ON THE TRAIL OF THE ROSWELL DEBRIS & BODIES:
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
(originally published Jan 2011)
If the Roswell crash of 1947 was extraterrestrial in nature, an intense study of its debris and victims would have been required. The initial recovery and retrieval of the crash wreckage was done in days. But the examination and analysis of such advanced and alien remnants would necessarily have been going on for decades. Indeed, if Roswell really happened, the quest for knowledge about its remnants would continue to this very day. It is time to go beyond 1947 in our search for the full story. Where are the debris and bodies in the 21st century? A bold and fresh approach to this investigation will concentrate on actively “outing” the involved scientists and their respective organizations by name.
The corpses and craft parts – the physical evidence – are still here with us today. And there are people living today who have – in a scientific capacity – been exposed to these ET elements. We must operate as detectives in real time rather than simply as historians of the event, to uncover the whole truth. With applied effort, we can find out what happened to the material after the crash and where it is now. The organizations and the individuals that have been involved over the years in the scientific study of the otherworldly have names. We must identify them, invite them to come forward – or call them out.
In the first of a planned series of articles along these lines of investigation, we learn about one of several of these suspects: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
PEOPLE & PLACES CONFIRMED TO HAVE STUDIED ROSWELL’S PHYSICAL EVIDENCE
Both Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and its classified research contractor Battelle Memorial Institute have been confirmed by this author as having been involved in the analysis of the “memory metal” reported found at Roswell. In a years-long (and still continuing) investigation, it was discovered that Wright contracted Battelle in the months immediately following the crash to begin work on Roswell-inspired exotic and novel alloys. This complex story was reported in the concluding chapter of the revised edition of the best-seller Witness to Roswell, and was subsequently expanded on in five articles that are archived on this website:
These articles named some of the scientists involved, such as Dr. Howard C. Cross and Elroy John Center of Battelle, and General Lawrence Craigie who directed the USAF R&D. It is also believed that within the T-3 Engineering Division of Wright’s Air Materiel Command, other scientists and engineers (including civilian T-3 engineer Alfred Loedding, the subject of a future article) were engaged in such technical activity. It is thought that the US Naval Lab in Maryland has played a role in advanced experimentation on metals and materials with Roswell impetus. A 2010 article by this author and also archived on this site, The Roswell Artifacts: How They Hide the Evidence, examined the storage, containment, and security measures that would be needed. The conclusion was that a few bodies, a small craft, and some metal would be comparatively easy to “hide.”
Something that is critical to Roswell investigation (but that has been until now completely overlooked) is this: Precisely who are the privileged few scientists and organizations who have beheld and studied these ET artifacts in the intervening decades since the crash?
OTHERS INVOLVED IN THE TANGIBLE STUDY OF THINGS ET
Those who may have studied the physical crash evidence have likely come from many different “walks of life.” This may include engineers and scientists within the military-industrial complex:
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Military Bases
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National Laboratories
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Contracted Universities
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Aerospace Companies and the US Space Program
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Quasi-Governmental and Private Research Centers
Study areas would include the craft’s materials of construction; its operating physics, navigation and propulsion; and its pilots’ physiologies. It would require individuals in different disciplines and with different types of expertise. And it would necessitate work at various facilities (located within both public and private sector organizations) that would have the specialized equipment and resources required for evaluation and potential replication. For instance, Battelle's directive was to study the materials of construction of the craft because of Battelle's prior work on top-secret defense contracts, its world-renowned metallurgists, and its equipment. Battelle possessed an arc-furnace that Wright-Patterson itself did not: one that could melt Nickel and Titanium to the purity levels required to make the Roswell-like metal Nitinol.
In our search for likely suspects who have studied ET, we must consider three things: 1) what organizations and scientists have had prior work on top-secret government projects; 2) who possesses the needed technical expertise; and 3) the specialized equipment, systems and facilities required to study the artifacts. No one place or organization could possibly have all the people and resources that would be required to effectively evaluate such things.
Well-known organizations with names such as Lawrence Berkeley, NASA, Sandia Labs, Los Alamos Lab and Lockheed will be explored for clues. Also investigated will be those with lesser-known names such as MITRE, Dugway Proving Ground, and Liquid Metal Technologies. Some within these organizations may have been made privy, either wittingly or unwittingly, to the actual material from Roswell. Or they may be working on “extension technologies” that were developed terrestrially, based on what has been learned from the study of the crash material. If we dig deeply within some of these organizations, we begin to see hints and reports of such ET study. I recognize that some of the information in these articles will be “anecdotal” or “circumstantial”. But to trail blaze this new line of inquiry, we must think outside of the box, listen to what is said, note the connections, and consider the possible. Since the publication of my research thus far on the Roswell-Battelle connection, some of those within the scientific community have generously (and bravely) reached out to me to offer clues to help solve this enduring mystery.
LET’S BEGIN WITH BERKELEY
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is located on the grounds of the University of California at Berkeley, and is managed by the University for the US Department of Energy. Now employing about 4000, it was founded as the Radiation Laboratory in 1931 by Nobel Prize winning physicist Ernest Lawrence in 1931. It is the Department of Energy’s oldest National Laboratory. With a motto: “Bringing Science Solutions to the World,” Berkeley professes that its work today is of an unclassified nature. It has maintained that since the mid-1950s their work has been” largely unclassified”, and that since the 1970s it has been “exclusively unclassified.”
Of course in the 1940s and in the early 1950s, such was not at all the case. Berkeley supported the Manhattan Project. It was instrumental in valuable, highly-classified achievements supporting the development of the atom bomb, the proximity fuse, and radar. And even though it is said today by the organization that the “exclusive mission of Berkeley is unclassified work”, this is not strictly accurate. Non-military personnel working on Department of Energy atomic or nuclear-related research must possess a “Q Clearance", which is equivalent to the US Department of Defense’s “Top Secret” or TS security clearance. A “Q Clearance” requires background investigation of the previous ten years of the applicant’s life, conducted by both the FBI and the US Office of Personnel Management. Some of Berkeley’s facilities are of an extraordinarily sensitive nature, housing atomic materials. Security measures are accordingly intense and much of the work is conducted under officially “Restricted” classification.
I have dialoged with two “famous in their field” scientists who have very strong connections to Berkeley. They have both imparted to me very credible and very telling information. It strengthens the case that Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory should be more thoroughly investigated for its potential participation in the examination of the unearthly:
SCIENTIST ONE
One of these acclaimed (and still professionally active) scientists is a very senior-level NASA engineer. For many years he has been employed by the prestigious NASA Ames Research Lab in Silicon Valley. Associated with the Lab’s Space Science and Astrobiology Division, his work embraces Exo-Planetary Studies and Astrophysics as well as Aerospace Engineering. He has made substantial contributions in the wind-tunnel testing of the Mars Lander and in efforts at methane signature detection on Mars. This scientist related to me a story about Lawrence Berkeley Lab that he had never told before:
He explained that his own father was employed at Lawrence Berkeley Labs in the early 1950s, when some of the work at the organization
was still very highly classified. The scientist’s father was a Tool and Die Maker. A highly skilled machinist, he was experienced in working with every manner of material including plastics, composites, ceramics, exotic alloys and forged metal. He had created and operated high-performance jigs (cutting tools) to produce metal forms (dies) as well as to make parts for highly-hardened machinery. The Tool and Die Man made a confession to his son later in life and before he died. He said that while at Berkeley in the early 1950s, he was presented with some strange material by a Lab manager. The technician (who possessed security clearances) was tasked by the official to see if he could attempt to “machine” the material in any way. Could he craft from it? Could he use his expertise and his precision tools and bits (which possessed the greatest cutting capabilities available anywhere at the time) to in any way engineer the material?
The technician (whom his scientist-son described as truthful, honorable and no-nonsense) told him that the material at Berkeley was not like any that he had ever encountered before or since. Knowing of his son’s professional research at NASA on “life on other planets,” he privately detailed to him what he felt could only be something from another world. He said that it appeared “metal-like” but not exactly – its precise nature was unknown. Impervious to applied torch heat, he was unable to puncture, dent, cut or even scratch the material. Its impossible strength did not match its comparatively light weight. There was no earthly way that the material could be worked, and he concluded that the material was not from that time and not of Earth. He was not offered the origin of the material by the Lab’s manager, nor did he ask. He knew not to. He did wonder though, was this a piece from an off-Earth machine? Of course, Jesse Marcel himself said that some of the material he discovered at the Foster Ranch in 1947 could not be “worked,” nor cut nor heated either. And his counterpart, Intelligence Officer Master Sgt Lewis Rickett (in interviews conducted in the 1980s) said that in talking with his fellow counterintelligence officer Joe Wirth some time after the Roswell crash, he learned that they were “still unable to cut it” or to entirely identify its metallurgical makeup.
The NASA scientist explained that his father had worked on many unusual and classified configurations and materials during his many years at Berkeley, but none ever like that. For his father to have mentioned this particular instance in such confidential tones – and with such grave seriousness – meant to the scientist that this was a material that was not normal, it was not ours…and that working on the material had in some way deeply impacted his father’s psyche, emblazoning the memory of it in his father’s mind for the rest of his life.
On January 14 2011 Lawrence Berkeley announced that it had created the strongest material ever made – a glass impregnated at the microscopic level with alloys – that is virtually impervious to damage. One of the additions to the material to create its super-tough, lightweight characteristics is the rare earth material Palladium. Interestingly, NASA recently announced that the addition of Palladium to the memory metal Nitinol allowed for greater shape memory characteristics. Adding it allows for the use of less Titanium (and changed what was previously thought to be the needed 50/50 ratio of Ni to Ti to create the morph.)
SCIENTIST TWO
Another preeminent scientist contacted me to relate his personal story of employment at Lawrence Berkeley. He had first contacted UFO researcher Tom Carey, about an incident at the organization that he believed may have possibly been related to Roswell memory metal research. Tom then put me in touch with this scientist. He has over three decades of development and management experience in electronics, materials science and computer science disciplines. He was employed for eight years with both Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and by Los Alamos National Laboratory. This author has independently confirmed the scientist’s employment with the National Laboratories. The scientist has since consulted with private industry, technology labs, and development firms in the areas of nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. A technical visionary, he was an early science editor of the now defunct cyber-culture magazine Mondo 2000.
This scientist stated to me that in the early 1970s (over a decade after the supposed discovery of the shape-recovery alloy Nitinol at the US Naval Lab), his group of materials scientists and engineers at Berkeley were given samples of “memory metal.” He said that the whole episode was “the single oddest experience"
that he had in US National Laboratory employ. To this day he is haunted by the real meaning and purpose of his group’s unusual assignment.
He was told that the material was delivered from the “China Lake” US Navy station to Berkeley for “characterization studies.” The group’s instructions were vague – and they were not to discuss it with outsiders. They were simply told: “Just figure it out!” They were given no available phase diagrams on Nickel and Titanium (that we today know had previously been completed at both Battelle and at the Navy Lab). Neither the scientist nor any of those in his group had any previous experience with the material. They were all perplexed about why they were given no background information whatsoever. Their task aggressively ordered, was only to find out “how the metal morphs.” Rumors and suspicions were that this was an extremely important material of high value and research interest. There was “something else” about the material that the government wanted to know. It was surmised later by the group that the government felt that by “starting from scratch” that new insights could be achieved about the unusual nature of the metal.
The scientist would not divulge to me to whom he reported his findings, nor what precisely were the findings, nor the titles of the reports his group generated. He did say that he was more than surprised to learn later that highly detailed and accurate studies on memory metal had already been completed long before by the government and one of its contractors. Battelle, NASA and the Navy Lab had already known and detailed the material’s micro-structure; the energy requirements needed to create the morph; and its technical composition, parameters and properties (including phase diagrams). It made no sense to him that they had left himself and his Berkeley group “high and dry” to characterize the material for no apparent reason, for others had already done so. In hindsight the scientist believes that – rather than building on previously available information about the material – there was something that was still fundamentally unknown about the memory metal. He and his group should have been tasked to do applied research on the material, but this was basic research.
This scientist does not feel it at all unreasonable that the original impetus for shape-recovery alloy study by the US government was the material found at Roswell. In fact, this scientist feels that it is probable, which is why he bravely contacted Carey and I to relate his Berkeley experiments. His uneasy experience at the Lab left him feeling that there is something more to “memory metal” – with a meaning that still eludes. This strange episode recalls what was learned by this author about other “bizarre” government experiments and circumstances surrounding the testing of Nitinol. As reported in previous articles on the memory metal, in one instance in the early 1970s, two US Navy scientists (Eldon Byrd and Dr. Fred Wang) beseeched a well-known psychic to morph the metal with his mind! Equally as intriguing is that it was during this very same time frame that the Berkeley scientist was conducting his “odd” Nitinol experiments at Berkeley with material supplied by the Navy! It appears then that in the early 1970s the Navy was conducting strange memory metal work on both coasts at the same time.
Because “Scientist One” and “Scientist Two” remain professionally active in their respective fields, I have elected to maintain their privacy. They may also be able to provide information in the future that is relevant to this investigation. That said, their names have been confirmed to a very few. I have also retained email correspondence and transcribed telephone interviews from these Berkeley-connected scientists.
MORE ABOUT BERKELEY AND UFOS
If there was ever the thought that the material or craft from Roswell was potentially radioactive (or that its physics may have operated at the atomic level), Berkeley would have been one of the likely candidate organizations to assist in such technical analysis. At the time it was the only facility in the world with an advanced cyclotron (a type of particle accelerator). It dealt with anything “energy” – especially with advanced energy systems. It was home to “big science” and to world-leading theoretical physicists such as Robert Oppenheimer, key developer of the Atom Bomb. The organization (and some of its select scientists) were proven to have effectively “kept secrets” about the most secret of projects – the Manhattan Project. A friend and professional associate of Berkeley’s Robert Oppenheimer was Chester Lytle. Like Oppenheimer, Lytle was a renowned Manhattan Project Engineer and the inventor of the detonator for Oppenheimer’s Atom Bomb. A few years before he passed, Lytle confessed to researcher Robert Hastings that he had been made aware that the Roswell crash was in fact that of an alien space vehicle and that humanoid bodies were recovered.
Noted scientist Luis Alvarez also worked at Berkeley, winning a Nobel prize in physics. He was also associated with the Jason Society, a super-secret think tank. The Jason group numbers about 30-60 and has (in a quasi-private capacity) advised the DOE, DARPA, the Navy, and Intelligence on highly classified matters of science and technology for decades. Unsubstantiated rumor is that some in Jason have dealt with the technical principles relating to ET technology. What is substantiated is that Berkeley’s Luis Alvarez was also a panel member of one of the first official government UFO study groups, Project Sign. Alvarez worked closely with Sign secretary Fred Durant, a CIA agent in scientific intelligence. This author had a recent conversation with Durant (now 94) and found him to be evasive and still “spook-like” in his replies about the Roswell crash. Controversial former UFO researcher William Steinman maintained that in 1986 he had personally confronted Luis Alvarez – and that the scientist had admitted to his knowledge of a crashed alien craft some decades prior.
Dr. James Harder was a Berkeley engineer for many years. He was also a very credible and noted early Ufologist. Like other Berkeley-associated scientists, his interest gravitated to the materials sciences. Interestingly, his favored research area was material evidence of fallen UFOs. Harder spoke in Congressional testimony in 1968 of the physical analysis of the Ubatuba, Brazil metal sample. Harder believed that insights gained from molecular science and nanotechnology would ultimately reveal much about such recovered samples.
Berkeley, like Battelle, may represent an organization that has had direct or tangential experience with the Roswell material. As more information develops on this possibility, this author will make the findings available so that others may also travel this trail of inquiry.
A PLEA AND VOW TO THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY
Those who have studied the physical evidence of a crashed UFO in an official capacity (or that have direct knowledge of such) no doubt find themselves in a quandary. They are obligated to their employer (whether it is the US government or one of its contractors) to maintain the confidentiality of their work. They must adhere to their ascribed security clearances and they must comply with their security oaths. And they and their families have an intrinsic right to privacy, which would no doubt be broken with open disclosure.
But for their own peace of mind and sanity – and to honor their legacy – they must consider coming forth on some level. And these scientists have a higher obligation.
It is the obligation to Truth and to History. As professionals who live and work for the factual, they in particular must realize how vital it is to tell of what they have learned of the earth-fallen Alien. If they do not, I have an obligation that I then must honor: I will track them down and publicly reveal their involvement without their consent: I will “out” them.