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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - August 9, 2007 It was right before the Culture of Contact news conference ...
It's June 28, the date of the news conference for The Culture of Contact. The world, at least from my perspective, is about to break open today. Since May, when Don Schmitt and Tom Carey's Witness to Roswell arrived on the shelves, precious little has been said about the unbelievable affidavit Walter Haut swore out in December 2002. In that affidavit, which George Noory and I talked about on Coast to Coast AM back in July, Walter Haut finally tells exactly what happened on July 8, 1947, the day of the staff meeting at Walker Field in Roswell. Walter Haut said that he was at that meeting along with the other staff members at Walker Field, a meeting attended by none other than General Roger Ramey from Carswell AFB at Fort Worth and Ramey's aide, Col. Thomas DuBose. Why would General Ramey come to Roswell from Fort Worth? The answer: It was all about the two crashes north of town and what to do about them. General Ramey had brought with him a plan from his bosses at the Pentagon: Admit to the first crash and cover up the second. Walter Haut details that plan. You can read all about it in Witness to Roswell and you can read all about it in our July issue. And when the officers agreed to follow the plan, they passed around pieces of the Roswell wreckage. It was not from Planet Earth, they figured. There was no knowing what it was or what it was supposed to do. Walter Haut even kept a piece of the space wreckage on his office desk. I wonder what happened to that piece? Then, Walter Haut wrote in his affidavit, after he issued the now-famous press release, his boss Col. Blanchard asked him to stop over at the hangar where they were storing the crash debris to see the craft and the alien bodies for himself. This he did, and he and describes both in his affidavit. And he describes what happened the next day when Major Jesse Marcel came back from Fort worth after being blindsided by General Ramey into posing in front of a weather balloon and told to act the role of a confused intelligence officer who made a mistake in misidentifying the wreckage. Marcel, he says, was angry but never talked about it again. We all know that he did, in fact, talk about it thirty years later while Walter Haut stayed silent. You can read all about Jesse Marcel's story in Jesse Marcel, Jr.'s book, The Roswell Legacy. So here I am, and it's a very hot June day in Manhattan as I begin to make my way all across town from the Port Authority Terminal to the Culture of Contact press conference at the Pioneer Theater on the Lower East Side, or "the Old Country" as some folks in LA like to call it. I'm on the phone with the publisher from New Page Books, telling him about the press conference, about the article about the book coming up in our magazine. He's been calling since I got off the bus, calling again and again as the phone kept dropping his call from inside the terminal. The conversation is intense. This is a big book for him. A lot rides on how this book is perceived. It's been on the radio already, but not much has been made of the affidavit. Why? He doesn't know. Don't people realize that this affidavit is one of the most important admissions in the entire Roswell story? If the affidavit is true, and we have no reason to think it's not because of Walter Haut's recorded conversation with Wendy Connors and Dennis Balthaser and his statements, overheard by Carolyn Siska, to visitors to the International Roswell Museum he founded, then Haut confirms Major Jesse Marcel's story that he began telling in 1978 -- that the Roswell crash really happened. If the Roswell crash of a vehicle from off this planet really happened, then we have been visited by extraterrestrials. If we have been visited by extraterrestrials and the government has been covering it up, there's your coverup conspiracy. This is like finding the additional gunmen on the grassy knoll, a syringe of lethal drugs next to Marilyn Monroe, or the second shooter in the RFK assassination. And this could be even bigger because, as Steve Bassett put it, it rewrites human history for the past thousands of years. Suddenly that car insurance company's cave man take on a whole new look. As I weave my way through the early afternoon foot and car traffic in Manhattan, horns blaring and brakes screeching, I explain this to the publisher. Sure there are other stories in his book, great stories. But the affidavit is the one document that wipes out everything a Michael Shermer and all the other debunkers can scream about. The affidavit support Jesse Marcel, Jr. as the living eyewitness to what his father brought home from the debris field. I have to hammer this, I tell the publisher. Crossing Herald Square, I head down Broadway, probably the best street for walkers if you're heading downtown to the East Side because you don't have to zig-zag your way across the small blocks. Push-racks with hanging dresses block my way, big rolling stock with scores of dresses that will show up on store racks in months. People are screaming at each other in unrecognizable languages. Yes, I can make out a little French, but that's about it. Maybe some Arabic, too. But the rest of the languages are unrecognizable. I go past the storefront electronic stores, the cell-phone dealers, the costume-jewelry stores, and the Korean delis. Now the street opens up and I'm at Madison Square and the Flat Iron Building where Broadway and Fifth Avenue intersect. Lots of cars, lots of details with this publisher. Now I'm telling about my own books and how authors have to learn to hit the talking points because most reporters at a press conference will not know about the book you're talking about. I gotta get off this call because I have to jump on a downtown train. Don't want to be late for this news conference because it's the first one we're sponsoring as part of this event. A few New York newspapers will be there. The New Yorker has given us a mention. And Time Out New York gave Jeremy Vaeni some nice coverage. Jeremy, Harold Egeln, Farah Yurdozu, and Mike Luckman have put together a significant conference in a very short order. And this will be their news conference. I almost feel like Raymond in Barry Levinson's Rain Man, "Gotta get to the conference, can't be late, can't be late, can't be late." There's the R train up ahead. Will that work? Nope, need the F, need the F. The Sixth Avenue F train takes you down to Houston Street, way over on the East Side near First Avenue. And that's the Lower East Side. And that's for tomorrow. Bill Birnes |
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