Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart three D
Speaker 1: audio for full exposure listen with headphones used from time
Speaker 1: to time of hiding information about UFO. What do you
Speaker 1: have to say directment whose charges are absolutely untrue? Actually,
Speaker 1: the United States Air Force releases statistics on the UFO
Speaker 1: phenomena through the Department of Defense Press Test periodically, and
Speaker 1: we've always honored accredited media when they want to investigate
Speaker 1: a given specific siting. There's nothing to hide. There's nothing
Speaker 1: to hide it all. Is there anything in the files,
Speaker 1: either classified or unclassified, that would indicate that there may
Speaker 1: be extra terrestrial visitors overhead? What's to all? The protect
Speaker 1: is completely class and there's nothing in the record to
Speaker 1: could indicate that we have been visited by any of fantacism.
Speaker 1: How does the Air Force look upon people who make
Speaker 1: full for to the UFO. They look at him as
Speaker 1: qualified a. Yes, they do look on him as qualified observers. Actually,
Speaker 1: most people who report a UFO sighting patreontic citizens who
Speaker 1: have been mystified by something that they've seen. I'm Toby
Speaker 1: Ball and this is Strange Arrivals. A six months after
Speaker 1: the assassination of President Kennedy a police officer named Lonnie
Speaker 1: Zamora chased a speeding car down a desert stretch of
Speaker 1: highway outside the town of Socorro, New Mexico. While in pursuit,
Speaker 1: he heard a roaring sound, and looking to the sowest,
Speaker 1: saw a flame in the sky, maybe a half mile
Speaker 1: in the distance. He knew that there was a dynamite
Speaker 1: shack somewhere in that area and figured it must have exploded.
Speaker 1: He abandoned his pursuit of the speeding car and drove
Speaker 1: in the direction of the flame. In a report about
Speaker 1: the incident filed by Colonel Eric de Jacquier of the
Speaker 1: United States Air Force, he has the more claiming that
Speaker 1: the flame was quote bluish and sort of orange and color. However,
Speaker 1: he could not tell the size of the flame, which
Speaker 1: was slowly descending. The flame was of a narrow type
Speaker 1: and streamed down into a sort of funnel shape end quote.
Speaker 1: Zamora drove slowly westward on a gravel road. Here he
Speaker 1: is describing what happened next in an interview with K.
Speaker 1: S R. C. S. Walter Schrode, I went up the
Speaker 1: road for about has a mile. Again, UH came up
Speaker 1: to this a little balcon deal there on the side
Speaker 1: of the old night for a glance about the of
Speaker 1: the window. Look to my lad in the white object
Speaker 1: on the ground. Far thought it might be a card
Speaker 1: that turned over. Also really the real thing. Harry going
Speaker 1: out there to investigate. Maybe somebody would be hurt. Uh
Speaker 1: that diamond saw his white at a jape luke an object.
Speaker 1: It was a luminum white in color, though he pointed
Speaker 1: out not chrome. Photos taken later of the site show
Speaker 1: a desert scene, low scrub, sandy soil, rocks, distant mountains.
Speaker 1: He's a half mile or more from town. He briefly
Speaker 1: stopped his cruiser and saw two figures by the egg
Speaker 1: shaped object to what appeared to be people dressed in
Speaker 1: white uniforms with they have gentmts on like spaceman or anything. Low.
Speaker 1: I would say, there are people. I just I saw
Speaker 1: something white, white color like he didn't. You could not
Speaker 1: identify them as actually being a human being. And you
Speaker 1: and I were they two of them? I would say
Speaker 1: were two, because one with some fronds and the other
Speaker 1: talked to him back so more a radio back to
Speaker 1: headquarters that he was going to investigate. He lost sight
Speaker 1: of the figures in the white overalls. Leaving his car,
Speaker 1: he began to walk towards the object, which he now
Speaker 1: saw was resting on two outward slanting legs, but his
Speaker 1: approach was cut short by a sudden loud noise. When
Speaker 1: it took off, it made a loud, loud, growing sound
Speaker 1: that the very low noise rower panicked. Zamora turned and
Speaker 1: ran in the opposite direction. He banged his leg on
Speaker 1: the bumper of the cruiser, fell to the ground, losing
Speaker 1: his glasses, and scrambled to get further away. The object
Speaker 1: emitted a bluish orange flame. Zamora said he was concerned
Speaker 1: it might blow up, but instead it rose into the air,
Speaker 1: and then after it got up near about the sound
Speaker 1: seemed to disappeared. The sound was It was very very
Speaker 1: quiet there with the craft in the air and silently
Speaker 1: moving away from him. He noticed a marking on the side,
Speaker 1: which a second report has him describing as being read
Speaker 1: about a foot to a foot and a half in
Speaker 1: height and shaped like a quote crescent with a vertical
Speaker 1: arrow and horizontal lines underneath. Samura claimed that the object
Speaker 1: then aimed in altitude and moved off to the south.
Speaker 1: Later in this radio interview, Walter Schrode asked this strange question.
Speaker 1: It wasn't dragging anything. We had a report that dragging
Speaker 1: something as that land was dragging log n. Shrode said
Speaker 1: he heard reports that the object was dragging something. Zamora
Speaker 1: denied it. The interview ended abruptly when Zamora said, excuse,
Speaker 1: we wanted some military people that the ones up to me. Now,
Speaker 1: let pole when you have the military people are here
Speaker 1: from Ulefo to talk to you right now and ask
Speaker 1: you some more questions about this. The military people who
Speaker 1: had come to speak with him were from the US
Speaker 1: Air Force, and we're working on Project blue Book, the
Speaker 1: effort to investigate and explain uf fositeings. While Blue Book
Speaker 1: officially ended in nineteen sixty nine, it has lived on
Speaker 1: in popular culture. At least three television shows, Project UFO
Speaker 1: Dark Skies in the History Channels show Project blue Book
Speaker 1: have centered on Bluebook investigations, and it is found in
Speaker 1: countless other shows, movies, and books. Ezekiel saw the wheel.
Speaker 1: This is the wheel, he said, he saw. These are
Speaker 1: unidentified flying objects that people say they are seeing. Now,
Speaker 1: are they proof that we are being visited by civilizations
Speaker 1: from other stars? Are just? What are they? The United
Speaker 1: States Air Force began an investigation of this high strangeness
Speaker 1: in a search for the truth. What you were about
Speaker 1: to see is part of that twenty years search. The
Speaker 1: UFO era is generally considered to start in when a
Speaker 1: pilot named Kenneth Arnold saw nine metallic flying discs traveling
Speaker 1: at high speeds near Mount Rainier. His story hit the newspapers.
Speaker 1: Two days later, The Chicago Sun for one ran a
Speaker 1: page two story headlined supersonic flying saucers cited by Idaho
Speaker 1: pilot speed estimated at twelve hundred miles an hour when
Speaker 1: seeing ten thousand feet up near Mount Rainier. Two weeks later,
Speaker 1: in New Mexico, the public information officer at Roswell Army
Speaker 1: Air Force Base issued a press release stating that the
Speaker 1: five hundred and ninth Operations Group had recovered a flying
Speaker 1: disc that had crashed on ranch land. The Roswell crash
Speaker 1: is probably the best snow own of all UFO stories.
Speaker 1: We'll get to it later in this series. But while
Speaker 1: these are the two most famous UFO incidents from ninety seven,
Speaker 1: they are far from the only ones. This is Air
Speaker 1: Force Captain Hector Quintinilla, speaking in nineteen sixty four. At
Speaker 1: the time, he was the head of Project Blue Book.
Speaker 1: You're nine. We had a rash of unidentified flying objects
Speaker 1: we recorded to the Air Force. A researcher named Ted
Speaker 1: Blocher set out to document just how many UFO reports
Speaker 1: there were that year. On January one, nixty seven, he
Speaker 1: made public his findings in a book called Report on
Speaker 1: the UFO Wave of ninety seven, published by the National
Speaker 1: Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena or NIGHTCAP, a leading civilian
Speaker 1: UFO research organization. It was just the fantastic the number
Speaker 1: of cases that he found. He found eight hundred thirty cases,
Speaker 1: initially found well over a thousand. When he finished, he
Speaker 1: published a book on the eight cases that he had done,
Speaker 1: and I got interested in what he was doing. My
Speaker 1: name is jan Aldrich. I am retired from the Army
Speaker 1: with twenty five years and I'm retired from the Post
Speaker 1: Office twenty five years. During my army career, I worked
Speaker 1: in meteorology, intelligence and security, safety and personnel, so I
Speaker 1: have quite a bit of experience in all these areas,
Speaker 1: and I started looking at newspapers to find more cases.
Speaker 1: Bloacher only done about a hundred and seventy newspapers in
Speaker 1: the United States and Canada. I continued this on, and
Speaker 1: he continued on, we continue to find more and more cases.
Speaker 1: There was about eleven thousand newspapers in North America in
Speaker 1: just a few had been scanned, had looked for items,
Speaker 1: and it was obvious that if there's eight hundred items
Speaker 1: in about two hundred newspapers, what are there going to
Speaker 1: be in a thousand, two thousand, five thousand. I said,
Speaker 1: my goal is doing three thousand newspapers with the help
Speaker 1: of people all over the world looking through newspapers, and
Speaker 1: we were able to do about five thousand total newspapers.
Speaker 1: Those Some of the cases were admittedly trivial. These were,
Speaker 1: after all, the earliest days of the UFO era. Aldridge,
Speaker 1: Bloacher and others were able to identify about three thousand
Speaker 1: sightings reported in nine three thousand. Is is interesting what Bloatcher,
Speaker 1: myself and other people that looked at what we found,
Speaker 1: Amain Michelle, Dr James McDonald at the University of Arizona
Speaker 1: and other people said, Oh, the UFO activity that we
Speaker 1: know of currently existed in except maybe abductions. This is
Speaker 1: kind of a revelation. The phenomenon does not evolve. In
Speaker 1: other words, almost anything that you think of when you
Speaker 1: think about UFOs today turned up in the cases from
Speaker 1: except for abductions. Again. Captain Hector Quentinilla on the seven
Speaker 1: UFO sightings. During this time, Jene Sanford directed the Air
Speaker 1: Force to establish an office to try to determine what
Speaker 1: these unidentified flying objects were. The program that became Project
Speaker 1: blue Book started out as Project sign. The program is
Speaker 1: threefold and the Air Force interest in you FOLS is
Speaker 1: first to determine if a possible threat to the security
Speaker 1: of the United States exists. Second, to determine the technical
Speaker 1: or scientific characteristics of any such youthfols. Third, to try
Speaker 1: to explain are identified. All youthol sightings reported to the
Speaker 1: services the U FOLS as such do not pose any
Speaker 1: threat to the security of the United States. I do
Speaker 1: get a number of reports from people who claim that
Speaker 1: they have um seeing little green men. Retired Air Force
Speaker 1: pilot James mcgahey the program was started primarily out of
Speaker 1: concern over security issues that possibly had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with alien spacecraft. It had to do is something going
Speaker 1: on in the airspace United States. Is possibly some foreign
Speaker 1: country doing something, possibly the Soviet Union and that's really
Speaker 1: why it started. Jan Aldredge Project site had a lot
Speaker 1: of engineers and aviation experts involved with it. It involved
Speaker 1: lots of people, and it probably as far as the
Speaker 1: military goes, is probably the biggest project. It became fairly
Speaker 1: apparent very early on that people were seeing all kinds
Speaker 1: of things in the sky, but most of them could
Speaker 1: easily be explained with prosaic explanations of natural phenomena, misidentification,
Speaker 1: and various auto connectic effects, various other psychological effects and
Speaker 1: visual effects. And the Air Force said, why are we
Speaker 1: doing this? We don't want to be doing this. Projects
Speaker 1: Signs name changed in to Project Grudge, and with the
Speaker 1: name change came a change in direction, a certainty that
Speaker 1: what people were seeing we're not extraterrestrial craft. The attitude
Speaker 1: was now that we can explain all these things away,
Speaker 1: either as hoaxes, hallucinations or man made objects. And that
Speaker 1: was their theme song for about up till the middle
Speaker 1: of fifty one. After January it changed its name to
Speaker 1: Project blue Book. They had a bunch of reserve Air
Speaker 1: Force officers who were called into service because of the
Speaker 1: Korean War and they were put on this so ahead
Speaker 1: about eight eight or nine people that we're working on
Speaker 1: UFOs in that era up to all about early nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three. Then these people started to be released from
Speaker 1: active duty service. The program was never very big. Most
Speaker 1: of the time it was only five people, one officer
Speaker 1: or a couple enlisted people as secretary and one consultant,
Speaker 1: j Allen Heineck. At the beginning of their interest in UFOs,
Speaker 1: the Air Force contacted Jay Allan Heinek at the time
Speaker 1: and astronomer at Ohio State University to see if he
Speaker 1: might be interested in consulting on what was then Project sign.
Speaker 1: They understood that some percentage of the cases would be
Speaker 1: traceable back to stars, meteors, and other such phenomena. He
Speaker 1: liked to claim that he was like the innocent bystander
Speaker 1: who got shot accidentally. This is in the late nineteen forties.
Speaker 1: He was teaching astronomy at Ohio State and one day
Speaker 1: a couple of Air Force people from right Field It's
Speaker 1: not right Patterson Dayton came to visit him at the university. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Mark O'Connell. I am the author of The Close
Speaker 1: Encounters Man. How one man made the world believe in UFOs.
Speaker 1: It's a biography of Dr J. Allen Heineck, who is
Speaker 1: one of the best known, if not the best known
Speaker 1: UFO experts of all time. After making small talk for
Speaker 1: a while, they said, hey, so what do you know
Speaker 1: about these UFOs. Well, UFOs were a new thing in
Speaker 1: that time period, and Heineck, being a serious scientists, just
Speaker 1: kind of shrugged it off and said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I think the whole thing is kind of stupid. I
Speaker 1: think it's just a phase. People are still kind of
Speaker 1: jumpy after Pearl Harbor, are worried about sneak attacks and
Speaker 1: these are of force. People said, well, we have a
Speaker 1: job for you if you're interested, because we have a
Speaker 1: whole pile of these UFO reports and we don't know
Speaker 1: what to do with them, and we'd like to have
Speaker 1: an astronomer look at them and tell us if these
Speaker 1: people are really just seeing ordinary astronomical objects that they're
Speaker 1: just misinterpreting somehow. And heine said sure. I mean, basically
Speaker 1: to him, it was easy money. He Nick is an
Speaker 1: interesting and important figure in UFO lore, and we will
Speaker 1: spend more time looking at his life and career as
Speaker 1: a UFO investigator, but for now, what's important is that
Speaker 1: he was involved in an effort to look at the
Speaker 1: information that had been collected during Projects Sign Project Grudge
Speaker 1: in the early days of Project Blue Book. This effort
Speaker 1: was known informally as the Robertson Panel. In the CIA
Speaker 1: put together a panel, a Committee on the the Scientific
Speaker 1: Study of UFOs something like that was the official title.
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things where the report was
Speaker 1: classified for a long time. It wasn't until you know,
Speaker 1: decades later that the public got to see the report.
Speaker 1: But the Robertson Panel was dedicated to looking at whether
Speaker 1: or not the UFO phenomenon might be a threat. I
Speaker 1: am Aaron Gullias. I'm a history teacher and writer and
Speaker 1: the host of the Saucer Life podcast. Like most defense
Speaker 1: and intelligence establishment efforts to investigate UFOs in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: this was mostly concerned about not about determining what the
Speaker 1: things in the sky are, but determining whether or not
Speaker 1: the things in the sky are a danger to national
Speaker 1: security or something that needs to be dealt with immediately.
Speaker 1: James mcgahey. At that time, they were again concerned about
Speaker 1: Soviet disinformation because the Soviet unions since in Brown nine,
Speaker 1: has spent a huge amount of time trying to see disinformation,
Speaker 1: trying to disrupt society in the United States. The KJB
Speaker 1: at various other organizations just trying to make trouble inside
Speaker 1: the United States, whether physical trouble or psychological trouble, and
Speaker 1: the CIA was very concerned that the Soviet Union might
Speaker 1: use UFOs as a way to spread panic in the
Speaker 1: United States. The Robertson Panel was so named because it
Speaker 1: was chaired by Howard Robertson, a highly respected physicist and
Speaker 1: mathematician at cal Tech who also worked on a number
Speaker 1: of government and military programs. He was asked by the
Speaker 1: CIA to assemble a team of experts to evaluate the
Speaker 1: UFO evidence to date. The panel comprised mostly other physicists,
Speaker 1: along with a CIA officer who was also a missile
Speaker 1: expert and served as the panel secretary. And it was
Speaker 1: very disappointed right off the bat with the Robertson panel
Speaker 1: because he was invited in a sort of a guest speaker,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't part of the panel, and he legitimately
Speaker 1: felt that he probably should have been part of that panel.
Speaker 1: So it was handled very very informally without much serious intent,
Speaker 1: and iin it just basically felt like when he went
Speaker 1: into interview with them, when he gave testimony to this panel,
Speaker 1: that he was just sort of dismissed, and you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't really take anything he said very seriously. In all,
Speaker 1: the panel met for twelve hours over four days and
Speaker 1: examined twenty three cases, or about one percent of the
Speaker 1: total number that were available. At one point, they watched
Speaker 1: a movie of some UFOs taken by an air worse
Speaker 1: photographer military photographer that's actually, even today is still pretty
Speaker 1: remarkable film to watch. They've projected the film on a
Speaker 1: wall in the conference room where you couldn't make out
Speaker 1: much detail, and all the members of the panel said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: those are obviously seagulls. Well, this took place in Utah,
Speaker 1: very far from any oceans, so I don't know where
Speaker 1: they thought seagulls were coming from. So that was the
Speaker 1: Robertson panel. Heinek was pretty disappointed in how that worked out.
Speaker 1: Aaron Gullies. The Robertson panel concluded that you know, physically,
Speaker 1: sort of operationally, there was no real danger from the UFOs,
Speaker 1: but the concept of the UFOs, the concept of invaders
Speaker 1: from outer space, the concerns about people not knowing what
Speaker 1: these things might be. In the government not knowing or
Speaker 1: not sharing what these things might be, that there might
Speaker 1: be some negative effects on the public with regard to
Speaker 1: keeping them focused on the Soviet Union, as you know,
Speaker 1: geopolitical enemy number one. They worried that that the UFOs
Speaker 1: might be a distraction if if, sort of the popular
Speaker 1: conception of UFOs as alien craft continued to to be
Speaker 1: on the rise. So among the recommendations the Robertson panel
Speaker 1: made was to work on the educational side of things
Speaker 1: to encourage media outlets to present their news stories and
Speaker 1: documentaries on on the UFOs as being essentially harmless, not
Speaker 1: a danger, not anything to worry about, to sort of
Speaker 1: defang and devenomize the UFOs as an existential threat. The
Speaker 1: recommendations weren't just to discourage the view that UFOs were
Speaker 1: something to be concerned about, but also to encourage the
Speaker 1: development of skills to help people evaluate any information they
Speaker 1: were provided with. The CIA actually said in that report
Speaker 1: that we should create a program to teach critical thinking
Speaker 1: to the American public such that they will not be
Speaker 1: easily swayed by disinformation and panic. The things that are real.
Speaker 1: It's probably the best thing. The CIA ever said un
Speaker 1: virtually it was instituted. So the Robertson panel ended up
Speaker 1: disregarding UFOs as physical entities. Might there have been a
Speaker 1: thumb on the scale. In reply to a letter from
Speaker 1: James Klotts that was posted to the computer UFO network
Speaker 1: on the Worldwide Web or Coupon, Robertson panel member Thornton
Speaker 1: Page wrote, quote, HP Robertson told us in the first
Speaker 1: private No Outsiders session that our job was to reduce
Speaker 1: public concern and show that UFO reports could be explained
Speaker 1: by conventional reasoning. End quote. There's no corroboration for this story,
Speaker 1: but it is interesting in what it implies about the
Speaker 1: goals of the meetings. So the Robertson panel dismissed the
Speaker 1: notion that UFOs were real, physical objects or anything that
Speaker 1: the public should be concerned about. And yet people continued
Speaker 1: to see things that they couldn't explain, and the Air
Speaker 1: Force kept investigating, And one of these investigations drew Alan
Speaker 1: Heinik to the small town of Socorro, New Mexico, to
Speaker 1: try to determine what a local policeman had seen in
Speaker 1: the desert after the break strange arrivals will return in
Speaker 1: a moment. So back to Lonnie Zamora and his sighting
Speaker 1: in Socorro, New Mexico in ninety sixty four. Remember, Zamora
Speaker 1: had been chasing a speeding car on when he heard
Speaker 1: a roaring sound and saw flames descending from the sky.
Speaker 1: He turned off the highway and came upon two white
Speaker 1: clad figures outside an egg shaped craft. With another loud roar,
Speaker 1: the craft took off again, flying low over the desert
Speaker 1: before rising into the sky. The Air Force clearly felt
Speaker 1: a sense of urgency to deal with this sighting. The
Speaker 1: first report on the case was filed two days after
Speaker 1: the encounter on April. On April, a second report was
Speaker 1: submitted on four days after the encounter. Alan Heinik was
Speaker 1: summoned to New Mexico to assist with the investigation. This
Speaker 1: is Heinik speaking with k s r C radio's Walter Schrode.
Speaker 1: If you don't mind like to a here here so
Speaker 1: I see um whether you're common province might be on
Speaker 1: this and I might ask any direct questions because I
Speaker 1: don't know why the questions you can cannot answer you
Speaker 1: this opinion and and an honor to appreciate it very much. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: first off, I should say there's no question of my
Speaker 1: not being able to answer anything because I'm acting as
Speaker 1: u uh independent investigating might say. Um. But the fact
Speaker 1: that I don't have anything to say the things that's
Speaker 1: puggling to me is I'm sure it must be to
Speaker 1: the folks around here. UM. I certainly believe that Zama
Speaker 1: had a most interesting and significant experience, and I'm particularly
Speaker 1: interested in the tracks that were left and the analysis
Speaker 1: of the samples of material from those tracks. And until
Speaker 1: you know more about it, thus, all I can say,
Speaker 1: disappointing to you perhaps is something that right, I'm apposed
Speaker 1: as you are. From the beginning there was confusion as
Speaker 1: public statements by Heinich and the Air Force investigators were
Speaker 1: at odds with those of Zamora and other locals. This
Speaker 1: is Lonnie Zamora with the ever President Walter Schrode. Schrode
Speaker 1: had asked Samora if the craft he saw bore any markings, Yes,
Speaker 1: they did not from them all, I didn't see the market. Well,
Speaker 1: I went up closer to it. I did to the market,
Speaker 1: and someone said that the markings that you saw it
Speaker 1: was an upside down be with three lines running through
Speaker 1: its group that goes They feel though the one who
Speaker 1: say doesn't marketing, and they don't want to say anything
Speaker 1: about the markets or every more question you on, Matt,
Speaker 1: and we run into an area that they don't want
Speaker 1: to to talk about when you just say so. But
Speaker 1: when Schrod interviewed Heinek, Heineck disputed that the Air Force
Speaker 1: had put any restrictions on what Zamora could say. I
Speaker 1: was called by the Pentagon this morning, and there's an
Speaker 1: Associated Press's report out to the effect that some Air
Speaker 1: Force person had told Mr Zamara not to say anything
Speaker 1: about the lettering, and I was asked specifically to find
Speaker 1: out whether this statement had been made, who made it
Speaker 1: and all that sort of thing. Zamara tells me that
Speaker 1: no one Air Force or no one else told him
Speaker 1: not to say anything about it. But this is how
Speaker 1: these rumors get started. To emphasize the point that the
Speaker 1: Pentagon had nothing to hide. Heinick described the marking as
Speaker 1: related to him by Zamora. He said, Zamora quote described
Speaker 1: it to me as an inverted V. Was sort of
Speaker 1: a bar Across said earlier we heard that Samora described
Speaker 1: it as a quote crescent with a vertical arrow and
Speaker 1: horizontal lines underneath, which isn't exactly the same as what
Speaker 1: Heineck says, but close enough that I don't think Heinek
Speaker 1: is being intentionally misleading. Later in the interview, Schrode asked
Speaker 1: Heineck Samoura had told them that there had been men
Speaker 1: around the craft. I know that there were earlier reports
Speaker 1: that he had seen people, but to me, he said
Speaker 1: nothing specific about people that he describes seeing objects that
Speaker 1: appeared to be in white coveralls. He indicated that he
Speaker 1: saw something along the side on the side of the
Speaker 1: instrument of the device that resembled white cover rolls. Yes.
Speaker 1: But when Race Stanford, a NYECAP investigator who had come
Speaker 1: to Skoro to look into Zamora's claims, asked lew Us Ridell,
Speaker 1: the editor of a Sakora newspaper who had talked to
Speaker 1: Zamora about the encounter, there is again this disconnect between
Speaker 1: the stories that Samora is telling and high Neck's assertions.
Speaker 1: And talking to Dr I him by the Samori told
Speaker 1: him nothing specific at all about seeing any men, imply
Speaker 1: they hadn't even he hadn't even mentioned any men. He
Speaker 1: later seemed to come down and say that you mentioned
Speaker 1: cover all after very funny questioning by one of the
Speaker 1: persons to his present. But did in this talk with
Speaker 1: Zamara soon after the citing, since you were one of
Speaker 1: the first to be there, did he mentioned to you
Speaker 1: that he actually saw a man or just cover off.
Speaker 1: Um he really doesn't have did and he said there
Speaker 1: were cool and even swimming bone bim men. But you
Speaker 1: learnt to think so over go, he said to be
Speaker 1: when you were still in the car. The one of
Speaker 1: them a boat of a man objects had their BacT
Speaker 1: to him and one of them turned around and not
Speaker 1: him square in the face. That was the exact words.
Speaker 1: And he very definitely uh deliso two men at at
Speaker 1: Obe and uh he said immediately m uh. They disappeared
Speaker 1: and kindly got in the plane from the side, from
Speaker 1: the west side, and the plane lifted up. And start
Speaker 1: of the investigation was made more difficult by a lack
Speaker 1: of physical evidence. There were some shallow depressions where the
Speaker 1: more I had seen the craft, and some of the
Speaker 1: brushes of burn marks, but that was all. The Air
Speaker 1: Force investigators at the scene listed the acts that they
Speaker 1: were able to establish. They were unable to find any
Speaker 1: witnesses other than Zamora. There were no unidentified helicopters or
Speaker 1: aircraft in the area at that time, and no unusual
Speaker 1: radar readings. The weather was windy but clear, so a
Speaker 1: weather phenomenon was ruled out. There was no evidence of
Speaker 1: markings of any sort in the area other than the
Speaker 1: shallow depressions where the craft had been. Soil samples taken
Speaker 1: from the site disclosed no foreign material or unusual radiation
Speaker 1: and burn brush, so no evidence of chemical propellants. There
Speaker 1: was no evidence presented that the object was extraterrestrial in
Speaker 1: origin or represented a threat to the security of the
Speaker 1: United States. But despite these findings, there was a general
Speaker 1: belief that Zamora had seen something that he hadn't hallucinated,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't lying. Heinich wrote that Zamora, although not
Speaker 1: overly bright or articulate, is basically sincere, honest and reliable.
Speaker 1: He would not be capable of contriving a complete hoax,
Speaker 1: nor would his temperament indicate that he would have the
Speaker 1: slightest interest in such. In fact, Heinik was sure that
Speaker 1: Zamora had seen a physical object and that it was
Speaker 1: important to determine what exactly that object was given the
Speaker 1: proximity to Air Force Bass such as Holloman and Kurtland.
Speaker 1: The investigation focused on whether the craft could have been
Speaker 1: a helicopter, an experimental lunar module, or a vertical takeoff
Speaker 1: and landing aircraft, a kind of hybrid vehicle that could
Speaker 1: take off like a helicopter and then fly like a plane.
Speaker 1: A considerable amount of space in the Project Bluebook file
Speaker 1: about the Zamora case is taken up with letters sent
Speaker 1: to try to det herman if any of those types
Speaker 1: of aircraft might have been active in that area at
Speaker 1: the date and time of Samora's encounter. These inquiries did
Speaker 1: not turn up an explanation. Could it have been a hoax?
Speaker 1: That is some people's preferred theory. See Lonnie Zamora wasn't
Speaker 1: just a so Cora police officer. He was an actual
Speaker 1: police officer in the police force. But he was also
Speaker 1: a campus police officer at the New Mexico Institute of
Speaker 1: Mining and Technology, which is a very respectable college there,
Speaker 1: smallish but respected. Hi. I am Brian Dunning. I'm best
Speaker 1: known for the Skeptoid podcast at skeptoid dot com, where
Speaker 1: we take a science based look at urban legends. It
Speaker 1: was like a character in a movie. Okay, he's the
Speaker 1: guy that all the students would make fun of. He
Speaker 1: was extremely rigid, he was overweight. I mean they would
Speaker 1: make fun of him. And what the president of the
Speaker 1: university always said, it was, Yes, this was some of
Speaker 1: our students. They were making fun of him. They were
Speaker 1: hoaxing him. They put a big balloon out in the desert.
Speaker 1: They tricked him into chasing one of their guys up
Speaker 1: this dirt road, and once he got there, they put
Speaker 1: this balloon with some flashing lights on it and they
Speaker 1: towed it off at high speed, following behind another car
Speaker 1: and another road, something like you might expect out of
Speaker 1: the movie Animal House. Okay, remember this odd question that
Speaker 1: Walter Schroede asked Lonnie Zamora. It wasn't dragging anything. We
Speaker 1: had a report that dragging something. It makes me wonder if,
Speaker 1: in fact, the UFO wasn't dragging something but was actually
Speaker 1: being towed. But Zamora seems to deny this. Regardless, there's
Speaker 1: documentation that a student hoax was suspected, at least by
Speaker 1: some people. The president of the New Mexico Institute of
Speaker 1: Mining and Technology was named Sterling Colgate. In he received
Speaker 1: a letter from his friend, the chemist and winner of
Speaker 1: two Nobel Prizes, Linus Pauling, that included a question about
Speaker 1: the Zamora encounter. In response, Colgate wrote, I have good
Speaker 1: indication of student who engineered hoax. Student has left now.
Speaker 1: Lonnie Zamora always stuck to his story, and by all accounts,
Speaker 1: Lonnie Zamora was a straight up, straightforward guy. He was honest,
Speaker 1: he was patriotic, he loved his family, he was a good,
Speaker 1: strong member of the community. Literally, I've never heard anyone
Speaker 1: say anything bad about the guy, that he was unreliable,
Speaker 1: and not for a minute do I claim that he
Speaker 1: was lying or making anything up. Nevertheless, if the word
Speaker 1: gets out that you were hoaxed, most of us are
Speaker 1: more likely to kind of double down on our original
Speaker 1: story than to admit that we were hoaxed and fooled
Speaker 1: by a bunch of snot nosed jerky kids at this university.
Speaker 1: The balloon idea had been floated earlier in the files
Speaker 1: and dismissed in part because the winds that day were
Speaker 1: blowing opposite the direction that the object took. There was
Speaker 1: also speculation about whether a car could have towed the
Speaker 1: balloon as Dunning describes, but that was similarly doubted because
Speaker 1: the expectation was that a car would have kicked up dust,
Speaker 1: and there was no report of dust nor retire tracks
Speaker 1: from a TOKR found at the scene. In April letter
Speaker 1: to Donald Menzel at the Harvard Observatory, heim Nick expressed
Speaker 1: skepticism about a hoax, and he tells this anecdote which
Speaker 1: seems to address the explanation voiced by Dunning. The path
Speaker 1: once told me of an instance in which some college
Speaker 1: students wanted to get even with the geology professor, so
Speaker 1: they planted a quote meteorite unquote and contrived an explosion
Speaker 1: at some instant part of the state, and had this
Speaker 1: poor professor running around ragged chasing a meteor right. The perpetrators, however,
Speaker 1: were caught and expelled from school because they simply couldn't
Speaker 1: keep their secret. They quote confided unquote to friends, who
Speaker 1: in turn confided to others. And there you are. So
Speaker 1: where does this leave us? The case has never been
Speaker 1: conclusively solved. As Brian Dunning says, the Lonnie Zamora story is.
Speaker 1: You'll find it as one of the foundational stones in
Speaker 1: any book about UFO stories. In the end, you are
Speaker 1: left with a credible witness, but only one. The physical
Speaker 1: evidence is scant. The description of the vehicle and egg
Speaker 1: on stilts seems like something you'd see on a science
Speaker 1: fiction movie or television show more than an actual craft
Speaker 1: from an advanced civilization. But the alternative explanations aren't without
Speaker 1: their flaws. I find myself agreeing with Dunning because I
Speaker 1: can imagine entire tracks being missed in the desert, or
Speaker 1: the search for them taking place after the wind and
Speaker 1: the weather had obscured them. That seems more likely to
Speaker 1: me than a visit by a craft from a different
Speaker 1: planet or, in Jim Peniston's view, a different time. In
Speaker 1: the letter to Menzel Heineck offered his thoughts a year
Speaker 1: after the encounter, it seems much more likely to me
Speaker 1: that he saw a strange test craft which is super secret.
Speaker 1: The flaws in this reasoning or that if it is
Speaker 1: so secret, why would anyone be landing a half mile
Speaker 1: south of a town. Why also have we been unable
Speaker 1: to an earth from various agencies any classified clues as
Speaker 1: such going on? And that's probably the best place to
Speaker 1: leave it. With the caveat that the default position here
Speaker 1: is not an extraterrestrial craft. There is no evidence that
Speaker 1: this is the case. There is simply a sighting, and
Speaker 1: in the absence of a definitive explanation, the most likely
Speaker 1: possible solutions. What this undoubtedly was was another story in
Speaker 1: a growing litany of such stories that seemed to indicate
Speaker 1: that there was something going on in our skies that
Speaker 1: the government either couldn't explain or was keeping secret. Heinek
Speaker 1: acknowledged this in his letter to Donald Menzel. There is
Speaker 1: no question that a mighty folklore is being built up
Speaker 1: in this whole field. Someday it might be worth while
Speaker 1: to document all this for the benefit of historians who
Speaker 1: will look back at the era. Two years later, another
Speaker 1: piece of this folklore would be born in Michigan, an
Speaker 1: event that would come to symbolize the public's distrust over
Speaker 1: the government handling of UFO reports and shake Alan Heineck's
Speaker 1: belief in the work he was doing for the Air Force.
Speaker 1: Hi Nick, the Air Force's skeptical scientists investigator, would become
Speaker 1: a believer next time on Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heeart three D audio and Grimm
Speaker 1: and mild from Aaron Manky. This episode was written and
Speaker 1: hosted by Toby Ball and produced by Miranda Hawkins and
Speaker 1: Josh Thame, with executive producers Alex Williams, Matt Frederick, and
Speaker 1: Aaron Manky, and special thanks to Wendy Connors, creator of
Speaker 1: the Faded Discs archive of UFO related audio on archive
Speaker 1: dot org. Learn more about Strange Rivals over at grimm
Speaker 1: and mild dot com, and find more podcasts from My
Speaker 1: heart Radio by visiting the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite chows