Post by Joanna on Feb 4, 2017 19:41:00 GMT -5
UFO Expert Changes Mind, Denies Roswell Crash
Did aliens crash a flying saucer in the New Mexico desert near Roswell in July 1947, before the US military covered it up? It is a question that has been at the forefront of the UFO debate ever since.
Roswell entered UFO history when the military announced in a press release it had found the remains of a crashed flying saucer in the nearby desert in July 1947. But the following day, the statement was retracted and replaced with one claiming the object was, in fact, a damaged US Air Force weather balloon. Later, witnesses came forward to say there had been alien bodies within the “crashed craft,” which, along with the wreckage, were taken to the mysterious top-secret Area 51 military base in Nevada.
But now, one of the leading supporters of the theory that aliens crash-landed in the desert nearly 70 years ago, appears to have had second thoughts. Kevin Randle co-wrote with Donald Schmitt the 1991 book UFO Crash at Roswell, and in 1994, The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell. But, in a new solo book revisiting the case, entitled Roswell in the 21st Century, he appears to have reached a different conclusion.
Writing on his own blog following an online debate in which it was charged that he had recanted the whole Roswell case in his new book, Randle stopped short of a full admission, but did admit to a change of heart. “The question being asked about me, but never actually put to me, is if I have abandoned the alien model for the Roswell crash,” he wrote. “The short, flip answer is read the book. The more lengthy answer is well sort of. “The book was meant to be a cold case look at the Roswell crash,” he continued, “starting at the beginning and shifting through the mountains of evidence that have been gathered by a number of researchers ... all of whom seemed to have a biased opinion from ‘yes, it was alien’ to ‘no, it was a Mogul balloon.’ To all of them (which at one time included me with some of them), I say I don’t know. And there you have it ... I go through the whole story, document it as best I can, and in the end, I have to say that the case is built on testimony gathered decades after the fact and that everything we know about memory is that it really is no good when it comes to something like this.”
In his new book, Randle said he had concluded that the eight people who told him they had actually seen alien bodies at the crash site “had not been telling the truth.”
Skeptic Robert Sheaffer, who wrote Bad UFOs: Critical Thinking about UFO Claims, responded, saying, “So Randle has raised the number of those who lied about seeing alien bodies at Roswell from four to eight, and there never were more than eight. This completely undercuts the need for bizarre ET or non-ET explanations for alleged alien body sightings at Roswell.”
Other claims concerning the incident were as follows:
Annie Jacobs: “Stalin and Mengele sent in deformed children in a Commie Nazi saucer.”
Nick Redfern: “The US Army flew in dwarfish captured Japanese pilots in a bizarre craft.”
U.S. Air Force: “The Air Force dropped crash test dummies in the desert.”
All these highly implausible explanations are unnecessary, because there are no truthful accounts of alien bodies at Roswell to explain. Randle doggedly pursued the Holy Grail of alien evidence at Roswell for more than thirty years. When he realized it wasn't there, he was brave enough to admit it."
British UFO expert Nigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual, does not believe the mystery will ever be solved. “Randle doesn't exactly debunk Roswell; rather, he hedges his bets and is open to an alien explanation. But at the moment we don’t have sufficient evidence to say one way or the other. Given the time lapsed and the many contradictory witness statements and rumors surrounding this incident,” he continued, “I don't think there will be an answer that satisfies everyone, unless of course it was an alien spaceship craft and the US releases this to the public.”
But Nick Pope, a former UFO researcher in the UK Ministry of Defence, has launched a campaign to solve the case before the 70th anniversary this July, in the hope that someone in the town hung on to a piece of the wreckage and can produce it.
Source: Jon Austin, The Express, January 26, 2017.
