Have you ever watched a contortionist squeeze their way into
the tiniest of spaces? They calculate every move, having practiced many times which
limb and joint should precede which into the void - a carefully choreographed dance
to occupy micro-spaces in ways the human form was never intended.
Equally, in what has increasingly become a fact-free and
conspiracy leaning society, we watch truth contortionists in our own politics twist
their extreme “version” of the truth into public discourse while attracting new
adherents with battle cries of
combating the “Deep State”. Q-Anon
endorsers are elected to public office and whole swaths of the population, enduring
the worse pandemic in 100 years, shun scientific experts in favor of conspiracy
mongering and snake oil pushing politicians. People die.
And as I watch this train wreck of what I once thought was
the greatest country on earth, with its supposed deep-rooted institutions and traditions
of civility and decorum, literally going to hell in a handbasket fast, I can’t
help but experience Déjà vu. I have seen this self-destructive and corrosive behavior
before, in the world of UFOs.
The microcosm of UFO-world is both fascinating and exhausting
to observe. It too is an alternative reality where facts are in constant free
fall, conspiracy runs rampant and its truth contortionists are exceptionally
adept at their trade. Instead of the Deep State it is the Cosmic Watergate,
where the “Government” allegedly wages an almost century old war hiding the “truth”
of extraterrestrials visitation to planet earth. In UFO-world, there is no middle
ground in this war – you are either against the “truth embargo” or you are labeled
a Government agent, an agitator, a disinformer, or a debunker.
To give you a taste of how UFO truth is stretched, warped
and ultimately consumed by the public as “fact”, let me share with you a recent
Facebook exchange with Donald Schmitt of “It was Aliens” Roswell fame. I want
to focus on two specific areas – standards of evidence and factual reporting.
Let us begin with standards of evidence which are pretty
much non-existent in UFO-world. Ufologists for some odd reason often either believe
themselves exempt from professional standards of evidence or cherry pick the
standards they employ.
Because the Roswell Incident suffers from a complete lack of
public domain physical evidence, i.e. the bodies, the craft, etc., Schmitt
believes that Roswell is foremost a people investigation. His reasoning is that
if he finds the witnesses to the event, at some point the physical evidence is
going to pop, and then he can call in the UFO-world equivalent of CSI to scientifically
analyze the material evidence. By his reasoning, the real-world standards of
evidence would be those that involve witness testimony, i.e. the same standards
involved in civil or criminal proceedings. Fine, I can sort of agree with that.
So, let us examine legal standards of evidence. Direct
evidence like witness testimony is admissible in a court of law when the
witness is present in the court room and subject to cross examination by both the
prosecution and the defense. Hearsay, where the witness is not available for
cross examination, and instead their words are introduced by a third party, is not
admissible with a few exceptions – one of these being the Dying Declaration
exception which Schmitt not only endorses but believes trumps all prior testimony.
The Dying Declaration hearsay exception however does not
exactly match up to Schmitt’s use of it. Dying Declaration is invoked for example
if a person is murdered and they can name their murderer right before dying, or
as another example, a person confesses to
a family member with their last dying words that they had committed a crime.
But with Roswell, no crime has been committed; instead, we are talking about
memories of an event.
Schmitt believes that if Roswell Witness A has been saying X
for years, and now close to their death they state Y instead, in his opinion, this
end-of-life change-of-heart deathbed testimony is superior to and supersedes any
conflicting testimony the witness gave prior. I would love to hear real criminal
and civil lawyers (I am not one) opine on this. This sounds like nonsense to me
as this change of heart is not related to knowledge of a crime but the radically
differing testimony of a witness.
This appears to be more akin to a contested will case. If I
write up my will leaving all my assets to my children and toward the end of my
life I write a new will leaving it all to my dog, well something’s up that prompted
such a radical departure. The will gets contested and various factors like Lack
of Testamentary Capacity (read mental capacity) and Undue Influence (prompting
by others to modify the will) must be considered. The end of life will does not
automatically supersede the prior.
The second issue I want to touch upon is factual reporting, i.e.
telling it like it is, straight-up, without embellishment and without leaving
out important details. Equally important is not obfuscating or making ambiguous
statements that are open to assumption and interpretation. In our lengthy Facebook
exchange, Schmitt has provided some glaring examples of non-factual reporting.
Let us take the case of Doyle Rees that Schmitt mentions in
his book Cover-Up at Roswell: Exposing the 70-Year Conspiracy to Suppress
the Truth. Schmitt believes Rees provided
deathbed testimony to back up Roswell as an alien event.
Rees is first mentioned at the end of chapter 6 in which Schmitt
summarily disqualifies Sheridan Cavitt as a witness, because Cavitt allegedly repeatedly
lied to Schmitt over many interviews. Here is an excerpt from the book:
Cavitt’s own former boss, Lt.
Colonel Doyle “Dode” Rees, who was stationed at USA/OSI at Kirkland AFB in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, wrote a letter at our request to him around the same time. In it,
he remarked, “When you call the press conference to tell the world, let me
know, because I want to be there”.
Note how this paragraph has a double connotation; that Cavitt
was “in the know” and Rees was also potentially in on the secret and waiting
for his more directly involved subordinate to spill the beans. However, Doyle Rees (DR) gave a taped interview to Sign Oral History Project’s
Tom Tulien (TT) in October 1999 https://sohp.us/interviews/pdf/Rees-Doyle-1999.pdf,
where Rees’ knowledge of the Roswell Incident comes into focus.
DR: [Laughing] Yeah. Well, I came
after the Roswell incident. I came out there after that.
TT: Were you aware of that at the
time?
DR: No, I wasn't. And one of my top
officers was down at Roswell at the time, you know. You've probably heard of
Sheridan Cavitt, have you?
TT: Yeah.
DR: Well, he was one of my top officers,
and they've always - the people I've talked to – have always suspected that he
was holding out. That his lips were sealed. And he told me - and I have lots of
correspondence here with him - where he says, "I don't know
anything." He says, "If I'd have known, I would have told you."
But that may not be so - I don't know. If you're sworn to secrecy, maybe he's
got to keep - maybe his lips are sealed, I don't know.
This exchange paints a different picture. Rees believed Cavitt
may have known more than he was saying but clearly professes his own lack of involvement
or knowledge.
And in Sheridan Cavitt’s (SC) own May 24, 1994 interview with
Colonel Richard Weaver (RW) as part of the US Air Force’s report on Roswell: https://media.defense.gov/2010/Dec/01/2001329893/-1/-1/0/roswell-2.pdf
, Cavitt mentions the letter Rees sent him:
RW: Well the names I recognize here
that were still: are Doyle Rees and John Stahl.
SC: Doyle is still alive. I have a
letter from him.
RW: I think he's in the Association
of Former OSI Agents.
SC: Yeah. Right.
RW: And I am also a member of that
so I see a lot of that. So, I see a lot of their letters and stuff, pictures
that they send.
MC: We get correspondence from
Doyle… (NOTE: MC is Sheridan Cavitt’s wife)
MC: Nice, nice man.
SC: He is a nice man. And a nice
family. I don’t know what the date on that is. Letter from Doyle, it says:
“When you call the press conference to tell the world, let me know, because I want
to be there.“ So, I just got reams of this stuff from books.
So, Cavitt acknowledges the letter from Rees with the “tell
the world” message. None of this is technically non-factual, at least until Schmitt
states this in our Facebook exchange: https://www.facebook.com/donald.r.schmitt/posts/10217218700087129
Rees was not in Roswell and not
involved as we have ever been able to determine. I quoted his letter which he
was kind enough to have written on our behalf to Cavitt where he clearly
implied that he had a BIG story to tell. We have that letter.
Put into context with Rees and Cavitt’s interviews, we see an
alternate picture: Rees professes no knowledge of the Roswell Incident but
believes Cavitt may be holding back something, although Cavitt has also denied
any knowledge. Schmitt asks Rees to write the letter to Cavitt with the “tell
the world” message. Schmitt states in a public forum that Rees was implying that
Cavitt had a BIG story to tell, but who prompted Rees to write the letter in
the first place? Schmitt & CO. This is a self-generated and twisted version
of the truth where Schmitt is simply playing one witness against the other and
then trying to attach importance to a letter that has no significance whatsoever.
To explore Doyle Rees (DR) knowledge or involvement with the
Roswell Incident further, let us examine this excerpt from his interview with Tom
Tulien (TT):
TT: Yeah, it is odd too that the
whole thing began during the time that we developed nuclear capability.
DR: Yes, yes.
TT: And you know, the green
fireballs around Los Alamos.
DR: Yes.
TT: You know, that is curious, too.
DR: Yeah, it, it's a strange thing.
There isn't an answer to it yet, as far as I know. You can't dismiss it,
because of the reports you get from good witnesses. But then on the other hand,
why haven't we got the concrete evidence somehow. A photograph- or really a
crash.
TT: Yeah.
DR: I have lots of reservations
about the Roswell incident. I doubt that it occurred myself. I can't believe
that it occurred, and it went to Washington, and went to Wright-Pat. And those
of us who are in counterintelligence and intelligence - if that did occur we'd
have had rumors of it, somehow. But I never did hear a rumor from within the
Air Force that there was anything like that going on.
But I hope there can be a
resolution to this and put it to rest. Or, if there is something to this, let's
make an all-out effort to resolve it. Because if there are UFOs coming from
other galaxies, they have some scientific information that would be awful
valuable to us.
What is striking about Rees’ response is that he reveals his
non-involvement or knowledge of the Roswell Incident, unprompted! Schmitt in
his book paints a different picture:
"Rees refused to tell anyone
about the '47 incident..."
When I asked Schmitt why he didn’t mention Tulien’s interview in his
book, he initially gave lengthy and irrelevant explanations of how deathbed
testimony was superior to prior testimony and argued this point ad nauseam until he claimed he had never seen the Tulien
transcript to begin with and only first heard of it when I brought it up. OK,
benefit of the doubt granted.
But as oftentimes happens when one does protest too much
while contorting the truth, slippage occurs where you say something that sounds
good in the moment but does not exactly fit the overall story. Here’s some
relevant Facebook exchanges where Schmitt talks about Rees:
Rees was not in Roswell and not
involved as we have ever been able to determine. I quoted his letter which
he was kind enough to have written on our behalf to Cavitt where he clearly
implied that he had a BIG story to tell. We have that letter.
Rees was not at Roswell at the time
of the incident, so he remains a non-witness. The only reason we
sought him out was because he was Cavitt's boss and Cavitt wouldn't even
admit being at Roswell in 47'.
For the umpteenth time; Doyle Rees
was in Albuquerque at the time and not involved at Roswell.
The fact that you intentionally
select a non-witness to argue your point demonstrates how flaccid your
effort.
The fact that Rees was not at
Roswell at the time of the incident is the bottom line.
If the best you or anyone else can
do is relegate an individual who was 200 miles away from Roswell at the time
to somehow being involved - your misrepresentation.
Which really begs the question, if Rees was such a
non-character and the only reason Schmitt sought him out was because he was in Cavitt’s
chain of command, why in the world would Schmitt write this about Rees?
"Unknown to
his family, he was also involved with the CIC investigation of the Roswell
Incident"
Twisting the truth here is saying it mildly.
Now to be fair to Schmitt, since he does place such importance
on end-of-life testimony, let me finish this off by relating the anecdote in
the book where Schmitt ties in Rees’ alleged endorsement of the extraterrestrial
hypothesis. Summarized on Facebook:
Rees died in 2007 and according to his
daughter Julie, who we interviewed in 2011, just before he died she was
spending time with him at his home in Utah. One day she found him sitting in a
chair staring through a window up at the sky. "What are you looking for Daddy?
she asked. "I'm looking for UFOs. They're real, you know," he replied
and then he added, "I saw the bodies."
The problem with this “deathbed” anecdote is that there is absolutely
nothing to tie it to Roswell. Rees is not quoted saying “I saw the Roswell
alien bodies” but it is a general statement in support of the Extraterrestrial
Hypothesis. This exchange remains hearsay and would not be considered anything
close to a Dying Declaration. However, Schmitt believes this anecdote trumps Rees’
taped interview where he opines on the UFO phenomenon:
TT: You've been looking at this
phenomenon for fifty years, what's your attitude about it these days?
DR: About?
TT: About the phenomenon in
general?
DR: Well, I would say this: I'm not
convinced that there are UFOs. I'm convinced that people are seeing something
that they are accused of being UFOs. Some of the testimony of the people that have
observed them, and my own observation - it's something you can't just laugh about
and forget about. They did -people that were honest and trustworthy - make
awful sincere, honest reports on what they saw. I don't know. I'm not convinced
that there are flying saucers. Yet, I'm - I can't understand, if there isn't a
strange phenomenon going on, why people are seeing them. Not only in New Mexico
or the Southwest - but all over the world. They're observed them all over the
world. So, it's strange. But then it's strange, if there is such a thing - why
haven't we had concrete evidence to show that there is? That would be my
thoughts.
Note that Rees did not deny the plausibility of UFOs but denied
knowing what UFOs are, due to lack of concrete evidence. Rees also denied any
knowledge of the Roswell Incident itself.
To summarize, Rees when interviewed on tape in 1999 at the
age of 91, by all appearances was in a sound state of mind, based on his
coherent answers to Tulien’s questions, as reflected in the transcript. But
then eight year later, in 2007 when he died at the age of 99, Doyle Rees
allegedly had a radical change of opinion on UFOs. I say we contest the will!
Schmitt was livid that I called him out on these factual errors,
and he did not hesitate to mention the 150 other witnesses that he had interviewed
multiple times over many years. But if he is so nonchalant about distorting the
record of one of the least important of the characters in his book, what are we
to assume about the central witnesses that he attaches great importance to?
I’m happy to give him the benefit of the doubt, but if Schmitt
really wants to avoid being labeled a truth contortionist, it would be in his
best interest to release the complete transcripts of his witness interviews so
we can judge their testimony for ourselves. Other wise we are at the mercy of
his interpretations, factual errors, and unconventional standards of evidence
and in UFO-world that bar has been set far too low for way too long.
