UFO superstar researcher William L. Moore, co-author of The Roswell Incident, appeared on Bill Jenkins' The Open Mind radio program in early 1984 and discussed the Cash-Landrum case. Moore had an excellent knowledge of the case, and some direct familiarity with it. Moore was a member of APRO, and supposedly, Moore was responsible for John Schuessler becoming involved in the case. Bill Moore (along with Richard Doty) also circulated rumors of a secret flight of a test vehicle originating from Kirtland AFB, which fed into the development the myth of the nuclear-powered WASP 2.
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| Bill Moore |
Here's a transcript of the portion of the show discussing the Cash-Landrum case:
Listener “Mike” calls in a with a question about the Cash-Landrum incident, asking if Moore is familiar with it and the witnesses’ legal case against the U.S. Government.
Moore:
Yes, very familiar with all aspects of that case. In fact I was the first investigator called on the case. I put it in the hands of the people dealing with it now.
Mike: I, see so it’s probably a pretty good case, then?
Moore:
It appears to be on the surface. (Commercial break)
The case in question was the Cash-Landrum case. Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum and a young boy - I think he was seven years old at the time, Colby Landrum. In December of 1980, driving home at night, after dark, encounter an unusual object above the highway, stop the car, get out to look at it. It’s bright, it’s essentially obstructing the road ahead of them. It appears to be in trouble, there’s a loud roaring noise, flame comes out the bottom, suddenly a bunch of helicopters appear around it and it seems to get control of itself and takes off across the tree line. They don’t know what it was, they’re terrified. They think- one of them thinks it is the Second Coming, they just don’t know what to make of it. They get home they experience physical symptoms which are quite similar in many respects to radiation poisoning. And they continue to experience physical effects now, three years later after the fact- quite serious physical effects as a matter of fact.
The question at issue of course, is just what is it they saw, where did the helicopters come from. There were a number of independent reports verifying helicopters were in the area at the time. The road surface was damaged, there was damage to some of the vegetation in the area and all of this of course makes for a “what’s going on here” type case. Certainly they saw something, the medical effects were caused by something. And the case was investigated largely by John Schuessler in Houston Texas, who was the deputy director of MUFON, The Mutual UFO Network, one of the three major national organizations that deal with UFOs. MUFON has a oh- about 900 members worldwide, I guess, publishes a journal (has a local chapter here in Los Angeles, as a matter of fact, that is sponsoring this get-together next weekend at the Culver City Civic auditorium Saturday afternoon 1:00 to 5:00 and we’ll talk some more about that later).
But back to Cash-Landrum, Schuessler did what I would consider to be a “credible” investigation in may respects, in that he covered a lot of territory in a short amount of time, but he, being only one individual, seemed to have skipped a few points, I guess understandably. But the result was that the Air Force instituted an investigation of their own, or at least they claim it was an official investigation through the Judge Advocate general’s office, and the Inspector General’s office, trying to in essence get themselves off the hook. And they concluded that they [Gersten’s clients] could not show Government involvement in the case. They [Gersten’s clients] could not produce any evidence that would indicate whose helicopters were there. That’s point one.
At that point, Peter Gersten, a New York attorney, got involved with it and filed a complaint against the Department of the Air Force on behalf of these people, claiming that the Government was responsible at least for the injuries and the medical treatment of these people because they were citizens, because the Government had an obligation to protect its citizens against whatever this thing was since it had caused damage. That claim was rejected on the grounds that Gersten had totally failed to connect the injuries, which they didn’t deny, with anything which was sponsored by the Government. They didn’t deny the incident occurred, or the injuries occurred, they simply said, “We're not responsible because you haven’t produced any evidence indicating that we are responsible,” they threw the burden in his lap, you see. He appealed that, and in September, a ruling was issued by the Judge Advocate of the Air Force upholding the initial denial on the same grounds, that Gersten failed to prove in any way to implicate the Government in the occurrence. And until he could show that they in fact were responsible through some action on their part, they claimed that he had no cause of action, and I know that his intention was then to appeal that in a Federal Court in a civil matter against them, to gain judgement against them, against the Air Force.
And I assume he has done that, but I don’t really know for certain if he has. And I really have some problems in wondering if he’s going to get anywhere with it simply because if in fact the Government was involved in any way, he’s going to have one whale of a time in trying to prove it. If they’re going to cover it, they’re certainly not going to produce information and there’s certainly provisions within the security and classification procedures which allow members of military intelligence or military projects to deny the very existence of these things if disclosure would effect the National security.
Jenkins:
Just takes a short session with the judge.
Moore:
That’s right, it’s happened in the past. So I’m very sympathetic to the problems that these people are having, and I really wish I could do something to alleviate them but at this point, I don’t see a lot of hope unless somebody comes out of the wood work and says “hey the Government was involved in this thing in some way,and here’s the proof, here’s the connection, here’s the evidence,” and willing to testify on that behalf that the evidence is authentic. So we’re left with a question: Did they see a legitimate UFO, and was some unit of the military aware of its presence, and did they send out what amounted to 20-some odd helicopters to try to intercept it, and is that what the helicopters were doing there,
Jenkins:
Or, were they trying to help it?
Moore:
Or, were they trying to help it?, which is another question. Or, and I tend to lean more in the direction of a second alternative, and that is that what we have in fact run into here is the test of some secret project-type vehicle, which may be nuclear propulsion, and which went out of control and threatened to crash and they said, “hey guys, we're going down,” and the helicopters were sent out to cordon the area off and try to recover the object and keep the public away from it.
Now we know that there has been considerable interest on and off in the area of nuclear propulsion for use within the atmosphere since 1946, going back to the old NEPA project, the Nuclear Energy for Propulsion of Aircraft, NEPA, and you know, that’s almost forty years ago, that considerable research was done and that it slowed up in the 60s, the late 60s, but it’s possible somebody made a breakthrough and we have in fact developed a nuclear propelled craft and that it was on a test mission, went out of control and that’s what happened. I tend to believe that that’s more realistic in this case than the fact that they encountered a legitimate UFO - simply because of the circumstances. I think that tends to be more credible. You don’t send off 26 or 25 CH-46 helicopters, Chinook helicopters, CH-47 (I guess they are) after a UFO. You send a fighter-interceptor.
Jenkins:
They’re not going to be very effective against (inaudible)...
Moore:
Yeah, you don’t send out Chinooks loaded to the gills with personnel. You do that if you’re going to cordon off an area. If you’re going to secure an area and try to protect the public from going in there and to protect the security of the project involved, then you send out helicopters full of people. But if you’re after a UFO, in every case you send out a fighter-interceptor.
(Interview turns to other topics.)
