital to know what instrument recorded the data. We don’t have the camera or any of the other information about how the slides of the body were taken. The other claims are all based on speculation, trying to make the slides and the Ray’s history fit into the narrative of the Roswell story. 

Don Schmitt
Don Schmitt has been somewhat more cautious in his statements, emphasizing the witness testimony collected in their books. Maussan asked him if it is the greatest story of all time. “One of the greatest stories. I always say of the millennium, so in the last thousand years, yes.”



More Eyewitness testimony about the “Roswell Slides”


From a beWitness promo video

Anthony Bragalia said, 
"Clear versions of the slides depict a being whose anatomy does not correspond to a human being. The limbs (legs and arms) are exceeding thin, frail and fragile, characteristics that are not associated with hydrocephalus. In fact, the torso (which has been opened) and rest of the body look nothing like any known case of hydrocephalus in history. The structure looks very make-shift, resembling a quickly-assembled ‘erector set’ type deal, with beams that have ratchet holes in them. The set-up in no way whatsoever resembles that of a professional museum display. ... I believe that this is a 'private viewing' of a creature recently deceased, partially autopsied, and preserved.”http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-roswell-slides-update-by-tony.html
Not everyone agrees with his assessment, and many have found that the photos closely resemble an ancient body on display in a museum case being photographed by a tourist.

Placard: Employees must wash hands after touching alien?
Roswell expert David Rudiak was asked to analyze if the placard on the body.

“Because poor focus seemed to be the main problem, I tried various refocusing software, but couldn't get what I thought were consistent results. ... Tom Carey wanted me to have a look because of my work on the Ramey memo. But there is much less to work with here, such as unknown circumstances and font, quite unlike the Ramey memo. I'm not claiming to be a full-fledged image processing expert, and when examination of the placard in high resolution is hopefully undertaken after May 5 by multiple qualified people, maybe we will get a definitive answer as to what is shown.
As Robert Hastings just wrote... the placard is the key to resolving this thing (or somebody finding something like a child mummy that is an exact match to what is shown.)

 I remember paying most of my attention on the head and commenting to Tom that it looked much more human than I would have expected if it was an alien.” http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-roswell-slides-and-mummies.html
 Rudiak also said,
“I agree that it makes no sense that the Rays could casually photograph an alien corpse on display somewhere. Further, there is that woman in the dress standing in one of the pictures. From the low quality screen captures we've seen, the dress does NOT suggest a military nurse standing in the picture, but a civilian. I agree it looks more like a civilian setting, perhaps a museum, perhaps somewhere else.?"http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-roswell-slides-and-me.html

Tom Carey and Jaime Maussan
Jaime Maussan asks Tom Carey, as a physical anthropologist, to explain what type of creature is pictured in the slides, and if it is a primate. Carey says it is bipedal, but does not recognize it as being human, but that, “Certainly, in our taxonomic categories that we use since Carolus Linnaeus described the order of primates, it certainly does look like it would be classified as a primate, perhaps even a hominid.”
Conferencia de Prensa Jaime Maussan beWITNESS / Sé Testigo Auditorio Nacional
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxezh3MJLGA (At 1:16:00)


perhaps even a hominid
A quote from Witness To Roswell by Carey & Schmitt, pages 35-37:
“In science, where the bottom line is also the search for truth, Occam’s Law of Parsimony, a.k.a. Occam's Razor, is used to decide among competing hypotheses the one that best explains the observed data. It holds that, with all other factors being equal, the simplest hypothesis that explains the most observed data is the best, and must prevail. Thus employed, it serves as a tool for eliminating competing-but-lacking theories, hypotheses, and from others being considered.”

Ergo, a picture of a hominid in a glass case is a dead Roswell alien.

Since there is no actual evidence provided by the slides, the promoters are trying to prop it up by marrying it to the Roswell research done by Carey and Schmitt.  



The Cinco de Mayo show



The slides were originally said to be awaiting presentation in a non-sensational format, but that changed. Jaime Maussan came on board, arranging for the venue and advertising, billing it as a chance of a lifetime, to be able to witness a historical event, the presentation of evidence of extraterrestrials.




As best I can tell, the program will go something like this: Jaime Maussan as host, Carol Rosin will introduce Edgar Mitchell, who is there as part cheerleader and part celebrity endorsement. Adam Dew will introduce the story about the mysterious well-connected Rays, then Carey & Schmitt will pick it up and frame it in the context of Roswell (probably giving with a recap of their research and digs, bringing out an alleged witness to testify it looks like what he saw at RAAF. 
Witness testimony.

The slides will be projected, then the CGI hologram of the body onstage. Richard Dolan fits in there somewhere, supposedly helping us digest how this Disclosure will change our World. Maussan will probably close the show with a speech about how everyone has witnessed history, the cast will take a final bow, the lights will come on. An  announcer may direct the audience to pick a up a few souvenirs on their way out.

Jaime Maussan is advertising the show this way:
Be WITNESS, El Cambio de la Historia contará con tecnología de punta: tridimensional y holográfica por primera vez en México y en el Auditorio Nacional, un evento con características únicas para ser testigos directos de la realidad extraterrestre en la Tierra, un evento único e irrepetible.
Translation:
Be WITNESS, The Changing the of History will feature technology: three-dimensional holographic, a first in Mexico and the National Auditorium, an event with unique characteristics in order to be direct witnesses of extraterrestrial reality on Earth, a unique and unrepeatable event. 

It ain't over 'til it's over


A sequel? KOB 4 reported that "The (Roswell International UFO Museum & Research Center) museum says there will be a presentation on the pictures in Roswell during the UFO festival in July." Alejandro Rojas informs me that, "Don and Tom are board members and present every year." Additionally, Don Schmitt has several solo convention appearances booked.

What about scientific study of the slides? Adam Dew says he's asked around a bit, but that science will have to wait until after the show. 
"I will continue to show the slides to more pediatricians/forensic pathologists/etc. And after May 5, every forensic pathologist on Earth can take a stab at it."


Some further reading on the "Roswell Slides" story:

Tim Printy, May 5, 2015: The day that will change the world
José Antonio Caravaca, Roswell Slides: The Moment of Truth
Tim HebertCurrent State of Affairs: Roswell Linked Kodak Slides
Jeff RitzmannThe Birth of Anti-Evidence: The ‘Roswell Slides’
Paul KimballBragalia on mummies and the "Roswell slides"
Gilles FernandezThe Roswell Slides Saga: Some Claims versus some Facts

Monday, October 20, 2014

Lockheed, the Area 51 Interceptors & John Lear

Al Frickey tells all!

In the article, Ben Rich, Area 51 & Taking ET Home, I focused on the specific remarks attributed to Ben Rich from one particular occasion. It's fairly been pointed out that Lockheed had other connections to UFOs, and that Rich mentioned UFOs to others both in letters and conversations. 


Kelly Johnson

Clarence "Kelly" Johnson

Kelly Johnson had reported spotting UFOs, knew others working with him that had also, and he had a serious interest in the topic.

Kelly Johnson letter fromProject Blue Book files.
http://www.fold3.com/image/6314607/

For discussions of Johnson's sightings, see:

“The Lockheed UFO case, 1953,” by Joel Carpenter

http://conspiracy101.com/ufos/skunkworks/

Kelly Johnson: The founder of Aera 51's UFOsightings
http://ufopartisan.blogspot.com/2010/08/area-51-founders-ufo-sightings.html

The Lockheed UFO Case Revisited
http://www.notaghost.com/2012/03/a-prosaic-explanation-for-a-famous-ufo-case.html



Ben Rich

Ben Rich, the Area 51 Interceptors & John Lear

Ben Rich shared Johnson’s interest in UFOs, as demonstrated in his letter to John Andrews

Ben Rich Letter to John AndrewsJohn Andrews' Correspondence with Ben Rich, Lee Graham and others.

John Andrews was a designer for scale-model kits of cars and airplanes for the Testor Corp. With his contacts in the aviation industry, he managed to get inside information and build models based on secret military designs before their release to the public.


Andrews on "Sightings" 10/02/94 (at 8:33 of this clip)

John Andrews had an interest in UFOs, and was responsible for getting John Lear involved:

John Lear, the delicious part of
every 80s conspiracy theory.
“...up till 1984, my sole interest was SR-71, F-19, Stealth Fighter, stuff like that. As a matter of fact, you can go on the internet: John Andrews, who was Vice President of Testors, and eventually made the ‘Sport Model’. You know he and I had letters going back and forth. He’d say, “Hey, you ought to look into this flying saucer deal.” And I’d say, “No, its bullshit, you know I don’t need to waste my time.”  http://projectcamelot.org/lang/en/john_lear_2008_transcript_1_en.html

Andrews and Lear were also friends with Jim Goodall, an avid aviation author and historian. Goodall was fascinated with the Stealth programs at Area 51, and wondered what else might be flying there. He became a member of the original Area 51 “Interceptors,” and came to share the interest of his friends in more exotic aircraft.

“[Jim] Goodall had come to believe in the saucers.”
By the time he went up to Whitesides to look down on Dreamland for the first time with John Lear in the fall of 1988, his obsession had expanded. At some point during the revelation of the Lazar story, and talking to those who had worked at the base, Goodall crossed the Ridge—or began to straddle it. He came to believe in the presence of alien craft, as did John Andrews, his frequent companion on the trips."There are things out there that would make George Lucas green with envy," he had been told, and he believed. 
The key moment in his conversion was a letter Ben Rich had written to him, in which Rich said that both he and Kelly Johnson believed in UFOs. (But in the account I had, this was a tease.) From Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51  by Phil Patton, 1998.

Jim Goodall, describing has aviation sleuthing

Making George Lucas Drool

Jim Goodall took some of his experience, mixed it with some unattributed quotes and a heaping helping of speculation in a 1988 article for Gung-Ho magazine:

Gung-Ho, Feb. 1988

Rumour has it some of these systems involve force-field technology, gravity-drive systems, and "flying saucer" designs. Rumour further has it that these designs are not necessarily of Earth human origin - but of who might have designed them or helped us to do it, there is less talk. "Let's just put it this way," explained one retired Lockheed engineer. "We have things flying in the Nevada desert that would make George Lucas drool."
Feb. 88 issue of GUNG-HOStealth - And Beyond - A look at Aurora and Some "Unfunded Opportunities" (UFO) by "Al Frickey," pseudonym of Jim Goodall

See more Jim Goodall quotes from "Area 51 - the Dreamland Chronicles" by David Darlington at 

Larger Than Life

Ben Rich
The Ben Rich rumors circulating are either distortions or gross exaggerations he may have said.

"Ben Rich was well known as both a joker and someone who enjoyed embellishing a good story. I asked one of his former co-workers about the truth of a certain story Ben included in his memoirs and was told that, 'Ben tended to fire for effect rather than accuracy.' That was why I was interested in finding out how true his supposed statements were regarding technology to 'travel to the stars.' The truth became clear after I had a chance to examine Ben's personal papers." - Peter Merlin



Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Ben Rich, Area 51, & Taking ET Home

One of the enduring modern legends of ufology is that Lockheed developed advanced UFO-type technology, perhaps due to reverse-engineering extraterrestrial spacecraft.

(Updated Sept. 20, 2023 with comment on Ben Rich from Steve Justice.)

In his 1994 autobiography, Skunk WorksBen Rich wrote that while Lockheed was developing the stealth plane: 
"Some of our senior engineers thought it might be easier to build a flying saucer. The problem was how to build one… We don't know how to do that. The Martians wouldn’t tell us.” 
Rich had a sense of humor, and he could engage in some boastful sensationalizing (BS for short) to improve a story.

It came from Area 51

The myth of the Skunk Works super technology is closely tied to the lore of UFOs. The stories told by Paul Bennewitz were repeated by John Lear, who grafted Area 51 onto the narrative. Shortly afterwards, Bob Lazar surfaced to spotlight Area 51, which soon gave rise to stories of the legendary Aurora.


The Area 51 "Interceptors," Jim Goodall and John Andrews were involved in pursuing this, as well as Andrews' friend Lee Graham, who got tangled in the MJ-12 document circus. Andrews and Goodall tried to coax Stealth secrets and UFO stories out of Ben Rich, but he mostly responded in friendly deflecting replies. If Ben Rich ever made extravagant statements about Lockheed spacecraft, there's no indication that it was anything more than words.

Kooks and Charlatans

On the forum Above Top Secret, ATSZOMBIE asked about the Skunk Works legends,
"Ben Rich, stated during a 1993, Alumni Speech at UCLA, 
We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an Act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity...Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do.
A traceable context for the quote, if he actually did gave it?"

There were several floundering answers, but using the screen name Shadowhawk, aviation historian Peter Merlin joined the conversation: 

Peter Merlin

Merlin replied:
Ben Rich is constantly misquoted as saying "We now have the technology to take E.T home." That is not what he said. 

At the end of his presentation he showed his final slide, a picture of a disk-shaped craft – the classic “flying saucer” – flying into a partly cloudy sky with a burst of sunlight in the background and he gave his standard tagline. It was a joke he had used in numerous presentations since 1983 when Steven Spielberg’s "E.T. the Extraterrestrial," a film about a young boy befriending a lost visitor from space and helping the alien get home, had become the highest-grossing film of all-time. Rich apparently decided to capitalize on this popularity. By the summer of 1983, he had added the flying saucer picture to the end of a set of between 12 and 25 slides that he showed with his lecture on the history of Lockheed's famed Skunk Works division. 

Rich had long used a standard script for his talks, tailoring the content as necessary to accommodate his audience. Since most Skunk Works current projects were classified, it didn’t matter whether he was addressing schoolchildren or professional aeronautical engineers; he always ended the same way. At a Defense Week symposium on future space systems in Washington, D.C., on September 20, 1983, he said, “Unfortunately, I cannot tell you what we have been doing for the last 10 years. It seems we score a breakthrough at the Skunk Works every decade, so if you invite me back in 10 years I’ll be able to tell you what we are doing [now]. I can tell you about a contract we recently received. The Skunk Works has been assigned the task of getting E.T. back home.” The audience laughed, as it was meant to do. 

If something is successful, it is worth repeating. Rich gave an identical speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, on September 6, 1984, and continued using his script during successive appearances. Sometimes he refined the details a bit. “I wish I could tell you what else we are doing in the Skunk Works,” he said, wrapping up a presentation for the Beverly Hills chapter of the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution on May 23, 1990. “You’ll have to ask me back in a few years. I will conclude by telling you that last week we received a contract to take E.T. back home.” 

Three years later he was still using the same line and the same slide. “We did the F-104, C-130, U-2, SR-71, F-117 and many other programs that I can’t talk about,” he proclaimed during a 1993 speech at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, home of Air Force Materiel Command, the organization responsible for all flight-testing within the Air Force. “We are still working very hard, I just can’t tell you what we are doing.” As usual, he added his by now infamous punchline, “The Air Force has just given us a contract to take E.T. back home.” 
Within the UFO community, Rich’s words, and additional statements attributed to him without corroborative proof, have become gospel. He is named as having admitted that extraterrestrial UFO visitors are real and that the U.S. military has interstellar capabilities, and although nearly two full years passed between Rich’s UCLA speech and his death in 1995, some believers have touted his comments as a “deathbed confession.” It was nothing of the kind. 

Rich, a brilliant scientist, apparently believed in the existence of other intelligent life in the universe, though only as something distant and mysterious. In July 1986, after Testor Corporation model-kit designer John Andrews wrote asking what he thought about the possible existence of either manmade or extraterrestrial UFOs, Rich responded, “I’m a believer in both categories. I feel everything is possible.” He cautioned, however, that, “In both categories, there are a lot of kooks and charlatans – be cautious.” 
Slide  13

Merlin went on to say in another comment:
The main point of my earlier posts was simply that Ben Rich did not say what some people claim he said. Most of his so-called quotes are not traceable back to a reliable source. The Keller/Harzan accounts of his 1993 UCLA speech are based solely on memory and were only reported years after the event. The overall description of Rich's presentation matches (for the most part) his standard script, though I'm not sure that I believe he ended that talk with a discussion of the F-117A. By 1993, he was ending with the YF-22 winning the Advanced Tactical Fighter fly-off competition, something the Skunk Works was justifiably proud of at the time. Perhaps he mentioned it earlier in his UCLA speech, or maybe Keller and Harzan simply forgot. It is not really important. I won't hold it against Keller and Harzan that they describe his UFO slide as a black disk flying into space, rather than as a metallic flying saucer in a cloudy sky with a sunburst. Their description is not bad for being based on memory, and I was just looking at a photocopy of the original slide last week. Quoting Rich as saying, "We have the technology to take E.T. home" is a close but memory-distorted version of what he actually said, as evidenced by his presentation scripts, which he followed closely. 
Peter Merlin later greatly expanded the material, providing documentation in an excellent article for Tim Printy's SUNlite,
"Taking ET Home: Birth of a Modern Myth." See pages 17-19 SUNlite5_6.pdf

 

Steve Justice on the Ben Rich and the Lockheed UFO Legends

In 2020, more evidence surfaced, testimony from  one of Ben Rich's Skunk Works colleagues. Steve Justice, as described in his bio at VirginGalactic:

“A 39-year veteran of Lockheed Martin and a ‘legend’ in its Skunk Works division - he brings incredibly deep leadership and engineering experience. During his career, he led numerous technology breakthrough programs and served on the teams that developed the F-117A Nighthawk, the world’s first stealth attack aircraft, the YF-22A prototype for the F-22A stealth fighter, and the JASSM stealth missile. He also served as deputy program manager for Lockheed Martin's Blackswift, an innovative reusable hypersonic testbed for high speed, high-altitude aircraft technologies.”

While Steve Justice was part of Tom DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences (TTSA), he was interviewed by Luis Elizondo in July of 2020 for the company’s podcast. Near the end, questions were read from social media submissions, and one asked about Ben Rich and claims of Lockheed having advanced UFO-level technology.

TTSA Talks Ep. 6: Steve Justice Talks About His Journey From Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works to TTSA (7/30/2020) YouTube clip starting with Ben Rich question. 

Luis Elizondo: John asks, “All right, Steve please comment on this, according to Ben Rich CEO of Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in 1993 he said, “We now have the technology to take E.T home.” The question that John has is, “Is he nuts or what?”

Steve Justice: I'll - I'm gonna say you know, I've seen this quote and I've seen it just propagate like crazy especially through the social media world and that kind of stuff, and I've heard it attributed to a number of things too, private conversations, but in speeches is where one of the common threads is. And as the historian for the Skunk Works yeah this this was a question I had too, and I actually worked with Ben um and sat in his office and talked with him about all kinds of subjects including this, and he never said that to me okay. But one of the really interesting things, Ben wrote down all of his speeches they were all written out including the listing of the slides out there, so what is in the social media world is that we say we have this ability to take ET home and he shows a slide of a flying saucer up there.

So I remember looking through Ben's speeches and I remember this just as clearly as can be, and because there's a slide that's called out for this little paragraph is ‘Skunk in the clouds’ so that was one of the slides we would put up as a thing of, ‘hey we're working on pretty cool stuff out there, you know, wait a decade or two and you might see it.’ But it was to indicate that the Skunk had a future out there but we couldn't discuss it. So the Skunk in the clouds was the identified slide and I used it many times when I was giving speeches to civic groups or schools or whatever. But his actual words in the speech were, I'm going to try to remember this as clearly as I possibly can was like, “You may be wondering what we're working on in the Skunk Works now and we can't talk about it but I want you to know we've just been awarded a contract to build this (with the Skunk in the clouds [slide]) to fly E.T back home.”

Okay, that's what I have written down that he said. And so you know, things change over time and that kind of stuff, and there's perceptions and distortions. I can't like to say I can't speak for any private conversations Ben had. I can speak to the private conversation he had with me... [Interrupted by question]

Luis Elizondo: Well let me ask you this Steve,  On that, I mean, if someone has a technology to send the Mars rover to go, let's say on to Mars, or an asteroid, or another planet and collect soil samples and bring it back home and there happens to potentially be microbial life or some sort of alien life form, is that really that far-fetched? NASA actually has plans to do just that don't they, to actually take soil samples and bring them back here to our planet and look at these samples?

Steve Justice: They do, but the context that I knowing Ben, he was the joke master. I mean just loved humor and he loved messing with people, and so to me this statement particularly when he's frustrated that he can't get credit for what you know the Skunk Work was doing to help Lockheed shareholders you know, and Lockheed investors, and quite honestly in a lot of cases, executive leadership know what was going on, it was a frustration point for him, so he would put big fluffy statements out there that sounded so off the wall they were…

Luis Elizondo:  So just provocative statements…

Steve Justice: …just provocative as could be. I remember when the F-117 Stealth Fighter was black, he made statements like you know, “We have stuff going on in the desert that's just decades ahead of your imagination.” And he was specifically talking about the Stealth Fighter but people attribute that to whatever they want it to be. But he was so incredibly frustrated that he couldn't get credit for this incredible breakthrough of stealth technology, so it manifested itself in multiple ways. So I attribute it more to that, but that's the real life quote of Ben, let’s say, he may have said the other, but he didn't do it to me, and it was in none of the transcripts of his speeches.
. . .


Closing words from Ben Rich from Skunk Works:
"The Skunk Works has always been perched at the cutting edge. More than half a dozen times over the past fifty years of cold war we have managed to create breakthroughs in military aircraft or weapons systems that tipped the strategic balance of power for a decade or longer, because our adversaries could not duplicate or counter what we had created. That must continue to be our role into the next century, if we are to preserve what we have accomplished and be prepared for the hazards as well as the opportunities for the uncharted, risky future"